Chapter Twenty-Two
“He truly did not show?” Mabel looked as heartbroken as Eleanor felt. The cab hit a deep pothole and Mabel wobbled, steadying herself against the door as Lillian toppled onto her. “But why?” she asked, when they’d righted themselves.
The bump had been an excuse for Eleanor to break eye contact and she did not remake it now. “I do not know.” When she’d asked Roland if there was a letter waiting on her way out the door that morning, he had shaken his head and something inside her had withered.
It had been twelve hours. Surely, if there had been a good reason for the Captain’s absence, he would have sent word by now. God, she regretted sending last night’s letter.
It was the duke’s fault. He’d turned her life topsy-turvy and in the process had shaken all sense from her.
“It is time to solve the mystery of the Letter Man,” Lillian said. “Once we uncover his identity, we can track him down and demand he account for his absence.”
“We are not tracking him down,” Eleanor said. She forced herself to look at them so they could understand how serious she was.
“But if we knew who he was,” Mabel said, “we could arrange another meeting. A more subtle one this time. If we discovered where he worked, you could casually bump into him wearing the rose and lime dress you are so fond of.”
“I am not going to stalk him.” It was humiliating enough that she’d sat waiting for him when he clearly didn’t value their friendship as much as she did.
She certainly wasn’t going to seek him out now that she knew she wasn’t wanted.
She was going to go to work for as long as she had it.
She was going to focus on what was in front of her and nothing else.
A crease formed between Mabel’s brows and she cocked her head. “Is it truly stalking if the purpose is matrimony?”
Eleanor’s jaw dropped. Lillian’s followed a millisecond afterward. “Yes!” they said in unison.
“Though it’s not technically against the law,” Lillian added.
Eleanor sighed and rubbed her temples as another bump in the road made her head throb. “It may not be against the law, but it is certainly against all my values.”
“Your pride, you mean.” Lillian snorted. Where Mabel usually couched her criticisms, Lillian got straight to the point.
“Yes, my pride.” That was what hurt. That was the cause of the pain in her chest. Her ego was enormous and its bruise was likewise, so the ache had nothing to do with her heart.
Unless it did. Perhaps both had been irreparably damaged, and there was no telling if it was the Captain or the duke who’d cast the blow that felled her.
Apparently her pain did not warrant an end to the conversation, as her friends prattled on without her input. “The articles this morning might give us a clue,” Lillian said. “If there were any notable arrests last night, those should be the starting point for our investigation.”
“There will be no investigation,” Eleanor replied. When neither of them responded, she grabbed their hands. “I beg of you both, drop it. If he contacts me, I shall tell you. Otherwise, it is best to forget him.”
She would. At least she would try.
Lillian and Mabel shared a look. Dash it. They would forget nothing. Hopefully, they would at least keep their conspiracy theories to themselves.
The cab pulled to a stop and Eleanor threw open the door. What she needed was work. Nothing calmed her like the feel of her fingers flying across her typecase. Working hard was what made a person, and she needed to feel excellent right now.
“Good morning, Otto,” Mabel said as he held open the door.
“Good morning, Otto,” Lillian added.
Eleanor couldn’t bring herself to match her friends’ geniality. She nodded as she passed him. He nodded back, with a sympathetic look that made her think he somehow knew what had happened last night.
She set her jaw against the tears. Her feet were leaden as she dragged them through the foyer. For the first time in years, she could feel every ounce of her typecase. Instead of keeping her steady as she sailed, it threatened to drag her beneath the waters, until she was choking on ink.
She had struggled to rise from bed. The temptation to never cross this tiled floor again had almost kept her beneath the heavy quilt.
But until she had truly decided to quit and had given The Times’ publisher sufficient notice, she would show up.
That was what good people did. They showed up.
They worked hard and did their job to the best of their ability regardless of what personal crisis ailed them.
Lillian opened the door to what should have been an empty print room. After all, it was only fifteen minutes to seven. Her colleagues would not be in until seven on the dot. Whichever colleagues still came to work after last week’s protests, that is.
Instead, the print room was humming with new faces and new energy. Men and women stood around the Linotypes, happily chatting. A few of them looked to Eleanor, Lillian, and Mabel, and shot them welcoming smiles, as if the print room was their territory and Eleanor was the interloper.
“They have hired new staff.” Mabel’s voice was barely a whisper.
Which meant Mr. Bell clearly had no intention of negotiating with those still protesting. Instead of listening to his workers’ concerns, he had simply erased them.
“Do we still have work?” Lillian asked.
Eleanor looked at the foreman, who stood in the far corner, talking with one of the new hires. He returned the look and jerked his head toward her usual desk. “I guess we still have work,” she said.
“Thank goodness.”
“There are so many women,” Mabel said.
It was true. At least thirty percent of the newcomers wore practical skirts of varying dark shades and crisp, white shirts with simple collars.
“Do you think it’s punishment?” Lillian asked. “The men revolted and so they were replaced by women and young boys in retaliation?”
“Punishment or progress,” Mabel murmured. “Perhaps Mr. Bell is signaling a new era.”
A new era that left them behind.
There were only a handful of compositor’s desks remaining.
Eleanor’s was one of them. She swallowed and made her way to it, trying to ignore the forceful thump-thump-thump of her heart, which might literally break free from her chest. A box of Eleanor’s sorts that had formed part of the previous issue was perched on the table next to a wash bucket.
Mabel sighed and took it to be filled. While Lillian was dictating and Eleanor was composing, Mabel would scrub.
As Eleanor began to set up for the day, placing her typecase on the angled table, two women crossed the aisle that separated the new from the old.
“Jessica,” one said, thrusting her hand forward. “And that’s Elizabeth, but everyone calls her Lizzie.”
Everyone calls her Lizzie. Like they’d been around long enough for nicknames to catch on.
Eleanor sighed. That wasn’t charitable. The new staff weren’t at fault here. They’d seen an opportunity and acted on it. Eleanor would have admired that initiative in practically every other scenario.
“When did you start?” Lillian asked.
“Friday. There was an advertisement in Thursday’s paper calling for people who were good with their hands—seamstresses, butchers, and the like. They interviewed us that day and we started the next.”
An advertisement in Thursday’s paper, which meant that it had been written, set, and printed in a single afternoon. Maybe the advertisement had been a single line or two. Even the laziest compositor could set two lines of type in one afternoon.
“I was a kitchen maid,” Elizabeth said. “Lord, I am glad to get out of service.”
“I told them I was a kitchen maid,” Jessica added. “Truth is, when I wasn’t descaling the fish Da had caught, I was helping Ma with my sisters. Always wanted a career, now here I am.”
Jessica’s grin sent a white-hot frustration coursing through Eleanor. She should be happy for the girl. There was no bigger advocate for women in the workforce than herself. The more women there were creating their own independent lives, the better.
But not here. Not her life.
“I’m thrilled for you,” she said, trying hard to conceal the lie.
“If you’ll excuse me, I must return to work.
” She unlatched the typecase, flipped it open, and then proceeded to check each letter and punctuation mark to make sure they all faced forward and right-side up.
She ran a finger over the edge of each sort, checking for dried ink or damage that could cause imperfections.
All the while, Lillian and Mabel chatted with the newcomers, who took great interest in how the usual setting of type worked.
“We don’t have to do any of that,” Jessica said, gesturing to Eleanor as she continued to work through her case. “The machine resets all the matrices itself. The metal slugs get thrown back into the melt after the printing is done, and the foundry hands do that.”
Eleanor didn’t comment. Maybe if she was completely silent, these women would take the hint and leave.
“Surely the slugs must be cleaned before they’re used again,” Mabel said.
Jessica shrugged. “I haven’t seen it, but they say that the ink and such bubbles to the top and can be skimmed off in a second.”
Mabel raised her eyebrows. “Interesting. My fingers are permanently dry and cracked. It would be lovely not to have to scrub again.”
The comment hurt. Yes, Mabel had complained of dry hands.
They had all complained. There were times Lillian’s voice was hoarse and barely above a whisper.
Still, she did her job. Eleanor’s neck and shoulders ached regularly, her back would lock up, and some evenings she would need to soak her tired hands in hot water and Epsom salts to relieve the cramps.