Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 naïve 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”