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Charlotte B. Herr - "The Wise Mamma Goose"

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O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 by Various

V >> Various >> O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920




Rosemary's arm was about her--Mrs. Langdon's soft voice in her
ears--a deeper note from Rosemary's engineer.

"Oh, I say, poor girl! What is it, dear child--what's the matter? Is
it the heat, Janie?"

"The heat!" She could hear herself laughing--frantic, hateful,
jangling laughter that wouldn't stop. "Oh, Jerry! Oh-h, Jerry, Jerry,
Jerry!"

"It's this ghastly day. Let me get her some water, Mrs. Langdon.
Don't cry so, Janie--please, please don't, darling."

"I c-can't help it--I c-can't----" She paused, listening intently,
her hand closing sharply over Rosemary's wrist. "Oh, listen,
listen--there it comes again--I told you so!"

"Thank Heaven," murmured Mrs. Langdon devoutly, "I thought that it
never was going to rise this evening. It's from the south, too, so I
suppose that it means rain."

"Rain?" repeated Janet vaguely. "Why in the world should it mean rain?"
Her small, pale face looked suddenly brilliant and enchanted, tilted
up to meet the thunderous music that was swinging nearer and nearer.
"Oh, do listen, you people! This time it's surely going to land!"

Rosemary stared at her blankly. "Land? What _are_ you talking about,
Janie?"

"My airplane--the one that you said was the fat Hodges boy on a
motorcycle! Is there any place near here that it can make a landing?"

"Darling child--" Mrs. Langdon's gentle voice was gentler than ever--
"darling child, it's this wretched heat. There isn't any airplane,
dear--it's just the wind rising in the beeches."

"The wind?" Janet laughed aloud--they really were too absurd.
"Why, Mrs. Langdon, you can hear the _engines_, if you'll only listen!
You can hear them, can't you, Mr. Bain?"

The young engineer shook his head. "No plane would risk flying with
this storm coming, Miss Abbott. There's been thunder for the last
hour or so, and it's getting nearer, too. It's only the wind, I think."

"Oh, you're laughing at me--of course, of course you hear it. Why,
it's as clear as--as clear as--" Her voice trailed off into silence.
Quite suddenly, without any transition or warning, she knew. She
could feel her heart stand perfectly still for a minute, and then
plunge forward in mad flight, racing, racing--oh, it knew, too, that
eager heart! She took her hand from the arm of the chair, releasing
Rosemary's wrist very gently.

"Yes, of course, it's the heat," she said quietly. She must be
careful not to frighten them, these kind ones. "If you don't mind,
Mrs. Langdon, I think that I'll go down to the gate to watch the
storm burst. No, please, don't any of you come--I'll promise to
change everything if I get caught--yes, everything! I won't be long;
don't wait for me."

She walked sedately enough until she came to the turn in the path,
but after that she ran, only pausing for a minute to listen
breathlessly. Oh, yes--following, following, that gigantic music!
How he must be laughing at her now--blind, deaf, incredulous little
fool that she had been, to doubt that Jerry would find a way! But
where could he land? Not in the garden--not at the gates--oh, now
she had it--the far meadow. She turned sharply; it was dark, but the
path must be here. Yes, this was the wicket gate; her groping
fingers were quite steady--they found the latch--released it--the
gate swung to behind her flying footsteps. "Oh, Jerry, Jerry!" sang
her heart. Why hadn't she worn the rose-coloured frock? It was she
who would be a ghost in that trailing white thing. To the right
here--yes, there was the hawthorn hedge--only a few steps more--oh,
now! She stood as still as a small statue, not moving, not breathing,
her hands at her heart, her face turned to the black and torn sky.
Nearer, nearer, circling and darting and swooping--the gigantic
humming grew louder--louder still--it swept about her thunderously,
so close that she clapped her hands over her ears, but she stood her
ground, exultant and undaunted. Oh, louder still--and then suddenly
the storm broke. All the winds and the rains of the world were
unleashed, and fell howling and shrieking upon her, she staggered
under their onslaught, drenched to the bone, her dress whipping
frantically about her, blinded and deafened by that tumultuous
clamour. She had only one weapon against it--laughter--and she
laughed now--straight into its teeth. And as though hell itself must
yield to mirth, the fury wavered--failed--sank to muttering. But
Janie, beaten to her knees and laughing, never even heard it die.

"Jerry?" she whispered into the darkness, "Jerry?"

Oh, more wonderful than wonder, he was there! She could feel him stir,
even if she could not hear him--so close, so close was he that if she
even reached out her hand, she could touch him. She stretched it out
eagerly, but there was nothing there--only a small, remote sound of
withdrawal, as though some one had moved a little.

"You're afraid that I'll be frightened, aren't you?" she asked
wistfully. "I wouldn't be--I wouldn't--please come back'"

He was laughing at her, she knew, tender and mocking and caressing;
she smiled back, tremulously.

"You're thinking, 'I told you so!' Have you come far to say it to me?"

Only that little stir--the wind was rising again.

"Jerry, come close--come closer still. What are you waiting for,
dear and dearest?"

This time there was not even a stir to answer her; she felt suddenly
cold to the heart. What had he always waited for?

"You aren't waiting--you aren't waiting to go?" She fought to keep
the terror out of her voice, but it had her by the throat. "Oh, no,
no--you can't--not again! Jerry, Jerry, don't go away and leave
me--truly and truly I can't stand it--truly!"

She wrung her hands together desperately; she was on her knees to
him--did he wish her to go lower still? Oh, she had never learned to
beg!

"I can't send you away again--I can't. When I sent you to France I
killed my heart--when I let you go to death, I crucified my soul. I
haven't anything left but my pride--you can have that, too. I can't
send you back to your heaven. Stay with me--stay with me, Jerry!"

Not a sound--not a stir--but well she knew that he was standing there,
waiting. She rose slowly to her feet.

"Very well--you've won," she said hardly. "Go back to your saints and
seraphs and angels; I'm beaten. I was mad to think that you ever
cared--go back!" She turned, stumbling, the sobs tearing at her
throat; he had gone several steps before she realized that he was
following her--and all the hardness and bitterness and despair fell
from her like a cloak.

"Oh, Jerry," she whispered, "Jerry, darling, I'm so sorry. And
you've come so far--just to find this! What is it that you want;
can't you tell me?"

She stood tense and still, straining eyes and ears for her
answer--but it was not to eyes or ears that it came.

"Oh, of course!" she cried clearly. "Of course, my wanderer! Ready?"

She stood poised for a second, head thrown back, arms flung wide--a
small figure of Victory, caught in the flying wind.

And, "Contact, Jerry!" she called joyously into the darkness.
"Contact!"

There was a mighty whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the storm.
She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell--and then grow
fainter--fainter still--dying, dying--dying--

But Janie, her small white face turned to the storm-swept sky behind
which shone the stars, was smiling radiantly. For she had sped her
wanderer on his way--she had not failed him!




THE CAMEL'S BACK


BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

From _The Saturday Evening Post_

The restless, wearied eye of the tired magazine reader resting for a
critical second on the above title will judge it to be merely
metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny
and the new broom rarely have anything to do with cups and lips and
pennies and brooms. This story is the great exception. It has to do
with an actual, material, visible and large-as-life camel's back.

Starting from the neck we shall work tailward. Meet Mr. Perry
Parkhurst, twenty-eight, lawyer, native of Toledo. Perry has nice
teeth, a Harvard education, and parts his hair in the middle. You
have met him before--in Cleveland, Portland, St. Paul, Indianapolis,
Kansas City and elsewhere. Baker Brothers, New York, pause on their
semi-annual trip through the West to clothe him; Montmorency & Co.,
dispatch a young man posthaste every three months to see that he has
the correct number of little punctures on his shoes. He has a
domestic roadster now, will have a French roadster if he lives long
enough, and doubtless a Chinese one if it comes into fashion. He
looks like the advertisement of the young man rubbing his
sunset-coloured chest with liniment, goes East every year to the
Harvard reunion--does everything--smokes a little too much--Oh,
you've seen him.

Meet his girl. Her name is Betty Medill, and she would take well in
the movies. Her father gives her two hundred a month to dress on and
she has tawny eyes and hair, and feather fans of three colours. Meet
her father, Cyrus Medill. Though he is to all appearances flesh and
blood he is, strange to say, commonly known in Toledo as the
Aluminum Man. But when he sits in his club window with two or three
Iron Men and the White Pine Man and the Brass Man they look very
much as you and I do, only more so, if you know what I mean.

Meet the camel's back--or no--don't meet the camel's back yet. Meet
the story.

During the Christmas holidays of 1919, the first real Christmas
holidays since the war, there took place in Toledo, counting only
the people with the italicized _the_, forty-one dinner parties,
sixteen dances, six luncheons male and female, eleven luncheons
female, twelve teas, four stag dinners, two weddings and thirteen
bridge parties. It was the cumulative effect of all this that moved
Perry Parkhurst on the twenty-ninth day of December to a desperate
decision.

Betty Medill would marry him and she wouldn't marry him. She was
having such a good time that she hated to take such a definite step.
Meanwhile, their secret engagement had got so long that it seemed as
if any day it might break off of its own weight. A little man named
Warburton, who knew it all, persuaded Perry to superman her, to get
a marriage license and go up to the Medill house and tell her she'd
have to marry him at once or call it off forever. This is some
stunt--but Perry tried it on December the twenty-ninth. He presented
self, heart, license, and ultimatum, and within five minutes they
were in the midst of a violent quarrel, a burst of sporadic open
fighting such as occurs near the end of all long wars and engagements.
It brought about one of those ghastly lapses in which two people who
are in love pull up sharp, look at each other coolly and think it's
all been a mistake. Afterward they usually kiss wholesomely and
assure the other person it was all their fault. Say it all was my
fault! Say it was! I want to hear you say it!

But while reconciliation was trembling in the air, while each was,
in a measure, stalling it off, so that they might the more
voluptuously and sentimentally enjoy it when it came, they were
permanently interrupted by a twenty-minute phone call for Betty from
a garrulous aunt who lived in the country. At the end of eighteen
minutes Perry Parkhurst, torn by pride and suspicion and urged on by
injured dignity, put on his long fur coat, picked up his light brown
soft hat and stalked out the door.

"It's all over," he muttered brokenly as he tried to jam his car
into first. "It's all over--if I have to choke you for an hour, darn
you!" This last to the car, which had been standing some time and
was quite cold.

He drove downtown--that is, he got into a snow rut that led him
downtown.

He sat slouched down very low in his seat, much too dispirited to
care where he went. He was living over the next twenty years without
Betty.

In front of the Clarendon Hotel he was hailed from the sidewalk by a
bad man named Baily, who had big huge teeth and lived at the hotel
and had never been in love.

"Perry," said the bad man softly when the roadster drew up beside
him at the curb, "I've got six quarts of the dog-gonedest champagne
you ever tasted. A third of it's yours, Perry, if you'll come
upstairs and help Martin Macy and me drink it."

"Baily," said Perry tensely. "I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink
every drop of it. I don't care if it kills me. I don't care if it's
fifty-proof wood alcohol."

"Shut up, you nut!" said the bad man gently. "They don't put wood
alcohol in champagne. This is the stuff that proves the world is
more than six thousand years old. It's so ancient that the cork is
petrified. You have to pull it with a stone drill."

"Take me upstairs," said Perry moodily. "If that cork sees my heart
it'll fall out from pure mortification."

The room upstairs was full of those innocent hotel pictures of
little girls eating apples and sitting in swings and talking to dogs.
The other decorations were neckties and a pink man reading a pink
paper devoted to ladies in pink tights.

"When you have to go into the highways and byways--" said the pink
man, looking reproachfully at Baily and Perry.

"Hello, Martin Macy," said Perry shortly, "where's this stone-age
champagne?"

"What's the rush? This isn't an operation, understand. This is a
party."

Perry sat down dully and looked disapprovingly at all the neckties.

Baily leisurely opened the door of a wardrobe and brought out six
wicked-looking bottles and three glasses.

"Take off that darn fur coat!" said Martin Macy to Perry. "Or maybe
you'd like to have us open all the windows." "Give me champagne,"
said Perry.

"Going to the Townsends' circus ball to-night?"

"Am not!"

"'Vited?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why not go?"

"Oh, I'm sick of parties," exclaimed Perry, "I'm sick of 'em. I've
been to so many that I'm sick of 'em."

"Maybe you're going to the Howard Tates' party?"

"No, I tell you; I'm sick of 'em."

"Well," said Macy consolingly, "the Tates' is just for college kids
anyway."

"I tell you--"

"I thought you'd be going to one of 'em anyways. I see by the papers
you haven't missed a one this Christmas."

"Hm," grunted Perry morosely.

He would never go to any more parties. Classical phrases played in
his mind--that side of his life was closed, closed. Now when a man
says "closed, closed" like that, you can be pretty sure that some
woman has double-closed him, so to speak. Perry was also thinking
that other classical thought, about how cowardly suicide is. A noble
thought that one--warm and uplifting. Think of all the fine men we
should lose if suicide were not so cowardly!

An hour later was six o'clock, and Perry had lost all resemblance to
the young man in the liniment advertisement. He looked like a rough
draft fur a riotous cartoon. They were singing--an impromptu song of
Baily's improvisation:


_One Lump Perry, the parlour snake,
Famous through the city for the way he drinks his tea;
Plays with it, toys with it,
Makes no noise with it,
Balanced on a napkin on his well-trained knee_.


"Trouble is," said Perry, who had just banged his hair with Bailey's
comb and was tying an orange tie round it to get the effect of
Julius Caesar, "that you fellas can't sing worth a damn. Soon's I
leave th' air an' start singin' tenor you start singin' tenor too."

"'M a natural tenor," said Macy gravely. "Voice lacks cultivation,
tha's all. Gotta natural voice, m'aunt used say. Naturally good
singer."

"Singers, singers, all good singers," remarked Baily, who was at the
telephone. "No, not the cabaret; I want night clerk. I mean
refreshment clerk or some dog-gone clerk 'at's got food--food! I
want----"

"Julius Caesar," announced Perry, turning round from the mirror.
"Man of iron will and stern 'termination."

"Shut up!" yelled Baily. "Say, iss Mr. Baily. Sen' up enormous supper.
Use y'own judgment. Right away."

He connected the receiver and the hook with some difficulty and then
with his lips closed and an air of solemn intensity in his eyes went
to the lower drawer of his dresser and pulled it open.

"Lookit!" he commanded. In his hands he held a truncated garment of
pink gingham.

"Pants," he explained gravely. "Lookit!" This was a pink blouse, a
red tie and a Buster Brown collar.

"Lookit!" he repeated. "Costume for the Townsends' circus ball. I'm
li'l' boy carries water for the elephants."

Perry was impressed in spite of himself.

"I'm going to be Julius Caesar," he announced after a moment of
concentration.

"Thought you weren't going!" said Macy.

"Me? Sure, I'm goin'. Never miss a party. Good for the nerves--like
celery."

"Caesar!" scoffed Baily. "Can't be Caesar! He's not about a circus.
Caesar's Shakespeare. Go as a clown."

Perry shook his head.

"Nope; Caesar."

"Caesar?"

"Sure. Chariot."

Light dawned on Baily.

"That's right. Good idea."

Perry looked round the room searchingly.

"You lend me a bathrobe and this tie," he said finally.

Baily considered.

"No good."

"Sure, tha's all I need. Caesar was a savage. They can't kick if I
come as Caesar if he was a savage."

"No," said Baily, shaking his head slowly. "Get a costume over at a
costumer's. Over at Nolak's."

"Closed up."

"Find out."

After a puzzling five minutes at the phone a small, weary voice
managed to convince Perry that it was Mr. Nolak speaking, and that
they would remain open until eight because of the Townsends' ball.
Thus assured, Perry ate a great amount of filet mignon and drank his
third of the last bottle of champagne. At eight-fifteen the man in
the tall hat who stands in front of the Clarendon found him trying
to start his roadster.

"Froze up," said Perry wisely. "The cold froze it. The cold air."

"Froze, eh?"

"Yes. Cold air froze it."

"Can't start it?"

"Nope. Let it stand here till summer. One those hot ole August
days'll thaw it out awright."

"Goin' let it stand?"

"Sure. Let 'er stand. Take a hot thief to steal it. Gemme taxi."

The man in the tall hat summoned a taxi.

"Where to, mister?"

"Go to Nolak's--costume fella."




II

Mrs. Nolak was short and ineffectual looking, and on the cessation
of the world war had belonged for a while to one of the new
nationalities. Owing to the unsettled European conditions she had
never since been quite sure what she was. The shop in which she and
her husband performed their daily stint was dim and ghostly and
peopled with suits of armour and Chinese mandarins and enormous
papier-mache birds suspended from the ceiling. In a vague background
many rows of masks glared eyelessly at the visitor, and there were
glass cases full of crowns and scepters and jewels and enormous
stomachers and paints and powders and crape hair and face creams and
wigs of all colours.

When Perry ambled into the shop Mrs. Nolak was folding up the last
troubles of a strenuous day, so she thought, in a drawer full of
pink silk stockings.

"Something for you?" she queried pessimistically.

"Want costume of Julius Hur, the charioteer."

Mrs. Nolak was sorry, but every stitch of charioteer had been rented
long ago. Was it for the Townsends' circus ball?

It was.

"Sorry," she said, "but I don't think there's anything left that's
really circus."

This was an obstacle.

"Hm," said Perry. An idea struck him suddenly. "If you've got a piece
of canvas I could go's a tent."

"Sorry, but we haven't anything like that. A hardware store is where
you'd have to go to. We have some very nice Confederate soldiers."

"No, no soldiers."

"And I have a very handsome king."

He shook his head.

"Several of the gentlemen," she continued hopefully, "are wearing
stovepipe hats and swallow-tail coats and going as ringmasters--but
we're all out of tall hats. I can let you have some crape hair for a
moustache."

"Wantsomep'm 'stinctive."

"Something--let's see. Well, we have a lion's head, and a goose, and
a camel--"

"Camel?" The idea seized Perry's imagination, gripped it fiercely.

"Yes, but it needs two people."

"Camel. That's an idea. Lemme see it."

The camel was produced from his resting place on a top shelf. At
first glance he appeared to consist entirely of a very gaunt,
cadaverous head and a sizable hump, but on being spread out he was
found to possess a dark brown, unwholesome-looking body made of thick,
cottony cloth.

"You see it takes two people," explained Mrs. Nolak, holding the
camel up in frank admiration. "If you have a friend he could be part
of it. You see there's sorta pants for two people. One pair is for
the fella in front and the other pair for the fella in back. The
fella in front does the lookin' out through these here eyes an' the
fella in back he's just gotta stoop over an' folla the front fella
round."

"Put it on," commanded Perry.

Obediently Mrs. Nolak put her tabby-cat face inside the camel's head
and turned it from side to side ferociously.

Perry was fascinated.

"What noise does a camel make?"

"What?" asked Mrs. Nolak as her face emerged, somewhat smudgy.
"Oh, what noise? Why, he sorta brays."

"Lemme see it in a mirror."

Before a wide mirror Perry tried on the head and turned from side to
side appraisingly. In the dim light the effect was distinctly
pleasing. The camel's face was a study in pessimism, decorated with
numerous abrasions, and it must be admitted that his coat was in
that state of general negligence peculiar to camels--in fact, he
needed to be cleaned and pressed--but distinctive he certainly was.
He was majestic. He would have attracted attention in any gathering
if only by his melancholy cast of feature and the look of pensive
hunger lurking round his shadowy eyes.

"You see you have to have two people," said Mrs. Nolak again.

Perry tentatively gathered up the body and legs and wrapped them
about him, tying the hind legs as a girdle round his waist. The
effect on the whole was bad. It was even irreverent--like one of
those medieval pictures of a monk changed into a beast by the
ministrations of Satan. At the very best the ensemble resembled a
humpbacked cow sitting on her haunches among blankets.

"Don't look like anything at all," objected Perry gloomily.

"No," said Mrs. Nolak; "you see you got to have two people."

A solution flashed upon Perry.

"You got a date to-night?"

"Oh, I couldn't possibly--"

"Oh, come on," said Perry encouragingly. "Sure you can! Here! Be a
good sport and climb into these hind legs."

With difficulty he located them and extended their yawning depths
ingratiatingly. But Mrs. Nolak seemed loath. She backed perversely
away.

"Oh, no--"

"C'm on! Why, you can be the front if you want to. Or we'll flip a
coin."

"Oh, no--"

"Make it worth your while."

Mrs. Nolak set her lips firmly together.

"Now you just stop!" she said with no coyness implied. "None of the
gentlemen ever acted up this way before. My husband--"

"You got a husband?" demanded Perry. "Where is he?"

"He's home."

"Wha's telephone number?"

After considerable parley he obtained the telephone number
pertaining to the Nolak penates and got into communication with that
small, weary voice he had heard once before that day. But Mr. Nolak,
though taken off his guard and somewhat confused by Perry's
brilliant flow of logic, stuck staunchly to his point. He refused
firmly but with dignity to help out Mr. Parkhurst in the capacity of
back part of a camel.

Having rung off, or rather having been rung off on, Perry sat down
on a three-legged stool to think it over. He named over to himself
those friends on whom he might call, and then his mind paused as
Betty Medill's name hazily and sorrowfully occurred to him. He had a
sentimental thought. He would ask her. Their love affair was over,
but she could not refuse this last request. Surely it was not much
to ask--to help him keep up his end of social obligation for one
short night. And if she insisted she could be the front part of the
camel and he would go as the back. His magnanimity pleased him. His
mind even turned to rosy-coloured dreams of a tender reconciliation
inside the camel--there hidden away from all the world.

"Now you'd better decide right off."

The bourgeois voice of Mrs. Nolak broke in upon his mellow fancies
and roused him to action. He went to the phone and called up the
Medill house. Miss Betty was out; had gone out to dinner.

Then, when all seemed lost, the camel's back wandered curiously into
the store. He was a dilapidated individual with a cold in his head
and a general trend about him of downwardness. His cap was pulled
down low on his head, and his chin was pulled down low on his chest,
his coat hung down to his shoes, he looked run-down, down at the
heels, and--Salvation Army to the contrary--down and out. He said
that he was the taxicab driver that the gentleman had hired at the
Clarendon Hotel. He had been instructed to wait outside, but he had
waited some time and a suspicion had grown upon him that the
gentleman had gone out the back way with purpose to defraud
him--gentlemen sometimes did--so he had come in. He sank down on to
the three-legged stool.

"Wanta go to a party?" demanded Perry sternly.

"I gotta work," answered the taxi driver lugubriously. "I gotta keep
my job."