The Portion of Labor Part 70

But when she went down to breakfast the next morning her mother stared at her sharply.

"Ellen Brewster, what is the matter with you?" she cried.

"Nothing. Why?"

"Nothing! You look like a ghost."

"I feel perfectly well," said Ellen. She made an effort to eat as much breakfast as usual in order that her mother should not suspect that she was troubled. When at last she set out for the factory, in the early morning dusk, she was chilled and trembling with excitement.

The storm had quite ceased, and there was a pale rose-and-violet dawn-light in the east, and presently came effects like golden-feathered shafts shooting over the sky. The road was alive with shovelling men, construction-cars of the railroad company were laboring back and forth to clear the tracks, householders were making their way from their doors to their gates, clearing their paths, lifting up the snow in great, glittering, blue-white blocks on their clumsy shovels. Everywhere were the factory employes hastening to their labor; the snow was dropping from the overladen tree branches in great blobs; there was an incessant, shrill chatter of people, and occasional shouts. It was the rally of mankind after a defeat by a primitive force of nature. It was the eternal rea.s.sertion of human life and a higher organization over the elemental. Men who had walked doggedly the morning before now moved with a spring of alacrity, although the road was very heavy. There was a new light in their eyes; their cheeks glowed. Ellen had no doubt whatever that if Robert Lloyd had not yielded the att.i.tude of the employes of Lloyd's would be one of resistance. She herself seemed to breathe in resistance to tyranny, and strength for the right in every breath of the clear, crisp morning air. She felt as if she could trample on herself and her own weakness, for the sake of justice and the inalienable good of her kind, with as little hesitation as she trampled on the creaking snow. Yet she trembled with that deadly chill before a sense of impending fate. When she returned the salutations of her friends on the road she felt that her lips were stiff.

"You look dreadful queer, Ellen," Abby Atkins said, anxiously, when she joined her. Maria also was out that morning.

"Have you heard what they are going to do?" Ellen asked, in a sort of breathless fashion.

"You mean about the wage-cutting? Don't look so, Ellen."

Maria pressed close to Ellen, and slid her thin arm through hers.

"Yes," said Ellen. "What did John Sargent say when he got home last night?"

Abby hesitated a second, looking doubtfully at Ellen. "I don't see that there is any need for you to take all this so much to heart,"

she said.

"What did he say?"

"Well," Abby replied, reluctantly, "I believe Mr. Lloyd wouldn't give in. Ellen Brewster, for Heaven's sake, don't look so!"

Ellen walked on, her head high, her face as white as death. Maria clung closely to her, her own lips quivering.

"What are the men going to do, do you think?" asked Ellen, presently, in a low voice.

"I don't know," replied Abby. "John Sargent seems to think they'll give in. He says he doesn't know what else they can do. The times are hard. I believe Amos Lee and Tom Peel are for striking, but he says he doesn't believe the men will support them. The amount of it all is, a man with money has got it all his own way. It's like fighting with bare hands to oppose him, and getting yourself cut, and not hurting him at all. He's got all the weapons. We simply can't go without work all winter. It is better to do with less than with nothing at all. What can a man like w.i.l.l.y Jones do if he hasn't any work? He and his mother would actually suffer. What could we do?"

"I don't think we ought to think so much about that," said Ellen.

"What do you think we ought to think about, for goodness' sake?"

"Whether we are doing right or not, whether we are furthering the cause of justice and humanity, or hindering it. Whether it is for good in the long run or not. There have always been martyrs; I don't see why it is any harder for us to be martyrs than for those we read about."

Sadie Peel came pressing up behind eagerly, her cheeks glowing, holding up her dress, and displaying a cheap red petticoat. "Ellen Brewster," she exclaimed, "if you dare say anything more to-day I'm goin' to talk. Father is tearing, though he goes around looking as if he wouldn't jump at a cannon-ball. Do, for Heaven's sake, keep still; and if you can't get what you want, take what you can get. I ain't goin' to be cheated out of my nea.r.s.eal cape, nohow."

"Sadie Peel, you make me tired," cried Abby Atkins. "I don't say that I'm striking, but I'd strike for all a nea.r.s.eal cape. I'm ashamed of you."

"I don't care if you be," said the girl, tossing her head. "A nea.r.s.eal cape means as much to me as some other things to you. I want Ellen Brewster to hold her tongue."

"Ellen Brewster will hold her tongue or not, just as she has a mind to," responded Abby, with a snap. She did not like Sadie Peel.

"Oh, stick up for her if you want to, and get us all into trouble."

"I shall stick up for her, you can be mighty sure of that," declared Abby.

Ellen walked on as if she heard nothing of it at all, with little Maria clinging closely to her. Robert Lloyd got out of his sleigh and went up-stairs just before they reached the factory, and she heard a very low, subdued mutter of execration.

"They don't mean to strike," she told herself. "They mean to submit."

All went to their tasks as usual. In a minute after the whistle blew the great pile was in the full hum of labor. Ellen stood for a few moments at her machine, then she left it deliberately, and made her way down the long room to where John Sargent stood at his bench cutting shoes, with a swift faithfulness born of long practice. She pressed close to him, while the men around stared.

"What is going to be done?" she asked, in a low voice.

Sargent turned and looked at her in a troubled fashion, and spoke in a pacific, soothing tone, as her father might have done. He was much older than Ellen.

"Now look here, child," he said, "I don't dare take the responsibility of urging all these men into starvation this kind of weather. The times are hard. Lloyd has some reason--"

Ellen walked away from him swiftly and went to the row of lasting-machines where Amos Lee and Tom Peel stood. She walked up to them and spoke in a loud, clear voice.

"You are not going to give in?" said she. "You don't mean to give in?"

Lee turned and gave her one stare, and left his machine.

"Not another st.i.tch of work will I do under this new wage-list, so help me, G.o.d!" he proclaimed.

Tom Peel stood for a second like an automaton, staring at them both.

Then he turned back to his post.

"I'm with ye," he said.

The lasters, for some occult reason, were always the most turbulent element in Lloyd's. In less than three minutes the enthusiasm of revolt had spread, and every laster had left his machine. In a half-hour more there was an exodus of workmen from Lloyd's. There were very few left in the factory. Among them were John Sargent, the laster who was a deacon and had formed one of the consulting committee, Sadie Peel, who wanted her nea.r.s.eal cape, and Mamie Brady, who would do nothing which she thought would displease the foreman, Flynn.

"If father's mind to be such a fool, it's no reason why I should,"

said Sadie Peel, st.i.tching determinedly away. Mamie Brady looked at Flynn, when he came up to her, with a gentle, wheedling smile. There was no one near, and she fancied that he might steal a kiss. But instead he looked at her, frowning.

"No use you tying away any longer, Mamie," he said. "The strike's on."

Chapter LIII

That was one of the strangest days which Ellen had ever pa.s.sed. The enforced idleness gave her an indefinite sense of guilt. She tried to a.s.sist her mother about the household tasks, then she tried to sew on the wrappers, but she was awkward about it, from long disuse.

"Do take your book and sit down and read and rest a little, now you've got a chance," said f.a.n.n.y, with sharp solicitude.

She said never one word concerning it to Ellen, but all the time she thought how Ellen had probably lost her lover. It was really doubtful which suffered the more that day, the mother or the daughter. f.a.n.n.y, entirely faithful to her own husband, had yet that strange vicarious affection for her daughter's lover, and a realization of her state of mind, of which a mother alone is capable. It is like a cord of birth which is never severed. Not one shadow of sad reflection pa.s.sed over the bright enthusiastic face of the girl but was pa.s.sed on, as if driven by some wind of spirit, over the face of the older woman. She reflected Ellen entirely.

As for Andrew, his anxiety was as tender, and less subtle. He did not understand so clearly, but he suffered more. He was clumsy with this mystery of womanhood, but he was unremitting in his efforts to do something for the girl. Once he tiptoed up to f.a.n.n.y and whispered, when Ellen was in the next room, that he hoped she hadn't made any mistake, that it seemed to him she looked pretty pale.