O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 | Page 8

who will stand
up to it and tell it courageously to go to hell. No! It comes back and
licks hands."
"I'll tell you why. My uncle and Mrs. Denby are the typical moral
cowards of their generation. There's selfishness, too. What a travesty of
love! Of course there's scandal, a perpetual scandal; but it's a hidden,
sniggering scandal they don't have to meet face to face; and that's all
they ask of life, they, and people like them--never to have to meet
anything face to face. So long as they can bury their heads like
ostriches! ... Faugh!" There would be a moment's silence; then Adrian
would complete his thought. "In my uncle's case," he would grumble in
the darkness, "one phase of the selfishness is obvious. He couldn't even
get himself originally, I suppose, to face the inevitable matter-of-fact
moments of marriage. It began when he was middle-aged, a bachelor--I
suppose he wants the sort of Don Juan, eighteen-eighty, perpetual sort
of romance that doesn't exist outside the brains of himself and his like....
Camellias!"
Usually he tried to stir up argument with his wife, who in these matters
agreed with him utterly; even more than agreed with him, since she was
the escaped daughter of rich and stodgy people, and had insisted upon
earning her own living by portrait-painting. Theoretically, therefore,
she was, of course, an anarchist. But at moments like the present her
silent assent and the aura of slight weariness over an ancient subject
which emanated from her in the dusk, affronted Adrian as much as
positive opposition.
"Why don't you try to understand me?"

"I do, dearest!"--a pathetic attempt at eager agreement.
"Well, then, if you do, why is the tone of your voice like that? You
know by now what I think. I'm not talking convention; I believe there
are no laws higher than the love of a man for a woman. It should seek
expression as a seed seeks sunlight. I'm talking about honesty; bravery;
a willingness to accept the consequences of one's acts and come
through; about the intention to sacrifice for love just what has to be
sacrificed. What's the use of it otherwise? That's one real advance the
modern mind has made, anyhow, despite all the rest of the welter and
uncertainty."
"Of course, dearest."
He would go on. After a while Cecil would awake guiltily and inject a
fresh, almost gay interest into her sleepy voice. She was not so
unfettered as not to dread the wounded esteem of the unlistened-to male.
She would lean over and kiss Adrian.
"Do go to sleep, darling! What's the sense? Pretty soon your uncle will
be dead--wretched old man! Then you'll never have to think of him
again." Being a childless woman, her red, a trifle cruel mouth would
twist itself in the darkness into a small, secretive, maternal smile.
But old Mr. Henry McCain didn't die; instead he seemed to be caught
up in the condition of static good health which frequently companions
entire selfishness and a careful interest in oneself. His butler died,
which was very annoying. Mr. McCain seemed to consider it the
breaking of a promise made fifteen or so years before. It was endlessly
a trouble instructing a new man, and then, of course, there was
Adlington's family to be looked after, and taxes had gone up, and Mrs.
Adlington was a stout woman who, despite the fact that Adlington,
while alive, had frequently interrupted Mr. McCain's breakfast
newspaper reading by asserting that she was a person of no character,
now insisted upon weeping noisily every time Mr. McCain granted her
an interview. Also, and this was equally unexpected, since one rather
thought he would go on living forever, like one of the damper sort of
fungi, Mr. Denby came home from the club one rainy spring night with
a slight cold and died, three days later, with extraordinary gentleness.
"My uncle," said Adrian, "is one by one losing his accessories. After a
while it will be his teeth."
Cecil was perplexed. "I don't know exactly what to do," she complained.

"I don't know whether to treat Mrs. Denby as a bereaved aunt, a
non-existent family skeleton, or a released menace. I dare say now,
pretty soon, she and your uncle will be married. Meanwhile, I suppose
it is rather silly of me not to call and see if I can help her in any way.
After all, we do know her intimately, whether we want to or not, don't
we? We meet her about all the time, even if she wasn't motoring over to
your uncle's place in the summer when we stop there."
So she went, being fundamentally kindly and fundamentally curious.
She spoke of the expedition as "a descent upon Fair Rosamund's
tower."
The small,