"Why, Goosie; I tell you the lumps are growing. They're great big now,
Goosie. Oh, why don't you let me take you to the doctor! I _know_
something is the matter!"
Dolly had tears in her eyes almost, and her voice was very dolorous. For
the fourteenth time in two weeks, she was treating the singular shoulders
of Charles-Norton. He was sitting beneath the glow of the evening lamp,
his coat off, his shirt pulled down to his elbows; and she, standing
behind the chair, was leaning solicitously over him. A wisp of her hair
caressed his right ear, but somehow did not relax his temper. "Well, let
them alone, Dolly," he growled; "let them alone. Good Lord, let them
alone!"
For two weeks he had been getting more and more peevish. To be sure,
for two weeks, daily, his shoulders had been washed and rubbed and
massaged and lotioned and parboiled and anointed and fomented and
capsicon-plastered, till his very soul was sensitive and a suspicion
was agrowl within him--a bad, mean feeling that Dolly was finding a bit,
just a bit, of something akin to pleasure in the ardor of her
ministrations. Besides, he was fighting a moral fight of his own. Great
bursts of dissatisfaction swept through him every day now; and it was
only by a constant vigilance that he kept his vagrant elbows close
to his ribs.
"Let them be for a while, Dolly," he repeated in gentler tone.
"Besides--besides----"
But he left unsaid the thought following the "besides." "Now, dear," said
Dolly, kindly, but with a certain firmness; "you've simply got to let me
see what I can do. Why, Goosie, you can't go on in this way! You'd be
getting humps on your back! No--no; we'll try a nice little ice-pack
to-night."
"I don't want any ice-packs!" yelped Charles-Norton (what a bad-mannered
young man he had become!); "I'm tired of fomentations and things!
Besides"--and this time the besides did not pause, but burst out of him
like a stream from a high-pressure hydrant--"besides, it isn't what I
want----" And to an irresistible impulse his right hand reached out for a
brush and, crossing over to his left shoulder, began rubbing it
vigorously.
"Goosie, Goosie, my clothes-brush, my best clothes-brush!"
But the lament in Dolly's voice had little effect upon Charles-Norton. He
was brushing himself with grave concentration. "Get the flesh-brush," he
mumbled between set teeth, rubbing the while; "Gee, this feels good. Get
the pack to-night."
Dolly ran into the bath-room and returned with the flesh-brush;
Charles-Norton made an exchange without losing a stroke. "That's
something like it," he murmured.
"But, Goosie," began Dolly. Her voice was low now; she stood withdrawn
from him as if a bit afraid; her hands were clasped and her lips
trembled. "Goosie, dear; don't do that. Oh, don't; you'll hurt yourself.
It's getting all red, Goosie. You're rubbing the skin off, I tell you.
Why, it's almost bleeding--Goosie, Goosie, stop it, stop it!"
"Feels lots better," he said unfeelingly. "Look at it." And transferring
the brush to his left hand, he began to rub the right shoulder, raising
his left for Dolly's inspection.
She approached timidly. "You've rubbed all the poor skin off," she
announced. "It's bleeding." He felt the light touch of her fingers. "Why,
Goosie--there's something--something. Why, Goosie!"
The last was almost a cry, and the silence that followed had an
awe-stricken pulse. "What is it?" he asked, still busily brushing.
"Why, there's something"--again he felt the tender touch of her
fingers--"there're a lot of little things--a lot of little things
pricking right through the skin!"
"Let me rub it some more," he said, transferring the brush. "Now, look at
it," he said, after several more vigorous minutes of his strange
treatment.
"Goosie!"
This time it was a cry to stab the heart. He dropped the brush and looked
up at her. She was pale, and her eyes were very big. "Well, what is the
matter now," he asked impatiently.
She came near again, still pale, but with lips tight. "A-ouch!" he
yelped.
For with a sudden sharp movement, she had plucked something out of his
shoulder. A smart came into his eyes; it was as if a lock of hair had
been pulled out by the roots. "Look at this, Goosie," she said with
forced calmness, and placed something in his hand.
It was very small and very soft. He dropped his eyes upon it as it lay
lightly in his palm. "Good lord!" he ejaculated, his bad humor gone
suddenly into a genuine concern; "Good Lord!" he said, rising to his feet
in consternation; "it's a; it's a----"
"It's a feather," said Dolly, with sepulchral finality; "it's a feather."
It was a feather--a soft, downy, white, baby feather. Charles-Norton
looked at it long, as it lay, shivering slightly, there in his palm. He
took it up and passed the luster of it slowly through his fingers.
Something like a smile gradually came into his face. He raised the
feather against the light of the lamp. His eyes brightened.
"Isn't it pretty, Dolly?" he said. "Isn't it pretty? just look at it. So
white, and fresh, and new, and glistening. And see the curve, the slender
curve of it--oh, Dolly, isn't it pretty and fine?"
But Dolly, collapsed in a chair, broke out a-crying. "Oh, Goosie, Goosie,
what are we going to do now?" she wailed; "what are we to do? O--O----"
"Well," said Charles-Norton, the spirit of contradiction which for
several days had been within him rising to his lips; "well, _I_ don't see
what there is to make so much fuss about. A few feathers are not going to
hurt a man, are they? 'Tisn't as if I were insane, or had hydrophobia!"
"But, Goosie, Goosie, _no_ one has feathers on his shoulders! No one
_ever_ had feathers on his shoulders! No other man _in the world_ ever
did that; none in the world _ever_ had feathers on his shoulders that
way! Oh, Goosie, Goosie, what shall we do!!!"
"Let them alone," said Charles-Norton, now quite vexed. "They're mine;
they don't hurt _you_, do they? Let 'em alone!" He raised his arms and
began to slip his shirt up again.
The tears ceased to drip from Dolly's eyes. "You can't do that," she
said, a maternal firmness coming into her voice. "Why, Goosie, what would
they think of you down at the office?"
"At the office? Why, they won't know it!"
"But _you'll_ know it, Goosie. All the time, you'll know it. Goosie, you
don't want to be different, do you? You want to be like other men, don't
you? You don't want to be _different_?"
This argument had some effect on Charles-Norton. He stood very still,
scratching his head pensively. "Well," he said finally, "maybe you're
right. Maybe we had better keep them cut short."
"Oh, Goosie!" cried Dolly, joyously, and bounded from the room. She came
running back with the scissors. "Come, quick!" she panted. "I'll cut
them, short. 'Twon't be much trouble after all, will it? I'll cut them
every day. It will be just like shaving--no more trouble than that!"
And she slid the scissors along Charles-Norton's skin with a cold,
decisive little zip. He could see her head, cocked a bit side-ways with
concentration, reflected in the glass panes of the side-board as she cut
and cut, closer and closer. Her rosy nostrils were distended slightly;
upon her tight lip the tip of a small white tooth gleamed. A light shiver
passed along Charles-Norton's spine. "Gee, I didn't think she could look
like this," he thought.