Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Shoulders of Atlas

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"Rose is perfectly contented just the way she is," declared Sylvia,
turning upon him. "I shouldn't be surprised if she lived out her days
here, just as her aunt did."

"Maybe it would be the best thing," said Henry. "She's got us as long
as we live." Henry straightened himself as he spoke. Since his
resolve to resume his work he had felt years younger. Lately he had
been telling himself miserably that he was an old man, that his
life-work was over. To-night the pulses of youth leaped in his veins.
He was so pleasantly excited that after he and Sylvia had gone to bed
it was long before he fell asleep, but he did at last, and just in
time for Rose and Horace.

Rose, after Sylvia went down-stairs, had put out her light and sat
down beside the window gazing out into the night. She still wore her
jewels. She could not bear to take them off. It was a beautiful
night. The day had been rather warm, but the night was one of
coolness and peace. The moon was just rising. Rose could see it
through the leafy branches of an opposite elm-tree. It seemed to be
caught in the green foliage. New shadows were leaping out of the
distance as the moon increased. The whole landscape was dotted with
white luminosities which it was bliss not to explain, just to leave
mysteries. Wonderful sweetnesses and fresh scents of growing things,
dew-wet, came in her face.

Rose was very happy. Only an hour before she had been miserable, and
now her whole spirit had leaped above her woe as with the impetus of
some celestial fluid rarer than all the miseries of earth and of a
necessity surmounting them. She looked out at the night, and it was
to her as if that and the whole world was her jewel-casket, and the
jewels therein were immortal, and infinite in possibilities of giving
and receiving glory and joy. Rose thought of Horace, and a delicious
thrill went over her whole body. Then she thought of Lucy Ayres, and
felt both pity and a sort of angry and contemptuous repulsion. "How a
girl can do so!" she thought.

Intuitively she knew that what she felt for Horace was a far nobler
love than Lucy's. "Love--was it love, after all?" Rose did not know,
but she gave her head a proud shake. "I never would put him in such a
position, and lie about him, just because--" she said to herself.

She did not finish her sentence. Rose was innately modest even as to
her own self-disclosures. Her emotions were so healthy that she had
the power to keep them under the wings of her spirit, both to guard
and hold the superior place. She had a feeling that Lucy Ayres's love
for Horace was in a way an insult to him. After what Sylvia had said,
she had not a doubt as to the falsity of what Lucy had told her
during their drive. She and Lucy had been on the front seat of the
carriage, when Lucy had intimated that there was an understanding
between herself and Horace. She had spoken very low, in French, and
Rose had been obliged to ask her to repeat her words. Immediately
Lucy's mother's head was between the two girls, and the bunch of
violets on her bonnet grazed Rose's ear.

"What are you saying?" she had asked Lucy, sharply. And Lucy had
lied. "I said what a pleasant day it is," she replied.

"You said it in French."

"Yes, mother."

"Next time say it in English," said Mrs. Ayres.

Of course, if Lucy had lied to her mother, she had lied to her. She
had lied in two languages. "She must be a very strange girl," thought
Rose. She resolved that she could not go to see Lucy very often, and
a little pang of regret shot through her. She had been very ready to
love poor Lucy.

Presently, as Rose sat beside the window, she heard footsteps on the
gravel sidewalk outside the front yard, and then a man's figure came
into view, like a moving shadow. She knew the figure was a man
because there was no swing of skirts. Her heart beat fast when the
man opened the front gate and shut it with a faint click. She
wondered if it could be Horace, but immediately she saw, from the
slightly sidewise shoulders and gait, that it was Henry Whitman. She
heard him enter; she heard doors opened and closed. After a time she
heard a murmur of voices. Then there was a flash of light across the
yard, from a lighted lamp being carried through a room below. The
light was reflected on the ceiling of her room. Then it vanished, and
everything was quiet. Rose thought that Sylvia and Henry had retired
for the night. She almost knew that Horace was not in the house. She
had heard him go out after supper and she had not heard him enter. He
had a habit of taking long walks on fine nights.

Rose sat and wondered. Once the suspicion smote her that possibly,
after all, Lucy had spoken the truth, that Horace was with her. Then
she dismissed the suspicion as unworthy of her. She recalled what
Sylvia had said; she recalled how she herself had heard Lucy lie. She
knew that Horace could not be fond of a girl like that, and he had
known her quite a long time. Again Rose's young rapture and belief in
her own happiness reigned. She sat still, and the moon at last sailed
out of the feathery clasp of the elm branches, and the whole
landscape was in a pale, clear glow. Then Horace came. Rose started
up. She stood for an instant irresolute, then she stole out of her
room and down the spiral stair very noiselessly. She opened the front
door before Horace could insert his key in the latch.

Horace started back.

"Hush," whispered Rose. She stifled a laugh. "Step back out in the
yard just a minute," she whispered.

Horace obeyed. He stepped softly back, and Rose joined him after she
had closed the door with great care.

"Now come down as far as the gate, out of the shadows," whispered
Rose. "I want to show you something."

The two stole down to the gate. Then Rose faced Horace in full glare
of moonlight.

"Look at me," said she, and she stifled another laugh of pure,
childish delight.

Horace looked. Only a few of the stones which Rose wore caught the
moonlight to any extent, but she was all of a shimmer and gleam, like
a creature decked with dewdrops.

"Look at me," she whispered again.

"I am looking."

"Do you see?"

"What?"

"They are poor Aunt Abrahama's jewels. Aunt Sylvia gave them to me.
Aren't they beautiful? Such lovely, old-fashioned settings. You can't
half see in the moonlight. You shall see them by day."

"It is beautiful enough now," said Horace, with a sort of gasp.
"Those are pearls around your neck?"

"Yes, really lovely pearls; and such carved pink coral! And look at
the dear old pearl spray in my hair. Wait; I'll turn my head so the
moon will show on it. Isn't it dear?"

"Yes, it is," replied Horace, regarding the delicate spray of seed
pearls on Rose's head.

"And only look at these bracelets and these rings; and I had to tie
the ear-rings on because my ears are not pierced. Would you have them
pierced and wear them as they are--I believe ear-rings are coming
into vogue again--or would you have them made into rings?"

"Rings," said Horace, emphatically.

"I think that will be better. I fancy the ear-rings dangling make me
a little nervous already. See all these brooches, and the rings."

Rose held up her hands and twirled her ring-laden fingers, and
laughed again.

"They are pretty large, most of the rings," said she. "There is one
pearl and one emerald that are charming, and several of the dearest
old-fashioned things. Think of poor Aunt Abrahama having all these
lovely things packed away in a bureau drawer and never wearing them."

"I should rather have packed away my name," said Horace.

"So should I. Isn't it awful? The Abrahama is simply dreadful, and
the way it comes down with a sort of whack on the White! Poor Aunt
Abrahama! I feel almost guilty having all her pretty jewels and being
so pleased with them."

"Oh, she would be pleased, too, if she knew."

"I don't know. She and my mother had been estranged for years, ever
since my mother's marriage. Would she be pleased, do you think?"

"Of course she would, and as for the things themselves, they are
fulfilling their mission."

Rose laughed. "Maybe jewels don't like to be shut up for years and
years in a drawer, away from the light," said she. "They do seem
almost alive. Look, you can really see the green in that emerald!"

Horace was trembling from head to foot. He could hardly reply.

"Why, you are shivering," said Rose. "Are you cold?"

"No--well, perhaps yes, a little. It is rather cool to-night after
the hot day."

"Where have you been?"

"I walked to Tunbury and back."

"That is seven miles. That ought to have warmed you. Well, I think we
must go in. I don't know what Aunt Sylvia would say."

"Why should she mind?"

"I don't know. She might not think I should have run out here as I
did. I think all these jewels went to my head. Come. Please walk very
softly."

Horace hesitated.

"Come," repeated Rose, imperatively, and started.

Horace followed.

The night before they had been on the verge of a love scene, now it
seemed impossible, incongruous. Horace was full of tender longing,
but he felt that to gratify it would be to pass the impossible.

"Please be very still," whispered Rose, when they had reached the
house door. She herself began opening it, turning the knob by slow
degrees. All the time she was stifling her laughter. Horace felt that
the stifled laughter was the main factor in prohibiting the
love-making.

Rose turned the knob and removed her hand as she pushed the door
open; then something fell with a tiny tinkle on the stone step. Both
stopped.

"One of my rings," whispered Rose.

Horace stooped and felt over the stone slab, and finally his hand
struck the tiny thing.

"It's that queer little flat gold one," continued Rose, who was now
serious.

A sudden boldness possessed Horace. "May I have it?" he said.

"It's not a bit pretty. I don't believe you can wear it."

Horace slipped the ring on his little finger. "It just fits."

"I don't care," Rose said, hesitatingly. "Aunt Sylvia gave me the
things. I don't believe she will care. And there are two more flat
gold rings, anyway. She will not notice, only perhaps I ought to tell
her."

"If you think it will make any trouble for you--"

"Oh no; keep it. It is interesting because it is old-fashioned, and
as far as giving it away is concerned, I could give away half of
these trinkets. I can't go around decked out like this, nor begin to
wear all the rings. I certainly never should have put that ring on
again."

Horace felt daunted by her light valuation of it, but when he was in
the house, and in his room, and neither Sylvia nor Henry had been
awakened, he removed the thing and looked at it closely. All the
inner surface was covered with a clear inscription, very clear,
although of a necessity in minute characters--"Let love abide
whate'er betide."

Horace laughed tenderly. "She has given me more than she knows," he
thought.

Chapter XVI

Henry Whitman awoke the next morning with sensations of delight and
terror. He found himself absolutely unable to rouse himself up to
that pitch of courage necessary to tell Sylvia that he intended to
return to his work in the shop. He said to himself that it would be
better to allow it to become an accomplished fact before she knew it,
that it would be easier for him. Luckily for his plans, the family
breakfasted early.

Directly after he had risen from the table, Henry attempted to slip
out of the house from the front door without Sylvia's knowledge. He
had nearly reached the gate, and had a sensation of exultation like a
child playing truant, when he heard Sylvia's voice.

"Henry!" she called. "Henry Whitman!"

Henry turned around obediently.

"Where are you going?" asked Sylvia.

She stood under the columns of the front porch, a meagre little
figure of a woman dressed with severe and immaculate cheapness in a
purple calico wrapper, with a checked gingham apron tied in a prim
bow at her back. Her hair was very smooth. She was New England
austerity and conservatism embodied. She was terrifying, although it
would have puzzled anybody to have told why. Certain it was that no
man would have had the temerity to contest her authority as she stood
there. Henry waited near the gate.

"Where are you going?" asked Sylvia again.

"Down street," replied Henry.

"Whereabouts down street?"

Henry said again, with a meek doggedness, "Down street."

"Come here," said Sylvia.

Henry walked slowly towards her, between the rows of box. He was
about three feet away when she spoke again. "Where are you going?"
said she.

"Down street."

Sylvia looked at Henry, and he trembled inwardly. Had she any
suspicion? When she spoke an immense relief overspread him. "I wish
you'd go into the drug store and get me a quarter of a pound of
peppermints," said she.

Then Henry knew that he had the best of it. Sylvia possessed what she
considered an almost guilty weakness for peppermints. She never
bought them herself, or asked him to buy them, without feeling
humiliated. Her austere and dictatorial manner vanished at the moment
she preferred the request for peppermints.

"Of course I'll get them," said Henry, with enthusiasm. He mentally
resolved upon a pound instead of a quarter.

"I don't feel quite right in my stomach, and I think they're good for
me," said Sylvia, still abjectly. Then she turned and went into the
house. Henry started afresh. He felt renewed compunction at his
deceit as he went on. It seemed hard to go against the wishes of that
poor, little, narrow-chested woman who had had so little in life that
a quarter of a pound of peppermints seemed too much for her to desire.

But Henry realized that he had not the courage to tell her. He went
on. He had just about time to reach the shop before the whistle blew.
As he neared the shop he became one of a stream of toilers pressing
towards the same goal. Most of them were younger than he, and it was
safe to assume none were going to work with the same enthusiasm.
There were many weary, rebellious faces. They had not yet come to
Henry's pass. Toil had not yet gotten the better of their freedom of
spirit. They considered that they could think and live to better
purpose without it. Henry had become its slave. He was his true self
only when under the conditions of his slavery. He had toiled a few
years longer than he should have done, to attain the ability to keep
his head above the waters of life without toil. The mechanical motion
of his hands at their task of years was absolutely necessary to him.
He had become, in fact, as a machine, which rusts and is good for
nothing if left long inactive. Henry was at once pitiable and
terrible when he came in sight of the many-windowed building which
was his goal. The whistles blew, and he heard as an old war-horse
hears the summons to battle. But in his case the battle was all for
naught and there was no victory to be won. But the man was happier
than he had been for months. His happiness was a pity and a shame to
him, but it was happiness, and sweet in his soul. It was the only
happiness which he had not become too callous to feel. If only he
could have lived in the beautiful old home, and spent the rest of his
life in prideful wrestling with the soil for goodly crops, in tasting
the peace of life which is the right of those who have worked long!

But it all seemed too late. When a man has become welded to toil he
can never separate himself from it without distress and loss of his
own substance of individuality. What Henry had told Sidney Meeks was
entirely true: good-fortune had come too late for him to reap the
physical and spiritual benefit from it which is its usual dividend.
He was no longer his own man, but the man of his life-experience.

When he stood once more in his old place, cutting the leather which
smelled to him sweeter than roses, he was assailed by many a gibe,
good-natured in a way, but still critical.

"What are you to work again for, Henry?" "You've got money enough to
live on." "What in thunder are you working for?"

One thing was said many times which hit him hard. "You are taking the
bread out of the mouth of some other man who needs work; don't you
know it, Henry?" That rankled. Otherwise Henry, at his old task, with
his mind set free by the toil of his hands, might have been entirely
happy.

"Good Lord!" he said, at length, to the man at his side, a
middle-aged man with a blackened, sardonic face and a forehead lined
with a scowl of rebellion, "do you suppose I do it for the money? I
tell you it's for the work."

"The work!" sneered the other man.

"I tell you I've worked so long I can't stop, and live."

The other man stared. "Either you're a damned fool, or the men or the
system--whatever it is that has worked you so long that you can't
stop--ought to go to--" he growled.

"You can't shake off a burden that's grown to you," said Henry.

The worker on Henry's other side was a mere boy, but he had a bulging
forehead and a square chin, and already figured in labor circles.

"As soon try to shake off a hump," he said, and nodded.

"Yes," said Henry. "When you've lived long enough in one sort of a
world it settles onto your shoulders, and nothing but death can ease
a man from the weight of it."

"That's so," said the boy.

"But as far as keeping the bread from another man goes--" said Henry.
Then he hesitated. He was tainted by the greed for unnecessary money,
in spite of his avowal to the contrary. That also had come to be a
part of him. Then he continued, "As far as that goes, I'm willing to
give away--a--good part of what I earn."

The first man laughed, harshly. "He'll be for giving a library to
East Westland next, to make up to men for having their money and
freedom in his own pockets," he said.

"I 'ain't got so much as all that, after all," said Henry. "Because
my wife has had a little left to her, it don't follow that we are
millionaires."

"I guess you are pretty well fixed. You don't need to work, and you
know it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. There's my wife's
brother can't get a job."

"Good reason why," said the boy on the other side. "He drinks."

"He drinks every time he gets out of work and gets clean
discouraged," retorted the man.

"Well," said the boy, "you know me well enough to know that I'm with
my class every time, but hanged if I can see why your wife's brother
'ain't got into a circle that there's no getting him out of. We've
got to get out of work sometimes. We all know it. We've got to if we
don't want humps on all our shoulders; and if Jim can't live up to
his independence, why, he's out of the running, or, rather, in his
own running so neither God nor man can get him out of it. You know
the time that last strike was on he was in the gutter every day, when
he could beg enough money to keep him there. Now, we can't have that
sort of thing. When a man's got so he can't work nor fight neither,
why, he's up against it. If Henry here gave up his job, Jim couldn't
get it, and you know it."

Henry went on. He hardly heard now what they were saying. His mind
was revelling in its free flights of rebellion against everything.
Henry, for a man who kept the commandments, was again as wicked as he
could be, and revelling in his wickedness. He was like a drinker
returned to his cups. His joy was immense, but unholy. However, the
accusation that he was taking bread from another man who needed it
more than he still rankled. He could, after all, rise somewhat above
mere greed. He resolved that he would give, and no one should know of
his giving, to the family of the man Jim who had no work.

During the morning Henry did not trouble himself about Sylvia and
what she would think about it all. Towards noon, however, he began to
dread going home and facing her. When he started he felt fairly
cowardly. He stopped at the drug store and bought a pound of
peppermints.

Albion Bennet waited on him. Albion Bennet was an intensely
black-haired man in his forties. His black hair was always sleek with
a patent hair-oil which he carried in his stock. He always wore a red
tie and an old-fashioned scarf-pin set with a tiny diamond, and his
collars were made of celluloid.

"I have gone back to the hotel to board," he informed Henry, while
tying up the parcel. He colored a little under his black, bristling
cheeks as he spoke.

"I thought you left," said Henry.

"So I did. I went to board at the Joneses', but--I can't stand a girl
right in my face and eyes all the time. When I want to get married,
and see the right one, then I want to do the courting; but hang it if
I can stand being courted, and that's what I've been up against ever
since I left the hotel, and that's a fact. Susy Jones was enough, but
when it came to Fanny Elliot getting thick with her, and both of them
on hand, it was too much. But I stuck it out till Susy began to do
the cooking and her mother made me eat it."

"I have heard Miss Hart wasn't a very good cook," said Henry.

"Well, she ain't anything to brag of; but say, a man can stand
regulation cooking done bad, but when it comes to new-fangled messes
done bad, so a man don't know what he's eating, whether it's cats or
poisonous mushrooms, I draw the line. Miss Hart's bread is more
generally saleratusy and heavy, but at least you know it's heavy
bread, and I got heavy stuff at the Joneses and didn't know what it
was. And Miss Hart's pies are tough, but you know you've got tough
pies, and at the Joneses' I had tough things that I couldn't give a
name to. Miss Hart's doughnuts are greasy, but Lord, the greasy
things at the Joneses' that Susy made! At least you know what you've
got when you eat a greasy doughnut, and if it hurts you you know what
to tell the doctor, but I had to give it up. I'd rather have bad
cooking and know what it is than bad cooking and know what it isn't.
Then there were other things. I like, when I get home from the store,
to have a little quiet and read my paper, and Susy and Fanny, if I
didn't stay in the parlor, were banging the piano and singing at me
all the time to get me down-stairs. So I've gone back to the hotel,
and I'm enough sight better off. Of course, when that matter of Miss
Farrel came up I left. A man don't want to think he may get a little
arsenic mixed in with the bad cooking, but now I'm convinced that's
all right."

"How do you know?" asked Henry, paying for the peppermints. "I never
thought Miss Hart had anything to do with it myself, but of course
she wasn't exactly acquitted, neither she nor the girl. You said
yourself that she bought arsenic here."

"So she did, and it all went to kill rats," said Albion. "Lots of
folks have bought arsenic here to kill rats with. They didn't all of
them poison Miss Farrel." Albion nodded wisely and mysteriously. "No,
Lucinda's all right," he said. "I ain't at liberty to say how I know,
but I do know. I may get bad cooking at the hotel, but I won't get no
arsenic."

Henry looked curiously at the other man. "So you've found out
something?" he said.

"I ain't at liberty to say," replied Albion. "It's a pretty nice day,
ain't it? Hope we ain't going to have such a hot summer as last,
though hot weather is mighty good for my business, since I put in the
soda-fountain."

Henry, walking homeward with his package of peppermints, speculated a
little on what Albion Bennet had said; then his mind reverted to his
anxiety with regard to Sylvia, and her discovery that he had returned
to the shop. He passed his arm across his face and sniffed at his
coat-sleeve. He wondered if he smelled of leather. He planned to go
around to the kitchen door and wash his hands at the pump in the yard
before entering the house, but he could not be sure about the
leather. He wondered if Rose would notice it and be disgusted. His
heart sank as he neared home. He sniffed at his coat-sleeve again. He
wondered if he could possibly slip into the bedroom and put on
another coat for dinner before Sylvia saw him. He doubted if he could
manage to get away unnoticed after dinner. He speculated, if Sylvia
asked him where he was going again, what he could say. He considered
what he could say if she were to call him to account for his long
absence that forenoon.

When he reached the house he entered the side yard, stopped at the
pump, washed his hands and dried them on his handkerchief, and drank
from the tin cup chained to the pump-nose. He thought he might enter
by the front door and steal into his bedroom and get the other coat,
but Sylvia came to the side door.

"Where in the world have you been?" she said. Henry advanced,
smiling, with the peppermints. "Why, Henry," she cried, in a voice of
dismay which had a gratified ring in it, "you've been and bought a
whole pound! I only said to buy a quarter."

"They're good for you," said Henry, entering the door.

Sylvia could not wait, and put one of the sweets in her mouth, and to
that Henry owed his respite. Sylvia, eating peppermint, was oblivious
to leather.

Henry went through into the bedroom and put on another coat before he
sat down at the dinner-table.

Sylvia noticed that. "What did you change your coat for?" said she.

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