Chapter 38

________________________________________________
_ Chapter XXXVIII

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.

[Illustration: 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 a _tete-a-tete_ with 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." _

Read next: Chapter 39

Read previous: Chapter 37

Table of content of Portion of Labor


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book