Chapter 12 The Martin School
THE MARTIN SCHOOL
EMMA
Before breakfast, I found Lizzy writing a letter in a well-lit nook, her hair loosely gathered.
No, not a letter. There were columns of numbers in a thick volume. She saw my glance and said, “Monthly accounts for the school. I have the habit from when I helped Papa at Longbourn. I suppose that sounds odd.”
“A lady must understand money.” She looked pleased, and I continued, “In that spirit, would you suggest an inn where Harriet and I could stay in London?”
“What? You are very welcome here. We certainly have room.”
“I do not wish to impose.”
“That is nonsense, and you know it.” She wiped her pen and stood, skeptical and concerned. “Is something wrong?”
We were alone, and Lizzy’s simple question deserved truth. “I am uncomfortable this close to Yuánchi.” Her eyebrows rose. I added, “Do you not want me away from him?”
Dryly, she said, “Because you are his soulmate, or whatever? He and I have discussed that. We are bound. It is as simple as that.”
If I concentrated, I could sense all three of them: Yuánchi blazing behind the house, Lizzy heated with the same fire, and, faintly, Mr. Darcy a few rooms away. “It is not so simple for me.”
“Oh, Emma.” She reached for my hand, and I stepped back. She smiled ruefully, a few steps between us. “Pardon me. I forgot. When I brought you to Yuánchi, the last thing I wished was to make you uncomfortable.”
“I know that. I am sure we will visit endlessly. At the school this afternoon, to start.” That was enough to launch Lizzy into enthusiastic plans.
At noon, Harriet and I stood with Lizzy on a London corner. The fabled Martin School was across the street, visible in glimpses between passing carts and strolling dock workers.
I had sent my own letter this morning, and my reticule held an encouraging reply, so this was only Harriet’s and my first stop of the day.
The school’s classrooms and boarding were in a two-story white wooden building, the same one we gathered in after yesterday’s frightening events.
It had broad, shop-like windows on the bottom floor, but otherwise it could have been a plain, oversized country home.
Two other buildings housed what Lizzy called “practical education.” They were red brick and tall as barns, with arched entrances wide enough to admit coaches.
Their steeply peaked slate roofs had multiple chimneys and an industrial style.
The three buildings surrounded a grassy yard teeming with children from six to ten, both boys and girls. The youngest squealed and ran in games. The oldest lounged with studied calm.
“The younger classes are on break now,” Lizzy said, on her toes to see better. She pointed to one of the red brick buildings. “That is the smithy. The other, we call the factory. It has machines and tools away from the smoke and fumes.”
“They are so large!” exclaimed Harriet. Mrs. Goddard’s boarding school would have fit in half of any of them.
“How many students are there?” I asked.
“Six and forty,” Lizzy answered. “Some pay tuition and return to their homes after school, but most are charity, and most of them board at the school. Although I dislike the connotation of ‘charity.’ I may rename their status to sponsored or scholarship. What do you think?”
“Charity is a virtue,” I said.
Lizzy’s curly chignon flung as she shook her head.
“You should be right, but society abhors those who require assistance. Providing charity is a virtue. Receiving it is a sin. Even among the students, there were conflicts. The working class sneers at the poor, and the gentry sneer at those who work, but it is accidents of birth or health that dictate who has wealth, and who struggles—” She broke off with a wry smile.
“At this rate, I shall be wearing black and marching with Mary. Oh, we have been seen!” Lizzy waved at a lady in her mid-twenties who had raised her hand in greeting from the doorway of the white building.
Lizzy crossed the street at her preferred, skirt-thrashing pace.
Harriet and I followed more sedately, dodging traffic.
Introductions at the white building were brief due to a class in progress.
We looked inside the smithy, where a man in a leather apron was pounding noisily on red-hot metal before a semicircle of boys, then entered the factory building.
A gaggle of girls gathered around Lizzy with a mix of curtsies and excited, childish “Good morning, Mrs. Darcys.”
Lizzy walked to a mechanism of iron and wood the size of a pony.
It was spinning a metal wheel at a leisurely pace while blowing modest puffs of steam.
The precise motion and shimmering heat made me think of draca.
Lizzy tapped it affectionately. “A Watt steam engine. The Luddites smash them, but I am certain they are wrong. They should protest for more production and higher wages, not break tools that reduce labor.” She raised her voice to be heard over the clanks.
“Girls, who will show our guests how to thread a bolt?” Excited hands shot up.
Lizzy chose a quiet, thin girl around twelve. “Martha, would you please?”
Martha nodded, bobbing fuzzy black braids, and took a metal rod a few inches long from a bucket.
“The boys smith these round tenons. They are supposed to be three-eighths of one inch, but we check because boys are not careful.” The other girls giggled while she soberly slipped the metal through a plate with several sized holes.
“Then we cut the thread with a die.” She fastened the metal rod into a clamp.
“How will this bolt be cut?” Lizzy asked in an enraptured tone.
“A three-eighths-inch Martin bolt has sixteen threads each inch,” the girl answered.
The tip of her tongue poked out while she dabbed a single drop of liquid on the metal—“Linseed oil”—then she gave a sparkling smile and cried, “Watch this!” The pony-sized mechanism began to shriek and rattle, spinning wheels every which way while steam whistled.
The metal rod vanished into a whirling silver plate, then popped back out.
The girl presented it to Lizzy with a curtsy.
“Is it not beautiful!” Lizzy exclaimed, holding it out for us.
Harriet and I put our heads together. The rod had one square end, and fine lines on the round part.
“What is it?” I said finally.
Harriet was squinting. “They hold coaches together.” That insight caused ecstasies of delight from Lizzy, and Harriet cast me a private, astonished glance. Another student brought a small piece of square metal. The two were twisted together, the class applauded, and Martha smiled shyly.
“And what is the impediment to efficient use of bolts in manufacturing?” Lizzy asked in a sing-song tone.
“Non-standardized threads!” the girls chanted back.
Lizzy threw her hands up in delight as if her girls had performed a three-part Bach chorale.
To us, she said, “The industry is frightfully disorganized. I am certain it is due to masculine pride. Every blacksmith makes bolts with whatever whim of thread and diameter he imagines while spreading butter on his crumpet. Then they all refuse to cede authority to one another. But we make only four sizes, all with exact threads, and with the steam engine, even a child can cut dozens in an hour!”
“What do you do with them all?” I asked.
“The girls sell them, and we share the funds for cake. There is a carriage maker not ten minutes’ walk from here.
” Softly, she added, “That is to teach them that their work has value. None of these children have families that can provide a livelihood. I hope to start them in their own businesses so they do not die in the mines or sew twelve hours a day for pennies.”
While Lizzy thanked the students, Harriet whispered to me, “This is a peculiar school.” I nodded, pleased by Harriet’s unconvinced tone.
We returned to the white building and visited the classrooms, which we had seen briefly yesterday, then went upstairs to the boarding rooms. There were eight rooms with two beds per room, each bed shared by two children.
It was as pleasant and spacious as most family homes, although simply furnished.
Lizzy explained, “I would rather teach more children than hang paintings. This enterprise has taken six months, and it is a token against the teeming children in London with no chance of education.” She sighed.
“It is overwhelming if I think of the numbers. But when I think of the children we do help, I am encouraged. It is so much more than sponsoring a favored child in the country, which is the fashion for wealthy London couples.”
The last door of the hallway was closed. Lizzy stopped with her hand on the knob, unusually hesitant, and her deep brown eyes met mine. “One of our young ones, Nessy, is in here with a cough. When I come to the school, I visit to cheer her up. Emma, I wonder if you would see her?”
I heard the question in her tone. Could I enter a sickroom without collapsing? And, hidden but more desperate, the thin thread of hope.
I rested my lace-enclosed fingertips on the doorjamb.
“I would like to visit, if I may prepare first. But Lizzy… I have been in sickrooms. Do not imagine I am your husband’s legend.
I am the same as I have ever been. It will not help.
” Lizzy nodded tightly, her eyes overly bright, and I knew this child had no passing cough.
I began the ritual I used with Papa. My dress was hidden under my long coat, but I aligned the coat clasps, then perfected each seam on each gloved finger.
But something was different. Already, the threat of illness felt distant.
An echo of the scarlet that filled me yesterday remained, smoothing my mind.
Was I the same as I had ever been?
I nodded to Lizzy. She opened the door, and we filed in. The air was sharply cold, the window propped wide to the winter day. This treatment was described in the newspapers, and my heart sank. I knew what sickened the girl.