O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 Part 28

"Does he?" said the doctor, obviously relieved. "Well, I hope that he'll live till we get him ash.o.r.e. There's just a chance, of course, though his fever is very high now. He's quite lucid just now, and has been insisting upon seeing you. Later he mayn't be conscious.

So----"

Harber nodded. "I'll go in."

Barton lay in his berth, still, terribly thin, and there were two pink patches of fever burning upon his cheek-bones. He opened his eyes with an infinite weariness as Harber entered the room, and achieved a smile.

"Hard luck, old fellow," said Harber, crossing to him. "'Sall _up_!" said Barton, grinning gamely. "I'm through. Asked 'em to send you in. Do something for me, Harber--tha's right, ain't it--Harber's your name?"

"Yes. What is it, Barton?"

Barton closed his eyes, then opened them again.

"Doggone memory--playin' tricks," he apologized faintly. "This, Harber. Black-leather case inside leather grip there--by the wall.

Money in it--and letters. Everything goes--to the girl. n.o.body else.

I know you're straight. Take 'em to her?"

"Yes," said Harber.

"Good," said Barton. "All right, then! Been expecting this. All ready for it. Name--address--papers--all there. She'll have no trouble--getting money. Thanks, Harber." And after a pause, he added: "Better take it now--save trouble, you know."

Harber got the leather case from the grip and took it at once to his own stateroom.

When he returned, Barton seemed for the moment, with the commission off his mind, a little brighter.

"No end obliged, Harber," he murmured.

"All right," said Harber, "but ought you to talk?"

"Won't matter now," said Barton grimly. "Feel like talking now.

To-morrow may be--too late!" And after another pause, he went on: "The fine dreams of youth--odd where they end, isn't it?

"This--and me--so different. So different! Failure. She was wise--but she didn't know everything. The world was too big--too hard for me.

'You can't fail,' she said, '_I won't let you fail_!' But you see----"

Harber's mind, slipping back down the years, with Barton, to his own parting, stopped with a jerk.

"What!" he exclaimed.

Barton seemed drifting, half conscious, half unconscious of what he was saying. He did not appear to have heard Harber's exclamation over the phrase so like that Janet had given him.

"We weren't like the rest," droned Barton. "No--we wanted more out of life than they did. We couldn't be content--with half a loaf. We wanted--the bravest adventures--the yellowest gold--the...."

Picture that scene, if you will. What would _you_ have said? Harber saw leaping up before him, with terrible clarity, as if it were etched upon his mind, that night in Tawnleytown ten years before. It was as if Barton, in his semidelirium, were reading the words from _his_ past!

"I won't let you fail! ... half a loaf ... the bravest adventures ...

the yellowest gold." Incredible thing! That Barton and _his_ girl should have stumbled upon so many of the phrases, the exact phrases!

And suddenly full knowledge blinded Harber.... No! No! He spurned it.

It couldn't be. And yet, he felt that if Barton were to utter one more phrase of those that Janet had said and, many, many times since, written to _him_, the impossible, the unbelievable, would be stark, una.s.sailable fact.

He put his hand upon Barton's arm and gently pressed it.

"Barton," he said, "tell me--Janet--Tawnleytown?"

Barton stared with gla.s.sy, unseeing eyes for a moment; then his eyelids fell.

"The bravest adventures--the yellowest gold," he murmured. Then, so faintly as almost to baffle hearing: "Where--all--our--dreams?

Gone--aglimmering. Gone."

That was all.

Impossible? No, just very, very improbable. But how, by its very improbability, it does take on the semblance of design! See how by slender a thread the thing hung, how every corner of the plan fitted.

Just one slip Janet Spencer made; she let her thoughts and her words slip into a groove; she repeated herself. And how unerringly life had put her finger upon that clew! So reasoned Harber.

Well, if the indictment were true, there was proof to be had in Barton's leather case!

Harber, having called the doctor, went to his stateroom.

He opened the leather case. Inside a cover of yellow oiled silk he found first a certificate of deposit for three thousand pounds, and beneath it a packet of letters.

He unwrapped them.

And, though somehow he had known it without the proof, at the sight of them something caught at his heart with a clutch that made it seem to have stopped beating for a long time. For the sprawling script upon the letters was almost as familiar to him as his own.

Slowly he reached down and took up the topmost letter, drew the thin shiny sheets from the envelope, fluttered them, dazed, and stared at the signature:

Yours, my dearest lover, JANET.

Just so had she signed _his_ letters. It _was_ Janet Spencer. Two of her argosies, each one laden with gold for her, had met in their courses, had sailed for a little together.

The first reasonable thought that came to Harber, when he was convinced of the authenticity of the miracle, was that he was free--free to go after the girl he loved, after Vanessa Simola. I think that if he could have done it, he'd have turned the steamer back to the Orient in that moment. The thought that the ship was plunging eastward through a waste of smashing heavy seas was maddening, no less!

He didn't want to see Janet or Tawnleytown, again. He did have, he told me, a fleeting desire to know just how many other ships Janet might have launched, but it wasn't strong enough to take him to see her. He sent her the papers and letters by registered mail under an a.s.sumed name.

And then he went to Claridon, Michigan, to learn of her people when Vanessa might be expected home. They told him she was on her way. So, fearing to miss her if he went seeking, he settled down there and stayed until she came. It was seven months of waiting he had ... but it was worth it in the end.

And that was Harber's romance. Just an incredible coincidence, you say. I know it. I told Harber that. And Mrs. Harber.

And _she_ said nothing at all, but looked at me inscrutably, with a flicker of scorn in her sea-gray eyes.

Harber smiled lazily and serenely, and leaned back in his chair, and replied in a superior tone: "My dear Sterne, things that are made in heaven--like my marriage--don't just happen. Can't you see that your stand simply brands you an unbeliever?"

And, of course, I _can_ see it. And Harber may be right. I don't know.

Does any one, I wonder?

ALMA MATER