Hope Mills Part 42

The men had the hose ready. They put it out of the window, turned on the stream, and in a few moments a column of dense smoke rose amid the arrowy flashes of lurid splendor. The watchman ran down from Connelly's.

It was subdued in a few moments. They tore away the charred boxes and _debris_, smoking and smouldering. Underneath all they found the body of princely Bruno.

"This is fiendis.h.!.+" cried Jack, dragging the poor fellow away, his scorched coat smelling horribly. "Brave Bruno, you are the second hero of the night!"

"Whatever dastardly devil did this, knows as much about Hope Mills as you or I," shouted Hurd savagely. "Bruno was poisoned first; and he wouldn't have taken any thing from a strange hand. But the fellow was a fool to build the fire here."

"I don't know about that," said Darcy. "If it had burned the door down, it would have gone in the hall, and up the hatchway--if it was open."

"By thunder! so it would; and right to the stock-room. That place must never be left open again while Hope Mills stands, or co-operation waves her starry banner in the breeze."

"Loud applause!" said some one.

The fire was thoroughly extinguished; and the guardian of the night decided to remain here, being within call if another disturbance should occur at Mrs. Connelly's. The bells rang out for midnight. A few, who had gathered at the alarm, dispersed: and every thing became quiet again,--deadly, solemnly quiet.

Jack wanted to see Maverick, so he paced back to Mrs. Connelly's. He was trying to remember some distinctive mark of the man he had seen jump. He was too stout for Davy, and he could not believe such villany of the man. Then Price was a little lame from an old rheumatic affection, and would not have dared such a deed.

Barton Kane had been washed, patched, bandaged, put to bed, and given an opiate; so now he was in a sound but rather disturbed sleep. The men gathered in the lunch-room, and discussed the cowardly attempt upon the mill, the day's affairs generally.

"See how great a matter a little fire kindles," said Maverick. "But for McPherson's lecture here, I don't believe any of these things would have happened. It is a free country, of course, and a man has a right to air his ideas; but capital is not set firmly enough on its legs to stand a severe fire, and labor is in too great a superabundance. To seek to drain the ocean with a silver mug may be grand, but quite hopeless."

One! The witching hour, and a few sleepy men began to yawn.

"How odd it seems, not to hear trains in the night!" Maverick said presently. "A queer lock-out this."

One, again. One, two, three: this time the fire-alarm.

They rushed out toward the mill. Then they as suddenly wheeled around.

In an instant the air seemed full of shouts and cries, and a broad sheet of flame flared up in the face of the tranquil heavens. A roar, like a mighty tramping of hosts, a crackling, snapping, sweeping sound.

"It's Keppler's. Boyd's block will surely go!"

The houses were frame, old and dry: Keppler's on the corner, the rest joined, like a row of sheds, and filled with the very poorest; a few apartments standing empty. The engines were out, but it was of little avail. The corner was just one brilliant sheet of lurid light. Shrieking women and children fled for their lives. The street swarmed again, and people trampled over one another in their wild terror. There was a crash, and the building fell in. The flames licked up the other fiery flood, and had a brave battle in the cellar. The engines played until the air was filled with smothering smoke, and there was nothing left but a long, blackened ruin.

"It may be ungenerous to rejoice in any man's misfortune," said Maverick, "but in a sanitary point of view I am thankful those old rookeries have come to an end. Boyd wouldn't do any thing to them, and they were unfit for pigs to live in. And, as for Keppler's, there will be but one verdict this end of the town."

Some one laid a hand on Jack Darcy's shoulder. He turned and saw Fred Lawrence.

"They are all worried to death about you, old chap," began Fred. "Your mother, Miss Morgan, Sylvie,--and Irene is walking the floor. I have not seen her so excited since--since she had the fever. What a horrible thing! Was any one lost, do you know?"

"They will not be able to tell that until morning, every thing is in such confusion. Pray G.o.d that the morning may dawn soon! I seem to have lived through years."

The dawn came up by and by; first in faint opaline splendors, then scarlet and gold. The moon paled, and the stars dropped out, and there was a chirp of birds to welcome the new-born day.

The shock of the fire cooled the temper of the raiders, for half the men were idle hangers-on, rather than absolute strikers. One frantic woman flew to the scene of devastation: her boy, four years old, was missing.

They tried to comfort her with the thought that some neighbor had kindly taken him in, but she kept wildly imploring them to search.

There was no further molestation of the men at Hope Mills. They walked in the yard quietly at seven o'clock, their faces touched with surprise and terror when they heard the story of the night. Barton Kane lay disabled at Mrs. Connelly's, and poor Bruno was buried with honors, regretted by the whole force.

Jack called the men together, and addressed them briefly. He was very pale, and his usually bright, clear eyes were heavy.

"I want to thank you," he said, in a tone that was a little unsteady with exhaustion and emotion, "I want to thank you for standing so bravely by me, and by your principles. We are all partners together, and what is one man's interest is every man's. I feel sure that we shall never have another difficulty. We have gone through the worst, and in a little while every man will have his free choice again. Let us all keep the warmest of friends until then."

There was no cheering: they were not gay enough for that. Some of the men wrung his hand silently; then the women pressed forward, and invoked a blessing upon him.

"We know better nor any of 'em what it was to have no fire, and childers cryin' for bread," said one woman, wiping her eyes with the end of her faded shawl. "And, thank the Lord, I've had bite, and sup, and fire, ever since the day Hope Mills was opened."

The men outside were working at the ruins,--among them some of the strikers of yesterday. They found poor Mrs. Rooney's little Johnny, burned to a crisp; and in the house next to Keppler's they exhumed the body of Biddy Brady, a good-natured, efficient washerwoman, whose greatest fault was her intemperance. She and her son had gone to bed very drunk, after having a good time through the evening. The boy had been roused in season, but she had perished. It was as vivid and fervent a temperance-lecture as ever was given in Yerbury.

About ten in the morning Jack Darcy returned home dead tired, as much with the excitement as the fatigue, took a bath, and went to bed.

The Yerbury authorities looked sharply about them that day. The strikers were orderly and quiet, but they had lost ground. "The Evening Transcript" deprecated all this sort of business, and for once had no fling about the "Utopian theory of co-operation." But "The Leader" of the morning came out strongly in praise of the good order, forbearance, and _esprit de corps_ of Hope Mills, and called Mr. Darcy "our young and enterprising citizen, whom, we doubt not, we shall hear of in higher positions in life, which he has proved himself eminently worthy to fill."

There was no great lament made about Boyd's Row or Keppler's saloon, except for the sad casualty it had caused; but the dastardly attack on Mrs. Connelly, and the fiendish attempt to burn Hope Mills, met with the severest condemnation.

Maverick came around to the Darcys that evening. "I fancy I have found your man, Jack," he began. "Mrs. Stixon called me in towards night, saying Jem had been on a spree, and was dreadfully beaten. I found one side of his face scratched and bruised, and bits of gravel still adhering to the flesh. The right arm, on the same side, has one bone broken, and his shoulder is dislocated. He said he fell off of a stoop, and is dreadfully sullen. I asked him what stoop, but he would not tell.

Do you remember which way the man fell?"

Jack thought a moment. "On the right side, Maverick, away from me, or I should have seen his face. Just such a size man as Jem Stixon, too,"

with a satisfied nod.

"What will you do about it?"

Jack took two or three turns across the floor. "See here, Maverick, we will not do any thing. You cure the poor fellow, and I think he will never try to damage Hope Mills again. I can hardly forgive him Bruno, though."

"If I were Sylvie Barry,"--he never called her Mrs. Lawrence when speaking of her,--"I should say, 'Jack, you are an angel.'"

Jack flushed. "Masculine angels!" he laughed.

"Well, wasn't there Gabriel and a host of them? Why, Jack, they were _all_ masculine!"

There was no need for earthly justice to meddle with Jem Stixon. His arm inflamed: he had led a hard life late years, and his system was in bad order. He would not listen to amputation until it was too late, and in less than a month he was dead. It was better for his poor hard-working wife and family.

One other death grew out of the summer riots, though this was at a distance. Dennis Connelly had been working with a railroad-gang, and the strikers there had a desperate struggle with the civil authority. They were worsted in the end, and Connelly was one of the victims, or perhaps more truly speaking, a victim to bad whiskey, for when sober he was very peaceable. Kit sent for his body, and had him decently buried.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE strikers at the hat-factory did not carry the day. The employers were very indignant, and tabooed the union men altogether. At Garafield's the men were called in council, the points discussed, and a small advance in wages allowed. The co-operatives went their way quietly. Perhaps the most convincing argument was a very jubilant letter from Winston, part of which Darcy put up in the hall. He had just succeeded in making an important contract for two years, on very fair terms. That would see them through safely unless the whole world came to grief again!

Jack wrote Miss McLeod a graphic account of the "labor troubles," and she replied with equally characteristic _verve_. "She could hardly decide," she declared, "whether to be glad, or sorry, that her young friend had grown so independent of her; but in any emergency she wished to be remembered."

There was now a certain respect paid to Hope Mills, among the community at Yerbury. Perhaps there are no people so exacting and difficult to satisfy as those friends and neighbors whose advice you have not taken, and prospered without it. They indulge in a righteous self-complacency if you are unfortunate, and pity you grandly; but to own themselves mistaken is the one bitter flavor in the cup. There seemed to be but one point now upon which they were doubtful,--the honesty of the managers at the last moment. Every workman knew or might know exactly how affairs stood, but _they_ did not have the capital. Just at the end of the five years _somebody_ might abscond with the money-bag under his arm. It seemed so every way certain that human nature could not withstand the temptation.

Yet there was growing up among the hands a curious neighborly sympathy, as if they were in some degree relatives; and they were made so, in fact, by some marriages of sons and daughters. They were more intelligent; they kept their houses cleaner, their little gardens prettier, not allowing them to go to weeds before the summer was half over. Those who could go to the industrial school learned a deal about sewing, and became seamstresses instead of mill-girls. Some made their own family dresses, some were very tasty milliners. It gave them a reliance upon what they could do themselves. The two daughters of one workman kept a little poultry-yard "scientifically," and dressed themselves from its proceeds. Industry became more general. Instead of dawdling away whole evenings in gossip, they had some light employment, and worked as they talked.