The Portion of Labor Part 81

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 pa.s.sed 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 f.a.n.n.y. "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. f.a.n.n.y 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 G.o.d's sake, what is it?" gasped f.a.n.n.y.

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 f.a.n.n.y 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.

f.a.n.n.y 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 pa.s.sing 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 acc.u.mulation 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 f.a.n.n.y 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.

Chapter LXI

The new park, which had been named, in honor of the president of the street railway company, Clemens Park, was composed of a light growth of oak and birch trees. With the light of the full moon, like a broadside of silvery arrows, and the frequent electric-lights filtering through the young, delicate foliage, it was much more effective than a grove of pine or hemlock would have been.

When the people streamed into it from the crowded electric-cars, there were exclamations of rapture. Women and girls fairly shrieked with delight. The ground, which had been entirely cleared of undergrowth, was like an etching in clearest black and white, of the tender dancing foliage of the oaks and birches. The birches stood together in leaning, white-limbed groups like maidens, and the rustling spread of the oaks shed broad flashes of silver from the moon. In the midst of the grove the Hungarian orchestra played in a pavilion, and dancing was going on there. Many of the people outside moved with dancing steps. Children in swings flew through the airs with squeals of delight. There was a stand for the sale of ice-cream and soda, and pretty girls blossomed like flowers behind the counters. There were various rustic adornments, such as seats and grottos, and at one end of the grove was a small collection of wild animals in cages, and a little artificial pond with swans. Now and then, above the chatter of the people and the music of the orchestra, sounded the growl of a bear or the shrill screech of a paroquet, and the people all stopped and listened and laughed. This little t.i.tillation of the unusual in the midst of their sober walk of life affected them like champagne. Most of them were of the poorer and middle cla.s.ses, the employes of the factories of Rowe.

They moved back and forth with dancing steps of exultation.

"My, ain't it beautiful!" f.a.n.n.y said, squeezing Andrew's arm. He had his wife on one arm, his mother on the other. For him the whole scene appeared more than it really was, since it reflected the joy of his own soul. There was for him a light greater than that of the moon or electricity upon it--that extreme light of the world--the happiness of a human being who blesses in a moment of prosperity the hour he was born. He knew for the first time in his life that happiness is as true as misery, and no mere creation of a fairy tale. No trees of the Garden of Eden could have outshone for him those oaks and birches. No gold or precious stones of any mines on earth can equal the light of the little star of happiness in one human soul.

f.a.n.n.y, as they walked along, kept looking at her husband, and her own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and p.r.i.c.kly delight. She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant.

Ellen, with Abby and Maria, walked behind them.

Presently Andrew met another man who had also purchased stock in the mine, and stopped to exchange congratulations. The man's face was flushed, as if he had been drinking, but he had not. On his arm hung his wife, a young woman with a showy red waist and some pink ribbon bows on her hat. She was teetering a little in time to the music, while a little girl clung to her skirts and teetered also.

"Well, old man," said the new-comer, with a hoa.r.s.e sound in his throat, "they needn't talk to us any more, need they?"

"That's so," replied Andrew, but his joy in prosperity was not like the other man's. It placed him heights above him, although from the same cause. Prosperity means one thing to one man, and another to his brother.

Presently they met Jim Tenny and Eva and Amabel. They were walking three abreast, Amabel in the middle. Jim Tenny looked hesitatingly at them, although his face was widened with irrepressible smiles.

Eva gazed at them with defiant radiance. "Well," said she, "so luck has turned?"

Amabel laughed out, and her laugh trilled high with a note of silver, above the chatter of the crowd and the blare and rhythmic trill of the orchestra. "I've had an ice-cream, and I'm going to have a new doll and a doll-carriage," said she. "Oh, Ellen!" She left her father and mother for a second and clung to Ellen, kissing her; then she was back.

"Well, Andrew?" said Jim. He had a shamed face, yet there was something brave in it struggling for expression.