Betina Krahn (20 page)

Straightaway she had taken Maple and Daniel and Fritz aside and delegated tasks for the day, emphasizing how much she counted on them to see things through. Then she positioned herself in the main entry, directing everyone reporting for work to the appropriate floor and supervisor. It should have functioned like a clockwork. And it did … for nearly an hour.

What she hadn’t counted on was the free migration between floors and work areas. No one seemed to stay at their post for very long. Then there was the disconcerting influx of children, who in addition to the noise and injury hazards they created posed a considerable distraction to mothers and their fellow workers. She peeled little ones from walls, windows, and machinery; wiped wet paint from sticky hands; and sent group after group outside to play, where they were promptly evicted from the rear garden or extricated from the muddy trench in front and sent back inside to their mothers.

Cole had to wade hip-deep through children playing on the stairs as he made his way to the offices. They stared at him, pulled on his coat, and asked bold as brass, “Where’d ye nick them boots?” He managed to extricate himself and made
it most of the way up the stairs before a toddler, still un-breeched, took a fancy to his glossy footgear and attached himself bodily to Cole’s leg.

Unable to detach the child without provoking a pitched fit, Cole was forced to carry the child along to the office, where he demanded: “Will someone please get this creature
off my leg
?”

Madeline, who had seen him limping across the sewing floor and into the office, groaned quietly and handed Maple Thoroughgood the sewing machine instruction sheet she had been reading aloud. After their intimate encounter the previous night, facing Cole under any circumstance was going to be uncomfortable. But in the middle of a situation she herself found nearly intolerable … she would rather have had a few molars extracted.

After locating the child’s mother and peeling the toddler’s grubby little fingers from his boot, she stood and faced him, expecting the worst. He did not disappoint her.

“What in infernal blazes are all those br—children doing here? It’s a madhouse out there!” he roared.

“A slight miscalculation,” she said, picking up some papers from Tattersall’s vacant desk and pretending to be more interested in them than in his developing tirade. “The workers I hired in London turned out to be a bit more … 
productive
 … than I realized.”

“The hell they are!” He flung a finger toward the sewing floor. “Faces are the only thing that scurvy lot know how to produce. And hungry mouths. You cannot seriously expect to get anything done with herds of wild offspring rampaging through the factory at will. Something must be done.”

“They are hardly rampaging at will,” she declared. She forced herself to look directly at him, hoping her all-too-vivid recollections of the night before did not show in her face. “Something will be done. I have already set in motion a plan for dealing with our Ideal children. Unfortunately, the schoolmaster and schoolmistress I have engaged will not arrive
for another month.” She glanced toward the gaggle of children hanging on the coat hooks and climbing about on chairs stacked against the far wall of the sewing room. “I hadn’t counted on quite so many children, or on providing a school for them quite so soon.”

“A schoolmaster?” He eyed the ragged and quarrelsome bunch tussling for a place on the top chair of the stack. “You must be joking. You’re going to try to teach
that
lot the three Rs?”

“Education is the very foundation of civilization, Lord Mandeville.”

“Of all the cockeyed, harebrained ideas of yours, this has to be the most idiotic. It’s not enough that you give them houses and food and jobs, you have to keep their blessed brats occupied too!” He reddened and fished about in the inner breast pocket of his coat for an envelope. “Very well—here it is.” He slapped the envelope into her hand. At her frown of confusion, he told her, “It’s all the rope you’ll need. Try not to hang yourself with it.”

She watched him stride across the sewing floor and battle his way down the steps before opening the envelope. In it was a letter to the officers of the Bank of England authorizing carte blanche whatever drafts she would make against the encumbered funds of her trust. He was giving her the money she needed for the replacement cloth and anything else she might want. Why?

Why now? She scowled, realizing he must have written the letter sometime that morning. After last night. After he had tempted and tantalized her, enjoyed and explored her. Was it payment for services rendered or something to oil the way for future liberties? She should probably hand it right back to him, let him know she wasn’t for sale, not even for a “greater good.” But if she did refuse it, how would she fund her factory, her dream? Was she going to let a bit of pride ruin everything?

Blast his dark heart! When did everything get to be so
complicated? He had just managed to make her first major victory too fraught with worries to enjoy.

It was just past noon, and many of the workers were heading home for a bit of dinner, when Emily Farrow’s boys came racing up the main stairs, wailing and sobbing as if their hearts were breaking. They were so loud that every woman on the sewing floor turned to see what was going on.

Jonathan’s and Theodore’s velvet jackets were ripped, their lace collars hung in tatters, and their mud-caked lisle stockings flapped on their legs, trailing from their ruined black slippers. Worse yet, their shoulder-length curls were smeared with mud and a hank of Jonathan’s hair, near his face, was missing altogether.

Emily heard their cries and ran from the office to meet them. They threw themselves into her arms and wailed that they had been attacked by bigger boys.

The women left their stations to investigate. Most were mothers themselves, and there was a wide range of emotions in their faces as they watched Emily’s reaction to her children’s story.

“Th-they called us sissies and nancy boys,” Jonathan gasped out.

“Th-threw mud … an’ knocked us down an’ tore our clothes.” The tears from Theodore’s big blue eyes left clear tracks on his mud-streaked cheeks.

Emily raised an anguished face to Madeline. “This isn’t the first time this has happened, Miss Duncan. My poor, sweet babies—something must be done this time!”

Madeline groaned privately. This was all she needed—to have to mediate childhood squabbles on top of everything else. Trying to think what to do, she knelt by Jonathan and Theodore and lifted their faces. “Who did it? Do you know their names?”

Both boys shook their heads and burrowed into their
mother’s shoulders with fresh wails and sobs. Madeline rose and looked in appeal at the other women. They regarded her with blank looks and skeptical frowns.

“Well, I’m afraid we can’t do much unless we know who the culprits are. But I think this is a good opportunity for all of you to speak to your children about—”

“Oh, but we do know who the culprits are,” came a booming male voice from across the sewing room. The women parted to reveal Cole striding toward them, dragging a mud-caked urchin in each hand. He hauled them up before Madeline and released them with a glare that warned them to stay put. “They’re right here,” he declared, then pointed to Emily’s boys. “And right there.”

“Wh-what?” Emily pushed to her feet, paling, and pulled her children tighter against her. “That’s absurd. One look at my poor babies proves they are the victims!”

“And one look at these two will reveal the damage your two inflicted,” Cole countered.

Before Madeline stood two shoeless young boys, eight or nine years old, wearing cast-off adult breeches cinched with frayed cord, oversized shirts hanging half off their shoulders, and a generous smattering of drying mud. Their clothes were ripped in places. Beneath their defiant eyes they had nasty scratches on their cheeks.

“Jack? Willie? Why, them’s my—” Bess Clark hurried from the far side of the worktables, bringing several others with her. She stopped just before she reached her offspring and folded her arms. “Whad’ve ye been up to?”

“Nothin’, Ma, honest,” one said, cowering behind his older brother.

“It weren’t us. Them’s what started it!” The older one pointed at Emily’s boys. “Called us gutter wipes an’ whop-straws, poked fun at our clothes.” He hitched up his oversized pants with a defensive glower and pressed his arms to his waist as if trying to hide his rope belt. “They said we wus ragpickers, thick wi’ fleas.”

“An’ lousy,” the smaller one put in. “I ain’t got no lice—look, see!” He offered his head for inspection, but all attention was turning to the spectacle of his mother’s reddening face and blazing eyes.

“Snooty little tits.” She glared at Emily’s boys, causing them to shrink against their mother. “Call my boys names, will ye? Deserved a right good thrashin’ if’n ye ask me.” She pulled her offspring to her sides by their ears. “Fancy little nibs in their velvet ’n lace—think they’re better’n the rest, do they? I could show ’em
better
—”

Madeline was suddenly caught between two furious mothers: Emily Farrow and Bess Clark, scowling at each other, each threatening to take the other’s children in hand if they weren’t rightly punished. The rest of the women murmured to one another, frowning and beginning to take sides.

“Look at Jonathan’s and Theodore’s clothes!” Emily insisted, outraged.

“Look at Jack’s an’ Willie’s faces!” Bess countered. “Them two went for blood!”

“It seems to me”—Cole’s booming voice halted every word mid-utterance—“that both pairs got in a few good licks.”

“They cut my Jonnie’s hair!” Emily held up the truncated lock.

“Them two blacked little Willie’s eye!” Bess grabbed the boy’s face and thrust it out in evidence.

“While I was out walking the grounds, I happened to see what occurred,” Cole announced, his expression daring anyone to contest it. “There was an inadvertent trip … a bit of laughter, a few taunts … a shove, then a shove back. Before long all four were on the ground, thrashing and scratching and flailing, until they rolled down into the mud of the water-main trench. From what I saw, they bear equal blame. Of course, it’s not up to me to decide what should be done.”

When he looked to Madeline, laying the problem squarely at her feet, the others did too. She stood for a moment,
trying to look composed and thoughtful while frantically trying to think of where to go from there. A moment later she came to life and addressed first Emily, then Bess Clark.

“Take your boys home and get them cleaned up, both of you. I’ll see the lot of you in my office tomorrow morning, first thing.” She broadened her orders to include the others. “Until then, I suggest that all of you give your children a sound bit of parental guidance on the virtues of tolerance and charity.”

Emily seemed shaken by Madeline’s stern look, her hands trembling as she ushered her darlings to the stairs. Bess gave the closest of her boys a flip on the ear to get him moving and could be heard railing at the pair as they tromped down the rear steps. Afterward, Madeline bid the others return to work, then headed to her office for a minute’s peace.

“You see what’s happening, don’t you?” Cole said. She turned to find him leaning a shoulder against the door frame, wearing a knowing look.

“You were a fat lot of help,” she said irritably.

“You’re welcome. It’s jealousy pure and simple, you know. With helpings of envy and distrust and prejudice thrown in for good measure.” When she scowled, he clarified: “It’s a quintessential clash of classes, St. Madeline. Probably inevitable in this unlikely stew of workers and management you’re brewing up. Little Fauntleroy Farrows don’t bide well alongside the guttersnipe Clarks of this world—and vice versa.”

Was he taunting her or offering her insight? “They’re just boys. They don’t have a class,” she insisted.

“What cave have you been living in? Some boys are born with a burden of wealth, some with a burden of poverty, but all bear the weight of their father’s class on their shoulders from the minute they are born. I should know …” He looked as if he might say more, his eyes suddenly darkening with something remembered. Then he gave her a taunting
smile and turned to go. “You have a problem on your hands, St. Madeline.”

So she did. She sat down in her padded chair and closed her eyes. She had anticipated a vast array of pitfalls and problems, but this was certainly not one of them. She hadn’t bargained on quite so many children, or on a children’s squabble rousing such resentment and division between adults. Much as she hated to admit it, Cole was right; this had to be quashed before it affected morale. She had to do something. But what?

Who would have thought that something as ridiculous as children’s clothes could possibly pose a thr—

Clothes, ridiculous?

That brought her up short. Why would children’s clothes be any less important than men’s and women’s? Clothing certainly played a huge part in limiting the lives of women. That was what her venture was all about—freeing women from the tyranny of their garments. But what about freeing children from the tyranny of their garments?

Now that she thought about it, there were a number of people in the dress reform movement who had taken up the issue of restrictive children’s clothing. In the middle and upper classes, many children were corseted and bound to backboards from an early age. And one look at Emily’s boys—with their tight velvet coats and delicate lace collars, their long curls and prissy black slippers—illustrated how absurd children’s fashions could be.

Madeline headed for the sample room, where she did her best thinking.

“You want what?” chief designer Endicott said, blinking in disbelief. “When?”

“Final sketches and pattern pieces. By tomorrow morning.” She gave him a look of unadulterated faith and expectation. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I really need something to show them. You have such a genius for analyzing a garment
and knowing just what pieces would be needed where. I did some calculations and I think we’ll need only three sizes of each. The rest can be altered up or down from them.”