The Crimson Thread (Once Upon a Time)

by Suzanne Weyn

  “I thought this fella was your friend,” Seamus said as he opened the door for Bertie. “How is that you don’t know where he lives?”

  “Because he doesn’t live anywhere in particular,” she explained, “but he’s well known around here, and someone will be able to locate him.” She felt confident that once she appeared in the neighborhood, he would pop up on his own, as had been his habit in the past. It wouldn’t take much looking.

  But after an hour of asking for him from the vendors and even in Sullivan’s Tavern, they discovered that no one had seen Ray since the day before.

  They went up to the apartment to check on Maria, Liam, and Eileen. Liam and Eileen were on the fire escape throwing cupfuls of water on people below and giggling gleefully. Seamus promptly joined in the fun. Maria was baking something called lasagna in the oven, and the place smelled wonderful. She squealed gleefully when Bertie told her of the success with the dresses and of her marriage proposal.

  “My, it is touching how that Ray loves you, though, to bring you those beautiful gowns, and even after you two had quarreled,” she remarked with a sigh.

  “It makes me feel bad. I’m looking for him to at least give him the chance to claim his rightful credit,” Bertie said.

  “Haven’t you heard?” said Maria. “He’s left town.”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “I ran into Hilda on the street, and she told me she saw him at the railway station when she was returning from visiting her relatives in Pennsylvania. He was getting on a train.”

  “Where was he going?” Bertie asked.

  “He did not say, or she did not ask—I am not sure which. But he said that he was going for good.”

  Bertie sighed. Though she was greatly relieved— if he was gone she could keep the credit, James, everything—she was aware of an ache, an inexplicable sense of loss.

  He was gone.

  Poof! Vanished! Just like that.

  Maybe it was because he was the first person she had met in America, or perhaps it was the debt she felt to him—or possibly it was that things had ended so badly between them—but she knew they had unfinished business, and now it seemed it would never be resolved.

  It just felt wrong for him to be completely gone so suddenly. “It is as well that he has gone,” Maria said, seeing the anxiety in Bertie’s face. “He wanted you to love him, and you know that was not how you felt. I cannot blame you. He was a strange little man. And now you are to marry your true heart’s desire with no interference from him.”

  Bertie nodded. “Of course you’re right, Maria.”

  Bertie’s engagement to James was announced on the society page of the newspaper: Bertrille Miller of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, to wed James Peter Wellington Jr., son of textile magnate James Peter Wellington Sr.

  There was an engagement party to introduce Bertie to society. Margaret whipped up a suitable dress, which Bertie adored. Elizabeth, Catherine, and Alice twisted her hair in the back, fastening it with many hairpins. “This is called a French twist,” Elizabeth told her, patting the roll of hair into place, “and it is the height of fashion.”

  “Leave all the gorgeous curls loose on top and let some wispy strands fall down,” Catherine advised. “It’s very flirty that way.”

  “Catherine!” Elizabeth scolded, but with a smile, and did as Catherine had advised.

  Just before Bertie was to enter the party room, James caught up with her and slipped his arm around her waist from behind. “You look like a dream,” he whispered in her ear.

  In early November, James left for the family estate just outside Atlanta, Georgia. He explained to her that because it was outside the city proper and had served as a military base for Northern soldiers, it had not been burned down as the rest of Atlanta had been during the Civil War. “We bought it after the war. It’s very old and grand, but a bit creaky and dull. If we want something newer we can move into town,” he said.

  During the next week, Bertie prepared to leave, packing up her small room at the Wellingtons’. At the same time, things at home were also changing.

  There was no point in keeping the tenement apartment now. She’d be taking Eileen with her to Atlanta and Liam would be off to live with Finn, so she informed the landlord that they would leave by mid-November. It had been Halloween the day they received a letter from Finn, saying he had room for his younger brother in the small apartment he’d rented near the firehouse. There was a nearby school Liam could attend. Liam was enthused to join his big brother and to go to school, so it was decided that he should go.

  His timing couldn’t have been better. But still, Bertie couldn’t quite believe they would all be going their separate ways. It made her deeply uneasy.

  “My children are all leaving me,” Paddy lamented on the day they saw Liam off on the train. “Liam’s leaving, and you’ll be taking Eileen with you to Atlanta.” They had agreed that she should take Eileen, since there would be no one else to take care of her.

  “Just for a while,” Bertie said as she waved to Liam, who was waving from the window of the departing train. Her eyes were filled with tears. She saw that her father’s were as well. “We’ll all be together again,” she said, and the words caused the tears to overflow, revealing that deep down she was worried that this might not be so. She saw that Seamus was wiping a mist of tears from his glasses, and she hugged him to her side.

  The day she and Eileen left for Atlanta, her father and Seamus drove them to the station in J. P.’s fine coach. “All right, my girls,” Paddy said, as they got on the train. “If anyone should give you trouble, find a way to send word to me. Find someone to write you a letter and I’ll get someone to read the letter. I’ll drive this coach straight to you.”

  “I love you, Da,” said Bertie, hugging him. “Seamus, you take care of this old man. Promise?”

  “Sure thing,” Seamus promised, quickly wiping under his glasses.

  All too quickly, they were on the train and headed to Atlanta. They stopped overnight at a hotel James had booked for them in Washington, D.C., and resumed their trip in the morning. Miles had rumbled on and Bertie now peered out the window of the moving train as the Atlanta railroad station appeared a short distance off.

  Eileen was sleeping in the seat beside her, her blond curls spread across Bertie’s lap. Bertie felt happy that she breathed easily and was growing stronger every day.

  At last the train arrived at the station, and she spied James on the platform. Scooping Eileen into her arms, she left the train along with the other passengers. With sleepy-eyed Eileen in one arm balanced on her hip and her suitcase in the other, she was reminded of the first day, not very long ago at all, that she’d gotten off the steamer at Castle Garden.

  Then she’d had nothing but rags on her back. Now she was disembarking from a train to another new land, but this time she was dressed in a fine traveling suit and a chic, feathered hat from the Parisian sisters. The clodhopper boots she’d worn that first day had been replaced with ones that were shining, black, and high-buttoned. Eileen looked like a doll in a flowered frock, her hair in ribbons.

  “There are my beauties,” James greeted Bertie and Eileen as they got off the train. He kissed Bertie lightly on the cheek. “I’ll take you directly to the estate. You’ll have a wing of it to yourself, so everything will look quite proper. Our housekeeper will be there. She’ll be a sort of chaperone.”

  He guided them to a waiting carriage. “Father sent a telegram last night and said the dresses were a hit at the Autumn Ball,” he reported when they were on their way. “He has pages of orders for dresses made in the same style. We’re to begin production immediately. Of course, I’ll rely on you tremendously, since you’re the brilliant genius with all the talent.” He handed her a paper with the orders written on it.

  She took it, panicked.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  The matter was that she couldn’t read. But how could she tell him that? What would he think of h
er?

  “I’ll look at it later,” she said. “Right now I’m just a bit weary from the trip.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A New Life

  That night Bertie lay in a high, lush, canopied double bed listening to breezes rustling the magnolia tree outside her window. A sheer white curtain blew slightly, and after the constant din of New York City, the quiet seemed odd; though if she shut her eyes, it reminded her of her thatched cottage back home, and she found it calming.

  The estate was grand beyond anything she could have ever imagined. The bedroom she was now inhabiting was the size of the entire tenement apartment. Eileen was asleep in the bedroom one door over. She knew she should have been happy that her little sister had such a remarkable room all to herself, but she seemed unnervingly far away.

  Fortune had certainly smiled on them. Her wild girlhood idea about being a princess was coming true. Certainly no princess ever lived more splendidly than this.

  Somehow she would have to learn to read. There was a fully stocked library on the bottom floor. How fast could she learn?

  In the morning she dressed and went down to the dining room, where an elegant breakfast was being served by a very proper if unsmiling staff. Eileen had already been dressed by Mrs. DeNeuve, the housekeeper, in a frilly pink frock under a brilliantly white, ruffle-edged pinafore.

  “Good morning,” James greeted her. He stood beside the table with a croissant in one hand and a fine china teacup in the other. “I have to go into the office on Whitehall Street this morning. I’ve asked John, our driver, to take you out to the textile mill to supervise the reweaving of the fabric we have with the packing materials. Father has made a bulk order of your crimson thread, or something like it, so you should be all set.”

  “But I don’t know how to do it!” she said as panic seized her. “I’ve never even seen a textile mill.”

  “The foreman, Eustace, knows what to do,” he assured her. “You just make sure the result comes out right. Also, the dresses you made are being shipped down, and tissue patterns will be drawn from them. Oversee that, too.”

  “What will you be doing?” she asked.

  “Business things,” he replied. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  After breakfast, Mrs. DeNeuve whisked Eileen from her seat. “I’ve hired a nanny for her,” she told Bertie, her voice thick with a Southern drawl. “We have to go introduce ourselves. When you are ready, John is waiting for you at the front of the estate. I have left a sunbonnet for you by the front door.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. DeNeuve.”

  When she reached the wide, white-pillared front porch, a man in a formal frock coat came up the steps. “Your carriage,” he said, gesturing to the vehicle behind three black horses.

  She got in, still tying the ribbon of her bonnet under her chin, and they rode down the very long drive out to the front gate and another five or so miles into the countryside.

  Soon they came to what seemed to be another town entirely. This one was nothing like Atlanta, but filled with drab and impoverished-looking stores, a narrow, white clapboard church, and rows of small, identical homes. A sign told her that she had come to the town of Wellington, established in 1870. Home of Wellington Industries.

  When she married James, she would be a Wellington—part of a family that owned an entire town!

  It was almost too much to take in.

  The town gradually sloped down toward a rushing, foaming brown river. The mill came into view as they traveled along the river’s banks. It was a gloomy, three-story brick building with several small, dark windows that peered at her like glaring eyes. The second building looming behind it was even larger and more bleak due to its being entirely without windows on the upper floors.

  A short, very old man was waiting for them when the carriage reached the front of the mill. John climbed down and opened the carriage door for her to get out. “Good day,” the man greeted her formally, without warmth. “I am Eustace Henley, the mill foreman. I have been with the Wellington family since they bought this mill ten years ago.”

  Bertie introduced herself as the fiancée of James Wellington Jr., which brought only a disgruntled grunt from Eustace. “Thank you for agreeing to show me the mill,” she said.

  With a curt nod, he beckoned her to follow him into the building they were standing in front of. “This here is the original building that was destroyed by Union troops during the war.”

  “Your Civil War?” she inquired, remembering what Finn had told her about it one day.

  “Yep. The War Between the States is what we call it here,” he told her. “This building was rebuilt by Wellington and is now used for carding, spinning, and spooling. The other building that we’ll come to is just for carding and weaving.”

  Bertie followed Eustace through the high-ceilinged, narrow halls of the dark, hot mill. The entire building seemed to throb with nearly deafening sounds of machinery. She trailed him into a huge, open room where row upon row of gigantic machines with moving parts performed different functions.

  A row of barefoot, dirty children stood perched on machines, reaching practically into their moving parts. They were no older than Liam. “What are they doing?” she asked.

  “They’re doffers,” Eustace informed her. “They take the full spindles of thread from the spinning frames and replace them with new ones. It’s best to use children because they’re just the right size to reach the spindles without having to bend.”

  “The machine is moving and they’re right on top of it,” she observed. “Couldn’t they get hurt?”

  He shrugged philosophically. “Some careless ones do. But there are always more to replace them. Most live in town and their parents all work here at the mill, so it’s a good place for them to be.”

  “Everyone in town works here?” she questioned.

  “It’s a company town,” he explained. “The company owns the stores and the houses, and some even say that the pastor of the church answers to J. P. Wellington faster than he answers to God.” He snickered a little at his own bitterly irreverent joke. “In Wellington you either work in the textile mill or in the clothing factory down the road.”

  Bertie knew of mining towns in Ireland where everyone worked for the same mining company, and they were not so different from this town. Once she made the comparison, she understood exactly what she was looking at.

  She knew these places employed a lot of people and they were not all bad. But the workers labored long hours and they weren’t paid much. They bought everything from the company-owned stores until they became so indebted to the company that they couldn’t think of looking elsewhere for a living. After a while, it was as if the company owned their lives.

  She smiled at the children, who grinned back at her. One boy was the spitting image of Liam. Tedious though it might have been for him to take care of Eileen, she wouldn’t have wanted to think of him, merely eleven, cooped up here near this unforgiving machinery—a soulless monster that would remorselessly rip his arm off if he got too close—placing and replacing spindles of thread all day.

  She got to work explaining to Eustace just how Ray had used the packing materials to weave the new fabric. Though she found the man off-putting, he knew his business and seemed to understand exactly what needed to be done and how to do it. “I’ll put the littlest girls on this right away,” he said. “They’re good at picking and sorting, with those tiny fingers they got.”

  “It’s a job they could do outside,” Bertie suggested.

  “Naw,” Eustace disagreed. “They just skip off and start to play if you let them outside.”

  Bertie figured that was probably true. Who could blame them? They were children, after all.

  As John drove Bertie back to the estate, she felt more tired than if she had worked an entire day, though really she’d done nothing. It was as if the textile mill had sucked something out of her. This drained sensation was something she couldn’t explain, even to herself, but she felt it. />
  The thought of seeing James again lifted her spirits when they came up the front drive, but when she got inside, she discovered that he was not yet home.

  She met with the nanny, Nancy, a young Frenchwoman about her own age. On a table, Bertie noticed a small stack of books, some in English and some in French. Inside were colorful pictures. “Well, aren’t you the lucky girl to have such lovely books,” Bertie said to Eileen as she sat with her in the nursery.

  “Eila love books,” said Eileen, bending down to kiss a volume of Mother Goose rhymes with a loud smack.

  “Nancy, would you mind if I looked at the book with you while you read these to Eileen?” Bertie requested.

  Nancy seemed bewildered by this, but nodded in agreement. “Yes, miss, as you like.”

  “Don’t call me miss, please,” Bertie said. “Bertie will do.”

  “All right . . . Bertie.” She opened the book, and with Eileen on her right and Bertie on her left, she began to read: “Simple Simon met a pieman, going to the fair . . .”

  Bertie sat forward alertly, her eyes riveted to every word in the book, determined to learn to read.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Revealing Conversation

  The next two weeks were the busiest that Bertie had ever known. All day she supervised things at the textile mill, checking the fabric that was woven and constantly adjusting it. It was perplexing. The fabric never took on the luminously magical quality that Ray had somehow embedded into it.

  It’s these machines, she decided one day as she stood in the spinning room watching them work. They suck the magic out of the thing. “What if we hired local weavers to make this by hand?” she suggested to Eustace.

  He laughed scornfully. “Do that and it will take five times as long and cost ten times as much to make,” he scoffed. “You’ll miss the season and lose your profit margin.”

  “What if we only did the trim by hand?” she asked.

  “You take that up with your boyfriend,” said Eustace, walking off. “I can’t make that kind of decision.”