THE RAG HOUSE
The place where Lydia Trivett worked and controlled the activities
of twenty other women was a lofty, raftered hall lighted from the
north by a row of windows under which the sorters sat. In the midst
of the chamber the material was piled in huge, square bales covered
with sacking. The parcels came from all parts of Europe, where linen
and cotton rag could be obtained; and before they were handled, the
contents entered a thresher for preliminary dusting. The thresher
throbbed and thundered within a compartment boarded off from the
workshop. Here in a great wooden case, a roller with iron-shod teeth
revolved, while above this lower, moving wheel, fixed prongs stood
similarly armed, so that their teeth passed between each other at every
turn. Here spun the rags and whirled and tossed, while the dust of
France, Belgium, England, Ireland, Scotland was sucked away from them.
Every rag that entered Dene Mill was subjected to this rough initial
embrace, where Alice Barefoot, a tall, strong woman, attended the
thresher. She was herself of the colour of dust, with a high complexion
and lion-coloured hair, tied up in a yellow kerchief. She prided
herself on doing man’s work and, indeed, accomplished her heavy labours
very completely. The dusted rag she piled in tall baskets, stopped the
thresher, then opened the door of the chamber and bore the rag out to
the sorters. They sat each before her lattice with the material heaped
at her left. The practised workers dealt very swiftly with the stuff,
running it between their hands and knowing its composition by touch.
Wool or silk sometimes intruded, but was flung aside, for only cotton
passed to the empty baskets at each woman’s right. The workers were
clad in white overalls and their heads were covered with white caps and
bonnets. Wonderful cleanliness marked them and the atmosphere of the
brightly lighted shop was clear despite the flocculent material that
passed through it.
For purity of air and water, chemicals and working hands is a vital
matter to the paper maker. Every operation must needs be as cleanly as
sleepless precaution can make it.
From the mountain of rags on her left the sorter plucked material and
picked it over the lattice, an open wire-work sieve spread before
her. Standing beside it was a short upright knife used to cut the
rags and sever from them the buttons, hooks and eyes, whalebones
and other extraneous additions that had belonged to their earlier
incarnations. These knives were made from old steel scythes worn too
thin for husbandry, but here answering a final purpose of value. The
hones hummed from time to time, for the busy knives needed constant
sharpening. Their cutting edge turned away from the workwoman and to it
she brought the material—fragments of every garment ever manufactured
from spun cotton.
The history of many a single rag had been a feminine epic, from its
plucking in a far off cotton field to its creation, use, adventures,
triumphs, tragedies and final dissolution. Here they were from the dust
heaps of a continent, from the embracing of bodies noble and simple,
high and low, young and old, sweet and foul.
Their tags and buttons were swiftly cut away and each grille exhibited
a strange assortment of trophies—pearl and glass, metal and foil,
whalebone and indiarubber. Even so many foreign substances escaped the
sorters, to be captured at a later period in the purification of the
rag.
The women sat back to back and there was little speech among them.
Their hands twinkled in a sort of rhythmic measure from right to left
and left to right. Then, as their baskets were filled, came Alice
Barefoot to carry them away and pile fresh accumulations from the
thresher.
To-day the work was old rag; but sometimes a consignment of fragments
and overplus from the collar and shirt factories arrived clean and
white. Out of them had garments been cut and the remnants needed
nothing but shortening and dismemberment upon the knives and picking
over for coloured threads, or rubbish that hang about them.
Here reigned Lydia and herself worked at a lattice with the rest. She
had only come to the Mill when her husband died; but her skill proved
great and her influence greater. Blind-folded she could have done her
sorting and separated by touch the cotton, or linen, from any other
textile fabric. She was clad in a big white garment and had wrapped
her head and neck in a pale blue handkerchief so that her face only
appeared.
Next to her sat a girl, and sometimes they spoke.
Daisy Finch was a big blonde maiden, a friend of Medora’s; and
concerning Medora the pair kept up a fitful conversation. But Lydia’s
eyes were about her while her hands swiftly ran through the rags. She
marked all that was going on from her place at the end of the row, and
sometimes cried out a direction, or word of admonition.
“She don’t tell me nothing,” said Daisy. “She just leaves you with
a sort of general feeling she ain’t happy, then she’ll turn it off
and say, ‘talk of something else,’ though all the time we haven’t
been talking of anything in particular. Of course it ain’t anybody’s
business.”
“Nobody’s and everybody’s,” declared Lydia; “but nobody’s in the sense
that you can meddle directly in it.”
“They was made for each other you might say—such a laughing thing as
Medora used to be.”
“You never know who’s made for each other till they come to be fit
together. And then life wears down the edges with married people most
times, like it do with a new set of false teeth. Keep her good luck
before Medora. Remind her, when you get a chance, how fortunate she
is. Life’s gone so easy with her that she takes for granted a lot she
ought to take with gratitude.”
“It’s just a passing worry I dare say,” suggested Daisy. “When she
forgets herself, she’ll often laugh and chatter in the old way.”
“Well, she’s fonder of you than most, so you help her to forget herself
as often as you can.”
Daisy promised to do so and the elder thanked her.
When the bell rang, they stopped work, and while some, Lydia among
them, went to their baskets for dinner, most flung off their overalls,
donned hats and jackets and hurried home.
As for Mrs. Trivett, she stopped in the shop, ate her meal, then
produced a newspaper and read while others talked.
The day was fine and warm and many groups took their food together in
the sun round about the Mill.
Outside the vat house were Jordan Kellock and Robert Life, another
vatman, while the new-comer, Philander Knox, ate his dinner beside
them. On a bench at hand, Medora and Ned shared the contents of their
basket, and the talk ran up and down.
Mr. Knox had won permanent employment without difficulty. Indeed he
proved a paper maker of the first rank, and while Mr. Trood deprecated
Knox’s very unusual stroke, he admitted that the result was as good as
possible.
Of this matter they were now speaking.
“Ernest Trood is a great formalist,” said Kellock. “He believes in what
you may call tradition and a sort of stroke that you’d say was the
perfection of the craft. But you can’t make a man to a model. You can
show him another man who works on a good pattern—no more.”
“The stroke comes just like every other stroke, whether it’s cricket,
or billiards, or shooting, I reckon,” said Ned Dingle. “It comes, or
else it don’t come. Take me: I’ve tried a score of times to make
paper; but I can’t do it. I can’t get the stroke. But you might have an
apprentice new to it and find, after a month or two, he’d prove himself
in the way to be a paper maker.”
Mr. Knox, who had already won a friendly greeting from his new
associates, in virtue of an amiable character and humorous disposition,
admitted that the vatman was born, not made.
“And you may very near say as much for the beaterman,” he added. “I
never want to see better pulp than you send down to the vat room, Ned
Dingle.”
“’Tis the life and soul of the paper to have such pulp as yours, Ned,”
confirmed Kellock, and the beater was pleased. Praise always excited
Ned and made him chatter.
“I don’t know what there is to it—just thoroughness no doubt and a
keen eye and no scamping of the tests. I take a lot more tests than
most beaters I reckon,” he said.
They discussed their craft and Ned told how for the purposes of
the new water-mark pictures destined for a forthcoming exhibition,
extraordinary pulp would be necessary.
“Soft as milk it will have to be,” he declared.
“I’ve seen the like,” said Knox. “Stuff you’d think couldn’t hold
together. It’s got to find every tiny crevice of the mould; but such
pulp takes the dyes exceeding well.”
“Our dyes are Trenchard’s secret,” answered Dingle. “He’s a great
chemist, as a paper master needs to be. I’d give a lot to look in the
laboratory; but only Trood goes there.”
“A very understanding foreman is Ernest Trood,” admitted Mr. Knox; then
he turned to Medora.
“How’s they fingers?” he asked.
“Better,” she said. “You knock your fingers about rattling them against
the crib.”
“The fingers always suffer,” he admitted. “For my part I shake when
there’s a spell of very hot pulp for the thick papers. I’m feared of my
life the skin will go somewhere and put me out of action for a bit. If
some man could invent a possible glove, many a tender-skinned vatman
would bless him. But a glove would kill the stroke no doubt.”
Dingle pressed more food from their basket on Medora and the well meant
action apparently annoyed her. What passed between them was not heard,
save the last words.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “Can’t I have my own way even in that?”
“Hush!” replied Ned. “Have it as you will.”
But she grew angry; her face lowered and she pressed her lips together.
The others joked and Mr. Knox offered Medora a piece of pie.
“Hard hearted devil, you are, Dingle,” he exclaimed. “To eat the cheese
and offer your poor girl the bread.”
Medora jumped up and at the same moment Daisy Finch came along to seek
her. They departed together and strolled from the works up the valley.
But Ned Dingle was evidently disturbed. His face had fallen and he lit
his pipe and went slowly after the women.
“Take my tip and leave her alone,” shouted Knox; then he caught sight
of Kellock’s perturbed countenance and turned to him.
“Aren’t they good friends?” he asked.
“Of course they are—none better.”
“Sometimes a bit of chaff makes a breeze end in laughter,” said the
elder; “and sometimes it don’t.”
“Chaff’s a ticklish thing,” answered Jordan.
“To you it might be, because you’re one of the serious sort, that never
see much to laugh at in anything,” retorted Philander; “but that’s your
loss. Alice Barefoot in the rag house is the same. Can’t see a joke and
mistook my fun yesterday for rudeness. I might have known by her eye
she weren’t a laughter-loving creature. But Mrs. Dingle can laugh.”
“She laughs when there’s anything to laugh at,” said Kellock drily.
“The art is to find something to laugh at in everything,” explained
Philander Knox. “And married people ought to practice that for their
own salvation more than any.”
“How is it you ain’t married?” asked Robert Life. He was a man of few
words and his wife worked in the glazing house with Medora.
“For the very good reason that my wife’s dead,” replied Mr. Knox. She’s
left me for a better place and better company—a very excellent wife
according to her lights, and I missed her.”
“I dare say you’ll find another here,” suggested a man who had come
along a minute before. It was Henry Barefoot, Alice’s brother, the
boilerman—an old sailor, who had drifted into the Mill when his
service days were done.
“If I do, Henry, it won’t be your sister, so don’t throw out no hopes,”
answered Knox.
Henry laughed.
“No man ever offered for her and no man ever will,” he declared. “Her
pride is to do man’s work and she never will do woman’s—not if all the
men in Devon went on their knees to her.”
“I’ve known others the same,” declared Philander. “They’re neuter bees,
to say it kindly, and they hum so terrible sorrowful over their toil
that the male give ’em a wide berth. Duty’s their watchword; and they
do it in a way to make us common people hate the word.”
“That’s Alice. You know the sort seemingly,” said Henry.
“I’ve met with ’em. They are scattered about. I used to pity ’em till
I found there wasn’t no need. They’re quite satisfied with themselves
for the most part, but seldom satisfied with other people.”
“Alice is a withering woman, though a very good housekeeper and looks
after me very well,” said Mr. Barefoot.
“As housekeepers they can’t be beaten,” admitted the other. “But Mrs.
Dingle is a very different pattern—a pretty creature—prettiest
I’ve seen for a month of Sundays. They pretty women are exacting in
marriage, because nine times out of ten they’ve been spoiled before.
She looks to me as though she wanted something she ain’t got.”
“Dingle don’t know what she wants, for in a minute of temper he told me
so,” said Mr. Life.
“Don’t he? Then you tell him to be quick and find out,” advised
Philander, “because with a rare piece like that, if he don’t, some
other young fellow very likely will.”
Then Kellock spoke, for this sentiment seemed outrageous to him.
“How can you say such an indecent thing!” he exclaimed. “A man of your
age ought to know better.”
“A man of your age perhaps don’t,” answered Mr. Knox. “And yet you’re
old enough to know the meaning of a pretty girl. But I’m afraid you’re
one of those chaps that’s had some useful things left out of him,
Kellock. You ain’t called ‘Jordan’ for nothing I expect. No doubt you
wouldn’t wish to comfort Mrs. Dingle; but then you’re not everybody,
and other young men might feel called to cheer her up—no more than
that of course. And why you should flush so red and use the word
‘indecent’ to such a decent man as me, I can’t guess.”
“You would if you knew more about it, however,” said Henry Barefoot.
“You ain’t up in our history yet, else you’d understand that Kellock
here was one of the ‘also ran’ lot after Medora Dingle. No offence,
Jordan—of course such things can’t be hid.”
“You oughtn’t to talk about such private matters, Barefoot,” answered
Kellock calmly, “and a conversation like this is improper, and for my
part I don’t wish to hear any more of it. No self-respecting man would
pry into such a delicate subject.”
“Who’s prying?” asked Philander. “I merely say, from my knowledge of
human beings in general, that if a pretty young woman’s not happy
and her husband hasn’t got the trick to make her so, ’tis almost any
odds some other chap will come along and have a try. That’s what
would happen in most Christian countries anyway—whether Devonshire’s
different I don’t know, being a stranger to these parts.”
“We men mind our own business in Devonshire,” said Kellock, and Knox
answered promptly.
“Then I’m right,” he said, “because a pretty girl down on her luck is
every man’s business.”
“She’ll get a fright I dare say,” prophesied Robert Life. “I’ve known
more than one young married woman, restless like, who ran a bit of
risk; but as a rule their eyes are opened in time and the husband makes
good.”
Kellock, heartily loathing this conversation, left the others, and when
he was gone, Life explained to Mr. Knox the situation.
“Another man might be dangerous,” said Henry Barefoot, “for by all
accounts Medora liked him very well and was in two minds to the last
which she’d take. But Kellock’s a good and sober creature and a great
respecter of law and order. You can trust him not to break out.”
“You speak as a bachelor and your sister’s brother, Henry,” answered
Philander. “Where there’s a woman and a man that once loved her, you
can no more trust either of ’em not to break out than you can trust a
spring in autumn. Kellock’s clearly a virtuous soul, and he certainly
won’t break out if he can help it. You can see by his eyes he’s not
a lady’s man, and never will be in any large and generous sense. But
so much the more danger, for where that sort dines they sleeps when
love’s the trouble. Let them love once and they’ll love for ever, no
matter what happens; and if she was fool enough to go playing about
with him, she might overthrow him to his own loss in the long run.”
These forebodings were cut short by the work bell and Mr. Knox,
expressing a hope that he might be mistaken, shook out his pipe and
followed Robert back into the vat room.