The Best Short Stories of 1915

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Here and there among the newly made citizens were wives and children.
The women were proud of their men. They looked at them from time to
time, their faces showing pride and awe.

One little woman, sitting immediately in front of the President, held
the hand of a big, muscular man and stroked it softly. The big man was
looking at the speaker with great blue eyes that were the eyes of a
dreamer.

The President's words came clear and distinct:

_You were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope,
by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some
expectation of a better kind of life. You dreamed dreams of this
country, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. A man enriches
the country to which he brings dreams, and you who have brought them
have enriched America._

The big man made a curious choking noise and his wife breathed a soft
"Hush!" The giant was strangely affected.

The President continued:

_No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us, but remember this,
if we have grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with
you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man
does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some
of us have forgotten what America believed in, you at any rate imported
in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. Each of you, I am sure,
brought a dream, a glorious, shining dream, a dream worth more than
gold or silver, and that is the reason that I, for one, make you
welcome._

The big man's eyes were fixed. His wife shook him gently, but he did
not heed her. He was looking through the presidential rostrum, through
the big buildings behind it, looking out over leagues of space to a
snow-swept village that huddled on an island in the Beresina, the
swift-flowing tributary of the mighty Dnieper, an island that looked
like a black bone stuck tight in the maw of the stream.

It was in the little village on the Beresina that the Dream came to
Ivan Berloff, Big Ivan of the Bridge.

The Dream came in the spring. All great dreams come in the spring,
and the Spring Maiden who brought Big Ivan's Dream was more than
ordinarily beautiful. She swept up the Beresina, trailing wondrous
draperies of vivid green. Her feet touched the snow-hardened ground
and armies of little white and blue flowers sprang up in her footsteps.
Soft breezes escorted her, velvety breezes that carried the aromas of
the far-off places from which they came, places far to the southward,
like Kremenchug and Kerch, and more distant towns beyond the Black Sea
whose people were not under the sway of the Great Czar.

The father of Big Ivan, who had fought under Prince Menshikov at Alma
fifty-five years before, hobbled out to see the sunbeams eat up the snow
hummocks that hid in the shady places, and he told his son it was the
most wonderful spring he had ever seen.

"The little breezes are hot and sweet," he said, sniffing hungrily with
his face turned toward the south. "I know them, Ivan! I know them! They
have the spice odor that I sniffed on the winds that came to us when we
lay in the trenches at Balaklava. Praise God for the warmth!"

And that day the Dream came to Big Ivan as he plowed. It was a wonder
dream. It sprang into his brain as he walked behind the plow, and for
a few minutes he quivered as the big bridge quivers when the Beresina
sends her ice squadrons to hammer the arches. It made his heart pound
mightily, and his lips and throat became very dry.

Big Ivan stopped at the end of the furrow and tried to discover what
had brought the Dream. Where had it come from? Why had it clutched him
so suddenly? Was he the only man in the village to whom it had come?

Like his father, he sniffed the sweet-smelling breezes. He thrust his
great hands into the sunbeams. He reached down and plucked one of a
bunch of white flowers that had sprung up overnight. The Dream was
born of the breezes and the sunshine and the spring flowers. It came
from them and it had sprung into his mind because he was young and
strong. He knew! It couldn't come to his father or Donkov, the tailor,
or Poborino, the smith. They were old and weak, and Ivan's dream was
one that called for youth and strength.

"Ay, for youth and strength," he muttered as he gripped the plow. "And
I have it!"

That evening Big Ivan of the Bridge spoke to his wife, Anna, a little
woman, who had a sweet face and a wealth of fair hair.

"Wife, we are going away from here," he said.

"Where are we going, Ivan?" she asked.

"Where do you think, Anna?" he said, looking down at her as she stood
by his side.

"To Bobruisk," she murmured.

"No."

"Farther?"

"Ay, a long way farther."

Fear sprang into her soft eyes. Bobruisk was eighty-nine versts away,
yet Ivan said they were going farther.

"We--we are not going to Minsk?" she cried.

"Ay, and beyond Minsk!"

"Ivan, tell me!" she grasped. "Tell me where we are going!"

"We are going to America."

"_To America?_"

"Yes, to America!"

Big Ivan of the Bridge lifted up his voice when he cried out the words
"To America," and then a sudden fear sprang upon him as those words
dashed through the little window out into the darkness of the village
street. Was he mad? America was 8,000 versts away! It was far across
the ocean, a place that was only a name to him, a place where he knew
no one. He wondered in the strange little silence that followed his
words if the crippled son of Poborino, the smith, had heard him. The
cripple would jeer at him if the night wind had carried the words to
his ear.

Anna remained staring at her big husband for a few minutes, then she
sat down quietly at his side. There was a strange look in his big blue
eyes, the look of a man to whom has come a vision, the look which came
into the eyes of those shepherds of Judea long, long ago.

"What is it, Ivan?" she murmured softly, patting his big hand. "Tell
me."

And Big Ivan of the Bridge, slow of tongue, told of the Dream. To no
one else would he have told it. Anna understood. She had a way of
patting his hands and saying soft things when his tongue could not
find words to express his thoughts.

Ivan told how the Dream had come to him as he plowed. He told her how
it had sprung upon him, a wonderful dream born of the soft breezes, of
the sunshine, of the sweet smell of the upturned sod and of his own
strength. "It wouldn't come to weak men," he said, baring an arm that
showed great snaky muscles rippling beneath the clear skin. "It is a
dream that comes only to those who are strong and those who want--who
want something that they haven't got." Then in a lower voice he said:
"What is it that we want, Anna?"

The little wife looked out into the darkness with fear-filled eyes.
There were spies even there in that little village on the Beresina,
and it was dangerous to say words that might be construed into a
reflection on the Government. But she answered Ivan. She stooped
and whispered one word into his ear, and he slapped his thigh with
his big hand.

"Ay," he cried. "That is what we want! You and I and millions like us
want it, and over there, Anna, over there we will get it. It is the
country where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the blood!"

Anna stood up, took a small earthenware jar from a side shelf, dusted it
carefully and placed it upon the mantel. From a knotted cloth about her
neck she took a ruble and dropped the coin into the jar. Big Ivan looked
at her curiously.

"It is to make legs for your Dream," she explained. "It is many versts
to America, and one rides on rubles."

"You are a good wife," he said. "I was afraid that you might laugh at
me."

"It is a great dream," she murmured. "Come, we will go to sleep."

The Dream maddened Ivan during the days that followed. It pounded
within his brain as he followed the plow. It bred a discontent that
made him hate the little village, the swift-flowing Beresina and the
gray stretches that ran toward Mogilev. He wanted to be moving, but
Anna had said that one rode on rubles, and rubles were hard to find.

And in some mysterious way the village became aware of the secret.
Donkov, the tailor, discovered it. Donkov lived in one half of the
cottage occupied by Ivan and Anna, and Donkov had long ears. The
tailor spread the news, and Poborino, the smith, and Yanansk, the
baker, would jeer at Ivan as he passed.

"When are you going to America?" they would ask.

"Soon," Ivan would answer.

"Take us with you!" they would cry in chorus.

"It is no place for cowards," Ivan would answer. "It is a long way,
and only brave men can make the journey."

"Are you brave?" the baker screamed one day as he went by.

"I am brave enough to want liberty!" cried Ivan angrily. "I am brave
enough to want--"

"Be careful! Be careful!" interrupted the smith. "A long tongue has
given many a man a train journey that he never expected."

That night Ivan and Anna counted the rubles in the earthenware pot.
The giant looked down at his wife with a gloomy face, but she smiled
and patted his hand.

"It is slow work," he said.

"We must be patient," she answered. "You have the Dream."

"Ay," he said. "I have the Dream."

Through the hot, languorous summertime the Dream grew within the
brain of Big Ivan. He saw visions in the smoky haze that hung above
the Beresina. At times he would stand, hoe in hand, and look toward
the west, the wonderful west into which the sun slipped down each
evening like a coin dropped from the fingers of the dying day.

Autumn came, and the fretful whining winds that came down from the
north chilled the Dream. The winds whispered of the coming of the
Snow King, and the river grumbled as it listened. Big Ivan kept out
of the way of Poborino, the smith, and Yanansk, the baker. The Dream
was still with him, but autumn is a bad time for dreams.

Winter came, and the Dream weakened. It was only the earthenware pot
that kept it alive, the pot into which the industrious Anna put every
coin that could be spared. Often Big Ivan would stare at the pot as he
sat beside the stove. The pot was the umbilical cord which kept the
Dream alive.

"You are a good woman, Anna," Ivan would say again and again. "It was
you who thought of saving the rubles."

"But it was you who dreamed," she would answer. "Wait for the spring,
husband mine. Wait."

It was strange how the spring came to the Beresina that year. It
sprang upon the flanks of winter before the Ice King had given the
order to retreat into the fastnesses of the north. It swept up the
river escorted by a million little breezes, and housewives opened
their windows and peered out with surprise upon their faces. A
wonderful guest had come to them and found them unprepared.

Big Ivan of the Bridge was fixing a fence in the meadow on the
morning the Spring Maiden reached the village. For a little while
he was not aware of her arrival. His mind was upon his work, but
suddenly he discovered that he was hot, and he took off his overcoat.
He turned to hang the coat upon a bush, then he sniffed the air, and
a puzzled look came upon his face. He sniffed again, hurriedly,
hungrily. He drew in great breaths of it, and his eyes shone with
a strange light. It was wonderful air. It brought life to the Dream.
It rose up within him, ten times more lusty than on the day it was
born, and his limbs trembled as he drew in the hot, scented breezes
that breed the _Wanderlust_ and shorten the long trails of the world.

Ivan clutched his coat and ran to the little cottage. He burst through
the door, startling Anna, who was busy with her housework.

"The Spring!" he cried. "_The Spring!_"

He took her arm and dragged her to the door. Standing together they
sniffed the sweet breezes. In silence they listened to the song of
the river. The Beresina had changed from a whining, fretful tune into
a lilting, sweet song that would set the legs of lovers dancing. Anna
pointed to a green bud on a bush beside the door.

"It came this minute," she murmured.

"Yes," said Ivan. "The little fairies brought it there to show us that
spring has come to stay."

Together they turned and walked to the mantel. Big Ivan took up the
earthenware pot, carried it to the table, and spilled its contents
upon the well-scrubbed boards. He counted while Anna stood beside him,
her fingers clutching his coarse blouse. It was a slow business, because
Ivan's big blunt fingers were not used to such work, but it was over at
last. He stacked the coins into neat piles, then he straightened himself
and turned to the woman at his side.

"It is enough," he said quietly. "We will go at once. If it was not
enough, we would have to go because the Dream is upon me and I hate
this place."

"As you say," murmured Anna. "The wife of Littin, the butcher, will buy
our chairs and our bed. I spoke to her yesterday."

Poborino, the smith; his crippled son; Yanansk, the baker; Dankov, the
tailor, and a score of others were out upon the village street on the
morning that Big Ivan and Anna set out. They were inclined to jeer at
Ivan, but something upon the face of the giant made them afraid. Hand
in hand the big man and his wife walked down the street, their faces
turned toward Bobruisk, Ivan balancing upon his head a heavy trunk that
no other man in the village could have lifted.

At the end of the street a stripling with bright eyes and yellow curls
clutched the hand of Ivan and looked into his face.

"I know what is sending you," he cried.

"Ay, _you_ know," said Ivan, looking into the eyes of the other.

"It came to me yesterday," murmured the stripling. "I got it from the
breezes. They are free, so are the birds and the little clouds and the
river. I wish I could go."

"Keep your dream," said Ivan softly. "Nurse it, for it is the dream of a
man."

Anna, who was crying softly, touched the blouse of the boy. "At the
back of our cottage, near the bush that bears the red berries, a pot
is buried," she said. "Dig it up and take it home with you and when
you have a kopeck drop it in. It is a good pot."

The stripling understood. He stooped and kissed the hand of Anna, and
Big Ivan patted him upon the back. They were brother dreamers and they
understood each other.

Boris Lugan has sung the song of the versts that eat up one's courage as
well as the leather of one's shoes.

"Versts! Versts! Scores and scores of them!
Versts! Versts! A million or more of them!
Dust! Dust! And the devils who play in it
Blinding us fools who forever must stay in it."

Big Ivan and Anna faced the long versts to Bobruisk, but they were not
afraid of the dust devils. They had the Dream. It made their hearts
light and took the weary feeling from their feet. They were on their
way. America was a long, long journey, but they had started, and every
verst they covered lessened the number that lay between them and the
Promised Land.

"I am glad the boy spoke to us," said Anna.

"And I am glad," said Ivan. "Some day he will come and eat with us in
America."

They came to Bobruisk. Holding hands, they walked into it late one
afternoon. They were eighty-nine versts from the little village on the
Beresina, but they were not afraid. The Dream spoke to Ivan, and his
big hand held the hand of Anna. The railway ran through Bobruisk, and
that evening they stood and looked at the shining rails that went out
in the moonlight like silver tongs reaching out for a low-hanging star.

And they came face to face with the Terror that evening, the Terror that
had helped the spring breezes and the sunshine to plant the Dream in the
brain of Big Ivan.

They were walking down a dark side street when they saw a score of men
and women creep from the door of a squat, unpainted building. The little
group remained on the sidewalk for a minute as if uncertain about the
way they should go, then from the corner of the street came a cry of
"Police!" and the twenty pedestrians ran in different directions.

It was no false alarm. Mounted police charged down the dark thoroughfare
swinging their swords as they rode at the scurrying men and women who
raced for shelter. Big Ivan dragged Anna into a doorway, and toward
their hiding place ran a young boy who, like themselves, had no
connection with the group and who merely desired to get out of harm's
way till the storm was over.

The boy was not quick enough to escape the charge. A trooper pursued
him, overtook him before he reached the sidewalk, and knocked him down
with a quick stroke given with the flat of his blade. His horse struck
the boy with one of his hoofs as the lad stumbled on his face.

Big Ivan growled like an angry bear, and sprang from his hiding place.
The trooper's horse had carried him on to the sidewalk, and Ivan seized
the bridle and flung the animal on its haunches. The policeman leaned
forward to strike at the giant, but Ivan of the Bridge gripped the left
leg of the horseman and tore him from his saddle.

The horse galloped off, leaving its rider lying beside the moaning boy
who was unlucky enough to be in a street where a score of students were
holding a meeting.

Anna dragged Ivan back into the passageway. More police were charging
down the street, and their position was a dangerous one.

"Ivan!" she cried, "Ivan! Remember the Dream! America, Ivan! _America!_
Come this way! _Quick!_"

With strong hands she dragged him down the passage. It opened into a
narrow lane, and, holding each other's hands, they hurried toward the
place where they had taken lodgings. From far off came screams and
hoarse orders, curses and the sound of galloping hoofs. The Terror was
abroad.

Big Ivan spoke softly as they entered the little room they had taken.
"He had a face like the boy to whom you gave the lucky pot," he said.
"Did you notice it in the moonlight when the trooper struck him down?"

"Yes," she answered. "I saw."

They left Bobruisk next morning. They rode away on a great, puffing,
snorting train that terrified Anna. The engineer turned a stopcock
as they were passing the engine, and Anna screamed while Ivan nearly
dropped the big trunk. The engineer grinned, but the giant looked up
at him and the grin faded. Ivan of the Bridge was startled by the rush
of hot steam, but he was afraid of no man.

The train went roaring by little villages and great pasture stretches.
The real journey had begun. They began to love the powerful engine. It
was eating up the versts at a tremendous rate. They looked at each other
from time to time and smiled like two children.

They came to Minsk, the biggest town they had ever seen. They looked out
from the car windows at the miles of wooden buildings, at the big church
of St. Catharine, and the woolen mills. Minsk would have frightened them
if they hadn't had the Dream. The farther they went from the little
village on the Beresina the more courage the Dream gave to them.

On and on went the train, the wheels singing the song of the road.
Fellow travelers asked them where they were going. "To America," Ivan
would answer.

"To America?" they would cry. "May the little saints guide you. It is a
long way, and you will be lonely."

"No, we shall not be lonely," Ivan would say.

"Ha! you are going with friends?"

"No, we have no friends, but we have something that keeps us from being
lonely." And when Ivan would make that reply Anna would pat his hand and
the questioner would wonder if it was a charm or a holy relic that the
bright-eyed couple possessed.

They ran through Vilna, on through flat stretches of Courland to Libau,
where they saw the sea. They sat and stared at it for a whole day,
talking little but watching it with wide, wondering eyes. And they
stared at the great ships that came rocking in from distant ports,
their sides gray with the salt from the big combers which they had
battled with.

No wonder this America of ours is big. We draw the brave ones from the
old lands, the brave ones whose dreams are like the guiding sign that
was given to the Israelites of old--a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar
of fire by night.

The harbor master spoke to Ivan and Anna as they watched the restless
waters.

"Where are you going, children?"

"To America," answered Ivan.

"A long way. Three ships bound for America went down last month."

"Ours will not sink," said Ivan.

"Why?"

"Because I know it will not."

The harbor master looked at the strange blue eyes of the giant, and
spoke softly. "You have the eyes of a man who sees things," he said.
"There was a Norwegian sailor in the _White Queen_, who had eyes like
yours and he could see death."

"I see life!" said Ivan boldly. "A free life--"

"Hush!" said the harbor master. "Do not speak so loud." He walked
swiftly away, but he dropped a ruble into Anna's hand as he passed
her by. "For luck," he murmured. "May the little saints look after
you on the big waters."

They boarded the ship, and the Dream gave them a courage that
surprised them. There were others going aboard, and Ivan and Anna
felt that those others were also persons who possessed dreams. She
saw the dreams in their eyes. There were Slavs, Poles, Letts, Jews,
and Livonians, all bound for the land where dreams come true. They
were a little afraid--not two per cent of them had ever seen a ship
before--yet their dreams gave them courage.

The emigrant ship was dragged from her pier by a grunting tug and
went floundering down the Baltic Sea. Night came down, and the devils
who, according to the Esthonian fishermen, live in the bottom of the
Baltic, got their shoulders under the stern of the ship and tried to
stand her on her head. They whipped up white combers that sprang on
her flanks and tried to crush her, and the wind played a devil's lament
in her rigging. Anna lay sick in the stuffy women's quarters, and Ivan
could not get near her. But he sent her messages. He told her not to
mind the sea devils, to think of the Dream, the Great Dream that would
become real in the land to which they were bound. Ivan of the Bridge
grew to full stature on that first night out from Libau. The battered
old craft that carried him slouched before the waves that swept over
her decks, but he was not afraid. Down among the million and one smells
of the steerage he induced a thin-faced Livonian to play upon a mouth
organ, and Big Ivan sang Paleer's "Song of Freedom" in a voice that
drowned the creaking of the old vessel's timbers, and made the seasick
ones forget their sickness. They sat up in their berths and joined in
the chorus, their eyes shining brightly in the half gloom:

"Freedom for serf and for slave,
Freedom for all men who crave
Their right to be free
And who hate to bend knee
But to Him who this right to them gave."

It was well that these emigrants had dreams. They wanted them. The sea
devils chased the lumbering steamer. They hung to her bows and pulled
her for'ard deck under emerald-green rollers. They clung to her stern
and hoisted her nose till Big Ivan thought that he could touch the door
of heaven by standing on her blunt snout. Miserable, cold, ill, and
sleepless, the emigrants crouched in their quarters, and to them Ivan
and the thin-faced Livonian sang the "Song of Freedom."

The emigrant ship pounded through the Cattegat, swung southward through
the Skagerrack and the bleak North Sea. But the storm pursued her. The
big waves snarled and bit at her, and the captain and the chief officer
consulted with each other. They decided to run into the Thames, and the
harried steamer nosed her way in and anchored off Gravesend.

An examination was made, and the agents decided to transship the
emigrants. They were taken to London and thence by train to Liverpool,
and Ivan and Anna sat again side by side, holding hands and smiling at
each other as the third-class emigrant train from Euston raced down
through the green Midland counties to grimy Liverpool.

"You are not afraid?" Ivan would say to her each time she looked at him.

"It is a long way, but the Dream has given me much courage," she said.

"To-day I spoke to a Lett whose brother works in New York City," said
the giant. "Do you know how much money he earns each day?"

"How much?" she questioned.

"Three rubles, and he calls the policemen by their first names."

"You will earn five rubles, my Ivan," she murmured. "There is no one as
strong as you."

Once again they were herded into the bowels of a big ship that
steamed away through the fog banks of the Mersey out into the Irish Sea.
There were more dreamers now, nine hundred of them, and Anna and Ivan
were more comfortable. And these new emigrants, English, Irish, Scotch,
French, and German, knew much concerning America. Ivan was certain that
he would earn at least three rubles a day. He was very strong.

On the deck he defeated all comers in a tug of war, and the captain of
the ship came up to him and felt his muscles.

"The country that lets men like you get away from it is run badly," he
said. "Why did you leave it?"

The interpreter translated what the captain said, and through the
interpreter Ivan answered.

"I had a Dream," he said, "a Dream of freedom."

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