The Best Short Stories of 1919 Part 24

"Who are you and what are you?" he demanded. "I command you to solve this mystery and solve it now!"

His voice had risen to a shout, but a sudden lump in his throat silenced it, for the boy was weeping again.

"Oh," wept the boy, "if you've liked me at _all_, put it off as long as you can, for you'll make me tell you I hate you, and _why_ I hate you!"

"_Hate_ me?"

It had struck Henry Montagu like a flail in the face, wiping away his anger, his astonishment at the boy's uncanny knowledge, even his astonishment that the word was able to strike him so.

"I--I've suffered enough through you!" he stammered painfully. "And if I've got to suffer more, I insist on doing it now and getting it over with!"

"Don't! don't! It will _never_ be over with!" gulped the boy.

"I'm _through_!" cried Mr. Montagu. "_Who_ are you? _What_ are you?"

At the determined finality of the voice the boy quivered like a helpless thing, and his stuttering e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns came as if shaken out of him by the s.h.i.+vering of his body.

"Wh--_who_ am I?"

"_Yes!_"

"Wh--_what_ am I?"

"_Yes!_"

Never yet had he been so awful as in the torment and majesty that gazed like fate at Henry Montagu now, and the frightful fire of the eyes seemed to dry up the tears on his cheeks at its first flare of accusing righteousness.

"_I'm the child that you and your wife refused to have!_"

As the aghast man shrank back before his blighting fury, he leaned farther and farther toward him.

"_Now_ do you know why I hate you as no human thing can hate? _Your wilful waste has made my hideous want!_ Now do you know why I said I'd done a more terrific thing than had ever been done in the world's history before? _I've gotten in!_ At last, at last, I've gotten in, in spite of you, and after she was dead! I've done a greater and more impossible thing than that great Mystery the world adores! I've gotten in despite you, and without even a _woman's_ help! When we spoke of _that_ life once before to-night, I shocked you! Do you believe _now_ that my history is more terrible, or not? He suffered, and suffered, and He died. But He'd _lived_! His torture was a few hours--for mine to-night, I've waited almost as many years as He did, and to what end?

_To nothing!_ G.o.d, G.o.d, do you see _that_?"

He twisted open his hands and held out his bruised wrists before the trembling man's eyes. "For all those years--"

He suddenly drew himself to his full height and threw them pa.s.sionately above his head in the posture that had haunted Henry Montagu from the first instant's glimpse of him.

"For all those endless years, ever since your marriage-night, I've stood beating, beating, beating at the door of life until my wrists have bled!

And you didn't hear me! You couldn't and she wouldn't! You didn't want to! You wouldn't listen! And you--you never have heard that desperate pounding and calling, not even to-night, though even so, with that woman out of the way, I made you _feel_ me! But _she'd_ heard me, the ghoul!

She heard me again and again! I made her! I told her what she was, and that you knew it, and I meant it! Her marriage certificate was her license! She gave you a wanton's love, and you gave her just what you got! And I made her understand that! I made her understand it right here in this place! That's why I wanted to come here--I could see only her picture, and I wanted to see a _real_ one of them! Until to-night, I could never see either of you, but I always knew where you were!

"And when you brought her here, I made her look at that enemy of me and my kind that I could always _feel_--those women that she was one of and that she _knew_ she was one of when I screamed it at her in this place!

For _I was with you two that night! I was with you till after you'd gone home, you demons!_ That's why she'd never come near the place again, the coward, the miserable coward! That's why I hate her worse than I hate you! There's a pitiful little excuse for the men, because they're _stupider_.

"For the hideous doom of all our hopeless millions, the women are more wickedly to blame, because they must face the fact that we are waiting to get in. G.o.d, G.o.d, I'd gladly be even a woman, if I could! But you're bad enough--bad enough--bad enough to deserve the fate you face to-night! And now, G.o.d help you, you're facing it, just as I said you would! You deserve it because you were put here with a purpose and you flatly wouldn't fulfil it! G.o.d only demands that mankind should be made in His image. In a wisdom that you have no right to question. He lets the images go their own way, as you've gone yours. Yet you, and all others like you, the simple, humble image-workers, instead of rejoicing that you have work to do, set your little selves up far greater than Great G.o.d, and actually decide whether men shall even _be_!

"You have a lot of hypercritical, self-justifying theories about it--that it's better for them not to live at all than to suffer some of the things that life, even birth itself, can wither them with. But there never yet was any living creature, no matter how smeared and smitten, that told the truth when he said he wished he'd never been born, while we, the countless millions of the lost, pound and shriek for life--forever shriek and hope! That's the worst anguish of the lost--they hope! I've shown what can be done through that anguish, as it's never been shown before. Even the terrible night that woman died, I hoped! I hoped more than ever, for knowing then that for all eternity it was too late, I hoped for _revenge_! And revenge was my right! Yes, every solitary soul has a right to _live_, even if it lives to wreck, kill, madden its parents! And now, oh, G.o.d, I've got my revenge when I no longer want it! The way you took me in, the way you wanted me to stay when I'd almost frightened you to death, made me want to spare you! It was my fate that I--I liked you--I--_more_ than liked you. And I tried to save you! Oh, G.o.d, G.o.d, _how_ I've tried!"

As he stood with his hands thrown forth again and his wretched eyes staring into those of the white-faced man, Henry Montagu met the wild gaze unflinchingly. He had sat dumbstruck and shuddering, but the spasmodic quivering of his body had lessened into calmness, and his whispered, slow words gained in steadiness as they came: "My boy, I admit you've nearly driven me to madness just now. I was close to the border! I can't dispute one shred of reproach, of accusation, of contempt. Your fearful explanation of this night, the awful import of your visit and yourself have shaken me to the center of my being. But its huge consistency is that of a madman. You poor, you pitiful, deluded boy, you tell me to believe you are an unborn soul, while you stand there and exist before my eyes!"

The boy gave a cry of agony--agony so immortal that as he sank into his chair and clutched the table, an echoing moan of it wrenched from the older man.

"I _don't_ exist! Didn't I tell you my secret was more terrible than any living heart had ever held? I'm real to you since I made you let me into your thoughts to-night. I'm real to you, and through your last moment of consciousness through eternity I always will be! But I won't be with you! You don't believe me yet, but the moment you do, I won't be here!

And I never can be real to any other creature in the universe--_not even that prost.i.tute who refused to be my mother_! I don't exist, and never can exist!"

"But you do! You do! You do! You're there before me now!" gasped Mr.

Montagu through chattering teeth. "How can you deny that you're sitting here with me in this restaurant? I forgive you--I love you, and I forgive you, but, thank G.o.d, _I see through you at last_! You're a fanatic, a poor, frenzied maniac on this subject, and you've morbidly spied on and studied me as a typical case of it; through your devilish understanding and divination you've guessed at that conversation between me and my wife, and like the creature I pictured you in my house, a ravening, devouring thing, you've sought to drag me into your h.e.l.l of madness! But you shan't! I tell you I see through you at last, you pitiful mad creature! You know you're there before my eyes, and just so truly as you are, not one syllable do I believe of what you've told me!"

As the boy sprang with a venomous shout to his feet, all the hate in his terrible being sprang tenfold into his eyes.

"Do you call me 'mad,' and 'creature'? Do you dare deny me, now, after all I've told you? You coward, you _coward_! You've denied me life, but you can't deny this night! The people in this place will let you know presently! I tried to spare you. Though I'd thirsted for my revenge I pleaded with you, _prayed_ to you to spare yourself! If you'd stayed in the house, you might have come to your senses and forgotten me! But what hope for you is there _now_? Do you still believe I exist? Look back at the night! Do you remember the portrait? You commanded me to stop--commanded, as you've always commanded my fate, and I was powerless. To me, that was a parental command--from _you_, you who deliberately _wouldn't_ be my parent! Did you see me wince under it? If you hadn't done it, you'd have found me out right then! I'm not a physical thing, and I couldn't have moved it! I only _said_ I was going to Maurice's! I couldn't have come here if you hadn't brought me! When you wondered, as we were starting out, whether I had a hat, I stooped down in the hall. But you only thought I picked one up! As we came in here, you only _thought_ I checked it! Did you see the man stare as you reached out to take my check away from me? Have I eaten or drunk to-night? I've not, for I'm not a _creature_! And mad, I? Look to yourself, as I told you to look before it was too late! You fool, you've been staring inoffensive women out of countenance, with all the hate from my face printed on yours, and in the eyes of all these people you've been sitting here for half an hour talking to yourself, and ordering wine and food for an empty chair! _You_ won't ever believe you're mad, but every one else will!"

"So help me G.o.d," cried Henry Montagu, white and trembling, "you're there! I swear you're there!"

"So help you G.o.d, I'm _there_!" cried the boy frightfully, pointing straight at him.

"Right there, in your brain, there, there, and _only_ there! I'm no more flesh and blood than--than I _ever_ was, _because, you murderer, you and your d.a.m.ned wife never would let me be_! Well, do you see through me _now_?"

"No! No!" screamed Mr. Montagu. "I _don't_ see through you! I don't!"

But as he leaned forward to clutch at him in his terror, all that he could see before him was a closed door beyond a dozen tables, a disused entranceway diagonally opposite the one that had let them in. "I _don't_ believe you!" he wailed. "Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d, my G.o.d, _where are you_?"

He turned frantically to the men and women nearest him. "You saw him!

There _was_ a boy with me, wasn't there? Wasn't there? Yes, see, there, isn't he going for that door? Oh, my boy, my boy!" And he dashed toward it. He heard the terrible screams of women, and chairs and a table crashed in his wake. He reached it. It was locked.

Desperately sobbing, he hurled himself against it.

It seemed to him as if all the men in the restaurant fell upon him.

Strong, merciless hands dragged down and pinioned the wrists with which he had beaten against the door.

"GOVERNMENT GOAT"[11]

[Note 11: Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company.

Copyright, 1920, by Susan Glaspell Cook.]

BY SUSAN GLASPELL

From _The Pictorial Review_

Joe Doane couldn't get to sleep. On one side of him a family were crying because their man was dead, and on the other side a man was celebrating because he was alive.

When he couldn't any longer stand the wails of the Cadaras, Joe moved from his bedroom to the lounge in the sitting-room. But the lounge in the sitting-room, beside making his neck go in a way no neck wants to go, brought him too close to Ignace Silva's rejoicings in not having been in one of the dories that turned over when the schooner _Lillie-Bennie_ was caught in the squall last Tuesday afternoon and unable to gather all her men back from the dories before the sea gathered them. Joe Cadara was in a boat that hadn't made it--hence the wails to the left of the Doanes, for Joe Cadara left a wife and four children and they had plenty of friends who could cry, too. But Ignace Silva--more's the pity, for at two o'clock in the morning you _like_ to wish the person who is keeping you awake was dead--got back to the vessel. So to-night his friends were there with bottles, for when a man _might_ be dead certainly the least you can do is to take notice of him by getting him drunk.

People weren't sleeping in Cape's End that night. Those who were neither mourning nor rejoicing were being kept awake by mourners or rejoicers.

All the vile, diluted whisky that could be bought on the quiet was in use for the deadening or the heightening of emotion. Joe Doane found himself wis.h.i.+ng _he_ had a drink. He'd like to stop thinking about dead fishermen--and hearing live ones. Everybody had been all strung up for two days ever since word came from Boston that the _Lillie-Bennie_ was one of the boats "caught."