Read Ebook: Hope Mills; Or Between Friend and Sweetheart by Douglas Amanda M

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Ebook has 1668 lines and 113215 words, and 34 pages

ot sure I am in love with the so-called civilization. For the great majority it only means harder work."

"Did we not learn in some school-book--I am quite sure I did--that

'Satan finds some mischief still, For idle hands to do'?"

"Are you not afraid?" She turned with a bright, tormenting smile to the handsome young fellow, who flushed under her clear glance.

"For those who have brains, manual labor may not be the only chance of salvation," he returned with a somewhat haughty flippancy.

"I wonder they do not turn their brains to some account."

They reached the gate, and Miss Barry was sitting on the porch. Sylvie was too pretty and too womanly to be quarrelled with for the sake of a subject that did not in the least interest him. Beside, he meant to come in; so he opened the gate for her, and followed in a well-bred, gentlemanly way, that had nothing obtrusive in it. Miss Barry welcomed him with the quaint formality, the subtile air of education, refinement, and morality, so much a part of herself. It pleased him extremely, and settled him in his determination.

"Sylvie has a touch of radicalism," he mused to himself; "but it is a disease of youth, and thrives by association. Take her quite away, and she will soon recover her normal tone."

He found his mother still up on his return, and rather restless. She lay on her sofa, and dozed so much through the day, that night had but little slumber to bring her.

"I am so glad you did not go to Long Branch," she remarked, as she toyed with her son's silken, perfumed hair. "I get so lonesome when your father is away; and he seems to think of nothing but business"--in a complaining tone. "I do not know what I should do but for Sylvie. She is such a charming little body! Fred, do you think there is any truth in Gertrude's gossip about her and that--one of your father's mill-hands, is it not? How can Miss Barry allow it?"

"There is no truth in it," with a light, scornful laugh. "The families are neighbors, you know; and I suppose the boor takes a look for encouragement. I shall not go away this summer. I can find pleasanter employment."

She pressed his hand, and smiled, as their eyes met. Sons-in-law were very little to one, except in the way of respectability, but a daughter like Sylvie would be such a comfort! Fred had no need to marry a fortune, but Sylvie would not be poor.

NOW that Fred Lawrence had come home, there was no need of going so often to Hope Terrace, Sylvie thought. Time never hung heavy on her hands; for she was not indolent, and there were friends and pleasures. Miss Barry had a conscientious misgiving that Sylvie ought to be taken about like other young ladies; but she shrank from fashionable life herself, and could not resolve to trust her darling with any other person. Beside, Sylvie always seemed contented.

The other picture held in its soft, still, light, an old-fashioned, low-gabled house with wide eaves; a broad doorway, with the upper half always open in summer; a well with curb and sweep and bucket where farm-hands came to drink; a pond with a shady side, where cows herded in their peaceful fashion, wading knee-deep on hot days, chewing their cud contentedly at others, browsing through golden hours; fields of glowing grain, then tawny stubble, a bit of corn with nodding tassels, and not infrequently a group of children, picturesque in this far light. It all stood out with the clearness of a stereoscope.

She had her ambitions too, this bright little girl. They were tinctured with the crudeness of youth, and its boundless vision, it is true; and sometimes the passion of despair seized her soul in a cold grasp, when she felt hemmed in on every side, and longed for some opening, some step in the great world higher than fashionable frivolity.

Miss Barry had no taste for famous women. They were well enough in the world: she paid a proper and polite deference to Mrs. Somerville, Mrs. Browning, and Rosa Bonheur,--that kind of intellectual deference that sets them out of the sphere of ordinary women. Wives and mothers were better for the every-day life of the world; since pictures and poetry were luxuries, accessories, but not home or food or clothes. Though she had missed her woman's destiny, she had not lost faith in it; though she had held out her hand to the woman who had made shipwreck of her own life for the wild, graceless brother's sake, she still looked on clear seas and smooth sailing as possible for lovers' barks. In her plans for Sylvie there was a fine, manly, generous husband; a love so sweet and entire that the girl should forget her restless yearnings; baby hands to cling to her, baby lips to press, young lives to mould, and a future to plan for others.

Miss Barry believed in work devoutly, but gentlewomen had a firm place in her creed. The paintings and music were well enough as accomplishments, and she was proud of them; but she delicately repressed the other dreams and desires until Sylvie ceased to speak of them except to her friend Jack.

Miss Barry had experienced some anxiety on this point, it must be confessed. You would never have perceived it from the wise little woman's face or any tone of her voice. She went more frequently to the Darcys of an evening with Sylvie: she rolled her easy-chair and work-table to the opposite side of the sitting-room, where it commanded a view of the piano and the sofa in the parlor, the door being always open. She could hear and see, she could make pleasant, trenchant remarks: indeed, she was one of themselves, as young in heart, if the hair did glisten silvery under the bit of exquisite thread-lace that did duty as an apology for a cap.

Jack and Sylvie were not lovers. A rare good friendship it was, more perfect than brotherly and sisterly regard, in that it held no duty-element, and was spontaneous. Sylvie never laughed at Jack in his awkward boyish days: he had never tormented her small belongings as brothers are wont to do.

Miss Barry feared the flame might be easily fanned. A little opposition or warning would bring Sylvie's innocent wandering thoughts to a focus, and kindle the fire. She was very wary. She trusted Sylvie to Jack with an air that said, "You are too honorable to betray the confidence I repose in you."

The old class prejudice spoke out in this covert objection to Jack as a suitor. She honored him sincerely for giving up the dreams of ambitious and energetic manhood to stay at home and comfort these two delicate women. Yet she had a half fancy that it betokened weakness or lack of some kind in the very content with which he seemed to go about his daily duties. Alas for consistency! We preach content from the pulpit on Sunday, and on Monday glance with quiet contempt on our plodding neighbor, who can commune with the daisies by the wayside, while there is gold lying untroubled in desert gulches.

Honest, sturdy Jack, taking up the duty of to-day cheerfully with a manful endurance, because the hands holding his fate were too weak and tender to be wrestled with, and that in his large, generous soul he could not war on a smaller antagonist, neither was it his nature to continually thrust any sacrifice he might make before the eyes of the one he was benefiting. How much silent heroism goes unpraised in the world, while we stand on the highways, and prate of our discrimination, our quick insight! Jack might be praised for his self-denial, but the higher appreciation was withheld. Even Sylvie was fretted at times, because he would get interested in all things pertaining to the mill.

Miss Barry said to herself, "It is best that Sylvie should marry in her own circle, a man of cultivation, refinement, and position. Jack is a dear good fellow, but not the person to satisfy her for a lifetime."

Jack thought nothing at all about it. He never gave up the idea of a great wide world, where he could have a hand-to-hand struggle with something as powerful as himself. He had come to no dreams of wife and children. He did like Sylvie with all his big, honest heart. If she had fallen in love with him, and betrayed it by some girlish sign, he would have been startled at first, then thought it over in his slow, careful way, asked her to marry him, and loved her devotedly all his days, leaving the dreams to the past with a tender benediction.

But Sylvie was no more in love than he.

As I said, she decided that she was not needed at Hope Terrace, and staid away four days. Then the carriage came, with a beseeching note. Had Fred gone again?

She found him there in all his elegant listlessness. It exasperated her strangely.

"What have you been about, Sylvie?" cried Mrs. Lawrence. "Is your aunt ill? It seems a full week since you were here."

"Oh, no!" with her beguiling little smile. "I cannot tell exactly what, only I thought"--

"You thought because Fred was home I would need no one else! As if a love-story would not bore him, and an invalid's whims--well, men are not women, my dear," decisively, and with a complacent expression as if she had settled the argument beyond any question, for the first time since the world began.

"Why, you never tried me on a love-story," interposed Fred. "You do not know how deeply sympathetic I might be with your favorite heroines."

"Thank you for her. She has gone to Coldbridge to see about a nurse for the Orphans' Home, and will not be back until four."

"Then I can keep you without a single scruple," and Mrs. Lawrence looked oddly pleased. "Fred, tell them not to put the horses out. What wonderful health your aunt has, Sylvie! I don't see how she can endure the bother of those schools and institutions: it would wear me out in no time. But I have had a family of children;" and she leaned back on her pillow with a satisfied air.

The carriage came around again; and with the assistance of a maid, Sylvie, and her son, Mrs. Lawrence walked down stairs. He handed both ladies in, and seated himself opposite with the air of a prince.

Sylvie looked so bright and gay this morning, her velvety eyes full of tender light, her cheek all abloom with youth and health, the sweet scarlet lips half smiling, and her attire far enough removed from the rigor of fashion to have a kind of originality about it. She always wore something that added tone and brightness,--a bit of colored ribbon or a flower, or a bow that flashed out unexpectedly, as if greeting you with laughing surprise.

"What do you do to mother, Sylvie?" Fred asked, with a touch of complimentary curiosity in his voice. "Yesterday she was dull and moping. I could not persuade her to drive."

"It was so warm, no wonder. I felt dull and drowsy myself. But to-day is the perfection of loveliness."

"And you have a charm, Sylvie. I do not know but it is your perfect, buoyant health. You seem to lift one up. I only wish I could keep you all the time," remarked Mrs. Lawrence with a touch of longing.

Sylvie colored, and averted her eyes: then she gave herself a kind of mental shaking, and resolutely glanced back, uttering some rather trite remark. She would not suspect or understand.

They came home again, and had lunch: then, while Mrs. Lawrence was taking her siesta, Fred carried off Sylvie to his study. It was luxuriously beautiful. Several gems of pictures adorned the wall, which had been newly frescoed to suit his fancy. Easy chairs lured one to test their capacious depth, some exquisitely-bound books were arranged in a carved and polished case, and the table was daintily littered with papers. He had an idea that a man's surroundings were a very fair index to his character and tastes, quite forgetting that it implied length of purse as well.

He made spasmodic attempts at literary work. Abstruse essays were begun under the impression that he had something brilliant and original to say, but before they were finished a new train of thought led him captive. He dreamed delicately sensuous dreams, lapped in luxurious idleness, the rooms stifling with odorous hot-house flowers. He went clothed in soft raiment, he sunned himself in languid seas of imagination, and was too indifferent to concentrate his powers upon any great faith or belief, or even emotion. He had a contempt for cheap and plain belongings, as leaning insensibly to vitiation of taste. Nothing modern met his approbation. The old-time philosophies won him with their subtile flavor. He could propound his theories eloquently, but they did not touch him deeply enough to rouse him into action of any kind. All that his education and culture had done for him so far was to develop an incapacity for any regular, wholesome work that would be of the slightest use to any human being.

Something of this passed through Sylvie's mind as she sat there. This handsome and stalwart lily of the valley, with no desire for toiling, and no ability for spinning, would be content to drift and dawdle through life on his father's money. At that moment he was more contemptible to her than Irene, winning lovers by the score, and casting them aside with no more compunction than if they were the litter of faded flowers.

After all, why should she care if he did not reach her standard of moral and intellectual excellence, of that knightly chivalry whose rallying-cry was, "God and my fellow-men!" Why should she desire to rouse him from that complacent ease and fastidiousness, brought about by wealth, and the certainty of no need of effort on his part? Surely she was no modern apostle carrying around the watchword of work.

Yet somehow--if all the subtile forces running to waste in both him and Jack could be galvanized into earnest, active life; if the sturdy, wholesome thought of the one could be mated with the clear, crisp training of the other; if both could have the wide outlook beyond material wants and comforts! It fretted her.

Yet these two, sitting here on this peerless summer day, skimmed over wide fields like gay butterflies. She could not be in earnest with him. Just when she was roused and warm, he seemed to lift her by some flight of eloquence, and waft her to his realm of fancy. It annoyed her to find he had that much power over her.

It must be admitted that when Fred Lawrence willed, he could be extremely fascinating. Women yielded gracefully, nay, eagerly, to his sway; and much delicate flattery had their eyes and lips fed him upon. Sylvie piqued him a trifle by her utter unconcern--or was it the fine instinct of coquetry inherent in feminine nature?

There was no telling what this queer, bright, unconventional little thing might do if left to herself. A good marriage would prove her salvation. She had many womanly possibilities: yet, with all due deference to Miss Barry and her old blue blood, Sylvie might overstep the bounds, and take up some of the reforming projects so dear to elderly spinsters. As Mrs. Fred Lawrence she would be held regally above them, and could depute her charitable work to her aunt.

In justice to the man, it must be confessed that Sylvie's dainty, piquant loveliness stirred his soul; and, if self had not been so intense a centre, he might have been ardently in love, or clearer-sighted. Much of the time her demeanor toward him was coldly indifferent: yet the misfortune was, her interest in all things kindled so easily that she could not, at a moment, change to him. Her moods of reticence and shy evasion added a flavor to the cup. With a man's egregious vanity, he jumped at the conclusion that these little intangible things signified love.

One day Sylvie stumbled over Irene. She came flying up stairs with some choice nectarines for Mrs. Lawrence, a kind that seemed only to reach perfection in Miss Barry's old-fashioned garden. There sat Irene, superb, nonchalant.

"Miss Barry is quite well," Sylvie said with some constraint, remembering their last parting.

Irene had honestly forgotten it. She laughed now, a low, ringing, melodious laugh.

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