There was a driving snow-storm the next day. When Ellen started for
the factory the white twilight of early morning still lingered.
Everywhere were the sons and daughters of toil plodding laboriously
and noiselessly through the snow, each keeping in the track of the
one who went before. There was no wind blowing, and the snow was in
a blue-white level; the trees bent stiffly and quietly beneath a
heavy shag of white, and now and then came a clamor of birds, which
served to accentuate the silence and peace. Ellen could always be
forced by an extreme phase of nature to forgetfulness of her own
stresses. For the time being she forgot everything; her vain
watching for Robert, the talk of trouble in the factory, the
disappointment in her home--all were forgotten in the contemplation,
or rather in the absorbing, of this new-old wonder of snow.
There was a survival of the old Greek spirit in the girl, and had
she come to earth without her background of orthodox traditions, she
might have easily found her own deities in nature. The peace of the
snow enveloped her soul as well as the earth, and she became a
beneficiary of the white storm; the graceful droop of the pine
boughs extended to her thoughts, and the clamor of the birds aroused
in her a winged freedom, so that she felt at once peace and a sort
of ecstasy. She walked in the track of a stolidly plodding man
before her, as different a person as if she were an inhabitant of
another planet. He was digesting the soggy, sweet griddle-cakes
which he had eaten for breakfast, and revolving in his mind two
errands for his wife--one, a pail of lard; the other, three yards of
black dress braid; he was considering the surface scum of existence,
that which pertained solely to his own petty share of it; the girl,
the clear residue of life which was, and had been, and would be.
Each was on the way to humble labor for daily bread, but with a
difference of eternity between them.
But when Ellen reached the end of the cross street where the Atkins
girls lived, she heard a sound which dispelled her rapt state. Her
far vision became a near one; she saw, as it were, the clouded
window-glass between her mortal eyes and the beyond, and the sound
of a cough brought it about. Abby and Maria were coming towards her
through the snow. Maria was coughing violently, and Abby was
scolding her.
"I don't care anything about it, Maria Atkins," Abby was saying,
"you ought to be ashamed of yourself coming out such a morning as
this. There isn't any sense in it. You know you'll catch cold, and
then there'll be two of you to take care of. You don't help a mite
doing so, you needn't think you do."
When Abby caught sight of Ellen she hastened forward, while Maria,
still coughing, trailed behind, lifting her little, heavy,
snow-bound feet wearily.
"Ellen, I wish you'd tell Maria to turn around and go home," she
said. "Just hear her cough, and out in all this snow, and getting
her skirts draggled. She hasn't got common-sense, you tell her so."
Ellen stopped, nodding assentingly. "I think she's right, Maria,"
she said. "You ought not to be out such a morning as this. You had
better go home."
Maria came up smiling, though her lips were quite white, and she
controlled her cough to convulsive motions of her chest.
"I am no worse than usual," said she. "I feel better than I
generally do in the morning. I haven't coughed any more, if I have
as much, and I am holding my dress up high, and you know how warm
the factory is. It will be enough sight warmer than it is at home.
It is cold at home."
"Lloyd don't have to save coal," said Abby, bitterly, "but that
don't alter the fact of your getting your skirts draggled."
Maria pulled up her skirts so high that she exposed her slender
ankles, then seeing that she had done so, she let them fall with a
quick glance at two men behind them.
"The snow will shake right off; it's light, Abby," she said.
"It ain't light. I should think you might listen to Ellen, if you
won't to me."
Ellen pressed close to Maria, and pulled her thin arm through her
own. "Look here," she said, "don't you think--"
Then Maria burst out with a pitiful emphasis. "I've got to go," she
said. "Father had a bad spell last night; he can't get out. He'll
lose his place this time, we are afraid, and there's a note coming
due that father says he's paid, but the man didn't give it up, and
he's got to pay it over again; the lawyer says there is no other
way, and we can't let John Sargent do everything. He's got a sister
out West he's about supporting since her husband died last fall.
I've got to go to work; we've got to have the money, Ellen, and as
for my cough, I have always coughed. It hasn't killed me yet, and I
guess it won't yet for a while." Maria said the last with a
reckless gayety which was unusual to her.
Abby trudged on ahead with indignant emphasis. "I'd like to know
what good it is going to do to work and earn and pay up money if
everybody is going to be killed by it?" she said, without turning
her head.
Ellen pulled up Maria's coat-collar around her neck and put an extra
fold of her dress-skirt into her hand.
"There, you can hold it up as high as that, it looks all right,"
said she.
"I wish Robert Lloyd had to get up at six o'clock and trudge a mile
in this snow to his work," said Abby, with sudden viciousness.
"He'll be driven down in his Russian sleigh by a man looking like a
drum-major, and cut our poor little wages, and that's all he cares.
Who's earning the money, he or us, I'd like to know? I hate the
rich!"
"If it's true, what you say," said Maria, "it seems to me it's like
hating those you have given things to, and that's worse than hating
your enemies."
"Don't say given, say been forced to hand over," retorted Abby,
fiercely; "and don't preach, Maria Atkins, I hate preaching; and do
have sense enough not to talk when you are out in this awful storm.
You can keep your mouth shut, if you can't do anything else!"
Ellen had turned quite white at Abby's words.
"You don't think that he means to cut the wages?" she said, eagerly.
"I know he does. I had it straight. Wait till you get to the shop."
"I don't believe it."
"You wait. Norman Lloyd was as hard as nails, and the young one is
just like him." Abby looked relentlessly at Ellen.
"Maybe it isn't so," whispered Maria to Ellen.
"I don't believe it is," responded Ellen, but Abby heard them, and
turned with a vicious jerk.
"Well, you wait!" said she.
The moment Ellen reached the factory she realized that something
unwonted had happened. There were groups of men, talking, oblivious
even of the blinding storm, which was coming in the last few minutes
with renewed fury, falling in heavy sheets like dank shrouds.
Ellen saw one man in a muttering group throw out an arm, whitened
like a branch of a tree, and shake a rasped, red fist at the
splendid Russian sleigh of the Lloyd's, which was just gliding out
of sight with a flurry of bells and a swing of fur tails, the whole
surmounted by the great fur hat of the coachman. Abby turned and
looked fiercely at Ellen.
"What did I tell you?" she cried.
Even then Ellen would not believe. She caught a glimpse of Robert's
fair head at the office window, and a great impulse of love and
loyalty came over her.
"I don't believe it," she said aloud to Maria. Maria held her arm
tightly.
"Maybe it isn't so," she said.
But when they entered the room where they worked, there was a sullen
group before a placard tacked on the wall. Ellen pressed closely,
and saw what it was--a reduced wage-list. Then she went to her
machine.