Original Short Stories, Volume IV: reference groups

The couple burst into tears, make excuses to every guest and hold back those who want to leave by offering the dumplings, which cheer the crowd up.

She dreams of fine dinners while her husband relishes his soup, and avoids her rich school friend out of envy; when he proudly brings home an invitation to an official ball, she throws it down.

She weeps that she has no gown, then calculates the largest sum she can ask without a refusal; her husband quietly gives up the savings he meant for a hunting gun.

With the gown ready she frets that she has no jewels and would rather not go than look poor; her husband suggests her rich friend, who lets her choose, and she falls for a diamond necklace.

She is the success of the ball, courted by everyone; at four in the morning, ashamed of her shabby wraps beside the other women's furs, she hurries out before her husband can find a cab.

The uncle collapses; the mother majestically orders the women out, the priest gives the last rites to what is probably a corpse, and the family give him a grand funeral praising his return to the faith.

She tells a passing neighbour the funeral is fixed for Saturday, bakes forty-eight dumplings, and finds her father still rattling whenever she looks in; her husband comes home asking if it is over.

The couple sleep beside the dying man; at dawn he is still alive, and the wife reassures her husband that the authorities will let them bury him on schedule, as they did for a neighbour.

The old man lingers; the couple get the mayor and the health officer to agree to backdate the death, but the next morning he still breathes as the black-clad mourners arrive.

For months she checks her figure in a broken mirror, stops going to confession and fancies every fellow servant, and a sharp-eyed boy most of all, has found her out.

She swears she would refuse the former lover if he came back that day; the farmer, puzzled, reasons that no girl would refuse her master over a slip that left no trace, and she still says she cannot.

Married, she feels like someone who has robbed her husband and will be found out; she visits her child twice a year; years later he grows moody and seems to bear her a grudge.

When she snaps at a neighbour's boy, her husband says she would not treat her own child so; convinced he knows, she flees to the church to pray.

The priest says her husband has already told him the trouble; back home she throws herself at her husband's feet, and he shouts that his grievance is that she has given him no children.

He beats her nightly; at last she throws him off and cries that she has had a child by the farmhand who deserted her, and that he took her by force.

Home in a shabby cab, she finds the necklace gone; they search everywhere, neither took the cab's number, and her husband walks the route until dawn in vain.

After a week's search they write to the friend that the clasp is being mended, then hunt the jewellers for a match and find one for thirty-six thousand francs, half of it borrowed.

He mortgages the rest of his life to usurers; the friend takes the replacement coolly without opening it; they dismiss the maid, move to a garret, and she learns the drudgery of the poor.

At the old man's bedside the son-in-law complains that the death comes in good working weather, and the couple reckon how many hours the funeral invitations will cost.

The wife suggests he start inviting mourners now and say the old man is already dead; he agrees, tells her to bake dumplings for the guests, and eats his bread without wasting a crumb.

The old man dies in the middle of the feast; the couple are relieved, and the wife's only grief is that she must bake four dozen more dumplings for the real funeral.

A young nobleman tells friends how his pompous royalist father read at dinner that his mother's brother, a spendthrift freethinker living with women in a cheap flat, was dying.

The father stays home so as not to compromise his political position; the mother summons a priest, and they agree that the uncle dying without the sacraments would be a public disaster for the family and their party.

In the kitchen the servant says the uncle will not want a priest and that his lady friends are with him; the mother blushes scarlet, and the amused son offers to go in first.

The uncle drives the priest out as a robber of souls; the two women take their places at his side; the family retreat to the kitchen to argue over another approach, until a new uproar breaks out.

The Protestant porter has brought his own minister to try his luck; the uncle is beside himself, the son throws both men out, and the servant runs in crying that the uncle is dying.

The twice-widowed farmer awkwardly proposes, saying a farm needs a mistress and a thrifty girl like her would make a man's fortune.

She collapses and says she cannot; he gives her until morning, sure she will accept a match that binds so profitable a worker to him.

When she recovers the farmer demands an answer; she admits there may be a lover, and he names every young man around until he hits on the farmhand who left.

That night the farmer comes to her bed and forces himself on her; they live as man and wife and he announces he has put up the banns.

The priest wins money to replace the church pews; the village teases the carpenter, the job goes to an outsider, and word spreads that his opinions are the only bar to his getting it.

Greed drives the carpenter into the church at dusk, where he feels in his enemy's house; he stammers that he has come about the work while the priest pretends not to understand.

The priest feigns outrage that the parish's one unbeliever should ask, then names his price: the carpenter must take communion publicly at high Mass on Sunday.

The carpenter agrees, asks to put it off, and balks at the confessional box; the priest, now friendly, insists on two confessions first but lets him make them in the parlour.

He shakes on the bargain, dreads it all the next day like a tooth-pulling, and at the parsonage is made to kneel, ashamed, not even knowing the opening prayer.

A dissolute soldier, broke and cut off by his father, takes leave to visit his pious sister and her mild husband, the only relatives he has never borrowed from, and privately judges the husband a fool.

Left to himself, he finds the town dead and regrets coming; the dinner is a meagre, greasy stew in a damp room, and his sister fusses that her husband is not made for society.

The keeper says he beat the boy and could not turn out the last of his blood; the master approves, and the keeper thrashes the nephew before him as an example.

Questioned commandment by commandment, he says he loves God as much as he can, though maybe not more than his children or a hundred francs, and never swears except when angry.

He works on Sundays, calls himself an honest man while admitting he pads bills for rich customers, and denies lying while admitting he tells tales when it pays.

The soldier despises everything beyond cafes and women; his sister greets him coldly and, alone with him, lectures him on the drinking and debts she has heard about.

Startled by voices, he finds an English traveller with three daughters; asked if he owns the ship, he says yes, lets them aboard, and is taken with the pretty eldest girl.

He walks into a well-lit house, is shown upstairs by a startled maid, and sits down among four ladies in evening dress who greet him with cool surprise.

His brother-in-law walks in and the soldier, gleeful at catching him and already counting on a loan or blackmail, waltzes him round the room; it is the house of a senior judge, and the brother-in-law cries that he is mad.

She proudly explains that she replaced the lost necklace and it took ten years to pay; her friend, moved, tells her the original was paste worth five hundred francs at most.

The priest hides behind the door while the son goes in and finds his uncle handsome and dignified in an armchair, guarded by two bold young women waiting for their omelette.

After ten years of night work and haggling they have paid everything, and she has grown coarse and old; meeting her still-lovely friend in the park, she decides to tell her the whole story.

He leaves for America after three months but keeps her image unchanged for twelve years; one spring, on a train, a stout mother with four girls asks whether he is the man she thinks.

She is the woman he loved; he is stunned, takes her hand and weeps for her lost youth, while she cheerfully says she is only a mother now and that he too has gone white.

He sees her old charm beginning in her eldest daughter, manages only commonplaces before his stop, and that night stares long into his mirror at his own old face.

They batter down the barricaded door and find a ragged, white-haired man they do not recognise until the daughter cries his name; he is mad, the old man is never found, and the girl nearly dies that summer.

Her mother dies and she bears a sickly premature child, leaves it with neighbours, claiming to be married, and returns to the farm aching constantly for it.

Her baby does not know her at first, then warms to her; she pours out her troubles to it, and on returning in tears is called into her master's room, where they sit in awkward silence.

The family leave the next day; he wanted to propose but did not; she married abroad and writes every New Year, never mentioning her husband, and he mourns the girl she was.

On the way down the young caretaker catches up with the mule carrying the family's daughter, who looks at him sadly, and hears none of the mother's long list of winter duties.

At the head of the descent everyone says goodbye; the young man whispers to the girl not to forget those up above, and she barely breathes 'No'.

Walking back, the old caretaker says winter is bearable if you accept it from the start, but the young man's thoughts follow the girl; next day he walks back to the pass to gaze down at her village.

He longs to go down while he still can; the two settle into cards and dominoes until four days of snow bury the inn and they must dig themselves out.

He tells the story of the wreck as though he had witnessed it; the family sketch the hold while he listens, enchanted, to the eldest girl talk, until she hears a sound.

Huddled against the stern in the freezing dark, he feels the girl trembling against him and is astonished to find himself happy to be in danger beside her.

The youngest daughter sobs; he forces his cloak on the eldest; the wind rises and each wave shakes the rotten hull, and he longs to take her in his arms.

The wreck lurches and the girl falls on him; he kisses her, thinking it the end; a rescue boat sent by the innkeeper finds them, and he is sorry to be saved.

He recalls watching women bathe at a seaside resort twelve years earlier, and his first sight of a young woman who instantly seemed the one he was born to love.

He is introduced and falls utterly in love, adoring even her gloves and veil; she is married, but her husband comes only at weekends and he gives the man no thought.

The boy mutters an apology and vanishes; at midnight the master wakes to find the straw-packed house deliberately set on fire, escapes through the window and fires his gun to wake the keeper.

The keeper jumps clear; they realise the nephew set the fire and that the old cook has burned to death, and then the nephew bolts out of the stable.

They become lovers until he tires of her and avoids her; finding herself pregnant, she goes to him in the stable at night, and when he laughs at his promise she half strangles him.

A huge pale wolf terrorises the province; the brothers' great hunts never find it, it strikes wherever they are not, and when it eats their own pigs they take it as an insult and begin to feel it has a man's mind.

The wolf breaks cover at dusk and the brothers race after it at a reckless gallop; the elder strikes his head on a branch and is killed outright.

Alone in the freezing wood with the body, the younger brother is seized by a fear he has never known; when the wolf crosses his path, his fear turns to rage and he gives chase with the corpse across his saddle.

In a moonlit valley he props his brother's body on a rock, crying 'Look, Jean!', strangles the wolf with his bare hands, and lays it at the dead man's feet.

The tide has surrounded the wreck; he stops the father from jumping into hidden channels, and they must wait aboard as night falls and the water deepens.

At midnight the father solemnly wishes him a happy New Year and the family sings their anthem into the dark; he asks the girl to sing alone, and her voice moves him.

All care forgotten, they climb to 2,350 metres; then the balloon plunges and they hurl out ballast, landing near a populous plain where strange lights flash on the rivers.

They mistake their racing shadow for a dog and steer by the pole star toward Belgium, calling out for directions; the narrator hears what he knows to be a strong wind.

The pilot nudges him to keep quiet so as not to frighten the passengers, since a storm is pursuing them; they pass over the dazzling furnaces of a manufacturing town.

They sight the sea ahead with thunder behind them; the pilot orders everything packed and hunts for a landing as they skim over a canal and a farm, scattering the animals.

By the fire he pictures every accident that could have befallen the old man, knowing twenty guides could search a week without finding him, and resolves to set out at one in the morning.

He packs food, rope and axe, waits trembling for the clock, then sets out with the dog and climbs for five hours to a summit his companion used to hunt from, where he watches the dawn.

He searches all day, calling and listening, walks over thirty miles, and spends the night half frozen in a snow hole with the dog, waking in despair.

She lies awake in terror, imagines she is bewitched, and at last climbs the fence and runs off across the moonlit fields crying out.

He climbs into the shattered hull, full of sand, and sits taking notes, shivering at the loneliness and the scratching of crabs.

They divide the chores and never quarrel; one morning the old man goes hunting, and the young one, alone, sleeps late, then grows frightened of the solitude and goes out to meet him.

Seized by fear of the cold and silence, he runs back sure the old man took another road, but the inn is cold and empty; he makes soup and keeps going out to look.

The dog bristles and growls at the door; the young man brandishes a chair at the unseen visitor, then drinks glass after glass of brandy until his courage returns.

He flings the door open to face the caller, is driven back by the wind and bolts it, not seeing the dog run out; hearing scratching and wailing, he barricades the door and windows with furniture.

In blind rage the keeper snatches up the gun and shoots the fleeing boy dead; he is acquitted at trial and leaves the country for good.

They try ashes in water, a shepherd's charmed loaf, a schoolmaster's secrets and a pilgrimage, all in vain, and she comes to believe she is being punished for her first sin.

Afraid he will die too, he struggles back to the inn and sleeps like the dead, until a voice crying his name wakes him; he shouts into the dark and hears nothing.

He bolts the door, certain the old man has just died calling to him, whether in farewell or to curse the one who did not search hard enough, and that the ghost will haunt the inn until the body is buried.

By day he sits tortured by the thought of the body in the snow; by night he paces, too afraid to open the door or lie in bed, until the cry comes again and he falls backward in terror.

For weeks he lives drunk to blot out the voice, until the brandy runs out and the terror returns worse, and he paces like a caged beast, defying the thing through the wall.

A worn-out peasant comes home through the farmyard and asks after his wife's dying father; she says the priest expects him to die before morning.

After dinner a hunting man begins a story about his lonely country property, kept by a severe retired policeman who lived there with his fourteen-year-old nephew.

He describes the sly, ugly nephew and the old woman who came to cook, and his yearly ride out to the lodge on a gloomy October day.

The same faithful greetings as every year, though the old cook has grown bent and frail; the keeper is plainly troubled but refuses to say why before dinner.

The keeper confesses that after months of hunting a poacher he followed his own nephew and caught him poaching on his master's land.

Left alone in the farm kitchen while the others work the fields, a servant girl finishes the dishes, feels oppressed by the heat and smells without knowing why, and steps out for air.

She watches the farmyard and the blossoming orchard, feels an animal urge to run and stretch, gathers the eggs and goes out to sit in the grass.

She lies down on straw in a ditch and dozes, and wakes to a farmhand who has long been courting her grabbing at her breast.

She slaps him; he apologises and they sit and talk of their master, their villages and families, and she grows sad thinking of her distant mother.

He kisses her again and she bloodies his nose; he admires her for it, and when she asks whether he really wants to marry her he says of course he does.

Overpowered, he swears to marry her at once, but a few days later she learns he has left the district for good, and she is left in misery fearing people will find out.

A letter comes that she cannot read; hoping it is from her lover, she has it read aloud and learns her mother is gravely ill; her master kindly lets her go home.

Teased about her supposed husband, she works like two, cuts waste and drives hard bargains until her master trusts her with the whole farm's business and calls her worth her weight in gold.

Her wages never rise though the farm prospers through her; she finally goes to ask for more, loses her nerve, and asks for a week's leave instead; her master says he will have something to say when she returns.

At dawn she wades into a pond to drown herself, but leeches on her legs drive her out screaming; a passing peasant tends her and drives her back to the farm.

He realises the barrenness is his own, then laughs and says they will fetch the child, since he had wanted to adopt one anyway, and is heartily glad.

A man reads a much-crossed letter from abroad at New Year and tells a friend how, twenty years before, his employer sent him off to inspect a wrecked ship instead of spending the holiday in the city.

With two hours to wait he wanders the old port town, then boards a small steamer for the island on a cold, foggy, dispiriting day.

Crossing a dead, flat sea, he questions the steamer's captain; his task is to judge for the insurers whether everything was done to refloat the stranded ship.

The captain points out the distant wreck and explains he can walk out to it dry-shod at low tide but must leave by a fixed hour or be caught by the returning sea.

After lunch he sets out across the vast drained sands, marvelling at the vanished sea, toward the wreck growing on the horizon like a stranded whale.

A village carpenter who wins laughs by mocking the priest and working through Mass is the priest's secret rival of ten years, and may be elected mayor.

He swears he has never deceived his wife, then admits visiting brothels in town, but always paying; he is absolved, does the work, and takes communion every month.

Faced with an evening of sermons and no coffee or liqueur, he invents an errand at the police station, escapes, and settles in the best cafe in town.

Bored by the quiet cafe, he drinks brandy until he wants a spree, gets an address for the town's girls from the waiter, and sets off unsure of the directions.

A pretty woman from a family of clerks, married to a minor clerk, suffers constantly over her shabby flat and dreams of rich rooms, footmen and admiring men.

Mother, son and priest drive to the uncle's building; the son, sent ahead, gets past a suspicious porter and up to a fifth-floor door barred by a huge, dirty servant.

The uncle says it is the parents' fault they never met; the son gently explains why his mother cannot come in, and the uncle seems to soften until the priest steps out too soon and the uncle roars at him.

Summoned by telegram, the narrator arrives at the gasworks where a crowd of hundreds watches a new balloon being inflated for a night flight.

He explains the balloon's new varnish and valve, all made in the pilot's own shops; self-appointed experts in the crowd predict it will come down before the city walls, and paper patches on small holes alarm the onlookers.

After dinner the basket is loaded with instruments, horns and food; it proves too heavy and one passenger has to climb out, much to his regret, before the pilot cuts the ropes.

The balloon shoots up over the city and the river; the pilot gloats over his varnish, and they tell whether they are rising by dropping cigarette papers.

At five hundred metres they hear wheels, whips, trains and children's voices distinctly, and answer the people calling up to them with their siren.

As night falls they argue over which town they are passing, hear dogs and cattle raise the alarm below, and the narrator feels a well-being he has never known.

The crew keep the balloon level with pinches of sand, delighting in how it answers the smallest weight while remaining the slave of the wind; their siren terrifies sleeping peasants.

They rise above the mist into starlight as the moon comes up below them, and float in a silent, weightless intoxication.

Dawn shows the fields racing past; peasants shout at them to come down, but they hold their course over an old canal city whose chimes greet them.

They drop, drag the anchor through a beet field and bounce to a halt; wary peasants and curious cows gather, and they catch a train home just before the storm breaks.

Two middle-aged friends dine on a summer evening; one laments growing old, and the other says he never noticed his own ageing until one simple, terrible revelation.

After a hunt dinner full of boastful tales, an old nobleman who never hunts explains that his family gave it up after his hunting-mad ancestor and that ancestor's brother lived for nothing else.

The two brothers would not stop a chase even for the birth of an heir; in a bitter winter the wolves grow bold and begin attacking people and stables.

He rides home laughing and weeping; the widow raises her son to hate hunting, a horror passed down to the narrator; a lady listening says it is fine to have passions like that.

The family who keep a mountain inn leave for the valley as winter closes the pass, leaving an old caretaker, a young one on his first winter, and a dog shut in till spring.

He crosses the snow-levelled valley, glances down at the buried village, searches the glacier for his companion, and calls out at dusk with no answer.

Days of howling back and forth end in silence and an empty-headed sleep; in spring the family return, surprised no one came down, and find a torn animal skeleton by the door.