Part 8

“And you can that, miss,” was the hearty answer. “You’ve got us all on your side now, sure. I went up this morning to see the houses. They are fine ones, too.”

“And did you pick out one for yourself, Mr. Brady? You are married, I believe?”

“I am that; and I’ve got as good a wife as ever the saints sent to bless a man. Yes, I picked out the one I liked best; but the woman’ll have to see it first, you know. And then, do you know, I think I’ll buy it. The terms are so easy, and I’ve a little money laid by, that I’d like to use; and I’m thinking Carrie’d be happier in a home of our own.”

“Now, that’s sensible of you,” said Salome, delighted that her houses were in such good prospect of pleasing. “If you do it, I’ve no doubt a good many others will. And, by and by, we shall have quite a community of property owners.”

Brady straightened himself up unconsciously at the word, touched his hat and passed on, his heart warmed and gratified by the kindly notice; while Salome entered the office in unusually good spirits.

“It seems to me,” she began, addressing herself to Burnham, “that everything is swinging round into the circle of my plans far better than I had dared hope. I expected opposition, or at least indifference, on the part of the operatives. On the contrary, they are all as delighted with the state of affairs as I am.”

“Why shouldn’t they be?” was Burnham’s comment. “They’d be ungrateful wretches if they weren’t. They’ve far more to gain than you have to lose, remember.”

“But you’ve been trying to make me believe,” pursued Salome, “that they didn’t want their condition improved; that they were satisfied to be let alone; and that they’d resist every improvement I offered.”

“Wait a little and see;” Burnham tried to make his tone impartial, if not skeptical; “you’ve only begun yet. Don’t expect the habits of months and years, the loose customs and low tastes, are going to be overthrown in a single night. The affair of last night, for instance, was doubtless the most orderly entertainment and the quietest dance they ever had. But it don’t follow that they will all of them be satisfied to drop entirely the old order of low dances when they had plenty to drink, even if they didn’t have salads and coffee, or ice-cream and cake. There’s no telling how many of them will be stealing off to those places before winter is over.”

“Then we must get up some form of entertainment that will hold them to us,” said Salome firmly. “They sha’n’t fall back, if anything we can compass can save them.”

Villard looked across his big ledger at her, as if she had been an angel sent from Heaven direct, to preach a higher political economy to the cotton factories of earth. She caught his look and smiled back at him; but she said no more.

She did not speak to him until just as she was ready to go home.

“How do you like your new quarters, Mr. Villard?” she said, then. “I hope you rested well last night?”

Villard remembered his sleepless hours vaguely, as in a dream. She looked so bright and untroubled herself.

“You deserted me after that first dance. Did I dance so badly that you feared or dreaded to be caught by me again? If it hadn’t been for Mr. Burnham and Mr. Fales I should have felt quite a wall-flower.”

“You never could be that, Miss Shepard,” poor Villard managed to say.

“Well, as soon as the young people get moved in we must start some classes. I know a good dressmaker whom I can get, and Marion will teach them some other things, if they want it.”

She lingered some minutes, talking over the Hall and her plans, and left him with a confused image of herself mixing up with the figures of the ledger in a most incongruous way. Alas! John Villard was to have many a hard fight with himself before he could drive away that image at will.

The young operatives—and all that dwelt within the corporation boarding-house walls—began that very night to pick up their effects, and make ready to move into their new quarters. Mrs. French had all she could attend to in preparing for her large family, assigning rooms, and attending to the thousand details of opening the Hall. But before the week was closed, every old boarding-house was closed and the new home full.

Marion Shaw found her time altogether occupied. Her work was to lie directly among the girls, as Villard’s influence was to save the boys and young men. Marion had a gentle and pleasing manner that made friends everywhere she went. She had had a good deal of experience in managing boarding-school girls, and although they are a widely different class from factory girls, human nature—girl-nature, is the same everywhere. Before the week was over, Marion had made friends with many of the girls, and had already interested them in keeping their rooms tidy, in forming a girls’ club, which should embrace all sorts of good ends, and in rousing in them what was of infinite value in the work she had laid out,—a desire to become as near like her and Salome as it was possible for them to be.

“We shall have to endure the cross of having them cut all their dresses like ours, wear ribbons like ours, do up their hair like ours, and get up the most astonishing hats purporting to be like ours,” said she to Salome one night; “but if it all comes of their wanting to be like us,—you understand me, dear,—I mean of their wanting to reach a higher ideal of course,—we can bear it.”

“We shall have to,” was the answer. “The truth of it is, they will be trying to copy our habits and manners and characters, too.”

“Then we shall have to be all the more careful,” said Marion seriously.

Life to Marion Shaw was a serious thing. Although she was but twenty-seven years old, she had come to realize that life may not be for any what the fancy of youth pictures it; and even to realize that the highest good which life can hold is not to be happy. Already she knew that happiness is but a relative term, and that only by ceasing to search and plan for it, can any of us find it even in small degree.

Just now, she walked dangerously near to happiness. On the opening night, Geoffrey Burnham had kept closely at her side all the evening, and after the affair was over, he had walked home with her, while Robert Fales had gone ahead with Salome.

At the door, the two had paused a little, looking at the exquisite, moonlit October night. Suddenly the extraordinary interest Burnham had felt in this young woman had culminated. He seized both her hands in his, and pressed them close to his breast.

“Why have you not come to me before?” he murmured, passionately. “Why have you waited all these years?”

“I was waiting for you,” she answered, with a smile.

XV.

One evening in January, Salome and Marion went over early to Newbern Shepard Hall. Marion’s duties called her there every evening, and she was seldom unaccompanied by her friend.

The success of Salome’s schemes for the interest of the working-girls seemed already assured. Although the Hall had been open but little more than two months, classes in dressmaking and millinery and in domestic science were already established, and were well attended. Some girls there were, it is true, who felt that, after working all day, they were entitled to an idle evening, or to the right of amusing themselves after their own fashion. But plenty of young women had been found to open the classes, and the number was steadily increasing. No strong measures had been taken to induce these girls to join. Marion had talked with some of them individually, at first, and found a few who, half skeptically, had consented to try the dressmaking class, as an experiment. Then the announcement was made that a class would be opened on a certain night, and twenty-six girls were present. Instruction in sewing, cutting and fitting was given free to any woman connected with the Shawsheen Mills. As the girls had been paying exorbitant prices for having cheap material poorly made up, and as Salome had provided instructors from the best dressmaking establishment Shepardtown afforded, the girls were not slow to see the benefit that would come to them.

The young wives of operatives, too, women with houses and children to care for, then began to avail themselves of the privileges which the class afforded. So that, on this January evening, there were over a hundred and fifty women in the classes, and another room had been opened to them on the ground floor.

It was the same with other classes. At first, the young women had joined with the older ones in “pooh-poohing” the cooking and housekeeping lectures and demonstrations. The idea that they and their mothers did not know how to cook, and that Salome, who knew absolutely nothing of such matters, essayed to teach them, was a most distasteful one. But when they found that a celebrated teacher was to come out twice a week from Boston, and give demonstrations in the model class-rooms below, and that a graduate of the Boston Cooking School had been engaged to take charge of the lessons every evening, they, the young married women from the cottages, especially, dropped in from curiosity; and although they had come to scoff, they remained to cook. In short, they had become deeply interested in the new ways of housekeeping, and were surprised and delighted to find a way of making their few dollars go farther and procure a better and more healthful living. Consequently, these classes, too, were full, although the older matrons did not yet give up their prejudices.

Among the girls who had not yet joined the classes, there were many who sat quietly in their own rooms or in the large reading-rooms, and enjoyed the current magazines and papers, or gossiped quietly and harmlessly about the fashions and each other—not altogether unlike women of higher pretensions. It was astonishing, even to Salome, who had, from the first, believed in her girls, how few of them went out on the streets at night.

“It is not astonishing to me,” said Marion, that January evening, in reply to a remark from her friend to this effect. “The girls are tired at night and are only too glad to have a pleasant, light and steam-heated place to stay in. Their rooms at the old boardinghouses were cold, barren and dismal. In winter weather they could not sit in them, and the so-called parlor was not much better. When I was at Mme. Blanc’s one of her servant girls went wrong. I shall never forget something she said. When Madame heard of it, she sent for the girl and asked her, bitterly, what had made her bring such a scandalous thing upon a select house like hers. I was in her room at the time. The poor girl looked up at Mme. Blanc and said, ‘O, ma’am, you’re awful particular about where your young ladies spend their evenings,—girls that you’re paid for looking after. But us servant girls—how did you look after us? You didn’t allow us a light in our own rooms, or to speak above a whisper in the kitchen, or seem to think we was human beings at all. What else could we do, but go out on the street when we wanted a bit of freedom? And once, on the street, ma’am, girls like us ain’t never safe. If you’d looked out for me, ma’am, and treated me as well as you treat your own dog or cat, it would never have happened.’ Poor Madame was overcome entirely, and the girl left her white with rage. But she looked after her servants more closely afterward, and kept them in at night in warm rooms. I don’t believe our girls want to do wrong,—especially if we make it comfortable for them to do right.”

On the young men’s side, things had gone equally well. There was a class of them who, like their fathers before them, were sturdy, honest and faithful. It was a small class, but upon these John Villard depended to counteract the influence of the lower foreign element that had crept in; and to the pride of these he appealed, both directly and indirectly, in his efforts to establish a better social atmosphere among the operatives.

With a few of these to begin with, he had opened an evening school on the other wing of the Hall; and, as in the case of the women’s classes, it had increased in numbers and interest from the start. The overseers, almost to a man, gladly availed themselves of its opportunities for the education that the true American always feels the need for; and they, with the better class of men from the looms and mules, set the example for others to follow.

No better man for the work could have been chosen than John Villard. He had come up under much the same conditions that governed them. He had begun on the lowest round, and worked up to the position he now occupied, by hard work and the closest application to business. This fact, together with his attitude toward them during the strike, had made him a favorite with nearly every man on the works. They felt that they could place the utmost confidence in Villard; and in the Shawsheen Mills, as everywhere, a rugged sincerity and honesty of purpose carried a weight that even the most unstable felt.

The lecture-hall was usually packed at the weekly entertainment which Salome provided, and a new feeling of content and self-respect had begun to permeate the mills. Make a man who has been looked upon as a mere machine feel that he is estimated at something near the worth which every human being feels in his heart that he is entitled to, and you have done much to raise him to a higher social standard. For the first time since old Newbern Shepard’s day, the mill-hands began to feel a just pride in being individual American citizens. Unconsciously, both men and women were setting their faces toward the higher standards which Villard by his life, and Salome by her newly awakened energy, had set for them.

At the mills, affairs were on a most flourishing basis. The Shawsheen brand of cloth was too well known to allow of a few months shutdown of the mills making any difference in the law of demand. Orders had increased, even while the mills were closed, and they had been worked to their utmost capacity ever since they had opened. Never had the Shawsheen Mills been more prosperous than at the beginning of January, or their future looked brighter.

When Villard had opened his evening school he invited Burnham to co-operate with him; but the latter had put him off without a definite reply, and not until the afternoon of the day referred to in the beginning of this chapter had Villard asked him whether or not he might count on his assistance. Burnham occasionally looked in at the Hall of an evening, but Villard had begun to suspect that this was principally for the purpose of seeing Marion Shaw.

“Well, to tell the truth,” Burnham finally admitted, “I’ve no taste for this sort of thing. Oh, yes; it’s a good scheme, and seems to be working first-rate; but I’m not the right fellow for the place. I don’t like philanthropic work, never did, never shall. I work hard enough during the day. I need rest and freedom at night.”

Villard smiled.

“And I suppose I don’t do anything day-times and need this sort of thing as recreation and intellectual stimulus?” His tone was sarcastic, for he had little patience with selfishness in any form.

“No, not that,” said Burnham. “You work hard enough—too hard, in fact. But all this is more in your line. You’re like Miss Shepard; you’re both of you happier working yourselves to death for others. Now, I’m not built on that plan. I’ve no faculty for teaching, and I’m sure that my well-meant efforts to meet the men half-way are looked upon by them as condescension on my part.”

He waited an instant for Villard to speak, but no answer came.

“I can’t help it. I wasn’t born to the manor, so to speak. I didn’t come up from the ranks, as you know. I suppose they’d believe in me more, if I had. But you know that my father put me under Mr. Greenough to learn the business, only after I had graduated from college and fooled away a year in Europe. I sometimes doubt if I’m not out of place in this mill as it is run nowadays.”

“Oh, no, not that,” put in Villard hastily. “You’re too good a business man. We couldn’t spare you.”

“I can see how it’s all coming out,” Burnham continued, as if he had not heard Villard. “You two” (Villard’s heart jumped at the words) “will go on and make a model institution of the Shawsheen Mills. I should doubt if you made a profitable one, only that I know you’ve got a mighty good business head on your shoulders; and, I say, the way Miss Shepard is developing is a caution to us men. I’d no idea she’d take such a practical turn, or learn the details so readily. Oh, I can see where it’s going to end. She’ll be the recognized head and you’ll be her first assistant. As for me, I sha’n’t be in it. I shall have resigned.”

“Jeff!” It was only occasionally that these two called each other by their boyhood names.

“Yes, I don’t think I should care to have it known that I worked under a woman, much as I admire and respect Miss Shepard. There’d be no other way, unless I married her!”

Villard turned pale with sudden, inward rage, but he said nothing.

“Don’t think I’d have much chance there, though,” Burnham went on lightly. “You’re more her style. And you’re both so much wrapped up in good works that you’ve no time for faith in each other, beyond what you waste in philanthropic effort. Miss Shepard don’t seem to be the marrying kind. I don’t believe she ever thinks of a man unless he has the merit of being an operative in the mills.”

“And since you’re bent on discussing matrimonial matters,” observed Villard, with sarcasm, “how about Miss Shaw? And when are the wedding-cards to be issued?”

Burnham shook the ashes from his cigar and looked at his watch critically.

“Marion Shaw is a fine girl,” he said. “She’s the right kind of woman to tie to; but”—and Burnham took up his hat to go out—“I’m not the marrying kind either.”

So Villard had come to understand that he must take care of his evening school as best he could alone.

Robert Fales had settled in Shepardtown. There were to be more cottages built in the spring, and to him Salome had alone confided her plan of erecting a new church which should be named for her grandfather. When the evening school began to grow, he went to Villard and offered his services as assistant, and had proved a most valuable one.

This evening Salome looked in upon them, and asked Villard if he could give her a few moments after the class.

“I shall be very glad,” he replied. “I have been working up the idea you spoke about the other day, and wanted to talk with you about it.”

“The profit-sharing scheme?” asked Salome. “That’s just what I wanted to speak of. It seems to me we ought, now, at the beginning of the year, to get it into manageable shape, and tell the men, so that they may know what to expect. I will be in the reception-room when your class is through.”

Much as Villard was interested in his work the remaining hour dragged a little. The prospect of a quiet _tête-à-tête_ with Salome, even on so unromantic a subject as profit-sharing, was too alluring.

But, at last, he found himself face to face with her, and for a few moments forgot all else in the pleasure of listening to her voice and watching the curve of her chin and mobile lips, as she talked of immaterial things.

“And now, what kind of a plan have you formulated as to the profit-sharing?” she asked, after a little.

“Profits—oh, yes,” said Villard, suddenly brought to himself. “I have examined all the accounts of such experiments in foreign countries, and tried to remember the differing conditions and better wages here. I have prepared a rough draft of a circular which I thought perhaps you might like to send out among the hands. Do you want to see it?”

“Of course,” was the answer.

“I don’t pretend it is complete, you know,” he went on, drawing a folded paper from his inner pocket. “It is only an abstract, but—here it is.”

“Read it to me, please,” said Salome.

He would rather have had her read it, while he watched her face; but he complied.

“For some time past,” the circular read, “the subject of co-operation in some form has been considered by the Shawsheen Mills. Believing that capital and labor are interdependent and their interests identical, it has been decided to adopt some plan by which the laborer may obtain a share of the product in proportion to the profits of the scheme, at the same time guaranteeing his wages against the time of loss.

“It is now proposed, therefore, to divide a sum among the Shawsheen employes, each year in which there are surplus profits, over and above wages earned.

“Understand, that before anything can be set apart for this purpose, wages must be paid, interest must be paid, and a fair profit on capital must be paid. In addition to this, an additional amount must be set aside to make good the wear and tear of buildings and machinery, and to strengthen reserve funds against a time of depression.

“Ordinarily, the sum above all these amounts must be small, and must differ, of course, with the fluctuations of the market, the depression of trade, and the wear of machinery from year to year. It will be readily seen, also, that the sum to be divided will be enlarged by extra care and attention on the part of employes. Every weaver who makes a mis-pick, every burler who slights her work, every spinner who makes a needless knot; in short, every person who makes an unnecessary waste of any kind, makes the amount to be divided smaller, by making a loss to the concern; and, on the other hand, if every person in the mill attends to the little savings, the wool-washers saving every scrap of wool, the spinners making less waste, the weavers weaving up the whole bobbin, and so on through all the branches, a great saving can be made which will effectually increase the sum to be divided; and it will be for the direct interest of every employe to exercise such increased care and diligence.

“The mode of distributing this bonus will be by making a dividend of so much per cent. upon the wages earned by each person. If, after all contingencies are provided for, there is not enough left to make a dividend of one per cent., no dividend will be made for that year. In case of a dividend it will be paid on and after the first day of May in each year to all employes who have been in employ at the Shawsheen Mills for at least seven months during the year, and shall not have been discharged for drunken or disorderly conduct. The amount of wages earned during the year preceding the first of April shall be the amount upon which the bonus for each individual shall be computed.

“The profit for the present year, if there be a dividend, will be paid on or after the first day of May. Let every person connected with the mills work so faithfully, making every effort toward a wise economy, that the first dividend shall be an encouraging one.”

John Villard stopped reading the circular and looked across at Salome. She was regarding him with a fixed look of admiration and reverence, such as a good woman feels for but one man in a lifetime. For an instant his pulses leaped; but he was too modest a man to believe in his own good fortune.

“Well, what do you think of it?” he asked.

His words brought her to herself. Her expression faded to one of mere brightness, and became less frankly honest.

“I think it capital,” she said. “I do not see how it can be improved. Will you let me take it home and consider it?”

“Of course,” he assented. “You know I do not pretend it is perfect. But it seems to me we risk nothing in trying it.”

Salome rose to go and reached out her hand for the manuscript. Some pieces had fallen on the table and in gathering them up, their hands brushed against each other.

An electric thrill shot through the frame of each. Salome stood, blushing and sweet, suddenly conscious that a crucial moment in her life had come. Had Villard but spoken, had he but clasped the hand that still remained near his!