The Portion of Labor. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
lookin' at things even if it goes against us. If what McGrath said was true, that Lloyd's losing money keeping on, I dunno how we can expect him or any other man to do that.”
“Why not he lose money as well as we?” demanded Nahum, fiercely.
“'Cause we 'ain't got none to lose,” cried Jim Tenny, with a hard laugh, and Eva and Fanny echoed him hysterically.
Nahum took no notice of the interruption. Tragedy, to his comprehension, never verged on comedy. One could imagine his face of intense melancholy and denunciation relaxed with laughter no more than that of the stern prophet of righteous retribution whose name he bore.
“Why shouldn't Norman Lloyd lose money?” he demanded again. “Why shouldn't he lose his fine house as well as I my poor little home? Why shouldn't he lose his purple and fine linen as well as Jim his chances of happiness? Why shouldn't he lose his diamond shirt-studs, and his carriage and horses, as well as Joe his life?”
“Well, he earned his money, I suppose,” Andrew said, slowly, “and I suppose it's for him to say what he'll do with it.”
“Earned his money? He didn't earn his money,” cried Nahum Beals. “We earned it, every dollar of it, by the sweat of our brows, and it's for us, not him, to say what shall be done with it. Well, the time will come, I tell ye, the time will come.”
“We sha'n't see it,” said Joe Atkins.
“It may come sooner than you think,” said Nahum. Then Nahum Beals, with a sudden access of bitterness, broke in. “Look at Norman Lloyd,” he cried, “havin' that great house, and horses and carriages, and dressin' like a dude, and his wife rustlin' in silks so you can hear her comin' a mile off, and shinin' like a jeweller's window—look at 'em all—all the factory bosses—livin' like princes on the money we've earned for 'em; and look at their relations, and look at the rich folks that ain't never earned a cent, that's had money left 'em. Go right up and down the Main Street, here in this city. See the Lloyds and the Maguires and the Marshalls and the Risleys and the Lennoxes—”
“There ain't none of the Lennoxes left except that one woman,” said Andrew.
“Well, look at her. There she is without chick or child, rollin' in riches, and Norman Lloyd's her own brother-in-law. Why don't she give him a little money to run the factory this winter, so you and me won't have to lose everythin'?”
“I suppose she's got a right to do as she pleases with her own,” said Andrew.
“I tell you she ain't,” shouted Nahum. “She ain't the one to say, ‘It's the Lord, and He's said it.’ Cynthia Lennox and all the women like her are the oppressors of the poor. They are accursed in the sight of the Lord, as were those women we read about in the Old Testament, with their mantles and crisping-pins. Their low voices and their silk sweeps and their shrinkin' from touchin' shoulders with their fellow-beings in a crowd don't alter matters a mite.”
“Now, Nahum,” cried Jim Tenny, with one of his sudden turns of base when his sense of humor was touched, “you don't mean to say that you want Cynthia Lennox to give you her money?”
“I'd die, and see her dead, before I'd touch a dollar of her money!” cried Nahum—“before I'd touch a dollar of her money or anything that was bought with her money, her money or any other rich person's. I want what I earn. I don't want a gift with a curse on it. Let her keep her fine things. She and her kind are responsible for all the misery of the poor on the face of the earth.”
“Seems to me you're reasonin' in a circle, Nahum,” Andrew said, good-humoredly.
“Look here, Andrew, if you're on the side of the rich, why don't you say so?” cried Eva.
“He ain't,” returned Fanny—“you know better, Eva Loud.”
“No, I ain't,” declared Andrew. “You all of you know I'm with the class I belong to; I ain't a toady to no rich folks; I don't think no more of 'em than you do, and I don't want any favors of 'em—all I want is pay for my honest work, and that's an even swap, and I ain't beholden, but I want to look at things fair and square. I don't want to be carried away because I'm out of work, though, God knows, it's hard enough.”
“I don't know what's goin' to become of us,” said Joseph Atkins—then he coughed.
“I don't,” Jim Tenny said, bitterly.
“And God knows I don't,” cried Eva, and she sat down in the nearest chair, flung up her hands before her face, and wept.
Then Fanny spoke to Ellen, who had been sitting very still and attentive, her eyes growing larger, her cheeks redder with excitement. Fanny had often glanced uneasily at her, and wished to send her to bed, but she was in the habit of warming Ellen's little chamber at the head of the stairs by leaving open the sitting-room door for a while before she went to it, and she was afraid of cooling the room too much for Joseph Atkins, and had not ventured to interrupt the conversation. Now, seeing the child's fevered face, she made up her mind. “Come, Ellen, it's your bed-time,” she said, and Ellen rose reluctantly, and, kissing her father, she went to her aunt Eva, who caught at her convulsively and kissed her, and sobbed against her cheek. “Oh, oh!” she wailed, “you precious little thing, you precious little thing, I don't know what's goin' to become of us all.”
“Don't, Eva,” said Fanny, sharply; “can't you see she's all wrought up? She hadn't ought to have heard all this talk.”
Andrew looked anxiously at his wife, rose, and caught up Ellen in his arms with a hug of fervent and protective love. “Don't you worry, father's darlin',” he whispered. “Don't you worry about anythin' you have heard. Father will always have enough to take care of you with.”
Jim Tenny, when Andrew set the child down, caught her up again with a sounding kiss. “Don't you let your big ears ache, you little pitcher,” said he, with a gay laugh. “Little doll-babies like you haven't anythin' to worry about if Lloyd's shut down every day in the year.”
“They're the very ones whom it concerns,” said Nahum Beals, when Ellen and her mother had gone up-stairs.
“Well, I wouldn't have had that little nervous thing hear all this, if I'd thought,” Andrew said, anxiously.
Joseph Atkins, whom Fanny had stationed in a sheltered corner near the stove when she opened the door, peered around at Andrew.
“Seems as if she was too young to get much sense of it,” he remarked. “My Maria, that's her age, wouldn't.”
“Ellen hears everything and makes her own sense of it,” said Andrew, “and the Lord only knows what she's made of this. I hope she won't fret over it.”
“I wish my tongue had been cut off before I said anything before her,” cried Eva. “I know just what that child is. She'll find out what a hard world she's in soon enough, anyway, and I don't want to be the one to open her eyes ahead of time.”
Ellen went to bed quietly, and her mother did not think she had paid much attention to what had been going on, and said so when she went down-stairs after Ellen had been kissed and tucked in bed and the lamp put out. “I guess she didn't mind much about it, after all,” she said to Andrew. “I guess the room was pretty warm, and that was what made her cheeks so red.”
But Ellen, after her mother left her, turned her little head towards the wall and wept softly, lest some one hear her, but none the less bitterly that she had no right conception of the cause of her grief. There was over her childish soul the awful shadow of the labor and poverty of the world. She knew naught of the substance behind the shadow, but the darkness terrified her all the more, and she cried and cried as if her heart would break. Then she, with a sudden resolution, born she could not have told of what strange understanding and misunderstanding of what she had heard that evening, slipped out of bed, groped about until she found her cherished doll, sitting in her little chair in the corner. She was accustomed to take the doll to bed with her, and had undressed her for that purpose early in the evening, but she had climbed into bed and left