Granville Joy was employed in Lloyd's, and Robert had seen him that
very day and spoken to him, but he did not recognize him, not until
Ellen spoke. "This is Mr. Joy, Mr. Lloyd," she said; "perhaps you
know him. He works in your uncle's shop." She said it quite simply,
as if it was a matter of course that Robert was on speaking terms
with all the employés in his uncle's factory.
Granville colored. "I saw Mr. Lloyd this afternoon in the
cutting-room," he said, "and we had some talk together; but maybe he
don't remember, there are so many of us." Granville said "so many
of us" with an indescribably bitter emphasis. Suddenly his
gentleness seemed changed to gall. It was the terrible protest of
one of the herd who goes along with the rest, yet realizes it, and
looks ever out from his common mass with fierce eyes of individual
dissent at the immutable conditions of things. Immediately, when
Granville saw the other young man, this gentleman in his light
summer clothes, who bore about him no stain nor odor of toil, he
felt that here was Ellen's mate; that he was left behind. He looked
at him, not missing a detail of his superiority, and he saw himself
young and not ill-looking, but hopelessly common, clad in awkward
clothes; he smelled the smell of leather that steamed up in his face
from his raiment and his body; and he looked at Ellen, fair and
white in her dainty muslin, and saw himself thrust aside, as it
were, by his own judgment as to the fitness of things, but with no
less bitterness. When he said "there are so many of us," he felt the
impulse of revolution in his heart; that he would have liked to lead
the "many of us" against this young aristocrat. But Robert smiled,
though somewhat stiffly, and bowed. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Joy," he
said; "I do remember, but for a minute I did not."
"I don't wonder," said Granville, and again he repeated, "There are
so many of us," in that sullen, bitter tone.
"What is the matter with the fellow?" thought Robert; but he said,
civilly enough; "Oh, not at all, Mr. Joy. I will admit there are a
good many of you, as you say, but that would not prevent my
remembering a man to whom I was speaking only a few hours ago. It
was only the half-light, and I did not expect to see you here."
"Mr. Joy is a very old friend of mine," Ellen said, quickly, with a
painful impulse of loyalty. The moment she saw her old school-boy
lover intimidated, and manifestly at a disadvantage before this
elegant young gentleman, she felt a fierce instinct of partisanship.
She stood a little nearer to him. Granville's face lightened, he
looked at her gratefully, and Robert stared from one to the other
doubtfully. He began to wonder if he had interrupted a love-scene,
and was at once pained with a curious, new pain, and indignant.
Then, too, he scarcely knew what to do. He had been sent to ask
Ellen to come into the parlor.
"My aunt is in the house," he said.
"Your aunt?"
"Yes, my aunt, Miss Lennox."
Ellen gave a great start, and stared at him. "Does she want to see
me?" she asked, abruptly.
Robert glanced at Granville. He was afraid of being rude towards
this possible lover, but the young man was quick to perceive the
situation.
"I guess I must be going," he said to Ellen.
"Must you hurry?" she returned, in the common, polite rejoinder of
her class in Rowe.
"Yes, I guess I must," said Granville. He held out his hand towards
Ellen, then drew it away, but she extended hers resolutely, and so
forced his back again. "Good-night," she said, kindly, almost
tenderly, and again Robert thought with that sinking at his heart
that here was quite possibly the girl's lover, and all his dreams
were thrown away.
As for Granville, he glowed with a sudden triumph over the other.
Again he became almost sure that Ellen loved him after all, that it
was only her maiden shyness which had led her to refuse him. He
pressed her hand hard, and held it as long as he dared; then he
turned to Robert. "I'll bid you good-evening, sir," he said, with
awkward dignity, and was gone.
"I will go in and see your aunt," Ellen said to Robert, regarding
him as she spoke with a startled expression. It had flashed through
her mind that Miss Lennox had possibly come to confess the secret of
so many years ago, and she shrank with terror as before the lowering
of some storm of spirit. She knew how little was required to lash
her mother's violent nature into fury. "She was not--?" she began to
say to Robert, then she stopped; but he understood. "Don't be
afraid, Miss Brewster," he said, kindly. "It is not a matter of
by-gones, but the future. My aunt has a plan for you which I think
you will like."
Ellen looked at him wonderingly, but she went with him across the
moonlit yard into the house.
She found Miss Cynthia Lennox, fair and elegant in a filmy black
gown, and a broad black hat draped with lace and violets shading her
delicate, clear-cut face, and her father and mother. Fanny's eyes
were red. She looked as if she had been running--in fact, one could
easily hear her breathe across the room. "Ellen, here is Miss
Lennox," she said. Ellen approached the lady, who rose, and the two
shook hands. "Good-evening, Miss Brewster," said Cynthia, in the
same tone which she might have used towards a society acquaintance.
Ellen would never have known that she had heard the voice before. As
she remembered it, it was full of intensest vibrations of maternal
love and tenderness and protection beyond anything which she had
ever heard in her own mother's voice. Now it was all gone, and also
the old look from her eyes. Cynthia Lennox was, in fact, quite
another woman to the young girl from what she had been to the child.
In truth, she cared not one whit for Ellen, but she was possessed
with a stern desire of atonement, and far stronger than her love was
the appreciation of what that mother opposite must have suffered
during that day and night when she had forcibly kept her treasure.
The agony of that she could present to her consciousness very
vividly, but she could not awaken the old love which had been the
baby's for this young girl. Cynthia felt much more affection for
Fanny than for Ellen. When she had unfolded her plan for sending
Ellen to college, and Fanny had almost gone hysterical with delight,
she found it almost impossible to keep her tears back. She knew so
acutely how this other woman felt that she almost seemed to lose her
own individuality. She began to be filled with a vicarious adoration
of Ellen, which was, however, dissipated the moment she actually saw
her. She realized that this grown-up girl, who could no longer be
cuddled and cradled, was nothing to her, but her sympathy with the
mother remained.
Ellen remained standing after she had greeted Cynthia. Robert went
over to the mantle-piece and stood leaning against it. He was
completely puzzled and disturbed by the whole affair. Ellen looked
at Cynthia, then at her parents. "Ellen, come here, child," said her
father, suddenly, and Ellen went over to him, sitting on the plush
sofa beside her mother.
Andrew reached up and took hold of Ellen's hands, and drew her down
on his knee as if she had been a child. "Ellen, look here," he said,
in an intense, almost solemn voice, "father has got something to
tell you."
Fanny began to weep almost aloud. Cynthia looked straight ahead,
keeping her features still with an effort. Robert studied the carpet
pattern.
"Look here, Ellen," said Andrew; "you know that father has always
wanted to do everything for you, but he ain't able to do all he
would like to. God hasn't prospered him, and it seems likely that he
won't be able to do any more than he has done, if so much, in the
years to come. You know father has always wanted to send you to
college, and give you an extra education so you could teach in a
school where you would make a good living, and now here Miss Lennox
says she heard your composition, and she has heard a good deal about
you from Mr. Harris, how well you stood in the high-school, and she
says she is willing to send you to Vassar College."
Ellen turned pale. She looked long at her father, whose pathetic,
worn, half-triumphant, half-pitiful face was so near her own; then
she looked at Cynthia, then back again. "To Vassar College?" she
said.
"Yes, Ellen, to Vassar College, and she offers to clothe you while
you are there, but we thank her, and tell her that ain't necessary.
We can furnish your clothes."
"Yes, we can," said Fanny, in a sobbing voice, but with a flash of
pride.
"Well, what do you say to it, Ellen?" asked Andrew, and he asked it
with the expression of a martyr. At that moment indescribable pain
was the uppermost sensation in his heart, over all his triumph and
gladness for Ellen. First came the anticipated agony of parting with
her for the greater part of four years, then the pain of letting
another do for his daughter what he wished to do himself. No man
would ever look in Ellen's eyes with greater love and greater
shrinking from the pain which might come of love than Andrew at that
moment.
"But--" said Ellen; then she stopped.
"What, Ellen?"
"Can you spare me for so long? Ought I not to be earning money
before that, if you don't have much work?"
"I guess we can spare you as far as all that goes," cried Andrew. "I
guess we can. I guess we don't want you to support us."
"I rather guess we don't," cried Fanny.
Ellen looked at her father a moment longer with an adorable look,
which Robert saw with a sidewise glance of his downcast eyes, then
at her mother. Then she slid from her father's knee and crossed the
room and stood before Cynthia. "I don't know how to thank you
enough," she said, "but I thank you very much, and not only for
myself but for them"; she made a slight, graceful, backward motion
of her shoulder towards her parents. "I will study hard and try to
do you credit," said she. There was something about Ellen's direct,
childlike way of looking at her, and her clear speech, which brought
back to Cynthia the little girl of so many years ago. A warm flush
came over her delicate cheeks; her eyes grew bright with tenderness.
[Illustration: I'll study hard and try to do you credit]
"I have no doubt as to your doing your best, my dear," she said,
"and it gives me great pleasure to do this for you."
With that, said with a graceful softness which was charming, she
made as if to rise, but Ellen still stood before her. She had
something more to say. "If ever I am able," she said--"and I shall
be able some day if I have my health--I will repay you." Ellen
spoke with the greatest sweetness, yet with an inflexibility of
pride evident in her face. Cynthia smiled. "Very well," she said,
"if you feel better to leave it in that way. If ever you are able
you shall repay me; in the mean time I consider that I am amply paid
in the pleasure it gives me to do it." Cynthia held out her slender
hand to Ellen, who took it gratefully, yet a little constrainedly.
In the opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of
blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over
Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude--a sense of injury
which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself.
However, Andrew felt it also.
After this surprising benefactress and Robert had gone, after
repeated courtesies and assurances of obligation on both sides,
Andrew turned to Fanny. "What does she do it for?" he asked.
"Hush; she'll hear you."
"I can't help it. What does she do it for? Ellen isn't anything to
her."
Fanny looked at him with a meaning smile and nod which made her
tear-stained face fairly grotesque.
"What do you mean lookin' that way?" demanded Andrew.
"Oh, you wait and see," said Fanny, with meaning, and would say no
more. She was firm in her conclusion that Cynthia was educating
their girl to marry her favorite nephew, but that never occurred to
Andrew. He continued to feel, while supremely grateful and
overwhelmed with delight at this good fortune for Ellen, the
distrust and resentment of a proud soul under obligation for which
he sees no adequate reason, and especially when it is directed
towards a beloved one to whom he would fain give of his own strength
and treasure.
As for Ellen, she was in a tumult of wonder and delight, but when
she looked at the doll in her corner there came again that vague
sense of injury, and she felt again as if in some way she were being
robbed instead of being made the object of benefit.
After Ellen had gone to bed that night she wondered if she ought to
go to college, and maybe gain thereby a career which was beyond
anything her own loved ones had known, and if it were not better for
her to go to work in the shop after all.