The Classic American Short Story Megapack, Volume 1

by Ambrose Bierce

  XXII

  “Have you heard the news?” cried Carrie Dungen as she sped towards Martha’s kitchen. “Have you heard the news?” Her eyes were shining with delight.

  “No,” answered Martha’s sister Kate, bending forward eagerly. “What was it? What was it?”

  Carrie appeared triumphantly in the open door. “Oh, there’s been an awful scene between Doctor Trescott and Jake Winter. I never thought that Jake Winter had any pluck at all, but this morning he told the doctor just what he thought of him.”

  “Well, what did he think of him?” asked Martha.

  “Oh, he called him everything. Mrs. Howarth heard it through her front blinds. It was terrible, she says. It’s all over town now. Everybody knows it.”

  “Didn’t the doctor answer back?”

  “No! Mrs. Howarth—she says he never said a word. He just walked down to his buggy and got in, and drove off as co-o-o-l. But Jake gave him jinks, by all accounts.”

  “But what did he say?” cried Kate, shrill and excited. She was evidently at some kind of a feast.

  “Oh, he told him that Sadie had never been well since that night Henry Johnson frightened her at Theresa Page’s party, and he held him responsible, and how dared he cross his threshold—and—and—and—”

  “And what?” said Martha.

  “Did he swear at him?” said Kate, in fearsome glee.

  “No—not much. He did swear at him a little, but not more than a man does anyhow when he is real mad, Mrs. Howarth says.”

  “O-oh!” breathed Kate. “And did he call him any names?”

  Martha, at her work, had been for a time in deep thought. She now interrupted the others. “It don’t seem as if Sadie Winter had been sick since that time Henry Johnson got loose. She’s been to school almost the whole time since then, hasn’t she?”

  They combined upon her in immediate indignation. “School? School? I should say not. Don’t think for a moment. School!”

  Martha wheeled from the sink. She held an iron spoon, and it seemed as if she was going to attack them. “Sadie Winter has passed here many a morning since then carrying her schoolbag. Where was she going? To a wedding?”

  The others, long accustomed to a mental tyranny, speedily surrendered.

  “Did she?” stammered Kate. “I never saw her.”

  Carrie Dungen made a weak gesture.

  “If I had been Doctor Trescott,” exclaimed Martha, loudly, “I’d have knocked that miserable Jake Winter’s head off.”

  Kate and Carrie, exchanging glances, made an alliance in the air. “I don’t see why you say that, Martha,” replied Carrie, with considerable boldness, gaining support and sympathy from Kate’s smile. “I don’t see how anybody can be blamed for getting angry when their little girl gets almost scared to death and gets sick from it, and all that. Besides, everybody says—”

  “Oh, I don’t care what everybody says,” said Martha.

  “Well, you can’t go against the whole town,” answered Carrie, in sudden sharp defiance.

  “No, Martha, you can’t go against the whole town,” piped Kate, following her leader rapidly.

  “‘The whole town,’” cried Martha. “I’d like to know what you call ‘the whole town.’ Do you call these silly people who are scared of Henry Johnson ‘the whole town’?”

  “Why, Martha,” said Carrie, in a reasoning tone, “you talk as if you wouldn’t be scared of him!”

  “No more would I,” retorted Martha.

  “O-oh, Martha, how you talk!” said Kate. “Why, the idea! Everybody’s afraid of him.”

  Carrie was grinning. “You’ve never seen him, have you?” she asked, seductively.

  “No,” admitted Martha.

  “Well, then, how do you know that you wouldn’t be scared?”

  Martha confronted her. “Have you ever seen him? No? Well, then, how do you know you would be scared?”

  The allied forces broke out in chorus: “But, Martha, everybody says so. Everybody says so.”

  “Everybody says what?”

  “Everybody that’s seen him say they were frightened almost to death. Tisn’t only women, but it’s men too. It’s awful.”

  Martha wagged her head solemnly. “I’d try not to be afraid of him.”

  “But supposing you could not help it?” said Kate.

  “Yes, and look here,” cried Carrie. “I’ll tell you another thing. The Hannigans are going to move out of the house next door.”

  “On account of him?” demanded Martha.

  Carrie nodded. “Mrs. Hannigan says so herself.”

  “Well, of all things!” ejaculated Martha. “Going to move, eh? You don’t say so! Where they going to move to?”

  “Down on Orchard Avenue.”

  “Well, of all things! Nice house?”

  “I don’t know about that. I haven’t heard. But there’s lots of nice houses on Orchard.”

  “Yes, but they’re all taken,” said Kate. “There isn’t a vacant house on Orchard Avenue.”

  “Oh yes, there is,” said Martha. “The old Hampstead house is vacant.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Kate. “But then I don’t believe Mrs. Hannigan would like it there. I wonder where they can be going to move to?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” sighed Martha. “It must be to some place we don’t know about.”

  “Well.” said Carrie Dungen, after a general reflective silence, “it’s easy enough to find out, anyhow.”

  “Who knows—around here?” asked Kate.

  “Why, Mrs. Smith, and there she is in her garden,” said Carrie, jumping to her feet. As she dashed out of the door, Kate and Martha crowded at the window. Carrie’s voice rang out from near the steps. “Mrs. Smith! Mrs. Smith! Do you know where the Hannigans are going to move to?”

  XXIII

  The autumn smote the leaves, and the trees of Whilomville were panoplied in crimson and yellow. The winds grew stronger, and in the melancholy purple of the nights the home shine of a window became a finer thing. The little boys, watching the sear and sorrowful leaves drifting down from the maples, dreamed of the near time when they could heap bushels in the streets and burn them during the abrupt evenings.

  Three men walked down the Niagara Avenue. As they approached Judge Hagenthorpe’s house he came down his walk to meet them in the manner of one who has been waiting.

  “Are you ready, judge?” one said.

  “All ready,” he answered.

  The four then walked to Trescott’s house. He received them in his office, where he had been reading. He seemed surprised at this visit of four very active and influential citizens, but he had nothing to say of it.

  After they were all seated, Trescott looked expectantly from one face to another. There was a little silence. It was broken by John Twelve, the wholesale grocer, who was worth $400,000, and reported to be worth over a million.

  “Well, doctor,” he said, with a short laugh, “I suppose we might as well admit at once that we’ve come to interfere in something which is none of our business.”

  “Why, what is it?” asked Trescott, again looking from one face to another. He seemed to appeal particularly to Judge Hagenthorpe, but the old man had his chin lowered musingly to his cane, and would not look at him.

  “It’s about what nobody talks of—much,” said Twelve. “It’s about Henry Johnson.”

  Trescott squared himself in his chair. “Yes?” he said.

  Having delivered himself of the title, Twelve seemed to become more easy. “Yes,” he answered, blandly, “we wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “Yes?” said Trescott.

  Twelve abruptly advanced on the main attack. “Now see here, Trescott, we like you, and we have come to talk right out about this business. It may be none of our affairs and all that, and as fo
r me, I don’t mind if you tell me so; but I am not going to keep quiet and see you ruin yourself. And that’s how we all feel.”

  “I am not ruining myself,” answered Trescott.

  “No, maybe you are not exactly ruining yourself,” said Twelve, slowly, “but you are doing yourself a great deal of harm. You have changed from being the leading doctor in town to about the last one. It is mainly because there are always a large number of people who are very thoughtless fools, of course, but then that doesn’t change the condition.”

  A man who had not heretofore spoken said, solemnly, “It’s the women.”

  “Well, what I want to say is this,” resumed Twelve: “Even if there are a lot of fools in the world, we can’t see any reason why you should ruin yourself by opposing them. You can’t teach them anything, you know.”

  “I am not trying to teach them anything.” Trescott smiled wearily. “I—It is a matter of—well—”

  “And there are a good many of us that admire you for it immensely,” interrupted Twelve; “but that isn’t going to change the minds of all those ninnies.”

  “It’s the women,” stated the advocate of this view again.

  “Well, what I want to say is this,” said Twelve. “We want you to get out of this trouble and strike your old gait again. You are simply killing your practice through your infernal pigheadedness. Now this thing is out of the ordinary, but there must be ways to—to beat the game somehow, you see. So we’ve talked it over—about a dozen of us—and, as I say, if you want to tell us to mind our own business, why, go ahead; but we’ve talked it over, and we’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to do is to get Johnson a place somewhere off up the valley, and—”

  Trescott wearily gestured. “You don’t know, my friend. Everybody is so afraid of him, they can’t even give him good care. Nobody can attend to him as I do myself.”

  “But I have a little no-good farm up beyond Clarence Mountain that I was going to give to Henry,” cried Twelve, aggrieved. “And if you—and if you—if you—through your house burning down, or anything—why, all the boys were prepared to take him right off your hands, and—and—”

  Trescott arose and went to the window. He turned his back upon them. They sat waiting in silence. When he returned he kept his face in the shadow. “No, John Twelve,” he said, “it can’t be done.”

  There was another stillness. Suddenly a man stirred on his chair.

  “Well, then, a public institution—” he began.

  “No,” said Trescott; “public institutions are all very good, but he is not going to one.”

  In the background of the group old Judge Hagenthorpe was thoughtfully smoothing the polished ivory head of his cane.

  XXIV

  Trescott loudly stamped the snow from his feet and shook the flakes from his shoulders. When he entered the house he went at once to the dining-room, and then to the sitting-room. Jimmie was there, reading painfully in a large book concerning giraffes and tigers and crocodiles.

  “Where is your mother, Jimmie?” asked Trescott.

  “I don’t know, pa,” answered the boy. “I think she is up-stairs.”

  Trescott went to the foot of the stairs and called, but there came no answer. Seeing that the door of the little drawing-room was open, he entered. The room was bathed in the half-light that came from the four dull panes of mica in the front of the great stove. As his eyes grew used to the shadows he saw his wife curled in an arm-chair. He went to her. “Why, Grace.” he said, “didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  She made no answer, and as he bent over the chair he heard her trying to smother a sob in the cushion.

  “Grace!” he cried. “You’re crying!”

  She raised her face. “I’ve got a headache, a dreadful headache, Ned.”

  “A headache?” he repeated, in surprise and incredulity.

  He pulled a chair close to hers. Later, as he cast his eye over the zone of light shed by the dull red panes, he saw that a low table had been drawn close to the stove, and that it was burdened with many small cups and plates of uncut tea-cake. He remembered that the day was Wednesday, and that his wife received on Wednesdays.

  “Who was here to-day, Gracie?” he asked.

  From his shoulder there came a mumble, “Mrs. Twelve.”

  “Was she—um,” he said. “Why—didn’t Anna Hagenthorpe come over?”

  The mumble from his shoulder continued, “She wasn’t well enough.”

  Glancing down at the cups, Trescott mechanically counted them. There were fifteen of them. “There, there,” he said. “Don’t cry, Grace. Don’t cry.”

  The wind was whining round the house, and the snow beat aslant upon the windows. Sometimes the coal in the stove settled with a crumbling sound, and the four panes of mica flashed a sudden new crimson. As he sat holding her head on his shoulder, Trescott found himself occasionally trying to count the cups. There were fifteen of them.

  THE BLUE HOTEL, by Stephen Crane

  I

  The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its position against any background. The Palace Hotel, then, was always screaming and howling in a way that made the dazzling winter landscape of Nebraska seem only a gray swampish hush. It stood alone on the prairie, and when the snow was falling the town two hundred yards away was not visible. But when the traveller alighted at the railway station he was obliged to pass the Palace Hotel before he could come upon the company of low clapboard houses which composed Fort Romper, and it was not to be thought that any traveller could pass the Palace Hotel without looking at it. Pat Scully, the proprietor, had proved himself a master of strategy when he chose his paints. It is true that on clear days, when the great trans-continental expresses, long lines of swaying Pullmans, swept through Fort Romper, passengers were overcome at the sight, and the cult that knows the brown-reds and the subdivisions of the dark greens of the East expressed shame, pity, horror, in a laugh. But to the citizens of this prairie town and to the people who would naturally stop there, Pat Scully had performed a feat. With this opulence and splendor, these creeds, classes, egotisms, that streamed through Romper on the rails day after day, they had no color in common.

  As if the displayed delights of such a blue hotel were not sufficiently enticing, it was Scully’s habit to go every morning and evening to meet the leisurely trains that stopped at Romper and work his seductions upon any man that he might see wavering, gripsack in hand.

  One morning, when a snow-crusted engine dragged its long string of freight cars and its one passenger coach to the station, Scully performed the marvel of catching three men. One was a shaky and quick-eyed Swede, with a great shining cheap valise; one was a tall bronzed cowboy, who was on his way to a ranch near the Dakota line; one was a little silent man from the East, who didn’t look it, and didn’t announce it. Scully practically made them prisoners. He was so nimble and merry and kindly that each probably felt it would be the height of brutality to try to escape. They trudged off over the creaking board sidewalks in the wake of the eager little Irishman. He wore a heavy fur cap squeezed tightly down on his head. It caused his two red ears to stick out stiffly, as if they were made of tin.

  At last, Scully, elaborately, with boisterous hospitality, conducted them through the portals of the blue hotel. The room which they entered was small. It seemed to be merely a proper temple for an enormous stove, which, in the centre, was humming with godlike violence. At various points on its surface the iron had become luminous and glowed yellow from the heat. Beside the stove Scully’s son Johnnie was playing High-Five with an old farmer who had whiskers both gray and sandy. They were quarrelling. Frequently the old farmer turned his face towards a box of sawdust—colored brown from tobacco juice—that was behind the stove, and spat with an air of great impatience and irritation. With a loud flourish
of words Scully destroyed the game of cards, and bustled his son up-stairs with part of the baggage of the new guests. He himself conducted them to three basins of the coldest water in the world. The cowboy and the Easterner burnished themselves fiery-red with this water, until it seemed to be some kind of a metal polish. The Swede, however, merely dipped his fingers gingerly and with trepidation. It was notable that throughout this series of small ceremonies the three travellers were made to feel that Scully was very benevolent. He was conferring great favors upon them. He handed the towel from one to the other with an air of philanthropic impulse.

  Afterwards they went to the first room, and, sitting about the stove, listened to Scully’s officious clamor at his daughters, who were preparing the mid-day meal. They reflected in the silence of experienced men who tread carefully amid new people. Nevertheless, the old farmer, stationary, invincible in his chair near the warmest part of the stove, turned his face from the sawdust box frequently and addressed a glowing commonplace to the strangers. Usually he was answered in short but adequate sentences by either the cowboy or the Easterner. The Swede said nothing. He seemed to be occupied in making furtive estimates of each man in the room. One might have thought that he had the sense of silly suspicion which comes to guilt. He resembled a badly frightened man.

  Later, at dinner, he spoke a little, addressing his conversation entirely to Scully. He volunteered that he had come from New York, where for ten years he had worked as a tailor. These facts seemed to strike Scully as fascinating, and afterwards he volunteered that he had lived at Romper for fourteen years. The Swede asked about the crops and the price of labor. He seemed barely to listen to Scully’s extended replies. His eyes continued to rove from man to man.

  Finally, with a laugh and a wink, he said that some of these Western communities were very dangerous; and after his statement he straightened his legs under the table, tilted his head, and laughed again, loudly. It was plain that the demonstration had no meaning to the others. They looked at him wondering and in silence.