The Portion of Labor Part 15

"His name is Granville Joy," Ellen replied, unexpectedly.

"Why, how did you know, child?" her grandmother asked. "Seems to me he's got a highfalutin' name enough. Here you, Granville--if that's your name--don't you know any better than to--" But the boy was gone, his sled creaking on the hard snow at his heels, and a faint whoop sounded from the distance.

"I guess if I had the bringin' up of that boy there wouldn't be such doin's," said Mrs. Zelotes, severely. "His mother's a pretty woman, but I don't believe she's got much force. She wouldn't have given him such a name if she had."

"She named him after the town she came from," said f.a.n.n.y. "She told me once. She's a real smart woman, and she makes that boy stand around."

"She must; it looks as if he was standin' round pretty lively jest now," said Mrs. Zelotes. "Namin' of a boy after a town! They'd better wait and name a town after the boy if he amounts to anything."

"His mother told me he was goin' into the first grammar-school next year," said f.a.n.n.y.

"I pity the teacher," said Mrs. Zelotes, and then she recoiled, for the boy made another dart from behind a lamp-post, crossed their path, and was off again.

"My land!" gasped Mrs. Zelotes, "you speak to him, Andrew." But Andrew laughed. "Might as well speak to a whirlwind," said he. "He ain't doin' any harm, mother; it's only his boyish antics. For Heaven's sake, let him enjoy himself while he can, it won't be long before the grind-mill in there will get hold of him, and then he'll be sober enough to suit anybody," and Andrew pointed at Lloyd's as he spoke.

"Boys can be boys," said Mrs. Zelotes, severely, "and they can have a good time, but they can behave themselves."

None of them looking after that flying and whooping figure ahead had the slightest idea of the true situation. They did not know that the boy was confused by the fires, none the less ardent that they were so innocent, of a first love for Ellen; that, ever since he had seen her little, fair face on her aunt's shoulder the day when she was found, it had been even closer to his heart than his sled and his jackstones and his ball, and his hope of pudding for dinner. They did not know that he had toiled at the wood-pile of a Sat.u.r.day, and run errands after school, to earn money to buy Christmas presents for his mother and Ellen; that he had at that very minute in his purse in the bottom of his pocket the sum of eighty-nine cents, mostly in coppers, since his wage was generally payable in that coin, and his pocket sagged arduously therefrom. They did not know that he was even then bound upon an errand to the grocery store for a bag of flour to be brought home on his sled, and would thereby swell his exchequer by another cent. They did not know what dawning chords of love, and knowledge of love, that wild whoop expressed; and the boy dodged and darted and hid, and appeared before them all the way to the busy main street of Rowe; and, after they had entered the great store where the finest Christmas display was held, he stood before the window staring at Ellen vanishing in a brilliant vista, and whooped now and then, regardless of public opinion.

Ellen, when once she was inside the store, forgot everything else.

She clung more tightly to her mother's hand, as one will cling to any wonted stay of love in the midst of strangeness, even of joy, and she saw everything with eyes which photographed it upon her very soul. At first she had an impression of a dazzling incoherence of splendor, of a blare as of thousands of musical instruments all sounding different notes of delight, of a weaving pattern of colors, too intricate to master, of a mingled odor of paint and varnish, and pine and hemlock boughs, and then she spelled out the letters of the details. She looked at those counters set with the miniature paraphernalia of household life which give the first sweet taste of domesticity and housekeeping joys to a little girl.

There were the sets of dolls' furniture, and the dolls, dishes, and there was a counter with dolls' cooking-stoves and ranges bristling with the most delightful realism of pots and pans, at which she gazed so fixedly and breathlessly that she looked almost stupid. Her elders watched half in delight, half with pain, that they could not purchase everything at which she looked. Mrs. Zelotes bought some things surrept.i.tiously, hiding the parcels under her shawl. Andrew, whispering to a salesman, asked the price of a great cooking-stove at which Ellen looked long. When he heard the amount he sighed.

f.a.n.n.y touched his arm comfortingly. "There would be no sense in your buying that, if you had all the money in creation," she said, in a hushed voice. "There's a twenty-five-cent one that's good enough.

I'm going to buy that for her to-morrow. She'll never know the difference." But Andrew Brewster, nevertheless, went through the great, dazzling shop with his heart full of bitterness. It seemed to him monstrous and incredible that he had a child as beautiful and altogether wonderful as that, and could not buy the whole stock for her if she wanted it. He had never in his whole life wanted anything for himself that he could not have, enough to give him pain, but he wanted for his child with a longing that was a pa.s.sion. Her little desires seemed to him the most important and sacred needs in the whole world. He watched her with pity and admiration, and shame at his own impotence of love to give her all.

But Ellen knew nothing of it. She was radiant. She never thought of wanting all those treasures further than she already had them. She gazed at the wonders in that department where the toy animals were kept, and which resembled a miniature menagerie, the silence broken by the mooing of cows, the braying of donkeys, the whistle of canaries, and the roars of mock-lions when their powers were invoked by the attendants, and her ears drank in that discordant bable of tiny mimicry like music. There was no spirit of criticism in her.

She was utterly pleased with everything.

When her grandmother held up a toy-horse and said the fore-legs were too long, Ellen wondered what she meant. To her mind it was more like a horse than any real one she had ever seen.

As she gazed at the decorations, the wreaths, the gauze, the tinsel, and paper angels, suspended by invisible wires over the counters, and all glittering and shining and twinkling with light, a strong whiff of evergreen fragrance came to her, and the aroma of fir-balsam, and it was to her the very breath of all the mysterious joy and hitherto untasted festivity of this earth into which she had come. She felt deep in her childish soul the sense of a promise of happiness in the future, of which this was a foretaste. When she went into the department where the dolls dwelt, she fairly turned pale. They swung, and sat, and lay, and stood, as in angelic ranks, all smiling between shining fluffs of hair. It was a chorus of smiles, and made the child's heart fairly leap. She felt as if all the dolls were smiling at her. She clung fast to her mother's hand, and hid her face against her skirt.

"Why, what is the matter, Ellen?" f.a.n.n.y asked. Ellen looked up, and smiled timidly and confusedly, then at the dazzle of waxen faces and golden locks above skirts of delicate pink and blue and white, like flower petals.

"You never saw so many dolls together before, did you, Ellen?" said Andrew; then he added, wistfully, "There ain't one of 'em any bigger and prettier than your own doll, be they, Ellen?" And that, although he had never recovered from his uneasiness about that mysterious doll.

Ellen had not seen Cynthia Lennox since that morning several weeks ago when she had run away from her, except one glimpse when she was sleigh-riding. Now all at once, when they had stopped to look at some wonderful doll-houses, she saw her face to face. Ellen had been gazing with rapture at a great doll-house completely furnished, and Andrew had made one of his miserable side inquiries as to its price, and f.a.n.n.y had said, quite loud, "Lord, Andrew, you might just as well ask the price of the store! You know such a thing as that is out of the question for any child unless her father is rich as Norman Lloyd," and Ellen, who had not noticed what they were saying, looked up, when a faint breath of violets smote her sense with a quick memory, and there was the strange lady who had taken her into her house and kept her and given her the doll, the strange lady whom the gentleman said might be punished for keeping her if people were to know.

Cynthia Lennox went pale when, without knowing what was going to happen, she looked down and saw suddenly the child's innocent face looking into hers. She stood wavering in her trailing, fur-lined, and softly whispering draperies, so marked and set aside by her grace and elegance and countenance of superiority and proud calm that people turned to look after her more than after many a young beauty, and did not, for a second, know what to say or do. She had no mind to shrink from a recognition of the child; she had no fear of the result, but there was a distinct shrinking at a scene with that flashing-eyed and heavy-browed mother of the child in such a place as that. She would undoubtedly speak very loud. She expected the volley of recrimination in a high treble which would follow the announcement in that sweet little flute which she remembered so well.

"Mamma, that is the lady who kept me, and would not let me go home."

But Ellen, after a second's innocent and startled regard, turned away with no more recognition than if she had been a stranger. She turned her little back to her, and looked at the doll-house. A great flush flamed over Cynthia Lennox's face, and a qualm of mortal shame. She took an impetuous glide forward, and was just about to speak and tell the truth, whatever the consequences, and not be outdone in magnanimity by that child, when a young girl with a sickly but impudent and pretty face jostled her rudely. The utter pertness of her ignorant youth knew no respect for even the rich Miss Cynthia Lennox. "Here's your parcel, lady," she said, in her rough young voice, its shrillness modified by hoa.r.s.eness from too much shouting for cash boys during this busy season, and she thrust, with her absent eyes upon a gentleman coming towards her, a parcel into Cynthia's hands. Somehow the touch of that parcel seemed to bring Cynthia to her senses. It was a kodak which she had been purchasing for the little boy who had lived with her, and whom it had almost broken her heart to lose. She remembered what her friend Lyman Risley had said, that it might make trouble for others besides herself. She took her parcel with that involuntary meekness which the proudest learn before the matchless audacity of youthful ignorance when it fairly a.s.serts itself, and pa.s.sed out of the store to her waiting carriage. Ellen saw her.

"That was Cynthia Lennox, wasn't it?" f.a.n.n.y said, with something like awe. "Wasn't that an elegant cloak she had on? I guess it was Russian sable."

"I don't care if it was, it ain't a mite handsomer than my cape lined with squirrel," said Mrs. Zelotes.

Ellen looked intently at a game on the counter. It was ten o'clock when Ellen went home. She had been into all the princ.i.p.al stores which were decorated for Christmas. Her brain resembled a kaleidoscope as she hurried along at her mother's hand. Every thought seemed to whirl the disk, and new and more dazzling combinations appeared, but the principle which underlay the whole was that of the mystery of festivity and joy upon the face of the earth, of which this Christmas wealth was the key.

The Brewsters had scarcely reached the factory neighborhood when there was a swift bound ahead of them and the familiar whoop.

"There's that boy again," said Mrs. Zelotes.

She made various remonstrances, and even Andrew, when the boy had pa.s.sed his own home in his persistent d.o.g.g.i.ng of them, called out to him, as did f.a.n.n.y, but he was too far ahead to hear. The boy followed them quite to their gate, proceeding with wild spurts and dashes from shadow to shadow, and at last reappeared from behind one of the evergreen trees in the west yard, springing out of its long shadow with strange effect. He darted close to Ellen as she pa.s.sed in the gate, crammed something into her hand, and was gone. Andrew could not catch him, though he ran after him. "He ran like a rabbit," he said, coming breathlessly into the house, where they were looking at the treasure the boy had thrust upon Ellen. It was a marvel of a patent top, which the boy had long desired to own. He had spent all his money on it, and his mother was cheated of her Christmas present, but he had given, and Ellen had received, her first token of love.

Chapter XII

The next spring Ellen went to school. When a child who has reigned in undisputed sovereignty at home is thrust among other children at school, one of two things happens: either she is scorned and rebelled against, and her little crown of superiority rolled in the dust of the common playground, or she extends the territories of her empire. Ellen extended hers, though involuntarily, for there was no conscious thirst for power in her.

On her first morning at school, she seated herself at her desk and looked forth from the golden cloud of her curls, her eyes full of innocent contemplation, her mouth corners gravely drooping. She knew one little girl who sat not far from her. The little girl's name was Floretta Vining. Floretta was built on the scale of a fairy, with tiny, fine, waxen features, a little tossing mane of flaxen hair, eyes a most lovely and perfect blue, with no more depth in them than in the blue of china, and an expression of the sweetest and most innocent inanity and irresponsibility. n.o.body ever expected anything of this little Floretta Vining. She was always a negative success.

She smiled around from the foot of her curving cla.s.s, and never had her lessons, but she never disobeyed the rules, except that of punctuality.

Floretta was late at school. She came daintily up the aisle, two cheap bangles on one wrist slipping over a slim hand, and tinkling.

Floretta's mother had a taste for the cheaply decorative. There was an abundance of coa.r.s.e lace on Floretta's frock, and she wore a superfluous sash which was not too fresh. Floretta toed out excessively, her slender little feet pointing out sharply, almost at right angles with each other, and Ellen admired her for that. She watched her coming, planting each foot as carefully and precisely as a bird, her lace frills flouncing up and down, her bangles jingling, and thought how very pretty she was.

Ellen felt herself very loving towards the teacher and Floretta Vining. Floretta leaned forward as soon as she was seated and gazed at her with astonishment, and that deepening of amiability and general sweetness which one can imagine in the face of a doll after persistent scrutiny. Ellen smiled decorously, for she was not sure how much smiling was permissible in school. When she smiled guardedly at Floretta, she was conscious of another face regarding her, twisted slightly over a shabby little shoulder covered with an ignominious blue stuff, spotted and faded. This little girl's wisp of brown braid was tied with a shoe-string, and she looked poorer than any other child in the school, but she had an honest light in her eyes, and Ellen considered her to be rather more beautiful than Floretta.

She was Maria Atkins, Joseph Atkins's second child. Ellen sat with her book before her, and the strange, new atmosphere of the school-room stole over her senses. It was not altogether pleasant, although it was considered that the ventilation was after the most approved modern system. She perceived a strong odor of peppermints, and Floretta Vining was waving ostentatiously a coa.r.s.e little pocket-handkerchief scented with New-mown Hay. There was also a strong effusion of stale dinners and storm-beaten woollen garments, but there was, after all, that savor of festivity which Ellen was apt to discover in the new. She looked over her book with utter content. In a line with her, on the boys' side, there appeared a covertly peeping face under a thatch of light hair, and Ellen, influenced insensibly by the boy's shyly worshipful eyes, looked and saw Granville Joy. She remembered the Christmas top, and blushed very pink without knowing why, and flirted all her curls towards the boys' side.

Ellen, from having so little acquaintance with boys, had had no very well-defined sentiments towards them, but now, on being set apart with her feminine element, and separated so definitely by the middle aisle of the school-room, she began to experience sensations both of shyness and exclusiveness. She did not think the boys, in their coa.r.s.e clothes, with their cropped heads, half as pretty as the girls.

The teacher coming down the aisle laid a caressing hand on Ellen's curls, and the child looked up at her with that confidence which is exquisite flattery.

After she had pa.s.sed, Ellen heard a subtle whisper somewhere at her back; it was half audible, but its meaning was entirely plain. It signified utmost scorn and satirical contempt. It was fine-pointed and far-reaching. A number looked around. It was as expressive as a whole sentence, and, being as concentrated, was fairly explosive with meaning.

"H'm, ain't you pretty? Ain't you dreadful pretty, little dolly-pinky-rosy. H'm, teacher's partial. Ain't you pretty? Ain't you stuck up? H'm."

Ellen, not being used to the school vernacular, did not fairly apprehend all this, and least of all that it was directed towards herself. She cast a startled look around, then turned to her book.

She leaned back in her seat and held her book before her face with both hands, and began to read, spelling out the words noiselessly.

All at once, she felt a fine p.r.i.c.k on her head, and threw back one hand and turned quickly. The little girl behind was engrossed in study, and all Ellen could see was the parting in her thick black hair, for her head was supported by her two hands, her elbows were resting on her desk, and she was whispering the boundaries of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Ellen turned back to her reading-book, and recommenced studying with the painful faithfulness of the new student; then came again that small, fine, exasperating p.r.i.c.k, and she thrust her face around quickly to see that same faithfully intent little girl.

Ellen rubbed her head doubtfully, and tried to fix her attention again upon her book, but presently it came again; a p.r.i.c.k so small and fine that it strained consciousness; an infinitesimal point of torture, and this time Ellen, turning with a swift flirt of her head, caught the culprit. It was that faithful little girl, who held a black-headed belt-pin in her hand; she had been carefully separating one hair at a time from Ellen's golden curls, and tweaking it out.

Ellen looked at her with a singular expression compounded of bewilderment, of injury, of resentment, of alarm, and of a readiness to accept it all as a somewhat peculiar advance towards good-fellowship and a merry understanding. But the expression on that dark, somewhat grimy little face, looking out at her from a jungle of coa.r.s.e, black locks, was fairly impish, almost malicious.

There was not merriment in it so much as jibing; instead of that soft regard and worshipful admiration which Ellen was accustomed to find in new eyes, there was resentful envy.

Then Ellen shrank, and bristled with defiance at the same time, for she had the spirit of both the Brewsters and the Louds in her, in spite of her delicacy of organization. She was a fine instrument, capable of chords of tragedy as well as angelic strains. She saw that the little girl who was treating her so was dressed very poorly, that her dress was not only shabby, but actually dirty; that she, as well as the other girl whom she noticed, had her braid tied with an old shoe-string, and that a curious smell of leather pervaded her. Ellen continued to regard the little girl, then suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder, and the teacher, Miss Rebecca Mitch.e.l.l, was looking down at her. "What is the trouble?"

asked Miss Mitch.e.l.l. That look of half-wondering admiration to which Ellen was accustomed was in the teacher's eyes, and Ellen again thought her beautiful.

One of the first, though a scarcely acknowledged principle of beauty, is that of reflection of the fairness of the observer. Ellen being as innocently self-seeking for love and admiration as any young thing for its natural sustenance, was quick to recognize it, though she did not understand that what she saw was herself in the teacher's eyes, and not the teacher. She gazed up in that roseate face with the wide mouth set in an inverted bow of smile, curtained, as it were, with smoothly crinkled auburn hair clearly outlined against the cheeks, at the palpitating curve of shiny black-silk bosom, adorned with a festoon of heavy gold watch-chain, and thought that here was love, and beauty, and richness, and elegance, and great wisdom, calling for reverence but no fear. She answered not one word to the teacher's question, but continued to gaze at her with that look of wide-eyed and contemplative regard.