Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Shoulders of Atlas

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The Shoulders of Atlas

A Novel

By
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Author of
"By the Light of the Soul" "The Debtor"
"Jerome" "A New England Nun" etc.

New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
MCMVIII

Copyright, 1908, by the New York Herald Co.
All rights reserved.
Published June, 1908.

Chapter I

Henry Whitman was walking home from the shop in the April afternoon.
The spring was very early that year. The meadows were quite green,
and in the damp hollows the green assumed a violet tinge--sometimes
from violets themselves, sometimes from the shadows. The trees
already showed shadows as of a multitude of bird wings; the
peach-trees stood aloof in rosy nimbuses, and the cherry-trees were
faintly a-flutter with white through an intense gloss of gold-green.

Henry realized all the glory of it, but it filled him with a renewal
of the sad and bitter resentment, which was his usual mood, instead
of joy. He was past middle-age. He worked in a shoe-shop. He had
worked in a shoe-shop since he was a young man. There was nothing
else in store for him until he was turned out because of old age.
Then the future looked like a lurid sunset of misery. He earned
reasonably good wages for a man of his years, but prices were so high
that he was not able to save a cent. There had been unusual expenses
during the past ten years, too. His wife Sylvia had not been well,
and once he himself had been laid up six weeks with rheumatism. The
doctor charged two dollars for every visit, and the bill was not
quite settled yet.

Then the little house which had come to him from his father,
encumbered with a mortgage as is usual, had all at once seemed to
need repairs at every point. The roof had leaked like a sieve, two
windows had been blown in, the paint had turned a gray-black, the
gutters had been out of order. He had not quite settled the bill for
these repairs. He realized it always as an actual physical incubus
upon his slender, bowed shoulders. He came of a race who were
impatient of debt, and who regarded with proud disdain all gratuitous
benefits from their fellow-men. Henry always walked a long route from
the shop in order to avoid passing the houses of the doctor and the
carpenter whom he owed.

Once he had saved a little money; that was twenty-odd years before;
but he had invested it foolishly, and lost every cent. That
transaction he regarded with hatred, both of himself and of the
people who had advised him to risk and lose his hard-earned dollars.
The small sum which he had lost had come to assume colossal
proportions in his mind. He used, in his bitterest moments, to reckon
up on a scrap of paper what it might have amounted to, if it had been
put out at interest, by this time. He always came out a rich man, by
his calculations, if it had not been for that unwise investment. He
often told his wife Sylvia that they might have been rich people if
it had not been for that; that he would not have been tied to a
shoe-shop, nor she have been obliged to work so hard.

Sylvia took a boarder--the high-school principal, Horace Allen--and
she also made jellies and cakes, and baked bread for those in East
Westland who could afford to pay for such instead of doing the work
themselves. She was a delicate woman, and Henry knew that she worked
beyond her strength, and the knowledge filled him with impotent fury.
Since the union had come into play he did not have to work so many
hours in the shop, and he got the same pay, but he worked as hard,
because he himself cultivated his bit of land. He raised vegetables
for the table. He also made the place gay with flowers to please
Sylvia and himself. He had a stunted thirst for beauty.

In the winter he found plenty to do in the extra hours. He sawed wood
in his shed by the light of a lantern hung on a peg. He also did what
odd jobs he could for neighbors. He picked up a little extra money in
that way, but he worked very hard. Sometimes he told Sylvia that he
didn't know but he worked harder than he had done when the shop time
was longer. However, he had been one of the first to go, heart and
soul, with the union, and he had paid his dues ungrudgingly, even
with a fierce satisfaction, as if in some way the transaction made
him even with his millionaire employers. There were two of them, and
they owned houses which appeared like palaces in the eyes of Henry
and his kind. They owned automobiles, and Henry was aware of a
cursing sentiment when one whirred past him, trudging along, and
covered him with dust.

Sometimes it seemed to Henry as if an automobile was the last straw
for the poor man's back: those enormous cars, representing fortunes,
tyrannizing over the whole highway, frightening the poor old country
horses, and endangering the lives of all before them. Henry read with
delight every account of an automobile accident. "Served them right;
served them just right," he would say, with fairly a smack of his
lips.

Sylvia, who had caught a little of his rebellion, but was gentler,
would regard him with horror. "Why, Henry Whitman, that is a dreadful
wicked spirit!" she would say, and he would retort stubbornly that he
didn't care; that he had to pay a road tax for these people who would
just as soon run him down as not, if it wouldn't tip their old
machines over; for these maniacs who had gone speed-mad, and were
appropriating even the highways of the common people.

Henry had missed the high-school principal, who was away on his
spring vacation. He liked to talk with him, because he always had a
feeling that he had the best of the argument. Horace would take the
other side for a while, then leave the field, and light another
cigar, and let Henry have the last word, which, although it had a
bitter taste in his mouth, filled him with the satisfaction of
triumph. He loved Horace like a son, although he realized that the
young man properly belonged to the class which he hated, and that,
too, although he was manifestly poor and obliged to work for his
living. Henry was, in his heart of hearts, convinced that Horace
Allen, had he been rich, would have owned automobiles and spent hours
in the profitless work-play of the golf links. As it was, he played a
little after school-hours. How Henry hated golf! "I wish they had to
work," he would say, savagely, to Horace.

Horace would laugh, and say that he did work. "I know you do," Henry
would say, grudgingly, "and I suppose maybe a little exercise is good
for you; but those fellers from Alford who come over here don't have
to work, and as for Guy Lawson, the boss's son, he's a fool! He
couldn't earn his bread and butter to save his life, except on the
road digging like a common laborer. Playing golf! Playing! H'm!" Then
was the time for Horace's fresh cigar.

When Henry came in sight of the cottage where he lived he thought
with regret that Horace was not there. Being in a more pessimistic
mood than usual, he wished ardently for somebody to whom he could
pour out his heart. Sylvia was no satisfaction at such a time. If she
echoed him for a while, when she was more than usually worn with her
own work, she finally became alarmed, and took refuge in Scripture
quotations, and Henry was convinced that she offered up prayer for
him afterward, and that enraged him.

He struck into the narrow foot-path leading to the side door, the
foot-path which his unwilling and weary feet had helped to trace more
definitely for nearly forty years. The house was a small cottage of
the humblest New England type. It had a little cobbler's-shop, or
what had formerly been a cobbler's-shop, for an ell. Besides that,
there were three rooms on the ground-floor--the kitchen, the
sitting-room, and a little bedroom which Henry and Sylvia occupied.
Sylvia had cooking-stoves in both the old shop and the kitchen. The
kitchen stove was kept well polished, and seldom used for cooking,
except in cold weather. In warm weather the old shop served as
kitchen, and Sylvia, in deference to the high-school teacher, used to
set the table in the house.

When Henry neared the house he smelled cooking in the shop. He also
had a glimpse of a snowy table-cloth in the kitchen. He wondered,
with a throb of joy, if possibly Horace might have returned before
his vacation was over and Sylvia were setting the table in the other
room in his honor. He opened the door which led directly into the
shop. Sylvia, a pathetic, slim, elderly figure in rusty black, was
bending over the stove, frying flapjacks. "Has he come home?"
whispered Henry.

"No, it's Mr. Meeks. I asked him to stay to supper. I told him I
would make some flapjacks, and he acted tickled to death. He doesn't
get a decent thing to eat once in a dog's age. Hurry and get washed.
The flapjacks are about done, and I don't want them to get cold."

Henry's face, which had fallen a little when he learned that Horace
had not returned, still looked brighter than before. While Sidney
Meeks never let him have the last word, yet he was much better than
Sylvia as a safety-valve for pessimism. Meeks was as pessimistic in
his way as Henry, although he handled his pessimism, as he did
everything else, with diplomacy, and the other man had a secret
conviction that when he seemed to be on the opposite side yet he was
in reality pulling with the lawyer.

Sidney Meeks was older than Henry, and as unsuccessful as a country
lawyer can well be. He lived by himself; he had never married; and
the world, although he smiled at it facetiously, was not a pleasant
place in his eyes.

Henry, after he had washed himself at the sink in the shop, entered
the kitchen, where the table was set, and passed through to the
sitting-room, where the lawyer was. Sidney Meeks did not rise. He
extended one large, white hand affably. "How are you Henry?" said he,
giving the other man's lean, brown fingers a hard shake. "I dropped
in here on my way home from the post-office, and your wife tempted me
with flapjacks in a lordly dish, and I am about to eat."

"Glad to see you," returned Henry.

"You get home early, or it seems early, now the days are getting so
long," said Meeks, as Henry sat down opposite.

"Yes, it's early enough, but I don't get any more pay."

Meeks laughed. "Henry, you are the direct outcome of your day and
generation," said he. "Less time, and more pay for less time, is our
slogan."

"Well, why not?" returned Henry, surlily, still with a dawn of
delighted opposition in his thin, intelligent face. "Why not? Look at
the money that's spent all around us on other things that correspond.
What's an automobile but less time and more money, eh?"

Meeks laughed. "Give it up until after supper, Henry," he said, as
Sylvia's thin, sweet voice was heard from the next room.

"If you men don't stop talking and come right out, these flapjacks
will be spoiled!" she cried. The men arose and obeyed her call.
"There are compensations for everything," said Meeks, laughing, as he
settled down heavily into his chair. He was a large man. "Flapjacks
are compensations. Let us eat our compensations and be thankful.
That's my way of saying grace. You ought always to say grace, Henry,
when you have such a good cook as your wife is to get meals for you.
If you had to shift for yourself, the way I do, you'd feel that it
was a simple act of decency."

"I don't see much to say grace for," said Henry, with a disagreeable
sneer.

"Oh, Henry!" said Sylvia.

"For compensations in the form of flapjacks, with plenty of butter
and sugar and nutmeg," said Meeks. "These are fine, Mrs. Whitman."

"A good thick beefsteak at twenty-eight cents a pound, regulated by
the beef trust, would be more to my liking after a hard day's work,"
said Henry.

Sylvia exclaimed again, but she was not in reality disturbed. She was
quite well aware that her husband was enjoying himself after his own
peculiar fashion, and that, if he spoke the truth, the flapjacks were
more to his New England taste for supper than thick beefsteak.

"Well, wait until after supper, and maybe you will change your mind
about having something to say grace for," Meeks said, mysteriously.

The husband and wife stared at him. "What do you mean, Mr. Meeks?"
asked Sylvia, a little nervously. Something in the lawyer's manner
agitated her. She was not accustomed to mysteries. Life had not held
many for her, especially of late years.

Henry took another mouthful of flapjacks. "Well, if you can give me
any good reason for saying grace you will do more than the parson
ever has," he said.

"Oh, Henry!" said Sylvia.

"It's the truth," said Henry. "I've gone to meeting and heard how
thankful I ought to be for things I haven't got, and things I have
got that other folks haven't, and for forgiveness for breaking
commandments, when, so far as I can tell, commandments are about the
only things I've been able to keep without taxes--till I'm tired of
it."

"Wait till after supper," repeated the lawyer again, with smiling
mystery. He had a large, smooth face, with gray hair on the sides of
his head and none on top. He had good, placid features, and an easy
expression. He ate two platefuls of the flapjacks, then two pieces of
cake, and a large slice of custard pie! He was very fond of sweets.

After supper was over Henry and Meeks returned to the sitting-room,
and sat down beside the two front windows. It was a small, square
room furnished with Sylvia's chief household treasures. There was a
hair-cloth sofa, which she and Henry had always regarded as an
extravagance and had always viewed with awe. There were two rockers,
besides one easy-chair, covered with old-gold plush--also an
extravagance. There was a really beautiful old mahogany table with
carved base, of which neither Henry nor Sylvia thought much. Sylvia
meditated selling enough Calkin's soap to buy a new one, and stow
that away in Mr. Allen's room. Mr. Allen professed great admiration
for it, to her wonderment. There was also a fine, old, gold-framed
mirror, and some china vases on the mantel-shelf. Sylvia was rather
ashamed of them. Mrs. Jim Jones had a mirror which she had earned by
selling Calkin's soap, which Sylvia considered much handsomer. She
would have had ambitions in that direction also, but Henry was firm
in his resolve not to have the mirror displaced, nor the vases,
although Sylvia descanted upon the superior merits of some vases with
gilded pedestals which Mrs. Sam Elliot had in her parlor.

Meeks regarded the superb old table with appreciation as he sat in
the sitting-room after supper. "Fine old piece," he said.

Henry looked at it doubtfully. It had been in a woodshed of his
grandfather's house, when he was a boy, and he was not as confident
about that as he was about the mirror and vases, which had always
maintained their parlor estate.

"Sylvia don't think much of it," he said. "She's crazy to have one of
carved oak like one Mrs. Jim Jones has."

"Carved oak fiddlestick!" said Sidney Meeks. "It's a queer thing that
so much virtue and real fineness of character can exist in a woman
without the slightest trace of taste for art."

Henry looked resentful. "Sylvia has taste, as much taste as most
women," he said. "She simply doesn't like to see the same old things
around all the time, and I don't know as I blame her. The world has
grown since that table was made, there's no doubt about that. It
stands to reason furniture has improved, too."

"Glad there's something you see in a bright light, Henry."

"I must say that I like this new mission furniture, myself, pretty
well," said Henry, somewhat importantly.

"That's as old as the everlasting hills; but the old that's new is
the newest thing in all creation," said Meeks. "Sylvia is a foolish
woman if she parts with this magnificent old piece for any
reproduction made in job lots."

"Oh, she isn't going to part with it. Mr. Allen will like it in his
room. He thinks as much of it as you do."

"He's right, too," said Meeks. "There's carving for you; there's a
fine grain of wood."

"It's very hard to keep clean," said Sylvia, as she came in rubbing
her moist hands. "Now, that new Flemish oak is nothing at all to take
care of, Mrs. Jones says."

"This is worth taking care of," said Meeks. "Now, Sylvia, sit down. I
have something to tell you and Henry."

Sylvia sat down. Something in the lawyer's manner aroused hers and
her husband's keenest attention. They looked at him and waited. Both
were slightly pale. Sylvia was a delicate little woman, and Henry was
large-framed and tall, but a similar experience had worn similar
lines in both faces. They looked singularly alike.

Sidney Meeks had the dramatic instinct. He waited for the silence to
gather to its utmost intensity before he spoke. "I had something to
tell you when I came in," he said, "but I thought I had better wait
till after supper."

He paused. There was another silence. Henry's and Sylvia's eyes
seemed to wax luminous.

Sidney Meeks spoke again. He was enjoying himself immensely. "What
relation is Abrahama White to you?" he said.

"She is second cousin to Sylvia. Her mother was Sylvia's mother's
cousin," said Henry. "What of it?"

"Nothing, except--" Meeks waited again. He wished to make a coup. He
had an instinct for climaxes. "Abrahama had a shock this morning," he
said, suddenly.

"A shock?" said Henry.

Sylvia echoed him. "A shock!" she gasped.

"Yes, I thought you hadn't heard of it."

"I've been in the house all day," said Sylvia. "I hadn't seen a soul
before you came in." She rose. "Who's taking care of her?" she asked.
"She ain't all alone?"

"Sit down," said Sidney. "She's well cared for. Miss Babcock is
there. She happened to be out of a place, and Dr. Wallace got her
right away."

"Is she going to get over it?" asked Sylvia, anxiously. "I must go
over there, anyway, this evening. I always thought a good deal of
Abrahama."

"You might as well go over there," said the lawyer. "It isn't quite
the thing for me to tell you, but I'm going to. If Henry here can eat
flapjacks like those you make, Sylvia, and not say grace, his state
of mind is dangerous. I am going to tell you. Dr. Wallace says
Abrahama can't live more than a day or two, and--she has made a will
and left you all her property."

Chapter II

There was another silence. The husband and wife were pale, with
mouths agape like fishes. So little prosperity had come into their
lives that they were rendered almost idiotic by its approach.

"Us?" said Sylvia, at length, with a gasp.

"Us?" said Henry.

"Yes, you," said Sidney Meeks.

"What about Rose Fletcher, Abrahama's sister Susy's daughter?" asked
Sylvia, presently. "She is her own niece."

"You know Abrahama never had anything to do with Susy after she
married John Fletcher," replied the lawyer. "She made her will soon
afterward, and cut her off."

"I remember what they said at the time," returned Sylvia. "They all
thought John Fletcher was going to marry Abrahama instead of Susy.
She was enough sight more suitable age for him. He was too old for
Susy, and Abrahama, even if she wasn't young, was a beautiful woman,
and smarter than Susy ever thought of being."

"Susy had the kind of smartness that catches men," said the lawyer,
with a slight laugh.

"I always wondered if John Fletcher hadn't really done a good deal to
make Abrahama think he did want her," said Sylvia. "He was just that
kind of man. I never did think much of him. He was handsome and glib,
but he was all surface. I guess poor Abrahama had some reason to cut
off Susy. I guess there was some double-dealing. I thought so at the
time, and now this will makes me think so even more."

Again there was a silence, and again that expression of bewilderment,
almost amounting to idiocy, reigned in the faces of the husband and
wife.

"I never thought old Abraham White should have made the will he did,"
said Henry, articulating with difficulty. "Susy had just as much
right to the property, and there she was cut off with five hundred
dollars, to be paid when she came of age."

"I guess she spent that five hundred on her wedding fix," said Sylvia.

"It was a queer will," stammered Henry.

"I think the old man always looked at Abrahama as his son and heir,"
said the lawyer. "She was named for him, and his father before him,
you know. I always thought the poor old girl deserved the lion's
share for being saddled with such a name, anyhow."

"It was a dreadful name, and she was such a beautiful girl and
woman," said Sylvia. She already spoke of Abrahama in the past tense.
"I wonder where the niece is," she added.

"The last I heard of her she was living with some rich people in New
York," replied Meeks. "I think they took her in some capacity after
her father and mother died."

"I hope she didn't go out to work as hired girl," said Sylvia. "It
would have been awful for a granddaughter of Abraham White's to do
that. I wonder if Abrahama never wrote to her, nor did anything for
her."

"I don't think she ever had the slightest communication with Susy
after she married, or her husband, or the daughter," replied Meeks.
"In fact, I practically know she did not."

"If the poor girl didn't do well, Abrahama had a good deal to answer
for," said Sylvia, thoughtfully. She looked worried. Then again that
expression of almost idiotic joy overspread her face. "That old White
homestead is beautiful--the best house in town," she said.

"There's fifty acres of land with it, too," said Meeks.

Sylvia and Henry looked at each other. Both hesitated. Then Henry
spoke, stammeringly:

"I--never knew--just how much of an income Abrahama had," he said.

"Well," replied the lawyer, "I must say not much--not as much as I
wish, for your sakes. You see, old Abraham had a lot of that railroad
stock that went to smash ten years ago, and Abrahama lost a good
deal. She was a smart woman; she could work and save; but she didn't
know any more about business than other women. There's an income of
about--well, about six hundred dollars and some odd cents after the
taxes and insurance are paid. And she has enough extra in the Alford
Bank to pay for her last expenses without touching the principal. And
the house is in good repair. She has kept it up well. There won't be
any need to spend a cent on repairs for some years."

"Six hundred a year after the taxes and insurance are paid!" said
Sylvia. She gaped horribly. Her expression of delight was at once
mean and infantile.

"Six hundred a year after the taxes and insurance are paid, and all
that land, and that great house!" repeated Henry, with precisely the
same expression.

"Not much, but enough to keep things going if you're careful," said
Meeks. He spoke deprecatingly, but in reality the sum seemed large to
him also. "You know there's an income besides from that fine
grass-land," said he. "There's more than enough hay for a cow and
horse, if you keep one. You can count on something besides in good
hay-years."

Henry looked reflective. Then his face seemed to expand with an
enormous idea. "I wonder--" he began.

"You wonder what?" asked Sylvia.

"I wonder--if it wouldn't be cheaper in the end to keep
an--automobile and sell all the hay."

Sylvia gasped, and Meeks burst into a roar of laughter.

"I rather guess you don't get me into one of those things, butting
into stone walls, and running over children, and scaring horses, with
you underneath most of the time, either getting blown up with
gasolene or covering your clothes with mud and grease for me to clean
off," said Sylvia.

"I thought automobiles were against your principles," said Meeks,
still chuckling.

"So they be, the way other folks run 'em," said Henry; "but not the
way I'd run 'em."

"We'll have a good, steady horse that won't shy at one, if we have
anything," said Sylvia, and her voice had weight.

"There's a good buggy in Abrahama's barn," said Meeks.

Sylvia made an unexpected start. "I think we are wicked as we can
be!" she declared, violently. "Here we are talking about that poor
woman's things before she's done with them. I'm going right over
there to see if I can't be of some use."

"Sit down, Sylvia," said Henry, soothingly, but he, too, looked both
angry and ashamed.

"You had better keep still where you are to-night," said Meeks. "Miss
Babcock is doing all that anybody can. There isn't much to be done,
Dr. Wallace says. To-morrow you can go over there and sit with her,
and let Miss Babcock take a nap." Meeks rose as he spoke. "I must be
going," he said. "I needn't charge you again not to let anybody know
what I've told you before the will is read. It is irregular, but I
thought I'd cheer up Henry here a bit."

"No, we won't speak of it," declared the husband and wife, almost in
unison.

After Meeks had gone they looked at each other. Both looked
disagreeable to the other. Both felt an unworthy suspicion of the
other.

"I hope she will get well," Sylvia said, defiantly. "Maybe she will.
This is her first shock."

"God knows I hope she will," returned Henry, with equal defiance.

Each of the two was perfectly good and ungrasping, but each accused
themselves and each other unjustly because of the possibilities of
wrong feeling which they realized. Sylvia did not understand how, in
the face of such prosperity, she could wish Abrahama to get well, and
she did not understand how her husband could, and Henry's mental
attitude was the same.

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