_Luke Manders agrees with her entirely, and Southern Europe contributes
some of its culls to the mill, notably one Black Orlo, whose vitriolic
utterances the doctor’s daughter finds nourishing._
WITH a sag of excitement, a sense of anti-climax, Glen found that
Luke was not in his office: he would not return to the mill until
late afternoon. This was not surprising, because old Ben Birdsall was
shunting more and more of his own responsibilities upon his young
assistant, and Luke Manders was doing much work which was far outside
the borders of a bookkeeper’s position. He went frequently to outlying
plantations and nearby towns on the mill’s business, and she was
accustomed to his absences, but to-day it was disappointing out of all
proportion.
But when her own work was well under way the feeling wore off; there
was, indeed, an added zest in the delay. It gave her long hours for
thinking--for thinking of her father, and of how satisfied he would
be with them both, for remembering that day of their first meeting
with Luke Manders in his mountains. So long as her mind and memory
functioned, she would have that picture ... the dim interior of Granny
Manders’ cabin with the setting sun in a shaft of concentrated radiance
for the boy’s entrance, the bold, beautiful boy, gypsy-dark, richly
weathered, fearless and free, his gun in his hands, wild as a hawk as
his grandam had fitly said, scorning them! And scorning them still, he
had come down from his heights to their drab levels, she considered,
taking what was best of the lowlands--learning, gentler living, but had
kept all that was finest from his forbears and his high hills.
How he stood out, Glen exulted, from the men about him--kindly, futile
old Mr. ’Gene Carey, slow old Ben Birdsall, the sallow, spiritless mill
workers, even the young blades from The Hill! He was a tall pine among
garden shrubs.
Going quietly about her tasks at the Altonia, she pulsated with
pride at the thought of him, planning the clear and purposeful path
before them. They would read together and study together and work
together, animated always by the ideal of service to the mill people
and the mountaineers. They would preach Dr. Darrow’s sermons of air
and clean houses and wholesome food; above all, they would fight for
better conditions of labor. There were model mills all through the
South--even in the same city, mills where children of working age spent
half the day in school and made a fine development, body and brain, and
it was Glen’s dream to bring the Altonia up to standard, but Manders
confided to her that it was in a very bad way, financially. Between
the superintendent who died, Miss Minnie, and blundering old Ben, the
concern had very nearly gone on the rocks; it would take every effort
to set her soundly afloat again.
“And old Carey wants money! You see, it cost him a lot to send his girl
to Europe, and now she’s home, and he says she wants to do the house
over from cellar to attic,” Luke Manders told Glen. “That’s why he’s
putting on the screws.”
“It’s abominable!” she flared. “Grinding down the hands, keeping his
mill twenty years behind the times, so that Nancy can have all the
things she doesn’t need! Luke, I can’t stand it! I’m not going to stand
it! I’ll find a way----”
“Careful!” he steadied her. “I know how you feel, Glen, but we’ve got
to be patient.”
“Patient!” She blazed with chivalrous indignation, “I don’t want to be
patient. I want to do something _now_!”
The mountaineer shook his head. “Wait. Trust me.”
Her hot blue gaze plumbed the dark depths of his. “I do, Luke! You
know I trust you! But why can’t I go to Nancy Carey, and make her come
down here and see conditions and contrast them with other mills, and
realize-- She’s a soft little thing, but she’s gentle and kind, and----”
He cut her short. “Yes--gentle and kind like old Carey’s gentle and
kind--when it won’t interfere with their own comforts or profits.
Carey’s good-natured; he wouldn’t kick a dog or curse a nigger, but
he’ll grind every ounce of work out of his hands and house ’em like
swine, and never figure he’s being hard. No, Glen--you wait!”
She was mutinous. “Wait, wait, wait! I’m sick of it, Luke? What am I
waiting _for_?”
He considered in silence for a long moment. “Wait till I’m so necessary
to him that he’ll have to listen to me.”
“But, Luke, he listens to you now! It’s wonderful the way he talks to
you and takes your advice about things! Why, he’d listen to you this
minute!” She came close to him, eager, ardent.
“Yes--and laugh at me, and tell me to mind my own business! And my
business is to try to get the mill out of the red ink just now. No,
Glen,” he said again, gravely, regretfully, “you wait.”
So the doctor’s daughter waited, perforce, and found a fresh outlet for
her emotion. There had been a surprising influx of foreigners to the
Altonia in recent years, dark-eyed, dark-skinned South Europeans whom
Ben Birdsall disliked and distrusted.
“Good Americans is good enough for me,” the superintendent liked to say
virtuously. “Bunch o’ soreheads, always kickin’ about something. If it
don’t suit ’em here, let ’em go back where they come from! Wish t’ th’
Lawd I dast clean ’em out, but we need ’em!”
Glen found them odd and interesting. There were graybeards among them
with simmering passion in their eyes who exhorted fellow workers
at stealthy evening meetings, swarthy youths who flared into open
resentment at a word, richly colored, full-breasted girls who moved
among the mill workers like sly flames, and one outstanding figure,
by reason of fervor and superior intelligence, a man called Black
Orlo, who edited a tiny paper named _The Torch_. It came out weekly or
monthly, as the editor was able to manage, and was printed in secret on
a crude hand press, and while Mr. Carey had ordered its suppression,
the sparks still flew, and some of them ignited the red-haired girl.
“Glen,” Luke warned her, “I wouldn’t read that rag! I wouldn’t be
caught with it!”
But she continued to read it, for Black Orlo said in vigorous print
the things she swallowed back every day of her life, and she found it
a safety valve. The man himself, dark, saturnine, unshaven, unsavory,
was repulsive to her, but she found his utterances stimulating.
At five o’clock, on her nineteenth birthday, Luke had not returned
to his office. She began to lose her hold on the radiant mood of the
morning. She had wakened to such a definite sense of occasion but the
day had jogged on in its accustomed groove, calmly and colorlessly, and
being nineteen did not appear to have any especial significance after
all.
Gloriana-Virginia Tolliver, a small putty-colored person at a loom,
shot out a lean little claw and caught hold of her skirt as she passed.
“Glen,” she wheedled, “yo’all was goin’ to gimme a fairy-tale book
to read out of, and learn me the biggest words. Did yo’ jes’ pintly
fo’git?”
Glen was remorseful. “I did forget, Glory. I thought of it the very
last thing before I went to sleep, and I put it right where I would
be sure to see it--it’s the one I read myself when I was little, you
know--and then--” she colored swiftly before the uncomprehending eyes
of the child--“I was busy this morning--I mean, something happened to
make me forget----”
“Oh, hit’s all right!” Gloriana-Virginia reassured her. “Don’t yo’ go
to frettin’ yo’sef, Glen! Jes’ any time’ll do. But I sho’ do crave
story-readin’, an’ M’liss’, she reckons hit’s jes’ plumb foolishness.”
She was a tiny, wizened creature, with curiously shaped hands which
did not seem quite human, and her face, with its gentle dark eyes,
always made Glen think of the wise and patient countenance of a little
monkey. She was her especial favorite of all the mill children and she
gave her a repentant hug now, and promised the book without fail for
the morning.
The superintendent came hurriedly through the spinning room with an
open letter in his hand. His face was red and his mild eyes were round
with excitement. He waved an excited greeting to Glen as he went past
her. “Say, my ship’s come in, Miss Glen! It sho’ has! Lawdy, Lawdy, I
never suspicioned sech a thing could happen outside the movies!” He
hurried into Mr. ’Gene Carey’s private office and shut the door behind
him, just as Luke Manders came in from the door which led into the lane.
Gloriana-Virginia bent over her frame in earnest absorption as he came
nearer them but Glen turned swiftly to greet him.
“Glen!” It was the simplest of salutations; nothing but her name, yet
it restored instantly the sense of impending climax. It was in his
voice and in his eyes, and she answered with his name, softly, on a
caught breath. “Will you wait? I will walk home with you.”
“I will wait.”
“I won’t be a minute--just to report to Mr. Carey on the Beulah-land
cotton--” He went into the owner’s office as swiftly as old Ben
Birdsall had done, and the long and disappointing day was redeemed.
“Luke Manders, he skeers me,” Gloriana-Virginia whispered, peering
round her frame.
“Oh, Glory, dear, you mustn’t say that! Why, Luke is your best friend!
He’s trying all the time to make things better and easier for you--for
you and all the children, and all the hands--and he has such fine plans
for a rest house and playroom and shorter hours--only, of course,
that’s a secret, and you mustn’t tell any one, not even M’Liss’ or
grand-pap.”
“I won’t name hit to nawbuddy,” the child promised obediently. “But I
am jes’ pintly skeered of Luke Manders.”
“But you _mustn’t_ be,” Glen insisted warmly. “It’s just his way,
Glory--he seems stern, but he isn’t, really. He works so hard, and he
hasn’t time to stop and talk with you as I have, but he feels just the
same as I do, Glory. You believe me, don’t you, honey?”
“Yes, me’um.” She frowned over a broken thread and her lean fingers
twisted it capably. “I b’lieve everything yo’all tell me. But I am jes’
pintly _skeered_ of Luke Manders.”
Glen laughed and hugged her again. “But I tell you you _mustn’t_ be!
I’ll bring the fairy tales to-morrow, Glory.”
“Cross yo’ heart, hope-never-to-see-the-back-o’-yo’-neck?”
“Cross my heart!” She sped away for her hat and coat and slipped
quietly out at the side door, waiting for Luke in the lane.
He came in five minutes, old Ben Birdsall trailing at his heels, the
open letter still in his hand. She sensed instantly that Luke wanted
to be rid of him; there was impatience in his stride which left the
superintendent behind and annoyance in his sharp--“Ready, Glen? Come
on!”
But the old fellow persisted. “Wait a minute! Hold on there, Luke! Yo’
hold yo’ hosses, cain’t yo’? I want to tell Miss Glen!”
The girl had started forward, obedient to Luke’s word, but she halted
perforce when Ben caught up with her, thrusting his arm before her, the
letter shaking in his shaking hand.
“My ship’s come in, Miss Glen, just like I said! Oh, my Lawdy, Lawdy!
Look a’ here!” He continued to wave the letter before her. “It’s my
niece Irene, my sister Hattie’s gal! Say, I never suspicioned, when she
married that lunger and pulled up stakes and traipsed out west with
him--‘Uncle Ben,’ she says--right here in this letter--‘Uncle Ben,
you stood by me when I hadn’t nobody but yo’ and now I’m a’ going to
pay yo’ back,’ she says.” He began to cry, childishly, wiping away his
tears with the back of his hand.
“But--I don’t understand, Ben! Has she sent you money?” In spite of
Luke’s insistent hand at her elbow, she could not begrudge this moment.
“Sent me money? Say, she’s sent _fo’_ me, that’s what she’s done--sent
money right to the bank fo’ me to get me fixed up fine, and fo’ my
ticket to Californy! ‘Uncle Ben,’ she says--”
Luke Manders cut in crisply. “Oil. Her husband has----”
“Now, yo’ hold yo’ hosses,” the old fellow pleaded. “First off, they
got ’em a little ranch--coupla acres, I reckon, and ’lowed they’d raise
oranges, but what with dry years and frosts and hard times, why, they
never got ahead. And Albert, he didn’t gain like she hoped he would,
and say, they was just about down and out, but it’s darkest just before
dawn, like the saying goes, and if they haven’t struck oil! _Oil_--on
an orange ranch? Wouldn’t that kill you? And a gusher, she says! And
now, ’stead of fo’getting the holler log, the way lots would do, why
she wants I should come out and live with ’em the rest of my bawn days!
‘Uncle Ben,’ she says----”
Luke’s touch was insistent. “It’s glorious, Ben, and I’m so happy for
you!” Glen patted his shaking shoulder. “You’ve worked hard all your
life and you’ve been kind, and it’s _right_ that this should happen to
you! And to-morrow I want to hear all about it, and all your plans, and
I’d love to have you read the letter to me if you will!”
They left him smudging the tears into his grimy cheeks and trying to
get his disheveled letter back into its envelop. “But say--wait a
minute!” He called after them. “I never told you about Luke! He’s----”
“I’ll tell her,” said Luke curtly. “_Come_, Glen!”
“Poor old Ben! Isn’t it wonderful for him? To slave all these years,
here, without seeing anything else, and now-- Oh, can’t you just
picture him out there--_basking_ in it all?” She glanced at his
absorbed face. “But what about you, Luke? Does this mean----”
He nodded. “Yes. Carey’s made me superintendent. He and Ben were
talking of it, just as I came in. At first, Carey figured I was too
young, but Ben made him see that I knew the ropes better than any
outsider--that I’ve been learning, day in, day out, for five years----”
“Of course you have! Of course you’re capable! Oh, Luke, I’m so glad
for you, and so proud!” She met his eyes and almost gasped at the
blaze of excitement and exultation she saw there. He was breathing
like a runner who has just breasted the tape. “Dad would be so proud,”
she added, faltering a little. It was rather frightening to see his
silence, his reserve, broken up like this. “Dad always said you would
go far, Luke. He had such faith in you. He often said to me----”
They had been walking swiftly ever since leaving old Ben behind in the
lane, choosing automatically a quiet back street, and now, turning
a corner, they were alone. He caught her wrists in a grip of steel,
cutting her sentence short.
“It’s what I was aiming for the day I started to work,” he said,
tensely. “Do you hear? I promised myself, then. And now you listen to
me, Glen, you listen, and remember. Five years from the time I started
in here as a hand, I’m superintendent: in less than five years more,
I’ll own the Altonia!”
“_Luke!_”
“You listen to me, and you keep still about it, but you remember
what I say!” A new Luke Manders, fiery, implacable--new voice, new
eyes, new grasp of iron. Gloriana-Virginia Tolliver’s persistent word
flashed into her mind and out again--“I’m jes’ pintly _skeered_ of
Luke Manders....” It came in of its own volition but she drove it out,
loyally, in a panic at herself for harboring it even an instant.
“And your granny!” The image of his ancient kinswoman that day of the
first meeting--“hit’s ontelling, what you might do and be, if you was
to be fotched on!” How unerringly the old crone had divined power and
purpose in her “son’s _son’s_ son!”
“Yes, Granny would be satisfied.” He relaxed a trifle, letting go of
her throbbing wrists, and she wondered if his mind had reverted to the
witch-woman’s threat to “ha’nt him” unless he came to Dr. Darrow. “She
would be satisfied.” He repeated it, gravely, and there was reassurance
in sensing the return to his normal manner.
He was walking swiftly, with long strides, and Glen, in spite of her
fine height, had to take a skipping step now and then to keep up with
him. With a touch at her elbow he guided her from the deserted side
street into a winding, mounting lane which led, in rambling, dallying
fashion to the back of her house, and looking up into his face again,
Glen saw that her hour had come--the hour she had visualized on waking
that morning.
She stood still when he did, and met his eyes fearlessly and gladly.
There was no self-consciousness, no shyness, no maiden reserves. She
was conscious of a deep wonder within herself. Was it like this, then?
Not in the few romances she had read! She had known since she was
fourteen that she would some day fall in love with Luke Manders, and
now she was nineteen, the age of her father’s stipulation, and she was
falling in love with him, or rather, she had fallen in love with him
this morning. Bold, beautiful, fearless and free, the golden lad of
their golden legend; she was carrying out her father’s last and dearest
wish, living and dying. “If there’s anything in this ‘hereafter’ stuff
... if I’m--anywhere--you’ll know I’m _glad_!”
Her eyes looked very blue in the sudden pallor of her golden-olive face
with its halo of glowing hair. It was not like the books, then; she
felt solemn, thankful, uplifted; very close to her father.
Again Luke Manders was breathing like a runner, and again his voice was
strange, with another strangeness. There was about him now a warmth and
a softness, but they were as implacable as the harshness had been, and
as little to be denied. “Remember that first day? How I caught you by
your hair and jerked you back?”
“Yes.” She was a little breathless. “You said--‘Hi, Sis, run duck
your head in the Branch! Didn’t you know your hair was a-fire?’” She
laughed, but he did not laugh with her. Instead, she felt herself swept
into an embrace which was compounded of flame and steel, and heard the
second of his strange new voices.
“I’ve never touched your hair since that day, have I? I’ve never
touched you. Not because I didn’t want to. Not because I didn’t crave
to, and hunger to, and thirst to, honing for you, every hour of the
day, every hour of the night!” He slipped back into the picturesqueness
of his mountain diction; even his accent reverted. He might have been,
in that moment, the boy who leaped into the shaft of setting sunlight
with his feud rifle in his hands. “But I promised your father to wait,
and I’ve waited. But you are nineteen, and I am superintendent of the
Altonia Mill”--it was almost like a chant of triumph--“and I’ll wait
no longer! I have been aiming for this, just as I’ve been aiming for
the mill, ever since--” Fingers of steel under her chin, lifting it,
forcing her face upward. “I’ll wait no longer!”