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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 60 |
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_ Chapter LX Lloyd's had been running for two months, and spring had fairly begun. It was a very forward season. The elms were leafed out, the cherry and peach blossoms had fallen, and the apple-trees were in full flower. There were many orchards around Rowe. The little city was surrounded with bowing garlands of tenderest white and rose, the well-kept lawns in the city limits were like velvet, and golden-spiked bushes and pink trails of flowering almond were beside the gates. Lilacs also, flushed with rose, purpled the walls of old houses. One morning Ellen, on her way to the factory, had for the first time that year a realization of the full presence of the spring. All at once she knew the goddess to be there in her whole glory. "Spring has really come," she said to Abby. As she spoke she jostled a great bush of white flowers, growing in a yard close to the sidewalk, and an overpowering fragrance, like a very retaliation of sweetness, came in her face. "Yes," said Abby; "it seems more like spring than it did last night, somehow!" Abby had gained flesh, and there was a soft color on her cheeks, so that she was almost pretty, as she glanced abroad with a sort of bright gladness and a face ready with smiles. Maria also looked in better health than she had done in the winter. She walked with her arm through Ellen's. Suddenly a carriage, driven rapidly, passed them, and Cynthia Lennox's graceful profile showed like a drooping white flower in a window. Sadie Peel came up to them with a swift run. "Say!" she said, "know who that was?" "We've got eyes," replied Abby Atkins, shortly. "Who said you hadn't? You needn't be so up an' comin', Abby Atkins; I didn't know as you knew they were married, that's all. I just heard it from Lottie Snell, whose sister works at the dressmaker's that made the wedding fix. Weddin' fix! My land! Think of a weddin' without a white dress and a veil! All she had was a gray silk and a black velvet, and a black lace, and a travellin'-dress!" Abby Atkins eyed the other girl sharply, her curiosity getting the better of her dislike. "Who did she marry?" said she, shortly. "I suppose she didn't marry the black velvet, or the lace, or the travelling-dress. That's all you seem to think about." "I _thought_ you didn't know," replied Sadie Peel, in a tone of triumph. "They've kept it mighty still, and he's been goin' there so long, ever since anybody can remember, that they didn't think it was anything more now than it had been right along. Lyman Risley and Cynthia Lennox have just got married, and they've gone down to Old Point Comfort. My land, it's nice to have money, if you be half blind!" Ellen looked after the retreating carriage, and made no comment. She was pale and thin, and moved with a certain languor, although she held up her head proudly, and when people asked if she were not well, answered quickly that she had never been better. Robert had not been to see her yet. She had furtively watched for him a long time, then she had given it up. She would not acknowledge to herself or any one else that she was not well or was troubled in spirit. Her courage was quite equal to the demand upon it, yet always she was aware of a peculiar sensitiveness to all happenings, whether directly concerned with herself or not, which made life an agony to her, and she knew that her physical strength was not what it had been. Only that morning she had looked at her face in the glass, and had seen how it was altered. The lovely color was gone from her cheeks, there were little, faint, downward lines about her mouth, and, more than that, out of her blue eyes looked the eternal, unanswerable question of humanity, "Where is my happiness?" It seemed to her when she first set out that she could not walk to the factory. That sense of the full presence of the spring seemed to overpower her. All the revelation of beauty and sweetness seemed a refinement of torture worse to bear than the sight of death and misery would have been. Every blooming apple-bough seemed to strike her full on the heart. "Only look at that bush of red flowers in that yard," Maria said once, and Ellen looked and was stung by the sight as by the contact of a red flaming torch of spring. "What ails you, dear; don't you like those flowers?" Maria said, anxiously. "Yes, of course I do; I think they are lovely," replied Ellen, looking. She looked after the carriage which contained the bridal party; she thought how the bridegroom had almost lost his eyesight to save her, and her old adoration of Cynthia seemed to rise to a flood-tide. Then came the thought of Robert, how he must have ceased to love her--how some day he would be starting off on a bridal trip of his own. Maud Hemingway, with whom she had often coupled him in her thoughts, seemed to start up before her, all dressed in bridal white. It seemed to her that she could not bear it all. She continued walking, but she did not feel the ground beneath her feet, nor even Maria's little, clinging fingers of tenderness on her arm. She became to her own understanding like an instrument which is played upon with such results of harmonies and discords that all sense of the mechanism is lost. "Well, Ellen Brewster," said Sadie Peel, in her loud, strident voice, "I guess you wouldn't have been walkin' along here quite so fine this mornin' if it hadn't been for Mr. Risley. You'd ought to send him a weddin'-present--a spoon, or something." "Shut up," said Abby Atkins; "Ellen has worried herself sick over him as it is." She eyed Ellen anxiously as she spoke. Maria clung more closely to her. "Shut up yourself, Abby Atkins," returned Sadie Peel. "He's got a wife to lead him around, and I don't see much to worry about. A great weddin'! My goodness, if I don't get married when I'm young enough to wear a white dress and veil, catch me gettin' married at all!" Sadie Peel sped on with her news to a group of girls ahead, and the wheels of the carriage flashed out of sight in the spring sunlight. It was quite true that Risley and Cynthia had been married that morning. He had not entirely lost his vision, although it would always be poor, and he would live happily, although in a measure disappointedly, feeling that his partial helplessness was his chief claim upon his wife's affection. He had gotten what he had longed for for so many years, but by means which tended to his humiliation instead of his pride. But Cynthia was radiant. In caring for her half-blind husband she attained the spiritual mountain height of her life. She possessed love in the one guise in which he appealed to her, and she held him fast to the illumination of her very soul. After the carriage had passed out of sight Abby came close on the other side of Ellen and slid her arm through hers. "Say!" she began. "What is it?" asked Ellen. Abby blushed. "Oh, nothing much," she replied, in a tone unusual for her. She took her arm away from Ellen's, and laughed a little foolishly. Ellen stared at her with grave wonder. She had not the least idea what she meant. Abby changed the subject. "Going to the park opening to-night, Ellen?" she asked. "No, I guess not." "You'd better. Do go, Ellen." "Yes, do go, Ellen; it will do you good," said Maria. She looked into Ellen's face with the inexpressibly pure love of one innocent girl for another. The park was a large grove of oaks and birch-trees which had recently been purchased by the street railway company of Rowe, and it was to be used for the free entertainment of the people, with an undercurrent of consideration for the financial profit of the company. "I'm afraid I can't go," said Ellen. "Yes, you can; it will do you good; you look like a ghost this morning," said Abby. "Do go, Ellen," pleaded Maria. However, Ellen would not have gone had it not been for a whisper of Abby's as they came out of the factory that night. "Look here, Ellen, you'd better go," said she, "just to show folks. That Sadie Peel asked me this noon if it was true that you had something on your mind, and was worrying about--well, you know what--that made you look so." Ellen flushed an angry red. "I'll stop for you and Maria to-night," she answered, quickly. "All right," Abby replied, heartily; "we'll go on the eight-o'clock car." Ellen hurried home, and changed her dress after supper, putting on her new green silk waist and her spring hat, which was trimmed with roses. When she went down-stairs, and told her mother where she was going, she started up. "I declare, I'd go too if your father had come home," she said. "I don't know when I've been anywhere; and Eva was in this afternoon and said that she and Jim were going." "I wonder where father is?" said Ellen, uneasily. "I don't know as I ought to go till he comes home." "Oh, stuff!" replied Fanny. "He's stopped to talk at the store. Oh, here he is now. Andrew Brewster, where in the world have you been?" she began as he entered; but his mother was following him, and something in their faces stopped her. Fanny Brewster had lived for years with this man, but never before had she seen his face with just that expression of utter, unreserved joy; although joy was scarcely the word for it, for it was more than that. It was the look of a man who has advanced to his true measure of growth, and regained self-respect which he had lost. All the abject bend of his aging back, all the apologetic patience of his outlook, was gone. She stared at him, hardly believing her eyes. She was as frightened as if he had looked despairing instead of joyful. "Andrew Brewster, what is it?" she asked. She tried to smile, to echo the foolish width of grimace on his face, but her lips were too stiff. Ellen looked at him, trembling, and very white under her knot of roses. Andrew held out a paper and tried to speak, but he could not. "For God's sake, what is it?" gasped Fanny. Then Mrs. Zelotes spoke. "That old mining-stock has come up," said she, in a harsh voice. "He'd never ought to have bought it. I should have told him better if he had asked me, but it's come up, and it's worth considerable more than he paid for it. I've just been down to Mrs. Pointdexter's, and Lawyer Samson was in there seeing her about a bond she's got that's run out, and he says the mine's going to pay dividends, and for Andrew to hold on to part of it, anyhow. I bought this paper, and it's in it. He never ought to have bought it, but it's come up. I hope it will learn him a lesson. He's had enough trouble over it." Nothing could exceed the mixture of recrimination and exultation with which the old woman spoke. She eyed Fanny accusingly; she looked at Andrew with grudging triumph. "Lawyer Samson says it will make him rich, he guesses; at any rate, he'll come out whole," said she. "I hope it will learn you a lesson." Andrew dropped into a chair. His face was distended with a foolish smile like a baby's. He seemed to smile at all creation. He looked at his wife and Ellen; then his face again took on its expression of joyful vacuity. Fanny went close to him and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "You 'ain't had a mite of supper, Andrew Brewster," said she; "come right out and have something to eat." Andrew shook his head, still smiling. His wife and daughter looked at him alarmedly, then at each other. Then his mother went behind him, laid a hard, old hand on each shoulder, and shook him. "If you _have_ got a streak of luck, there's no need of your actin' like a fool about it, Andrew Brewster," said she. "Go out and eat your supper, and behave yourself, and let it be a lesson to you. There you had worked and saved that little money you had in the bank, and you bought an old mine with it, and it might have turned out there wasn't a thing in it, no mine at all, and there was. Just let it be a lesson to you, that's all; and go out and eat your supper, and don't be too set up over it." Andrew looked at his wife and mother and daughter, still with that expression of joy, so unreserved that it was almost idiotic. They had all stood by him loyally; he had their fullest sympathy; but had one of them fully understood? Not one of them could certainly understand what was then passing in his mind, which had been straitened by grief and self-reproach, and was now expanding to hold its full measure of joy. That poor little sum in the bank, that accumulation of his hard earnings, which he had lost through his own bad judgment, had meant much more than itself to him, both in its loss and its recovery. It was more than money; it was the value of money in the current coin of his own self-respect. His mother shook him again, but rather gently. "Get up this minute, and go out and eat your supper," said she; "and then I don't see why you can't go with Fanny and me to the park opening. They say lots of folks are goin', and there's goin' to be fireworks. It'll distract your mind. It ain't safe for anybody to dwell too much on good luck any more than on misfortune. Go right out and eat your supper; it's most time for the car." Andrew obeyed. _ |
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