Ellen, under the influence of that old fascination which Cynthia had
exerted over her temporarily in her childhood, and which had now
assumed a new lease of life, would have loved to see her every day,
but along with the fascination came a great timidity and fear of
presuming. She felt instinctively that the fascination was an
involuntary thing on Cynthia's part. She kept repeating to herself
what she had said, that she was not sending her to Vassar because
she loved her. Strangely enough, this did not make Ellen unhappy in
the least, she was quite content to do all the loving and adoring
herself. She made a sort of divinity of the older woman, and who
expects a divinity to step down from her marble heights, and love
and caress? Ellen began to remember all Cynthia's ways and looks, as
a scholar remembers with a view to imitation. She became her
disciple. She began to move like Cynthia, and to speak like her,
though she did not know it. Her imitation was totally unconscious;
indeed, it was hardly to be called imitation; it was rather the
following out of the leading of that image of Cynthia which was
always present before her mind. Ellen saw Cynthia very seldom. Once
or twice she arrayed herself in her best and made a formal call of
gratitude, and once Fanny went with her. Ellen saw the incongruity
of her mother in Cynthia's drawing-room with a torture which she
never forgot. Going home she clung hard to her mother's arm all the
way. She was fairly fierce with love and loyalty. She was so
indignant with herself that she had seen the incongruity. "I think
our parlor is enough sight prettier than hers," she said, defiantly,
when they reached home and the hideous lamp was lighted. Ellen
looked around the ornate room, and then at her mother, as with a
challenge in behalf of loyalty, and of that which underlies
externals.
"I rather guess it is," agreed Fanny, happily, "and I don't s'pose
it cost half so much. I dare say that mat on her hearth cost as much
as all our plush furniture and the carpet, and it is a dreadful
dull, homely thing."
"Yes, it is," said Ellen.
"I wish I'd been able to keep my hands as white as Miss Lennox's,
an' I wish I'd had time to speak so soft and slow," said Fanny,
wistfully. Then Ellen had her by both shoulders, and was actually
shaking her with a passion to which she very seldom gave rein.
"Mother," she cried--"mother, you know better, you know there is
nobody in the whole world to me like my own mother, and never will
be. It isn't being beautiful, nor speaking in a soft voice, nor
dressing well, it's the being you--_you_. You know I love you best,
mother, you know, and I love my own home best, and everything that
is my own best, and I always will." Ellen was almost weeping.
"You silly child," said Fanny, tenderly. "Mother knows you love her
best, but she wishes for your sake, and especially since you are
going to have advantages that she never had, that she was a little
different."
"I don't, I don't," said Ellen, fiercely. "I want you just as you
are, just exactly as you are, mother."
Fanny laughed tearfully, and rubbed her coarse black head against
Ellen's lovingly with a curious, cat-like motion, then bade her run
away or she would not get her dress done. A dressmaker was coming
for a whole week to the Brewster house to make Ellen's outfit. Mrs.
Zelotes had furnished most of the materials, and Andrew was to pay
the dressmaker. "You can take a little more of that money out of the
bank," Fanny said. "I want Ellen to go looking so she won't be
ashamed before the other girls, and I don't want Cynthia Lennox
thinking she ain't well enough dressed, and we ought to have let her
do it. As for being beholden to her for Ellen's clothes, I won't."
"I rather guess not," said Andrew, but he was sick at heart. Only
that afternoon the man from whom he had borrowed the money to buy
Ellen's watch and chain had asked him for it. He had not a cent in
advance for his weekly pay; he could not see where the money for
Ellen's clothes was coming from. It was long since the "Golden Hope"
had been quoted in the stock-list, but the next morning Andrew
purchased a morning paper. He had stopped taking one regularly. He
put on his spectacles, and spread out the paper in his shaking
hands, and scrutinized the stock-list eagerly, but he could not find
what he wanted. The "Golden Hope" had long since dropped to a still
level below all record of fluctuations. A young man passing to his
place at the bench looked over his shoulder. "Counting up your
dividends, Brewster?" he asked, with a grin.
Andrew folded up the paper gloomily and made no reply.
"Irish dividends, maybe," said the man, with a chuckle at his own
wit, and a backward roll of a facetious eye.
"Oh, shut up, you're too smart to live," said the man who stood next
at the bench. He was a young fellow who had been a school-mate of
Ellen in the grammar-school. He had left to go to work when she had
entered the high-school. His name was Dixon. He was wiry and alert,
with a restless sparkle of bright eyes in a grimy face, and he cut
the leather with lightning-like rapidity. Dixon had always thought
Ellen the most beautiful girl in Rowe. He looked after Andrew with a
sharp pain of sympathy when he went away with the roll of newspaper
sticking out of his pocket.
"Poor old chap," he said to the facetious man, thrusting his face
angrily towards him. "He has had a devil of a time since he begun to
grow old. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Wait till you begin
to drop behind. It's what's bound to come to the whole boiling of
us."
"Mind your jaw," said the first man, with a scowl.
"You'd better mind yours," said Dixon, slashing furiously at the
leather.
That noon Dixon offered Andrew, shamefacedly, taking him aside lest
the other men see, a piece of pie of a superior sort which his
mother had put into his dinner bag, but Andrew thanked him kindly
and refused it. He could eat nothing whatever that noon. He kept
thinking about the dressmaker, and how Fanny would ask him again to
take some of that money out of the bank to pay her, and how the
money was already taken out.
That evening, when he sat down to the tea-table furnished with the
best china and frosted cake in honor of the dressmaker, and heard
the radiant talk about Ellen's new frills and tucks, he had a cold
feeling at his heart. He was ashamed to look at the dressmaker.
"You won't know your daughter when we get her fixed up for Vassar,"
she told Andrew, with a smirk which covered her face with a network
of wrinkles under her blond fluff of hair.
"Do have some more cake, Miss Higgins," said Fanny. She was radiant.
The image of her daughter in her new gowns had gone far to
recompense her for all her disappointments in life, and they had not
been few. "What, after all, did it matter?" she asked herself, "if a
woman was growing old, if she had to work hard, if she did not know
where the next dollar was coming from, if all the direct personal
savor was fast passing out of existence, when one had a daughter who
looked like that?" Ellen, in a new blue dress, was ravishing. The
mother looked at her when she was trying it on, with the possession
of love, and the dressmaker as if she herself had created her.
After supper Ellen had to try on the dress again for her father, and
turn about slowly that he might see all its fine points.
"There, what do you think of that, Andrew?" asked Fanny,
triumphantly.
"Ain't she a lady?" asked the dressmaker.
"It is very pretty," said Andrew, smiling with gloomy eyes. Then he
heaved a great sigh, and went out of the south door to the steps.
"Your father is tired to-night," Fanny said to Ellen with a meaning
of excuse for the dressmaker.
The dressmaker reflected shrewdly on Andrew's sigh when she was on
her way home. "Men don't sigh that way unless there's money to pay,"
she thought. "I don't believe but he has been speculating." Then
she wondered if there was any doubt about her getting her pay, and
concluded that she would ask for it from day to day to make sure.
So the next night after tea she asked, with one of her smirks of
amiability, if it would be convenient for Mrs. Brewster to pay her
that night. "I wouldn't ask for it until the end of the week," said
she, "but I have a bill to pay." She said "bill" with a murmur
which carried conviction of its deception. Fanny flushed angrily.
"Of course," said she, "Mr. Brewster can pay you just as well every
night if you need it." Fanny emphasized the "need" maliciously.
Then she turned to Andrew. "Andrew," said she, "Miss Higgins needs
the money, if you can pay her for yesterday and to-day."
Andrew turned pale. "Yes, of course," he stammered. "How much?"
"Six dollars," said Fanny, and in her tone was unmistakable meaning
of the dearness of the price. The dressmaker was flushed, but her
thin mouth was set hard. It was as much as to say, "Well, I don't
care so long as I get my money." She was unmarried, and her lonely
condition had worked up her spirit into a strong attitude of
defiance against all masculine odds. She had once considered men
from a matrimonial point of view. She had wondered if this one and
that one wanted to marry her. Now she was past that, and considered
with equal sharpness if this one or that one wanted to cheat her.
She had missed men's love through some failing either of theirs or
hers. She did not know which, but she was determined that she would
not lose money. So she bore Fanny's insulting emphasis with
rigidity, and waited for her pay.
Andrew pulled out his old pocket-book, and counted the bills. Miss
Higgins saw that he took every bill in it, unless there were some in
another compartment, and of that she could not be quite sure. But
Andrew knew. He would not have another penny until the next week
when he received his pay. In the meantime there was a bill due at
the grocery store, and one at the market, and there was the debt for
Ellen's watch. However, he felt as if he would rather owe every man
in Rowe than this one small, sharp woman. He felt the scorn lurking
within her like a sting. She seemed to him like some venomous
insect. He went out to the doorstep again, and wondered if she would
want her pay the next night when she went home.