When Ellen had been at work in the factory a year, she was running a
machine and working by the piece, and earning on an average eighteen
dollars a week. Of course that was an unusual advance for a girl,
but Ellen was herself unusual. She came to work in those days with
such swiftness and unswerving accuracy that she seemed fairly a part
of the great system of labor itself. While she was at her machine,
her very individuality seemed lost; she became an integral part of a
system.
"She's one of the best hands we ever had," Flynn told Norman Lloyd
one day.
"I am glad to hear that," Lloyd responded, smiling with that
peculiar smile of his which was like a cold flash of steel.
"Curse him, he thinks no more of anybody in this shop than he does
of the machine they work," Flynn thought as he watched the
proprietor walking with his stately descent down the stairs. The
noon whistle was blowing, and the younger Lloyd went leaping down
the stairs and joined his uncle, then the two walked down the
street, away from the factory. The factory at that time of year
began to present, in spite of its crude architecture, quite a
charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and
were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet. All the
front of Lloyd's was covered with vines, which had grown with
amazing swiftness. Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect
upon them with complacency.
"I should think it would make it pleasanter for the men to work in
the factory, when it looks so pretty and green," she told her
husband one of the hottest days of the preceding summer. As she
spoke she compressed her lips in a way which was becoming habitual
to her. It meant the endurance of a sharp stab of vital pain. There
was a terrible pathos in the poor woman's appearance at that time.
She still kept about. Her malady did not seem to be on the increase,
but it endured. Her form had changed indescribably. She had not lost
flesh, but she had a curious, distorted look, and one on seeing her
had a bewildered feeling, and looked again to be sure that he had
seen aright. Her ghastly pallor she concealed in a manner which she
thought distinctly sinful. She painted and powdered. She did not
dare purchase openly the concoctions which were used for improving
her complexion, but she went to a manicure and invested in a colored
salve for her finger-nails. This, with rather surprising skill for
such a conscience-pricked tyro, she applied to the pale curves of
her cheeks and her blue lips. She took more pains than ever before
with her dress, and it was all to deceive her husband, that he
should not be annoyed. She felt a desperate shame because of her
illness; she felt it to be a direct personal injury to this
masculine power which had been set over her gentle femininity. It
was not so much because she was afraid of losing his affection that
she concealed her affliction from him, as because she felt that the
affliction itself was somehow an act of disloyalty. Her terrible
malady had in a way affected her reasoning powers, so that they had
become distorted by a monstrous growth of suffering, like her body.
She would not give up going about as usual, and was never absent
from church. She drove about with her husband in his smart trap.
Twice she had gone with Robert to consult the New York specialist,
taking times when Norman was away on business. She still would not
consent to an operation, and lately the specialist had been lukewarm
in advising it. He had indeed been doubtful from the first.
Mrs. Lloyd treated Robert with a soft affection which was almost
like that of a mother. One night, when he returned late from a call
on Ellen, she sat up waiting for him. He had not called on Ellen
before for several months, and it was nearly midnight when he
returned.
"Why, Aunt Lizzie, are you up?" he cried, as he entered the library
door and saw his aunt's figure, clad in shining black satin,
gleaming with jet, in the depths of an easy-chair.
Mrs. Lloyd looked up at him with an expression of patient suffering.
"I couldn't go to sleep if I went to bed, Robert," she replied, in a
hushed voice. She found it a comfort sometimes to confess her pain
to him. Robert went over to her, and drew her large, crinkled, blond
head to his shoulder as if she had been a child.
"Poor thing," he whispered, stroking her face pitifully. "Is it very
terrible?" he asked, with his lips close to her ear.
"Terrible," she whispered back. "Oh, Robert, you do not know; pray
God you may never know."
"I wish to God I could bear it for you, Aunt Lizzie," Robert said,
fervently.
"Oh, hush! If you or Norman had to bear anything like this, I should
curse God and die," she answered, and she shut her mouth hard, and
her whole face was indicative of a repressed shriek.
"Aunt Lizzie, don't you think you ought to go to New York, that you
ought--" Robert began, but she stopped him with an almost fierce
peremptoriness. "Robert Lloyd, I have trusted you," she said. "For
God's sake, don't forsake me. Don't say a word to me about that;
when I can I will. It means my death, anyhow. Dr. Evarts thought so;
you can't deny it."
"I think he thought there was a chance, Aunt Lizzie," Robert
returned, but he said it faintly.
"You can't cheat me," replied Mrs. Lloyd. "I know." She had a lapse
from pain, and her features began to assume their natural
expression. She looked at him almost smiling, and as if she turned
her back upon her own misery. "Where have you been, Robert?" she
asked.
Robert colored a little, but he answered directly enough. "I have
been to make a call on Miss Brewster," he said.
"You don't go there very often," said Mrs. Lloyd.
"No, not very often."
"She's a beautiful girl, as beautiful a girl as I ever laid eyes on,
if she does work in the shop," said Mrs. Lloyd, "and she's a good
girl, too; I know she is. She was the sweetest little thing when she
was a child, and she 'ain't altered a mite!" Then Mrs. Lloyd looked
with a sort of wistful curiosity at Robert.
"I think it is all true, what you say, Aunt Lizzie," replied Robert.
Mrs. Lloyd continued to look at him with that wistful scrutiny.
"Robert," she began, then she hesitated.
"What, Aunt Lizzie?"
"If--ever you wanted to marry that girl, I don't see any reason why
you shouldn't, for my part."
Robert pulled a chair close to his aunt, and sat down beside her,
still holding her hand.
"I've a good mind to tell you the whole story, Aunt Lizzie," he
said.
"I wish you would, Robert. You know I think as much of you as if you
were my own son, and I won't tell anybody, not even your uncle, if
you don't want me to."
"Well, then, it is all in a nutshell," said Robert. "I like her, you
know, and I think I have ever since I saw her in her little white
gown at the high-school exhibition."
"Wasn't she sweet?" said his aunt.
"And she likes me, too, I think."
"Of course she does."
"But you know what my salary is, and her whole family is in a
measure dependent upon her."
"Hasn't her father got work?"
"No."
"I'll speak to Norman," cried Mrs. Lloyd, quickly. "I know he would
do it for me."
"But even then, Aunt Lizzie, there is the aunt in the asylum, and
the child, and--"
"Your uncle will pay you more."
"It isn't altogether that; in fact, it isn't that at all which is at
the bottom of the difficulty. The difficulty is with Ellen herself.
She will never consent to my marrying her, and having to support her
family, while matters are as now. You don't know how proud she is,
Aunt Lizzie."
"She is a splendid girl."
"As far as I am concerned I would marry the whole lot on a little
more than I have now, but she would not let me do it. There's
nothing to do but to wait."
"Perhaps the aunt will get well and her husband will come back; and
I will see, anyway, if Norman won't give her father work," said Mrs.
Lloyd.
"I think you had better not, Aunt Lizzie."
"Why not, Robert?"
"There are reasons why I think you had better not." Robert would
not tell her that Ellen had begged him not to use any influence of
his to get her father work.
"After the way father has been turned off, I can't stand it," she
had said, with a sort of angry dignity which was unusual to her. In
fact, her father himself had begged her not to make use of Robert in
any way for his own advancement.
"If they don't want me for my work, I don't want to crawl in because
the nephew of the boss likes my daughter," he had said. This speech
was fairly rough for him, but Ellen had understood.
"I know what you mean, father," she said.
"I'd rather work in the road," said Andrew. That autumn he was
getting jobs of clearing up yards of fallen leaves, and gathering
feed-corn and pumpkins, and earning a pittance. Fanny continued to
work on her wrappers. "It's a mercy wrappers don't go out of
fashion," she often said.
"I suppose things that folks can get for nothing ain't so apt to go
out of fashion," Andrew retorted, bitterly. He hated the wrappers
with a deadly hatred. He hated the sight of the limp row of them on
his bedroom wall. Nobody knew how the family pinched and screwed in
those days.
They were using the small fund which they secured from the house
mortgage, Ellen's earnings, and Fanny's and Andrew's, and every cent
had to be counted, but there was something splendid in their loyalty
to poor Eva in the asylum. The thought of deserting her in her
extremity never occurred to them.
Mrs. Lloyd spoke of her that night, when she and Robert were talking
together in the library.
"They are good folks, to keep on doing for that poor woman in the
asylum," she said.
"They would never desert a dog that belonged to them," Robert
answered, fervently. "I tell you that trait is worth a good many
others, Aunt Lizzie."
"I guess it is," said his aunt. Then another paroxysm of pain seized
her. She looked at Robert with a convulsed, speechless face. He held
her hands more tightly, his own face contracting in sympathy, and
watched his aunt with a sort of angry helplessness. But he felt as
if he wanted to fight something for the sake of this poor,
oppressed, innocent creature; indeed, he felt fairly blasphemous.
But this time the pain passed quickly, and Mrs. Lloyd looked at her
nephew with an expression of relief and gentleness which was almost
angelic. When the pain was over she thought again of the Brewsters,
and how they would not have forsaken her in her misery, had she
belonged to them, any more than they had forsaken the insane aunt.
"They are good folks," said she, "and that is the main thing. That
is the main thing to consider when you are marrying into a family,
Robert. It is more than riches and position. The power they've got
of loving and standing by each other is worth more than anything
else."
"You are right, Aunt Lizzie, I guess there's no doubt of that," said
Robert.
"And that girl's beautiful," said Mrs. Lloyd. She gazed at the young
man with a delicate understanding and sympathy which was almost
beyond that of a sweetheart. Robert felt as if a soft hand of
tenderness and blessing were laid on his inmost heart. He looked at
her like a grateful child.
"There isn't anybody like her, is there, Aunt Lizzie?" he asked.
"No, I don't think there is, dear boy," said Mrs. Lloyd. "I do think
she is the sweetest little thing I ever saw in my life."
Robert brought his aunt's hand to his lips and kissed it. It seemed
to him for a minute as if the love and sympathy of this martyr were
almost more precious than the love of Ellen herself.
He realized when he was in his own room, and the house was quiet,
how much he loved his aunt, and how hard her pain and probably
inevitable doom were for him to bear. Then something came to him
which he had never felt before--a great, burning anxiety and
tenderness and terror over Ellen, because she was of the weaker half
of creation, which is born to the larger share of pain in the world.
He felt that he would almost have given her up, yielded up forever
all his delight in her, to spare her; for the pain of knighthood,
which is in every true lover, awoke in his heart.