Chapter 12

________________________________________________
_ 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. _

Read next: Chapter 13

Read previous: Chapter 11

Table of content of Shoulders of Atlas: A Novel


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book