Salome Shepard, reformer

by Helen M. Winslow

“Poor fool!” he told himself, a hundred times that night. “As if she would even look at me—a poor factory-boy, self-educated, self-trained, and—yes, self-conceited!”

He remembered his youth; how poor he had been; how he had studied by moonlight to save the expense of a candle; how he had worked all through his boyhood in a cotton-mill, that he might help his older sister to support their mother; how, after his mother had died and his sister married, he had remained poor and alone and almost friendless; how little he had seen and known of women; how utterly lacking he was in all the graces of society and the refinements that he supposed to come from outward polish only; in short, how utterly at variance with her tastes and interests and aims his life had been.

He remembered her life of luxury, of travel, of careful training, and the indulgence of cultivated, æsthetic tastes. What was he, that he should dare to even think of her? What but a presumptuous fool, that he should dream of touching even her frail, white hand? And yet, her eyes had drooped when they met his that day, when they all went over the Hall together. Stay—what did it mean? Did she?—could she feel?—but, no. He was a presumptuous idiot to think of it.

He paced the floor for an hour. Then he lit a cigar and, under its peaceful influences, he tried again to fix his mind on the mills, on the changed condition of things, on anything,—but her. Still, constantly, over and over, her tall, white-robed figure took shape in the curling wreaths of vapor, and he fell to dreaming what it would be like to have a happy home of his own, with her as its center and joy.

Again, he was exasperated with himself and called himself hard names. He threw away the half-smoked weed and resolutely prepared for bed; but only to toss wearily about, combating himself on the old grounds until the dawn, pushing its way through the crevices of his blinds, told him to rise and set his face again toward the workaday world. It was the first time that hard-working, earnest, practical John Villard had ever passed a sleepless night.

He had hardly seen how he was to bear the daily contact with Salome, after that. He was too modest and too honest with himself to dream that there might be any hope for him. He had, at one time during the night, thought of leaving the mills, and going away to try a new and easier life than this promised to be. Then he called himself a coward and remembered her words:

“I have depended on you from the first,” and he determined to stay, cost what it might. Besides, all his hopes and interests were with the Shawsheen workers. No: he could not leave them, he could not leave her now.

So he went forth in the morning, unchanged in outward appearance, and yet, stronger and better for this first grand fight with himself. And he met her with his usual deferential bow and smile when, by and by, she came to the office for her usual morning’s study of business affairs.

It was unanimously agreed that the opening of the Hall had been a grand success. The mill-hands, themselves, seemed to feel the new attitude into which they had suddenly stepped, and were already brighter and more hopeful.

On her way to the mills, Salome had met a young overseer, who was hurrying in to town for something. She greeted him pleasantly, calling him by name, when, to her surprise, he stopped.