The Best Short Stories of 1919 Part 5

Belle Carpenter did not resist. When he kissed her upon the lips she leaned heavily against him and looked over his shoulder into the darkness. In her whole att.i.tude there was a suggestion of waiting.

Again, as in the alleyway, George Willard's mind ran off into words and, holding the woman tightly, he whispered the words into the still night.

"l.u.s.t," he whispered, "l.u.s.t and night and women."

George Willard did not understand what happened to him that night on the hillside. Later, when he got to his own room, he wanted to weep and then grew half insane with anger and hate. He hated Belle Carpenter and was sure that all his life he would continue to hate her. On the hillside he had led the woman to one of the little open s.p.a.ces among the bushes and had dropped to his knees beside her. As in the vacant lot, by the laborers' houses, he had put up his hands in grat.i.tude for the new power in himself and was waiting for the woman to speak when Ed Handby appeared.

The bartender did not want to beat the boy, who he thought had tried to take his woman away. He knew that beating was unnecessary, that he had power within himself to accomplish his purpose without that. Gripping George by the shoulder and pulling him to his feet he held him with one hand while he looked at Belle Carpenter seated on the gra.s.s. Then with a quick wide movement of his arm he sent the younger man sprawling away into the bushes and began to bully the woman, who had risen to her feet.

"You're no good," he said roughly. "I've half a mind not to bother with you. I'd let you alone if I didn't want you so much."

On his hands and knees in the bushes George Willard stared at the scene before him and tried hard to think. He prepared to spring at the man who had humiliated him. To be beaten seemed infinitely better than to be thus hurled ignominiously aside.

Three times the young reporter sprang at Ed Handby and each time the bartender, catching him by the shoulder, hurled him back into the bushes. The older man seemed prepared to keep the exercise going indefinitely but George Willard's head struck the root of a tree and he lay still. Then Ed Handby took Belle Carpenter by the arm and marched her away.

George heard the man and woman making their way through the bushes. As he crept down the hillside his heart was sick within him. He hated himself and he hated the fate that had brought about his humiliation.

When his mind went back to the hour alone in the alleyway he was puzzled, and stopping in the darkness, listened, hoping to hear again the voice, outside himself, that had so short a time before put new courage into his heart. When his way homeward led him again into the street of frame houses he could not bear the sight and began to run, wanting to get quickly out of the neighborhood that now seemed to him utterly squalid and commonplace.

WILLUM'S VANILLA[4]

[Note 4: Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1920, by Edwina Stanton Babc.o.c.k.]

BY EDWINA STANTON BABc.o.c.k

From _Harper's Magazine_

The letter came while Mr. Pawket was chopping wood. His ax rested on a stump and piles of white chips breathed fragrance around him as he stood watching the buckboard of the Rural Free Delivery wind down the country road.

The Rural Free Delivery consisted of a white horse, a creaking buckboard, and a young woman of determined manner. A Rough Rider's hat sat with an air of stern purpose on the Rural Free Delivery's dark head, and a pair of surgeon's gauntlet gloves heightened her air of official integrity.

As the buckboard approached the group of tulip-trees opposite Mr.

Pawket's residence he shoved back his hat and pulled a blue-spotted handkerchief out of his hip pocket; pa.s.sing the handkerchief over his face, he greeted the Rural Free Delivery:

"Hot enough fer yer?"

It was really not so very hot, but if Mr. Pawket had not asked this question he would have felt lacking in geniality. He did not, however, go forward to intercept possible mail. There was the little iron box with his name on it nailed to the tulip-tree; there was the red signal to be adjusted. It pleased Mr. Pawket to realize that the government had all this planned out for his special convenience and he was careful not to upset regime. He watched the Rural Free Delivery climb down from the buckboard, go to the little box on the tree, deposit one letter, lock the box, and set up the signal. When the ceremony was concluded Mr.

Pawket came out from behind the barn. Walking with the heavy, bent-kneed tread of the life-long farmer, he leaned upon the bars by the cow-sheds.

"Many gitten 'em to-day?" he inquired.

The Rural Free Delivery climbed back into the buckboard; she pulled on the gauntlets, replying with black-eyed reserve:

"Finn's folks had two--a asthma circler and a letter from that son they thought was drownded. Mis' Sweetser's got a paper--- the one her daughter is a manicurer sends her. And there's a box yet for the Grant girl--her graduatin'-dress, I expect--seems she's too high-toned to wear anything but machine-made."

The Rural Free Delivery whipped up the white horse and the stern contours of the Rough Rider hat disappeared down the winding, shadowed road. At last Mr. Pawket, rousing from the reverie induced by news of the resurrection of Finn's boy, took down the bars and crossed the road to the post-box. Dragging from his pocket a cl.u.s.ter of huge barn keys, he sought among them for the infinitesimal key of the box. This small key had the appearance of coquetting with Mr. Pawket--it invariably disappeared behind the larger keys and eluded his efforts to single it out; it seemed to him flirtatious, feminine; and as he stood like an old Druid invoking the spirit of the tulip-tree, he addressed this small key with benevolent irony.

"You'm a shrimp, that's what you are," Mr. Pawket said to the key.

"Nothin' but a shrimp.... Why in tarnation don't they have a key you can see?... I'd hate to lose you on a dark night, I would," eying the key severely.

But the shrimp key at least did its work, and Mr. Pawket with unconcealed feelings of wonder and concern drew forth from the box the letter. It was a large, rich-looking letter. The envelope was thin and crackly, embossed with purple designs of twisted reptiles coiling around a woman's face, and in one corner were small purple letters forming the words "Hotel Medusa." The handwriting on the envelope was bold and black, and the dark seal bore impress of a small winged form that Mr.

Pawket took to be a honey-bee. He regarded the letter suspiciously, studying it from every position as he entered the kitchen door.

"Say, Mother, here's a letter. What'll I do with it?"

Mrs. Pawket came sighing from the washtub. She wrinkled her forehead as one harried by the incessant demands of the outside world. Wiping her hands on her wet ap.r.o.n, she took the letter, regarding it contemptuously.

"Leave it be on the parlor mantel," advised Mrs. Pawket. "The twins is comin' up the road. I can hear them hollerin' at that echo down by the swamps. Leave it be; they'll attend to it."

Mr. Pawket, having carried out this injunction, stood by the door considering whether it was worth while to go back to his chopping. The sun was in the middle of the sky; he sniffed odors of the kitchen and discerned a rich atmosphere known to his consciousness as "dinner-time."

"Now I'm here I may as well stay," he remarked to his wife. He sat heavily down in a Turkey-red-covered rocking-chair, quoting facetiously:

"Ef yer never want to be sad and sorry Just keep away from hurry and worry."

"The Rural says Finn's folks has heard from that young feller was drownded."

Mrs. Pawket raised a disapproving face from contemplating a small kettle of Irish stew, remarking, severely: "Much the Rural knows about it.

She's into everybody's business."

Mr. Pawket demurred. "Well, carr'in' the mail and all, she's liable to sense a good deal. Some says she's always been foreknowledged. 'Twuz the Rural foretold the blizzit last winter; 'twuz the Rural found out Hank Jellaby's nephew was married. Wasn't it her knowed all the time who sot Mullins's barn afire? There's a good many depends on the Rural for keeping up with things."

Soon the sun was a green glare through the tulip-trees; that meant it was half past twelve, and the twins raced in. They were hoa.r.s.e from intriguing with the echo in the swamp; but as they entered the gate (careful to swing it the wrong way and squeeze through) they discussed a tingling problem in mental arithmetic.

"If Mrs. Fenton gave her son two wapples" (snuffle), "and her nephew one naple" (snuffle), "and two wapples to her son's friend, reservin' one napple for herself and conservin' four rapples for the household, what would be the sum of these given napples multiplied by four?"

Reciting this appalling chorus, the twins faced their grandfather, who, poising his battered sun-hat on his knees, from the depths of his arm-chair looked proudly, if fearfully, upon them.

"Say, Gramp', kin' you answer it?" demanded the twins.

Standing before him in the kitchen doorway, they mouthed it, curly-headed, croaking synchronous challenge. They sc.r.a.ped their shoes on a sc.r.a.per near the door; one peered furtively under a covered dish on the table while the other washed hands and face in a tin basin under the grape-arbor. Together they made strange "snorting" noises of repressed masculinity as, seizing knife and fork from the pile in the center of the table, they took seats, elbows on plates, instruments waving in air.

"Kin you answer it?"

Mr. Pawket hedged. He also drew a chair up to the table and, spearing a slice of bread with his knife, bent bushy brows.

"'Kin I answer it?' Well, that's a nice question. Would yer teacher like me to answer it? No, he wouldn't. It's for your learnin', ain't it? Not for mine. I'm all finished with them conundrums. Of course," went on Mr.

Pawket, airily--"of course I never done figurin' like that when I was a boy. Them apples, now. Seems to me it all depends on the season. Ef the lady was a widder, like as not she was took advantage of. I mistrust she wouldn't be no judge of apples; not bein' a farmer, how could she know that there's years when apples is valleyble, and other years when you insult the pigs with 'em? But then--you talk about apples--Well, as for a fine apple, whether it's Northern Spy or Harvest Moon...." Thus Mr.

Pawket skilfully directed the conversation into channels more familiar.

At last the twins, in a fine, concerted action of chewing, balanced large slices of b.u.t.tered bread on the flats of their hands, eyed their grandparents, and, after swallowing with peculiar heavy efforts of the epiglottis, remarked, simultaneously:

"Willum is comin' home."

Mr. Pawket started. He reached for his spectacles, solemnly polished them, and put them on. Mrs. Pawket, bearing a large leaning tower of griddle-cakes toward the table, halted as one petrified.

The twins bent over their plates, humped their shoulders, observing, "That's what they all say down to the Center."