They paid her wages full and just, but there was no certificate of honorable discharge from the Concord Corporation, and with no certificate, she would never be hired by any other corporation in Lowell. She walked out of the tall gate benumbed. She had often dreamed of this last day, but in her dream she would be going home in triumph, and now there was no triumph and no home to go to even in disgrace.

22

Farewell

The bear had won. It had stolen her home, her family, her work, her good name. She had thought she was so strong, so tough, and she had just stood there like a day-old lamb and let it gobble her down. She looked around the crowded room that had been her home—the two double beds squeezed in with less than a foot between them for passage. She thought of Betsy sitting cross-legged on the one, bent slightly toward the candle, reading aloud while she, Lyddie, lay motionless, lost in Oliver’s world.

And Amelia. Amelia would know what turp—turpitune, turpentine, whatever the wretched word was—Amelia was sure to know what it meant. She could see the older girl’s eyebrows arch and her lips purse—“But why are you asking?” Indeed. So I can know what they charged against me—why I’ve lost my job, why I’ve been dismissed without a certificate. “You?” Betsy would laugh. “Not our Lyddie—Mr. Marsden’s best girl.” Meanwhile, Prudence would be busy explaining the meaning of the cussed word.

Thank God Rachel was safe. She had a home and food and school. She had a mother. And Charlie. I will not cry. She began to pack her things, stuffing them unfolded into the tiny gunnysack that had been her only luggage when she came. She almost laughed aloud. The sack wouldn’t hold her extra clothes, much less her books. Well, she was a rich woman now. She could afford a proper trunk for her belongings even if she had no place to take them.

“They let me go,” she explained to Mrs. Bedlow.

The landlady was incredulous. “But why?” she asked. “You were Mr. Marsden’s best girl. Everyone said so.”

Lyddie gave a laugh more like a horse whinny than any human sound. “Then everyone is wrong.”

She could not bring herself to describe to Mrs. Bedlow the two encounters in the weaving room. She must, somehow, have caused the first. She knew so little of the ways of men and women that she must have, without realizing, given him some sign. Mr. Marsden was a deacon in his church. He was not a likable man, but surely … And last night. Mercy on her—she’d acted like a crazed beast. Why, even her own mother who died in an asylum had never gone wild like that.