The best short stories of 1919, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1919, and the yearbook of the American short story
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories -- 20th century -- Bibliography; Short stories -- 20th century -- Indexes; Short stories, American
It was the next day, in the dusk of a turn in the hallway, that Martha
once more felt the presence of Jim. If her life in the peaceful
household of her friends had brought an outward calm, a mantle of repose
and quiet, this was instantly torn up by the vision that formed before
her eyes in the half dim hallway. Instantly she was the old Martha, held
in the grasp of terror. Her face was drawn in tense, white lines, her
lips were deformed, and with trembling gaunt hands she thrust back the
apparition. Her screams, "Jim, let me be, let me be," brought Mrs.
Lennon running and called Deems from his work in the wood-shed.
They found her in a faint on the floor. They carried her to her room and
put her to bed, Mrs. Lennon speaking to her, soothing and trying to
bring her back to her former calm.
There followed a few days of rain which seemed in some way to make
Martha less uneasy and restless. Deems and his wife, seeing her silent
and apparently resting, felt that slowly the terror she had been
suffering was being washed out. Martha's attitude encouraged this
feeling. She rested in silence, attentive to the dropping of the rain
and learning once more to wear her old-time composure.
When Deems returned toward nightfall one day, it was with the news that
the incessant rains had done serious damage in the cemetery. Dripping
from the drenching he had received in his tour of inspection, his boots
muddy, and his hands dirty from holding to the precarious bushes, he
shook with cold as he reported on what he had found. In his narrative he
had quite forgotten the presence of Martha who sat by, silent and
waxen-faced.
"And you ought to see," he said, turning to his wife, "how the rain has
run down those graves. You know, it's loosened Jim Sloan's stone so, I'm
afraid it'll fall against the first heavy blow."
Martha's exclamation "Oh!" recalled to him her presence. He stopped
talking for a while, then hoping to blot out the effects of his
statement he began a lively story of the number of trees that had fallen
across the road, and how he had been told that over at Rampaco the
post-office had been struck by lightning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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