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

one entertained, and no fashionable, exhausting life. He managed to persuade Miss Barry and Sylvie and Mrs. Lawrence to go, and insisted upon Irene having the variety of air and scene. There was a roomy furnished cottage at their disposal: they could cook their meals, or have them sent in. Fred should come down once or twice a week, and he and Darcy would enliven them with flying visits. Miss Barry must take her pony and carriage.

Jack approved of the plan at once. It would bring the two beings in whom he was so warmly interested more closely in contact with each other, give them those bits and fragments of leisurely indolence so conducive to sentiment. Sylvie would judge more truly and tenderly than it was possible to do at present; and he could not see her alone, could not be her companion in walks and drives, without betraying his regard.

While the plan was still under consideration, Dame Fortune resolved to smile upon Fred Lawrence. Late in the winter he had sent a paper on household art, with several exquisite designs, to a magazine, and for once happened to hit the prevailing fancy. He was asked for a series of such articles, with the offer of having them collected in book form afterward. It more than encouraged him: it gave him a feeling of certainty that he had struck the right vein, that here was a fair and appreciative field for his talent, his fine taste, and high culture. A little utilitarian, perhaps; and he smiled, thinking of some past dreams. And was true art so ethereal that it must exist only in the exalted states of the mind? Was it not to embellish and beautify all lives, rather than crowd out the thousands that the few might feast on some exquisite vision? Was any art higher than that which boldly thrust aside shams, and went to the shaping of true, strong, faithful aims in the work placed before one? Were those wonderful Greek fragments, wrought in times of social depravity such as the world now shrank from mentioning, to be one's guide and inspirer, to the despising of purer if less sensuous forms of beauty? If one enlightened and sweetened the life of to-day with the work of to-day, would it not be as worthy as hugging to the soul some useless theory?

He mentioned his new offer to Mr. Garafield. It would not be honest to take the time that was another's; and surely Fred Lawrence's mental capacity had largely cleared when he came to put into every-day work the fine sense of honor that he had hitherto supposed belonged only to a liberal education.

Mr. Garafield was a shrewd business-man, although fanciful in taste. He should be the gainer by associating this true artist with him. Decorative art was coming to be a truly recognized branch; and its leaders and apostles would reap not only credit, but financial success.

Fred was amazed. Only yesterday, it seemed, he had well-nigh been refused the privilege of earning his bread. To-day, in an unexpected quarter, prosperity opened upon him.

"I have no capital, as you well know," he said stammeringly to Mr. Garafield.

Garafield smiled and nodded in a satisfied manner.

"The brain-work and the ideas are sufficient capital, Mr. Lawrence. By this partnership you will be free of drudgery: some other clerk can keep books and take orders for us. You will gain time for your literary labors, and those in turn will carry weight in the business. Neither do I think you will regret taking my offer."

Fred went down to Jack Darcy's that evening, and told over his plans, as in other years he had confessed his college ambitions and the laurels he was to win. And Jack's face lighted up with honest enthusiasm, while his voice took on a curious little tremble. He was so glad! for Sylvie's sake and love's sake.


CHAPTER XXII.

WHEN Fred Lawrence came next day into Sylvie Barry's presence, there was a certain proud humility shining in his handsome face, that was now quite worn and thin; a dignity born of honor in having achieved at least a standing-place in the world. He was not her hero, never had been indeed; and his pale face flushed at the remembrance of his once complacent claim to her regard.

She was sitting in the room with his mother, but she sprang up from the low ottoman.

"I am so glad! your mother has been telling me the news. Why, it is"--

She had held out her hands as she began her sentence, but as he took them she made a sudden pause. His were icy cold.

"More than I could have expected in such a brief while, hardly at all. Both offers have surprised me greatly."

He strove so hard to render his tone calm, that it was absolutely cold.

She turned with a petulant but charming gesture, while her peachy cheek took on a riper tint.

"You are not a bit enthusiastic," in that pretty, imperious, chiding tone. "I suppose you think good fortune ought to fall down upon you, be thrust on you, like greatness."

"No. I am very thankful for it. I can give my mother and sister some needed indulgences that it would have pained me very much to see them go without. How is Irene?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Lawrence fretfully. "She does mope so. I shall be so glad to get away."

"I have just come from the doctor's. We are to start on Thursday. Sylvie, are you all ready?"

"Yes," with a positive little nod.

He stepped into the next room. Irene had been worse after Mrs. Minor's visit, but was the same again now, quiet, cold, impassible. It made no difference to her whether they remained here, or went to Depford Beach. She evinced neither pain, pleasure, nor interest; but she liked best to be alone. She endured Sylvie with rather more equanimity than she did her mother, but even the fault-finding energy would have been welcome to the doctor. Nothing mattered: that was the trouble.

She heard now they were to go in two days. The cottage was all ready. Martha and Miss Barry's trusty handmaiden were to do the housekeeping. The place was so arranged, with the spacious hall through the middle, that each family could be by itself.

"I have ordered a carriage to come every day for you and mother," Fred said quietly. "I thought you would like it better than being dependent on Miss Barry."

Irene gave a slow, acquiescent nod.

"Good-by," cried Sylvie, looking in. "I will run over again to-morrow."

"I wanted her to stay to tea," said Mrs. Lawrence complainingly. "It is so dull!"

"I will come up and take tea with you. I will order it at once." And he ran down.

There was a subtle perfume in the hall. She had a bunch of violets in her belt, he remembered. He said over softly Ben Jonson's quaint lines,--


"Here she was wont to go, and here, and here,
Just where the daisies, pinks, and violets grow:
The world may find the spring by following her."


But he could not follow. Had fate smiled on him to make the renunciation more bitter? For now he could work his way up to something worthy of her acceptance. And had he not learned the past winter, had he not been slowly learning ever since the death and loss, that the manhood of a gentleman was his thoughtfulness for others, his courteous delicacy, his consideration, often his denial of self, rather than the exquisite polish of cultivation, and the veneer of society's affectations? How blind he must have been, ever to have offered these last to a woman so true and pure of soul!

But a still larger sacrifice had been demanded of him. He must see her in seductive solitudes, in still more intimate association. If he could stay away from Depford Beach! but that was not possible. He was to spend Sundays with them. But surely Jack would be there then. An almost careless lover he thought his friend. Was every smile so dear to him?

The doctor and Fred went down with them. Darcy had decided to take a business trip, so presently Mrs. Darcy joined the seaside household. In the bygone years Mrs. Lawrence would not have deigned to notice her; but she found this delicate, mild-mannered, middle-aged woman very companionable. Circumstances had rendered Mrs. Darcy exclusive, rather than any inherent trait of birth or breeding. She had lived with a few people always, and two or three strong attachments had given to her character the kind of concentration that passes for strength. Yet all of these had been more positive people than herself; and while this had softened the tendency to that querulous exactingness that weak, sweet natures are apt to possess, it had also shaped to certain generous instincts that were quite free from vanity. Her natural kindliness gave her the charm of good-breeding, and this settled her in the estimation of Mrs. Lawrence. She might have possessed all the virtues in the calendar, but an inharmonious, unpolished turn or act would have tabooed her. We generally ascribe this grace to life-long culture, or a certain inheritance of blood, but it occasionally springs from other causes.

The three women, with natures and aims widely different, fraternized in the most amiable manner. Sylvie glanced in and out between them as a gleam of sunshine penetrates the interstices of a wood, and brings out all lights and tints, itself untouched by any. Their greatest diversion was driving. Back of the little settlement--it was hardly large enough for a village, and had a powerful rival some seven miles farther on--there were country lanes and by-ways, sleepy-looking farms, and picturesquely careless houses. Below them there was a great fish _entrepot_, with fishing-boats plying up and down, brawny fishermen trilling their musical half-chant, half-song, as they floated over the bay.

It was curious how, presently, Sylvie came to watch for Fred. Truth to tell, she found Depford Beach a trifle monotonous. No interest of schools or clubs or young people's affairs, no strong energetic talks with Jack about mill business, few people coming and going that she cared about; the three ladies purring through the drowsy hours on topics that she fancied she had exhausted years ago; and Irene, between whom and her there had never been any real electric sympathy, and who was now coldly indifferent to all matters. For hours she would sit with her hands dropped nerveless in her lap, glancing over the wide sea out to the farther horizon. What thoughts were in her mind, Sylvie wondered? She could not even provoke her to the wordy combats of old. The flashes of temper and imperiousness had alike died out. She was courteously polite, and acknowledged all favors with a punctiliousness that built the wall around her still more firmly. "If one could only rouse her," Dr. Maverick said; but that seemed just the thing no one _could_ do.

Yet she certainly was improving in health. Her step became more assured, her eye less languid, and her complexion cleared up to the hopeful tints of renewed bodily vigor. Her slender hands filled out a trifle; and sometimes she would take a book, as if she needed an interest beside her own sombre thoughts to while away the hours.

So Sylvie established her easel, and had recourse to painting. Oddly enough she began to ask herself what it was all for? Filling her own rooms, and bestowing gifts upon friends, was very