O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 Part 30

Two years later he reappeared in Africa. Marie was with him. They were living in a small town on the rim of the desert near Biskra. Grimshaw occupied a native house--a mere hovel, flat-roofed, sun-baked, bare as a hermit's cell. Marie had hired herself out as _femme de chambre_ in the only hotel in the place. "I watched over him," she told me. "And believe me, _monsieur_, he needed care! He was thin as a ghost. He had starved more than once during those two years. He told me to go back to France, to seek happiness for myself. But for me happiness was with him. I laughed and stayed. I loved him--magnificently, _monsieur_."

Grimshaw was writing again--in French--and his work began to appear in the Parisian journals, a strange poetic prose impregnated with mysticism. It was Grimshaw, sublimated. I saw it myself, although at that time I had not heard Waram's story. The French critics saw it.

"This Pilleux is as picturesque as the English poet, Grimshaw. The style is identical." Waram saw it. He read everything that Pilleux wrote--with eagerness, with terror. Finally, driven by curiosity, he went to Paris, got Pilleux's address from the editor of _Gil Blas_, and started for Africa.

Grimshaw is a misty figure at the last. You see him faintly--an exile, racially featureless, wearing a dirty white native robe, his face wrinkled by exposure to the sun, his eyes burning. Marie says that he prowled about the village at night, whispering to himself, his head thrown back, pointing his beard at the stars. He wrote in the cool hours before dawn, and later, when the village quivered in heat fumes and he slept, Marie posted what he had written to Paris.

One day he took her head between his hands and said very gently: "Why don't you get a lover? Take life while you can."

"You say there is eternal life," she protested.

"_N'en doutez-pas_! But you must be rich in knowledge. Put flowers in your hair. And place your palms against a lover's palms and kiss him with generosity, _ma pet.i.te_. I am not a man; I am a shadow."

Marie slipped her arms around him and, standing on tiptoe, put her lips against his. "_Je t'aime_," she said simply.

His eyes deepened. There flashed into them the old, mad humour, the old vitality, the old pa.s.sion for beauty. The look faded, leaving his eyes "like flames that are quenched." Marie shivered, covered her face with her hands, and ran out. "There was no blood in him," she told me.

"He was like a spirit--a ghost. So meagre! So wan! Waxen hands. Yellow flesh. And those eyes, in which, _monsieur_, the flame was quenched!"

And this is the end of the curious story.... Waram went to Biskra and from there to the village where Grimshaw lived. Grimshaw saw him in the street one evening and followed him to the hotel. He lingered outside until Waram had registered at the _bureau_ and had gone to his room. Then he went in and sent word that "Pierre Pilleux was below and ready to see Doctor Waram."

He waited in the "garden" at the back of the hotel. No one was about.

A cat slept on the wall. Overhead the arch of the sky was flooded with orange light. Dust lay on the leaves of the potted plants and bushes.

It was breathless, hot, quiet. He thought: "Waram has come because Dagmar is dead. Or the public has found me out!"

Waram came immediately. He stood in the doorway a moment, staring at the grotesque figure which faced him. He made a terrified gesture, as if he would shut out what he saw. Then he came into the garden, steadying himself by holding on to the backs of the little iron garden chairs. The poet saw that Waram had not changed so very much--a little gray hair in that thick, black mop, a few wrinkles, a rather stodgy look about the waist. No more. He was still Waram, neat, self-satisfied, essentially English.... Grimshaw strangled a feeling of aversion and said quietly: "Well, Waram. How d'you do? I call myself Pilleux now."

Waram ignored his hand. Leaning heavily on one of the chairs, he stared with a pa.s.sionate intentness. "Grimshaw?" he said at last.

"Why, yes," Grimshaw answered. "Didn't you know?"

Waram licked his lips. In a whisper he said: "I killed you in Switzerland six years ago. Killed you, you understand."

Grimshaw touched his breast with both hands. "You lie.

"Here I am."

"You are dead."

"Dead?"

"Before G.o.d, I swear it."

"Dead?"

Grimshaw felt once more the on-rushing flood of darkness. His thoughts flashed back over the years. The "wall." His suffering. The dog. The song in the field. The Negro. The door that opened. The stars. His own flesh, fading into spirit, into shadows....

"Dead?" he demanded again.

Waram's eyes wavered. He laughed unsteadily and looked behind him.

"Strange," he said. "I thought I saw----" He turned and went quickly across the garden into the hotel. Grimshaw called once, in a loud voice: "Waram!" But the doctor did not even turn his head. Grimshaw followed him, overtook him, touched his shoulder. Waram paid no attention. Going to the _bureau_ he said to the proprietor: "You told me that a Monsieur Pilleux wished to see me."

"_Oui, monsieur_. He was waiting for you in the garden."

"He is not there now."

"But just a moment ago----"

"I am _here_," Grimshaw interrupted.

The proprietor brushed past Waram and peered into the garden. It was twilight out there now. The cat still slept on the wall. Dust on the leaves. Stillness....

"I'm sorry, _monsieur_. He seems to have disappeared."

Doctor Waram straightened his shoulders. "Ah," he said. "Disappeared.

Exactly." And pa.s.sing Grimshaw without a glance he went upstairs.

Grimshaw spoke to the proprietor. But the little man bent over the desk, and began to write in an account book. His pen went on scratching, inscribing large, flourishing numbers in a neat column....

Grimshaw shrugged and went into the street. The crowds paid no attention to him--but then, they never had. A dog sniffed at his heels, whined, and thrust a cold nose into his hand.

He went to his house. "I'll ask Marie," he thought.... She was sitting before a mirror, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling at herself.... She had put a flower in her hair. Her lips were parted.

She smiled at some secret thought. Grimshaw watched her a moment; then with a leap of his heart he touched her shoulder. And she did not turn, did not move....

He knew! He put his fingers on her cheek, her neck, the shining braids of her coa.r.s.e black hair. Then he walked quickly out of the house, out of the village, toward the desert.

Two men joined him. One of them said: "I have just died." They went on together, their feet whispering in the sand, walking in a globe of darkness until the stars came out--then they saw one another's pale faces and eager, frightened eyes. Others joined them. And others. Men.

Women. A child. Some wept and some murmured and some laughed.

"Is this death?"

"Where now, brother?"

Grimshaw thought: "The end. What next? Beauty. Love. Illusion.

Forgetfulness."

He clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his face to the stars, walked steadily forward with that company of the dead, into the desert, out of the story at last.

COMET [Published originally under t.i.tle, "The Comet."]

By SAMUEL A. DERIEUX

From _American Magazine_

No puppy ever came into the world under more favourable conditions than Comet. He was descended from a famous family of pointers. Both his mother and father were champions. Before he opened his eyes, while he was still crawling about over his brothers and sisters, blind as puppies are at birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant's kennel master, picked him out.

"That's the best un in the bunch."