Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series — In November

BY EDITH WYATT

THEY had pitched camp in the shelter of a great buff-colored dune, with two up-turned canoes, and a small tent with a flap staked over it.

Lake Michigan, all green and mist-blown, banded the whole north horizon, to break along the curving beach in little hoary crowns of foam and bubbles.

Southwest, southeast, and south, the broad, full contours of the dunes purled far away, beneath the gray and purple sky of the late autumn.

They were grown with red-oak and yellow poplar-brush toward the west.

Toward the southeast and south their long pure curves, low-swooping like a swallow’s flight, ran nude and pale, in shadows exquisitely changing in the rising afternoon.

Beside a smoky fire, between the tent and the lake, a sunburned young woman with roughly blown hair, in corduroy skirt and a boy’s overcoat, dark and shabby, now hid her eyes from the smoke, in the crook of her arm, and now rubbed vaseline on a stiff shoe in her lap.

These occupations so closely engaged her attention that she did not at first observe, across the beach, the approach of a little sandy woman between fifty and sixty, in a short walking-skirt and a felt walking-hat tied down with a veil.

Her shoes looked damp.

She glanced rather shyly, but with a sort of liking and friendliness, at the tent and the fire.

'Come and dry your shoes,' said the girl hospitably, lifting her eyes.

She was a rather pretty blonde girl, with a good-humored, quiet expression.

'Are you folks camping out here?'

said the visitor, still looking with an air of satisfaction and pleasure at the camp.

'You’re from Chicago, relatives to Mrs. Horick in South Laketown, ain’t you?

So I heard.

I’ve sewed some for her.

Oh, I just wisht I was you.

Few cares enough for camping to do it this time of year.

Your folks come here to fish?'

'No,' said the girl quietly.

'One of my cousins was taken sick this fall, and told to live outdoors.

So he decided to come out here and camp with his wife and little boy and me.

For a while.'

'You have a nice place for it.'

'My cousins have gone to the station on some errands,' said the girl reflectively, polishing her shoe.

She could not very well say to her relative’s dressmaker, that the camp had feared the visit of Mrs. Horick on that very afternoon.

Mrs. Horick was a pretty, competent, hard-edged young woman, who enjoyed such things in life as tight face-veils, high traps, and docked horses.

The adult campers had drawn lots to select her victim for the afternoon.

The lot had fallen to Jim Paine.

But Jim took so unbridled a pleasure in displeasing Mrs. Horick that it was decided such a fate would be too cruel to her.

The lots were drawn again.

This time the lot fell to Alice Paine.

But Mrs. Horick depressed Alice, sometimes for several hours after her departure.

The lots were drawn again.

This time the lot fell to Elsie Norris.

With whoops, it was determined Elsie must remain.

She would not care a fig what Mrs. Horick said or thought, would be entirely amiable with her, and, besides, had no shoes to walk to the station in.

One pair was wet.

The other was too stiff to put on.

After dressing Elsie in the most handsome garments the camp afforded, the others had left her, early in the afternoon, with Shep, Rabbie’s collie, wandering around within call, and occasionally barking at imaginary wolves in the brush.

'Perhaps you met my cousins on your way,' said Elsie.

'No. I didn’t come from that direction.

I came from Gary.

It ain’t much of a place to live.

But I got a real good airy room, with a back-porch of my own, in a carpenter’s family there.

Miss Brackett’s my name.

I’m about the only dressmaker in the place, so’s I get plenty of custom, more 'n all that I can do; and well-paid, too, you can say in a way,' she added with a sigh; 'and in a way, not; because I hate sewing.

But then I walk a good deal around here.

There’s some fine walks through the oaks and in the dunes; just as fine as any one could wish,' she said with a look of content.

'It makes me just about homesick to see your camp.

I was camping myself six years ago.'

'Were you?

Here?'

'No,' said Miss Brackett, with a little hesitation.

In response to Elsie’s invitation, she had seated herself on a log, near the fire.

There was evidently something very stirring in their little camp to her.

For a moment she even looked as if she were going to cry.

'It was on the plains,' she said finally, with a certain pride.

'A long wagon-trip, a whole year long.'

'How fine!'

'Yes,' said Miss Brackett, looking at the dunes and the surging lake.

'It was, as you might say, a great experience.

You hardly would believe me, but before that time, why, I hardly knew there was such a place as outdoors; not till I was forty-six years old; and that’s a fact.'

Elsie glanced up at her inquiringly.

She had heard of persons who acquired Spanish at ninety, or who experienced a passionate personal infatuation for the first time at sixty, but never of an adult creature, devoted to an indoor existence, who suddenly felt in middle age a real response to the great inarticulate voices of the earth.

'Up to then, I lived on the West Side, in Chicago, with my married sister.

My father left the place to her and to me.

Most of the rest of the property went to my young half-brother Kip.

But when Nettie’s children were nearly grown, it seemed as though there wasn’t any room left in the house for me; and yet they needed me, you see, to sew for them, right straight along.

I used to sew, sew, sew till midnight and past, often, tucking on the girls' summer dresses, especially that last spring when I was at home; and I began to cough then and get so dreadful tired.

That winter Nettie thought each of the girls ought to have their own room.

It was no more than right, either.

Nettie and me, we each had our own room when we was young girls.

So I used to sleep just on two chairs with quilts in the back parlor, and couldn’t seem to rest very good, and, besides, had to get up and get dressed and the room fixed, real early, so Will could come there and read his morning paper.

Well, I used to keep all my things in shoe-boxes, up in the attic, so they’d be out of the way.

They used to laugh, and laugh, about those boxes; and one night we was all sitting on the steps, and they were laughing, and my youngest niece, Baby, she got real mad.

She 's so warm-hearted and she never wanted to take my room, and only did because it provoked Nettie so, for her not to.

Babe turned real white, and she said all of a sudden, "The reason why Aunt Min hasn’t anything but shoe-boxes to keep her things in is just because we’ve turned her out of everything," she said.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

And she jumped up and ran into the house.

'That night my brother Kip happened to be there.

He’d been West ever since he was fifteen.

He’s a lot younger than Nettie and me--only twenty-five, then.

We thought Kip was an awful wild, queer sort of fellow, then; we didn’t know him at all.

I felt just like the rest.

He’d run through all that was left him long ago; and he’d married an actress and was separated from her.

He was a sort of a Socialist too, and even had tramped some.

But he seemed to be real kind in some ways.

When Babe said that, he looked at me quite hard.

When he went home he says to me, "You look sick, Min," he says, and he took hold of my hand.

"You’ve got fever.

Why don’t you see a doctor?"

'Well, I don’t know what got into me.

After they was all gone that night, I just broke down, and cried and cried.

I did feel dreadful sick and feverish, and I hadn’t no money of my own to see a doctor, and felt just all gone really.

I managed to get up and fix the room before any of them come down.

But then I had to lie on the sofa, and couldn’t get to breakfast.

And after breakfast--would you believe it?

--a doctor come.

Kip sent him, himself.

But he frightened Nettie to death.

I felt dreadfully sorry for her.'

'He told your sister how ill you were,' said Elsie gravely.

'Oh, yes.

But it wasn’t so much that, as she was so afraid some of the children might catch my trouble.

She was all right though as soon as they got me to the hospital, though she was provoked too, because it took so much of her time to come there to see me.

She come twice before I went away.

The doctor said that going away was my only chance.

For all that I was up and around, he thought I couldn’t live a year.'

Neither of them spoke for a moment, looking away at the dunes.

'Then--what do you think--Kip had an intimate friend, quite a rich young man, Will Bronson, who was sick the same way I was.

That’s how Kip come to notice my sickness so.

The doctors wanted him kept out of doors, and he and Kip was going on this wagon-trip.

But his mother was nearly crazy worrying over it, and worrying the young man and crying all day and night.

She thought Kip never could take care of him.

Well, those boys wanted me to go off with them on the wagon-trip.

They said I could cook for them, and it would relieve the mother.

And it did.

They took me to see her.

And she thought if a person like me could go on a wagon-trip it couldn’t be so awful after all.

Well, the short and the long of it was, we went to Fort Leavenworth, and the boys got a wagon and provisions and blankets and thick shoes and things for me, and they got two good mules from the government post, and we started off.'

Miss Brackett sat erect.

A look of elation burned in her violet eyes.

Elsie drew a deep breath and laughed.

'Yes.

I didn’t like the idea at first: all the rough clothes, and our being alone on the plains, and after a while going to be right in the desert--it seemed to me terrible.

But it was the only thing there was for me to do.

I just kep' my mouth shut tight through all that time.

And then, I don’t know, more and more, oh, I just come to love it!'

After a moment Elsie said, 'And did you really have any hardships?'

'What do you call hardship?

The rainy reason was bad.

But I’ve been lots wetter longer at a time, through whole winters, when I’d lend my rubbers to the children.

Sometimes it was terrible cold.

But then we always had a good fire.

I’ve been lots colder in the back parlor and on crowded street-car platforms, and lots and lots more uncomfortable.

Once we got off the trail.

Once we had a bad time about finding water.

One night, after the mules was hobbled they jumped along so far, even hobbled, that we couldn’t get them for hours.

Kip and Will Bronson was gone six hours in different directions; and I was afraid they was lost.

But I’ve had more hardship, you might say, and not that I want to complain either, in one week on the West Side at home, than in a whole year of what they called roughing it.

And for hard feelings, and real mean bad ways of acting, I’ve seen more of them over getting out one shirt-waist in a dressmaker’s shop, than in that whole time on the wagon-trip.

Even though once we had a man in our camp that we heard afterwards was a criminal and fugitive from justice,' she added with a laugh.

'What sort of a man was he?'

'A very considerate, pleasant sort of man.

He was a short, thick-set fellow from Missouri, with a hard sort of chin.

He come riding up near the Baton Pass, and asked to stay the night and get supper and breakfast with us.

Well, it so happened I had caught cold and wasn’t feeling extra.

The boys was worried and sort of mad,--that was the worst trouble we had,--because I would mend and cook just the same.

The boys cooked terrible, and it seemed as though I couldn’t have no peace of mind, unless I did it.

It made me feel so as though I was no use to them and not paying my share by what I did, you know.

Well, this man from Missouri was a fine cook.

He stayed with us three days, and by the time he went I was all right again.

He was real helpful.

They never got him.

When we come to Trinidad, we was good and surprised to find he was a cattle thief that shot a sheriff that tried to arrest him.'

The lake was paler now.

White clouds plumed on the horizon, and an evening glow, green and faintly flushing, was reflected delicately from the west.

The dunes were browner and darker.

The visitor sat thinking, evidently, of her long, free wandering days.

Elsie, putting on her shoes, sat thinking of her wayfaring companion’s mean and hateful life in the very midst of what is called civilization and respectability; of her struggle for existence--a struggle in which she had been all but killed by the greedinesses around her; a struggle just as sharp as any of the nail-and-claw-depredations commonly attributed exclusively to wilder-nesses.

They watched the sky change, in an unspoken friendliness.

'And now, you are much better?'

said Elsie quietly.

'Yes.

Now I’m well, thank God!

And the Bronson boy as sound as a bell.

That was the most lucky illness you can imagine for me.

I couldn’t go back after that to the way I lived before.

I always would live different--more outdoors, and just looking after myself better.

Since that time, I’ve been lots more use to myself and everybody else.

After we got to California, I sewed here and there for the people where we boarded first, and they liked my sewing so much, and I made so much money, that when Kip got a job to Gary, engineering for the electric plant, and I come too, to keep house for him, I put up a sign and gradually I’d worked up a good trade, before he was married.

Why I’m going to be able to send Babe to Vassar, and plenty for me to take a trip west, too, next summer.

Kip married such a nice girl.'

She rose.

'I’ve talked you to death.

But when you spoke about your cousin, it brought everything right out of my lips some way.

I hope he’s not so very sick.'

'No. He will be well again.

He has a splendid constitution.'

Miss Brackett shook hands with her.

'I wish you would come in for a minute and see me, if you ever have time some day when you’re in Gary.'

'I will.'

'Good-night.'

'Good-night.'

As her visitor disappeared over the rounded ridge of the dune, Elsie heard the home-coming voices of the campers.

They had brought peanut-taffy to her, and they praised her none the less highly for her intended sacrifice to the Moloch of Mrs. Horick and the dullness of the world that she had not needed to make this sacrifice.

For some reason, she could not have explained to them about her chance guest.

But she was still thinking of her, as she walked from the shore a little later to gather firewood for supper.

The sun dropped long-ribbed level beams over the russet oak-brush and buff shadows of the dunes.

Crimson rifts broke in the amber ether of the west.

Rich, rich, soft, and deep, the fragrance of some far autumnal bonfire breathed in the cool air.

'Where are the songs of spring?

oh, where are they?

Mourn not for them, thou hast thy music, too,' rang silently in the girl’s fancy as she stood looking around her.

And she wondered that she never till that day had realized how deeply wild creation is the birthright of every creature, not only for the power of tooth and fang, the strength of the marauder, but for the vitality of speed and sensitiveness, ground-squirrel, deer, and cricket; and how Nature’s most profound magnificence might sing, perhaps, not in her thrilling melody to April pulses, but in her proud cadence to November hearts.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE NOTES

THE LIE

MARY ANTIN, ever since _The Promised Land_ first appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_, has come to mark the highest standard of literary excellence and political idealism possible for the best and most gifted of our foreigners to attain.

Born in Russia, educated in Boston and New York, her influence has been widely exerted by her books and by her public addresses.

One of the chief points of interest in Mary Antin’s story lies in the conflict of ideas about truth.

David had learned that in America a good patriotic citizen should learn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The demand for this strictness, he came to learn, was more particularly severe when assertions were recorded in writing on public documents.

The little boy understood equally well that the training which his father had received in Russia made it seem right in certain cases to swear falsely and deceive the government.

David therefore saw the tragical significance of his father’s false record on the American public school document.

In David’s conception Mr. Rudinsky had done no wrong in telling the lie; yet that lie nevertheless stood out as a bold contrast to George Washington’s idea of truth.

How could the little boy be loyal to both ideas, when the ideas were diametrically opposed to each other?

_Suggested Points for Study and Comment_ 1. What are some of the differences suggested between life for the Jewish person in Russia and in America?

2. How does the author indicate her own feelings in regard to the problems that confront David and his father?

3. What does citizenship mean to Mr. Rudinsky?

What are some of the more concrete forms by which he makes his ideas of freedom evident?

Does his conception of Americanism coincide with that of the average American?

4. Has the literalness of David’s interpretation of "America" any real connection with the time of the story?

Was it necessary to give so much general detail before the question of David’s age came up?

5. Why is Bennie introduced into the story?

Do you find any other characters contributing to the humor or acting as foils?

6. How does the author reveal Miss Ralston’s competence to reconcile the two ideals of truth?

STUDENT’S COMMENT ON 'THE LIE'

To me the chief interest in _The Lie_ centres in the portrayal of character.

Naturally I was most interested in David, and I found myself contrasting David’s habitually serious devotion to his studies with my own rather fitful habits of attack.

The contrast was not comforting.

Little Bennie I liked, too.

Indeed, I think that for everyday living, I should find him the more agreeable companion of the two.

He bubbles over so easily and charms us with his frankness and unconscious humor.

Mr. Rudinsky’s ambition for David is splendid--so splendid that we can pretty readily excuse the lie he told about David’s age.

I was not so much interested in Mrs. Rudinsky, but I nevertheless felt that if I were grading her on her proficiency in motherhood, I’d have to give her an A-,--or at least a B+.

And Miss Ralston was wonderful.

Wouldn’t it be splendid if every teacher could have such a sympathetic understanding of children’s hearts!

The second item that interested me was the patriotic note.

In these war days everything even remotely connected with the patriotic ideal stirs us.

I was proud that I could think of America as the land where my fathers had freely died in order that I might live in freedom.

And I rather guiltily questioned whether I have been showing by my own service any real appreciation of the sacrifice which these fathers had made.

And I felt a bit ashamed when I thought that David’s admiration for George Washington somehow seemed loftier and more deeply personal than my own had been.

Another characteristic struck me: Miss Antin portrayed her separate scenes with such graphic power.

I am sure that I shall always remember the whimsical figure of David in the George Washington coat that was so much too big for the tiny figure.

But I was almost afraid to laugh for fear of hurting David’s feelings, for David somehow seemed so very near.

This touch of reality is equally strong in the passage which describes Mrs. Rudinsky and her hasty toilet, and her hands on which the scrubbing brush and paring knife had left their unmistakable marks.

I, of course, find that I was interested in the plot.

Indeed, I read stories principally for the fun of seeing how the events shape themselves at the close.

It doesn’t matter here that we are not told exactly what happened in that conversation between Miss Ralston and David.

We know that the trouble was all smoothed out.

Personally, I feel quite sure that David finally took part in that school entertainment.

BLUE REEFERS

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

A reefer properly belongs in the category useful.

Even in its second or third season of usefulness, it retains certain warm and comforting qualities.

How its sphere of endeavor may be extended to include a divine mission of poetic justice, Miss Ashe unfolds in a delightfully humorous experience of two little girls--one very pretty and habitually urbane, the other very homely and rather crude.

With reefers smothering all glories of Persian lawn and fine silk slips, we have two little girls arrived at the height of ecstatic self-forgetfulness in the excitement of giving a recitation for the Christmas entertainment.

Complete satisfaction, too, is the reader’s. What a delightful chuckle he gives over Aunt Emma’s chagrin at discovering that, in the matter of little girls, golden hair and pink cheeks, or freckles and a 'jaw,' make very little difference!

Yet his chuckle, after all, is only an echo from an adult world, a world suggested to Martha by the vague whisperings of Father and Mother after she has gone to bed.

Far more real is the world Miss Ashe has created, where Miss Miriam’s black dress and gold cross present a charming but insoluble mystery; where one is forced, however regretfully, to reconcile cotton-batting with a Sunday-School Christmas tree, and where 'it is so nice to be in things.'

_Suggested Points for Study and Comment_ 1. Comment on the author’s use of detail.

Does it create a real atmosphere?

2. Is the author successful in her interpretation of the mind of the small girl?

Is the author’s own personality ever intruded?

How is she able to secure the larger view of the events that take place?

3. Is the climax made more or less effective by the children’s unconsciousness of their act?

Would you have preferred a more startling dénouement?

4. Why is Luella sketched so lightly?

Is the contrast only between the two little girls?

5. How does Miss Miriam contribute to the interest in the story?

6. Comment on the skillful ending of the story.

THE DEBT

KATHLEEN CARMAN (Mrs. L. N.

Dodge), a writer of interesting short stories, lives in Evanston, Illinois.

_The Debt_ is her first contribution to _The Atlantic_.

Certain of the old Flemish painters present a canvas which seems to suggest that a peaceful meadow-land, a winding river, or a distant mountain-slope, exists only as a background for the figure in which they are interested.

The relative importance is indicated by the proportions that make the figure loom large and masterful within the scene.

Miss Carman, too, has cleared her canvas for the presentation of her figure;

but her heroine is very small, very insignificant, in the presence of greater realities of expansive sea, cloud-fancies, or the rising moon.

The interest of the story centres in the relation between Nature--more exactly God in Nature--and patient, plodding Sister Anne.

Nothing else matters.

The problem itself is clear to Sister Anne; only the solution is difficult.

To one whose life has seen all the unloveliness of heavy manual labor, there exists a pressing necessity to pay for the joy of living that is in her: a strange, absorbing joy in the beauty that God has created.

Praise and prayer are not her instruments.

A loving attendance at chapel and early matins cannot translate her feelings.

Love and worship must be transmuted into the thing she knows--service.

The time comes.

Simply, consciously, unquestioning, she risks her life to return another’s to God--a small payment for what He has given her.

The problem is between them.

Her devout companions may admire, the wealthy landowner wonder; nothing can be given to this 'poor, lonely, ignorant, toil-worn being, who in her starved existence had found more joy than she could make return for.'

_Suggested Points for Study and Comment_ 1. The reader will find it interesting to contrast the ways in which Sister Anne and The Princess, in Miss Donnell’s story of _The Princess of Make-Believe_, reconcile themselves to the drudgery of dish-washing and similar tasks of kitchen routine.

2. What various manifestations of nature especially impressed Sister Anne?

What appeal did these make to her companions?

3. Do you regard the author’s prolonged analytical method of characterization--as employed in the first part of the story--as the most effective means of bringing the reader into an understanding of the deeper personality of Sister Anne?

4. What special detail in this analysis most strongly impresses you?

5. What other method might have been adopted?

6. Characterize fully the spirit and the motive which impel Sister Anne’s final deed of sacrifice.

What impresses you as the finest element in her act?

7. Comment upon the author’s way of ending the story.

SETH MILES AND THE SACRED FIRE

CORNELIA A.

P.

COMER, accomplished critic, essayist, and writer of short stories, was educated at Vassar, and afterwards engaged in journalistic work in the Middle West and California.

She now lives in Seattle.

There are really three stories in one: Cynthia’s and Dick’s we put together from suggestions; that of Seth Miles we know from his own detailed narrative; Richard’s remains for our forming.

All the details are woven into a tale of one day.

A day hot and sultry in itself is made to coincide with the grumblings and self-pitying of a pampered son; both day and character are cleared without the arrival of the threatened storm, and duty is made as splendid and beautiful as the sun emerging from a darkened sky.

A dilettante, conceiving in his cultured self an appropriate offering from Mammon to the Muses, learns that even the heir of millions has work to do.