The Portion of Labor Part 72

"All this can make very little difference to you," Robert urged.

"You know how I feel. That is, it can make very little difference to you if you still feel as you did. You must know that I have only been waiting--that I am eager and impatient to lift you out of it all."

Ellen faced him. "Do you think I would be lifted out of it now?" she said.

"Why, but, Ellen, you cannot--"

"Yes, I can. You do not know me."

"Ellen, you are under a total misapprehension of my position."

"No, I am not. I apprehend it perfectly."

"Ellen, you cannot let this separate us."

Ellen looked straight ahead in silence.

"You at least owe it to me to tell me if, irrespective of this, your feelings have changed," Robert said, in a low voice.

Ellen said nothing.

"You may have come to prefer some one else," said Robert.

"I prefer no one before my own, before all these poor people who are a part of my life," Ellen cried out, suddenly, her face flaming.

"Then why do you refuse to let me act for their final good? You must know what it means to have them thrown out of work in midwinter. You know the factory will remain closed for the present on account of the strike."

"I did not doubt it," said Ellen, in a hard voice. All the bitter thoughts to which she would not give utterance were in her voice.

"I cannot continue to run the factory at the present rate and meet expenses," said Robert; "in fact, I have been steadily losing for the last month." He had, after all, descended to explanation. "It amounts to my either reducing the wage-list or closing the factory altogether," he continued. "For my own good I ought to close the factory altogether, but I thought I would give the men a chance."

Robert thought by saying that he must have finally settled matters.

It did not enter his head that she would really think it advisable for him to continue losing money. The pure childishness of her att.i.tude was something really beyond the comprehension of a man of business who had come into hard business theories along with his uncle's dollars.

"What if you do lose money?" said Ellen.

Robert stared at her. "I beg your pardon?" said he.

"What if you do lose money?"

"A man cannot conduct business on such principles," replied Robert.

"There would soon be no business to conduct. You don't understand."

"Yes, I do understand fully," replied Ellen.

Robert looked at her, at the clear, rosy curve of her young cheek, the toss of yellow hair above a forehead as candid as a baby's, at her little, delicate figure, and all at once such a rage of masculine insistence over all this obstinacy of reasoning was upon him that it was all he could do to keep himself from seizing her in his arms and forcing her to a view of his own horizon. He felt himself drawn up in opposition to an opponent at once too delicate, too unreasoning, and too beloved to encounter. It seemed as if the absurdity of it would drive him mad, and yet he was held to it. He tried to give a desperate wrench aside from the main point of the situation. He leaned over Ellen, so closely that his lips touched her hair.

"Ellen, let us leave all this," he pleaded; "let me talk to you. I had to wait a little while. I knew you would understand that, but let me talk to you now."

Ellen sat as rigid as marble. "I wish to talk of nothing besides the matter at hand, Mr. Lloyd," said she. "That is too close to my heart for any personal consideration to come between."

Chapter LIV

When Robert went home in the winter twilight he was more miserable than he had ever been in his life. He felt as if he had been a.s.saulting a beautiful alabaster wall of unreason. He felt as if that which he could shatter at a blow had yet held him in defiance.

The idea of this girl, of whom he had thought as his future wife, deliberately setting herself against him, galled him inexpressibly, and in spite of himself he could not quite free his mind of jealousy. On his way home he stopped at Lyman Risley's office, and found, to his great satisfaction, that he was alone, writing at his desk. Even his stenographer had gone home. He turned around when Robert entered, and looked at him with his quizzical, yet kindly, smile.

"Well, how are you, boy?" he said.

Robert dropped into the first chair, and sat therein, haunched up as in a lapse of despair and weariness.

"What is the matter?" asked Risley.

"You have heard about the trouble in the factory?"

For answer Risley held up a night's paper with glaring head-lines.

"Yes, of course it is in the papers," a.s.sented Robert, wearily.

Risley stared at him in a lazily puzzled fas.h.i.+on. "Well," he said, "what is it all about? Why are you so broken up about it?" Risley laid considerable emphasis on the _you_.

"Yes," cried Robert, in a sudden stress of indignation. "You look at it like all the rest. Why are all the laborers to be petted and coddled, and the capitalists held up to execration? Good Lord, isn't there any pity for the rich man without his drop of water, in the Bible or out? Are all creation born with blinders on, and can they only see before their noses?"

"What are you talking about, Robert?" said Risley, laughing a little.

"I say why should all the sympathy go to the workmen who are acting like the pig-headed idiots they are, and none for the head of the factory, who has the sharp-edged, red-hot brunt of it all to bear?"

"You wouldn't look at it that way if you were one of the poor men just out on strike such weather as this," said Risley, dryly. He glanced as he spoke at the window, which was beginning to be thickly furred with frost in spite of the heat of the office. Robert followed his gaze, and noted the spreading fairy jungle of crystalline trees and flowers on the broad field of gla.s.s.

"Do you think that is the worst thing in the world to bear?" he demanded, angrily.

"What? Cold and hunger not only for yourself, but for those you love?"

"Yes."

"Well, I think it is pretty bad," replied Risley.

"Well, suppose you had to bear that, at least for those you loved, and--and--" said the young man, lamely.

Risley remained silent, waiting.

"If I had been my uncle instead of myself I should simply have shut down with no ado," said Robert, presently, in an angry, argumentative voice.

"I suppose you would; and as it was?"

"As it was, I thought I would give them a chance. Good G.o.d, Risley, I have been running the factory at a loss for a month as it is. With this new wage-list I should no more than make expenses, if I did that. What was it to me? I did it to keep them in some sort of work.

As for myself, I would much rather have shut down and done with it, but I tried to keep it running on their account, poor devils, and now I am execrated for it, and they have deliberately refused what little I could offer."