The Crimson Thread (10 page)

            “We have skills in Ire – Wales…such as you have not heard of in this country; ancient spinners and weavers have passed them down from mother to daughter since time immemorial. In no time, Bertie will have your dull colors shining.”

            “Can you embroider?” J.P. asked, speaking directly to Bertie. “Chinese embroidery is all the rage.”

            Paddy didn’t give her the opportunity to debunk his claims. “Certainly she can. If you give her your pattern books, some of you disastrous fabrics, and sketches of what you’d like to see embroidered on the dress, she will have the most beautiful Chinese-style dress you have ever seen waiting for you in the morning.”

            J.P. circled his desk, looking from Bertie to Paddy and back again. “We can go to the warehouse and bring back some of the fabric. Miss Miller, you know where the pattern books are kept. I will ask Margaret to give you the rest of the day off to make this dress.”

            Bertie wanted to throw herself on J.P.’s knees and beg his forgiveness for her father’s well-meaning insanity. She longed to say that this was impossible and that it was really not their intention to give him false hope when there was none. “Yes, sir,” was all that came out.

            “Do you really think you can salvage this disaster?” J.P. asked her.

            This was her moment to say, “No!” but nothing came from her mouth.

            “She’s modest, but I know she can do it,” Paddy answered for her.

            “All right,” said J.P., sitting behind his large desk and taking a cigar from the humidor. “If you can successfully do this for me, my gratitude will know no bounds and the rewards will be great. But if I find that you have wasted my time and my fabric on some foolishness, both you and your father will leave my household immediately!”

after leaving the Wellington townhouse, Bertie went directly to the restaurant where Maria worked and, after explaining what she needed to do, asked her friend to stay with Liam and Eileen so she could work all night, because that was surely what would be required, if the task was even possible at all.

            “Of course I can,” Maria assured her warmly. “How often do you get a chance like this? Go make dresses so heavenly they’ll think that the angels created them.”

            “
You’re
an angel!” said Bertie, hugging her.

            From the restaurant, she went to the cellar Ray had shown her. With a heavy pattern book gripped under one arm and a carpetbag of thread and needles in her other hand, Bertie climbed down the cellar stairs into the basement room. She had told Da to have a crate of fabric delivered outside the alleyway door, because it was the only place she could think of to work without constantly being interrupted by Liam or Eileen.

            She knew J.P. was right about the rage for everything Chinese. She’d noticed the trend coming in the fashion journals the Wellington girls left behind in the sewing room. She’d observed the shift toward rich, jewel-toned, embroidered hats in the bonnets in the Parisian sisters’ shop. How had James missed it?

            From the carpetbag she took an oil lantern and lit it. The loom and spinning wheel were still there and looked somewhat improved. Ray must have begun working on them.

            Going back to the alley, Bertie began dragging down the heavy crate of fabric. It thumped down the first two steps and then got away from her. She jumped out of the way as it slid past her, crashing open at the bottom of the steps.

            Hurrying down the stairs, she bent to inspect it. Dark blue material sat inside in a straw packing material that seemed flecked with gold strands. Sifting it through her fingers, she saw it was a mixture of straw and some other kind of gold-colored strips of material. It had probably been added to make the straw softer and less abrasive.

            She lifted the blue fabric, holding it out in front of her. It was indeed of good quality, with a slight shine to it, but not at all in fashion.

            Sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor that had been strewn with straw, she began to page through the pattern book. The designs were lovely, but she could think of no way to make them work with this material. Her father had promised something shining and remarkable and new. How was she supposed to accomplish
that
?

            It was hard to stay mad at Paddy, he was so well-intentioned. She knew he saw this as her chance to advance, to jump forward faster than years of steady toil would accomplish, to catch J.P. Wellington’s attention and to dazzle him. But he was such a dreamer!

            And now he had put everything in jeopardy: his job, her job. Without either of their salaries, how would they live? It was getting cooler by the day. If they lost the apartment, Eileen would never survive in a mission shelter for the homeless; her health had become so frail.

            This was hopeless! She had no idea where to begin. Why even try?

            Dropping her head, she let hot tears roll down her cheeks. Crying unabashedly felt like such a relief that she quickly worked herself into a state of full-blown sobbing. Bertie was crying so hard that she didn’t hear Ray come down the stairs until he was beside her. “Hey, now,” he said, squatting beside her, “what is the matter?”

            “Oh, it’s such a disaster!” she told him, wiping her eyes.

            “Tell me,” he prodded.

            Bertie tearfully recounted the day’s events.

            When she was done, he got up and examined the blue material. Then he flipped through the pattern book. He ran his fingers through the packing material, examining it with keen interest. “Do you still have the crimson thread I bought you that day?”

            “Yes. I had it in my room at the Wellingtons’. I figured that if I would ever need it, this was the time.” She took the spool of shimmering red from her skirt pocket and tossed it to him.

            “I can do this for you,” he said. “What will you give me if I do?”

            “I have nothing,” she replied.

            He grinned slightly. “You have more than you think. When this is done, we will negotiate a price.”

Spinning Straw into Gold
 

The next morning Bertie entered J.P. Wellington’s study and greeted her anxiously waiting employer. With flaring nostrils she swallowed the yawn that welled up in her throat. “Good morning, sir,” she addressed him, covering her mouth with one hand.

            She’d come directly from the basement room, where she had slept for only two hours just before dawn, curled in the corner of the room, while Ray finished his work. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like and nervously pushed back some of the curled tendrils that had escaped her frayed hairdo.

            The bag she held contained the results of Ray’s labor. He’d drawn a pattern in tailor’s chalk directly onto the back of the blue material and pinned it using her as his model.

            While he had labored on the dress, he’d put her to work picking out the gold cloth from the straw. She’d worked until exhaustion finally closed her bleary eyes.

            Just before she fell asleep, he had been working at the old hand loom. In his lap he held a pile of the gold strips she had sorted out of the packing straw and the spool of crimson thread.

            In the morning he’d shaken her awake, thrusting a gown wrapped in the blue fabric into her hand. “You had better hurry,” he advised as she’d sleepily brushed the straw from the floor out of her hair. “It’s six thirty,” he added, looking at a watch he took from his pocket. “I just finished.”

            Having rushed uptown, sometimes running, she now stood before J.P. Wellington without even having seen the gown. “I see you have brought the dress,” J.P. prodded. “Should I call one of the girls to model it?”

            “It’s fitted to me, as I was the only model available,” she explained.

            “Then go put it on!” J.P. exploded. “What are you standing there for?”

            “Yes, sir.” She hurried into the library and locked the door behind her. Freeing the dress from the cloth, she took a swift, sharp breath in amazement.

            How had he done it?

            Holding the gown out in front of her, she beheld an exquisite strapless evening gown the likes of which she had not seen in any of the sketches in the pattern book. The blue fabric formed the body of the gown, which was nipped in at the waist with a skirt that gracefully draped to the floor.

            Appliquéd and embroidered up the entire side of the skirt was a swirling, gorgeous design of Asian-inspired red chrysanthemums.

            Immediately she saw that he had used her crimson thread to expertly create the embroidered design.

            And incredible as this was, even more spectacular was the crimson cape meant to be worn on top of the gown. The staid blue fabric had be re-created into a luxurious, rich material with a pattern of swirls and lines as if the starry cosmos had been captured within the folds of the fabric. And the pattern appeared to have been woven of pure gold!

            But where had he gotten this gold?

            A closer inspection gave her the unbelievable answer.

            The packing material!

            That’s what he had been doing on the loom. He’d woven the bits of gold fabric, interspersing them with more bits of the golden thread – and even with the straw pieces – to create this magical cape!

            Someone pounded on the door. “We’re waiting to see your creation, Bertie,” James spoke from the other side. “Are you ready?”

            “One minute,” she called, delaying him.

            As she pulled off her dress, the last pins in her hair came loose and her thick curls tumbled past her shoulders. She would have to pin it back up after she put on the gown.

            She stepped into the gown and fastened the cape just as another knock came on the door. “Are you dressed yet?” This time it was J.P.’s demanding, impatient inquiry.

            Frantically, she clutched at her hair, but there was no more time left. “Yes, I’m ready,” she said, unlocking the door.

            J.P. and James stepped into the library and circled her. Both looked thunderstruck, and they gazed at her speechlessly.

            J.P. stepped closer and took the hem of the cape between her fingers, examining it. “Beautiful,” he murmured.

            “Yes, beautiful,” James echoed, gazing at Bertie as though seeing her for the first time.

            Alice, Catherine, and Elizabeth hurried into the library at that moment. “Holy horses!” Catherine cried. “What a dress!”

            “Oh, it’s divine,” Elizabeth agreed. “Is it in your new line, Father? I didn’t see it in the pattern book. I must have it. The Autumn Ball is next week. I had a gown I was planning to wear, but I hate it now.”

            “Bertie is closest to my size,” Catherine argued. “Have her make a different one for you.”

            “Margaret can adjust it to fit me,” Elizabeth argued. “It’s much too grown-up for you. You’re only just making your debut this fall. I simply have to wear this gown.”

            “Bertie, I need two more dresses of this type, but in styles more suitable to younger girls,” J.P. said. “I can give you two days to create them. Can you do it?”

            “I don’t know, sir, I – “

            “If you can, I will give you a sizable bonus. I will also hire you to work alongside James at Wellington Industries for a handsome salary – a very handsome salary, indeed. If not, I will assume that his was a fluke, something you could only do one time, and it will be of no value to me. Your services here will no longer be required, nor will your father’s. Do you understand?”

            “Yes, sir,” she replied.

            “Please agree to do it, Bertie,” Alice pleaded. “I would so love a dress even half as beautiful as this one.”

            “Yes! Yes! Please!” Catherine cajoled. “If I can’t have this one, I need something like it.”

            “But I stayed up nearly all night,” said Bertie. “I can’t do it another night.”

            “Can she have more time, Father?” James requested. “It’s reasonable. The poor girl is only human.”

            “All right. Today is Thursday. You may take the rest of today and tomorrow and the weekend to work,” J.P. allowed. “But I must have the dresses by Monday so they can be fitted properly. I want my daughters to wear them to the Autumn Ball and create a stir. I need a calendar full of orders by the end of the month.”

            “Do it, Bertie,” James urged her. “We would make such a great team.”

            She nodded, her nostrils flaring once again with a suppressed yawn. “I’ll try,” she said.

            She
would
do it too. For the chance to work side by side with James, she would do anything.