O. Henry Memorial Award Stories of 1920 by Various - HTML preview

Butterflies

BY ROSE SIDNEY

 

From The Pictorial Review

The wind rose in a sharp gust, rattling the insecure windows and sighing forlornly about the corners of the house. The door unlatched itself, swung inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on its sagging hinges. A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm, steamy room. But whatever ghostly visitant had paused upon the threshold, he had evidently decided not to enter, for the catch snapped shut with a quick, passionate vigour. The echo of the slamming door rang eerily through the house.

Mart Brenner's wife laid down the ladle with which she had been stirring the contents of a pot that was simmering on the big, black stove, and, dragging her crippled foot behind her, she hobbled heavily to the door.

As she opened it a new horde of fog-wraiths blew in. The world was a gray, wet blanket. Not a light from the village below pierced the mist, and the lonely army of tall cedars on the black hill back of the house was hidden completely.

"Who's there?" Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and muffled. Far off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn.

The faint throb of hope stilled in her breast. She had not really expected to find any one at the door unless perhaps it should be a stranger who had missed his way at the crossroads. There had been one earlier in the afternoon when the fog first came. But her husband had been at home then and his surly manner quickly cut short the stranger's attempts at friendliness. This ugly way of Mart's had isolated them from all village intercourse early in their life on Cedar Hill.

Like a buzzard's nest their home hung over the village on the unfriendly sides of the bleak slope. Visitors were few and always reluctant, even strangers, for the village told weird tales of Mart Brenner and his kin. The village said that he--and all those who belonged to him as well--were marked for evil and disaster. Disaster had truly written itself through-out their history. His mother was mad, a tragic madness of bloody prophecies and dim fears; his only son a witless creature of eighteen, who, for all his height and bulk, spent his days catching butterflies in the woods on the hill, and his nights in laboriously pinning them, wings outspread, upon the bare walls of the house.

The room where the Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread yellow butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to the black rafters overhead.

Olga Brenner herself was no less tragic than her family. On her face, written in the acid of pain, was the history of the blows and cruelty that had warped her active body. Because of her crippled foot, her entire left side sagged hopelessly and her arm swung away, above it, like a branch from a decayed tree. But more saddening than her distorted body was the lonely soul that looked out of her tired, faded eyes.

She was essentially a village woman with a profound love of its intimacies and gossip, its fence-corner neighbourliness. The horror with which the village regarded her, as the wife of Mart Brenner, was an eating sore. It was greater than the tragedy of her poor, witless son, the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that some day some one might come to the house in one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble hope again as she turned back into the dim room and closed the door behind her.

"Must have been that bit of wind," she meditated. "It plays queer tricks sometimes"

 

She went to the mantel and lighted the dull lamp. By the flicker she read the face of the clock.

"Tobey's late!" she exclaimed uneasily. Her mind never rested from its fear for Tobey. His childlike mentality made him always the same burden as when she had rocked him hour after hour, a scrawny mite of a baby on her breast.

"It's a fearful night for him to be out!" she muttered.

 

"Blood! Blood!" said a tragic voice from a dark corner by the stove. Barely visible in the ruddy half-dark of the room a pair of demoniac eyes met hers.

 

Mrs. Brenner threw her shrivelled and wizened mother-in-law an angry and contemptuous glance.

 

"Be still!" she commanded. "'Pears to me that's all you ever say--blood!"

 

The glittering eyes fell away from hers in a sullen obedience. But the tragic voice went on intoning stubbornly, "Blood on his hands! Red! Dripping! I see blood!"

 

Mrs. Brenner shuddered. "Seems like you could shut up a spell!" she complained.

The old woman's voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering. Olga's commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them. Mrs. Brenner went back to the stove. But her eyes kept returning to the clock and thence to the darkening square of window where the fog pressed heavily into the very room.

Out of the gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle crashing out of Mrs. Brenner's nerveless hand and brought a moan from the dozing old woman! It was a scream, a long, piercing scream, so intense, so agonized that it went echoing about the room as though a disembodied spirit were shrieking under the rafters! It was a scream of terror, an innocent, a heart-broken scream!

"Tobey!" cried Mrs. Brenner, her face rigid.

 

The old woman began to pick at her ragged skirt, mumbling, "Blood! Blood on his hands! I see it."

 

"That was on the hill," said Mrs. Brenner slowly, steadying her voice.

She put her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with agonized intentness. But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen again. At intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn. There was no other sound. Even the old woman in the shadowy corner had ceased her mouthing.

Mrs. Brenner stood motionless, with her hand against her trembling lips, her head bent forward for four of the dull intervals between the siren-call.

 

Then there came the sound of steps stumbling around the house. Mrs. Brenner, with her painful hobble, reached the door before the steps paused there, and threw it open.

The feeble light fell on the round, vacant face of her son his inevitable pasteboard box, grimy with much handling, clutched close to his big breast, and in it the soft beating and thudding of imprisoned wings.

Mrs. Brenner's voice was scarcely more than a whisper, "Tobey!" but it rose shrilly as she cried, "Where you been? What was that scream?"

 

Tobey stumbled past her headlong into the house, muttering, "I'm cold!"

 

She shut the door and followed him to the stove, where he stood shaking himself and beating at his damp clothes with clumsy fingers.

 

"What was that scream?" she asked him tensely. She knotted her rough fingers as she waited for his answer.

 

"I dunno," he grunted sullenly. His thick lower lip shoved itself forward, baby-fashion.

 

"Where you been?" she persisted.

 

As he did not answer she coaxed him, "Aw, come on, Tobey. Tell Ma. Where you been?"

 

"I been catching butterflies," he answered. "I got a big one this time," with an air of triumph.

 

"Where was you when you heard the scream?" she asked him cunningly. He gave a slow shake of his head. "I dunno," he answered in his dull voice.

 

A big shiver shook him. His teeth chattered and he crouched down on his knees before the open oven-door.

"I'm cold," he complained. Mrs. Brenner came close to him and laid her hand on his wet, matted hair. "Tobey's a bad boy," she scolded. "You mustn't go out in the wet like this. Your hair's soaked."

She got down stiffly on her lame knees. "Sit down," she ordered, "and I'll take off your shoes. They're as wet as a dish-rag."

 

"They're full of water, too," Tobey grumbled as he sprawled on the floor, sticking one big, awkward foot into her lap. "The water in there makes me cold."

"You spoil all your pa's shoes that a-way," said Mrs. Brenner, her head bent over her task. "He told you not to go round in the wet with 'em any more. He'll give you a lashing if he comes in and sees your shoes. I'll have to try and get 'em dry before he comes home. Anyways," with a breath of deep relief, "I'm glad it ain't that red clay from the hill. That never comes off."

The boy paid no attention to her. He was investigating the contents of his box, poking a fat, dirty forefinger around among its fluttering contents. There was a flash of yellow wings, and with a crow of triumph the boy shut the lid.

"The big one's just more than flapping," he chuckled. "I had an awful hard time to catch him. I had to run and run. Look at him, Ma," the boy urged. She shook her head.

"I ain't got the time," she said, almost roughly. "I got to get these shoes off'n you afore your father gets home, Tobey, or you'll get a awful hiding. Like as not you'll get it anyways, if he's mad. Better get into bed."

"Naw!" Tobey protested. "I seen Pa already. I want my supper out here! I don't want to go to bed!"

 

Mrs. Brenner paused. "Where was Pa?" she asked.

 

But Tobey's stretch of coherent thinking was past. "I dunno!" he muttered.

 

Mrs. Brenner sighed. She pulled off the sticky shoes and rose stiffly.

 

"Go get in bed," she said.

"Aw, Ma, I want to stay up with my butterflies," the boy pleaded. Two big tears rolled down his fat cheeks. In his queer, clouded world he had learned one certain fact. He could almost always move his mother with tears.
But this time she was firm. "Do as I told you!" she ordered him. "Mebbe if you're in bed your father won't be thinking about you. And I'll try to dry these shoes afore he thinks about them." She took the grimy box from his resisting fingers, and, holding it in one hand, pulled him to his feet and pushed him off to his bedroom.

When she had closed the door on his wail she returned and laid the box on the shelf. Then she hurried to gather up the shoes. Something on her hand as she put it out for the sodden shoes caught her eye and she straightened, holding her hand up where the feeble light from the shelf caught it.

"I've cut myself," she said aloud. "There's blood on my hand. It must 'a' been on those lacings of Tobeys."

 

The old woman in the corner roused. "Blood!" she screeched. "Olga! Blood on his hands!"

Mrs. Brenner jumped. "You old screech-owl!" she cried. She wiped her hand quickly on her dirty apron and held it up again to see the cut. But there was no cut on her hand! Where had that blood come from? From Tobey's shoes?

And who was it that had screamed on the hill? She felt herself enwrapped in a mist of puzzling doubts.

She snatched up the shoes, searching them with agonized eyes. But the wet and pulpy mass had no stain. Only the wet sands and the slimy water-weeds of the beach clung to them.

Then where had the blood come from? It was at this instant that she became conscious of shouts on the hillside. She limped to the door and held it open a crack. Very faintly she could see the bobbing lights of torches. A voice carried down to her.

"Here's where I found his hat. That's why I turned off back of these trees. And right there I found his body!"

 

"Are you sure he's dead?" quavered another voice.

 

"Stone-dead!'"

 

Olga Brenner shut the door. But she did not leave it immediately. She stood leaning against it, clutching the wet shoes, her staring eyes glazing.

Tobey was strong. He had flown into childish rages sometimes and had hurt her with his undisciplined strength. Where was Mart? Tobey had seen him. Perhaps they had fought. Her mind refused to go further. But little subtle undercurrents pressed in on her. Tobey hated and feared his father. And Mart was always enraged at the sight of his half-witted son. What had happened? And yet no matter what had occurred, Tobey had not been on the hill. His shoes bore mute testimony to that. And the scream had been on the slope. She frowned.

Her body more bent than ever, she hobbled slowly over to the stove and laid the shoes on the big shelf above it, spreading them out to the rising heat. She had barely arranged them when there was again the sound of approaching footsteps. These feet, however, did not stumble. They were heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the shoes, gathered them up, and turned to run. But one of the lacings caught on a nail on the shelf. She jerked desperately at the nail, and the jerking loosened her hold of both the shoes. With a clatter they fell at her feet.

In that moment Mart Brenner stood in the doorway. Poverty, avarice, and evil passions had minted Mart Brenner like a devil's coin. His shaggy head lowered in his powerful shoulders. His long arms, apelike, hung almost to his knees. Behind him the fog pressed in, and his rough, bristly hair was beaded with diamonds of moisture.

"Well?" he snapped. A sardonic smile twisted his face. "Caught you, didn't I?"

He strode forward. His wife shrank back, but even in her shivering terror she noticed, as one notices small details in a time of peril, that his shoes were caked with red mud and that his every step left a wet track on the rough floor.

"He didn't do 'em no harm," she babbled. "They're just wet. Please, Mart, they ain't harmed a mite. Just wet. That's all. Tobey went on the beach with 'em. It won't take but a little spell to dry 'em."

Her husband stooped and snatched up the shoes. She shrank into herself, waiting the inevitable torrent of his passion and the probable blow. Instead, as he stood up he was smiling. Bewildered, she stared at him in a dull silence.

"No harm done," he said, almost amiably. Shaking with relief, she stretched out her hand.

 

"I'll dry 'em," she said. "Give me your shoes and I'll get the mud off."

 

Her husband shook his head. He was still smiling.

 

"Don't need to dry 'em. I'll put 'em away," he replied, and, still tracking his wet mud, he went into Tobey's room.

Her fear flowed into another channel. She dreaded her husband in his black rages, but she feared him more now in his unusual amiability. Perhaps he would strike Tobey when he saw him. She strained her ears to listen.

A long silence followed his exit. But there was no outcry from Tobey, no muttering nor blows. After a few moments, moving quickly, her husband came out. She raised her heavy eyes to stare at him. He stopped and looked intently at his own muddy tracks. "I'll get a rag and wipe up the mud right off."

As she started toward the nail where the rag hung, her husband put out a long arm and detained her. "Leave it be," he said. He smiled again.

She noticed, then, that he had removed his muddy shoes and wore the wet ones. He had fully laced them, and she had almost a compassionate moment as she thought how wet and cold his feet must be.

"You can put your feet in the oven, Mart, to dry 'em."

Close on her words she heard the sound of footsteps and a sharp knock followed on the sagging door. Mart Brenner sat down on a chair close to the stove and lifted one foot into the oven. "See who's there!" he ordered.

She opened the door and peered out. A group of men stood on the step, the faint light of the room picking out face after face that she recognized--Sheriff Munn; Jim Barker, who kept the grocery in the village; Cottrell Hampstead, who lived in the next house below them; young Dick Roamer, Munn's deputy; and several strangers.

"Well?" she asked ungraciously.

 

"We want to see Brenner!" one of them said.

 

She stepped back. "Come in," she told them. They came in, pulling off their caps, and stood huddled in a group in the centre of the room.

 

Her husband reluctantly stood up.

 

"Evening!" he said, with his unusual smile. "Bad out, ain't it?"

 

"Yep!" Munn replied. "Heavy fog. We're soaked."

 

Olga Brenner's pitiful instinct of hospitality rose in her breast.

 

"I got some hot soup on the stove. Set a spell and I'll dish you some," she urged.

 

The men looked at each other in some uncertainty. After a moment Munn said, "All right, if it ain't too much bother, Mrs. Brenner."

 

"Not a bit," she cried eagerly. She bustled about, searching her meagre stock of chinaware for uncracked bowls.

"Set down?" suggested Mart. Munn sat down with a sign, and his companions followed his example. Mart resumed his position before the stove, lifting one foot into the capacious black maw of the oven.

"Must 'a' got your feet wet, Brenner?" the sheriff said with heavy jocularity.

 

Brenner nodded, "You bet I did," he replied. "Been down on the beach all afternoon."

"Didn't happen to hear any unusual noise down there, did you?" Munn spoke with his eyes on Mrs. Brenner, at her task of ladling out the thick soup. She paused as though transfixed, her ladle poised in the air.

Munn's eyes dropped from her face to the floor. There they became fixed on the tracks of red clay.

 

"No, nothin' but the sea. It must be rough outside tonight, for the bay was whinin' like a sick cat," said Mart calmly.

 

"Didn't hear a scream, or nothing like that, I suppose?" Munn persisted.

 

"Couldn't hear a thing but the water. Why?"

 

"Oh--nothing," said Munn.

 

Mrs. Brenner finished pouring out the soup and set the bowls on the table.

Chairs clattered, and soon the men were eating. Mart finished his soup before the others and sat back smacking his lips. As Munn finished the last spoonful in his bowl he pulled out a wicked-looking black pipe, crammed it full of tobacco and lighted it.

Blowing out a big blue breath of the pleasant smoke, he inquired, "Been any strangers around to-day?"

Mart scratched his head. "Yeah. A man come by early this afternoon. He was aiming to climb the hill. I told him he'd better wait till the sun come out. I don't know whether he did or not."

"See anybody later--say about half an hour ago?"

 

Mart shook his head. "No. I come up from the beach and I didn't pass nobody."

 

The sheriff pulled on his pipe for a moment. "That boy of yours still catching butterflies?" he asked presently.

Mart scowled. He swung out a long arm toward the walls with their floods of butterflies. But he did not answer.
"Uh-huh!" said Munn, following the gesture with his quiet eyes. He puffed several times before he spoke again.

"What time did you come in, Brenner, from the beach?"

 

Mrs. Brenner closed her hands tightly, the interlaced ringers locking themselves.

 

"Oh, about forty minutes ago, I guess it was. Wasn't it, Olga?" Mart said carelessly.

 

"Yes." Her voice was a breath.

 

"Was your boy out to-day?"

 

Mart looked at his wife. "I dunno."

 

Munn's glance came to the wife.

 

"Yes."

 

"How long ago did he come in?"

 

"About an hour ago." Her voice was flat and lifeless.

 

"And where had he been?" Munn's tone was gentle but insistent.

 

Her terrified glance sought Mart's face. "He'd been on the beach!" she said in a defiant tone.

 

Mart continued to look at her, but there was no expression in his face. He still wore his peculiar affable smile.

 

"Where did these tracks come from, on the floor?"

 

Swift horror fastened itself on Mrs. Brenner.

 

"What's that to you?" she flared.

 

She heard her husband's hypocritical and soothing tones. "Now, now, Olga! That ain't the way to talk to these gentlemen. Tell them who made these tracks."

 

"You did!" she cried. All about her she could feel the smoothness of a falling trap.

 

Mart smiled still more broadly.

 

"Look here, Olga, don't get so warm over it. You're nervous now. Tell the gentlemen who made those tracks."

 

She turned to Munn desperately. "What do you want to know for?" she asked him.

 

The sharpness of her voice roused old Mrs. Brenner, drowsing in her corner.

 

"Blood!" she cried suddenly. "Blood on his hands!"

In the silence that followed, the eyes of the men turned curiously toward the old woman and then sought each other with speculative stares. Mrs. Brenner, tortured by those long significant glances, said roughly. "That's Mart's mother. She ain't right! What are you bothering us for?"

Dick Roamer put out a hand to plead for her, and tapped Munn on the arm. There was something touching in her frightened old face.

 

"A man--a stranger was killed up on the hill," Munn told her.

 

"What's that got to do with us?" she countered.

 

"Not a thing, Mrs. Brenner, probably, but I've just to make sure where every man in the village was this afternoon."

 

Mrs. Brenner's lids flickered. She felt the questioning intentness of Sheriff Munn's eyes on her stolid face and she felt that he did not miss the tremor in her eyes.

 

"Where was your son this afternoon?"

 

She smiled defiance. "I told you, on the beach."

 

"Whose room is that?" Munn's forefinger pointed to Tobey's closed door.

 

"That's Tobey's room," said his mother.

 

"The mud tracks go into that room. Did he make those tracks, Mrs. Brenner?"

 

"No! Oh, no! No!" she cried desperately. "Mart made those when he came in. He went into Tobey's room!"

 

"How about it, Brenner?"

 

Mart smiled with an indulgent air. "Heard what she said, didn't you?"

 

"Is it true?"

 

Mart smiled more broadly. "Olga'll take my hair off if I don't agree with her," he said.

"Let's see your shoes, Brenner?" Without hesitation Mart lifted one heavy boot and then the other for Munn's inspection. The other silent men leaned forward to examine them.

"Nothing but pieces of seaweed," said Cottrell Hampstead,

 

Munn eyed them. Then he turned to look at the floor.

 

"Those are about the size of your tracks, Brenner. But they were made in red clay. How do you account for that?"

 

"Tobey wears my shoes,'" said Brenner.

 

Mrs. Brenner gasped. She advanced to Munn.

 

"What you asking all these questions for?" she pleaded.

 

Munn did not answer her. After a moment he asked. "Did you hear a scream this afternoon?"

 

"Yes," she answered.

 

"How long after the screaming did your son come in?"

 

She hesitated. What was the best answer to make? Bewildered, she tried to decide. "Ten minutes or so," she said.

 

"Just so," agreed Munn. "Brenner, when did you come in?"

 

A trace of Mart's sullenness rose in his face. "I told you that once," he said.

 

"I mean how long after Tobey?"

 

"I dunno," said Mart.

 

"How long, Mrs. Brenner?"

 

She hesitated again. She scented a trap. "Oh, 'bout ten to fifteen minutes, I guess," she said.

Suddenly she burst out passionately. "What you hounding us for? We don't know nothing about the man on the hill. You ain't after the rest of the folks in the village like you are after us. Why you doing it? We ain't done nothing."

Munn made a slight gesture to Roamer, who rose and went to the door, and opened it. He reached out into the darkness. Then he turned. He was holding something in his hand, but Mrs. Brenner could not see what it was.
"You chop your wood with a short, heavy axe, don't you, Brenner?" said Munn.

Brenner nodded.

 

"It's marked with your name, isn't it?"

 

Brenner nodded again.

 

"Is this the axe?"

 

Mrs. Brenner gave a short, sharp scream. Red and clotted, even the handle marked with bloody spots, the axe was theirs.

Brenner started to his feet. "God!" he yelped, "that's where that axe went! Tobey took it!" More calmly he proceeded, "This afternoon before I went down on the beach I thought I'd chop some wood on the hill. But the axe was gone. So after I'd looked sharp for it and couldn't find it, I gave it up."

"Tobey didn't do it!" Mrs. Brenner cried thinly. "He's as harmless as a baby! He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"

 

"How about those clay tracks, Mrs. Brenner? There is red clay on the hill where the man was killed. There is red clay on your floor." Munn spoke kindly.

 

"Mart tracked in that clay. He changed shoes with Tobey. I tell you that's the truth." She was past caring for any harm that might befall her.

 

Brenner smiled with a wide tolerance. "It's likely, ain't it, that I'd change into shoes as wet as these?"

 

"Those tracks are Mart's!" Olga reiterated hysterically.

 

"They lead into your son's room, Mrs. Brenner. And we find your axe not far from your door, just where the path starts for the hill." Munn's eyes were grave.

 

The old woman in the corner began to whimper, "Blood and trouble! Blood and trouble all my days! Red on his hands! Dripping! Olga! Blood!"

"But the road to the beach begins there too," Mrs. Brenner cried, above the cracked voice, "and Tob