O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ dreams, wide with amazement.

      "I must be nine-tenths asleep," she murmured gently. "Because I don't hear a single thing, Janet. Perhaps—"

      "Hush—listen!" begged Janet, raising an imperative hand—and then her own eyes widened. "Why—it's gone!" There was a note of flat incredulity in her voice. "Heavens, how those things must eat up space! Not a minute, ago it was fairly shaking this room, and now—"

      Rosemary stifled a small pink yawn and smiled ingratiatingly.

      "Perhaps you were asleep too," she suggested humbly. "I don't believe that airplanes ever fly this way any more. Or it might have been that fat Hodges boy on his motorcycle—he does make the most dreadful racket. Oh, Janet, what a perfectly ripping night—do see!"

      They leaned together on the window-sill, silenced by the white and shining beauty that had turned the pleasant garden into a place of magic and enchantment. The corners of Janet's mouth lifted suddenly. How absurd people were! The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle! Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic—even little, lovely, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening. But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent—and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a crying pity that it need ever land—anything so fleet and strong and sure should fly forever! But if they must rest, those beating wings—the old R.F.C. toast went singing through her head and she flung it out into the moonlight, smiling—"Happy landings! Happy landings, you!"

      The next day was the one that brought to White Orchards what was to be known for many moons as "the Big Storm." It had been gathering all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown appalling and incredible, even to Janet's American and exigent standards. The smouldering copper sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would burn forever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break the stillness—it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. Every one had struggled through the day assuring one another that when evening came it would be all right—dangling the alluring thought of the cool darkness before each other's hot and weary eyes; but the night proved even more outrageous than the day. To the little group seated on the terrace, dispiritedly playing with their coffee, it seemed almost a personal affront. The darkness closed in on them, smothering, heavy, intolerable; they could feel its weight, as though it were some hateful and tangible thing.

      "Like—like black cotton wool," explained Rosemary, stirred to unwonted resentment. She had spent the day curled up in the largest Indian chair on the terrace, round-eyed with fatigue and incredulity.

      "I honestly think that we must be dreaming," she murmured to her feverish audience; "I do, honestly. Why, it's only May, and we never, never—there was that day in August about five years ago that was almost as bad, though. D'you remember, Mummy?"

      "It's hardly the kind of thing that one is likely to forget, love. Do you think that it is necessary for us to talk? I feel somehow that I could bear it much more easily if we kept quite quiet."

      Janet stirred a little, uneasily. She hated silence—that terrible, empty space waiting to be filled up with your thoughts—why, the idlest chatter spared you that. She hated the terrace, too—she closed her eyes to shut out the ugly darkness that was pressing against her; behind the shelter of her lids it was cooler and stiller, but open-eyed or closed, she could not shut out memory. The very touch of the bricks beneath her feet brought back that late October day. She had been sitting curled up on the steps in the warm sunlight, with the keen, sweet air stirring her hair and sending the beech-leaves dancing down the flagged path—there had been a heavenly smell of burning from the far meadow, and she was sniffing it luxuriously, feeling warm and joyous and protected in Jerry's great tweed coat—watching the tall figure swinging across from the lodge gate with idle, happy eyes—not even curious. It was not until he had almost reached the steps that she had noticed that he was wearing a foreign uniform—and even then she had promptly placed him as one of Rosemary's innumerable conquests, bestowing on him a friendly and inquiring smile.

      "Were you looking for Miss Langdon?" Even now she could see the courteous, grave young face soften as he turned quickly toward her, baring his dark head with that swift foreign grace that turns our perfunctory habits into something like a ritual.

      "But no," he had said gently, "I was looking for you, Miss Abbott."

      "Now will you please tell me how in the world you knew that I was

       Miss Abbott?"

      And he had smiled—with his lips, not his eyes.

      "I should be dull indeed if that I did not know. I am Philippe

       Laurent, Miss Abbott."

      And "Oh," she had cried joyously, "Liane's Philippe!"

      "But yes—Liane's Philippe. They are not here, the others? Madame

       Langdon, the little Miss Rosemary?"

      "No, they've gone to some parish fair, and I've been wicked and stayed home. Won't you sit down and talk to me? Please!"

      "Miss Abbott, it is not to you that I must talk. What I have to say is indeed most difficult, and it is to Jeremy's Janie that I would say it. May I, then?"

      It had seemed to Jeremy's Janie that the voice in which she answered him came from a great distance, but she never took her eyes from the grave and vivid face.

      "Yes. And quickly, please."

      So he had told her—quickly—in his exquisitely careful English, and she had listened as attentively and politely, huddled up on the brick steps in the sunlight, as though he were running over the details of the last drive, instead of tearing her life to pieces with every word. She remembered now that it hadn't seemed real at all—if it had been to Jerry that these horrors had happened could she have sat there so quietly, feeling the colour bright in her cheeks, and the wind stirring in her hair, and the sunlight warm on her hands? Why, for less than this people screamed, and fainted, and went raving mad!

      "You say—that his back is broken?"

      "But yes, my dear," Liane's Philippe had told her, and she had seen the tears shining in his gray eyes.

      "And he is badly burned?"

      "My brave Janie, these questions are not good to ask—not good, not good to answer. This I will tell you. He lives, our Jerry—and so dearly does he love you that he will drag back that poor body from hell itself—because it is yours, not his. This he has sent me to tell you, most lucky lady ever loved."

      "You mean—that he isn't going to die?"

      "I tell you that into those small hands of yours he has given his life. Hold it fast."

      "Will he—will he get well?" "He will not walk again; but have you not swift feet to run for him?"

      And there had come to her, sitting on the terrace in the sunshine, an overwhelming flood of joy, reckless and cruel and triumphant. Now he was hers forever, the restless wanderer—delivered to her bound and helpless, never to stray again. Hers to worship and serve and slave for, his troth to Freedom broken—hers at last!

      "I'm coming," she had told the tall young Frenchman breathlessly.

       "Take me to him—please СКАЧАТЬ