IF Jack Darcy had taken his tour for pure pleasure and enjoyment, the
time was ill chosen in every respect. Winter was bad enough; but an
unprosperous one, full of financial clouds and storms, and scurrying
drifts of distrust, was not calculated to make the way brilliant.
But he had one glorious enjoyment to begin with. He went straight to
Niagara, and took his first glimpse of it in its awesome majesty of
frost and ice. From that high exaltation we call worship, through every
intermediate degree and sense of beauty, to that of a delicate and
minute fairy dream. The winter sun radiating glowing tints, with skies
of sapphire and opal, the great stretches of wordless wonder, bound hand
and foot like some old Norse god amid his ice-fields; the one night when
a full moon silvered it with prismatic grandeur, and made of the
glittering ice-crystals entrances to diamond-mines of fabled genii,
touching him weirdly with this unearthly splendor; and the next solemn
day, when the very sky seemed chilled to unfallen snow, and the
ice-caverns turned a dull blue, reminding him of descriptions of polar
scenery, and filling his soul with a sense of boundless solitude.
Then he began his tour of the cities. He had taken some books along,
whether to perplex or make clear his brains, he hardly knew. He pored
over pages of Adam Smith, he turned to Ruskin for comfort, he picked up
Brassey's figures and experience, and Stuart Mill's strong, kindly
reasoning, and digested them in his own slow, practical, much-befogged
way, trying to solve the problems.
It was a great and wonderful world. Little Yerbury had hardly any true
idea what a mite she was, when one looked at the immense labor-fields of
the West and apparently endless resources. Yet there was the same
depression out here. Shops and mills closed, for sale, and to let; some
running on three-quarter time, with half the number of workmen, others
going on at ruinous competition; anxious, moody-eyed men walking the
streets, or grouped on corners, their coats and hats shabby, their
beards untrimmed, old boots and shoes with the heels tramped over at one
side, or a bit of stocking showing through the leather. "No man hath
hired us," said their despondent faces plainer than any words. Young men
and boys offering to do any kind of work for any kind of pay, sleeping
in station-houses; relief-stores, church charities and soup-houses,
homes for the friendless, and all such places, filled to overflowing,
and new hordes crowding in every day.
Yet there seemed to be no lack of money. It lay in banks, it went
begging for good security. Where was there any good security? Every inch
of ground, every building, stocks and furniture, were covered by
mortgages. Stock companies trembled in the balance, and went down like
card-houses. Everybody wanted to sell every thing, but there were no
buyers. Everybody wanted to work, but there was nothing to do. Everybody
was in a chronic state of grumbling; there was no profit to be made in
farming, in manufacturing, in any thing. There had been too much
over-production, for which every one blamed his neighbor. The great
warehouses were full of grain, the mills loaded up with iron, the
factories full of cloth and flannels and cottons; and yet people were
going hungry and in rags. It was puzzling and painful. We had bought too
much abroad, and sent the money out of the country, the balance of trade
would make it all right again; there had been over-production, and now
there must be a vigorous repression; there had been too much
speculation in real estate; there had been too great an accumulation of
capital in the business centres; we were fast verging to the state of
older countries, where there were the few rich and the many poor: there
was a surplus of labor, and was there not also a surplus of people?
There was another sad side to it all, that made Jack's heart ache. These
young men and boys tramping through the country, begging or worse,
swearing, telling foul stories, herding together anywhere, corrupting
one another's morals, smoking, drinking,--somehow they managed to obtain
these indulgences,--looking furtively out of languid, sodden eyes, their
faces hard and worn, their voices coarse and gruff; and they were to be
the next generation of what?--loyal and honest citizens, or jail-birds?
It was not all so sombre. At five and twenty a healthy, unwarped nature
is many-sided. There were countless marvels to see and to study. He
stumbled over people who had known Mr. Lawrence, and who had a kindly
feeling for a Hope Mills man. And he had done something more in the last
eight years than merely learn how to make cloth. He had dipped into
chemistry, and knew a little about dyes; he had studied up in grades and
kinds of wool, and was interested in labor processes. With fresh
opportunities he looked into it more closely, observed new methods of
decreasing waste, or saving labor. He was a well-informed,
well-mannered, sensible fellow; and occasionally some one would say of
him, "A smart, long-headed chap, that! The world will hear of him some
day, or I am mistaken."
He kept looking about for some place where, if the world did not hear of
him, he might get a chance in some enterprise where he could take a few
steps upward. There certainly were more men than places. The world was a
bee-hive, surely; but alas for those who swarmed out in such times as
these!
After he had gone as far West as Minnesota, he went down the
Mississippi to a different kind of civilization in the quaint old
cities. It was none the less heart-sickening. He found traces of the
war, that we had almost forgotten, fresh at every step; still it seemed
as if the hand of Nature was much more bounteous than at the bleak
North. Yet Bishop Heber's old missionary hymn rang continually through
his mind. Even amid the Florida orange-groves, and the great
cotton-fields, some cause brought about baleful results, in the unwisdom
of man.
Then to the cities of luxury and thrift, where wealth was strong enough
to crowd poverty out one side, where art and music and cultivation made
a subtile atmosphere that somehow recalled the Lawrences. He lingered
and quaffed delightsome draughts, and at last tore himself away from
seductive sights and sounds. In a dim, half-defined way the delights
came to him. Would he ever be stoic enough to spurn them?
Last of all, home with its sweet welcomes, its cleanliness and order,
its familiar furniture and cheerful fires, its easy-chairs and quaint
fragrant air, as if every thing had lain in dried rose-leaves; the
mother love and tears, the smiles out of dimmer eyes, and cousin Jane
Morgan's hearty greeting; to say nothing of his delicious supper and his
own bed, where sleep seemed awaiting him with open arms.
His mother had written a good deal of Yerbury gossip to him, but it had
been mostly of the pleasant order. When he dropped into Maverick's
office the next day, and was welcomed so heartily that it was like a
brother's greeting, he listened to the other side. Affairs were worse
than ever. The bank had gone into liquidation, and would pay about forty
per cent. Property mortgages had been foreclosed right and left; there
was nothing, scarcely, doing; there had been want and misery and
sickness, and now diphtheria was raging.
"So you see the revival didn't do every thing," said Maverick grimly.
"I'm of the opinion, if some of them had preached less, and distributed
bread and broth with a freer hand, it would have been more of a good
work. The praying would be well enough in its place, and, for those old
fellows who pray on a full stomach, very enjoyable, I dare say. But I'd
like them to look after their drains and their wells and their cisterns
before they ask the Almighty to sanctify these afflictions to the poor
wretches who suffer from them. And now, Jack Darcy, what are you going
to do? Have you found better pastures?" and Maverick glanced up with
curious inquiry.
"No," replied Jack, rather reluctantly it must be confessed. It seemed
to him now that he had been spending his time for nought, unless
pleasure counted, and he felt a trifle ashamed of it.
Maverick gave an odd little laugh that puzzled the other.
"See here, Maverick," began Jack in such earnest that he blushed like a
great boy, "I haven't found any new place for myself. The world seems
just full and running over. The great cities have their own men out of
employment, and hordes from every other place. I'd be almost ashamed to
ask for a job. I declare, I'd rather raise as much of my living as I
could in our back garden, or take Perley's farm, and put it together,
and set men raising strawberries, than tramp round, asking for work,
with a feeling that it was taken from some one who had a better right,
who was a native of the soil."
"Then you have not lost your conscience?"
"I hope not. It is the same old story everywhere. What is to be done
about it?" and Jack knit his brows. "I have been going over the books
that I thought would help or let in a little light on the matter, but it
is a wisdom hard to get at. How to make more work in the world, how to
cheapen living, how to"--
"Bring about the millennium! What dead earnest you are in, Darcy!"
"Weren't you in earnest a moment ago, Maverick, when you talked about
the praying and the bread and broth?" said Jack with a great knot drawn
in his brow.
"Yes, Heaven knows. And some one must take hold of the thing who has
eyes to see, and brains, and--and money. You see, people have crowded
into cities and towns, and if they could be sent out somewhere! Why
don't we organize colonies or something of the sort? Now, there's
Florida. Living is cheap, and in such a climate there are fewer needs of
clothing and fuel. I have been wondering why the big dons in cities did
not gather up the poor they have been feeding at soup-houses and
everywhere, and send them out with some one to manage until they could
stand alone. There would be less diphtherias and fevers and starvation;
for that's its right name, Darcy. What can you do when one's system is
all run out with meal-mush, and weak tea that is half willow-leaves, and
such trash? There's Kilburn--he has had the name of being good to the
poor this winter because he has given them trust at his store. Such
stuff! I have looked into a few samples," and the expressive nostrils
curled in disgust. "He makes an enormous profit, for he sells the
poorest kind of goods to these people at the highest prices. Then he
manages to get hold of something, house or furniture, or maybe
clothes,--I don't know. He and Deacon Boyd--Darcy, how can a man honor
religion when these two men are its exponents? So good to the poor! Pah!
It makes me sick. Isn't there a cleaner air somewhere on God's earth?
Can't they be taken out of this?"
"If they could be! There must be one way out, Maverick: better, perhaps,
than going West where thousands are tramping about. And Heaven knows
they need a new factor in civilization down there!"
The young eyes met in sudden hopeful animation. Had they solved even one
strand of the great tangle, that worse than Gordian knot which could not
be cut?
The door opened slowly; and there entered a middle-aged, rather grizzled
man, with shaggy eyebrows, sparse beard, and bent shoulders. He glanced
in hesitatingly, his eyes wandering down to Darcy.
"I declare to man!" and he stared hard, with the door-knob still in his
hand. "Jack Darcy! I heard you were home. How d'y do? How d'y do?" and
he wrung the hand warmly. "I'm powerful glad to see you," and he looked
him slowly over, from head to foot. "Why, you've grown, or something!
What a great giant you are!--Morning, doctor," nodding rather
incidentally to Maverick. "So you've had a long tramp, Jack? Your mother
brought some of the letters over to my old lady, who has been rather
poorly the last two months. Why, you could set up book-writing! Well,
what's the good word? Can't be like Yerbury all over."
"There are too many towns full of idle people, if that is what you mean.
But it was splendid, Cameron! I have one more dream,--to go up and down
the Western coast, and over the Rocky Mountains; but I want to digest
this first. I have no fancy for mental dyspepsia," and he gave a good,
wholesome laugh.
"The right way, Jack," nodded Maverick, with a shrewd twinkle in his
eye.
"Well, you've come back to a dull place,--a dull place," and Cameron
shook his head despondingly. "We used to be main proud of old Yerbury;
but--is the whole world to go on and starve to death, with such crops,
and such an abundance of every thing?"
"We are going to weather it through, Cameron," Jack answered with a
stubborn hopefulness. "There have been hard times before that have ended
in renewed prosperity."
"Yes. There was '57; hard enough, Heaven knows, with the banks going to
smash everywhere. It ruined my father. And way back in '37, when there
was such a wild-fire about real estate, and it came out just as this
has. Do people ever learn by experience, Maverick?" and the man gave a
short, unmirthful chuckle. "You could buy up half Yerbury to-day, for
taxes and mortgages. I can't, for the life of me, see how it all came
about. And that it has gone all over the world,--well, human nature in
England or Germany can't well laugh at human nature in this
country.--Are these things like cholera and fevers, doctor, taking a
clean sweep once in a while?" and Cameron gave a twist to the end of his
faded beard, as if he might wring the secret out of it.
"We have learned to manage the cholera, and see in it, not a
dispensation of Providence, but the natural result of filth and greed
and carelessness. Darcy and I are getting up a panacea now," with a
bright little laugh. "But how is Mrs. Cameron? Is her medicine out?"
"Yes;" and Cameron drew a phial from his pocket. "You don't think it
would do to stop here? She's pretty well, I should say;" and he fingered
the bottle as if he were debating whether to have it filled or not.
"No. She must go on. She is getting her strength back nicely; but it's
bad policy to stop at three-quarters of the race,--eh, Cameron? The
first warm day I'll take her out driving."
While he was talking, he reached out for the bottle, and began
compounding. Cameron nodded an acknowledgment of the last sentence, then
turning to Jack, said abruptly,--
"What was the scheme, Darcy?"
Jack flushed, and glanced at Maverick.
"Emigration, the old remedy," answered the doctor. "England has tried
her hand at it pretty successfully; so why shouldn't we? Only we need
not go out of our own country. There are thousands of acres of
productive land lying idle, and thousands of people starving, or worse.
Too many here,--not enough there."
"Where to?" Cameron asked laconically, his face unmoved by any ripple of
enthusiasm.
Jack seemed to be put on his mettle by it. Lack of faith in him always
roused his belligerent qualities, back in the old school days.
"Yes, Cameron," in an incisive tone, looking steadily out of his
determined eyes. "The cities are crowded over and over, and full of
tramps, and the West swarms with them. We need not imagine we have all
the idle people here at the East. But farming there has come to be a
business of great things, almost as bad as manufacturing. You must have
money, or the big fellows will swallow you up. But we were talking of
Florida. No winter, as one may say; and your house a simple matter, your
fuel, your clothes, a mere nothing. You could hardly starve if you
tried."
Cameron came back to his chair, pushed it out from the wall, planted
himself deliberately in it, and tilted back, pushing up his old felt
hat, as if he did not mean to have his vision obstructed. Then he gave
his beard another twist.
"Can you tell me why this is, Jack Darcy? Here are countries with fine
and lovely climates, where every thing grows to your hand; yet they
always seem to lie idle: Italy and Spain and Turkey and South America,
and our own Gardens of Eden," with a bit of sarcastic smile. "The very
ease of living seems to take the ambition out of one. Well, why
shouldn't it? Even the bees, you know, were demoralized when they found
they did not have to lay up for winter. Wouldn't those people come to be
worse tramps and idlers? I'm sure the poor white trash of the South has
helped itself very little."
"We were talking of concerted effort," interposed
Maverick,--"purchasing a large tract of land, forming a community,
taking different kinds of workmen, and making a success of it. Why
should we not have flourishing towns in Florida, as well as in Kansas?"
"To be sure, to be sure!" nodding his head and tugging at his beard in a
manner that showed he was not a whit convinced. "Then you give up," he
said, "that any thing can be done at home?"
"Any thing done at home?" Jack lifted his level brows, and stared a
little.
"Yes. The going away may all be very well. I tried it in '57; went out
to Indiana with a little money, and tried farming that I didn't know any
thing about, had the ague six months, and then came back poorer
certainly. Now, the thing is just here with a good many of us,--we have
our little homes, and in such times as these, in any hard times, we
couldn't sell for any thing worth while. Then there's many a thing, to a
man or a woman past middle life, that can't be reckoned in dollars and
cents: the home you've made for yourself, the old friends, the church,
even the familiar street you've walked over so often that every
flagstone comes to have a near look."
"But those who have no homes, no strong interests"--
"If I was going to found a colony, I should want a little better stock,"
with a short, dry laugh.
"May be you have a plan?" suggested Maverick good-naturedly.
"Well, I've thought it over a good deal this winter, sitting in the
house with the old lady;" and there came a peculiar far-off look in
Cameron's eye as he studied a figure in the carpet. "If God worked
miracles nowadays, and was to make a dozen or so honest men with a good,
stout share of brains, there might be a little lifting-up of the dull
skies. Take this town, leaving out politics and all that sort. Five
years ago we were prosperous, and there wasn't a prettier town anywhere
about. Good wages were paid, people were thrifty; and I will say it for
David Lawrence, if he was one of your high kind, he was a gentleman.
I've worked for him fifteen years steady. Then the Eastmans came in, and
there was nothing but hurry and drive, grumbling about high wages,
buying cheap wools, and if cloth was poor, blaming the men. Then wages
went down and down, and, when the men stood out, the scum of all the
places around was brought in. Yerbury improved, and beer-saloons
multiplied. Houses were thrown together and sold; and now they're all
falling apart, and standing empty, and half a dozen families are
crowding into one miserable tenement. Who made the money? Was it high
wages that ruined Hope Mills, and wrecked Yerbury Bank?"
"You have hit the truth somewhere, Cameron."
"Those men were thieves and swindlers; and I suppose to-day they're
living on the fat of the land, milk and honey thrown in. See here, I'm
not an educated man, but I have a little common sense. Suppose we'd been
let to go our ways quiet like,--the farmers holding on to their farms,
and making two blades of grass grow where one grew before. Wasn't that
some old philosopher's advice? Suppose David Lawrence hadn't built that
great palace out on Hope Terrace (he was a plainish man himself), and
there had been five or six beside him making a moderate share of money.
He's lost all his great fortune, there's seventy thousand or so gone
somewhere, the bank has smashed with thousands more of everybody's
money, with nothing much to show but trumpery mortgages; there's no work
and no money, and a howl goes up that there has been over-production.
Not over-production of honesty, I take it."
Maverick looked at the little earnest man, and laughed a hearty,
cheering sort of laugh that was like pouring oil into a wound. Jack
stared with wide-open eyes.
"I've been to hear Rantley two or three times,--he's going about
lecturing, you know,--but I don't see as he has any very good plan for
getting work on its legs again. Then I've listened to the parson this
winter, to please the old lady; and he is sure all this is a judgment
for our sins. Seems to me, judgment went a little askew: why doesn't it
touch Eastman and such fellows?"
"Has nothing been done?" asked Jack. "I have heard no business gossip
for the last three months. Can't it be proved that he was a defaulter?"
"Perhaps it could. The old lady was reading the other morning about the
scapegoat being sent into the wilderness with everybody's sins on his
head; and I guess they'd rather have _him_ off somewhere, and pack the
trouble on him. He might tell too much if he was here. They couldn't get
the money back, even if he has it; but no one ever will believe that
David Lawrence profited by it. That money belongs to the people of
Yerbury, who have earned it, and saved it; and I say thieving and
roguery have more to do with hard times than 'surplus of labor.' The big
men have taken the money that belonged to the little ones."
"None of the Lawrence estate has been settled, I suppose?" asked Jack.
"Every thing is for sale. The mortgage on the big house is to be
foreclosed, also on the mill I believe. I declare to you, Darcy, it
makes my heart ache to see those dumb spindles, and the great silent
engine standing like a mourner at a funeral. Come now, why should Hope
Mills go to ruin, and Yerbury fall to pieces, while you and Maverick go
and build up Florida? Wouldn't the money and the energy do something
here?"
Cameron's eyes looked out of their overhanging thatch with a puzzled,
thoughtful expression, as if there must be a solution to the mystery.
Jack was startled. Building up Florida looked feasible, but building up
Yerbury--
"Then you will not go with us?" said Maverick with a half-laugh.
"I've my little home clear of debt, and a trifle at interest; and over
in Yerbury churchyard there are two graves dear to me and my old lady.
It would break her heart to leave them. And sometimes, Maverick, I thank
God, that I've no sons to grow up tramps or worse. No, I'll stay here,
and fight through somehow."
They were silent for several minutes, each one tugging at the knotty
problem. Then Cameron rose, reached out for the phial of medicine, drove
his slouch-hat down over his forehead, and walked toward the door.
"Drop in and see us, Jack, after you have thought it over a bit.
Mother's always had a warm corner in her heart for you.--Morning,
doctor;" and, nodding, he closed the door behind him.