 | CHAPTER II.
THE SLIPPERY PATH. The silent partner |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
THE SLIPPERY PATH.
NOTHING is more conducive to one's sense
of personal comfort than to live in a factory
town and not be obliged to answer factory
bells. This is especially to be said of those misty
morning bells, which lay a cloudy finger upon
one's last lingering dream, and dip it and dimple
it into shreds; of those six-o'clock winter bells,
whose very tongues seem to have stiffened with
the cold, and to move thickly and numbly against
their frosted cheeks. One listens and dozes, and
would dream again but for listening again, and
draws one's silk and eider shoulder-robe closer to
one's warm throat with a shiver of rare enjoyment.
Iron voices follow, and pierce the shoulder-robe.
They are distinct in spite of the eider,
though a little hoarse. One turns and wraps
one's self again. They are dulled, but inexorable.
One listens and dozes, and would dream again
One has to take only the pleasure of listening.
A dim consciousness of many steps of cold
people cutting the biting, sunless air, gives a
crispness to the blankets. The bells shiver in
sympathy with the steps, and the steps shiver in
response to the bells. The bells hurry, hurry,
hurry to the steps. The steps hurry, hurry,
hurry to the bells. The bells grow cross and
snappish, — it is so cold. The steps grow pert
and saucy, — it is so cold. Bells and steps, in a
convulsion of ill-temper, go out from hearing together,
and only a sense of pillows and two hours
before breakfast fills the world.
Miss Kelso, waking to the six-o'clock bells of a
winter morning, appreciates this with uncommon
keenness; with the more uncommon keenness
that she has never waked to the six-o'clock bells
of a winter morning before. She has experienced
the new sensation of spending, for the first time,
a February night in her July house, and is so
thoroughly convinced that she ought to be cold,
and so perfectly assured that she is n't, that the
dangerous consideration of the possible two hours
before mentioned, and the undeniable fact that
incite between her delicate young flesh and her
delicate young conscience one of those painful
and prolonged struggles which it is impossible for
any one who is obliged to get up in the morning
to appreciate. Conscience conquering, after
a protracted contest, the vanquished party slips
reluctantly and slowly out of silk and eider
into crépins and Persiana, just as Mr. Maverick
Hayle's self-possessed ring plays leisurely
through the house.
The ghastly death of the managing partner
has had its effect upon his business and his
daughter, without doubt. Upon his business —
as might be assumed from the fact that Maverick
Hayle should breakfast at seven o'clock — a confusing
effect, requiring care and time to adjust
with wisdom. Upon his daughter, — what, for
instance? If he slipped from her life, as he slips
from her story, so heart slips away from heart,
and love from love, with the slide of every hour.
To cross the gap from life with a father to life
without, very much as the February night
descended upon the July house, were not unnatural.
One must be warm, at all events.
It was such a young grief, and she so young a
griever; and the sun shone, and the winter air
was crisp.
Perley had been fond of her father, — of course;
and mourned him, — of course: but fondness is
not friendship, and mourning is not desolation.
Add to this a certain obstinate vein in this
young woman, which suggested it to her fancy
as a point of loyalty to her father's memory
not to strain her sorrow beyond its honest
altitude, and what follows? To be at first very
sadly shocked, to be next very truly lonely; to
wish that she had never been cross to him
(which she had), and to be sure that he had never
been cross to her (which he had); to see, and
love to see, the best of the departed life and
the sweetest of the departed days; and then to
wander musing away, by sheer force of contrast,
upon her own unfinished life, and into
the sweetness of her own coming days, and repent
of it next moment; to forget one afternoon
to notice the five-o'clock solitude because
Maverick comes in; to take very much to her
Prayer-Book the first fortnight, and entirely to
her lover's coffee this morning, very lovely, a
little quiet, and less unhappy.
“But pale?” suggested Maverick, leaning
back in his chair, with the raised eyebrow of a
connoisseur, to pronounce upon the effect of her.
The effect was good, very good. Her black
dress, and the little silver tête-à-tête service over
which she leaned, set one another off quaintly;
and a trifle more color in her face would have
left the impression of a sketch finished by two
artists who had failed of each other's idea.
Perley did not know that she was pale; did
not feel pale; felt perhaps — and paused.
How did she feel?
Apparently she did not feel like explaining
to Maverick Hayle. Something in the delicate
motion with which he raised the delicate napkin
in his well-shaped hand to his delicately
trimmed mustache acted perhaps as a counter-irritant
to some delicate shading of her thought.
It would not have been the first time that such
a thing had happened. He was as necessary to
Perley Kelso as her Axminster carpets; he
suited her in the same way; in the same way
she feel?
“As nearly as I can make out,” said Perley,
“I feel like a large damask curtain taken down
for the first time off its cornice,” with a glance
at the heavy walnut mouldings of her windows.
“All in a heap, you know, and surprised. Or
like a — what do you call it? that part of a
plane that runs in a groove, when you stop the
groove up. And I 'm not used, you know, Maverick,
to feeling at all; it 's never been asked of
me before.”
She smiled and playfully shook her head; but
her young eyes were perplexed and gently sad.
“It was coming to this cold house, under the
circumstances,” suggested Maverick.
No; Perley shook her head again; the house
was not cold; never mind. Was his cup out?
The milk was cold, at any rate; he must wait
a minute; and so sat thoughtfully silent while
she touched the bell, with the little silver service
shining against her shoulder and the curve
of her arm.
“What did you come down here for?” asked
Maverick, over his second cup.
Perley did n't know.
“When shall you go back?”
Perley did n't know that.
“What are you going to do?”
Perley did n't know that, either. “Perhaps I
shall not go back. I am tired of town. Perhaps
I shall stay here and look after — things.”
“Things? For instance?”
“The mills, for instance. My property, for
instance.”
Maverick lazily laughed; pushing back his
chair, and raising the connoisseur's eyebrow
again at the little shining service, and the black
curve of the womanly, warm arm.
Perhaps she would take his place this morning;
he was late, now; she could rake over a
shoddy-heap, he was sure, or scold an overseer.
He would agree to sit by the fire and order dinner,
if she would just run over to father's for him
and bring him his slippers.
“I 'll run over to the counting-room with you,
and bring you to repentance,” said Perley; “the
air must be like wine this morning, and the sun
like heaven.”
The air was so much like wine and the sun like
at the mill-gates, strolled on by a path on the
river's brink through and beyond the town, finding
herself loath to go back and sit by the fire
and order dinner; the more so, possibly, because
she was a bit annoyed that Maverick should have
hit with such exactness her typical morning; it
had, somehow, a useless, silly sound.
A useless, silly sound in this town of Five
Falls was artistically out of place. She almost
felt herself to be a superfluity in the cold, crisp
air filled to the full with business noises; and
took a pleasure in following the river almost out
of hearing of the mill machinery, and quite into
the frozen silence of the upper stream.
Though the stream was large, the town was
not; neither had the mills, from that distance, an
imposing air. Perley, with a sudden remembrance
of the size of her income, wondered at
this for the first time. “The business” had been
a standing mystery in the young lady's careless
fancy, the existence of which she had dimly understood
from her father, as she had dimly understood
the existence of “The Blue Plum”; perhaps
both had been about equally withheld from
in it she felt sure; that it was a responsible business
and a profitable business she understood;
that there were girls in little shawls, ragged men,
and bad tobacco, an occasional strike, and a mission
Sunday school connected with it, she remembered.
Upon the cool of her summer rest the hot
whir of the thing had never breathed. Factory
feet had trodden as lightly as dewdrops upon her
early dreams.
She put on Five Falls for a few months every
year as she put on a white dress, — a cool thing,
which kept wash-people busy.
Five Falls in July agreed with her, and she
fancied it. Five Falls in February entertained
her, and she found it suggestive; and indeed
Five Falls in February was not a barren sight.
She had wandered, it might be, half a mile up
stream, and had turned to look behind her, just
at the spot from which the five cascades, which
named the town, broke into view; more accurately,
there were four cascades — pretty, swift,
slender things — and the dam. The stream was
a deep one, with a powerful current, and Perley
the dam. It was a county bridge and well built;
its stone piers, freckled and fringed with heavy
frost, had the sombre, opulent air of time-worn
frescos, behind which arches of light and sky
drew breath like living things, and palpitated in
time to the irregular pulse of the water.
The pulse of the water was sluggish, half
choked by swathings of beautiful ice; the falls,
caught in their tiny leap, hung, frozen to the heart,
in mid-air; the open dam, swift, relentless, and
free, mocked at them with peals of hollow laughter;
and great puffs and palls of smoke, which
overhung the distant hum of the little town, made
mouths, one fancied, at the shining whiteness of
the fields and river bank.
Miss Kelso, turning to retrace her steps with
her face set thoughtfully towards this sight, was
disturbed by a quick, loud tread behind her; it
came abreast of her and passed her, and, in so
doing, thrust the flutter of a dingy plaid dress
against her in the narrow path.
Either some faded association with the faded
dress or with the energetic tread, or both, puzzled
Miss Kelso, and she stopped to consider it.
but without turning her head. Miss Kelso,
after a moment's hesitation, stepped up and
touched her on the shoulder.
“I knew you,” said the girl abruptly, still without
turning her head. “I did n't suppose you 'd
know me. You need n't unless you want to.”
“I had forgotten you,” said Perley, frankly.
“But I remember now. I remember very well.
I am surprised to see you in Five Falls.”
“You need n't never be surprised to see factory
folks anywhere,” said Sip Garth. “We 're a
restless set. Wanderers on the face of the earth.”
“Are you in my father's — in the mills?”
“Yes,” more gently, and with a glance at Perley's
mourning, “in your mills, I suppose; the
brick ones, — yes. I supposed they were yours
when I heard the names. But folks told me you
only come down here in summer-time. I did n't
expect to see you. I 've been here three
weeks.”
“You like it here?” asked Miss Kelso, somewhat
at a loss how to pursue the art of conversation
under what she found to be such original circumstances,
— she and Sip were walking towards
side.
“I hope you like it here?” she repeated.
“Catty likes. It does n't make much odds to
me.”
“Who is Catty?”
“That 's my sister; we 're the last of us, she
and I. Father got smashed up three weeks ago
last Friday; caught in the gearing by the arm.
They would n't let Catty and me look at him, he
was smashed so. But I looked when there
was n't anybody round. I wanted to see the last
of him. I never thought much of father, but I
wanted to see the last of him.”
In her controlled, well-bred way, Perley sickened
and shrunk again, as she had sickened and
shrunk from this girl before, but said quickly, “O,
I am sorry!”
“You need n't be,” said Sip Garth. “Have n't
I told you that I did n't think much of father? I
never did neither.”
“But that is dreadful!” exclaimed Miss
Kelso. “Your own father! and now he is
dead!”
Something in their kindred deprivation moved
recoil, and more like attraction than disgust,
took possession of her as they walked slowly
and more slowly, in the ever-widening path, side
by side into the town.
“He beat Catty,” said Sip, after a pause, in a
low voice. “He beat me, but I did n't make so
much of that. He used to take my wages. I
had to hide 'em, but he used to find 'em. He
spent it on drink. You never saw a man get
drunker than my father could, Miss Kelso.”
Miss Kelso presumed that she never had;
thinking swiftly how amused Maverick would
be at that, but said nothing.
“Drunk as a beast,” continued Sip, in an interested
tone, as if she were explaining a problem
in science, — “drunk as a fool. Why, so
drunk, he 'd lie on a rummy's floor for twenty-four
hours, dead as a door-nail. I 've seen them
kick him out, down the steps, into the ditch, you
know, when they could n't get rid of him no
other way. Then” — lowering her voice again
— “then he came home and beat Catty.”
“You seem to be fond of your sister,” observed
Miss Kelso.
“Yes,” said Sip, after some silence, — “yes,
I love Catty.”
“You have not been to work this morning?”
asked Perley, for want of something better to
say.
“No, I asked out to-day. Catty 's sick. I 've
just been up river to Bijah's after some dock-weed
for her; he had some dock-weed, and he
told me to come; he 's a well-meaning old chap,
Bijah Mudge.”
Not having the pleasure of the acquaintance
of Mr. Mudge, Perley was perplexed how to
follow the topic, and did not try.
“I suppose you think I was saucy to you,”
said Sip, suddenly, “in the Opera House, I mean.
I did n't expect you 'd ever notice me again.”
“You `put it to me honest,' certainly,” said
Miss Kelso, smiling. “But though, of course, you
were quite mistaken, I did not think, as far as
I thought at all about it, that you meant to be
impertinent. The Opera question, Sip, is one
which it takes a cultivated lover of music to
understand.”
“Oh!” said Sip with a puzzled face.
“Poetry, fiction, art, all are open to the same
are affected by these things very differently.
Superior music is purity itself; it clears the air;
and only —”
Miss Kelso remembered suddenly that she was
talking to an ignorant factory-girl; a girl who
went to the Blue Plum, and had never heard of
Mozart; wondered how she could have made
such a blunder; collected her scattered pearls
into a hasty change of subject, — something about
the cold weather and mill-hours and Catty.
“Catty 's deaf,” said Sip again in her sudden
way, after they had walked in silence for a few
moments down the shining, slippery, broadening
way. She lifted her little brown face sidewise to
Perley's abstracted one, to watch the effect of
this; hesitating, it seemed, whether it were worth
while to bestow some lingering confidence upon
her.
“Ah!” said Perley; “poor thing!”
The little brown face fell, and with it fell another
pause. It had been a thoughtful pause for
Miss Kelso, and she broke it in a thoughtful voice.
“Can you stop with your dock-weed long
enough to sit down here a minute? It is
we are so close to town; and I want you to talk
to me.”
“I have n't got anything to say to you,” said
Sip a little sullenly, sitting down, however, upon
a broad, dry rock, and spreading her hands,
which were bare and purple, out upon her lap
in the sun.
“Don't you earn enough to buy you gloves?”
asked Miss Kelso.
“Catty had my gloves,” said Sip, evasively.
“What do you want of me? I can't stay long.”
“Why, I hardly know,” said Perley, slowly.
“I want you to talk without being questioned.
I don't like to question you all the time. But I
want to hear more about you, and — you did n't
speak of your mother; and where you live, and
how; and many other things. I am not used to
people who live as you do. I presume I do not
understand how to treat you. I do not think it
is curiosity. I think it is — I do not know
what it is. I suppose I am sorry.”
“You need n't trouble yourself to be sorry, as
I 've said before,” replied Sip, chafing her purple
fingers. “Besides, I have n't much to tell.
that would make stories in newspapers, I bet
you! Foreigners mostly. If you want stories
to amuse you, you 've come to the wrong place.
I 'm a Yankee, and my mother was a Yankee.
Father was n't; but I don't know what he was,
and I don't believe he knew himself. There 's
been six of us, put together; the rest died,
babies mostly, of drink and abuse. I wish
Catty and me 'd been two of 'em! Well, mother
she died with one of 'em four years ago (it was
born of a Tuesday, and Thursday morning she
was to work, and Saturday noon she was dead),
and father he died of the gearing, and Catty and
me moved here where there was easy work for
Catty. We was in a hoop-skirt factory before, at
Waltham; I used to come in nights to the Blue
Plum, as you see me in your carriage. I guess
that 's all. I 've worked to cotton-mills before
the hoops; so they put me right to weaving. I
told you we 're a restless lot. But we 're always
at factory jobs someways, from father to son and
mother to daughter. It 's in the blood. But I
guess that 's all.
“You have good prompt pay,” said Miss Kelso,
a better or healthier occupation. You get so
much exercise and air.”
She had heard her father say this, in times
long past.
Sip shrugged her shoulders with a suppressed
laugh; the unmistakable, incorrigible, suppressed
laugh of “discontented labor,” but said nothing.
“I should like to see your sister Catty,” said
Perley, obliged to reintroduce conversation.
“We 're on the Company board. You can
come when she gets well.”
“How long has she been deaf?”
“It may not please you to hear,” said Sip,
reluctantly.
Miss Kelso was sure that it would not displease
her to hear.
“Well, they were running extra time,” said
Sip, “in the town where we was at work before
Catty was born. They were running fourteen
hours a day. Mother she was at work,
you know. There was no two ways to that.
Father was on a spree, and we children were
little shavers, earning next to nothing. She
begged off from the extra; but it was all, or
I 'll say this for Jack Bench, — he was our boss,
— Jack, he had n't got it through his head what
condition she was in. But she worked till a
Saturday night, and Catty was born on a Monday
morning. Father came off his drunk Sunday,
and Jack Bench he always laid it on to
that; but Catty was born deaf. Father did
fly round pretty well that Sunday night, and
maybe it helped. But he did n't strike mother.
I was round all day to see to it that he should
n't strike. But Catty was born deaf — and,”
half under her breath, “and — queer, and dumb,
you know; but I 've taught her a little talk.
She talks on her fingers. Sometimes she makes
sounds in her throat. But I can always understand
Catty. Poor Catty! It 's never her fault,
but she 's a world of care and wear.”
“But such things,” said Miss Kelso, rising
with a shocked face from the sunny stone, “do
not often happen in our New England factories!”
“I only know what I know,” said Sip, shortly;
“I did n't blame anybody. I never knew any
other woman as it turned out so bad to. They
fact is, they 're mostly more particular than the
women themselves. I 've seen a boss threaten
a woman with her notice to get her home, and
she would n't stir. But it 's all or quit, in
general.”
“But these people cannot be in such need of
money as that!” said Perley.
“Folks don't do such things for fun,” said
Sip, shortly.
“But in our mills —”
“Your own mills are your own affairs,” interrupted
Sip. “You 'd better find out for yourself.
It ain't to complain to you that I talk to you.”
They had come now quite into the town, and
stopped, at the parting of their several ways.
Miss Kelso held out her hand to the girl, with
a troubled face. The mills were making a
great noise and confused her, and she felt that
it was of little use to say anything further than
that she should try to come and see Catty, and
that she thanked her for — but she was sure that
she did not know for what, and so left the sentence
unfinished, and bade her good morning
instead.
Sip Garth stood still in a snow-drift, and
rubbed her hands, which had grown pink and
warm. Her brown little face was puzzled.
“It was n't all the sun, nor yet the touch.
It was the newness, I think,” she said.
She said it again to Catty, when she got home
with the dock-weed.
“Eh!” said Catty. She made a little harsh
sound like a croak.
“O, no matter,” said Sip, talking upon her
fingers, “you could n't understand! But I think
it must have been the newness.”
| CHAPTER II.
THE SLIPPERY PATH. The silent partner | |