The Daring Ladies of Lowell (28 page)

B
y mid-afternoon the crowds had dispersed, the indignant chatter about the verdict quieted. Lowell’s streets took on at least the façade of normalcy of a Sunday afternoon as the sound of organ music drifted upward to the surgery from Saint Anne’s.

The sun was high as she and Samuel stood together on a slope curving gently downhill from the surgery to a stream that emptied into the Merrimack. She felt the gentle pressure of Samuel’s hand on her waist, guiding her to a path that led down to the river.

“Why didn’t you meet me at the bridge?” Samuel asked.

“I couldn’t,” she said. So short a time ago, but it felt like a lifetime, and she had lost touch with the girl crying by the bridge, there too late.

“Are you saying you forgot?”

“No.” She didn’t have the strength to explain.

“It doesn’t matter, you’re here now. Let’s start over. Don’t hold back, I want to know everything,” he said.

There was no way to encompass “everything” in a single conversation. It was too late for that. What she must give him was honesty.

They were down now by the stream, turning fully toward each other. He drew her close. Gently, she pulled back. She had made her decision—when, exactly? She didn’t quite know.

“If that had been me, if I had been the one Avery killed, they would have dissected me in that courtroom, too,” she said. “When Mason said that suicide is common among prostitutes…more, that it is their natural death”—she drew a deep breath—“he was talking to me.” She held herself still with effort. “My mother whom I loved, who was wonderful, was married to a dreadful man.”

“What happened?”

“She was in love with someone else, and my father caught them. He forced her to leave. He called her a prostitute.” There was no need to add that he had also said—when she abandoned the farm—that she was destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

He tried to pull her close again. “Oh, God, Alice,” he said. He wanted to comfort her. He searched her face. He wanted to erect some kind of barrier around her, something to shield her from her sadness and pain, but it went far beyond that. Saying the words suddenly became easy.

“I love you,” he said. “I want to marry you. Will you marry me?”

She shook her head slowly from side to side. She felt not a tremor of doubt. “I can’t. It’s not possible,” she said.

“Alice, I love you.”

“It doesn’t matter, Samuel.”

Her dismissal felt like a blow to the stomach. “Why not?”

She wanted to say the words. Through this long and tortured time since Lovey’s death, they had been there; they were in her now. But the dream had evaporated fully today. Lovey, Tilda—gone. Avery free; justice denied.

“All of us here, all the mill girls, we live with your family’s mix of benevolence and tyranny. It’s all twisted together; there’s no way out of that. I can’t live with conflicting loyalties,” she said.

He tried to marshal his words, but his tongue felt thick. He wanted to stop her. He didn’t want to hear what was coming.

“You have to know—if you and your father don’t agree to reforms at the mill, I’ll stand with my coworkers. I’m going to that strike meeting tonight, and if our demands aren’t met, I’ll join a turnout.”

“Do you blame me for Lovey’s death?”

She said it almost tenderly. “You couldn’t give her justice, Samuel. I know it wasn’t all in your hands. But—yes, I blame your family for Tilda’s death and for acting like cowards and throwing away the case against Avery. If your brother had testified, that evil man would be going to prison. Instead, your family’s self-interest came first.”

He was incredulous. “You judge me as if I
am
my family. I am
not
my family. Alice, I don’t accept this. I don’t think you want to leave me, I don’t believe it. You’re traumatized. This has been a terrible time. You’ve lost much, but there are good lives ahead for us. I will take care of you, I will help you do what you want to do—” He could not curb the urgency in his voice.

She shook her head. “You may not
accept
it, but I
mean
it. I don’t blame you for all that has happened. But what kind of person would I be to not stand with the others in confronting your father? You can’t make him do what you want; nobody can. But I wish—I wish you had fought back harder.” The full import of what she was saying hung between them.

“You really mean this? You’re telling me there is no future for us?”

“Yes.”

Samuel stepped back. He didn’t speak for a long moment. “I’m not giving up,” he said finally. “I’ve waited too long to meet a woman like you, and I doubt that I will find one again. But I can’t force myself on you.” He cupped her face in his hands in a swift gesture, then let them drop. “And I meant what I said.”

“Please, please, go now,” she said.

“You’re insisting on good-bye.”

She nodded. “Yes. Please don’t try to contact me or change my mind.”

So this was finally the true way she saw him—as nothing more than a pawn of his father’s. “Alice, I’m trying to understand you,” he said slowly.

“Please don’t try,” she said.

Without another word, he turned and started up the slope toward trees burnished with dappled sunlight. He stopped and turned around. “You know when I fell in love with you?” he said. “It was in the church, at Lovey’s funeral. I saw you walking toward me, so straight and proud and beautiful—I was caught then, and I can’t be free.” He shook his head and continued walking.

She watched him go, hands over her mouth so she wouldn’t betray herself and call out to him. He didn’t stop, disappearing finally over the edge of the hill.

A
lone, Alice walked slowly through town toward Boott Hall, through the quiet heart of Lowell. She passed the darkened, shuttered company store where she and the other girls had once tossed scarves over their shoulders, admired trinkets that flashed and sparkled on their wrists and throats, and, every now and then, laughing with one another, put down a hard-earned dollar for a dream. And there, on the other side, the bank. How could that not be a benefit to them all? That feeling of power, slipping a dollar—maybe two—into a brown envelope, sliding it under the metal bars to a teller’s hands—how could that not be freedom? It was, but there was never enough money; it was dignity granted with reservations.

Her head was aching. She had sent Samuel away; Lovey was gone; Avery was free. All lightness and possibility, over. Even now, walking down the street, she could almost hear the laughter of what had been, what could be. What dreams did she own anymore? Why had Lovey been robbed of hers? Avery would be a man looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, but it wasn’t enough.

“D
id you really try to slap him?” Ellie asked in awe.

Alice nodded silently as she settled herself into a parlor chair, a deep weariness seeping into her bones. Her job as witness to the trial was done. Tomorrow morning the factory whistle would sound, and it was back to the looms. Only gradually did she realize no one was saying anything. She looked up and saw the others slowly pulling on their coats, avoiding her eyes.

“You are all going to the strike meeting,” she said.

Mary-o turned and faced her, standing at the front door. Her face was pale but resolute, her hand on the doorknob. “Are you with us, Alice?” she asked quietly.

Dear Mary-o, she knew the price of what she was asking.

“Yes, of course I am,” Alice said. She stood and walked to the rack, pulling on her own coat, buttoning it tight.

A general exhalation of breath, as the girls glanced quickly from one to another, back to Alice, their faces mirroring shared relief. They were united once again. Whether that would do them any good was one thing, but at least they felt the presence of shared strength.

“We’ll vote on the issues and then present them to Hiram Fiske. And if he rejects them, we’ll turn out tomorrow. That’s the plan,” Mary-o said.

A turnout—no income, no home. All in the room knew the peril they faced.

“Let’s go,” Alice said. Why, she wondered, was she not frightened? When she had left the farm, it was with determination but also with great anxiety. Now it was different. She would find a way. One foot in front of the other, that would be how she would do it.

“I’ve got enough food in the larder for a week; I’ve been stocking up,” volunteered Mrs. Holloway.

“What about Samuel Fiske?” Ellie asked. “Won’t he help us?”

Trust a child to say what her friends must be wondering. “I don’t think he can,” she said gently.

T
he vote—in a muted, somber crowd—was taken at eight o’clock. There had been little argument, with many unsure how this process worked. What would happen to them? Did anyone actually think Hiram Fiske would concede anything? “There’ll just be others who’ll take our jobs,” argued one of the mill laborers, but there was a momentum, fed by the trial verdict that very day, to speak up for themselves, to assert something.

The list of demands was sent around the room for signatures, emerging somewhat wrinkled and soiled but legible. A messenger was appointed to take it to the Fiske family at the Lowell Inn.

Mary-o reported all this back in Boott Hall, hardly able to speak above a whisper. “We did it,” she said.

Alice reached out and took Mary-o’s hand, feeling a sudden, fierce pride.

There was something different rolling through the air at Boott Hall that night—something both huge and invisible. They all felt it. They clustered around the piano, singing, as Mary-o pounded the keys, playing every song she knew. They sang until quite late, breathing in the unknown, growing giddy, almost drunk, on what they inhaled.

H
iram Fiske took the document from the messenger, touching it with distaste. “They can’t even wash their hands after work?” he said to no one in particular.

He scanned it silently, then passed it to Samuel. “I want you to post a notice in the morning—anyone joining a turnout is automatically fired,” he ordered.

“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it, Father?” It was Daisy, timidly. “I mean—”