A year rolled by—a year of prosperity to the Shawsheen Mills, and of
growth and improvement in the condition of their operatives. John
Villard had been made first superintendent and a new man had taken his
place. Salome continued to act as her own agent and had developed a keen
love and tact for the business,—a condition of affairs which Mrs. Soule
never ceased to bemoan.
The young people at the Hall were more than ever the dearest objects of
her solicitude. In most cases, their elevation had been steady and
substantial. Young men had become self-respecting and carried themselves
with increased dignity. Young women gradually grew less frivolous and
more earnest. Thrown together under so much better conditions than
formerly, both sexes emulated the politeness which they were quick to
notice between Villard and Salome. They became more quiet and decorous;
they read a better class of books; they began, in their way, to
cultivate higher tastes than had been known in the old factory
boarding-house or among the tumble-down tenement houses. Several
marriages had taken place, at which Salome had acted as the girl’s
guardian, giving away the bride. Young O’Donovan’s was the first of
these. His increased pay as overseer enabled him to marry Kitty Kendall,
to whom he had long been devoted; and the young bridegroom was even
happier than the bride when Salome offered to act in that capacity.
Neither of them would have dared ask it of her, but her evident
willingness to act on this occasion encouraged those who came after,
until Salome said she felt all the responsibilities of a mother with a
large family of daughters.
As Villard saw all this marrying and giving in marriage, he grew, at
times, more restless. There were occasions when he came suddenly upon
Salome, or, perhaps during their rare talks together, when he felt sure
for a moment that she felt for him more than a friendly interest. But,
remembering his comparative poverty, he never spoke the one word which
would have broken down all barriers. And Salome successfully concealed
her feeling for him, not daring, even, to examine it herself. So they
had drifted on, more than friends and less than lovers, through another
year.
There came, at last, the first period of absence from each other since
Mr. Greenough’s death. Daily association, pleasant as it is, cannot
teach lovers how much they love, as can a short separation.
The second dividend of the mills had been declared, each operative
getting three and a half per cent., this time, on their wages. When the
work consequent on this transaction was closed up, it was decided to put
new machinery in the lower mills. There was an improved kind in one of
the Holyoke mills, and it was decided that Villard should go,
personally, to examine its workings, leaving Salome and the second
superintendent alone for a few days.
Villard had made his preparations to start with a strange sinking at the
heart. He was not a man to indulge in silly presentiment, but he could
not feel any enthusiasm about going. He had not taken two days away from
the mills in two years, and was justly entitled to a vacation; but every
time he thought of going to Holyoke, his heart sank within him.
He thought it was because he must leave Salome, and chided himself for
his sentimental fancies. He told himself to be a man; not a silly fool.
And, finally, he refused to think of his premeditated journey, since he
could not do so comfortably.
He was to leave Shepardtown on a seven-thirty express, west. Salome
remained at the office unusually late that afternoon. She made him go
carefully over her various duties, and recount, over and over again,
everything necessary for her to say or do while he was gone.
The other superintendent was called away early, and she was left alone
with Villard in the inner office, the clerks coming in and out and
Marion dropping in once on a trifling errand.
Finally, she said:
“Well, I suppose I must bid you good-bye. I hope you won’t be gone
long.”
She held out her hand and Villard took it. A subtle fire shot from it
straight to Villard’s heart. He looked up. Were her eyes, so soft and
kind, suffused with tears? Was this the strong, self-reliant Salome?
“Miss Shepard, Salome,” he burst out, incoherently, “I——”
“Come right in this way,” said a hearty voice at the other door.
“Villard will tell you what you want to know——”
“Good-bye,” said Salome again, in the most matter-of-fact tone,
releasing her hand just in time, as the other superintendent ushered in
a buyer from the west. “Good-bye and good luck;” and turning, she walked
away with the nonchalant air which a woman knows so well how to assume,
even at the most serious moment of her life.
Poor Villard was both confused and exalted by the sudden dawn of
blessedness, which had as suddenly faded. He turned to the buyer but was
incoherent, and gave wrong prices on the last shipment of cotton, so
that his customer felt obliged to call him back to his senses by a not
over-delicate allusion to the parting he was shrewd enough to guess he
had interrupted.
Salome went home in a strangely depressed mood. She ate but little
dinner, and excusing herself early in the evening on the plea of unusual
weariness, she retired to her room, undressed and donned a silken
night-wrapper, only to lie awake all night, worrying herself with
fruitless questioning. In the watches of the night and under cover of
the dark, she told herself that she had given her heart unsought; that
had Villard loved her as she did him, nothing could have kept him from
saying so; that she had been vain and conceited in fancying that, under
his quiet demeanor, he loved her.
Then she remembered his sudden, yearning look when he had grasped her
hand, and that, from the depths of his great, manly heart, he had called
her “Salome.” And then, woman-like, she shed a few hot tears of
gratitude and impatience.
Marion Shaw, meanwhile, had gone to the Hall alone that evening. Her
work among the mill-girls had grown dearer to her heart with every
month. Most of the girls loved her now, and looked upon her as a
comrade, though walking on much higher ground than they. Many of them
had secret aspirations to reach the standard of her ideals, as they
dimly conceived it, and were the better for trying.
Marion had not had a long fight with herself when weeks had rolled into
months, and she heard no word from Burnham.
She had always been an individual girl—one who thought for herself, who
set high ideals for herself, who believed that one only does one’s duty
by living at one’s highest and noblest.
When she was a mere girl she had become acquainted with a young
college-student, and their friendship ripened into love. When she became
engaged to Ralph Leland, Marion looked upon her betrothal as no less
sacred than a marriage vow. When, after a few years of study and close
confinement in a theological seminary, Leland had shown symptoms of
consumption and been ordered to Colorado, her mother was slowly nearing
her death, with the same disease. It had wrung her heart with anguish to
decide between them, but Leland had said:
“Stay with your mother, Marion. She cannot live long and needs you with
her to the end. I shall live many years, and, I feel confident, may yet
entirely recover. It is hard, but your mother can have but a year or two
at the most. I hope to live for many years. And we could neither of us
be happy if we remembered her here, sorrowing and suffering alone.”
And so Marion had staid to nurse her dying mother, and Ralph Leland had
gone west to seek health and strength. In two months he was seized with
congestion of the lungs and died suddenly, away from all friends and
apart from her.
What Marion suffered at this time, only a woman can understand. What she
endured, only a woman who has gone down into the blackness of despair
can conceive. Her mother failing gradually, her lover gone, what wonder
that, for a time, life seemed a blank?
After the first, she had not talked about Ralph, but nursed his memory
silently, day and night. For eighteen months, she took sole care of her
mother, seeing her slip away into the “great unknown,” inch by inch.
Never did the mother realize that she was going to die, and she
constantly made plans for the next season when she was going to be “so
much better.” Often Marion, knowing she was soon to be motherless, would
leave her low seat near her mother, and stand behind the invalid’s chair
to hide the tears that welled up, even while she agreed with the
invalid’s plans.
Day by day, the gnawing agony of seeing her mother slowly dying before
her melted into and overshadowed the loss of that love which was to have
shielded and defended her till death. But she never gave way, before
mortal eyes, to her sorrow; and she never failed to minister to the
mother who so needed her care.
By and by she was left alone. Then, for the first time, did the awful
sense of loss overpower her. For days she did not sleep or take any
nourishment. Then she rallied and girded herself for the struggle for
existence which such women must make, and which, in her case, had been
eased by the door which Salome had opened to her.
Through all her trials and discouragement, Ralph Leland had been a
present reality to her. Even since the first blackness of darkness she
had believed that somewhere, somehow, she would meet him as of old, and
they would live again for each other. Then she came to believe that he
loved her still, wherever in God’s great universe he might be.
“When he was in Colorado,” she used to say to herself, “I never had a
doubt that he loved me still. If he had gone to the farthest corner of
the earth I should not have dreamed of his forgetting me. Why should I
now, when he has only gone to a remoter part of the universe?”
This thought was the one, calm, sustaining help to her in all her work.
And in this belief she was strong to take up any burden which might be
laid upon her.
When she came to Shepardtown and met Burnham, she had been struck by the
subtle, strange resemblance to Ralph which she saw in him. It was more
than the mere resemblance of feature. It was the resemblance of
expression, of looks, of the intangible essence of life.
From this point on, so long as she came in daily contact with Burnham,
she was fascinated by this ever-recurring resemblance; sometimes she was
half-persuaded that it was Leland who talked or sang to her, and she sat
watching him in dreamy remembrance of the old days, before her mother or
Ralph had sickened. As she grew gradually to believe that Burnham loved
her, she thanked Heaven that a good man’s love was to brighten her life
once more. When the veil was rent away, and she saw that Burnham was not
the true, white-souled knight she had thought him, and realized that he
was not the ideal she had believed and trusted in, she was surprised to
find that she no longer loved him. And then she thought out the true
solution.
On the night of Villard’s departure, as has been said, Marion had gone
to the work she most delighted in—her work among the girls. There were
classes to be overlooked, and her own special one in singing to be
taught. She was half through the musical hour, when she turned suddenly
towards the door. There stood Geoffrey Burnham.
Afterwards she remembered how little feeling the sight of him caused
her. But then she said pleasantly:
“Oh, won’t you walk in and hear us sing? My girls have made decided
improvement since you heard us last,” and she went on composedly with
the class.
Burnham looked on wonderingly. As he watched this self-possessed young
woman, his old passion flamed up within him. He had never cared for her
as at that moment. When the class was over, she advanced toward him.
“Aren’t you going to shake hands with a fellow?” he said, holding out
his own.
“Certainly,” she said, without the least emotion. He would have retained
his hold upon her hand, but she withdrew it, saying:
“To what accident are we indebted for this unexpected pleasure?”
“I came,” he said, “on business. I must see Villard. But they tell me he
won’t be home for several days. There’s a certain combination of forces
we want to get him into, if possible.”
“You won’t, you know,” laughed Marion, “unless it’s for the good of the
working-men.”
“Well, it is,” answered Burnham. “A society is being planned for Lowell,
which will do for the operatives there something like that which Villard
and Salome and you have been doing here. I said I would come down and
consult with him to-night. Besides, I——can’t you guess any other reason
for my coming?”
“Oh, plenty of them,” replied Marion indifferently. “I suppose you feel
a friendship for all who were once your people, and rather want to see
them once more.”
“Not that, at all,” said he significantly, determined now that she
should hear him out. “Are you going home? May I walk down with you?”
Marion gave her permission and went for her wraps. She half felt what
was coming, but she was strangely apathetic.
When they were out under the stars, the talk began in commonplaces; but
Burnham soon veered it round where he chose.
“Why are you so cold?” he asked, half querulously.
“Cold?” she repeated, purposely misunderstanding him. “I’m not cold.
This wrap I have on is warmer than it looks.”
“And your heart,—is that?” retorted he.
Marion did not answer.
“You know I love you. I—know you once loved me,” he went on, losing his
head, as a consequence of her indifference. “Perhaps you resented my
treating you as I did. Perhaps I didn’t do right, going off that way,
without a word; but I thought it better so. You see—my mother,—and
I,—Marion Shaw!”—he seized her hand, grasping it in both his own—“will
you marry me?”
Marion withdrew her hand.
It was cool, and she felt like a spectator at stage theatricals which
did not concern her.
“Marion, you did love me, you can’t deny it!” he said. “What is the
trouble?”
“I’m sorry you have brought this subject up to-night,” she said, gently.
“It had much better have remained dead and buried.”
“Marion Shaw, you shall not evade me so,” retorted Burnham, led on by
her steady refusal to respond to his passion. “You did love me—I was
sure of it—or else, you are the basest of coquettes, and were playing
with me. And now you are tired of me!”
“As you were of me!” she blazed out, now roused into speech. “Listen,
since you dare address me as you do. I did not love you. You thought I
did. I thought I did. When you found it convenient for some reason, I
neither know nor care what, to leave me without a word, I found, for the
first time, that I was only in love with _being_ in love. No,—wait until
I am through. Ten years ago I became engaged to the bravest and best and
truest man that ever lived.” Marion’s voice broke, but she went on. “He
died and I kept on loving his memory, loving him wherever he might be.
When I met you, the striking resemblance you bore to him smote me like
an electric shock. You seemed good and noble like him, and under the
glamour of your constant presence and evident fancy for me, I allowed
myself to drift into a sentimental feeling for you. I now see what that
feeling was. It was only a love of being in love; and you happened to be
the one man I have met so far, and I hope the only one I shall ever
meet, capable of calling that feeling out. You have compelled me to
speak plainly. I hope you are satisfied. This is our gate. Miss Shepard
has retired, but she will be glad to see you at the office in the
morning. Good-night.” And Marion left him standing rooted to the ground
where she left him.
For a few days Burnham felt himself a badly used man. He had loved and
his love had been trampled on, he said to himself.
He went back to Lowell the next day, promising to write Villard; and a
week after, when he had settled down at home again with his dainty and
querulous mother, he went calmly over the ground of his defeat.
“She never did a more sensible thing in her life,” he declared, as he
lighted his pipe, at last. “It would have been an awful bore to have to
live up to her ideal.”