Portion of Labor — Chapter 9

He saw at a flash the sweet yet monstrous imperfection of her, and he loved her better for it.

Chapter IX

After Ellen's experience in running away, she dreamed her dreams with a difference.

The breath of human passion had stained the pure crystal of her childish imagination; she peopled all her air-castles, and sounds of wailing farewells floated from the White North of her fancy after the procession of the evergreen trees in the west yard, and the cherry-trees on the east had found out that they were not in the Garden of Eden.

In those days Ellen grew taller and thinner, and the cherubic roundness of her face lengthened into a sweet wistfulness of wonder and pleading, as of one who would look farther, since she heard sounds and saw signs in her sky which indicated more beyond.

Andrew and Fanny watched her more anxiously than ever, and decided not to send her to school before spring, though all the neighbors exclaimed at their tardiness in so doing.

"She'll be two years back of my Hattie gettin' into the high-school," said one woman, bluntly, to Fanny, who retorted, angrily, "I don't care if she's ten years behind, if she don't lose her health."

"You wait and see if she's two years behind!"

exclaimed Eva, who had just returned from the shop, and had entered the room bringing a fresh breath of December air, her cheeks glowing, her black eyes shining.

Eva was so handsome in those days that she fairly forced admiration, even from those of her own sex whose delicacy of taste she offended.

She had a parcel in her hand, which she had bought at a store on her way home, for she was getting ready to be married to Jim Tenny.

"I tell you there don't nobody know what that young one can do," continued Eva, with a radiant nod of triumph.

"There ain't many grown-up folks round here that can read like her, and she's studied geography, and she knows her multiplication-table, and she can spell better than some that's been through the high-school.

You jest wait till Ellen gets started on her schoolin'--she won't stay in the grammar-school long, I can tell you that.

She'll go ahead of some that's got a start now and think they're 'most there."

Eva pulled off her hat, and the coarse black curls on her forehead sprang up like released wire.

She nodded emphatically with a good-humored combativeness at the visiting woman and at her sister.

"I hope your cheeks are red enough," said Fanny, looking at her with grateful admiration.

The visiting woman sniffed covertly, and a retort which seemed to her exceedingly witty was loud in her own consciousness.

"Them that likes beets and pinies is welcome to them," she thought, but she did not speak.

"Well," said she, "folks must do as they think best about their own children.

I have always thought a good deal of an education myself.

I was brought up that way."

She looked with eyes that were fairly cruel at Eva Loud and Fanny, who had been a Loud, who had both stopped going to school at a very early age.

Then the rich red flamed over Eva's forehead and neck as well as her cheeks.

There was nothing covert about her, she would drag an ambushed enemy forth into the open field even at the risk of damaging disclosures regarding herself.

"Why don't you say jest what you mean, right out, Jennie Stebbins?"

she demanded.

"You are hintin' that Fanny and me never had no education, and twittin' us with it."

"It wa'n't our fault," said Fanny, no less angrily.

"No, it wa'n't our fault," assented Eva.

"We had to quit school.

Folks can live with empty heads, but they can't with empty stomachs.

It had to be one or the other.

If you want to twit us with bein' poor, you can, Jennie Stebbins."

"I haven't said anything," said Mrs. Stebbins, with a scared and injured air.

"I'd like to know what you're making all this fuss about?

I don't know.

What did I say?"

"If I'd said anything mean, I wouldn't turn tail an' run, I'd stick to it about one minute and a half, if it killed me," said Eva, scornfully.

"You know what you was hintin' at, jest as well as we do," said Fanny; "but it ain't so true as you and some other folks may think, I can tell you that.

If Eva and me didn't go to school as long as some, we have always read every chance we could get."

"That's so," said Eva, emphatically.

"I guess we've read enough sight more than some folks that has had a good deal more chance to read.

Fanny and me have taken books out of the library full as much as any of the neighbors, I rather guess."

"We've read every single thing that Mrs. Southworth has ever written," said Fanny, "and that's sayin' considerable."

"And all Pansy's and Rider Haggard's," declared Eva, with triumph.

"And every one of The Duchess and Marie Corelli, and Sir Walter Scott, and George Macdonald, and Laura Jean Libbey, and Charles Reade, and more, besides, than I can think of."

"Fanny has read 'most all Tennyson," said Eva, with loyal admiration; "she likes poetry, but I don't very well.

She has read most all Tennyson and Longfellow, and we've both read _Queechee_, and _St.

Elmo_, and _Jane Eyre_."

"And we've read the Bible through," said Fanny, "because we read in a paper once that that was a complete education.

We made up our minds we'd read it through, and we did, though it took us quite a while."

"And we take _Zion's Herald_, and _The Rowe Gazette_, and _The Youth's Companion_," said Eva.

"And we've both of us learned Ellen geography and spellin' and 'rithmetic, till we know most as much as she does," said Fanny.

"That's so," said Fanny.

"I snum, I believe I could get into the high-school myself, if I wasn't goin' to git married," said Eva, with a gay laugh.

She was so happy in those days that her power of continued resentment was small.

The tide of her own bliss returned upon her full consciousness and overflowed, and crested, as with glory, all petty annoyances.

The visiting woman took up her work, and rose to go with a slightly abashed air, though her small brown eyes were still blanks of impregnable defence.

"Well, I dunno what I've said to stir you both so," she remarked again.

"If I've said anythin' that riled you, I'm sorry, I'm sure.

As I said before, folks must do as they are a mind to with their own children.

If they see fit to keep 'em home from school until they're women grown, and if they think it's best not to punish 'em when they run away, why they must.

I 'ain't got no right to say anythin', and I 'ain't." "You--" began Fanny, and then she stopped short, and Eva began arranging her hair before the glass.

"The wind blew so comin' home," she said, "that my hair is all out."

The visiting woman stared with a motion of adjustive bewilderment, as one might before a sudden change of wind, then she looked, as a shadowy motion disturbed the even light of the room and little Ellen passed the window.

She knew at once, for she had heard the gossip, that the ready tongues of recrimination were hushed because of the child, and then Ellen entered.

The winter afternoon was waning and the light was low; the child's face, with its clear fairness, seemed to gleam out in the room like a lamp with a pale luminosity of its own.

The three women, the mother, and aunt, and the visiting neighbor, all looked at her, and Ellen smiled up at them as innocently sweet as a flower.

There was that in Ellen's smile and regard at that time which no woman could resist.

Suddenly the visiting neighbor laid a finger softly under her chin and tilted up her little face towards the light.

Then she said with that unconscious poetry of bereavement which sees a likeness in all fair things of earth to the face of the lost treasure, "I do believe she looks like my first little girl that died."

After the visiting woman had gone, Fanny and Eva calling after her to come again, they looked at each other, then at Ellen.

"That little girl that died favored the Stebbinses, and was dark as an Injun," said Fanny, "no more like Ellen--" "That's so," acquiesced Eva; "I remember that young one.

Lookin' like Ellen--I'd like to see the child that did look like her; there ain't none round these parts.

I wish you could have seen folks stare at her when I took her down street yesterday.

One woman said, 'Ain't she pretty as a picture,' so loud I heard it, but Ellen didn't seem to."

"Sometimes I wonder if we'll make her proud," Fanny said, in a hushed voice, with a look of admiration that savored of worship at Ellen.

"She don't ever seem to notice," said Eva, with a hushed response.

Indeed, Ellen had seemed to pay no attention whatever to their remarks, whether from an innate humility and lack of self-consciousness, or because she was so accustomed to adulation that it had become as the breath of her nostrils, to be taken no more account of.

She had seated herself in her favorite place in a rocking-chair at a west window, with her chin resting on the sill, and her eyes staring into the great out-of-doors, full of winds and skies and trees and her own imaginings.

She would sit so, motionless, for hours at a time, and sometimes her mother would rouse her almost roughly.

"What be you thinkin' about, settin' there so still?"

she would ask, with eyes of vague anxiety fixed upon her, but Ellen could never answer.

Though it was getting late, it did not seem dark as early as usual, since there was a full moon and there was snow on the ground which gave forth a pale light in a wide surface of reflection.

However, the moon was behind clouds, for it was beginning to snow again quite heavily, and the white flakes drove in whirlwinds past the street-lamp on the corner of the street.

Now and then a tramping and muffled figure came into the radius of light, then passed into the white gloom beyond.

Fanny was preparing supper, and the light from the dining-room shone in where Ellen sat, but the sitting-room was not lighted.

Ellen began to smell the fragrance of tea and toast, and there was a reflection of the dining-room table and lamp outside pictured vividly against the white sheet of storm.

Ellen knew better, but it amused her to think that her home was out-of-doors as well as under her father's and mother's roof.

Eva passed her with her hands full of kindlings.

She was going to make a fire in the parlor-stove, for Jim Tenny was coming that evening.

She laid a tender hand on Ellen's head as she passed, and smoothed her hair.

Ellen had a sort of acquiescent wonder over her aunt Eva in those days.

She heard people say Eva was getting ready to be married, and speculated.

"What is getting ready to be married?"

she asked Eva.

"Why, getting your clothes made, you little ninny," Eva answered.

The next day Ellen had watched her mother at work upon a new little frock for herself for some time before she spoke.

"Mother," she said.

"Yes, child."

"Mother, you are making that new dress for me, ain't you?"

"Of course I am; why?"

"And you made me a new coat last week?"

"Why, you know I did, Ellen; what do you mean?"

"And you are going to make me a petticoat and put that pretty lace on it?"

"You know I am, Ellen Brewster, what be you drivin' at?"

"Be I a-gettin' ready to be married, mother?"

asked Ellen, with the strangest look of wonder and awe and anticipation.

Fanny had told this saying of the child's to everybody, and that evening when Jim Tenny came he caught up Ellen and gave her a toss to the ceiling, a trick of his which filled Ellen with a sort of fearful delight, the delight of helplessness in the hands of strength, and the titillation of evanescent risk.

"So you are gettin' ready to be married, are you?"

Jim Tenny said, with a great laugh, looking at her soberly, with big black eyes.

Jim Tenny was a handsome fellow, and much larger and stronger than her father.

Ellen liked him; he often brought candies in his pocket for her, and they were great friends, but she could never understand why he stayed in the parlor all alone with her aunt Eva, instead of in the sitting-room with the others.

Ellen had looked back at him as soberly.

"Mother says I 'ain't," she replied, "but--" "But what?"

"I am getting most as many new clothes as Aunt Eva, and she is."

"And you think maybe you are gettin' ready to be married, after all, hey?"

"I think maybe mother wants to surprise me," Ellen said.

Jim Tenny had all of a sudden shaken convulsively as if with mirth, but his face remained perfectly sober.

That evening after the parlor door was closed upon Jim and Eva, Ellen wondered what they were laughing at.

To-night when she saw Eva enter the room, a lighted lamp illuminating her face fairly reckless with happiness, to light the fire in the courting-stove as her sister facetiously called it, she thought to herself that Jim Tenny was coming, that they would be shut up in there all alone as usual, and then she looked out at the storm and the night again, and the little home picture thrown against it.

Then she saw her father coming into the yard with his arms full of parcels, and she was out of her chair and at the kitchen door to meet him.

Andrew had brought as usual some dainties for his darling.

He watched Ellen unwrap the various parcels, not smiling as usual, but with a curious knitting of his forehead and pitiful compression of mouth.

When she had finished and ran into the other room to show a great orange to her aunt, he drew a heavy sigh that was almost a groan.

His wife coming in from the kitchen with a dish heard him, and looked at him with quick anxiety, though she spoke in a merry, rallying way.

"For the land sake, Andrew Brewster, what be you groanin' that way for?"

she cried out.

Andrew's tense face did not relax; he strove to push past her without a word, but Fanny stood before him.

"Now, look at here, Andrew," said she, "you 'ain't goin' to walk off with a face like that, unless I know what the matter is.

Are you sick?"

"No, I ain't sick, Fanny," Andrew said; then in a low voice, "Let me go, I will tell you by-and-by."

"No, Andrew, you have got to tell me now.

I'm goin' to know whatever has happened."

"Wait till after supper, Fanny."

"No, I can't wait.

Look here, Andrew, you are my husband, and there ain't no trouble that can come to you in this world that I can't bear, except not knowin'.

You've got to tell me what the matter is."

"Well, keep quiet till after supper, then," said Andrew.

Then suddenly he leaned his face close to her and whispered with a hiss of tragedy, "Lloyd's shut down."

Fanny recoiled and looked at him.

"When?"

"The foreman gave notice to-night."

"For how long?

Did he say?"

"Oh, till business got better--same old story.

Unless I'm mistaken, Lloyd's will be shut down all winter."

"Well, it ain't so bad for us as for some," said Fanny.

Both pride and a wish to cheer her husband induced her to say that.

She did not like to think that, after the fine marriage she had made, she needed to be as distressed at a temporary loss of employment as others.

Then, too, that look of overhanging melancholy in Andrew's face alarmed her; she felt that she must drive it away at any cost.

"Seems to me it's bad enough for anybody," said Andrew, morosely.

"Now, Andrew, you know it ain't. Here we own the house clear, and we've got that money in the savings-bank, and all that's your mother's is yours in the end.

Of course we ain't always thinkin' of that, and I'm sure I hope she'll outlive me, but it's so.

You know we sha'n't starve if you don't have work."

"We shall starve in the end, and you know I've been--" Andrew stopped suddenly as he heard Ellen and his sister-in-law coming.

He shook his head at his wife with a warning motion that she should keep silence.

"Don't Eva know?"

she whispered.

"No, she came out early.

Do for Heaven's sake keep quiet till after supper."

Eva was sharp-eyed, and all through supper she watched Andrew, and the lines of melancholy on his face, which did not disappear even when he forced conversation.

"What in creation ails you, Andrew?"

she burst out, finally.

"You look like a walking funeral."

Andrew made no reply, and Fanny volunteered an answer.

"He's all tired out," she said; "he's got a little cold.

Eat some more of the stew, Andrew; it'll do you good, it's nice and hot."

"You can't cheat me," said Eva.

"There's something to pay."

She took a mouthful, then she stared at Andrew, with a sudden pallor.

"It ain't anythin' about Jim, is it?"

she gasped out.

"Because if it is, there's no use in your waitin' to tell me, you might as well have it over at once.

You won't make it any easier for me, I can tell you that."

"No, it ain't anything about Jim, in the way you mean, Eva," her sister said, soothingly.

"Eat your supper and don't worry."

"What do you mean by that?

Jim ain't sick?"

"No, I tell you; don't be a goose, Eva."

"He ain't been anywhere with--" "Do keep still, Eva!"

Fanny cried, impatiently.

"If I didn't have any more faith than that in a man, I'd give him up.

I don't think you're fair to Jim.

Of course he ain't been with that girl, when he's goin' to marry you next month."

"I'm just as fair to Jim as he deserves," Eva said, simply.

"I think just as much of him, but what a man's done once he may do again, and I can't help it if I think of it, and he shouldn't be surprised.

He's brought it on himself.

I've got as much faith in him as anybody can have, seein' as he's a man.

Well, if it ain't that, Andrew Brewster, what is it?"

"Now, you let him alone till after supper, Eva," Fanny said.

"Do let him have a little peace."

"Well, I'll get it out of him afterwards," Eva said.

As soon as she got up from the table she pushed him into the sitting-room.

"Now, out with it," said she.

Ellen, who had followed them, stood looking at them both, her lips parted, her eyes full of half-alarmed curiosity.

"Lloyd's has shut down, if you want to know," Andrew said, shortly.

"Oh my God!"

cried Eva.

Andrew shrank from her impatiently.

She made that ejaculation because she was a Loud, and had an off-streak in her blood.

Not one of Andrew's pure New England stock would have so expressed herself.

He sat down beside the lamp and took up the evening paper.

Eva stood looking at him a minute.

She was quite pale, she was weighing consequences.

Then she went out to her sister.

"Well, you know what's happened, Fan, I s'pose," she said.

"Yes, I'm awful sorry, but I tell Andrew it ain't so bad for us as for some; we sha'n't starve."

"I don't know as I care much whether I starve or not," said Eva.

"It's goin' to make me put off my weddin'; and if I do put it off, Jim and me will never get married at all; I feel it in my bones."

"Why, what should you have to put it off for?"

asked Fanny.

"Why?

I should think you'd know why without askin'.

Ain't I spent every dollar I have saved up on my weddin' fixin's, and Jim, he's got his mother on his hands, and she's been sick, and he ain't saved up anything.

If you s'pose I'm goin' to marry him and make him any worse off than he is now you're mistaken."

"Well, mebbe Jim can work somewhere else, and mebbe Lloyd's won't be shut up long," Fanny said, consolingly.

"I wouldn't give up so, if I was you."

"I might jest as well," Eva returned.

"It's no use, Jim and me will never get married."

Eva's face was curiously set; she was not in the least loud nor violent as was usually the case when she was in trouble, her voice was quite low, and she spoke slowly.

Fanny looked anxiously at her.

"It ain't as though you hadn't a roof to cover you," she said, "for you've got mine and Andrew's as long as we have one ourselves."

"Do you think I'd live on Andrew long?"

demanded Eva.

"You won't have to.

Jim will get work in a week or two, and you'll get married.

Don't act so.

I declare, I'm ashamed of you, Eva Loud.

I thought you had more sense, to give up discouraged at no more than this.

I don't see why you jump way ahead into trouble before you get to it."

"I've got to it, and I can feel the steam of it in my face," Eva said, with unconscious imagery.

Then she lit a lamp, and went up-stairs to change her dress before Jim Tenny arrived.

It was snowing hard.

Ellen sat in her place by the window and watched the flakes drive past the radiance of the street-lamp on the corner, and past the reflection of the warm, bright room.

Now she could see, since the light was in the room where she sat, her father beside the table reading his paper, and shadowy images of all the familiar things projecting themselves like a mirage of home into the night and storm.

Ellen could see, even without turning round, that her father looked very sober, and did not seem to be much interested in his paper, and a vague sense of calamity oppressed her.

She did not know just what might be involved in Lloyd's shutting down, but she saw that her father and aunt were disturbed, and her imaginings were half eclipsed by a shadow of material things.

Ellen dearly loved this early evening hour when she could stare out into the mystery of the night, herself sheltered under the wing of home, and the fancies which her childish brain wove were as a garment of spirit for the future; but to-night she did not dream so much as she wondered and reflected.

Pretty soon Ellen saw a man's figure plodding through the fast-gathering snow, and heard her aunt Eva make a soft, heavy rush down the front stairs, and she knew the man was Jim Tenny, and her aunt had been watching for him.

Ellen wondered why she had watched up in her cold room, why she had not sat down-stairs where it was warm, and let Jim ring the door-bell.

Ellen liked Jim Tenny, but there was often that in her aunt's eyes regarding him which made Ellen look past him and above him to see if there was another man there.

Ellen heard the fire crackling in the parlor-stove, and saw the light shining under the parlor threshold, and heard the soft hum of voices.

Her mother, having finished washing up the supper dishes, came in presently and seated herself beside the lamp with her needle-work.

"You don't feel any wind comin' in the window?"

she said, anxiously, to Ellen.

"No, ma'am," replied Ellen.

Andrew looked up quickly.

"You're sure you don't?"

he said.

"No, sir."

Ellen watched her mother sewing out in the snowy yard, then a dark shadow came between the reflection and the window, then another.

Two men treading in the snow in even file, one in the other's foot-tracks, came into the yard.

"Somebody's comin'," said Ellen, as a knock, came on the side door.

"Did you see who 'twas?"

Fanny asked, starting up.

"Two men."

"It's somebody to see you, Andrew," Fanny said, and Andrew tossed his paper on the table and went to the door.

When the door was opened Ellen heard a man cough.

"I should think anybody was crazy to come out such a night as this, coughin' that way," murmured Fanny.

"I do believe it's Joe Atkins;

sounds like his cough."

Then Andrew entered with the two men stamping and shaking themselves.

"Here's Joseph Atkins and Nahum Beals," Andrew said, in his melancholy voice, all unstirred by the usual warmth of greeting.

The two men bowed stiffly.

"Good-evenin'," Fanny said, and rose and pushed forward the rocking-chair in which she had been seated to Joseph Atkins, who was a consumptive man with an invalid wife, and worked next Andrew in Lloyd's. "Keep your settin', keep your settin'," he returned in his quick, nervous way, as if his very words were money for dire need, and sat himself down in a straight chair far from the fire.

The other man, Nahum Beals, was very young.

He seated himself next to Joseph, and the two side by side looked with gloomy significance at Andrew and Fanny.

Then Joseph Atkins burst out suddenly in a rattling volley of coughs.

"You hadn't ought to come out such a night as this, I'm afraid, Mr. Atkins," said Fanny.

"He's been out jest as bad weather as this all winter," said the young man, Nahum Beals, in an unexpectedly deep voice.

"The workers of this world can't afford to take no account of weather.

It's for the rich folks to look out betwixt their lace curtains and see if it looks lowery, so they sha'n't git their gold harnesses and their shiny carriages, an' their silks an' velvets an' ostrich feathers wet.

The poor folks that it's life and death to have to go out whether or no, no matter if they've got an extra suit of clothes or not.

They've got to go out through the drenchin' rain and the snow-drifts, to earn money so that the rich folks can have them gold-plated harnesses and them silks and velvets.

Joe's been out all winter in weather as bad as this, after he's been standin' all day in a shop as hot as hell, drenched with sweat.

One more time won't make much difference."

"It would be 'nough sight better for me if it did," said Joseph Atkins, chokingly, and still with that same seeming of hurry.

Fanny had gone out to the dining-room, and now she returned stirring some whiskey and molasses in a cup.

"Here," said she, "you take this, Mr. Atkins; it's real good for a cough.

Andrew cured a cold with it last month."

"Mine ain't a cold, and it can't be cured in this world, but it's better for me, I guess," said Joe Atkins, chokingly, but he took the cup.

"Now, you hadn't ought to talk so," Fanny said.

"You had ought to think of your wife and children."

"My life is insured," said Joseph Atkins.

"We ain't got no money and no jewelry, and no silver to leave them we love--all we've got to leave 'em is the price of our own lives," said Nahum Beals.

"I wish I had got my life insured," Andrew said.

"Don't talk so, Andrew," Fanny cried, with a shudder.

"My life is insured for two thousand dollars," Joe Atkins said, with an odd sort of pride.

"I had it done three years ago.

My lungs was sound as anybody's then, but that very next summer I worked up under that tin roof, and came out as wet as if I'd been dipped in the river, into an east wind, and got a chill.

It was the only time I ever struck luck--to get insured before that happened.

Nobody'd look at me now, and I dunno what they'd do.

I 'ain't laid up a cent, I've had so much sickness in my family."

"If you hadn't worked that summer in the annex under that tin roof, you'd be as well as you ever was now," said Nahum Beals.

"I worked there 'longside of you that summer," said Andrew to Joe, with bitter reminiscence.

"We used to strip like a gang of convicts, and we stood in pools of sweat.

It was that awful hot summer, and the room had only that one row of windows facing the east, and the wind never that way."