Between Two Loves/01
BETWEEN TWO LOVES
CHAPTER I.
LOVER OR BROTHER?
"With cylinder and beam,
And fine conducting skill,
Torture the straitened steam
To work thy reasoned will.
"Then, 'mid thy workshop's dusty din
Where Titan steam hath sway,
Croon to thyself a song within,
Or pour the lusty lay."
"Their love in early infancy began,
And rose as childhood ripened into man."
Success is the one thing forever good, that success which is the reward of the self-helpful and the persevering; and standing in Burley Mill, Jonathan Burley was not inclined to underrate either his own merits or the reward they had brought him. The clickity-clackity clickity-clackity of the looms, the whirr-r-ring of the belts and drums, and the hum-m-ming of the great engine in the regions below, were the noblest of music in his ears. For Burley was proud of his mill, and rather inclined to consider it as the veritable and final cause of sheep and iron. Were there not men on Australian plains, and Tartar steppes, and American prairies, and English hill-sides, whose sole care was the wool which supplied his constantly craving machines?
The dusty daylight was loaded with a thousand subtle odors of oil and wool and dyes, and the sunshine fell upon hundreds of webs, many-colored and bright-tinted, soft and glossy as silk, beautiful with curious devices and borders and reliefs. It fell also upon hundreds of hands, some of them ordinary enough, slipshod both as to mind and body; others bright, handsome, alert, and full of intelligence. The best workers, almost without exception, were women, rosy-cheeked Yorkshire girls, or the more intellectual Lancashire hand, with her wonderful gray eyes, long-fringed, bewitching, and full of feeling. The men had less individuality, and the long, blue checked pinafore and cloth cap, which all alike wore, still further increased their uniformity.
Each worker attended to two looms, and most of them were singing as they watched the shuttles glide swiftly between the webs, and the wefts slowly welding themselves to the warps, and growing into soft merinos and lustrous alpacas. Burley, standing within the door of the long weaving-room, saw everything with a comprehensive eye. He was fond of singing, and he listened with pleasure to the clear, throstle-like warbling of a girl in some solo part, and the stirring chorus lifted by twenty voices around her. It was a favorite hymn of his, and it touched him somewhat, he had no objection to hear its triumphant strains mingling with the clicking of the machinery and the clack of the wayward shuttles; he knew well that men and women who sing at their labor put a good heart into it.
Nature has made many fine fellows in her time, and she meant Jonathan Burley for one of them. He had a grand physique, good mental abilities, and a spiritual nature of quick and lofty sympathies. But when the passion of fortune-making gets hold of a man, it robs, in greater or less degree, all his faculties. So, though the hymn touched some sentiment far nobler than wool, it was wool that was in all his thoughts as his eyes wandered down the long room.
He had his hands in his pockets, but the attitude did not give him that air of indolent unconcern it gives to many men; an observer would have been quite sure that he was only fingering his gold as a stimulus to some calculation of profit and loss. It was strange that the process should have been going on even while he noted each loom, and let the melody of the hymn sink into his consciousness, but it was, and Ben Holden, his chief overseer, when he entered knew it.
"Burley, thou hed better close wi' Dixon for them yams afore he lets them go to somebody else."
"He's welcome to let them go to anybody but me, at that figure."
"If thou hed thy wits about thee thou would take 'em."
"Ben, thou doesn't know iverything. It might be wit to take 'em, but it will be wisdom to let 'em alone. It's a varry queer thing thou will meddle i' my affairs;" but even while uttering the half complaint, he put his hand on Ben's shoulder and went out with him. They stood on the stone steps a few minutes talking very earnestly, the overlooker, in his long, checked pinafore and cloth cap, making a strong contrast to the master in handsome broadcloth and fine linen. And the subject of their conversation was singular, considering the place and business relations of the two men.
"Burley," said Ben Holden, "thou hesn't been to thy class-meeting in five weeks."
"And I'll not be there to-night, Ben."
"My word, but God hes a deal to do wi' some folks before he can get 'em to do right"
"Why, thou knows I'm a bit bothered about my daughter Eleanor and Anthony Aske. They don't get on as well as might be, and I'm none going to fetch my family troubles to t' class meeting. Not I."
"Nay, I niver heard tell of it before. It sounds varry like uncommon nonsense. Eleanor's nobbut a child, it's a queer thing if Aske is letting her dispute with him already."
"Ben, thou art a bachelor. Little thou knows of women, and there's no use in telling thee how they do manage men in these days. St. Paul himself would niver hev believed it, niver!"
Then Burley walked away. There had been no profession of friendship, no ceremony at parting, but the whole tone and attitude of the two men towards each other indicated a sincere affection and perfect confidence. For the inequality between them was more artificial than real. Both had been born in the same small moor-side village, and they had shared together their boyish griefs and joys. Both had begun life in the same mill. Burley had married a rich wife, made money, and became a large mill-owner and a wealthy man. Holden had enough and to spare, and if he had not been as successful in business he had given his spare time to study, and become a favorite local preacher and class-leader. So, if Burley was master in the mill, Holden was in higher things the master's teacher. Each in his capacity spoke plain words to the other, but their mutual attachment was as true and warm as in the days when they had trudged hand in hand to hard work, and shared their scanty meals.
The mention of his daughter's name changed the whole expression of Jonathan's face, and as he climbed the steps to an upper weaving-room it grew dark with anger.
"Let him, if he dares," he muttered; "he'll hev more than a lass to fight with if he does." Then he opened a door, and looked down the rows of ponderous Jacquard looms with their dangling yellow harness, and their silent, patient weavers. One loom was not working, but at another, not far from it, a very handsome woman was busily engaged. She did not look up as Jonathan entered, but she was aware of his entrance, and her face flushed as he approached her. For a moment he watched the different threads of the harness rising and falling as if to a tune; then he said, softly, "Thy brother is away again, Sarah, now what wilt thou do about it?"
"I can't tell, master, till t' time comes, then I'll do my duty, whatever it may be. Hev patience a bit longer wi' him."
"Then it's for thy sake, I can tell thee that." She made a slight negative motion of her head, and bent her face resolutely over the leaves and flowers growing with every motion of the shuttle.
Jonathan then paused at the empty loom. The work in progress was of a beautiful and intricate design, and evidently the labor of a master-hand. He admired it heartily, and catching Sarah's glance watching him, he nodded back to her his approval of it. As he left the room he looked once more at her, and most men would have done the same. Not, perhaps, because of the perfect oval of her face, or of the charm of her large, lustrous gray eyes, but because such a loving, noble soul looked forth from them that one forgot whether the body was there or not.
There was an old tie between Sarah Benson and her master, one which she probably knew nothing of. But Jonathan remembered that he had loved the girl's mother, that he had carried her dinner-can, and gone with her to chapel, and tended the looms next hers, for two happy years. And he knew now that Sarah was very dear to him, though he had never suspected the love until it had become a part of his daily life and dearest hopes.
For when Sarah first entered his mill she was only a child ten years old, and many changes had taken place since. Jonathan, then on the road to fortune, had achieved success, and the only child that his wife left him had been recently married to Anthony Aske, the young squire of Aske Hall, and one of the richest landed proprietors in the county. Her fortune and future were provided for, and Jonathan, yet in the prime of life, a handsome man whose career was assured, hoped now to realize with the woman he loved the domestic happiness which had been his dream thirty years before.
But in all our hopes there is generally some why or if. Sarah did not look at life through the same eyes as Jonathan. She loved with her whole soul a brother, who relied upon her almost as he would have relied upon a mother. And this youth had just those qualities which attach women with passionate strength to their possessor. Handsome, gay, full of beautiful, impossible dreams, quite dependent upon her care and fore-thought for every daily comfort, she yet loved him all the better for his faults and his weakness.
True, when he chose to work, few workmen could compete with Steve Benson. The loveliest designs grew under his fingers, and he had an equal facility in their execution. But he hated any employment which "chopped his days into hours and minutes" and above all things he hated the confinement and noise and smell of the mill.
The trouble with Steve was one which ruins many a promising life. Nature had made him to live with her, and to do his life's duty in some of her free, open-air workshops; and ignorance and untoward circumstances had tethered him to a Jacquard loom in a noisy mill. Sarah dimly understood something of this mistake, but thirty years ago women were not accustomed to analyze life and its conditions. They took it as it came, and thought it enough to follow their catechism and "do their duty in that state of life into which it hath pleased God to call them."
At six o'clock Sarah had reached the little cottage which she called home. It consisted only of three rooms, one down-stairs and two smaller ones above it, but it was beautifully clean and very well furnished. The flag floor was as white as water and pipe-clay could make it, the steel fender shone and glinted in the pleasant blaze of the fire, there was a home-made hearth-rug, large and thick and many-colored, before it, and a little round table set with cups and saucers of a gay pattern; the kettle simmered upon the hob, and Sarah was kneeling before the fire toasting some slices of bread, when the door opened, and a laughing, handsome, dusty fellow entered.
"My word, Sarah, but I am tired and thirsty and hungry! Eh, lass, but I've hed such a jolly tramp of it."
"Wheriver hes thou been, my lad? Burley was rare put out to find thy loom idle."
The last word was broken in two by a kiss, and ere Steve let her face slip from his hands he stroked affectionately the smooth bands of black hair above it.
"Been? Why, I've been all through Elsham woods, and down to t' varry sea-sands, and look 'ee here, my lass!" Then he emptied his pockets on the rug beside her, shells and insects and weeds, and all sorts of curious things.
She could not say a cross word to him, he looked so happy, so perfectly satisfied with his day's doings. He passed over her remark about his loom as if it was a subject not worth speaking about, and began a vivid description of all he had seen and heard. She brought him a basin of water and soap, and a towel, and while he spattered and splashed, he was telling her, in interrupted sentences and with broken laughs, all his adventures.
"There is no tea like thine, Sarah, and no toast either, dear lass;" and when he had drained the pot and emptied the plate, she made him more, and still listened, with apparent interest, to his talk, though her thoughts towards the end of the meal were wandering far from Elsham woods and the sea-side. After it was over and the house-place tidied, she went to her room to consult with her own heart. What was to be done with this loving, charming lad, who could neglect his work, and spend a whole day gathering shells and weeds, and seemingly quite unconscious that he was doing wrong? She had allowed Steve to pursue his own way so long, and yet she was aware that it contained elements of disaster which at some time would be beyond control.
This night, in spite of her apparent content, a question she had long put aside presented itself peremptorily for answer. This road, or that road, which was it to be? She did not distrust her own judgment, and she was a woman who, amid many counsellors, would be very likely to follow her own judgment, yet she wanted some one to advise her to do what she had already determined on.
She put on her best dress and bonnet and went down-stairs. Steve was sitting in the chimney-corner, serenely smoking a long clay pipe. On the table at his elbow there was a jar of tobacco, his violin and his specimens. His face beamed with the luxury of anticipated pleasure, yet as soon as he saw that Sarah was going out he said, "Wait a bit Sarah; I'm none too tired to walk wi' thee."
"Nay, I won't hev thee, Steve. I'm going by mysen to-night, lad."
His nature was too easy and careless to ask where. He laid down his pipe and took up his violin, and as she went up the street, she heard him playing "The Bonnie House o' Airlie." In some subtle way the strains made an unpleasant impression on her, and she walked rapidly onward, never stopping until she reached a quarter of the town where there were no mills, but many squares and terraces of comfortable houses. She unfastened the gate of one set in a small garden, and went in. The main path was lined with hollyhocks of every color, and as she lingered to admire them, the front door opened, and an old lady called to her.
"Sarah Benson, I saw you coming. Walk in."
"Nay, but I was going round, Mrs, Allison. Is t' preacher in?"
"Yes, he is in. There is nothing wrong, I hope, Sarah?"
"Nay, I hope not. I want to tell him summat, that's all."
"Well, then, he is in his study. Go to him."
It was not quite so easy to tell the preacher her trouble as she had thought it would be. She hesitated so much that he said, "Sarah, you must be candid with me. I can't advise you upon half-lights. What is wrong with Steve?"
"He wont stick to his loom, sir, and he's that fond o' rambling about t' country-side that he might as well have no home at all, and I'm feared Master Burley will lose patience wi' him and turn him off, and there's no telling then what will be to do."
"Well, Sarah?"
"The master, sir, he likes me, and he has spoken words that I might listen to if I knew what to do about Steve."
"Do you mean me to understand that Jonathan Burley has asked you to marry him?"
"To be sure I mean that. I am a decent lass, sir, and he would say no wrong word to me."
"You would be a very rich woman, Sarah, and could do a deal of good."
"But not to Steve, there is no love between Steve and Burley. If I married Burley, Steve would go, and I know not where to. He would niver have bite, nor sup, nor day's work from him, and Burley would fret none if he thought I was rid o' the charge o' Steve!"
"And you think Steve needs you? Is that it?"
"I'm sure that Steve needs me. There's nobody loves him but me. I keep a home for him to come to when he's tired out, and if I didn't listen to his fiddling, and his tales o' all he's seen and read, why he'd varry soon find public-houses where he and his fiddle would be more than welcome. I'm sure o' that sir."
"You are very likely right, Sarah. Now, do you love Jonathan Burley?"
"Nay, I think not. I know nothing about love, but it seems to me I hev no heart for any one but Steve."
"Then if you are the good girl I take you to be, Sarah, you will not marry a man you do not love, and you will stand by a brother you do love just as long as he needs your help to keep him out of sin and danger. Steve is not a bad lad, the things he likes are good things if he does not neglect his duty for them. Go home and do the best you can to keep him right."
"Thank you, sir, I will do that for sure, I will."
As she went home, she bought a slice of ham for Steve's supper, and as he ate it, she talked to him of his rambles and his specimens until he was in his very happiest humor. Then she told him how Burley had admired his work, and somehow made him feel that it would not be very hard to go back to it in the morning.
"And, Steve," she added, "suppose thee and me join t' building society, and buy our own cottage. Then thou could hev a bit o' garden and grow all t' flowers in it thou likes best. If thou will only stick to thy loom, it will be varry easy work, lad, and I'm sure there will be no one as will hev a finer garden than thee."
This idea charmed Steve. He declared he would work every day, he would work over-hours for it, and in the glow of this new hope he went to bed. Sarah, also, was full of rest and confidence, and as she went about her common household tasks, Steve heard her cheerfully singing.
"O Lord, how happy is the time.
When in thy love I rest;
When from my weariness I climb.
E'en to thy tender breast.
"And, anywhere or everywhere.
So that I do thy will,
And do my life's work heartily,
I shall be happy still."
For, after all, there was in Sarah's heart a sense of disappointment, and a consciousness of resignation to some duty, which she had set before her own interest and pleasure. She had said, truly enough, that Steve was dearest of all to her; and yet, if—if—she would not think of the ifs at all; still, no woman, perhaps, ever resigned the prospect of wealth, honor, and a true affection without some lingering looks backward.