Betina Krahn (33 page)

By even the most conservative of estimates, there was soon a score of visitors roaming the factory, grounds, and village, each looking for evidence to support a preconceived notion of what Madeline Duncan had wrought in creating the Ideal Garment Company. Madeline tried to gather them together to explain the principles behind her company, but most immediately took issue with her ideas.

“It is not possible to mechanize the work of craftsmen,” William Morris insisted. “Mechanization destroys the human spirit. The result will be inferior goods, pure rubbish!”

Mrs. Bethnal-Green held up one of the completed bodices between two fingers. “Replacing women’s corsets … with these hideous things? Why, that’s ludicrous—”

“You have children in the factory—I can hear them,” Sir Reginald declared, stalking off to hunt them down. “Child labor—I might have guessed as much!”

“You require your female workers to wear
such garments whether they wish to or not,” Henry Broadhurst charged. “That represents a systematic policy of domination. Workers are not chattel! All men possess certain inalienable rights …”

“Come with me, Sir William, Mr. Broadhurst,” Madeline insisted, taking them by the arms. “When you understand the way we work, you’ll see that our workers participate in every aspect of our business. We begin with a mechanized cutting process.…”

She led them up the stairs to the cutting floor and had Fritz explain his system. They watched and questioned Daniel Steadman and a number of the other cutters about their work.

“This is all very well,” Morris declared brusquely, “but who does the designing? The design should be the natural alchemy of the material, the tools, and the craftsman’s hands and spirit.”

Madeline suddenly thought of Endicott—“Oh, but of course! I have a marvelous surprise for you, Sir William.”

She led the way to the stairs and trundled her visitors through the sewing room and into the offices. “This is where we do most of the design work—our sample room. I believe you already know my chief designer.” She beamed as she introduced Jessup Endicott.

Endicott rose from his desk and turned.

The men stared at each other in disbelief.

“You!” Morris roared.

“Morris!” Endicott reddened.

Morris turned on Madeline. “You’ve just cast your entire enterprise into disrepute. Nothing this mealy little worm produces could possibly have the slightest merit!”

Endicott stalked over, his eyes blazing with more fire than Madeline had ever witnessed in him. “How dare you! Don’t listen to him, Madeline. He’s a crude and petty tyrant, a ruffian who can no more control his mouth than he can his designs, a glory-grabbing misanthrope who belongs in the Dark Ages, barking at serfs.”

“And this”—Morris indicated Endicott’s flamboyant dress with a dismissive hand—“is a laughable parody of a craftsman, an elitist who refuses to dirty his hands with the real, honest work of creation. High-flown ideas is all he’s ever produced, and not one of those of any value!”

“B-but I thought you were …” She looked at Endicott, then at Morris. “I thought he was …”

Before she could put words to her confusion, she had to dart between them and call for Mr. Broadhurst’s assistance to keep them from coming to fisticuffs.

She urged Sir William back out the door and down the hallway, only to run into Sir Reginald in the outer office, demanding to know why the children in St. Crispin were being kept in the factory, day after day, imprisoned in a locked room.

“Imprisoned! They’re not imprisoned, they’re in school! Where on earth did you hear that they are kept in a locked—” Then she saw he had Jonathan Farrow by the arm and knew where that misinformation came from.

“Jonathan Farrow, why aren’t you in school?” she demanded crossly.

“Mr. Tattersall … a bunch of nobs come and started askin’ questions an’ Mr. Tattersall, he let us out early for dinner.”

Madeline had a vision of a horde of children on the loose, running higgledy-piggledy about the work floors. She groaned.

From that moment on, things seemed to spiral further and further out of Madeline’s control. The visitors poked their noses into every conceivable aspect of the factory’s operation: tools, equipment, lighting, designs, storage, shipping, sales strategy, worker satisfaction. Everywhere she went in the factory, she saw workers stopped and talking to a visitor, explaining how things worked or what they thought of the way the factory was operated. And in every case her workers’ words were twisted to suit the preconceived notions of the visitors.

“O’course the women get paid extra … by the piece,” Thomas Clark said.

“You aren’t all paid the same equitable wage?”

“Miss Duncan put our little ’uns downstairs so we’d sew more,” Bess said.

“She holds your babies for ransom—to make you work harder?”

“She wants all the women to wear Ideal garments,” Priscilla said.

“You’re required to wear her questionable garments or you’ll be sacked?”

Shortly, Madeline herself was cornered just outside the offices by Morris and Broadhurst, Horbaugh and Carpenter, soon to be joined by others. They demanded to know what she intended to do about the deficiencies in her facility, her manufacturing process, and her treatment of her workers.

“Wages are far from uniform. This Steadman fellow makes half again as much as the other cutters,” Carpenter said, waving one of her own documents in her face.

“You have not made adequate provisions for workers to interact with their product,” Morris declared. “Where is the pride of creation to be had in cutting hunks of cloth all day?”

“What this factory needs is a workers’ association,” Broadhurst insisted. “Someone to speak up for the unenfranchised and to organize the workers so that they have some defense against the arbitrary decisions of management.”

“I see through this sham of a school, Miss Duncan.” Horbaugh shook his finger at her. “Violation of child labor laws is a very serious matter indeed.”

She backed against the office window, unable to make sense of their accusations.

All she could see were moving mouths, reddened faces, glaring eyes. Then Cole was pushing his way to her side, his face crimson with rage, his eyes blazing.

“Quiet, dammit!” he roared. “What the devil is the matter with you people?”

All present fell into a stunned silence.

Then Sir Reginald Horbaugh rallied and demanded, “What have you to say for yourself, young woman?”

Madeline straightened and looked from one to the other of these people who had descended on her company in order to pass judgment on her and everything she had tried to accomplish. No doubt they were powerful, influential. No doubt they could ruin her if she refused to comply with their demands.

“What I have to say is … What I have to say is
good day to you all.
”

When they just gawked at her, she felt fury gathering within her. “Are you hard of hearing as well as pompous, self-absorbed, and insensitive? I’m telling you to leave!”

She took Sir Reginald and Sir William by the sleeves, turned them, and propelled them toward the stairs. “Out—the lot of you!”

“You cannot—”

“Well, I never—”

“How dare she?”

“Out! Leave!” Shooing and shoving, she herded the dozen or so critics gathered around her toward the stairs. Cole joined her in ushering them to the steps, trundling them down and out the front doors.

The ruffled Sir Reginald turned on the steps to wag another finger. “I warn you, young woman, you shall regret this rudeness and unthinkable treatment of us.”

“We are not without influence!” Mrs. Bethnal-Green proclaimed.

“How dare you!” Madeline demanded. “What gives you the right to invade my factory, poking and prodding, slighting and sneering … Filth, exploitation, oppression, inequity, immorality … if you see them here, it’s because that’s what
your own minds
are full of!” She paused to take a deep breath. “You’re no better than that conniving little wretch who wrote those lies in the newspaper!”

With that she turned and headed back into the factory.

Just before the door slammed, she heard one final comment.

“Well … I never!”

Cole was there at the foot of the steps, but she couldn’t bear to face him just then. She started up the steps. But Gilbert headed her off He grabbed her hands, drew her close, and lifted her hands to press a kiss on them.

“Madeline dearest, what have you done? They’re naught but a bunch of hypocritical old nobs, but they do have influence. People listen to them. They’ll slice you up and toast you for breakfast!” When she looked up into his sympathetic face, tears pricked the backs of her eyes.

“Then they shall just have to toast me. I’ll not take back a word I said.”

“Then I shall be your champion,” he said grandly. “I shall go after them and defend you to the limits of my being.” He pressed another ardent kiss on her knuckles. “Perhaps a few words with influential friends, another article … I shall do what I can.”

He strode down the steps, donned his hat, and blew her a kiss over his shoulder as he exited the front doors.

Madeline hurried to her office and slammed the door behind her. How could one wretched article, one mean-spirited and unsubstantiated bit of fiction, wield such influence with intelligent, educated people. With a slight progression of thought, she could imagine that Fitch’s one article might now yield five or ten, all written by leading citizens, all reporting on the “deficiencies” and “abuses” occurring at her Ideal Garment Company.

She sank weakly into her chair.

And she couldn’t help feeling betrayed by her own workers. How easily they had let the visitors’ criticism distort their thinking. How could they misrepresent things so, in light of everything she had done to help them?

But as her anger began to settle, she recalled the way her
workers were questioned. These were proud and simple people, unused to having their opinions solicited. And, of course, they would be embarrassed at any hint that they had accepted charity or been “helped.”

In fact, it had undoubtedly been just as humiliating an experience for them as it was for her.

She began to relax, thinking of Gilbert and his gallant behavior. She wouldn’t have thought of him as a paladin type; he had always been too busy to bother with family matters. Perhaps Aunt Olivia’s death had made him realize the importance of the love and support of family.

And then there was Cole.

He had stood by her and helped her to defend herself and Ideal. Still, how could she face him after such a disastrous confrontation with the “do-gooders” of the world? Somehow, she had gone from being in the forefront of the reform movement to being cast on the other side of the question entirely, among the “owners” and “oppressors” of the world. And all because she had simply tried to put her ideals into action.

She thought of what Cole had said about the way reformers stir up trouble and raise expectations and then walk away, leaving others to sort out the mess they’ve made. At the time she believed he was simply being pessimistic and close-minded. Now she wondered how he had come by such disturbing insight.

Cole had taken himself straight down to the storerooms, hoping that two floors between him and Madeline would be enough to gain some perspective on what was happening to her. And to him.

He had come so close to committing mayhem that afternoon, it was frightening. Her experience with those “interested citizens”—a self-appointed delegation of hypocritical old cods—was a fair representation of just what her dream
was up against in society and in the world at large. In the past few days he had allowed the relative peace in the factory and the seductive intimacy that was developing between him and Madeline to obscure the cold, unpleasant facts of the situation. She was in over her head, adrift on a doomed ship of ideals. And instead of steering her into a safe, sensible dock, he had jumped on board with her, even knowing that the weight of his approval might be all she needed to send her foundering.

The grim thought that he might have done more harm than good set him hurrying through the receiving room to the rear stairs and out the rear door. With his hands in his pockets, he paced back and forth, too preoccupied to respond to Roscoe’s and Algy’s greetings. Sinking deeper into inner conflict, he struck off for a brisk walk to clear his head.

Behind him, Roscoe and Algy climbed back down into the trench beside the massive rock that had become their raison d’être in recent days.

“ ’E’s right furious wi’ us, I reckon,” Roscoe said, arching his aching back over his hands. “Well, never ye mind. Him an’ Miz Duncan, they’ll be pleased as punch when this old rock is in bits and hauled clean away.”

“We’ll do it up right this time, eh, Roscoe?”

“Right enough, Alg.” Roscoe drew a deep, confident breath. “Hand me a few more sticks of that powder. An’ reel off a bit more o’ that fuse.” He paused to look at the half dozen red paper tubes they had wedged against the side of the rock. “It pays to be careful wi’ this stuff, ye know. ’Cause, like the feller said, th’ Almighty gives ye only one set o’ thumbs.”

It was late in the day before Madeline emerged from her office. No one was in the outer office and a peek in the sample room showed it to be empty as well. Collecting herself, she stepped out onto the sewing floor and found it mostly deserted as well. Only Maple and Charlotte were at their machines.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

Maple looked up, seeming uncomfortable, and finally said: “They quit for the day and went downstairs … with the cutters.” Something in the way she couldn’t meet Madeline’s eyes as she said it sent a chill of premonition through Madeline.

Images of Thomas and Bess Clark and Ben Murtry and Will Huggins responding to the loaded questions of their visitors suddenly flashed before her mind. She was on her way to the stairs before she had time to think what she might find or what she might do about it. Maple and Charlotte looked at each other with concern, then abandoned their machines to follow her down.

Sprawled on idle cutting tables and perched on boxes and chairs dragged from the classroom were nearly all of Ideal’s employees. Someone was speaking, but the instant she appeared, all fell into dead silence. They looked at her with puzzled, wary, or outright hostile expressions that carried an almost physical impact.