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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 28 |
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_ Chapter XXVIII Andrew Brewster, lying in the dewy grass under the apple-trees, giving way for almost the first time since his childhood to impulses which had hitherto, from his New England heredity, stiffened instead of relaxed his muscles of expression, felt as if he were being stung to death by ants. He was naturally a man of broad views, who felt the indignity of coping with such petty odds. "For God's sake, if I had to be done to death, why couldn't it have been for something?" he groaned, speaking with his lips close to the earth as if it were a listening ear. "Why need it all have been over so little? It's just the little fight for enough to eat and wear that's getting the better of me that was a man, and able to do a man's work in the world. Now it has come to this! Here I am runnin' away from a woman because she wants me to pay her three dollars, and I am afraid of another woman because--I've been and fooled away a few hundred dollars I had in the savings-bank. I'm afraid--yes, it has come to this. I am afraid, afraid, and I'd run away out of life if I knew where it would fetch me to. I'm afraid of things that ain't worth being afraid of, and it's all over things that's beneath me." There came over Andrew, with his mouth to the moist earth, feeling the breath and the fragrance of it in his nostrils, a realization of the great motherhood of nature, and a contempt for himself which was scorching and scathing before it. He felt that he came from that mighty breast which should produce only sons of might, and was spending his whole life in an ignominy of fruitless climbing up mole-hills. "Why couldn't I have been more?" he asked himself. "Oh, my God, is it my fault?" He said to himself that if he had not yielded to the universal law and longing of his kind for a home and a family, it might have been better. He asked himself that question which will never be answered with a surety of correctness, whether the advancement of the individual to his furthest compass is more to the glory of life than the blind following out of the laws of existence and the bringing others into the everlasting problem of advance. Then he thought of Ellen, and a great warmth of conviction came over the loving heart of the man; all his self-contempt vanished. He had her, this child who was above pearls and rubies, he had her, and in her the furthest reach of himself and progression of himself to greater distances than he could ever have accomplished in any other way, and it was a double progress, since it was not only for him, but also for the woman he had married. A great wave of love for Fanny came over him. He seemed to see that, after all, it was a shining road by which he had come, and he saw himself upon it like a figure of light. He saw that he lived and could never die. Then, as with a remorseless hurl of a high spirit upon needle-pricks of petty cares, he thought again of the dressmaker, of the money for Ellen's watch, of the butcher's bill, and the grocer's bills, and the money which he had taken from the bank, and again he cowered beneath and loathed his ignoble burden. He dug his hot head into the grass. "Oh, my God! oh, my God!" he groaned. He fairly sobbed. Then he felt a soft wind of feminine skirts caused by the sudden stoop of some one beside him, and Ellen's voice, shrill with alarm, rang in his ears. "Father, what is the matter? Father!" Such was the man's love for the girl that his first thought was for her alarm, and he pushed all his own troubles into the background with a lightning-like motion. He raised himself hastily, and smiled at her with his pitiful, stiff face. "It's nothing at all, Ellen, don't you worry," he said. But that was not enough to satisfy her. She caught hold of his arm and clung to it. "Father," she said, in a tone which had in it, to his wonder, a firm womanliness--his own daughter seemed to speak to him as if she were his mother--"you are not telling me the truth. Something is the matter, or you wouldn't do like this." "No, there's nothin', nothin' at all, dear child," said Andrew. He tried to loosen her little, clinging hand from his arm. "Come, let's go back to the house," he said. "Don't you mind anything about it. Sometimes father gets discouraged over nothin'." "It isn't over nothing," said Ellen. "What is it about, father?" Andrew tried to laugh. "Well, if it isn't over nothin', it's over nothin' in particular," said he; "it's over jest what's happened right along. Sometimes father feels as if he hadn't made as much as he'd ought to out of his life, and he's gettin' older, and he's feelin' kind of discouraged, that's all." "Over money matters?" said Ellen, looking at him steadily. "Over nothin'," said her father. "See here, child, father's ashamed that he gave way so, and you found him. Now don't you worry one mite about it--it's nothing at all. Come, let's go back to the house," he said. Ellen said no more, but she walked up from the field holding tightly to her father's poor, worn hand, and her heart was in a tumult. To behold any convulsion of nature is no light experience, and when it is a storm of the spirit in one beloved the beholder is swept along with it in greater or less measure. Ellen trembled as she walked. Her father kept looking at her anxiously and remorsefully. Once he reached around his other hand and chucked her playfully under the chin. "Scared most to death, was she?" he asked, with a shamefaced blush. "I know something is the matter, and I think it would be better for you to tell me, father," replied Ellen, soberly. "There's nothing to tell, child," said Andrew. "Don't you worry your little head about it." Between his anxiety lest the girl should be troubled, and his intense humiliation that she should have discovered him in such an abandon of grief which was almost like a disclosure of the nakedness of his spirit, he was completely unnerved. Ellen felt him tremble, and heard his voice quiver when he spoke. She felt towards her father something she had never felt before--an impulse of protection. She felt the older and stronger of the two. Her grasp on his hand tightened, she seemed in a measure to be leading him along. When they reached the yard between the houses Andrew cast an apprehensive glance at the windows. "Has she gone?" he asked. "Who, the dressmaker?" "Yes." "She hadn't when I came out. I saw you come past the house, and I thought you walked as if you didn't feel well, so I thought I would run out and see." "I was all right," replied Andrew. "Have you got to try on anything more to-night?" "No." "Well, then, let's run into grandma's a minute." "All right," said Ellen. Mrs. Zelotes was sitting at her front window in the dusk, looking out on the street, as was her favorite custom. The old woman seldom lit a lamp in the summer evening, but sat there staring out at the lighted street and the people passing and repassing, with her mind as absolutely passive as regarded herself as if she were travelling and observing only that which passed without. At those times she became in a fashion sensible of the motion of the world, and lost her sense of individuality in the midst of it. When her son and granddaughter entered she looked away from the window with the expression of one returning from afar, and seemed dazed for a moment. "Hullo, mother!" said Andrew. The room was dusky, and they moved across between the chairs and tables like two shadows. "Oh, is it you, Andrew?" said his mother. "Who is that with you--Ellen?" "Yes," said Ellen. "How do you do, grandma?" Mrs. Zelotes became suddenly fully awake to the situation; she collected her scattered faculties; her keen old eyes gleamed in a shaft of electric-light from the street without, which fell full upon her face. "Set down," said she. "Has the dressmaker gone?" "No, she hadn't when I came out," replied Ellen, "but she's most through for to-night." "How do your things look?" "Real pretty, I guess." "Sometimes I think you'd better have had Miss Patch. I hope she 'ain't got your sleeves too tight at the elbows." "They seem to fit very nicely, grandma." "Sleeves are very particular things; a sleeve wrong can spoil a whole dress." Suddenly the old woman turned on Ellen with a look of extremest facetiousness and intelligence, and the girl winced, for she knew what was coming. "I see you goin' past with a young man last night, didn't I?" said she. Ellen flushed. "Yes," she said, almost indignantly, for she had a feeling as if the veil of some inner sacredness of her nature were continually being torn aside. "I went over to Miss Lennox, to carry some sweet-peas, and Mr. Robert Lloyd was there, and he came home with me." "Oh!" replied her grandmother. Ellen's patience left her at the sound of that "Oh," which seemed to rasp her very soul. "You have none of you any right to talk and act as you do," said she. "You make me ashamed of you, you and mother; father has more sense. Just because a young man makes me a call to return something, and then walks home with me, because he happened to be at the house where I call in the evening! I think it's a shame. You make me feel as if I couldn't look him in the face." "Never mind, grandma didn't mean any harm," Andrew said, soothingly. "You needn't try to excuse me, Andrew Brewster," cried his mother, angrily. "I guess it's a pretty to-do, if I can't say a word in joke to my own granddaughter. If it had been a poor, good-for-nothing young feller workin' in a shoe-factory, I s'pose she'd been tickled to death to be joked about him, but now when it begins to look as if somebody that was worth while had come along--" "Grandma, if you say another word about it, I will never speak to Robert Lloyd again as long as I live," declared Ellen. "Never mind, child," whispered Andrew. "I do mind, and I mean what I say," Ellen cried. "I won't have it. Robert Lloyd is nothing to me, and I am nothing to him. He is no better than Granville Joy. There is nothing between us, and you make me too ashamed to think of him." Then the old woman cried out, in a tone of triumph, "Well, there he is, turnin' in at your gate now." _ |
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