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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 23 |
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_ Chapter XXIII Ellen, under the influence of that old fascination which Cynthia had exerted over her temporarily in her childhood, and which had now assumed a new lease of life, would have loved to see her every day, but along with the fascination came a great timidity and fear of presuming. She felt instinctively that the fascination was an involuntary thing on Cynthia's part. She kept repeating to herself what she had said, that she was not sending her to Vassar because she loved her. Strangely enough, this did not make Ellen unhappy in the least, she was quite content to do all the loving and adoring herself. She made a sort of divinity of the older woman, and who expects a divinity to step down from her marble heights, and love and caress? Ellen began to remember all Cynthia's ways and looks, as a scholar remembers with a view to imitation. She became her disciple. She began to move like Cynthia, and to speak like her, though she did not know it. Her imitation was totally unconscious; indeed, it was hardly to be called imitation; it was rather the following out of the leading of that image of Cynthia which was always present before her mind. Ellen saw Cynthia very seldom. Once or twice she arrayed herself in her best and made a formal call of gratitude, and once Fanny went with her. Ellen saw the incongruity of her mother in Cynthia's drawing-room with a torture which she never forgot. Going home she clung hard to her mother's arm all the way. She was fairly fierce with love and loyalty. She was so indignant with herself that she had seen the incongruity. "I think our parlor is enough sight prettier than hers," she said, defiantly, when they reached home and the hideous lamp was lighted. Ellen looked around the ornate room, and then at her mother, as with a challenge in behalf of loyalty, and of that which underlies externals. "I rather guess it is," agreed Fanny, happily, "and I don't s'pose it cost half so much. I dare say that mat on her hearth cost as much as all our plush furniture and the carpet, and it is a dreadful dull, homely thing." "Yes, it is," said Ellen. "I wish I'd been able to keep my hands as white as Miss Lennox's, an' I wish I'd had time to speak so soft and slow," said Fanny, wistfully. Then Ellen had her by both shoulders, and was actually shaking her with a passion to which she very seldom gave rein. "Mother," she cried--"mother, you know better, you know there is nobody in the whole world to me like my own mother, and never will be. It isn't being beautiful, nor speaking in a soft voice, nor dressing well, it's the being you--_you_. You know I love you best, mother, you know, and I love my own home best, and everything that is my own best, and I always will." Ellen was almost weeping. "You silly child," said Fanny, tenderly. "Mother knows you love her best, but she wishes for your sake, and especially since you are going to have advantages that she never had, that she was a little different." "I don't, I don't," said Ellen, fiercely. "I want you just as you are, just exactly as you are, mother." Fanny laughed tearfully, and rubbed her coarse black head against Ellen's lovingly with a curious, cat-like motion, then bade her run away or she would not get her dress done. A dressmaker was coming for a whole week to the Brewster house to make Ellen's outfit. Mrs. Zelotes had furnished most of the materials, and Andrew was to pay the dressmaker. "You can take a little more of that money out of the bank," Fanny said. "I want Ellen to go looking so she won't be ashamed before the other girls, and I don't want Cynthia Lennox thinking she ain't well enough dressed, and we ought to have let her do it. As for being beholden to her for Ellen's clothes, I won't." "I rather guess not," said Andrew, but he was sick at heart. Only that afternoon the man from whom he had borrowed the money to buy Ellen's watch and chain had asked him for it. He had not a cent in advance for his weekly pay; he could not see where the money for Ellen's clothes was coming from. It was long since the "Golden Hope" had been quoted in the stock-list, but the next morning Andrew purchased a morning paper. He had stopped taking one regularly. He put on his spectacles, and spread out the paper in his shaking hands, and scrutinized the stock-list eagerly, but he could not find what he wanted. The "Golden Hope" had long since dropped to a still level below all record of fluctuations. A young man passing to his place at the bench looked over his shoulder. "Counting up your dividends, Brewster?" he asked, with a grin. Andrew folded up the paper gloomily and made no reply. "Irish dividends, maybe," said the man, with a chuckle at his own wit, and a backward roll of a facetious eye. "Oh, shut up, you're too smart to live," said the man who stood next at the bench. He was a young fellow who had been a school-mate of Ellen in the grammar-school. He had left to go to work when she had entered the high-school. His name was Dixon. He was wiry and alert, with a restless sparkle of bright eyes in a grimy face, and he cut the leather with lightning-like rapidity. Dixon had always thought Ellen the most beautiful girl in Rowe. He looked after Andrew with a sharp pain of sympathy when he went away with the roll of newspaper sticking out of his pocket. "Poor old chap," he said to the facetious man, thrusting his face angrily towards him. "He has had a devil of a time since he begun to grow old. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Wait till you begin to drop behind. It's what's bound to come to the whole boiling of us." "Mind your jaw," said the first man, with a scowl. "You'd better mind yours," said Dixon, slashing furiously at the leather. That noon Dixon offered Andrew, shamefacedly, taking him aside lest the other men see, a piece of pie of a superior sort which his mother had put into his dinner bag, but Andrew thanked him kindly and refused it. He could eat nothing whatever that noon. He kept thinking about the dressmaker, and how Fanny would ask him again to take some of that money out of the bank to pay her, and how the money was already taken out. That evening, when he sat down to the tea-table furnished with the best china and frosted cake in honor of the dressmaker, and heard the radiant talk about Ellen's new frills and tucks, he had a cold feeling at his heart. He was ashamed to look at the dressmaker. "You won't know your daughter when we get her fixed up for Vassar," she told Andrew, with a smirk which covered her face with a network of wrinkles under her blond fluff of hair. "Do have some more cake, Miss Higgins," said Fanny. She was radiant. The image of her daughter in her new gowns had gone far to recompense her for all her disappointments in life, and they had not been few. "What, after all, did it matter?" she asked herself, "if a woman was growing old, if she had to work hard, if she did not know where the next dollar was coming from, if all the direct personal savor was fast passing out of existence, when one had a daughter who looked like that?" Ellen, in a new blue dress, was ravishing. The mother looked at her when she was trying it on, with the possession of love, and the dressmaker as if she herself had created her. After supper Ellen had to try on the dress again for her father, and turn about slowly that he might see all its fine points. "There, what do you think of that, Andrew?" asked Fanny, triumphantly. "Ain't she a lady?" asked the dressmaker. "It is very pretty," said Andrew, smiling with gloomy eyes. Then he heaved a great sigh, and went out of the south door to the steps. "Your father is tired to-night," Fanny said to Ellen with a meaning of excuse for the dressmaker. The dressmaker reflected shrewdly on Andrew's sigh when she was on her way home. "Men don't sigh that way unless there's money to pay," she thought. "I don't believe but he has been speculating." Then she wondered if there was any doubt about her getting her pay, and concluded that she would ask for it from day to day to make sure. So the next night after tea she asked, with one of her smirks of amiability, if it would be convenient for Mrs. Brewster to pay her that night. "I wouldn't ask for it until the end of the week," said she, "but I have a bill to pay." She said "bill" with a murmur which carried conviction of its deception. Fanny flushed angrily. "Of course," said she, "Mr. Brewster can pay you just as well every night if you need it." Fanny emphasized the "need" maliciously. Then she turned to Andrew. "Andrew," said she, "Miss Higgins needs the money, if you can pay her for yesterday and to-day." Andrew turned pale. "Yes, of course," he stammered. "How much?" "Six dollars," said Fanny, and in her tone was unmistakable meaning of the dearness of the price. The dressmaker was flushed, but her thin mouth was set hard. It was as much as to say, "Well, I don't care so long as I get my money." She was unmarried, and her lonely condition had worked up her spirit into a strong attitude of defiance against all masculine odds. She had once considered men from a matrimonial point of view. She had wondered if this one and that one wanted to marry her. Now she was past that, and considered with equal sharpness if this one or that one wanted to cheat her. She had missed men's love through some failing either of theirs or hers. She did not know which, but she was determined that she would not lose money. So she bore Fanny's insulting emphasis with rigidity, and waited for her pay. Andrew pulled out his old pocket-book, and counted the bills. Miss Higgins saw that he took every bill in it, unless there were some in another compartment, and of that she could not be quite sure. But Andrew knew. He would not have another penny until the next week when he received his pay. In the meantime there was a bill due at the grocery store, and one at the market, and there was the debt for Ellen's watch. However, he felt as if he would rather owe every man in Rowe than this one small, sharp woman. He felt the scorn lurking within her like a sting. She seemed to him like some venomous insect. He went out to the doorstep again, and wondered if she would want her pay the next night when she went home. _ |
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