Triumph of the Egg, and Other StoriesAnderson, Sherwood
General
Triumph of the Egg, and Other Stories
Anderson, Sherwood
Ohio -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
Sometimes she was a little mad herself and then
she was whipped or scolded. The mad world of her fancy had to be put
away. It frightened her a little. Once after the thing appeared she
cried, went down to the fence crying. A man who was cultivating corn
came along and stopped his horses. "What's the matter?" he asked
sharply. She couldn't tell him so she told a lie. "A bee stung me," she
said. The man laughed. "It'll get well. Better put on your shoes," he
advised.
The time of the marching trees and the dancing grasses was in
Rosalind's childhood. Later when she had graduated from the Willow
Springs High School and had the three years of waiting about the
Wescott house before she went to the city she had other experiences in
the orchard. Then she had been reading novels and had talked with other
young women. She knew many things that after all she did not know. In
the attic of her mother's house there was a cradle in which she and her
brother had slept when they were babies. One day she went up there and
found it. Bedding for the cradle was packed away in a trunk and she
took it out. She arranged the cradle for the reception of a child. Then
after she did it she was ashamed. Her mother might come up the attic
stairs and see it. She put the bedding quickly back into the trunk and
went down stairs, her cheeks burning with shame.
What a confusion! One day she went to the house of a schoolgirl friend
who was about to be married. Several other girls came and they were all
taken into a bedroom where the bride's trousseau was laid out on a bed.
What soft lovely things! All the girls went forward and stood over
them, Rosalind among them. Some of the girls were shy, others bold.
There was one, a thin girl who had no breasts. Her body was flat like a
door and she had a thin sharp voice and a thin sharp face. She began to
cry out strangely. "How sweet, how sweet, how sweet," she cried over
and over. The voice was not like a human voice. It was like something
being hurt, an animal in the forest, far away somewhere by itself,
being hurt. Then the girl dropped to her knees beside the bed and began
to weep bitterly. She declared she could not bear the thought of her
schoolgirl friend being married. "Don't do it! O, Mary don't do it!"
she pleaded. The other girls laughed but Rosalind couldn't stand it.
She hurried out of the house.
That was one thing that had happened to Rosalind and there were other
things. Once she saw a young man on the street. He clerked in a store
and Rosalind did not know him. However her fancy played with the
thought that she had married him. Her own thoughts made her ashamed.
Everything shamed her. When she went into the orchard on summer
afternoons she sat with her back against the apple tree and took off
her shoes and stockings just as she had when she was a child, but the
world of her childhood fancy was gone, nothing could bring it back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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