The Portion of Labor Part 24

"Very much. The sea is beautiful."

So, after all, it was the sea which she had cared for at Dragon Beach, and not the clam-bakes and merry-go-rounds and women in wrappers in the surf. Robert felt rebuked for thinking of anything but the sea in his memory of Dragon Beach; there was a wonderful water-view there.

All the time they sat there in the parlor, the murmur of conversation at the south door continued, and now and again over it swelled the fervid exhortations of Nahum Beals. Not a word could be distinguished, but the meaning was beyond doubt. That voice was full of denunciation, of frenzied appeal, of warning.

"Who is it?" asked Lloyd, after an unusually loud burst.

"Mr. Beals," replied Ellen, uneasily. She wished that he would not talk so loud.

"He sounds as if he were preaching fire and brimstone," said Robert.

"No, he is talking about the labor question," replied Ellen.

Then she looked confused, for she remembered that this young man's uncle was the head of Lloyd's, that he himself would be the head of Lloyd's some day. All at once, along with another feeling which seemed about to conquer her, came a resentment against this young man with his fine clothes and his gentle manners. Two men pa.s.sed the windows and one of them looked in, and when the electric-light flashed on his face she saw Granville Joy, and the man with him was in his shirt-sleeves. She saw those white shirt-sleeves swing into the darkness, and felt at once antagonized against herself and against Robert, and yet she knew that she had never seen a man like him.

"I suppose he has settled it," said Robert.

"I don't know," replied Ellen.

"He sounds dangerous."

"Oh, no. He is a good man. He wouldn't hurt anybody. He has always talked that way. He used to come here and talk when I was a child.

It used to frighten me at first, but it doesn't now. It is only the way that poor people are treated that frightens me."

Again Robert had a sensation of moving un.o.btrusively aside from a direct encounter. He looked across the room and started at something which he espied for the first time.

"Pardon me," he said, rising, "but I am interested in dolls. I see you still keep your doll, Miss Brewster."

Ellen sat stupefied. All at once it dawned upon her what might happen. In the corner of the parlor sat her beloved doll, still beloved, though the mother and not the doll had outgrown her first condition of love. The doll, in the identical dress in which she had come from Cynthia's so many years ago, sat staring forth with the fixed radiance of her kind, seated stiffly in a tiny rocking-chair, also one of the treasures of Ellen's childhood. It was a curious feature for the best parlor, but Ellen had insisted upon it. "She isn't going to be put away up garret because I have outgrown her,"

said she. "She's going to sit in the parlor as long as she lives.

Suppose I outgrew you, and put you up in the garret; you wouldn't like it, would you, mother?"

"You are a queer child," f.a.n.n.y had said, laughing, but she had yielded.

When young Lloyd went close to examine the doll, Ellen's heart stood still. Suppose he should recognize it? She tried to tell herself that it was impossible. Could any young man recognize a doll after all those years? How much did a boy ever care for a doll, anyway?

Not enough to think of it twice after he had given it up. It was different with a girl. Her doll meant--G.o.d only knew what her doll meant to her; perhaps it had a meaning of all humanity. But the boy, what had he cared for the doll? He had gone away out West and left it.

But Lloyd remembered. He stared down at the doll a moment. Then he took her up gingerly in her fluffy pink robes of an obsolete fashion. He held her at arm's length, and stared and stared.

Suddenly he parted the flaxen wig and examined a place on the head.

Then he looked at Ellen.

"Why, it is my old doll," he cried, with a great laugh of wonder and incredulity. "Yes, it is my old doll! How in the world did you come by my doll, Miss Brewster? Account for yourself. Are you a child kidnapper?"

Ellen, who had risen and come forward, stood before him, absolutely still, and very pale.

"Yes, it is my doll," said Lloyd, with another laugh. "I will tell you how I know. Of course I can tell her face. Dolls look a good deal alike, I suppose, but I tell you I loved this doll, and I remember her face, and that little cast in her left eye, and that beautiful, serene smile; but there's something besides. Once I burned her head with the red-hot end of the poker to see if she would wake up. I always had a notion when I was a child that it was only a question of violence to make her wake up and demonstrate some existence besides that eternal grin. So I burned her, but it made no difference; but here is the mark now--see."

Ellen saw. She had often kissed it, but she made no reply. She was occupied with considerations of the consequences.

"How did you come by her, if you don't mind telling?" said the young man again. "It is the most curious thing for me to find my old doll sitting here. Of course Aunt Cynthia gave her to you, but I didn't know that she was acquainted with you. I suppose she saw a pretty little girl getting around without a doll after I had gone, and sent her, but--"

Suddenly between the young man's face and the girl's flashed a look of intelligence. Suddenly Robert remembered all that he had heard of Ellen's childish escapade. He _knew_. He looked from her to the doll, and back again. "Good Lord!" he said. Then he set the doll down in her little chair all of a heap, and caught Ellen's hand, and shook it.

"You are a trump, that is what you are," he said; "a trump. So she--" He shook his head, and looked at Ellen, dazedly. She did not say a word, but looked at him with her lips closed tightly.

"It is better for you not to tell me anything," he said; "I don't want to know. I don't understand, and I never want to, how it all happened, but I do understand that you are a trump. How old were you?" Robert's voice took on a tone of tenderness.

"Eight," replied Ellen, faintly.

"Only a baby," said the young man, "and you never told! I would like to know where there is another baby who would do such a thing." He caught her hand and shook it again. "She was like a mother to me,"

he said, in a husky voice. "I think a good deal of her. I thank you."

Suddenly to the young man looking at the girl a conviction as of some subtle spiritual perfume came; he had seen her beauty before, he had realized her charm, but this was something different. A boundless approbation and approval which was infinitely more precious than admiration seized him. Her character began to reveal itself, to come in contact with his own; he felt the warmth of it through the veil of flesh. He felt a sense of reliance as upon an inexhaustibility of goodness in another soul. He felt something which was more than love, being purely unselfish, with as yet no desire of possession. "Here is a good, true woman," he said to himself. "Here is a good, true woman, who has blossomed from a good, true child." He saw a wonderful faithfulness shining in her blue eyes, he saw truth itself on her lips, and could have gone down at the feet of the little girl in the pink cotton frock. Going home he tried to laugh at himself, but could not succeed. It is easy to shake off the clasp of a hand of flesh, but not the clasp of another soul.

Ellen on her part was at once overwhelmed with delight and confusion. She felt the fervor of admiration in the young man's att.i.tude towards her, but she was painfully conscious of her undeservingness. She had always felt guilty about her silence and disobedience towards her parents, and as for any self-approbation for it, that had been the farthest from her thoughts. She murmured something deprecatingly, but Lloyd cut her short.

"It's no use crying off," said he; "you are one girl in a thousand, and I thank you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It might have made awful trouble. My aunt Lizzie told me what a commotion there was over it."

"I ran away," said Ellen, anxiously. Suddenly it occurred to her he might think Cynthia worse than she had been.

"Never mind," said Lloyd--"never mind. I know what you did. You held your blessed little tongue to save somebody else, and let yourself be blamed."

The door which led into the sitting-room opened, and Andrew looked in.

He made a shy motion when he saw Lloyd; still, he came forward. His own callers had gone, and he had heard voices in the parlor, and had feared Granville Joy was calling upon Ellen.

As he came forward, Ellen introduced him shyly. "This is Mr. Lloyd, father," she said. "Mr. Lloyd, this is my father." Then she added, "He came to bring back my valedictory." She was very awkward, but it was the charming awkwardness of a beautiful child. She looked exceedingly childish standing beside her father, looking into his worn, embarra.s.sed face.

Lloyd shook hands with Andrew, and said something about the valedictory, which he had enjoyed reading.

"She wrote it all herself without a bit of help from the teacher,"

said Andrew, with wistful pride.

"It is remarkably well written," said Robert.

"You didn't hear it read at the hall?" said Andrew.

"No, I had not that good fortune."

"You ought to have heard them clap," said Andrew.

"Oh, father," murmured Ellen, but she looked innocently at her father as if she delighted in his pride and pleasure without a personal consideration.

The front door opened. "That's your mother," said Andrew.

f.a.n.n.y looked into the lighted parlor, and dodged back with a little giggle.

Ellen colored painfully. "It is Mr. Lloyd, mother," she said.