Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short StoriesNesbit, E. (Edith)
General
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories
Nesbit, E. (Edith)
Short stories
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.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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