Chapter Four

Donna was sound asleep and didn’t hear the maids climbing the stairs. The curtains in the room were heavy velvet and not a crack of light penetrated them. When they rounded the corner of the stairs, Donna halfway awoke, hearing their whispered voices. She thought she would play possum and pretend to be under the Sandman’s influence and perhaps pick up some information as to her whereabouts and the general household routine. Both the annoying stuffy smell of lavender lingering in the bedding and hearing the maids muted mutterings also meant she was still back in the past. Rats. This was not the way she hoped the day would begin.

“Look, I know something is odd about her. Did you see the tattoo?” Donna recognized Rose’s voice.

“Coo! Nobody has tattoos on their bums ‘cept pirates and heathens! Well, my brother has one, too, and he was a sailor.” That would be Annabelle. “I know, I saw it when you did!”

“Yes, but I saw it clearer. You have weak eyes.”

At this point, Donna emitted a fake snore and halfway rolled over to face the wall. Let them think she was still asleep and maybe they’d talk more.

“I wish I could have come up here last night to look at her clothes, but I was so tired from working the party. I wonder where she got them.”

Donna heard them just fine now, so her feigned sleep was working. They were whispering louder.

“She’s probably worn out, coming here from Chicago. Royce said he found her in the stable alone! What woman travels alone? Nobody, that’s who!” Once again, it was Rose. The chattering stopped. Donna lay still, hoping they would resume. She assumed they were picking through her clothing.

“Look at this thing! What do you make of this–this, bust band she had on last night! It looks like a horse girth. And so stretchy!” Annabelle must have been looking at her underwear, Donna assumed now. She heard the maids giggle. When did they invent brassieres, she wondered? She would have to explain that. She heard them snapping the straps, as silly school girls would. She thought perhaps she could start stirring so she could get some breakfast. She had no idea what time it was and wanted to be up before most of the general household. The best idea seemed to be flopping over onto her back and waggling an arm.

“Shh! Here now, she’s moving. Go get a quick look at her. Some things I couldn’t see good in the candle light last night, you know.” Once again, the bolder Rose spoke. Annabelle seemed to be the one to hold back on nosiness.

Donna kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut and steadied her breathing to lure them a little closer. She could feel the movement of air as they came closer to the bed.

“There! I thought so! Her hair has painted streaks in it! What on earth…?” Donna thought about the highlights she had applied on her last visit to the beauty shop. She thought the gold and bronze streaks were glamorous, but now they marked her as unusual and freakish in this time and place.

“I can’t see anything, you know I have weak eyes,” Annabelle said.

“They’re there. My God, I don’t know what they are—some kind of paint.” Rose was so close Donna could feel her gentle breath. She knew it was time to pretend to awaken for real. She gave a good long cough and halfway pushed herself up on her elbows.

“Oh! Miss! We thought we heard you callin’ out from downstairs!” Rose lied through her teeth, but Donna had to admit she had her cover story prepared.

“While we came up we brought you more clothing—we thought you might want to change into some fresh things!”

“That’s kind of you.” Donna rubbed her eyes, they were so dry feeling. She saw Rose staring intently at her face. At the same time she remembered her violet contact lenses. Better to remove them or have them question her eye color. They weren’t prescription anyway.

“Your eyes miss! They’re not the same—the color I mean. One is blue and one is pur—”

Donna saw Annabelle coming in closer. Quickly—she had to do something. She hoped her hands were halfway clean and while rubbing her eyes, plucked out the lens from her right eye. The left one seemed to be missing, perhaps she had rubbed it out and it was on the bedding. She pretended to squint and blink, all the while pinching the lens and hiding it in her hand.

“Purple? Oh no, my eyes are blue. It’s strange that you ask. Sometime they look different colors in different lights.”

“I didn’t mean anything, Miss. Just…I just thought you might have the pink eye or an infection. We could have Royce go to town and get you some tincture from the doctor.”

Rose certainly was persistent, Donna thought. It would be a good thing to keep her eye on her, until she got this time travel thing straightened out.

“Rose, I used to have a cat with different color eyes,” Annabelle spoke up. “You know odd things occur in nature that we can’t explain.”

Now, Donna sat up halfway in the bed.

“I’d really like to wash up,” she told the maids.

“Certainly, we'll fetch you a bucket of water in a minute. We have some boiling in the kitchen. We just wanted to show you the clothes we selected. Rose picked out a variety of sizes. You look to be sort of a medium sized person.”

“Thank you so much. Oh, and I found the chamber pot last night.” Now that was a fun experience.

Donna couldn't very well tell them she had got up immediately after they left and went into what was the bathroom when she last stayed in the room. However, it was simply a large storage closet, holding mops, rags, bottles of some kind of foul smelling disinfectant and piles of bedding. From the looks of things, this room was not used much and the closet was probably handy to store things for the second floor.

Yanking the curtains open to get some moonlight in the room, Donna had felt under the bed and found a chipped enamel chamber pot. Reluctantly, she used it but at least she got some relief. She would have to get used to the absence of indoor plumbing––either that or holding her liquid intake in the evenings.

There was a moment of awkward silence and she realized the maids might be hanging around to see if she had any more unusual body markings when she left the bed. Luckily, except for the streaked hair and tattoo, she had nothing else futuristic. She did have pierced ears, but that was not unusual in cultures around the world. She'd removed the contact lenses, so she could think of nothing else that might pique their interest.

“Er…we'll fetch your water, won’t we, Rose?”

For some reason, they wanted to travel in a pair, Donna figured so they could compare notes on their observations. Annabelle remarked to having weak eyes, and Rose might not have been the brightest, but she had street smarts. So be it, she’d watch her step around them.

Donna picked through the clothes and found what appeared to be a nice clean outfit. Long legged underwear, a kind of undershirt or button front bodice affair and a long sleeved white blouse seemed appropriate. Nothing had zippers, everything was buttoned or tied. The waistbands and collars were free of any tags. There were no union labels, no dry clean tags, or even sizes. She saw by the stitching that everything was handmade. She wondered when mechanical sewing machines were invented and had to admit she had no idea. The two maids hurried up with the water, Donna noticed. Her presence was probably the best gossip they’d had in a long time. So every minute they were away, she figured, they might miss something. She also had the feeling that they would not be passing the gossip along to Mrs. Bradenton if they cared to keep their positions. For that, she breathed a sigh of relief.

They had returned with a wooden bucket, a bowl of soft soap, some combs and hair pins. Annabelle filled the wash basin in the stand near the window and Rose stood nearby with towels. They waited until Donna washed her face and hands, and moved to her neck and chest. Since she had no deodorant, she soaped and rinsed heavily. When Rose handed her the towel to dry herself, she also offered a tin of talcum powder and a soft bristle brush. Donna took and dabbed the powder under her arms and thought it would be comparable to commercial deodorant. Rose also offered her a small bottle of cologne and Donna splashed it on liberally. I’ll smell like the rest of the household, she thought.

Then she started dressing. She thought Annabelle and Rose would keep a close watch on her, and they did. While they tidied up and made the bed she caught their sideways glances. She sat on the edge of a couch and pulled on her brassiere then the under drawers and the under blouse the maids had provided. She pulled on some black stockings which had a nice soft feel to them. She picked up the blouse and put that on, buttoning the abalone buttons. The skirt was next; she buttoned it backwards, and then twisted it around so the buttons were in the back. Lastly, she pulled on some leather boots with no closures or grommets, just a straight pull on with a tab on the back. They were a bit loose, but she wasn't complaining.

Looking around, she found a hairbrush on the bureau and brushed her hair. The natural boar bristles felt good against her scalp. She thought back to when she shampooed her hair last. She wondered when she could get a good shampooing again, and maybe she had better not ask just yet. They might think she was strange or asking to waste water. Every time you needed water, somebody would have to draw it from the well. Peering into the mirror, she almost did a double take. She had this mirror in her apartment in Chicago. Yes, this exact mirror! It was a family heirloom. She touched the frame and the glass lightly with her fingertips. The touch of the cool metal spooked her a bit. She looked around the room once again, but more deliberately. The quilt on her bed last night—yes! It was hanging on the wall of her apartment. It had been carefully preserved against any further damage by a preservation process that they used for wedding gowns. Friends and visitors often complimented her on it, its fine handiwork and beautiful mixture of colors. Now here she was, actually using it to keep warm at night and not just a wall decoration. All these beautiful items made her miss her other life. She was glad to be able to touch them and use them, but the feelings that they awoke in her were bittersweet.

* * * *

When Donna was busy brushing the snarls out of her hair, the two maids went back down the stairs. When they were a little distance away and beyond earshot, they begin chirping again.

“Did you hear what she said about the chamber pot?” Rose said. She leaned against the wall, careful to keep a watchful eye down the hall.

“I know! What else on earth would you do in the middle of the night? We all use chamber pots.” Annabelle was flabbergasted. “It’s either that or the outhouse and we forgot to tell her where that was. But she wouldn’t have found it in the dark.” She fiddled with a stray curl that had fallen out of her cap. “It was almost as if she was proud to have found the silly thing. I don’t understand her at all. We’ve never had a guest like her, that’s for sure!”

“Don’t you dare tell anyone what she said, they won’t believe us.” Rose said. “What if she’s not really who she says she is? Maybe she’s from a foreign country.”

“No, no of course not. The missus would have our ears,” Annabelle replied. “We’ll just keep this to ourselves for the time being. Say, you keep an eye on her and I will also. Then in case one of us misses something maybe the other will catch it!”

* * * *

Royce slept fitfully when he returned from the main house. He knew the path backwards and forwards, so the darkness meant nothing to him. Yet, as he walked, his mind tumbled and turned with the evening’s events.

The woman’s appearance unnerved him. He’d seen a lot in his twenty-eight years, but this was the strangest he could ever remember. She was pretty and seemed different than other women he had known in his daily dealings. She had a healthy glow to her, so she had probably spent a lot of time outdoors in the sun and fresh air. He knew of many wealthy women who routinely walked their properties, checking on livestock and out buildings. Of course, they would be with their foreman or husband, but still, not every woman liked to be holed away indoors completely. Her speech was informal and at the same time a bit bold. In most cases, a woman of her position would speak to him in a different tone, since he was only a working man. Yet she spoke to him almost as a counterpart, an equal. He had to admit he liked it. She seemed a bit addled, and her replies to him were a bit slow. Perhaps it was due to tiredness or the fact that she had fallen. Whatever the reason, Miss Bradenton was different than any other guest that had been on the property.

He pulled on his work clothes and boots. It was time to get to his chores. Normally, his life was routine. Work, eat, rest. He had a day off on Sundays and trips to town with the maids to fetch supplies. This was his station in life and he accepted it. What more could a working man want?

He thought back to what he had done as a young man. Working on fishing boats on Lake Michigan was rough, but the pay was decent. In the wintertime, when everything iced over, he found a job working in a Milwaukee brewery. After two years of that, his eyesight had begun to falter, but just on the left side. He had gone to a doctor and all he could say he was sorry, but it was something called a cataract and he would have to learn to live with it. He reached up to rub his patch and remembered the anger he felt that day. The doctor kindly suggested that Royce might want to consider wearing an eye patch to stop curious stares. Royce did it and actually found it to be a relief since the blurring was annoying and he found he could compensate over time.

Then two summers ago, there was a fire at the brewery and the owners said it would be shut down for a number of months until everything was repaired and back in running order. They told all the employees to take time off and return in the fall and they would rehire the original workers first. Being frugal, Royce had saved most of his salary and journeyed back to southern Michigan to visit friends, and his mother, whom he had not seen in two years. She had liked Royce being home again and said she heard they would soon be looking to hire a stable hand at Fallow Field farms.

Royce was hesitant to go, but she told him the job would include free living quarters. So Royce decided to check on it, and found the current stableman to be elderly and in failing health. He was only staying on, he told Royce, until Mrs. Bradenton found a substitute. He showed Royce around a bit and described the job. Royce said he had some experience with horses, from working with the draft horses at the brewery. The old man told him there was nothing to it; it was the same when you worked around any large farm animal. You fed and watered them, kept the stables clean, and maintained the tack and buggies. Naturally, there would be incidental handyman work, fence mending, and ground keeping. He told Royce he would recommend him if he was seriously interested, and Royce said he was.

Within two weeks time, he had a new job and a tidy cottage to live in. He preferred to keep his cottage simple and rather bare, but his mother insisted on giving him decorations and assorted cook pots and bedding. Though he protested and told his mother he had lived in a sparse boarding house while in Milwaukee, she insisted on arranging his cottage into something comfortable and livable.

Besides, he loved Fallow Field. It was composed of acres of prime fruit orchards and vineyards. The entire property was bordered on the western side by the slow moving Saint Joe River and on the northern side by a deep ravine. To the east and south were other smaller farms owned by local fruit farmers that raised pears, currents and plums. Fallow Field farm lay a few miles from Saint Joseph, a pleasant drive by buggy in daylight.

He learned his job quickly and liked the sameness of the routine. Feed and groom the horses, and save up handyman jobs for rainy days and winter time. He knew he would have the job as long as he wanted, and the longer he was there, the less he wanted to go back to the brewery. Fallow Field was beautiful and peaceful during all seasons. The city of Milwaukee was just that—a city, sprawling and dirty and growing every year. On the farm he had the peacefulness he longed for. The animals seemed to like his gentle ways and he soon learned to groom and tend to them so they shone with good health, inside and out.

He forked the hay to them from the cart. The stable had twelve horses in total; some were hacking horses for pleasure riding and four were draft-mixes to put in the traces for the heavy wagon or plowing.

As he heaved the hayfork to and fro, he thought again of Miss Bradenton and the events of last night. He could easily become besotted with that woman, but their social status was so different. There would be no chance at a romantic entanglement, or would there? She had seemed a bit odd that first night and it unnerved him. Perhaps that personality quirk would pass from her and she would be as normal as everyone else. He hoped she would stay for a long visit and perhaps they could meet up, either by coincidence or serendipity, on the farm. Most everyone at Fallow Field crossed paths during a typical day. So there was a chance, after all. He smiled and knew he wanted her. He wanted to loosen her hair and cover his chest with it. He wanted to listen to her breathing when they held each other close. He put the hayfork against the wall and wiped his hands on his pants. No, it was best to drive such thoughts from his mind. They were from different stations in life and would probably always remain that way. He should be ashamed of his thoughts. There were other jobs he needed to do today. It was best that he got on with them.