Lyddie

by Katherine Paterson

  And now, on this first morning of her new life, she lay in bed a few minutes to relish the quiet of the empty attic. Three days rattling in a coach, then to share a room with five others—indeed, a bed with a stranger who woke Lyddie in the middle of the night with her tossing and snoring—to be clanged awake by a bell, and to have her head punctured by shrieks and squeals and the rattle of voices—it made the windowless alcove she had left behind at Cutler’s seem a haven of peace. But she would not look back. She threw off the quilt. She had nothing to wear but her much too small homespun. It couldn’t be helped. She dressed herself and padded down the four flights of stairs in her darned and redarned stockings.

  The front room was crowded with the two large dining tables that Tim, Mrs. Bedlow’s son, was scurrying to set. Wonderful smells of coffee and apple pie and hash and—would it be fish?—wafted through the house from the magical stove as though to prove how many separate wonders it could perform at once.

  “I’ve left my boots …” Lyddie started.

  Mrs. Bedlow looked up, her round face radiant from the heat. “They’re by the stove drying, but they won’t do, you know.”

  “Ey?”

  “Your clothes. Your boots. They simply won’t do. That dress is only fit now to be burned. Or what’s left of it. I’m afraid it turned to mud stew in my kettle. What could my crazy brother have been thinking of letting a mere girl …?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t his fault, ma’am,” said Lyddie, slipping her feet into Triphena’s boots, now stiff from a night beside the stove. “It was the men. They were so stupid …”

  “You needn’t tell me. I know that brother of mine. He was sitting up on top laughing, not giving a word of direction.”

  “But he had the coach and team …”

  “Nonsense. He does it to amuse himself and humiliate his betters. He’d wreck a coach if he thought it would give him a rollicking story to tell in the tavern that night. And all at the cost of your clothes and dignity.”

  “Well, I ain’t lost much either way.”

  “Have you any money at all?”

  Lyddie hesitated. She really didn’t. It was Triphena’s money, not her own.

  “If I’m to recommend you to the Concord Corporation, you need to look decent. They like to hire a good class of girls here.”

  Lyddie reddened.

  “Of course, you’re as good as anyone, a better worker than most, I suspect, but at the factory they’ll look at your clothes and shoes to decide. The Almighty may look at the heart, but ‘man looketh on the outward appearance’ as the Good Book says, and that goes for women too, I fear. So you’ll have to do better than …” She looked sadly at Lyddie’s tight homespun and stiff, worn boots.

  Lyddie hung her head. “I have a bit left over from the trip. But it’s on loan.”

  “You can pay it back after you’re working. Now, would you like to give me a hand? I think the girls will be home for breakfast early. The river’s too high and the mill wheels are likely slowing. It means a holiday for them, but not for me.”

  Lyddie hastened to grab a cloth and take a pie Mrs. Bedlow was removing from the bowels of the stove. “Yes,” Mrs. Bedlow continued, “there’ll be a few days off now till the water goes down.” She smiled. “Time enough to get you proper clothes and a place in the factory as well.”

  If the girls had seemed noisy before, it was nothing compared to their entrance to breakfast. They burst through the door, each high-pitched voice shrieking to be heard over the others. There was an air of holiday that hardly paused for a blessing over the food and that erupted full blast before the echo of the “amen” died.

  Lyddie, her feet alternately sloshing about and being pinched by Triphena’s shoes, determinedly helped Tim serve both large tables. They brought in great platters of fried cod, hash, potato balls, pumpkin mush with huge pitchers of cream, toast and butter, apple pie, and pitchers of coffee and milk. Lyddie had never seen harvesters eat so much or so noisily. And these were supposed to be ladies.

  “Hello, there,” a voice cut through the din. “We didn’t really meet you.”

  The room was suddenly quiet. “Don’t be rude, Betsy,” another said. “She was tired last night.” Lyddie turned to see who had said this last because it was her idea of a lady’s voice. The young woman who had spoken was smiling. “You only came in last night, didn’t you, my dear?”

  Lyddie nodded.

  “There, don’t be shy. We were all new once, even our Betsy.” There was a titter from the rest. “I’m Amelia Cate.” Her name was aristocratic—Amelia. It suited her. She was almost as pretty as the lady in pink that had come through the inn last year. Her skin was white and her face and hands long and delicate. And she was respected, or the others wouldn’t have stopped chattering when she spoke.

  “And you?”

  “Lyddie Worthen. Lydia Worthen.” With a rough finger she scratched at the tight homespun across her chest. It seemed to Lyddie that the room was full of young women, all well-dressed, all delicate, all beautiful. And she a crow among peacocks.

  “Vermont, isn’t it?” said the one called Betsy, and a few of the others laughed.

  “What’s the matter with Vermont?” The voice had a bare trace of a Green Mountain twang. “I’m from near Rutland myself. Where do you hail from, Lyddie?”

  Lyddie turned to see a girl not much older than herself, but, like all the others, whiter of complexion. She had light hair braided in a crown about her head and a serious face that a few freckles failed to relieve. Lyddie pulled at her own straggly brown plaits, grateful when attention shifted and the room was once again filled with chattering.

  After breakfast, Amelia and the Rutland girl, whose name was Prudence Allen, offered to take her shopping for a proper dress, work apron, shoes, and bonnet. As they were leaving, Mrs. Bedlow pressed something into Amelia’s hand, which turned out to be a dollar that Mrs. Bedlow claimed was a payment from her roguish brother for damages to Lyddie’s clothing on the way.

  Much to Lyddie’s distress, it took all the money she had left, including the coachman’s dollar, to dress her in a manner that satisfied Amelia and Prudence. She was so pained at the waste of money that she couldn’t enjoy any of the new things, though she was pressed to wear the shoes home. In her heart she knew that she had never had a better-fitting pair—even the stiffness that she felt around the toes and heels and ankles was simply a reminder that she had on grand new city boots. When they were broken in, she would be able to walk anywhere in such shoes—even home.

  Lyddie never quite knew how it was decided, but Mrs. Bedlow told her that evening that she would move her things from the attic to Amelia and Prudence’s room on the third floor. The other girls might grumble, which indeed they did, being passed over for a choice room by a newcomer, but Amelia had persuaded Mrs. Bedlow that since Lyddie had no relatives or friends in the house, indeed in the city, she needed their particular caring. Mrs. Bedlow, still feeling guilty about her brother, gave in. So Lyddie was moved to a smaller bedroom on the third floor to be with Amelia, Prudence, and the obviously disgruntled Betsy, who, since their previous roommate had gone home to New Hampshire the week before, had had the luxury of a bed to herself.

  Four to a room was in itself a luxury, as most of the rooms held six. But even so, there was hardly any space to walk around the two double beds, the two tiny nightstands, and the various trunks and bandboxes of the inhabitants. There was no place to sit except on the beds, but then, on a regular workday there was no leisure time except the less than three hours between supper and curfew. Most of the girls spent their short measure of free time down in the parlor/dining room or out in town where there were shops and lectures and even dances, all run by honest citizens bent on parting the working girls from their wages.

  “Now,” said Amelia, who was far more conscientious about her duties as caretaker than Lyddie would have wished, “where will you be going to ch
urch on the Sabbath?”

  Lyddie looked up in alarm. Living as far as they had from the village, the Worthens had never even bothered to pay pew rent in the village congregational church. “I—I hadn’t thought to go.”

  Amelia sighed, reminding Lyddie that she was proving a harder case than the older girl had bargained for. “Oh, but you must,” she said.

  “What Amelia means,” Betsy said, looking up from her novel, “is that regardless of the state of your immortal soul, the corporation requires regular attendance of all its girls. It makes us look respectable, even those of us who waste our precious minds on novels.”

  “Oh, do behave yourself, Betsy.”

  “Sorry, Amelia, but if I let you carry on about her moral duties when the girl plainly has no notion of them herself, this conversation will last all night.” She put down her book and looked Lyddie straight in the face. “They’ll probably make you put in an appearance from time to time somewhere. The Methodists don’t press girls for pew rent, so if you’re short on money, best go there. You have to pay for it in longer sermons, but nonetheless I always recommend the Methodists to new girls with no particular desire to go anywhere.”

  “Betsy!”

  “Betsy likes to sound shocking,” Prudence explained patiently. “Don’t take it to heart.” She was brushing out her long blonde hair and looked like a princess in a fairy tale, though her voice was far too matter-of-fact for a story book.

  “But—” How should Lyddie explain it? “But, ain’t Massachusetts a free country?”

  “Of course, my dear,” Amelia said. “But there are rules and regulations here as in any civilized establishment. They are meant for our own good, my dear. You’ll see.”

  Betsy rolled her eyes and went back to her novel.

  The next morning Mrs. Bedlow led Lyddie down the street past all the corporation boardinghouses to the bridge that led to the factory complex. Between two low brick buildings was a tall wooden fence. The gate of the fence was locked like a jail yard, but Mrs. Bedlow wasn’t deterred. She simply went to the door of one of the low buildings and walked in. Lyddie followed, dragging her feet, for the room they entered was larger than the main floor of Cutler’s Tavern, and it was crowded with tables and scriveners’ desks. There were a few men working about the huge room, who looked up over their pens and account books as the two women passed, but it was clear that nothing much was being accomplished even in the counting room now that the water was too high to drive the mill wheel.

  Mrs. Bedlow walked straight through the room and out the door on the opposite side into a courtyard large enough, it seemed to Lyddie, for the whole of their mountain farm to fit inside. The front gate and low south buildings—the counting house, offices, and storerooms, as Mrs. Bedlow explained—formed part of the enclosure. The two slightly shorter sides were taller frame structures—the machine shops and repair shops—and across the whole north end of the compound was the cotton mill itself—a gigantic six-story brick building. At one end ran the frame structure of the outdoor staircase. From the brick face, six even rows of windows seemed to glower down at her through the gray April drizzle like so many unfriendly eyes. A bell tower rose from the long roof, making the building seem even taller and more forbidding.

  “It must seem imposing to a farm girl,” Mrs. Bedlow said.

  Lyddie nodded and tightened her grip on her shawl to keep from trembling.

  Mrs. Bedlow turned back toward the low south building and knocked on a door marked “Agent.”

  “I’ve brought you a new girl,” she said cheerily to the young man who opened the door. “Fresh from the farm and very healthy, as you can see.”

  The young man hardly gave Lyddie a glance, but stepped back and held the door for them to come in. “I’ll see if Mr. Graves can spare a minute,” he said haughtily.

  “These clerks do put on airs,” Mrs. Bedlow whispered, but if she was trying to make Lyddie feel more at ease, she failed. Nor was the sight of the agent himself any comfort.

  “Mrs. Bedlow, isn’t it?” He was a fat, prosperous-looking man, but without the manners to stand when a middle-aged lady came into his office.

  Mrs. Bedlow talked very fast, her face flushed. Lyddie was sure the man would turn them both away—he looked barely patient as Mrs. Bedlow rattled on. But in the end, he said he would give Lyddie a contract for one year. There was a shortage in the weaving room at the moment. Mr. Thurston, the clerk, would give the girl the broadside with the regulations for the Concord and arrange for her to have her smallpox vaccination the following morning.

  They were dismissed with a nod. Mrs. Bedlow punched Lyddie and prompted her to thank the agent for his kindness. Lyddie’s voice could hardly manage a whisper, but it didn’t matter. The gentleman wasn’t paying her any attention.

  She signed the paper where the clerk pointed, tried to listen carefully to all his warnings about what the contract demanded, and stuffed the broadside that he handed her into her apron pocket. She would study it tonight, she decided, her heart sinking. She could tell at a glance that it would be almost impossible for her to make out the meaning of such a paper. Oh, if only Charlie were here to read it aloud to her and explain the long words. Factory girls were not supposed to be ignorant, it would seem.

  It would be several months before she could read with ease the “Regulations for the Boarding Houses of the Concord Corporation.” But she found out the next day that it concealed unpleasant truths. The first of these was the vaccination. Mrs. Bedlow marched her over to the hospital after dinner where a doctor cruelly gouged her leg and poured a mysterious liquid directly into the wound.

  Lyddie was even more distressed when the wound turned into a nasty sore in a few days’ time, but she was only laughed at for her distress and told it was all for her own good. She’d never get the pox now, so she should be grateful. Amelia, indeed, was always instructing her to be grateful about things that Lyddie, try as she might, could not summon the least whiff of gratitude over. But finally, when she had been alternately shocked and bored for the better part of two weeks, the announcement was made at supper that work was to begin again the next day, and Lyddie felt a surge of gratitude that her days of idleness were over. She would be a true factory girl in a few hours’ time.

  Lyddie was mostly disappointed, but perhaps a tiny bit relieved, when Mrs. Bedlow announced that she would take her over to the weaving room after dinner. The large noonday meal must be out of the way and the dishes washed before the housekeeper could spare a moment, she said. Besides, it wouldn’t do to be totally worn out the first day. Four hours would be plenty to start with.

  The gate was locked. “They don’t want tardy girls slipping past,” Mrs. Bedlow explained. “You must always take care to be here when the bell rings.” They entered the factory complex through the counting room as they had two weeks before, but this time it was teeming with men, all dressed like gentlemen. Every head seemed to rise, and every eye looked their way. Despite her new clothes, Lyddie could feel the shame burning through her rough brown cheeks. She ducked her bonneted head and hurried through as fast as she could, almost shoving Mrs. Bedlow in her haste.

  Once in the yard, she was acutely aware of the thudding. The pulse of the factory boomed through the massive brick wall, and she could feel the vibrations of the machinery as they made their way up the shadowy wooden staircase, which clung for dear life to the side of the building.

  Mrs. Bedlow huffed ahead, stopping more than once to catch her breath on the climb to the fourth floor. Once there, she jerked open the door, and the thudding beat exploded into a roar. She gave Lyddie a little push toward the racket. “Mr. Marsden is expecting you!” she yelled. “He’ll see you settled in.” And she was gone.

  9

  The Weaving Room

  Creation! What a noise! Clatter and clack, great shuddering moans, groans, creaks, and rattles. The shrieks and whistles of huge leather belts on wheels. And wh
en her brain cleared enough, Lyddie saw through the murky air row upon row of machines, eerily like the old hand loom in Quaker Stevens’s house, but as unlike as a nightmare, for these creatures had come to life. They seemed moved by eyes alone—the eyes of neat, vigilant young women—needing only the occasional, swift intervention of a human hand to keep them clattering.

  From the overarching metal frame crowning each machine, wooden harnesses, carrying hundreds of warp threads drawn from a massive beam at the back of each loom, clanked up and down. Shuttles holding the weft thread hurtled themselves like beasts of prey through the tall forests of warp threads, and beaters slammed the threads tightly into place. With alarming speed, inches of finished cloth rolled up on the beams at the front of the looms.

  The girls didn’t seem afraid or even amazed. As she walked by with the overseer, girls glanced up. A few smiled, some stared. No one seemed to mind the deafening din. How could they stand it? She had thought a single stagecoach struggling to hold back the horses on a downhill run was unbearably noisy. A single stagecoach! A factory was a hundred stagecoaches all inside one’s skull, banging their wheels against the bone. Her impulse was to turn and run to the door, down the rickety stairs, through the yard and counting room, across the narrow bridge, past the row of boardinghouses, down the street—out of this hellish city and back, back, back to the green hills and quiet pastures.