Betina Krahn (23 page)

She demonstrated the small mother-of-pearl buttons.

“Cal, even
you
could work them,” one of the Ketchums taunted another.

“If’n he could get a gal to hold still long enough!” another brother blurted out, drawing a burst of male laughter.

Alarmed by the drift of their comments, she hurried on. “You will notice that some of the fabric we use is unique. It is not woven, it is machine knitted … of the finest long staple cotton yarns. That means that some parts of the bodice will be firm and retain their shape and some parts will have a healthful ‘give’ to permit a range of movement. That should be most helpful for women who engage in outdoor exercise like riding or tennis or bicycling, for women who must work both in the home and in shops, offices, and factories, and for women with chores to do and children to watch.”

“Yer sayin’
mothers’ll
wear these things?” Bess Clark blurted out. The horror on her face made her opinion of that prospect perfectly plain.

“Well, yes. Women of all ages and stations and stages of life will wear them.”

“Girls too?” That came from a Ketchum, Madeline would have staked her life on it. Wicked laughter, mostly male, was followed by indrawn breaths, mostly female. She sought out the nearest Ketchum and pinned his ears back with a look.

“Young
ladies
? Of course.” She found the others and gave them glares as she continued. “Will you be able to know that a woman is wearing it? Possibly. Not because her shape will change so much, but because her attitude will. She will be healthier, more comfortable, and have more freedom of movement. The resulting benefits will be visible in her glowing face.”

“In her
blushin’
face, ye mean,” Harley Ketchum declared, drawing all eyes to his dour countenance. “A proper girl’d be shamed to her toes to wear such a thing.”

Madeline’s worst fears were being realized. She had asked for opinions and participation—and she was getting it. Now she was being forced to put her own reputation for propriety on the line. In front of Cole Mandeville.

“I consider myself a proper woman, Mr. Ketchum. And I wear such garments without blushing.” She prayed that for
once her body wouldn’t betray her with a flush of embarrassment. It didn’t. Harley lowered his eyes in the face of her determination, but from the looks on the others’ faces, she wasn’t sure it was enough to turn the tide.

“We will also produce a companion garment.” She turned to Maple for a second piece of clothing and held up a pair of sturdy knitted cotton knickers. Here was a garment they had no trouble recognizing, and their reaction was predictably mixed. “Some of you know these as ‘drawers.’ A rather old-fashioned term. These shorter, fuller versions are known generally as ‘knickers.’ These will be worn with the bust bodice to provide a comfortable, supportive, and entirely proper foundation for ladies’ garments.”

Tittering began at the back. By the time it worked its way to the front, she had heard the joke being passed along. “Them drawers be so short, a gal’s ‘nethers’ will be hangin’ out.”

Pretending not to have heard, she held the waist of the knickers up to her own middle, demonstrating the length of them.

“You can plainly see, they are generous enough to provide for modesty, soft enough to provide for comfort, and the cotton makes them easy to launder. They are both less restrictive and of superior quality to other foundation garments being sold.” She paused, searching the upturned faces around her—but found mostly puzzlement and uncertainty. She dug down into her repertoire of facts and figures.

“Traditional garments for an average woman have been shown to—wait, there is a much better way to show you.” In a stroke of inspiration she beckoned to Emily and Tattersall, sending one off to her house for a box of things at the bottom of her wardrobe and the other down to the shipping room for an old scale recently resurrected. While they were gone, she pulled out a number of sketches she and Endicott had produced together, showing the sorts of garments she hoped Ideal would produce in the future.

By the time Tattersall returned, the workers were buzzing about what they had seen and about the new concept of reform garments. Some were dubious, others skeptical; a few were outright hostile. Then Emily returned carrying a large box, and their attention once again focused on Madeline.

With a determined smile she set the scale and began pulling old garments from the box to place on one side of the scale. “These were my aunt Olivia’s—things she had worn and kept as a reminder of how fortunate she was to have been freed from such sartorial tyranny. They are from twenty years ago, but they are all still commonly worn by traditionally attired women. A pair of ladies’ shoes … stockings … chemise, sturdy corset, and cover … drawers … a small dress improver … one petticoat, two, now three … a skirt … a blouse and jacket.”

Even folded lengthwise and drooping over the edges, the garments scarcely fit between the chains that held the pan.

“If we were to put weights on the other side, it would take sixteen or seventeen pounds to balance these clothes. That is precisely how much the average woman must bear and drag around on her person each day. And how much
laundry
must be done. Think of the washing and ironing of all those petticoats, chemises, and corset covers.”

There was considerable murmuring among the women, and glowering and head scratching among the men.

“I can see you need something for comparison.” She put her proposed Ideal garments on the other side of the scale and added a traditional skirt, blouse, light chemise, stockings, and sensible shoes. Their combined weight failed to even budge the mass of clothing on the other side. “You can clearly see that reform clothing will result in not only greater comfort and freedom and better health, but also in smaller expense and less laundry. The arguments for reform in women’s clothing are simply overwhelming.”

They were not, however, overwhelmingly
convincing
. Her demonstration had made something of an impact on the
women, but she could see many of them eyeing their husbands to gauge their response before responding themselves. Unfortunately male reaction tended to fall into one of two categories: adolescent humor or simmering indignation.

Madeline was genuinely stunned by their resistance to so reasonable and forward-thinking a project. She reminded herself that clothing was an area in which tradition and morality met—and hammered out unwritten laws with the subtlety of an artist’s palette, the capriciousness of a summer storm, and the force of all Ten Commandments. True, clothing
was
an expression of who people were: their personal tastes, their values, their economic status, and even the class to which they belonged. But she still couldn’t believe that her workers would cling to absurd old notions of fashion propriety, especially when their own financial interests were at stake!

Merciful heavens! What did she have to do to make them see the light?

Then, with the heat of Cole’s I-told-you-so gaze boring into her, inspiration struck.

“To produce a good product, you have to know it well. And to truly know a product, you really have to use it yourself. Your opinion and contribution are so important, I want you to have firsthand experience with our garments. That’s why I’ve decided to distribute our entire first run of production to the women of St. Crispin.”

There was no time to think it all through, but it felt right … the perfect rebuttal to all the doubting Thomases in her workforce.

“Each woman in our employ and the wife of each male employee will be given two sets of our products to wear and evaluate.” She relaxed a bit, pleased with her sudden brainstorm. “Call it … another of the benefits of working at the Ideal Garment Company.”

Everyone began talking at once, such that she could scarcely make out one word in three. Then suddenly Thomas
Clark was on his feet, shoulder to shoulder with a red-faced Harley Ketchum.

“What are ye sayin’?” He jabbed a finger toward the garments on the table. “That our womenfolk got t’wear them things?”

The room went quiet as all waited to hear what she would say. Knowing that how she responded would determine her leadership, she struggled to strike the right tone—neither bullying nor begging.

“What I am saying … is that I have such confidence in these designs that I believe the garments themselves will convince you of their worth. Once a woman has tried them, has felt the comfort and freedom they offer, she won’t want to wear anything else. That is what I want for our customers, and that is what I want for you as our workers.”

But despite her enthusiasm and even the magnanimous offer of free garments to each and every woman, they were still doubtful. Frustration built in her as she saw them huddling back in their chairs, tucking their chins, and wagging their heads. Even Roscoe and Algy and that fellow they talked her into hiring—what was his name?—wore skeptical expressions. And they weren’t even working in the factory!

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Cole’s voice boomed out over the others, drawing every eye in the room to him. He pushed off from the wall and came to stand near the front row of seats with his hands in his trouser pockets and his elbows out, looking for all the world like a great, winged messenger of doom. “The sort of garments you’re attempting to produce require a certain … 
sophistication
 … to appreciate.” He swept the assembly with a look of condescension. “And it appears that sophistication is in rather short supply around here.”

Horrified, Madeline planted herself in one of the aisles, among the workers, and turned to face him.

“A woman hardly needs to be worldly-wise to appreciate the advantages of doing less wash each week, in avoiding heat
exhaustion in the dregs of summer, or in being able to bend and pick up a child without losing her breath. My workers are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves the merits of Ideal garments.”

“Your workers have difficulty deciding which shoe to put on which foot,” he declared with a genial smile.

An indignant murmur spread throughout the room.

How dare he! She gave him a look that would have scorched a wet blanket, then turned to her employees with her eyes ablaze.

“I believe we’re ready to go to work, are we not?” She looked challengingly from one to another to another. They had not exactly caught fire, but they were sitting straighter, holding their heads higher, and looking resentfully at Cole. It would have to do.

“Good. Endicott and Daniel Steadman will work with the new cutters, showing you how to lay out the patterns and stack the cloth. Maple and Charlotte Thoroughgood will instruct the seamstresses in the order and method of stitching the garments. We all have a great deal of work to do. Let’s get started.”

As the workers poured out into the factory, talking in hushed tones about what they had just heard and seen, Thomas Clark paused in a group of cutters and hitched up his trousers beneath his belly. “Don’t care what they say, my Bessie won’t be wearing the likes o’ them things. Won’t have my woman paradin’ about wi’ her nether parts hanging out.”

Madeline sighed quietly.

When the last worker had returned to the factory and the classroom was empty except for Madeline and Cole, she began to pack away the garments she had used in her demonstration. The longer she worked under his probing, judgmental gaze, the more curt and angry her movements became. She shook a chemise so hard that it made a loud crack, then folded it up into a cramped little square.

“Thank you ever so much for the
help,
your lordship,” she said sharply.

But his reply to her sarcasm was not at all what she expected. “You’re quite welcome.”

Cole turned on his heel and left, the echo of his words lapping like sardonic laughter in his head. She was welcome, he had said, and apparently meant it. On some level he must have known that his condescension would rankle her workers and galvanize them into giving Madeline a chance. He had done it anyway.

Meddling. Unforgivable.

Helping. Even worse.

She was quite welcome
. What the hell was happening to him? Getting involved, sticking his nose—his treacherous and damned near indestructible, magnanimous impulses—into places they didn’t belong? Her anger at him was the only thing that made it half bearable. As long as she didn’t know he was suffering these nauseating little episodes of charity and humanity, she couldn’t claim a victory and couldn’t use it as an excuse to sink deeper and deeper into a quagmire of altruism.

He headed for the shed behind Netter’s tavern, where his horse was stabled, hoping that a ride would help to clear his head. Perhaps seeing the wretched place from a distance would help him regain some perspective on it.

But when he returned some hours later, he found the same quandary waiting for him and made the only decision he could. He would just have to keep telling her and her wretched workers the truth … even if it helped.

Roscoe Turner and Algy Bates stood in the garden behind the factory, staring at the devastation they had wrought and seeing in it a job half done. “That Lord Man-de-ville mebbe
a testy sort, but’e knows ’is engineerin’,” Roscoe said, then rubbed his grizzled chin. “Know what we need, Alg?”

“What?” Algy stared at him as if awaiting an oracle.

“More horses.”

Spotting Rupert Fitzwater crouched at the side of the factory building, bending over something with feverish intensity, they headed over to see what he was doing. When he heard them coming he straightened and hurriedly stuffed what he was working on into his pocket. They could see, as he crammed it out of sight, that it was a writing pad of some sort.

“What ye got there, Rupert?” Roscoe asked, eyeing the edge of the pad sticking out of Fitzwater’s pocket.

“Nothing,” Rupert responded too quickly. Then he followed Roscoe’s gaze to his pocket and hurriedly shoved the rest of the pad out of sight. “Jus’ a bit of scribblin’.” Their dubious faces prodded him to elaborate. “I keep a diary … on my travels an’ such.”

“We ain’t got time fer scribblin’. We got us a rock to move,” Roscoe said. “We be headin’ over to Stonecrouch to see if they got any horses we can use.”