The 3rd Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK: 15 Classic Stories by Achmed Abdullah

Author:Achmed Abdullah [Abdullah, Achmed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, mystery, historical, romance
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2024-08-14T21:00:00+00:00

AFTER YOUTH

Originally published in The Forum, March 1918.

SHE was an Irishwoman. She was sentimental and emotional. But seldom had she given way to hysteria.

But today her nerves were a quivering tangle of thin, tortured wires. Her heavy, loose-lipped mouth dropped and sagged in a pitiful downward curve. There were hectic spots on her thin, high cheek-bones, and her blue eyes were red-rimmed, smarting. The Adam’s-apple in her scrawny throat moved up and down convulsively, as a ball of glass plays in a fountain. She was choking with dry sobs.

She stood in the kitchen, looking out of the window from which the torn, black mosquito-veiling was hanging in a sodden, hopeless mass. For it had rained the night before, and heavy drops had beaten in through the window. The garbage pail was a stinking abomination, overflowing with refuse, egg-shells and coffee-grounds and rancid bacon-drippings and here and there stumps of Virginia cigarettes. The shelves showed a motley collection of cheap chinaware, some blue, some white, with a gold rim, some imitation Delft, but all cracked, chipped, stained, dirty. The sour smell from the biscuit-tin which did duty as bread-box was overpowering. In the corner there was a roller-towel, black and limp and disgusting. There was a huge spot near its top which looked like a grinning, obscene black maw.

The other houses in the pretty little suburb were surrounded with the glory of green lawn and smiling, odorous spring flowers. Her yard was rank with sun-yellowed, dusty weeds, foul, useless things, without beauty or meaning. There were the Brugschers next door, nice, kindly, simple German folk. Every evening Jimmy Brugscher worked in the garden when he came home from work. His fat, yellow-haired wife kissed him and laughed noisily, delightedly, when he brought in an extra plate of lima beans, an extra handful of flowers, a specially crisp head of lettuce.

The woman compared the two gardens, and then she nearly cried. She loved green things and flowers. She remembered the red-blooming window boxes of her mother’s house in Dublin.

She shivered—and it was a warm August morning, with a brazen sky, cloudless, and red-hot sun rays shooting down.

A pitiful little cry came from the next room. Her small daughter was clamoring for food. She was a pretty wee thing, though thin and pale and emaciated so that her eyes looked like big, black splotches. The woman thought that there was an accusing look in those innocent, childish eyes.

“Food,” she murmured, and nearly laughed. “Food; oh, yes.”

She went to the ice-chest, which had not seen ice for a week, and took out a remnant of sour milk which she had begged from the Borden man three days ago. There were some cold, boiled potatoes in the ice-chest. She hesitated, then pushed the plate back again.

She fed the little girl, holding her close. There was a certain happiness in that warm, near body after all. Tenderness came over her like a hot wave, and she kissed her child—once, twice, a dozen times.

Then she straightened up with a hopeless gesture.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.