 | CHAPTER VI.
MOULDINGS AND BRICKS. The silent partner |  |
6. CHAPTER VI.
MOULDINGS AND BRICKS.
“MAVERICK!”
“At your service.”
“But Maverick — ”
“What then?”
“Last year, at Saratoga, I paid fifteen dollars
apiece for having my dresses done up!”
“Thus supporting some pious and respectable
widow for the winter, I have no doubt.”
“Maverick! how much did I think about the
widow?”
“I should say, from a cursory examination of
the subject, that your thoughts would be of less
consequence — excuse me — to a pious and respectable
widow, than — how many times fifteen?
Without doubt, a serious lack of taste on the part
of a widow; but, I fear, a fatal fact.”
“But, Maverick! I know a man on East Street
whom I never could make up my mind to look in
in those carriage cushions!”
The bill was on file, undoubtedly, suggested
Maverick. Allow her friend an opportunity to
see it, by all means.
“Maverick! do you see that shawl on the arm
of the tête-à-tête? It cost me three thousand
dollars.”
Why not? Since she did the thing the honor
to become it, she must in candor admit, amazingly.
“And there 's lace up stairs in my bureau
drawer for which I paid fifty dollars a yard. And,
Maverick! I believe the contents of any single
jewel-case in that same drawer would found a
free bed in a hospital. And my bill for Farina
cologne and kid gloves last year would supply a
sick woman with beefsteak for this. And Maverick!”
“And what?” very languidly from Maverick.
“Nothing, only — why, Maverick! I am a
member of a Christian church. It has just occurred
to me.”
“Maverick!” again, after a pause, in which
Maverick had languished quite out of the conversation,
Perley in the shawl from the tête-à-tête, as if she
had been a lay-figure for some crude and gorgeous
design which he failed to grasp. Now he made a
Sibyl of her, now a Deborah, now a Maid of Orleans,
a priestess, a princess, a Juno; after some
reflection, a Grace Darling; after more, a prophetess
at prayer.
“Maverick! we must have a library in our
mills.”
“Must we?” mused Maverick, extinguishing
his prophetess in a gorgeous turban.
“There; how will that do? What a Nourmahal
you are!”
“And relief societies, and half-time schools,
and lectures, and reading-rooms, and, I hope, a
dozen better things. Those will only do to start
with.”
“A modest request — for Cophetua, for instance,”
said Maverick, dropping the shawl in a
blazing heap at her feet.
“Maverick! I 've been a lay-figure in life long
enough, if you please. Maverick, Maverick! I
cannot play any longer. I think you will be sorry
if you play with me any longer.”
Cophetua said this with knitted brows. Maverick
tossed the shawl away, and sat down beside
her. The young man's face also had a wrinkle
between the placid eyes.
“Those will only do to start with,” repeated
Perley, “but start with those we must. And,
Maverick,” with rising color, “some tenement-houses,
if you please, that are fit for human beings
to inhabit; more particularly human beings who
pay their rentals to Christian people.”
“It seems to me, Perley,” said her lover, pleasantly,
“a great blunder in the political economy of
Hayle and Kelso that you and I should quarrel
over the business. Why should we quarrel over the
business? It is the last subject in the world that
collectively, and as comfortable and amiable engaged
people, can concern us. If you must amuse
yourself with these people, and must run athwart
the business, go to father. Have you been to
father?”
“I had a long talk with your father,” said Perley,
“yesterday.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said something about Political Economy;
he said something else about Supply and Demand.
Market.”
“He said, in short, that we cannot afford any
more experiments in philanthropy on this town of
Five Falls?”
“He said, in short, just that.”
“He said, undoubtedly, the truth. It would
be out of the question. Why, we ran the works
at a dead loss half of last year; kept the hands
employed, and paid their wages regularly, when
the stock was a drug in the market and lay like
lead on our hands. Small thanks we get for that
from the hands, or — you.”
“Your machinery, I suppose, would not have
been improved by lying unused?” observed Perley,
quietly.
“It would have been injured, I presume.”
“And it has been found worth while, from a
business point of view, to retain employés even
at a loss, rather than to scatter them?”
“It has been, perhaps,” admitted Maverick, uneasily.
“One would think, however, Perley, that
you thought me destitute of common humanity,
just because you cannot understand the
ins and outs of the thousand and one questions
not find these people as much of a diversion as
you do, but I protest that I do not abuse them.
They go about their business; and I go about
mine. Master and man meet on business grounds,
and business grounds alone. Bub Mell and a
young lady with nothing else to do may meet,
without doubt, upon religious grounds; upon the
highest religious grounds.”
“These improvements which I suggest,” pursued
Perley, waving Maverick's last words away
with her left hand (it was without ornament and
had a little bruise upon one finger), “have been
successful experiments, all of them, in other mills;
most of them in the great Pacific. Look at the
great Pacific!”
“The great Pacific can afford them,” said
Maverick, shortly. “That 's the way with our
little country mills always. If we don't bankrupt
ourselves by reflecting every risk that the great
concerns choose to run, some soft-hearted and
soft-headed philanthropist pokes his finger into
our private affairs, and behold, there 's a hue and
cry over us directly.”
“For a little country mill,” observed Perley,
bruised white finger, “I think, if I may judge
from my own income, that a library and a reading-room
would not bankrupt us, at least this
year. However, if Hayle and Kelso cannot
afford some few of these little alterations, I think
their silent partner can.”
“Very well,” laughed Maverick; “we 'll make
the money and you may spend it.”
“Maverick Hayle,” said Perley, after a silence,
“do you know that every law of this State which
regulates the admission of children into factories
is broken in your mills?”
“Ah?” said Maverick.
“I ask,” insisted Perley, “if you know it?”
“Why, no,” said Maverick, with a smile; “I
cannot say that I know it exactly. I know that
nobody not behind the scenes can conceive of the
dodges these people invent to scrape and screw
a few dollars, more or less, out of their children.
As a rule, I believe the more they earn themselves
the more they scrape and screw. I know
how they can lie about a child's age. Turn a
child out of one mill for his three months' schooling,
and he 's in another before night, half the
three months' certificates begged or bribed out
of a school-mistress at the end of three weeks.
Now, what can I do? You can't expect a mill-master
to have the time, or devote it to running
round the streets compelling a few Irish babies
to avail themselves of the educational privileges
of this great and glorious country!”
“That is a thing,” observed Perley, “that I
can look after in some measure, having, as you
noticed, nothing else to do.”
“That is a thing,” said Maverick, sharply,
“which I desire, Perley, that you will let alone.
I must leave it to the overseers, or we shall
be plunged into confusion worse confounded.
That is a thing which I must insist upon it
that you do not meddle with.”
Perley flushed vividly. The little scar upon
her finger flushed too. She raised it to her lips
as if it pained her.
“There is reason,” urged Maverick, — “there
is reason in all things, even in a young lady's
fancies. Just look at it! You run all over Five
Falls alone on a dark night, very improperly,
to hear mill-people complain of their drains,
come home and break your engagement ring and
cut your finger. Forthwith you must needs turn
my mill-hands into lap-dogs, and feed them
on — what was it? roast beef? — out of your
jewelry-box!”
“I do not think,” said Perley, faintly smiling,
“that you understand, Maverick.”
“I do not think I understand,” said Maverick.
“You do not understand,” repeated Perley,
firmly but faintly still. “Maverick! Maverick!
if you cannot understand, I am afraid we shall
both be very sorry!”
Perley got up and crossed the room two or
three times. There was a beautiful restlessness
about her which Maverick, leaning back upon
the tête-à-tête, with his mustache between his
fingers, noted and admired.
“I cannot tell you,” pursued Perley in a low
voice, “how the world has altered to me, nor how
I have altered to myself, within the past few
weeks. I have no words to say how these people
seem to me to have been thrust upon my hands,
— as empty, idle, foolish hands, God knows, as
ever he filled with an unsought gift!”
“Now I thought,” mentioned Maverick, gracefully,
“that both the people and the hands did
well enough as they were.”
Perley spread out the shining hands, as if in
appeal or pain, and cried out, as before, “Maverick!
Maverick!” but hardly herself knowing,
it seemed, why she cried.
“One would think,” pursued Maverick, with a
jerk at his mustache, “to hear and to see you,
Perley, that there were no evils in the country
but the evils of the factory system; that there
was no poverty but among weavers earning ten
dollars a week. Questions which political economists
spend life in disputing, you expect a mill-master
—”
“Who does n't care a fig about them,” interrupted
Perley.
“Who does n't care a fig about them,” admitted
the mill-master, “you are right; between you
and me, you are right; who does n't care a fig
about them — to settle. Now there 's father; he
is au fait in all these matters; has a theory for
every case of whooping-cough, — and a mission
school. Once for all, I must beg to have it
understood that I turn you and the State committees
talk to a State committee!”
“And yet,” said Perley, sadly, “your father
and you tie my hands to precisely the same extent
by different methods.”
“No?” said Maverick, “really?”
“He with Adam Smith, and you with a tête-à-tête.
He is too learned, and you are too lazy. I
have not been educated to reason with him, and
I suppose I am too fond of you to deal with
you,” said the young lady. “But, Maverick,
there is something in this matter which neither
of you touch. There is something about the
relations of rich and poor, of master and man,
with which the state of the market has nothing
whatever to do. There is something, — a claim,
a duty, a puzzle, it is all too new to me to know
what to call it, — but I am convinced that there
is something at which a man cannot lie and twirl
his mustache forever.”
Being a woman, and having no mustache to
twirl, urged Maverick, nothing could well be more
natural than that she should think so. An appropriate
opinion, and very charmingly expressed.
Should he order the horses at half past ten?
“Maverick!” cried Perley, thrusting out her
hands as before, and as before hardly knowing, it
seemed, why she cried, — “Maverick, Maverick!”
Possibly it was a week later that the new
partner called one evening upon Miss Kelso.
He was there, he said, at the request of Mr.
Hayle the junior; was sorry to introduce business
into a lady's parlor; but there was a little
matter about the plans —
“Ah, yes,” said Miss Kelso, hastily, “plans of
the new mill?”
“A plan for the new mill; yes. Mr. Hayle
desired your opinion about some mouldings, I
believe; and, as I go in town to-morrow to meet
an appointment with the architect, it fell to my
lot to confer with you. Mr. Hayle desired me to
express to you our wish — I think he said our
wish — that any preference you might have in
the ornamentation of the building should be
rigidly regarded.”
“Very thoughtful in Mr. Hayle,” said Perley,
“and characteristic. Sit down, if you please, Mr.
Garrick.”
He was a grave man, this Mr. Garrick; if there
voice, if a curl as light as a feather fell across her
unsmiling mouth, one would suppose that Stephen
Garrick, sitting gravely down with mill plans in
his hand, beside her, was the last man upon earth
to detect either.
“Now,” said Miss Kelso, pulling towards her
across the table a marvellous green mill on a
gray landscape, with full-grown umber shade-trees
where a sand heap rightfully belonged, and
the architect's name on a sign above the counting-room,
“what is this vital question concerning
which Mr. Hayle desires my valuable opinion?”
“The question is, whether you would prefer
that the mouldings — here is a section; you can
see the design better about this door — should be
of Gloucester granite or not.”
“Or what?” asked Perley.
“Or not,” said Mr. Garrick, smiling.
“I never saw you smile before,” said Miss
Kelso, abruptly, tossing away the plans. “I did
not know that you could. It is like —”
“What is it like?” asked Stephen Garrick,
smiling again.
“It is like making a burning-glass out of a
tumbled over the edge of the table, Mr. Garrick.
Thank you. Is Gloucester granite of a violet
tint?”
“Outside of an architect's privileged imagination,
not exactly. What shall I tell Mr. Hayle?”
“You may tell Mr. Hayle that I do not care
whether the mouldings are of Gloucester granite
or of green glass. No; on the whole, I will tell
him myself.
“You see, Mr. Garrick,” said Miss Kelso after
an awkward pause, “when you are a woman and
a silent partner, it is only the mouldings of a
matter that fall to you.”
Mr. Garrick saw.
“And so,” piling up the plans upon the table
thoughtfully, “you become a little sensitive upon
the subject of mouldings. You would so much
rather be a brick-maker!”
“I suppose,” said Stephen Garrick, “that I
have been what you would call a brick-maker.”
“I suppose you have,” said Miss Kelso, still
thoughtfully. “Mr. Garrick?”
Mr. Garrick lifted his grave face inquiringly.
“I suppose you know what it is to be very poor?”
“Very poor.”
“And now you will be very rich. That must
be a singular life!”
“It is in some respects a dangerous life, Miss
Kelso.”
“It is in other respects a privileged life, Mr.
Garrick.”
“It is proverbial of men with my history,”
said Garrick, slowly, — “men who have crawled on
their hands and knees from the very quagmires
of life, — men who know, as no other men can
know, that the odds are twenty to one when a
poor man makes a throw in the world's play —”
“Are they?” interrupted the lady.
“Twenty to one,” said Stephen Garrick, in a
dry statistical tone, “against poverty, always. It
is proverbial, I say, that men who know as God
knows that it is by `him who hath no money'
that the upright, downright, unmistakable miseries
of life are drained to the dregs, — that such
men prove to be the hardest of masters and the
most conservative of social reformers. It has been
the fancy of my life, I may say that it has been
more like a passion than a fancy,” said the parvenu
in Hayle and Kelso, laying his hard hand hardly
piled up beside him, “as fast and as far as I got
out of the mud myself to bring other people with
me. I cannot find any dainty words in which to
put this, Miss Kelso, for it is a very muddy thing
to be poor.”
“I have thought it — but very lately — to be
a hard thing,” said Perley.
The hard lines about Stephen Garrick's mouth
worked, but he said nothing. Perley, looking up
suddenly, saw what hard lines they were; and
when he met her look he smiled, and she
thought what a pleasant smile it was.
“Mr. Garrick, do you think it is possible, —
this thing of which you speak? Possible to be
Hayle and Kelso, and yet to pick people out of
the mud?”
“I believe it to be possible.”
“You are not in an easy position, it strikes
me, Mr. Garrick.”
“It strikes me — I beg your pardon — that
you are not in another, Miss Kelso.”
Stephen Garrick took his leave with this;
wisely, perhaps; would have taken his leave with
a gravely formal bow, but that Miss Kelso held
hand.
Walking home with his pile of colored plans
under his arm, Mr. Garrick fell in with two of the
mill-people, the young watchman Burdock and a
girl whom he did not recognize. He said, What a
pleasant evening for a walk it was! as he went
by them, cheerily.
“It 's nothing to say `A pleasant evening,' I
know,” said Dirk as he passed them; “but it 's a
way I like about Mr. Garrick. A man thinks
better of himself for it; feels as if he was somebody
— almost. I mean to be somebody yet, Sip.”
“Do you?” said Sip, with a patient smile. He
said it so often! She had so little faith that he
would ever do any more than say it.
“It 's a hard rut to wrench out of, Dirk, — the
mills. How many folks I 've seen try to get out
of the mills! They always came back.”
“But they don't always come back, Sip. Look
at Stephen Garrick.”
“Yes, yes,” said Sip patiently, “I know they
don't always come back, and I 've looked at Stephen
Garrick; but the folks as I knew came
back. I 'd go back. I know I should.”
“It would be never you that would go back,”
urged Dirk, anxiously. “You 're the last girl I
know for that.”
Sip shook her head. “It 's in the blood, maybe.
I know I should go back. What a kind of
a pleasantness there is about the night, Dirk!”
There was somehow a great pleasantness to
Sip about the nights when she had a walk with
Dirk; she neither understood nor questioned
how; not a passion, only a pleasantness; she noticed
that the stars were out; she was apt to hear
the tiny trail of music that the cascades made
above the dam; she saw twice as many lighted
windows with the curtains up as she did when
she walked alone; if the ground were wet, it did
did not trouble her; if the ground were dry, it
had a cool touch upon her feet; if there were a
geranium anywhere upon a window-sill, it pleased
her; if a child laughed, she liked the sound; if
Catty had been lost since supper, she felt sure that
they should find her at the next corner; if she
had her week's ironing to do when she got home,
she forgot it; if a rough word sprang to her lips,
it did not drop; if her head ached, she smiled;
if a boy twanged a jew's-harp, she could have
jealously by with Jim, in her blue ribbons, she
could sit down and cry softly over her, — such a
gentleness there was about the night.
It was only pleasantness and gentleness that
ever lay between her and Dirk. Sip never
flushed or frowned, never pouted or coquetted
at her sparse happiness; it might be said that
she never hoped or dreamed about it; it might
even be that the doggedness of her little brown
face came over it or into it, and that it was not
without a purpose that she neither dreamed nor
hoped. Miss Kelso sometimes wondered. Dirk
dully perplexed himself about her now and then.
“I wish,” said Sip, as they came into the yard
of the damp stone house, “that you 'd look in at
the window for me a minute, Dirk.”
“What shall I look at?” said Dirk, stepping
up softly to the low sill, “her?”
Catty was in view from the window; sitting on
the floor with her feet crossed, stringing very
large yellow beads; she did this slowly, and with
some hesitation; now and then a kind of ill-tempered
fright seemed to fall upon her repulsive
face; once or twice she dropped the toys, and
annoyed animal's upon her lap.
“I give them to her to try her,” whispered Sip.
“Do you see anything about her that is new?
anything, Dirk, that you never took a notice of
before?”
“Why, no,” said Dirk, “I don't see nothin' uncommon.
What 's the matter?”
“Nothing! It 's nothing only a fear I had.
Never mind!”
Sip drew a sudden long breath, and turned
away.
Now it was pleasant to Sip to share even a fear
with Dirk.
“Look in again,” she said, with a low laugh,
“over on the wall beyond Catty. Look what is
hanging on the wall.”
“O, that big picture over to the left of the
chiny-closet?” Dirk pointed to the Beethoven
dreaming wildly in the dingy little room.
“A little to the left of the cupboard, — yes.
One night I walked in and found it, Dirk! She
hung it there for me to walk in and find. I laid
awake till three o'clock next morning, I laid and
looked at it. I don't know anybody but you,
forgetting it makes about the room.”
Now it was very new to Sip to have a “forgetting”
that she could share with even Dirk.
“It looks like the Judgment Day,” said Dirk,
looking over Catty's head at the plunging dream
and the solitary dreamer.
There chanced that night two uncommon occurrences;
for one, the watchman at the Old
Stone was sleepy; for another, Miss Kelso was
not.
The regulations in Hayle and Kelso were inexorable
at night. Two fires and three drunken
watchmen within the limits of a year had put it
out of the question to temper justice with mercy.
To insure the fidelity of the watch, he was required
to strike the hour with the factory bell
from nine at night till four o'clock in the morning.
Now upon the night in question Miss Kelso's
little silver clock struck twelve, but the great
tongue of the Old Stone did not. In perhaps
twenty minutes, Old Stone woke up with a jerk,
and rang in the midnight stoutly.
To be exact, I should have said that there
chanced that night three uncommon occurrences.
chilly and very dark spring midnight, dress herself,
steal down stairs, unlock the front door, and
start off alone to walk a quarter of a mile, and
save a sleepy young watchman from disgrace, is
not, it must be allowed, so characteristic an
event as naturally to escape note.
It happened, furthermore, that it did not escape
the note of the new partner, coming out
on precisely the same errand at the same time.
They met at the lady's gate: she just passing
through, he walking rapidly by; she with a smile,
he with a start.
“Miss Kelso!”
“Mr. Garrick?”
“Is anything wrong?”
“With the watchman? Yes, or will be. I had
hoped I was the only person who knew that midnight
came in at twenty minutes past twelve.”
“And I had hoped that I was.”
“It was very thoughtful in you, Mr. Garrick,”
said Perley, heartily,
He did not say that it was thoughtful in her.
He turned and looked at her as she stood shivering
and smiling, with her hand upon the gate, —
He would have liked to say what he thought
it, but it struck him as a difficult thing to do.
Graceful words came so hardly to him; he felt
this hardly at the moment.
“I suppose I must leave the boy to you then,”
said Perley, slowly.
“You are taking cold,” said the mill-master, in
his hard way. It was very dark where they
stood, yet not so dark but that he could see, in
bowing stiffly, how Miss Kelso, with her bruised
hand upon the gate, shot after him a warm, sweet,
impulsive woman's smile.
Dirk was sitting ruefully upon an old boiler
in the mill-yard. He rubbed his eyes when Mr.
Garrick came up. When he saw who it was, the
boy went white to the lips.
“Burdock, the bell was not struck to-night at
twelve o'clock.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Dirk, desperately making
his last throw.
“Not at twelve o'clock.”
“Punctually, sir, you may be sure; I never
missed a bell in Hayle and Kelso yet.”
“The bell rang,” observed Mr. Garrick, with
midnight, exactly.”
“Mr. Garrick —” begged the watchman, but
stammered and stopped.
“Of course you know the consequences,” said
the master, more gently, sitting down upon the
rusty boiler beside the man, “of a miss in the
bell, — of a single miss in a bell.”
“I should think I 'd been in Hayle and Kelso
long enough to know,” said Dirk, with his head
between his knees. “Mr. Garrick, upon my word
and honor, I never slept on watch before. I was
kind of beat out to-night.” The truth was, that
Dirk had been carrying in coal for Sip half the
afternoon. “Had n't so much sleep as common
to-day; but that 's no excuse for me, I know.”
He thought he would not say anything about
the coal. “I would n't ha' cared so much about
keepin' the place,” broke forth the young man,
passionately, “but for a reason I had, — I worked
so hard for the place! and so long, sir! And,
God knows, sir, I had such a reason for lookin'
on to keep the place!”
“Infidelity on the part of a watchman, you see,
Burdock,” urged the master, “is not a matter that
his employer can dally with.”
“I 'm no fool, sir,” said the man; “I see that.
Of course I look to lose the place.”
“Suppose I were to offer to you, with a reprimand
and warning, the trial of the place again?”
“Sir!” Dirk's head came up like a diver's
from between his knees. “You 're — your 're
good to me, sir! I — I did n't look for that,
sir!”
Mr. Garrick made no reply, but got up and
paced to and fro between the boiler and a little
old, disused cotton-house that stood behind it,
absorbed in thought.
“Mr. Garrick,” said the watchman, suddenly,
“did you get out of bed and come over here to
save the place for me?”
“For some such reason, I believe.”
“Mr. Garrick, I did n't look to be treated like
that. I thank you, sir. Mr. Garrick —”
“Well?” said the master, stopping his walk
between the boiler and the cotton-house.
“I told you the first lie, sir, that I 've told any
man since I lied sick to stay to home from the
warping-room, when I was n't much above that
boiler there in highness. I think I 'd not have
been such a sneak, sir, but for the reason that I
had.”
It seemed that the master said “Well?” again,
though in fact he said nothing, but only stood
between the boiler and the cotton-house, gravely
looking at the man.
“There 's a — girl I know,” said Dirk, wiping
rust from his hands upon his blue overalls, “I
don't think, sir, there 's a many like her, I don't
indeed.”
“Ah!” said Stephen Garrick, restlessly pacing
to and fro again, in the narrow limit that the
boiler and the cotton-house shut in.
“I don't indeed, sir. And I 've always looked
to being somebody, and pushin' in the mills on
account of her. And I should have took it very
hard to lose the place, sir, — on account of her.
there don't seem to be what you might call a
fair chance for a man in the mills, Mr. Garrick.”
“No, not what might be called a fair chance, I
think,” said Mr. Garrick.
“Not comparing with some other calls in life,
it don't seem to me,” urged Dirk, disconsolately.
“The men to the top they stay to the top, and
the men to the bottom they stay to the bottom.
There is n't a many sifts up like yourself, sir.
It 's like a strawberry-box packed for market, the
— and a girl comes into the account, it 's none
so easy.”
“No, it 's not easy, I grant you, Burdock.
What a place this is to spend a night in!”
“A kind of a churchly place,” said the young
watchman, glancing over the cotton-house at the
purple shadow that the mill made against the
purple sky; and at purple shadows that the silent
village made, and the river, and the bridge.
“Takin' in the screech of the dam, it 's a solemn
place; a place where if a man knows a reason, —
or a girl, he thinks o' 't. It 's a place where, if a
man has ever any longin's for things 't he can
call hisn, — wife, and home, and children, and
right and might to make 'em comfortable, you
know, — he 'll consider of 'em. It is a kind of a
surprising thing, sir, — the feelin's that a man
will have for a good woman.”
“A surprising thing,” said Stephen Garrick
| CHAPTER VI.
MOULDINGS AND BRICKS. The silent partner | |