O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 by Various

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"I tell you," he cried, "that's a dangerous character--that boy!"

"Is that all you've got to say?" asked the squire.

"It's enough, ain't it?" demanded Thornycroft angrily.

The squire nodded and spat into the cuspidor between his feet. "I think
so," he said quietly, "Stand aside. Davy Alien step forward. Put your
hand on the book here, son. Davy, how old are you?"

The boy gulped. "Thirteen years old, goin' on fo'teen."

"You're old enough, son, to know the nater of the oath you're about to
take. For over two years you've been the mainstay an' support of your
mother. You've had to carry the burdens and responsibilities of a man,
Davy. The testimony you give in this case will be the truth, the whole
truth an' nothin' but the truth, so help you God. What about it?"

Davy nodded, his face very white.

"All right now. Tell us about it. Talk loud so we can hear--all of us."

The boy's eyes never left Mr. Kirby's while he talked. Something in them
held him, fascinated him, overawed him. Very large and imposing he
looked there behind his little table, with his faded old overcoat on,
and there was no sound in the room but the boy's clear voice.

"An' you come off an' left the dog at first?"

"Yes, sir,"

"An' you didn't unfasten the chain from the block till the dog got
caught in the fence?"

"No, sir, I didn't."

"Did you try to get him to follow you then?"

"No, sir, he wanted to."

"Ask him, Mr. Kirby," broke in Thornycroft angrily, "if he tried to
drive him home!"

"I'll ask him whatever seems fit an' right to me, sir," said Mr. Kirby.
"What did you tell your ma, Davy, when you got home?"

"I told her he followed me."

"Did you tell her whose dog he was?

"No, sir."

"Ain't that what you ought to have done? Ain't it?"

Davy hesitated. "Yes, sir."

There was a slight shuffling movement amoung the men crowded about.
Somebody cleared his throat. Mr. Kirby resumed.

"This block you been tellin' about--how was it fastened to the dog?"

"Thar was a chain fastened to the block by a staple. The other end was
fastened to the collar."

"How heavy do you think that block was?"

"About ten pound. I reckon."

"Five," broke in Old Man Thornycroft with a sneer.

Mr. Kirby turned to him. "You fetched it with you, didn't you? I told
you to. It's evidence. Bob Kelley, go out to Mr. Thornycroft's buggy an'
bring that block of wood into court."

The room was silent while the rural policeman was gone. Davy still stood
in the cleared space before Mr. Kirby, his ragged overcoat on, his
tattered hat in his hand, breathing fast, afraid to look at his mother.
Everybody turned when Kelley came in with the block of wood. Everybody
craned their necks to watch, while at the magistrate's order Kelley
weighed the block of wood on the store's scales, which he put on the
magistrate's table.

"Fo'teen punds," said Mr. Kirby. "Take the scales away."

"It had rubbed all the skin off'n the dog's neck," broke in Davy
impulsively. "It was all raw an' bleedin'."

"Aw, that ain't so!" cried Thornycroft.

"Is the dog out there?" asked Mr. Kirby.

"Yes, sir, under the buggy."

"Bob Kelley, you go out an' bring that dog into court."

The rural policeman went out, and came back with the hound, who looked
eagerly up from one face to the other, then, seeing Davy, came to him
and stood against him, still looking around with that expression of
melancholy on his face that a hound dog always wears except when he's in
action.

"Bring the dog here, son!" commanded Mr. Kirby. He examined the raw
place on the neck. "Any of you gentlemen care to take a look?" he asked.

"It was worse than that," declared Davy, "till I rubbed vase-leen on
it."

Old Man Thornycroft pushed forward, face quivering. "What's all this got
to do with the boy stealin' the dog?" he demanded. "That's what I want
to know--what's it got to do?"

"Mr. Thornycroft," said Kirby, "at nine o'clock this mornin' this place
ceased to be Tom Belcher's sto', an' become a court of justice. Some
things are seemly in a court, some not. You stand back there!"

The old man stepped back to the counter, and stood julling his chin, his
eyes running over the crowd of faces.

"Davy Allen," spoke Mr. Kirby, "you stand back there with your ma. Tom
Belcher make way for him. And, Tom, s'pose you put another stick of wood
in that stove an' poke up the fire." He took off his glasses, blew on
them, polished them with his handkerchief and readjusted them. Then,
leaning back in his chair, he spoke.

"Gentlemen, from the beginnin' of time, as fur back as records go, a
dog's been the friend, companion, an' protector of man. Folks say he
come from the wolf, but that ain't no reflection on him, seem' that we
come from monkeys ourselves, an' I believe, takin' all things into
account, I'd as soon have a wolf for a ancestor as a monkey, an' a
little ruther.

"Last night in the libery of my old friend Judge Fowler in town, I
looked up some things about this dog question. I find that there have
been some queer decisions handed down by the courts, showin' that the
law does recognize the fact that a dog is different from other
four-footed critters. For instance, it has been held that a dog has a
right to protect not only his life but his dignity; that where a man
worries a dog beyond what would be reasonable to expect any self
respectin' critter to stand, that dog has a right to bite that man, an'
that man can't collect any damages--provided the bitin' is done at the
time of the worryin' an' in sudden heat an' passion. That has been held
in the courts, gentlemen. The law that holds for man holds for dogs.

"Another thing: If the engineer of a railroad train sees a cow or a
horse or a sheep on the track, or a hog, he must stop the train or the
road is liable for any damage done 'em. But if he sees a man walkin'
along the track he has a right to presume that the man, bein' a critter
of more or less intelligence, will git off, an' he is not called on to
stop under ordinary circumstances. The same thing holds true of a dog.
The engineer has a right to presume that the dog, bein' a critter of
intelligence, will get off the track. Here again the law is the same for
dog an' man.

"_But_--if the engineer has reason to believe that the man's mind is
took up with some object of an engrossin' nater, he is supposed to stop
the train till the man comes to himself an' looks around. The same thing
holds true of a dog. If the engineer has reason to suspect that the
dog's mind is occupied with some engrossin' topic, he must stop the
train. That case has been tested in this very state, where a dog was on
the track settin' a covey of birds in the adjoinin' field. The railroad
was held responsible for the death of that dog, because the engineer
ought to have known by the action of the dog that his mind was on
somethin' else beside railroad trains an' locomotives."

Again the magistrate spat into the cuspidor between his feet. Davy,
still watching him, felt his mother's grip on his arm. Everyone was
listening so closely that the whispered sneering comment of Old Man
Thornycroft to the man next to him was audible, "What's all this got to
do with the case?"

"The p'int I'm gettin' to is this," went on Mr. Kirby, not paying
attention to him: "a dog is not like a cow or a horse or any four-footed
critter. He's a individual, an' so the courts have held in spirit if not
in actual words. Now this court of mine here in Tom Belcher's sto, ain't
like other courts. I have to do the decidin' myself; I have to interpret
the true spirit of the law, without technicalities an' quibbles such as
becloud it in other an' higher courts. An' I hold that since a dog is
_de facto_ an' _de jure_ an individual, he has a right to life, liberty
an' the pursuit of happiness.

"Therefore, gentlemen, I hold that that houn' dog, Buck, had a perfect
right to follow that boy, Davy Allen, there; an' I hold that Davy Allen
was not called on to drive that dog back, or interfere in any way with
that dog followin' him if the dog so chose. You've heard the evidence of
the boy. You know, an' I know, he has spoke the truth this day, an'
there ain't no evidence to the contrary. The boy did not entice the dog.
He even went down the road, leavin' him behind. He run back only when
the dog was in dire need an' chokin' to death. He wasn't called on to
put that block an' chain back on the dog. He couldn't help it if the dog
followed him. He no more stole that dog than I stole him. He's no more a
thief than I am. I dismiss this case, Mr. Thornycroft, this case you've
brought against Davy Allen. I declare him innocent of the charge of
theft. I set it down right here on the records of this court."

"Davy!" gasped Mrs. Allen. "Davy!"

But, face working, eyes blazing, Old Man Thornycroft started forward,
and the dog, panting, shrank between boy and mother. "Jim Kirby!" cried
the old man, stopping for a moment in the cleared space. "You're
magistrate. What you say goes. But that dog thar--he's mine! He's my
property--mine by law!" He jerked a piece of rope out of his overcoat
pocket and came on toward the cowering dog. "Tom Belcher, Bob Kelley!
Stop that dog! He's mine!"

"Davy!" Mrs. Alien was holding the boy. "Don't--don't say anything.
You're free to go home. Your record's clear. The dog's his!"

"Hold on!" Mr. Kirby had risen from his chair. "You come back here, Mr.
Thornycroft. This court's not adjourned yet. If you don't get back, I'll
stick a fine to you for contempt you'll remember the rest of your days.
You stand where you are, sir! Right there! Don't move till I'm through!"

Quivering the old man stood where he was. Mr. Kirby sat down, face
flushed, eyes blazing. "Punch up that fire, Tom Belcher," he said. "I
ain't through yet."

The hound came trembling back to Davy, looked up in his face, licked his
hand, then sat down at the side opposite his former master, looking
around now and then at the old man, terror in his eyes. In the midst of
a deathly silence the magistrate resumed.

"What I was goin' to say, gentlemen, is this: I'm not only magistrate,
I'm an officer in an organization that you country fellers likely don't
know of, an organization known as the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. As such an officer it's my duty to report an' bring
to trial any man who treats a dumb brute in a cruel an' inhuman way. Mr
Thornycroft, judgin' by the looks of that houn', you ain't give him
enough to eat to keep a cat alive--an' a cat we all know, don't eat
much, just messes over her vittles. You condemned that po' beast, for no
fault of his own, to the life of a felon. A houn' that ain't happy at
best, he's melancholy; an' a houn' that ain't allowed to run free is of
all critters the wretchedest. This houn's neck is rubbed raw. God only
knows what he's suffered in mind an' body. A man that would treat a dog
that way ain't fitten to own one. An' I hereby notify you that, on the
evidence of this boy, an' the evidence before our eyes, I will indict
you for breakin' the law regardin' the treatment of animals; an' I
notify you, furthermore, that as magistrate I'll put the law on you for
that same thing. An' it might be interestin' to you to know, sir, that I
can find you as much as five hundred dollars, or send you to jail for
one year, or both, if I see fit--an' there ain't no tellin' but what I
will see fit, sir."

He looked sternly at Thornycroft.

"Now I'm goin' to make a proposition that I advise you to jump at like
you never jumped at anything before. If you will give up that houn'
Buck--to me, say, or to anybody I decide will be kind to him--I will let
the matter drop. If you will go home like a peaceable citizen, you won't
hear no more about it from me; but if you don't--"

"Git out of my way!" cried Old Man Thornycroft. "All of you! I'm
goin'--I'm goin'!"

"Hold on!" said Mr. Kirby, when he had got almost to the door. "Do you,
in the presence of these witnesses, turn over this dog to me,
relinquishin' all claims to him, on the conditions named? Answer Yes or
No?"

There was a moment's silence; then the old man cried out:

"Take the old hound! He ain't wuth the salt in his vittles!"

He jerked the door open.

"Yes or no?" called Mr. Kirby inexorably.

"Yes!" yelled the old man, and slammed the door behind him.

"One minute, gentlemen," said Mr. Kirby, rising from the table and
gathering his papers and records together. "Just one more thing: If
anybody here has any evidence, or knows of any, tendin' to show that
this boy Davy Allen is not the proper person to turn over a houn' dog
to, I hope he will speak up." He waited a moment. "In the absence of any
objections, an' considerin' the evidence that's been given here this
mornin', I think I'll just let that dog go back the way he come. Thank
you, gentlemen. Court's adjourned!"

PORCELAIN CUPS

BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL

From _Century Magazine_

I

OF GREATNESS INTIMATELY VIEWED

"Oh, but they are beyond praise," said Cynthia Allonby, enraptured, "and
certainly you should have presented them to the Queen."

"Her majesty already possesses a cup of that ware," replied Lord
Pevensey. "It was one of her New Year's gifts, from Robert Cecil. Hers
is, I believe, not quite so fine as either of yours; but then, they tell
me, there is not the like of this pair in England, nor indeed on the
hither side of Cataia."

He set the two pieces of Chinese pottery upon the shelves in the south
corner of the room. These cups were of that sea-green tint called
celadon, with a very wonderful glow and radiance. Such oddities were the
last vogue at court in this year of grace 1593: and Cynthia could not
but speculate as to what monstrous sum Lord Pevensey had paid for this
his last gift to her.

Now he turned, smiling, a really superb creature in his blue and gold.
"I had another message from the Queen--"

"George," Cynthia said, with fond concern, "it frightens me to see you
thus foolhardy, in tempting alike the Queen's anger and the Plague."

"Eh, as goes the Plague, it spares nine out of ten," he answered,
lightly. "The Queen, I grant you, is another pair of sleeves, for an
irritated Tudor spares nobody."

But Cynthia Allonby kept silence, and did not exactly smile, while she
appraised her famous young kinsman. She was flattered by, and a little
afraid of, the gay self-confidence which led anybody to take such
chances. Two weeks ago it was that the painted terrible old Queen had
named Lord Pevensey to go straightway into France, where rumour had it,
King Henri was preparing to renounce the Reformed Religion, and making
his peace with the Pope: and for two weeks Pevensey had lingered, on one
pretence or another, at his house in London, with the Plague creeping
about the city like an invisible incalculable flame, and the Queen
asking questions at Windsor. Of all the monarchs that had ever reigned
in England, Elizabeth was the least used to having her orders
disregarded. Meanwhile Lord Pevensey came every day to the Marquis of
Falmouth's lodgings at Deptford; and every day Lord Pevensey pointed out
to the marquis's daughter that Pevensey, whose wife had died in
childbirth a year back, did not intend to go into France, for nobody
could foretell how long a stay, as a widower. Certainly it was all very
flattering ...

"Yes, and you would be an excellent match," said Cynthia, aloud, "if
that were all. And yet, what must I reasonably expect in marrying, sir,
the famous Earl of Pevensey?"

"A great deal of love and petting, my dear. And if there were anything
else to which you had a fancy, I would get it for you."

Her glance went to those lovely cups and lingered fondly. "Yes, dear
Master Generosity, if it could be purchased or manufactured, you would
get it for me--"

"If it exists I will get it for you," he declared.

"I think that it exists. But I am not learned enough to know what it is.
George, if I married you I would have money and fine clothes and soft
hours and many lackeys to wait on me, and honour from all men. And you
would be kind to me, I know when you returned from the day's work at
Windsor--or Holyrood or the Louvre. But do you not see that I would
always be to you only a rather costly luxury, like those cups, which the
Queen's minister could afford to keep for his hours of leisure?"

He answered: "You are all in all to me. You know it. Oh, very well do
you know and abuse your power, you adorable and lovely baggage, who have
kept me dancing attendance for a fortnight, without ever giving me an
honest yes or no." He gesticulated. "Well, but life is very dull in
Deptford village, and it amuses you to twist a Queen's adviser around
your finger! I see it plainly, you minx, and I acquiesce because, it
delights me to give you pleasure, even at the cost of some dignity. Yet
I may no longer shirk the Queen's business,--no, not even to amuse you,
my dear."

"You said you had heard from her--again?"

"I had this morning my orders, under Glorianna's own fair hand, either
to depart to-morrow into France or else to come to-morrow to Windsor. I
need not say that in the circumstances I consider France the more
wholesome."

Now the girl's voice was hurt and wistful. "So, for the thousandth time,
is it proven the Queen's business means more to you than I do. Yes,
certainly it is just as I said, George."

He observed, unruffled: "My dear, I scent unreason. This is a high
matter. If the French King compounds with Rome, it means war for
Protestant England. Even you must see that."

She replied, sadly: "Yes, even I! oh, certainly, my lord, even a
half-witted child of seventeen can perceive as much as that."

"I was not speaking of half-witted persons, as I remember. Well, it
chances that I am honoured by the friendship of our gallant Bearnais,
and am supposed to have some claim upon him, thanks to my good fortune
last year in saving his life from the assassin Barriere. It chances that
I may perhaps become, under providence, the instrument of preserving my
fellow countrymen from much grief and trumpet-sounding and
throat-cutting. Instead of pursuing that chance, two weeks ago--as was
my duty--I have dangled at your apron-strings, in the vain hope of
softening the most variable and hardest heart in the world. Now,
clearly, I have not the right to do that any longer."

She admired the ennobled, the slightly rapt look which, she knew,
denoted that George Bulmer was doing his duty as he saw it, even in her
disappointment. "No, you have not the right. You are wedded to your
state-craft, to your patriotism, to your self-advancement, or christen
it what you will. You are wedded, at all events, to your man's business.
You have not time for such trifles as giving a maid that foolish and
lovely sort of wooing to which every maid looks forward in her heart of
hearts. Indeed, when you married the first time it was a kind of
infidelity; and I am certain that poor dear mouse-like Mary must have
felt that often and over again. Why, do you not see, George, even now,
that your wife will always come second to your real love?"

"In my heart, dear sophist, you will always come first. But it is not
permitted that any loyal gentleman devote every hour of his life to
sighing and making sonnets, and to the general solacing of a maid's
loneliness in this dull little Deptford. Nor would you, I am sure,
desire me to do so."

"I hardly know what I desire," she told him ruefully. "But I know that
when you talk of your man's business I am lonely and chilled and far
away from you. And I know that I cannot understand more than half your
fine high notions about duty and patriotism and serving England and so
on," the girl declared: and she flung wide her lovely little hands, in a
despairing gesture. "I admire you, sir, when you talk of England. It
makes you handsomer--yes, even handsomer!--somehow. But all the while I
am remembering that England is just an ordinary island inhabited by a
number of ordinary persons, for the most of whom I have no particular
feeling one way or the other.".

Pevensey looked at her for a while with queer tenderness. Then he
smiled. "No, I could not quite make you understand, my dear. But, ah,
why fuddle that quaint little brain by trying to understand such matters
as lie without your realm? For a woman's kingdom is the home, my dear,
and her throne is in the heart of her husband--"

"All this is but another way of saying your lordship would have us cups
upon a shelf," she pointed out--"in readiness for your leisure."

He shrugged, said "Nonsense!" and began more lightly to talk of other
matters. Thus and thus he would do in France, such and such trinkets he
would fetch back--"as toys for the most whimsical, the loveliest and the
most obstinate child in all the world," he phrased it. And they would be
married, Pevensey declared, in September: nor (he gaily said) did he
propose to have any further argument about it. Children should be
seen--the proverb was dusty, but it particularly applied to pretty
children.

Cynthia let him talk. She was just a little afraid of his self
confidence, and of this tall nobleman's habit of getting what he wanted,
in the end: but she dispiritedly felt that Pevensey had failed her. He
treated her as a silly infant: and his want of her, even in that
capacity, was a secondary matter: he was going into France, for all his
petting talk, and was leaving her to shift as she best might, until he
could spare the time to resume his love-making....

II

WHAT COMES OF SCRIBBLING

Now when Pevensey had gone the room seemed darkened by the withdrawal of
so much magnificence. Cynthia watched from the window as the tall earl
rode away, with three handsomely clad retainers. Yes, George was very
fine and admirable, no doubt of it: even so, there was relief in the
reflection that for a month or two she was rid of him.

Turning, she faced a lean dishevelled man who stood by the Magdalen
tapestry scratching his chin. He had unquiet bright eyes, this
out-at-elbows poet whom a marquis's daughter was pleased to patronize,
and his red hair to-day was unpardonably puzzled. Nor were his manners
beyond reproach, for now, without saying anything, he too went to the
window. He dragged one foot a little as he walked.

"So my lord Pevensey departs! Look how he rides in triumph! like lame
Tamburlaine, with Techelles and Usumcasane and Theridamas to attend him,
and with the sunset turning the dust raised by their horses' hoofs into
a sort of golden haze about them. It is a beautiful world. And truly,
Mistress Cyn," the poet said, reflectively, "that Pevensey is a very
splendid ephemera. If not a king himself, at least he goes magnificently
to settle the affairs of kings. Were modesty not my failing Mistress
Cyn, I would acclaim you as strangely lucky, in being beloved by two
fine fellows that have not their like in England."

"Truly you are not always thus modest, Kit Marlowe--"

"But, Lord, how seriously Pevensey takes it all! and himself in
particular! Why, there departs from us, in befitting state, a personage
whose opinion as to every topic in the world is written legibly in the
carriage of those fine shoulders, even when seen from behind and from so
considerable a distance. And in not one syllable do any of these
opinions differ from the opinions of his great-great-grandfathers. Oho,
and hark to Deptford! now all the oafs in the Corn-market are cheering
this bulwark of Protestant England, this rising young hero of a people
with no nonsense about them. Yes, it is a very quaint and rather
splendid ephemera."

A marquis's daughter could not quite approve of the way in which this
shoemaker's son, however talented, railed at his betters. "Pevensey will
be the greatest man in these kingdoms some day. Indeed, Kit Marlowe,
there are those who say he is that much already."

"Oh very probably! Still, I am puzzled by human greatness. A century
hence what will he matter, this Pevensey? His ascent and his declension
will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have
given place to other foolish battles and treaties and oblivion will have
swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately
ruff and all. Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island,
whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what
does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit Marlowe the
subject of a drama? Hah, softly though! for does even that very greatly
matter? Who really cares to-day about what scratches were made upon wax
by that old Euripides, the latchet of whose sandals I am not worthy to
unloose? No, not quite worthy, as yet!"

And thereupon the shabby fellow sat down in the tall leather-covered
chair which Pevensey had just vacated: and this Marlowe nodded his
flaming head portentously. "Hoh, look you, I am displeased, Mistress
Cyn, I cannot lend my approval to this over-greedy oblivion that gapes
for all. No, it is not a satisfying arrangement that I should teeter
insecurely through the void on a gob of mud, and be expected bye and bye
to relinquish even that crazy foothold. Even for Kit Marlowe death lies
in wait! and it may be, not anything more after death, not even any
lovely words to play with. Yes, and this Marlowe may amount to nothing,
after all: and his one chance of amounting to that which he intends may
be taken away from him at any moment!"

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