All through the winter months, Geoffrey Burnham and Marion Shaw were
constantly meeting. As Burnham had intimated to Villard, he had taken
only a superficial interest in the philanthropic or ethical side of
mill-economy. But he was often at the Hall of an evening; and upon
pleasant nights, when the ladies walked over from the Shepard mansion,
he accompanied them home after the evening’s engagement. If it were
early, as on ordinary occasions, he went in and sat chatting with them
for an hour or two. Mrs. Soule always welcomed him, and although she
never went to the Hall, she found ample opportunities of telling him how
many lonely hours it caused her.
“I often wish Salome cared half as much,” she used plaintively to say on
these occasions, “for a living aunt as for a dead grandfather.”
Often, Burnham sang to Salome’s accompaniment, his rich tenor voice
lending pathos, and his ardent glances a meaning, for Marion in the
love-songs he sang so well. The latter sat silent at such times, a quiet
content wrapping her round, forgetting the past, ignoring the future.
“A blind man’s paradise,” she told herself it was, as the weeks rolled
by, and the glamour of a scarcely hinted but very evident passion waited
in vain for more than the vaguest expression.
Sometimes the two were left alone for a while, when the conversation
took a fitful tone, as if uncertain whether to be light and frivolous,
or tender and deep. Several times Burnham had seized Marion’s
unresisting hand and kissed it passionately; and, finally, one evening
when they were alone, he had put his arm about her waist and drawn her
close to him.
“Why have we not had each other all these years?” he asked, looking into
her sweet, confused eyes. “What cruel fate has kept you from me?”
“It does not matter, does it, so long as we have each other now?” Marion
had asked in reply. And then he had bent and kissed the pure white brow
and the clustering rings of hair.
After this, every night, Marion, kneeling by her bedside alone, thanked
God for the love that had come to brighten her bereaved life.
And Burnham? Did he realize what he might be doing when he won this true
and loyal woman’s heart? At first, he, too, was happy in the present.
The past held nothing which he was proud to remember; and into the
future he stubbornly refused to look. He had, for years,—“since his days
of adolescence,” he told himself,—had no interest in women, although he
knew that, in a place like Shepardtown, he was the object of several
fond mammas’ machinations, and the admiration of most of the village
girls. He had never met Marion’s counterpart. She interested and
fascinated him. Simple and childish in many ways, she was grave and
dignified in others. Her life, he could see, would be spent for others.
She was one of those women who are a constant sacrifice to the world
around them; who give openly and always of their best, asking and
expecting little in return. In short-Burnham knew it as well as any one
could—she was a woman whose life and love and utmost service would be
absorbed by a selfish man, only to be as unappreciated as they were
undeserved on his part. And yet, ever since their first meeting, months
before, there had been that subtle consciousness of each other drawing
them on, that wave of feeling on meeting, that positive yearning when
they were separated.
After Villard’s pointed questioning regarding Marion, Burnham began to
question himself seriously. At first, when thoughts of the future had
intruded into his calm moments, he thought of her as his wife; of
himself as settled down in a house of his own; he even expected to be
happy. But he did not put his thoughts into words. When he was with
Marion, he avoided—not so much from intention perhaps as from a
reluctance to break the spell of romance which hung over them—any
mention of different relations in the future.
It was April before he brought himself to face about and look at the
subject, calmly and seriously. Just where was he drifting with Marion?
One day he allowed himself to let fall some remark about her to
Villard,—not in any way implying their peculiar relations, but yet
speaking of her in such a way that Villard drew himself up to his
straightest, and looked him in the eye a full moment. Not a word was
said, but at that instant, Burnham felt the disagreeable consciousness
of being a scoundrel.
He went home that evening and tried to read. Then he tried to smoke.
Then he thought of going over to the Shepard mansion. He finally decided
on sitting down and squarely meeting an issue that should have been
faced six months before.
Geoffrey Burnham was thirty-seven years old. He had considered only his
own taste and desires ever since he was born. When he was a boy, if he
had wanted anything, he had it. If his father did not grant his every
wish his mother would. And she, poor woman, had fostered in him the idea
that all his personal, imperious desires were meant, always, to be
immediately granted. The conquering of Self had been no part of his
early discipline.
His father died when he was in Europe. When he came home, and entered
the mills,—an arrangement the father effected just before his
decease,—his pretty, white-faced mother had come to Shepardtown to be
near her son. For him she lived and would die. Yielding weakly in
everything to him, she avenged her position by setting herself against
all other women. Salome had called upon her, and had invited her to her
house, but in vain. Mrs. Burnham went nowhere, and wanted to see no one.
Her son was all in all to her. And but for the constant fear that he
would marry the handsome Miss Shepard, who, with all her wealth, she
felt sure, would crowd her completely out of her son’s heart and home,
she would have been a comparatively happy woman. Incredible to
larger-hearted women, as it seems, there are women so selfish in their
devotion to an only son, as to wreck his life, so far as its being of
any practical value to himself and others is concerned, by the strength
of their own weak persistence.
Burnham thought of his mother. He remembered the comfortable habits he
had settled into; he wondered if any other woman would ever let him
smoke in the best room in the house, or submit to his will when he
chose, as he often did for days together, to speak only in monosyllables
in his own house. He felt that, should he marry, his habits would all
have to be changed; that the solitude which he prized, when he felt so
inclined, might be absolute no longer. He remembered his mother’s
peculiarities, and said to himself that there would be a devil of a row,
should he undertake to bring a wife home. There might be constant
bickerings, and that he never could abide. No; better let women alone.
Then he thought of Marion and sighed. Her tender eyes, when he parted
from her two nights before, came up before him.
“Hang it,” he asked himself; “just how far have I gone with her,
anyway?”
He felt himself a scoundrel again, to his credit be it written. But
then, there were the habits of a lifetime, and his mother to be
remembered. Could he overthrow all his established convictions?
And yet, just what might Marion be expecting of him? No, he had given
her no definite encouragement in words. Still, one never can tell how a
good, pure woman is going to take these things.
Burnham went out under the April sky and walked up and down the concrete
walk bareheaded, until his mother, from her window, reminded him for the
third time that he would certainly get cold out there; and shouldn’t she
make him a cup of hot negus? Then he came in and renewed the conflict.
“I’ve let the thing run too long,” he said to himself, as he gazed into
the open wood-fire, having refused the decoction his mother had
patiently brought him. “I’ll have a reckoning with myself to-night, and
decide this thing once for all.”
Burnham was a decided man, and, once determined, seldom changed his
mind. He boasted, sometimes, of that quality, forgetting that it is only
an ignorant or an unprogressive soul which will never acknowledge itself
in the wrong, or change its course from the one marked out, perhaps in
obstinacy or error.
Until midnight he argued with himself, although, unconsciously, his mind
had been secretly made up at the start. When the clock struck twelve he
rose and got together his writing materials.
He had fully decided that it would be folly for him to marry Marion
Shaw. She was a rarely devoted, unselfish woman, and a most lovable one;
but he knew himself, he said, and if she married him she would do so
only to be unhappy in the end. She could not be otherwise, living with
him and his mother.
But how was he to withdraw from the delicate situation in which he had
foolishly placed himself? There was, he decided, but one way.
For a year, now, Salome Shepard had been making a deep and practical
study of the mills and their operation. She had proved a wonderfully apt
scholar, her womanly intuition often grasping, in a few minutes, details
which he had been months in learning. He doubted if, should occasion
require it, she could not run the mills alone. With Villard—honest,
faithful soul!—to help her, Burnham felt that there was no longer any
need of his services at the Shawsheen Mills. There was another
superintendency in a mill at Lowell which stood open to him, whenever he
chose to take it. There were some things about it that he would not
like; but he must not remain on dangerous ground. He took great credit
to himself as he reflected that honor required him not to trifle with
Marion’s feelings another day. He virtuously decided to take himself out
of her way. Once gone from her she would cease to feel his attraction
and forget the tender scenes between them. He would resign his
connection with the Shawsheen Mills.
He sat down and wrote the letter of resignation. Then he went to bed and
slept. He, like Villard, had kept awake hours for a woman. But he was
not the man to conquer his selfish nature, or to grow stronger by
fighting himself.
* * * * *
The next morning Salome found Villard alone in the inner office of the
mills. A note lay on her desk. It was Burnham’s resignation.
She uttered an exclamation of surprise, and turned to Villard.
“Did you know about this?” she asked, handing him the note.
Villard looked as astonished as though a dynamite bomb had exploded in
the mill-yard.
“Not a word,” he said. “But stay, he did hint at something, months ago;
but I never gave it a second thought. ‘Decided that he is no longer
needed on the works, and an opportunity having offered to better his
condition.’ H’m! Those are his reasons? Strange he hadn’t mentioned the
matter to me although it _was_ his own business.”
“But what are we going to do? Can’t we get him back?” asked Salome.
“We can try,” was the reply, “but Burnham is a pretty determined fellow
when he fairly makes up his mind. Shall I go over and see him?”
“If you please. Tell him to come back with you; I want to persuade him
to stay if I can.”
Villard went over to Burnham’s house, but he had already gone to Lowell
to complete arrangements to enter the new position. Mrs. Burnham knew
nothing of either this plan or her son’s sudden resignation. Villard
returned to Salome.
“What are we going to do,” she asked, “supposing he refuses to come
back—even at an increased salary?”
“Don’t you think you and I can run the business alone for a while?”
returned Villard, “at least until we can find a good man. Good
superintendents don’t grow on every bush.”
“Do you think I am capable of taking his place—with your help, of
course?” Salome looked earnestly at him.
“I think you are quite capable of doing anything noble and great,” he
answered, fervently.
“With your help,” she said, in a low tone. “Of course I will do
anything, and shall be only too proud,” she hastened to add, “if I have
succeeded in learning enough of the business to be of any use.”
Villard looked again at her averted eyes, and checked an impulse to say
something more. Had he known a tenth as much of women as of cotton
factories, his fortune and happiness had been in his own hands. But he
honestly thought she had turned away her eyes and spoken the last
sentence to turn him away from saying more; while she was saying to
herself as she turned to her desk again:
“Will he never, never speak? It will come, some time, I am sure, but
will he never dare?”