The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 28

As I left the room, carrying the letters and the ashes of the flowers, the idea of taking them to the husband instead of to the wife, flashed through my mind. Then--I think it was some jealous feeling about the phantom that decided me--I quickened my steps to a run down the staircase.

"They would bring her back. He would think of her more than ever," I told myself, "so he shall never see them. He shall never see them if I can prevent it." I believe it occurred to me that Mrs. Vanderbridge would be generous enough to give them to him--she was capable of rising above her jealousy, I knew--but I determined that she shouldn't do it until I had reasoned it out with her. "If anything on earth would bring back the Other One for good, it would be his seeing these old letters,"

I repeated as I hastened down the hall.

Mrs. Vanderbridge was lying on the couch before the fire, and I noticed at once that she had been crying. The drawn look in her sweet face went to my heart, and I felt that I would do anything in the world to comfort her. Though she had a book in her hand, I could see that she had not been reading. The electric lamp on the table by her side was already lighted, leaving the rest of the room in shadow, for it was a grey day with a biting edge of snow in the air. It was all very charming in the soft light; but as soon as I entered I had a feeling of oppression that made me want to run out into the wind. If you have ever lived in a haunted house--a house pervaded by an unforgettable past--you will understand the sensation of melancholy that crept over me the minute the shadows began to fall. It was not in myself--of this I am sure, for I have naturally a cheerful temperament--it was in the s.p.a.ce that surrounded us and the air we breathed.

I explained to her about the letters, and then, kneeling on the rug in front of her, I emptied the dust of the flowers into the fire. There was, though I hate to confess it, a vindictive pleasure in watching it melt into the flames and at the moment I believe I could have burned the apparition as thankfully. The more I saw of the Other One, the more I found myself accepting Hopkins' judgment of her. Yes, her behaviour, living and dead, proved that she was not "a good sort."

My eyes were still on the flames when a sound from Mrs.

Vanderbridge--half a sigh, half a sob--made me turn quickly and look up at her.

"But this isn't his handwriting," she said in a puzzled tone. "They are love letters, and they are to her--but they are not from him." For a moment or two she was silent, and I heard the pages rustle in her hands as she turned them impatiently. "They are not from him," she repeated presently, with an exultant ring in her voice. "They are written after her marriage, but they are from another man." She was as sternly tragic as an avenging fate. "She wasn't faithful to him while she lived. She wasn't faithful to him even while he was hers--"

With a spring I had risen from my knees and was bending over her.

"Then you can save him from her. You can win him back? You have only to show him the letters, and he will believe."

"Yes, I have only to show him the letters." She was looking beyond me into the dusky shadows of the firelight, as if she saw the Other One standing there. "I have only to show him the letters," I knew now that she was not speaking to me, "and he will believe."

"Her power over him will be broken," I cried out. "He will think of her differently. Oh, don't you see? Can't you see? It is the only way to make him think of her differently. It is the only way to break for ever the thought that draws her back to him."

"Yes, I see, it is the only way," she said slowly; and the words were still on her lips when the door opened and Mr. Vanderbridge entered.

"I came for a cup of tea," he began, and added with playful tenderness, "What is the only way?"

It was the crucial moment, I realized--it was the hour of destiny for these two--and while he sank wearily into a chair, I looked imploringly at his wife and then at the letters lying scattered loosely about her.

If I had had my will I should have flung them at him with a violence which would have startled him out of his lethargy. Violence, I felt was what he needed--violence, a storm, tears, reproaches--all the things he would never get from his wife.

For a minute or two she sat there, with the letters before her, and watched him with her thoughtful and tender gaze. I knew from her face, so lovely and yet so sad, that she was looking again at invisible things--at the soul of the man she loved, not at the body. She saw him, detached and spiritualized, and she saw also the Other One--for while we waited I became slowly aware of the apparition in the firelight--of the white face and the cloudy hair and the look of animosity and bitterness in the eyes. Never before had I been so profoundly convinced of the malignant will veiled by that thin figure. It was as if the visible form were only a spiral of grey smoke covering a sinister purpose.

"The only way," said Mrs. Vanderbridge, "is to fight fairly even when one fights evil." Her voice was like a bell, and as she spoke, she rose from the couch and stood there in her glowing beauty confronting the pale ghost of the past. There was a light about her that was almost unearthly--the light of triumph. The radiance of it blinded me for an instant. It was like a flame, clearing the atmosphere of all that was evil, of all that was poisonous and deadly. She was looking directly at the phantom, and there was no hate in her voice--there was only a great pity, a great sorrow and sweetness.

"I can't fight you that way," she said, and I knew that for the first time she had swept aside subterfuge and evasion, and was speaking straight to the presence before her. "After all, you are dead and I am living, and I cannot fight you that way. I give up everything. I give him back to you. Nothing is mine that I cannot win and keep fairly.

Nothing is mine that belongs really to you."

Then, while Mr. Vanderbridge rose, with a start of fear, and came towards her, she bent quickly, and flung the letters into the fire. When he would have stooped to gather the unburned pages, her lovely flowing body curved between his hands and the flames; and so transparent, so ethereal she looked, that I saw--or imagined that I saw--the firelight s.h.i.+ne through her. "The only way, my dear, is the right way," she said softly.

The next instant--I don't know to this day how or when it began--I was aware that the apparition had drawn nearer, and that the dread and fear, the evil purpose, were no longer a part of her. I saw her clearly for a moment--saw her as I had never seen her before--young and gentle and--yes, this is the only word for it--loving. It was just as if a curse had turned into a blessing, for, while she stood there, I had a curious sensation of being enfolded in a kind of spiritual glow and comfort--only words are useless to describe the feeling because it wasn't in the least like anything else I had ever known in my life. It was light without heat, glow without light--and yet it was none of these things. The nearest I can come to it is to call it a sense of blessedness--of blessedness that made you at peace with everything you had once hated.

Not until afterwards did I realize that it was the victory of good over evil. Not until afterwards did I discover that Mrs. Vanderbridge had triumphed over the past in the only way that she could triumph. She had won, not by resisting, but by accepting, not by violence, but by gentleness, not by grasping, but by renouncing. Oh, long, long afterwards, I knew that she had robbed the phantom of power over her by robbing it of hatred. She had changed the thought of the past, in that lay her victory.

At the moment I did not understand this. I did not understand it even when I looked again for the apparition in the firelight, and saw that it had vanished. There was nothing there--nothing except the pleasant flicker of light and shadow on the old Persian rug.

HIS SMILE[11]

By SUSAN GLASPELL

(From _The Pictorial Review_)

Laura stood across the street waiting for the people to come out from the picture-show. She couldn't have said just why she was waiting, unless it was that she was waiting because she could not go away. She was not wearing her black; she had a reason for not wearing it when she came on these trips, and the simple lines of her dark-blue suit and the smart little hat Howie had always liked on her, somehow suggested young and happy things. Two soldiers came by; one of them said, "h.e.l.lo, there, kiddo," and the other, noting the anxiety with which she waited, a.s.sured her, "_You_ should worry." She looked at them, and when he saw her face the one who had said, "You should worry," said, in sheepish fas.h.i.+on, "Well, _I_ should worry," as if to get out of the apology he didn't know how to make. She was glad they had gone by. It hurt so to be near the soldiers.

The man behind her kept saying, "Pop-_corn_! _Pop_-corn right _here_."

It seemed she must buy pop-corn if she stood there. She bought some. She tried to do the thing she was expected to do--so she wouldn't be noticed.

Then the people came pus.h.i.+ng out from the theater. They did it just as they did it in the other towns. A new town was only the same town in a different place; and all of it was a world she was as out of as if it were pa.s.sing before her in a picture. All of it except that one thing that was all she had left! She had come so far to have it tonight. She _wouldn't_ be cheated. She crossed the street, and as the last people were coming out of the theater she went in.

A man, yawning, was doing something to a light. He must belong to the place. His back was to her, and she stood there trying to get brave enough to speak. It had never been easy for her to open conversations with strangers. For so many years it was Howie who had seemed to connect her with the world. And suddenly she thought of how sorry Howie would be to see her waiting around in this dismal place after every one else had gone, trying to speak to a strange man about a thing that man wouldn't at all understand. How well Howie would understand it! He would say, "Go on home, Laura." "Don't do this, sweetheart." Almost as if he had said it, she turned away. But she turned back. This was her wedding anniversary.

She went up to the man. "You didn't give all of the picture tonight, did you?" Her voice was sharp; it mustn't tremble.

He looked round at her in astonishment. He kept looking her up and down as if to make her out. Her trembling hands clutched the bag of pop-corn and some of it spilled. She let it all fall and put one hand to her mouth.

A man came down from upstairs. "Lady here says you didn't give the whole show tonight," said the first man.

The young man on the stairs paused in astonishment. He, too, looked Laura up and down. She took a step backward.

"What was left out wasn't of any importance, lady," said the man, looking at her, not unkindly, but puzzled.

"I think it was!" she contended in a high, sharp voice. They both stared at her. As she realized that this could happen, saw how slight was her hold on the one thing she had, she went on, desperately, "You haven't any right to do this! It's--it's _cheating_."

They looked then, not at her, but at each other--as the sane counsel together in the presence of what is outside their world. Oh, she knew that look! She had seen her brother and his wife doing it when first she knew about Howie.

"Now I'll tell you, lady," said the man to whom she had first spoken, in the voice that deals with what has to be dealt with carefully, "you just let me give you your money back, then you won't have the feeling that you've been cheated." He put his hand in his pocket.

"I don't want my money back!" cried Laura. "I--want to see what you left out!"

"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," proposed the young man, taking his cue from the older one. "I'll tell you just exactly what happened in the part that was left out."

"I know exactly what happened," cut in Laura. "I--I want to _see_--what happened."

It was a cry from so deep that they didn't know what to do.

"Won't you do it for me?" she begged of the young man, going up to him.

"What you left out--won't you show it for me--_now_?"

He just stood there staring at her.

"It means--! It--" But how could she tell them what it meant? She looked from one to the other, as if to see what chance there was of their doing it without knowing what it meant. When she couldn't keep sobs back, she turned away.

Even in her room at the hotel she had to try to keep from crying. She could hear the man moving around in the next room--so he, of course, could hear her, too. It was all as it was in the pictures--people crowded together, and all of it something that seemed life and really wasn't. Even _that_--the one thing, the one moment--really wasn't life.

But it was all she had! If she let herself think of how little that all was--it was an emptiness she was afraid of.

The people who had tried to comfort her used to talk of how much she had had. She would wonder sometimes why they were talking on her side instead of their own. For if you have had much--does that make it easy to get along with nothing? Why couldn't they _see_ it? That because of what Howie had been to her--and for ten years!--she just didn't know any way of going on living without Howie!