Hope Mills Part 13

Farrell tapped, and came in.

"Jackson's here now, sir. Is the note ready?"

"Yes. There is some change. Get a hack, Farrell: it is too far to walk.

Did Mr. Eastman"--

There was so long a pause that Farrell said,--

"Mr. Eastman went to New York. He said he might not be back to-morrow."

Mr. Lawrence nodded, as if that were sufficient. He would not peer into the man's business.

"If you should want any thing, sir, Jackson will be at hand," said the man kindly; for the thin, pale face, and strange, nervous light in the eyes startled him.

"Jackson," he began, when outside, "Mr. Lawrence is going to stay a bit, maybe all night. He has a great pile of books before him; but I'm afraid he's queer some way. His eyes look wild and strange. Keep a lookout, will you"--

"You don't mean that he's likely to shuffle? Are things as bad as that?

Has he got a pistol?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Maybe I'm wrong;" and Farrell counted over the money in his hand. "Anyhow, I would walk up and down this hall, and listen."

Jackson nodded, and Farrell went his way; yet now he thought the brisk walk would not hurt him. Jackson heeded his bidding, but all was quiet.

Once he went in the next room, and climbed up to a high sliding window, used for ventilation. Mr. Lawrence sat there poring over the books. At twelve it was the same. Jackson tolled off the hour of midnight. Every thing was safe in the great building. Then he settled himself in an easy-chair, and presently fell into a doze.

Meanwhile Mr. Lawrence studied the books in a dazed, bewildered way.

Here and there a balance had been struck, and it all looked fair. But there was a terrible wrong somewhere!

The figures danced before his eyes in lurid lights and grotesque shapes, with grinning faces, flying, whirling, in a wild, demoniac waltz. The room was full. The procession he had watched to-night winding out from the mill, stopped and jeered, and pointed skinny fingers at him. Then he was at the bank, and they came in troops, wringing their hands, and cursing him. Strange tales that he had read mixed with them in inextricable confusion. Pictures of the past hurried by with panoramic distinctness; and hark! what was that? The grand trump of the Judgment Day? It tolled and tolled again, like a thunder-peal. Was any one dead?

He was so tired! He put his arms down on the desk, and leaned his face on them. If he could sleep off this intolerable weariness!

He was a boy again, wading through the limpid brook, stepping from stone to stone, and sometimes plashing over. Was that the dried sweetness of balsam,--the pungent odor of pennyroyal and water-mint,--the clean, resinous fragrance of the pines? Out there were lily-pads,--great golden-hearted chalices, with long, sinuous greenish-pink stems under the shady, transparent water. How cool and peaceful! The sky overhead was of palest blue with white flecks, and somewhere a bird was singing.

If he could go to it; if he could stay amid all this sweet quiet, and forget-- What was it he wanted to forget? Not his little Fred, surely!

How proud he should be of him in his manhood. What a help and comfort!

There was a strange, sudden darkness. The head drooped a little one side, and the visions had come to an end.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN Farrell returned to his post in the morning, Jackson reported Mr.

Lawrence asleep in the office. No one thought of him again until about ten o'clock, when some protested notes came in. Jeffries knocked at the door, opened it softly, spoke, but received no answer; then stepped nearer, and peered curiously at the face. It was ghastly white, the eyes wide open and staring, and with a shriek Jeffries alarmed the whole establishment.

Old Dr. Lecounte came, p.r.o.nounced him dead, and then sent for Dr.

Maverick, to whom he had taken a great liking. Between them both they found a faint sign of life; and he was removed to his elegant mansion on Hope Terrace, where his wife went into immediate and violent hysterics.

They remained several hours, and decided it to be that terrible death in life, entire paralysis of brain, nerve, and muscle. He might linger some days; he might drop away any moment.

Horace Eastman, looking over the news items the next morning, saw this account, and returned at once to Yerbury. Certainly fortune had favored him. Affairs were in wild confusion. He learned that a telegram had been sent to young Mr. Lawrence, and an answer received. He would be back next Monday. Mrs. Minor came up, and brought an experienced nurse.

The mill kept open until Sat.u.r.day. Then Mr. Eastman called the men together.

He was very much puzzled to know what to do, he said. He had resigned his position as superintendent of the mills, nearly a month ago; but Mr. Lawrence had begged him to stay on until he could come to some decision. The affairs were in a very embarra.s.sed condition, and now suspension was imperative. What Mr. Lawrence would have done, he could not tell; but he did not feel justified in taking the responsibility. He was most truly sorry--he could say it from his heart--for those whose cheerful faces and light steps he had watched year after year, until he came to have a friendly feeling for them all; and he was shocked at the result of all this trouble to his dear friend, to whom he was bound by a deeper tie than that of mere business. But there had been two years of unparalleled depression, and Mr. Lawrence had made a brave fight. No one beside himself knew all the difficulties that had beset his old friend's path. It was not only here in Yerbury that trade was dull: it was from the Atlantic to the Pacific. England, Germany, and France were suffering as deeply as ourselves. Production had been overdone by most of the employers using their best efforts to keep their hands at work in the face of a falling market, or no market at all. Shelves were packed with goods everywhere. We were on the eve of a great change, and it would be some time before values would become stable again. If the balance of trade (high-sounding, but imperfectly understood term) could once more turn in our favor; if we could export our surplus goods, and find new markets,--as no doubt we would,--every shop and factory would soon be ringing with the cheerful sound of labor. It would be a hard winter; but he, for one, believed the spring would open auspiciously, that business would revive, homes be prosperous, and every heavy heart light. Let them all take courage for their own future and that of Hope Mills in the hands of its young master. He regretted deeply that there was no money to pay them with to-night; but that would doubtless be attended to soon. He wanted to bid them a cordial good-by, and beg them to stand by young Mr. Lawrence.

There was some rather faint cheering. Troubled eyes questioned despondent eyes; what were they to do with winter coming on? First it was the bank, now the mills, and what next G.o.d only could tell.

Fred Lawrence reached Yerbury Monday evening; and at midnight the faint, fluttering soul of his father pa.s.sed over that mighty river. There had been no return to consciousness. Mrs. Lawrence still lay in her darkened room, unable to bear any sound beyond that of the trained nurse.

To say that Fred was shocked, would feebly express his emotion. He had never dreamed of his father's dying,--never dreamed of any thing like misfortune happening to him, of any keener suffering than some temporary annoyance. He felt quite helpless. His old philosophies did not inspire him with courage, or open a way out of this dark present. There was to be a funeral; there were business complications; some one had to think of the future; the mill was shut up, the fortune swept away, and he had been stranded on a strange sh.o.r.e, knowing not which way to turn.

Eastman was still in Yerbury. He was intensely sympathetic with the bereaved family. In fact, now that he would never have to meet the eye of the man he had so deeply wronged, his spirits rose, his pity overflowed. Fred was quite touched by it. Hamilton Minor, with his rather brusque business ways, jarred against his sorrow.

He was rather testy with Mr. Eastman. "For the life of me, I can't see how things have come to this pa.s.s," he said sharply. "Hope Mills has been considered as sound as a nut,--one of the surest places in the country. Mr. Lawrence has made thousands and thousands. I have known a good deal about his affairs."

"It is the result of a large-hearted philanthropy,--of keeping poor devils at work when there was no demand for goods, so that they should not starve. I should have closed out the concern two years ago. When you begin to lose, it is time to get out,--not wait until every stiver is gone. But, if ever there was a n.o.ble man, it is our dead friend David Lawrence."

His chest swelled as he p.r.o.nounced this eulogy, and he laid his white hand sympathetically on his waistcoat.

"What is all this bank muddle about?"

"I really don't know. Heavy real-estate business"--

"And you a director!" interrupted Minor, with an unpleasant quickness.

"I have had so much on my hands that I did not pay strict attention to it, I must confess. You know, Minor, what a tremendous shrinkage there has been in values: it seems to me as if the bottom had fallen out of every thing. I have an interest out in Nevada that I am anxious to look after, and should have gone a year ago, but Lawrence begged me to hold over until matters brightened a little. He was so sure times would improve. By Jove! I think they grow worse and worse!"

"And Fred knows no more than a baby!" said Minor, in a tone of contempt.

"You'd be a help to him, Eastman, if you would stay and go over accounts."

"I don't know about that," shaking his head slowly. "The books are all on the square, as you will see. If one could only make money as easily as one can add up that which has been made and spent!" and Eastman gave a little laugh.

"But it cannot be a total loss. The house, I know, is settled upon Mrs.

Lawrence. And the mill-property"--

"Mortgaged for all it is worth in such times as these. Perhaps I ought not to speak of it, but George was in a little difficulty which the old gentleman tided over. Too much real estate, Minor!"

Hamilton Minor had no great amount of confidence in the man before him; but then, he did not have in any one. He was on a little of the paper, and just now he felt exceedingly dubious about it. Some arrangement ought to be made whereby members of the family who had stood by Mr.

Lawrence ought not to be losers.

The funeral was strangely quiet and solemn; I was about to add, select.

The mill overseers and officers were formally invited. Fred had a feeling about the men,--it seemed as if they ought to form a procession; but the walk to the cemetery was a long one, and Mrs. Minor decisively negatived any plan that took in the "rabble." The coffin lay in the s.p.a.cious drawing-room, where friends and acquaintances, in the same set, nodded solemnly, and uttered a few words of well-bred condolence. The mourners were up-stairs. The few coaches were filled with men, a little group stood around the open grave, and David Lawrence pa.s.sed out of mortal sight,--his life-work all done. Had the toil been worth the reward?

The next day Eastman left for New York, and his stay there was brief. He knew what would be surmised after much trouble and searching, but it could not be positively laid at his door. And with a cheerful heart he set out to seek a new fortune.

To the great surprise of Mr. and Mrs. Minor, they found Hope Terrace mortgaged. Mrs. Lawrence could talk of nothing, could not endure the confusion of voices in her room. Some trustees were appointed to investigate the whole affair, for Fred was as ignorant as a child of all pertaining to the mill.

The examination disclosed a pitiable state of affairs. George Eastman had built up Yerbury on borrowed capital, lived on it in luxury, speculated, lost and won like any other gaming. He had persuaded each individual that he was on the high road to wealth. There had been a peculiar fascination about the man; or is it that the appeal to greed and covetousness is so much more convincing than that to honor and truth, that the baser impulses are quicker with their response? It was a great bubble upon credit, and carried with it the seeds of self-destruction. True, the bank held mortgages on rows of flimsy-built houses where walls were cracking apart, foundations settling, plumbing in such a condition that it was a hotbed of disease. They would not cover the indebtedness. The available cash had been drawn out by large depositors, the best bonds and stocks surrept.i.tiously sold. And with all this there was a defalcation traceable to Hope Mills or the Eastmans.