The Portion of Labor. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Well, Maria has got some coffee all made, and a nice little piece of steak ready to cook.”
“You holler and ask him.”
“What is the use? Just see the way he walks; I know without askin'.”
However, as Andrew neared his house he involuntarily quickened his pace, and his head and shoulders became suddenly alert. It had occurred to him that possibly Fanny and Eva might have had some news of Ellen during his absence. Possibly she might have come home even.
Then he was hailed by the stout woman standing at the door of the next house. “Heard anything yet, Andrew?”
Andrew shook his head, and looked with despairing eyes at the windows where he used to see Ellen's little face. She had not come, then, for these women would have known it. He entered the house, and Fanny greeted him with a tremulous cry. “Have you heard anything; oh, have you heard anything, Andrew?”
Eva sprang forward and clutched him by the arm.
“Have you?”
Andrew shook his head, and moved her hand from his arm, and pushed past her roughly.
Fanny stood in his way, and threw her arms around him with a wild, sobbing cry, but he pushed her away also with sternness, and went to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. The four women—his wife, her sister, and the two neighbors—stood staring at him; his face was terrible as he dipped the water from the pail on the sink corner, and the terribleness of it was accentuated by the homely and every-day nature of his action.
They all stared, then Fanny burst out with a loud and desperate wail. “He won't speak to me, he pushes me away, when it is our child that's lost—his as well as mine. He hasn't any feelings for me that bore her. He only thinks of himself. Oh, oh, my own husband pushes me away.”
Andrew went on washing his hands and his ghastly face, and made no reply. He had actually at that moment not the slightest sympathy with his wife. All his other outlets of affection were choked by his concern for his lost child; and as for pity, he kept reflecting, with a cold cruelty, that it served her right—it served both her and her sister right. Had not they driven the child away between them?
He would not eat the supper which the neighbors had prepared for him; finally he went across the yard to his mother's. It seemed to him at that time that his mother could enter into his state of mind better than any one else.
When he went out, Fanny called after him, frantically, “Oh, Andrew, you ain't going to leave me?”
When he made no response, she gazed for a second at his retreating back, then her temper came to her aid. She caught her sister's arm, and pulled her away out of the kitchen. “Come with me,” she said, hoarsely. “I've got nobody but you. My own husband leaves me when he is in such awful trouble, and goes to that old woman, that has always hated me, for comfort.”
The sisters went into Fanny's bedroom, and sat down on the edge of the bed, with their arms round each other. “Oh, Fanny!” sobbed Eva; “poor, poor Fanny! if Andrew turns against you, I will stand by you as long as I live. I will work my fingers to the bone to support you and Ellen. I will never get married. I will stay and work for you and her. And I will never get mad with you again as long as I live, Fanny. Oh, it was all my fault, every bit my fault, but, but—” Eva's voice broke; suddenly she clasped her sister tighter, and then she went down on her knees beside the bed, and hid her tangled head in her lap. “Oh, Fanny,” she sobbed out miserably, “there ain't much excuse for me, but there's a little. When Jim Tenny stopped goin' with me last summer, my heart 'most broke. I don't care if you do know it. That's what made me so much worse than I used to be. Oh, my heart 'most broke, Fanny! He's treated me awful, but I can't get over it; and now little Ellen's gone, and I drove her away!”
Fanny bent over her sister, and pressed her head close to her bosom. “Don't you feel so bad, Eva,” said she. “You wasn't any more to blame than I was, and we'll stand by each other as long as we live.”
“I'll work my fingers to the bone for you and Ellen, and I'll never get married,” said Eva again.
Chapter IV
Ellen Brewster was two nights and a day at Cynthia Lennox's, and no one discovered it. All day the searching-parties passed the house. Once Ellen was at the window, and one of the men looked up and saw her, and since his solicitude for the lost child filled his heart with responsiveness towards all childhood, he waved his hand and nodded, and bade another man look at that handsome little kid in the window.
“Guess she's about Ellen's size,” said the other.
“Shouldn't wonder if she looked something like her,” said the first.
“Answers the description well enough,” said the other, “same light hair.”
Both of the men waved their hands to Ellen as they passed on, but she shrank back afraid. That was about ten o'clock of the morning of the day after Miss Lennox had taken her into her house. She had waked at dawn with a full realization of the situation. She remembered perfectly all that had happened. She was a child for whom there were very few half-lights of life, and no spiritual twilights connected her sleeping and waking hours. She opened her eyes and looked around the room, and remembered how she had run away and how her mother was not there, and she remembered the strange lady with that same odd combination of terror and attraction and docility with which she had regarded her the night before. It was a very cold morning, and there was a delicate film of frost on the windows between the sweeps of the muslin curtains, and the morning sun gave it a rosy glow and a crusting sparkle as of diamonds. The sight of the frost had broken poor Andrew Brewster's heart when he saw it, and reflected how it might have meant death to his little tender child out under the blighting fall of it, like a little house-flower.
Ellen lay winking at it when Cynthia Lennox came into the room and leaned over her. The child cast a timid glance up at the tall, slender figure clad in a dressing-gown of quilted crimson silk which dazzled her eyes, accustomed as she was to morning wrappers of dark-blue cotton at ninety-eight cents apiece; and she was filled with undefined apprehensions of splendor and opulence which might overwhelm her simple grasp of life and cause her to lose all her old standards of value.
She had always thought her mother's wrappers very beautiful, but now look at this! Cynthia's face, too, in the dim, rosy light, looked very fair to the child, who had no discernment for those ravages of time of which adults either acquit themselves or by which they measure their own. She did not see the faded color of the woman's face at all; she did not see the spreading marks around mouth and eyes, or the faint parallels of care on the temples; she saw only that which her unbiased childish vision had ever sought in a human face, love and kindness, and tender admiration of herself; and her conviction of its beauty was complete. But at the same time a bitter and piteous jealousy for her mother and home, and all that she had ever loved and believed in, came over her. What right had this strange woman, dressed in a silk dress like that, to be leaning over her in the morning, and looking at her like that—to be leaning over her in the morning instead of her own mother, and looking at her in that way, when she was not her mother? She shrank away towards the other side of the bed with that nestling motion which is the natural one of all young and gentle children even towards vacancy, but suddenly Cynthia was leaning close over her, and she was conscious again of that soft smother of violets, and Cynthia's arms were embracing all her delicate little body with tenderest violence, folding her against the soft red silk over her bosom, and kissing her little, blushing cheeks with the lightest and carefulest kisses, as though she were a butterfly which she feared to harm with her adoring touch.
“Oh, you darling, you precious darling!” whispered Cynthia. “Don't be afraid, darling; don't be afraid, precious; you are very safe; don't