""Poor Kent!" he said, "how it would distress him to see his children now!
That Nat barely pulled through his fever; but he seems to have taken a new turn since then and is stronger than ever. But I am afraid they are very poor."
"To my astonishment, the voice that replied was Mr. Maynard"s.
""Of course they are," said he impatiently; "but n.o.body will ever have a chance to help them till the last cent"s gone. That Dora would work her fingers off in the mills rather than ask or receive help."
""But good heavens! Maynard, you"d never stand by and see Tom Kent"s daughter in the mills?" exclaimed the doctor.
"I could not hear the reply, for they were walking away. But the words "in the mills" rang in my ears. A new world seemed opening before me. I had no particle of false pride; all I wanted was to earn money honestly. I could not understand why I had never thought of this way. I knew that many of the factory operatives, who were industrious and economical, supported large families of children on their wages. "It would be strange enough if I could not support Nat and myself," thought I, and I almost ran home, I was so glad. I said nothing to Nat; I knew instinctively that it would grieve him.
"The next day after I left him at school I went to the largest mill and saw the overseer. He was a coa.r.s.e, disagreeable man; but he had known my father and he treated me respectfully. He said they could not give me very good wages at first; but if I learned readily, and was skillful in tending the looms, I might in time make a very good living. The sums that he named seemed large, tried by my humble standard. Even at the beginning I should earn more than I had been able to for many months at my needle. After tea I told Nat. He lay very still for some moments; the tears rolled down his cheeks; then he reached up both hands and drew my face down to his, and said, "Dear sister, it would be selfish to make it any harder for you than it must be at best. But oh, Dot, Dot! do you think you can dream what it is for me to have to lie here and be such a burden on you?"
""Oh, Nat!" I said, "if you don"t want to break my heart, don"t speak so.
I don"t have to earn any more for two than I should have to alone; it does not cost anything for you; and if it did, you darling, don"t you know that I could not live without you? you are all I have got in the world." Nat did not reply; but all that evening his face looked as I never saw it before. Nat was fifteen; instinct was beginning to torture him with a man"s sense of his helplessness, and it was almost more than even his childlike faith and trust could bear.
"The next day I told Miss Penstock. She had been as kind to us as a mother through this whole year and a half, and I really think we had taken the place of children in her lonely old heart. But she never could forget that we were her minister"s children; she always called me Miss Dora, and does to this day. She did not interrupt me while I told her my plan, but the color mounted higher and higher in her face. As soon as I stopped speaking, she exclaimed:--
""Dora Kent, are you mad--a girl with a face like yours to go into the mills? you don"t know what you"re about."
""Yes I do, dear Pennie," I said (Nat had called her Pennie ever since his sickness, when she had taken tender care of him night and day). "I know there are many rude, bad men there, but I do not believe they will trouble me. At any rate I can but try. I must earn more money, Pennie; you know that as well as I do."
"She did indeed know it; but it was very hard for her to give approbation to this scheme. It was not until after a long argument that I induced her to promise not to write to Aunt Abby till I had tried the experiment for one month.
"The next day I went to the mill. Everything proved much better than I had feared. Some of the women in the room in which I was placed had belonged to papa"s Sunday-school, and they were all very kind to me, and told the others who I was; so from the outset I felt myself among friends. In two weeks I had grown used to the work; the noise of the looms did not frighten or confuse me, and it did not tire me to stand so many hours. I found that I should soon be able to do most of my work mechanically, and think about what I pleased in the mean time. So I hoped to be able to study at home and recite my lessons to myself in the mill. The only thing that troubled me was that I could not take Nat to and from school, and he had to be left alone sometimes. But I found a very pleasant and faithful Irish boy, who was glad to earn a little money by drawing him back and forth, often staying with him after school till I came home at six o"clock. This boy was the son of the Irish gardener on the overseer"s place. The overseer was an Englishman; his name was Wilkins. He is the only human being I ever disliked so that it was hard to speak to him. His brother, too, the agent who had charge of all Mr. Maynard"s business, was almost as disagreeable as he. They both looked like bloated frogs; their wide, shapeless mouths, flat noses, and prominent eyes, made me shudder when I looked at them.
"Little Patrick soon grew fond of Nat, as everybody did who came into close contact with him; and he used often to stay at our house till late at night, hearing Nat"s stories, and watching him draw pictures on the blackboard. One of the things I had kept was a great blackboard which papa had made for him. It was mounted on a stout standard, so that it could be swung close in front of his chair or wagon, and he would lie there and draw for hours together. Some of the pictures he drew were so beautiful I could not bear to have them rubbed out. It seemed almost like killing things that were alive. Whenever I dared to spend a penny for anything not absolutely needful, I always bought a sheet of drawing-paper or a crayon; for Nat would rather have them than anything else in the world--even than a book--unless the book had pictures.
"One night, when I went home, I found him sitting up very straight in his wagon, with his cheeks crimson with excitement. Patrick was with him, and the table and the whole floor were covered with queer, long, jointed paste-board sheets, with pieces of gay-colored calicoes, pasted on them.
Patrick looked as excited as Nat, and as soon as I opened the door he exclaimed, "Och, Miss Dora, see how he"s plazed with um." I was almost frightened at Nat"s face. "Why Nat, dear," said I, "what are they? I don"t think they are very pretty;" and I picked up one of the queer things and looked at it. "The colors are bright and pretty, but I am sure almost all the patterns are hideous."
""Of course they are," shouted Nat hysterically. "That"s just it. That"s what pleases me so," and he burst out crying. I was more frightened still.
Trampling the calicoes under my feet, I ran and knelt by his chair, and put my arms around him. "Oh, Nat, Nat, what is the matter?" cried I.
"Patrick, what have you done to him?" Poor Patrick could not speak; he was utterly bewildered; he began hastily picking up the prints and shuffling them out of sight.
""Don"t you touch one!" screamed Nat, lifting up his head again, with tears rolling down his cheeks. "Dot, Dot," he went on, speaking louder and louder, "don"t you see? those are patterns; Patrick says Mr. Wilkins buys them. I can earn money too; I can draw a million times prettier ones than those."
"Like lightning the thing flashed through my brain. Of course he could. He drew better ones every day of his life, by dozens, on the old blackboard, with crumbling bits of chalk. Again and again I had racked my brains to devise some method by which he might be taught, as artists are taught, and learn to put his beautiful conceptions into true shapes for the world to see. But I knew that materials and instruction were both alike out of our reach, and I had hoped earnestly that such longing had never entered his heart. I sat down and covered my face with my hands.
""You see, sister," said Nat in a calmer tone, sobered himself by my excitement--"you see, don"t you?"
""Yes, dear, I do see," said I; "you will earn much more money than I ever can, and take care of me, after all."
"To our inexperience, it seemed as if a mine had opened at our feet. Poor Patrick stood still, unhappy and bewildered, twisting one of the pattern-books in his hand.
""An" is it these same that Misther Nat"ll be afther tryin" to make?" said he.
""Oh no, Patrick," said Nat, laughing, "only the pictures from which these are to be made."
"Then we questioned Patrick more closely. All he knew was that Mr.
Wilkins" sister made many of the drawings; Patrick had seen them lying in piles on Mr. Wilkins" desk; some of them colored, some of them merely in ink. The pieces of paper were about the size of these patterns, some six or eight inches square.
""Will I ask Miss Wilkins to come and show yees?" said Patrick.
""No, no," said we both, hastily; "you must not tell anybody. Of course she would not want other people to be drawing them too."
""Especially if she can"t make anything better than these," said Nat, pityingly. Already his tone had so changed that I hardly recognized it. In that moment the artist-soul of my darling brother had felt its first breath of the sweetness of creative power.
"Patrick promised not to speak of it to a human being; as he was going out of the door he turned back, with a radiant face, and said: "An "twas meself that only thought maybe the calikers"d amuse him for a minnit with their quare colors," and he almost somerseted off the door-steps, uttering an Irish howl of delight.
""You"ve made our fortunes! there"ll always be calicoes wanted, and I can draw fifty patterns a day, and I"ll give you half of the first pay I get for them," called the excited Nat; but Patrick was off.
"We sat up till midnight. I was scarcely less overwrought than Nat. He drew design after design and rejected them as not quite perfect.
""You know," he said, "I must send something so very good to begin with, that they can"t help seeing at first sight how good it is."
""But not so good that you can"t ever make another equal to it," suggested I out of my practical but inartistic brain.
""No danger of that, Dot," said Nat, confidently. "Dot, there isn"t anything in this world I can"t make a picture of, if I can have paper enough, and pencils and paint."
"At last he finished three designs which he was willing to send. They were all for spring or summer dresses. One was a curious block pattern, the blocks of irregular shapes, but all fitting into each other, and all to be of the gayest colors. Here and there came a white block with one tiny scarlet dot upon it; "That"s for a black-haired girl, Dot," said Nat; "you couldn"t wear it."
"The second was a group of ferns tied by a little wreath of pansies; nothing could be more beautiful. The third was a fantastic mixture of pine-ta.s.sels and acorns. I thought it quite ugly, but Nat insisted on it that it would be pretty for a summer muslin; and so it was the next year, when it was worn by everybody, the little plumy pine-ta.s.sels of a bright green (which didn"t wash at all), and the acorns all tumbling about on your lap, all sides up at once.
"It was one o"clock before we went to bed, and we might as well have sat up all night, for we did not sleep. The next morning I got up before light and walked into town, to a shop where they sold paints. I had just time to buy a box of water-colors and get back to the mill before the bell stopped ringing. All the forenoon the little white parcel lay on the floor at my feet. As often as I looked at it, I seemed to see Nat"s pictures dancing on the surface. I had given five dollars for the box; I trembled to think what a sum that was for us to spend on an uncertainty; but I had small doubt. At noon I ran home; I ate little dinner--Nat would not touch a mouthful. "You must see the pansies and ferns done before you go," he said.
"And before my hour was up they were so nearly done that I danced around Nat"s chair with delight.
""I know Mr. Wilkins never saw anything so pretty in his life," said Nat, calmly.
"The thought of Mr. Wilkins was a terrible damper to me. Nat had not seen him: I had.
""Nat," said I, slowly, "Mr. Wilkins won"t know that it is pretty. He is not a man; he is a frog, and he looks as if he lied. I believe he will cheat us."
"Nat looked shocked. "Why Dora, I never in my life heard you speak so. You shall not take them to him. I will have Patrick take me there."
""No, no, dear," I exclaimed, "I would not have you see Mr. Wilkins for the world. He is horrible. But I am not afraid of him."
"I meant that I would not for the world have him see Nat. He was coa.r.s.e and brutal enough to be insulting to a helpless cripple, and I knew it.
But Nat did not dream of my reason for insisting so strongly on going myself, and he finally yielded.
"I took the pictures to the overseer"s office at noon. I knew that "Agent Wilkins," as he was called to distinguish him from his brother, was always there at that time. He looked up at me, as I drew near the desk, with an expression which almost paralyzed me with disgust. But for Nat"s sake I kept on. I watched him closely as he looked at the pictures. I thought I detected a start of surprise, but I could not be sure. Then he laid them down, saying carelessly, "I am no judge of these things; I will consult some one who is, and let you know to-morrow noon if we can pay your brother anything for the designs."
""Of course you know that the market is flooded with this sort of thing, Miss Kent," he added, as I was walking away. I made no reply; I was already revolving in my mind a plan for taking them to another mill in town, whose overseer was a brother of one of papa"s wardens. The next day at noon I went to the office; my heart beat fast, but I tried to believe that I did not hope. Both the brothers were there. The overseer spoke first, but I felt that the agent watched me sharply.
""So your lame brother drew these designs, did he, Miss Dora?"
""My brother Nat drew them, sir; I have but one brother, said I, trying hard to speak civilly.
""Well" said he, "they are really very well done--quite remarkable, considering that they are the work of a child who has had no instruction; they would have to be rearranged and altered before we could use them, but we would like to encourage him and to help you too," he continued, patronizingly, "and so we shall buy them just as they are."