Hope Mills by Amanda Minnie Douglas (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📕

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