 | CHAPTER X.
ECONOMICAL. The silent partner |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
ECONOMICAL.
THERE is something very pleasant about
the town of Five Falls early on a summer
morning.
There was something very pleasant about the
town of Five Falls on one summer morning when
Bub Mell got up at five o'clock to catch a rat.
To pluck a Five Falls morning in the bud, one
should be up and in it before the bells, — like
Bub. Until the bells are awake, there is a stillness
and a cleanliness about the place that are
noticeable; about the dew-laid dusty streets
and damp sidewalks bare of busy feet; about
the massive muteness of the mills; about the
very tenements on East Street, washed and made
shining by the quiet little summer shower that
fell perhaps last night, like old sins washed out
by tears; about the smooth, round cheek of the
sky before the chimneys begin to breathe upon it;
the bosom of the upper stream; about the arches
of the stone bridge, great veins, one thinks, for the
pulsing dam; about the slopes of buttercups and
clover which kneel to the water's edge with a
reverent look, as if they knelt for baptism; about
some groups of pines that stretch their arms out
like people gone wearily to sleep. The pines, the
clover slopes, the dam, the streets and houses, the
very sky, everything, in fact, in Five Falls, except
those babies of cascades, wears, upon a summer
morning, that air of having gone or of having
been wearily to sleep, — an air of having been
upon its feet eleven hours and a half yesterday,
and of expecting to be upon its feet eleven hours
and a half to-day.
Bub has been awake for some fifteen minutes —
he sleeps upon a mat, like a puppy. behind the
door, — before he shakes himself a little in his
rags (the ceremony of a toilet is one of Bub's lost
arts; he can, indeed, remember faintly having been
forcibly induced to take certain jerks at the street
pump on mild mornings, at some indefinite past
period of juvenile slavery, till his mother was
nicely laid up out of the way in the bedroom, and
wretched stairs, and out with the other puppies
into the clean stillness of the early time.
The sick woman is troublesome this morning;
there is a great deal of coughing and confusion
going on; and the husband up since midnight.
Bub finds it annoying to be broken of his sleep;
suffers from some chronic sensitiveness on the
dangers of being at hand to be despatched for the
doctor; and finds in the rat at once an inspiration
and a relief.
There is indeed peculiar inspiration in the case
of that rat. Bub chuckles over his shoulder at
himself as he trots out into the peaceful time;
there is a large three-cornered jagged rag among
Bub's rags; the rat bit it yesterday; it hangs down
from his little trousers behind and wags as he
trots. He put the rat into a hogshead to pay for
it; and shut it down with that piece of board
fence with which he provided himself last week
(from Mr. Hayle's garden) for such emergencies.
There is a richness about going to sleep over-night
with the game for your morning's hunt in
a hogshead, which is not generally appreciated
by gentlemen of the chase. There is a kind of
a sure delight, a consciousness of duty done and
pleasure in waiting, which have quite an individual
flavor.
None the other coves know about that rat.
You bet. Not much. Hi-igh.
Bub's right shoulder chuckles at his left shoulder,
and his left shoulder chuckles at his right
shoulder, and the jagged rag behind wags with
delight. Won't he jab him now! Hi-igh, there.
Hi-igh! See him! He thinks he 's a goin' to
cut 'n' run, does he? He must be green.
Away goes Mr. Hayle's board fence into the
bean patch, and down goes Bub into the hogshead.
There 's a contest for you! All Bub's poor
little puzzling soul is in his eyes. All his old
young face — the only old young thing in the
dawning time — is filled and fired. Won't he
have that rat? Five hundred cascades might
play upon the pure bosom of the river, and all
the buttercups in Five Falls kneel for baptism,
— but he 'll have that rat.
The smooth, round cheek of the sky seems to
stoop to the very hogshead, and lay itself tenderly
down to cover the child and the vermin
from the sight of the restful time.
Presently it begins to be very doubtful who
shall cut 'n' run. And by and by it begins to be
more than doubtful who must be green.
At one fell swoop of anguish, Bub finds his
dirty little finger bitten to the bone, and himself
alone in the hogshead.
Hi-igh!
Bub sits down in the bottom of the hogshead
and grits his teeth. He does n't cry, you understand.
Not he. Used to cry when he got
bit. And holler. But got so old he give it up.
Lor. Ain't he glad none the other coves knows
now. You bet. Hi-igh.
All the foreheads of the buttercups and clovers
seem dripping with sacred water, when Bub lifts
his little aged yellow face with the dirt and
blood and tobacco upon it, over — just over —
the edge of the hogshead to see what became of
the rat. The cheek of the sky blushes a sadder
red for shame. The sleepy pine-trees stretch their
arms out solemnly towards the little fellow. The
cascades are at play with each other's hands and
feet. The great pulse of the dam, as sad as life,
as inexorable as death, as mysterious as both,
beats confused meanings into the quiet time.
“Lor,” says Bub in the hogshead, looking out,
half pausing for the instant with his gashed finger
at his sly mouth, — “Lor, it 's goin' to be a boozier
of a day. I 'll bet.”
But the bells have waked, with a cross cry, and
Five Falls starts, to stand for eleven hours and a
half upon its feet. The peaceful time has slipped
and gone. The pine-trees rub their eyes and
sigh. The pulse of the dam throbs feverishly
fast. The sun dries the baptismal drops from the
heads of the buttercups and clovers. The dew-laid
streets fill and throng; the people have dirty
clothes and hurried faces; the dust flies about;
the East Street tenements darken to the sight in
the creeping heat, like the habit of old sins returned
to darken a sad and sorry life; you see
that there are villanous stairs and no drains;
you hear coughing and confusion from the
woman's bedchamber overhead. You see, too,
that the spotless cheek of the sky is blackened
now by the chimneys all about, and how still and
patiently it lies to take the breath of the toil-worn
town.
Only those tiny cascades play — eternal children
— upon a mother's bosom; as if the heart
child, must somehow, somewhere, play forever in
the smile of an undying morning.
By means of stopping to have his finger bound,
and of a search in the bean-patch for the rat, and
of another search in the cellar for the rat, and of
the delay occasioned by a vindictive kick or two
at the hogshead, and by forgetting his breakfast
and remembering it, and going back for it to find
that it is all eaten, if indeed there has ever been
any, which the confusion in the sick-room renders
a probable theory, Bub is late this morning.
Nynee was cross about the finger, too; pulled
the thread and hurt him; wanted her own breakfast
probably. Bub's little old face wears an extra
shade of age and evil as he trots away to work,
and he swears roundly by the way; swears loud
enough to be heard across the street, for Mr.
Garrick, on his way to the station, turns his head
to look after the child. Bub shies away; has
been a little skittish about Mr. Garrick, since they
tried to put him to school and his father swore
him off for ten years old. It is generally understood
now in Hayle and Kelso that the firm occasionally
pull in different ways; Mr. Mell knows
family government which is calculated to arrest
a child's steady stride to ruined manhood; everybody
knows; Mr. Garrick is unpopular accordingly.
He has his friends among his work-people,
chiefly of the kind that do not easily come to
the surface. The young watchman at the Old
Stone is one of them, you may be sure. But he
is not a popular master so far.
Bub, with his sly eyes, and tobacco-yellowed
skin, and his pipe in his mouth, and the blood
and dirt upon his clothes, and the little rag behind,
and his old, old smile, trots away to the
mills, whose open door has, to Mr. Garrick's
fancy, an air of gaping after the child.
“As a prison-door will do in the end,” muses
Mr. Garrick.
He takes a note-book from his pocket, jotting
something in it; about the child, perhaps. He
has been making an estimate this week of the
suffering and profligate children in his mills.
There is scarcely a vice on the statute-book
which he has not found in existence among the
little children in those mills.
The leaf of the note-book turns, in closing, to
recent entries, which run like this: —
“Said the chaplain of an English prison, after
showing the cost of ninety-eight juvenile criminals
to the State, in six years, to have amounted,
in various ways, to £ 6,063 ($ 30,315): `They have
cost a sum of money which would have kept them
at a boarding-school the whole time.'
“Said the Honorable, the late Clerk of the Police
of Fall River, Mass., in answer to an inquiry as
to the number of children in that town peculiarly
exposed to a life of crime:.... `I should say,
after consulting the docket of our Police Court,
and inquiring as to the subsequent expenses, that
the cost of such juvenile offenders as ultimately
reach the State Prison would average two hundred
and fifty dollars. We have had some who
have cost much more than this; one as much as
five hundred dollars.”'
Mr. Garrick glances over them with his peculiar
smile, just as Bub and the little wagging rag
disappear in the yawn of the mill-door.
There is another noticeable entry, by the way,
in Mr. Garrick's note-book. It lies against little
Dib Docket's name: —
“In H — the Chief of the Police estimates the
number of openly abandoned women at not less
less notorious and degraded class. `They are,'
said he, `brought before the Police Court again
and again. Most of them are under twenty years
of age. They come from the country and the
manufacturing towns. They are the children of
drunken and vicious parents.”'
Bub dips into the mouth of the door and crawls
up the stairs on “all fours,” so much, so very
much like a little puppy! He is a little afraid
of his overseer, being so late. At the top of the
stairs he loiters and looks down. In the blue
distance beyond the windows, the cascades are
just to be seen at their eternal play.
The machinery is making a great noise this
morning. The girls are trying to sing, but the
engines have got hold of the song, and crunch
it well. Bub, on the threshold of the spooling-room,
stops with a queer little chuckle like a sigh.
He wishes he need n't go in. It looks kinder
jolly out. Lor! don't it? Would a'most go to
school fur the sake uv gettin' out. But guesses
he must be too old.
Won't that boss jaw this mornin'! He 'll bet.
Hi-igh!
The strain from down stairs struggles and faints
as Bub goes in to work; as if the engines had a
mouthful of it, and were ready for more.
The “boss” does “jaw” this morning. Bub
expects it, deserves it, bears it, hangs his head
and holds his tongue, glad, on the whole, that it is
no worse. A cuff or a kick would not surprise
him. The overseer is a passionate man, of a race
of passionate men; an overseer by birthright;
comes from a family of them, modernized, in a
measure, to be sure. He can remember when his
father, being an overlooker in a Rhode Island mill,
carried to work a leathern strap, with tacks inserted,
for the flagellation of children. This man
himself can tell you of children whom he has run,
in some parts of the country, at night work, when
the little creatures dropped asleep upon their
feet, and he was obliged to throw water over
them to keep them awake and at work.
The girls down stairs are singing something
this morning about a “Happy Day.” Bub, dimly
hearing, dimly wonders what; having never had
but one green boy at the Mission, does not know;
thinks it has a pretty sound, wishes the wheels
would let it alone, hopes the boss is out of the way
tobacco, and recovers sufficiently from the mortification
of the “jawing” to lift his little, wrinkled
face — it seems as if it never before had borne
such wrinkles — to see what he can do about it.
Another little wrinkled face, old, yellow, sly,
and sad, works close beside him. It has mouth
and pockets full of quids.
“Give us a chaw,” says Bub.
“Not much,” says the little face, with a wink.
“Seems as if I should choke!” says Bub. “I
must have a chaw, Bill.”
“You don't do none of my chawin',” says Bill,
“less 'n five cents down.”
“Fact is,” says Bub, ruefully, “I 'm out o' cash
just now. Never you mind, though.”
Bub minds, however. He goes to work again
with one eye on Bill. Bill's pocket is torn down.
He must be green. You could a'most get a quid
out and he 'd never know it. Bub watches his
chance. He must have tobacco at any chance.
The child lives upon it, like an old toper on his
dram. Every inch of his little body craves it.
He is in a dry, feverish heat. He thinks he shall
burn up, if he does not get it. To work till
meant to have sold that rat to a chap he knew,
and to have been supplied.
Think a cove of his size can work all day
without it? You — bet — not —
There is a spring and a cry. Bub has pounced
upon Bill's torn pocket. Bill has backed, and
dragged him. The wagging rag on Bub's little
trousers has caught in a belt.
All over the spooling-room there is a spring
and a cry.
All up the stairs there seems to be a spring
and a cry. They come from the song about the
Happy, Happy Day. The engines close teeth on
the song and the child together.
They stop the machinery; they run to and
fro; they huddle together; they pick up something
here, and wipe up something there, and
cover up something yonder, closely; they look
at one another with white faces; they sit down
sickly; they ask what is to do next.
There is nothing to do. Bub has saved the
State his two hundred and fifty dollars, and has
Bill's quid of tobacco in his mangled hand.
There is nothing to do. Life, like everything
so old, he has given it up.
There is nothing to do but to carry the news
now; nobody likes to carry the news to the sick
woman; nobody offers; the overseer, half wishing
that there had been an oath or two less in
the “jawing,” volunteers to help about the — the
— pieces, if they 'll find somebody to go on ahead.
That 's all he objects to; goin' on ahead.
Mr. Hayle the senior, who has been summoned
from the counting-room, takes his hat to go in
search of some one; would go himself, but the
fact is, he has never seen the woman, nor the
father to know him by name, and feels a delicacy
about obtruding his services. He mentions the
matter to his son, but Maverick succinctly refuses;
remembers just now, for the first time
since it happened, some long-past allusion of
Miss Kelso's to a drain, and concludes that his
personal sympathy can hardly be the most
desirable to offer to Mr. Mell.
Just without the mill-yard, bent upon some
early errand of her own, the two gentlemen
chance upon Perley.
“Ask her,” says the younger man, in a low
voice; “she would do to break ill news to the
mother of the Maccabees.”
They pause to tell her what has happened;
their shocked faces speak faster than their slow
words; she understands quite what is needed of
her; has turned the corner to East Street, while
their unfinished explanation hangs upon their
decorous lips.
The young man stands for a moment looking
after her swift, strong, helpful figure, as it
vanishes from view, with a sense of puzzled loss
upon his handsome face, but shrugs his shoulders,
and back in the counting-room shrugs them
again.
Perley is none too soon at the First Tenement
and No. 6.
The overlooker and his covered burden, and
the little crowd that trails whispering after it,
are just in sight, as she climbs the villanous
stairs.
The overlooker, and the covered burden, and
the whispering crowd, are none too late at the
First Tenement and No. 6.
Mr. Mell comes out from the sick-room on
behind the door; the doctor, who has been, has
gone, and the coughing and confusion are quite
over.
Mr. Mell stands still in the middle of the
kitchen, with his hand at his ear. Whether he
is listening to a thing which Perley says, — a
gentle, awful thing, said in a gentle, awful voice,
— or whether he is listening to certain sounds of
feet upon the stairs, it were difficult to say.
He stands still in the middle of the kitchen,
with his hand behind his ear.
The feet upon the stairs have climbed the
stairs, have passed the stairs, have passed the
door, have paused.
The overlooker, with his hat in his hand, has
laid the covered burden softly down upon the
mat behind the door, where the little burden,
like a little puppy, slept last night.
Mr. Mell sits down then in the nearest chair.
He points at the open bedroom door. He seems
to be weak from watching, and the hand with
which he points trembles badly.
“Do you see?” he says. “Look there. See,
don't ye? I 'm glad ye did n't come ten minute
her. She would ha' greeted sair, I 'm feared.
Keep the laddie well covered, will ye? I wald
na' like so much as her dead een to seem to see
it. It would ha' ben sae fretful for her; I wald
na' likit to see her greetin' ower the laddie. I
wald na' likit you; keep him covered, will ye?”
It is very touching to hear the man mourn
in the old long-disused Scotch words of his
youth, and very touching to hear what a cry
there is in the words themselves.
But it is not heart-breaking, like the thing
which he says in broad English, next. It is after
the overlooker has gone, and the covered burden
is laid decently upon a bed, and Perley has been
busied in and out of the bedroom, and the children
have been washed a little, and the “fust
gell,” crying bitterly over a cup of coffee which
she is trying to make, has been comforted, and a
cleanly silence has fallen upon the two rooms,
and upon the two beds with their mute occupants.
It is after he has sat stupidly still with his face
in his hands. It is just as Perley, seeing nothing
more that she can do for him, is softly shutting
the door to go and find flowers for little Bub.
Look a here. Say! What damages do you
think the mills 'll give me? I 'd ought to have
damages on the loss of the boy's wages. He was
earnin' reglar, and growin' too.
At the foot of the stairs Perley finds a girl
with large eyes, and soiled blue ribbons on her
hair, sitting and sobbing in her mill-dress, rubbing
the dust about her pretty face.
“I would n't sit here, Nynee,” suggests Perley
gently; “go up and help your sister, and do not
cry.”
“It seems as if everything fretful happened to
me,” sobs Nynee, pettishly. “The mills was bad
enough. Then it was mother, and then it was
somebody comin' in to tell me about Bub, and
now it 's both of 'em. I wish I 'd tied up Bub's
finger pleasant this morning. It 'll be fretfuller
than ever to home now. I wish I was dead like
them two; yes, I do. I had other things that
bothered me besides. I did n't want no more!”
“What other things?” asks Perley, very gently
sitting down on the stairs, and very wisely taking
no heed just now of the little miserable, selfish
sobs.
“O, different things. Things about somebody
like, and some folks that like some folks better
than me. I was bothered to death before!” cries
Nynee.
“Some time,” says Perley, “you shall tell me all
about them. Run up to your sister, now.”
Nynee runs up, and Perley, in going for Bub's
flowers, thinks that she would rather gain the
hearing of that little love-story, sitting on the
dirty stairs, than to get the girl to church with
her for a year to come.
| CHAPTER X.
ECONOMICAL. The silent partner | |