Margret Howth: A Story of To-day

The light was conquering. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth from the steep hills like pointed swords; the foggy swamp of wet vapour trembled and broke, so touched, rose at last, leaving patches of damp brilliance on the fields, and floated majestically up in radiant victor clouds, led by the conquering wind. Victory: it was in the cold, pure ether filling the heavens, in the solemn gladness of the hills. The great forests thrilling in the soft light, the very sleepy river wakening under the mist, chorded with a grave bass in the rising anthem of welcome to the new life which God had freshly given to the world. From the sun himself, come forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, to the flickering raindrops on the road-side mullein, the world seemed to rejoice, exultant in victory. Homely, cheerier sounds broke the outlined grandeur of the morning, on which Margret looked wearily. Lois lost none of them; no morbid shadow of her own balked life kept their meaning from her.

The light played on the heaped vegetables in the old cart; the bony legs of the donkey trotted on with fresh vigour. There was not a lowing cow in the distant barns, nor a chirping swallow on the fence-bushes, that did not seem to include the eager face of the little huckster in their morning greetings. Not a golden dandelion on the road-side, not a gurgle of the plashing brown water from the well-troughs, which did not give a quicker pleasure to the glowing face. Its curious content stung the woman walking by her side. What secret of recompense had the poor wretch found?

"Your father is here, Lois," she said carelessly, to break the silence. "I saw him at the mill yesterday."

Her face kindled instantly.

"He's home, Miss Marg'et,—yes. An' it's all right wid him. Things allus do come right, some time," she added, in a reflective tone, brushing a fly off Barney's ear.

Margret smiled.

"Always? Who brings them right for you, Lois?"

"The Master," she said, turning with an answering smile.

Margret was touched. The owner of the mill was not a more real verity to this girl than the Master of whom she spoke with such quiet knowledge.

"Are things right in the mill?" she said, testing her.

A shadow came on her face; her eyes wandered uncertainly, as if her weak brain were confused,—only for a moment.

"They'll come right!" she said, bravely. "The Master'll see to it!"

But the light was gone from her eyes; some old pain seemed to be surging through her narrow thought; and when she began to talk, it was in a bewildered, doubtful way.

"It's a black place, th' mill," she said, in a low voice. "It was a good while I was there: frum seven year old till sixteen. 'T seemed longer t' me 'n 't was. 'T seemed as if I'd been there allus,—jes' forever, yoh know. 'Fore I went in, I had the rickets, they say: that's what ails me. 'T hurt my head, they've told me,—made me different frum other folks."

She stopped a moment, with a dumb, hungry look in her eyes. After a while she looked at Margret furtively, with a pitiful eagerness.

"Miss Marg'et, I think there BE something wrong in my head. Did YOH ever notice it?"

Margret put her hand kindly on the broad, misshapen forehead.

"Something is wrong everywhere, Lois," she said, absently.

She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered down whatever hope had risen just then, listened half-attentive as the huckster maundered on.

"It was th' mill," she said at last. "I kind o' grew into that place in them years: seemed to me like as I was part o' th' engines, somehow. Th' air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi' smoke 'n' wool 'n' smells.

"In them years I got dazed in my head, I think. 'T was th' air 'n' th' work. I was weak allus. 'T got so that th' noise o' th' looms went on in my head night 'n' day,—allus thud, thud. 'N' hot days, when th' hands was chaffin' 'n' singin', th' black wheels 'n' rollers was alive, starin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakes creepin',—creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th' hands was,—very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people down there, though they never heard His name: preachers don't go there. But He'll see to 't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him, seein' they don't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry. I knew it wud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. I knew"–

The girl's hands were working together, her eyes set, all the slow years of ruin that had eaten into her brain rising before her, all the tainted blood in her veins of centuries of slavery and heathenism struggling to drag her down. But above all, the Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her scarred face,—through her marred senses.

"I knew it wud come right, allus. I was alone then: mother was dead, and father was gone, 'n' th' Lord thought 't was time to see to me,—special as th' overseer was gettin' me an enter to th' poor-house. So He sent Mr. Holmes along. Then it come right!"

Margret did not speak. Even this mill-girl could talk of him, pray for him; but she never must take his name on her lips!

"He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Did yoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?"

Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile.

"No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think; but it's got th' air,—th' air."

She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to find in its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost.

"Ther' 's places in them alleys 'n' dark holes, Miss Marg'et, like th' openin's to hell, with th' thick smells 'n' th' sights yoh'd see."

She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from which she had escaped. The ill of life was real enough to her,—a hungry devil down in those alleys and dens. Margret listened, waked reluctantly to the sense of a different pain in the world from her own,—lower deeps from which women like herself draw delicately back, lifting their gauzy dresses.

"Miss Marg'et!"

Her face flashed.

"Well, Lois?"

"Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for such as yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk into jails 'n' work-houses, that 'd scorn to be cowardly or mean,—that shows God's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thievin', to th' orphints or—such as me. Ther' 's things th' Master likes in them, 'n' it'll come right, it'll come right at last; they'll have a chance—somewhere."

Margret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet. What had she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong? Her own higher life was starved, thwarted. Could it be that the blood of these her brothers called against HER from the ground? No wonder that the huckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy. It was not an easy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave. And yet—was she to blame? Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learned conservatism in her cradle. Her life in the West had not yet quickened her pulse. So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced her in this girl, just as you or I would have done. She had her own pain to bear. Was she her brother's keeper? It was true, there was wrong; this woman's soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help? She was free,—and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all the soul's diseases, and–

Well, Lois was quiet now,—ready to be drawn into a dissertation on Barney's vices and virtues, or her room, where "th' air was so strong, 'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh,—best in THIS town," she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or on the river-bank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of the farms. The fences were well built, she noticed,—the barns wide and snug-looking: for this county in Indiana is settled by New England people, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians. They both leave their mark on barns or fields, I can tell you! The two women were talking all the way. In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this silent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about paltry, common things,—partly, as I said, from a hope to forget herself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world which opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbid shadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures were intensely real, like those of her class. If there were latent powers in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foul air and life, she knew nothing of it. She never probed her own soul with fierce self-scorn, as this quiet woman by her side did;—accepted, instead, the passing moment, with keen enjoyment. For the rest, childishly trusted "the Master."

This very drive, now, for instance,—although she and the cart and Barney went through the same routine every day, you would have thought it was a new treat for a special holiday, if you had seen the perfect abandon with which they all threw themselves into the fun of the thing. Not only did the very heaps of ruby tomatoes, and corn in delicate green casings, tremble and shine as though they enjoyed the fresh light and dew, but the old donkey cocked his ears, and curved his scraggy neck, and tried to look as like a high-spirited charger as he could. Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, and there was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind. It was a new side of life for Margret. She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient or modern, watching it. It was a very busy ride,—something to do at every farm-house: a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margret noticed,—the pearly white balls close to the heap of royal purple. No matter how small the basket was that she stopped for, it brought out two or three to put it in; for Lois and her cart were the event of the day for the lonely farm-houses. The wife would come out, her face ablaze from the oven, with an anxious charge about that butter; the old man would hail her from the barn to know "ef she'd thought toh look in th' mail yes'rday;" and one or the other was sure to add, "Jes' time for breakfast, Lois." If she had no baskets to stop for, she had "a bit o' business," which turned out to be a paper she had brought for the grandfather, or some fresh mint for the baby, or "jes' to inquire fur th' fam'ly."

As to the amount that cart carried, it was a perpetual mystery to Lois. Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had gone into town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that it would break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in its unlimited endurance. "This cart 'll be right side up fur years to come," she would assert, shaking her head. "It 's got no more notion o' givin' up than me nor Barney,—not a bit." Margret had her doubts,—and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load,—how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow hearts, scarlet veined,—golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest,—russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins,—plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom,—peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.

I wish with all my heart somebody would paint me Lois and her cart! Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past his room out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously. But he had his grand battle-piece on hand then,—and after that he went the way of all geniuses, and died down into colourer for a photographer. He met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, and touched his hat as he returned Lois's "Good-morning," and took a couple of great pawpaws from her. She was a woman, you see, and he had some of the school-master's old-fashioned notions about women. He was a sickly-looking soul. One day Lois had heard him say that there were pawpaws on his mother's place in Ohio; so after that she always brought him some every day. She was one of those people who must give, if it is nothing better than a Kentucky banana.

After they passed the stone quarry, they left the country behind them, going down the stubble-covered hills that fenced in the town. Even in the narrow streets, and through the warehouses, the strong, dewy air had quite blown down and off the fog and dust. Morning (town morning, to be sure, but still morning) was shining in the red window-panes, in the tossing smoke up in the frosty air, in the very glowing faces of people hurrying from market with their noses nipped blue and their eyes watering with cold. Lois and her cart, fresh with country breath hanging about them, were not so out of place, after all. House-maids left the steps half-scrubbed, and helped her measure out the corn and beans, gossiping eagerly; the newsboys "Hi-d!" at her in a friendly, patronizing way; women in rusty black, with sharp, pale faces, hoisted their baskets, in which usually lay a scraggy bit of flitch, on to the wheel, their whispered bargaining ending oftenest in a low "Thank ye, Lois!"—for she sold cheaper to some people than they did in the market.

Lois was Lois in town or country. Some subtile power lay in the coarse, distorted body, in the pleading child's face, to rouse, wherever they went, the same curious, kindly smile. Not, I think, that dumb, pathetic eye, common to deformity, that cries, "Have mercy upon me, O my friend, for the hand of God hath touched me!"—a deeper, mightier charm, rather: a trust down in the fouled fragments of her brain, even in the bitterest hour of her bare life,—a faith faith in God, faith in her fellow-man, faith in herself. No human soul refused to answer its summons. Down in the dark alleys, in the very vilest of the black and white wretches that crowded sometimes about her cart, there was an undefined sense of pride in protecting this wretch whose portion of life was more meagre and low than theirs. Something in them struggled up to meet the trust in the pitiful eyes,—something which scorned to betray the trust,—some Christ-like power in their souls, smothered, dying, under the filth of their life and the terror of hell. A something in them never to be lost. If the Great Spirit of love and trust lives, not lost!

Even in the cold and quiet of the woman walking by her side the homely power of the poor huckster was wholesome to strengthen. Margret left her, turning into the crowded street leading to the part of the town where the factories lay. The throng of anxious-faced men and women jostled and pushed, but she passed through them with a different heart from yesterday's. Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone: she was keenly alive; the coarse real life of this huckster fired her, touched her blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her. She half smiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered brain the world had seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death. How actual it was to-day,—hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work and tears and pleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in, to suffer or die, if God so willed it,—God, the good!

CHAPTER IV

She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy air of copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid office, the work, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate chicken was making its heart glad over a piece of fresh earth covered with damp moss. Dr. Knowles stopped to look at it when he came, passing her with a surly nod.

"So your master's not forgotten you," he snarled, while the blind old hen cocked her one eye up at him.

Pike, the manager, had brought in some bills.

"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door.

"Holmes,—he feeds it every morning."

The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the cold face bending over the desk, meantime.

Pike laughed.

"Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickens must lie nearer his heart than men."

Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip.

The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which he was determined to verify.

"Holmes," he said, carelessly, "has an affinity for animals. No wonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gave him 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air.'"

The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick, cool movement over the page. He was not baffled.

"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possession here."

She looked up now.

"He came here to take my place in the mills,—buy me out,—articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you think,—no,—not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he 's sold them at a high figure,—threw his heart in,—the purchaser being a lady. It was light, I fancy,—starved out, long ago."

The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work.

"Miss Herne is the lady,—my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmes they'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit."

Nothing could be read on the face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,—worse than Orleans slaves. Margret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment.

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks.

"It's a good thing for Holmes," said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool.

"Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes."

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of "niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end.

"A lady in the case?"

"Of course. Only child of Herne's. HE comes down with the dust as dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If money 's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride now to 't."

The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that—

"Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town."

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel,—a clergyman, Vandyke; whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference.

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he was so cursedly indifferent."

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in themselves," said Vandyke, half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in the West," said the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths,"—with a mournful remembrance of the last dime in his waistcoat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air that no sane man can comprehend."

"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.

His reverend friend gave him a look,—after which he was silent.

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it," persisted the wool-man, earnestly looking at the attentive face of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know the thing."

Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the clergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If they're made out of the top of society, they get so refined, so idealized, that every particle flies off on its own special path to the sun, and the Community 's broke; and if they're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, down together,—they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near the brutes as they can. It isn't easy to believe, Sir, but it's true. I have seen it. I've seen every one of them the United States can produce. It's FACTS, Sir; and facts, as Lord Bacon says, 'are the basis of every sound speculation.'"

The last sentence was slowly brought out, as quotations were not exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards,—"You see, that nailed the parson."

The parson nodded gravely.

"You'll find no such experiment in the Bible," threw in the young doctor, alluding to "serious things" as a peace-offering to his reverend friend.

"One, I believe," dryly.

"Well," broke in the farmer, folding up his wool, "that's neither here nor there. This experiment of Knowles's is like nothing known since the Creation. Plan of his own. He spends his days now hunting out the gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to be transported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men and women like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. All start fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honour, rise according to the stuff that's in them,—pah! it makes me sick!"

"Knowles's inclination to that sort of people is easily explained," spitefully lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was a half-breed Creek, with all the propensities of the redskins to fire-water and 'itching palms.' Blood will out."

"Here he is," maliciously whispered the woolman. "No, it's Holmes," he added, after the doctor had started into a more respectful posture, and glanced around frightened.

He, the doctor, rose to meet Holmes's coming footstep,—"a low fellah, but always sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry the best catch," etc., etc. The others, on the contrary, put on their hats and sauntered away into the street.

The day broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters. The old school-master in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts (brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the "Sirventes de Bertrand de Born." Joel, up in the barn by himself, worked through the long day in the old fashion,—pondering gravely (being of a religious turn) upon a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Clinche, reported in the "Gazette;" wherein that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law upon slaveholders, praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the face of the earth. Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche's church, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement of the day was over. The New Testament was,—well,—hardly suited for the—emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour. I may remark, in passing, that this course of conduct so disgusted the High Church rector of the parish, that he not only ignored all new devils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called them,) but talked as if the millennium were un fait accompli, and he had leisure to go and hammer at the poor dead old troubles of Luther's time. One thing, though, about Joel: while he was joining in Mr. Clinche's petition for the "wiping out" of some few thousands, he was using up all the fragments of the hot day in fixing a stall for a half-dead old horse he had found by the road-side.