The Cords of Vanity | Page 8

grow up, and--marry, and--die, whether we
want to or not. We've no choice. And it may not matter, after all.
Everything will keep right on like it did before; and the stars won't care;
and what we've done and had done to us won't really matter!"
"Well, but, Stella, you can have a right good time first, anyway, if you
keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you really

go to Heaven afterwards if you haven't been really bad,--don't you?"
"Rob,--are you ever afraid of dying?" Stella asked, "very much
afraid--Oh, you know what I mean."
I did. I was about ten once more. It was dark, and I was passing a
drug-store, with huge red and green and purple bottles glistening in the
gas-lit windows; and it had just occurred to me that I, too, must die, and
be locked up in a box, and let down with trunk-straps into a hole, like
Father was.... So I said, "Yes."
"And yet we've got to! Oh, I don't see how people can go on living like
everything was all right when that's always getting nearer,--when they
know they've got to die before very long. Because they dance and go on
picnics and buy hats as if they were going to live forever. I--oh, I can't
understand."
"They get used to the idea, I reckon. We're sort of like the rats in the
trap at home, in our stable," I suggested, poetically. "We can bite the
wires and go crazy, like lots of them do, if we want to, or we can eat
the cheese and kind of try not to think about it. Either way, there's no
getting out till they come to kill us in the morning."
"Yes," sighed Stella; "I suppose we must make the best of it."
"It's the only sensible thing to do, far as I can see."
"But it is all so big--and so careless about us!" she said, after a little.
"And we don't know--we can't know!--what is going to happen to you
and me. And we can't stop its happening!"
"We'll just have to make the best of that, too," I protested, dolefully.
Stella sighed again, "I hope so," she assented; "still, I'm scared of it."
"I think I am, too--sort of," I conceded, after reflection. "Anyhow, I am
going to have as good a time as I can."
There was now an even longer pause. Pitiable, ridiculous infants were

pondering, somewhat vaguely but very solemnly, over certain
mysteries of existence, which most of us have learned to accept with
stolidity. We were young, and to us the miraculous insecurity and
inconsequence of human life was still a little impressive, and we had
not yet come to regard the universe as a more or less comfortable place,
well-meaningly constructed anyhow--by Somebody--for us to reside in.
Therefore we moved a trifle closer together, Stella and I, and were
commonly miserable over the Weltschmerz. After a little a distant
whippoorwill woke me from a chaos of reverie, and I turned to Stella,
with a vague sense that we two were the only people left in the whole
world, and that I was very, very fond of her.
Stella's head was leaned backward. Her lips were parted, and the
moonlight glinted in her eyes. Her eyes were blue.
"Don't!" said Stella, faintly.
I did....
It was a matter out of my volition, out of my planning. And, oh, the
wonder, and sweetness, and sacredness of it! I thought, even in the
instant; and, oh, the pity that, after all, it is slightly disappointing....
Stella was not angry, as I had half expected. "That was dear of you,"
she said, impulsively, "but don't try to do it again." There was the
wisdom of centuries in this mandate of Stella's as she rose from the
bench. The spell was broken, utterly. "I think," said Stella, in the voice
of a girl of fifteen, "I think we'd better go and dance some more."
5
In the crude morning I approached Stella, with a fatuous smile. She
apparently both perceived and resented my bearing, although she never
once looked at me. There was something of great interest to her in the
distance, apparently down by the springhouse; she was flushed and
indignant; and her eyes wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't turn for an instant
in my direction.

I fidgeted.
"If," said she, impersonally, "if you believe it was because of you, you
are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody.
You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a
mess, and I hate you. Go away from me!"
And she stamped her foot in a fine rage.
For the moment I entertained an un-Christian desire that Stella had
been born a boy.