The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 6

"Calculated!" With a gasp Mrs. Tyarck took off and began to polish her gla.s.ses; she kept two hard little eyes fixed on the speaker.

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n forgot to hawk. "_Calculated?_"

"It is to arrest the depredations of ants," confessed Miss Frenzy. She looked from one to the other with great dignity, supplementing: "I have long suffered greatly from the onslaughts of ants, both red and black.

With the fly-paper, judiciously placed, I have hoped to curtail their activities."

It had grown a little grayer of twilight; the two visitors, trapped as it were within the high board enclosures, fenced all about with sweeps of tangled vine, the pale glimmering of ghostly blossoms, felt uncomfortable. With slow suspicion they moved away from one so frankly the author of gin and pitfall; from one who could so calmly admit that bits of fly-paper dribbling about her garden paths were "calculated."

"Who was it," whispered Mrs. Tyarck, darkly-"who was it once said that Frenzy was sort of odd?" The two visitors moved instinctively toward a way of exit. With one more sigh Miss Frenzy reluctantly followed them.

As they cast about in their minds for means of final reproof, she paused at the kitchen door. There, where a rain-barrel stood under a leader, was a bit of soap in a flower-pot saucer; seizing it, the old shopkeeper began vigorously washing her hands.

"Five waters," sighed Miss Frenzy-"five waters, before I can feel that my hands are in any degree cleansed!"

The others stood watching her. Instantly they seized the opportunity.

"Well, I should think so." Mrs. Cap.r.o.n hawked her superior virtue. "I'm glad to hear you say that, Frenzy. Nice work indeed you've been doin'

with them hands! Murderin' and slayin'! Why can't you live and let live (unless, of course, it's rats or mosquitoes)? Now you go and get the blood of them innercent worms on your shoulders! Why couldn't you let 'em go on feedin' where their Creator wanted 'em to feed?"

They looked at her.

"All them different cruelties," they commented-"fly-paper to track them ignorant ants onto, and that there trap for cats.... Well, you got more spots onto your soul than soap can take off. 'Thou shalt not kill,' it says. Why"-this burst of feeling from Mrs. Tyarck-"why, it's all I can do to set foot on a spider!"

"And look at me with wasps!" exclaimed Mrs. Cap.r.o.n. "How many wasps I've let go for their enjoyment of life, even though, for all I know, next thing they might sting me or one of mine."

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, getting warm and virtuous, sat down in the kitchen doorway.

Opening the netted catchall, she took out therefrom a bundle of tracts.

This lady was the important local officer of many humanitarian societies and lost no opportunity to improve the morale of her community. The tract she selected for Miss Frenzy was of an impressive blue with the t.i.tle, "Deal Tenderly with the Humble Animals that Cannot Speak."

"Now think of them ants," exhorted Mrs. Cap.r.o.n. She looked hard at Miss Frenzy Giddings. "Think of them thoughtless ants runnin' onto that fly-paper and not able to call out to the others what's happened to 'em!"

"You're like me," said Mrs. Tyarck. Taking her handkerchief, she wet it in the rain-barrel and obsequiously attempted to rub off a slight fly-paper stickiness still on the mohair of her friend. "You're like me.

I'm that tender-hearted I can't even boil a lobster. I was so from a child. Come time the kettle boils it's Tyarck always has to put the lobster in-me all of a tremble!"

"And flies," suggested Mrs. Cap.r.o.n-"there's a many thinks that flies has got souls (though not the Board of Health). But even flies-look at me! I keep sugar and mola.s.ses for 'em in their own saucer, and if they come to their last end that way, why, they must die likin' it, and it's what they chose for theirselves."

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n drew the string of her netted catchall tight. She hawked, drew her upper lip down over the lower, and b.u.t.toned up the tight-fitting coat of mohair.

"Them cruelties of yourn will haunt you, Frenzy," summed up both ladies; "there's verses in the Bible for just such things," exclaimed the visitors together; then they all went in, the two friends turning their attention to Miss Giddings's household arrangements, offering her advice and counsel as to her clothes and the management of her kitchen range.

There were no more words about the cruelties except that that night in the long, wandering prayer in which Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, as leader of the meeting, had ample opportunity to score against any one whom she fancied delinquent, or against whom she had a private grudge, she inserted into her pet.i.tion:

"And from all needless cruelties, keep us, O Lord. The bird that hops onto our sill"-Mrs. Cap.r.o.n did not specify whether sparrow or nightingale, but she implored fervently-"help us to remember it's one of Thy birds and set no snare for it, and the-er-the innercent creepin'

things mindin' their own business and praisin' Thee-defend 'em from our impident croolties ... help us to live and let live and refrain from all light-minded killin' and irreligious trap-settin'."

Little Johnnie Tyarck, sitting big-eared and thin-faced alongside of his mother's angular orisons, rubbed puzzled eyes. Johnnie wondered if Mrs.

Cap.r.o.n, always severe in her att.i.tude toward boys, could possibly have learned about those twenty-five hop-toads he had corralled in a sewer-pipe, carefully stopping up the ends of the pipe with mud and stones. The interned hop-toads had haunted Johnnie-and yet-and yet- Well, there was something insolent and forthputting about hop-toads-they breathed with their stomachs, had morose mouths, and proved themselves cra.s.sly superfluous and useless in the general scheme. Some one, it had seemed to Johnnie, should discipline hop-toads.

Behind Johnnie's wispy little head was the grizzled one of Mr. Bloomby, the ragman. Mr. Bloomby, it was understood, was invariably haled to prayer-meeting by Mrs. Bloomby, a person of extreme virtue.

As Mrs. Cap.r.o.n's prayer to be defended from cruelties proceeded, Mr.

Bloomby became rather hot under the celluloid collar he had extracted from recent collections of rags-he wondered if it could have possibly got round that he had once built a fire, a small but provocative fire, under a recalcitrant mule in order to persuade the mule to draw a load which he, Mr. Bloomby, deemed entirely adapted to the mule's capacity.

Mr. Bloomby mentally confronted the inexperienced Supreme Being with data as to mules and the way a mule would try to get even with you.

But there was one person on whom Mrs. Cap.r.o.n's prayer made little, if any, impression. Miss Frances Giddings bowed her sallow face into her wobbly, gloved hand. "Five waters must I pa.s.s my hands through, O Lord,"

she prayed, "but never will I neglect Thy roses!" Into her mind swept clouds of fresh, heavenly bloom. With a dedication to beauty that she did not know was pagan, she lost herself in the dream of eternal gardening.

Nevertheless, the story of Frances Giddings's "cruelties" got about.

There was much discussion over the dark revelations made by Mrs. Cap.r.o.n and Mrs. Tyarck. Morning wrappers conferred in bas.e.m.e.nts; lead-wrapped crimps met in cellars; in church there were eyegla.s.ses that glittered judgment. Just how was the village of Ivy Corners to look upon a person whose backyard was full of contraptions-this one for cats, that one for locusts; pitfalls for inquiring chickens, fly-paper for migrating ants!

Under the amazing elasticity of village imagination it was finally evolved and told with indrawn breath that there had been cruelty like that "in the family." A Giddings, ancestor of Miss Frances, forgotten till now, but revamped for especial significance, was said to have been "dog-catcher," and in this governmental disguise to have inflicted incredible torments upon the stray animals of his impounding. Then came horrified descriptions of Miss Frenzy, head tied up, a flaming wad of newspaper on a broom, attacking the diaphanous intrenchments of caterpillars. These recitals, all working up to an hysterical crescendo, were pounded like so many coffin-nails in the final burial of a shy, gentle personality. Little by little the impression grew stronger that Miss Frenzy, though still out of jail, was both cruel and "queer," and between these judgments and her sensitive appreciation of them, the tall, stooping figure was seen less and less among intimate gatherings of Ivy Corners.

Months pa.s.sed before another name came up for discussion; this time it was the name of the girl in the scarlet cap and sweater; a poor enough little country name; a name hardly destined for tragedy, but when the older townswomen had finished with it, it had become a foul thing-fouler, poor defenseless young name, than the great red-ember names of Catherine de' Medici or the Empress Faustine. When autumn dragged its gritty brown leaves into the gutters of Ivy Corners this name, too, had become nearly buried. The little scarlet coat had vanished from the town, but every door-k.n.o.b seemed to be aware of its history, every window was alert and cold to face it down. White curtains, carefully tied back, seemed to wait primly for the moment when they also would be called to impress themselves upon any one who should be so bold as to try to win their immaculate favor.

Yet one winter night when the wind-blown trees seemed to try to claw the stars out of the sky, the girl in the scarlet coat did come back. There was a push at Miss Frenzy's door, the little shop bell jumped with a scared jangle. It was almost midnight; shadows shivered under the electric lights and the village streets were empty; a p.r.i.c.kling drift of snow sifted past the blue bleakness of the windows. Things were at the relentless hour; a second desperate pull sent the store bell into a frightened spasm.

"Who's there?" quavered Miss Frenzy. She sat up; then, looking like a nut-colored Persian in her strange-figured wrapper, she got out of bed and held high the lamp that burned all night on her chair. The cold made her gray face quiver, but she shuffled bravely into the store where the street light still flickered its bleak question.

On the shop floor lay a figure. Its abandon had a stark quality, as if it had been buffeted and abandoned to unappeased tortures of the elements. The old spinster, lamp in hand, leaned shivering over it. It was a little sc.r.a.p of life's tragedy that had blown like a dead leaf in Miss Frenzy's path; she was not prepared for it. "Not dead? Not dead?"

she quavered. Well, yes, it was dead. Miss Frenzy could see animation, the thing we call "life," but even she knew that it was dead youth, with all its fairy powers lost, that she looked upon. She bent closely to stricken lips that muttered a tuneless kind of song:

"_The night train.... If I go back, if I go back ..._" There was a long silence and then the young voice chanted, deliriously, "_In Miss Frenzy's garden ... the fences are high ..._"

The girl's body lay with the stamp of primal woe fixed indelibly upon it. It was wastage in the social scheme, yet it had something of torn petal, of wind-blown b.u.t.terfly, of wings that had been frozen while fluttering at the very center of the flower of life. Protest dragged at Miss Frenzy's heart.

"_Young_," muttered the cracked voice. "_Young._" The tears tore to the near-sighted eyes. Out of the old maid's defeated being came the curious sense of being true to something; of loyalty to hidden forces life had hitherto kept her from recognizing. As she might have raised a vestal virgin struck down by her flame she raised the piteous form. Staggering to her deserted bed, Miss Frenzy laid the girl in its warmth. She drew off the wrecked red clothing, she made a hot drink and got it somehow between the locked lips. "There, there!" sobbed Miss Frenzy. She knew that "There, there" was what mothers said to their hurt children, and yet she was not a mother-and this-oh, this was not a child!

When at last the exhausted frame shuddered down to sleep the old storekeeper moved away, shutting the bedroom door. She went back into the shop and roamed restlessly hither and yon. The electric light had gone out and dawn was stealing in. On every hand some article of woman's clothing interrogated her. Lace collars, immaculate in their set pattern, swayed fastidiously from her absent touch; the cards of b.u.t.tons eyed her curiously; bolts of smooth, conventional satin ribbon conveyed calm judgments. With a frightened look, she turned out the lamp and sat sleepless at the store window....

All that winter Miss Frenzy held her little fort alone; her gentle face grew sterner, her careful speech more and more stilted. To all inquiries, curious, suave, or critical, she returned the invariable statement:

"I have long been in need of an a.s.sistant. This young girl is bright and willing; her friends have, most regrettably, cast her off-" A dark flush would come into Miss Frenzy's face as she forced herself to add: "It appears that she has had a sad experience.... I intend to befriend her."

An att.i.tude like this held by a character already under the ban of local disapproval seemed to have only one significance for the leaders of thought in Ivy Corners. It conveyed to such leaders blatant immorality, the countenancing of a sinner who should be made to pay the full penalty for a misstep. Mrs. Tyarck, head held high, was theatrically outraged.

With superb ostentation she took to patronizing the "other" dry-goods shop, where, in order to put down vice, she bought things of which she disapproved, did not want, or already possessed duplicates. At this store she made gloomy remarks, such as, "Ef we ain't careful we'll be back ag'in in G.o.dom and Sommarah." No one noticed the slight inaccuracy of p.r.o.nunciation, but the angle of the wing on Mrs. Tyarck's hat proclaimed to the world at large the direction of her virtuous sentiments.

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, however, laid a loftier plan of attack. Entering the little shop of an evening, she would plant herself before the counter, sigh heavily, and produce from the k.n.o.bby catch-all a tract. This she would hand to the drooping girl in attendance, saying, solemnly, "_There is things, young woman, as will bear thinkin' on._" Several days later the methodical Mrs. Cap.r.o.n would return with another tract, commanding, as one in authority, "Give that to your mistaken benefactor." She would then hawk once with juridic deliberation, stare into the stricken young face, and majestically depart.

But spring, which, when it brings the surge of sap in the trees, also brings back something like kindness and pity in the withered human heart, came to Ivy Corners with its old tender ministry, until the very tufts of gra.s.s between the village stones had an air of escape from confining limitations; and until the little store's isolation was pierced by one or two rays of human warmth. The minister's wife called.

One or two mothers of large families invented shopping errands in order to show some measure of interest in the young life Miss Frenzy was helping back to usefulness and sanity. The girl's shamed eyes, eyes that would probably never again meet the world's with the gaze of square integrity, often rested like tired birds in looks of sympathy and encouragement. Such persons as displayed these qualities, however, were sharply disapproved by the more decided voices in village conclaves.

"There is things which has limits," criticized Mrs. Tyarck. This lady, in her effort to convey her idea of sustained condemnation, even went so far as once more to enter the little shop to inquire the price of some purple veiling hanging seductively in the window. Miss Giddings herself waited on the shopper; the girl sat near by cutting fresh paper for the shelves.

"I ain't here because I'm any the less scandalized," began Mrs. Tyarck in a loud whisper. "Your own reputation was none too safe, Frenzy, that you should go and get a Jezebel to keep store for you. Are you goin' to reduce that veilin' any? I know it's loud, but Tyarck always wants I should dress young."

Then there was short silence. The veiling was measured and cut off. Miss Giddings wrapped up the purple net without speaking. Under her gla.s.ses her eyes shot fire, her long face was suffused, but she spoke no word.

Mrs. Tyarck leaned over the counter, her face poked between rows of hanging black stockings, taking on a look of bland counsel.

"It's on account of them cruelties of yours," she explained-continuing with ostentatious secrecy, "you ain't in no position to take up for this girl, Frenzy."

Then the whispers grew louder and louder until they were like hisses.