Kitabı oku: «Hope Mills: or, Between Friend and Sweetheart», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XVI

There were a few faint hints of autumn in Yerbury. The air was warm, and freighted with the peculiar sweetness of over-ripe grapes and apples, of dried balsam and faded golden-rod by the wayside. The very air seemed to quiver with intense contrasts of color, the yellow beeches standing out in strong relief, the bronze-red of one great oak, the bluish-green of the spruce, and the tender tints of fading, long-armed larches, drooping in regretful sadness. Lights of silvery gray and russet-brown, pale gold and hazy purple, and a sapphire sky bending over all. The artistic side of Fred Lawrence's soul was touched as he had once fancied nothing this side of Europe could touch it.

For a moment a mighty rush of regret came over him. This magnificent place had been his home. Perhaps he would have been more than human not to have experienced a pang.

He wandered about for some time. It was too lovely to go in and explore those dusty, darkened rooms: this evening would answer for that. He paced the lawn, he lingered by the gate; he took a turn about the grapery, now used for profit by the thrifty farmer who had charge of the place. Then he turned, and went down the street. The bells were ringing for six. From his height above, he could see the laborers wending their way, the great chimney of Hope Mills. He would walk in that direction. They would all be gone by the time he reached it.

The streets were indeed nearly deserted. In the shade here the wind blew a little chilly. Yes, it was just the same; but then, it would not be likely to alter in a year. Why, it seemed a decade almost, since the night he had come home to his dying father!

Ah, if they had been more to each other! Did he go about with a lonely spirit, Fred wondered, feeling the uselessness and insufficiency of the life he was leading? Had he been glad to lay the burthen down?

A sudden firm, manful step ran down the stone stairway with a cheerful ring, and a voice hummed a tune softly, as one sometimes does for a seeming accompaniment, when the mind is occupied with other things; – a tall, robust figure, with long arms, and a springy step, as if he might still leap a post, or jump the creek. He was rushing off, when, curiously enough, with no other motive than an impulse, he turned, and saw an almost motionless figure.

Whether he would send for the articles belonging to his father, or visit Hope Mills in person, risking a sight of Jack Darcy, or whether he would summon courage enough to ask for his old friend, were matters that Fred had put off for to-morrow's decision. Why he had wandered here at all, amazed him now; and he stood quite breathless at the unexpected apparition, without power to move or speak.

If he had still been in the high tide of prosperity, Jack would have passed him by silently, but with no rudeness. Something in the bent head, the pale face, the general melancholy attitude, came home to his heart, – his fresh, generous, magnanimous heart. He ventured a step nearer, he put out his hand.

"Fred, old fellow!"

The rich, full voice might have melted any heart. The frank, honest eyes lighted with wonderful tenderness: there was a glow and earnestness that could come only from a large, forgiving soul, capable of putting by its own sense of pain or any past discomfiture.

Fred Lawrence crimsoned to the very edge of his hair, to the farthest depths of his soul. He would have taken the hand: then he drew back with a gesture of self-reproach, as if he could tread his past sinful pride in the dust.

"Let's forget the bygones," the hearty young fellow began, "that is, if you would like to have it so," drawing back a trifle to give him his choice as a delicate woman might have done.

"Thank you, Jack," grasping the warm, firm hand in his own pale, cold one, and raising his soft dark eyes, so near to tears. Just now no other words would come.

Jack drew the hand through his arm. "I've thought of you so many times," he began, as if they had parted the best of friends. "It has been a sad year for many, doubly so for you."

"Sad indeed. O Jack!"

It was all uttered in the long tremulous swell of voice that tells the whole story.

"Yes."

With that, their friendship was renewed. Women might have fallen into each other's arms with expressions of penitence and forgiveness; but they had said their say, as was characteristic of both.

"Were you coming in?" and Darcy turned back as he asked the question.

"No: I only reached Yerbury an hour or so ago on a little business. Some remembrance of old time brought me hither."

"I am glad it did. Shall we walk down Main Street? Are you staying at Hope Terrace?"

"I shall be for a few days."

A silence fell between them. There was no one else in the street; and their steps sounded with a steady tramp, as if they might walk on to some definite end.

"Jack, dear old friend, after requiting your tender love to my exacting and selfish boyhood with a pitiless treachery that will always shame my manhood, I wonder if I dare ask it back, if I dare come to you."

"There is nothing to give back. I do believe I have kept up a sort of girlish hankering for you. And now, if I can do any thing, if you are in any perplexity" —

"Come up to Hope Terrace, and take tea with me. I want to talk to you all the evening. You have just the same mesmeric strength that used to soothe me when a boy. What a milk-and-water cub I must have been! I wonder you did not throw me over."

Jack laughed.

"Let us turn back to Kit Connelly's, and I can send a message home, so that mother will not keep tea waiting."

That done, they strolled on together the same path by which Fred had come. The sun had dropped down behind the hill, and the glowing tints had faded to purple-black and indistinct grays. They wound around the hills, and came up to the very gate where their last good-by had been uttered. And Fred remembered then that this was the first time Jack had shared the hospitality of Hope Terrace, now when it was no longer his.

Mrs. Milroy gave them some supper in a pretty little apartment which had been the servants' parlor, and was now hers. Then they went up to Fred's room, which had been opened and aired. Some of its choicest belongings had been taken away, but another than Fred would not have remarked this. And here they renewed the remembrances of the years that had fallen between.

"It seems cowardly to come to you in trouble, and to take so large a share of your sympathy again," Fred said with his good-night. "But you always were so strong and earnest."

He went down to the mill the next day, and was much interested in the working of Jack's plans.

"You found your place," he said with a curious intonation, as if he half envied the man before him.

"Yet in all truth I should not have chosen this," Jack answered with honest gravity. "But, when I found circumstances would keep me here, I resolved to work at it persistently and faithfully; and I learned in it the larger lesson of the true dignity of labor. If I should solve my problem successfully, I can ask no more. Five years is a long while when you count the days," and he smiled.

"You will succeed, I know. You have just that mastery over every thing."

Jack finally persuaded Fred to come down to the well-remembered cottage, and see his mother. Mrs. Darcy would have welcomed her bitterest enemy if Jack had desired her to.

All this time Jack was thinking whether he could do his old friend a good turn. He hated to offer him any subordinate position in the mill. At present he could attend to the book-keeping. Then he heard there was to be a change at the paper-mills, and went over. They wanted a clerk and foreman, one with taste enough to select pretty designs, and who could keep books.

"I do not know as you would like it, Fred," he continued with some hesitation in his cheery tones.

"I have been a dawdler long enough, and I have had a bitter experience in finding any thing to do. I shall be glad to take it, and you may believe I will try my best. Many, many thanks for your kind interest."

There had been a sharp, short struggle in Fred's soul. He would rather have gone elsewhere, where he was not known. But if fate had resolved to bring him back to Yerbury, if she had offered him bread here, while it had been stones elsewhere, he would certainly be a fool to starve for pride's sake. Some wholesome ideas had found lodgement in his brain, along with the Greek myths and synthetic philosophies. If he could not astonish the world with brilliant reasoning, he might at least get his own living.

He went back to the city, and discussed the project with his mother and Irene. She had a tender longing for her son: to be with him would afford her greater satisfaction than the magnificence of her daughter's house. Irene consented stonily. It was burying herself alive, but then no one would torment her with hateful marriages. To stay here with Agatha was simply unendurable.

Mrs. Minor made no further comment than to say she did not think her mother could be kept as comfortable. Irene was her own mistress.

So Fred Lawrence went back to Yerbury and work. It was an altogether new undertaking. He had no business training and no experience, except his desultory two months in Bristol's office. Yet from the very first day there was something that interested him here, although for awhile the smells, the dust and disorder, half sickened him. As for any wound to his pride, he felt that less because the whole world seemed to have taken a general overturn. Half of the elegant houses in the neighborhood of Hope Terrace were for sale, and shut up. Expensive country mansions to be used for a few summer months were quite beyond present incomes. A month at the seaside cost much less. Costly scientific, or rather unscientific gardening, – since the true aim of science must be the best adjustment of power to the desired result, – graperies, green-houses, henneries standing empty, the money lavished upon them so much waste material at present, – where had the wealth gone to so suddenly? He could not understand the rapid and wide-spread ruin. Even of themselves, – how was it that for years there should be no stint, but absolute wastefulness, and then nothing at all?

He was so new to any business results, that he seemed like a child groping in the dark. And here was Jack Darcy, with his academy training merely, managing one of the great problems of the day, taking hold manfully to right the wrongs brought about by selfishness and utter disregard for one's neighbor. Had Plotinus struck the grand key-note when he said he "was striving to bring the God within us in harmony with the God of the universe"? For might there not be false gods within?

He found he had not much time for abstruse speculations, which was all the better for his mental health. After enduring the dirt and disorder of the office for a week, he set about remedying that. He might not be able to regenerate the world, but he could make one little room decent. The office-boy and the scrub-woman were called in; the desks and shelves were cleared of the accumulation of months, and presented quite an orderly aspect. He found his hands blistered by the rough handling, but the reward was a wholesome hunger and a good night's sleep. Not quite as entertaining, perhaps, as a scramble in the Sierras or the Alps, but productive of as beneficial results.

Then there was a home to be found. Living at Hope Terrace on a thousand a year would hardly be possible, even if it could be had rent free. So he asked Mrs. Darcy's advice about the matter, and she proposed a pretty cottage, – there were so many standing empty. It seemed very queer to be counselling this proud, sad-eyed young man, who a year or two ago had hardly deigned to look at them. Yet, like Jack, she still held a tender feeling for the pretty, enthusiastic boy she remembered.

There had been in his mind a great struggle about Sylvie. He knew now that she belonged to Jack. That thorough manliness and integrity, that earnest, unflinching soul, the rich, generous temperament that could be so tender to weakness, so forgiving to wrong, was the soul of her ideal hero. And he had dared to offer her his poor, paltry affectation of love! Blinded by his own arrogant self-esteem, he had spurned the pure pearl, and taken the empty, glittering shell to her as the kind of treasure he was satisfied to deal in.

How thoroughly he despised himself! It was such a keen, bitter humiliation! Not only that he had aspired to her, but that he should have misrepresented and traduced Jack, not from an overwhelming passion of jealousy, – that might be pardoned, – but a shallow, overweening vanity of wealth and position.

"She shall see that I have learned to respect and honor him!" he said to himself with an intensity of regret that was very honest and real. "If I can never regain her esteem, I shall at least try for my old place in his regard."

They found a pretty, convenient cottage, quite on the opposite side of Yerbury, suiting Fred much better than to be near his old friends. The furniture was brought over from the great house; and, though it had seemed but odds and ends there, it was amply sufficient. Irene's piano and some of the old family silver had been saved out of the wreck, a few of the less expensive pictures, and sufficient books to form quite a library. Fred really enjoyed arranging and planning. It was quite a matter of astonishment to him, that rules of art and harmony were needed at every step: if he could not make them remunerative in a written article, he could put them in practice here.

He kept much to himself, being busy in the office during the day, and at home in the evening. He was sick of society, of the world in general. He had met Maverick a few times, but he shrank from strangers. Mrs. Darcy's tender, unobtrusive motherliness, he enjoyed, but he did not dare to accept much of it. The duties of his life were marked out plainly before him, and he must not swerve from the path. It was to be a kind of neutral tint, twilight rather than sunshine; and the joys he might come to long for, he must put away with a firm hand.

The first of December every thing was in readiness for his small household, even to the tidy housekeeper Mrs. Darcy had found for him among her poor. Mrs. Lawrence and Irene came in the promised train; and he met them with a carriage and a multiplicity of wraps, although it was a bright, pleasant day. His mother clung to him with tremulous hands: he realized more than ever how much she had broken in the past year, – very little older than Mrs. Darcy if counted by years, but whole decades if judged by every other point.

Irene was cold and stately. She did not like coming here, – neither did she like staying at Mrs. Minor's. Wild thoughts had flooded her brain of going somewhere, and under a new name making a mark in the world. She had a fine voice, and a decided talent for histrionics, but how to get to this place where fame and fortune would be at her command? How to bridge across any chasm? Nothing, she said to herself, but just stand helpless, and see the great world go on, with no part nor lot in the matter. If she must be buried alive, as well at Yerbury as anywhere.

There had never been any sentiment between her and Fred; in truth, none of the Lawrence women ever were given to sentiment. She walked into the little parlor with the step of a queen, and gave a cool stare around.

"I hope you will like it" – with some hesitation. "There is your piano. And mother's room looks as it did at the Terrace, with the exception of its being so much smaller. And here is a library. Here is our dining-room – some of the old engravings, you see."

"Could I go to my room? Which is it, Fred?" and his mother looked up with a weak, pleading smile.

"Yes: let me carry you. You are so thin and light now, and you must be fatigued after all this journey;" and, taking her in his arms, he bore her up-stairs.

It was a pleasant room over the parlor, with an alcove toward the south, in which the mid-day sun was shining. A bright fire burned in the grate: there were her own easy-chairs, a bit of the carpet she had once chosen, the Persian rug she had admired so much when Fred first sent it home, the bed with its snowy drapery, and little ornaments with their familiar faces.

"It is delightful," she said, still clinging to her son's arm. "And I am to stay here with you? Agatha is very good, of course; but I have always had my own home, and if I did sign it away it was to save your poor dear father. I don't see how things could have ended so, only, if he had lived, it would all have been different;" and she wiped away the tears that came so easily now.

Fred put her in the chair nearest the fire, and began to unfasten her wraps. He had been quite an expert in delicate ways during his prosperity.

"Your room is next – there," nodding his head to the open doorway, and glancing up in his sister's immovable face. "I hope I made my divisions rightly: I thought you would like to be near mother."

"It is all as well as it can be, I suppose," she answered with weary indifference.

There came to Fred Lawrence just then a painful sense of want and loss, a far-reaching sympathy in something that had never been, and now, when the outside glitter was torn away, left life cold and barren. Was human love so much?

His mother went on in her weak, inconsequent way, yet her foolish praise was very sweet to him. He had been living such a lonely life for months, that even he was grateful for something that looked like home, for a woman's figure flitting about, and some voice beside his own.

The dinner-bell rang presently.

"I ordered yours brought up here," said Fred; "and I will have a little with you, then I must go back to the office."

"It is terrible, Fred! That you should have to" —

"Dignify labor," and he laughed. "Mother dear, I was so thankful to get something to do! And I am proud of making a home for you. Am I not your only son?"

"But a clerk!" Some of the old Hope disdain spoke out there. "I cannot bear to think of it – with all your education and talents and genius. I wish you had found some business. There is the five thousand dollars of the life-insurance, you know; and you could take it, though Agatha made me promise that I would not have it fooled away in any thing. But I should be glad to have you use it."

Fred stooped suddenly, and kissed her on the forehead. There was something in mother-love, after all.

Just then Martha West came in with the tray. Fred drew out the folding breakfast-table that his mother had so often used, while he was introducing Martha to his mother and sister. She courtesied, and proceeded to lay the cloth and the dishes, and disappeared for the viands themselves.

"Is one woman expected to do all the work?" asked Irene at length.

"She thinks she can – with so small a family. Of course I" —

Irene raised her hand deprecatingly. "Spare me details," she said. "It is very bitter to eat the bread of dependence: I have learned that already."

He made no answer. Mrs. Lawrence looked from one to the other in helpless bewilderment, but Martha entered again, and changed the troubled current.

It was quite a picnic dinner. Irene unbent a little at the sight of the rare china and beautiful old silver. She supposed every thing had gone down in the whirlpool of ruin, and that humiliation would be complete in delft and plated ware. Then she ventured to glance around.

Fred chatted gayly, making talk. It had not used to be one of his accomplishments in his magnificent days when women vied with each other in the delight of entertaining him. It was pleasant to see his mother touch the bell, and sit back in her chair while Martha brought in the dessert.

"And now I must go. Do not expect me much before seven. I wonder if you will feel able to come down to tea? Ah! there are the trunks, just in time. I will send them up, and you will feel quite at home when you have your belongings in place."

Then he went back to his desk, and for the next two hours was too busy to think. After all, there is nothing like energetic employment to keep dismal forebodings out of one's mind.

But that evening after supper, when they had gathered in the library, Mrs. Lawrence began to question him concerning Hope Mills. Agatha had said some one had started the business anew.

Fred explained.

"But how could the workmen do it alone? Your father never trusted them, Fred; and I am sure my father had trouble enough with them in his day! They were always an ignorant, unreasonable set. Don't you remember how they struck several years ago, and workmen had to come from elsewhere? They must have some head. And who found the money? Mr. Minor says they cannot possibly succeed."

Some time Fred would have to stand Jack Darcy on his true pedestal. As well do it now, and have it over.

"The project was Mr. Darcy's. I believe he had most of the capital. It was very generous of him to risk it in such times as these."

Irene looked up from her moody contemplation of the fire. A dull flush suffused her face.

"Not Jack Darcy," she said, – "Sylvie Barry's great hero."

"Yes."

"Sylvie Barry!" re-echoed Mrs. Lawrence, and she looked sharply at her son. "And she gave you up for him! Who is he?"

"He used to be in the mill," answered Irene, with all her olden scorn. "His father was there also. And the Darcys" —

"The Darcys can boast as good blood as we!" exclaimed Fred, his face in a sudden heat. "And Jack Darcy is a gentleman by birth, by instinct, and, best of all, the impulses of a true and noble heart."

The discussion recalled an old remembrance to Mrs. Lawrence. She looked vaguely at her son as if she were not quite certain, as she said, —

"Was there not something about him when you were boys? He was coarse and rough, wasn't he? and Agatha used to worry. I knew it was only a boy's folly; but she was glad when you went to college, and I think – there was his sister" – her maternal instincts taking alarm.

"No, he never had a sister. His father died, and he staid at home. His mother was delicate, and his grandmother old. She is dead, and he gets his small fortune from her. No, he was not coarse nor rude, but he was my champion in boyhood, my hero then; and it is the shame of my life that I should have let him drop out of it because I was the richer of the two. I despise myself for any thing so narrow and unmanly, and yet he was generous enough to forgive. I do not wonder at Miss Barry's choice when she contrasted us, and I honor her to-day for her discrimination. She never encouraged me, blind, idiotic fool that I was! and I have only my wretched vanity to blame. He is fully worthy of her, and that is the highest compliment I can pay him."

"Very magnanimous for a rejected lover," commented Irene with a touch of sarcasm.

"But you did love Sylvie?" Mrs. Lawrence said, bewildered by his rapid defence.

"I blush now at the thought of having offered her such a paltry regard. To me she will always be a sweet and peerless woman. I am glad she will have the strength of manhood to lean upon, the purity of its honor to trust, the exceeding tenderness of a soul that will never know a narrow or grudging thought, to confide in. All my years look poor and barren beside his."

"I can never forgive her" —

"You must, you must!" and Fred seized his mother's hand, pressing it to his lips. "There is nothing to forgive," he went on. "You would not have had her throw aside the love of her life for my fancied fortune that has taken wings. It was my blunder. And I want to say that I have taken up my old friendship for Jack Darcy, come back to the truth that money is one of the incidental surroundings of the man, but it can never be the man himself."

Irene's haughty lip curled, but no one openly gainsaid Fred.