Lyman Risley was very seriously injured. There was, as the men had
reported, danger for his eyes. When Robert was called into the
reception-room of the hospital to see his aunt, he scarcely
recognized her. Her soft, white hair was tossed about her temples,
her cheeks were burning. She ran up to him like an eager child and
clutched his arm.
"How is he?" she demanded. "Tell me quick!"
"They are doing everything they can for him. Why, don't, poor Aunt
Cynthia!"
"His eyes, they said--"
"I hope he will come out all right. Don't, dear Aunt Cynthia." The
young man put his arm around his aunt and spoke soothingly, blushing
like a girl before this sudden revelation of an under-stratum of
delicacy in a woman's heart.
Cynthia lost control of herself completely; or, rather, the true
self of her rose uppermost, shattering the surface ice of her
reserve. "Oh," she said--"oh, if he--if he is--blind, if he
is--I--I--will lead him everywhere all the rest of his life; I will,
Robert."
"Of course you will, dear Aunt Cynthia," replied Robert, soothingly.
Suddenly Cynthia's face took on a new expression. She looked at
Robert, deadly pale, and her jaw dropped. "He will not--die," she
said, with stiff lips. "It is not as bad as that?"
"Oh no, no; I am sure he will not," Robert cried, wonderingly and
pityingly. "Don't, Aunt Cynthia."
"If he dies," she said--"if he dies--and he has loved me all this
time, and I have never done anything for him--I cannot bear it; I
will not bear it; I will not, Robert!"
"Oh, he isn't going to die, Aunt Cynthia."
"I want to go to him," she said. "I _will_ go to him."
Robert looked helplessly from her to Fanny. "I am afraid you can't
just now, Aunt Cynthia," he replied.
Fanny came resolutely to his assistance. "Of course you can't, Miss
Lennox," she said. "The doctors won't let you see him now. You would
do him more harm than good. You don't want to do him harm!"
"No, I don't want to do him harm," returned Cynthia, in a wailing,
hysterical voice. She threw herself down upon a sofa and began
sobbing like a child, with her face hidden.
A young doctor entered and stood looking at her.
Robert turned to him. "It is my aunt, and she is agitated over Mr.
Risley's accident," he said, coloring a little.
Instantly the young physician's face lost its expression of
astonishment and assumed the soothing gloss of his profession. "Oh,
my dear Miss Lennox," he said, "there is no cause for agitation, I
assure you. Everything is being done for Mr. Risley."
"Will he be blind?" gasped Cynthia, with a great vehemence of woe,
which seemed to gainsay the fact of her years. It seemed as if such
an outburst of emotion could come only from a child all unacquainted
with grief and unable to control it.
The young doctor laughed blandly. "Blind? No, indeed," he replied.
"He might have been blind had this happened twenty-five years ago,
but with the resources of the present day it is a different matter.
Pray don't alarm yourself, dear Miss Lennox."
"Can you call a carriage for my aunt?" asked Robert. He went close
to Cynthia and laid a hand on her slender shoulder. "I am going to
have a carriage come for you, and perhaps Mrs. Brewster will be
willing to go home with you in it."
"Of course I will," replied Fanny.
"You hear what Dr. Payson says, that there is nothing to be alarmed
about," Robert said, in a low voice, with his lips close to his
aunt's ear.
Cynthia made no resistance, but when the carriage arrived, and she
was being driven off, with Fanny by her side, she called out of the
window with a fierce shamelessness of anxiety, "Robert, you must
come and tell me how he is this afternoon, or I shall come back here
and see him myself."
"Yes, I will, Aunt Cynthia," he replied, soothingly. He met the
doctor's curious eyes when he turned. The young man had a gossiping
mind, but he forbore to say what he thought, which was to the effect
that--why under the heavens, if that woman cared as much as that for
that man, she had not married him, instead of letting him dangle
after her so many years? But he merely said:
"There is no use in saying anything to excite a woman further
when she is in such a state of mind, but--" Then he paused
significantly.
"You think the chances of his keeping his eyesight are poor?" said
Robert.
"Mighty poor," replied the doctor.
Robert stood still, with his pale, shocked face bent upon the
carpet. He could not seem to comprehend at once the enormity of it
all; his mind was grasping at and trying to assimilate the horrible
fact with an infinite pain.
"Have they got the man that did it?" asked the doctor.
"I don't know. I had to see to poor Risley," replied Robert. "I hope
to God they have." Then all at once he thought, with keen anxiety,
of Ellen. Who knew what new tragedy had happened? "I must go back to
the factory," he said, hurriedly. "I will be back here in an hour or
so, and see how he is getting on. For Heaven's sake, do all you
can!"
Robert was desperately impatient to be back at the factory. He was
full of vague anxiety about Ellen. He could not forget that the shot
which had hit poor Risley had been meant for her, and he remembered
the look on the man's face as he aimed. He found a carriage at the
street corner, and jumped in, and bade the man drive fast.
When Robert entered the great building, and felt the old vibration
of machinery, he had a curious sensation, one which he had never
before had and which he had not expected. For the first time in his
life he knew what it was to have a complete triumph of his own will
over his fellow-men. He had gotten his own way. All this army of
workmen, all this machinery of labor, was set in motion at his
desire, in opposition to their own. He realized himself a leader and
a conqueror. He went into the office, and Flynn and Dennison came
forward, smiling, to greet him.
"Well," said Dennison, "we're off again." He spoke as if the
factory were a ship which had been launched from a shoal.
"Yes," replied Robert, gravely.
Nellie Stone, at the desk, was glancing around, with a half-shy,
half-coquettish look.
"How is Mr. Risley?" asked Flynn.
"He is badly hurt," replied Robert. "Have they found the man? Do you
know what has been done about it?"
"They've got all the police force of the city out," replied Flynn,
"but it's no use. They'll never catch Amos Lee. His mother was a
gypsy, I've always heard. He knows about a thousand ways out of
traps, and there's plenty to help him. They've got Dixon under
arrest, and Tom Peel; but they didn't have any fire-arms on 'em, and
they can't prove anything. Peel says he's ready to go back to work."
Flynn had a somewhat seedy and downcast appearance, although he
fought hard for his old jaunty manner. His impulsive good-nature had
gotten the better of his judgment and his own wishes, and he had
gone to Mamie Brady and offered to marry her out of hand if she
recovered from her attempted suicide. The night before he had
watched, turn and turn about, with her mother. He gave a curious
effect of shamefaced and melancholy virtue. He followed Robert to
one side when he was hanging up his hat and coat. "I'm going to tell
you, Mr. Lloyd," he said, rather awkwardly; "maybe you won't be
interested in the midst of all this, but it all came from the
strike. She's better this morning, and I'm going to marry her, poor
girl."
Robert looked at him in a dazed fashion. For a moment he had not the
slightest idea what he was talking about.
"I'm going to marry Mamie Brady," explained Flynn. "She took
laudanum. It all happened on account of the strike. I'll own I'd
been flirting some with her, but she'd never done it if she hadn't
been out of work, too. She said so. Her mother made her life a hell.
I'm going to marry her, and take her out of it."
"It's mighty good of you," Robert said, rather stupidly.
"There ain't no other way for me to do," replied Flynn. "She thinks
the world of me, and I suppose I'm to blame."
"I hope she'll make you a good wife and you'll be happy," said
Robert.
"She thinks all creation of me," replied Flynn, with the simplest
vanity and acquiescence in the responsibility laid upon him in the
world. "That shot wasn't meant for Mr. Risley," said Flynn, as
Robert approached the office door. His eyes flashed. He himself
would gladly have been shot for the sake of Ellen Brewster. He was
going to marry, and try to fulfill his simple code of honor, but all
his life he would be married to one woman, with another ideal in his
heart; that was inevitable.
"I know it wasn't," Robert replied, grimly.
"Everything is quiet now," said Dennison, with his smooth smile.
Robert made no reply, but entered the great work-room. "He's mighty
stand-offish, now he's got his own way," Dennison remarked in a
whisper to Nellie Stone. He leaned closely over her. Flynn had
followed Robert. The girl glanced up at the foreman, who was
unmarried, although years older than she, and her face quivered a
little, but it seemed due to a surface sensitiveness.
"I want to know if you've heard that Ed is going to marry Mamie
Brady, after all," she whispered.
Dennison nodded.
She knitted her forehead over a column of figures. Dennison leaned
his face so close that his blond-bearded cheek touched hers. She
made a little impatient motion.
"Oh, go long, Jim Dennison," she said, but her tone was
half-hearted.
Dennison persisted, bending her head gently backward until he kissed
her. She pushed him away, but she smiled weakly.
"You didn't want Ed Flynn. Why, he's a Roman Catholic, and you're
Baptist, Nell," he said.
"Who said I did?" she retorted, angrily. "Why, I wouldn't marry Ed
Flynn if he was the last man in the world."
"You'd 'nough sight better marry me," said Dennison.
"Go along; you're fooling."
"No, I ain't. I mean it, honest."
"I don't want to marry anybody yet awhile," said Nellie Stone; but
when Dennison kissed her again she did not repulse him, and even
nestled her head with a little caressing motion into the hollow of
his shoulder.
Then they both started violently apart as Flynn entered.
"Say!" he proclaimed, "what do you think? The boss has just told the
hands that he'll split the difference and reduce the wages five
instead of ten per cent."