Nothing That Meets the Eye Read Online Free PDF

tearing at his thumbnails. He tried to crush himself into as small a space as possible.
    In the last two minutes, in the interview with the foreman, he had completely changed the world in which he had been living for four weeks. He had made the relationship between himself and the town ugly, uncomfortable, mercenary. He had banished the sense of the unspoiled paradise. He had not only asked, but he had been refused!
    Suddenly, as he huddled in the window, the town seemed to rise up cold and hostile about him. He shuddered as he might have at something supernatural. The familiar riverbank frightened him, and so did the church spire over the trees, the barn whose roof he could just see, where he had often visited the goats. He squirmed farther into the window at the sight of Mrs. Coolidge, the wife of the postmaster, who was entering the bridge from the other end. He wondered if she would speak to him. He remembered she had smiled at him last Sunday in church. Almost everybody smiled at him, and he was handed an open hymnal when they stood up to sing. But couldn’t their smiles from the first have been sarcastic or pitying?
    Aaron flung himself about and, bowing slightly, forced himself to say, “Good morning, Mrs. Coolidge!”
    â€œGood morning!” she returned in an astonished, cracked voice. She cleared her throat and passed on, without a change in her pace.
    Aaron looked after her and a wave of uncertainty passed over him. What had she meant? How had she meant the “Good morning”? He held fast to the sill, barely resisting an impulse to run after her and demand his answers.
    He stared and frowned before him and began to rip his nails. He thought of Mrs. Hopley, remembered Pete in the doorway, recalled that Mac had seemed cool last evening. Wally, the switchman, had greeted him with only a wave of the hand. He remembered George Shmid’s smiling mouth, asking him questions about Freya. He could recall a dwindling sincerity in people’s voices, even times when he might have been snubbed, when he thought he had not been seen. Suppose the whole town suspected evil of him? Of him and Freya? Of course, everyone in Clement had seen him with her at one time or another! He tried to remember when anyone had mentioned Freya or the Wolstenholmes to him. Were they so bad that no one spoke of them? Did the town suspect evil of him or not? And if it did, why didn’t it come out and say so?
    There was a report like a gunshot behind him. Aaron turned around, as a plank of the bridge floor rattled hollowly into place, and a car moved toward him.
    IX
    W ith the relief that it was only a car came a kind of snap inside him, and a relaxation. Slowly and without passion, the idea took form in his mind to go and get his things and to leave the town.
    Rather than use Trevelyan Boulevard, he chose the quiet road that ran by the railroad tracks and the river, which would bring him to Pleasant Street. He passed an old man, then a young woman, neither of whom he knew nor who paid him any notice. And though the sight of each had caused a little shock inside him, he began to swing his arms in a physical expression of confidence that almost set his mind at rest.
    A block away now, George Shmid stepped out from Mrs. Hopley’s walk and turned in the other direction. The sight of his squat, odiously familiar back was enough. Aaron realized suddenly that he could not face anyone he knew, Mrs. Hopley, the baler, any of the roomers. And yet, even now he considered running after George and explaining to him, not for Freya or for himself, but for the town’s sake. If he explained, though, could he change what had happened to the town that morning? And how could he explain? What was there to explain?
    His thoughts foundered in an emotion he could not at once identify. It felt like guilt. But what was he guilty of? Why had he not been good enough? What was so wrong with him that his best efforts had not made him fit in the