The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1920, 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
My eyes had her there, a figure faintly rose-colored against the
deepening background of the sea. She stood erect and curiously still
beside a grave, her hands clenched, her eyes narrowed. In Urkey they
always put up a stone for a man lost at sea; very often they went
further for the comfort of their souls and mounded the outward likeness
of an inward grave. Well, that was Andrew's stone and Andrew's grave.
Some one in the Memorial Day procession last week had laid a wreath of
lilacs under the stone. And now, wandering alone, Mary Matheson had come
upon it.
I saw her bend and with a fierce gesture catch up the symbol of death
and fling it behind her on the grass. Afterward, as she stood there with
her breast heaving and her lips moving as if with pain, I knew I should
not be where I was, watching; I knew that no casual ears of mine should
hear the cry that came out of her heart:
"No, No, No! They're still trying to kill him--still trying to kill
him--all of them! But they sha'n't! They sha'n't!"
I tell you it shook me and it shamed me. I thought I ought to cough or
scuff my feet or something, but it seemed too late for that. Moreover
the play had taken another turn that made me forget the moralities,
quite, and another actor had come quietly upon the scene.
I can't say whether Joshua, seeing Mary on her way to the Dome, had
followed her, or whether he had been strolling that way on his own
account. He was there, at all events, watching her from beyond the
grave, his head slightly inclined, his hands clasped behind him, and his
feet apart on the turf. The color of dusk lent a greenish cast to his
bloodless face, and the night wind, coming up free over the naked curve
of the Dome and flapping the long black tails of his coat, seemed but
to accentuate the dead weight of his attitude.
When a minute had gone by I heard his dry voice.
"So, Mary, you're at it again?"
"But they sha-n-t!" She seemed to take flame. "It's not right to Andrew
nor me. They do it just to mock me, and I know it, and oh! I don't care,
but they sha'n't, they sha'n't!"
"Mary," said Joshua, all the smoldering anger of the years coming in his
voice, "Mary, I think it's time you stopped being a fool. We've all had
enough of it, Mary. Andrew is dead."
She turned on him with a swift, ironical challenge.
"You say it _now_? You _know_ now? Perhaps you've just made sure;
perhaps you've seen his body washed up on one of the beaches--just
to-day? Or then why so tardy, Joshua? If you _knew_, why couldn't you
say it in so many words ten years ago--five years ago? _Why_?"
"Because----"
"Yes, because? Because?" There was something incredibly ruthless,
tiger-like, about this shadow-dwelling woman. "Say it now, Joshua; that
you know of a certainty Andrew went down. I dare you again!"
Joshua said it.
"I know of a certainty Andrew went down that night."
"_How_ do you know? Did you _see him go down_? Tell me that!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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