The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 7

"Mackintosh--James Mackintos.h.!.+ What are you looking for? An ash-tray?

Here's one." Burnaby pa.s.sed it over.

"Thanks!" said Pollen, relaxing. "Yes--go on!"

Burnaby resumed his narrative calmly. "I knew him--Mackintosh, that is--fifteen, no, it was fourteen years ago in Arizona, when I was ranching there, and for the next three years I saw him constantly. He had a place ten miles down the river from me. He was about four years older than I was--a tall, slim, sandy-haired, freckled fellow, preternaturally quiet; a trusty, if there ever was one. Unlike most preternaturally quiet people, however, it wasn't dulness that made him that way; he wasn't dull a bit. Stir him up on anything and you found that he had thought about it a lot. But he never told me anything about himself until I had known him almost two years, and then it came out quite accidentally one night--we were on a spring round-up--when the two of us were sitting up by the fire, smoking and staring at the desert stars. All the rest were asleep." Burnaby paused. "Is this boring you?"

he asked.

"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Ennis; she was watching intently Pollen's half-averted face.

Burnaby threw away his cigarette. "At first," he said, "it seemed to me like the most ordinary of stories--the usual fixed idea that the rejected lover carries around with him for a year or so until he forgets it; the idea that the girl will regret her choice and one day kick over the traces and hunt him up.

"But it wasn't the ordinary story--not by a long shot. You'll see. It seems he had fallen in love with a girl--had been in love with her for years--before he had left the East; a very young girl, nineteen, and of an aspiring family. The family, naturally, didn't look upon him with any favor whatsoever; he was poor and he didn't show the slightest inclination to engage in any of the pursuits they considered proper to the ambitions of a worthy young man. Rather a dreamer, I imagine, until he had found the thing he wanted to do. Not a very impressive figure in the eyes of whitespatted fatherhood. Moreover, he himself was shy about trying to marry a rich girl while she was still so young.

"'She was brought up all wrong,' he said. 'What could you expect? Life will have to teach her. She will have to get over her idea, as one gets over the measles, that money and houses and possessions are the main things.' But he knew she would get over it; he was sure that at the bottom of her heart was a well of honesty and directness. 'Some day,' he said, 'she'll be out here.'

"Apparently the upshot of the matter was that he went to the girl and told her--all these ideas of his; quit, came West; left the road open to the other man. Oh, yes, there was another man, of course; one thoroughly approved of by the family. Quaint, wasn't it? Perhaps a little overly judicial. But then that was his way. Slow-moving and sure.

He saw the girl at dusk in the garden of her family's country place; near a sun-dial, or some other appropriately romantic spot. She kissed him n.o.bly on the forehead, I suppose--the young girl gesture; and told him she wasn't worthy of him and to forget her.

"'Oh, no, I won't,' he said. 'Not for a minute! And in five years--or ten--you'll come to me. You'll find out.' And then he added something else: 'Whenever things have reached their limit,' he said, 'think of me with all your might. Think hard! There's something in that sort of stuff, you know, where two people love each other. Think hard!' Then he went away."

A log snapped and fell with a soft thud to the ashes beneath. Burnaby was silent for a moment, staring at the fire.

When he spoke again, it was with a slow precision as if he were trying with extreme care to find the right words.

"You see," he said, "he had as an added foundation for his faith--perhaps as the main foundation for it--his knowledge of the other man's character; the character of the man the girl married. It was"--he spoke more hastily and, suddenly raising his head, looked at Mary Rochefort, who, sunk back in her chair, was gazing straight ahead of her--"an especial kind of character. I must dwell on it for a moment, and you must mark well what I say, for on it my parable largely depends.

It was a character of the sort that to any but an odalisk means eventual shame; to any woman of pride, you understand, eventually of necessity a broken heart. It was a queer character, but not uncommon. Outwardly very attractive. Mackintosh described it succinctly, shortly, as we sat there by the fire. He spoke between his teeth--the faint wind stirring the desert sand sounded rather like his voice." Burnaby paused again and reached over for a cigarette and lit it deliberately.

"He was a man," he continued, "who apparently had the faculty of making most women love him and, in the end, the faculty of making all women hate him. I imagine to have known him very well would have been to leave one with a mental shudder such as follows the touching of anguilliform material; snake-like texture. It would leave one ashamed and broken, for fundamentally he was contemptuous of the dignity of personality, particularly of the personalities of women. He was a collector, you understand, a collector of beauty, and women, and incidents--amorous incidents. He carried into his personal relations.h.i.+ps the cold objectiveness of the artist. But he wasn't a very great artist, or he wouldn't have done so; he would have had the discrimination to control the artist's greatest peril. It's a flame, this cold objectiveness, but a flame so powerful that it must be properly shaded for intimate use.

Otherwise it kills like violet rays. Women wore out their hearts on him, not like waves breaking on a crystal rock, but like rain breaking into a gutter."

"Good Lord!" murmured Mrs. Ennis involuntarily.

Burnaby caught her exclamation. "Bad, wasn't it?" he smiled. "But remember I am only repeating what Mackintosh told me. Well, there he was then--Mackintosh--hard at work all day trying to build himself up a ranch, and he was succeeding, too, and, at night, sitting on his porch, smoking and listening to the river, and apparently expecting every moment the girl to appear. It was rather eerie. He had such a convincing way; he was himself so convinced. You half expected yourself to see her come around the corner of the log house in the moonlight. There was about it all the impression that here was something that had a touch of the inevitability of the Greek idea of fate; something more arranged than the usual course of human events. Meanwhile, back in the East, was the girl, learning something about life."

He interrupted himself. "Want a cigarette?" he said to Pollen. "Here they are." He handed over the box. "What is it? A match? Wait a moment; I'll strike it for you. Keep the end of the thing steady, will you? All right." He resumed the thread of his narrative.

"In four years she had learned a lot," he said; "she had become apparently almost a woman. On a certain hot evening in July--about seven o'clock, I imagine--she became one entirely; at least, for the moment, and, at least, her sort of woman. I am not defending what she did, remember; I am simply saying that she did it.

"It was very hot; even now when dusk was approaching. The girl had been feeling rather ill all day; feverish. She had not been able to get away to her country place as yet. Into the semidarkness of the room where she was came her husband. That night she had determined, as women will, upon a final test. She knew where he expected to dine; she asked him if he would dine with her.

"'I can't,' he said. 'I'm sorry--'

"Possibly nothing immediate would have happened had he not added an unspeakable flourish to his portrait. He reached out his arms and drew the girl to him and tried to kiss her condescendingly; but I suppose his hands found her, in her clinging gown, soft to their touch. At all events, they tightened upon her in an unmistakable way. She pulled herself away. 'Let me pa.s.s!' she said. 'You--you--!'--she could think of no words to suit him. You see, she understood him completely, now. He was a collector, but a collector so despicable that he was even unwilling to trade one article for another. He wanted to keep on his shelves, as it were, all the acc.u.mulation of his life, and take down from time to time whatever part of it suited his sudden fancy.

"The girl went up to her own room, and very carefully, not knowing precisely what she did, changed into a black street dress and removed all marks of identification. Her eyes swam with feverishness. While she was dressing, she bathed in hot water her arms where her husband's hands had been. She concluded that it was not what he had done--had constantly done--but what he was that made life unbearable. When she was through she went downstairs, and out of the front door, and walked slowly toward the center of the town and the railway station."

"And is that all?" asked Mary Rochefort, after a while.

"Oh, no," said Burnaby; "it's only the beginning. Mackintosh was in the hills beyond his ranch, hunting horses. He was camped in a little valley by himself. On this particular day he had been out since sun-up and did not get back until just about dusk. He picketed the horse he had been riding, and built a small fire, and began to cook his supper. All around him, brooding and unreal, was the light you get in high mountain places.

The fire shone like a tiny ruby set in topaz. Mackintosh raised his head and saw a woman coming out of the spur of aspen trees across the creek from him. He wasn't surprised; he knew right away who it was; he knew it was the girl. He watched her for a moment, and then he went over to her, and took her hand, and led her to the fire. They didn't speak at all."

"And you mean," asked Mrs. Ennis, "that she did that? That she came all the way out to him, like that?"

"No," retorted Burnaby, "of course not. How could she? She wasn't even sure where he was living. At the moment she was in a hospital out of her head. You see, I didn't know whether to believe Mackintosh or not when he said he saw her that night, although I am sure he believed he did--such things are beyond human proof--but what I do know is that he came straight down from the hills, and boarded a train, and went East, and found the girl, and, after a while, came back with her." He looked at the fire. "They were the most completely happy people I have ever seen," he continued. "They were so calm and determined about themselves.

Everything immaterial had been burned away. They knew they were playing on the side of fate. And so," he concluded, "that's the end of my parable. What do you make of it?"

The curtains, stirred by the breeze, tip-tapped softly; in the silence the fire hissed gently. Pollen spoke first, but with some difficulty, as if in the long period of listening on his part his throat had become dry. "It's very interesting," he said; "very! But what's it all about?

And you certainly don't believe it, do you?"

"Of course I do," answered Burnaby calmly. "You should, too; it's true."

Mary Rochefort looked up with an exclamation. "Gracious!" she said. "I had no idea it was so late! My motor must be waiting." She got to her feet. She looked very white and her eyes were tired; the translucent quality of the earlier hours was gone. "I'm worn out," she explained.

"I've been going about too much. I must rest." She held her hand out to Mrs. Ennis; over her shoulder she spoke to Pollen. "No," she said.

"Don't bother. I'll take myself home, thanks."

"I'll see you to your car," he stammered.

She turned to Burnaby. "Good night!" she said. Her voice was lifeless, disinterested; her eyes met his for an instant and were withdrawn.

"Good night," he said.

Mrs. Ennis stood by the door for a moment before she walked slowly back to the fireplace. From the street outside came the whirring of a motor and the sound of Mary Rochefort's voice saying good-by to Pollen.

Mrs. Ennis rested an arm on the mantelpiece and kicked a log thoughtfully with a white-slippered foot; then she faced about on Burnaby.

"I suppose," she said, "you realize that you have spoiled my party?"

"I?" said Burnaby.

"Yes, you!" Her small, charming face was a study in ruefulness, and indecision whether to be angry or not, and, one might almost have imagined, a certain amused tenderness as well. "Don't you suppose those people knew of whom you were talking?"

Burnaby, peering down at her, narrowed his eyes and then opened them very wide. "They couldn't very well have helped it," he said, "could they? For, you see"--he paused--"the girl who came West was Mrs.

Pollen."

Mrs. Ennis gasped in the manner of a person who is hearing too much.

"Mrs. Pollen?"

"Yes. You knew he had been divorced, didn't you? Years ago."

"I'd heard it, but forgotten." Mrs. Ennis clasped her jeweled hand. "And you dared," she demanded, "to tell his story before him in that way?"

"Why not? It was rather a complete revenge upon him of fate, wasn't it?

You see, he couldn't very well give himself away, could he? His one chance was to keep quiet." Burnaby paused and smiled doubtfully at Mrs.

Ennis. "I hope I made his character clear enough," he said. "That, after all, was the point of the story."

"How did you know it was this Pollen?" she asked, "and how, anyway, would Mary Rochefort know of whom you were talking?"

Burnaby grinned. "I took a chance," he said. "And as to the second, I told Madame de Rochefort at dinner--merely as a coincidence; at least, I let her think so--that I had once known in the West a Mrs. Pollen with a curious history. Perhaps I wouldn't have told it if Pollen hadn't been so witty." He picked up a silver dish from the mantelpiece and examined it carefully.