Salome Shepard, reformer

by Helen M. Winslow

The two superintendents followed the band with speeches that were characteristic of each. Burnham’s, witty and tinged with sarcasm, but friendly and cordial enough; and Villard’s, strong with earnest purpose and full of brotherly love. The matron, Mrs. French, was presented, also, and her few remarks won a friendly recognition among the young folks; and then Salome announced that the meeting would adjourn to the dining-rooms in the basement.

More refined audiences than hers have not been slow to exchange an atmosphere of sentiment and intellectuality for one of prosaic salads and cold meats, and more fanciful ices and coffee; and the Shawsheen operatives were soon encountering a more æsthetic collation, it is probable, than had ever been served them before. But as it was a bountiful one, they acted well their part and found no fault.

The crowning delight of the evening came afterward. The young men were asked to lend a hand, and soon the floor was cleared in the large hall, and word was circulated through the house that the evening’s entertainment would close with dancing. Nothing could have gone so far toward convincing the mill-hands that Salome had meant what she said, than this concession to their social rights, unless it was the fact that she, herself,—the haughty, aristocratic daughter of Floyd Shepard, whom they had looked upon with envy not unmixed with hatred,—that she should lead the dance with the younger superintendent. An orchestra of three pieces was selected from the band of musicians, and Marion and Salome, by turns, furnished the piano accompaniment. Salome claimed her promise from Villard and danced merrily, not only the first figure but several others. Mrs. Soule was too much overcome by all she had seen and heard to endure this, and was taken home; but the others staid until the midnight hour tolled, and the dancers had all bidden good-night to their newly-developed friends and gone home enthusiastic in their praise of the new order of things in the mill régime, and, especially, of the woman who was opening to them the wider doors of opportunity.

XIV.

John Villard passed a wakeful night in his new rooms at Newbern Shepard Hall. A strange and unwonted feeling had taken possession of him; one which he was slow to recognize, but which cried loudly to him of his folly and presumption, even while it refused to be put off.

After that first dance, Salome had paused by an open window and he had stood idly watching her. Suddenly a tremendous desire to clasp her in his arms, to hold her close, to demand her full surrender, swept over him. So sudden and strong was the passion, that it was with difficulty that he kept from seizing the soft hand which lay dangerously near on the window-sill. So over-mastering was it, that he dared not stay or even speak. He turned on his heel and went out under the quiet stars, alone.

In the days when she had held aloof from the mill, and the superintendents scarcely ever saw her, Geoffrey Burnham had regarded her as “something too bright and good for human nature’s daily food,” looking upon her as immensely above him, socially speaking. But now that she had become familiarly associated with them in the daily affairs and interests of the mill, Burnham thought of her as having entered the field of good comradeship, and felt that friendly, if not exactly equal, terms existed between them.

With John Villard it was different. He had begun by looking with a certain degree of scorn upon a woman who held tremendous interests so lightly as she had done in the old days. He had felt for her all the contempt a man who does not know them—a man with serious purposes—may feel for the irresponsible butterflies he imagines society-girls to be. With her deeper interest in the side of life which interested him, and her efforts to raise the standard of the mills, her realization of what to him was a sacred object in life and her devotion to it, his thought of her had changed.

With him, familiar every-day contact had not made of her a comrade, in the ordinary sense of the word. Her beauty and refinement, together with the consciousness which never left his sensitive soul, that it was her wealth and her generosity which made the new conditions possible,—these things only served to raise her to a pedestal where she stood, forever apart from the rest of the universe,—a woman to be revered and worshiped; not a woman to be aspired to.

Suddenly, he found himself in love with her. The tide of feeling which swept over him was one that no man could mistake. It was not enough that he might worship her on her pedestal, with a devotion silent and unknown. He wanted to hold her in his arms. He wanted her eyes to droop before his glance—not to look at him in the steady fashion he knew so well. He wanted to feel her heart beating against his. He wanted to kiss her.