Part 11 (2/2)
”She's afraid she won't get frostin' on her cake, and silk dresses, I expect,” Jim Tenny said, and laughed, but his laugh was very bitter.
”Jim Tenny, you know better than that,” Eva cried, sharply. ”I won't stand that.”
Jim Tenny, with a quick motion, unwound his arm from Eva's waist and stripped up his sleeve. ”There, look at that, will you,” he cried out, shaking his lean, muscular arm at them; ”look at that muscle, and me tellin' her that I could earn a livin' for her, and she afraid. I can dig if I can't make shoes. I guess there's work in this world for them that's willin', and don't pick and choose.”
”There ain't,” declared Nahum, shortly.
”You can't dig when the ground's froze hard,” Eva said, with literal meaning.
”Then I'll take a pickaxe,” cried Jim.
”You can dig, but who's goin' to pay you for the diggin'?” demanded Nahum Beals.
”The idea of a girl's bein' afraid I wa'n't enough of a man to support a wife with an arm like that,” said Jim Tenny, ”as if I couldn't dig for her, or fight for her.”
”The fightin' has got to come first in order to get the diggin', and the pay for it,” said Nahum.
”Now, look at here,” Andrew Brewster broke in, ”you know I'm in as bad a box as you, and I come home to-night feelin' as if I didn't care whether I lived or died; but if it's true what McGrath said to-night, we've got to use common-sense in 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 s.h.i.+rt-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 s.h.i.+nin' 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!”
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