The Portion of Labor Part 30

"Poor old chap," he said to the facetious man, thrusting his face angrily towards him. "He has had a devil of a time since he begun to grow old. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Wait till you begin to drop behind. It's what's bound to come to the whole boiling of us."

"Mind your jaw," said the first man, with a scowl.

"You'd better mind yours," said Dixon, slashing furiously at the leather.

That noon Dixon offered Andrew, shamefacedly, taking him aside lest the other men see, a piece of pie of a superior sort which his mother had put into his dinner bag, but Andrew thanked him kindly and refused it. He could eat nothing whatever that noon. He kept thinking about the dressmaker, and how f.a.n.n.y would ask him again to take some of that money out of the bank to pay her, and how the money was already taken out.

That evening, when he sat down to the tea-table furnished with the best china and frosted cake in honor of the dressmaker, and heard the radiant talk about Ellen's new frills and tucks, he had a cold feeling at his heart. He was ashamed to look at the dressmaker.

"You won't know your daughter when we get her fixed up for Va.s.sar,"

she told Andrew, with a smirk which covered her face with a network of wrinkles under her blond fluff of hair.

"Do have some more cake, Miss Higgins," said f.a.n.n.y. She was radiant.

The image of her daughter in her new gowns had gone far to recompense her for all her disappointments in life, and they had not been few. "What, after all, did it matter?" she asked herself, "if a woman was growing old, if she had to work hard, if she did not know where the next dollar was coming from, if all the direct personal savor was fast pa.s.sing out of existence, when one had a daughter who looked like that?" Ellen, in a new blue dress, was ravishing. The mother looked at her when she was trying it on, with the possession of love, and the dressmaker as if she herself had created her.

After supper Ellen had to try on the dress again for her father, and turn about slowly that he might see all its fine points.

"There, what do you think of that, Andrew?" asked f.a.n.n.y, triumphantly.

"Ain't she a lady?" asked the dressmaker.

"It is very pretty," said Andrew, smiling with gloomy eyes. Then he heaved a great sigh, and went out of the south door to the steps.

"Your father is tired to-night," f.a.n.n.y said to Ellen with a meaning of excuse for the dressmaker.

The dressmaker reflected shrewdly on Andrew's sigh when she was on her way home. "Men don't sigh that way unless there's money to pay,"

she thought. "I don't believe but he has been speculating." Then she wondered if there was any doubt about her getting her pay, and concluded that she would ask for it from day to day to make sure.

So the next night after tea she asked, with one of her smirks of amiability, if it would be convenient for Mrs. Brewster to pay her that night. "I wouldn't ask for it until the end of the week," said she, "but I have a bill to pay." She said "bill" with a murmur which carried conviction of its deception. f.a.n.n.y flushed angrily.

"Of course," said she, "Mr. Brewster can pay you just as well every night if you need it." f.a.n.n.y emphasized the "need" maliciously.

Then she turned to Andrew. "Andrew," said she, "Miss Higgins needs the money, if you can pay her for yesterday and to-day."

Andrew turned pale. "Yes, of course," he stammered. "How much?"

"Six dollars," said f.a.n.n.y, and in her tone was unmistakable meaning of the dearness of the price. The dressmaker was flushed, but her thin mouth was set hard. It was as much as to say, "Well, I don't care so long as I get my money." She was unmarried, and her lonely condition had worked up her spirit into a strong att.i.tude of defiance against all masculine odds. She had once considered men from a matrimonial point of view. She had wondered if this one and that one wanted to marry her. Now she was past that, and considered with equal sharpness if this one or that one wanted to cheat her.

She had missed men's love through some failing either of theirs or hers. She did not know which, but she was determined that she would not lose money. So she bore f.a.n.n.y's insulting emphasis with rigidity, and waited for her pay.

Andrew pulled out his old pocket-book, and counted the bills. Miss Higgins saw that he took every bill in it, unless there were some in another compartment, and of that she could not be quite sure. But Andrew knew. He would not have another penny until the next week when he received his pay. In the meantime there was a bill due at the grocery store, and one at the market, and there was the debt for Ellen's watch. However, he felt as if he would rather owe every man in Rowe than this one small, sharp woman. He felt the scorn lurking within her like a sting. She seemed to him like some venomous insect. He went out to the doorstep again, and wondered if she would want her pay the next night when she went home.

Chapter XXIV

Ellen had a flower-garden behind the house, and a row of sweet-peas which was her pride. It had occurred to her that she might venture, although Cynthia Lennox had her great garden and conservatories, to carry her a bunch of these sweet-peas. She had asked her mother what she thought about it. "Why, of course, carry her some if you want to," said f.a.n.n.y. "I don't see why you shouldn't. I dare say she's got sweet-peas, but yours are uncommon handsome, and, anyway, it ought to please her to have some given her. It ain't altogether what's given, it's the giving."

So Ellen had cut a great bouquet of the delicate flowers, selecting the shades carefully, and set forth. She was as guiltily conscious as a lover that she was making an excuse to see Miss Lennox. She hurried along in delight and trepidation, her great bouquet shedding a penetrating fragrance around her, her face gleaming white out of the dusk. She had to pa.s.s Granville Joy's house on her way, and saw with some dismay, as she drew near, a figure leaning over the gate.

He pushed open the gate when she drew near, and stood waiting.

"Good-evening, Ellen," he said. He was mindful not to say "Hullo"

again. He bowed with a piteous imitation of Robert Lloyd, but Ellen did not notice it.

"Good-evening," she returned, rather stiffly, then she added, in a very gentle voice, to make amends, that it was a beautiful night.

The young man cast an appreciative glance at the crescent moon in the jewel-like blue overhead, and at the soft shadows of the trees.

"Yes, beautiful," he replied, with a sort of grat.i.tude, as if the girl had praised him instead of the night.

"May I walk along with you?" he asked, falling into step with her.

"I am going to take these sweet-peas to Miss Lennox," said Ellen, without replying directly.

She was in terror lest Granville should renew his appeal of a few weeks before, and she was in terror of her own pity for him, and also of that mysterious impulse and longing which sometimes seized her to her own wonder and discomfiture. Sometimes, in thinking of Granville Joy, and his avowal of love, and the touch of his hand on hers, and his lips on hers, she felt, although she knew she did not love him, a softening of her heart and a quickening of her pulse which made her wonder as to her next movement, if it might be something which she had not planned. And always, after thinking of Granville, she thought of Robert Lloyd; some mysterious sequence seemed to be established between the two in the girl's mind, though she was not in love with either.

Ellen was just at that period almost helpless before the demands of her own nature. No great stress in her life had occurred to awaken her to a stanchness either of resistance or yielding. She was in the full current of her own emotions, which, added to a goodly flood inherited from the repressed pa.s.sion of New England ancestors, had a strong pull upon her feet. Sooner or later she would be given that hard shake of life which precipitates and organizes in all strong natures, but just now she was in a ferment. She walked along under the crescent moon, with the young man at her side whose every thought and imagination was dwelling upon her with love. She was conscious of a tendency of her own imagination in his direction, or rather in the direction of the love and pa.s.sion which he represented, and all the time her heart was filled with the ideal image of another woman. She was prostrated with that hero-worship which belongs to young and virgin souls, and yet she felt the drawing of that other admiration which is more earthly and more fascinating, as it shows the jewel tints in one's own soul as well as in the other.

As for Granville Joy, who had scrubbed his hands and face well with scented soap to take away the odor of the leather, and put on a clean shirt and collar, being always prepared for the possibility of meeting this dainty young girl whom he loved, he walked along by her side, casting, from time to time, glances which were pure admiration at the face over the great bunch of sweet-peas.

"Don't you want me to carry them for you?" he asked.

"No, thank you," replied Ellen. "They are nothing to carry."

"They're real pretty flowers," said Granville, timidly.

"Yes, I think they are."

"Mother planted some, but hers didn't come up. Mother has got some beautiful nasturtiums. Perhaps you would like some," he said, eagerly.

"No, thank you, I have some myself," Ellen said, rather coldly. "I'm just as much obliged to you."

Granville quivered a little and shrank as a dog might under a blow.

He saw this dainty girl-shape floating along at his side in a flutter of wonderful draperies, one hand holding up her skirts with maddening revelations of whiteness. If a lily could hold up her petals out of the dust she might do it in the same fashion as Ellen held her skirts, with no coa.r.s.e clutching nor crumpling, not immodestly, but rather with disclosures of modesty itself. Ellen's wonderful daintiness was one of her chief charms. There was an immaculateness about her attire and her every motion which seemed to extend to her very soul, and hedged her about with the lure of unapproachableness. It was more that than her beauty which roused the imagination and quickened the pulses of a young man regarding her.

Granville Joy did not feel the earth beneath his feet as he walked with Ellen. The scent of the sweet-peas came in his face, he heard the soft rustle of Ellen's skirts and his own heart-beats. She was very silent, since she did not wish him to go with her, though she was all the time reproaching herself for it. Granville kept casting about for something to say which should ingratiate him with her. He was resolved to say nothing of love to her.

"It is a beautiful night," he said.

"Yes, it is," agreed Ellen, and she looked at the moon. She felt the boy's burning, timid, worshipful eyes on her face. She trembled, and yet she was angry and annoyed. She felt in an undefined fashion that she herself was the summer night and the flowers and the crescent moon, and all that was fair and beautiful in the whole world to this other soul, and shame seized her instead of pride. He seemed to force her to a sight of her own pettiness, as is always the case when love is not fully returned. She made an impatient motion with the shoulder next Granville, and walked faster.

"You said you were going to Miss Lennox's," he remarked, anxiously, feeling that in some way he had displeased her.

"Yes, to carry her some sweet-peas."

"She must have been real good-looking when she was young," Granville said, injudiciously.

"When she was young," retorted Ellen, angrily. "She is beautiful now. There is not another woman in Rowe as beautiful as she is."

"Well, she is good-looking enough," agreed Granville, with unreasoning jealousy. He had not heard of Ellen's good fortune. His mother had not told him. She was a tenderly sentimental woman, and had always had her fancies with regard to her son and Ellen Brewster. When she heard the news she reflected that it would perhaps remove the girl from her boy immeasurably, that he would be pained, so she said nothing. Every night when he came home she had watched his face to see if he had heard.