All of her dreams burnt off like morning fog when, as she ascended the stairs, she heard Mrs. Quince calling for her in a birdsong voice. Lucy prepared a flimsy story of taking a walk to clear her head, but Mrs. Quince had no questions about where she had been. When Lucy followed her voice to the kitchen, she stood by a basket packed with food and a bottle of claret.
“I want you to take this to Mr. Olson at his mill,” she said.
Lucy looked at the basket, not wanting to look into Mrs. Quince’s pale eyes, which bore down on her with menacing intensity. “Perhaps that is not wise.”
Mrs. Quince showed no inclination to listen to nonsense. In two quick strides she came to Lucy and took her jaw hard in her pale hand, her long fingers gripping tight. “Your uncle wishes it.”
Lucy attempted to step back and pull her head away, but Mrs. Quince pulled her closer, digging into her flesh with her fingernails. “You will go where I tell you, and you will marry whom I say.”
Mrs. Quince let go. Lucy turned away, knowing she had no choice but to bide her time. There could be no ruptures, no major conflicts.
Choosing her battles, she nodded. “I will go.”
Mrs. Quince harrumphed in triumph. “Better for you to have been good from the first.”
Lucy took the basket and set out for the half an hour or so it would take to walk to the mill. It was a mild day, but still cool, and Lucy wore a long blue coat that she thought becoming, and it did a fine job of keeping her warm so that she could enjoy the stroll. She walked by Grey Friar Gate and over the footbridge and then along the rural ways that wound along the far side of the Leen, now swollen with spring abundance. She passed the hill the children called the “fairy mound,” but there were no children playing there today.
She had visited the mill only once before, and that was with a large group from town and before it had been populated by machines and workers. Nevertheless, she had been down this road many times, and had often enjoyed the quiet, peaceful walk. Scattered along the way were rural cottages where the bulk of Nottingham’s hosiery had once been made by artisans. When Lucy had first come to live in the county, these cottages had been vibrant places, full of comings and goings and the ceaseless noise of the interior looms. She had walked by to see children playing, women sitting together peeling turnips or sewing, men gathered to smoke pipes after a day’s labors. Now all was altered. The cottages were dark and silent, or if she saw their inmates, they sat inert before their houses, watching her with hungry eyes, like wolves considering uncertain prey.
At last she approached Mr. Olson’s mill, a large two-storied rectangular structure whose base was built of stone but the rest formed from unpainted lumber. A massive chimney belched dark smoke. When still fifty feet away she could hear the clattering of dozens of stocking frames—it sounded like an endless torrent of pebbles tumbling upon a wooden floor. There was a chorus of coughing and the muted sound of a single child crying.
Lucy had never before been inside a working mill, and did not know what constituted proper etiquette. Did she knock as though it were a private house or walk in as though it were a shop? Her indecision was answered when she observed one of the two main doors—for they were built like those of a barn—was open, and so Lucy merely stepped inside. What she saw left her breathless. The entire floor was an expanse of stocking frames—each one a rectangular machine as tall as a man and half as wide, fitted with twenty or more needles and wires into which quick moving hands fed the wool that produced the celebrated Nottinghamshire hosiery.
It was not the kind of work or the number of machines that horrified Lucy. It was, first of all, the gloom of the mill. There were few windows, and those were up high, letting in only thin shafts of daylight. These highlighted the amount of linen dust and debris in the air—the reason why nearly every worker paused several times each minute to cough. Even though she but stood at the threshold, Lucy’s lungs grew leaden. Then there were the workers themselves: women, children, and the elderly. Three or four large men roamed the floor, looking for signs that a worker was not keeping a proper pace. Such a worker would receive a warning rap on the side of his or her frame from a cudgel. Lucy stood observing only a moment before the overseers beat an old man on his thigh and a child upon his back.
She did not mean to cry out, but upon seeing the brute hit the child, she could not help herself. One of the overseers, a tall man, and an extraordinarily fat one, of early middle years came over to her. He was nearly bald, with only a little fringe of orange hair about the back of his head, which was both oversized and ruddy.
“What’s here?” he asked. “Come to bring me what to eat, have you, missy?”
Lucy held herself erect and thrust out her chin. “I am looking for Mr. Olson.”
He grinned at her, showing a mouth full of strong yellow teeth. “So’s every girl in the county. A grim enough gent, I reckon, but now that he’s got coin upon him, it’s a different story, ain’t it? But never you mind it. You want Olson, you come with me, miss.”
Lucy followed him into the mill, and at once she felt her lungs constrict, as though someone had put a heavy woolen cloth over her mouth. The workers looked up at her as she passed by, and she noticed the cloth covering the basket’s contents had come somewhat loose, and she felt dozens of eyes upon the bread that poked through. One little boy licked his lips.
“Something to eat, miss,” he said.
The overseer struck his frame, and the boy returned to work.
At the far end of the building, the overseer knocked upon a single door set into the wall, and opened it without waiting for a response. Inside, Mr. Olson sat behind an expansive desk, writing out a letter. There were numerous other letters drying upon the desk, as well as ledgers and open books. Behind him, a door that he might come and go without crossing the mill, and a very large window allowed natural light to brighten the closet.
“Found this lassie looking for you,” the overseer said.
“Yes, yes, send her in and close the door. I don’t want that filth getting in here.”
The overseer all but shoved her inside, and then shut the door tight behind him, leering at her as he did so. Lucy did not love being shut up alone with Mr. Olson like this, but the air was much cleaner and purer in here and the light was bright.
“Miss Derrick,” said Mr. Olson. There was something peculiar in his expression. It was not precisely pleasure, for that would have been out of character. Nevertheless, Lucy detected a distinct lack of displeasure, and an attentiveness that she had not before seen in him. For an instant he appeared almost attractive.
“I know you are occupied,” she said, feeling her face grow hot, “so I brought you your dinner.” The words sounded forced and stiff.
He looked at the gift, which she set down on his desk. “It is an unexpected kindness.”
Smiling somehow caused her throat to hurt, so she soon abandoned the effort.
“Please sit,” he told her, and gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Though my mill is no place for a young lady.”
“It seems an unhappy place,” Lucy said, listening to the clacking, the staccato coughing, and the occasional thud she now understood to be the overseers’ cudgels. She thought of her father’s claim, that mills were a blight upon the land. She wished she could leave right then. It seemed to her urgent that she do so, but she could not think of how she could flee without humiliating herself, so she closed her eyes for a moment and tried to breathe. Perhaps Mr. Olson would not notice her distress.