Betina Krahn (21 page)

He gave her a narrow look, then glanced at the fading light coming through the windows. “But it would mean working half the night! And you know how I need my sleep,” he moaned. “I’m just no good at all without eight blissful hours in the arms of Morpheus.” Looking back at her and at the drawings she clutched against her, he winced. After a moment his shoulders rounded, and he held out a hand for the sketchbook. “All right, then, give them to me. I probably wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight anyway, for seeing that woebegone look on your face every time I closed my eyes.”

The next morning the seamstresses reported promptly at eight for work, but their minds were not on learning to use the machines with which they would earn their living. Their true attention was on the office door, where both Emily Farrow and Bessie Clark disappeared at Madeline’s bidding.

When they reappeared sometime later, they looked solemn and subdued. Before questions could be asked, Madeline Duncan directed everyone down the stairs and into the classroom. There she laid out for them a proposal that took them all by surprise.

“I’ve had a wonderful idea that may solve many of our problems. You need something to work on as you become familiar with the machines, and we need to do something about the children’s clothing problem. With that in mind, it struck me that children are just as much in need of sensible clothing as women are. So with the benefit of Endicott’s creative genius, we have come up with an Ideal design for children! As it happens, we have a generous supply of the very fabric most recommended for active and growing children: woollen jersey.”

Her face alight with excitement she opened her sketchbook to the first design, a middy blouse and trousers for boys.

It was greeted by silence and blank looks.

After a few moments one woman declared: “Why … it looks like a sailor’s shirt ’cept for th’ color.”

“Because that’s exactly what it is,” Madeline responded, refusing to be dismayed by their lack of enthusiasm. “It’s made of sturdy woolen jersey with a healthful give, to allow for boys to climb and run and move easily. And it has doubled knees to cut down on repairs.”

Still the women hesitated, some trying to be polite, others blatantly skeptical and shaking their heads.

“The first to wear these garments will be your very own children. The children of St. Crispin will all be wearing
equally
new and
equally
attractive clothing. Never again will any child look down on another because of what he is wearing.”

“Yer sayin’ ye want to dress our young ’uns like swaggerin’ tars?” Bessie asked.

“Hardly like swaggering tars …” she replied, taken aback by the question and the attitude behind it. Before she could continue, Cole Mandeville strolled into the room and she had the distinct impression that he had been eavesdropping for some time.

“Well. I was passing and heard what you said about your little project,” he declared, sauntering over to take the sketch from her. A look of indignation dawned on his face as he studied it. “You propose to make
these
for the local children?”

“I do,” she said irritably. Oh, why couldn’t he leave well enough alone!

“Surely this is a jest. You know perfectly well you cannot make clothes like this for … ragamuffins.” He tossed a haughty glance at her seamstresses. “Why, the queen herself designed these suits for the princes royal some years back. Since then they’ve been stitched by only the finest tailors and reserved for only the noblest of families. It would be unthinkable to dress
these
children like princes of the realm.”

His words and his arrogant attitude, displayed so callously before the children’s mothers’ eyes, were the last straw.

“I based my design on those sailor suits, but there are important differences—improvements, in fact. And just who do you think you are to come waltzing in and tell me what I can and cannot produce? If I want to dress our Ideal children like princes of the realm, it’s no blessed business of yours. You’re here to oversee and advise—not to establish yourself as the Ideal arbiter of class distinctions!”

She pointed to the door. “If you don’t mind, your lordship, we are trying to do something useful and productive here, and we don’t need interference.”

His smile did not seem at all abashed. He bowed with a degree of irony and obligingly made his exit.

Madeline took a moment to collect herself after he had gone, then turned back to her seamstresses. It seemed to her that their expressions had changed. They were now looking at her as if to their savior or champion.

“And what about the girls?” asked a woman from the back. “What would they wear, Miss Duncan?”

Madeline released the breath she had been holding and hurried to pull out another sketch, a clever dropped-waist dress with a pleated skirt and a sailor’s collar.

“I had this in mind for the girls.”

The collective oohs and nods and smiles were gratifying. Madeline began to relax.

“There are several variations on this basic design that would allow for individual tastes. Would you care to see?”

That night Beaumont Tattersall returned from London in a wagon laden with bolts of bleached muslin and fine-gauge cotton knit. He had managed to strike a deal with a cloth jobber, even convincing the fellow to accept a postdated bank draft.

When the wagon load of fabric pulled up before Madeline’s
house, it was a welcome excuse to avoid having dinner with Cole. She spent the better part of the evening inspecting the new cloth and supervising Maple Thoroughgood as she tried out one of the sewing machines to make sample garments. Things went fairly well and the hours slipped by. It was late indeed when she returned to the house. Catching sight of a lamp burning in the library window, she hurried straight up to bed without a stop in the kitchen.

The next morning she rose a bit before her customary hour of seven and grabbed a mug of coffee and a leftover scone on the way out the rear kitchen door, thus avoiding an encounter with Cole over breakfast. She had a great deal to do and the thought of starting her day with a fiery confrontation was less than appealing. His behavior the previous day in the classroom was unforgivable. And coming so soon after he had given her the financial freedom she so desperately wanted and needed, it was also incomprehensible. Unless—the ugly thought arose in her—he did think that if she had plenty of financial rope, she truly would hang herself.

More troubling, however, was the question of what had happened to him between that night in the kitchen and the very next morning. That night he had been the very essence of roguish warmth and reckless tenderness. He had teased and talked with her, dazzled her with the pleasures he summoned from within her, and then gallantly refused to take advantage of her vulnerable state. The next morning he was a changed man; scowling, contemptuous, and eager to challenge her and find fault with everything he laid eyes upon—even children, for heaven’s sake!

It was as if in the mere act of rising, shaving, and dressing he had recalled who and what he was and what he— The act of dressing? She thought about that for a moment. Was it possible that in buttoning himself up in his too-tight vest and wrapping himself in a restrictive collar he somehow squeezed and stifled his better nature?

As she stood musing on that fanciful thought, she suddenly
realized she was standing in the future garden, staring at the sunken boulder that had grown to massive proportions in the past two days. It seemed the more Roscoe, Algy, and that new fellow dug, the more they had to dig. There was now a crater at least twelve feet in diameter and at least four feet deep at the sides surrounding that accursed hunk of mineral. She frowned, thinking she could just as well have done without her precious “cursantheemums” if she had known they were going to cause this much trouble.

Walking around that massive hole, contemplating it, she decided to take another look at the plans she had commissioned to see if there wasn’t something she might do with that huge, annoying rock besides dig it up.

Just as she was turning toward the factory door, Roscoe and Algy came around the corner of the factory, yawning and stretching and having a good morning scratch on their way to work. When Roscoe spotted her, he gave Algy a thump on the shoulder to bring him alert, and together they hurried to intercept her.

“Mornin’, miz,” Roscoe called. “Out an’ about—givin’ ’er a look-see?”

“Good morning!” she called, halting and looking back at the garden. “Not much to see except that awful rock.” She grew pensive. “At this rate you’ll never get it out of there. I was just thinking … perhaps I should look at the plans to see if there is something we might be able to do around it—or with it.”

Roscoe looked troubled in the extreme. “But what about yer cursantheemums, miz? Ye had yer heart set on cursantheemums—I know ye did.”

Her head was beginning to ache; she rubbed her temples. “Yes, yes, well, the reality seems to be that I won’t have
cursantheemums,
at least not there.” She sighed. “I’ll get over it. Right now it’s more important to see some progress, and if you can’t—”

“Oh, but we can, miz,” Roscoe assured her. “We’ll soon
have ’er shifted outta here. A sixteen-man rock takes a bit o’ time, ye know.”

She studied both Roscoe’s genial face and Algy’s habitually doleful one, then looked back at the rock and the trench growing around it. “All right, a few more days. But I don’t want to get past prime planting. I want to see a few flowers here before autumn.”

The pair watched her pull her shawl close about her and walk into the factory. Roscoe rubbed his stubbled chin and frowned, while Algy fidgeted beside him.

“What’ll we do, Roscoe?” Algy finally broke the silence.

“We be good for a few more days, I reckon,” Roscoe answered, walking over to the edge of the crater to study the situation. After a few minutes of deep contemplation, he wagged a finger. “You know, Alg, I bet we
could
move this here rock … if’n we wuz to try.”

“Move it?” It seemed a rather radical concept to Algy. “How?”

“Hell, them engineer fellers does it all the time. If th’ likes o’ them can,
we
can.” He pulled his coat aside and stuck his thumbs in his braces. His eyes narrowed. “Know what the secret to movin’ a big rock is, Alg?”

“What, Roscoe?” Algy listened with widened eyes.

“
Horses,
” Roscoe announced. “An’ plenty of ’em.”

The factory was humming that morning when Cole arrived. There were still children everywhere, but there seemed to be more industry about the place. When he looked into the cutting room on his way upstairs, he was surprised to see the tables fully assembled and being waxed by several men under the direction of Daniel Steadman. In the middle of the tables, down a center alley left to provide access to the mechanical shafts, Fritz Gonnering and his beleaguered new assistant were working feverishly over some machine.

Cole paused to watch the engineer, whose eyes were red but whose hands seemed as steady as a village parson’s. He couldn’t help noting the expert way the German handled his tools and the intensity with which he became absorbed in his work. Cole had to admit that despite his drinking, the man had managed to accomplish a great deal. His mechanical cutting system, if it worked, was a genuine innovation.

After studying it awhile, he saw Fritz coming out of the center alley and strolled over to ask him
a few questions. The engineer was explaining to him that his center shaft and belt system was also being tried on the Continent, when there was a cry of terror from overhead. All eyes turned upward to see little Theodore Farrow hanging from one of the rafters—just above a whirling metal shaft fitted with spinning wheels and belts.

Cole called for him to hang on. Other men broke out in shouts and confusion, some climbing up on tables to try to reach him. Cole gave Fritz a shove, ordered him to disengage the power shaft. But even as Fritz raced off, one of the boy’s shoes fell off and into the main mechanism, dislodging belts and sending pieces of shredded shoe flying in all directions. Would-be rescuers went scrambling off the tables, dodging and ducking.

Before the leather had stopped flying, Cole had ripped off his coat and was charging across the tables and up onto the machine frame between spinning wheels and flapping belts. As he climbed steadily higher, there were gasps and mutters from those below. When he was as high as he could go, he stretched taut, grabbed the boy’s foot, then secured a hold on his calf, then thigh. “Let go—I have you!”

It took some desperate coaxing, but Theodore finally gave up his grip on the beam. They teetered precariously for a moment as Cole struggled to keep his balance and lower the boy at the same time. Only when the child was safe against him did he glance down at his precarious footing … on metal braces no more than three or four inches wide, with a power shaft and wheels grinding along only an inch from the toes of his boots, eight feet off the floor.

There were gasps and shouts of “careful now!” as he began to make his way back down the machinery, finding footholds where there seemed to be none. By the time he was once more on the floor, the pulley wheels were finally slowing and the men were converging on him, laughing in astonishment and exclaiming over what they’d just witnessed. He set the weeping Theodore on a tabletop and barked out:
“What in hell possessed you to climb up there in the first place?”