The Portion of Labor Part 25

Then f.a.n.n.y came forward and shook hands with Robert. Her face was flaming--she cast involuntary glances at Andrew for confirmation of her opinion. She was openly and shamelessly triumphant, and yet all at once Robert ceased to be repelled by it. Through his insight into the girl's character, he had seemed to gain suddenly a clearer vision for the depths of human love and pity which are beneath the coa.r.s.e and the common. When f.a.n.n.y stood beside her daughter and looked at her, then at Robert, with the reflection of the beautiful young face in her eyes of love, she became at once pathetic and sacred.

"It is all natural," he said to himself as he was going home.

Chapter XX

Robert Lloyd when he came to Rowe was confronted with one of the hardest tasks in the world, that of adjustment to circ.u.mstances which had hitherto been out of his imagination. He had not dreamed of a business life in connection with himself. Though he had always had a certain admiration for his successful uncle, Norman Lloyd, yet he had always had along with the admiration a recollection of the old tale of the birthright and the mess of pottage. He had expected to follow the law, like his father, but when he had finished college, about two years after his father's death, he had to face the unexpected. The stocks in which the greater part of the elder Lloyd's money had been invested had depreciated; some of them were for the time being quite worthless as far as income was concerned.

There were two little children--girls--by his father's second marriage, and there was not enough to support them and their mother and allow Robert to continue his reading for the law. So he pursued, without the slightest hesitation, but with bitter regret, the only course which he saw open before him. He wrote to his uncle Norman, and was welcomed to a position in his factory with more warmth than he had ever seen displayed by him. In fact, Norman Lloyd, who had no son of his own, saw with a quickening of his pulses the handsome young fellow of his own race who had in a measure thrown himself upon his protection. He had never shared his wife's longing for children as children, and had never cared for Robert when a child; but now, when he was a man grown and bore his name, he appealed to him.

Norman Lloyd was supposed to be heaping up riches, and wild stories of his wealth were told in Rowe. He gave large sums to public benefactions, and never stinted his wife in her giving within certain limits. It would have puzzled any one when faced with facts to understand why he had the name of a hard man, but he had it, whether justly or not. "He's as hard as nails," people said. His employes hated him--that is, the more turbulent and undisciplined spirits hated him, and the others regarded him as slaves might a stern master. When Robert started his work in his uncle's office he started handicapped by this sentiment towards his uncle. He looked like his uncle, he talked like him, he had his same gentle stiffness, he was never unduly familiar. He was at once placed in the same category by the workmen.

Robert Lloyd did not concern himself in the least as to what the employes in his uncle's factory thought of him. Nothing was more completely out of his mind. He was conscious of standing on a firm base of philanthropic principle, and if ever these men came directly under his control, he was resolved to do his duty by them so far as in him lay.

Ellen, since her graduation, had been like an animal which circles about in its endeavors to find its best and natural place of settlement.

"What shall I do next?" she had said to her mother. "Shall I go to work, or shall I try to find a school somewhere in the fall, or shall I stay here, and help you with some work I can do at home? I know father cannot afford to support me always at home."

"I guess he can afford to support his only daughter at home a little while after she has just got out of school," f.a.n.n.y had returned indignantly, with a keen pain at her heart.

f.a.n.n.y mentioned this conversation to Andrew that night after Ellen had gone to bed.

"What do you think--Ellen was asking me this afternoon what she had better do!" said she.

"What she had better do?" repeated Andrew, vaguely. He looked shrinkingly at f.a.n.n.y, who seemed to him to have an accusing air, as if in some way he were to blame for something. And, indeed, there were times when f.a.n.n.y in those days did blame Andrew, but there was some excuse for her. She blamed him when her own back was filling her very soul with the weariness of its ache as she bent over the seams of those grinding wrappers, and when her heart was sore over doubt of Ellen's future. At those times she acknowledged to herself that it seemed to her that Andrew somehow might have gotten on better. She did not know how, but somehow. He had not had an expensive family. "Why had he not succeeded?" she asked herself. So there was in her tone an unconscious recrimination when she answered his question about Ellen.

"Yes--what she had better go to work at," said f.a.n.n.y, dryly, her black eyes cold on her husband's face.

Andrew turned so white that he frightened her. "Go to work!" said he. Then all at once he gave an exceedingly loud and bitter groan.

It betrayed all his pride in and ambition for his daughter and his disgust and disappointment over himself. "Oh! my G.o.d, has it come to this," he groaned, "that I cannot support my one child!"

f.a.n.n.y laid down her work and looked at him. "Now, Andrew," said she, "there's no use in your taking it after such a fas.h.i.+on as this. I told Ellen that it was all nonsense--that she could stay at home and rest this summer."

"I guess, if she can't--" said Andrew. He dropped his gray head into his hands, and began to sob dryly. f.a.n.n.y, after staring at him a moment, tossed her work onto the floor, went over to him, and drew his head to her shoulder.

"There, old man," said she, "ain't you ashamed of yourself? I told her there was no need for her to worry at present. Don't do so, Andrew; you've done the best you could, and I know it, if I stop to think, though I do seem sort of impatient sometimes. You've always worked hard and done your best. It ain't your fault."

"I don't know whether it is or not," said Andrew, in a high, querulous voice like a woman's. "It seems as if it must be somebody's fault. If it ain't my fault, whose is it? You can't blame the Almighty."

"Maybe it ain't anybody's fault."

"It must be. All that goes wrong is somebody's fault. It can't be that it just happens--that would be worse than the other. It is better to have a G.o.d that is cruel than one that don't care, and it is better to be to blame yourself, and have it your fault, than His.

Somehow, I have been to blame, f.a.n.n.y. I must have. It would have been enough sight better for you, f.a.n.n.y, if you'd married another man."

"I didn't want another man," replied f.a.n.n.y, half angrily, half tenderly. "You make me all out of patience, Andrew Brewster. What's the need of Ellen going to work right away? Maybe by-and-by she can get an easy school. Then, we've got that money in the bank."

Andrew looked away from her with his face set. f.a.n.n.y did not know yet about his withdrawal of the money for the purpose of investing in mining-stocks. He never looked at her but the guilty secret seemed to force itself between them like a wedge of ice.

"Then Grandma Brewster has got a little something," said f.a.n.n.y.

"Only just enough for herself," said Andrew. Then he added, fiercely, "Mother can't be stinted of her little comforts even for Ellen."

"I 'ain't never wanted to stint your mother of her comforts," f.a.n.n.y retorted, angrily.

"She 'ain't got but a precious little, unless she spends her princ.i.p.al," said Andrew. "She 'ain't got more'n a hundred and fifty or so a year clear after her taxes and insurance are paid."

"I ain't saying anything," said f.a.n.n.y. "But I do say you're dreadful foolish to take on so when you've got so much to fall back on, and that money in the bank. Here you haven't had to touch the interest for quite a while and it has been acc.u.mulating."

It was agreed between the two that Ellen must say nothing to her grandmother Brewster about going to work.

"I believe the old lady would have a fit if she thought Ellen was going to work," said f.a.n.n.y. "She 'ain't never thought she ought to lift her finger."

So Ellen was charged on no account to say anything to her grandmother about the possible necessity of her going to work.

"Your grandmother's awful proud," said f.a.n.n.y, "and she's always thought you were too good to work."

"I don't think anybody is too good to work," replied Ellen, but she uttered the plat.i.tude with a sort of mental reservation. In spite of herself, the att.i.tude of wors.h.i.+p in which she had always seen all who belonged to her had spoiled her a little. She did look at herself with a sort of compunction when she realized the fact that she might have to go to work in the shop some time. School-teaching was different, but could she earn enough school-teaching? There was a st.u.r.dy vein in the girl. All the time she pitied herself she blamed herself.

"You come of working-people, Ellen Brewster. Why are you any better than they? Why are your hands any better than their hands, your brain than theirs? Why are you any better than the other girls who have gone to work in the shops? Do you think you are any better than Abby Atkins?"

And still Ellen used to look at herself with a pitying conviction that she would be out of place at a bench in the shoe-factory, that she would suffer a certain indignity by such a course. The realization of a better birthright was strong upon her, although she chided herself for it. And everybody abetted her in it. When she said once to Abby Atkins, whom she encountered one day going home from the shop, that she wondered if she could get a job in her room in the fall, Abby turned upon her fiercely.

"Good Lord, Ellen Brewster, you ain't going to work in a shoe-shop?"

she said.

"I don't see why not as well as you," returned Ellen.

"Why not?" repeated the other girl. "Look at yourself, and look at us!"

As she spoke, Ellen saw projected upon her mental vision herself pa.s.sing down the street with the throng of factory operatives which her bodily eyes actually witnessed. She had come opposite Lloyd's as the six o'clock whistle was blowing. She saw herself in her clean, light summer frock, slight and dainty, with little hands like white flowers in the blue folds of her skirt, with her fine, sensitive outlook of fair face, and her dainty carriage; and she saw others--those girls and women in dingy skirts and bagging blouses, with coa.r.s.e hair strained into hard knots of exigency from patient, or sullen faces, according to their methods of bearing their lots; all of them rank with the smell of leather, their coa.r.s.e hands stained with it, swinging their poor little worn bags which had held their dinners. There were not many foreigners among them, except the Irish, most of whom had been born in this country, and a sprinkling of fair-haired, ruddy Swedes and keen Polanders, who bore themselves better than the Americans, being not so apparently at odds with the situation.

The factory employes in Rowe were a superior lot, men and women.

Many of the men had put on their worn coats when they emerged from the factory, and their little bags were supposed to disguise the fact of their being dinner satchels. And yet there was a difference between Ellen Brewster and the people among whom she walked, and she felt it with a sort of pride and indignation with herself that it was so.

"I don't see why I should be any better than the rest," said she, defiantly, to Abby Atkins. "My father works in a shop, and you are my best friend, and you do. Why shouldn't I work in a shop?"

"Look at yourself," repeated the other girl, mercilessly. "You are different. You ain't to blame for it any more than a flower is to blame for being a rose and not a common burdock. If you've got to do anything, you had better teach school."

"I would rather teach school," said Ellen, "but I couldn't earn so much unless I got more education and got a higher position than a district school, and that is out of the question."

"I thought maybe your grandmother could send you," said Abby.

"Oh no, grandma can't afford to. Sometimes I think I could work my own way through college, if it wasn't for being a burden in the mean time, but I don't know."

Suddenly Abby Atkins planted herself on the sidewalk in front of Ellen, and looked at her sharply, while an angry flush overspread her face.