THE morning's mail brought to Darcy the letter he had hardly dared
expect. It was brief but cordial. Would he come to New York, and the
matter could be arranged to his satisfaction? "He had not been very
eager to ask favors."
"We'll weather through, Winston!" he cried joyfully. "I must go to New
York. Miss McLeod has sent."
Then he ran off home, and arrayed himself in spotless linen and
immaculate cuffs, complained a little that Jane Morgan should be away,
and begged his mother to ask in some of the pretty, friendly girls
living in the next house, if he should not be home to supper. There was
a late train that he would be quite sure of, if the business detained
him until night. Then he kissed her tenderly: she was still a little
shaken from her last night's vigil.
He went around by Maverick's office, though it took him out of his way;
but he must hear some word of Miss Lawrence.
"She is very ill, and will be for some time to come; but I am
wonderfully interested in the case. It's a brain-fever. The girl is a
study in herself. She has the force and power, and capability of both
suffering and endurance, that would answer for half a dozen souls; but
it has come pretty nearly to a wreck. Did you ever know much about her?"
"No. I once spent an evening with Miss Barry when she was there," and
Jack flushed. "It was before Mr. Lawrence died. They used to be great
friends, you know."
"And it ended like most women's friendships, eh?" with a peculiar light
in his eyes as he spoke.
"No: it broke off in the middle; regards have a trick of doing that when
they're not ended, you know. Sylvie is very generous: she would go there
to-day if she were needed."
"Would she? She may be before it is all over."
"Go down and tell her, Maverick, when you are in that direction."
Maverick nodded.
Darcy was just in time to catch his train. There had been quite a fall
of snow from midnight to dawn, and the trees were glittering with
thousands of diamond-sparks and patches of fleecy ermine. The winding
roads were white; the cottages and the fence-posts were hooded; and the
snow caught all the tints of sun and shadowy lights, reflecting them
back like a mirror. His heart was so light as they whirled along, he
smiled, and could hardly forbear shouting at a group of boys who were
snow-balling by the roadside.
He met Miss McLeod at Mr. Hildreth's. They had the private office to
themselves; and he related the mishaps of the past three months, showed
her the actual figures, and admitted that times seemed really harder
than last year. There was such a horrible shrinkage everywhere! Still
there must be some trade presently,--it always had been so in the
history of the world.
"I think you deserve a great deal of credit for having pulled through so
far on your limited capital," said she. "Some of the business-men I
meet, think this will prove the hardest year in our history. It will
winnow the chaff from the wheat pretty well."
"If it does not winnow us all into chaff," returned the young fellow,
with a touch of grim humor.
"We shall come back to smaller profits and greater industry. The world
will not be able to play at being ladies and gentlemen, and perhaps a
little wholesome work will not be a bad discipline."
Then she wanted to know what amount would be likely to tide him over for
the next six months. He said he did not desire to exceed ten thousand
dollars. She would make it twelve, however. After the notes were duly
signed, she took him to her bank, and introduced him. As he had some
other parties to see, she drove him about in her carriage, and insisted
upon taking him home with her presently.
What an elegant old lady she was in her sables and velvets, and her
royal air! her eyes bright with spirit and energy, her cheeks a little
pink with the crisp air, glad sunshine, and perhaps her own hearty,
wholesome mood. Occasionally she leaned out and nodded to some friend;
and once her carriage drew up to the sidewalk as she summoned a fine,
portly-looking gentleman to her.
"Mr. Throckmorton," she said, with gracious dignity, "I want to
introduce my young friend Mr. Darcy, of Hope Mills, Yerbury, to you. If
you can serve him in any business-way, I shall be glad to have you."
The gentleman bowed, and held out his hand, with cordial fine breeding.
"Hope Mills! It belonged to my friend Lawrence, did it not,--David
Lawrence?"
"Until his death, yes."
"Sad misfortune, that. He ought to have retired years before. There was
some villany in his manager, was there not? It is difficult to find a
purely honest man nowadays; but I do believe Lawrence was one. We dealt
with him a great many years, but toward the last there was some
dissatisfaction,--goods not coming quite up to samples."
"We try to do our business on the square, Mr. Throckmorton," returned
Jack, with a proud curve of the lips that was almost a smile, and
illumined his face. "If any thing is not exactly as represented, we
shall make it good; but we try never to have occasion to do that. We
should be glad to have you test our honesty and skill."
"Thank you,--I will, I will;" and, touching his hat to Miss McLeod, they
parted.
"If men were as generous as you!" cried Jack, with enthusiastic candor,
"how splendid a place this world would be for business! Did you ever
have a jealous thought in all your life?"
She laughed brightly. "I have had nearly all the things I wanted," she
answered, with tender solemnity. "There would have been little excuse.
Mr. Darcy, we do not always realize how hard life is to some; and, where
everybody's man's hand is against one, it is natural for him to be
against every man."
Their four-o'clock meal was an elegant little dinner. They were quite
alone, which pleased Jack. She questioned him about Maverick, his
practice, his friends, and wondered if he ever meant to marry. Jack said
laughingly no one in Yerbury dared to make fascinating eyes at him.
Did she care so much for Maverick? Surely these two ought to be
together, yet what would _he_ do without his trusty comrade?
They veered round to the mills presently, and discussed honesty. Jack
admitted that Mr. Throckmorton and other customers had a right to
complain. There had been a deal of cheap wool used, and many poor
workmen employed, during Eastman's last year or two.
"Mr. Darcy," she began energetically, "why do you not think up something
new? We import pretty material for ladies' wear, that could as well be
made here, for we women are growing sensible enough to believe something
beside silk admissible. And though men may cling to superannuated coats,
with an affection most commendable in hard times, I never heard of a
woman being attached to an old gown."
"I never thought of it," he admitted frankly.
"That is what you were put in the world for,--to think," and she smiled
with quaint humor. "Invent something. I'll take a sample to every store
to match, and lift my brows in surprise when clerks confess they have
not seen it. Give it a pretty name, of course."
"That is worth considering, surely;" and his eyes sparkled. "Hope Mills
ought presently to be the grandest place in the country, you take so
much interest in it," and his whole face expressed his admiration.
"I do hope to see you a successful manufacturer, Mr. Darcy; and,
woman-like, I want the scheme to succeed. I should like to see even a
small party of men trained to honesty and fair play. And, if I lose my
money, it is no worse than a downfall in stocks."
"I shall do my best now and ever," he answered heartily.
They parted with much warm gratitude on the honest fellow's side. He
took the evening train for home; and his mother had a good cup of tea
awaiting him, along with her smile. He related his grand good luck, and
there were not two happier people in all Yerbury. When the bank found he
had an account at New York, and a good backer, they were extremely
affable again.
Jack broached the new idea to Winston and Cameron.
"To be sure," admitted Winston. "Some one will do it presently, and we
might get the lead. Darcy, your old lady is a trump, and always carries
the honors. There will have to be some new processes: see here, talk to
Ben Hay about it; he's made two or three improvements, and has some
brains. Gad! It'll be quite jolly to have a new line of goods. Get the
ladies on your side, and you're all right!"
He had not a spare moment until after his late supper, when he told his
mother he must run over to the Lawrences, and stop a moment at the
doctor's, though he had despatched the good news to him in the morning.
He found matters worse than he had feared. There had been an alarming
change in Miss Lawrence. Martha ushered him through the hall to the
library, where Fred was sitting. The two clasped hands, and then sat
down together. A hard, dry sob seemed to tear its way up from Fred's
very soul.
"Jack," he cried in a strained, despairing tone, "could I have done any
thing to save her? I have been engrossed with my own affairs, my own
dreams of advancement. I wanted to have money again, but it was for her
sake and my mother's," with a lingering tremulous intonation. "She has
been too solitary, she has brooded over every thing. But she would not
go out, or see any company; and somehow it was our misfortune to grow up
without any warm, vital interest in each other. When I was a boy I used
to like it at your house, because your father and mother took such a
real delight in you. It is the pith of life. Poor father--he was very
proud of me, he gave his life for our pleasure and grandeur and reckless
extravagance, yet all the later years we were well-nigh strangers. Why
can't people get nearer to each other, Jack, or is it only given to the
very few? Does the greedy world swallow up every sentiment, every bit of
tenderness, and make a mock of it?"
"No, no! Nothing can quite kill it, thank God! You and I have proved
that. It may be smothered under dust and rubbish, and frozen with
neglect, but the germ will revive,--just as the brown woolly ball
evolves the fine delicate fern-leaf that it has held in its heart
through winter storms, you know. Don't blame yourself. Every soul has to
fight its own battle somewhere, with no day's-man between but God. We
get back to the old truth in spite of the new philosophies, and own in
our vanquished moments that we cannot _make_ strength, that ours is
only a broken reed, and the true upholding force must come from some
knowledge higher than our own."
Jack paused, strangely stirred in every fibre. He seldom essayed
sentiment: with him the deeds of life had to answer, rather than any
eloquence of words. He laid his strong, warm arm over Fred's shoulder,
the old boyish caress with which he had often comforted unknowingly.
"I think you have been doing nobly," he went on presently. "I did not
look to find you so brave and persevering, so earnest in thinking of
others; for, after all, a man's training does throw a great many
shackles about him."
Dr. Maverick entered at that moment. He had hurried off his
office-patients to come and spend an hour watching this case, which held
a fascinating interest for him. Some most unfavorable symptoms had
supervened, but he did not despair. The nurse had been regularly
trained, he had kept her busy in Yerbury the last year. He could trust
her to note the slightest variations.
Just now Miss Lawrence lay in a heavy stupor, so like death that one
could not detect it from any motion. Her eyes were half open, her face
had a dull purplish tint. The abundant hair had been confined in a thick
plait, and brushed straight across her forehead. How distinct and finely
clear the brows were pencilled, how haughtily sweet the curve of the
pallid, fever-burned lips, how exquisitely round and perfect the chin,
the slope of the throat and neck! Jack stole one glance,--they had both
gone in with the doctor,--but it seemed almost sacrilegious, now when
she was powerless to frown the intruder out of her presence. And he had
carried her in his arms!
"O Darcy," Maverick exclaimed presently, "I did not go to Miss Barry's,
after all. I have been so desperately busy to-day."
Fred glanced up, and his eye met that of his friend. Both flushed, and
both mistook the cause.
It was a curiously auspicious moment. Jack went over to him. "I wonder,"
he began, with a marked persuasiveness in his tone, "if you would like
to have Sylvie Barry come over? She and your sister used to be such
friends. And, in times like these, animosities and foolish prejudices
ought to die out."
Fred gave him a startled look, and half turned, his lids drooping to
veil the secret in his eyes. Jack waited with breath that half strangled
him. He had marvelled how these two souls were to be brought into
friendly contact again; how Sylvie was to have an opportunity of knowing
that Fred was redeeming the manliness of manhood, instead of grounding
among its trivial shoals, and, if she ever had cared for him, to
understand that he was not utterly unworthy. He had spoken--what if the
chance should fail!
Fred very naturally misinterpreted the emotion. Jack offered this out of
the boundless tenderness of his heart, so confident was he of Sylvie's
regard.
"You think--she would come?"
His own voice, under the great stress, sounded miles away to him, quite
as if some other person had spoken.
How often the tense strain of feeling is relieved by a tone or an
incident quite out of the magnetic current!
"Some one ought to drop in occasionally, for your mother's sake," said
Dr. Maverick. "We shall have her in a fever from sympathy," putting the
fact more delicately in words than it was in his thought.
"She would be glad to come, I know. She would feel hurt if-- You empower
me to ask her?" with an abrupt transition of tone.
Fred Lawrence bowed his head. He could not trust his voice.
The sick girl started, opened wide her eyes, threw up her arms, and
began in weird, passionate tones, as if it were a stage declamation. Oh
the lurid thought that seemed to travel from regions of bliss to the
nethermost hell; to display a boundless capacity for enjoyment, for
pleasure or pain, for tenderness and bitter, brilliant satire, a keen
knowledge of the world to the very dregs,--the dust and ashes! She
implored her lost idols to come near, and in the next breath she tossed
them from her with a mocking laugh. She had no faith in God or man, and
before her was a blank wall of despair.
Jack led him away. He took him out in the keen air of the starry winter
night, and began to talk of Hope Mills and the new projects. It was too
late afterward to call on Sylvie, so he waited until the next morning.
She was inexpressibly shocked. "Of course she would go," she made
answer; and she went that very afternoon, with her aunt for companion.
They found Mrs. Lawrence in a dreadfully disturbed and apprehensive
state. She was so weary of solitude that she welcomed them gladly, quite
forgetting this girl had insulted her by rejecting her son. In a weak,
shuffling manner she excused herself for not having accepted their
overtures before. She had been so utterly overwhelmed by the death of
Mr. Lawrence, that, in her state of nervous prostration, it had been
impossible to see any one. And now she was positive she should take the
fever. Her health was so delicate, her nerves so susceptible, and to
hear the raving of delirium,--the laughs that were quite like a
maniac,--would be sure to shatter her beyond any help. If it were not in
the dead of winter, she should go to New York at once, and stay with
Mrs. Minor until all danger of infection was over. She did not seem to
comprehend the gravity of Irene's case, though she wept over her
suffering in a soft self-pity.
"If you could be removed to our house," suggested Miss Barry, in her
gentle way, "we would take the best of care of you; and it must be
extremely wearing for you here."
"Ah, you have no idea! I never slept last night. I have heard of people
in these dreadful fevers who have left their beds when the nurse was
absent, and committed some horrible crime. I locked my door last night;
then I was afraid I might faint away alone, and Fred had to come and
stay with me. It was terrible!" and the washed-out eyes dilated with
real fear.
Martha was despatched for the doctor, who not only came himself, but
brought a close coach, thankful to dispose of one patient so
comfortably. Before dusk Mrs. Lawrence was snugly settled in Miss
Barry's best room, where a cheerful open-front stove made amends for a
grate, and the new surroundings served to take her mind from her late
apprehensions. Indeed, she felt so much better for the change, that she
insisted upon coming down to tea.
It was beneficial in many ways. They removed Irene again to her own
room, and used her mother's for various convenient purposes. Sylvie went
back and forth, and shared the day-watching, beside entertaining Mrs.
Lawrence. The two dropped insensibly into their olden positions. Sylvie
listened patiently to the death, the loss of fortune, the changes, which
Mrs. Lawrence dwelt upon with the exaggerating vividness of a nature
completely engrossed with its own sorrows.
Dr. Maverick had to come every day. Mrs. Lawrence had arrived at that
stage when a woman depends upon the doctor as a sort of bulletin for her
own health. Fred, too, must visit his mother frequently; but at first he
chose the hours he knew Sylvie would be with Irene.
Dr. Maverick used to watch Sylvie Barry with an interest and admiration
that grew upon him. Her tact was something marvellous, born of a certain
exquisite harmony and almost divine unselfishness. But of this last she
appeared serenely unconscious. I think, indeed, that she was. A higher
love and faith had interpenetrated her soul, her very being. Instead of
agonizing introspections and lightning flashes to the inward depths of
her nature, she seemed to live continually on the outside of herself,
radiating warmth and light as the sun. Her patience was of a rare, fine
quality, born of health, and spirits not easily wearied.
It would have been quite impossible for any two people to go through
such a strain of feeling, and not be drawn together in love and
sympathy, or friendship. With Fred and Sylvie it was unconsciously a
little of all. If he had gone back with the old love, even exalted and
refined, he would surely have blundered again. But now she was
another's, sacred in his eyes. And though in his blind pride he had once
thought the greatest favor he could do her would be to save her from any
such _mésalliance_, he recognized now that Jack Darcy was immeasurably
above him in all the qualities that went to make up pure manhood. Even
in his work: Jack's ambition was not for himself, but a cause; and
his--ah, how poor and paltry it seemed! So he accepted his place with
outward bravery, and a great wrench of all a man holds most dear. For
now he loved her.
The days passed slowly on. It seemed at the last as if the fever would
prove the victor. A consultation was held, and new remedies employed.
Irene's beautiful hair was cut off and laid away, the clear skin seemed
to grow brown and shrivelled, the hands lost their plump whiteness, and
the rosy nails were dull and gray. There came a time when human skill
had done all, and they could only wait for that Higher power to whose
eternal force death and love alike submit.
There followed upon that awful night of suspense, days when she was but
just alive, when a turn of her head on the pillow caused a lapse into
unconsciousness. But the spring came on; and she did rally, at first, it
appeared, at the entire sacrifice of her regal beauty. Would she care to
take life on such terms?
They brought Mrs. Lawrence home. Mrs. Minor came up, and insisted that
both mother and sister should be removed to the city at once. She had
her horses and carriage, her servants, her luxuries, and she could make
them so much more comfortable.
Dr. Maverick interposed a decided negative. The body had not yet resumed
its normal state; but the brain was to be ministered to, as only those
of experience and study could minister. It was to be brought out of the
hell of its own despairing self-torture, and enfranchised, set free from
the demons that, standing in the present abeyance of weakness, had lost
neither strength nor desire, and were only waiting the auspicious moment
to seize their prey again. And he was too much fascinated to relinquish
the study.
Sylvie persuaded her aunt to indulge in a pony-carriage. Miss Barry was
breaking a little; but she still kept her interest in good works, and
found she was much more useful with this aid. Winsome little Sylvie
looked more piquant than ever with the reins in her hands, flashing
hither and thither through the streets of Yerbury, gathering a harvest
of smiles and nods. She fairly compelled Mrs. Lawrence to trust her
precious self to what she laughingly declared was superior
horsewomanship.
Dr. Maverick used to stop her often, just to catch a delicious ripple of
laughter, or a bit of trenchant talk. If it were not for Jack Darcy--did
Jack love her? At all events, she loved him: any one could see that by
her frank, fearless manner. Oh, sapient Dr. Maverick, with all your
knowledge of brains and nerves, of occult causes and mysterious effects!
So it happens that sometimes a simple, direct truth is the greatest
puzzle of all.
The schools and clubs had not been neglected with all this excitement.
But this winter Mary Moran had been teacher at a small salary; and a
bakery and refreshment or dining room had been opened down stairs, which
really made quite a little money. Wholesomely cooked food was offered
for sale, with bread, rolls, and biscuit. The club had also given two
successful suppers. When Jane Morgan was home, Sylvie was relieved of
the actual care: she would have it. She had come back to Yerbury a
thousand dollars richer for her relative's death, and she and Jack were
drawing plans for a co-operative store.