Page 45 of Lyddie


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“What are you talking about? You could never be—”

“Oh, yes.” She was silent for a moment as though sifting the words she needed from the chaff of her thoughts. “I’m going to have a child, Lyddie.”

“A what?” Her voice had dropped to a stunned whisper. She tried to search Diana’s features, but it was too dark to read her expression. “Who done this to you?” she asked finally.

“Oh Lyddie, no one ‘done’ it to me.”

“Then he’ll marry you, ey?”

“He—he’s not free to marry. There’s a wife … in Concord. She wouldn’t come to live here in a factory town. Though her father is one of the owners.” Diana’s laugh was short and harsh.

It was that doctor. Lyddie was sure of it. He looked so kind and gentle and all the time … “But what will you do?” She could hear now the shrillness in her voice. She tried to tone it down. “Where can you go?”

“I’ve got some savings, and he’s—he’s determined to help as he can. I’ll find work. I’ll—we’ll manage—the baby and I.”

“It ain’t right.”

“I’ll need to go soon. I can’t bring dishonor on the Association. Any whisper of this, and our enemies will dance like dervishes with delight.” She could hear the grim amusement in Diana’s voice. “I won’t hand them a weapon to destroy us. Not if I can possibly help it.”

“How can I help you? Oh Diana, I been so blind—”

She touched

Lyddie’s cheek lightly. “Let’s just pray everyone has been as blind. I’ll write you, if I may. Tell you how things go—”

“You been so good to me—”

“I’ll miss you, little Lyddie.” The final bell began to clang. “Quick. Slip in before they lock you out.”

“Diana—” But the older girl pushed her toward the door and hurried away down the street toward Number Three.

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The word passed around the floor next morning was that Diana Goss had left, snatching an honorable dismissal while she could still get it. Much more of her radical doings and she would have been blacklisted, or so the rumors went.

20

B Is for Brigid

Brigid had two looms now and would soon be ready for a third. She stood between them proudly, the sweat pouring from her forehead in concentration. If she would wear less clothing—but no, the girls from the Acre wore the same layers of dress, summer and winter. Still, despite her craziness, Brigid was turning into a proper operative.

Mr. Marsden hardly came past Lyddie’s looms these days. When their eyes met by chance, it was as though they had never been introduced. Earlier, his coldness had worried her. She feared then that he might find some reason to dismiss her, so she had been scrupulous to observe every regulation to the letter. As the days went on, she became less anxious about Mr. Marsden’s state of mind, much preferring his coolness to the rosebud smiles and little pats she had endured before her illness.

She treated herself to some more books. In honor of Ezekial Freeman—what a handsome name her friend had chosen for himself—she bought Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself and a Bible. Both volumes became a quiet comfort to her Sunday loneliness, because as she read them she could hear Ezekial’s rich, warm voice filling the darkness of the cabin.

She had liked Mr. Dickens’s account of his travels in America—all but the Lowell part. It was, as Diana had warned her, romantical. There was no mention in its rosy descriptions of sick lungs or blacklisting or men with wives at Concord.

July wore on its weary way into August. It seemed a century since the summer just a year ago when she had read and reread Oliver Twist and dreamed of home. She had been such a child then—such a foolish, unknowing child. As always, many of the New England operatives had gone home. Brigid took on her third loom. More Irish girls came on as spare hands, some of the machines simply stood idle. The room was quieter. Lyddie took to copying out passages from Mr. Douglass and the Bible to paste on her looms.

She liked the Psalms best. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills …” and “By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion …” The Psalms were poetry, no, songs that rode the powerful rhythm of the looms.

Sometimes she composed her own. “By the rivers of Merrimack and Concord there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered …” I must forget, she thought. I must forget them all. I cannot bear the remembering.

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