Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Shoulders of Atlas

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Henry shivered as if with cold. "I thought the house seemed kind of
damp when I came in," he said, "and this coat is some heavier."

Sylvia looked at him with fretful anxiety. "You've got cold. I knew
you would," she said. "You stayed out late last night, and the dew
was awful heavy. I knew you would catch cold. You had better stop at
the drug store and get some of those pellets that Dr. Wallace puts
up."

Again was Henry's way made plain for him. "Perhaps I had," said he,
eagerly. "I'll go down and get some after dinner."

But Horace innocently offered to save him the trouble. "I go past the
drug store," said he. "Let me get them."

But Sylvia unexpectedly came to Henry's aid. "No," she said. "I think
you had better not wait till Mr. Allen comes home from school. Dr.
Wallace says those pellets ought to be taken right away, just as soon
as you feel a cold, to have them do any good."

Henry brightened, but Rose interposed. "Why, I would love to run down
to the drug store and get the medicine," she said. "You lie down
after dinner, Uncle Henry, and I'll go."

Henry cast an agonizing glance at Horace. The young man did not
understand in the least what it meant, but he came to the rescue.

"The last time I took those pellets," he said, "Mr. Whitman got them
for me. It was one Saturday, and I was home, and felt the cold coming
on, and I lay down, just as you suggest Mr. Whitman's doing, and got
asleep, and awoke with a chill. I think that if one has a cold the
best thing is to keep exercising until you can get hold of a remedy.
I think if Mr. Whitman walks down to the drug store himself and gets
the pellets, and takes one, and keeps out in the open air afterwards,
as it is a fine day, it will be the very best thing for him."

"That is just what I think myself," said Henry, with a grateful look
at Horace.

Henry changed his coat again before leaving, on the plea that it was
better for him to wear a lighter one when walking and the heavier one
when he was in the house. He and Horace walked down the street
together. They were out of sight of the house when Henry spoke.

"Mrs. Whitman don't know it yet," said he, "but there's no reason why
you shouldn't. I 'ain't got any cold. I'll get the pellets to satisfy
her, but I 'ain't got any cold. I wanted to get out again and not
tell her, if I could help it. I didn't want a fuss. I'm going to put
it off as long as I can. Mrs. Whitman's none too strong, and when
anything goes against her she's all used up, and I must save her as
long as possible."

Horace stared at Henry with some alarm. "What on earth is it?" he
said.

"Nothing, only I have gone back to work in the shop."

Horace looked amazed. "But I thought--"

"You thought we had enough so I hadn't any need to work, and you are
right," said Henry, with a pathetic firmness. "We have got property
enough to keep us, if nothing happens, as long as we live, but I had
to go back to that infernal treadmill or die."

Horace nodded soberly. "I think I understand," said he.

"I'm glad you do."

"But Mrs. Whitman--"

"Oh, poor Sylvia will take it hard, and she won't understand. Women
don't understand a lot of things. But I can't help it. I'll keep it
from her for a day or two. She'll have to hear of it before long. You
don't think Rose will mind the leather smell?" concluded Henry.

"I wouldn't worry about that. There is nothing very disagreeable
about it," Horace replied, laughing.

"I will always change my coat and wash my hands real particular
before I set down to the table," said Henry, wistfully. Then he
added, after a second's hesitation: "You don't think she will think
any the less of me? You don't suppose she won't be willing to live in
the house because I work in the shop?"

"You mean Rose--Miss Fletcher?"

"Yes; of course she's been brought up different. She don't know
anything about people's working with their hands. She's been brought
up to think they're beneath her. I suppose it's never entered into
the child's head that she would live to set at the same table with a
man who works in a shoe-shop. You don't suppose it will set her
against me?"

"I think even if she has been brought up differently, as you say,
that she has a great deal of sense," replied Horace. "I don't think
you need to worry about that."

"I'm glad you don't. I guess it would about break Sylvia's heart to
lose her now, and I've got so I set a good deal by the child myself.
Mr. Allen, I want to ask you something."

Henry paused, and Horace waited.

"I want to ask you if you've noticed anything queer about Sylvia
lately," Henry said, at last.

Horace looked at him. "Do you mean in her looks or her manners?"

"Both."

Horace hesitated in his turn. "Now you speak of it--" he began.

"Well," said Henry, "speak out just what you think."

"I have not been sure that there was anything definite," Horace said,
slowly. "I have not been sure that it was not all imagination on my
part."

"That's just the way I've been feeling," Henry said, eagerly. "What
is it that you've been noticing?"

"I told you I am not sure that it is not all imagination, but--"

"What?"

"Well, sometimes your wife has given me the impression that she was
brooding over something that she was keeping entirely to herself. She
has had a look as if she had her eyes turned inward and was worrying
over what she saw. I don't know that you understand what I mean by
that?"

Henry nodded. "That's just the way Sylvia's been looking to me."

"I don't know but she looks as well as ever."

"She's grown thin."

"Maybe she has. Sometimes I have thought that, but what I have
noticed has been something intangible in her manner and expression,
that I thought was there one minute and was not at all sure about the
next. I haven't known whether the trouble, or difference, as perhaps
I had better put it, was with her or myself."

Henry nodded still more emphatically. "That's just the way it's
seemed to me, and we 'ain't either of us imagined it. It's so," said
he.

"Have you any idea--"

"No, I haven't the least. But my wife's got something on her mind,
and she's had something on her mind for a long time. It ain't
anything new."

"Why don't you ask her?"

"I have asked her, and she says that of course she's got something on
her mind, that she ain't a fool. You can't get around Sylvia. She
never would tell anything unless she wanted to. She ain't like most
women."

Just then Horace turned the corner of the street leading to his
school, and the conversation ceased, with an enjoinder on his part to
Henry not to be disturbed about it, as he did not think it could be
anything serious.

Henry's reply rang back as the two men went their different ways. "I
don't suppose it can be anything serious," he said, almost angrily.

Horace, however, was disposed to differ with him. He argued that a
woman of Sylvia Whitman's type does not change her manner and grow
introspective for nothing. He was inclined to think there might be
something rather serious at the bottom of it all. His imagination,
however, pictured some disease, which she was concealing from all
about her, but which caused her never-ceasing anxiety and perhaps
pain.

That night he looked critically at her and was rather confirmed in
his opinion. Sylvia had certainly grown thin, and the lines in her
face had deepened into furrows. She looked much older than she had
done before she had received her inheritance. At the same time she
puzzled Horace by looking happier, albeit in a struggling sort of
fashion. Either Rose or the inheritance was the cause of the
happiness. Horace was inclined to think it was Rose, especially since
she seemed to him more than ever the source of all happiness and
further from his reach.

That night he had found in the post-office a story of whose
acceptance he had been almost sure, accompanied by the miserable
little formula which arouses at once wrath and humiliation. Horace
tore it up and threw the pieces along the road. There was a
thunder-shower coming up. It scattered the few blossoms remaining on
the trees, and many leaves, and the bits of the civilly hypocritical
note of thanks and rejection flew with them upon the wings of the
storm wind.

Horace gazed up at the clouds overhead, which looked like the rapids
of some terrible, heavenly river overlapping each other in shell-like
shapes and moving with intense fury. He thought of Rose, and first
hoped that she was in the house, and then reflected that he might as
well give up all hope of ever marrying her. The returned manuscript
in his pocket seemed to weigh down his very soul. He recalled various
stories which he had read in the current magazines of late, and it
seemed to him that his compared very favorably with them. He tried to
think of the matter judicially, as if the rejected story were not his
own, and felt justified in thinking well of it. He had a sickening
sense of being pitted against something which he could not gainsay,
which his own convictions as to the privilege of persons in authority
to have their own opinions forbade him to question.

"The editors had a perfect right to return my story, even if it is
every whit as worthy of publication, even worthier, than anything
which has appeared in their magazine for a twelvemonth," he told
himself.

He realized that he was not dependent upon the public concerning the
merit of his work--he could not be until the work appeared in
print--but he was combating the opinions (or appealing to them) of a
few men whose critical abilities might be biassed by a thousand
personal matters with which he could not interfere. He felt that
there was a broad, general injustice in the situation, but absolute
right as to facts. These were men to whom was given the power to
accept or refuse. No one could question their right to use that
power. Horace said to himself that he was probably a fool to
entertain for a moment any hope of success under such conditions.

"Good Lord! It might depend upon whether the readers had
indigestion," he thought; and at the same time he accepted the
situation with a philosophic pride of surrender.

"It's about one chance in a good many thousand," he told himself. "If
I don't get the chance some other fellow does, and there's no mortal
way but to make the best of it, unless I act like a fool myself."
Horace was exceedingly alive to the lack of dignity of one who kicked
against the pricks. He said to himself that if he could not marry
Rose, if he could not ask her why, he must accept his fate, not
attack it to his own undoing, nor even deplore it to his ignominy.

In all this he was, rather curiously, leaving the girl and her
possible view of the matter entirely out of the question. Horace,
while he was not in the least self-deprecatory, and was disposed to
be as just in his estimate of himself as of other men, was not
egotistical. It did not really occur to him that Rose's fancy, too,
might have been awakened as his own had been, that he might cause her
suffering. It went to prove his unselfishness that, upon entering the
house, and seeing Rose seated beside a window with her embroidery,
his first feeling was of satisfaction that she was housed and safe
from the fast-gathering storm.

Rose looked up as he entered, and smiled.

"There's a storm overhead," remarked Horace.

"Yes," said Rose. "Aunt Sylvia has just told me I ought not to use a
needle, with so much lightning. She has been telling me about a woman
who was sewing in a thunder-storm, and the needle was driven into her
hand." Rose laughed, but as she spoke she quilted her needle into her
work and tossed it on a table, got up, and went to the window.

"It looks almost wild enough for a cyclone," she said, gazing up at
the rapid scud of gray, shell-like clouds.

"Rose, come right away from that window," cried Sylvia, entering from
the dining-room. "Only last summer a woman in Alford got struck
standing at a window in a tempest."

"I want to look at the clouds," said Rose, but she obeyed.

Sylvia put a chair away from the fireplace and out of any draught.
"Here," said she. "Set down here." She drew up another chair close
beside Rose and sat down. There came a flash of lightning and a
terrible crash of thunder. A blind slammed somewhere. Out in the
great front yard the rain swirled in misty columns, like ghostly
dancers, and the flowering shrubs lashed the ground. Horace watched
it until Sylvia called him, also, to what she considered a place of
safety. "If you don't come away from that window and set on the sofa
I shall have a conniption fit," she said. Horace obeyed. As he sat
down he thought of Henry, and without stopping to think, inquired
where he was.

"He went down to Mr. Meeks's," replied Sylvia, with calm decision.

Horace stared at her. He wondered if she could possibly be lying, or
if she really believed what she said.

He did not know what had happened that afternoon; neither did Rose.
Rose had gone out for a walk, and while Sylvia was alone a caller,
Mrs. Jim Jones, had come. Mrs. Jim Jones was a very small,
angry-looking woman. Nature had apparently intended her to be plump
and sweet and rosy, and altogether comfortable, but she had flown in
the face of nature, like a cross hen, and had her own way with
herself.

It was scarcely conceivable that Mrs. Jim Jones could be all the time
in the state of wrath against everything in general which her sharp
tongue and her angry voice evinced, but she gave that impression. Her
little blond face looked like that of a doll which has been covered
with angry pin-scratches by an ill-tempered child. Whenever she spoke
these scratches deepened.

Mrs. Jim Jones could not bring herself to speak of anything without a
show of temper, whether she really felt it or not. She fairly lashed
out at Sylvia when the latter inquired if it was true that Albion
Bennet had left her house and returned to the hotel.

"Yes, it is true, and thank the Lord for His unspeakable mercy to the
children of men. I couldn't have stood that man much longer, and
that's the gospel truth. He ate like a pig, so there wasn't a mite of
profit in it. And he was as fussy as any old maid I ever saw. If I
have to choose between an old maid and an old batch for a boarder,
give me the old maid every time. She don't begin to eat so much, and
she takes care of her room. Albion Bennet about ruined my spare
chamber. He et peanuts every Sunday, and they're all ground into the
carpet. Yes, I'm mighty glad to get rid of him. Let alone everything
else, the way he pestered my Susy was enough to make me sick of my
bargain. There that poor child got so she tagged me all over the
house for fear Albion Bennet would make love to her. I guess Susy
ain't going to take up with a man like Albion Bennet. He's too old
for her anyhow, and I don't believe he makes much out of his drug
store. I rather guess Susy looks higher than that. Yes, he's gone,
and it's 'good riddance, bad rubbish.'"

"If you feel so about it I'm glad he's gone back to Lucinda," said
Sylvia. "She didn't have many steady boarders, and it did sort of
look against her, poor thing, with all the mean talk there's been."

"I guess there wasn't quite so much smoke without a little fire,"
said Mrs. Jim Jones, and her small face looked fairly evil.

Then Sylvia was aroused. "Now, Mrs. Jones, you know better," said
she. "You know as well as you want to that Lucinda Hart was no more
guilty than you and I were. We both went to school with her."

Mrs. Jim Jones backed down a little. There was something about Sylvia
Whitman when she was aroused that a woman of Mrs. Jones's type could
not face with impunity. "Well, I don't pretend to know," said she,
with angry sullenness.

"You pretended to know just now. If folks don't know, it seems to me
the best thing they can do is to hold their tongues, anyhow."

"I am holding my tongue, ain't I? What has got into you, Sylvia
Whitman?"

"No, you didn't hold your tongue when you said that about there not
being so much smoke without some fire."

"Well, there always is fire when there's smoke, ain't there?"

"No, there ain't always, not on the earth. Sometimes there's smoke
that folks' wicked imaginations bring up out of the other place. I do
believe that."

"Why, Sylvia Whitman, how you do talk! You're almost swearing."

"Have it swearing if you want to," said Sylvia. "I know I'm glad that
Albion Bennet has gone back to Lucinda's. Everybody knows how mortal
scared he is of his own shadow, and if he's got grit enough to go
back there it's enough to about satisfy folks that there wasn't
anything in the story."

"Well, it's 'good riddance, bad rubbish,' as far as I'm concerned,"
said Mrs. Jim Jones. There had been on her face when she first
entered an expression of peculiar malignity. Sylvia knew it of old.
She had realized that Mrs. Jones had something sweet for her own
tongue, but bitter for her, in store, and that she was withholding it
as long as possible, in order to prolong the delight of anticipation.
"You've got two boarders, ain't you?" inquired Mrs. Jim Jones.

"I've got one boarder," replied Sylvia, with dignity, "and we keep
him because he can't bear to go anywhere else in East Westland, and
because we like his company."

"I thought Abrahama White's niece--"

"She ain't no boarder. She makes her home here. If you think we'd
take a cent of money from poor Abrahama's own niece, you're mistaken."

"I didn't know. She takes after her grandmother White, don't she? She
was mortal homely."

Then Sylvia fairly turned pale with resentment. "She doesn't look any
more like old Mrs. White than your cat does," said she. "Rose is a
beauty; everybody says so. She's the prettiest girl that ever set
foot in this town."

"Everybody to their taste," replied Mrs. Jim Jones, in the village
formula of contempt. "I heard Mr. Allen, your boarder, was going to
marry her," she added.

"He ain't."

"I'm glad to hear it from headquarters," said Mrs. Jim Jones. "I said
I couldn't believe it was true."

"Mr. Allen won't marry any girl in East Westland," said Sylvia.

"Is there anybody in Boston?" asked Mrs. Jim Jones, losing her
self-possession a little.

Sylvia played her trump card. "I don't know anything--that is, I
ain't going to say anything," she replied, mysteriously.

Mrs. Jim Jones was routed for a second, but she returned to the
attack. She had not yet come to her particular errand. She felt that
now was the auspicious moment. "I felt real sorry for you when I
heard the news," said she.

Sylvia did not in the least know what she meant. Inwardly she
trembled, but she would have died before she betrayed herself. She
would not even disclose her ignorance of what the news might be. She
did not, therefore, reply in words, but gave a noncommittal grunt.

"I thought," said Mrs. Jim Jones, driven to her last gun, "that you
and Mr. Whitman had inherited enough to make you comfortable for
life, and I felt real bad to find out you hadn't."

Sylvia turned a little pale, but her gaze never flinched. She grunted
again.

"I supposed," said Mrs. Jim Jones, mouthing her words with intensest
relish, "that there wouldn't be any need for Mr. Whitman to work any
more, and when I heard he was going back to the shop, and when I saw
him turn in there this morning, I declare I did feel bad."

Then Sylvia spoke. "You needn't have felt bad," said she. "Nobody
asked you to."

Mrs. Jim Jones stared.

"Nobody asked you to," repeated Sylvia. "Nobody is feeling at all bad
here. It's true we've plenty, so Mr. Whitman don't need to lift his
finger, if he don't want to, but a man can't set down, day in and day
out, and suck his thumbs when he's been used to working all his life.
Some folks are lazy by choice, and some folks work by choice. Mr.
Whitman is one of them."

Mrs. Jim Jones felt fairly defrauded. "Then you don't feel bad?" said
she, in a crestfallen way.

"Nobody feels bad here," said Sylvia. "I guess nobody in East
Westland feels bad unless it's you, and nobody wants you to."

After Mrs. Jim Jones had gone, Sylvia went into her bedroom and sat
down in a rocking-chair by the one window. Under the window grew a
sweetbrier rose-bush. There were no roses on it, but the soothing
perfume of the leaves came into the room. Sylvia sat quite still for
a while. Then she got up and went into the sitting-room with her
mouth set hard.

When Rose had returned she had greeted her as usual, and in reply to
her question where Uncle Henry was, said she guessed he must be at
Mr. Meeks's; there's where he generally was when he wasn't at home.

It did not occur to Sylvia that she was lying, not even when, later
in the afternoon, Horace came home, and she answered his question as
to her husband's whereabouts in the same manner. She had resolved
upon Sidney Meeks's as a synonyme for the shoe-shop. She knew herself
that when she said Mr. Meeks's she in reality meant the shoe-shop.
She did not worry about others not having the same comprehension as
herself. Sylvia had a New England conscience, but, like all New
England consciences, it was susceptible of hard twists to bring it
into accordance with New England will.

The thunder-tempest, as Sylvia termed it, continued. She kept
glancing, from her station of safety, at the streaming windows. She
was becoming very much worried about Henry. At last she saw a figure,
bent to the rainy wind, pass swiftly before the side windows of the
sitting-room. She was on her feet in an instant, although at that
minute the room was filled with blue flame followed by a terrific
crash. She ran out into the kitchen and flung open the door.

"Come in quick, for mercy's sake!" she called. Henry entered. He was
dripping with rain. Sylvia did not ask a question. "Stand right where
you are till I bring you some dry clothes," she said.

Henry obeyed. He stood meekly on the oil-cloth while Sylvia hurried
through the sitting-room to her bedroom.

"Mr. Whitman has got home from Mr. Meeks's, and he's dripping wet,"
she said to Horace and Rose. "I am going to get him some dry things
and hang the wet ones by the kitchen stove."

When she re-entered the kitchen with her arms full, Henry cast a
scared glance at her. She met it imperturbably.

"Hurry and get off those wet things or you'll catch your death of
cold," said she.

Henry obeyed. Sylvia fastened his necktie for him when he was ready
for it. He wondered if she smelled the leather in his drenched
clothing. His own nostrils were full of it. But Sylvia made no sign.
She never afterwards made any sign. She never intimated to Henry in
any fashion that she knew of his return to the shop. She was, if
anything, kinder and gentler with him than she had been before, but
whenever he attempted, being led thereto by a guilty conscience, to
undeceive her, Sylvia lightly but decidedly waved the revelation
aside. She would not have it.

That day, when she and Henry entered the sitting-room, she said, so
calmly that he had not the courage to contradict her: "Here is your
uncle Henry home from Mr. Meeks's, and he was as wet as a drowned
rat. I suppose Mr. Meeks didn't have any umbrella to lend. Old
bachelors never do have anything."

Henry sat down quietly in his allotted chair. He said nothing. It was
only when the storm had abated, when there was a clear streak of gold
low in the west, and all the wet leaves in the yard gave out green
and silver lights, when Sylvia had gone out in the kitchen to get
supper and Rose had followed her, that the two men looked at each
other.

"Does she know?" whispered Horace.

"If she does know, and has taken a notion never to let anybody know
she knows, she never will," replied Henry.

"You mean that she will never mention it even to you?"

Henry nodded. He looked relieved and scared. He was right. He
continued to work in the shop, and Sylvia never intimated to him that
she knew anything about it.

Chapter XVII

When Henry had worked in the shop before Sylvia's inheritance, he had
always given her a certain proportion of his wages and himself
defrayed their housekeeping bills. He began to do so again, and
Sylvia accepted everything without comment. Henry gradually became
sure that she did not touch a dollar of her income from her new
property for herself. One day he found on the bureau in their bedroom
a book on an Alford savings-bank, and discovered that Sylvia had
opened an account therein for Rose. Sylvia also began to give Rose
expensive gifts. When the girl remonstrated, she seemed so distressed
that there was nothing to do but accept them.

Sylvia no longer used any of Abrahama White's clothes for herself.
Instead, she begged Rose to take them, and finally induced her to
send several old gowns to her dressmaker in New York for renovation.
When Rose appeared in these gowns Sylvia's expression of worried
secrecy almost vanished.

The time went on, and it was midsummer. Horace was spending his long
vacation in East Westland. He had never done so before, and Sylvia
was not pleased by it. Day after day she told him that he did not
look well, that she thought he needed a change of air. Henry became
puzzled. One day he asked Sylvia if she did not want Mr. Allen to
stay with them any longer.

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