O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 by Various

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He touched the breast of a weather-beaten doublet. He gave her that
queer twisted sort of smile which the girl could not but find
attractive, somehow. He said: "Why but this heart thumping here inside
me may stop any moment like a broken clock. Here is Euripides writing
better than I: and here in my body, under my hand, is the mechanism upon
which depend all those masterpieces that are to blot the Athenian from
the reckoning, and I have no control of it!"

"Indeed, I fear that you control few things," she told him, "and that
least of all do you control your taste for taverns and bad women. Oh, I
hear tales of you!" And Cynthia raised a reproving fore-finger.

"True tales, no doubt." He shrugged. "Lacking the moon he vainly cried
for, the child learns to content himself with a penny whistle."

"Ah, but the moon is far away," the girl said, smiling--"too far to hear
the sound of human crying: and besides, the moon, as I remember it, was
never a very amorous goddess--"

"Just so," he answered: "also she was called Cynthia, and she, too, was
beautiful."

"Yet is it the heart that cries to me, my poet?" she asked him, softly,
"or just the lips?"

"Oh, both of them, most beautiful and inaccessible of goddesses." Then
Marlowe leaned toward her, laughing and shaking that disreputable red
head. "Still you are very foolish, in your latest incarnation, to be
wasting your rays upon carpet earls who will not outwear a century. Were
modesty not my failing, I repeat, I could name somebody who will last
longer. Yes, and--if, but I lacked that plaguey virtue--I would advise
you to go a-gypsying with that nameless somebody, so that two manikins
might snatch their little share of the big things that are eternal, just
as the butterfly fares intrepidly and joyously, with the sun for his
torch-boy, through a universe wherein thought cannot estimate the
unimportance of a butterfly, and wherein not even the chaste moon is
very important. Yes, certainly I would advise you to have done with this
vanity of courts and masques, of satins and fans and fiddles, this
dallying with tinsels and bright vapours; and very movingly I would
exhort you to seek out Arcadia, travelling hand in hand with that still
nameless somebody." And of a sudden the restless man began to sing.

Sang Kit Marlowe:

"Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods or sleepy mountain yields.

"And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals--"

But the girl shook her small, wise head decisively. "That is all very
fine, but, as it happens, there is no such place as this Arcadia, where
people can frolic in perpetual sunlight the year round, and find their
food and clothing miraculously provided. No, nor can you, I am afraid,
give me what all maids really, in their heart of hearts, desire far
more than any sugar-candy Arcadia. Oh, as I have so often told you, Kit,
I think you love no woman. You love words. And your seraglio is tenanted
by very beautiful words, I grant you, thought there is no longer any
Sestos builded of agate and crystal, either, Kit Marlowe. For, as you
may perceive, sir, I have read all that lovely poem you left with me
last Thursday--"

She saw how interested he was, saw how he almost smirked. "Aha, so you
think it not quite bad, eh, the conclusion of my 'Hero and Leander'?"

"It is your best. And your middlemost, my poet, is better than aught
else in English," she said, politely, and knowing how much he delighted
to hear such remarks.

"Come, I retract my charge of foolishness, for you are plainly a wench
of rare discrimination. And yet you say I do not love you! Cynthia, you
are beautiful, you are perfect in all things. You are that heavenly
Helen of whom I wrote, some persons say, acceptably enough--How strange
it was I did not know that Helen was dark-haired and pale! for certainly
yours is that immortal loveliness which must be served by poets in life
and death."

"And I wonder how much of these ardours," she thought, "is kindled by my
praise of his verses?" She bit her lip, and she regarded him with a hint
of sadness. She said, aloud: "But I did not, after all, speak to Lord
Pevensey concerning the printing of your poem. Instead, I burned your
'Hero and Leander'."

She saw him jump, as under a whip-lash. Then he smiled again, in that
wry fashion of his. "I lament the loss to letters, for it was my only
copy. But you knew that."

"Yes, Kit, I knew it was your only copy."

"Oho! and for what reason did you burn it, may one ask?"

"I thought you loved it more than you loved me. It was my rival, I
thought--" The girl was conscious of remorse, and yet it was remorse
commingled with a mounting joy.

"And so you thought a jingle scribbled upon a bit of paper could be
your rival with me!"

Then Cynthia no longer doubted, but gave a joyous little sobbing laugh,
for the love of her disreputable dear poet was sustaining the stringent
testing she had devised. She touched his freckled hand caressingly, and
her face was as no man had ever seen it, and her voice, too, caressed
him.

"Ah, you have made me the happiest of women, Kit! Kit, I am almost
disappointed in you, though, that you do not grieve more for the loss of
that beautiful poem."

His smiling did not waver; yet the lean, red-haired man stayed
motionless. "Do I appear perturbed?" he said. "Why, but see how lightly
I take the destruction of my life-work in this, my masterpiece! For I
can assure you it was a masterpiece, the fruit of two years' toil and of
much loving repolishment--"

"Ah, but you love me better than such matters, do you not?" she asked
him, tenderly. "Kit Marlowe, I adore you! Sweetheart, do you not
understand that a woman wants to be loved utterly and entirely? She
wants no rivals, not even paper rivals. And so often when you talked of
poetry I have felt lonely and chilled and far away from you, and I have
been half envious, dear, of your Heros and your Helens, and your other
good-for-nothing Greek minxes. But now I do not mind them at all. And I
will make amends, quite prodigal amends, for my naughty jealousy; and my
poet shall write me some more lovely poems, so he shall--"

He said "You fool!"

And she drew away from him, for this man was no longer smiling.

"You burned my 'Hero and Leander'! You! you big-eyed fool! You lisping
idiot! you wriggling, cuddling worm! you silken bag of guts! had not
even you the wit to perceive it was immortal beauty which would have
lived long after you and I were stinking dirt? And you, a half-witted
animal, a shining, chattering parrot, lay claws to it!" Marlowe had
risen in a sort of seizure, in a condition which was really quite
unreasonable when you considered that only a poem was at stake, even a
rather long poem.

And Cynthia began to smile, with tremulous hurt-looking young lips. "So
my poet's love is very much the same as Pevensey's love! And I was
right, after all."

"Oh, oh!" said Marlowe, "that ever a poet should love a woman! What
jokes does the lewd flesh contrive!" Of a sudden he was calmer: and then
rage fell from him like a dropped cloak and he viewed her as with
respectful wonder. "Why, but you sitting there, with goggling innocent
bright eyes, are an allegory of all that is most droll and tragic. Yes,
and indeed there is no reason to blame you. It is not your fault that
every now and then is born a man who serves an idea which is to him the
most important thing in the world. It is not your fault that this man
perforce inhabits a body to which the most important thing in the world
is a woman. Certainly it is not your fault that this compost makes yet
another jumble of his two desires, and persuades himself that the two
are somehow allied. The woman inspires, the woman uplifts, the woman
strengthens him for his high work, saith he! Well, well, perhaps there
are such women, but by land and sea I have encountered none of them."

All this was said while Marlowe shuffled about the room, with bent
shoulders, and nodding his tousled red head, and limping as he walked.
Now Marlowe turned, futile and shabby-looking, just where Pevensey had
loomed resplendent a while since. Again she saw the poet's queer,
twisted, jeering smile.

"What do you care for my ideals? What do you care for the ideals of that
tall earl whom you have held from his proper business for a fortnight?
or for the ideals of any man alive? Why, not one thread of that dark
hair, not one snap of those white little fingers, except when ideals
irritate you by distracting a man's attention from Cynthia Allonby.
Otherwise, he is welcome enough to play with his incomprehensible toys."

He jerked a thumb toward the shelves behind him.

"Oho, you virtuous pretty ladies! what all you value is such matters as
those cups: they please the eye, they are worth sound money, and people
envy you the possession of them. So you cherish your shiny mud cups, and
you burn my 'Hero and Leander': and I declaim all this dull nonsense,
over the ashes of my ruined dreams, thinking at bottom of how pretty you
are, and of how much I would like to kiss you. That is the real tragedy,
the immortal tragedy, that I should still hanker after you, my
Cynthia--"

His voice dwelt tenderly upon her name. His fever-haunted eyes were
tender, too, for just a moment. Then he grimaced.

"No, I am wrong--the tragedy strikes deeper. The root of it is that
there is in you and in all your glittering kind no malice, no will to do
harm nor to hurt anything, but just a bland and invincible and, upon the
whole, a well-meaning stupidity, informing a bright and soft and
delicately scented animal. So you work ruin among those men who serve
ideals, not foreplanning ruin, not desiring to ruin anything, not even
having sufficient wit to perceive the ruin when it is accomplished. You
are, when all is done, not even detestable, not even a worthy peg
whereon to hang denunciatory sonnets, you shallow-pated pretty creatures
whom poets--oh, and in youth all men are poets!--whom poets, now and
always, are doomed to hanker after to the detriment of their poesy. No,
I concede it: you kill without premeditation, and without ever
suspecting your hands to be anything but stainless. So in logic I must
retract all my harsh words; and I must, without any hint or reproach,
endeavour to bid you a somewhat more civil farewell."

She had regarded him, throughout this preposterous and uncalled-for
harangue, with sad composure, with a forgiving pity. Now she asked him,
very quietly, "Where are you going, Kit?"

"To the Golden Hind, O gentle, patient and unjustly persecuted virgin
martyr!" he answered, with an exaggerated how--"since that is the part
in which you now elect to posture."

"Not to that low, vile place again!"

"But certainly I intend in that tavern to get tipsy as quickly as
possible: for then the first woman I see will for the time become the
woman whom I desire and who exists nowhere." And with that the
red-haired man departed, limping and singing as he went to look for a
trull in a pot-house.

Sang Kit Marlowe:

"And I will make her beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

"A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold--"

III

ECONOMICS OF EGERIA

She sat quite still when Marlowe had gone.

"He will get drunk again," she thought despondently. "Well, and why
should it matter to me if he does, after all that outrageous ranting? He
has been unforgivably insulting--Oh, but none the less, I do not want to
have him babbling of the roses and gold of that impossible fairy world
which the poor, frantic child really believes in, to some painted woman
of the town who will laugh at him. I loathe the thought of her laughing
at him--and kissing him! His notions are wild foolishness; but I at
least wish that they were not foolishness, and that hateful woman will
not care one way or the other."

So Cynthia sighed, and to comfort her forlorn condition fetched a
hand-mirror from the shelves whereon glowed her green cups. She touched
each cup caressingly in passing; and that which she found in the mirror,
too, she regarded not unappreciatively, from varying angles.... Yes
after all, dark hair and a pale skin had their advantages at a court
where pink and yellow women were so much the fashion as to be common.
Men remembered you more distinctively. Though nobody cared for men, in
view of their unreasonable behaviour, and their absolute
self-centeredness.... Oh, it was pitiable, it was grotesque, she
reflected sadly, how Pevensey and Kitt Marlowe had both failed her,
after so many pretty speeches.

Still, there was a queer pleasure in being wooed by Kit: his insane
notions went to one's head like wine. She would send Meg for him again
to-morrow. And Pevensey was, of course, the best match imaginable....
No, it would be too heartless to dismiss George Bulmer outright. It was
unreasonable of him to desert her because a Gascon threatened to go to
mass; but, after all, she would probably marry George in the end. He was
really almost unendurably silly, though, about England and freedom and
religion, and right and wrong things like that. Yes, it would be tedious
to have a husband who often talked to you as though he were addressing a
public meeting.... However, he was very handsome, particularly in his
highflown and most tedious moments; that year-old son of his was sickly
and would probably die soon, the sweet, forlorn little pet, and not be a
bother to anybody: and her dear old father would be profoundly delighted
by the marriage of his daughter to a man whose wife could have at will a
dozen celadon cups, and anything else she chose to ask for....

But now the sun had set, and the room was growing quite dark. So Cynthia
stood a-tiptoe, and replaced the mirror upon the shelves, setting it
upright behind those wonderful green cups which had anew reminded her of
Pevensey's wealth and generosity. She smiled a little, to think of what
fun it had been to hold George back, for two whole weeks, from
discharging that horrible old queen's stupid errands.

IV

TREATS PHILOSOPHICALLY OF BREAKAGE

The door opened. Stalwart young Captain Edward Musgrave came with a
lighted candle, which he placed carefully upon the table in the room's
centre.

He said: "They told me you were here. I come from London. I bring news
for you."

"You bring no pleasant tidings, I fear--"

"As Lord Pevensey rode through the Strand this afternoon, on his way
home, the Plague smote him. That is my sad news. I grieve to bring such
news, for your cousin was a worthy gentleman and universally respected."

"Ah," Cynthia said, very quiet, "so Pevensey is dead. But the Plague
kills quickly!"

"Yes, yes, that is a comfort, certainly. Yes, he turned quite black in
the face, they report, and before his men could reach him had fallen
from his horse. It was all over almost instantly. I saw him afterward,
hardly a pleasant sight. I came to you as soon as I could. I was
vexatiously detained--"

"So George Bulmer is dead, in a London gutter! It seems strange, because
he was here, befriended by monarchs, and very strong and handsome and
self-confident, hardly two hours ago. Is that his blood upon your
sleeve?"

"But of course not! I told you I was vexatiously detained, almost at
your gates. Yes, I had the ill luck to blunder into a disgusting
business. The two rapscallions tumbled out of a doorway under my horse's
very nose, egad! It was a near thing I did not ride them down. So I
stopped, naturally. I regretted stopping, afterward, for I was too late
to be of help. It was at the Golden Hind, of course. Something really
ought to be done about that place. Yes, and that rogue Marler bled all
over a new doublet, as you see. And the Deptford constables held me with
their foolish interrogatories--"

"So one of the fighting men was named Marlowe! Is he dead, too, dead in
another gutter?"

"Marlowe or Marler, or something of the sort--wrote plays and sonnets
and such stuff, they tell me. I do not know anything about him--though,
I give you my word now, those greasy constables treated me as though I
were a noted frequenter of pot-houses. That sort of thing is most
annoying. At all events, he was drunk as David's sow, and squabbling
over, saving your presence, a woman of the sort one looks to find in
that abominable hole. And so, as I was saying, this other drunken rascal
dug a knife into him--"

But now, to Captain Musgrave's discomfort, Cynthia Allonby had begun to
weep heartbrokenly.

So he cleared his throat, and he patted the back of her hand. "It is a
great shock to you, naturally--oh, most naturally, and does you great
credit. But come now, Pevensey is gone, as we must all go some day, and
our tears cannot bring him back, my dear. We can but hope he is better
off, poor fellow, and look on it as a mysterious dispensation and that
sort of thing, my dear--"

"Oh, Ned, but people are so cruel! People will be saying that it was I
who kept poor Cousin George in London this past two weeks, and that but
for me he would have been in France long ago. And then the Queen,
Ned!--why, that pig-headed old woman will be blaming it on me, that
there is nobody to prevent that detestable French King from turning
Catholic and dragging England into new wars, and I shall not be able to
go to any of the court dances! nor to the masque!" sobbed Cynthia, "nor
anywhere!"

"Now you talk tender-hearted and angelic nonsense. It is noble of you to
feel that way, of course. But Pevensey did not take proper care of
himself, and that is all there is to it. Now I have remained in London
since the Plague's outbreak. I stayed with my regiment, naturally. We
have had a few deaths, of course. People die everywhere. But the Plague
has never bothered me. And why has it never bothered me? Simply because
I was sensible, took the pains to consult an astrologer, and by his
advice wear about my neck, night and day, a bag of dried toad's blood
and powdered cinnamon. It is an infallible specific for men born in
February. No, not for a moment do I wish to speak harshly of the dead,
but sensible persons cannot but consider Lord Pevensey's death to have
been caused by his own carelessness."

"Now, certainly that is true," the girl said, brightening. "It was
really his own carelessness, and his dear, lovable rashness. And
somebody could explain it to the Queen. Besides, I often think that wars
are good for the public spirit of a nation, and bring out its true
manhood. But then it upset me, too, a little, Ned, to hear about this
Marlowe--for I must tell you that I knew the poor man, very slightly. So
I happen to know that today he flung off in a rage, and began drinking,
because somebody, almost by pure accident, had burned a packet of his
verses--"

Thereupon Captain Musgrave raised heavy eyebrows, and guffawed so
heartily that the candle flickered. "To think of the fellow's putting it
on that plea! when he could so easily have written some more verses.
That is the trouble with these poets, if you ask me: they are not
practical even in their ordinary, everyday lying. No, no, the truth of
it was that the rogue wanted a pretext for making a beast of himself,
and seized the first that came to hand. Egad, my dear, it is a daily
practice with these poets. They hardly draw a sober breath. Everybody
knows that."

Cynthia was looking at him in the half-lit room with very flattering
admiration.... Seen thus, with her scarlet lips a little
parted--disclosing pearls--and with her naive dark eyes aglow, she was
quite incredibly pretty and caressable. She had almost forgotten until
now that this stalwart soldier, too, was in love with her. But now her
spirits were rising venturously, and she knew that she liked Ned
Musgrave. He had sensible notions; he saw things as they really were,
and with him there would never be any nonsense about top-lofty ideas.
Then, too, her dear old white-haired father would be pleased, because
there was a very fair estate....

So Cynthia said: "I believe you are right, Ned. I often wonder how they
can be so lacking in self-respect. Oh, I am certain you must be right,
for it is just what I felt without being able quite to express it You
will stay for supper with us, of course. Yes, but you must, because it
is always a great comfort for me to talk with really sensible persons. I
do not wonder that you are not very eager to stay, though, for I am
probably a fright, with my eyes red, and with my hair all tumbling down,
like an old witch's. Well, let us see what can be done about it, sir!
There was a hand-mirror--"

And thus speaking, she tripped, with very much the reputed grace of a
fairy, toward the far end of the room, and standing a-tiptoe, groped at
the obscure shelves, with a resultant crash of falling china.

"Oh, but my lovely cups!" said Cynthia, in dismay. "I had forgotten they
were up there: and now I have smashed both of them, in looking for my
mirror, sir, and trying to prettify myself for you. And I had so fancied
them, because they had not their like in England!"

She looked at the fragments, and then at Musgrave, with wide, innocent
hurt eyes. She was honestly grieved by the loss of her quaint toys. But
Musgrave, in his sturdy, common-sense way, only laughed at her
seriousness over such kickshaws.

"I am for an honest earthenware tankard myself!" he said, jovially, as
the two went in to supper.

THE HIGH COST OF CONSCIENCE

_BY BEATRICE RAVENEL_

From _Harper's Magazine_

"Any woman who can accept money from a gentleman who is in no way
related to her--" Miss Fowler delivered judgment.

"My dear Aunt Maria, you mean a gentleman's disembodied spirit," Hugh's
light, pleasant tones intervened.

"A legacy, Maria, is not quite the same thing. Mr. Winthrop Fowler's
perfect intonation carried its usual implication that the subject was
closed.

"---- is what I call an adventuress," Miss Fowler summed up. She had a
way of ignoring objections, of reappearing beyond them like a submarine
with the ultimate and detonating answer. "And now she wants to reopen
the matter when the whole thing's over and done with. After three years.
Extraordinary taste." She hitched her black-velvet Voltaire arm-chair a
little away from the fire and spread a vast knitting-bag of Chinese
brocade over her knees. "I suppose she isn't satisfied; she wants more."

"Naturally. I cannot imagine what other reason she could have for
insisting on a personal interview," her brother agreed, dryly. He
retired into the _Transcript_ as a Trappist withdraws into his vows. A
chastened client of Mr. Fowler's once observed that a half-hour's
encounter with him resulted in a rueful of asphyxiated topics.

Miss Maria, however, preferred disemboweling hers, "I shouldn't have
consented," she snapped. "Hugh, if you would be so good as to sit down.
You are obstructing the light. And the curtain-cord. If you could
refrain from twisting it for a few moments."

Hugh let his long, high-shouldered figure lapse into the window-seat.
"And besides, we're all dying to know what she looks like," he
suggested.

"Speak for yourself, please," said Miss Fowler, with the vivacity of the
lady who protests too much.

"I do, I do! Good Lord! I'm just as bad as the rest of you. All my life
I've been consumed to know what Uncle Hugh could have seen in a
perfectly obscure little person to make him do what he did. There must
have been something." His eyes travelled to a sketch in pencil of a
man's head which hung in the shadow of the chimneypiece, a sketch whose
uncanny suggestion might have come from the quality of the sitter or
merely from a smudging of the medium. "Everything he did always seemed
to me perfectly natural," he went on, as though conscious of new
discovery. "Even those years when he was knocking about the world,
hiding his address. Even when he had that fancy that people were
persecuting him. Most people did worry him horribly."

A glance flashed between the two middle-aged listeners. It was a
peculiar glance, full of a half-denied portent. Then Miss Fowler's
fingers, true to their traditions, loosened their grip on her needles
and casually smoothed out her work.

"I have asked you not to speak of that," she mentioned, quietly.

"I know. But of course there was no doubt at all that he was sa--was
entirely recovered before his death. Don't you think so, sir?"

His uncle laid down the paper and fixed the young man with the gray,
unsheathed keenness that had sent so many witnesses grovelling to the
naked truth. "No doubt whatever. I always held, and so did both the
physicians, that his lack of balance was a temporary and sporadic thing,
brought on by overwork--and certain unhappy conditions of his life.
There has never been any such taint in our branch of the family."

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