The Portion of Labor Part 80

She took off her hat and smoothed her hair.

"Well, I am glad he has done that much," said f.a.n.n.y, "but I won't say a word as long as you ain't hurt."

With that she went into the kitchen, and Ellen and Andrew heard the dishes rattle. "Your mother's been dreadful nervous," whispered Andrew. He looked at Ellen meaningly. Both of them thought of poor Eva Tenny. Lately the reports with regard to her had been more encouraging, but she was still in the asylum.

Suddenly, as they stood there, a swift shadow pa.s.sed the window, and they heard a shrill scream from up-stairs. It sounded like "Mamma, mamma!" "It's Amabel!" cried Ellen. She clutched her father by the arm. "Oh, what is it--who is it?" she whispered, fearfully.

Andrew was suddenly white and horror-stricken. He took hold of Ellen, and pushed her forcibly before him into the parlor. "You stay in there till I call you," he said, in a commanding voice, the like of which the girl had never heard from him before; then he shut the door, and she heard the key turn in the lock.

"Father, I can't stay in here," cried Ellen. She ran towards the other door into the front hall, but before she could reach it she heard the key turn in that also. Andrew was convinced that Eva had escaped from the asylum, and thus made sure of Ellen's safety in case she was violent. Then he rushed out into the kitchen, and there was Amabel clinging to her mother like a little wild thing, and f.a.n.n.y weeping aloud.

When Andrew entered f.a.n.n.y flew to him. "O Andrew--O Andrew!" she cried. "Eva's come out! She's well! she's cured! She's as well as anybody! She is! She says so, and I know she is! Only look at her!"

"Mamma, mamma!" gasped Amabel, in a strange, little, pent voice, which did not sound like a child's. There was something fairly inhuman about it. "Mamma," as she said it, did not sound like a word in any known language. It was like a cry of universal childhood for its parent. Amabel clung to her mother, not only with her slender little arms, but with her legs and breast and neck; all her slim body became as a vine with tendrils of love and growth around her mother.

As for Eva, she could not have enough of her. She was intoxicated with the possession of this little creature of her own flesh and blood.

"She's grown; she's grown so tall," she said, in a high, panting voice. It was all she could seem to realize--the fact that the child had grown so tall--and it filled her at once with ineffable pain and delight. She held the little thing so close to her that the two seemed fairly one. "Mamma, mamma!" said Amabel again.

"She has--grown so tall," panted Eva.

f.a.n.n.y went up to her and tried gently to loosen her grasp of the little girl. In her heart she was not yet quite sure of her. This fierceness of delight began to alarm her. "Of course she has grown tall, Eva Tenny," she said. "It's quite a while since you were--taken sick."

"I ain't sick now," said Eva, in a steady voice. "I'm cured now. The doctors say so. You needn't be afraid, f.a.n.n.y Brewster."

"Mamma, mamma!" said Amabel. Eva bent down and kissed the little, delicate face; then she looked at her sister and at Andrew, and her own countenance seemed fairly illuminated. "I 'ain't _told_ you all," said she. Then she stopped and hesitated.

"What is it, Eva?" asked f.a.n.n.y, looking at her with increasing courage. The tears were streaming openly down her cheeks. "Oh, you poor girl, what have you been through?" she said. "What is it?"

"I 'ain't got to go through anything more," said Eva, still with that rapt look over Amabel's little, fair head. "He's--come back."

"Eva Tenny!"

"Yes, he has," Eva went on, with such an air of inexpressible triumph that it had almost a religious quality in it. "He has. He left her a long time ago. He--he wanted to come back to me and Amabel, but he was ashamed, but finally he came to the asylum, and then it all rolled off, all the trouble. The doctors said I had been getting better, but they didn't know. It was--Jim's comin' back.

He's took me home, and I've come for Amabel, and--he's got a job in Lloyd's, and he's bought me this new hat and cape." Eva flirted her free arm, and a sweep of jetted silk gleamed, then she tossed her head consciously to display a hat with a knot of pink roses. Then she kissed Amabel again. "Mamma's come back," she whispered.

"Mamma, mamma!" cried Amabel.

Andrew and f.a.n.n.y looked at each other.

"Where is he?" asked Andrew, in a slow, halting voice.

Eva glanced from one to the other defiantly. "He's outside, waitin'

in the road," said she; "but he ain't comin' in unless you treat him just the same as ever. I've set my veto on that." Eva's voice and manner as she said that were so unmistakably her own that all f.a.n.n.y's doubt of her sanity vanished. She sobbed aloud.

"O G.o.d, I'm so thankful! She's come home, and she's all right! O G.o.d, I'm so thankful!"

"What about Jim?" asked Eva, with her old, proud, defiant look.

"Of course he's comin' in," sobbed f.a.n.n.y. "Andrew, you go--"

But Andrew had already gone, unlocking the parlor door on his way.

"It's your aunt Eva, Ellen," he said as he pa.s.sed. "She's come home cured, and your uncle Jim is out in the yard, and I'm goin' to call him in. I guess you'd better go out and see her."

Chapter LX

Lloyd's had been running for two months, and spring had fairly begun. It was a very forward season. The elms were leafed out, the cherry and peach blossoms had fallen, and the apple-trees were in full flower. There were many orchards around Rowe. The little city was surrounded with bowing garlands of tenderest white and rose, the well-kept lawns in the city limits were like velvet, and golden-spiked bushes and pink trails of flowering almond were beside the gates. Lilacs also, flushed with rose, purpled the walls of old houses. One morning Ellen, on her way to the factory, had for the first time that year a realization of the full presence of the spring. All at once she knew the G.o.ddess to be there in her whole glory.

"Spring has really come," she said to Abby. As she spoke she jostled a great bush of white flowers, growing in a yard close to the sidewalk, and an overpowering fragrance, like a very retaliation of sweetness, came in her face.

"Yes," said Abby; "it seems more like spring than it did last night, somehow!" Abby had gained flesh, and there was a soft color on her cheeks, so that she was almost pretty, as she glanced abroad with a sort of bright gladness and a face ready with smiles. Maria also looked in better health than she had done in the winter. She walked with her arm through Ellen's.

Suddenly a carriage, driven rapidly, pa.s.sed them, and Cynthia Lennox's graceful profile showed like a drooping white flower in a window.

Sadie Peel came up to them with a swift run. "Say!" she said, "know who that was?"

"We've got eyes," replied Abby Atkins, shortly.

"Who said you hadn't? You needn't be so up an' comin', Abby Atkins; I didn't know as you knew they were married, that's all. I just heard it from Lottie Snell, whose sister works at the dressmaker's that made the wedding fix. Weddin' fix! My land! Think of a weddin'

without a white dress and a veil! All she had was a gray silk and a black velvet, and a black lace, and a travellin'-dress!"

Abby Atkins eyed the other girl sharply, her curiosity getting the better of her dislike. "Who did she marry?" said she, shortly. "I suppose she didn't marry the black velvet, or the lace, or the travelling-dress. That's all you seem to think about."

"I _thought_ you didn't know," replied Sadie Peel, in a tone of triumph. "They've kept it mighty still, and he's been goin' there so long, ever since anybody can remember, that they didn't think it was anything more now than it had been right along. Lyman Risley and Cynthia Lennox have just got married, and they've gone down to Old Point Comfort. My land, it's nice to have money, if you be half blind!"

Ellen looked after the retreating carriage, and made no comment.

She was pale and thin, and moved with a certain languor, although she held up her head proudly, and when people asked if she were not well, answered quickly that she had never been better. Robert had not been to see her yet. She had furtively watched for him a long time, then she had given it up. She would not acknowledge to herself or any one else that she was not well or was troubled in spirit. Her courage was quite equal to the demand upon it, yet always she was aware of a peculiar sensitiveness to all happenings, whether directly concerned with herself or not, which made life an agony to her, and she knew that her physical strength was not what it had been. Only that morning she had looked at her face in the gla.s.s, and had seen how it was altered. The lovely color was gone from her cheeks, there were little, faint, downward lines about her mouth, and, more than that, out of her blue eyes looked the eternal, unanswerable question of humanity, "Where is my happiness?"

It seemed to her when she first set out that she could not walk to the factory. That sense of the full presence of the spring seemed to overpower her. All the revelation of beauty and sweetness seemed a refinement of torture worse to bear than the sight of death and misery would have been. Every blooming apple-bough seemed to strike her full on the heart.

"Only look at that bush of red flowers in that yard," Maria said once, and Ellen looked and was stung by the sight as by the contact of a red flaming torch of spring. "What ails you, dear; don't you like those flowers?" Maria said, anxiously.

"Yes, of course I do; I think they are lovely," replied Ellen, looking.

She looked after the carriage which contained the bridal party; she thought how the bridegroom had almost lost his eyesight to save her, and her old adoration of Cynthia seemed to rise to a flood-tide.

Then came the thought of Robert, how he must have ceased to love her--how some day he would be starting off on a bridal trip of his own. Maud Hemingway, with whom she had often coupled him in her thoughts, seemed to start up before her, all dressed in bridal white. It seemed to her that she could not bear it all. She continued walking, but she did not feel the ground beneath her feet, nor even Maria's little, clinging fingers of tenderness on her arm.

She became to her own understanding like an instrument which is played upon with such results of harmonies and discords that all sense of the mechanism is lost.

"Well, Ellen Brewster," said Sadie Peel, in her loud, strident voice, "I guess you wouldn't have been walkin' along here quite so fine this mornin' if it hadn't been for Mr. Risley. You'd ought to send him a weddin'-present--a spoon, or something."

"Shut up," said Abby Atkins; "Ellen has worried herself sick over him as it is." She eyed Ellen anxiously as she spoke. Maria clung more closely to her.

"Shut up yourself, Abby Atkins," returned Sadie Peel. "He's got a wife to lead him around, and I don't see much to worry about. A great weddin'! My goodness, if I don't get married when I'm young enough to wear a white dress and veil, catch me gettin' married at all!"