Part 4

But the fact was Mrs. Blair took the loaves and fishes with a childlike delight which meant appreciation, certainly, but not avarice. She enjoyed her wealth, and her life, and herself, immensely and openly; and that was her charm to her husband, a man immersed in large affairs, sagacious, powerful, and without imagination. He was a cultivated man, because his forbears had been educated people, of sober, comfortable wealth; hence he had gone to college, like other young men of his class, and had traveled, and had acquired an intellectual, or rather a commercial knowledge of Art. But, until he married, every instinct was for power, and the making of money. After that, though the guiding principle remained the same, a sense of beauty did awaken in him. He never flagged in his fierce and joyous and cruel passion for getting; but he delighted in his wife--perhaps as one of his own enormous machines might have delighted in a ray of sunlight dancing across its steel shafts, and flickering through the thunderous whir of its driving-wheel. He loaded the girl he married with every luxury; almost immediately she found she had nothing left to desire--from dogs to diamonds, houses, yachts, or pictures. She, poor child, realized no deprivation in seeing every wish fulfilled, and thought herself the luckiest and the happiest woman in the world. Her money, combined with a good deal of common-sense, gave her the power to interfere helpfully in the lives of less fortunate people. She called it Philanthropy, and found playing Providence to the halt, the maimed, and the blind a really keen interest. Her impulse was always to “manage”; and so, when her husband, frowning, and perhaps a little less satisfied with himself than usual, began to talk about his sister’s affairs, Mrs. Blair was instantly interested.

“Of course her husband’s death will make a difference in her income?” she said, as they went upstairs to the library. “A country minister’s salary doesn’t amount to much anyhow; but”--

“Well, she made her bed,” he interrupted sharply; “she ought to be willing to lie in it!”

“Oh, yes, of course; but now the man is dead, it’s different. I know you want to do something for her, you are so generous.”

He pulled her pretty ear at that, and told her she was a flattering little humbug. “What do you want, diplomat? You’ll bankrupt me yet. Am I to build a palace for Lily? Look here, I wrote that West Virginia college president to-day and told him I’d give him the money he wanted. It’s all your doing, but I get the name of a great educator.”

“Oh, Robert, how good you are! I think that ought to silence the people that say you ‘grind the face of the poor.’ I saw that in the paper to-day. Beasts! and you are so generous! I tell you what I want: I want you to have them come here, your sister and the children”--

“You angel!” he said. “No; that’s dangerous. We mightn’t like the brats. The boy’s name is Silas. I don’t think I could stand a cub named Silas. But the girl wouldn’t be so bad. As for Lily (we used to call her Lily when she was a girl), she is one of those gentle, colorless women, all virtue and no opinions, whom anybody could live with. Rather a fool, you know. But we’ll have them come and make us a visit, if it won’t bore you. If we like it, we can prolong it. Anyhow, I’ll see that poor Lil has a decent income. You know, my father didn’t leave her a cent. The old gentleman said he wouldn’t have ‘that hell-fire Presbyterian use any of his money for his damned heathen!’ But I’ll look after her now.”

* * * * *

Thus it was that a home was prepared for Silas Eaton’s widow; the offer of it came the day after the funeral, when she sat down to face the future. She had gone over her assets, in her halting, feminine way, counting up the dollars on her fingers, and subtracting the debts with a stubby lead-pencil on the back of an old envelope; and she had discovered that when all the expenses of the funeral were paid she would have in the bank one hundred and seventy-five dollars. If she could manage to sell her husband’s very limited library, she might add a few dollars to that sum; but very few.

One hundred and seventy-five dollars! She must go to some city, and go to work, so that Silas and Esther might be educated. She had got as far as that when her brother’s letter came. He would have come himself, he said, but was detained by an annoying strike in one of his rolling-mills, and so wrote to ask her to come, with the children, and visit him for a little while; “then we’ll see what can be done; but don’t worry about ways and means. I will see to all that.”

She read the straightforward, kindly words, her heart beating so she could scarcely breathe. Then she covered her face with her hands, and trembled with excitement and relief. “Oh,” she said, “the children won’t be poor! Robert will take care of us.”

III

When Mrs. Eaton went to Mercer, the change in her life was absolute and bewildering. Robert Blair’s enormous wealth was, at first, simply not to be realized. The subdued and refined magnificence of the house conveyed nothing to his sister’s mind, because she had no standard of value. The pictures and tapestries implied not money, but only beauty and joy, for she had never dreamed of buying anything but food and clothes; so how could she guess that all the money of all her sixteen years on a minister’s salary would not have purchased, say, the small misty square of canvas that held in one corner a wonderful and noble and peasant name?

The first night in the great wainscoted dining-room, with a man bringing unknown dishes to her elbow, with candles shining on elaborate and useless pieces of silver, with the glow of firelight flickering out from under a superb chimney-piece of Mexican marble, and dancing about the stately and dignified room--the beauty and the graciousness and the wonder of it was an overwhelming experience, though she had not the dimmest idea of the fortune it represented--a fortune notorious and envied the land over. That she had had no share in it until now did not wound her in the least; she was grateful for the warmth and the comfort and the kindness, now they had come; she never harked back to the painful years of silence and forgetfulness.

Her brother and his wife watched her, amused and interested; her dazzled admiration of everything was half touching, half droll. But what a confession it was! Eleanor Blair realized this, and she said to herself, warmly, that she would make up to Robert’s sister for the past. She was in her element in arranging her sister-in-law’s future; she made a dozen plans for her in the first week; but her husband laughed and shook his head.

“Wait,” he said; “time enough when we see how we get along.”

But they got along very well. The children, after the first shy awkwardness had worn off, were really attractive. Silas, an eager brown-eyed boy of eleven, lovable in spite of his name, made artless and pretty love to his pretty aunt, who found him a delightful plaything. “The serious Esther,” as her uncle called her, was a friendly little creature, when one came to know her; her common-sense commended her to Mr. Blair, and her dressmaking and her education were an immediate interest to her aunt.

So it came about that the visit was prolonged, and the project of a little establishment of her own for Mrs. Eaton gradually given up; at all events, for the present. It was very satisfactory as it was. The house was so big, they were not in the way; and Mrs. Eaton’s mourning kept her in the background in regard to society--which “was just as well,” Mrs. Blair admitted, smiling to herself--but it made no difference in her usefulness. She was really quite useful in one way or another; she could write an intelligent note to a tradesman, or reply (by formula) to a begging letter; so, by and by, she was practically her sister-in-law’s secretary, and certainly the Blairs had never had either a maid or a butler who could begin to arrange flowers for a dinner party as Mrs. Eaton did. She was silent, and rather vague, but always gentle, and ready and eager to fetch and carry for anybody. She so rarely expressed any opinion of her own, that when she did the two strong and good-natured people who made her life so easy for her could hardly take it seriously. She did, to be sure, decline to change her son’s objectionable name, on the ground that it was his name, and so could not be changed; “and,” Mrs. Blair complained once, “she won’t let me send Esther to dancing-school. I asked her if she thought dancing was wrong, and she said, ‘Oh, no; but Mr. Eaton did.’ Isn’t it funny?”

Robert Blair laughed, and said he would straighten that out. But, somehow, it was not straightened out. Esther teased, and Mrs. Blair was just a little impatient and sarcastic. But Esther did not go to dancing-school.

“I’m sorry to displease you, Eleanor,” Mrs. Eaton said, shrinking as she spoke, like a frightened animal which expects a blow, “but--I can’t allow it. Mr. Eaton would not have wished it.”

Yet, negative as she seemed, the little quiet woman was keenly alive to the advantages of this full, rich life for the children, and, indeed, for herself. Mere rest was such a luxury to her, for she had lived and worked as only a country minister’s wife must. So, to feel no anxiety, to have delicate food, to know the touch of fine linen,--in fact, to be comfortable, meant more to her than even her brother, enjoying his generosity towards her, could possibly imagine.

So life began for his sister and her children in Robert Blair’s beautiful great house in the new part of Mercer,--the new part which is not offended by the sight of those great black chimneys roaring with sapphire and saffron flames, or belching monstrous coils of black smoke, threaded with showers of sparks,--those chimneys and roofs which are not beautiful to look upon, but which have made the “new” part of Mercer possible. When Mrs. Eaton came to her brother’s house, these unlovely foundations of his fortune were still for a month. There was a strike on, and Mercer was cleaner and quieter than it had been for many months,--in fact, than it had been since the last strike. The clang and clamor of the machine-shops, the scream of the steel saws biting into the living, glowing rails, the thunderous crash of plates being tested in the hot gloom of the foundries, had all stopped.

“And, oh dear me,” said Mrs. Blair, “what a relief it is! Of course it’s very annoying to have them strike, and all that, but when one drives into town to get to the other side of the river, the noise is perfectly intolerable. And when the wind is in that direction, we can really hear the roar even out here.”

She said this to her clergyman, who looked at her with a veiled sparkle of humor in his handsome eyes.

“So the puddlers shall starve to make a Mercer holiday,” he said good-naturedly.

“If they choose to strike, they must take the consequences,” she replied, with some spirit. “Besides, they are the most ungrateful creatures! Well, I’m sure I don’t know what we’re coming to!”

“Something may be coming to us,” her visitor said, with a whimsical look, but he sighed, and got up to take his leave. His charming parishioner sighed too, prettily, and said with much feeling,--

“Of course, Mr. West, if there are any cases that need help, you’ll let me know.”

“But, Nellie,” said Mrs. Eaton, who had been sitting silent, as usual, and quite overlooked by the other two, “is there any use in helping the people who are in trouble because they are out of work, and yet not letting them go to work?”

Mrs. Blair laughed, in spite of herself, the protest was so unexpected, and so absurd, coming from this meek source. “My dear,” she said, “you don’t understand; they can go to work if they want to.”

“Well,” Mrs. Eaton said anxiously, “I should think, either they are wrong, and so you shouldn’t help them, or they are right, and they ought to get what they want.”

Her sister stared at her, and then laughed again, greatly amused; but William West put on his glasses and gave her a keen look.

“Mrs. Eaton, don’t you want to help us on the Organized Relief Association?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lydia Eaton, “if there’s anything I can do.”

“I don’t want to steal your services away from any other parson,” he said pleasantly. “I suppose you belong to Mr. Hudson’s flock? You are a Presbyterian, of course?”

“No, sir, I am not,” she said, the color rising in her face.

“Oh, then you do belong to me?” he said smiling.

“I’m not an Episcopalian,” she answered, with a frightened look.

“Then what on earth are you?” Mrs. Blair asked her, laughing.

“I’m not--anything,” she said, her voice trembling; “but, Eleanor, please don’t speak of it. The children must not know it. Mr. Eaton would want them to be members of his church. So we must always go there.”

There was an instant’s awkward pause. Mrs. Blair looked very disapproving.

“Why, Lydia,” she said, “do you mean you don’t believe things? Why, I never had a doubt in my life!” she exclaimed, turning to the minister, who was silent.

Mrs. Eaton caught her breath, and looked at him too, her mild eyes full of pain. “Nobody ever asked me before. I am sorry, but I can’t help it. The Bible says people go to hell; but God is good, so I don’t believe the Bible. But Mr. Eaton would wish me to go to church.”

The perfectly simple logic, so primitive as to stop at “the Bible says,” was irresistibly funny; yet, to William West, infinitely touching. But he put the discussion aside quietly.

“So you will come on our committee?” he said. “We shall be glad to have you.”

But when he went away he laughed a little to himself. “The iron heel of Edwards, I suppose. But how direct! Two and two make four. She is incapable of understanding that they sometimes make five.”

But Mrs. Blair did not dismiss it so lightly. She was annoyed at the protest about the strikers, and that impelled her to straighten out Mrs. Eaton’s religious beliefs. There was some irritation in her voice as she began, but she was in earnest, and stopped in the middle of “proofs” to tell Samuel to say she was “not at home.”

“But, Eleanor, you are,” Mrs. Eaton protested in a frightened way.

“My dear, that is a form of speech.”

“But it makes Samuel tell a lie,” she said nervously.

“Oh, Lily, don’t be silly,” Mrs. Blair said impatiently, and then jumped from hell to the strikers,--though, as it happened, the distance between them was not so great after all. “Really, now, Lydia, I don’t think you ought to speak as you did before Mr. West about the men. In the first place, business isn’t philanthropy, and Robert can’t give in to them. And in the second place, they are behaving outrageously! I should think you would have more loyalty to Robert than to seem to uphold them.”

“I only meant”--Mrs. Eaton began breathlessly.

“Oh, my dear, you don’t know what you mean,” Mrs. Blair interrupted, laughing and good-natured again. “But just remember, will you, how kind Robert is? It seems to me he is always doing things for this ungrateful place. Look at the fountain in the square; that’s the last thing.”

“But wouldn’t the men rather have had running water in the tenements?” Mrs. Eaton said; “there are only hydrants down in the back yards.”

However, as that first year in Mercer slipped by, there were very few such jars. The strike ended early in the fall, and there was nothing to call out any objectionable opinion from Mrs. Eaton on that line.

“As for Lydia,” Robert Blair said once, “you say ‘go,’ and she goeth. She has absolutely no will of her own.”

This was, apparently, quite true. At all events, she had a genius for obedience, and a terror of responsibility. In the organized relief-work which Mrs. Blair’s clergyman had proposed, obedience necessitated responsibility sometimes, and no one knew how the silent little creature suffered when she had to decide anything. But she did decide, usually with remarkable but very simple common-sense.

“And always on the supposition that two and two make four,” Mr. West said to himself. He found her literalness a little aggravating just at first, but it was very diverting. He used to put on his glasses and watch her anxious face when she talked to him or received his orders (for such his requests or suggestions seemed to her); and he would ask her questions to draw out her astounding simplicity and directness of thought, and find her as refreshing as a child. She used to sit up before him, saying, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and looking, with her startled eyes, like a little gray rabbit--for at the end of a year she took off her black dress, and wore instead soft grays that were very pretty and becoming. Her absolute literalness gave him much entertainment; but she never knew it. If she had guessed it, she would have been humbly glad to have been ridiculous, if it had amused him.

And so the first year and a half went by.

IV

It was the next winter that she asked her first question.

“Mr. West,” she said, after making notes of this or that case that needed looking after (for she was practically visitor for St. James now),--“Mr. West, I would like to ask you something.”

“Do, my dear Mrs. Eaton,” he answered heartily.

“I would like to ask you,” she said, her eyes fixed on his, to lose no shade of meaning in his reply, “do you think it would be right for one person to live on money that another person had stolen?”

“If they knew it was stolen, of course not!” he said, smiling. “Has a pickpocket offered to go halves with you?”

“No, sir,” she answered, so gravely that her listener’s eyes twinkled. She made no explanation, but went away with a troubled look. The next time she saw him she had another question:--

“But suppose the person who lived on the money the other person stole needed it very much. Suppose they hadn’t anything else in the world. Suppose their children hadn’t anything else. Would it be their business to ask where it came from, Mr. West?”

“If it was their business to spend it, it would be,” he told her. “Oh, my dear lady, the question of complicity is a pretty big one!” He sighed, thinking how little she realized that she was guessing at the riddle of the painful earth.

Again she went away, her face falling into lines of care. But William West never thought of the matter again. Indeed, he had no time to think of his quiet almoner; those were alarming days in Mercer. The echoes of that storm which shook not only the town, but the very State and nation, are still rolling and muttering in the dark places of the land.

Another strike had begun in October. As for the deep and far-reaching causes, the economic and industrial necessities, the vast plans of organizations and trusts, they have no place in this statement of the way in which one ignorant woman regarded their effects--a woman living quietly in her brother’s house, doing her work, expending her little charities, trying to relieve the dreadful misery of those wintry days, with about as much success as a child who plays beside some terrific torrent and tries to dam it with his tiny bank of twigs and pebbles. Robert Blair’s sister had no economic or ethical theories; she had only an anguished heart at the suffering in that dreary mill town, a dreadful bewilderment at its contrast with the untouched luxury of her brother’s house. That she should find a child in one of the tenements dying at its mother’s barren breast, while her own children fared sumptuously every day; that a miserable man should curse her because her brother was robbing him of work, and warmth, and decency, even, while she must bless that same brother for what he was giving her, was a dreadful puzzle. As she understood the situation, this misery existed because her brother would no longer give even fourteen cents an hour to human beings who had to stand half naked in the scorch of intense furnaces, reeking with sweat, taking a breathless moment to plunge waist deep into tanks of cold water; to men who worked where the crash of exploding slag or the accidental tipping of a ladle might mean death; to gaunt and stunted creatures, hollow-eyed, with bleared and sodden faces, whose incessant toil to keep alive had crushed out the look of manhood, and left them silent, hopeless, brutish, with only one certainty in their stupefied souls: “_men don’t grow old in the mills_.” ... That these things should be, while she was clothed in soft raiment bought by wealth which these desperate beings had helped to create--meant to this ignorant woman that there was something wrong somewhere. It was not for her to say what or where. She had no ambition to reform the world. She did not protest against the “unearned increment,” nor did she have views as to “buying labor in the cheapest market.” She did not know anything about such phrases. The only thing that concerned her was whether she, living on her brother’s money, had any part or lot in the suffering about her? She grew nervous and haggard and more distrait and literal than ever. She wished she dared lay her troubles before the wise, gentle, strong man who, to her, was all that was good and great. But it did not seem to her right to criticise her brother to his clergyman. She never realized how amusing her simplicity might be, laid up against the enormous complexity of the industrial question; to her it was only: “If Robert is rich, and doesn’t give his workmen enough to live on, are not the children and I stealing from the men in living on Robert’s money?”

This little question, applied to the relations of capital and labor, is of course absurd; but she asked it all the same, this soft, negative, biddable creature. She had gone to take some food to a hungry household, and she went away burning with shame because she was not hungry! It had been a cold, bright November day; she went past one of the silent furnaces along the black cinder path to the river-bank, where the flat cones of slag were dumped; some of them were still slightly warm.

It was quiet enough here to think: After all, Robert’s money did so much good; there was the great fountain in the square, and the hospital, and the free night school. And think of what he was doing for Essie and Silas! Oh, it surely wasn’t her business to ask why he cut the men’s wages down!

There was a flare of sunset flushing the calm blue of the upper heavens, and in the river, running black and silent before her, a red glow smouldered and brightened. Behind her, and all along the opposite bank, the furnaces were still. Oh, the misery of that black stillness! If only she could see again the monstrous sheets of flame, orange, and azure, bursting with a roar of sparks from under the dampers of the great chimneys. It would mean work and warmth and food to so many! By some unsuggested flash of memory the parsonage garden came swiftly to her mind. It must be lying chill in the wintry sunset; she could see the little house behind it, with its bare, clean poverty; she wished she were back in it again with the two children! The beauty and the luxury of her brother’s house seemed suffocating and intolerable; and yet would it feed the strikers if she should starve?--the vision of her own destitution without her brother’s money was appalling. She sat down on a piece of slag, a little faint at the thought. Just then, from down below her, on the great heap of refuse, she heard voices.

“Come farther up; they’re hotter higher up,” a woman said shrilly.

Then a miserable little group came clambering over the great cones of cooling slag, and a child cried out joyously, “This here one’s hot, mammy!”

The woman, catching sight of Robert Blair’s sister, though not recognizing her, said harshly:--

“You bet hangman Blair has a fire in his house to-day. Well, thank God, he ain’t made no cut in slag, yet; we can get a bit of warmth here. I wish he may freeze in his bed!”