That Which Wills Thee [Chapter 4]

It was the beginning of summer. The air was fresh, and trees were allowed to grow, and untamed grasses and low plants flourished in all shades of green and brown, and the wind blew clean and free of contaminates. The horses clopped along the dirt road, seeming also to be intrigued by the change of scenery outside the busy streets of Manchester. They pulled a fine carriage, holding the family and their driver, their use a gift of Mr. Flint for the weekend. Jane had not told her father of the desire to depart from the city in permanence, only that they wished to see the country for several days.

James, five years old at the time, scooted back and forth between the right and left sets of windows, peering out at the fields and stacked stone walls and neat rows of trees and unknown herds of animals grazing. “What are those?”

“Sheep, they make wool for our clothing in the cold months,” William responded.

“An’ those?”

“Dairy cows, they produce the milk that ends up at our front door in the mornings.”

“What’re they doin’ to the dirt there?”

“Tilling it, making the dirt soft so that they can plant the crops soon.”

“Plant crops?”

“What, maybe oats. Things that make our bread.”

“Why?” The young boy asked.

“Why?” William responded with a laugh. “Well, we have to eat, huh?”

Jane sighed a gentle sigh, peering out the window at the view the boy was taking in. “You know, your father used to do work like that. Tilling fields and cutting the wool from sheep and milking cows.”

William clicked his tongue. “Well, we grew potatoes and beans. We didn’t have any sheep near us, but the neighbors did have a few cows. Didn’t milk them often, myself, but we did get our share of milk a good many times. The stuff straight from the cows beats any you can get from any milkman on any day.”

James stuck his face to the window, leaving finger and nose-prints along his eye level. Jane shook her head and looked down at the bundle sitting on her lap. Marie was breathing gently, the normal rasp and snoring almost inaudible against the rumbling of the wheels of the cart.

“James?” She asked suddenly.

The boy pulled himself away from the window and look to his mother in the seat. “Yeah, momma?” He responded, leaning into her lap and poking his fingers as his baby sister’s tiny hands at the edges of the blankets.

William looked at her as she began to ask, “Your father was your age when he started working the fields and things like that. Would you ever want to live out here, do that sort of thing?”

“Mmm-“ James hummed, fingers dragging at his mouth in thought. “Do I get paid?”

William grinned. “No pay, but everything you pull out of the ground is yours to eat or barter for other stuff.”

“Like milk straight from the cows?”

“Just like that,” William winked and raised his eyebrows at his wife.

“I think—“ James continued for a long while. “I think Mar would like to drink that too. Oh! Maybe we call pull over and get some right here! What part’s the milk come out from?”

William chuckled into his hand. “Well, these belong to someone.”

“The whole lot?” James said with a tilt of his head.

“The whole lot. We’re still close to the city, the big fields are all worked by the estate owners and their workers, they can work a lot more efficiently than a whole lot of little farmers. But if we wanted to, like your mother says, we could live off the land, just the four of us.”

“I think that would be fine.” James shrugged, losing interest in the conversation in favor of more sights out the window.

William and Jane looked into each other’s eyes across the benches of the wagon. “Our answer is becoming easier to make, love,” the husband concluded.

Jane looked down at the bundle in her arms, then out the window to the expanses of greenery and animals. “When we return… I’ll talk to him earnestly.”

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That Which Wills Thee [Chapter 3]

Young Marie O’Malley grew sick often, producing a hacking cough for weeks at a time. During these periods, the babe could hardly sleep, and often kept her parents and brother up with the sound of her sickness. Doctor Gregory, a trusted physician that was a friend of Gerald Flint and his family, was brought to the O’Malley’s home to examine the child.

He peered into Marie’s eyes and ears and throat but found nothing abnormal. With the listening device in his ears, something called a stethoscope, he listened to the sounds of the child’s heartbeat and breath.

“It is strained,” he said, turning back to the parents, Jane holding the older James on her lap.

“For what reason, doctor?” Jane asked.

“Perhaps just how her lungs are,” he said with a shrug. “These coughing fits… we call it a bronchospasm. Does she cough up mucous often?”

“Yes.”

“That, is in fact, good,” The doctor stated, “to clear the tubes inside her chest, to get some form of relief.”

William leaned forward, listening, puzzled. “And when she coughs all of it out, will she be all better?”

“Well… unlikely.”

“It is so painful for her, doctor,” Jane spoke up, “coughing throughout the night.”

“Hmm,” Gregory replied in frustration, “This is far from the first case I have seen with these signs. How often are you bathing her? The cold water can be bad for the breathing.”

Jane pondered on the intervals and responded. “Once a week.”

The doctor stood and began to put away his tools. “Once every two weeks, then. The nights when she cannot sleep, rub some strong alcohol upon her gums, she will be able to rest.”

“But the coughing will continue?” William asked, stubborn still.

The doctor sighed and peered out the open window. The sky was dingy, despite the midday hour, with smoke from the stacks staining the sky. “Others may not agree with me, but the smoke and fog could be the causes. This… asthma condition… it is worsened by the particles in the air. Like coal miners, breathing in the dust from the mines. Perhaps… keep your windows closed, cover her mouth with a cloth when she must go outside. I’m sorry there’s nothing more I can do, but I will ask my colleagues in the University if they know more.”

And so the doctor departed, with Marie no better than before. The coughing returned, and with it the sleepless nights for everyone.

William spoke on the topic to his wife one day, “My father began to cough like that before he passed, Jane.”

“He was an old man, and our daughter is just a babe.”

“More the reason that it should not burden her.”

Jane was stubborn. “The doctor gave us advice, she has been sleeping better with the alcohol on her gums, and the cold baths…”

“But still she is not better.”

“Then what?”

William pushed at the shutters on the windows, revealing the gray sky beyond. “He also said that the smoke is at fault.”

“I’ve lived here all my life with the smoke.”

“And I have not. The country does not have such dirty air. It is clean, you can breathe as deep as you wish on any day. I noticed this rancid aid from the first day I arrived.”

Jane stood and held at her husband’s back. “Do you speak of bringing our family out there… to do what out there with nothing?”

“If it is better for her, for our family-“

“The best place is here, about my family.” Jane shook her head vehemently. “You remember what I told my father. You would not take me away from here, from him.”

“Ask him if he would put that before his granddaughter’s well-being.”

James was soon at his mother’s side, pulling on the hem of her apron. “Momma… papa… don’t fight.”

“It’s not a fight, boy. We simply have to determine what is best for all of us.”

Jane huffed and returned to her seat. In the corner of the room, in the child’s bed, Marie began to hack and complain. William pulled the shutters closed, returning the room to candlelight. He sighed. “If we wish something is to change, the two of us must decide on it together.”

Jane remained silent as she tended to the girl, propping her head upon the pillow in the crib.

“Perhaps if we journey to the country, experience it for a day or two, to simply imagine life there… to smell the fresh air, to experience the trees and the grasses and clear, flowing rivers… perhaps your mind will open. Will you allow us that, wife?”

“I shall ask my father.”

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That Which Wills Thee [Chapter 2]

Many a young person was able to find a trade to work in during these new, impressive times of growth for the city, the country, and industry as a whole. For some, it was a way to make sure that everyone in their household was fed and clothed, especially in big families where the lady of the house couldn’t help but stay home and tend to the youngest of the bunch. For others who had been born into the privileges of high society, such as the owners and managers of the big, fancy factories, it was a way to learn skills for the future.

While young William O’Malley found his skills and strengths utilized among the factory’s textile mills, hauling heavy necessities back and forth, the offices where the money was made and the bills were paid was making use of another workforce.

Jane Flint was the last of four children, the sole girl, of the factor’s owner, Gerald Flint. With her birth, her mother departed the Earth for heaven. As such, young Jane was coddled by her father most of her young life, with the man saying, ambiguously serious, that she would never be allowed to leave his side.

Jane was introduced at a young age to the enterprise of the factory, and despite common practice at the time, was taught reading, writing, and mathematics so that she was able to start taking part in certain aspects of the office. It wasn’t long before she was managing the money heading out at the end of every week to the workers, paying them for their efforts inside the factory. Through the pay window of the factory’s office is where she first laid eyes on the fine young man, about her age, and felt her heart flutter.

It was many months of glances, then small talk, to the maturing William O’Malley that a sort of relationship formed, at least the best one that could exist between two different sorts of people. When Jane’s brothers began to find their own brides, she sensed and hoped that her time would either come soon or that she would be passed over entirely and be left to the business and a future as an old maid. When asking her father, the topics of courtship and marriage were always unbreachable, and the talks always changed to the running of the business.

One week, among the coins used to pay the workers, Jane slipped a message to William, telling him of a place and time to meet her, outside, for the first time proper. They met up then, and many times after, in secret and began a courtship. When Jane was finally caught by a servant nosily instructed by her father, she came out with the truth.

“Father,” she said to him, wishing to explain her desires, “This man comes from the country, and his only means between himself and his elderly father is what we pay him. If we are to marry, he will not take me away from here as other men might. We may both continue to work as we have, without spreading gossip of our relationship, so that none shall be the wiser. I simply wish to be with him, to fulfill my desires as a woman, to be wed.”

With the words touching the owner’s heart, he allowed his daughter Jane, eighteen, and the working-class boy, seventeen, to marry. As promised, nothing changed as the married couple continued working their respective posts. William’s father, who had grown too frail to continue working on his own, drove the newly married couple to seek out new lodgings for the three of them. With help from Jane’s father, they managed to move into an apartment in the center of the city that was quite fine and spacious, but still humble nonetheless.

When Jane found herself with a child, she was finally allowed to depart from her job at the factory. William rose to the position of floor manager, gaining more responsibility and more pay in turn, the grace of his hard work and a slight bit of favor from Jane’s father. Their first child, James O’Malley was born that fall, a healthy and hearty baby just like his father. Able to continue on happily after seeing his first grandchild, Henry O’Malley passed peacefully.

As expected, Jane found herself with a second child not long after. Her pregnancy seemed inexplicably more difficult the second time, but after the many months of carrying the child, the O’Malleys gave birth to a seemingly healthy second child, a girl, earning the name Marie. As time passed, James grew up strong much like his father did, but for Marie, the babe found life more troublesome…

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