Part 6

“Ah, well,” he protested good-naturedly, “I’m sure Mrs. Eaton does not mean to be impertinent; and I’m sure she does appreciate her brother’s kindness. Only, she is trying to work out a great problem on an individual basis, which is of course very foolish. But the dear little lady must not be allowed--And yet”--He paused, frowning and perplexed.

“Ah, but, Mr. West, when she has the assurance to quote the Bible to her own brother--it seems to me that’s rather impertinent? Fancy! something about ‘doing unto others’--and ‘being partaker’ if she spent the money that had been ‘wrung from the strikers.’ Upon my word! ‘Wrung!’ As I said to my husband, ‘Upon my word, I never heard of such a thing.’”

“Neither did I,” William West said dryly. “We are all of us in the habit of taking our dividends, and not looking at the way they are earned. Mrs. Eaton is certainly unusual.”

“Well, do you think you can influence her?” Mrs. Blair insisted. “I don’t mean to stay with us; I don’t think that would be possible or desirable now. But to let Mr. Blair give her an allowance, so that she can take care of the children. It is positively wicked to think how she is ruining the children!”

“Won’t she take any money from your husband?”

“Not a cent, if you please! Not a penny. She keeps saying that if she can’t feel that the source of the money is all right, she can’t spend it.” Mrs. Blair cuffed her dog prettily with her muff, and kissed his little sleek head. “Isn’t she a goose, Pat, you darling?”

“Her principle would turn the world upside down,” the clergyman said.

“That’s just what I say!” cried Mrs. Blair.

“If we all said we would have nothing to do with the ‘blood of the just person,’ what would become of the railroads and the coal-mines and the oil trusts? What would become of our dividends from industrial stocks if we insisted on knowing that the workmen were honestly paid? How could we eat meat, if we looked into the slaughter-house?”

Mrs. Blair looked puzzled.

“And she is going to work for her living?” He was profoundly moved. “Good heavens, out of the mouths of babes! What a primitive expression of social responsibility! But surely, Mrs. Blair, we must respect her honesty? As for her judgment, that’s another matter.”

Eleanor Blair’s blank astonishment left her speechless for a moment; then she flung up her head haughtily.

“Mr. West, do you mean to say”--she began.

“My dear Mrs. Blair,” he said quietly, “I mean to say that little Mrs. Eaton, in her simple way, puts her finger right on the centre of this whole miserable question, in which, directly or indirectly, we are all involved: she has recognized our complicity. Of course she is going to work the wrong way--at least, I suppose she is. God knows! But what courage,--what directness!”

“Do I understand,” Eleanor Blair said, rising, “that you approve of my sister-in-law’s extraordinary conduct?”

“I approve of _her_,” he said, smiling. “If you ask me whether I think she is doing right, I should say ‘Yes,’ because she is acting upon her conscience. Is she doing wisely? No; because civilization is compromise. We have either got to bow in the House of Rimmon, or go and live in the woods like Thoreau and eat dried peas. I’ll tell her so, if you want me to. But as for attempting to influence her, I cannot do that. The place whereon we stand is holy ground.”

Mrs. Blair picked up her dog and set her teeth; then she looked slightly beyond the clergyman, with half-shut eyes, and said,--

“Will you be good enough to have my carriage called?”

VI

“I never would have been brave enough,” Mrs. Eaton said meekly to Mr. West, when the dreadful step was actually taken, “I never could have done it, but I knew Mr. Eaton would have wished it; and, besides, I felt I was taking the food of those poor people.”

“Well, no,” he began, “that is really not reasonable”--But he stopped; this timid creature could not reason--she could only feel. “Fools,” he said to himself, as he left her, “rush in where the political economist fears to tread. She is a fool, poor little soul, but”--

The winter had passed heavily away. Mrs. Eaton had succeeded in getting a place in Mr. Davis’s shop--“where,” the proprietor used to say, “having Robert Blair’s sister for a saleslady is money in my pocket! She’s better than a ‘fire-and-water bargain sale.’” So she stood behind a counter and sold ribbon, and was stared at and whispered about. But she had very keen anxieties about food and clothes, and the children’s discontent lay like a weight upon the mother’s heart--which ached, too, with the pain of the second wrench from the affection and kindness of her family. Fortunately her peculiar logic did not lead her to reject the Baptist deacon’s money, which was certainly much more doubtful than her brother’s. By some mental process of her own, the fact that she worked for it seemed to make its acceptance moral. She had no leisure now to work for Mr. West; but the remembrance of his patience and gentleness always made a little pause of peace in her heavy thoughts. It was a hard, bleak life for this silent little creature; and the rector of St. James, himself a silent soul, watched her live it, and pondered many things.

The strike had broken in February. The men went back to their work--defeat, like some bitter wind, blowing the flames of resentment into fiercer heat, which “next time” would mean destroying victory.

“Will it be like Samson pulling down the temple upon himself?” William West wondered, depressed and hopeless.

It was night--a summer night; sweet and still over in the old-fashioned part of Mercer, where the fragrance of roses overflowed the high brick walls of the gardens. Here in the mill district it was not sweet, and all night long the mills roared and crashed, and the flames bursting out of vast chimneys flared and faded, and flared again.

William West was alone in his library. His sermon for the next morning had been finished early in the week; he had looked it over the last thing, and now the manuscript was slipped into its black velvet cover. He sat, his head on his hand, tapping with strong, restless fingers the arm of his chair. The old question, always more or less present in the mind of this man, was clamoring for an answer: How far are we responsible? Through how many hands must dishonest money, cruel money, mean money, pass to be cleansed? Is it clean when it comes to me--this dividend or that? Shall a man, or a railroad, or a trust deal iniquitously with one of these little ones, and I profit by it? Shall I trace my dollar to its source, and find it wet with tears and blood, and reject it? Or shall I decline to trace it, and buy my bread in innocence? Even the chief priests refused the thirty pieces of silver! Am I an accomplice? For that matter, is the Christian Church an accomplice? What does it say to the philanthropy of thieves? Priests used to take toll from the plunder of robbers, and say mass for their souls in return. Nowadays--“I cover my eyes, but I hold out my hand,” he said to himself.

Well--well! The Reverend William West, in his way, was doubtless as great a fool in asking unprofitable questions as was Lydia Eaton. That the existing order would be turned upside down by the introduction of the sense of personal responsibility there can be no doubt. Such an introduction would be the application to the complex egotism of the nineteenth century of the doctrines of a Galilean peasant, who was a communist and the Saviour of the world. It would be the setting forth in individual lives of the spirit of Jesus Christ, the most revolutionary element that could possibly be introduced into society. We are none of us ready for that.

At least William West was not ready; he had no intention of making himself ridiculous, no matter if he did ask himself unanswerable questions; he was not ready to throw away present opportunities and destroy his influence. Yet, as for Mrs. Eaton--

“Talk about martyrs!” he said to himself, as he sat there at midnight thinking of her, of her hard life, of her splendid foolishness.

“Well, there is one thing I could do for her. Why not? Good God, how selfish I am! I suppose she would think my money was clean? Yes, I could at least do _that_.”

This was no new thought. It had been in his mind more or less for months. He only faced it that night more strenuously.

So it came about that by and by he rose, his face set, his mouth hard. He took a key from his watch chain, and opened a little closet in the side of the chimney, and took out a box. He laid it on the table, and again sat down in his revolving chair, and stared blankly ahead of him. Then he opened it. There were some letters in it, and a picture, and a crumbling bunch of flowers that looked as though they had once been pansies; he held them in his hand, a bitter sort of amusement in his eyes. The letters he put aside, as though their touch stung him. At the photograph he looked long and intently. Then he bent the card over in his hand, and it broke across the middle. Hastily he gathered these things together and went over to his fireplace. A fire had been laid during the cold spring rains, and the logs were dry and dusty. At the touch of a match, they sputtered and broke into a little roaring flame. William West put his handful of letters and the flowers and the picture gently down in the midst of it, and then stood and watched them burn. When there was only a white film left, on which the sparks ran back, widening and dying, he went over to his desk, and with a certain strong and satisfied cheerfulness he began to write:--

MY DEAR MRS. EATON,--You and I have spoken more than once of your action in leaving your brother’s house, and you know, I am sure, how profoundly I honor and respect your courage in acting upon your convictions. It is this respect which I am venturing to offer you in asking you to honor me by becoming my wife. My sincere regard and appreciation have been yours ever since I first knew you, and if you will consent to make a home for yourself and the children in my house, it will be a home for me, and you know what that will be for a lonely man. If you will consent, I shall be always,

Faithfully yours, WILLIAM WEST.

As he folded the sheet of paper and thrust it into the envelope there was a whimsical look in his eyes.

“A _love_-letter!” he said to himself; but his face was very gentle and tender.

* * * * *

However, the answer to the letter was all that the most ardent lover could desire.

COUNTING THE COST

I

ANNIE GRAHAM, the young woman with whom this story concerns itself, lived in a Western manufacturing town. Her home was, both inside and outside, like hundreds and thousands of other American homes, a cheap frame house, in a cheap, respectable suburb; a house without any other beauty or refinement than cleanliness and a certain amount of rather coarse comfort. Her father was a workingman, as his father had been before him. He was a gasfitter, and went to his work every morning with a greasy leather bundle under his arm, and a cheerful heart in his breast. First, because he had plenty of work and, having no imagination, never worried about the future. But mostly because of a comfortable fact to which, when not occupied with the practical details of his trade, he devoted his thoughts; the fact being that there was a certain tidy bit of money in the bank for his Annie,--money which he had hoarded up, little by little, saved out of car-fares, and tobacco, and clothes; money which meant privation and courage, and slow, persistent, heavy toil. It amounted to a little over fifteen hundred dollars, and he hoped it would be twenty-five hundred before he died. What Annie would do with it when he was gone was the only direction in which Johnny Graham’s fancy worked. Would she rent a better house, maybe, than this little one they had lived in since she was twelve; or would she get herself fine clothes or a piano or books? He thought that she would probably get books. Annie was so fond of reading! He was very proud of this fondness for reading, and used to tell his fellow-workmen about it, and say he had seen her turn over so many pages, in fifteen minutes by his watch. He timed her, he said, and my! but she was the fast reader! He had no idea of placing any restrictions upon the way in which she should spend her inheritance when she got it; he had no feeling about the money as anything but a means of future pleasure to Annie.

“When I’m dead and gone, the afternoon, maybe, of the funeral, they’ll tell her. ‘Annie Graham,’ the lawyer’ll say, ‘your father’s left you a tidy bit of money. It’s twenty-five hundred dollars,’ he’ll say; well, maybe it’ll be twenty-six hundred,--well, say three thousand. ‘Miss Graham,’ he’ll say, ‘here’s three thousand dollars.’ Well, Annie’ll jump. An’ it’ll comfort her,” Annie’s father would think many times a day, smiling, and screwing in his gas-fixtures with his blackened fingers, or scratching a match on his trousers, and hunting for leaks.

He had been father and mother to his little girl ever since his wife died, when Annie was five. He had baked and scrubbed and cleaned for them both when she was a child, and in his clumsy way he had sewed on buttons and darned rents and washed her little face and hands as tenderly as a woman could have done. And when she grew into a big girl and went to the grammar school, he still knew all about her hats and clothes; and he still tried to save her pretty hands, and sifted the ashes, and waited on her, and was proud of her just as he always had been. There was more than one hard-working woman neighbor who would have been willing to “make a good stepmother” to Annie, and who felt, in all honesty, that the gasfitter was spoiling his girl, and that she just only hoped nothing bad would come of it.

“Them girls that’s taken such care of,--well, the dear only knows what happens to them!” the neighbors said, with mysterious pursings of the lips. But so far nothing out of the way had happened to Annie. Nothing “bad” had come of the simple, faithful loving that the child had had.

Annie was eighteen. She was a fresh-looking girl, with an intelligent face, though a little serious for her years. Her placid gray eyes had a rather absent look sometimes, and there was a line on her white forehead that told of thought. Johnny Graham knew what that line meant. He knew with what intensity Annie had applied herself to her studies when she was in school, and how, after she had graduated, and had gotten a place as a “saleslady,” as Johnny expressed it, she still worked and toiled over her books whenever she could find time.

“But she’s mostly figurin’,” he told his friends proudly.

That Annie, at eighteen, had taught herself geometry, and had yearnings for the higher calculus, was a matter of burning pride to the gasfitter, though he had no idea what it was all about.

“I suppose now, Annie, you know all there is in the arithmetics on them subjects?” he said to her one night as he sat in his shirt-sleeves smoking his pipe by the kitchen stove, and looking at his daughter, who, with her pencil pressed against her lips, was frowning over a sheet of calculations. Annie gave a little start and looked up smiling.

“Why, father, dear, I don’t know anything--comparatively.”

“But, Annie, now what’s the good of them lines? Do you cut patterns on ’em? I seen a advertisement saying they’d show you how to cut out dresses on a chart. And there was a lot of them lines drawed on it.”

Annie came over and sat on his knee; she laughed, but she sighed, too.

“No; it’s just working them out that I like,” she said. “I guess I like studying; that’s it.”

“Well, you’re a real student, I guess,” he told her, and passed his rough, grimy hand over her soft hair. “Did I pull your hair?” he said, for it seemed as though she winced; but she only answered by taking his hand and kissing it, which made her father protest, and then cuddle her up in his arms and say, “Well, now, Annie, I think you’re a real scholar.”

They sat in the kitchen, but not because they had not a parlor, like everybody else. There was a best room behind the kitchen, and upstairs two bedrooms, and above them an attic, rented to Dave Duggan, a steady young workman who had lodged with them for nearly a year. Of course, obviously--propinquity being the root of love--he had a tenderness for Annie; and he was referred to by the women who were not Annie’s stepmothers as her “feller.” The parlor, in which the gasfitter rarely sat, was as frankly ugly as the outside of the small, narrow frame house. It had been furnished according to Mrs. Graham’s taste, and it had been religiously unchanged since her death. The tapestry carpet, with its monstrous roses and broad green leaves, had worn and faded into inoffensiveness, and the red rep furniture had suffered the same kindly change; but the knitted tidies were new, and the plush picture frames; and Annie had added the knots of china silk on the chair-backs; and on the wall there was a snow-shovel, painted and gilded and tied with pink satin ribbons, and also some decorated brass placques; on the mantelpiece were two little wooden shoes,--Dave Duggan’s gift,--gilded and adorned with blue satin bows, and used as match-boxes.

To Johnny Graham this terrible parlor stood for art and luxury. As for Annie, she did not know enough to find the snow-shovel painful, nor even the rolling-pin, another gift from Dave, which, covered with plush, hung from one corner of the mantelpiece. She merely thought of these things as “mother’s” and as “presents,” and valued them accordingly. But she would never have dreamed of occupying this fine room unless there was company; and, indeed, the kitchen was far more homelike.

She sat now nestling down against her father’s shoulder, listening to his story of the day’s work: the fine house on the hill where he had gone to mend a fixture; the nice young lady he had seen; and the toilet-table all covered with silver things.

“Why, Annie, now I tell you, there was brushes and combs made out of silver; and there was five little sorts of silver boxes, different sizes and shapes, hearts and rounds mostly. Didn’t seem to have nothing in ’em. I had to move ’em to get at the bracket. What do you suppose folks has such things for? Now a brush made out o’ silver is no sense; it’s heavy. Annie, now, would you like things like that?”

“Indeed, I wouldn’t,” she said. “Think of the trouble they’d be to keep clean.”

“Well, the help does that in them houses, I suppose,” he ruminated. “Annie, now, suppose you had a lot of money, would you buy them things?”

“Indeed, I wouldn’t!” Annie said again, laughing. “No, I know what I’d do. I heard a girl talking about it. There’s a college for girls somewhere in the East, just like there is for young men. I would go to that college and study. My! wouldn’t I study!”

* * * * *

That was the beginning of what some people called the tragedy of Annie Graham’s life, and some the success--it all depends on how you look at it.

Her chance remark about a girl’s college lingered in her father’s thoughts; Johnny Graham had not known that there were such things as women’s colleges. There were primary schools and high schools and “pay” schools, where he supposed the swells sent their children, but his knowledge never went farther than this.

“A college for girls!” Well, why not? He believed girls was smarter than boys any day in the year; anyway his Annie was. He thought about it constantly, when, to save something for that inheritance in the bank, he walked to and from his work; and he thought of it while he worked. He spoke of it, when he had the chance, in a tentative way to two or three persons for whom he was doing jobs of gasfitting. Did they ever hear anything of them girls’ colleges? What was they like? Did they cost money? Once, in the big morning-room of an old-fashioned house, he spoke to an old lady who sat by the fire while he screwed a lava tip on the burner over the mantelpiece. She was an old woman and rich, and so she ought to know about such things, Johnny Graham reasoned; so, with the respectful guilelessness of the American workman, he cleared his throat and said, he wondered, now, if she was knowing anything about girls’ colleges?

The old woman started, and seemed to see him for the first time, and put on her glasses to inspect him.

“What did you say, my good man?” she inquired.

Johnny, unoffended by this offensive term, which means, “you are not so good as I am,” repeated his question mumblingly, with the old lava tip between his lips.

“I have a girl I’m thinking of sending to one of them institutions,” he explained.

The old lady frowned and took off her glasses and tapped them on the arm of her chair.

“You will make a great mistake, my good man. It is a great mistake to educate your daughter above her position.”

Johnny took the lava tip out of his mouth and stared at her.

“Well, now, ma’am,” he said in his slow way, “I don’t see how you make that out. An American girl is an American girl; no matter how you look at it. You can’t educate her above that.”

Upon which the old lady nodded her head and said: “Yes, yes; of course; this is what I’ve always said; this is what we are coming to!”

And Johnny Graham rolled up his tools in his greasy leather apron, and went home, pondering deeply. He was not in the least angry at the old lady; he was simply incapable of understanding her. But that night he thought it over, and pointed out to himself that, after all, if Annie’s mind was set that way, there was no use in her waiting to spend her money till he was dead and gone.

“I’ll probably be livin’ twenty years yet,” he thought, after some calculation, “and Annie maybe would be too old for a girls’ college then. She’d better go now; and anyway it might be a good investment of the money; she might set up as a teacher, maybe, after she got learned. They do say Councilman Welch’s daughter got four hundred dollars for teachin’ in the Primary School; and that’s twenty per cent. interest on two thousand dollars; I believe it’s a good thing!”

It was then that Annie came in, looking, it chanced, a little pale, and, perhaps, a little wistful. Annie was not discontented; she had no aspirations; only the child was vaguely aware of an emptiness in her life. And she had stopped at the Public Library as she came home from her work, and had read an article in a magazine concerning a College for Women in another State.

“That’s what I’d do if I were rich,” she thought, as she walked home. “I’d go there and study.”

So she was a little absent, even when she kissed her father, and heard him tell all about the big house where the rich old woman lived all by herself, because she had quarreled with her only daughter.

“Seems strange, now, to quarrel with your children,” said Johnny, buttering his bread on the tablecloth, and then, tilting his chair back, eating it with great contentment.

After supper he told Annie what he had planned for her. Her amazement at her father’s wealth was almost as keen a delight to Johnny as was her impetuous refusal to use it, and her tears because he was “so good” to her; almost as keen a joy as her final yielding to the logic of his urging, that, after all, the family would be better off if she could teach, and earn a big salary. “Six hundred dollars, maybe,” he said, stretching his imagination for the purpose of convincing her.

So it was arranged. Annie Graham was to go away to study; she was to fit herself to be a teacher; she was to be educated into her father’s intellectual superior; she was to be raised “above her station.” Would it be a failure or a success? Would she be happy or most miserable? Would the little dull, loving, ignorant gasfitter hold or lose his girl?

Well, it all depends upon how you look at it.