Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories Part 52

'Maybe,' he said, addressing a huge chocolate-colored bust of an Indian lady, 'maybe I can catch up to those fellows some time--but not here.

Noon, I bet,'--looking at his watch,--'and it is to eat.'

He contemplated the Mantegna baby.

'So long,' he said, 'you're running things,' and snapped his watch.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE

NOTES

THE PRELIMINARIES

Cornelia A. P. Comer, accomplished critic, essayist, and writer of short stories, was educated at Va.s.sar, and afterwards engaged in journalistic work in the Middle West and California. She now lives in Seattle.

The plot of _The Preliminaries_ might readily be told in a single paragraph. Its significance lies in its lucid and austere psychology.

The young Mr. Oliver Pickersgill appears in four distinct situations; and as we watch him in company with the four dominating and diverse personalities in turn, we are engrossed in the swift and poignant play of his feelings--feelings which finally deepen into a sincere and settled consciousness of attained truth and a confident loyalty to an imprisoned convict. The verisimilitude of both situation and conversation is complete; and in the process there is no exhaustion of emotional values. Henry James would not have treated the situations with more clarity.

The author's further treatment of the problems connected with marriage is seen in two other noteworthy Atlantic stories--_The Kinzer Portraits and The Long Inheritance._

b.u.t.tERCUP-NIGHT

JOHN GALSWORTHY, an English 'novelist of much distinction, and a playwright who has proved that the possession of ideas is not incompatible with popular success. Endowed with an exquisite sense of pity, he has put that sentiment to many chivalrous uses, and since the war he has written in the public service on behalf of various patriotic and humanitarian objects.' Thus Mr. Galsworthy was described in the _London Gazette_ as a recipient of the honor of knighthood in the list of New Year (1918) Honors, his declination not having been received in time to forestall the publication.

_b.u.t.tercup-Night_ is hardly a story at all. In company with Mr.

Galsworthy we live out the quiet but impressive experience of a single evening, night, and morning, all the while breathing the atmosphere of a rare June beauty that completely wins us to its aesthetic favor and repose. The incident of the sick horse, so gently cared for by the faithful keeper, secures our sympathy but does not draw us away from the more insistent wooing of the charms of the b.u.t.tercup-night and the morning radiance of a suddenly awakened glow of blooming yellow. The commonplace writer would use the scene for romantic effect; Galsworthy enhances the beauty of the setting by a homely but sincere realism. The significant merits of the style are its purity, its restraint, and its complete adaptability to the hoveringly quiescent mood.

HEPATICAS

Anne Douglas Sedgwick (Madame Basil de Selincourt) is of American birth, but has lived in England since her childhood. For many years she has found an admiring audience as a writer of novels and short stories. In 1908 she was married to M. de Selincourt.

The t.i.tle of the story hints at a reliance upon mere setting. And the hepatica bed, with all that its a.s.sociations signify, certainly makes its generous atmospheric contribution to the charm of the narrative. But as domestic entanglements begin to ensue, our interest in the flowers is soon s.h.i.+fted to plot and theme. Our sustained sympathy rests with the mother--the mother who has created in her home an atmosphere of the truest and most sensibly refined culture. The promising son, sharing this atmosphere and even enriching it, yields while at Aldershot before the war to the superficial charm of a chorus girl, and marries her. Her loud and garish presence in the home of quiet beauty and repose provides an interesting but tragic study in contrast, and makes us continually more anxious as we watch its influence upon the mother, yearning pityingly for her absent son, yet plaintively relieved when news comes that he has been killed in the war. Death has released him from the grim necessity of living his mismated life and caring for the child born of parents of such divergent types. The supreme merit of the mother's character lies in her willing acceptance of the burdening problem. The strength of the story, as we view it in its entirety, rests in a skillful merging of effects which allows final emphasis upon character portrayal and thematic situation.

POSSESSING PRUDENCE

Amy Wentworth Stone is a resident of Boston, who combines a pleasant sense of the ludicrous with a rare understanding of the spirit of childhood.

This miniature sketch of Amy Wentworth Stone's is admirably handled, and sparkles with the best and kindliest humor--a humor that is in no sense spoiled by the sins that rest so lightly upon the imaginative soul of little Prudence Jane. Her sins hark quickly back to the childhood periods of each reader who sympathetically remembers the world of fancy which conflicted so loudly with dull realism. The charm of this humorous tracery will invite a rereading of Miss Stone's similar triumph in _Capital Punishments_, published in the _Atlantic_ for November, 1913.

THE GLORY-BOX

Elizabeth Ashe is the pen name of Georgiana Pentlarge, a young and promising story-writer living in Boston.

_The Glory-Box_ is an unforgettable story. Its accuracy in the matter of minor household details and commonplace neighborliness creates an atmosphere of intimate realism which readily wins our sympathetic credence in situation and event. We grow easily familiar with the three or four characters who are introduced, and then we discover our interest centering in two of these--Eunice, the sweetheart, and Stephen, the lover--as, in their separated lives, each in fancy penetrates the daily routine and comes fondly to rest in thoughts and plans of marriage. The story interest is enhanced by the contrast of their daily routine.

Eunice's time is spent in teaching, relieved by friendly village companions.h.i.+p; Stephen's in the arduous work of the Columbia Law School, relieved by glimpses of fas.h.i.+onable life in Was.h.i.+ngton Square. All this routine and hope and relaxation end in the tragedy that the earlier realism of the story grimly accentuates and intensifies. The art of the story lies in the author's quiet control of situations which might so easily, in the hands of a lesser craftsman, run a riotous course in the field of pseudo-sentiment.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HERD

Dallas Lore Sharp, well known as a keen observer both of nature and of human nature, is Professor of English at Boston University.

I have asked permission to extract this episode from a longer article.

Professor Sharp was as generous in this as he has been helpful in other matters relating to selections which make up this volume of narratives.

The paragraphs which precede the present beginning are expository in nature, and while they bear interestingly upon the incident, they are not a necessary part of the narrative. The selection breathes the very atmosphere of highly hazardous adventure; and even though the writer quickly generates in us a feeling of confidence in the superior powers of Ranchman Wade and Peroxide Jim, we nevertheless restlessly live through the moments of the wild stampede as it makes its mad and frightened way along the perilous edge of the rim-rock.

IN THE PASHA'S GARDEN

H. G. Dwight is the son of an American missionary to the Near East, and lived for many years in Constantinople. Being compelled to leave Turkey after her entrance into the war, he returned to the United States and is now in the government service.

Mr. Dwight in this Stamboul romance has invested his scenes with the languorous and mystical spirit of the orientalism in which his characters so naturally move. We are here far away from the O. Henry type of story, with its startling cleverness, crisp humor, and ingenious surprise. We share instead the leisure and luxury of this eastern way of living--felt all the more strongly because of the presence of the French wife whose independent customs and bearing offend the servants of the easy-going Pasha. The interest, however, is not confined to the atmosphere. We are soon breathing the mystery of the kiosque--a mystery which the author never fully solves, but leaves silently merged in the intangible charm of the pervading orientalism.

LITTLE SELVES

Mary Lerner, a story-writer of Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, first won attention by the publication of 'Little Selves' in the _Atlantic Monthly_.

I have included this selection because it reveals so delicately and so immediately that quality which we may somewhat paradoxically call _romantic realism_. The scenes which Miss Lerner's old Irish woman so intimately recalls are all peopled by the real creatures of a remembered past, princ.i.p.ally her little selves as they lived through their childish joys and sorrows and swiftly sequent perplexities. But each of these experiences, so intimately and realistically portrayed, is seen through memories tinged with the charm of a happy Celtic romance.

THE FAILURE

Charles Caldwell Dobie is a young writer living in San Francisco.

Mr. Dobie has in this story shown himself more than a mere realist. The realistic details of John Scidmore's home, the early-morning routine of the insurance office, the evening splendor of Julia Norris's hotel apartments,--all are graphically re-created. But the central idea is an ethical one--John Scidmore's wavering action in the midst of a business situation where a frank admission of gross neglect was morally imperative. His immediate failure to meet the situation is grimly contrasted with his wife's expressed faith in his honesty. The story presents a graphic instance of a righteous act silently directed by a strongly influencing personality. It closes with this particular problem solved; but we end the reading with many interesting and conflicting surmises concerning the future domestic life in the Scidmore home.

BUSINESS IS BUSINESS

Henry Seidel Canby, essayist and critic and occasional writer of stories, is a Professor of English at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. His books include several volumes on the short story.

The commercial theme has been freely exploited by the popular magazine writers. When it is written merely for the sake of getting in line with a popular trend, it is likely to be empty and bl.u.s.terous. In Mr. Canby's story we are, of course, interested in the business atmosphere; but we are more deeply interested in the portrayal of character. Cargan is most fully drawn, and we watch him with increasing keenness as we see him dominated by the various moods which the other personalities and the s.h.i.+fting incidents and the changing environment engender. The skill shown in the rapid but graphic sketching of Mrs. Cargan and Mrs. Waldron is equally engaging. The story is perfect in its mastery of narrative technique.

NOTHING

Zephine Humphrey (Mrs. Fahnestock), long a contributor of essays and stories to the _Atlantic_, is the author of a novel ent.i.tled _Grail-Fire_.

In this and other contributions to the _Atlantic_ Miss Humphrey has shown an acute sensitiveness to atmosphere and personality. We are here charmingly led into an intimate understanding of the surroundings and character of the little blind woman who lives her lonely life in the simple cottage where, in preparation for the imminent affliction, she had long ago learned to do her work in the silent dark. The story has almost no plot interest, for we trace no significant movement of events--except the few which are fragmentarily imparted in confidential retrospect. The quietness of the style is in thorough keeping with the secured tone--one of those happy revelations so difficult to accomplish, yet when once accomplished suggesting, by its inevitable touch, the easy process of masters.h.i.+p.