The Crimson Thread (17 page)

            “If that’s the whooping cough, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” Mrs. Linny told her when she came upon Bertie holding her side after a particularly bad bout. “I can’t have that contagion in my inn. Everyone will leave. Have you seen a doctor?”

            Bertie shook her head as she struggled to catch her breath. “If it doesn’t go away soon, I will.”

            “See that you do.”

            The next morning Bertie sat at the edge of the narrow bed in her small room at Mrs. Linny’s Inn and sighed deeply. She couldn’t think of another place to seek work, and there was not enough money left for a train ticket. She now knew she’d made a mistake in staying. If they’d gone back, she might at least be staying with Maria now. Here she was completely friendless.

            “What are we going to do, Eileen?” she asked her sister, who sat beside her.

            Eileen imitated Bertie’s sigh and shrugged her slim shoulders. “Iduhknow,” she replied.

            “Neither do I, sweet pea,” she said, just as another round of fitful coughing seized her. It rocked her frame so violently that it brought tears to her eyes.

            This coughing was only getting worse. What if it
was
whooping cough and she couldn’t work? How would they live? Who would take care of Eileen?

            “Maybe I have to swallow my pride and go to the estate to see if there is a letter for me. I’d rather cut off my arm than go back there, but I think it is our only hope.”

            Eileen seemed alarmed. “Don’t cut your arm. It would have blood.”

            Bertie laughed wanly. “No, I only mean I do not want to go back there. Don’t you worry.” She took a napkin off the nightstand and unwrapped the crescent roll she’d saved from last night’s supper. She bit off the end, handing the rest to Eileen.

            Eileen gobbled most of it down but then put the end piece back on Bertie’s lap. “Now you dome more,” she offered.

            Bertie gazed at her fondly. She had been so busy she’d hardly noticed how much Eileen had grown. She was definitely taller than she had been when they’d arrived in America in late summer. “Eileen, you have a birthday coming up soon, don’t you, at the end of the month. Do you know how old you will be?”

            Eileen held up four fingers.

            “Oh, you are a smart girl!” she praised her little sister.

            Eileen nodded happily. “Eila four fingers soon.”

            Bertie took the envelope of money from J.P. off the dresser. There wasn’t much left. She should save it for food and rent. “We can walk, Eileen. It’s only ten miles.”
And ten miles back
, she added silently to herself.

            “Eila can walk very good,” her sister replied gamely. It was true that she had become much more confident and steady in her walking, having recently shed the toddler’s lurching gait.

            Outside, the day was overcast with a bitter wind. Despites Eileen’s steadier steps, she still couldn’t keep up, and it wasn’t long before Bertie put her sister on her own back and carried her. Three hours later she trudged up the long driveway to the estate trying to ignore the agonizing blister that had formed at the back of her heel.

            On the front porch, Bertie put Eileen down beside her and took a deep breath. “Wish us luck, Eileen,” she said as she grasped the door’s gleaming brass knocker.

            Mrs. DeNeuve answered the door, scowling when she saw Bertie. “Good day, Mrs. DeNeuve. Have any letters come for me since I’ve been gone?” Bertie asked.

            “No,” replied Mrs. DeNeuve, moving to shut the door.

            “None?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Can I speak to Nancy?”

            “She’s been let go. Her services were no longer needed.”

            “Where is she now?’

            “I’m sure I have no idea.”

            “Did they fire her because of me?” Bertie asked urgently.

            “Not at all. With no child in the home, there was no further need for a governess,” Mrs. DeNeuve said as she closed the door firmly in Bertie’s face.

            Bertie blinked back tears of disappointment and anger. She had walked so far and for nothing! What was she to do now?

            A hard wind blew through the front porch, and she pressed Eileen into her side to shelter the little girl from the blowing sticks and leaves that swirled around them. The maelstrom set off another episode of the choking cough that was plaguing her.

            The door reopened just as Bertie caught her first breath, and Mrs. DeNeuve stepped out. “I just recalled that there was one letter two weeks ago.”

            “Did you see who it was from?” Bertie asked hopefully.

            “I did. The return address was from some Irishman named Finn O’Malley in Chicago,” Mrs. DeNeuve informed her. “I gave it to young Mr. Wellington.”

            Her hopes soared! Finn had written to her! He’d left a return address!

            “Thank you! Where is James now? Is he at the office in town? I only want my letter, I promise you.”

            “He’s at the mill,” Mrs. DeNeuve told her. “But don’t go down there. There’s trouble.”

            “What kind of trouble?”

            “I’m not sure, but John told me that an angry crowd was forming.”

Trouble
 

It took Bertie an additional two hours to get to the town of Wellington. Her weary steps grew slower and slower. Several times she had to stop altogether and put Eileen down until her coughing subsided.

            When she got into Wellington, it seemed curiously deserted. “Where all the peoples?” Eileen asked from her perch on Bertie’s back.

            “I don’t know,” Bertie admitted. Then, though, she spied a crowd milling around in front of a tavern called the Copper Penny. Approaching it, she saw a sign in the window. With a surge of pride, she realized that she could read it: JOIN THE STRIKE! SOME INSIDE! HEAR ALL ABOUT IT! FREE LUNCH!

            A man barreled out the front door, talking animatedly to another man. “Excuse me,” Bertie interrupted them. “What is a strike?”

            The man looked her up and down as if he recognized her from the mill, and then decided that this thin, pale woman couldn’t be the same one who had managed the mill. “The workers are organizing,” he told her. “We’ve walked off the job until they offer us better pay and decent working conditions.”

            “That’s wonderful,” Bertie said.

            “It’s long overdue,” said the other man. “The United Mine Workers have come down to help us organize. The Amalgamated Society of Tailors is here to support us too. Wellington threatened to fire anyone who walked off, but we’ve banded together: He can’t fire everyone in town.”

            Bertie wanted to say something encouraging, but she was suddenly overtaken with another fit of coughing. The first man she’d spoken to steadied her as she listed to one side. “Say, miss, why not put the tot down and go inside for some of that free lunch? They’ve got big pots of corned beef and cabbage going. At least you’ll be able to sit.” He helped lift Eileen from her shoulders and held the door open for them to enter.

            Holding Eileen tightly by the wrist, Bertie pushed her way into the crowded tavern. Inside, a wall of heat and the mingled odors from the tightly packed throng assailed her, causing her empty stomach to lurch.

            The striking workers were shoulder to shoulder, listening to a fiery speech from a man who stood on a table. Bertie couldn’t see over the people in front of her, but she heard the words “organize”” and “human rights” and “union,” spoken with an accent.

            The voice was familiar.

            Standing on her toes to see better, she caught sight on the speaker.

            It was Ray who was speaking to the crowd!

            Bertie jumped up, waving her arm as best she could in the tight quarters to attract his attention. He didn’t notice her, so she jumped again.

            There was a sharp whistle at the door. Four uniformed police officers strode in forcefully. “This is an illegal assembly for the purposes of promoting civil unrest and a conspiracy to riot!” the tallest officer barked. “You are all under arrest!”

            All around her, panicked people began to run. Bertie was pushed in the stampede.

            “Stand your ground!” Ray shouted, but it was no use; the need to escape overpowered the crowd, and they were desperate to avoid arrest.

            Hanging on to a table to keep from being swept along, Bertie regained her balance once again and stood Eileen on top of the table so she wouldn’t be crushed by the crowd.

            In the next second, she lost her grip. The moving throng of fleeing people carried her along like a relentless ocean current. “Stay there!” she shouted at Eileen as she struggled to keep her head above the flow. “Don’t move. I’ll be back for you!”

            She was carried out the front door into the street. Outside stood three horse-drawn police wagons. The struggling strikers were being collared by police and forced inside. In the confusion, many others were running.

            Bertie found a clear space to break from the crowd and staggered around the corner away from the mob.

            All at once, the miles of walking, the lack of food, the persistent, rib-quaking cough, the crush of the moving crowd – all these debilitating factors converged. Her knees caved and another wave of coughing caused her to buckle forward, holding on to the outside wall of the tavern. The ground below lurched up, tipping her backward.

            The last thing she felt was unyielding hardness as he head crashed down onto the ground.

Bertie opened her eyes and peered around. She was on a cot in some narrow, sparely furnished, windowless room. As soon as she turned her head she was slammed with a sickening pain that set off a round of coughing.

            A woman in a plain dark blue dress appeared in the doorway. “Ah, you’re awake, at least.”

            Rolling onto her side, Bertie waited until the coughing quieted. “Where am I? What happened?”

            The woman, who was only a little older than she, pulled a stool beside the bed and sat. “My name is Emma. I work here at this mission, which is where you are right now. You were outside the Copper Penny, and you must have been knocked down or fainted. You hit your head rather hard, I’m afraid.”

            “It feels like someone hit
me
,” Bertie said, “with a sledgehammer.”

            “The doctor thought you could have a hairline skull fracture,” the woman said.

            “How did I get here?”

            “Many people passed you by, I’m afraid, thinking you a drunkard who had passed out. But finally a kind gentleman stopped and saw that you were bleeding. The tavern had shut down by then, so he put you in his wagon and brought you here to the mission down the road.”

            Bertie felt her head and realized it was wrapped in gauze. “How long have I been here?”

            “Close to fifteen hours.”

Fifteen hours! Bertie lurched forward in alarm, but the pain in her head drove her back onto the bed. “Where is Eileen? Is she all right?”

The woman gazed at her blankly, not understanding.

“The little blond girl who was with me.” Bertie’s heart began pounding wildly.

The woman shook her head. “They brought you in alone.”

The Real Name
 

Bertie slept fitfully on the narrow cot, opening her eyes every few hours to ask if Emma had found Eileen. Various strangers came in and told her that Emma had not yet returned from the Copper Penny, where she had gone to inquire. They urged her to sleep more, which she found easy to do.

            Several hours later, she became aware of an elderly man in a suit, a doctor, who checked her bandages with amazing gentleness. “Thank you, sir,” she murmured with sleepy, half-open eyes. “Have they found Eileen?”