Margaret did not sleep well in her lavender-scented sheets that night. Always she heard the roar and the click-clack of the mills, and everywhere she saw the weary little workers with their closely-bound skirts, and their strained, anxious faces.
She came down to breakfast with dark circles under her eyes, and she ate almost nothing, to the great, though silent, distress of the family.
The Spencers were alone now. There would be no more guests for a week, then would come a merry half-dozen for the Christmas holidays. New Year’s was the signal for a general breaking up. The family seldom stayed at Hilcrest long after that, though the house was not quite closed, being always in readiness for the brothers when either one or both came down for a week’s business.
It was always more or less of a debatable question—just where the family should go. There was the town house in New York, frequentlyopened for a month or two of gaiety; and there were the allurements of some Southern resort, or of a trip abroad, to be considered. Sometimes it was merely a succession of visits that occupied the first few weeks after New Year’s, particularly for Mrs. Merideth and Ned; and sometimes it was only a quiet rest under some sunny sky entirely away from Society with a capital S. The time was drawing near now for the annual change, and the family were discussing the various possibilities when Margaret came into the breakfast-room. They appealed to her at once, and asked her opinion and advice—but without avail. There seemed to be not one plan that interested her to the point of possessing either merits or demerits.
“I am going down to Patty’s,” she said, a little hurriedly, to Mrs. Merideth, when breakfast was over. “I got some names and addresses of the mill children yesterday from Mr. McGinnis; and I shall ask Patty to go with me to see them. I want to talk with the parents.”
“But, my dear, you don’t know what you are doing,” protested Mrs. Merideth. “They are so rough—those people. Miss Alby, our visitinghome missionary, told me only last week how dreadful they were—so rude and intemperate and—and ill-odored. She has been among them. She knows.”
“Yes; but don’t you see?—those are the very people that need help, then,” returned Margaret, wearily. “They don’t know what they are doing to their little children, and I must tell them. Imusttell them. I shall have Patty with me. Don’t worry.” And Mrs. Merideth could only sigh and sigh again, and hurry away up-stairs to devise an altogether more delightful plan for the winter months than any that had yet been proposed—a plan so overwhelmingly delightful that Margaret could not help being interested. Of one thing, however, Mrs. Merideth was certain—if there was a place distant enough to silence the roar of the mills in Margaret’s ears, that place should be chosen if it were Egypt itself.
Patty Durgin hesitated visibly when Margaret told her what she wanted to do, until Margaret exclaimed in surprise, and with a little reproach in her voice:
“Why, Patty, don’t you want to help me?”
“Yes, yes; you don’t understand,” protestedPatty. “It ain’t that. I want ter do it all. If you have money for ’em, let me give it to ’em.”
Margaret was silent. Her eyes were still hurt, still rebellious.
“I—I don’t want you ter see them,” stammered Patty, then. “I don’t want you ter feel so—so bad.”
Margaret’s face cleared.
“Oh, but I’m feeling bad now,” she asserted cheerily; “and after I see them I’ll feel better. I want to talk to them; don’t you see? They don’t realize what they are doing to their children to let them work so, and I am going to tell them.”
Patty sighed.
“Ye don’t understand,” she began, then stopped, her eyes on the determined young face opposite. “All right, I’ll go,” she finished, but she shivered a little as she spoke.
And they did go, not only on that day, but on the next and the next. Margaret almost forgot the mills, so filled was her vision with drunken men, untidy women, wretched babies, and cheerless homes.
Sometimes her presence and her questions were resented, and always they were looked upon withdistrust. Her money, if she gave that, was welcome, usually; but her remonstrances and her warnings fell upon deaf, if not angry, ears. And then Margaret perceived why Patty had said she did not understand—there was no such thing as making a successful appeal to the parents. She might have spared herself the effort.
Sometimes she did not understand the words of the dark-browed men and the slovenly women—there were many nationalities among the operatives—but always she understood their black looks and their almost threatening gestures. Occasionally, to be sure, she found a sick woman or a discouraged man who welcomed her warmly, and who listened to her and agreed with what she had to say; but with them there was always the excuse of poverty—though their Sue and Bess and Teddy might not earn but twenty, thirty, forty cents a day; yet that twenty, thirty, and forty cents would buy meat and bread, and meant all the difference between a full and an empty stomach, perhaps, for every member of the family, at times.
Margaret did what she could. She spent her time and her money without stint, and went fromhouse to house untiringly. She summoned young McGinnis to her aid, and arranged for a monster Christmas tree to be placed in the largest hall in town; and she herself ordered the books, toys, candies, and games for it, besides the candles and tinsel stars to make it a vision of delight to the weary little eyes all unaccustomed to such glory. And yet, to Margaret it seemed that nothing that she did counted in the least against the much there was to be done. It was as if a child with a teaspoon and a bowl of sand were set to filling up a big chasm: her spoonful of sand had not even struck bottom in that pit of horror!
The house-party at Hilcrest was not an entire success that Christmas. Even the guests felt a subtle something in the air that was not conducive to ease; while Mrs. Merideth and her brothers were plainly fighting a losing contest against a restlessness that sent a haunting fear to their eyes.
Margaret, though scrupulously careful to show every attention to the guests that courtesy demanded, was strangely quiet, and not at all like the merry, high-spirited girl that most of them knew. Brandon, who was again at the house, sought her out one day, and said low in her ear:
“If it were June and not December, and if we were out in the auto instead of here by the fire, I’m wondering; would I need to—watch out for those brakes?”
The girl winced.
“No, no,” she cried; “never! I think I should simply crawl for fear that under the wheels somewhere would be a child, a dog, a chicken, oreven a helpless worm—something that moved and that I might hurt. There is already so much—suffering!”
Brandon laughed uneasily and drew back, a puzzled frown on his face. He had not meant that she should take his jest so seriously.
It was on the day after New Year’s, when all the guests had gone, that Margaret once more said to her guardian that she wished to speak to him, and on business. Frank Spencer told himself that he was used to this sort of thing now, and that he was resigned to the inevitable; but his eyes were troubled, and his lips were close-shut as he motioned the girl to precede him into the den.
“I thought I ought to tell you,” she began, plunging into her subject with an abruptness that betrayed her nervousness, “I thought I ought to tell you at once that I—I cannot go with you when you all go away next week.”
“You cannot go with us!”
“No. I must stay here.”
“Here! Why, Margaret, child, that is impossible!—here in this great house with only the servants?”
“No, no, you don’t understand; not here at Hilcrest. I shall be down in the town—with Patty.”
“Margaret!” The man was too dismayed to say more.
“I know, it seems strange to you, of course” rejoined the girl, hastily; “but you will see—you will understand when I explain. I have thought of it in all its bearings, and it is the only way. I could not go with you and sing and laugh and dance, and all the while remember that my people back here were suffering.”
“Your people! Dear child, they are not your people nor my people; they are their own people. They come and go as they like. If not in my mills, they work in some other man’s mills. You are not responsible for their welfare. Besides, you have already done more for their comfort and happiness than any human being could expect of you!”
“I know, but you do not understand. It is in a peculiar way that they are my people—not because they are here, but because they are poor and unhappy.” Margaret hesitated, and then went on, her eyes turned away from her guardian’sface. “I don’t know as I can make you understand—as I do. There are people, lots of them, who are generous and kind to the poor. But they are on one side of the line, and the poor are on the other. They merely pass things over the line—they never go themselves. And that is all right. They could not cross the line if they wanted to, perhaps. They would not know how. All their lives they have been surrounded with tender care and luxury; they do not know what it means to be hungry and cold and homeless. They do not know what it means to fight the world alone with only empty hands.”
Margaret paused, her eyes still averted; then suddenly she turned and faced the man sitting in silent dismay at the desk.
“Don’t you see?” she cried. “Ihavecrossed the line. I crossed it long ago when I was a little girl. I do know what it means to be hungry and cold and homeless. I do know what it means to fight the world with only two small empty hands. In doing for these people I am doing for my own. They are my people.”
For a moment there was silence in the little room. To the man at the desk the bottom seemedsuddenly to have dropped out of his world. For some time it had been growing on him—the knowledge of how much the presence of this fair-haired, winsome girl meant to him. It came to him now with the staggering force of a blow in the face—and she was going away. To Frank Spencer the days suddenly stretched ahead in empty uselessness—there seemed to be nothing left worth while.
“But, my dear Margaret,” he said at last, unsteadily, “we tried—we all tried to make you forget those terrible days. You were so keenly sensitive—they weighed too heavily on your heart. You—you were morbid, my dear.”
“I know,” she said. “I understand better now. Every one tried to interest me, to amuse me, to make me forget. I was kept from everything unpleasant, and from everybody that suffered. It comes to me very vividly now, how careful every one was that I should know of only happiness.”
“We wanted you to forget.”
“But I never did forget—quite. Even when years and years had passed, and I could go everywhere and see all the beautiful things and places I had read about, and when I was with my friends,there was always something, somewhere, behind things. Those four years in New York were vague and elusive, as time passed. They seemed like a dream, or like a life that some one else had lived. But I know now; they were not a dream, and they were not a life that some one else lived. They were my life. I lived them myself. Don’t you see—now?” Margaret’s eyes were luminous with feeling. Her lips trembled; but her face glowed with a strange exaltation of happiness.
“But what—do you mean—to do?” faltered the man.
Margaret flushed and leaned forward eagerly.
“I am going to do all that I can, and I hope it will be a great deal. I am going down there to live.”
“To live—not to live, child!”
“Yes. Oh, Iknownow,” she went on hurriedly. “I have been among them. Some are wicked and some are thoughtless, but all of them need teaching. I am going to live there among them, to show them the better way.”
The man at the desk left his chair abruptly. He walked over to the window and looked out. The moon shone clear and bright in the sky. Downin the valley the countless gleaming windows and the tall black chimneys showed where the mill-workers still toiled—those mill-workers whom the man had come almost to hate: it was because of them that Margaret was going! He turned slowly and walked back to the girl.
“Margaret,” he began in a voice that shook a little, “I had not thought to speak of this—at least, not now. Perhaps it would be better if I never spoke of it; but I am almost forced to say it now. I can’t let you go like this, and not—know. I must make one effort to keep you.... If you knew that there was some one here who loved you—who loved you with the whole strength of his being, and if you knew that to him your going meant everything that was loneliness and grief, would you—could you—stay?”
Margaret started. She would not look into the eyes that were so earnestly seeking hers. It was of Ned, of course, that he was speaking. Of that she was sure. In some way he had discovered Ned’s feeling for her, had perhaps even been asked to plead his cause with her.
“Did you ever think,” began Spencer again, softly, “did you ever think that if you did stay,you might find even here some one to whom you could show—the better way? That even here you might do all these things you long to do, and with some one close by your side to help you?”
Margaret thought of Ned, of his impulsiveness, his light-heartedness, his utter want of sympathy with everything she had been doing the last few weeks; and involuntarily she shuddered. Spencer saw the sensitive quiver and drew back, touched to the quick. Margaret struggled to her feet.
“No, no,” she cried, still refusing to meet his eyes. “I—I cannot stay. I am sorry, believe me, to give you pain; but I—I cannot stay!” And she hurried from the room.
The man dropped back in his chair, his face white.
“She does not love me, and no wonder,” he sighed bitterly; and he went over word by word what had been said, though even then he did not find syllable or gesture that told him the truth—that she supposed him merely to be playing John Alden to his brother’s Miles Standish.
The household at Hilcrest did not break up as early as usual that year. A few days were consumed in horrified remonstrances and tearful pleadings on the part of Mrs. Merideth and Ned when Margaret’s plans became known. Then several more days were needed for necessary arrangements when the stoical calm of despair had brought something like peace to the family.
“It is not so dreadful at all,” Margaret had assured them. “I have taken a large house not far from the mills, and I am having it papered and painted and put into very comfortable shape. Patty and her family will live with me, and we are going to open classes in simple little things that will help toward better living.”
“But that is regular settlement work,” sighed Mrs. Merideth.
“Is it?” smiled Margaret, a little wearily. “Well, perhaps it is. Anyway, I hope that just the presence of one clean, beautiful home amongthem will do some good. I mean to try it, at all events.”
“But are you going to do nothing but that all the time—just teach those dreadful creatures, and—and live there?”
“Certainly not,” declared Margaret, with a bright smile. “I’ve planned a trip to New York.”
“To New York?” Mrs. Merideth sat up suddenly, her face alight. “Oh, that will be fine—lovely! Why didn’t you tell us? Poor dear, you’ll need a rest all right, I’m thinking, and we’ll keep you just as long as we can, too.” With lightning rapidity Mrs. Merideth had changed their plans—in her mind. They would go to New York, not Egypt. Egypt had seemed desirable, but if Margaret was going to New York, that altered the case.
“Oh, but I thought you weren’t going to New York,” laughed Margaret. “Besides—I’m going with Patty.”
“With Patty!” If it had not been tragical it would have been comical—Mrs. Merideth’s shocked recoil at the girl’s words.
“Yes. After we get everything nicely to running—weshall have teachers to help us, you know—Patty and I are going to New York to see if we can’t find her sisters, Arabella and Clarabella.”
“What absurd names!” Mrs. Merideth spoke sharply. In reality she had no interest whether they were, or were not absurd; but they chanced at the moment to be a convenient scapegoat for her anger and discomfiture.
“Patty doesn’t think them absurd,” laughed Margaret. “She would tell you that she named them herself out of a ‘piece of a book’ she found in the ash barrel long ago when they were children. You should hear Patty say it really to appreciate it. She used to preface it by some such remark as: ‘Names ain’t like measles an’ relations, ye know. Ye don’t have ter have ’em if ye don’t want ’em—you can change ’em.’”
“Ugh!” shuddered Mrs. Merideth. “Margaret, how can you—laugh!”
“Why, it’s funny, I think,” laughed Margaret again, as she turned away.
Even the most urgent entreaties on the part of Margaret failed to start the Spencers on their trip, and not until she finally threatened to make thefirst move herself and go down to the town, did they consent to go.
“But that absurd house of yours isn’t ready yet,” protested Mrs. Merideth.
“I know, but I shall stay with Patty until it is,” returned Margaret. “I would rather wait until you go, as you seem so worried about the ‘break,’ as you insist upon calling it; but if you won’t, why I must, that is all. I must be there to superintend matters.”
“Then I suppose I shall have to go,” moaned Mrs. Merideth, “for I simply will not have you leave us here and go down there to live; and I shall tell everybody,everybody,” she added firmly, “that it is merely for this winter, and that we allowed you to do it only on that one condition.”
Margaret smiled, but she made no comment—it was enough to fight present battles without trying to win future ones.
On the day the rest of the family left Hilcrest, Margaret moved to Patty’s little house on the Hill road. Her tiny room up under the eaves looked woefully small and inconvenient to eyes that were accustomed to luxurious Hilcrest; and the supper—which to Patty was sumptuous in the extravagance she hadallowed herself in her visitor’s honor—did not tempt her appetite in the least. She told herself, however, that all this was well and good; and she ate the supper and laid herself down upon the hard bed with an exaltation that rendered her oblivious to taste and feeling.
In due time the Mill House, as Margaret called her new home, was ready for occupancy, and the family moved in. Naming the place had given Margaret no little food for thought.
“I want something simple and plain,” she had said to Patty; “something that the people will like, and feel an interest in. But I don’t want any ‘Refuges’ or ‘Havens’ or ‘Rests’ or ‘Homes’ about it. It is a home, but not the kind that begins with a capital letter. It is just one of the mill houses.”
“Well, why don’t ye call it the ‘Mill House,’ then, an’ done with it?” demanded Patty.
“Patty, you’re a genius! I will,” cried Margaret. And the “Mill House” it was from that day.
Margaret’s task was not an easy one. Both she and her house were looked upon with suspicion, and she had some trouble in finding the two or threeteachers of just the right sort to help her. Even when she had found these teachers and opened her classes in sewing, cooking, and the care of children, only a few enrolled themselves as pupils.
“Never mind,” said Margaret, “we shall grow. You’ll see!”
The mill people, however, were not the only ones that learned something during the next few months. Margaret herself learned much. She learned that while there were men who purposely idled their time away and drank up their children’s hard-earned wages, there were others who tramped the streets in vain in search of work.
“I hain’t got nothin’ ter do yit, Miss,” one such said to Margaret, in answer to her sympathetic inquiries. “But thar ain’t a boss but what said if I’d got kids I might send them along. They was short o’ kids. I been tryin’ ter keep Rosy an’ Katy ter school. I was cal’latin’ ter make somethin’ of ’em more’n their dad an’ their mammy is: but I reckon as how I’ll have ter set ’em ter work.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t,” remonstrated Margaret. “That would spoil everything. Don’t you see that you mustn’t? They must go to school—get an education.”
The man gazed at her with dull eyes.
“They got ter eat—first,” he said.
“Yes, yes, I know,” interposed Margaret, eagerly. “I understand all that, and I’ll help about that part. I’ll give you money until you get something to do.”
A sudden flash came into the man’s eyes. His shoulders straightened.
“Thank ye, Miss. We be n’t charity folks.” And he turned away.
A week later Margaret learned that Rosy and Katy were out of school. When she looked them up she found them at work in the mills.
This matter of the school question was a great puzzle to Margaret. Very early in her efforts she had sought out the public school-teachers, and asked their help and advice. She was appalled at the number of children who appeared scarcely to understand that there was such a thing as school. This state of affairs she could not seem to remedy, however, in spite of her earnest efforts. The parents, in many cases, were indifferent, and the children more so. Some of the children in the mills, indeed, were there solely—according to the parents’ version—becausethey could not “get on” in school. Conscious that there must be a school law, Margaret went vigorously to work to find and enforce it. Then, and not until then, did she realize the seriousness of even this one phase of the problem she had undertaken to solve.
There were other phases, too. It was not always poverty, Margaret found, that was responsible for setting the children to work. Sometimes it was ambition. There were men who could not even speak the language of their adopted country intelligibly, yet who had ever before them the one end and aim—money. To this end and aim were sacrificed all the life and strength of whatever was theirs. The minute such a man’s boys and girls were big enough and tall enough to be “sworn in” he got the papers and set them to work; and never after that, as long as they could move one dragging little foot after the other, did they cease to pour into the hungry treasury of his hand the pitiful dimes and pennies that represented all they knew of childhood.
The winter passed and the spring came. The Mill House, even to the most skeptical observer, showed signs of being a success. Even already a visible influence had radiated from its shining windows and orderly yard; and the neighboring houses, with their obvious attempt at “slickin’ up,” reminded one of a small boy who has been told to wash his face, for company was coming. The classes boasted a larger attendance, and the stomachs and the babies of many a family in the town were feeling the beneficial results of the lessons.
To Margaret, however, the whole thing seemed hopelessly small: there was so much to do, so little done! She was still the little girl with the teaspoon and the bowl of sand; and the chasm yawned as wide as ever. To tell the truth, Margaret was tired, discouraged, and homesick. For months her strength, time, nerves, and sympathies had been taxed to the utmost; and now that there had come a breathing space, when the intricatemachinery of her scheme could run for a moment without her hand at the throttle, she was left weak and nerveless. She was, in fact, perilously near a breakdown.
Added to all this, she was lonely. More than she would own to herself she missed her friends, her home life at Hilcrest, and the tender care and sympathetic interest that had been lavished upon her for so many years. Here she was the head, the strong tower of defense, the one to whom everybody came with troubles, perplexities, and griefs. There was no human being to whom she could turn for comfort. They all looked to her. Even Bobby McGinnis, when she saw him at all—which was seldom—treated her with a frigid deference that was inexpressibly annoying to her.
From the Spencers she heard irregularly. Earlier in the winter the letters had been more frequent: nervously anxious epistles of some length from Mrs. Merideth; stilted notes, half protesting, half pleading, from Ned; and short, but wonderfully sympathetic communications from Frank. Later Frank had fallen very ill with a fever of some sort, and Mrs. Merideth and Nedhad written only hurried little bulletins from the sick-room. Then had come the good news that Frank was out of danger, though still far too weak to undertake the long journey home. Their letters showed unmistakably their impatience at the delay, and questioned her as to her health and welfare, but could set no date for their return. Frank, in particular, was disturbed, they said. He had not planned to leave either herself or the mills so long, it being his intention when he went away merely to take a short trip with his sister and brother, and then hurry back to America alone. As for Frank himself—he had not written her since his illness.
Margaret was thinking of all this, and was feeling specially forlorn as she sat alone in the little sitting-room at the Mill House one evening in early April. She held a book before her, but she was not reading; and she looked up at once when Patty entered the room.
“I’m sorry ter trouble ye,” began Patty, hesitatingly, “but Bobby McGinnis is here an’ wanted me ter ask ye——”
Margaret raised an imperious hand.
“That’s all right, Patty,” she said so sharplythat Patty opened wide her eyes; “but suppose you just ask Bobby McGinnis to come here to me and ask his question direct. I will see him now.” And Patty, wondering vaguely what had come to her gentle-eyed, gentle-voiced mistress—as she insisted upon calling Margaret—fled precipitately.
Two minutes later Bobby McGinnis himself stood tall and straight just inside the door.
“You sent for me?” he asked.
Margaret sprang to her feet. All the pent loneliness of the past weeks and months burst forth in a stinging whip of retort.
“Yes, I sent for you.” She paused, but the man did not speak, and in a moment she went on hurriedly, feverishly. “I always send for you—if I see you at all, and yet you know how hard I’m trying to help these people, and that you are the only one here that can help me.”
She paused again, and again the man was silent.
“Don’t you know what I’m trying to do?” she asked.
“Yes.” The lips closed firmly over the single word.
“Didn’t I ask you to help me? Didn’t I appoint us a committee of two to do the work?”Her voice shook, and her chin trembled like that of a grieved child.
“Yes.” Again that strained, almost harsh monosyllable.
Margaret made an impatient gesture.
“Bobby McGinnis, why don’t you help me?” she demanded, tearfully. “Why do you stand aloof and send to me? Why don’t you come to me frankly and freely, and tell me the best way to deal with these people?”
There was no answer. The man had half turned his face so that only his profile showed clean-cut and square-chinned against the close-shut door.
“Don’t you know that I am alone here—that I have no friends but you and Patty?” she went on tremulously. “Do you think it kind of you to let me struggle along alone like this? Sometimes it seems almost as if you were afraid——”
“I am afraid,” cut in a voice shaken with emotion.
“Bobby!” breathed Margaret in surprised dismay, falling back before the fire in the eyes that suddenly turned and flashed straight into hers. “Why, Bobby!”
If the man heard, he did not heed. The bonds of his self-control had snapped, and the torrent of words came with a force that told how great had been the pressure. He had stepped forward as she fell back, and his eyes still blazed into hers.
“Iamafraid—I’m afraid of myself,” he cried. “I don’t dare to trust myself within sight of your dear eyes, or within touch of your dear hands—though all the while I’m hungry for both. Perhaps I do let you send for me, instead of coming of my own free will; but I’m never without the thought of you, and the hope of catching somewhere a glimpse of even your dress. Perhaps I do stand aloof; but many’s the night I’ve walked the street outside, watching the light at your window, and many’s the night I’ve not gone home until dawn lest some harm come to the woman I loved so—good God! what am I saying!” he broke off hoarsely, dropping his face into his hands, and sinking into the chair behind him.
Over by the table Margaret stood silent, motionless, her eyes on the bowed figure of the man before her. Gradually her confused senses were coming into something like order. Slowly her dazed thoughts were taking shape.
It was her own fault. She had brought this thing upon herself. She should have seen—have understood. And now she had caused all this sorrow to this dear friend of her childhood—the little boy who had befriended her when she was alone and hungry and lost.... But, after all, why should he not love her? And why should she not—love him? He was good and true and noble, and for years he had loved her—she remembered now their childish compact, and she bitterly reproached herself for not thinking of it before—it might have saved her this.... Still, did she want to save herself this? Was it not, after all, the very best thing that could have happened? Where, and how could she do more good in the world than right here with this strong, loving heart to help her?... She loved him, too—she was sure she did—though she had never realized it before. Doubtless that was half the cause of her present restlessness and unhappiness—she had loved him all the time, and did not know it! Surely there was no one in the world who could so wisely help her in her dear work. Of course she loved him!
Very softly Margaret crossed the room and touched the man’s shoulder.
“Bobby, I did not understand—I did not know,” she said gently. “You won’t have to stay away—any more.”
“Won’t have to—stay—away!” The man was on his feet, incredulous wonder in his eyes.
“No. We—we will do it together—this work.”
“But you don’t mean—you can’t mean——” McGinnis paused, his breath suspended.
“But I do,” she answered, the quick red flying to her cheeks. Then, half laughing, half crying, she faltered: “And—and I shouldn’t think you’d make—meask—you!”
“Margaret!” choked the man, as he fell on his knees and caught the girl’s two hands to his lips.
“MARGARET CROSSED THE ROOM AND TOUCHED THE MAN’S SHOULDER.”“MARGARET CROSSED THE ROOM AND TOUCHED THE MAN’S SHOULDER.”
Ned Spencer returned alone to Hilcrest about the middle of April. In spite of their able corps of managers, the Spencers did not often leave the mills for so long a time without the occasional presence of one or the other of the firm, though Ned frequently declared that the mills were like a clock that winds itself, so admirably adjusted was the intricate machinery of their management.
It was not without some little embarrassment and effort that Ned sought out the Mill House, immediately upon his return, and called on Margaret.
“I left Della and Frank to come more slowly,” he said, after the greetings were over. “Frank, poor chap, isn’t half strong yet, but he was impatient that some one should be here. For that matter, I found things in such fine shape that I told them I was going away again. We mademore money when I wasn’t ‘round than when I was!”
Margaret smiled, but very faintly. She understood only too well that behind all this lay the reasons why her urgent requests and pleas regarding some of the children, had been so ignored in the office of Spencer & Spencer during the last few months. She almost said as much to Ned, but she changed her mind and questioned him about Frank’s health and their trip, instead.
The call was not an unqualified success—at least it was not a success so far as Margaret was concerned. The young man was plainly displeased with the cane-seated chair in which he sat, and with his hostess’s simple toilet. The reproachful look had gone from his eyes, it was true, but in its place was one of annoyed disapproval that was scarcely less unpleasant to encounter. There were long pauses in the conversation, which neither participant seemed able to fill. Once Margaret tried to tell her visitor of her work, but he was so clearly unsympathetic that she cut it short and introduced another subject. Of McGinnis she did not speak; time enough for that when Frank Spencer should return and the engagement wouldhave to be known. She did tell him, however, of her plans to go to New York later in search of the twins.
“I shall take Patty with me,” she explained, “and we shall make it a sort of vacation. We both need the change and the—well, it won’t be exactly a rest, perhaps.”
“No, I fear not,” Ned returned grimly. “I do hope, Margaret, that when Della gets home you’ll take a real rest and change at Hilcrest. Surely by that time you’ll be ready to cut loose from all this sort of thing!”
Margaret laughed merrily, though her eyes were wistful.
“We’ll wait and see how rested New York makes me,” she said.
“But, Margaret, you surely are going to come to Hilcrest then,” appealed Ned, “whether you need rest or not!”
“We’ll see, Ned, we’ll see,” was all she would say, but this time her voice had lost its merriment.
Ned, though he did not know it, and though Margaret was loth to acknowledge it even to herself, had touched upon a tender point. She did long for Hilcrest, its rest, its quiet, and the tendercare that its people had always given her. She longed for even one day in which she would have no problems to solve, no misery to try to alleviate—one day in which she might be the old care-free Margaret. She reproached herself bitterly for all this, however, and accused herself of being false to her work and her dear people; but in the next breath she would deny the accusation and say that it was only because she was worn out and “dead tired.”
“When the people do get home,” she said to Bobby McGinnis one day, “when the people do get home, we’ll take a rest, you and I. We’ll go up to Hilcrest and just play for a day or two. It will do us good.”
“To Hilcrest?—I?” cried the man.
“Certainly; why not?” returned Margaret quickly, a little disturbed at the surprise in her lover’s voice. “Surely you don’t think that the man I’m expecting to marry can stay away from Hilcrest; do you?”
“N-no, of course not,” murmured McGinnis; but his eyes were troubled, and Margaret noticed that he did not speak again for some time.
It was this, perhaps, that set her own thoughtsinto a new channel. When, after all, had she thought of them before together—Bobby and Hilcrest? It had always been Bobby and—the work.
It was on a particularly beautiful morning in June that Margaret and Patty started for New York—so beautiful that Margaret declared it to be a good omen.
“We’ll find them—you’ll see!” she cried.
Little Maggie had been left at the Mill House with the teachers, and for the first time for years Patty found herself care-free, and at liberty to enjoy herself to the full.
“I hain’t had sech a grand time since I was a little girl an’ went ter Mont-Lawn,” she exulted, as the train bore them swiftly toward their destination. “Even when Sam an’ me was married we didn’t stop fur no play-day. We jest worked. An’ say, did ye see how grand Sam was doin’ now?” she broke off jubilantly. “He wa’n’t drunk once last week! Thar couldn’t no one made him do it only you. Seems how I never could thank ye fur all you’ve done,” she added wistfully.
“But you do thank me, Patty, every day of your life,” contended Margaret, brightly. “You thank me by just helping me as you do at the Mill House.”
“Pooh! As if that was anything compared ter what you does fur me,” scoffed Patty. “’Sides, don’t I git pay—money, fur bein’ matron?”
In New York Margaret went immediately to a quiet, but conveniently located hotel, where the rooms she had engaged were waiting for them. To Patty even this unpretentious hostelry was palatial, as were the service and the dinner in the great dining-room that evening.
“I don’t wonder folks likes ter be rich,” she observed after a silent survey of the merry, well-dressed throng about her. “I s’pose mebbe Mis’ Magoon’d say this was worse than them autymobiles she hates ter see so; an’ it don’t look quite—fair; does it? I wonder now, do ye s’pose any one of ’em ever thought of—divvyin’ up?”
A dreamy, far-away look came into the blue eyes opposite.
“Perhaps! who knows?” murmured Margaret. “Still,theyhaven’t ever—crossed the line, perhaps, so they don’t—know.”
“Huh?”
Margaret smiled.
“Nothing, Patty. I only meant that they hadn’t lived in Mrs. Whalen’s kitchen and kept all their wealth in a tin cup.”
“No, they hain’t,” said Patty, her eyes on the sparkle of a diamond on the plump white finger of a woman near by.
Margaret and Patty lost no time the next morning in beginning their search for the twins. There was very little, after all, that Patty knew of her sisters since she had last seen them; but that little was treasured and analyzed and carefully weighed. The twins were at the Whalens’ when last heard from. The Whalens, therefore, must be the first ones to be looked up; and to the Whalens—as represented by the address in Clarabella’s last letter—the searchers proposed immediately to go.
“An’ ter think that you was bein’ looked fur jest like this once,” remarked Patty, as they turned the corner of a narrow, dingy street.
“Poor dear mother! how she must have suffered,” murmured Margaret, her eyes shrinking from the squalor and misery all about them. “I think perhaps never until now did I realizeit—quite,” she added softly, her eyes moist with tears.
“Ye see the Whalens ain’t whar they was when you left ’em in that nice place you got fur ’em,” began Patty, after a moment, consulting the paper in her hand. “They couldn’t keep that, ‘course; but Clarabella wrote they wa’n’t more’n one or two blocks from the Alley.”
“The Alley! Oh, how I should love to see the Alley!” cried Margaret. “And we will, Patty; we’ll go there surely before we return home. But first we’ll find the Whalens and the twins.”
The Whalens and the twins, however, did not prove to be so easily found. They certainly were not at the address given in Clarabella’s letter. The place was occupied by strangers—people who had never heard the name of Whalen. It took two days of time and innumerable questions to find anybody in the neighborhood, in fact, who had heard the name of Whalen; but at last patience and diligence were rewarded, and early on the third morning Margaret and Patty started out to follow up a clew given them by a woman who had known the Whalens and who remembered them well.
Even this, however, promising as it was, did not lead to immediate success, and it was not until the afternoon of the fifth day that Margaret and Patty toiled up four flights of stairs and found a little bent old woman sitting in a green satin-damask chair that neither Margaret nor Patty could fail to recognize.
“Do I remember ‘Maggie’? ‘Mag of the Alley’?” quavered the old woman excitedly in response to Margaret’s questions. “Sure, an’ of course I do! She was the tirror of the hull place till she was that turned about that she got ter be a blissed angel straight from Hiven. As if I could iver forgit th’ swate face of Mag of the Alley!”
“Oh, but you have,” laughed Margaret, “for I myself am she.”
“Go ‘way wid ye, an’ ye ain’t that now!” cried the old woman, peering over and through her glasses, and finally snatching them off altogether.
“But I am. And this is Mrs. Durgin, who used to be Patty Murphy. Don’t you remember Patty Murphy?”
Mrs. Whalen fell back in her chair.
“Saints of Hiven, an’ is it the both of yez, allgrowed up ter be sich foine young ladies as ye be? Who’d ‘a’ thought it!”
“It is, and we’ve come to you for help,” rejoined Margaret. “Do you remember Patty Murphy’s sisters, the twins? We are trying to find them, and we thought perhaps you could tell us where they are.”
Mrs. Whalen shook her head.
“I knows ’em, but I don’t know whar they be now.”
“But you did know,” interposed Patty. “You must ‘a’ known four—five years ago, for my little Maggie was jest born when the twins come ter New York an’ found ye. They wrote how they was livin’ with ye.”
The old woman nodded her head.
“I know,” she said, “I know. We was livin’ over by the Alley. But they didn’t stay. My old man he died an’ we broke up. Sure, an’ I’m nothin’ but a wanderer on the face of the airth iver since, an’ I’m grown old before my time, I am.”
“But, Mrs. Whalen, just think—just remember,” urged Margaret. “Where did they go? Surely you can tell that.”
Again Mrs. Whalen shook her head.
“Mike died, an’ Tom an’ Mary, they got married, an’ Jamie, sure an’ he got his leg broke an’ they tuk him ter the horspital—bad cess to ’em! An’ ’twas all that upsettin’ that I didn’t know nothin’ what did happen. I seen ’em—then I didn’t seen ’em; an’ that’s all thar was to it. An’ it’s the truth I’m a-tellin’ yez.”
It was with heavy hearts that Margaret and Patty left the little attic room half an hour later. They had no clew now upon which to work, and the accomplishment of their purpose seemed almost impossible.
In the little attic room behind them, however, they left nothing but rejoicing. Margaret’s gifts had been liberal, and her promises for the future even more than that. The little bent old woman could look straight ahead now to days when there would be no bare cupboards and empty coal scuttles to fill her soul with apprehension, and her body with discomfort.
Back to the hotel went Margaret and Patty for a much-needed night’s rest, hoping that daylight and the morning sun would urge them to new efforts, and give them fresh courage, in spite of theunpromising outlook. Nor were their hopes unfulfilled. The morning sun did bring fresh courage; and, determined to make a fresh start, they turned their steps to the Alley.
The Alley never forgot that visit, nor the days that immediately followed it. There were men and women who remembered Mag of the Alley and Patty Murphy; but there were more who did not. There were none, however, that did not know who they were before the week was out, and that had not heard the story of Margaret’s own childhood’s experience in that same Alley years before.
As for the Alley—it did not know itself. It had heard, to be sure, of Christmas. It had even experienced it, in a way, with tickets for a Salvation Army tree or dinner. But all this occurred in the winter when it was cold and snowy; and it was spring now. It was not Christmas, of course; and yet—
The entire Alley from one end to the other was flooded with good things to eat, and with innumerable things to wear. There was not a child that did not boast a new toy, nor a sick room that did not display fruit and flowers.Even the cats and the dogs stopped their fighting, and lay full-stomached and content in the sun. No wonder the Alley rubbed its eyes and failed to recognize its own face!
The Alley received, but did not give. Nowhere was there a trace of the twins; and after a two weeks’ search, and a fruitless following of clews that were no clews at all, even Margaret was forced sorrowfully to acknowledge defeat.
On the evening before the day they had set to go home, Patty timidly said:
“I hadn’t oughter ask it, after all you’ve done; but do ye s’pose—could we mebbe jest—jest go ter Mont-Lawn fur a minute, jest ter look at it?”
“Mont-Lawn?”
“Yes. We was so happy thar, once,” went on Patty, earnestly. “You an’ me an’ the twins. I hain’t never forgot it, nor what they learnt me thar. All the good thar was in me till you come was from them. I thought mebbe if I could jest see it once ’twould make it easier ’bout the other—that we can’t find the twins ye know.”
“See it? Of course we’ll see it,” cried Margaret. “I should love to go there myself. You know I owe it—everything, too.”
It was not for home, therefore, that Margaret and Patty left New York the next morning, but for Mont-Lawn. The trip to Tarrytown and across the Hudson was soon over, as was the short drive in the fresh morning air. Almost before the two travelers realized where they were, the beautiful buildings and grounds of Mont-Lawn appeared before their eyes.
Margaret had only to tell that they, too, had once been happy little guests in the years gone by, to make their welcome a doubly cordial one; and it was not long before they were wandering about the place with eyes and ears alert for familiar sights and sounds.
In the big pavilion where their own hungry little stomachs had been filled, were now numerous other little stomachs experiencing the same delight; and in the long dormitories where their own tired little bodies had rested were the same long rows of little white beds waiting for other weary little limbs and heads. Margaret’s eyes grew moist here as she thought of that dear mother who years before had placed over just such a little bed the pictured face of her lost little girl, and of how that same little girl hadseen it and had thus found the dear mother arms waiting for her.
It was just as Margaret and Patty turned to leave the grounds that they saw a young woman not twenty feet away, leading two small children. Patty gave a sudden cry. The next moment she bounded forward and caught the young woman by the shoulders.
“Clarabella, Clarabella—I jest know you’re Clarabella Murphy!”
It was a joyous half-hour then, indeed—a half-hour of tears, laughter, questions, and ejaculations. At the end of it Margaret and Patty hurried away with a bit of paper on which was the address of a certain city missionary.
All the way back to New York they talked it over—the story of the twins’ life during all those years; of how after months of hardship, they had found the good city missionary, and of how she had helped them, and they had helped her, until now Clarabella had gone to Mont-Lawn as one of the caretakers for the summer, and Arabella had remained behind at the missionary’s home to help what she could in the missionary’s daily work.
“And we’ll go now and see Arabella!” cried Patty, as they stepped from the train at New York. “An’ ain’t it jest wonderful—wonderful ter think that we are a-goin’ ter see Arabella!”
When Margaret and Patty went home three days later they were accompanied by a beautiful girl, whose dark eyes carried a peculiar appeal in their velvety depths. Some of the passengers in the car that day wondered at such an expression on the face of one so young and so lovely, but when the girl rose and moved down the aisle, they wondered no longer. She was lame, and in every movement her slender form seemed to shrink from curious eyes.
Margaret had found her little friend far from strong. Arabella had been taxing her strength to the utmost, assisting the missionary through the day, and attending night school in the evening. She had worked and studied hard, and the strain was telling on her already frail constitution. All this Margaret saw at once and declared that Arabella must come home with them to the Mill House.
“But I couldn’t,” the girl had objected. “I couldn’t be a burden to you and Patty.”
“Oh, but you won’t be,” Margaret had returned promptly. “You’re going to be a help to Patty and me. The Mill House needs you. The work is increasing, and we haven’t teachers enough.”
“Oh, then I’ll come,” the girl had sighed contentedly—nor did she know that before night Margaret had found and engaged still another teacher, lest Arabella, when she joined the Mill House family, should find too much to do.
Almost the first piece of news that Margaret heard upon her return was that the family were back at Hilcrest, and that Mrs. Merideth had already driven down to the Mill House three times in hopes to get tidings of Margaret’s coming. When Mrs. Merideth drove down the fourth time Margaret herself was there, and went back with her to Hilcrest.
“My dear child, how dreadfully you look!” Mrs. Merideth had exclaimed. “You are worn out, and no wonder. You must come straight home with me and rest.” And because Mrs. Merideth had been tactful enough to say “rest” and not “stay,” Margaret had gone, willingly and thankfully. She was tired, and she did need a rest: but she was not a little concerned to find howreally hungry she was for the cool quiet of the west veranda, and how eagerly she listened to the low, sweet voices of her friends in pleasant chat—it had been so long since she had heard low sweet voices in pleasant chat!
The thin cheeks and hollow eyes of Frank Spencer shocked her greatly. She had not supposed a few short months could so change a strong man into the mere shadow of his former self. There was a look, too, in his eyes that stirred her curiously; and, true to her usual sympathetic response to trouble wherever she found it, she set herself now to the task of driving that look away. To this end, in spite of her own weariness, she played and sang and devoted herself untiringly to the amusement of the man who was not yet strong enough to go down to the mills.
It had been planned that immediately upon Frank Spencer’s return, McGinnis should go to him with the story of his love for Margaret. This plan was abandoned, however, when Margaret saw how weak and ill her guardian was.
“We must wait until he is better,” she said to Bobby when he called, as had been arranged, onthe second evening after her arrival. “He may not be quite pleased—at first, you know,” she went on frankly; “and I don’t want to cause him sorrow just now.”
“Then ’twill be better if I don’t come up—again—just yet,” stammered Bobby, miserably, his longing eyes on her face.
“Yes. I’ll let you know when he’s well enough to see you,” returned Margaret; and she smiled brightly. Nor did it occur to her that for a young woman who has but recently become engaged, she was accepting with extraordinary equanimity the fact that she should not see her lover again for some days. It did occur to Bobby, however, and his eyes were troubled. They were still troubled as he sat up far into the night, thinking, in the shabby little room he called home.
One by one the days passed. At Hilcrest Margaret was fast regaining her old buoyant health, and was beginning to talk of taking up her “work” again, much to the distress of the family. Frank Spencer, too, was better, though in spite of Margaret’s earnest efforts the curiously somber look was not gone from his eyes. It even seemeddeeper and more noticeable than ever sometimes, Margaret thought.
Never before had Margaret known quite so well the man who had so carefully guarded her since childhood. She suddenly began to appreciate what he had done for her all those years. She realized, too, with almost the shock of a surprise, how young he had been when the charge was intrusted to him, and what it must have meant to a youth of twenty to have a strange, hysterical little girl ten years old thrust upon him so unceremoniously. She realized it all the more fully now that the pleasant intercourse of the last two weeks had seemed to strip from him the ten years’ difference in their ages. They were good friends, comrades. Day after day they had read, and sung and walked together; and she knew that he had exerted every effort to make her happy.
More keenly than ever now she regretted that she must bring sorrow to him in acknowledging her engagement to Bobby. She knew very well that he would not approve of the marriage. Had he not already pleaded with her to stay there at Hilcrest as Ned’s wife? And had he not always disapproved of her having much to say toMcGinnis? It was hard, indeed, in the face of all this, to tell him. But it must be done. In two days now he was going back to the mills. There was really no excuse for any further delay. She must send for Bobby.
There was a thunder-storm on the night Bobby McGinnis came to Hilcrest. The young man arrived just before the storm broke, and was ushered at once by Margaret herself to the little den where Frank Spencer sat alone. Mrs. Merideth had gone to bed with a headache, and Ned was out of town, so Margaret had the house to herself. For a time she wandered aimlessly about the living-room and the great drawing-room; then she sat down in a shadowy corner which commanded a view of the library and of the door of the den. She shivered at every clap of thunder, and sent a furtive glance toward that close-shut door, wondering if the storm outside were typical of the one which even then might be breaking over Bobby’s head.
It was very late when McGinnis came out of the den and closed the door behind him—so late that he could stop for only a few words with the girl who hurried across the room to meet him. Hisface was gray-white, and his whole appearance showed the strain he had been under for the last two hours.
“Mr. Spencer was very kind,” he said huskily in response to the question in Margaret’s eyes. “At first, of course, he—but never mind that part.... He has been very kind; but I—I can’t tell you now—all that he said to me. Perhaps—some other time.” McGinnis was plainly very much moved. His words came brokenly and with long pauses.
For some time after her lover had gone Margaret waited for Frank Spencer to come out and speak to her. But the door of the den remained fast shut, and she finally went up-stairs without seeing him.
The next few days at Hilcrest were hard for all concerned. Before Margaret had come down stairs on the morning following McGinnis’s call, Frank Spencer had told his sister of the engagement; and after the first shock of the news was over, he had said constrainedly, and with averted eyes:
“There is just one thing for us to do, Della—or rather, for us not to do. We must not drive Margaretaway from us. She has full right to marry the man she loves, of course, and if—if we are too censorious, it will result only in our losing her altogether. It isn’t what we want to do, but what we must do. We must accept him—or lose her. I—I’m afraid I forgot myself at first, last night,” went on Frank, hurriedly, “and said some pretty harsh things. I didn’t realizewhatI was saying until I saw the look on his face. McGinnis is a straightforward, manly young fellow—we must not forget that, Della.”
“But think of his po-position,” moaned Mrs. Merideth.
Frank winced.
“I know,” he said. “But we must do our best to remedy that. I shall advance him and increase his pay at once, of course, and eventually he will become one of the firm, if Margaret—marries him.”
Mrs. Merideth burst into tears.
“How can you take it so calmly, Frank,” she sobbed. “You don’t seem to care at all!”
Frank Spencer’s lips parted, then closed again. Perhaps it was just as well, after all, that she should not know just how much he did—care.
“It may not be myself I’m thinking of,” he said at last, quietly. “I want Margaret—happy.” And he turned away.
Margaret was not happy, however, as the days passed. In spite of everybody’s effort to act as if everything was as usual, nobody succeeded in doing it; and at last Margaret announced her determination to go back to the Mill House. She agreed, however, to call it a “visit,” for Mrs. Merideth had cried tragically:
“But, Margaret, dear, if we are going to lose you altogether by and by, surely you will give us all your time now that you can!”