In the darkness by the house, Eugene clutched at his throat. He wept for all the lovely people who would not come again.
Eliza stood upon the porch, her hands clasped loosely across her stomach. Eugene was leaving the house and going toward the town. It was the day before his departure; dusk was coming on, the hills were blooming in strange purple dusk. Eliza watched him go.
“Spruce up there, boy!” she called. “Spruce up! Throw your shoulders back!”
In the dusk he knew that she was smiling tremulously at him, pursing her lips. She caught his low mutter of annoyance:
“Why, yes,” she said, nodding briskly. “I’d show them! I’d act as if I thought I was Somebody. Son,” she said more gravely, with a sudden change from her tremulous banter, “it worries me to see you walk like that. You’ll get lung-trouble as sure as you’re born if you go all humped over. That’s one thing about your papa: he always carried himself as straight as a rod. Of course, he’s not as straight now as he used to be—as the fellow says” (she smiled tremulously)—“I reckon we all have a tendency to shrink up a little as we get older. But in his young days there wasn’t a straighter man in town.”
And then the terrible silence came between them again. He had turned sullenly upon her while she talked. Indecisively she stopped, peered down at him with white pursed face, and in that silence, behind the trivial arras of her talk, he heard the bitter song of all her life.
The marvellous hills were blooming in the dusk. Eliza pursed her lips reflectively a moment, then continued:
“Well, when you get way up there—as the fellow says—in Yankeedom, you want to look up your Uncle Emerson and all your Boston kin. Your Aunt Lucy took a great liking to you when they were down here—they always said they’d be glad to see any of us if we ever came up—when you’re a stranger in a strange land it’s mighty good sometimes to have someone you know. And say—when you see your Uncle Emerson, you might just tell him not to be surprised to see me at any time now” (She nodded pertly at him)—“I reckon I can pick right up and light out the same as the next fellow when I get ready—I may just pack up and come—without saying a word to anyone—I’m not going to spend all my days slaving away in the kitchen—it don’t pay—if I can turn a couple of trades here this Fall, I may start out to see the world like I always intended to—I was talking to Cash Rankin about it the other day—‘Why, Mrs. Gant,’ he said, ‘if I had your head I’d be a rich man in five years—you’re the best trader in this town,’ he said. ‘Don’t you talk to me about any more trades,’ I said—‘when I get rid of what I’ve got now I’m going to get out of it, and not even listen to anyone who says real-estate to me—we can’t take any of it with us, Cash,’ I said—‘there are no pockets in shrouds and we only need six feet of earth to bury us in the end—so I’m going to pull out and begin to enjoy life—or as the feller says—before it’s too late’—‘Well, I don’t know that I blame you, Mrs. Gant,’ he said—‘I reckon you’re right—we can’t take any of it with us,’ he said—‘and besides, even if we could, what good would it do us where we’re goin’?’—Now here” (she addressed Eugene with sudden change, with the old loose masculine gesture of her hand)—“here’s the thing I’m going to do—you know that lot I told you I owned on Sunset Crescent—”
And now the terrible silence came between them once again.
The marvellous hills were blooming in the dusk. We shall not come again. We never shall come back again.
Without speech now they faced each other, without speech they knew each other. In a moment Eliza turned quickly from him and with the queer unsteady steps with which she had gone out from the room where Ben lay dying, she moved toward the door.
He rushed back across the walk and with a single bound took the steps that mounted to the porch. He caught the rough hands that she held clasped across her body, and drew them swiftly, fiercely, to his breast.
“Goodbye,” he muttered harshly. “Goodbye! Goodbye, mama!” A wild, strange cry, like that of a beast in pain, was torn from his throat. His eyes were blind with tears; he tried to speak, to get into a word, a phrase, all the pain, the beauty, and the wonder of their lives—every step of that terrible voyage which his incredible memory and intuition took back to the dwelling of her womb. But no word came, no word could come; he kept crying hoarsely again and again, “Goodbye, goodbye.”
She understood, she knew all he felt and wanted to say, her small weak eyes were wet as his with tears, her face was twisted in the painful grimace of sorrow, and she kept saying:
“Poor child! Poor child! Poor child!” Then she whispered huskily, faintly: “We must try to love one another.”
The terrible and beautiful sentence, the last, the final wisdom that the earth can give, is remembered at the end, is spoken too late, wearily. It stands there, awful and untraduced, above the dusty racket of our lives. No forgetting, no forgiving, no denying, no explaining, no hating.
O mortal and perishing love, born with this flesh and dying with this brain, your memory will haunt the earth forever.
And now the voyage out. Where?
XL
The Square lay under blazing moonlight. The fountain pulsed with a steady breezeless jet: the water fell upon the pool with a punctual slap. No one came into the Square.
The chimes of the bank’s
