The closing of Lloyd's marked, in some inscrutable way, the close of
the first period of Ellen Brewster's childhood. Looking back in
later years, she always felt her retrospective thought strike a
barrier there, beyond which her images of the past were confused.
Yet it was difficult to tell why it was so, for after the first the
child could, it seemed, have realized no difference in her life. Now
and then she heard some of that conversation characterized at once
by the confidence of wrong and injustice, and the logical doubt of
it, by solid reasoning which, if followed far enough, refuted
itself, by keen and unanswerable argument, and the wildest and most
futile enthusiasm. But she had gained nothing except the conviction
of the great wrongs of the poor of this earth and the awful tyranny
of the rich, of the everlasting moaning of Lazarus at the gates and
the cry for water later on from the depths of the rich man's hell.
Somehow that last never comforted Ellen; she had no conception of
the joy of the injured party over righteous retribution. She pitied
the rich man and Lazarus impartially, yet all the time a spirit of
fierce partisanship with these poor men was strengthening with her
growth, their eloquence over their wrongs stirred her soul, and set
her feet outside her childhood. Still, as before said, there was no
tangible difference in her daily life. The little petted treasure of
the Brewsters had all her small luxuries, sweets, and cushions of
life, as well after as before the closing of Lloyd's. And the
preparations for her aunt's wedding went on also. The sight of her
lover sleigh-riding with her rival that afternoon had been too much
for the resolution of Eva Loud's undisciplined nature. She had
herself gone to Jim Tenny's house that evening, and called him to
account, to learn that he had seriously taken her resolution not to
marry at present to proceed from a fear that he would not provide
properly for her, and that he had in this state of indignation been
easily led by the sight of Aggie Bemis's pretty face in her front
door, as he drove by, to stop. She had told Jim that she would marry
him as she had agreed if he looked at matters in that way, and had
passed Aggie Bemis's window leaning on Jim's arm with a side stare
of triumph.
"Be you goin' to get married next month after what you said this
mornin'?" her sister asked, half joyfully, half anxiously.
"Yes, I be," was all Eva replied, and Fanny stared at her; she was
so purely normal in her inconsistency as to seem almost the other
thing.
The preparations for the wedding went on, but Eva never seemed as
happy as she had done before the closing of Lloyd's. Jim Tenny could
get no more work, and neither could Andrew.
Fanny lamented that the shop had closed at that time of year, for
she had planned a Christmas tree of unprecedented splendor for
Ellen, but Mrs. Zelotes was to be depended upon as usual, and Andrew
told his wife to make no difference. "That little thing ain't goin'
to be cheated nohow," he said one night after Ellen had gone to bed
and his visiting companions of the cutting-room had happened in.
"I know my children won't get much," Joseph Atkins said, coughing as
he spoke; "they wouldn't if Lloyd's hadn't shut down. I never see
the time when I could afford to make any account of Christmas, much
as ever I could manage a turkey Thanksgiving day."
"The poor that the Lord died for can't afford to keep his birthday;
it is the rich that he's going to cast into outer darkness, that
keep it for their own ends, and it's a blasphemy and a mockery,"
proclaimed Nahum Beals. He was very excited that night, and would
often spring to his feet and stride across the room. There was
another man there that night, a cousin of Joseph Atkins, John
Sargent by name. He had recently moved to Rowe, since he had
obtained work at McGuire's, "had accepted a position in the
finishing-room of Mr. H. S. McGuire's factory in the city of Rowe,"
as the item in the local paper put it. He was a young man, younger
than his cousin, but he looked older. He had a handsome face, under
the most complete control as to its muscles. When he laughed he gave
the impression of the fixedness of merriment of a mask. He looked
keenly at Nahum Beals with that immovable laugh on his face, and
spoke with perfectly good-natured sarcasm. "All very well for the
string-pieces of the bridge from oppression to freedom," he said,
"but you need some common-sense for the ties, or you'll slump."
"What do you mean?"
"We ain't in the Old Testament, but the nineteenth century, and
those old prophets, if they were alive to-day, would have to step
down out of their flaming chariots and hang their mantles on the
bushes, and instead of standing on mountain-tops and tellin' their
enemies what rats they were, and how they would get what they
deserved later on, they would have to tell their enemies what they
wanted them to do to better matters, and make them do it."
"Instead of standing by your own strike in Greenboro, you quit and
come here to work in McGuire's the minute you got a chance," said
Nahum Beals, sullenly, and Sargent responded, with his unrelaxing
laugh, "I left enough strikers for the situation in Greenboro; don't
you worry about me."
"I think he done quite right to quit the strike if he got a chance
to work," Joseph Atkins interposed. "Folks have got to look out for
themselves, labor reform or no labor reform."
"That's the corner-stone of labor reform, seems to me," said Andrew.
"Seems to me sometimes you talk like a damned scab," cried Nahum
Beals, fiercely, red spots flickering in his thin cheeks. Andrew
looked at him, and spoke with slow wrath. "Look here, Nahum Beals,"
he said, "you're in my house, but I ain't goin' to stand no such
talk as that, I can tell you."
John Sargent laid a pacifically detaining hand on Nahum Beals's arm
as he strode past him. "Oh, Lord, stop rampagin' up and down like a
wildcat," he said. "What good do you think you're doin' tearin' and
shoutin' and insultin' people? He ain't talkin' like a scab, he's
only talkin' a tie to your string-piece."
"That's so," said Joseph Atkins. Sargent boarded with him, and the
board money was a godsend to him, now he was out of work. John
Sargent had fixed his own price, and it was an unheard-of one for
such simple fare as he had. His weekly dollars kept the whole poor
family in food. But John Sargent was a bachelor, and earning
remarkably good wages, and Joseph Atkins's ailing wife, whom illness
and privation had made unnaturally grasping and ungrateful, told her
cronies that it wasn't as if he couldn't afford it.
Up-stairs little Ellen lay in her bed, her doll in her arms,
listening to the low rumble of masculine voices in the room below.
Her mother had gone out, and there were only the men there. They
were smoking, and the odor of their pipes floated up into Ellen's
chamber through the door-cracks. She thought how her grandmother
Brewster would sniff when she came in next day. She could hear her
saying, "Well, for my part, if those men couldn't smoke their old
pipes somewhere else besides in my sittin'-room, I wouldn't have 'em
in the house." But that reflection did not trouble Ellen very long,
and she had never been disturbed herself by the odor of the pipes.
She thought of them insensibly as the usual atmosphere when men were
gathered together in any place except the church. She knew that they
were talking about that old trouble, and Nahum Beals's voice of high
wrath made her shrink; but, after all, she was removed from it all
that night into a little prospective paradise of her own, which, as
is the case in childhood, seemed to overgild her own future and all
the troubles of the world. Christmas was only a week distant, she
was to have a tree, and the very next evening her mother had
promised to take her down-town and show her the beautiful, lighted
Christmas shops. She wondered, listening to that rumble of
discontent below, why grown-up men and women ever fretted when they
were at liberty to go down-town every evening when they chose and
look at the lighted shops, for she could still picture pure delight
for others without envy or bitterness.
The next day the child was radiant; she danced rather than walked;
she could not speak without a smile; she could eat nothing, for her
happiness was so purely spiritual that desires of the flesh were in
abeyance. Her heart beat fast; the constantly recurring memory of
what was about to happen fairly overwhelmed her as with waves of
delight.
"If you don't eat your supper you can't go, and that's all there is
about it," her mother told her when they were seated at the table,
and Ellen sat dreaming before her toast and peach preserve.
"You must eat your supper, Ellen," Andrew said, anxiously. Andrew
had on his other coat, and he had shaved, and was going too, as was
Mrs. Zelotes Brewster.
"She 'ain't eat a thing all day, she's so excited about goin',"
Fanny said. "Now, Ellen, you must eat your supper, or you can't
go--you'll be sick."
And Ellen ate her supper, though exceeding joy as well as exceeding
woe can make food lose its savor, and toast and preserves were as
ashes on her tongue when the very fragrance of coming happiness was
in her soul.
When, finally, in hand of her mother, while Andrew walked behind
with her grandmother, she went towards the lights of the town, she
had a feeling as of wings on her feet. However, she walked soberly
enough with wide eyes of amazement and delight at everything--the
long, silver track of the snowy road under the light of the full
moon, the slants of the house roofs sparkling with crusts of
crystals, the lighted windows set with house plants, for the
dwellers in the outskirts of Rowe loved house plants, and their
front windows bloomed with the emulative splendor of geraniums from
fall to spring. She saw behind them glimpses of lives and some
doings as real as her own, but mysterious under the locks of other
personalities, and therefore as full of possibilities of
preciousness as the sheet of morning dew over a neighbor's yard; she
had often believed she saw diamonds sparkle in that, though never in
her own. She had proved it otherwise too often. So Ellen, seeing
through a window a little girl of her own age in a red frock,
straightway believed it to be satin of the richest quality, and,
seeing through another window a tea-table spread, had no doubt that
the tin teapot was silver. A girl with a crown of yellow braids
pulled down a curtain, and she thought her as beautiful as an angel;
but of all this she said nothing at all, only walked soberly on,
holding fast to her mother's hand.
When they were half-way to the shops, a door of a white house close
to the road flew open and shut again with a bang, there was a scurry
and grating slide on the front walk, then the gate was thrown back,
and a boy dashed through with a wild whoop, just escaping contact
with Mrs. Zelotes Brewster. "You'd better be careful," said she,
sharply. "It ain't the thing for boys to come tearin' out of yards
in the evenin' without seein' where they are goin'."
The boy cast an abashed glance at her. The street-lamp shone full on
his face, which was round and reddened by the frosty winds, with an
aimlessly grinning mouth of uncertain youth, and black eyes with a
bold and cheerful outlook on the unknown. He was only ten, but he
was large for his age. Ellen, when he looked from her grandmother
back at her, thought him almost a man, and then she saw that he was
the boy who had brought the chestnuts to her the night when she had
returned from her runaway excursion. The boy recognized her at the
same moment, and his mouth seemed to gape wider, and a moist red
overspread his face down to his swathing woollen scarf. Then he gave
another whoop significant of the extreme of nervous abashedness and
the incipient defiance of his masculine estate, there was a flourish
of heels, followed by a swift glimmering slide of steel, and he was
off trailing his sled.
"That's that Joy boy that brought Ellen the chestnuts that time,"
Fanny said. "Do you remember him, Ellen?"
"Yes, ma'am," replied Ellen. The look of the boy in her face had
bewildered and confused her, without her knowing the why of it. It
was as if she had spelled a word in her reading-book whose meaning
she could not grasp.
"I don't care who he is," said Mrs. Zelotes, "he 'ain't no business
racin' out of gates that way, and his folks hadn't ought to let a
boy no older than that out alone of nights."
They kept on, and the boy apparently left them far behind in his
career of youthful exuberance, until they came to the factories.
Andrew looked up at the windows of Lloyd's, dark except for a faint
glimmer in a basement window from the lamp of the solitary watchman,
and drew a heavy sigh.
"It ain't as bad for you as it is for some," his mother said,
sharply, and then she jumped aside, catching her son's arm as the
boy sprang out of a covering shadow under the wall of Lloyd's and
dashed before them with another wild whoop and another glance of
defiant bashfulness at Ellen.
"My land! it's that boy again," cried Mrs. Zelotes. "Here, you
boy!--boy! What's your name?"
"His name is Granville Joy," Ellen replied, unexpectedly.
"Why, how did you know, child?" her grandmother asked. "Seems to me
he's got a highfalutin' name enough. Here you, Granville--if that's
your name--don't you know any better than to--" But the boy was
gone, his sled creaking on the hard snow at his heels, and a faint
whoop sounded from the distance.
"I guess if I had the bringin' up of that boy there wouldn't be such
doin's," said Mrs. Zelotes, severely. "His mother's a pretty woman,
but I don't believe she's got much force. She wouldn't have given
him such a name if she had."
"She named him after the town she came from," said Fanny. "She told
me once. She's a real smart woman, and she makes that boy stand
around."
"She must; it looks as if he was standin' round pretty lively jest
now," said Mrs. Zelotes. "Namin' of a boy after a town! They'd
better wait and name a town after the boy if he amounts to
anything."
"His mother told me he was goin' into the first grammar-school next
year," said Fanny.
"I pity the teacher," said Mrs. Zelotes, and then she recoiled, for
the boy made another dart from behind a lamp-post, crossed their
path, and was off again.
"My land!" gasped Mrs. Zelotes, "you speak to him, Andrew." But
Andrew laughed. "Might as well speak to a whirlwind," said he. "He
ain't doin' any harm, mother; it's only his boyish antics. For
Heaven's sake, let him enjoy himself while he can, it won't be long
before the grind-mill in there will get hold of him, and then he'll
be sober enough to suit anybody," and Andrew pointed at Lloyd's as
he spoke.
"Boys can be boys," said Mrs. Zelotes, severely, "and they can have
a good time, but they can behave themselves."
None of them looking after that flying and whooping figure ahead had
the slightest idea of the true situation. They did not know that the
boy was confused by the fires, none the less ardent that they were
so innocent, of a first love for Ellen; that, ever since he had seen
her little, fair face on her aunt's shoulder the day when she was
found, it had been even closer to his heart than his sled and his
jackstones and his ball, and his hope of pudding for dinner. They
did not know that he had toiled at the wood-pile of a Saturday, and
run errands after school, to earn money to buy Christmas presents
for his mother and Ellen; that he had at that very minute in his
purse in the bottom of his pocket the sum of eighty-nine cents,
mostly in coppers, since his wage was generally payable in that
coin, and his pocket sagged arduously therefrom. They did not know
that he was even then bound upon an errand to the grocery store for
a bag of flour to be brought home on his sled, and would thereby
swell his exchequer by another cent. They did not know what dawning
chords of love, and knowledge of love, that wild whoop expressed;
and the boy dodged and darted and hid, and appeared before them all
the way to the busy main street of Rowe; and, after they had entered
the great store where the finest Christmas display was held, he
stood before the window staring at Ellen vanishing in a brilliant
vista, and whooped now and then, regardless of public opinion.
Ellen, when once she was inside the store, forgot everything else.
She clung more tightly to her mother's hand, as one will cling to
any wonted stay of love in the midst of strangeness, even of joy,
and she saw everything with eyes which photographed it upon her very
soul. At first she had an impression of a dazzling incoherence of
splendor, of a blare as of thousands of musical instruments all
sounding different notes of delight, of a weaving pattern of colors,
too intricate to master, of a mingled odor of paint and varnish, and
pine and hemlock boughs, and then she spelled out the letters of the
details. She looked at those counters set with the miniature
paraphernalia of household life which give the first sweet taste of
domesticity and housekeeping joys to a little girl.
There were the sets of dolls' furniture, and the dolls, dishes, and
there was a counter with dolls' cooking-stoves and ranges bristling
with the most delightful realism of pots and pans, at which she
gazed so fixedly and breathlessly that she looked almost stupid. Her
elders watched half in delight, half with pain, that they could not
purchase everything at which she looked. Mrs. Zelotes bought some
things surreptitiously, hiding the parcels under her shawl. Andrew,
whispering to a salesman, asked the price of a great cooking-stove
at which Ellen looked long. When he heard the amount he sighed.
Fanny touched his arm comfortingly. "There would be no sense in your
buying that, if you had all the money in creation," she said, in a
hushed voice. "There's a twenty-five-cent one that's good enough.
I'm going to buy that for her to-morrow. She'll never know the
difference." But Andrew Brewster, nevertheless, went through the
great, dazzling shop with his heart full of bitterness. It seemed to
him monstrous and incredible that he had a child as beautiful and
altogether wonderful as that, and could not buy the whole stock for
her if she wanted it. He had never in his whole life wanted anything
for himself that he could not have, enough to give him pain, but he
wanted for his child with a longing that was a passion. Her little
desires seemed to him the most important and sacred needs in the
whole world. He watched her with pity and admiration, and shame at
his own impotence of love to give her all.
But Ellen knew nothing of it. She was radiant. She never thought of
wanting all those treasures further than she already had them. She
gazed at the wonders in that department where the toy animals were
kept, and which resembled a miniature menagerie, the silence broken
by the mooing of cows, the braying of donkeys, the whistle of
canaries, and the roars of mock-lions when their powers were invoked
by the attendants, and her ears drank in that discordant bable of
tiny mimicry like music. There was no spirit of criticism in her.
She was utterly pleased with everything.
When her grandmother held up a toy-horse and said the fore-legs were
too long, Ellen wondered what she meant. To her mind it was more
like a horse than any real one she had ever seen.
As she gazed at the decorations, the wreaths, the gauze, the tinsel,
and paper angels, suspended by invisible wires over the counters,
and all glittering and shining and twinkling with light, a strong
whiff of evergreen fragrance came to her, and the aroma of
fir-balsam, and it was to her the very breath of all the mysterious
joy and hitherto untasted festivity of this earth into which she had
come. She felt deep in her childish soul the sense of a promise of
happiness in the future, of which this was a foretaste. When she
went into the department where the dolls dwelt, she fairly turned
pale. They swung, and sat, and lay, and stood, as in angelic ranks,
all smiling between shining fluffs of hair. It was a chorus of
smiles, and made the child's heart fairly leap. She felt as if all
the dolls were smiling at her. She clung fast to her mother's hand,
and hid her face against her skirt.
"Why, what is the matter, Ellen?" Fanny asked. Ellen looked up, and
smiled timidly and confusedly, then at the dazzle of waxen faces and
golden locks above skirts of delicate pink and blue and white, like
flower petals.
"You never saw so many dolls together before, did you, Ellen?" said
Andrew; then he added, wistfully, "There ain't one of 'em any bigger
and prettier than your own doll, be they, Ellen?" And that,
although he had never recovered from his uneasiness about that
mysterious doll.
Ellen had not seen Cynthia Lennox since that morning several weeks
ago when she had run away from her, except one glimpse when she was
sleigh-riding. Now all at once, when they had stopped to look at
some wonderful doll-houses, she saw her face to face. Ellen had been
gazing with rapture at a great doll-house completely furnished, and
Andrew had made one of his miserable side inquiries as to its price,
and Fanny had said, quite loud, "Lord, Andrew, you might just as
well ask the price of the store! You know such a thing as that is
out of the question for any child unless her father is rich as
Norman Lloyd," and Ellen, who had not noticed what they were saying,
looked up, when a faint breath of violets smote her sense with a
quick memory, and there was the strange lady who had taken her into
her house and kept her and given her the doll, the strange lady whom
the gentleman said might be punished for keeping her if people were
to know.
Cynthia Lennox went pale when, without knowing what was going to
happen, she looked down and saw suddenly the child's innocent face
looking into hers. She stood wavering in her trailing, fur-lined,
and softly whispering draperies, so marked and set aside by her
grace and elegance and countenance of superiority and proud calm
that people turned to look after her more than after many a young
beauty, and did not, for a second, know what to say or do. She had
no mind to shrink from a recognition of the child; she had no fear
of the result, but there was a distinct shrinking at a scene with
that flashing-eyed and heavy-browed mother of the child in such a
place as that. She would undoubtedly speak very loud. She expected
the volley of recrimination in a high treble which would follow the
announcement in that sweet little flute which she remembered so
well.
"Mamma, that is the lady who kept me, and would not let me go home."
But Ellen, after a second's innocent and startled regard, turned
away with no more recognition than if she had been a stranger. She
turned her little back to her, and looked at the doll-house. A great
flush flamed over Cynthia Lennox's face, and a qualm of mortal
shame. She took an impetuous glide forward, and was just about to
speak and tell the truth, whatever the consequences, and not be
outdone in magnanimity by that child, when a young girl with a
sickly but impudent and pretty face jostled her rudely. The utter
pertness of her ignorant youth knew no respect for even the rich
Miss Cynthia Lennox. "Here's your parcel, lady," she said, in her
rough young voice, its shrillness modified by hoarseness from too
much shouting for cash boys during this busy season, and she thrust,
with her absent eyes upon a gentleman coming towards her, a parcel
into Cynthia's hands. Somehow the touch of that parcel seemed to
bring Cynthia to her senses. It was a kodak which she had been
purchasing for the little boy who had lived with her, and whom it
had almost broken her heart to lose. She remembered what her friend
Lyman Risley had said, that it might make trouble for others besides
herself. She took her parcel with that involuntary meekness which
the proudest learn before the matchless audacity of youthful
ignorance when it fairly asserts itself, and passed out of the store
to her waiting carriage. Ellen saw her.
"That was Cynthia Lennox, wasn't it?" Fanny said, with something
like awe. "Wasn't that an elegant cloak she had on? I guess it was
Russian sable."
"I don't care if it was, it ain't a mite handsomer than my cape
lined with squirrel," said Mrs. Zelotes.
Ellen looked intently at a game on the counter. It was ten o'clock
when Ellen went home. She had been into all the principal stores
which were decorated for Christmas. Her brain resembled a
kaleidoscope as she hurried along at her mother's hand. Every
thought seemed to whirl the disk, and new and more dazzling
combinations appeared, but the principle which underlay the whole
was that of the mystery of festivity and joy upon the face of the
earth, of which this Christmas wealth was the key.
The Brewsters had scarcely reached the factory neighborhood when
there was a swift bound ahead of them and the familiar whoop.
"There's that boy again," said Mrs. Zelotes.
She made various remonstrances, and even Andrew, when the boy had
passed his own home in his persistent dogging of them, called out to
him, as did Fanny, but he was too far ahead to hear. The boy
followed them quite to their gate, proceeding with wild spurts and
dashes from shadow to shadow, and at last reappeared from behind one
of the evergreen trees in the west yard, springing out of its long
shadow with strange effect. He darted close to Ellen as she passed
in the gate, crammed something into her hand, and was gone. Andrew
could not catch him, though he ran after him. "He ran like a
rabbit," he said, coming breathlessly into the house, where they
were looking at the treasure the boy had thrust upon Ellen. It was a
marvel of a patent top, which the boy had long desired to own. He
had spent all his money on it, and his mother was cheated of her
Christmas present, but he had given, and Ellen had received, her
first token of love.