O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Various

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He wondered now and then why Madame Picard, who almost from the first
had been a constant attendant at his meetings, watched him so closely,
so secretly--both when he sat with her and the cripple at meals and at
the carpenter's house, where he was never unconscious of her eyes. He
wondered also why she brought her baby with her, and why all who came
fondled it so much and so respectfully. He did not wonder at the
deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her--that seemed
somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at
times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable
intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was
afraid to seek for. It was there, however--a nervous determination,
not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and
with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it--and he was
not far wrong.

Soon after his first sermon he began little by little to introduce
ritual into the meetings at Michaud's, so that they became decorous;
rum-drinking was postponed till after the concluding prayer, and that
in itself was a triumph. He began to feel the need of hymns, and,
since he could find in French none that had associations for himself,
he set about translating some of the more familiar ones, mostly those
of a militant nature. Some of them, especially "The Son of God goes
forth to war," leaped into immediate popularity and were sung two or
three times in a single service. He liked that repetition; he thought
it laid the groundwork for the enthusiasm which he aroused more and
more as time went on, and which he took more pains to arouse.
Nevertheless, the first time that his feverish eloquence brought tears
and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful
before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and
brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted
and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding
suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as
their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only
for a moment, however, of course it was godly, as any rapture informed
by religion must be. He was sorry he had lost courage and stopped so
soon. These were an emotional and not an intellectual people--if they
were to be reached at all, it must be through the channels of their
emotions. Thus far he thought clearly, and that was as far as he did
think, for he was discovering in himself a capacity for religious
excitement that was only in part a reflex of the crowd's fervour, and
the discovery quickened and adorned the memory of the few great
moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders,
thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and
afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West
Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed
that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him
brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern
them completely perhaps. That possibility was cause for prayerful and
lonely consideration, for meditation among the hills, whence he might
draw strength. He hired a pony forthwith and set out for a few days in
the hinterland.

It was the most perilous thing he could have done. There is neither
sanctity nor holy calm in the tropic jungle, nothing of the hallowed
quietude that, in northern forests, clears the mind of life's muddle
and leads the soul to God. There lurks instead a poisonous anodyne in
the heavy, scented air--a drug that lulls the spirit to an evil repose
counterfeiting the peacefulness whence alone high thoughts can spring.
In the North, Nature displays a certain restraint even in her most
flamboyant moods: the green fires of spring temper their sensuousness
in chill winds, and autumn is rich in suggestion not of love, but of
gracious age, having the aloof beauty of age and its true estimates of
life. The perception of its loveliness is impersonal and leaves the
line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a
straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no
orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the
senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a
single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as
though he lived still in Eden. From such stealthy influences the man
of rigid convictions is often in more danger than the man of no
convictions at all, for rigid convictions rather often indicate
inexperience and imperfect observation; experience,
therefore--especially emotional experience--sometimes warps them into
strange and hideous shapes.

Simpson did not find in the bush the enlightenment that he had hoped
for. He did, however, anaesthetize his mind into the belief that he
had found it. Returning, he approached Port au Prince by a route new
to him. A well-beaten trail aroused his curiosity and he followed it
into a grove of ceiba and mahogany. It was clear under foot, as no
tropic grove uncared for by man can be clear; in the middle of it lay
the ashes of a great fire, and three minaca-palm huts in good repair
huddled almost invisible under the vast trees. The ground, bare of
grass, was trodden hard, as though a multitude had stamped it
down--danced it down, perhaps--and kept it bare by frequent use.

"What a place for a camp-meeting!" thought Simpson as he turned to
leave it. "God's cathedral aisles, and roofed by God's blue sky."

His pony shied and whirled around, a long snake--a
fer-de-lance--flowed across the path.

The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the
only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not
yet quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they
reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God.
Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done
ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of
something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He
thrust it resolutely out of his mind.

V

"I have told your people--your _canaille_," said Father Antoine, "that
I shall excommunicate them all."

The priest had been graver than his wont--more dignified, less
volcanic, as though he was but the mouthpiece of authority, having
none of it himself.

"They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered.

Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given
that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new
power that had covered it.

"You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their
damnation be on your head, then."

The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow
sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock.

From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven;
he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more
imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare
people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted
pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had
combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl
at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater
opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used
it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that
he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use.
His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his
mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before--he openly
attacked the Roman Church.

"What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the
rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to
hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and
its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the
priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without
price, for all--for all--for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does
he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?"

There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned
from the platform.

"Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson
could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see
the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!"

In response to the whip of her voice there was a roar like the roar of
a train in a tunnel. It died away; the crowd eddied back upon the
platform. Father Antoine--he was robed, and there were two acolytes
with him, one with a bell and the other with a candle--began to read
in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own.

"_Excommunicado_ ----"

The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased; the candle-flame
snuffed out, the bell tinkled, there was the flash of a cope in the
doorway, and the priest was gone.

"He has excommunicated you!" Simpson shouted, almost shrieked. "Thank
God for that, my people!"

They faced him again; ecstatic, beside himself, he flung at them
incoherent words. But the Latin, mysterious as magic, fateful as a
charm, had frightened them, and they did not yield to Simpson
immediately. Perhaps they would not have yielded to him at all if it
had not been for Madame Picard.

From her corner rose an eerie chant in broken minors; it swelled
louder, and down the lane her people made for her she came dancing.
Her turban was off, her dress torn open to the breasts; she held the
child horizontally and above her in both hands. Her body swayed
rhythmically, but she just did not take up the swing of the votive
African dance that is as old as Africa. Up to the foot of the platform
she wavered, and there the cripple joined her, laughing as always.
Together they shuffled first to the right and then to the left, their
feet marking the earth floor in prints that overlapped like scales.
She laid the baby on the platform, sinking slowly to her knees as she
did so; as though at a signal the wordless chant rumbled upward from
the entire building, rolled over the platform like a wave, engulfing
the white man in its flood.

"Symbolism! Sacrifice!" Simpson yelled. "She offers all to God!"

He bent and raised the child at arm's length above his head. Instantly
the chanting ceased.

"To the grove!" screamed the _mamaloi_. She leaped to the platform,
almost from her knees it seemed, and snatched the child. "To the
grove!"

The crowd took up the cry; it swelled till Simpson's ears ached under
the impact of it.

"To the grove!"

Doubt assailed him as his mind--a white man's mind--rebelled.

"This is wrong," he said dully; "wrong."

Madame Picard's fingers gripped his arm. Except for the spasms of the
talons which were her fingers she seemed calm.

"No, m'sieu'," she said. "You have them now. Atonement--atonement,
m'sieu'. You have many times spoken of atonement. But they do not
understand what they cannot see. They are behind you--you cannot leave
them now."

"But--the child?"

"The child shall show them--a child shall lead them, m'sieu'. They
must see a _theatre_ of atonement--then they will believe. Come."

Protesting, he was swept into the crowd and forward--forward to the
van of it, into the Grand Rue. Always the thunderous rumble of the mob
continued; high shrieks flickered like lightning above it; the name of
Christ dinned into his ears from foul throats. On one side of him the
cripple appeared; on the other strode the _mamaloi_--the child,
screaming with fear, on her hip. A hymn-tune stirred under the
tumult--rose above it.

"_Le fils de Dieu se va Pen guerre
Son drapeau rouge comme sang_."

Wild quavers adorned the tune obscenely; the mob marched to it,
falling into step. Torches came, flaming high at the edges of the
crowd, flaming wan and lurid on hundreds of black faces.

"_Il va pour gagner sa couronne
Qui est-ce que suit dans son train_?"

"A crusade!" Simpson suddenly shouted. "It is a crusade!"

Yells answered him. Somewhere a drum began, reverberating as though
unfixed in space; now before them, now behind; now, it seemed, in the
air. The sound was maddening A swaying began in the crowd that took on
cadence, became a dance. Simpson, his brain drugged, his senses
perfervid marched on in exultation. These were his people at last.

The drum thundered more loudly, became unbearable. They were clear of
the town and in the bush at last; huge fires gleamed through the
trees, and the mob spilled into the grove. The cripple and the
_mamaloi_ were beside him still.

In the grove, with the drums--more than one of them now--palpitating
unceasingly, the dancing became wilder, more savage. In the light of
the fire the _mamaloi_ swayed, holding the screaming child, and close
to the flames crouched the cripple. The hymn had given place to the
formless chant, through which the minors quivered like the wails of
lost souls.

The scales fell from Simpson's eyes. He rose to his full height and
stretched out his arm, demanding silence; there was some vague hope in
him that even now he might guide them. His only answer was a louder
yell than ever.

It took form. Vieux Michaud sprang from the circle into the full
firelight, feet stamping, eyes glaring.

"_La ch vre_!" he yelled. "_La chevre sans cornes_!"

The drums rolled in menacing crescendo, the fire licked higher. All
sounds melted into one.

"_La chevre sans cornes_!"

The _mamaloi_ tore the child from her neck and held it high by one
leg. Simpson, seeing clearly as men do before they die, flung himself
toward her.

The cripple's knife, thrust from below, went home between his ribs
just as the _mamaloi's_ blade crossed the throat of the sacrifice.

"So I signed the death-certificate," Witherbee concluded. "Death at
the hands of persons unknown."

"And they'll call him a martyr," said Bunsen.

"Who knows?" the consul responded gravely. "Perhaps he was one."

MARTIN GARRITY GETS EVEN

By COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER and LEO. F. CREAGAN

From _American Magazine_

The entrance of Martin Garrity, superintendent of the Blue Ribbon
Division of the O.R.& T. Railroad, had been attended by all the
niceties of such an occasion, when Martin, grand, handsome, and
magnificent, arrived at his office for the day. True to form, he had
cussed out the office boy, spoken in fatherly fashion to the
trainmaster over the telephone about the lateness of No. 210, remarked
to the stenographer that her last letter had looked like the exquisite
tracks of a cow's hoof--and then he had read two telegrams. A moment
later, white, a bit stooped, a little old in features, he had left the
office, nor had he paused to note the grinning faces of those in his
wake, those who had known hours before!

Home, and stumbling slightly as he mounted the steps of the veranda,
he faced a person in screaming foulard and a red toque, Mrs. Jewel
Garrity, just starting for the morning's assault upon the market.
Wordlessly he poked forward the first of the telegrams as he pulled
her within the hall and shut the door. And with bulging eyes Jewel
read it aloud:

Chicago, April 30.
GARRITY,
Montgomery City:

Effective arrival successor J.P. Aldrich must dispense your valuable
services. Kindly forward resignation by wire confirming this telegram.

W.W. WALKER,
Vice-President & General
Manager.

"And who is this Walker person?" Jewel asked, with a vindictive gasp.
"'Tis me that never heard of him. Why should he sign hisself vice
prisident and giniral manager when the whole world knows Mr. Barstow,
bless his soul, is the----"

"Will ye listen?" Martin bellowed with sorrowful asperity. "Somethin's
happened. And now:

GARRITY,
Montgomery City.

Alabaster abound celebrity conglomerate commensurate constituency
effective arrival successor. Meet me Planters Hotel St. Louis this
P.M.
LEMUEL C. BARSTOW."

And while Jewel gasped Martin went on:

"'Tis code it is, from Barstow. It says Walker's taken his place--and
I'm out."

Mouth drawn at the corners, hand trembling slightly, Jewel reached for
the message and stared blankly at the railroad code. Then silently she
turned and thumped up the stairs. In a moment she was down again; the
screaming foulard had given place to a house dress; the red toque had
been substituted by a shawl. But the lips were drawn no longer--a
smile was on them, and a soft hand touched Martin's white cheek as she
reached the door.

"'Tis me that's goin' to the cash-carry, Marty darlin'," came quietly.
"I never liked that high-toned market annyhow. About--about that
other, Marty, me bye, 'tis all right, it is, it is. We can always
start over again."

Over again! It had opened the doors of memory for Martin Garrity as,
at the window, he stared after her with eyes that saw in the portly,
middle-aged figure a picture of other days, when the world had centred
about a fluttering honour flag, which flew above a tiny section house
at a bit of a place called Glen Echo, when the rotund form of Jewel
Garrity was slender and graceful, when Martin's freckled face was
thinner and more engaging, and when----

Visions of the old days floated before him, days on the section with
his crew of "snipes" back in the Honour Flag times. Memories returned
to him, of blazing hours in the summer, when even the grease-lizards
panted and died, when the heat rays curled in maddening serpent-like
spirals before his glazed eyes.

And why? Why had he been willing to sacrifice, to work for wages
pitiful indeed, compared to the emoluments of other lines of
endeavour? Why had she, his Jewel, accepted the loneliness, the
impoverishment of those younger days with light-heartedness? He never
had thought of it before. Now, deposed, dethroned, defeated at the
very pinnacle of his life, the answer came, with a force that brought
a lump to his throat and a tear to his eyes. Why? Because they had
loved this great, human, glistening thing of shining steel and
thundering noise, loved it because the Blue Ribbon division had
included the Blue Ribbon section, their section, which they had built
together.

Now, all they had worked for, lived for, longed for, and enjoyed
together had been taken away, without warning, without reason, and
given to another! Martin groaned with the thought of it. Three hours
later he kissed his Jewel good-bye, roaring at her because a tear
stood in each eye--to cover the fact that tears were in his own. That
night, still grim, still white, he faced Lemuel C. Barstow, former
vice-president and general manager of the O.R.& T. in his hotel room
in St. Louis. That person spoke with biting directness.

"Politics, Martin," came his announcement. "They shelved me because I
wouldn't play the tricks of a clique that got into power before I
could stop 'em. You were my pet appointee, so you went, too. It wasn't
because we weren't efficient. They lifted the pin on me, and that
meant you. So here we are. But"--and a fist banged on the
table--"they're going to pay for it! This new crowd knows as much
about railroading as a baby does about chess. I tried to tell that to
the men with the money. They wouldn't listen. So I went to men who
could hear, the Ozark Central. I'm to be the new president of that
road."

"That wooden axle outfit?" Martin squinted. "Sure, Mr. Barstow, I'm
not knockin' the new deal, or----"

"Never mind that." Lemuel C. Barstow smiled genially. "That's where
your part of the job comes in. That's why I need you. But we'll let
that go for the present. Go back to Montgomery City, turn over the
reins to this new fish, who doesn't know an air brake from a boiler
tube, and keep quiet until I send for you."

Then ensued two weeks of nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but to
pace the floor like some belligerent, red-faced caged animal, daring
his Jewel to feel hurt because sneering remarks had been made about
her husband's downfall. Two weeks--then came the summons.

"Careful now, Martin! No wild throws, remember!" Lemuel Barstow was
giving the final instructions. "We've got a big job ahead. I've
brought you down here because you have the faculty of making men think
they hate you--then going out and working their heads off for you,
because well, to be frank, you're the biggest, blunderingest,
hardest-working blusterer that I ever saw--and you're the only man who
can pull me through. This road's in rotten shape, especially as
concerns the roadbed. The steel and ties are all right, but the
ballast is rotten. You've got to make it the best in Missouri, and
you've got only eight months to do it in. So tear loose. Your job's
that of special superintendent, with no strings on it. Pay no
attention to any one but me. If you need equipment, buy it and tell
the purchasing agent to go to the hot place. By March 1st, and no
later, I want the track from St. Louis to Kansas City to be as smooth
as a ballroom floor."

"And why the rush?"

"Just this: The O.R.& T. treated me like a dirty dog. I'm going to
make 'em pay for it; I'm after my pound of flesh now! There's just one
thing that road prizes above all else--it's St. Louis-Kansas City mail
contracts. The award comes up again in March. The system that can make
the fastest time in the government speed trials gets the plum.
Understand?"

"I do!" answered Martin, with the first real enthusiasm he had known
in weeks. "'Tis me budget I'll be fixin' up immejiate at once. Ye'll
get action, ye will." He departed for a frenzied month. Then he
returned at the request of President Barstow.

"You're doing wonderful work, Martin," said that official. "It's
coming along splendidly. But--but----I understand there's a bit of a
laugh going around among the railroad men about you."

"About me?" Garrity's chest bulged aggressively. "An' who's laughin?"

"Nearly everybody in the railroad game in Missouri. They say you let
some slick salesman sting you for a full set of Rocky Mountain
snow-fighting machinery, even up to a rotary snow plough. I----"

"Sting me?" Martin bellowed the words. "That I did not!"

"Good! I knew----"

"I ordered it of me own free will. And if annybody laughs----"

"But, Martin"--and there was pathos in the voice--"a rotary snow
plough? On a Missouri railroad? Flangers, jull-ploughs, wedge
ploughs--tunnel wideners--and a rotary? Here? Why--I--I thought better
of you than that. We haven't had a snow in Missouri that would require
all of those things, not in the last ten years. What did they cost?"

"Eighty-three thousand, fi'hunnerd an' ten dollars," answered Martin
gloomily. He _had_ pulled a boner. Mr. Barstow figured on a sheet of
paper.

"At three dollars a day, that would hire nearly a thousand track
labourers for thirty days. A thousand men could tamp a lot of ballast
in a month, Martin."

"That they could, sir," came dolefully. Then Garrity, the old lump in
his throat, waited to be excused, and backed from the office. That
rotary snow plough had been his own, his pet idea--and it had been
wrong!

Gloomily he returned to Northport, his headquarters, there to observe
a group of grinning railroad men gathered about a great, bulky object
parked in front of the roundhouse. Behind it were other contraptions
of shining steel, all of which Martin recognized without a second
glance--his snow-fighting equipment, just arrived. Nor did he approach
for a closer view. Faintly he heard jeering remarks from the crowd;
then laughter. He caught the mention of his own name, coupled with
derisive comment. His hands clenched. His red neck bulged. His big
lungs filled--then slowly deflated; and Martin went slowly homeward,
in silence.

"And is it your liver?" asked Jewel Garrity as they sat at dinner.

"It is not!" bawled Martin. He rose. He pulled his napkin from his
chin with Garrity emphasis and dropped it in the gravy. He thumped
about the table, then stopped.

One big freckled paw reached uncertainly outward and plunked with
intended gentleness upon the woman's shoulder, to rest, trembling
there, a second. Then silently Martin went on upstairs. For that touch
had told her that it was--his heart!

A heart that ached with a throbbing sorrow which could not be downed
as the summer passed and Martin heard again and again the reflexes
brought about by the purchase of his snow ploughs. Vainly he stormed
up and down the line of the Ozark Central with its thousands of
labourers. Vainly he busied himself with a thousand intricacies of
construction, in the hope of forgetfulness. None of it could take from
his mind the fact that railroad men were laughing at him, that
chuckling train-butchers were pointing out the giant machinery to
grinning passengers, that even the railroad journals were printing
funny quips about Barstow's prize superintendent and his mountain snow
plough. Nor could even the news that Aldrich, over on the Blue Ribbon
division, was allowing that once proud bit of rail to degenerate into
an ordinary portion of a railroad bring even a passing cheer. They,
too, were laughing! In a last doglike hope Martin looked up the
precipitation reports. It only brought more gloom. Only four times in
thirty years had there been a snowfall in Missouri that could block a
railroad!

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