The Best Short Stories of 1920 Part 50

Joshua halted before her. Folding his hands behind him he looked her over slowly from head to foot.

"You lie!" That was all he said.

"Oh, no, Joshua. I'm not lying. Andrew has come for the wedding."

"You lie," he repeated in the same impa.s.sive tone. "You know I know you lie, Mary, for you know I know that Andrew is dead."

"Yes, yes--" She was fumbling to clear a damp fold of her gown from something held in the crook of her arm. "But I didn't say----"

With that she had the burden uncovered and held forth in her outstretched hand.

She held it out in the light where all of us could see--the thing Rolldown had discarded from his treasures, that I had picked up and been robbed of in the kindly dark--the old brown casket-thing with the polished surfaces and the bits of intricate and ghastly carvings that had once let in the light of day and the sound of words--the old, brown, sea-bitten, sand-scoured skull of Andrew Blake, with the two gold teeth in the upper jaw dulled by the tarnishing tides that had brought it up slowly from its bed in the bottom of the sea. And to think that I had carried it, and felt of it, and not known what it was!

It lay there supine in the nest of Mary's palm, paying us no heed whatever, but fixing its hollow regard on the shadows among the rafters.

And Joshua, the brother, made no sound.

His face had gone a curious color, like the pallor of green things sprouting under a stone. His knees caved a little under his weight, and as we watched we saw his hands moving over his own breast, where the heart was, with a strengthless gesture, like a caress. After what seemed a long while we heard his voice, a whisper of horrible fascination.

"_Turn it over!_"

Mary said nothing, nor did she move to do as he bade. Like some awful play of a cat with a mouse she held quiet and watched him.

"Mary--do as I say--_and turn it over_!"

Her continued, unanswering silence seemed finally to rouse him. His voice turned shrill. Drawing on some last hidden reservoir of strength, he cried, "Give it to me! It's mine!" and made an astonishing dart, both hands clawing for the relic. But my cousin Duncan was there to step in his way and send him carroming along the fringe of the crowd.

The queer fellow didn't stop or turn or try again; sending up all the while the most unearthly cackle of horror my ears have ever heard, he kept right on through the door and the packed vestry, clawing his way to the open with that brief gift of vitality.

It was so preposterous and so ghastly to see him carrying on so, with his white linen and his fine black wedding-clothes and the gray hair that would have covered a selectman's head in another year--it was all so absurdly horrible that we simply stood as we were in the church and wondered and looked at Mary Matheson and saw her face still rapt and quiet, and still set in that same bedevilled smile, as if she didn't know that round tears were running in streams down her cheeks.

"Let him go," was all she said.

They didn't let him go for too long a time, for they had seen the stamp of death on the man's face. When they looked for him finally they found him lying in a dead huddle on the gra.s.s by Lem White's gate. I shall never forget the look of him in the lantern-light, nor the look of them that crowded around and stared down at him--Duncan, I remember, puzzled--Miah cursing G.o.d--and three dazed black men showing the whites of their eyes, strange negroes being brought in from the wreck: for the ship was no India ship after all, but a coffee carrier from Brazil.

But seeing Miah made me remember that long-forgotten question that the lips of this dead man had put to the deaf sea and the blind sky.

"Who is to pay the bill? Who is to pay the bill?"

Well, two of the three had helped to pay the bill now for a girl's light-hearted word. But I think the other has paid the most, for she has had longer to meet the reckoning. She still lives there alone in the house on the cow street. She is an old woman now, but there's not so much as a line on her face nor a thread of white in her hair, and that's bad. That's always bad. That's something like the thing that happened to the Wandering Jew. Yes, I'm quite sure Mary has paid.

But I am near to forgetting the answer to it all. I hadn't so long to wait as most folks had--no longer than an hour of that fateful night.

For when I got home to our kitchen I found my cousin Duncan already there, with the lamp lit. I came in softly on account of the lateness, and that's how I happened to surprise him and glimpse what he had before he could get it out of sight.

I don't know yet how he came by it, but there on the kitchen table lay the skull of Andrew Blake. When I took it, against his protest, and turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant--a hole as clean and round as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when, remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I made out the shape of a leaden slug nested loosely between two points of bone behind the nose--a bullet, I should say, from an old, single-ball dueling pistol--such a pistol as Joshua Blake had played with in the shadow of apple-trees on that distant afternoon, and carried in his pocket, no doubt, to the warm-lit gaiety of Alma Beedie's birthday party....

FOOTNOTE:

[16] Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921, by Wilbur Daniel Steele.

THE THREE TELEGRAMS[17]

#By# ETHEL STORM

From _The Ladies' Home Journal_

For two years Claire Rene's days had been very much alike. It was a dull routine, full of heavy tasks, in the tiny crumbling house, in the shrunken garden patch, and grand'mere--there was always grand'mere to care for. Often in the afternoon Claire Rene wandered in the forest for an hour. She was used to the silence of the tall trees; the silence in the house frightened her. All the people in her land were gone away; the great noise beyond had taken them. Sometimes the noise had stopped, but the silence in the house, the silence in the garden, and the silence of grand'mere never stopped. It was hard for Claire Rene to understand.

There was no one left in her land except grand'mere and Jacques. Jacques lived in the forest and cut wood; in the summer time he shot birds, in the winter time rabbits; Jacques was a very old man.

Claire Rene thought about a great many things when she walked in the forest in the afternoons. She wondered how old she was. She knew that she had been seven years old when her three brothers went away a long time before. She would like to have another birthday, some day, but not until Clement and Fernand and Alphonse came home again. Then they would laugh as they used to laugh on her birthdays, and catch her up in their big, strong arms, and kiss her and call her "Dear little sister."

Clement was the biggest and strongest of all; sometimes he would run off with her on his back into the forest, and the others would follow running and calling; and then at the end of the chase the three brothers would make a throne of their brown, firm hands and carry Claire Rene back to the door of the tiny house, where grand'mere would be waiting and scolding and smiling and ruddy of cheek. Grand'mere never scolded any more; she never smiled, and her cheeks were like dried figs.

Claire Rene didn't often let herself think of the day that such a dreadful thing had happened. Many days after Clement and Fernand and Alphonse had gone away, grand'mere had started to walk to the nearest town four miles distant. She was gone for hours and hours; Claire Rene had watched for her from the doorway until dusk had begun to fall; the dusk had been a queer color, thick and blue; a terrible noise had filled the air. Then the child remembered that her three brothers had told her that they were going away to kill rabbits--like Jacques. At the time she thought it strange that they had cried about killing rabbits. But when she heard such a thunder of noise she knew it must be a very great work indeed.

She was just wondering how there could be so many rabbits in the world, when she saw an old, bent woman coming through the garden gate. It was grand'mere; Jacques was leading her; she was making a strange noise in her throat, and her eyes were closed. Jacques had stayed in the house all the night, looking at grand'mere, lying on the bed with her eyes closed. In the morning, Claire Rene had spoken to her, but she hadn't answered. After days and days she walked from her bed to a chair by the window. She never again did any more than that; grand'mere was blind--and she was deaf.

Jacques explained how it all happened; Claire Rene didn't listen carefully, but she did understand that her three brothers were not killing rabbits, but were killing men. She knew then why they had cried; they were so kind and good, Clement and Fernand and Alphonse; they would hate to kill men. But Jacques had said they were wicked men that had to be killed. He said it wouldn't take long, that all the strong men in France were shooting at them.

Claire Rene had a great deal to do after that. She had to bathe and dress grand'mere; she had to cook the food and scrub the floor and scour the pots and pans. She kept the pans very bright. Grand'mere might some day open her eyes, and there would be a great scolding if the pans were not bright. Claire Rene also tended the garden; Jacques helped her with the heavy digging. He was very mean about the vegetables; he made her put most of them in the cellar; and the green things that wouldn't keep he himself put into jars and tins and locked them in the closet. When the summer had gone he gave Claire Rene the keys.

"Ma pet.i.te," he said, "you learn too fast to eat too little. You must be big and well when your brothers come back."

All the winter long Claire Rene watched for her brothers. Once a telegram had come, brought by a boy who said he had walked all the miles of the forest. In the memory of Claire Rene there lay a hidden fear about telegrams. Years before, grand'mere had cried for many days when Jacques had brought from the town just such a thin, crackling envelope.

And Claire Rene knew that after that she had no longer any young mother or father--only grand'mere and her three brothers.

Grand'mere had enough of sorrow. The telegram was better hidden in the room of her brothers. Grand'mere would never find it there; it was far away from her chair by the window, up the straight, narrow stairs, under the high, peaked gable. Then, too, there was a comfort in that room for Claire Rene; it was quiet; the great silence of downstairs was too big to squeeze up the narrow way. Each day she would stroke and tend the high white bed; each week she would drag the ma.s.s of feather mattress to the narrow window ledge and air it for the length of a sunny day.

At evening she would pull and pile high again the snowy layers, as quickly as her tired back could move, as quickly as her thin, blue fingers could smooth the heavy homespun sheets and comforters. Quick she must be lest Clement and Fernand and Alphonse come home before the night fell over their sleeping place. When she placed the telegram under the first high pillow (Clement's pillow) it made a sound that frightened her.

In the evenings grand'mere's chair was pulled to the great hearth fire.

Claire Rene would watch the flamelight spread over the stonelike face.

Sometimes bright sparkles from the rows of copper pots and pans would lay spots of light on the heavy closed lids.

Claire Rene would spring from her chair and kneel beside the dumb figure. "Grand'mere!" she would call. "Do you see? Have you the eyes again?"

Then the lights would shift, and her head would drop over her trembling knees, and she would look away from the dry, sealed eyes of grand'mere.

She never cried; it might make a noise in the still, whitewashed room to frighten her. Grand'mere might find the tears when she raised her hands to let them travel over the face of her grandchild. It was enough that once grand'mere had shivered when her fingers found the hollows in Claire Rene's cheeks. After that the child puffed out her cheeks while the knotted hands made their daily journey. Grand'mere's fingers would smooth the sunny tangled hair, touch the freckled upturned nose; they would pause and tremble at the slightest brush from the eyelashes that fringed the deep, gray eyes.

Claire Rene would pile more logs on the fire and wonder what thoughts lay in grand'mere's mind; wonder whether she knew that they had so much more wood in the shed than they had food in the larder. She was clever about cooking the roots from the cellar. But grand'mere's coffee was weaker each day, and only once in a long while did Jacques bring milk.

Then he used to stand and order Claire Rene to drink it all, but she would choke and say it was sour and sickened her; only thus could she save enough for grand'mere's coffee in the morning.

There were many things to think about, to look at on the winter evenings by the firelight: Clement's seat by the chimney corner, where he whittled and whistled; Fernand's flute hanging on the wall; the books of Alphonse on the high shelf over the dresser. Claire Rene found that her heart and her eyes would only find comfort if her fingers were busy. She would tiptoe to the dresser and bring out a basket, once filled with the socks of her brothers. She would crouch by the fireside, first stirring the logs to make more light for her work. It was long since the candles were gone. It was the only joyous moment in the day when she handled the dried everlastings that filled the basket. Always she must hurry, work more quickly, select the withered colors with more care. The wreaths for her three brothers must be beautiful, must be ready on time. Clement and Fernand and Alphonse must be crowned, given the reward when they came home from killing wicked men to save La Belle France!