Reels and Spindles: A Story of Mill Life

"Fayette, that stare of yours is getting chronic. I wish you'd give it up. Everything I do or say seems to astonish you. What's the matter with me? Am I not like other girls? You must know many down at the mill."

"No, you ain't."

"How different? I'd really like to know."

"Ain't seen you cry once, – or not more 'n once," he corrected truthfully. "An' you left all them things up there, an' the trees, an' the posies, an' everything like that way."

For one moment Amy's breast heaved and her voice choked. Then she jerked her head in a fashion she had when she wished to throw aside unpleasant things and replied: —

"What would be the use of crying? If it would bring them all back, I'd cry a bath-tub full. But it won't. Thinking about it only makes it worse. It had to be, and in some ways I'm thankful it did. It was all unreal and dreamlike up there. I knew nothing about the sorrows and hardships in the real world. But how I am talking! I wonder, do you understand at all what I have said?"

"I couldn't help cryin' when the bluebird's nest fell an' smashed all the eggs," remarked Fayette, whimpering at the recollection. His words were "like a bit of blue sky, showing through a cloud," as the girl often expressed it, when the untaught lad revealed something of his intense love of nature, so strongly in contrast to his otherwise limited intelligence.

"Well, we must forget what's past and go to work. I'll tether the burros out of the roadside while you clean up their shed; and when they come back to find it all sweet and white, like Pepita herself, they'll be as pleased as Punch. Wonder we never thought of having the old stable at Fairacres whitewashed."

"Didn't have me, then," answered the lad.

"Fayette, you're as vain as a peacock. You always say 'ME' as if it were spelled with the biggest kind of capital letters."

"Do I? Hmm," responded Fayette, with a vacant smile.

Then Amy went into the house where Hallam and Cleena were arguing about what rooms should be arranged for the personal use of master and mistress, because Hallam thought his father's likes and habits should take precedence of all others.

During this time of separation from him, the son had grown to think of his parent as a whimsical invalid, only. Oddly enough, with his own physical infirmity, he had come to look upon any bodily weakness of other lads or men as something almost degrading. He had always felt himself disgraced by his own lameness. It was this which had given him so bitter and distorted an outlook upon life, and involuntarily there had crept into his love for his father a feeling of contempt as well.

Something of this showed in his talk with his sister, over this selection of rooms, and shocked her. Then, with loyal indignation she proceeded to enlighten him as to her own view of the subject.

"Now, see here, Hallam Kaye. I don't believe, I can't believe, and I never will believe that from being a brilliant scholar and a wonderfully talented artist my darling father has suddenly become a – a – the sickly, selfish man you seem to imagine."

"Amy! I never said that. I never thought it. I only remember that he has always had the best of everything, and I supposed he always should."

The tears of excited protest rushed into her eyes, but she dashed them away. "Queer, I never cry, hardly ever, unless I'm mad. I am mad at you, Hal Kaye, right straight clear through. You wait and see how father is, after this trouble. All his life he has been petted by mother, who adores him; and that not too agreeable cousin Archibald said the truth about his having had so easy a path all his life. I tell you it isn't for his children to sit here in judgment upon him, nor criticise anything he does; but one thing I believe, he's had a good hard waking up. He hasn't realized the truth. How should he? Mother has always smiled and smiled and seen to everything. He was a genius. He was never to be disturbed. He never has been. Not till now. Now he has been tumbled off his cushions whack! and presently he'll get up – all right."

"Whe-e-ew! You don't mince matters in speaking of your relatives, do you, sweet sister?"

"Not a bit. Just you wait. All the histories we've ever read, all the tales we've ever heard, of gentlemen and gentlewomen, 'aristocrats,' who have had to suffer anything dreadful, show that they have borne the troubles as no meaner person could. The good there is in being of 'family,' it seems to me, is the self-respect that holds us upright, no matter what blows are dealt."

Again Hallam blew a long note. But he looked at his excited little sister with a new admiration.

"Upon my word, Amy, my dear, you are positively eloquent. Who knows but you may one day take to the 'stump,' become a public orator, and lecture, to fill the coffers of that 'family' of which you are so proud."

"No, thank you. I don't need to go abroad to lecture. I find enough subjects right in my own household. Between you and 'Bony' and Miss Scrubbub my life's a burden to me. Now hear me, both of you; for in the language of 'Bonaparty Gineral Lafayette,' 'there ain't none o' ye got no sense 'cept me,' and 'me' says: Fix up the north chamber for a studio. Put all father's things in there. Fix the middle room, which faces east and the sunrise, for a bedroom; and this warm southwestern one for a private sitting room, for mother darling, where she can retreat to think upon her husband's greatness and her children's folly; and where the sweet blessed thing will never be alone one single minute, unless every other member of the family is sound asleep. So that's for the 'retreating' of Friend Salome Kaye. Oh, that she were here this minute! that I could hug the heart right out of her! Fly around, Amy, 'an' set the house to one side,' à la Friend Adam's old housekeeper."

It was wonderful what four pairs of arms could accomplish when love actuated them. "Spite House" had seemed hopelessly bare and dirty when the little household first entered it, but it was far from that by the end of a week's stay. Bare and bleak and unadorned it was still, and the surroundings seemed to forbid that it would ever be any better. But there was not an inch of its surface, outside or in, that had not been cleaned and polished, by scrubbing or whitewash brush. Even the moss-grown roof had been swept by Fayette, standing barefooted and unsupported on the sloping shingles, while he vigorously attacked them. To Hallam this seemed a desecration. The moss had been the one redeeming feature of the roof's ugliness.

"Saints save us! If we leave go that muck up yon, it'll be like me dressin' for mass an' no rackin' down me hair, so it would. No, Master Hal, if riches we can't have, cleanness we can. An' that's aye more pleasin' to God."

The plain, strong furniture which had been in the house had been placed to best advantage; and in the parents' rooms above, as well as the one family living room below, were gathered all that had been brought from dear Fairacres.

A load of wood and another of coal, which Cleena supposed had been sent by Friend Adam and paid for with her money, gave a comfortable look to the woodshed, and in the storeroom was a bag of flour, a side of bacon, a fair supply of vegetables, and a barrel of apples. These the village grocer's lad had brought in his delivery wagon, and it was useless to ask him by whose order. Since they were needed, however, it was well to take them in and to consider them as belonging with the wood and coal.

Finally, the Saturday afternoon arrived on which Hallam and Amy were to go to the Clove, to pass First Day with Adam Burn and their parents, returning before nightfall with the latter, to begin their reunited family life.

Dressed in their freshest clothes, upon Balaam and Pepita, groomed by the willing hands of Fayette, they journeyed gayly down the slope over the familiar road, eager for their visit and the warm welcome awaiting them.

"Do you know, Amy, it's queer that we've never been about alone much, even on these country roads, till now? Losing our home seems to have broken down ever so many restrictions."

"Well, don't you like it? Doesn't it make you feel freer and healthier?"

"Maybe. I'm not enthusiastic over our poverty. I'd be glad enough to go back to Fairacres."

"So would I, if we could live there honestly. I wouldn't go, not for one day, if I could help it, to live in debt as we did."

"Aren't we living in debt just the same now, and much more uncomfortably?"

"I suppose so; though it's different. This time it isn't going to last, and we haven't shut our eyes to it."

"Why isn't it going to last? How can we stop it? I see nothing ahead except starvation."

"Hallam Kaye, the very first thing you ought to learn is to be cheerful. You don't want to be a dead weight on anybody, do you? Well, you will be if you can't look ahead at all to anything bright. You and I are going to work and mend the family fortunes. Then we're going back to Fairacres and do all the good we can with the money we've earned."

"If I were sound – "

"And sensible, you'd race me again to the gate of the Clove."

Burnside-in-the-Clove was a bonny place. The "burn," from which the farm took its name almost as much as from the family which had dwelt there for generations, ran through the velvet lawn and was spanned by a rustic bridge where the well kept driveway curved toward the roomy house.

"Oh! it's so lovely here. The many, many windows, each more cheery and inviting than its neighbor; the old-fashioned door, opened almost all the time; the hammocks, the benches, the flowers, the cool, sweet dairy – this is a home. I guess I'll make ours here instead of at Fairacres, after all," laughed Amy, as they paced sedately over the gravel, the better to enjoy the scene, and now that they had arrived, in no such haste for the meeting with their people.

"I like to go slowly now, don't you, Hal? Because that makes the pleasure 'long-drawn out' and all the sweeter. In a minute mother's face will be in the doorway, with father looking over her shoulder. Friend Adam, blessed man, will hobble after, if he is not too lame; and then we shall jump off and the 'man' will take the burros, and we will go in and hug everybody all round, and eat the biggest kind of a supper – living on dry bread and milk two meals a day can give an appetite! And then one of dear old Adam's 'Spirit' talks; and bed and sleep, and breakfast and meeting, and – "

"'Spite House'!"

"No, Hallam, truly not. Our mother couldn't live in such a place. To-morrow a new life will begin on the barren knoll. 'Charity House' she will have it, and wherever our mother goes, softness and kindness and loveliness are sure to follow."

"Yes, that is so," answered the cripple, thoughtfully. "Well, hear me, Amy. I guess I have been about as much of a wet blanket as I could be, but I'm going to try my very hardest to make things easy for father and mother. Just now, as we rode down the valley into all this peace and quiet, I seemed to see myself exactly as I am. Heigho! but look how green the grass is still, late in the year as it is, and how beautiful the vines on the stone walls. The maples are like a golden glory. My father must have been wonderfully soothed by so much loveliness about him, though he's going to feel it all the – "

"Take care, Sir Optimist, that is to be. You're taking the wrong turn, comrade. Come away from the down to 'has been,' and climb to 'will be,' short metre."

It was all as they said. The mother's gentle face in the doorway, looking rested and less faded for the week passed in the society of a simple, noble man; the father's gay and debonair, as Amy remembered it – how long ago, was it? And last of all Friend Adam, in gray attire, his broadbrim crowning his snowy hair, his expression one of childlike happiness and freedom from care.

He welcomed them both with all heartiness, but Amy was dearest. She had always been, perhaps because she bore the name of his long dead wife, and had always seemed to stand as a child to his childless life.

So after the fine supper was over, while before a blazing fire in another room Mr. and Mrs. Kaye discussed with Hallam all the events of the past week, Amy and the old man who had lived for more than eighty years a blameless, helpful life sat by a window in another place and looked out into the moonlight saying little, but enjoying all.

"Dear father Adam, shall I tell thee" – for with him she always drifted into the sweet speech which was hers by birthright and his for all his life – "shall I tell thee how it seems to me, as if thee had learned every single lesson life and God has had to teach. Thee has had poverty and sorrow, and endured the wrong that others have done thee. Thee has seen thy kindred go away and leave thee alone. It is just like a good soldier who has been in a thick fight and a sailor who has swam in deep waters, but has come out safe on the other side. Thee is so calm and happy, like Mrs. Jones's little Belinda, who sits in the sun and sings and croons to herself, with never a plaything or anything good about her except her own serene happiness. Isn't it?"

"Maybe, child. It may be. It should be, certainly. There should be no care in either extreme of life. Both ends are so close to the Father's house.