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+Project Gutenberg's The Shoulders of Atlas, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Shoulders of Atlas
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+Release Date: January 21, 2006 [EBook #17566]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHOULDERS OF ATLAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Shoulders of Atlas
+
+A Novel
+
+By
+Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+Author of
+"By the Light of the Soul" "The Debtor"
+"Jerome" "A New England Nun" etc.
+
+New York and London
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+MCMVIII
+
+Copyright, 1908, by the New York Herald Co.
+All rights reserved.
+Published June, 1908.
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+Henry Whitman was walking home from the shop in the April afternoon.
+The spring was very early that year. The meadows were quite green,
+and in the damp hollows the green assumed a violet tinge--sometimes
+from violets themselves, sometimes from the shadows. The trees
+already showed shadows as of a multitude of bird wings; the
+peach-trees stood aloof in rosy nimbuses, and the cherry-trees were
+faintly a-flutter with white through an intense gloss of gold-green.
+
+Henry realized all the glory of it, but it filled him with a renewal
+of the sad and bitter resentment, which was his usual mood, instead
+of joy. He was past middle-age. He worked in a shoe-shop. He had
+worked in a shoe-shop since he was a young man. There was nothing
+else in store for him until he was turned out because of old age.
+Then the future looked like a lurid sunset of misery. He earned
+reasonably good wages for a man of his years, but prices were so high
+that he was not able to save a cent. There had been unusual expenses
+during the past ten years, too. His wife Sylvia had not been well,
+and once he himself had been laid up six weeks with rheumatism. The
+doctor charged two dollars for every visit, and the bill was not
+quite settled yet.
+
+Then the little house which had come to him from his father,
+encumbered with a mortgage as is usual, had all at once seemed to
+need repairs at every point. The roof had leaked like a sieve, two
+windows had been blown in, the paint had turned a gray-black, the
+gutters had been out of order. He had not quite settled the bill for
+these repairs. He realized it always as an actual physical incubus
+upon his slender, bowed shoulders. He came of a race who were
+impatient of debt, and who regarded with proud disdain all gratuitous
+benefits from their fellow-men. Henry always walked a long route from
+the shop in order to avoid passing the houses of the doctor and the
+carpenter whom he owed.
+
+Once he had saved a little money; that was twenty-odd years before;
+but he had invested it foolishly, and lost every cent. That
+transaction he regarded with hatred, both of himself and of the
+people who had advised him to risk and lose his hard-earned dollars.
+The small sum which he had lost had come to assume colossal
+proportions in his mind. He used, in his bitterest moments, to reckon
+up on a scrap of paper what it might have amounted to, if it had been
+put out at interest, by this time. He always came out a rich man, by
+his calculations, if it had not been for that unwise investment. He
+often told his wife Sylvia that they might have been rich people if
+it had not been for that; that he would not have been tied to a
+shoe-shop, nor she have been obliged to work so hard.
+
+Sylvia took a boarder--the high-school principal, Horace Allen--and
+she also made jellies and cakes, and baked bread for those in East
+Westland who could afford to pay for such instead of doing the work
+themselves. She was a delicate woman, and Henry knew that she worked
+beyond her strength, and the knowledge filled him with impotent fury.
+Since the union had come into play he did not have to work so many
+hours in the shop, and he got the same pay, but he worked as hard,
+because he himself cultivated his bit of land. He raised vegetables
+for the table. He also made the place gay with flowers to please
+Sylvia and himself. He had a stunted thirst for beauty.
+
+In the winter he found plenty to do in the extra hours. He sawed wood
+in his shed by the light of a lantern hung on a peg. He also did what
+odd jobs he could for neighbors. He picked up a little extra money in
+that way, but he worked very hard. Sometimes he told Sylvia that he
+didn't know but he worked harder than he had done when the shop time
+was longer. However, he had been one of the first to go, heart and
+soul, with the union, and he had paid his dues ungrudgingly, even
+with a fierce satisfaction, as if in some way the transaction made
+him even with his millionaire employers. There were two of them, and
+they owned houses which appeared like palaces in the eyes of Henry
+and his kind. They owned automobiles, and Henry was aware of a
+cursing sentiment when one whirred past him, trudging along, and
+covered him with dust.
+
+Sometimes it seemed to Henry as if an automobile was the last straw
+for the poor man's back: those enormous cars, representing fortunes,
+tyrannizing over the whole highway, frightening the poor old country
+horses, and endangering the lives of all before them. Henry read with
+delight every account of an automobile accident. "Served them right;
+served them just right," he would say, with fairly a smack of his
+lips.
+
+Sylvia, who had caught a little of his rebellion, but was gentler,
+would regard him with horror. "Why, Henry Whitman, that is a dreadful
+wicked spirit!" she would say, and he would retort stubbornly that he
+didn't care; that he had to pay a road tax for these people who would
+just as soon run him down as not, if it wouldn't tip their old
+machines over; for these maniacs who had gone speed-mad, and were
+appropriating even the highways of the common people.
+
+Henry had missed the high-school principal, who was away on his
+spring vacation. He liked to talk with him, because he always had a
+feeling that he had the best of the argument. Horace would take the
+other side for a while, then leave the field, and light another
+cigar, and let Henry have the last word, which, although it had a
+bitter taste in his mouth, filled him with the satisfaction of
+triumph. He loved Horace like a son, although he realized that the
+young man properly belonged to the class which he hated, and that,
+too, although he was manifestly poor and obliged to work for his
+living. Henry was, in his heart of hearts, convinced that Horace
+Allen, had he been rich, would have owned automobiles and spent hours
+in the profitless work-play of the golf links. As it was, he played a
+little after school-hours. How Henry hated golf! "I wish they had to
+work," he would say, savagely, to Horace.
+
+Horace would laugh, and say that he did work. "I know you do," Henry
+would say, grudgingly, "and I suppose maybe a little exercise is good
+for you; but those fellers from Alford who come over here don't have
+to work, and as for Guy Lawson, the boss's son, he's a fool! He
+couldn't earn his bread and butter to save his life, except on the
+road digging like a common laborer. Playing golf! Playing! H'm!" Then
+was the time for Horace's fresh cigar.
+
+When Henry came in sight of the cottage where he lived he thought
+with regret that Horace was not there. Being in a more pessimistic
+mood than usual, he wished ardently for somebody to whom he could
+pour out his heart. Sylvia was no satisfaction at such a time. If she
+echoed him for a while, when she was more than usually worn with her
+own work, she finally became alarmed, and took refuge in Scripture
+quotations, and Henry was convinced that she offered up prayer for
+him afterward, and that enraged him.
+
+He struck into the narrow foot-path leading to the side door, the
+foot-path which his unwilling and weary feet had helped to trace more
+definitely for nearly forty years. The house was a small cottage of
+the humblest New England type. It had a little cobbler's-shop, or
+what had formerly been a cobbler's-shop, for an ell. Besides that,
+there were three rooms on the ground-floor--the kitchen, the
+sitting-room, and a little bedroom which Henry and Sylvia occupied.
+Sylvia had cooking-stoves in both the old shop and the kitchen. The
+kitchen stove was kept well polished, and seldom used for cooking,
+except in cold weather. In warm weather the old shop served as
+kitchen, and Sylvia, in deference to the high-school teacher, used to
+set the table in the house.
+
+When Henry neared the house he smelled cooking in the shop. He also
+had a glimpse of a snowy table-cloth in the kitchen. He wondered,
+with a throb of joy, if possibly Horace might have returned before
+his vacation was over and Sylvia were setting the table in the other
+room in his honor. He opened the door which led directly into the
+shop. Sylvia, a pathetic, slim, elderly figure in rusty black, was
+bending over the stove, frying flapjacks. "Has he come home?"
+whispered Henry.
+
+"No, it's Mr. Meeks. I asked him to stay to supper. I told him I
+would make some flapjacks, and he acted tickled to death. He doesn't
+get a decent thing to eat once in a dog's age. Hurry and get washed.
+The flapjacks are about done, and I don't want them to get cold."
+
+Henry's face, which had fallen a little when he learned that Horace
+had not returned, still looked brighter than before. While Sidney
+Meeks never let him have the last word, yet he was much better than
+Sylvia as a safety-valve for pessimism. Meeks was as pessimistic in
+his way as Henry, although he handled his pessimism, as he did
+everything else, with diplomacy, and the other man had a secret
+conviction that when he seemed to be on the opposite side yet he was
+in reality pulling with the lawyer.
+
+Sidney Meeks was older than Henry, and as unsuccessful as a country
+lawyer can well be. He lived by himself; he had never married; and
+the world, although he smiled at it facetiously, was not a pleasant
+place in his eyes.
+
+Henry, after he had washed himself at the sink in the shop, entered
+the kitchen, where the table was set, and passed through to the
+sitting-room, where the lawyer was. Sidney Meeks did not rise. He
+extended one large, white hand affably. "How are you Henry?" said he,
+giving the other man's lean, brown fingers a hard shake. "I dropped
+in here on my way home from the post-office, and your wife tempted me
+with flapjacks in a lordly dish, and I am about to eat."
+
+"Glad to see you," returned Henry.
+
+"You get home early, or it seems early, now the days are getting so
+long," said Meeks, as Henry sat down opposite.
+
+"Yes, it's early enough, but I don't get any more pay."
+
+Meeks laughed. "Henry, you are the direct outcome of your day and
+generation," said he. "Less time, and more pay for less time, is our
+slogan."
+
+"Well, why not?" returned Henry, surlily, still with a dawn of
+delighted opposition in his thin, intelligent face. "Why not? Look at
+the money that's spent all around us on other things that correspond.
+What's an automobile but less time and more money, eh?"
+
+Meeks laughed. "Give it up until after supper, Henry," he said, as
+Sylvia's thin, sweet voice was heard from the next room.
+
+"If you men don't stop talking and come right out, these flapjacks
+will be spoiled!" she cried. The men arose and obeyed her call.
+"There are compensations for everything," said Meeks, laughing, as he
+settled down heavily into his chair. He was a large man. "Flapjacks
+are compensations. Let us eat our compensations and be thankful.
+That's my way of saying grace. You ought always to say grace, Henry,
+when you have such a good cook as your wife is to get meals for you.
+If you had to shift for yourself, the way I do, you'd feel that it
+was a simple act of decency."
+
+"I don't see much to say grace for," said Henry, with a disagreeable
+sneer.
+
+"Oh, Henry!" said Sylvia.
+
+"For compensations in the form of flapjacks, with plenty of butter
+and sugar and nutmeg," said Meeks. "These are fine, Mrs. Whitman."
+
+"A good thick beefsteak at twenty-eight cents a pound, regulated by
+the beef trust, would be more to my liking after a hard day's work,"
+said Henry.
+
+Sylvia exclaimed again, but she was not in reality disturbed. She was
+quite well aware that her husband was enjoying himself after his own
+peculiar fashion, and that, if he spoke the truth, the flapjacks were
+more to his New England taste for supper than thick beefsteak.
+
+"Well, wait until after supper, and maybe you will change your mind
+about having something to say grace for," Meeks said, mysteriously.
+
+The husband and wife stared at him. "What do you mean, Mr. Meeks?"
+asked Sylvia, a little nervously. Something in the lawyer's manner
+agitated her. She was not accustomed to mysteries. Life had not held
+many for her, especially of late years.
+
+Henry took another mouthful of flapjacks. "Well, if you can give me
+any good reason for saying grace you will do more than the parson
+ever has," he said.
+
+"Oh, Henry!" said Sylvia.
+
+"It's the truth," said Henry. "I've gone to meeting and heard how
+thankful I ought to be for things I haven't got, and things I have
+got that other folks haven't, and for forgiveness for breaking
+commandments, when, so far as I can tell, commandments are about the
+only things I've been able to keep without taxes--till I'm tired of
+it."
+
+"Wait till after supper," repeated the lawyer again, with smiling
+mystery. He had a large, smooth face, with gray hair on the sides of
+his head and none on top. He had good, placid features, and an easy
+expression. He ate two platefuls of the flapjacks, then two pieces of
+cake, and a large slice of custard pie! He was very fond of sweets.
+
+After supper was over Henry and Meeks returned to the sitting-room,
+and sat down beside the two front windows. It was a small, square
+room furnished with Sylvia's chief household treasures. There was a
+hair-cloth sofa, which she and Henry had always regarded as an
+extravagance and had always viewed with awe. There were two rockers,
+besides one easy-chair, covered with old-gold plush--also an
+extravagance. There was a really beautiful old mahogany table with
+carved base, of which neither Henry nor Sylvia thought much. Sylvia
+meditated selling enough Calkin's soap to buy a new one, and stow
+that away in Mr. Allen's room. Mr. Allen professed great admiration
+for it, to her wonderment. There was also a fine, old, gold-framed
+mirror, and some china vases on the mantel-shelf. Sylvia was rather
+ashamed of them. Mrs. Jim Jones had a mirror which she had earned by
+selling Calkin's soap, which Sylvia considered much handsomer. She
+would have had ambitions in that direction also, but Henry was firm
+in his resolve not to have the mirror displaced, nor the vases,
+although Sylvia descanted upon the superior merits of some vases with
+gilded pedestals which Mrs. Sam Elliot had in her parlor.
+
+Meeks regarded the superb old table with appreciation as he sat in
+the sitting-room after supper. "Fine old piece," he said.
+
+Henry looked at it doubtfully. It had been in a woodshed of his
+grandfather's house, when he was a boy, and he was not as confident
+about that as he was about the mirror and vases, which had always
+maintained their parlor estate.
+
+"Sylvia don't think much of it," he said. "She's crazy to have one of
+carved oak like one Mrs. Jim Jones has."
+
+"Carved oak fiddlestick!" said Sidney Meeks. "It's a queer thing that
+so much virtue and real fineness of character can exist in a woman
+without the slightest trace of taste for art."
+
+Henry looked resentful. "Sylvia has taste, as much taste as most
+women," he said. "She simply doesn't like to see the same old things
+around all the time, and I don't know as I blame her. The world has
+grown since that table was made, there's no doubt about that. It
+stands to reason furniture has improved, too."
+
+"Glad there's something you see in a bright light, Henry."
+
+"I must say that I like this new mission furniture, myself, pretty
+well," said Henry, somewhat importantly.
+
+"That's as old as the everlasting hills; but the old that's new is
+the newest thing in all creation," said Meeks. "Sylvia is a foolish
+woman if she parts with this magnificent old piece for any
+reproduction made in job lots."
+
+"Oh, she isn't going to part with it. Mr. Allen will like it in his
+room. He thinks as much of it as you do."
+
+"He's right, too," said Meeks. "There's carving for you; there's a
+fine grain of wood."
+
+"It's very hard to keep clean," said Sylvia, as she came in rubbing
+her moist hands. "Now, that new Flemish oak is nothing at all to take
+care of, Mrs. Jones says."
+
+"This is worth taking care of," said Meeks. "Now, Sylvia, sit down. I
+have something to tell you and Henry."
+
+Sylvia sat down. Something in the lawyer's manner aroused hers and
+her husband's keenest attention. They looked at him and waited. Both
+were slightly pale. Sylvia was a delicate little woman, and Henry was
+large-framed and tall, but a similar experience had worn similar
+lines in both faces. They looked singularly alike.
+
+Sidney Meeks had the dramatic instinct. He waited for the silence to
+gather to its utmost intensity before he spoke. "I had something to
+tell you when I came in," he said, "but I thought I had better wait
+till after supper."
+
+He paused. There was another silence. Henry's and Sylvia's eyes
+seemed to wax luminous.
+
+Sidney Meeks spoke again. He was enjoying himself immensely. "What
+relation is Abrahama White to you?" he said.
+
+"She is second cousin to Sylvia. Her mother was Sylvia's mother's
+cousin," said Henry. "What of it?"
+
+"Nothing, except--" Meeks waited again. He wished to make a coup. He
+had an instinct for climaxes. "Abrahama had a shock this morning," he
+said, suddenly.
+
+"A shock?" said Henry.
+
+Sylvia echoed him. "A shock!" she gasped.
+
+"Yes, I thought you hadn't heard of it."
+
+"I've been in the house all day," said Sylvia. "I hadn't seen a soul
+before you came in." She rose. "Who's taking care of her?" she asked.
+"She ain't all alone?"
+
+"Sit down," said Sidney. "She's well cared for. Miss Babcock is
+there. She happened to be out of a place, and Dr. Wallace got her
+right away."
+
+"Is she going to get over it?" asked Sylvia, anxiously. "I must go
+over there, anyway, this evening. I always thought a good deal of
+Abrahama."
+
+"You might as well go over there," said the lawyer. "It isn't quite
+the thing for me to tell you, but I'm going to. If Henry here can eat
+flapjacks like those you make, Sylvia, and not say grace, his state
+of mind is dangerous. I am going to tell you. Dr. Wallace says
+Abrahama can't live more than a day or two, and--she has made a will
+and left you all her property."
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+There was another silence. The husband and wife were pale, with
+mouths agape like fishes. So little prosperity had come into their
+lives that they were rendered almost idiotic by its approach.
+
+"Us?" said Sylvia, at length, with a gasp.
+
+"Us?" said Henry.
+
+"Yes, you," said Sidney Meeks.
+
+"What about Rose Fletcher, Abrahama's sister Susy's daughter?" asked
+Sylvia, presently. "She is her own niece."
+
+"You know Abrahama never had anything to do with Susy after she
+married John Fletcher," replied the lawyer. "She made her will soon
+afterward, and cut her off."
+
+"I remember what they said at the time," returned Sylvia. "They all
+thought John Fletcher was going to marry Abrahama instead of Susy.
+She was enough sight more suitable age for him. He was too old for
+Susy, and Abrahama, even if she wasn't young, was a beautiful woman,
+and smarter than Susy ever thought of being."
+
+"Susy had the kind of smartness that catches men," said the lawyer,
+with a slight laugh.
+
+"I always wondered if John Fletcher hadn't really done a good deal to
+make Abrahama think he did want her," said Sylvia. "He was just that
+kind of man. I never did think much of him. He was handsome and glib,
+but he was all surface. I guess poor Abrahama had some reason to cut
+off Susy. I guess there was some double-dealing. I thought so at the
+time, and now this will makes me think so even more."
+
+Again there was a silence, and again that expression of bewilderment,
+almost amounting to idiocy, reigned in the faces of the husband and
+wife.
+
+"I never thought old Abraham White should have made the will he did,"
+said Henry, articulating with difficulty. "Susy had just as much
+right to the property, and there she was cut off with five hundred
+dollars, to be paid when she came of age."
+
+"I guess she spent that five hundred on her wedding fix," said Sylvia.
+
+"It was a queer will," stammered Henry.
+
+"I think the old man always looked at Abrahama as his son and heir,"
+said the lawyer. "She was named for him, and his father before him,
+you know. I always thought the poor old girl deserved the lion's
+share for being saddled with such a name, anyhow."
+
+"It was a dreadful name, and she was such a beautiful girl and
+woman," said Sylvia. She already spoke of Abrahama in the past tense.
+"I wonder where the niece is," she added.
+
+"The last I heard of her she was living with some rich people in New
+York," replied Meeks. "I think they took her in some capacity after
+her father and mother died."
+
+"I hope she didn't go out to work as hired girl," said Sylvia. "It
+would have been awful for a granddaughter of Abraham White's to do
+that. I wonder if Abrahama never wrote to her, nor did anything for
+her."
+
+"I don't think she ever had the slightest communication with Susy
+after she married, or her husband, or the daughter," replied Meeks.
+"In fact, I practically know she did not."
+
+"If the poor girl didn't do well, Abrahama had a good deal to answer
+for," said Sylvia, thoughtfully. She looked worried. Then again that
+expression of almost idiotic joy overspread her face. "That old White
+homestead is beautiful--the best house in town," she said.
+
+"There's fifty acres of land with it, too," said Meeks.
+
+Sylvia and Henry looked at each other. Both hesitated. Then Henry
+spoke, stammeringly:
+
+"I--never knew--just how much of an income Abrahama had," he said.
+
+"Well," replied the lawyer, "I must say not much--not as much as I
+wish, for your sakes. You see, old Abraham had a lot of that railroad
+stock that went to smash ten years ago, and Abrahama lost a good
+deal. She was a smart woman; she could work and save; but she didn't
+know any more about business than other women. There's an income of
+about--well, about six hundred dollars and some odd cents after the
+taxes and insurance are paid. And she has enough extra in the Alford
+Bank to pay for her last expenses without touching the principal. And
+the house is in good repair. She has kept it up well. There won't be
+any need to spend a cent on repairs for some years."
+
+"Six hundred a year after the taxes and insurance are paid!" said
+Sylvia. She gaped horribly. Her expression of delight was at once
+mean and infantile.
+
+"Six hundred a year after the taxes and insurance are paid, and all
+that land, and that great house!" repeated Henry, with precisely the
+same expression.
+
+"Not much, but enough to keep things going if you're careful," said
+Meeks. He spoke deprecatingly, but in reality the sum seemed large to
+him also. "You know there's an income besides from that fine
+grass-land," said he. "There's more than enough hay for a cow and
+horse, if you keep one. You can count on something besides in good
+hay-years."
+
+Henry looked reflective. Then his face seemed to expand with an
+enormous idea. "I wonder--" he began.
+
+"You wonder what?" asked Sylvia.
+
+"I wonder--if it wouldn't be cheaper in the end to keep
+an--automobile and sell all the hay."
+
+Sylvia gasped, and Meeks burst into a roar of laughter.
+
+"I rather guess you don't get me into one of those things, butting
+into stone walls, and running over children, and scaring horses, with
+you underneath most of the time, either getting blown up with
+gasolene or covering your clothes with mud and grease for me to clean
+off," said Sylvia.
+
+"I thought automobiles were against your principles," said Meeks,
+still chuckling.
+
+"So they be, the way other folks run 'em," said Henry; "but not the
+way I'd run 'em."
+
+"We'll have a good, steady horse that won't shy at one, if we have
+anything," said Sylvia, and her voice had weight.
+
+"There's a good buggy in Abrahama's barn," said Meeks.
+
+Sylvia made an unexpected start. "I think we are wicked as we can
+be!" she declared, violently. "Here we are talking about that poor
+woman's things before she's done with them. I'm going right over
+there to see if I can't be of some use."
+
+"Sit down, Sylvia," said Henry, soothingly, but he, too, looked both
+angry and ashamed.
+
+"You had better keep still where you are to-night," said Meeks. "Miss
+Babcock is doing all that anybody can. There isn't much to be done,
+Dr. Wallace says. To-morrow you can go over there and sit with her,
+and let Miss Babcock take a nap." Meeks rose as he spoke. "I must be
+going," he said. "I needn't charge you again not to let anybody know
+what I've told you before the will is read. It is irregular, but I
+thought I'd cheer up Henry here a bit."
+
+"No, we won't speak of it," declared the husband and wife, almost in
+unison.
+
+After Meeks had gone they looked at each other. Both looked
+disagreeable to the other. Both felt an unworthy suspicion of the
+other.
+
+"I hope she will get well," Sylvia said, defiantly. "Maybe she will.
+This is her first shock."
+
+"God knows I hope she will," returned Henry, with equal defiance.
+
+Each of the two was perfectly good and ungrasping, but each accused
+themselves and each other unjustly because of the possibilities of
+wrong feeling which they realized. Sylvia did not understand how, in
+the face of such prosperity, she could wish Abrahama to get well, and
+she did not understand how her husband could, and Henry's mental
+attitude was the same.
+
+Sylvia sat down and took some mending. Henry seated himself opposite,
+and stared at her with gloomy eyes, which yet held latent sparks of
+joy. "I wish Meeks hadn't told us," he said, angrily.
+
+"So do I," said Sylvia. "I keep telling myself I don't want that poor
+old woman to die, and I keep telling myself that you don't; but I'm
+dreadful suspicious of us both. It means so much."
+
+"Just the way I feel," said Henry. "I wish he'd kept his news to
+himself. It wasn't legal, anyhow."
+
+"You don't suppose it will make the will not stand!" cried Sylvia,
+with involuntary eagerness. Then she quailed before her husband's
+stern gaze. "Of course I know it won't make any difference," she
+said, feebly, and drew her darning-needle through the sock she was
+mending.
+
+Henry took up a copy of the East Westland Gazette. The first thing he
+saw was the list of deaths, and he seemed to see, quite plainly,
+Abrahama White's among them, although she was still quick, and he
+loathed himself. He turned the paper with a rattling jerk to an
+account of a crime in New York, and the difficulty the police had
+experienced in taking the guilty man in safety to the police station.
+He read the account aloud.
+
+"Seems to me the principal thing the New York police protect is the
+criminals," he said, bitterly. "If they would turn a little of their
+attention to protecting the helpless women and children, seems to me
+it would be more to the purpose. They're awful careful of the
+criminals."
+
+Sylvia did not hear. She assented absently. She thought, in spite of
+herself, of the good-fortune which was to befall them. She imagined
+herself mistress of the old White homestead. They would, of course,
+rent their own little cottage and go to live in the big house. She
+imagined herself looking through the treasures which Abrahama would
+leave behind her--then a monstrous loathing of herself seized her.
+She resolved that the very next morning she would go over and help
+Miss Babcock, that she would put all consideration of material
+benefits from her mind. She brought her thoughts with an effort to
+the article which Henry had just read. She could recall his last
+words.
+
+"Yes, I think you are right," said she. "I think criminals ought not
+to be protected. You are right, Henry. I think myself we ought to
+have a doctor called from Alford to-morrow, if she is no better, and
+have a consultation. Dr. Wallace is good, but he is only one, and
+sometimes another doctor has different ideas, and she may get help."
+
+"Yes, I think there ought to be a consultation," said Henry. "I will
+see about it to-morrow. I will go over there with you myself
+to-morrow morning. I think the police ought not to protect the
+criminals, but the people who are injured by them."
+
+"Then there would be no criminals. They would have no chance," said
+Sylvia, sagely. "Yes, I agree with you, Henry, there ought to be a
+consultation."
+
+She looked at Henry and he at her, and each saw in the other's face
+that same ignoble joy, and that same resentment and denial of it.
+
+Neither slept that night. They were up early the next morning. Sylvia
+was getting breakfast and Henry was splitting wood out in the yard.
+Presently he came stumbling in. "Come out here," he said. Sylvia
+followed him to the door. They stepped out in the dewy yard and stood
+listening. Beneath their feet was soft, green grass strewn with tiny
+spheres which reflected rainbows. Over their heads was a wonderful
+sky of the clearest angelic blue. This sky seemed to sing with
+bell-notes.
+
+"The bell is tolling," whispered Henry. They counted from that
+instant. When the bell stopped they looked at each other.
+
+"That's her age," said Sylvia.
+
+"Yes," said Henry.
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+The weather was wonderful on Abrahama White's funeral day. The air
+had at once the keen zest of winter and the languor of summer. One
+moment one perceived warm breaths of softly undulating pines, the
+next it was as if the wind blew over snow. The air at once stimulated
+and soothed. One breathing it realized youth and an endless vista of
+dreams ahead, and also the peace of age, and of work well done and
+deserving the reward of rest. There was something in this air which
+gave the inhaler the certainty of victory, the courage of battle and
+of unassailable youth. Even old people, pausing to notice the
+streamer of crape on Abrahama White's door, felt triumphant and
+undaunted. It did not seem conceivable, upon such a day, that that
+streamer would soon flaunt for them.
+
+The streamer was rusty. It had served for many such occasions, and
+suns and rains had damaged it. People said that Martin Barnes, the
+undertaker, ought to buy some new crape. Martin was a very old man
+himself, but he had no imagination for his own funeral. It seemed to
+him grotesque and impossible that an undertaker should ever be in
+need of his own ministrations. His solemn wagon stood before the door
+of the great colonial house, and he and his son-in-law and his
+daughter, who were his assistants, were engaged at their solemn tasks
+within.
+
+The daughter, Flora Barnes, was arraying the dead woman in her last
+robe of state, while her father and brother-in-law waited in the
+south room across the wide hall. When her task was performed she
+entered the south room with a gentle pride evident in her thin,
+florid face.
+
+"She makes a beautiful corpse," she said, in a hissing whisper.
+
+Henry Whitman and his wife were in the room, with Martin Barnes and
+Simeon Capen, his son-in-law. Barnes and Capen rose at once with
+pleased interest, Henry and Sylvia more slowly; yet they also had
+expressions of pleasure, albeit restrained. Both strove to draw their
+faces down, yet that expression of pleasure reigned triumphant,
+overcoming the play of the facial muscles. They glanced at each
+other, and each saw an angry shame in the other's eyes because of
+this joy.
+
+But when they followed Martin Barnes and his assistants into the
+parlor, where Abrahama White was laid in state, all the shameful joy
+passed from their faces. The old woman in her last bed was majestic.
+The dead face was grand, compelling to other than earthly
+considerations. Henry and Sylvia forgot the dead woman's little store
+which she had left behind her. Sylvia leaned over her and wept;
+Henry's face worked. Nobody except himself had ever known it, but he,
+although much younger, had had his dreams about the beautiful
+Abrahama White. He remembered them as he looked at her, old and dead
+and majestic, with something like the light of her lost beauty in her
+still face. It was like a rose which has fallen in such a windless
+atmosphere that its petals retain the places which they have held
+around its heart.
+
+Henry loved his wife, but this before him was associated with
+something beyond love, which tended to increase rather than diminish
+it. When at last they left the room he did what was very unusual with
+him. He was reticent, like the ordinary middle-aged New-Englander. He
+took his wife's little, thin, veinous hand and clasped it tenderly.
+Her bony fingers clung gratefully to his.
+
+When they were all out in the south room Flora Barnes spoke again. "I
+have never seen a more beautiful corpse," said she, in exactly the
+same voice which she had used before. She began taking off her large,
+white apron. Something peculiar in her motion arrested Sylvia's
+attention. She made a wiry spring at her.
+
+"Let me see that apron," said she, in a voice which corresponded with
+her action.
+
+Flora recoiled. She turned pale, then she flushed. "What for?"
+
+"Because I want to."
+
+"It's just my apron. I--"
+
+But Sylvia had the apron. Out of its folds dropped a thin roll of
+black silk. Flora stood before Sylvia. Beads of sweat showed on her
+flat forehead. She twitched like one about to have convulsions. She
+was very tall, but Sylvia seemed to fairly loom over her. She held
+the black silk out stiffly, like a bayonet.
+
+"What is this?" she demanded, in her tense voice.
+
+Flora twitched.
+
+"What is it? I want to know."
+
+"The back breadth," replied Flora in a small, scared voice, like the
+squeak of a mouse.
+
+"Whose back breadth?"
+
+"Her back breadth."
+
+"_Her_ back breadth?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Robbing the dead!" said Sylvia, pitilessly. Her tense voice was
+terrible.
+
+Flora tried to make a stand. "She hadn't any use for it," she
+squeaked, plaintively.
+
+"Robbing the dead! Its bad enough to rob the living."
+
+"She couldn't have worn that dress without any back breadth while she
+was living," argued Flora, "but now it don't make any odds. It don't
+show."
+
+"What were you going to do with it?"
+
+Flora was scared into a storm of injured confession. "You 'ain't any
+call to talk to me so, Mrs. Whitman," she said. "I've worked hard,
+and I 'ain't had a decent black silk dress for ten years."
+
+"How can you have a dress made out of a back breadth, I'd like to
+know?"
+
+"It's just the same quality that Mrs. Hiram Adams's was, and--" Flora
+hesitated.
+
+"Flora Barnes, you don't mean to say that you're robbing the dead of
+back breadths till you get enough to make you a whole dress?"
+
+Flora whimpered. "Business has been awful poor lately," she said.
+"It's been so healthy here we've hardly been able to earn the salt to
+our porridge. Father won't join the trust, either, and lots of times
+the undertaker from Alford has got our jobs."
+
+"Business!" cried Sylvia, in horror.
+
+"I can't help it if you do look at it that way," Flora replied, and
+now she was almost defiant. "Our business is to get our living out of
+folks' dying. There's no use mincing matters. It's our business, just
+as working in a shoe-shop is your husband's business. Folks have to
+have shoes and walk when they're alive, and be laid out nice and
+buried when they're dead. Our business has been poor. Either Dr.
+Wallace gives awful strong medicine or East Westland is too healthy.
+We haven't earned but precious little lately, and I need a whole
+black silk dress and they don't."
+
+Sylvia eyed her in withering scorn. "Need or not," said she, "the one
+that owns this back breadth is going to have it. I rather think she
+ain't going to be laid away without a back breadth to her dress."
+
+With that Sylvia crossed the room and the hall, and entered the
+parlor. She closed the door behind her. When she came out a few
+minutes later she was pale but triumphant. "There," said she, "it's
+back with her, and I've got just this much to say, and no more, Flora
+Barnes. When you get home you gather up all the back breadths you've
+got, and you do them up in a bundle, and you put them in that barrel
+the Ladies' Sewing Society is going to send to the missionaries next
+week, and don't you ever touch a back breadth again, or I'll tell it
+right and left, and you'll see how much business you'll have left
+here, I don't care how sickly it gets."
+
+"If father would--only have joined the trust I never would have
+thought of such a thing, anyway," muttered Flora. She was vanquished.
+
+"You do it, Flora Barnes."
+
+"Yes, I will. Don't speak so, Mrs. Whitman."
+
+"You had better."
+
+The undertaker and his son-in-law and Henry had remained quite
+silent. Now they moved toward the door, and Flora followed, red and
+perspiring. Sylvia heard her say something to her father about the
+trust on the way to the gate, between the tall borders of box, and
+heard Martin's surly growl in response.
+
+"Laying it onto the trust," Sylvia said to Henry--"such an awful
+thing as that!"
+
+Henry assented. He looked aghast at the whole affair. He seemed to
+catch a glimpse of dreadful depths of feminity which daunted his
+masculine mind. "To think of women caring enough about dress to do
+such a thing as that!" he said to himself. He glanced at Sylvia, and
+she, as a woman, seemed entirely beyond his comprehension.
+
+The whole great house was sweet with flowers. Neighbors had sent the
+early spring flowers from their door-yards, and Henry and Sylvia had
+bought a magnificent wreath of white roses and carnations and smilax.
+They had ordered it from a florist in Alford, and it seemed to them
+something stupendous--as if in some way it must please even the dead
+woman herself to have her casket so graced.
+
+"When folks know, they won't think we didn't do all we could," Sylvia
+whispered to Henry, significantly. He nodded. Both were very busy,
+even with assistance from the neighbors, and a woman who worked out
+by the day, in preparing the house for the funeral. Everything had to
+be swept and cleaned and dusted.
+
+When the hour came, and the people began to gather, the house was
+veritably set in order and burnished. Sylvia, in the parlor with the
+chief mourners, glanced about, and eyed the smooth lap of her new
+black gown with a certain complacency which she could not control.
+After the funeral was over, and the distant relatives and neighbors
+who had assisted had eaten a cold supper and departed, and she and
+Henry were alone in the great house, she said, and he agreed, that
+everything had gone off beautifully. "Just as she would have wished
+it if she could have been here and ordered it herself," said Sylvia.
+
+They were both hesitating whether to remain in the house that night
+or go home. Finally they went home. There was an awe and strangeness
+over them; besides, they began to wonder if people might not think it
+odd for them to stay there before the will was read, since they could
+not be supposed to know it all belonged to them.
+
+It was about two weeks before they were regularly established in the
+great house, and Horace Allen, the high-school teacher, was expected
+the next day but one. Henry had pottered about the place, and
+attended to some ploughing on the famous White grass-land, which was
+supposed to produce more hay than any piece of land of its size in
+the county. Henry had been fired with ambition to produce more than
+ever before, but that day his spirit had seemed to fail him. He sat
+about gloomily all the afternoon; then he went down for the evening
+mail, and brought home no letters, but the local paper. Sylvia was
+preparing supper in the large, clean kitchen. She had been looking
+over her new treasures all day, and she was radiant. She chattered to
+her husband like a school-girl.
+
+"Oh, Henry," said she, "you don't know what we've got! I never
+dreamed poor Abrahama had such beautiful things. I have been up in
+the garret looking over things, and there's one chest up there packed
+with the most elegant clothes. I never saw such dresses in my life."
+
+Henry looked at his wife with eyes which loved her face, yet saw it
+as it was, elderly and plain, with all its youthful bloom faded.
+
+"I don't suppose there is anything that will suit you to have made
+over," he said. "I suppose they are dresses she had when she was
+young."
+
+Sylvia colored. She tossed her head and threw back her round
+shoulders. Feminine vanity dies hard; perhaps it never dies at all.
+
+"I don't know," she said, defiantly. "Three are colors I used to
+wear. I have had to wear black of late years, because it was more
+economical, but you know how much I used to wear pink. It was real
+becoming to me."
+
+Henry continued to regard his wife's face with perfect love and a
+perfect cognizance of facts. "You couldn't wear it now," he said.
+
+"I don't know," retorted Sylvia. "I dare say I don't look now as if I
+could. I have been working hard all day, and my hair is all out of
+crimp. I ain't so sure but if I did up my hair nice, and wasn't all
+tuckered out, that I couldn't wear a pink silk dress that's there if
+I tone it down with black."
+
+"I don't believe you would feel that you could go to meeting dressed
+in pink silk at your time of life," said Henry.
+
+"Lots of women older than I be wear bright colors," retorted Sylvia,
+"in places where they are dressy. You don't know anything about
+dress, Henry."
+
+"I suppose I don't," replied Henry, indifferently.
+
+"I think that pink silk would be perfectly suitable and real becoming
+if I crimped my hair and had a black lace bonnet to wear with it."
+
+"I dare say."
+
+Henry took his place at the supper-table. It was set in the kitchen.
+Sylvia was saving herself all the steps possible until Horace Allen
+returned.
+
+Henry did not seem to have much appetite that night. His face was
+overcast. Along with his scarcely confessed exultation over his
+good-fortune he was conscious of an odd indignation. For years he had
+cherished a sense of injury at his treatment at the hands of
+Providence; now he felt like a child who, pushing hard against
+opposition to his desires, has that opposition suddenly removed, and
+tumbles over backward. Henry had an odd sensation of having
+ignominiously tumbled over backward, and he missed, with ridiculous
+rancor, his sense of injury which he had cherished for so many years.
+After kicking against the pricks for so long, he had come to feel a
+certain self-righteous pleasure in it which he was now forced to
+forego.
+
+Sylvia regarded her husband uneasily. Her state of mind had formerly
+been the female complement of his, but the sense of possession
+swerved her more easily. "What on earth ails you, Henry Whitman?" she
+said. "You look awful down-in-the-mouth. Only to think of our having
+enough to be comfortable for life. I should think you'd be real
+thankful and pleased."
+
+"I don't know whether I'm thankful and pleased or not," rejoined
+Henry, morosely.
+
+"Why, Henry Whitman!"
+
+"If it had only come earlier, when we had time and strength to enjoy
+it," said Henry, with sudden relish. He felt that he had discovered a
+new and legitimate ground of injury which might console him for the
+loss of the old.
+
+"We may live a good many years to enjoy it now," said Sylvia.
+
+"I sha'n't; maybe you will," returned Henry, with malignant joy.
+
+Sylvia regarded him with swift anxiety. "Why, Henry, don't you feel
+well?" she gasped.
+
+"No, I don't, and I haven't for some time."
+
+"Oh, Henry, and you never told me! What is the matter? Hadn't you
+better see the doctor?"
+
+"Doctor!" retorted Henry, scornfully.
+
+"Maybe he could give you something to help you. Whereabouts do you
+feel bad, Henry?"
+
+"All over," replied Henry, comprehensively, and he smiled like a
+satirical martyr.
+
+"All over?"
+
+"Yes, all over--body and soul and spirit. I know just as well as any
+doctor can tell me that I haven't many years to enjoy anything. When
+a man has worked as long as I have in a shoe-shop, and worried as
+much and as long as I have, good-luck finds him with his earthworks
+about worn out and his wings hitched on."
+
+"Oh, Henry, maybe Dr. Wallace--"
+
+"Maybe he can unhitch the wings?" inquired Henry, with grotesque
+irony. "No, Sylvia, no doctor living can give medicine strong enough
+to cure a man of a lifetime of worry."
+
+"But the worry's all over now, Henry."
+
+"What the worry's done ain't over."
+
+Sylvia began whimpering softly. "Oh, Henry, if you talk that way it
+will take away all my comfort! What do you suppose the property would
+mean to me without you?"
+
+Then Henry felt ashamed. "Lord, don't worry," he said, roughly. "A
+man can't say anything to you without upsetting you. I can't tell how
+long I'll live. Sometimes a man lives through everything. All I meant
+was, sometimes when good-luck comes to a man it comes so darned late
+it might just as well not come at all."
+
+"Henry, you don't mean to be wicked and ungrateful?"
+
+"If I am I can't help it. I ain't a hypocrite, anyway. We've got some
+good-fortune, and I'm glad of it, but I'd been enough sight gladder
+if it had come sooner, before bad fortune had taken away my rightful
+taste for it."
+
+"You won't have to work in the shop any longer, Henry."
+
+"I don't know whether I shall or not. What in creation do you suppose
+I'm going to do all day--sit still and suck my thumbs?"
+
+"You can work around the place."
+
+"Of course I can; but there'll be lots of time when there won't be
+any work to be done--then what? To tell you the truth of it, Sylvia,
+I've had my nose held to the grindstone so long I don't know as it's
+in me to keep away from it and live, now."
+
+Henry had not been at work since Abrahama White's death. He had been
+often in Sidney Meeks's office; only Sidney Meeks saw through Henry
+Whitman. One day he laughed in his face, as the two men sat in his
+office, and Henry had been complaining of the lateness of his
+good-fortune.
+
+"If your property has come too late, Henry," said he, "what's the use
+in keeping it? What's the sense of keeping property that only
+aggravates you because it didn't come in your time instead of the
+Lord's? I'll draw up a deed of gift on the spot, and Sylvia can sign
+it when you go home, and you can give the whole biling thing to
+foreign missions. The Lord knows there's no need for any mortal man
+to keep anything he doesn't want--unless it's taxes, or a quick
+consumption, or a wife and children. And as for those last, there
+doesn't seem to be much need of that lately. I have never seen the
+time since I came into the world when it was quite so hard to get
+things, or quite so easy to get rid of them, as it is now. Say the
+word, Henry, and I'll draw up the deed of gift."
+
+Henry looked confused. His eyes fell before the lawyer's sarcastic
+glance. "You are talking tomfool nonsense," he said, scowling. "The
+property isn't mine; it's my wife's."
+
+"Sylvia never crossed you in anything. She'd give it up fast enough
+if she got it through her head how downright miserable it was making
+you," returned the lawyer, maliciously. Then Sidney relented. There
+was something pathetic, even tragic, about Henry Whitman's sheer
+inability to enjoy as he might once have done the good things of
+life, and his desperate clutch of them in flat contradiction to his
+words. "Let's drop it," said the lawyer. "I'm glad you have the
+property and can have a little ease, even if it doesn't mean to you
+what it once would. Let's have a glass of that grape wine."
+
+Sidney Meeks had his own small amusement in the world. He was one of
+those who cannot exist without one, and in lieu of anything else he
+had turned early in life toward making wines from many things which
+his native soil produced. He had become reasonably sure, at an early
+age, that he should achieve no great success in his profession.
+Indeed, he was lazily conscious that he had no fierce ambition to do
+so. Sidney Meeks was not an ambitious man in large matters. But he
+had taken immense comfort in toiling in a little vineyard behind his
+house, and also in making curious wines and cordials from many
+unusual ingredients. Sidney had stored in his cellar wines from elder
+flowers, from elderberries, from daisies, from rhubarb, from clover,
+and currants, and many other fruits and flowers, besides grapes. He
+was wont to dispense these curious brews to his callers with great
+pride. But he took especial pride in a grape wine which he had made
+from selected grapes thirty years ago. This wine had a peculiar
+bouquet due to something which Sidney had added to the grape-juice,
+the secret of which he would never divulge.
+
+It was some of this golden wine which Sidney now produced. Henry
+drank two glasses, and the tense muscles around his mouth relaxed.
+Sidney smiled. "Don't know what gives it that scent and taste, do
+you?" asked Sidney. "Well, I know. It's simple enough, but nobody
+except Sidney Meeks has ever found it out. I tell you, Henry, if a
+man hasn't set the river on fire, realized his youthful dreams, and
+all that, it is something to have found out something that nobody
+else has, no matter how little it is, if you have got nerve enough to
+keep it to yourself."
+
+Henry fairly laughed. His long, hollow cheeks were slightly flushed.
+When he got home that night he looked pleasantly at Sylvia, preparing
+supper. But Sylvia did not look as radiant as she had done since her
+good-fortune. She said nothing ailed her, in response to his inquiry
+as to whether she felt well or not, but she continued gloomy and
+taciturn, which was most unusual with her, especially of late.
+
+"What in the world is the matter with you, Sylvia?" Henry asked. The
+influence of Sidney Meeks's wine had not yet departed from him. His
+cheeks were still flushed, his eyes brilliant.
+
+Then Sylvia roused herself. "Nothing is the matter," she replied,
+irritably, and immediately she became so gay that had Henry himself
+been in his usual mood he would have been as much astonished as by
+her depression. Sylvia began talking and laughing, relating long
+stories of new discoveries which she had made in the house, planning
+for Horace Allen's return.
+
+"He's going to have that big southwest room and the little one out of
+it," Sylvia said. "To-morrow you must get the bed moved into the
+little one, and I'll get the big room fixed up for a study. He'll be
+tickled to pieces. There's beautiful furniture in the room now. I
+suppose he'll think it's beautiful. It's terrible old-fashioned. I'd
+rather have a nice new set of bird's-eye maple to my taste, and a
+brass bedstead, but I know he'll like this better. It's solid old
+mahogany."
+
+"Yes, he'll be sure to like it," assented Henry.
+
+After supper, although Sylvia did not relapse into her taciturn mood,
+Henry went and sat by himself on the square colonial porch on the
+west side of the house. He sat gazing at the sky and the broad acres
+of grass-land. Presently he heard feminine voices in the house, and
+knew that two of the neighbors, Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot,
+had called to see Sylvia. He resolved that he would stay where he was
+until they were gone. He loved Sylvia, but women in the aggregate
+disturbed and irritated him; and for him three women were sufficient
+to constitute an aggregate.
+
+Henry sat on the fine old porch with its symmetrical pillars. He had
+an arm-chair which he tilted back against the house wall, and he was
+exceedingly comfortable. The air was neither warm nor cold. There was
+a clear red in the west and only one rose-tinged cloud the shape of a
+bird's wing. He could hear the sunset calls of birds and the laughter
+of children. Once a cow lowed. A moist sense of growing things, the
+breath of spring, came into his nostrils. Henry realized that he was
+very happy. He realized for the first time, with peaceful content,
+not with joy so turbulent that it was painful and rebellious, that he
+and his wife owned this grand old house and all those fair acres. He
+was filled with that great peace of possession which causes a man to
+feel that he is safe from the ills of life. Henry felt fenced in and
+guarded. Then suddenly the sense of possession upon earth filled his
+whole soul with the hope of possession after death. Henry felt, for
+the first time in his life, as if he had a firm standing-ground for
+faith. For the first time he looked at the sunset sky, he listened to
+the birds and children, he smelled the perfume of the earth, and
+there was no bitterness in his soul. He smiled a smile of utter peace
+which harmonized with it all, and the conviction of endless happiness
+and a hereafter seemed to expand all his consciousness.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+The dining-room in the White homestead was a large, low room whose
+southward windows were shaded at this season with a cloud of
+gold-green young grape leaves. The paper was a nondescript pattern, a
+large satin scroll on white. The room was wainscoted in white, and
+the panel-work around the great chimney was beautiful. A Franklin
+stove with a pattern of grape-vines was built into the chimney under
+the high mantel. Sylvia regarded this dubiously.
+
+"I don't think much of that old-fashioned Franklin stove," she told
+Henry. "Why Abrahama had it left in, after she had her nice furnace,
+beats me. Seems to me we had better have it taken out, and have a
+nice board, covered with paper to match this on the room, put there
+instead. There's a big roll of the paper up garret, and it ain't
+faded a mite."
+
+"Mr. Allen will like it just the way it is," said Henry, regarding
+the old stove with a sneaking admiration of which he was ashamed. It
+had always seemed to him that Sylvia's taste must be better than his.
+He had always thought vaguely of women as creatures of taste.
+
+"I think maybe he'll like a fire in it sometimes," he said, timidly.
+
+"A fire, when there's a furnace?"
+
+"I mean chilly days in the fall, before we start the furnace."
+
+"Then we could have that nice air-tight that we had in the other
+house put up. If we had a fire in this old thing the heat would all
+go up chimney."
+
+"But it would look kind of pretty."
+
+"I was brought up to think a fire was for warmth, not for looks,"
+said Sylvia, tartly. She had lost the odd expression which Henry had
+dimly perceived several days before, or she was able to successfully
+keep it in abeyance; still, there was no doubt that a strange and
+subtle change had occurred within the woman. Henry was constantly
+looking at her when she spoke, because he vaguely detected unwonted
+tones in her familiar voice; that voice which had come to seem almost
+as his own. He was constantly surprised at a look in the familiar
+eyes, which had seemed heretofore to gaze at life in entire unison
+with his own.
+
+He often turned upon Sylvia and asked her abruptly if she did not
+feel well, and what was the matter; and when she replied, as she
+always did, that nothing whatever was the matter, continued to regard
+her with a frown of perplexity, from which she turned with a switch
+of her skirts and a hitch of her slender shoulders. Sylvia, while she
+still evinced exultation over her new possessions, seemed to do so
+fiercely and defiantly.
+
+When Horace Allen arrived she greeted him, and ushered him into her
+new domain with a pride which had in it something almost repellent.
+At supper-time she led him into the dining-room and glanced around,
+then at him.
+
+"Well," said she, "don't you think it was about time we had something
+nice like this, after we had pulled and tugged for nothing all our
+lives? Don't you think we deserve it if anybody does?"
+
+"I certainly do," replied Horace Allen, warmly; yet he regarded her
+with somewhat the same look of astonishment as Henry. It did not seem
+to him that it could be Sylvia Whitman who was speaking. The thought
+crossed his mind, as he took his place at the table, that possibly
+coming late in life, after so many deprivations, good-fortune had
+disturbed temporarily the even balance of her good New England sense.
+
+Then he looked about him with delight. "I say, this is great!" he
+cried, boyishly. There was something incurably boyish about Horace
+Allen, although he was long past thirty. "By George, that Chippendale
+sideboard is a beauty," he said, gazing across at a fine old piece
+full of dull high lights across its graceful surfaces.
+
+Sylvia colored with pleasure, but she had been brought up to disclaim
+her possessions to others than her own family. "Mrs. Jim Jones has
+got a beautiful one she bought selling Calkin's soap," she said. "She
+thinks it's prettier than this, and I must say it's real handsome.
+It's solid oak and has a looking-glass on it. This hasn't got any
+glass."
+
+Horace laughed. He gazed at a corner-closet with diamond-paned doors.
+
+"That is a perfectly jolly closet, too," he said; "and those are
+perfect treasures of old dishes."
+
+"I think they are rather pretty," said Henry. He was conscious of an
+admiration for the old blue-and-white ware with its graceful shapes
+and quaint decorations savoring of mystery and the Far East, but he
+realized that his view was directly opposed to his wife's. This time
+Sylvia spoke quite in earnest. As far as the Indian china was
+concerned, she had her convictions. She was a cheap realist to the
+bone.
+
+She sniffed. "I suppose there's those that likes it," said she, "but
+as for me, I can't see how anybody with eyes in their heads can look
+twice at old, cloudy, blue stuff like that when they can have nice,
+clear, white ware, with flowers on it that _are_ flowers, like this
+Calkin's soap set. There ain't a thing on the china in that closet
+that's natural. Whoever saw a prospect all in blue, the trees and
+plants, and heathen houses, and the heathen, all blue? I like things
+to be natural, myself."
+
+Horace laughed, and extended his plate for another piece of pie.
+
+"It's an acquired taste," he said.
+
+"I never had any time to acquire tastes. I kept what the Lord gave
+me," said Sylvia, but she smiled. She was delighted because Horace
+had taken a second piece of pie.
+
+"I didn't know as you'd relish our fare after living in a Boston
+hotel all your vacation," said she.
+
+"People can talk about hotel tables all they want to," declared
+Horace. "Give me home cooking like yours every time. I haven't eaten
+a blessed thing that tasted good since I went away."
+
+Henry and Sylvia looked lovingly at Horace. He was a large man,
+blond, with a thick shock of fair hair, and he wore gray tweeds
+rather loose for him, which had always distressed Sylvia. She had
+often told Henry that it seemed to her if he would wear a nice suit
+of black broadcloth it would be more in keeping with his position as
+high-school principal. He wore a red tie, too, and Sylvia had an
+inborn conviction that red was not to be worn by fair people, male or
+female.
+
+However, she loved and admired Horace in spite of these minor
+drawbacks, and had a fiercely maternal impulse of protection towards
+him. She was convinced that every mother in East Westland, with a
+marriageable daughter, and every daughter, had matrimonial designs
+upon him; and she considered that none of them were good enough for
+him. She did not wish him to marry in any case. She had suspicions
+about young women whom he might have met while on his vacation.
+
+After supper, when the dishes had been cleared away, and they sat in
+the large south room, and Horace had admired that and its
+furnishings, Sylvia led up to the subject.
+
+"I suppose you know a good many people in Boston," she remarked.
+
+"Yes," replied Horace. "You know, I was born and brought up and
+educated there, and lived there until my people died."
+
+"I suppose you know a good many young ladies."
+
+"Thousands," said Horace; "but none of them will look at me."
+
+"You didn't ask them?"
+
+"Not all, only a few, but they wouldn't."
+
+"I'd like to know why not?"
+
+Then Henry spoke. "Sylvia," he said, "Mr. Allen is only joking."
+
+"I hope he is," Sylvia said, severely. "He's too young to think of
+getting married. It makes me sick, though, to see the way girls chase
+any man, and their mothers, too, for that matter. Mrs. Jim Jones and
+Mrs. Sam Elliot both came while you were gone, Mr. Allen. They said
+they thought maybe we wouldn't take a boarder now we have come into
+property, and maybe you would like to go there, and I knew just as
+well as if they had spoken what they had in their minds. There's
+Minnie Jones as homely as a broom, and there's Carrie Elliot getting
+older, and--"
+
+"Sylvia!" said Henry.
+
+"I don't care. Mr. Allen knows what's going on just as well as I do.
+Neither of those women can cook fit for a cat to eat, let alone
+anything else. Lucy Ayres came here twice on errands, too, and--"
+
+But Horace colored, and spoke suddenly. "I didn't know that you would
+take me back," he said. "I was afraid--"
+
+"We don't need to, as far as money goes," said Sylvia, "but Mr.
+Whitman and I like to have the company, and you never make a mite of
+trouble. That's what I told Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot."
+
+"I'm glad he's got back," Henry said, after Horace had gone up-stairs
+for the night and the couple were in their own room, a large one out
+of the sitting-room.
+
+"So am I," assented Sylvia. "It seems real good to have him here
+again, and he's dreadful tickled with his new rooms. I guess he's
+glad he wasn't shoved off onto Mrs. Jim Jones or Mrs. Sam Elliot. I
+don't believe he has an idea of getting married to any girl alive. He
+ain't a mite silly over the girls, if they are all setting their caps
+at him. I'm sort of sorry for Lucy Ayres. She's a pretty girl, and
+real ladylike, and I believe she'd give all her old shoes to get him."
+
+"Look out, he'll hear you," charged Henry. Their room was directly
+under the one occupied by Horace.
+
+Presently the odor of a cigar floated into their open window.
+
+"I should know he'd got home. Smoking is an awful habit," Sylvia
+said, with a happy chuckle.
+
+"He'd do better if he smoked a pipe," said Henry. Henry smoked a pipe.
+
+"If a man is going to smoke at all, I think he had better smoke
+something besides a smelly old pipe," said Sylvia. "It seems to me,
+with all our means, you might smoke cigars now, Henry. I saw real
+nice ones advertised two for five cents the other day, and you
+needn't smoke more than two a day."
+
+Henry sniffed slightly.
+
+"I suppose you think women don't know anything about cigars," said
+Sylvia; "but I can smell, anyhow, and I know Mr. Allen is smoking a
+real good cigar."
+
+"Yes, he is," assented Henry.
+
+"And I don't believe he pays more than a cent apiece. His cigars have
+gilt papers around them, and I know as well as I want to they're
+cheap; I know a cent apiece is a much as he pays. He smokes so many
+he can't pay more than that."
+
+Henry sniffed again, but Sylvia did not hear. She had one deaf ear,
+and she was lying on her sound one. Then they fell asleep, and it was
+some time before both woke suddenly. A sound had wakened Henry, an
+odor Sylvia. Henry had heard a door open, forcing him into
+wakefulness; Sylvia had smelled the cigar again. She nudged her
+husband. Just then the tall clock in the sitting-room struck ten
+deliberately.
+
+"It's late, and he's awake, smoking, now," whispered Sylvia.
+
+Henry said nothing. He only grunted.
+
+"Don't you think it's queer?"
+
+"Oh no. I guess he's only reading," replied Henry. He had a strong
+masculine loyalty towards Horace, as another man. He waited until he
+heard Sylvia's heavy, regular breathing again. Then he slipped out of
+bed and stole to the window. It was a strange night, very foggy, but
+the fog was shot through with shafts of full moonlight. The air was
+heavy and damp and sweet. Henry listened a moment at the bedroom
+window, then he tiptoed out into the sitting-room. He stole across
+the hall into the best parlor. He raised a window in there
+noiselessly, looked out, and listened. There was a grove of pines and
+spruces on that side of the house. There was a bench under a pine.
+Upon this bench Henry gradually perceived a whiteness more opaque
+than that of the fog. He heard a voice, then a responsive murmur.
+Then the fragrant smoke of a cigar came directly in his face. Henry
+shook his head. He remained motionless a moment. Then he left the
+room, and going into the hall stole up-stairs. The door of the
+southwest chamber stood wide open. Henry entered. He was trembling
+like a woman. He loved the young man, and suspicions, like dreadful,
+misshapen monsters, filled his fancy. He peeped into the little room
+which he and Sylvia had fitted up as a bedroom for Horace, and it was
+vacant.
+
+Henry went noiselessly back down-stairs and into his own room. He lay
+down without disturbing his wife, but he did not fall asleep. After
+what seemed to him a long time he heard a stealthy footstep on the
+stair, and again smelled the aroma of a cigar which floated down from
+overhead.
+
+That awoke Sylvia. "I declare, he's smoking again," she murmured,
+sleepily. "It's a dreadful habit."
+
+Henry made no reply. He breathed evenly, pretending to be asleep.
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+Although it was easy for a man, especially for a young marriageable
+man, to obtain board in East Westland, it was not so easy for a
+woman; and the facts of her youth and good looks, and presumably
+marriageable estate, rendered it still more difficult. There was in
+the little village a hotel, so-called, which had formerly been the
+tavern. It was now the East Westland House. Once it had been the Sign
+of the Horse. The old sign-board upon which a steed in flaming red,
+rampant upon a crude green field against a crude blue sky, had been
+painted by some local artist, all unknown to fame, and long since at
+rest in the village graveyard, still remained in the hotel attic,
+tilted under the dusty eaves.
+
+The Sign of the Horse had been in former days a flourishing hostelry,
+before which, twice a day, the Boston and the Alford stages had drawn
+up with mighty flourishes of horns and gallant rearings of jaded
+steeds. Scarcely a night but it had been crowded by travellers who
+stayed overnight for the sake of the good beds and the good table and
+good bar. Now there was no bar. East Westland was a strictly
+temperance village, and all the liquor to be obtained was exceedingly
+bad, and some declared diluted by the waters of the village pond.
+
+There was a very small stock of rum, gin, and whiskey, and very young
+and morbid California wines, kept at the village drug store, and
+dispensed by Albion Bennet. Albion required a deal of red-tape before
+he would sell even these doubtful beverages for strictly medicinal
+purposes. He was in mortal terror of being arrested and taken to the
+county-seat at Newholm for violation of the liquor law. Albion,
+although a young and sturdy man not past his youth, was exceedingly
+afraid of everything. He was unmarried, and boarded at the hotel.
+There he was divided between fear of burglars, if he slept on the
+first floor, and of fire if he slept on the second. He compromised by
+sleeping on the second, with a sufficient length of stout, knotted
+muslin stowed away in his trunk, to be attached to the bed-post and
+reach the ground in case of a conflagration.
+
+There was no bank in East Westland, none nearer than Alford, six
+miles away, and poor Albion was at his wit's end to keep his daily
+receipts with safety to them and himself. He had finally hit upon the
+expedient of leaving them every night with Sidney Meeks, who was
+afraid of nothing. "If anything happens to your money, Albion," said
+Sidney, "I'll make it good, even if I have to sell my wine-cellar."
+Albion was afraid even to keep a revolver. His state of terror was
+pitiable, and the more so because he had a fear of betraying it,
+which was to some extent the most cruel fear of all. Sidney Meeks was
+probably the only person in East Westland who understood how it was
+with him, and he kept his knowledge to himself. Sidney was astute on
+a diagnosis of his fellow-men's mentalities, and he had an almost
+womanly compassion even for those weaknesses of which he himself was
+incapable.
+
+"Good; I'll keep what you have in your till every night for you, and
+welcome, Albion," he had said. "I understand how you feel, living in
+the hotel the way you do."
+
+"Nobody knows who is coming and going," said Albion, blinking
+violently.
+
+"Of course one doesn't, and nobody would dream of coming to my house.
+Everybody knows I am as poor as Job's off ox. You might get a
+revolver, but I wouldn't recommend it. You look to me as if you might
+sleep too sound to make it altogether safe."
+
+"I do sleep pretty sound," admitted Albion, although he did not quite
+see the force of the other man's argument.
+
+"Just so. Any man who sleeps very sound has no right to keep a loaded
+revolver by him. He seldom, if ever, wakes up thoroughly if he hears
+a noise, and he's mighty apt to blaze away at the first one he sees,
+even if it's his best friend. No, it is not safe."
+
+"I don't think it's very safe myself," said Albion, in a relieved
+tone. "Miss Hart is always prowling around the house. She doesn't
+sleep very well, and she's always smelling smoke or hearing burglars.
+She's timid, like most women. I might shoot her if I was only half
+awake and she came opposite my door."
+
+"Exactly," said Sidney Meeks. When Albion went away he stared after
+his bulky, retreating back with a puzzled expression. He shook his
+head. Fear was the hardest thing in the world for him to understand.
+"That great, able-bodied man must feel mighty queer," he muttered, as
+he stowed away the pile of greasy bank-notes and the nickels
+collected at the soda-fountain in a pile of disordered linen in a
+bureau drawer. He chuckled to himself at the eagerness with which
+Albion had seized upon the fancy of his shooting Miss Hart.
+
+Lucinda Hart kept the hotel. She had succeeded to its proprietorship
+when her father died. She was a middle-aged woman who had been pretty
+in a tense, nervous fashion. Now the prettiness had disappeared under
+the strain of her daily life. It was a hard struggle to keep the East
+Westland House and make both ends meet. She had very few regular
+boarders, and transients were not as numerous as they had been in the
+days of the stage-coaches. Now commercial travellers and business men
+went to Alford overnight instead of remaining at East Westland. Miss
+Hart used the same feather-beds which had once been esteemed so
+luxurious. She kept them clean, well aired, and shaken, and she would
+not have a spring-bed or a hair mattress in the house. She was
+conservatism itself. She could no more change and be correct to her
+own understanding than the multiplication table.
+
+"Feather-beds are good enough for anybody who stays in this hotel, I
+don't care who it is," she said. She would not make an exception,
+even for Miss Eliza Farrel, the assistant teacher in the high school,
+although she had, with a distrust of the teacher's personality, a
+great respect for her position. She was inexorable even when the
+teacher proposed furnishing a spring-bed and mattress at her own
+expense. "I'd be willing to accommodate, and buy them myself, but it
+is a bad example," she said, firmly. "Things that were good enough
+for our fathers and mothers are good enough for us. Good land! people
+ain't any different from what they used to be. We haven't any
+different flesh nor any different bones."
+
+Miss Hart had a theory that many of the modern diseases might be
+traced directly to the eschewing of feather-beds. "Never heard of
+appendicitis in my father's time, when folks slept on good, soft
+feather-beds, and got their bones and in'ards rested," she said.
+
+Miss Hart was as timid in her way as Albion Bennet. She never got
+enough control of her nervous fears to secure many hours of sound
+sleep. She never was able to wholly rid herself of the conviction
+that her own wakefulness and watchfulness was essential to the right
+running of all the wheels of the universe, although she would have
+been shocked had she fairly known her own attitude. She patrolled the
+house by night, moving about the low, uneven corridors with a
+flickering candle--for she was afraid to carry a kerosene lamp--like
+a wandering spirit.
+
+She was suspicious, too. She never lodged a stranger overnight but
+she had grave doubts of his moral status. She imagined him a murderer
+escaped from justice, and compared his face with the pictures of
+criminals in the newspapers, or she was reasonably sure that he was
+dishonest, although she had little to tempt him. She employed one
+chambermaid and a stable-boy, and did the cooking herself. Miss Hart
+was not a good cook. She used her thin, tense hands too quickly. She
+was prone to over-measures of saleratus, to under-measures of sugar
+and coffee. She erred both from economy and from the haste which
+makes waste. Miss Eliza Farrel often turned from the scanty, poorly
+cooked food which was place before her with disgust, but she never
+seemed to lose an ounce of her firm, fair flesh, nor a shade of her
+sweet color.
+
+Miss Eliza Farrel was an anomaly. She was so beautiful that her
+beauty detracted from her charm for both sexes. It was so perfect as
+to awaken suspicion in a world where nothing is perfect from the hand
+of nature. Then, too, she was manifestly, in spite of her beauty, not
+in the first flush of youth, and had, it seemed, no right to such
+perfection of body. Also her beauty was of a type which people
+invariably associate with things which are undesirable to the rigidly
+particular, and East Westland was largely inhabited by the rigidly
+particular.
+
+East Westland was not ignorant. It read of the crimes and follies of
+the times, but it read of them with a distinct and complacent sense
+of superiority. It was as if East Westland said: "It is desirable to
+read of these things, of these doings among the vicious and the
+worldly, that we may understand what _we_ are." East Westland looked
+upon itself in its day and generation as a lot among the cities of
+the plain.
+
+It seemed inconceivable that East Westland people should have
+recognized the fact that Miss Farrel's beauty was of a suspicious
+type, but they must have had an instinctive knowledge of it. From the
+moment that Miss Farrel appeared in the village, although she had the
+best of references, not a woman would admit her into her house as a
+boarder, and the hotel, with its feather-beds and poor table, was her
+only resource. Women said of her that she was made up, that no woman
+of her age ever looked as she did and had a perfectly irreproachable
+moral character.
+
+As for the men, they admired her timidly, sheepishly, and also a
+trifle contemptuously. They did not admit openly the same opinion as
+the women with regard to the legitimacy of her charms, but they did
+maintain it secretly. It did not seem possible to many of them that a
+woman could look just as Eliza Farrel did and be altogether natural.
+As for her character, they also agreed with the feminine element
+secretly, although they openly declared the women were jealous of
+such beauty. It did not seem that such a type could be anything
+except a dangerous one.
+
+Miss Eliza Farrel was a pure blonde, as blond as a baby. There was
+not a line nor blemish in her pure, fine skin. The flush on her
+rounded cheeks and her full lips was like a baby's. Her dimples were
+like a baby's. Her blond hair was thick and soft with a pristine
+softness and thickness which is always associated with the hair of a
+child. Her eyebrows were pencilled by nature, as if nature had been
+art. Her smile was as fixedly radiant as a painted cherub's. Her
+figure had that exuberance and slenderness at various portions which
+no woman really believes in. She looked like a beautiful doll, with
+an unvarying loveliness of manner and disposition under all
+vicissitudes of life, but she was undoubtedly something more than a
+doll.
+
+Even the women listened dubiously and incredulously when she talked.
+They had never heard a woman talk about such things in the way she
+did. She had a fine education, being a graduate of one of the women's
+colleges. She was an accomplished musician and a very successful
+teacher. Her pupils undoubtedly progressed, although they did not
+have the blind love and admiration which pupils usually have for a
+beautiful teacher. To this there was one exception.
+
+Miss Farrel always smiled, never frowned or reprimanded. It was said
+that Miss Farrel had better government than Miss Florence Dean, the
+other assistant. Miss Dean was plain and saturnine, and had no
+difficulty in obtaining a good boarding-place, even with the mother
+of a marriageable daughter, who had taken her in with far-sighted
+alacrity. She dreamed of business calls concerning school matters,
+which Mr. Horace Allen, the principal, might be obliged to make, and
+she planned to have her daughter, who was a very pretty girl, in
+evidence. But poor Miss Farrel was thrown back upon the mercies of
+Miss Hart and the feather-beds and the hotel.
+
+There were other considerations besides the feather-beds and the poor
+fare which conspired to render the hotel an undesirable
+boarding-place. Miss Farrel might as well have been under the
+espionage of a private detective as with Miss Hart. If Miss Hart was
+suspicious of dire mischief in the cases of her other boarders, she
+was certain in the case of Eliza Farrel. She would not have admitted
+her under her roof at all had she not been forced thereto by the
+necessity for money. Miss Hart herself took care of Miss Farrel's
+room sometimes. She had no hesitation whatever in looking through her
+bureau drawers; indeed, she considered it a duty which she owed
+herself and the character of her house. She had taken away the keys
+on purpose, and had told miss Farrel, without the slightest
+compunction, that they were lost. The trunks were locked, and she had
+never been able to possess herself of the keys, but she felt sure
+that they contained, if not entire skeletons, at least scattered
+bones.
+
+She discovered once, quite in open evidence on Miss Farrel's
+wash-stand, a little porcelain box of pink-tinted salve, and she did
+not hesitate about telling Hannah, her chambermaid, the daughter of a
+farmer in the vicinity, and a girl who was quite in her confidence.
+She called Hannah into the room and displayed the box. "This is what
+she uses," she said, solemnly.
+
+Hannah, who was young, but had a thick, colorless skin, nodded with
+an inscrutable expression.
+
+"I have always thought she used something on her face," said Miss
+Hart. "You can't cheat _me_."
+
+Hannah took up a little, ivory-backed nail-polisher which was also on
+the wash-stand. "What do you suppose this is?" she asked, timidly, in
+an awed whisper.
+
+"How do I know? I never use such things myself, and I never knew
+women who did before," said Miss Hart, severely. "I dare say, after
+she puts the paint on, she has to use something to smooth it down
+where the natural color of the skin begins. How do I know?"
+
+Hannah laid the nail-polisher beside the box of salve. She was very
+much in love with the son of the farmer who lived next to her
+father's. The next Thursday afternoon was her afternoon off. She
+watched her chance, and stole into Miss Farrel's room, applied with
+trembling fingers a little of the nail-salve to her cheeks, then
+carefully rubbed it all off with the polisher. She then went to her
+own room, put on a hat and thick veil, and succeeded in getting out
+of the hotel without meeting Miss Hart. She was firmly convinced that
+she was painted, and that her cheeks had the lovely peach-bloom of
+Miss Farrel's.
+
+It seems sometimes as if one's own conviction concerning one's self
+goes a long way towards establishing that of other people. Hannah,
+that evening, when she met the young man whom she loved, felt that
+she was a beauty like Miss Eliza Farrel, and before she went home he
+had told her how pretty she was and asked her to marry him, and
+Hannah had consented, reserving the right to work enough longer to
+earn a little more money. She wished to be married in a white lace
+gown like one in Miss Farrel's closet. Miss Hart had called Hannah in
+to look at it one morning when Miss Farrel was at school.
+
+"What do you suppose a school-teacher can want of a dress like this
+here in East Westland?" Miss Hart had asked, severely. "She can't
+wear it to meeting, or a Sunday-school picnic, or a church sociable,
+or even to a wedding in this place. Look at it. It's cut low-neck."
+
+Hannah had looked. That night she had, in the secrecy of her own
+room, examined her own shoulders, and decided that although they
+might not be as white as Miss Farrel's, they were presumably as well
+shaped. She had resolved then and there to be married in a dress like
+that. Along with her love-raptures came the fairy dream of the lace
+gown. For once in her life she would be dressed like a princess.
+
+When she told Miss Hart she was going to be married, her mistress
+sniffed. "You can do just as you like, and you will do just as you
+like, whether or no," she said; "but you are a poor fool. Here you
+are getting good wages, and having it all to spend on yourself; and
+you ain't overworked, and you'll find out you'll be overworked and
+have a whole raft of young ones, and not a cent of wages, except
+enough to keep soul and body together, and just enough to wear so you
+won't be took up for going round indecent. I've seen enough of such
+kind of work."
+
+"Amos will make a real good husband; everybody says he's the best
+match anywhere around," replied Hannah, crimson with blushes and half
+crying.
+
+Miss Hart sniffed again. "Jump into the fire if you want to," said
+she. "I hope you ain't going before fall, and leave me in the lurch
+in hot weather, and preserves to be put up."
+
+Hannah said she would not think of getting married before November.
+She did not say a word about the white lace gown, but that evening
+the desire to look at it again waxed so strong within her that she
+could not resist it. She was sitting in her own room, after lighting
+the kerosene lamp in the corridor opposite Miss Farrel's room, which
+was No. 20, and she was thinking hard about the lace gown, and
+wondering how much it cost, when she started suddenly. As she sat
+beside her window, her own lamp not yet lit, she had seen a figure
+flit past in the misty moonlight, and she was sure it was Miss
+Farrel. She reflected quickly that it was Thursday evening, when Miss
+Hart always went to prayer-meeting. Hannah had a cold and had stayed
+at home, although it was her day off. Miss Hart cherished the belief
+that her voice was necessary to sustain the singing at any church
+meeting. She had, in her youth, possessed a fine contralto voice. She
+possessed only the remnant of one now, but she still sang in the
+choir, because nobody had the strength of mind to request her to
+resign. Sunday after Sunday she stood in her place and raised her
+voice, which was horribly hoarse and hollow, in the sacred tunes, and
+people shivered and endured. Miss Hart never missed a Sunday service,
+a choir rehearsal, or a Thursday prayer-meeting, and she did not on
+that Thursday evening.
+
+Hannah went to her door and listened. She heard laughter down in the
+room which had been the bar but was now the office. A cloud of
+tobacco smoke floated from there through the corridor. Hannah drew it
+in with a sense of delicious peace. Her lover smoked, and somehow the
+odor seemed to typify to her domestic happiness and mystery. She
+listened long, looking often at the clock on the wall. "She must be
+gone," she thought, meaning Miss Hart. She was almost sure that the
+figure which she had seen flitting under her window in the moonlight
+was that of the school-teacher. Finally she could not resist the
+temptation any longer. She hurried down the corridor until she
+reached No. 20. She tapped and waited, then she tapped and waited
+again. There was no response. Hannah tried the door. It was locked.
+She took her chambermaid's key and unlocked the door, looking around
+her fearfully. Then she opened the door and slid in. She locked the
+door behind her. Then straight to the closet she went, and that
+beautiful lace robe seemed to float out towards her. Hannah slipped
+off her own gown, and in a few moments she stood before the
+looking-glass, transformed.
+
+She was so radiant, so pleased, that a flush came out on her thick
+skin; her eyes gleamed blue. The lace gown fitted her very well. She
+turned this way and that. After all, her neck was not bad, not as
+white, perhaps, as Miss Farrel's, but quite lovely in shape. She
+walked glidingly across the room, looking over her shoulder at the
+trail of lace. She was unspeakably happy. She had a lover, and she
+was a woman in a fine gown for the first time in her life. The gown
+was not her own, but she would have one like it. She did not realize
+that this gown was not hers. She was fairly radiant with the
+possession of her woman's birthright, this poor farmer's daughter, in
+whom the instincts of her kind were strong. She glided across the
+room many times. She surveyed herself in the glass. Every time she
+looked she seemed to herself more beautiful, and there was something
+good and touching in this estimation of herself, for she seemed to
+see herself with her lover's eyes as well as her own.
+
+Finally she sat down in Miss Farrel's rocker; she crossed her knees
+and viewed with delight the fleecy fall of lace to the floor. Then
+she fell to dreaming, and her dreams were good. In that gown of
+fashion she dreamed the dreams of the life to which the women of her
+race were born. She dreamed of her good housewifery; she dreamed of
+the butter she would make; she dreamed of her husband coming home to
+meals all ready and well cooked. She dreamed, underneath the other
+dreams, of children coming home. She had no realization of the time
+she sat there. At last she started and turned white. She had heard a
+key turn in the lock. Then Miss Farrel entered the room--Miss Eliza
+Farrel, magnificent in pale gray, with a hat trimmed with roses
+crowning her blond head. Hannah cowered. She tried to speak, but only
+succeeded in making a sound as if she were deaf and dumb.
+
+Then Miss Farrel spoke. There was a weary astonishment and amusement
+in her tone, but nothing whatever disturbed or harsh. "Oh, is it you,
+Hannah?" she said.
+
+Hannah murmured something unintelligible.
+
+Miss Farrel went on, sweetly: "So you thought you would try on my
+lace gown, Hannah?" she said. "It fits you very well. I see your
+hands are clean. I am glad of that. Now please take it off and put on
+your own dress."
+
+Hannah stood up. She was abject.
+
+"There is nothing for you to be afraid of," said Miss Farrel. "Only
+take off the gown and put on your own, or I am afraid Miss Hart--"
+
+Miss Hart's name acted like a terrible stimulus. Hannah unfastened
+the lace gown with fingers trembling with haste. She stepped out of
+the shimmering circle which it made; she was in her own costume in an
+incredibly short space of time, and the lace gown was in its
+accustomed place in the closet. Then suddenly Miss Hart opened the
+door.
+
+"I thought I saw a light," said she. She looked from one to the
+other. "It is after eleven o'clock," she said, further.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Farrel, sweetly. "I have been working. I had to look
+over some exercises. I think I am not quite well. Have you any
+digitalis in the house, Miss Hart? Hannah here does not know. I was
+sorry to disturb her, and she does not know. I have an irritable
+heart, and digitalis helps it."
+
+"No, I have not got any digitalis," replied Miss Hart, shortly. She
+gave the hard sound to the _g_, and she looked suspiciously at both
+women. However, Miss Farrel was undoubtedly pale, and Miss Hart's
+face relaxed.
+
+"Go back to your room," she said to Hannah. "You won't be fit for a
+thing to-morrow." Then she said to Miss Farrel: "I don't know what
+you mean by digitalis. I haven't got any, but I'll mix you up some
+hot essence of peppermint, and that's the best thing I know of for
+anything."
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Farrel. She had sank into a chair, and had her
+hand over her heart.
+
+"I'll have it here in a minute," said Miss Hart. She went out, and
+Hannah followed her, but not before she and Miss Eliza Farrel had
+exchanged looks which meant that each had a secret of the other to
+keep as a precious stolen jewel.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+The next morning Henry was very quiet at the breakfast-table. He said
+good-morning to Horace in almost a surly manner, and Sylvia glanced
+from one to the other of the two men. After Horace had gone to school
+she went out in the front yard to interview Henry, who was pottering
+about the shrubs which grew on either side of the gravel walk.
+
+"What on earth ailed you and Mr. Allen this morning?" she began,
+abruptly.
+
+Henry continued digging around the roots of a peony. "I don't know as
+anything ailed us. I don't know what you are driving at," he replied,
+lying unhesitatingly.
+
+"Something did ail you. You can't cheat me."
+
+"I don't know what you are driving at."
+
+"Something did ail you. You'll spoil that peony. You've got all the
+weeds out. What on earth are you digging round it that way for? What
+ailed you?"
+
+"I don't know what you are driving at."
+
+"You can't cheat me. Something is to pay. For the land's sake, leave
+that peony alone, and get the weeds out from around that syringa
+bush. You act as if you were possessed. What ailed you and Mr. Allen
+this morning? I want to know."
+
+"I don't know what you are driving at," Henry said again, but he
+obediently turned his attention to the syringa bush. He always obeyed
+a woman in small matters, and reserved his masculine prerogatives for
+large ones.
+
+Sylvia returned to the house. Her mouth was set hard. Nobody knew how
+on occasions Sylvia longed for another woman to whom to speak her
+mind. She loved her husband, but no man was capable of entirely
+satisfying all her moods. She started to go to the attic on another
+exploring expedition; then she stopped suddenly, reflecting. The end
+of her reflection was that she took off her gingham apron, tied on a
+nice white one trimmed with knitted lace, and went down the street to
+Mrs. Thomas P. Ayres's. Thomas P. Ayres had been dead for the last
+ten years, but everybody called his widow Mrs. T. P. Ayres. Mrs.
+Ayres kept no maid. She had barely enough income to support herself
+and her daughter. She came to the door herself. She was a small,
+delicate, pretty woman, and her little thin hands were red with
+dish-water.
+
+"Good-morning," she said, in a weary, gentle fashion. "Come in, Mrs.
+Whitman, won't you?" As she spoke she wrinkled her forehead between
+her curves of gray hair. She had always wrinkled her forehead, but in
+some inscrutable fashion the wrinkles had always smoothed out. Her
+forehead was smooth as a girl's. She smiled, and the smile was
+exactly in accord with her voice; it was weary and gentle. There was
+not the slightest joy in it, only a submission and patience which
+might evince a slight hope of joy to come.
+
+"I've got so much to do I ought not to stop long," said Sylvia, "but
+I thought I'd run in a minute."
+
+"Walk right in," said Mrs. Ayres, and Sylvia followed her into the
+sitting-room, which was quite charming, with a delicate flowered
+paper and a net-work of green vines growing in bracket-pots, which
+stood all about. There were also palms and ferns. The small room
+looked like a bower, although it was very humbly furnished. Sylvia
+sat down.
+
+"You always look so cool in here," she said, "and it's a warm morning
+for so early in the season."
+
+"It's the plants and vines, I guess," replied Mrs. Ayres, sitting
+down opposite Mrs. Whitman. "Lucy has real good luck with them."
+
+"How is Lucy this morning?"
+
+Mrs. Ayres wrinkled her forehead again. "She's in bed with a sick
+headache," she said. "She has an awful lot of them lately. I'm afraid
+she's kind of run down."
+
+"Why don't you get a tonic?"
+
+"Well, I have been thinking of it, but Dr. Wallace gives such
+dreadful strong medicines, and Lucy is so delicate, that I have
+hesitated. I don't know but I ought to take her to Alford to Dr.
+Gilbert, but she doesn't want to go. She says it is too expensive,
+and she says there's nothing the matter with her; but she has these
+terrible headaches almost every other day, and she doesn't eat enough
+to keep a sparrow alive, and I can't help being worried about her."
+
+"It doesn't seem right," agreed Mrs. Whitman. "Last time I was here I
+thought she didn't look real well. She's got color, a real pretty
+color, but it isn't the right kind."
+
+"That's just it," said Mrs. Ayres, wrinkling her forehead. "The
+color's pretty, but you can see too plain where the red leaves off
+and where the white begins."
+
+"Speaking about color," said Mrs. Whitman, "I am going to ask you
+something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Do you really think Miss Farrel's color is natural?"
+
+"I don't know. It looks so."
+
+"I know it does, but I had it real straight that she keeps some pink
+stuff that she uses in a box as bold as can be, right in sight on her
+wash-stand."
+
+"I don't know anything about it," said Mrs. Ayres, in her weary,
+gentle fashion. "I have heard, of course, that some women do use such
+things, but none of my folks ever did, and I never knew anybody else
+who did."
+
+Then Sylvia opened upon the subject which had brought her there. She
+had reached it by a process as natural as nature itself.
+
+"I know one thing," said she: "I have no opinion of that woman. I
+can't have. When I hear a woman saying such things as I have heard of
+her saying about a girl, when I know it isn't true, I make up my mind
+those things are true about the woman herself, and she's talking
+about herself, because she's got to let it out, and she makes believe
+it's somebody else."
+
+Mrs. Ayres's face took on a strange expression. Her sweet eyes
+hardened and narrowed. "What do you mean?" she asked, sharply.
+
+"I guess I had better not tell you what I mean. Miss Farrel gives
+herself clean away just by her looks. No living woman was ever made
+so there wasn't a flaw in her face but that there was a flaw in her
+soul. We're none of us perfect. If there ain't a flaw outside,
+there's a flaw inside; you mark my words."
+
+"What was it she said?" asked Mrs. Ayres.
+
+"I don't mean to make trouble. I never did, and I ain't going to
+begin now," said Sylvia. Her face took on a sweet, hypocritical
+expression.
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+Sylvia fidgeted. She was in reality afraid to speak, and yet her very
+soul itched to do so. She answered, evasively. "When a woman talks
+about a girl running after a man, I think myself she lives in a glass
+house and can't afford to throw stones," said she. She nodded her
+head unpleasantly.
+
+Mrs. Ayres reddened. "I suppose you mean she has been talking about
+my Lucy," said she. "Well, I can tell you one thing, and I can tell
+Miss Farrel, too. Lucy has never run after Mr. Allen or any man. When
+she went on those errands to your house I had to fairly make her go.
+She said that folks would think she was running after Mr. Allen, even
+if he wasn't there, and she has never been, to my knowledge, more
+than three times when he was there, and then I made her. I told her
+folks wouldn't be so silly as to think such things of a girl like
+her."
+
+"Folks are silly enough for anything. Of course, I knew better; you
+know that, Mrs. Ayres."
+
+"I don't know what I know," replied Mrs. Ayres, with that forceful
+indignation of which a gentle nature is capable when aroused.
+
+Mrs. Whitman looked frightened. She opened her lips to speak, when a
+boy came running into the yard. "Why, who is that?" she cried,
+nervously.
+
+"It's Tommy Smith from Gray & Snow's with some groceries I ordered,"
+said Mrs. Ayres, tersely. She left the room to admit the boy at the
+side door. Then Sylvia Whitman heard voices in excited conversation.
+At the same time she began to notice that the road was filled with
+children running and exclaiming. She herself hurried to the kitchen
+door, and Mrs. Ayres turned an ashy face in her direction. At the
+same time Lucy Ayres, with her fair hair dishevelled, appeared at the
+top of the back stairs listening. "Oh, it is awful!" gasped Mrs.
+Ayres. "It is awful! Miss Eliza Farrel is dead, and--"
+
+Sylvia grasped the other woman nervously by the arm. "And what?" she
+cried.
+
+Lucy gave an hysterical sob and sank down in a slender huddle on the
+stairs. The grocer's boy looked at them. He had a happy, important
+expression. "They say--" he began, but Mrs. Ayres forestalled him.
+
+"They say Lucinda Hart murdered her," she screamed out.
+
+"Good land!" said Sylvia. Lucy sobbed again.
+
+The boy gazed at them with intense relish. He realized the joy of a
+coup. He had never been very important in his own estimation nor that
+of others. Now he knew what it was to be important. "Yes," he said,
+gayly; "they say she give her rat poison. They've sent for the
+sheriff from Alford."
+
+"She never did it in the world. Why, I went to school with her,"
+gasped Mrs. Ayres.
+
+Sylvia had the same conviction, but she backed it with logic. "What
+should she do it for?" she demanded. "Miss Farrel was a steady
+boarder, and Lucinda ain't had many steady boarders lately, and she
+needed the money. Folks don't commit murder without reason. What
+reason was there?"
+
+"School ain't going to keep to-day," remarked the boy, with glee.
+
+"Of course it ain't," said Sylvia, angrily. "What reason do they
+give?"
+
+"I 'ain't heard of none," said the boy. "S'pose that will come out at
+the trial. Hannah Simmons is going to be arrested, too. They think
+she knowed something about it."
+
+"Hannah Simmons wouldn't hurt a fly," said Sylvia. "What makes them
+think she knew anything about it?"
+
+"Johnny Soule, that works at the hotel stable, says she did," said
+the boy. "They think he knows a good deal."
+
+Sylvia sniffed contemptuously. "That Johnny Soule!" said she. "He's
+half Canadian. Father was French. I wouldn't take any stock in what
+he said."
+
+"Lucinda never did it," said Mrs. Ayres. "I went to school with her."
+
+Lucy sobbed again wildly, then she laughed loudly. Her mother turned
+and looked at her. "Lucy," said she, "you go straight back up-stairs
+and put this out of your mind, or you'll be down sick. Go straight
+up-stairs and lie down, and I'll bring you up some of that nerve
+medicine Dr. Wallace put up for you. Maybe you can get to sleep."
+
+Lucy sobbed and laughed again. "Stop right where you are," said her
+mother, with a wonderful, firm gentleness--"right where you are. Put
+this thing right out of your mind. It's nothing you can help."
+
+Lucy sobbed and laughed again, and this time her laugh rang so wildly
+that the grocer's boy looked at her with rising alarm. He admired
+Lucy. "I say," he said. "Maybe she ain't dead, after all. I heard all
+this, but you never can tell anything by what folks say. You had
+better mind your ma and put it all out of your head." The grocer's
+boy and Lucy had been in the same class at school. She had never
+noticed him, but he had loved her as from an immeasurable distance.
+Both were very young.
+
+Lucy lifted a beautiful, frightened face, and stared at him. "Isn't
+it so?" she cried.
+
+"I dare say it ain't. You had better mind your ma."
+
+"I dare say it's all a rumor," said Sylvia, soothingly.
+
+Mrs. Ayres echoed her. "All a made-up story, I think," said she. "Go
+right up-stairs, Lucy, and put it out of your head."
+
+Lucy crept up-stairs with soft sobs, and they heard a door close.
+Then the boy spoke again. "It's so, fast enough," he said, in a
+whisper, "but there ain't any need for her to know it yet."
+
+"No, there isn't, poor child," said Sylvia.
+
+"She's dreadful nervous," said Mrs. Ayres, "and she thought a lot of
+Miss Farrel--more, I guess, than most. The poor woman never was a
+favorite here. I never knew why, and I guess nobody else ever did. I
+don't care what she may have intimated--I mean what you were talking
+about, Sylvia. That's all over. Lucy always seemed to like her, and
+the poor child is so sensitive and nervous."
+
+"Yes, she is dreadful nervous," said Sylvia.
+
+"And I think she ate too much candy yesterday, too," said Mrs. Ayres.
+"She made some candy from a recipe she found in the paper. I think
+her stomach is sort of upset, too. I mean to make her think it's all
+talk about Miss Farrel until she's more herself."
+
+"I would," said Sylvia. "Poor child."
+
+The grocer's boy made a motion to go. "I wonder if they'll hang her,"
+he said, cheerfully.
+
+"Hang her!" gasped Mrs. Ayres. "She never did it any more than I did.
+I went to school with Lucinda Hart."
+
+"Why should she kill a steady boarder, when the hotel has run down so
+and she's been so hard up for money?" demanded Sylvia. "Hang her!
+You'd better run along, sonny; the other customers will be waiting;
+and you had better not talk too much till you are sure what you are
+talking about."
+
+The boy went out and closed the door, and they heard his merry
+whistle as he raced out of the yard.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+Sylvia Whitman, walking home along the familiar village street, felt
+like a stranger exploring it for the first time. She had never before
+seen it under the glare of tragedy which her own consciousness threw
+before her eyes. No tragedy had ever been known in East Westland
+since she could remember. It had been a peaceful little community,
+with every day much like the one before and after, except for the
+happenings of birth and death, which are the most common happenings
+of nature.
+
+But now came death by violence, and even the wayside weeds seemed to
+wave in a lurid light. Now and then Sylvia unconsciously brushed her
+eyes, as if to sweep away a cobweb which obstructed her vision. When
+she reached home, that also looked strange to her, and even her
+husband's face in the window had an expression which she had never
+seen before. So also had Horace Allen's. Both men were in the south
+room. There was in their faces no expression which seemed to denote a
+cessation of conversation. In fact, nothing had passed between the
+two men except the simple statement to each other of the news which
+both had heard. Henry had made no comment, neither had Horace. Both
+had set, with gloomy, shocked faces, entirely still. But Sylvia, when
+she entered, forced the situation.
+
+"Why should she kill a steady boarder, much as she needed one?" she
+queried.
+
+And Horace responded at once. "There is no possible motive," he said.
+"The arrest is a mere farce. It will surely prove so."
+
+Then Henry spoke. "I don't understand, for my part, why she is
+arrested at all," he said, grimly.
+
+Horace laughed as grimly. "Because there is no one else to arrest,
+and the situation seems to call for some action," he replied.
+
+"But they must have some reason."
+
+"All the reason was the girl's (Hannah Simmons, I believe her name
+is) seeming to be keeping something back, and saying that Miss Hart
+gave Miss Farrel some essence of peppermint last night, and the fact
+that the stable-boy seems to be in love with Hannah, and jealous and
+eager to do her mistress some mischief, and has hinted at knowing
+something, which I don't believe, for my part, he does."
+
+"It is all nonsense," said Sylvia. "Whatever Hannah Simmons is
+keeping to herself, it isn't killing another woman, or knowing that
+Lucinda Hart did it. There was no reason for either of those women to
+kill Miss Farrel, and folks don't do such awful things without
+reason, unless they're crazy, and it isn't likely that Lucinda and
+Hannah have both come down crazy together, and I know it ain't in the
+Hart family, or the Simmons. What if poor Lucinda did give Miss
+Farrel some essence of peppermint? I gave some to Henry night before
+last, when he had gas in his stomach, and it didn't kill him."
+
+"What they claim is that arsenic was in the peppermint," said Horace,
+in an odd, almost indifferent voice.
+
+"Arsenic in the peppermint!" repeated Sylvia. "You needn't tell me
+Lucinda Hart put arsenic in the peppermint, though I dare say she had
+some in the house to kill rats. It's likely that old tavern was
+overrun with them, and I know she lost her cat a few weeks ago. She
+told me herself. He was shot when he was out hunting. Lucinda thought
+somebody mistook him for a skunk. She felt real bad about it. I feel
+kind of guilty myself. I can't help thinking if I'd just looked round
+then and hunted up a kitten for poor Lucinda, she never would have
+had any need to keep rat poison, and nobody would have suspected her
+of such an awful thing. I suppose Albion Bennet right up and told
+she'd bought it, first thing. I think he might have kept still, as
+long as he'd boarded with Lucinda, and as many favors as she'd showed
+him. He knew as well as anybody that she never gave it to Miss
+Farrel."
+
+"Now, Sylvia, he had to tell if he was asked," Henry said,
+soothingly, for Sylvia was beginning to show signs of hysterical
+excitement. "He couldn't do anything else."
+
+"He could have forgot," Sylvia returned, shrilly. "Men ain't so awful
+conscientious about forgetting. He could have forgot."
+
+"He had to tell," repeated Henry. "Don't get all wrought up over it,
+Sylvia."
+
+"I can't help it. I begin to feel guilty myself. I know I might have
+found a kitten. I had a lot on my mind, with moving and everything,
+but I might have done it. Albion Bennet never had the spunk to do
+anything but tell all he knew. I suppose he was afraid of his own
+precious neck."
+
+"Ain't it most time to see about dinner?" asked Henry.
+
+Then Sylvia went out of the room with a little hysterical twitter
+like a scared bird, and the two men were left alone. Silence came
+over them again. Both men looked moodily at nothing. Finally Henry
+spoke.
+
+"One of the worst features of any terrible thing like this is that
+burdens innumerable are either heaped upon the shoulders of the
+innocent, or they assume them. There's my poor wife actually trying
+to make out that she is in some way to blame."
+
+"Women are a queer lot," said Horace, in a miserable tone.
+
+Then the door opened suddenly, and Sylvia's think, excited face
+appeared.
+
+"You don't suppose they'll send them to prison?" she said.
+
+"They'll both be acquitted," said Horace. "Don't worry, Mrs. Whitman."
+
+"I've got to worry. How can I help worrying? Even if poor Lucinda is
+acquitted, lots of folks will always believe it, and her boarders
+will drop away, and as for Hannah Simmons, I shouldn't be a mite
+surprised if it broke her match off."
+
+"It's a dreadful thing," said Henry; "but don't you fret too much
+over it, Sylvia. Maybe she killed herself, and if they think that
+Lucinda won't have any trouble afterwards."
+
+"I think some have that opinion now," said Horace.
+
+Sylvia sniffed. "A woman don't kill herself as long as she's got
+spirit enough to fix herself up," she said. "I saw her only yesterday
+in a brand-new dress, and her hair was crimped tight enough to last a
+week, and her cheeks--"
+
+"Come, Sylvia," said Henry, admonishingly.
+
+"You needn't be afraid. I ain't going to talk about them that's dead
+and gone, and especially when they've gone in such a dreadful way;
+and maybe it wasn't true," said Sylvia. "But it's just as I say: when
+a woman is fixed up the way Miss Eliza Farrel was yesterday, she
+ain't within a week of making way with herself. Seems as if I might
+have had forethought enough to have got that kitten for poor Lucinda."
+
+Sylvia went out again. The men heard the rattle of dishes. Horace
+rose with a heavy sigh, which was almost a sob, and went out by the
+hall door, and Henry heard his retreating steps on the stair. He
+frowned deeply as he sat by the window. He, too, was bearing in some
+measure the burden of which he had spoken. It seemed to him very
+strange that under the circumstances Horace had not explained his
+mysterious meeting with the woman in the grove north of the house the
+night before. Henry had a certainty as to her identity--a certainty
+which he could not explain to himself, but which was none the less
+fixed.
+
+No suspicion of Horace, as far as the murder was concerned--if murder
+it was--was in his mind, but he did entertain a suspicion of another
+sort: of some possibly guilty secret which might have led to the
+tragedy. "I couldn't feel worse if he was my own son," he thought. He
+wished desperately that he had gone out in the grove and interrupted
+the interview. "I'm old enough to be his father," he told himself,
+"and I know what young men are. I'm to blame myself."
+
+When he heard Horace's approaching footsteps on the stair he turned
+his face stiffly towards the window, and did not look up when the
+young man entered the room. But Horace sat down opposite and began
+speaking rapidly in a low voice.
+
+"I don't know but I ought to go to Mr. Meeks with this instead of
+you," he said; "and I don't know that I ought to go to anybody, but,
+hang it, I can't keep the little I know to myself any longer--that
+is, I can't keep the whole of it. Some I never will tell. Mr.
+Whitman, I don't know the exact minute Miss Hart gave her that
+confounded peppermint, and Miss Hart seems rather misty about it, and
+if the girl knows she won't tell; but I suspect I may be the last
+person who saw that poor woman alive. I found a note waiting for me
+from her when I arrived yesterday, and--well, she wanted to see me
+alone about something very particular, and she--" Horace paused and
+reddened. "Well, you know what women are, and of course there was
+really no place at the hotel where I could have been sure of a
+private interview with her. I couldn't go to her room, and one might
+as well talk in a trolley-car as that hotel parlor; and she didn't
+want to come here to the house and be closeted with me, and she
+didn't want to linger after school, for those school-girls are the
+very devil when it comes to seeing anything; and though I will admit
+it does sound ridiculous and romantic, I don't see myself what else
+she could have done. She asked me in her note to step out in the
+grove about ten o'clock, when the house was quiet. She wrote she had
+something very important to say to me. So I felt like a fool, but I
+didn't go to bed, and I stole down the front stairs, and she was out
+there in the grove waiting for me, and we sat down on the bench there
+and she told me some things."
+
+Henry nodded gravely. He now looked at Horace, and there was relief
+in his frowning face.
+
+"I can tell you some of the things that she said to me," continued
+Horace, "and I am going to. You are connected with it--that is, you
+are through your wife. Miss Farrel wasn't Miss at all. She was a
+married woman." Henry nodded again. "She had not lived with her
+husband long, however, and she had been married some twenty years
+ago. She was older than she looked. For some reason she did not get
+on with him, and he left her. I don't myself feel that I know what
+the reason was, although she pretended to tell me. She seemed to have
+a feeling, poor soul, that, beautiful as she was, she excited
+repulsion rather than affection in everybody with whom she came in
+contact. 'I might as well be a snake as a woman.' Those were just her
+words, and, God help her, I do believe there was something true about
+them, although for the life of me I don't know why it was."
+
+Henry looked at Horace with the eyes of a philosopher. "Maybe it was
+because she wanted to charm," he said.
+
+Horace shot a surprised glance at him. He had not expected anything
+like that from Henry, even though he had long said to himself that
+there were depths below the commonplace surface.
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he said, reflectively. "I don't know but you
+are. She was a great beauty, and possibly the knowledge of it made
+her demand too much, long for too much, so that people dimly realized
+it and were repelled instead of being attracted. I think she loved
+her husband for a long time after he left her. I think she loved many
+others, men and women. I think she loved women better than a woman
+usually does, and women could not abide her. That I know; even the
+school-girls fought shy of her."
+
+"I have seen the Ayres girl with her," said Henry.
+
+Horace changed color. "She is not one of the school-girls," he
+replied, hastily.
+
+"I think I have heard Sylvia say that Mrs. Ayres had asked her there
+to tea."
+
+"Yes, I believe she has. I think perhaps the Ayres family have paid
+some attention to her," Horace said, constrainedly.
+
+"I have seen the Ayres girl with her a good deal, I know," said Henry.
+
+"Very possibly, I dare say. Well, Miss Farrel did not think she or
+any one else cared about her very much. She told me that none of her
+pupils did, and I could not gainsay her, and then she told me what I
+feel that I must tell you." Horace paused. Henry waited.
+
+Then Horace resumed. He spoke briefly and to the purpose.
+
+"Miss Abrahama White, who left her property to your wife, had a
+sister," he said. "The sister went away and married, and there was a
+daughter. First the father died, then the mother. The daughter, a
+mere child at the time, was left entirely destitute. Miss Farrel took
+charge of her. She did not tell her the truth. She wished to
+establish if possible some claim upon her affection. She considered
+that to claim a relationship would be the best way to further her
+purpose. The girl was told that Miss Farrel was her mother's cousin.
+She was further told that she had inherited a very considerable
+property from her mother, whereas she had not inherited one cent.
+Miss Farrel gave up her entire fortune to the child. She then, with
+the nervous dread of awakening dislike instead of love which filled
+her very soul, managed to have the child, in her character of an
+heiress, established in a family moving in the best circles, but
+sadly in need of money. Then she left her, and began supporting
+herself by teaching. The girl is now grown to be a young woman, and
+Miss Farrel has not dared see her more than twice since she heaped
+such benefits upon her. It has been her dream that some day she might
+reveal the truth, and that gratitude might induce love, but she has
+never dared put it to the test. Lately she has not been very well,
+and the thought has evidently come to her more than once that she
+might die and never accomplish her purpose. I almost think the poor
+woman had a premonition. She gave me last night the girl's address,
+and she made me promise that in case of her death she should be sent
+for. 'I can't bear to think that nobody will come,' she said. Of
+course I laughed at her. I thought her very morbid, but--well, I have
+telegraphed to the girl to come in time for the funeral. She is in
+New York. She and the people with whom she lives have just returned
+from the South."
+
+"She must come here," Henry said.
+
+"I could think of no other place," said Horace. "You think Mrs.
+Whitman--"
+
+"Of course," Henry said. He started up to speak to Sylvia, but Horace
+stopped him.
+
+"I forgot," he said, quickly. "Miss Farrel asked me to promise that I
+should not tell the girl, in case of her death before she had an
+opportunity of doing so, of what she had done for her. 'Let her come
+just because she thinks I am her relative,' she said, 'and because
+she may possibly feel kindly towards me. If I can have no comfort
+from it while I am alive, there is no need for her to know her
+obligation.'"
+
+"It sounds like a mighty queer story to tell Sylvia," Henry said.
+Then he opened the door and called, and Mrs. Whitman immediately
+responded. Her hands were white with flour. She had been making
+biscuits. She still looked nervous and excited.
+
+"What is to pay now?" said she.
+
+Henry told her in few words.
+
+"You mean that Abrahama's niece was taken care of by Miss Farrel when
+her mother died, and Miss Farrel got a place for her to live with
+some New York folks, and you mean Miss Farrel was related to her
+mother?" said Sylvia. She looked sharply at Henry.
+
+"Yes," he replied, feebly. Horace stood looking out of the window.
+
+"She wa'n't," said Sylvia.
+
+"Now, Sylvia."
+
+"If that poor woman that's gone wanted the girl to think she was her
+relation enough to lie about it I sha'n't tell her, you can depend on
+that; but it's a lie," said Sylvia. "Miss Farrel wa'n't no relation
+at all to Susy White. She couldn't have been unless she was related
+to me, too, on my mother's side, and she wa'n't. I know all about my
+mother's family. But I sha'n't tell her. I'm glad Miss Farrel got a
+home for her. It was awful that the child was left without a cent. Of
+course she must come here, and stay, too. She ought to live with her
+folks. We've got enough to take care of her. If we can't do as much
+as rich folks, I guess it will be full as well for the girl."
+
+Henry opened his lips to speak, but a glance from Horace checked him.
+Sylvia went on talking nervously. The odd manner and tone which Henry
+had noticed lately in everything she said and did seemed intensified.
+She talked about what room she should make ready for the girl. She
+made plan after plan. She was very pale, then she flushed. She walked
+aimlessly about gesturing with her floury hands.
+
+Finally Henry took her firmly by the shoulder. "Come, Sylvia," he
+said, "she won't be here until night. Now you had better get dinner.
+It's past twelve." Sylvia gave a quick, frightened glance at him.
+Then she went silently out of the room.
+
+"Mrs. Whitman does not seem well," Horace said, softly.
+
+"I think her nerves are all out of order with what she has gone
+through with lately," said Henry. "It has been a great change that
+has come to us both, Mr. Allen. When a man and woman have lived past
+their youth, and made up their minds to bread and butter, and nothing
+else, and be thankful if you get that much, it seems more like a slap
+than a gift of Providence to have mince-pie thrust into their mouths.
+It has been too much for Sylvia, and now, of course, this awful thing
+that has happened has upset her, and--"
+
+He stopped, for Sylvia opened the door suddenly. "If she wa'n't dead
+and gone, I wouldn't believe one word of such a tomfool story," said
+she, with vicious energy. Then she shut the door again.
+
+At dinner Sylvia ate nothing, and did not talk. Neither Henry nor
+Horace said much. In the afternoon Horace went out to make some
+arrangements which he had taken upon himself with regard to the dead
+woman, and presently Henry followed him. Sylvia worked with feverish
+energy all the afternoon setting a room in order for her expected
+guest. It was a pretty room, with an old-fashioned paper--a sprawling
+rose pattern on a tarnished satin ground. The room overlooked the
+grove, and green branches pressed close against two windows. There
+was a pretty, old-fashioned dressing-table between the front windows,
+and Sylvia picked a bunch of flowers and put them in a china vase,
+and set it under the glass, and thought of the girl's face which it
+would presently reflect.
+
+"I wonder if she looks like her mother," she thought. She stood
+gazing at the glass, and shivered as though with cold. Then she
+started at a sound of wheels outside. In front of the house was
+Leander Willard, who kept the livery-stable of East Westland. He was
+descending in shambling fashion over the front wheels, steadying at
+the same time a trunk on the front seat; and Horace Allen sprang out
+of the back of the carriage and assisted a girl in a flutter of
+dark-blue skirts and veil. "She's come!" said Sylvia.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+Sylvia gave a hurried glance at her hair in the glass. It shone like
+satin with a gray-gold lustre, folded back smoothly from her temples.
+She eyed with a little surprise the red spots of excitement which
+still remained on her cheeks. The changelessness of her elderly
+visage had been evident to her so long that she was startled to see
+anything else. "I look as if I had been pulled through a knot-hole,"
+she muttered.
+
+She took off her gingham apron, thrust it hastily into a bureau
+drawer in the next room, and tied on a clean white one with a
+hemstitched border. Then she went down-stairs, the starched white bow
+of the apron-strings covering her slim back like a Japanese sash. She
+heard voices in the south room, and entered with a little cough.
+Horace and the new-comer were standing there talking. The moment
+Sylvia entered, Horace stepped forward. "I hardly know how to
+introduce you," he said; "I hardly know the relationship. But, Mrs.
+Whitman, here is Miss Fletcher--Miss Rose Fletcher."
+
+"Who accepts your hospitality with the utmost gratitude," said Miss
+Rose Fletcher, extending a little hand in a wonderful loose gray
+travelling glove. Mrs. Whitman took the offered hand and let it drop.
+She was rigid and prim. She smiled, but the smile was merely a
+widening of her thin, pale, compressed lips. She looked at the girl
+with gray eyes, which had a curious blank sharpness in them. Rose
+Fletcher was so very well dressed, so very redolent of good breeding
+and style, that it was difficult at first to comprehend if that was
+all. Finally one perceived that she was a very pretty girl, of a
+sweet, childish type, in spite of her finished manners and her very
+sophisticated clothes. Sylvia at first saw nothing except the
+clothes, and realized nothing except the finished manner. She
+immediately called to the front her own manners, which were as
+finished as the girl's, albeit of a provincial type. Extreme manners
+in East Westland required a wholly artificial voice and an expression
+wholly foreign to the usual one. Horace had never before seen Sylvia
+when all her manners were in evidence, and he gazed at her now in
+astonishment and some dismay.
+
+"Her mother was own sister to Miss Abrahama White, and Abrahama
+White's mother and my mother were own cousins on the mother's side.
+My mother was a White," she said. The voice came like a slender,
+reedy whistle from between her moveless, widened lips. She stood as
+if encased in armor. Her apron-strings stood out fiercely and were
+quite evident over each hip. She held her head very high, and the
+cords on her long, thin neck stood out.
+
+Poor Rose Fletcher looked a little scared and a little amused. She
+cast a glance at Horace, as if for help. He did not know what to say,
+but tried manfully to say it. "I have never fully known, in such a
+case," he remarked, "whether the relationship is second cousin or
+first cousin once removed." It really seemed to him that he had never
+known. He looked up with relief as Henry entered the room, and Sylvia
+turned to him, still with her manners fully in evidence.
+
+"Mr. Whitman, this is Miss Abrahama White's niece," said she.
+
+She bowed stiffly herself as Henry bowed. He was accustomed to
+Sylvia's company manners, but still he was not himself. He had never
+seen a girl like this, and he was secretly both angry and alarmed to
+note the difference between her and Sylvia, and all women to which he
+had been used. However, his expression changed directly before the
+quick look of pretty, childish appeal which the girl gave him. It was
+Rose's first advance to all men whom she met, her little feeler put
+out to determine their dispositions towards her. It was quite
+involuntary. She was unconscious of it, but it was as if she said in
+so many words, "Do you mean to be kind to me? Don't you like the look
+of me? I mean entirely well. There is no harm in me. Please don't
+dislike me."
+
+Sylvia saw the glance and interpreted it. "She looks like her
+mother," she announced, harshly. It was part of Sylvia's extreme
+manners to address a guest in the third person. However, in this
+case, it was in reality the clothes which had occasioned so much
+formality. She immediately, after she had spoken and Henry had
+awkwardly murmured his assent to her opinion, noticed how tired the
+girl looked. She was a slender little thing, and looked delicate in
+spite of a babyish roundness of face, which was due to bone-formation
+rather than flesh.
+
+Sylvia gave an impression of shoving the men aside as she approached
+the girl. "You look tired to death," said she, and there was a sweet
+tone in her force voice.
+
+Rose brightened, and smiled at her like a pleased child. "Oh, I am
+very tired!" she cried. "I must confess to being very tired, indeed.
+The train was so fast. I came on the limited from New York, you know,
+and the soft-coal smoke made me ill, and I couldn't eat anything,
+even if there had been anything to eat which wasn't all full of
+cinders. I shall be so very glad of a bath and an opportunity to
+change my gown. I shall have to beg you to allow your maid to assist
+me a little. My own maid got married last week, unexpectedly, and I
+have not yet replaced her."
+
+"I don't keep a hired girl," said Sylvia. She looked, as Henry had,
+both angry and abashed. "I will fasten up your dress in the neck if
+that is what you want," said she.
+
+"Oh, that is all," Rose assured her, and she looked abashed, too.
+Even sophistication is capable of being daunted before utterly
+unknown conditions. She followed Sylvia meekly up-stairs, and Henry
+and Horace carried the trunk, which had been left on the front walk,
+up after them.
+
+Leander Willard was a man of exceeding dignity. He was never willing
+to carry a trunk even into a house. "If the folks that the trunk
+belongs to can't heft it in after I've brought it up from the depot,
+let it set out," he said. "I drive a carriage to accommodate, but I
+ain't no porter."
+
+Therefore, Henry and Horace carried up the trunk and unstrapped it.
+Rose looked around her with delight. "Oh, what a lovely room!" she
+cried.
+
+"It gets the morning sun," said Sylvia. "The paper is a little mite
+faded, but otherwise it's just as good as it ever was."
+
+"It is perfectly charming," said Rose. She tugged at the jewelled
+pins in her hat. Sylvia stood watching her. When she had succeeded in
+removing the hat, she thrust her slender fingers through her fluff of
+blond hair and looked in the glass. Her face appeared over the bunch
+of flowers, as Sylvia had thought of its doing. Rose began to laugh.
+"Good gracious!" she said. "For all I took such pains to wash my face
+in the lavatory, there is a great black streak on my left cheek.
+Sometimes I think the Pullmans are dirtier than the common
+coaches--that more soft-coal smoke comes in those large windows;
+don't you think so?"
+
+Sylvia colored, but her honesty was fearless. "I don't know what a
+Pullman is," she said.
+
+Rose stared for a second. "Oh, a parlor-car," she said. "A great many
+people always say parlor-car." Rose was almost apologetic.
+
+"Did you come in a parlor-car?" asked Sylvia. Rose wondered why her
+voice was so amazed, even aggressive.
+
+"Why, of course; I always do," said Rose.
+
+"I've seen them go through here," said Sylvia.
+
+"Do you mind telling me where my bath-room is?" asked Rose, looking
+vaguely at the doors. She opened one. "Oh, this is a closet!" she
+cried. "What a lovely large one!"
+
+"There ain't such a thing as a bath-room in this house," replied
+Sylvia. "Abrahama White, your aunt, had means, but she always thought
+she had better ways for her money than putting in bath-rooms to
+freeze up in winter and run up plumbers' bills. There ain't any
+bath-room, but there's plenty of good, soft rain-water from the
+cistern in your pitcher on the wash-stand there, and there's a new
+cake of soap and plenty of clean towels."
+
+Rose reddened. Again sophistication felt abashed before dauntless
+ignorance. She ran to the wash-stand. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" she
+cried. "Of course this will do beautifully. What a charming old
+wash-stand!--and the water is delightfully soft." Rose began
+splashing water over her face. She had taken off her blue
+travelling-gown and flung it in a heap over a chair. Sylvia
+straightened it out carefully, noting with a little awe the rustle of
+its silk linings; then she hung it in the closet. "I'll hang it here,
+where it won't get all of a muss," said she. Already she began to
+feel a pleasure which she had never known--the pleasure of chiding a
+young creature from the heights of her own experience. She began
+harshly, but before she had finished her voice had a tender cadence.
+
+"Oh, thank you," said the girl, still bending over the wash-basin. "I
+know I am careless with my things. You see, I have always been so
+dependent upon my maid to straighten out everything for me. You will
+do me good. You will teach me to be careful."
+
+She turned around, wiping her face, and smiling at Sylvia, who felt
+her very soul melt within her, although she still remained rigidly
+prim, with her stiff apron-strings standing out at right angles. She
+looked at the girl's slender arms and thin neck, which was pretty
+though thin. "You don't weigh much, do you?" she said.
+
+"A little over a hundred, I think."
+
+"You must eat lots of fresh vegetables and eggs, and drink milk, and
+get more flesh on your bones," said Sylvia, and her voice was full of
+delight, although now--as always, lately--a vague uneasiness lurked
+in her eyes. Rose, regarding her, thought, with a simple shrewdness
+which was inborn, that her new cousin must have something on her
+mind. She wondered if it was her aunt's death. "I suppose you thought
+a good deal of my aunt who died," she ventured, timidly.
+
+Sylvia regarded her with quick suspicion. She paled a little. "I
+thought enough of her," she replied. "She had always lived here. We
+were distant-related, and we never had any words, but I didn't see
+much of her. She kept herself to herself, especially of late years.
+Of course, I thought enough of her, and it makes me feel real bad
+sometimes--although I own I can't help being glad to have so many
+nice things--to think she had to go away and leave them."
+
+"I know you must feel so," said Rose. "I suppose you feel sometimes
+as if they weren't yours at all."
+
+Sylvia turned so pale that Rose started. "Why, what is the matter?
+Are you ill?" she cried, running to her. "Let me get some water for
+you. You are so white."
+
+Sylvia pushed her away. "There's nothing the matter with me," she
+said. "Folks can't always be the same color unless they're painted."
+She gave her head a shake as if to set herself right, and turned
+resolutely towards Rose's trunk. "Can you unpack, yourself, or do you
+want me to help you?" she asked.
+
+Rose eyed the trunk helplessly, then she looked doubtfully at Sylvia.
+A woman who was a relative of hers, and who lived in a really grand
+old house, and was presumably well-to-do, and had no maids at
+command, but volunteered to do the service herself, was an anomaly to
+her.
+
+"I'm afraid it will be too much trouble," she said, hesitatingly.
+"Marie always unpacked my trunk, but you have no--"
+
+"I guess if I had a girl I wouldn't set her to unpacking your trunk,"
+said Sylvia, vigorously. "Where is your key?"
+
+"In my bag," replied Rose, and she searched for the key in her
+dark-blue, gold-trimmed bag. "Mrs. Wilton's maid, Anne, packed my
+trunk for me," she said. "Anne packs very nicely. Mr. Wilton and her
+sister, Miss Pamela Mack, did not know whether I ought to put on
+mourning or not for Cousin Eliza, but they said it would be only
+proper for me to wear black to the funeral. So I have a ready-made
+black gown and hat in the trunk. I hardly knew how much to bring. I
+did not know--" She stopped. She had intended to say--"how long I
+should stay," but she was afraid.
+
+Sylvia finished for her. "You can stay just as long as you are a mind
+to," said she. "You can live here all the rest of your life, as far
+as that is concerned. You are welcome. It would suit me, and it would
+suit Mr. Whitman."
+
+Rose looked at Sylvia in amazement as she knelt stiffly on the floor
+unlocking her trunk. "Thank you, you are very kind," she said,
+feebly. She had a slight sensation of fear at such a wealth of
+hospitality offered her from a stranger, although she was a distant
+relative.
+
+"You know this was your own aunt's house and your own aunt's things,"
+said Sylvia, beginning to remove articles from the trunk, "and I want
+you to feel at home here--just as if you had a right here." The words
+were cordial, but there was a curious effect as if she were repeating
+a well-rehearsed lesson.
+
+"Thank you," Rose said again, more feebly than before. She watched
+Sylvia lifting out gingerly a fluffy white gown, which trailed over
+her lean arm to the floor. "That is a tea-gown; I think I will put it
+on now," said Rose. "It will be so comfortable, and you are not
+formal here, are you?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You are not formal here in East Westland, are you?"
+
+"No," replied Sylvia, "we ain't formal. So you want to put on--this?"
+
+"Yes, I think I will."
+
+Sylvia laid the tea-gown on the bed, and turned to the trunk again.
+
+"You know, of course, that Aunt Abrahama and mamma were estranged for
+years before mamma died," said Rose. She sat before the white
+dressing-table watching Sylvia, and the lovely turn of her neck and
+her blond head were reflected in the glass above the vase of flowers.
+
+"Yes, I knew something about it."
+
+"I never did know much, except that Aunt Abrahama did not approve of
+mamma's marriage, and we never saw her nor heard of her. Wasn't it
+strange," she went on, confidentially, "how soon after poor mamma's
+death all my money came to me?"
+
+Sylvia turned on her. "Have you got money?" said she. "I thought you
+were poor."
+
+"Yes, I think I have a great deal of money. I don't know how much. My
+lawyers take care of it, and there is a trustee, who is very kind. He
+is a lawyer, too. He was a friend of poor Cousin Eliza's. His name is
+McAllister. He lives in Chicago, but he comes to New York quite
+often. He is quite an old gentleman, but very nice indeed. Oh yes, I
+have plenty of money. I always have had ever since mamma died--at
+least, since a short time after. But we were very poor, I think,
+after papa died. I think we must have been. I was only a little girl
+when mamma died, but I seem to remember living in a very little,
+shabby place in New York--very little and shabby--and I seem to
+remember a great deal of noise. Sometimes I wonder if we could have
+lived beside the elevated road. It does not seem possible that we
+could have been as poor as that, but sometimes I do wonder. And I
+seem to remember a close smell about our rooms, and that they were
+very hot, and I remember when poor mamma died, although I was so
+young. I remember a great many people, who seemed very kind, came in,
+and after that I was in a place with a good many other little girls.
+I suppose it was a school. And then--" Rose stopped and turned white,
+and a look of horror came over her face.
+
+"What then?" asked Sylvia. "Don't you feel well, child?"
+
+"Yes, I feel well--as well as I ever feel when I almost remember
+something terrible and never quite do. Oh, I hope I never shall quite
+remember. I think I should die if I did."
+
+Sylvia stared at her. Rose's face was fairly convulsed. Sylvia rose
+and hesitated a moment, then she stepped close to the girl and pulled
+the fair head to her lean shoulder. "Don't; you mustn't take on so,"
+she said. "Don't try to remember anything if it makes you feel like
+that. You'll be down sick."
+
+"I am trying not to remember, and always the awful dread lest I shall
+comes over me," sobbed the girl. "Mr. McAllister says not to try to
+remember, too, but I am so horribly afraid that I shall try in spite
+of me. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela don't know anything about it. I
+never said anything about it to them. I did once to Mr. McAllister,
+and I did to Cousin Eliza, and she said not to try, and now I am
+telling you, I suppose because you are related to me. It came over me
+all of a sudden."
+
+Rose sobbed again. Sylvia smoothed her hair, then she shook her by
+the slender, soft shoulders, and again that overpowering delight
+seized her. "Come, now," she said, "don't you cry another minute. You
+get up and lay your underclothes away in the bureau drawers. It's
+almost time to get supper, and I can't spend much more time here."
+
+Rose obeyed. She packed away piles of laced and embroidered things in
+the bureau drawers, and under Sylvia's directions hung up her gowns
+in the closet. As she did this she volunteered further information.
+
+"I do remember one thing," she said, with a shudder, "and I always
+know if I could remember back of that the dreadful thing would come
+to me." She paused for a moment, then she said, in a shocked voice:
+"Mrs. Whitman."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I really do remember that I was in a hospital once when I was
+little. I remember the nurses and the little white beds. That was not
+dreadful at all. Everybody petted me, but that was when the trying
+not to remember began."
+
+"Don't you think of it another minute," Sylvia said, sternly.
+
+"I won't; I won't, really. I--"
+
+"For goodness' sake, child, don't hang that heavy coat over that lace
+waist--you'll ruin it!" cried Sylvia.
+
+Rose removed the coat hurriedly, and resumed, as Sylvia took it out
+of her hand: "It was right after that Cousin Eliza Farrel came, and
+then all that money was left to me by a cousin of father's, who died.
+Then I went to live with Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, and I went to
+school, and I went abroad, and I always had plenty, and never any
+trouble, except once in a while being afraid I should remember
+something dreadful. Poor Cousin Eliza Farrel taught school all the
+time. I never saw her but twice after the first time. When I grew
+older I tried to have her come and live with me. Mrs. Wilton and Miss
+Pamela have always been very nice to me, but I have never loved them.
+I could never seem to get at enough of them to love."
+
+"You had better put on that now," said Sylvia, indicating the fluffy
+mass on the bed. "I'll help you."
+
+"I don't like to trouble you," Rose said, almost pitifully, but she
+stood still while Sylvia, again with that odd sensation of delight,
+slipped over the young head a lace-trimmed petticoat, and fastened
+it, and then the tea-gown. The older woman dressed the girl with
+exactly the same sensations that she might have experienced in
+dressing her own baby for the first time. When the toilet was
+completed she viewed the result, however, with something that savored
+of disapproval.
+
+Rose, after looking in the glass at her young beauty in its setting
+of lace and silk, looked into Sylvia's face for the admiration which
+she felt sure of seeing there, and shrank. "What is the matter? Don't
+I look nice?" she faltered.
+
+Sylvia looked critically at the sleeves of the tea-gown, which were
+mere puffs of snowy lace, streaming with narrow ribbons, reaching to
+the elbow. "Do they wear sleeves like that now in New York?" asked
+she.
+
+"Why, yes!" replied Rose. "This tea-gown came home only last week
+from Madame Felix."
+
+"They wear sleeves puffed at the bottom instead of the top, and a
+good deal longer, in East Westland," said Sylvia.
+
+"Why, this was made from a Paris model," said Rose, meekly. Again
+sophistication was abashed before the confidence of conservatism.
+
+"I don't know anything about Paris models," said Sylvia. "Mrs.
+Greenaway gets all her patterns right from Boston."
+
+"I hardly think madame would have made the sleeves this way unless it
+was the latest," said Rose.
+
+"I don't know anything about the latest," said Sylvia. "We folks here
+in East Westland try to get the _best_." Sylvia felt as if she were
+chiding her own daughter. She spoke sternly, but her eyes beamed with
+pleasure. The young girl's discomfiture seemed to sweeten her very
+soul.
+
+"For mercy's sake, hold up your dress going down-stairs," she
+admonished. "I swept the stairs this morning, but the dust gathers
+before you can say boo, and that dress won't do up."
+
+Rose gathered up the tail of her gown obediently, and she also
+experienced a certain odd pleasure. New England blood was in her
+veins. It was something new and precious to be admonished as a New
+England girl might be admonished by a fond mother.
+
+When she went into the south room, still clinging timidly to her lace
+train, Horace rose. Henry sat still. He looked at her with pleased
+interest, but it did not occur to him to rise. Horace always rose
+when Sylvia entered a room, and Henry always rather resented it.
+"Putting on society airs," he thought to himself, with a sneer.
+
+However, he smiled involuntarily; the girl was so very pretty and so
+very unlike anything which he had ever seen. "Dressed up as if she
+were going to a ball, in a dress made like a night-gown," he thought,
+but he smiled. As for Horace, he felt dazzled. He had scarcely
+realized how pretty Rose was under the dark-blue mist of her veil. He
+placed a chair for her, and began talking about the journey and the
+weather while Sylvia got supper. Henry was reading the local paper.
+Rose's eyes kept wandering to that. Suddenly she sprang to her feet,
+was across the room in a white swirl, and snatched the paper from
+Henry's hands.
+
+"What is this, oh, what is this?" she cried out.
+
+She had read before Horace could stop her. She turned upon him, then
+upon Henry. Her face was very pale and working with emotion.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "you only telegraphed me that poor Cousin Eliza was
+dead! You did not either of you tell me she was murdered. I loved
+her, although I had not seen her for years, because I have so few to
+whom my love seemed to belong. I was sorry because she was dead, but
+murdered!"
+
+Rose threw herself on a chair, and sobbed and sobbed.
+
+"I loved her; I did love her," she kept repeating, like a distressed
+child. "I did love her, poor Cousin Eliza, and she was murdered. I
+did love her."
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+Horace was right in his assumption that the case against Lucinda Hart
+and Hannah Simmons would never be pressed. Although it was proved
+beyond a doubt that Eliza Farrel had swallowed arsenic in a
+sufficiently large quantity to cause death, the utter absence of
+motive was in the favor of the accused, and then the suspicion that
+the poison might have been self-administered, if not with suicidal
+intent, with another, steadily gained ground. Many thought Miss
+Farrel's wonderful complexion might easily have been induced by the
+use of arsenic.
+
+At all events, the evidence against Lucinda and Hannah, when sifted,
+was so exceedingly flimsy, and the lack of motive grew so evident,
+that there was no further question of bringing them to trial. Still
+the suspicion, once raised, grew like a weed, as suspicion does grow
+in the ready soil of the human heart. For a month after the tragedy
+it seemed as if Sylvia Whitman's prophecy concerning the falling off
+of the hotel guests was destined to fail. The old hostelry was
+crowded. Newspaper men and women from all parts of the country
+flocked there, and also many not connected with the press, who were
+morbidly curious and revelled in the sickly excitement of thinking
+they might be living in the house of a poisoner. Lucinda Hart sent in
+her resignation from the church choir. Her experience, the first time
+she had sung after Eliza Farrel's death, did not exactly daunt her;
+she was not easily daunted. But she had raised her husky contralto,
+and lifted her elderly head in its flowered bonnet before that
+watchful audience of old friends and neighbors, and had gone home and
+written her stiffly worded note of resignation.
+
+She attended church the following Sunday. She said to herself that
+her absence might lead people to think there was some ground for the
+awful charge which had been brought against her. She bought a smart
+new bonnet and sat among the audience, and heard Lucy Ayres, who had
+a beautiful contralto, sing in her place. Lucy sang well, and looked
+very pretty in her lace blouse and white hat, but she was so pale
+that people commented on it. Sylvia, who showed a fairly antagonistic
+partisanship for Lucinda, spoke to her as she came out of church, and
+walked with her until their roads divided. Sylvia left Henry to
+follow with Rose Fletcher, who was still staying in East Westland,
+and pressed close to Lucinda.
+
+"How are you?" she said.
+
+"Well enough; why shouldn't I be?" retorted Lucinda.
+
+It was impossible to tell from her manner whether she was grateful
+for, or resented, friendly advances. She held her head very high.
+There was a stiff, jetted ornament on her new bonnet, and it stood up
+like a crest. She shot a suspicious glance at Sylvia. Lucinda in
+those days entertained that suspicion of suspicion which poisons the
+very soul.
+
+"I don't know why you shouldn't be," replied Sylvia. She herself cast
+an angry glance at the people around them, and that angry glance was
+like honey to Lucinda. "You were a fool to give up your place in the
+choir," said Sylvia, still with that angry, wandering gaze. "I'd
+sung. I'd shown 'em; and I'd sung out of tune if I'd wanted to."
+
+"You don't know what it was like last Sunday," said Lucinda then. She
+did not speak complainingly or piteously. There was proud strength in
+her voice, but it was emphatic.
+
+"I guess I do know," said Sylvia. "I saw everybody craning their
+necks, and all them strangers. You've got a lot of strangers at the
+hotel, haven't you, Lucinda?"
+
+"Yes," said Lucinda, and there was an echo in her monosyllable like
+an expletive.
+
+Sylvia nodded sympathizingly. "Some of them write for the papers, I
+suppose?" said she.
+
+"Some of them. I know it's my bread-and-butter to have them, but I
+never saw such a parcel of folks. Talk about eyes in the backs of
+heads, they're all eyes and all ears. Sometimes I think they ain't
+nothing except eyes and ears and tongue. But there's a lot besides
+who like to think maybe they're eating poison. I know I'm watched
+every time I stir up a mite of cake, but I stir away."
+
+"You must have your hands full."
+
+"Yes; I had to get Abby Smith to come in and help."
+
+"She ain't good for much."
+
+"No, she ain't. She's thinkin' all the time of how she looks, instead
+of what she's doing. She waits on table, though, and helps wash
+dishes. She generally forgets to pass the vegetables till the meat is
+all et up, and they're lucky if they get any butter; but I can't help
+it. They only pay five dollars a week, and get a lot of enjoyment out
+of watching me and Hannah, and they can't expect everything."
+
+The two women walked along the country road. There were many other
+people besides the church-going throng in their Sunday best, but they
+seemed isolated, although closely watched. Presently, however, a
+young man, well dressed in light gray, with a white waistcoat,
+approached them.
+
+"Why, good-day, Miss Hart!" he said, raising his hat.
+
+Lucinda nodded stiffly and walked on. She did not speak to him, but
+to Sylvia. "He is staying at the hotel. He writes for a New York
+paper," she informed Sylvia, distinctly.
+
+The young man laughed. "And Miss Hart is going to write for it, too,"
+he said, pleasantly and insinuatingly. "She is going to write an
+article upon how it feels to be suspected of a crime when one is
+innocent, and it will be the leading feature in next Sunday's paper.
+She is to have her picture appear with it, too, and photographs of
+her famous hotel and the room in which the murder was said to have
+been committed, aren't you, Miss Hart?"
+
+"Yes," replied Lucinda, with stolidity.
+
+Sylvia stared with amazement. "Why, Lucinda!" she gasped.
+
+"When I find out folks won't take no, I give 'em yes," said Lucinda,
+grimly.
+
+"I knew I could finally persuade Miss Hart," said the young man,
+affably. He was really very much of a gentleman. He touched his hat,
+striking into a pleasant by-path across a field to a wood beyond.
+
+"He's crazy over the country," remarked Lucinda; and then she was
+accosted again, by another gentleman. This time he was older and
+stouter, and somewhat tired in his aspect, but every whit as genially
+persuasive.
+
+"He writes for a New York paper," said Lucinda to Sylvia, in exactly
+the same tone which she had used previously. "He wants me to write a
+piece for his paper on my first twenty-four hours under suspicion of
+crime."
+
+"And you are going to write it, aren't you, Miss Hart?" asked the
+gentleman.
+
+"Yes," replied Lucinda, with alacrity.
+
+This time the gentleman looked a trifle suspicious. He pressed his
+inquiry. "Can you let us have the copy by Wednesday?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Lucinda. Her "yes" had the effect of a snap.
+
+The gentleman talked a little more at length with regard to his
+article, and Lucinda never failed with her ready "yes."
+
+They were almost at the turn of the road, where Sylvia would leave
+Lucinda, when a woman appeared. She was young, but she looked old,
+and her expression was one of spiritual hunger.
+
+"This lady writes for a Boston paper," said Lucinda. "She came
+yesterday. She wants me to write a piece for her paper upon women's
+unfairness to women."
+
+"Based upon the late unfortunate occurrence at Miss Hart's hotel,"
+said the woman.
+
+"Yes," said Lucinda, "of course; everything is based on that. She
+wants me to write a piece upon how ready women are to accuse other
+women of doing things they didn't do."
+
+"And you are going to write it?" said the woman, eagerly.
+
+"Yes," said Lucinda.
+
+"Oh, thank you! you are a perfect dear," said the woman. "I am so
+much pleased, and so will Mr. Evans be when he hears the news. Now I
+must ask you to excuse me if I hurry past, for I ought to wire him at
+once. I can get back to Boston to-night."
+
+The woman had left them, with a swish of a frilled silk petticoat
+under a tailored skirt, when Sylvia looked at Lucinda. "You ain't
+goin' to?" said she.
+
+"No."
+
+"But you said so."
+
+"You'd say anything to get rid of them. I've said no till I found out
+they wouldn't take it, so then I began to say yes. I guess I've said
+yes, in all, to about seventeen."
+
+"And you don't mean to write a thing?"
+
+"I guess I ain't going to begin writing for the papers at my time of
+life."
+
+"But what will they do?"
+
+"They won't get the pieces."
+
+"Can't they sue you, or anything?"
+
+"Let them sue if they want to. After what I've been through lately I
+guess I sha'n't mind that."
+
+"And you are telling every one of them you'll write a piece?"
+
+"Of course I am. It's the only thing they'll let me tell them. I want
+to get rid of them somehow."
+
+Sylvia looked at Lucinda anxiously. "Is it true that Albion Bennet
+has left?" she said.
+
+"Yes; he was afraid of getting poisoned. Mrs. Jim Jones has taken
+him. I reckon I sha'n't have many steady boarders after this has
+quieted down."
+
+"But how are you going to get along, Lucinda?"
+
+"I shall get along. Everybody gets along. What's heaped on you you
+have to get along with. I own the hotel, and I shall keep more hens
+and raise more garden truck, and let Hannah go if I can't pay her. I
+shall have some business, enough to keep me alive, I guess."
+
+"Is it true that Amos Quimby has jilted Hannah on account of--?"
+
+"Guess so. He hasn't been near her since."
+
+"Ain't it a shame?"
+
+"Hannah's got to live with what's heaped on her shoulders, too," said
+Lucinda. "Folks had ought to be thankful when the loads come from
+other people's hands, instead of their own, and make the best of it.
+Hannah has got a good appetite. It ain't going to kill her. She can
+go away from East Westland by-and-by if she wants to, and get another
+beau. Folks didn't suspect her much, anyway. I've got the brunt of
+it."
+
+"Lucinda," said Sylvia, earnestly. "Folks can't really believe you'd
+go and do such a thing."
+
+"It's like flies after molasses," said Lucinda. "I never felt I was
+so sweet before in my life."
+
+"What can they think you'd go and poison a good, steady boarder like
+that for?"
+
+"She paid a dollar a day," said Lucinda.
+
+"I know she did."
+
+"And I liked her," said Lucinda. "I know lots of folks didn't, but I
+did. I know what folks said, and I'll own I found things in her room,
+but I don't care what folks do to their outsides as long as their
+insides are right. Miss Farrel was a real good woman, and she had a
+kind of hard time, too."
+
+"Why, I thought she had a real good place in the high-school; and
+teachers earn their money dreadful easy."
+
+"It wasn't that."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+Lucinda hesitated. "Well," she said, finally, "it can't do her any
+harm, now she's dead and gone, and I don't know as it was anything
+against her, anyway. She just set her eyes by your boarder."
+
+"Not Mr. Allen? You don't mean Mr. Allen, Lucinda?"
+
+"What other boarder have you had? I've known about it for a long
+time. Hannah and me both have known, but we never opened our lips,
+and I don't want it to go any further now."
+
+"How did you find out?"
+
+"By keeping my eyes and ears open. How does anybody find out
+anything?"
+
+"I don't believe Mr. Allen ever once thought of her," said Sylvia,
+and there was resentment in her voice.
+
+"Of course he didn't. Maybe he'll take a shine to that girl you've
+got with you now."
+
+"Neither one of them has even thought of such a thing," declared
+Sylvia, and her voice was almost violent.
+
+"Well, I don't know," Lucinda said, indifferently. "I have had too
+much to look out for of my own affairs since the girl came to know
+anything about that. I only thought of their being in the same house.
+I always had sort of an idea myself that maybe Lucy Ayres would be
+the one."
+
+"I hadn't," said Sylvia. "Not but she--well, she looked real sick
+to-day. She didn't look fit to stand up there and sing. I should
+think her mother would be worried about her. And she don't sing half
+as well as you do."
+
+"Yes, she does," replied Lucinda. "She sings enough sight better than
+I do."
+
+"Well, I don't know much about music," admitted Sylvia. "I can't tell
+if anybody gets off the key."
+
+"I can," said Lucinda, firmly. "She sings enough sight better than I
+can, but I sang plenty well enough for them, and if I hadn't been so
+mad at the way I've been treated I'd kept on. Now they can get on
+without me. Lucy Ayres does look miserable. There's consumption in
+her family, too. Well, it's good for her lungs to sing, if she don't
+overdo it. Good-bye, Sylvia."
+
+"Good-bye," said Sylvia. She hesitated a moment, then she said:
+"Don't you mind, Lucinda. Henry and I think just the same of you as
+we've always thought, and there's a good many besides us. You haven't
+any call to feel bad."
+
+"I don't feel bad," said Lucinda. "I've got spunk enough and grit
+enough to bear any load that I 'ain't heaped on my own shoulders, and
+the Lord knows I 'ain't heaped this. Don't you worry about me,
+Sylvia. Good-bye."
+
+Lucinda went her way. She held her nice black skirt high, but her
+plodding feet raised quite a cloud of dust. Her shoulders were thrown
+back, her head was very erect, the jetted ornament on her bonnet
+shone like a warrior's crest. She stepped evenly out of sight, as
+evenly as if she had been a soldier walking in line and saying to
+himself, "Left, right; left, right."
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+When Sylvia reached home she found Rose Fletcher and Horace Allen
+sitting on the bench under the oak-trees of the grove north of the
+house. She marched out there and stood before them, holding her
+fringed parasol in such a way that it made a concave frame for her
+stern, elderly face and thin shoulders. "Rose," said she, "you had
+better go into the house and lay down till dinner-time. You have been
+walking in the sun, and it is warm, and you look tired."
+
+She spoke at once affectionately and severely. It seemed almost
+inconceivable that this elderly country woman could speak in such
+wise to the city-bred girl in her fashionable attire, with her air of
+self-possession.
+
+But the girl looked up at her as if she loved her, and answered, in
+just the way in which Sylvia liked her to answer, with a sort of
+pretty, childish petulance, defiant, yet yielding. "I am not in the
+least tired," said she, "and it did not hurt me to walk in the sun,
+and I like to sit here under the trees."
+
+Rose was charming that morning. Her thick, fair hair was rolled back
+from her temples, which had at once something noble and childlike
+about them. Her face was as clear as a cameo. She was dressed in
+mourning for her aunt, but her black robe was thin and the fine
+curves of her shoulders and arms were revealed, and the black lace of
+her wide hat threw her fairness into relief like a setting of onyx.
+
+"You had better go into the house," said Sylvia, her eyes stern, her
+mouth smiling. A maternal instinct which dominated her had awakened
+suddenly in the older woman's heart. She adored the girl to such an
+extent that the adoration fairly pained her. Rose herself might
+easily have found this exacting affection, this constant
+watchfulness, irritating, but she found it sweet. She could scarcely
+remember her mother, but the memory had always been as one of lost
+love. Now she seemed to have found it again. She fairly coquetted
+with this older woman who loved her, and whom she loved, with that
+charming coquettishness sometimes seen in a daughter towards her
+mother. She presumed upon this affection which she felt to be so
+staple. She affronted Sylvia with a delicious sense of her own power
+over her and an underlying affection, which had in it the protective
+instinct of youth which dovetailed with the protective instinct of
+age.
+
+It had been planned that she was to return to New York immediately
+after Miss Farrel's funeral. In fact, her ticket had been bought and
+her trunk packed, when a telegram arrived rather late at night. Rose
+had gone to bed when Sylvia brought it up to her room. "Don't be
+scared," she said, holding the yellow envelope behind her. Rose
+stared at her, round-eyed, from her white nest. She turned pale.
+
+"What is it?" she said, tremulously.
+
+"There's no need for you to go and think anything has happened until
+you read it," Sylvia said. "You must be calm."
+
+"Oh, what is it?"
+
+"A telegram," replied Sylvia, solemnly. "You must be calm."
+
+Rose laughed. "Oh, Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela are forever sending
+telegrams," she said. "Very likely it is only to say somebody will
+meet me at the Grand Central."
+
+Sylvia looked at the girl in amazement, as she coolly opened and read
+the telegram. Rose's face changed expression. She regarded the yellow
+paper thoughtfully a moment before she spoke.
+
+"If anything has happened, you must be calm," said Sylvia, looking at
+her anxiously. "Of course you have lived with those people so many
+years you have learned to think a good deal of them; that is only
+natural; but, after all, they ain't your own."
+
+Rose laughed again, but in rather a perplexed fashion. "Nothing has
+happened," she said--"at least, nothing that you are thinking
+of--but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Why, Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela are going to sail for Genoa
+to-morrow, and that puts an end to my going to New York to them."
+
+A great brightness overspread Sylvia's face. "Well, you ain't left
+stranded," she said. "You've got your home here."
+
+Rose looked gratefully at her. "You do make me feel as if I had, and
+I don't know what I should do if you did not, but"--she frowned
+perplexedly--"all the same, one would not have thought they would
+have gone off in this way without giving me a moment's notice," she
+said, in rather an injured fashion, "after I have lived with them so
+long. I never thought they really cared much about me. Mrs. Wilton
+and Miss Pamela look too hard at their own tracks to get much
+interest in anybody or anything outside; but starting off in this
+way! They might have thought that I would like to go--at least they
+might have told me."
+
+Suddenly her frown of perplexity cleared away. "I know what has
+happened," she said, with a nod to Sylvia. "I know exactly what has
+happened."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Mrs. Wilton's and Miss Pamela's aunt Susan has died, and they've got
+the money. They have been waiting for it ever since I have been with
+them. Their aunt was over ninety, and it did begin to seem as if she
+would never die."
+
+"Was she very rich?"
+
+"Oh, very; millions; and she never gave a cent to Mrs. Wilton and
+Miss Pamela. She has died, and they have just made up their minds to
+go away. They have always said they should live abroad as soon as
+they were able." Rose looked a little troubled for a moment, then she
+laughed. "They kept me as long as they needed me," said she, with a
+pleasant cynicism, "and I don't know but I had lived with them long
+enough to suit myself. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela were always nice
+to me, but sometimes--well, sometimes I felt so outside them that I
+was awfully lonesome. And Mrs. Wilton always did just what you knew
+she would, and so did Miss Pamela, and it was a little like living
+with machines that were wound up to do the right thing by you, but
+didn't do it of their own accord. Now they have run down, just like
+machines. I know as well as I want to that Aunt Susan has died and
+left them her money. I shall get a letter to-morrow telling me about
+it. I think myself that Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela will get married
+now. They never gave up, you know. Mrs. Wilton's husband died ages
+ago, and she was as much of an old maid as Miss Pamela, and neither
+of them would give up. They will be countesses or duchesses or
+something within a year."
+
+Rose laughed, and Sylvia beamed upon her. "If you feel that you can
+stay here," she said, timidly.
+
+"_If_ I feel that I can," said Rose. She stretched out her slender
+arms, from which the lace-trimmed sleeves of her night-gown fell away
+to the shoulder, and Sylvia let them close around her thin neck and
+felt the young cheek upon her own with a rapture like a lover's.
+
+"Those folks she lived with in New York are going to Europe
+to-morrow," she told Henry, when she was down-stairs again, "and they
+have treated that poor child mean. They have never told her a word
+about it until now. She says she thinks their rich aunt has died and
+left them her money, and they have just cleared out and left her."
+
+"Well, she can stay with us as long as she is contented," said Henry.
+
+"I rather guess she can," said Sylvia.
+
+Henry regarded her with the wondering expression which was often on
+his face nowadays. He had glimpses of the maternal depths of his
+wife's heart, which, while not understanding, he acquiesced in; but
+there was something else which baffled him.
+
+But now for Sylvia came a time of contentment, apparently beyond
+anything which had ever come into her life. She fairly revelled in
+her possession of Rose, and the girl in her turn seemed to
+reciprocate. Although the life in East Westland was utterly at
+variance with the life she had known, she settled down in it, of
+course with sundry hitches of adjustment. For instance, she could not
+rid herself at first of the conviction that she must have, as she had
+always had, a maid.
+
+"I don't know how to go to work," she said to Sylvia one day. "Of
+course I must have a maid, but I wonder if I had better advertise or
+write some of my friends. Betty Morrison may know of some one, or
+Sally Maclean. Betty and Sally always seem to be able to find ways
+out of difficulties. Perhaps I had better write them. Maybe it would
+be safer than to advertise."
+
+Sylvia and Rose were sitting together in the south room that
+afternoon. Sylvia looked pathetically and wistfully at the girl.
+"What do you want a maid for?" she asked, timidly.
+
+Rose stared. "What for? Why, what I always want a maid for: to attend
+to my wardrobe and assist me in dressing, to brush my hair,
+and--everything," ended Rose, comprehensively.
+
+Sylvia continued to regard her with that wistful, pathetic look.
+
+"I can sew braid on your dresses, and darn your stockings, and button
+up your dresses, and brush your hair, too, just as well as anybody,"
+she said.
+
+Rose ran over to her and went down on her knees beside her. "You
+dear," she said, "as if you didn't have enough to do now!"
+
+"This is a very convenient house to do work in," said Sylvia, "and
+now I have my washing and ironing done, I've got time on my hands. I
+like to sew braid on and darn stockings, and always did, and it's
+nothing at all to fasten up your waists in the back; you know that."
+
+"You dear," said Rose again. She nestled her fair head against
+Sylvia's slim knees. Sylvia thrilled. She touched the soft puff of
+blond hair timidly with her bony fingers. "But I have always had a
+maid," Rose persisted, in a somewhat puzzled way. Rose could hardly
+conceive of continued existence without a maid. She had managed very
+well for a few days, but to contemplate life without one altogether
+seemed like contemplating the possibility of living without a comb
+and hair-brush. Sylvia's face took on a crafty expression.
+
+"Well," said she, "if you must have a maid, write your friends, and I
+will have another leaf put in the dining-table."
+
+Rose raised her head and stared at her. "Another leaf in the
+dining-table?" said she, vaguely.
+
+"Yes. I don't think there's room for more than four without another
+leaf."
+
+"But--my maid would not eat at the table with us."
+
+"Would she be willing to eat in the kitchen--cold victuals--after we
+had finished?"
+
+Rose looked exceedingly puzzled. "No, she would not; at least, no
+maid I ever had would have," she admitted.
+
+"Where is she going to eat, then? Would she wait till after we were
+through and eat in the dining-room?"
+
+"I don't believe she would like that, either."
+
+"Where is she going to eat?" demanded Sylvia, inexorably.
+
+Rose gazed at her.
+
+"She could have a little table in here, or in the parlor," said
+Sylvia.
+
+Rose laughed. "Oh, that would never do!" said she. "Of course there
+was a servants' dining-room at Mrs. Wilton's, and there always is in
+a hotel, you know. I never thought of that."
+
+"She has got to eat somewhere. Where is she going to eat?" asked
+Sylvia, pressing the question.
+
+Rose got up and kissed her. "Oh, well, I won't bother about it for a
+while, anyway," said she. "Now I think of it, Betty is sure to be off
+to Newport by now, and Sally must be about to sail for Paris to buy
+her trousseau. She is going to marry Dicky van Snyde in the autumn
+(whatever she sees in him)! So I doubt if either of them could do
+anything about a maid for me. I won't bother at all now, but I am not
+going to let you wait upon me. I am going to help you."
+
+Sylvia took one of Rose's little hands and looked at it. "I guess you
+can't do much with hands like yours," said she, admiringly, and with
+an odd tone of resentment, as if she were indignant at the mere
+suggestion of life's demanding service from this dainty little
+creature, for whom she was ready to immolate herself.
+
+However, Rose had in her a vein of persistency. She insisted upon
+wiping the dishes and dusting. She did it all very badly, but Sylvia
+found the oddest amusement in chiding her for her mistakes and in
+setting them right herself. She would not have been nearly as well
+pleased had Rose been handy about the house. One evening Henry caught
+Sylvia wiping over all the dishes which Rose had wiped, and which
+were still damp, the while she was fairly doubled up with suppressed
+mirth.
+
+"What in creation ails you, Sylvia?" asked Henry.
+
+She extended towards him a plate on which the water stood in drops.
+"Just see this plate that dear child thinks she has wiped," she
+chuckled.
+
+"You women do beat the Dutch," said Henry.
+
+However, Rose did prove herself an adept in one respect. She had
+never sewed much, but she had an inventive genius in dress, and, when
+she once took up her needle, used it deftly.
+
+When Sylvia confided to her her aspiration concerning the pink silk
+which she had found among Abrahama's possessions, Rose did not laugh
+at all, but she looked at her thoughtfully.
+
+"Don't you think it would be suitable if I had it made with some
+black lace?" asked Sylvia, wistfully. "Henry thinks it is too young
+for me, but--"
+
+"Not black," Rose said, decisively. The two were up in the attic
+beside the old chest of finery. Rose took out an old barege of an
+ashes-of-roses color. She laid a fold of the barege over the pink
+silk, then she looked radiantly at Sylvia.
+
+"It will make a perfectly lovely gown for you if you use the pink for
+a petticoat," said she, "and have the gown made of this delicious old
+stuff."
+
+"The pink for a petticoat?" gasped Sylvia.
+
+"It is the only way," said Rose; "and you must have gray gloves, and
+a bonnet of gray with just one pale-pink rose in it. Don't you
+understand? Then you will harmonize with your dress. Your hair is
+gray, and there is pink in your cheeks. You will be lovely in it.
+There must be a very high collar and some soft creamy lace, because
+there is still some yellow left in your hair."
+
+Rose nodded delightedly at Sylvia, and the dressmaker came and made
+the gown according to Rose's directions. Sylvia wore it for the first
+time when she walked from church with Lucinda Hart and found Rose and
+Horace sitting in the grove. After Rose had replied to Sylvia's
+advice that she should go into the house, she looked at her with the
+pride of proprietorship. "Doesn't she look simply lovely?" she asked
+Horace.
+
+"She certainly does," replied the young man. He really gazed
+admiringly at the older woman, who made, under the glimmering shadows
+of the oaks, a charming nocturne of elderly womanhood. The faint pink
+on her cheeks seemed enhanced by the pink seen dimly through the
+ashen shimmer of her gown; the creamy lace harmonized with her
+yellow-gray hair. She was in her own way as charming as Rose in hers.
+
+Sylvia actually blushed, and hung her head with a graceful sidewise
+motion. "I'm too old to be made a fool of," said she, "and I've got a
+good looking-glass." But she smiled the smile of a pretty woman
+conscious of her own prettiness. Then all three laughed, although
+Horace but a moment before had looked very grave, and now he was
+quite white. Sylvia noticed it. "Why, what ails you, Mr. Allen?" she
+said. "Don't you feel well?"
+
+"Perfectly well."
+
+"You look pale."
+
+"It is the shadow of the oaks."
+
+Sylvia noticed a dainty little white box in Rose's lap. "What is
+that?" she asked.
+
+"It is a box of candy that dear, sweet Lucy Ayres who sang to-day
+made her own self and gave to me," replied Rose. "She came up to me
+on the way home from church and slipped it into my hand, and I hardly
+know her at all. I do think it is too dear of her for anything. She
+is such a lovely girl, and her voice is beautiful." Rose looked
+defiantly at Horace. "Mr. Allen has been trying to make me promise
+not to eat this nice candy," she said.
+
+"I don't think candy is good for anybody, and girls eat altogether
+too much of it," said Horace, with a strange fervor which the
+occasion hardly seemed to warrant.
+
+"Wouldn't I know he was a school-teacher when I heard him speak like
+that, even if nobody had ever told me?" said Rose. "Of course I am
+going to eat this candy that dear Lucy made her own self and gave me.
+I should be very ungrateful not to, and I love candy, too."
+
+"I will send for some to Boston to-morrow," cried Horace, eagerly.
+
+Rose regarded him with amazement. "Why, Mr. Allen, you just said you
+did not approve of candy at all, and here you are proposing to send
+for some for me," she said, "when I have this nice home-made candy, a
+great deal purer, because one knows exactly what is in it, and you
+say I must not eat this."
+
+Rose took up a sugared almond daintily and put it to her lips, but
+Horace was too quick for her. Before she knew what he was about he
+had dashed it from her hand, and in the tumult the whole box of candy
+was scattered. Horace trampled on it, it was impossible to say
+whether purposely or accidentally, in the struggle.
+
+Both Rose and Sylvia regarded him with amazement, mixed with
+indignation.
+
+"Why, Mr. Allen!" said Rose. Then she added, haughtily: "Mr. Allen,
+you take altogether too much upon yourself. You have spoiled my
+candy, and you forget that you have not the least right to dictate to
+me what I shall or shall not eat."
+
+Sylvia also turned upon Horace. "Home-made candy wouldn't hurt her,"
+she said. "Why, Mr. Allen, what do you mean?"
+
+"Nothing. I am very sorry," said Horace. Then he walked away without
+another word, and entered the house. The girl and the woman stood
+looking at each other.
+
+"What did he do such a thing for?" asked Rose.
+
+"Goodness knows," said Sylvia.
+
+Rose was quite pale. She began to look alarmed. "You don't suppose
+he's taken suddenly insane or anything?" said she.
+
+"My land! no," said Sylvia. "Men do act queer sometimes."
+
+"I should think so, if this is a sample of it," said Rose, eying the
+trampled candy. "Why, he ground his heel into it! What right had he
+to tell me I should or should not eat it?" she said, indignantly,
+again.
+
+"None at all. Men are queer. Even Mr. Whitman is queer sometimes."
+
+"If he is as queer as that, I don't see how you have lived with him
+so long. Did he ever make you drop a nice box of candy somebody had
+given you, and trample on it, and then walk off?"
+
+"No, I don't know as he ever did; but men do queer things."
+
+"I don't like Mr. Allen at all," said Rose, walking beside Sylvia
+towards the house. "Not at all. I don't like him as well as Mr. James
+Duncan."
+
+Sylvia looked at her with quick alarm. "The man who wrote you last
+week?"
+
+"Yes, and wanted to know if there was a hotel here so he could come."
+
+"I thought--" began Sylvia.
+
+"Yes, I had begun the letter, telling him the hotel wasn't any good,
+because I knew he would know what that meant--that there was no use
+in his asking me to marry him again, because I never would; but now I
+think I shall tell him the hotel is not so bad, after all," said Rose.
+
+"But you don't mean--"
+
+"I don't know what I do mean," said Rose, nervously. "Yes, I do know
+what I mean. I always know what I mean, but I don't know what men
+mean making me drop candy I have had given me, and trampling on it,
+and men don't know that I know what I mean." Rose was almost crying.
+
+"Go up-stairs and lay down a little while before dinner," said
+Sylvia, anxiously.
+
+"No," replied Rose; "I am going to help you. Don't, please, think I
+am crying because I feel badly. It is because I am angry. I am going
+to set the table."
+
+But Rose did not set the table. She forgot all about it when she had
+entered the south room and found Henry Whitman sitting there with the
+Sunday paper. She sat down opposite and looked at him with her clear,
+blue, childlike eyes. She had come to call him Uncle Henry.
+
+"Uncle Henry?" said she, interrogatively, and waited.
+
+Henry looked across at her and smiled with the somewhat abashed
+tenderness which he always felt for this girl, whose environment had
+been so very different from his and his wife's. "Well?" he said.
+
+"Uncle Henry, do you think a man can tell another man's reasons for
+doing a queer thing better than a woman can?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"I almost know a woman could tell why a woman did a queer thing,
+better than a man could," said Rose, reflectively. She hesitated a
+little.
+
+Henry waited, his worn, pleasant face staring at her over a vividly
+colored page of the paper.
+
+"Suppose," said Rose, "another woman had given Aunt Sylvia a box of
+candy which she had made herself, real nice candy, and suppose the
+woman who had given it to her was lovely, and you had knocked a piece
+of candy from Aunt Sylvia's mouth just as she was going to taste it,
+and had startled her so you made her drop the whole box, and then set
+your heel hard on the pieces; what would you have done it for?"
+
+The girl's face wore an expression of the keenest inquiry. Henry
+looked at her, wrinkling his forehead. "If another woman had given
+Sylvia a box of candy she had made, and I knocked a piece from her
+hand just as she was going to taste it, and made her drop the whole
+box, and had trampled all the rest of the candy underfoot, what
+should I have done it for?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Henry looked at her. He heard a door shut up-stairs. "I shouldn't
+have done it," he said.
+
+"But suppose you had done it?"
+
+"I shouldn't have."
+
+Rose shrugged her shoulders. "You are horrid, Uncle Henry," she said.
+
+"But I shouldn't have done it," repeated Henry. He heard Horace's
+step on the stair. Rose got up and ran out of the room by another
+door from that which Horace entered. Horace sat down in the chair
+which Rose had just vacated. He looked pale and worried. The eyes of
+the two men met. Henry's eyes asked a question. Horace answered it.
+
+"I am in such a devil of a mess as never man was yet, I believe," he
+said.
+
+Henry nodded gravely.
+
+"The worst of it is I can't tell a living mortal," Horace said, in a
+whisper. "I am afraid even to think it."
+
+At dinner Rose sat with her face averted from Horace. She never spoke
+once to him. As they rose from the table she made an announcement. "I
+am going to run over and see Lucy Ayres," she said. "I am going to
+tell her an accident happened to my candy, and maybe she will give me
+some more."
+
+Henry saw Horace's face change. "Candy is not good for girls; it
+spoils their complexion. I have just been reading about it in the
+Sunday paper," said Henry. Sylvia unexpectedly proved his ally. Rose
+had not eaten much dinner, although it had been an especially nice
+one, and she felt anxious about her.
+
+"I don't think you ought to eat candy when you have so little
+appetite for good, wholesome meat and vegetables," she said.
+
+"I want to see Lucy, too," said Rose. "I am going over there. It is a
+lovely afternoon. I have nothing I want to read and nothing to do. I
+am going over there."
+
+Henry's eyes questioned Horace's, which said, plainly, to the other
+man, "For God's sake, don't let her go; don't let her go!"
+
+Rose had run up-stairs for her parasol. Horace turned away. He
+understood that Henry would help him. "Don't let her go over there
+this afternoon," said Henry to Sylvia, who looked at him in the
+blankest amazement.
+
+"Why not, I'd like to know?" asked Sylvia.
+
+"Don't let her go," repeated Henry.
+
+Sylvia looked suspiciously from one man to the other. The only
+solution which a woman could put upon such a request immediately
+occurred to her. She said to herself, "Hm! Mr. Allen wants Rose to
+stay at home so he can see her himself, and Henry knows it."
+
+She stiffened her neck. Down deep in her heart was a feeling more
+seldom in women's hearts than in men's. She would not have owned that
+she did not wish to part with this new darling of her heart--who had
+awakened within it emotions of whose strength the childless woman had
+never dreamed. There was also another reason, which she would not
+admit even to herself. Had Rose been, indeed, her daughter, and she
+had possessed her from the cradle to womanhood, she would probably
+have been as other mothers, but now Rose was to her as the infant she
+had never borne. She felt the intense jealousy of ownership which the
+mother feels over the baby in her arms. She wished to snatch Rose
+from every clasp except her own.
+
+She decided at once that it was easy to see through the plans of
+Horace and her husband, and she determined to thwart them. "I don't
+see why she shouldn't go," she said. "It is a lovely afternoon. The
+walk will do her good. Lucy Ayres is a real nice girl, and of course
+Rose wants to see girls of her own age now and then."
+
+"It is Sunday," said Henry. He felt and looked like a hypocrite as he
+spoke, but the distress in Horace's gaze was too much for him.
+
+Sylvia sniffed. "Sunday," said she. "Good land! what has come over
+you, Henry Whitman? It has been as much as I could do to get you to
+go to meeting the last ten years, and now all of a sudden you turn
+around and think it's wicked for a young girl to run in and see
+another young girl Sunday afternoon." Sylvia sniffed again very
+distinctly, and then Rose entered the room.
+
+Her clear, fair face looked from one to another from under her black
+hat. "What is the matter?" she asked.
+
+Sylvia patted her on the shoulder. "Nothing is the matter," said she.
+"Run along and have a good time, but you had better be home by five
+o'clock. There is a praise meeting to-night, and I guess we'll all
+want to go, and I am going to have supper early."
+
+After Rose had gone and Sylvia had left the room, the two men looked
+at each other. Horace was ashy pale. Henry's face showed alarm and
+astonishment. "What is it?" he whispered.
+
+"Come out in the grove and have a smoke," said Horace, with a look
+towards the door through which Sylvia had gone.
+
+Henry nodded. He gathered up his pipe and tobacco from the table, and
+the two men sauntered out of the house into the grove. But even there
+not much was said. Both smoked in silence, sitting on the bench,
+before Horace opened his lips in response to Henry's inquiry.
+
+"I don't know what it is, and I don't know that it is anything, and
+that is the worst of it," he said, gloomily; "and I can't see my way
+to telling any mortal what little I do know that leads me to fear
+that it is something, although I would if I were sure and actually
+knew beyond doubt that there was--" He stopped abruptly and blew a
+ring of smoke from his cigar.
+
+"Something is queer about my wife lately," said Henry, in a low voice.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That's just it. I feel something as you do. It may be nothing at
+all. I tell you what, young man, when women talk, as women are
+intended by an overruling Providence to talk, men know where they are
+at, but when a woman doesn't talk men know where they ain't."
+
+"In my case there has been so much talk that I seem to be in a fog of
+it, and can't see a blessed thing sufficiently straight to know
+whether it is big enough to bother about or little enough to let
+alone; but I can't repeat the talk--no man could," said Horace.
+
+"In my case there ain't talk enough," said Henry. "I ain't in a fog;
+I'm in pitch darkness."
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+The two men sat for some time out in the grove. It was very pleasant
+there. The air was unusually still, and only the tops of the trees
+whitened occasionally in a light puff of wind like a sigh. Now and
+then a carriage or an automobile passed on the road beyond, but not
+many of them. It was not a main thoroughfare. The calls and quick
+carols of the birds, punctuated with sharp trills of insects, were
+almost the only sounds heard. Now and then Sylvia's face glanced at
+them from a house window, but it was quickly withdrawn. She never
+liked men to be in close conclave without a woman to superintend, yet
+she could not have told why. She had a hazy impression, as she might
+have had if they had been children, that some mischief was afoot.
+
+"Sitting out there all this time, and smoking, and never seeming to
+speak a word," she said to herself, as she returned to her seat
+beside a front window in the south room and took up her book. She was
+reading with a mild and patronizing interest a book in which the
+heroine did nothing which she would possibly have done under given
+circumstances, and said nothing which she would have said, and was,
+moreover, a distinctly different personality from one chapter to
+another, yet the whole had a charm for the average woman reader.
+Henry had flung it aside in contempt. Sylvia thought it beautiful,
+possibly for the reason that her own hard sense was sometimes a
+strenuous burden, and in reading this she was forced to put it behind
+her. However, the book did not prevent her from returning every now
+and then to her own life and the happenings in it. Hence her stealthy
+journeys across the house and peeps at the men in the grove. If they
+were nettled by a sense of feminine mystery, she reciprocated. "What
+on earth did they want to stop Rose from going to see Lucy for?"
+seemed to stare at her in blacker type than the characters of the
+book.
+
+Presently, when she saw Horace pass the window and disappear down the
+road, she laid the book on the table, with a slip of paper to keep
+the place, and hurried out to the grove. She found Henry leisurely
+coming towards the house. "Where has he gone?" she inquired, with a
+jerk of her shoulder towards the road.
+
+"Mr. Allen?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"Don't you know?"
+
+"Maybe I do," said Henry, smiling at Sylvia with his smile of
+affection and remembrance that she was a woman.
+
+"Why don't you tell?"
+
+"Now, Sylvia," said Henry, "you must remember that Mr. Allen is not a
+child. He is a grown man, and if he takes it into his head to go
+anywhere you can't say anything."
+
+Sylvia looked at Henry with a baffled expression. "I think he might
+spend his time a good deal more profitably Sunday afternoon than
+sitting under the trees and smoking, or going walking," said she,
+rashly and inconsequentially. "If he would only sit down and read
+some good book."
+
+"You can't dictate to Mr. Allen what he shall or shall not do," Henry
+repeated.
+
+"Why didn't you want Rose to go to Lucy's?" asked Sylvia, making a
+charge in an entirely different quarter.
+
+Henry scorned to lie. "I don't know," he replied, which was the
+perfect truth as far as it went. It did not go quite far enough, for
+he did not add that he did not know why Horace Allen did not want her
+to go, and that was his own reason.
+
+However, Sylvia could not possibly fathom that. She sniffed with her
+delicate nostrils, as if she actually smelled some questionable odor
+of character. "You men have mighty queer streaks, that's all I've got
+to say," she returned.
+
+When they were in the house again she resumed her book, reading every
+word carefully, and Henry took up the Sunday paper, which he had not
+finished. The thoughts of both, however, turned from time to time
+towards Horace. Sylvia did not know where he had gone. She did not
+suspect. Henry knew, but he did not know why. Horace had sprung
+suddenly to his feet and caught up his hat as the two men had been
+sitting under the trees. Henry had emitted a long puff of tobacco
+smoke and looked inquiringly at him through the filmy blue of it.
+
+"I can't stand it another minute," said Horace, almost with violence.
+"I've got to know what is going on. I am going to the Ayres's myself.
+I don't care what they think. I don't care what she thinks. I don't
+care what anybody thinks." With that he was gone.
+
+Henry took another puff at his pipe. It showed the difference between
+the masculine and the feminine point of view that Henry did not for
+one moment attach a sentimental reason to Horace's going. He realized
+Rose's attractions. The very probable supposition that she and Horace
+might fall in love with and marry each other had occurred to him, but
+this he knew at once had nothing to do with that. He turned the whole
+over and over in his mind, with no result. He lacked enough premises
+to arrive at conclusions. He had started for the house and his Sunday
+paper when he met Sylvia, and had resolved to put it all out of his
+mind. But he was not quite able. There is a masculine curiosity as
+well as a feminine, and one is about as persistent as the other.
+
+Meantime Horace was walking down the road towards the Ayres house. It
+was a pretty, much-ornamented white cottage, with a carefully kept
+lawn and shade trees. At one side was an old-fashioned garden with an
+arbor. In this arbor, as Horace drew near, he saw the sweep of
+feminine draperies. It seemed to him that the arbor was full of
+women. In reality there were only three--Lucy, her mother, and Rose.
+
+When Rose had rung the door-bell she had been surprised by what
+sounded like a mad rush to answer her ring. Mrs. Ayres opened the
+door. She looked white and perturbed, and behind her showed Lucy's
+face, flushed and angry.
+
+"I knew it was Miss Fletcher; I told you so, mother," said Lucy, and
+her low, sweet voice rang out like an angry bird's with a sudden
+break for the high notes.
+
+Mrs. Ayres kept her self-possession of manner, although her
+face showed not only nervousness but something like terror.
+"Good-afternoon, Miss Fletcher," she said. "Please walk in."
+
+"She said for me to call her Rose," cried Lucy. "Please come in,
+Rose. I am glad to see you."
+
+In spite of the cordial words the girl's voice was strange. Rose
+stared from daughter to mother and back again. "If you were engaged,"
+she said, rather coldly, "if you would prefer that I come some other
+time--"
+
+"No, indeed," cried Lucy, "no other time. Yes, every other time. What
+am I saying? But I want you now, too. Come right up to my room, Rose.
+I know you will excuse my wrapper and my bed's being tumbled. I have
+been lying down. Come right up."
+
+Rose followed Lucy, and to her astonishment became aware that Lucy's
+mother was following her. Mrs. Ayres entered the room with the two
+girls. Lucy looked impatiently at her, and spoke as Rose wondered any
+daughter could speak. "Rose and I have some things to talk over,
+mother," she said.
+
+"Nothing, I guess, that your mother cannot hear," returned Mrs.
+Ayres, with forced pleasantry. She sat down, and Lucy flung herself
+petulantly upon the bed, where she had evidently been lying, but
+seemingly not reposing, for it was much rumpled, and the pillows gave
+evidence of the restless tossing of a weary head. Lucy herself had a
+curiously rumpled aspect, though she was not exactly untidy. Her
+soft, white, lace-trimmed wrapper carelessly tied with blue ribbons
+was wrinkled, her little slippers were unbuttoned. Her mass of soft
+hair was half over her shoulders. There were red spots on the cheeks
+which had been so white in the morning, and her eyes shone. She kept
+tying and untying two blue ribbons at the neck of her wrapper as she
+lay on the bed and talked rapidly.
+
+"I look like a fright, I know," she said. "I was tired after church,
+and slipped off my dress and lay down. My hair is all in a muss."
+
+"It is such lovely hair that it looks pretty anyway," said Rose.
+
+Lucy drew a strand of her hair violently over her shoulder. It almost
+seemed as if she meant to tear it out by the roots.
+
+"Lucy!" said her mother.
+
+"Oh, mother, do let me alone!" cried the girl. Then she said, looking
+angrily at her tress of hair, then at Rose: "It is not nearly as
+pretty as yours. You know it isn't. All men are simply crazy over
+hair your color. I hate my hair. I just hate it."
+
+"Lucy!" said her mother again, in the same startled but admonitory
+tone.
+
+Lucy made an impatient face at her. She threw back the tress of hair.
+"I hate it," said she.
+
+Rose began to feel awkward. She noticed Mrs. Ayres's anxious regard
+of her daughter, and she thought with disgust that Lucy Ayres was not
+so sweet a girl as she had seemed. However, she felt an odd kind of
+sympathy and pity for her. Lucy's pretty face and her white wrapper
+seemed alike awry with nervous suffering, which the other girl dimly
+understood, although it was the understanding of a normal character
+with regard to an abnormal one.
+
+Rose resolved to change the subject. "I did enjoy your singing so
+much this morning," she said.
+
+"Thank you," replied Lucy, but a look of alarm instead of pleasure
+appeared upon her face, which Rose was astonished to see in the
+mother's likewise.
+
+"I feel so sorry for poor Miss Hart, because I cannot think for a
+moment that she was guilty of what they accused her of," said Rose,
+"that I don't like to say anything about her singing. But I will say
+this much: I did enjoy yours."
+
+"Thank you," said Lucy again. Her look of mortal terror deepened.
+From being aggressively nervous, she looked on the verge of a
+collapse.
+
+Mrs. Ayres rose, went to Lucy's closet, and returned with a bottle of
+wine and a glass. "Here," she said, as she poured out the red liquor.
+"You had better drink this, dear. You know Dr. Wallace said you must
+drink port wine, and you are all tired out with your singing this
+morning."
+
+Lucy seized the glass and drank the wine eagerly.
+
+"It must be a nervous strain," said Rose, "to stand up there, before
+such a crowded audience as there was this morning, and sing."
+
+"Yes, it is," agreed Mrs. Ayres, in a harsh voice, "and especially
+when anybody isn't used to it. Lucy is not at all strong."
+
+"I hope it won't be too much for her," said Rose; "but it is such a
+delight to listen to her after--"
+
+"Oh, I am tired and sick of hearing Miss Hart's name!" cried Lucy,
+unpleasantly.
+
+"Lucy!" said Mrs. Ayres.
+
+"Well, I am," said Lucy, defiantly. "It has been nothing but Miss
+Hart, Miss Hart, from morning until night lately. Nobody thinks she
+poisoned Miss Farrel, of course. It was perfect nonsense to accuse
+her of it, and when that is said, I think myself that is enough. I
+see no need of this eternal harping upon it. I have heard nothing
+except 'poor Miss Hart' until I am nearly wild. Come, Rose, I'll get
+dressed and we'll go out in the arbor. It is too pleasant to stay
+in-doors. This room is awfully close."
+
+"I think perhaps I had better not stay," Rose replied, doubtfully. It
+seemed to her that she was having a very strange call, and she began
+to be indignant as well as astonished.
+
+"Of course you are going to stay," Lucy said, and her voice was sweet
+again. "We'll let Miss Hart alone and I'll get dressed, and we'll go
+in the arbor. It is lovely out there to-day."
+
+With that Lucy sprang from the bed and let her wrapper slip from her
+shoulders. She stood before her old-fashioned black-walnut bureau and
+began brushing her hair. Her white arms and shoulders gleamed through
+it as she brushed with what seemed a cruel violence.
+
+Rose laughed in a forced way. "Why, dear, you brush your hair as if
+it had offended you," she said.
+
+"Don't brush so hard, Lucy," said Mrs. Ayres.
+
+"I just hate my old hair, anyway," said Lucy, with a vicious stroke
+of the brush. She bent her head over, and swept the whole dark mass
+downward until it concealed her face and nearly touched her knees.
+Then she gave it a deft twist, righted herself, and pinned the coil
+in place.
+
+"How beautifully you do up your hair," said Rose.
+
+Lucy cast an appreciative glance at herself in the glass. The wine
+had deepened the glow on her cheeks. Her eyes were more brilliant.
+She pulled her hair a little over one temple, and looked at herself
+with entire satisfaction. Lucy had beautiful neck and arms,
+unexpectedly plump for a girl so apparently slender. Her skin was
+full of rosy color, too. She gazed at the superb curve of her
+shoulders rising above the dainty lace of her corset-cover, and
+smiled undisguisedly.
+
+"I wish my neck was as plump as yours," said Rose.
+
+"Yes, she has a nice, plump neck," said Mrs. Ayres. While the words
+showed maternal pride, the tone never relaxed from its nervous
+anxiety.
+
+Lucy's smile vanished suddenly. "Well, what if it is plump?" said
+she. "What is the use of it? A girl living here in East Westland can
+never wear a dress to show her neck. People would think she had gone
+out of her mind."
+
+Rose laughed. "I have some low-neck gowns," said she, "but I can't
+wear them, either. Maybe that is fortunate for me, my neck is so
+thin."
+
+"You will wear them in other places," said Lucy. "You won't stay here
+all your days. You will have plenty of chances to wear your low-neck
+gowns." She spoke again in her unnaturally high voice. She turned
+towards her closet to get her dress.
+
+"Lucy!" said Mrs. Ayres.
+
+"Well, it is the truth," said Lucy. "Don't preach, mother. If you
+were a girl, and somebody told you your neck was pretty, and you knew
+other girls had chances to wear low-neck dresses, you wouldn't be
+above feeling it a little."
+
+"My neck was as pretty as yours when I was a girl, and I never wore a
+low-neck dress in my life," said Mrs. Ayres.
+
+"Oh, well, you got married when you were eighteen," said Lucy. There
+was something almost coarse in her remark. Rose felt herself flush.
+She was sophisticated, and had seen the world, although she had been
+closely if not lovingly guarded; but she shrank from some things as
+though she had never come from under a country mother's wing in her
+life.
+
+Lucy got a pale-blue muslin gown from the closet and slipped it over
+her shoulders. Then she stood for her mother to fasten it in the
+back. Lucy was lovely in this cloud of blue, with edgings of lace on
+the ruffles and knots of black velvet. She fastened her black velvet
+girdle, and turned herself sidewise with a charming feminine motion,
+to get the effect of her slender waist between the curves of her
+small hips and bust. Again she looked pleased.
+
+"You are dear in that blue gown," said Rose.
+
+Lucy smiled. Then she scowled as suddenly. She could see Rose over
+her shoulder in the glass. "It is awful countrified," said she. "Look
+at the sleeves and look at yours. Where was yours made?"
+
+"My dressmaker in New York made it," faltered Rose. She felt guilty
+because her gown was undeniably in better style.
+
+"There's no use trying to have anything in East Westland," said Lucy.
+
+While she was fastening a little gold brooch at her throat, Rose
+again tried to change the subject. "That candy of yours looked
+perfectly delicious," said she. "You must teach me how you make it."
+
+Mrs. Ayres went dead white in a moment. She looked at Lucy with a
+look of horror which the girl did not meet. She went on fastening her
+brooch. "Did you like it?" she asked, carelessly.
+
+"An accident happened to it, I am sorry to say," explained Rose. "Mr.
+Allen and I were out in the grove, and somehow he jostled me, and the
+candy got scattered on the ground, and he stepped on it."
+
+"Were you and he alone out there?" asked Lucy, in a very quiet voice.
+
+Rose looked at her amazedly. "Why, no, not when that happened!" she
+replied. "Aunt Sylvia was there, too." She spoke a little
+resentfully. "What if Mr. Allen and I had been alone; what is that to
+her?" she thought.
+
+"There is some more candy," said Lucy, calmly. "I will get it, and
+then we will go out in the arbor. I will teach you to make the candy
+any day. It is very simple. Come, Rose dear. Mother, we are going out
+in the arbor."
+
+Mrs. Ayres rose immediately. She preceded the two girls down-stairs,
+and came through the sitting-room door with a dish of candy in her
+hand just as they reached it. "Here is the candy, dear," she said to
+Lucy, and there was something commanding in her voice.
+
+Lucy took the dish, a pretty little decorated affair, with what
+seemed to Rose an air of suspicion and a grudging "thank you, mother."
+
+"Come, Rose," she said. She led the way and Rose followed. Mrs. Ayres
+returned to the sitting-room. The girls went through the
+old-fashioned garden with its flower-beds outlined with box, in which
+the earlier flowers were at their prime, to the arbor. It was a
+pretty old structure, covered with the shaggy arms of an old
+grape-vine whose gold-green leaves were just uncurling. Lucy placed
+the bowl of candy on the end of the bench which ran round the
+interior, and, to Rose's surprise, seated herself at a distance from
+it, and motioned Rose to sit beside her, without offering her any
+candy. Lucy leaned against Rose and looked up at her. She looked
+young and piteous and confiding. Rose felt again that she was sweet
+and that she loved her. She put her arm around Lucy.
+
+"You are a dear," said she.
+
+Lucy nestled closer. "I know you must have thought me perfectly
+horrid to speak as I did to mother," said she, "but you don't
+understand."
+
+Lucy hesitated. Rose waited.
+
+"You see, the trouble is," Lucy went on, "I love mother dearly, of
+course. She is the best mother that ever a girl had, but she is
+always so anxious about me, and she follows me about so, and I get
+nervous, and I know I don't always speak as I should. I am often
+ashamed of myself. You see--"
+
+Lucy hesitated again for a longer period. Rose waited.
+
+"Mother has times of being very nervous," Lucy said, in a whisper. "I
+sometimes think, when she follows me about so, that she is not for
+the time being quite herself."
+
+Rose started and looked at the other girl in horror. "Why don't you
+have a doctor?" said she.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that she--I don't mean that there is anything
+serious, only she has always been over-anxious about me, and at times
+I fancy she is nervous, and then the anxiety grows beyond limit. She
+always gets over it. I don't mean that--"
+
+"Oh, I didn't know," said Rose.
+
+"I never mean to be impatient," Lucy went on, "but to-day I was very
+tired, and I wanted to see you especially. I wanted to ask you
+something."
+
+"What?"
+
+Lucy looked away from Rose. She seemed to shrink within herself. The
+color faded from her face. "I heard something," she said, faintly,
+"but I said I wouldn't believe it until I had asked you."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I heard that you were engaged to marry Mr. Allen."
+
+Rose flushed and moved away a little from Lucy. "You can contradict
+the rumor whenever you hear it again," said she.
+
+"Then it isn't true?"
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+Lucy nestled against Rose, in spite of a sudden coldness which had
+come over the other girl. "You are so dear," said she.
+
+Rose looked straight ahead, and sat stiffly.
+
+"I am thoroughly angry at such rumors, merely because a girl happens
+to be living in the same house with a marriageable man," said she.
+
+"Yes, that is so," said Lucy. She remained quiet for a few moments,
+leaning against Rose, her blue-clad shoulder pressing lovingly the
+black-clad one. Then she moved away a little, and reared her pretty
+back with a curious, snakelike motion. Rose watched her. Lucy's eyes
+fastened themselves upon her, and something strange happened. Either
+Lucy Ayres was a born actress, or she had become actually so imbued,
+through abnormal emotion and love, with the very spirit of the man
+that she was capable of projecting his own emotions and feelings into
+her own soul and thence upon her face. At all events, she looked at
+Rose, and slowly Rose became bewildered. It seemed to her that Horace
+Allen was looking at her through the eyes of this girl, with a look
+which she had often seen since their very first meeting. She felt
+herself glowing from head to foot. She was conscious of a deep
+crimson stealing all over her face and neck. Her eyes fell before the
+other girl's. Then suddenly it was all over. Lucy rose with a little
+laugh. "You sweet, funny creature," she said. "I can make you blush,
+looking at you, as if I were a man. Well, maybe I love you as well as
+one." Lucy took the bowl of candy from the bench and extended it to
+Rose. "Do have some candy," said she.
+
+"Thank you," said Rose. She looked bewildered, and felt so. She took
+a sugared almond and began nibbling at it. "Aren't you going to eat
+any candy yourself?" said she.
+
+"I have eaten so much already that it has made my head ache," replied
+Lucy. "Is it good?"
+
+"Simply delicious. You must teach me how you make such candy."
+
+"Lucy will be glad to teach you any day," said Mrs. Ayres's voice.
+She had come swiftly upon them, and entered the arbor with a
+religious newspaper in her hand. Lucy no longer seemed annoyed by her
+mother's following her. She only set the candy behind her with a
+quick movement which puzzled Rose.
+
+"Aren't you going to offer your mother some?" she asked, laughing.
+
+"Mother can't eat candy. Dr. Wallace has forbidden it," Lucy said,
+quickly.
+
+"Yes, that is quite true," assented Mrs. Ayres. She began reading her
+paper. Lucy offered the bowl again to Rose, who took a bonbon. She
+was just swallowing it when Horace Allen appeared. He made a motion
+which did not escape Mrs. Ayres. She rose and confronted him with
+perfect calmness and dignity. "Good-afternoon, Mr. Allen," she said.
+
+Lucy had sprung up quickly. She was very white. Horace said
+good-afternoon perfunctorily, and looked at Rose.
+
+Mrs. Ayres caught up the bowl of candy. "Let me offer you some, Mr.
+Allen," she said. "It is home-made candy, and quite harmless, I
+assure you."
+
+Her fair, elderly face confronted him smilingly, her voice was calm.
+
+"Thank you," said Horace, and took a sugared almond.
+
+Lucy made a movement as if to stop him, but her mother laid her hand
+with gentle firmness on her arm. "Sit down, Lucy," she said, and Lucy
+sat down.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+Henry Whitman and his wife Sylvia remained, the one reading his
+Sunday paper, the other her book, while Horace and Rose were away.
+Henry's paper rustled, Sylvia turned pages gently. Occasionally she
+smiled the self-satisfied smile of the reader who thinks she
+understands the author, to her own credit. Henry scowled over his
+paper the scowl of one who reads to disapprove, to his own credit.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What did you come for, Mr. Allen?" said she.
+
+Suddenly Horace thought of the obvious thing to say, the explanation
+to give. "Miss Fletcher is thinking of coming later to take Miss Lucy
+for a drive," said he.
+
+"And you called to tell her?" said Mrs. Ayres.
+
+Horace looked at her. Mrs. Ayres understood. "Miss Fletcher must come
+with a double-seated carriage so that I can go," said she. "My
+daughter is very nervous about horses. I never allow her to go to
+drive without me."
+
+She observed, with a sort of bitter sympathy, the look of relief
+overspread Horace's face. "I will send a telephone message from Mrs.
+Steele's, next door, so there will be no mistake," she said.
+
+"Thank you," replied Horace. His face was burning.
+
+Mrs. Ayres went on with a melancholy and tragic calm. "I saw what I
+saw when I came in," said she. "I have only to inform you that--any
+doubts which you may have entertained, any fears, are altogether
+groundless. Everything has been as harmless as--the candy you ate
+last night."
+
+Horace started and stared at her. In truth, he had lain awake until a
+late hour wondering what might be going to happen to him.
+
+"I made it," said Mrs. Ayres. "I attend to everything. I have
+attended to everything." She gazed at him with a strange, pathetic
+dignity. "I have no apologies nor excuses to make to you," she said.
+"I have only this to say, and you can reflect upon it at your
+leisure. Sometimes, quite often, it may happen that too heavy a
+burden, a burden which has been gathering weight since the first of
+creation, is heaped upon too slender shoulders. This burden may bend
+innocence into guilt and modesty into shamelessness, but there is no
+more reason for condemnation than in a case of typhoid fever. Any man
+of good sense and common Christianity should take that view of it."
+
+"I do," cried Horace, hurriedly. He looked longingly at the door. He
+had never felt so shamed in his life, and never so angrily
+sympathetic.
+
+"I will go over to Mrs. Steele's and telephone immediately," said
+Mrs. Ayres, calmly. "Good-morning, Mr. Allen."
+
+"Good-morning," said Horace. There was something terrible about the
+face of patient defiance which the woman lifted to his.
+
+"You will not--" she began.
+
+Horace caught her thin hand and pressed it heartily. "Good God, Mrs.
+Ayres!" he stammered.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, I understand. I can trust you," she said. "I am
+very glad it happened with you."
+
+Horace was relieved to be out in the open air. He felt as if he had
+escaped from an atmosphere of some terrible emotional miasma. He
+reflected that he had heard of such cases as poor Lucy Ayres, but he
+had been rather incredulous. He walked along wondering whether it was
+a psychological or physical phenomenon. Pity began to get the better
+of his shame for himself and the girl. The mother's tragic face came
+before his eyes. "What that woman must have to put up with!" he
+thought.
+
+When he had commenced the morning session of school he found himself
+covertly regarding the young girls. He wondered if such cases were
+common. If they were, he thought to himself that the man who threw
+the first stone was the first criminal of the world. He realized the
+helplessness of the young things before forces of nature of which
+they were brought up in so much ignorance, and his soul rebelled. He
+thought to himself that they should be armed from the beginning with
+wisdom.
+
+He was relieved that at first he saw in none of the girl-faces before
+him anything which resembled in the slightest degree the expression
+which he had seen in Lucy Ayres's. These girls, most of them
+belonging to the village (there were a few from outside, for this was
+an endowed school, ranking rather higher than an ordinary
+institution), revealed in their faces one of three interpretations of
+character. Some were full of young mischief, chafing impatiently at
+the fetters of school routine. They were bubbling over with innocent
+animal life; they were longing to be afield at golf or tennis. They
+hated their books.
+
+Some were frankly coquettish and self-conscious, but in a most
+healthy and normal fashion. These frequently adjusted stray locks of
+hair, felt of their belts at their backs to be sure that the
+fastenings were intact, then straightened themselves with charming
+little feminine motions. Their flowerlike faces frequently turned
+towards the teacher, and there was in them a perfect consciousness of
+the facts of sex and charm, but it was a most innocent, even
+childlike consciousness.
+
+The last type belonged to those intent upon their books, soberly
+adjusted to the duties of life already, with little imagination or
+emotion. This last was in the minority.
+
+"Thank God!" Horace thought, as his eyes met one and another of the
+girl-faces. "She is not, cannot be, a common type." And then he felt
+something like a chill of horror as his eyes met those of a new
+pupil, a girl from Alford, who had only entered the school the day
+before. She was not well dressed. There was nothing coquettish about
+her, but in her eyes shone the awful, unreasoning hunger which he had
+seen before. Upon her shoulders, young as they were, was the same
+burden, the burden as old as creation, which she was required to bear
+by a hard destiny, perhaps of heredity. There was something horribly
+pathetic in the girl's shy, beseeching, foolish gaze at Horace. She
+was younger and shyer than Lucy and, although not so pretty,
+immeasurably more pathetic.
+
+"Another," thought Horace. It was a great relief to him when, only a
+week later, this girl found an admirer in one of the schoolboys, who,
+led by some strange fascination, followed her instead of one of the
+prettier, more attractive girls. Then the girl began to look more
+normal. She dressed more carefully and spent more time in arranging
+her hair. After all, she was very young, and abnormal instincts may
+be quieted with a mere sop at the first.
+
+When Horace reached home that day of the drive he found that Rose had
+returned. Sylvia said that she had been at home half an hour.
+
+"She went to Alford," she said, "and I'm afraid she's all tired out.
+She came home looking as white as a sheet. She said she didn't want
+any dinner, but finally said she would come down."
+
+At the dinner-table Rose was very silent. She did not look at Horace
+at all. She ate almost nothing. After dinner she persisted in
+assisting Sylvia in clearing away the table and washing the dishes.
+Rose took a childish delight in polishing the china with her
+dish-towel. New England traits seemed to awake within her in this New
+England home. Sylvia was using the willow ware now, Rose was so
+pleased with it. The Calkin's soap ware was packed away on the top
+shelf of the pantry.
+
+"It is perfectly impossible, Aunt Sylvia," Rose had declared, and
+Sylvia had listened. She listened with much more docility than at
+first to the decrees of sophistication.
+
+"The painting ain't nearly as natural," she had said, feebly,
+regarding the moss rosebuds on a Calkin's soap plate with fluctuating
+admiration which caused her pain by its fluctuations.
+
+"Oh, but, Aunt Sylvia, to think of comparing for one minute ware like
+that with this perfectly wonderful old willow ware!" Rose had said.
+
+"Well, have your own way," said Sylvia, with a sigh. "Maybe I can get
+used to everything all blue, when it ain't blue, after awhile. I know
+you have been around more than I have, and you ought to know."
+
+So the gold-and-white ware which had belonged to Sylvia's mother
+decked the breakfast-table and the willow ware did duty for the rest
+of the time. "I think it is very much better that you have no maid,"
+Rose said. "I simply would not trust a maid to care for china like
+this."
+
+Rose took care of her room now, and very daintily. "She'll be real
+capable after awhile," Sylvia told Henry.
+
+"I didn't know as she'd be contented to stay at all, we live so
+different from the way she's been used to," said Henry.
+
+"It's the way her mother was brought up, and the way she lived, and
+what's in the blood will work out," said Sylvia. "Then, too, I guess
+she didn't care any too much about those folks she lived with. For my
+part, I think it's the queerest thing I ever heard of that Miss
+Farrel, if she took such a notion to the child, enough to do so much
+for her, didn't keep her herself."
+
+"Miss Farrel was a queer woman," said Henry.
+
+"I guess she wasn't any too well balanced," agreed Sylvia.
+
+"What do you suppose tired Rose out so much this morning?" asked
+Henry. "It isn't such a very long ride to Alford."
+
+"I don't know. She looked like a ghost when she got home. I'm glad
+she's laying down. I hope she'll get a little nap."
+
+That was after dinner, when the house had been set in order, and
+Sylvia was at one front window in the cool sitting-room, with a
+basket of mending, and Henry at another with a library book. Henry
+was very restless in these days. He pottered about the place and was
+planning to get in a good hay crop, but this desultory sort of
+employment did not take the place of his regular routine of toil. He
+missed it horribly, almost as a man is said to miss a pain of long
+standing. He knew that he was better off without it, that he ought to
+be happier, but he knew that he was not.
+
+For years he had said bitterly that he had no opportunity for reading
+and improving his mind. Now he had opportunity, but it was too late.
+He could not become as interested in a book as he had been during the
+few moments he had been able to snatch from his old routine of toil.
+Some days it seemed to Henry that he must go back to the shop, that
+he could not live in this way. He had begun to lose all interest in
+what he had anticipated with much pleasure--the raising of grass on
+Abrahama White's celebrated land. He felt that he knew nothing about
+such work, that agriculture was not for him. If only he could stand
+again at his bench in the shop, and cut leather into regular shapes,
+he felt that while his hands toiled involuntarily his mind could
+work. Some days he fairly longed so for the old familiar odor of
+tanned hides, that odor which he had once thought sickened him, that
+he would go to the shop and stand by the open door, and inhale the
+warm rush of leather-scented air with keen relish. But he never told
+this to Sylvia.
+
+Henry was not happy. At times it seemed to him that he really wished
+that he and Sylvia had never met with this good-fortune. Once he
+turned on Sidney Meeks with a fierce rejoinder, when Sidney had
+repeated the sarcasm which he loved to roll beneath his tongue like a
+honeyed morsel, that if he did not want his good-fortune it was the
+easiest thing in the world to relinquish it.
+
+"It ain't," said Henry; "and what's more, you know it ain't. Sylvia
+don't want to give it up, and I ain't going to ask her. You know I
+can't get rid of it, but it's true what I say: when good things are
+so long coming they get sour, like most things that are kept too
+long. What's the use of a present your hands are too cramped to hold?"
+
+Sidney looked gravely at Henry, who had aged considerably during the
+last few weeks. "Well, I am ready to admit," he said, "that sometimes
+the mills of the gods grind so slow and small that the relish is out
+of things when you get them. I'm willing to admit that if I had
+to-day what I once thought I couldn't live without, I'd give up beat.
+Once I thought I'd like to have the biggest law practice of any
+lawyer in the State. If I had it now I'd be ready to throw it all up.
+It would come too late. Now I'd think it was more bother than it was
+worth. How'd I make my wines and get any comfort out of life? Yes, I
+guess it's true, Henry, when Providence is overlong in giving a man
+what he wants, it contrives somehow to suck the sweetness out of what
+he gets, though he may not know it, and when what he thought he
+wanted does come to him it is like a bee trying to make honey out of
+a flower that doesn't hold any. Why don't you go back to the shop,
+Henry, and have done with it?"
+
+"Sylvia--" began Henry.
+
+But Sidney cut in. "If you haven't found out," said he, "that in the
+long-run doing what is best for yourself is doing what's best for the
+people who love you best, you haven't found out much."
+
+"I don't know," Henry said, in a puzzled, weary way. "Sometimes it
+seems to me I can't keep on living the way I am living, and live at
+all; and then I don't know."
+
+"I know," said Sidney. "Get back to your tracks."
+
+"Sylvia would feel all cut up over it. She wouldn't understand."
+
+"Of course she wouldn't understand, but women always end in settling
+down to things they don't understand, when they get it through their
+heads it's got to be, and being just as contented, unless they're the
+kind who fetch up in lunatic asylums, and Sylvia isn't that kind. The
+inevitable may be a hard pill for her to swallow, but it will never
+stick in her throat."
+
+Henry shook his head doubtfully. He had been thinking it over since.
+He had thought of it a good deal after dinner that day, as he sat
+with the unread book in his lap. Sylvia's remarks about Rose diverted
+his attention, then he began thinking again. Sylvia watched him
+furtively as she sewed. "You ain't reading that book at all," she
+said. "I have been watching you, and you 'ain't turned a single page
+since I spoke last."
+
+"I don't see why I should," returned Henry. "I don't see why anybody
+but a fool should ever open the book, to begin with."
+
+"What is the book?"
+
+Henry looked at the title-page. "It is Whatever, by Mrs. Fane
+Raymond," he said, absently.
+
+"I've heard it was a beautiful book."
+
+"Most women would like it," said Henry. "It seems to be a lot written
+about a fool woman that didn't know what she wanted, by another fool
+woman who didn't know, either, and was born cross-eyed as to right
+and wrong."
+
+"Why, Henry Whitman, it ain't true!"
+
+"I suppose it ain't."
+
+"No book is true--that is, no story."
+
+"If it ain't true, so much the less reason to tell such a pack of
+stupid lies," said Henry. He closed the book with a snap.
+
+"Why, Henry, ain't you going to finish it?"
+
+"No, I ain't. I'm going back to the shop to work."
+
+"Henry Whitman, you ain't!"
+
+"Yes, I am. As for pottering round here, and trying to get up an
+interest in things I ought to have begun instead of ended in, and
+setting round reading books that I can't keep my mind on, and if I
+do, just get madder and madder, I won't. I'm going back to work with
+my hands the way I've been working the last forty years, and then I
+guess I'll get my mind out of leading-strings."
+
+"Henry Whitman, be you crazy?"
+
+"No, but I shall be if I set round this way much longer."
+
+"You don't need to do a mite of work."
+
+"You don't suppose it's the money I'm thinking about! It's the work."
+
+"What will folks say?"
+
+"I don't care what they say."
+
+"Henry Whitman, I thought I knew you, but I declare it seems as if I
+have never known you at all," Sylvia said. She looked at him with her
+puzzled, troubled eyes, in which tears were gathering. She was still
+very pale.
+
+A sudden pity for her came over Henry. After all, he ought to try to
+make his position clear to her. "Sylvia," he said, "what do you think
+you would do, after all these years of housekeeping, if you had to
+stand in a shoe-shop, from morning till night, at a bench cutting
+leather?"
+
+Sylvia stared at him. "Me?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+"Why, you know I couldn't do it, Henry Whitman!"
+
+"Well, no more can I stand such a change in my life. I can't go to
+farming and setting around after forty years in a shoe-shop, any more
+than you can work in a shoe-shop after forty years of housekeeping."
+
+"It ain't the same thing at all," said Sylvia.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it ain't." Sylvia closed her thin lips conclusively. This,
+to her mind, was reasoning which completely blocked all argument.
+
+Henry looked at her hopelessly. "I didn't suppose you would
+understand," he said.
+
+"I don't see why you thought so," said Sylvia. "I guess I have a mind
+capable of understanding as much as a man. There is no earthly sense
+in your going to work in the shop again, with all our money. What
+would folks say, and why do you want to do it?"
+
+"I have told you why."
+
+"You haven't told me why at all."
+
+Henry said no more. He looked out of the window with a miserable
+expression. The beautiful front yard, with its box-bordered
+flower-beds, did not cheer him with the sense of possession. He heard
+a bird singing with a flutelike note; he heard bees humming over the
+flowers, and he longed to hear, instead, the buzz and whir of
+machines which had become the accompaniment of his song of life. A
+terrible isolation and homesickness came over him. He thought of the
+humble little house in which he and Sylvia had lived so many years,
+and a sort of passion of longing for it seized him. He felt that for
+the moment he fairly loathed all this comparative splendor with which
+he was surrounded.
+
+"What do you think she would say if you went back to the shop?" asked
+Sylvia. She jerked her head with an upward, sidewise movement towards
+Rose's room.
+
+"She may not be contented to live here very long, anyway. It's likely
+that when the summer's over she'll begin to think of her fine friends
+in New York, and want to lead the life she's been used to again,"
+said Henry. "It ain't likely it would make much difference to her."
+
+Sylvia looked at Henry as he had never seen her look before. She
+spoke with a passion of utterance of which he had never thought her
+capable. "She is going to stay right here in her aunt Abrahama's
+house, and have all she would have had if there hadn't been any
+will," said she, fiercely.
+
+"You would make her stay if she didn't want to?" said Henry, gazing
+at her wonderingly.
+
+"She's got to want to stay," said Sylvia, still with the same strange
+passion. "There'll be enough going on; you needn't worry. I'm going
+to have parties for her, if she wants them. She says she's been used
+to playing cards, and you know how we were brought up about cards--to
+think they were wicked. Well, I don't care if they are wicked. If she
+wants them she's going to have card-parties, and prizes, too, though
+I 'most know it's as bad as gambling. And if she wants to have
+dancing-parties (she knows how to dance) she's going to have them,
+too. I don't think there's six girls in East Westland who know how to
+dance, but there must be a lot in Alford, and the parlor is big
+enough for 'most everything. She shall have every mite as much going
+on as she would have in New York. She sha'n't miss anything. I'm
+willing to have some dinners with courses, too, if she wants them,
+and hire Hannah Simmons's little sister to wait on the table, with a
+white cap on her head and a white apron with a bib. I'm willing Rose
+shall have everything she wants. And then, you know, Henry, there's
+the church sociables and suppers all winter, and she'll like to go to
+them; and they will most likely get up a lecture and concert course.
+If she can't be every mite as lively here in East Westland as in New
+York, if I set out to have her, I'll miss my guess. There's lots of
+beautiful dresses up-stairs that belonged to her aunt, and I'm going
+to have the dressmaker come here and make some over for her. It's no
+use talking, she's going to stay."
+
+"Well, I am sure I hope she will," said Henry, still regarding his
+wife with wonder.
+
+"She is going to, and if she does stay, you know you can't go back to
+work in the shop, Henry Whitman. I'd like to know how you think you
+could set down to the table with her, smelling of leather the way you
+used to."
+
+"There might be worse smells."
+
+"That's just because you are used to it."
+
+"That's just it," cried Henry, pathetically. "Can't you get it
+through your head, Sylvia? It is because I'm used to it. Can't you
+see it's kind of dangerous to turn a man out of his tracks after he's
+been in them so long?"
+
+"There ain't any need for you to work in the shop. We've got plenty
+of money without," said Sylvia, settling back immovably in her chair,
+and Henry gave it up.
+
+Sylvia considered that she had won the victory. She began sewing
+again. Henry continued to look out of the window.
+
+"She is a delicate little thing, and I guess it's mighty lucky for
+her that she came to live in the country just as she did," Sylvia
+observed.
+
+"I suppose you know what's bound to happen if she and Mr. Allen stay
+on in the same house," said Henry. "As far as I am concerned, I think
+it would be a good arrangement. Mr. Allen has a good salary, and she
+has enough to make up for what he can't do; and I would like to keep
+the child here myself, but I somehow thought you didn't like the
+idea."
+
+Again Sylvia turned white, and stared at her husband almost with
+horror. "I don't see why you think it is bound to happen," said she.
+
+Henry laughed. "It doesn't take a very long head to think so."
+
+"It sha'n't happen. That child ain't going to marry anybody."
+
+"Sylvia, you don't mean that you want her to be an old maid!"
+
+"It's the best thing for any girl, if she only thought so, to be an
+old maid," said Sylvia.
+
+Henry laughed a little. "That's a compliment to me."
+
+"I ain't saying anything against you. I've been happy enough, and I
+suppose I've been better off than if I'd stayed single; but Rose has
+got enough to live on, and what any girl that's got enough to live on
+wants to get married for beats me."
+
+Henry laughed again, a little bitterly this time. "Then you wouldn't
+have married me if you had had enough to live on?" he said.
+
+Sylvia looked at him, and an odd, shamed tenderness came into her
+elderly face. "There's no use talking about what wasn't, anyway,"
+said she, and Henry understood.
+
+After a little while Sylvia again brought up the subject of Horace
+and Rose. She was evidently very uneasy about it. "I don't see why
+you think because a young man and girl are in the same house anything
+like that is bound to happen," said she.
+
+"Well, perhaps not; maybe it won't," said Henry, soothingly. He saw
+that it troubled Sylvia, and it had always been an unwritten maxim
+with him that Sylvia should not be troubled if it could be helped. He
+knew that he himself was about to trouble her, and why should she be
+vexed, in addition, about an uncertainty, as possibly this incipient
+love-affair might be. After all, why should it follow that because a
+young man and a girl lived in the same house they should immediately
+fall in love? And why should it not be entirely possible that they
+might have a little love-making without any serious consequences?
+Horace had presumably paid a little attention to girls before, and it
+was very probable that Rose had received attention. Why bother about
+such a thing as this when poor Sylvia would really be worried over
+his, Henry's, return to his old, humble vocation?
+
+For Henry, as he sat beside the window that pleasant afternoon, was
+becoming more and more convinced it must happen. It seemed to him
+that his longing was gradually strengthening into a purpose which he
+could not overcome. It seemed to him that every flutelike note of a
+bird in the pleasance outside served to make this purpose more
+unassailable, as if every sweet flower-breath and every bee-hum,
+every drawing of his wife's shining needle through the white garment
+which she was mending, all served to render his purpose so settled a
+thing that any change in it was as impossible as growth in a granite
+ledge. That very day Henry had been approached by the superintendent
+of Lawson & Fisher's, where he had worked, and told that his place,
+which had been temporarily filled, was vacant and ready for him. He
+had said that he must consider the matter, but he had known in his
+heart that the matter admitted of no consideration. He looked gloomy
+as he sat there with his unread book in his hand, yet gradually an
+eager, happy light crept into his eyes.
+
+After supper he told Sylvia he was going down to the store. He did
+go, but on his way he stopped at the superintendent's house and told
+that he would report for work in the morning.
+
+Rose had not come down to supper. Henry had wondered why, and
+sympathized in part with Sylvia's anxiety. Still, he had a vague
+feeling that a young girl's not coming down to supper need not be
+taken very seriously, that young girls had whims and fancies which
+signified nothing, and that it was better to let them alone until
+they got over them. He knew that Sylvia, however, would take the
+greatest comfort in coddling the girl, and he welcomed the fact as
+conducing to his making his arrangements for the next day. He thought
+that Sylvia would not have the matter in mind at all, since she had
+the girl to fuss over, and that she would not ask him any questions.
+On his way home he stopped at Sidney Meeks's. He found the lawyer in
+a demoralized dining-room, which had, nevertheless, an air of homely
+comfort, with its chairs worn into hollows to fit human anatomies,
+and its sideboard set out with dusty dishes and a noble ham. Meeks
+was a very good cook, although one could not confidently assert that
+dust and dirt did not form a part of his ingredients. One of his
+triumphs was ham cooked in a manner which he claimed to have
+invented. After having been boiled, it was baked, and frequently
+basted in a way which Meeks kept as secret as the bouquet of his
+grape wine. Sidney sat at the table eating bread and ham spread with
+mustard, and there were also a mysterious pie in reserve and a bottle
+of wine. "Draw up, Henry," said Sidney.
+
+"I've had supper."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sylvia had chicken salad and flapjacks and hot biscuits."
+
+Sidney sniffed. "Cut a slice off that ham," he ordered, "and draw a
+chair up. Not that one; you'll go through. Yes, that's right. Bring
+over another wineglass while you're about it. This is daisy wine, ten
+years old. I've got a pie here that I'll be willing to stake your
+fortune you can't analyze. It's after the pattern of the cold pasties
+you read about in old English novels. You shall guess what's in it.
+Draw up."
+
+Henry obeyed. He found himself sitting opposite Sidney, eating and
+drinking with intense enjoyment. Sidney chuckled. "Good?" said he.
+
+"I don't know when my victuals have tasted right before," said Henry.
+He received a large wedge of the pie on his plate, and his whole face
+beamed with the first taste.
+
+Sidney leaned across the table and whispered. "Squabs," said he,
+"and--robins, big fat ones. I shot 'em night before last. It's all
+nonsense the fuss folks make about robins, and a lot of other birds,
+as far as that goes--damned sentiment. Year before last I hadn't a
+bushel of grapes on my vines because the robins stole them, and not a
+half-bushel of pears on that big seckel-pear-tree. If they'd eaten
+them up clean I wouldn't have felt so bad, but there the ground would
+be covered with pears rotted on account of one little peck. They are
+enough sight better to be on women's bonnets than eating up folks'
+substance, though I don't promulgate that doctrine abroad. And one
+thing I ain't afraid to say: big fat robins ought to be made some use
+of. This pie is enough sight more wholesome for the bodies of men who
+have immortal souls dependent a little on what is eaten, in spite of
+the preaching, than Western tainted beef. I made up my mind that pie
+was the natural destiny of a robin, and I make squab-and-robin pies
+every week of my life. The robins are out of mischief in that pie,
+and they are doing us good. What makes you look so, though, Henry?
+There's something besides my pie and ham and wine that gives that
+look to your face."
+
+"I'm going back to the shop to-morrow," said Henry.
+
+Sidney looked at him. "Most folks would say you were an uncommon
+fool," said he. "I suppose you know that."
+
+"I can't help it," said Henry, happily. Along with the savory pie in
+his mouth came a subtler relish to his very soul. The hunger of the
+honest worker who returns to his work was being appeased.
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+While Henry was at Sidney Meeks's, Horace sat alone smoking and
+reading the evening paper. He kept looking up from the paper and
+listening. He was hoping that Rose, in spite of the fact that she had
+not been able to come down to supper, might yet make her appearance.
+He speculated on her altered looks and manner at dinner. He could not
+help being a little anxious, in spite of all Mrs. Ayres's assurances
+and the really vague nature of his own foreboding. He asked himself
+if he had had from the beginning anything upon which to base
+suspicion. Given the premises of an abnormal girl with a passion for
+himself which humiliated him, an abnormal woman like Miss Farrel with
+a similar passion, albeit under better control, the melodramatic
+phases of the candy, and sudden death, and traces of arsenical
+poison, what should be the conclusion?
+
+He himself had eaten some of presumably the same candy with no ill
+effects. Mrs. Ayres had assured him of her constant watchfulness over
+her daughter, who was no doubt in an alarmingly nervous state, but
+was she necessarily dangerous? He doubted if Mrs. Ayres had left the
+two girls a moment to themselves during the drive. What possible
+reason, after all, had he for alarm?
+
+When he heard Sylvia mounting the stairs, and caught a glimpse of a
+little tray borne carefully, he gave up all hope of Rose's coming
+down. Presently he went out and walked down the village street,
+smoking. As he passed out of the yard he glanced up at Rose's
+windows, and saw the bright light behind the curtains. He felt glad
+that the girl had a woman like Sylvia to care for her.
+
+As he looked Sylvia's shadow passed between the window and the light.
+It had, in its shadowy enlargement, a benignant aspect. There was an
+angelic, motherly bend to the vague shoulders. Sylvia was really in
+her element. She petted and scolded the girl, whom she found flung
+upon her bed like a castaway flower, sobbing pitifully.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" demanded Sylvia, in a honeyed tone,
+which at once stung and sweetened. "Here you are in the dark, crying
+and going without your victuals. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
+
+As she spoke Sylvia struck a match and lit the lamp. Rose buried her
+face deeper in the bed.
+
+"I don't want any lamp," she gasped.
+
+"Don't want any lamp? Ain't you ashamed of yourself? I should think
+you were a baby. You are going to have a lamp, and you are going to
+sit up and eat your supper." Sylvia drew down the white shades
+carefully, then she bent over the girl. She did not touch her, but
+she was quivering with maternal passion which seemed to embrace
+without any physical contact. "Now, what is the matter?" she said.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"What is the matter?" repeated Sylvia, insistently.
+
+Suddenly Rose sat up. "Nothing is the matter," she said. "I am just
+nervous." She made an effort to control her face. She smiled at
+Sylvia with her wet eyes and swollen mouth. She resolutely dabbed at
+her flushed face with a damp little ball of handkerchief.
+
+Sylvia turned to the bureau and took a fresh handkerchief from the
+drawer. She sprinkled it with some toilet water that was on the
+dressing-table, and gave it to Rose. "Here is a clean handkerchief,"
+she said, "and I've put some of your perfumery on it. Give me the
+other."
+
+Rose took the sweet-smelling square of linen and tried to smile
+again. "I just got nervous," she said.
+
+"Set down here in this chair," said Sylvia, "and I'll draw up the
+little table, and I want you to eat your supper. I've brought up
+something real nice for you."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Sylvia; you're a dear," said Rose, pitifully,
+"but--I don't think I can eat anything." In spite of herself the
+girl's face quivered again and fresh tears welled into her eyes. She
+passed her scented handkerchief over them. "I am not a bit hungry,"
+she said, brokenly.
+
+Sylvia drew a large, chintz-covered chair forward. "Set right down in
+this chair," she said, firmly. And Rose slid weakly from the bed and
+sank into the chair. She watched, with a sort of dull gratitude,
+while Sylvia spread a little table with a towel and set out the tray.
+
+"There," said she. "Here is some cream toast and some of those new
+pease, and a little chop, spring lamb, and a cup of tea. Now you just
+eat every mite of it, and then I've got a saucer of strawberries and
+cream for you to top off with."
+
+Rose looked hopelessly at the dainty fare. Then she looked at Sylvia.
+The impulse to tell another woman her trouble got the better of her.
+If women had not other women in whom to confide, there are times when
+their natures would be too much for them. "I heard some news this
+morning," said she. She attempted to make her voice exceedingly light
+and casual.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I heard about Mr. Allen's engagement."
+
+"Engagement to who?"
+
+"To--Lucy."
+
+"Lucy!"
+
+"Lucy Ayres. She seems to be a very sweet girl. She is very pretty. I
+hope she will make him very happy." Rose's voice trembled with sad
+hypocrisy.
+
+"Who told you?" demanded Sylvia.
+
+"She told me herself."
+
+"Did her mother hear it?"
+
+"She did, but I think she did not understand. Lucy spoke in French.
+She talks French very well. She studied with Miss Farrel, you know. I
+think Lucy has done all in her power to fit herself to become a good
+wife for an educated man."
+
+"What did she tell you in French for? Why didn't she speak in
+English?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, I know. She did it so her mother wouldn't hear, and say in
+English that she was telling an awful whopper. Mr. Allen is no more
+engaged to Lucy Ayres than I am."
+
+Rose gazed at Sylvia with sudden eagerness. "What makes you think so,
+Aunt Sylvia?"
+
+"Nothing makes me think what I know. Mr. Allen has never paid any
+attention to Lucy Ayres, beyond what he couldn't help, and she's made
+a mountain out of a mole-hill. Lucy Ayres is man-crazy, that's all.
+You needn't tell me."
+
+"Then you don't think--?"
+
+"I know better. I'll ask Mr. Allen."
+
+"If you asked him it would make it very hard for him if it wasn't
+so," said Rose.
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"Mr. Allen is a gentleman, and he could not practically accuse a
+woman of making an unauthorized claim of that sort," said Rose.
+
+"Well, I won't say anything about it to him if you think I had better
+not," said Sylvia, "but I must say I think it's pretty hard on a man
+to have a girl going round telling folks he's engaged to her when he
+ain't. Eat that lamb chop and them pease while they're hot."
+
+"I am going to. They are delicious. I didn't think I was hungry at
+all, but to have things brought up this way--"
+
+"You've got to eat a saucer of strawberries afterwards," said Sylvia,
+happily.
+
+She watched the girl eat, and she was in a sort of ecstasy, which
+was, nevertheless, troubled. After a while, when Rose had nearly
+finished the strawberries, Sylvia ventured a remark.
+
+"Lucy Ayres is a queer girl," said she. "I've known all about her for
+some time. She has been thinking young men were in love with her,
+when they never had an idea of such a thing, ever since she was so
+high."
+
+Sylvia indicated by her out-stretched hand a point about a foot and a
+half from the floor.
+
+"It seems as if she must have had some reason sometimes," said Rose,
+with an impulse of loyalty towards the other girl. "She is very
+pretty."
+
+"As far as I know, no young man in East Westland has ever thought of
+marrying her," said Sylvia. "I think myself they are afraid of her.
+It doesn't do for a girl to act too anxious to get married. She just
+cuts her own nose off."
+
+"I have never seen her do anything unbecoming," began Rose; then she
+stopped, for Lucy's expression, which had caused a revolt in her, was
+directly within her mental vision.
+
+It seemed as if Sylvia interpreted her thought. "I have seen her
+making eyes," said she.
+
+Rose was silent. She realized that she, also, had seen poor Lucy
+making eyes.
+
+"What a girl is so crazy to get married for, anyway, when she has a
+good mother and a good home, I can't see," said Sylvia, leading
+directly up to the subject in the secret place of her mind.
+
+Rose blushed, with apparently no reason. "But she can't have her
+mother always, you know, Aunt Sylvia," said she.
+
+"Her mother's folks are awful long-lived."
+
+"But Lucy is younger. In the course of nature she will outlive her
+mother, and then she will be all alone."
+
+"What if she is? 'Ain't she got her good home and money enough to be
+independent? Lucy won't need to lift a finger to earn money if she's
+careful."
+
+"I always thought it would be very dreadful to live alone," Rose
+said, with another blush.
+
+"Well, she needn't be alone. There's plenty of women always in want
+of a home. No woman need live alone if she don't want to."
+
+"But it isn't quite like--" Rose hesitated.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"It wouldn't seem quite so much as if you had your own home, would
+it, as if--" Rose hesitated again.
+
+Sylvia interrupted her. "A girl is a fool to get married if she's got
+money enough to live on," said she.
+
+"Why, Aunt Sylvia, wouldn't you have married Uncle Henry if you had
+had plenty of money?" asked the girl, exactly as Henry had done.
+
+Sylvia colored faintly. "That was a very different matter," said she.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because it was," said Sylvia, bringing up one of her impregnable
+ramparts against argument.
+
+But the girl persisted. "I don't see why," she said.
+
+Sylvia colored again. "Well, for one thing, your uncle Henry is one
+man in a thousand," said she. "I know every silly girl thinks she has
+found just that man, but it's only once in a thousand times she does;
+and she's mighty lucky if she don't find out that the man in a
+thousand is another woman's husband, when she gets her eyes open.
+Then there's another thing: nothing has ever come betwixt us."
+
+"I don't know what you mean."
+
+"I mean we've had no family," said Sylvia, firmly, although her color
+deepened. "I know you think it's awful for me to say such a thing,
+but look right up and down this street at the folks that got married
+about the same time Henry and I did. How many of them that's had
+families 'ain't had reason to regret it? I tell you what it is,
+child, girls don't know everything. It's awful having children, and
+straining every nerve to bring them up right, and then to have them
+go off in six months in consumption, the way the Masons lost their
+three children, two boys and a girl. Or to worry and fuss until you
+are worn to a shadow, the way Mrs. George Emerson has over her son,
+and then have him take to drink. There wasn't any consumption in the
+Mason family on either side in a straight line, but the three
+children all went with it. And there ain't any drink in the Emerson
+family, on her side or his, all as straight as a string, but Mrs.
+Everson was a Weaver, and she had a great-uncle who drank himself to
+death. I don't believe there's a family anywhere around that hasn't
+got some dreadful thing in it to leak out, when you don't expect it,
+in children. Sometimes it only leaks in a straight line, and
+sometimes it leaks sidewise. You never know. Now here's my family. I
+was a White, you know, like your aunt Abrahama. There's consumption
+in our family, the worst kind. I never had any doubt but what Henry
+and I would have lost our children, if we'd had any."
+
+"But you didn't have any," said Rose, in a curiously naive and
+hopeful tone.
+
+"We are the only ones of all that got married about the time we did
+who didn't have any," said Sylvia, in her conclusive tone.
+
+"But, Aunt Sylvia," said Rose, "you wouldn't stop everybody's getting
+married? Why, there wouldn't be any people in the world in a short
+time."
+
+"There's some people in the world now that would be a good sight
+better off out of it, for themselves and other folks," said Sylvia.
+
+"Then you don't think anybody ought to get married?"
+
+"If folks want to be fools, let them. Nothing I can say is going to
+stop them, but I'll miss my guess if some of the girls that get
+married had the faintest idea what they were going into they would
+stop short, if it sent them over a rail-fence. Folks can't tell girls
+everything, but marriage is an awful risk, an awful risk. And I say,
+as I said before, any girl who has got enough to live on is a fool to
+get married."
+
+"But I don't see why, after all."
+
+"Because she is," replied Sylvia.
+
+This time Rose did not attempt to bruise herself against the elder
+woman's imperturbability. She did not look convinced, but again the
+troubled expression came over her face.
+
+"I am glad you relished your supper," said Sylvia.
+
+"It was very nice," replied Rose, absently. Suddenly the look of
+white horror which had overspread her countenance on the night of her
+arrival possessed it again.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" cried Sylvia.
+
+"I almost remembered, then," gasped the girl. "You know what I told
+you the night I came. Don't let me remember, Aunt Sylvia. I think I
+shall die if I ever do."
+
+Sylvia was as white as the girl, but she rose briskly. "There's
+nothing to remember," she said. "You're nervous, but I'm going to
+make some of that root-beer of mine to-morrow. It has hops in it, and
+it's real quieting. Now you stop worrying, and wait a minute. I've
+got something to show you. Here, you look at this book you've been
+reading, and stop thinking. I'll be back in a minute. I've just got
+to step into the other chamber."
+
+Sylvia was back in a moment. She never was obliged to hesitate for a
+second as to the whereabouts of any of her possessions. She had some
+little boxes in her hand, and one rather large one under her arm.
+Rose looked at them with interest. "What is it, Aunt Sylvia?" said
+she.
+
+Sylvia laughed. "Something to show you that belongs to you," she said.
+
+"Why, what have you got that belongs to me, Aunt Sylvia?"
+
+"You wait a minute."
+
+Sylvia and Rose both stood beside the white dressing-table, and
+Sylvia opened the boxes, one after another, and slowly and
+impressively removed their contents, and laid them in orderly rows on
+the white dimity of the table. The lamplight shone on them, and the
+table blazed like an altar with jewelled fires. Rose gasped. "Why,
+Aunt Sylvia!" said she.
+
+"All these things belonged to your aunt Abrahama, and now they belong
+to you," said Sylvia, in a triumphant tone.
+
+"Why, but these are perfectly beautiful things!"
+
+"Yes; I don't believe anybody in East Westland ever knew she had
+them. I don't believe she could have worn them, even when she was a
+girl, or I should have heard of them. I found them all in her bureau
+drawer. She didn't even keep them under lock and key; but then she
+never went out anywhere, and if nobody even knew she had them, they
+were safe enough. Now they're all yours."
+
+"But they belong to you, Aunt Sylvia."
+
+Sylvia took up the most valuable thing there, a really good pearl
+necklace, and held it dangling from her skinny hand. "I should look
+pretty with this around my neck, shouldn't I?" she said. "I wanted to
+wear that pink silk, but when it comes to some things I ain't quite
+out of my mind. Here, try it on."
+
+Rose clasped the necklace about her white, round throat, and smiled
+at herself in the glass. Rose wore a gown of soft, green China silk,
+and the pearls over its lace collar surrounded her face with soft
+gleams of rose and green.
+
+"These amethysts are exquisite," said Rose, after she had done
+admiring herself. She took up, one after another, a ring, a bracelet,
+a necklace, a brooch, and ear-rings, all of clear, pale amethysts in
+beautiful settings.
+
+"You could wear these," she said to Sylvia.
+
+"I guess I sha'n't begin to wear jewelry at my time of life,"
+declared Sylvia. Her voice sounded almost angry in its insistence.
+"Everything here is yours," she said, and nodded her head and set her
+mouth hard for further emphasis.
+
+The display upon the dressing-table, although not of great value, was
+in reality rather unusual. All of the pieces were, of course, old,
+and there were more semi-precious than precious stones, but the
+settings were good and the whole enough to delight any girl. Rose
+hung over them in ecstasy. She had not many jewels. Somehow her
+income had never seemed to admit of jewels. She was pleased as a
+child. Finally she hung some pearl ear-rings over her ears by bits of
+white silk, her ears not being pierced. She allowed the pearl
+necklace to remain. She clasped on her arms some charming cameo
+bracelets and a heavy gold one set with a miniature of a lady. She
+covered her slender fingers with rings and pinned old brooches all
+over her bosom. She fastened a pearl spray in her hair, and a heavy
+shell comb. Then she fairly laughed out loud. "There!" said she to
+Sylvia, and laughed again.
+
+Sylvia also laughed, and her laugh had the ring of a child's. "Don't
+you feel as if you were pretty well off as you are?" said she.
+
+Rose sprang forward and hugged Sylvia. "Well off!" said she. "Well
+off! I never knew a girl who was better off. To think of my being
+here with you, and your being as good as a mother to me, and Uncle
+Henry as good as a father; and this dear old house; and to see myself
+fairly loaded down with jewels like a crown-princess. I never knew I
+liked such things so much. I am fairly ashamed."
+
+Rose kissed Sylvia with such vehemence that the elder woman started
+back, then she turned again to her mirror. She held up her hands and
+made the gems flash with colored lights. There were several very good
+diamonds, although not of modern cut; there was a fairly superb
+emerald, also pearls and amethysts and green-blue turquoises, on her
+hands. Rose made a pounce upon a necklace of pink coral, and clasped
+it around her neck over the pearls.
+
+"I have them all on now," she said, and her laugh rang out again.
+
+Sylvia surveyed her with a sort of rapture. She had never heard of
+"Faust," but the whole was a New England version of the "Jewel Song."
+As Marguerite had been tempted to guilty love by jewels, so Sylvia
+was striving to have Rose tempted by jewels to innocent celibacy. But
+she was working by methods of which she knew nothing.
+
+Rose gazed at herself in the glass. A rose flush came on her cheeks,
+her lips pouted redly, and her eyes glittered under a mist. She
+thrust her shining fingers through her hair, and it stood up like a
+golden spray over her temples. Rose at that minute was wonderful.
+Something akin to the gleam of the jewels seemed to have waked within
+her. She felt a warmth of love and ownership of which she had never
+known herself capable. She felt that the girl and her jewels, the
+girl who was the greatest jewel of all, was her very own. For the
+first time a secret anxiety and distress of mind, which she had
+confided to no one, was allayed. She said to herself that everything
+was as it should be. She had Rose, and Rose was happy. Then she
+thought how she had found the girl when she first entered the room,
+and had courage, seeing her as she looked now, to ask again: "What
+was the matter? Why were you crying?"
+
+Rose turned upon her with a smile of perfect radiance. "Nothing at
+all, dear Aunt Sylvia," she cried, happily. "Nothing at all."
+
+Sylvia smiled. A smile was always somewhat of an effort for Sylvia,
+with her hard, thin lips, which had not been used to smiling. Sylvia
+had no sense of humor. Her smiles would never be possible except for
+sudden and unlooked-for pleasures, and those had been rare in her
+whole life. But now she smiled, and with her lips and her eyes. "Rose
+wasn't crying because she thought Mr. Allen was going to marry
+another girl," she told herself. "She was only crying because a girl
+is always full of tantrums. Now she is perfectly happy. I am able to
+make her perfectly happy. I know that all a girl needs in this world
+to make her happy and free from care is a woman to be a mother to
+her. I am making her see it. I can make up to her for everything.
+Everything is as it should be."
+
+She stood gazing at Rose for a long moment before she spoke. "Well,"
+said she, "you look like a whole jewelry shop. I don't see, for my
+part, how your aunt came to have so many--why she wanted them."
+
+"Maybe they were given to her," said Rose. A tender thought of the
+dead woman who had gone from the house of her fathers, and left her
+jewels behind, softened her face. "Poor Aunt Abrahama!" said she.
+"She lived in this house all her life and was never married, and she
+must have come to think that all her pretty things had not amounted
+to much."
+
+"I don't see why," said Sylvia. "I don't see that it was any great
+hardship to live all her life in this nice house, and I don't see
+what difference it made about her having nice things, whether she got
+married or not. It could not have made any difference."
+
+"Why not?" asked Rose, looking at her with a mischievous flash of
+blue eyes. A long green gleam like a note of music shot out from the
+emerald on her finger as she raised it in a slight gesture. "To have
+all these beautiful things put away in a drawer, and never to have
+anybody see her in them, must have made some difference."
+
+"It wouldn't make a mite," said Sylvia, stoutly.
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"Because it wouldn't."
+
+Rose laughed, and looked again at herself in the glass.
+
+"Now you had better take off those things and go to bed, and try to
+go to sleep," said Sylvia.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Sylvia," said Rose. But she did not stir, except to turn
+this way and that, to bring out more colored lights from the jewels.
+
+Sylvia had to mix bread that night, and she was obliged to go. Rose
+promised that she would immediately go to bed, and kissed her again
+with such effusion that the older woman started back. The soft,
+impetuous kiss caused her cheek to fairly tingle as she went
+down-stairs and about her work. It should have been luminous from the
+light it made in her heart.
+
+When Henry came home, with a guilty sense of what he was to do next
+day, and which he had not courage enough to reveal, he looked at his
+wife with relief at her changed expression. "I declare, Sylvia, you
+look like yourself to-night," he said. "You've been looking kind of
+curious to me lately."
+
+"You imagined it," said Sylvia. She had finished mixing the bread,
+and had washed her hands and was wiping them on the roller-towel in
+the kitchen.
+
+"Maybe I did," admitted Henry. "You look like yourself to-night,
+anyhow. How is Rose?"
+
+"Rose is all right. Young girls are always getting nervous kinks. I
+took her supper up to her, and she ate every mite, and now I have
+given her her aunt's jewelry and she's tickled to pieces with it,
+standing before the looking-glass and staring at herself like a
+little peacock." Sylvia laughed with tender triumph.
+
+"I suppose now she'll be decking herself out, and every young man in
+East Westland will be after her," said Henry. He laughed, but a
+little bitterly. He, also, was not altogether unselfish concerning
+the proprietorship of this young thing which had come into his
+elderly life. He was not as Sylvia, but although he would have denied
+it he privately doubted if even Horace was quite good enough for this
+girl. When it came to it, in his heart of hearts, he doubted if any
+but the fatherly love which he himself gave might be altogether good
+for her.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"Of course I do," she replied.
+
+"Well, you keep asking him why he doesn't go away, and I began to
+think you didn't," said Henry.
+
+"I want him to stay," said Sylvia, "but I don't want any foolishness."
+
+"Foolishness?" said Henry, vaguely.
+
+It was a very hot afternoon, but in spite of the heat Rose and Horace
+were afield. They had been gone ever since dinner. It was Saturday,
+and Henry had come home early from the shop. The first question he
+asked had been concerning the whereabouts of the young people. "Off
+together somewhere," Sylvia had replied. Then the conversation had
+ensued.
+
+"Yes, foolishness," repeated Sylvia, with a sort of hysterical
+violence. She sat out on the front porch with some mending, and she
+sewed feverishly as she spoke.
+
+"I don't know what you mean by foolishness, I guess, Sylvia."
+
+Henry sat on the porch step. He wore a black mohair coat, and his
+thin hair was well brushed.
+
+"It does seem," said Sylvia, "as if a young man and a young woman
+might live in the same house and behave themselves."
+
+Henry stared at her. "Why, Sylvia, you don't mean--"
+
+"I mean just what I said--behave themselves. It does seem sometimes
+as if everything any girl or young man thought of was falling in love
+and getting married," Sylvia said--"falling in love and getting
+married," with a bitter and satirical emphasis.
+
+"I don't see," said Henry, "that there is very much against Mr. Allen
+and Rose's falling in love and getting married. I think he might do
+worse, and I think she might. Sometimes I've looked at the two of
+them and wondered if they weren't just made for each other. I can't
+see quite what you mean, Sylvia? You don't mean to say that you don't
+want Mr. Allen ever to get married?"
+
+"He can marry whoever he wants to," said Sylvia, "but he sha'n't
+marry her."
+
+"You don't mean you don't want her ever to get married?"
+
+"Yes, I do mean just that."
+
+"Why, Sylvia, are you crazy?"
+
+"No, I ain't crazy," replied Sylvia, doggedly. "I don't want her to
+get married, and I'm in the right of it. She's no call to get
+married."
+
+"I don't see why she 'ain't got a call as well as other girls."
+
+"She 'ain't. Here she's got a good home, and everything she needs,
+and more, too. She's got money of her own that she had when she come
+here, plenty of it. I'm going over to Alford to-morrow and see if I
+can't find some things in the stores there for her that I think
+she'll like. And I'm going to get Jim Jones--he's a good hand--to see
+if he can't get a good, safe horse and pretty carriage for her, so
+she can ride out."
+
+Henry stared. "I dunno as I can take care of a horse, Sylvia," he
+said, doubtfully.
+
+"Nobody wants you to. I can get Billy Hudson to come. He can sleep in
+the chamber over the kitchen. I spoke to his mother about it, and
+she's tickled to pieces. She says he's real handy with horses, and
+he'll come for fifteen dollars a month and his board. Rose is going
+to have everything she wants."
+
+"Does she want a horse and carriage?"
+
+"I shouldn't think of it if I didn't s'pose she did."
+
+"What made me ask," said Henry, "was, I'd never heard her speak of
+it, and I knew she had money enough for anything if she did want it."
+
+"Are you grudging my spending money her own aunt left on her?"
+
+Henry looked reproachfully at his wife. "I didn't quite deserve that
+from you, Sylvia," he said, slowly.
+
+Sylvia looked at him a moment. Her face worked. Then she glanced
+around to be sure nobody saw, and leaned over and touched the
+shoulder of Henry's mohair coat with a little, skinny hand. "Henry,"
+she said, pitifully.
+
+"What, Sylvia?"
+
+"You know I didn't mean anything. You've always been generous about
+money matters. We 'ain't never had ill feeling about such a thing as
+that. I shouldn't have spoke that way if I hadn't been all wrought
+up, and--" Suddenly Sylvia thrust her hand under her white apron and
+swept it up to her face. She shook convulsively.
+
+"Now, Sylvia, of course you didn't mean a blessed thing. I've known
+you were all wrought up for a long time, but I haven't known what
+about. Don't take on so, Sylvia."
+
+A little, hysterical sob came from Sylvia under the apron. Her
+scissors fell from her lap and struck the stone slab on which Henry
+was sitting. He picked them up. "Here are your scissors, Sylvia,"
+said he. "Now don't take on so. What is it about? What have you got
+on your mind? Don't you think it would do you good to tell me?"
+
+"I wish," sobbed Sylvia, "that Abrahama White had left her property
+where it belonged. I wish we'd never had a cent of it. She didn't do
+right, and she laid the burden of her wrong-doing onto us when she
+left us the property."
+
+"Is that what's troubling you, Sylvia?" said Henry, slowly. "If
+that's all," he continued, "why--"
+
+But Sylvia interrupted him. She swept the apron from her face and
+showed it grimly set. There was no trace of tears. "That ain't
+troubling me," said she. "Nothing's troubling me. I'm kind of
+nervous, that's all, and I hate to set still and see foolishness. I
+don't often give way, and I 'ain't nothing to give way for. I'm jest
+all wrought up. I guess there's going to be a thunder-tempest. I've
+felt jest like it all day. I wish you'd go out in the garden and pick
+a mess of green corn for supper. If you're a mind to you can husk it,
+and get that middling-sized kettle out from under the sink and put
+the water on to boil. I suppose they'll be home before long now. They
+ain't quite got to going without their victuals."
+
+Henry rose. "I'd admire to get the corn," said he, and went around
+the house towards the kitchen. Left to herself, Sylvia let her work
+fall in her lap. She stared at the front yard and the street beyond
+and the opposite house, dimly seen between waving boughs, and her
+face was the face of despair. Little, commonplace, elderly
+countenance that it seemed, it was strengthened into tragedy by the
+terrible stress of some concealed misery of the spirit. Sylvia sat
+very stiffly, so stiffly that even the work in her lap, a mass of
+soft muslin, might have been marble, with its immovable folds. Sylvia
+herself looked petrified; not a muscle of her face stirred. She was
+suffering the keenest agony upon earth, that agony of the spirit
+which strikes it dumb.
+
+She had borne it for months. She had never let slip the slightest
+hint of it. At times she had managed to quiet it with what she knew
+to be sophistries. She had been able to imagine herself almost happy
+with Rose and the new passion for her which had come into her life,
+but that passion was overgrown by her secret, like some hideous
+parasite. Even the girl's face, which was so beloved, was not to be
+seen without a pang to follow upon the happiness. Sylvia showed,
+however, in spite of her face of utter despair, an odd strength, a
+courage as if for battle.
+
+After awhile she heard Henry's returning footsteps, and immediately
+her face and whole body relaxed. She became flesh, and took up her
+needlework, and Henry found her sewing placidly. The change had been
+marvellous. Once more Sylvia was a little, commonplace, elderly woman
+at her commonplace task. Even that subtle expression which at times
+so puzzled Henry had disappeared. The man had a sensation of relief
+as he resumed his seat on the stone step. He was very patient with
+Sylvia. It was his nature to be patient with all women. Without
+realizing it, he had a tenderness for them which verged on contempt.
+He loved Sylvia, but he never lost sight of the fact that she was a
+woman and he a man, and therefore it followed, as a matter of course,
+that she was by nature weaker and, because of the weakness, had a
+sweet inferiority. It had never detracted from his love for her; it
+had increased it. There might not have been any love in the beginning
+except for that.
+
+Henry was perhaps scarcely capable of loving a woman whom he might be
+compelled to acknowledge as his superior. This elderly New-Englander
+had in him none of the spirit of knight-errantry. He had been a good,
+faithful husband to his wife, but he had never set her on a pedestal,
+but a trifle below him, and he had loved her there and been patient
+with her.
+
+But patience must breed a certain sense of superiority. That is
+inevitable. Henry's tender patience with Sylvia's moods and unreason
+made him see over her character, as he could see over her physical
+head. Lately this sense of mystery had increased, in a way, his
+comprehension of his own stature. The more mysterious Sylvia became,
+and the more Henry's patience was called into action, the taller he
+appeared to himself to become.
+
+While he had been getting the corn out in the garden, and preparing
+it to be cooked, he had reflected upon Sylvia's unaccountable emotion
+and her assertion that there was no reason for it, and he realized
+his masculine height. He knew that it would have been impossible for
+him to lose control of himself and then declare that there was no
+cause; to sway like a reed driven by the wind.
+
+Henry was rather taken by this idea. When he had returned to his
+station on the porch he was thinking how women were reeds driven by
+the winds of their emotions, and really, in a measure, irresponsible.
+If he had again found Sylvia with her apron over her face, he was
+quite prepared to be very tender, but he was relieved to see that the
+paroxysm had passed. He did not smile as he sat down, neither did
+Sylvia. It was rather unusual for them to smile at each other, but
+they exchanged looks of peaceful accord, which really meant more than
+smiles.
+
+"Well," said Henry, "the kettle's on the stove."
+
+"How much corn did you get?"
+
+"Well, I allowed three ears apiece. They're pretty good size. I
+thought that was about right."
+
+Sylvia nodded.
+
+"The corn's holding out pretty well," said Henry. "That other later
+kind will be ready by the time the lima beans are ripe."
+
+"That 'll go nice for succotash," said Sylvia, taking another stitch.
+
+"That's what I was thinking," said Henry.
+
+He sat staring out upon the front yard, and he was in reality
+thinking, with pleasant anticipations, of the succotash. Now that he
+was back in his old track at the shop, his appetite was better, and
+he found himself actually dreaming about savory dishes like a boy.
+Henry's pleasures in life were so few and simple that they had to go
+a long way, and lap over onto his spiritual needs from his physical
+ones.
+
+Sylvia broke in upon his visions of succotash. She was straining her
+eyes to see the road beyond the front yard. "What time is it?" she
+asked. "Do you know?"
+
+"It was half-past five by the kitchen clock."
+
+"They ain't in sight yet." Sylvia stared and frowned at the distance.
+"This house does set too far back," she said, impatiently.
+
+"Now, Sylvia, I wouldn't give up a mite of this front yard."
+
+"I'd give it all up if I could see folks go past. A woman wants to
+see something out of the window and from the doorstep besides flowers
+and box and trees."
+
+Sylvia glared at the yard, which was beautiful. The box grew lustily,
+framing beds of flowers and clusters of radiant bushes. There were
+two perfectly symmetrical horse-chestnut-trees, one on each side of
+the broad gravel walk. The yard looked like some wonderful map
+wherein the countries were made of flowers, the design was so
+charmingly artificial and prim.
+
+"It's awful set, I think," said Sylvia. "I'd rather have flowers
+growing where they want to instead of where they have to. And I never
+did like box. Folks say it's unhealthy, too."
+
+"It's been here for years, and the people who belonged here have
+never been short-lived," said Henry. "I like it."
+
+"I don't," said Sylvia. She looked at the road. "I don't see where
+they can be."
+
+"Oh, they'll be along soon. Don't worry, Sylvia."
+
+"Well," said Sylvia, in a strident voice, "I'm going in and get
+supper, and when it's ready we'll set down and eat it. I ain't going
+to wait one minute. I'm just sick of this kind of work."
+
+Sylvia got up, and her scissors dropped again onto the step. Henry
+picked them up. "Here are your scissors," said he.
+
+Sylvia took them and went into the house with a flounce. Henry heard
+a door slam and dishes rattle. "She's all wrought up again," he
+thought. He felt very tall as he pitied Sylvia. He was sorry for her,
+but her distress over such a matter as the young folks' being late
+seemed to him about as much to be taken seriously as the buzzing of a
+bumblebee over a clump of lilies in the yard.
+
+He was watching the bumblebee when he heard the front gate click, and
+thought with relief that the wanderers had returned, then Sidney
+Meeks came into view from between the rows of box. Sidney came up the
+walk, wiping his forehead with a large red handkerchief, and fanning
+himself with an obsolete straw hat.
+
+"Hullo," said Henry.
+
+"How are you?" said Meeks. "It's a corking hot day."
+
+"Yes, it is pretty hot, but I think it's a little cooler than it was
+an hour ago."
+
+"Try walking and you won't think so."
+
+"Set down," said Henry, pointing to the chair Sylvia had just
+vacated. "Set down and stay to supper."
+
+"I don't say I won't stay to supper, but I've got an errand first.
+I've struck a new idea about wine. Haven't you got a lot of wild
+grapes down back here?"
+
+"Yes, back of the orchard."
+
+"Well, I've got an idea. I won't say what it is now. I want to see
+how it turns out first. Does Sylvia use wild grapes?"
+
+"No, I know she won't. There are going to be bushels of Concords and
+Delawares."
+
+"Well, I want you to go down with me and let me look at your wild
+grape-vines. I suppose the grapes must be set long ago. I just want
+to see how many there are. I suppose I can make a deal with you for
+some?"
+
+"You can have them, and welcome. I know Sylvia will say so, too."
+
+"Well, come along. We can go around the house."
+
+Henry and Meeks skirted the house and the vegetable garden, then
+crossed a field, and found themselves at one side of the orchard. It
+was a noble old orchard. The apple, pear, and peach trees, set in
+even rows, covered three acres. Between the men and the orchard grew
+the wild grapes, rioting over an old fence. Henry began to say there
+was a gap in the fence farther down, but the lawyer's hand gripped
+his arm with sudden violence, and he stopped short. Then he as well
+as Meeks heard voices. They heard the tones of a girl, trembling with
+sweetness and delight, foolish with the blessed folly of life and
+youth. The voice was so full of joy that at first it sounded no more
+articulate than a bird's song. It was like a strophe from the
+primeval language of all languages. Henry and Meeks seemed to
+understand, finally, what the voice said, more from some inner
+sympathy, which dated back to their youth and chorded with it, than
+from any actual comprehension of spoken words.
+
+This was what the sweet, divinely foolish girl-voice said: "I don't
+know what you can see in me to love."
+
+There was nothing in the words; it was what any girl might say; it
+was very trite, but it was a song. Celestial modesty and pride were
+in it, and joy which looked at itself and doubted if it were joy.
+
+Then came the man's voice, and that sang a song also foolish and
+trite, but divine and triumphant and new as every spring.
+
+Henry and Meeks saw gradually, as they listened, afraid to move lest
+they be heard. They saw Horace and Rose sitting on the green turf
+under an apple-tree. They leaned against its trunk, twisted with
+years of sun and storm, and the green spread of branches was
+overhead, and they were all dappled with shade and light like the
+gold bosses of a shield. The man's arm was around the girl, and they
+were looking at each other and seeing this world and that which is to
+come.
+
+Suddenly Meeks gave Henry's arm another violent clutch. He pointed.
+Then they saw another girl standing in the tangle of wild grapes. She
+wore a green muslin gown, and was so motionless that it was not easy
+to discern her readily. She was listening and watching the lovers,
+and her young face was terrible. It was full of an enormous, greedy
+delight, as of one who eats ravenously, and yet there was malignity
+and awful misery and unreason in it. Her cheeks were flushed and her
+blue eyes glittered. It was evident that everything she heard and saw
+caused her the most horrible agony and a more horrible joy. She was
+like a fanatic who dances in fire.
+
+Meeks and Henry looked at her for a long minute, then at each other.
+Henry nodded as if in response to a question. Then the two men,
+moving by almost imperceptible degrees, keeping the utmost silence,
+hearing all the time that love duet on the other side of the
+grape-vines, got behind the girl. She had been so intent that there
+had been no danger of seeing them. Horace and Rose were also so
+intent that they were not easily reached by any sight or sound
+outside themselves.
+
+Meeks noiselessly and firmly clasped one of Lucy Ayres's arms. It was
+very slender, and pathetically cold through her thin sleeve. Henry
+grasped the other. She turned her wild young face over her shoulder,
+and saw them, and yielded. Between them the two men half carried,
+half led the girl away across the fields to the road. When they were
+on the road Henry released his grasp of her arm, but Meeks retained
+his. "Will you go quietly home?" said he, "or shall Mr. Whitman and I
+go with you?"
+
+"I will go," Lucy replied, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+Meeks looked keenly at her. "Now, Lucy," he said, in a gentle voice,
+"there's no use; you've got to go home."
+
+"Yes," said Henry. "Go home to your ma, right away, like a good girl."
+
+Lucy remained motionless. Her poor young eyes seemed to see nothing.
+
+"Good Lord!" sighed Meeks, wiping his forehead with his disengaged
+hand. "Well, come along, Lucy. Now, Lucy, you don't want to make a
+spectacle of yourself on the street. I think we must go home with
+you, because I can see right in your eyes that you won't budge a step
+unless we make you, but we don't want to walk holding on to you. So
+now you just march along ahead, and we'll keep behind you, and we
+won't have all the town up in arms."
+
+Lucy said nothing. Meeks wiped his forehead again, freed her, and
+gave her a gentle shove between her shoulders. "Now, march," said he.
+
+Lucy began to walk; the two men kept behind her. Presently they met a
+boy, who evidently noticed nothing unusual, for he leaped past,
+whistling.
+
+"Thank the Lord it isn't far," muttered Meeks, wiping his forehead.
+"It's d--n hot."
+
+Lucy walked on quite rapidly after awhile. They were nearly in sight
+of her home when Mrs. Ayres met them. She was almost running, and was
+pale and out of breath.
+
+"Lucy," she began, "where--?" Then she realized that Meeks and Henry
+were with the girl.
+
+"Henry, you just keep an eye on her," said Meeks. Then he spoke to
+Mrs. Ayres with old-fashioned ceremony. "Madam," he said, "will you
+be so kind as to step aside? I have a word I would like to say to
+you."
+
+Mrs. Ayres, with a scared glance at Lucy, complied.
+
+"Just this way a moment," he said. "Now, madam, I have a word of
+advice which you are at liberty to take or not. Your daughter seems
+to be in a dangerously nervous state. I will tell you plainly where
+we found her. It seems that Mr. Allen and Miss Fletcher have fallen
+in love with each other, and have come to an understanding. We
+happened upon them, sitting together very properly, as lovers should,
+in the apple orchard back of Mr. Whitman's, and your daughter stood
+there watching them. She is very nervous. If you take my advice you
+will lose no time in getting her away."
+
+Mrs. Ayres stood and listened with a cold, pale dignity. She waited
+until Meeks had entirely finished, then she spoke slowly and evenly.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Meeks," she said. "Your advice is very good, so good
+that I have proved it by anticipating you. My daughter is in a very
+nervous condition. She never fully recovered from a severe attack of
+the grip."
+
+Mrs. Ayres lied, and Meeks respected her for it.
+
+"We are to start before long for St. Louis, where my brother lives,"
+continued Mrs. Ayres. "I am going to rent my house furnished. My
+brother is a widower, and wishes us to make our home with him, and we
+may never return here. I was obliged to go on an errand to the store,
+and when I came home I missed Lucy and was somewhat anxious. I am
+very much obliged to you. We are going away, and I have no doubt that
+an entire change of scene will restore my daughter entirely.
+Yesterday she had a sick headache, and is still suffering somewhat
+from it to-day."
+
+"That woman lied like a gentleman," Meeks said to Henry when they
+were on their way home. "Good Lord! I was thankful to her."
+
+Henry was regarding him with a puzzled look. "Do you think the poor
+girl is in love with Mr. Allen, too?" he asked.
+
+"I think she is in love with love, and nothing will cure that," said
+Meeks.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+Henry looked more and more disturbed as they went down the street. "I
+declare, I don't know what Sylvia will say," he remarked, moodily.
+
+"You mean about the pretty little love-affair?" said Meeks, walking
+along fanning himself with his hat.
+
+"Yes, she'll be dreadful upset."
+
+"Upset; why?"
+
+"It beats me to know why. Who ever does know the why of a woman?"
+
+"What in creation is the fellow, anyhow?" said Meeks, with a laugh.
+"Are all the women going daft over him? He isn't half bad looking,
+and he's a good sort, but I'm hanged if I can see why he should upset
+every woman who looks at him. Here we've just escorted that poor
+Ayres girl home. I declare, her face made me shiver. I was glad there
+wasn't any pond handy for her. But if you mean to say that your good,
+sensible old wife--"
+
+"Get out! You know better," cried Henry, impatiently. "You know
+Sylvia better than that. She sets a lot by Mr. Allen; I do myself;
+but, as far as that goes, she'd give her blessing if he'd marry any
+girl but Rose. That's where the hitch comes in. She doesn't want him
+to marry her."
+
+"Thinks he isn't good enough?"
+
+"I don't believe it's that. I don't know what it is. She says she
+don't want Rose to marry anybody."
+
+"Good Lord! Sylvia doesn't expect a girl with a face like that, and
+money to boot, to be an old maid! My only wonder is that she hasn't
+been snapped up before now."
+
+"I guess Rose has had chances."
+
+"If she hasn't, all the men who have seen her have been stone blind."
+
+"I don't know what has got into Sylvia, and that's the truth," Henry
+said. "I never saw her act the way she does lately. I can't imagine
+what has got into her head about Rose that she thinks she mustn't get
+married."
+
+"Maybe Sylvia is in love with the girl," said Meeks, shrewdly.
+
+"I know she is," said Henry. "Poor Sylvia loves her as if she was her
+own daughter, but I have always understood that mothers were crazy to
+have their daughters married."
+
+"So have I, but these popular ideas are sometimes nonsense. I have
+always heard that myself."
+
+"Sylvia and I have been happy enough together," said Henry. "It can't
+be that her own life as a married woman makes her think it a better
+plan to remain single."
+
+"That's stuff."
+
+"It seems so to me. Well, all the reason I can think of is, Sylvia
+has come to set so much by the girl that she's actually jealous of
+her."
+
+"Do you suppose they'll tell her to-night?" asked Meeks.
+
+Henry regarded him with an expression of actual terror. "Seems as if
+they might wait, and let Sylvia have her night's sleep," he muttered.
+
+"I guess I won't stay to supper," said Meeks.
+
+"Stay, for the Lord's sake."
+
+Meeks laughed. "I believe you are afraid, Henry."
+
+"I hate to see a woman upset over anything."
+
+"So do I, for that matter. Do you think my staying might make it any
+better?"
+
+"Yes, it might. Here we are in sight of the house. You ain't going to
+back out?"
+
+Meeks laughed again, although rather uneasily. "All right," he said.
+
+When he and Henry entered they found Sylvia moving nervously about
+the sitting-room. She was scowling, and her starched apron-strings
+were rampant at her slim back.
+
+"Well," she said, with a snap, "I'm glad somebody has come. Supper's
+been ready for the last quarter of an hour, and I don't know but the
+corn is spoiled. How do you do, Mr. Meeks? I'll be glad to have you
+stay to supper, but I don't know as there's a thing fit to eat."
+
+"Oh, I'll risk it," Sidney said. "You can't have anything worse than
+I've got at home. I had to go to Alford about that confounded Ames
+case. I had a dinner there that wasn't fit for a dog to eat, and I'm
+down to baker's bread and cheese."
+
+"Where have _you_ been?" demanded Sylvia of Henry. He cast an
+appealing glance at Meeks. The two men stood shoulder to shoulder, as
+if confronted by a common foe of nervous and exasperated feminity.
+
+"I'm to blame for that," said Meeks. "I wanted to see if you had any
+wild grapes to spare, and I asked Henry to go down to the orchard
+with me. I suppose you can spare me some of those wild grapes?"
+
+"Take all you want, and welcome," said Sylvia. "Now, I'll put supper
+on the table, and we'll eat it. I ain't going to wait any longer for
+anybody."
+
+After Sylvia had gone, with a jerk, out of the room, the two men
+looked at each other. "Couldn't you give Allen a hint to lay low
+to-night, anyhow?" whispered Meeks.
+
+Henry shook his head. "They'll be sure to show it some way," he
+replied. "I don't know what's got into Sylvia."
+
+"It seems a pretty good sort of match, to me."
+
+"So it does to me. Of course Rose has got more money, and I know as
+well as I want to that Horace has felt a little awkward about that;
+but lately he's been earning extra writing for papers and magazines,
+and it was only last Monday he told me he'd got a steady job for a
+New York paper that wouldn't interfere with his teaching. He seemed
+mighty tickled about it, and I guess he made up his mind then to go
+ahead and get married."
+
+"Come to supper," cried Sylvia, in a harsh voice, from the next room,
+and the two men went out at once and took their seats at the table.
+Rose's and Horace's places were vacant. "I'd like to know what they
+think," said Sylvia, dishing up the baked beans. "They can eat the
+corn cold. It's just as good cold as it is all dried up. Here it is
+six o'clock and they ain't come yet."
+
+"These are baked beans that are baked beans," said Meeks.
+
+"Yes, I always have said that Sylvia knows just how to bake beans,"
+said Henry. "I go to church suppers, and eat other folks' baked
+beans, but they 'ain't got the knack of seasoning, or something."
+
+"It's partly the seasoning and partly the cooking," said Sylvia, in a
+somewhat appeased voice.
+
+"This is brown bread, too," said Meeks. His flattering tone was
+almost fulsome.
+
+Henry echoed him eagerly. "Yes, I always feel just the same about the
+brown bread that Sylvia makes," he said.
+
+But the brown bread touched a discordant tone.
+
+Sylvia frowned. "Mr. Allen always wants it hot," said she, "and it
+'ll be stone cold. I don't see where they went to."
+
+"Here they are now," said Henry. He and Meeks cast an apprehensive
+glance at each other. Voices were heard, and Horace and Rose entered.
+
+"Are we late?" asked Rose. She smiled and blushed, and cast her eyes
+down before Sylvia's look of sharp inquiry. There was a wonderful new
+beauty about the girl. She fairly glowed with it. She was a rose
+indeed, full of sunlight and dew, and holding herself, over her
+golden heart of joy, with a divine grace and modesty.
+
+Horace did not betray himself as much. He had an expression of
+subdued triumph, but his face, less mobile than the girl's, was under
+better control. He took his place at the table and unfolded his
+napkin.
+
+"I am awfully sorry if we have kept you waiting, Mrs. Whitman," he
+said, lightly, as if it did not make the slightest difference if she
+had been kept waiting.
+
+Sylvia had already served Rose with baked beans. Now she spoke to
+Horace. "Pass your plate up, if you please, Mr. Allen," she said.
+"Henry, hand Mr. Allen the brown bread. I expect it's stone cold."
+
+"I like it better cold," said Horace, cheerfully.
+
+Sylvia stared at him, then she turned to Rose. "Where on earth have
+you been?" she demanded.
+
+Horace answered for her. "We went to walk, and sat down under a tree
+in the orchard and talked; and we hadn't any idea how the time was
+passing," he said.
+
+Henry and Meeks cast a relieved glance at each other. It did not
+appear that an announcement was to be made that night. After supper,
+when Meeks left, Henry strolled down the street a little way with him.
+
+"I'm thankful to have it put off to-night, anyhow," he said. "Sylvia
+was all wrought up about their being late to supper, and she wouldn't
+have got a mite of sleep."
+
+"You don't think anything will be said to-night?"
+
+"No, I guess not. I heard Sylvia tell Rose she'd better go to bed
+right after supper, and Rose said, 'Very well, Aunt Sylvia,' in that
+way she has. I never saw a human being who seems to take other
+people's orders as Rose does."
+
+"Allen told me he'd got to sit up till midnight over some writing,"
+said Meeks. "That may have made a difference to the girl. Reckon she
+knew spooning was over for to-day."
+
+Henry looked back at the house. There were two lighted windows on the
+second floor. "Rose is going to bed," he said. "That light's in her
+room."
+
+"She looked happy enough to dazzle one when she came in, poor little
+thing," said Meeks. In his voice was an odd mixture of tenderness,
+admiration, and regret. "You've got your wife," he said, "but I
+wonder if you know how lonely an old fellow like me feels sometimes,
+when he thinks of how he's lived and what he's missed. To think of a
+girl having a face like that for a man. Good Lord!"
+
+"You might have got married if you'd wanted to," said Henry.
+
+"Of course; could get married now if I wanted to, but that isn't the
+question. I don't know what I'm such a d--n fool as to tell you for,
+only it's like ancient history, and no harm that I can see for either
+the living or the dead. There was a time when, if Abrahama White had
+worn a face like that for me--well--Poor girl, she got her heart
+turned the way it wasn't meant to go. She had a mean, lonesome life
+of it. Sometimes now, when I go into that house where she lived so
+many years, I declare, the weight of the burden she had to bear seems
+to be on me. It was a cruel life for a woman, and here's your wife
+wanting that girl to live the same way."
+
+"Wouldn't she have you after Susy got married?" asked Henry. The
+words sounded blunt, but his voice was tender.
+
+"Didn't ask her. I don't think so. She wasn't that kind of woman. It
+was what she wanted or nothing with her, always was. Guess that was
+why I felt the way I did about her."
+
+"She was a handsome girl."
+
+"Handsome! This girl you've got is pretty enough, but there never was
+such a beauty as Abrahama. Sometimes when I call her face back before
+my eyes, I declare it sounds like women's nonsense, but I wonder if I
+haven't done better losing such a woman as that than marrying any
+other."
+
+"She was handsome," Henry said again, in his tone of futile,
+wondering sympathy.
+
+When Henry had left Sidney and returned home, he found, to his
+horror, that Sylvia was not down-stairs. "She's up there with the
+girl, and Rose 'll tell her," he thought, uneasily. "She can't keep
+it to herself if she's alone with another woman."
+
+He was right. Sylvia had followed the girl to her room. She was still
+angry with Rose, and filled with a vague suspicion, but she adored
+her. She was hungry for the pleasure of unfastening her gown, of
+seeing the last of her for the day. When she entered she found Rose
+seated beside the window. The lamp was not lit.
+
+Sylvia stood in the doorway looking into the shadowy room. "Are you
+here?" she asked. She meant her voice to be harsh, but it rang sweet
+with tenderness.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Sylvia."
+
+"Where are you?"
+
+"Over here beside the window."
+
+"What on earth are you setting in the dark for?"
+
+"Oh, I just thought I'd sit down here a few minutes. I was going to
+light the lamp soon."
+
+Sylvia groped her way to the mantel-shelf, found the china match-box,
+and struck a match. Then she lit the lamp on the bureau and looked at
+the girl. Rose held her face a little averted. The lighting of the
+room had blotted out for her the soft indeterminateness of the summer
+night outside, and she was a little afraid to look at Sylvia with the
+glare of the lamp full upon her face.
+
+"You'll get cold setting there," said Sylvia; "besides, folks can
+look right in. Get up and I'll unhook your dress."
+
+Rose got up. Sylvia lowered the white window-shade and Rose stood
+about for her gown to be unfastened. She still kept her face away
+from the older woman. Sylvia unfastened the muslin bodice. She looked
+fondly at the soft, girlish neck when it was exposed. Her lips fairly
+tingled to kiss it, but she put the impulse sternly from her.
+
+"What were you and Mr. Allen talking about so long down in the
+orchard?" said she.
+
+"A good many things--ever so many things," said Rose, evasively.
+
+Sylvia saw the lovely, slender neck grow crimson. She turned the girl
+around with a sudden twist at the shoulders, and saw the face
+flushing sweetly under its mist of hair. She saw the pouting lips and
+the downcast eyes.
+
+"Why don't you look at me?" she said, in a hard whisper.
+
+Rose remained motionless.
+
+"Look at me."
+
+Rose raised her eyelids, gave one glance at Sylvia, then she dropped
+them again. She was all one soft, rosy flush. She smiled a smile
+which she could not control--a smile of ecstasy.
+
+Sylvia turned deadly pale. She gasped, and held the girl from her,
+looking at her pitilessly. "You don't mean it?" she exclaimed.
+
+Then Rose spoke with a sudden burst of emotion. "Oh, Aunt Sylvia,"
+she said, "I thought I wouldn't tell you to-night. I made him promise
+not to tell to-night, because I was afraid you wouldn't like it, but
+I've got to. I don't feel right to go to bed and not let you know."
+
+"Then it's so?"
+
+Rose gave her a glance of ineffable happiness and appeal for sympathy.
+
+"You and him are planning to get married?"
+
+"Not for a year; not for a whole year. He's absurdly proud because
+he's poor, and he wants to make sure that he can earn more than his
+teacher's salary. Not for a whole year."
+
+"You and him are planning to get married?"
+
+"I wasn't sure till this afternoon," Rose whispered. She put her arms
+around Sylvia, and tried to nestle against her flat bosom with a
+cuddling movement of her head, like a baby. "I wasn't sure," she
+whispered, "but he--told me, and--now I am sure."
+
+Then Rose wept a little, softly, against Sylvia's thin breast. Sylvia
+stood like a stone. "Haven't you had all you wanted here?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Sylvia, you know I have. You've been so good to me."
+
+"I had got my plans made to put in a bath-room," said Sylvia. "I've
+got the carpenters engaged, and the plumber. They are going to begin
+next week."
+
+"You've been as good as can be to me, Aunt Sylvia."
+
+"And I'm on the lookout for a carriage and horse you can drive, and
+I've been planning to have some parties for you. I've tried to think
+of everything that would make you feel happy and contented and at
+home."
+
+"Oh, you have; I know you have, dear Aunt Sylvia," murmured Rose.
+
+"I have done all I knew how," repeated Sylvia, in a stony fashion.
+She put the girl gently away and turned to go, but Rose caught her
+arm.
+
+"Aunt Sylvia, you aren't going like this!" she cried. "I was afraid
+you wouldn't like it, though I don't know why. It does seem that
+Horace is all you could ask, if I were your very own daughter."
+
+"You are like my very own daughter," said Sylvia, stiffly.
+
+"Then why don't you like Horace?"
+
+"I never said anything against him."
+
+"Then why do you look so?"
+
+Sylvia stood silent.
+
+"You won't go without kissing me, anyway, will you?" sobbed Rose.
+
+This time she really wept with genuine hurt and bewilderment.
+
+Sylvia bent and touched her thin, very cold lips to Rose's. "Now go
+to bed," she said, and moved away, and was out of the room in spite
+of Rose's piteous cry to her to come back.
+
+Henry, after he had entered the house and discovered that Sylvia was
+up-stairs with Rose, sat down to his evening paper. He tried to read,
+but could not get further than the glaring headlines about a
+kidnapping case. He was listening always for Sylvia's step on the
+stair.
+
+At last he heard it. He turned the paper, with a loud rustle, to the
+continuation of the kidnapping case as she entered the room. He did
+not even look up. He appeared to be absorbed in the paper.
+
+Sylvia closed the hall door behind her noiselessly; then she crossed
+the room and closed the door leading into the dining-room. Henry
+watched her with furtive eyes. He was horribly dismayed without
+knowing why. When Sylvia had the room completely closed she came
+close to him. She extended her right hand, and he saw that it
+contained a little sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings pinned
+together.
+
+"Henry Whitman," said she.
+
+"Sylvia, you are as white as a sheet. What on earth ails you?"
+
+"Do you know what has happened?"
+
+Henry's eyes fell before her wretched, questioning ones. "What do you
+mean, Sylvia?" he said, in a faint voice.
+
+"Do you know that Mr. Allen and Rose have come to an understanding
+and are going to get married?"
+
+Henry stared at her.
+
+"She has just told me," said Sylvia. "Here I have done everything in
+the world I could for her to make her contented."
+
+"Sylvia, what on earth makes you feel so? She is only going to do
+what every girl who has a good chance does--what you did yourself."
+
+"Look at here," said Sylvia, in an awful voice.
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"I found them in a box up in the garret. They were cut from
+newspapers years ago, when Rose was nothing but a child, just after
+her mother died."
+
+"What are they? Don't look so, Sylvia."
+
+"Here," said Sylvia, and Henry took the little yellow sheaf of
+newspaper clippings, adjusted his spectacles, moved the lamp nearer,
+and began to read.
+
+He read one, then he looked at Sylvia, and his face was as white as
+hers. "Good God!" he said.
+
+Sylvia stood beside him, and their eyes remained fixed on each
+other's white face. "I suppose the others are the same," Henry said,
+hoarsely.
+
+Sylvia nodded. "Only from different papers. It's terrible how alike
+they are."
+
+"So you've had this on your mind?"
+
+Sylvia nodded grimly.
+
+"When did you find them?"
+
+"We'd been living here a few days. I was up in the garret. There was
+a box."
+
+Henry remained motionless for a few moments. Then he sighed heavily,
+rose, and took Sylvia by the hand. "Come," he said.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Come."
+
+Sylvia followed, dragging back a little at her husband's leading
+hand, like a child. They passed through the dining-room into the
+kitchen. "There's a fire in the stove, ain't there?" said Henry, as
+they went.
+
+Sylvia nodded again. She did not seem to have many words for this
+exigency.
+
+Out in the kitchen Henry moved a lid from the stove, and put the
+little sheaf of newspaper clippings, which seemed somehow to have a
+sinister aspect of its own, on the bed of live coals. They leaped
+into a snarl of vicious flame. Henry and Sylvia stood hand in hand,
+watching, until nothing but a feathery heap of ashes remained on top
+of the coals. Then he replaced the lid and looked at Sylvia.
+
+"Have you got any reason to believe that any living person besides
+you and I knows anything about this?" he asked.
+
+Sylvia shook her head.
+
+"Do you think Miss Farrel knew?"
+
+Sylvia shook her head again.
+
+"Do you think that lawyer out West, who takes care of her money,
+knows?"
+
+"No." Sylvia spoke in a thin, strained voice. "This must be what she
+is always afraid of remembering," she said.
+
+"Pray God she never does remember," Henry said. "Poor little thing!
+Here she is carrying a load on her back, and if she did but once turn
+her head far enough to get a glimpse of it she would die of it. It's
+lucky we can't see the other side of the moon, and I guess it's lucky
+we haven't got eyes in the backs of our heads."
+
+"You wondered why I didn't want her to get married to him," said
+Sylvia.
+
+Henry made an impatient motion. "Look here, Sylvia," he said. "I love
+that young man like my own son, and your feeling about it is rank
+idiocy."
+
+"And I love her like my own daughter!" cried Sylvia, passionately.
+"And I don't want to feel that she's marrying and keeping anything
+back."
+
+"Now, look here, Sylvia, here are you and I. We've got this secret
+betwixt us, and we've got to carry it betwixt us, and never let any
+living mortal see it as long as we both live; and the one that
+outlives the other has got to bear it alone, like a sacred trust."
+
+Sylvia nodded. Henry put out the kitchen lamp, and the two left the
+room, moving side by side, and it was to each of them as if they were
+in reality carrying with their united strength the heavy, dead weight
+of the secret.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+Henry, after the revelation which Sylvia had made to him, became more
+puzzled than ever. He had thought that her secret anxiety would be
+alleviated by the confidence she had made him, but it did not seem to
+be. On the contrary, she went about with a more troubled air than
+before. Even Horace and Rose, in the midst of their love-dream,
+noticed it.
+
+One day Henry, coming suddenly into the sitting-room, found Rose on
+her knees beside Sylvia, weeping bitterly. Sylvia was looking over
+the girl's head with a terrible, set expression, as if she were
+looking at her own indomitable will. For the first time Henry lost
+sight of the fact that Sylvia was a woman. He seemed to see her as a
+separate human soul, sexless and free, intent upon her own ends,
+which might be entirely distinct from his, and utterly unknown to him.
+
+Rose turned her tear-wet face towards him. "Oh, Uncle Henry," she
+sobbed, "Aunt Sylvia is worrying over something, and she won't tell
+me."
+
+"Nonsense," said Henry.
+
+"Yes, she is. Horace and I both know she is. She won't tell me what
+it is. She goes about all the time with such a dreadful face, and she
+won't tell me. Oh, Aunt Sylvia, is it because you don't want me to
+marry Horace?"
+
+Sylvia spoke, hardly moving her thin lips. "I have nothing whatever
+against your marriage," she said. "I did think at first that you were
+better off as you were, but now I don't feel so."
+
+"But you act so." Rose stumbled to her feet and ran sobbing out of
+the room.
+
+Henry turned to his wife, who sat like a statue. "Sylvia, you ought
+to be ashamed of yourself," he said, in a bewildered tone. "Here you
+are taking all the pleasure out of that poor child's little
+love-affair, going about as you do."
+
+"There are other things besides love-affairs," said Sylvia, in a
+strange, monotonous tone, almost as if she were deaf and dumb, and
+had no knowledge of inflections. "There are affairs between the soul
+and its Maker that are more important than love betwixt men and
+women."
+
+Sylvia did not look at Henry. She still gazed straight ahead, with
+that expression of awful self-review. The thought crossed Henry's
+mind that she was more like some terrible doll with a mechanical
+speech than a living woman. He went up to her and took her hands.
+They were lying stiffly on her lap, in the midst of soft white
+cambric and lace--some bridal lingerie which she was making for Rose.
+"Look here, Sylvia," said Henry, "you don't mean that you are
+fretting about--what you told me?"
+
+"No," said Sylvia, in her strange voice.
+
+"Then what--?"
+
+Sylvia shook off his hands and rose to her feet. Her scissors dropped
+with a thud. She kept the fluffy white mass over her arm. Henry
+picked up the scissors. "Here are your scissors," said he.
+
+Sylvia paid no attention. She was looking at him with stern, angry
+eyes.
+
+"What I have to bear I have to bear," said she. "It is nothing
+whatever to you. It is nothing whatever to any of you. I want to be
+let alone. If you don't like to see my face, don't look at it. None
+of you have any call to look at it. I am doing what I think is right,
+and I want to be let alone."
+
+She went out of the room, leaving Henry standing with her scissors in
+his hand.
+
+After supper that night he could not bear to remain with Sylvia,
+sewing steadily upon Rose's wedding finery, and still wearing that
+terrible look on her face. Rose and Horace were in the parlor. Henry
+went down to Sidney Meeks's for comfort.
+
+"Something is on my wife's mind," he told Sidney, when the two men
+were alone in the pleasant, untidy room.
+
+"Do you think she feels badly about the love-affair?"
+
+"She says that isn't it," replied Henry, gloomily, "but she goes
+about with a face like grim death, and I don't know what to make of
+it."
+
+"She'll tell finally."
+
+"I don't know whether she will or not."
+
+"Women always do."
+
+"I don't know whether she will or not."
+
+"She will."
+
+Henry remained with Meeks until quite late. Sylvia sewed and sewed by
+her sitting-room lamp. Her face never relaxed. She could hear the hum
+of voices across the hall.
+
+After awhile the door of the parlor was flung violently open, and she
+heard Horace's rushing step upon the stair. Then Rose came in, all
+pale and tearful.
+
+"I have told him I couldn't marry him, Aunt Sylvia," she said.
+
+Sylvia looked at her. "Why not?" she asked, harshly.
+
+"I can't marry him and have you feel so dreadfully about it."
+
+"Who said I felt dreadfully about it?"
+
+"Nobody said so; but you look so dreadfully."
+
+"I can't help my looks. They have nothing whatever to do with your
+love-affairs."
+
+"You say that just to pacify me, I know," said Rose, pitifully.
+
+"You don't know. Do you mean to say that you have dismissed him?"
+
+"Yes, and he is horribly angry with me," moaned Rose.
+
+"I should think he would be. What right have you to dismiss a man to
+please another woman, who is hardly any relation to you? I should
+think he would be mad. What did he do?"
+
+"He just slammed the door and ran."
+
+Sylvia laid her work on the table and started out of the room with an
+angry stride.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Rose, feebly, but she got no reply.
+
+Soon Sylvia re-entered the room, and she had Horace by the arm. He
+looked stern and bewildered. Sylvia gave him a push towards Rose.
+
+"Now look at here, both of you," she said. "Once for all, I have got
+nothing to say against your getting married. I am worrying about
+something, and it is nobody's business what it is. I am doing right.
+I am doing what I know is right, and I ain't going to let myself be
+persuaded I ain't. I have done all I could for Rose, and I am going
+to do more. I have nothing against your getting married. Now I am
+going into the parlor to finish this work. The lamp in there is
+better. You can settle it betwixt you."
+
+Sylvia went out, a long line of fine lace trailing in her wake.
+Horace stood still where she had left him. Rose looked at him timidly.
+
+"I didn't know she felt so," she ventured, at last, in a small voice.
+
+Horace said nothing. Rose went to him, put her hand through his arm,
+and laid her cheek against his unresponsive shoulder. "I did think it
+would about kill her if it went on," she whispered. "I think I was
+mistaken."
+
+"And you didn't mind in the least how much I was hurt, as long as she
+wasn't," said Horace.
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"I must say it did not have that appearance."
+
+Rose wept softly against his rough coat-sleeve. "I wanted to do what
+was right, and she looked so dreadfully; and I didn't want to be
+selfish," she sobbed.
+
+Horace looked down at her, and his face softened. "Oh Rose," he said,
+"you are all alike, you women. When it comes to a question of right
+or wrong, you will all lay your best-beloved on the altar of
+sacrifice. Your logic is all wrong, dear. You want to do right so
+much that the dust of virtue gets into your eyes of love and blinds
+them. I should come first with you, before your aunt Sylvia, and your
+own truth and happiness should come first; but you wanted to lay them
+all at her feet--or, rather, at the feet of your conscience."
+
+"I only wanted to do what was right," Rose sobbed again.
+
+"I know you did, dear." Horace put his arm around Rose. He drew her
+to a chair, sat down, and took her on his knee. He looked at her
+almost comically, in return for her glance of piteous appeal.
+
+"Don't laugh at me," she whispered.
+
+Horace kissed her. "I am not laughing at you, but at the eternal
+feminine, dear," he said. "There is something very funny about the
+eternal feminine. It is so earnest on the wrong tack, and hurts
+itself and others so cruelly, and gets no thanks for it."
+
+"I don't know what you mean. I don't like your talking so to me,
+Horace. I only meant to do what was right."
+
+"I won't talk so any more, darling."
+
+"I don't think I have much of the eternal feminine about me, Horace."
+
+"Of course not, sweetheart."
+
+"I love you, anyway," Rose whispered, and put up her face to be
+kissed again, "and I didn't want to hurt you. I only wanted to do my
+duty."
+
+"Of course you did, sweetheart. But now you think your duty is to
+marry me, don't you?"
+
+Rose laughed, and there was something angelic and innocent about that
+laugh of the young girl. Horace kissed her again, then both started.
+"She is talking to herself in there," whispered Rose. "Horace, what
+do you suppose it is about? Poor Aunt Sylvia must be worrying
+horribly about something. What do you think it is?"
+
+"I don't know, darling," replied Horace, soberly.
+
+They both heard that lamentable murmur of a voice in the other room,
+but the doors were closed and not a word could be understood.
+
+Sylvia was sewing rapidly, setting the most delicate and dainty
+stitches, and all the time she was talking carrying on a horrible
+argument, as if against some invisible dissenter.
+
+"Ain't I doing everything I can?" demanded Sylvia. "Ain't I, I'd like
+to know? Ain't I bought everything I could for her? Ain't I making
+her wedding-clothes by hand, when my eyes are hurting me all the
+time? Ain't I set myself aside and given her up, when God knows I
+love her better than if she was my own child? Ain't I doing
+everything? What call have I to blame myself? Only to-day I've bought
+a lot of silver for her, and I'm going to buy a lot more. After the
+underclothes are done I'm going about the table linen, though she
+don't need it. I ain't using a mite of her aunt Abrahama's. I'm
+saving it all for her. I'm saving everything for her. I've made my
+will and left all her aunt's property to her. What have I done? I'm
+doing right; I tell you I'm doing right. I know I'm doing right.
+Anybody that says I ain't, lies. They lie, I say. I'm doing right.
+I--"
+
+Henry opened the door. He had just returned from Sidney Meeks's.
+Sylvia was sewing quietly.
+
+Henry looked around the room. "Why, who were you talking to?" he
+asked.
+
+"Nobody," replied Sylvia, taking another stitch.
+
+"I thought I heard you talking."
+
+"How could I be talking when there ain't anybody here to talk to?"
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+It was not quite a year afterwards that the wedding-day of Rose and
+Horace was set. It was July, shortly after the beginning of the
+summer vacation. The summer was very cool, and the country looked
+like June rather than July. Even the roses were not gone.
+
+The wedding was to be in the evening, and all day long women worked
+decorating the house. Rose had insisted on being married in the old
+White homestead. She was to have quite a large wedding, and people
+from New York and Boston crowded the hotel. Miss Hart was obliged to
+engage three extra maids. Hannah Simmons had married the winter
+before. She had married a young man from Alford, where she now lived,
+and came over to assist her former mistress. Lucinda had a look of
+combined delight and anxiety. "It's almost as bad as when they
+thought we'd committed murder," she said to Hannah.
+
+"It was queer how we found that," said Hannah.
+
+"Hush," said Lucinda. "You remember what we agreed upon after we'd
+told Albion Bennet that we'd keep it secret."
+
+"Of course I remember," said Hannah; "but there ain't any harm in my
+reminding you how queer it was that we found the arsenic, that the
+poor thing had been taking to make her beautiful complexion, in her
+room."
+
+"It was awful," said Lucinda. "Poor soul! I always liked her. People
+ought to be contented with what God has given them for complexions."
+
+"I wonder if she would have looked very dreadful if she hadn't taken
+it," Hannah said, ruminatingly. She was passing the kitchen
+looking-glass as she spoke, and glanced in it. Hannah considered that
+her own skin was very rough. "I suppose," said she, "that it would
+never have happened if she had been careful. I suppose lots of women
+do use such things."
+
+Lucinda cast a sharp glance at Hannah. "It's downright wicked fooling
+with them," said she. "I hope you won't get any such ideas into your
+head."
+
+"No, I sha'n't," replied Hannah. "I'm married."
+
+"I heard pretty straight this morning," said Lucinda, "that Lucy
+Ayres had got married out West, and had done real well."
+
+"I'm mighty glad of it," said Hannah, sharply. "She was crazy enough
+to get married when she was here."
+
+Lucinda echoed her as sharply. "Guess you're right," she said.
+"Albion Bennet told me some things. I shouldn't think she'd make much
+of a wife, if she has got a pretty face."
+
+"She's just the kind to settle down and be a real sensible woman,
+after she's found out that she's on the earth and not in the clouds,"
+returned Hannah, with an air of wisdom.
+
+Then Albion Bennet came into the kitchen for some hot water for
+shaving. He was going to the wedding, and had closed his store early,
+and was about to devote a long time to preparations. Lucinda, also,
+was going. She had a new black silk for the occasion.
+
+When Albion left the kitchen he beckoned her to follow him. She made
+an excuse and went out into the corridor. "What is it?" she said to
+Albion, who was waiting, holding his pitcher of hot water.
+
+"Nothing," said he, "only I was over to Alford this morning and--I
+bought some violets. I thought you'd like to wear them to the
+wedding."
+
+Lucinda stared at him. "What for?" asked she.
+
+Albion fidgeted and his pitcher of hot water tilted.
+
+"Look out, you're spilling the water," said Lucinda. "What for?"
+
+"I--thought you might like to wear them, you know," said Albion. He
+had never before given violets to a woman, and she had never had any
+given her by a man.
+
+"Thank you," she said, faintly.
+
+"I've ordered a hack to come for me at half-past seven, and--I
+thought maybe you'd like to ride with me," said Albion, further.
+
+Lucinda stared. "What for?" she said again.
+
+"I thought you might like to ride."
+
+Then Lucinda colored. "Why, folks would talk," said she.
+
+"Let them. I don't care; do you?"
+
+"Albion Bennet, I'm a lot older than you. I ain't old enough to be
+your mother, but I'm a good deal older than you."
+
+"I don't care," said Albion. "I know how old you are. I don't care.
+I'd enough sight rather have you than those young things that keep
+racing to my store. When I get you I shall know what I've got, and
+when I've got them I shouldn't know. I'd rather have heavy bread, or
+dry bread, and know it was bread, than new-fangled things that ain't
+a mite more wholesome, and you don't know what you've got. I don't
+know how you feel, Lucinda, but I ain't one who could ever marry
+somebody he hadn't summered and wintered. I've summered and wintered
+you, and you've summered and wintered me. I don't know how much
+falling in love there is for either of us, but I reckon we can get on
+together and have a good home, and that's what love-making has to
+wind up in, if the mainspring don't break and all the works bust. I'm
+making quite a little lot from my store. I suppose maybe the soda and
+candy trade will fall off a little if I get married, but if it does I
+can take a young clerk to draw it. You won't have to work so hard.
+You can let some of this big hotel, and keep rooms enough for us, and
+I'll hire a girl for the kitchen and you can do fancy-work."
+
+"Land!" said Lucinda. "I can do the work for only two."
+
+"You're going to have a hired girl," said Albion, firmly. "I know of
+one I can get. She's a real good cook. Are you going in the hack with
+me, Lucinda?"
+
+Lucinda looked up at him, and her face was as the face of a young
+girl. She had never had an offer, nor a lover. Albion Bennet looked
+very dear to her.
+
+"Good land!" said Albion, "you act as if you were a back number,
+Lucinda. You look as young as lots of the young women. You don't do
+up your hair quite like the girls that come for soda and candy, but
+otherwise--"
+
+"I can do up my hair like them, if I want to," said Lucinda. "It's
+thick enough. I suppose I 'ain't fussed because I didn't realize that
+anybody but myself ever thought about it one way or the other."
+
+"Then you'll go in the hack?" said Albion.
+
+Lucinda made a sudden, sharp wheel about. "I sha'n't get ready to go
+in a hack if I don't hurry and get these biscuits made for supper,"
+said she, and was gone.
+
+It is odd how individuality will uprear itself before its own
+consciousness, in the most adverse circumstances. Few in all the
+company invited to the wedding wasted a thought upon Albion Bennet
+and Lucinda Hart, but both felt as if they were the principal figures
+of it all. Lucinda really did merit attention. She had taken another
+role upon her stage of life. The change in her appearance savored of
+magic. Albion kept looking at her as if he doubted his very eyes.
+Lucinda did not wear the black silk which she had made for the
+occasion. She had routed out an old lavender satin, which she had
+worn years ago and had laid aside for mourning when her father died.
+It was made in one of those quaint styles which defy fashion. Lucinda
+had not changed as to her figure. She hesitated a little at the
+V-shape of the neck. She wondered if she really ought not to fill
+that in with lace, but she shook her head defiantly, and fastened
+around her neck a black velvet ribbon with a little pearl pin. Then
+she tucked Albion's violets in the lavender satin folds of her waist.
+Her hair was still untouched with gray, and she had spoken the truth
+when she had said she could arrange it like a girl. She had puffed it
+low over her temples and given it a daring twist in the back.
+
+Albion fairly gasped when he saw her. "Lord!" said he, "why ain't you
+been for candy and soda to the store, too?"
+
+Few people at the wedding noticed Lucinda and Albion, but they
+noticed each other to that extent that all save themselves seemed
+rather isolated from them. Albion whispered to Lucinda that she would
+make a beautiful bride, and she looked up at him, and they were in
+love.
+
+They stood well back. Neither Lucinda nor Albion were pushing.
+Lucinda considered that her wonderful city boarders belonged in the
+front ranks, and Albion shared her opinion. It was a beautiful
+wedding. The old house was transformed into a bower with flowers and
+vines. Musicians played in the south room, which was like a grove
+with palms. There was a room filled with the wedding-presents, and
+the glitter of cut glass and silver seemed almost like another
+musical effect.
+
+The wedding was to be at eight o'clock. Everybody was there before
+that time. Meeks and Henry stood together in the hall by the spiral
+staircase, which was wound with flowers and vines. Henry wore a
+dress-suit for the first time in his life. Meeks wore an ancient one,
+in which he moved gingerly. "I believe I weigh fifty pounds more than
+I did when the blamed thing was made," he said to Henry, "and the
+broadcloth is as thin as paper. I'm afraid to move."
+
+Henry looked very sober. "What's the matter, Henry?" asked Sidney.
+
+"It's Sylvia."
+
+"Sylvia? I thought--"
+
+"Yes, I thought, too, that she had got what was on her mind off it,
+but she hasn't. I don't know what ails her. She ain't herself. I'm
+worried to death about her."
+
+Then the wedding-march was played and the bridal party came down the
+stairs. Rose was on the arm of the lawyer who had acted as her
+trustee. He was to give her away. The task had been an impossible one
+for Henry to undertake, although he had been the first one thought of
+by Rose. Henry had told Meeks, and the two had chuckled together over
+it. "The idea of a man from a shoe-shop giving away a bride in real
+lace at a swell wedding," said Henry.
+
+"She was the right sort to ask you, though," said Meeks.
+
+"Bless her little heart," said Henry, "she wouldn't care if Uncle
+Henry smelled strong enough of leather to choke out the smell of the
+flowers. But I ain't going to make a spectacle of myself at my time
+of life. If I stand that dress-suit I shall do well. Sylvia is going
+to wear black lace with a tail to it. I know somebody will step on
+it."
+
+Sylvia, in her black lace, came down the stairs in the wake of the
+bridal party. She did not seem to see her husband as she passed him.
+
+"By Jove!" said the lawyer, in a whisper. "What does ail her, Henry?
+She looks as if she was going to jump at something."
+
+Henry did not answer. He made his way as quickly as possible after
+Sylvia, and Sidney kept with him.
+
+Horace and Rose, in her bridal white, stood before the clergyman. The
+music had ceased. The clergyman opened his mouth to begin the
+wedding-service, when Sylvia interrupted him. She pushed herself like
+a wedge of spiritual intent past the bridal pair and the bridesmaids
+and best man, and stood beside the clergyman. He was a small, blond
+man, naturally nervous, and he fairly trembled when Sylvia put her
+hand on his arm and spoke.
+
+"I have something to say," said she, in a thin, strained voice. "You
+wait."
+
+The clergyman looked aghast at her. People pressed forward, craning
+their necks to hear more distinctly. Some tittered from nervousness.
+Henry made his way to his wife's side, but she pushed him from her.
+
+"No," she said. "Stand back, Henry, and listen with the others. You
+had nothing to do with it. You ain't concerned in it."
+
+Then she addressed the assembly. "This man, my husband," she said,
+"has known nothing of it. I want you all to understand that before I
+begin." Sylvia fumbled in the folds of her black lace skirt, while
+the people waited. She produced a roll of paper and held it up before
+them. Then she began her speech.
+
+"I want," said she, "before all this company, before my old friends,
+and the friends of these two young people who are about to be
+married, to make my confession. I have not had the courage before. I
+have courage now, and this is the fitting time and place, since it
+metes out the fittest punishment and shame to me, who deserve so
+much. You have assembled here to-night thinking that you were to be
+at my house at this wedding. It is not so. It is not my house. None
+of this property is mine. I have known it was not mine since a little
+while after we came to live here. I have known it all belonged to
+Rose Fletcher, Abrahama White's own niece. After Rose came to live
+with us, I tried to put salve on my conscience by doing every single
+thing I could for her. When my husband went to work again, I spent
+every cent that came from her aunt's property on Rose. I gave her all
+her aunt's jewelry. I tried to salve over my conscience and make it
+seem right--what I had done, what I was doing. I tried to make it
+seem right by telling myself that Rose had enough property of her own
+and didn't need this, but I couldn't do it. I have been in torment,
+holding wealth that didn't belong to me, that has gnawed at my very
+heart all the time. Now I am going to confess. Here is Abrahama
+White's last will and testament. I found it in a box in the garret
+with some letters. Abrahama wrote letters to her sister asking her to
+forgive her, and telling her how sorry she was, and begging her to
+come home, but she never sent one of them. There they all were. She
+had tried to salve her conscience as I have tried to salve mine. She
+couldn't do it, either. She had to give it up, as I am doing. Then
+she made her will and left all her property to Rose."
+
+Sylvia unfolded the roll of paper and began reading. The will was
+very short and concise. It was as follows:
+
+"I, Abrahama White, being in sound mind and understanding, and moved
+thereunto by a desire to make my peace with God for my sins before I
+give up this mortal flesh, declare this to be my last will and
+testament. I give and bequeath to my niece, Rose Fletcher, the
+daughter of my beloved sister, deceased, my entire property, real and
+personal, to her and her heirs forever. And I hereby appoint Sidney
+Meeks, Esquire, as my executor.
+
+  "(Signed) Abrahama White."
+
+Sylvia read the will in her thin, strained voice, very clearly. Every
+word was audible. Then she spoke again. "I have kept it secret all
+this time," said she. "My husband knew nothing of it. I kept it from
+him. I tried to hide from God and myself what I was doing, but I
+could not. Here is the will, and Miss Rose Fletcher, who stands
+before you, about to be united to the man of her choice, is the owner
+of this house and land and all the property which goes with it."
+
+She stopped. There was a tense silence. Then Sidney Meeks spoke.
+"Mrs. Whitman," he said, "may I trouble you for the date of that
+document you hold, and also for the names of the witnesses?"
+
+Sylvia looked at Sidney in bewilderment, then she scrutinized the
+will. "I don't see any date," she said, at last, "and there is no
+name signed except just Abrahama's."
+
+Meeks stepped forward. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "Mrs. Whitman
+has, I am pleased to say, been under quite unnecessary anxiety of
+spirit. The document which she holds is not valid. It is neither
+dated nor signed. I have seen it before. The deceased lady, Miss
+Abrahama White, called me in one morning, shortly before her death,
+and showed me this document, which she had herself drawn up, merely
+to make her wishes clear to me. She instructed me to make out a will
+under those directions, and I was to bring it to her for her
+signature, and produce the proper witnesses. Then, the next day, she
+called me in to inform me that there had been a change in her plans
+since she had heard of her niece's having a fortune, and gave me
+directions for the later will, which was properly made out, signed,
+witnessed, and probated after Miss White's decease. Mrs. Whitman is
+the rightful heir; but since she has labored under the delusion that
+she was not, I am sure we all appreciate her courage and sense of
+duty in making the statement which you have just heard from her lips."
+
+Sylvia looked at the lawyer, and her face was ghastly. "Do you mean
+to say that I have been thinking I was committing theft, when I
+wasn't, all this time?" said she.
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+Henry went to Sylvia and took hold of her arm, but she did not seem
+to heed him. "I was just as guilty," said she, firmly, "for I had the
+knowledge of sin in my heart and I held it there. I was just as
+guilty."
+
+She stared helplessly at the worthless will which she still held. A
+young girl tittered softly. Sylvia turned towards the sound. "There
+is no occasion to laugh," said she, "at one who thought she was
+sinning, and has had the taste of sin in her soul, even though she
+was not doing wrong. The intention was there."
+
+Sylvia stopped. Rose had both arms around her, and was kissing her
+and whispering. Sylvia pushed her gently away. "Now," she said to the
+minister, "you can go on with your marrying. Even if Mr. Meeks had
+told me before what he has just told me here in your presence, I
+should have had to speak out. I've carried it on my shoulders and in
+my heart just as long as I could and live and walk and speak under
+it, let alone saying my prayers. I don't say I haven't got to carry
+it now, for I have, as long as I live; but telling you all about it
+was the only way I could shift a little of the heft of it. Now I feel
+as if the Lord Almighty was helping me carry the burden, and always
+would. That's all I've got to say. Now you can go on with your
+marrying."
+
+Sylvia stepped back. There was a hush, then a solemn murmur of one
+voice, broken at intervals by other hushes and low responses.
+
+When it was over, and the bridal pair stood in the soft shadow of
+their bridal flowers--Rose's white garment being covered with a
+lace-like tracery of vines and bride roses, and her head with its
+chaplet of orange-blossoms shining out clearly with a white radiance
+from the purple mist of leaves and flowers, which were real, yet
+unreal, and might have been likened to her maiden dreams--Henry and
+Sylvia came first to greet them.
+
+Henry's dress-suit fitted well, but his shoulders, bent with his
+life-work over the cutting-table, already moulded it. No tailor on
+earth could overcome the terrible, triumphant rigidity of that back
+fitted for years to its burden of toil. However, the man's face was
+happy with a noble happiness. He simply shook hands, with awkward
+solemnity, with the two, but in his heart was great, unselfish
+exultation.
+
+"This man," he was saying to himself, "has work to do that won't
+grind him down and double him up, soul and body, like a dumb animal.
+He can take care of his wife, and not let her get bent, either, and
+the Lord knows I'm thankful."
+
+He felt Sylvia's little nervous hand on his arm, and a great
+tenderness for her was over him. He had not a thought of blame or
+shame on her account.
+
+Instead, he looked at Rose, blooming under her bridal flowers, not so
+much smiling as beaming with a soft, remote radiance, like a star,
+and he said to himself: "Thank the Lord that she will never get so
+warped and twisted as to what is right and wrong by the need of money
+to keep soul and body together, that she will have to do what my wife
+has done, and bear such a burden on her pretty shoulders."
+
+It seemed to Henry that never, not even in his first wedded rapture,
+had he loved his wife as he loved her that night. He glanced at her,
+and she looked wonderful to him; in fact, there was in Sylvia's face
+that night an element of wonder. In it spirit was manifest, far above
+and crowning the flesh and its sordid needs. Her shoulders, under the
+fine lace gown, were bent; her very heart was bent; but she saw the
+goal where she could lay her burden down.
+
+The music began again. People thronged around the bride and groom.
+There were soft sounds of pleasant words, gentle laughs, and happy
+rejoinders. Everybody smiled. They witnessed happiness with perfect
+sympathy. It cast upon them rosy reflections. And yet every one bore,
+unseen or seen, the burden of his or her world upon straining
+shoulders. The grand, pathetic tragedy inseparable from life, which
+Atlas symbolized, moved multiple at the marriage feast, and yet love
+would in the end sanctify it for them all.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Shoulders of Atlas, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
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