O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 Part 27

Miss Janet Spencer, Tawnleytown....

And the envelope dropped from his nerveless fingers to the table.

Who shall say how love goes or comes? Its ways are a sacred, insoluble mystery, no less. But it had gone for Harber: and just as surely, though so suddenly, had it come! Yes, life had bitterly tricked him at last. She had sent him this girl ... too late! The letter in the envelope was written to tell Janet Spencer that within six weeks he would be in Tawnleytown to claim her in marriage.

One must be single-minded like Harber to appreciate his terrible distress of mind. The facile infidelity of your ordinary mortal wasn't for Harber. No, he had sterner stuff in him.

Vanessa! The name seemed so beautiful ... like the girl herself, like the things she had said. It was an Italian name. She had told him her people had come from Venice, though she was herself thoroughly a product of America. "So that you can never forget," she had said. Ah, it was the warm blood of Italy in her veins that had prompted that An American girl wouldn't have said that!

He slit the envelope, letting the letter fall to the table, and put it in his pocket.

Yet why should he save it? He could never see her again, he knew.

Vain had been those half-promises, those wholly lies, that his eyes and lips had given her. For there was Janet, with her prior promises.

Ten years Janet had waited for him ... ten years ... and suddenly, aghast, he realized how long and how terrible the years are, how they can efface memories and hopes and desires, and how cruelly they had dealt with him, though he had not realized it until this moment.

Janet ... why, actually, Janet was a stranger, he didn't know Janet any more! She was nothing but a frail phantom of recollection: the years had erased her! But this girl--warm, alluring, immediate....

No--no! It couldn't be.

So much will the force of an idea do for a man, you see. Because, of course, it could have been. He had only to destroy the letter that lay there before him, to wait on until the next sailing, to make continued love to Vanessa, and never to go to Tawnleytown again.

There was little probability that Janet would come here for him. Ten years and ten thousand miles ... despite all that he had vowed on Bald k.n.o.b that Sunday so long ago, wouldn't you have said that was barrier enough?

Why, so should I! But it wasn't.

For Harber took the letter and put it in a fresh envelope, and in the morning he went aboard the steamer without seeing the girl again ...

unless that bit of white standing near the top of the slope, as the ship churned the green harbour water heading out to sea, were she, waving.

But he kept the address she had written.

Why? He never could use it. Well, perhaps he didn't want to forget too soon, though it hurt him to remember. How many of us, after all, have some little memory like that, some intimate communion with romance, which we don't tell, but cling to? And perhaps the memory is better than the reality would have been. We imagine ... but that again is cynical. Harber will never be that now. Let me tell you why.

It's because he hadn't been aboard ship on his crossing to Victoria twenty-four hours before he met Clay Barton.

Barton was rolled up in rugs, lying in a deck-chair, biting his teeth hard together to keep them from chattering, though the temperature was in the eighties, and most of the pa.s.sengers in white.

Barton appeared to be a man of forty, whereas he turned out to be in his early twenties. He was emaciated to an alarming degree and his complexion was of the pale, yellow-green that spoke of many recurrences of malaria. The signs were familiar to Harber.

He sat down beside Barton, and, as the other looked at him half a dozen times tentatively, he presently spoke to him.

"You've had a bad time of it, haven't you?"

"Terrible," said Barton frankly. "They say I'm convalescent now. I don't know. Look at me. What would you say?"

Harber shook his head.

Barton laughed bitterly. "Yes, I'm pretty bad," he agreed readily.

And then, as he talked that day and the two following, he told Harber a good many things.

"I tell you, Harber," he said, "we'll do anything for money. Here I am--and I knew d.a.m.ned well it was killing me, too. And yet I stuck it out six months after I'd any earthly business to--just for a few extra hundreds."

"Where were you? What were you doing?" asked Harber.

"Trading-post up a river in the Straits Settlements," said Barton.

"A crazy business from the beginning--and yet I made money. Made it lots faster than I could have back home. Back there you're hedged about with too many rules. And compet.i.tion's too keen. You go into some big corporation office at seventy-five a month, maybe, and unless you have luck you're years getting near anything worth having.

And you've got to play politics, bootlick your boss--all that. So I got out.

"Went to California first, and got a place in an exporting firm in San Francisco. They sent me to Sydney and then to Fiji. After I'd been out for a while and got the hang of things, I cut loose from them.

"Then I got this last chance, and it looked mighty good--and I expect I've done for myself by it. Five years or a little better.

That's how long I've lasted. Back home I'd have been good for thirty-five. A short life and a merry one, they say. Merry. Good G.o.d!"

He shook his head ironically.

"The root of all evil," he resumed after a little. "Well, but you've got to have it--can't get along without it in _this_ world. You've done well, you say?"

Harber nodded.

"Well, so should I have, if the cursed fever had let me alone. In another year or so I'd have been raking in the coin. And now here I am--busted--done--;--_fini_, as the French say. I burned the candle at both ends--and got just what was coming to me, I suppose. But how _could_ I let go, just when everything was coming my way?"

"I know," said Harber. "But unless you can use it----"

"You're right there. Not much in it for me now. Still, the medicos say a cold winter back home will.... I don't know. Sometimes I don't think I'll last to....

"Where's the use, you ask, Harber? You ask me right now, and I can't tell you. But if you'd asked me before I got like this, I could have told you quick enough. With some men, I suppose, it's just an acquisitive nature. With me, that didn't cut any figure. With me, it was a girl. I wanted to make the most I could for her in the shortest time. A girl ... well...."

Harber nodded. "I understand. I came out for precisely the same reason myself," he remarked.

"You did?" said Barton, looking at him sadly. "Well, luck was with you, then. You look so--so d.a.m.ned fit! You can go back to her ...

while I ... ain't it h.e.l.l? Ain't it?" he demanded fiercely.

"Yes," admitted Harber, "it is. But at the same time, I'm not sure that anything's ever really lost. If she's worth while----"

Barton made a vehement sign of affirmation.

"Why, she'll be terribly sorry for you, but she won't _care_,"

concluded Harber. "I mean, she'll be waiting for you, and glad to have you coming home, so glad that...."

"Ah ... yes. That's what ... I haven't mentioned the fever in writing to her, you see. It will be a shock."

Harber, looking at him, thought that it would, indeed.

"I had a letter from her just before we sailed," went on the other, more cheerfully. "I'd like awfully, some time, to have you meet her.

She's a wonderful girl--wonderful. She's clever. She's much cleverer than I am, really ... about most things. When we get to Victoria, you must let me give you my address."

"Thanks," said Harber. "I'll be glad to have it."

That was the last Harber saw of him for five days. The weather had turned rough, and he supposed the poor fellow was seasick, and thought of him sympathetically, but let it rest there. Then, one evening after dinner, the steward came for him and said that Mr. Clay Barton wanted to see him. Harber followed to Barton's stateroom, which the sick man was occupying alone. In the pa.s.sageway near the door, he met the ship's doctor.

"Mr. Harber?" said the doctor. "Your friend in there--I'm sorry to say--is----"

"I suspected as much," said Harber. "He knows it himself, I think."