The book of Evelyn

by Geraldine Bonner

The steamer sails the day after to-morrow and this afternoon I sent up the trunk. I had offered to come in the evening and help her pack and then backed out. In an offhand manner, as she was sorting piles of sheet music, she said Roger was coming in after dinner to say good-by. She seemed engrossed by the music, gave an absent-minded assent when I said I couldn’t help that night. I could not tell whether she had at last guessed and was exhibiting unusual tact or whether she was still unconscious. I knew that every minute of the next day was filled and it would be Roger’s only chance to see her alone. It was difficult to imagine him proposing in a room littered with his lady’s wardrobe. But love is said to find out a way and if a man’s in earnest he can put the question just as well in a fourth-floor parlor full of clothes, as he can by moonlight in a bower.

I had been waiting for this interview, braced and steeled for the announcement. It was the final trial and I was going to go through with it proudly and stoically if I died the day after. I did not feel quite as if I should die. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, that’s why we don’t all, sometime or other, commit suicide. Hope upheld me now: with a career beckoning she might refuse him. It was but a sickly gleam. No woman, comprehensible to me, would ever put the greatest career the world offers before Roger Clements. The hope lay in the fact that Lizzie was not a comprehensible woman.

With great inward struggle I preserved my pride and stoicism through the rest of the afternoon. They were still with me when, in the evening I lay down on the divan bed, whence I can hear all ascending footsteps. The wreath of cement flowers gradually faded, and the daylight sounds of the house were absorbed in the evening quiet. Night had possession of the city for what seemed an endless time when I heard him going up: from the street, past my floor, up the next flight, and the next, then the far faint closing of Lizzie’s door. Rigid in the dark I pictured the meeting—the room with its high blaze of gas, the open trunks and scattered garments, and Lizzie with her smile and the enveloping beam of her glance.

It was profoundly still in the back room, only the tiny ticking of my watch on the table. The old tomcat, who at this hour was wont to lift up his voice in a nuptial hymn, had gone afield for his wooing. The parlors and bedrooms in the extensions were quiet, their lighted windows throwing a soft yellow light into my darkened lair. Our little bit of the city held its breath in sympathy with me, prone with fixed eyes, seeing those two in the parlor.

Would he work up to it in gentle gradations, gracefully and poetically as men did in novels, or blurt it out in one great question which (for me at least) would have made life blossom as the wood did when Siegmund sung? They would probably stand—people didn’t sit when such matters were afoot—and if she said yes would he take her in his arms then and there? Under the same roof, just two floors above me, they might be standing now, enfolded, cheek to cheek. Pride and stoicism fell from me and I pressed my face into the pillow and moaned like a wounded animal.

The watch ticked on. It was evidently not going to be short and tempestuous. Roger was an unhurried person and he would probably proffer his suit with dignified deliberation. I was certain, if he was successful, he’d come in and tell me on the way down. I couldn’t see him passing my door and not remembering. The place was dark, he might think I was asleep and go by. I got up and lit the lights, thinking as I stretched up with the match, that they were signals telling him I was here, waiting, ready to wish him joy.

Then I looked at the watch—only just nine. He might be hours longer. I could spend the time in preparation, be ready to meet him with a frank unforced smile.

I went to the back window and looked up at the stars for courage. The sky was sprinkled with them—big ones and bright pin points. For centuries they had been gazing down at the puny agonies of discarded lovers, unmoved and cynically curious, winking at them in derision. The thought had a tonic effect. Under its stimulus I straightened my ancestors, askew after a morning’s dusting, and touched up the bunch of daffodils on the table. Then the effect began to wear off. I reached for the watch—twenty minutes past nine.

If she had refused him it would have been done by now. Lizzie wasn’t one to spare or mince her words. I’d better get ready for him. I went to the mirror and saw a ghost, and the stars’ stern message was forgotten. That I should some day be dust was not a sustaining thought now when I was so much a suffering sentient thing, sunk down in the midmost of the moment. I brushed some rouge on my cheeks and smiled at the reflection to see if I could do it naturally. It was ghastly, like the grimace of a corpse that had expired in torment.

Then suddenly I dropped my rouge and gave a smothered cry—I heard Lizzie calling my name. For a moment power of movement seemed stricken from me. I had not thought that she would be the one to tell me. She called again and I opened the door and went into the hall. Her head was visible over the banisters.