Hope Mills Part 15

He kept looking about for some place where, if the world did not hear of him, he might get a chance in some enterprise where he could take a few steps upward. There certainly were more men than places. The world was a bee-hive, surely; but alas for those who swarmed out in such times as these!

After he had gone as far West as Minnesota, he went down the Mississippi to a different kind of civilization in the quaint old cities. It was none the less heart-sickening. He found traces of the war, that we had almost forgotten, fresh at every step; still it seemed as if the hand of Nature was much more bounteous than at the bleak North. Yet Bishop Heber's old missionary hymn rang continually through his mind. Even amid the Florida orange-groves, and the great cotton-fields, some cause brought about baleful results, in the unwisdom of man.

Then to the cities of luxury and thrift, where wealth was strong enough to crowd poverty out one side, where art and music and cultivation made a subtile atmosphere that somehow recalled the Lawrences. He lingered and quaffed delightsome draughts, and at last tore himself away from seductive sights and sounds. In a dim, half-defined way the delights came to him. Would he ever be stoic enough to spurn them?

Last of all, home with its sweet welcomes, its cleanliness and order, its familiar furniture and cheerful fires, its easy-chairs and quaint fragrant air, as if every thing had lain in dried rose-leaves; the mother love and tears, the smiles out of dimmer eyes, and cousin Jane Morgan's hearty greeting; to say nothing of his delicious supper and his own bed, where sleep seemed awaiting him with open arms.

His mother had written a good deal of Yerbury gossip to him, but it had been mostly of the pleasant order. When he dropped into Maverick's office the next day, and was welcomed so heartily that it was like a brother's greeting, he listened to the other side. Affairs were worse than ever. The bank had gone into liquidation, and would pay about forty per cent. Property mortgages had been foreclosed right and left; there was nothing, scarcely, doing; there had been want and misery and sickness, and now diphtheria was raging.

"So you see the revival didn't do every thing," said Maverick grimly.

"I'm of the opinion, if some of them had preached less, and distributed bread and broth with a freer hand, it would have been more of a good work. The praying would be well enough in its place, and, for those old fellows who pray on a full stomach, very enjoyable, I dare say. But I'd like them to look after their drains and their wells and their cisterns before they ask the Almighty to sanctify these afflictions to the poor wretches who suffer from them. And now, Jack Darcy, what are you going to do? Have you found better pastures?" and Maverick glanced up with curious inquiry.

"No," replied Jack, rather reluctantly it must be confessed. It seemed to him now that he had been spending his time for nought, unless pleasure counted, and he felt a trifle ashamed of it.

Maverick gave an odd little laugh that puzzled the other.

"See here, Maverick," began Jack in such earnest that he blushed like a great boy, "I haven't found any new place for myself. The world seems just full and running over. The great cities have their own men out of employment, and hordes from every other place. I'd be almost ashamed to ask for a job. I declare, I'd rather raise as much of my living as I could in our back garden, or take Perley's farm, and put it together, and set men raising strawberries, than tramp round, asking for work, with a feeling that it was taken from some one who had a better right, who was a native of the soil."

"Then you have not lost your conscience?"

"I hope not. It is the same old story everywhere. What is to be done about it?" and Jack knit his brows. "I have been going over the books that I thought would help or let in a little light on the matter, but it is a wisdom hard to get at. How to make more work in the world, how to cheapen living, how to"--

"Bring about the millennium! What dead earnest you are in, Darcy!"

"Weren't you in earnest a moment ago, Maverick, when you talked about the praying and the bread and broth?" said Jack with a great knot drawn in his brow.

"Yes, Heaven knows. And some one must take hold of the thing who has eyes to see, and brains, and--and money. You see, people have crowded into cities and towns, and if they could be sent out somewhere! Why don't we organize colonies or something of the sort? Now, there's Florida. Living is cheap, and in such a climate there are fewer needs of clothing and fuel. I have been wondering why the big dons in cities did not gather up the poor they have been feeding at soup-houses and everywhere, and send them out with some one to manage until they could stand alone. There would be less diphtherias and fevers and starvation; for that's its right name, Darcy. What can you do when one's system is all run out with meal-mush, and weak tea that is half willow-leaves, and such trash? There's Kilburn--he has had the name of being good to the poor this winter because he has given them trust at his store. Such stuff! I have looked into a few samples," and the expressive nostrils curled in disgust. "He makes an enormous profit, for he sells the poorest kind of goods to these people at the highest prices. Then he manages to get hold of something, house or furniture, or maybe clothes,--I don't know. He and Deacon Boyd--Darcy, how can a man honor religion when these two men are its exponents? So good to the poor! Pah!

It makes me sick. Isn't there a cleaner air somewhere on G.o.d's earth?

Can't they be taken out of this?"

"If they could be! There must be one way out, Maverick: better, perhaps, than going West where thousands are tramping about. And Heaven knows they need a new factor in civilization down there!"

The young eyes met in sudden hopeful animation. Had they solved even one strand of the great tangle, that worse than Gordian knot which could not be cut?

The door opened slowly; and there entered a middle-aged, rather grizzled man, with s.h.a.ggy eyebrows, spa.r.s.e beard, and bent shoulders. He glanced in hesitatingly, his eyes wandering down to Darcy.

"I declare to man!" and he stared hard, with the door-k.n.o.b still in his hand. "Jack Darcy! I heard you were home. How d'y do? How d'y do?" and he wrung the hand warmly. "I'm powerful glad to see you," and he looked him slowly over, from head to foot. "Why, you've grown, or something!

What a great giant you are!--Morning, doctor," nodding rather incidentally to Maverick. "So you've had a long tramp, Jack? Your mother brought some of the letters over to my old lady, who has been rather poorly the last two months. Why, you could set up book-writing! Well, what's the good word? Can't be like Yerbury all over."

"There are too many towns full of idle people, if that is what you mean.

But it was splendid, Cameron! I have one more dream,--to go up and down the Western coast, and over the Rocky Mountains; but I want to digest this first. I have no fancy for mental dyspepsia," and he gave a good, wholesome laugh.

"The right way, Jack," nodded Maverick, with a shrewd twinkle in his eye.

"Well, you've come back to a dull place,--a dull place," and Cameron shook his head despondingly. "We used to be main proud of old Yerbury; but--is the whole world to go on and starve to death, with such crops, and such an abundance of every thing?"

"We are going to weather it through, Cameron," Jack answered with a stubborn hopefulness. "There have been hard times before that have ended in renewed prosperity."

"Yes. There was '57; hard enough, Heaven knows, with the banks going to smash everywhere. It ruined my father. And way back in '37, when there was such a wild-fire about real estate, and it came out just as this has. Do people ever learn by experience, Maverick?" and the man gave a short, unmirthful chuckle. "You could buy up half Yerbury to-day, for taxes and mortgages. I can't, for the life of me, see how it all came about. And that it has gone all over the world,--well, human nature in England or Germany can't well laugh at human nature in this country.--Are these things like cholera and fevers, doctor, taking a clean sweep once in a while?" and Cameron gave a twist to the end of his faded beard, as if he might wring the secret out of it.

"We have learned to manage the cholera, and see in it, not a dispensation of Providence, but the natural result of filth and greed and carelessness. Darcy and I are getting up a panacea now," with a bright little laugh. "But how is Mrs. Cameron? Is her medicine out?"

"Yes;" and Cameron drew a phial from his pocket. "You don't think it would do to stop here? She's pretty well, I should say;" and he fingered the bottle as if he were debating whether to have it filled or not.

"No. She must go on. She is getting her strength back nicely; but it's bad policy to stop at three-quarters of the race,--eh, Cameron? The first warm day I'll take her out driving."

While he was talking, he reached out for the bottle, and began compounding. Cameron nodded an acknowledgment of the last sentence, then turning to Jack, said abruptly,--

"What was the scheme, Darcy?"

Jack flushed, and glanced at Maverick.

"Emigration, the old remedy," answered the doctor. "England has tried her hand at it pretty successfully; so why shouldn't we? Only we need not go out of our own country. There are thousands of acres of productive land lying idle, and thousands of people starving, or worse.

Too many here,--not enough there."

"Where to?" Cameron asked laconically, his face unmoved by any ripple of enthusiasm.

Jack seemed to be put on his mettle by it. Lack of faith in him always roused his belligerent qualities, back in the old school days.

"Yes, Cameron," in an incisive tone, looking steadily out of his determined eyes. "The cities are crowded over and over, and full of tramps, and the West swarms with them. We need not imagine we have all the idle people here at the East. But farming there has come to be a business of great things, almost as bad as manufacturing. You must have money, or the big fellows will swallow you up. But we were talking of Florida. No winter, as one may say; and your house a simple matter, your fuel, your clothes, a mere nothing. You could hardly starve if you tried."

Cameron came back to his chair, pushed it out from the wall, planted himself deliberately in it, and tilted back, pus.h.i.+ng up his old felt hat, as if he did not mean to have his vision obstructed. Then he gave his beard another twist.

"Can you tell me why this is, Jack Darcy? Here are countries with fine and lovely climates, where every thing grows to your hand; yet they always seem to lie idle: Italy and Spain and Turkey and South America, and our own Gardens of Eden," with a bit of sarcastic smile. "The very ease of living seems to take the ambition out of one. Well, why shouldn't it? Even the bees, you know, were demoralized when they found they did not have to lay up for winter. Wouldn't those people come to be worse tramps and idlers? I'm sure the poor white trash of the South has helped itself very little."

"We were talking of concerted effort," interposed Maverick,--"purchasing a large tract of land, forming a community, taking different kinds of workmen, and making a success of it. Why should we not have flouris.h.i.+ng towns in Florida, as well as in Kansas?"

"To be sure, to be sure!" nodding his head and tugging at his beard in a manner that showed he was not a whit convinced. "Then you give up," he said, "that any thing can be done at home?"

"Any thing done at home?" Jack lifted his level brows, and stared a little.

"Yes. The going away may all be very well. I tried it in '57; went out to Indiana with a little money, and tried farming that I didn't know any thing about, had the ague six months, and then came back poorer certainly. Now, the thing is just here with a good many of us,--we have our little homes, and in such times as these, in any hard times, we couldn't sell for any thing worth while. Then there's many a thing, to a man or a woman past middle life, that can't be reckoned in dollars and cents: the home you've made for yourself, the old friends, the church, even the familiar street you've walked over so often that every flagstone comes to have a near look."

"But those who have no homes, no strong interests"--

"If I was going to found a colony, I should want a little better stock,"

with a short, dry laugh.

"May be you have a plan?" suggested Maverick good-naturedly.

"Well, I've thought it over a good deal this winter, sitting in the house with the old lady;" and there came a peculiar far-off look in Cameron's eye as he studied a figure in the carpet. "If G.o.d worked miracles nowadays, and was to make a dozen or so honest men with a good, stout share of brains, there might be a little lifting-up of the dull skies. Take this town, leaving out politics and all that sort. Five years ago we were prosperous, and there wasn't a prettier town anywhere about. Good wages were paid, people were thrifty; and I will say it for David Lawrence, if he was one of your high kind, he was a gentleman.

I've worked for him fifteen years steady. Then the Eastmans came in, and there was nothing but hurry and drive, grumbling about high wages, buying cheap wools, and if cloth was poor, blaming the men. Then wages went down and down, and, when the men stood out, the sc.u.m of all the places around was brought in. Yerbury improved, and beer-saloons multiplied. Houses were thrown together and sold; and now they're all falling apart, and standing empty, and half a dozen families are crowding into one miserable tenement. Who made the money? Was it high wages that ruined Hope Mills, and wrecked Yerbury Bank?"

"You have hit the truth somewhere, Cameron."

"Those men were thieves and swindlers; and I suppose to-day they're living on the fat of the land, milk and honey thrown in. See here, I'm not an educated man, but I have a little common sense. Suppose we'd been let to go our ways quiet like,--the farmers holding on to their farms, and making two blades of gra.s.s grow where one grew before. Wasn't that some old philosopher's advice? Suppose David Lawrence hadn't built that great palace out on Hope Terrace (he was a plainish man himself), and there had been five or six beside him making a moderate share of money.

He's lost all his great fortune, there's seventy thousand or so gone somewhere, the bank has smashed with thousands more of everybody's money, with nothing much to show but trumpery mortgages; there's no work and no money, and a howl goes up that there has been over-production.

Not over-production of honesty, I take it."