Jack wrung his hand warmly.
In May there was quite a jollification over the marriage of two mill-hands. Ben Hay took to wife pretty Rose Connelly; and the coffee-house parlor was denuded of tables and benches, trimmed with evergreens and flowers, and such a merry-making as did one's heart good. There was a bountiful supper, plenty of tea, coffee, and lemonade, dancing, and ice-cream, and the utmost good-humor and good wishes. Connelly père had gone back to his cups, thrown up his situation, come home and stirred up a general "ruction," and had now gone off on a tramp. Ben Hay was to cast his lot with the Connelly household for the present.
"But I tell you what it is, Mr. Darcy," said he, "if any luck comes to Hope Mills, in five years' time I'll have my own little house and garden. I tramped around a bit in the dull times, but I didn't see many prettier places than Yerbury. And, the more I study this business of co-operation, the more I think it will succeed in the end."
Jack experienced a great throb of comfort when he heard such words as these.
Another mill-hand had married Mary Moran. She was not the beauty of Yerbury, by any means, but everybody declared she had improved wonderfully, and that she was the smartest girl in town. Their wedding-party was given at the club-room. It was a larger and rather more boisterous affair; and some of the Morans' warm-hearted Irish friends brought a "dhrop of the craythur" in their pockets, to drink the bride's health. Everybody admitted that there wasn't such another bread-maker in town, unless it was Miss Morgan.
In fact, it was quite astonishing to see what a revolution had been worked in this most important article of diet. The women had learned to distinguish between poor and good flour, and Kilburn's trade in the former had fallen off largely. Of the bread that in Samantha Allen's view "required cast-iron principle to back it up," very little was seen. It had been rather hard work to convince some of the mothers that bread wasn't naturally born into the world heavy and sour, but it had been done.
If Hope Mills failed, the impetus to general knowledge that had been diffused throughout Yerbury would remain and bear fruit. An evening-school had been opened for boys too large to stay at home evenings, and just the right age to fall into temptations. It began with the mill-boys, but it soon drew in others. There was a short session of study, then a talk about some useful art or science. Maverick had treated them to sundry experiments, and explained many general rules of health. Mr. Winston had described Western cities in a vivid and picturesque manner. There had been some astronomy within the reach of all, some philosophy of common every-day things; and it had given the boys ideas above "high, low, Jack."
Darcy tried to find comfort in this when other matters looked dark to him. A little good seed had been sown. The generation growing up would not be quite so dull and brutish. One thing was remarked,—the saloons were not as full. This was laid to dull times, and ascribed to the "revival" of two years ago; but that had not touched the poorer class of Irish and English, who, even during the hardest winter, had managed to find drink-money, when their families were being supported by the relief-store.
Business did "pick up" a little. Prices went lower and lower, however. They looked at their great store of goods with dismay. If the currency question could ever be settled, if we could export more and import less,—though there were people who argued that, the more money we spent abroad, the more it really strengthened us, and money lying idle in our treasury at home was no evidence of prosperity: partly true and partly false reasoning; and, to our astonishment, while we were brilliantly theorizing how to do it, our vain and superficial neighbors across the water, crushed and beaten down by a useless and costly war, and a government of gigantic selfishness, went to work with intrepid courage and industry, and did it.
Meanwhile it must be confessed that Jack's interests were very much divided. The practical part of him never lost sight of the mill. He had the dogged tenacity that holds on with a deathless grip until it conquers, or is wholly beaten. It seemed to him this summer that he had several distinct individualities. He was so deeply interested in Fred and Sylvie! They had slipped into an easy friendship,—a friendship in which neither crossed a certain line, but from widely different motives. Fred's strongest and highest one was honor toward his friend. He began dimly to realize that high culture and refinement of the intellectual senses, a perfect state of outward finish and polish, did not always strengthen the soul's morality and purity. Patience, self-sacrifice, obedience to a creed simpler in words, and yet more comprehensive, than any of his grand philosophies, were needed to form a strong and manful soul. His had been so long bound about with swaddling-clothes, airy, sensuous, fine as a gossamer web, yet strong in beliefs and prejudices. There were times when he felt, through that instinctive knowledge we can never wholly define or explain, that Sylvie Barry belonged to him, that they two could reach a point in mental and artistic life, that she and Jack would never attain. His whole soul cried out for her. With the charm of self-satisfying and blinding theories swept away, he clung passionately to the love that had been only a complacent fancy three years ago. The mere touch of her hand, or glance of her eye, quickened and kindled his entire soul, and made him acutely and agonizingly conscious of the wealth of adoration he had hardly dreamed of possessing. There were moments when her presence filled him with a heavenly satisfaction, when he understood that divine fusion of spirit with spirit in its entirety, when love overcame pride, and he was humble enough to go to her in his poverty.