Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Shoulders of Atlas

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Both were quite engrossed. Sylvia had reached an extremely
interesting portion of her book, and Henry was reading a section of
his paper which made him fairly warlike. However, the clock striking
four aroused both of them.

"I think it is very funny that they have not come home," said Sylvia.

"I dare say they will be along pretty soon," said Henry.

Sylvia looked keenly at him. "Henry Whitman, did he go to the
Ayres's?" said she.

Henry, cornered, told the truth. "Well, I shouldn't wonder," he
admitted.

"I think it is pretty work," said Sylvia, angry red spots coming in
her cheeks.

Henry said nothing.

"The idea that a young man can't be in the house with a girl any
longer than this without his fairly chasing her," said Sylvia.

"Who knows that he is?"

"Do you think he is interested in the Ayres girl?"

"No, I don't."

"Then it is Rose," said Sylvia. "Pretty work, I call it. Here she is
with her own folks in this nice home, with everything she needs."

Henry looked at Sylvia with astonishment. "Why," he said, "girls get
married! You got married yourself."

"I know I did," said Sylvia, "but that hasn't got anything to do with
it. Of course he has to chase her the minute she comes within
gunshot."

"Still, there's one thing certain, if she doesn't want him he can
take it out in chasing, if he is chasing, and I don't think he is,"
said Henry. "Nobody is going to make Rose marry any man."

"She don't act a mite in love with him," said Sylvia, ruminatingly.
"She seemed real mad with him this noon about that candy. Henry, that
was a funny thing for him to do."

"What?" asked Henry, who had so far only gotten Rose's rather vague
account of the candy episode.

Sylvia explained. "He actually knocked that candy out of her hand,
and made her spill the whole box, and then trampled on it. I saw him."

Henry stared at Sylvia. "It must have been an accident," said he.

"It looked like an accident on purpose," said Sylvia. "Well, I guess
I'll go out and make some of that salad they like so much for supper."

After Sylvia had gone Henry sat for a while reflecting, then he went
noiselessly out of the front door and round to the grove. He found
the scattered pieces of candy and the broken box quickly enough. He
cast a wary glance around, and gathered the whole mass up and thrust
it into the pocket of his Sunday coat. Then he stole back to the
house and got his hat and went out again. He was hurrying along the
road, when he met Horace and Rose returning. Rose was talking,
seemingly, with a cold earnestness to her companion. Horace seemed to
be listening passively. Henry thought he looked pale and anxious.
When he saw Henry he smiled. "I have an errand, a business errand,"
explained Henry. "Please tell Mrs. Whitman I shall be home in time
for supper. I don't think she knew when I went out. She was in the
kitchen."

"All right," replied Horace.

After he had passed them Henry caught the words, "I think you owe me
an explanation," in Rose's voice.

"It is about this blamed candy," thought Henry, feeling the crumpled
mass in his pocket. He had a distrust of candy, and it occurred to
him that he would have an awkward explanation to make if the candy
should by any possibility melt and stick to the pocket of his Sunday
coat. He therefore took out the broken box and carried it in his
hand, keeping the paper wrapper firmly around it. "What in creation
is it all about?" he thought, irritably. He felt a sense of personal
injury. Henry enjoyed calm, and it seemed to him that he was being
decidedly disturbed, as by mysterious noises breaking in upon the
even tenor of his life.

"Sylvia is keeping something to herself that is worrying her to
death, in spite of her being so tickled to have the girl with us, and
now here is this candy," he said to himself. He understood that for
some reason Horace had not wanted Rose to eat the candy, that he had
resorted to fairly desperate measures to prevent it, but he could not
imagine why. He had no imagination for sensation or melodrama, and
the candy affair was touching that line. He had been calmly prosaic
with regard to Miss Farrel's death. "They can talk all they want to
about murder and suicide," he had said to Sylvia. "I don't believe a
word of it."

"But the doctors found--" began Sylvia.

"Found nothing," interposed Henry. "What do doctors know? She et
something that hurt her. How do doctors know but what anybody might
eat something that folks think is wholesome, that, if the person
ain't jest right for it, acts like poison? Doctors don't know much.
She et something that hurt her."

"Poor Lucinda's cooking is enough to hurt 'most anybody," admitted
Sylvia; "but they say they found--"

"Don't talk such stuff," said Henry, fiercely. "She et something. I
don't know what you women like best to suck at, candy or horrors."

Now Henry was forced to admit that he himself was confronted by
something mysterious. Why had Horace fairly flung that candy on the
ground, and trampled on it, unless he had suddenly gone mad, or--?
There Henry brought himself up with a jolt. He absolutely refused to
suspect. "I'd jest as soon eat all that's left of the truck myself,"
he thought, "only I couldn't bear candy since I was a child, and I
ain't going to eat it for anybody."

Henry had to pass the Ayres house. Just as he came abreast of it he
heard a hysterical sob, then another, from behind the open windows of
a room on the second floor, whose blinds were closed. Henry made a
grimace and went his way. He was bound for Sidney Meeks's. He found
the lawyer in his office in an arm-chair, which whirled like a top at
the slightest motion of its occupant. Around him were strewn Sunday
papers, all that could be bought. On the desk before him stood a
bottle of clear yellow wine, half-emptied.

Sidney looked up and smiled as Henry entered. "Here I am in a vortex
of crime and misrule," he said, "and I should have been out of my
wits if it had not been for that wine. There's another glass over
there, Henry; get it and help yourself."

"Guess I won't take any now, thank you," said Henry. "It's just
before supper."

"Maybe you are wise," admitted the lawyer. He slouched before Henry
in untidy and unmended, but clean, Sunday attire. Sidney Meeks was as
clean as a gentleman should be, but there was never a crease except
of ease in his clothes, and he was so buttonless that women feared to
look at him closely. "It might go to your head," said Sidney. "It
went to mine a little, but that was unavoidable. After one of those
papers there my head was mighty near being a vacuum."

"What do you read the papers for?" asked Henry.

"Because," said Sidney, "I feel it incumbent upon me to be well
informed concerning two things, although I verily believe it to be
true that I have precious little of either, and they cannot directly
concern me. I want to know about the stock market, although I don't
own a blessed share in anything except an old mine out West on a map;
and I want to know what evil is fermenting in the hearts of men,
though I am pretty sure, in spite of the original sin part of it,
that precious little is fermenting in mine. About three o'clock this
afternoon I came to the conclusion that we were in hell or Sodom, or
else the newspaper men got saved from the general destruction along
with Lot. So I got a bottle of this blessed wine, and now I am fully
convinced that I am on a planet which is the work of the Lord
Almighty, and only created for an end of redemption and eternal
bliss, and that the newspaper men are enough sight better than Lot
ever thought of being, and are spending Sunday as they should,
peacefully in the bosoms of their own families. In fact, Henry, my
mental and spiritual outlook has cleared. What in creation is that
wad of broken box you are carrying as if it would go off any minute?"

Henry told him the story in a few words.

"Gee whiz!" said Meeks. "I thought I had finished the Sunday papers
and here you are with another sensation. Let's see the stuff."

Henry gave the crumpled box with the mass of candy to Meeks, who
examined it closely. He smelled of it. He even tasted a bit. "It's
all beyond me," he said, finally. "I am loath to admit that a
sensation has lit upon us here in East Westland. Leave it with me,
and I'll see what is the matter with it, if there's anything. I don't
think myself there's anything, but I'll take it to Wallace. He's an
analytical chemist, and holds his tongue, which is worth more than
the chemistry."

"You will not say a word--" began Henry, but Meeks interrupted him.

"Don't you know me well enough by this time?" he demanded, and Henry
admitted that he did.

"Do you suppose I want all this blessed little town in a tumult, and
the devil to pay?" said Meeks. "It is near time for me to start some
daisy wine, too. I shouldn't have a minute free. There'd be suits for
damages, and murder trials, and the Lord knows what. I'd rather make
my daisy wine. Leave this damned sticky mess with me, and I'll see to
it. What in creation any young woman in her senses wants to spend her
time in making such stuff for, anyway, beats me. Women are all more
or less fools, anyhow. I suppose they can't help it, but we ought to
have it in mind."

"I suppose there's something in it," said Henry, rather doubtfully.

Meeks laughed. "Oh, I don't expect any man with a wife to agree with
me," he said. "You might as well try to lift yourself by your
boot-straps; but I've got standing-ground outside the situation and
you haven't. Good-night, Henry. Don't fret yourself over this. I'll
let you know as soon as I know myself."

Henry, passing the Ayres house on his way home, fancied he heard
again a sob, but this time it was so stifled that he was not sure.
"It's mighty queer work, anyway," he thought. He thought also that
though he should have liked a son, he was very glad that he and
Sylvia had not owned a daughter. He was fond of Rose, but, although
she was a normal girl, she often gave him a sense of mystery which
irritated him.

Had Henry Whitman dreamed of what was really going on in the Ayres
house, he would have been devoutly thankful that he had no daughter.
He had in reality heard the sob which he had not been sure of. It had
come from Lucy's room. Her mother was there with her. The two had
been closeted together ever since Rose had gone. Lucy had rushed
up-stairs and pulled off her pretty gown with a hysterical fury. She
had torn it at the neck, because the hooks would not unfasten easily,
before her mother, who moved more slowly, had entered the room.

"What are you doing, Lucy?" Mrs. Ayres asked, in a voice which was at
once tender and stern.

"Getting out of this old dress," replied Lucy, fiercely.

"Stand round here by the light," said her mother, calmly. Lucy
obeyed. She stood, although her shoulders twitched nervously, while
her mother unfastened her gown. Then she began almost tearing off her
other garments. "Lucy," said Mrs. Ayres, "you are over twenty years
old, and a woman grown, but you are not as strong as I am, and I used
to take you over my knee and spank you when you were a child and
didn't behave, and I'll do it now if you are not careful. You
unfasten that corset-cover properly. You are tearing the lace."

Lucy gazed at her mother a moment in a frenzy of rage, then suddenly
her face began to work piteously. She flung herself face downward
upon her bed, and sobbed long, hysterical sobs. Then Mrs. Ayres waxed
tender. She bent over the girl, and gently untied ribbons and
unfastened buttons, and slipped a night-gown over her head. Then she
rolled her over in the bed, as if she had been a baby, and laid her
own cheek against the hot, throbbing one of the girl. "Mother's
lamb," she said, softly. "There, there, dear, mother knows all about
it."

"You don't," gasped the girl. "What do you know? You--you were
married when you were years younger than I am." There was something
violently accusing in her tone. She thrust her mother away and sat up
in bed, and looked at her with fierce eyes blazing like lamps in her
soft, flushed face.

"I know it," said Mrs. Ayres. "I know it, and I know what you mean,
Lucy; but there is something else which I know and you do not."

"I'd like to know what!"

"How a mother reads the heart of her child."

Lucy stared at her mother. Her face softened. Then it grew burning
red and angrier. "You taunt me with that," she said, in a
whisper--"with that and everything." She buried her face in her
crushed pillow again and burst into long wails.

Mrs. Ayres smoothed her hair. "Lucy," said she, "listen. I know what
is going on within you as you don't know it yourself. I know the
agony of it as you don't know it yourself."

"I'd like to know how."

"Because you are my child; because I can hardly sleep for thinking of
you; because every one of my waking moments is filled with you. Lucy,
because I am your mother and you are yourself. I am not taunting you.
I understand."

"You can't."

"I do. I know just how you felt about that young man from the city
who boarded at the hotel six years ago. I know how you felt about Tom
Merrill, who called here a few times, and then stopped, and married a
girl from Boston. I have known exactly how you have felt about all
the others, and--I know about this last." Her voice sank to a whisper.

"I have had some reason," Lucy said, with a terrible eagerness of
self-defence. "I have, mother."

"What?"

"One day, the first year he came, I was standing at the gate beside
that flowering-almond bush, and it was all in flower, and he came
past and he looked at the bush and at me, then at the bush again, and
he said, 'How beautiful that is!' But, mother, he meant me."

"What else?"

"You remember he called here once."

"Yes, Lucy, to ask you to sing at the school entertainment."

"Mother, it was for more than that. You did not hear him speak at the
door. He said, 'I shall count on you; you cannot disappoint me.' You
did not hear his voice, mother."

"What else, Lucy?"

"Once, one night last winter, when I was coming home from the
post-office, it was after dark, and he walked way to the house with
me, and he told me a lot about himself. He told me how all alone in
the world he was, and how hard it was for a man to have nobody who
really belonged to him in the wide world, and when he said good-night
at the gate he held my hand--quite a while; he did, mother."

"What else, Lucy?"

"You remember that picnic, the trolley picnic to Alford. He sat next
to me coming home, and--"

"And what?"

"There were only--four on the seat, and he--he sat very close, and
told me some more about himself: how he had been alone ever since he
was a little boy, and--how hard it had been. Then he asked how long
ago father died, and if I remembered, and if I missed him still."

"I don't quite understand, dear, how that--"

"You didn't hear the way he spoke, mother."

"What else, Lucy?"

"He has always looked at me very much across the church, and whenever
I have met him it has not been so much what--he said as--his manner.
You have not known what his manner was, and you have not heard how he
spoke, nor seen his eyes when--he looked at me--"

"Yes, dear, you are right. I have not. Then you have thought he was
in love with you?"

"Sometimes he has made me think so, mother," Lucy sobbed.

Mrs. Ayres gazed pitifully at the girl. "Then when you thought
perhaps he was not you felt badly."

"Oh, mother!"

"You were not yourself."

"Oh, mother!"

Mrs. Ayres took the girl by her two slender shoulders; she bent her
merciful, loving face close to the younger one, distraught, and full
of longing, primeval passion. "Lucy," she whispered, "your mother
never lost sight of--anything."

Lucy turned deadly white. She stared back at her mother.

"You thought perhaps he was in love with Miss Farrel, didn't you?"
Mrs. Ayres said, in a very low whisper.

Lucy nodded, still staring with eyes of horrified inquiry at her
mother.

"You had seen him with her?"

"Ever so many times, walking, and he took her to ride, and I saw him
coming out of the hotel. I thought--"

"Listen, Lucy." Mrs. Ayres's whisper was hardly audible. "Mother made
some candy and sent it to Miss Farrel. She--never had any that
anybody else made. It--was candy that would not hurt anybody that she
had."

Lucy's face lightened as if with some veritable illumination.

"Mother perhaps ought not to have let you think--as you did, so
long," said Mrs. Ayres, "but she thought perhaps it was best, and,
Lucy, mother has begun to realize that it was. Now you think,
perhaps, he is in love with this other girl, don't you?"

"They are living in the same house," returned Lucy, in a stifled
shriek, "and--and--I found out this afternoon that she--she is in
love with him. And she is so pretty, and--" Lucy sobbed wildly.

"Mother has been watching every minute," said Mrs. Ayres.

"Mother, I haven't killed him?"

"No, dear. Mother made the candy."

Lucy sobbed and trembled convulsively. Mrs. Ayres stroked her hair
until she was a little quieter, then she spoke. "Lucy," she said,
"the time has come for you to listen to mother, and you must listen."

Lucy looked up at her with her soft, terrible eyes.

"You are not in love with this last man," said Mrs. Ayres, quietly.
"You were not in love with any of the others. It is all because you
are a woman, and the natural longings of a woman are upon you. The
time has come for you to listen and understand. It is right that you
should have what you want, but if the will of God is otherwise you
must make the best of it. There are other things in life, or it would
be monstrous. It will be no worse for you than for thousands of other
women who go through life unmarried. You have no excuse to--commit
crime or to become a wreck. I tell you there are other things besides
that which has taken hold of you, soul and body. There are spiritual
things. There is the will of God, which is above the will of the
flesh and the will of the fleshly heart. It is for you to behave
yourself and take what comes. You are still young, and if you were
not there is always room in life for a gift of God. You may yet have
what you are crying out for. In the mean time--"

Lucy interrupted with a wild cry. "Oh, mother, you will take care of
me, you will watch me!"

"You need not be afraid, Lucy," said Mrs. Ayres, grimly and tenderly.
"I will watch you, and--" She hesitated a moment, then she continued,
"If I ever catch you buying that again--"

But Lucy interrupted.

"Oh, mother," she said, "this last time it was not--it really was
not--_that!_ It was only something that would have made her sick a
little. It would not have--It was not _that!_"

"If I ever do catch you buying that again," said Mrs. Ayres, "you
will know what a whipping is." Her tone was almost whimsical, but it
had a terrible emphasis.

Lucy shrank. "I didn't put enough of _that_ in to--to do much harm,"
she murmured, "but I never will again."

"No, you had better not," assented Mrs. Ayres. "Now slip on your
wrapper and come down-stairs with me. I am going to warm up some of
that chicken on toast the way you like it, for supper, and then I am
coming back up-stairs with you, and you are going to lie down, and
I'll read that interesting book we got out of the library."

Lucy obeyed like a child. Her mother helped her slip the wrapper over
her head, and the two went down-stairs.

After supper that night Sidney Meeks called at the Whitmans'. He did
not stay long. He had brought a bottle of elder-flower wine for
Sylvia. As he left he looked at Henry, who followed him out of the
house into the street. They paused just outside the gate.

"Well?" said Henry, interrogatively.

"All right," responded Meeks. "What it is all about beats me. The
stuff wouldn't hurt a babe in arms, unless it gave it indigestion.
Your boarder hasn't insanity in his family, has he?"

"Not that I know of," replied Henry. Then he repeated Meeks's
comment. "It beats me," he said.

When Henry re-entered the house Sylvia looked at him. "What were you
and Mr. Meeks talking about out in the street?" she asked.

"Nothing," replied Henry, lying as a man may to a woman or a child.

"He's in there with her," whispered Sylvia. "They went in there the
minute Mr. Meeks and you went out." Sylvia pointed to the best parlor
and looked miserably jealous.

"Well," said Henry, tentatively.

"If they've got anything to say I don't see why they can't say it
here," said Sylvia.

"The door is open," said Henry.

"I ain't going to listen, if it is, and you know I can't hear with
one ear," said Sylvia. "Of course I don't care, but I don't see why
they went in there. What were you and Mr. Meeks talking about, Henry?"

"Nothing," answered Henry, cheerfully, again.

Chapter XIII

Rose Fletcher had had a peculiar training. She had in one sense
belonged to the ranks of the fully sophisticated, who are supposed to
swim on the surface of things and catch all the high lights of
existence, like bubbles, and in another sense it had been very much
the reverse. She might, so far as one side of her character was
concerned, have been born and brought up in East Westland, as her
mother had been before her. She had a perfect village simplicity and
wonder at life, as to a part of her innermost self, which was only
veneered by her contact with the world. In part she was entirely
different from all the girls in the place, and the difference was
really in the grain. That had come from her assimilation at a very
tender age with the people who had had the care of her. They had
belonged by right of birth with the most brilliant social lights, but
lack of money had hampered them. They blazed, as it were, under
ground glass with very small candle-powers, although they were on the
same shelf with the brilliant incandescents. Rose's money had been
the main factor which enabled them to blaze at all. Otherwise they
might have still remained on the shelf, it is true, but as dark stars.

Rose had not been sent away to school for two reasons. One reason was
Miss Farrel's, the other originated with her caretakers. Miss Farrel
had a jealous dread of the girl's forming one of those erotic
friendships, which are really diseased love-affairs, with another
girl or a teacher, and the Wiltons' reason was a pecuniary one. Among
the Wiltons' few assets was a distant female relative of pronounced
accomplishments and educational attainments, who was even worse off
financially than they. It had become with her a question of
bread-and-butter and the simplest necessaries of life, whereas Mrs.
Wilton and her sister, Miss Pamela, still owned the old family
mansion, which, although reduced from its former heights of fashion,
was grand, with a subdued and dim grandeur, it is true, but still
grand; and there was also a fine old country-house in a fashionable
summer resort. There were also old servants and jewels and laces and
all that had been. The difficulty was in retaining it with the
addition of repairs, and additions which are as essential to the mere
existence of inanimate objects as food is to the animate, these being
as their law of growth. Rose Fletcher's advent, although her fortune
was, after all, only a moderate one, permitted such homely but
necessary things as shingles to be kept intact upon roofs of old
family homes; it enabled servants to be paid and fuel and food to be
provided. Still, after all, had poor Eliza Farrel, that morbid victim
of her own hunger for love, known what economies were practised at
her expense, in order that all this should be maintained, she would
have rebelled. She knew that the impecunious female relative was a
person fully adequate to educate Rose, but she did not know that her
only stipend therefor was her bread-and-butter and the cast-off
raiment of Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela. She did not know that when
Rose came out her stock of party gowns was so limited that she had to
refuse many invitations or appear always as the same flower, as far
as garments were concerned. She did not know that during Rose's two
trips abroad the expenses had been so carefully calculated that the
girl had not received those advantages usually supposed to be derived
from foreign travel.

While Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela would have scorned the imputation
of deceit or dishonesty, their moral sense in those two directions
was blunted by their keen scent for the conventionalities of life,
which to them had almost become a religion. They had never owned to
their inmost consciousness that Rose had not derived the fullest
benefit from Miss Farrel's money; it is doubtful if they really were
capable of knowing it. When a party gown for Rose was weighed in the
balance with some essential for maintaining their position upon the
society shelf, it had not the value of a feather. Mrs. Wilton and
Miss Pamela gave regular dinner-parties and receptions through the
season, but they invited people of undoubted social standing whom
Miss Farrel would have neglected for others on Rose's account. By a
tacit agreement, never voiced in words, young men or old who might
have made too heavy drains upon wines and viands were seldom invited.
The preference was for dyspeptic clergymen and elderly and genteel
females with slender appetites, or stout people upon diets. It was
almost inconceivable how Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, with no actual
consultations to that end, practised economies and maintained
luxuries. They seemed to move with a spiritual unity like the
physical one of the Siamese twins. Meagre meals served magnificently,
the most splendid conservatism with the smallest possible amount of
comfort, moved them as one.

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