O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 Part 5

d.a.m.n fool! Don't care if you do hate swearing--d.a.m.n fools are d.a.m.n fools, and there's an end to it. All those statistics are sheer melodramatic rot--the chap who fired 'em at you probably has all his money invested in submarines, and is fairly delirious with jealousy.

Peg (did I ever formally introduce you to Pegasus, the best pursuit-plane in the R.F.C.--or out of it?)--Peg's about as likely to let me down as you are! We'd do a good deal for each other, she and I--n.o.body else can really fly her, the darling! But she'd go to the stars for me--and farther still. Never you fear--we have charmed lives, Peg and I--we belong to Janie.

"I think that people make an idiotic row about dying, anyway. It's probably jolly good fun--and I can't see what difference a few years here would make if you're going to have all eternity to play with.

Of course you're a ghastly little heathen, and I can see you wagging a mournful head over this already--but every time that I remember what a shocking sell the After Life (exquisite phrase!) is going to be for you, darling, I do a bit of head-wagging myself--and it's not precisely mournful! I can't wait to see your blank consternation--and you needn't expect any sympathy from _me_. My very first words will be, 'I told you so!' Maybe I'll rap them out to you with a table-leg!

"What do you think of all this Ouija Planchette rumpus, anyway? I can't for the life of me see why any one with a whole new world to explore should hang around chattering with this one. I know that I'd be half mad with excitement to get at the new job, and that I'd find re-a.s.suring the loved ones (exquisite phrase number two) a hideous bore. Still, I can see that it would be nice from their selfish point of view! Well, I'm no ghost yet, thank G.o.d--nor yet are you--but if ever I am one, I'll show you what devotion really is.

I'll come all the way back from heaven to play with foolish Janie, who doesn't believe that there is one to come from. To foolish, foolish Janie, who still will be dearer than the prettiest angel of them all, no matter how alluringly her halo may be tilted or her wings ruffled. To Janie who, Heaven forgive him, will be all that one poor ghost has ever loved!"

Had there come to him, the radiant and the confident, a moment of terrible and shattering surprise--a moment when he realized that there were no pretty angels with s.h.i.+ning wings waiting to greet him--a moment when he saw before him only the overwhelming darkness, blacker and deeper than the night would be, when she blew out the little hungry flame that was eating up the sheet that held his laughter? Oh, gladly would she have died a thousand deaths to have spared him that moment!

"My little Greatheart, did you think that I did not know how brave you are? You are the truest soldier of us all, and I, who am not much given to wors.h.i.+p, am on my knees before that shy gallantry of yours, which makes what courage we poor duffers have seem a vain and boastful thing. When I see you as I saw you last, small and white and clear and brave, I can't think of anything but the first crocuses at White Orchards, s.h.i.+ning out, demure and valiant, fearless of wind and storm and cold--fearless of Fear itself. You see, you're so very, very brave that you make me ashamed to be afraid of poetry and sentiment and pretty words--things of which I have a good, thumping Anglo-Saxon terror, I can tell you! It's because I know what a heavenly brick you are that I could have killed that statistical jacka.s.s for bothering you; but I'll forgive him, since you say that it's all right. And so ghosts are the only things in the world that frighten you--even though you know that there aren't any. You and Madame de Stael, hey? 'I do not believe in ghosts, but I fear them!' It's pretty painful to learn that the mere sight of one would turn you into a gibbering lunatic. Nice sell for an enthusiastic spirit who'd romped clear back from heaven to give you a pleasant surprise--I _don't_ think! Well, no fear, young Janie--I'll find some way if I'm put to it--some nice, safe, pretty way that wouldn't scare a neurasthenic baby, let alone the dauntless Miss Abbott. I'll find--"

Oh, no more of that--no more! She crushed the sheet in her hands fiercely, crumpling it into a little ball--the candle-flame was too slow. No, she couldn't stand it--she couldn't--she couldn't, and there was an end to it. She would go raving mad--she would kill herself--she would--She lifted her head, wrenched suddenly back from that chaos of despair, alert and intent. There it was again, coming swiftly nearer and nearer from some immeasurable distance--down--down--nearer still--the very room was humming and throbbing with it--she could almost hear the singing in the wires.

She swung far out over the window edge, searching the moon-drenched garden with eager eyes--surely, surely it would never fly so low unless it were about to land! Engine trouble, perhaps--though she could detect no break in the huge, rhythmic pulsing that was shaking the night. Still--

"Rosemary!" she called urgently. "Rosemary--listen--is there a place where it can land?"

"Where what can land?" asked a drowsy voice.

"An airplane. It's flying so low that it must be in some kind of trouble--do come and see!"

Rosemary came pattering obediently toward her, a small, docile figure, dark eyes misted with dreams, wide with amazement.

"I must be nine-tenths asleep," she murmured gently. "Because I don't hear a single thing, Janet. Perhaps--"

"Hush--listen!" begged Janet, raising an imperative hand--and then her own eyes widened. "Why--it's _gone_!" There was a note of flat incredulity in her voice. "Heavens, how those things must eat up s.p.a.ce! Not a minute, ago it was fairly shaking this room, and now--"

Rosemary stifled a small pink yawn and smiled ingratiatingly.

"Perhaps you were asleep too," she suggested humbly. "I don't believe that airplanes ever fly this way any more. Or it might have been that fat Hodges boy on his motorcycle--he does make the most dreadful racket. Oh, Janet, what a perfectly _ripping_ night--do see!"

They leaned together on the window-sill, silenced by the white and s.h.i.+ning beauty that had turned the pleasant garden into a place of magic and enchantment. The corners of Janet's mouth lifted suddenly.

How absurd people were! The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle! Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic--even little, lovely, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening. But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent--and pa.s.sionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a crying pity that it need ever land--anything so fleet and strong and sure should fly forever! But if they must rest, those beating wings--the old R.F.C. toast went singing through her head and she flung it out into the moonlight, smiling--"Happy landings! Happy landings, you!"

The next day was the one that brought to White Orchards what was to be known for many moons as "the Big Storm." It had been gathering all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown appalling and incredible, even to Janet's American and exigent standards. The smouldering copper sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would burn forever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break the stillness--it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

Every one had struggled through the day a.s.suring one another that when evening came it would be all right--dangling the alluring thought of the cool darkness before each other's hot and weary eyes; but the night proved even more outrageous than the day. To the little group seated on the terrace, dispiritedly playing with their coffee, it seemed almost a personal affront. The darkness closed in on them, smothering, heavy, intolerable; they could feel its weight, as though it were some hateful and tangible thing.

"Like--like black cotton wool," explained Rosemary, stirred to unwonted resentment. She had spent the day curled up in the largest Indian chair on the terrace, round-eyed with fatigue and incredulity.

"I honestly think that we must be dreaming," she murmured to her feverish audience; "I do, honestly. Why, it's only _May_, and we never, never--there was that day in August about five years ago that was almost as bad, though. D'you remember, Mummy?"

"It's hardly the kind of thing that one is likely to forget, love.

Do you think that it is necessary for us to talk? I feel somehow that I could bear it much more easily if we kept quite quiet."

Janet stirred a little, uneasily. She hated silence--that terrible, empty s.p.a.ce waiting to be filled up with your thoughts--why, the idlest chatter spared you that. She hated the terrace, too--she closed her eyes to shut out the ugly darkness that was pressing against her; behind the shelter of her lids it was cooler and stiller, but open-eyed or closed, she could not shut out memory. The very touch of the bricks beneath her feet brought back that late October day. She had been sitting curled up on the steps in the warm sunlight, with the keen, sweet air stirring her hair and sending the beech-leaves dancing down the flagged path--there had been a heavenly smell of burning from the far meadow, and she was sniffing it luxuriously, feeling warm and joyous and protected in Jerry's great tweed coat--watching the tall figure swinging across from the lodge gate with idle, happy eyes--not even curious. It was not until he had almost reached the steps that she had noticed that he was wearing a foreign uniform--and even then she had promptly placed him as one of Rosemary's innumerable conquests, bestowing on him a friendly and inquiring smile.

"Were you looking for Miss Langdon?" Even now she could see the courteous, grave young face soften as he turned quickly toward her, baring his dark head with that swift foreign grace that turns our perfunctory habits into something like a ritual.

"But no," he had said gently, "I was looking for you, Miss Abbott."

"Now will you please tell me how in the world you knew that I was Miss Abbott?"

And he had smiled--with his lips, not his eyes.

"I should be dull indeed if that I did not know. I am Philippe Laurent, Miss Abbott."

And "Oh," she had cried joyously, "Liane's Philippe!"

"But yes--Liane's Philippe. They are not here, the others? Madame Langdon, the little Miss Rosemary?"

"No, they've gone to some parish fair, and I've been wicked and stayed home. Won't you sit down and talk to me? Please!"

"Miss Abbott, it is not to you that I must talk. What I have to say is indeed most difficult, and it is to Jeremy's Janie that I would say it. May I, then?"

It had seemed to Jeremy's Janie that the voice in which she answered him came from a great distance, but she never took her eyes from the grave and vivid face.

"Yes. And quickly, please."

So he had told her--quickly--in his exquisitely careful English, and she had listened as attentively and politely, huddled up on the brick steps in the sunlight, as though he were running over the details of the last drive, instead of tearing her life to pieces with every word. She remembered now that it hadn't seemed real at all--if it had been to Jerry that these horrors had happened could she have sat there so quietly, feeling the colour bright in her cheeks, and the wind stirring in her hair, and the sunlight warm on her hands? Why, for less than this people screamed, and fainted, and went raving mad!

"You say--that his back is broken?"

"But yes, my dear," Liane's Philippe had told her, and she had seen the tears s.h.i.+ning in his gray eyes.

"And he is badly burned?"

"My brave Janie, these questions are not good to ask--not good, not good to answer. This I will tell you. He lives, our Jerry--and so dearly does he love you that he will drag back that poor body from h.e.l.l itself--because it is yours, not his. This he has sent me to tell you, most lucky lady ever loved."

"You mean--that he isn't going to die?"

"I tell you that into those small hands of yours he has given his life. Hold it fast."

"Will he--will he get well?" "He will not walk again; but have you not swift feet to run for him?"

And there had come to her, sitting on the terrace in the suns.h.i.+ne, an overwhelming flood of joy, reckless and cruel and triumphant. Now he was hers forever, the restless wanderer--delivered to her bound and helpless, never to stray again. Hers to wors.h.i.+p and serve and slave for, his troth to Freedom broken--hers at last!

"I'm coming," she had told the tall young Frenchman breathlessly.

"Take me to him--please let's hurry."

"_Ma pauvre pet.i.te_, this is war. One does not come and go at will.

G.o.d knows by what miracle enough red tape unwound to let me through to you, to bring my message and to take one back."

"What message, Philippe?"

"That is for you to say, little Janie. He told me, 'Say to her that she has my heart--if she needs my body, I will live. Say to her that it is an ugly, broken, and useless thing; still, hers. She must use it as she sees fit. Say to her--no, say nothing more. She is my Janie, and has no need of words. Tell her to send me only one, and I will be content.' For that one word, Janie, I have come many miles. What shall it be?"

And she had cried out exultantly, "Why, tell him that I say--" But the word had died in her throat. Her treacherous lips had mutinied, and she had sat there, feeling the blood drain back out of her face--out of her heart--feeling her eyes turn back with sheer terror, while she fought with those stiffened rebels. Such a little word "Live!"--surely they could say that. Was it not what he was waiting for, lying far away and still--schooled at last to patience, the reckless and the restless! Oh, Jerry, Jerry, live! Even now she could feel her mind, like some frantic little wild thing, racing, racing to escape Memory. What had he said to her? "You, wise beyond wisdom, will never hold me--you will never hold me--you will never--"

And suddenly she had dropped her twisted hands in her lap and lifted her eyes to Jerry's amba.s.sador.