The Bird in the Box

by Mary M. Mears

Flushed like Ulysses returned from his adventures, old David deposited his grip-sack in the entry and then cautiously approached his daughter-in-law's room. She lay there in a great bed with four posts, and in her thin fingers, she held a leaf of the lilac bush—a leaf like a green heart.

The old man peered in at her, pursing up his lips. He thought that his story would "liven Laviny up," and he was enjoying the prospect of relating it, when she turned toward him. She half lifted herself on her elbow. Her face was ghastly, her eyes shining. She looked past him; then fixed her eyes wildly on his face. But he shook his head at her and began speaking with soft jocularity.

"No, I didn't bring him, I couldn't; let me tell you how it was;" and he advanced smiling into the room. "Day after day as Thomas seen that ship he was at work on, grow up taller in the stocks; as he fitted them pieces of red tin unto her sides,—for Thomas was what they call a 'fitter-up', Laviny,—he had his thoughts. And you an' me, knowin' him, we know pretty well what those thoughts were. The long and short of it was, he couldn't stand bein' tied by the leg no longer. He thought how she would glide through the water, that great ship, of the lands she'd visit, of—Laviny!" he cried sharply, as with a gasp, she fell back on the pillow.

"You hadn't ought to act so," he expostulated; "you know he wa'n't marked the way he was fer nothin' with that little spot on his left cheek under the eye. His mother marked him that way before ever he was born, and we often spoke of its bein' jest the shape of the continent of Africky; and it's to Africky—"

A hoarse rattle drowned his words. He peered more closely at her with his aged eyes. And at that moment a faint thin wail came up from the other side of the bed.

He seized her arm while his tears fell on her wrist, which never quivered under their hot touch. "Laviny!" he cried, "Oh, he hadn't ought to have done it! Don't leave me alone with it—the little one!" he shrieked. "Why didn't you tell me it was here? Oh, Laviny, Laviny girl!"

But Lavina Beckett paid no heed. She had embarked for a stranger port and over stormier seas than any her husband had dared. The sound of the old man's sobs brought a woman to the door. Her figure surged with fat. One of her teeth projected when her face was in repose. She hastily approached the bed, but even she was awed.

"Don't make sech a noise," she said finally. "It ain't no use. You can't call her back now. If you could've managed to bring him, it would've been different likely. But you didn't. You never did manage, I guess, to do anything you set out to."

But the old man paid no heed. He sat with his hands on his knees, his head dropped forward, inefficient, old, broken down by grief, and a thin low wail for the second time broke the silence.