Hope Mills Part 26

Fred stooped suddenly, and kissed her on the forehead. There _was_ something in mother-love, after all.

Just then Martha West came in with the tray. Fred drew out the folding breakfast-table that his mother had so often used, while he was introducing Martha to his mother and sister. She courtesied, and proceeded to lay the cloth and the dishes, and disappeared for the viands themselves.

"Is one woman expected to do all the work?" asked Irene at length.

"She thinks she can--with so small a family. Of course I"--

Irene raised her hand deprecatingly. "Spare me details," she said. "It is very bitter to eat the bread of dependence: I have learned that already."

He made no answer. Mrs. Lawrence looked from one to the other in helpless bewilderment, but Martha entered again, and changed the troubled current.

It was quite a picnic dinner. Irene unbent a little at the sight of the rare china and beautiful old silver. She supposed every thing had gone down in the whirlpool of ruin, and that humiliation would be complete in delft and plated ware. Then she ventured to glance around.

Fred chatted gayly, making talk. It had not used to be one of his accomplishments in his magnificent days when women vied with each other in the delight of entertaining him. It was pleasant to see his mother touch the bell, and sit back in her chair while Martha brought in the dessert.

"And now I must go. Do not expect me much before seven. I wonder if you will feel able to come down to tea? Ah! there are the trunks, just in time. I will send them up, and you will feel quite at home when you have your belongings in place."

Then he went back to his desk, and for the next two hours was too busy to think. After all, there is nothing like energetic employment to keep dismal forebodings out of one's mind.

But that evening after supper, when they had gathered in the library, Mrs. Lawrence began to question him concerning Hope Mills. Agatha had said some one had started the business anew.

Fred explained.

"But how could the workmen do it alone? Your father never trusted them, Fred; and I am sure my father had trouble enough with them in his day!

They were always an ignorant, unreasonable set. Don't you remember how they struck several years ago, and workmen had to come from elsewhere?

They must have some head. And who found the money? Mr. Minor says they cannot possibly succeed."

Some time Fred would have to stand Jack Darcy on his true pedestal. As well do it now, and have it over.

"The project was Mr. Darcy's. I believe he had most of the capital. It was very generous of him to risk it in such times as these."

Irene looked up from her moody contemplation of the fire. A dull flush suffused her face.

"Not Jack Darcy," she said,--"Sylvie Barry's great hero."

"Yes."

"Sylvie Barry!" re-echoed Mrs. Lawrence, and she looked sharply at her son. "And she gave you up for him! Who is he?"

"He used to be in the mill," answered Irene, with all her olden scorn.

"His father was there also. And the Darcys"--

"The Darcys can boast as good blood as we!" exclaimed Fred, his face in a sudden heat. "And Jack Darcy is a gentleman by birth, by instinct, and, best of all, the impulses of a true and n.o.ble heart."

The discussion recalled an old remembrance to Mrs. Lawrence. She looked vaguely at her son as if she were not quite certain, as she said,--

"Was there not something about him when you were boys? He was coa.r.s.e and rough, wasn't he? and Agatha used to worry. I knew it was only a boy's folly; but she was glad when you went to college, and I think--there was his sister"--her maternal instincts taking alarm.

"No, he never had a sister. His father died, and he staid at home. His mother was delicate, and his grandmother old. She is dead, and he gets his small fortune from her. No, he was not coa.r.s.e nor rude, but he was my champion in boyhood, my hero then; and it is the shame of my life that I should have let him drop out of it because I was the richer of the two. I despise myself for any thing so narrow and unmanly, and yet he was generous enough to forgive. I do not wonder at Miss Barry's choice when she contrasted us, and I honor her to-day for her discrimination. She never encouraged me, blind, idiotic fool that I was!

and I have only my wretched vanity to blame. He is fully worthy of her, and that is the highest compliment I can pay him."

"Very magnanimous for a rejected lover," commented Irene with a touch of sarcasm.

"But you _did_ love Sylvie?" Mrs. Lawrence said, bewildered by his rapid defence.

"I blush now at the thought of having offered her such a paltry regard.

To me she will always be a sweet and peerless woman. I am glad she will have the strength of manhood to lean upon, the purity of its honor to trust, the exceeding tenderness of a soul that will never know a narrow or grudging thought, to confide in. All my years look poor and barren beside his."

"I can never forgive her"--

"You must, you must!" and Fred seized his mother's hand, pressing it to his lips. "There is nothing to forgive," he went on. "You would not have had her throw aside the love of her life for my fancied fortune that has taken wings. It was my blunder. And I want to say that I have taken up my old friendship for Jack Darcy, come back to the truth that money is one of the incidental surroundings of the man, but it can never be the man himself."

Irene's haughty lip curled, but no one openly gainsaid Fred.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE winter was a rather open one, with but little snow. Matters were somewhat better in Yerbury, but bad enough, Sylvie Barry thought. The churches began their usual work,--parish aids, clothing-clubs, and sewing-societies. It was as she said: they begged from the rich to give to the poor. Women met to make or to alter over garments, and devise means to render the poor more comfortable. There were so many miserable homes, so many inefficient wives and mothers, who were ignorant of the commonest principles of economy. They could live on meal-mush, they could go in rags, but the science of thrift was utterly unknown in many instances.

Sylvie had done her share of church work as a growing maiden. Every year there had been some mission, and a sewing-school.

"And yet it doesn't seem to do much good," said she. "The girls learn to hem a handkerchief, which a sewing-machine can do in ten seconds: they sew a few patches together, and perhaps make an ap.r.o.n. By the next winter they have forgotten all about it. And some of their mothers do not seem to care."

"The mothers need educating," Miss Morgan began, with a decisive nod of the head. "They were married out of shops and factories, and know very little, and have brought up their children to know less. I'm not one of the kind who can see no good in the world's progress, and who want to go back to the days of spinning-wheels, wax polish for tables and chairs, and a day spent every week scouring the bra.s.s andirons and candlesticks and door-k.n.o.bs, and various other matters; but I do think we have gone to the other extreme. Women dawdle away half their lives. It is of no use to make clothes, you can buy them cheaper; it is of no use to mend, to do this or that, and so they do nothing."

"I was struck with a contrast I saw yesterday," returned Sylvie. "I had occasion to go to the Webbers,--you know the little cottage on Alden Street, Miss Morgan, where they always have such pretty flowers in the window. Mr. Webber works at satchel-making, and even in good times did not earn very high wages. They have a garden, in which they raise the most wonderful succession of crops; they keep some chickens, which they manage to have laying most of the time; and they have five children. It was quite late in the afternoon. Mrs. Webber sat by the window, making lace, on a cushion, at which she realizes about a dollar a week; Christine, the eldest girl, who still goes to school, was crocheting a baby's hood,--she does a good deal of work for Mrs. Burnett's fancy-store, and yet is a very smart scholar; Amelie, the next one, was darning the stockings; the boy, who comes third, was out-doors, tidying up the chicken-house; and the two little girls were in the corner, cutting and sewing patchwork, with a doll in the cradle between them.

The house is always clean, the children are well and rosy, and play about a good deal, and Christine last year earned thirty dollars. Her mother puts half the money she earns in the bank for her marriage-portion. I was so glad it wasn't in Yerbury Bank! You wouldn't believe, that, though she is not quite sixteen, she has almost a hundred dollars saved up. And I must tell you, also, there was a most savory smell of the supper cooking. Altogether, it was so tidy and thrifty, with the clean, bright, and not unpretty faces, that I thought it would make a charming 'interior,' if only some Dutch artist could do justice to it in his minute, pains-taking way. Then I went to the Coles, who live around in the next street. The gate was off its hinges, and the two big boys were firing stones from the street at a post in the yard. They were ragged and dirty. I went in the house, and found the mother and the two girls in the sitting-room. I do not believe there was a piece of furniture whole, and every thing was dusty and shabby, with that close smell some people always have in their houses. Mrs. Cole sat by the window, in a listless manner, doing nothing. Martha had her baby on her lap, asleep, in a soiled and ragged dress, while she was reading; the little girl, who is about twelve, was cutting up some pretty pieces of silk into nothing, that I could see, but a general litter over the table. The kitchen looked dreadful. I had some baby-dresses for Martha, that Mrs. Kent gave me: so I unrolled my bundle, and displayed them.

'Oh,' said she, 'they are long, aren't they! and I've just put my baby in short dresses.' If you could have heard the kind of helpless, dissatisfied tone in which it was uttered! I had half a mind to bundle them up, and take them back. 'You can shorten them,' I answered, 'and some of them will make two dresses.' 'Yes,' she answered reluctantly, 'only I should want something for yokes and sleeves.' Then her mother came to inspect them, and she was rather more gracious. But I could not help contrasting the two families. Mr. Cole is a carpenter, and has earned very good wages. Martha ran a machine in the shoe-shop, bought a melodeon, and took two or three quarters' music-lessons; purchased a very handsome set of amethyst jewelry and two pretty silk dresses when she was married. And in the two years of her married life, her husband has done next to nothing, although he is a steady, pleasant fellow. Now he is at Pittsburg, earning just enough to pay his own board. She has her sewing-machine, but she doesn't know how to make any kind of garment decently. When they had money they bought every thing ready-made. She paid Miss Gilman twenty-two dollars to make her two silk dresses. If she had put one of them in some plain, simple garments, how much more serviceable it would have proved!"

"Such people are hardly worth helping," Miss Morgan said sharply.

"Isn't it a faulty system that makes them so?" asked Sylvie, drawing her brows into a little, perplexed frown. "Martha worked for two years, and earned a good deal of money. At one time she made ten dollars a week. It was just one thing,--fine st.i.tching on shoes,--yet one would think she would understand a sewing-machine so completely that she could do any thing with it. But she actually hired part of her baby's wardrobe made; and the dresses she bought,--cheap coa.r.s.e-trimmed things, I should have been ashamed of. Christine Webber wants to study for a teacher; and, as there is so little for girls to do, I think she will. She will make wiser investments of her money than Martha Cole, and think of the kind of wife her husband will get!"

"The era of prosperity was too much for some people," said Mrs. Darcy, with her motherly smile. "I used to wonder six or seven years ago, how it was that so many middle-cla.s.s people could afford a servant, or fancy they needed one. A little more time spent in household duties would not have injured the women; and, if they had accustomed the children to take a part, it would have been much better for them. Then so much sewing was hired; and, although the income looked large, the expenditures swallowed it all up, and no one was any better off. How few had any stock of underclothing, bed-linen, or useful and durable articles!"

"Industry must come around in the fashion again. Even the despised patchwork doubtless had its uses. It taught children to sew, and to manage economically. I remember that I once had three quilts on hand at one time. The larger pieces went into the first, and so on. My last one was a very pretty little thing, and I saved all the sc.r.a.ps for it. Yet we often hear people laugh about the folly of cutting calico into bits to sew together again. Why should it not be considered honorable and respectable to put every thing to the best use?" and Miss Morgan glanced up with a confidence no one could gainsay.

"That is the grand secret," cried Sylvie,--"making economy honorable.

You never see the nice old families flaunting their best silk and their point-laces on ordinary occasions. Something is kept sacred. And I do think there is more real economy among them, than among those who absolutely have a need for it. If wastefulness could once come to be considered a sin of ostentation and low-breeding, it would not have so many followers. Some people do it because they are afraid of being thought mean; but if they could be trained to that bravery of spirit that makes a work of beauty out of the poorest and smallest things because they are well done, and fitting to the place and season"--

"Bravo!" said a laughing voice as the door opened. "Mrs. Darcy, when the committee of ways and means have worn out your carpet by their frequent meetings in your charmed temple, you must insist upon their buying you a new one. Good-morning, ladies! Miss Barry, I set out to find you; and your aunt fancied you would be here, the place of all waifs and strays.

I want you and Miss Morgan to go and inspect a room, or rather two rooms, to see if they will answer our purpose. Mrs. Lane had a school there."

"Oh, I know the place!" began Sylvie eagerly, b.u.t.toning up her sack again, and looking smilingly in Dr. Maverick's face, that had a sparkling wholesomeness born of the fresh air and brisk walk. And whenever he caught her eye with this light in it, so friendly and earnest, a thrill sped through his veins.

Miss Morgan was soon ready, and the three started. The place was only a few squares away, in a block of buildings where the stores on the lower floor stood empty; indeed, some of them had never been rented. Up-stairs there was one large room with three front windows, and a smaller room at the back with a fireplace, sink and water, and a large closet.