Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Shoulders of Atlas

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> The Shoulders of Atlas

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Rose, having been so young when she went to live with them, had never
realized the true state of affairs. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela had
not encouraged her making visits in houses where her eyes might have
been opened. Then, too, she was naturally generous, and not
sharp-eyed concerning her own needs. When there were no guests at
dinner, and she rose from the table rather unsatisfied after her
half-plate of watery soup, her delicate little befrilled chop and dab
of French pease, her tiny salad and spoonful of dessert, she never
imagined that she was defrauded. Rose had a singularly sweet,
ungrasping disposition, and an almost childlike trait of accepting
that which was offered her as the one and only thing which she
deserved. When there was a dinner-party, she sat between an elderly
clergyman and a stout judge, who was dieting on account of the danger
of apoplexy, with the same graceful agreeableness with which she
would have sat between two young men.

Rose had not developed early as to her temperament. She had played
with dolls until Miss Pamela had felt it her duty to remonstrate. She
had charmed the young men whom she had seen, and had not thought
about them when once they were out of sight. Her pulses did not
quicken easily. She had imagination, but she did not make herself the
heroine of her dreams. She was sincerely puzzled at the expression
which she saw on the faces of some girls when talking with young men.
She felt a vague shame and anger because of it, but she did not know
what it meant. She had read novels, but the love interest in them was
like a musical theme which she, hearing, did not fully understand.
She was not in the least a boylike girl; she was wholly feminine, but
the feminine element was held in delicate and gentle restraint.
Without doubt Mrs. Wilton's old-fashioned gentility, and Miss
Pamela's, and her governess's, who belonged to the same epoch, had
served to mould her character not altogether undesirably. She was, on
the whole, a pleasant and surprising contrast to girls of her age,
with her pretty, shy respect for her elders, and lack of
self-assertion, along with entire self-possession and good breeding.
However, she had missed many things which poor Miss Farrel had
considered desirable for her, and which her hostesses with their
self-sanctified evasion had led her to think had been done.

Miss Farrel, teaching in her country school, had had visions of the
girl riding a thoroughbred in Central Park, with a groom in
attendance; whereas the reality was the old man who served both as
coachman and butler, in carefully kept livery, guiding two horses apt
to stumble from extreme age through the shopping district, and the
pretty face of the girl looking out of the window of an ancient coupe
which, nevertheless, had a coat of arms upon its door. Miss Farrel
imagined Rose in a brilliant house-party at Wiltmere, Mrs. Wilton's
and Miss Pamela's country home; whereas in reality she was roaming
about the fields and woods with an old bull-terrier for guard and
companion. Rose generally carried a book on these occasions, and
generally not a modern book. Her governess had a terror of modern
books, especially of novels. She had looked into a few and shuddered.
Rose's taste in literature was almost Elizabethan. She was not
allowed, of course, to glance at early English novels, which her
governess classed with late English and American in point of
morality, but no poetry except Byron was prohibited.

Rose loved to sit under a tree with the dog in a white coil beside
her, and hold her book open on her lap and read a word now and then,
and amuse herself with fancies the rest of the time. She grew in
those days of her early girlhood to have firm belief in those things
which she never saw nor heard, and the belief had not wholly deserted
her. She never saw a wood-nymph stretch out a white arm from a tree,
but she believed in the possibility of it, and the belief gave her a
curious delight. When she returned to the house for her scanty,
elegantly served dinner with the three elder ladies, her eyes would
be misty with these fancies and her mouth would wear the inscrutable
smile of a baby's at the charm of them.

When she first came to East Westland she was a profound mystery to
Horace, who had only known well two distinct types of girls--the
purely provincial and her reverse. Rose, with her mixture of the two,
puzzled him. While she was not in the least shy, she had a reserve
which caused her to remain a secret to him for some time. Rose's
inner life was to her something sacred, not to be lightly revealed.
At last, through occasional remarks and opinions, light began to
shine through. He had begun to understand her the Sunday he had
followed her to Lucy Ayres's. He had, also, more than begun to love
her. Horace Allen would not have loved her so soon had she been more
visible as to her inner self. Things on the surface rarely interested
him very much. He had not an easily aroused temperament, and a veil
which stimulated his imagination and aroused his searching instinct
was really essential if he were to fall in love. He had fallen in
love before, he had supposed, although he had never asked one of the
fair ones to marry him. Now he began to call up various faces and
wonder if this were not the first time. All the faces seemed to dim
before this present one. He realized something in her very dear and
precious, and for the first time he felt as if he could not forego
possession. Hitherto it had been easy enough to bear the slight
wrench of leaving temptation and moving his tent. Here it was
different. Still, the old objection remained. How could he marry upon
his slight salary?

The high-school in East Westland was an endowed institution. The
principal received twelve hundred a year. People in the village
considered that a prodigious income. Horace, of course, knew better.
He did not think that sum sufficient to risk matrimony. Here, too, he
was hampered by another consideration. It was intolerable for him to
think of Rose's wealth and his paltry twelve hundred per year. An
ambition which had always slumbered within his mind awoke to full
strength and activity. He began to sit up late at night and write
articles for the papers and magazines. He had got one accepted, and
received a check which to his inexperience seemed promisingly large.
In spite of all his anxiety he was exalted. He began to wonder if
circumstances would not soon justify him in reaching out for the
sweet he coveted. He made up his mind not to be precipitate, to wait
until he was sure, but his impatience had waxed during the last few
hours, ever since that delicious note of stilted, even cold, praise
and that check had arrived. When Rose had started to go up-stairs he
had not been able to avoid following her into the hall. The door of
the parlor stood open, and the whole room was full of the soft
shimmer of moonlight. It looked like a bower of romance. It seemed
full of soft and holy and alluring mysteries. Horace looked down at
Rose, Rose looked up at him. Her eyes fell; she trembled deliciously.

"It is very early," he said, in a whispering voice which would not
have been known for his. It had in it the male cadences of wooing
music.

Rose stood still.

"Let us go in there a little while," whispered Horace. Rose followed
him into the room; he gave the door a little push. It did not quite
close, but nearly. Horace placed a chair for Rose beside a window
into which the moon was shining; then he drew up one beside it, but
not very close. He neither dared nor was sure that he desired. Alone
with the girl in this moonlit room, an awe crept over him. She looked
away from him out of the window, and he saw that this same awe was
over her also. All their young pulses were thrilling, but this awe
which was of the spirit held them in check. Rose, with the full white
moonlight shining upon her face, gained an ethereal beauty which gave
her an adorable aloofness. The young man seemed to see her through
the vista of all his young dreams. She was the goddess before which
his soul knelt at a distance. He thought he had never seen anything
half so lovely as she was in that white light, which seemed to crown
her with a frosty radiance like a nimbus. Her very expression was
changed. She was smiling, but there was something a little grave and
stern about her smile. Her eyes, fixed upon the clear crystal of the
moon sailing through the night blue, were full of visions. It did not
seem possible to him that she could be thinking of him at all, this
beautiful creature with her pure regard of the holy mystery of the
nightly sky; but in reality Rose, being the more emotional of the
two, and also, since she was not the one to advance, the more daring,
began to tremble with impatience for his closer contact, for the
touch of his hand upon hers.

She would have died before she would have made the first advance, but
it filled her as with secret fire. Finally a sort of anger possessed
her, anger at herself and at Horace. She became horribly ashamed of
herself, and angry at him because of the shame. She gazed out at the
wonderful masses of shadows which the trees made, and she gazed up
again at the sky and that floating crystal, and it seemed impossible
that it was within her as it was. Her clear face was as calm as
marble, her expression as immovable, her gaze as direct. It seemed as
if a man must be a part of the wonderful mystery of the moonlit night
to come within her scope of vision at all.

Rose chilled, when she did not mean to do so, by sheer maidenliness.
Horace, gazing at her calm face, felt in some way rebuked. He had led
a decent sort of life, but after all he was a man, and what right had
he to even think of a creature like that? He leaned back in his
chair, removing himself farther from her, and he also gazed at the
moon. That mysterious thing of silver light and shadows, which had
illumined all the ages of creation by their own reflected light,
until it had come to be a mirror of creation itself, seemed to give
him a sort of chill of the flesh. After all, what was everything in
life but a repetition of that which had been and a certainty of
death? Rose looked like a ghost to his fancy. He seemed like a ghost
to himself, and felt reproached for the hot ardor surging in his
fleshly heart.

"That same moon lit the world for the builders of the Pyramids," he
said, tritely enough.

"Yes," murmured Rose, in a faint voice. The Pyramids chilled her. So
they were what he had been thinking about, and not herself.

Horace went on. "It shone upon all those ancient battle-fields of the
Old Testament, and the children of Israel in their exile," he said.

Rose looked at him. "It shone upon the Garden of Eden after Adam had
so longed for Eve that she grew out of his longing and became
something separate from himself, so that he could see her without
seeing himself all the time; and it shone upon the garden in
Solomon's Song, and the roses of Sharon, and the lilies of the
valley, and the land flowing with milk and honey," said she, in a
childish tone of levity which had an undercurrent of earnestness in
it. All her emotional nature and her pride arose against Pyramids and
Old Testament battle-fields, when she had only been conscious that
the moon shone upon Horace and herself. She was shamed and angry as
she had never been shamed and angry before.

Horace leaned forward and gazed eagerly at her. After all, was he
mistaken? He was shrewd enough, although he did not understand the
moods of women very well, and it did seem to him that there was
something distinctly encouraging in her tone. Just then the night
wind came in strongly at the window beside which they were sitting.
An ardent fragrance of dewy earth and plants smote them in the face.

"Do you feel the draught?" asked Horace.

"I like it."

"I am afraid you will catch cold."

"I don't catch cold at all easily."

"The wind is very damp," argued Horace, with increasing confidence.
He grew very bold. He seized upon one of her little white hands. "I
won't believe it unless I can feel for myself that your hands are not
cold," said he. He felt the little soft fingers curl around his hand
with the involuntary, pristine force of a baby's. His heart beat
tumultuously.

"Oh--" he began. Then he stopped suddenly as Rose snatched her hand
away and again gazed at the moon.

"It is a beautiful night," she remarked, and the harmless deceit of
woman, which is her natural weapon, was in her voice and manner.

Horace was more obtuse. He remained leaning eagerly towards the girl.
He extended his hand again, but she repeated, in her soft, deceitful
voice, "Yes, a perfectly beautiful night."

Then he observed Sylvia Whitman standing beside them. "It is a nice
night enough," said she, "but you'll both catch your deaths of cold
at this open window. The wind is blowing right in on you."

She made a motion to close it, stepping between Rose and Horace, but
the young man sprang to his feet. "Let me close it, Mrs. Whitman,"
said he, and did so.

"It ain't late enough in the season to set right beside an open
window and let the wind blow in on you," said Sylvia, severely. She
drew up a rocking-chair and sat down. She formed the stern apex of a
triangle of which Horace and Rose were the base. She leaned back and
rocked.

"It is a pleasant night," said she, as if answering Rose's remark,
"but to me there's always something sort of sad about moonlight
nights. They make you think of times and people that's gone. I dare
say it is different with you young folks. I guess I used to feel
different about moonlight nights years ago. I remember when Mr.
Whitman and I were first married, we used to like to set out on the
front door-step and look at the moon, and make plans."

"Don't you ever now?" asked Rose.

"Now we go to bed and to sleep," replied Sylvia, decisively. There
was a silence. "I guess it's pretty late," said Sylvia, in a meaning
tone. "What time is it, Mr. Allen?"

Horace consulted his watch. "It is not very late," said he. It did
not seem to him that Mrs. Whitman could stay.

"It can't be very late," said Rose.

"What time is it?" asked Sylvia, relentlessly.

"About half-past ten," replied Horace, with reluctance.

"I call that very late," said Sylvia. "It is late for Rose, anyway."

"I don't feel at all tired," said Rose.

"You must be," said Sylvia. "You can't always go by feelings."

She swayed pitilessly back and forth in her rocking-chair. Horace
waited in an agony of impatience for her to leave them, but she had
no intention of doing so. She rocked. Now and then she made some
maddening little remark which had nothing whatever to do with the
situation. Then she rocked again. Finally she triumphed. Rose stood
up. "I think it is getting rather late," said she.

"It is very late," agreed Sylvia, also rising. Horace rose. There was
a slight pause. It seemed even then that Sylvia might take pity upon
them and leave them. But she stood like a rock. It was quite evident
that she would settle again into her rocking-chair at the slightest
indication which the two young people made of a disposition to remain.

Rose gave a fluttering little sigh. She extended her hand to Horace.
"Good-night, Mr. Allen," she said.

"Good-night," returned Horace. "Good-night, Mrs. Whitman."

"It is time you went to bed, too," said Sylvia.

"I think I'll go in and have a smoke with Mr. Whitman first," said
Horace.

"He's going to bed, too," said Sylvia. "He's tired. Good-night, Mr.
Allen. If you open that window again, you'll be sure and shut it down
before you go up-stairs, won't you?"

Horace promised that he would. Sylvia went with Rose into her room to
unfasten her gown. A lamp was burning on the dressing-table. Rose
kept her back turned towards the light. Her pretty face was flushed
and she was almost in tears. Sylvia hung the girl's gown up
carefully, then she looked at her lovingly. Unless Rose made the
first advance, when Sylvia would submit with inward rapture but
outward stiffness, there never were good-night kisses exchanged
between the two.

"You look all tired out," said Sylvia.

"I am not at all tired," said Rose. She was all quivering with
impatience, but her voice was sweet and docile. She put up her face
for Sylvia to kiss. "Good-night, dear Aunt Sylvia," said she.

"Good-night," said Sylvia. Rose felt merely a soft touch of thin,
tightly closed lips. Sylvia did not know how to kiss, but she was
glowing with delight.

When she joined Henry in their bedroom down-stairs he looked at her
in some disapproval. "I don't think you'd ought to have gone in
there," he said.

"Why not?"

"Why, you must expect young folks to be young folks, and it was only
natural for them to want to set there in the moonlight."

"They can set in there in the moonlight if they want to," said
Sylvia. "I didn't hinder them."

"I think they wanted to be alone."

"When they set in the moonlight, I'm going to set, too," said Sylvia.
She slipped off her gown carefully over her head. When the head
emerged Henry saw that it was carried high with the same rigidity
which had lately puzzled him, and that her face had that same
expression of stern isolation.

"Sylvia," said Henry.

"Well?"

"Does anything worry you lately?"

Sylvia looked at him with sharp suspicion. "I'd like to know why you
should think anything worries me," she said, "as comfortable as we
are off now."

"Sylvia, have you got anything on your mind?"

"I don't want to see young folks making fools of themselves," said
Sylvia, shortly, and her voice had the same tone of deceit which Rose
had used when she spoke of the beautiful night.

"That ain't it," said Henry, quietly.

"Well, if you want to know," said Sylvia, "she's been pestering me
with wanting to pay board if she stays along here, and I've put my
foot down; she sha'n't pay a cent."

"Of course we can't let her," agreed Henry. Then he added, "This was
all her own aunt's property, anyway, and if there hadn't been a will
it would have come to her."

"There was a will," said Sylvia, fastening her cotton night-gown
tightly around her skinny throat.

"Of course she's going to stay as long as she's contented, and she
ain't going to pay board," said Henry; "but that ain't the trouble.
Have you got anything on your mind, Sylvia?"

"I hope so," replied Sylvia, sharply. "I hope I've got a little
something on my mind. I ain't a fool."

Henry said no more. Neither he nor Sylvia went to sleep at once. The
moon's pale influence lit their room and seemed disturbing in itself.
Presently they both smelled cigar smoke.

"He's smoking," said Sylvia. "Well, nothing makes much difference to
you men, as long as you can smoke. I'd like to know what you'd do in
my place."

"Have you got anything on your mind, Sylvia?"

"Didn't I say I hoped I had? Everybody has something on her mind,
unless she's a tarnation fool, and I ain't never set up for one."

Henry did not speak again.

Chapter XIV

The next morning at breakfast Rose announced her intention of going
to see if Lucy Ayres would not go to drive with her.

"There's one very nice little horse at the livery-stable," said she,
"and I can drive. It is a beautiful morning, and poor Lucy did not
look very well yesterday, and I think it will do her good."

Horace turned white. Henry noticed it. Sylvia, who was serving
something, did not. Henry had thought he had arrived at a knowledge
of Horace's suspicions, which in themselves seemed to him perfectly
groundless, and now that he had, as he supposed, proved them to be
so, he was profoundly puzzled. Before he had gone to Horace's
assistance. Now he did not see his way clear towards doing so, and
saw no necessity for it. He ate his breakfast meditatively. Horace
pushed away his plate and rose.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Sylvia. "Don't you feel well, Mr.
Allen?"

"Perfectly well; never felt better."

"You haven't eaten enough to keep a sparrow alive."

"I have eaten fast," said Horace. "I have to make an early start this
morning. I have some work to do before school."

Rose apparently paid no attention. She went on with her plans for her
drive.

"Are you sure you know how to manage a horse?" said Sylvia,
anxiously. "I used to drive, but I can't go with you because the
washerwoman is coming."

"Of course I can drive," said Rose. "I love to drive. And I don't
believe there's a horse in the stable that would get out of a walk,
anyway."

"You won't try to pass by any steam-rollers, and you'll look out for
automobiles, won't you?" said Sylvia.

Horace left them talking and set out hurriedly. When he reached the
Ayres house he entered the gate, passed between the flowering shrubs
which bordered the gravel walk, and rang the bell with vigor. He was
desperate. Lucy herself opened the door. When she saw Horace she
turned red, then white. She was dressed neatly in a little blue
cotton wrapper, and her pretty hair was arranged as usual, with the
exception of one tiny curl-paper on her forehead. Lucy's hand went
nervously to this curl-paper.

"Oh, good-morning!" she said, breathlessly, as if she had been
running.

Horace returned her greeting gravely. "Can I see you a few moments,
Miss Lucy?" he said.

A wild light came into the girl's eyes. Her cheeks flushed again.
Again she spoke in her nervous, panting voice, and asked him in. She
led the way into the parlor and excused herself flutteringly. She was
back in a few moments. Instead of the curl-paper there was a little,
soft, dark, curly lock on her forehead. She had also fastened the
neck of her wrapper with a gold brooch. The wrapper sloped well from
her shoulders and displayed a lovely V of white neck. She sat down
opposite Horace, and the simple garment adjusted itself to her slim
figure, revealing its tender outlines.

Lucy looked at Horace, and her expression was tragic, foolish, and of
almost revolting wistfulness. She was youth and womanhood in its most
helpless and pathetic revelation. Poor Lucy could not help herself.
She was a thing always devoured and never consumed by a flame of
nature, because of the lack of food to satisfy an inborn hunger.

Horace felt all this perfectly in an analytical way. He sympathized
in an analytical way, but in other respects he felt that curious
resentment and outrage of which a man is capable and which is fiercer
than outraged maidenliness. For a man to be beloved when his own
heart does not respond is not pleasant. He cannot defend himself, nor
even recognize facts, without being lowered in his own self-esteem.
Horace had done, as far as he could judge, absolutely nothing
whatever to cause this state of mind in Lucy. He was self-exonerated
as to that, but the miserable reason for it all, in his mere
existence as a male of his species, filled him with shame for himself
and her, and also with anger.

He strove to hold to pity, but anger got the better of him. Anger and
shame coupled together make a balking team. Now the man was really at
a loss what to say. Lucy sat before him with her expression of
pitiable self-revelation, and waited, and Horace sat speechless. Now
he was there, he wondered what he had been such an ass as to come
for. He wondered what he had ever thought he could say, would say.
Then Rose's face shone out before his eyes, and his impulse of
protection made him firm. He spoke abruptly. "Miss Lucy--" he began.
Lucy cast her eyes down and waited, her whole attitude was that of
utter passiveness and yielding. "Good Lord! She thinks I have come
here at eight o'clock in the morning to propose!" Horace thought,
with a sort of fury. But he did not speak again at once. He actually
did not know how to begin, what to say. He did not, finally, say
anything. He rose. It seemed to him that he must prevent Rose from
going to drive with Lucy, but he saw no way of doing so.

When he rose it was as if Lucy's face of foolish anticipation of joy
was overclouded. "You are not going so soon?" she stammered.

"I have to get to school early this morning," Horace said, in a harsh
voice. He moved towards the door. Lucy also had risen. She now looked
altogether tragic. The foolish wistfulness was gone. Instead, claws
seemed to bristle all over her tender surface. Suddenly Horace
realized that her slender, wiry body was pressed against his own. He
was conscious of her soft cheek against his. He felt at once in the
grip of a tiger and a woman, and horribly helpless, more helpless
than he had ever been in his whole life. What could he say or do?
Then suddenly the parlor door opened and Mrs. Ayres, Lucy's mother,
stood there. She saw with her stern, melancholy gaze the whole
situation.

"Lucy!" she said.

Lucy started away from Horace, and gazed in a sort of fear and wrath
at her mother.

"Lucy," said Mrs. Ayres, "go up to your own room."

Lucy obeyed. She slunk out of the door and crept weakly up-stairs.
Horace and Mrs. Ayres looked at each other. There was a look of doubt
in the woman's face. For the first time she was not altogether sure.
Perhaps Lucy had been right, after all, in her surmises. Why had
Horace called? She finally went straight to the point.

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