A NEW MILL GIRL
The autumn had deepened—the cotton had been picked. The dry stalks, sentinelling the seared ground, waved their tattered remnants of unpicked bolls to and fro—summer's battle flags which had not yet fallen.
Millwood was astir early that morning—what there was of it. One by one the lean hounds had arisen from their beds of dry leaves under the beeches, and, shaking themselves with that hound-shake which began at their noses and ended in a circular twist of their skeleton tails, had begun to hunt for stray eggs and garbage. Yet their master was already up and astir.
He came out and took a long drink from the jug behind the door. He drank from the jug's mouth, and the gurgling echo sounded down the empty hall: Guggle—guggle—gone! Guggle—guggle—gone! It said to Edward Conway as plainly as if it had a voice.
“Yes, you've gone—that's the last of you. Everything is gone,” he said.
He sat down on his favorite chair, propped his feet upon the rotten balcony's rim and began to smoke.
Within, he heard Lily sobbing. Helen was trying to comfort her.
Conway glanced into the room. The oldest sister was dressed in a plain blue cotton gown—for to-day she would begin work at the mill. Conway remembered it. He winced, but smoked on and said nothing.
“'Tain't no use—'tain't no use,” sobbed the little one—“My mammy's gone—gone!”
Such indeed was the fact. Mammy Maria had gone. All that any of them knew was that only an hour before another black mammy had come to serve them, and all she would say was that she had come to take Mammy Maria's place—gone, and she knew not where.
Conway winced again and then swore under his breath. At first he had not believed it, none of them had. But as the morning went on and Mammy Maria failed to appear, he accepted it, saying: “Jus' like a niggah—who ever heard of any of them havin' any gratitude!”
Helen was too deeply numbed by the thought of the mill to appreciate fully her new sorrow. All she knew—all she seemed to feel—was, that go to the mill she must—go—go—and Lily might cry and the world might go utterly to ruin—as her own life was going:
“I want my mammy—I want my mammy,” sobbed the little one.
Then the mother instinct of Helen—that latent motherhood which is in every one of her sex, however young—however old—asserted itself for the first time.
She soothed the younger child: “Never mind, Lily, I am going to the mill only to learn my lesson this week—next week you shall go with me. We will not be separated after that.”
“I want my mammy—oh, I want my mammy,” was all Lily could say.
Breakfast was soon over and then the hour came—the hour when Helen Conway would begin her new life. This thought—and this only—burned into her soul: To-day her disgrace began. She was no longer a Conway. The very barriers of her birth, that which had been thrown around her to distinguish her from the common people, had been broken down. The foundation of her faith was shattered with it.
For the last time, as a Conway, she looked at the fields of Millwood—at the grim peak of Sunset Rock above—the shadowed wood below. Until then she did not know it made such a difference in the way she looked at things. But now she saw it and with it the ruin, the abandonment of every hope, every ambition of her life. As she stood upon the old porch before starting for the mill, she felt that she was without a creed and without a principle.
“I would do anything,” she cried bitterly—“I care for nothing. If I am tempted I shall steal, I know I shall—I know I shall”—she repeated.
It is a dangerous thing to change environments for the worse. It is more dangerous still to break down the moral barrier, however frail it may be, which our conscience has built between the good and the evil in us. Some, reared under laws that are loose, may withstand this barrier breaking and be no worse for the change; but in the case of those with whom this barrier of their moral belief stands securely between conscience and forbidden paths, let it fall, and all the best of them will fall with it.
For with them there are no degrees in degradation—no caste in the world of sin. Headlong they rush to moral ruin. And there are those like Helen Conway, too blinded by the environment of birth to know that work is not degradation. To them it is the lowering of every standard of their lives, standards which idleness has erected. And idleness builds strange standards.
If it had occurred to Helen Conway—if she had been reared to know that to work honestly for an honest living was the noblest thing in life, how different would it all have been!
And so at last what is right and what is wrong depend more upon what has gone before than what follows after. It is more a question of pedigree and environment than of trials and temptations.
“I shall steal,” she repeated—“oh, I know I shall.”
And yet, as her father drove her in the old shambling buggy across the hill road to the town, there stood out in her mind one other picture which lingered there all day and for many days. She could not forget it nor cast it from her, and in spite of all her sorrow it uplifted her as she had been uplifted at times before when, reading the country newspaper, there had blossomed among its dry pages the perfume of a stray poem, whose incense entered into her soul of souls.
It was a young man in his shirt sleeves, his face flushed with work, his throat bare, plowing on the slope of the hillside for the fall sowing of wheat.
What a splendid picture he was, silhouetted in the rising sun against the pink and purple background of sunbeams!
It was Clay Westmore, and he waved his hand in his slow, calm forceful way as he saw her go by.
It was a little thing, but it comforted her. She remembered it long.
The mill had been running several hours when Kingsley looked up, and saw standing before him at his office window a girl of such stately beauty that he stood looking sillily at her, and wondering.
He did not remember very clearly afterwards anything except this first impression; that her hair was plaited in two rich coils upon her head, and that never before had he seen so much beauty in a gingham dress.
He remembered, too, that her eyes, which held him spellbound, wore more an expression of despair and even desperation than of youthful hope. He could not understand why they looked that way, forerunners as they were of such a face and hair.
And so he stood, sillily smiling, until Richard Travis arose from his desk and came forward to meet her.
She nodded at him and tried to smile, but Kingsley noticed that it died away into drawn, hard lines around her pretty mouth.
“It is Miss Conway,” he said to Kingsley, taking her hand familiarly and holding it until she withdrew it with a conscious touch of embarrassment.
“She is one of my neighbors, and, by the way, Kingsley, she must have the best place in the mill.”
Kingsley continued to look sillily at her. He had not heard of Helen—he did not understand.
“A place in the mill—ah, let me see,” he said thoughtfully.
“I've been thinking it out,” went on Travis, “and there is a drawing-in machine ready for her. I understand Maggie is going to quit on account of her health.”
“I, ah—” began Kingsley—“Er—well, I never heard of a beginner starting on a drawing-in machine.”
“I have instructed Maggie to teach her,” said Travis shortly. Then he beckoned to Helen: “Come.”
She followed Richard Travis through the mill. He watched her as she stepped in among the common herd of people—the way at first in which she threw up her head in splendid scorn. Never had he seen her so beautiful. Never had he desired to own her so much as then.
“The exquisite, grand thing,” he muttered. “And I shall—she shall be mine.”
Then her head sank again with a little crushed smile of helpless pity and resignation. It touched even Travis, and he said, consolingly, to her:
“You are too beautiful to have to do this and you shall not—for long. You were born to be queen of—well, The Gaffs, eh?”
He laughed and then he touched boldly her hair which lay splendidly around her temples.
She looked at him resignedly, then she flushed to her eyes and followed him.
The drawer-in is to the loom what the architect is to the building. And more—it is both architect and foundation, for as the threads are drawn in so must the cloth be.
The work is tedious and requires skill, patience, quickness, and that nicety of judgment which comes with intellect of a higher order than is commonly found in the mill. For that reason the drawer-in is removed from the noise of the main room—she sits with another drawer-in in a quiet, little room nearby, and, with her trained fingers, she draws in through the eyelets the threads, which set the warp.
Maggie was busy, but she greeted him with a quaint, friendly little smile. Helen noticed two things about her at once: that there was a queer bright light in her eyes, and that beneath them glowed two bright red spots, which, when Travis approached, deepened quickly.
“Yes, I am going to leave the mill,” she said, after Travis had left them together. “I jus' can't stan' it any longer. Mother is dead, you know, an' father is an invalid. I've five little brothers and sisters at home. I couldn't bear to see them die in here. It's awful on children, you know. So I've managed to keep 'em a-goin' until—well—I've saved enough an' with the help of—a—a—friend—you see—a very near friend—I've managed to get us a little farm. We're all goin' to it next week. Oh, yes, of course, I'll be glad to teach you.”
She glanced at Helen's hands and smiled: “Yo' hands don't look like they're used to work. They're so white and beautiful.”
Helen was pleased. Her fingers were tapering and beautiful, and she knew her hands were the hands of many generations of ladies.
“I have to make a living for myself now,” she said with a dash of bitterness.
“If I looked like you,” said Maggie, slyly and yet frankly, “I'd do something in keeping with my place. I can't bear to think of anybody like you bein' here.”
Helen was silent and Maggie saw that the tears were ready to start. She saw her half sob and she patted her cheek in a motherly way as she said:
“Oh, but I didn't mean to hurt you so. Only I do hate so to see—oh, I am silly, I suppose, because I am going to get out of this terrible, terrible grind.”
Her pale face flushed and she coughed, as she bent over her work to show Helen how to draw in the threads.
“Now, I'm a good drawer-in, an' he said onct”—she nodded at the door from which Travis had gone out—“that I was the best in the worl'; the whole worl'.” She blushed slightly. “But, well—I've made no fortune yet—an' somehow, in yo' case now—you see—somehow I feel sorter 'fraid—about you—like somethin' awful was goin' to happen to you.”
“Why—what—” began Helen, surprised.
“Oh, it ain't nothin',” she said trying to be cheerful—“I'll soon get over this ... out in the air. I'm weak now and I think it makes me nervous an' skeery.... I'll throw it off that quick,” she snapped her fingers—“out in the open air again—out on the little farm.” She was silent, as if trying to turn the subject, but she went back to it again. “You don't know how I've longed for this—to get away from the mill. It's day in an' day out here an' shut up like a convict. It ain't natural—it can't be—it ain't nature. If anybody thinks it is, let 'em look at them little things over on the other side,” and she nodded toward the main room. “Why, them little tots work twelve hours a day an' sometimes mo'. Who ever heard of children workin' at all befo' these things come into the country? Now, I've no objection to 'em, only that they ought to work grown folks an' not children. They may kill me if they can,” she laughed,—“I am grown, an' can stan' it, but I can't bear to think of 'em killin' my little brothers an' sisters—they're entitled to live until they get grown anyway.”
She stopped to cough and to show Helen how to untangle some threads.
“Oh, but they can't hurt me,” she laughed, as if ashamed of her cough; “this is bothersome, but it won't last long after I get out on the little farm.”
She stopped talking and fell to her work, and for two hours she showed Helen just how to draw the threads through, to shift the machine, to untangle the tangled threads.
It was nearly time to go home when Travis came to see how Helen was progressing. He came up behind the two girls and stood looking at them work. When they looked up Maggie started and reddened and Helen saw her tighten her thin lips in a peculiar way while the blood flew from them, leaving a thin white oval ring in the red that flushed her face.
“You are doing finely,” he said to Helen—“you will make a swift drawer-in.” He stooped over and whispered: “Such fingers and hands would draw in anything—even hearts.”
Helen blushed and looked quickly at Maggie, over whose face the pinched look had come again, but Maggie was busy at her machine.
“I remember when I came here five years ago,” went on Maggie after Travis had left, “I was so proud an' happy. I was healthy an' well an' so happy to think I cu'd make a livin' for the home-folks—for daddy an' the little ones. Oh, they would put them in the mill, but I said no, I'll work my fingers off first. Let 'em play an' grow. Yes, they've lived on what I have made for five years—daddy down on his back, too, an' the children jus' growin', an' now they are big enough and strong enough to he'p me run the little farm—instead”—she said after a pause—“instead of bein' dead an' buried, killed in the mill. That was five years ago—five years”—she coughed and looked out of the window reflectively.
“Daddy—poor daddy—he couldn't help the tree fallin' on his back an' cripplin' him; an' little Buddy, well, he was born weakly, so I done it all. Oh, I am not braggin' an' I ain't complainin', I'm so proud to do it.”
Helen was silent, her own bitterness softened by the story Maggie was telling, and for a while she forgot herself and her sorrow.
It is so always. When we would weep we have only to look around and see others who would wail.
“When I come I was as rosy as you,” Maggie went on; “not so pretty now, mind you—nobody could be as pretty as you.”
She said it simply, but it touched Helen.
“But I'll get my color back on the little farm—I'll be well again.” She was silent a while. “I kno' you are wonderin' how I saved and got it.” Helen saw her face sparkle and the spots deepen. “Mr. Travis has been so kind to me in—in other ways—but that's a big secret,” she laughed, “I'm to tell you some day, or rather you'll see yo'self, an' then, oh—every thing will be all right an' I'll be ever so much happier than I am now.”
She jumped up impulsively and stood before Helen.
“Mightn't I kiss you once,—you're so pretty an' fresh?” And she kissed the pretty girl half timidly on the cheek.
“It makes me so happy to think of it,” she went on excitedly, “to think of owning a little farm all by ourselves, to go out into the air every day whenever you feel like it and not have to work in the mill, nor ask anybody if you may, but jus' go out an' see things grow—an' hear the birds sing and set under the pretty green trees an' gather wild flowers if you want to. To keep house an' to clean up an' cook instead of forever drawin'-in, an' to have a real flower garden of yo' own—yo' very own.”
They worked for hours, Maggie talking as a child who had found at last a sympathetic listener. Twilight came and then a clang of bells and the shaft above them began to turn slower and slower. Helen looked up wondering why it had all stopped so suddenly. She met the eyes of Travis looking at her.
“I am to take you home,” he said to her, “the trotters are at the door. Oh,” as he looked at her work—“why, you have done first rate for the day.”
“It's Maggie's,” she whispered.
He had not seen Maggie and he stood looking at Helen with such passionate, patronizing, commanding, masterful eyes, that she shrank for a moment, sideways.
Then he laughed: “How beautiful you are! There are queens born and queens made—I shall call you the queen of the mill, eh?”
He reached out and tried to take her hand, but she shrank behind the machine and then—
“Oh, Maggie!” she exclaimed—for the girl's face was now white and she stood with a strained mouth as if ready to sob.
“Oh, Maggie's a good little girl,” said Travis, catching her hand.
“Oh, please don't—please”—said Maggie.
Then she walked out, drawing her thin shawl around her.