Ellen's deepest emotion was pity for her father, so intense that it
was actual physical pain.
"Poor father! Poor father! He had to borrow the money to buy me my
watch and chain," she kept repeating to herself. "Poor father!"
To her New England mind, borrowing seemed almost like robbing. She
actually felt as if her father had committed a crime for love of
her, but all she looked at was the love, not the guilt. Suddenly a
conviction which fairly benumbed her came over her--the money in the
savings-bank; that little hoard, which had been to the imagination
of herself and her mother a sheet-anchor against poverty, must be
gone. "Father must have used if for something unbeknown to mother,"
she said to herself--"he must, else he would not have told Mr.
Evarts that he could not pay him." It was a hot night, but the girl
shivered as she realized for the first time the meaning of the wolf
at the door. "All we've got left is this house--this house
and--and--our hands," thought Ellen. She saw before her her father's
poor, worn hands, her mother's thin, tired hands, jerking the thread
in and out of those shameful wrappers; then she looked at her own,
as yet untouched by toil, as white and small and fair as flowers.
She thought of the four years before her at college, four years
before she could earn anything--and in the mean time? She looked at
the pile of her school-books on the table. She had been studying
hard all summer. The thirst for knowledge was as intense in her as
the thirst for stimulants in a drunkard.
"I ought to give up going to college, and go to work in the shop,"
Ellen said to herself, and she said it as one might drive a
probing-knife into a sore. "I ought to," she repeated. And yet she
was far from resolving to give up college. She began to argue with
herself the expediancy, supposing that the money in the bank was
gone, of putting a mortgage on the house. If her father continued to
have work, they might get along and pay for her aunt, who might, as
the doctor had said, not be obliged to remain long in the asylum if
properly cared for. Would it not, after all, be better, since by a
course at college she would be fitted to command a larger salary
than she could in any other way. "I can support them all," reflected
Ellen. At that time the thought of Robert Lloyd, and that awakening
of heart which he had brought to pass, were in abeyance. Old powers
had asserted themselves. This love for her own blood and their need
came between her and this new love, half of the senses, half of the
spirit.
Amabel waked up in the early sultry dawn of the summer day with the
bewilderment of one in a new world. She stared at the walls of the
room, at the shaft of sunlight streaming in the window, then at
Ellen.
"Where am I?" she inquired, in a loud, querulous plaint. Then she
remembered, but she did not cry; instead, her little face took on a
painfully old look.
"You are here with cousin Ellen, darling, don't you know?" Ellen
replied, leaning over her, and kissing her.
Amabel wriggled impatiently away, and faced to the wall. "Yes, I
know," said she.
That morning Amabel would not eat any breakfast, and Fanny suggested
that Ellen take her for a ride on the street-cars. "We can get along
without you for an hour," she whispered, "and I am afraid that child
will be sick."
So Ellen and Amabel set out, leaving Fanny and the dressmaker at
work, and when they were returning past the factories the noon
whistles were blowing and the operatives were streaming forth.
Ellen was surprised to see her father among them as the car swept
past. He walked down the street towards home, his dinner-bag
dangling at his side, his back more bent than ever.
She wondered uneasily if her father was ill, for he never went home
to dinner. She looked back at him as the car swept past, but he did
not seem to see her. He walked with an air of seeing nothing,
covering the ground like an old dog with some patient, dumb end in
view, heeding nothing by the way. It puzzled her also that her
father had come out of Lloyd's instead of McGuire's, where he had
been employed all summer. Ellen, after she reached home, watched
anxiously for her father to come into the yard, but she did not see
him. She assisted about the dinner, which was a little extra on
account of the dressmaker, and all the time she glanced with covert
anxiety at the window, but her father did not pass it. Finally, when
she went out to the pump for a pitcher of water, she set the pitcher
down, and sped to the orchard like a wild thing. A suspicion had
seized her that her father was there.
Sure enough, there he was, but instead of lying face down on the
grass, as he had done before, he was sitting back against a tree. He
had the air of having settled into such a long lease of despair that
he had sought the most comfortable position for it. His face was
ghastly. He looked at Ellen as she drew near, and opened his mouth
as if to speak, but instead he only caught his breath. He stared
hard at her, then he closed his eyes as if not to see her, and
motioned her away with one hand with an inarticulate noise in his
throat.
But Ellen sat down beside him. She caught his two hands and looked
at him. "Father, look at me," said she, and Andrew opened his eyes.
The expression in them was dreadful, compounded of shame and despair
and dread, but the girl's met them with a sort of glad triumph and
strength of love. "Now look here, father," she said, "you tell me
all about it. I didn't want to know last night. Now I want to know.
What is the matter?"
Andrew continued to look at her, then all at once he spoke with a
kind of hoarse shout. "I'm discharged! I'm discharged," he said,
"from McGuire's; they've got a boy who can move faster in my
place--a boy for less pay, who can move faster. I hurried over to
Lloyd's to see if they would take me on again; I've always thought I
should get back into Lloyd's, and I saw the foreman, and he told me
to my face that I was too old, that they wanted younger men. And I
went into the office to see Lloyd, pushed past the foreman, with him
damning me, and I saw Lloyd."
"Was young Mr. Lloyd there?" asked Ellen, with white lips.
"No; I guess he had gone to dinner. And Lloyd looked at me, and I
believe he counted every gray hair in my head, and he saw my back,
and he saw my hands, and he said--he said I was too old."
Andrew snatched his hands from Ellen's grasp, pressed them to his
face, and broke into weeping. "Oh, my God, I'm too old, I'm too
old!" he sobbed; "I'm out of it! I'm too old!"
Ellen regarded him, and her face had developed lines of strength
hitherto unrevealed. There was no pity in it, hardly love; she
looked angry and powerful. "Father, stop doing so, and look at me,"
she said. She dragged her father's hands from his face, and he
stared at her with his inflamed eyes, half terrified, half
sustained. At that moment he realized a strength of support as from
his own lost youth, a strength as of eternal progress which was more
to be relied upon than other human strength. For the first time he
leaned on his child, and realized with wonder the surety of the
stay.
"Now, father, you stop doing so," said Ellen. "You can get work
somewhere; you are not old. Call yourself old! It is nonsense. Are
you going to give in and be old because two men tell you that you
are? What if your hair is gray! Ever so many young men have gray
hair. You are not old, and you can get work somewhere. McGuire's and
Lloyd's are not the only factories in the country."
"That ain't all," said Andrew, with eyes like a beseeching dog's on
her face.
"I know that isn't all," said Ellen. "You needn't be afraid to tell
me, father. You have taken the money out of the savings-bank for
something."
Again Andrew would have snatched his hands from the girl's and
hidden his face, but she held them fast. "Yes, I have," he admitted,
in a croaking voice.
"Well, what if you have?" asked Ellen. "You had a right to take it
out, didn't you? You put it in. I don't know of anybody who had a
better right to take it out than you, if you wanted to."
Andrew stared at her, as if he did not hear rightly. "You don't know
what I did with it, Ellen," he stammered.
"It is nobody's business," replied Ellen. She had an unexplained
sensation as if she were holding fast to her father's slipping
self-respect which was dragging hard at her restraining love.
"I put it in a worthless gold-mine out in Colorado--the same one
your uncle Jim lost his money in," groaned Andrew.
"Well, it was your money, and you had a perfect right to," said
Ellen. "Of course you thought the mine was all right or you wouldn't
have put the money into it."
"God knows I did."
"Well, the best business men in the world make mistakes. It is
nobody's business whether you took the money out or not, or what you
used it for, father."
"I don't see how the bills are going to be paid, and there's your
poor aunt," said Andrew. He was leaning more and more heavily upon
this new tower of strength, this tender little girl whom he had
hitherto shielded and supported. The beautiful law of reverse of
nature had come into force.
Ellen set her mouth firmly. "Don't you worry, father," said she. "We
will think of some way out of it. There's a little money to pay for
Aunt Eva, and maybe she won't be sick long. Does mother know,
father?"
"She don't know about anything, Ellen," replied Andrew, wretchedly.
"I know she doesn't know about your getting thrown out of work--but
about the bank?"
"No, Ellen."
Ellen rose. "You stay here, where it is cool, till I ring the
dinner-bell, father," she said.
"I don't want any dinner, child."
"Yes, you do, father. If you don't eat your dinner you will be sick.
You come when the bell rings."
Andrew knew that he should obey, as he saw the girl's light dress
disappear among the trees.
Ellen went back to the pump, and carried her pitcher of water into
the house. Her mother met her at the door. "Where have you been all
this time, Ellen Brewster?" she asked, in a high voice. "Everything
is getting as cold as a stone."
Ellen caught her mother's arm and drew her into the kitchen, and
closed the door. Fanny turned pale as death and looked at her.
"Well, what has happened now?" she said. "Is your father killed?"
"No," said Ellen, "but he is out of work, and he can't get a job at
Lloyd's, and he took all that money out of the savings-bank a long
time ago, and put it into that gold-mine that Uncle Jim lost in."
Fanny clutched the girl's arm in a grasp so hard that it left a blue
mark on the tender flesh. She looked at her, but did not speak one
word.
"Now, mother," said Ellen, "you must not say one word to father to
scold him. He's got enough to bear as it is."
Fanny pushed her away with sudden fierceness. "I guess I don't need
to have my own daughter teach me my duty to my husband," said she.
"Where is he?"
"Down in the orchard."
"Well, ring the bell for dinner loud, so he can hear it."
When Andrew came shuffling wearily up from the orchard, Fanny met
him at the corner of the house, out of sight from the windows. She
was flushed and perspiring, clad in a coarse cotton wrapper,
revealing all her unkempt curves. She went close to him, and thrust
one large arm through his. "Look here, Andrew," said she, in the
tenderest voice he had ever heard from her, a voice so tender that
it was furious, "you needn't say one word. What's done's done. We
shall get along somehow. I ain't afraid. Come in and eat your
dinner!"
The dressmaking work went on as usual after dinner. Andrew had
disappeared, going down the road towards the shop. He tried for a
job at Briggs's, with no success, then drifted to the corner
grocery.
Ellen sat until nearly three o'clock sewing. Then she went up-stairs
and got her hat, and went secretly out of the back door, through the
west yard, that her mother should not see her. However, her
grandmother called after her, and wanted to know where she was
going.
"Down street, on an errand," answered Ellen.
"Well, keep on the shady side," called her grandmother, thinking the
girl was bound to the stores for some dressmaking supplies.
That night Miss Higgins did not ask for her pay; she had made up her
mind to wait until her week was finished. She went away after
supper, and Ellen followed her to the door. "We won't want you
to-morrow, Miss Higgins," said she, "and here is your pay." With
that she handed a roll of bills to the woman, who stared at her in
amazement and growing resentment.
"If my work ain't satisfactory," said she--
"Your work is satisfactory," said Ellen, "but I don't want any more
work done. I am not going to college."
There was something conclusive and intimidating about Ellen's look
and tone. The dressmaker, who had been accustomed to regard her as a
child, stared at her with awe, as before a sudden revelation of
force. Then she took her money, and went down the walk.
When Ellen re-entered the sitting-room her father and mother, who
had overheard every word, confronted her.
"Ellen Brewster, what does this mean?"
Andrew looked as if he would presently fall to the floor.
"It means," said Ellen--and she looked at her parents with the brave
enthusiasm of a soldier on her beautiful face--she even laughed--"it
means that I am going to work--I have got a job in Lloyd's."
When Ellen made that announcement, her mother did a strange thing.
She ran swiftly to a corner of the room, and stood there, staring at
the girl, with back hugged close to the intersection of the walls,
as if she would withdraw as far as possible from some threatening
ill. At that moment she looked alarmingly like her sister; there was
something about Fanny in her corner, calculated, when all
circumstances were taken into consideration, to make one's blood
chill, but Andrew did not look at her. He was intent upon Ellen, and
the facing of the worst agony of his life, and Ellen was intent upon
him. She loved her mother, but the fear as to her father's suffering
moved her more than her mother's. She was more like her father, and
could better estimate his pain under stress. Andrew rose to his feet
and stood looking at Ellen, and she at him. She tried to meet the
drawn misery and incredulousness of his face with a laugh of
reassurance.
"Yes, I've got a job in Lloyd's," said she. "What's the matter,
father?"
Then Andrew made an almost inarticulate response; it sounded like a
croak in an unknown tongue.
Ellen continued to look at him, and to laugh.
"Now look here, father," said she. "There is no need for you and
mother to feel bad over this. I have thought it all over, and I have
made up my mind. I have got a good high-school education now, and
the four years I should have to spend at Vassar I could do nothing
at all. There is awful need of money here, and not only for us, but
for Aunt Eva and Amabel."
"You sha'n't do it!" Andrew burst out then, in a great shout of
rage. "I'll mortgage the house--that'll last awhile. You sha'n't, I
say! You are my child, and you've got to listen. You sha'n't, I
say!"
"Now, father," responded Ellen's voice, which seemed to have in it a
wonderful tone of firmness against which his agonized vociferousness
broke as against a rock, "this is nonsense. You must not mortgage
the house. The house is all you have got for your and mother's old
age. Do you think I could go to college, and let you give up the
house in order to keep me there? And as for grandma Brewster, you
know what's hers is hers as long as she lives--we don't want to
think of that. I have got this job now, which is only three dollars
a week, but in a year the foreman said I might earn fifteen or
eighteen, if I was quick and smart, and I will be quick and smart.
It is the best thing for us all, father."
"You sha'n't!" shouted Andrew. "I say you sha'n't!"
Suddenly Andrew sank into a chair, his head lopped, he kept moving a
hand before his eyes, as if he were brushing away cobwebs. Then
Fanny came out of her corner.
"Get the camphor, quick!" she said to Ellen. "I dun'no' but you've
killed your father."
Fanny held her husband's head against her shoulder, and rubbed his
hands frantically. The awful strained look had gone from her face.
Ellen came with the camphor, and then went for water. Fanny rubbed
Andrew's forehead with the camphor, and held the bottle to his nose.
"Smell it, Andrew," she said, in a voice of ineffable tenderness and
pity. Ellen returned with a glass of water, and Andrew swallowed a
little obediently. Finally he made out to stagger into the bedroom
with Fanny's and Ellen's assistance. He sat down weakly on the bed,
and Fanny lifted his legs up. Then he sank and closed his eyes as if
he were spent. In fact, he was. At that moment of Ellen's
announcement some vital energy in him suddenly relaxed like
overstrained rubber. His face, sunken in the pillow, was both
ghastly and meek. It was the face of a man who could fight no more.
Ellen knelt down beside him, sobbing.
"Oh, father!" she sobbed, "I think it is for the best. Dear father,
you won't feel bad."
"No," said Andrew, faintly. There was a slight twitching in his
hand, as if he wished to put it on her head, then it lay thin and
inert on the coverlid. He tried to smile, but his face settled into
that look of utter acquiescence of fate.
"I s'pose it's the best you can do," he muttered.
"Have you told Miss Lennox?" gasped Fanny.
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
"She was sorry, but she made no objection," replied Ellen,
evasively.
Fanny came forward abruptly, caught up the camphor-bottle, and began
bathing Andrew's forehead again.
"We won't say any more about it," said she, in a harsh voice. "You'd
better go over to your grandma Brewster's and see if she has got any
whiskey. I think your father needs to take something."
"I don't want anything," said Andrew, feebly.
"Yes, you do, too, you are as white as a sheet. Go over and ask her,
Ellen."
Ellen ran across the yard to her grandmother's, and the old woman
met her at the door. She seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of
trouble.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Father's a little faint, and mother wants me to borrow the
whiskey," said Ellen. She had not at that time the courage to tell
her grandmother what she had done.
Mrs. Zelotes ran into the house, and came out with the bottle.
"I'm comin' over," she announced. "I'm kind of worried about your
father; he 'ain't looked well for some time. I wonder what made him
faint. Maybe he ate something which hurt him."
Ellen said nothing. She fled up-stairs to her chamber, as her
grandmother entered the bedroom. She felt cowardly, but she thought
that she would let her mother tell the news.
She sat down and waited. She knew that presently she would hear the
old woman's voice at the foot of the stairs. She was resolved upon
her course, and knew that she could not be shaken in it, yet she
dreaded unspeakably the outburst of grief and anger which she knew
would come from her grandmother. She felt as if she had faced two
fires, and now before the third she quailed a little.
It was not long before the expected summons came.
"Ellen--Ellen Brewster, come down here!"
Ellen went down. Her grandmother met her at the foot of the stairs.
She was trembling from head to foot; her mouth twisted and wavered
as if she had the palsy.
"Look here, Ellen Brewster, this ain't true?" she stammered.
"Yes, grandma," answered Ellen. "I have thought it all over, and it
is the only thing for me to do."
Her grandmother clutched her arm, and the girl felt as if she were
in the grasp of another will, which was more conclusive than steel.
"You sha'n't!" she said, whispering, lest Andrew should hear, but
with intense force.
"I've got to, grandma. We've got to have the money."
"The money," said the old woman, with an inflection of voice and a
twist of her features indicative of the most superb scorn--"the
money! I guess you ain't goin' to lose such a chance as that for
money. I guess I've got two hundred and ten dollars a year income,
and I'll give up a half of that, and Andrew can put a mortgage on
the house, if that Tenny woman has got to be supported because her
husband has run off and left her and her young one. You sha'n't go
to work in a shop."
"I've got to, grandma," said Ellen.
The old woman looked at her. It was like a duel between two strong
wills of an old race. "You sha'n't," she said.
"Yes, I shall, grandma."
Then the old woman turned upon her in a fury of rage.
"You're a Loud all over, Ellen Brewster," said she. "You 'ain't got
a mite of Brewster about you. You 'ain't got any pride! You'd just
as soon settle down and work in a shop as do anything else."
Fanny pushed before her. "Look here, Mother Brewster," said she,
"you can just stop! Ellen is my daughter, and you 'ain't any right
to talk to her this way. I won't have it. If anybody is goin' to
blame her, it's me."
"Who be you?" said Mrs. Zelotes, sniffing.
Then she looked at them both, at Ellen and at her mother.
"If you go an' do what you've planned," said she to Ellen, "an' if
you uphold her in it," to Fanny, "I've done with you."
"Good riddance," said Fanny, coarsely.
"I ain't goin' to forget that you said that," cried Mrs. Zelotes.
She held up her dress high in front and went out of the door. "I
ain't comin' over here again, an' I'll thank you to stay at home,"
said she. Then she went away.
Soon after Fanny heard Ellen in the dining-room setting the table
for supper, and went out.
"Where did you get that money you paid the dressmaker with?" she
asked, abruptly.
"I borrowed it of Abby," replied Ellen.
"Then she knows?"
"Yes."
Fanny continued to look at Ellen with the look of one who is
settling down with resignation under some knife of agony.
"Well," said she, "there's no need to talk any more about it before
your father. Now I guess you had better toast him some bread for his
supper."
"Yes, I will," replied Ellen. She looked at her mother pitifully,
and yet with that firmness which had seemed to suddenly develop in
her. "You know it is the best thing for me to do, mother?" she said,
and although she put it in the form of a question, the statement was
commanding in its assertiveness.
"When are you--goin' to work?" asked Fanny.
"Next Monday," replied Ellen.