Glory gave a nod of understanding. “Is someone having an unwell day? Sometimes I have an unwell day, and visitors are uncomfortable.”
Isabelle smiled. “Something like that. Mr. Osgood seems to be having a series of unwell days just now.”
Glory looked surprised. “Mr. Osgood? From the mill?”
Isabelle could imagine the picture in Glory’s head of Alexander railing, howling, and overturning furnishings. Isabelle wished she could find amusement in such a picture, but the truth was far from diverting.
Mrs. Kenworthy answered. “Everyone has difficult times, Glory. And each person’s difficulties look different.” She turned to Isabelle. “I offer my apologies; I understand you once stopped by to see us on one such problematic day.”
“No such apologies are necessary between friends, I hope.” Isabelle smiled at Mrs. Kenworthy and patted Glory’s hand. “But I certainly am glad to be able to see you when you’re well.”
Glory nodded in understanding. “And when Mr. Osgood is well, we can visit him also. I like Mr. Osgood.”
“I like him too,” Isabelle said and realized it was true.
Glory had another idea. “Maybe he’d like to hold Abbie’s dog. That helps me on some of my unwell days.”
If it was easiest for Glory to imagine Alexander’s problem as a reflection of her own, if that was how she could understand it, Isabelle was perfectly willing to let her imagine Alexander shouting and throwing things and then feeling the comfort of a warm dog to cuddle. “Perhaps he would indeed.”
Glory got very serious. “Sometimes the doctors tell me that too many unwell days in a row means I may need a new home.”
Isabelle’s eyes shot to Mrs. Kenworthy’s. She saw there an air of exhaustion that went deep, far beyond Isabelle’s own effects of the past many weeks. But behind the weariness, there was something else: a well of strength, goodness, and grace. Isabelle hadn’t known Polly Kenworthy long, but she was certain that some of that grace and goodness had come not in spite of the challenge of raising Glory but because of it.
Mrs. Kenworthy smiled at Glory. “Dearest,” she said, her voice gentle, “this is always your home. We are your family, and this is where you belong.”
At the end of their visit, when Glory handed Isabelle the painting and promised to come when the time was right, Isabelle spoke briefly with Mrs. Kenworthy alone.
“How are you managing?” Both women asked the question at the same time. They laughed, and Isabelle gestured to Mrs. Kenworthy to answer first.
“Fine. We are all well.” She placed her hand on Isabelle’s arm. “I hope the talk of sending Glory away did not upset you. It is not in our plan at any time, but she is older now, and she understands well enough. If illness overtakes her, or if in some coming day her condition worsens, she may need more help than we can give her here at home. If that happens, we don’t want a change to come as a frightening shock.”
Isabelle nodded.
Mrs. Kenworthy put a gentle hand on Isabelle’s shoulder. “And you, my dear? Are you keeping yourself well?”
Isabelle gave a small laugh. “You sound like my mother. She keeps asking me if I’m eating.”
With a twinkle in her smile, Mrs. Kenworthy said, “Mothers know that caretakers need their strength.” She leaned closer, as if to share a confidence. “Are you eating?” she asked, her laugh joining Isabelle’s.
“Plenty.” She added, “Thank you.”
“Mr. Kenworthy reports that Mr. Osgood is improving.” Mrs. Kenworthy managed to inform Isabelle of her interest without asking impertinent or disrespectful questions.
“There are times when I am sure that is true,” Isabelle said. “And other times I fear I’m woefully inadequate for the tasks at hand.”
Mrs. Kenworthy repeated what she’d said earlier. “Everyone has difficult times. This is yours.”
Isabelle felt surprised. “I thought you were going to say this is his.”
“That too. But don’t underestimate the challenge you’re facing. And don’t put limits on how high you’ll rise to meet it.”
A wave of love for this kind woman flooded Isabelle. “Are you,” she whispered, “ever afraid?”
Mrs. Kenworthy answered with a small laugh and a press of the hands. “Oh, of so very many things.”
“I wake afraid of what will greet me,” Isabelle confided. “I fear I am married to two different men.”
Mrs. Kenworthy shook her head. “No, dear. Not two different men.”
Isabelle felt a bit foolish for having said so because clearly Mrs. Kenworthy didn’t understand. She turned her head away to hide her embarrassment.
“Not two different,” her friend continued. “More like six. Inside every man lives a small army of others. Only one comes to the surface at a time, but they can switch places right quick.” She snapped her fingers. “They’ve got their strengths, sure enough. And,” she said, “their struggles. The gentle one, the angry one, the busy one, the proud one, the attentive one. And the wounded one, I’m afraid, who pays calls for injuries of all kinds.”
Every word hit Isabelle with the weight of truth.
Isabelle looked at Mrs. Kenworthy in wonder. “Why doesn’t anyone tell us this? It should be a course of study in school. Every young woman should realize this about men.”
“Oh, my dear. Before you decide they are so foreign and impossible to understand, you must accept that there are dozens of different women inside of you.”
Isabelle laughed but instantly recognized the truth of her friend’s comment. Without knowing to put a name to it, she had been holding back or pushing forward certain aspects of her personality. Even within the past few days, Isabelle had reined in or set loose different selves for different purposes.
Maybe her difficulty in growing closer to Alexander was that the wrong personas were being sent to the front lines. She was playful when he was serious. He felt angry when she expected affection.
“You’ve given me so much to think about,” Isabelle said. “I should like very much to learn to be like you.”
“We are all constantly learning, if we’re doing it correctly.”
Isabelle accepted Mrs. Kenworthy’s sincere words with a smile of gratitude for her kind friend’s support.
The sun has come out,” Isabelle announced as she walked into the parlor to spend the morning with Alexander. She drew open the drapes and exposed the room to the rare sight of January morning light. “I thought I should share it with you in here in case it never happens again.” As the room brightened, she saw Alexander in his chair, face stormy. “New year, and a new weather pattern.”
“The sun shines in Manchester as many days of the year as it does at the Lakes.” The strength his voice had gained made Isabelle glad, even though it was clear this was a dark-mood day.
“As I have not noticed that myself, I have decided to keep count. We are now at one.” She sat at his side and smoothed the skirts of her dress.
He scoffed. “That is ridiculous. There have been plenty of sunny days here.”
“If I haven’t noticed them,” Isabelle said, “then it is a good thing for me to begin now. I have to start somewhere.”
As Isabelle watched, Alexander let out an exasperated breath and shook his head.
She gripped the arms of her chair, and her mouth gaped open in a most unladylike manner.
She had not imagined what she’d seen. He’d done it. As she sat and watched, he had turned his head from one side to another.
Isabelle leaped from her seat.
“You did it!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands and feeling more like Glory Kenworthy than she ever had. “You shook your head!”
A sound of frustration, possibly annoyance, came from his lips.
“If you’re expecting me to jump up and dance, you’re going to be, once again, disappoin
ted.” His face continued to look angry.
“But this is great improvement,” she said, attempting to lure him into celebration.
He was disinclined to celebrate. “I haven’t taken a step in months. I can only sit in this chair because I’m tied to it. I haven’t looked in on my work for so long, I have no way of knowing if the entire operation has burned to the ground, and you believe I ought to shout for joy because I turned my head?”
Well, when he put it that way, perhaps it did not sound quite so remarkable.
But Isabelle would not be dissuaded. “Just think,” she said, pushing his chair nearer to the window. “Now you can turn away from me at your leisure. You no longer have to close your eyes or wait for me to leave the room. You can simply turn your head and pretend I’m not here.” She stopped his chair directly in a window-shaped beam of light. “You’re practically a free man again.”
On a good day, that would have made Alexander laugh. This was not that day.
Reading his reaction, she reduced her playful tone and said, “I’d like to invite Doctor Kelley to come see you. Not for professional reasons, although I am certain he’d not be able to resist poking about.”
She gave him a moment to agree. When he said nothing, she continued. “It has been some time,” she reminded him.
As he didn’t answer, she could only assume he remembered how long it had been. Perhaps a new angle, she thought. “I think it would do him good to see your improvement.”
She turned his chair and knelt so near that he had to face her. He could only ignore her now if he closed his eyes. She inclined her head so her face was mere inches from his. “Please. Please bring Doctor Kelley back to see you.”
He met her eye and held her gaze. She felt a flush creeping up her neck, but she did not look away. She knelt before him, waiting for acknowledgment.
Finally he spoke. “If you want to invite him, I’ll not stop you.”
“How perfectly gracious of you,” she muttered, moving to sit at the parlor table. She opened her hinged wooden box and began to write.
He said nothing for the duration of her letter-writing. When he continued to say nothing, she wrote to Edwin and to her mother as well. After folding and sealing the papers, she came back to his chair.
“Would you like me to move your chair?” she asked.
“What I’d like is to move it myself,” he bit out. “But I cannot.”
“All right, then. Shall we do Doctor Kelley’s exercises?”
“No.”
His curt response shook her resolve to carry on with equanimity. She took a bracing breath.
“But the exercises are strengthening your body so you can move yourself,” she said.
“Do not attempt to cajole me. I am not a child!” he roared.
She stood with hands on hips. “I know well that you are not a child,” she said, her voice growing with each word. “A child would be more tractable.”
Surprise covered his face, as well it might; she had never spoken like this to him.
“Every day we carry out our assignments, you come closer to regaining your mobility.” Pleased at the steadiness of her voice, she went on. “We owe our best attempts to your healing. And we owe this effort to Doctor Kelley, after all he has done for us.”
Though she kept her voice steady, her heart beat harder with each word she spoke. If his circulation was reacting in a similar way, this interlude would be a vast improvement over his brooding silence: a new kind of exercise.
“Perhaps you will feel more inclined to exercise with Nurse Margaret.”
He looked slightly abashed, and she felt the momentary joy of winning a dispute.
“If there is nothing else I can help you with, then,” she said.
He said, “There is nothing,” but his voice held no anger. Perhaps even a note of penitence.
“Indeed not.” She moved toward the door, grateful for her ability to walk away from him. “I’ll be off.”
“Fine.”
Isabelle wished for a door she could slam behind her. Ever since speaking with Mrs. Kenworthy that day, she’d tried to remember that Alexander’s anger was merely one facet of his experience. She could choose to respond in kind or choose a different reaction. But there were days, like this one, when she wished she could engage in full combat.
Knowing that a change in venue was needed, she put on a coat and took herself to the mill. Upon entering, she waited inside the door of the spinning room for someone to notice she was there.
The men and women working at the machines, lifting, stretching, guiding, and containing the fibers in their various spindles and spools looked like dancers in a ballet. Their every motion, taken together, created a flow of motion where nothing went amiss.
Isabelle could only begin to imagine the result if something did go amiss.
After a few minutes, Isabelle watched two young women duck out of their places in front of a machine and two others take their places. Seamlessly, the new workers raised their arms to balance a winding bobbin or measure tension of yarn. Isabelle watched the two who had stepped away. They walked to a corner of the huge room and disappeared through a door.
It wasn’t the door Mr. Connor had taken her through either to the stairs or to Alexander’s office, but Isabelle felt bold and followed the two.
Hauling open the heavy door, Isabelle entered a room with hooks along the wall, several holding uniforms or overcoats. Along another wall, large barrels held water with dippers for the workers to take a drink.
One of the young women noticed her. “You new, love?” she asked, her voice carrying the same lilt as Mr. Kenworthy’s. “Get your uniform here,” she said, gesturing to the coats hanging on the hooks. “Most any will fit you, but make sure it’s good and snug along your arms. Don’t want anything dangling,” she said, turning away and taking the water dipper from her friend.
“What’s your floor?” the other girl asked.
“Pardon?”
“Warping? Spinning? Wefting?” The two young women shared a look that seemed to reflect they found Isabelle daft.
She knew these women ought not spend so much of their break trying to discern her needs. She clarified. “I beg your pardon, but I am here to see Mr. Connor.”
The taller girl grinned. “Mr. Connor’s nice to see, I’ll grant you, but if you were lucky, you’d have come back in summer, when Mr. Osgood himself walked the floor.” She looked at her friend, and they both sighed. “Now there was a man to come see. His eyes, like a perfect sky reflected in a lake.”
“And his smile, when you could find it, would make a girl swoon.” Her face took on a serious expression as she faced Isabelle. “It was a hazard, I assure you.”
The other girl nodded. “One I was willing to risk. Still am, if I tell you the truth.”
“Aye, Grace, go on with you. The master is indeed the picture of a fine man, but he has a new little wife.”
“Oh no,” Isabelle said as she shook her head, hoping to stop this strange conversation.
The young woman called Grace said, “Oh, it’s too true. Someone from the Lakes, if the stories are right.” She made a deferential gesture with her hand and bobbed a curtsy to show a gently teasing reverence. “Hard to imagine anyone worthy to be Mrs. Osgood. Not mistaken, am I, Sarah?”
The other girl laughed, welcoming Isabelle in on the joke. “We must get back to work, and if it’s Mr. Connor you’re looking for, you’ll find him coming around to the spinning floor at the top of the hour.”
“And don’t forget what I told you about the sleeves,” Grace said, tugging at her uniform coat.
The clamor of the spinning floor rushed into the room as the girls let themselves out, and then the door closed the sound out again. Isabelle stood in the quiet and pondered the life these two women led. They must be within a few years of Isabelle’
s age, but their experience was so different than her own. Maintaining employment, earning wages. It was foreign to Isabelle. Young women in her social circles not only had no need for such things, but they had not even any opportunity for them. If Isabelle had told her parents, before she’d married, that she wanted to secure a job so she could earn money, they’d have laughed, and then they’d have worried.
And that was not even to mention the way the workers had spoken about her husband. How mortified they’d have been if Isabelle had told them her name or in some other way shown them she was the “little wife” they’d mentioned.
At the same time, she felt proud. Not only that they’d found her husband handsome but that they also seemed to admire and respect him.
Her mind spun with such thoughts.
She returned to the spinning floor and awaited Mr. Connor. When he appeared on what must have been his scheduled rounds, Isabelle caught his eye and waved. He made a sign that he’d be with her in a moment, and she watched the frenetic surge of motion at every machine. She tried to count the number of workers on this floor alone, but with their movement, it was easy to lose track of how many were even attending one machine. There must have been at least fifty machines whirring, clanging, and roaring on the floor. At the same moment dizzying and comforting, the clamor made Isabelle grateful to Mr. Kenworthy and Mr. Connor for keeping everything under control.
“Welcome, Mrs. Osgood,” Mr. Connor said after he’d led her to Alexander’s office. “How can I help you today?”
“I don’t want to keep you from your work,” Isabelle said, “but I was wondering if we could arrange a time to bring Mr. Osgood to do an inspection.”
His mouth moved a moment before he seemed able to form words. If Mr. Connor had been expecting something from her, he hadn’t expected this. “An inspection, ma’am?”
“An opportunity for him to come through each floor and see that all things are still going according to plan.” It had sounded like such a simple, obvious suggestion before she’d spoken it aloud. Now, though, she was unsure. Perhaps it would dislodge the cogs of his smoothly working system.
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