Disclaimer: The characters in this story are the property of Disney and his likeness is only used for fan related purposes. Any original characters featured are the intellectual property of their creators.
Fireflies in the Morning
CHAPTER SIX;
As was her custom, Mrs. Moira Porter took her lunch in the dining room and, when she was done, went to the parlor for the rest of the afternoon. She was prepared to greet and receive any guests that might want to visit with her and, if not, she was in the middle of re-reading the Bible and wouldn't mind sitting by herself and reading a few good verses.
She wasn't always given to such a life of luxury. As a girl, Moira Sullivan had had to work long hours for a small wage, if only to provide for her mother, her father and her much younger brother. The factory work was tedious yet dangerous, and Moira sat at a machine, working the knobs and the levers and, because of her small hands, she was expected to reach in among the gears whenever there was a jam—which was precisely how she lost the smallest finger on her right hand. And though she wore a white glove now to hide the unsightly stump, the injury had done nothing for her then except cost her her work.
Well, no. That wasn't true. In fact, looking back on it, that horrific injury was probably the best thing that could've happened to her. Because she couldn't work in the textile factory any longer, Moira was reduced to selling half-wilted flowers on the corner where his family's tenement stood. Which was how, one lovely spring day, she sold a daisy to the middle-aged gentleman visiting New York who eventually became first her mentor, then her husband.
No, Moira Sullivan hadn't been a rich girl but Moira Porter... now that her dear husband William was gone, all she had left were the eighteen years they had together, plus his house and his money and his staff to remind her of him. William Porter's family had made their money generations back, at the beginning of the century; William was the last in the line and, when he met sixteen-year-old Moira, fated to be a bachelor for the rest of his years. He took a fancy to Moira's strong personality and her willingness to do anything proper in order to provide for her family and his visit to Manhattan turned into a six year trip. After they were wed, he even went so far as to move her parents to Pennsylvania with them when they finally left New York.
William was more than willing to bring Francis along, too, but Moira's brother—twelve years old when Moira got married at the age of twenty-two—had taken up with the Bowery Boys and refused to leave the city no matter how much Moira tried to persuade him and their mother cried. Well, Mrs. Porter sniffed, her nose in her Bible and Emma's hoodlum father on her mind, at least one good thing had come of her younger brother's pigheadedness.
Mr. and Mrs. Porter had never been blessed with any children. If there was anything that her brother had that made Mrs. Porter—who, in William Porter's large family home, had infinitely more—envious, it was his family. Frank Sullivan had managed to marry above him, a good girl named Margaret Kelly, and they had two children. The boy, named Francis Junior after his father, was, in Mrs. Porter's opinion, as much of a waste as his jailbird father. And then there was Emma...
She sighed and, placing her gilded bookmark back in its place, set her Bible aside. Those first few days after Emma went back to school were always the toughest. The house seemed so much quieter without her, and mealtimes were so much lonelier. It always reminded Mrs. Porter of how desolate the household had been following Mr. Porter's death the year before she rescued Emma from that terrible slum in New York.
Just the memory of the stench and the squalor that Mrs. Porter had found Emma wallowing in as an eight-year-old child, it was enough to make the woman lift her glasses before pinching her nose with her gloved fingers and breathe shallowly in for a few moments. She had thought she escaped such cramped, close living quarters when William whisked (most) of her family away to the clean air of Pennsylvania. Thankfully, she was able to save Emma from a dreadful fate.
And by now her young ward was safely settled in at the Hyde Park boarding school in Boston, a premier Catholic institution that would not only spare Emma from having to work long, hard hours slaving away in a factory, but would also turn her into a gentlewoman, prepared to be the perfect bride for a suitable husband once her schooling was complete. That was enough to turn the corners of Mrs. Porter's prim mouth upwards in a slight, satisfied smile. She would do anything to make sure Emma was pointed in the right direction.
She just wondered when the silly girl would drop the Sullivan name and finally agree to become Emma Porter. How else could she stand to inherit the Porter house and everything that came with it unless she did? It was such a pity the child didn't understand, she just—
"Madam?"
Henry's somber voice was so grave, so dreadfully dismal, it always reminded her of a funeral dirge. No matter where in the house he was, if he projected it loud enough, she could always hear it.
Mrs. Porter removed her spectacles next, placing them neatly on top of her Bible. They were only for reading and, as she looked around the parlor for her tall, looming butler, she didn't need them. "Yes, Henry?" she called, unable to find him.
And then, all of a sudden, there he was. Tall and broad, in a stark contrast to his short, round wife, Henry Solomon could've been a young seventy or an old fifty. Even as mistress of the house, Mrs. Porter had never had cause to ask; as far as she could remember, Henry had looked the same as now when she first moved into this house nearly twenty-five years ago. His grey hair was the color of dirty snow but it covered his entire head, save for one balding patch in the back that didn't get any large despite the passing years. His eyes were a hard blue color that reminded her of the sky during roaring summertime thunderstorms. There were hardly any wrinkles on his face and for one good reason: Henry never smiled. He seemed to think a frown was a proper expression for a servant and Mrs. Porter, too used to it to notice, found herself agreeing at times.
His head was partly bowed as he shuffled into the parlor, his permanent frown in place. There was a familiar yellow sheaf in his hand, one that he held up as he rumbled, "There was a delivery boy calling for you at the side door." Mrs. Porter nodded. Too right, too, for the delivery boy to use the servant's entrance at the side. Henry held up the yellow paper. "He brought this."
It was familiar but, without her reading glasses, she could hardly read any of what it said at so far of a distance. She gestured at it impatiently. "Yes? What is it?"
"It's a telegram, madam. Would you like me to read it to you?"
Mrs. Porter held out her hand royally. "Hand it here, please."
Henry did just what he was told. Mrs. Porter accepted the telegram, wondering where it could've come from, eager to slip her reading spectacles back on so that she could see it. Once they were in place, and she taken the time to make sure they were perched smartly on the end of her nose, she read to herself:
AUGUST 26, 1899
TELEGRAM
TO MRS. WILLIAM PORTER AT 23 MOCKINGBIRD LANE, ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA
EMMA SULLIVAN NOT RECEIVED AT SCHOOL STOP CONDUCTOR SAYS NOT ON TRAIN STOP ARE WE STILL EXPECTING THIS TERM QUERY
RESPECTFULLY,
MS. ADELAIDE MILLER, HEADMISTRESS
HYDE PARK SCHOOL
Mrs. Porter read the lines twice, three times and had no trouble understanding what they meant, though for all the money the tuition for that school cost, this Miller woman could've spared the expense to show some concern that Emma was missing. Slowly removing her glasses and then pinching the bridge of her nose again, she swallowed back her annoyed sigh. Not in front of the help.
William always warned her about minding her temper. While he found it thrilling and rewarding at most times, enjoying that headstrong manner of hers that made her such an interesting companion and a wonderful mistress for the Porter house, he often chided her when she did lose it. Rather than get angry, he would say with a knowing smile, do something about it. That's how his grandfather had made all of his money during the construction of the Erie Canal. That was how he managed to land Moira's hand in marriage when, year after year, she turned him down for being so much older.
He was right, as ever. Mrs. Porter shook the telegram out then folded it over and slipped the offending letter inside the cover of her Bible. Why be angry that the Hyde Park school had temporarily misplaced her niece? Why be angry that Emma was missing? Anger wasn't going to solve this problem. Panicking about it wouldn't work, either. There had to be a reasonable explanation about all this—and it would be Moira Porter who got to the bottom of it.
"Henry?"
The butler hadn't moved from his position directly in front of her chair. "Yes, madam?"
"Is the boy still here?"
"No, madam. He was paid well for his errand and then sent back to the telegraph office."
"Then would you be so kind as to have the carriage brought around? I have a telegram or two of my own that I would like to send."
Henry bowed his head, revealing the small balding patch on the back. "At once."
As Henry left the parlor, Mrs. Porter tucked her Bible under arm and followed after him. But rather than head out front to wait for the carriage, she went instead straight to her study. There would be paper to be found in her desk, and a pen, and she would take the time to prepare her response to Mrs. Miller's message before she went down to the telegram office herself. Because, while she wasn't so frugal as to count the letters in her reply, it was wonton waste to write long willy-nilly telegrams just because she could.
The study was probably one of the least used rooms in the whole house. It had been a library once, when her husband was still alive, but Mrs. Porter hadn't kept it up; instead, she brought in an antique desk she bought in town and sat down at it to write her letters. There were still a few mahogany bookshelves standing against three of the walls, each and every one haphazardly dusted courtesy of Sally's slapdash way of tidying up. The desk was set right by the open bay window so that she could take advantage of the sunlight while she could.
There was still a weak stream of light splashing throw the window, illuminating the desktop. Mrs. Porter took her seat and, after grabbing one of her pens from the right-hand side drawer, pulled the front drawer out, looking for a piece of paper or some stock for her to begin to draft her reply. However, before she grabbed any paper from the front compartment, something about the array caught her attention. She paused and, narrowing her shrewd gaze, it took her a moment to discover what it was.
Her letters.
Her special letters, the private letters she'd kept and hid and told herself that she would share with Emma one day, they'd been moved. Oh, it wasn't so easy to notice—even Mrs. Porter took a few curious moments before it struck her. Someone had taken great care to keep them in order, the most recent letters on top in their crisp, white envelopes, the older ones—dingy yellows, crackled browns—hidden at the bottom. But the letters weren't stacked as evenly as they should be, the twine was loose, and they were shoved further in the back than she had ever kept them.
Someone had been reading her letters. Someone... a seed of suspicion had planted itself into her mind but, before it could blossom into full-blown certainty, she turned in her seat and, lifting her voice, called out, "Henry?"
More often than not, it worked both ways: all Mrs. Porter had to do was call for Henry and her butler was there. He had hearing like bat and took his steps like a cat, arriving behind her with a quickness and such silence that was surprising to her. Sometimes she suspected that he had been standing there all along.
"Yes, madam?"
Mrs. Porter kept the drawer open, the letters disheveled and obviously in the wrong place. She gestured at them, keeping as calm as ever. "You haven't had any cause to straighten any of these papers, have you?"
"Certainly not!" Henry sounded scandalized. "Not your private papers, madam. I would never dare!"
Mrs. Porter tapped the gloved fingers of her good hand absently against the desktop. "Mmm... yes, that's what I thought." Henry rarely entered her study, regarding it as a private female sort of place for his mistress. With that reasoning, he left this room and Mrs. Porter's grand bedroom to the maid to dust and straighten.
"Would you want I have a word with young Sally?"
"No... no, that wouldn't be necessary. Tell me, Henry: is the carriage here? I feel that I would rather send those telegrams as soon as I can."
Not that that was quite necessary. Already she could see the response she would receive, almost as if they were sitting right in front of her. Mrs. Miller wouldn't have any further information regarding Emma's whereabouts, unless she took aside Mary O'Halloran and got the information out of Emma's girlfriend. By then it would pointless, once Mrs. Porter sent the second telegram she aimed to send.
Because suddenly she knew, as certain as she knew that her younger brother was a no-good scoundrel who was rotting away in Sing Sing, where her young ward had gone.
End Note: Figured it was about time we got to meet the infamous Aunt Moira ;) P.S. Researching the proper format for a telegram was actually really interesting!
Been a little bit of a slow go, but I'm still trucking. 27k down, 23k to go!
- stress, 07.19.11
