To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 25
JOE had been to Boston. He had tried to persuade Evelyn to come with him, for she had been nervous and depressed, hiding from him, when he tried to help her, behind magazines, behind quick determined talk of outside things. He thought, if we could get away together and just be silly. "Do come, Evelyn! Don't you remember what fun we had there the time we bought cherries and rode in the swan boats?" But she had said "Boston!" in the same tone with which she said "Westlake!" and added that she couldn't leave Hope. No, she couldn't leave her with Joe's mother, or Charlotte. And there was a new black Matilda who would be too lonely. And at last she had cried, "Oh, Joe, don't fuss so!" and had run upstairs and slammed the door of Hope's room after her. But she wept when she kissed him good-by, and told him to hurry home.
He managed to get back a day earlier than he had expected. He had not telegraphed, for he wanted to surprise her. He took one of O'Leary's taxis, stopping at Clark's for some flowers. A strange young lady waited on him condescendingly, making him feel shy. He watched her disentangle the heap of dawn-colored roses with wet dark leaves, while the feeling of Evelyn surged through him.
"Sperrigus?"
"I— Excuse me?"
"I say-ed, sperrigus?"
"Oh! Oh no, thank you"
Driving in pouring rain through the puddles of Poor Farm Road, silver wings sprang out from the taxi, yet Joe wanted to get out and run. But when he reached the house it was empty.
He hurried through it, calling her. It was dark with the rain outside, empty and still, but not at peace. Did the house seem as lonely as this to her when he was out of it?
His whole being waited for her, as he had waited for his mother when he was a child. He needed Evelyn for safety. He was lost without her.
She came at last, with Hope. And he was safe again; the world was real, instead of a shifting mist that covered emptiness. The house no longer waited and listened. He wanted to cry from relief as he held her; he felt weak and young and at peace.
Then he saw that her eyes were red.
"Evelyn, what's the matter?"
"Nothing," she said in a muted voice. "The roses are lovely, Joe." And she let them fall back into their box.
"Something's wrong. You're sick."
"No, I'm all right."
At supper she cut up her food, lifted it to her mouth, put it back on her plate untouched. Sometimes she sat in silence, sometimes she asked him a stranger's question: "Did you have nice weather?" "Did you go to the theater?"
"Evelyn, you must tell me what's wrong," he cried, and there was desperation in his voice.
She pushed back her full plate and went into the living room. Her hands twisted and tore her handkerchief.
"Joe, I'm not happy—I want to go away."
"I wanted you to come to Boston"
"Oh, I don't mean that! I mean go away for good."
"But why?"
"I love you—I love you ever so much—and Hope—but I'm so bored, I'm so sick of this life, I hate this place, I'm so tired"
He took her writhing hands in his; he held them still.
"I feel so restless, so nervous, Joe. I can't sleep; I can't stop crying at night when you're asleep. And nothing seems worth doing"
He held her hands in silence, looking at her in suffering pity.
"I'm young, I'm pretty; it's too soon for everything to be over. I don't give a damn about church fairs and growing sweet peas and making dresses for Hope. Oh, Joe, you don't know what the women here are like! Servants and new sweater stitches, and the emotion that goes into deciding whether to have a silk lamp shade or a parchment one. I could scream! I will scream some day, and I won't be able to stop, and you'll have to put me in an asylum, unless I get away."
"It's too lonely for you out here. Let's try it in town."
"No! No!"
"But where do you want to go?"
"Mrs. Prather wants me to go to Paris with her, and then to the Lido. I long to go! The people I'm used to, the ways I understand—I ought never to have left them. I hate this place!"
"Perhaps we can go somewhere else, Evelyn."
"No, Joe, no. Don't you understand?"
"Understand? . . . You mean you're tired of me, too?"
She nodded, gasping for breath. She held his hand tight against her wet cheek.
"Do you want to leave me?"
"Joe, you're so good to me—why do I want to go?"
"You're tired, darling. I've let you work too hard. I'll send you away for a while, and then perhaps?"
"No, no, no! I want to go for good. Oh, Joe, this isn't a new idea! I tried to get over it because of Hope, but you don't know how unhappy I've been! I want to go! I've got to go!"
The life she longed for, where each step of the day was effortless delight. Held up by soft pillows to drink fragrant coffee from thin porcelain, lying deep in a hot bath, just those things would be enough after the discomfort of her life now. Jokes and compliments, and people, heaps of people. Crazy, amusing, admiring people, instead of Hope—"Eat your nice spinach, darling. Now, Hope, eat it up!"—and Joe yawning over his book in the evening. Oh, the evenings! She wanted to slip into a scrap of bright chiffon and dance all night, and be told she was young and beautiful.
Oh, the relief if she could go free! And they wanted her to come back to them—her mother, Mrs. Prather, Ralph Levinson
It would be bitter grief to leave Hope. But Mrs. Prather hadn't asked her, and it would be no life for a child, this summer. Just this summer she wanted to be gay, reckless; then when she came back surely Joe would let her have the baby.
A black face appeared in the doorway. The whites of the eyes, the spectacles, their nose piece made comfortable by a winding of pale blue worsted, printed themselves on Joe's memory. The big mauve rosette of puckered lips parted to ask in a soft explosion that sighed itself to silence:
"Doan you-all wan' no pie?"
Evelyn turned away her face, distorted with weeping. Joe shook his head.
"No cawfee?"
"No, thank you, Matilda." He shut the door behind her and went back to Evelyn. She was picking up and setting down a small crystal Buddha on the mantelpiece, watching, half hypnotized, the blur of shadow with its core of soft light rising and falling on the wall behind it; but as Joe touched her the Buddha leaped from her hand and fell to the floor.
"Perhaps you'll change your mind, Evelyn."
She shook her head, sobbing.
"It isn't Levinson, is it? Evelyn, you don't love him?"
"I don't know! I don't know! I thought I did once. I would have been happy with him, but now you've made me so I can't be happy with anyone—with him or with you. I just know I want to go out of your life. I've spoiled it enough."
"You've been my strength and my happiness; you still are; you always will be. You're mine forever, even if you leave me, and I'm yours. Everything we've known together—our secrets, Evelyn! The way we've laughed together, the things we've come through—don't you see how we belong to each other?"
"I want to go."
"You shall go, but you'll come back to me."
"Oh, I don't know, I don't know!"
"You came to me to help you, Evelyn, my Evelyn. I'll remember that forever."
Then as he began to tremble, as tears began to pour over his face, he understood what she had told him. He stumbled to the sofa, putting up his hands to hide his tears, but they ran through his fingers. He could not stop them, he had lost control.
Evelyn knelt beside him, kissing his wet face, pressing her wet cheek to his.
"I'll stay, Joe. I'll stay, darling. Don't you hear me? Don't you hear what I'm saying?"
When he heard the sadness in her voice, when she lay cold and quiet and pitying in his arms, he knew he must let her go.
"Evelyn hasn't been very well, and she's going abroad for a rest and a change with her mother and some friends," Kate told people. "No, unfortunately, Joe's too busy to get away just now. He and Hope are going to spend the summer with me. You know I've been fairly rattling round in the house since Carrie went to California."