At last the stairs were empty of clattering feet and the shrill laughter of young women at the end of a long workday. But still there was no Brigid. Lyddie hesitated. Perhaps the girl had gone ahead? Or perhaps she had forgotten something and gone back. Lyddie started across the nearly deserted yard. Her supper would be waiting and Mrs. Bedlow was insulted by tardiness. She had got nearly to the gate when something made her stop, nose up, like a doe with young in the thicket.

She hurried back and climbed the four flights to the weaving room. The lamps had been extinguished by the operatives as they left their looms, so at first her eyes could make out nothing but the hulking shapes of the machines.

Then she heard a strained, high-pitched voice. “Please, sir, please Mr. Marsden …”

Lyddie snatched up the fire bucket. It was full of water, but she didn’t notice the weight. “Please—no—” She ran down the aisle between the looms toward the voice and saw in the shadows Brigid, eyes white with fear, and Mr. Marsden’s back. His hands were clamped on Brigid’s arms.

“Mr. Marsden!”

At the sound of her hoarse cry, the overseer whirled about. She crammed the fire bucket down over his shiny pate, his bulging eyes, his rosebud mouth fixed in a perfect little O. The stagnant water sloshed over his shoulders and ran down his trousers.

She let go of the bucket and grabbed Brigid’s hand. They began to run, Lyddie dragging Brigid across the floor. Behind in the darkness, she thought she heard the noise of an angry bear crashing an oatmeal pot against the furniture.

She started to laugh. By the time they were at the bottom of the stairs she was weak with laughter and her side ached, but she kept running, through the empty yard, past the startled gatekeeper, across the bridge, and down the row of wide-eyed boardinghouses, dragging a bewildered Brigid behind her.

21

Turpitude

By morning the laughter was long past. She was awake and dressed, pacing the narrow corridor between the beds, before the four-thirty bell. Her breath caught high in her throat and her blood raced around her body, undecided whether to run fire through her veins, searing her despite the November chill, or freeze to the icy rivulet of a mountain brook.

She could not touch her breakfast. The smell of fried codfish turned her stomach. But she sat there amidst the chatter and clatter of the meal because it was easier to pass the time in the noise of company than in the raging silence of her room.

She was the first at the gate. It wasn’t that she was eager for the day to begin, but eager for it to be over, for whatever was to happen—and she did not doubt that something dreadful must happen—for whatever must happen to be in the past.