The Portion of Labor Part 41

Ellen's deepest emotion was pity for her father, so intense that it was actual physical pain.

"Poor father! Poor father! He had to borrow the money to buy me my watch and chain," she kept repeating to herself. "Poor father!"

To her New England mind, borrowing seemed almost like robbing. She actually felt as if her father had committed a crime for love of her, but all she looked at was the love, not the guilt. Suddenly a conviction which fairly benumbed her came over her--the money in the savings-bank; that little h.o.a.rd, which had been to the imagination of herself and her mother a sheet-anchor against poverty, must be gone. "Father must have used if for something unbeknown to mother,"

she said to herself--"he must, else he would not have told Mr.

Evarts that he could not pay him." It was a hot night, but the girl shivered as she realized for the first time the meaning of the wolf at the door. "All we've got left is this house--this house and--and--our hands," thought Ellen. She saw before her her father's poor, worn hands, her mother's thin, tired hands, jerking the thread in and out of those shameful wrappers; then she looked at her own, as yet untouched by toil, as white and small and fair as flowers.

She thought of the four years before her at college, four years before she could earn anything--and in the mean time? She looked at the pile of her school-books on the table. She had been studying hard all summer. The thirst for knowledge was as intense in her as the thirst for stimulants in a drunkard.

"I ought to give up going to college, and go to work in the shop,"

Ellen said to herself, and she said it as one might drive a probing-knife into a sore. "I ought to," she repeated. And yet she was far from resolving to give up college. She began to argue with herself the expediancy, supposing that the money in the bank was gone, of putting a mortgage on the house. If her father continued to have work, they might get along and pay for her aunt, who might, as the doctor had said, not be obliged to remain long in the asylum if properly cared for. Would it not, after all, be better, since by a course at college she would be fitted to command a larger salary than she could in any other way. "I can support them all," reflected Ellen. At that time the thought of Robert Lloyd, and that awakening of heart which he had brought to pa.s.s, were in abeyance. Old powers had a.s.serted themselves. This love for her own blood and their need came between her and this new love, half of the senses, half of the spirit.

Amabel waked up in the early sultry dawn of the summer day with the bewilderment of one in a new world. She stared at the walls of the room, at the shaft of sunlight streaming in the window, then at Ellen.

"Where am I?" she inquired, in a loud, querulous plaint. Then she remembered, but she did not cry; instead, her little face took on a painfully old look.

"You are here with cousin Ellen, darling, don't you know?" Ellen replied, leaning over her, and kissing her.

Amabel wriggled impatiently away, and faced to the wall. "Yes, I know," said she.

That morning Amabel would not eat any breakfast, and f.a.n.n.y suggested that Ellen take her for a ride on the street-cars. "We can get along without you for an hour," she whispered, "and I am afraid that child will be sick."

So Ellen and Amabel set out, leaving f.a.n.n.y and the dressmaker at work, and when they were returning past the factories the noon whistles were blowing and the operatives were streaming forth.

Ellen was surprised to see her father among them as the car swept past. He walked down the street towards home, his dinner-bag dangling at his side, his back more bent than ever.

She wondered uneasily if her father was ill, for he never went home to dinner. She looked back at him as the car swept past, but he did not seem to see her. He walked with an air of seeing nothing, covering the ground like an old dog with some patient, dumb end in view, heeding nothing by the way. It puzzled her also that her father had come out of Lloyd's instead of McGuire's, where he had been employed all summer. Ellen, after she reached home, watched anxiously for her father to come into the yard, but she did not see him. She a.s.sisted about the dinner, which was a little extra on account of the dressmaker, and all the time she glanced with covert anxiety at the window, but her father did not pa.s.s it. Finally, when she went out to the pump for a pitcher of water, she set the pitcher down, and sped to the orchard like a wild thing. A suspicion had seized her that her father was there.

Sure enough, there he was, but instead of lying face down on the gra.s.s, as he had done before, he was sitting back against a tree. He had the air of having settled into such a long lease of despair that he had sought the most comfortable position for it. His face was ghastly. He looked at Ellen as she drew near, and opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead he only caught his breath. He stared hard at her, then he closed his eyes as if not to see her, and motioned her away with one hand with an inarticulate noise in his throat.

But Ellen sat down beside him. She caught his two hands and looked at him. "Father, look at me," said she, and Andrew opened his eyes.

The expression in them was dreadful, compounded of shame and despair and dread, but the girl's met them with a sort of glad triumph and strength of love. "Now look here, father," she said, "you tell me all about it. I didn't want to know last night. Now I want to know.

What is the matter?"

Andrew continued to look at her, then all at once he spoke with a kind of hoa.r.s.e shout. "I'm discharged! I'm discharged," he said, "from McGuire's; they've got a boy who can move faster in my place--a boy for less pay, who can move faster. I hurried over to Lloyd's to see if they would take me on again; I've always thought I should get back into Lloyd's, and I saw the foreman, and he told me to my face that I was too old, that they wanted younger men. And I went into the office to see Lloyd, pushed past the foreman, with him d.a.m.ning me, and I saw Lloyd."

"Was young Mr. Lloyd there?" asked Ellen, with white lips.

"No; I guess he had gone to dinner. And Lloyd looked at me, and I believe he counted every gray hair in my head, and he saw my back, and he saw my hands, and he said--he said I was too old."

Andrew s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands from Ellen's grasp, pressed them to his face, and broke into weeping. "Oh, my G.o.d, I'm too old, I'm too old!" he sobbed; "I'm out of it! I'm too old!"

Ellen regarded him, and her face had developed lines of strength hitherto unrevealed. There was no pity in it, hardly love; she looked angry and powerful. "Father, stop doing so, and look at me,"

she said. She dragged her father's hands from his face, and he stared at her with his inflamed eyes, half terrified, half sustained. At that moment he realized a strength of support as from his own lost youth, a strength as of eternal progress which was more to be relied upon than other human strength. For the first time he leaned on his child, and realized with wonder the surety of the stay.

"Now, father, you stop doing so," said Ellen. "You can get work somewhere; you are not old. Call yourself old! It is nonsense. Are you going to give in and be old because two men tell you that you are? What if your hair is gray! Ever so many young men have gray hair. You are not old, and you can get work somewhere. McGuire's and Lloyd's are not the only factories in the country."

"That ain't all," said Andrew, with eyes like a beseeching dog's on her face.

"I know that isn't all," said Ellen. "You needn't be afraid to tell me, father. You have taken the money out of the savings-bank for something."

Again Andrew would have s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands from the girl's and hidden his face, but she held them fast. "Yes, I have," he admitted, in a croaking voice.

"Well, what if you have?" asked Ellen. "You had a right to take it out, didn't you? You put it in. I don't know of anybody who had a better right to take it out than you, if you wanted to."

Andrew stared at her, as if he did not hear rightly. "You don't know what I did with it, Ellen," he stammered.

"It is n.o.body's business," replied Ellen. She had an unexplained sensation as if she were holding fast to her father's slipping self-respect which was dragging hard at her restraining love.

"I put it in a worthless gold-mine out in Colorado--the same one your uncle Jim lost his money in," groaned Andrew.

"Well, it was your money, and you had a perfect right to," said Ellen. "Of course you thought the mine was all right or you wouldn't have put the money into it."

"G.o.d knows I did."

"Well, the best business men in the world make mistakes. It is n.o.body's business whether you took the money out or not, or what you used it for, father."

"I don't see how the bills are going to be paid, and there's your poor aunt," said Andrew. He was leaning more and more heavily upon this new tower of strength, this tender little girl whom he had hitherto shielded and supported. The beautiful law of reverse of nature had come into force.

Ellen set her mouth firmly. "Don't you worry, father," said she. "We will think of some way out of it. There's a little money to pay for Aunt Eva, and maybe she won't be sick long. Does mother know, father?"

"She don't know about anything, Ellen," replied Andrew, wretchedly.

"I know she doesn't know about your getting thrown out of work--but about the bank?"

"No, Ellen."

Ellen rose. "You stay here, where it is cool, till I ring the dinner-bell, father," she said.

"I don't want any dinner, child."

"Yes, you do, father. If you don't eat your dinner you will be sick.

You come when the bell rings."

Andrew knew that he should obey, as he saw the girl's light dress disappear among the trees.

Ellen went back to the pump, and carried her pitcher of water into the house. Her mother met her at the door. "Where have you been all this time, Ellen Brewster?" she asked, in a high voice. "Everything is getting as cold as a stone."

Ellen caught her mother's arm and drew her into the kitchen, and closed the door. f.a.n.n.y turned pale as death and looked at her.

"Well, what has happened now?" she said. "Is your father killed?"

"No," said Ellen, "but he is out of work, and he can't get a job at Lloyd's, and he took all that money out of the savings-bank a long time ago, and put it into that gold-mine that Uncle Jim lost in."

f.a.n.n.y clutched the girl's arm in a grasp so hard that it left a blue mark on the tender flesh. She looked at her, but did not speak one word.

"Now, mother," said Ellen, "you must not say one word to father to scold him. He's got enough to bear as it is."

f.a.n.n.y pushed her away with sudden fierceness. "I guess I don't need to have my own daughter teach me my duty to my husband," said she.

"Where is he?"