Isabelle and Alexander, Rebecca Anderson [nonfiction book recommendations .TXT] 📗

if anything was amiss, she would hardly know it. From there, she inspected the finishing room, where dozens of workers sat at machines sewing the cloth’s edges, and others folded finished fabrics for delivery.

With every loop around each floor, Isabelle felt more anxious for Mr. Connor’s arrival. Many times she had heard him say that Osgood Mills ran like a precision machine because Alexander had set it in motion to do so, but she worried that without Mr. Kenworthy or Mr. Connor on the premises, something might go badly wrong and she would feel responsible for it.

However, as she wandered about each of the floors, the people who glanced her way merely nodded at her, making her believe they were fully capable of all the work that needed to be done.

Reentering the weaving room, she breathed in the near silence. With the last of the cloth removed from the loom, no machinery ran. She knew that, beginning the next day, the new looms would roar to life. But for now, the few workers who remained to shut down the last running loom bent and hovered over piles of cloth.

There was an air of tension in their postures and in their glances. Isabelle’s instinct was that something had been lost or possibly broken.

“Has something gone wrong?” Isabelle asked. Oh, please, she thought. Say no.

One of the men stood to face her. “Ah, sure enough we are all well, Mrs. Osgood.” He glanced at the other workers. “Something simply seems to be off. As soon as we can put our fingers on it, we shall have it right.”

A woman raised her head from the pile of cloth she was inspecting and sniffed the air. She shook her head as if to dismiss a notion and went back to the cloth.

Looking around at the workers, the man spoke again. “Mrs. Sanders and Lorraine and I will comb through the room once more. You all have your assignments, no?”

Murmurs of assent flowed through the group.

“Very well. Carry on with your work, and the three of us,” he said, gesturing to the two women standing beside him, “will get the room shipshape.”

Isabelle followed the workers to the stairs, where some went up and others down. She decided to do another circuit of the floors and climbed once again all the way to the top.

All was well in finishing. The same for dyeing. Isabelle wished she could simply ring a bell for Mr. Connor and he would appear, but at least in the meantime she could continue to move through the mill. The only thing that would make waiting for him to arrive more frustrating would be doing so sitting down.

As she made her way down the stairs to the weaving floor, she entertained the idea of bypassing the room with its empty wooden looms, the now-useless frames that had been her favored machines in the mill. Never again would she hear the swishing and clicking of the shuttles, the creaking of old wood. Knowing it was foolish, she stepped inside the weaving floor to say goodbye to the looms.

What greeted her senses there was not the silence she’d expected but rather a snapping and rustling sound that seemed not to belong to the room at all. She stood confused until she stepped into the room and her eyes stung from smoke.

“Fire,” she shouted. “Fire!”

Beneath an empty wooden loom, a small bundle of folded cloth sat, waiting to be delivered to the dyeing and finishing floors. Pinched in a corner of the loom frame, a corner of this bundle burned with an orange glow. As Isabelle ran toward the cloth, the fire licked up the legs of the loom, catching the shuttle, the warp forms, and the weft forms almost instantly. The speed with which she watched the flame move showed her that it would destroy the loom immediately, and if she did nothing, the fire would leap to the other looms, the floorboards, and the stacks of woven cloth. From there, anything and everything in the building could be in danger. Not to mention every person.

Leaping forward, Isabelle snatched the burning folded cloth from beneath the loom and dragged it toward the stairs, where space had been cleared to set up the new machines. She kicked at the burning cloth and then folded it upon itself, hoping to quell the flame. She felt the heat through her shoes, but she continued to stamp at it until it merely breathed a smoky haze into the room.

Glancing around the room, she sought for a water bucket, knowing that every working floor had at least one. When she found one, she grabbed it and ran toward the flaming loom, still shouting and hoping someone would hear her. The heaviness of the full bucket strained at her arms.

As she ran, water splashed across her skirt, drenching the lower half of her. Knowing she could ill afford to lose any of the precious water, she slowed.

“Steady,” she told herself.

Approaching the oiled wood, she could see the path of the fire eating its way through the frame. Standing between the burning loom and the one beside it, she hurled the water from the bucket.

Steam rushed at her, and when it dissipated, she could see that the water had made but a small difference in the size of the flame. She turned from side to side, desperate to find another fire bucket, but she could see nothing that would help her. The skirts of her dress, heavy with the spilled water, clung to her legs.

“Why does no one teach ladies how to quell fires?” she muttered into the rush and snap of flame. “My skills are useless here unless I can put it out by speaking French to it.”

Unfastening the waist of her skirts, she continued to yell for help. The wet skirt fell to the floor, and she stepped out of it, not caring that her shift would be the first sight to greet anyone who came to assist her. If,