Now, if he had only expressed himself in decided opposition, there might have been something to hope for in the matter—at least, it would have opened the way for an argument upon the subject; and, then, there was always the possibility that he might be induced to change his mind. However, his provoking approval put the case wholly beyond reach. And so old Simlin, toiling early and late, quietly followed his vocation.
There was not a better moulder in the whole foundry, or one that drew much higher wages. But, then, he was getting old. To be sure, he never had been young, so far as they knew any thing about him, even ten years ago, when, altogether unknown and friendless, he had first made his appearance in the village. But these ten years combined had not worn upon him like the last one. His head now, if once the soot had been removed, would not have shown a single black hair; and his voice was weak and cracked, and there was a visible trembling about the old man’s legs. Perhaps he did imbibe liquor; but nobody had any right to say so, for nobody could prove that it was true. Only of late he had a strangely confused manner when anyone addressed him, and, raising his unsteady hand nervously to his head, would repeat the sentence that had been on his lips a hundred, yes, a thousand times, until it had long ago grown into a stereotyped form—“I ain’t got no relatives an’ nobody to look after, so thar isn’t any sense in workin’ too much.”
Perhaps he really thought that the people would never see that he was straining every effort, using every moment of his time, though, before the sun was up, and often after it was gone, the old man was at his place. And Simlin was always the first on hand if there was an extra job that would bring an extra cent.
But, other than making the assertion that he had no relatives, and nobody depending upon him, and that he did not think it worth while to work over-much, he never carried on a conversation. That there was no one to look after him was a self-evident fact. He lived utterly alone, in a small cabin on the brow of the hill. Rarely a soul but himself ever crossed its threshold. Under the step the gray gophers made their burrow, and, beneath the tall beech trees, that threw down their prickly nuts, the brown weasels played in peaceful groups. The shy quail, sounding their whistle, fled among the ferns; and above, from the myriad branches, the beautiful wild doves mourned out their perpetual sadness. At evening, when the sun went down, and the long line of the Scioto Hills flushed crimson with serene glory; when, by slow degrees, the pageant of departing day withdrew its gorgeous colors; even when the valley below was black with the gloom of night, the western radiance lingered, like the transforming light of some other land, upon the rude cabin, standing on its high and solitary perch.
Empty and bare, it afforded but little protection from the weather, for through it the winds blew in Winter, and the rains dripped in Summer. Simlin’s wants, however, appeared to be few and simple. He seldom had a fire, even at the coldest season. What he subsisted upon, nobody knew. Once, perhaps, in two or three days, he would buy a loaf of coarse bread from the baker in the village, and his table evidently was supplied in the most frugal manner.
The people put down his besetting sin to be avarice; and the hut, if it contained no furniture, was reported to contain wealth enough, hidden away in its obscure cracks and corners, to have draped its dreary boards in the most costly velvet and lace, and encased its walls with marble. Of course, he was a miser. More than ten years now he had been at the foundry, and not a cent of the wages which he drew regularly had he spent, or put so much as a farthing into the savings bank, where many of the hands had laid up quite a pile. But, unlike the majority of misers, the old man never complained of being poor; indeed, he never complained at all, or spoke of money in any way. If the subject was brought up in his presence, he either preserved utter silence or quietly got up and left; and, if driven to the last extremity, and made to say something, he would remark, running into the same old channel, that “It didn’t much matter—he hadn’t any relatives nor any body dependin’ upon him.”
So lonely and forlorn did he seem, and so harmless withal—for the old man never was known to do a mean action, or resent an angry word—that many uncouth kindnesses had been shown him on the part of the hands, with whom he was by no means unpopular. Especially had this been the case latterly; for, though he himself was apparently unconscious of it, so terribly broken had he become that the change was sorrowful to behold; and, rude as were the foundry-workmen, what there was pathetic in the patient manner in which the feeble old man silently worked on told upon them by instinct.
There had even been an interest taken in him up at the great house. Every season, “the colonel,” as the owner and sole proprietor of the Rocky Ford Foundry was called by all the employes, brought his family down from the city to spend a few months rusticating in the beautiful Scioto Valley, where he had built a summer residence for that purpose, and that he might be near his great iron-works at the same time. There was always gay company up at the house—visitors from town, who needed no second invitation to entice them from the dust of the city to this peaceful retreat among the lovely hills of Ohio. Besides, the colonel had a beautiful daughter, and every body liked the “young misses.” Seldom, though, did she ever go down to the foundry; never, indeed unless some special object took her there.
Coming from her home a mile distant—this home for her embowered in perpetual Summer and wrapped in the peace that broods upon the everlasting hills, where she could see, far off, the golden meadow-lands and the more distant Paint Ridge, with its transparent veil of mist; this home from which she had often looked out and listened to the blue Scioto, unflecked with sail or skiff, struggling by day and night to tell its mysterious story, as it flowed forever on its lonely course—coming from this home, over the narrow path that led down the slope to the river’s edge, where the green rushes grew and the wild columbine hung its bells above the water—coming on, past the great rocks, where the scarlet lichens flamed in the sun and the blossoming alder displayed its drifted clusters; coming still with active feet over the velvet moss—coming from the lovely valley, coming from the tranquil hills, when she entered the foundry it seemed like stepping suddenly from the beautiful world into some haunt of evil spirits.
Within the great dingy walls no shining sunlight brightened the air. Dim and cheerless, it hung laden with smoke and vapor, that floated in clouds to the rafters. The harsh clang of heavy machinery, together with the roar of the furnaces, seemed to shake the very building. Among the enormous wheels that whirled with frightful velocity, and the immense belts that whizzed above their heads, the workmen, black and begrimed, looked small, weird and unearthly, moving about upon the damp ground, with its jet-like covering of charred cinders. The place seemed an apparition of demons, performing in some cavern of the lower regions their evil incantations. No wonder the young lady seldom went there. Its gloom fell upon her with a heavy oppression, and her breath only came freely when once more she found herself out in the clear and open sunlight.