Reels and Spindles: A Story of Mill Life

"Hmm. Well, I'm in for it. I'm to remain under the cloud for an indefinite time. If it succeeds – I'll not regret. If it doesn't, maybe the Lord will square it up to my account, against the thoughtless neglect I showed Salome. Now, I'll go out and interview my old acquaintance of the Sierras. I wonder is his voice as mellifluous as erstwhile!"

"Br-a-a-ay! Ah-umph! A-h-h-u-m-p-h!!" responded Balaam, from afar.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PICNIC IN THE GLEN

It is amazing how fast time flies when one is busy. At "Charity House" all were busy, and to all the winter passed with incredible swiftness.

To Amy each day seemed too short to accomplish half she desired, and each one held some new, fascinating interest in that study of life which so absorbed her.

"You're the funniest girl, Amy. Even the lengthening of the days, getting a little lighter in the mornings, week by week, so we can see the sun rise and such things, as we walk to work – I'd never think of it, 'cept for you."

"Now you do think of it, isn't it interesting?"

"Yes, I like it. Things seem to mean something, now I know you. Before, well – 'pears like I didn't think at all; I just slid along and took no notice."

"But it's so wonderful. Everything is wonderful, – even the way the months have gone. Here it is spring, the bloodroot lying in a white drift along the brookside, and the yellow lilies opening their funny tooth-shaped petals everywhere in the woods. Yet only a minute ago, as it seems, the dead leaves were falling, and I was on my way for the first time to work in the mill. I belong there now, a part of it. I have almost forgotten how it used to be when I was so idle."

"Seems to me you could never have been idle, Amy. Anyway, you've got on splendid. The 'Supe' says he never had a girl go ahead so fast. Isn't it grand, though, to be out of the mill this lovely day? Saturday-half means ever so much more fun now than it used to do, and doesn't cost half so much money. Don't worry you half so much either, as it did to go shopping all the time. Say, Amy, I've about got Mis' Hackett paid up."

"I'm delighted; it must be wretched to feel one's self in debt, I think."

"It's mighty nice to feel one's self out of it. I've got you to thank for that, too, 'long of lots of other things. Isn't the club doing fine? We wouldn't have had that, either, but for you."

"Nonsense! Indeed, you would. Hallam was as interested as I in the subject; and as soon as we told Uncle Fred, he was even more eager than we. But it is to father we all owe the most, I think."

"So do I. To dream of a splendid gentleman like him, and such a painter, taking so much time and trouble just for a lot of mill folks, I think it's grand. I don't understand how he can."

"Seeing that his own two children are 'mill folks,' I can, readily," answered Amy, laughing. "But, indeed, I know he would go on with it now just as thoroughly, even if we were not in the case at all."

This talk occurred one lovely afternoon when the half-holiday made a club picnic a possible and most delightful thing. The two girls, Gwendolyn and Amy, were a little earlier than the others, and were on their way to the appointed meeting place, "Treasure Island," a small piece of wooded ground rising in the middle of the Ardsley's widest span. From the island to the banks, on either side, were foot-bridges, and in the grove tables and benches had been built by the lads of the organization. It was an ideal picnic ground, and these were ideal picnickers; for those who toil the hardest on most days of the week enter most heartily into the recreations they do secure.

The girls were passing down into the glen where Amy had once lost her way and been rescued by Fayette. It seemed so long ago that she could hardly realize how few months had really elapsed.

She spoke of the matter to her companion, who seemed to be in a reflective mood that afternoon, and who again remarked upon the change in the mill boy, also.

"Your uncle and Cleena Keegan have made him different, too. He's as proud as Punch of his mushroom raising, isn't he? He owes that to Mister Fred; but, odd! he's as scared of Cleena as if she owned him. He didn't forgive that thing about Balaam, and seems to feel he has a right to him, same's Mr. Metcalf has."

"Poor old Balaam, he's made a lot of trouble, first and last; but I guess he's all right now, only Cleena won't let Fayette talk of him. She says it's 'punishment,' – the only sort she can inflict. I don't understand why she wants him punished, anyway."

"Maybe for stealing him that Christmas night out of Mr. Wingate's stable."

"Possibly; I don't know. She's like a mother puss with her kitten. One minute she pets him to foolishness, the next she gives him a mental slap that reduces him to the humblest, most timid mood. Well, I'm glad the burro business is settled, though it's odd how Fayette covets that animal; and the exercise of going up and down to his work, the days he has to go, isn't hurting Hallam at all. I never knew him to be so well and strong as he seems this spring."

"Amy, how was it about Balaam? Ma says she never heard the rights of it yet. And say, she likes that book you lent her, about the woman went round the world alone, visiting them hospitals, better 'n any novel she ever read. She's going to give up the other story papers soon as the subscription runs out an' take one o' them library tickets you were telling about, or your uncle, where they send the books to you by mail and you can have your choose of hundreds. Say, wouldn't it be prime if we could get a big library here?"

"Grand! We will, some day, too."

"My! You say such things as if you expected them to be. How, I'd like to know?"

"Well, if in no other way, by just us mill folks banding together and making a beginning. Indeed, I think my father would give his own little library as a start. There's a fine one at Fairacres, and I'm hoping when Cousin Archibald comes back he'll get interested in our work and help along."

"Might as well look for miracles."

"I do. I'm always finding them, too. There's one at your very feet. Don't tread upon it, please."

Stooping, the girl pulled Gwendolyn's dress away from a tiny green speck, growing in dangerous proximity to the wood road.

"What's it?"

"This baby fern."

"All that fuss about a fern!"

"It's life, it's struggle. See, so dainty, so fine, yet so plucky, forcing its soft frond up through the earth, among all these bits of rocks; never stopping, never fearing, just trusting the Creator and doing its duty. It would be a pity to end it so soon."

"Amy, did I ever! Well, there it is again. I shall never be able to crush anything like that without remembering what you've said just now. I – I wish you wouldn't. It makes me feel sort of wicked. And that's silly, just for a fern."

"Gwen, anything that makes us more merciful can't be silly. Heigho! there are the picnickers all coming along the banks and over the bridges. Truly, a goodly company, yet we began with just you and Lionel, Mary Reese, Hallam, and me. Now there are a hundred members, old and young. There's one of the everyday miracles for you!"

The vigorous young association which went by the name of the "Ardsley Club" flourished beyond even Amy's most sanguine expectation. Three rooms of "Charity House," the sunny western side of the higher story, had been cheerfully offered by Mr. Kaye as a home for the club. These rooms he had had fitted up under his own supervision, though the work had been done by the members themselves, in hours after mill duties were over. The color mixer had supplied the material with which the once ugly white walls were tinted; and upon the soft-hued groundwork there had been stencilled a delicate conventional design. At one end of the large room designated the "reading room" a scroll bore the legend which old Adam Burns had given Amy as a "rule of life": "Simplicity, Sincerity, Sympathy," and opposite gleamed in golden letters the other maxim: "Love Conquers All."

"Love, Simplicity, Sincerity, and Sympathy, which is the synonym of Love, and forms with it the golden circle," was adopted as one of the by-laws, and it is true that each member endeavored to keep this one law inviolably. The result was a spirit of peace and goodwill rarely found in a gathering of so many varying natures. It had been Mr. Kaye's idea to make the affair one of no expense to the members, outside of his own household, but Frederic promptly vetoed that.

"In the first place, there are none of us rich enough to do such a thing. There will be lights, firing, musical instruments, books, current literature, games – any number of things that cost money. Amy's idea is fine. A club of the right sort will be a powerful factor for good in this community of mill workers, but it must be made self-supporting. If you give the use of the rooms and will act as instructor along some lines, – art and literature, which you comprehend better than financiering, respected brother, – you will have done your generous share. Amy and Cleena will keep the rooms in order, with occasional aid from the girl members – after we secure them. A small sum, contributed by each member, will run the whole concern. People who are as constantly employed as these mill operatives have not the leisure nor means to acquire a book education, but a more intelligent, wider-awake, more receptive class is not to be found. Yet let nobody dare to approach them with anything at all in the nature of 'charity' or mental almsgiving. Your democrat beats your aristocrat in the matter of pride every time, and that is a paradox for you to consider. I relinquish the floor."

"After having exhausted the subject," laughed Hallam. But the subject had not been exhausted. Amy proposed the matter the very next day, at "nooning," and secured the members as mentioned by her to Gwendolyn. In a week the membership had doubled; and as soon as the affair was really comprehended, that it was a mutual benefit organization in the highest sense of the word, applications were plentiful.

Uncle Frederic had been a literal globe-trotter, and his journeyings on foot made him able to discourse in a familiar way of things no guide-book ever points out. Nor did Cleena's good cookery come in for any poor show among these healthy, happy folk. The club paid for the simple refreshments provided at their weekly "socials," and Cleena prepared them. Even this day, for their out-of-door reunion, she had made all the needful preparations, and had been so busy she had scarcely remembered to keep a close watch upon Fayette.

"But troth, it's no more nor right he should take his bit fun with the rest," she remarked to herself, as she pulled the last tin of biscuits from the chimney oven and spread them with sweet butter and daintily sliced tongue. "He's aye restless betimes; and – but it's comin', it's comin', me blessed gossoon!"

But to whom Cleena's exclamation referred it would have been difficult to say, – though possibly to Fayette, as her next words seemed to indicate. For the good creature still "conversed with Cleena" in every instance when she happened to be left alone, it being a necessity of her friendly nature that she should talk to somebody.

"Me gineral's never got over the burro business yet, alanna! An' it do seem hard how 't one has so little an' t' other so much. That Mr. 'Super' Metcalf now, as fine a man as treads shoe leather, never a doubt I doubt, yet himself judgin' it fair, since the man Wingate wanted the beast, the man Wingate should have him. Anyway, there he stands, brayin' his head off in the 'Supe's' stable, in trust for the old man'll never bestride him. Nobody rides him at all, Miss Amy says; yet here's me gineral heart-broke for him; an' the cripple goin' afoot; an' all them little Metcalfs envyin' an' covetin'; an' all because a man who's word is law said he'd take him for rent an' just kept him, whether or no. But a good job it was when Mister Fred come home, with money for rent an' a few trifles, but not much besides. Well, where's the need? Eight dollars a week is Miss Amy's wage now, God bless her! an' Master Hal's nigh the same, – let alone them bit pictures the master's be's doin' constant. Mister Fred's the knack o' sellin' 'em too. Well, if the mistress could see – and hark, me fathers! What's that?"

Down in the fragrant glen and on the little island the hungry "Ardsleyites" waited long for the promised supper; and up on Bareacre knoll things were happening that would provide another sensation for the little town, quiet now since the Christmas horsewhipping episode.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A DOUBLE INHERITANCE IN A SINGLE DAY

Almost before she asked it, Cleena answered her own question.

"The powder! the powder! It's Fayetty a-meddlin'! Oh, is he killed, the witless gossoon?"

Then she turned toward the stairway leading into the cellar, and from whence she had heard the dull roar, and now imagined she saw smoke as she certainly did smell suggestive fumes. She needed not to descend, however, for at the stair's head the lad rushed against her, bruising her with something hard and heavy that he carried, and thus dispelling her first fear of his personal injury.

"Fayetty – Fayetty! Hold by! What's amiss? What's – "

He deposited a box upon the kitchen table, plump in the tray of biscuits, and catching Cleena about the waist began to execute a grotesque dance with her for helpless partner. After a moment she was able to extricate herself from his frantic clutch and to demand sternly: —

"Ye omahaun, are ye gone daft?"

"It's money, Cleena Keegan! It's money! The cellar's full of it! Money, money, money! Chests full, cellars full – oh! oh! oh!"

Then did her eye fall upon the box and the spot where it rested, and indignation seized her soul. With one grasp of her strong hands she flung it to the floor, where it fell heavily, cracked, and burst asunder.

Both were then too astonished to speak. Fayette's wildest dreams had, evidently, come true. Cleena could not believe her eyes. Never in all her life had she seen so many precious coins. They were dimmed by age and moisture, yet, unmistakably, they were of gold, with a few that might be silver. All the fairy tales of her beloved Ireland rushed through her mind, and she regarded the half-wit with a new veneration.

"Sure, you're one o' them elf-men, I believe; that different from ordinary you can even make dollars o' doughnuts. Arrah musha, 'twas a smart decent day when Miss Amy fetched you home to Fairacres! Sent, was ye, to make the old family rich; and the marvel o' cure in your long, lean hands. Troth, I'm struck all of a heap."

But Fayette was not. He had never been so active. He began to gather up the coins which had been scattered by the breaking of the chest and, for want of something better in which to store them, pulled Cleena's apron from her waist and piled them in that. She sat on, silently regarding him. For a few minutes she honestly believed that he was a genuine specimen of the "little people" who were said to make green Erin their favorite home. But when he began to gabble in a hoarse, excited tone of how he had long been expecting this "find"; how he had watched his opportunity when all the household should be absent that he might disobey and use the explosive that would lessen his labor so greatly, she came back to common sense.

"So you've been lookin' for it, have ye? Well, now you've got it, but ye might ha' been killed in the job. What for no? With Mister Fred gone to town an' him tellin' ye most explicit ye should no touch nor meddle at all. Was aught like this found in either of them mushroom ones?"

"I – don't – know," answered Fayette, slowly, still stooping and tying his bundle. "If there was – that man's – got it. It was mine. I begun the digging. I – "

"An' he finished, eh? Well, you take up your pack an' put it here in my dresser. Then go wash your face. Such a sight! Hold, did ye any more harm there below?"

"Harm! harm! to dig such a treasure as this out of my mine? Well, if I used only a little bit of powder and got so much, what a lot I might have found if I'd used more. I'll bet the whole ground is full."

"Oh, ye silly! Put that stuff down. It's makin' ye lose what little sense you've got. An', me neighbor, look here. See them beautiful biscuits all spoiled the day, the day!"

This reminded the lad that he was hungry. He had been hard at work all day in the underground passage, the third and last of those he had set out to make beneath "Charity House." The first two had been completed, the walls shored, the rich beds for mushroom-raising made upon the dark damp floors. Already these beds were dotted with the white growths, that in a marvellous short time would be full-grown mushrooms and finding a place upon many an epicure's table.

That very hour, even, Frederic Kaye was in the city negotiating for their regular sale at profitable prices; and wondering not a little, it may be, at the strange fact that "Spite House," instead of being the barren, unproductive spot at first supposed, would prove instead a veritable mine of support to the whole household. Of that other "mining," with its anticipated results in gold of which Fayette had sometimes babbled, Mr. Kaye took no account. Old Jacob Ingraham who built the house had been a hard, close-fisted man, if all accounts were true, and not at all likely to deposit his money in the ground, when there were investments which would help to increase it. But of old Jacob's wife, history said little, and Frederic never thought.

Fayette placed the apron in the cupboard, as he had been bidden, and when he would have added the broken box also, Cleena prevented.

"Oh, ye dirty boy! That – that mouldy, muddy, nasty thing! No, no! No, no!" and she tossed it unceremoniously into the box of kindling-wood. In the roomy "Dutch" oven in the wall she had baked many of her picnic biscuits, and she regarded the ruin Fayette had wrought among her sandwiches with an air absurdly sad.

Now he had no scruples against a bit of dirt, and had already crammed his mouth full of the broken food, when Cleena looked round and saw him. His mouth was distended with laughter as well as bread, and this provoked her still further. Sweeping her long arm over the table, she brushed all the sandwiches into a big pan that stood conveniently near, and remarked grimly: —

"Not another bite o' better food do you get till them's all ate."

"All right. I like 'em. But what's the picnickers goin' to do?"

"The best they can. An' you're to help. Go wash your hands."

"I have."

"Again, once more; then show 'em to me."

The lad laughingly obeyed. Then demanded: —

"What for?"

Cleena replied by action rather than word. She tied a fresh gingham apron about his shoulders and brought the strings around in front so that his mud-stained clothing was entirely covered. Then she led him to her kneading-table and set a bucket of sifted flour before him.

"Make biscuit."

"How many?"

"Three hundred. Fall to, measure, I'll count."

She did. For two whole hours the pair labored in that kitchen, Fayette kneading, cutting out, slipping the pans into the ovens and removing them; while Cleena spread and cut tongue after tongue, till even more than the original supply had been reproduced. Then she paused and looked up.

There stood Teamster John in the doorway, smiling and watching Fayette's new occupation with genuine surprise.

"Shucks! makin' a cook out of him? Ain't ye rather late with your luncheon? I drove up to carry the baskets down to the 'Island.'"

"Humph! Ready they was, fast enough. But – man, look here," and she opened the cupboard door to draw forth the apron of gold.

"No, you shan't! He shan't touch it! It's mine – it's mine!" cried Fayette, and snatched the bundle from her hands. He had not tied it securely, and again the long-buried coins rolled into the sunlight and spread themselves over the floor.

"To the – land's – sake!"

"They're mine – they're all mine – every single one. I found 'em. I blasted 'em out. Nobody shall touch them – nobody!"

"You – blasted them – out? From the cellar of this house? You – simpleton!"

"Like to ha' done it yourself, hey?"

"No; but I'm sorrier than I can tell that ever you were let to fool with powder. How'd Mister Frederic allow it?"

Cleena answered promptly, "He didn't. He strict forbid it. Yes, I know, I know. It was a chance. If me guardian angel hadn't been nigh, you might never ha' seen old Cleena again. Arrah musha, but I'm that shook up I'd know! What say? Is it time yet for their supper down yon, or what?"

"It'll be a little late, maybe, but never mind. My, my! Chests o' gold! Who'd believe it? Like a story book, now, ain't it? And where, in the name of common sense, did you get all this flour and meat an' fixings, Cleena, woman?"

"Mister Fred. The last day he went to town. He was to buy enough for one picnic, so he brought home enough for two. That's ever his way. He's the good provider, is Mister Fred. Bless him!"

"Exactly. Well, I'll tell you, it is late, so I'll just drive down to tell the youngsters they'd better come up here and eat their supper. They'll be crazy wild for a sight of that chest and what was in it; and if they don't come to-day, they'll be besieging you all day to-morrow. When a thing like this happens, it belongs to the town."

"Don't neither; belongs to me. I found it. I'll keep it. I dare ye!"

"All right, lad. Don't worry. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. I've heard of such things afore now, and never once that they didn't bring trouble. All I'm thankful for is you didn't kill anybody nor smash up the house with your fool blastin'. You won't get another chance to try, if I have to come right here and stay myself;" and he smiled sweetly toward Cleena, who ignored the smile, but agreed with the suggestion.

"Yes; that's right. That's sense. What for no? Troth, to-morrow's a Sunday, an' not to be disturbed o' none such havers. What's a bit of old dollars dug out o' the mud? An' Monday's me wash. Faith, it's sense in small matters ye're havin', Teamster John. Drive yon an' make haste back. I'll spread me a cloth on the grass an' each may eat like a heathen, does he like, that same as he was down in the woods."

"But they shan't touch it – they shan't even see it! It's mine. I'll keep it, understand?"

Cleena understood not only the words, but the lad with whom she had to deal.

"Whist, alanna, would you hide yourself, then? Faith, no; run avick. Put on your Sunday suit, brush yer hair, make yerself tidy, then stand up like a showman at Donnybrook fair, an' pass the time o' day with who comes. What for no? The box an' the gold must be showed. Such a thing can't be hid. Well, then, gossoon, just show it yerself."

So when, not long after, the whole band of merrymakers came trooping over the knoll of Bareacre, they found not only their belated supper spread for them, but a sight to amuse their curiosity in the buried treasure, estimated at various sums by the excited beholders, and with an ever increasing value as the story passed from mouth to mouth.

"It will belong to 'Bony,' of course."

"No; to the Kayes. He doesn't own the house."

"Nor they. If they did, they wouldn't take it from him. They're not that sort of folks."

"But they're as poor as anybody now."

"Archibald Wingate owns the property. I should think it belonged to him."

"The 'Supe' will probably take it in charge."

So the talk bandied back and forth till poor Fayette's weak brain was in a whirl; and amid it all there was one name that fell upon his hearing with a sense of pain, – "Archibald Wingate." The man he hated. Well, of one thing he was resolved – this unearthed treasure might be the mill owner's, but if it were, he should never, never touch it.

Poor Fayette! So he still stood and proudly exhibited the wonder, and told over and again exactly how he had long suspected its existence, and had watched his opportunity, with this result. Since he was happy and watchful, Cleena felt he was secure – for the present. But all the time she longed for Mr. Frederic's return, or even for that of Mr. Kaye, who was abroad upon a sketching ramble. There should be somebody in authority present, since Hallam and Amy were both too young, and Teamster John – well, he might "do at a pinch." In any case, he must remain on guard till a better man appeared.