The Classic American Short Story Megapack, Volume 1

by Ambrose Bierce

  “No, but look,” said Reifsnyder; “supposing you don’t got a face!”

  XV

  As soon as Williams was hidden from the view of the old judge he began to gesture and talk to himself. An elation had evidently penetrated to his vitals, and caused him to dilate as if he had been filled with gas. He snapped his fingers in the air, and whistled fragments of triumphal music. At times, in his progress towards his shanty, he indulged in a shuffling movement that was really a dance. It was to be learned from the intermediate monologue that he had emerged from his trials laurelled and proud. He was the unconquerable Alexander Williams. Nothing could exceed the bold self-reliance of his manner. His kingly stride, his heroic song, the derisive flourish of his hands—all betokened a man who had successfully defied the world.

  On his way he saw Zeke Paterson coming to town. They hailed each other at a distance of fifty yards.

  “How do, Broth’ Paterson?”

  “How do, Broth’ Williams?”

  They were both deacons.

  “Is you’ folks well, Broth’ Paterson?”

  “Middlin’, middlin’. How’s you’ folks, Broth’ Williams?”

  Neither of them had slowed his pace in the smallest degree. They had simply begun this talk when a considerable space separated them, continued it as they passed, and added polite questions as they drifted steadily apart. Williams’s mind seemed to be a balloon. He had been so inflated that he had not noticed that Paterson had definitely shied into the dry ditch as they came to the point of ordinary contact.

  Afterwards, as he went a lonely way, he burst out again in song and pantomimic celebration of his estate. His feet moved in prancing steps.

  When he came in sight of his cabin, the fields were bathed in a blue dusk, and the light in the window was pale. Cavorting and gesticulating, he gazed joyfully for some moments upon this light. Then suddenly another idea seemed to attack his mind, and he stopped, with an air of being suddenly dampened. In the end he approached his home as if it were the fortress of an enemy.

  Some dogs disputed his advance for a loud moment, and then discovering their lord, slunk away embarrassed. His reproaches were addressed to them in muffled tones.

  Arriving at the door, he pushed it open with the timidity of a new thief. He thrust his head cautiously sideways, and his eyes met the eyes of his wife, who sat by the table, the lamp-light defining a half of her face.

  “Sh!” he said, uselessly. His glance travelled swiftly to the inner door which shielded the one bed-chamber. The pickaninnies, strewn upon the floor of the living-room, were softly snoring. After a hearty meal they had promptly dispersed themselves about the place and gone to sleep. “Sh!” said Williams again to his motionless and silent wife. He had allowed only his head to appear. His wife, with one hand upon the edge of the table and the other at her knee, was regarding him with wide eyes and parted lips as if he were a spectre. She looked to be one who was living in terror, and even the familiar face at the door had thrilled her because it had come suddenly.

  Williams broke the tense silence. “Is he all right?” he whispered, waving his eyes towards the inner door. Following his glance timorously, his wife nodded, and in a low tone answered:

  “I raikon he’s done gone t’ sleep.”

  Williams then slunk noiselessly across his threshold.

  He lifted a chair, and with infinite care placed it so that it faced the dreaded inner door. His wife moved slightly, so as to also squarely face it. A silence came upon them in which they seemed to be waiting for a calamity, pealing and deadly.

  Williams finally coughed behind his hand. His wife started, and looked upon him in alarm. “Pears like he done gwine keep quiet ternight,” he breathed. They continually pointed their speech and their looks at the inner door, paying it the homage due to a corpse or a phantom. Another long stillness followed this sentence. Their eyes shone white and wide. A wagon rattled down the distant road. From their chairs they looked at the window, and the effect of the light in the cabin was a presentation of an intensely black and solemn night. The old woman adopted the attitude used always in church at funerals. At times she seemed to be upon the point of breaking out in prayer.

  “He mighty quiet ter-night,” whispered Williams. “Was he good ter-day?” For answer his wife raised her eyes to the ceiling in the supplication of Job. Williams moved restlessly. Finally he tiptoed to the door. He knelt slowly and without a sound, and placed his ear near the key-hole. Hearing a noise behind him, he turned quickly. His wife was staring at him aghast. She stood in front of the stove, and her arms were spread out in the natural movement to protect all her sleeping ducklings.

  But Williams arose without having touched the door. “I raikon he er-sleep,” he said, fingering his wool. He debated with himself for some time. During this interval his wife remained, a great fat statue of a mother shielding her children.

  It was plain that his mind was swept suddenly by a wave of temerity. With a sounding step he moved towards the door. His fingers were almost upon the knob when he swiftly ducked and dodged away, clapping his hands to the back of his head. It was as if the portal had threatened him. There was a little tumult near the stove, where Mrs. Williams’s desperate retreat had involved her feet with the prostrate children.

  After the panic Williams bore traces of a feeling of shame. He returned to the charge. He firmly grasped the knob with his left hand, and with his other hand turned the key in the lock. He pushed the door, and as it swung portentously open he sprang nimbly to one side like the fearful slave liberating the lion. Near the stove a group had formed, the terror stricken mother, with her arms stretched, and the aroused children clinging frenziedly to her skirts.

  The light streamed after the swinging door, and disclosed a room six feet one way and six feet the other way. It was small enough to enable the radiance to lay it plain. Williams peered warily around the corner made by the door-post.

  Suddenly he advanced, retired, and advanced again with a howl. His palsied family had expected him to spring backward, and at his howl they heaped themselves wondrously. But Williams simply stood in the little room emitting his howls before an open window. “He’s gone! He’s gone! He’s gone!” His eye and his hand had speedily proved the fact. He had even thrown open a little cupboard.

  Presently he came flying out. He grabbed his hat, and hurled the outer door back upon its hinges. Then he tumbled headlong into the night. He was yelling: “Docteh Trescott! Docteh Trescott!” He ran wildly through the fields, and galloped in the direction of town. He continued to call to Trescott, as if the latter was within easy hearing. It was as if Trescott was poised in the contemplative sky over the running negro, and could heed this reaching voice—“Docteh Trescott!”

  In the cabin, Mrs. Williams, supported by relays from the battalion of children, stood quaking watch until the truth of daylight came as a reinforcement and made the arrogant, strutting, swashbuckler children, and a mother who proclaimed her illimitable courage.

  XVI

  Theresa Page was giving a party. It was the outcome of a long series of arguments addressed to her mother, which had been overheard in part by her father. He had at last said five words, “Oh, let her have it.” The mother had then gladly capitulated.

  Theresa had written nineteen invitations, and distributed them at recess to her schoolmates. Later her mother had composed five large cakes, and still later a vast amount of lemonade.

  So the nine little girls and the ten little boys sat quite primly in the dining-room, while Theresa and her mother plied them with cake and lemonade, and also with ice-cream. This primness sat now quite strangely upon them. It was owing to the presence of Mrs. Page. Previously in the parlor alone with their games they had overturned a chair; the boys had let more or less of their hoodlum spirit shine forth. But when circumstances could be possibly magnified to warrant it, the girls made the boys victims of
an insufferable pride, snubbing them mercilessly. So in the dining-room they resembled a class at Sunday-school, if it were not for the subterranean smiles, gestures, rebuffs, and poutings which stamped the affair as a children’s party.

  Two little girls of this subdued gathering were planted in a settle with their backs to the broad window. They were beaming lovingly upon each other with an effect of scorning the boys.

  Hearing a noise behind her at the window, one little girl turned to face it. Instantly she screamed and sprang away, covering her face with her hands. “What was it? What was it?” cried every one in a roar. Some slight movement of the eyes of the weeping and shuddering child informed the company that she had been frightened by an appearance at the window. At once they all faced the imperturbable window, and for a moment there was a silence. An astute lad made an immediate census of the other lads. The prank of slipping out and looming spectrally at a window was too venerable. But the little boys were all present and astonished.

  As they recovered their minds they uttered warlike cries, and through a side door sallied rapidly out against the terror. They vied with each other in daring.

  None wished particularly to encounter a dragon in the darkness of the garden, but there could be no faltering when the fair ones in the dining-room were present. Calling to each other in stern voices, they went dragooning over the lawn, attacking the shadows with ferocity, but still with the caution of reasonable beings. They found, however, nothing new to the peace of the night. Of course there was a lad who told a great lie. He described a grim figure, bending low and slinking off along the fence. He gave a number of details, rendering his lie more splendid by a repetition of certain forms which he recalled from romances. For instance, he insisted that he had heard the creature emit a hollow laugh.

  Inside the house the little girl who had raised the alarm was still shuddering and weeping. With the utmost difficulty was she brought to a state approximating calmness by Mrs. Page. Then she wanted to go home at once.

  Page entered the house at this time. He had exiled himself until he concluded that this children’s party was finished and gone. He was obliged to escort the little girl home because she screamed again when they opened the door and she saw the night.

  She was not coherent even to her mother. Was it a man? She didn’t know. It was simply a thing, a dreadful thing.

  XVII

  In Watermelon Alley the Farraguts were spending their evening as usual on the little rickety porch. Sometimes they howled gossip to other people on other rickety porches. The thin wail of a baby arose from a near house. A man had a terrific altercation with his wife, to which the alley paid no attention at all.

  There appeared suddenly before the Farraguts a monster making a low and sweeping bow. There was an instant’s pause, and then occurred something that resembled the effect of an upheaval of the earth’s surface. The old woman hurled herself backward with a dreadful cry. Young Sim had been perched gracefully on a railing. At sight of the monster he simply fell over it to the ground. He made no sound, his eyes stuck out, his nerveless hands tried to grapple the rail to prevent a tumble, and then he vanished. Bella, blubbering, and with her hair suddenly and mysteriously dishevelled, was crawling on her hands and knees fearsomely up the steps.

  Standing before this wreck of a family gathering, the monster continued to bow. It even raised a deprecatory claw. “Doh’ make no botheration ’bout me, Miss Fa’gut,” it said, politely. “No, ’deed. I jes drap in ter ax if yer well this evenin’, Miss Fa’gut. Don’ make no botheration. No, ’deed. I gwine ax you to go to er daince with me, Miss Fa’gut. I ax you if I can have the magnifercent gratitude of you’ company on that ’casion, Miss Fa’gut.”

  The girl cast a miserable glance behind her. She was still crawling away. On the ground beside the porch young Sim raised a strange bleat, which expressed both his fright and his lack of wind. Presently the monster, with a fashionable amble, ascended the steps after the girl.

  She grovelled in a corner of the room as the creature took a chair. It seated itself very elegantly on the edge. It held an old cap in both hands. “Don’ make no botheration, Miss Fa’gut. Don’ make no botherations. No, ’deed. I jes drap in ter ax you if you won’ do me the proud of acceptin’ ma humble invitation to er daince, Miss Fa’gut.”

  She shielded her eyes with her arms and tried to crawl past it, but the genial monster blocked the way. “I jes drap in ter ax you ’bout er daince, Miss Fa’gut. I ax you if I kin have the magnifercent gratitude of you’ company on that ’casion, Miss Fa’gut.”

  In a last outbreak of despair, the girl, shuddering and wailing, threw herself face downward on the floor, while the monster sat on the edge of the chair gabbling courteous invitations, and holding the old hat daintily to his stomach.

  At the back of the house, Mrs. Farragut, who was of enormous weight, and who for eight years had done little more than sit in an armchair and describe her various ailments, had with speed and agility scaled a high board fence.

  XVIII

  The black mass in the middle of Trescott’s property was hardly allowed to cool before the builders were at work on another house. It had sprung upward at a fabulous rate. It was like a magical composition born of the ashes. The doctor’s office was the first part to be completed, and he had already moved in his new books and instruments and medicines.

  Trescott sat before his desk when the chief of police arrived. “Well, we found him,” said the latter.

  “Did you?” cried the doctor. “Where?”

  “Shambling around the streets at daylight this morning. I’ll be blamed if I can figure on where he passed the night.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Oh, we jugged him. I didn’t know what else to do with him. That’s what I want you to tell me. Of course we can’t keep him. No charge could be made, you know.”

  “I’ll come down and get him.”

  The official grinned retrospectively. “Must say he had a fine career while he was out. First thing he did was to break up a children’s party at Page’s. Then he went to Watermelon Alley. Whoo! He stampeded the whole outfit. Men, women, and children running pell-mell, and yelling. They say one old woman broke her leg, or something, shinning over a fence. Then he went right out on the main street, and an Irish girl threw a fit, and there was a sort of a riot. He began to run, and a big crowd chased him, firing rocks. But he gave them the slip somehow down there by the foundry and in the railroad yard. We looked for him all night, but couldn’t find him.”

  “Was he hurt any? Did anybody hit him with a stone?”

  “Guess there isn’t much of him to hurt any more, is there? Guess he’s been hurt up to the limit. No. They never touched him. Of course nobody really wanted to hit him, but you know how a crowd gets. It’s like—it’s like—”

  “Yes, I know.”

  For a moment the chief of the police looked reflectively at the floor. Then he spoke hesitatingly. “You know Jake Winter’s little girl was the one that he scared at the party. She is pretty sick, they say.”

  “Is she? Why, they didn’t call me. I always attend the Winter family.”

  “No? Didn’t they?” asked the chief, slowly. “Well—you know—Winter is—well, Winter has gone clean crazy over this business. He wanted—he wanted to have you arrested.”

  “Have me arrested? The idiot! What in the name of wonder could he have me arrested for?”

  “Of course. He is a fool. I told him to keep his trap shut. But then you know how he’ll go all over town yapping about the thing. I thought I’d better tip you.”

  “Oh, he is of no consequence; but then, of course, I’m obliged to you, Sam.”

  “That’s all right. Well, you’ll be down tonight and take him out, eh? You’ll get a good welcome from the jailer. He don’t like his job for a cent. He says you can have your man whenever you want him. He’s got no use
for him.”

  “But what is this business of Winter’s about having me arrested?”

  “Oh, it’s a lot of chin about your having no right to allow this—this—this man to be at large. But I told him to tend to his own business. Only I thought I’d better let you know. And I might as well say right now, doctor, that there is a good deal of talk about this thing. If I were you, I’d come to the jail pretty late at night, because there is likely to be a crowd around the door, and I’d bring a—er—mask, or some kind of a veil, anyhow.”

  XIX

  Martha Goodwin was single, and well along into the thin years. She lived with her married sister in Whilomville. She performed nearly all the house-work in exchange for the privilege of existence. Every one tacitly recognized her labor as a form of penance for the early end of her betrothed, who had died of small-pox, which he had not caught from her.

  But despite the strenuous and unceasing workaday of her life, she was a woman of great mind. She had adamantine opinions upon the situation in Armenia, the condition of women in China, the flirtation between Mrs. Minster of Niagara Avenue and young Griscom, the conflict in the Bible class of the Baptist Sunday-school, the duty of the United States towards the Cuban insurgents, and many other colossal matters. Her fullest experience of violence was gained on an occasion when she had seen a hound clubbed, but in the plan which she had made for the reform of the world she advocated drastic measures. For instance, she contended that all the Turks should be pushed into the sea and drowned, and that Mrs. Minster and young Griscom should be hanged side by side on twin gallows. In fact, this woman of peace, who had seen only peace, argued constantly for a creed of illimitable ferocity. She was invulnerable on these questions, because eventually she overrode all opponents with a sniff. This sniff was an active force. It was to her antagonists like a bang over the head, and none was known to recover from this expression of exalted contempt. It left them windless and conquered. They never again came forward as candidates for suppression. And Martha walked her kitchen with a stern brow, an invincible being like Napoleon.