Isabelle and Alexander

by Rebecca Anderson

  Seldom did Alexander spend any time in this room, and he spoke of his pleasure at the changes she had made. “Perhaps we have more opportunities to rediscover the rooms of our home,” he said.

  His inclusive words sparked great delight in Isabelle’s heart.

  Glory announced that her painting was nearing completion, but when Isabelle asked if she could see its progress, Glory told her she would not show them until it was finished. Alexander said nothing, but Isabelle hoped that soon enough, he would warm to Glory enough to relax into conversation in her presence. Isabelle noticed that his attention to the young woman had changed recently; he no longer seemed cross about her quirks. Instead, he seemed to watch the way she interacted with her mother, and after she left, he mentioned some of what he’d noticed.

  “Glory can do more than I had believed she could,” he said to Isabelle as they ate dinner. “When she spoke of the ways she assists her mother in the home, I was surprised at her abilities. When Kenworthy speaks of her, he talks with so much fatherly affection I can hardly believe half of what he says, but it appears she is more capable than I had imagined.”

  Such a concession swelled Isabelle’s heart. She understood that Alexander’s comments meant more than simply a wider understanding of Glory’s skills; he was beginning to see that institutionalization was not a foregone conclusion to her condition and therefore not to his, either.

  On a lovely, sunny afternoon, Isabelle walked to the Kenworthys’ home. Upon arrival, she found the ladies preparing to walk out to the park.

  “Join us, do,” Glory said, clapping her hands. “We shall search for flowers in the park.”

  “How could I resist?” Isabelle said, as eager as Glory to experience the emerging spring.

  Their stroll was a great success, as Glory was able to discover many early blooms in the public garden. When her mother suggested they ought to be moving toward home, Glory contested they needed another hour out of doors. “We may not have another day this fair for quite some time, you know,” she said.

  Isabelle would not dare to argue with such logic, and the ladies continued their wanderings with great pleasure. They greeted acquaintances and strangers along the paths, each as eager as the last to breathe in the warm sunshine.

  “I was unprepared for Manchester to hold so much of natural beauty,” Isabelle admitted. “It has been a gloomy and dark winter.”

  Mrs. Kenworthy pressed Isabelle’s arm. “For none more than for you, dear, but now you see the winter is come to an end. All shall look brighter from here on.”

  Before long, Isabelle saw Glory beginning to droop. Mrs. Kenworthy kept a steady stream of encouragement as she guided Glory along the path toward home. Isabelle noticed Glory’s steps slow, her voice deepen, and her brow furrow. Mrs. Kenworthy’s talking maintained its cheerfulness but began, as they moved through the park, to take on a manic air.

  Isabelle met Mrs. Kenworthy’s eye, and the older woman gave a small shake of her head, as if Isabelle had asked if there were something she could do and the answer was no.

  “Dear Mrs. Osgood, how do you like our park?” she said, inviting Isabelle to join in her conversation.

  “Oh,” Isabelle said, faltering. “Well. It is lovely.” She felt a plunge of despair that she could be of no more use than this. Determined to take some of the pressure off Mrs. Kenworthy to chatter to her daughter all the way to their home, Isabelle tried again. “See this wilderness section over here?” she asked, pointing to her right. “It rather reminds me of a place I used to play with my cousin when I was small. I would steal vegetables from the kitchen garden and fill my apron pockets with peas and radishes, then wander out into our small wild garden and stay there for hours, pretending I could not hear the calls of my parents or the housemaids. I would dig in the dirt, make crowns of flowers, climb hills and trees, and eventually come home dreadfully soiled. Do you know,” she said, leaning closer to Glory as if to impart a secret, “I believe it thrilled my father.”

  “Your father craves adventure, does he?” Mrs. Kenworthy asked, reaching for Glory’s hand. The young woman batted her mother’s arm away.

  “The idea of adventure, at any rate.” Isabelle watched Glory become less tractable with every few steps.

  She decided to try something else. “Glory, do you remember the song about the rabbit we played and sang a few weeks ago?”

  Usually Glory would have clapped her hands and begun to sing, but she grunted and turned her head away.

  Mrs. Kenworthy gave Isabelle a smile and a nod, and Isabelle began to sing. Her voice quiet, she hoped that none of the people taking the air in the park would bring word of this back to Alexander. Even in the blush of their newfound connection, he might not understand the motive for such unconventional behavior. She glanced about, hoping no one would recognize her or find her impropriety distasteful.

  In the glade beside the stream,

  The creatures prance and stir and hop.

  A hedgehog shuffles past a fox

  And a rook watches from the treetop.

  Behind a stone a rabbit hides,

  Resting for the race ahead

  When he must bound across the glade

  Before he rests in his warren bed.

  She continued to sing the song through twice, and because Glory stopped grunting and muttering as Isabelle sang, she hummed it an additional time as they walked.

  Never had the sight of the Kenworthys’ home brought Isabelle such relief. But at the same time that Isabelle caught sight of the front door, so did Glory.

  She began to yell and stamp her feet. “No!” she shouted. “It is not time to go inside.”

  Mrs. Kenworthy held Glory firmly by the elbow and led her toward the door.

  “No!” she screeched again. People on the street looked at them and then looked away. “We stay out!” she yelled and dug her feet into the road.

  “Here,” Isabelle said, taking Glory’s other arm, “let me help.”

  Glory shrieked like she had been burned, and Isabelle stepped away.

  “I did not mean to . . .” Isabelle said, feeling a sting of tears.

  “No, dear,” Mrs. Kenworthy said, her voice gentle and soft. “You are helping. If you don’t mind taking her arm and assisting us into the house.”

  As Isabelle took Glory’s arm, the young woman jerked herself free and hit out at Isabelle, making contact with her eye. Isabelle saw flashes of light before she felt the pain of being hit. She gasped.

  “Darling, please,” Mrs. Kenworthy pled. “Mrs. Osgood, I am so terribly sorry.”

  Catching her breath, Isabelle said, “Do not think of me. Let us get her inside before she hurts herself.”

  Climbing the stairs, the women struggled to maintain their grasp on Glory’s arms, but as soon as they opened the door, Glory broke free. She picked up a large candlestick and swung it.

  Both women lunged out of the way. Glory ran into the parlor and, judging by the sounds Isabelle heard, threw something heavy against a wall.

  “What can I do?” Isabelle asked, feeling a combination of fear at the display and shame that she had somehow contributed to what was happening. From the other side of the wall, they could hear Glory shouting and crying. More crashing sounds followed.

  “My dear Mrs. Osgood,” Mrs. Kenworthy said, shaking her head, “I do apologize, but when Glory has reached this stage, there is nothing to do but let it run its course.” She winced as another heavy object made contact with a surface. “She might be easier if her father were here,” she added.

  “Of course,” Isabelle said. “I shall go for him now.”

  Catching a rare glimpse of Mrs. Kenworthy’s fatigue, she leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  Mrs. Kenworthy attempted to speak her gratitude, but Isabelle rushed out the door. Hurrying to the mill, all she could think of was getting Mr. Kenwor
thy home as quickly as possible. She practically ran to the mill, and upon entering, scanned the spinning room and saw no sign of him. She took to the stairs and glanced at every work floor, willing him to be there, to see her.

  She finally discovered him in the weaving room, bent over one of the new metal machines being prepared to replace the wooden ones.

  “Mr. Kenworthy,” she said, breathless.

  He did not turn; her voice could not carry above the sounds of the mill. She touched his shoulder, and he turned to see her.

  “My dear Mrs. Osgood, are you here to see the last of the cloth come off the last wooden loom? How kind of you. As you can see, most of the looms are already at rest.”

  “Indeed, sir, that is not why I have come. You are needed at home at once. Glory . . .” Isabelle did not know how to finish her sentence, but she did not need to. He seemed to understand at an instant that she was having one of her episodes.

  He glanced about as if the solution to this problem could be found in the warps in the corner or the stacks of folded cloth that had come off the loom.

  With no idea of what she was going to say, she touched his arm. “Sir,” Isabelle began, and then let the words tumble out, “I shall stay here. Please, go home. If there is someone you could send to fetch Mr. Connor, I shall do well enough to keep my eye on things until he arrives.” Even as she said the words, she knew how silly the thought was that there was any way in which she could provide leadership here.

  He nodded and grasped her hands before hurrying out. The weavers who remained in the room continued their work, moving the shuttle and feeding the threads into the weft. One of the weavers looked over her shoulder and nodded at Isabelle.

  “Right. Carry on,” she said, feeling foolish as she made her way to the stairs. How did she think her presence would assist in the work that needed to be done? Every person in this mill, from the schoolchildren to the grizzled elderly men and women, could perform tasks she could not even imagine. Nevertheless, she had given her word that she would stay, and her word had seemed to comfort Mr. Kenworthy.

  So stay she would.

  Isabelle made her way from one mill floor to the next. At each landing of the stairs, a sign announced the floor’s function. “Fifth Story: Dyes.” Isabelle entered the dyeing floor, where huge vats of boiling colored water blew billows of hot steam into the humid air. As she took a circuit of the room, she realized that if anything was amiss, she would hardly know it. From there, she inspected the finishing room, where dozens of workers sat at machines sewing the cloth’s edges, and others folded finished fabrics for delivery.

  With every loop around each floor, Isabelle felt more anxious for Mr. Connor’s arrival. Many times she had heard him say that Osgood Mills ran like a precision machine because Alexander had set it in motion to do so, but she worried that without Mr. Kenworthy or Mr. Connor on the premises, something might go badly wrong and she would feel responsible for it.

  However, as she wandered about each of the floors, the people who glanced her way merely nodded at her, making her believe they were fully capable of all the work that needed to be done.

  Reentering the weaving room, she breathed in the near silence. With the last of the cloth removed from the loom, no machinery ran. She knew that, beginning the next day, the new looms would roar to life. But for now, the few workers who remained to shut down the last running loom bent and hovered over piles of cloth.

  There was an air of tension in their postures and in their glances. Isabelle’s instinct was that something had been lost or possibly broken.

  “Has something gone wrong?” Isabelle asked. Oh, please, she thought. Say no.

  One of the men stood to face her. “Ah, sure enough we are all well, Mrs. Osgood.” He glanced at the other workers. “Something simply seems to be off. As soon as we can put our fingers on it, we shall have it right.”

  A woman raised her head from the pile of cloth she was inspecting and sniffed the air. She shook her head as if to dismiss a notion and went back to the cloth.

  Looking around at the workers, the man spoke again. “Mrs. Sanders and Lorraine and I will comb through the room once more. You all have your assignments, no?”

  Murmurs of assent flowed through the group.

  “Very well. Carry on with your work, and the three of us,” he said, gesturing to the two women standing beside him, “will get the room shipshape.”

  Isabelle followed the workers to the stairs, where some went up and others down. She decided to do another circuit of the floors and climbed once again all the way to the top.

  All was well in finishing. The same for dyeing. Isabelle wished she could simply ring a bell for Mr. Connor and he would appear, but at least in the meantime she could continue to move through the mill. The only thing that would make waiting for him to arrive more frustrating would be doing so sitting down.

  As she made her way down the stairs to the weaving floor, she entertained the idea of bypassing the room with its empty wooden looms, the now-useless frames that had been her favored machines in the mill. Never again would she hear the swishing and clicking of the shuttles, the creaking of old wood. Knowing it was foolish, she stepped inside the weaving floor to say goodbye to the looms.

  What greeted her senses there was not the silence she’d expected but rather a snapping and rustling sound that seemed not to belong to the room at all. She stood confused until she stepped into the room and her eyes stung from smoke.

  “Fire,” she shouted. “Fire!”

  Beneath an empty wooden loom, a small bundle of folded cloth sat, waiting to be delivered to the dyeing and finishing floors. Pinched in a corner of the loom frame, a corner of this bundle burned with an orange glow. As Isabelle ran toward the cloth, the fire licked up the legs of the loom, catching the shuttle, the warp forms, and the weft forms almost instantly. The speed with which she watched the flame move showed her that it would destroy the loom immediately, and if she did nothing, the fire would leap to the other looms, the floorboards, and the stacks of woven cloth. From there, anything and everything in the building could be in danger. Not to mention every person.

  Leaping forward, Isabelle snatched the burning folded cloth from beneath the loom and dragged it toward the stairs, where space had been cleared to set up the new machines. She kicked at the burning cloth and then folded it upon itself, hoping to quell the flame. She felt the heat through her shoes, but she continued to stamp at it until it merely breathed a smoky haze into the room.

  Glancing around the room, she sought for a water bucket, knowing that every working floor had at least one. When she found one, she grabbed it and ran toward the flaming loom, still shouting and hoping someone would hear her. The heaviness of the full bucket strained at her arms.

  As she ran, water splashed across her skirt, drenching the lower half of her. Knowing she could ill afford to lose any of the precious water, she slowed.

  “Steady,” she told herself.

  Approaching the oiled wood, she could see the path of the fire eating its way through the frame. Standing between the burning loom and the one beside it, she hurled the water from the bucket.

  Steam rushed at her, and when it dissipated, she could see that the water had made but a small difference in the size of the flame. She turned from side to side, desperate to find another fire bucket, but she could see nothing that would help her. The skirts of her dress, heavy with the spilled water, clung to her legs.

  “Why does no one teach ladies how to quell fires?” she muttered into the rush and snap of flame. “My skills are useless here unless I can put it out by speaking French to it.”

  Unfastening the waist of her skirts, she continued to yell for help. The wet skirt fell to the floor, and she stepped out of it, not caring that her shift would be the first sight to greet anyone who came to assist her. If, she thought, anyone ever came to assist her.

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sp; She lifted the sodden fabric and slapped it against the loom frame. Under the weight of the cloth, one of the burning legs gave way. Isabelle kicked at a piece of the wood that was covered by her skirts, snapping it in half. She reached for her skirts and pulled them toward her as she prepared to throw them again.

  Her voice felt raw from smoke and shouting, but she persisted in calling for help and slapping at the burning wood.

  Arms shaking, she continued to lift and drop the cloth, and as she began to see progress in controlling the flame, she heard a loud curse from behind her.

  “I need more water,” she shouted toward the voice, hoping it belonged to someone who had more knowledge or experience than she did.

  A figure ran past her, calling for her to continue suffocating the blaze. Within seconds, a splash of water came past her shoulder and sizzled over the wood, soaking the blackened remains of her skirt again.

  As the man ran past, she saw that it was Mr. Connor. “Keep it up. I’ll get more water,” he said.

  Her heart pounded in her throat, and she willed herself to continue to slap out the flames. The wood cracked and fell in on itself, grazing her arm as it did so. She carried on, grateful for the appearance of Mr. Connor but aware that her stamina was approaching an end. Her breath came in gasps, each inhale scraping down her throat. Mr. Connor must have activated an alarm, for a shrill bell pealed, and soon men armed with buckets and blankets rushed into the weaving floor.

  A small part of Isabelle wished to stay and see the fire completely extinguished, but when she saw that the mill workers had a system they had clearly learned and practiced, she backed away and made her way down the stairs.

  Soon she joined the flood of workers moving toward the street, and she allowed herself to be carried by the surging crowd out the door. Even the belching stacks of the surrounding mills could not dampen Isabelle’s enthusiasm for the relatively fresh air.