The soul of Henry Jones

At the age of thirty-two Henry Jones awoke one brilliant summer morning with the sudden realization that the soul in him was starving. He lay quiet, staring idly at the white ceiling above the bed, his mind groping dully with this abrupt enlightenment. After a moment of mental confusion--for the enormity of the conception stirred him profoundly--he raised himself upon one elbow in bed and looked at his wife who lay sleeping beside him.

He had always thought her pretty in a quiet, unobtrusive sort of way. He did not remember ever having noticed before the wrinkles that were beginning to show around her eyes, but he could see them there now, plainly. And her neck seemed very thin and stringy, and the line of her lean jaw very sharp. That he had never noticed before either. The thin locks of straight black hair that were spread upon her pillow were shot through with gray. The vision of a great soft, fluffy mass of wavy golden tresses flashed into his mind--the crowning glory of no particular woman, but just an abstract picture.

Henry Jones shivered a little and fell to staring at the round white face of the tiny alarm-clock on the bureau. Then, after a time, he found himself thinking that it was unusually early for him to be awake, for the clock hands pointed to half past five.

He slid noiselessly out of bed. For a moment he stood irresolute; then he began to dress swiftly, watching his still sleeping wife with a furtive air and feeling somehow very guilty. When he was fully dressed he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and paused an instant to view the completed picture.

The mirror showed a short, rotund little man in a light gray suit, with a narrow black leather belt that bulged out prominently in front; a round, pink and white almost cherubic face, with light blue eyes, eyebrows so light they were almost unnoticeable; and sandy hair with a tiny bald spot on top.

But what Henry Jones saw was a pair of sad, wistful eyes with the soul shining out of them--a soul patiently yearning for the satisfaction of its desires.

The little suburban village in which Henry Jones lived and worked was just beginning to awaken into life, as he passed down its streets that early summer morning. He held himself very erect, with his chest expanded, breathing deep of the morning air and walking rapidly.

A girl was coming toward him down the narrow sidewalk of the maple-lined avenue--a trim, buoyant little figure. Henry Jones noticed her slim, silk-clad ankles as she drew closer. And he saw, too, that she wore neat, high-heeled shoes that were very trig and becoming. He watched the ankles and the shoes as they approached. Henry Jones was an expert on the latest styles of shoes, for he was by profession a shoe clerk. But there was in his appraising regard of this particular pair on this particular morning a look that was not wholly impersonally professional.

As the girl passed him, Henry Jones raised his eyes to her face. She was a very pretty girl, with curving lips and soft, fluffy golden hair blowing low about her ears. He did not remember ever having seen her before, but as he met her eyes he smiled--a frank, friendly, comrady sort of smile he felt it was--and he heard his lips murmuring “Good morning,” as his hand went to his hat.

The girl did not pause, but as she passed he thought he saw that she, too, was smiling. And afterward he remembered vividly that the pink of her cheeks had deepened to a sudden red, and that her long lashes had fallen shyly. Henry Jones threw out his chest still farther and strode forward with a song in his heart.

Six years before this important morning to the Jones family, Martha Lewis had married Henry Jones. At the age of twenty-five--one year Henry’s junior--she had felt herself in a fair way of being laid upon the shelf of perpetual maidenhood, and so she had married the prosaic, plodding Henry, as the only available eligible unattached young man of her acquaintance.

You are not to imagine Martha Lewis as an acrid, designing young female. She was merely a comparatively unattractive girl according to the standards demanded by the young men of Rosewood. Like many other girls of her type, Martha was blessed, in exchange for physical beauty, with a considerable stock of good common sense. Throughout her years of adolescence she had cherished secretly all the usual dreams and romance of young girlhood. Then, realizing gradually that their fulfilment was beyond her, she had put them resolutely away, and at her father’s death, when she was twenty-four, had calmly turned to face the world with the resolution to make the best of existing circumstances.

And so she had married Henry Jones--deliberately, because she wanted to. She was in love with him, of course, just as she knew he was with her. It was not the love of her dreams, but a steadfast, practical, common sense love. Probably it was the better kind, she often told herself; and yet--because she was only human, and especially because she was a woman--there were times when, underneath the prosaic contentment of the daily routine of her married life, she found herself wanting something more. For Henry was neither in looks nor by nature inspiring to the female mind. But he made her a good husband; Martha knew that, and she loved him and was content.

This was Henry Jones’s wife--not the woman he knew--but the real woman, as she was on this summer morning when his soul suddenly expanded.

Martha was in the kitchen preparing the meal when he returned. He pecked her upon the cheek, hastily mumbled something about not feeling well, and going out to get the morning air, and then escaped into the dining-room with his morning paper.

During the meal he sat silent, pretending to read.

“Eat your eggs,” said his wife abruptly.

Henry Jones came back with a start from the rippling little stream beside which he had been lying, and ate his eggs almost sullenly.

Martha was glancing at the newspaper. “I see the shoe factories are in trouble again. That’ll put up your prices at the store.”

“Yes,” said Henry, and went on eating his eggs.

Martha waited a moment. “How’s the new clerk getting on, Hen?” she volunteered again. “Are you going to keep him?”

“Guess so,” said Henry. His inner being shuddered at the nickname his wife used so frequently; but outwardly he felt he was maintaining his composure.

“It must have been that salad last night that upset you,” went on Martha after another interval of silence; to which Henry answered nothing.

All that day at the store Henry’s work revolted him as nothing had ever revolted him before. He longed for freedom. He wanted to wander through dim, cool, mossy woods; or to lie beside babbling brooks upon his back and watch the birds in the trees overhead; or to sit braced against a tree-trunk with a book upon his knee, reading poetry to a pair of blue eyes staring up into his face. Henry had never read much poetry, but he knew now he wanted to.

And she would brush back her straying locks of golden hair and implore him to read more. And then he--

“That hurts my corn,” said Henry Jones’s customer irritably. “Can’t you give me one a little wider at the toe?”

At dinner that evening Henry’s malady was unimproved. He ate very little, seemed disinclined to talk, and equally unable to read his evening newspaper. To Martha’s anxious questions concerning his health Henry guessed his “liver was out of order”--a surmise that the pink and white of his cheeks and the clearness of his little eyes stoutly denied.

He would have none of the pills she tried to force upon him, but promised, if he could be allowed to spend the evening at Williams’s Billiard Parlor, watching the games, to take it when he came home in the event of his not feeling better by then.

So, immediately after the meal was over, Henry put on his hat and escaped from the oppression of domesticity into the freedom of the great outdoors. But he did not go to Williams’s Billiard Parlor. Instead he turned sharply, as soon as he was out of sight of his home, and headed in exactly the opposite direction.

Now you can readily understand that in this state of mind it was inevitable that sooner or later Henry should meet the other woman. That is in no way peculiar; but it is rather surprising that in Henry’s case she came into his life this very first evening.

There is a little lake near Rosewood, which during the summer months is ideal for canoeing. It was toward this lake that Henry bent his steps. The night was warm, but not unpleasantly so, for there was a stiff breeze blowing. Almost a full moon hung overhead, with scudding, low-flying clouds passing swiftly across its face at intervals. Henry jammed his straw hat down firmly on his head and strode forward with rapid steps into the wind.

Not that Henry was particularly interested in canoeing. Mr. and Mrs. Jones had, in fact, never been in a canoe together. Henry had never been in one in his life, for he was an indifferent swimmer in spite of his fleshiness, and the obvious frailty of this form of boat held no appeal for him; and if his wife had ever been in one he did not know it. She had never suggested it except once--soon after they were married--and that he had long since forgotten.

Henry struck the lake near its upper end, where it was wildest. He was glad to find himself quite alone; be laid his hat on the ground and sat down close beside the shore, facing the wind that blew strongly toward him from across the water. The lake was rough, and the sound of its little angry waves beating against the pebbly beach at his feet thrilled him. After a moment the moon came from behind a flying cloud and the water was lighted with silver. Henry sighed rapturously.

For perhaps ten minutes he sat motionless. Then abruptly coming from up the lake he saw a lone canoe. It was hardly more than two hundred feet off shore, and was heading downward, across the wind. Henry could see it plainly in the moonlight--a canoe with a single occupant, a girl, seated in its stern and paddling with a single paddle. The empty bow of the canoe rose high in the air.

Henry watched it with furiously beating heart as it rose and fell on the silvery waves. The girl was paddling desperately, and evidently with waning strength to keep its bow from blowing around toward the shore.

The wind increased with a sudden gust, and all at once the girl stopped paddling. The bow of the canoe, acting almost like a sail, swung rapidly around. The canoe rode more quietly now, but drifted steadily shoreward. After a moment the girl started paddling again, and came slanting across the waves in a direction that Henry realized with a start would land her almost at his feet.

Another gust forced her to increase the force of her strokes, but still she could not hold her own. She was almost opposite Henry, and hardly fifty feet off shore, when she gave up again; this time evidently for good, for she held the paddle idle across her knees.

The canoe blew inshore rapidly. Henry was sitting in the shadow of a tree and knew the girl had not seen him. Another moment passed and the bow of the canoe grated upon the pebbly beach, hardly ten feet from where he sat.