O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES 1920
Chosen by the Society of Arts and Sciences
With an Introduction by Blanche Colton Williams
Author of "A Handbook on Story Writing,"
"Our Short Story Writers," Etc.
Associate Professor of English, Hunter College
of the City of New York.
Instructor in Story Writing, Columbia University
(Extension Teaching and Summer Session).
CONTENTS
EACH IN HIS GENERATION. By Maxwell Struthers Burt
"CONTACT!" By Frances Noyes Hart
THE CAMEL'S BACK. By F. Scott Fitzgerald
BREAK-NECK HILL. By Esther Forbes
BLACK ART AND AMBROSE. By Guy Gilpatric
THE JUDGMENT OF VULCAN. By Lee Foster Hartman
THE ARGOSIES. By Alexander Hull
ALMA MATER. By O. F. Lewis
SLOW POISON. By Alice Duer Miller
THE FACE IN THE WINDOW. By William Dudley Pelley
A MATTER OF LOYALTY. By Lawrence Perry
PROFESSOR TODD'S USED CAR. By L.H. Robbins
THE THING THEY LOVED. By "Marice Rutledge"
BUTTERFLIES. By "Rose Sidney"
NO FLOWERS. By Gordon Arthur Smith
FOOTFALLS. By Wilbur Daniel Steele
THE LAST ROOM OF ALL. By Stephen French Whitman
INTRODUCTION
O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES 1919, in its introduction,
rendered a brief account of the origin of this monument to O.
Henry's genius. Founded in 1918 by the Society of Arts and Sciences,
through the initiative of Managing Director John F. Tucker, it took
the form of two annual prizes of $500 and $250 for, respectively,
the best and second-best stories written by Americans and published
in America.
The Committee of Award sifted the periodicals of 1919 and found
thirty-two which, in their opinion, were superior specimens of
short-story art. The prize-winners, determined in the manner set
forth, were Margaret Prescott Montague's "England to America" and
Wilbur Daniel Steele's "For They Know Not What They Do." For these
stories the authors duly received the awards, on the occasion of the
O. Henry Memorial dinner which was given by the Society at the Hotel
Astor, June 2, 1920.
Since it appeared to be a fitting extension of the memorial to
incorporate in volume form the narratives chosen, they were included,
either by title or reprint, in the first book of the series of which
this is the second. Thus grouped, they are testimony to unprejudiced
selection on the part of the Committee of Award as they are evidence
of ability on the part of their authors.
The first volume has met favour from critics and from laymen. For
the recognition of tedious, if pleasant, hours necessary to a
meticulous survey of twelve months' brief fiction, the Committee of
Award are grateful, as they are indebted to the generous coöperation
of authors and publishers, but for whom the work would have been
impossible of continuation.
The committee express thanks for the approval which affirms that
"No more fitting tribute to the genius of William Sidney Porter
(O. Henry) could possibly have been devised than that of this
'Memorial Award,'" [1] which recognizes each story as "a definite
expression of American life--as O. Henry's was," [2] which knows by
inescapable logic that a story ranking second with five judges is
superior to one ranking first with only one of these. A number of
reviewers graciously showed awareness of this fact.
[Footnote 1: _New York Times_, June 2, 1920.]
[Footnote 2: _Chicago Tribune_, Paris Edition, August 7, 1920.]
The Committee of Award for 1920 consisted of
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Ph.D., Chairman |
EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt.D. | JUDGES
ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD |
MERLE ST. CROIX WRIGHT, D.D. |
and JOHN F. TUCKER, Managing Director of the Society,
Founder of the O. Henry Memorial.
As in preceding years the Committee held regular meetings at which
they weighed the merits of every story-candidate presented. By
January, 1921, one hundred and twenty-five remained, among which
those rated highest are as follows:[3]
Babcock, Edwina Stanton, Gargoyle (_Harper's_, Sept.)
Barrett, Richmond Brooks, The Daughter of the Bernsteins
(_Smart Set_, July).
"Belden, Jacques," The Duke's Opera (_Munsey's_, October).
Benét, Stephen Vincent, The Funeral of John Bixby (_Munsey's_, July).
Brooks, Jonathan, Bills Playable (_Collier's_, September 18).
Burt, Maxwell Struthers, A Dream or Two (_Harper's_, May);
Each in His Generation (_Scribner's_, July).
Cabell, James Branch, The Designs of Miramon (_Century_, August).
Child, Richard Washburn, A Thief Indeed (_Pictorial Review_, June).
Clausen, Carl, The Perfect Crime (_Saturday Evening Post_, Sept. 25).
Cram, Mildred, The Ember (_McCall's_, June); Odell (_Red
Book_, May); Wind (_Munsey's_, August).
Dobie, Charles Caldwell, Young China (_Ladies Home Journal_, August).
Edwards, Cleveland, Pride o' Name on Peachtree (_Live Stories_, Feb.).
Ferber, Edna, You've Got to Be Selfish (_McClure's_, April).
Fitzgerald, Scott, The Camel's Back (_Saturday Evening Post_,
Apr. 24); The Cut-Glass Bowl (_Scribner's_, May);
The Off-Shore Pirate (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 29).
Forbes, Esther, Break-Neck Hill (_Grinnell Review_, September).
Gilpatric, Guy, Black Art and Ambrose (_Collier's_, August 21).
Hartman, Lee Foster, The Judgment of Vulcan (_Harper's_, March).
Hergesheimer, Joseph, "Read Them and Weep" (_Century_, January).
Hooker, Brian, Branwen (_Romance_, June).
Hull, Alexander, The Argosies (_Scribner's_, September).
Hume, Wilkie, The Metamorphosis of High Yaller
(_Live Stories_, June).
Kabler, Hugh, Fools First (_Saturday Evening Post_, November 20).
Kerr, Sophie, Divine Waste (_Woman's Home Companion_, May).
La Motte, Widows and Orphans (_Century_, September).
Lewis, O. F., Alma Mater (_Red Book_, June). Sparks That Flash
in the Night (_Red Book_, October).
Marquis, Don Kale (_Everybody's_, September); Death and Old Man
Murtrie (_New Republic_, February 4).
Marshall, Edison, Brother Bill the Elk (_Blue Book_, May).
Means, E. K., The Ten-Share Horse (_Munsey's_, May).
Miller, Alice Duer, Slow Poison (_Saturday Evening Post_, June 12).
Montague, Margaret Prescott, Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge (_Atlantic
Monthly_, June).
[4]Mumford, Ethel Watts, A Look of the Copperleys (_Ladies Home
Journal_, April); Red Gulls (_Pictorial Review_, October).
Newell, Maude Woodruff, Salvage (_Green Book_, July).
Noyes, Frances Newbold, "Contact!" [5] (_Pictorial Review_, December).
Pelley, William Dudley, The Face in the Window (_Red Book_, May);
The Show-Down (_Red Book_, June).
Perry, Lawrence, The Real Game (_Everybody's_, July). A Matter of
Loyalty (_Red Book_, July); The Lothario of the Seabird
(_Ladies Home Journal_, August); The Rocks of Avalon
(_Red Book_, December).
Post, Melville Davisson, The House by the Loch (_Hearst's_, May).
Redington, Sarah, A Certain Rich Woman (_Outlook_, May 5).
Reid, M. F., Doodle Buys a Bull Pup (_Everybody's_, August).
Richardson, Norval, The Bracelet (_McClure's_, July).
Robbins, L.H., "Ain't This the Darnedest World?" (_American_, May);
Professor Todd's Used Car (_Everybody's_, July).
"Rutledge, Marice," The Thing They Loved (_Century_, May).
Ryan, Kathryn White, A Man of Cone (_Munsey's_, March).
Scarborough, Dorothy, The Drought (_Century_, May).
"Sidney, Rose," Butterflies (_Pictorial Review_, September).
Smith, Gordon Arthur, No Flowers (_Harper's_, May); The Aristocrat
(_Harper's_, November).
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, Both Judge and Jury (_Harper's_, January);
God's Mercy (_Pictorial Review_, July); Footfalls (_Pictorial
Review_, October).
Synon, Mary, On Scarlet Wings (_Red Book_, July).
Titus, Harold, Aliens (_Ladies Home Journal_, May).
Tuckerman, Arthur, Black Magic, (_Scribner's_, August).
Welles, Harriet, According to Ruskin (_Woman's Home Companion_,
June);
Distracting Adeline (_Scribner's_, May).
Whitman, Stephen French, The Last Room of All (_Harper's_, June).
Wilkes, Allene Tupper, Toop Goes Skating (_Woman's Home Companion_,
November).
[Footnote 3: Listed alphabetically by authors.]
[Footnote 4: A member of the Committee of Award, this author
refused as a matter of course to allow consideration of her stories
for republication here or for the prizes. But the other members
insist upon their being listed, and upon mention of "Red Gulls" as
one of the best stories of 1920.]
[Footnote 5: Reprinted as by Frances Noyes Hart.]
From this list were selected seventeen stories which, in the
judgment of the Committee, rank highest and which, therefore, are
reprinted in this volume.
Since, as will be recalled from the conditions of the award, only
American authors were considered, certain familiar foreign names are
conspicuously absent. Achmed Abdullah, Stacy Aumonier, F. Britten
Austin, Phyllis Bottome, Thomas Burke, Coningsby Dawson, Mrs. Henry
Dudeney, Lord Dunsany, John Galsworthy, Perceval Gibbon, Blasco
Ibañez, Maurice Level, A. Neil Lyons, Seumas MacManus, Leonard Merrick,
Maria Moravsky, Alfred Noyes, May Sinclair and Hugh Walpole all
illustrate recovery from the world war. But with their stories the
Committee had nothing to do. The Committee cannot forbear mention,
however, of "Under the Tulips" (_Detective Stories_, February 10),
one of the two best horror specimens of the year. It is by an
Englishwoman, May Edginton.
Half a dozen names from the foreign list just given are synonymous
with the best fiction of the period. Yet the short story as
practised in its native home continues to excel the short story
written in other lands. The English, the Russian, the French, it is
being contended in certain quarters, write better literature. They
do not, therefore, write better stories. If literature is of a
magnificent depth and intricate subtlety in a measure proportionate
to its reflection of the vast complexity of a nation that has
existed as such for centuries, conceivably it will be facile and
clever in a measure proportionate to its reflection of the spirit of
the commonwealth which in a few hundred years has acquired a place
with age-old empires.
The American short-story is "simple, economical, and brilliantly
effective," H.L. Mencken admits.[6] "Yet the same hollowness that
marks the American novel," he continues, "also marks the short story."
And of "many current makers of magazine short stories," he
asseverates, "such stuff has no imaginable relation to life as men
live it in the world." He further comments, "the native author of any
genuine force and originality is almost invariably found to be under
strong foreign influences, either English or Continental."
With due regard for the justice of this slant--that of a student of
Shaw, Ibsen, and Nietzsche--we believe that the best stories written
in America to-day reflect life, even life that is sordid and dreary
or only commonplace. In the New York _Evening Post_[7] the present
writer observed:
"A backward glance over the short stories of the preceding twelve
months discovers two facts. There are many of them, approximately
between fifteen hundred and two thousand; there are, comparatively,
few of merit."
[Footnote 6: The National Letters, in _Prejudices_, second series,
Knopf, N.Y., 1920.]
[Footnote 7: April 24, 1920.]
"You have looked from the rear platform of the limited, across the
widening distance, at a town passed a moment ago. A flourishing city,
according to the prospectus; a commonplace aggregation of
architecture, you say; respectable middle-class homes; time-serving
cottages built on the same plan; a heaven-seeking spire; perhaps a
work of art in library or townhall. You are rather glad that you
have left it behind; rather certain that soon you will have rolled
through another, its counterpart.
"But there may be hope, here, of sorts. For a typical American town
represents twentieth century life and development, just as current
short stories reflect conditions. If the writer failed to represent
his age, to reflect its peculiar images, he would not serve it truly."
It is significant that these words preceded by only a few months the
publication of Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street," which illustrates in
a big and popular way the point in question. Work of satire that it
is, it cannot but hold out a solution of the problem presented: in
the sweep of the land to the Rockies lies a "dominion which will
rise to unexampled greatness when other empires have grown senile."
America is young; its writers are young. But they are reflecting the
many-coloured, multiform life of America, in journalism and in art.
Quite naturally, they profit by all that has preceded them in other
literatures. Since their work stands rooted in romanticism it may
legitimately heighten the effects and lights of everyday life.
A glance at the stories republished by the O. Henry Memorial Award
Committee for 1920 will reveal their varied nature. The _genus
Africanus_ is represented by "Black Art and Ambrose," which has a
close second in another on the list, "The Metamorphosis of High
Yaller," and a third in "The Ten-Share Horse" of E.K. Means. The
tabulation reveals a number of cosmic types--Jewish, Chinese, English,
French, Irish, Italian, American. The Chinese character is even more
ubiquitous than in 1919, but the tales wherein he figures appear to
the Committee to be the last drops in the bucket. Two exceptions
occur: "Young China," by Charles Caldwell Dobie, and "Widows and
Orphans," by Ellen La Motte. The former knows San Francisco Chinatown,
the latter is acquainted with the Oriental at home. One of the
Committee regards "The Daughter of the Bernsteins" as the best story
of Jewish character. Another sees in it a certain crudeness. Its
companions in the year were the tales of Bruno Lessing, Montague
Glass, and--in particular--a story by Leon Kelley entitled "Speeches
Ain't Business" (_Pictorial Review_, July).
But this note on the list is a digression. With regard to the
stories reprinted, "The Last Room of All" illustrates old-world
influence, surely, in its recountal of events in an age long past,
the time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival
of old forms, old customs, it is a masquerade. But behold that it is
a gorgeous blood-coloured masquerade and that Cercamorte is a
distinct portrait of the swash-buckler hero of those times.
The young Americans in "The Camel's Back" support a critical thesis
made for their author that he is evolving an idiom. It is the idiom
of young America. If you are over thirty, read one of this prodigy's
ten-thousand word narratives and discover for the first time that
you are separated by a hopeless chasm from the infant world.
"Professor Todd's Used Car" and "Alma Mater" are two of the numerous
stories published in 1920 which take up the cudgels for the
undertrodden college professor. Incidentally, it is interesting to
read from a letter of Mr. Lewis: "The brevity--and the twist in the
plot at the end--were consciously patterned on O. Henry's methods."
Without further enumeration of the human types, it is a matter of
observation that they exist in many moods and ages as they exist in
real life. A revenant who lived one hundred years ago might pick up
this volume and secure a fairly accurate idea of society to-day. A
visitor from another country might find it a guide to national
intelligence and feeling.
A few stories appealed to the Committee for their poetry. "The
Funeral of John Bixby," by Stephen Vincent Benét, and "The Duke's
Opera," by "Jacques Belden" (the first an allegorical fantasy and
the second a poetic-romance) are at the head of this division. With
these should be included Don Marquis's "Death and Old Man Murtrie,"
for its sardonic allegory, and "The Designs of Miramon," by James
Branch Cabell, for its social satire. Individual members of the
Committee would have liked to include these--different members
preferring different ones of the four--but the Committee as a whole
saw the allegory or satire or poetry predominant over story values.
The mysterious and the tragic are found in the work of Mildred Cram
and Wilbur Daniel Steele. "Odell" and "Wind" illustrate Miss Cram's
particular genius in this direction: but "The Ember," it is voted,
ranks first of her publications. Mr. Steele's "Both Judge and Jury"
and "God's Mercy" are exotic, perhaps, but the atmosphere he creates
is beguiling in comparison with that of mere everyday. "Footfalls"
was selected out of an embarrassment of riches offered by this author.
The best horror story of the year is Rose Sidney's "Butterflies." It
is a Greek tragedy, unrelieved, to be taken or left without
palliation.
Athletics, no one will deny, constitutes a definite phase of
American life. The sport-struggle is best illustrated in the fiction
of Lawrence Perry, whether it be that of a polo match, tennis game,
or crew race. "A Matter of Loyalty" is representative of this contest,
and in the combined judgment of the Committee the highest ranking of
all Mr. Perry's stories. "Bills Playable," by Jonathan Brooks,
conceives athletics in a more humorous spirit.
Animal stories fill page upon page of 1920 magazines. Edison Marshall,
represented in the 1919 volume, by "The Elephant Remembers," has
delivered the epic of "Brother Bill the Elk." In spite of its length,
some fifteen thousand words, the Committee were mightily tempted to
request it for republication. Its Western author knows the animals in
their native lairs. "Break-Neck Hill," for which a member of the
Committee suggests the more poignant "Heart-Break Hill" as title,
expresses sympathy for the horse in a way the Committee believe
hitherto unexploited. "Aliens" received more votes as the best dog
story of the year.
Among a number of sea-tales are those by Richard Matthews Hallet,
wherein Big Captain Hat appears. The woman sea-captain is by way of
being, for the moment, a novel figure.
Anecdotal stories and very brief tales appear to have received
editorial sanction in 1920. "No Flowers" is of the former _genre_,
and whereas certain of the Committee see in the same author's
"The Aristocrat" a larger story, they agree with the majority that
the scintillance of this well-polished gem should give it setting
here.
Variety of setting and diversity of emotion the reader will find in
greater measure, perhaps, than in the first volume of this series.
"Butterflies," for example, spells unrelieved horror; "The Face in
the Window" demands sympathetic admiration for its heroine; to read
"Contact!" means to suffer the familiar Aristotelian purging of the
emotions through tears. And their locales are as widely dissimilar
as are their emotional appeals. With these, all of which are
reprinted herein, the reader will do well to compare Dorothy
Scarborough's "Drought," for the pathos of a situation brought about
by the elements of nature in Texas.
The Committee could not agree upon the first and second prize stories.
The leaders were: "Each in His Generation," "Contact!" "The Thing
They Loved," "The Last Room of All," "Slow Poison," "God's Mercy"
and "Alma Mater." No story headed more than one list. The point
system, to which resort was made, resulted in the first prize
falling to "Each in His Generation," by Maxwell Struthers Burt, and
the second to "Contact!", by Frances Newbold Noyes (now Frances
Noyes Hart).
Mr. Burt's story of Henry McCain and his nephew Adrian compresses
within legitimate story limits the antagonism between successive
generations. Each representative, bound by traditions and customs of
the particular age to which he belongs, is bound also by the chain
of inheritance. One interested in the outcome of the struggle
between the inexorable thrall of "period" and the inevitable bond of
race will find the solution of the problem satisfactory, as will the
reader who enjoys the individual situation and wishes most to find
out whether Uncle Henry left his money to Adrian or rejected that
choice for marriage with the marvellous lady of his own era.
"Contact!" is the first story by the author of "My A.E.F." and in
its every line testifies to the vital interest Miss Noyes had and
has in the boys who won the war--whether American, French or English.
So much one would know from a single rapid reading. A critic might
guess that it would have been impossible as a first story if the
author had not lived much abroad, as she has done since she was very
much of a child. At Oxford, or in the home of Gaston Paris, or
travelling around the globe, she received the foundation for the
understanding sympathy which endeared her as "Petite" to her soldier
boys. A critic might also aver that the steady moving forward of the
action, joined to the backward progress, yet both done so surely,
could not have been achieved without years of training. And in this
respect the narrative is little short of being a _tour de force_. But,
as a matter of fact. Miss Noyes dreamed the whole thing! Her
antecedent experience proved greater than mere technique.
The Committee wish to comment upon the irregularity of the output of
fiction from month to month. May brought forth the greatest number
of good stories, as November reaped the fewest. They wish, also, to
register notice of the continued flexibility of the short story form.
"The Judgment of Vulcan," at one extreme, in some thirteen thousand
words none the less relates a short story; "Alma Mater," at the other,
accomplishes the same end in two thousand. It is a matter of record
that the Committee discovered a number of excellent examples
containing not more than two thirds this latter number, a fact that
argues against the merging of the short story and the novel. Finally,
the Committee believe the fiction of the year 1920 superior to that
of 1919.
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS,
NEW YORK CITY,
March 3, 1921.
EACH IN HIS GENERATION
BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
From _Scribner's Magazine_
Every afternoon at four o'clock, except when the weather was very
bad--autumn, winter, and spring--old Mr. Henry McCain drove up to
the small, discreet, polished front door, in the small, discreet,
fashionable street in which lived fairly old Mrs. Thomas Denby; got
out, went up the white marble steps, rang the bell, and was admitted
into the narrow but charming hall--dim turquoise-blue velvet
panelled into the walls, an etching or two: Whistler, Brangwyn--by a
trim parlour-maid. Ten generations, at least, of trim parlour-maids
had opened the door for Mr. McCain. They had seen the sparkling
victoria change, not too quickly, to a plum-coloured limousine; they
had seen Mr. McCain become perhaps a trifle thinner, the colour in
his cheeks become a trifle more confined and fixed, his white hair
grow somewhat sparser, but beyond that they had seen very little
indeed, although, when they had left Mr. McCain in the drawing-room
with the announcement that Mrs. Denby would be down immediately, and
were once again seeking the back of the house, no doubt their
eyebrows, blonde, brunette, or red, apexed to a questioning angle.
In the manner of youth the parlour-maids had come, worked, fallen in
love and departed, but Mr. McCain, in the manner of increasing age,
had if anything grown more faithful and exact to the moment. If he
were late the fraction of five minutes, one suspected that he
regretted it, that it came near to spoiling his entire afternoon. He
was not articulate, but occasionally he expressed an idea and the
most common was that he "liked his things as he liked them";
his eggs, in other words, boiled just so long, no more--after
sixty years of inner debate on the subject he had apparently
arrived at the conclusion that boiled eggs were the only kind of eggs
permissible--his life punctual and serene. The smallest manifestation
of unexpectedness disturbed him. Obviously that was one reason why,
after a youth not altogether constant, he had become so utterly
constant where Mrs. Denby was concerned. She had a quality of
perenniality, charming and assuring, even to each strand of her
delicate brown hair. Grayness should have been creeping upon her,
but it was not. It was doubtful if Mr. McCain permitted himself,
even secretly, to wonder why. Effects, fastidious and constant, were
all he demanded from life.
This had been going on for twenty years--this afternoon call; this
slow drive afterward in the park; this return by dusk to the shining
small house in the shining small street; the good-by, reticently
ardent, as if it were not fully Mr. McCain's intention to return
again in the evening. Mr. McCain would kiss Mrs. Denby's hand--slim,
lovely, with a single gorgeous sapphire upon the third finger.
"Good-by, my dear," he would say, "you have given me the most
delightful afternoon of my life." For a moment Mrs. Denby's hand
would linger on the bowed head; then Mr. McCain would straighten up,
smile, square his shoulders in their smart, young-looking coat, and
depart to his club, or the large, softly lit house where he dwelt
alone. At dinner he would drink two glasses of champagne. Before he
drained the last sip of the second pouring he would hold the glass
up to the fire, so that the bronze coruscations at the heart of the
wine glowed like fireflies in a gold dusk. One imagined him saying
to himself: "A perfect woman! A perfect woman--God bless her!"
Saying "God bless" any one, mind you, with a distinct warming of the
heart, but a thoroughly late-Victorian disbelief in any god to bless....
At least, you thought as much.
And, of course, one had not the slightest notion whether he--old
Mr. Henry McCain--was aware that this twenty years of devotion on
his part to Mrs. Denby was the point upon which had come to focus
the not inconsiderable contempt and hatred for him of his nephew
Adrian.
It was an obvious convergence, this devotion of all the traits which
composed, so Adrian imagined, the despicable soul that lay beneath
his uncle's unangled exterior: undeviating self-indulgence; secrecy;
utter selfishness--he was selfish even to the woman he was supposed
to love; that is, if he was capable of loving any one but himself--a
bland hypocrisy; an unthinking conformation to the dictates of an
unthinking world. The list could be multiplied. But to sum it up,
here was epitomized, beautifully, concretely, the main and minor
vices of a generation for which Adrian found little pity in his heart;
a generation brittle as ice; a generation of secret diplomacy; a
generation that in its youth had covered a lack of bathing by a vast
amount of perfume. That was it--! That expressed it perfectly! The
just summation! Camellias, and double intentions in speech, and
unnecessary reticences, and refusals to meet the truth, and a
deliberate hiding of uglinesses!
Most of the time Adrian was too busy to think about his uncle at
all--he was a very busy man with his writing: journalistic writing;
essays, political reviews, propaganda--and because he was busy he
was usually well-content, and not uncharitable, except professionally;
but once a month it was his duty to dine with his uncle, and then,
for the rest of the night, he was disturbed, and awoke the next
morning with the dusty feeling in his head of a man who has been
slightly drunk. Old wounds were recalled, old scars inflamed; a
childhood in which his uncle's figure had represented to him the
terrors of sarcasm and repression; a youth in which, as his guardian,
his uncle had deprecated all first fine hot-bloodednesses and
enthusiasms; a young manhood in which he had been told cynically
that the ways of society were good ways, and that the object of life
was material advancement; advice which had been followed by the
stimulus of an utter refusal to assist financially except where
absolutely necessary. There had been willingness, you understand, to
provide a gentleman's education, but no willingness to provide
beyond that any of a gentleman's perquisites. That much of his early
success had been due to this heroic upbringing, Adrian was too
honest not to admit, but then--by God, it had been hard! All the
colour of youth! No time to dream--except sorely! Some warping, some
perversion! A gasping, heart-breaking knowledge that you could not
possibly keep up with the people with whom, paradoxically enough,
you were supposed to spend your leisure hours. Here was the making
of a radical. And yet, despite all this, Adrian dined with his uncle
once a month.
The mere fact that this was so, that it could be so, enraged him. It
seemed a renunciation of all he affirmed; an implicit falsehood. He
would have liked very much to have got to his feet, standing firmly
on his two long, well-made legs, and have once and for all delivered
himself of a final philippic. The philippic would have ended
something like this:
"And this, sir, is the last time I sacrifice any of my good hours to
you. Not because you are old, and therefore think you are wise, when
you are not; not because you are blind and besotted and damned--a
trunk of a tree filled with dry rot that presently a clean wind will
blow away; not because your opinions, and the opinions of all like
you, have long ago been proven the lies and idiocies that they are;
not even because you haven't one single real right left to live--I
haven't come to tell you these things, although they are true; for
you are past hope and there is no use wasting words upon you; I have
come to tell you that you bore me inexpressibly. (That would be the
most dreadful revenge of all. He could see his uncle's face!) That
you have a genius for taking the wrong side of every question, and I
can no longer endure it. I dissipate my time. Good-night!"
He wouldn't have said it in quite so stately a way, possibly, the
sentences would not have been quite so rounded, but the context
would have been the same.
Glorious; but it wasn't said. Instead, once a month, he got into his
dinner-jacket, brushed his hair very sleekly, walked six blocks,
said good-evening to his uncle's butler, and went on back to the
library, where, in a room rich with costly bindings, and smelling
pleasantly of leather, and warmly yellow with the light of two
shaded lamps, he would find his uncle reading before a crackling
wood fire. What followed was almost a formula, an exquisite
presentation of stately manners, an exquisite avoidance of any topic
which might cause a real discussion. The dinner was invariably gentle,
persuasive, a thoughtful gastronomic achievement. Heaven might
become confused about its weather, and about wars, and things like
that, but Mr. McCain never became confused about his menus. He had a
habit of commending wine. "Try this claret, my dear fellow, I want
your opinion.... A drop of this Napoleonic brandy won't hurt you a
bit." He even sniffed the bouquet before each sip; passed, that is,
the glass under his nose and then drank. But Adrian, with a
preconceived image of the personality back of this, and the memory
of too many offences busy in his mind, saw nothing quaint or amusing.
His gorge rose. Damn his uncle's wines, and his mushrooms, and his
soft-footed servants, and his house of nuances and evasions, and his
white grapes, large and outwardly perfect, and inwardly sentimental
as the generation whose especial fruit they were. As for himself, he
had a recollection of ten years of poverty after leaving college; a
recollection of sweat and indignities; he had also a recollection of
some poor people whom he had known.
Afterward, when the dinner was over, Adrian would go home and awake
his wife, Cecil, who, with the brutal honesty of an honest woman,
also some of the ungenerosity, had early in her married life flatly
refused any share in the ceremonies described. Cecil would lie in
her small white bed, the white of her boudoir-cap losing itself in
the white of the pillow, a little sleepy and a little angrily
perplexed at the perpetual jesuitical philosophy of the male.
"If you feel that way," she would ask, "why do you go there, then?
Why don't you banish your uncle utterly?" She asked this not without
malice, her long, violet, Slavic eyes widely open, and her red mouth,
a trifle too large, perhaps, a trifle cruel, fascinatingly
interrogative over her white teeth. She loved Adrian and had at times,
therefore, the right and desire to torture him. She knew perfectly
well why he went. He was his uncle's heir, and until such time as
money and other anachronisms of the present social system were done
away with, there was no use throwing a fortune into the gutter, even
if by your own efforts you were making an income just sufficiently
large to keep up with the increased cost of living.
Sooner or later Adrian's mind reverted to Mrs. Denby. This was
usually after he had been in bed and had been thinking for a while
in the darkness. He could not understand Mrs. Denby. She affronted
his modern habit of thought.
"The whole thing is so silly and adventitious!"
"What thing?"
Adrian was aware that his wife knew exactly of what he was talking,
but he had come to expect the question. "Mrs. Denby and my uncle."
He would grow rather gently cross. "It has always reminded me of
those present-day sword-and-cloak romances fat business men used to
write about ten years ago and sell so enormously--there's an
atmosphere of unnecessary intrigue. What's it all about? Here's the
point! Why, if she felt this way about things, didn't she divorce
that gentle drunkard of a husband of hers years ago and marry my
uncle outright and honestly? Or why, if she couldn't get a
divorce--which she could--didn't she leave her husband and go with
my uncle? Anything in the open! Make a break--have some courage of
her opinions! Smash things; build them up again! Thank God nowadays,
at least, we have come to believe in the cleanness of surgery rather
than the concealing palliatives of medicine. We're no longer--we
modern people--afraid of the world; and the world can never hurt for
any length of time any one who will stand up to it and tell it
courageously to go to hell. No! It comes back and licks hands."
"I'll tell you why. My uncle and Mrs. Denby are the typical moral
cowards of their generation. There's selfishness, too. What a
travesty of love! Of course there's scandal, a perpetual scandal;
but it's a hidden, sniggering scandal they don't have to meet face
to face; and that's all they ask of life, they, and people like
them--never to have to meet anything face to face. So long as they
can bury their heads like ostriches! ... Faugh!" There would be a
moment's silence; then Adrian would complete his thought. "In my
uncle's case," he would grumble in the darkness, "one phase of the
selfishness is obvious. He couldn't even get himself originally, I
suppose, to face the inevitable matter-of-fact moments of marriage.
It began when he was middle-aged, a bachelor--I suppose he wants the
sort of Don Juan, eighteen-eighty, perpetual sort of romance that
doesn't exist outside the brains of himself and his like....
Camellias!"
Usually he tried to stir up argument with his wife, who in these
matters agreed with him utterly; even more than agreed with him,
since she was the escaped daughter of rich and stodgy people, and
had insisted upon earning her own living by portrait-painting.
Theoretically, therefore, she was, of course, an anarchist. But at
moments like the present her silent assent and the aura of slight
weariness over an ancient subject which emanated from her in the dusk,
affronted Adrian as much as positive opposition.
"Why don't you try to understand me?"
"I do, dearest!"--a pathetic attempt at eager agreement.
"Well, then, if you do, why is the tone of your voice like that? You
know by now what I think. I'm not talking convention; I believe
there are no laws higher than the love of a man for a woman. It
should seek expression as a seed seeks sunlight. I'm talking about
honesty; bravery; a willingness to accept the consequences of one's
acts and come through; about the intention to sacrifice for love
just what has to be sacrificed. What's the use of it otherwise?
That's one real advance the modern mind has made, anyhow, despite
all the rest of the welter and uncertainty."
"Of course, dearest."
He would go on. After a while Cecil would awake guiltily and inject
a fresh, almost gay interest into her sleepy voice. She was not so
unfettered as not to dread the wounded esteem of the unlistened-to
male. She would lean over and kiss Adrian.
"Do go to sleep, darling! What's the sense? Pretty soon your uncle
will be dead--wretched old man! Then you'll never have to think of
him again." Being a childless woman, her red, a trifle cruel mouth
would twist itself in the darkness into a small, secretive, maternal
smile.
But old Mr. Henry McCain didn't die; instead he seemed to be caught
up in the condition of static good health which frequently
companions entire selfishness and a careful interest in oneself. His
butler died, which was very annoying. Mr. McCain seemed to consider
it the breaking of a promise made fifteen or so years before. It was
endlessly a trouble instructing a new man, and then, of course,
there was Adlington's family to be looked after, and taxes had gone
up, and Mrs. Adlington was a stout woman who, despite the fact that
Adlington, while alive, had frequently interrupted Mr. McCain's
breakfast newspaper reading by asserting that she was a person of no
character, now insisted upon weeping noisily every time Mr. McCain
granted her an interview. Also, and this was equally unexpected,
since one rather thought he would go on living forever, like one of
the damper sort of fungi, Mr. Denby came home from the club one
rainy spring night with a slight cold and died, three days later,
with extraordinary gentleness.
"My uncle," said Adrian, "is one by one losing his accessories.
After a while it will be his teeth."
Cecil was perplexed. "I don't know exactly what to do," she
complained. "I don't know whether to treat Mrs. Denby as a bereaved
aunt, a non-existent family skeleton, or a released menace. I dare
say now, pretty soon, she and your uncle will be married. Meanwhile,
I suppose it is rather silly of me not to call and see if I can help
her in any way. After all, we do know her intimately, whether we
want to or not, don't we? We meet her about all the time, even if
she wasn't motoring over to your uncle's place in the summer when we
stop there."
So she went, being fundamentally kindly and fundamentally curious.
She spoke of the expedition as "a descent upon Fair Rosamund's tower."
The small, yellow-panelled drawing-room, where she awaited Mrs.
Denby's coming, was lit by a single silver vase-lamp under an orange
shade and by a fire of thin logs, for the April evening was damp
with a hesitant rain. On the table, near the lamp, was a silver vase
with three yellow tulips in it, and Cecil, wandering about, came
upon a double photograph frame, back of the vase, that made her gasp.
She picked it up and stared at it. Between the alligator edgings,
facing each other obliquely, but with the greatest amity, were
Mr. Thomas Denby in the fashion of ten years before, very handsome,
very well-groomed, with the startled expression which any definite
withdrawal from his potational pursuits was likely to produce upon
his countenance, and her uncle-in-law, Mr. Henry McCain, also in the
fashion of ten years back. She was holding the photographs up to the
light, her lips still apart, when she heard a sound behind her, and,
putting the frame back guiltily, turned about. Mrs. Denby was
advancing toward her. She seemed entirely unaware of Cecil's
malfeasance; she was smiling faintly; her hand was cordial, grateful.
"You are very good," she murmured. "Sit here by the fire. We will
have some tea directly."
Cecil could not but admit that she was very lovely; particularly
lovely in the black of her mourning, with her slim neck, rising up
from its string of pearls, to a head small and like a delicate
white-and-gold flower. An extraordinarily well-bred woman, a sort of
misty Du Maurier woman, of a type that had become almost non-existent,
if ever it had existed in its perfection at all. And, curiously
enough, a woman whose beauty seemed to have been sharpened by many
fine-drawn renunciations. Now she looked at her hands as if expecting
Cecil to say something.
"I think such calls as this are always very useless, but then--"
"Exactly--but then! They mean more than anything else in the world,
don't they? When one reaches fifty-five one is not always used to
kindness.... You are very kind...." She raised her eyes.
Cecil experienced a sudden impulsive warmth. "After all, what did
she or any one else know about other peoples' lives? Poor souls!
What a base thing life often was!"
"I want you to understand that we are always so glad, both Adrian
and myself.... Any time we can help in any way, you know--"
"Yes, I think you would. You--I have watched you both. You don't mind,
do you? I think you're both rather great people--at least, my idea
of greatness."
Cecil's eyes shone just a little; then she sat back and drew
together her eager, rather childish mouth. This wouldn't do! She had
not come here to encourage sentimentalization. With a determined
effort she lifted her mind outside the circle of commiseration which
threatened to surround it. She deliberately reset the conversation
to impersonal limits. She was sure that Mrs. Denby was aware of her
intention, adroitly concealed as it was. This made her uncomfortable,
ashamed. And yet she was irritated with herself. Why should she
particularly care what this woman thought in ways as subtle as this?
Obvious kindness was her intention, not mental charity pursued into
tortuous by-paths. And, besides, her frank, boyish cynicism, its
wariness, revolted, even while she felt herself flattered at the
prospect of the confidences that seemed to tremble on Mrs. Denby's
lips. It wouldn't do to "let herself in for anything"; to "give
herself away." No! She adopted a manner of cool, entirely reflective
kindliness. But all along she was not sure that she was thoroughly
successful. There was a lingering impression that Mrs. Denby was
penetrating the surface to the unwilling interest beneath. Cecil
suspected that this woman was trained in discriminations and
half-lights to which she and her generation had joyfully made
themselves blind. She felt uncomfortably young; a little bit smiled
at in the most kindly of hidden ways. Just as she was leaving, the
subversive softness came close to her again, like a wave of too much
perfume as you open a church-door; as if some one were trying to
embrace her against her will.
"You will understand," said Mrs. Denby, "that you have done the very
nicest thing in the world. I am horribly lonely. I have few women
friends. Perhaps it is too much to ask--but if you could call again
sometime. Yes ... I would appreciate it so greatly."
She let go of Cecil's hand and walked to the door, and stood with
one long arm raised against the curtain, her face turned toward the
hall.
"There is no use," she said, "in attempting to hide my husband's life,
for every one knows what it was, but then--yes, I think you will
understand. I am a childless woman, you see; he was infinitely
pathetic."
Cecil felt that she must run away, instantly. "I do--" she said
brusquely. "I understand more than other women. Perfectly! Good-by!"
She found herself brushing past the latest trim parlour-maid, and
out once more in the keen, sweet, young dampness. She strode briskly
down the deserted street. Her fine bronze eyebrows were drawn down
to where they met. "Good Lord! Damn!"--Cecil swore very prettily and
modernly--"What rotten taste! Not frankness, whatever it might seem
outwardly; not frankness, but devious excuses! Some more of Adrian's
hated past-generation stuff! And yet--no! The woman was
sincere--perfectly! She had meant it--that about her husband. And
she _was_ lovely--and she was fine, too! It was impossible to deny it.
But--a childless woman! About that drunken tailor's model of a
husband! And then--Uncle Henry! ..." Cecil threw back her head; her
eyes gleamed in the wet radiance of a corner lamp; she laughed
without making a sound, and entirely without amusement.
But it is not true that good health is static, no matter how
carefully looked after. And, despite the present revolt against the
Greek spirit, Time persists in being bigotedly Greek. The
tragedy--provided one lives long enough--is always played out to its
logical conclusion. For every hour you have spent, no matter how
quietly or beautifully or wisely, Nemesis takes toll in the end. You
peter out; the engine dulls; the shining coin wears thin. If it's
only that it is all right; you are fortunate if you don't become
greasy, too, or blurred, or scarred. And Mr. McCain had not spent
all his hours wisely or beautifully, or even quietly, underneath the
surface. He suddenly developed what he called "acute indigestion."
"Odd!" he complained, "and exceedingly tiresome! I've been able to
eat like an ostrich all my life." Adrian smiled covertly at the
simile, but his uncle was unaware that it was because in Adrian's
mind the simile applied to his uncle's conscience, not his stomach.
It _was_ an odd disease, that "acute indigestion." It manifested
itself by an abrupt tragic stare in Mr. McCain's eyes, a whiteness of
cheek, a clutching at the left side of the breast; it resulted also
in his beginning to walk very slowly indeed. One day Adrian met
Carron, his uncle's physician, as he was leaving a club after
luncheon. Carron stopped him. "Look here, Adrian," he said,
"is that new man of your uncle's--that valet, or whatever he is--a
good man?"
Adrian smiled. "I didn't hire him," he answered, "and I couldn't
discharge him if I wanted--in fact, any suggestion of that kind on my
part, would lead to his employment for life. Why?"
"Because," said Carron, "he impresses me as being rather young and
flighty, and some day your uncle is going to die suddenly. He may
last five years; he may snuff out to-morrow. It's his heart." His
lips twisted pityingly. "He prefers to call it by some other name,"
he added, "and he would never send for me again if he knew I had
told you, but you ought to know. He's a game old cock, isn't he?"
"Oh, very!" agreed Adrian. "Yes, game! Very, indeed!"
He walked slowly down the sunlit courtway on which the back door of
the club opened, swinging his stick and meditating. Spring was
approaching its zenith. In the warm May afternoon pigeons tumbled
about near-by church spires which cut brown inlays into the soft
blue sky. There was a feeling of open windows; a sense of unseen
tulips and hyacinths; of people playing pianos.... Too bad, an old
man dying that way, his hand furtively seeking his heart, when all
this spring was about! Terror in possession of him, too! People like
that hated to die; they couldn't see anything ahead. Well, Adrian
reflected, the real tragedy of it hadn't been his fault. He had
always been ready at the slightest signal to forget almost
everything--yes, almost everything. Even that time when, as a
sweating newspaper reporter, he had, one dusk, watched in the park
his uncle and Mrs. Denby drive past in the cool seclusion of a
shining victoria. Curious! In itself the incident was small, but it
had stuck in his memory more than others far more serious, as
concrete instances are likely to do.... No, he wasn't sorry; not a
bit! He was glad, despite the hesitation he experienced in saying to
himself the final word. He had done his best, and this would mean
his own release and Cecil's. It would mean at last the blessed
feeling that he could actually afford a holiday, and a little
unthinking laughter, and, at thirty-nine, the dreams for which, at
twenty-five, he had never had full time. He walked on down the
courtway more briskly.