The Passions of Emma (9 page)
Slowly, she lifted her eyes to the red brick, arched gateway of the Thames Street mill. The cotton mill where the Irish bobbin boy had died.
Emma Tremayne had been in all the best houses in Bristol, but never had she set so much as the slender toe of her glazed white kid boot inside the Thames Street cotton mill. She hesitated just past the thick, iron-banded door, next to a time clock and row after row of little yellow cards. Around her the walls and floors trembled to the throbbing cadence of the machines.
A thin man, wearing a shiny black suit and reversible paper cuffs, stepped out of a wooden cubicle that made Emma think of a prison guard tower. She had never seen him before, yet it never occurred to her that he wouldn’t know her. The Tremaynes had always been known by everyone in Bristol.
She held out her hand to him, although it shook a little. She always imagined herself being brave, sailing forward to conquer worlds. But the truth was that even an occasion as familiar and
simple as a tea party, with people she’d known all her life, could sometimes send her heart to bucking wildly in her chest. She knew her fears were irrational—fears of being stared at and judged so strictly—but she couldn’t seem to prevent them.
simple as a tea party, with people she’d known all her life, could sometimes send her heart to bucking wildly in her chest. She knew her fears were irrational—fears of being stared at and judged so strictly—but she couldn’t seem to prevent them.
As this man was staring at her, his eyes wide behind a pair of spectacles that were thick as milk-bottle glass. She told him she wanted to take a tour of the mill, and his Adam’s apple bobbed hard in his long slender neck. But in the end he only swallowed and nodded and led her to an office down the hall. There, he turned her over to a Mr. Thaddeus Stipple, a short man with the blubbery roundness of a walrus.
Mr. Stipple tried to tell her that she did not really want to see the mill, for it was dirty and noisy and full of the Irish. Not at all a sight for a gently reared lady such as herself. Emma laced her fingers together in her lap and made herself smile at the man. She reminded him of who she was, as Mama would have done, even though she thought she sounded embarrassingly full of herself.
He gave one more halfhearted protest, then sighed, pushing himself heavily to his feet. He had her follow him back out into the courtyard, up a flight of iron-plated stairs, and through a tin-covered door. They came out onto a latticed catwalk. Overhead, the ceiling was a tangled mess of belts, wires, pipes, beams, and shafting. But Emma looked down, into an enormous room full of clanking, whirling, shuddering machines. This, Mr. Stipple told her, was the spinning room.
He gave the machines names: twisting frame and ring spinner and worsted mule. But all Emma saw was a maze of pulleys and cogs, spinning gears, and whirring bobbins. The din of steel jamming against steel hurt her ears. The rank smell of sweat and oily vapors choked her nose. The air was hot and so full of cotton flint she could barely breathe.
It was a roaring hell, a hell full of children.
She saw wan-faced girls, stoop shouldered and thin chested in their ragged dresses, some so small they had to stand on stools and
boxes to do their work. Their pale fingers danced between spinning bobbins, catching and tying the snapped threads before they could tangle.
boxes to do their work. Their pale fingers danced between spinning bobbins, catching and tying the snapped threads before they could tangle.
She watched a boy, with legs as white and thin as birch twigs, crawl beneath one of the great iron monsters to squirt an oil can at a rack of sharp, whirling spindles. Another boy ran by beneath her, rolling a bushel full of spools over a floor slick with grease and tobacco spittle. She could imagine his bare feet slipping on that filthy floor, imagine him thrusting out his arm to catch himself and being caught instead by the cogs of an unguarded machine.
She wondered which had been the one to kill the Irish bobbin boy. Padraic.
Emma never knew how she was able to pick the woman out from among the press of machines and workers on the factory floor. Perhaps it was her red hair, which was like a flaring torch even in the dim light of the cavernous room. Or because she alone was no longer tending to her machine, which was drawing cotton fibers exquisitely long and fine and winding them around dozens of whirling bobbins.
Her dark eyes, fever bright, were staring up at Emma. She had tied her flaming hair back with a piece of twine, but wisps of it clung to her cheeks. Her face had a pale sheen to it, like a lit wax candle. This time she wasn’t bundled up in a coat, and Emma saw that the woman’s shapeless lye-boiled dress was stained with grease and stretched taut over a belly that was great with child.
She took a step toward Emma and lifted her head, as if she would call out. But then a harsh, racking cough seized her. Her thin shoulders hunched, and she pressed a fist hard to her breastbone, as the coughs tore through her one after another, and her whole body shook.
She fumbled with the sleeve of her worn dress and pulled out a handkerchief and coughed into it hard, almost choking, as if her next breath would be her last.
A man on the floor, who must have been the overseer, saw her
then and shouted something Emma couldn’t hear. As the woman turned back to her ring spinner, she stuffed the handkerchief back up her sleeve. But Emma had seen that the ragged bit of cotton was stained with strings of blood.
then and shouted something Emma couldn’t hear. As the woman turned back to her ring spinner, she stuffed the handkerchief back up her sleeve. But Emma had seen that the ragged bit of cotton was stained with strings of blood.
Emma watched her, not moving, barely breathing herself. She wondered how she had come to be what she was, Emma Tremayne, born to such wealth and privilege. And not that woman, coughing her life out on a cotton mill floor.
I
t wasn’t often that a young man of only twenty-eight would be so certain in his heart and mind and soul of where he was going and what he was doing in this life, but Geoffrey Alcott was such a man.
t wasn’t often that a young man of only twenty-eight would be so certain in his heart and mind and soul of where he was going and what he was doing in this life, but Geoffrey Alcott was such a man.
Early every morning, except for Sundays, he went down to his office in the old warehouse that was the headquarters of Alcott Textiles, and there he ran his family business with a steady hand on the tiller and a keen eye on the horizon. Besides the Thames Street facility, he owned eight other mills throughout New England, and Geoffrey could have lived well off their income without once ever setting foot inside a spinning room. But such was not his way.
He made it a point of pride that he could himself perform every task he paid others to do. When he was ten, he’d talked his father into allowing him to be a bobbin boy for a week—he still bore the scar on his left hand from where he’d cut it on a buzzing steel spindle. He could disassemble and put together again a carding engine almost as quickly as his best machinist. One day just last year, he’d stood before a ring spinner for a full shift, untangling and tying up broken threads along with the lowliest of the mill rats.
Indeed, Geoffrey’s overseers and secretaries often complained that he tried to do too much. If he’d had his way, he would have examined, paid, and received every bill himself. As it was, he did
insist on keeping the books for the Thames Street mill, all in his own meticulous handwriting.
insist on keeping the books for the Thames Street mill, all in his own meticulous handwriting.
At precisely ten minutes before noon every day, Geoffrey Alcott would leave his office in the warehouse and walk home, strolling at a modest pace down Burton Street toward the harbor, before turning uptown on Hope Street. Folk joked that you could set your watch by Geoffrey Alcott.
Most days he enjoyed his walk. Down the cross streets and between the houses and storefronts he could catch blue glimpses of the harbor. When the wind blew steadily, as it did today, he could smell fish and brine, and the spent steam from his cotton mill.
It was on his walks that he did most of his dreaming. Geoffrey Alcott was well favored and rich, but these things he had inherited from his father and grandfather. He had always wanted to make his own mark.
So in the last five years, since his father’s death, he had built Alcott Textiles into one of the largest business concerns in the state. To the mills he had added a bleachery and dye works. This year he would extend their operations to include a foundry for the building of the machines that powered his mills.
Just this week, the
Providence Evening Bulletin
had referred to him as “Rhode Island’s textile tycoon.” He’d clipped the article, and he carried it now in the breast pocket of his fashionable windowpane-checked suit. From time to time as he walked he tapped the pocket, smiling to himself at the crinkling sound the newsprint made.
Providence Evening Bulletin
had referred to him as “Rhode Island’s textile tycoon.” He’d clipped the article, and he carried it now in the breast pocket of his fashionable windowpane-checked suit. From time to time as he walked he tapped the pocket, smiling to himself at the crinkling sound the newsprint made.
When he crossed Church Street, he entered a vaulted arch of giant maples and elms and chestnut trees. He left behind the noise of commerce and took up the music of gentrified life. Great Folk life. Here, carriage wheels didn’t clatter, they softly crunched over the dirt and gravel street. Coal didn’t rumble down chutes into bins; it gently slid. No one shouted or cursed, babies didn’t cry, but sometimes from behind wrought-iron gates and privet hedges he could hear a child’s laughter.
When he passed the ivy-shawled house of the Carter sisters, he
heard the squeak of a porch glider. He stopped and bowed to the two ladies. He smiled when he heard Miss Liluth giggle.
heard the squeak of a porch glider. He stopped and bowed to the two ladies. He smiled when he heard Miss Liluth giggle.
His own house was the biggest and grandest of the mansions on Hope Street. He walked through an iron archway and up an alley of marble flagstones. Linden trees lined the way, and on sunny spring days like this one their scent was sweet and haunting. It always made him feel a little sad, the smell of the lindens in spring, although he could never say why.
He stopped at the bottom of the portico and let his gaze roam slowly up the two-story fluted Corinthian columns and tall Palladian windows. Alcott pride had been built into the house, and he always felt an answering pride well up inside of him at the sight of it.
He put his custom-made kangaroo congress gaiter on the first marble step just as the mill’s shrill whistle blasted, the town clock pealed, and Saint Michael’s bell tolled the noon hour.
By the time the last chime had been carried away by the wind, he was through the door of the Hope Street mansion. He hung his derby on the hall tree and put his ivory boarhead walking stick in the elephant’s-foot umbrella stand. He adjusted the columbine in his buttonhole and slicked back his hair.
He breathed deeply, filling his head with the house’s familiar scent that was both sweet and musky. Some folk might say it was the hundred years’ worth of beeswax polish rubbed into the olivewood paneling. But Geoffrey Alcott knew it for what it was: the smell of old money.
As he did every afternoon, Geoffrey went first into the morning room, where he found his grandmother sitting in her white wicker rocking chair among her camellias and ferns. Twice a week she had the
Bristol Phoenix
delivered hot off the presses so that she could check the obituaries and gloat over whom she’d managed to outlive for another day.
Bristol Phoenix
delivered hot off the presses so that she could check the obituaries and gloat over whom she’d managed to outlive for another day.
She had been waiting for him, and her eyes came alive in her
fleshless face when he entered the room. She waved the newspaper through the air so hard her cap strings fluttered.
fleshless face when he entered the room. She waved the newspaper through the air so hard her cap strings fluttered.
“Amelia Attwater!” she shrieked. She was nearly deaf and she behaved as if everyone else was also. “Right here she is—Amelia Attwater, dead in the paper. It says it was softening of the brain what did her in, but that’s a bald-faced lie if ever there was one. Her brain was always soft as stewed tomatoes, so why should that affliction suddenly up and kill her? Huh? I ask you.”
He leaned over and kissed the air close to her crepe-papery cheek and got a strong whiff of camphor balls and fresh printer’s ink. “Perhaps it was a progressive disease,” he said.
“Hogwash. It was her gallstones that did it. Last time I saw her, at Olivia Wentworth’s funeral—and what a sorry affair
that
was: brass instead of sterling on the casket and a paucity of white blossoms among the flowers—I remarked how she’d been looking awfully jaundiced lately. Amelia, that is, not Olivia.
Olivia
looked like a pitless prune because the undertaker had forgotten to put her teeth in. As for Amelia, she was as yellow as cow piss. It was gallstones, I tell you, only the Attwaters would never admit to something so pedestrian. Always giving themselves airs, that family.” She thumped the newspaper with a gnarled, opal-ringed finger. “They made up this bit about softening of the brain.”
that
was: brass instead of sterling on the casket and a paucity of white blossoms among the flowers—I remarked how she’d been looking awfully jaundiced lately. Amelia, that is, not Olivia.
Olivia
looked like a pitless prune because the undertaker had forgotten to put her teeth in. As for Amelia, she was as yellow as cow piss. It was gallstones, I tell you, only the Attwaters would never admit to something so pedestrian. Always giving themselves airs, that family.” She thumped the newspaper with a gnarled, opal-ringed finger. “They made up this bit about softening of the brain.”
The old woman drew in such a belabored sigh her chest rattled. “Poor jaundiced Amelia. Dead in the paper. Nipped in the bud.”
Geoffrey leaned over his grandmother’s white-lace-caped shoulder for a closer look at the obituary. Her palsied hands caused the paper to tremble, but he was able to catch a glimpse of it. “It says there that she was ninety-three.”
“In the bud, poor soul. But then the Attwaters have always been known for dying young. Never has been any grit in that family, beyond the stones in their bladders.”
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