Dear Lyddie Worthen,
Doubtless thy Charlie has told thee about thy farm. Although our father pled on thy behalf, thy uncle could not be moved. Thus our father put down the purchase price himself, as he has four sons and not enough land for us all.
I have spoken with thy Charlie. He has urged me to put aside my fears and speak my heart plain. Which is that I long to earn from our father the deed to thy farm. Yet thy land would be barren without thee.
May I dare ask thee to return? Not as sister, but as wife?
Forgive these bold words, but I know not how to fashion pretty phrases fit for such as thee.
In all respect, thy friend,
Luke Stevens
What had Charlie said to the man to make him dare write such a letter? Do they think they can buy me? Do they think I will sell myself for that land? That land I have no one to take to anymore? I have nothing left but me, Lyddie Worthen—do they think I will sell her? I will not be a slave. Nor will I be his freight—some homeless fugitive that Luke Stevens must bend down his lofty Quaker soul to rescue.
She tore the letter into tiny bits and stuffed every shred of it into Mrs. Bedlow’s iron cook stove, and then, to her own amazement, burst into tears.
19
Diana
She had been alone before Rachel came, but she had not known what loneliness was—this sharp pain in her breastbone dragging down into a dull, persistent heaviness. My heart is heavy, she thought. It’s not just a saying. It is what is—heavy, a great stone lodged in my breast, pressing down my whole being. How can I even stand straight and look out upon the world? I
am doubled over into myself and, for all the weight, find only emptiness.
Workdays dragged by with nothing to look forward to at the evening bell. Rumor had it that the corporation had slowed the clocks to squeeze even more minutes out of the long summer shift. From time to time, she wondered why she was working so hard, now that the farm was sold and Rachel and Charlie lost to her. She brushed the question aside. She worked hard because work was all she knew, all she had. Everything else that had made her know herself as Lyddie Worthen was gone. Nothing but hard work—so hard that her mind became as calloused as her hands—work alone remained. She fell into bed exhausted and only felt the full burden of her grief in dreams, which, determined as she was, she could not control.
The weavers at the Massachusetts Corporation had all refused the agent’s demand that they each tend four looms and take a piece rate reduction as well. They signed a pledge in defiance and none of them backed down. The word went like a whispered wave through the Concord weaving room: “Not a girl has backed down. Not a one.”
Diana should have been elated. Wasn’t it a victory for the Association? But when Lyddie was finally able to rouse herself from her own pain, she saw that Diana’s face was drawn, the expression grim and set. Since Rachel had gone, whenever Brigid or Diana had tried to reach out to her, she had shaken them off. No one could understand her loss, she was sure. She did not have the strength to bear their vain attempts to comfort.
Then, suddenly, it was mid-July, and Lyddie realized that Diana was still at work, looking more sickly by the day. It was more than the heat of the weaving room. She’s worried, Lyddie thought, she’s sore troubled, and I, so bent on my own trial, never took it to mind.
Lyddie tried to speak to Diana on the stairs, but she seemed hardly to hear the greeting. Are they threatening her with dismissal? With blacklisting? A chill went through Lyddie. She thought she had nothing else to lose, but suppose Diana was to go? Diana—the one person who, from her first day on, had treated her like a proper person—the only one who had never laughed at Lyddie’s queer mountain speech or demanded that she change her manners or her mind. All the girls took their burdens to Diana. She was always the one who came to help you. Nobody ever thought of Diana needing help.
She’s ill—like Betsy and Rachel and Prudence and a host of others, Lyddie thought. She’s worked here too long and too hard. How much longer could Diana last? How much longer could any of them last?
I must do something for her, Lyddie decided, give her a present. There was only one present good enough.
“Diana?” Lyddie worked her way through the jostling crowd of operatives crossing the yard. “I been thinking.” She glanced around to see if anyone was listening, but all the girls were too intent on rushing home for their suppers. “About the—the—” Even now that she had made up her mind, she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak the forbidden word in the very courtyard of the corporation. She took a deep breath. “I been thinking on signing.”
The older girl turned to her and put her hand on Lyddie’s sleeve. “Well,” she said, and Lyddie couldn’t quite make out the rest in the clamor of the yard, but it sounded something like: “Well, we’ll see,” as Diana let herself be carried away in the rushing stream of operatives.
But I mean it, thought Lyddie. I mean it.
Earlier in the spring she had known that there were girls in her own house secretly circulating the petition, but now that she had made up her mind to it, she wanted to do it for Diana. How could it be a true present otherwise? After supper she put on her bonnet and went to Diana’s boardinghouse. She asked one of the girls in the front room of Number Three for Diana. “Diana Goss?” the girl asked with a sneer. “It’s Tuesday. She’ll be at her meeting.”
“Oh.”
The girl looked her up and down as though memorizing her features. Maybe the girl was a corporation spy. Stare her down, Lyddie told herself. The other was shorter than she, so when Lyddie stood tall and looked down into her eyes, the girl shifted her gaze. “It’s at their reading room on Central Street.” She glanced back at Lyddie. The sneer had returned. “Number Seventy-six. All are welcome. So I’m told.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, thought Lyddie, and made her way into town.
The meeting had already begun. Someone was reading minutes. The forty or so girls crowded into the small room looked almost like a sewing circle, so many of the girls were doing mending or needlework.
“Hello.” The young woman who seemed to be in charge interrupted the secretary’s droning. “Come on in.”
Lyddie stepped into the room, looking about uncertainly for a chair. To her relief she saw Diana, getting up and coming toward her. “You came,” she said, her tired features relaxing into a smile. It reminded her of that first night when she had gone to see Diana, except then Diana had looked lovely and full of life. She took Lyddie to a place where there were two vacant chairs and sat beside her while the meeting carried on.