Old Miss wrote an explanatory letter. Hagar knew or ought to know that they had little or nothing but the place. The Colonel had been in debt, but Medway had cleared that off, as it was right that he should, now that he was able to do it; right and kind. But as for ready money—country people never had any ready money, she knew that perfectly well. Medway was now, Old Miss supposed, a rich man, but no one knew exactly how rich, and at any rate it was his money, and living abroad as he did was, of course, expensive. He couldn't justly be expected to do much more than he was doing. "As for your having money to give the Greens, you haven't any, child! Medway has told your grandfather that he wants you from now on to have every proper advantage, but that he does not believe in the way young people to-day squander money, nor does he want you to depart from what you have been taught at Gilead Balm. He wants you to remain modest in your wants, as every woman should be. The money he has put in your grandfather's hands for you this year is to pay for this winter in New York and for wherever you go next summer. He never meant it to be diverted to helping people without any claim upon him that are out of employment. Your grandfather won't hear to any such thing as you propose. He says your idea of coming home and using the money you are costing in New York is preposterous. The money isn't your money; it's your father's money, to be used as he, and not as you, direct.... Of course, it's a hard year, and of course, there are people suffering. There always are. But Jim's a man and can get work, and Thomasine oughtn't to have gone away from home anyhow. They aren't starving, child."—So Old Miss, and more to the same effect, and then, at the end, a postscript. "I had a ten-dollar gold-piece that's been lying by me a long time, and I've taken it to Mary Green and told her to send it to Jim. She seemed surprised, and from what she says and what his letter says, I don't think they are any worse off than most people. You're young, and your feelings run away with you."
Hagar wrote a long, loving letter to Thomasine, and sent her the twenty dollars. Thomasine returned her effusive, pretty thanks, showed that she was glad, and glad enough to have the help, but insisted that she should regard it as a loan. She acknowledged that Jim and she, and therefore Marietta and the babies, had been pretty hard up. But things were better, she hopefully said. She had a place and Jim had a place. His arm was about well, and on the whole, they liked New Jersey, "though it isn't as interesting, of course, as New York."
CHAPTER XVI
THE MAINES
It was the year of the assassination of Sadi Carnot in France, of the trial of Emma Goldman in New York, of much "Hellish Anarchist Activity." It was a year of growth in the American Federation of Labour. It was a year of Socialist growth. It was a year of strikes—mine strikes, railway strikes, other strikes, Lehigh and Pullman and Cripple Creek. It was the year of the Army of Coxey. It was the year of the Unemployed and of Relief Agencies. It was the year when the phrase "A living wage" received currency.
In the winter of 1894 the Spanish War had not been, the Boer War had not been, the Russo-Japanese War had not been. The war between Japan and China was on the eve of being; people talked of Matabeleland, and Cecil Rhodes was chief in South Africa. Hawaii was in process of being annexed. In the winter of 1894 it was the Wilson Tariff Bill, and Bimetallism, and Mr. Gladstone and Home Rule, and the Mafia in Sicily, and the A.P.A., and the Bicycle, and Queen Liliuokalani, and the Causes of Strikes and of Panics, and Electric Traction, and the romances of Sienkiewicz and "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and "The Prisoner of Zenda" and "The Heavenly Twins." Mr. Howells was writing "Letters of an Altrurian Traveller"; George Meredith had published "Lord Ormont and his Aminta." Stevenson, at Vailima, was considering "Weir of Hermiston."
In 1894 occurred the first voting of women in New Zealand. It saw the opening of a Woman's Congress in Berlin. In New York a Woman Suffrage Amendment was strongly advocated before a Constitutional Convention. There was more talk than usual of the Unrest among Women, more editorials than usual upon the phenomenon, more magazine articles. But the bulk of the talk and the editorials and the magazine articles had to do with the business failures and the Unemployed and the Strikes.
The beating of the waves of the year was not loudly heard in the Maines' long, high-ceilinged parlour. The law droned on, bad years with good. Powhatan had speculated and made his little losses. His philosophy this winter was pessimistic, and the household "economized." But the table was still good and plentiful, and the coloured servants, who were fond of him and he of them, smiled and bobbed, and he had not felt it necessary to change his brand of cigars, and the same old people came in the evening. Mrs. Maine never read the newspapers. She rarely read anything, though once in a while she took up an old favourite of her youth, and placidly dipped now into it and now into her box of chocolates. Powhatan kept her supplied with the chocolates. Twice a week, when he came in at five o'clock, he produced out of his overcoat pocket a glazed, white, two-pound box:—"Chocolates, Bessie! Catch!"