by O. Henry
As I said before, it was The Angel who devised the infamous scheme. He stood balancing the photograph in his hand, looking first at it and then at Denny, meditatively chewing a black gum twig.
It was one of those marvelous resemblances that sometimes exist, not in families, but between people in no manner related.
“With the material on hand,” said The Angel, as if he were arguing with some invisible antagonist, “it would be sinful not to do it. Denny in the rôle. Raph to rig him up, Mc. (that was I) to assist, and the glory mine;—boys, Luella is coming back to Old Angles tonight for positively her last reappearance.”
We gathered close to The Angel while he began to set forth his plans, but at that moment a warning scurrying of feet from the direction of the recitation hall reminded us where we were, and we retreated hurriedly to a certain grape arbor which was held sacred to our councils of war, we having repeatedly proven by successful defence, our title to it against prying students.
I have no word of excuse to offer for what we did. Our youth might have accorded some, and the fact that The Angel swayed us by that masterful power of organization and leadership which has subsequently so distinguished his career, might add a little to it, but I shall plead nothing. I will only ask that the reader judge us by the end achieved, but as to his opinion of the affair, why, it matters little, since the question will never be settled either one way or another in this world.
That night, according to custom, Darius Hobbs, the janitor, blew a conch shell on the rear porch of the college building, signifying the arrival of nine o’clock, the hour for retiring. When the lights were out we four met in The Angel’s room. He had everything ready,—sheet, vaseline, pearl powder, and a pair of curling tongs borrowed from a professor’s wife. Raph, his artistic instincts well awakened, set to work on the “make up.”
In forty minutes everything was done, and Denny stood before us in the classically draped folds of a linen sheet, his hair newly curled, and pearl powdered like a marshmallow. He was looking like a seraph, and swearing a little at the nippy fall air the September night had brought. In a properly dim light, we conceded, Luella’s ghost itself could not have done better.
“Suppose he should shy something at me!” said Denny, with a not unreasonable qualm.
“Let it go clean through you,” said The Angel, “like an orthodox conscientious ghost. Realism is what we want. But he wont do it. I wonder what he will do. A professor of mathematics ought to do something out of the ordinary in re a visit from a genuine ghost.”
“Suppose,” I said, “he should raise a row?”
“If the welkin rings,” said The Angel, “it’s cut and run, of course. Denny’s clothes, or sufficient thereof, will be in the arbor, and he’ll get them on and be elbowing among the alarmed bystanders in no time.”
“I wonder who Luella was,” said Denny;—“His girl?”
“Certainly,” said The Angel; “And isosceles triangles parted them.”
“But she died, you know,” said Denny. “Isn’t it—?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s not half as bad as the rapping tables and cabinet humbuggery. There’s nothing to pay.”
It was near eleven o’clock when we minced softly down stairs and out upon the campus. Denny’s form was hidden by an overcoat, lest chance mortal eyes might gaze upon his spectral guise and be amazed. It was quite dark, for the autumn stars, sparkling frostily above, only drove the shadows into denser masses beneath the oaks. We heard nothing but a hound baying weirdly from the timber, and the muffled blows of a pillow fight somewhere in the smaller boys’ dormitory. The principal’s cow, grazing near, blew a deep breath of apprehension as we passed, fearing some fresh plot against her comfort.
Under his arm, The Angel—who thought of everything—carried a bundle of Denny’s clothes, which, while we waited, he deposited in the grape arbor for the donning by the ghost in case of an alarm.
Old Angles’ cottage was dark. His light always went out at ten. We halted under a cluster of trees thirty yards away, and The Angel went on a reconnaissance. He returned in ten minutes and said:
“He has’nt gone to bed. He’s sitting by a handful of coals in the fireplace. He was smoking his pipe, but he dropped it and never picked it up. I think he’s asleep, and the door and windows are open. Denny’ll appear in the door. Raph, you take the bull’s eye and stand about the corner of the house. Throw just enough light on Denny to make him a first class ghost. Denny, you—”
“Let up,” said Denny, sweetly. “I dont need any coaching. I’m going to create a part. The light from the bull’s eye is the only cue I want. Dont have it too strong.”
“Spectators to the rear,” said The Angel.
The Angel and I crept around to the back window under some thick fig trees that made an Erebus beneath them. All we could do now was to await the carrying out of the program by the leading actor and his assistant. Peering between the slats of the window blinds we made out the dim form of Old Angles sunk down in his chair beside the fireplace. The open doorway opposite us was black. The background was perfect. Old Angles stirred a little, and we heard him sigh deeply.
Suddenly, unaccompanied by any sound, a vision framed itself in the doorway; a vision so incorporeal, so faintly luminous and phantasmal, so beautiful that I gasped, and The Angel gripped my shoulder with abrupt violence. Was that unearthly, intangible thing really Denny, or was it—
“Hal!”
The word stole upon the silence, sweet and faint and far away, but the dim figure in the chair writhed at the sound, stumbled to its feet, and lurched down somewhere in the dark, crying a name in a voice that turned us cold where we stood.
“Lu-el-la!”
There was a whole life’s history in that heart wringing cry, and we began to see what idiots we had been. Old Angles was crouching or kneeling somewhere on the floor. We saw the vague outlines of his arms upraised toward Denny, his fingers hooked and quivering like beech leaves. Then he began to speak, and it seemed that he was imploring forgiveness for something that had been done. The precise drift of the matter we could not follow with much understanding. He spoke indistinctly, and his words were upheaved by so violent an emotion that little continuity of idea attended them, but their import held us, ghost and all, in an indomitable spell. Thus he cried:
“Forgive, forgive! Luella—is it for that—you have come—or to judge? Have I not—lived in torture—these years—praying to Almighty God—that he might let you—but speak one word to me—from the grave—one word—to end this—all you had you gave—and I—ruined—ruined your life—Luella—my wife—forgive—”
Old Angles broke off with that harsh, wrenching, discordant sob that renders the grief of strong men unlovely. The ghost stood his ground manfully.
“Blind and unworthy—unfit to live—throwing away Heaven’s gifts—I found too late—the angel you were—but one word of forgiveness—and I take up—my burden again—until I come—forgive!—”
I heard The Angel moisten his lips and whisper between his teeth:
“His chance! Now, oh, now; will the noodle take it!”
Then it was that Denny Toole rose to his opportunity and wrested summum bonum out of a very bad piece of business. His seraph’s voice spake again, dulcet and clear, and seeming to come from the fixed stars:
“Hal, I forgive. I came to tell you. Be comforted. We shall meet again, and I wait for you above, where all is peace and love.”
The ghost turned his head ever so slightly toward the corner of the house, where Raph stood, and vanished, leaving Stygian darkness in the doorway. We heard a hoarse, but exultant “Thank God!” from the darkness in the room, and a soft, crumpling fall as if something had relaxed.
The Angel and I rounded the house and overtook Raph and the ghost, who was hustling into his overcoat. Even in the faint light we could see the perspiration standing on his face
. The ghost spake to The Angel.
“You damned fool!” he said.
“Right!” said The Angel.
When we filed into Old Angles’ room the next day for our geometry lesson, we seemed to see another man in his chair. There was the same black dyed suit, the same rusty tie and straggling red whiskers, but out of the worn face shone a soul that had found peace. The old harassed, haunted look was gone, and in its stead was a calm exaltation that triumphed over its sadness.
And, considering all things, we agreed that it was well. Through a deception, it was true, had peace been brought to Old Angles, but judging from the face of Luella as shown upon the old photograph, and what is known of the all forgiving and all sacrificing deep tender heart of woman that passeth our understanding, I do not think that the words of forgiveness spoken by the ghost that came to Old Angles will be foresworn when he comes to face Luella’s immortal spirit.
As we came out of the room one of the younger boys began—:
“Old Ang—”
The Angel’s hand closed upon his windpipe.
“Professor Haliburton Chester Strayhorn,” he said.—“Now, don’t go and forget it.”
Pursuing Ideals
* * *
THE MOMENT I met Curley I liked him. After we had talked an hour, in comparison with our relations those of Damon and Pythias would have appeared strained. Our tastes were identical, and we viewed life from a common standpoint of youth and disillusionment. When we spoke of Art we mentally spelled it with a big A, and referred to ideals as if they were as plentiful as blackberries.
Curley wrote, and he had been lucky enough to catch the return tide of Romance after it had been drawn away by the yellow spotted moon of Realism, and very nearly succeeded in being a Vogue. I was in the way of illustrating, and I had a “Girl” in black and white which (if I do say it) was referred to at least once where Charles Dana Gibson’s was—say three times. Curley promised to drop into my studio, and I assured him I would fall up into his study—he was beyond calling it a “den”—as soon as possible.
But, to speak of my Girl.
Perhaps you have seen her. She is no stranger to the magazines, the backs of holiday numbers, or the galleries, where she has looked down more than once, in oils, unapproached in beauty by any of her living admirers. Her face was etched upon my heart. She was my Ideal, the pictorial incarnation of feminine charm. From my pencil or brush, whenever I had excellence in woman to portray, always grew this one Girl, and I loved to think she was mine alone.
I knew her as no one else ever could. I was familiar with her thoughts as well as her outward graces. I knew her little mannerisms of movement, her little tricks of turning her head quickly when she spoke, and her way of smiling suddenly out of a dreamy repose, like soft lightning from a gray cloud at twilight. To me alone she had opened the treasures of her heart. I cannot describe her as I knew her except to say that she was affectionate beyond the run of women, light hearted but unswervingly loyal, and with a flow of easy musical chat that revealed every sentiment she felt. She had a few distinguishing peculiarities that were characteristic of her and very dear to me. At home she always wore red; red house wrappers and pale red tea gowns, with a bunch of red geranium at her throat or waist. She loved to sit on hassocks instead of chairs, and in her gold brown hair she nearly always wore a silver pin. Her face was of no known standard of beauty. Rather heavy lidded her eyes were, with a look in them not to be described unless you understand what I mean when I say they were full of Fate. She was very fair, weighed 126, and her attitudes were impulsive, and so natural as to be sometimes unpicturesque. I loved her with my whole heart. She—
But, wait.
One day I had a note from a firm of publishers asking me to call. I did so. They handed me a manuscript novel to illustrate. Mr. Curley, the author, had requested that I be given the commission.
I was pleased at this evidence of friendship from Curley. He had not yet visited my studio, but I had met him repeatedly at other places, and we had become intimate friends.
A night or two afterward I opened the manuscript and began to glance over it. It was one of those romances that were quite popular then (and are still, today). Love was the motif, and the swift action of the plot carried the reader among scenes of royal splendor and knightly daring. The time was one long gone by, and the gallants and princesses played their parts at a court whose name you shall seek for in vain in the pages of history, but the living interest was there, and better still for the author, the kind of stuff was just what the people were asking for.
But it was neither Mr. Curley’s style nor his plot that kept me chained to his manuscript until late that night. It was the startling fact that his heroine was my Girl. He had portrayed her with the utmost fidelity down to the red house gowns and her trick of smiling suddenly from deep reverie. He had described her person, her nature, her virtues, her every peculiarity so well that my admiration for Curley’s delineative powers was swamped in an overwhelming flood of jealousy toward the writer. How had he come to know her? What right had he to drag into print for the perusal of a profaning public her sacred thoughts and attributes to which I alone had a prerogative? The picture must have been drawn from life, and by one who enjoyed an intimate association with the model. He must surely know her. The thought fired me with a sudden and stimulating resolve.
I would find out.
I finished my illustrations, and returned them with the manuscript to the publishers. I outdid all my previous efforts in the drawings of Curl— By Heavens! no—of my heroine. I selected for pictures only such scenes as her presence illumined, and I threw all my art and all my love into my work. My tribute to her charms should not be inferior to Curley’s—he whom I now regarded as a base rival.
About three days after I had sent in my work, early one morning Curley walked into my studio. He greeted me pleasantly, in his charming way. Curley was a dreamer, and had the soul of an artist, but he made no cheap bid for fame by eccentricities of dress or manner. Neither did I. Curley might have been a stock broker, judging by his quiet, stylish dress and his close cut hair, instead of a rhapsodist and a sentimentalist. So might I.
My Girl was strongly in evidence about my studio. Sketches of her face and form were everywhere, in pastel, crayon, oil, water color, pen and ink—every vehicle by the use of which I could delight the eye with her beloved face.
After greeting Curley with assumed warmth I watched him closely. His eye wandered to my pictures, and he could not conceal a start of surprise when he saw Her face smiling at him from so many canvases.
I may as well state here that my Girl was a creature of my imagination. Her outward semblance was my ideal woman, whom I had not met but longed to meet, and her inward characteristics, as I have described them, were bestowed upon her by my own mind, and were such as my ideal woman might possess.
Curley had once told me that he always drew his characters from life. When I read his novel I knew that in the person of his heroine, when I met her, I should find my fate. I had resolved to find out who she was and win her, if possible. In what relation she stood to Curley I did not, of course, know. She was, unquestionably, something near, for his study of her was thorough, and portrait-like in its delineation. Curley was unmarried: she might have been a friend, a sister, or—painful reflection!—his fiancee. I would find out.
Curley walked over to where I was finishing a sketch, and mended the loose wrapper of a cigar with exaggerated carefulness.
“Joyce,” he said, I thought a little constrainedly, “those illustrations were splendid; especially of Zenobia. I see that her face is a favorite study of yours. May I ask if the lady posed in person for the illustrations and sketches?”
I caught Curley’s eye, and saw jealousy in it. Was it possible that my imaginary pictures of his heroine actually bore a resemblance to her, and he suspected me of being acquainted with her?
/> “Do you think the pictures do justice to Zenobia?” I asked, concealing my anxiety.
“They are admirable and faithful,” he answered.
“The young lady,” I said, “did not pose for the sketches. They were drawn from—memory.”
“You are fortunate in knowing her,” said Curley.
She was evidently not his sister, or he would have asked me point blank if I knew her. He was fencing with me. He looked upon me as a possible rival. I must dissemble.
“Anyone should be,” I said.
“She is incomparable,” said Curley, fastening his eyes on the sketches of Her face.
“The world has’nt her equal. I must compliment your portrayal of her character in your book.”
“You think it very like her?” asked Curley, eagerly.
“A splendid characterization,” I said.
“Joyce,” said Curley, looking down at his cigar. “We have been pretty close friends; I am going to ask you a question. Do you love her?”
“Curley, old man,” I answered, “I do. Do you?”
He looked at me, a little surprised, and said:
“I am sure of it.”
I was playing a rather bold game, but the reward was worth it. I was determined to meet this woman whom Curley knew, and it was only through him that I could do so. She was the embodiment of my ideal, and she was reserved for me by fate. Curley thought I already knew her. I conceived an impudent proposition and made it.
“Old man,” I said, slowly, “Suppose we call on her together, and take a fair start. Then let the best man win.”
Somewhat to my surprise, Curley did not demur. He sprang forward, grasped my hand, and exclaimed: