_Glen sets the day for her twentieth birthday, and grieves because her
suitor is too busy to help her better conditions, while Mr. ’Gene Carey
is crushed by the perfidy of Old Ben._
GLEN would have been very lonely in the months which followed if it had
not been for her increased activities with the mill workers, and her
joy in her transformed house, for she saw less and less of Luke Manders.
She had to fight a feeling of disappointment which bordered sometimes
on resentment: Luke’s advancement, instead of knitting them more
closely together, seemed rather to come between them and force them
apart. He was so absorbedly, relentlessly busy! Glen, unhappy over the
way in which he drove the hands, had to admit that he drove himself
most cruelly of all, and the hardest thing she had to bear was her
helplessness to help him. She was bewildered by the fact that her
duties, in spite of the tremendous pressure under which the mill was
being run, were lighter than ever before. She longed ardently to lift
burdens from him, but he constantly assumed more and more of the work
which she had been in the habit of doing--even taking over the bulk
of the correspondence, and taking full charge of certain of the files.
When she protested he was adamant; he had to keep the reins in his
own hands; he was so pushed he hardly knew whether he was on “foot or
horseback,” and it confused him if he didn’t keep his eye on all the
details.
And when she put a hand on his sleeve and said earnestly--“But Luke, I
want to _help_ you!” he had an instantaneous transition to the Luke of
the lane on her birthday.
“You know how you can help me!” He was almost savage in voice and eyes,
in the embrace in which he caught her. “You can help me if you want
to--by marrying me! By keeping your promise to your father!”
She was frightened by his vehemence, and still more by her own reaction
to it. She took herself firmly in hand; she would not fail him and
her father because she was that curious and unfortunate creature, the
person who doesn’t like to be touched. “But I will marry you, Luke! I
will!”
“When?”
Strong walls closing round about her, closing in, nearer and nearer; so
near, so close, so tight, that she could hardly breathe, hardly think.
“When--when--when I’m twenty, Luke!”
“The day you’re twenty?”
“The day--I’m twenty!”
He released her, after a long moment, and flung himself out of the
office, and Glen dropped unsteadily into her chair. Presently, however,
there came a distinct sense of relief. It was settled, then. On her
twentieth birthday. It put a period to evasions and delays. On the day
that she was twenty, she would marry Luke, keep her word, please her
father.
Meanwhile, in her greater leisure, she went into the Tollivers’ home
and others of its sort and tried faithfully to water where the doctor
had planted, in spite of stony soil. Gloriana-Virginia was ailing, and
Glen tried first to handle her case from the angle of the mill.
“Luke,” she said earnestly, waylaying the superintendent in the hall,
“I think Glory should be laid off for a month. She’s so miserable----”
He nodded, frowning. “Looks no worse than she usually does--always was
a pindling young one, but she’s pretty tough and wiry, and she’s a
good hand. I’d hate to lay her off now, with these rush orders coming
in--she keeps the other kids hustling, too.” Then, at the unhappiness
in her face--“Just wait till I get the reins in my own hands, Glen!
We’ll make a model mill out of the Altonia! You wait!”
“But Glory can’t wait,” the girl was mutinous. “Surely Mr. Carey----”
“You think you know old Carey, but you don’t,” he cut in harshly.
“Mighty soft and mealy-mouthed with you, because he liked your father,
but with me, he’s always putting on the screws. No use your naming
it to him. He’d say--‘Yes--lay her off! Give ’em all a month on full
pay’--to _you_, and next day he’d give me the wink to put ’em back.”
And when Glen raged at the duplicity of the Altonia’s owner, again he
urged patience. Let her trust him; he would soon be in a position to
dictate. Why, that niece of the old man’s--the widow--Mrs. Bob Lee
Tenafee, wasn’t that her name?--she’d been there with a bunch of club
women, scolding about conditions in the mill, comparing it with others
in the community, and he was soft as silk with her--but what did it
amount to? Wait; _wait_!
Then Glen, with a twinge of treachery to Luke, went to the most
responsible member of the Tolliver family, M’liss’, the maiden aunt.
M’liss’ Tolliver had been a tall woman, to begin with, but her
shoulders sagged and her chest caved in and her stomach protruded until
she had eliminated several inches from her height. She was as flat
and thin as a paper doll, her skin was the color of tripe, and her
dull eyes were utterly and absolutely devoid of all expression. The
shapeless, dun-hued dress she wore was stained with snuff and tobacco
juice, and her scanty hair was twisted into a frowsy knot at the back
of her neck.
She received without enthusiasm Glen’s suggestion that Gloriana-Virginia
be kept at home.
“No, me’um, I allus aim to keep young-uns to work,” she stated sagely.
“Hit kindly does ’em good to keep movin’. I named hit to Super to put
Beany on reg’ler--he’s the least one, that’s been dinner-totin’--but
Super, he says they got a lot o’ pesky new-fangled laws ’bout not
lettin’ young-uns make their salt!”
Glen let the general issue slide and held to the case in point. “But,
M’liss’,--Glory isn’t well!”
The aunt shrugged a lean shoulder and treated herself generously to
snuff before she answered. “Well’s she ever was; well’s she’ll ever be,
I reckon. Her paw was pindlin’, too, and that young-un was borned sick.”
“M’liss’, listen to me! If you don’t take care of that child--she’ll
_die_!”
“Well, won’t we all of us? Old pap, thar--” she nodded toward her sire,
dozing in the sun, “he’s daid a’ready, only he don’t know ’nuff to lay
still ’twell we bury him! No, me’um,” she spat with languid emphasis,
“that Glory-chile, ef she was to lay off, she’d feel a heap sight
wuss’n she do now, and what’s mo’, she’d be so plumb spi’lt thar’d be
no livin’ with her!”
That evening, with a still greater sense of disloyalty to Luke,
Glen sat down at Miss Ada’s beautiful old desk-bookcase and wrote
an earnest letter to a certain society, begging them to send an
investigator to the Altonia. Its conditions of safety and sanitation,
she stated, were far below standard; it was breaking or evading the
law in a dozen different directions; it was the worst mill in the
community, in the state.
She signed and sealed the letter and sat staring at it unhappily, and
once she made a motion to tear it up. Luke would be furious if he knew,
and even though she had asked that her communication be regarded as
confidential, it would doubtless come out in time.
Luke, driven, cumbered Luke, whom she was already treating so
shabbily, who was enslaving himself to put the mill on the right side
of the ledger again, needed every hand he had on his pay roll--even
Gloriana-Virginia’s small claws--and she was deliberately making
trouble for him. He did not mean to be hard. He was hounded by old Mr.
’Gene Carey, that mild-mannered, moist-eyed old hypocrite, who, in
his turn, was being relentlessly goaded by Peter Parker of Pasadena,
worthless young waster, lolling in luxury (she grew almost lyric, after
the fashion of the heated weeklies) on the cruel profits of a business
he had never seen.
She felt no resentment toward Luke, only a remorseful realization that
his hands were tied, and she must act, now, for them both, and she ran
swiftly to the letter box at the corner, dropped in her communication
and came back with her chin held high.
The surcease from all her sorrows was her house. It received her like
a lover. Sometimes, in the restful dining room, in the quaint chamber,
establishing herself for a quiet evening in the sitting room where
now the Persian rug seemed to lie relaxed and at ease, she had the
happy fancy that her mother, pale Effie, was there, moving through the
transformed house with her frail and hesitating gait. And sometimes
there came likewise the thought that Dr. Darrow, crusty and choleric,
was stamping after her, hotly and profanely disapproving, loudly
lamenting his golden oak and the robust flowers of the carpets.
At those times she flung herself hastily into his books or the vehement
weekly, or slipped down the hill to hear Black Orlo’s feverish
philippics, which always gave her a sort of Charlotte Corday thrill.
Mr. ’Gene Carey was home again, a wholesome color in his face and a
spring in his step, when he received the news of old Ben Birdsall’s
death, and he grieved over it sincerely. “Poor old Ben! Looks like he
couldn’t stand prosperity! One of those old truck horses that ought to
die in harness! Yes, sir, if he’d stayed on here at the Altonia with
us, old Ben’d been good for fifteen, twenty years yet, but sitting in
the sunshine, picking oranges off the tree, watching the gusher gush,
he just naturally slowed down and stopped, that’s what he did! Poor old
Ben! He was a faithful soul if ever there was one! I miss him. By the
eternal, I miss him! Used to look at me with those old eyes of his ...
kind of like a dog that trusts you....” He winked and blew a blast into
his handkerchief.
Nancy, who came for him every afternoon, patted and soothed him. He
mustn’t take it like that; wasn’t it fine that old Ben had so much
happiness before he went? She lifted her lovely hazel eyes to Luke for
confirmation of her comforting theory but Luke was not sympathetic. He
had no solemn comments to make whatever, and made an excuse to leave
the office at once.
His attitude fretted the old gentleman. “Funny thing, Lady-bird, that
Luke can’t show a little feeling over poor old Ben! I wanted to shut
the mill down for a day, in memory of him, or half a day, anyhow, but
Luke won’t hear of it, and he hasn’t a good word to say of the old
chap. Can’t understand it. Why, if he was _here_, you might say it was
jealousy, Luke being so ambitious to do everything his own way, but a
_dead_ man, Lady-bird! It’s--it’s _hard_! I don’t like it!”
He told his young superintendent that he didn’t like it--told him with
vigor and feeling, in the middle of a driving, high-keyed afternoon,
in spite of his daughter’s coaxing hand on his arm.
Luke Manders started to speak excitedly, got hold of himself, paced up
and down the room for a moment and then faced his employer gravely.
“Mr. Carey, sir,” he began, with something in his tone which made Glen,
passing through to the spinning room, stop and stare, “you think it’s
queer I can’t take on over Birdsall. Well, I’m not shedding any tears
over a thief.”
“_Luke!_” It was Glen who cried out.
Mr. ’Gene Carey’s genial old face flushed an angry cardinal. “Now, look
here, Manders, I won’t stand for that! I won’t listen to a word against
old Ben, not even from you. You’re jealous of him for some reason,
Lord knows why, for he was a good friend to you while he was here, and
always glad to see you advance! I think it’s pretty small business,
Luke, when a man’s dead and gone, to----”
The mountaineer colored likewise but he held his head high, and there
was patience in his voice, and regret. “I’m mighty sorry, Mr. Carey. I
wish I could keep still about it all. I’d put the flag at half mast and
hang crape over the whole place, yes, and cry like a nigger at a gospel
meeting, if I could keep you fooled. But I couldn’t, Mr. Carey. You’d
have to know sometime, sir. You’d have to know.”
It was very still in the stuffy little office of the Altonia, and the
old man and the two girls who were looking at him and listening to him
seemed to hold their breath. Nancy was the least moved of the three,
but her tender and lyrical gaze grew softer, and Glen Darrow paled
swiftly, while the senior partner’s dark and dangerous flush increased
until his face was mottled and congested looking.
“What do you mean?” he managed thickly. “What are you trying to tell
me, Luke Manders, about poor old Ben Birdsall, lying in his grave out
there in California?”
The superintendent cleared his throat. There was nothing hard about
him now. He hesitated, and showed in look and tone and tempo the most
unmistakable distaste for his unlovely task.
“I wish I didn’t _have_ to try to tell you, sir. I wish to God I
didn’t! You won’t believe me, at first. You won’t want to believe me.
But I can show you the books, and I can show you the files.”
After a hectic quarter of an hour, Mr. ’Gene Carey got hold of himself,
and was able to listen intelligently, and to take in and assimilate
the heavy tidings Luke Manders had brought him. Old Ben Birdsall, the
young superintendent told him, as briefly and coolly as possible, had
been cheating him for years, pilfering from the Altonia, altering the
books, destroying incriminating letters, covering up his perfidy with a
depth of guile amazing in a man of his mentality--or of what they had
innocently believed to be his mentality.
The old gentleman took it very hard. The two girls, palely listening,
were afraid he would swoon in the violence of his grief and
indignation, and Glen, witnessing the slow death of his faith in his
old retainer, found her heart softening toward him.
Nancy took him home at last, bewildered and broken, and it was arranged
that Luke should come to see him that evening, after he had dined and
rested, and tell him more of the grim details.
Glen, left alone with Luke, felt a great uprushing tide of loyalty and
admiration engulfing her. No wonder he had become almost a fanatic on
work, with this avalanche of debt and treachery sliding down upon the
Altonia! No wonder he had seemed ruthless in his zeal to make up for
the scandalous losses!
She, too, had liked and trusted old Ben Birdsall, and was shocked at
his deep and calculating wickedness, and the whole thing left her dazed
and shaken. Timidly, she tried to make Luke see a little of what she
was feeling, but he took her words somberly, in a deep preoccupation,
and she slipped away, to leave him with his grave and serious
responsibilities.
When she came down to breakfast next morning Miss Ada’s eyes, never
without the look of recent tears, showed signs of fresh weeping. Mr.
’Gene Carey, after a long evening with his superintendent, had fallen
into an uneasy sleep, and at four in the morning had suffered a stroke.
One side was paralyzed, and he could not speak.
Glen went down the hill to work in a tight-lipped silence. In view of
his dreadful physical calamity, added to his business tragedy, and
remembering his stout-hearted loyalty to old Ben, it was impossible to
keep on casting him for the villain of the piece. She did not idealize
him in the least, but she pitied him, and saw him for what he was--a
rather futile and pathetic unit in a vicious feudal system. The bulk
of her rage and resentment, hereafter, would center on Peter Parker of
Pasadena, and directly she reached the mill she found Black Orlo and
held earnest converse with him.
Mr. Carey’s condition, after a week, was more hopeful. Save for a
slight thickness of speech, he was able to talk normally, and the
doctors promised that he would be getting about with a cane in three
months’ time. He was, his daughter told her friends, the vast tribe of
Careys and Tenafees and their ilk who “claimed kin,” simply angelic
in his patience and gentleness, and he showed a touching and pitiful
gratitude to his young henchman, Luke Manders.
The superintendent had confessed that he had been putting his own
salary back into the business ever since the revelation of old Ben
Birdsall’s duplicity, and the Altonia’s trembling on the brink of ruin:
the mill owed him considerably more than a thousand dollars.
“You must keep account, boy,” his employer said brokenly. “You shall
have every penny back, and interest--yes, sir, by the eternal. Eight
per cent! Just let me get in action again--oh, _damn_ this fool
leg--and we’ll work it out! We’ll get her afloat again!”
There was no possible doubt of it, Manders assured him, and he was not
to worry about his back pay; his expenses were small, and he had saved
a good deal. Any time at all would do; he was in no hurry; Mr. Carey
was to forget that, and hurry up and get well again. Miss Ada would
have been amazed beyond measure at the gentleness, the respect, the
veneration of the young savage; it made Nancy Carey’s hazel gaze grow
liquid and tender.
The weeks went on in a dull procession; Mr. Carey improved slowly,
Gloriana-Virginia grew slowly worse; Luke Manders made himself slowly
more and more necessary to his employer; Glen Darrow began slowly to
accumulate a small and austere trousseau. It was a heavy and languid
spring, humid and enervating. Gloriana-Virginia seemed visibly to
shrink and shrivel, but she lived so completely in her fairy tales that
she was quite literally absent from the body and present with the
witches and the princess and the ogres.
“Glen,” she whispered once at eleven o’clock on a stifling forenoon,
wiping the sweat out of her eyes with a backward motion of her sallow
hand, “ef yo’all was to stand on that Wishin’ Cyarpet, wishin’ so hard
yo’ jes’ pintly bend yo’ wishbone, whar’d yo’ wish to be _at_?”
The doctor’s daughter smiled and opened her lips to reply lightly and
in kind, but the pupils of her eyes dilated swiftly and darkly at a
sudden thought.
“Glory,” she caught the child’s thin shoulders in a hard young grip,
“Glory, I’d wish to be where I could see what our Peter Parker of
Pasadena is doing this moment!”