Between Two Loves. Amelia E. Barr

      Lover or Brother

       Table of Contents

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      BETWEEN TWO LOVES

       Table of Contents

      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."

      Prof. Blackie.

      "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