Hope Mills Part 18

"It is something unusual"--

"She is getting to be an old lady, Jack. There, sit down to your breakfast while it is nice and hot. No fear but what I will attend to grandmother."

She had risen; but in the midst of her dressing her hands had lost their cunning, her limbs their strength. Jane came to look at her in alarm.

"It's a warning," she said, with her grand old smile. "But I have no pain, and so you can leave me here for a while. My strength may come back."

Mrs. Darcy was much frightened.

"Remember that ninety-four is a good old age, and she has hardly had a sick day in her life. After breakfast Jack might go over for Dr.

Maverick. He is sensible, and will not torment her with experiments."

Jack rather hurried through his meal, and then ran up to grandmother's room. She put out her wrinkled hand, thin to be sure, but still slender and smooth, with no k.n.o.bby joints. A proud sort of beauty illumined the old face, though the eyes were a little dull.

"Dear boy," and there was a curious quaver in her voice, "I've had to give in at last. The Lord knows best. He has given me many a happy year with you; yet I have never forgotten the folks over yonder. I shall be glad to see them again,--your father, Jack, and the rest. 'Then they came to the land of Beulah, where the sun s.h.i.+neth day and night, and betook themselves to rest'--you know. We used to read it together."

A sharp pang went to Jack's heart. He pressed the limp hand to his lips, and gazed into the face that had changed in some indescribable way. Then Jane came with a tempting breakfast, and fed her with wonderful gentleness, it seemed to him.

He went out, and brought Maverick back with him.

"It is a general breaking-up of nature," said the doctor with a tender gravity. "Nothing can be done, unless she should suffer; but I do not think she will. It is the way lives ought to end oftener. Give her whatever she will take; and keep cheerful, all of you. After all, it is only a little journey."

"Where?" the young eyes asked as they met each other in solemn mood.

Jack scarcely left her. She liked to open her eyes, and find him sitting there, when she would smile faintly, and murmur a few words. Sylvie and Miss Barry were the only visitors admitted to her room. They used to read out of "Pilgrim's Progress," the book she had loved so well, and occasionally they sang some sweet old hymn.

"Jack," she said once, "you will find everything in my old box there in the bureau. It was my mother's, and came across the sea with me. You have been a good lad. You took your father's place with me, and you must never regret that you staid here to make an old woman happy. You have been a good lad--a good--little lad"-- And her mind wandered to other years.

Just growing gradually weaker, and falling asleep peacefully. A long, well-spent life, and a death to remember and desire.

They buried her in Yerbury churchyard, and the townspeople turned out to do her honor. Jack thought of another death, and the almost solitary state of the funeral.

How good it was that they had Jane Morgan now! She carried them right along.

Jack opened the bra.s.s-bound box, still fragrant with its sandal-wood lining. Some old letters, the trinkets she had saved from her poverty, and a will bequeathing her all, in government bonds, to Jack.

There was nearly seven thousand dollars. With his own little savings he felt quite rich.

"Jack," said his mother, "all these years you have waited patiently, and put by your own dreams. Do not think that I did not notice the struggle.

It was very generous and kindly; and I am glad, for grandmother's sake, that you staid. But now if you like we will go somewhere else, and make a new home"--did her voice tremble a little then? "I am still young enough to take root elsewhere, and cousin Jane is so energetic she helps one to new life. There may be prettier and more prosperous places, and you have years before you in which to realize a fortune."

He glanced up at the face bending over him, instinct with the honorable grace of middle life; the hair with a few threads of silver; the soft, fine skin showing some wrinkles about the eyes and two or three light creases across the forehead; the cheeks out of which roundness had vanished, and the lips the scarlet of girlhood, but though both were pale the mouth was still tender and sweet. A womanly woman,--that seemed to him a perfect description of his mother, a woman who had loved three generations, and held by them. Now for his sake she would give up the old ties, and try a new world,--this shy, shrinking, loving woman.

What would she leave? She had never known any other home in her married life, though this had been changed and improved since her wedding-day.

Everywhere some trace of his father. The porch with the roses climbing over it, the great maples in the street, planted by him; the odorous old balm of Gilead, that he had hunted up because she had cared for it, and they had one in her old home; the trailing clematis with its s.h.i.+ning smilax-like green, and its heliotrope fragrance; the white rose that had been planted on the morning of Jack's birth, and had sent up many generations from the old root; the latticed summer-house with its wealth of grapes; and almost like a vision Jack could fancy he saw the tall figure and deliberate step,--the sweet ghost of memory that could never walk in any other place. Did his mother have such dreams?

Yes, there were better things to life than mere money-getting.

"I believe those were the wild dreams of boyhood,"--smiling a little,--"the 'long, long thoughts of youth.' I used to want something that would occupy my whole soul and every energy, that was stirring, earnest, absorbing, and held a grand outlook. But I think"--very deliberately, as if he were weighing every word--"that my work has come to me, instead of my going out to seek it. At all events, I shall not go away for the present."

"Well," she returned, but she could not keep the great gladness out of her voice.

Having thus made his election, Jack Darcy looked st.u.r.dily about to see what was to be done, and the best way to do it. He asked two of the old over-lookers, Hurd and Bradley, to meet him at Maverick's office; and there they discussed co-operation until long past midnight. They looked into the cotton-mill connected with the Rochdale experiment; they read up the workings of those at Oldham and Lancas.h.i.+re, of the industries in France, and banking in Germany.

"Here we are," said Jack, "with so much of our lives spent in learning to manage looms and turn out different kinds of cloth. People must wear clothes until the millennium, and cloth will be made. It seems to me that it must be a good thing to identify the workmen, and get their real interest. We should avoid strikes on the one hand, the continual disputes about wages, and be much less at the mercy of all outside influence. The men will understand thoroughly that industry, economy, thrift, and perseverance is good for each individually; that he is using these qualities not only for the master, but for himself. There will be better work, and more of it."

Hurd seemed to be taking the measure of Darcy through this speech. Now he said,--

"Darcy, any man who knows enough to head such a business as Hope Mills, knows enough to carve out a fortune for himself; and my opinion is that he would be a fool to let the chance slip."

"A man may have the knowledge, but not the requisite capital," was the patient answer. "Then he might think"--

"Well, you've a sight of faith, that's all! Your men will go on with the tramp of soldiers in good times; and when the pinch comes, then look out! If they were educated, reasonable, sensible; but you and I both know the ma.s.s are not. It will do better in the old countries, for there children expect to follow in the footsteps of their parents; but here, where every boy looks upon himself as a possible president, it cannot be done. It has been tried, and has failed. It will again."

"Then you will not join?"

"I don't say that, Darcy. I can't very well get away from Yerbury: if I could, the Lord knows I'd go. But there--it is just as bad everywhere else. Don't be too sanguine though: you young chaps build air-castles easily."

Bradley wrung his hand warmly at parting. "I want to look into this thing a little more closely," he said. "I believe you have struck the keynote. Whatever raises the workman raises the whole world. If you get him to be self-supporting, there is one less pauper or tramp for the State to take in charge, and tax all other workingmen for his support."

"I rather like the scheme of the co-operative store," Hurd began presently. "There's a sight of money somehow between the producer and the consumer. Farmers are grumbling all the time. I wrote to my brother-in-law last spring about trading for a small farm, and going into poultry-business perhaps; and he sent back a list of prices he had obtained for his produce. b.u.t.ter twenty-five cents, and we paid forty this winter. Milk two and a half cents a quart, while ours is from eight to ten."

"Transportation to be counted in," suggested Maverick.

"The thing discouraged me, so I thought I'd hold on a bit, since I did not know the first rule for farming. As Darcy says, we have spent all these years perfecting ourselves in our business, and it hardly looks reasonable that we should succeed at once in something altogether different. If you don't mind, Darcy, I'd like to look over that Rochdale experiment a little at my leisure."

Jack handed him the book, and the small party dispersed. In a week they met again, with two more, one a stubborn old Englishman who had been in the business. They had done very well for a while, then the market flattened. They could not hold their stock, so the big fish swallowed them up. That was always the end where you had no credit and no reserve capital. Truth to tell, Jack began to realize how hard it would be to convert some of the very men he would like to have.

Meanwhile Hamilton Minor came up with some capitalists, and Hope Mills was put up at auction. They looked around the town, examined the building and machinery, which was the best of its kind; but n.o.body could tell whether we had reached bottom prices or not, and, though the place was to be offered at an immense sacrifice, they were wary. Empty mills and rusting machinery were not profitable investments. Mr. Minor's eloquence went for nothing. These long-headed dons would rather hold on to their money, though they expressed a good deal of sympathy for the Lawrence estate.

"I do believe it will go for the face of the mortgage," said Jack to Maverick that evening. "Twenty thousand dollars, and a year's interest and taxes. Twenty-two thousand would cover the whole thing; and three years ago Mr. Lawrence wouldn't have looked at fifty thousand. Maverick, I can get together ten thousand of my own, and if there was one other person"--

"We will hunt him up," returned Maverick hopefully. "There is the reputation of the cloth already made, which is one great step in your favor. Yes, it must be done."

Yerbury was looking a little brighter and better at midsummer.

Scarlet-fever had pretty well disappeared; but malaria had come in its stead, convenient name for want of nourishment, stagnation, and despondency. The haggard-looking wives and mothers went out to a day's was.h.i.+ng or scrubbing; but the children, better off, roamed over the fields in search of berries or a stray ownerless fruit-tree, laughing and happy in their rags and bare feet.

Darcy tried two or three pretty well-to-do men, that he fancied had the good of the town at heart; but the project looked wild to them. If David Lawrence couldn't stand up against hard times, no new men could. He, Darcy, had better put his money in government-bonds, and live on the interest. Nothing could be made in such times as these.

"It seems as if one half of the world has decided that the other half should starve," Jack declared in a discouraged tone. "No one is willing to start the ball again. If it wasn't for mother I would risk every dollar of my own. And then to think of the land lying idle about here,--enough to feed half the town! I do not wonder that we are fast coming to beggary and ruin."

Maverick was pretty sober for several days, then he went off to Narragansett Pier; "tired of my everlasting badgering," said Jack to Sylvie, who, poor child, had her hands and heart full of projects that she talked over with Miss Morgan and her aunt, and did not make much more progress than Jack.

So it happened one July evening that Jack sat smoking on the porch in a rather despondent frame of mind. Miss Morgan and his mother had gone to make some neighborly calls.

A quick step came down the street. "If Maverick wasn't in Rhode Island!"

thought Jack; then it came nearer, with a little halt, and Jack sprang down the steps in the moonlight.

"Hillo, old fellow!" said the rich, laughing voice. "Have you looked after my patients, and entertained my office-callers, in my absence?