If you want to kill a girl for going back to work to save herself from starvation, do it!
The opposing force moved aside with an almost imperceptible motion. Ellen looked like a beautiful child, her light hair tossed around her rosy face, her eyes full of the daring of perfect confidence. She in reality did not feel one throb of fear. She passed the picket-line, and turned instinctively and marched backward with her blue eyes upon them all. Abby Atkins sprang forward to Ellen's side, with Sargent and Joy and Willy Jones and Andrew. Andrew kept calling to Ellen to come back, but she did not heed him.
The little army was several rods from the pickets before a shot rang out, but that was fired into the air. However, it was followed by a fierce clamor of “Scab” and a shower of stones, which did little harm. The Lloyds marched on without a word, except from Sadie Peel. She turned round with a derisive shout.
“Scab yourselves!” she shrieked. “You dassen't fire at me. You're scabs yourselves, you be!”
“Scabs, scabs!” shouted the men, moving forward.
“Scab yourself!” shouted Sadie Peel.
Abby Atkins caught hold of her arm and shook her violently. “Shut up, can't you, Sadie Peel,” she said.
“I'll shut up when I get ready, Abby Atkins! I ain't afraid of them if you be. They dassen't hit me. Scab, scab!” the girl yelled back, with a hysteric laugh.
“Don't that girl know anything?” growled a man behind her.
“Shut up, Sadie Peel,” said Abby Atkins.
“I ain't afraid if you be, and I won't shut up till I get ready, for you or anybody else. I'm goin' to have my nearseal cape! Hi!”
“I ain't afraid,” said Abby, contemptuously, “but I've got sense.”
Maria pressed close to Sadie Peel. “Please do keep still, Sadie,” she pleaded. “Let us get into the factory as quietly as we can. Think, if anybody was hurt.”
“I ain't afraid,” shrieked the girl, with a toss of her red fringe, and she laughed like a parrot. Abby Atkins gripped her arm so fiercely that she made her cry out with pain. “If you don't keep still!” she said, threateningly.
Willy Jones was walking as near as he could, and he carried his right arm half extended, as if to guard her. Now and then Abby turned and gave him a push backward.
“They won't trouble us girls, and you might as well let us and the men that have sticks go first,” she said in a whisper.
“If you think—” began the young fellow, coloring.
“Oh, I know you ain't afraid,” said Abby, “but you've got your mother to think of, and there's no use in running into danger.”
The pickets were gradually left behind; they were, in truth, half-hearted. Many of them had worked in Lloyd's, and had small mind to injure their old comrades. They were not averse to a great show of indignation and bluster, but when it came to more they hesitated.
Presently the company came into the open space before Lloyd's. Robert and Lyman Risley and several foremen were standing at the foot of the stairs. The windows of the factory were filled with faces, and derisive cries came from them. Lloyd's tall shaft of chimney was plumed with smoke. The employés advanced towards the stairs, when suddenly Amos Lee, Dixon, and a dozen others appeared, coming with a rush from around a corner of the building, and again the air was filled with the cry of “Scab!” Ellen and Abby linked arms and sprang forward before the men with an impetuous rush, with Joy and Willy Jones and Andrew following. Ellen, as she rushed on towards the factory stairs, was conscious of no fear at all, but rather of a sort of exaltation of courage. It did not really occur to her that she could be hurt, that it could be in the heart of Lee or Dixon, or any of them, actually to harm her. She was throbbing and intense with indignation and resolution. Into that factory to her work she was bound to go. All that intimidated her in the least was the fear for her father. She rushed as fast as she could that her father might not get before her and be hurt in some way.
“Scab! scab!” shouted Lee and the others.
“Scab yourself!” shrieked Sadie Peel. Her father was one of the opposing party, and that gave her perfect audacity. “Look out you don't hit me, dad,” she cried to him. “I'm goin' to get my nearseal cape. Don't you hit your daughter, Tom Peel!” She raced on with a sort of hoppity-skip. She caught a young man near her by the arm and forced him into the same dancing motion.
They were at the foot of the stairs, when Robert, watching, saw Lee with a pistol in his hand aim straight at Ellen. He sprang before her, but Risley was nearer, and the shot struck him. When Risley fell, a great cry, it would have been difficult to tell whether of triumph or horror, went up from the open windows of the other factories, and men came swarming out. Lee and his companions vanished.
A great crowd gathered around Risley until the doctors came and ordered them away, and carried him in the ambulance to the hospital. He was not dead, but evidently very seriously injured.
When the ambulance had rolled out of sight, the Lloyd employés entered the factory, and the hum of machinery began.
Fanny and Andrew stood together before the factory after Ellen had entered. Andrew had started when he had seen his wife.
“You here?” he said.
“I rather guess I'm here,” returned Fanny. “Do you s'pose I was goin' to stay at home, and not know whether you and her were shot dead or not?”
“I guess it's all safe now,” said Andrew. He was very pale. He looked at the blood-stained place where Lyman Risley had lain. “It's awful work,” he said.
“Who did it?” asked Fanny, sharply. “I heard the shot just before I got here.”
“I don't know for sure, and guess it's better I don't,” replied Andrew, sternly.
Then all at once as they stood there a woman came up with a swift, gliding motion and a long trail of black skirts straight to Fanny, who was the only woman there. There were still a great many men and boys standing about. The woman, Cynthia Lennox, caught Fanny's arm with a nervous grip. Her finely cut face was very white under the nodding plumes of her black bonnet.
“Is he in there?” she asked, in a strained voice, pointing to the shop.
Fanny stared at her. She was half dazed. She did not know whether she was referring to the wounded man or Robert.
Andrew was quicker in his perceptions.
“They carried him off to the hospital in the ambulance,” he told her. Then he added, as gently as if he had been addressing Ellen: “I guess he wasn't hurt so very bad. He came to before they took him away.”
“You don't know anything about it,” Fanny said, sharply. “I heard them say something about his eyes.”
“His eyes!” gasped Cynthia. She held tightly to Fanny, who looked at her with a sudden passion of sympathy breaking through her curiosity.
“Oh, I guess he wasn't hurt so very bad; hedidcome to. I heard him speak,” she said, soothingly. She laid her hard hand over Cynthia's slim one.
“They took him to the hospital?”
“Yes, in the ambulance.”
“Is—my nephew in there?”
“No; he went with him.”
Cynthia looked at the other woman with an expression of utter anguish and pleading.
“Look here,” said Fanny; “the hospital ain't very far from here. Suppose we go up there and ask how he is? We could call out your nephew.”
“Will you go with me?” asked Cynthia, with a heart-breaking gasp.
If Ellen could have seen her at that moment, she would have recognized her as the woman whom she had known in her childhood. She was an utter surprise to Fanny, but her sympathy leaped to meet her need like the steel to the magnet.
“Of course I will,” she said, heartily.
“I would,” said Andrew—“I would go with her, Fanny.”
“Of course I will,” said Fanny; “and you had better go home, I guess, Andrew, and see how I left the kitchen fire. I don't know but the dampers are all wide open.”
Fanny and Cynthia hastened in one direction towards the hospital, and Andrew towards home; but he paused for a minute, and looked thoughtfully up at the humming pile of Lloyd's. The battle was over and the strike was ended. He drew a great sigh, and went home to see to the kitchen fire.
Lyman Risley was very seriously injured. There was, as the men had reported, danger for his eyes. When Robert was called into the reception-room of the hospital to see his aunt, he scarcely recognized her. Her soft, white hair was tossed about her temples, her cheeks were burning. She ran up to him like an eager child and clutched his arm.
“How is he?” she demanded. “Tell me quick!”
“They are doing everything they can for him. Why, don't, poor Aunt Cynthia!”
“His eyes, they said—”
“I hope he will come out all right. Don't, dear Aunt Cynthia.” The young man put his arm around his aunt and spoke soothingly, blushing like a girl before this sudden revelation of an under-stratum of delicacy in a woman's heart.
Cynthia lost control of herself completely; or, rather, the true self of her rose uppermost, shattering the surface ice of her reserve. “Oh,” she said—“oh, if he—if he is—blind, if he is—I—I—will lead him everywhere all the rest of his life; I will, Robert.”
“Of course you will, dear Aunt Cynthia,” replied Robert, soothingly.
Suddenly Cynthia's face took on a new expression. She looked at Robert, deadly pale, and her jaw dropped. “He will not—die,” she said, with stiff lips. “It is not as bad as that?”
“Oh no, no; I am sure he will not,” Robert cried, wonderingly and pityingly. “Don't, Aunt Cynthia.”
“If he dies,” she said—“if he dies—and he has loved me all this time, and I have never done anything for him—I cannot bear it; I will not bear it; I will not, Robert!”
“Oh, he isn't going to die, Aunt Cynthia.”
“I want to go to him,” she said. “Iwillgo to him.”
Robert looked helplessly from her to Fanny. “I am afraid you can't just now, Aunt Cynthia,” he replied.
Fanny came resolutely to his assistance. “Of course you can't, Miss Lennox,” she said. “The doctors won't let you see him now. You would do him more harm than good. You don't want to do him harm!”
“No, I don't want to do him harm,” returned Cynthia, in a wailing, hysterical voice. She threw herself down upon a sofa and began sobbing like a child, with her face hidden.
A young doctor entered and stood looking at her.
Robert turned to him. “It is my aunt, and she is agitated over Mr. Risley's accident,” he said, coloring a little.
Instantly the young physician's face lost its expression of astonishment and assumed the soothing gloss of his profession. “Oh, my dear Miss Lennox,” he said, “there is no cause for agitation, I assure you. Everything is being done for Mr. Risley.”
“Will he be blind?” gasped Cynthia, with a great vehemence of woe, which seemed to gainsay the fact of her years. It seemed as if such an outburst of emotion could come only from a child all unacquainted with grief and unable to control it.
The young doctor laughed blandly. “Blind? No, indeed,” he replied. “He might have been blind had this happened twenty-five years ago, but with the resources of the present day it is a different matter. Pray don't alarm yourself, dear Miss Lennox.”
“Can you call a carriage for my aunt?” asked Robert. He went close to Cynthia and laid a hand on her slender shoulder. “I am going to have a carriage come for you, and perhaps Mrs. Brewster will be willing to go home with you in it.”
“Of course I will,” replied Fanny.
“You hear what Dr. Payson says, that there is nothing to be alarmed about,” Robert said, in a low voice, with his lips close to his aunt's ear.
Cynthia made no resistance, but when the carriage arrived, and she was being driven off, with Fanny by her side, she called out of the window with a fierce shamelessness of anxiety, “Robert, you must come and tell me how he is this afternoon, or I shall come back here and see him myself.”
“Yes, I will, Aunt Cynthia,” he replied, soothingly. He met the doctor's curious eyes when he turned. The young man had a gossiping mind, but he forbore to say what he thought, which was to the effect that—why under the heavens, if that woman cared as much as that for that man, she had not married him, instead of letting him dangle after her so many years? But he merely said:
“There is no use in saying anything to excite a woman further when she is in such a state of mind, but—” Then he paused significantly.
“You think the chances of his keeping his eyesight are poor?” said Robert.
“Mighty poor,” replied the doctor.
Robert stood still, with his pale, shocked face bent upon the carpet. He could not seem to comprehend at once the enormity of it all; his mind was grasping at and trying to assimilate the horrible fact with an infinite pain.
“Have they got the man that did it?” asked the doctor.
“I don't know. I had to see to poor Risley,” replied Robert. “I hope to God they have.” Then all at once he thought, with keen anxiety, of Ellen. Who knew what new tragedy had happened? “I must go back to the factory,” he said, hurriedly. “I will be back here in an hour or so, and see how he is getting on. For Heaven's sake, do all you can!”
Robert was desperately impatient to be back at the factory. He was full of vague anxiety about Ellen. He could not forget that the shot which had hit poor Risley had been meant for her, and he remembered the look on the man's face as he aimed. He found a carriage at the street corner, and jumped in, and bade the man drive fast.
When Robert entered the great building, and felt the old vibration of machinery, he had a curious sensation, one which he had never before had and which he had not expected. For the first time in his life he knew what it was to have a complete triumph of his own will over his fellow-men. He had gotten his own way. All this army of workmen, all this machinery of labor, was set in motion at his desire, in opposition to their own. He realized himself a leader and a conqueror. He went into the office, and Flynn and Dennison came forward, smiling, to greet him.
“Well,” said Dennison, “we're off again.” He spoke as if the factory were a ship which had been launched from a shoal.
“Yes,” replied Robert, gravely.
Nellie Stone, at the desk, was glancing around, with a half-shy, half-coquettish look.
“How is Mr. Risley?” asked Flynn.
“He is badly hurt,” replied Robert. “Have they found the man? Do you know what has been done about it?”
“They've got all the police force of the city out,” replied Flynn, “but it's no use. They'll never catch Amos Lee. His mother was a gypsy, I've always heard. He knows about a thousand ways out of traps, and there's plenty to help him. They've got Dixon under arrest, and Tom Peel; but they didn't have any fire-arms on 'em, and they can't prove anything. Peel says he's ready to go back to work.” Flynn had a somewhat seedy and downcast appearance, although he fought hard for his old jaunty manner. His impulsive good-nature had gotten the better of his judgment and his own wishes, and he had gone to Mamie Brady and offered to marry her out of hand if she recovered from her attempted suicide. The night before he had watched, turn and turn about, with her mother. He gave a curious effect of shamefaced and melancholy virtue. He followed Robert to one side when he was hanging up his hat and coat. “I'm going to tell you, Mr. Lloyd,” he said, rather awkwardly; “maybe you won't be interested in the midst of all this, but it all came from the strike. She's better this morning, and I'm going to marry her, poor girl.”
Robert looked at him in a dazed fashion. For a moment he had not the slightest idea what he was talking about.
“I'm going to marry Mamie Brady,” explained Flynn. “She took laudanum. It all happened on account of the strike. I'll own I'd been flirting some with her, but she'd never done it if she hadn't been out of work, too. She said so. Her mother made her life a hell. I'm going to marry her, and take her out of it.”
“It's mighty good of you,” Robert said, rather stupidly.
“There ain't no other way for me to do,” replied Flynn. “She thinks the world of me, and I suppose I'm to blame.”
“I hope she'll make you a good wife and you'll be happy,” said Robert.
“She thinks all creation of me,” replied Flynn, with the simplest vanity and acquiescence in the responsibility laid upon him in the world. “That shot wasn't meant for Mr. Risley,” said Flynn, as Robert approached the office door. His eyes flashed. He himself would gladly have been shot for the sake of Ellen Brewster. He was going to marry, and try to fulfill his simple code of honor, but all his life he would be married to one woman, with another ideal in his heart; that was inevitable.
“I know it wasn't,” Robert replied, grimly.
“Everything is quiet now,” said Dennison, with his smooth smile. Robert made no reply, but entered the great work-room. “He's mighty stand-offish, now he's got his own way,” Dennison remarked in a whisper to Nellie Stone. He leaned closely over her. Flynn had followed Robert. The girl glanced up at the foreman, who was unmarried, although years older than she, and her face quivered a little, but it seemed due to a surface sensitiveness.
“I want to know if you've heard that Ed is going to marry Mamie Brady, after all,” she whispered.
Dennison nodded.
She knitted her forehead over a column of figures. Dennison leaned his face so close that his blond-bearded cheek touched hers. She made a little impatient motion.
“Oh, go long, Jim Dennison,” she said, but her tone was half-hearted.
Dennison persisted, bending her head gently backward until he kissed her. She pushed him away, but she smiled weakly.
“You didn't want Ed Flynn. Why, he's a Roman Catholic, and you're Baptist, Nell,” he said.
“Who said I did?” she retorted, angrily. “Why, I wouldn't marry Ed Flynn if he was the last man in the world.”
“You'd 'nough sight better marry me,” said Dennison.
“Go along; you're fooling.”
“No, I ain't. I mean it, honest.”
“I don't want to marry anybody yet awhile,” said Nellie Stone; but when Dennison kissed her again she did not repulse him, and even nestled her head with a little caressing motion into the hollow of his shoulder.
Then they both started violently apart as Flynn entered.
“Say!” he proclaimed, “what do you think? The boss has just told the hands that he'll split the difference and reduce the wages five instead of ten per cent.”
When Robert Lloyd entered the factory that morning he experienced one of those revulsions which come to man in common with all creation. As the wind can swerve from south to east, and its swerving be a part of the universal scheme of things, so the inconsistency of a human soul can be an integral part of its consistency. Robert, entering Lloyd's, flushed with triumph over his workmen, filled also with rage whenever he thought of poor Risley, became suddenly, to all appearances, another man. However, he was the same man, only he had come under some hidden law of growth. All at once, as he stood there amidst those whirring and clamping machines, and surveyed those bowed and patient backs and swaying arms of labor, standing aside to allow a man bending before a heavy rack of boots to push it to another department, he realized that his triumph was gone.
Not a man or woman in the factory looked at him. All continued working with a sort of patient fierceness, as if storming a citadel—as, indeed, they were in one sense—and waging incessant and in the end hopeless warfare against the destructive forces of life. Robert stood in the midst of them, these fellow-beings who had bowed to his will, and saw, as if by some divine revelation, in his foes his brothers and sisters. He saw Ellen's fair head before her machine, and she seemed the key-note of a heart-breaking yet ineffable harmony of creation which he heard for the first time. He was a man whom triumph did not exalt as much as it humiliated. Who was he to make these men and women do his bidding? They were working as hard as they had worked for full pay. Without doubt he would not gain as much comparatively, but he was going to lose nothing actually, and he would not work as these men worked. He saw himself as he never could have seen himself had the strike continued; and yet, after all, he was not a woman, to be carried away by a sudden wave of generous sentiment and enthusiasm, for his business instincts were too strong, inherited and developed by the force of example. He could not forget that this had been his uncle's factory.
He shut his mouth hard, and stood looking at the scene of toil, then he resolved what to do.
He spoke to Flynn, who could not believe his ears, and asked him over.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said.
“Go and speak to the engineer, and tell him to shut down,” said Robert.
“You ain't going to turn them out, after all?” gasped Flynn. He was deadly white.
“No, I am not. I only want to speak to them,” replied Robert, shortly.
When the roar of machinery had ceased, Robert stood before the employés, whose faces had taken on an expression of murder and menace. They anticipated the worst by this order.
“I want to say to you all,” said Robert, in a loud, clear voice, “that I realize it will be hard for you to make both ends meet with the cut of ten per cent. I will make it five instead of ten per cent., although I shall actually lose by so doing unless business improves. I will, however, try it as long as possible. If the hard times continue, and it becomes a sheer impossibility for me to employ you on these terms without abandoning the plant altogether, I will approach you again, and trust that you will support me in any measures I am forced to take. And, on the contrary, should business improve, I promise that your wages shall be raise to the former standard at once.”
The speech was so straightforward that it sounded almost boyish. Robert, indeed, looked very young as he stood there, for a generous and pitying impulse does tend to make a child of a man. The workmen stared at him a minute, then there was a queer little broken chorus of “Thank ye's,” with two or three shrill crows of cheers.
Robert went from room to room, repeating his short speech, then work recommenced.
“He's the right sort, after all,” said Granville Joy to John Sargent, and his tone had a quality of heroism in it. He was very thin and pale. He had suffered privations, and now came additional worry of mind. He could not help thinking that this might bring about an understanding between Robert and Ellen, and yet he paid his spiritual dues at any cost.
“It's no more than he ought to do,” growled a man at Granville's right. “S'pose he does lose a little money?”
“It ain't many out of the New Testament that are going to lose a little for the sake of their fellow-men, I can tell you that,” said John Sargent. He was cutting away deftly and swiftly, and thinking with satisfaction of the money which he would be able to send his sister, and also how the Atkins family would be no longer so pinched. He was a man who would never come under the grindstone of the pessimism of life for his own necessities, but lately the necessities of others had almost forced him there. Now and then he glanced across the room at Maria, whose narrow shoulders he could see bent painfully over her work. He was in love with Maria, but no one suspected it, least of all Maria herself.
“Lord! don't talk about the New Testament. Them days is past,” growled the man on the other side of Joy.
“They ain't past for me,” said John Sargent, stoutly. A dark flush rose to his cheek as if he were making a confession of love.
“Lord! don't preach,” said the other man, with a sneer.
Ellen had stopped work with the rest when Robert addressed them. Then she recommenced her stitching without a word. Her thoughts were in confusion. She had so long held one attitude towards him that she could not readily adjust herself to another. She was cramped with the extreme narrowness of the enthusiasm of youth. At noontime she heard all the talk which went on about him. She heard some praise him, and some speak of him as simply doing his manifest duty, and some say openly that he should have put the wages back upon the former footing, and she did not know which was right. He did not come near her, and she was very glad of that. She felt that she could not bear it to have him speak to her before them all.
When she went home at night the news had preceded her. Fanny and Andrew looked up eagerly when she entered. “I hear he has compromised,” said Andrew, with doubtful eyes on the girl's face.
“Yes; he has cut the wages five instead of ten per cent.,” replied Ellen, and it was impossible to judge of her feelings by her voice. She took off her hat and smoothed her hair.
“Well, I am glad he has done that much,” said Fanny, “but I won't say a word as long as you ain't hurt.”
With that she went into the kitchen, and Ellen and Andrew heard the dishes rattle. “Your mother's been dreadful nervous,” whispered Andrew. He looked at Ellen meaningly. Both of them thought of poor Eva Tenny. Lately the reports with regard to her had been more encouraging, but she was still in the asylum.
Suddenly, as they stood there, a swift shadow passed the window, and they heard a shrill scream from up-stairs. It sounded like “Mamma, mamma!” “It's Amabel!” cried Ellen. She clutched her father by the arm. “Oh, what is it—who is it?” she whispered, fearfully.
Andrew was suddenly white and horror-stricken. He took hold of Ellen, and pushed her forcibly before him into the parlor. “You stay in there till I call you,” he said, in a commanding voice, the like of which the girl had never heard from him before; then he shut the door, and she heard the key turn in the lock.
“Father, I can't stay in here,” cried Ellen. She ran towards the other door into the front hall, but before she could reach it she heard the key turn in that also. Andrew was convinced that Eva had escaped from the asylum, and thus made sure of Ellen's safety in case she was violent. Then he rushed out into the kitchen, and there was Amabel clinging to her mother like a little wild thing, and Fanny weeping aloud.
When Andrew entered Fanny flew to him. “O Andrew—O Andrew!” she cried. “Eva's come out! She's well! she's cured! She's as well as anybody! She is! She says so, and I know she is! Only look at her!”
“Mamma, mamma!” gasped Amabel, in a strange, little, pent voice, which did not sound like a child's. There was something fairly inhuman about it. “Mamma,” as she said it, did not sound like a word in any known language. It was like a cry of universal childhood for its parent. Amabel clung to her mother, not only with her slender little arms, but with her legs and breast and neck; all her slim body became as a vine with tendrils of love and growth around her mother.
As for Eva, she could not have enough of her. She was intoxicated with the possession of this little creature of her own flesh and blood.
“She's grown; she's grown so tall,” she said, in a high, panting voice. It was all she could seem to realize—the fact that the child had grown so tall—and it filled her at once with ineffable pain and delight. She held the little thing so close to her that the two seemed fairly one. “Mamma, mamma!” said Amabel again.
“She has—grown so tall,” panted Eva.
Fanny went up to her and tried gently to loosen her grasp of the little girl. In her heart she was not yet quite sure of her. This fierceness of delight began to alarm her. “Of course she has grown tall, Eva Tenny,” she said. “It's quite a while since you were—taken sick.”
“I ain't sick now,” said Eva, in a steady voice. “I'm cured now. The doctors say so. You needn't be afraid, Fanny Brewster.”
“Mamma, mamma!” said Amabel. Eva bent down and kissed the little, delicate face; then she looked at her sister and at Andrew, and her own countenance seemed fairly illuminated. “I 'ain'ttoldyou all,” said she. Then she stopped and hesitated.
“What is it, Eva?” asked Fanny, looking at her with increasing courage. The tears were streaming openly down her cheeks. “Oh, you poor girl, what have you been through?” she said. “What is it?”
“I 'ain't got to go through anything more,” said Eva, still with that rapt look over Amabel's little, fair head. “He's—come back.”
“Eva Tenny!”
“Yes, he has,” Eva went on, with such an air of inexpressible triumph that it had almost a religious quality in it. “He has. He left her a long time ago. He—he wanted to come back to me and Amabel, but he was ashamed, but finally he came to the asylum, and then it all rolled off, all the trouble. The doctors said I had been getting better, but they didn't know. It was—Jim's comin' back. He's took me home, and I've come for Amabel, and—he's got a job in Lloyd's, and he's bought me this new hat and cape.” Eva flirted her free arm, and a sweep of jetted silk gleamed, then she tossed her head consciously to display a hat with a knot of pink roses. Then she kissed Amabel again. “Mamma's come back,” she whispered.
“Mamma, mamma!” cried Amabel.
Andrew and Fanny looked at each other.
“Where is he?” asked Andrew, in a slow, halting voice.
Eva glanced from one to the other defiantly. “He's outside, waitin' in the road,” said she; “but he ain't comin' in unless you treat him just the same as ever. I've set my veto on that.” Eva's voice and manner as she said that were so unmistakably her own that all Fanny's doubt of her sanity vanished. She sobbed aloud.
“O God, I'm so thankful! She's come home, and she's all right! O God, I'm so thankful!”
“What about Jim?” asked Eva, with her old, proud, defiant look.
“Of course he's comin' in,” sobbed Fanny. “Andrew, you go—”
But Andrew had already gone, unlocking the parlor door on his way. “It's your aunt Eva, Ellen,” he said as he passed. “She's come home cured, and your uncle Jim is out in the yard, and I'm goin' to call him in. I guess you'd better go out and see her.”
Lloyd's had been running for two months, and spring had fairly begun. It was a very forward season. The elms were leafed out, the cherry and peach blossoms had fallen, and the apple-trees were in full flower. There were many orchards around Rowe. The little city was surrounded with bowing garlands of tenderest white and rose, the well-kept lawns in the city limits were like velvet, and golden-spiked bushes and pink trails of flowering almond were beside the gates. Lilacs also, flushed with rose, purpled the walls of old houses. One morning Ellen, on her way to the factory, had for the first time that year a realization of the full presence of the spring. All at once she knew the goddess to be there in her whole glory.
“Spring has really come,” she said to Abby. As she spoke she jostled a great bush of white flowers, growing in a yard close to the sidewalk, and an overpowering fragrance, like a very retaliation of sweetness, came in her face.
“Yes,” said Abby; “it seems more like spring than it did last night, somehow!” Abby had gained flesh, and there was a soft color on her cheeks, so that she was almost pretty, as she glanced abroad with a sort of bright gladness and a face ready with smiles. Maria also looked in better health than she had done in the winter. She walked with her arm through Ellen's.
Suddenly a carriage, driven rapidly, passed them, and Cynthia Lennox's graceful profile showed like a drooping white flower in a window.
Sadie Peel came up to them with a swift run. “Say!” she said, “know who that was?”
“We've got eyes,” replied Abby Atkins, shortly.
“Who said you hadn't? You needn't be so up an' comin', Abby Atkins; I didn't know as you knew they were married, that's all. I just heard it from Lottie Snell, whose sister works at the dressmaker's that made the wedding fix. Weddin' fix! My land! Think of a weddin' without a white dress and a veil! All she had was a gray silk and a black velvet, and a black lace, and a travellin'-dress!”
Abby Atkins eyed the other girl sharply, her curiosity getting the better of her dislike. “Who did she marry?” said she, shortly. “I suppose she didn't marry the black velvet, or the lace, or the travelling-dress. That's all you seem to think about.”
“Ithoughtyou didn't know,” replied Sadie Peel, in a tone of triumph. “They've kept it mighty still, and he's been goin' there so long, ever since anybody can remember, that they didn't think it was anything more now than it had been right along. Lyman Risley and Cynthia Lennox have just got married, and they've gone down to Old Point Comfort. My land, it's nice to have money, if you be half blind!”
Ellen looked after the retreating carriage, and made no comment.
She was pale and thin, and moved with a certain languor, although she held up her head proudly, and when people asked if she were not well, answered quickly that she had never been better. Robert had not been to see her yet. She had furtively watched for him a long time, then she had given it up. She would not acknowledge to herself or any one else that she was not well or was troubled in spirit. Her courage was quite equal to the demand upon it, yet always she was aware of a peculiar sensitiveness to all happenings, whether directly concerned with herself or not, which made life an agony to her, and she knew that her physical strength was not what it had been. Only that morning she had looked at her face in the glass, and had seen how it was altered. The lovely color was gone from her cheeks, there were little, faint, downward lines about her mouth, and, more than that, out of her blue eyes looked the eternal, unanswerable question of humanity, “Where is my happiness?”
It seemed to her when she first set out that she could not walk to the factory. That sense of the full presence of the spring seemed to overpower her. All the revelation of beauty and sweetness seemed a refinement of torture worse to bear than the sight of death and misery would have been. Every blooming apple-bough seemed to strike her full on the heart.
“Only look at that bush of red flowers in that yard,” Maria said once, and Ellen looked and was stung by the sight as by the contact of a red flaming torch of spring. “What ails you, dear; don't you like those flowers?” Maria said, anxiously.
“Yes, of course I do; I think they are lovely,” replied Ellen, looking.
She looked after the carriage which contained the bridal party; she thought how the bridegroom had almost lost his eyesight to save her, and her old adoration of Cynthia seemed to rise to a flood-tide. Then came the thought of Robert, how he must have ceased to love her—how some day he would be starting off on a bridal trip of his own. Maud Hemingway, with whom she had often coupled him in her thoughts, seemed to start up before her, all dressed in bridal white. It seemed to her that she could not bear it all. She continued walking, but she did not feel the ground beneath her feet, nor even Maria's little, clinging fingers of tenderness on her arm. She became to her own understanding like an instrument which is played upon with such results of harmonies and discords that all sense of the mechanism is lost.
“Well, Ellen Brewster,” said Sadie Peel, in her loud, strident voice, “I guess you wouldn't have been walkin' along here quite so fine this mornin' if it hadn't been for Mr. Risley. You'd ought to send him a weddin'-present—a spoon, or something.”
“Shut up,” said Abby Atkins; “Ellen has worried herself sick over him as it is.” She eyed Ellen anxiously as she spoke. Maria clung more closely to her.
“Shut up yourself, Abby Atkins,” returned Sadie Peel. “He's got a wife to lead him around, and I don't see much to worry about. A great weddin'! My goodness, if I don't get married when I'm young enough to wear a white dress and veil, catch me gettin' married at all!”
Sadie Peel sped on with her news to a group of girls ahead, and the wheels of the carriage flashed out of sight in the spring sunlight. It was quite true that Risley and Cynthia had been married that morning. He had not entirely lost his vision, although it would always be poor, and he would live happily, although in a measure disappointedly, feeling that his partial helplessness was his chief claim upon his wife's affection. He had gotten what he had longed for for so many years, but by means which tended to his humiliation instead of his pride. But Cynthia was radiant. In caring for her half-blind husband she attained the spiritual mountain height of her life. She possessed love in the one guise in which he appealed to her, and she held him fast to the illumination of her very soul.
After the carriage had passed out of sight Abby came close on the other side of Ellen and slid her arm through hers. “Say!” she began.
“What is it?” asked Ellen.
Abby blushed. “Oh, nothing much,” she replied, in a tone unusual for her. She took her arm away from Ellen's, and laughed a little foolishly.
Ellen stared at her with grave wonder. She had not the least idea what she meant.
Abby changed the subject. “Going to the park opening to-night, Ellen?” she asked.
“No, I guess not.”
“You'd better. Do go, Ellen.”
“Yes, do go, Ellen; it will do you good,” said Maria. She looked into Ellen's face with the inexpressibly pure love of one innocent girl for another.
The park was a large grove of oaks and birch-trees which had recently been purchased by the street railway company of Rowe, and it was to be used for the free entertainment of the people, with an undercurrent of consideration for the financial profit of the company.
“I'm afraid I can't go,” said Ellen.
“Yes, you can; it will do you good; you look like a ghost this morning,” said Abby.
“Do go, Ellen,” pleaded Maria.
However, Ellen would not have gone had it not been for a whisper of Abby's as they came out of the factory that night.
“Look here, Ellen, you'd better go,” said she, “just to show folks. That Sadie Peel asked me this noon if it was true that you had something on your mind, and was worrying about—well, you know what—that made you look so.”
Ellen flushed an angry red. “I'll stop for you and Maria to-night,” she answered, quickly.
“All right,” Abby replied, heartily; “we'll go on the eight-o'clock car.”
Ellen hurried home, and changed her dress after supper, putting on her new green silk waist and her spring hat, which was trimmed with roses. When she went down-stairs, and told her mother where she was going, she started up.
“I declare, I'd go too if your father had come home,” she said. “I don't know when I've been anywhere; and Eva was in this afternoon and said that she and Jim were going.”
“I wonder where father is?” said Ellen, uneasily. “I don't know as I ought to go till he comes home.”
“Oh, stuff!” replied Fanny. “He's stopped to talk at the store. Oh, here he is now. Andrew Brewster, where in the world have you been?” she began as he entered; but his mother was following him, and something in their faces stopped her. Fanny Brewster had lived for years with this man, but never before had she seen his face with just that expression of utter, unreserved joy; although joy was scarcely the word for it, for it was more than that. It was the look of a man who has advanced to his true measure of growth, and regained self-respect which he had lost. All the abject bend of his aging back, all the apologetic patience of his outlook, was gone. She stared at him, hardly believing her eyes. She was as frightened as if he had looked despairing instead of joyful. “Andrew Brewster, what is it?” she asked. She tried to smile, to echo the foolish width of grimace on his face, but her lips were too stiff.
Ellen looked at him, trembling, and very white under her knot of roses. Andrew held out a paper and tried to speak, but he could not.
“For God's sake, what is it?” gasped Fanny.
Then Mrs. Zelotes spoke. “That old mining-stock has come up,” said she, in a harsh voice. “He'd never ought to have bought it. I should have told him better if he had asked me, but it's come up, and it's worth considerable more than he paid for it. I've just been down to Mrs. Pointdexter's, and Lawyer Samson was in there seeing her about a bond she's got that's run out, and he says the mine's going to pay dividends, and for Andrew to hold on to part of it, anyhow. I bought this paper, and it's in it. He never ought to have bought it, but it's come up. I hope it will learn him a lesson. He's had enough trouble over it.”
Nothing could exceed the mixture of recrimination and exultation with which the old woman spoke. She eyed Fanny accusingly; she looked at Andrew with grudging triumph. “Lawyer Samson says it will make him rich, he guesses; at any rate, he'll come out whole,” said she. “I hope it will learn you a lesson.”
Andrew dropped into a chair. His face was distended with a foolish smile like a baby's. He seemed to smile at all creation. He looked at his wife and Ellen; then his face again took on its expression of joyful vacuity.
Fanny went close to him and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. “You 'ain't had a mite of supper, Andrew Brewster,” said she; “come right out and have something to eat.”
Andrew shook his head, still smiling. His wife and daughter looked at him alarmedly, then at each other. Then his mother went behind him, laid a hard, old hand on each shoulder, and shook him.
“If youhavegot a streak of luck, there's no need of your actin' like a fool about it, Andrew Brewster,” said she. “Go out and eat your supper, and behave yourself, and let it be a lesson to you. There you had worked and saved that little money you had in the bank, and you bought an old mine with it, and it might have turned out there wasn't a thing in it, no mine at all, and there was. Just let it be a lesson to you, that's all; and go out and eat your supper, and don't be too set up over it.”
Andrew looked at his wife and mother and daughter, still with that expression of joy, so unreserved that it was almost idiotic. They had all stood by him loyally; he had their fullest sympathy; but had one of them fully understood? Not one of them could certainly understand what was then passing in his mind, which had been straitened by grief and self-reproach, and was now expanding to hold its full measure of joy. That poor little sum in the bank, that accumulation of his hard earnings, which he had lost through his own bad judgment, had meant much more than itself to him, both in its loss and its recovery. It was more than money; it was the value of money in the current coin of his own self-respect.
His mother shook him again, but rather gently. “Get up this minute, and go out and eat your supper,” said she; “and then I don't see why you can't go with Fanny and me to the park opening. They say lots of folks are goin', and there's goin' to be fireworks. It'll distract your mind. It ain't safe for anybody to dwell too much on good luck any more than on misfortune. Go right out and eat your supper; it's most time for the car.”
Andrew obeyed.
The new park, which had been named, in honor of the president of the street railway company, Clemens Park, was composed of a light growth of oak and birch trees. With the light of the full moon, like a broadside of silvery arrows, and the frequent electric-lights filtering through the young, delicate foliage, it was much more effective than a grove of pine or hemlock would have been.
When the people streamed into it from the crowded electric-cars, there were exclamations of rapture. Women and girls fairly shrieked with delight. The ground, which had been entirely cleared of undergrowth, was like an etching in clearest black and white, of the tender dancing foliage of the oaks and birches. The birches stood together in leaning, white-limbed groups like maidens, and the rustling spread of the oaks shed broad flashes of silver from the moon. In the midst of the grove the Hungarian orchestra played in a pavilion, and dancing was going on there. Many of the people outside moved with dancing steps. Children in swings flew through the airs with squeals of delight. There was a stand for the sale of ice-cream and soda, and pretty girls blossomed like flowers behind the counters. There were various rustic adornments, such as seats and grottos, and at one end of the grove was a small collection of wild animals in cages, and a little artificial pond with swans. Now and then, above the chatter of the people and the music of the orchestra, sounded the growl of a bear or the shrill screech of a paroquet, and the people all stopped and listened and laughed. This little titillation of the unusual in the midst of their sober walk of life affected them like champagne. Most of them were of the poorer and middle classes, the employés of the factories of Rowe. They moved back and forth with dancing steps of exultation.
“My, ain't it beautiful!” Fanny said, squeezing Andrew's arm. He had his wife on one arm, his mother on the other. For him the whole scene appeared more than it really was, since it reflected the joy of his own soul. There was for him a light greater than that of the moon or electricity upon it—that extreme light of the world—the happiness of a human being who blesses in a moment of prosperity the hour he was born. He knew for the first time in his life that happiness is as true as misery, and no mere creation of a fairy tale. No trees of the Garden of Eden could have outshone for him those oaks and birches. No gold or precious stones of any mines on earth can equal the light of the little star of happiness in one human soul.
Fanny, as they walked along, kept looking at her husband, and her own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant.
Ellen, with Abby and Maria, walked behind them.
Presently Andrew met another man who had also purchased stock in the mine, and stopped to exchange congratulations. The man's face was flushed, as if he had been drinking, but he had not. On his arm hung his wife, a young woman with a showy red waist and some pink ribbon bows on her hat. She was teetering a little in time to the music, while a little girl clung to her skirts and teetered also.
“Well, old man,” said the new-comer, with a hoarse sound in his throat, “they needn't talk to us any more, need they?”
“That's so,” replied Andrew, but his joy in prosperity was not like the other man's. It placed him heights above him, although from the same cause. Prosperity means one thing to one man, and another to his brother.
Presently they met Jim Tenny and Eva and Amabel. They were walking three abreast, Amabel in the middle. Jim Tenny looked hesitatingly at them, although his face was widened with irrepressible smiles. Eva gazed at them with defiant radiance. “Well,” said she, “so luck has turned?”
Amabel laughed out, and her laugh trilled high with a note of silver, above the chatter of the crowd and the blare and rhythmic trill of the orchestra. “I've had an ice-cream, and I'm going to have a new doll and a doll-carriage,” said she. “Oh, Ellen!” She left her father and mother for a second and clung to Ellen, kissing her; then she was back.
“Well, Andrew?” said Jim. He had a shamed face, yet there was something brave in it struggling for expression.
“Well, Jim?” said Andrew.
The two shook hands solemnly. Then they walked on together, and the sisters behind, with Amabel clinging to her mother's hand. “Jim's goin' to work if hehashad a little windfall,” said Eva, proudly. “Oh, Fanny, only think what it means!”
“I hope it will be a lesson to both of them,” said Mrs. Zelotes, stalking along after, but she smiled harshly.
“Oh, land, don't croak, if you've got a chance to laugh! There's few enough chances in this world,” cried Eva, with boisterous good humor. “As for me, I've come out of deep waters, and I'm goin' to take what comfort I can in the feel of the solid ground under my feet.” She began to force Amabel into a dance in time with the music, and the child shrieked with laughter.
“S'pose she's all right?” whispered Mrs. Zelotes to Fanny.
“Land, yes,” replied Fanny; “it's just like her, just the way she used to do. It makes me surer than anything else that she's cured.”
The girls behind were loitering. Abby turned to Ellen and pointed to a rustic seat under a clump of birches.
“Let's sit down there a minute, Ellen,” said she.
“All right,” replied Ellen. When she and Abby seated themselves, Maria withdrew, standing aloof under an oak, looking up at the illumined spread of branches with the rapt, innocent expression of a saint.
“Why don't you come and sit down with us, Maria?” Ellen called.
“In a minute,” replied Maria, in her weak, sweet voice. Then John Sargent came up and joined her.
“She'll come in a minute,” Abby said to Ellen. “She—she—knows I want to tell you something.”
Abby hesitated. Ellen regarded her with wonder.
“Look here, Ellen,” said Abby; “I don't know what you're going to think of me after all I've said, but—I'm going to get married to Willy Jones. His mother has had a little money left her, and she owns the house clear now, and I'm going to keep right on working; and—I never thought I would, Ellen, you know; but I've come to think lately that all you can get out of labor in this world is the happiness it brings you, and—the love. That's more than the money, and—he wants me pretty bad. I suppose you think I'm awful, Ellen Brewster.” Abby spoke with triumph, yet with shame. She dug her little toe into the shadow-mottled ground.
“Oh, Abby, I hope you'll be real happy,” said Ellen. Then she choked a little.
“I've made up my mind not to work for nothing,” said Abby; “I've made up my mind to get whatever work is worth in this world if I can, and—to get it for him too.”
“I hope you will be very happy,” said Ellen again.
“There he is now,” whispered Abby. She rose as Willy Jones approached, laughing confusedly. “I've been telling Ellen Brewster,” said Abby, with her perfunctory air.
Ellen held out her hand, and Willy Jones grasped it, then let it drop and muttered something. He looked with helpless adoration at Abby, who put her hand through his arm reassuringly.
“Let's go and see the animals,” said she; “I haven't seen the animals.”
“I guess I'll go and see if I can find my father and mother,” returned Ellen. “I want to see my mother about something.”
“Oh, come with us.” Abby grasped Ellen firmly around the waist and kissed her. “I don't love him a mite better than I do you,” she whispered; “so there! You needn't think you're left out, Ellen Brewster.”
“I don't,” replied Ellen. She tried to laugh, but she felt her lips stiff. And unconquerable feeling of desolation was coming over her, and in spite of herself her tone was somewhat like that of a child who sees another with all the cake.
“I suppose you know Floretta got married last night,” said Abby, moving off with Willy Jones. John Sargent and Maria had long since disappeared from under the oak.
Ellen, left alone, looked for a minute after Abby and Willy, and noted the tender lean of the girl's head towards the young man's shoulder; then she started off to find her father and mother. She could not rid herself of the sense of desolation. She felt blindly that if she could not get under the shelter of her own loves of life she could not bear it any longer. She had borne up bravely under Robert's neglect, but now all at once, with the sight of the happiness of these others before her eyes, it seemed to crush her. All the spirit in her seemed to flag and faint. She was only a young girl, who would fall to the ground and be slain by the awful law of gravitation of the spirit without love. “Anyway, I've got father and mother,” she said to herself.
She rushed on alone through the merry crowd. The orchestra was playing a medley. The violins seemed to fairly pierce thought. A Roman-candle burst forth on the right with a great spluttering, and the people, shrieking with delight, rushed in that direction. Then a rocket shot high in the air with a splendid curve, and there was a sea of faces watching with speechless admiration the dropping stars of violet and gold and rose.
Ellen kept on, moving as nearly as she could in the direction in which her party had gone. Then suddenly she came face to face with Robert Lloyd.
She would have passed him without a word, but he stood before her.
“Won't you speak to me?” he asked.
“Good-evening, Mr. Lloyd,” returned Ellen.
Then she tried to move on again, but Robert still stood before her.
“I want to say something to you,” he said, in a low voice. “I was coming to your house to-night, but I saw you on the car. Please come to that seat over there. There is nobody in that direction. They will all go towards the fireworks now.”
Ellen looked at him hesitatingly. At that moment she seemed to throw out protecting antennæ of maidenliness; and, besides, there was always the memory of the cut in wages, for which she still judged him; and then there was the long neglect.
“Please come,” said Robert. He looked at her at once like a conqueror and a pleading child. Ellen placed her hand on his arm, and they went to the seat under the clump of birches. They were quite alone, for the whole great company was streaming towards the fireworks. A fiery wheel was revolving in the distance, and rockets shot up, dropping showers of stars. Ellen gazed at them without seeing them at all.
Robert, seated beside her, looked at her earnestly. “I am going to put back the wages on the old basis to-morrow,” he said.
Ellen made no reply.
“Business has so improved that I feel justified in doing so,” said Robert. His tone was almost apologetic. Never as long as he lived would he be able to look at such matters from quite the same standpoint as that of the girl beside him. She knew that, and yet she loved him. She never would get his point of view, and yet he loved her. “I have waited until I was able to do that before speaking to you again,” said Robert. “I knew how you felt about the wage-cutting. I thought when matters were back on the old basis that you might feel differently towards me. God knows I have been sorry enough for it all, and I am glad enough to be able to pay them full wages again. And now, dear?”
“It has been a long time,” said Ellen, looking at her little hands, clasped in her lap.
“I have loved you all the time, and I have only waited for that,” said Robert.
Later on Robert and Ellen joined Fanny and the others. It was scarcely the place to make an announcement. After a few words of greeting the young couple walked off together, and left the Brewsters and Tennys and Mrs. Zelotes standing on the outskirts of the crowd watching the fireworks. Granville Joy stood near them. He had looked at Robert and Ellen with a white face, then he turned again towards the fireworks with a gentle, heroic expression. He caught up Amabel that she might see the set piece which was just being put up. “Now you can see, Sissy,” he said.
Eva looked away from the fireworks after the retreating pair, then meaningly at Fanny and Andrew. “That's settled,” said she.
Andrew's face quivered a little, and took on something of the same look which Granville Joy's wore. All love is at the expense of love, and calls for heroes.
“It'll be a great thing for her,” said Fanny, in his ear; “it'll be a splendid thing for her, you know that, Andrew.”
Andrew gazed after the nodding roses on Ellen's hat vanishing towards the right. Another rocket shot up, and the people cried out, and watched the shower of stars with breathless enjoyment. Andrew saw their upturned faces, in which for the while toil and trial were blotted out by that delight in beauty and innocent pleasure of the passing moment which is, for human souls, akin to the refreshing showers for flowers of spring; and to him, since his own vision was made clear by his happiness, came a mighty realization of it all, which was beyond it all. Another rocket described a wonderful golden curve of grace, then a red light lit all the watching people. Andrew looked for Ellen and Robert, and saw the girl's beautiful face turning backward over her lover's shoulder. All his life Andrew had been a reader of the Bible, as had his father and mother before him. To-day, ever since he had heard of his good fortune, his mind had dwelt upon certain verses of Ecclesiastes. Now he quoted from them. “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity, for that is thy portion in this life and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun.”
Ellen saw her father, and smiled and nodded, then she and her lover passed out of sight. Another rocket trailed its golden parabola along the sky, and dropped with stars; there was an ineffably sweet strain from the orchestra; the illuminated oaks tossed silver and golden boughs in a gust of fragrant wind. Andrew quoted again from the old King of Wisdom—“I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor, and that was my portion of labor.” Then Andrew thought of the hard winter which had passed, as all hard things must pass, of the toilsome lives of those beside him, of all the work which they had done with their poor, knotted hands, of the tracks which they had worn on the earth towards their graves, with their weary feet, and suddenly he seemed to grasp a new and further meaning for that verse of Ecclesiastes.
He seemed to see that labor is not alone for itself, not for what it accomplishes of the tasks of the world, not for its equivalent in silver and gold, not even for the end of human happiness and love, but for the growth in character of the laborer.
“That is the portion of labor,” he said. He spoke in a strained, solemn voice, as he had done before. Nobody heard him except his wife and mother. His mother gave a sidewise glance at him, then she folded her cape tightly around her and stared at the fireworks, but Fanny put her hand through his arm and leaned her cheek against his shoulder.
THE END