by O. Henry
“ ‘What do you think of her, Judson?’ asks Fergus, with an air.
“ ‘This much,’ says I. ‘She is to be Mrs. Judson Tate. I am no man to play tricks on a friend. So take your warning.’
“I thought Fergus would die laughing.
“ ‘Well, well, well,’ said he, ‘you old doughface! Struck too, are you? That ’s great! But you ’re too late. Francesca tells me that Anabela talks of nothing but me, day and night. Of course, I ’m awfully obliged to you for making that chin-music to her of evenings. But, do you know, I ’ve an idea that I could have done it as well myself.’
“ ‘Mrs. Judson Tate,’ says I. ‘Don’t forget the name. You ’ve had the use of my tongue to go with your good looks, my boy. You can’t lend me your looks; but hereafter my tongue is my own. Keep your mind on the name that ’s to be on the visiting cards two inches by three and a half—“Mrs. Judson Tate.” That ’s all.’
“ ‘All right,’ says Fergus, laughing again. ‘I ’ve talked with her father, the alcalde, and he ’s willing. He ’s to give a baile to-morrow evening in his new warehouse. If you were a dancing man, Jud, I ’d expect you around to meet the future Mrs. McMahan.’
“But on the next evening, when the music was playing loudest at the Alcalde Zamora’s baile, into the room steps Judson Tate in new white linen clothes as if he were the biggest man in the whole nation, which he was.
“Some of the musicians jumped off the key when they saw my face, and one or two of the timidest señoritas let out a screech or two. But up prances the alcalde and almost wipes the dust off my shoes with his forehead. No mere good looks could have won me that sensational entrance.
“ ‘I hear much, Señor Zamora,’ says I, ‘of the charm of your daughter. It would give me great pleasure to be presented to her.’
“There were about six dozen willow rocking-chairs, with pink tidies tied on to them, arranged against the walls. In one of them sat Señorita Anabela in white Swiss and red slippers, with pearls and fireflies in her hair. Fergus was at the other end of the room trying to break away from two maroons and a claybank girl.
“The alcalde leads me up to Anabela and presents me. When she took the first look at my face she dropped her fan and nearly turned her chair over from the shock. But I ’m used to that.
“I sat down by her and began to talk. When she heard me speak she jumped, and her eyes got as big as alligator pears. She could n’t strike a balance between the tones of my voice and the face I carried. But I kept on talking in the key of C, which is the ladies’ key; and presently she sat still in her chair and a dreamy look came into her eyes. She was coming my way. She knew of Judson Tate, and what a big man he was, and the big things he had done; and that was in my favour. But, of course, it was some shock to her to find out that I was not the pretty man that had been pointed out to her as the great Judson. And then I took the Spanish language, which is better than English for certain purposes, and played on it like a harp of a thousand strings. I ranged from the second G below the staff up to F-sharp above it. I set my voice to poetry, art, romance, flowers, and moonlight. I repeated some of the verses that I had murmured to her in the dark at her window; and I knew from a sudden soft sparkle in her eye that she recognized in my voice the tones of her midnight mysterious wooer.
“Anyhow, I had Fergus McMahan going. Oh, the vocal is the true art—no doubt about that. Handsome is as handsome palavers. That ’s the renovated proverb.
“I took Señorita Anabela for a walk in the lemon grove while Fergus, disfiguring himself with an ugly frown, was waltzing with the claybank girl. Before we returned I had permission to come to her window in the patio the next evening at midnight and talk some more.
“Oh, it was easy enough. In two weeks Anabela was engaged to me, and Fergus was out. He took it calm, for a handsome man, and told me he was n’t going to give in.
“ ‘Talk may be all right in its place, Judson,’ he says to me, ‘although I ’ve never thought it worth cultivating. But,’ says he, ‘to expect mere words to back up successfully a face like yours in a lady’s good graces is like expecting a man to make a square meal on the ringing of a dinner-bell.’
“But I have n’t begun on the story I was going to tell you yet.
“One day I took a long ride in the hot sunshine, and then took a bath in the cold waters of a lagoon on the edge of the town before I ’d cooled off.
“That evening after dark I called at the alcalde’s to see Anabela. I was calling regular every evening then, and we were to be married in a month. She was looking like a bulbul, a gazelle, and a tea-rose, and her eyes were as soft and bright as two quarts of cream skimmed off from the Milky Way. She looked at my rugged features without any expression of fear or repugnance. Indeed, I fancied that I saw a look of deep admiration and affection, such as she had cast at Fergus on the plaza.
“I sat down, and opened my mouth to tell Anabela what she loved to hear—that she was a trust, monopolizing all the loveliness of earth. I opened my mouth, and instead of the usual vibrating words of love and compliment, there came forth a faint wheeze such as a baby with croup might emit. Not a word—not a syllable—not an intelligible sound. I had caught cold in my laryngeal regions when I took my injudicious bath.
“For two hours I sat trying to entertain Anabela. She talked a certain amount, but it was perfunctory and diluted. The nearest approach I made to speech was to formulate a sound like a clam trying to sing ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’ at low tide. It seemed that Anabela’s eyes did not rest upon me as often as usual. I had nothing with which to charm her ears. We looked at pictures and she played the guitar occasionally, very badly. When I left, her parting manner seemed cool—or at least thoughtful.
“This happened for five evenings consecutively.
“On the sixth day she ran away with Fergus McMahan.
“It was known that they fled in a sailing yacht bound for Belize. I was only eight hours behind them in a small steam launch belonging to the Revenue Department.
“Before I sailed, I rushed into the botica of old Manuel Iquito, a half-breed Indian druggist. I could not speak, but I pointed to my throat and made a sound like escaping steam. He began to yawn. In an hour, according to the customs of the country, I would have been waited on. I reached across the counter, seized him by the throat, and pointed again to my own. He yawned once more, and thrust into my hand a small bottle containing a black liquid.
“ ‘Take one small spoonful every two hours,’ says he.
“I threw him a dollar and skinned for the steamer.
“I steamed into the harbour at Belize thirteen seconds behind the yacht that Anabela and Fergus were on. They started for the shore in a dory just as my skiff was lowered over the side. I tried to order my sailormen to row faster, but the sounds died in my larynx before they came to the light. Then I thought of old Iquito’s medicine, and I got out his bottle and took a swallow of it.
“The two boats landed at the same moment. I walked straight up to Anabela and Fergus. Her eyes rested upon me for an instant; then she turned them, full of feeling and confidence, upon Fergus. I knew I could not speak, but I was desperate. In speech lay my only hope. I could not stand beside Fergus and challenge comparison in the way of beauty. Purely involuntarily, my larynx and epiglottis attempted to reproduce the sounds that my mind was calling upon my vocal organs to send forth.
“To my intense surprise and delight the words rolled forth beautifully clear, resonant, exquisitely modulated, full of power, expression, and long-repressed emotion.
“ ‘Señorita Anabela,’ says I, ‘may I speak with you aside for a moment?’
“You don’t want details about that, do you? Thanks. The old eloquence had come back all right. I led her under a cocoanut palm and put my old verbal spell on her again.
“ ‘Judson,’ says she, ‘when you are talking to m
e I can hear nothing else—I can see nothing else—there is nothing and nobody else in the world for me.’
“Well, that ’s about all of the story. Anabela went back to Oratama in the steamer with me. I never heard what became of Fergus. I never saw him any more. Anabela is now Mrs. Judson Tate. Has my story bored you much?”
“No,” said I. “I am always interested in psychological studies. A human heart—and especially a woman’s—is a wonderful thing to contemplate.”
“It is,” said Judson Tate. “And so are the trachea and the bronchial tubes of man. And the larynx, too. Did you ever make a study of the windpipe?”
“Never,” said I. “But I have taken much pleasure in your story. May I ask after Mrs Tate, and inquire of her present health and whereabouts?”
“Oh, sure,” said Judson Tate. “We are living in Bergen Avenue, Jersey City. The climate down in Oratama did n’t suit Mrs. T. I don’t suppose you ever dissected the arytenoid cartilages of the epiglottis, did you?”
“Why, no,” said I, “I am no surgeon.”
“Pardon me,” said Judson Tate, “but every man should know enough of anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health. A sudden cold may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary vesicles, which may result in a serious affection of the vocal organs.”
“Perhaps so,” said I, with some impatience; “but that is neither here nor there. Speaking of the strange manifestations of the affection of women, I——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Judson Tate, “they have peculiar ways. But, as I was going to tell you: when I went back to Oratama I found out from Manuel Iquito what was in that mixture he gave me for my lost voice. I told you how quick it cured me. He made that stuff from the chuchula plant. Now, look here.”
Judson Tate drew an oblong, white pasteboard box from his pocket.
“For any cough,” he said, “or cold, or hoarseness, or bronchial affection whatsoever, I have here the greatest remedy in the world. You see the formula printed on the box. Each tablet contains licorice, 2 grains; balsam tolu, 1/10 grain; oil of anise, 1/20 minim; oil of tar, 1/60 minim; oleo-resin of cubebs, 1/60 minim; fluid extract of chuchula, 1/10 minim.
“I am in New York,” went on Judson Tate, “for the purpose of organizing a company to market the greatest remedy for throat affections ever discovered. At present I am introducing the lozenges in a small way. I have here a box containing four dozen, which I am selling for the small sum of fifty cents. If you are suffering——”
I got up and went away without a word. I walked slowly up to the little park near my hotel, leaving Judson Tate alone with his conscience. My feelings were lacerated. He had poured gently upon me a story that I might have used. There was a little of the breath of life in it, and some of the synthetic atmosphere that passes, when cunningly tinkered, in the marts. And, at the last it had proven to be a commercial pill, deftly coated with the sugar of fiction. The worst of it was that I could not offer it for sale. Advertising departments and counting-rooms look down upon me. And it would never do for the literary. Therefore I sat upon a bench with other disappointed ones until my eyelids drooped.
I went to my room, and, as my custom is, read for an hour stories in my favourite magazines. This was to get my mind back to art again.
And as I read each story, I threw the magazines sadly and hopelessly, one by one, upon the floor. Each author, without one exception to bring balm to my heart, wrote liltingly and sprightly a story of some particular make of motor-car that seemed to control the sparking plug of his genius.
And when the last one was hurled from me I took heart.
“If readers can swallow so many proprietary automobiles,” I said to myself, “they ought not to strain at one of Tate’s Compound Magic Chuchula Bronchial Lozenges.”
And so if you see this story in print you will understand that business is business, and that if Art gets very far ahead of Commerce, she will have to get up and hustle.
I may as well add, to make a clean job of it, that you can’t buy the chuchula plant in the drug stores.
THE GENTLE GRAFTER
The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear
* * *
I SAW a light in Jeff Peters’s room over the Red Front Drug Store. I hastened toward it, for I had not known that Jeff was in town. He is a man of the Hadji breed, of a hundred occupations, with a story to tell (when he will) of each one.
I found Jeff repacking his grip for a run down to Florida to look at an orange grove for which he had traded, a month before, his mining claim on the Yukon. He kicked me a chair, with the same old humorous, profound smile on his seasoned countenance. It had been eight months since we had met, but his greeting was such as men pass from day to day. Time is Jeff Peters’s servant, and the continent is a big lot across which he cuts to his many roads.
For a while we skirmished along the edges of unprofitable talk which culminated in that unquiet problem of the Philippines.
“All them tropical races,” said Jeff, “could be run out better with their own jockeys up. The tropical man knows what he wants. All he wants is a season ticket to the cock-fights and a pair of Western Union climbers to go up the bread-fruit tree. The Anglo-Saxon man wants him to learn to conjugate and wear suspenders. He’ll be happiest in his own way.”
I was shocked.
“Education, man,” I said, “is the watchword. In time they will rise to our standard of civilization. Look what education has done for the Indian.”
“O-ho!” sang Jeff, lighting his pipe (which was a good sign). “Yes, the Indian! I’m looking. I hasten to contemplate the Red Man as a standard bearer of progress. He’s the same as the other brown boys. You can’t make an Anglo-Saxon of him. Did I ever tell you about the time my friend John Tom Little Bear bit off the right ear of the arts of culture and education and spun the teetotum back round to where it was when Columbus was a boy? I did not?
“John Tom Little Bear was an educated Cherokee Indian and an old friend of mine when I was in the Territories. He was a graduate of one of them Eastern football colleges that have been so successful in teaching the Indian to use the gridiron instead of burning his victims at the stake. As an Anglo-Saxon, John Tom was copper-colored in spots. As an Indian, he was one of the whitest men I ever knew. As a Cherokee, he was a gentleman on the first ballot. As a ward of the nation, he was mighty hard to carry at the primaries.
“John Tom and me got together and began to make medicine—how to get up some lawful, genteel swindle which we might work in a quiet way so as not to excite the stupidity of the police or the cupidity of the larger corporations. We had close upon $500 between us, and we pined to make it grow, as all respectable capitalists do.
“So we figures out a proposition which seems to be as honorable as a gold mine prospectus and as profitable as a church raffle. And inside of thirty days you find us swarming into Kansas with a pair of fluent horses and a red camping wagon on the European plan. John Tom is Chief Wish-Heap-Dough, the famous Indian medicine man and Samaritan Sachem of the Seven Tribes. Mr. Peters is business manager and half owner. We needed a third man, so we looked around and found J. Conyngham Binkly leaning against the want column of a newspaper. This Binkly had a disease for Shakespearean rôles, and an hallucination about a 200 nights’ run on the New York stage. But he confesses that he never could earn the butter to spread on his William S. rôles, so he is willing to drop to the ordinary baker’s kind, and be satisfied with a 200-mile run behind the medicine ponies. Besides Richard III., he could do twenty-seven coon songs and banjo specialties, and was willing to cook, and curry the horses. We carried a fine line of excuses for taking money. One was a magic soap for removing grease spots and quarters from clothes. One was Sum-wah-tah, the great Indian Remedy, made from a prairie herb revealed by the Great Spirit in a dream to his favorite medicine men, the great chiefs McGarrity and Silber
stein, bottlers, Chicago. And the other was a frivolous system of pickpocketing the Kansasters that had the department stores reduced to a decimal fraction. Look ye! A pair of silk garters, a dream book, one dozen clothes-pins, a gold tooth, and ‘When Knighthood Was in Flower,’ all wrapped up in a genuine Japanese silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady by Mr. Peters for the trivial sum of fifty cents, while Professor Binkly entertains us in a three-minute round with the banjo.
“’Twas an eminent graft we had. We ravaged peacefully through the State, determined to remove all doubt as to why ’twas called bleeding Kansas. John Tom Little Bear, in full Indian chief’s costume, drew crowds away from the parchesi sociables and government ownership conversaziones. While at the football college in the East he had acquired quantities of rhetoric and the arts of calisthenics and sophistry in his classes, and when he stood up in the red wagon and explained to the farmers, eloquent, about chilblains and hyperæsthesia of the cranium, Jeff couldn’t hand out the Indian Remedy fast enough for ’em.
“One night we was camped on the edge of a little town out west of Salina. We always camped near a stream, and put up a little tent. Sometimes we sold out of the Remedy unexpected, and then Chief Wish-Heap-Dough would have a dream in which the Manitou commanded him to fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the most convenient place. ’Twas about ten o’clock, and we’d just got in from a street performance. I was in the tent with the lantern, figuring up the day’s profits. John Tom hadn’t taken off his Indian make-up, and was sitting by the camp-fire minding a fine sirloin steak in the pan for the Professor till he finished his hair-raising scene with the trained horses.
“All at once out of the dark bushes comes a pop like a firecracker, and John Tom gives a grunt and digs out of his bosom a little bullet that has dented itself against his collarbone. John Tom makes a dive in the direction of the fireworks, and comes back dragging by the collar a kid about nine or ten years young, in a velveteen suit, with a little nickel-mounted rifle in his hand about as big as a fountain-pen.