The Portion of Labor. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
with gloomy significance at Andrew and Fanny. Then Joseph Atkins burst out suddenly in a rattling volley of coughs.
“You hadn't ought to come out such a night as this, I'm afraid, Mr. Atkins,” said Fanny.
“He's been out jest as bad weather as this all winter,” said the young man, Nahum Beals, in an unexpectedly deep voice. “The workers of this world can't afford to take no account of weather. It's for the rich folks to look out betwixt their lace curtains and see if it looks lowery, so they sha'n't git their gold harnesses and their shiny carriages, an' their silks an' velvets an' ostrich feathers wet. The poor folks that it's life and death to have to go out whether or no, no matter if they've got an extra suit of clothes or not. They've got to go out through the drenchin' rain and the snow-drifts, to earn money so that the rich folks can have them gold-plated harnesses and them silks and velvets. Joe's been out all winter in weather as bad as this, after he's been standin' all day in a shop as hot as hell, drenched with sweat. One more time won't make much difference.”
“It would be 'nough sight better for me if it did,” said Joseph Atkins, chokingly, and still with that same seeming of hurry.
Fanny had gone out to the dining-room, and now she returned stirring some whiskey and molasses in a cup.
“Here,” said she, “you take this, Mr. Atkins; it's real good for a cough. Andrew cured a cold with it last month.”
“Mine ain't a cold, and it can't be cured in this world, but it's better for me, I guess,” said Joe Atkins, chokingly, but he took the cup.
“Now, you hadn't ought to talk so,” Fanny said. “You had ought to think of your wife and children.”
“My life is insured,” said Joseph Atkins.
“We ain't got no money and no jewelry, and no silver to leave them we love—all we've got to leave 'em is the price of our own lives,” said Nahum Beals.
“I wish I had got my life insured,” Andrew said.
“Don't talk so, Andrew,” Fanny cried, with a shudder.
“My life is insured for two thousand dollars,” Joe Atkins said, with an odd sort of pride. “I had it done three years ago. My lungs was sound as anybody's then, but that very next summer I worked up under that tin roof, and came out as wet as if I'd been dipped in the river, into an east wind, and got a chill. It was the only time I ever struck luck—to get insured before that happened. Nobody'd look at me now, and I dunno what they'd do. I 'ain't laid up a cent, I've had so much sickness in my family.”
“If you hadn't worked that summer in the annex under that tin roof, you'd be as well as you ever was now,” said Nahum Beals.
“I worked there 'longside of you that summer,” said Andrew to Joe, with bitter reminiscence. “We used to strip like a gang of convicts, and we stood in pools of sweat. It was that awful hot summer, and the room had only that one row of windows facing the east, and the wind never that way.”
“Not till I came out of the shop that night I took the chill,” said Joe.
Suddenly the young man, Nahum Beals, hit his knees a sounding slap, which made Ellen, furtively and timidly attentive at her window, jump. “It seems sometimes as if the Almighty himself was in league with 'em,” he shouted out, “but I tell you it won't last, it won't last.”
“I don't see much sign of any change for the better,” Andrew said, gloomily.
“I tell you, sir, it won't last,” repeated Nahum Beals. “I tell you, the Lord only raises 'em up higher and higher that He may dash 'em lower when the time comes. The same earth is beneath the high places of this life, and the lowly ones, and the law that governs 'em is the same, and—the higher the place the longer the fall, and the longer the fall the sorer the hurt.” Nahum Beals sprang to his feet with a strange abandon of self-consciousness and a fiery impetus for one of his New England blood. He had a delicate, nervous face, like a woman's, his blue eyes gleamed like blue flames under his overhang of white forehead, he shook his head as if it were maned like a lion, and, though he wore his thin, fair hair short, one could seem to see it flung back in glistening lines. He spread his hands as if he were addressing an audience, and as he did so the parlor door opened and Jim Tenny and Eva stood there, listening.
“I tell you, sir,” shouted Nahum Beals, “the time will come when you will all thank God that you belong to the poor and down-trodden of this earth, and not to the rich and great—the time will come. There's knives to sharpen to-day, and wood for scaffolds as plenty as in the days of the French Revolution, and the hand that marks the time of day on the clock of men's patience with wrong and oppression has near gone round to the same hour and minute.”
Andrew Brewster looked at him, with a curious expression half of disgust, half of sympathy. His sense of dignity in the face of adversity inherited from his New England race was shocked; he was not one to be blindly swayed by another's fervor even when his own wrongs were in question. He would not have made a good follower in a revolution, nor a leader. He would simply have found his own place of fixed principle and abided there. Then, too, he had a judicial mind which could combine the elements of counsels for and against his own cause.
“Now, look at here,” he said, slowly, “I ain't goin' to say I don't think we ain't in a hard place, and that there's somethin' wrong that's to blame for it, but I dunno but you go most too far, Nahum; or, rather, I dunno as you go far enough. I dunno but we've got to dig down past the poor and the rich, farther into the everlastin' foundations of things to get at what's the trouble.”
Jim Tenny, standing in the parlor doorway, with an arm around Eva's waist, broke in suddenly with a defiant laugh. “I don't care nothin' about the everlastin' foundations of things, and I don't care a darn about the rich and the poor,” he proclaimed. “I'm willin' to leave that to lecturers and dynamiters, and let 'em settle it if they can. I don't grudge the rich nothin', and I ain't goin' to call the Almighty to account for givin' somebody else the biggest piece of pie; mebbe it would give me the stomach-ache. All I'm concerned about is Lloyd's shut-down.”
“That's so,” said Eva.
“I tell you, sir, it ain't the facts of the case, but the reason for the facts, which we must think of,” maintained Nahum Beals.
“I don't care a darn for the facts nor the reasons,” said Jim Tenny; “all I care about is I'm out of work maybe till spring, with my mother dependent on me, and not a cent laid up, I've been so darned careless, and here's Eva says she won't marry me till I get work.”
“I won't,” said Eva, who was very pale, except for burning spots on her cheeks.
“She's afraid she won't get frostin' on her cake, and silk dresses, I expect,” Jim Tenny said, and laughed, but his laugh was very bitter.
“Jim Tenny, you know better than that,” Eva cried, sharply. “I won't stand that.”
Jim Tenny, with a quick motion, unwound his arm from Eva's waist and stripped up his sleeve. “There, look at that, will you,” he cried out, shaking his lean, muscular arm at them; “look at that muscle, and me tellin' her that I could earn a livin' for her, and she afraid. I can dig if I can't make shoes. I guess there's work in this world for them that's willin', and don't pick and choose.”
“There ain't,” declared Nahum, shortly.
“You can't dig when the ground's froze hard,” Eva said, with literal meaning.
“Then I'll take a pickaxe,” cried Jim.
“You can dig, but who's goin' to pay you for the diggin'?” demanded Nahum Beals.
“The idea of a girl's bein' afraid I wa'n't enough of a man to support a wife with an arm like that,” said Jim Tenny, “as if I couldn't dig for her, or fight for her.”
“The fightin' has got to come first in order to get the diggin', and the pay for it,” said Nahum.
“Now, look at here,” Andrew