The Best Short Stories of 1915

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At the water trough he stopped and the thirsty horses drank deeply. His
father came out of the barn, a pitchfork in his hand, and sat down on
the edge of the trough, fanning himself with his hat. The boy noticed
that his father seemed more tired than usual. His brown hair was already
mixed with gray and was damp where the hat had rested. His eyes seemed
less cheerful than usual, and his face less red.

When the horses raised their heads from the trough, the boy led them to
their stalls. His father followed him.

"How was cultivatin', Frank?" he asked as he stepped into the barn.

"Oh, it wasn't bad."

"The ground was pretty hard, wasn't it?"

"Not very."

In silence they unharnessed the horses, which buried their heads in the
newly-cut hay and blew the fragrant, spicy dust from their nostrils. As
the boy unloosed the collar of his horse, it slipped and fell upon his
foot. His face writhed in a flash of temper and he began cursing in a
low tone, heavily and deliberately. Then he picked up the collar and
struck the horse. Under lowered eyelashes he saw his father stand in the
doorway, his face white with repressed anger. The boy stopped suddenly.
He had never seen his father look like that before. He heard him turn in
the doorway.

The horses fed, they walked through the hot, deserted farm-yard to the
house. As they entered the shaded living-room, his mother came from the
kitchen, humming a bit of tune. Her eyes lit up when she saw them. She
talked cheerfully as she worked. The boy said nothing. He seemed to be
looking out of the open window into the orchard; instead, through his
lowered eyelashes, he followed his mother's movements about the room
as she set the small table for three, still humming as she worked. The
boy saw that she stopped often to cough. This was not unusual, but once
the cough became so strong that it left her face colorless. Uneasily
sympathetic, he noted that after this she did not hum again. Whenever
she looked his way, the boy turned his head, not so soon but that he
could see and feel the half-fearful appeal that darkened her eyes.

After the glasses had been filled, the three drew up to the table. The
dinner was eaten in silence. The eyes of the boy constantly returned to
his mother's face. Somehow she seemed different to-day. He wished that
she didn't wear that black dress, it made her face look too white and
her eyes too large and bright. He ate rapidly. Why didn't his father and
mother talk? They used to tease him about one of the neighbor girls. But
they had not for a long time now. He wondered why. Why didn't they say
something? It was too still.

As soon as he had finished his meal, he drank the water left in his
glass and pushed back his chair. His mother looked quickly at his
father. The boy watched them closely and uneasily. Both seemed to be
shrinking from something. His father carefully folded and unfolded his
newspaper. Then he laid it beside his plate and cleared his throat. He
turned in his chair.

"Wait a minute, Frank," he spoke with hesitation.

The boy turned, looked at his father a moment, and then sat down.

"I don't think we'll cultivate this afternoon, Frank," his father
commenced slowly.

"Why--" The boy started to speak but stopped. He saw the frightened
grayness return to his mother's face. His father, too, seemed restless.
He crossed and recrossed his knees nervously.

"Well, Frank," he continued, "it's this way. Your Ma ain't been feelin'
well for quite a while and we rode over to the doctor's this morning to
see what was the matter."

His mother had gone back of his chair. He could feel her hand on his
shoulders. He turned half-round, his hands grasping the chair tightly.

"You mustn't be scared, Frank--the doctor said it wasn't so very bad."

He could feel her twining his hair about her fingers.

He turned, faced his mother silently, half afraid, as though some grim
barrier stood between them. He saw fine lines about her gray eyes, and
their color seemed heavy and faded. The boy sat staring at his mother
with an intensity that made a color come to her cheeks, but he was not
looking at her any more. Instead, he was wondering fiercely why he had
never noticed the gray in her hair or the lines in her face, or the
cough. The cough--surely he might have noticed that. His body lay limp
against the back of the chair.

"The doctor said that Ma was pretty sick," his father was speaking on,
his voice devoid of life or feeling. "But he said that she 'ud be all
right if she went some place where the air was drier."

"What did he say it was?" he asked in a strained voice.

"It's her lungs, he says."

They were silent after this. He was looking out of the window at a
far-away straw-stack which lay a mass of dull gold in the sombre setting
of plowed land.

His mother still stood behind his chair. In the heavy silence of the
room he could hear her uneven breathing. He heard his father turn in his
chair.

"Well, Mother's got to go west--we might all of us go," he spoke with an
attempt at cheerfulness. "Maybe we can work a small farm out there."

"What will we do with the farm here?" As she spoke the boy felt his
mother's hand press more heavily on his shoulder. He turned from the
window and caught his father's eyes looking at him. He saw his face
flush.

"I guess we got to sell it. I can get a fair price. Help is scarce and
rent's low since the dry years. We can't afford to rent it."

Again the boy caught his father's glance resting hopefully on him.

"But we can't sell the old place; we have worked it too long."

The boy was uneasily conscious of the break in his mother's voice. He
sat up, his body stiffened. Did they expect him to stay on the farm? He
wouldn't--he could not do that! They had no right to ask this of him.
But he remembered the quick hope in his father's eyes.

He got up from his chair, walked past his mother without looking at her,
picked up his hat and went outside, closing the screen-door noiselessly
behind him.

The earth slept warm in the drowsiness of early afternoon. The freshness
of the morning had passed and a languorous mist had fallen. The boy
looked out to where earth and sky met in a haze of indefinable color.
What a wonderful earth was beyond! He turned and walked heavily away.
They hadn't any right to expect that!

Half-unconsciously he went toward the grove north of the house where he
had played when he was a little boy. The neighbor boys would collect in
the grove on a quiet summer afternoon, dressed as Indians, and in heavy
seriousness would plan a desperate attack on the little white house with
its green trimmings. What happy times they used to have! But he wasn't a
boy any more, he had grown up; still he felt an expectant eagerness as
he entered the cool shade of the trees.

He followed a path, indistinct now in the rank growth of gooseberry
bushes, until he reached his destination. A tree, broken off a couple of
feet from the ground, had left a high stump with some ragged splinters,
serving as the back of a natural chair.

The boy sat for a while, leaning back with lowered eyelashes. The dim
spaces of the grove brought old memories. As he brooded there, relaxed,
the sunlight coming in broken fragments through the oak leaves softened
his face into almost that of a child.

Suddenly he straightened in desperate rebellion. Why did things have
to happen so? He didn't want to grow older--he would rather be a boy.
If he were, his father and mother would not expect him to stay on the
farm. With his reflections came the picture of his mother, her dark
eyes shining unnaturally out of the rigid paleness of her face. Then
the black dress with its long folds--it was horrible. The boy's thoughts
blurred into a confusion of sharp emotions.

As he lay back again, with lowered eyelids, he was vaguely conscious
of the life about him. Robins hopped from branch to branch, singing
and chirping. A blue-jay, in a cracked crescendo, was attacking the
established order of things among birds. A bee droned idly past.
Occasionally all sounds ceased, and silence, deep and impenetrable,
seemed to close in. After a moment, the confused murmur of the woods
began again.

In the underbrush near him, the boy became aware of fluttering noise. At
first he could see nothing; then he saw a snake--a blue racer--writhing
along the ground, while above it, making queer little noises of
distress, hovered a brown wood-thrush. He stiffened. His flesh always
crawled at the sight of a snake! Yet, leaning forward, he watched
intently. The thrush, its body a blur of brown feathers, rose and
fell in continuous attack. Then he saw the reason. A few yards from
the tree-stump lay a nest, hidden in a clump of gooseberry bushes. Above
the rim showed a circle of hungry gaping beaks. The snake was crawling
steadily toward the nest.

It was almost there. The thrush became wild in fear for its young. Again
and again its body flashed in silent deadly attack. The snake, rearing
its head from the ground, its jaws wide, struck back at the fluttering
terror above it.

The snake reached the nest. It writhed over the edge. With a quick,
sharp note the bird flung itself upon its enemy. A blur of brown
feathers and a glimpse of a twisting, bluish body were all that the
boy could see. A moment, and the snake writhed out from the nest. The
thrush lay on the ground, blood crimsoning the speckled white of its
breast. Its wings fluttered slightly, then the body was still.

The boy leaned back against the trunk and closed his eyes. He released
his breath sharply. His throat contracted so that he almost choked. He
had always had a horror of seeing a creature maimed or killed. He felt
it doubly now, and he might have helped the bird,--no one else could.
Yet it was only a bird; such things happened continually--they had to
be: but he could not forget the flutterings of the dying thrush. Then,
suddenly, he remembered his mother.

After a long time, he opened his eyes. The trees, the sky,--all the
country was asleep; the absolute tranquillity of space lay lightly in
the air and bathed the earth with a drowsy light. And the boy yielded
himself to the silence. His eyes mirrored the mystic, reflective mood
of the afternoon.

In the west, ragged clouds massed together and spread over the sky,
their long streamers, black where they reached the sun, darkening the
earth with the gray misty twilight of the storm. Then a cool breeze
sprang up, the clouds receded, and the sun shone out.

The boy became conscious that it was late and jumped down from his seat.
He felt strangely cheerful. The confused emotions which had raged in him
all the afternoon had spent themselves, and he whistled as he walked on
between the trees. When he turned into the lane near the house, he could
see, in the west, a few black masses of cloud, vivid against the crimson
flame of the sky--wandering spirits in an infinity of lonely space.

At the windmill he stopped and looked toward the house. The kitchen was
lighted; the rest of the house was dark and shadowy. A thin spiral of
smoke twisted up until it became lost in the gray light. How home-like
it all was! The boy walked quickly toward the house, took the milk pails
from the hooks on the porch and went into the barn. The horses did
not raise their heads from the grain as he entered. The sound of their
crunching, the sweet smell of the hay, seemed part of the pervading rest
and content about him. His father came up from the gloom of the barn,
carrying a pail of milk. He glanced at the boy.

"I thought I'd do the chores to-night, son. You don't get a vacation
very often. You ought to rest."

"Oh!" The boy felt sudden embarrassment. He had a queer pity for his
father. He almost wished that he could have done the chores himself.

It was dark as they walked slowly to the house. In the dusk of the
east, the moon appeared red on the rim of the horizon. Everything seemed
asleep, yet infinite life still vibrated through its sleep. Out of the
oak-grove sounded the hopeless lament of the turtle-dove, voicing the
mystery and sadness of the night. From the farm to the north came the
faint cry of someone calling the cows, "Co-o, boss; co-o, boss!" A
moment, the boy felt as though it were the wonder and music of the
horizon that called. Then he smiled at the idea.

His father stopped on the porch. The boy knew what his father was
thinking, knew with a wave of pity and understanding. It seemed to him
there, in the darkness, that suddenly he was able to comprehend the
shadows which he had not known before in his boyish dream of life.

He took off his hat. The night wind was cool. How intense the night was!
Nature seemed a living and beautiful power, ever-veiled but always near.
For a moment his father rested his hand upon the boy's shoulder. The boy
moved closer to him.

THE END OF THE PATH[13]

BY NEWBOLD NOYES

From _Every Week_

[13] Copyright, 1915, by Every Week Corporation. Copyright, 1916, by
Newbold Noyes.

Set far back in the hills that have thrown their wall of misty purple
about the laughing blue of Lake Como, on a sheer cliff three thousand
feet above the lake, stands a little weather-stained church. Beneath it
lie the two villages of Cadenabbia and Menaggio; behind and up are rank
on rank of shadowy mountains, sharply outlined against the sky,--the
foothills leading back to the giant Alps.

The last tiny cream-colored house of the villages stands a full two
miles this side of the tortuous path that winds up the face of the
chrome-colored cliff. Once a year, in a creeping procession of black
and white, the natives make a pilgrimage to the little church to pray
for rain in the dry season. Otherwise it is rarely visited.

Blagden climbed slowly up the narrow path that stretched like a clean
white ribbon from the little group of pastel-colored houses by the
water. There was not a breath of wind, not a rustle in the gray-green
olive trees that shimmered silver in the sunlight. Little lizards,
sunning themselves on warm flat stones, watched him with brilliant eyes,
and darted away to safety as he moved. The shadows of the cypress trees
barred the white path like rungs of a ladder. And Blagden, drinking deep
of the beauty of it all, climbed upward.

When he opened the low door of the little chapel the cold of the
darkness within was as another barrier. He stepped inside, his footsteps
echoing heavily through the shadows, though he walked on tiptoe. After
the brilliant sunlight outside he could make out but little of the
interior at first. At the far end four candles were burning, and he made
his way toward them across the worn floor.

In a cheap, tarnished frame of gilt, above the four flickering pencils
of light, hung a picture of the Virgin. Blagden stared at it in
amazement. It had evidently been painted by a master hand. Blagden
was no artist; but the face told him that. It was drawn with wonderful
appreciation of the woman's sweetness. Perhaps the eyes were what was
most wonderful,--pitiful, trusting, a little sad perhaps.

The life-sized figure, draped in smoke-colored blue, blended softly
with the dusky shadows, and the flickering candlelight lent a witchery
to blurred outlines that half deceived him,--at moments the picture
seemed alive. She was smiling a little wistful smile.

And the canvas over the heart of the Virgin was cut in a long, clean
stroke--and opened in a disfiguring gash. Beneath it, on a little stand,
lay a slim-bladed, vicious knife, covered with dust.

Blagden wonderingly stooped to pick it up--and a voice spoke out of the
darkness behind him.

"I would not touch it, Signor," it said, and Blagden wheeled guiltily.

A man was standing in the shadow, almost at his elbow.

He was old, the oldest man Blagden had ever seen, and he wore the long
brown gown of a monk. His face was like a withered leaf, lined and
yellow, and his hair was silver white.

Only the small, saurian eyes held Blagden with their strange brilliance.
The rest of his face was like a death mask.

"Why not?" said Blagden.

The monk stepped forward into the dim light, crossing himself as he
passed the picture. He looked hesitatingly at the younger man before
him, searching his face with his wonderfully piercing eyes. He seemed to
find there what he was searching for, and when he spoke Blagden wondered
at the gentleness of his voice.

"There is a story. Would the Signor care to hear?"

Blagden nodded, and the two moved back in the shadows a short distance
to the front line of little low chairs. Before them, over the dancing
light of the four candles, stood the mutilated picture of Mary, beneath
it the dust-covered dagger.

And then the withered monk began speaking, and Blagden listened, looking
up at the picture.

"It all happened a great many years ago," said the old man; "but I am
old, so I remember.

"Rosa was the girl's name. She lived with her father and mother in a
little house above Menaggio. And every day in the warm sunlight of the
open fields she sang as she watched the goats for the old people, and
her voice was like cool water laughing in the shadows of a little brook.

"She was always singing, little Rosa; for she was young, and the sun had
never stopped shining for her. People used to call her beautiful.

"And there was Giovanni. Each morning he would pass her home where the
yellow roses with the pink hearts grew so sweetly, and always she would
blow him a kiss from the little window.

"Then Giovanni would toil with all the strength of his youth, and he too
would sing while he toiled; for was it not all for her?

"Often Rosa's goats would stray toward Giovanni's vineyard as dusk
came, and they would drive them home together, always laughing, always
singing, hand in hand, as the sun slipped golden over the top of the
hills across the lake. Sometimes they would walk together in the
afterglow, and Giovanni would weave a crown of the little flowers that
grew about them, and his princess would wear it, laughing happily.

"They were like two children, Signor. There were nights spent together
on the lake, when he told her of his dreams, while the gentlest of winds
stirred her curls against his brown cheek, and the moon's wake stretched
like a golden pathway from shore to shore.

"They were to be married when the grapes were picked, people used to
whisper.

"And then one day a new force came into the girl's life. The Church,
Signor!

"No one understands when or why this comes to a young girl, I think.
She was torn with the idea that she should join her church, go into the
little nunnery across the lake, and leave the sunshine.

"She did not want to go, and it was a strange yet a beautiful thing.
This young, beautiful girl who seemed so much a part of the sunshine
and the flowers was to close the door of the Church upon it all!

"You are thinking it was strange, Signor.

"Giovanni was frantic--you can understand.

"He had dreamed so happily of that which was to be, that now to have the
cup snatched from his lips was torture. He took her little sun-kissed
hands in his and begged on his knees with tears streaming down his
cheeks. And Rosa wept also--but could not answer as he begged. I think
she loved the boy, Signor. Yet there is something stronger than the
love of a boy and a girl.

"She asked for one more night in which to decide. She would come up here
to this little church and pray for Mary to guide her. He kissed her cold
lips and came away.

"He was a boy, and he never doubted but that she would choose his strong
young arms.

"The girl came here. All night she knelt on the rough stone floor,
praying and--weeping; for she loved him. And the Virgin above the four
candles looked down with the great, wistful eyes you see--and bound
the girl's soul faster and faster to her own.

"And when morning came she entered the white walls across the lake
without seeing her lover again.

"Giovanni went mad, I think, when they told him. He screamed out his
hate for the world and his God, and rushed up the little white path to
where we are sitting now, Signor.

"Once here, he drew the dagger you see beneath the Virgin and stabbed
with an oath on his lips. That is why I did not let you touch it."

Blagden nodded, and the old monk was silent for a moment before he went
on.

"Giovanni disappeared for two days. When he came back his face was that
of a madman still. He was met by a white funeral winding up the little
path. You understand, Signor,--a virgin's funeral. Giovanni was hurrying
blindly past when they stopped him.

"There was no reproach spoken for what he had done, no bitterness; only
a kind of awe--and pity.

"Rosa had died on her knees in the nunnery at the exact time he stabbed
yonder picture. And they told him months afterward that her face was
strangely like that of the Virgin when they found her,--beautiful and
pleading and sad. There was no given cause for her death--there are
things we cannot understand. She was praying for strength, the sisters
said."

The monk ceased speaking, and for a long moment they sat silent, Blagden
and the withered, white-haired man, staring mutely up at the beautiful
face above them. It was Blagden who broke the silence.

"What do you think happened?" he asked slowly.

"I do not know," said the monk.

There was another pause, then Blagden spoke again.

"Anyway," he said, brushing his hand across his eyes, "she paid in part
the debt Giovanni owed his God."

"Yes?" said the monk softly. "I wonder, Signor! For I am Giovanni."

THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER[14]

BY SEUMAS O'BRIEN

From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_

[14] Copyright, 1915, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine. Copyright,
1916, by Seumas O'Brien.

When Standish McNeill started talking to his friend Felix O'Dowd as they
walked at a leisurely pace towards the town of Castlegregory on a June
morning, what he said was: "The world is a wonderful place when you come
to think about it, an' Ireland is a wonderful place an' so is America,
an' though there are lots of places like each other there's no place
like Ballysantamalo. When there's not sunshine there, there's moonshine
an' the handsomest women in the world live there, an' nowhere else
except in Ireland or the churchyards could you find such decent people."

"Decency," said Felix, "when you're poor is extravagance, and bad
example when you're rich."

"And why?" said Standish.

"Well," said Felix, "because the poor imitate the rich an' the rich give
to the poor an' when the poor give to each other they have nothing of
their own."

"That's communism you're talking," said Standish. "an' that always comes
from education an' enlightenment. Sure if the poor weren't dacent they'd
be rich an' if the rich were dacent they'd be poor an' if everyone had a
conscience they'd be less millionaires."

"'Tis a poor bird that can't pick for himself."

"But suppose a bird had a broken wing an' couldn't fly to where the
pickings were?" said Felix.

"Well, then bring the pickings to him. That would be charity."

"But charity is decency and wisdom is holding your tongue when you don't
know what you're talking about."

"If the people of Ballysantamalo are so decent, how is it that there are
so many bachelors there? Do you think it right to have all the young
women worrying their heads off reading trashy novels an' doin' all sorts
of silly things like fixin' their hair in a way that was never intended
by nature an' doin' so for years an' years an' havin' nothin' in the end
but the trouble of it all."

"Well, 'tis hard blamin' the young men because every young lady you
meet looks better to you than the last until you meet the next an' so
you go on to another until you're so old that no one would marry you at
all unless you had lots of money, a bad liver, an' a shaky heart."

"An old man without any sense, lots of money, a bad liver, an' a shaky
heart can always get a young lady to marry him," said Felix, "though
rheumatics, gout, an' a wooden leg are just as good in such a case."

"Every bit," said Standish, "but there's nothin' like a weak
constitution, a cold climate, an' a tendency to pneumonia."

"Old men are quare," said Felix.

"They are," said Standish, "an' if they were all only half as wise as
they think they are then they'd be only young fools in the world. I
don't wonder a bit at the suffragettes. An' a time will come when we
won't know men from women unless some one tells us so."

"Wisha, 'tis my belief that there will be a great reaction some day,
because women will never be able to stand the strain of doin' what
they please without encountering opposition. When a man falls in love
he falls into trouble likewise, an' when a woman isn't in trouble you
may be sure that there's something wrong with her."

"Well," said Standish, "I think we will leave the women where the devil
left St. Peter--"

"Where was that?" asked Felix.

"Alone," answered Standish.

"That would be all very fine if they stayed there," said Felix.

"Now," said Standish, "as I was talking of me travels in foreign
parts, I want to tell you about the morning I walked along the beach
at Ballysantamalo, an' a warm morning it was too. So I ses to meself,
'Standish McNeill,' ses I, 'what kind of a fool of a man are you? Why
don't you take a swim for yourself?' So I did take a swim, an' I swam
to the rocks where the seals goes to get their photograph's taken an'
while I was havin' a rest for meself I noticed a grasshopper sittin' a
short distance away an' 'pon me word, but he was the most sorrowful
lookin' grasshopper I ever saw before or since. Then all of a sudden a
monster whale comes up from the sea and lies down beside him an' ses:
'Well,' ses he, 'is that you? Who'd ever think of finding you here.
Why, there's nothing strange under the sun but the ways of woman.'

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