O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 Part 11

"Ha!" he said. "Now, come in, man, and warm yourself and see the baby! A fine boy!"

He was ahead of me at the door; I went in upon his heels. We came into the kitchen together.

Hazen's kitchen was also living-room and bedroom in the cold of winter.

The arrangement saved firewood. There was a bed against the wall opposite the door. As we came in a woman got up stiffly from this bed and I saw that this woman was Hazen's wife. But there was a change in her. She was bleak as cold iron and she was somehow strong.

Hazen rasped at this woman impatiently: "Well, I'm home! Where is the boy?"

She looked at him and her lips moved soundlessly. She closed them, opened them again. This time she was able to speak.

"The boy?" she said to Hazen. "The boy is dead!"

The dim-lit kitchen was very quiet for a little time. I felt myself breathe deeply, almost with relief. The thing for which I had waited--it had come. And I looked at Hazen Kinch.

He had always been a little thin man. He was shrunken now and very white and very still. Only his face twitched. A muscle in one cheek jerked and jerked and jerked at his mouth. It was as though he controlled a desire to smile. That jerking, suppressed smile upon his white and tortured countenance was terrible. I could see the blood drain down from his forehead, down from his cheeks. He became white as death itself.

After a little he tried to speak. I do not know what he meant to say.

But what he did was to repeat--as though he had not heard her words--the question which he had flung at her in the beginning. He said huskily: "Where is the boy?"

She looked toward the bed and Hazen looked that way; and then he went across to the bed with uncertain little steps. I followed him. I saw the little twisted body there. The woman had been keeping it warm with her own body. It must have been in her arms when we came in. The tumbled coverings, the crushed pillows spoke mutely of a ferocious intensity of grief.

Hazen looked down at the little body. He made no move to touch it, but I heard him whisper to himself: "Fine boy."

After a while he looked at the woman. She seemed to feel an accusation in his eyes. She said: "I did all I could."

He asked "What was it?"

I had it in me--though I had reason enough to despise the little man--to pity Hazen Kinch.

"He coughed," said the woman. "I knew it was croup. You know I asked you to get the medicine--ipecac. You said no matter--no need--and you had gone."

She looked out of the window.

"I went for help--to Annie Marshey. Her babies had had it. Her husband was going to town and she said he would get the medicine for me. She did not tell him it was for me. He would not have done it for you. He did not know. So I gave her a dollar to give him--to bring it out to me.

"He came home in the snow last night. Baby was bad by that time, so I was watching for Doan. I stopped him in the road and I asked for the medicine. When he understood he told me. He had not brought it."

The woman was speaking dully, without emotion.

"It would have been in time, even then," she said. "But after a while, after that, baby died."

I understood in that moment the working of the mills. And when I looked at Hazen Kinch I saw that he, too, was beginning to understand. There is a just mercilessness in an aroused G.o.d. Hazen Kinch was driven to questions.

"Why--didn't Marshey fetch it?" he asked.

She said slowly: "They would not trust him--at the store."

His mouth twitched, he raised his hands.

"The money!" he cried. "The money! What did he do with that?"

"He said," the woman answered, "that he lost it--in your office; lost the money there."

After a little the old money-lender leaned far back like a man wrenched with agony. His body was contorted, his face was terrible. His dry mouth opened wide.

He screamed!

Halfway up the hill to my house I stopped to look back and all round.

The vast hills in their snowy garments looked down upon the land, upon the house of Hazen Kinch. Still and silent and inscrutable.

I knew now that a just and brooding G.o.d dwelt among these hills.

ON STRIKE

BY ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

From _The Popular Magazine_

"Furthermore, howadji," ventured Najib, who had not spoken for fully half an hour, but had been poring over a sheaf of s.h.i.+pment items scribbled in Arabic, "furthermore, I am yearnful to know who was the unhappy person the wicked general threatened. Or, of a perhaps, it was that poor general himself who was bethreatened by his padishah or by the--"

"What on earth are you babbling about, Najib?" absent-mindedly asked Logan Kirby, as he looked up from a month-old New York paper which had arrived by muleteer that day and which the expatriated American had been reading with pathetic interest.

Now, roused from his perusal by Najib's query, Logan saw that the little Syrian has ceased wrestling with the s.h.i.+pment items and was peering over his employer's shoulder, his beady eyes fixed in keen curiosity on the printed page.

"I enseeched you to tell me, howadji," said Najib, "who has been threatening that poor general. Or, perchancely, who has been made to cower himself undertheneath of that fierce general's threatenings. See, it is there, howadji. There, in the black line at the left top end of the news. See?"

Following the guidance of Najib's stubby, unwashed finger, Kirby read the indicated headline:

GENERAL STRIKE THREATENED

"Oh!" he answered, choking back a grin, "I see. There isn't any 'general,' Najib. And he isn't threatened. It means--"

"May the faces of all liars be blackened!" cried Najib in virtuous indignation. "And may the maker of the becurst newspage lie be doubly afflictioned! May his camels die and his wives cast dust upon his bared head! For he has befooled me, by what he has here enprinted. My heart went out with a sweet sorrowfulness for that poor general or for the folk he bethreatened. Whichever it might chance itself to be. And now the news person has made a jest of the truth. But he--"

Kirby's attempt at self-control went to pieces. He guffawed. Najib eyed him sourly; then said in icy reproof:

"It is known to all, howadji, that Sidi-ben-Ha.s.san, the sheikh, was the wisest of men. And did not Sidi-ben-Ha.s.san make known, in his book, that '_Laughter is for women and for hyenas_'? Furthermore--"

"I'm sorry I laughed at you, Najib," returned Kirby, with due penitence, "I don't wonder you got such an idea, from the headline. You see, I have read the story that goes under it. That's how I happen to know what it means. It means that several thousand workmen of several allied trades threatened to go on strike. That will tie up a lot of business, you see; along a lot of lines. It will mean a general tie-up--a--"

From Najib's blank face, the American saw his more or less technical explanation was going wide. Still remorseful at having hurt his factotum's feelings, Kirby laid the paper aside and undertook to simplify the matter.