Ellen looked at the other girl in a kind of rage of maidenly shame.
"Why have I got to get married, anyway?" she demanded. "Isn't there
anything in this world besides getting married? Why do you all talk
so about me? You don't seem so bent on getting married yourself. If
you think so much of marriage, why don't you get married yourself,
and let me alone?"
"Nobody wants to marry me that I know of," replied Abby, quite
simply. Then she, too, blazed out. "Get married!" she cried. "Do you
really think I would get married to the kind of man who would marry
me? Do you think I could if I loved him?" A great wave of red
surged over the girl's thin face, her voice trembled with
tenderness. Ellen knew at once, with a throb of sympathy and shame,
that Abby did love some one.
"Do you think I would marry him if I loved him?" demanded Abby,
stiffening herself into a soldier-like straightness. "Do you think?
I tell you what it is," she said, "I was lookin' only to-day at
David Mendon at the cutting-bench, cutting away with his poor little
knife. I'd like to know how many handles he's worn out since he
began. There he was, putting the pattern on the leather, and cuttin'
around it, standin' at his window, that's a hot place in summer and
a cold one in winter, and there's where he's stood for I don't know
how many years since before I was born. He's one of the few that
Lloyd's has hung on to when he's got older, and I thought to myself,
good Lord, how that poor man must have loved his wife, and how he
must love his children, to be willin' to turn himself into a machine
like that for them. He never takes a holiday unless he's forced into
it; there he stands and cuts and cuts. If I were his wife, I would
die of shame and pity that I ever led him into it. Do you think I
would ever let a man turn himself into a machine for me, if I loved
him? I guess I wouldn't! And that's why, when I see a man of another
sort that you won't have to break your own heart over, whether you
marry him or not, payin' attention to you, I am glad. It's a
different thing, marriage with a man like Robert Lloyd, and a man
like that would never think of me. I'm right in the ranks, and you
ain't."
"I am," said Ellen, stoutly.
"No, you ain't; you don't belong there, and when I see a chance for
you to get out where you belong--"
"I don't intend to make marriage a stepping-stone," said Ellen.
"Sometimes--" She hesitated.
"What?" asked the other girl.
"Sometimes I think I would rather not go to college, after all."
"Ellen Brewster, are you crazy? Of course, you will go to college
unless you marry Robert Lloyd. Perhaps he won't want to wait." Then
Abby, dauntless as she was, shrank a little before Ellen's wrathful
retort.
"Abby Atkins, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she cried.
"There he's been to see me just twice, the first time on an errand,
and the next with his aunt, and he's walked home with me once
because he couldn't help it; his aunt told him to!"
"But here he is again to-night," said Abby, apologetically.
"What of that? I suppose he has come on another errand."
"Then what made you run away?"
"Because you have all made me ashamed of my life to look at him,"
said Ellen, hotly.
Then down went her head on the bed again, and Abby was leaning over
her, caressing her, whispering fond things to her like a lover.
"There, there, Ellen," she whispered. "Don't be mad, don't feel bad.
I didn't mean any harm. You are such a beauty--there's nobody like
you in the world--that everybody thinks that any man who sees you
must want you."
"Robert Lloyd doesn't, and if he did I wouldn't have him," sobbed
Ellen.
"You sha'n't if you don't want him," said Abby, consolingly.
After a while the two girls bathed their eyes with cold water, and
went down-stairs into the sitting-room. Maria was making herself a
blue muslin dress, and her mother was hemming the ruffles. There was
a cheap blue shade on the lamp, and Maria herself was clad in a blue
gingham. All the blue color and the shade on the lamp gave a curious
pallor and unreality to the homely room and the two women. Mrs.
Atkins's hair was strained back from her hollow temples, which had
noble outlines.
"I'm going to walk a little way with Ellen, she's going home," said
Abby.
"Very well," said her mother. Maria looked wistfully at them as they
went out. She went on sewing on her blue muslin, rather sadly. She
coughed a little.
"Why don't you put up your sewing for to-night and go to bed,
child?" said her mother.
"I might as well sit here and sew as go to bed and lie there. I
shouldn't sleep," replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness
conceivable. There was in it no shadow of complaining. Of late years
all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl. She
was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless. Often when she raised a hand
it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain
poised by some curious inertia. Still, she went to the shop every
day and did her work faithfully. She pasted linings in shoes, and
her slender little fingers used to fly as if they were driven by
some more subtle machine than any in the factory. Often Maria felt
vaguely as if she were in the grasp of some mighty machine worked by
a mighty operator; she felt, as she pasted the linings, as if she
herself were also a part of some monstrous scheme of work under
greater hands than hers, and there was never any getting back of it.
And always with it all there was that ceaseless, helpless,
bewildered longing for something, she was afraid to think what,
which often saps the strength and life of a young girl. Maria had
never had a lover in her life; she had not even good comrades among
young men, as her sister had. No man at that time would have ever
looked twice at her, unless he had fallen in love with her, and had
been disposed to pick her up and carry her along on the hard road
upon which they fared together. Maria was half fed in every sense;
she had not enough nourishing food for her body, nor love for her
heart, nor exercise for her brain. She had no time to read, as she
was forced to sew when out of the shop if she would have anything to
wear. When at last she went up-stairs to bed, before Abby returned,
she sat down by her window, and leaned her little, peaked chin on
the sill and looked out. The stars were unusually bright for a
summer night; the whole sky seemed filled with a constantly
augmenting host of them. The scent of tobacco came to her from
below. To the lonely girl the stars and the scent of the tobacco
served as stimulants; she formed a forcible wish. "I wish," she
muttered to herself, "that I was either an angel or a man." Then
the next minute she chided herself for her wickedness. A great wave
of love for God, and remorse for impatience and melancholy in her
earthly lot, swept over her. She knelt down beside her bed and
prayed. An exultation half-physical, half-spiritual, filled her.
When she rose, her little, thin face was radiant. She seemed to
measure the shortness of the work and woe of the world as between
her thumb and finger. The joy of the divine filled all her longing.
When Abby came home, who shared her chamber, she felt no jealousy.
She only inquired whether she had gone quite home with Ellen. "Yes,
I did," replied Abby. "I don't think it is safe for her to go past
that lonely place below the Smiths'."
"I'm glad you did," said Maria, with an angelic inflection in her
voice.
"Robert Lloyd came to see Ellen, and she ran away over here, and
wouldn't see him, because they had all been plaguing her about him,"
said Abby. "I wish she wouldn't do so. It would be a splendid thing
for her to marry him, and I know he likes her, and his aunt is going
to send her to college."
"That won't make any difference to Ellen, and everything will be all
right anyway, if only she loved God," said Maria, still with that
rapt, angelic voice.
"Shucks!" said Abby. Then she leaned over her sister, caught her by
her little, thin shoulders and shook her tenderly. "There, I didn't
mean to speak so," said she. "You're awful good, Maria. I'm glad
you've got religion if it's so much comfort to you. I don't mean to
make light of it, but I'm afraid you ain't well. I'm goin' to get
you some more of that tonic to-morrow."