Seeing anyone new in River City was always a matter of great excitement and even greater gossip. Although the town was a relatively young one, it hardly attracted new people in droves; when last year had brought both Marcellus Washburn and Harold Hill as new permanent residents, it had come as quite a shock – to say nothing of the fact that they had each proceeded to wed one of the town's well-established spinsters! But now the better part of a year had gone by, and there had been few additional intrusions into River City life except for a few temporary arrivals, such as visiting relatives, seasonal farmhands, and one completely legitimate and entirely ineffectual salesman of sewing machines.
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in March of 1913, however, Marian was quite surprised not only to meet two new River City-ziens but to find them standing right on her own doorstep.
The librarian had been deeply absorbed in the task of washing all the windows in the house, a task which had currently led her to the kitchen, when the sudden chime of the doorbell startled her. Frowning, she tried to think of who it would be at this particular hour. So as not to be too surprised when she opened the door, she darted over to the parlor window and pushed the curtain aside, just enough so that she could see the front doorstep but not be seen herself. A woman and a child were waiting patiently before the door, and Marian was astonished to realize that she recognized neither of them. For a brief moment of frenzied paranoia, her mind rushed with the horrifying possibility that this woman was a figure from Harold's past, and her heart pounded so rapidly that she could very nearly hear it.
Of course, Marian knew it was perfectly reasonable that there should be a lady in the town that she had never met before. As small of a town as River City was, there were still over two thousand residents, and it was unlikely for them all to have crossed paths, or to remember in detail if they had. As she opened the door, the librarian discreetly examined her visitors, trying to recall if she'd ever seen them before.
The woman was pale and handsome, her hair black and shiny beneath a feathery yellow hat. There was a sweet upturned look to her nose, and her large, round eyes were nearly black as her hair. She was clearly young – Marian judged her to be very near to her own age – and was clad in a pale yellow dress that was a bit too voluminous with an excess of frills, probably at least five years out of fashion. Clinging to her skirts was a small girl who looked very much like the woman, dressed in a smart blue sailor suit with her black hair hanging over her shoulder in a single thick braid.
"Good afternoon. Are you Mrs. Hill, the piano teacher?" the woman asked, looking shy and apologetic in a way that contrasted sharply with her vivid appearance.
"Yes, I am," Marian replied, her suspicion not entirely abated. "What may I help you with?"
"Well, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Mrs. Nellie Appleton. and my daughter Millicent –" The child's large eyes snapped up to Marian's for an instant before quickly dropping her gaze down to her shoes. " –has been taking piano lessons for several years now. We just moved to River City and I was told to inquire to you about the possibility of continuing her studies here."
"Oh!" the librarian exclaimed, almost laughing in her utter relief. "I am flattered that somebody was kind enough to mention me, but I'm sorry to say that I'm not exactly the prominent piano teacher in town any longer – my mother gives most of the lessons lately. I only have one appointment free at the moment. Unless you could arrange for Millicent to come at exactly six o'clock on Thursday nights, I'm afraid I may not be able to be the one to teach her."
Mrs. Appleton nodded slowly, pursing her lips. "I don't think we would have a problem with that time, would we, Milly?"
The girl shook her head quickly, grateful for the opportunity to look at her mother instead of at Marian. "That's good," she murmured, her high voice cracking.
The librarian smiled warmly at them. "Well, why don't you two come inside so we can discuss the details? I'd also like to hear what Millicent is capable of so I'll know where to start her lessons. Follow me to the music room, please."
xxx
As it turned out, Millicent Appleton was one of the more naturally talented students that Marian had ever had taught – despite the little girl's almost painful bashfulness, she possessed skills that were very impressive for one so young, and Marian soon grew to look forward to her lessons with her. While the girl was rather difficult to get through to, the librarian had already developed a warm affection for her as she realized how similar her new student was to her brother. Though she had no difficulty in articulation, Milly was just as loath to speak as Winthrop had once been, and even eye contact could send her into a full-on panic. Although she did not know the cause of Milly's condition, Marian was as patient and understanding as she could manage, and the girl seemed to appreciate it greatly. When she timidly confessed, after only her third lesson, how much she preferred Marian over her former piano teacher and even any of the teachers she'd had in school, the librarian was touched. It might have been, in part, her fondness for young Milly that led her to accept so unhesitatingly when Harold suggested one night that it might be time to forgo their attempts to delay parenthood – not that they had ever practiced them with much consistency, anyway.
Mrs. Appleton always accompanied Millicent to and from her lessons, but Marian was a bit shocked when the woman showed up on her doorstep on a Friday afternoon about a month after their first meeting.
"I hope I haven't caught you at an inconvenient time," Mrs. Appleton said demurely, her brown eyes wide with self-effacing worry. "But I just wanted you to have this pie – in appreciation for what you've done for Milly. She really adores you, Mrs. Hill."
"Your daughter is a delightful student," Marian told her with a warm smile as she accepted the pie – it was a lemon meringue that smelled heavenly. "Thank you very much! That's awfully thoughtful of you to do that for me."
It was a curious gesture – none of her students' parents had ever bothered to engage personally with her other than to pay her or inquire about their children's progress. Unsure of how to respond to Mrs. Appleton's unexpected visit, the librarian marshaled her domestic instincts and asked her if she might like to come in for tea.
Marian felt more than a little awkward as the two of them first sat down together in the parlor – it seemed that she would be responsible for leading the conversation, as Mrs. Appleton was nearly as diffident as her daughter.
There was something very insubstantial, twitchy, fluttery about Mrs. Appleton – her eyes and hands were in constant motion, and she had a nervous habit of repeatedly smoothing back the tendrils of hair behind her ears. Between her mannerisms and her penchant for ruffles and feathers, Marian thought of her, not unkindly, as being rather like a small bird – though she was in actuality a few inches taller than the librarian.
Politely, Marian asked Mrs. Appleton where she had come from and what had brought her to River City.
"I lived up in Platteville, Wisconsin, but – certain circumstances necessitated a change of situation," Mrs. Appleton answered cryptically, staring into her teacup. "I was able to get a job teaching at River City High School – I used to teach before I was married."
The librarian was slightly stunned that the school board would have approved the hiring of a married woman as a teacher, but she thought it would be improper to pry into the matter of how Mrs. Appleton had landed her position. Instead, Marian asked her, "What subject do you teach?"
"English and literature," she replied – and for Marian, the conversation instantly changed from banal to fascinating.
Despite her eccentricities, despite the fact that they had only just met, in the course of this conversation Mrs. Appleton managed to become one of Marian's most favorite people in River City. Marian found that she was just the sort of lady that she had long felt this town to be sorely lacking. Mrs. Appleton had a knowledge of and passion for literature that the librarian had not found in another person since Uncle Maddy. It was incredibly refreshing to meet another River City-zien with such intellectual interests – the two of them ardently discussed their favorite poets, the shame of censorship, the foolishness of Elinor Glyn's novels, and the genius of Shakespeare for nearly two hours, until they had long run out of tea and their conversation was disrupted by the arrival of Harold.
As the music professor poked his head into the parlor, he looked understandably surprised.
"Oh, good evening," he ventured, clearly uncertain of what kind of greeting is expected when coming home to find one's wife entertaining a woman that one has not yet met.
To be honest, Marian did not know if there was a particular protocol that should be followed, either, but she attempted to rescue her husband. "Oh, Mrs. Appleton, this is my husband, Harold Hill. Harold – this is – um, my friend, Mrs. Nellie Appleton."
Marian had gotten rather accustomed to the phrase "my husband" over the past five months, though it still delighted her to say it, but "my friend" – it had been so long since she had referred to anybody in that way that she felt unsure if she was using the word correctly. Could one become a friend after a single conversation? Was she being dreadfully presumptuous? Should she have asked Mrs. Appleton's permission before calling her that? But that sounded so childish!
"How do you do, Mrs. Appleton?" Harold said with a smile. "I believe I've already met your daughter – Milly, is that right?"
"Yes, that's her," Mrs. Appleton replied, her voice going a little softer again now that she was talking to somebody with whom she had not yet grown comfortable. "I've heard so very much about you around town, Professor Hill. Your band seems to be the pride and joy of River City!"
Husband and wife exchanged fond glances, the two of them realizing in amusement at the same time that Mrs. Appleton knew nothing about the extremely unusual circumstances that had brought the boys' band into existence and the two of them together.
"Yes, well, the band is, ahem, still just starting out, but we're always getting better, and Marian's done so very much for us," he proclaimed with a grin. "I don't suppose you have a son, do you?"
Marian just about gasped at his audacity – was he really conducting a sales pitch in their own home? – but to her relief, Nellie did not seem offended.
"Not yet, but if I do, I'd love to have him learn an instrument someday," Nellie answered placidly, and for the first time Marian noticed the definitive roundness of the English teacher's abdomen.
Once again, she felt a bit baffled – a woman who was not only married, but pregnant, had been hired at the high school? It seemed too improbable to be true, yet Nellie did not seem like the type capable of large-scale deception – unless her entire shrinking-violet persona was an act. Still, Marian wasn't about to jump to such a cynical conclusion. Surely not every person who came into River City could be a charlatan!
Long after Mrs. Appleton had departed and Harold and Marian had finished their dinner, the librarian still found herself mulling over the particulars of their enjoyable but rather odd visit.
"You and that Nellie Appleton already looked like a couple of old friends when I walked in here. I think it's wonderful that there'll be another literary lady for you to talk to now," Harold noted as they washed the dishes together.
"Oh, I know," Marian agreed. "As wonderful as it is to have all of River City interested in music – well, it seems unlikely that they'll all be as enamored with books anytime soon. The ladies do more reading now than they used to, for certain, but their chief passion is still, well – gossip!"
"Maybe you and Mrs. Appleton both can work together to give River City a literary renaissance," the professor said with a wink.
"Wouldn't that be wonderful? I know that Nellie's not exactly a personality, but if Mrs. Shinn and the ladies grew to like her, I really think we might be able to persuade them... and why shouldn't they like her? She's very sweet, after all."
"And, if nothing else, River City could always use more of her wonderful pies!"
xxx
Marian was never quite sure how to feel around the prominent ladies of River City. While the women did dote on her and hang on her every well-educated word after they had realized the error of their ways back in July, the librarian was not so foolish as to forget entirely the years of loneliness that the cruel gossip of these same women had brought upon her. Most of the ladies, with the exception of the inscrutably aloof Eulalie Shinn, had often seemed very remorseful and apologetic toward Marian whenever they remembered just how they had treated her, and Ethel Washburn, as the wife of Harold's dearest friend and one of the least malicious gossips to begin with, had grown rather close to the librarian in recent months. But Marian never felt comfortable around them, exactly, and she had been rather discouraged to realize that despite her considerably more active social life nowadays, there was not one female that she could talk with half as easily as she could with her husband. As much as she liked Ethel, the two of them could hardly talk about anything more stimulating than housework and fashions. Despite her earnest appreciation of the library and Marian's knowledge, Ethel wasn't one to concern herself with much beyond the simple pleasures and problems of River City life.
She had envied Harold's relationship with Marcellus, sometimes. They had such a long history, such a comfortable familiarity, and somehow fate had conspired to bring them both to the same little town! Marian never expected to see any of her school friends from back East again, and even if she did, it was unlikely that they would have anything in common by now. But most of the committee ladies were far older than her and had entirely different interests, and, most importantly, Marian knew that she could never form a genuine, intimate friendship with a person who had spent years laughing scornfully behind her back.
That was why it had been a tremendous relief to meet a woman who not only shared her passions, but who had not even been in town to hear the spiteful rumors about her. There was also another victory – she had proved herself capable of shedding the friendlessness that these rumors had made a fact of her life. It had been so long since Marian had made a new friend that she had wondered if she had forgotten how, or if the forming of friendships was somehow too childish of a phenomenon for an adult woman to grasp. But after that first conversation, the women fell rather easily into a routine of calling on one another, or stopping to chat before or after Milly's lessons. Marian felt now as though she had at last started anew, that she had finally thrown off the yoke that had been placed over her shoulders ever since her family had moved to River City.
Of course, it was a mistake for her to assume that one could ever be entirely free from the far-reaching and poisonous effects of a small community prone to gossip. She was soon to learn that her newfound companionship with Nellie was to be anything but free of such difficulties.
xxx
When the Ladies' Events Committee convened in late April, they did so in the ostentatiously furnished parlor of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Hix. All sage-green fabric and dark wood and cluttered Victorian decor, the Hix home gave the constant impression of being oppressively dusty even though it was kept impeccably clean. Even Marian, whose tastes in decor admittedly ran toward the ornate, felt that whoever had designed this particular interior must have had something of a vendetta against air, light and space.
It was in this living museum that the committee had gathered for the solemn purpose of organizing a "May Day Bake Sale", the proceeds of which would go toward the noble, if vaguely defined, Town Beautification Campaign that they were planning to enact during the summer of 1913. In the small notebook in which she recorded the vital details of these meetings, Marian was jotting down what sort of baked goods each lady had pledged to contribute. After the committee members' confectionary repertoires had been thoroughly accounted for, they had moved on to the slightly more difficult task of figuring out whomever else in River City they could wheedle into providing pastry.
Marian very rarely spoke up in the phases of these meetings that called for community connections – for other than her mother or Harold, there was nobody to whom she was close enough to ask for help.
But as Alma Hix lamented that she simply couldn't think of one more lady who was a talented baker, and that she supposed that she just might have to ask Mrs. Hattie Lloyd to round out their selection with her notoriously regrettable rhubarb pie, Marian dutifully piped up to ask if any of the ladies had met Mrs. Nellie Appleton.
While a few of the ladies looked back at her with no sign of recognition, most of the others smiled – and not with friendly affection. There was a sort of hunger in their eyes and a smugness about their lips, and Marian knew, her heart sinking, that Mrs. Appleton would not be welcomed at the bake sale.
"Hmm, Mrs. Hill," simpered Maud Dunlop with condescending reproachfulness, "It seems that you don't know as much as you think you do about Mrs. Appleton. I'm sure that if you did, you would not have made such a suggestion."
"I know that she can bake the most delicious pies," Marian blurted, feeling foolish. "I teach her daughter."
Mrs. Shinn let out an abrupt bark of laughter. "Her daughter, yes. I don't suppose you've met Mr. Appleton, have you?"
Marian could feel herself growing pale. Was this really how it started – had there once been a conversation just like this about her? "No, as a matter of fact, I –"
"Because there isn't a Mr. Appleton!" Mrs. Hix proclaimed authoritatively. "And, personally, I don't think there ever was."
Mrs. Dunlop tapped her fingernails on the table, shaking her head. "The woman wears the showiest clothes – all those pretty pastels – certainly unbecoming of a widow!"
Her breathing began to come more quickly, and Marian realized that she was at a dangerous risk of crying. She had been so certain that the ladies had come far enough so as to never again viciously attack a woman about whom they knew so little – they still gossiped, of course, but never like this. And to hear all of this vitriol aimed toward someone who she considered a friend – it was almost too much to handle.
"You don't know that she was recently widowed!" the librarian protested, trying her best to sound logical and detached so as not to betray her turmoil of emotion. "Her daughter is old enough to be in school, after all."
Mrs. Squires smirked as she exclaimed, "Haven't you noticed her waistline? I'd say she was widowed within the past six months – or she wants us to think so, at least." Marian winced inwardly as she chastised herself for overlooking so obvious a detail.
The mention of Mrs. Appleton's maternal condition pounded the final nail into any chance of her respectability. The next few minutes went by in a blur of vindictive clamor:
"She doesn't go to church! She lives next door to me and I've never seen her leaving the house on a Sunday morning, not once."
"Well, I daresay if she were the God-fearing type, she'd not be in her situation, would she?"
"Her daughter's a strange one as well, acts downright unnatural sometimes."
"I wonder if the baby's father is even the same as the little girl's?"
"I could have sworn I saw her flirting with the school principal – he's my sister's husband..."
"You know, I saw her in the mercantile and she didn't even say hello to me."
"To think the town lets people like her teach our children!"
Before long Marian was hardly hearing their specific accusations, hearing instead the dreadful, tinny echoes of rumors past: Her kind of woman doesn't belong on any committee... She advocates dirty books... She was seen coming and going from his house!...
In her mind, she was screaming: Stop! You have no proof, and no right to say these things! She composed a long, indignant speech about how it wasn't so long ago that the ladies had thought terrible things about herself, and hadn't they been wrong then?
But the timeless dilemma of the schoolyard bystander kept her silent. She knew it was her moral responsibility to stand up for any person who was being degraded in such a way, but even her personal loyalty to Mrs. Appleton could not surmount the cold dread Marian felt at the prospect of such barbs being tossed in her direction once again. If she defended Nellie, the women could easily see her as having immoral tendencies, herself, and it would be a short road from there to becoming an outcast once again. Marian simply couldn't bring herself to throw herself against those ladies with whom she had never yet felt that she had a very firm footing.
So, instead of directly addressing their gossip, Marian simply cleared her throat and tapped her pencil against her notebook. "So, Mrs. Hix, I suppose you will be asking Mrs. Lloyd if she would like to donate her rhubarb pie?"
xxx
Marian had planned to go into town after the meeting to get a little shopping done, but her mind buzzed uncomfortably with anxiety, and she found that she did not feel up to going about in public. Her instinct, in times of trouble, was to run to her mother or Harold – but to explain why she was so distraught, she would be forced to admit her own cowardice.
After wandering aimlessly through the park for a while, Marian finally set her course for home, where, at least until band practice ended, she could be alone. She drew the shades in the parlor and crumpled on the couch, nauseated with worry, paralyzed with the inability to act.
It took a while for the one terrible thought to cut through Marian's fog of self-pity, but when it did, it made her blood run cold, and she bolted upright with a gasp.
Does Nellie know yet what they say about her? And if not – how long before she finds out?
Before long, Marian was going to have to defend Mrs. Appleton against the ladies – it was only a matter of when – and how.
xxx
To be continued...