The Best Short Stories of 1920, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ could always have apples for the asking. The Stillman boys did not go to school. They had a tutor. Their father whipped them soundly when they disobeyed him by going to play in the streets of the town with the other children.

      Dave Fellows had finally persuaded Dick Shelton to take a Cure. Dick Shelton sober, it was discovered, was a man of culture and knew, into the bargain, all the points of the law. So he was made Justice of the Peace. His wife stopped taking in washing and spent her days trying to keep the children out of the front room where Dick tried his cases.

      Dave Fellows himself gave up the principalship of the school, finding its meagre return insufficient to meet the needs of an increasing family. Yielding to the persuasion of Henderson, he became contractor for taking out timber at Trout Creek Mill. He counted on his two oldest sons to do men's work during the summer when school was not in session. Fellows moved his family into the very house in which Henderson had lived. Henderson explained that he had to live in town to be near a doctor for his ailing wife and sickly girls. The millmen told Dave Fellows that Henderson was afraid of them because they had threatened him if he kept on overcharging them at the Company store.

      Abe Cohen did a thriving business in clothing. He had a long list of customers heavily in debt to him through the promise that they could pay whenever they got ready. He dunned them openly on the street so that they made a wide detour in order to avoid going past his store.

      Dr. Barton had established a reputation for kindness of heart as well as skill in practice that threatened his rival's good will. Helen Barton, the doctor's young daughter, perversely kept company with her father's rival. Every one felt sorry for the father but secretly admired Dr. Smelter's diabolic tactics.

      Long-forgotten was the enemy when it came the second time. On a dark night when Five Points lay heavy in its slumbers, it bore down upon the north side of the town. Some sensitive sleeper, troubled in his dreams, awoke to see the dreadful red tongues cutting across the darkness like crimson banners. His cries aroused the town. All the fathers rushed out against the enemy. The mothers dressed their children and packed best things in valises ready to flee when there was no longer any hope.

      For three days and three nights the enemy raged, leaping in to eat up one house, two houses, beaten back and back, creeping up in another place, beaten back again. The school boys took beaters and screamed at the enemy as they beat.

      The older ones remembered the first coming of the enemy. They said, "It was a warning!" They prayed while fear shook their aching arms. The Life of the town writhed and gleams of colour came out of its writhings and a whiteness as if the red tongues were cleansing away impurities.

      The mill managers brought their men to fight the enemy. "We mustn't let it go," they said. Mr. Stillman had his two sons helping him. He talked to them while they fought the enemy together. He spoke of punishment for sin. His sons listened while the lust of fighting held their bodies.

      Helen Barton knelt at her father's feet where he was fighting the enemy and swore she would never see Dr. Smelter again. She knew he was a bad man and could never bring her happiness.

      Lyda, eldest daughter in the Shelton family, gathered her little sisters about her, quieting their clamours while her mother wrung her hands and said over and over again, "To happen when your papa was getting on so nicely!" Lyda resolved that she would put all thoughts of marrying out of her head. She would have to stop keepin company with Ned Backus, the hardware man's son. It was not fair to keep company with a man you did not intend to marry. She would stay for ever with her mother and help care for the children so that her father would have a peaceful home life and not be tempted.

      All about, wherever they were, people prayed. They prayed until there was nothing left in their hearts but prayer as there was nothing left in their bodies but a great tiredness.

      Then a heavy rain came and the red tongues drank greedily until they were slaked and became little short red flickers of light on a soaked black ground. The enemy was conquered. One street of the town was gone.

      People ran to the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack. Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words. "Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before the hymns in their church song-books. The strands of Life leapt and contorted themselves but they could not pull themselves apart.

      The revival ended. Building began. In a few months a street of houses sprang up defiant in yellow newness. In and out of a pattern little changed from its old accustomed aspect Life pulsated in great waves over the heavy strands. In and out, up and down, it rushed, drawing threads tightly together, knotting them in fantastic knots that only the judgment day could undo.

      Mr. Stillman's sons were now young men. The younger was dying of heart trouble in a hospital in the city. The father had locked the elder in his room for two weeks on bread and water until he found out exactly what had happened between his son and the Barringers' hired girl. Guy Stillman, full-blooded, dark, and handsome, with high cheek bones like an Indian, declared vehemently that he would never marry the girl.

      Dave Fellows had taken his sons out of school to help him the year round in the woods. Sixteen-year-old Lawrence had left home and gone to work in the town barber shop late afternoons and evenings in order to keep on at his work in the high school grades just established. He vowed he would never return home to be made into a lumber-jack. Dave's wife was trying to persuade him to leave Five Points and go to the city where her family lived. There the children could continue their schooling and Dave could get work more suited to his ability than lumbering seemed to be. Dave, too proud to admit that he had not the capacity for carrying on this work successfully, refused to entertain any thought of leaving the place. "If my family would stick by me, everything would come out all right," he always said.

      Lyda Shelton still kept company with Ned Backus. When he begged her to marry him, she put him off another year until the children were a little better able to care for themselves. Her next youngest sister had married a dentist from another town and had not asked her mother to the wedding. Lyda was trying to make it up to her mother in double devotion.

      Helen Barton met Dr. Smelter once too often and her father made her marry him. She had a child born dead. Now she was holding clandestine meetings with Mr. Daly, a traveling salesman, home on one of his quarterly visits to his family. He had promised to take Helen away with him on his next trip and make a home for her in the city.

      It was a sweltering hot Saturday in the first part of June. Every now and then the wind blew in from the east picking up the dust in eddies. Abe Cohen's store was closed. His children wandered up and down the street, celebrating their sabbath in best clothes and chastened behaviour. Jim Dunn was watching a large consignment of goods for the Company store being unloaded. He was telling Earl Henderson, the manager's nephew, how much it would cost him to get in with the poker crowd.

      George Brainerd had finished fixing up the Company's accounts. He whistled as he worked. Dave Fellows was in debt three hundred dollars to the Company. That would keep him another year. He was a good workman but a poor manager. Sam Kent was in debt one hundred dollars. He would have to stay, too. John Simpson had come out even. He could go if he wanted to. He was a trouble-maker anyway. …

      Helen Barton sat talking with Daly in the thick woods up back of the Presbyterian church. They were planning how to get away undetected on the evening train. … "If she was good enough for you then, she's good enough now," Mr. Stillman was saying to his defiant son. "You're not fit for a better woman. You'll take care of her and that's the end of it. … "

      Widow Stokes' half-witted son rode up from СКАЧАТЬ