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

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