Lyddie

by Katherine Paterson

  She hurried back and climbed the four flights to the weaving room. The lamps had been extinguished by the operatives as they left their looms, so at first her eyes could make out nothing but the hulking shapes of the machines.

  Then she heard a strained, high-pitched voice. “Please, sir, please Mr. Marsden …”

  Lyddie snatched up the fire bucket. It was full of water, but she didn’t notice the weight. “Please—no—” She ran down the aisle between the looms toward the voice and saw in the shadows Brigid, eyes white with fear, and Mr. Marsden’s back. His hands were clamped on Brigid’s arms.

  “Mr. Marsden!”

  At the sound of her hoarse cry, the overseer whirled about. She crammed the fire bucket down over his shiny pate, his bulging eyes, his rosebud mouth fixed in a perfect little O. The stagnant water sloshed over his shoulders and ran down his trousers.

  She let go of the bucket and grabbed Brigid’s hand. They began to run, Lyddie dragging Brigid across the floor. Behind in the darkness, she thought she heard the noise of an angry bear crashing an oatmeal pot against the furniture.

  She started to laugh. By the time they were at the bottom of the stairs she was weak with laughter and her side ached, but she kept running, through the empty yard, past the startled gatekeeper, across the bridge, and down the row of wide-eyed boardinghouses, dragging a bewildered Brigid behind her.

  21

  Turpitude

  By morning the laughter was long past. She was awake and dressed, pacing the narrow corridor between the beds, before the four-thirty bell. Her breath caught high in her throat and her blood raced around her body, undecided whether to run fire through her veins, searing her despite the November chill, or freeze to the icy rivulet of a mountain brook.

  She could not touch her breakfast. The smell of fried codfish turned her stomach. But she sat there amidst the chatter and clatter of the meal because it was easier to pass the time in the noise of company than in the raging silence of her room.

  She was the first at the gate. It wasn’t that she was eager for the day to begin, but eager for it to be over, for whatever was to happen—and she did not doubt that something dreadful must happen—for whatever must happen to be in the past.

  She tried not to think of Brigid. She could not take on Brigid’s fate as well as her own. If only she had not come back up the stairs. Monster! Would I have wished to leave that poor child alone? Better to feed Rachel and Agnes to the bear. And yet, Brigid was not a helpless child. She might have broken loose—stomped his foot or … Well, it was too late for that. Lyddie had gone back. She had, mercy on her, picked up that pail of filthy water and crammed it down on the overseer’s neat little head. And all she had need to do was speak. When she had called his name, he had turned and let Brigid go. But, no, Lyddie could not be satisfied. She had taken that pail and rammed it till the man’s shoulders were almost squeezed up under the tin. The skin on her scalp crawled …

  Why didn’t they open the gate? She was as weary of the scene in her head as if she’d actually picked up that heavy bucket and brought it down over and over again and run the length of the yard dragging Brigid behind her a thousand times over. Laughing. Of course he must have heard her. She had howled like a maniac. He must have heard.

  The other operatives were crowded about, jostling her as they all waited for the bell. And still, when it rang, she jumped. It was so loud, so like an alarm clanging danger. She tried to turn against the tide, to get away while there was still time, but she was caught in the chattering, laughing trap of factory girls pushing themselves forward into the new day. She gave up and allowed the press of bodies around her to propel her to the enclosed staircase and up the four flights to the weaving room.

  Brigid was not at her looms. Mr. Marsden was not on his high stool. Her execution was delayed. She felt relief, which was immediately swallowed up in anxiety. She needed it all to be over.

  One of the girls from the Acre approached her. “Brigid says to tell you she’s feeling a wee bit poorly this morning. You are not to worry.”

  The little coward. She’s going to let me face it all alone, ey? When I was the one risked all to help her.

  The girl glanced back over her shoulder and around the room. She bent her face close to Lyddie’s neck and whispered. “The truth be told, she got word not to report this morning. But she had no wish to alarm you.”

  Now Lyddie was truly alarmed without even the slight armor that resentment might provide. Would they, then, be punishing Brigid instead of her? What sin had Brigid committed? What rule had she ever trespassed? And she with a sickly mother and nearly a dozen brothers and sisters to care for?

  Mr. Marsden had come in. Lyddie kept her eyes carefully on her looms. The room shook and shuddered into life. Lyddie and the Irish girl beyond kept Brigid’s looms going between them as best they could. She was almost busy enough to suppress her fears. And then a young man, the agent’s clerk in his neat suit and cravat, appeared at her side and asked her to come with him to the agent’s office. The time had come at last. She shut down her own looms and one of Brigid’s, and followed the clerk down the stairs and out across the yard to the low building that housed the counting room and the offices.

  The agent Graves was seated at his huge rolltop desk and did not at once turn from his papers and acknowledge her presence. The clerk had only taken her as far as the door, so she stood just inside as he closed it behind her. She tried to breathe.

  She waited like that, hardly able to get a breath past her Adam’s apple, until she began to feel quite faint. Would she collapse then in a heap on the rug? She studied the pattern, shades of dull browns, starting nearly black in the center and spinning out lighter and lighter to a dirty yellow at the outer edge. Dizzy, she stumbled a step forward to keep from falling. The man turned in his chair, as though annoyed. He was wearing half spectacles and he lowered his massive head and stared over them at her.

  “You—you sent for me, sir?” It came out like a hen cackle.

  “Yes?”

  “You sent for me, sir.” She was glad to hear her voice grow stronger. The man kept staring as though she were a maggot on his dish. “Lydia Worthen, sir. You sent for me.”

  “Ah, yes, Miss Worthen.” He neither stood nor asked her to sit down. “Miss Worthen.” He gathered the papers he had been working on and tamped the bottom of the pile on his desk to neaten it, and then laid the stack down on the right side of the desk. Then he scraped his chair around to face her more directly. “Miss Worthen. I’ve had a distressing interview with your overseer this morning.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder how Mr. Marsden had retold last night’s encounter.

  “It seems,” he continued, “it seems you are a troublemaker in the weaving room.” He was studying her closely now, as closely as he had studied his papers before. “A troublemaker,” he repeated.

  “I, sir?”

  “Yes. Mr. Marsden fears you are having a bad influence on the other girls there.”

  So there had been no report of last night. That, at least, seemed clear. “I do my work, sir,” Lyddie said, gathering courage. “I have no intention of causing trouble on the floor.”

  “How long have you been with us, Miss Worthen?”

  “A year, sir. Last April, sir.”

  “And how many looms are you tending at this time?”

  “Four, sir.”

  “I see. And your wages? On the average?”

  “I make a good wage, sir. Lately it’s been three dollars above my board.”

  “Are you satisfied with these wages, then?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I see. And the hours?”

  “I’m used to long hours. I manage.”

  “I see. And none of this …” He waved a massive hand. “None of this ten-hour business, eh?”

  “I never signed a petition.” I meant to, but no need for you to know it.


  There was a long pause during which the agent took off his spectacles as though to see her better. “So,” he said finally, “you are not one of these female reform girls?”

  “No sir.”

  “I see,” he said, replacing his spectacles and looking quite as though he saw much less than he had a few minutes before. “I see.”

  She took a tiny step forward. “May I ask, sir, why I’m being called a troublemaker?” She spoke very softly, but the agent heard her.

  “Yes, well—”

  “Maybe …” Her heart thumped in admiration for her own boldness. “Maybe Mr. Marsden could be called, sir? How is it, exactly, that I have displeased him?” Her voice went up to soften the request into a question.

  “Yes, well …” He hesitated. “Open the door.” And when Lyddie obeyed, he called to the clerk to summon Mr. Marsden, then turned again to Lyddie. “You may sit down, Miss Worthen,” he said, and went back to the papers on his desk.

  Though the chair he indicated was narrow and straight, she was grateful to sit down at last. The spurt of courage had exhausted her as much as her fear had earlier. She was glad, too, to have time to pull her rioting thoughts together. But the longer she waited, the greater the tumult inside her. So that when the clerk opened the door and Mr. Marsden appeared, she could only just keep from jumping up and crying out. She pressed her back into the spindles of the chair until she could almost feel the print of the wood through to her chest. She kept her eyes on the dizzying oval spiral of the rug.

  There was a clearing of the throat and then, “You sent for me, sir?” Lyddie nearly laughed aloud. Her exact words, not ten minutes before.

  The superintendent turned in his chair, but again he did not stand or offer the visitor a chair. “Miss Worthen here asks to know the charges against her.”

  Mr. Marsden coughed. Lyddie looked up despite herself. At her glance the overseer blinked quickly, then composed himself, his lids hooding his little dark eyes, his rosebud mouth tightening to a slit. “This one is a troublemaker,” he said evenly.

  She leapt to her feet. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. “A troublemaker? Then what be you, Mr. Marsden? What be you, ey?”

  The agent’s head went up. His body was spread and his eyes bulged like a great toad, poised to spring. “Sit down, Miss Worthen!”

  She sank onto the chair.

  Her outburst had given the overseer the time he needed. He smiled slightly as though to say, See? No lady, this one.

  Satisfied that he had stilled her, the agent shifted his gaze from Lyddie to her accuser. “A troublemaker, Mr. Marsden?” For a quick moment Lyddie hoped—but the man went on. “In what way a troublemaker? Her work record seems satisfactory.”

  “It is not”—and now Mr. Marsden turned and glared straight at Lyddie, all trace of nervousness gone—“it is not her work as such. Indeed,” and here, he gave a sad little laugh, “I at one time thought of her as one of the best on the floor. But”—he turned back to the agent, his voice solemn and quiet—“I am forced, sir, to ask for her dismissal. It is a matter of moral turpitude.”

  Moral what? What was he saying? What was he accusing her of?

  “I see,” said the agent, as though all had been explained when nothing, nothing had.

  “I cannot,” and now the overseer’s voice was fairly dripping with the honey of regret, “for the sake of all the innocent young women in my care, I cannot have among my girls someone who sets an example of moral turpitude.”

  “Certainly not, Mr. Marsden. The corporation cannot countenance moral turpitude.”

  She turned unbelieving from one man to the other, but they ignored her. She fought for words to counter the drift the interview had taken, but what could she say? She did not know what turpitude was. How could she deny something she did not even know existed? She knew what moral was. But that didn’t help. Moral was Amelia’s territory of faithful attendance at Sabbath worship and prayer meeting and Bible study, and she couldn’t ask for consideration on those counts. She hardly ever went to worship, and Lord knew when she read, it wasn’t just the Bible. Still, she was no worse than many, was she? At least she was not a papist, and no one was condemning them.

  She opened her mouth. They were both looking at her sadly, but sternly. In the silence, the battle had been lost.

  “You may ask the clerk for whatever wages are due you, Miss Worthen,” the agent said, turning to his desk.

  Mr. Marsden gave his superior’s back a nod and tight rosebud smile. Did he click his heels? At any rate, he left quickly without another glance toward Lyddie.

  “You may go now,” the agent said without turning.

  What could she do? She stumbled to her feet and out the door.

  They paid her wages full and just, but there was no certificate of honorable discharge from the Concord Corporation, and with no certificate, she would never be hired by any other corporation in Lowell. She walked out of the tall gate benumbed. She had often dreamed of this last day, but in her dream she would be going home in triumph, and now there was no triumph and no home to go to even in disgrace.

  22

  Farewell

  The bear had won. It had stolen her home, her family, her work, her good name. She had thought she was so strong, so tough, and she had just stood there like a day-old lamb and let it gobble her down. She looked around the crowded room that had been her home—the two double beds squeezed in with less than a foot between them for passage. She thought of Betsy sitting cross-legged on the one, bent slightly toward the candle, reading aloud while she, Lyddie, lay motionless, lost in Oliver’s world.

  And Amelia. Amelia would know what turp—turpitune, turpentine, whatever the wretched word was—Amelia was sure to know what it meant. She could see the older girl’s eyebrows arch and her lips purse—“But why are you asking?” Indeed. So I can know what they charged against me—why I’ve lost my job, why I’ve been dismissed without a certificate. “You?” Betsy would laugh. “Not our Lyddie—Mr. Marsden’s best girl.” Meanwhile, Prudence would be busy explaining the meaning of the cussed word.

  Thank God Rachel was safe. She had a home and food and school. She had a mother. And Charlie. I will not cry. She began to pack her things, stuffing them unfolded into the tiny gunnysack that had been her only luggage when she came. She almost laughed aloud. The sack wouldn’t hold her extra clothes, much less her books. Well, she was a rich woman now. She could afford a proper trunk for her belongings even if she had no place to take them.

  “They let me go,” she explained to Mrs. Bedlow.

  The landlady was incredulous. “But why?” she asked. “You were Mr. Marsden’s best girl. Everyone said so.”

  Lyddie gave a laugh more like a horse whinny than any human sound. “Then everyone is wrong.”

  She could not bring herself to describe to Mrs. Bedlow the two encounters in the weaving room. She must, somehow, have caused the first. She knew so little of the ways of men and women that she must have, without realizing, given him some sign. Mr. Marsden was a deacon in his church. He was not a likable man, but surely … And last night. Mercy on her—she’d acted like a crazed beast. Why, even her own mother who died in an asylum had never gone wild like that.

  She did not like Mr. Marsden. She had never liked him, but she had tried to please him—tried to win his approval by being the best. And though she needed to know what it was exactly that he was accusing her of, she knew he had not told the agent of those encounters. So, it was something else she had done wrong. She would have asked Mrs. Bedlow, but she was afraid the word would come out “turpentine” and Mrs. Bedlow would laugh. She couldn’t bear to be laughed at, not just now.

  “I’ll be out of my room by tomorrow—the next day at the latest.”

  “But where will you go?” Don’t worry for me. I can’t stand it if you are kind, I might break down.

  “Back to housekeeping, I reckon.” That
was it. Triphena would be sure to take her in.

  She went to the bank and withdrew all her money—243 dollars and 87 pence. Then she went to the bookstore. She wanted to give Brigid a copy of Oliver Twist even if the girl couldn’t really read it yet. She’d be able to in time.

  “Will there be anything else for you today, Miss Worthen?” They were friends now, the bookseller and she. She hesitated, but what did it matter? She would never be in again. “Do you have a book that—that tells the meanings of words?”

  “Ah,” he said, “We have an old Alexander dictionary, of course, and then there’s Webster’s and Worcester’s, which are more up-to-date.”

  “I think I need a up-to-date one,” she said. She didn’t want to risk buying one that didn’t have the one word she needed.

  The bookseller got down two fat books, Parts I and II of An American Dictionary of the English Language and then a third. “Many people prefer the Worcester,” he said, indicating the third book. “It’s a bit newer. And all in the one volume.” Lyddie paid for the Worcester and forced herself to take it out of the shop before opening it.

  As soon as she was out of sight of the bookshop window, she rested her parcels on the sidewalk and opened the dictionary. It took her some time to find the word. The pages were thin and her fingers calloused and clumsy, and she did not know the spelling. But she found it at last.

  What? She would have howled in the street had it not been so crowded with passersby. She was not a vile or shameful character! She was not base or depraved. She was only ignorant, and what was the sin in that? He was the evil one to accuse her of such. She had done nothing evil, only foolish.