The Best Short Stories of 1915

V >> Various >> The Best Short Stories of 1915

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His imagination began to reconstruct their story. He wished that he
might learn more. He went back to the old desk. It might have been
his uncle's. He opened a drawer; it was empty. A second and a third;
the last contained some valueless miscellany, an old glass knob a faded
bit of worsted fringe, some papers. Poking under them, he actually found
a package of letters. He picked it up, and with a little thrill of
realization recognized his uncle's writing. The paper was old and
yellowed with time. It had no address, but was sealed with red wax.
Scarcely expecting fulfillment of his romantic hope, he broke the seal
and opened the package. There was no address on the first envelope. Some
business memorandum, no doubt; yet nothing surely that at this late day
he might not in honor examine. He drew out the closely written sheet and
turned it over. After all the years his eyes were surely the first to
read it. There was no name in the inscription. Uncle William's fine
writing was very legible.

II

July 15, 1863.

My little love with the smooth hair and the great eyes, you do not
know that I have the little daguerreotype next my heart. I stole it
from Lucretia, and packed it among my things. How often I shall take it
out in the long days ahead before the war is over and I can come back to
tell you that I love you. You will wait for me, sweetheart. No other man
shall be the one to make those clear eyes fall, to change them from a
child's to a woman's eyes. I can see you as you stood there beside the
sun-dial. "Fight a brave fight, William," you said, "and come back
soon." You were brave and glorious. Your eyes were not even wet, yet you
care enough for me to shed a tear. I know that, little Allison. We have
been such good comrades, you and I. I looked back and saw you waving.
But you trust life so fearlessly, child. You are only fifteen. At that
age one cannot imagine death. I am twenty-three and am a man. I knew I
must not speak. I knew it, though my heart was knocking against my sides
for love of you. So I shall not send these letters. I shall send you a
line now and then, but not of love. You will hear the news of me from
mother and the girls. I shall write these letters just the same, and
keep them, and if the day comes when those great eyes, those dear and
wonderful eyes, give the promise my heart is waiting for, then I shall
hand them to you to read, and you shall know how long and faithfully I
have loved you. I shall not write you of the war and the long marches;
those things will be in my home letters. To you I shall write only of
ourselves, not as if I were in the midst of battle and sudden death,
but as if I were at home in Beechwood, where my heart is, at my window
overlooking a corner of your garden. I am there now, sitting at my
window as I write. I have just caught a glimpse of you in your Sunday
gown, the white-and-green striped silk, with the tiny lavender flowers
scattered on the white ground. You were picking a spray of lemon verbena
to take to church. I see you in the little green bonnet in the high pew
beside your mother. You have the soul of a lover, my Allison. I know it
when I see you smell the fragrant flowers. Little Allison, how you will
love when your day comes! Your mouth, so young, so warm, so generous,
was made to give all; your pure eyes for complete trust. You belong to
me, my Allison, although you do not know it yet. Even as I write this,
fear shakes my heart. Have not all lovers thought the same? So strong
is the sense of possession in love, so impossible it seems to the human
heart that we should give all and receive nothing. What if some one
should rudely awaken your clear soul from its young sleep, lay hot
human hands upon you, my rose, my little cool, white flower! I can not
bear these thoughts. You are mine, and I shall let you sleep until the
moment comes for love to knock at the door of your heart. There shall
be no rude awakening. I shall speak first so gently, yes, you shall be
roused slowly from that sleep of childhood. Then you will put your hands
in mine and say, "William, I love you," just as you said to me to-day,
"Fight a good fight." And I will take those dear hands and draw you
slowly toward me and kiss you on your fine, straight brows, your serene
forehead, that is like that of the angels in the Italian pictures father
brought home from Italy. Then I will let you go. I shall not be too
impetuous, lest I frighten you. And then some day you will say again,
"Come home soon William," and it will mean that I am to go home to you.

Yours till death,

WILLIAM.

August, '63.

My love with the dove's eyes:

Why were you so shy when I met you to-day on the gravel path? I asked
you where you were going. You would not stop; you almost ran past, like
a little gray moth. I love you in that gray little gown; your little
bare shoulders are pink beside it, like a spring flower beside a stone.
Why were you so shy? You are too young to have a lover. There is no one
except the tow-headed Bowman boy across the street. It could not have
been he. Then you went to the piano, and I heard you singing softly, "My
Love is like a Red, Red Rose." What can you know of love, my little one?
I am jealous of life itself that must bring that change to you. I would
delay that day. Not yet would I have the bud open for the hot sun to
draw out its fragrance. I would keep you yet a while in the white,
austere innocence of your youth. My little love, my child, the hour is
not yet.

WILLIAM.

September, '64.

Where I sit at my window, sweetheart, I can see the corner of the
grape-arbor in your garden. Do you remember the day we sat there, and I
read you my story, and you listened, with your great dreaming eyes on
the slippery leaf shadows, and your mouth stained with the purple
grapes? And when I had finished, you asked me, "Why did Reginald think
he had to die, William?" And I told you, "Because he loved Eleanor so
much and she loved another man." "Then why didn't he love some one else,
too? How silly they all were!" you said. You were too young to
understand. I look in the eyes of the little girl in the picture, and
she does not understand. The little girl is a year younger than you, and
the green-and-white frock in the picture was torn and darned last
summer. I remember how you looked, bent over your needle, your red lips
a little heavy with unspoken protest as you sewed the long rent. What a
child you always were to tear your frocks and get berry stains on your
white aprons and scratch your fingers and arms with briers! And how I
have loved each scratch and stain. My sweet, wild little Allison! Now
perhaps you begin to understand, to wonder and dream a little. You may
even have your dreams of lovers. You wonder yet with no intimation
behind your clear eyes of what this thing is that incites men to courage
or drives them to madness and death. Have you wondered yet if some day
it will come to you? Or does it live still in that fair, fragrant world
of your imagination as a tale that is told?

* * * * *

To-day you came home from your sewing circle, where you sewed garments
for the soldiers, and when you came away you let me carry your package.
The sleeve of your little gray gown had been darned, and you had
outgrown the dress. "It isn't pretty any more, but I mustn't have a
new one," you said. "It is wicked for us to have new things when the
soldiers are ragged and cold." And that look that is like tears came
into your eyes. Oh, how I longed to kiss the hand you held out for your
bundle at the gate! Not yet, Allison. You are just sixteen. You are a
child yet. I must wait.

WILLIAM.

December, '64.

My Allison, I signed myself last your William, and I called you mine.
It is no bold assumption. Neither life nor death can make me other than
yours, whether you will or not, neither can it make you any less mine.
Isn't it our George William Curtis who said that the land belonged to
his rich neighbor, but the view was his? No matter if I never touch your
dear hands save as a friend, my Allison, you will still be mine, because
I have divined the fine mysteries of your spirit. I am your worshiper
and knight, whatever fate befalls us. "We needs must love the highest
when we see it," says the new poet across the water. No truer words
were ever spoken. So in that fine inner sense I am yours and you are
mine whether you ever come to love me or not. To-day I found you chasing
a butterfly in the garden. What a child you are still! You brushed me as
you ran past, then, as you turned, ran almost into my arms. Ah, my
Allison, you did not know how it set my heart beating when that loose
strand of your hair blew across my face! Your cheeks were flushed, and
you drew back laughing.

"What do you want with the butterfly, Allison?" I asked. "You surely
would not hurt it. If you throw your bonnet over it, you will break its
wings."

You looked at me with your great eyes.

"I would not do that, William. I only wanted to see the gold spots on
its wings."

"You can do that best without touching it, my dear," I said. "A touch
will destroy its gold dust." You looked at me with your pure eyes and
said,--like a little child, yet you are almost a woman,--"Oh, William,
I would not break its wings." And then sharply a thought struck me like
a pang. Can I perhaps see you better with my soul's eyes, Allison, if
you are never mine? Would I break _your_ wings in touching you? Are
you something too fine and fair for human experience? It came like a
presentiment then that you would never be mine in the dear common human
way. Can it be so, dear love? No, no; I would have you when the hour
comes. Despite the angel in your eyes, you were made to make fair a
home, to know in all its phases a man's love, to hold your children in
your arms,--children with eyes such as you have now,--and teach them
such things as pure beings like you can teach to children.

"Isn't it nice that they are butterflies last, William?" you said.
"Suppose they had to grow brown and ugly and to move slowly, instead
of flying, when they are old like people."

"It is like life and death," I told you, although God knows I am no
preacher. Perhaps it is because my body is at the war while my soul
is in Beechwood that I must sometimes think these thoughts of death.
Your eyes looked straight into mine then, with something like a
reflection of heaven's light. Then again all at once they were a child's
again, and you said: "Grandma's portrait in the hall is beautiful. She
was sixteen then. But she isn't pretty any more."

"No, she isn't pretty any more, Allison, yet once like you she chased
butterflies in the garden. And that portrait was painted the year before
she was married."

Why was it then that you turned away your eyes and the soft curve of
your cheek grew pink? Perhaps it is always so with the young girl at
the thought of love and marriage; but you are still a child.

"The butterfly has flown away, Allison, and you never even looked at
its golden wings," I reminded you, and you laughed and shrugged. "There
will be another," you said. Yes, there will always be more butterflies
in the garden, and there will always be more lovers in the world for
such as you while your sweet youth lasts, whether I live to woo you or
not. That thought saddens me. Yet should I not feel it enough to have
known and loved you? Suppose you had never been in the world, and I had
loved some commonplace pretty girl instead of little Allison, with eyes
like an autumn brook in the sun?

Oh, my dear, the time is long, and I grow weary with my make-believing.
I am a thousand miles away. A cold rain is falling. I could not bear it
were it not for your voice in my ears: "Fight a good fight. Come back
home soon, William." As soon, God pity me as I can. My country first,
even if it robs me of life's dearest treasure. Ah, that I had dared
before I left to speak the words in my heart, "Wait for me, sweetheart,
wait till I come home; for it will be no true home unless you make it
for me."

But I did not say it. The hour was not yet. Pray God it may come for us
both, for never will another know how to love you as I do, my Allison.

YOUR FAITHFUL WILLIAM.

March, '65.

In battle, on the march, there has been no time for my letters, my
sweetheart, and only in my dreams have I been able to fancy myself at
the window overlooking your garden. But now there is a lull for writing.
We feel that the end is drawing near. And so once more I can trust my
dream self back in Beechwood with you.

Last night I took you home from Uncle Alvin's. We walked slowly
under the moon. The air was cool. You wore your little brown hood.
You are taller now, little Allison. I lingered at the gate when I
said good night. You lingered, too, and for the first time I knew--I
cannot say how--that your soft childhood was unfolding its wings to
depart. Not that I dared even to linger over your hand, still less
to pull off the brown mitten and kiss the little hand curled soft and
warm within; but the eyes that you turned to me had a graver light.
Was it the sad news of the war, the death and tragedy about you?
Jolly Dick Burrows, Arthur and Henry, struck down, blotted out. These
are aging times, my sweetheart. Had you the consciousness of me as
anything nearer than your old friend Lucretia's brother? Some day
life will bring to you this thing that tears at my heart. Some day not
so far off now. Sometimes I wonder that I dare hope it will come to me.

WILLIAM.

April 10, '65.

It has come, the news has come; the war is over. A few days, weeks,
and I shall be with you. I have been wounded. They have told you that,
have they not? But it is nothing, a scratch. It troubles me now, but it
will soon be over. Last night I sat in the hot Southern twilight that
smelled of jessamine and dreamed myself back with you in New England,
where the spring nights are cold. But I did not dream any more the
meetings of fantasy. My mind leaped forward, and dreamed of my real
home-coming. I had greeted them all, my dear mother, the girls, Alice,
and Lucretia. Then they left us alone in the little circle about the
sun-dial, only it was summer, and the bees were heavy with the flower
dust, the air was fragrant. And then at last I saw the consciousness
of womanhood in your eyes--those clear eyes that have always looked
so straight at mine, straight into my heart, it seemed, although I
knew they were too young to see. Not once except for that first moment
when you said, with lowered lids, "Welcome home, William," did you look
at me. And as we sat on the garden seat, I could see your color rise,
the lace scarf tremble with your quickened breath. And then I took your
hand. "I have come home to you, Allison," I said. "What have you to say
to me?" But you would not raise your eyes. I took both of your hands
then. "Look at me, Allison," I said, and something ran through you like
the wind through a rose shaking out its perfume, and I seemed to draw
into my very soul the fragrance of your young emotion; and I said again,
"Look at me, Allison." And then, half like a child commanded, you raised
your eyes.... There is a majestic purity about you, Allison! Even in the
young confusion of that moment it pierced me, humbled me in adoring love
before you. "Allison, speak," I said, and I could scarcely get out the
words. "Do you love me?" and you, stammering like a child, said, "I
don't know, William. I don't know." "Then at least you do not love any
other man?" I asked you, and you shook your head.

Oh, Allison, if I come home to find that some other man has taught you
love, how shall I live through the burden of my days!

WILLIAM.

July, '65.

My Allison:

Here I sit in verity at my window and write. I shall never speak,
after all; for now I know that I haven't the right. The wound was
fatal, it seems, and I have only a short time to live, so I dare not
tell you until after I am gone. It would hurt you too much. Even now
I can scarcely bear to see your pity in your eyes. Suppose that pity
were to imagine itself love! When I am myself, my whole being rejects
that thought. It is not such love I dreamed to win from you, my Allison.
Then again there are moments, weak moments, when I would have anything,
take you at any price, only to have you nearer, only to wring those
brief hours of warmth and sunshine from the cold outstretched hand of
death. But that is only weakness. Such sad companionship with oncoming
death shall not be for you, my beloved. You shall see me till the last
as Lucretia's brother, not your lover. I cannot trust myself to think
of that other man who will live my dreams. Yet for myself I ask only
to live till the end with my eyes filled with the sight of you; to live
in fact and memory over each tone of your voice, each light and shade
on that dear face. You are not a child now. With your dark braids about
your star-like face, you are a woman, ready to waken to the knowledge
of love; but, thank God! not yet awakened. So I may know still the cool,
unconscious touch of your hand, your dear daily gift of flowers, watch
your sweet down-bent head as you come to read to me here in our garden,
and not heed the words for the dearness of dreaming over your face,
living so intensely each moment of you. Oh, my sweet, why did you go
so soon to-day? I know it was to buy ribbons for a new muslin for Molly
Dearborn's party. You must go to your parties, be happy. That is all I
wish. Yet you would so gladly have given me that hour if you had known.
Some one could have matched the ribbon for you. "Allison does not know,"
I heard Lucretia say the other day. "We do not want her to know. It
would distress her too much." I shall not let you know, my darling.
I write it now, but I shall blot it out lest it hurt you too much to
know afterward how precious each moment you gave me was, lest it grieve
your tender heart to know there was something more you might have given
had you known.

WILLIAM.

Like one coming out of a dream, Mark glanced about the room, noted the
hands of the clock marking the half hour past midnight, then picked up
the picture of the girl who was young more than forty years ago.

With a little sense of shock it came to him that she existed no more. He
wondered whether she also had died in her sweet youth or lived still, an
old woman.

If she was alive, had she married some one not Uncle William? Or had she
never married? Had she loved him? Had she known that he loved her? He
picked up the picture again. The face seemed vaguely familiar. It seemed
to speak to him. He lost himself in dreams and roused himself with a
laugh.

"I believe I am half in love with you myself, little Allison, in love
with your lost youth, in love with the shadow of a shadow. And _that_
is a subject for a song--"

Allison, a quaint little name it was. Allison what? Who was she? It
struck him suddenly,--he wondered that he had not thought of it
before,--it must be, it surely was, Miss Allison Clyde. He studied the
young pictured face more closely, and felt sure he traced a resemblance
in it to the old. To-morrow he would find out.

The pathos of it--too old for love, the theme of his song. Reverently he
gathered up the letters, replaced them in their envelope, and put them
away. Suddenly, sharply the consciousness smote him: the woman to whom
those letters were written had never read them.

III

The next afternoon at tea-time he took the daguerreotype to his Aunt
Lucretia. She received it with her slow, uncertain, frail old hands,
lifting it to the light.

"Why, that little old picture of Allison!" she said. "I had forgotten we
had it. Where did you find it? It was William's." She stared at it with
the pitiful look the eyes of the old show at reawakening memories. "I
always thought your Uncle William was in love with her," she confided,
"although he never told us so."

"Miss Allison Clyde?" Mark questioned, and Miss Lucretia nodded faintly,
marveling:

"Why, didn't you know!"

"And was Miss Allison in love with Uncle William?"

Miss Lucretia answered doubtfully:

"I don't know. She was a child. She never said so."

"Did she ever, later on, have a love-affair?"

His aunt shook her head.

"Not that I know of. She was always so taken up with her own household.
They were very close to each other, a very united family."

"It is a wonderful little face," Mark said, looking down at the
daguerreotype.

"She was only a child then," Lucretia repeated, "not more than fifteen."
Her eyes became reminiscent. "She was still so young, only seventeen,
when he died. When he came home, he knew he had not long to live. He
used to sit out here and watch her as she moved about. He never talked
much, but the look in his eyes was," Aunt Lucretia stated in her quiet
way, "very moving."

Mark heard a step, and glanced up to see Miss Allison Clyde herself
standing beside them, looking down at them with a smile.

"To whom am I indebted for this honor? That funny little old ambrotype!
Where did you unearth it, Lucretia?"

"It was Brother William's," Lucretia explained, with her gentle
melancholy. "Mark found it in his room and asked me about it."

Mark looked to see some revelation in Miss Allison Clyde's face, but
found none. Her kindly smile had not faded or changed except to take
on a shade of amusement as she picked up the ambrotype.

"How proud I was of that mantilla!" she said. "I remember it so well.
It was green. Do you recall it, Lucretia?"

Miss Lucretia nodded, her frail hands busy with the tea-cups.

"I do. And the turban with the green plume you wore with it."

Mark glanced from the picture of the child to the face of the woman
whose youth was past. Was it tragedy for her, he wondered, that she
had never known in its fullness the meaning of love and home? Or was
she happy burning with her own diffusing light full of the warmth of
humanity, loving, and giving to all the world instead of one lover?

Miss Lucretia interrupted his reverie.

"I suppose you are going over to see Stella this evening, and we old
people shall have to amuse ourselves without you as best we can."

Mark lifted his Lowestoft tea-cup and set it down again before he
answered slowly:

"No, I think not. I am going to stay and have some music with Miss
Allison."

He wondered why Miss Allison had made Stella seem suddenly hard, new,
almost crude, like the modern furniture in the drawing-room beside the
fine old mahogany, with its simple decoration and tone of time.

It was that evening, which he had decided should be his last, that,
when their music was over, he handed Miss Allison Clyde a sheet of
manuscript music.

"Since you liked it," he said.

She took it, a faint color coming in her cheek. It was the manuscript
of the fifth song of his cycle, "Evening," and he had dedicated it to
her. Involuntarily she moved to give it back to him.

"No, not to me. You are too kind. But you must dedicate it to youth."

He nodded, with his smile.

"So I have: to the woman who has youth in her heart." Then he drew
out the package of letters. "And these," he said in a lower voice,
"are yours also." He handed them to her silently.

"Mine?" She turned over the package in doubtful wonder.

"I found them in the desk with the daguerreotype. When you open them
you will understand."

Turning from the doorway for a last good night, Mark saw Miss Allison,
as he always afterward remembered her, standing by the tall mantel in
the candle-light with the unopened package of Uncle William's letters
in her hand.

ZELIG[17]

BY BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT

From _The Bellman_

[17] Copyright, 1915, by The Bellman Company. Copyright, 1916, by
Benjamin Rosenblatt.

Old Zelig was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him
"Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent--"Mr."
"The old one is a barrel with a stave missing," knowingly declared his
neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres." For "to
belong," on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means
being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew
must join "A Society for Burying Its Members," to be provided at least
with a narrow cell at the end of the long road. Zelig was not even a
member of one of these. "Alone, like a stone," his wife often sighed.

In the cloakshop where Zelig worked he stood daily, brandishing his
heavy iron on the sizzling cloth, hardly ever glancing about him. The
workmen despised him, for during a strike he returned to work after
two days' absence. He could not be idle, and thought with dread of the
Saturday that would bring him no pay envelope.

His very appearance seemed alien to his brethren. His figure was tall,
and of cast-iron mold. When he stared stupidly at something, he looked
like a blind Samson. His gray hair was long, and it fell in disheveled
curls on gigantic shoulders somewhat inclined to stoop. His shabby
clothes hung loosely on him; and, both summer and winter, the same old
cap covered his massive head.

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