The Portion of Labor Part 78

Cynthia looked at the other woman with an expression of utter anguish and pleading.

"Look here," said f.a.n.n.y; "the hospital ain't very far from here.

Suppose we go up there and ask how he is? We could call out your nephew."

"Will you go with me?" asked Cynthia, with a heart-breaking gasp.

If Ellen could have seen her at that moment, she would have recognized her as the woman whom she had known in her childhood. She was an utter surprise to f.a.n.n.y, but her sympathy leaped to meet her need like the steel to the magnet.

"Of course I will," she said, heartily.

"I would," said Andrew--"I would go with her, f.a.n.n.y."

"Of course I will," said f.a.n.n.y; "and you had better go home, I guess, Andrew, and see how I left the kitchen fire. I don't know but the dampers are all wide open."

f.a.n.n.y and Cynthia hastened in one direction towards the hospital, and Andrew towards home; but he paused for a minute, and looked thoughtfully up at the humming pile of Lloyd's. The battle was over and the strike was ended. He drew a great sigh, and went home to see to the kitchen fire.

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, blus.h.i.+ng 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 f.a.n.n.y. "I am afraid you can't just now, Aunt Cynthia," he replied.

f.a.n.n.y came resolutely to his a.s.sistance. "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 a.s.sumed the soothing gloss of his profession. "Oh, my dear Miss Lennox," he said, "there is no cause for agitation, I a.s.sure 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 f.a.n.n.y.

"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 f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.similate 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+p 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.