O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 by Various

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She saw this, at least, as soon as she saw anything; for Julian,
like most of us when the occasion rises, developed a very pretty
power of concealment. He had for a month been seeing Miss Littell
every day before any of us knew that he went to see her at all.
Certainly Anne, unsuspicious by nature, was unprepared for the
revelation.

It took place in the utterly futile, unnecessary way such
revelations always do take place. The two poor innocent dears had
allowed themselves a single indiscretion; they had gone out together,
a few days before Christmas, to buy some small gifts for each other.
They had had an adventure with a beggar, an old man wise enough to
take advantage of the holiday season, and the no less obvious
holiday in the hearts of this pair. He had forced them to listen to
some quaint variant of the old story, and they had between them
given him all the small change they had left--sixty-seven cents, I
think it was.

That evening at dinner Julian, ever so slightly afraid of the long
pause, had told Anne the story as if it had happened to him alone. A
few days afterward the girl, whom she happened to meet somewhere or
other, displaying perhaps a similar nervousness, told the same story.
Even the number of cents agreed.

I spoke a moment ago of the extraordinary power of concealment which
we all possess; but I should have said the negative power to avoid
exciting suspicion. Before that moment, before the finger points at
us, the fool can deceive the sage; and afterward not even the sage
can deceive the veriest fool.

Julian had no desire to lie to his wife. Indeed, he told me he had
felt from the first that she would be his fittest confidante. He
immediately told her everything--a dream rather than a narrative.

Nowhere did Anne show her magnanimity more than in accepting the
rather extravagant financial arrangements which Julian insisted on
making for her. He was not a rich man, and she the better economist
of the two. We knew she saw that in popular esteem Julian would pay
the price of her pride if she refused, and that in this ticklish
moment of his life the least she could do was to let him have the
full credit for his generosity.

"And after all," as she said to me, "young love can afford to go
without a good many things necessary to old age."

It was the nearest I heard her come to a complaint.

As soon as everything was settled she sailed for Florence, where she
had friends and where, she intimated, she meant to spend most of her
time.

I said good-by to her with real emotion, and the phrase I used as to
my wish to serve her was anything but a convention.

Nor did she take it so.

"Help Julian through this next year," she said. "People will take it
harder than he knows. He'll need you all." And she was kind enough
to add something about my tact. Poor lady! She must have mentally
withdrawn her little compliment before we met many times again.

II

Perhaps the only fault in Anne's education of her husband had been
her inability to cling. In his new menage this error was rectified,
and the effect on him was conspicuously good; in fact, I think Rose's
confidence in his greatness pulled them through the difficult time.

For there was no denying that it was difficult. Many people looked
coldly on them, and I know there was even some talk of asking him to
resign from the firm of architects of which he was a member. The
other men were all older, and very conservative. Julian represented
to them everything that was modern and dangerous. Granger, the
leading spirit, was in the habit of describing himself as holding
old-fashioned views, by which he meant that he had all the virtues
of the Pilgrim Fathers and none of their defects. I never liked him,
but I could not help respecting him. The worst you could say of him
was that his high standards were always successful.

You felt that so fanatical a sense of duty ought to have required
some sacrifices.

To such a man Julian's conduct appeared not only immoral but
inadvisable, and unfitting in a young man, especially without
consulting his senior partners.

We used to say among ourselves that Granger's reason for wanting to
get rid of Julian was not any real affection for the dim old moral
code, but rather his acute realization that without Anne his junior
partner was a less valuable asset.

Things were still hanging fire when I paid her the first of my
annual visits. She was dreadfully distressed at my account of the
situation. She had the manner one sometimes sees in dismissed nurses
who meet their former little charges unwashed or uncared for. She
could hardly believe it was no longer her business to put the whole
matter right.

"Can't she do something for him?" she said. "Make her bring him a
great building. That would save him."

It was this message that I carried home to Rose; at least I suggested
the idea to her as if it were my own. I had my doubts of her being
able to carry it out.

Out of loyalty to Julian, or perhaps I ought to say out of loyalty to
Anne, we had all accepted Rose, but we should soon have loved her in
any case. She was extraordinarily sweet and docile, and gave us,
those at least who were not parents, our first window to the east,
our first link with the next generation, just at the moment when we
were relinquishing the title ourselves. I am afraid that some of the
males among us envied Julian more than perhaps in the old days we
had ever envied him Anne.

But we hardly expected her to further his career as Anne had done,
and yet, oddly enough, that was exactly what she did. Her methods
had all the effectiveness of youth and complete conviction. She
forced Julian on her friends and relations, not so much on his
account as on theirs. She wanted them to be sure of the best. The
result was that orders flowed in. Things took a turn for the better
and continued to improve, as I was able to report to Anne when I
went to see her at Florence or at Paris. She was always well lodged,
well served, and surrounded by the pleasantest people, yet each time
I saw her she had a look exiled and circumscribed, a look I can only
describe as that of a spirit in reduced circumstances.

She was always avid for details of Julian and all that concerned him,
and as times improved I was stupid enough to suppose I pleased her by
giving them from the most favourable angle. It seemed to me quite
obvious, as I saw how utterly she had ruined her own life, that she
ought at least to have the comfort of knowing that she had not
sacrificed it in vain. And so I allowed myself, not an exaggeration
but a candour more unrestrained than would be usual in the
circumstances.

Led on by her burning interest I told her many things I might much
better have kept to myself; not only accounts of his work and his
household and any new friends in our old circle, but we had all been
amazed to see a sense of responsibility develop in Julian in answer
to his new wife's dependence on him. With this had come a certain
thoughtfulness in small attentions, which, I saw too late, Anne must
always have missed in him. She was so much more competent in the
smaller achievements of life than he that it had been wisdom to leave
them to her; and Anne had often traveled alone and attended to the
luggage, when now Rose was personally conducted like a young empress.
The explanation was simple enough: Anne had the ability to do it,
and the other had not. Even if I had stopped to think, I might fairly
have supposed that Anne would find some flattery in the contrast. I
should have been wrong.

Almost the first thing she asked me was whether he came home to
luncheon. In old times, though his house was only a few blocks from
his office, he had always insisted that it took too much time. Anne
had never gained her point with him, though she put some force into
the effort. Now I had to confess he did.

"It's much better for him," she said with pleasure, and quite
deceived me; herself, too, perhaps.

Yet even I, for all my blindness, felt some uneasiness the year
Rose's son was born. I do not think the desire for offspring had
ever taken up a great deal of room in Julian's consciousness, but of
course Anne had wanted children, and I felt very cruel, sitting in
her little apartment in Paris, describing the baby who ought to have
been hers. How different her position would have been now if she had
some thin-legged little girl to educate or some raw-boned boy to
worry over; and there was that overblessed woman at home, necessary
not only to Julian but to Julian's son.

It was this same year, but at a later visit, that I first became
aware of a change in Anne. At first the charm of her surroundings,
her pretty clothes, even to the bright little buckles on her shoes,
blinded me to the fact that she herself was changed. I do not mean
that she was aged. One of the delightful things about her was that
she was obviously going to make an admirable old lady; the delicate
boniness of her face and the clearness of her skin assured that.
This was a change more fundamental. Even in her most distracted days
Anne had always maintained a certain steadiness of head. She had
trodden thorny paths, but she had always known where she was going.
I had seen her eyelids red, but I had never failed to find in the
eyes themselves the promise of a purpose. But now it was gone. I
felt as if I were looking into a little pool which had been troubled
by a stone, and I waiting vainly for the reflection to re-form itself.

So painful was the impression that before I sailed for home I tried
to convey to her the dangers of her mood.

"I think you are advising me to be happy," she said.

"I am advising no such thing," I answered. "I am merely pointing out
that you run the risk of being more unhappy than you are. My
visits--or rather the news I bring you--are too important to you.
You make me feel as if it were the only event of the year--to you
who have always had such an interesting life of your own."

"I have not had a life of my own since I was twenty," she returned.
It was at twenty she had married.

"Then think of Julian," I said, annoyed not only at my own clumsiness
but at the absence of anything of Anne's old heroic spirit.
"For his sake, at least, you must keep your head. Why, my dear woman,
one look at your face, grown as desperate as it sometimes appears now,
would ruin Julian with the whole world. Even I, knowing the whole
story, would find it hard to forgive him if you should fail to
continue to be the splendid triumphant creature whom we know you
were designed to be."

She gave me a long queer look, which meant something tremendous.
Evidently my words had made an impression.

They had, but not just the one I intended.

III

One of the first people I always saw on returning was Julian. How
often he thought of Anne I do not know, but he spoke of her with the
greatest effort. He invariably took care to assure himself that she
was physically well, but beyond this it would have been a brave
person who dared to go. He did not want to hear the details of her
life and appearance.

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that a few months after
this I came to tell him that Anne was about to return to America.
Why she was coming, or for how long, her letter did not say. I only
knew that the second Saturday in December would see her among us
again. It seemed fair to assume that her stay would not be long.
Julian evidently thought so for he arranged to be in the West for
three or four weeks.

I went to meet her. The day was cold and rainy, and as soon as I saw
her I made up my mind that the crossing had been a bad one, and I
was glad no one else had come to the wharf with me. She was standing
by the rail, wrapped in a voluminous fur coat--the fashions were
slim in the extreme--and her hat was tied on by a blue veil.

I may as well admit that from the moment I heard of her projected
return I feared that her real motive for coming, conscious or
unconscious, was to see Julian again. So when I told her of his
absence I was immensely relieved that she took it as a matter of
course.

"I suppose we might have met," she observed. "As it is, I can go
about without any fear of an awkward encounter." I say I was relieved,
but I was also excessively puzzled. Why had Anne come home?

It was a question I was to hear answered in a variety of ways during
the next few months, by many of Anne's friends and partisans; for,
as I think I have said, Anne had inspired great attachment since her
earliest days. Why had she come home? they exclaimed. Why not, pray?
Had she done anything criminal that she was to be exiled? Did I
think it pleasant to live abroad on a small income? Even if she
could get on without her friends, could they do without her?

The tone of these questions annoyed me not a little when I heard them,
which was not for some time. Soon after Anne's arrival I, too, was
called away, and it was not until February that I returned and was
met by the carefully set piece--Anne the Victim.

With that ill-advised self-confidence of which I have already made
mention, I at once set about demolishing this picture. I told Anne's
friends, who were also mine, that she would thank them very little
for their attitude. I found myself painting her life abroad as a
delirium of intellect and luxury. I even found myself betraying
professional secrets and arguing with total strangers as to the
amount of her income.

Even in Montreal faint echoes of this state of things had reached me,
but not until I went to see Anne on my return did I get any idea of
their cause. She had taken a furnished apartment from a friend, in a
dreary building in one of the West Forties. Only a jutting front of
limestone and an elevator man in uniform saved it, or so it seemed
to me, from being an old-fashioned boarding house. Its windows, small,
as if designed for an African sun, looked northward upon a darkened
street. Anne's apartment was on the second floor, and the
requirements of some caryatids on the outside rendered her
fenestration particularly meager. Her friend, if indeed it were a
friend, had not treated her generously in the matter of furniture.
She had left nothing superfluous but two green glass jugs on the
mantelpiece, and had covered the chairs with a chintz, the
groundwork of which was mustard colour.

Another man who was there when I came in, who evidently had known
Anne in different surroundings, expressed the most hopeful view
possible when he said that doubtless it would all look charming when
she had arranged her own belongings.

Anne made a little gesture. "I haven't any belongings," she said.

I didn't know what she meant, perhaps merely a protest against the
tyranny of things, but I saw the effect her speech produced on her
auditor. Perhaps she saw it too, for presently she added: "Oh, yes!
I have one."

And she went away, and came back carrying a beautiful old silver
loving cup. I knew it well. It came from Julian's forebears. Anne
had always loved it, and I was delighted that she should have it now.
She set it on a table before a mirror, and here it did a double
share to make the room possible.

When we were alone I expressed my opinion of her choice of lodgings.

"This sunless cavern!" I said. "This parlour-car furniture!"

She looked a little hurt. "You don't like it?" she said.

"Do you?" I snapped back.

After a time I had recourse to the old argument that it didn't look
well; that it wasn't fair to Julian. But she had been expecting this.

"My dear Walter," she answered, "you must try to be more consistent.
In Paris you told me that I must cease to regulate my life by Julian.
You were quite right. This place pleases me, and I don't intend to go
to a hotel, which I hate, or to take a house, which is a bother, in
order to soothe Julian's feelings. I have begun to lead my life to
suit myself."

The worst of it was, I could think of no answer.

A few evenings afterward we dined at the same house. Anne arrived
with a scarf on her head, under the escort of a maid. She had come
in a trolley car. Nobody's business but her own, perhaps, if she
would have allowed it to remain so, but when she got up to go, and
other people were talking of their motors' being late, Anne had to
say: "Mine is never late; it goes past the corner every minute."

I could almost hear a sigh, "Poor angel!" go round the room.

The next thing that happened was that Julian sent for me. He was in
what we used to call in the nursery "a state."

"What's this I hear about Anne's being hard up?" he said. "Living in
a nasty flat, and going out to dinner in the cars?" And he wouldn't
listen to an explanation. "She must take more; she must be made to
take more."

I had one of my most unfortunate inspirations. I thought I saw an
opportunity for Julian to make an impression.

"I don't think she would listen to me," I said. "Why don't you get
Mr. Granger to speak to her?"

The idea appealed to Julian. He admired Mr. Granger, and remembered
that he and Anne had been friends. Whereas I thought, of course, that
Mr. Granger would thus be made to see that the fault, if there were
a fault, was not of Julian's generosity. Stupidly enough I failed to
see that if Julian's offer was graceful Anne's gesture of refusal
would be upon a splendid scale.

And it must have been very large, indeed, to stir old Granger as it
did. He told me there had been tears in his eyes while she spoke of
her husband's kindness. Kindness! He could not but compare her
surroundings with the little house, all geraniums and muslin curtains,
in which the new Mrs. Chelmsford was lodged. Anne had refused, of
course. In the circumstances she could not accept. She said she had
quite enough for a single woman. The phrase struck Granger as almost
unbearably pathetic.

One day I noticed the loving cup--which was always on Anne's table,
which was admired by everyone who came to the apartment, and was
said to recall her, herself, so pure and graceful and perfect--one
day the loving cup was gone.

I was so surprised when my eye fell on its vacant place that I
blurted out: "Goodness, Anne, where's your cup?"

The next moment I could have bitten out my tongue. Anne stood still
in the middle of the room, twisting her hands a little, and
everyone--there were three or four of us there--stopped talking.

"Oh," she said, "oh, Walter, I know you'll scold me for being
officious and wrong-headed, but I have sent the cup back to Julian's
son. I think he ought to have it."

Everyone else thought the deed extremely noble. I took my hat and
went to Rose. Rose was not very enthusiastic. A beautiful letter had
accompanied the cup. We discussed the advisability of sending it back;
but of course that would have done no good. The devilish part of a
favour is that to accept or reject it is often equally incriminating.
Anne held the situation in the hollow of her hand. Besides, as Rose
pointed out, we couldn't very well return it without asking Julian,
and we had both agreed that for the present Julian had better remain
in ignorance of the incident. He would have thought it mean-spirited
to allow any instance of Anne's generosity to remain concealed from
the public. Rose and I were willing to allow it to drop.

I was sorry, therefore, when I found, soon after, not only that
everyone knew of the gift but that phrases of the beautiful letter
itself were current, with marks of authenticity upon them. It was
not hard to trace them to Anne's intimates.

I have no idea to this day whether Anne was deliberately trying to
ruin the man for whom she had sacrificed so much; or whether one of
those large, unconscious, self-indulgent movements of our natures
was carrying her along the line of least resistance. There are some
people, I know, who can behave well only so long as they have the
centre of the stage, and are driven by a necessity almost moral to
regain such a place at any cost, so that they may once again begin
the exercise of their virtues.

Anne's performance was too perfect, I thought, for conscious art,
and she was not a genius. She was that most dangerous of all engines,
a good person behaving wickedly. All her past of high-mindedness and
kindness protected her now like an armour from the smallest suspicion.
All the grandeur of her conduct at the time of the divorce was
remembered as a proof that she at least had a noble soul. Who could
doubt that she wished him well?

If so, she soon appeared to be the only person who did. For, as we
all know, pity is one of the most dangerous passions to unloose. It
demands a victim. We rise to pathos, only over the dead bodies of
our nearest and dearest.

Every phrase, every gesture of Anne's stirred one profoundly, and it
was inevitable, I suppose, that Julian should be selected as the
sacrifice. I noticed that people began to speak of him in the past,
though he was still moving among us--"As Julian used to say."

He and Anne fortunately never met, but she and the new Mrs. Julian
had one encounter in public. If even then Anne would have shown the
slightest venom all might still have been well. But, no, the worn,
elderly woman, face to face with the young beauty who had possessed
herself of everything in the world, showed nothing but a tenderness
so perfect that every heart was wrung. I heard Rose criticized for
not receiving her in the same spirit.

The next day Julian was blackballed at a philanthropic club at which
he had allowed himself to be proposed merely from a sense of civic
duty.

Over the incident I know Anne wept. I heard her tears.

"Oh, if I could have spared him that!" she said.

My eyes were cold, but those of Mr. Granger, who came in while her
eyelids were still red, were full of fire.

She spent a week with the Grangers that summer. The whole
family--wife, sons and daughters--had all yielded to the great
illusion.

It must not be supposed that I had failed to warn Julian. The
supineness of his attitude was one of the most irritating features
of the case. He answered me as if I were violating the dead; asked
me if by any chance I didn't see he deserved all he was getting.

No one was surprised when in the autumn he resigned from his firm.
There had been friction between the partners for some time. Soon
afterward he and Rose sailed for Italy, where they have lived ever
since. He had scarcely any income except that which he made in his
profession; his capital had gone to Anne. He probably thought that
what he had would go further abroad.

I do not know just how Anne took his departure, except that I am
sure she was wonderful about it. I had ceased to see her. She has,
however, any number of new friends, whose fresh interest in her
story keeps it continually alive. She has given up her ugly flat and
taken a nice little house, and in summer I notice she has red
geraniums in the window boxes. I often see a nice little motor
standing before her door--the result doubtless of a year's economy.

Whenever her friends congratulate her on the improvement in her
finances she says she owes it all to me--I am such an excellent man
of business.

"I admire Walter so much," I am told she says, "though I'm afraid I
have lost him as a friend. But then, in the last few years I have
lost so much." And she smiles that brave sad smile of hers.

THE FACE IN THE WINDOW

BY WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY

From _The Red Book_

At nine o'clock this morning Sheriff Crumpett entered our New England
town post-office for his mail. From his box he extracted his monthly
Grand Army paper and a letter in a long yellow envelope. This
envelope bore the return-stamp of a prominent Boston lumber-company.
The old man crossed the lobby to the writing-shelf under the Western
Union clock, hooked black-rimmed glasses on a big nose and tore a
generous inch from the end of the envelope.

The first inclosure which met his eyes was a check. It was heavy and
pink and crisp, and was attached to the single sheet of letter-paper
with a clip. Impressed into the fabric of the safety-paper were the
indelible figures of a protector: _Not over Five Thousand_ ($5000)
_Dollars_.

The sheriff read the name of the person to whom it was payable and
gulped. His gnarled old hand trembled with excitement as he glanced
over the clipped letter and then went through it again.

November 10, 1919.

MY DEAR SHERIFF:

Enclosed please find my personal check for five thousand dollars.
It is made out to Mrs. McBride. Never having known the lady
personally,
and because you have evidently represented her with the authorities,
I am sending it to you for proper delivery. I feel, from your
enthusiastic account of her recent experience, that it will give
you
pleasure to present it to her.

Under the circumstances I do not begrudge the money. When first
advised of Ruggam's escape, it was hot-headed impulse which
prompted
me to offer a reward so large. The old clan-blood of the Wileys
must
have made me murder-mad that Ruggam should regain his freedom
permanently
after the hellish thing he did to my brother. The newspapers heard
of it,
and then I could not retract.

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