Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve Read Free Book Online Page B

that after a time, he is compelled to say, with the faint echo of the schoolmaster in his voice, “Is not that so, Olympia? Or perhaps you have not yet had time to glance at Haskell’s essays.”
    She raises her chin with a bravado she does not feel and says to John Haskell rather than to her father, “I have read nearly all of the essays, Mr. Haskell, and I like them very much.”
    She breathes so shallowly that she cannot get air into her lungs. Another silence ensues, one that, as it unfolds, begins to annoy her father.
    “Surely, Olympia, you can be more specific,” he says finally.
    She takes a breath and lays down her fork.
    “The form of your essays is deceptively simple, Mr. Haskell,” she says. “You appear to have written seven stories without judgment or commentary, yet the portraits, in the accretion of detail, are more persuasive, I believe, than any rhetoric could possibly be.”
    “Persuasive of what?” asks Philbrick, who has not read the essays.
    “Persuasive of the need to improve the living conditions of millworkers,” she answers.
    John Haskell looks quickly at Philbrick, who does, after all, own a number of boardinghouses in Rye, as if to ascertain whether the man will be offended by further discussion of the topic. But Haskell doubtless also sees, as she does, the small smile on her father’s face, a smile that indicates to her that perhaps his insistence that she speak about the book is, in fact, part of his plan to engage in lively debate. Haskell then turns from Philbrick to Olympia. She prays that he will not say that she is too kind in her comments, for she knows that to do so will be to dismiss her entirely.
    “Your portraits are raw and have passages that are to me both illuminating and difficult to read,” she continues before he can speak, “not in their language but in the images they create, particularly as regards accidents and medical matters.”
    “This is quite true, Olympia,” her father says, beginning slightly to recover his pride in his daughter.
    “I think it would be the rare reader indeed who could come away from those portraits unmoved,” she adds.
    “Your perceptions would seem to belie your age,” Rufus Philbrick interjects suddenly, appraising her with keen eyes. She finds she does not mind the frankness of his gaze.
    “Not at all,” her father says. “My daughter is exceptionally well schooled.”
    “And what school might that be?” Zachariah Cote asks, addressing her politely. Olympia does not like the man’s sudden smile, nor the exceptional length of his side-whiskers, nor, more important, the way in which the conversation has turned to her rather than to the work of John Haskell.
    “The school of my father,” she says.
    “Is that so?” asks Rufus Philbrick with some surprise. “You do not attend classes?”
    Her father answers for her. “My daughter went to the Commonwealth Seminary for Females in Boston for six years, at which time it became painfully apparent that Olympia’s learning was far superior to that of her instructors. I removed her and have been schooling her at home instead; although a year from now, I hope to enroll her at Wellesley College.”
    “Have you minded?” Catherine Haskell asks quietly, turning in her direction. “Being separated from other girls your age?”
    “My father is a gifted and kind teacher,” Olympia says diplomatically.
    “So you know a great deal about the mills?” Rufus Philbrick asks John Haskell.
    “Not as much as I would like,” he answers. “One of the disadvantages of creating portraits to tell one’s story is that they seldom allow the writer to reveal a full historical perspective, and I fear this is a major flaw of the book. I think that understanding the history of any given situation is critical to comprehending it in the present. Do you not agree?”
    “Oh, I think so,” Olympia’s father says.
    “In the early days of the mills,” Haskell continues, “when the workers were