 | CHAPTER XIV.
SWEPT AND GARNISHED. The silent partner |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
SWEPT AND GARNISHED.
IT was Dirk who had covered Sip's eyes when
the timber struck the bridge.
She did not think of it at the time, but remembered
it afterwards.
She remembered it when he came that evening
to the door of the lonely, sodden house, after Miss
Kelso had gone, asking how she was, but refusing
to enter lest, he said, he should be “one too
many.” She liked that. They did not want him
— she and Catty — that night. This thing, in
the solitude of the dripping house, had surprised
her. God in heaven did not seem to have separated
her and Catty, after all. The silence of
death was spared her. Catty's living love had
made no sound; her dead love made none
either. A singular comfort came to Sip, almost
with the striking of her sorrow. She and Catty
could not be parted like two speaking people.
dead, grew grandly eloquent. The ring of the
flood was her solemn kiss. The sunshine on the
kitchen floor to-morrow would be her dear good-morning.
Clouds and shadows and springing
green gave her speech forever. The winds of
long nights were language for her. Ah, the
ways, the ways which Catty could find to speak
to her!
Sip walked about the room with dry, burning
eyes. She could not cry. She felt exultant,
excited. The thing which she greatly feared had
come upon her. The worst that ever could hurt
her and Catty was over. And now how privileged
and rich she was! What ways! How
many ways! Only she and Catty knew. How
glad she was now that Catty had never talked
like other people!
This curious mood — if it should be called a
mood — lasted, evenly, till the poor, disfigured
heap found one day in the ebbing of the flood
flung upright against a rock, a mile below the
dam, with its long hands outstretched, spelling
awful dumb words, had been brought to the
stone house and carried away again, and left
be unsealed, to spell its untranslated message
through a tangle of myrtle into the smoky factory
air.
After that she shrank suddenly, like a waked
somnambulist, and went sick to bed.
One day she got up and went to work again.
That was the day that Dirk Burdock had
watched for, had grown impatient about, seized
impetuously when it came.
It had been a pleasant day, with a grave sunlight
and a quiet sky. Sip took a grave and
pleasant face out into it. She wore a grave and
pleasant smile when the young watchman's eager
step overtook her, where the rusty boiler (made
rustier than ever by the flood, and since removed)
had stood beside the cotton-house.
“I 'm glad to see you out again, Sip,” said
the young man, awkwardly, striding out of step
with her, and falling back with a jerk.
“Yes,” said Sip, “it is quite time I should be
at work again.”
“It 's a pleasant day,” said Dirk.
“A very pleasant day,” said Sip.
“Been to see the new mill since the repairs?”
thought. Now Dirk had vowed within himself,
that, whatever else he said to Sip, he would say
nothing about the flood. He had an idea that it
might make her cry. He had another, that it was
about time for her to forget it. He had another
still, somewhat to the effect that he was the man
to make her forget. In the face of these three
ideas, Dirk could have bitten his tongue out for
his question. However, Sip did not cry, neither
did she seem to have forgotten the flood, neither
did she seem anxious to forget it or avoid it.
She said, Yes, smiling, that she had walked by
on her way to work this morning. There must
have been a good deal of damage done?
“A sight,” said Dirk, with a sigh of relief.
“They say the young man lost the most out o'
that affair.”
“Young Hayle?”
“Yes; though they was all involved, I suppose,
for that matter, — her among 'em. But she
never bothered her head about it at the time
o' 't. She was all taken up with —”
“I know,” Sip ran on, gently, when poor Dirk
stuck in despair. “I do not think she thought of
— like her.”
“She must have lost,” said Dirk, reviving
again; “I thought the fall lectures would be
broke off, but it seems they ain't.”
Sip said nothing; did not seem inclined to
talk, and the two young people turned a couple
of corners on the way to the stone house in
thoughtful silence. They were almost too young
to be so thoughtful and so silent; more especially
the young man, growing nervous, and taking
furtive, anxious glances at the girl's face.
It was an inscrutable face.
Sip had shut her lips close; she looked straight
ahead; the brown, dull tints of her cheeks and
temples came out like a curtain, and folded all
young colors and flushes and tremors, all hope
and fear, all longing or purpose, need or fulness
in her, out of sight. She only looked straight on
and waited for Dirk to speak.
She quite knew that and what he would speak.
When he began, presently, with a quivering face,
“Well, Sip, I don't see that I 'm getting on
any in the mills, after all,” she was neither
surprised nor off her guard. She was not yet
guard by a young man with a quivering face. If
she had a thing to do, she meant to do it; put
her hands together in that way she had, bent at
the knuckles, resolutely.
“No,” she said, “no; you 'll never get any
farther, Dirk.”
“But I meant to,” said Dirk, hotly. “I thought
I should! Mebbe you think it 's me that 's the
trouble, not the getting on!”
“Perhaps there is a trouble about you,” said
Sip, honestly; “I don't know; and I don't much
care whether there is or not. But I think most of
the trouble is in the getting on. Mills ain't made
to get on in. It ain't easy, I know, Dirk. It
ain't. It 's the staying put of 'em, that 's the
worst of 'em. Don't I know? It 's the staying
put that 's the matter with most o' folks in the
world, it seems to me. For we are the most o'
folks, — us that stay put, you know.”
“Are we?” said Dirk, a little puzzled by Sip's
social speculations. “But I 'm getting steady
pay now, Sip, at any rate; and I 've a steady
chance. Garrick 's a friend o' mine, I believe,
and has showed himself friendly. He 'll keep me
worse off than on watch, Sip.”
“O yes,” said Sip; “you 've got a good place,
Dirk.”
“With a chance,” repeated Dirk.
“With a chance? Maybe,” answered Sip.
“And now,” said Dirk, trembling suddenly,
“what with the place and the chance — maybe,
and the pay and the steadiness, sure, I 've been
thinking, Sip, as the time had come to ask
you —”
“Don't!” said Sip.
All young colors and flushes and tremors,
hopes and fears, longing and need, broke now
out of the brown curtain of Sip's face. In the
instant she was a very lonely, very miserable
little girl, not by any means over twenty-three,
and the young man had eyes so cruelly kind!
But she said: “Don't, Dirk! O please, don't!”
“Well!” said Dirk. He stopped and drew
breath as if she had shot him.
They had come to the stone house now, and
Sip began walking back and forth in front of it.
“But I was going to ask you to be my wife!”
said Dirk. “It 's so long that I have n't dared
I will; I 'll ask at any rate. Sip, will you marry
me? There! I should choke if I did n't ask.
You may say what you please.”
“I can't say what I please,” said Sip, in a low
voice, walking faster.
“I don't know what's to hinder,” said Dirk,
in an injured tone; “I always knew I was n't
half fit for you, and I always knew you 'd ought
to have a man that could get on. But considering
the steadiness and the chance, and that I —
I set such a sight by you, Sip, and sometimes
I 've thought you — liked me well enough,” concluded
Dirk, candidly.
“I like you, Dirk,” said Sip, slowly, “well
enough.”
“Well enough to be my wife?”
“Well enough to be your wife.”
“Then I should n't think,” observed Dirk, simply,
and with a brightening face, “that you 'd
find it very hard saying what you please.”
“Maybe I should n't,” said Sip, “if I could be
your wife; but I can't.”
Her bent hands fell apart weakly; she did not
look at Dirk; she fixed her eyes on a little clump
looked sick and faint.
“I 'll not marry you,” said the girl feebly; “I 'll
not marry anybody. Maybe it is n't the way a
girl had ought to feel when she likes a young fellow,”
added Sip, with a kind of patient aged bitterness
crawling into her eyes. “But we don't
live down here so 's to make girls grow up like
girls should, it seems to me. Things as would
n't trouble rich folks troubles us. There 's things
that troubles me. I 'll never marry anybody,
Dirk. I 'll never bring a child into the world to
work in the mills; and if I 'd ought not to say it,
I can't help it, for it 's the truth, and the reason,
and I 've said it to God on my knees a many and
a many times. I 've said it before Catty died, and
I 've said it more than ever since, and I 'll say
it till I die. I 'll never bring children into this
world to be factory children, and to be factory
boys and girls, and to be factory men and women,
and to see the sights I 've seen, and to bear the
things I 've borne, and to run the risks I 've run,
and to grow up as I 've grown up, and to stop
where I 've stopped, — never. I 've heard tell
of slaves before the war that would n't be fathers
That 's the way I feel, and that 's the way I mean
to feel. I won't be the mother of a child to go
and live my life over again. I 'll never marry
anybody.”
“But they need n't be factory people,” urged
Dirk, with a mystified face. “There 's trades and
— other things.”
“I know, I know,” Sip shook her head, — “I
know all about that. They 'd never get out of
the mills. It 's from generation to generation. It
could n't be helped. I know. It 's in the blood.”
“But other folks don't take it so,” urged Dirk,
after a disconsolate pause. “Other folks marry,
and have their homes and the comfort of 'em.
Other folks, if they love a man, 'll be his wife
someways or nuther.”
“Sometimes,” said Sip, “I seem to think that
that I 'm not other folks. Things come to me
someways that other folks don't understand nor
care for.” She crushed the dock-weed to a
wounded mass, and dug her foot into the ground,
and stamped upon it.
“I 've made up my mind, Dirk. It 's no use
talking. It — it hurts me,” with a tender motion of
of the weed which she was covering up with sand.
“I 'd rather not talk any more, Dirk. There 's
other girls. Some other girl will do.”
“I 'll have no other girl if I can't have you!”
said poor Dirk, turning away. “I never could
set such a sight by another girl as I 've set by
you. If you don't marry, Sip, no more 'll I.”
Sip smiled, but did not speak.
“Upon my word, I won't!” cried Dirk. “You
think I 'm one of other folks, I guess. You wait
and see. I 've loved you true. If ever man
loved a girl, I 've loved you true. If I can't
have you, I 'll have nobody!”
But Sip only smiled.
She went into the house after Dirk had gone,
weakly. The flushing tremors in her face had
set into a dead color, and her hands came together
again at the knuckles.
The Irish woman was away, and the house was
lonely and still. The kitchen fire was out. She
went out into the little shed for kindlings, thinking
that she would make a cup of tea directly,
she felt so weak.
When she got there, she sat down on the
hanging, listlessly against the axe. She wished
that she need never lift her head nor look about
again. She wished that when the Irish woman
came home she should just step into the little
shed and find her dead. What a close little
warm sheltered shed it was! All the world outside
of it seemed emptied, swept, and garnished.
She felt as if her life had just been through a
“house-cleaning.” It was clean and washed, and
proper and right, and as it should be, and drearily
in order forever. Now it was time to sit down in it.
Sip had what Mr. Mill calls a “large share of
human nature,” and she loved Dirk, and she led
a lonely life. She was neither a heroine, nor a
saint, nor a fanatic, sitting out there in the little
wood-shed on the chopping-block.
“I don't see why I could n't have had that,
leastways,” she cried between her hands. “I
have n't ever had much else. I don't see why
that should go too.”
But she did see. In about ten minutes she
saw clearly enough to get up from the chopping-block,
and go in and make her cup of tea.
| CHAPTER XIV.
SWEPT AND GARNISHED. The silent partner | |