Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Shadows in the Attic
Amy—Amy Carmichael. Are you listening?” Amy looked up at the teacher and scrambled to get her mind back on trigonometry. But the truth was, she hadn’t been listening for quite a while. She had more important things than math on her mind. It was September 12, 1882, a once-in-a-lifetime day, and Amy was not about to miss the event! How cruel it had been of the astronomy teacher to tell his students all about the “great September comet,” when he knew none of the girls at Marlborough House boarding school would be allowed to stay up to watch it. Amy had tried everything she could think of to get around the rule that dormitory girls were not allowed to stay up past 9 p.m. But nothing had made any difference. She had even gone to Miss Kay, the school principal, and begged her to let the girls stay up. But comet or no comet, Miss Kay had no intention of bending the rules one bit.
Amy hadn’t wanted to ask Miss Kay, but as usual, she had been the one voted to do it. Being only fourteen years old meant there were lots of older girls in the school, but Amy was a natural leader. She had courage the other girls envied. Even when she’d knocked firmly on Miss Kay’s door, she hadn’t been one bit afraid. And when Miss Kay dismissed what Amy thought was a well-balanced argument for being allowed to stay up to view the comet, Amy had left the office with her head held high. The other girls were depending on her, and she would find another way for them to watch the comet.
That was the problem occupying her mind during trigonometry class. As she thought about it, a plan began to form in her mind. What was to stop them from sneaking up and watching the comet from the attic skylight? That way they wouldn’t even have to go outside, and if they were very quiet, the dormitory mistress wouldn’t hear them. It was a plan Amy was sure would work. Now all she had to do was figure out a way to keep the other girls awake until midnight. Amy knew she could stay awake herself; the excitement of seeing a comet wouldn’t let her sleep. But if some of the other girls fell asleep, it would be hard to wake them, and it could be noisy, too.
By the time the girls were all dressed in their long, white flannel nightgowns ready for bed, Amy knew just how they’d do it. She cleared her throat, twisted her long, dark brown hair behind her head, and told the girls about her disappointing visit to Miss Kay. Several of the girls hung their heads. Amy paused a moment for dramatic effect, and then she produced a reel of sewing thread she’d sneaked from embroidery class. “This is our answer,” she said jubilantly, holding the thread in the air. The girls looked puzzled.
Again Amy paused for effect before going on. “Everyone will get a long piece of thread. After the lamps are blown out, you will tie one end of it to your big toe.”
A ripple of giggles flowed from the girls.
Amy continued. “After you have tied the thread to your big toe, creep over to me and give me the other end and go back to bed. I will hold the other end of all of the pieces of thread and tug on them every so often to keep you all awake. When I hear the bells chime out twelve o’clock, I’ll give a double tug on the thread. That will be the signal. We’ll all get out of bed and creep up to the attic and watch the comet through the skylight. Just be sure to skip the third step on the way up the stairs. It creaks.”
The girls all giggled and nodded and set about tying the thread to their big toes. Every so often, after the lamps were blown out, Amy jerked the threads to keep everyone awake. Finally, the clock struck twelve, and Amy gave the threads a double tug. The girls all sat up straight in bed and untied the thread from their big toes. Quietly, they formed a line by the door. They did this without even thinking, because everywhere they went at boarding school, from chapel to dinner, they walked in a line. They filed out the door, past the dormitory mistress’s room, and up the stairs. Each girl stepped carefully over the third step. They all glided up to the attic like a silent row of ghosts. With great care, Amy turned the brass knob on the huge oak door at the top of the stairs. The knob didn’t squeak. Amy slowly pushed the door open and motioned the girls to go in. Once the door was shut behind them, the girls gathered in silence under the skylight.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight that spilled into the attic through the skylight, Amy had an odd feeling. She looked around. The attic was filled with shapes. There were the shapes of old furniture and piles of books, but there were some other shapes, too, clustered in the corner. Amy peered into the darkness to make them out, and as she did, the shapes became the outlines of people. Then dread of dreads, they became the shape of Miss Kay and three other teachers.
At that moment, Miss Kay lit a candle. Several of the girls screamed. Amy’s heart sank. Miss Kay would know that Amy had planned this adventure. After all, Amy planned most of the mischief that occurred at Marlborough House.
Fortunately, the comet was due to pass overhead at any moment, so Miss Kay just waved her hand at the girls, and sternly said, “Silence.” And so, Amy and all the girls in her dormitory got to see the comet, but not in the company they would have liked.
Once the comet was past, Miss Kay looked directly at Amy. “I will see you in my office straight after breakfast.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Amy, with a curtsy.
The girls trudged back to their room, not bothering to skip the creaking third step this time.
For the rest of the night, Amy hardly slept. She didn’t mind being punished; she’d been punished plenty of times before. But what if I’m expelled and sent back to Ireland this time? What will my parents say? She hated the thought of going home in disgrace. Her parents would be so disappointed in her, and she had six younger brothers and sisters to set an example for. If only she weren’t Irish. That was the trouble. With her flashing brown eyes and lively imagination, she just didn’t seem to fit into an English girls’ school. It was all too confining. Everything was done to bells and timetables. She hardly ever got to go outdoors. If it weren’t for the box of chrysanthemums her mother, Catherine Carmichael, had sent her and the white lily one of the older girls had left behind, Amy would hardly get to see nature at all. It was no wonder she had to see the comet. At home in Ireland, she could have watched it from the second-story nursery window, with the Irish Sea crashing against the rocks at Millisle in the background.
How she missed the sea and the tide pools with their fresh treasures every day. And she missed her pets. At Marlborough House there was only a grumpy tomcat who spat if Amy even looked at him. Back home in Ireland there was Gildo the collie dog, who spent her days lying by the front door waiting for someone to come out and play. And Daisy, the yellow and white cat, who liked to stretch herself across the kitchen window ledge. Then there were the two ponies, Fanny and Charlie. How she loved to ride them. Three years at boarding school in England was a long time to be away from them all. Amy wished she could be back home, but she couldn’t go back in disgrace. So despite feeling homesick, she hoped and prayed that Miss Kay wouldn’t expel her in the morning.
As the light of dawn began to filter through the drapes, Amy still couldn’t sleep. She thought back to the dollhouse she had been given for Christmas when she was eight years old. It was beautifully decorated and filled with dainty doll-sized furniture, but it was boring. On Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, she’d dumped the furniture out of the dollhouse and replaced it with moss for a carpet and twigs for indoor trees. That had made it a much more interesting place. She had gone out to the apple tree in the yard and collected ants and bugs and beetles and installed them in their new home. She had spent hours watching them climb all over it until her nanny found out and made her remove the moss and bugs. School was like the dollhouse. It was often boring, and sometimes Amy wished she could put moss down for carpet and move in some new friends and make it an interesting place.
Amy was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep as she picked at her breakfast. When everyone else had been dismissed from the dining room, she reported to Miss Kay. Unlike Amy, Miss Kay seemed to have had a good night’s sleep. She was in a very good mood when Amy knocked on her door. Amy stood in front of Miss Kay’s desk. Miss Kay told Amy how disappointed she was in her behavior and pointed out that Amy should use her leadership talents to lead the other girls to do the right thing instead of disobeying authority. After the long lecture, Amy waited breathlessly to see what Miss Kay was leading up to. Would she be expelled? Thankfully, she wasn’t. Instead, she was given some extra duties to perform. She had to get up half an hour early each morning and clean out the downstairs fire grates, and every Saturday night for a month she was to help the chambermaid polish all the silverware.
For the next couple of months, things went smoothly for Amy. There were no more comets or any other once-in-a-lifetime events on the horizon, so she settled in to study once again.
However, in November, just before her fifteenth birthday, Amy was again called into Miss Kay’s office. This time, Miss Kay asked her to sit down. She had “difficult” news, she said. Amy and her brothers, Norman and Ernest, who attended a nearby boys’ school, were to go home to Ireland at once. Amy’s father, David Carmichael, had not given any reason for their sudden return home, but he had said that they would not be returning to school. So in the middle of the school year, Amy packed up her belongings and, along with her two brothers, boarded a train that would take them from the Yorkshire countryside to Liverpool, where they would take a steamboat across the Irish Sea to Ireland and home. Only it wasn’t the same home they’d left. Amy’s parents and younger brothers and sisters had moved from the old, gray stone country house into the city of Belfast. The move was because of Mr. Carmichael’s work. Amy’s father and his brother William owned a large flour mill in Millisle. The mill had been in the family for more than one hundred years, but the two brothers had kept it as up-to-date as they possibly could. It was the first mill in the area to have new rollers to grind the wheat, and it was steam powered. It even had gas lighting.
The Carmichael brothers had decided to open another mill nearer Belfast. So the family had moved into a house in College Gardens while the oldest three children were away at boarding school. But things weren’t going as well as planned. For the first time in a hundred years, the Carmichaels’ flour mills were losing money. It didn’t matter how efficiently the brothers ran their two mills. The problem was not the mills; it was new fast steamships. The wheat used in the mills to make the flour came from America. It was shipped to Liverpool, England, and then sent on to Ireland. Once in Ireland, the Carmichael Mills would grind it into flour, which was sold in Ireland and England. The new fast steamships, however, made it possible to grind the wheat in America and then ship the flour straight to England, where it arrived in good condition and not infested with bugs, as was often the case during long sailboat trips across the Atlantic Ocean from North America. This meant that the Irish mills were having to produce their flour more and more cheaply to compete with American flour, until they were making hardly any profit at all. For the Carmichaels, that meant there was no money for private boarding schools, so Amy and her brothers had been called home.
Amy, though, continued to study music, painting, and singing at a private finishing school in Belfast, which suited her fine. She was glad the whole family was together again. In many ways, Marlborough House had been a lonely place for her, but she never was alone at home, not with six brothers and sisters, and Uncle William’s five children, who seemed to visit a lot. There were always enough children around the house to organize into teams for games.
Amy also liked being in the city. She was allowed to explore Belfast on her own. She loved to walk around and look at the huge five-story brick buildings that made up most of the city and stand by the side of the road and watch the horse-drawn trams go by.
One day, after she had been out exploring, Amy walked into the drawing room while her mother and father were having a serious conversation. Her mother looked as if she was about to cry, and her father was shrugging his shoulders and saying, “What can I do? What can I do?” Amy backed out of the room, not wanting to disturb her parents’ privacy.
Soon enough, though, she found out what they had been talking about. On top of the money problems created by cheap American flour, Mr. Carmichael had loaned one thousand pounds to a friend to help him get back on his feet after some financial difficulties. But the friend had lost Mr. Carmichael’s money, and Mr. Carmichael would not send his friend into bankruptcy by demanding it back. As a result, there wasn’t enough money for Amy to continue attending the finishing school. Instead, she began tutoring the younger children at home.
Mr. Carmichael worried continually about money. He spent hours thinking about how he could have done things differently. He worried so much that his health began to suffer, and in April 1885, he came down with pneumonia. Amy, now seventeen years old, nursed him day and night, but he did not recover like a man of fifty-three ought to have, and within several weeks he was dead.
Everything changed for Amy the day her father died. She was suddenly pushed into adulthood. As the oldest daughter, new responsibilities fell to her. It would be her job to care for the younger children. And to stretch out as far as possible what money her father had left, she also helped her mother with the care and cleaning of the house. There was no paying for servants to do those chores anymore.
Despite it all, Amy didn’t waste time feeling sorry for herself. She had a job to do, and her mother and brothers and sisters were depending on her. If it meant she would spend the next ten years taking care of her younger siblings, that is what she would do. And she would make it as much fun as she possibly could.