Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short StoriesNesbit, E. (Edith)
General
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories
Nesbit, E. (Edith)
Short stories
But it was not Mary that he came for, though she married him just the
same, and came out to America with their children some years after her
sister's lone pilgrimage.
The intrusion of Jerry McMurray signaled the grounding of her dream-bark
on the shoals of reality. Who cared about the cut-and-dried life of a
grown woman? Enchantment now lay behind her, and, if the intervals
between periods of pain permitted, she again turned an expectant face
toward the old childish visions. Sometimes she could make the trip twice
over without being overtaken by suffering. But her intervals of comfort
grew steadily shorter; frequently she was interrupted before she could
get rightly launched on her delight. And always there seemed to be one
vision more illusive than the rest which she particularly longed to
recapture. At last, chance words of Anna's put her on its trail in this
wise.
When she was not, as her niece said, 'in her trance, wool-gathering'
Anna did her best to distract her, sending the children in to ask 'would
she have a sup of tea now,' or a taste of wine jelly. One day, after the
invalid had spent a bad night, she brought in her new long silk coat for
her aunt's inspection, for the old woman had always been 'tasty' and
'dressy,' and had made many a fine gown in her day. The sharp old eyes
lingered on the rich and truly striking braid ornament that secured the
loose front of the garment.
'What's that plaster?' she demanded, disparagingly.
Anna, inclined to be wroth, retorted: 'I suppose you'd be preferring one
o' them tight ganzy [sweater] things that fit the figger like a jersey,
all buttoned down before.'
A sudden light flamed in the old face. 'I have it!' she cried. 'Tis what
I've been seeking this good while. 'Twill come now--the red coat! I must
be getting back to the beginning.'
With that, she was off, relaxing and composing herself, as if
surrendering to the spell of a hypnotist.
To reach any desired picture in her gallery, she must start at the
outset. Then they followed on, in due order--all that procession of
little girls: pink clad, blue-print clad, bare-legged or brogan-shod;
flirting their short skirts, plaiting their heavy braids. About half way
along, a new figure asserted itself--a girl of nine or ten, who twisted
this way and that before a blurred bit of mirror and frowned at the red
coat that flapped about her heels,--bought oversize, you may be sure, so
that she shouldn't grow out of it too soon. The sleeves swallowed her
little brown hands, the shoulders and back were grotesquely sack-like,
the front had a puss [pout] on it.
''Tis the very fetch of Paddy the gander I am in it. I'll not be wearing
it so.' She frowned with sudden intentness. 'Could I be fitting it a
bit, I wonder, the way mother does cut down John's coats for Martin?'
With needle, scissors and thread, she crept up to her little chamber
under the eaves. It was early in the forenoon when she set to work
ripping. The morning passed, and the dinner hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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