Buch lesen: «The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story», Seite 27

"But neither Colcord nor Bates is a scientist!"

"That is not at all necessary," was the composed reply. "I am the scientist."

"And Nick the victim," flashed Evelyn Colcord. "Well, I most decidedly and unalterably object, Professor Simec."

"Your husband and Mr. Bates, inspired by humanitarian motives, named a condition under which they would give—not risk—their lives. I meet their condition, at least so far as it lies within human agency to do.... Of course they can withdraw their offer—"

Bates, who had left his seat and was walking up and down the room, turned suddenly, standing over the scientist with upraised hand.

"Simec, I withdraw right here. I'm no fool. The whole spirit of this—this situation is not in keeping with the original idea. Not at all. Whether you are joking, serious, or simply insane, I'm out. Try it on yourself."

"I have already assumed great risks. In furtherance of my device—which, as you may imagine, will have far-reaching effects—I must survive, if I can."

Evelyn, who had suppressed an exclamation of approval of Arnold Bates's stanch words, turned to her husband. His jaws were bulging at the corners, his eyes alight. In a species of panic she tried to speak but could not.

"And you, Colcord?" Simec's colorless delivered question came as from afar.

Colcord had arisen and was staring at the inventor with the face of one exalted.

"If you have what you say you have, Simec, you meet my condition to the letter. At the very least, it will be a most important asset to the cause of my country. In either case the least I can give to help it along is my life—if that proves necessary.... When do you want me?"

In the silence that followed Evelyn Colcord, sitting like a statue, unable to move nor to speak, passed through a limbo of nameless emotion. Through her mind swept a flashing filament of despair, hope, craven fear, and sturdy resolution. Tortured in the human alembic, she was at length resolved, seeing with a vision that pierced all her horizons. And then, trembling, tense, there came—a thought? A vision? She knew not what it was, nor was she conscious of attempting to ascertain. She knew only that for a fleeting instant the veil had been lifted and that she had gazed upon serenity and that all was well. Further, she had no inclination to know. Not that she feared complete revelation; for that matter, some subconscious conviction that all would be well illumined her senses. This she spurned, or rather ignored, in a greater if nameless exaltation. Stern with the real fibre of her womanhood, she lifted her head in pride.

Then, moved by initiative not her own, her face turned, not to her husband, but to her guests, each in turn. Arnold Bates was crushing a napkin in his sensitive fingers, flushed, angry, rebellious, perhaps a trifle discomfited. Dane was smiling foolishly; Bessie was leaning forward on the table, dead white, inert. Doctor Allison's head was shaking; he was clicking his tongue and his wife was twisting her stout fingers one around another. So her gaze wandered, and then, as though emerging from a dream, revivified, calm, she studied each intently. She knew not why, but something akin to contempt crept into her mind.

It was as though seeking relief that her eyes rested upon Sybil Latham. The Englishwoman's face was turned to Colcord; her color was heightened only slightly, but in her blue eyes was the light of serene stars, and about her lips those new lines of self-sacrifice, anxiety, sorrow, which Evelyn had resented as marring the woman's delicate beauty, now imparted to her face vast strength, ineffable dignity, nobility.

Evelyn Colcord's throat clicked; for a moment she did not breathe, while a vivid flash of jealous emotion departed, leaving in its place a great peace, an exaltation born of sudden knowing. Instinctively seeking further confirmation, her eyes, now wide and big and flaming, swept to Latham. His face, too, was turned toward her husband. It was the grimly triumphant visage of the fighter who knows his own kind, of the friend and believer whose faith, suddenly justified, has made him proud.

Evelyn rose and stood erect, staring into vacancy. Here were two who knew, who understood—who had been through hell and found it worth while.

Voices, expostulatory voices, roused her. Allison was at her side and Dane, whose wife, weeping, was pulling at her bare arm. Colcord and Simec stood to one side, aloof, as though already detached from the world.

"Evelyn!" Allison's voice was peremptory. "I command you! You're the only one who has the right to check this damn foolishness. I command you to speak."

"Evelyn—" Dane's voice trailed into nothingness.

Again her eyes turned to Sybil Latham, and then, rigidly as an automaton, she walked swiftly to her husband's side. For a moment the two stood facing each other, eye riveted to eye. Her beautiful bare arms flew out swiftly, resting upon his shoulders, not encircling his neck.

"Nick—" Her voice was low, guttural. "I—I didn't help you much, did I, dear heart? I didn't understand. They've been saying it would all come home to us. But I didn't think so quickly—nor to us. I—I wasn't ready. I am now. I want to help; I—I—" Her fingers clutched his shoulders convulsively. "When—when do you go?"

Colcord stood a moment, his eyes smouldering upon her.

"To-morrow morning at seven," he replied. "That was the hour, Professor Simec?" he added with a side-wise inclination of his head.

"Yes." The scientist looked away, hesitated, and then joined in the little procession to the dimly lighted hall. Evelyn started as she felt her fingers locked together in a firm hand.

"You know, dear girl, don't you?" There was a mist in Latham's eyes.

But Evelyn's face was light.

"Yes, Jeffery," she said proudly, "I know now."

THE PATH OF GLORY ¹⁸

By MARY BRECHT PULVER

From The Saturday Evening Post

It was so poor a place—a bitten-off morsel "at the beyond end of nowhere"—that when a February gale came driving down out of a steel sky and shut up the little lane road and covered the house with snow a passer-by might have mistaken it all, peeping through its icy fleece, for just a huddle of the brown bowlders so common to the country thereabouts.

And even when there was no snow it was as bad—worse, almost, Luke thought. When everything else went brave and young with new greenery; when the alders were laced with the yellow haze of leaf bud, and the brooks got out of prison again, and arbutus and violet and buttercup went through their rotation of bloom up in the rock pastures and maple bush—the farm buildings seemed only the bleaker and barer.

That forlorn unpainted little house, with its sagging blinds! It squatted there through the year like a one-eyed beggar without a friend—lost in its venerable white-beard winters, or contemplating an untidy welter of rusty farm machinery through the summers.

When Luke brought his one scraggy little cow up the lane he always turned away his head. The place made him think of the old man who let the birds build nests in his whiskers. He preferred, instead, to look at the glories of Bald Mountain or one of the other hills. There was nothing wrong with the back drop in the home stage-set; it was only home itself that hurt one's feelings.

There was no cheer inside, either. The sagging old floors, though scrubbed and spotless, were uncarpeted; the furniture meager. A pine table, a few old chairs, a shabby scratched settle covered by a thin horse blanket as innocent of nap as a Mexican hairless—these for essentials; and for embellishment a shadeless glass lamp on the table, about six-candle power, where you might make shift to read the Biweekly—times when there was enough money to have a Biweekly—if you were so minded; and window shelves full of corn and tomato cans, still wearing their horticultural labels, where scrawny one-legged geraniums and yellowing coleus and begonia contrived an existence of sorts.

And then, of course, the mantelpiece with the black-edged funeral notice and shiny coffin plate, relics of Grampaw Peel's taking-off; and the pink mug with the purple pansy and "Woodstock, N.Y.," on it; the photograph of a forgotten cousin in Iowa, with long antennæ-shaped mustaches; the Bible with the little china knobs on the corners; and the pile of medicine testimonials and seed catalogues—all these contributed something.

If it was not a beautiful place within, it was, also, not even a pleasant place spiritually. What with the open door into his father's room, whence you could hear the thin frettings made by the man who had lain these ten years with chronic rheumatism, and the untuneful whistlings of whittling Tom, the big brother, the shapely supple giant whose mind had never grown since the fall from the barn room when he was eight years old, and the acrid complaints of the tall gaunt mother, stepping about getting their inadequate supper, in her gray wrapper, with the ugly little blue shawl pinned round her shoulders, it was as bad a place as you might find in a year's journeying for anyone to keep bright and "chirk up" in.

Not that anyone in particular expected "them poor Hayneses" to keep bright or "chirk up." As far back as he could remember, Luke had realized that the hand of God was laid on his family. Dragging his bad leg up the hill pastures after the cow, day in and day out, he had evolved a sort of patient philosophy about it. It was just inevitable, like a lot of things known in that rock-ribbed and fatalistic region—as immutably decreed by heaven as foreordination and the damnation of unbaptized babes. The Hayneses had just "got it hard."

Yet there were times, now he was come to a gangling fourteen, when Luke's philosophy threatened to fail him. It wasn't fair—so it wasn't! They weren't bad folks; they'd done nothing wicked. His mother worked like a dog—"no fair for her," any way you looked at it. There were times when the boy drank in bitterly every detail of the miserable place he called home and knew the depths of an utter despair.

If there was only some way to better it all! But there was no chance. His father had been a failure at everything he touched in early life, and now he was a hopeless invalid. Tom was an idiot—or almost—and himself a cripple. And Nat! Well, Nat "wa'n't willin'"—not that one should blame him. Times like these, a lump like a roc's egg would rise in the boy's throat. He had to spit—and spit hard—to conquer it.

"If we hain't the gosh-awfulest lot!" he would gulp.

To-day, as he came up the lane, June was in the land. She'd done her best to be kind to the farm. All the old heterogeneous rosebushes in the wood-yard and front "lawn" were pied with fragrant bloom. Usually Luke would have lingered to sniff it all, but he saw only one thing now with a sudden skipping at his heart—an automobile standing beside the front porch.

It was not the type of car to cause cardiac disturbance in a connoisseur. It was, in fact, of an early vintage, high-set, chunky, brassily æsthetic, and given to asthmatic choking on occasion; but Luke did not know this. He knew only that it spelled luxury beyond all dreams. It belonged, in short, to his Uncle Clem Cheesman, the rich butcher who lived in the village twelve miles away; and its presence here signaled the fact that Uncle Clem and Aunt Mollie had come to pay one of their detestable quarterly visits to their poor relations. They had come while he was out, and Maw was in there now, bearing it all alone.

Luke limped into the house hastily. He was not mistaken. There was a company air in the room, a stiff hostile-polite taint in the atmosphere. Three visitors sat in the kitchen, and a large hamper, its contents partly disgorged, stood on the table. Luke knew that it contained gifts—the hateful, merciful, nauseating charity of the better-off.

Aunt Mollie was speaking as he entered—a large, high-colored, pouter-pigeon-chested woman, with a great many rings with bright stones, and a nodding pink plume in her hat. She was holding up a bifurcated crimson garment, and greeted Luke absently.

"Three pair o' them underdrawers, Delia—an' not a break in one of 'em! I sez, as soon as I see Clem layin' 'em aside this spring, 'Them things'll be jest right fur Delia's Jere, layin' there with the rheumatiz.' They may come a little loose; but, of course, you can't be choicey. I've b'en at Clem fur five years to buy him union suits; but he's always b'en so stuck on red flannen. But now he's got two aut'mobiles, countin' the new delivery, I guess he's gotta be more tony; so he made out to spare 'em. And now that hat, Delia—it ain't a mite wore out, an' fur all you'll need one it's plenty good enough. I only had it two years and I guess folks won't remember; an' what if they do—they all know you get my things. Same way with that collarette. It's a little moth-eaten, but it won't matter fur you.... The gray suit you can easy cut down fur Luke, there—"

She droned on, the other woman making dry automatic sounds of assent. She looked cool—Maw—Luke thought; but she wasn't. Not by a darn sight! There was a spot of pink in each cheek and she stared hard every little bit at Grampaw Peel's funeral plate on the mantel. Luke knew what she was thinking of—poor Maw! She was burning in a fire of her own lighting. She had brought it all on herself—on the whole of them.

Years ago she had been just like Aunt Mollie. The daughters of a prosperous village carpenter, they had shared beads, beaux and bangles until Maw, in a moment's madness, had chucked it all away to marry poor Paw. Now she had made her bed, she must lie in it. Must sit and say "Thank you!" for Aunt Mollie's leavings, precious scraps she dared not refuse—Maw, who had a pride as fierce and keen as any! It was devilish! Oh, it was kind of Aunt Mollie to give; it was the taking that came so bitter hard. And then they weren't genteel about their giving. There was always that air of superiority, that conscious patronage, as now, when Uncle Clem, breaking off his conversation with the invalid in the next room about the price of mutton on the hoof and the chances of the Democrats' getting in again, stopped fiddling with his thick plated watch chain and grinned across at big Tom to fling his undeviating flower of wit:

"Runnin' all to beef, hain't ye, Tom, boy? Come on down to the market an' we'll git some A-1 sirloins outen ye, anyway. Do your folks that much good."

It was things like this that made Luke want to burn, poison, or shoot Uncle Clem. He was not a bad man, Uncle Clem—a thick sandy chunk of a fellow, given to bright neckties and a jocosity that took no account of feelings. Shaped a little like a log, he was—back of his head and back of his neck—all of a width. Little lively green eyes and bristling red mustaches. A complexion a society bud might have envied. Why was it a butcher got so pink and white and sleek? Pork, that's what Uncle Clem resembled, Luke thought—a nice, smooth, pale-fleshed pig, ready to be skinned.

His turn next! When crops and politics failed and the joke at poor Tom—Tom always giggled inordinately at it, too—had come off, there was sure to be the one about himself and the lame duck next. To divert himself of bored expectation, Luke turned to stare at his cousin, S'norta.

S'norta, sitting quietly in a chair across the room, was seldom known to be emotional. Indeed, there were times when Luke wondered whether she had not died in her chair. One had that feeling about S'norta, so motionless was she, so uncompromising of glance. She was very prosperous-looking, as became the heiress to the Cheesman meat business—a fat little girl of twelve, dressed with a profusion of ruffles, glass pearls, gilt buckles, and thick tawny curls that might have come straight from the sausage hook in her papa's shop.

S'norta had been consecrated early in life to the unusual. Even her name was not ordinary. Her romantic mother, immersed in the prenatal period in the hair-lifting adventures of one Señorita Carmena, could think of no lovelier appellation when her darling came than the first portion of that sloe-eyed and restless lady's title, which she conceived to be baptismal; and in due course she had conferred it, together with her own pronunciation, on her child. A bold man stopping in at Uncle Clem's market, as Luke knew, had once tried to pronounce and expound the cognomen in a very different fashion; but he had been hustled unceremoniously from the place, and S'norta remained in undisturbed possession of her honors.

Now Luke was recalled from his contemplation by his uncle's voice again. A lull had fallen and out of it broke the question Luke always dreaded.

"Nat, now!" said Uncle Clem, leaning forward, his thick fingers clutching his fat knees. "You ain't had any news of him since quite a while ago, have you?" The wit that was so preponderate a feature of Uncle Clem's nature bubbled to the surface. "Dunno but he's landed in jail a spell back and can't git out again!" The lively little eyes twinkled appreciatively.

Nobody answered. It set Maw's mouth in a thin, hard line. You wouldn't get a rise out of old Maw with such tactics—Maw, who believed in Nat, soul and body. Into Luke's mind flashed suddenly a formless half prayer: "Don't let 'em nag her now—make 'em talk other things!"

The Lord, in the guise of Aunt Mollie, answered him. For once, Nat and Nat's character and failings did not hold her. She drew a deep breath and voiced something that claimed her interest:

"Well, Delia, I see you wasn't out at the Bisbee's funeral. Though I don't s'pose anyone really expected you, knowin' how things goes with you. Time was, when you was a girl, you counted in as big as any and traveled with the best; but now"—she paused delicately, and coughed politely with an appreciative glance round the poor room—"they ain't anyone hereabouts but's talkin' about it. My land, it was swell! I couldn't ask no better for my own. Fourteen cabs, and the hearse sent over from Rockville—all pale gray, with mottled gray horses. It was what I call tasty.

"Matty wasn't what you'd call well-off—not as lucky as some I could mention; but she certainly went off grand! The whole Methodist choir was out, with three numbers in broken time; and her cousin's brother-in-law from out West—some kind of bishop—to preach. Honest, it was one of the grandest sermons I ever heard! Wasn't it, Clem?"

Uncle Clem cleared his throat thoughtfully.

"Humiliatin'!—that's what I'd call it. A strong maur'l sermon all round. A man couldn't hear it 'thout bein' humiliated more ways'n one." He was back at the watch-chain again.

"It's a pity you couldn't of gone, Delia—you an' Matty always was so intimate too. You certainly missed a grand treat, I can tell you; though, if you hadn't the right clothes—"

"Well, I haven't," Maw spoke dryly. "I don't go nowheres, as you know—not even church."

"I s'pose not. Time was it was different, though, Delia. Ain't nobody but talks how bad off you are. Ann Chester said she seen you in town a while back and wouldn't of knowed it was you if it hadn't of b'en you was wearin' my old brown cape, an' she reconnized it. Her an' me got 'em both alike to the same store in Rockville. You was so changed, she said she couldn't hardly believe it was you at all."

"Sometimes I wonder myself if it is," said Maw grimly.

"Well, 's I was sayin', it was a grand funeral. None better! They even had engraved invites, over a hundred printed—and they had folks from all over the state. They give Clem, here, the contract fur the supper meat—"

"The best of everything!" Uncle Clem broke in. "None o' your cheap graft. Gimme a free hand. Jim Bisbee tole me himself. 'I want the best ye got,' he sez; an' I give it. Spring lamb and prime ribs, fancy hotel style—"

"An' Em Carson baked the cakes fur 'em, sixteen of 'em; an' Dickison the undertaker's tellin' all over they got the best quality shroud he carries. Well, you'll find it all in the Biweekly, under Death's Busy Sickle. Jim Bisbee shore set a store by Matty oncet she was dead. It was a grand affair, Delia. Not but what we've had some good ones in our time too."

It was Aunt Mollie's turn to stare pridefully at the Peel plate on the chimney shelf.

"A thing like that sets a family up, sorta."

Uncle Clem had taken out a fat black cigar with a red-white-and-blue band. He bit off the end and alternately thrust it between his lips or felt of its thickness with a fondling thumb and finger. Luke, watching, felt a sudden compassion for the cigar. It looked so harried.

"I always say," Aunt Mollie droned on, "a person shows up what he really is at the last—what him and his family stands fur. It's what kind of a funeral you've got that counts—who comes out an' all. An' that was true with Matty. There wa'n't a soul worth namin' that wasn't out to hers."

How Aunt Molly could gouge—even amicably! And funerals! What a subject, even in a countryside where a funeral is a social event and the manner of its furniture marks a definite social status! Would they never go? But it seemed at last they would. Incredibly, somehow, they were taking their leave, Aunt Mollie kissing Maw good-by, with the usual remark about "hopin' the things would help some," and about being "glad to spare somethin' from my great plenty."

She and Señorita were presently packed into the car and Tom had gone out to goggle at Uncle Clem cranking up, the cold cigar still between his lips. Now they were off—choking and snorting their way out of the wood-yard and down the lane. Aunt Mollie's pink feather streamed into the breeze like a pennon of triumph.

Maw was standing by the stove, a queer look in her eyes; so queer that Luke didn't speak at once. He limped over to finger the spilled treasures on the table.

"Gee! Lookit, Maw! More o' them prunes we liked so; an' a bag o' early peaches; an' fresh soup meat fur a week—"

A queer trembling had seized his mother. She was so white he was frightened.

"Did you sense what it meant, Luke—what Aunt Molly told us about Matty Bisbee? We was left out deliberate—that's what it meant. Her an' me that was raised together an' went to school and picnics all our girlhood together! Never could see one 'thout the other when we was growin' up—Jim Bisbee knew that too! But"—her voice wavered miserably—"I didn't get no invite to her funeral. I don't count no more, Lukey. None of us, anywheres.... We're jest them poor Gawd-forsaken Hayneses."

She slipped down suddenly into a chair and covered her face, her thin shoulders shaking. Luke went and touched her awkwardly. Times he would have liked to put his arms round Maw—now more than ever; but he didn't dare.

"Don't take on, Maw! Don't!"

"Who's takin' on?" She lifted a fierce, sallow, tear-wet face. "Hain't no use makin' a fuss. All's left's to work—to work, an' die after a while."

"I hate 'em! Uncle Clem an' her, I mean."

"They mean kindness—their way." But her tears started afresh.

"I hate 'em!" Luke's voice grew shriller. "I'd like—I'd like—Oh, damn 'em!"

"Don't swear, boy!"

It was Tom who broke in on them. "It's a letter from Rural Free Delivery. He jest dropped it."

He came up, grinning, with the missive. The mother's fingers closed on it nervously.

"From Nat, mebbe—he ain't wrote in months."

But it wasn't from Nat. It was a bill for a last payment on the "new harrow," bought three years before.