O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Various

V >> Various >> O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921

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The summer crept into autumn; autumn to early winter, bringing with it
the transformation of the rickety old Ozark Central to a smooth,
well-cushioned line of gleaming steel, where the trains shot to and
fro with hardly a tremor, where the hollow thunder of culvert and
trestle spoke of sturdy strength, where the trackwalker searched in
vain for loose plates or jutting joints; but to Garrity, it was only
the fulfilment or the work of a mechanical second nature. December was
gliding by in warmth and sunshine. January came, with no more than a
hatful of snow, and once more Martin found himself facing the
president.

"We'll win that contract, Martin!" It almost brought a smile to the
superintendent's face. "I've just been over the road--on the quiet. We
made eighty miles an hour with hardly a jolt!"

"Thankee, sir." A vague sense of joy touched Martin's aching
heart--only to depart.

"By the way, I noticed when I went through Northport that you've still
got that rotary where everybody can see it. I wish you'd move that
stuff--behind the roundhouse, out of sight."

Then Martin, heavier at heart than ever, went back to Northport. There
he said a quaking good-bye to his last hope--and executed the
president's orders, trying not to notice the grins of the "goat" crew
as they shunted the machinery into hiding. That night, after Jewel was
asleep, and the cat outside had ceased yowling, Martin climbed
stealthily out of bed and went on his knees, praying with all the
fervour of his big being for snow. And the prayer was answered----

By the worst rain that a Missouri January had known in years,
scattering the freshly tamped gravel, loosening the piles of trestles,
sending Martin forth once more to bawl his orders with the thunder of
the old days back at Glen Echo, even to leap side by side with the
track labourers, a tamping bar in his big hands, that one more blow
might be struck, one more impression made upon the giant task ahead.

January slid by; February went into the third week before the job was
finished. Martin looked at the sky with hopeful eyes. It was useless.
March the first--and Martin went into St. Louis to make his report,
and to spend an uneasy, restless night with the president in his room
at the hotel.

"It's only a few days off now"--they were in bed the next morning,
finishing the conversation begun the night before--"and I want you to
keep your eyes open every second! The mail marathon agreement reads
that no postponement can be made on account of physical or mechanical
obstacles. If a trestle should happen to go out--that would be our
finish."

"I wish"--Martin rolled out of bed and groped for his shoes--"we'd
been workin' with me old Blue Ribbon division. I know every foot o'
----"

"Oh, chase the Blue Ribbon division! Every time I see you you've got
something on your chest about it. Why, man, don't you know it's the
Blue Ribbon division that I'm counting on! Aldrich has let it run down
until it's worse than a hog trail. If they can make forty-five an hour
on it, I'm crazy. You can't win mail contracts with that. So forget
it. Anyhow, you're working for the Ozark Central now."

Martin nodded, then for a long moment crouched silent humiliated, his
thick fingers fumbling with the laces of his shoes. At last, with a
sigh, he poked his shirt into his trousers and thumped across the room
to raise the drawn shades.

He stared. He gulped. He yelped--with an exclamation of joy, of
deliverance, of victory! The outside world was white! A blinding,
swirling veil shrouded even the next building. The street below was
like a stricken thing; the vague forms of the cars seemed to no more
than crawl. Wildly Martin pawed for the telephone and bawled a number.
Barstow sat up in bed.

"Snow!" he gasped. "A blizzard!"

"Order the snow ploughs!" Garrity had got the chief dispatcher, and
was bawling louder than ever. "All of thim! Put an injine on each and
keep thim movin'! Run that rotary till the wheels drop off!"

Then he whirled, grasping wildly at coat, hat, and overcoat.

"And now will ye laugh?" he roared, as he backed to the door. "Now
will ye laugh at me snow plough?"

Twenty-four hours later, when trains were limping into terminals hours
behind time, when call after call was going forth to summon aid for
the stricken systems of Missouri, when double-headers, frost-caked
wheels churning uselessly, bucked the drifts in a constantly losing
battle; when cattle trains were being cut from the schedules, and
every wire was loaded with the messages of frantic officials, someone
happened to wonder what that big boob Garrity was doing with his snow
ploughs. The answer was curt and sharp--there on the announcement
board of the Union Station:

OZARK CENTRAL ALL TRAINS ON TIME

But Martin had only one remark to make, that it still was snowing.
Noon of the third day came, and the Ozark Central became the detour
route of every cross-Missouri mail train. Night, and Martin Garrity,
snow-crusted, his face cut and cracked by the bite of wind and the
sting of splintered, wind-driven ice, his head aching from loss of
sleep, but his heart thumping with happiness, took on the serious
business of moving every St. Louis-Kansas City passenger and express
train, blinked vacuously when someone called him a wizard.

Railroad officials gave him cigars, and slapped him on his snow-caked
shoulders. He cussed them out of the way. The telephone at Northport
clanged and sang with calls from President Barstow; but Martin only
waved a hand in answer as he ground through with the rotary.

"Tell him to send me tilegrams!" he blustered. "Don't he know I'm
busy?"

Twelve hours more. The snow ceased. The wind died. Ten miles out of
Kansas City Martin gave the homeward-bound order for Northport, then
slumped weakly into a corner. Five minutes before he had heard the
news--news that hurt. The O.R.& T., fighting with every available man
it could summon, had partially opened its line, with the exception of
one division, hopelessly snowed under--his old, his beloved Blue
Ribbon.

"Tis me that would have kept 'er open," he mused bitterly. "And they
fired me!"

He nodded and slept. He awoke--and he said the same thing again. He
reached Northport, late at night, to roar at Jewel and the hot water
she had heated for his frost-bitten feet--then to hug her with an
embrace that she had not known since the days when her Marty wore a
red undershirt.

"And do ye be hearin?" she asked. "The Blue Ribbon's tied up! Not a
wheel----"

"Will ye shut up?" Martin suddenly had remembered something. The mail
test! Not forty-eight hours away! He blinked. One big hand smacked
into the other. "The pound of flesh!" he bellowed. "Be gar! The pound
of flesh!"

"And what are ye talkin' ----"

"Woman, shut up," said Martin Garrity. "'Tis me that's goin' to bed.
See that I'm not disturbed. Not even for Mr. Barstow."

"That I will," said Jewel--but that she didn't. It was Martin himself
who answered the pounding on the door four hours later, then, in the
frigid dining room, stared at the message which the chief dispatcher
had handed him:

GARRITY, NORTHPORT: If line is free of snow assemble all snow-fighting
equipment and necessary locomotives to handle same, delivering same
fully equipped and manned with your own force to Blue Ribbon Division
O.R. & T. Accompany this equipment personally to carry out
instructions as I would like to have them carried out. Everything
depends on your success or failure to open this line.

LEMUEL C. BARSTOW.

So! He was to make the effort; but if he failed that mail contract
came automatically to the one road free to make the test, the Ozark
Central! That was what Barstow meant! Make the effort, appear to fight
with every weapon, that the O.R. & T. might have no claim in the
future of unfairness but to fail! Let it be so! The O.R. & T. had
broken his heart. Now, at last, his turn had come!

He turned to the telephone and gave his orders. Then up the stairs he
clambered and into his clothes. Jewel snorted and awoke.

"Goo'by!" roared Martin as he climbed into his coat. "They've sent for
me to open the Blue Ribbon."

"And have they?" Jewel sat up, her eyes beaming. "I'd been wishin'
it--and ye'll do it, Marty; I've been thinkin' about the old section
snowed under--and all the folks we knew----"

"Will ye shut up?" This was something Martin did not want to hear. Out
of the house he plumped, to the waiting double-header of locomotives
attached to the rotary, and the other engines, parked on the switches,
with their wedge ploughs, jull-ploughs, flangers, and tunnel wideners.
The "high-ball" sounded. At daybreak, boring his way through the
snow-clogged transfer at Missouri City, Martin came out upon the main
line of the O.R. & T.--and to his duty of revenge.

On they went, a slow, deliberate journey, steam hissing, black smoke
curling, whistles tooting, wheels crunching, as the rotary bucked the
bigger drifts and the smaller ploughs eliminated the slighter raises,
a triumphant procession toward that thing which Martin knew he could
attack with all the seeming ferocity of desperation and yet fail--the
fifty-foot thickness of Bander Cut.

Face to face, in the gaunt sun of early morning he saw it--a little
shack, half covered with snow, bleak and forbidding in its loneliness,
yet all in all to the man who stared at it with eyes suddenly
wistful--his little old section house, where once the honour flag had
flown.

He gulped. Suddenly his hand tugged at the bell cord. Voices had come
from without, they were calling his name! He sought the door, then
gulped again. The steps and platform of his car were filled with
eager, homely-faced men, men he had known in other days, his old crew
of section "snipes."

All about him they crowded; Martin heard his voice answering their
queries, as though someone were talking far away. His eyes had turned
back to that section house, seeking instinctively the old flag, his
flag. It spoke for a man who gave the best that was in him, who
surpassed because he worked with his heart and with his soul in the
every task before him. But the flag was not there. The pace had not
been maintained. Then the louder tones of a straw boss called him
back:

"You'll sure need that big screw and all the rest of them babies,
Garrity. That ole Bander Cut's full to the sky--and Sni-a-bend Hill!
Good-night! But you'll make 'er. You've got to, Garrity; we've made up
a purse an' bet it down in Montgomery that you'll make 'er!"

Martin went within and the crew waited for a high-ball order that did
not come. In his private car, alone, Martin Garrity was pacing the
floor. The call of the old division, which he had loved and built, was
upon him, swaying him with all the force of memory.

"I guess we could sell the flivver----" he was repeating. "Then I've
got me diamond ... and Jewel ... she's got a bit, besides what we've
saved bechune us. And he'll win the test, anyhow ... they'll never
beat him over this division ... if I give him back what I've earned
... and if he wins anyhow------"

Up ahead they still waited. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. At last a figure
appeared in the cab of the big rotary, looking for a last time at that
bleak little section house and the bare flagpole. Then:

"Start 'er up and give 'er hell!"

Martin was on the job once more, while outside his old section snipes
cheered, and reminded him that their hopes and dreams for a division
still beloved in spite of a downfall rested upon his shoulders. The
whistles screamed. The bells clanged. Smoke poured from the stacks of
the double-header, and the freshening sun, a short time later, glinted
upon the white-splotched equipment, as the great auger followed by its
lesser allies, bored into the mass of snow at Bander Cut.

Hours of backing and filling, of retreats and attacks, hours in which
there came, time after time, the opportunity to quit. But Martin did
not give the word. Out the other side they came, the steam shooting
high, and on toward the next obstacle, the first of forty, lesser and
greater, which lay between them and Montgomery City.

Afternoon ... night. Still the crunching, whining roar of the rotary
as it struck the icy stretches fought against them in vain, then
retreated until pick and bar and dynamite could break the way for its
further attack. Midnight, and one by one the exhausted crew approached
the white-faced, grim-lipped man who stood tense and determined in the
rotary cab. One by one they asked the same question:

"Hadn't we better tie up for the night?"

"Goon! D'ye hear me? Goon! What is it ye are, annyhow, a bunch of
white-livered cowards that ye can't work without rest?"

The old, dynamic, bulldozing force, the force that had made men hate
Martin Garrity only to love him, had returned into its full power, the
force that had built him from a section snipe to the exalted possessor
of the blue pennon which once had fluttered from that flagpole, was
again on the throne, fighting onward to the conclusion of a purpose,
no matter what it might wreck for him personally, no matter what the
cost might be to him in the days to come. He was on his last job--he
knew that. The mail contract might be won a thousand times over, but
there ever would rest the stigma that he had received a telegram which
should have been plain to him, and that he had failed to carry out its
hidden orders. But with the thought of it Martin straightened, and he
roared anew the message which carried tired, aching men through the
night:

"Go on! Go on! What's stoppin' ye? Are ye going to let these
milk-an'-water fellys over here say that ye tried and quit?"

Early morning--and there came Sni-a-bend Hill, with the snow packed
against it in a new plane which obliterated the railroad as though it
had never been there. Hot coffee came from the containers, sandwiches
from the baskets, and the men ate and drank as they worked--all but
Garrity. This was the final battle, and with it came his battle cry:

"Keep goin'! This is the tough one--we've got to go on--we've got to
go on!"

And on they went. The streaking rays of dawn played for a moment upon
an untroubled mound of white, smooth and deep upon the eastern end of
Sni-a-bend. Then, as though from some great internal upheaval, the
mass began to tremble. Great heaps of snow broke from their place and
tumbled down the embankment. From farther at the rear, steam,
augmented by the vapours of melting snow and the far-blown gushes of
spitting smoke, hissed upward toward the heights of the white-clad
hill. Then a bulging break--the roar of machinery, and a monster came
grinding forth, forcing its way hungrily onward, toward the next and
smaller contest. Within the giant auger a man turned to Garrity.

"Guess it's over, Boss. They said up at Glen Echo--"

A silent nod. Then Garrity turned, and reaching into the
telegram-blank holder at the side of the cab, brought forth paper and
an envelope. Long he wrote as the rotary clattered along, devouring
the smaller drifts in steady succession, a letter of the soul, a
letter which told of an effort that had failed, of a decision that
could not hold. And it told, too, of the return of all that Martin had
worked for--Mr. Barstow had been good to him, and he, Martin Garrity,
could not take his money and disobey him. He'd pay him back.

Whistles sounded, shrieking in answer to the tooting of others from
far away, the wild eerie ones of yard engines, the deeper, throatier
tones of factories. It was the end. Montgomery City!

Slowly Martin addressed the envelope, and as the big bore came to a
stop, evaded the thronging crowds and sought the railroad mail box. He
raised the letter....

"Mr. Garrity!" He turned. The day agent was running toward him. "Mr.
Garrity, Mr. Barstow wants to see you. He's here--in the station. He
came to see the finish."

So the execution must be a personal one! The letter was crunched into
a pocket. Dimly, soddenly, Martin followed the agent. As through a
haze he saw the figure of Barstow, and felt that person tug at his
sleeve.

"Come over here, where we can talk in private!" There was a queer ring
in the voice and Martin obeyed. Then--"Shake, Old Kid!"

Martin knew that a hand was clasping his. But why?

"You made it! I knew you would. Didn't I tell you we'd get our pound
of flesh?"

"But--but the contract----"

"To thunder with the contract!" came the happy answer of Barstow. "If
you had only answered the 'phone, you wouldn't be so much in the dark.
What do I care about mail contracts now--with the best two lines in
Missouri under my supervision? Don't you understand? This was the hole
that I had prayed for this O.R. & T. bunch to get into from the first
minute I saw that snow. They would have been tied up for a week
longer--if it hadn't been for us. Can't you see? It was the argument I
needed--that politics isn't what counts--it's brains and doing things!
Now do you understand? Well"--and Barstow stood off and laughed--"if I
have to diagram things for you, the money interests behind the O.R. &
T. have seen the light. I'll admit it took about three hours of
telephoning to New York to cause the illumination; but they've seen
it, and that's enough. They also have agreed to buy the Ozark Central
and to merge the two. Further, they have realized that the only
possible president of the new lines is a man with brains like, for
instance, Lemuel C. Barstow, who has working directly with him a
general superintendent--and don't overlook that general part--a
_general_ superintendent named Martin Garrity!"

STRANGER THINGS

By MILDRED CRAM

From _Metropolitan Magazine_

We were seated in the saloon of a small steamer which plies between
Naples and Trieste on irregular schedule. Outside, the night was
thickly black and a driving rain swept down the narrow decks.

"You Englishmen laugh at ghosts," the Corsican merchant said. "In my
country, we are less pretentious. Frankly, we are afraid. You, too,
are afraid, and so you laugh! A difference, it seems to me, which
lies, not in the essence but in the manner."

Doctor Fenton smiled queerly. "Perhaps. What do any of us know about
it, one way or the other? Ticklish business! We poke a little too far
beyond our ken and get a shock that withers our souls. Cosmic force!
We stumble forward, bleating for comfort, and fall over a charged
cable. It may have been put there to hold us out--or in."

Aldobrandini, the Italian inventor, was playing cards with a German
engineer. He lost the game to his opponent, and turning about in his
chair, came into the conversation.

"You are talking about ghosts. I have seen them. Once in the Carso.
Again on the campagna near Rome. I met a company of Caesar's
legionaries tramping through a bed of asphodels. The asphodels lay
down beneath those crushing sandals, and then stood upright again,
unharmed."

The engineer shuffled the cards between short, capable fingers.
"Ghosts. Yes, I agree; there are such things. Created out of our
subconscious selves; mirages of the mind; photographic spiritual
projections; hereditary memories. There are always explanations."

Doctor Fenton poked into the bowl of his pipe with a broad thumb. "Did
any of you happen to know the English poet, Cecil Grimshaw? No? I'll
tell you a story about him if you care to listen. A long story, I warn
you. Very curious. Very suggestive. I cannot vouch for the entire
truth of it, since I got the tale from many sources--a word here, a
chance encounter there, and at last only the puzzling reports of men
who saw Grimshaw out in Africa. He wasn't a friend of mine, or I
wouldn't tell these things."

Aldobrandini's dark eyes softened. He leaned forward. "Cecil Grimshaw
... We Latins admire his work more than that of any modern
Englishman."

The doctor tipped his head back against the worn red velvet of the
lounge. An oil lamp, swinging from the ceiling, seemed to isolate him
in a pool of light. Outside, the invisible sea raced astern, hissing
slightly beneath the driving impact of the rain.

I first heard of Grimshaw [the doctor began] in my student days in
London. He was perhaps five years my senior, just beginning to be
famous, not yet infamous, but indiscreet enough to get himself talked
about. He had written a little book of verse, "Vision of Helen," he
called it, I believe.... The oblique stare of the hostile Trojans.
Helen coifed with flame. Menelaus. Love ... Greater men than Grimshaw
had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his
imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the
exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly
and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was
beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw with disapproval,
if you spoke of him at all, or, if you happened to be a prophet, you
saw in him the ultimate bomb beneath the Victorian literary edifice.
And so he was.

I saw him once at the Alhambra--poetry in a top hat! He wore evening
clothes that were a little too elaborate, a white camellia in his
buttonhole, and a thick-lensed monocle on a black ribbon. During the
entr'acte he stood up and surveyed the house from pit to gallery, as
if he wanted to be seen. He was very tall and the ugliest man in
England. Imagine the body of a Lincoln, the hands of a woman, the jaw
and mouth of Disraeli, an aristocratic nose, unpleasant eyes, and then
that shock of yellow hair--hyacinthine--the curly locks of an insane
virtuoso or a baby prodigy.

"Who is that?" I demanded.

"Grimshaw. The chap who wrote the book about naughty Helen. _La belle
Helene_ and the shepherd boy."

I stared. Everyone else stared. The pit stopped shuffling and giggling
to gaze at that prodigious monstrosity, and people in the boxes turned
their glasses on him. Grimshaw seemed to be enjoying it. He spoke to
someone across the aisle and smiled, showing a set of huge white
teeth, veritable tombstones.

"Abominable," I said.

But I got his book and read it. He was the first Englishman to dare
break away from literary conventions. Of course he shocked England. He
was a savage aesthete. I read the slim volume through at one sitting;
I was horrified and fascinated.

I met Grimshaw a year later. He was having a play produced at the
Lyceum--"The Labyrinth"--with Esther Levenson as Simonetta. She
entertained for him at her house in Chelsea and I got myself invited
because I wanted to see the atrocious genius at close range. He wore a
lemon-coloured vest and lemon-yellow spats.

"How d'you do?" he said, gazing at me out of those queer eyes of his.
"I hear that you admire my work."

"You have been misinformed," I replied. "Your work interests me,
because I am a student of nervous and mental diseases."

"Ah. Psychotherapy."

"All of the characters in your poem, 'The Vision of Helen,' are
neurotics. They suffer from morbid fears, delusions, hysteria, violent
mental and emotional complexities. A text-book in madness."

Grimshaw laughed. "You flatter me. I am attracted by neurotic types.
Insanity has its source in the unconscious, and we English are afraid
of looking inward." He glanced around the crowded room with an amused
and cynical look. "Most of these people are as bad as my Trojans,
Doctor Fenton. Only they conceal their badness, and it isn't good for
them."

We talked for a few moments. I amused him, I think, by my diagnosis of
his Helen's mental malady. But he soon tired of me and his restless
gaze went over my head, searching for admiration. Esther Levenson
brought Ellen Terry over and he forgot me entirely in sparkling for
the good lady--showing his teeth, shaking his yellow locks, bellowing
like a centaur.

"The fellow's an ass," I decided.

But when "The Labyrinth" was produced, I changed my mind. There again
was that disturbing loveliness. It was a story of the passionate
Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Esther Levenson drifted
through the four long acts against a background of Tuscan walls,
scarlet hangings, oaths, blood-spilling, dark and terrible vengeance.
Grimshaw took London by the throat and put it down on its knees.

Then for a year or two he lived on his laurels, lapping up admiration
like a drunkard in his cups. Unquestionably, Esther Levenson was his
mistress, since she presided over his house in Cheyne Walk. They say
she was not the only string to his lute. A Jewess, a Greek poetess,
and a dancer from Stockholm made up his amorous medley at that time.
Scandalized society flocked to his drawing-room, there to be received
by Simonetta herself, wearing the blanched draperies and tragic pearls
of the labyrinth he had made for her. Grimshaw offered no apologies.
He was the uncrowned laureate and kings can do no wrong. He was
painted by the young Sargent, of course, and by the aging
Whistler--you remember the butterfly's portrait of him in a yellow
kimono leaning against a black mantel? I, for one, think he was vastly
amused by all this fury of admiration; he despised it and fed upon it.
If he had been less great, he would have been utterly destroyed by it,
even then.

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