Hope Mills Part 40

The seed was sown, and it is too true that "foul weeds grow apace."

There were club-meetings and union-meetings. The shoe-factory, which had struggled hard to get on its legs again, soon became a hotbed of discontent. The hatters held meetings, the paper-makers were aroused, and then began preparation for another grand strike. The weavers from Coldbridge and Stilford sent over a deputation to Hope Mills, warning, exhorting, and threatening. "No system," said they, "should interfere with mutual strength and protection."

And this was not all. It seemed as if Yerbury meant to make them the scape-goat of every thing. Robert Winston was broadly caricatured; and there was a bit of insulting abuse, calling them traders in their brethren's blood, pasted up on the gate-post. "The Evening Transcript"

went over the system of co-operation, and showed to its own satisfaction, that it was a system full of errors and miscalculations based on the credulity of workmen. It hinted that the same mysterious cause which reduced profits last year would reduce them again next year, that at the end of the five years the bread and cheese would come out just even, although there had been a great deal more bread than cheese, as everybody knew. If the corporation were working for the best interests of the men, why had they not sold off stock when every one knew prices were going permanently down, instead of waiting to sell it below cost? Why had they paid exorbitant prices for wool when the market was flooded with it? Why had they not done this or that? until one wondered why, understanding the woollen-business so well, and being able to see just where enormous profits could be made, and losses avoided, they had not all gone into it themselves. The article wound up with a covert and insulting insinuation. Human nature was the same, the world over. Men of the highest probity and honor had succ.u.mbed to temptation: these men who had never really been in any responsible position had yet to be proved. If men like David Lawrence and Horace Eastman could not make a stand against fluctuations and difficulties, it was hardly likely success would crown any such abnormal undertaking.

Jack did not see the paper until the next day. Some one laid it surrept.i.tiously on his desk. His face flushed darkly at the attack upon his honesty, and for a moment all the belligerency of his boyhood rose to the surface. He had half a mind to hunt up the writer of the article, and pound him to a jelly with his two fists. But presently he laughed to himself, and then made a tour of the mills in his cheeriest fashion. He saw with grief that the seed had found root. There were some sullen faces and short answers.

It certainly is a hard thing to keep on fighting an old foe that can only be beaten, never killed.

Jack stumbled over Cameron in the store-room.

"Cameron," said he with a white, rigid face, "I wish to G.o.d this was the last day of the five years! I should walk out of Hope Mills, and never set foot in it again, no, not even if they implored me on their knees. A thankless, miserable set! The lying article in last night's paper made me mad for a moment, but could not sting: yet the faces of my own men did as I came through the rooms."

"You've had a hard pull, Jack!" Cameron's voice was fatherly and soothing. "You might have put your money and your brains in something that would have proved much pleasanter. But the man who takes up the first end of a truth always gets hard knocks: it is the people who come after who find a smooth path. Don't you remember," drawing his wrinkled face into a queer smile, "the shrewd application your New York lady made about the children of Israel? Jack, if the salvation scheme of the Bible was all proved false,--which it never will be, to my mind,--there's so much wisdom in it beside, that a chap could take it just for a sort of guidebook in every-day matters, all the same. And now we're going to have a big fight."

"You think that?" cried Jack, in vague alarm. "I wish Winston was here.

He can always talk so to the point!"

"Well, he isn't: we've got to go through it ourselves. But this settles it! You see, there's been Price, and Pickett, and Davy, to stir up strife and bad feeling, and all this outside influence; but my old woman's praying us through, and I set a good deal of store by her prayers, Jack! If these ruffians go on, Yerbury'll be half ruined again, but it is their own fault. I'm not much on capital punishment, but I would go to the hanging of that McPherson. If he'd staid away, we should have done well enough."

Jack drew a long, troubled breath.

"I'd let every man go out who wanted to, but I wouldn't pay-him a red cent, there!"

That evening Jack went down to Larch Avenue. He found Fred and Sylvie up in arms. Indignation was a mild term.

It was a magnificent night, with a nearly full moon. The light flooded the wide lawn path, and made shadows of elves and gnomes on the porch, as the wind wandered in and out the great honeysuckle, whose ripe, rich perfume was shaken about with every waft. Within, an Argand lamp, and porcelain shade with a minute painting of Puck and his fairy host, sent a softened radiance on the old, rich-hued carpet, and antique furniture.

It was but little changed, yet wore an indescribably antique look.

Over at an open window sat Irene Lawrence, dressed in white, with a single deep-red velvety rose at her throat, which Sylvie had pinned there. Her hair had grown rapidly, and, though it did not quite curl, the ends tumbled about loosely, framing in the face with their dusky purplish tint. It was very clear now, and a little pale; the old brilliant coloring had not all returned; the pa.s.sionless grace, the deep eyes with their steady lights, the mouth suggesting mobility and warmth and pa.s.sion, rather than defining it, the droop of the white lids, the unruffled brow, and the pose of the bowed head and slightly-yielding throat, made a marvellous picture.

The three were talking earnestly, as people do in the great crises of life; Sylvie wondrously piquant, with some thin, black, trailing stuff making shifting billows about her restless feet. She questioned Jack eagerly, she denounced the attack as cruel and cowardly. What did he mean to do? What should Fred do for him?

"There is nothing to do, but just wait for the result. The dragon's-teeth have been sown. The only comfort I have is, that you never can put a lie on the face of truth, and nail it there. No amount of arguing or talk can make a thing so when it is _not_ so. Higher than this little human round, G.o.d garners every truth in his keeping, and will make it tell somewhere!"

Miss Lawrence raised her eyes, and glanced over to him. Had the slow impa.s.siveness of her soul been touched, that this sudden peculiar grace of sympathy, or some hidden kindred feeling, rose and a.s.serted itself?

And yet she might have been in some magnetic sleep, for all actual movement of her features; it was the dawn of an expression that seemed to transport him to some strange world, where he had known her long ago,--where he had watched for her coming, listened to her voice,--rather than any present interest or meaning.

He rose abruptly.

"You are not going!" cried Sylvie, in her pretty wifely imperiousness.

"I"--for a moment he had the sensation of a man drowning. The surging waves were about him, throbbing, leaping, strangling him. There was a ringing in his ears, there was a long shuddering sensation, like being overwhelmed.

"It is very warm," he went on in a faint, strained voice, wiping the beaded drops from his broad brow.

"Come over here," pleaded Sylvie: "you will be cooler. The wind is south, and doesn't blow in those windows. You are sure you feel quite well?" scanning him anxiously. "You look pale."

"It was only momentary." He wondered now what had so moved him. "I am like good old John Bunyan's Pilgrim,"--laughing faintly,--"'tumbled up and down' with these excitements. I wish they were at an end. We were going on so nicely when that McPherson came! Don't let us think any more about it," throwing up his head with a nervous shake. "Sylvie, I wish you would sing something."

"With pleasure. Fred and I have been practising duets. When Yerbury is laid in ashes we can go off as strolling minstrels;" and she laughed gayly, as she went to the piano. That exquisite tact in changing a mood or scene was a familiar characteristic of Sylvie Barry.

As the sound of their blending voices floated out on the summer night air, there leaped up in Darcy's soul a subtle, forceful, vivifying flame, touching to a white heat the farthest pulse of his being.

Resistance appeared impossible: he did not even dream what manner of influence this might be. Long afterward--it seemed ages to him--as their heads were bent together over the pages of the music, he raised his eyes, and let them wander slowly toward Irene Lawrence.

Was there something quite new in the face,--a sort of strange, wondering, troubled expression, as if some unseen, almost unknown, depth had been stirred?

He did not need to ask the question now. Wild as it was, he loved that statue over yonder, and it seemed to him that his pa.s.sion in its enduring vitality must awaken her soul to kindred life! An exultant strength and determination rose within him. What might have abashed another man, filled him with a deathless courage, as high as it was pure.

He thanked Sylvie and Fred for the song, but resisted their entreaties to remain. When he said good-night, he went over to Miss Lawrence, and took her hand. It was cold and pa.s.sive, and her eyes fell beneath his.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE excitement ran very high not only in Yerbury, but all over the country. Strikes seemed the order of the day again, and for what reason, was not clearly made manifest, unless labor felt that it had capital a little by the throat, in that its services were again somewhat in demand. "Now," said the prophets. Surely, if they did not strike when there was employment, they could not when there was none.

It began in the shoe-shop. The next Monday morning the men made their demand in no gentle terms, and were refused. There was a large contract at stake, however, and by Tuesday night the matter was talked over in a better spirit. The employers were willing to accede to one-half of the demand, otherwise the order must be sent to another firm. Thursday morning they went to work with a rather ill grace, yet some elation.

Then the hatters took their turn. The hands at Hope Mills were served with a notice that the mutual protectionists in all the towns around were to be out on the following Monday; and stirring appeals were made to those who had any feeling of honor in the cause.

It was exceedingly hard on the men. They gathered around in little knots on Sunday, wild with conflicting emotions. Their faith in Hope Mills and co-operation was undergoing a severe strain. The fear of secret frauds, of underhand dealing, of distrust in Winston and Darcy, had been dinned in their ears by outside influence, some of it very potent. Not one appeal had been made by the managers: Cameron and the others decided it was best.

Jack went over to the mill on Monday morning. The gatekeeper and the bell-boy were there. The engineer came in with a quiet, solemn "Good-morning." The Brotherhood of Engineers had warned him too, and he was a little troubled; but he had cast in his lot with the rest, and it might be as well to wait and see what they did. The main shaft was turned.

Jack from his office-window watched the streets filling up with men and women, many beside the regular operatives. They came to a halt.

"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" the bell rang out cheerily on the summer morning air. "Come to work, come to work! The birds build homes, and rear their young; the bee skims the fragrant air in search of flowers; the rivers run to the sea, turning wheels, driving ships: nothing in the great economy of nature is idle," sang out the clang of the bell.

The hands glanced at one another in doubt and dismay, and there was an awful silence for a few seconds.

Some one elbowed his way through the crowd. He had come from the bedside of his sick child, who might be dying even now,--a small, wiry, middle-aged man, with a set, resolute face. He glanced about, then he sprang up on a pile of packing-boxes. It was Jesse Gilman.

"My fellow-workmen," he began, "I don't know how you all feel about this matter; but Hope Mills took me in when I had tramped the country half over, and found nothing to do. I've tried the old system, and this can't be any worse; and, if I have to lose money by an employer, I'd rather it would be John Darcy of Yerbury, than any man I know. No man on the face of the earth has a right to say I shall not work in Hope Mills when I made my own bargain long ago to do it. That is all I have to say. I am going to work."

"Three cheers!" cried some one as Gilman jumped down.

There were cheers and groans.

Ben Hay followed him, and stood a moment in the gateway.

"Boys," said he in his rich, ringing voice, "Hope Mills was opened to receive a crowd of starving men. I'll take my oath to Jack Darcy's honesty. He's stuck by us, and we'll stick to him. That's the beauty of co-operation. You can't get away, and tramp off with the first fool that asks you! It isn't merely keeping company: it's a good, honest, up-and-down marriage. I'd as soon think of leaving my wife because some day she didn't give me two dinners instead of one!"

There was a shout of laughter. The ice was broken in good earnest.

"Three cheers for Ben Hay! Three cheers and a tiger for Jack Darcy!" and amid all this hubbub the men and women, the boys and girls, rushed in pell-mell. A gladder crew one never saw. To decide when others doubt, to go forward boldly when others hesitate, to stand up for the principle of right when others have traduced and blackened it, to take the first step, is to be as heroic as the "six hundred" of deathless fame.

They went to work with a will, though some were a little sore and doubtful, but they were carried on by the enthusiasm of the others. The street below was still blocked up, and there were yells and groans.

Presently there came a shower of superannuated eggs. Two landed in Darcy's office-window. After that, a stampede of the riotous crew.