Home from the Hill by William Humphrey

Author:William Humphrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504006248
Publisher: Open Road Media

31

The young man—who he was does not matter—one of those who had heard himself described in the baccalaureate just the day before as a conqueror of the coming age, and now bearing himself as if he believed it—arrived at the Halstead door, corsage in hand, to claim Libby for the graduation dance. He was met by her father, who found in his face no promise of immediate conquest, and admitted him to the parlor. Mr. Halstead gathered up his newspaper and nodded the young man to his armchair and left the room, calling up as he passed through the hall:

“He’s here, Libby.”

He proceeded to the kitchen. Shortly there reached him there the creak of footsteps on the stairs, the murmur of voices, the opening and closing of the front door, whereupon he got up, returned through the dining room, and, still reading, passed his wife at the foot of the stairs.

He looked up, however, when just then the doorbell gave a tinkle. He turned. The door opened and through it came a hand upon which perched a beribboned cellophane box containing a white gardenia. The young man’s fallen face duly followed.

“I might as well leave this for her,” he said to Mr. Halstead’s wife. “It’s no use to me.”

As neither of them came to relieve him of it, he deposited the box on the hallstand.

“Well,” he said, “I do (as if he had some reason for not) hope she feels better soon.

“Well, good night, all,” he said, and with sickroom softness, eased the door shut behind him.

“She took sick,” said his wife. “All of a sudden.”

This, the corsage, the waiting dance: it was all highly reminiscent.

Mrs. Halstead had expected that it would be, and she preempted the reminiscence. “Just like that Hunnicutt boy,” she said. “Theron.”

For she had been reminded of Theron Hunnicutt when fifteen minutes before she had gone in to find her daughter dressed in her new white gown seated at the vanity trying to make her face while great silent tears ran down her cheeks. She pretended not to notice, and nothing was said. Nothing had ever passed between them about that boy, that night, what her father had done to him. Still, her mother had sometimes wondered. Now she knew. It was confirmed by the frightened sincerity of Libby’s unwilling efforts to get herself ready for this date, and by the distress it was causing her. Poor child, poor pretty thing, her heart was aching, and it made her mother’s heart ache to see. Then the doorbell rang and the powder she had spread on her face was all streaked with a fresh flow of tears. They heard her father answer the door as he had that other night, then heard him make his flat announcement, as he had not that other night, and Libby turned to her and said, “Mama, I can’t. I can’t go. I’m sick. You’ll have to tell him I can’t go. I’m sick.” And she looked it.

So now as her husband

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