AFTER the first of January it came off bitterly cold. Coal went up half
a dollar on a ton; and flour rose, more by the greed of speculators than
any scarcity, or any demand for it abroad. There was considerable
suffering, though not as much as the winter before. The men and women
and boys and girls at Hope Mills were thankful enough for their
seventy-five per cent, and did their very best. A spirit of economy and
emulation ran through the whole brotherhood. Every month Cameron
announced whatever saving had been made in different departments, and
the hands were proud enough of it. Those who had taken their whole
winter's coal out of the share were quite jubilant. Once a week the
workmen had a meeting, and discussed matters a little. Three men had
been reprimanded, but on the whole the _morale_ was excellent. Winston
was on the alert continually, east, west, anywhere, buying here, selling
there, seeing in every thing the promise of better times.
"We've reached the last ditch as surely as they did in the war," he said
to Darcy, rubbing his hands in great glee. "I tell you, old chap, it was
a lucky thought of starting just as we did. You see, we shall come up
with the good times; for I do honestly believe the worst is over."
Jack smiled, but was not so sanguine. They had only gone such a little
way on the five-years' journey. But there were some very encouraging
rays right around them. Kit Connelly's coffee-house was working to a
charm. Jack began to think that drinking liquors was not so much a
besetting sin, as a natural sequence of having nothing else to drink
when you were cold or hot, or tired or hungry. The men fell into the
habit of going to Kit's for their midday lunch, and presently some of
the women went over. The room was so bright and pleasant; and, with Miss
Rose there, they were on their best behavior. In the evening Mrs.
Connelly brought her work, and sat by the desk. Some of the younger men,
who had no homes; as one may say, dropped in, and looked over the books.
Once two young chaps had come up from Keppler's to have a little fun, as
they said, and were rather noisy. Mrs. Connelly rose.
"Gentlemen," she said, "you forget yourselves. This is an orderly, quiet
house, not a tavern. If you cannot submit to the rules, you must leave
it."
"Leave it! Come, who'll put us out!" laughed the bully. "Let's see you
try," with an insolent leer at the lady.
Two men were sitting at a table just a little back of them. Their eyes
met. Both rose; and, each seizing a shoulder of the bully, he was
marched out before he could make the slightest resistance, his companion
looking on in amazement.
"Next time you insult a lady in her own house, you will not get off so
easily! Just bear that in mind."
The fellow uttered an oath, but the door was shut in his face.
"Thank you, John Kelly, and you, Ben Hay," said Mrs. Connelly, in a
brave voice, though her heart fluttered a little.
The other young ruffian rose, and walked out quietly.
"If you didn't mind, Ben Hay," she said, an hour or so after, as they
were shutting up for the night, "I'd like to have you drop in quite
often of an evening. The boys are hardly big enough if we should ever be
beset by such scamps as that, and you've always been so friendly-like."
"Yes," answered Ben, flushing, and casting a sheepish look at the desk,
where Rose's curly head was bent over her accounts. "Yes, I'm at your
service. It's enough sight cheerfuller here than in Mother Mitchell's
boarding-house. I'll be glad to come."
"Thank you."
Miss Barry heard of this, and told it over to Jack.
"Ben Hay is a good, plucky fellow. He used to go down at noon for beer,
but I do not think he has been since the coffee-house was opened.
Sylvie, do you know, I believe reformers in general would be more
successful if they put a good and pleasant thing in the place of the
evil they assail. Too often they leave their convert to pick his way
alone. Hay is very much interested in the plans of the mill. The
meetings have done this much already,--a spirit of inquiry has been
awakened in some of the men, and they are reading up what other people
have achieved in this line. I want them to get well grounded before
there comes any strain. We can't go on prospering forever. That would be
too much like fairy-land."
"But every one thinks the panic nearly at an end," and Sylvie studied
the grave face before her.
"I do not want to croak," and Jack gave a little laugh that sounded
forced, "but we have just begun to pay off our debts. Every city and
town, and nearly every individual, is in debt. If we could pay with
promises to pay, we might tide over a while longer; but when interest
reaches a certain point, it swallows capital. If we can meet our
indebtedness everywhere, as fast as it matures, well and good: if not,
then we have only nibbled at the crust of our bitter pie."
"Anyhow," cried Sylvie, with the woman's sanguine nature, "Yerbury is a
great deal better off than it was last winter. Every one admits there
is much less suffering."
"There is more employment, and no broken bank," with a cheerful smile.
"Do you know," said the young girl presently, while a faint color went
wandering over her fair face, "that they are doing a marvellous stroke
of business at Garafield's, even if the times are bad? Mrs. Garafield
was down to tea a few evenings since, and she was greatly encouraged.
There is such a rage about the new style of papering. Everybody has run
mad on dados and friezes, and fresco patterns, bordering, and harmonies
of color," laughingly. "And they have some wonderful new designs."
"Fred is in just the right place. If he has courage to fight through,"
and there came a curious, almost foreboding expression in the
sympathetic eyes.
"You care a good deal for him, Jack! And yet he did not use you nobly,"
with a peculiar regret in the tone. "It is the one thing"--
"Sylvie, if I forgave it, surely you can." Then he turned his eyes upon
her, and read or rather dreamed of something in a dim, dazed way, the
story of a bygone summer. Had it been more to her than any one thought?
Miss Barry had hinted to his mother that Sylvie's decision in the matter
was a great disappointment to her. There had been a decision, then, and
one adverse to Fred Lawrence.
"I hate a false and cowardly man!" her cheeks were flaming now. "And
when you were schoolboys together,--when Agatha and Gertrude were so
afraid he would lower himself if he looked at any boy below his own
social position,--he used to stand up for you,--yes, he did,--and fight;
of course not in a brutal way with fists," and she laughed at her own
conceit, "but in that higher, finer manner, with no shield or weapon
save his love for you. I used to like to see you together,--you so
sturdy and manful and true, and he delicate and handsome and adoring.
And then"--
"Sylvie, I wonder if a woman can understand a man's friendship. We never
had any quarrel. We just drifted apart. I don't believe we forgot each
other. Circumstances took him out of my sphere, into a new one. If I had
been there in college, going along with him step by step, don't you
suppose he would have stood up for me in the face of his fine friends,
just as he used to with his sisters?"
"I hope so: I would like to believe it."
"I am more just to him than you, Sylvie," said Jack, a little wounded.
"I _know_ it. I don't doubt it any more than I doubt--well, myself. He
might have come--I was always sorry to see him avoid me, and I think he
was weak, but he never forgot."
"He _was_ weak, he was worse, Jack." There was a curious cry of anguish
in her voice, and her shoulders swayed unconsciously, while her eyes
looked out on the summer night he could not see.
"Don't get so excited over it, Sylvie," and the pleasant, cheery laugh
seemed to bring healing on its wings. "Whatever it was, and we will let
all that go, he made the _amende honorable_ the night we had tea
together up there in the great house. We took up our friendship just
where it had dropped. Men never go over those crooked and thorny steps
of the past, they have so much work to do in the present and the future.
I wanted then to make a position for him in the mill; but it was not
possible, and would not have been the part of wisdom under _any_
circumstances. Yet it seemed as if I had stepped in his place. I was
glad to hear of this other, though Fred would have been happier
elsewhere. Sylvie, I do not believe you realize what it cost him to come
back to Yerbury, to walk about, a working-man, where he had driven in
his carriage. So down at the bottom there is the temper of the real blue
steel, which _can_ bend."
"How generous you are, Jack!" There was something more than admiration
in her tone, and yet she was wondering if she could ever forgive her
fallen hero.
"See here, Sylvie, I don't mean to question any one's religion, but I've
often thought about the rejoicing up above, over the one who went
astray. I do not believe we rejoice with a very full heart: maybe we are
not heavenly enough. We can never be sure of our own strength until some
far-reaching test is applied, and yet it may not be an entirely true
test. It may quiver about the weak spot in our souls; but, while there
is any feeling, one cannot be entirely lost. That is why I say he never
forgot. And you and I ought to rejoice that he _did_ come back instead
of going off in that gloomy, diseased, Manfred style, and upbraiding the
world. 'Whatever his hand found to do'--that was one of grandmother's
texts, and he went bravely at it."
"I do believe you are a better Christian than I," she answered softly,
her eyes limpid with emotion.
"No. Perhaps not even a better friend;" and a smile played about his
mouth.
"A truer friend, a more generous one"--
"What were we talking of?" in a sudden change of tone. "Oh, the business
at Garafield's! Fred is a good deal of an artist, an intellectual artist
I should say; and, though he may not attain to fame by painting
pictures, there are many other points coming to be appreciated. He is in
the way for usefulness; and, if he wins the bays for beauty as well, I
am sure we shall all rejoice. I heard he had been designing."
"You hear every thing." Sylvie made a capricious little _moue_. Her nods
and gestures were so much a part of her, so piquant, decisive, and full
of expression, when she did not intrench herself behind a studied
dignity.
"I am glad you have heard it. I was wondering how best to tell you. I
thought Garafield's might be a stepping-stone, these hard times, but it
may prove the veritable ladder itself. Only"--
"Well!" with a trifle of impatience, as if she could not endure the
suggestiveness of the tone.
"I wonder if you understand the courage it took for Fred Lawrence to
make a home here in Yerbury, to bring his mother and sister; for you see
he must endure for them as well as himself. Mrs. Lawrence will always be
an invalid, I suppose. He thinks her quite changed and softened:
evidently she clings to him. They see none of their old friends. Miss
Lawrence never goes anywhere."
"As if one could help that!" almost passionately. "Auntie wrote a note
to Mrs. Lawrence, and it was merely answered. They do not desire to
receive any one. We can only let them alone, Jack."
"Even then we can hardly fail to appreciate what he is doing, possibly
suffering. I think he will come in time to win back all the regard his
friends ever gave him," Jack Darcy said in a steady tone.
Was he pleading for him? Sylvie was somewhat puzzled, the most so,
perhaps, about herself. How much had she cared for Fred in that old
time? If not at all, why did this feeling of shame over a fallen idol
continually haunt her? She compared the two men in every thing, and
sometimes was vexed to admit that Jack was the nobler.
Their walk had come to an end. They paused at the gate; and a third
person striding up Larch Avenue took in the drooping, attentive, and
pliant figure, the strong, protecting, powerful personality of the
other,--and wondered, as he had more than once before. Were they friends
merely? It was not possible for a woman to see so much of Jack Darcy's
noble, manly life, and not admire, not love, Dr. Maverick admitted. She
showed in many ways that she did care for him. Oddly enough she
sheltered herself under his friendly care when other admirers came too
near. Could not Darcy see! What a blind, stupid mole he must be in this
respect! and the doctor kicked a stone in his path with such force that
the two turned in the midst of their good-bys, and waited with smiling
faces for him to reach them. Not a shade of annoyance in look or tone at
the interruption.
"The queerest lovers," he thought to himself. "If I stood in that man's
place"--
Jack went homeward in a curiously speculative mood. He has always
fancied for Sylvie some handsome, spirited knight, whose mental
intuitions would be as delicate and refined as hers, whose enjoyment as
intense. Little as he knew of love, he understood their friendship too
thoroughly to be betrayed into any mistake. And he wondered now if he
held the key to Sylvie's spiritual enfranchisement of all other men? If
she had not loved Fred Lawrence, she had come too dangerously near it
ever to free herself entirely from whatever thrall his soul had thrown
over hers. She _had_ been disappointed in him, he read that from her
tone; but surely, if he brought himself up to a finer and truer standard
than any known in that enervating atmosphere of luxury, would she still
be implacable? How could he best serve these two people, whom he loved
so entirety?
He had many other things to busy himself about beside love and
friendship. March came on apace, and the balance-sheet for the six
months had to be put in shape. The accounts had been systematically
kept: that he had insisted upon in the beginning. Cameron knew every
gallon of oil, every pound of wool, every penny spent for repairs and
stock; Hurd and Yardley had kept account of every yard of cloth, and
what quality, that had passed through their hands; Winston, of
travelling, advertising, commissions, &c.; and Jack went over every
thing. They had done wonderfully. There was actually a balance of profit
to every man, woman, and child. The forms were printed, and distributed
to every employee, and there was a great rejoicing time. They engaged
the Cooking Club to provide them a supper, and the young people had a
merry dance afterward.
"It's hardly safe to halloo until you are out of the woods," said some
of the solid old men of Yerbury, who were living snugly on the interest
of government-bonds. "Six months is no test at all. Wait until there is
a hard pull, and you will not be so jubilant."
"No," answered Jack with a humorous twinkle in his eye: "it's right to
have the rejoicing now, when we have fairly earned it. The man who
croaks when Providence has smiled upon him, deserves the frown; and he
who is unthankful for small successes hardly has a right to great ones.
I do not expect all fair sailing, but we will weather the storms
together."
"It _is_ rather unfortunate," commented another wise-acre. "I have
observed these wonderful beginnings seldom end well. If you should have
a run of bad luck now, your men will be dissatisfied, and likely blame
you for not keeping up to that mark. I shouldn't have made such a great
effort, and then there would have been a chance for improvement."
"A new broom sweeps clean, but it _will_ get worn out," with sundry
mysterious nods.
"I declare," said Jack to his friend and comforter, Maverick, "half the
town looks at me as if I must have robbed a bank, or falsified accounts,
told a lie, or cheated, or maybe murdered some rich old don, and made
merry on his money. Why can't people rejoice with you when there is any
thing to rejoice about,--an event which does not happen so often in
these evil days? I do believe Boyd, and a lot of the others, would be
glad to see the scheme fail; but I'll work night and day to make a
success of it. It shall not go down," and Jack set his lips together in
a way that spoke volumes for his resolve.
"I have observed before that some people are fond of disparaging plans
that they have no hand in," returned the doctor coolly.
"And philanthropy is a much-derided virtue. If the old Athenian had been
a stock-broker or a bank-director, he might not have been sent into
exile, eh?" and Darcy laughed good-humoredly. "If I have kept a few
people from starvation this winter, I ought surely to have as much
credit as to have dealt around alms. As for the success, we had the
reputation of Hope Mills in our favor, and every man had his own fortune
at stake, and brought out the best that was in him."
He sent Miss McLeod her half-yearly rent, a copy of the statement, and a
very temperate letter. He was quite proud to think he had no need of
accepting her proffered favor, but he thanked her again for it.
She answered promptly. She had shown the statement to Mr. Hildreth, and
he thought it remarkable. Wasn't it a trifle too rose-colored to last?
Count on her as a friend, if evil days came; and we none of us could
tell exactly what was in store. The financial horizon was by no means
clear.
A few others gave him words of heartfelt encouragement. The Rev. Mr.
Marlow spoke of him in very high terms, much to Sylvie's delight, and
said already there had been a great change in the mill-hands. The
coffee-house he considered an especially commendable thought.
There was a quiet change going on that was destined to bear more
abundant fruit in the future. Some of the men and women had begun to
think a little for themselves. The pupils of the cooking-school were
beginning the A B C of beauty and neatness. Their rooms were swept
cleaner; their clothes took on a more tidy aspect. With the opening
spring, gardens and court-yards were cleared of their rubbish, and
flower-beds flourished again. Sylvie gave her girls one very instructive
lecture on slips and flower-seeds, and one Saturday they went out to
the woods for ferns and wild flowers. It was only one little corner, to
be sure, but it was the leaven that was presently to do a wide-spread
work.
Hope Mills took up its steady march again. Half a dozen new hands were
added, though Jack wished that he could find employment for some of the
poor souls that besieged him daily. If times really were coming better,
if orders only would increase, and he could with safety enlarge his
borders! But "slow and steady" was his motto. He was not one to
disparage the present by exaggerating the advantages of the future.
There was one home that these cordial little excitements never entered.
The three souls in it, although they should have been very near and
dear, wrapped themselves in their own thoughts and sorrows, and took no
note of their fellows.
Mrs. Lawrence heeded the outward change least of the three. She had her
pretty room, her glowing fire in winter, her fur slippers, and zephyr
shawls; her late breakfast in bed, then her luxurious dressing-gown, and
her books. She had settled herself into the _rôle_ of an invalid for the
remainder of her days. The loss and suffering had not taken her out of
herself, or raised her narrow, vapid nature. She was at once patient and
complaining,--even her affection for her son was combined with great
mental and moral weakness. She was profoundly grieved that he should
have been compelled to accept so unsuitable a position; but to her it
was only a temporary event. Something _must_ happen. In some mysterious
way they would come back to their former grandeur,--not that she cared
especially, but for the sake of Fred and Irene. Then for days she would
lose herself in the joys and sorrows of her heroines. To such people
novel-reading is certainly a godsend. A readable book was as
exhilarating to her as a splendid morning drive or a good deed is to
many others. She had society without being bored. She had wit, poetry,
art, music, travels, dinners, and balls, with no worry, no late hours,
or fatigue.
Irene could not so yield up her personality. She brooded over her lot in
a haughty, bitter spirit. She uttered no complaint,--she was far too
proud for that,--but she took no interest in any thing. Like a
melancholy ghost she wandered up and down, or sat by the window for
hours in a listless attitude. There were moments when she wished herself
Lady Frodsham, times when the change and bustle of such a life as that
of Mr. Barringer would have been heaven itself.
Fred could never persuade her to go anywhere. She took no walks, except
to pace up and down the garden path when the quiet of the house drove
her well-nigh crazy. Once in a great while she opened the piano, and
played as if a demon had taken possession of her soul and her fingers.
Fred breakfasted early and alone. After a while he fell into the habit
of taking his lunch in his office, and coming home to a late dinner.
Martha was certainly the perfection of maids. The housekeeping went on
with the regularity of clockwork: there were no complaints even. Fred
used to sit in his mother's room until her bedtime, when he would go
down to the library, and work for an hour or two.
The utter dearth of interest would have been terrible to him but for his
business. At first he preserved a wide and punctilious distance between
himself and Mr. Garafield. He was the employer, to be sure; but then
Fred Lawrence had a dignity of his own to maintain. One day, however,
the dignity suffered a collapse. Mr. Garafield brought in some new
designs, and they lapsed into an exceedingly entertaining art
discussion. The employer had excellent taste, trained and shaped by
practical experience: Fred possessed the wider mental reach and
exquisite perception of harmony and color, the sentiment of genius.
"Why do you not take up the idea, Mr. Lawrence?" asked his employer.
"House finishing and furnishing is fast coming to be a fine art. An
intelligent, harmonious beauty is demanded. We are leaving behind the
complacency of mere money in our adornments, and asking for something
that evinces thought and refinement. I am sure you could succeed if you
once set about the work."
The compliment touched Fred profoundly, roused him to a new venture. He
practised his almost lost art of designing to some purpose: he wrote two
or three art essays that happened to find much more favor than his
abstruse philosophies. After all, he was young, and the whole world lay
before him. Surely he could carve out some kind of fortune. The light of
earnest endeavor shone in his eyes, the languid step quickened into one
of courageous elasticity. He had dawdled away years enough: he would put
a purpose into his manhood, that some distant eyes, seeing, might not
relegate him entirely to the regions of contempt.
"There's quite a good deal in that young Lawrence," declared Phil
Maverick decisively. "I was in at Garafield's the other evening, and, I
must confess, listened to a fine art lecture. All about wall-papering,
too!" with a genial laugh. "What an education that fellow has! Couldn't
he find any thing to do, that he must drop down upon a paper-factory? I
am sure I should have made a big fight out somewhere in the great
world."
"'Beyond the Alps lies Italy,'" quoted Jack. "Not on the top, you
observe, but perhaps in the valley. I wish you would be a little
friendly with him, Maverick: you couldn't help but like him."
"There is more in him than I gave him credit for. I thought at the time
of his father's death I had never seen so useless a fine gentleman,
with all the stamina educated out of him. I had half a mind to turn him
over to Aunt Jean and Miss Lothrop."
Darcy laughed absently, and Maverick saw that his mind had wandered
elsewhere. How odd that these two should be friends! Maverick could not
discern the fine bond uniting them.