“Don't you say one word against Jim,” said Eva again. “If ever I hear anybody say one word against him I'll—”
“You don't mean you're goin' to stan' up for him, Eva Tenny?”
“As long as I draw the breath of life, and after, if I know anything,” declared Eva. Then she straightened herself to her full height, threw back her shoulders, and burst into a furious denunciation like some prophetess of wrath. The veins on her forehead grew turgid, her lips seemed to swell, her hair seemed to move as she talked. The others shrank back and looked at her; even little Amabel hushed her sobs and stared, fascinated. “Curses on the grinding tyranny that's brought it all about, and not on the poor, weak man that fell under it!” she cried. “Jim ain't to blame. He's had bigger burdens put on his shoulders than the Lord gave him strength to bear. He had to drop 'em. Jim has tried faithful ever since we were married. He worked hard, and it wa'n't never his fault that he lost his place, but he kept losin' it. They kept shuttin' down, or dischargin' him for no reason at all, without a minute's warnin'. An' it wa'n't because he drank. Jim never drank when he had a job. He was just taken up and put down by them over him as if he was a piece on a checker-board. He lost his good opinion of himself when he saw others didn't set any more by him than to shove him off or on the board as it suited their play. He began to think maybe he wa'n't a man, and then he began to act as if he wasn't a man. And he was ashamed of his life because he couldn't support me and Amabel, ashamed of his life because he had to live on my little earnin's. He was ashamed to look me in the face, and ashamed to look his own child in the face. It was only night before last he was talkin' to me, and I didn't know what he meant then, but I know now. I thought then he meant something else, but now I know what he meant. He sat a long time leanin' his head on his hands, whilst I was sewin' on wrappers, after Amabel had gone to bed, and finally he looks up and says, ‘Eva, you was right and I was wrong.’
“‘What do you mean, Jim?’ says I.
“‘I mean you was right when you thought we'd better not get married, and I was wrong,’ says he; and he spoke terrible bitter and sad. I never heard him speak like it. He sounded like another man. I jest flung down my sewin' and went over to him, and leaned his poor head against my shoulder. ‘Jim,’ says I, ‘I 'ain't never regretted it.’ And God knows I spoke the truth, and I speak the truth when I say it now. I 'ain't never regretted it, and I don't regret it now.” Eva said the last with a look as if she were hurling defiance, then she went on in the same high, monotonous key above the ordinary key of life. “When I says that, he jest gives a great sigh and sort of pushes me away and gets up. ‘Well, I have,’ says he; ‘I have, and sometimes I think the best thing I can do is to take myself out of the way, instead of sittin' here day after day and seein' you wearin' your fingers to the bone to support me, and seein' my child, an' bein' ashamed to look her in the face. Sometimes I think you an' Amabel would be a damned sight better off without me than with me, and I'm done for anyway, and it don't make much difference what I do next.’
“‘Jim Tenny, you jest quit talkin' in such a way as this,’ says I, for I thought he meant to make away with himself, but that wa'n't what he meant. Aggie Bemis had been windin' her net round him, and he wa'n't nothin' but a man, and all discouraged, and he gave in. Any man would in his place. He ain't to blame. It's the tyrants that's over us all that's to blame.” Eva's voice shrilled higher. “Curse them!” she shrieked. “Curse them all!—every rich man in this gold-ridden country!”
“Eva Tenny, you're beside yourself,” said Fanny, who was herself white to her lips, yet she viewed her sister indignantly, as one violent nature will view another when it is overborne and carried away by a kindred passion.
“Wonder if you'd be real calm in my place?” said Eva; and as she spoke the dreadful impassibility of desperation returned upon her. It was as if she suffered some chemical change before their eyes. She became silent and seemed as if she would never speak again.
“You hadn't ought to talk so,” said Fanny, weakly, she was so terrified. “You ought to think of poor little Amabel,” she added.
With that, Eva's dreadful, expressionless eyes turned towards Amabel, and she held out her hand to her, but the child fairly screamed with terror and clung to Ellen. “Oh, Aunt Eva, don't look at her so, you frighten her,” Ellen said, trembling, and leaning her cheek against Amabel's little, cold, pale one. “Don't cry, darling,” she whispered. “It is just because poor mother feels so badly.”