The Portion of Labor Part 32

"Grat.i.tude may be a factor in it, but it is very far from being the whole of the matter. It is one of the spring madnesses of life; but don't be alarmed, it will be temporary in the case of a girl like that. She will easily be led into her natural track of love. Do you know, Cynthia, that she is one of the most normal, typical young girls I ever saw, and that makes me wonder more at this impression of unusual ability which she undoubtedly gives. She has all the weaknesses of her age and s.e.x, she is much younger than some girls of her age, and yet there is the impression which I cannot shake off."

"I have it, too," said Cynthia, rather impatiently.

"Cynthia Lennox, I don't believe you care in the least for this young devotee of yours, for all you are heaping benefits upon her,"

Risley said, looking at her quizzically.

"I am not sure that I do," replied Cynthia, calmly.

"Then why on earth--?"

Suddenly Cynthia began speaking rapidly and pa.s.sionately, straightening herself in her chair. "Oh, Lyman, do you think I could do a thing like that, and not repent it and suffer remorse for it all these years?" she cried.

"A thing like that?"

"Like stealing that child," Cynthia replied, in a whisper.

"Stealing the child? You did not steal the child."

"Yes, I did."

"Why, it was only a few hours that you kept her."

"What difference does it make whether you steal anything for a few hours or a lifetime? I kept her, and she was crying for her mother, and her mother was suffering tortures all that time. Then I kept it secret all these years. You didn't know what I have suffered, Lyman."

Cynthia regarded him with a wan look.

Risley half laughed, then checked himself. "My poor girl, you have the New England conscience in its worst form," he said.

"You yourself told me it was a serious thing I was doing," Cynthia said, half resentfully. "One does not wish one's sin treated lightly when one has hugged its p.r.i.c.ks to one's bosom for so long--it detracts from the dignity of suffering."

"So I did, but all those years ago!"

"If you don't leave me my remorse, how can I atone for the deed?"

"Cynthia, you are horribly morbid."

"Maybe you are right, maybe it is worse than morbid. Sometimes I think I am unnatural, out of drawing, but I did not make myself, and how can I help it?" Cynthia spoke with a pathetic little laugh.

She leaned her head back in her chair, and looked at a star through a gap in the vines. The shadows of the leaves played over her long, white figure. Again to Risley, gazing at her, came the conviction as of subtle spiritual deformity in the woman; she was unnatural in something the same fashion that an orchid is unnatural, and it was worse, because presumably the orchid does not know it is an orchid and regret not being another, more evenly developed, flower, and Cynthia had a full realization and a mental mirror clear enough to see the twist in her own character.

Risley had never kissed her in his life, but that night, when they parted, he laid a hand on her soft, gray hair, and smoothed it back with a masculine motion of tenderness, leaving her white forehead, which had a candid, childish fulness about the temples, bare. Then he put his lips to it.

"You are a silly girl, Cynthia," he said.

"I wish I were different, Lyman," she responded, and, he felt, with a double meaning.

"I don't," he said, and stroked her hair with a great tenderness, which seemed for the time to quite fill and satisfy his heart. He was a man of measureless patience, born to a firm conviction of the journey's end.

"There are worse things than loving a good woman your whole life and never having her," he said to himself as he went home, but he said it without its full meaning. Risley's "nerves" were always lighted by the lamp of his own hope, which threw a gleam over unknown seas.

Chapter XXVI

Robert Lloyd accompanied Ellen home, though she had said timidly that she was not in the least afraid, that she would not trouble any one, that she could take a car. Cynthia herself had insisted that Robert should escort her.

"It's too late for you to be out alone," she said, and the girl seemed to perceive dimly a hedge of conventionality which she had not hitherto known. She had often taken a car when she was alone of an evening, without a thought of anything questionable. Some of the conductors lived near Ellen, and she felt as if she were under personal friendly escort. "I know the conductor on that car, and it would take me right home, and I am not in the least afraid," she said to Robert, as the car came rocking down the street when they emerged from Cynthia's grounds.

"It's a lovely night," Robert said, speaking quickly as they paused on the sidewalk. "I am not going to let you go alone, anyway. We will take the car if you say so, but what do you say to walking?

It's a lovely night."

It actually flashed through Ellen's mind--to such small issues of finance had she been accustomed--that the young man might insist upon paying her car-fare if he went with her on the car.

"I would like to walk, but I am sorry to put you to so much trouble," she said, a little awkwardly.

"Oh, I like to walk," returned Robert. "I don't walk half enough,"

and they went together down the lighted street. Suddenly to Ellen there came a vivid remembrance, so vivid that it seemed almost like actual repet.i.tion of the time when she, a little child, maddened by the sudden awakening of the depths of her nature, had come down this same street. She saw that same brilliant market-window where she had stopped and stared, to the momentary forgetfulness of her troubles in the spectacular display of that which was entirely outside them.

Curiously enough, Robert drew her to a full stop that night before the same window. It was one of those strange cases of apparent telepathy which one sometimes notices. When Ellen looked at the market-window, with a flash of reminiscence, Robert immediately drew her to a stop before it. "That is quite a study in color," he said.

"I fancy there are a good many unrecognized artists among market-men."

"Yes, it is really beautiful," agreed Ellen, looking at it with eyes which had changed very little from their childish outlook. Again she saw more than she saw. The window differed materially from that before which she had stood fascinated so many years ago, for that was in a different season. Instead of frozen game and winter vegetables, were the products of summer gardens, and fruits, and berries. The color scheme was dazzling with great heaps of tomatoes, and long, emerald ears of corn, and baskets of apples, and gold crooks of summer squashes, and speckled pods of beans.

"Suppose," said Robert, as they walked on, "that all the market-men who had artistic tastes had art educations and set up studios and painted pictures, who would keep the markets?"

He spoke gayly. His manner that night was younger and merrier than Ellen had ever seen it. She was naturally rather grave herself. What she had seen of life had rather disposed her to a hush of respect than to hilarity, but somehow his mood began to infect her.

"I don't know," she answered, laughing, "I suppose somebody would keep the markets."

"Yes, but they would not be as good markets. That is, they would not do as artistic markets, and they would not serve the higher purpose of catering to the artistic taste of man, as well as to his bodily needs."

"Perhaps a picture like that is just as well and better than it would be painted and hung on a wall," Ellen admitted, reflectively.

"Just so--why is it not?" Robert said, in a pleased voice.

"Yes, I think it is," said Ellen. "I do think it is better, because everybody can see it there. Ever so many people will see it there who would not go to picture-galleries to see it, and then--"

"And then it may go far to dignify their daily needs," said Robert.

"For instance, a poor man about to buy his to-morrow's dinner may feel his soul take a little fly above the prices of turnips and cabbages."

"Maybe," said Ellen, but doubtfully.

"Don't you think so?"

"The prices of turnips and cabbages may crowd other things out,"

Ellen replied, and her tone was sad, almost tragic. "You see I am right in it, Mr. Lloyd," she said, earnestly.