The Fruit of the Tree | Page 5

rate she is coming, and that ought to be a good sign. Did she never show any interest in the mills during her husband's life?"
"Not as far as I know. I've been at Westmore three years, and she's not been seen there in my time. She is very young, and Westmore himself didn't care. It was a case of inherited money. He drew the dividends, and Truscomb did the rest."
Miss Brent reflected. "I don't know much about the constitution of companies--but I suppose Mrs. Westmore doesn't unite all the offices in her own person. Is there no one to stand between Truscomb and the operatives?"
"Oh, the company, on paper, shows the usual official hierarchy. Richard Westmore, of course, was president, and since his death the former treasurer--Halford Gaines--has replaced him, and his son, Westmore Gaines, has been appointed treasurer. You can see by the names that it's all in the family. Halford Gaines married a Miss Westmore, and represents the clan at Hanaford--leads society, and keeps up the social credit of the name. As treasurer, Mr. Halford Gaines kept strictly to his special business, and always refused to interfere between Truscomb and the operatives. As president he will probably follow the same policy, the more so as it fits in with his inherited respect for the status quo, and his blissful ignorance of economics."
"And the new treasurer--young Gaines? Is there no hope of his breaking away from the family tradition?"
"Westy Gaines has a better head than his father; but he hates Hanaford and the mills, and his chief object in life is to be taken for a New Yorker. So far he hasn't been here much, except for the quarterly meetings, and his routine work is done by another cousin--you perceive that Westmore is a nest of nepotism."
Miss Brent's work among the poor had developed her interest in social problems, and she followed these details attentively.
"Well, the outlook is not encouraging, but perhaps Mrs. Westmore's coming will make a change. I suppose she has more power than any one."
"She might have, if she chose to exert it, for her husband was really the whole company. The official cousins hold only a few shares apiece."
"Perhaps, then, her visit will open her eyes. Who knows but poor Dillon's case may help others--prove a beautiful dispensation, as Mrs. Ogan would say?"
"It does come terribly pat as an illustration of some of the abuses I want to have remedied. The difficulty will be to get the lady's ear. That's her house we're coming to, by the way."
An electric street-lamp irradiated the leafless trees and stone gate-posts of the building before them. Though gardens extended behind it, the house stood so near the pavement that only two short flights of steps intervened between the gate-posts and the portico. Light shone from every window of the pompous rusticated fa?ade--in the turreted "Tuscan villa" style of the 'fifties--and as Miss Brent and Amherst approached, their advance was checked by a group of persons who were just descending from two carriages at the door.
The lamp-light showed every detail of dress and countenance in the party, which consisted of two men, one slightly lame, with a long white moustache and a distinguished nose, the other short, lean and professional, and of two ladies and their laden attendants.
"Why, that must be her party arriving!" Miss Brent exclaimed; and as she spoke the younger of the two ladies, turning back to her maid, exposed to the glare of the electric light a fair pale face shadowed by the projection of her widow's veil.
"Is that Mrs. Westmore?" Miss Brent whispered; and as Amherst muttered: "I suppose so; I've never seen her----" she continued excitedly: "She looks so like--do you know what her name was before she married?"
He drew his brows together in a hopeless effort of remembrance. "I don't know--I must have heard--but I never can recall people's names."
"That's bad, for a leader of men!" she said mockingly, and he answered, as though touched on a sore point: "I mean people who don't count. I never forget an operative's name or face."
"One can never tell who may be going to count," she rejoined sententiously.
He dwelt on this in silence while they walked on catching as they passed a glimpse of the red-carpeted Westmore hall on which the glass doors were just being closed. At length he roused himself to ask: "Does Mrs. Westmore look like some one you know?"
"I fancied so--a girl who was at the Sacred Heart in Paris with me. But isn't this my corner?" she exclaimed, as they turned into another street, down which a laden car was descending.
Its approach left them time for no more than a hurried hand-clasp, and when Miss Brent had been absorbed into the packed interior her companion, as his habit was, stood for