Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories Part 12

'I'm so quiet. I didn't know it could be like this.'

The March wind blew the dust into her face. The grit irritated her. She wished there were snow on the ground and then wondered that she should care. That was how it was the next two days: she went on thinking and acting, with every now and then this strange awareness of being alive.

But on Monday afternoon when they came home from the cemetery, Eunice went upstairs to her room.

'I'm going to lie down a while, mother.'

Her mother made no answer as she turned into the kitchen.

Eunice lay down on the bed. A pale yellow sunset gleamed through the branches of the tree outside her window. She had seen the yellow streak in the sky as they had left the cemetery. She closed her eyes to shut it out. Her heart was no longer numb. It was waking to its misery. She lay very still with clenched hands. She had learned to bear physical pain that way. She thought perhaps she could bear this if she lay very still.

'I want to tell you about a book I've just read. It's great stuff.'

'O Stephen, Stephen, laddie!'

The tears came, and great sobs that shook and twisted her rigid body.

Once she thought her mother came up the stairs and stopped outside her door. She buried her face in the pillow. Her mother must not hear. By and by,--she had been quiet for an hour,--her mother came in with a tray.

'I've made you some toast and tea, Eunice. You must keep up your strength.'

Her tone was flat and emotionless. She set the tray down by her in the darkness. Then she lighted the gas.

Eunice swallowed the tea obediently, she was so very tired. As she put the cup down her eyes fell on the cretonne-covered box in the window.

'Mother, my Glory-Box! Don't let me see it! Oh, don't let me see my Glory-Box!'

Mrs. Day came up to the bed. 'I'll take it out to-morrow while you are at school. I meant to do that.' Her face worked as she left the room.

When the door closed, Eunice sat up and pushed her tumbled hair back from her face. She wanted to look at the Glory-Box. To-morrow her mother was going to take it away. She clasped her hands tightly about her drawn-up knees and stared at the box with hot, miserable eyes. Of course it would have to be taken away, but she wanted to look at it now because it was her Glory-Box and because it was Stephen's. Stephen had made it.

'That's a decent job for just a lawyer,' he had said, when the last nail was driven in and they were taking a critical survey of it.

Stephen had laughed when she regretted that the roses in the cretonne were yellow, because the things to go into the box very likely would be pink. He had laughed and kissed her and told her she had better get a pair of pink specs, then the roses would be pink enough.

And Stephen had taken such an interest in what she had written about the things she was embroidering for household use. When she had reported a whole dozen napkins hemmed and initialed, he had thought it would be jolly to have nice linen. They would probably be short on silver at first, but good linen made you feel respectable. He remembered his mother taking so much pride in what had been left of hers. For a moment the words of that letter were so vividly recalled that she forgot that Stephen was dead. For quite a moment she was happy. Then she remembered, but the realization brought no tears, only a swelling wave of misery.

'I can't bear it, oh, I can't!'

But even as she moaned she knew that she would bear it, that she would go on living for years and years and years. Other girls she had known or heard about--in her own town--had gone on living: little Sadie Smith whose lover had been killed three days before her wedding, and even Milly Petersen, who had been engaged for five years when the man asked to be released because he wanted to marry the girl who had recently moved to Milly's street. These girls had lived; they had grown pale and faded, or hard. People felt very sorry for them: they were spoken of as 'poor Milly,' or 'Sadie Smith, poor child'; but they had lived. Eunice saw herself moving among her little circle, brave and sad-eyed like these girls.

Suddenly--she never remembered just how it came about--suddenly her humor flashed a white light over the vision. This sad-eyed Self seemed something not to pity but to scorn. It was grotesque standing in your friend's parlor with clenched hands, as it were, and compressed lips, saying, 'Don't mind me, please. I'm bearing it.' If one were going to live one must live happily. Stephen was such a happy person. He was happy when he was working or playing or just loving. Even hurdy-gurdys made him happy.

'When I hear one grinding away in the morning,' he had written, 'I have to kick a few Law Journals about just to keep in tune with the darn thing.'

It had been a delightful surprise to her, his overflowing happiness, for Stephen's face in repose was very grave. She herself only occasionally had his joy in mere living, but she had always thought that Stephen's joyfulness would prove infectious. Suppose, now, without Stephen she should make the experiment of being happy. It would be a wonderful experiment to see,--she spoke the words aloud, deliberately,--to see if she could kill this terrible thing, Sorrow, and keep Stephen to love and to remember.

Eunice was still staring at the Glory-Box, but it was more than her Glory-Box. It was part of the problem that she was trying to think out clearly. For perhaps sorrow was a problem that you could work out like other problems, if only you could see it, not as one solid, opaque ma.s.s, but as something made up of pieces that you could deal with one at a time. The Glory-Box was a piece. She had wanted it taken away because it was a thing so filled with pain that she could not bear to have it about. If--Eunice got up in her excitement and walked up and down the room--if the Glory-Box could become a box again, just a box covered with cretonne, and the things in it become things, then a great piece of misery would disappear. Love, a girl's love, was like--she groped a moment for words--like a vine that puts forth little shoots and tendrils; love even went into things. When Death trampled on the vine, the shoots and tendrils were crushed with it. But if you cut them off, these poor bruised pieces of the vine, the vine itself would perhaps have a chance to become strong and beautiful.

Eunice played with the idea, her cheeks flushed, her eyes very bright.

She felt as she did sometimes when talking on paper with Stephen.

She went over to the Glory-Box and raised the cover. On top lay the matinee that Mabel had brought on that day not quite a week ago. She unfolded it and touched it. 'This isn't--Stephen,' she said aloud, quite firmly. 'It's cotton voile and val lace. It's cotton voile.'

She took out garment after garment. When she came to the pink kimono her eyes blinded with tears. 'It's a lovely shade. Pink is pretty with dark hair.' Her quivering lips could scarcely frame the words. 'It's not Stephen. It's--it's just a kimono.'

She put the things back and closed the box. 'I'll look at the rest in a day or two. I'll keep looking at them. Probably I shall never be able to use them, but I'll keep looking until I get accustomed to seeing them.

Mother will get used to seeing the box here. If she put it in the storeroom she would always dread going in.'

Mrs. Day was getting breakfast the next morning when Eunice came down.

She went on mechanically with her preparation, avoiding looking at her.

At the table she glanced up. Eunice's face was white and haggard, but her eyes, strangely big, were shining. Eunice's mother watched her furtively throughout the meal. As they left the table Eunice put her arms about her.

'Don't take the box out, mother. It's better to get used to it. I'm trying to get used to things. Don't you worry about me. You'll see.'

She kissed her and hurried to school. In her exalted mood the sympathetic attentions of the other teachers seemed almost surprising.

They were dear and kind, but why should they be so kind? She was going to be happy. At the end of the day, however, Eunice let herself softly into the house, too wretched to want to meet her mother. She carried to her room the letters of condolence that were on the dining-room table.

She read them impa.s.sively, even the kindly one from Miss Lansing, wondering why they did not touch her. 'It's because I'm tired,' she concluded, and knelt down by the Glory-Box, bowing her head on her outstretched arms.

'Stephen, dear,' she prayed, 'I can't look at the things to-night. I'm too tired.'

But the next day she took them all out. And on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon three weeks later she startled her mother by coming into her room dressed in the suit and hat that were her 'best.' Her mother laid down the skirt on which she was putting a new braid.

'Why, where are you going, Eunice?'

'I thought I'd call on Mabel. I've never been to see her since she started housekeeping. I promised to, long ago.'

Mrs. Day looked at her keenly, her mouth tightening. 'You're foolish to go and see all her wedding presents about the house. You won't be able to stand it.'

'I shall, mother. That's why I'm going to stand it. I shan't mind calling there after I've been this once. I've thought it out.'

'You're a queer girl, Eunice. I don't understand you. But I suppose you know your--your own business best,' she ended, taking up her work again.

Eunice felt quite sure that she did, and yet there were days when the experiment seemed a failure, or at least only just begun: days when she would read in a paper of brilliant social events in New York, in Stephen's New York. Stephen might have been there at that dinner, his eyes, which looked so gravely from his picture, lighted with the joyfulness of the occasion, his splendid head towering above the other men as he joined in the toasts--Stephen had told her they always made toasts at these dinners; she could hear his laugh, his hearty boyish laugh. And those other days in early spring, when a hurdy-gurdy would play 'Turkey in the Straw,' and she could see Stephen pitching his Law Journals about, exulting in the glorious fact that he was alive. Oh, how she longed for him, wanted him these days--with a pa.s.sionate yearning that for moments maddened her. But as the months went by the times of overwhelming wanting came less and less frequently. 'I shall soon be happy,' Eunice told herself. And on a morning of June loveliness, a morning of very blue sky, white clouds, and b.u.t.ter-cups, Eunice knew that she was happy.

'I'm glad to-day, Stephen, I'm glad, just because it's all so beautiful.'

She wondered now and again why, since she herself was so surely leaving the sorrow behind her, her mother should still droop under its weight.

They seldom talked about Stephen. They had agreed at the beginning not to do that often, but there was bitterness in her mother's face and bitterness on occasion in her words. 'I've got used to seeing your box around, but don't ever ask me to look inside.' It occurred to Eunice that perhaps it was because to her mother had come only the grief. She was not having Stephen to love.

III

One afternoon late in February, Eunice was met in the hall by her mother. 'A letter came for you this morning. It's from New York.' She stood watching her as Eunice opened it with unsteady fingers.

Eunice looked up in a few moments, very white. 'It's from Professor Lansing's sister,' she faltered. 'Miss Lansing is coming on to Chicago this week. She says she would like to see me. She'll stop off in Dayton over night, Sat.u.r.day probably, and will come out for lunch if it's convenient for us to have her. She can make connections by doing that.

Oh, mother, it's beautiful of her to want to come.'

'I don't know that it will do you much good to see her. You'll probably get upset.'