“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.
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.
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 haveyoubeen?” 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.
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.”