But there was no struggling against her influence; and as, the night

before, he had looked at Westmore with the nurse's eyes, so he now found

himself seeing his house as it must appear to Mrs. Westmore. He noticed

the shabby yellow paint of the palings, the neglected garden of their

neighbour, the week's wash flaunting itself indecently through the

denuded shrubs about the kitchen porch; and as he admitted his

companions to the narrow passage he was assailed by the expected whiff

of "boiled dinner," with which the steam of wash-tubs was intimately

mingled.

Duplain was in the passage; he had just come out of the kitchen, and the

fact that he had been washing his hands in the sink was made evident by

his rolled-back shirt-sleeves, and by the shiny redness of the knuckles

he was running through his stiff black hair.

"Hallo, John," he said, in his aggressive voice, which rose abruptly at

sight of Amherst's companions; and at the same moment the frowsy

maid-of-all-work, crimson from stooping over the kitchen stove, thrust

her head out to call after him: "See here, Mr. Duplain, don't you leave

your cravat laying round in my dough."

V

MRS. WESTMORE stayed just long enough not to break in too abruptly on

the flow of her friend's reminiscences, and to impress herself on Mrs.

Amherst's delighted eyes as an embodiment of tactfulness and

grace--looking sympathetically about the little room, which, with its

books, its casts, its photographs of memorable pictures, seemed, after

all, a not incongruous setting to her charms; so that when she rose to

go, saying, as her hand met Amherst's, "Tonight, then, you must tell me

all about those poor Dillons," he had the sense of having penetrated so

far into her intimacy that a new Westmore must inevitably result from

their next meeting.

"Say, John--the boss is a looker," Duplain commented across the

dinner-table, with the slangy grossness he sometimes affected; but

Amherst left it to his mother to look a quiet rebuke, feeling himself

too aloof from such contacts to resent them.

He had to rouse himself with an effort to take in the overseer's next

observation. "There was another lady at the office this morning,"

Duplain went on, while the two men lit their cigars in the porch.

"Asking after you--tried to get me to show her over the mills when I

said you were busy."

"Asking after me? What did she look like?"

"Well, her face was kinder white and small, with an awful lot of black

hair fitting close to it. Said she came from Hope Hospital."

Amherst looked up. "Did you show her over?" he asked with sudden

interest.

Duplain laughed slangily. "What? Me? And have Truscomb get on to it and

turn me down? How'd I know she wasn't a yellow reporter?"

Amherst uttered an impatient exclamation. "I wish to heaven a yellow

reporter _would_ go through these mills, and show them up in head-lines

a yard high!"

He regretted not having seen the nurse again: he felt sure she would

have been interested in the working of the mills, and quick to notice

the signs of discouragement and ill-health in the workers' faces; but a

moment later his regret was dispelled by the thought of his visit to

Mrs. Westmore. The afternoon hours dragged slowly by in the office,

where he was bound to his desk by Truscomb's continued absence; but at

length the evening whistle blew, the clerks in the outer room caught

their hats from the rack, Duplain presented himself with the day's

report, and the two men were free to walk home.

Two hours later Amherst was mounting Mrs. Westmore's steps; and his hand

was on the bell when the door opened and Dr. Disbrow came out. The

physician drew back, as if surprised and slightly disconcerted; but his

smile promptly effaced all signs of vexation, and he held his hand out

affably.

"A fine evening, Mr. Amherst. I'm glad to say I have been able to bring

Mrs. Westmore an excellent report of both patients--Mr. Truscomb, I

mean, and poor Dillon. This mild weather is all in their favour, and I

hope my brother-in-law will be about in a day or two." He passed on with

a nod.

Amherst was once more shown into the library where he had found Mrs.

Westmore that morning; but on this occasion it was Mr. Tredegar who rose

to meet him, and curtly waved him to a seat at a respectful distance

from his own. Amherst at once felt a change of atmosphere, and it was

easy to guess that the lowering of temperature was due to Dr. Disbrow's

recent visit. The thought roused the young man's combative instincts,

and caused him to say, as Mr. Tredegar continued to survey him in

silence from the depths of a capacious easy-chair: "I understood from

Mrs. Westmore that she wished to see me this evening."

It was the wrong note, and he knew it; but he had been unable to conceal

his sense of the vague current of opposition in the air.

"Quite so: I believe she asked you to come," Mr. Tredegar assented,

laying his hands together vertically, and surveying Amherst above the

acute angle formed by his parched finger-tips. As he leaned back,

small, dry, dictatorial, in the careless finish of his evening dress

and pearl-studded shirt-front, his appearance put the finishing touch to

Amherst's irritation. He felt the incongruousness of his rough clothes

in this atmosphere of after-dinner ease, the mud on his walking-boots,

the clinging cotton-dust which seemed to have entered into the very

pores of the skin; and again his annoyance escaped in his voice.

"Perhaps I have come too early--" he began; but Mr. Tredegar interposed

with glacial amenity: "No, I believe you are exactly on time; but Mrs.

Westmore is unexpectedly detained. The fact is, Mr. and Mrs. Halford

Gaines are dining with her, and she has delegated to me the duty of

hearing what you have to say."

Amherst hesitated. His impulse was to exclaim: "There is no duty about

it!" but a moment's thought showed the folly of thus throwing up the

game. With the prospect of Truscomb's being about again in a day or two,

it might well be that this was his last chance of reaching Mrs.

Westmore's ear; and he was bound to put his case while he could,

irrespective of personal feeling. But his disappointment was too keen to

be denied, and after a pause he said: "Could I not speak with Mrs.

Westmore later?"

Mr. Tredegar's cool survey deepened to a frown. The young man's

importunity was really out of proportion to what he signified. "Mrs.

Westmore has asked me to replace her," he said, putting his previous

statement more concisely.

"Then I am not to see her at all?" Amherst exclaimed; and the lawyer

replied indifferently: "I am afraid not, as she leaves tomorrow."

Mr. Tredegar was in his element when refusing a favour. Not that he was

by nature unkind; he was, indeed, capable of a cold beneficence; but to

deny what it was in his power to accord was the readiest way of

proclaiming his authority, that power of loosing and binding which made

him regard himself as almost consecrated to his office.

Having sacrificed to this principle, he felt free to add as a gratuitous

concession to politeness: "You are perhaps not aware that I am Mrs.

Westmore's lawyer, and one of the executors under her husband's will."

He dropped this negligently, as though conscious of the absurdity of

presenting his credentials to a subordinate; but his manner no longer

incensed Amherst: it merely strengthened his resolve to sink all sense

of affront in the supreme effort of obtaining a hearing.

"With that stuffed canary to advise her," he reflected, "there's no hope

for her unless I can assert myself now"; and the unconscious wording of

his thought expressed his inward sense that Bessy Westmore stood in

greater need of help than her work-people.

Still he hesitated, hardly knowing how to begin. To Mr. Tredegar he was

no more than an underling, without authority to speak in his superior's

absence; and the lack of an official warrant, which he could have

disregarded in appealing to Mrs. Westmore, made it hard for him to find

a good opening in addressing her representative. He saw, too, from Mr.

Tredegar's protracted silence, that the latter counted on the effect of

this embarrassment, and was resolved not to minimize it by giving him a

lead; and this had the effect of increasing his caution.

He looked up and met the lawyer's eye. "Mrs. Westmore," he began, "asked

me to let her know something about the condition of the people at the

mills----"

Mr. Tredegar raised his hand. "Excuse me," he said. "I understood from

Mrs. Westmore that it was you who asked her permission to call this

evening and set forth certain grievances on the part of the operatives."

Amherst reddened. "I did ask her--yes. But I don't in any sense

represent the operatives. I simply wanted to say a word for them."

Mr. Tredegar folded his hands again, and crossed one lean little leg

over the other, bringing into his line of vision the glossy tip of a

patent-leather pump, which he studied for a moment in silence.

"Does Mr. Truscomb know of your intention?" he then enquired.

"No, sir," Amherst answered energetically, glad that he had forced the

lawyer out of his passive tactics. "I am here on my own

responsibility--and in direct opposition to my own interests," he

continued with a slight smile. "I know that my proceeding is quite out

of order, and that I have, personally, everything to lose by it, and in

a larger way probably very little to gain; but I thought Mrs. Westmore's

attention ought to be called to certain conditions at the mills, and no

one else seemed likely to speak of them."

"May I ask why you assume that Mr. Truscomb will not do so when he has

the opportunity?"

Amherst could not repress a smile. "Because it is owing to Mr. Truscomb

that they exist."

"The real object of your visit then," said Mr. Tredegar, speaking with

deliberation, "is--er--an underhand attack on your manager's methods?"

Amherst's face darkened, but he kept his temper. "I see nothing

especially underhand in my course----"

"Except," the other interposed ironically, "that you have waited to

speak till Mr. Truscomb was not in a position to defend himself."

"I never had the chance before. It was at Mrs. Westmore's own suggestion

that I took her over the mills, and feeling as I do I should have

thought it cowardly to shirk the chance of pointing out to her the

conditions there."

Mr. Tredegar mused, his eyes still bent on his gently-oscillating foot.

Whenever a sufficient pressure from without parted the fog of

self-complacency in which he moved, he had a shrewd enough outlook on

men and motives; and it may be that the vigorous ring of Amherst's

answer had effected this momentary clearing of the air.

At any rate, his next words were spoken in a more accessible tone. "To

what conditions do you refer?"

"To the conditions under which the mill-hands work and live--to the

whole management of the mills, in fact, in relation to the people

employed."

"That is a large question. Pardon my possible ignorance--" Mr. Tredegar

paused to make sure that his hearer took in the full irony of this--"but

surely in this state there are liability and inspection laws for the

protection of the operatives?"

"There are such laws, yes--but most of them are either a dead letter, or

else so easily evaded that no employer thinks of conforming to them."

"No employer? Then your specific charge against the Westmore mills is

part of a general arraignment of all employers of labour?"

"By no means, sir. I only meant that, where the hands are well treated,

it is due rather to the personal good-will of the employer than to any

fear of the law."

"And in what respect do you think the Westmore hands unfairly treated?"

Amherst paused to measure his words. "The question, as you say, is a

large one," he rejoined. "It has its roots in the way the business is

organized--in the traditional attitude of the company toward the

operatives. I hoped that Mrs. Westmore might return to the mills--might

visit some of the people in their houses. Seeing their way of living, it

might have occurred to her to ask a reason for it--and one enquiry would

have led to another. She spoke this morning of going to the hospital to

see Dillon."

"She did go to the hospital: I went with her. But as Dillon was

sleeping, and as the matron told us he was much better--a piece of news

which, I am happy to say, Dr. Disbrow has just confirmed--she did not go

up to the ward."

Amherst was silent, and Mr. Tredegar pursued: "I gather, from your

bringing up Dillon's case, that for some reason you consider it typical

of the defects you find in Mr. Truscomb's management. Suppose,

therefore, we drop generalizations, and confine ourselves to the

particular instance. What wrong, in your view, has been done the

Dillons?"

He turned, as he spoke, to extract a cigar from the box at his elbow.

"Let me offer you one, Mr. Amherst: we shall talk more comfortably," he

suggested with distant affability; but Amherst, with a gesture of

refusal, plunged into his exposition of the Dillon case. He tried to put

the facts succinctly, presenting them in their bare ugliness, without

emotional drapery; setting forth Dillon's good record for sobriety and

skill, dwelling on the fact that his wife's ill-health was the result of

perfectly remediable conditions in the work-rooms, and giving his

reasons for the belief that the accident had been caused, not by

Dillon's carelessness, but by the over-crowding of the carding-room. Mr.

Tredegar listened attentively, though the cloud of cigar-smoke between

himself and Amherst masked from the latter his possible changes of

expression. When he removed his cigar, his face looked smaller than

ever, as though desiccated by the fumes of the tobacco.

"Have you ever called Mr. Gaines's attention to these matters?"

"No: that would have been useless. He has always refused to discuss the

condition of the mills with any one but the manager."

"H'm--that would seem to prove that Mr. Gaines, who lives here, sees as

much reason for trusting Truscomb's judgment as Mr. Westmore, who

delegated his authority from a distance."

Amherst did not take this up, and after a pause Mr. Tredegar went on:

"You know, of course, the answers I might make to such an indictment. As

a lawyer, I might call your attention to the employe's waiver of risk,

to the strong chances of contributory negligence, and so on; but happily

in this case such arguments are superfluous. You are apparently not

aware that Dillon's injury is much slighter than it ought to be to serve

your purpose. Dr. Disbrow has just told us that he will probably get off

with the loss of a finger; and I need hardly say that, whatever may have

been Dillon's own share in causing the accident--and as to this, as you

admit, opinions differ--Mrs. Westmore will assume all the expenses of

his nursing, besides making a liberal gift to his wife." Mr. Tredegar

laid down his cigar and drew forth a silver-mounted note-case. "Here, in

fact," he continued, "is a cheque which she asks you to transmit, and

which, as I think you will agree, ought to silence, on your part as well

as Mrs. Dillon's, any criticism of Mrs. Westmore's dealings with her

operatives."

The blood rose to Amherst's forehead, and he just restrained himself

from pushing back the cheque which Mr. Tredegar had laid on the table

between them.

"There is no question of criticizing Mrs. Westmore's dealings with her

operatives--as far as I know, she has had none as yet," he rejoined,

unable to control his voice as completely as his hand. "And the proof

of it is the impunity with which her agents deceive her--in this case,

for instance, of Dillon's injury. Dr. Disbrow, who is Mr. Truscomb's

brother-in-law, and apt to be influenced by his views, assures you that

the man will get off with the loss of a finger; but some one equally

competent to speak told me last night that he would lose not only his

hand but his arm."

Amherst's voice had swelled to a deep note of anger, and with his tossed

hair, and eyes darkening under furrowed brows, he presented an image of

revolutionary violence which deepened the disdain on Mr. Tredegar's lip.

"Some one equally competent to speak? Are you prepared to name this

anonymous authority?"

Amherst hesitated. "No--I shall have to ask you to take my word for it,"

he returned with a shade of embarrassment.

"Ah--" Mr. Tredegar murmured, giving to the expressive syllable its

utmost measure of decent exultation.

Amherst quivered under the thin lash, and broke out: "It is all you have

required of Dr. Disbrow--" but at this point Mr. Tredegar rose to his

feet.

"My dear sir, your resorting to such arguments convinces me that nothing

is to be gained by prolonging our talk. I will not even take up your

insinuations against two of the most respected men in the

community--such charges reflect only on those who make them."

Amherst, whose flame of anger had subsided with the sudden sense of its

futility, received this in silence, and the lawyer, reassured, continued

with a touch of condescension: "My only specific charge from Mrs.

Westmore was to hand you this cheque; but, in spite of what has passed,

I take it upon myself to add, in her behalf, that your conduct of today

will not be allowed to weigh against your record at the mills, and that

the extraordinary charges you have seen fit to bring against your

superiors will--if not repeated--simply be ignored."

* * * * *

When, the next morning at about ten, Mrs. Eustace Ansell joined herself

to the two gentlemen who still lingered over a desultory breakfast in

Mrs. Westmore's dining-room, she responded to their greeting with less

than her usual vivacity.

[Illustration: "No--I shall have to ask you to take my word for it."]

It was one of Mrs. Ansell's arts to bring to the breakfast-table just

the right shade of sprightliness, a warmth subdued by discretion as the

early sunlight is tempered by the lingering coolness of night. She was,

in short, as fresh, as temperate, as the hour, yet without the

concomitant chill which too often marks its human atmosphere: rather her

soft effulgence dissipated the morning frosts, opening pinched spirits

to a promise of midday warmth. But on this occasion a mist of

uncertainty hung on her smile, and veiled the glance which she turned

on the contents of the heavy silver dishes successively presented to her

notice. When, at the conclusion of this ceremony, the servants had

withdrawn, she continued for a moment to stir her tea in silence, while

her glance travelled from Mr. Tredegar, sunk in his morning mail, to Mr.

Langhope, who leaned back resignedly in his chair, trying to solace

himself with Hanaford Banner, till midday should bring him a sight of

the metropolitan press.

"I suppose you know," she said suddenly, "that Bessy has telegraphed for

Cicely, and made her arrangements to stay here another week."

Mr. Langhope's stick slipped to the floor with the sudden displacement

of his whole lounging person, and Mr. Tredegar, removing his

tortoise-shell reading-glasses, put them hastily into their case, as

though to declare for instant departure.

"My dear Maria--" Mr. Langhope gasped, while she rose and restored his

stick.

"She considers it, then, her duty to wait and see Truscomb?" the lawyer

asked; and Mrs. Ansell, regaining her seat, murmured discreetly: "She

puts it so--yes."

"My dear Maria--" Mr. Langhope repeated helplessly, tossing aside his

paper and drawing his chair up to the table.

"But it would be perfectly easy to return: it is quite unnecessary to

wait here for his recovery," Mr. Tredegar pursued, as though setting

forth a fact which had not hitherto presented itself to the more limited

intelligence of his hearers.

Mr. Langhope emitted a short laugh, and Mrs. Ansell answered gently:

"She says she detests the long journey."

Mr. Tredegar rose and gathered up his letters with a gesture of

annoyance. "In that case--if I had been notified earlier of this

decision, I might have caught the morning train," he interrupted

himself, glancing resentfully at his watch.

"Oh, don't leave us, Tredegar," Mr. Langhope entreated. "We'll reason

with her--we'll persuade her to go back by the three-forty."

Mrs. Ansell smiled. "She telegraphed at seven. Cicely and the governess

are already on their way."

"At seven? But, my dear friend, why on earth didn't you tell us?"

"I didn't know till a few minutes ago. Bessy called me in as I was

coming down."

"Ah--" Mr. Langhope murmured, meeting her eyes for a fraction of a

second. In the encounter, she appeared to communicate something more

than she had spoken, for as he stooped to pick up his paper he said,

more easily: "My dear Tredegar, if we're in a box there's no reason why

we should force you into it too. Ring for Ropes, and we'll look up a

train for you."

Mr. Tredegar appeared slightly ruffled at this prompt acquiescence in

his threatened departure. "Of course, if I had been notified in advance,

I might have arranged to postpone my engagements another day; but in any

case, it is quite out of the question that I should return in a

week--and quite unnecessary," he added, snapping his lips shut as though

he were closing his last portmanteau.

"Oh, quite--quite," Mr. Langhope assented. "It isn't, in fact, in the

least necessary for any of us either to stay on now or to return.

Truscomb could come to Long Island when he recovers, and answer any

questions we may have to put; but if Bessy has sent for the child, we

must of course put off going for today--at least I must," he added

sighing, "and, though I know it's out of the question to exact such a

sacrifice from you, I have a faint hope that our delightful friend here,

with the altruistic spirit of her sex----"

"Oh, I shall enjoy it--my maid is unpacking," Mrs. Ansell gaily

affirmed; and Mr. Tredegar, shrugging his shoulders, said curtly: "In

that case I will ring for the time-table."

When he had withdrawn to consult it in the seclusion of the library, and

Mrs. Ansell, affecting a sudden desire for a second cup of tea, had

reseated herself to await the replenishment of the kettle, Mr. Langhope

exchanged his own chair for a place at her side.

"Now what on earth does this mean?" he asked, lighting a cigarette in

response to her slight nod of consent.

Mrs. Ansell's gaze lost itself in the depths of the empty tea-pot.

"A number of things--or any one of them," she said at length, extending

her arm toward the tea-caddy.

"For instance--?" he rejoined, following appreciatively the movements of

her long slim hands.

She raised her head and met his eyes. "For instance: it may mean--don't

resent the suggestion--that you and Mr. Tredegar were not quite

well-advised in persuading her not to see Mr. Amherst yesterday

evening."

Mr. Langhope uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"But, my dear Maria--in the name of reason...why, after the doctor's

visit--after his coming here last night, at Truscomb's request, to put

the actual facts before her--should she have gone over the whole

business again with this interfering young fellow? How, in fact, could

she have done so," he added, after vainly waiting for her reply,

"without putting a sort of slight on Truscomb, who is, after all, the

only person entitled to speak with authority?"

Mrs. Ansell received his outburst in silence, and the butler,

reappearing with the kettle and fresh toast, gave her the chance to

prolong her pause for a full minute. When the door had closed on him,

she said: "Judged by reason, your arguments are unanswerable; but when

it comes to a question of feeling----"

"Feeling? What kind of feeling? You don't mean to suggest anything so

preposterous as that Bessy----?"

She made a gesture of smiling protest. "I confess it is to be regretted

that his mother is a lady, and that he looks--you must have noticed

it?--so amazingly like the portraits of the young Schiller. But I only

meant that Bessy forms all her opinions emotionally; and that she must

have been very strongly affected by the scene Mr. Tredegar described to

us."

"Ah," Mr. Langhope interjected, replying first to her parenthesis, "how

a woman of your good sense stumbled on that idea of hunting up the

mother--!" but Mrs. Ansell answered, with a slight grimace: "My dear

Henry, if you could see the house they live in you'd think I had been

providentially guided there!" and, reverting to the main issue, he went

on fretfully: "But why, after hearing the true version of the facts,

should Bessy still be influenced by that sensational scene? Even if it

was not, as Tredegar suspects, cooked up expressly to take her in, she

must see that the hospital doctor is, after all, as likely as any one to

know how the accident really happened, and how seriously the fellow is

hurt."

"There's the point. Why should Bessy believe Dr. Disbrow rather than Mr.

Amherst?"

"For the best of reasons--because Disbrow has nothing to gain by

distorting the facts, whereas this young Amherst, as Tredegar pointed

out, has the very obvious desire to give Truscomb a bad name and shove

himself into his place."

Mrs. Ansell contemplatively turned the rings upon her fingers. "From

what I saw of Amherst I'm inclined to think that, if that is his object,

he is too clever to have shown his hand so soon. But if you are right,

was there not all the more reason for letting Bessy see him and find out

as soon as possible what he was aiming at?"

"If one could have trusted her to find out--but you credit my poor child

with more penetration than I've ever seen in her."

"Perhaps you've looked for it at the wrong time--and about the wrong

things. Bessy has the penetration of the heart."

"The heart! You make mine jump when you use such expressions."

"Oh, I use this one in a general sense. But I want to help you to keep

it from acquiring a more restricted significance."

"Restricted--to the young man himself?"

Mrs. Ansell's expressive hands seemed to commit the question to fate.

"All I ask you to consider for the present is that Bessy is quite

unoccupied and excessively bored."

"Bored? Why, she has everything on earth she can want!"

"The ideal state for producing boredom--the only atmosphere in which it

really thrives. And besides--to be humanly inconsistent--there's just

one thing she hasn't got."

"Well?" Mr. Langhope groaned, fortifying himself with a second

cigarette.

"An occupation for that rudimentary little organ, the mention of which

makes you jump."

"There you go again! Good heavens, Maria, do you want to encourage her

to fall in love?"

"Not with a man, just at present, but with a hobby, an interest, by all

means. If she doesn't, the man will take the place of the

interest--there's a vacuum to be filled, and human nature abhors a

vacuum."

Mr. Langhope shrugged his shoulders. "I don't follow you. She adored her

husband."

His friend's fine smile was like a magnifying glass silently applied to

the gross stupidity of his remark. "Oh, I don't say it was a great

passion--but they got on perfectly," he corrected himself.

"So perfectly that you must expect her to want a little storm and stress

for a change. The mere fact that you and Mr. Tredegar objected to her

seeing Mr. Amherst last night has roused the spirit of opposition in

her. A year ago she hadn't any spirit of opposition."

"There was nothing for her to oppose--poor Dick made her life so

preposterously easy."

"My ingenuous friend! Do you still think that's any reason? The fact is,

Bessy wasn't awake, she wasn't even born, then.... She is now, and you

know the infant's first conscious joy is to smash things."

"It will be rather an expensive joy if the mills are the first thing she

smashes."

"Oh I imagine the mills are pretty substantial. I should, I own," Mrs.

Ansell smiled, "not object to seeing her try her teeth on them."

"Which, in terms of practical conduct, means----?"

"That I advise you not to disapprove of her staying on, or of her

investigating the young man's charges. You must remember that another

peculiarity of the infant mind is to tire soonest of the toy that no one

tries to take away from it."

"_Que diable!_ But suppose Truscomb turns rusty at this very unusual

form of procedure? Perhaps you don't quite know how completely he

represents the prosperity of the mills."

"All the more reason," Mrs. Ansell persisted, rising at the sound of Mr.

Tredegar's approach. "For don't you perceive, my poor distracted friend,

that if Truscomb turns rusty, as he undoubtedly will, the inevitable

result will be his manager's dismissal--and that thereafter there will

presumably be peace in Warsaw?"

"Ah, you divinely wicked woman!" cried Mr. Langhope, snatching at an

appreciative pressure of her hand as the lawyer reappeared in the

doorway.

VI

BEFORE daylight that same morning Amherst, dressing by the gas-flame

above his cheap wash-stand, strove to bring some order into his angry

thoughts. It humbled him to feel his purpose tossing rudderless on

unruly waves of emotion, yet strive as he would he could not regain a

hold on it. The events of the last twenty-four hours had been too rapid

and unexpected for him to preserve his usual clear feeling of mastery;

and he had, besides, to reckon with the first complete surprise of his

senses. His way of life had excluded him from all contact with the

subtler feminine influences, and the primitive side of the relation left

his imagination untouched. He was therefore the more assailable by those

refined forms of the ancient spell that lurk in delicacy of feeling

interpreted by loveliness of face. By his own choice he had cut himself

off from all possibility of such communion; had accepted complete

abstinence for that part of his nature which might have offered a

refuge from the stern prose of his daily task. But his personal

indifference to his surroundings--deliberately encouraged as a defiance

to the attractions of the life he had renounced--proved no defence

against this appeal; rather, the meanness of his surroundings combined

with his inherited refinement of taste to deepen the effect of Bessy's

charm.

As he reviewed the incidents of the past hours, a reaction of

self-derision came to his aid. What was this exquisite opportunity from

which he had cut himself off? What, to reduce the question to a personal

issue, had Mrs. Westmore said or done that, on the part of a plain

woman, would have quickened his pulses by the least fraction of a

second? Why, it was only the old story of the length of Cleopatra's

nose! Because her eyes were a heavenly vehicle for sympathy, because her

voice was pitched to thrill the tender chords, he had been deluded into

thinking that she understood and responded to his appeal. And her own

emotions had been wrought upon by means as cheap: it was only the

obvious, theatrical side of the incident that had affected her. If

Dillon's wife had been old and ugly, would she have been clasped to her

employer's bosom? A more expert knowledge of the sex would have told

Amherst that such ready sympathy is likely to be followed by as prompt a

reaction of indifference. Luckily Mrs. Westmore's course had served as a

corrective for his lack of experience; she had even, as it appeared,

been at some pains to hasten the process of disillusionment. This timely

discipline left him blushing at his own insincerity; for he now saw that

he had risked his future not because of his zeal for the welfare of the

mill-hands, but because Mrs. Westmore's look was like sunshine on his

frozen senses, and because he was resolved, at any cost, to arrest her

attention, to associate himself with her by the only means in his power.

Well, he deserved to fail with such an end in view; and the futility of

his scheme was matched by the vanity of his purpose. In the cold light

of disenchantment it seemed as though he had tried to build an

impregnable fortress out of nursery blocks. How could he have foreseen

anything but failure for so preposterous an attempt? His breach of

discipline would of course be reported at once to Mr. Gaines and

Truscomb; and the manager, already jealous of his assistant's popularity

with the hands, which was a tacit criticism of his own methods, would

promptly seize the pretext to be rid of him. Amherst was aware that only

his technical efficiency, and his knack of getting the maximum of work

out of the operatives, had secured him from Truscomb's animosity. From

the outset there had been small sympathy between the two; but the

scarcity of competent and hard-working assistants had made Truscomb

endure him for what he was worth to the mills. Now, however, his own

folly had put the match to the manager's smouldering dislike, and he saw

himself, in consequence, discharged and black-listed, and perhaps

roaming for months in quest of a job. He knew the efficiency of that

far-reaching system of defamation whereby the employers of labour pursue

and punish the subordinate who incurs their displeasure. In the case of

a mere operative this secret persecution often worked complete ruin; and

even to a man of Amherst's worth it opened the dispiriting prospect of a

long struggle for rehabilitation.

Deep down, he suffered most at the thought that his blow for the

operatives had failed; but on the surface it was the manner of his

failure that exasperated him. For it seemed to prove him unfit for the

very work to which he was drawn: that yearning to help the world forward

that, in some natures, sets the measure to which the personal adventure

must keep step. Amherst had hitherto felt himself secured by his insight

and self-control from the emotional errors besetting the way of the

enthusiast; and behold, he had stumbled into the first sentimental trap

in his path, and tricked his eyes with a Christmas-chromo vision of

lovely woman dispensing coals and blankets! Luckily, though such wounds

to his self-confidence cut deep, he could apply to them the antiseptic

of an unfailing humour; and before he had finished dressing, the

picture of his wide schemes of social reform contracting to a blue-eyed

philanthropy of cheques and groceries, had provoked a reaction of

laughter. Perhaps the laughter came too soon, and rang too loud, to be

true to the core; but at any rate it healed the edges of his hurt, and

gave him a sound surface of composure.

But he could not laugh away the thought of the trials to which his

intemperance had probably exposed his mother; and when, at the

breakfast-table, from which Duplain had already departed, she broke into

praise of their visitor, it was like a burning irritant on his wound.

"What a face, John! Of course I don't often see people of that kind

now--" the words, falling from her too simply to be reproachful, wrung

him, for that, all the more--"but I'm sure that kind of soft loveliness

is rare everywhere; like a sweet summer morning with the mist on it. The

Gaines girls, now, are my idea of the modern type; very handsome, of

course, but you see just _how_ handsome the first minute. I like a story

that keeps one wondering till the end. It was very kind of Maria

Ansell," Mrs. Amherst wandered happily on, "to come and hunt me out

yesterday, and I enjoyed our quiet talk about old times. But what I

liked best was seeing Mrs. Westmore--and, oh, John, if she came to live

here, what a benediction to the mills!"

Amherst was silent, moved most of all by the unimpaired simplicity of

heart with which his mother could take up past relations, and open her

meagre life to the high visitations of grace and fashion, without a

tinge of self-consciousness or apology. "I shall never be as genuine as

that," he thought, remembering how he had wished to have Mrs. Westmore

know that he was of her own class. How mixed our passions are, and how

elastic must be the word that would cover any one of them! Amherst's, at

that moment, were all stained with the deep wound to his self-love.

The discolouration he carried in his eye made the mill-village seem more

than commonly cheerless and ugly as he walked over to the office after

breakfast. Beyond the grim roof-line of the factories a dazzle of rays

sent upward from banked white clouds the promise of another brilliant

day; and he reflected that Mrs. Westmore would soon be speeding home to

the joy of a gallop over the plains.

Far different was the task that awaited him--yet it gave him a pang to

think that he might be performing it for the last time. In spite of Mr.

Tredegar's assurances, he was certain that the report of his conduct

must by this time have reached the President, and been transmitted to

Truscomb; the latter was better that morning, and the next day he would

doubtless call his rebellious assistant to account. Amherst, meanwhile,

took up his routine with a dull heart. Even should his offense be

condoned, his occupation presented, in itself, little future to a man

without money or powerful connections. Money! He had spurned the thought

of it in choosing his work, yet he now saw that, without its aid, he was

powerless to accomplish the object to which his personal desires had

been sacrificed. His love of his craft had gradually been merged in the

larger love for his fellow-workers, and in the resulting desire to lift

and widen their lot. He had once fancied that this end might be attained

by an internal revolution in the management of the Westmore mills; that

he might succeed in creating an industrial object-lesson conspicuous

enough to point the way to wiser law-making and juster relations between

the classes. But the last hours' experiences had shown him how vain it

was to assault single-handed the strong barrier between money and

labour, and how his own dash at the breach had only thrust him farther

back into the obscure ranks of the stragglers. It was, after all, only

through politics that he could return successfully to the attack; and

financial independence was the needful preliminary to a political

career. If he had stuck to the law he might, by this time, have been

nearer his goal; but then the gold might not have mattered, since it was

only by living among the workers that he had learned to care for their

fate. And rather than have forfeited that poignant yet mighty vision of

the onward groping of the mass, rather than have missed the widening of

his own nature that had come through sharing their hopes and pains, he

would still have turned from the easier way, have chosen the deeper

initiation rather than the readier attainment.

But this philosophic view of the situation was a mere thread of light on

the farthest verge of his sky: much nearer were the clouds of immediate

care, amid which his own folly, and his mother's possible suffering from

it, loomed darkest; and these considerations made him resolve that, if

his insubordination were overlooked, he would swallow the affront of a

pardon, and continue for the present in the mechanical performance of

his duties. He had just brought himself to this leaden state of

acquiescence when one of the clerks in the outer office thrust his head

in to say: "A lady asking for you--" and looking up, Amherst beheld

Bessy Westmore.

She came in alone, with an air of high self-possession in marked

contrast to her timidity and indecision of the previous day. Amherst

thought she looked taller, more majestic; so readily may the upward

slant of a soft chin, the firmer line of yielding brows, add a cubit to

the outward woman. Her aspect was so commanding that he fancied she had

come to express her disapproval of his conduct, to rebuke him for lack

of respect to Mr. Tredegar; but a moment later it became clear, even to

his inexperienced perceptions, that it was not to himself that her

challenge was directed.

She advanced toward the seat he had moved forward, but in her absorption

forgot to seat herself, and stood with her clasped hands resting on the

back of the chair.

"I have come back to talk to you," she began, in her sweet voice with

its occasional quick lift of appeal. "I knew that, in Mr. Truscomb's

absence, it would be hard for you to leave the mills, and there are one

or two things I want you to explain before I go away--some of the

things, for instance, that you spoke to Mr. Tredegar about last night."

Amherst's feeling of constraint returned. "I'm afraid I expressed myself

badly; I may have annoyed him--" he began.

She smiled this away, as though irrelevant to the main issue. "Perhaps

you don't quite understand each other--but I am sure you can make it

clear to me." She sank into the chair, resting one arm on the edge of

the desk behind which he had resumed his place. "That is the reason why

I came alone," she continued. "I never can understand when a lot of

people are trying to tell me a thing all at once. And I don't suppose I

care as much as a man would--a lawyer especially--about the forms that

ought to be observed. All I want is to find out what is wrong and how to

remedy it."

Her blue eyes met Amherst's in a look that flowed like warmth about his

heart. How should he have doubted that her feelings were as exquisite as

her means of expressing them? The iron bands of distrust were loosened

from his spirit, and he blushed for his cheap scepticism of the morning.

In a woman so evidently nurtured in dependence, whose views had been

formed, and her actions directed, by the most conventional influences,

the mere fact of coming alone to Westmore, in open defiance of her

advisers, bespoke a persistence of purpose that put his doubts to shame.

"It will make a great difference to the people here if you interest

yourself in them," he rejoined. "I tried to explain to Mr. Tredegar that

I had no wish to criticise the business management of the mills--even if

there had been any excuse for my doing so--but that I was sure the

condition of the operatives could be very much improved, without

permanent harm to the business, by any one who felt a personal sympathy

for them; and in the end I believe such sympathy produces better work,

and so benefits the employer materially."

She listened with her gentle look of trust, as though committing to him,

with the good faith of a child, her ignorance, her credulity, her little

rudimentary convictions and her little tentative aspirations, relying on

him not to abuse or misdirect them in the boundless supremacy of his

masculine understanding.

"That is just what I want you to explain to me," she said. "But first I

should like to know more about the poor man who was hurt. I meant to see

his wife yesterday, but Mr. Gaines told me she would be at work till

six, and it would have been difficult to go after that. I _did_ go to

the hospital; but the man was sleeping--is Dillon his name?--and the

matron told us he was much better. Dr. Disbrow came in the evening and

said the same thing--told us it was all a false report about his having

been so badly hurt, and that Mr. Truscomb was very much annoyed when he

heard of your having said, before the operatives, that Dillon would lose

his arm."

Amherst smiled. "Ah--Mr. Truscomb heard that? Well, he's right to be

annoyed: I ought not to have said it when I did. But unfortunately I am

not the only one to be punished. The operative who tied on the black

cloth was dismissed this morning."

Mrs. Westmore flamed up. "Dismissed for that? Oh, how unjust--how

cruel!"

"You must look at both sides of the case," said Amherst, finding it much

easier to remain temperate in the glow he had kindled than if he had had

to force his own heat into frozen veins. "Of course any act of

insubordination must be reprimanded--but I think a reprimand would have

been enough."

It gave him an undeniable throb of pleasure to find that she was not to

be checked by such arguments. "But he shall be put back--I won't have

any one discharged for such a reason! You must find him for me at

once--you must tell him----"

Once more Amherst gently restrained her. "If you'll forgive my saying

so, I think it is better to let him go, and take his chance of getting

work elsewhere. If he were taken back he might be made to suffer. As

things are organized here, the hands are very much at the mercy of the

overseers, and the overseer in that room would be likely to make it

uncomfortable for a hand who had so openly defied him."

With a heavy sigh she bent her puzzled brows on him. "How complicated it

is! I wonder if I shall ever understand it all. _You_ don't think

Dillon's accident was his own fault, then?"

"Certainly not; there are too many cards in that room. I pointed out the

fact to Mr. Truscomb when the new machines were set up three years ago.

An operative may be ever so expert with his fingers, and yet not learn

to measure his ordinary movements quite as accurately as if he were an

automaton; and that is what a man must do to be safe in the

carding-room."

She sighed again. "The more you tell me, the more difficult it all

seems. Why is the carding-room so over-crowded?"

"To make it pay better," Amherst returned bluntly; and the colour

flushed her sensitive skin.

He thought she was about to punish him for his plain-speaking; but she

went on after a pause: "What you say is dreadful. Each thing seems to

lead back to another--and I feel so ignorant of it all." She hesitated

again, and then said, turning her bluest glance on him: "I am going to

be quite frank with you, Mr. Amherst. Mr. Tredegar repeated to me what

you said to him last night, and I think he was annoyed that you were

unwilling to give any proof of the charges you made."

"Charges? Ah," Amherst exclaimed, with a start of recollection, "he

means my refusing to say who told me that Dr. Disbrow was not telling

the truth about Dillon?"

"Yes. He said that was a very grave accusation to make, and that no one

should have made it without being able to give proof."

"That is quite true, theoretically. But in this case it would be easy

for you or Mr. Tredegar to find out whether I was right."

"But Mr. Tredegar said you refused to say who told you."

"I was bound to, as it happened. But I am not bound to prevent your

trying to get the same information."

"Ah--" she murmured understandingly; and, a sudden thought striking him,

he went on, with a glance at the clock: "If you really wish to judge for

yourself, why not go to the hospital now? I shall be free in five

minutes, and could go with you if you wish it."

Amherst had remembered the nurse's cry of recognition when she saw Mrs.

Westmore's face under the street-lamp; and it immediately occurred to

him that, if the two women had really known each other, Mrs. Westmore

would have no difficulty in obtaining the information she wanted; while,

even if they met as strangers, the dark-eyed girl's perspicacity might

still be trusted to come to their aid. It remained only to be seen how

Mrs. Westmore would take his suggestion; but some instinct was already

telling him that the highhanded method was the one she really preferred.

"To the hospital--now? I should like it of all things," she exclaimed,

rising with what seemed an almost childish zest in the adventure. "Of

course that is the best way of finding out. I ought to have insisted on

seeing Dillon yesterday--but I begin to think the matron didn't want me

to."

Amherst left this inference to work itself out in her mind, contenting

himself, as they drove back to Hanaford, with answering her questions

about Dillon's family, the ages of his children, and his wife's health.

Her enquiries, he noticed, did not extend from the particular to the

general: her curiosity, as yet, was too purely personal and emotional to

lead to any larger consideration of the question. But this larger view

might grow out of the investigation of Dillon's case; and meanwhile

Amherst's own purposes were momentarily lost in the sweet confusion of

feeling her near him--of seeing the exquisite grain of her skin, the way

her lashes grew out of a dusky line on the edge of the white lids, the

way her hair, stealing in spirals of light from brow to ear, wavered off

into a fruity down on the edge of the cheek.

At the hospital they were protestingly admitted by Mrs. Ogan, though the

official "visitors' hour" was not till the afternoon; and beside the

sufferer's bed, Amherst saw again that sudden flowering of compassion

which seemed the key to his companion's beauty: as though her lips had

been formed for consolation and her hands for tender offices. It was

clear enough that Dillon, still sunk in a torpor broken by feverish

tossings, was making no perceptible progress toward recovery; and Mrs.

Ogan was reduced to murmuring some technical explanation about the state

of the wound while Bessy hung above him with reassuring murmurs as to

his wife's fate, and promises that the children should be cared for.

Amherst had noticed, on entering, that a new nurse--a gaping young woman

instantly lost in the study of Mrs. Westmore's toilet--had replaced the

dark-eyed attendant of the day before; and supposing that the latter was

temporarily off duty, he asked Mrs. Ogan if she might be seen.

The matron's face was a picture of genteel perplexity. "The other nurse?

Our regular surgical nurse, Miss Golden, is ill--Miss Hibbs, here, is

replacing her for the present." She indicated the gaping damsel; then,

as Amherst persisted: "Ah," she wondered negligently, "do you mean the

young lady you saw here yesterday? Certainly--I had forgotten: Miss

Brent was merely a--er--temporary substitute. I believe she was

recommended to Dr. Disbrow by one of his patients; but we found her

quite unsuitable--in fact, unfitted--and the doctor discharged her this

morning."

Mrs. Westmore had drawn near, and while the matron delivered her

explanation, with an uneasy sorting and shifting of words, a quick

signal of intelligence passed between her hearers. "You see?" Amherst's

eyes exclaimed; "I see--they have sent her away because she told you,"

Bessy's flashed back in wrath, and his answering look did not deny her

inference.

"Do you know where she has gone?" Amherst enquired; but Mrs. Ogan,

permitting her brows a faint lift of surprise, replied that she had no

idea of Miss Brent's movements, beyond having heard that she was to

leave Hanaford immediately

In the carriage Bessy exclaimed: "It was the nurse, of course--if we

could only find her! Brent--did Mrs. Ogan say her name was Brent?"

"Do you know the name?"

"Yes--at least--but it couldn't, of course, be the girl I knew----"

"Miss Brent saw you the night you arrived, and thought she recognized

you. She said you and she had been at some school or convent together."

"The Sacred Heart? Then it _is_ Justine Brent! I heard they had lost

their money--I haven't seen her for years. But how strange that she

should be a hospital nurse! And why is she at Hanaford, I wonder?"

"She was here only on a visit; she didn't tell me where she lived. She

said she heard that a surgical nurse was wanted at the hospital, and

volunteered her services; I'm afraid she got small thanks for them."

"Do you really think they sent her away for talking to you? How do you

suppose they found out?"

"I waited for her last night when she left the hospital, and I suppose

Mrs. Ogan or one of the doctors saw us. It was thoughtless of me,"

Amherst exclaimed with compunction.

"I wish I had seen her--poor Justine! We were the greatest friends at

the convent. She was the ringleader in all our mischief--I never saw any

one so quick and clever. I suppose her fun is all gone now."

For a moment Mrs. Westmore's mind continued to linger among her

memories; then she reverted to the question of the Dillons, and of what

might best be done for them if Miss Brent's fears should be realized.

As the carriage neared her door she turned to her companion with

extended hand. "Thank you so much, Mr. Amherst. I am glad you suggested

that Mr. Truscomb should find some work for Dillon about the office. But

I must talk to you about this again--can you come in this evening?"

VII

AMHERST could never afterward regain a detailed impression of the weeks

that followed. They lived in his memory chiefly as exponents of the

unforeseen, nothing he had looked for having come to pass in the way or

at the time expected; while the whole movement of life was like the

noon-day flow of a river, in which the separate ripples of brightness

are all merged in one blinding glitter. His recurring conferences with

Mrs. Westmore formed, as it were, the small surprising kernel of fact

about which sensations gathered and grew with the swift ripening of a

magician's fruit. That she should remain on at Hanaford to look into the

condition of the mills did not, in itself, seem surprising to Amherst;

for his short phase of doubt had been succeeded by an abundant inflow of

faith in her intentions. It satisfied his inner craving for harmony that

her face and spirit should, after all, so corroborate and complete each

other; that it needed no moral sophistry to adjust her acts to her

appearance, her words to the promise of her smile. But her immediate

confidence in him, her resolve to support him in his avowed

insubordination, to ignore, with the royal license of her sex, all that

was irregular and inexpedient in asking his guidance while the whole

official strength of the company darkened the background with a

gathering storm of disapproval--this sense of being the glove flung by

her hand in the face of convention, quickened astonishingly the flow of

Amherst's sensations. It was as though a mountain-climber, braced to the

strain of a hard ascent, should suddenly see the way break into roses,

and level itself in a path for his feet.

On his second visit he found the two ladies together, and Mrs. Ansell's

smile of approval seemed to cast a social sanction on the episode, to

classify it as comfortably usual and unimportant. He could see that her

friend's manner put Bessy at ease, helping her to ask her own questions,

and to reflect on his suggestions, with less bewilderment and more

self-confidence. Mrs. Ansell had the faculty of restoring to her the

belief in her reasoning powers that her father could dissolve in a

monosyllable.

The talk, on this occasion, had turned mainly on the future of the

Dillon family, on the best means of compensating for the accident, and,

incidentally, on the care of the young children of the mill-colony.

Though Amherst did not believe in the extremer forms of industrial

paternalism, he was yet of opinion that, where married women were

employed, the employer should care for their children. He had been

gradually, and somewhat reluctantly, brought to this conviction by the

many instances of unavoidable neglect and suffering among the children

of the women-workers at Westmore; and Mrs. Westmore took up the scheme

with all the ardour of her young motherliness, quivering at the thought

of hungry or ailing children while her Cicely, leaning a silken head

against her, lifted puzzled eyes to her face.

On the larger problems of the case it was less easy to fix Bessy's

attention; but Amherst was far from being one of the extreme theorists

who reject temporary remedies lest they defer the day of general

renewal, and since he looked on every gain in the material condition of

the mill-hands as a step in their moral growth, he was quite willing to

hold back his fundamental plans while he discussed the establishment of

a nursery, and of a night-school for the boys in the mills.

The third time he called, he found Mr. Langhope and Mr. Halford Gaines

of the company. The President of the Westmore mills was a trim

middle-sized man, whose high pink varnish of good living would have

turned to purple could he have known Mr. Langhope's opinion of his

jewelled shirt-front and the padded shoulders of his evening-coat.

Happily he had no inkling of these views, and was fortified in his

command of the situation by an unimpaired confidence in his own

appearance; while Mr. Langhope, discreetly withdrawn behind a veil of

cigar-smoke, let his silence play like a fine criticism over the various

phases of the discussion.

It was a surprise to Amherst to find himself in Mr. Gaines's presence.

The President, secluded in his high office, seldom visited the mills,

and when there showed no consciousness of any presence lower than

Truscomb's; and Amherst's first thought was that, in the manager's

enforced absence, he was to be called to account by the head of the

firm. But he was affably welcomed by Mr. Gaines, who made it clear that

his ostensible purpose in coming was to hear Amherst's views as to the

proposed night-schools and nursery. These were pointedly alluded to as

Mrs. Westmore's projects, and the young man was made to feel that he was

merely called in as a temporary adviser in Truscomb's absence. This was,

in fact, the position Amherst preferred to take, and he scrupulously

restricted himself to the answering of questions, letting Mrs. Westmore

unfold his plans as though they had been her own. "It is much better,"

he reflected, "that they should all think so, and she too, for Truscomb

will be on his legs again in a day or two, and then my hours will be

numbered."

Meanwhile he was surprised to find Mr. Gaines oddly amenable to the

proposed innovations, which he appeared to regard as new fashions in

mill-management, to be adopted for the same cogent reasons as a new cut

in coat-tails.

"Of course we want to be up-to-date--there's no reason why the Westmore

mills shouldn't do as well by their people as any mills in the country,"

he affirmed, in the tone of the entertainer accustomed to say: "I want

the thing done handsomely." But he seemed even less conscious than Mrs.

Westmore that each particular wrong could be traced back to a radical

vice in the system. He appeared to think that every murmur of assent to

her proposals passed the sponge, once for all, over the difficulty

propounded: as though a problem in algebra should be solved by wiping it

off the blackboard.

"My dear Bessy, we all owe you a debt of gratitude for coming here, and

bringing, so to speak, a fresh eye to bear on the subject. If I've been,

perhaps, a little too exclusively absorbed in making the mills

profitable, my friend Langhope will, I believe, not be the first

to--er--cast a stone at me." Mr. Gaines, who was the soul of delicacy,

stumbled a little over the awkward associations connected with this

figure, but, picking himself up, hastened on to affirm: "And in that

respect, I think we can challenge comparison with any industry in the

state; but I am the first to admit that there may be another side, a

side that it takes a woman--a mother--to see. For instance," he threw in

jocosely, "I flatter myself that I know how to order a good dinner; but

I always leave the flowers to my wife. And if you'll permit me to say

so," he went on, encouraged by the felicity of his image, "I believe it

will produce a most pleasing effect--not only on the operatives

themselves, but on the whole of Hanaford--on our own set of people

especially--to have you come here and interest yourself in

the--er--philanthropic side of the work."

Bessy coloured a little. She blushed easily, and was perhaps not

over-discriminating as to the quality of praise received; but under her

ripple of pleasure a stronger feeling stirred, and she said hastily: "I

am afraid I never should have thought of these things if Mr. Amherst had

not pointed them out to me."

Mr. Gaines met this blandly. "Very gratifying to Mr. Amherst to have you

put it in that way; and I am sure we all appreciate his valuable hints.

Truscomb himself could not have been more helpful, though his larger

experience will no doubt be useful later on, in developing

and--er--modifying your plans."

It was difficult to reconcile this large view of the moral issue with

the existence of abuses which made the management of the Westmore mills

as unpleasantly notorious in one section of the community as it was

agreeably notable in another. But Amherst was impartial enough to see

that Mr. Gaines was unconscious of the incongruities of the situation.

He left the reconciling of incompatibles to Truscomb with the simple

faith of the believer committing a like task to his maker: it was in the

manager's mind that the dark processes of adjustment took place. Mr.

Gaines cultivated the convenient and popular idea that by ignoring

wrongs one is not so much condoning as actually denying their existence;

and in pursuance of this belief he devoutly abstained from studying the

conditions at Westmore.

A farther surprise awaited Amherst when Truscomb reappeared in the

office. The manager was always a man of few words; and for the first

days his intercourse with his assistant was restricted to asking

questions and issuing orders. Soon afterward, it became known that

Dillon's arm was to be amputated, and that afternoon Truscomb was

summoned to see Mrs. Westmore. When he returned he sent for Amherst; and

the young man felt sure that his hour had come.

He was at dinner when the message reached him, and he knew from the

tightening of his mother's lips that she too interpreted it in the same

way. He was glad that Duplain's presence kept her from speaking her

fears; and he thanked her inwardly for the smile with which she watched

him go.

That evening, when he returned, the smile was still at its post; but it

dropped away wearily as he said, with his hands on her shoulders: "Don't

worry, mother; I don't know exactly what's happening, but we're not

blacklisted yet."

Mrs. Amherst had immediately taken up her work, letting her nervous

tension find its usual escape through her finger-tips. Her needles

flagged as she lifted her eyes to his.

"Something _is_ happening, then?" she murmured.

"Oh, a number of things, evidently--but though I'm in the heart of them,

I can't yet make out how they are going to affect me."

His mother's glance twinkled in time with the flash of her needles.

"There's always a safe place in the heart of a storm," she said

shrewdly; and Amherst rejoined with a laugh: "Well, if it's Truscomb's

heart, I don't know that it's particularly safe for me."

"Tell me just what he said, John," she begged, making no attempt to

carry the pleasantry farther, though its possibilities still seemed to

flicker about her lip; and Amherst proceeded to recount his talk with

the manager.

Truscomb, it appeared, had made no allusion to Dillon; his avowed

purpose in summoning his assistant had been to discuss with the latter

the question of the proposed nursery and schools. Mrs. Westmore, at

Amherst's suggestion, had presented these projects as her own; but the

question of a site having come up, she had mentioned to Truscomb his

assistant's proposal that the company should buy for the purpose the

notorious Eldorado. The road-house in question had always been one of

the most destructive influences in the mill-colony, and Amherst had made

one or two indirect attempts to have the building converted to other

uses; but the persistent opposition he encountered gave colour to the

popular report that the manager took a high toll from the landlord.

It therefore at once occurred to Amherst to suggest the purchase of the

property to Mrs. Westmore; and he was not surprised to find that

Truscomb's opposition to the scheme centred in the choice of the

building. But even at this point the manager betrayed no open

resistance; he seemed tacitly to admit Amherst's right to discuss the

proposed plans, and even to be consulted concerning the choice of a

site. He was ready with a dozen good reasons against the purchase of the

road-house; but here also he proceeded with a discretion unexampled in

his dealings with his subordinates. He acknowledged the harm done by the

dance-hall, but objected that he could not conscientiously advise the

company to pay the extortionate price at which it was held, and reminded

Amherst that, if that particular source of offense were removed, others

would inevitably spring up to replace it; marshalling the usual

temporizing arguments of tolerance and expediency, with no marked change

from his usual tone, till, just as the interview was ending, he asked,

with a sudden drop to conciliation, if the assistant manager had

anything to complain of in the treatment he received.

This came as such a surprise to Amherst that before he had collected

himself he found Truscomb ambiguously but unmistakably offering

him--with the practised indirection of the man accustomed to cover his

share in such transactions--a substantial "consideration" for dropping

the matter of the road-house. It was incredible, yet it had really

happened: the all-powerful Truscomb, who held Westmore in the hollow of

his hand, had stooped to bribing his assistant because he was afraid to

deal with him in a more summary manner. Amherst's leap of anger at the

offer was curbed by the instant perception of its cause. He had no time

to search for a reason; he could only rally himself to meet the

unintelligible with a composure as abysmal as Truscomb's; and his voice

still rang with the wonder of the incident as he retailed it to his

mother.

"Think of what it means, mother, for a young woman like Mrs. Westmore,

without any experience or any habit of authority, to come here, and at

the first glimpse of injustice, to be so revolted that she finds the

courage and cleverness to put her little hand to the machine and

reverse the engines--for it's nothing less that she's done! Oh, I know

there'll be a reaction--the pendulum's sure to swing back: but you'll

see it won't swing _as far_. Of course I shall go in the end--but

Truscomb may go too: Jove, if I could pull him down on me, like

what's-his-name and the pillars of the temple!"

He had risen and was measuring the little sitting-room with his long

strides, his head flung back and his eyes dark with the inward look his

mother had not always cared to see there. But now her own glance seemed

to have caught a ray from his, and the knitting flowed from her hands

like the thread of fate, as she sat silent, letting him exhale his hopes

and his wonder, and murmuring only, when he dropped again to the chair

at her side: "You won't go, Johnny--you won't go."

* * * * *

Mrs. Westmore lingered on for over two weeks, and during that time

Amherst was able, in various directions, to develop her interest in the

mill-workers. His own schemes involved a complete readjustment of the

relation between the company and the hands: the suppression of the

obsolete company "store" and tenements, which had so long sapped the

thrift and ambition of the workers; the transformation of the Hopewood

grounds into a park and athletic field, and the division of its

remaining acres into building lots for the mill-hands; the establishing

of a library, a dispensary and emergency hospital, and various other

centres of humanizing influence; but he refrained from letting her see

that his present suggestion was only a part of this larger plan, lest

her growing sympathy should be checked. He had in his mother an example

of the mind accessible only to concrete impressions: the mind which

could die for the particular instance, yet remain serenely indifferent

to its causes. To Mrs. Amherst, her son's work had been interesting

simply because it _was_ his work: remove his presence from Westmore, and

the whole industrial problem became to her as non-existent as star-dust

to the naked eye. And in Bessy Westmore he divined a nature of the same

quality--divined, but no longer criticized it. Was not that

concentration on the personal issue just the compensating grace of her

sex? Did it not offer a warm tint of human inconsistency to eyes chilled

by contemplating life in the mass? It pleased Amherst for the moment to

class himself with the impersonal student of social problems, though in

truth his interest in them had its source in an imagination as open as

Bessy's to the pathos of the personal appeal. But if he had the same

sensitiveness, how inferior were his means of expressing it! Again and

again, during their talks, he had the feeling which had come to him when

she bent over Dillon's bed--that her exquisite lines were, in some

mystical sense, the visible flowering of her nature, that they had taken

shape in response to the inward motions of the heart.

To a young man ruled by high enthusiasms there can be no more dazzling

adventure than to work this miracle in the tender creature who yields

her mind to his--to see, as it were, the blossoming of the spiritual

seed in forms of heightened loveliness, the bluer beam of the eye, the

richer curve of the lip, all the physical currents of life quickening

under the breath of a kindled thought. It did not occur to him that any

other emotion had effected the change he perceived. Bessy Westmore had

in full measure that gift of unconscious hypocrisy which enables a woman

to make the man in whom she is interested believe that she enters into

all his thoughts. She had--more than this--the gift of self-deception,

supreme happiness of the unreflecting nature, whereby she was able to

believe herself solely engrossed in the subjects they discussed, to

regard him as the mere spokesman of important ideas, thus saving their

intercourse from present constraint, and from the awkward contemplation

of future contingencies. So, in obedience to the ancient sorcery of

life, these two groped for and found each other in regions seemingly so

remote from the accredited domain of romance that it would have been as

a great surprise to them to learn whither they had strayed as to see

the arid streets of Westmore suddenly bursting into leaf.

With Mrs. Westmore's departure Amherst, for the first time, became aware

of a certain flatness in his life. His daily task seemed dull and

purposeless, and he was galled by Truscomb's studied forbearance, under

which he suspected a quickly accumulating store of animosity. He almost

longed for some collision which would release the manager's pent-up

resentment; yet he dreaded increasingly any accident that might make his

stay at Westmore impossible.

It was on Sundays, when he was freed from his weekly task, that he was

most at the mercy of these opposing feelings. They drove him forth on

long solitary walks beyond the town, walks ending most often in the

deserted grounds of Hopewood, beautiful now in the ruined gold of

October. As he sat under the beech-limbs above the river, watching its

brown current sweep the willow-roots of the banks, he thought how this

same current, within its next short reach, passed from wooded seclusion

to the noise and pollution of the mills. So his own life seemed to have

passed once more from the tranced flow of the last weeks into its old

channel of unillumined labour. But other thoughts came to him too: the

vision of converting that melancholy pleasure-ground into an outlet for

the cramped lives of the mill-workers; and he pictured the weed-grown

lawns and paths thronged with holiday-makers, and the slopes nearer the

factories dotted with houses and gardens.

An unexpected event revived these hopes. A few days before Christmas it

became known to Hanaford that Mrs. Westmore would return for the

holidays. Cicely was drooping in town air, and Bessy had persuaded Mr.

Langhope that the bracing cold of Hanaford would be better for the child

than the milder atmosphere of Long Island. They reappeared, and brought

with them a breath of holiday cheerfulness such as Westmore had never

known. It had always been the rule at the mills to let the operatives

take their pleasure as they saw fit, and the Eldorado and the Hanaford

saloons throve on this policy. But Mrs. Westmore arrived full of festal

projects. There was to be a giant Christmas tree for the mill-children,

a supper on the same scale for the operatives, and a bout of skating and

coasting at Hopewood for the older lads--the "band" and "bobbin" boys in

whom Amherst had always felt a special interest. The Gaines ladies,

resolved to show themselves at home in the latest philanthropic

fashions, actively seconded Bessy's endeavours, and for a week Westmore

basked under a sudden heat-wave of beneficence.

The time had passed when Amherst might have made light of such efforts.

With Bessy Westmore smiling up, holly-laden, from the foot of the ladder

on which she kept him perched, how could he question the efficacy of

hanging the opening-room with Christmas wreaths, or the ultimate benefit

of gorging the operatives with turkey and sheathing their offspring in

red mittens? It was just like the end of a story-book with a pretty

moral, and Amherst was in the mood to be as much taken by the tinsel as

the youngest mill-baby held up to gape at the tree.

At the New Year, when Mrs. Westmore left, the negotiations for the

purchase of the Eldorado were well advanced, and it was understood that

on their completion she was to return for the opening of the

night-school and nursery. Suddenly, however, it became known that the

proprietor of the road-house had decided not to sell. Amherst heard of

the decision from Duplain, and at once foresaw the inevitable

result--that Mrs. Westmore's plan would be given up owing to the

difficulty of finding another site. Mr. Gaines and Truscomb had both

discountenanced the erection of a special building for what was, after

all, only a tentative enterprise. Among the purchasable houses in

Westmore no other was suited to the purpose, and they had, therefore, a

good excuse for advising Bessy to defer her experiment.

Almost at the same time, however, another piece of news changed the

aspect of affairs. A scandalous occurrence at the Eldorado, witnesses to

which were unexpectedly forthcoming, put it in Amherst's power to

threaten the landlord with exposure unless he should at once accept the

company's offer and withdraw from Westmore. Amherst had no long time to

consider the best means of putting this threat into effect. He knew it

was not only idle to appeal to Truscomb, but essential to keep the facts

from him till the deed was done; yet how obtain the authority to act

without him? The seemingly insuperable difficulties of the situation

whetted Amherst's craving for a struggle. He thought first of writing to

Mrs. Westmore;, but now that the spell of her presence was withdrawn he

felt how hard it would be to make her understand the need of prompt and

secret action; and besides, was it likely that, at such short notice,

she could command the needful funds? Prudence opposed the attempt, and

on reflection he decided to appeal to Mr. Gaines, hoping that the

flagrancy of the case would rouse the President from his usual attitude

of indifference.

Mr. Gaines was roused to the extent of showing a profound resentment

against the cause of his disturbance. He relieved his sense of

responsibility by some didactic remarks on the vicious tendencies of the

working-classes, and concluded with the reflection that the more you did

for them the less thanks you got. But when Amherst showed an

unwillingness to let the matter rest on this time-honoured aphorism, the

President retrenched himself behind ambiguities, suggestions that they

should await Mrs. Westmore's return, and general considerations of a

pessimistic nature, tapering off into a gloomy view of the weather.

"By God, I'll write to her!" Amherst exclaimed, as the Gaines portals

closed on him; and all the way back to Westmore he was busy marshalling

his arguments and entreaties.

He wrote the letter that night, but did not post it. Some unavowed

distrust of her restrained him--a distrust not of her heart but of her

intelligence. He felt that the whole future of Westmore was at stake,

and decided to await the development of the next twenty-four hours. The

letter was still in his pocket when, after dinner, he was summoned to

the office by Truscomb.

That evening, when he returned home, he entered the little sitting-room

without speaking. His mother sat there alone, in her usual place--how

many nights he had seen the lamplight slant at that particular angle

across her fresh cheek and the fine wrinkles about her eyes! He was

going to add another wrinkle to the number now--soon they would creep

down and encroach upon the smoothness of the cheek.

She looked up and saw that his glance was turned to the crowded

bookshelves behind her.

"There must be nearly a thousand of them," he said as their eyes met.

"Books? Yes--with your father's. Why--were you thinking...?" She started

up suddenly and crossed over to him.

"Too many for wanderers," he continued, drawing her hands to his breast;

then, as she clung to him, weeping and trembling a little: "It had to

be, mother," he said, kissing her penitently where the fine wrinkles

died into the cheek.

VIII

AMHERST'S dismissal was not to take effect for a month; and in the

interval he addressed himself steadily to his task.

He went through the routine of the work numbly; but his intercourse with

the hands tugged at deep fibres of feelings. He had always shared, as

far as his duties allowed, in the cares and interests of their few free

hours: the hours when the automatic appendages of the giant machine

became men and women again, with desires and passions of their own.

Under Amherst's influence the mixed elements of the mill-community had

begun to crystallize into social groups: his books had served as an

improvised lending-library, he had organized a club, a rudimentary

orchestra, and various other means of binding together the better

spirits of the community. With the older men, the attractions of the

Eldorado, and kindred inducements, often worked against him; but among

the younger hands, and especially the boys, he had gained a personal

ascendency that it was bitter to relinquish.

It was the severing of this tie that cost him most pain in the final

days at Westmore; and after he had done what he could to console his

mother, and to put himself in the way of getting work elsewhere, he

tried to see what might be saved out of the ruins of the little polity

he had built up. He hoped his influence might at least persist in the

form of an awakened instinct of fellowship; and he gave every spare hour

to strengthening the links he had tried to form. The boys, at any rate,

would be honestly sorry to have him go: not, indeed, from the profounder

reasons that affected him, but because he had not only stood

persistently between the overseers and themselves, but had recognized

their right to fun after work-hours as well as their right to protection

while they worked.

In the glow of Mrs. Westmore's Christmas visitation an athletic club had

been formed, and leave obtained to use the Hopewood grounds for Saturday

afternoon sports; and thither Amherst continued to conduct the boys

after the mills closed at the week-end. His last Saturday had now come:

a shining afternoon of late February, with a red sunset bending above

frozen river and slopes of unruffled snow. For an hour or more he had

led the usual sports, coasting down the steep descent from the house to

the edge of the woods, and skating and playing hockey on the rough

river-ice which eager hands kept clear after every snow-storm. He always

felt the contagion of these sports: the glow of movement, the tumult of

young voices, the sting of the winter air, roused all the boyhood in his

blood. But today he had to force himself through his part in the

performance. To the very last, as he now saw, he had hoped for a sign in

the heavens: not the reversal of his own sentence--for, merely on

disciplinary grounds, he perceived that to be impossible--but something

pointing to a change in the management of the mills, some proof that

Mrs. Westmore's intervention had betokened more than a passing impulse

of compassion. Surely she would not accept without question the

abandonment of her favourite scheme; and if she came back to put the

question, the answer would lay bare the whole situation.... So Amherst's

hopes had persuaded him; but the day before he had heard that she was to

sail for Europe. The report, first announced in the papers, had been

confirmed by his mother, who brought back from a visit to Hanaford the

news that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period,

and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been the

readiest caustic for the wound inflicted; but Amherst, for that very

reason, disdained it. He would not taint his disappointment with

mockery, but would leave it among the unspoiled sadnesses of life....

He flung himself into the boys' sports with his usual energy, meaning

that their last Saturday with him should be their merriest; but he went

through his part mechanically, and was glad when the sun began to dip

toward the rim of the woods.

He was standing on the ice, where the river widened just below the

house, when a jingle of bells broke on the still air, and he saw a

sleigh driven rapidly up the avenue. Amherst watched it in surprise.

Who, at that hour, could be invading the winter solitude of Hopewood?

The sleigh halted near the closed house, and a muffled figure, alighting

alone, began to move down the snowy slope toward the skaters.

In an instant he had torn off his skates and was bounding up the bank.

He would have known the figure anywhere--known that lovely poise of the

head, the mixture of hesitancy and quickness in the light tread which

even the snow could not impede. Half-way up the slope to the house they

met, and Mrs. Westmore held out her hand. Face and lips, as she stood

above him, glowed with her swift passage through the evening air, and in

the blaze of the sunset she seemed saturated with heavenly fires.

"I drove out to find you--they told me you were here--I arrived this

morning, quite suddenly...."

She broke off, as though the encounter had checked her ardour instead of

kindling it; but he drew no discouragement from her tone.

"I hoped you would come before I left--I knew you would!" he exclaimed;

and at his last words her face clouded anxiously.

"I didn't know you were leaving Westmore till yesterday--the day

before--I got a letter...." Again she wavered, perceptibly trusting her

difficulty to him, in the sweet way he had been trying to forget; and he

answered with recovered energy: "The great thing is that you should be

here."

She shook her head at his optimism. "What can I do if you go?"

"You can give me a chance, before I go, to tell you a little about some

of the loose ends I am leaving."

"But why are you leaving them? I don't understand. Is it inevitable?"

"Inevitable," he returned, with an odd glow of satisfaction in the word;

and as her eyes besought him, he added, smiling: "I've been dismissed,

you see; and from the manager's standpoint I think I deserved it. But

the best part of my work needn't go with me--and that is what I should

like to speak to you about. As assistant manager I can easily be

replaced--have been, I understand, already; but among these boys here I

should like to think that a little of me stayed--and it will, if

you'll let me tell you what I've been doing."

[Illustration: Half-way up the slope to the house they met.]

She glanced away from him at the busy throng on the ice and at the other

black cluster above the coasting-slide.

"How they're enjoying it!" she murmured. "What a pity it was never done

before! And who will keep it up when you're gone?"

"You," he answered, meeting her eyes again; and as she coloured a little

under his look he went on quickly: "Will you come over and look at the

coasting? The time is almost up. One more slide and they'll be packing

off to supper."

She nodded "yes," and they walked in silence over the white lawn,

criss-crossed with tramplings of happy feet, to the ridge from which the

coasters started on their run. Amherst's object in turning the talk had

been to gain a moment's respite. He could not bear to waste his perfect

hour in futile explanations: he wanted to keep it undisturbed by any

thought of the future. And the same feeling seemed to possess his

companion, for she did not speak again till they reached the knoll where

the boys were gathered.

A sled packed with them hung on the brink: with a last shout it was off,

dipping down the incline with the long curved flight of a swallow,

flashing across the wide meadow at the base of the hill, and tossed

upward again by its own impetus, till it vanished in the dark rim of

wood on the opposite height. The lads waiting on the knoll sang out for

joy, and Bessy clapped her hands and joined with them.

"What fun! I wish I'd brought Cicely! I've not coasted for years," she

laughed out, as the second detachment of boys heaped themselves on

another sled and shot down. Amherst looked at her with a smile. He saw

that every other feeling had vanished in the exhilaration of watching

the flight of the sleds. She had forgotten why she had come--forgotten

her distress at his dismissal--forgotten everything but the spell of the

long white slope, and the tingle of cold in her veins.

"Shall we go down? Should you like it?" he asked, feeling no resentment

under the heightened glow of his pulses.

"Oh, do take me--I shall love it!" Her eyes shone like a child's--she

might have been a lovelier embodiment of the shouting boyhood about

them.

The first band of coasters, sled at heels, had by this time already

covered a third of the homeward stretch; but Amherst was too impatient

to wait. Plunging down to the meadow he caught up the sled-rope, and

raced back with the pack of rejoicing youth in his wake. The sharp climb

up the hill seemed to fill his lungs with flame: his whole body burned

with a strange intensity of life. As he reached the top, a distant bell

rang across the fields from Westmore, and the boys began to snatch up

their coats and mufflers.

"Be off with you--I'll look after the sleds," Amherst called to them as

they dispersed; then he turned for a moment to see that the skaters

below were also heeding the summons.

A cold pallor lay on the river-banks and on the low meadow beneath the

knoll; but the woodland opposite stood black against scarlet vapours

that ravelled off in sheer light toward a sky hung with an icy moon.

Amherst drew up the sled and held it steady while Bessy, seating

herself, tucked her furs close with little breaks of laughter; then he

placed himself in front.

"Ready?" he cried over his shoulder, and "Ready!" she called back.

Their craft quivered under them, hanging an instant over the long

stretch of whiteness below; the level sun dazzled their eyes, and the

first plunge seemed to dash them down into darkness. Amherst heard a cry

of glee behind him; then all sounds were lost in the whistle of air

humming by like the flight of a million arrows. They had dropped below

the sunset and were tearing through the clear nether twilight of the

descent; then, with a bound, the sled met the level, and shot away

across the meadow toward the opposite height. It seemed to Amherst as

though his body had been left behind, and only the spirit in him rode

the wild blue currents of galloping air; but as the sled's rush began to

slacken with the strain of the last ascent he was recalled to himself by

the touch of the breathing warmth at his back. Bessy had put out a hand

to steady herself, and as she leaned forward, gripping his arm, a flying

end of her furs swept his face. There was a delicious pang in being thus

caught back to life; and as the sled stopped, and he sprang to his feet,

he still glowed with the sensation. Bessy too was under the spell. In

the dusk of the beech-grove where they had landed, he could barely

distinguish her features; but her eyes shone on him, and he heard her

quick breathing as he stooped to help her to her feet.

"Oh, how beautiful--it's the only thing better than a good gallop!"

She leaned against a tree-bole, panting a little, and loosening her

furs.

"What a pity it's too dark to begin again!" she sighed, looking about

her through the dim weaving of leafless boughs.

"It's not so dark in the open--we might have one more," he proposed; but

she shook her head, seized by a new whim.

"It's so still and delicious in here--did you hear the snow fall when

that squirrel jumped across to the pine?" She tilted her head, narrowing

her lids as she peered upward. "There he is! One gets used to the

light.... Look! See his little eyes shining down at us!"

As Amherst looked where she pointed, the squirrel leapt to another tree,

and they stole on after him through the hushed wood, guided by his grey

flashes in the dimness. Here and there, in a break of the snow, they

trod on a bed of wet leaves that gave out a breath of hidden life, or a

hemlock twig dashed its spicy scent into their faces. As they grew used

to the twilight their eyes began to distinguish countless delicate

gradations of tint: cold mottlings of grey-black boles against the snow,

wet russets of drifted beech-leaves, a distant network of mauve twigs

melting into the woodland haze. And in the silence just such fine

gradations of sound became audible: the soft drop of loosened

snow-lumps, a stir of startled wings, the creak of a dead branch,

somewhere far off in darkness.

They walked on, still in silence, as though they had entered the glade

of an enchanted forest and were powerless to turn back or to break the

hush with a word. They made no pretense of following the squirrel any

longer; he had flashed away to a high tree-top, from which his ironical

chatter pattered down on their unheeding ears. Amherst's sensations were

not of that highest order of happiness where mind and heart mingle their

elements in the strong draught of life: it was a languid fume that stole

through him from the cup at his lips. But after the sense of defeat and

failure which the last weeks had brought, the reaction was too exquisite

to be analyzed. All he asked of the moment was its immediate

sweetness....

They had reached the brink of a rocky glen where a little brook still

sent its thread of sound through mufflings of ice and huddled branches.

Bessy stood still a moment, bending her head to the sweet cold tinkle;

then she moved away and said slowly: "We must go back."

As they turned to retrace their steps a yellow line of light through the

tree-trunks showed them that they had not, after all, gone very deep

into the wood. A few minutes' walk would restore them to the lingering

daylight, and on the farther side of the meadow stood the sleigh which

was to carry Bessy back to Hanaford. A sudden sense of the evanescence

of the moment roused Amherst from his absorption. Before the next change

in the fading light he would be back again among the ugly realities of

life. Did she, too, hate to return to them? Or why else did she walk so

slowly--why did she seem as much afraid as himself to break the silence

that held them in its magic circle?

A dead pine-branch caught in the edge of her skirt, and she stood still

while Amherst bent down to release her. As she turned to help him he

looked up with a smile.

"The wood doesn't want to let you go," he said.

She made no reply, and he added, rising: "But you'll come back to

it--you'll come back often, I hope."

He could not see her face in the dimness, but her voice trembled a

little as she answered: "I will do what you tell me--but I shall be

alone--against all the others: they don't understand."

The simplicity, the helplessness, of the avowal, appealed to him not as

a weakness but as a grace. He understood what she was really saying:

"How can you desert me? How can you put this great responsibility on me,

and then leave me to bear it alone?" and in the light of her unuttered

appeal his action seemed almost like cruelty. Why had he opened her eyes

to wrongs she had no strength to redress without his aid?

He could only answer, as he walked beside her toward the edge of the

wood: "You will not be alone--in time you will make the others

understand; in time they will be with you."

"Ah, you don't believe that!" she exclaimed, pausing suddenly, and

speaking with an intensity of reproach that amazed him.

"I hope it, at any rate," he rejoined, pausing also. "And I'm sure that

if you will come here oftener--if you'll really live among your

people----"

"How can you say that, when you're deserting them?" she broke in, with a

feminine excess of inconsequence that fairly dashed the words from his

lips.

"Deserting them? Don't you understand----?"

"I understand that you've made Mr. Gaines and Truscomb angry--yes; but

if I should insist on your staying----"

Amherst felt the blood rush to his forehead. "No--no, it's not

possible!" he exclaimed, with a vehemence addressed more to himself than

to her.

"Then what will happen at the mills?"

"Oh, some one else will be found--the new ideas are stirring everywhere.

And if you'll only come back here, and help my successor----"

"Do you think they are likely to choose any one else with your ideas?"

she interposed with unexpected acuteness; and after a short silence he

answered: "Not immediately, perhaps; but in time--in time there will be

improvements."

"As if the poor people could wait! Oh, it's cruel, cruel of you to go!"

Her voice broke in a throb of entreaty that went to his inmost fibres.

"You don't understand. It's impossible in the present state of things

that I should do any good by staying."

"Then you refuse? Even if I were to insist on their asking you to stay,

you would still refuse?" she persisted.

"Yes--I should still refuse."

She made no answer, but moved a few steps nearer to the edge of the

wood. The meadow was just below them now, and the sleigh in plain sight

on the height beyond. Their steps made no sound on the sodden drifts

underfoot, and in the silence he thought he heard a catch in her

breathing. It was enough to make the brimming moment overflow. He stood

still before her and bent his head to hers.

"Bessy!" he said, with sudden vehemence.

She did not speak or move, but in the quickened state of his perceptions

he became aware that she was silently weeping. The gathering darkness

under the trees enveloped them. It absorbed her outline into the shadowy

background of the wood, from which her face emerged in a faint spot of

pallor; and the same obscurity seemed to envelop his faculties, merging

the hard facts of life in a blur of feeling in which the distinctest

impression was the sweet sense of her tears.

"Bessy!" he exclaimed again; and as he drew a step nearer he felt her

yield to him, and bury her sobs against his arm.