XVIII.
A year rolled by—a year of prosperity to the Shawsheen Mills, and of growth and improvement in the condition of their operatives. John Villard had been made first superintendent and a new man had taken his place. Salome continued to act as her own agent and had developed a keen love and tact for the business,—a condition of affairs which Mrs. Soule never ceased to bemoan.
The young people at the Hall were more than ever the dearest objects of her solicitude. In most cases, their elevation had been steady and substantial. Young men had become self-respecting and carried themselves with increased dignity. Young women gradually grew less frivolous and more earnest. Thrown together under so much better conditions than formerly, both sexes emulated the politeness which theywere quick to notice between Villard and Salome. They became more quiet and decorous; they read a better class of books; they began, in their way, to cultivate higher tastes than had been known in the old factory boarding-house or among the tumble-down tenement houses. Several marriages had taken place, at which Salome had acted as the girl’s guardian, giving away the bride. Young O’Donovan’s was the first of these. His increased pay as overseer enabled him to marry Kitty Kendall, to whom he had long been devoted; and the young bridegroom was even happier than the bride when Salome offered to act in that capacity. Neither of them would have dared ask it of her, but her evident willingness to act on this occasion encouraged those who came after, until Salome said she felt all the responsibilities of a mother with a large family of daughters.
As Villard saw all this marrying and giving in marriage, he grew, at times, more restless. There were occasions when he came suddenly upon Salome, or, perhaps during their rare talks together, when he felt sure for a moment that she felt for him more than a friendly interest. But, remembering his comparativepoverty, he never spoke the one word which would have broken down all barriers. And Salome successfully concealed her feeling for him, not daring, even, to examine it herself. So they had drifted on, more than friends and less than lovers, through another year.
There came, at last, the first period of absence from each other since Mr. Greenough’s death. Daily association, pleasant as it is, cannot teach lovers how much they love, as can a short separation.
The second dividend of the mills had been declared, each operative getting three and a half per cent., this time, on their wages. When the work consequent on this transaction was closed up, it was decided to put new machinery in the lower mills. There was an improved kind in one of the Holyoke mills, and it was decided that Villard should go, personally, to examine its workings, leaving Salome and the second superintendent alone for a few days.
Villard had made his preparations to start with a strange sinking at the heart. He was not a man to indulge in silly presentiment, but he could not feel any enthusiasm about going. He had not taken two days away from themills in two years, and was justly entitled to a vacation; but every time he thought of going to Holyoke, his heart sank within him.
He thought it was because he must leave Salome, and chided himself for his sentimental fancies. He told himself to be a man; not a silly fool. And, finally, he refused to think of his premeditated journey, since he could not do so comfortably.
He was to leave Shepardtown on a seven-thirty express, west. Salome remained at the office unusually late that afternoon. She made him go carefully over her various duties, and recount, over and over again, everything necessary for her to say or do while he was gone.
The other superintendent was called away early, and she was left alone with Villard in the inner office, the clerks coming in and out and Marion dropping in once on a trifling errand.
Finally, she said:
“Well, I suppose I must bid you good-bye. I hope you won’t be gone long.”
She held out her hand and Villard took it. A subtle fire shot from it straight to Villard’s heart. He looked up. Were her eyes, so softand kind, suffused with tears? Was this the strong, self-reliant Salome?
“Miss Shepard, Salome,” he burst out, incoherently, “I——”
“Come right in this way,” said a hearty voice at the other door. “Villard will tell you what you want to know——”
“Good-bye,” said Salome again, in the most matter-of-fact tone, releasing her hand just in time, as the other superintendent ushered in a buyer from the west. “Good-bye and good luck;” and turning, she walked away with the nonchalant air which a woman knows so well how to assume, even at the most serious moment of her life.
Poor Villard was both confused and exalted by the sudden dawn of blessedness, which had as suddenly faded. He turned to the buyer but was incoherent, and gave wrong prices on the last shipment of cotton, so that his customer felt obliged to call him back to his senses by a not over-delicate allusion to the parting he was shrewd enough to guess he had interrupted.
Salome went home in a strangely depressed mood. She ate but little dinner, and excusingherself early in the evening on the plea of unusual weariness, she retired to her room, undressed and donned a silken night-wrapper, only to lie awake all night, worrying herself with fruitless questioning. In the watches of the night and under cover of the dark, she told herself that she had given her heart unsought; that had Villard loved her as she did him, nothing could have kept him from saying so; that she had been vain and conceited in fancying that, under his quiet demeanor, he loved her.
Then she remembered his sudden, yearning look when he had grasped her hand, and that, from the depths of his great, manly heart, he had called her “Salome.” And then, woman-like, she shed a few hot tears of gratitude and impatience.
Marion Shaw, meanwhile, had gone to the Hall alone that evening. Her work among the mill-girls had grown dearer to her heart with every month. Most of the girls loved her now, and looked upon her as a comrade, though walking on much higher ground than they. Many of them had secret aspirations to reach the standard of her ideals, asthey dimly conceived it, and were the better for trying.
Marion had not had a long fight with herself when weeks had rolled into months, and she heard no word from Burnham.
She had always been an individual girl—one who thought for herself, who set high ideals for herself, who believed that one only does one’s duty by living at one’s highest and noblest.
When she was a mere girl she had become acquainted with a young college-student, and their friendship ripened into love. When she became engaged to Ralph Leland, Marion looked upon her betrothal as no less sacred than a marriage vow. When, after a few years of study and close confinement in a theological seminary, Leland had shown symptoms of consumption and been ordered to Colorado, her mother was slowly nearing her death, with the same disease. It had wrung her heart with anguish to decide between them, but Leland had said:
“Stay with your mother, Marion. She cannot live long and needs you with her to the end. I shall live many years, and, I feel confident, may yet entirely recover. It is hard,but your mother can have but a year or two at the most. I hope to live for many years. And we could neither of us be happy if we remembered her here, sorrowing and suffering alone.”
And so Marion had staid to nurse her dying mother, and Ralph Leland had gone west to seek health and strength. In two months he was seized with congestion of the lungs and died suddenly, away from all friends and apart from her.
What Marion suffered at this time, only a woman can understand. What she endured, only a woman who has gone down into the blackness of despair can conceive. Her mother failing gradually, her lover gone, what wonder that, for a time, life seemed a blank?
After the first, she had not talked about Ralph, but nursed his memory silently, day and night. For eighteen months, she took sole care of her mother, seeing her slip away into the “great unknown,” inch by inch. Never did the mother realize that she was going to die, and she constantly made plans for the next season when she was going to be “so much better.” Often Marion, knowing shewas soon to be motherless, would leave her low seat near her mother, and stand behind the invalid’s chair to hide the tears that welled up, even while she agreed with the invalid’s plans.
Day by day, the gnawing agony of seeing her mother slowly dying before her melted into and overshadowed the loss of that love which was to have shielded and defended her till death. But she never gave way, before mortal eyes, to her sorrow; and she never failed to minister to the mother who so needed her care.
By and by she was left alone. Then, for the first time, did the awful sense of loss overpower her. For days she did not sleep or take any nourishment. Then she rallied and girded herself for the struggle for existence which such women must make, and which, in her case, had been eased by the door which Salome had opened to her.
Through all her trials and discouragement, Ralph Leland had been a present reality to her. Even since the first blackness of darkness she had believed that somewhere, somehow, she would meet him as of old, and they would liveagain for each other. Then she came to believe that he loved her still, wherever in God’s great universe he might be.
“When he was in Colorado,” she used to say to herself, “I never had a doubt that he loved me still. If he had gone to the farthest corner of the earth I should not have dreamed of his forgetting me. Why should I now, when he has only gone to a remoter part of the universe?”
This thought was the one, calm, sustaining help to her in all her work. And in this belief she was strong to take up any burden which might be laid upon her.
When she came to Shepardtown and met Burnham, she had been struck by the subtle, strange resemblance to Ralph which she saw in him. It was more than the mere resemblance of feature. It was the resemblance of expression, of looks, of the intangible essence of life.
From this point on, so long as she came in daily contact with Burnham, she was fascinated by this ever-recurring resemblance; sometimes she was half-persuaded that it was Leland who talked or sang to her, and she sat watching him in dreamy remembrance of the old days, beforeher mother or Ralph had sickened. As she grew gradually to believe that Burnham loved her, she thanked Heaven that a good man’s love was to brighten her life once more. When the veil was rent away, and she saw that Burnham was not the true, white-souled knight she had thought him, and realized that he was not the ideal she had believed and trusted in, she was surprised to find that she no longer loved him. And then she thought out the true solution.
On the night of Villard’s departure, as has been said, Marion had gone to the work she most delighted in—her work among the girls. There were classes to be overlooked, and her own special one in singing to be taught. She was half through the musical hour, when she turned suddenly towards the door. There stood Geoffrey Burnham.
Afterwards she remembered how little feeling the sight of him caused her. But then she said pleasantly:
“Oh, won’t you walk in and hear us sing? My girls have made decided improvement since you heard us last,” and she went on composedly with the class.
Burnham looked on wonderingly. As hewatched this self-possessed young woman, his old passion flamed up within him. He had never cared for her as at that moment. When the class was over, she advanced toward him.
“Aren’t you going to shake hands with a fellow?” he said, holding out his own.
“Certainly,” she said, without the least emotion. He would have retained his hold upon her hand, but she withdrew it, saying:
“To what accident are we indebted for this unexpected pleasure?”
“I came,” he said, “on business. I must see Villard. But they tell me he won’t be home for several days. There’s a certain combination of forces we want to get him into, if possible.”
“You won’t, you know,” laughed Marion, “unless it’s for the good of the working-men.”
“Well, it is,” answered Burnham. “A society is being planned for Lowell, which will do for the operatives there something like that which Villard and Salome and you have been doing here. I said I would come down and consult with him to-night. Besides, I——can’t you guess any other reason for my coming?”
“Oh, plenty of them,” replied Marion indifferently.“I suppose you feel a friendship for all who were once your people, and rather want to see them once more.”
“Not that, at all,” said he significantly, determined now that she should hear him out. “Are you going home? May I walk down with you?”
Marion gave her permission and went for her wraps. She half felt what was coming, but she was strangely apathetic.
When they were out under the stars, the talk began in commonplaces; but Burnham soon veered it round where he chose.
“Why are you so cold?” he asked, half querulously.
“Cold?” she repeated, purposely misunderstanding him. “I’m not cold. This wrap I have on is warmer than it looks.”
“And your heart,—is that?” retorted he.
Marion did not answer.
“You know I love you. I—know you once loved me,” he went on, losing his head, as a consequence of her indifference. “Perhaps you resented my treating you as I did. Perhaps I didn’t do right, going off that way, without a word; but I thought it betterso. You see—my mother,—and I,—Marion Shaw!”—he seized her hand, grasping it in both his own—“will you marry me?”
Marion withdrew her hand.
It was cool, and she felt like a spectator at stage theatricals which did not concern her.
“Marion, you did love me, you can’t deny it!” he said. “What is the trouble?”
“I’m sorry you have brought this subject up to-night,” she said, gently. “It had much better have remained dead and buried.”
“Marion Shaw, you shall not evade me so,” retorted Burnham, led on by her steady refusal to respond to his passion. “You did love me—I was sure of it—or else, you are the basest of coquettes, and were playing with me. And now you are tired of me!”
“As you were of me!” she blazed out, now roused into speech. “Listen, since you dare address me as you do. I did not love you. You thought I did. I thought I did. When you found it convenient for some reason, I neither know nor care what, to leave me without a word, I found, for the first time, that I was only in love withbeingin love. No,—wait until I am through. Ten years ago I becameengaged to the bravest and best and truest man that ever lived.” Marion’s voice broke, but she went on. “He died and I kept on loving his memory, loving him wherever he might be. When I met you, the striking resemblance you bore to him smote me like an electric shock. You seemed good and noble like him, and under the glamour of your constant presence and evident fancy for me, I allowed myself to drift into a sentimental feeling for you. I now see what that feeling was. It was only a love of being in love; and you happened to be the one man I have met so far, and I hope the only one I shall ever meet, capable of calling that feeling out. You have compelled me to speak plainly. I hope you are satisfied. This is our gate. Miss Shepard has retired, but she will be glad to see you at the office in the morning. Good-night.” And Marion left him standing rooted to the ground where she left him.
For a few days Burnham felt himself a badly used man. He had loved and his love had been trampled on, he said to himself.
He went back to Lowell the next day, promising to write Villard; and a week after, when hehad settled down at home again with his dainty and querulous mother, he went calmly over the ground of his defeat.
“She never did a more sensible thing in her life,” he declared, as he lighted his pipe, at last. “It would have been an awful bore to have to live up to her ideal.”