The Portion of Labor Part 53

Robert looked at her, his own face working, then he could bear it no longer. He was over on the sofa beside Ellen and had her in his arms. "You poor little thing," he whispered. "Don't. I have loved you ever since the first time I saw you. I ought to have told you so before. Don't you love me a little, Ellen?"

But Ellen released herself with a motion of firm elusiveness and looked at him. The tears still stood in her eyes, but her face was steady. "I have been putting you out of my mind," said she.

"But could you?" whispered Robert, leaning over her.

Ellen did not reply, but looked down and trembled.

"Could you?" repeated Robert, and there was in his voice that masculine insistence which is a true note of nature, and means the subjugation of the feminine into harmony.

Ellen did not speak, but every line in her body betrayed helpless yielding.

"You know you could not," said Robert with triumph, and took her in his arms again.

But he reckoned without the girl, who was, after all, stronger than her natural instincts, and able to rise above and subjugate them.

She freed herself from him resolutely, rose, and stood before him, looking at him quite unfalteringly and accusingly.

"Why do you come now?" she asked. "You say you have loved me from the first. You came to see me, you walked home with me, and said things to me that made me think--" She stopped.

"Made you think what, dear?" asked Robert. He was pale and indescribably anxious and appealing. It was suddenly revealed to him that this plum was so firmly attached to its bough of individuality that possibly love itself could not loosen it.

"You made me think that perhaps you did care a little," said Ellen, in a low but unfaltering voice.

"You thought quite right, only not a little, but a great deal," said Robert, firmly.

"Then," said Ellen, "the moment I gave up going to college and went to work you never came to see me again; you never even spoke to me in the shop; you went right past me without a look."

"Good G.o.d! child," Robert interposed, "don't you know why I did that?"

Ellen looked at him bewildered, then a burning red overspread her face. "Yes," she replied. "I didn't. But I do now. They would have talked."

"I thought you would understand that," said Robert. "I had only the best motives for that. I cannot speak to you in the factory any more than I have done. I cannot expose you to remark; but as for my not calling, I believed what you said to my aunt and to me. I thought that you had deliberately preferred a lower life to a higher one--that you preferred earning money to something better. I thought--"

Robert fairly started as Ellen began talking with a fire which seemed to make her scintillate before his eyes.

"You talk about a lower and a higher life," said she. "Is it true?

Is Va.s.sar College any higher than a shoe-factory? Is any labor which is honest, and done with the best strength of man, for the best motives, to support the lives of those he loves, or to supply the needs of his race, any higher than another? Where would even books be without this very labor which you despise--the books which I should have learned at college? Instead of being benefited by the results of labor, I have become part of labor. Why is that lower?"

Robert stared at her.

"I have come to feel all this since I went to work," said Ellen, speaking in a high, rapid voice. "When I went to work, it was, as you thought, for my folks, to help them, for my father was out of work, and there was no other way. But since I have been at work I have realized what work really is. There is a glory over it, as there is over anything which is done faithfully on this earth for good motives, and I have seen the glory, and I am not ashamed of it; and while it was a sacrifice at first, now, while I should like the other better, I do not think it is. I am proud of my work."

The girl spoke with a sort of rapt enthusiasm. The young man stared, bewildered.

Robert caught Ellen's little hands, which hung, tightly clinched, in the folds of her dress, and drew her down to his side again. "See here, dear," he said, "maybe you are right. I never looked at it in this way before, but you do not understand. I love you; I want to marry you. I want to make you my wife, and lift you out of this forever."

Then again Ellen freed herself, and straightened her head and faced him. "There is nothing for me to be lifted out of," said she. "You speak as if I were in a pit. I am on a height."

"My G.o.d! child, how many others feel as you, do you think, out of the whole lot?" cried Robert.

"I don't know," replied Ellen, "but it is true. What I feel is true."

Robert caught up her little hand and kissed it. Then he looked at its delicate outlines. "Well, it may be true," he said, "but look at yourself. Can't you see that you are not fashioned for manual labor?

Look at this little hand."

"That little hand can do the work," Ellen replied, proudly.

"But, dear," said Robert, "admitting all this, admitting that you are not in a position to be lifted--admitting everything--let us come back to our original starting-point. Dear, I love you, and I want you for my wife. Will you marry me?"

"No, I never can," replied Ellen, with a long, sobbing breath of renunciation.

"Why not? Don't you love me?"

"Yes. I think it must be true that I do. I said I wouldn't; I have tried not to, but I think it must be true that I do."

"Then why not marry me?"

"Because it will be impossible for my father and mother to get along and support Amabel and Aunt Eva without my help," said Ellen, directly.

"But I--" began Robert.

"Do you think I will burden you with the support of a whole family?"

said Ellen.

"Ellen, you don't know what I would be willing to do if I could have you," cried the young man, fervently. And he was quite in earnest.

At that moment it seemed to him that he could even come and live there in that house, with the hideous lamp, and the crushed-plush furniture, and the eager mother; that he could go without anything and everything to support them if only he could have this girl who was fairly storming his heart.

"I wouldn't be willing to have you," said Ellen, firmly. "As things are now I cannot marry you, Mr. Lloyd. Then, too," she added, "you asked me just now how many people looked at all this labor as I do, and I dare say not very many. I know not many of your kind of people. I know how your uncle looks at it. It would hurt you socially to marry a girl from a shoe-shop. Whether it is just or not, it would hurt you. It cannot be, as matters are now, Mr.

Lloyd."

"But you love me?"

Ellen suddenly, as if pushed by some mighty force outside herself, leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms. He tipped back her face and kissed her, and looked down at her masterfully.

"We will wait a little," he said. "I will never give you up as long as I live if you love me, Ellen."

Chapter x.x.xIX

When Ellen went out into the sitting-room that evening, after Robert Lloyd had taken leave, her father and mother were still there, although the callers had gone. Both of them looked furtively at her as she went through the room to the kitchen to get a lamp, then they looked at each other. f.a.n.n.y was glowing with half shamefaced triumph; Andrew was pale. Ellen did not re-enter the room, but simply paused at the door, before going up-stairs, and they had a vision of a face in a tumult of emotions, with eyes and hair illuminated to excess of brilliancy by the lamp which she held.

"Good-night," she called, and her voice did not sound like her own.

"Something has happened," f.a.n.n.y whispered to Andrew, when Ellen's chamber door had closed.

"Do you suppose she's goin' to?" whispered Andrew, in a sort of breathless fashion. His eyes on his wife's face were sad and wistful.