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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ Chapter XVIII After the exhibition there was a dance. The Brewsters, even Mrs. Zelotes, remained to see the last of Ellen's triumph. Mrs. Zelotes was firmly convinced that Ellen's appearance excelled any one's in the hall. Not a girl swung past them in the dance but she eyed her white dress scornfully, then her rosy face, and sniffed with high nostrils like an old war-horse. "Jest look at that Vining girl's dress, coarse enough to strain through," she said to Fanny, leaning across Andrew, who was sitting rapt, his very soul dancing with his daughter, his eyes never leaving her one second, following her fair head and white flutter of muslin ruffles and ribbons around the hall. "Yes, that's so," assented Fanny, but not with her usual sharpness. A wistful softness and sweetness was on her coarsely handsome face. Once she reached her hand over Andrew's and pressed it, and blushed crimson as she did so. Andrew turned and smiled at her. All that annoyed Andrew was that Ellen danced with Granville Joy often, and also with other boys. It disturbed him a little, even while it delighted him, that she should dance at all, that she should have learned to dance. Andrew had been brought up to look upon dancing as an amusement for Louds rather than for Brewsters. It had not been in vogue among the aristocracy of this little New England city when he was young. Mrs. Zelotes watched Ellen dance with inward delight and outward disapproval. "I don't approve of dancing, never did," she said to Andrew, but she was furious once when Ellen sat through a dance. Towards the end of the evening she saw with sudden alertness Ellen dancing with a new partner, a handsome young man, who carried himself with more assurance than the school-boys. Mrs. Zelotes hit Andrew with her sharp elbow. "Who's that dancing with her now?" she said. "That's young Lloyd," answered Andrew. He flushed a little, and looked pleased. "Norman Lloyd's nephew?" asked his mother, sharply. "Yes, he's on here from St. Louis. He's goin' into business with his uncle," replied Andrew. "Sargent was telling me about it yesterday. Young Lloyd came into the post-office while we were there." Fanny had been listening. Immediately she married Ellen to young Lloyd, and the next moment she went to live in a grand new house built in a twinkling in a vacant lot next to Norman Lloyd's residence, which was the wonder of the city. She reared this castle in Spain with inconceivable swiftness, even while she was turning her head towards Eva on the other side, and prodding her with an admonishing elbow as Mrs. Zelotes had prodded Andrew. "That's Norman Lloyd's nephew dancing with her now," she said. Eva looked at her, smiling. Directly the idea of Ellen's marriage with the young man with whom she was dancing established full connections and ran through the line of Ellen's relatives as though an electric wire. As for Ellen, dancing with this stranger, who had been introduced to her by the school-master, she certainly had no thought of a possible marriage with him, but she had looked into his face with a curious, ready leap of sympathy and understanding of this other soul which she met for the first time. It seemed to her that she must have known him before, but she knew that she had not. She began to reflect as they were whirling about the hall, she gazed at that secret memory of hers, which she had treasured since her childhood, and discovered that what had seemed familiar to her about the young man was the face of a familiar thought. Ever since Miss Cynthia Lennox had told her about her nephew, the little boy who had owned and loved the doll, Ellen had unconsciously held the thought of him in her mind. "You are Miss Cynthia Lennox's nephew," she said to young Lloyd. "Yes," he replied. He nodded towards Cynthia, who was sitting on the opposite side from the Brewsters, with the Norman Lloyds and Lyman Risley. "She used to be like a mother to me," he said. "You know I lost my mother when I was a baby." Ellen nodded at him with a look of pity of that marvellous scope which only a woman in whom the maternal slumbers ready to awake can compass. Ellen, looking at the handsome face of the young man, saw quite distinctly in it the face of the little motherless child, and all the tender pity which she would have felt for that child was in her eyes. "What a beautiful girl she is," thought the young man. He smiled at her admiringly, loving her look at him, while not in the least understanding it. He had asked to be presented to Ellen from curiosity. He had not been at the exhibition, and had heard the school-master and Risley talking about the valedictory. "I didn't know that you taught anarchy in school, Mr. Harris," Risley had said. He laughed as he said it, but Harris had colored with an uneasy look at Norman Lloyd, whose face wore an expression of amusement. "Perhaps I should have," he began, but Lloyd interrupted him. "My dear fellow," he said, "you don't imagine that any man in his senses could take seriously enough to be annoyed by it that child's effusion on her nice little roll of foolscap tied with her pretty white satin ribbon?" "She is just as sweet as she can be," said Mrs. Norman, "and I thought her composition was real pretty. Didn't you, Cynthia?" "Very," replied Cynthia. "What your are worrying about it for, Edward, I don't see," said Mrs. Norman to the school-master. "Well, I am glad if it struck you that way," said he, "but when I heard the applause from all those factory people"--he lowered his voice, since a number were sitting near--"I didn't know, but--" He hesitated. "That the spark that would fire the mine might be in that pretty little beribboned roll of foolscap," said Risley, laughing. "Well, it was a very creditable production, and it was written with the energy of conviction. The Czar and that little school-girl would not live long in one country, if she goes on as she has begun." It was then that young Lloyd, who had just come in, and was standing beside the school-master, turned eagerly to him, and asked who the girl was, and begged him to present him. "Perhaps he'll fall in love with her," said Mrs. Norman, directly, when the two men had gone across the hall in quest of Ellen. Her husband laughed. "You have not seen your aunt for a long time," Ellen said to young Lloyd, when they were sitting out a dance after their waltz together. "Not since--I--I came on--with my father when he died," he replied. Again Ellen looked at him with that wonderful pity in her face, and again the young man thought he had never seen such a girl. "I think your aunt is beautiful," Ellen said, presently, gazing across at Cynthia. "Yes, she must have been a beauty when she was young." "I think she is now," said Ellen, quite fervently, for she was able to disabuse her mind of associations and rely upon pure observation, and it was quite true that leaving out of the question Cynthia's age and the memory of her face in stronger lights at closer view, she was as beautiful from where they sat as some graceful statue. Only clear outlines showed at that distance, and her soft hair, which was quite white, lay in heavy masses around the intense repose of her face. "Yes--s," admitted Robert, somewhat hesitatingly. "She used to think everything of me when I was a little shaver," he said. "Doesn't she now?" "Oh yes, I suppose she does, but it is different now. I am grown up. A man doesn't need so much done for him when he is grown up." Then again he looked at Ellen with eyes of pleading which would have made of the older woman what he remembered her to have been in his childhood, and hers answered again. Robert did not say anything to her about the valedictory until just before the close of the evening, when their last dance together was over. "I am sorry I did not have a chance to hear your valedictory," he said. "I could not come early." Ellen blushed and smiled, and made the conventional school-girl response. "Oh, you didn't miss anything," said she. "I am sure I did," said the young man, earnestly. Then he looked at her and hesitated a little. "I wonder if you would be willing to lend it to me?" he said, then. "I would be very careful of it, and would return it immediately as soon as I had read it. I should be so interested in reading it." "Certainly, if you wish," said Ellen, "but I am afraid you won't think it is good." "Of course I shall. I have been hearing about it, how good it was, and how you broke up the whole house." Ellen blushed. "Oh, that was only because it was the valedictory. They always clap a good deal for the valedictory." "It was because it was you, you dear beauty," thought the young man, gazing at her, and the impulse to take her in his arms and kiss that blush seized upon him. "I know they applauded your valedictory because it was worthy of it," said he, and Ellen's eyes fell before his, and the blush crept down over her throat, and up to the soft toss of hair on her temples. The two were standing, and the man gazed at Ellen's pink arms and neck through the lace of her dress, those incomparable curves of youthful bloom shared by a young girl and a rose; he gazed at that noble, fair head bent not so much before him as before the mystery of life, of which a perception had come to her through his eyes, and he said to himself that there never was such a girl, and he also wondered if he saw aright, he being one who seldom entirely lost the grasp of his own leash. Having the fancy and the heart of a young man, he was given like others of his kind to looking at every new girl who attracted him in the light of a problem, the unknown quantity being her possible interest for him, but he always worked it out calmly. He kept himself out of his own shadow, when it came to the question of emotions, in something the same fashion that his uncle Norman did. Now, looking at Ellen Brewster with the whole of his heart setting towards her in obedience to that law which had brought him into being, he yet was saying quite coolly and loudly in his own inner consciousness, "Wait, wait, wait! Wait until to-morrow, see how you feel then. You have felt in much this way before. Wait! Perhaps you don't see it as it is. Wait!" He realized his own wisdom all the more clearly when Ellen led him to the settee where her relatives sat guarding her graduation presents and her precious valedictory. She presented him gracefully enough. Ellen knew nothing of society etiquette, she had never introduced such a young gentleman as this to any one in her life, but her inborn dignity of character kept her self-poise perfect. Still, when young Lloyd saw the mother coarsely perspiring and fairly aggressive in her delight over her daughter, when poor Andrew hoped he saw him well, and Mrs. Zelotes eyed him with sharp approbation, and Eva, conscious of her shabbiness, bowed with a stiff toss of her head and sat back sullenly, and little Amabel surveyed him with uncanny wisdom divided between himself and Ellen, he became conscious of a slight disappearance of his glamour. He thanked Ellen most heartily for the privilege which she granted him, when she took the valedictory from the heap of flowers, and took his leave with a bow which made Fanny nudge Andrew, almost before the young man's back was turned. Then she looked at Ellen, but she said nothing. A sudden impulse of delicacy prevented her. There was something about this beloved daughter of hers which all at once seemed strange to her. She began to associate her with the sacred mystery of life as she had never done. Then, too, there was the more superficial association with one of another class which she held in outward despite but inward awe. Ellen gathered up her presents into her lap, and sat there a few minutes through the last dance, which she had refused to Granville Joy, who went away with nervous alertness for another girl, and nobody spoke to her. When young Lloyd and Cynthia Lennox and the others left, as they did directly, Fanny murmured, "They've gone," and they all knew what she meant. She was thinking--and so were they all, except Ellen--that that was the reason, because he had to go, that he had not asked Ellen for the last dance. As for Ellen, she sat looking at her gold watch and chain, which she had taken out of the case. Her face grew intensely sober, and she did not notice when young Lloyd left. All at once she had reflected how her father had never owned a watch in his whole life, though he was a man, but he had given one to her. She reflected how he had so little work, how shabby his clothes were, how he must have gone without himself to buy this for her, and the girl had such a heart of gold that it rose triumphantly loyal to its first loves and tendernesses, and her father's old, worn face came between her and that of the young man who might become her lover. _ |
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