The Best Short Stories of 1919 Part 28

From time to time he'd look up at them. There seemed to be no little agitation among this group. They'd hold on to each other and jump up and down like watchers whose men are being brought in from a wreck. There was one place where again he had to lift the government goat. After this he heard shouts and looked ash.o.r.e to see his boys dancing up and down like little Indians.

Finally they had made it. The watchers on the sh.o.r.e came running out to meet them.

"Oh, Mr. Doane!" cried Mrs. Cadara, hands out-stretched, "I am _thankful_ to you! You saved my goat! I _have_ no man myself to save my goat. I _have_ no man. I _have_ no man!"

Mrs. Cadara covered her face with her hands, swayed back and forth, and sobbed because her man was dead.

Young Cadaras gathered around her. They seemed of a sudden to know they had no father, and to realize that this was a thing to be deplored.

Agnes even wet her mourning handkerchief.

Myrtie came up and took his arm. "Oh, Father," said she, "I was so 'fraid you'd hurt yourself!"

He looked down into his little girl's face. He realized that just a little while before he had expected never to look into her face again.

He looked at the government goat, standing a little apart, benevolently regarding this humankind. Suddenly Joe Doane began to laugh. He laughed--laughed--and laughed. And it _was_ a laugh.

"When I saw you lift that goat!" said his wife, in the voice of a woman who may not have a fireless cooker, but--!

Young Joe Doane, too long brow-beaten not to hold the moment of his advantage, began dancing round Tony Cadara with the taunting yell, "You ain't _got_ no pa to save your goat!" And Edgar lispingly chimed in, "Ain't _got_ no pa to save your goat!"

"Here!" cried their father, "Stop devilin' them kids about what they can't help. Come! Hats on! Every Doane, every Cadara, goes up to see if Ed. Smith might _happen_ to have a soda."

But young Joe had suffered too long to be quickly silent. "You ain't _got_ no pa to get you soda!" persisted he.

"Joe!" commanded his father, "stop pesterin' them kids or I'll _lick_ you!"

And Joe, drunk with the joy of having what the Cadaras had not, shrieked, "You ain't _got_ no pa to lick you! You ain't _got_ no pa to lick you!"

THE STONE[12]

[Note 12: Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company.

Copyright, 1920, by Henry Goodman.]

BY HENRY GOODMAN

From _The Pictorial Review_

"Martha Sloan is goin' the way o' Jim," said Deems Lennon to his wife.

"See," and he pointed through the open window toward the cemetery. "I seen her before Jim's stone, beggin' on her knees an' mumblin' with her hands stretched out. She been that way a number o' times when I come upon her as I was fixin' up the graves."

Mrs. Lennon, a stout, pleasant-faced woman, looked in the direction indicated by her husband. Together they watched Martha Sloan, white-haired, thin, and bent, making her way up the cemetery path. She was nervous and her walk was broken by little, sudden pauses in which she looked about.

"Poor soul," said Mrs. Lennon, "she's afraid. She ain't been herself sence Dorothy died. Losin' the two children right after Jim has broken her up completely."

"She's afraid for herself," said her husband. "If you heard her up there by that stone you'd have thought she was speakin' to some one alive, to some one who could do her things."

"Oh well, that's enough to make any one queer," Mrs. Lennon said. Then she stopped, and watched the figure on the hillside.

"Look," said Mrs. Lennon, "look at her. She's down on her knees."

Deems stood by her near the window.

"That's it," he exclaimed. "That's exactly what she's been doing now for some time. I heard her speak. I don't know where she got the idea. She thinks Jim's following her--reaching out for her--trying to grasp her. I heard her plead. I don't know what'll come of it."

They were both startled when, as suddenly as Martha Sloan had knelt, she rose from her place before the gravestone and, moving in nervous haste, ran down the pathway.

"Deems, we must go to her," said Mrs. Lennon. "Maybe we can do something for her." And as they both hurried into the kitchen and out of the house, Martha Sloan, panting and white-faced with fright, rushed to the house.

"Deems," she gasped. "Deems, it's Jim. He's reaching out. He's reaching out to seize me."

"Martha, calm yourself," said Deems, taking Martha Sloan's shaking hand in his. "That ain't right. You're sensible. You mustn't think so much of it. You must keep your mind away."

"That's right, Martha," Mrs. Lennon said, as she helped Martha Sloan into the house. "You mustn't keep thinking of Jim, and keep going up there all the time. There's many things waiting for you at home, and when you're through there why don't you come over to us?"

But Martha Sloan, either not hearing or not heeding the words of Deems and his wife, sat huddled, nervously whispering, more to herself than to her friends. "It's Jim. It's his hand reaching out to me. He took Dorothy. He took Joseph, and he's reaching out now to me. He can't stand having me living."

She was nervous and in the power of a fear that was stronger than her will. She sat uneasily looking about her as if knowing that she was safe in the house of friends, but as if feeling herself momentarily in the presence of something strange and frightful. She cast frightened looks about her, at the room, at Mrs. Lennon, and at Deems. She looked at them in silence as if she did not know how to speak to them until, prompted by great uneasiness, she spoke in a loud whisper, "Take me home. Take me home, Deems. I want to get away."

Deems slipped into his coat, said to his wife, "I'll be back soon,"

then, helping Martha from the chair, walked out with her.

"Come now, Martha, you know us well enough. We're your friends, aren't we? And we tell you there's nothing to fear. It's all your believing.

There's nothing after you. There's nothing you need fear."

"You don't know. It was he took my two children. He took Dorothy. When they laid her out in the parlor, I could just see him standing at her head. He was cruel when he lived. He beat them; Dorothy and Joseph, they hated him. And when they laid out Joseph after his fall, when the bridge gave way, Jim was standing by his head, and his eyes were laughing at me like he'd say, 'I took him, but now there's you.' And he's trying for me now."

Deems was pleased that she was speaking. He hoped that in conversing she would find respite from her thoughts.

"No, Martha," he said, "that wasn't Jim took Dorothy and Joseph. You know there's a G.o.d that gives and takes. Their years were run. Can't you see, Martha?"

"It was Jim who took. He couldn't see them living. When he lived he couldn't see them growing up to be themselves. He took them like he took me from you. D' you remember, Deems, how he came and in no time I was his? He owned me completely."

Deems was silent. There was no arguing. Even now there was vividly alive in his mind, and, he knew, in the minds of the other villagers, the recollection of that sense of possession which went with Jim Sloan. He recalled that William Carrol had hanged himself when he could not pay Jim Sloan the debt he owed him. It was true that Jim Sloan had owned his children as if they were pieces of property. The whole village had learned to know this fact soon after these children had grown up. Deems, recalling his feelings for Martha Sloan, remembered now the amazement, the astonishment, with which he had viewed the change that came over Martha immediately after her marriage to Jim Sloan.

She had been light-hearted and joyful as if overflowing with the vitality natural to the country about the village. There had been gladness in her laugh. Immediately after her marriage all this had changed.

Martha had been wont to run lightly about her father's house. Her movements had become suddenly freighted with a seriousness that was not natural to her. Her laughter quieted to a restrained smile which in turn gave way to a uniform seriousness. The whole village noted and remarked the change. "He is older than she," they said, "and is making her see things as he does."

When they reached the house, Martha, without a word, left Deems and hurried in. Deems turned away, looking back and shaking his head, the while he mumbled to himself, "There's no good in this. There's no good for Martha."

He was struck motionless when suddenly he beheld Martha by the window.

He had thought her slightly composed when she had left him, for her manner was more quiet than it had been. Now he was startled. Out of the window she leaned, her eyes fastened on the distant gravestone--white, large, and dominating--a shaft that rose upright like a gigantic spear on the crest of the hill. He watched her face and head and saw that her movements were frightened. As she moved her head--it seemed she was following something with her eyes which, look as closely as he could, he failed to make out--there was a jerkiness of movement that showed her alert and startled.

From the musty, dark parlor Martha looked out on the cemetery. There, clear in the evening light, stood the large white stone--a terrible symbol that held her. To her nervous mind, alive with the creations of her fear, it seemed she could read the lines,

JAMES SLOAN BORN SEPT. 14, 1857 DIED NOV. 12, 1915