She leaned back upon her pillows, and smiled deeply and dreamily to herself. She glanced about her fine bedroom, so exquisitely furnished if sparse of those gimcracks and crowded plush beloved of the “lower classes.”
“I trust,” said Miss Beardsley, with austere delicacy, “that matters have adjusted themselves since the birth of the child?”
Lilybelle, not being a lady, found nothing offensive in the inquisitiveness which the better classes feel is their right with regard to less exalted personages. She answered with simplicity: “Oh, yes. In a way. He—ain’t—I mean, isn’t, quite so—flighty. But I always knew he’d come to that, and settle down.”
She paused, gazed bemusedly before her, and settled herself comfortably on her pillows.
“It was very hard for Mr. T. I can see that now. What was I? Nothing but a Lancastershire lass, as couldn’t read her letters nor do a real sum proper like, and helped her Ma on the farm and worked in her uncle’s inn. And here was Mr. T., a gentleman—gentry. It was a far fall for him. It was no wonder he couldn’t abide me at first.”
“He shouldn’t have married you then,” said Miss Beardsley, censoriously, still being ignorant of the facts surrounding this marriage. “But once having married you, he should have made the best of it.”
The light entirely left Lilybelle’s face, but it retained its new calm and serenity. She continued, as if Miss Beardsley had not spoken: “But he seems more resigned, like, to things now. I knew it would be so.
“Wot—what—does a gentleman expect of marriage, any gentleman? A wife as knows her place and has respect for him, and minds her ways and her tongue. A wife as makes him comfortable. That’s all. Gentlemen don’t care so much for fine ladies as knows books and music. They thinks—think—they do, but they don’t, really. Give ’em a wife as knows how to darn socks, cook a good meal, make a comfortable bed, and be there to hear their troubles and put up with their rages, all serene like, and that’s all they ask. I knew it was only a matter of time before Mr. T. would come around. He’d find out, I says to myself, that even though I’m not gentry and don’t know my letters, that I’m the same as any other woman after all. And more loving than most.”
Miss Beardsley, though inflexibly opposed to the male sex, and outraged by Lilybelle’s serene disposition of more refined and educated women, yet had to admit there was profound wisdom in her observations. But this only confirmed her opinion that men were a low sex, easily placated by creature comforts.
She said, admonishingly: “No doubt you are quite right, Lilybelle, though it seems a little deplorable. I am glad for your sake, however, that matters are adjusting themselves.”
Lilybelle did not answer. Her smile was bemused and confident.
The door opened violently to admit John. His dark face was distraught and wretched, and his black eye, as it flashed on Miss Beardsley, had a dullness of smoldering misery. A moment later it turned upon Lilybelle, who smiled calmly and said: “Mr. T. you’ve missed the baby’s feeding. Is it a fine day outside?”
But John said nothing. He walked across the sun-streaked floor to the baby’s crib, and stood there for a long moment looking down at his first-born.
Miss Beardsley, who had perception, understood that she was not wanted here. She rose and with dignity said that she must really go and attend to some household matters. She left the room with stately quietness, and closed the door after her.
Lilybelle lay on her pillows and waited with that strong serenity which was like the earth itself. John, except at more violent intervals, had almost lost his power to frighten or sadden her. As he looked down at the baby, she looked at him. Her face became very soft and gentle and full of love.
He turned to her with abrupt and jerky movements, and she saw his suffering. It did not matter to her what had caused it. He was suffering as a child suffers, and the first thing a child desires is comfort and tenderness.
She lifted her round white arms to him speechlessly, and smiled a little. She had never done this before, but in her simplicity she did not reflect on her audacity, and that this gesture might be rudely repudiated, and with scorn and hatred.
He stared at her, his eyes flickering with fire. He stiffened. If there had been the slightest taint of cajolement or theatrical falseness in Lilybelle’s attitude, he would have broken into harsh and furious laughter. But he saw nothing but the pretty young girl in her white bed, her lovely curling bright hair on her shoulders, and her expression of tenderness, sympathy and understanding.
Instinct, rather than desire, sent him stumbling towards her, made him fall on his knees beside the bed and drop his aching head upon her breast. He felt her arms enfold him with warmth and infinite love. He heard her speechless murmurs of compassion and love. The hot anguish in his heart mysteriously began to abate. The love of all simple women implicit in Lilybelle seemed to him like cool water washing over burning wounds, an undemanding love that asked nothing else but to comfort.
“O Lilybelle,” he groaned, and pressed his cheek more urgently against her breast. “O my God, Lilybelle!”
“Yes, yes,” she whispered. “Yes, my love.”
CHAPTER 25
Mr. Livingston surveyed his superintendent, John Turnbull, with his pale blue and watery eyes. He sat in stiff dignity behind his desk, his white hand lying impotently upon it.
He had absolutely no aversions or likings for his young superintendent, for he was a man of no strong emotions at all. John, to him, was only a piece of machinery, or a young human being who had been installed in Everett Livingston & Company for expedient reasons. Beyond that, he did not exist. He was useful. He was competent, restless and keen, and his dour expressions and occasional vehemences had not disturbed Mr. Livingston at any time. He had allowed John to have his way, knowing vaguely that behind John’s decisions stood the form of the genial Mr. Wilkins.
But today he saw John as more than just a man who represented usefulness to his company. He had suddenly enlarged to Mr. Livingston, had annoyingly come close, had exuded a disagreeable warmth which had begun to thaw the edges of Mr. Livingston’s remote personality. In short, he had forcibly impinged himself on Mr. Livingston’s notice, and this was enough to arouse in that gentleman an active if frigid dislike.
He really saw John for the first time, and decided that the “feller” was objectionable. Did he not know that his function was to advance the prosperity of the company and not to intrude his humanness upon his employer?
“You were saying, sir?” asked John with impatient courtesy.
Mr. Livingston moved his head in his high starched collar, then regarded John with affronted dignity.
“I was saying that I seriously object to this importation of most—ah—objectionable persons into my New England mills. Really inexcusable creatures, Mr. Turnbull. I cannot understand what you are thinking of.”
John compressed his big angry lips as he strove for a reasonable voice. “Mr. Livingston,” he said at last, “you must really understand the situation. There are not enough men and women, or children, in the community about the mills to expand production. We have all the farm folk and the town folk we can procure. Now, with new mills we need more labour. It is very simple. Too, the natives demand too high a rate of wages. These French-Canadians will work for much less. We can hire their children for not more than two dollars a week. Surely you can see the possibilities?”
Mr. Livingston contemplated the possibilities, and his ascetic white face momentarily became uncertain and confused. He toyed with a paper knife.
John continued: “We can hire the men for seven dollars a week, the women for five. These people breed like rabbits. Most of them have five to eight children. For twenty-two dollars a week we can hire a whole family, whereas a similar family of old New Englanders would demand at least fifty. I cannot see how you can object to this, then.”
Mr. Livingston rubbed his lower lip against the faint frosty line of his mustache. Then he said: “How young are the children y
ou contemplate engaging?”
John shrugged. “The New Englanders will not allow their children under twelve to work, even for four hours a day, and all day Saturday, after school. They insist upon schooling. But the French-Canadians care nothing for schooling, and, in fact, their priests deplore it except in rare and unusual instances. We can hire children as young as seven years old for several hours a day.”
Mr. Livingston rose with a graceful movement that even his age could not destroy. With bent head he slowly paced up and down the room. John watched him, then smiled darkly.
“Mr. Wilkins said to me yesterday: ‘Do the little beggars good. Nothin’ like hard work to keep down high feelin’s from eatin’ too much meat.’”
Mr. Livingston continued to pace the bare cold office as if he had not heard.
“Mr. Wilkins,” continued John, the darkness of his smile increasing, “points out the mills in England, where children as young as five and six work ten hours a day. To their distinct betterment, he urges.”
Mr. Livingston said in a low voice: “I’ve been to Manchester. I’ve seen the women and the children in the cotton mills.” He shivered. “I’ve heard them coughing their lungs out, from the chaff and the fluff. I’ve seen the women and the girls in the coal mines—” He paused. His elegant and aristocratic face tightened. He continued, in a lower but firmer voice: “I’ll not have such things in my mills.”
For an instant an inscrutable look passed over John’s features. But he said nothing just then.
Mr. Livingston continued, as if recounting a scene of indescribable horror to himself: “They crawled on their hands and knees, almost naked, blackened like blackamoors, streaming with sweat. They snarled and sobbed like dying animals. And the men who used them for this infamous thing sat in their country estates drinking their wine and fattening up their fine ladies and their strumpets.”
John, who had risen when his employer had risen, played absently with the pens on Mr. Livingston’s desk. He had looked up alertly once, then had become silent again.
Mr. Livingston drew a deep breath, for unaccustomed emotion choked him. ‘‘I’ll not have this thing in America, at least not in my own mills, Mr. Turnbull. Not so long as I have one heart-beat left.”
“I did not know you were such a democrat, Mr. Livingston,” murmured John, sardonically.
But Mr. Livingston heard his words, and a dull flush crept under the crumpled parchment of his skin. He drew up, haughtily. “I am no democrat, Mr. Turnbull, at least not the sort you imply so unpleasantly. But, there are things men cannot do, in decency and honour. I shall not have babes in arms strangling in my mills.”
John turned to him impatiently, but he said with enough respect: “Let us discuss this sensibly, Mr. Livingston. These French-Canadians are inured to hardship. Their priests have seen to that. They are ignorant, illiterate, stupid, greedy and dull as dogs. Work is nothing to them. The children work from the moment they walk—”
The flush increased on Mr. Livingston’s face, and his blue eye flashed with unusual ire. “You don’t see the implications of all this, Mr. Turnbull? Of course, you are an Englishman, who does not accord humanity to those who are poor and unprotected. But I am an American. I deplore many things most strenuously, and hope that the day will come when a worker will be regarded as more than a beast of burden. I love my country, Mr. Turnbull, strange as it may seem to you. And because I love her, I fear for her safety, virtue, integrity and health. There is a threat implicit in the entrance to America of such as these—these French-Canadians. Not that, of course, I do not feel the utmost compassion for them, and admit they are human, also. They are not responsible for their sad condition. But I cannot see that by allowing them to enter with their illiteracy, their stupidity, their adherence to a foreign, repugnant, and alien hierarchy, they advance the welfare of America. Nor are they of those honoured and persecuted men who have come to America to escape that very hierarchy, and to enjoy the blessings of liberty. They come solely for money, for even the pittance you would dole out to them.”
He paused. John was looking at him steadfastly. But Mr. Livingston knew very little of men, could not read his expression.
Mr. Livingston continued, in a more hurried and stronger tone:
“Though this will no doubt bore you, Mr. Turnbull, I will recall to your memory the fact that America was founded by noble men who could not endure slavery, ignorance, persecution and superstition in their native lands. They came here to breathe the air of freedom, of—of liberation. Later, other men like them followed them, from France, from Germany, from England, and other nations. We give them all honour,” and Mr. Livingston inclined his white and narrow head. “But these others, such as the wretches my competitors and other business men and industrialists are bringing here now on cattle boats—they are a menace and a threat to America. They come in their filth, like a pack of hungry and ravening wolves, escaping famine. America, and her ideals, mean nothing to these creatures. She is a land to be plundered. She is a land to be perverted by their own alien allegiances, their obnoxious religions, their desperate tyrannies. She is a land to be seduced and enslaved by the Papist hierarchy, to be brought under the thumb of Rome. Mr. Turnbull, sir, I shall not be guilty of such betrayal of my country, my people! The Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideology of America shall not be betrayed by conscienceless scoundrels, not for all the money in the world!”
He paused by his desk, and with his frail patrician hand he struck on it loudly and dully. He was trembling slightly. One parchment cheek was twitching, and the blue fire of his eye was strong and resolute.
“Mr. Turnbull, I ask you to reflect on the future of America, should these alien hordes inundate her, and breed as they do. What of the future, Mr. Turnbull? Or, perhaps, you do not care. But I do! America will become rich and powerful. She will excite the lust and greed of less fortunate and vigorous nations. What then? They will assail her. They will seek to overcome her. Who will defend her then? These dark aliens, these ravagers, who owe allegiance not to America but to their greed and their appalling pagan religions? I assure you, Mr. Turnbull, they will not! They will not love her, no more than any plunderer or devourer loves that which he has plundered or devoured. Nor, having by biological accident so little intelligence, will they be stirred by any battle-cries of ‘liberty, freedom, equality!’ They will be but sounding words to them. A man needs integrity and tolerance and intelligence to understand these precious things.”
“You are looking too far into the future, sir,” said John. His head was bent. He lifted the cover of a thick ledger on Mr. Livingston’s desk and glanced at the contents absently.
Mr. Livingston drew a strangled breath. He stood by his desk, so straight, so thin and so rigid that he seemed to gain in height.
“I am thinking of the future of America,” he said. “The future of a race of people that stemmed strongly from England! A future of men of integrity, strength, cleanness and intelligence. How dare I betray them, and their children and grandchildren? Is America to become the vassal of some benighted, foul and illiterate European nation? Is her best in blood and manhood to be destroyed by the same monsters that have destroyed Spain, France, Italy and Russia? Never, sir! Never, never!”
He was overcome with his own rare passion. He sat down, holding stiffly to the arms of his chair while he slowly lowered his trembling and emaciated body to its seat. “Never, never,” he whispered, above the choking of his lungs.
John sat down also. He seemed very thoughtful. Then he quietly opened the ledger.
“Let us look at things more realistically, sir. Of course, the final decision is with you.
“Here is Appleton’s Mills, and the reports of their progress. And Gorth’s mills, and Brownings’, all situated in the same localities as Livingston’s. You have maintained a higher standard than theirs, with regard to labour. Your rates have been much higher. But, nevertheless, your workers have not produced more. In fact, they have produced less. Mr. Wilkins would
have some pungent observations to make about that!”
He smiled humorously at Mr. Livingston, but that gentleman’s white face remained frozen and rigid.
“Now, thanks to our new processes and patents, we have taken a huge spurt in the cotton industry,” continued John, biting his lip and trying to control his own thoughts. “We have gone very far, in a year. Your competitors have shown much anxiety. In order to maintain their profits, they have been importing these French-Canadians, and even some shiploads of people from Europe. They are now abreast of us. They will go on, and pass us. That is inevitable. You cannot get sufficient labour in New England, even if your competitors let their American workers go to you. Which I doubt they will, considering everything.”
He closed the ledger, and looked fixedly at his employer, who was even whiter if possible.
“Mr. Livingston, I can tell you now that if we refuse to employ alien labour we shall lose what we have already gained. You can’t compete with your competitors in the market. Unless, of course, you sacrifice all your profits—to America.”
He paused, and smiled his dark and ironical smile, which had something twisted in it. Then, as Mr. Livingston said nothing, he shrugged.
“I doubt, however, that your stockholders will be so patriotic, and so delicate about the welfare of America. They have invested because they saw the chances of good return. You owe a duty to them, also. In short, we hire foreign labour, or we go under. That will be the end of Everett Livingston & Company.”
He added, very softly: “The end. Bankruptcy. Ruin. The disappearance of Livingston from the cotton trade.”
Mr. Livingston suddenly came to life with wild and feverish passion. He cried: “We have the best processes! The buying public will not be deceived! We can do business honourably and survive!”
John smiled again, and fatalistically shrugged. “Then it becomes my unpleasant duty, Mr. Livingston, to inform you that Mr. Wilkins has instructed me to tell you that in the event you are obdurate he will not allow you to use our patents.”