The Portion of Labor Part 8

"Oh, Cynthia, I can't believe that," said she. "It don't seem as if any woman could be so bad as that when the child's mother was in such agony over her." And then she added, "I can't believe it, because it seems to me that if any woman was bad enough to do that, she couldn't have given her up at all, she was such a beautiful child." Mrs. Norman Lloyd had no children of her own, and was given to gazing with eyes of gentle envy at pretty, rosy little girls, frilled with white embroidery like white pinks, dancing along in leading hands of maternal love. "It don't seem to me I could ever have given her up, if I had once been bad enough to steal her," she said. "What put such an idea into your head, Cynthia?"

When the church-bell clanged out just then Lyman Risley had never been so thankful in his life. Mrs. Lloyd rose promptly, for she had to lead the meeting, that being the custom among the sisters in her church. "Well," said she, "I am thankful she is found, anyway; I couldn't have slept a wink that night if I had known she was lost, the dear little thing. Good-night, Cynthia; don't come to the door.

Good-night, Mr. Risley. Come and see me, Cynthia--do, dear."

When Mrs. Norman Lloyd was gone, Risley looked at Cynthia with a long breath of relief, but she turned to him with seemingly no appreciation of it, and repeated her declaration which Mrs. Lloyd's coming had interrupted: "Lyman, I am going there to-night--this minute. Will you go with me? No, you must not go with me. I am going!" She sprang to her feet.

"Sit down, Cynthia," said Risley. "I tell you they were not harsh to her. You don't seem to consider that they love the child--possibly better than you can--and would not in the nature of things be harsh to her under such circ.u.mstances. Sit down and hear the rest of it."

"But they will be harsh by-and-by, after the first joy of finding her is over," said Cynthia. "I will go and tell them the first thing in the morning, Lyman."

"You will do nothing so foolish. They are not only not insisting upon her telling her secret, but announced to me their determination not to do so in the future. I wish you could have seen that man's face when he told me what a delicate, nervous little thing his child was, and the doctor said she must not be fretted if she had taken a notion not to tell; and I wish you could have seen the mother and the aunt, and the grandmother, Mrs. Zelotes Brewster. They would all give each other and themselves up to be torn of wild beasts first.

It is easy to see where the child got her extraordinary strength of will. They took me out in the sitting-room, and there was a wild flurry of feminine skirts before me. I had previously overheard myself announced as Lawyer Risley by the aunt, and the response from various voices that they were 'goin' if he was comin' out in the sittin'-room.' It always made them nervous to see lawyers. Well, I followed the parents and the grandmother and the aunt out. I dared not refuse when they suggested it, and I hoped desperately that the child would not remember me from that one scared glance she gave at me this morning. But there she sat in her little chair, holding the doll you gave her, and she looked up at me when I entered, and I have never in the whole course of my existence seen such an expression upon the face of a child. Remember me? Indeed she did, and she promised me with the faithfulest, stanchest eyes of a woman set in a child's head that she would not tell; that I need not fear for one minute; that the lady who had given her the doll was quite safe. She knew, and she must have heard what I said to you this morning. She is the most wonderful child I have ever seen."

Cynthia had sank back in her chair. Lyman Risley put his cigar back between his lips; Cynthia was quite still, her delicate profile towards him.

"I a.s.sure you there is not the slightest danger of their troubling the child because of her silence, and you would do an exceedingly foolish thing, and its consequences would react not upon yourself only, but--upon others, were you to confess the truth to them," he said after a little. "You must think of others--of your friends, and of your sister's boy, whose loss led you into this. This would--well, it would get into the papers, Cynthia."

"Do you think that the doll continued to please her?" asked Cynthia.

"Cynthia, I want you to promise," said her friend, persistently.

"Very well, I will promise, if you will promise to let me know the minute you hear that they are treating her harshly because of her silence."

Suddenly Cynthia turned her face upon him. "Lyman," said she, "do you think that I could do anything for her--"

"Do anything for her?" he repeated, vaguely.

"Yes; they cannot have money. They must be poor: the father works in the factory. Would they allow me--"

The lawyer laughed. "Cynthia," he said, "you do not realize that pride finds its native element in all strata of society, and riches are comparative. Let me inform you that these Brewsters, of whom this child sprung, claim as high places in the synagogue as any of your Lennoxes and Risleys, and, what is more, they believe themselves there. They have seen the tops of their neighbors' heads as often as you or I. The mere fact of familiarity with shoe-knives and leather, and hand-skill instead of brain-skill, makes no difference with such inherent confidence of importance as theirs.

The Louds, on the other side--the handsome aunt is a Loud--are rather below caste, but they make up for it with defiance. And as for riches, I would have you know that the Brewsters are as rich in their own estimation as you in yours; that they have possessions which entirely meet their needs and their aesthetic longings; that not only does Andrew Brewster earn exceedingly good wages in the shop, and is able to provide plenty of nouris.h.i.+ng food and good clothes, but even by-and-by, if he prospers and is prudent, something rather extra in the way of education--perhaps a piano. I would have you know that there is a Rogers group on a little marble-topped table in the front window, and a table in the side window with a worked spread, on which reposes a red plush photograph alb.u.m; that there is also a set of fine parlor furniture, with various devices in the way of silken and lace scarfs over the corners and backs of the chairs and sofa, and that there is a tapestry carpet; that in the sitting-room is a fine crushed-plush couch, and a multiplicity of rocking-chairs; that there is a complete dining-set in the next room, the door of which stood open, and even a side-board with red napkins, and a fine display of gla.s.s, every whit as elegant in their estimation as your cut gla.s.s in yours. The child's father owns his house and land free of enc.u.mbrance. He told me so in the course of his artless boasting as to what he might some day be able to do for the precious little creature of his own flesh and blood; and the grandmother owns her comfortable place next door, and she herself was dressed in black silk, and I will swear the lace on her cap was real, and she wore a great brooch containing hair of the departed, and it was set in pearl. What are you going to do in the face of opulence like this, Cynthia?"

Cynthia did not speak; her face looked as still as if it were carved in ivory.

"Cynthia," said the man, in a harsh voice, "I did not dream you were so broken up over losing that little boy of your sister's, poor girl."

Cynthia still said nothing, but a tear rolled down her cheek. Lyman Risley saw it, then he looked straight ahead, scowling over his cigar. He seemed suddenly to realize in this woman whom he loved something anomalous, yet lovely--a beauty, as it were, of deformity, an over-development in one direction, though a direction of utter grace and sweetness, like the lip of an orchid.

Why should she break her heart over a child whom she had never seen before, and have no love and pity for the man who had laid his best at her feet so long?

He saw at a flash the sweet yet monstrous imperfection of her, and he loved her better for it.

Chapter IX

After Ellen's experience in running away, she dreamed her dreams with a difference. The breath of human pa.s.sion had stained the pure crystal of her childish imagination; she peopled all her air-castles, and sounds of wailing farewells floated from the White North of her fancy after the procession of the evergreen trees in the west yard, and the cherry-trees on the east had found out that they were not in the Garden of Eden. In those days Ellen grew taller and thinner, and the cherubic roundness of her face lengthened into a sweet wistfulness of wonder and pleading, as of one who would look farther, since she heard sounds and saw signs in her sky which indicated more beyond. Andrew and f.a.n.n.y watched her more anxiously than ever, and decided not to send her to school before spring, though all the neighbors exclaimed at their tardiness in so doing.

"She'll be two years back of my Hattie gettin' into the high-school," said one woman, bluntly, to f.a.n.n.y, who retorted, angrily,

"I don't care if she's ten years behind, if she don't lose her health."

"You wait and see if she's two years behind!" exclaimed Eva, who had just returned from the shop, and had entered the room bringing a fresh breath of December air, her cheeks glowing, her black eyes s.h.i.+ning.

Eva was so handsome in those days that she fairly forced admiration, even from those of her own s.e.x whose delicacy of taste she offended.

She had a parcel in her hand, which she had bought at a store on her way home, for she was getting ready to be married to Jim Tenny. "I tell you there don't n.o.body know what that young one can do,"

continued Eva, with a radiant nod of triumph. "There ain't many grown-up folks round here that can read like her, and she's studied geography, and she knows her multiplication-table, and she can spell better than some that's been through the high-school. You jest wait till Ellen gets started on her schoolin'--she won't stay in the grammar-school long, I can tell you that. She'll go ahead of some that's got a start now and think they're 'most there." Eva pulled off her hat, and the coa.r.s.e black curls on her forehead sprang up like released wire. She nodded emphatically with a good-humored combativeness at the visiting woman and at her sister.

"I hope your cheeks are red enough," said f.a.n.n.y, looking at her with grateful admiration.

The visiting woman sniffed covertly, and a retort which seemed to her exceedingly witty was loud in her own consciousness. "Them that likes beets and pinies is welcome to them," she thought, but she did not speak. "Well," said she, "folks must do as they think best about their own children. I have always thought a good deal of an education myself. I was brought up that way." She looked with eyes that were fairly cruel at Eva Loud and f.a.n.n.y, who had been a Loud, who had both stopped going to school at a very early age.

Then the rich red flamed over Eva's forehead and neck as well as her cheeks. There was nothing covert about her, she would drag an ambushed enemy forth into the open field even at the risk of damaging disclosures regarding herself.

"Why don't you say jest what you mean, right out, Jennie Stebbins?"

she demanded. "You are hintin' that f.a.n.n.y and me never had no education, and twittin' us with it."

"It wa'n't our fault," said f.a.n.n.y, no less angrily.

"No, it wa'n't our fault," a.s.sented Eva. "We had to quit school.

Folks can live with empty heads, but they can't with empty stomachs.

It had to be one or the other. If you want to twit us with bein'

poor, you can, Jennie Stebbins."

"I haven't said anything," said Mrs. Stebbins, with a scared and injured air. "I'd like to know what you're making all this fuss about? I don't know. What did I say?"

"If I'd said anything mean, I wouldn't turn tail an' run, I'd stick to it about one minute and a half, if it killed me," said Eva, scornfully.

"You know what you was hintin' at, jest as well as we do," said f.a.n.n.y; "but it ain't so true as you and some other folks may think, I can tell you that. If Eva and me didn't go to school as long as some, we have always read every chance we could get."

"That's so," said Eva, emphatically. "I guess we've read enough sight more than some folks that has had a good deal more chance to read. f.a.n.n.y and me have taken books out of the library full as much as any of the neighbors, I rather guess."

"We've read every single thing that Mrs. Southworth has ever written," said f.a.n.n.y, "and that's sayin' considerable."

"And all Pansy's and Rider Haggard's," declared Eva, with triumph.

"And every one of The d.u.c.h.ess and Marie Corelli, and Sir Walter Scott, and George Macdonald, and Laura Jean Libbey, and Charles Reade, and more, besides, than I can think of."

"f.a.n.n.y has read 'most all Tennyson," said Eva, with loyal admiration; "she likes poetry, but I don't very well. She has read most all Tennyson and Longfellow, and we've both read _Queechee_, and _St. Elmo_, and _Jane Eyre_."

"And we've read the Bible through," said f.a.n.n.y, "because we read in a paper once that that was a complete education. We made up our minds we'd read it through, and we did, though it took us quite a while."

"And we take _Zion's Herald_, and _The Rowe Gazette_, and _The Youth's Companion_," said Eva.

"And we've both of us learned Ellen geography and spellin' and 'rithmetic, till we know most as much as she does," said f.a.n.n.y.

"That's so," said f.a.n.n.y. "I snum, I believe I could get into the high-school myself, if I wasn't goin' to git married," said Eva, with a gay laugh. She was so happy in those days that her power of continued resentment was small. The tide of her own bliss returned upon her full consciousness and overflowed, and crested, as with glory, all petty annoyances.