After Ellen's experience in running away, she dreamed her dreams
with a difference. The breath of human passion 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 Fanny 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 Fanny, 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
shining.
Eva was so handsome in those days that she fairly forced admiration,
even from those of her own sex 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 nobody 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 coarse 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 Fanny, 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 Fanny, 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 Fanny and me never had no
education, and twittin' us with it."
"It wa'n't our fault," said Fanny, no less angrily.
"No, it wa'n't our fault," assented 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
Fanny; "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. Fanny 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 Fanny, "and that's sayin' considerable."
"And all Pansy's and Rider Haggard's," declared Eva, with triumph.
"And every one of The Duchess 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."
"Fanny 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 Fanny, "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 Fanny.
"That's so," said Fanny. "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.
The visiting woman took up her work, and rose to go with a slightly
abashed air, though her small brown eyes were still blanks of
impregnable defence. "Well, I dunno what I've said to stir you both
so," she remarked again. "If I've said anythin' that riled you, I'm
sorry, I'm sure. As I said before, folks must do as they are a mind
to with their own children. If they see fit to keep 'em home from
school until they're women grown, and if they think it's best not to
punish 'em when they run away, why they must. I 'ain't got no right
to say anythin', and I 'ain't."
"You--" began Fanny, and then she stopped short, and Eva began
arranging her hair before the glass. "The wind blew so comin' home,"
she said, "that my hair is all out." The visiting woman stared with
a motion of adjustive bewilderment, as one might before a sudden
change of wind, then she looked, as a shadowy motion disturbed the
even light of the room and little Ellen passed the window. She knew
at once, for she had heard the gossip, that the ready tongues of
recrimination were hushed because of the child, and then Ellen
entered.
The winter afternoon was waning and the light was low; the child's
face, with its clear fairness, seemed to gleam out in the room like
a lamp with a pale luminosity of its own.
The three women, the mother, and aunt, and the visiting neighbor,
all looked at her, and Ellen smiled up at them as innocently sweet
as a flower. There was that in Ellen's smile and regard at that time
which no woman could resist. Suddenly the visiting neighbor laid a
finger softly under her chin and tilted up her little face towards
the light. Then she said with that unconscious poetry of bereavement
which sees a likeness in all fair things of earth to the face of the
lost treasure, "I do believe she looks like my first little girl
that died."
After the visiting woman had gone, Fanny and Eva calling after her
to come again, they looked at each other, then at Ellen. "That
little girl that died favored the Stebbinses, and was dark as an
Injun," said Fanny, "no more like Ellen--"
"That's so," acquiesced Eva; "I remember that young one. Lookin'
like Ellen--I'd like to see the child that did look like her; there
ain't none round these parts. I wish you could have seen folks stare
at her when I took her down street yesterday. One woman said, 'Ain't
she pretty as a picture,' so loud I heard it, but Ellen didn't seem
to."
"Sometimes I wonder if we'll make her proud," Fanny said, in a
hushed voice, with a look of admiration that savored of worship
at Ellen.
"She don't ever seem to notice," said Eva, with a hushed response.
Indeed, Ellen had seemed to pay no attention whatever to
their remarks, whether from an innate humility and lack of
self-consciousness, or because she was so accustomed to adulation
that it had become as the breath of her nostrils, to be taken no
more account of. She had seated herself in her favorite place in a
rocking-chair at a west window, with her chin resting on the sill,
and her eyes staring into the great out-of-doors, full of winds and
skies and trees and her own imaginings.
She would sit so, motionless, for hours at a time, and sometimes her
mother would rouse her almost roughly. "What be you thinkin' about,
settin' there so still?" she would ask, with eyes of vague anxiety
fixed upon her, but Ellen could never answer.
Though it was getting late, it did not seem dark as early as usual,
since there was a full moon and there was snow on the ground which
gave forth a pale light in a wide surface of reflection. However,
the moon was behind clouds, for it was beginning to snow again quite
heavily, and the white flakes drove in whirlwinds past the
street-lamp on the corner of the street. Now and then a tramping and
muffled figure came into the radius of light, then passed into the
white gloom beyond.
Fanny was preparing supper, and the light from the dining-room shone
in where Ellen sat, but the sitting-room was not lighted. Ellen
began to smell the fragrance of tea and toast, and there was a
reflection of the dining-room table and lamp outside pictured
vividly against the white sheet of storm.
Ellen knew better, but it amused her to think that her home was
out-of-doors as well as under her father's and mother's roof. Eva
passed her with her hands full of kindlings. She was going to make a
fire in the parlor-stove, for Jim Tenny was coming that evening. She
laid a tender hand on Ellen's head as she passed, and smoothed her
hair. Ellen had a sort of acquiescent wonder over her aunt Eva in
those days. She heard people say Eva was getting ready to be
married, and speculated. "What is getting ready to be married?" she
asked Eva.
"Why, getting your clothes made, you little ninny," Eva answered.
The next day Ellen had watched her mother at work upon a new little
frock for herself for some time before she spoke.
"Mother," she said.
"Yes, child."
"Mother, you are making that new dress for me, ain't you?"
"Of course I am; why?"
"And you made me a new coat last week?"
"Why, you know I did, Ellen; what do you mean?"
"And you are going to make me a petticoat and put that pretty lace
on it?"
"You know I am, Ellen Brewster, what be you drivin' at?"
"Be I a-gettin' ready to be married, mother?" asked Ellen, with the
strangest look of wonder and awe and anticipation.
Fanny had told this saying of the child's to everybody, and that
evening when Jim Tenny came he caught up Ellen and gave her a toss
to the ceiling, a trick of his which filled Ellen with a sort of
fearful delight, the delight of helplessness in the hands of
strength, and the titillation of evanescent risk.
"So you are gettin' ready to be married, are you?" Jim Tenny said,
with a great laugh, looking at her soberly, with big black eyes. Jim
Tenny was a handsome fellow, and much larger and stronger than her
father. Ellen liked him; he often brought candies in his pocket for
her, and they were great friends, but she could never understand why
he stayed in the parlor all alone with her aunt Eva, instead of in
the sitting-room with the others.
Ellen had looked back at him as soberly. "Mother says I 'ain't," she
replied, "but--"
"But what?"
"I am getting most as many new clothes as Aunt Eva, and she is."
"And you think maybe you are gettin' ready to be married, after all,
hey?"
"I think maybe mother wants to surprise me," Ellen said.
Jim Tenny had all of a sudden shaken convulsively as if with mirth,
but his face remained perfectly sober.
That evening after the parlor door was closed upon Jim and Eva,
Ellen wondered what they were laughing at.
To-night when she saw Eva enter the room, a lighted lamp
illuminating her face fairly reckless with happiness, to light the
fire in the courting-stove as her sister facetiously called it, she
thought to herself that Jim Tenny was coming, that they would be
shut up in there all alone as usual, and then she looked out at the
storm and the night again, and the little home picture thrown
against it. Then she saw her father coming into the yard with his
arms full of parcels, and she was out of her chair and at the
kitchen door to meet him.
Andrew had brought as usual some dainties for his darling. He
watched Ellen unwrap the various parcels, not smiling as usual, but
with a curious knitting of his forehead and pitiful compression of
mouth. When she had finished and ran into the other room to show a
great orange to her aunt, he drew a heavy sigh that was almost a
groan. His wife coming in from the kitchen with a dish heard him,
and looked at him with quick anxiety, though she spoke in a merry,
rallying way.
"For the land sake, Andrew Brewster, what be you groanin' that way
for?" she cried out.
Andrew's tense face did not relax; he strove to push past her
without a word, but Fanny stood before him. "Now, look at here,
Andrew," said she, "you 'ain't goin' to walk off with a face like
that, unless I know what the matter is. Are you sick?"
"No, I ain't sick, Fanny," Andrew said; then in a low voice, "Let me
go, I will tell you by-and-by."
"No, Andrew, you have got to tell me now. I'm goin' to know whatever
has happened."
"Wait till after supper, Fanny."
"No, I can't wait. Look here, Andrew, you are my husband, and there
ain't no trouble that can come to you in this world that I can't
bear, except not knowin'. You've got to tell me what the matter is."
"Well, keep quiet till after supper, then," said Andrew. Then
suddenly he leaned his face close to her and whispered with a hiss
of tragedy, "Lloyd's shut down."
Fanny recoiled and looked at him.
"When?"
"The foreman gave notice to-night."
"For how long? Did he say?"
"Oh, till business got better--same old story. Unless I'm mistaken,
Lloyd's will be shut down all winter."
"Well, it ain't so bad for us as for some," said Fanny. Both pride
and a wish to cheer her husband induced her to say that. She did not
like to think that, after the fine marriage she had made, she needed
to be as distressed at a temporary loss of employment as others.
Then, too, that look of overhanging melancholy in Andrew's face
alarmed her; she felt that she must drive it away at any cost.
"Seems to me it's bad enough for anybody," said Andrew, morosely.
"Now, Andrew, you know it ain't. Here we own the house clear, and
we've got that money in the savings-bank, and all that's your
mother's is yours in the end. Of course we ain't always thinkin' of
that, and I'm sure I hope she'll outlive me, but it's so. You know
we sha'n't starve if you don't have work."
"We shall starve in the end, and you know I've been--" Andrew
stopped suddenly as he heard Ellen and his sister-in-law coming. He
shook his head at his wife with a warning motion that she should
keep silence.
"Don't Eva know?" she whispered.
"No, she came out early. Do for Heaven's sake keep quiet till after
supper."
Eva was sharp-eyed, and all through supper she watched Andrew, and
the lines of melancholy on his face, which did not disappear even
when he forced conversation.
"What in creation ails you, Andrew?" she burst out, finally. "You
look like a walking funeral."
Andrew made no reply, and Fanny volunteered an answer. "He's all
tired out," she said; "he's got a little cold. Eat some more of the
stew, Andrew; it'll do you good, it's nice and hot."
"You can't cheat me," said Eva. "There's something to pay." She
took a mouthful, then she stared at Andrew, with a sudden pallor.
"It ain't anythin' about Jim, is it?" she gasped out. "Because if it
is, there's no use in your waitin' to tell me, you might as well
have it over at once. You won't make it any easier for me, I can
tell you that."
"No, it ain't anything about Jim, in the way you mean, Eva," her
sister said, soothingly. "Eat your supper and don't worry."
"What do you mean by that? Jim ain't sick?"
"No, I tell you; don't be a goose, Eva."
"He ain't been anywhere with--"
"Do keep still, Eva!" Fanny cried, impatiently. "If I didn't have
any more faith than that in a man, I'd give him up. I don't think
you're fair to Jim. Of course he ain't been with that girl, when
he's goin' to marry you next month."
"I'm just as fair to Jim as he deserves," Eva said, simply. "I think
just as much of him, but what a man's done once he may do again, and
I can't help it if I think of it, and he shouldn't be surprised.
He's brought it on himself. I've got as much faith in him as anybody
can have, seein' as he's a man. Well, if it ain't that, Andrew
Brewster, what is it?"
"Now, you let him alone till after supper, Eva," Fanny said. "Do let
him have a little peace."
"Well, I'll get it out of him afterwards," Eva said.
As soon as she got up from the table she pushed him into the
sitting-room. "Now, out with it," said she. Ellen, who had followed
them, stood looking at them both, her lips parted, her eyes full of
half-alarmed curiosity.
"Lloyd's has shut down, if you want to know," Andrew said, shortly.
"Oh my God!" cried Eva. Andrew shrank from her impatiently. She made
that ejaculation because she was a Loud, and had an off-streak in
her blood. Not one of Andrew's pure New England stock would have so
expressed herself. He sat down beside the lamp and took up the
evening paper. Eva stood looking at him a minute. She was quite
pale, she was weighing consequences. Then she went out to her
sister. "Well, you know what's happened, Fan, I s'pose," she said.
"Yes, I'm awful sorry, but I tell Andrew it ain't so bad for us as
for some; we sha'n't starve."
"I don't know as I care much whether I starve or not," said Eva.
"It's goin' to make me put off my weddin'; and if I do put it off,
Jim and me will never get married at all; I feel it in my bones."
"Why, what should you have to put it off for?" asked Fanny.
"Why? I should think you'd know why without askin'. Ain't I spent
every dollar I have saved up on my weddin' fixin's, and Jim, he's
got his mother on his hands, and she's been sick, and he ain't saved
up anything. If you s'pose I'm goin' to marry him and make him any
worse off than he is now you're mistaken."
"Well, mebbe Jim can work somewhere else, and mebbe Lloyd's won't be
shut up long," Fanny said, consolingly. "I wouldn't give up so, if I
was you."
"I might jest as well," Eva returned. "It's no use, Jim and me will
never get married." Eva's face was curiously set; she was not in
the least loud nor violent as was usually the case when she was in
trouble, her voice was quite low, and she spoke slowly.
Fanny looked anxiously at her. "It ain't as though you hadn't a roof
to cover you," she said, "for you've got mine and Andrew's as long
as we have one ourselves."
"Do you think I'd live on Andrew long?" demanded Eva.
"You won't have to. Jim will get work in a week or two, and you'll
get married. Don't act so. I declare, I'm ashamed of you, Eva Loud.
I thought you had more sense, to give up discouraged at no more than
this. I don't see why you jump way ahead into trouble before you get
to it."
"I've got to it, and I can feel the steam of it in my face," Eva
said, with unconscious imagery. Then she lit a lamp, and went
up-stairs to change her dress before Jim Tenny arrived.
It was snowing hard. Ellen sat in her place by the window and
watched the flakes drive past the radiance of the street-lamp on the
corner, and past the reflection of the warm, bright room. Now she
could see, since the light was in the room where she sat, her father
beside the table reading his paper, and shadowy images of all the
familiar things projecting themselves like a mirage of home into the
night and storm. Ellen could see, even without turning round, that
her father looked very sober, and did not seem to be much interested
in his paper, and a vague sense of calamity oppressed her. She did
not know just what might be involved in Lloyd's shutting down, but
she saw that her father and aunt were disturbed, and her imaginings
were half eclipsed by a shadow of material things. Ellen dearly
loved this early evening hour when she could stare out into the
mystery of the night, herself sheltered under the wing of home, and
the fancies which her childish brain wove were as a garment of
spirit for the future; but to-night she did not dream so much as she
wondered and reflected. Pretty soon Ellen saw a man's figure
plodding through the fast-gathering snow, and heard her aunt Eva
make a soft, heavy rush down the front stairs, and she knew the man
was Jim Tenny, and her aunt had been watching for him. Ellen
wondered why she had watched up in her cold room, why she had not
sat down-stairs where it was warm, and let Jim ring the door-bell.
Ellen liked Jim Tenny, but there was often that in her aunt's eyes
regarding him which made Ellen look past him and above him to see if
there was another man there. Ellen heard the fire crackling in the
parlor-stove, and saw the light shining under the parlor threshold,
and heard the soft hum of voices. Her mother, having finished
washing up the supper dishes, came in presently and seated herself
beside the lamp with her needle-work.
"You don't feel any wind comin' in the window?" she said, anxiously,
to Ellen.
"No, ma'am," replied Ellen.
Andrew looked up quickly. "You're sure you don't?" he said.
"No, sir."
Ellen watched her mother sewing out in the snowy yard, then a dark
shadow came between the reflection and the window, then another. Two
men treading in the snow in even file, one in the other's
foot-tracks, came into the yard.
"Somebody's comin'," said Ellen, as a knock, came on the side door.
"Did you see who 'twas?" Fanny asked, starting up.
"Two men."
"It's somebody to see you, Andrew," Fanny said, and Andrew tossed
his paper on the table and went to the door.
When the door was opened Ellen heard a man cough.
"I should think anybody was crazy to come out such a night as this,
coughin' that way," murmured Fanny. "I do believe it's Joe Atkins;
sounds like his cough." Then Andrew entered with the two men
stamping and shaking themselves.
"Here's Joseph Atkins and Nahum Beals," Andrew said, in his
melancholy voice, all unstirred by the usual warmth of greeting. The
two men bowed stiffly.
"Good-evenin'," Fanny said, and rose and pushed forward the
rocking-chair in which she had been seated to Joseph Atkins, who was
a consumptive man with an invalid wife, and worked next Andrew in
Lloyd's.
"Keep your settin', keep your settin'," he returned in his quick,
nervous way, as if his very words were money for dire need, and sat
himself down in a straight chair far from the fire. The other man,
Nahum Beals, was very young. He seated himself next to Joseph, and
the two side by side looked with gloomy significance at Andrew and
Fanny. Then Joseph Atkins burst out suddenly in a rattling volley of
coughs.
"You hadn't ought to come out such a night as this, I'm afraid, Mr.
Atkins," said Fanny.
"He's been out jest as bad weather as this all winter," said the
young man, Nahum Beals, in an unexpectedly deep voice. "The workers
of this world can't afford to take no account of weather. It's for
the rich folks to look out betwixt their lace curtains and see if it
looks lowery, so they sha'n't git their gold harnesses and their
shiny carriages, an' their silks an' velvets an' ostrich feathers
wet. The poor folks that it's life and death to have to go out
whether or no, no matter if they've got an extra suit of clothes or
not. They've got to go out through the drenchin' rain and the
snow-drifts, to earn money so that the rich folks can have them
gold-plated harnesses and them silks and velvets. Joe's been out all
winter in weather as bad as this, after he's been standin' all day
in a shop as hot as hell, drenched with sweat. One more time won't
make much difference."
"It would be 'nough sight better for me if it did," said Joseph
Atkins, chokingly, and still with that same seeming of hurry.
Fanny had gone out to the dining-room, and now she returned stirring
some whiskey and molasses in a cup.
"Here," said she, "you take this, Mr. Atkins; it's real good for a
cough. Andrew cured a cold with it last month."
"Mine ain't a cold, and it can't be cured in this world, but it's
better for me, I guess," said Joe Atkins, chokingly, but he took the
cup.
"Now, you hadn't ought to talk so," Fanny said. "You had ought to
think of your wife and children."
"My life is insured," said Joseph Atkins.
"We ain't got no money and no jewelry, and no silver to leave them
we love--all we've got to leave 'em is the price of our own lives,"
said Nahum Beals.
"I wish I had got my life insured," Andrew said.
"Don't talk so, Andrew," Fanny cried, with a shudder.
"My life is insured for two thousand dollars," Joe Atkins said, with
an odd sort of pride. "I had it done three years ago. My lungs was
sound as anybody's then, but that very next summer I worked up under
that tin roof, and came out as wet as if I'd been dipped in the
river, into an east wind, and got a chill. It was the only time I
ever struck luck--to get insured before that happened. Nobody'd look
at me now, and I dunno what they'd do. I 'ain't laid up a cent, I've
had so much sickness in my family."
"If you hadn't worked that summer in the annex under that tin roof,
you'd be as well as you ever was now," said Nahum Beals.
"I worked there 'longside of you that summer," said Andrew to Joe,
with bitter reminiscence. "We used to strip like a gang of convicts,
and we stood in pools of sweat. It was that awful hot summer, and
the room had only that one row of windows facing the east, and the
wind never that way."
"Not till I came out of the shop that night I took the chill," said
Joe.
Suddenly the young man, Nahum Beals, hit his knees a sounding slap,
which made Ellen, furtively and timidly attentive at her window,
jump. "It seems sometimes as if the Almighty himself was in league
with 'em," he shouted out, "but I tell you it won't last, it won't
last."
"I don't see much sign of any change for the better," Andrew said,
gloomily.
"I tell you, sir, it won't last," repeated Nahum Beals. "I tell you,
the Lord only raises 'em up higher and higher that He may dash 'em
lower when the time comes. The same earth is beneath the high places
of this life, and the lowly ones, and the law that governs 'em is
the same, and--the higher the place the longer the fall, and the
longer the fall the sorer the hurt." Nahum Beals sprang to his feet
with a strange abandon of self-consciousness and a fiery impetus for
one of his New England blood. He had a delicate, nervous face, like
a woman's, his blue eyes gleamed like blue flames under his overhang
of white forehead, he shook his head as if it were maned like a
lion, and, though he wore his thin, fair hair short, one could seem
to see it flung back in glistening lines. He spread his hands as if
he were addressing an audience, and as he did so the parlor door
opened and Jim Tenny and Eva stood there, listening.
"I tell you, sir," shouted Nahum Beals, "the time will come when you
will all thank God that you belong to the poor and down-trodden of
this earth, and not to the rich and great--the time will come.
There's knives to sharpen to-day, and wood for scaffolds as plenty
as in the days of the French Revolution, and the hand that marks the
time of day on the clock of men's patience with wrong and oppression
has near gone round to the same hour and minute."
Andrew Brewster looked at him, with a curious expression half of
disgust, half of sympathy. His sense of dignity in the face of
adversity inherited from his New England race was shocked; he was
not one to be blindly swayed by another's fervor even when his own
wrongs were in question. He would not have made a good follower in a
revolution, nor a leader. He would simply have found his own place
of fixed principle and abided there. Then, too, he had a judicial
mind which could combine the elements of counsels for and against
his own cause.
"Now, look at here," he said, slowly, "I ain't goin' to say I don't
think we ain't in a hard place, and that there's somethin' wrong
that's to blame for it, but I dunno but you go most too far, Nahum;
or, rather, I dunno as you go far enough. I dunno but we've got to
dig down past the poor and the rich, farther into the everlastin'
foundations of things to get at what's the trouble."
Jim Tenny, standing in the parlor doorway, with an arm around Eva's
waist, broke in suddenly with a defiant laugh. "I don't care nothin'
about the everlastin' foundations of things, and I don't care a darn
about the rich and the poor," he proclaimed. "I'm willin' to leave
that to lecturers and dynamiters, and let 'em settle it if they can.
I don't grudge the rich nothin', and I ain't goin' to call the
Almighty to account for givin' somebody else the biggest piece of
pie; mebbe it would give me the stomach-ache. All I'm concerned
about is Lloyd's shut-down."
"That's so," said Eva.
"I tell you, sir, it ain't the facts of the case, but the reason for
the facts, which we must think of," maintained Nahum Beals.
"I don't care a darn for the facts nor the reasons," said Jim Tenny;
"all I care about is I'm out of work maybe till spring, with my
mother dependent on me, and not a cent laid up, I've been so darned
careless, and here's Eva says she won't marry me till I get work."
"I won't," said Eva, who was very pale, except for burning spots on
her cheeks.
"She's afraid she won't get frostin' on her cake, and silk dresses,
I expect," Jim Tenny said, and laughed, but his laugh was very
bitter.
"Jim Tenny, you know better than that," Eva cried, sharply. "I won't
stand that."
Jim Tenny, with a quick motion, unwound his arm from Eva's waist and
stripped up his sleeve. "There, look at that, will you," he cried
out, shaking his lean, muscular arm at them; "look at that muscle,
and me tellin' her that I could earn a livin' for her, and she
afraid. I can dig if I can't make shoes. I guess there's work in
this world for them that's willin', and don't pick and choose."
"There ain't," declared Nahum, shortly.
"You can't dig when the ground's froze hard," Eva said, with literal
meaning.
"Then I'll take a pickaxe," cried Jim.
"You can dig, but who's goin' to pay you for the diggin'?" demanded
Nahum Beals.
"The idea of a girl's bein' afraid I wa'n't enough of a man to
support a wife with an arm like that," said Jim Tenny, "as if I
couldn't dig for her, or fight for her."
"The fightin' has got to come first in order to get the diggin', and
the pay for it," said Nahum.
"Now, look at here," Andrew Brewster broke in, "you know I'm in as
bad a box as you, and I come home to-night feelin' as if I didn't
care whether I lived or died; but if it's true what McGrath said
to-night, we've got to use common-sense in lookin' at things even if
it goes against us. If what McGrath said was true, that Lloyd's
losing money keeping on, I dunno how we can expect him or any other
man to do that."
"Why not he lose money as well as we?" demanded Nahum, fiercely.
"'Cause we 'ain't got none to lose," cried Jim Tenny, with a hard
laugh, and Eva and Fanny echoed him hysterically.
Nahum took no notice of the interruption. Tragedy, to his
comprehension, never verged on comedy. One could imagine his face of
intense melancholy and denunciation relaxed with laughter no more
than that of the stern prophet of righteous retribution whose name
he bore.
"Why shouldn't Norman Lloyd lose money?" he demanded again. "Why
shouldn't he lose his fine house as well as I my poor little home?
Why shouldn't he lose his purple and fine linen as well as Jim his
chances of happiness? Why shouldn't he lose his diamond shirt-studs,
and his carriage and horses, as well as Joe his life?"
"Well, he earned his money, I suppose," Andrew said, slowly, "and I
suppose it's for him to say what he'll do with it."
"Earned his money? He didn't earn his money," cried Nahum Beals. "We
earned it, every dollar of it, by the sweat of our brows, and it's
for us, not him, to say what shall be done with it. Well, the time
will come, I tell ye, the time will come."
"We sha'n't see it," said Joe Atkins.
"It may come sooner than you think," said Nahum. Then Nahum Beals,
with a sudden access of bitterness, broke in. "Look at Norman
Lloyd," he cried, "havin' that great house, and horses and
carriages, and dressin' like a dude, and his wife rustlin' in silks
so you can hear her comin' a mile off, and shinin' like a jeweller's
window--look at 'em all--all the factory bosses--livin' like princes
on the money we've earned for 'em; and look at their relations, and
look at the rich folks that ain't never earned a cent, that's had
money left 'em. Go right up and down the Main Street, here in this
city. See the Lloyds and the Maguires and the Marshalls and the
Risleys and the Lennoxes--"
"There ain't none of the Lennoxes left except that one woman," said
Andrew.
"Well, look at her. There she is without chick or child, rollin' in
riches, and Norman Lloyd's her own brother-in-law. Why don't she
give him a little money to run the factory this winter, so you and
me won't have to lose everythin'?"
"I suppose she's got a right to do as she pleases with her own,"
said Andrew.
"I tell you she ain't," shouted Nahum. "She ain't the one to say,
'It's the Lord, and He's said it.' Cynthia Lennox and all the women
like her are the oppressors of the poor. They are accursed in the
sight of the Lord, as were those women we read about in the Old
Testament, with their mantles and crisping-pins. Their low voices
and their silk sweeps and their shrinkin' from touchin' shoulders
with their fellow-beings in a crowd don't alter matters a mite."
"Now, Nahum," cried Jim Tenny, with one of his sudden turns of base
when his sense of humor was touched, "you don't mean to say that you
want Cynthia Lennox to give you her money?"
"I'd die, and see her dead, before I'd touch a dollar of her money!"
cried Nahum--"before I'd touch a dollar of her money or anything
that was bought with her money, her money or any other rich
person's. I want what I earn. I don't want a gift with a curse on
it. Let her keep her fine things. She and her kind are responsible
for all the misery of the poor on the face of the earth."
"Seems to me you're reasonin' in a circle, Nahum," Andrew said,
good-humoredly.
"Look here, Andrew, if you're on the side of the rich, why don't you
say so?" cried Eva.
"He ain't," returned Fanny--"you know better, Eva Loud."
"No, I ain't," declared Andrew. "You all of you know I'm with the
class I belong to; I ain't a toady to no rich folks; I don't think
no more of 'em than you do, and I don't want any favors of 'em--all
I want is pay for my honest work, and that's an even swap, and I
ain't beholden, but I want to look at things fair and square. I
don't want to be carried away because I'm out of work, though, God
knows, it's hard enough."
"I don't know what's goin' to become of us," said Joseph
Atkins--then he coughed.
"I don't," Jim Tenny said, bitterly.
"And God knows I don't," cried Eva, and she sat down in the nearest
chair, flung up her hands before her face, and wept.
Then Fanny spoke to Ellen, who had been sitting very still and
attentive, her eyes growing larger, her cheeks redder with
excitement. Fanny had often glanced uneasily at her, and wished to
send her to bed, but she was in the habit of warming Ellen's little
chamber at the head of the stairs by leaving open the sitting-room
door for a while before she went to it, and she was afraid of
cooling the room too much for Joseph Atkins, and had not ventured to
interrupt the conversation. Now, seeing the child's fevered face,
she made up her mind. "Come, Ellen, it's your bed-time," she said,
and Ellen rose reluctantly, and, kissing her father, she went to her
aunt Eva, who caught at her convulsively and kissed her, and sobbed
against her cheek. "Oh, oh!" she wailed, "you precious little thing,
you precious little thing, I don't know what's goin' to become of us
all."
"Don't, Eva," said Fanny, sharply; "can't you see she's all wrought
up? She hadn't ought to have heard all this talk."
Andrew looked anxiously at his wife, rose, and caught up Ellen in
his arms with a hug of fervent and protective love. "Don't you
worry, father's darlin'," he whispered. "Don't you worry about
anythin' you have heard. Father will always have enough to take care
of you with."
Jim Tenny, when Andrew set the child down, caught her up again with
a sounding kiss. "Don't you let your big ears ache, you little
pitcher," said he, with a gay laugh. "Little doll-babies like you
haven't anythin' to worry about if Lloyd's shut down every day in
the year."
"They're the very ones whom it concerns," said Nahum Beals, when
Ellen and her mother had gone up-stairs.
"Well, I wouldn't have had that little nervous thing hear all this,
if I'd thought," Andrew said, anxiously.
Joseph Atkins, whom Fanny had stationed in a sheltered corner near
the stove when she opened the door, peered around at Andrew.
"Seems as if she was too young to get much sense of it," he
remarked. "My Maria, that's her age, wouldn't."
"Ellen hears everything and makes her own sense of it," said Andrew,
"and the Lord only knows what she's made of this. I hope she won't
fret over it."
"I wish my tongue had been cut off before I said anything before
her," cried Eva. "I know just what that child is. She'll find out
what a hard world she's in soon enough, anyway, and I don't want to
be the one to open her eyes ahead of time."
Ellen went to bed quietly, and her mother did not think she had paid
much attention to what had been going on, and said so when she went
down-stairs after Ellen had been kissed and tucked in bed and the
lamp put out. "I guess she didn't mind much about it, after all,"
she said to Andrew. "I guess the room was pretty warm, and that was
what made her cheeks so red."
But Ellen, after her mother left her, turned her little head towards
the wall and wept softly, lest some one hear her, but none the less
bitterly that she had no right conception of the cause of her grief.
There was over her childish soul the awful shadow of the labor and
poverty of the world. She knew naught of the substance behind the
shadow, but the darkness terrified her all the more, and she cried
and cried as if her heart would break. Then she, with a sudden
resolution, born she could not have told of what strange
understanding and misunderstanding of what she had heard that
evening, slipped out of bed, groped about until she found her
cherished doll, sitting in her little chair in the corner. She was
accustomed to take the doll to bed with her, and had undressed her
for that purpose early in the evening, but she had climbed into bed
and left her sitting in the corner.
"Don't you want your dolly?" her mother had asked.
"No, ma'am; I guess I don't want her to-night," Ellen had replied,
with a little break in her voice. Now, when she reached the doll,
she gathered her up in her little arms, and groped her way with her
into the closet. She hugged the doll, and kissed her wildly, then
she shook her. "You have been naughty," she whispered--"yes, you
have, dreadful naughty. No, don't you talk to me; you have been
naughty. What right had you to be livin' with rich folks, and
wearin' such fine things, when other children don't have anything.
What right had that little boy that was your mother before I was,
and that rich lady that gave you to me? They had ought to be put in
the closet, too. God had ought to put them all in the closet, the
way I'm goin' to put you. Don't you say a word; you needn't cry;
you've been dreadful naughty."
Ellen set the doll, face to the wall, in the corner of the closet,
and left her there. Then she crept back into bed, and lay there
crying over her precious baby shivering in her thin night-gown all
alone in the dark closet. But she was firm in keeping her there,
since, with that strange, involuntary grasp of symbolism which has
always been maintained by the baby-fingers of humanity for the
satisfying of needs beyond resources and the solving of problems
outside knowledge, she had a conviction that she was, in such
fashion, righting wrong and punishing evil. But she wept over the
poor doll until she fell asleep.