Lyddie spent the night with Diana. Everyone was kind. Diana had her family at last. Then why had something snapped like a broken warp thread inside Lyddie’s soul? Wasn’t she happy for Diana? Surely, surely she was—happy and greatly
relieved. “You must write to Brigid and tell her you are fine, ey?” Lyddie said as they parted the next morning. “She can read now, and she worries.”
* * *
* * *
It rained all the way through New Hampshire, a steady, wearying drizzle. Lyddie rode inside the coach. There was only one other passenger, an old man who took no notice of her. She was grateful because she cried most of the way. She, tough-as-gristle Lyddie, her face in her handkerchief, her head turned toward the shaded window. But the tumult that had raged inside her damped down more and more as though beat into the muddy earth under the horses’ hooves. When they finally crossed the bridge into Vermont, the sun came out and turned the leafless trees into silver against the deep green of the evergreen on the mountain slopes. The air was clean and cold, the sky blue, more like a bright day at winter’s end than November.
23
Vermont, November 1846
One more night along the way and the sky had turned into the underside of a thick quilt. The coachman pressed the team, eager to get to the next stop before the snow began to fall. It was nearly dusk when the coach took the final dash around the curve in the road that brought it to the door of Cutler’s Tavern.
Nothing had changed except herself. At first Triphena pretended not to recognize her at all—“this grand lady come from the city of looms and spindles.” But soon the game was over, and the old cook gave her a warm embrace and drew her to a seat by the giant fireplace.
“I would’ve thought you’d have a cook stove by now,” Lyddie said half teasing, as she looked around the familiar kitchen.
“Not while I’m cook here,” Triphena said fiercely. “I reckon everyone has those monstrosities in the city, ey?”
“They work fine. We had one at the boardinghouse.”
Triphena sniffed. “They’ll do, maybe, for those who ain’t real cooks.” She handed Lyddie a cup of her boiled coffee, thick with cream and maple sugar. “So you’re for a visit home, ey?”
Lyddie was brought back with a pang to her present state. “I’ve left the factory,” she said, “for good.”
“So it’s back to the farm, is it?”
“My uncle sold it.”
“But what of your poor mother and the little ones?”
“Mama died,” Lyddie said. There was no need to tell Triphena where. “And baby Agnes as well.”
“Oh, dear,” said Triphena softly.
“So Charlie took Rachel to live with him at the mill. The Phinneys have been good to them both. So—” She took a long drink from her coffee. It scalded her throat but she shook off the pain of it. “So—for the first time, I’m a free woman. Not a care—not a care in the world.”
She paused, not knowing how to say, then, that she wished therefore to become once more a housemaid in Mistress Cutler’s Tavern. “So—I thought to meself—what fun to work with Triphena again.”
The cook threw her head back and laughed. She thinks I’m joking. How to explain? How to say I’ve nowhere else to go?
And then the girl came in. She was no more than twelve or thirteen, dressed in rough calico with ill-fitting boots. Lyddie’s heart sank. That was the housemaid. There was no room for her at Cutler’s Tavern anymore.
As it was, she spent the night in one of the guest rooms, paying full price, although Mistress Cutler pretended for a moment that she couldn’t possibly take payment from an old and valued employee. Lyddie lay awake, wondering at the silence outside the window, the only light, the cloud-veiled moon. How could you sleep in such a quiet place with no rhythm and clatter from the street? Nothing at all to distract your head from wondering what on earth you could do, where you could go in a world that had no place for you, no need for you at all.
* * *
* * *
“Then you’re off to see the children today?” said Triphena as she fed her breakfast at the great kitchen table. Lyddie was grateful to have plans for at least one day. “The snow is no more’n a dusting. I can get Henry to take you in the wagon.” Henry was Willie’s successor.
Lyddie chose to walk. The day was cold and clear, but her shawl was warm and her boots stout and well broken in.
She was at the mill by mid-morning. Mrs. Phinney greeted her kindly, but Charlie and Rachel were gone to school in the village, so she just kept walking, her feet taking her up the hill road, past the fields and pastures of Quaker Stevens’s farm, and on, up and beyond, until she rounded the last curve and saw it sitting there, squat and homely against the green and silver of the November mountain.
A tracery of snow lay on the fields and in the yard, but it was not true winter yet. In a week or so, everything would be sleeping under a thick comforter, but for now, the cabin stood out in all its sturdy homemade ugliness. Just like me, she thought, and blinked back tears. It was good to be home.