“Ah,” he said in a more kindly tone, “well, it’s a broadcloth mill. The finest woolen goods you can buy. Beyond that, though, you shall be told what you need to know in the morning.” With that, he turned away from me, taking the lantern with him as he put his arm across the shoulders of the boy. They walked closer to the coal grate to warm themselves for a few moments, and then they left.
The room was not nearly as cold as it had been outside, and I lifted my trunk once more, carried it over to the cot, and took off my shoes and lay down, digging my hands into my coat pockets and wondering if there had been some kind of mistake. This was not a school. Mr. Wilson seemed not to be a tutor. But it must be the place my father had intended me to go, for they had known my name; they had been expecting my arrival. Still, what was I doing there?
Chapter 6
The night watchman had been correct about my knowing when to rise, but I was so tormented about my new situation—so different was it from what I had expected—that I barely slept. Why was I there? Was I to be an apprentice in a woolen mill? Was this to be the end of a proper education for me? Would I never get to Jamaica, after all? And what about Thornfield? Thoughts slid around in my brain and kept me awake, but even if I had slept like the dead, I would have been awakened by the bell tolling above me.
Within minutes after that, I heard the sounds of foot treads in the mill, the murmurs of voices, and then the loud clattering as the machines started up, and I rose from my cot and stepped to the wall of windows looking onto the mill floor. In the dim early-morning light, people of all aspects and ages—including boys and girls younger than I—moved purposefully, setting up their tasks for the day. Their countenances told me that they were involved in difficult, serious, deadening work, and I felt a chill of fear run down my back. Why would my father send me to such a place? Then, still staring, I was struck with a realization. I had thought they were men and women equally, but now I saw that by far the most were women. Women, in the chill atmosphere of the mill in early spring, wrapped as best they could manage in ragged shawls, hair bound in rags or covered in tattered mobcaps. I had never seen such sorry-looking people; even the stableboys at Thornfield had been better dressed than these. The girls’ dresses were faded to nearly colorless, as if they had been handed down from sister to sister or cousin to cousin, and it seemed that many of the girls wore more than one layer of dress, as it was the only way to keep warm. The boys—fewer in number than the girls—wore trousers either too long or too short, worn through at the knees, their hair curling over their collars. The few men, as well, wore ragged sweaters under threadbare woolen jackets. They grunted greetings to one another and nodded to the women and mostly ignored the children, some of whom seemed as young as six or eight years of age and who were already gathering up spindles from wooden boxes in a far corner.
Despite the commotion and the people in the mill, I was still alone in the room in which I had slept. The fire had gone out in the grate and it was cold indeed. There was no sign of the man or the boy from the night before, but I found a bucket of water beside the grate and I splashed my face and wet down my hair to make myself as presentable as possible. There being nothing further to do, I stepped over to the windows again, fascinated and terrified by this image of how my life was to be in the next months or years. The previous night those machines had seemed merely hulks in the dark, but now—under the light of lanterns hanging from the walls—they were clearly the most complicated equipment I could have imagined, dwarfing the busy people on the mill floor. And when the machines started up, the clatter of them, even with the door to the office closed, was nearly deafening.
I had been standing there only a few minutes when the door opened. Mr. Wilson did not bother to introduce himself, nor did he need to. Clearly, he was in charge. “Rochester?” he said to me as he entered. He spoke loudly, as was necessary above the roar and clatter of the machines. Behind him, another man slipped in and made his way directly to a stool at the high table with barely a glance and certainly not a word to me.
“Yes, sir, I am,” I responded, apprehension rising in my throat.
“You came all the way from Black Hill; that’s a far distance to ride in the cold.”
“Yes, it is, sir.” I should have felt relief for his apparent concern with my well-being, but I was still terrified of what was in store for me.
He turned and hung his hat on the hatstand near the door by which he had entered, and before he turned back he asked, “Do you know what this place is?”
“Yes, sir, I think I do, sir. It’s Maysbeck Mill, a woolen mill for the making of broadcloth, I think, sir.”
Mr. Wilson frowned at me. “A worsted mill,” he corrected, and he walked to his desk. “And this room?”
I gazed about. I didn’t know what the room would be called. “It’s the office, I think, sir.”
“The countinghouse.”
“Oh yes. The countinghouse.” I knew the term from the nursery rhyme but had always imagined the king sitting on his throne in a vast and opulent room, counting his stacks of golden guineas, not in a small, spare, noisy adjunct to a mill.
He stared at me over the rims of his eyeglasses.
“Where the accounts are done,” I added, extemporizing, “where the payments are received and the bills are paid and the records are made.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Very good. And this gentleman working so busily already is Mr. Wrisley. Bob Wrisley to me, but Mr. Wrisley to you.”
I nodded at the man on the stool, who seemed younger now than I had thought. I stepped over to Mr. Wrisley and shook his hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Wrisley, sir,” I said.
“And I, you,” he said, with a quick nod.
“And your job here—” Mr. Wilson said, already reaching for a sheaf of papers on his desk.
“Yes, sir?” It was to come now. I thought of the ragged workers on the mill floor below.
“Your job here is to learn all that is done in a countinghouse, from maintenance of supplies to the receipt of payments and bills, the paying of wages and bills, and the records of correspondence sent and received.” He paused a moment to scan through the sheet of paper in his hand, then laid it aside and looked again over his eyeglasses at me. “Indeed, you are correct: this is a mill for the making of worsted wool, but the important thing for you is not what kind of mill it is, but that it is a manufacturing business. Your father has contracted with me that you learn how such a business is run.”