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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 58 |
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_ Chapter LVIII Lyman Risley was very seriously injured. There was, as the men had reported, danger for his eyes. When Robert was called into the reception-room of the hospital to see his aunt, he scarcely recognized her. Her soft, white hair was tossed about her temples, her cheeks were burning. She ran up to him like an eager child and clutched his arm. "How is he?" she demanded. "Tell me quick!" "They are doing everything they can for him. Why, don't, poor Aunt Cynthia!" "His eyes, they said--" "I hope he will come out all right. Don't, dear Aunt Cynthia." The young man put his arm around his aunt and spoke soothingly, blushing like a girl before this sudden revelation of an under-stratum of delicacy in a woman's heart. Cynthia lost control of herself completely; or, rather, the true self of her rose uppermost, shattering the surface ice of her reserve. "Oh," she said--"oh, if he--if he is--blind, if he is--I--I--will lead him everywhere all the rest of his life; I will, Robert." "Of course you will, dear Aunt Cynthia," replied Robert, soothingly. Suddenly Cynthia's face took on a new expression. She looked at Robert, deadly pale, and her jaw dropped. "He will not--die," she said, with stiff lips. "It is not as bad as that?" "Oh no, no; I am sure he will not," Robert cried, wonderingly and pityingly. "Don't, Aunt Cynthia." "If he dies," she said--"if he dies--and he has loved me all this time, and I have never done anything for him--I cannot bear it; I will not bear it; I will not, Robert!" "Oh, he isn't going to die, Aunt Cynthia." "I want to go to him," she said. "I _will_ go to him." Robert looked helplessly from her to Fanny. "I am afraid you can't just now, Aunt Cynthia," he replied. Fanny came resolutely to his assistance. "Of course you can't, Miss Lennox," she said. "The doctors won't let you see him now. You would do him more harm than good. You don't want to do him harm!" "No, I don't want to do him harm," returned Cynthia, in a wailing, hysterical voice. She threw herself down upon a sofa and began sobbing like a child, with her face hidden. A young doctor entered and stood looking at her. Robert turned to him. "It is my aunt, and she is agitated over Mr. Risley's accident," he said, coloring a little. Instantly the young physician's face lost its expression of astonishment and assumed the soothing gloss of his profession. "Oh, my dear Miss Lennox," he said, "there is no cause for agitation, I assure you. Everything is being done for Mr. Risley." "Will he be blind?" gasped Cynthia, with a great vehemence of woe, which seemed to gainsay the fact of her years. It seemed as if such an outburst of emotion could come only from a child all unacquainted with grief and unable to control it. The young doctor laughed blandly. "Blind? No, indeed," he replied. "He might have been blind had this happened twenty-five years ago, but with the resources of the present day it is a different matter. Pray don't alarm yourself, dear Miss Lennox." "Can you call a carriage for my aunt?" asked Robert. He went close to Cynthia and laid a hand on her slender shoulder. "I am going to have a carriage come for you, and perhaps Mrs. Brewster will be willing to go home with you in it." "Of course I will," replied Fanny. "You hear what Dr. Payson says, that there is nothing to be alarmed about," Robert said, in a low voice, with his lips close to his aunt's ear. Cynthia made no resistance, but when the carriage arrived, and she was being driven off, with Fanny by her side, she called out of the window with a fierce shamelessness of anxiety, "Robert, you must come and tell me how he is this afternoon, or I shall come back here and see him myself." "Yes, I will, Aunt Cynthia," he replied, soothingly. He met the doctor's curious eyes when he turned. The young man had a gossiping mind, but he forbore to say what he thought, which was to the effect that--why under the heavens, if that woman cared as much as that for that man, she had not married him, instead of letting him dangle after her so many years? But he merely said: "There is no use in saying anything to excite a woman further when she is in such a state of mind, but--" Then he paused significantly. "You think the chances of his keeping his eyesight are poor?" said Robert. "Mighty poor," replied the doctor. Robert stood still, with his pale, shocked face bent upon the carpet. He could not seem to comprehend at once the enormity of it all; his mind was grasping at and trying to assimilate the horrible fact with an infinite pain. "Have they got the man that did it?" asked the doctor. "I don't know. I had to see to poor Risley," replied Robert. "I hope to God they have." Then all at once he thought, with keen anxiety, of Ellen. Who knew what new tragedy had happened? "I must go back to the factory," he said, hurriedly. "I will be back here in an hour or so, and see how he is getting on. For Heaven's sake, do all you can!" Robert was desperately impatient to be back at the factory. He was full of vague anxiety about Ellen. He could not forget that the shot which had hit poor Risley had been meant for her, and he remembered the look on the man's face as he aimed. He found a carriage at the street corner, and jumped in, and bade the man drive fast. When Robert entered the great building, and felt the old vibration of machinery, he had a curious sensation, one which he had never before had and which he had not expected. For the first time in his life he knew what it was to have a complete triumph of his own will over his fellow-men. He had gotten his own way. All this army of workmen, all this machinery of labor, was set in motion at his desire, in opposition to their own. He realized himself a leader and a conqueror. He went into the office, and Flynn and Dennison came forward, smiling, to greet him. "Well," said Dennison, "we're off again." He spoke as if the factory were a ship which had been launched from a shoal. "Yes," replied Robert, gravely. Nellie Stone, at the desk, was glancing around, with a half-shy, half-coquettish look. "How is Mr. Risley?" asked Flynn. "He is badly hurt," replied Robert. "Have they found the man? Do you know what has been done about it?" "They've got all the police force of the city out," replied Flynn, "but it's no use. They'll never catch Amos Lee. His mother was a gypsy, I've always heard. He knows about a thousand ways out of traps, and there's plenty to help him. They've got Dixon under arrest, and Tom Peel; but they didn't have any fire-arms on 'em, and they can't prove anything. Peel says he's ready to go back to work." Flynn had a somewhat seedy and downcast appearance, although he fought hard for his old jaunty manner. His impulsive good-nature had gotten the better of his judgment and his own wishes, and he had gone to Mamie Brady and offered to marry her out of hand if she recovered from her attempted suicide. The night before he had watched, turn and turn about, with her mother. He gave a curious effect of shamefaced and melancholy virtue. He followed Robert to one side when he was hanging up his hat and coat. "I'm going to tell you, Mr. Lloyd," he said, rather awkwardly; "maybe you won't be interested in the midst of all this, but it all came from the strike. She's better this morning, and I'm going to marry her, poor girl." Robert looked at him in a dazed fashion. For a moment he had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. "I'm going to marry Mamie Brady," explained Flynn. "She took laudanum. It all happened on account of the strike. I'll own I'd been flirting some with her, but she'd never done it if she hadn't been out of work, too. She said so. Her mother made her life a hell. I'm going to marry her, and take her out of it." "It's mighty good of you," Robert said, rather stupidly. "There ain't no other way for me to do," replied Flynn. "She thinks the world of me, and I suppose I'm to blame." "I hope she'll make you a good wife and you'll be happy," said Robert. "She thinks all creation of me," replied Flynn, with the simplest vanity and acquiescence in the responsibility laid upon him in the world. "That shot wasn't meant for Mr. Risley," said Flynn, as Robert approached the office door. His eyes flashed. He himself would gladly have been shot for the sake of Ellen Brewster. He was going to marry, and try to fulfill his simple code of honor, but all his life he would be married to one woman, with another ideal in his heart; that was inevitable. "I know it wasn't," Robert replied, grimly. "Everything is quiet now," said Dennison, with his smooth smile. Robert made no reply, but entered the great work-room. "He's mighty stand-offish, now he's got his own way," Dennison remarked in a whisper to Nellie Stone. He leaned closely over her. Flynn had followed Robert. The girl glanced up at the foreman, who was unmarried, although years older than she, and her face quivered a little, but it seemed due to a surface sensitiveness. "I want to know if you've heard that Ed is going to marry Mamie Brady, after all," she whispered. Dennison nodded. She knitted her forehead over a column of figures. Dennison leaned his face so close that his blond-bearded cheek touched hers. She made a little impatient motion. "Oh, go long, Jim Dennison," she said, but her tone was half-hearted. Dennison persisted, bending her head gently backward until he kissed her. She pushed him away, but she smiled weakly. "You didn't want Ed Flynn. Why, he's a Roman Catholic, and you're Baptist, Nell," he said. "Who said I did?" she retorted, angrily. "Why, I wouldn't marry Ed Flynn if he was the last man in the world." "You'd 'nough sight better marry me," said Dennison. "Go along; you're fooling." "No, I ain't. I mean it, honest." "I don't want to marry anybody yet awhile," said Nellie Stone; but when Dennison kissed her again she did not repulse him, and even nestled her head with a little caressing motion into the hollow of his shoulder. Then they both started violently apart as Flynn entered. "Say!" he proclaimed, "what do you think? The boss has just told the hands that he'll split the difference and reduce the wages five instead of ten per cent." _ |
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