by Anya Seton
Miss Simpkins raised her head, peering in Hesper’s direction. “If you’re through eating, get back to work,” she said.
“Why, I only stopped a few minutes ago,” answered Hesper crisply. “The sign in Mr. Johnson’s office says half an hour for lunch.”
The forelady stood up, her lips drew tight over the china teeth. “You’ll do as I say or out you go, miss. I run the stitching room.”
Her fellow workers all stared at Hesper with mild interest, hopeful of a scene. The new girl was green all right—talking back to Simp. She’d soon learn—that is if she lasted out the day.
Hesper gave a small shrug, and pulled the waiting pile of uppers onto her machine. What was the use? She had expected nothing agreeable from factory work. I won’t let the old bitch fire me, and I won’t quit until I’m good and ready to, she thought. And underneath there was another thought. I’ll show that Porterman. Turn out more uppers than anyone in the room, then tell him what I think of his precious factory. When I quit it won’t be to Simpkins or Mr. Johnson—it’ll be direct to him. For she had a confused picture of Amos jeering at her bungled handwork, with the foreman, but directing that she be paid anyway—out of charity, as Mr. Johnson had suggested—then of Amos’ incredulous surprise when he heard she was working in the factory after all.
None of this picture was true. Amos had dismissed the matter of the Honeywoods after turning it over to his foreman; all his attention was centered on obtaining a better royalty basis for the lease of McKay machines, and for this purpose he had been on a business trip to Farmington, New Hampshire, to interview Gordon McKay. It was not until the middle of November that Hesper was recalled to his mind at all.
Once a month as a matter of policy, Amos made a tour of the factory. His walnut-veneer and snugly carpeted office was on the ground floor and had a separate entrance from the street, so that in general he saw little of the hands. That was Johnson’s business. And he did an excellent job. Still, it seemed to please the workers and give them more incentive if the owner occasionally appeared, and Amos enjoyed the respectful bows and smiles which greeted him.
This November tour progressed even more pleasantly than usual since Amos had an agreeable announcement to make. On the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving there would be free beer in the stock room. The news was greeted with subdued cheers—and the various sub-foremen expressed respectful thanks on behalf of their men.
Amos, attended by Mr. Johnson, reached the stitching room last. His visits were always unannounced, and for a moment after he opened the door nobody knew that he was standing there. Miss Simpkins had her back turned and was counting out the new batches of uppers, while the workers were all hunched over their machines. The treadles clattered and the cords hissed on the wheels.
Amos ran his eyes perfunctorily over the bowed heads, and was brought up short by an auburn one, bright against the dingy wooden wall behind. He was startled to feel a distinct and not unpleasant shock. Why, she’s not bad-looking at all—he thought, staring at the bent profile. The low forehead, straight nose, and square chin were clear-cut as a cream medallion. What’s she doing here? he thought, in the moment that Miss Simpkins turned with a little shriek of embarrassment—“Why, Mr. Porterman! This is an honor, I’m sure. Girls—girls—stand up!”
The stitchers braked their wheels with their hands and stood up. Hesper was taller than any of them. She tilted her chin, and gave Amosa long level stare, not quite insolent. He noted that under the heavy, almost black eyebrows, her eyes were not green as he had vaguely thought, but a brownish gold with a dark circle around the irises.
All together now—” prompted Miss Simpkins. “Good morning, Mr. Porterman.” There was an obedient chorus. Hesper said nothing.
Amos collected himself and bowed. “Good morning, ladies. Everything going all right?” Miss Simpkins rustled and nodded enthusiastically.
"You quite warm enough?” continued Amos, looking at the potbellied little stove in the corner. The room was not warm, for cold air seeped continually through the thin wooden walls and around the rickety window frames. He noted that Hesper and the other stitchers wore their shawls, and Miss Simpkins a gray knitted hug-me-tight. “I’ll have more wood sent up—keep a good fire,” he said.
Miss Simpkins rustled again. “So very kind and thoughtful. But our girls don’t expect pampering, sir.” She herself kept comfortable since she had moved her chair next the stove, and always sat with her feet on the ledge.
“Machines running all right?” continued Amos. “Don’t hesitate to report any trouble.” Moved by a sudden impulse he walked over to Hesper’s machine. She stepped back, proud of the neat pile of bound uppers ticketed for delivery to the making room. Let him find fault with those—she thought watching him sardonically.
Miss Simpkins followed, divided between gratification that Mr. Porterman was spending so much time in here for once, and annoyance that he should choose that Honeywood girl’s work for inspection.
But Amos’ keen eyes did not see the uppers. He saw the girl’s long shapely hand resting on her wheel, the tips of the fingers were red and rough.
“How do you like the work?” he said stiffly, feeling her hostility hit him in a palpable wave.
“It serves to earn honest money,” she answered. “At least I don’t make a froach of these!’
He was puzzled, uncertain of the Marblehead word, and ignorant of the circumstances, which he intended immediately to find out from Johnson. He passed on and bent over someone else’s machine for the look of the thing, murmured commendation, then suddenly remembered his announcement.
“There’s to be free beer Wednesday night for the men—” he said smiling, “but as that will hardly suit you ladies, you may all go home early instead. You can leave at six.” This was generosity indeed, and he accepted the ripple of gratitude with complacence. The other factories were all keeping the hands overtime on Wednesday to make up for the holiday next day. His eyes slid to Hesper, but her expression had not changed.
Ah yes—you’re the grand Bashaw all right, aren’t you! she thought, smirking and bowing and conferring favors when you feel like it. She watched him turn and leave—the massive back in the pearl-gray broadcloth suit, the fair wavy hair that shone like silver and augmented the impression of smug prosperity. I wonder how he'd like to work in here under Miss Simpkins.
By now she had learned the meaning of the forelady’s rules. Miss Simpkins ran the stitching room like a reform school. It was impossible to go to the toilet without explanation, grudging permission sometimes withheld, and then timing. Five minutes by Miss Simpkins’ silver-plated watch. There was a fine of a penny a minute for infraction. The ladies’ W.C. was in the opposite end of the building in the basement behind a stock pile of tanned hides over which one usually had to clamber. Miss Simpkins’ earnings were therefore supplemented by many pennies a day which she pocketed.
Rules numbers 2 and 3, “no loitering, and no converse with male employees” were thus redundant. The women had no opportunity to see the men, except for an occasional sniggering stock-room boy. In the morning when they checked in, Miss Simpkins stood beside Mr. Johnson until the last of her inmates had been herded to the stitching room, and at night rule number five turned out to mean that the stitchers were usually the last to leave the building at seven-thirty or eight o’clock—after a fourteen-hour day—while Miss Simpkins, who received a percentage of the output, and had scant interest in returning to her own bleak lodging on Reed Street, demanded one more batch completed.
Hesper had settled to dogged endurance. The work became automatic, and despite fines, she earned from two-fifty to three dollars a week, gratefully received by Susan, who allowed her to keep fifty cents for pocket money, sorry that the girl was working so hard and home only long enough to eat a bite of supper and fall into bed exhausted. But everyone was working hard; life was hard just now and no amount of pity would soften it.
Throughout that winter only one incident was v
ivified for Hesper by any emotion more compelling than endurance. This was a meeting with Nat Cubby.
It happened on a January evening, when Miss Simpkins had been routed by a blinding headache. Despite desperate efforts she had been unable to write out the day’s work slip, and had turned it over to Hesper with the worst possible grace. She disliked Hesper, but she knew her to be the most intelligent and honest of the workers.
Hesper struggled on alone in the chilly, dark stitching room, tabulating Miss Simpkins’ cramped figures, until after the church bells rang eight. Then she blew on her fingers, stamped her numb feet, and turning off the two kerosene lamps, went out into the dark corridor and dropped the work sheet into a slotted box which was nailed on Mr. Johnson’s door, before signing out on the time sheet.
As she turned and wrapped her shawl tighter, and put on her mittens, a voice from the shadows said “Ahoy there—Fire-top!”
She jumped, and peering by aid of the one night lamp, perceived that the slight man in overalls was Nat Cubby.
“Hello—” she said, smiling a little. She had seen him at a distance and knew he worked in the cutting room, but in all these years since the night he acted so strangely and brought the slave-catcher to the Inn, she had not spoken to him. Now, however, she felt a faint pleasure. No matter his personal peculiarities he was a link with the past—with Johnnie.
“You’re late too—” she said, glancing nervously around. But there was nobody to spy and report. Johnson had left some time ago, and the night watchman must be in some other part of the building.
Nat shrugged. “I’ve got my reasons. I like to keep an eye on things.”
Hesper was puzzled, for it seemed to her that he glanced towards the closed door which led to Mr. Porterman’s private office.
“Don’t you miss the sea?” she asked, after a moment, beginning to walk down the hall. “This is a mighty different kind of life.”
“More money,” said Nat. “Besides I don’t care to leave—home so much. I like to keep an eye on things.” He repeated those words with a peculiar intonation.
Now what does he mean by that? she thought, sighing. The moment of pleasure at seeing him had passed. There had never been any real contact with Nat. It was time to hurry home, eat, get to bed. Her bones ached and she felt lightheaded and faint.
“Wait ’till I get my coat, I’ll walk down-along with you,” said Nat.
She assented indifferently. Anybody seeing them would be astonished to see her walking with a young man, she thought bitterly. But then Nat didn’t seem like a “young man,” really. And he was so ugly, poor soul, with that twist to his lip, and his yellow lynx eyes and skinniness.
They walked down Pleasant Street to Washington, their boots crunching over a light fall of snow.
“How’s your ma?” she asked presently to make conversation.
Nat said nothing for so long that she thought he was not going to answer, then he muttered—“At least that bostard’s out o’ the house.”
Hesper jerked around, staring at him. “D’you mean Mr. Porterman?” she asked with a startled laugh. “Isn’t he boarding with you now?”
“No, he went to the Marblehead Hotel.”
“But what made him leave?” persisted Hesper.
Nat jerked his head, shuffling his feet through the snow. “I don’t rightly know. If I did—”
He had not raised his voice, but the last words grated with leashed violence. She stared at him again. His head was bent and he gazed down at the snow. Oh well, she thought, they had some kind of a row. It’s no business of mine.
They walked silently along together until they passed the Town House, then Nat said suddenly—“Come home and see her for a minute. She’d be glad to see you.”
Hesper, whose mind had been concentrated on getting to her own home and resting, took a moment to understand him. It’s queer he never calls her “Ma,” she thought.
“Oh no, Nat. I’m tired. I’ve got to get back.”
He stopped and looked straight at Hesper. “She’ll give you some supper with me.” The yellow lamplight from an unshaded window fell on his face, and Hesper was again startled. The sardonic malevolence had softened into unmistakable appeal. Why, he isn’t really dangerous or sinister, she thought. Maybe he’s lonely. Johnnie said that once. “No use expectin’ Nat to be like other folks because he isn’t. But that’s a mighty lonesome way to be.” God knows I’m lonely too, she thought.
“I’ll come for a little while, Nat.”
He nodded, and she followed him down the narrow snowy sidewalk to the center of State Street, and between the carved wooden pilasters of the Cubby doorway.
Leah had been sitting in the parlor by the window, waiting. She came out in the hall to greet them, a sinuous figure in flowing black. Her soft hair was gathered into a loose knot at the back of her neck, and the hair shone like black satin against the duller black of her gown. Her red lips smiled their tender sleepy smile.
“You’re so late—” she murmured to Nat, and her eyes slid past him to the door as if she looked for someone else.
Nat shut the door sharply. “Had to work late. I brought Hes Honeywood for supper.”
“Welcome, I’m sure—” said Leah in vague greeting, scarcely looking at the girl. “It’s all hotted up on the kitchen table.” She walked ahead of them down the narrow hall to the kitchen, and Hesper noticed a whiff of spicy fragrance trailing after her. Sandalwood, thought the girl, identifying the perfume with a carved fan they had at home in the curio chest, and this puzzled her. Marblehead housewives did not perfume themselves, but then none of them looked like Leah either.
As they ate her discomfort grew. Leah’s fishballs and Johnnycake were even lighter than Susan’s. Her dried-apple pie had a delicious tang of lemon and fresh dairy butter, but Hesper’s initial appetite dwindled.
Whatever impulse had caused Nat to want her there tonight seemed to have vanished. And she felt herself an intruder. Soon she had the disagreeable sensation of not being there at all, so tangible was their preoccupation with each other. Nothing very definite. Only once did Nat look at his mother, but during that brief glance his eyes held a hungry, brooding intentness—and Leah, meeting the glance obliquely, turned her head away and lowered her lids.
“It was cold out today—” said Hesper, nervously at random. “Maybe the harbor’ll freeze over again.” .
Leah turned her dark head, seeming to come back from a great distance. “Why yes, it was cold out,” she said. “Very cold.”
Nat’s body jerked upright from the table, his fork clattered on his plate. “You didn’t go out! I told you not to!”
A tremor and a delicate flush passed over the lovely face. “Only to the wharf—” she said. “Just for some air—dear.”
“Anywhere else?” He spoke with the same controlled violence Hesper had heard earlier. “You didn’t go up Pleasant Street?”
There was a pause, and Hesper, uncomprehending, yet felt a swirl of dark emotions sweep like wind through the kitchen.
Leah shook her head. “I wouldn’t do what you didn’t want.”
“You’re not to leave the house unless I’m with you! If I can’t be sure, you know what I must do.”
Leah bowed her white neck, her dark eyes stared at the tablecloth. “Cruel—” she whispered, her lips barely moving—“Ah, Nat, let me go—” Her head bent lower, and then she added in a loud voice as though she spoke of someone else. “Let Leah go! She can be cruel too!” and she smiled a strange, secret smile.
Hesper felt a creep of primitive terror. She jumped up from the table, scraping her chair and stammering—“I must get back.”
The two who had forgotten her turned their heads and looked at the girl. Leah emerged again from the fringes of that other scarlet-shadowed world into which she was being once more driven by the intolerable pain of longing and of shame.
She rose from the table, and held her hand out with so much naturalness that Hesper was abashed. “Good-bye
—” Leah said. “It was kind of you to come. Nat and I are much—alone.”
Nat had risen too, and moved close beside Leah. He did not touch her, and yet it seemed to Hesper that the two were meshed together by a mysterious bond, and that they stood alone together on the other side of a chasm looking across at her.
Oh, I wish I hadn’t gone, Hesper thought, hurrying out into the cold. The moments in the Cubby kitchen held the eeriness of half-conscious fantasy—not devoid of pity or shock, but incomprehensible as a nightmare. The dark words and emotions, sliding past her furtively, only half apprehended. “You didn’t go up Pleasant Street—” I shall forget the whole thing, she thought in sudden disgust. They have nothing to do with me. I needn’t ever see them again—ever. And she hurried faster, beginning to run along the dim street.
Ahead of her she saw looming the outline of her home, dark in the wintry sky, though there was a light in the kitchen window. And her footsteps slowed. She stood in the darkness and looked out across the water. The black waves dappled with ice heaved and sighed amongst the rocks, and she felt for them a fascinated revulsion, continuance of the fear which she had denied. My life is like that—she thought with panic—back and forth like the waves, trapped here amongst the rocks, never really changing. She shivered but she did not know it. She stared into the blackness, and for the first time in years she had a vision of old Aunt ’Crese, long since dead. “Heartbreak, fire—the bitter taste of death. Three men—three kinds of love—always a hankering too hard. But at the end you’ll know....”
Hesper raised her arm in a savage gesture—and let it fall. “At the end—when there isn’t even a beginning! God...” she whispered in prayer and in hatred. She turned and walked up the path and into the house.
CHAPTER 8
IT WAS NOT UNTIL the June of 1866, when Hesper had at last achieved a sort of resignation towards what she believed to be her drab destiny, that she was suddenly released from it. But before release came there had been minor changes.
The year before, a month after Lee’s surrender, Susan obtained the loan of a thousand dollars from Amos, who had asked no security but her written promise to pay. This was not from sentiment, though he was conscious of unusual warmth towards Mrs. Honeywood which he did not analyze. He thought the Inn was a good investment. In business matters he was usually right, and he was right in this.