The Portion of Labor Part 62

"And yet if it wa'n't for us they couldn't keep the shop running at all," said the man, whose name was Tom Peel.

"That's so," said Granville, with a slight glance over his shoulder.

Ellen had met the Atkins girls, and had turned, and was coming back with them. It was as he had thought.

"If the new boss cuts down fifteen per cent., as the talk is, what be you goin' to do?" asked Tom Peel.

"I ain't goin' to stand it," replied Granville, fiercely.

"Ain't goin' to be swept clean by the new broom, hey?" said the man, with a widened grin.

"No!" thundered Granville--"not by him, nor any one like him. d.a.m.n him!"

Tom Peel's grin widened still further into an intense but silent laugh.

Meantime Ellen was walking with Abby and Maria.

"I wonder how we're going to get along with young Lloyd," said Abby.

Ellen looked at her keenly. "Why?" she said.

"Oh, I heard the men talking the other night after I'd gone to bed.

Maybe it isn't true that he's thinking of cutting down the wages."

"It can't be," said Ellen.

"I say so, too," said Maria.

"Well, I hope not," said Abby. "You can't tell. Some chimneys always have the wind whistling in them, and I suppose it's about so with a boot and shoe shop. It don't follow that there's going to be a hurricane."

They had come to the entrance of the street where the Atkins sisters lived, and Ellen parted from them.

She kept on her way quite alone. They had walked slowly, and the other operatives had either boarded cars or had gone out of sight.

Ellen, when she turned, faced the northwest, out of which a stiff wind was blowing. She thrust a hand up each jacket-sleeve, folding her arms, but she let the fierce wind smite her full in the face without blenching. She had a sort of delight in facing a wind like that, and her quick young blood kept her from being chilled. The sidewalk was frozen. There was no snow, and the day before there had been a thaw. One could see on this walk, hardened into temporary stability, the footprints of hundreds of the sons and daughters of labor. Read rightly, that sidewalk in the little manufacturing city was a hieroglyphic of toil, and perhaps of toil as tending to the advance of the whole world. Ellen did not think of that, for she was occupied with more personal considerations, thinking of the dead woman in the great Lloyd house. She pictured her lying dead on that same bed whereon she had seen her husband lie dead. All the ghastly concomitants of death came to her mind. "They will turn off all that summer heat, and leave her alone in this freezing cold," she thought. She remembered the sound of that other woman's kind voice in her ears, and she saw her face when she told her the dreadful news of her husband's death. She felt a sob rising in her throat, but forced it back. What Abby had told concerning Mrs. Lloyd's happiness in the face of death seemed to her heart-breaking, though she knew not why. That enormous, almost transcendent trust in that which was absolutely unknown seemed to engulf her.

When she reached home, her mother looked at her in astonishment. She was sewing on the interminable wrappers. Andrew was paring apples for pies. "What be you home for--be you sick?" asked f.a.n.n.y. Andrew gazed at her in alarm.

"No, I am not sick," replied Ellen, shortly. "Mrs. Lloyd is dead, and the factory's closed."

"I heard she was very low--Mrs. Jones told me so yesterday," said f.a.n.n.y, in a hushed voice. Andrew began paring another apple. He was quite pale.

"When is the funeral to be, did you hear?" asked f.a.n.n.y. Ellen was hanging up her hat and coat in the entry.

"Day after to-morrow."

"Have you heard anything about the hands sending flowers?"

"No."

"I suppose they will," said f.a.n.n.y, "as long as they sent one to him.

Well, she was a good woman, and it's a mark of respect, and I 'ain't anything to say against it, but I can't help feeling as if it was a tax."

Chapter XLVI

It was some time after Mrs. Lloyd's death. Ellen had not seen Robert except as she had caught from time to time a pa.s.sing glimpse of him in the factory. One night she overheard her father and mother talking about him after she had gone to bed, the sitting-room door having been left ajar.

"I thought he'd come and call after his aunt died," she heard f.a.n.n.y say. "I've always thought he liked Ellen, an' here he is now, with all that big factory, an' plenty of money."

"Mebbe he will," replied Andrew, with a voice in which were conflicting emotions, pride and sadness, and a struggle for self-renunciation.

"It would be a splendid thing for her," said f.a.n.n.y.

"It would be a splendid thing for _him_," returned Andrew, with a flash.

"Land, of course it would! You needn't be so smart, Andrew Brewster.

I guess I know what Ellen is, as well as you. Any man might be proud to get her--I don't care who--whether he's Robert Lloyd, or who, but that don't alter what I say. It would be a splendid chance for Ellen. Only think of that great Lloyd house, and it must be full of beautiful things--table linen, and silver, and what-not. I say it would be a splendid thing for her, and she'd be above want all her life--that's something to be considered when we 'ain't got any more than we have to leave her, and she workin' the way she is."

"Yes, that's so," a.s.sented Andrew, with a heavy sigh, as of one who looks upon life from under the mortification of an incubus of fate.

"We'd ought to think of her best good," said f.a.n.n.y, judiciously.

"I've been thinkin' every evening lately that he'd be comin'. I've had the fire in the parlor stove all ready to touch off, an' I've kept dusted in there. I know he liked her, but mebbe he's like all the rest of the big-bugs."

"What do you mean?" asked Andrew, with an inward qualm of repulsion.

He always hated unspeakably to hear his wife say "big-bugs" in that tone. Although he was far from being without humility, he was republican to the core in his estimate of his own status in his own free country. In his heart, as long as he kept the law of G.o.d and man, he recognized no "big-bugs." It was one of the taints of his wife's ancestry which grated upon him from time to time.

"Oh, well, mebbe he don't want to be seen callin' on a shop-girl."

"Then he'd better keep away, that's all!" cried Andrew, furiously.

"Oh, well, mebbe it ain't so," said f.a.n.n.y. "He's always seemed to me like a sensible feller, and I know he's liked Ellen, an' lots of girls that work in shops marry rich. Look at Annie Graves, married that factory boss over to Pemberton, an' has everythin'. She'd worked in his factory years. Mebbe it ain't that."

"Ellen don't act as if she minded anything about his not comin',"

said Andrew, anxiously.

"Land, no; she ain't that kind. She's too much like her grandmother, but there 'ain't been a night lately that she 'ain't done her hair over when she got home from the shop and changed her dress."

"She always changes her dress, don't she?" said Andrew.

"Oh yes, she always has done that. I guess she likes to get rid of the leather smell for a while; but she has put on that pretty, new, red silk waist, and I've seen her watchin', though she's never said anything."

"You don't suppose she--" began Andrew, in a voice of intensest anxiety and indignant tenderness.

"Land, no; Ellen Brewster ain't a girl to fret herself much over any man unless she's sure he wants her; trust her. Don't you worry about that. All I mean is, I know she's had a kind of an idea that he might come."