CHAPTER IX.
When Farrell returned to his post in the morning, Jackson reported Mr. Lawrence asleep in the office. No one thought of him again until about ten o'clock, when some protested notes came in. Jeffries knocked at the door, opened it softly, spoke, but received no answer; then stepped nearer, and peered curiously at the face. It was ghastly white, the eyes wide open and staring, and with a shriek Jeffries alarmed the whole establishment.
Old Dr. Lecounte came, pronounced him dead, and then sent for Dr. Maverick, to whom he had taken a great liking. Between them both they found a faint sign of life; and he was removed to his elegant mansion on Hope Terrace, where his wife went into immediate and violent hysterics. They remained several hours, and decided it to be that terrible death in life, entire paralysis of brain, nerve, and muscle. He might linger some days; he might drop away any moment.
Horace Eastman, looking over the news items the next morning, saw this account, and returned at once to Yerbury. Certainly fortune had favored him. Affairs were in wild confusion. He learned that a telegram had been sent to young Mr. Lawrence, and an answer received. He would be back next Monday. Mrs. Minor came up, and brought an experienced nurse.
The mill kept open until Saturday. Then Mr. Eastman called the men together.
He was very much puzzled to know what to do, he said. He had resigned his position as superintendent of the mills, nearly a month ago; but Mr. Lawrence had begged him to stay on until he could come to some decision. The affairs were in a very embarrassed condition, and now suspension was imperative. What Mr. Lawrence would have done, he could not tell; but he did not feel justified in taking the responsibility. He was most truly sorry—he could say it from his heart—for those whose cheerful faces and light steps he had watched year after year, until he came to have a friendly feeling for them all; and he was shocked at the result of all this trouble to his dear friend, to whom he was bound by a deeper tie than that of mere business. But there had been two years of unparalleled depression, and Mr. Lawrence had made a brave fight. No one beside himself knew all the difficulties that had beset his old friend's path. It was not only here in Yerbury that trade was dull: it was from the Atlantic to the Pacific. England, Germany, and France were suffering as deeply as ourselves. Production had been overdone by most of the employers using their best efforts to keep their hands at work in the face of a falling market, or no market at all. Shelves were packed with goods everywhere. We were on the eve of a great change, and it would be some time before values would become stable again. If the balance of trade (high-sounding, but imperfectly understood term) could once more turn in our favor; if we could export our surplus goods, and find new markets,—as no doubt we would,—every shop and factory would soon be ringing with the cheerful sound of labor. It would be a hard winter; but he, for one, believed the spring would open auspiciously, that business would revive, homes be prosperous, and every heavy heart light. Let them all take courage for their own future and that of Hope Mills in the hands of its young master. He regretted deeply that there was no money to pay them with to-night; but that would doubtless be attended to soon. He wanted to bid them a cordial good-by, and beg them to stand by young Mr. Lawrence.
There was some rather faint cheering. Troubled eyes questioned despondent eyes; what were they to do with winter coming on? First it was the bank, now the mills, and what next God only could tell.
Fred Lawrence reached Yerbury Monday evening; and at midnight the faint, fluttering soul of his father passed over that mighty river. There had been no return to consciousness. Mrs. Lawrence still lay in her darkened room, unable to bear any sound beyond that of the trained nurse.
To say that Fred was shocked, would feebly express his emotion. He had never dreamed of his father's dying,—never dreamed of any thing like misfortune happening to him, of any keener suffering than some temporary annoyance. He felt quite helpless. His old philosophies did not inspire him with courage, or open a way out of this dark present. There was to be a funeral; there were business complications; some one had to think of the future; the mill was shut up, the fortune swept away, and he had been stranded on a strange shore, knowing not which way to turn.
Eastman was still in Yerbury. He was intensely sympathetic with the bereaved family. In fact, now that he would never have to meet the eye of the man he had so deeply wronged, his spirits rose, his pity overflowed. Fred was quite touched by it. Hamilton Minor, with his rather brusque business ways, jarred against his sorrow.
He was rather testy with Mr. Eastman. "For the life of me, I can't see how things have come to this pass," he said sharply. "Hope Mills has been considered as sound as a nut,—one of the surest places in the country. Mr. Lawrence has made thousands and thousands. I have known a good deal about his affairs."
"It is the result of a large-hearted philanthropy,—of keeping poor devils at work when there was no demand for goods, so that they should not starve. I should have closed out the concern two years ago. When you begin to lose, it is time to get out,—not wait until every stiver is gone. But, if ever there was a noble man, it is our dead friend David Lawrence."
His chest swelled as he pronounced this eulogy, and he laid his white hand sympathetically on his waistcoat.
"What is all this bank muddle about?"
"I really don't know. Heavy real-estate business"—
"And you a director!" interrupted Minor, with an unpleasant quickness.
"I have had so much on my hands that I did not pay strict attention to it, I must confess. You know, Minor, what a tremendous shrinkage there has been in values: it seems to me as if the bottom had fallen out of every thing. I have an interest out in Nevada that I am anxious to look after, and should have gone a year ago, but Lawrence begged me to hold over until matters brightened a little. He was so sure times would improve. By Jove! I think they grow worse and worse!"
"And Fred knows no more than a baby!" said Minor, in a tone of contempt. "You'd be a help to him, Eastman, if you would stay and go over accounts."
"I don't know about that," shaking his head slowly. "The books are all on the square, as you will see. If one could only make money as easily as one can add up that which has been made and spent!" and Eastman gave a little laugh.
"But it cannot be a total loss. The house, I know, is settled upon Mrs. Lawrence. And the mill-property"—
"Mortgaged for all it is worth in such times as these. Perhaps I ought not to speak of it, but George was in a little difficulty which the old gentleman tided over. Too much real estate, Minor!"
Hamilton Minor had no great amount of confidence in the man before him; but then, he did not have in any one. He was on a little of the paper, and just now he felt exceedingly dubious about it. Some arrangement ought to be made whereby members of the family who had stood by Mr. Lawrence ought not to be losers.
The funeral was strangely quiet and solemn; I was about to add, select. The mill overseers and officers were formally invited. Fred had a feeling about the men,—it seemed as if they ought to form a procession; but the walk to the cemetery was a long one, and Mrs. Minor decisively negatived any plan that took in the "rabble." The coffin lay in the spacious drawing-room, where friends and acquaintances, in the same set, nodded solemnly, and uttered a few words of well-bred condolence. The mourners were up-stairs. The few coaches were filled with men, a little group stood around the open grave, and David Lawrence passed out of mortal sight,—his life-work all done. Had the toil been worth the reward?
The next day Eastman left for New York, and his stay there was brief. He knew what would be surmised after much trouble and searching, but it could not be positively laid at his door. And with a cheerful heart he set out to seek a new fortune.
To the great surprise of Mr. and Mrs. Minor, they found Hope Terrace mortgaged. Mrs. Lawrence could talk of nothing, could not endure the confusion of voices in her room. Some trustees were appointed to investigate the whole affair, for Fred was as ignorant as a child of all pertaining to the mill.
The examination disclosed a pitiable state of affairs. George Eastman had built up Yerbury on borrowed capital, lived on it in luxury, speculated, lost and won like any other gaming. He had persuaded each individual that he was on the high road to wealth. There had been a peculiar fascination about the man; or is it that the appeal to greed and covetousness is so much more convincing than that to honor and truth, that the baser impulses are quicker with their response? It was a great bubble upon credit, and carried with it the seeds of self-destruction. True, the bank held mortgages on rows of flimsy-built houses where walls were cracking apart, foundations settling, plumbing in such a condition that it was a hotbed of disease. They would not cover the indebtedness. The available cash had been drawn out by large depositors, the best bonds and stocks surreptitiously sold. And with all this there was a defalcation traceable to Hope Mills or the Eastmans. The money had gone in that direction. On the other hand, it was proven by the income of Hope Mills, and the amount paid out for labor, that there was no reason why they should not be solvent to-day.
Lavishly as the Lawrences had spent money, they had not taken it all. No one could or did accuse David Lawrence of private speculation. Minor had once tried his best to induce him to join in some enterprises, but failed. It was an easy matter to blame the Eastmans for every thing: they were away, and could not deny the charge. But had all these bank-officials clean hands? They had been given a sacred trust, the savings of the poor, the estates of widows and orphans; they had winked at investments of the most precarious kind; they had paid a high rate of interest, exacting a higher, which had been gladly given for a brief while. Safe principles of finance had been quite ignored: the new era was different from any thing that had ever happened to the world before, and required new men, and now they would have to go back to the old way. Surely there is not much that is new under the sun!
To bring back the Eastmans, and try them for their crimes, seemed hardly worth while. More than one man in Yerbury felt that it was safer to berate them at a distance, than meet their damaging retorts face to face. They could not get back any money. Hope Mills was ruined beyond a peradventure, and the affairs of the bank were best wound up as speedily as possible. There could be no large stealings for a receiver, consequently no occasion for delay. The sooner the wrecks and débris were cleared away, the quicker the moral atmosphere would be purified. There are wounds for which the instant cautery means life, the careful hesitation death.
And now every one looked at the exploded bubble in surprise, and cried angrily, "What has become of the money? Yesterday we were rich: where has it gone to? Six months ago we had twenty per cent dividend: why are these stocks worthless now? Why have railroads and shops and mills ceased to pay? What sudden blight has fallen over the world?"
Alas! There had been no money. Sanguine credit had traded on the honor and faith and nobleness of man toward man, and, behold, it had all been selfishness and falsehood and dishonor. Truth and virtue had been scorned and flouted in the highway, because forsooth there was a more brilliant semblance. Like a garment had men wrapped themselves in it, and now it was but rags and tatters.
There could be nothing extracted from the wreck of Hope Mills. Indeed, Fred would have given up a rich inheritance to save his father's honor, had it been his. To go on at Hope Terrace was madness. The fires and the servants would cost enough to maintain a family. Mrs. Minor and Fred quarrelled because Mrs. Lawrence had been persuaded to mortgage the place: she simply groaned and moaned, and wondered why they must worry her about every thing!
"I hope Irene will have the good sense to marry abroad," said Mrs. Minor. "And, Fred, what a pity you haven't a profession! What can you do?"
Last winter it had been, "my brother, De Woolfe," whom all the young ladies in Mrs. Minor's set were wild over.
Fred gave a sigh.
"I suppose I can do something to earn my bread," he replied bitterly.
"Fred," began Agatha suddenly, "there is that Miss Tillon. You know how absolutely wild she was over you last winter! Her fortune is all in her own right, and it is a solid one too. Hamilton has had occasion to know about it. You cannot do a better thing than marry her."
Fred glanced up. His sister was in sober earnest. To be bargained off like a woman, for a bare existence! Miss Tillon was at least thirty, of a suspicious, jealous turn of mind, well-enough looking perhaps, but narrow, with no intellectual culture, no approval of any thing beside her money. He had been amused at her preference. Possibly she might marry him, and rescue him from the pains of poverty. And he?
He might be vain and trifling, but he was not sunk so low in cowardice. His face flushed a vivid scarlet.
"I am not quite prepared to become chargeable to a woman yet," he said in a cold, calm voice.
"What nonsense! Some man will marry her, and get the money," Agatha retorted decisively.
"Not much of hers;" in a dry, contemptuous tone.
"You know what I mean. She will live in style, and travel; and her husband"—
"Will be the laughing-stock of his friends," interrupted Fred angrily. "No, Agatha, I will be dependent upon no one for my bread: if I cannot earn it I will starve."
"Oh, very well!" with a scornful smile. "I only hope Rene will be wiser. They are in Paris—I heard from Gertrude last week. She was very much shocked, of course. I hope George has not been foolish enough to let every thing slip through his fingers. Who could have believed that Horace Eastman would turn out such a swindler! Papa trusted him altogether too far. It does not answer to be too noble and disinterested in this world."
Fred made no reply to this charming bit of worldly wisdom. His delicate and high opinion of self had received a crushing blow. Married off, out of hand, to save him from poverty!
Why should his thoughts turn to Sylvie at that moment? Something stirred within him, an insane desire to win her—oh, mad enough, surely! He could, he would, do something! There was all his education and talent; yes, he really had talent. He would make himself famous. She should see that he had the right kind of stuff in him. He would climb up the hard hill in his lonely, sorrowful, proud way, until she, looking on, would come to repent her unjust verdict!
He shut himself up in his study, and made some very fair translations from his beloved poets. There were better ones, doubtless; and, after all, fame might not lie in that direction. There was physical science, much in vogue, and entertaining: no doubt he could do something in that line. There were theories and speculations, there were old philosophies—surely the ground was rich everywhere.
It was very poor at Yerbury, though there were theories enough. But, when you took them for temporal meat and drink, they were not a fattening diet. Men lounged in the streets and on the corners, or, worst of all, in saloons, talking themselves angry and hoarse over the bad luck, and blaming every one right and left. Women sat at home, and cried over losses and crosses, cooked their scanty dinners, and retired to bed early to save fuel. The poorer ones went out to a day's washing, glad to get that. Boys played cards, read dime-novels, and dreamed of wonderful fortunes at the West: some few stout-hearted chaps set out to seek them.
There were panaceas. Mr. Rantley preached the rankest communism and broadest free-thinking. Capital, i.e., money, was the tyrant of the world, and always would be until the laborers of the world rose up and claimed their rights. Why should this man starve when the man over yonder had his store-house full of flour that he was holding for higher prices? What right had he, except the might? So long as men were allowed to hoard up these monstrous fortunes, they could control the market, and would! What were the starving thousands to them? What if half the provision in the country rotted on the owner's hands? he could get as much or more money for the other half. What if the miners were at work only a small portion of time? could not the amount of coal be managed more easily, and prices kept up? Capital desired to keep production at the lowest ebb, because it could be more conveniently mastered. The only remedy was to give every man a chance, to break up these colossal fortunes, to have no great mills and mines; to have smaller capitalists, fewer hours of labor, to divide the immense hoards among the poor and needy until there should be no more want or suffering!
The Rev. Mr. Bristow shook his head at this modern anti-Christ. Every thing was anti-Christ, with Mr. Bristow, that went outside of his own narrow creed. He preached some stirring sermons. It was God's judgment upon them for their sins. They had forgotten him, they had been led away by false gods; they had made golden calves, and worshipped them; their sons had strayed into infidelity; their daughters had flaunted in gay attire, with plaiting of the hair, and dancing away their immortal souls; and now they must return to their God, to the meat that perisheth not, to the bread of life, and to the well of living water. There must be such a returning to God, such a revival of religion, that the world would be swept clear and clean out of its old sins!
"Splendid sermon! splendid sermon!" said Deacon Boyd, rubbing his hands together unctuously. "Parson's hit the nail just on the head. We've all strayed out of the way. I think a good old-fashioned revival'll set us straight sooner'n any thing. Nothing like coming to the Lord on the spot! This very week we ought to begin."
"I think you're right, Deacon Boyd," said grave Mr. Rising. "I, for one, will take hold of the work."
They called the church together, and began. I will not disparage the work. There were hungry souls that seemed fed with spiritual food, aching hearts that were bound up, reckless minds that paused on the verge of desperation. But there were others who wondered, even in the midst of the deacon's prayer, how it was that the Lord warned him to draw his twenty thousand dollars out of Yerbury Bank a week before the failure, when there were only he and his wife to keep, and let poor Mrs. Wharton with her five helpless children lose her husband's life-insurance, her little all, by putting it in the bank just a fortnight before the failure. Special providences, whereof Deacon Boyd discoursed so eloquently, happened oftener to the rich than to the poor.
However, they prayed and fasted and repented. To many, any strong emotion that took them out of the wearing round of thought was a blessing.
Jack Darcy, with a curious disbelief in every thing, went the rounds, and dropped into Maverick's office to talk it over. Sylvie was not home this winter: she and her aunt spent it in Philadelphia. Then Jack grew dull and restless. If the end of all things had come in Yerbury, he ought to try some other place in the great world.
It was settled presently quite by accident. A cousin of Mrs. Darcy's, one of your strong, thorough, energetic women, came to spend the winter with them; and Jack's mother, watching the throes of her son's soul, a little afraid of socialism, materialism, and all the other isms, proposed that Jack should take a journey West or South, and have a glimpse of the men and things beyond this narrow boundary.
"Grandmother grows feebler all the time now; and, being past ninety, we can't expect to keep her much longer. Of course, Jack, when she is gone, I shall have no tie but you; and, if it suited you to settle elsewhere, I should not object. You are young and ambitious, and I ought to think of your advancement. There never has been a time since your poor father's death that you could be so well spared;" yet the mother sighed. "And you have been a good son, Jack: you have given up many a wish cheerfully to two poor old women."
"Don't call yourself an old woman," said Jack almost gruffly, then he stooped to kiss her.
His heart gave a great boyish bound.
"Good-by, old Yerbury!" he cried exultantly one morning, quite sure of a new, glad life elsewhere.
"Though I shall be sorry to leave Sylvie and Maverick," he thought. "These old towns do grind the very soul out of a fellow who has any desire or energy in him. The world isn't all alike, I know," giving his chestnut mane a toss like a young, mettlesome colt.
CHAPTER X.
If Jack Darcy had taken his tour for pure pleasure and enjoyment, the time was ill chosen in every respect. Winter was bad enough; but an unprosperous one, full of financial clouds and storms, and scurrying drifts of distrust, was not calculated to make the way brilliant.
But he had one glorious enjoyment to begin with. He went straight to Niagara, and took his first glimpse of it in its awesome majesty of frost and ice. From that high exaltation we call worship, through every intermediate degree and sense of beauty, to that of a delicate and minute fairy dream. The winter sun radiating glowing tints, with skies of sapphire and opal, the great stretches of wordless wonder, bound hand and foot like some old Norse god amid his ice-fields; the one night when a full moon silvered it with prismatic grandeur, and made of the glittering ice-crystals entrances to diamond-mines of fabled genii, touching him weirdly with this unearthly splendor; and the next solemn day, when the very sky seemed chilled to unfallen snow, and the ice-caverns turned a dull blue, reminding him of descriptions of polar scenery, and filling his soul with a sense of boundless solitude.
Then he began his tour of the cities. He had taken some books along, whether to perplex or make clear his brains, he hardly knew. He pored over pages of Adam Smith, he turned to Ruskin for comfort, he picked up Brassey's figures and experience, and Stuart Mill's strong, kindly reasoning, and digested them in his own slow, practical, much-befogged way, trying to solve the problems.
It was a great and wonderful world. Little Yerbury had hardly any true idea what a mite she was, when one looked at the immense labor-fields of the West and apparently endless resources. Yet there was the same depression out here. Shops and mills closed, for sale, and to let; some running on three-quarter time, with half the number of workmen, others going on at ruinous competition; anxious, moody-eyed men walking the streets, or grouped on corners, their coats and hats shabby, their beards untrimmed, old boots and shoes with the heels tramped over at one side, or a bit of stocking showing through the leather. "No man hath hired us," said their despondent faces plainer than any words. Young men and boys offering to do any kind of work for any kind of pay, sleeping in station-houses; relief-stores, church charities and soup-houses, homes for the friendless, and all such places, filled to overflowing, and new hordes crowding in every day.
Yet there seemed to be no lack of money. It lay in banks, it went begging for good security. Where was there any good security? Every inch of ground, every building, stocks and furniture, were covered by mortgages. Stock companies trembled in the balance, and went down like card-houses. Everybody wanted to sell every thing, but there were no buyers. Everybody wanted to work, but there was nothing to do. Everybody was in a chronic state of grumbling; there was no profit to be made in farming, in manufacturing, in any thing. There had been too much over-production, for which every one blamed his neighbor. The great warehouses were full of grain, the mills loaded up with iron, the factories full of cloth and flannels and cottons; and yet people were going hungry and in rags. It was puzzling and painful. We had bought too much abroad, and sent the money out of the country, the balance of trade would make it all right again; there had been over-production, and now there must be a vigorous repression; there had been too much speculation in real estate; there had been too great an accumulation of capital in the business centres; we were fast verging to the state of older countries, where there were the few rich and the many poor: there was a surplus of labor, and was there not also a surplus of people?
There was another sad side to it all, that made Jack's heart ache. These young men and boys tramping through the country, begging or worse, swearing, telling foul stories, herding together anywhere, corrupting one another's morals, smoking, drinking,—somehow they managed to obtain these indulgences,—looking furtively out of languid, sodden eyes, their faces hard and worn, their voices coarse and gruff; and they were to be the next generation of what?—loyal and honest citizens, or jail-birds?
It was not all so sombre. At five and twenty a healthy, unwarped nature is many-sided. There were countless marvels to see and to study. He stumbled over people who had known Mr. Lawrence, and who had a kindly feeling for a Hope Mills man. And he had done something more in the last eight years than merely learn how to make cloth. He had dipped into chemistry, and knew a little about dyes; he had studied up in grades and kinds of wool, and was interested in labor processes. With fresh opportunities he looked into it more closely, observed new methods of decreasing waste, or saving labor. He was a well-informed, well-mannered, sensible fellow; and occasionally some one would say of him, "A smart, long-headed chap, that! The world will hear of him some day, or I am mistaken."
He kept looking about for some place where, if the world did not hear of him, he might get a chance in some enterprise where he could take a few steps upward. There certainly were more men than places. The world was a bee-hive, surely; but alas for those who swarmed out in such times as these!
After he had gone as far West as Minnesota, he went down the Mississippi to a different kind of civilization in the quaint old cities. It was none the less heart-sickening. He found traces of the war, that we had almost forgotten, fresh at every step; still it seemed as if the hand of Nature was much more bounteous than at the bleak North. Yet Bishop Heber's old missionary hymn rang continually through his mind. Even amid the Florida orange-groves, and the great cotton-fields, some cause brought about baleful results, in the unwisdom of man.
Then to the cities of luxury and thrift, where wealth was strong enough to crowd poverty out one side, where art and music and cultivation made a subtile atmosphere that somehow recalled the Lawrences. He lingered and quaffed delightsome draughts, and at last tore himself away from seductive sights and sounds. In a dim, half-defined way the delights came to him. Would he ever be stoic enough to spurn them?
Last of all, home with its sweet welcomes, its cleanliness and order, its familiar furniture and cheerful fires, its easy-chairs and quaint fragrant air, as if every thing had lain in dried rose-leaves; the mother love and tears, the smiles out of dimmer eyes, and cousin Jane Morgan's hearty greeting; to say nothing of his delicious supper and his own bed, where sleep seemed awaiting him with open arms.
His mother had written a good deal of Yerbury gossip to him, but it had been mostly of the pleasant order. When he dropped into Maverick's office the next day, and was welcomed so heartily that it was like a brother's greeting, he listened to the other side. Affairs were worse than ever. The bank had gone into liquidation, and would pay about forty per cent. Property mortgages had been foreclosed right and left; there was nothing, scarcely, doing; there had been want and misery and sickness, and now diphtheria was raging.
"So you see the revival didn't do every thing," said Maverick grimly. "I'm of the opinion, if some of them had preached less, and distributed bread and broth with a freer hand, it would have been more of a good work. The praying would be well enough in its place, and, for those old fellows who pray on a full stomach, very enjoyable, I dare say. But I'd like them to look after their drains and their wells and their cisterns before they ask the Almighty to sanctify these afflictions to the poor wretches who suffer from them. And now, Jack Darcy, what are you going to do? Have you found better pastures?" and Maverick glanced up with curious inquiry.
"No," replied Jack, rather reluctantly it must be confessed. It seemed to him now that he had been spending his time for nought, unless pleasure counted, and he felt a trifle ashamed of it.
Maverick gave an odd little laugh that puzzled the other.
"See here, Maverick," began Jack in such earnest that he blushed like a great boy, "I haven't found any new place for myself. The world seems just full and running over. The great cities have their own men out of employment, and hordes from every other place. I'd be almost ashamed to ask for a job. I declare, I'd rather raise as much of my living as I could in our back garden, or take Perley's farm, and put it together, and set men raising strawberries, than tramp round, asking for work, with a feeling that it was taken from some one who had a better right, who was a native of the soil."
"Then you have not lost your conscience?"
"I hope not. It is the same old story everywhere. What is to be done about it?" and Jack knit his brows. "I have been going over the books that I thought would help or let in a little light on the matter, but it is a wisdom hard to get at. How to make more work in the world, how to cheapen living, how to"—
"Bring about the millennium! What dead earnest you are in, Darcy!"
"Weren't you in earnest a moment ago, Maverick, when you talked about the praying and the bread and broth?" said Jack with a great knot drawn in his brow.
"Yes, Heaven knows. And some one must take hold of the thing who has eyes to see, and brains, and—and money. You see, people have crowded into cities and towns, and if they could be sent out somewhere! Why don't we organize colonies or something of the sort? Now, there's Florida. Living is cheap, and in such a climate there are fewer needs of clothing and fuel. I have been wondering why the big dons in cities did not gather up the poor they have been feeding at soup-houses and everywhere, and send them out with some one to manage until they could stand alone. There would be less diphtherias and fevers and starvation; for that's its right name, Darcy. What can you do when one's system is all run out with meal-mush, and weak tea that is half willow-leaves, and such trash? There's Kilburn—he has had the name of being good to the poor this winter because he has given them trust at his store. Such stuff! I have looked into a few samples," and the expressive nostrils curled in disgust. "He makes an enormous profit, for he sells the poorest kind of goods to these people at the highest prices. Then he manages to get hold of something, house or furniture, or maybe clothes,—I don't know. He and Deacon Boyd—Darcy, how can a man honor religion when these two men are its exponents? So good to the poor! Pah! It makes me sick. Isn't there a cleaner air somewhere on God's earth? Can't they be taken out of this?"
"If they could be! There must be one way out, Maverick: better, perhaps, than going West where thousands are tramping about. And Heaven knows they need a new factor in civilization down there!"
The young eyes met in sudden hopeful animation. Had they solved even one strand of the great tangle, that worse than Gordian knot which could not be cut?
The door opened slowly; and there entered a middle-aged, rather grizzled man, with shaggy eyebrows, sparse beard, and bent shoulders. He glanced in hesitatingly, his eyes wandering down to Darcy.
"I declare to man!" and he stared hard, with the door-knob still in his hand. "Jack Darcy! I heard you were home. How d'y do? How d'y do?" and he wrung the hand warmly. "I'm powerful glad to see you," and he looked him slowly over, from head to foot. "Why, you've grown, or something! What a great giant you are!—Morning, doctor," nodding rather incidentally to Maverick. "So you've had a long tramp, Jack? Your mother brought some of the letters over to my old lady, who has been rather poorly the last two months. Why, you could set up book-writing! Well, what's the good word? Can't be like Yerbury all over."
"There are too many towns full of idle people, if that is what you mean. But it was splendid, Cameron! I have one more dream,—to go up and down the Western coast, and over the Rocky Mountains; but I want to digest this first. I have no fancy for mental dyspepsia," and he gave a good, wholesome laugh.
"The right way, Jack," nodded Maverick, with a shrewd twinkle in his eye.
"Well, you've come back to a dull place,—a dull place," and Cameron shook his head despondingly. "We used to be main proud of old Yerbury; but—is the whole world to go on and starve to death, with such crops, and such an abundance of every thing?"
"We are going to weather it through, Cameron," Jack answered with a stubborn hopefulness. "There have been hard times before that have ended in renewed prosperity."
"Yes. There was '57; hard enough, Heaven knows, with the banks going to smash everywhere. It ruined my father. And way back in '37, when there was such a wild-fire about real estate, and it came out just as this has. Do people ever learn by experience, Maverick?" and the man gave a short, unmirthful chuckle. "You could buy up half Yerbury to-day, for taxes and mortgages. I can't, for the life of me, see how it all came about. And that it has gone all over the world,—well, human nature in England or Germany can't well laugh at human nature in this country.—Are these things like cholera and fevers, doctor, taking a clean sweep once in a while?" and Cameron gave a twist to the end of his faded beard, as if he might wring the secret out of it.
"We have learned to manage the cholera, and see in it, not a dispensation of Providence, but the natural result of filth and greed and carelessness. Darcy and I are getting up a panacea now," with a bright little laugh. "But how is Mrs. Cameron? Is her medicine out?"
"Yes;" and Cameron drew a phial from his pocket. "You don't think it would do to stop here? She's pretty well, I should say;" and he fingered the bottle as if he were debating whether to have it filled or not.
"No. She must go on. She is getting her strength back nicely; but it's bad policy to stop at three-quarters of the race,—eh, Cameron? The first warm day I'll take her out driving."
While he was talking, he reached out for the bottle, and began compounding. Cameron nodded an acknowledgment of the last sentence, then turning to Jack, said abruptly,—
"What was the scheme, Darcy?"
Jack flushed, and glanced at Maverick.
"Emigration, the old remedy," answered the doctor. "England has tried her hand at it pretty successfully; so why shouldn't we? Only we need not go out of our own country. There are thousands of acres of productive land lying idle, and thousands of people starving, or worse. Too many here,—not enough there."
"Where to?" Cameron asked laconically, his face unmoved by any ripple of enthusiasm.
Jack seemed to be put on his mettle by it. Lack of faith in him always roused his belligerent qualities, back in the old school days.
"Yes, Cameron," in an incisive tone, looking steadily out of his determined eyes. "The cities are crowded over and over, and full of tramps, and the West swarms with them. We need not imagine we have all the idle people here at the East. But farming there has come to be a business of great things, almost as bad as manufacturing. You must have money, or the big fellows will swallow you up. But we were talking of Florida. No winter, as one may say; and your house a simple matter, your fuel, your clothes, a mere nothing. You could hardly starve if you tried."
Cameron came back to his chair, pushed it out from the wall, planted himself deliberately in it, and tilted back, pushing up his old felt hat, as if he did not mean to have his vision obstructed. Then he gave his beard another twist.
"Can you tell me why this is, Jack Darcy? Here are countries with fine and lovely climates, where every thing grows to your hand; yet they always seem to lie idle: Italy and Spain and Turkey and South America, and our own Gardens of Eden," with a bit of sarcastic smile. "The very ease of living seems to take the ambition out of one. Well, why shouldn't it? Even the bees, you know, were demoralized when they found they did not have to lay up for winter. Wouldn't those people come to be worse tramps and idlers? I'm sure the poor white trash of the South has helped itself very little."
"We were talking of concerted effort," interposed Maverick,—"purchasing a large tract of land, forming a community, taking different kinds of workmen, and making a success of it. Why should we not have flourishing towns in Florida, as well as in Kansas?"
"To be sure, to be sure!" nodding his head and tugging at his beard in a manner that showed he was not a whit convinced. "Then you give up," he said, "that any thing can be done at home?"
"Any thing done at home?" Jack lifted his level brows, and stared a little.
"Yes. The going away may all be very well. I tried it in '57; went out to Indiana with a little money, and tried farming that I didn't know any thing about, had the ague six months, and then came back poorer certainly. Now, the thing is just here with a good many of us,—we have our little homes, and in such times as these, in any hard times, we couldn't sell for any thing worth while. Then there's many a thing, to a man or a woman past middle life, that can't be reckoned in dollars and cents: the home you've made for yourself, the old friends, the church, even the familiar street you've walked over so often that every flagstone comes to have a near look."
"But those who have no homes, no strong interests"—
"If I was going to found a colony, I should want a little better stock," with a short, dry laugh.
"May be you have a plan?" suggested Maverick good-naturedly.
"Well, I've thought it over a good deal this winter, sitting in the house with the old lady;" and there came a peculiar far-off look in Cameron's eye as he studied a figure in the carpet. "If God worked miracles nowadays, and was to make a dozen or so honest men with a good, stout share of brains, there might be a little lifting-up of the dull skies. Take this town, leaving out politics and all that sort. Five years ago we were prosperous, and there wasn't a prettier town anywhere about. Good wages were paid, people were thrifty; and I will say it for David Lawrence, if he was one of your high kind, he was a gentleman. I've worked for him fifteen years steady. Then the Eastmans came in, and there was nothing but hurry and drive, grumbling about high wages, buying cheap wools, and if cloth was poor, blaming the men. Then wages went down and down, and, when the men stood out, the scum of all the places around was brought in. Yerbury improved, and beer-saloons multiplied. Houses were thrown together and sold; and now they're all falling apart, and standing empty, and half a dozen families are crowding into one miserable tenement. Who made the money? Was it high wages that ruined Hope Mills, and wrecked Yerbury Bank?"
"You have hit the truth somewhere, Cameron."
"Those men were thieves and swindlers; and I suppose to-day they're living on the fat of the land, milk and honey thrown in. See here, I'm not an educated man, but I have a little common sense. Suppose we'd been let to go our ways quiet like,—the farmers holding on to their farms, and making two blades of grass grow where one grew before. Wasn't that some old philosopher's advice? Suppose David Lawrence hadn't built that great palace out on Hope Terrace (he was a plainish man himself), and there had been five or six beside him making a moderate share of money. He's lost all his great fortune, there's seventy thousand or so gone somewhere, the bank has smashed with thousands more of everybody's money, with nothing much to show but trumpery mortgages; there's no work and no money, and a howl goes up that there has been over-production. Not over-production of honesty, I take it."
Maverick looked at the little earnest man, and laughed a hearty, cheering sort of laugh that was like pouring oil into a wound. Jack stared with wide-open eyes.
"I've been to hear Rantley two or three times,—he's going about lecturing, you know,—but I don't see as he has any very good plan for getting work on its legs again. Then I've listened to the parson this winter, to please the old lady; and he is sure all this is a judgment for our sins. Seems to me, judgment went a little askew: why doesn't it touch Eastman and such fellows?"
"Has nothing been done?" asked Jack. "I have heard no business gossip for the last three months. Can't it be proved that he was a defaulter?"
"Perhaps it could. The old lady was reading the other morning about the scapegoat being sent into the wilderness with everybody's sins on his head; and I guess they'd rather have him off somewhere, and pack the trouble on him. He might tell too much if he was here. They couldn't get the money back, even if he has it; but no one ever will believe that David Lawrence profited by it. That money belongs to the people of Yerbury, who have earned it, and saved it; and I say thieving and roguery have more to do with hard times than 'surplus of labor.' The big men have taken the money that belonged to the little ones."
"None of the Lawrence estate has been settled, I suppose?" asked Jack.
"Every thing is for sale. The mortgage on the big house is to be foreclosed, also on the mill I believe. I declare to you, Darcy, it makes my heart ache to see those dumb spindles, and the great silent engine standing like a mourner at a funeral. Come now, why should Hope Mills go to ruin, and Yerbury fall to pieces, while you and Maverick go and build up Florida? Wouldn't the money and the energy do something here?"
Cameron's eyes looked out of their overhanging thatch with a puzzled, thoughtful expression, as if there must be a solution to the mystery.
Jack was startled. Building up Florida looked feasible, but building up Yerbury—
"Then you will not go with us?" said Maverick with a half-laugh.
"I've my little home clear of debt, and a trifle at interest; and over in Yerbury churchyard there are two graves dear to me and my old lady. It would break her heart to leave them. And sometimes, Maverick, I thank God, that I've no sons to grow up tramps or worse. No, I'll stay here, and fight through somehow."
They were silent for several minutes, each one tugging at the knotty problem. Then Cameron rose, reached out for the phial of medicine, drove his slouch-hat down over his forehead, and walked toward the door.
"Drop in and see us, Jack, after you have thought it over a bit. Mother's always had a warm corner in her heart for you.—Morning, doctor;" and, nodding, he closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER XI.
Jack and Maverick glanced at each other, a long, searching, questioning glance.
"Given twenty or forty moderate fortunes, instead of the one great one," said Jack slowly.
"And you have a greater amount of general prosperity and happiness."
"Co-operation," continued Jack.
"And now, if you don't mind, you may take a walk with me," said Maverick. "Office-hours are over, and I have some rather serious cases on hand. Jerry's gone lame, stuck a nail in his foot, so I console myself with pedestrian theories."
"All right. I may need a pilot."
It was a mid-April day; but spring was late, and every thing looked bleak to Jack after his Southern sojourn. Certainly it was quite different from the trim little town of Jack's boyhood. The blight of poverty and thriftlessness had fallen upon it. There were piles of refuse in the streets, still half frozen; there were muddy stoops and shabby hall-doors, and broken area-palings, and now and then a window patched up with paper or rags. For though there may be much high theorizing and preaching on the two or three exceptional men who have lifted themselves out of dens of poverty, and come through great tribulation, there are thousands who work out nothing but blind destruction and utter shipwreck, and who in frantic efforts for salvation drag down those nearest and dearest, as a drowning man may clutch at his own brother.
"Not very inviting," apologized Maverick; "but I have two calls to make here in Boyd's Row,—old rookeries that ought to have been pulled down long ago, but I suppose they still bring in Boyd considerable. I have made a complaint about the drains: they are enough to breed a pestilence. Tom Byrne has three children down with scarlet-fever. Two of them will be carried out presently, but I hope to save the little girl. No—I won't take you in."
"Tom Byrne—he was a mill-hand. And I know his wife well. Yes, Maverick." And Jack followed him.
It was a two-story cottage with three rooms on a floor, and two families occupying it. The Byrnes were up-stairs.
The two beds were in the front room, for the middle one was dark. There was a well-worn carpet on the floor, and the furniture very poor. Jenny Byrne had sold her best to pay the quarter's rent in the last place which they had left the first of January, the landlord preferring it should stand empty. Her little savings had been swept away by the bank disaster: there was no work, and three children to feed, except that Deacon Boyd found Tom sufficient employment to pay his rent.
On one bed close by the window lay the little girl, heavy-eyed and crimson. The elder boy had come to the stupor that precedes death, the other was restless with a half delirium. Jenny Byrne's round rosy cheeks had vanished, and her eyes had a distraught look, the lurking fear of coming woe. She stared at Jack a moment, then stretched out her hand, but as quickly withdrew it.
"Did you tell him, doctor? O Mr. Darcy!"
"Yes. He would come."
She wiped away some tears with the corner of her faded apron, then answered a question of Jack's. What could he say to the poor thing? Surely she had done her duty with truest endeavor; and Tom Byrne was a very fair average man, liking his daily glass of beer, but rarely going farther.
"Can you fix a bed in the other room, and put Kitty in it?" the doctor asked. "She is better, but I would rather have her out of here."
"And Jamie is better too?" she questioned, with tremulous eagerness. "His fever is nearly gone, and he's having such a nice sleep"—
"Sleep is the best thing for him," returned the doctor briefly. "About Kitty"—
The mother's wan face flushed. She came close to Dr. Maverick, her eyes downcast.
"The coal gave out this morning, and I've no fire there," she said just above a whisper. "The relief-store is closed"—
"Yes, yes; I'll see to it;" with a nod. "I will be in again"—looking at the sleeping child—"say about four." Then he changed the medicine for Kitty, and gave one or two orders.
Jack thrust a bank-note in Jenny's hand, with his good-by. "Tom will be so glad to see you, Mr. Darcy," she said, with an effort at calmness.
"Can nothing be done for them?" asked Jack, as they regained the street.
"No. Jamie had gone too far when I was called in. Larger rooms, fresher air, nourishing food: that's the secret of a physician's success in many cases. Poor little ones! He will not go through the night. Now, Jack, you are not to come in here, positively. Stand in this breeze, and blow the scarlet-fever out of your clothes."
He did as he was bid, and, getting tired, tramped up and down. How much of man's selfishness and dishonesty there was in this! If the time could ever come when the mists and fogs of complacency would be swept off, and we could see that it was the innocent suffering for the guilty, not that these poor souls were sinners above all men, as the self-righteous Pharisee preaches!
Maverick rejoined him with a grave face, then the two went down Main Street. Houses to let, stores and shops closed, and those open but half-stocked, and wearing a listless air. If three hard years so told on the place, and there was no prospect of better things, what would it be in five or ten? Was it some such misfortune that had overtaken those grand and luxurious cities of Oriental lands?
"Where are the Lawrences?" Jack asked presently.
"Well, I really do not know. I think I did hear that Mrs. Lawrence had gone to New York. The young man"—
Jack held his breath, and there was a strange flutter at his heart. After all these years he saw again the pale, handsome child who had given him a boy's ardent love.
"I have a fancy that he will not amount to much. Queer idea that of Cameron's, wasn't it, Darcy? Who was it that first preached or wrote of the 'duty nearest one'? Of course things cannot stay this way forever, they must mend; and maybe if some one took hold to help mend them—Cameron's idea is not a bad one. Maybe the same amount of money and energy expended here would be productive of good results: still I hold on to Florida for my poor and wretched suffering ones. But it is worth thinking of. Here, let us turn round by Hope Mills."
Jack was silent. "Hope Mills!" It rang through his brain like a chime of bells. Of course he knew that Mr. Hope had given them his name; but had he builded better than he knew? Was it indicative of something greater than the power of one man,—of many men? of strong, earnest endeavor; of truth, honor, and honesty; of thrift, and happy, jocund industry, once more?
But now it was very silent. The great yard had an untidy look, with some piles of weather-beaten lumber, and old débris. The windows were covered with dust; the broad stone steps showed where the winter snows had fallen and melted, leaving streaks of dirt, and more had blown in the corners. No cheerful creak of the great engine; no vapory puffs of smoke circling skyward from the chimney; no whir of looms. It saddened one inexpressibly.
"It is a big subject," said Jack slowly. "I've been puzzling my brains half the winter with what wiser heads than mine have said about capital and labor,—Mill and Brassey and Howell, and our own men, with soft, sweet bits of Ruskin, and savage bits of Carlyle. I don't know but Carlyle was right when he said, 'The beginning and the end of what is the matter with us, in these days, is, that we have forgotten God.' Cameron said it another way,—honor and honesty. Because, certainly, honor appeals to all that is noblest in human nature,—to chivalry, and tenderness and thought for others; and nothing ever prospered, in the long-run, that did not have a substratum of truth."
"Well, according to Bristow, we came back to him this winter—not I, Darcy, I don't make any pretence,"—and he shook his head with slow gravity. "But I was interested in the revival on psychological grounds. I had never been so inside of one before. Bristow is a good man, no doubt; but it is just the one chosen way with him,—strong crying and praying, and believing yourself a sinner above all men, and then a sudden peace and happiness, and a courage to endure,—a blind, unreasoning courage to take the present as it is, because God sent it, and it must be for the best. Boyd and Whitlow and Kenny were the great lights. They went about from house to house; they exhorted and prayed. Whitlow was one of the old bank-directors. Strange to say, he did not lose a penny. His money was in government-bonds; and now he has persuaded Yerbury that if his advice had been taken there would have been no trouble. Whitlow discharged his man this winter, and took in his place a half-grown boy. Mrs. Whitlow sets a good example to her class by discharging one handmaid and making the other do double duty. Yet, so far as I can find, Whitlow is a richer man than he was three years ago. Kenny keeps his factory open, and gives the men three days' work in the week, and pays them in poor shoes, as much as possible; and takes out a good deal in high rent. Boyd, who has the name of being the greatest saint of all,—does what? Opens that miserable row of houses, that he couldn't let on any terms, and takes in tenants who are willing to work out the rent. He gets good prices, too. Is he losing on them? Faugh! the very term of charity makes me sick. And this winter he purchased a good deal of the stock of the relief-store. Wretched flour; miserable, adulterated stuff of tea; pork, some of it that wasn't fit to eat; and cheap butter, that every one would have been ten times better without. I went to him one day, red-hot, in a sanitary view of the business; and he preached religion to me,—his kind. 'Boyd,' said I, 'there's Keppler's saloon, your own property, paying you a good income, no doubt, in these hard times, adding to the want and misery of Yerbury faster than your whole church can save. If you are in earnest, go break up that den of iniquity!'"
Jack laughed. "What did he say to that?"
"Meekly, that Keppler had a lease for five years, and was going on the second. The man is so honorable, he cannot break faith with his fellow-man, forsooth; but he breaks faith with God, in a serene, untroubled manner." And Maverick's lip curled scornfully under the fringe of moustache.
"But there must be some gold, or the counterfeit would not be so successfully received. We have had so much false money everywhere, that, since we can make that pass, we do not trouble ourselves. And yet, Maverick, there is something in it that you and I don't see clearly yet; but we cannot teach it acceptably until we can show better fruit. And, when leaders of all kinds, in high places, show that self only is at the bottom of every thing they do, it seems hopeless to demand that the class below, watching them, and suffering from their wrongdoing, shall attain a higher moral status. How can they help following coarsely in the footsteps of their betters?"
"Darcy, suppose you turn parson!" and Maverick laughed half quizzically. "See here: the world wants a very old sermon preached again to it, hammered into every fibre, put up over every doorway,—the essence of all knowledge, all religion, briefly comprehended in this, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' You won't need gown or bands for that work. Not to have one code of morals for the rich, and one for the poor; one creed for Sunday, and quite another belief for Monday; to have no lofty, impossible theories and exalted moods, but truthful, honest living; not to push away the miserable, ignorant souls, but take them by the hand in hearty co-operation. Maybe Cameron has the right clew. Why should we let human love be shamed by such things as an Oneida community or a Mormon city?"
The strong, earnest voice stirred Jack like martial music. All these years he had been struggling with a great, blind, confused something,—perhaps it was not a silver-mine or a railroad, but a work just here in the town of his boyhood, where he was known, where he had played and worked.
"Seventeenthly, and lastly," and Maverick looked at his watch, "I cannot idle any more time upon you, and must cut short with a 'To be continued.' We will talk it over again and again; and, if we cannot get it into shape, there is still Florida left. So, while you are dreaming it out by this great silent mill, whose prisoned spirits should prate of prosperity instead of desolation, I'll run my course around Yerbury, and we'll compare notes over our cigars. Addio," waving his hand.
Jack watched the compact figure as it moved briskly away; then he sauntered round the mill, down one street and up another, strolled out to Lovers' Lane, and returned by Larch Avenue. The Barry house began to show signs of life, for old Mat was clearing up the grounds. This was the one oasis that had not been bitten by speculation. He thought of winsome little Sylvie, and one summer evening when Irene Lawrence stepped into that pretty, cosey room with the grace and beauty of a Juno. Where was she now? And what was Fred doing? Making a great leap into name and fame, doubtless, now that he was put upon his mettle. The old boyish freaks came back to his mind, the enthusiastic unreasoning adoration, the last tender parting. An intense and subtile sympathy filled his soul; and, though he smiled a little, the memory was very sacred.
The texture of Jack's mind was not of the quick, brilliant, or sanguine order. He went over his books again; he ruminated as he cleaned the garden-paths, spaded the beds, trimmed the trees and shrubbery, and attended to the odds and ends known only to a careful householder. Cousin Jane was in her element out here; and they two discoursed of farming and gardening, and industry, she in a sharp, trenchant way.
She had remarked incidentally that her visit was near its end. Now that Jack was home, cousin Ellen would not need her.
"I don't see why you should not make your home here, cousin Jane," replied Mrs. Darcy. "Grandmother grows feebler all the time, and you have quite spoiled me by your strength and cheeriness. You have no nearer tie; and if you could content yourself with us—Jack was speaking about it a few evenings since. We should like so to keep you, cousin Jane."
Jane Morgan studied the beseeching eyes a while, then dropped her own, and thought.
"Very well," she answered, "if you like to have it so. While I am well and strong I think I ought to do enough somewhere to earn my living, and not use up the little laid by for a rainy day. If you and Jack are agreed, we'll consider it a bargain for a year. I like to be settled about what I'm going to do: there's nothing so uncomfortable as hanging on tenterhooks. When my visit's through I like to go, if I'm going; not stand an hour or two with the door-knob in my hand."
Jack was delighted. They could spare him now and then of an evening to stroll down to Maverick's office, where they discussed pretty nearly every thing under the sun. It was so in the beginning,—"the earth was without form, and void." Then the Barrys returned; Sylvie changed in some indescribable way as to a kind of delicate outside manner, but the same fresh, earnest girl in heart and soul, taking up her friendship with Jack just where she had laid it down. Yet they had both grown broader and richer in nature and experience, and there was something of the subtile flavor of new acquaintanceship.
Yerbury cleaned house, even to the tidying-up of streets and carting-away of rubbish. It was pitiful to see the attempts of some of the poor women, who washed their worn white curtains, scrubbed the shutters and hall-door, and set out a few ragged geraniums in the front yard, or made a little bed of lettuce and onions.
Yerbury Savings Bank was in the hands of a receiver. Some sold out their small accounts for a trifle: it was agreed there could not be much in the way of dividends. Here was a great mortgage on the Downer farm, that the Eastmans had partly cut into city lots. And, though Downer had received a large price, he was a poor man to-day, with no business, and several sons tramping the highways for work. Farms had not been profitable, but had the wealth and extravagance produced any better result? These places around would be sold presently for any sum they would bring.
"Speculation did look so tempting, though," said Jack with a humorous smile. "But for grandmother I might have been in the midst of it."
"There's just one thing that makes a man or a country rich," said Jane Morgan incisively; "and that's industry, good, honest labor. Marking up one's goods before breakfast, as the Frenchman did, realizes no absolute money. The speculators jingle their dollars from hand to hand, until some poor fool, attracted by the noise, gives them a hundred for their twenty. When a man makes money simply by another person's loss, he has not created any thing, or made any more of it; and the world's no better, that I can see."
"Cousin Jane, you are dipping into political economy;" and Jack nodded gayly. "I shall have to ask Maverick and some of the others up here; and maybe you can put in a straw, or a head of wheat, toward the regeneration of Yerbury."
"I dip into a little common sense now and then, and it seems to me that's what the world needs. There is no lack of the uncommon kind, and it's not to be altogether despised, since at times uncommon things are given to people to do. But, if all the bees in the hive thought they had a call to be queens, it runs in my mind there'd be a lack of honey presently."
"You are on the right foundation, cousin Jane. We must not only make the honey an honorable thing, but honor the bees, put labor on a better, truer foundation."
"I should just say, 'See here, my friends, it is not possible for us all to be rich, whether it is some fixed immutable law of fate, or the lack of necessary elements in one's character, or the meeting of the right person with the right circumstances; but the fact is there, true as judgment. You can be comfortable and clean if you have the energy; and it is better to scrub your own kitchen-floor, or raise a bushel of potatoes, than to sit and whine about luck or respectability. Now and then a ready-made fortune drops down upon one, and I don't know but it often brings a curse: anyhow, what you work for, you are pretty sure to enjoy.' It makes me mad when I see healthy, hearty young women sighing for servants and pianos and what not; when their grandmothers, who had as good blood, and as good sense, didn't despise honest work."
Sylvie Barry came in while Miss Morgan was in the midst of her "speech," as Jack declared it to be; and now she clapped her small white hands, with a "Bravo!"
"A new disciple, Jack," and she smiled. "Miss Morgan, we shall set you to reading our favorite authors, and solving the tremendous question. Where can we get work for these to do? For a great many stand idle in the market-place, because they have not been hired. What can we set them at?"
"Well, Miss Barry, I don't know much about the big, outside questions; but, going around Yerbury a little this winter, I shouldn't say the work was all done up; or, done in such a poor, thrown-together way, that it tumbles right to pieces again. There's skewy, ill-made beds with ragged counterpanes; there's shreds of old ingrain-carpets, that you fall over; there's broken chairs, and shabby clothes, and dirty corners,—work enough, I should say, to last some woman an hour or two. She might get out her pieces of calico, and, with the children's help, make a new spread, maybe a tidy apron, and she might braid a rag mat out of bits, and a hundred things that go toward comfort. No: all the work isn't done up yet, Miss Sylvie," and Jane Morgan stopped just then, to knit the seam-stitch in a stocking for a poor body.
Sylvie threw herself on the footstool, and leaned her arms on Miss Morgan's knee.
"I wasn't thinking so much of that when I spoke," she began earnestly; "but I do wonder if some of us couldn't take it up. There are art-schools, and music-schools, and cooking-schools, in the great cities; and why couldn't we start something of the kind here? Poor people—the real poor, I mean—are often wasteful and idle because they do not just know how to be any thing else. They buy cheap garments in stores, and they soon come apart. I had a sewing-school last summer, and I found some mothers didn't seem to care whether their children learned or not,—since there was so much sewing done by machines. But if the mothers could be taught a little"—
"That's about the upshot of what I said. You see, Miss Barry, people have been earning so much money of late years, that sewing has gone out of fashion. It didn't pay to do this or that, so they earned and spent. Now they sit listless in their dirt and rags, bemoaning hard times. It is good to know how to do more than one thing," and Miss Morgan nodded her head confidently, her strong face full of earnestness.
"Why can't you and Sylvie start a school—what shall we call it?—of useful and homely arts? You see, the girls do work in the mills and shops until they get married, and then they do not know how to make the best of their husbands' money. But don't crowd out all the beauty and the pleasure; there must be something to enlist the heart. Give a man an interest in a thing, and you awake a new feeling, an enthusiasm that makes every thing go as smoothly as oiling up machinery."
"I have often thought," said Mrs. Darcy in her soft, gentle voice, "that the poor did not get as much good of their money as the better classes, because they never have enough to buy advantageously, and store-keepers so often take the advantage of them. Now, yesterday I was over to Mrs. Hall's, and the poor thing was trying to make some bread, and she was not fit to stand up and knead it; so I thought I'd try. The flour was heavy and sticky and lumpy, and what I should call very unprofitable. No one could make good bread out of it. She said they traded at Kilburn's, because he would wait if they did not have the money. The flour was seven and a half a barrel; the eighth, ninety-five cents; and I do not believe the bread was fit to eat. So you must remember, when you blame people for poor cooking, that they may not always have decent materials to work with."
"Maverick was growling about Kilburn the other evening. It is a shame that he should sell such poor goods, when prices have come down a good deal."
"Can you not reform him a little?" and Mrs. Darcy smiled.
"Cousin Jane and Sylvie might go into business, as did the poor weavers of Toad Lane, with their sack of oatmeal, firkin of butter, a little sugar and flour," said Jack laughingly. "A fair division of labor. The men of Yerbury shall provide work, and the women shall train the inefficient how and where to spend money."
Sylvie glanced up with bright, inquiring eyes.
"Was it some more co-operation?" she asked.
Jack brought out his book, and read the story of the "Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale" and their wonderful success from a small beginning. The girl listened with wide-open eyes, and even Jane Morgan laid down her knitting.
"The queen-bee and the workers again," said she, as Jack closed the book. "It is not every man for himself, but every man for each other. And it comes back, always."