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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 21 |
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_ Chapter XXI Granville Joy was employed in Lloyd's, and Robert had seen him that very day and spoken to him, but he did not recognize him, not until Ellen spoke. "This is Mr. Joy, Mr. Lloyd," she said; "perhaps you know him. He works in your uncle's shop." She said it quite simply, as if it was a matter of course that Robert was on speaking terms with all the employes in his uncle's factory. Granville colored. "I saw Mr. Lloyd this afternoon in the cutting-room," he said, "and we had some talk together; but maybe he don't remember, there are so many of us." Granville said "so many of us" with an indescribably bitter emphasis. Suddenly his gentleness seemed changed to gall. It was the terrible protest of one of the herd who goes along with the rest, yet realizes it, and looks ever out from his common mass with fierce eyes of individual dissent at the immutable conditions of things. Immediately, when Granville saw the other young man, this gentleman in his light summer clothes, who bore about him no stain nor odor of toil, he felt that here was Ellen's mate; that he was left behind. He looked at him, not missing a detail of his superiority, and he saw himself young and not ill-looking, but hopelessly common, clad in awkward clothes; he smelled the smell of leather that steamed up in his face from his raiment and his body; and he looked at Ellen, fair and white in her dainty muslin, and saw himself thrust aside, as it were, by his own judgment as to the fitness of things, but with no less bitterness. When he said "there are so many of us," he felt the impulse of revolution in his heart; that he would have liked to lead the "many of us" against this young aristocrat. But Robert smiled, though somewhat stiffly, and bowed. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Joy," he said; "I do remember, but for a minute I did not." "I don't wonder," said Granville, and again he repeated, "There are so many of us," in that sullen, bitter tone. "What is the matter with the fellow?" thought Robert; but he said, civilly enough; "Oh, not at all, Mr. Joy. I will admit there are a good many of you, as you say, but that would not prevent my remembering a man to whom I was speaking only a few hours ago. It was only the half-light, and I did not expect to see you here." "Mr. Joy is a very old friend of mine," Ellen said, quickly, with a painful impulse of loyalty. The moment she saw her old school-boy lover intimidated, and manifestly at a disadvantage before this elegant young gentleman, she felt a fierce instinct of partisanship. She stood a little nearer to him. Granville's face lightened, he looked at her gratefully, and Robert stared from one to the other doubtfully. He began to wonder if he had interrupted a love-scene, and was at once pained with a curious, new pain, and indignant. Then, too, he scarcely knew what to do. He had been sent to ask Ellen to come into the parlor. "My aunt is in the house," he said. "Your aunt?" "Yes, my aunt, Miss Lennox." Ellen gave a great start, and stared at him. "Does she want to see me?" she asked, abruptly. Robert glanced at Granville. He was afraid of being rude towards this possible lover, but the young man was quick to perceive the situation. "I guess I must be going," he said to Ellen. "Must you hurry?" she returned, in the common, polite rejoinder of her class in Rowe. "Yes, I guess I must," said Granville. He held out his hand towards Ellen, then drew it away, but she extended hers resolutely, and so forced his back again. "Good-night," she said, kindly, almost tenderly, and again Robert thought with that sinking at his heart that here was quite possibly the girl's lover, and all his dreams were thrown away. As for Granville, he glowed with a sudden triumph over the other. Again he became almost sure that Ellen loved him after all, that it was only her maiden shyness which had led her to refuse him. He pressed her hand hard, and held it as long as he dared; then he turned to Robert. "I'll bid you good-evening, sir," he said, with awkward dignity, and was gone. "I will go in and see your aunt," Ellen said to Robert, regarding him as she spoke with a startled expression. It had flashed through her mind that Miss Lennox had possibly come to confess the secret of so many years ago, and she shrank with terror as before the lowering of some storm of spirit. She knew how little was required to lash her mother's violent nature into fury. "She was not--?" she began to say to Robert, then she stopped; but he understood. "Don't be afraid, Miss Brewster," he said, kindly. "It is not a matter of by-gones, but the future. My aunt has a plan for you which I think you will like." Ellen looked at him wonderingly, but she went with him across the moonlit yard into the house. She found Miss Cynthia Lennox, fair and elegant in a filmy black gown, and a broad black hat draped with lace and violets shading her delicate, clear-cut face, and her father and mother. Fanny's eyes were red. She looked as if she had been running--in fact, one could easily hear her breathe across the room. "Ellen, here is Miss Lennox," she said. Ellen approached the lady, who rose, and the two shook hands. "Good-evening, Miss Brewster," said Cynthia, in the same tone which she might have used towards a society acquaintance. Ellen would never have known that she had heard the voice before. As she remembered it, it was full of intensest vibrations of maternal love and tenderness and protection beyond anything which she had ever heard in her own mother's voice. Now it was all gone, and also the old look from her eyes. Cynthia Lennox was, in fact, quite another woman to the young girl from what she had been to the child. In truth, she cared not one whit for Ellen, but she was possessed with a stern desire of atonement, and far stronger than her love was the appreciation of what that mother opposite must have suffered during that day and night when she had forcibly kept her treasure. The agony of that she could present to her consciousness very vividly, but she could not awaken the old love which had been the baby's for this young girl. Cynthia felt much more affection for Fanny than for Ellen. When she had unfolded her plan for sending Ellen to college, and Fanny had almost gone hysterical with delight, she found it almost impossible to keep her tears back. She knew so acutely how this other woman felt that she almost seemed to lose her own individuality. She began to be filled with a vicarious adoration of Ellen, which was, however, dissipated the moment she actually saw her. She realized that this grown-up girl, who could no longer be cuddled and cradled, was nothing to her, but her sympathy with the mother remained. Ellen remained standing after she had greeted Cynthia. Robert went over to the mantle-piece and stood leaning against it. He was completely puzzled and disturbed by the whole affair. Ellen looked at Cynthia, then at her parents. "Ellen, come here, child," said her father, suddenly, and Ellen went over to him, sitting on the plush sofa beside her mother. Andrew reached up and took hold of Ellen's hands, and drew her down on his knee as if she had been a child. "Ellen, look here," he said, in an intense, almost solemn voice, "father has got something to tell you." Fanny began to weep almost aloud. Cynthia looked straight ahead, keeping her features still with an effort. Robert studied the carpet pattern. "Look here, Ellen," said Andrew; "you know that father has always wanted to do everything for you, but he ain't able to do all he would like to. God hasn't prospered him, and it seems likely that he won't be able to do any more than he has done, if so much, in the years to come. You know father has always wanted to send you to college, and give you an extra education so you could teach in a school where you would make a good living, and now here Miss Lennox says she heard your composition, and she has heard a good deal about you from Mr. Harris, how well you stood in the high-school, and she says she is willing to send you to Vassar College." Ellen turned pale. She looked long at her father, whose pathetic, worn, half-triumphant, half-pitiful face was so near her own; then she looked at Cynthia, then back again. "To Vassar College?" she said. "Yes, Ellen, to Vassar College, and she offers to clothe you while you are there, but we thank her, and tell her that ain't necessary. We can furnish your clothes." "Yes, we can," said Fanny, in a sobbing voice, but with a flash of pride. "Well, what do you say to it, Ellen?" asked Andrew, and he asked it with the expression of a martyr. At that moment indescribable pain was the uppermost sensation in his heart, over all his triumph and gladness for Ellen. First came the anticipated agony of parting with her for the greater part of four years, then the pain of letting another do for his daughter what he wished to do himself. No man would ever look in Ellen's eyes with greater love and greater shrinking from the pain which might come of love than Andrew at that moment. "But--" said Ellen; then she stopped. "What, Ellen?" "Can you spare me for so long? Ought I not to be earning money before that, if you don't have much work?" "I guess we can spare you as far as all that goes," cried Andrew. "I guess we can. I guess we don't want you to support us." "I rather guess we don't," cried Fanny. Ellen looked at her father a moment longer with an adorable look, which Robert saw with a sidewise glance of his downcast eyes, then at her mother. Then she slid from her father's knee and crossed the room and stood before Cynthia. "I don't know how to thank you enough," she said, "but I thank you very much, and not only for myself but for them"; she made a slight, graceful, backward motion of her shoulder towards her parents. "I will study hard and try to do you credit," said she. There was something about Ellen's direct, childlike way of looking at her, and her clear speech, which brought back to Cynthia the little girl of so many years ago. A warm flush came over her delicate cheeks; her eyes grew bright with tenderness. [Illustration: I'll study hard and try to do you credit] "I have no doubt as to your doing your best, my dear," she said, "and it gives me great pleasure to do this for you." With that, said with a graceful softness which was charming, she made as if to rise, but Ellen still stood before her. She had something more to say. "If ever I am able," she said--"and I shall be able some day if I have my health--I will repay you." Ellen spoke with the greatest sweetness, yet with an inflexibility of pride evident in her face. Cynthia smiled. "Very well," she said, "if you feel better to leave it in that way. If ever you are able you shall repay me; in the mean time I consider that I am amply paid in the pleasure it gives me to do it." Cynthia held out her slender hand to Ellen, who took it gratefully, yet a little constrainedly. In the opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude--a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself. However, Andrew felt it also. After this surprising benefactress and Robert had gone, after repeated courtesies and assurances of obligation on both sides, Andrew turned to Fanny. "What does she do it for?" he asked. "Hush; she'll hear you." "I can't help it. What does she do it for? Ellen isn't anything to her." Fanny looked at him with a meaning smile and nod which made her tear-stained face fairly grotesque. "What do you mean lookin' that way?" demanded Andrew. "Oh, you wait and see," said Fanny, with meaning, and would say no more. She was firm in her conclusion that Cynthia was educating their girl to marry her favorite nephew, but that never occurred to Andrew. He continued to feel, while supremely grateful and overwhelmed with delight at this good fortune for Ellen, the distrust and resentment of a proud soul under obligation for which he sees no adequate reason, and especially when it is directed towards a beloved one to whom he would fain give of his own strength and treasure. As for Ellen, she was in a tumult of wonder and delight, but when she looked at the doll in her corner there came again that vague sense of injury, and she felt again as if in some way she were being robbed instead of being made the object of benefit. After Ellen had gone to bed that night she wondered if she ought to go to college, and maybe gain thereby a career which was beyond anything her own loved ones had known, and if it were not better for her to go to work in the shop after all. _ |
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