O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Various

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

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"Ladies an' children is nicest, ain't they?" he appealed.

Suddenly the great Margarita d'Avala caught him in her arms and drew
him to that warm, beautiful breast where no child's head had ever
rested.

"Oh, Freddy, Freddy!" she cried. "You are right, and I must have you!"

"You kin, s' long's Florette's away," said Freddy.

WILD EARTH

By SOPHIE KERR

From _Saturday Evening Post_

The big department store so terrified Wesley Dean that he got no
farther than five steps beyond the entrance. Crowds of well-dressed
ladies milling round like cattle, the noise of many feminine voices,
the excessive warmth and the heady odour of powder and perfume--the
toilet goods were grouped very near the door--all combined to bewilder
and frighten him. He got out before the floorwalker of the centre
aisle could so much as ask him what he wanted.

Once outside he stood in the spring wind and meditated. There must be
other stores in Baltimore, little ones, where a man could buy things
in quiet and decency. Until the four-o'clock motor stage started for
Frederick he had nothing to do.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and started down the crowded
crookedness of Lexington Street. He reached the market and strolled
through it leisurely, feeling very much at home with the meats and
vegetables and the good country look of many of the stall keepers. Its
size amazed him; but then he'd always heard that Baltimore was a big
city, and so many people must take a lot to eat. He went on, all the
way through, and after a little hesitation struck down a quiet street
to the right. But he saw no shops of the sort he was looking for, and
he had thoughts of going back and braving the big store again. He
turned again and again, pleased by the orderly rows of
red-brick-with-white-trim houses, homey-looking places in spite of
their smallness and close setting. At last, right in the middle of a
row of these, he saw a large window set in place of the two usual
smaller ones, a window filled with unmistakable feminine stuff, and
the sign, small, neatly gilt lettered: Miss Tolman's Ladies' Shop.
Hemstitching Done.

There wasn't a soul going in or out, so he braved it, and was happier
still when he found himself the sole customer. The opening of the door
made a bell tinkle in a back room.

A girl came through parted green wool curtains, a girl so
flaxen-haired, with such blue eyes--like a friendly kitten--that
Wesley Dean almost forgot the errand that had brought him so far.

As for the girl, she was surprised to see a man, and particularly a
young country man, among the gloves and stockings, cheap pink
underthings, and embroideries of Miss Tolman's shop.

"You got any--any aprons?" he stammered.

"White aprons or gingham?" The girl's smile helped Wesley a great
deal. A very nice girl, he decided; but she made him feel queer,
light-headed.

"I'm not sure, ma'am. When I come away from home this morning I asked
Aunt Dolcey did she need anything, and she said 'yes, a couple of
aprons,' but she didn't say what kind."

The girl thought it over. "I reckon maybe if she's your auntie she'd
want white aprons."

Her mistake gave him a chance for the conversation which he felt a
most surprising wish to make.

"No'm, she's not my auntie. She's the old coloured woman keeps house
for me."

Oh, she was a very nice girl; something about the way she held her
head made Wesley think of his spunky little riding mare, Teeny.

"H'm. Then I think you'd be safe to get a gingham; anyway, a gingham
apron comes in handy to anybody working round a kitchen. We got some
nice big ones."

"Aunt Dolcey's not so awful big; not any bigger'n you, but heavier
set, like."

There is a distinct advance in friendly intimacy when one has one's
size considered in relation to a customer's needs, particularly when
the consideration shows how little a man knows about women's garments.
The girl reached beneath the counter and brought up an armful of
blue-and-white-checked aprons. She unfolded them deftly, and Wesley
saw that she had small strong hands and round wrists.

"These got bibs and nice long strings, cover you all up while you're
cooking. They're a dollar."

His gaze, intent on her rather than the aprons, brought her eyes to
his.

"Good-looking, but country," was her swift appraisal, adding to it,
"And what a funny mark he's got on his forehead."

It was true. His young hawklike face, tanned brown by sun and wind,
was made strangely grim by a dark vein on his brow, which lent a
frowning shadow to his whole visage. Yet the eyes she had looked into
were shy and gentle and reassuringly full of open admiration.

"If you think she'll like 'em I'll take two," he said after an
instant's pause.

"I'm sure she'll like 'em. They're good gingham and real well made. We
don't keep shoddy stuff. You could go into one of the big stores and
get aprons for fifty, sixty cents, but they wouldn't be good value."

The soft cadence of her voice gave Wesley a strange and stifled
feeling around the heart. He must--he must stay and talk to her.
Hardly knowing what he said, he burst into loquacity.

"I did go into one of the big stores, and it sort of scared
me--everything so stuffy and heaped up, and such a lot of people. I
don't get down to Baltimore very often, you see. I do most of my
buying right in Frederick, but I'd broke my disker, and if you send,
it's maybe weeks before the implement house will 'tend to you. So I
just come down and got the piece, so there won't be but one day lost."

The girl looked up at him again, and he could feel his heart pound
against his ribs. This time she was a little wistful.

"They say it's real pretty country out round Frederick. I've never
been out of Baltimore, 'cept to go down the bay on
excursions--Betterton and Love Point, and places like that. It makes a
grand sail in hot weather."

She handed him the package and picked up the two bills he had laid
down on the counter. There was plainly no reason for his further
lingering. But he had an artful idea.

"Look here--maybe I ought to get Aunt Dolcey a white apron, too. Maybe
she won't want the gingham ones at all."

The girl looked surprised at such extravagance.

"But if she doesn't you can bring 'em back when you come to Baltimore
again, and we'd exchange 'em," she argued mildly.

"No, I better get a white one now. She puts on a white apron
evenings," he added craftily.

A box of white aprons was lifted from the shelf and a choice made, but
even that transaction could not last forever, as Wesley Dean was
desperately aware.

"Look here, are you Miss Tolman?" he burst out. "I saw the name
outside on the window."

"Mercy, no! Miss Tolman's a kind of cousin of mine. She's fifty-two,
and she can't hardly get through that door there."

He disregarded the description, for the second bundle was being tied
up fast. He had never seen any one tie so fast, he thought.

"My name's Wesley Dean, and I got a farm in the mountains back of
Frederick. Say--I don't want you to think I'm fresh, but--but--say,
would you go to the movies with me to-night?"

It had come to him in a flash that he could disregard the seat in the
four-o'clock bus and go back to-morrow morning. Sweat stood out on his
forehead and on his curving, clean-shaven upper lip. His boy's eyes
hung on hers, pleading. All the happiness of his life, he felt, waited
for this girl's answer, this little yellow-haired girl whom he had
never seen until a quarter of an hour before.

"We-ell," she hesitated, "I--I don't like to have you think I'd pick
up like this with any fellow that come along----"

"I don't think so!" he broke in fiercely. "If I thought so I'd
never've asked you."

There was a strange breathless moment in the tiny cluttered shop, a
moment such as some men and women are lucky enough to feel once in a
lifetime. It is the moment when the heart's wireless sends its clear
message, "This is my woman" and "This is my man." The flaxen-haired
girl and the dark boy were caught in the golden magic of it and, half
scared, half ecstatic, were thrown into confusion.

"I'll go," she whispered breathlessly. "There's a little park a block
down the street. I'll be there at seven o'clock, by the statue."

"I'll be there, waiting for you," he replied, and because he could not
bear the strange sweet pain that filled him he plunged out of the
shop, jerking the door so that the little bell squealed with surprise.
He had forgotten his packages.

Also, as he remembered presently, he did not know her name.

He was at the feet of the statue in the park by half-past six, and
spent a restless half hour there in the cool spring twilight. Perhaps
she would not come! Perhaps he had frightened her, even as he had
frightened himself, by this inexplicable boldness. Other girls passed
by, and some of them glanced with a coquettish challenge at the
handsome tall youth with his frowning brow. But he did not see them.
Presently--and it was just on the stroke of seven--he saw her coming,
hesitantly, and with an air of complete and proper primness. She had
on a plain little shabby suit and hat, but round her throat was a
string of beads of a blue to match her eyes, an enticing, naive
harmony.

She carried the forgotten aprons, and handed them to him gravely.

"You left these," she said; and then, to regularize the situation, "My
name's Anita Smithers. I ought've told you this afternoon, but--I
guess I was kind of forgetful, too."

That made them both smile, and the smile left them less shy. He
stuffed the forgotten aprons into his overcoat pocket.

"I was so afraid you wouldn't come. Where can we go? I don't know
anything much about the city. I'd like to take you to a nice picture
show, the best there is."

She flushed with the glory of it.

"There's a real nice picture house only a little ways from here. They
got a Pauline Frederick film on. I'm just crazy about Pauline
Frederick."

By this time they were walking sedately out of the park, not daring to
look at each other. She watched him while he bought the tickets and
then a box of caramels from the candy stand inside.

"He knows what to do," she thought proudly. "He's not a bit of a
hick."

"D'you go to the pictures a lot?" he asked when they were seated.

"'Most every night. I'm just crazy about 'em."

"I expect you've got steady company, then?" The question fairly jerked
out of him.

She shook her head. "No, I almost always go by myself. My girl friend,
she goes with me sometimes."

He sighed with relief. "They got good picture shows in Frederick. I go
'most every Saturday night."

"But you don't live right in Frederick, you said."

He seized the chance to tell her about himself.

"Oh, my, no. I live back in the mountains. Say, I just wish you could
see my place. It's up high, and you can look out, ever so
far--everything kind of drops away below, and you can see the river
and the woods, and it takes different colours, 'cording to the season
and the weather. Some days when I'm ploughing or disking and I get up
on the ridge, it's so high up and far away seems like I'm on top the
whole world. It's lonesome--it's off the pike, you see--but I like it.
Here in the city everything crowds on you so close."

She had listened with the keenest interest.

"That's so. It must be grand to get off by yourself and have plenty
room. I get so tired of that squinched-in, narrow, stuffy shop; and
the place where I board is worse. I don't make enough to have a room
by myself. There's two other girls in with me, and seems like we're
always under-foot to each other. And there isn't any parlour, and we
got only one bureau for the three of us, and you can guess what a mess
that is. And the closet's about as big as a pocket handkerchief."

"Ain't you got any folks?"

The blue eyes held a sudden mist.

"Nobody but Miss Tolman, and she's only a distant cousin. Ma died two
years ago. She used to sew, but she wasn't strong, and we never could
get ahead."

"My folks are all gone, too."

How little and alone she was, but how much nearer to him her aloneness
brought her. He wanted to put his hand over hers and tell her that he
would take care of her, that she need never be alone again. But the
beginning of the film choked back the words. He poked the box of
caramels at her, and she took it, opened it with a murmured "Oh, my,
thank you!" Presently they both had sweetly bulging cheeks. Where
their elbows touched on the narrow chair arm made tingling thrills run
all over him. Once she gave him an unconscious nudge of excitement.

Out of the corner of his eye he studied her delicate side face as she
sat, with her lips parted, intent on the film.

"She's pretty--and she's good," thought Wesley Dean. "I expect she's
too good for me."

But that unwontedly humble thought did not alter it a hair's breadth
that she must be his. The Deans had their way always. The veins in his
wrists and the vein in his forehead beat with his hot purpose. He
shifted so that his arm did not touch hers, for he found the nearness
of her disturbing; he could not plan or think clearly while she was so
close. And he must think clearly.

When the last flicker of the feature was over and the comic and the
news had wrung their last laugh and gasp of interest from the crowd,
they joined the slow exit of the audience in silence. On the sidewalk,
however, she found her voice.

"It was an awful nice picture," she said softly. "'Most the nicest I
ever saw."

"Look here, let's go somewhere and have a hot choc'late, or some soda,
or ice cream," he broke in hurriedly. He could not let her go with so
much yet unsaid. "Or would you like an oyster stew in a reg'lar
restaurant? Yes, that'd be better. Come on; it isn't late."

"Well, after all those caramels, I shouldn't think an oyster stew----"

"You can have something else, then." The main thing was to get her at
a table opposite him, where they wouldn't have to hurry away. "Let's
go in there."

He pointed toward a small restaurant across the street where red
candlelights glimmered warmly through panelled lace.

"But that looks like such a stylish place," she protested, even as she
let him guide her toward it.

But it was not so stylish when they got inside, and the appearance of
the stout woman, evidently both proprietor and cashier, who presided
over the scene at a table on a low platform near the door reassured
them both. And the red candleshades were only crinkled paper; the lace
curtains showed many careful darns. A rebellious boy of fourteen, in a
white jacket and apron, evidently the proprietor's son, came to take
their order. After a good bit of urging Anita said that she would take
a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee.

Wesley ordered an oyster stew for himself, and coffee, and then
grandly added that they would both have vanilla and chocolate ice
cream.

"He looks as if he just hated being a waiter," said Anita, indicating
the departing boy servitor.

"Sh'd think he would," said Wesley. He put his arms on the table and
leaned toward her. "I was going home this afternoon till I saw you. I
stayed over just to see you again. I've got to go back in the morning,
for I've not got my spring work done; but--you're going with me."

The vein on his forehead heightened his look of desperate
determination. He was not so much a suitor as a commander.

"You haven't got any folks and neither have I, so that makes it easy.
I'll come for you in the morning, about eight o'clock, and we'll go
get a license and get married, and then we can get the ten-o'clock bus
out to Frederick. Oh, girl, I never saw any one like you! I--I'll be
good to you--I'll take care of you. It don't matter if I didn't ever
see you till this afternoon, I'd never find anybody else that I want
so much in a hundred thousand years. I've not got a lot of money, but
the farm's mine, all free and clear, and if my wheat turns out all
right I'll have a thousand dollars' cash outright come the end of the
year, even after the taxes are paid and everything. Won't you look at
me, Anita--won't you tell me something? Don't you like me?"

The girl had listened with her eyes cast down, her hands nervously
picking at the edge of the tablecloth. But he was not mistaken in her.
She had wherewith to meet him, and her gaze was honest, without
coquetry or evasion.

"Oh, I do like you!" she cried with quick colour. "I do! I do! I
always thought somebody like you'd come along some day, just like
this, and then--it just seemed foolish to expect it. But look here. I
told you a story, right off. My name's not Anita--it's Annie. I took
to pretending it's Anita because--it does seem sort of silly, but I
got to tell you--because I saw it in the movies, and it seemed sort of
cute and different, and Annie's such a plain, common name. But I
couldn't let you go on talking like that and calling me by it, now
could I?"

The mutinous young waiter brought their food and thumped it
truculently down before them.

"Look out!" said Dean with sudden violent harshness, the vein in his
forehead darkening ominously. "What do you think you're doing, feeding
cattle?"

The boy drew back in confusion, and Annie exclaimed: "Oh, he didn't
mean it anything against us--he's just mad because he has to be a
waiter."

"Well, he'd better be careful; kids can be too smart Aleck."

The little gust had deflected them away from their own affairs. But
Annie brought them back. She leaned toward him.

"You make me kind of afraid of you. If you ever spoke to me like that
it'd just about kill me."

He was contrite. "Why, I couldn't ever speak to you like that, honey;
it just made me mad the way he banged things down in front of you. I
don't want people to treat you like that."

"And you look so fierce, too--scowling so all the time."

He put up a brown finger and touched his savage vein.

"Now, now--you mustn't mind my look. All the Dean men are marked like
that; it's in the blood. It don't mean a thing." He smiled winningly.
"I reckon if you're beginning to scold me you're going to marry me,
huh?"

Something very sweet and womanly leaped in Annie's blue eyes.

"I--I reckon I am," she said, and then confessed herself a brave
adventurer and philosopher in one. "Yes, I'd be a fool to sit round
and make excuses and pretend it wouldn't do to be so out of the
ordinary when here you are and here I am, and it means--our whole
lives. I don't care, either, if I didn't ever set eyes on you till
to-day--I know you're all right and that what you say's true. And I
feel as if I'd known you for years and years."

"That's the way I felt about you the minute I looked at you. Oh"--he
gave a vast and shaking sigh--"I can't hardly believe my luck. Eat up
your supper and let's get out of here. Maybe there's some stores open
yet and I could buy you a ring."

"And I have to be in my boarding house by half-past ten," offered
Annie, "or I'll be locked out. What the girls are going to say when I
come in and tell 'em----" She looked at him with intense and piteous
question--the question that every woman at the moment of surrender
asks sometimes with her lips, but always with her heart: "It is going
to be all right, isn't it? And you'll be good to me?"

"So help me God," said young Wesley Dean.

* * * * *

The farm lay high, as Wesley had said. Indeed, all the way from
Baltimore they had seemed to be going into the hills, those placidly
rounding friendly Maryland hills that rise so softly, so gradually
that the traveller is not conscious of ascent. The long straight road
dips across them gallantly, a silver band of travel to tie them to the
city, with little cities or towns pendent from it at wide intervals.
Trees edge it with a fringe of green; poor trees, maimed by the
trimmers' saws and shears into twisted caricatures of what a tree
should be, because the telegraph wires and telephone wires must pass,
and oaks and locusts, pines and maples, must be butchered of their
spreading branches to give them room.

It was along this highway that the motor bus, filled with passengers
and baggage and driven with considerably more haste than discretion,
carried the newly married pair. Annie's eyes grew wide at the wonder
and beauty of it. She was not at all afraid. She snuggled her hand
into Wes's and loved it--and loved him, too, with his look of pride
and joy in her. She was content to be silent and let him talk. Now and
then she looked at the little turquoise ring on her finger above the
shiny new wedding ring, and loved that, too, for he had chosen it at
once from the trayful offered them, blurting out that she must have it
because it matched her eyes.

"All this country out here's rich," he bragged, "but Fred'rick
County's far the richest land of all. Richest in the state. Maybe
richest in the whole United States, I dunno. And all the farms are
big. Great big farms--and great big teams to till 'em. People don't
use mules here s'much as they do over on the Eastern Shore. And
there's not any sand, like there is over there--in spots, that is."

"What's that man doing?" asked Annie alertly.

"Ploughin'. Say, didn't you ever see a man ploughin' before?" "Only in
the movies," said Annie, unabashed. "Do you ever plough?"

He laughed outright.

"Say, you're going to be some little farmer's wife. I can see that.
Yes'm, I plough a little now and then. It's like fancywork--awful
fascinating--and once you get started you don't want to stop till you
get a whole field done."

"Quit kidding."

"Say, Annie, do you know a chicken when you see it walking round? Or a
turkey? Or a guinea keet? We got 'em all. Aunt Dolcey, she takes care
of 'em."

"I'd like to take care of 'em. I'll feed 'em, if she'll show me how."

"Aunt Dolcey'll show you. She'll be tickled to death to have somebody
feed 'em when she's got the mis'ry."

At Frederick they left the big motor bus and got into Wes's own
rackety flivver, the possession of which delighted Annie's heart.

"My land, I never thought I'd get married to a man that owned an
automobile," she confessed with flattering frankness in her voice.

"This ain't an automobile," said Wes. "It's a coffeepot, and an awful
mean one. Sometimes she won't boil, no matter what I do."

The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled
merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was
a little after noon when they reached the farm.

They had had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough
and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the
trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there
were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came
through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its
fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and
persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up
to the open and thrust in tentative fingers--tiny pine trees, sprouts
and seedlings of hardwood, scraps of underbrush--all trying to gain a
foothold and even when cut and overturned by the sharp plough still
clinging tenaciously to their feeble rooting.

"It looks somehow," said Annie, vaguely understanding this, "as if the
trees and things were just waiting to climb over the walls."

"And that's what they are," said Wesley Dean. "The time I put in
grubbing! Well--let's go in and see Aunt Dolcey."

He had told her, coming out, that he was afraid she would find the
house sort of plain, but just the space of it delighted her. The rooms
were bare and square, whitewashed exquisitely, the furniture dark old
cherry and walnut of a style three generations past.

There were no blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie
could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker
of high light. Here and there were bits of colour--crimson and blue in
the rag carpet, golden brass candlesticks on the mantel, a red-beaded
mat on the table under the lamp, the lamp itself clear glass and
filled with red kerosene that happily repeated the tint of the mat. It
all pleased Annie, touching some hitherto untwanged chord of beauty in
her nature. And there was about it the unmistakable atmosphere of
home.

"Old-fashioned but sort of swell, too," she decided. "Looks kind of
like some of the parlours of those old houses on Charles Street that I
used to rubber into in the evenings when the lights were lit and
they'd forgot to put the blinds down."

She liked the impassive almost Egyptian face of Aunt Dolcey, too. The
old coloured woman had received her with a serious regard but
friendly.

"Mist' Wes, he stahtle me mighty frequen', but he nevah stahtle me
with no marryin' befo'," she said. "Honey, it'll be mighty nice to
have a pret' young gal in de house. I'll serve you de bes' I kin,
faithful an' stiddy, like I always serve him. Ef I'd 'a' known you was
a-comin' I'd sho' had somethin' fo' dinneh to-day besides greens an'
po'k, cracklin' pone an' apple dumplin's. That's nuffin' fo' a weddin'
dinneh."

But when they came to eat it, it was delicious--the greens delicately
seasoned, not greasy, the salt pork home-cured and sweet, the
cracklin' pone crumbling with richness, and the apple dumpling a
delight of spicy flavour.

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