The Portion of Labor Part 31

Now Ellen told him. "You know what Miss Cynthia Lennox is going to do for me," she said, abruptly, almost boastfully, she was so eager in her partisanship of Cynthia.

Granville looked at her blankly. They were coming into the crowded, brilliantly lighted main street of the city, and their two faces were quite plain to each other's eyes.

"No, I don't," said he. "What is it, Ellen?"

"She is going to send me to Va.s.sar College."

Granville's face whitened perceptibly. There was a queer sound in his throat.

"To Va.s.sar College!" he repeated.

"Yes, to Va.s.sar College. Then I shall be able to get a good school, and teach, and help father and mother."

Granville continued to look at her, and suddenly an intense pity sprang into life in the girl's heart. She felt as if she were looking at some poor little child, instead of a stalwart young man.

"Don't look so, Granville," she said, softly.

"Of course I am glad at any good fortune which can come to you, Ellen," Granville said then, huskily. His lips quivered a little, but his eyes on her face were brave and faithful. Suddenly Ellen seemed to see in this young man a counterpart of her own father.

Granville had a fine, high forehead and contemplative outlook. He had been a good scholar. Many said that it was a pity he had to leave school and go to work. It had been the same with her father.

Andrew had always looked immeasurably above his labor. She seemed to see Granville Joy in the future just such a man, a finer animal harnessed to the task of a lower, and harnessed in part by his own loving faithfulness towards others. Ellen had often reflected that, if it hadn't been for her and her mother, her father would not have been obliged to work so hard. Now in Granville she saw another man whom love would hold to the ploughshare. A great impulse of loyalty as towards her own came over her.

"It won't make any difference between me and my old friends if I do go to Va.s.sar College," she said, without reflecting on the dangerous encouragement of it.

"You can't get into another track of life without its making a difference," returned Granville, soberly. "But I am glad. G.o.d knows I'm glad, Ellen. I dare say it is better for you than if--" He stopped then and seemed all at once to see projected on his mirror of the future this dainty, exquisite girl, with her fine intellect, dragging about a poor house, with wailing children in arm and at heel, and suddenly a great courage of renunciation came over him.

"It _is_ better, Ellen," he said, in a loud voice, like a hero's, as if he were cheering his own better impulses on to victory over his own pa.s.sions. "It is better for a girl like you, than to--"

Ellen knew that he meant to say, "to marry a fellow like me." Ellen looked at him, the st.u.r.dy backward fling of his head and shoulders, and the honest regard of his pained yet unflinching eyes, and a great weakness of natural longing for that which she was even now deprecating nearly overswept her. She was nearer loving him that moment than ever before. She realized something in him which could command love--the renunciation of love for love's sake.

"I shall never forget my old friends, whatever happens," she said, in a trembling voice, and it might have all been different had they not then arrived at Cynthia Lennox's.

"Shall I wait and go home with you, Ellen?" Granville asked, timidly.

"No, thank you. I don't know how long I shall stay," Ellen replied.

"You are real kind, but I am not a bit afraid."

"It is sort of lonesome going past the shops."

"I can take a car," Ellen said. She extended her hand to Granville, and he grasped it firmly.

"Good-night, Ellen; I am always glad of any good fortune that may come to you," he said.

But Granville Joy, going alone down the brilliant street, past the blaze of the shop-windows and the knots of loungers on the corners, reflected that he had seen the fiery tip of a cigar on the Lennox veranda, that it might be possible that young Lloyd was there, since Miss Lennox was his aunt, and that possibly the aunt's sending Ellen to Va.s.sar might bring about something in that quarter which would not otherwise have happened, and he writhed at the fancy of that sort of good fortune for Ellen, but held his mind to it resolutely as to some terrible but necessary grindstone for the refinement of spirit. "It would be a heap better for her," he said to himself, quite loud, and two men whom he was pa.s.sing looked at him curiously.

"Drunk," said one to the other.

When he was on his homeward way he overtook a slender girl struggling along with a kerosene-can in one hand and a package of sugar in the other, and, seeing that it was Abby Atkins, he possessed himself of both. She only laughed and did not start. Abby Atkins was not of the jumping or screaming kind, her nerves were so finely balanced that they recovered their equilibrium, after surprises, before she had time for manifestations. There was a curious healthfulness about the slender, wiry little creature who was overworked and under-fed, a healthfulness which seemed to result from the action of the mind upon a meagre body.

"Hullo, Granville Joy!" she said, in her good-comrade fashion, and the two went on together. Presently Abby looked up in his face.

"Know about Ellen?" said she. Granville nodded.

"Well, I'm glad of it, aren't you?" Abby said, in a challenging tone.

"Yes, I am," replied Granville, meeting her look firmly.

Suddenly he felt Abby's little, meagre, bony hand close over the back of his, holding the kerosene-can. "You're a good fellow, Granville Joy," said she.

Granville marched on and made no response. He felt his throat fill with sobs, and swallowed convulsively. Along with this womanly compa.s.sion came a compa.s.sion for himself, so hurt on his little field of battle. He saw his own wounds as one might see a stranger's.

"Think of Ellen d.o.g.g.i.ng around to a shoe-shop like me and the other girls," said Abby, "and think of her draggin' around with half a dozen children and no money. Thank the Lord she's lifted out of it.

It ain't you nor me that ought to grudge her fortune to her, nor wish her where she might have been otherwise."

"That's so," said the young man.

Abby's hand tightened over the one on the kerosene-can. "You are a good fellow, Granville Joy," she said again.

Chapter XXV

Robert Lloyd was sitting on the veranda behind the green trail of vines when Ellen came up the walk. He never forgot the girl's face looking over her bunch of sweet-peas. There was in it something indescribably youthful and innocent, almost angelic. The light from the window made her hair toss into gold; her blue eyes sought Cynthia with the singleness of blue stars. It was evident whom she had come to see. She held out her flowers towards her with a gesture at once humble and worshipful, like that of some devotee at a shrine.

She said "Good-evening" with a shy comprehensiveness, then, to Cynthia, like a child, "I thought maybe you would like some of my sweet-peas."

Both gentlemen rose, and Risley looked curiously from the young girl to Cynthia, then placed his chair for her, smiling kindly.

"The sweet-peas are lovely," Cynthia said. "Thank you, my dear. They are much prettier than any I have had in my garden this year. Please sit down," for Ellen was doubtful about availing herself of the proffered chair. She had so hoped that she might find Cynthia alone.

She had dreamed, as a lover might have done, of a tete-a-tete with her, what she would say, what Cynthia would say. She had thought, and trembled at the thought, that possibly Cynthia might kiss her when she came or went. She had felt, with a thrill of spirit, the touch of Cynthia's soft lips on hers, she had smelt the violets about her clothes. Now it was all spoiled. She remembered things which she had heard about Mr. Risley's friendship with Cynthia, how he had danced attendance upon her for half a lifetime, and thought that she did not like him. She looked at his smiling, grizzled, blond face with distrust. She felt intuitively that he saw straight through her little subterfuge of the flowers, that he divined her girlish worship at the shrine of Cynthia, and was making fun of her.

"Do you object to a cigar, Miss Brewster?" asked Robert, and Risley looked inquiringly at her.

"Oh, no," replied Ellen, with the eager readiness of a child to fit into new conditions. She thought of the sitting-room at home, blue with the rank pipe-smoke of Nahum Beals and his kind. She pictured them to herself sitting about on these warm evenings in their shirt-sleeves, and she saw the two gentlemen in their light summer clothes with their fragrant cigars at their lips, and all of a sudden she realized that between these men and the others there was a great gulf, and that she was trying to cross it. She did not realize, as later, that the gulf was one of externals, and of width rather than depth, but it seemed to her then that from one sh.o.r.e she could only see dimly the opposite. A great fear and jealousy came over her as to her own future accessibility to those of the other kind among whom she had been brought up, like her father and Granville.

Ellen felt all this as she sat beside Cynthia, who was casting about in her mind, in rather an annoyed fashion, for something to say to this young beneficiary of hers which should not have anything to do with the benefit.

Finally she inquired if she were having a pleasant vacation, and Ellen replied that she was. Risley looked at her beautiful face with the double radiance of the electric-light and the lamp-light from the window on it, giving it a curious effect. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder why everybody seemed to have such an opinion as to the talents of this girl. Why did Cynthia consider that her native ability warranted this forcible elevation of her from her own sphere and setting her on a height of education above her kind? She looked and spoke like an ordinary young girl. She had a beautiful face, it is true, and her shyness seemed due to the questioning att.i.tude of a child rather than to self-consciousness, but, after all, why did she give people that impression? Her valedictory had been clever, no doubt, and there was in it a certain fire of conviction, which, though crude, was moving; but, after all, almost any bright girl might have written it. She had been a fine scholar, no doubt, but any girl with a ready intelligence might have done as well. Whence came this inclination of all to rear the child upon a pedestal?

Risley wondered, looking at her, narrowing his keen, light eyes under reflective brows, puffing at his cigar; then he admitted to himself that he was one with the crowd of Ellen's admirers. There was somehow about the girl that which gave the impression of an enormous reserve out of all proportion to any external evidence.

"The child says nothing remarkable," he told Cynthia, after she had gone that evening, "but somehow she gives me an impression of power to say something extraordinary, and do something extraordinary.

There is electricity and steel behind that soft, rosy flesh of hers.

But all she does which is evident to the eye of man is to worship you, Cynthia."

"Worship me?" repeated Cynthia, vaguely.

"Yes, she has one of those aberrations common to her youth and her s.e.x. She is repeating a madness of old Greece, and following you as a nymph might a G.o.ddess."

"It is only because she is grateful," returned Cynthia, looking rather annoyed.