"I wish I had a genius of some kind," she said abruptly to Sylvie afterward. "If I could write a book, or paint a picture, or design exquisite adornments, or if I could hold the world spell-bound by my voice"--

"You do sing," returned Sylvie. "Auntie was speaking of it yesterday.

She said, 'How I should like to hear Miss Lawrence sing some of her pathetic old ballads!'"

"You know all the sweet and tender ones."

"I sing mine over daily," and Sylvie laughed with a dainty inflection.

Irene went home, and opened her piano. It might have made jarring discord, but for Fred's thoughtfulness. She found it was in perfect tune.

Was it the music that brought a curious intensity to her after all these long, dreary months? Her fingers seemed a little stiff at first, and some things had gone out of her mind. Then she dropped her face into her hands, and thought.

"It is my only gift," she said slowly. "When they are married I will not be a burthen on them: I can make my way. I shall never try to think of marriage again;" and she shuddered.

"I declare, you are quite like yourself," said her mother that evening.

The weeks went on. Miss Barry was making plans for her niece. She could not live here alone, even for a few months. And she longed to see her married. Though the others had almost forgotten how surely her days were numbered, she had not.

Fred a.s.sented delicately to her proposal.

"It is not as if there were only your income," she said with a touch of pride. "Sylvie will have enough to keep the old house as it is kept now, and your mother and sister have some claims on you. Still, for her sake"--

Sylvie would fain have put it off, but she was gently overruled. The wedding-garments were ordered, the day appointed. A quiet marriage in the pretty parlor, with only a few friends. They brought Miss Barry down stairs, and she listened while her darling reverently repeated her vows.

They kissed the new bride while the tears were shining in her eyes, and sent her on a brief wedding-journey with heartfelt blessings. Maverick was to telegraph to them every day.

Fred Lawrence could hardly believe his happiness. They were like two children out on a pleasure-excursion, not needing to realize the gravity of life in these golden days. What cared they for pale winter suns and shivering blasts!

Long ago he had planned a brilliant tour to Europe for her. He had gone over it all, and would only have been bored; but it was the thing to do, and he might enjoy her fresh delight in it. But to both of them--to him especially--had come the higher revelations of life. It is the aggregation of individual characteristics that makes the sum-total of national character; and though at first retrenchment and economy seemed hideous words to the pleasure-loving, easy-going, self-indulgent souls nursed in the lap of prosperity, there was coming a realization to those who had fought their way valiantly across the yawning gulf, that the hot race for show, the desire to exceed one another, was not a lofty aim for an immortal soul, hardly for a cultured nature.

They both understood that beauty and grandeur were not far-off, hardly attained ideals, and that the great pleasures were set in the world rather as incentives and rewards, than highly seasoned daily food which must inevitably produce satiety. Some time, when they had earned this glorious vacation, they would take it hungering with the healthy appet.i.te of a well-trained soul. At present the duty was to deny one's self firmly and contentedly, to round off the sharp corners, to shape the daily living to high, pure purposes; so that the greater excellences of Art should not despise the minor forms, the steps whereby true perfection was attained, the tangled threads that often required more real genius to comprehend than the one great moment of inspiration.

They came home again fresh and bright, with the peculiar fragrance of a new life about them, just as you shall smell spring in the woods on some mild, sunny February day. Fred fluctuated between office and city, quite a prophet of household art, welcomed warmly back to the old circles which had so quietly dropped him for a while. Is there not a great deal of this unconscious proving of the fine metal of souls in the world? We cry out as we are thrust aside, or given some hard task to do; we wonder people do not hold out kindly hands, smile with sympathetic eyes; and yet their very help might weaken us. When we have beaten our way across with the roar of the distant waves still in our ears, the shadows of the black, fierce, jagged cliff hardly faded, the taste of the brackish spray still lingering on our lips, an exultant thrill speeds through every nerve as we clasp a hand that has had to buffet through the same fateful current.

Early in April Miss Barry had another seizure, a fatal stroke this time.

For a few days she lay in sweet content; and then dropped peacefully out of existence.

It seems always a mystery, why such earnest, useful souls, doing that highest of all work,--a pure, unselfish charity,--should be taken away, and the slothful, dependent, ease-loving, selfish ones left. The Darcys felt that Mrs. Lawrence could have been spared much more easily, and served a higher economy in point of usefulness. But G.o.d, who sees every end from the beginning, and is all-wise, judges differently. Miss Barry had done her work, no light life-task either. Only G.o.d knew what it had been, days of toil and nights of watching and prayer, such pain as only a strong soul could have kept to itself, and smiled over. Yet she had her exceeding sweet reward in this world,--years of peace and comfort, the child-love she had missed in one way, supplied in another, the hope of her days crowned more wisely by the waiting.

They did not think it worth while to keep up the two households; indeed, Mrs. Lawrence would not have been separated from her son: so she and Irene brought their worldly possessions over to Larch Avenue. The old house was large enough. Sylvie was a courteous and charming mistress; though Fred realized, with the sensitiveness of true tender love, the burthen he had brought to her.

"It is not without its wise compensation," she said, tears in her sunny brown eyes. "You see, I shall miss auntie so much less! She would not desire me to grieve despairingly for her, and here is the new claim to take her place. Beside," with a sad yet arch smile, "we shall have to strive against the temptation to selfishness that besets newly married people, when their pursuits are identical, as ours are. It will give a greater breadth, a purer tone, to our lives."

CHAPTER XXV.

HOPE MILLS pa.s.sed through a very prosperous six months. With some new processes, invented by the combined energy and ingenuity of the men, they made a new line of goods which was a perfect success. Interest and discount vanished; and there was a snug balance in the bank, of which every man was duly proud. They were beginning, too, to take a great interest in the finances of the country, and to see that a stable currency and wise economy and honesty were the best friends to commercial and industrial prosperity. One little incident made them exceedingly jubilant.

They had been undersold, in the same line of goods, with quite a large customer. Winston was rather blue about it at first, then laughed it off as one of the fluctuations of trade. To his great surprise, six months after, he received the largest order for goods that had yet been sent.

"We have been much deceived in the quality of cloths from Yates, Collins, & Co.," ran the note.

"They do not stand wear, though they resemble yours so closely. Our customers have made numerous complaints, and desire the old stock, which we are glad to order again.

"MILES, CHAMBERS, & CO."

This was put up on the bulletin-board, and discussed with much pride at the club. Every man had an interest in it, and an ambition to excel in his particular branch. It paid in the long-run to be honest; and, though there might be a higher principle than remuneration, that was not a bad test, after all.

So the third summer opened brilliantly. Yardley, Gilman, and four others drew up an agreement for a co-operative store. They hired one man who had been a very successful buyer for a large grocery-firm, which had failed, and took with it his small invested capital. He was to keep the books, take orders, and do the buying, subject to the advis.e.m.e.nt of the managers. A certain low per cent of profits was agreed upon, just enough, they calculated, to pay expenses; and the goods were to be offered as low as possible for cash. The superior quality and reduced price, they decided, would be more agreeable to most of the men than a small balance at the end of the year. An account was to be kept with every member, and the agreement to remain in force one year from date.

And yet there are shoals and quicksands for prosperity, as well as yawning abysses for adversity. There were people in Yerbury--not bad souls either--who were not content to allow the world to revolve on any axis but their own. They could see their neighbors' planets go to destruction with equanimity--following some law of nature or ethics that regulated supply and demand of any force, in their estimation; but when some bright particular star flashed out of the orbit they had set for it, of course it was beyond the pale of safety. There has always been a great deal of just such obstinacy in the world, just such narrow prescribing, and yet--"it does move."

One of the favorite objections of these wiseacres was, that Hope Mills was founded on a wrong basis. Who knew _just exactly_ what amount of goods Winston sold? Well, there was the amount manufactured,--the amount on hand every six months. True,--with a disbelieving shake of the head,--but he was up in the ways of the world; and what would hinder him, Ananias-like, from keeping back part of the price? When this was shown to be an utter impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this acc.u.mulation of capital, and by some successful _coup-d'etat_ Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier, unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their crimes in an out-and-out way; but there was going to be a profound mystery about this--the most simple and above-board management, when every man knew, every six months, the best and the worst of the details.

Employment was becoming more general all through the country. Everybody drew a long breath, and decided that the grinding times of depression had pa.s.sed. We would soon be back to the brilliant era of past prosperity.

And then there arose a new light in the labor horizon, a prophet who had discovered the magic key to the workingmen's paradise, and it had only to be turned by themselves, to gain entrance. Wherever he went, he was hailed with acclamation.

It was the old, old war upon capital, the old seductive science of equalizing things, values, money. Every poor man in the country had a better right to a cottage and garden and a few hours of leisure, than these few magnates to grasp every thing in their own hands, to roll in luxury, to feast in magnificence, to clothe their daughters in silks, velvets, and diamonds--it was to be noted that Mr. McPherson wore an immense diamond, but it was to be presumed that his wife or daughter did _not_. Everywhere one could see the rich growing richer, the poor poorer, the workman trodden down, brought to the level of slavery with his long hours and scanty wages. Where was it to end but in a nation of paupers, of thieves, of criminals of every grade? for, when you made a brute of a man, there came a time when he turned a brute's hand against you. This had been the underlying cause of all the world's great struggles: it had uncrowned kings, it had razed thrones, it had swept states. There were bits of distorted historical facts, fallacious but brilliant reasoning, and much bombast.

They heard of him in this city and that, and there was a great deal said about the cordiality with which he greeted "the h.o.r.n.y-handed son of toil." No town was so small that he disdained it, no city so great that he feared it. There had been "demonstrations," but he seemed proud of his defiance of danger.

Men who could not altogether approve of him admitted that he was "smart," that he uttered a good many truths, half-truths they were, dressed up in specious falsehoods, all the more dangerous, since the world does pay homage to virtue and truth. They were troublesome questions: the great difficulty was the haste made in settling them. A balance will finally adjust itself, though there may be many vibrations at first.

It was a fact much to be regretted, that with returning prosperity the gin-mills and beer-shops of Yerbury had, as a general thing, increased in their business. A notable instance to the contrary, however, was Keppler's saloon. It had depended a good deal on the men from Hope Mills and the iron-works. The latter had been closed so long; and, although the coffee-house did not seem much of a rival at first, it had gone on steadily, and given the men time to think. It was not simply the one gla.s.s of beer they took to wash down their midday lunch, but the treating when a crowd gathered, the many drinks during a heated discussion of an evening. Not half a dozen of the mill-hands went there now, so occupied had their minds become with other matters. Keppler's lease was not out, and his rent was high for the times; he had lost money and customers, and felt sore over it; he had a grudge against Jack Darcy as the exponent of a system that interfered with his profits.

McPherson was discussed over pipes and ale one warm June evening, with brains cleared, of course, by frequent potations and stifling smoke. It was proposed that he should be invited to lecture at Yerbury.

"I like to see fair play!" cried Keppler. "These fellows over here"--nodding toward the mill--"have had it all their own way because they took up a lot of starving men in dull times. That was all well enough,--praise-worthy--praise-w-o-r-thy," with a long accent. "But things have changed now,--changed!" with a confident nod. "I'd like to hear what the man has to say. You see, he has come up from the ranks, he has been poor himself!"

So the ball was put in motion. McPherson's speech at Millville, a great laboring-centre, was read aloud with frequent cheering. And the laboring-men at Yerbury began to wonder why wages were not higher, when so many shops were running on full time! Somebody was making a great deal of money: _they_ could barely live. Bread and meat had not fallen in the ratio of wages. It was still next door to starvation.

Finally some self-const.i.tuted labor-committee sent the letter of invitation, and received a cordial and flattering reply. Mr. McPherson had heard of Yerbury. He would be only too glad to come among them in his humble capacity, and shed what light he could upon the side of right and truth; raise his voice for the oppressed against the oppressor. And he mentioned that open-air meetings were generally more successful.

They put up a platform on the Common, the largest park in Yerbury. The day was very fine, not too hot, and a shower the evening before had laid the dust. At precisely four, a deputation awaited Mr. McPherson and his party at the station, escorted them to the Bedell House to refresh, and then to the grand hall of nature, with its waving arches of glistening green overhead.

Already a great concourse had a.s.sembled. Mr. McPherson mounted his rostrum, and, after a few preliminary flourishes, began in a clear, strong tone, that had the power of concentrating the attention of his audience. He went back centuries, and proved that from the very beginning of all industries there had been the desire to oppress, that the working-cla.s.ses had to combine and fight for every advantage gained, to wrest from kings, peers, masters, even equals, the privileges they held to-day. Plainly, capital was a tyrant fattening on unpaid toil.

"Were not the rich always in the ranks of capital, always against the poor man? They squeezed him to the utmost when they had need, then they flung him away. Did it matter to them if his wife and children starved?

If he stole a loaf of bread to appease the pangs of hunger, he was sent to prison; but if a bank president stole half a million, he went to--Europe! [Laughter and applause.] Does the capitalist employ the laborer in order that there shall be fewer starving men in the country?

It comes in the market, and buys at the lowest price, solely for its own benefit. It does not concern capital, whether this man can support wife and children on such a pittance: what business has he with wife and children! If the man drops at the work-bench, the victim of long hours, exhaustive toil, insufficient food, the town will thrust him into a pauper's grave, and another will fill his place. Even negro-slavery was more n.o.ble than this: it was to the master's interest that the slave should be well fed. Capital was shrewd, selfish, experienced, astute, strong: labor was kept in ignorance lest it might learn its worth, its rights; it was half-starved that it might be weak; it was driven from pillar to post with a more cruel than slave-driver's whip, that it might never be able to perfect a successful organization."

And so on and on. The crowd increased. The six-o'clock bells rang, and the procession from shops wended their way thither, many from curiosity, some from a hope of a new truth, and not a few filled with a secret sense of wrong and dissatisfaction. Mr. McPherson was still belaboring capital. Now he had declared it "a stupendous fraud, a hollow bubble, a reputation for wealth where no wealth existed, a fict.i.tious claim for what was not, but which still managed to hold the workman in its iron grasp; the concentrated labor of the men, not the lawful working interest of money. Some way this system of evil was going to be uprooted by men standing firm, refusing the wages of sweat and blood; and in the general overturn by legislation of state and country, every man was to have a farm or a factory, to quit work in the middle of the afternoon, and sit with folded hands on his own door-step, his own master, a free man!" [Great shouting and applause.]

He talked until seven, and wound up at last with a desperate but covert onslaught on Hope Mills. "No two men or six men, or company of any kind, had a right to band together to starve not only the men in their own town, but the laborers throughout the world, by so reducing wages for their own sole benefit; and every workman who submitted to have these chains forged around body and soul, no matter by what specious expedient, was a worse traitor, a more cruel oppressor of wife and children, than the red-handed capital that stood ready to make him a slave!"

There was an immense deal of cheering and applause. Mr. McPherson was invited to supper at the Bedell House by a deputation of working-men, though I think there were few h.o.r.n.y-handed ones among them. Liquors flowed freely, and the feast was rather noisy. A purse was handed to him when he went away--he was too n.o.ble to make any charge when he spoke in behalf of a cause so near his heart.