Hope Mills Part 43

The September showing was very encouraging. There were still a great many bankruptcies and losses, but some of them could not be guarded against. Darcy and Winston regularly eschewed speculation, though the latter confessed his fingers sometimes burned to be in the pie.

"But, after all," he said frankly, "if the energy, ingenuity, ambition, and strength that are expended to make certain people buy and sell, over and over, a thing that can be no more valuable than the money it makes year by year, which often is not much,--if this were turned into industrial and commercial channels,--gad! what a country we would be!

Our flag would float on every sea, our goods be in every port. And yet they go on, rich to-day because they have beggared their neighbor, poor to-morrow because their neighbor has beggared them. What idiotic business!"

But I must go back a little with my hero. There were many things to occupy his mind, the summer of the "strikes;" yet through it all, like one strain of heavenly harmony in a clash of discord, he came to know the diviner needs of his being. Another man might have been dismayed at the revelation. Like a flash when the horizon is opened, he saw the light; and he knew, from the depths of the darkness the next moment, what manner of storm it would be.

He had never weakened or frittered away his sweetest emotions on the various flirtations that fill the early years of so many men. He had liked and admired Sylvie Barry above all young women he had ever met; but this emotion, though pure and lasting, never stirred the ardor of his soul. Had it really lain untouched so long, or had some vague dream slipped into it the night he and Sylvie had planned the costume for Irene Lawrence, the time he first encountered her beauty in all its vivid splendor? To him she was a glorious young G.o.ddess.

The long-ago summer day he had met the two in the phaeton, he was more keenly pained for her sake than his own. To be sure, his first emotion was that of angry indignation, sending the outraged blood through every pulse; then, as it cooled, the act appeared so utterly unwomanly. If she had pa.s.sed him by carelessly--but to designedly attract his glance, and stab it thus, was as if a giant had taken a club to kill a b.u.t.terfly because it breathed the fragrance of the rose. He shut out that vision.

You can tell what impression she had made upon him, when he always thought of her as he saw her in the glow of Sylvie's pretty parlor, that summer night. His healthy, active temperament never brooded over disagreeable things a moment longer than necessity kept him there.

She faded from his mind by degrees. Even when he took Fred back into the old regard, he thought of her as the possible wife of some millionnaire.

When she returned to Yerbury, and shut herself up in stately despair, refusing even Sylvie's proffered sympathy, she puzzled him. How could she, so fond of admiration and gayety, live this nun's life, without the nun's spiritual exaltation? He pa.s.sed her once or twice in the hall, as he was calling on Fred, but neither made any sign.

Then came that terrible night, when he had found her astray, her brain consumed by the smouldering fire of isolation, when you have only the black, choking smoke that never blazes up in purifying flames. There are thousands of women who have done this, weakly, sentimentally, through the period of adversity that has tried the metal of all souls; but she, being stronger, more self-reliant, could not drop into puerile whining.

At Depford Beach they had come in contact again. There was both attraction and repulsion in these two people, as there often is in strongly-marked, positive natures. She tolerated him because he was Sylvie's lover; despised him, believing that he meant to make a stepping-stone of this girl's wealth and position; and, in spite of herself, felt the current of his strength and buoyant energy. By slow degrees the unwilling truth was forced upon her, that G.o.d never created any human soul for its own self-destruction; that there was no absolute virtue in warping and twisting circ.u.mstances into chains and bonds, that were ordained for higher, n.o.bler purposes. Her mental disease had run its course. Sylvie's sorrow was the final electric shock that broke the heavy soil of apathy.

Her utter surprise when she found that through all these years Jack Darcy had refrained from influencing Sylvie in his behalf, was something quite indescribable. She thought she had fathomed men's souls with her keen insight, but this man was a Saul amid his peers. Had there been some subtile, far-reaching foundation for Fred's regard in the boyhood days,--something that their eyes, being holden with golden bonds, could not see?

After the marriage there was a certain degree of a.s.sociation, not intimacy. And yet she set herself to watch him. Somewhere she would discern the print of the feet of clay this idol of Fred and Sylvie's possessed.

It was a most fascinating yet dangerous employment. She used to sit there in her impa.s.sive grace, as they talked, weighing every word, testing every sentiment, watching the expressions that flitted over Jack Darcy's countenance, until it went everywhere with her, the blue-gray eyes piercing the very depths of her soul. They came to the one night when a glance stirred and troubled both, when the depths of both natures experienced that curious shock of repulsion and wonder. It was not love, it was too near, too awesome, yet too spiritually pure, to be hate, still it sent them apart none the less surely.

By degrees, even amid the hard struggle of the strikes, he came to a self-knowledge. His perceptions were not easily confused; and by that intuitive process born pure in every soul, but too often marred and dulled by the many counterfeits put upon it, he knew this was love, a life-long pa.s.sion for one woman, not because she had as yet answered any need of his nature, or promised any expansion into higher life. He loved her just as she was; for her beauty, her swift, proud grace, her virtues if she had any, her very faults, and of those he was not in doubt. And he set himself to win her with the same high courage that had taken Hope Mills in hand.

Occasionally we see a man wrecked by this steady, persistent, overwhelming love for an inferior object, caught perhaps by some occult fascination that flashes all laws out of sight. We wonder how he can be so led astray; and yet it is an integral part of the man, a quality of the soul which he would not overcome and put in bonds if he could.

He did not cringe or flatter, or adopt any of the fears or weaknesses of pa.s.sion. It was not weak, and he did not fear. He meant to be master of her soul, and win her through that very power, struggle as she might. He would wait, if it were years, until she laid down her few weak weapons, and capitulated. From that time onward, there would be neither "mine"

nor "thine."

And now the fine, tested quality of his patience stood him in good stead. He might long to draw near, to clasp the snowy hand, to study the fathomless dusk of the eyes, and note the frightened droop of the fringed lids; but he held aloof. Still he went to Larch Avenue night after night; he dropped in of a morning when least expected, occasionally finding her alone for a few moments; he walked from church with them, by her side, the only times he came near her, and she felt in every pulse of her being the indefinable something that she was impelled to struggle against.

A curious change came over her. The cold indifference melted to a rose hue of interest, a pliant softness stole over her figure, a certain buoyant tenderness diffused itself in her tone, her dusky eyes came to have a startled softness like a shy, frightened fawn. The old brilliant color returned to cheek and lip, yet toned with the tremulous throbbing of a new inward life, so exquisitely attuned that she could but listen to the harmonious melody.

She came to understand presently; the intangible power in his demeanor roused her, I think; and her whole soul, every fibre of her body, rose up in mutinous revolt. Whither was this swift current carrying her? What great wave was this that struck at the very props of her own strength and reliance? How did this man dare to invade the walled sanct.i.ties of her being? She would have none of him: she would go on her solitary way, sufficient for herself. She, who had never loved amid all the beguilements the world had to offer, to be conquered by the very man she had trained herself to despise!

Irene Lawrence found it hard fighting with this unseen foe. He seemed always lying in ambush, always armored with a word or sentiment to which she must a.s.sent, always before her in the place she had meant to be; and she would not throw up the white flag of defeat. She would not own to herself she experienced any alarm or annoyance.

One evening Fred and Sylvie had gone to a neighbor's, and were momentarily expected. A peculiar temptation entered her soul. If this man must needs flutter in the flame, why should she be tender and careful of him? Others had dared her, to the burning of their very souls: if the experience was worth the pain, he should have it, and decide.

She sat down at the piano, and shook a shower of melody out of her slender finger-ends. All the affluent grace of womanhood with the polish of society spoke in every curve of her pliant figure, in the dainty, delicate, high-bred gestures. The eyes hung out their false lights of treacherous intent amid the half-slumberous fire; the very lips seemed shaped and blossoming with a rare thrill of pa.s.sion that could turn to a caress at a look. All along the brow ran fine sinuosities of light that dazzled like the tracery of pale flame. Had she blossomed into some royal midsummer flower that is seen but once in an age?

She had motioned him close beside her with an impelling wave of the hand. He could feel her warmth, her fragrant breath; her soft billowy dress fell against his foot in a crested wave; her white hand and slender wrist, just toned, but not hidden, with rare lace like that of Arachne's spinning, wandered temptingly over toward him. A sudden delirium took possession of him, an exhilaration that steeped the brain, that stirred every pulse, that awoke in him an almost maddening desire to clasp her in his arms, to drain such sweetness from her lips that the whole world might be beggared ever after, and he not care.

She knew the signs. She had seen more than one man dally on the brink, and then topple over to the blankness of despair. Even if she had pitied herself, which she did not, she could have had no mercy on him. Now she was set to her work, and she meant to do it if she brought into play every fascination art and nature had furnished her with.

His soul rose and glowed within him. The music, the most ravis.h.i.+ng of its kind, stirred him to that intensity of pain, it seemed as if he must cry out with torture. No suffering had ever been like this: if the doctrine of sacrificial fires were true, he might have purchased paradise.

Did he mean never to stir or speak? Could that hand, lying so pa.s.sively on the corner of the piano, remain unmoved, with hers just below it? Its defiant strength stung her.

"They do not come,"--looking warily around, and pa.s.sing him with her veiled eyes, rather than looking at him. "Are you growing weary? Shall I sing for you?"

The tone had the melody of some lotus-freighted stream. She had thrown all her sweetness into it.

"If you will."

His was tremulous and husky with repressed pa.s.sion.

Her voice was not pure: it had the rich depth and pathos of contralto, and the vibrant clearness of soprano. Now it threaded a tremulous pathway among the pathetic minor notes, while the fingers seemed to drop a faint sigh of accompaniment,--

"Oh! when ye hear me gie a loud, loud cry,-- The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,-- Shoot an arrow frae thy bow, and there let me lie, And we'll never gang down to the broom ony mair.

"And when ye see that I'm lying cauld and dead,-- The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,-- Then ye'll put me in a grave wi' a turf at my head, And we'll never gang down to the broom ony mair."

The last sad note died into summer-night sweetness. A current of bland, dangerous magnetism pa.s.sed between them. She turned her splendid, pa.s.sion-lighted eyes to him, and the subtle, measuring, conquering forces in the man and the woman met. With a mighty effort he thrust back desire, and compressed his lips to a line under the bronzed-gold moustache, while his eyes, like points of steel, never wavered.

Irene Lawrence turned blindly, and held out her hands as if to grasp some sure stay. Just as surely as she had not won, she had lost.

"I have tired you," he said,--a murmur just under his breath. "But you can hardly know the exquisite pleasure you have given me. It is perfect.

We will have no more music to-night;" and he rose, shutting the piano down.

She went to the open window like one in a trance, so stunned she could not even feel angry at his defiance of her. A long, long moment of silence: then they heard Sylvie's bright voice on the porch, and she came in with a waft of dewy, outdoor fragrance.

Miss Lawrence went to her room presently, to fight out the battle with herself. She admitted then that she had come to love Jack Darcy; but she was strong and resolute, and would not be mastered by the pa.s.sion. What could she do? for go away she must! Her imperious will and knowledge of men had availed her little to ward off this one's influence. Every instinct had been baffled, every movement had been met with a counterpoise. To stay here, and struggle, would be to yield eventually.

There were dark circles under her eyes the next morning, tokens of her vigil and strife. She intrenched herself again behind that dumb apathy: she stood aloof from Sylvie. For days she escaped the watchful sight of Darcy; but she heard his voice, and every rebellious pulse was a-tremble. She cast about for some expedients whereby to escape her prison honorably, and after several fruitless efforts found one.

In their early days there had been a girl-friend between Agatha and Gertrude, who had always held an attraction for the child Irene.

Wealthy, beautiful, and accomplished, she had married a man who had already made for himself a name in statesmans.h.i.+p, a cultured and polished gentleman, and her bridal had been the theme of the day. But the fiend of intemperance had wrought destruction of her brilliant prospects, and made her life an open scandal. When it could no longer be borne, she gathered up the wreck of her fortune and her two little girls, and opened a boarding-school in a quiet, aristocratic old town.

Irene had met her in New York after her own loss of fortune; and, though she had disdained sympathy, she was touched by Mrs. Trenholme's kindliness.

She wrote to her now; and, of half a dozen applications, this was the only one that elicited a favorable reply. Mrs. Trenholme needed a teacher of French and music, and she knew Miss Lawrence's accent was perfect. The salary was not large, being four hundred dollars a year; but the duties were not very arduous, being all confined to school-hours.

Much as Irene desired to go, there was some struggle with her pride before she could bring herself to accept. Only the prospect of that greater pride being laid in ruins before her eyes, could finally have induced her. Mrs. Trenholme expressed her delight warmly.

There were strenuous objections on Fred's part when it came to be talked over. "She had no need. He was as much her protector as her father had been: indeed, was he not paying back the kindly care to himself, honoring his father's memory by doing as he would have done?"

Sylvie came to the rescue presently.

"I would let her go, Fred," she counselled. "Beverly is a delightful place, with many cultured people, and Mrs. Trenholme is just the woman to have an influence over Irene. You see, she gets so tired of having no pursuit, no strong interest. I could not endure it myself."

"But she might have--I have dared to dream"--

"Put away dreams, my darling." Sylvie's voice was unconsciously sad.

Then, with a smile, and tears, "If G.o.d kept watch over us, and brought us to our haven, can we not trust him for her,--for them?"

And so they acquiesced.