Chapter 11 #2
“I like you sometimes too,” he grudgingly confessed. “You’re crazy. You’ll try anything to improve something at the factory. Sometimes you’ve got good ideas, not always though. Sometimes you make it worse, but at least you try, and you don’t deserve to get killed for a few pennies more in wages.”
“What do the men want? Explain it to me.”
“Sometimes they strike just because they can, to see if it’ll work. This won’t be a long one, a day or so, they know their wages are pretty good. You pay more than most of the owners.”
“I think so too, that’s why the strike took me by surprise.”
“They know you’re rich, so they give it a try. Our wages don’t cover a lot with high prices these days. Most of them have families to support, and too many kids to make ends meet.”
“And you don’t?” she asked him, curious about him.
“No wife, no kids. I wanted to make something of myself first. I went to the University of Edinburgh for a couple of years. I wanted to be a teacher, like my mother. My father was a coal miner. He died young, after we came to this country from Sweden. They were good people. My mother’s dead now too.
They were poor but educated, and wanted me to be too.
” Victoria had noticed that his accent was an educated one.
You could tell everything, or a lot, by the way people spoke in England.
Education and what class you came from made a difference, and the way you spoke marked you immediately.
It struck her that he was more educated than she was, since he had been to university.
“I took the job at the factory just as a stopgap measure to make some money, and I liked it, and I liked your husband, so I stayed. I earn enough to get by, but I couldn’t support a wife and kids decently.
” He felt strange saying it to her, she was so far above him socially and in every other way.
He stood up then. “I should go back, or they’ll think I turned traitor on them. ”
“I think you did.” She smiled at him. “Thank you, for saving me, and for the arm.” He had bandaged it neatly. And she didn’t need stitches at all, even though it still hurt.
“Don’t try to go home tonight. If they find you, they’ll kill you or you’ll get hurt, maybe worse next time. I won’t be back till morning. You can stay here, they won’t find you. They don’t know where I live. And they won’t suspect that you were with me.”
“Do you have a phone?” she asked him, and he laughed.
“Does it look like it? We’ll find a cab and get you home tomorrow, but you have to lie low tonight.
By tomorrow they’ll have calmed down. It was meant to be a one-day strike, to see if they could shake the money tree they think you have and see what falls out.
They’ll lose interest when they don’t get it.
They don’t have much to complain about—you’re a generous employer and they know it.
Maybe they tried it because you’re a woman. ”
He removed the loose board in his fence again, slipped through, and told her to replace it.
He took off at a dead run to get back to the strike at the factory, and she replaced the board and walked up the steps to his little cabin.
He had a desk, a battered chair, a narrow bed.
There were nails on the wall to hang his clothes, a tiny bathroom, and a very small kitchen with a small ice chest and an ancient stove.
Everything was neat and clean, and there were stacks of books on the floor.
She glanced at the titles. He liked history, politics, and poetry, which seemed an unlikely choice.
The bed was almost too small for her, so it was much too small for him—he was a tall man.
The sheets looked clean, but she didn’t get into the bed.
She lay on top of it. There was a single oil lamp on the table.
The cabin had no electricity. It was as rudimentary as it could get, but he had what he needed.
Victoria thought about how hostile Thor had been to her ever since he met her, and was surprised to hear that he liked the way she ran the factory.
He was a complete mystery to her. She realized how little she knew the people who worked for her and what their lives were like.
She could imagine a cabin like this one, with a mother, father, and a few children, and how unlivable it would be, and how hard to provide food and clothing for a whole family.
The salaries she paid were just numbers to her, calculated against profits, and she understood the strike better now, when she saw what it translated to.
She lay in the dark for a long time, still feeling agitated from the strike, and the escape to safety thanks to Thor.
Her arm was throbbing when she fell asleep, and she woke with a start when he came back a few hours later.
There were purple and pink streaks in the sky and the sun was coming up.
She sat up on his bed, wincing when she moved her arm. He made a mug of tea and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said politely, smoothing her skirt down as she moved to the chair so he could lie down, but he didn’t. He sat on the bed and poured a quick shot of the whiskey into his tea. “How did it go when you went back? Did they burn the factory down?”
“No, they settled down. They’re all gone now. They’ll be at work today, they don’t want to lose a day’s wages. I suggested we help clean up the mess when we go back. They weren’t crazy about that idea.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry you got hurt.” He seemed sincere.
“I guess it’s the price you pay for being an owner. It’s a rough game sometimes.”
“What made you want to run the business? That’s the craziest idea you’ve had yet. I’ve wondered about that since you started. I figured you’d go back to London with that posh accent of yours.” He smiled at her again and she laughed.
“It was Bert’s idea. He put it in his will. I wasn’t going to do it at first. But I hated the idea of selling everything he’d built to strangers. So I decided to try it. Maddox has helped me a lot. He’s taught me so much. I’m learning as I go along.”
“Your husband was right. You’re doing a good job.” His praise surprised her. “I’ve learned a lot watching you struggle with it. It takes perseverance to accomplish anything in life. And courage. You’ve got both. Are you glad you’ve done it?” She nodded, sipping the steaming tea.
“I thought you hated me,” she said, still mystified by why he had saved her, except for pure human decency.
“I never hated you. If I’d been pleasant, they would have all said I was sucking up to you.
And I’m an old-fashioned guy. I always thought that women have their place.
Men work, women stay home and take care of the children, or they’re nurses and teachers, jobs women do, like my mother.
They don’t run factories or mills. But you do it well.
I didn’t understand what you were trying to do at first, or that it was Bert’s idea.
He was right. Some women are just better at men’s jobs than they are.
You seem to be one of them, and you’ve got guts.
It was crazy of you to go to the strike last night.
Too crazy even for you. You need to be careful.
They can be a rough crowd sometimes. People get hurt and killed at strikes if things get out of hand.
I don’t think they wanted to kill you. I’m not sure they even saw you in the crowd.
” Talking to him, she was meeting a different person from the one who had looked daggers at her since she arrived.
She realized that she was talking to the side of him Bert had been so fond of and respected so much, the same man who had saved her the night before and bandaged her arm. They had run like the wind to escape.
He walked her out and found her a cab a little while later. He smiled at her after she got in.
“Be careful, Mrs. Banning. And take that arm to a doctor.”
“It’s fine. You did a good job. Thank you for saving my life.”
“Thank you for talking to me like a normal human being, even though I was rude to you before.” She felt as though she had made a friend that night.
He had the same feeling as he walked back to his shack.
He realized that he’d probably never get another chance to talk to her that way, but at least he knew who she was now.
She was a good woman, worthy of respect.
Even if she didn’t know her place, he thought, smiling to himself.
She was an unusual woman, willing to fight like a man for her what she believed was right, even if she got hurt.
* * *
Seamus paid for the cab when she got home, and she soaked in the bathtub.
The cut looked clean and wasn’t swollen.
She dressed for the office after Mrs. Kelly put a fresh dressing on her arm.
The housekeeper was shocked at the cut and scolded Victoria for being at the factory during the strike.
Victoria had no one to take care of her and protect her except the people who worked for her.
She got to work an hour later than usual and walked into Hubert Maddox’s office. She sat down across from him looking bright-eyed and alert, her sleeve hiding her injured arm, and she stunned him.
“I want to give them a three-percent raise, across the board, for all our employees.”
“You can’t reward violence with an increase in wages, Victoria. That’s not good management. The controller would have our heads for it, and they did hundreds of dollars of damage last night.”
“They need it,” she said quietly. She had never paid close attention to the slums around them on her way to work, but remembering Thor’s cottage, she knew that they all needed the raise they were fighting for.
“It’s what I want,” she said, in just the way Bert would have, and it made him smile.
She was a stubborn woman when she wanted to be, and flexible when she needed to be.