The Portion of Labor Part 66

"You had better go if Mr. Lloyd will take you," Abby said, decisively. "Thank you, Mr. Lloyd; she isn't fit to be out." She urged her sister towards the sleigh, and Robert a.s.sisted her into the fur-lined nest.

"I can sit with the driver," said Robert to Abby, "if you will come with your sister."

"No, thank you," replied Abby. "I am able to walk, but I will be much obliged if you will take Maria home."

Robert sprang in beside Maria, and the sleigh slid out of sight.

"I never!" said Abby. Ellen said nothing, but plodded on, her eyes fixed on the snowy track.

"I am glad she had a chance to ride," said Granville Joy, in a tentative voice. He looked uneasily at Ellen.

"It beats the Dutch," said Abby. She also regarded Ellen with sympathy and perplexity. When they reached the street where she lived, up which the sleigh had disappeared, she let Granville go on ahead, and she spoke to Ellen in a low tone. "Why didn't he ask you?" she said.

"He did," replied Ellen.

"In the office?"

"Yes."

"And you wouldn't?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't care to accept favors from a man who oppresses all my friends!"

"He was good to take in Maria," said Abby, in a perplexed voice.

"His uncle would never have thought of it."

Ellen made no reply. She stood still in the drifting snow, with her mouth shut hard.

"You feel as if this cutting wages was a pretty hard thing?" said Abby.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, so do I. I wonder what they will do about it. I don't know how the men feel. Somehow, folks can't seem to think or plan much in a storm like this. There's the sleigh coming back."

"Good-night," Ellen said, hurriedly, and trudged on as fast as she was able in order not to have the Lloyd sleigh pa.s.s her; it had to turn after reaching the end of the street. Ellen caught up with Granville Joy. Robert, glancing over the waving fringe of fur tails, saw disappearing in the pale gleam of the electric-light the two dim figures veiled by the drifting snow. He thought to himself, with a sharp pain, that perhaps, after all, Granville Joy was the reason for her rebuff. It never occurred to him that his action in cutting the wages could have anything to do with it.

Ellen went along with Granville, who was anxious to offer her his arm, but did not quite dare. He kept thrusting out an elbow in her direction, and an inarticulate invitation died in his throat.

Finally, when they reached an unusually high drift of snow, he plucked up sufficient courage.

"Take my arm, won't you?" he said, with a pitiful attempt at ease, then stared as if he had been shot, at Ellen's reply.

"No, thank you," she said. "I think it is easier to walk alone in snow like this."

"Maybe it is," a.s.sented Granville, dejectedly. He walked on, scuffling as hard as he could to make a path for Ellen with the patient faithfulness of a dog.

"What are you going to do about the cut in wages?" Ellen asked, presently.

Granville started. The sudden transition from personalities to generalities confused him.

"What?" he said.

Ellen repeated her question.

"I don't know," said Granville. "I don't think the boys have made up their minds. I don't know what they will do. They have been weeding out union men. I suppose the union would have something to say about it otherwise. I don't know what we will do."

"I shouldn't think there would be very much doubt as to what to do,"

said Ellen.

Granville stared at her over his shoulder in a perplexed, admiring fas.h.i.+on. "You mean--?" he asked.

"I shouldn't think there would be any doubt."

"Well, I don't know. It is a pretty serious thing to get out of work in midwinter for a good many of us, and as long as the union isn't in control, other men can come in. I don't know."

"I know," said Ellen.

"You mean--?"

"I mean that I do not think it right, that it is unjust, and I believe in resisting injustice."

"Men have resisted injustice ever since the Creation," said Granville, in a bitter voice.

"Well, resistance can continue as long as life lasts," returned Ellen. Just then came a fiercer blast than ever, laden with a stinging volley of snow, and seemed to sweep the words from the girl's mouth. She bent before it involuntarily, and the conviction forced itself upon her that, after all, resistance to injustice might be as futile as resistance to storm, that injustice might be one of the primal forces of the world, and one of the conditions of its endurance, and yet with the conviction came the renewed resolution to resist.

"What can poor men do against capital unless they are backed up by some labor organization?" asked Granville. "And I don't believe there are a dozen in the factory who belong to the union. There has been an understanding, without his ever saying so that I know of, that the old boss didn't approve of it. So lots of us kept out of it, we wanted work so bad. What can we do against such odds?"

"When right is on your side, you have all the odds," said Ellen, looking back over her snow-powdered shoulder.

"Then you would strike?"

"I wouldn't submit."

"Well, I don't know how the boys feel," said Granville. "I suppose we'll have to talk it over."

"I shouldn't need to talk it over," said Ellen. "You've gone past your house, Granville."

"I ain't going to let you go home alone in such a storm as this,"

said Granville, in a tender voice, which he tried to make facetious.

"I wouldn't let any girl go home alone in such a storm."

Ellen stopped short. "I don't want you to go home with me, thank you, Granville," she said. "Your mother will have supper ready, and I can go just as well alone."

"Ellen, I won't let you go alone," said the young man, as a wilder gust came. "Suppose you should fall down?"