The next morning at breakfast Rose announced her intention of going
to see if Lucy Ayres would not go to drive with her.
"There's one very nice little horse at the livery-stable," said she,
"and I can drive. It is a beautiful morning, and poor Lucy did not
look very well yesterday, and I think it will do her good."
Horace turned white. Henry noticed it. Sylvia, who was serving
something, did not. Henry had thought he had arrived at a knowledge
of Horace's suspicions, which in themselves seemed to him perfectly
groundless, and now that he had, as he supposed, proved them to be
so, he was profoundly puzzled. Before he had gone to Horace's
assistance. Now he did not see his way clear towards doing so, and
saw no necessity for it. He ate his breakfast meditatively. Horace
pushed away his plate and rose.
"Why, what's the matter?" asked Sylvia. "Don't you feel well, Mr.
Allen?"
"Perfectly well; never felt better."
"You haven't eaten enough to keep a sparrow alive."
"I have eaten fast," said Horace. "I have to make an early start this
morning. I have some work to do before school."
Rose apparently paid no attention. She went on with her plans for her
drive.
"Are you sure you know how to manage a horse?" said Sylvia,
anxiously. "I used to drive, but I can't go with you because the
washerwoman is coming."
"Of course I can drive," said Rose. "I love to drive. And I don't
believe there's a horse in the stable that would get out of a walk,
anyway."
"You won't try to pass by any steam-rollers, and you'll look out for
automobiles, won't you?" said Sylvia.
Horace left them talking and set out hurriedly. When he reached the
Ayres house he entered the gate, passed between the flowering shrubs
which bordered the gravel walk, and rang the bell with vigor. He was
desperate. Lucy herself opened the door. When she saw Horace she
turned red, then white. She was dressed neatly in a little blue
cotton wrapper, and her pretty hair was arranged as usual, with the
exception of one tiny curl-paper on her forehead. Lucy's hand went
nervously to this curl-paper.
"Oh, good-morning!" she said, breathlessly, as if she had been
running.
Horace returned her greeting gravely. "Can I see you a few moments,
Miss Lucy?" he said.
A wild light came into the girl's eyes. Her cheeks flushed again.
Again she spoke in her nervous, panting voice, and asked him in. She
led the way into the parlor and excused herself flutteringly. She was
back in a few moments. Instead of the curl-paper there was a little,
soft, dark, curly lock on her forehead. She had also fastened the
neck of her wrapper with a gold brooch. The wrapper sloped well from
her shoulders and displayed a lovely V of white neck. She sat down
opposite Horace, and the simple garment adjusted itself to her slim
figure, revealing its tender outlines.
Lucy looked at Horace, and her expression was tragic, foolish, and of
almost revolting wistfulness. She was youth and womanhood in its most
helpless and pathetic revelation. Poor Lucy could not help herself.
She was a thing always devoured and never consumed by a flame of
nature, because of the lack of food to satisfy an inborn hunger.
Horace felt all this perfectly in an analytical way. He sympathized
in an analytical way, but in other respects he felt that curious
resentment and outrage of which a man is capable and which is fiercer
than outraged maidenliness. For a man to be beloved when his own
heart does not respond is not pleasant. He cannot defend himself, nor
even recognize facts, without being lowered in his own self-esteem.
Horace had done, as far as he could judge, absolutely nothing
whatever to cause this state of mind in Lucy. He was self-exonerated
as to that, but the miserable reason for it all, in his mere
existence as a male of his species, filled him with shame for himself
and her, and also with anger.
He strove to hold to pity, but anger got the better of him. Anger and
shame coupled together make a balking team. Now the man was really at
a loss what to say. Lucy sat before him with her expression of
pitiable self-revelation, and waited, and Horace sat speechless. Now
he was there, he wondered what he had been such an ass as to come
for. He wondered what he had ever thought he could say, would say.
Then Rose's face shone out before his eyes, and his impulse of
protection made him firm. He spoke abruptly. "Miss Lucy--" he began.
Lucy cast her eyes down and waited, her whole attitude was that of
utter passiveness and yielding. "Good Lord! She thinks I have come
here at eight o'clock in the morning to propose!" Horace thought,
with a sort of fury. But he did not speak again at once. He actually
did not know how to begin, what to say. He did not, finally, say
anything. He rose. It seemed to him that he must prevent Rose from
going to drive with Lucy, but he saw no way of doing so.
When he rose it was as if Lucy's face of foolish anticipation of joy
was overclouded. "You are not going so soon?" she stammered.
"I have to get to school early this morning," Horace said, in a harsh
voice. He moved towards the door. Lucy also had risen. She now looked
altogether tragic. The foolish wistfulness was gone. Instead, claws
seemed to bristle all over her tender surface. Suddenly Horace
realized that her slender, wiry body was pressed against his own. He
was conscious of her soft cheek against his. He felt at once in the
grip of a tiger and a woman, and horribly helpless, more helpless
than he had ever been in his whole life. What could he say or do?
Then suddenly the parlor door opened and Mrs. Ayres, Lucy's mother,
stood there. She saw with her stern, melancholy gaze the whole
situation.
"Lucy!" she said.
Lucy started away from Horace, and gazed in a sort of fear and wrath
at her mother.
"Lucy," said Mrs. Ayres, "go up to your own room."
Lucy obeyed. She slunk out of the door and crept weakly up-stairs.
Horace and Mrs. Ayres looked at each other. There was a look of doubt
in the woman's face. For the first time she was not altogether sure.
Perhaps Lucy had been right, after all, in her surmises. Why had
Horace called? She finally went straight to the point.
"What did you come for, Mr. Allen?" said she.
Suddenly Horace thought of the obvious thing to say, the explanation
to give. "Miss Fletcher is thinking of coming later to take Miss Lucy
for a drive," said he.
"And you called to tell her?" said Mrs. Ayres.
Horace looked at her. Mrs. Ayres understood. "Miss Fletcher must come
with a double-seated carriage so that I can go," said she. "My
daughter is very nervous about horses. I never allow her to go to
drive without me."
She observed, with a sort of bitter sympathy, the look of relief
overspread Horace's face. "I will send a telephone message from Mrs.
Steele's, next door, so there will be no mistake," she said.
"Thank you," replied Horace. His face was burning.
Mrs. Ayres went on with a melancholy and tragic calm. "I saw what I
saw when I came in," said she. "I have only to inform you that--any
doubts which you may have entertained, any fears, are altogether
groundless. Everything has been as harmless as--the candy you ate
last night."
Horace started and stared at her. In truth, he had lain awake until a
late hour wondering what might be going to happen to him.
"I made it," said Mrs. Ayres. "I attend to everything. I have
attended to everything." She gazed at him with a strange, pathetic
dignity. "I have no apologies nor excuses to make to you," she said.
"I have only this to say, and you can reflect upon it at your
leisure. Sometimes, quite often, it may happen that too heavy a
burden, a burden which has been gathering weight since the first of
creation, is heaped upon too slender shoulders. This burden may bend
innocence into guilt and modesty into shamelessness, but there is no
more reason for condemnation than in a case of typhoid fever. Any man
of good sense and common Christianity should take that view of it."
"I do," cried Horace, hurriedly. He looked longingly at the door. He
had never felt so shamed in his life, and never so angrily
sympathetic.
"I will go over to Mrs. Steele's and telephone immediately," said
Mrs. Ayres, calmly. "Good-morning, Mr. Allen."
"Good-morning," said Horace. There was something terrible about the
face of patient defiance which the woman lifted to his.
"You will not--" she began.
Horace caught her thin hand and pressed it heartily. "Good God, Mrs.
Ayres!" he stammered.
She nodded. "Yes, I understand. I can trust you," she said. "I am
very glad it happened with you."
Horace was relieved to be out in the open air. He felt as if he had
escaped from an atmosphere of some terrible emotional miasma. He
reflected that he had heard of such cases as poor Lucy Ayres, but he
had been rather incredulous. He walked along wondering whether it was
a psychological or physical phenomenon. Pity began to get the better
of his shame for himself and the girl. The mother's tragic face came
before his eyes. "What that woman must have to put up with!" he
thought.
When he had commenced the morning session of school he found himself
covertly regarding the young girls. He wondered if such cases were
common. If they were, he thought to himself that the man who threw
the first stone was the first criminal of the world. He realized the
helplessness of the young things before forces of nature of which
they were brought up in so much ignorance, and his soul rebelled. He
thought to himself that they should be armed from the beginning with
wisdom.
He was relieved that at first he saw in none of the girl-faces before
him anything which resembled in the slightest degree the expression
which he had seen in Lucy Ayres's. These girls, most of them
belonging to the village (there were a few from outside, for this was
an endowed school, ranking rather higher than an ordinary
institution), revealed in their faces one of three interpretations of
character. Some were full of young mischief, chafing impatiently at
the fetters of school routine. They were bubbling over with innocent
animal life; they were longing to be afield at golf or tennis. They
hated their books.
Some were frankly coquettish and self-conscious, but in a most
healthy and normal fashion. These frequently adjusted stray locks of
hair, felt of their belts at their backs to be sure that the
fastenings were intact, then straightened themselves with charming
little feminine motions. Their flowerlike faces frequently turned
towards the teacher, and there was in them a perfect consciousness of
the facts of sex and charm, but it was a most innocent, even
childlike consciousness.
The last type belonged to those intent upon their books, soberly
adjusted to the duties of life already, with little imagination or
emotion. This last was in the minority.
"Thank God!" Horace thought, as his eyes met one and another of the
girl-faces. "She is not, cannot be, a common type." And then he felt
something like a chill of horror as his eyes met those of a new
pupil, a girl from Alford, who had only entered the school the day
before. She was not well dressed. There was nothing coquettish about
her, but in her eyes shone the awful, unreasoning hunger which he had
seen before. Upon her shoulders, young as they were, was the same
burden, the burden as old as creation, which she was required to bear
by a hard destiny, perhaps of heredity. There was something horribly
pathetic in the girl's shy, beseeching, foolish gaze at Horace. She
was younger and shyer than Lucy and, although not so pretty,
immeasurably more pathetic.
"Another," thought Horace. It was a great relief to him when, only a
week later, this girl found an admirer in one of the schoolboys, who,
led by some strange fascination, followed her instead of one of the
prettier, more attractive girls. Then the girl began to look more
normal. She dressed more carefully and spent more time in arranging
her hair. After all, she was very young, and abnormal instincts may
be quieted with a mere sop at the first.
When Horace reached home that day of the drive he found that Rose had
returned. Sylvia said that she had been at home half an hour.
"She went to Alford," she said, "and I'm afraid she's all tired out.
She came home looking as white as a sheet. She said she didn't want
any dinner, but finally said she would come down."
At the dinner-table Rose was very silent. She did not look at Horace
at all. She ate almost nothing. After dinner she persisted in
assisting Sylvia in clearing away the table and washing the dishes.
Rose took a childish delight in polishing the china with her
dish-towel. New England traits seemed to awake within her in this New
England home. Sylvia was using the willow ware now, Rose was so
pleased with it. The Calkin's soap ware was packed away on the top
shelf of the pantry.
"It is perfectly impossible, Aunt Sylvia," Rose had declared, and
Sylvia had listened. She listened with much more docility than at
first to the decrees of sophistication.
"The painting ain't nearly as natural," she had said, feebly,
regarding the moss rosebuds on a Calkin's soap plate with fluctuating
admiration which caused her pain by its fluctuations.
"Oh, but, Aunt Sylvia, to think of comparing for one minute ware like
that with this perfectly wonderful old willow ware!" Rose had said.
"Well, have your own way," said Sylvia, with a sigh. "Maybe I can get
used to everything all blue, when it ain't blue, after awhile. I know
you have been around more than I have, and you ought to know."
So the gold-and-white ware which had belonged to Sylvia's mother
decked the breakfast-table and the willow ware did duty for the rest
of the time. "I think it is very much better that you have no maid,"
Rose said. "I simply would not trust a maid to care for china like
this."
Rose took care of her room now, and very daintily. "She'll be real
capable after awhile," Sylvia told Henry.
"I didn't know as she'd be contented to stay at all, we live so
different from the way she's been used to," said Henry.
"It's the way her mother was brought up, and the way she lived, and
what's in the blood will work out," said Sylvia. "Then, too, I guess
she didn't care any too much about those folks she lived with. For my
part, I think it's the queerest thing I ever heard of that Miss
Farrel, if she took such a notion to the child, enough to do so much
for her, didn't keep her herself."
"Miss Farrel was a queer woman," said Henry.
"I guess she wasn't any too well balanced," agreed Sylvia.
"What do you suppose tired Rose out so much this morning?" asked
Henry. "It isn't such a very long ride to Alford."
"I don't know. She looked like a ghost when she got home. I'm glad
she's laying down. I hope she'll get a little nap."
That was after dinner, when the house had been set in order, and
Sylvia was at one front window in the cool sitting-room, with a
basket of mending, and Henry at another with a library book. Henry
was very restless in these days. He pottered about the place and was
planning to get in a good hay crop, but this desultory sort of
employment did not take the place of his regular routine of toil. He
missed it horribly, almost as a man is said to miss a pain of long
standing. He knew that he was better off without it, that he ought to
be happier, but he knew that he was not.
For years he had said bitterly that he had no opportunity for reading
and improving his mind. Now he had opportunity, but it was too late.
He could not become as interested in a book as he had been during the
few moments he had been able to snatch from his old routine of toil.
Some days it seemed to Henry that he must go back to the shop, that
he could not live in this way. He had begun to lose all interest in
what he had anticipated with much pleasure--the raising of grass on
Abrahama White's celebrated land. He felt that he knew nothing about
such work, that agriculture was not for him. If only he could stand
again at his bench in the shop, and cut leather into regular shapes,
he felt that while his hands toiled involuntarily his mind could
work. Some days he fairly longed so for the old familiar odor of
tanned hides, that odor which he had once thought sickened him, that
he would go to the shop and stand by the open door, and inhale the
warm rush of leather-scented air with keen relish. But he never told
this to Sylvia.
Henry was not happy. At times it seemed to him that he really wished
that he and Sylvia had never met with this good-fortune. Once he
turned on Sidney Meeks with a fierce rejoinder, when Sidney had
repeated the sarcasm which he loved to roll beneath his tongue like a
honeyed morsel, that if he did not want his good-fortune it was the
easiest thing in the world to relinquish it.
"It ain't," said Henry; "and what's more, you know it ain't. Sylvia
don't want to give it up, and I ain't going to ask her. You know I
can't get rid of it, but it's true what I say: when good things are
so long coming they get sour, like most things that are kept too
long. What's the use of a present your hands are too cramped to hold?"
Sidney looked gravely at Henry, who had aged considerably during the
last few weeks. "Well, I am ready to admit," he said, "that sometimes
the mills of the gods grind so slow and small that the relish is out
of things when you get them. I'm willing to admit that if I had
to-day what I once thought I couldn't live without, I'd give up beat.
Once I thought I'd like to have the biggest law practice of any
lawyer in the State. If I had it now I'd be ready to throw it all up.
It would come too late. Now I'd think it was more bother than it was
worth. How'd I make my wines and get any comfort out of life? Yes, I
guess it's true, Henry, when Providence is overlong in giving a man
what he wants, it contrives somehow to suck the sweetness out of what
he gets, though he may not know it, and when what he thought he
wanted does come to him it is like a bee trying to make honey out of
a flower that doesn't hold any. Why don't you go back to the shop,
Henry, and have done with it?"
"Sylvia--" began Henry.
But Sidney cut in. "If you haven't found out," said he, "that in the
long-run doing what is best for yourself is doing what's best for the
people who love you best, you haven't found out much."
"I don't know," Henry said, in a puzzled, weary way. "Sometimes it
seems to me I can't keep on living the way I am living, and live at
all; and then I don't know."
"I know," said Sidney. "Get back to your tracks."
"Sylvia would feel all cut up over it. She wouldn't understand."
"Of course she wouldn't understand, but women always end in settling
down to things they don't understand, when they get it through their
heads it's got to be, and being just as contented, unless they're the
kind who fetch up in lunatic asylums, and Sylvia isn't that kind. The
inevitable may be a hard pill for her to swallow, but it will never
stick in her throat."
Henry shook his head doubtfully. He had been thinking it over since.
He had thought of it a good deal after dinner that day, as he sat
with the unread book in his lap. Sylvia's remarks about Rose diverted
his attention, then he began thinking again. Sylvia watched him
furtively as she sewed. "You ain't reading that book at all," she
said. "I have been watching you, and you 'ain't turned a single page
since I spoke last."
"I don't see why I should," returned Henry. "I don't see why anybody
but a fool should ever open the book, to begin with."
"What is the book?"
Henry looked at the title-page. "It is Whatever, by Mrs. Fane
Raymond," he said, absently.
"I've heard it was a beautiful book."
"Most women would like it," said Henry. "It seems to be a lot written
about a fool woman that didn't know what she wanted, by another fool
woman who didn't know, either, and was born cross-eyed as to right
and wrong."
"Why, Henry Whitman, it ain't true!"
"I suppose it ain't."
"No book is true--that is, no story."
"If it ain't true, so much the less reason to tell such a pack of
stupid lies," said Henry. He closed the book with a snap.
"Why, Henry, ain't you going to finish it?"
"No, I ain't. I'm going back to the shop to work."
"Henry Whitman, you ain't!"
"Yes, I am. As for pottering round here, and trying to get up an
interest in things I ought to have begun instead of ended in, and
setting round reading books that I can't keep my mind on, and if I
do, just get madder and madder, I won't. I'm going back to work with
my hands the way I've been working the last forty years, and then I
guess I'll get my mind out of leading-strings."
"Henry Whitman, be you crazy?"
"No, but I shall be if I set round this way much longer."
"You don't need to do a mite of work."
"You don't suppose it's the money I'm thinking about! It's the work."
"What will folks say?"
"I don't care what they say."
"Henry Whitman, I thought I knew you, but I declare it seems as if I
have never known you at all," Sylvia said. She looked at him with her
puzzled, troubled eyes, in which tears were gathering. She was still
very pale.
A sudden pity for her came over Henry. After all, he ought to try to
make his position clear to her. "Sylvia," he said, "what do you think
you would do, after all these years of housekeeping, if you had to
stand in a shoe-shop, from morning till night, at a bench cutting
leather?"
Sylvia stared at him. "Me?"
"Yes, you."
"Why, you know I couldn't do it, Henry Whitman!"
"Well, no more can I stand such a change in my life. I can't go to
farming and setting around after forty years in a shoe-shop, any more
than you can work in a shoe-shop after forty years of housekeeping."
"It ain't the same thing at all," said Sylvia.
"Why not?"
"Because it ain't." Sylvia closed her thin lips conclusively. This,
to her mind, was reasoning which completely blocked all argument.
Henry looked at her hopelessly. "I didn't suppose you would
understand," he said.
"I don't see why you thought so," said Sylvia. "I guess I have a mind
capable of understanding as much as a man. There is no earthly sense
in your going to work in the shop again, with all our money. What
would folks say, and why do you want to do it?"
"I have told you why."
"You haven't told me why at all."
Henry said no more. He looked out of the window with a miserable
expression. The beautiful front yard, with its box-bordered
flower-beds, did not cheer him with the sense of possession. He heard
a bird singing with a flutelike note; he heard bees humming over the
flowers, and he longed to hear, instead, the buzz and whir of
machines which had become the accompaniment of his song of life. A
terrible isolation and homesickness came over him. He thought of the
humble little house in which he and Sylvia had lived so many years,
and a sort of passion of longing for it seized him. He felt that for
the moment he fairly loathed all this comparative splendor with which
he was surrounded.
"What do you think she would say if you went back to the shop?" asked
Sylvia. She jerked her head with an upward, sidewise movement towards
Rose's room.
"She may not be contented to live here very long, anyway. It's likely
that when the summer's over she'll begin to think of her fine friends
in New York, and want to lead the life she's been used to again,"
said Henry. "It ain't likely it would make much difference to her."
Sylvia looked at Henry as he had never seen her look before. She
spoke with a passion of utterance of which he had never thought her
capable. "She is going to stay right here in her aunt Abrahama's
house, and have all she would have had if there hadn't been any
will," said she, fiercely.
"You would make her stay if she didn't want to?" said Henry, gazing
at her wonderingly.
"She's got to want to stay," said Sylvia, still with the same strange
passion. "There'll be enough going on; you needn't worry. I'm going
to have parties for her, if she wants them. She says she's been used
to playing cards, and you know how we were brought up about cards--to
think they were wicked. Well, I don't care if they are wicked. If she
wants them she's going to have card-parties, and prizes, too, though
I 'most know it's as bad as gambling. And if she wants to have
dancing-parties (she knows how to dance) she's going to have them,
too. I don't think there's six girls in East Westland who know how to
dance, but there must be a lot in Alford, and the parlor is big
enough for 'most everything. She shall have every mite as much going
on as she would have in New York. She sha'n't miss anything. I'm
willing to have some dinners with courses, too, if she wants them,
and hire Hannah Simmons's little sister to wait on the table, with a
white cap on her head and a white apron with a bib. I'm willing Rose
shall have everything she wants. And then, you know, Henry, there's
the church sociables and suppers all winter, and she'll like to go to
them; and they will most likely get up a lecture and concert course.
If she can't be every mite as lively here in East Westland as in New
York, if I set out to have her, I'll miss my guess. There's lots of
beautiful dresses up-stairs that belonged to her aunt, and I'm going
to have the dressmaker come here and make some over for her. It's no
use talking, she's going to stay."
"Well, I am sure I hope she will," said Henry, still regarding his
wife with wonder.
"She is going to, and if she does stay, you know you can't go back to
work in the shop, Henry Whitman. I'd like to know how you think you
could set down to the table with her, smelling of leather the way you
used to."
"There might be worse smells."
"That's just because you are used to it."
"That's just it," cried Henry, pathetically. "Can't you get it
through your head, Sylvia? It is because I'm used to it. Can't you
see it's kind of dangerous to turn a man out of his tracks after he's
been in them so long?"
"There ain't any need for you to work in the shop. We've got plenty
of money without," said Sylvia, settling back immovably in her chair,
and Henry gave it up.
Sylvia considered that she had won the victory. She began sewing
again. Henry continued to look out of the window.
"She is a delicate little thing, and I guess it's mighty lucky for
her that she came to live in the country just as she did," Sylvia
observed.
"I suppose you know what's bound to happen if she and Mr. Allen stay
on in the same house," said Henry. "As far as I am concerned, I think
it would be a good arrangement. Mr. Allen has a good salary, and she
has enough to make up for what he can't do; and I would like to keep
the child here myself, but I somehow thought you didn't like the
idea."
Again Sylvia turned white, and stared at her husband almost with
horror. "I don't see why you think it is bound to happen," said she.
Henry laughed. "It doesn't take a very long head to think so."
"It sha'n't happen. That child ain't going to marry anybody."
"Sylvia, you don't mean that you want her to be an old maid!"
"It's the best thing for any girl, if she only thought so, to be an
old maid," said Sylvia.
Henry laughed a little. "That's a compliment to me."
"I ain't saying anything against you. I've been happy enough, and I
suppose I've been better off than if I'd stayed single; but Rose has
got enough to live on, and what any girl that's got enough to live on
wants to get married for beats me."
Henry laughed again, a little bitterly this time. "Then you wouldn't
have married me if you had had enough to live on?" he said.
Sylvia looked at him, and an odd, shamed tenderness came into her
elderly face. "There's no use talking about what wasn't, anyway,"
said she, and Henry understood.
After a little while Sylvia again brought up the subject of Horace
and Rose. She was evidently very uneasy about it. "I don't see why
you think because a young man and girl are in the same house anything
like that is bound to happen," said she.
"Well, perhaps not; maybe it won't," said Henry, soothingly. He saw
that it troubled Sylvia, and it had always been an unwritten maxim
with him that Sylvia should not be troubled if it could be helped. He
knew that he himself was about to trouble her, and why should she be
vexed, in addition, about an uncertainty, as possibly this incipient
love-affair might be. After all, why should it follow that because a
young man and a girl lived in the same house they should immediately
fall in love? And why should it not be entirely possible that they
might have a little love-making without any serious consequences?
Horace had presumably paid a little attention to girls before, and it
was very probable that Rose had received attention. Why bother about
such a thing as this when poor Sylvia would really be worried over
his, Henry's, return to his old, humble vocation?
For Henry, as he sat beside the window that pleasant afternoon, was
becoming more and more convinced it must happen. It seemed to him
that his longing was gradually strengthening into a purpose which he
could not overcome. It seemed to him that every flutelike note of a
bird in the pleasance outside served to make this purpose more
unassailable, as if every sweet flower-breath and every bee-hum,
every drawing of his wife's shining needle through the white garment
which she was mending, all served to render his purpose so settled a
thing that any change in it was as impossible as growth in a granite
ledge. That very day Henry had been approached by the superintendent
of Lawson & Fisher's, where he had worked, and told that his place,
which had been temporarily filled, was vacant and ready for him. He
had said that he must consider the matter, but he had known in his
heart that the matter admitted of no consideration. He looked gloomy
as he sat there with his unread book in his hand, yet gradually an
eager, happy light crept into his eyes.
After supper he told Sylvia he was going down to the store. He did
go, but on his way he stopped at the superintendent's house and told
that he would report for work in the morning.
Rose had not come down to supper. Henry had wondered why, and
sympathized in part with Sylvia's anxiety. Still, he had a vague
feeling that a young girl's not coming down to supper need not be
taken very seriously, that young girls had whims and fancies which
signified nothing, and that it was better to let them alone until
they got over them. He knew that Sylvia, however, would take the
greatest comfort in coddling the girl, and he welcomed the fact as
conducing to his making his arrangements for the next day. He thought
that Sylvia would not have the matter in mind at all, since she had
the girl to fuss over, and that she would not ask him any questions.
On his way home he stopped at Sidney Meeks's. He found the lawyer in
a demoralized dining-room, which had, nevertheless, an air of homely
comfort, with its chairs worn into hollows to fit human anatomies,
and its sideboard set out with dusty dishes and a noble ham. Meeks
was a very good cook, although one could not confidently assert that
dust and dirt did not form a part of his ingredients. One of his
triumphs was ham cooked in a manner which he claimed to have
invented. After having been boiled, it was baked, and frequently
basted in a way which Meeks kept as secret as the bouquet of his
grape wine. Sidney sat at the table eating bread and ham spread with
mustard, and there were also a mysterious pie in reserve and a bottle
of wine. "Draw up, Henry," said Sidney.
"I've had supper."
"What?"
"Sylvia had chicken salad and flapjacks and hot biscuits."
Sidney sniffed. "Cut a slice off that ham," he ordered, "and draw a
chair up. Not that one; you'll go through. Yes, that's right. Bring
over another wineglass while you're about it. This is daisy wine, ten
years old. I've got a pie here that I'll be willing to stake your
fortune you can't analyze. It's after the pattern of the cold pasties
you read about in old English novels. You shall guess what's in it.
Draw up."
Henry obeyed. He found himself sitting opposite Sidney, eating and
drinking with intense enjoyment. Sidney chuckled. "Good?" said he.
"I don't know when my victuals have tasted right before," said Henry.
He received a large wedge of the pie on his plate, and his whole face
beamed with the first taste.
Sidney leaned across the table and whispered. "Squabs," said he,
"and--robins, big fat ones. I shot 'em night before last. It's all
nonsense the fuss folks make about robins, and a lot of other birds,
as far as that goes--damned sentiment. Year before last I hadn't a
bushel of grapes on my vines because the robins stole them, and not a
half-bushel of pears on that big seckel-pear-tree. If they'd eaten
them up clean I wouldn't have felt so bad, but there the ground would
be covered with pears rotted on account of one little peck. They are
enough sight better to be on women's bonnets than eating up folks'
substance, though I don't promulgate that doctrine abroad. And one
thing I ain't afraid to say: big fat robins ought to be made some use
of. This pie is enough sight more wholesome for the bodies of men who
have immortal souls dependent a little on what is eaten, in spite of
the preaching, than Western tainted beef. I made up my mind that pie
was the natural destiny of a robin, and I make squab-and-robin pies
every week of my life. The robins are out of mischief in that pie,
and they are doing us good. What makes you look so, though, Henry?
There's something besides my pie and ham and wine that gives that
look to your face."
"I'm going back to the shop to-morrow," said Henry.
Sidney looked at him. "Most folks would say you were an uncommon
fool," said he. "I suppose you know that."
"I can't help it," said Henry, happily. Along with the savory pie in
his mouth came a subtler relish to his very soul. The hunger of the
honest worker who returns to his work was being appeased.