Lloyd's had been running for two months, and spring had fairly
begun. It was a very forward season. The elms were leafed out, the
cherry and peach blossoms had fallen, and the apple-trees were in
full flower. There were many orchards around Rowe. The little city
was surrounded with bowing garlands of tenderest white and rose, the
well-kept lawns in the city limits were like velvet, and
golden-spiked bushes and pink trails of flowering almond were beside
the gates. Lilacs also, flushed with rose, purpled the walls of old
houses. One morning Ellen, on her way to the factory, had for the
first time that year a realization of the full presence of the
spring. All at once she knew the goddess to be there in her whole
glory.
"Spring has really come," she said to Abby. As she spoke she jostled
a great bush of white flowers, growing in a yard close to the
sidewalk, and an overpowering fragrance, like a very retaliation of
sweetness, came in her face.
"Yes," said Abby; "it seems more like spring than it did last night,
somehow!" Abby had gained flesh, and there was a soft color on her
cheeks, so that she was almost pretty, as she glanced abroad with a
sort of bright gladness and a face ready with smiles. Maria also
looked in better health than she had done in the winter. She walked
with her arm through Ellen's.
Suddenly a carriage, driven rapidly, passed them, and Cynthia
Lennox's graceful profile showed like a drooping white flower in a
window.
Sadie Peel came up to them with a swift run. "Say!" she said, "know
who that was?"
"We've got eyes," replied Abby Atkins, shortly.
"Who said you hadn't? You needn't be so up an' comin', Abby Atkins;
I didn't know as you knew they were married, that's all. I just
heard it from Lottie Snell, whose sister works at the dressmaker's
that made the wedding fix. Weddin' fix! My land! Think of a weddin'
without a white dress and a veil! All she had was a gray silk and a
black velvet, and a black lace, and a travellin'-dress!"
Abby Atkins eyed the other girl sharply, her curiosity getting the
better of her dislike. "Who did she marry?" said she, shortly. "I
suppose she didn't marry the black velvet, or the lace, or the
travelling-dress. That's all you seem to think about."
"I _thought_ you didn't know," replied Sadie Peel, in a tone of
triumph. "They've kept it mighty still, and he's been goin' there so
long, ever since anybody can remember, that they didn't think it was
anything more now than it had been right along. Lyman Risley and
Cynthia Lennox have just got married, and they've gone down to Old
Point Comfort. My land, it's nice to have money, if you be half
blind!"
Ellen looked after the retreating carriage, and made no comment.
She was pale and thin, and moved with a certain languor, although
she held up her head proudly, and when people asked if she were not
well, answered quickly that she had never been better. Robert had
not been to see her yet. She had furtively watched for him a long
time, then she had given it up. She would not acknowledge to herself
or any one else that she was not well or was troubled in spirit. Her
courage was quite equal to the demand upon it, yet always she was
aware of a peculiar sensitiveness to all happenings, whether
directly concerned with herself or not, which made life an agony to
her, and she knew that her physical strength was not what it had
been. Only that morning she had looked at her face in the glass, and
had seen how it was altered. The lovely color was gone from her
cheeks, there were little, faint, downward lines about her mouth,
and, more than that, out of her blue eyes looked the eternal,
unanswerable question of humanity, "Where is my happiness?"
It seemed to her when she first set out that she could not walk to
the factory. That sense of the full presence of the spring seemed to
overpower her. All the revelation of beauty and sweetness seemed a
refinement of torture worse to bear than the sight of death and
misery would have been. Every blooming apple-bough seemed to strike
her full on the heart.
"Only look at that bush of red flowers in that yard," Maria said
once, and Ellen looked and was stung by the sight as by the contact
of a red flaming torch of spring. "What ails you, dear; don't you
like those flowers?" Maria said, anxiously.
"Yes, of course I do; I think they are lovely," replied Ellen,
looking.
She looked after the carriage which contained the bridal party; she
thought how the bridegroom had almost lost his eyesight to save her,
and her old adoration of Cynthia seemed to rise to a flood-tide.
Then came the thought of Robert, how he must have ceased to love
her--how some day he would be starting off on a bridal trip of his
own. Maud Hemingway, with whom she had often coupled him in her
thoughts, seemed to start up before her, all dressed in bridal
white. It seemed to her that she could not bear it all. She
continued walking, but she did not feel the ground beneath her feet,
nor even Maria's little, clinging fingers of tenderness on her arm.
She became to her own understanding like an instrument which is
played upon with such results of harmonies and discords that all
sense of the mechanism is lost.
"Well, Ellen Brewster," said Sadie Peel, in her loud, strident
voice, "I guess you wouldn't have been walkin' along here quite so
fine this mornin' if it hadn't been for Mr. Risley. You'd ought to
send him a weddin'-present--a spoon, or something."
"Shut up," said Abby Atkins; "Ellen has worried herself sick over
him as it is." She eyed Ellen anxiously as she spoke. Maria clung
more closely to her.
"Shut up yourself, Abby Atkins," returned Sadie Peel. "He's got a
wife to lead him around, and I don't see much to worry about. A
great weddin'! My goodness, if I don't get married when I'm young
enough to wear a white dress and veil, catch me gettin' married at
all!"
Sadie Peel sped on with her news to a group of girls ahead, and the
wheels of the carriage flashed out of sight in the spring sunlight.
It was quite true that Risley and Cynthia had been married that
morning. He had not entirely lost his vision, although it would
always be poor, and he would live happily, although in a measure
disappointedly, feeling that his partial helplessness was his chief
claim upon his wife's affection. He had gotten what he had longed
for for so many years, but by means which tended to his humiliation
instead of his pride. But Cynthia was radiant. In caring for her
half-blind husband she attained the spiritual mountain height of her
life. She possessed love in the one guise in which he appealed to
her, and she held him fast to the illumination of her very soul.
After the carriage had passed out of sight Abby came close on the
other side of Ellen and slid her arm through hers. "Say!" she began.
"What is it?" asked Ellen.
Abby blushed. "Oh, nothing much," she replied, in a tone unusual for
her. She took her arm away from Ellen's, and laughed a little
foolishly.
Ellen stared at her with grave wonder. She had not the least idea
what she meant.
Abby changed the subject. "Going to the park opening to-night,
Ellen?" she asked.
"No, I guess not."
"You'd better. Do go, Ellen."
"Yes, do go, Ellen; it will do you good," said Maria. She looked
into Ellen's face with the inexpressibly pure love of one innocent
girl for another.
The park was a large grove of oaks and birch-trees which had
recently been purchased by the street railway company of Rowe, and
it was to be used for the free entertainment of the people, with an
undercurrent of consideration for the financial profit of the
company.
"I'm afraid I can't go," said Ellen.
"Yes, you can; it will do you good; you look like a ghost this
morning," said Abby.
"Do go, Ellen," pleaded Maria.
However, Ellen would not have gone had it not been for a whisper of
Abby's as they came out of the factory that night.
"Look here, Ellen, you'd better go," said she, "just to show folks.
That Sadie Peel asked me this noon if it was true that you had
something on your mind, and was worrying about--well, you know
what--that made you look so."
Ellen flushed an angry red. "I'll stop for you and Maria to-night,"
she answered, quickly.
"All right," Abby replied, heartily; "we'll go on the eight-o'clock
car."
Ellen hurried home, and changed her dress after supper, putting on
her new green silk waist and her spring hat, which was trimmed with
roses. When she went down-stairs, and told her mother where she was
going, she started up.
"I declare, I'd go too if your father had come home," she said. "I
don't know when I've been anywhere; and Eva was in this afternoon
and said that she and Jim were going."
"I wonder where father is?" said Ellen, uneasily. "I don't know as I
ought to go till he comes home."
"Oh, stuff!" replied Fanny. "He's stopped to talk at the store. Oh,
here he is now. Andrew Brewster, where in the world have you been?"
she began as he entered; but his mother was following him, and
something in their faces stopped her. Fanny Brewster had lived for
years with this man, but never before had she seen his face with
just that expression of utter, unreserved joy; although joy was
scarcely the word for it, for it was more than that. It was the look
of a man who has advanced to his true measure of growth, and
regained self-respect which he had lost. All the abject bend of his
aging back, all the apologetic patience of his outlook, was gone.
She stared at him, hardly believing her eyes. She was as frightened
as if he had looked despairing instead of joyful. "Andrew Brewster,
what is it?" she asked. She tried to smile, to echo the foolish
width of grimace on his face, but her lips were too stiff.
Ellen looked at him, trembling, and very white under her knot of
roses. Andrew held out a paper and tried to speak, but he could not.
"For God's sake, what is it?" gasped Fanny.
Then Mrs. Zelotes spoke. "That old mining-stock has come up," said
she, in a harsh voice. "He'd never ought to have bought it. I should
have told him better if he had asked me, but it's come up, and it's
worth considerable more than he paid for it. I've just been down to
Mrs. Pointdexter's, and Lawyer Samson was in there seeing her about
a bond she's got that's run out, and he says the mine's going to pay
dividends, and for Andrew to hold on to part of it, anyhow. I bought
this paper, and it's in it. He never ought to have bought it, but
it's come up. I hope it will learn him a lesson. He's had enough
trouble over it."
Nothing could exceed the mixture of recrimination and exultation
with which the old woman spoke. She eyed Fanny accusingly; she
looked at Andrew with grudging triumph. "Lawyer Samson says it will
make him rich, he guesses; at any rate, he'll come out whole," said
she. "I hope it will learn you a lesson."
Andrew dropped into a chair. His face was distended with a foolish
smile like a baby's. He seemed to smile at all creation. He looked
at his wife and Ellen; then his face again took on its expression of
joyful vacuity.
Fanny went close to him and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "You
'ain't had a mite of supper, Andrew Brewster," said she; "come right
out and have something to eat."
Andrew shook his head, still smiling. His wife and daughter looked
at him alarmedly, then at each other. Then his mother went behind
him, laid a hard, old hand on each shoulder, and shook him.
"If you _have_ got a streak of luck, there's no need of your actin'
like a fool about it, Andrew Brewster," said she. "Go out and eat
your supper, and behave yourself, and let it be a lesson to you.
There you had worked and saved that little money you had in the
bank, and you bought an old mine with it, and it might have turned
out there wasn't a thing in it, no mine at all, and there was. Just
let it be a lesson to you, that's all; and go out and eat your
supper, and don't be too set up over it."
Andrew looked at his wife and mother and daughter, still with that
expression of joy, so unreserved that it was almost idiotic. They
had all stood by him loyally; he had their fullest sympathy; but had
one of them fully understood? Not one of them could certainly
understand what was then passing in his mind, which had been
straitened by grief and self-reproach, and was now expanding to hold
its full measure of joy. That poor little sum in the bank, that
accumulation of his hard earnings, which he had lost through his own
bad judgment, had meant much more than itself to him, both in its
loss and its recovery. It was more than money; it was the value of
money in the current coin of his own self-respect.
His mother shook him again, but rather gently. "Get up this minute,
and go out and eat your supper," said she; "and then I don't see why
you can't go with Fanny and me to the park opening. They say lots of
folks are goin', and there's goin' to be fireworks. It'll distract
your mind. It ain't safe for anybody to dwell too much on good luck
any more than on misfortune. Go right out and eat your supper; it's
most time for the car."
Andrew obeyed.