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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 40 |
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_ Chapter XL When Ellen had been at work in the factory a year, she was running a machine and working by the piece, and earning on an average eighteen dollars a week. Of course that was an unusual advance for a girl, but Ellen was herself unusual. She came to work in those days with such swiftness and unswerving accuracy that she seemed fairly a part of the great system of labor itself. While she was at her machine, her very individuality seemed lost; she became an integral part of a system. "She's one of the best hands we ever had," Flynn told Norman Lloyd one day. "I am glad to hear that," Lloyd responded, smiling with that peculiar smile of his which was like a cold flash of steel. "Curse him, he thinks no more of anybody in this shop than he does of the machine they work," Flynn thought as he watched the proprietor walking with his stately descent down the stairs. The noon whistle was blowing, and the younger Lloyd went leaping down the stairs and joined his uncle, then the two walked down the street, away from the factory. The factory at that time of year began to present, in spite of its crude architecture, quite a charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet. All the front of Lloyd's was covered with vines, which had grown with amazing swiftness. Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect upon them with complacency. "I should think it would make it pleasanter for the men to work in the factory, when it looks so pretty and green," she told her husband one of the hottest days of the preceding summer. As she spoke she compressed her lips in a way which was becoming habitual to her. It meant the endurance of a sharp stab of vital pain. There was a terrible pathos in the poor woman's appearance at that time. She still kept about. Her malady did not seem to be on the increase, but it endured. Her form had changed indescribably. She had not lost flesh, but she had a curious, distorted look, and one on seeing her had a bewildered feeling, and looked again to be sure that he had seen aright. Her ghastly pallor she concealed in a manner which she thought distinctly sinful. She painted and powdered. She did not dare purchase openly the concoctions which were used for improving her complexion, but she went to a manicure and invested in a colored salve for her finger-nails. This, with rather surprising skill for such a conscience-pricked tyro, she applied to the pale curves of her cheeks and her blue lips. She took more pains than ever before with her dress, and it was all to deceive her husband, that he should not be annoyed. She felt a desperate shame because of her illness; she felt it to be a direct personal injury to this masculine power which had been set over her gentle femininity. It was not so much because she was afraid of losing his affection that she concealed her affliction from him, as because she felt that the affliction itself was somehow an act of disloyalty. Her terrible malady had in a way affected her reasoning powers, so that they had become distorted by a monstrous growth of suffering, like her body. She would not give up going about as usual, and was never absent from church. She drove about with her husband in his smart trap. Twice she had gone with Robert to consult the New York specialist, taking times when Norman was away on business. She still would not consent to an operation, and lately the specialist had been lukewarm in advising it. He had indeed been doubtful from the first. Mrs. Lloyd treated Robert with a soft affection which was almost like that of a mother. One night, when he returned late from a call on Ellen, she sat up waiting for him. He had not called on Ellen before for several months, and it was nearly midnight when he returned. "Why, Aunt Lizzie, are you up?" he cried, as he entered the library door and saw his aunt's figure, clad in shining black satin, gleaming with jet, in the depths of an easy-chair. Mrs. Lloyd looked up at him with an expression of patient suffering. "I couldn't go to sleep if I went to bed, Robert," she replied, in a hushed voice. She found it a comfort sometimes to confess her pain to him. Robert went over to her, and drew her large, crinkled, blond head to his shoulder as if she had been a child. "Poor thing," he whispered, stroking her face pitifully. "Is it very terrible?" he asked, with his lips close to her ear. "Terrible," she whispered back. "Oh, Robert, you do not know; pray God you may never know." "I wish to God I could bear it for you, Aunt Lizzie," Robert said, fervently. "Oh, hush! If you or Norman had to bear anything like this, I should curse God and die," she answered, and she shut her mouth hard, and her whole face was indicative of a repressed shriek. "Aunt Lizzie, don't you think you ought to go to New York, that you ought--" Robert began, but she stopped him with an almost fierce peremptoriness. "Robert Lloyd, I have trusted you," she said. "For God's sake, don't forsake me. Don't say a word to me about that; when I can I will. It means my death, anyhow. Dr. Evarts thought so; you can't deny it." "I think he thought there was a chance, Aunt Lizzie," Robert returned, but he said it faintly. "You can't cheat me," replied Mrs. Lloyd. "I know." She had a lapse from pain, and her features began to assume their natural expression. She looked at him almost smiling, and as if she turned her back upon her own misery. "Where have you been, Robert?" she asked. Robert colored a little, but he answered directly enough. "I have been to make a call on Miss Brewster," he said. "You don't go there very often," said Mrs. Lloyd. "No, not very often." "She's a beautiful girl, as beautiful a girl as I ever laid eyes on, if she does work in the shop," said Mrs. Lloyd, "and she's a good girl, too; I know she is. She was the sweetest little thing when she was a child, and she 'ain't altered a mite!" Then Mrs. Lloyd looked with a sort of wistful curiosity at Robert. "I think it is all true, what you say, Aunt Lizzie," replied Robert. Mrs. Lloyd continued to look at him with that wistful scrutiny. "Robert," she began, then she hesitated. "What, Aunt Lizzie?" "If--ever you wanted to marry that girl, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't, for my part." Robert pulled a chair close to his aunt, and sat down beside her, still holding her hand. "I've a good mind to tell you the whole story, Aunt Lizzie," he said. "I wish you would, Robert. You know I think as much of you as if you were my own son, and I won't tell anybody, not even your uncle, if you don't want me to." "Well, then, it is all in a nutshell," said Robert. "I like her, you know, and I think I have ever since I saw her in her little white gown at the high-school exhibition." "Wasn't she sweet?" said his aunt. "And she likes me, too, I think." "Of course she does." "But you know what my salary is, and her whole family is in a measure dependent upon her." "Hasn't her father got work?" "No." "I'll speak to Norman," cried Mrs. Lloyd, quickly. "I know he would do it for me." "But even then, Aunt Lizzie, there is the aunt in the asylum, and the child, and--" "Your uncle will pay you more." "It isn't altogether that; in fact, it isn't that at all which is at the bottom of the difficulty. The difficulty is with Ellen herself. She will never consent to my marrying her, and having to support her family, while matters are as now. You don't know how proud she is, Aunt Lizzie." "She is a splendid girl." "As far as I am concerned I would marry the whole lot on a little more than I have now, but she would not let me do it. There's nothing to do but to wait." "Perhaps the aunt will get well and her husband will come back; and I will see, anyway, if Norman won't give her father work," said Mrs. Lloyd. "I think you had better not, Aunt Lizzie." "Why not, Robert?" "There are reasons why I think you had better not." Robert would not tell her that Ellen had begged him not to use any influence of his to get her father work. "After the way father has been turned off, I can't stand it," she had said, with a sort of angry dignity which was unusual to her. In fact, her father himself had begged her not to make use of Robert in any way for his own advancement. "If they don't want me for my work, I don't want to crawl in because the nephew of the boss likes my daughter," he had said. This speech was fairly rough for him, but Ellen had understood. "I know what you mean, father," she said. "I'd rather work in the road," said Andrew. That autumn he was getting jobs of clearing up yards of fallen leaves, and gathering feed-corn and pumpkins, and earning a pittance. Fanny continued to work on her wrappers. "It's a mercy wrappers don't go out of fashion," she often said. "I suppose things that folks can get for nothing ain't so apt to go out of fashion," Andrew retorted, bitterly. He hated the wrappers with a deadly hatred. He hated the sight of the limp row of them on his bedroom wall. Nobody knew how the family pinched and screwed in those days. They were using the small fund which they secured from the house mortgage, Ellen's earnings, and Fanny's and Andrew's, and every cent had to be counted, but there was something splendid in their loyalty to poor Eva in the asylum. The thought of deserting her in her extremity never occurred to them. Mrs. Lloyd spoke of her that night, when she and Robert were talking together in the library. "They are good folks, to keep on doing for that poor woman in the asylum," she said. "They would never desert a dog that belonged to them," Robert answered, fervently. "I tell you that trait is worth a good many others, Aunt Lizzie." "I guess it is," said his aunt. Then another paroxysm of pain seized her. She looked at Robert with a convulsed, speechless face. He held her hands more tightly, his own face contracting in sympathy, and watched his aunt with a sort of angry helplessness. But he felt as if he wanted to fight something for the sake of this poor, oppressed, innocent creature; indeed, he felt fairly blasphemous. But this time the pain passed quickly, and Mrs. Lloyd looked at her nephew with an expression of relief and gentleness which was almost angelic. When the pain was over she thought again of the Brewsters, and how they would not have forsaken her in her misery, had she belonged to them, any more than they had forsaken the insane aunt. "They are good folks," said she, "and that is the main thing. That is the main thing to consider when you are marrying into a family, Robert. It is more than riches and position. The power they've got of loving and standing by each other is worth more than anything else." "You are right, Aunt Lizzie, I guess there's no doubt of that," said Robert. "And that girl's beautiful," said Mrs. Lloyd. She gazed at the young man with a delicate understanding and sympathy which was almost beyond that of a sweetheart. Robert felt as if a soft hand of tenderness and blessing were laid on his inmost heart. He looked at her like a grateful child. "There isn't anybody like her, is there, Aunt Lizzie?" he asked. "No, I don't think there is, dear boy," said Mrs. Lloyd. "I do think she is the sweetest little thing I ever saw in my life." Robert brought his aunt's hand to his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him for a minute as if the love and sympathy of this martyr were almost more precious than the love of Ellen herself. He realized when he was in his own room, and the house was quiet, how much he loved his aunt, and how hard her pain and probably inevitable doom were for him to bear. Then something came to him which he had never felt before--a great, burning anxiety and tenderness and terror over Ellen, because she was of the weaker half of creation, which is born to the larger share of pain in the world. He felt that he would almost have given her up, yielded up forever all his delight in her, to spare her; for the pain of knighthood, which is in every true lover, awoke in his heart. _ |
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