Margret Howth, a Story of To-day Part 5

She was free,--and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all the soul's diseases, and----

Well, Lois was quiet now,--ready to be drawn into a dissertation on Barney's vices and virtues, or her room, where "th' air was so strong, 'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh,--best in THIS town,"

she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or on the river-bank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of the farms. The fences were well built, she noticed,--the barns wide and snug-looking: for this county in Indiana is settled by New England people, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians. They both leave their mark on barns or fields, I can tell you! The two women were talking all the way. In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this silent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about paltry, common things,--partly, as I said, from a hope to forget herself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world which opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbid shadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures were intensely real, like those of her cla.s.s. If there were latent powers in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foul air and life, she knew nothing of it. She never probed her own soul with fierce self-scorn, as this quiet woman by her side did;--accepted, instead, the pa.s.sing moment, with keen enjoyment. For the rest, childishly trusted "the Master."

This very drive, now, for instance,--although she and the cart and Barney went through the same routine every day, you would have thought it was a new treat for a special holiday, if you had seen the perfect abandon with which they all threw themselves into the fun of the thing.

Not only did the very heaps of ruby tomatoes, and corn in delicate green casings, tremble and shine as though they enjoyed the fresh light and dew, but the old donkey c.o.c.ked his ears, and curved his scraggy neck, and tried to look as like a high-spirited charger as he could.

Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, and there was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind. It was a new side of life for Margret.

She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient or modern, watching it. It was a very busy ride,--something to do at every farm-house: a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margret noticed,--the pearly white b.a.l.l.s close to the heap of royal purple. No matter how small the basket was that she stopped for, it brought out two or three to put it in; for Lois and her cart were the event of the day for the lonely farm-houses. The wife would come out, her face ablaze from the oven, with an anxious charge about that b.u.t.ter; the old man would hail her from the barn to know "ef she'd thought toh look in th' mail yes'rday;"

and one or the other was sure to add, "Jes' time for breakfast, Lois."

If she had no baskets to stop for, she had "a bit o' business," which turned out to be a paper she had brought for the grandfather, or some fresh mint for the baby, or "jes' to inquire fur th' fam'ly."

As to the amount that cart carried, it was a perpetual mystery to Lois.

Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had gone into town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that it would break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in its unlimited endurance. "This cart 'll be right side up fur years to come," she would a.s.sert, shaking her head. "It 's got no more notion o' givin' up than me nor Barney,--not a bit." Margret had her doubts,--and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load,--how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow hearts, scarlet veined,--golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest,--russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins,--plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom,--peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.

I wish with all my heart somebody would paint me Lois and her cart!

Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past his room out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously.

But he had his grand battle-piece on hand then,--and after that he went the way of all geniuses, and died down into colourer for a photographer. He met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, and touched his hat as he returned Lois's "Good-morning," and took a couple of great pawpaws from her. She was a woman, you see, and he had some of the school-master's old-fashioned notions about women. He was a sickly-looking soul. One day Lois had heard him say that there were pawpaws on his mother's place in Ohio; so after that she always brought him some every day. She was one of those people who must give, if it is nothing better than a Kentucky banana.

After they pa.s.sed the stone quarry, they left the country behind them, going down the stubble-covered hills that fenced in the town. Even in the narrow streets, and through the warehouses, the strong, dewy air had quite blown down and off the fog and dust. Morning (town morning, to be sure, but still morning) was shining in the red window-panes, in the tossing smoke up in the frosty air, in the very glowing faces of people hurrying from market with their noses nipped blue and their eyes watering with cold. Lois and her cart, fresh with country breath hanging about them, were not so out of place, after all. House-maids left the steps half-scrubbed, and helped her measure out the corn and beans, gossiping eagerly; the newsboys "Hi-d!" at her in a friendly, patronizing way; women in rusty black, with sharp, pale faces, hoisted their baskets, in which usually lay a scraggy bit of flitch, on to the wheel, their whispered bargaining ending oftenest in a low "Thank ye, Lois!"--for she sold cheaper to some people than they did in the market.

Lois was Lois in town or country. Some subtile power lay in the coa.r.s.e, distorted body, in the pleading child's face, to rouse, wherever they went, the same curious, kindly smile. Not, I think, that dumb, pathetic eye, common to deformity, that cries, "Have mercy upon me, O my friend, for the hand of G.o.d hath touched me!"--a deeper, mightier charm, rather: a trust down in the fouled fragments of her brain, even in the bitterest hour of her bare life,--a faith faith in G.o.d, faith in her fellow-man, faith in herself. No human soul refused to answer its summons. Down in the dark alleys, in the very vilest of the black and white wretches that crowded sometimes about her cart, there was an undefined sense of pride in protecting this wretch whose portion of life was more meagre and low than theirs. Something in them struggled up to meet the trust in the pitiful eyes,--something which scorned to betray the trust,--some Christ-like power in their souls, smothered, dying, under the filth of their life and the terror of h.e.l.l.

A something in them never to be lost. If the Great Spirit of love and trust lives, not lost!

Even in the cold and quiet of the woman walking by her side the homely power of the poor huckster was wholesome to strengthen. Margret left her, turning into the crowded street leading to the part of the town where the factories lay. The throng of anxious-faced men and women jostled and pushed, but she pa.s.sed through them with a different heart from yesterday's. Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone: she was keenly alive; the coa.r.s.e real life of this huckster fired her, touched her blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her. She half smiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered brain the world had seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death. How actual it was to-day,--hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work and tears and pleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in, to suffer or die, if G.o.d so willed it,--G.o.d, the good!

CHAPTER IV.

She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy air of copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid office, the work, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate chicken was making its heart glad over a piece of fresh earth covered with damp moss. Dr.

Knowles stopped to look at it when he came, pa.s.sing her with a surly nod.

"So your master's not forgotten you," he snarled, while the blind old hen c.o.c.ked her one eye up at him.

Pike, the manager, had brought in some bills.

"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door.

"Holmes,--he feeds it every morning."

The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the cold face bending over the desk, meantime.

Pike laughed.

"Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickens must lie nearer his heart than men."

Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip.

The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which he was determined to verify.

"Holmes," he said, carelessly, "has an affinity for animals. No wonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gave him 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air.'"

The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick, cool movement over the page. He was not baffled.

"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule.

Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possession here."

She looked up now.

"He came here to take my place in the mills,--buy me out,--articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you think,--no,--not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he 's sold them at a high figure,--threw his heart in,--the purchaser being a lady. It was light, I fancy,--starved out, long ago."

The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work.

"Miss Herne is the lady,--my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmes they'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit."

Nothing could be read on the face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,--worse than Orleans slaves.

Margret laughed to herself at his pa.s.sion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment.

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks.

"It's a good thing for Holmes," said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool.

"Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes."

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of "n.i.g.g.ahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end.

"A lady in the case?"

"Of course. Only child of Herne's. HE comes down with the dust as dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up.

If money 's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride now to 't."

The young doctor lighted his cigar, a.s.serting that--

"Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town."

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel,--a clergyman, Vand.y.k.e; whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference.

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he was so cursedly indifferent."

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in themselves," said Vand.y.k.e, half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in the West," said the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths,"--with a mournful remembrance of the last dime in his waistcoat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air that no sane man can comprehend."