Ellen actually went to work, with sheets of foolscap and a new bottle of ink, on a novel, which was not worth the writing; but no one could estimate the comfort and encouragement it was to Andrew. Ellen worked an hour or two every evening on the novel, and next day Andrew copied it in a hand like copperplate—large, with ornate flourishes. Andrew's handwriting had always been greatly admired, and, strangely enough, it was not in the least indicative of his character, being wholly acquired. He had probably some ability for drawing, but this had been his only outlet.
At the head of every chapter of Ellen's novel were birds and flowers done in colored inks, and every chapter had a tail-piece of elegant quirls and flourishes. Fanny admired it intensely. She was not quite so sure of Ellen's work as she was of her husband's. She felt herself a judge of one, but not of the other.
“If Ellen could only write as well as you copy, it will do,” she often said to Andrew.
“What she is writing is beautiful,” said Andrew, fervently. He was quite sure in his own mind that such a book had never been written, and his pride in his decorations was a minor one.
Ellen, although she was not versed in the ways of books, yet had enough of a sense of the fitness of things, and of the ridiculous, to know that the manuscript, with its impossible pen-and-ink birds and flowers heading and finishing every chapter, was grotesque in the extreme. She felt divided between a desire to laugh and a desire to cry whenever she looked at it. About her own work she felt more than doubtful; still, she was somewhat hopeful, since her taste and judgment, as well as her style, were alike crude. She told Abby and Maria what she was doing, under promise of strict secrecy, and after a while read them a few chapters.
“It's beautiful,” said Maria—“perfectly beautiful. I had a Sunday-school book this week which I know wasn't half as good.”
Ellen looked at Abby, who was silent. The three girls were up in Ellen's room. It was midwinter, some months after she had gone to work in the shop, and she had a fire in her little, air-tight stove.
“Well, what do you think of it, Abby?” asked Ellen. Ellen's cheeks were flushed as if with fever. She looked eagerly at the other girl.
“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” asked Abby, bluntly.
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Well, then, I don't know a thing about books, and I'd knock anybody else down that said it, but it seems to me it's trash.”
“Oh, Abby,” murmured Maria.
“Never mind,” said Ellen, though she quivered a little, “I want to know just how it looks to her.”
“It looks to me just like that,” said Abby—“like trash. It sounds as if, when you began to write it, you had mounted upon stilts, and didn't see things and people the way they really were. It ain't natural.”
“Do you think I had better give it up, then?” asked Ellen.
“No, I don't, on account of your father.”
“I believe it would about break father's heart,” said Ellen.
“I don't know but it's worth as much to write a book for your father, to please him, and keep his spirits up, as it is to write one for the whole world,” said Abby.
“Only, of course, she can't get any money for it,” said Maria. “But I don't believe Abby is right, and don't you get discouraged, Ellen. It sounds beautiful to me.”
“Well, I suppose it is worth keeping on with for father's sake,” said Ellen; but she had a discouraged air. She never again wrote with any hope or heart; she had faith in Abby's opinion, for she knew that she was always predisposed to admiration in her case.
Ellen at that time was earning more, for she had advanced, and had long ago left her station beside Mamie Brady; and now in a month or two she would have a machine. The girls, many of them, said openly that her rapid promotion was due to favoritism, and that Ed Flynn wouldn't do as much for anybody but Ellen Brewster. Flynn hung about her in the shop a good deal, but he had made no efforts to pay her decided attention. His religion was the prime factor for his hesitation. He could not see his way clear towards open addresses with a view to marriage. Still, he had a sharp eye for other admirers, and Ellen had not been in the factory two months before Granville Joy was sent into another room. Robert Lloyd, to whom the foreman appealed for confirmation of the plan, coincided with readiness.
“That fellow ain't strong enough to run that machine he's doing now,” said Flynn.
“Then put him on another,” Robert said, coloring. It was not quite like setting his rival in the front of the battle; still, he felt ashamed of himself. Quicker than lightning it had flashed through his mind that young Joy could thus be sent into a separate room from Ellen Brewster.
“I think he had better take one of the heel-shaving machines below,” said Flynn, “and let that big Swede, that's as strong as an ox, and never jumped at anything in his life, take his place here.”
“All right,” said Lloyd, assuming a nonchalant air. “Make the change if you think it advisable, Flynn.”
While such benevolence towards a possible rival had its suspicious points, yet there was, after all, some reason for it. Granville Joy, who was delicately organized as to his nerves, was running a machine for cutting linings, and this came down with sharp thuds which shook the factory, and it was fairly torture to him. Every time the knife fell he cringed as if at a cannon report. He had never grown accustomed to it. His face had acquired a fixed expression of being screwed to meet a shock of sound. He was manifestly unfit for his job, but he received the order to leave with dismay.
“Hasn't my work been satisfactory?” he asked Flynn.
“Satisfactory enough,” replied the foreman, genially, “but it's too hard for you, man.”
“I 'ain't complained,” said Joy, with a flash of his eyes. He thought he knew why this solicitude was shown him.
“I know you 'ain't,” said Flynn, “but you 'ain't got the muscle and nerve for it. That's plain enough to see.”
“I 'ain't complained, and I'd rather stay where I be,” said Joy, angrily.
“You'll go where you are sent in this factory, or be damned,” cried Flynn, walking off.
Joy looked after him with an expression which transformed his face. But the next morning the stolid Swede, who would not have started at a bomb, was at his place, and he was below, where he could not see Ellen.
Robert never spoke to Ellen in the factory, and had never called upon her since she entered. Now and then he met her on the street and raised his hat, that was all. Still, he began to wonder more and more if his aunt had not been mistaken in her view of the girl's motive for giving up college and going to work. Then, later on, he learned from Lyman Risley that a small mortgage had been put on the Brewster house some time before. In fact, Andrew, not knowing to whom to go, and remembering his kindness when Ellen was a child, had applied to him for advice concerning it. “He had to do it to keep his wife's sister in the asylum,” he told Robert; “and that poor girl went to work because she was forced into it, not because she preferred it, you may be sure of that.”
The two men were walking down the street one wind-swept day in December, when the pavement showed ridges of dust as from a mighty broom, and travellers walked bending before it with backward-flying garments.
“You may be right,” said Robert; “still, as Aunt Cynthia says, so many girls have that idea of earning money instead of going to school.”
“I know the pitiful need of money has tainted many poor girls with a monstrous and morbid overvalue of it,” said Risley, “and for that I cannot see they are to blame; but in this case I am sure it was not so. That poor child gave up Vassar College and went to work because she was fairly forced into it by circumstances. The aunt's husband ran away with another woman, and left her destitute, so that the support of her and her child came upon the Brewsters; and Brewster has been out of work a long time now, I know. He told me so. That mortgage had to be raised, and the girl had to go to work; there was no other way out of it.”
“Why didn't she tell Aunt Cynthia so?” asked Robert.
“Because she is Ellen Brewster, the outgrowth of the child who would not—” Risley checked himself abruptly.
“I know,” said Robert, shortly.
The other man started. “How long have you known—she did not tell?”
Robert laughed a little. “Oh no,” he replied. “Nobody told. I went there to call, and saw my own old doll sitting in a little chair in a corner of the parlor. She did not tell, but she knew that I knew. That child was a trump.”
“Well, what can you expect of a girl who was a child like that?” said Risley. “Mind you, in a way I don't like it. This power for secretiveness and this rigidity of pride in a girl of that age strike me rather unpleasantly. Of course she was too proud to tell Cynthia the true reason, and very likely thought they would blame her father, or Cynthia might feel that she was in a measure hinting to her to do more.”
“It would have looked like that,” said Robert, reflecting.
“Without any doubt that was what she thought; still, I don't like this strength in so young a girl. She will make a more harmonious woman than girl, for she has not yet grown up to her own character. But depend upon it, that girl never went to work of her own free choice.”
“You say the father is out of work?” Robert said.
“Yes, he has not had work for six months. He said, with the most dejected dignity and appeal that I ever saw in my life, that they begin to think him too old, that the younger men are preferred.”
“I wonder,” Robert began, then he stopped confusedly. It had been on his tongue to say that he wondered if he could not get some employment for him at Lloyd's; then he remembered his uncle, and stopped. Robert had begun to understand the older man's methods, and also to understand that they were not to be cavilled at or disputed, even by a nephew for whom he had undoubtedly considerable affection.
“It is nonsense, of course,” said Risley. “The man is not by any means old or past his usefulness, although I must admit he has that look. He cannot be any older than your uncle. Speaking of your uncle, how is Mrs. Lloyd?”
“I fear Aunt Lizzie is very far from well,” replied Robert, “but she tries to keep it from Uncle Norman.”
“I don't see how she can. She looked ghastly when I met her the other day.”
“That was when Uncle Norman was in New York,” said Robert. “It is different when he is at home.” As he spoke, an expression of intensest pity came over the young man's face. “I wonder what a woman who loves her husband will not do to shield him from any annoyance or suffering,” he said.
“I believe some women are born fixed to a sort of spiritual rack for the sake of love, and remain there through life,” said Risley. “But I have always liked Mrs. Lloyd. She ought to have good advice. What is it, has she told you?”
“Yes,” said Robert.
“It will be quite safe with me.”
Robert whispered one word in his ear.
“My God!” said Risley, “that? And do you mean to say that she has had no advice except Dr. Story?”
“Yes, I took her to New York to a specialist some time ago. Uncle Norman never knew it.”
“And nothing can be done?”
“She could have an operation, but the success would be very doubtful.”
“And that she will not consent to?”
“She has not yet.”
“How long?”
“Oh, she may live for years, but she suffers horribly, and she will suffer more.”
“And you say he does not know?”
“No.”
“Why, look here, Robert, dare you assume the responsibility? What will he say when he finds out that you have kept it from him?”
“I don't care,” said Robert. “I will not break an oath exacted by a woman in such straits as that, and I don't see what good it could do to tell him.”
“He might persuade her to have the operation.”
“His mere existence is persuasion enough, if she is to be persuaded. And I hope she may consent before long. She has seemed a little more comfortable lately, too.”
“I suppose sometimes those hideous things go away as mysteriously as they come,” said Risley.
“Yes,” replied Robert. “Going back to our first subject—”
Risley laughed. “Here she is coming,” he said.
In fact, at that moment they came abreast the street that led to the factories, and the six-o'clock whistle was just dying away in a long reverberation, and the workmen pouring out of the doors and down the stairs. Ellen had moved quickly, for she had an errand at the grocery-store before she went home. She was going to get some oysters for a hot stew for supper, of which her father was very fond. She had a little oyster-can in her hand when she met the two gentlemen. She had grown undeniably thinner since summer, but she was charming. Her short black skirt and her coarse gray jacket fitted her as well as if they had been tailor-made. There was nothing tawdry or slatternly about her. She looked every inch a lady, even with the drawback of an oyster-can, and mittens instead of gloves.
Both Risley and Robert raised their hats, and Ellen bowed. She did not smile, but her face contracted curiously, and her color obviously paled. Risley looked at Robert after they had passed.
“I have called on her twice,” said Robert, as if answering a question. His relations with the older man had become very close, almost like those of father and son, though Risley was hardly old enough for that relation.
“And you haven't been since she went to work?”
“No.”
“But you would have, had she gone to college instead of going to work in a shoe-factory?” Risley's voice had a tone of the gentlest conceivable sarcasm.
Robert colored. “Yes, I suppose so,” he said. Then he turned to Risley with a burst of utter frankness. “Hang it! old fellow,” he said, “you know how I have been brought up; you know how she—you know all about it. What is a fellow to do?”
“Do what he pleases. If it would please me to call on that splendid young thing, I should call if I were the Czar of all the Russias.”
“Well, I will call,” said Robert.
The very next evening Robert Lloyd went to call on Ellen. As he started out he was conscious of a strange sensation of shock, as if his feet had suddenly touched firm ground. All these months since Ellen had been working in the factory he had been vacillating. He was undoubtedly in love with her; he did not for a moment cheat himself as to that. When he caught a glimpse of her fair head among the other girls, he realized how unspeakably dear she was to him. Ellen never entered nor left the factory that he did not know it. Without actually seeing her, he was conscious of her presence always. He acknowledged to himself that there was no one like her for him, and never would be. He tried to interest himself in other young women, but always there was Ellen, like the constant refrain of a song. All other women meant to him not themselves, but Ellen. Womanhood itself was Ellen for his manhood. He knew it, and yet that strain of utterly impassionate judgment and worldly wisdom which was born in him kept him from making any advances to her. Now, however, the radicalism of Risley had acted like a spur to his own inclination. His judgment was in abeyance. He said to himself that he would give it up; he would go to see the girl—that he would win her if he could. He said to himself that she had been wronged, that Risley was right about her, that she was good and noble.
As the car drew near the Brewsters, his tenderness seemed to outspeed the electricity. The girl's fair face was plain before his eyes, as if she were actually there, and it was idealized and haloed as with the light of gold and precious stones. All at once, since he had given himself loose rein, he overtook, as it were, the true meaning of her. “The dear child,” he thought, with a rush of tenderness like pain—“the dear child. There she gave up everything and went to work, and let us blame her, rather than have her father blamed. The dear, proud child. She did that rather than seem to beg for more help.”
When Robert got off the car he was ready to fall at her feet, to push between her and the roughness of life, between her and the whole world.
He went up the little walk between the dry shrubs and rang the bell. There was no light in the front windows nor in the hall. Presently he heard footsteps, and saw a glimmer of light advancing towards him through the length of the hall. There were muslin-curtained side-lights to the door. Then the door opened, and little Amabel Tenny stood there holding a small kerosene lamp carefully in both hands. She held it in such a manner that the light streamed up in Robert's face and nearly blinded him. He was dimly conscious of a little face full of a certain chary innocence and pathos regarding him.
“Is Miss Ellen Brewster at home?” asked Robert, smiling down at the little thing.
“Yes, sir,” replied Amabel.
Then she remained perfectly still, holding the lamp, as if she had been some little sculptured light-bearer. She did not return his smile, and she did not ask him in. She simply regarded him with her sharp, innocent, illuminated face. Robert felt ridiculously nonplussed.
“Did you say she was in, my dear?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” replied Amabel, then relapsed into silence.
“Can I see her?” asked Robert, desperately.
“I don't know,” replied Amabel. Then she stood still, as before, holding the lamp.
Robert began to wonder what he was to do, when he heard a woman's voice calling from the sitting-room at the end of the hall, the door of which had been left ajar:
“Amabel Tenny, what are you doin'? You are coldin' the house all off! Who is it?”
“It's a man, Aunt Fanny,” called Amabel.
“Who is the man?” asked the voice. Then, much to Robert's relief, Fanny herself appeared.
She colored a flaming red when she saw him. She looked at Amabel as if she had an impulse to shake her.
“Why, Mr. Lloyd, is it you?” she cried.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Brewster; is—is your daughter at home?” asked Robert. He felt inclined to roar with laughter, and yet a curious dismay was beginning to take possession of him.
“Yes, Ellen is at home,” replied Fanny, with alacrity. “Walk in, Mr. Lloyd.” She was blushing and smiling as if she had been her own daughter. It was foolish, yet pathetic. Although Fanny asked the young man to walk in, and snatched the lamp peremptorily from Amabel's hand, she still hesitated. Robert began to wonder if he should ever be admitted. He did not dream of the true reason for the hesitation. There was no fire in the parlor, and in the sitting-room were Andrew, John Sargent, and Mrs. Wetherhed. It seemed to her highly important that Ellen should see her caller by herself, but how to take him into that cold parlor?
Finally, however, she made up her mind to do so. She opened the parlor door.
“Please walk in this way, Mr. Lloyd,” said she, and Robert followed her in.
It was a bitter night outside, and the temperature in the unused room was freezing. The windows behind the cheap curtains were thickly furred with frost.
“Please be seated,” said Fanny.
She indicated the large easy-chair, and Robert seated himself without removing his outer coat, yet the icy cold of the cushions struck through him.
Fanny ignited a match to light the best lamp with its painted globe. Her fingers trembled. She had to use three matches before she was successful.
“Can't I assist you?” asked Robert.
“No, thank you,” replied Fanny; “I guess the matches are damp. I've got it now.” Her voice shook. She turned to Robert when the lamp was lighted, still holding the small one, which she had set for the moment on the table. The strong double light revealed her face of abashed delight, although the young man did not understand it. It was the solicitude of the mother for the child which dignified all coarseness and folly.
“I guess you had better keep on your overcoat a little while till I get the fire built,” said she. “This room ain't very warm.”
Robert tried to say something polite about not feeling cold, but the lie was too obvious. Instead, he remarked that his coat was very warm, as it was, indeed, being lined with fur.
“I'll have the fire kindled in a minute,” Fanny said.
“Now don't trouble yourself, Mrs. Brewster,” said Robert. “I am quite warm in this coat, unless,” he added, lamely, “I could go out where you were sitting.”
“There's company out there,” said Fanny, with embarrassed significance. She blushed as she spoke, and Robert blushed also, without knowing why.
“It's no trouble at all to start a fire,” said Fanny; “this chimney draws fine. I'll speak to Ellen.”
Robert, left alone in the freezing room, felt his dismay deepen. Barriers of tragedy are nothing to those of comedy. He began to wonder if he were not, after all, doing a foolish thing. The hall door had been left ajar, and he presently became aware of Amabel's little face and luminous eyes set therein.
Robert smiled, and to his intense astonishment the child made a little run to him and snuggled close to his side. He lifted her up on his knee, and wrapped his fur coat around her. Amabel thrust out one tiny hand and began to stroke the sable collar.
“It's fur,” said she, with a bright, wise look into Robert's face.
“Yes, it's fur,” said he. “Do you know what kind?”
She shook her head, with bright eyes still on his.
“It is sable,” said Robert, “and it is the coat of a little animal that lives very far north, where it is as cold and colder than this all the time, and the ice and snow never melts.”
Suddenly Amabel slipped off his knee, pushing aside his caressing arm with a violent motion. Then she stood aloof, eying him with unmistakable reproof and hostility. Robert laughed.
“What is the matter?” he said.
“What does he do without his coat if it is as cold as that where he lives?” asked Amabel, severely. There was almost an accent of horror in her childish voice.
“Why, my dear child,” said Robert, “the little animal is dead. He isn't running around without his coat. He was shot for his fur.”
“To make you a coat?” Amabel's voice was full of judicial severity.
“Well, in one way,” replied Robert, laughing. “It was shot to get the fur to make somebody a coat, and I bought it. Come back here and have it wrapped round you; you'll freeze if you don't.”
Amabel came back and sat on his knee, and let him wrap the fur-lined garment around her. A strange sensation of tenderness and protection came over the young man as he felt the little, slender body of the child nestle against his own. He had begun to surmise who she was. However, Amabel herself told him in a moment.
“My mamma's sick, and they took her to an asylum. And my papa has gone away,” she said.
“You poor little soul,” said Robert, tenderly. Amabel continued to look at him with eyes of keenest intelligence, while one little cheek was flattened against his breast.
“I live with Uncle Andrew and Aunt Fanny now,” said she, “and I sleep with Ellen.”
“But you like living here, don't you, you dear?” asked Robert.
“Yes,” said Amabel, “and I like to stay with Ellen, but—but—I want to see my mamma and papa,” she wailed, suddenly, in the lowest and most pitiful wail imaginable.
“Poor little darling,” said Robert, stroking her flaxen hair. Amabel looked up at him with her little face all distorted with grief.
“If you had been my papa, would you have gone away and left Amabel?” she asked, quiveringly. Robert gathered her to him in a strong clasp of protection.
“No, you little darling, I never should,” he cried, fervently.
At that moment he wished devoutly that he had the handling of the man who had deserted this child.
“I like you most as well as my own papa,” said Amabel. “You ain't so big as my papa.” She said that in a tone of evident disparagement.
Then the sitting-room door opened, and Fanny and Ellen and Andrew appeared, the last with a great basket of wood and kindlings.
Robert set down Amabel, and sprang to his feet to greet Andrew and Ellen. Andrew, after depositing his basket beside the stove, shook hands with a sort of sad awkwardness. Robert saw that the man had aged immeasurably since he had last seen him.
“It is a cold night, Mr. Brewster,” he said, and knew the moment he said it that it was not a happy remark.
“It is pretty cold,” agreed Andrew, “and it's cold here in this room.”
“Oh, it'll be warm in a minute; this stove heats up quick,” cried Fanny, with agitated briskness. She began pulling the kindlings out of the basket.
“Here, you let me do that,” said Andrew, and was down on his knees beside her. The two were cramming the fuel into the little, air-tight stove, while Robert was greeting Ellen. The awkwardness of the situation was evidently overcoming her. She was quite pale, and her voice trembled as she returned his good-evening. Amabel left the young man, and clung tightly to Ellen's hand, drawing her skirt around her until only her little face was visible above the folds.
The awkwardness of the situation was evidently overcoming her
The fumes from a match filled the room, and the fire began to roar.
“It'll be warm in a minute,” said Fanny, rising. “You leave the register open till it's real good and hot, Ellen, and there's plenty more wood in the basket. Here, Amabel, you come out in the other room with Aunt Fanny.”
But Amabel, instead of obeying, made a dart towards Robert, who caught her up, laughing, and smuggled her into the depths of his fur-lined coat.
“Come right along, Amabel,” said Fanny.
But Amabel clung fast to Robert, with a mischievous roll of an eye at her aunt.
“Amabel,” said Fanny, authoritatively.
“Come, Amabel,” said Andrew.
“Oh, let her stay,” Robert said, laughing. “I'll keep her in my coat until it is warm.”
“I'm afraid she'll bother you,” said Fanny.
“Not a bit,” replied Robert.
“You are a naughty girl, Amabel,” said Fanny; but she went out of the room, with Andrew at her heels. She did not know what else to do, since the young man had expressed a desire to keep the child. She had thought he would have preferred atête-à-têtewith Ellen. Ellen sat down on the sofa covered with olive-green plush, beyond the table, and the light of the hideous lamp fell full upon her face. She was thin, and much of her lovely bloom was missing between her agitation and the cold; but Robert, looking at her, realized how dear she was to him. There was something about that small figure, and that fair head held with such firmness of pride, and that soul outlooking from steady blue eyes, which filled all his need of life. His love for the pearl quite ignored its setting of the common and the ridiculous. He looked at her and smiled. Ellen smiled back tremulously, then she cast down her eyes. The fire was roaring, but the room was freezing. The sitting-room door was opened a crack, and remained so for a second, then it was widened, and Andrew peeped in. Then he entered, tiptoeing gingerly, as if he were afraid of disturbing a meeting. He brought a blue knitted shawl, which he put over Ellen's shoulders.
“Mother thinks you had better keep this on till the room gets warm,” he whispered. Then he withdrew, shutting the door softly.
Robert, left alone with Ellen in this solemnly important fashion, felt utterly at a loss. He had never considered himself especially shy, but an embarrassment which was almost ridiculous was over him. Ellen sat with her eyes cast down. He felt that the child on his knee was regarding them both curiously.
“If you have come to see Ellen, why don't you speak to her?” demanded Amabel, suddenly. Then both Robert and Ellen laughed.
“This is your aunt's little girl, isn't she?” asked Robert.
Amabel answered before Ellen was able. “My mamma is sick, and they carried her away to the asylum,” she told Robert. “She—she tried to hurt Amabel; she tried to”—Amabel made that hideous gesture with her tiny forefinger across her throat. “Mamma was sick or she wouldn't,” she added, challengingly, to Robert.
“Of course she wouldn't, you poor little soul,” said Robert.
Suddenly Amabel burst into tears, and began to wriggle herself free from his arms. “Let me go,” she demanded; “let me go. I want Ellen.”
When Robert loosened his grasp she fled to Ellen, and was in her lap with a bound.
“I want my mamma—I want my mamma,” she moaned.
Ellen leaned her cheek against the poor little flaxen head. “There, there, darling,” she whispered, “don't. Mamma will come home as soon as she gets better.”
“How long will that be, Ellen?”
“Pretty soon, I hope, darling. Don't.”
Poor Eva Tenny had been in the asylum some four months, and the reports as to her condition were no more favorable. Ellen's voice, in spite of herself, had a hopeless tone, which the child was quick to detect.
“I want my mamma,” she repeated. “I want her, Ellen. It has been to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow after that, and the to-morrows are yesterdays, and she hasn't come.”
“She will come some time, darling.”
Robert sat eying the two with intensest pity. “Do you like chocolates, Amabel?” he asked.
The child repeated that she wanted her mother still, as with a sort of mechanical regularity of grief, but she fastened her eyes on him.
“Because I am going to send you a big box of them to-morrow,” said Robert.
Amabel turned to Ellen. “Does he mean it?” she asked.
“I guess so,” replied Ellen, laughing.
Amabel, looking from one to the other, also began to laugh unwillingly.
Then the sitting-room door opened, and Fanny called sharply and imperatively, “Amabel, Amabel; come!”
Amabel clung more tightly to Ellen, who began to gently loosen her arms.
“Amabel Tenny, come this minute. It is your bed-time,” said Fanny.
“I guess you had better go, darling,” whispered Ellen.
“I don't want to go to bed till you do, Ellen,” whispered the child.
Ellen gently but firmly unclasped the clinging arms. “Run along, dear,” she whispered.
“I will send those chocolates to-morrow,” suggested Robert.
Amabel seemed to do everything by sudden and violent impulses. All at once she ceased resisting. She slid down from Ellen's lap as quickly as she had gotten into it. She clutched her neck with two little wiry arms, kissed her hard on the mouth, darted across the room to Robert, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, then flew out of the room.
“She is an interesting child,” said Robert, who felt, like most people, the delicate flattery of a child's unsolicited caresses.
“I am very fond of her,” replied Ellen.
Then the two were silent. Robert suddenly realized that there was little to say unless he ventured on debatable ground. It would be too absurd of him to commence making love at once, and as for asking Ellen about her work, that seemed a subject better let alone.
Ellen herself opened the conversation by inquiring for his aunt.
“Aunt Cynthia is very well,” replied Robert. “I was in there last evening. You have not been to see her lately, Miss Brewster.”
Robert realized as soon as he had said that that he had made a mistake.
“No,” replied Ellen. She obviously paled a little, and looked at him wistfully. The young man could not stand it any longer, so straight into the heart of the matter he lunged.
“Look here, Miss Brewster,” he said, “why on earth didn't you tell Aunt Cynthia?”
“Tell her?” repeated Ellen, vaguely.
“Yes; make a clean breast of it to her. Tell her just why you went to work, and gave up college?”
Ellen colored, and looked at him half defiantly, half piteously. “I told her all I ought to,” she said.
“But you did not; pardon me,” said Robert, “you did not tell her half enough. You let her think that you actually of your own free choice went to work in the factory rather than go to college.”
“So I did,” replied Ellen, looking at him proudly.
“Of course you did, in one sense, but in another you did not. You deliberately chose to make a sacrifice; but it was a sacrifice. You cannot deny that it was a sacrifice.”
Ellen was silent.
“But you gave Aunt Cynthia the impression that it was not a sacrifice,” said Robert, almost severely.
Ellen's face quivered a little. “I saw no other way to do,” she said, faintly. The authoritative tone which this young man was taking with her stirred her as nothing had ever stirred her in her life before. She felt like a child before him.
“You have no right to give such a false impression of your own character,” said Robert.
“It was either that or a false impression of another,” returned Ellen, tremulously.
“You mean that she might have blamed your parents, and thought that they were forcing you into this?”
Ellen nodded.
“And I suppose you thought, too, that maybe Aunt Cynthia would suspect, if you told her all the difficulties, that you were hinting for more assistance.”
Ellen nodded, and her lip was quivering. Suddenly all her force of character seemed to have deserted her, and she looked more like a child than Amabel. She actually put both her little fists to her eyes. After all, the girl was very young, a child forced by the stress of circumstances to premature development, but she could relapse before the insistence of another nature.
Robert looked at her, his own face working, then he could bear it no longer. He was over on the sofa beside Ellen and had her in his arms. “You poor little thing,” he whispered. “Don't. I have loved you ever since the first time I saw you. I ought to have told you so before. Don't you love me a little, Ellen?”
But Ellen released herself with a motion of firm elusiveness and looked at him. The tears still stood in her eyes, but her face was steady. “I have been putting you out of my mind,” said she.
“But could you?” whispered Robert, leaning over her.
Ellen did not reply, but looked down and trembled.
“Could you?” repeated Robert, and there was in his voice that masculine insistence which is a true note of nature, and means the subjugation of the feminine into harmony.
Ellen did not speak, but every line in her body betrayed helpless yielding.
“You know you could not,” said Robert with triumph, and took her in his arms again.
But he reckoned without the girl, who was, after all, stronger than her natural instincts, and able to rise above and subjugate them. She freed herself from him resolutely, rose, and stood before him, looking at him quite unfalteringly and accusingly.
“Why do you come now?” she asked. “You say you have loved me from the first. You came to see me, you walked home with me, and said things to me that made me think—” She stopped.
“Made you think what, dear?” asked Robert. He was pale and indescribably anxious and appealing. It was suddenly revealed to him that this plum was so firmly attached to its bough of individuality that possibly love itself could not loosen it.
“You made me think that perhaps you did care a little,” said Ellen, in a low but unfaltering voice.
“You thought quite right, only not a little, but a great deal,” said Robert, firmly.
“Then,” said Ellen, “the moment I gave up going to college and went to work you never came to see me again; you never even spoke to me in the shop; you went right past me without a look.”
“Good God! child,” Robert interposed, “don't you know why I did that?”
Ellen looked at him bewildered, then a burning red overspread her face. “Yes,” she replied. “I didn't. But I do now. They would have talked.”
“I thought you would understand that,” said Robert. “I had only the best motives for that. I cannot speak to you in the factory any more than I have done. I cannot expose you to remark; but as for my not calling, I believed what you said to my aunt and to me. I thought that you had deliberately preferred a lower life to a higher one—that you preferred earning money to something better. I thought—”
Robert fairly started as Ellen began talking with a fire which seemed to make her scintillate before his eyes.
“You talk about a lower and a higher life,” said she. “Is it true? Is Vassar College any higher than a shoe-factory? Is any labor which is honest, and done with the best strength of man, for the best motives, to support the lives of those he loves, or to supply the needs of his race, any higher than another? Where would even books be without this very labor which you despise—the books which I should have learned at college? Instead of being benefited by the results of labor, I have become part of labor. Why is that lower?”
Robert stared at her.
“I have come to feel all this since I went to work,” said Ellen, speaking in a high, rapid voice. “When I went to work, it was, as you thought, for my folks, to help them, for my father was out of work, and there was no other way. But since I have been at work I have realized what work really is. There is a glory over it, as there is over anything which is done faithfully on this earth for good motives, and I have seen the glory, and I am not ashamed of it; and while it was a sacrifice at first, now, while I should like the other better, I do not think it is. I am proud of my work.”
The girl spoke with a sort of rapt enthusiasm. The young man stared, bewildered.
Robert caught Ellen's little hands, which hung, tightly clinched, in the folds of her dress, and drew her down to his side again. “See here, dear,” he said, “maybe you are right. I never looked at it in this way before, but you do not understand. I love you; I want to marry you. I want to make you my wife, and lift you out of this forever.”
Then again Ellen freed herself, and straightened her head and faced him. “There is nothing for me to be lifted out of,” said she. “You speak as if I were in a pit. I am on a height.”
“My God! child, how many others feel as you, do you think, out of the whole lot?” cried Robert.
“I don't know,” replied Ellen, “but it is true. What I feel is true.”
Robert caught up her little hand and kissed it. Then he looked at its delicate outlines. “Well, it may be true,” he said, “but look at yourself. Can't you see that you are not fashioned for manual labor? Look at this little hand.”
“That little hand can do the work,” Ellen replied, proudly.
“But, dear,” said Robert, “admitting all this, admitting that you are not in a position to be lifted—admitting everything—let us come back to our original starting-point. Dear, I love you, and I want you for my wife. Will you marry me?”
“No, I never can,” replied Ellen, with a long, sobbing breath of renunciation.
“Why not? Don't you love me?”
“Yes. I think it must be true that I do. I said I wouldn't; I have tried not to, but I think it must be true that I do.”
“Then why not marry me?”
“Because it will be impossible for my father and mother to get along and support Amabel and Aunt Eva without my help,” said Ellen, directly.
“But I—” began Robert.
“Do you think I will burden you with the support of a whole family?” said Ellen.
“Ellen, you don't know what I would be willing to do if I could have you,” cried the young man, fervently. And he was quite in earnest. At that moment it seemed to him that he could even come and live there in that house, with the hideous lamp, and the crushed-plush furniture, and the eager mother; that he could go without anything and everything to support them if only he could have this girl who was fairly storming his heart.
“I wouldn't be willing to have you,” said Ellen, firmly. “As things are now I cannot marry you, Mr. Lloyd. Then, too,” she added, “you asked me just now how many people looked at all this labor as I do, and I dare say not very many. I know not many of your kind of people. I know how your uncle looks at it. It would hurt you socially to marry a girl from a shoe-shop. Whether it is just or not, it would hurt you. It cannot be, as matters are now, Mr. Lloyd.”
“But you love me?”
Ellen suddenly, as if pushed by some mighty force outside herself, leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms. He tipped back her face and kissed her, and looked down at her masterfully.
“We will wait a little,” he said. “I will never give you up as long as I live if you love me, Ellen.”
When Ellen went out into the sitting-room that evening, after Robert Lloyd had taken leave, her father and mother were still there, although the callers had gone. Both of them looked furtively at her as she went through the room to the kitchen to get a lamp, then they looked at each other. Fanny was glowing with half shamefaced triumph; Andrew was pale. Ellen did not re-enter the room, but simply paused at the door, before going up-stairs, and they had a vision of a face in a tumult of emotions, with eyes and hair illuminated to excess of brilliancy by the lamp which she held.
“Good-night,” she called, and her voice did not sound like her own.
“Something has happened,” Fanny whispered to Andrew, when Ellen's chamber door had closed.
“Do you suppose she's goin' to?” whispered Andrew, in a sort of breathless fashion. His eyes on his wife's face were sad and wistful.
“Hush! How do I know?” asked Fanny. “I always told you he liked her.”
However, Fanny looked disturbed. Presently she went out in the kitchen to mix up some bread, and she wept a little, standing in a corner, with her face hidden in the folds of an old shawl which hung there on a peg. Dictatorial towards circumstances as she was when her beloved daughter came in question, and proud as she was at the prospect of an advantageous marriage for her, she remembered her sister in the asylum, she remembered how Andrew was out of work, and she could not understand how it was to be managed. And all this was aside from the grief which she would have felt in any case at losing Ellen.
As for Andrew, the next morning he put on his best clothes and went by trolley-cars to the next manufacturing town, not a city like Rowe, but a busy little place with two large factories, and tried in vain to get a job there. As he came home on the crowded car, his face was so despairing that the people looked curiously at him. Andrew had always been mild and peaceable, but at that moment anarchistic principles began to ferment in him. When a portly man, swelling ostentatiously with broadcloth and fine linen, wearing a silk hat, and carrying a gold-headed cane like a wand of office, got into the car, Andrew looked at him with a sidelong glance which was almost murderous. The spiritual bomb, which is in all our souls for our fellow-men, began to swell towards explosion. This man was the proprietor of one of the great factories in Leavitt, the town where Andrew had vainly sought a job. He had been in the office when Andrew entered, and the latter had heard his low voice of instruction to the foreman that the man was too old. The manufacturer, who weighed heavily, and described a vast curve of opulence from silk hat to his patent-leathers, sat opposite, his gold-headed cane planted in the aisle, his countenance a blank of complacent power. Andrew felt that he hated him.
The man's face was not intellectual, not as intellectual as Andrew's. He gave the impression of the force of matter oncoming and irresistible, some inertia which had started Heaven knew how. This man had inherited great wealth, as Andrew knew. He had capital with which to begin, and he had strength to roll the accumulating ball. Andrew felt more and more how he hated this man. He had told his foreman that Andrew was too old, and Andrew knew that he was no older, if as old, as the man himself.
“If I had been born under the Czar, and done with it, I should have felt differently,” he told himself. “But who is this man? What right has he to say that his fellow-men shall or shall not? Does even his own property give him the right of dictation over others? What is property? Is it anything but a temporary lease while he draws the breath of life? What of it in the tomb, to which he shall surely come? Shall a temporary possession give a man the right to wield eternal power? For the power of giving or withholding the means of life may produce eternal results.”
When the man rose and moved down the car, oscillating heavily, steadying himself with his gold-headed cane, and got out in front of a portentous mansion, Andrew would scarcely have recognized the look in his own eyes had he seen himself in a mirror.
“That chap is pretty well fixed,” said a man next him, to one on the other side.
“A cool half-million,” replied the other.
“More than that,” said the first speaker. “His father left him half a million to start with, besides the business, and he's been piling up ever since.”
“Do you work there?”
“Did, but I had what was mighty nigh a sunstroke last summer; had to quit. It was damned hot up there under the roof. It's the same old factory his father had.”
“Goin' to work again?”
“Next week, if I'm able, but I dun'no' whether I can stay there longer than till spring. It's damned hot up there under the roof.”
The man who spoke had a leaden hue of face, something ghastly, as if the deadly heat had begun a work of decomposition. Andrew looked at him, and his hatred against the rich man who had built himself a stately mansion, and kept his fellow-creatures at work for him in an unhealthy factory in tropical heat, and had condemned him for being too old, was redoubled.
“Andrew Brewster, where have you been?” Fanny asked, when he got home.
“I've been to Leavitt,” answered Andrew, shortly.
“To see if you could get a job there?”
“Yes.”
Fanny did not ask if he had been successful. She sighed, and took another stitch in the wrapper which she was making. That sigh almost drove Andrew mad.
“I don't see what has got you into such a habit of sighing,” he said, brutally.
Fanny looked at him with reproachful anger. “Andrew Brewster, you ain't like yourself,” said she.
“I can't help it.”
“There's no need for you to pitch into me because you can't get work; I ain't to blame. I'm doing all I can. I won't stand it, and you might as well know it first as last.”
Fanny glared angrily at her husband, then the tears sprang to her eyes.
Andrew hesitated a moment, then he leaned over her and put his thin cheek against her rough black hair. “The Lord knows I don't mean to be harsh to you, you poor girl,” said he, “but I wish I was dead.”
Fanny seemed to spring into resistance like a wire. “Then you are a coward, Andrew Brewster,” said she, hotly. “Talk about wishin' you was dead. I 'ain't got time to die. You'd 'nough sight better go out into the yard and split up some of that wood.”
“I didn't mean to speak so, Fanny,” said Andrew, “but sometimes I get desperate, and I've been thinking of Ellen.”
“Don't you suppose I have?” asked Fanny, angrily.
“Well, there's one thing about it; we won't stand in her way,” said Andrew.
“No, we won't,” replied Fanny. “I'll go out washing first.”
“She hasn't said anything?”
“No.”
As time went on Ellen still said nothing. She had made a curious compact for a young girl with her lover. She had stipulated that no engagement was to exist, that she should be perfectly free—when she said that she thought of Maud Hemingway, but she said it without a tremor—and if years hence both were free and of the same mind they might talk of it again.
Robert had rebelled strenuously. “You know this will shut me off from seeing much of you,” he said. “You know I told you how it will be about my even talking much to you in the factory.”
“Yes, I understand that now,” replied Ellen, blushing; “and I understand, too, that you cannot come to see me very often under such circumstances without making talk.”
“How often?” Robert asked, impetuously.
Ellen hesitated, her lip quivered a little, but her voice was firm. “Not oftener than two or three times a year, I am afraid,” said she.
“Great Scott!” cried Robert. Then he caught her in his arms again. “Do you suppose I can stand that?” he whispered. “Ellen, I cannot consent to this!”
“It is the only way,” said she. She freed herself from him enough to look into his eyes with a brave, fearless gaze of comradeship, which somehow seemed to make her dearer than anything else.
“But to see you to speak to only two or three times a year!” groaned Robert. “You are cruel, Ellen. You don't know how I love you.”
“There isn't any other way,” said Ellen. Then she looked up into his face with a brave innocence of confession like a child. “It hurts me, too,” said she.
Robert had her in his arms, and was covering her face with kisses. “You darling,” he whispered. “It shall not be long. Something will happen. We cannot live so. We will let it go so a little while, but something will turn up. I shall have a more responsible place and a larger salary, then—”
“Do you think I will let you?” asked Ellen, with a great blush.
“I will, whether you will let me or not,” cried Robert; and at that moment he felt inclined to marry the entire Brewster family rather than give up this girl.
However, as he went home, walking that he might think the better, he had to confess to himself that the girl was right; that, as matters were, anything definite was out of the question. He had to admit that it might be a matter of years.
When Ellen had been at work in the factory a year, she was running a machine and working by the piece, and earning on an average eighteen dollars a week. Of course that was an unusual advance for a girl, but Ellen was herself unusual. She came to work in those days with such swiftness and unswerving accuracy that she seemed fairly a part of the great system of labor itself. While she was at her machine, her very individuality seemed lost; she became an integral part of a system.
“She's one of the best hands we ever had,” Flynn told Norman Lloyd one day.
“I am glad to hear that,” Lloyd responded, smiling with that peculiar smile of his which was like a cold flash of steel.
“Curse him, he thinks no more of anybody in this shop than he does of the machine they work,” Flynn thought as he watched the proprietor walking with his stately descent down the stairs. The noon whistle was blowing, and the younger Lloyd went leaping down the stairs and joined his uncle, then the two walked down the street, away from the factory. The factory at that time of year began to present, in spite of its crude architecture, quite a charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet. All the front of Lloyd's was covered with vines, which had grown with amazing swiftness. Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect upon them with complacency.
“I should think it would make it pleasanter for the men to work in the factory, when it looks so pretty and green,” she told her husband one of the hottest days of the preceding summer. As she spoke she compressed her lips in a way which was becoming habitual to her. It meant the endurance of a sharp stab of vital pain. There was a terrible pathos in the poor woman's appearance at that time. She still kept about. Her malady did not seem to be on the increase, but it endured. Her form had changed indescribably. She had not lost flesh, but she had a curious, distorted look, and one on seeing her had a bewildered feeling, and looked again to be sure that he had seen aright. Her ghastly pallor she concealed in a manner which she thought distinctly sinful. She painted and powdered. She did not dare purchase openly the concoctions which were used for improving her complexion, but she went to a manicure and invested in a colored salve for her finger-nails. This, with rather surprising skill for such a conscience-pricked tyro, she applied to the pale curves of her cheeks and her blue lips. She took more pains than ever before with her dress, and it was all to deceive her husband, that he should not be annoyed. She felt a desperate shame because of her illness; she felt it to be a direct personal injury to this masculine power which had been set over her gentle femininity. It was not so much because she was afraid of losing his affection that she concealed her affliction from him, as because she felt that the affliction itself was somehow an act of disloyalty. Her terrible malady had in a way affected her reasoning powers, so that they had become distorted by a monstrous growth of suffering, like her body. She would not give up going about as usual, and was never absent from church. She drove about with her husband in his smart trap. Twice she had gone with Robert to consult the New York specialist, taking times when Norman was away on business. She still would not consent to an operation, and lately the specialist had been lukewarm in advising it. He had indeed been doubtful from the first.
Mrs. Lloyd treated Robert with a soft affection which was almost like that of a mother. One night, when he returned late from a call on Ellen, she sat up waiting for him. He had not called on Ellen before for several months, and it was nearly midnight when he returned.
“Why, Aunt Lizzie, are you up?” he cried, as he entered the library door and saw his aunt's figure, clad in shining black satin, gleaming with jet, in the depths of an easy-chair.
Mrs. Lloyd looked up at him with an expression of patient suffering. “I couldn't go to sleep if I went to bed, Robert,” she replied, in a hushed voice. She found it a comfort sometimes to confess her pain to him. Robert went over to her, and drew her large, crinkled, blond head to his shoulder as if she had been a child.
“Poor thing,” he whispered, stroking her face pitifully. “Is it very terrible?” he asked, with his lips close to her ear.
“Terrible,” she whispered back. “Oh, Robert, you do not know; pray God you may never know.”
“I wish to God I could bear it for you, Aunt Lizzie,” Robert said, fervently.
“Oh, hush! If you or Norman had to bear anything like this, I should curse God and die,” she answered, and she shut her mouth hard, and her whole face was indicative of a repressed shriek.
“Aunt Lizzie, don't you think you ought to go to New York, that you ought—” Robert began, but she stopped him with an almost fierce peremptoriness. “Robert Lloyd, I have trusted you,” she said. “For God's sake, don't forsake me. Don't say a word to me about that; when I can I will. It means my death, anyhow. Dr. Evarts thought so; you can't deny it.”
“I think he thought there was a chance, Aunt Lizzie,” Robert returned, but he said it faintly.
“You can't cheat me,” replied Mrs. Lloyd. “I know.” She had a lapse from pain, and her features began to assume their natural expression. She looked at him almost smiling, and as if she turned her back upon her own misery. “Where have you been, Robert?” she asked.
Robert colored a little, but he answered directly enough. “I have been to make a call on Miss Brewster,” he said.
“You don't go there very often,” said Mrs. Lloyd.
“No, not very often.”
“She's a beautiful girl, as beautiful a girl as I ever laid eyes on, if she does work in the shop,” said Mrs. Lloyd, “and she's a good girl, too; I know she is. She was the sweetest little thing when she was a child, and she 'ain't altered a mite!” Then Mrs. Lloyd looked with a sort of wistful curiosity at Robert.
“I think it is all true, what you say, Aunt Lizzie,” replied Robert.
Mrs. Lloyd continued to look at him with that wistful scrutiny.
“Robert,” she began, then she hesitated.
“What, Aunt Lizzie?”
“If—ever you wanted to marry that girl, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't, for my part.”
Robert pulled a chair close to his aunt, and sat down beside her, still holding her hand.
“I've a good mind to tell you the whole story, Aunt Lizzie,” he said.
“I wish you would, Robert. You know I think as much of you as if you were my own son, and I won't tell anybody, not even your uncle, if you don't want me to.”
“Well, then, it is all in a nutshell,” said Robert. “I like her, you know, and I think I have ever since I saw her in her little white gown at the high-school exhibition.”
“Wasn't she sweet?” said his aunt.
“And she likes me, too, I think.”
“Of course she does.”
“But you know what my salary is, and her whole family is in a measure dependent upon her.”
“Hasn't her father got work?”
“No.”
“I'll speak to Norman,” cried Mrs. Lloyd, quickly. “I know he would do it for me.”
“But even then, Aunt Lizzie, there is the aunt in the asylum, and the child, and—”
“Your uncle will pay you more.”
“It isn't altogether that; in fact, it isn't that at all which is at the bottom of the difficulty. The difficulty is with Ellen herself. She will never consent to my marrying her, and having to support her family, while matters are as now. You don't know how proud she is, Aunt Lizzie.”
“She is a splendid girl.”
“As far as I am concerned I would marry the whole lot on a little more than I have now, but she would not let me do it. There's nothing to do but to wait.”
“Perhaps the aunt will get well and her husband will come back; and I will see, anyway, if Norman won't give her father work,” said Mrs. Lloyd.
“I think you had better not, Aunt Lizzie.”
“Why not, Robert?”
“There are reasons why I think you had better not.” Robert would not tell her that Ellen had begged him not to use any influence of his to get her father work.
“After the way father has been turned off, I can't stand it,” she had said, with a sort of angry dignity which was unusual to her. In fact, her father himself had begged her not to make use of Robert in any way for his own advancement.
“If they don't want me for my work, I don't want to crawl in because the nephew of the boss likes my daughter,” he had said. This speech was fairly rough for him, but Ellen had understood.
“I know what you mean, father,” she said.
“I'd rather work in the road,” said Andrew. That autumn he was getting jobs of clearing up yards of fallen leaves, and gathering feed-corn and pumpkins, and earning a pittance. Fanny continued to work on her wrappers. “It's a mercy wrappers don't go out of fashion,” she often said.
“I suppose things that folks can get for nothing ain't so apt to go out of fashion,” Andrew retorted, bitterly. He hated the wrappers with a deadly hatred. He hated the sight of the limp row of them on his bedroom wall. Nobody knew how the family pinched and screwed in those days.
They were using the small fund which they secured from the house mortgage, Ellen's earnings, and Fanny's and Andrew's, and every cent had to be counted, but there was something splendid in their loyalty to poor Eva in the asylum. The thought of deserting her in her extremity never occurred to them.
Mrs. Lloyd spoke of her that night, when she and Robert were talking together in the library.
“They are good folks, to keep on doing for that poor woman in the asylum,” she said.
“They would never desert a dog that belonged to them,” Robert answered, fervently. “I tell you that trait is worth a good many others, Aunt Lizzie.”
“I guess it is,” said his aunt. Then another paroxysm of pain seized her. She looked at Robert with a convulsed, speechless face. He held her hands more tightly, his own face contracting in sympathy, and watched his aunt with a sort of angry helplessness. But he felt as if he wanted to fight something for the sake of this poor, oppressed, innocent creature; indeed, he felt fairly blasphemous. But this time the pain passed quickly, and Mrs. Lloyd looked at her nephew with an expression of relief and gentleness which was almost angelic. When the pain was over she thought again of the Brewsters, and how they would not have forsaken her in her misery, had she belonged to them, any more than they had forsaken the insane aunt.
“They are good folks,” said she, “and that is the main thing. That is the main thing to consider when you are marrying into a family, Robert. It is more than riches and position. The power they've got of loving and standing by each other is worth more than anything else.”
“You are right, Aunt Lizzie, I guess there's no doubt of that,” said Robert.
“And that girl's beautiful,” said Mrs. Lloyd. She gazed at the young man with a delicate understanding and sympathy which was almost beyond that of a sweetheart. Robert felt as if a soft hand of tenderness and blessing were laid on his inmost heart. He looked at her like a grateful child.
“There isn't anybody like her, is there, Aunt Lizzie?” he asked.
“No, I don't think there is, dear boy,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “I do think she is the sweetest little thing I ever saw in my life.”
Robert brought his aunt's hand to his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him for a minute as if the love and sympathy of this martyr were almost more precious than the love of Ellen herself.
He realized when he was in his own room, and the house was quiet, how much he loved his aunt, and how hard her pain and probably inevitable doom were for him to bear. Then something came to him which he had never felt before—a great, burning anxiety and tenderness and terror over Ellen, because she was of the weaker half of creation, which is born to the larger share of pain in the world. He felt that he would almost have given her up, yielded up forever all his delight in her, to spare her; for the pain of knighthood, which is in every true lover, awoke in his heart.