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In the Closed Room
by
Judith had heard of her Aunt Hester, but she only knew that she herself had hands like her and that her life had ended when she was quite young. Mrs. Foster was too much occupied by the strenuousness of life to dwell upon the passing of souls. To her the girl Hester seemed too remote to appear quite real. The legends of her beauty and unlikeness to other girls seemed rather like a sort of romance.
As she was not aware that Judith hated the Elevated Railroad, so she was not aware that she was fond of the far away Aunt Hester with the long-pointed fingers which could curl backwards. She did not know that when she was playing in her corner of the room, where it was her way to sit on her little chair with her face turned towards the wall, she often sat curving her small long fingers backward and talking to herself about Aunt Hester. But this–as well as many other things–was true. It was not secretiveness which caused the child to refrain from speaking of certain things. She herself could not have explained the reasons for her silence; also it had never occurred to her that explanation and reasons were necessary. Her mental attitude was that of a child who, knowing a certain language, does not speak it to those who have never heard and are wholly ignorant of it. She knew her Aunt Hester as her mother did not. She had seen her often in her dreams and had a secret fancy that she could dream of her when she wished to do so. She was very fond of dreaming of her. The places where she came upon Aunt Hester were strange and lovely places where the air one breathed smelled like flowers and everything was lovely in a new way, and when one moved one felt so light that movement was delightful, and when one wakened one had not quite got over the lightness and for a few moments felt as if one would float out of bed.
The healthy, vigourous young couple who were the child’s parents were in a healthy, earthly way very fond of each other. They had made a genuine love match and had found it satisfactory. The young mechanic Jem Foster had met the young shop-girl Jane Hardy, at Coney Island one summer night and had become at once enamoured of her shop-girl good looks and high spirits. They had married as soon as Jem had had the “raise” he was anticipating and had from that time lived with much harmony in the flat building by which the Elevated train rushed and roared every few minutes through the day and a greater part of the night. They themselves did not object to the “Elevated”; Jem was habituated to uproar in the machine shop, in which he spent his days, and Jane was too much absorbed in the making of men’s coats by the dozens to observe anything else. The pair had healthy appetites and slept well after their day’s work, hearty supper, long cheerful talk, and loud laughter over simple common joking.
“She’s a queer little fish, Judy,” Jane said to her husband as they sat by the open window one night, Jem’s arm curved comfortably around the young woman’s waist as he smoked his pipe. “What do you think she says to me to-night after I put her to bed?”
“Search ME!” said Jem oracularly.
Jane laughed.
“‘Why,’ she says, ‘I wish the Elevated train would stop.’
“‘Why?’ says I.
“‘I want to go to sleep,’ says she. ‘I’m going to dream of Aunt Hester.'”
“What does she know about her Aunt Hester,” said Jem. “Who’s been talkin’ to her?”
“Not me,” Jane said. “She don’t know nothing but what she’s picked up by chance. I don’t believe in talkin’ to young ones about dead folks. ‘Tain’t healthy.”
“That’s right,” said Jem. “Children that’s got to hustle about among live folks for a livin’ best keep their minds out of cemeteries. But, Hully Gee, what a queer thing for a young one to say.”