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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 39 |
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_ Chapter XXXIX 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. _ |
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