"FATHER!" exclaimed Jack a few days after this parting from his bosom
friend, "I think I will go in the mill for a year or two, if there is
any thing for me to do. Meanwhile my inspiration may come along."
"But what would you like best, Jack?"
"That's just the trouble," and the youthful brows knit in perplexity.
"All things seem alike to me: I haven't any choice."
Mr. Darcy drew a long breath that was almost a sigh. If Jack only would
evince some preference!
However, a place was found as under-bookkeeper. It was desperately
tiresome to Jack to sit perched on a high stool all day; and after three
months of it he begged to be put at something else.
At this period we had gone through our costly civil war; and, instead of
being exhausted as friends and enemies predicted, the machinery of
business appeared to have been set in motion with a new and overwhelming
impetus. Every thing was wanted; everybody had work or money; and the
most useless commodity found a purchaser: as if our anguish had crazed
us, and we went into a delirium of mental opium, and dreamed wild,
exhilarating dreams which we mistook for reality.
Yerbury had been a slow, solid, conservative town. Property was low,
taxes light and easily paid, a balance on hand in the treasury to
commence the new year, and very little pauperism in the town. Yerbury
officials utilized their inefficient population, and their county jail
was not made a palace of luxury. The old-fashioned element in the place
held crime as the result of sin instead of occult disease,--a thing to
be punished, rather than petted. It had good railroad connections,
plenty of water, with one navigable stream, and a variety of industries.
Iron, shoes, hats, paper, and clothing were manufactured to a
considerable extent, to say nothing of many smaller branches. Hope Mills
was the largest, the focus of the town, and had the prestige of being
handed down through three generations, though never as extensive as now.
Toward the west there was a succession of pretty hills that lay in the
broad sunshine, making you think somehow of Spanish slopes, covered with
vineyards, olives, and luxuriant verdure. Over beyond, a wide,
diversified country range, farms, woodland, hills and valleys, with a
branch of the river winding through, called, rather unromantically,
Little Creek.
On these slopes, the new part, dwelt the aristocracy. Streets wound
around in picturesque fashion to make easy grades, and many old
forest-trees were preserved by that means, giving the place an air of
years, rather than yesterday and improvement. There were two pretty
parks,--one devoted to Fourth-of-July orations from time immemorial;
there were churches of every denomination; a boarding and day school for
young ladies, the academy, some excellent district schools; a hall with
library and reading-room; a bank; rows of attractive shops and stores;
and, coming down in the scale of refinement, beer-saloons and
concert-halls, kept generally up to a certain point of morality. There
were so many laboring-men, and they must have something by way of
entertainment.
It struck Jack with a curious wonder. These stolid faces and plodding
steps were part of the human machines out of which wealth was being
ground. They went to the beer-shops at night in their dirty clothes,
smelling of grease and dye, drank beer, played a few games, and
harangued each other, and went home maudlin or stupefied. Perhaps it was
more comfortable than the slatternly wives and crying children. Did it
need to be so? If you gave the workingman a helping hand, did he turn
straightway into an unreasoning demagogue?
_He_ was not likely to be tempted by such doings. His home had always
been too clean and pleasant. He still kept up with the boys, and joined
the lyceum club; but the intimate companionship of his life was gone.
Fred did not come home for Christmas. College-life was
delightful,--would be just perfect if dear old Jack were there. The
glowing letters kept alive his own secret dissatisfaction. But how
explain it to one who would be sure to say, "Get out of it all, Jack: no
one has any right to keep you in such a distasteful round, and thwart
your life-plans." To be sure, he had no life-plans.
One raw, cold March day, Mr. Darcy went out to repair a roof that had
leaked in the previous storm. He rarely minded wind or weather.
"I declare," he said that evening, dropping into his capacious armchair,
"I feel as if I should never get warmed through. I do believe we shall
have a tremendous snowstorm to take this chill out of the air. Jack,
read the paper aloud, won't you?"
Jack complied. Local items, bits of State news, and the general progress
of the country; the starvation of a nation at the antipodes, the
discovery of a wonderful silver-mine, plans for new railroads,--how busy
the world was! It stirred Jack's youthful blood.
"I'd like to be a railroad-president," said Jack suddenly.
His father stared, then laughed at the absurdity. "Why, you're only a
boy, Jack," he replied.
"I know it. But the boy who means to be a railroad-president must begin
somewhere. Or if I could own a silver-mine," he went on, with the
boundless audacity of youth.
"Could you find use for the silver?" asked his father humorously.
Jack flushed, and lapsed into dreams. Grandmother opposite was nodding
in her chair, her knitting still in her fingers. Jack left his vision
for a moment, to calculate if the old chest upstairs was not nearly full
of stockings. His mother sat sewing some trifle, and just raised her
eyes with that longing, beseeching glance mothers so often give to their
sons.
"If women only did not care so much for one," thought Jack, "or if there
had been a great family of us. And still I can't see the wonderful
difference between going to college, and going to seek your fortune.
Does two or three hundred miles more matter when you are once away?"
The snow came on through the night. There being nothing urgent on hand,
Mr. Darcy remained within; but Jack buffeted the storm gallantly. It
would be worse than this out in the new countries where he meant to go
some time.
The next day Mr. Darcy was out. There was a dull pain in his breast,
going through to his back, and he coughed a little. It went on thus for
forty-eight hours, when the pain became intense, and fever set in. Dr.
Kendrick was summoned; and, though the case was severe, it had no
alarming symptoms at first. Jack went to and fro with his merry whistle;
speculative he might be, but he was not introspective or morbid: wife
and mother watched at home.
There came one of those sudden and inexplicable turns in the disease.
Jack was stunned, incredulous. In his mother's eyes lay a look of
helpless terror he was never to forget.
"You'll care for them always, Jack; you'll never leave them," said his
father imploringly, in one lucid interval.
"Always," answered the young voice bravely.
"Thank you, my son, my dear boy;" and there was a fervent clasp of the
hand.
A few days later Bernard Darcy lay coffined in the pretty parlor, while
wife and mother were crushed with grief.
"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes;" and Jack dropped the first handful of
earth in his father's open grave. The two women clung to him,--he was
their all. Here lay his duty as long as God pleased.
It seemed for weeks after this as if Mrs. Darcy would follow her
husband. She looked so white and wan, she was so feeble that some days
she could not leave her bed. Grandmother rallied with that invincible
determination not to be beaten down if her prop was wrenched away.
Jack was now a few months past eighteen, stout, and growing tall
rapidly. There was about him a sturdy persistence and the good common
sense that lends an adaptiveness or pliability of disposition, so to
speak, that is often mistaken for content. Since he must stay here for
some years to come, he would devote himself to learning the business of
manufacturing woollen cloth. It entertained him more than keeping books.
For the sake of these two bereaved women, he would take an actual
interest in the work he had to do.
Looking back in after-years, he was glad he made the resolve, and stood
by it manfully. It gave ballast to his character, shaped him to a
definite purpose. A narrow life, to be sure; nay, more, a distasteful
one: but he did his best, and waited, and that was all that could be
asked of him.
Early in June there was a great commotion at the mansion on Hope
Terrace. Miss Agatha Lawrence was married to Hamilton Minor, one of the
great firm of brokers in Wall Street, 'Morgan, Minor, & Co.' For weeks
it had been the talk of the town. The trousseau came from Paris, and was
marvellous. The presents were on exhibition, and created a vast amount
of envy and admiration,--silver, jewels, pictures, crystal, china, and
laces. And last of all a sumptuous wedding,--every delicacy in season
and out of season, costly wines, pyramids of cake, and a lavish
profusion of flowers. Nothing so grand had ever occurred in Yerbury.
Fred and a stylish Miss Minor were to stand. He reached home just in
time; and, as he was to be off again with the bridal party, he sent a
note of regret to Jack.
Jack had too much good sense to feel hurt, though he was disappointed. A
few weeks later he took his mother and grandmother up to the mountains
for change of air, and enjoyed the vacation hugely himself. So it
happened he did not see Fred at all.
The second year letters languished, indeed failed, I may as well admit.
Jack was being rapidly inducted into the wisdom of the world, Fred into
the wisdom of society. They would never meet on the old plane again. The
mill-hand would be no companion for the son and heir of David Lawrence,
Esq.
It was not in Jack Darcy's nature to be bitter or cynical. He just
accepted the fact. Somewhere he and Fred had outgrown each other, and
the boyish interests, once such a bond of union. Fred would be an
educated and cultivated gentleman.
Why should he be left in the background? His ambition was suddenly
roused again, and he more than half wished himself in college. He went
back to his books; he joined a debating-society. There was no need of
being a mere clod because he had to work. David Lawrence was a
gentleman. And the next spring he took up a little botany and
horticulture with his gardening. Old Mr. Rising down the street, who had
been gardener to some great lord,--a peculiar, obstinate Englishman,
with his head crammed full of odd bits of knowledge,--took a fancy to
Jack. They discussed not only fruit and flowers, but trade in its
various aspects, as Mr. Rising had relatives at Manchester who had
soared to the ambitions of mills and factories.
Time sped on, and they came to the second summer. Miss Gertrude Lawrence
was a belle now, and the great house was constantly filled with guests.
The Lawrence equipages were seen in every direction. Mrs. Minor was up
frequently, in grand state. The lawn was gay with croquet-parties, the
evenings were brilliant with lights and music: they had two elegant
garden-parties, when the grounds were illuminated with colored lanterns,
and the teas were festivals in themselves. Fred had brought home two
college chums, and for the first fortnight was deeply engrossed. Then,
too, the girls no longer nagged at him. He was developing into an
elegant young man, with due regard for the proprieties.
He did go to call on Jack one evening. It was a duty, a rather awkward
and embarrassing one, and he took to himself great credit in the point
of moral courage. He understood thoroughly now what Agatha had striven
so sedulously to explain, the difference in social station. He was not
likely in the future to make a blunder on that side, but it would not do
to turn the cold shoulder to Jack all at once. "A boy's will's the
wind's will," he repeated with much complacency, and it was but natural
that it should veer in other directions. Jack was a good enough fellow,
but no Sir Galahad or Sir any one now.
He was a little shocked at Mrs. Darcy in her mourning dress and widow's
cap. She was pale, and with the extreme delicacy so often pronounced
characteristic of American women. Grandmother sat in state and dignity,
rather resentful of what she termed in her secret heart Fred's neglect,
but a thing she would not have confessed openly if she had been put to
torture. And Jack?
Frederic De Woolfe Lawrence studied him with a critical eye. A great,
lumbering, inelegant fellow! Jack seemed to have grown out in every
direction, without being finished up in any. He was taken somewhat at a
disadvantage, too: somehow he fancied, if he had met Fred alone in a
stray walk, there would have been less formality.
They talked about college. Fred was doing well, for he was by nature a
student. Society's arts and airs would never entirely uproot that love.
He meant to distinguish himself, and have one of the prize essays. Jack
was rather grave and quiet, hard to get on with, Fred thought; and he
was relieved when the duty was ended, and he could go with a good grace.
Jack lingered on the porch, clinching his fingers, and listening to the
jaunty retreating footstep. There was something different in Fred's walk
even, a buoyancy as if he could override any little difficulties that
fate might have in store for him. Jack smiled grimly. Fortune had
showered every good gift upon him. He would go proudly, successfully,
through life. He would be praised and honored--and for what?
For a moment Jack felt like wrestling with him, shoulder to shoulder, to
distance him, to defeat him, to lower his complacent pride. His
half-patronizing manner had stung keenly. Then the real nobility of his
nature cropped out, and he laughed at his own sudden heat and passion.
"It would be folly," he said softly to himself. "I could not distinguish
myself in any line he will be likely to follow. He must work his way: I
must work mine. He knows what he means to do; and there he has gone
ahead of me, for I really do not know my own mind. No, there's no
further basis for a friendship: the boy-love has had its day, and died.
After all, isn't that the history of every thing?" and Jack looked up to
the stars, still with a little wordless pain at his heart.
He heard during the next week that Fred had gone West with one of his
friends, who was nephew to a great railway magnate. It would be only a
flying trip, to be sure, but here Jack was tempted to envy him. That
boundless West, the land of his own dreams!
Grandmother grew a trifle less energetic, still it could not be said
that her health began to fail. Mrs. Darcy remained about the same. Every
day Jack realized how much he was to the two women. To leave them would
be absolute cruelty.
At Christmas of this year Miss Gertrude Lawrence was married. The
wedding was rather quieter, from the fact that it was winter, and the
bride was to leave for Europe the next day. Irene was shooting up into a
tall girl, and being educated at a fashionable and expensive
boarding-school. Nothing happened to impair her friendship with Sylvie
Barry, though the two girls were as dissimilar in many respects as Jack
and Fred, but they both stood on the same social plane.
Meanwhile matters at Yerbury prospered mightily. The town was quite
bright at night with the glow from factory-windows, and people seemed
always hurrying to and fro. New shops and stores were started, new
streets were laid out, rows of houses built in town, and out on the edge
pretty and ugly suburban villas. Property began to increase everywhere.
Gertrude and her husband George Eastman came back to Yerbury in about
five months. He had begun his career as clerk in a bank, and joined his
brother afterward as an army-contractor. From thence they had branched
into general speculating, and were both considered rich men. Mr. Minor
owned a Fifth-avenue palace, and Mrs. Minor never came to Yerbury
without her maid. Mrs. Eastman could not have the palace in town, so she
decided to have a handsome summer residence at Yerbury, and spend her
winters at different hotels. Mr. Eastman thought he saw a grand opening
just in this pretty spot. Property was ridiculously low. Here were farms
and farms that might as well be cut up into building-lots, and turned
into cities. Here was the river-front, here were railroads: why not have
twice or thrice as many shops? why not call in the people from far and
wide, and make Yerbury a place of note? Time had been when our fathers
were content to dream and doze, but now it behooved everybody to be up
and stirring. In the new race the laggards would fall far behind.
Mr. Eastman set the example by purchasing one large tract, and laying
out streets. Then uprose houses as if by magic. Modern improvements,
water, gas, bath, butler's pantries, and dumb-waiters; and the houses
offered so cheaply that the solid, slow-going, honest business-men
wondered how it could be done. The places had a wonderfully seductive
look, and were sought after eagerly.
There was a peculiar interest in all this to Jack. When one day somebody
said,--
"Downer's property south of the bridge has gone for thirty thousand
dollars. Five years ago he'd been glad to have taken ten for it. Crater
and Harmon are going to build a big factory,"--Jack's heart went up with
a bound.
He still wanted to get away from Yerbury. He began to feel that he had
made a mistake with his life, and was anxious to rectify it if possible.
He did not see how he could do it here. He had gone into the groove, and
it was hard getting out. But if some one came along, and offered them a
fortune!
The chance drew near. A new street was prospected through Miss Barry's
grounds, through the Lanier place farther back, and the southern end
would touch the Darcy place, giving it some new fronts and available
lots, and placing the house on the corner. There would be sufficient
ground for the width of the street. A petition was forthwith circulated.
Alas that there could be people so blind to their own interests and the
general welfare of the community! Miss Barry stoutly resisted. She even
inspired some of her neighbors to that extent of opposition that they
would not sell at any price. Destroy the beauty of Larch Avenue, that
had been "Lovers' Walk" in the old days, and held so many tender
reminiscences!
"When I am gone I don't care what is done with the place," said Miss
Barry. "It will have but little sentiment for the next generation. A
change to me now would be like tearing up an old tree by the roots. I
could not endure it. They may have their elegant new houses; but give me
my large airy rooms and my old-time flowers, my nectarines and apricots.
Let me live my few years in peace and quiet."
"There is certainly enough to improve," returned Grandmother Darcy.
"There are miles and miles that people are glad to sell. Let them take
that. Let them build up the vacant lots. And where are all the people
coming from to fill them?"
"The factories and mills will bring in the people," said Jack sturdily.
"There is plenty of room elsewhere," returned Miss Barry with some
asperity. "There certainly is no need of turning people out of homes
they like, and have made comfortable."
"I suppose you cannot look at it in a business light," said Jack. "Women
rarely do"--
"There have been just such whirlwinds before, Mr. Darcy," said the
shrewd little old lady. "I have lived through two of them myself. And it
seems to me it is an epidemic of running in debt, rather than
prosperity. If everything were paid for; but you see here are
improvement-bonds, and our town runs in debt: here is everybody raising
money on mortgages. How is it to be paid? Do wages and salaries double?
History proves that it is a bad thing for a state when its rich men grow
richer, and its poor poorer."
"I am sure they need not," said Jack valiantly. "There is a higher scale
of wages paid than ever before."
"And no account made of thrift or economy. Enticements at every corner;
women flaunting silks and laces as everyday gear, with no sacredness;
old-fashioned neatness despised, industry ridiculed; men lounging in
beer-shops; girls flirting on the public streets, having no duties
beyond a day's work in a mill. What will the homes and the wives of the
next generation be like?"
"But that was all so irrelevant," said Jack after she had gone. "Women
mix up everything. Now, here: you are offered a big price for this
property. You two could live at ease all the rest of your life, and I"--
"You would go away," said his mother sorrowfully.
"Well, perhaps not," trying to make the tone indifferent.
"Jack," began his grandmother, sitting very erect, and glancing straight
before her into vacancy, "I am an old woman now; and, like Miss Barry, I
could not take a change comfortably. No other place will ever be home to
your mother or me. There is some money,--enough, I think, to take care
of us both. So, if you cannot be content, if you must have the restless
roving of youth out before your blood can cool, go and try the world. It
is pretty much alike all over,--some one going up while another goes
down; chances here, and chances there. As for the few years left me"--
And there was a slight tremble in her voice.
"Don't fret. I'm not going away," said Jack crossly, huskily, too much
hurt to study his tone. "If I can't always see things as you do"--
There were tears in his mother's eyes. Jack rose suddenly, thrust his
hands in his pockets, and walked out into the twilight. There was
nothing to be done with so obstinate a problem as his life. He would
learn the business thoroughly, getting on as fast as possible, and some
time make a strike out for himself, become a manufacturer in turn. The
thing was settled now. Maybe some one would want him for mayor or
congressman. There was a time when David Lawrence, Esq., had been a
comparatively poor man; and though Jack felt that he would hardly turn
his hand over to have a million of dollars put in it for the mere
money's worth, if he could not discover a silver-mine, or build a
railroad over the Rocky Mountains, he might become a rich man. Wealth
was a mighty lever, after all. He shut his lips grimly, and pushed his
hat down over his eyes. In the early summer dusk, fragrant with rose and
violet, he went over the old battle-ground. Did some enemy sow it
continually with dragon's teeth? To stay here eight or ten years,
mayhap, to make all the money he could. Not one year of her life did he
mean to grudge grandmother.
It was quite late when he came in, but his mother was watching for him.
She put her arms softly about his neck, and kissed him.
"Have a little patience, dear," she said, in tender, motherly tones; but
he knew her sympathy was with him.
"Yes, I mean to. I don't care as much as I did an hour ago. I'm going to
set myself steadily to business. You'll hear no more moans or groans out
of me, mother."
"Jack--you know I would go to the end of the world with you."
"I believe you would--yes, I do. There, good-night!" for she was crying.
"This is the way we rule circumstances," said Jack dryly, sitting down
in his own room, and taking up Carlyle. "What an amount of humbug is
talked in this world,--yes, and written too!"