Part 75 (1/2)

That evening little Amabel, who had developed a painful desire to make herself useful, having divined the altered state of the family finances, was pulling out basting-threads, with a puckered little face bent over her work. She was a very thin child, but there was an incisive vitality in her, and somehow f.a.n.n.y and Ellen contrived to keep her prettily and comfortably clothed.

”I've got to do my duty by poor Eva's child, if I starve,” f.a.n.n.y often said.

When the side door opened, Ellen and her mother thought it was another man come to swell the company in the dining-room.

”It beats all how men like to come and sit round and talk over matters; for my part, I 'ain't got any time to talk; I've got to work,” remarked f.a.n.n.y.

”That's so,” rejoined Ellen. She looked curiously like her mother that night, and spoke like her. In her heart she echoed the sarcasm to the full. She despised those men for sitting hour after hour in a store, or in the house of some congenial spirit, or standing on a street corner, and talking--talking, she was sure, to no purpose. As for herself, she had done what she thought right; she had, as it were, cut short the thread of her happiness of life for the sake of something undefined and rather vague, and yet as mighty in its demands for her allegiance as G.o.d. And it was done, and there was no use in talking about it. She had her wrappers to make. However, she told herself, extenuatingly, ”Men can't sew, so they can't work evenings. They are better off talking here than they would be in the billiard-saloon.” Ellen, at that time of her life, had a slight, unacknowledged feeling of superiority over men of her own cla.s.s. She regarded them very much as she regarded children, with a sort of tolerant good-will and contempt. Now, suddenly, she raised her head and listened. ”That isn't another man, it's a woman--it's Abby,” she said to her mother.

”She wouldn't come out in all this rain,” replied f.a.n.n.y. As she spoke, a great, wind-driven wash of it came over the windows.

”Yes, it is,” said Ellen, and she jumped up and opened the dining-room door.

Abby had entered, as was her custom, without knocking. She had left her dripping umbrella in the entry, and her old hat was flattened on to her head with wet, and several damp locks of her hair straggled from under it and clung to her thin cheeks. She still held up her wet skirts around her, as she had held them out-of-doors, but she was gesticulating violently with her other hand. She was repeating what she had said before. Ellen had heard her indistinctly through the door.

”Yes, I mean just what I say,” she cried. ”Get up and go to work, if you are men! Stop hanging around stores and corners, and talking about the tyranny of the rich, and go to work, and make them pay you something for it, anyhow. This has been kept up long enough. Get up and go to work, if you don't want those belonging to you to starve.”

Abby caught sight of Ellen, pale and breathless, in the door, with her mother looking over her shoulder, and she addressed her with renewed violence. ”Come here, Ellen,” she said, ”and put yourself on my side. We've got to give in.”

”You go away,” cried little Amabel, in a shrill voice, looking around Ellen's arm; but n.o.body paid any attention to her.

”I never will,” returned Ellen, with a great flash, but her voice trembled.

”You've got to,” said Abby. ”I tell you there's no other way.”

”I'll die before I give up,” cried Lee, in a loud, threatening voice.

”I'm with ye,” said Tom Peel.

Dixon and the young laster who sat beside him looked at each other, but said nothing. Dixon wrinkled his forehead over his pipe.

”Then you'd better go to work quick, before some that I know of, who are enough sight better worth saving than you are, starve,” replied Abby, unshrinkingly. ”If I could I would go to Lloyd's and open it on my own account to-morrow. I believe in bravery, but nothing except fools and swine jump over precipices.”

Abby pa.s.sed through the room, sprinkling rain-drops from her drenched skirts, and went into the kitchen with Ellen. f.a.n.n.y cast an angry glance at her, then a solicitous one at her dripping garments.

”Abby Atkins, you haven't got any rubbers on,” said she.

”Rubbers!” repeated Abby.

”You just slip off those wet skirts, and Amabel will fetch you down Ellen's old black petticoat and brown dress. Amabel--”

But Abby seated herself peremptorily before the kitchen stove and extended one soaked little foot in its shabby boot. ”I'm past thinking or caring about wet skirts,” said she. ”Good Lord, what do wet skirts matter? We can't make wrappers any longer. We had to sell the sewing-machine yesterday to pay the rent or be turned out, and we haven't got a thing to eat in the house except potatoes and a little flour. We haven't had any meat for a week. Nice fare for a man like poor father and a girl like Maria! We have come down to the kitchen fire like you, but we can't keep it burning as late as this.

The rest went to bed an hour ago to keep warm. Maria has got more cold. She did seem better one spell, but now she's worse again. Our chamber is freezing cold, and we haven't had a fire in it since the strike. John Sargent has ransacked every town within twenty miles for work, but he can't get any, and his sick sister keeps sending to him for money. He looks as if he was just about done, too. He went off somewhere after supper. A great supper! He don't smoke a pipe nowadays. Father don't get the medicine he ought to have, and that cold spell he just about perished for a little whiskey. The bedroom was like ice with no fire in the sitting-room, and he didn't sleep warm. It's one awful thing after another happening. Did you know Mamie Brady took laudanum last night?”

”Good land!” said f.a.n.n.y.

”Yes, she did. Ed Flynn has been playing fast and loose with her for a long time, and she's none too well balanced, and when it came to her not having enough to eat, and to keep her warm, and her mother nagging at her all the time--you know what an awful hard woman her mother is--she got desperate. She gulped it down when the last car went past and Ed Flynn hadn't come; she had been watchin' out for him; then she told her mother, and her mother shook her, then run for Dr. Fox, and he called in Dr. Lord, and they worked with a stomach-pump till morning, and she isn't out of danger yet. Then that isn't all. w.i.l.l.y Jones's mother is failing. He was over to our house last evening, telling us about it, and he fairly cried, poor boy. He said he actually could not get her what she needed to make her comfortable this awful winter. It was all he could do with odd jobs to keep the roof over their heads, that she hadn't actually enough to eat and keep her warm. It seemed as if he would die when he told about it. And that isn't all. Those little Blake children next door are fairly starving. They are going around to the neighbors' swill-buckets--it's a fact--just like little hungry dogs, and it's precious little they find in them. Mrs. Wetherhed has let her sewing-machine go, and Edward Morse is going to be sold out for taxes. And that isn't all.” Abby lowered her voice a little. She cast an apprehensive glance at the door of the other room, and at Amabel. ”Mamie Bemis has gone to the bad. I had it straight. She's in Boston. She didn't have enough to pay for her board, and got desperate. I know her sister did wrong, but that was no reason why she should have, and I don't believe she would if it hadn't been for the strike. It's all on account of the strike. There's no use talking: before the sparrow flies in the eyes of the tiger, he'd better count the cost.”

f.a.n.n.y, quite white, stood staring from Abby to Ellen, and back again.