Hope Mills Part 14

The money had gone in that direction. On the other hand, it was proven by the income of Hope Mills, and the amount paid out for labor, that there was no reason why they should not be solvent to-day.

Lavishly as the Lawrences had spent money, they had not taken it all. No one could or did accuse David Lawrence of private speculation. Minor had once tried his best to induce him to join in some enterprises, but failed. It was an easy matter to blame the Eastmans for every thing: they were away, and could not deny the charge. But had all these bank-officials clean hands? They had been given a sacred trust, the savings of the poor, the estates of widows and orphans; they had winked at investments of the most precarious kind; they had paid a high rate of interest, exacting a higher, which had been gladly given for a brief while. Safe principles of finance had been quite ignored: the new era was different from any thing that had ever happened to the world before, and required new men, and now they would have to go back to the old way.

Surely there is not much that is new under the sun!

To bring back the Eastmans, and try them for their crimes, seemed hardly worth while. More than one man in Yerbury felt that it was safer to berate them at a distance, than meet their damaging retorts face to face. They could not get back any money. Hope Mills was ruined beyond a peradventure, and the affairs of the bank were best wound up as speedily as possible. There could be no large stealings for a receiver, consequently no occasion for delay. The sooner the wrecks and _debris_ were cleared away, the quicker the moral atmosphere would be purified.

There are wounds for which the instant cautery means life, the careful hesitation death.

And now every one looked at the exploded bubble in surprise, and cried angrily, "What has become of the money? Yesterday we were rich: where has it gone to? Six months ago we had twenty per cent dividend: why are these stocks worthless now? Why have railroads and shops and mills ceased to pay? What sudden blight has fallen over the world?"

Alas! There had been no money. Sanguine credit had traded on the honor and faith and n.o.bleness of man toward man, and, behold, it had all been selfishness and falsehood and dishonor. Truth and virtue had been scorned and flouted in the highway, because forsooth there was a more brilliant semblance. Like a garment had men wrapped themselves in it, and now it was but rags and tatters.

There could be nothing extracted from the wreck of Hope Mills. Indeed, Fred would have given up a rich inheritance to save his father's honor, had it been his. To go on at Hope Terrace was madness. The fires and the servants would cost enough to maintain a family. Mrs. Minor and Fred quarrelled because Mrs. Lawrence had been persuaded to mortgage the place: she simply groaned and moaned, and wondered why they must worry her about every thing!

"I hope Irene will have the good sense to marry abroad," said Mrs.

Minor. "And, Fred, what a pity you haven't a profession! What can you do?"

Last winter it had been, "my brother, De Woolfe," whom all the young ladies in Mrs. Minor's set were wild over.

Fred gave a sigh.

"I suppose I _can_ do something to earn my bread," he replied bitterly.

"Fred," began Agatha suddenly, "there is that Miss Tillon. You know how absolutely wild she was over you last winter! Her fortune is all in her own right, and it is a solid one too. Hamilton has had occasion to know about it. You cannot do a better thing than marry her."

Fred glanced up. His sister was in sober earnest. To be bargained off like a woman, for a bare existence! Miss Tillon was at least thirty, of a suspicious, jealous turn of mind, well-enough looking perhaps, but narrow, with no intellectual culture, no approval of any thing beside her money. He had been amused at her preference. Possibly she might marry him, and rescue him from the pains of poverty. And he?

He might be vain and trifling, but he was not sunk so low in cowardice.

His face flushed a vivid scarlet.

"I am not quite prepared to become chargeable to a woman yet," he said in a cold, calm voice.

"What nonsense! Some man will marry her, and get the money," Agatha retorted decisively.

"Not much of hers;" in a dry, contemptuous tone.

"You know what I mean. She will live in style, and travel; and her husband"--

"Will be the laughing-stock of his friends," interrupted Fred angrily.

"No, Agatha, I will be dependent upon no one for my bread: if I cannot earn it I will starve."

"Oh, very well!" with a scornful smile. "I only hope Rene will be wiser.

They are in Paris--I heard from Gertrude last week. She was very much shocked, of course. I hope George has not been foolish enough to let every thing slip through his fingers. Who could have believed that Horace Eastman would turn out such a swindler! Papa trusted him altogether too far. It does not answer to be too n.o.ble and disinterested in this world."

Fred made no reply to this charming bit of worldly wisdom. His delicate and high opinion of self had received a crushing blow. Married off, out of hand, to save him from poverty!

Why should his thoughts turn to Sylvie at that moment? Something stirred within him, an insane desire to win her--oh, mad enough, surely! He could, he _would_, do something! There was all his education and talent; yes, he really had talent. He would make himself famous. She should see that he had the right kind of stuff in him. He would climb up the hard hill in his lonely, sorrowful, proud way, until she, looking on, would come to repent her unjust verdict!

He shut himself up in his study, and made some very fair translations from his beloved poets. There were better ones, doubtless; and, after all, fame might not lie in that direction. There was physical science, much in vogue, and entertaining: no doubt he could do something in that line. There were theories and speculations, there were old philosophies--surely the ground was rich everywhere.

It was very poor at Yerbury, though there were theories enough. But, when you took them for temporal meat and drink, they were not a fattening diet. Men lounged in the streets and on the corners, or, worst of all, in saloons, talking themselves angry and hoa.r.s.e over the bad luck, and blaming every one right and left. Women sat at home, and cried over losses and crosses, cooked their scanty dinners, and retired to bed early to save fuel. The poorer ones went out to a day's washing, glad to get that. Boys played cards, read dime-novels, and dreamed of wonderful fortunes at the West: some few stout-hearted chaps set out to seek them.

There were panaceas. Mr. Rantley preached the rankest communism and broadest free-thinking. Capital, i.e., money, was the tyrant of the world, and always would be until the laborers of the world rose up and claimed their rights. Why should this man starve when the man over yonder had his store-house full of flour that he was holding for higher prices? What right had he, except the might? So long as men were allowed to h.o.a.rd up these monstrous fortunes, they could control the market, and would! What were the starving thousands to them? What if half the provision in the country rotted on the owner's hands? he could get as much or more money for the other half. What if the miners were at work only a small portion of time? could not the amount of coal be managed more easily, and prices kept up? Capital desired to keep production at the lowest ebb, because it could be more conveniently mastered. The only remedy was to give every man a chance, to break up these colossal fortunes, to have no great mills and mines; to have smaller capitalists, fewer hours of labor, to divide the immense h.o.a.rds among the poor and needy until there should be no more want or suffering!

The Rev. Mr. Bristow shook his head at this modern anti-Christ. Every thing was anti-Christ, with Mr. Bristow, that went outside of his own narrow creed. He preached some stirring sermons. It was G.o.d's judgment upon them for their sins. They had forgotten him, they had been led away by false G.o.ds; they had made golden calves, and worshipped them; their sons had strayed into infidelity; their daughters had flaunted in gay attire, with plaiting of the hair, and dancing away their immortal souls; and now they must return to their G.o.d, to the meat that perisheth not, to the bread of life, and to the well of living water. There must be such a returning to G.o.d, such a revival of religion, that the world would be swept clear and clean out of its old sins!

"Splendid sermon! splendid sermon!" said Deacon Boyd, rubbing his hands together unctuously. "Parson's. .h.i.t the nail just on the head. We've all strayed out of the way. I think a good old-fashioned revival'll set us straight sooner'n any thing. Nothing like coming to the Lord on the spot! This very week we ought to begin."

"I think you're right, Deacon Boyd," said grave Mr. Rising. "I, for one, will take hold of the work."

They called the church together, and began. I will not disparage the work. There were hungry souls that seemed fed with spiritual food, aching hearts that were bound up, reckless minds that paused on the verge of desperation. But there were others who wondered, even in the midst of the deacon's prayer, how it was that the Lord warned him to draw his twenty thousand dollars out of Yerbury Bank a week before the failure, when there were only he and his wife to keep, and let poor Mrs.

Wharton with her five helpless children lose her husband's life-insurance, her little all, by putting it in the bank just a fortnight before the failure. Special providences, whereof Deacon Boyd discoursed so eloquently, happened oftener to the rich than to the poor.

However, they prayed and fasted and repented. To many, any strong emotion that took them out of the wearing round of thought was a blessing.

Jack Darcy, with a curious disbelief in every thing, went the rounds, and dropped into Maverick's office to talk it over. Sylvie was not home this winter: she and her aunt spent it in Philadelphia. Then Jack grew dull and restless. If the end of all things had come in Yerbury, he ought to try some other place in the great world.

It was settled presently quite by accident. A cousin of Mrs. Darcy's, one of your strong, thorough, energetic women, came to spend the winter with them; and Jack's mother, watching the throes of her son's soul, a little afraid of socialism, materialism, and all the other isms, proposed that Jack should take a journey West or South, and have a glimpse of the men and things beyond this narrow boundary.

"Grandmother grows feebler all the time now; and, being past ninety, we can't expect to keep her much longer. Of course, Jack, when she is gone, I shall have no tie but you; and, if it suited you to settle elsewhere, I should not object. You are young and ambitious, and I ought to think of your advancement. There never has been a time since your poor father's death that you could be so well spared;" yet the mother sighed.

"And you have been a good son, Jack: you have given up many a wish cheerfully to two poor old women."

"Don't call yourself an old woman," said Jack almost gruffly, then he stooped to kiss her.

His heart gave a great boyish bound.

"Good-by, old Yerbury!" he cried exultantly one morning, quite sure of a new, glad life elsewhere.

"Though I shall be sorry to leave Sylvie and Maverick," he thought.

"These old towns do grind the very soul out of a fellow who has any desire or energy in him. The world isn't all alike, I know," giving his chestnut mane a toss like a young, mettlesome colt.

CHAPTER X.

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 G.o.d 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 Bra.s.sey'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 compet.i.tion; 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 acc.u.mulation 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 coa.r.s.e 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."