Hope Mills Part 17

But now it was very silent. The great yard had an untidy look, with some piles of weather-beaten lumber, and old _debris_. The windows were covered with dust; the broad stone steps showed where the winter snows had fallen and melted, leaving streaks of dirt, and more had blown in the corners. No cheerful creak of the great engine; no vapory puffs of smoke circling skyward from the chimney; no whir of looms. It saddened one inexpressibly.

"It is a big subject," said Jack slowly. "I've been puzzling my brains half the winter with what wiser heads than mine have said about capital and labor,--Mill and Bra.s.sey and Howell, and our own men, with soft, sweet bits of Ruskin, and savage bits of Carlyle. I don't know but Carlyle was right when he said, 'The beginning and the end of what is the matter with us, in these days, is, that we have forgotten G.o.d.'

Cameron said it another way,--honor and honesty. Because, certainly, honor appeals to all that is n.o.blest in human nature,--to chivalry, and tenderness and thought for others; and nothing ever prospered, in the long-run, that did not have a substratum of truth."

"Well, according to Bristow, we came back to him this winter--not I, Darcy, I don't make any pretence,"--and he shook his head with slow gravity. "But I was interested in the revival on psychological grounds.

I had never been so inside of one before. Bristow is a good man, no doubt; but it is just the one chosen way with him,--strong crying and praying, and believing yourself a sinner above all men, and then a sudden peace and happiness, and a courage to endure,--a blind, unreasoning courage to take the present as it is, because G.o.d sent it, and it must be for the best. Boyd and Whitlow and Kenny were the great lights. They went about from house to house; they exhorted and prayed.

Whitlow was one of the old bank-directors. Strange to say, he did not lose a penny. His money was in government-bonds; and now he has persuaded Yerbury that if his advice had been taken there would have been no trouble. Whitlow discharged his man this winter, and took in his place a half-grown boy. Mrs. Whitlow sets a good example to her cla.s.s by discharging one handmaid and making the other do double duty. Yet, so far as I can find, Whitlow is a richer man than he was three years ago.

Kenny keeps his factory open, and gives the men three days' work in the week, and pays them in poor shoes, as much as possible; and takes out a good deal in high rent. Boyd, who has the name of being the greatest saint of all,--does what? Opens that miserable row of houses, that he couldn't let on any terms, and takes in tenants who are willing to work out the rent. He gets good prices, too. Is he losing on them? Faugh! the very term of charity makes me sick. And this winter he purchased a good deal of the stock of the relief-store. Wretched flour; miserable, adulterated stuff of tea; pork, some of it that wasn't fit to eat; and cheap b.u.t.ter, that every one would have been ten times better without. I went to him one day, red-hot, in a sanitary view of the business; and he preached religion to me,--his kind. 'Boyd,' said I, 'there's Keppler's saloon, your own property, paying you a good income, no doubt, in these hard times, adding to the want and misery of Yerbury faster than your whole church can save. If you are in earnest, go break up that den of iniquity!'"

Jack laughed. "What did he say to that?"

"Meekly, that Keppler had a lease for five years, and was going on the second. The man is so honorable, he cannot break faith with his fellow-man, forsooth; but he breaks faith with G.o.d, in a serene, untroubled manner." And Maverick's lip curled scornfully under the fringe of moustache.

"But there must be some gold, or the counterfeit would not be so successfully received. We have had so much false money everywhere, that, since we can make that pa.s.s, we do not trouble ourselves. And yet, Maverick, there _is_ something in it that you and I don't see clearly yet; but we cannot teach it acceptably until we can show better fruit.

And, when leaders of all kinds, in high places, show that self only is at the bottom of every thing they do, it seems hopeless to demand that the cla.s.s below, watching them, and suffering from their wrongdoing, shall attain a higher moral status. How can they help following coa.r.s.ely in the footsteps of their betters?"

"Darcy, suppose you turn parson!" and Maverick laughed half quizzically.

"See here: the world wants a very old sermon preached again to it, hammered into every fibre, put up over every doorway,--the essence of all knowledge, all religion, briefly comprehended in this, 'Love thy neighbor _as_ thyself.' You won't need gown or bands for that work. Not to have one code of morals for the rich, and one for the poor; one creed for Sunday, and quite another belief for Monday; to have no lofty, impossible theories and exalted moods, but truthful, honest living; not to push away the miserable, ignorant souls, but take them by the hand in hearty co-operation. Maybe Cameron has the right clew. Why should we let human love be shamed by such things as an Oneida community or a Mormon city?"

The strong, earnest voice stirred Jack like martial music. All these years he had been struggling with a great, blind, confused something,--perhaps it was not a silver-mine or a railroad, but a work just here in the town of his boyhood, where he was known, where he had played and worked.

"Seventeenthly, and lastly," and Maverick looked at his watch, "I cannot idle any more time upon you, and must cut short with a 'To be continued.' We will talk it over again and again; and, if we cannot get it into shape, there is still Florida left. So, while you are dreaming it out by this great silent mill, whose prisoned spirits should prate of prosperity instead of desolation, I'll run my course around Yerbury, and we'll compare notes over our cigars. _Addio_," waving his hand.

Jack watched the compact figure as it moved briskly away; then he sauntered round the mill, down one street and up another, strolled out to Lovers' Lane, and returned by Larch Avenue. The Barry house began to show signs of life, for old Mat was clearing up the grounds. This was the one oasis that had not been bitten by speculation. He thought of winsome little Sylvie, and one summer evening when Irene Lawrence stepped into that pretty, cosey room with the grace and beauty of a Juno. Where was she now? And what was Fred doing? Making a great leap into name and fame, doubtless, now that he was put upon his mettle. The old boyish freaks came back to his mind, the enthusiastic unreasoning adoration, the last tender parting. An intense and subtile sympathy filled his soul; and, though he smiled a little, the memory was very sacred.

The texture of Jack's mind was not of the quick, brilliant, or sanguine order. He went over his books again; he ruminated as he cleaned the garden-paths, spaded the beds, trimmed the trees and shrubbery, and attended to the odds and ends known only to a careful householder.

Cousin Jane was in her element out here; and they two discoursed of farming and gardening, and industry, she in a sharp, trenchant way.

She had remarked incidentally that her visit was near its end. Now that Jack was home, cousin Ellen would not need her.

"I don't see why you should not make your home here, cousin Jane,"

replied Mrs. Darcy. "Grandmother grows feebler all the time, and you have quite spoiled me by your strength and cheeriness. You have no nearer tie; and if you _could_ content yourself with us--Jack was speaking about it a few evenings since. We should like so to keep you, cousin Jane."

Jane Morgan studied the beseeching eyes a while, then dropped her own, and thought.

"Very well," she answered, "if you like to have it so. While I am well and strong I think I ought to do enough somewhere to earn my living, and not use up the little laid by for a rainy day. If you and Jack are agreed, we'll consider it a bargain for a year. I like to be settled about what I'm going to do: there's nothing so uncomfortable as hanging on tenterhooks. When my visit's through I like to go, if I'm going; not stand an hour or two with the door-k.n.o.b in my hand."

Jack was delighted. They could spare him now and then of an evening to stroll down to Maverick's office, where they discussed pretty nearly every thing under the sun. It was so in the beginning,--"the earth was without form, and void." Then the Barrys returned; Sylvie changed in some indescribable way as to a kind of delicate outside manner, but the same fresh, earnest girl in heart and soul, taking up her friendship with Jack just where she had laid it down. Yet they had both grown broader and richer in nature and experience, and there was something of the subtile flavor of new acquaintanceship.

Yerbury cleaned house, even to the tidying-up of streets and carting-away of rubbish. It was pitiful to see the attempts of some of the poor women, who washed their worn white curtains, scrubbed the shutters and hall-door, and set out a few ragged geraniums in the front yard, or made a little bed of lettuce and onions.

Yerbury Savings Bank was in the hands of a receiver. Some sold out their small accounts for a trifle: it was agreed there could not be much in the way of dividends. Here was a great mortgage on the Downer farm, that the Eastmans had partly cut into city lots. And, though Downer had received a large price, he was a poor man to-day, with no business, and several sons tramping the highways for work. Farms had not been profitable, but had the wealth and extravagance produced any better result? These places around would be sold presently for any sum they would bring.

"Speculation did look so tempting, though," said Jack with a humorous smile. "But for grandmother I might have been in the midst of it."

"There's just one thing that makes a man or a country rich," said Jane Morgan incisively; "and that's industry, good, honest labor. Marking up one's goods before breakfast, as the Frenchman did, realizes no absolute money. The speculators jingle their dollars from hand to hand, until some poor fool, attracted by the noise, gives them a hundred for their twenty. When a man makes money simply by another person's loss, he has not created any thing, or made any more of it; and the world's no better, that I can see."

"Cousin Jane, you are dipping into political economy;" and Jack nodded gayly. "I shall have to ask Maverick and some of the others up here; and maybe you can put in a straw, or a head of wheat, toward the regeneration of Yerbury."

"I dip into a little common sense now and then, and it seems to me that's what the world needs. There is no lack of the uncommon kind, and it's not to be altogether despised, since at times uncommon things are given to people to do. But, if all the bees in the hive thought they had a call to be queens, it runs in my mind there'd be a lack of honey presently."

"You are on the right foundation, cousin Jane. We must not only make the honey an honorable thing, but honor the bees, put labor on a better, truer foundation."

"I should just say, 'See here, my friends, it is not possible for us all to be rich, whether it is some fixed immutable law of fate, or the lack of necessary elements in one's character, or the meeting of the right person with the right circ.u.mstances; but the fact is there, true as judgment. You can be comfortable and clean if you have the energy; and it is better to scrub your own kitchen-floor, or raise a bushel of potatoes, than to sit and whine about luck or respectability. Now and then a ready-made fortune drops down upon one, and I don't know but it often brings a curse: anyhow, what you work for, you are pretty sure to enjoy.' It makes me mad when I see healthy, hearty young women sighing for servants and pianos and what not; when their grandmothers, who had as good blood, and as good sense, didn't despise honest work."

Sylvie Barry came in while Miss Morgan was in the midst of her "speech,"

as Jack declared it to be; and now she clapped her small white hands, with a "Bravo!"

"A new disciple, Jack," and she smiled. "Miss Morgan, we shall set you to reading our favorite authors, and solving the tremendous question.

Where can we get work for these to do? For a great many stand idle in the market-place, because they have not been hired. What can we set them at?"

"Well, Miss Barry, I don't know much about the big, outside questions; but, going around Yerbury a little this winter, I shouldn't say the work was all done up; or, done in such a poor, thrown-together way, that it tumbles right to pieces again. There's skewy, ill-made beds with ragged counterpanes; there's shreds of old ingrain-carpets, that you fall over; there's broken chairs, and shabby clothes, and dirty corners,--work enough, I should say, to last some woman an hour or two. She might get out her pieces of calico, and, with the children's help, make a new spread, maybe a tidy ap.r.o.n, and she might braid a rag mat out of bits, and a hundred things that go toward comfort. No: all the work isn't done up yet, Miss Sylvie," and Jane Morgan stopped just then, to knit the seam-st.i.tch in a stocking for a poor body.

Sylvie threw herself on the footstool, and leaned her arms on Miss Morgan's knee.

"I wasn't thinking so much of that when I spoke," she began earnestly; "but I do wonder if some of us couldn't take it up. There are art-schools, and music-schools, and cooking-schools, in the great cities; and why couldn't we start something of the kind here? Poor people--the real poor, I mean--are often wasteful and idle because they do not just know how to be any thing else. They buy cheap garments in stores, and they soon come apart. I had a sewing-school last summer, and I found some mothers didn't seem to care whether their children learned or not,--since there was so much sewing done by machines. But if the mothers could be taught a little"--

"That's about the upshot of what I said. You see, Miss Barry, people have been earning so much money of late years, that sewing has gone out of fashion. It didn't pay to do this or that, so they earned and spent.

Now they sit listless in their dirt and rags, bemoaning hard times. It is good to know how to do more than one thing," and Miss Morgan nodded her head confidently, her strong face full of earnestness.

"Why can't you and Sylvie start a school--what shall we call it?--of useful and homely arts? You see, the girls do work in the mills and shops until they get married, and then they do not know how to make the best of their husbands' money. But don't crowd out all the beauty and the pleasure; there must be something to enlist the heart. Give a man an interest in a thing, and you awake a new feeling, an enthusiasm that makes every thing go as smoothly as oiling up machinery."

"I have often thought," said Mrs. Darcy in her soft, gentle voice, "that the poor did not get as much good of their money as the better cla.s.ses, because they never have enough to buy advantageously, and store-keepers so often take the advantage of them. Now, yesterday I was over to Mrs. Hall's, and the poor thing was trying to make some bread, and she was not fit to stand up and knead it; so I thought I'd try. The flour was heavy and sticky and lumpy, and what I should call very unprofitable. No one could make good bread out of it. She said they traded at Kilburn's, because he would wait if they did not have the money. The flour was seven and a half a barrel; the eighth, ninety-five cents; and I do not believe the bread was fit to eat. So you must remember, when you blame people for poor cooking, that they may not always have decent materials to work with."

"Maverick was growling about Kilburn the other evening. It is a shame that he should sell such poor goods, when prices have come down a good deal."

"Can you not reform him a little?" and Mrs. Darcy smiled.

"Cousin Jane and Sylvie might go into business, as did the poor weavers of Toad Lane, with their sack of oatmeal, firkin of b.u.t.ter, a little sugar and flour," said Jack laughingly. "A fair division of labor. The men of Yerbury shall provide work, and the women shall train the inefficient how and where to spend money."

Sylvie glanced up with bright, inquiring eyes.

"Was it some more co-operation?" she asked.

Jack brought out his book, and read the story of the "Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale" and their wonderful success from a small beginning. The girl listened with wide-open eyes, and even Jane Morgan laid down her knitting.

"The queen-bee and the workers again," said she, as Jack closed the book. "It is not every man for himself, but every man for each other.

And it comes back, always."

CHAPTER XII.

"WHERE is grandmother?" Jack asked one morning late in May, as he came in from the garden, and found her place at the table vacant.

"She does not feel very well this morning, and I told her there was no need of rising with the lark," answered cousin Jane; but, though her voice was cheerful, there was a new gravity in her face.