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The Floating Press - Wilkins Freeman Mary E.

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156 pages

English

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In this popular novel from prominent nineteenth-century American author Mary Wilkins Freeman, heroine Sylvia finds herself on the receiving end of a large and unexpected inheritance. But soon the windfall has unexpected consequences as Sylvia delves deeper into family secrets.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776670178
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE SHOULDERS OF ATLAS
A NOVEL
* * *
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN

*
The Shoulders of Atlas A Novel First published in 1908 Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-017-8 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-018-5 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX
Chapter I
*
Henry Whitman was walking home from the shop in the April afternoon.The spring was very early that year. The meadows were quite green,and in the damp hollows the green assumed a violet tinge—sometimesfrom violets themselves, sometimes from the shadows. The treesalready showed shadows as of a multitude of bird wings; thepeach-trees stood aloof in rosy nimbuses, and the cherry-trees werefaintly a-flutter with white through an intense gloss of gold-green.
Henry realized all the glory of it, but it filled him with a renewalof the sad and bitter resentment, which was his usual mood, insteadof joy. He was past middle-age. He worked in a shoe-shop. He hadworked in a shoe-shop since he was a young man. There was nothingelse in store for him until he was turned out because of old age.Then the future looked like a lurid sunset of misery. He earnedreasonably good wages for a man of his years, but prices were so highthat he was not able to save a cent. There had been unusual expensesduring the past ten years, too. His wife Sylvia had not been well,and once he himself had been laid up six weeks with rheumatism. Thedoctor charged two dollars for every visit, and the bill was notquite settled yet.
Then the little house which had come to him from his father,encumbered with a mortgage as is usual, had all at once seemed toneed repairs at every point. The roof had leaked like a sieve, twowindows had been blown in, the paint had turned a gray-black, thegutters had been out of order. He had not quite settled the bill forthese repairs. He realized it always as an actual physical incubusupon his slender, bowed shoulders. He came of a race who wereimpatient of debt, and who regarded with proud disdain all gratuitousbenefits from their fellow-men. Henry always walked a long route fromthe shop in order to avoid passing the houses of the doctor and thecarpenter whom he owed.
Once he had saved a little money; that was twenty-odd years before;but he had invested it foolishly, and lost every cent. Thattransaction he regarded with hatred, both of himself and of thepeople who had advised him to risk and lose his hard-earned dollars.The small sum which he had lost had come to assume colossalproportions in his mind. He used, in his bitterest moments, to reckonup on a scrap of paper what it might have amounted to, if it had beenput out at interest, by this time. He always came out a rich man, byhis calculations, if it had not been for that unwise investment. Heoften told his wife Sylvia that they might have been rich people ifit had not been for that; that he would not have been tied to ashoe-shop, nor she have been obliged to work so hard.
Sylvia took a boarder—the high-school principal, Horace Allen—andshe also made jellies and cakes, and baked bread for those in EastWestland who could afford to pay for such instead of doing the workthemselves. She was a delicate woman, and Henry knew that she workedbeyond her strength, and the knowledge filled him with impotent fury.Since the union had come into play he did not have to work so manyhours in the shop, and he got the same pay, but he worked as hard,because he himself cultivated his bit of land. He raised vegetablesfor the table. He also made the place gay with flowers to pleaseSylvia and himself. He had a stunted thirst for beauty.
In the winter he found plenty to do in the extra hours. He sawed woodin his shed by the light of a lantern hung on a peg. He also did whatodd jobs he could for neighbors. He picked up a little extra money inthat way, but he worked very hard. Sometimes he told Sylvia that hedidn't know but he worked harder than he had done when the shop timewas longer. However, he had been one of the first to go, heart andsoul, with the union, and he had paid his dues ungrudgingly, evenwith a fierce satisfaction, as if in some way the transaction madehim even with his millionaire employers. There were two of them, andthey owned houses which appeared like palaces in the eyes of Henryand his kind. They owned automobiles, and Henry was aware of acursing sentiment when one whirred past him, trudging along, andcovered him with dust.
Sometimes it seemed to Henry as if an automobile was the last strawfor the poor man's back: those enormous cars, representing fortunes,tyrannizing over the whole highway, frightening the poor old countryhorses, and endangering the lives of all before them. Henry read withdelight every account of an automobile accident. "Served them right;served them just right," he would say, with fairly a smack of hislips.
Sylvia, who had caught a little of his rebellion, but was gentler,would regard him with horror. "Why, Henry Whitman, that is a dreadfulwicked spirit!" she would say, and he would retort stubbornly that hedidn't care; that he had to pay a road tax for these people who wouldjust as soon run him down as not, if it wouldn't tip their oldmachines over; for these maniacs who had gone speed-mad, and wereappropriating even the highways of the common people.
Henry had missed the high-school principal, who was away on hisspring vacation. He liked to talk with him, because he always had afeeling that he had the best of the argument. Horace would take theother side for a while, then leave the field, and light anothercigar, and let Henry have the last word, which, although it had abitter taste in his mouth, filled him with the satisfaction oftriumph. He loved Horace like a son, although he realized that theyoung man properly belonged to the class which he hated, and that,too, although he was manifestly poor and obliged to work for hisliving. Henry was, in his heart of hearts, convinced that HoraceAllen, had he been rich, would have owned automobiles and spent hoursin the profitless work-play of the golf links. As it was, he played alittle after school-hours. How Henry hated golf! "I wish they had towork," he would say, savagely, to Horace.
Horace would laugh, and say that he did work. "I know you do," Henrywould say, grudgingly, "and I suppose maybe a little exercise is goodfor you; but those fellers from Alford who come over here don't haveto work, and as for Guy Lawson, the boss's son, he's a fool! Hecouldn't earn his bread and butter to save his life, except on theroad digging like a common laborer. Playing golf! Playing! H'm!" Thenwas the time for Horace's fresh cigar.
When Henry came in sight of the cottage where he lived he thoughtwith regret that Horace was not there. Being in a more pessimisticmood than usual, he wished ardently for somebody to whom he couldpour out his heart. Sylvia was no satisfaction at such a time. If sheechoed him for a while, when she was more than usually worn with herown work, she finally became alarmed, and took refuge in Scripturequotations, and Henry was convinced that she offered up prayer forhim afterward, and that enraged him.
He struck into the narrow foot-path leading to the side door, thefoot-path which his unwilling and weary feet had helped to trace moredefinitely for nearly forty years. The house was a small cottage ofthe humblest New England type. It had a little cobbler's-shop, orwhat had formerly been a cobbler's-shop, for an ell. Besides that,there were three rooms on the ground-floor—the kitchen, thesitting-room, and a little bedroom which Henry and Sylvia occupied.Sylvia had cooking-stoves in both the old shop and the kitchen. Thekitchen stove was kept well polished, and seldom used for cooking,except in cold weather. In warm weather the old shop served askitchen, and Sylvia, in deference to the high-school teacher, used toset the table in the house.
When Henry neared the house he smelled cooking in the shop. He alsohad a glimpse of a snowy table-cloth in the kitchen. He wondered,with a throb of joy, if possibly Horace might have returned beforehis vacation was over and Sylvia were setting the table in the otherroom in his honor. He opened the door which led directly into theshop. Sylvia, a pathetic, slim, elderly figure in rusty black, wasbending over the stove, frying flapjacks. "Has he come home?"whispered Henry.
"No, it's Mr. Meeks. I asked him to stay to supper. I told him Iwould make some flapjacks, and he acted tickled to death. He doesn'tget a decent thing to eat once in a dog's age. Hurry and get washed.The flapjacks are about done, and I don't want them to get cold."
Henry's face, which had fallen a little when he learned that Horacehad not returned, still looked brighter than before. While SidneyMeeks never let him have the last word, yet he was much better thanSylvia as a safety-valve for pessimism. Meeks was as pessimistic inhis way as Henry, although he handled his pessimism, as he dideverything else, with diplomacy, and the other man had a secretconviction that when he seemed to be on the opposite side yet he wasin reality pulling with the lawyer.
Sidney Meeks was older than Henry, and as unsuccessful as a countrylawyer can well be. He lived by himself; h