Hope Mills - Amanda Minnie Douglas (icecream ebook reader .txt) 📗

stake, and brought out the best that was in him."

He sent Miss McLeod her half-yearly rent, a copy of the statement, and a very temperate letter. He was quite proud to think he had no need of accepting her proffered favor, but he thanked her again for it.

She answered promptly. She had shown the statement to Mr. Hildreth, and he thought it remarkable. Wasn't it a trifle too rose-colored to last? Count on her as a friend, if evil days came; and we none of us could tell exactly what was in store. The financial horizon was by no means clear.

A few others gave him words of heartfelt encouragement. The Rev. Mr. Marlow spoke of him in very high terms, much to Sylvie's delight, and said already there had been a great change in the mill-hands. The coffee-house he considered an especially commendable thought.

There was a quiet change going on that was destined to bear more abundant fruit in the future. Some of the men and women had begun to think a little for themselves. The pupils of the cooking-school were beginning the A B C of beauty and neatness. Their rooms were swept cleaner; their clothes took on a more tidy aspect. With the opening spring, gardens and court-yards were cleared of their rubbish, and flower-beds flourished again. Sylvie gave her girls one very instructive lecture on slips and flower-seeds, and one Saturday they went out to the woods for ferns and wild flowers. It was only one little corner, to be sure, but it was the leaven that was presently to do a wide-spread work.

Hope Mills took up its steady march again. Half a dozen new hands were added, though Jack wished that he could find employment for some of the poor souls that besieged him daily. If times really were coming better, if orders only would increase, and he could with safety enlarge his borders! But "slow and steady" was his motto. He was not one to disparage the present by exaggerating the advantages of the future.

There was one home that these cordial little excitements never entered. The three souls in it, although they should have been very near and dear, wrapped themselves in their own thoughts and sorrows, and took no note of their fellows.

Mrs. Lawrence heeded the outward change least of the three. She had her pretty room, her glowing fire in winter, her fur slippers, and zephyr shawls; her late breakfast in bed, then her luxurious dressing-gown, and her books. She had settled herself into the _role_ of an invalid for the remainder of her days. The loss and suffering had not taken her out of herself, or raised her narrow, vapid nature. She was at once patient and complaining,--even her affection for her son was combined with great mental and moral weakness. She was profoundly grieved that he should have been compelled to accept so unsuitable a position; but to her it was only a temporary event. Something _must_ happen. In some mysterious way they would come back to their former grandeur,--not that she cared especially, but for the sake of Fred and Irene. Then for days she would lose herself in the joys and sorrows of her heroines. To such people novel-reading is certainly a godsend. A readable book was as exhilarating to her as a splendid morning drive or a good deed is to many others. She had society without being bored. She had wit, poetry, art, music, travels, dinners, and balls, with no worry, no late hours, or fatigue.

Irene could not so yield up her personality. She brooded over her lot in a haughty, bitter spirit. She uttered no complaint,--she was far too proud for that,--but she took no interest in any thing. Like a melancholy ghost she wandered up and down, or sat by the window for hours in a listless attitude. There were moments when she wished herself Lady Frodsham, times when the change and bustle of such a life as that of Mr. Barringer would have been heaven itself.

Fred could never persuade her to go anywhere. She took no walks, except to pace up and down the garden path when the quiet of the house drove her well-nigh crazy. Once in a great while she opened the piano, and played as if a demon had taken possession of her soul and her fingers.

Fred breakfasted early and alone. After a while he fell into the habit of taking his lunch in his office, and coming home to a late dinner. Martha was certainly the perfection of maids. The housekeeping went on with the regularity of clockwork: there were no complaints even. Fred used to sit in his mother's room until her bedtime, when he would go down to the library, and work for an hour or two.

The utter dearth of interest would have been terrible to him but for his business. At first he preserved a wide and punctilious distance between himself and Mr. Garafield. He was the employer, to be sure; but then Fred Lawrence had a dignity of his own to maintain. One day, however, the dignity suffered a collapse. Mr. Garafield brought in some new designs, and they lapsed into an exceedingly entertaining art discussion. The employer had excellent taste, trained and shaped by practical experience: Fred possessed the wider mental reach and exquisite perception of harmony and color, the sentiment of genius.

"Why do you not take up the idea, Mr. Lawrence?" asked his employer. "House finishing and furnishing is fast coming to be a fine art. An intelligent, harmonious beauty is demanded. We are leaving behind the complacency of mere money in our adornments, and asking for something that evinces thought and refinement. I am sure you could succeed if you once set about the work."

The compliment touched Fred profoundly, roused him to a new venture. He practised his almost lost art of designing to some purpose: he wrote two or three art essays that happened to find much more favor than his abstruse philosophies. After all, he was young, and the whole world lay before him. Surely he could carve out some kind of fortune. The light of earnest endeavor shone in his eyes, the languid step quickened into one of courageous elasticity. He had dawdled away years enough: he would put a purpose into his manhood, that some distant eyes, seeing, might not relegate him entirely to the regions of contempt.

"There's quite a good deal in that young Lawrence," declared Phil Maverick decisively. "I was in at Garafield's the other evening, and, I must confess, listened to a fine art lecture. All about wall-papering, too!" with a genial laugh. "What an education that fellow has! Couldn't he find any thing to do, that he must drop down upon a paper-factory? I am sure I should have made a big fight out somewhere in the great world."

"'Beyond the Alps lies Italy,'" quoted Jack. "Not on the top, you observe, but perhaps in the valley. I wish you would be a little friendly with him, Maverick: you couldn't help but like him."

"There is more in him than I gave him credit for. I thought at the time of his father's death I had never seen so useless a fine gentleman, with all the stamina educated out of him. I had half a mind to turn him over to Aunt Jean and Miss Lothrop."

Darcy laughed absently, and Maverick saw that his mind had wandered elsewhere. How odd that these two should be friends! Maverick could not discern the fine bond uniting them.


CHAPTER XIX.

SUMMER came on apace. The Cooking Club took a vacation, or rather turned into a gardening club, and studied the sensible part of botany and floriculture. People began to look at the waste land lying about, with envious eyes. Here and there some one started a garden, or indulged in a flock of chickens. The Webbers traded their snug cottage for a place on the outskirts of the town, with two acres of ground, which they improved rapidly. Men who had sold farms, and spent the money in vain business speculations, looked back regretfully, and in some instances hired where they had been proprietors. There was no money to be realized in farming, but if one could even make a living! No one was making money but those lucky fellows at Hope Mills. Of course that was a bubble, and would burst presently; but doubtless it was good while it lasted.

Miss Barry, Sylvie, and Mrs. Darcy went away to a pleasant, quiet seaside resort. Miss Barry appeared to be ailing a little. Mrs. Minor so far relented as to invite her mother and Irene to spend two months with her at Long Branch. Mrs. Lawrence consented, Irene refused flatly. "She had no money to spend for dress, and she would accept no one's charity," she declared in her haughty way. But she could not stay in the house forever: so she took long walks over wild country ways, angry with the world, herself, and every thing. A fierce-eyed, beautiful girl, clinging desperately to her isolation, and yet eating out her very heart in loneliness.

The time ran on rapidly. September came around. Hope Mills did not make as good a report this time. Business had been very dull. Sales were next to nothing. People did not need much in warm weather, and orders were very light. However, several other branches of industry in Yerbury improved a trifle. Railroads, stocks, and real estate were fast becoming dead speculations: so men ventured to put their money warily into business again.

But the bottom had not been reached. Early in October there was a tremendous failure of an old and well-known firm of woollen-manufacturers. The bankrupt stock was sold at auction. Then another, and various smaller houses. The market was suddenly flooded. No one could sell. No one seemed to need new garments of any kind. Men wore their old clothes, and shrugged their shoulders in a sort of contemptuous content, as if they had suddenly found a great charm in a half-worn, shabby overcoat. Robert Winston went hither and yon. Not a piece or a yard would any one take.

There was a great deal of discussion in various daily journals. The business had been overdone again. Foreign markets must be found. We could not compete with foreign manufacturers. Our wool was inferior, our looms were inferior, our men knew so little, and demanded such high wages. Then we never could do any thing under the present wretched tariff and the skinning system of taxation. It took all a man could make. Another sapient statesman declared nothing could be done without more money. The contraction had been so great that not a man could do business. Then came a long list of figures to prove what a very little money was left in the country. Newspaper war raged, first on this side, then on that. If we did this, we would surely be ruined: if we did not, then ruin was inevitable.

Jack used to try for some light, no matter how faint. It seemed to him, if the great men at the helm of the national ship would set to work vigorously to widen and strengthen the commerce of the nation, instead of discussing such frivolous issues, prosperity might dawn once more. He went over his political economists again, and realized sadly that men had always disputed these points, and that each writer or prophet was sure his was the only creed that would ever save the world, while by following any other they would surely go to ruin.

Winston and he took counsel together: then they called in Cameron, who looked blue enough.

"Any ordinary factory