Short Stories, - [books to read fiction .txt] 📗
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Desruelles fainted once more and was removed. That afternoon, waiting wearily in the salle des gardes, a man came and stood before him, looking at him fixedly, then turning away. Everybody paid him the utmost respect. Desruelles asked the sergeant by his side who that personage was.
“It is M. M——, chief of the secret police.”
“Good God!” cried Desruelles—“Vedova!”
He fell in an apoplectic fit, and before morning brought the question of his identity to the tribunal of a higher court.
(Emma Churchman Hewitt: For Short Stories.)
The chorus has just ended and the conductor has acknowledged the plaudits of an enthusiastic audience.
Waiting in the side wings is a little bent old man, his silvery hair lying across his violin as he murmurs to it loving words.
At last! at last he will be heard in solo!
What matter all the weary years without recognition? He will be heard! What matter that it is only a charity concert and he has proffered his services? He will be heard! and the appreciation of the audience will testify to his genius.
But hark!
There has been some mistake!
That should have been his number, not the tenor solo!
Never mind, it is all right! What matters a few moments more or less, when one is about to reach one’s soul’s desire?
So he sits and listens, his heart beating loudly with suppressed but consuming excitement.
At last! At last!
But what is that?
The audience is leaving!
Why he hasn’t played yet!
He looks around in a dazed way. Moritz will explain it, he tells himself wearily, Moritz always understands everything, and he lays his head down on the table beside him.
A young man hastens from among the orchestra players, his face pale and his teeth set, as he thinks of the disappointed old man behind the scenes. He thinks his father is weeping over his disappointment. “Father,” he cries, a sob in his voice, “it is all right, it shall be all right! There were so many encores, you see there was not time for all. The manager didn’t know and he left out the wrong thing. But you are to play to-morrow night, father, so it will be all right, you see,” and he smiles as he raises the dear old face, as he would have done that of a child. Upon the furrowed cheeks there are no tears, but on the face, chiseled by the stern hand of death ... a look of pained surprise ... bewildered disappointment ... the old man’s heart is broken.
(A legend of the Origin of the Daisy: German of Rudolf Baumbach: Translated for Short Stories by Albert Gleaves.)
It is usually thought that when good children die they go to heaven and become angels. But if anyone imagines that they live there with nothing to do but fly around, and play hide-and-seek in the clouds, he is very much mistaken.
The angel children have to go to school every day like the boys and girls on earth, three hours in the forenoon and two hours in the afternoon. They write with gold pencils on silver slates, and instead of the A B C books, they have story books with all sorts of gay-colored pictures. They do not study geography, for a knowledge of the earth would be of no use in heaven, neither do they learn the long and terrible multiplication table, because they live in Eternity.
The school teacher is Doctor Faust. He was a magistrate on earth, but on account of certain affairs that caused him a good deal of trouble and were very much talked about, he was required to teach school for three thousand years before he can have a vacation. On Wednesday and Saturday afternoon there is no school, and the children are permitted to play by themselves in the Milky Way; but on Sunday, which is the grand holiday, they can go outside of heaven and play in the big meadow. There they enjoy themselves more than all the rest of the week put together.
The meadow is not green but blue, and thousands and tens of thousands of silver and golden flowers are all aglow with light and men call them stars.
In the afternoon of the great holiday, St. Peter takes care of the children, while Dr. Faust rests and recuperates from his labors during school-hours. St. Peter, who is always on guard at the gate of heaven, sees that there is no boisterous playing, and no running away or flying off too far; if he discovers any straying or wandering, he at once blows on his golden whistle the call to “come back.”
One Wednesday afternoon it was very warm in heaven and St. Peter fell asleep, tired out with watching. The children noticed this and took advantage of it to steal by the old man and spread themselves over the entire meadow. The most enterprising ventured out to explore the extent of their play-ground, and discovered that it was abruptly ended by a high board fence. This they examined carefully for cracks to look through, but finding none flew to the top of the fence and commenced shouting across the space beyond.
Now hell was on the other side of the fence, and a multitude of little devils had just been driven out of the door. They were coal-black, with horns on their heads and long tails behind. Soon they looked up and saw the angels above them fluttering around the top of the fence, and at once they began to beg that they might be allowed to come up into heaven, promising faithfully to behave, if only the angels could let them in for “just a little while.”
Moved with pity, the innocent angels decided to get the Jacobs’ ladder out of the garret and let the little imps come up. Fortunately St. Peter was still asleep and they managed to drag the ladder out without disturbing him. After a good many efforts they succeeded in raising it up against the fence and then lowering it into hell. It scarcely touched the ground before the long-tailed little varlets were swarming up the rounds like monkeys.
When they got near the top the angels took them by the hand and helped them over the fence.
This is how the devils got into heaven.
At first they behaved very well, tiptoeing here and there, and carrying their tails under their arms like a lady’s trail, as they had often seen the big devil grandmothers do. But this didn’t last long, and in a few minutes they began to let themselves out and give full vent to their feelings. They turned hand-springs and somersaults, and growled and yelled like veritable imps. They mocked the good and happy people who were dreamily looking out of the windows of heaven; they stuck out their tongues and made faces at them.
Finally they began to tear up the flowers and throw them down on the earth.
In the meantime the little angels had become very much frightened and bitterly they repented their rashness in letting such unmannerly guests into heaven. In vain they pleaded with the rascals to be quiet and go back to hell, but the devils only laughed at them.
At last, in despair, they awakened St. Peter and tearfully told him what they had done.
He clasped his hands over his head, as he always did when angry, and thundered, “Come in.”
And the little angels went sneaking through the gates, very crestfallen, with wings drooping and trailing on the floor. Then St. Peter called for the sleeping angel policemen, and when all the devils were caught, they were hand-cuffed and taken back where they belonged.
But this was not the end of the matter. For two consecutive Sundays the angels were not allowed to leave heaven, and when they were permitted to play they had to take off their wings and halo; this was the severest of all punishments for it is considered a great shame for an angel to be seen without his wings or his nimbus.
It is an ill-wind that blows no good. The flowers that the devils threw out of heaven, took root in the earth and grew from year to year. To be sure these star-flowers have lost much of their heavenly brightness, but they are still lovely to look at with their great hearts of gold and silver glory.
And because of this heavenly birth they do indeed possess a hidden power of their own.
When a maiden with doubt in her soul plucks off the white petals of the flower one by one, singing at the same time a certain song, she knows by the token of the last little petal the answer to the question of her heart.
(French of Iola Dorian: Nita Fitch: New York Saturday Review.)
It is the morning of the Epiphany.
The intense cold of the night has moderated, but the barometer still marks fifteen degrees below zero. From the tall steeples of innumerable churches the bells of St. Petersburg ring in the sacred feast. In an exquisitely appointed room of a palace, where tender lights filter through the golden shadows of silken hangings, sits a woman. Her attitude is one of repose, deep, unruffled. From the crown of her little flame colored head, to the tip of her dainty shoe, she is a perfect bit of dame Nature’s art. If she were standing we should call her tall, but she sits crouching in her chair with all the abandon of a dozing tigress. She gives a little yawn.
“Ah! late as usual,” she says aloud.
As she speaks the door opens and a servant enters.
“Captain Repine,” he announces.
He follows quickly on the man’s heels, short, thickset, with a dull Cossack face and kindly smile, wearing the uniform of an officer of the Imperial body-guard.
“Pardon, my dear Elisaveta. Have I made you wait?”
She gives her shapely shoulders a slight shrug, but watches him with contemplative eyes as he rattles on.
“Imagine, my beloved, I thought that I should not be able to take you to the races. I was so rushed at the last moment. Oh! but they will be superb! Never has the track been more perfect; hard as a rock and not a flake of snow.”
“Indeed,” says the lady languidly. Putting out a lazy, be-ringed hand she draws back the curtain that hides her window. “It is superb,” she assents.
“You know how difficult it is to accomplish that,” continues the young officer, “with this cursed wind drifting the Ladoga snow. Still I must tell you that five hundred men have worked all night at it. Brave fellows!
“The journals say something of a three-horse-race.”
“Yes; the event of the day. But come—”
“We have still an hour,” she answers, and motions him to a seat beside her.
“No, no, at your feet, always at your feet, Princess Veta,” says the young man gayly, flinging his head back to better look into the opal-tinted eyes above him. Keeping time with a heavy finger, he sings in a not unmusical baritone, two lines from a French love song:
M’obeiras—tu mieux?”
But the fair Elisaveta is oblivious to the importance of his melody’s burthen. With her little pointed chin against the rose of her palm she sits lost in a world of reverie.
“Do you remember Sergius Hotzka?” she asks suddenly.
He shrugs his shoulders,
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