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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 50 |
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_ Chapter L When Ellen came in sight of her house that night she saw her father's bent figure moving down the path with sidewise motions of a broom. He had been out at short intervals all the afternoon, that she should not have to wade through drifts to the door. The electric-light shone full on this narrow, cleared track and the toiling figure. "Hullo, father!" Ellen called out. Andrew turned, and his face lit with love and welcome and solicitude. "Be you dreadful snowy?" he asked. "Oh no, father, not very." "It's an awful storm." "Pretty bad, but I got along all right. The snow-plough has been out." "Wait a minute till I get this swept," said Andrew, sweeping violently before her. "You needn't have bothered, father," said Ellen. "I 'ain't anything else to do," replied Andrew, in a sad voice. "There's mother watching," said Ellen. "Yes, she's been diggin' at them wrappers all day." "I suppose she has," Ellen returned, in a bitter tone. Her father stared at her. Ellen never spoke like that. For the first time she echoed him and her mother. Something like terror came over him at the sound of that familiar note of his own life from this younger one. He seemed to realize dimly that a taint of his nature had descended upon his child. When Ellen entered the house, the warm air was full of savory odors of toast and tea and cooking meat and vegetables. "You'd better go right up-stairs and put on a dry dress, Ellen," said Fanny. "I put your blue one out on your bed, and your shoes are warming by the sitting-room stove. I've been worrying as to how you were going to get home all day." Then she stopped short as she caught sight of Ellen's face. "What on earth is the matter, Ellen Brewster?" she said. "Nothing," said Ellen. "Why?" "You look queer. Has anything happened?" "Yes, something has happened." "What?" Andrew turned pale. He stood in the entry with his snowy broom in hand, staring from one to the other. "Nothing that you need worry about," said Ellen. "I'll tell you when I get my dress changed." Ellen pulled off her rubbers, and went up-stairs to her chamber. Fanny and Andrew stood looking at each other. "You don't suppose--" whispered Andrew. "Suppose what?" responded Fanny, sharply. They continued to look at each other. Fanny answered Andrew as if he had spoken, with that jealous pride for her girl's self-respect which possessed her even before the girl's father. "Land, it ain't that," said she. "You wouldn't catch Ellen lookin' as if anything had come across her for such a thing as that." "No, I suppose she wouldn't," said Andrew; and he actually blushed before his wife's eyes. That afternoon Mrs. Wetherhed had been in, and told Fanny that she had heard that Robert Lloyd was to be married to Maud Hemingway; and both Andrew and Fanny had thought of that as the cause of Ellen's changed face. "You'd better take that broom out into the shed, and get the snow off yourself, and come in and shut the door," Fanny said, shortly. "You're colding the house all off, and Amabel has got a cold, and she's sitting right in the draught." "All right," replied Andrew, meekly, though Fanny had herself been holding the sitting-room door open. In those days Andrew felt below his moral stature as head of the house. Actually, looking at Fanny, who was earning her small share towards the daily bread, she seemed to him much taller than he, though she was a head shorter. He thought so little of himself, he seemed to see himself as through the wrong end of a telescope. Fanny went into the sitting-room and shut the door with a bang. Amabel did not look up from her book. She was reading a library book much beyond her years, and sniffing pathetically with her cold. Amabel had begun to discover an omnivorous taste for books, which stuck at nothing. She understood not more than half of what she read, but seemed to relish it like indigestible food. When Ellen came down-stairs, and sat beside the coal stove to change her shoes, she looked at the book which Amabel was reading. "You ought not to read that book, dear," she said. "Let Ellen get you a better one for a little girl to-morrow." But Amabel, without paying the slightest heed to Ellen's words, looked up at her with amazement, as Andrew and Fanny had done. "What's the matter, Ellen?" she asked, in her little, hoarse voice. Fanny and Andrew, who had just entered, stood waiting. Ellen bent over her shoe, drawing in the strings firmly and evenly. "Mr. Lloyd has reduced the wage-list," she said. "How much?" asked Andrew, in a hoarse voice. "Ten per cent." There was a dead silence. Andrew and Fanny looked at Ellen like people who are uncertain of their next move; Amabel stared from one to the other with her weak, watery eyes. Ellen continued to lace her shoes. "What do you think about it, Ellen?" asked Andrew, almost timidly. "I know of only one thing to think," replied Ellen, in a dogged voice. As she spoke she pulled the tag off a shoe-string because it would not go through the eyelet. "What is that?" asked Fanny, in a hard voice. "I think it is cruelty and tyranny," said Ellen, pulling the rough end of the string through the eyelet. "I suppose the times are pretty hard," ventured Andrew; but Ellen cut him short. "Robert Lloyd has half a million, which has been accumulated by the labor of poor men in prosperous times," said she, with her childlike severity and pitilessness. "There is no question about the matter." Then Fanny flung all self-interest to the wind and was at her daughter's side like a whirlwind. The fact that the two were of one blood was never so strongly evident. Red spots glowed in the elder woman's cheeks and her black eyes blazed. "Ellen's right," said she; "she's right. For a man worth half a million to cut down the wages of poor, hard-working folks in midwinter is cruelty. I don't care who does it." "Yes, it is," said Ellen. Fanny opened her mouth to tell Ellen of the rumor concerning Robert's engagement to Maud Hemingway, then she refrained, for some reason which she could not analyze. In her heart she did not believe the report to be true, and considered the telling of it a slight to Ellen, but it influenced her in her indignation against Robert for the wage-cutting. "What are they going to do?" asked Andrew. "I don't know," replied Ellen. "Did he--young Lloyd--talk to the men?" "No; notices were tacked up all over the shop." "That was the way his uncle would have done," said Andrew, in a curious voice of bitterness and respect. "So you don't know what they are going to do?" said Fanny. "No." "Well, I know what I would do," said Fanny. "I never would give in, if I starved--never!" _ |
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