The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 37

Betty Fuller was down on the floor. She was face downward, her head protected by her arm. Two feet from her, between the reading-table and the door into the dining-room, was her nine-months-old baby. Holding himself unsteadily between the casings of the hall door was young Jack, his face the color of cold ashes, his lips parched, drops of sweat, heavy as glycerin, standing on his forehead.

"What's happened?" demanded Sam.

But he saw what had happened; and his wife saw; and so did the neighbors. The baby's crib was mute witness to what had occurred. It was overturned-between Jack and his little family.

"Betty! Betty!" cried Mrs. Hod, kneeling down to the young mother's a.s.sistance.

"My baby! My only, only, little baby!" moaned the girl.

"Tell me," roared Sam to the father, "how did this happen?"

"I came in-sick-I guess-I guess-I didn't see the kid's crib. I fell over against it! I knocked it over-"

The neighbor woman had picked up the little body.

"It's-dead!" she whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

Sam whirled on Jack.

"Sick!" he roared. "Sick! The h-- you was sick! You was drunk! You're drunk now! See what you've done? You've killed your own kid-!"

At his words the girl shrieked again, that long agonizing terrible shriek that brought more neighbors.

"It was an accident," whispered the Fuller boy thickly.

"It wouldn't have been an accident if you'd behaved yourself and cut out this coming home drunk."

The woman picked up the girl and got her to the sofa. Over and over she kept moaning: "My baby! My only, only, little baby!"

The place filled with neighbors. After a while came Doctor Johnson-who was our coroner-and Mike Hogan, our chief of police.

Mike was at a loss whether to arrest the father or not. Sam dispelled his doubts.

"When the boy comes to himself and gets the stuff out of his brain, he'll feel bad enough, Mike," the fatherly old editor said. "The memory of it will be enough punishment. After all, he didn't do it intentionally."

"He's no good, sorr," stormed Mike, indicating the young father while he grew husky-throated at the pathos of the little mother's grief.

"Yes, he is, Mike. This is really d.i.c.k Fuller's-his father's-fault. He shouldn't ever have left the lad ten thousand dollars and no balance-wheel. Let these two children alone. It's for them to settle between themselves. Jack's got the Fuller blood in him from away back; and I think this will bring out his manhood. It's a fearful price for a young father to have to pay, Mike. But maybe, after all, it's for the best."

The neighbors left the boy and girl to their tragedy.

The marriage of old Wilbur Nieson's daughter Elisabeth to young Jack Fuller had been talked of in our town for a month and a day. Richard Fuller, son of Das.h.i.+ng Captain Jack, had grown to manhood, made considerable money and died, leaving it to his boy, whereupon the lad started straight for the devil.

Before he had come into his inheritance, he had been "keeping company"

with little Betty Nieson, who worked in the box-factory and lived with her derelict father in the scrubby old Nieson place out Cedar Street on the edge of town. The boy drank considerably and the rumor found its way into our newspaper office that, despite his money, Betty would not marry him until he had conquered the habit.

A town's mind is a child's mind and it readily sympathized with the struggle that the Nieson girl was making in her poor blind handicapped way to climb out of the environment which she had always known, and make something of herself. Then suddenly one day Jack Fuller sold his racy automobile. He and Betty were married and they furnished a modest home on Pleasant Street. One-half of the town said it was because Jack had gone through his inheritance. The other half said that it was his wife's influence over him. Certainly to all appearances the girl was making a desperate and commendable struggle not only to raise herself up but to compel Jack to be a man. Then the half of the home-folks which had claimed the way Jack squandered his money had been at the bottom of his marriage, were apparently in the right. For shortly after the pitiful little marriage the boy was seen frequenting the Whitney House bar as much as ever.

Now came this additional sorrow into the girl's life. She had married the lad trying to get away from the hereditary taint of the Nieson blood. It had come to her now that there appeared to be a taint also in the Fuller blood. She had lost her baby. The Hods said that there was a light burning in the Fuller tenement all that night.

The baby was buried the next day. It was a pathetic little funeral, just a prayer or two by Doctor Dodd of the Methodist Church, and then Blake Whipple, the undertaker, took care of the interment.

The evening of the day that the poor little shaver was laid underground, Mrs. Hod entered the tenement to console the bereaved girl. She entered without knocking. She paused at the threshold, made rigid by the sight before her.

For Jack Fuller was down on his knees before the girl he had married.

His finely-shaped head was buried in her lap. He was sobbing freakishly, for men do not know how to weep. And the girl seated there on the sofa was staring into unseeing s.p.a.ce with a holy look upon her beautifully plain face; her slender shapely fingers toying with the boy's wavy hair.

"Never, never, never-will I touch a drop of the stuff as long as I live, Betty," he choked between his tears. "I don't care-what the provocation is-I won't ever do it. I've been a cad, Betty. I haven't been a Fuller at all-but I'll show you I can be. I'll make up for this. We've lost the baby, Betty-but it's brought me to my senses. I'm-done! I swear it before G.o.d, Betty. I'm-done!"

The girl never knew a neighbor was looking on, unable to withdraw without disclosing her presence.

"If that's the price, Jack," she replied softly, divinely, "-if that's the price-and you'll keep your word-I'll pay it! Jackie dear-I love you.

I've loved you all along. But this has always been the way with me.

There was Dad. Rum got him-rum stole him away from me. When he was himself he was all right. But he drank and then beat me-he made me want to kill myself just because I was a Nieson-because his blood half saturated with rum-was in my veins. I married you, Jackie-because I hoped to pull myself up from being a Nieson. I hoped to show folks what I wanted to be-what I tried so hard to be. Every one knows the Niesons are worthless trash, the sc.u.m of the town. And I thought-being your wife-the wife of a Fuller-things would be different. The liquor seemed robbing me of you too, Jack. But if this-has given you back to me-yes-I'll pay the price. It's all right, Jack. I'll take your word that you'll never, never take a drop of the stuff again."

Mrs. Hod succeeded in getting out without being discovered. She went home and told her husband. Sam shook his head sadly.

"I hope so," commented the worldly wise old newspaper man, who frequently understood two-legged human folks better than they understood themselves. "I hope so, indeed. I'd do anything under G.o.d's heaven to help him. But I'm afraid for him-afraid for him and the girl. It sure will be h.e.l.l for her if the lad breaks his promise-just _once_!"

But to his everlasting credit, let it be set down that the Fuller blood came uppermost in Jack. He did not break his promise. But what the poor boy went through in that succeeding six months only a reticent G.o.d in His heaven knows.

Jack had sold his automobile for two hundred dollars. Now he transferred what was left of his legacy from a checking account in the corner bank to the savings department. He went to work for Will Pease mending automobiles in the Paris Garage.

He grew thin and haggard with the struggle he was making. Some brainless young roustabouts in our town tried to get him to drink again just for the sake of winning him back to his old habits. They actually did get him into a bar one night with a gla.s.s of liquor before him. Then I guess it came to him what he was doing. The Fuller blood in him made a great convulsion for the upper hand-and won! He smashed the gla.s.s into the tempter's eyes and stumbled out into the raw cold night-and home.

The boy came home to his childless wife one night and said:

"Betty-it's h.e.l.l!" he said. "I'm all burned out inside, Betty-"

"Jack," she cried piteously, "you're not going to give way after-after the price-we paid."

"Not if I can help it, Betty," he replied. "But I need help, girl. I need some sort of discipline that'll straighten me out and help me physically. Betty-I've got a chance-to get into the quartermaster's department of the Vermont National Guard-"

"You mean-be a soldier?" she cried.

"And why not, Betty?" he said. "My grandfather was a soldier. You know what he did in the Civil War; what he means to the Grand Army men. It's in my blood, I guess, Betty-"

"Jack!" she cried. "Don't leave me now! Don't leave me alone! Don't!

Don't! There's too many memories, Jack. I ain't-brave enough, Jack!"

He sank down on the sofa and hid his burning face in his hands.

"G.o.d help me!" he groaned. "I want to win out, but I'm all wrong inside.

Oh, Betty!"

She tried in her poor pitiful way to help him. She did help him-a little bit. But Jack was nearer right than he knew. He joined the Y. M. C. A.

that winter and went in for athletics. But two nights a week "on the floor" wasn't rigorous enough for him.

Pinkie Price, our star reporter, came into the newspaper office one forenoon and exclaimed, "Hey, you know that Fuller chap that killed his kid when he come home stewed? Well, what do you suppose he's up to? You know the preparedness scare and the trouble with Mexico and everything?