Daniel had known how important it was to secure the next installments and deposit it into the Fields, Osgood & Co. vault. That is why Osgood had asked Officer Carlton whether any papers had been found on Daniel-and was astounded to learn none had.
Could Daniel have been deliberately forced into the street by one of those Bookaneers attempting to take the papers? Osgood dismissed the idea from his mind as soon as he had thought it. Publishing had known some shady practices in the art of procuring a manuscript-bribery, theft, spying-but not physical assault nor, even by the shadiest Bookaneer, murder! The installments lost to Daniel's accident could be replaced from London-that was not what kept Osgood awake. But he did not want to admit that the police and coroner were right about his clerk and the opium. This boy was one of the fallen, they'd said. Had he forsaken Osgood, the firm, his own sister?
A few days later, Rebecca paused before Osgood's office door before leaving for the day. She was still wearing black-even the little jewelry she wore had been dyed black, as was custom-but she no longer wore the crepe over her dress. “Mr. Osgood,” she said, her dark hair straying from under a bonnet. As she fixed it, a ragged scar from years before was visible on the back of her right ear. “I need to thank you,” she said, and nodded knowingly.
Osgood, caught off guard, nodded and smiled back. Only after she walked away did he realize he did not know what it was she thanked him for. Was she referring to some business matter that had occurred during the day, for having given Daniel a position there years before, for holding her hand when she had cried, even though it broke the rules? Of course, it was too late now to ask her. He could not stop her the next morning and say, suavely, after giving instructions for letters and memorandum for the day, Oh, and what was it you wished to thank me for yesterday, my dear? Osgood was kicking himself for his slow brain, when a less welcome face appeared in the same place in the doorway
“Ah, Mr. Osgood, still here? No rich dinner parties tonight with the literary sort? No ‘swarry,’ as they're called?” This was Montague Midges, the circulation clerk for their magazines, the Atlantic Monthly and Every Saturday. He was an unctuous and grimly talkative little man but efficient. He was there to deliver the latest accounting numbers for the Atlantic. “I see sturdy Miss Sand is still in mourning,” he added with a sidelong glance out the door.
“Midges?”
“Your girl-keeper.” This was Midges's name for the firm's female bookkeepers. “Oh, I won't cry when Miss Two Shoes finally folds the mourning garb back in her drawer. The black makes their ankles look big, don't you think?”
“Mr. Midges, I'd prefer…”
Midges broke into whistling, as he often did in the midst of another person's sentence. “Guess she'll be breaking down without her brother in Boston, poor wretch. Ten to one she wishes now she hadn't given that husband of hers the mitten. Good night, sir!”
At that, Osgood had sprung up from his chair, but he knew if he defended Rebecca in hearing of the other female bookkeepers in the office, whispers would fly. It would only make things worse for her at a bad time. Sitting back, Osgood wondered if Midges had recognized the reality of Rebecca's situation better than he had. The palms of his hands began to sweat. Did the terrible loss of Daniel for Rebecca also mean the loss of Rebecca for Osgood?
REBECCA DIDN'T WANT to move to a new room, but the landlady insisted. With Daniel gone, she was to take her belongings to a smaller one at the top of the narrow stairs of the second-class boardinghouse for which she'd pay an additional one dollar per month.
Rebecca didn't argue-she wouldn't dare. Many boardinghouses did not take single women not living with relatives, especially divorced women, or charged them much higher rates than men. Those houses with too many needle girls from the factories feared being mistaken for brothels, and the landladies always preferred newlywed couples and male clerks when they had a choice. Rebecca's landlady, Mrs. Lepsin, made it clear that she originally had taken Rebecca in for two reasons: because she was not a shiftless Irish girl and because she was sharing the room with her brother. Now, though still not Irish, the other reason was dead, and it was clear Lepsin would prefer Rebecca gone.
Rebecca packed her clothes and her belongings by the light of a solitary candle. There were no closets in the room, so some of her clothes were already folded and the rest hanging by rusted nails on the wall. As she did, she ate a small cake of chocolate she kept with some red and white peppermint sticks inside a glove box for what she called emergencies. Like when she was hungry before bed after a meal downstairs of cold vegetables and watery rice pudding at the crowded table. Or when having to suddenly dismantle one's whole room in a matter of hours, or be put on the street!
The five-dollar monthly rent for the smaller room was more than Rebecca could possibly pay without Daniel's help, even with whatever reductions she'd find to make in her expenses. Savings accounted for, she would be able to pay two more months. If the firm's partners achieved their plan to defeat the pirates and profit as they deserved from The Mystery of Edwin Drood, it was widely expected that they would raise the bookkeepers’ salaries by seventy-five cents. If the pirates triumphed, the financial worries in the back offices of their building would worsen; salaries might even be reduced by twenty-five cents. The raise in salary had been a given before Dickens's death, but now it-and Rebecca's prospects to remain in the city-hung in the balance. When Rebecca had lived out in the country, with her carpenter husband, his income had been sufficient to keep up with the needs of a comfortable home with room to spare for young Daniel. He'd come to live with her and Ambrose on the death of their mother.
Then the war came and Ambrose left with the army. In the brutal battle of Stones River, Ambrose had been captured by the Confederates and kept as a prisoner in Danville. By the time he returned two years later, he was a skeleton of himself, debilitated and withdrawn. His temper had grown worse; he beat her regularly on the head and arms and hit Daniel whenever he intervened. The triangle of beatings and retaliation became a pattern that seemed to be the only way to keep up Ambrose's spirits. Rebecca had done her best to steer Ambrose away from his violence, but when it proved impossible to protect herself and her brother she gathered her courage and left. She'd taken Daniel away to Boston, where she had heard there were new positions opening in offices for young women in what the newspapers proclaimed the postwar economy.
That had been more than three years ago now. When she was able to afford the fees, and after a long process in the courts, she had secured a divorce from her husband. Ambrose, once notified by a country lawyer, did not object, remarking through a letter to the Boston judge that Rebecca's slender body had refused him any sons, anyway, and that her meddling brother was a worthless pest.
Under the standards of Massachusetts law, it was two years before the divorce would be final and she could remarry. Until then she was legally barred from entering any romantic relationship with a man. During that waiting period-of which there was another year remaining-any violation, or even any appearance of violation, would nullify her divorce immediately and she would not be allowed to marry again.
Being a wife was not foremost on her mind as she readied for the move upstairs. The other bookkeepers could talk all they wanted about weddings and where they would meet the coming mythical husband and how the latest ladies’ magazine advised that shaving one's entire head would lead to more lustrous hair once it grew back. All that wasn't her. Rebecca, despite everything, felt fortunate about her present situation. She had experienced marriage, and it had brought her only distress. Her post at the firm was different. True, she and the other girls at the office were “bookkeepers,” not clerks, and were paid a quarter of that paid to most of the male workers at Fields, Osgood & Co.-just as at all the other companies. But she relished her work and it supported her in a city full of young women waiting to snap up both her job and room. For that, and for the trust Osgood put in her to take care of herself, she had spontaneously thanked him before leaving the office.