The Portion of Labor Part 36

"No."

"Well, then, let's run into grandma's a minute."

"All right," said Ellen.

Mrs. Zelotes was sitting at her front window in the dusk, looking out on the street, as was her favorite custom. The old woman seldom lit a lamp in the summer evening, but sat there staring out at the lighted street and the people pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing, with her mind as absolutely pa.s.sive as regarded herself as if she were travelling and observing only that which pa.s.sed without. At those times she became in a fas.h.i.+on sensible of the motion of the world, and lost her sense of individuality in the midst of it. When her son and granddaughter entered she looked away from the window with the expression of one returning from afar, and seemed dazed for a moment.

"Hullo, mother!" said Andrew.

The room was dusky, and they moved across between the chairs and tables like two shadows.

"Oh, is it you, Andrew?" said his mother. "Who is that with you--Ellen?"

"Yes," said Ellen. "How do you do, grandma?"

Mrs. Zelotes became suddenly fully awake to the situation; she collected her scattered faculties; her keen old eyes gleamed in a shaft of electric-light from the street without, which fell full upon her face.

"Set down," said she. "Has the dressmaker gone?"

"No, she hadn't when I came out," replied Ellen, "but she's most through for to-night."

"How do your things look?"

"Real pretty, I guess."

"Sometimes I think you'd better have had Miss Patch. I hope she 'ain't got your sleeves too tight at the elbows."

"They seem to fit very nicely, grandma."

"Sleeves are very particular things; a sleeve wrong can spoil a whole dress."

Suddenly the old woman turned on Ellen with a look of extremest facetiousness and intelligence, and the girl winced, for she knew what was coming. "I see you goin' past with a young man last night, didn't I?" said she.

Ellen flushed. "Yes," she said, almost indignantly, for she had a feeling as if the veil of some inner sacredness of her nature were continually being torn aside. "I went over to Miss Lennox, to carry some sweet-peas, and Mr. Robert Lloyd was there, and he came home with me."

"Oh!" replied her grandmother.

Ellen's patience left her at the sound of that "Oh," which seemed to rasp her very soul. "You have none of you any right to talk and act as you do," said she. "You make me ashamed of you, you and mother; father has more sense. Just because a young man makes me a call to return something, and then walks home with me, because he happened to be at the house where I call in the evening! I think it's a shame. You make me feel as if I couldn't look him in the face."

"Never mind, grandma didn't mean any harm," Andrew said, soothingly.

"You needn't try to excuse me, Andrew Brewster," cried his mother, angrily. "I guess it's a pretty to-do, if I can't say a word in joke to my own granddaughter. If it had been a poor, good-for-nothing young feller workin' in a shoe-factory, I s'pose she'd been tickled to death to be joked about him, but now when it begins to look as if somebody that was worth while had come along--"

"Grandma, if you say another word about it, I will never speak to Robert Lloyd again as long as I live," declared Ellen.

"Never mind, child," whispered Andrew.

"I do mind, and I mean what I say," Ellen cried. "I won't have it.

Robert Lloyd is nothing to me, and I am nothing to him. He is no better than Granville Joy. There is nothing between us, and you make me too ashamed to think of him."

Then the old woman cried out, in a tone of triumph, "Well, there he is, turnin' in at your gate now."

Chapter XXIX

Ellen rose without a word, and fled out of the room and out of the house. It seemed to her, after what had happened, after what her mother and grandmother had said and insinuated, after what she herself had thought and felt, that she must. She longed to see Robert Lloyd, to hear him speak, as she had never longed for anything in the world, and yet she ran away as if she were driven to obey some law which was coeval with the first woman and beyond all volition of her individual self.

When she reached the head of the little cross street on which the Atkinses lived, she turned into it with relief. The Atkins house was a tiny cottage, with a little kitchen ell, and a sagging piazza across the front. On this piazza were shadowy figures, and the dull, red gleam of pipes, and one fiery tip of a cigar. Joe Atkins, and Sargent, and two other men were sitting out there in the cool of the evening. Ellen hurried around the curve of the foot-path to the kitchen door. Abby was in there, working with the swift precision of a machine. She washed and wiped dishes as if in a sort of fury, her thin elbows jerking, her mouth compressed.

When Ellen entered, Abby stared, then her whole face lighted up, as if from some internal lamp. "Why, Ellen, is that you?" she said, in a surprisingly sweet voice. Sometimes Abby's sharp American voice rang with the sweetness of a soft bell.

"I thought I'd run over a minute," said Ellen.

The other girl looked sharply at her. "Why, what's the matter?" she said.

"Nothing is the matter. Why?"

"Why, I thought you looked sort of queer. Maybe it's the light. Sit down; I'll have the dishes done in a minute, then we'll go into the sitting-room."

"I'd rather stay out here with you," said Ellen.

Abby looked at her again. "There is something the matter, Ellen Brewster," said she; "you can't cheat me. You would never have run over here this way in the world. What has happened?"

"Let's go up to your room after the dishes are done, and then I'll tell you," whispered Ellen. The men's voices on the piazza could be heard quite distinctly, and it seemed possible that their own conversation might be overheard in return.

"All right," said Abby. "Of course I have heard about your aunt,"

she added, in a low voice.

"Yes," said Ellen, and she felt shamed and remorseful that her own affairs had been uppermost in her mind, and that Abby had supposed that she might be disturbed over this great trouble of her poor aunt's.

"I think it is dreadful," said Abby. "I wish I could get hold of that woman." By "that woman" she meant the woman with whom poor Jim Tenny had eloped.

"I do," said Ellen, bitterly.

"But it's something besides that made you run over here," said Abby.

"I'll tell you when we go up to your room," replied Ellen.

When the dishes were finished, and the two girls in Abby's little chamber, seated side by side on the bed, Ellen still hesitated.

"Now, Ellen Brewster, what is the matter? You said you would tell, and you've got to," said Abby.

Ellen looked away from her, blus.h.i.+ng. The electric-light from the street shone full in the room, which was wavering with grotesque shadows.

"Well," said she, "I ran away."