Chapter Twelve

“Should we get the wagon? Or do you want to keep making an ass of yourself?”

Nellie had always hated her aunt. But she had to admit that Lucy was right. Of course the bank would never allow her to win. She should have realized that before she’d ever set foot in the courtroom.

The jurors had come over one by one and offered condolences as if it were a funeral, which in many ways it was. She was burying the last vestiges of hope. The powerful would always control the weak. That would never change. The stories she had written about women and children in factories and slums and asylums didn’t really matter. That was the stark truth of it. The inertia of the world was too great. There might be outrage for a week or two, but once the public moved on to the next story, things would remain as before. The rich would get richer; the poor would struggle and die early.

That was the real reason she had resisted working on the Emma Lazarus story, she realized. It would bring home this most unpleasant truth yet again, and she just didn’t want to face it anymore. Even if she could somehow show that Emma had been murdered, what difference would it make? The people who killed her would not be brought to justice. Pulitzer might publish a story in the World, and there might even be a hue and cry, but Hilton and DeKay and Barker would go unpunished.

She was better off writing about gardens and fashion for the Dispatch. The pay was better, and this way she would be nearer to her sisters, who could help take care of her mother. Working for the World was exciting, yes, but it was a false excitement, like trying on a dress you couldn’t afford and no one would let you wear anyhow.

“I think we’ll go to the train, Aunt Lucy.”

They arrived at the livery, a large two-story building with a balcony up top.

Nellie dreaded the thought of seeing her sisters. In their letters they had been so hopeful that their time working sixteen-hour days in the factories would come to an end. The last time Nellie had seen them, they looked so worn down, they could have passed for ten years older than Nellie instead of three and five years younger.

An attentive man in his early twenties with a thick mustache, earnest eyes, ragged suspenders, and a shirt several sizes too large jumped up from his bench outside the stable.

“May I help you?” he asked in a thick Eastern European accent.

“Yes, Hunkie,” said the aunt condescendingly. “Bring my wagon around.”

To Lucy, everyone from Eastern Europe was a Hunkie. All the Irish Catholics were micks, the Italians wops, the Jews kikes, and, of course, the few blacks in Apollo niggers. Nor did Lucy think her own ethnic group, the Black Irish, was any better. Lucy resented anyone trying to get ahead, as if managing to move up the economic ladder was proof of her own shortcomings.

The man brought the horse and carriage around to the entrance. He had rubbed the carriage seat clean of dust and brushed off the horse. He proudly held the reins tight as Lucy climbed up to the driver’s seat.

“Well,” said Lucy, looking down at Nellie and Mary Jane, “get a move on.”

Mary Jane balked at climbing up. Nellie realized they had forgotten the footstool at her aunt’s house.

“Do you have a footstool?” she asked the attendant.

The man look confused.

“Do you have a footstool?” Lucy said with impatience.

He still looked confused. Nellie realized he didn’t speak English. She pointed to her feet and mimed climbing on to the carriage. He caught on and motioned for her to wait a moment. He hurried inside the livery and brought out a stool, setting it down for Mary Jane and then helping her into the carriage. Then he took the stool and walked around to the other side, beckoned Nellie to come over, and helped her into her seat. She smiled at his solicitous manner.

“Thank you,” she said kindly.

“You’re welcome,” he said with pleasure in a thick European accent and handed Lucy the reins. She clucked and the horse began walking. The man waved good-bye.

“Nice fellow,” said Mary Jane.

“I think the only words he knows in English are thank you,” said Lucy sourly.

“Well, if that’s the case,” said Mary Jane, “he should go far.”

Nellie agreed. With that kind of energy and eagerness to please, the man would go far. She thought back to the immigrants at Castle Garden. They had such courage, risking their lives to make a weeks- or months-long journey in wretched conditions to a place where they knew no one, had no money, and couldn’t speak the language. And the whole system was set up against them: thieves, con men, bureaucrats, and angry nativists awaiting them on their arrival. Still they came, by the hundreds of thousands, fueled by nothing but hope for a better life. Nellie understood why Emma had fought for them.

How did she do it? Nellie wondered. Where did she get the hope, the faith that she could actually change things? Yes, Emma came from wealth, but that didn’t protect her from the enemies she was taking on, the parasites at Castle Garden or the hateful heir to the most successful department stores in America. The chances of prevailing in any of those situations had seemed impossible, but Emma had persevered—more than that, she’d actually succeeded. Emma saw an injustice and was willing to fight it, whatever daunting forces lurked on the other side. Nellie admired that so much. She didn’t have that kind of fortitude. Oh, she had worked hard to get a job in New York and managed to land the Bellevue story and a position on the World staff, but she had been fighting discouragement the whole way and had nearly given into it dozens of times. If Emma ever felt discouraged, she certainly never succumbed to it.

Suddenly Nellie didn’t feel quite so alone. The struggles to work in a man’s world or to fight a bank that cheated her family had been so lonely. No one really understood what that was like, not even Ingram. But the trails Emma had tried to blaze were every bit as rugged as Nellie’s. In her own eyes, Nellie fell short by comparison, but at last she had a guide, a beacon, someone who would have understood all she had to go through.

For the first time, Nellie saw why this assignment was so important to Pulitzer.

They had killed her, and letting Emma Lazarus die without getting to the bottom of what happened was like letting her die by the side of the road and then walking away. Emma, above all people, was entitled to a proper burial, and that meant exposing how she’d died. Justice would not come easily. Her murderers would almost certainly not be brought to legal justice. They were too powerful, too well-protected. But they might at least be brought to social justice.

She couldn’t wait to go back to New York.