WEAVERS AND WEFT
The Hardwick mill was a large one; to the mountain-bred girl it seemed
endless, while its clamour and roar was a thing to daunt. They passed
through the spinning department, in which the long lines of frames were
tended by children, and reached the weaving-rooms whose looms required
the attention of women, with here and there a man who had failed to make
a success of male occupations and sunk to the ill-paid feminine
activities. In a corner of one of these, Johnnie's guide stopped before
two silent, motionless looms, and threw on the power. He began to
instruct her in their operation, all communication being in dumb show;
for the clapping thunder of the weaving-room instantly snatches the
sound from one's lips and batters it into shapelessness. Johnnie had
been an expert weaver on the ancient foot-power looms of the mountains;
but the strangeness of the new machine, the noise and her surroundings,
bewildered her. When the man saw that she was not likely to injure
herself or the looms, he turned away with a careless nod and left her
to her fate.
It was a blowy April day outside, with a gay blue sky in which the white
clouds raced, drawing barges of shadow over the earth below. But the
necessity of keeping dust out of the machinery, the inconvenience of
having flying ends carried toward it, closed every window in the big
factory, and the operatives gasped in the early heat, the odour of oil,
the exhausted air. There was a ventilating system in the Hardwick mill,
and it was supposed to be exceptionally free from lint; but the fagged
children crowded to the casements with instinctive longing for the
outdoor air which could not of course enter through the glass; or
plodded their monotonous rounds to tend the frames and see that the
thread was running properly to each spool, and that the spools were
removed, when filled.
By noon every nerve in Johnnie's body quivered with excitement and
overstrain; yet when Mandy came for her at the dinner hour she showed
her a face still resolute, and asked that a snack be brought her to
the mill.
"I don't see why you won't come along home and eat your dinner," the
Meacham woman commented. "The Lord knows you get time enough to stay in
the mill working over them old looms. Say, I seen you in the hall--did
you know who you was talking to?"
The red flooded Johnnie's face as she knelt before her loom
interrogating its workings with a dexterous hand; even the white nape of
her neck showed pink to Mandy's examining eye; but she managed to reply
in a fairly even tone:
"Yes, that was Mr. Stoddard. I saw him yesterday evening when I was
coming down the Ridge with Shade."
"But did you know 'bout him? Say--Johnnie Consadine--turn yourself round
from that old loom and answer me, I was goin' a-past the door, and when
I ketched sight o' you and him settin' there talkin' as if you'd knowed
each other all your lives, why you could have--could have knocked me
down with a feather."
Johnnie sat up on her heels and turned a laughing face across her
shoulder.
"I don't see any reason to want to knock you down with anything," she
evaded the direct issue. "Go 'long, Mandy, or you won't have time to eat
your dinner. Tell Aunt Mavity to send me just a biscuit and a piece
of meat."
"Good land, Johnnie Consadine, but you're quare!" exclaimed Mandy,
staring with bulging light eyes. "If it was me I'd be all in a tremble
yet--and there you sit and talk about meat and bread!"
Johnnie did not think it necessary to explain that the tremor of that
conversation with Stoddard had indeed lasted through her entire morning.
"There was nothing to tremble about," she remarked with surface calm.
"He'd never seen a pink moccasin flower, and I gave him the one I had
and told him where it grew."
"Well, he wasn't looking at no moccasin flower when I seed him," Mandy
persisted. "He was lookin' at you. He jest eyed you as if you was Miss
Lydia Sessions herself--more so, if anything."
Johnnie inwardly rebuked the throb of joy which greeted this statement.
"I reckon his looks are his own, Mandy," she said soberly. "You and me
have no call to notice them."
"Ain't got no call to notice 'em? Well, I jest wish't I could get you
and him up in front of Miss Sessions, and have her see them looks of
his'n," grumbled Mandy as she turned away. "I bet you there'd be some
noticin' done then!"
When in the evening Mandy came for Johnnie, she found the new mill hand
white about the mouth with exhaustion, heavy-eyed, choking, and ready
to weep.
"Uh-huh," said the Meacham woman, "I know just how you feel. They all
look that-a-way the first day or two--then after that they look worse."
Nervelessly Johnnie found her way downstairs in the stream of tired
girls and women. There was more than one kindly greeting for the new
hand, and occasionally somebody clapped her on the shoulder and assured
her that a few days more would get her used to the work. The mill yard
was large, filled with grass-plots and gravel walks; but it was shut in
by a boarding so tall that the street could not be seen from the windows
of the lower floor. To Johnnie, weary to the point where aching muscles
and blood charged with uneliminated waste spelled pessimism, that high
board fence seemed to make of the pretty place a prison yard.
A man was propping open the big wooden gates, and through them she saw
the street, the sidewalk, and a carriage drawn up at the curb. In this
vehicle sat a lady; and a gentleman, hat in hand, talked to her from
the sidewalk.
"Come on," hissed Mandy, seizing her companion's arm and dragging her
forward. "Thar's Miss Lydia Sessions right now, and that's Mr. Stoddard
a-talkin' to her. I'll go straight up and give you a knockdown--I want
to, anyway. She's the one that runs the Uplift Club. If she takes a
shine to you it'll be money in your pocket."
She turned over her shoulder to glance at Johnnie, who was pulling
vigorously back. There was no hint of tiredness or depression in the
girl's face now. Her deep eyes glowed; red was again in the fresh lips
that parted over the white teeth in an adorable, tremulous smile.
Mandy stared.
"Hurry up--he'll be gittin' away," she admonished.
"Oh, no," objected the new girl. "Wait till some other time, I--I don't
want to--"
But her remonstrance came too late; Mandy had yanked her forward and was
performing the introduction she so euphoniously described.
Gray Stoddard turned and bowed to both girls. He carried the broken
orchid in his hand, and apparently had been speaking of it to Miss
Sessions. Mandy eyed him narrowly to see if any of the looks she had
apprehended as offensive to Miss Sessions went in Johnnie's direction.
And she was not disappointed.
Stoddard's gaze lingered long on the radiant countenance of the girl
from Unaka. Not so the young women looked after a few months of factory
life. He was getting to know well the odd jail-bleach the cotton mill
puts on country cheeks, the curious, dulled, yet resentful expression of
the eyes, begotten by continuous repetition of excessive hours of
trivial, monotonous toil. Would this girl come at last to that favour?
He was a little surprised at the strength of protest in his own heart.
Then MacPherson, coming down the office steps, called to him; and, with
courteous adieux, the two men departed in company.
Johnnie was a bit grieved to find that the removal from Miss Sessions of
the shrouding, misty veil revealed a countenance somewhat angular in
outline, with cheekbones a trifle hard and high, and a lack of colour.
She fancied, too, that Miss Sessions was slightly annoyed about
something. She wondered if it was because they had interrupted her
conversation with Mr. Stoddard and driven him away. Yet while she so
questioned, she was taking in with swift appreciation the trim set of
the driving coat Miss Lydia wore, the appropriate texture of the heavy
gloves on the small hands that held the lines, and a certain indefinable
air of elegance hard to put into words, but which all women recognize.
"Ain't she swell?" inquired Mandy, as they passed on. "She's after Mr.
Stoddard now--it used to be the preacher that had the big church in
Watauga, but he moved away. I wish I had her clothes."
"Yes," returned Johnnie absently. She had already forgotten her
impression of Miss Sessions's displeasure. Gone was the leaden weariness
of her day's toil Something intimate and kind in the glance Stoddard had
given her remained warm at her heart, and set that heart singing.
Meantime, Stoddard and MacPherson were walking up the ridge toward the
Country Club together, intending to spend the night on the highlands.
The Scotchman returned once more to the subject he had broached
that morning.
"This is a great country," he opened obliquely, "a very great country.
But you Americans will have to learn that generations of blood and
breeding are not to be skipped with impunity. See the sons and daughters
of your rich men. If the hope of the land lay in them it would be a bad
outlook indeed."
"Is that peculiar to America?" asked Stoddard mildly. They were coming
under the trees now. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his
hair to enjoy the coolness. "My impression was that the youthful
aristocracy of every country often made of itself a spectacle unseemly."
The Scotchman laughed. Then he looked sidewise at his companion. "I'm
not denying," he pursued, again with that odd trick of entering his
argument from the side, "that a young chap like yourself has my good
word. A man with money who will go to work to find out how that money
was made, and to live as his father did, carries an old head on young
shoulders. I put aside your socialistic vapourings of course--every
fellow to his fad--I see in you the makings of a canny business man."
It was Stoddard's turn to laugh, and he did so unrestrainedly, throwing
back his head and uttering his mirth so boyishly that the other smiled
in sympathy.
"You talk about what's in the blood," Gray said finally, "and then you
make light of my socialistic vapourings, as you call them. My mother's
clan--and it is from the spindle side that a man gets his traits--are
all come-outers as far back as I know anything about them. They fought
with Cromwell--some of them; they came over and robbed the Indians in
true sanctimonious fashion, and persecuted the Quakers; and down the
line a bit I get some Quaker blood that stood for its beliefs in the
stocks, and sacrificed its ears for what it thought right. I'm afraid
the socialistic vapourings are the true expression of the animal."
MacPherson grunted incredulously.
"I give you ten years to be done with it," he said. "It is a disease of
youth. But don't let it mark your affairs. It is all right to foregather
with these workingmen, and find out about their trades-unions and that
sort of thing--such knowledge will be useful to you in your business.
But when it comes to women"--MacPherson paused and shook his gray
head--"to young, pretty women--a man must stick to his own class."
"You mean the girl in the corridor," said Stoddard with that directness
which his friends were apt to find disconcerting. "I haven't classified
her yet. She's rather an extraordinary specimen."
"Well, she's not in your class, and best leave her alone," returned
MacPherson doggedly. "It wouldn't matter if the young thing were not so
beautiful, and with such a winning look in her eyes. This America beats
me. That poor lass would make a model princess--according to common
ideals of royalty--and here you find her coming out of some hut in the
mountains and going to work in a factory. Miss Lydia Sessions is a
well-bred young woman, now; she's been all over Europe, and profited by
her advantages of travel. I call her an exceedingly well-bred person."
"She is," agreed Stoddard without enthusiasm.
"And I'm sure you must admire her altruistic ideas--they'd just fall in
with yours, I suppose, now."
Stoddard shook his head.
"Not at all," he said briefly. "If you were enough interested in
socialism to know what we folks are driving at, I could explain to you
why we object to charitable enterprises--but it's not worth while."
"Indeed it is not," assented MacPherson hastily. "Though no doubt we
might have a fine argument over it some evening when we have nothing
better to talk about. I thought you and Miss Sessions were fixing up a
match of it, and it struck me as a very good thing, too. The holdings of
both of you are in cotton-mill property, I judge. That always makes for
harmony and stability in a matrimonial alliance."
Stoddard smiled. He was aware that Miss Lydia's holdings consisted of a
complaisant brother-in-law in whose house she was welcome till she could
marry. But he said nothing on this head.
"MacPherson," he began very seriously, "I wonder a little at you, I know
you old-world people regard these things differently; but could you look
at Mrs. Hardwick's children, and seriously recommend Mrs. Hardwick's
sister as a wife for a friend?"
Old MacPherson stopped in the way, thrust his hands deep in his pockets
and stared at the younger man.
"Well!" he ejaculated at last; "that's a great speech for a hot-headed
young fellow! Your foresight is worthy of a Scotchman."
Gray Stoddard smiled. "I am not a hot-headed person," he observed.
"Nobody but you ever accused me of such a thing. Marriage concerns the
race and a man's whole future. If the children of the marriage are
likely to be unsatisfactory, the marriage will certainly be so. We
moderns bedeck and bedrape us in all sorts of meretricious togas, till a
pair of fine eyes and a dashing manner pass for beauty; but when life
tries the metal--when nature applies her inevitable test--the degenerate
or neurotic type goes to the wall."
Again MacPherson grunted. "No doubt you're sound enough; but it is
rather uncanny to hear a young fellow talk like his grandfather," the
Scotchman said finally. "Are there many of your sort in this
astonishing land?"
"A good many," Stoddard told him. "The modern young man of education and
wealth is doing one of two things--burning up his money and going to the
dogs as fast as he can; or putting in a power of thinking, and trying,
while he saves his own soul, to do his part in the regeneration of
the world."
"Yes. Well, it's a big job. It's been on hand a long time. The young men
of America have their work cut out for them," said MacPherson drily.
"No doubt," returned Stoddard with undisturbed cheerfulness. "But when
every man saves his own soul, the salvation of the world will come
to pass."