O. Henry

by O. Henry

  Miss Medora chose the Vortex and thereby furnishes us with our little story.

  Professor Angelini praised her sketches excessively. Once when she had made a neat study of a horse-­chestnut tree in the park he declared she would become a second Rosa Bonheur. Again—a great artist has his moods—he would say cruel and cutting things. For example, Medora had spent an afternoon patiently sketching the statue and the architecture at Columbus Circle. Tossing it aside with a sneer, the professor informed her that Giotto had once drawn a perfect circle with one sweep of his hand.

  One day it rained, the weekly remittance from Harmony was overdue, Medora had a headache, the professor had tried to borrow two dollars from her, her art dealer had sent back all her water-­colors unsold, and—Mr. Binkley asked her out to dinner.

  Mr. Binkley was the gay boy of the boarding-­house. He was forty-­nine, and owned a fishstall in a downtown market. But after six o’clock he wore an evening suit and whooped things up connected with the beaux arts. The young men said he was an “Indian.” He was supposed to be an accomplished habitué of the inner circles of Bohemia. It was no secret that he had once loaned $10 to a young man who had had a drawing printed in Puck. Often has one thus obtained his entrée into the charmed circle, while the other obtained both his entrée and roast.

  The other boarders enviously regarded Medora as she left at Mr. Binkley’s side at nine o’clock. She was as sweet as a cluster of dried autumn grasses in her pale blue—oh—er—that very thin stuff—in her pale blue Comstockized silk waist and box-­pleated voile skirt, with a soft pink glow on her thin cheeks and the tiniest bit of rouge powder on her face, with her handkerchief and room key in her brown walrus, pebble-­grain hand-­bag.

  And Mr. Binkley looked imposing and dashing with his red face and gray mustache, and his tight dress coat, that made the back of his neck roll up just like a successful novelist’s.

  They drove in a cab to the Café Terence, just off the most glittering part of Broadway, which, as every one knows, is one of the most popular and widely patronized, jealously exclusive Bohemian resorts in the city.

  Down between the rows of little tables tripped Medora, of the Green Mountains, after her escort. Thrice in a lifetime may woman walk upon clouds—once when she trippeth to the altar, once when she first enters Bohemian halls, the last when she marches back across her first garden with the dead hen of her neighbor in her hand.

  There was a table set, with three or four about it. A waiter buzzed around it like a bee, and silver and glass shone upon it. And, preliminary to the meal, as the prehistoric granite strata heralded the protozoa, the bread of Gaul, compounded after the formula of the recipe for the eternal hills, was there set forth to the hand and tooth of a long-­suffering city, while the gods lay beside their nectar and home-­made biscuits and smiled, and the dentists leaped for joy in their gold-­leafy dens.

  The eye of Binkley fixed a young man at his table with the Bohemian gleam, which is a compound of the look of the basilisk, the shine of a bubble of Würzburger, the inspiration of genius and the pleading of a panhandler.

  The young man sprang to his feet. “Hello, Bink, old boy!” he shouted. “Don’t tell me you were going to pass our table. Join us—unless you’ve another crowd on hand.”

  “Don’t mind, old chap,” said Binkley, of the fishstall. “You know how I like to butt up against the fine arts. Mr. Vandyke—Mr. Madder—er—Miss Martin, one of the elect also in art—er——”

  The introduction went around. There were also Miss Elise and Miss ’Toinette. Perhaps they were models, for they chattered of the St. Regis decorations and Henry James—and they did it not badly.

  Medora sat in transport. Music—wild, intoxicating music made by troubadours direct from a rear basement room in Elysium—set her thoughts to dancing. Here was a world never before penetrated by her warmest imagination or any of the lines controlled by Harriman. With the Green Mountains’ external calm upon her she sat, her soul flaming in her with the fire of Andalusia. The tables were filled with Bohemia. The room was full of the fragrance of flowers—both mille and cauli. Questions and corks popped; laughter and silver rang; champagne flashed in the pail, wit flashed in the pan.

  Vandyke ruffled his long, black locks, disarranged his careless tie and leaned over to Madder.

  “Say, Maddy,” he whispered, feelingly, “sometimes I’m tempted to pay this Philistine his ten dollars and get rid of him.”

  Madder ruffled his long, sandy locks and disarranged his careless tie.

  “Don’t think of it, Vandy,” he replied. “We are short, and Art is long.”

  Medora ate strange viands and drank elderberry wine that they poured in her glass. It was just the color of that in the Vermont home. The waiter poured something in another glass that seemed to be boiling, but when she tasted it it was not hot. She had never felt so light-­hearted before. She thought lovingly of the Green Mountain farm and its fauna. She leaned, smiling, to Miss Elise.

  “If I were at home,” she said, beamingly, “I could show you the cutest little calf!”

  “Nothing for you in the White Lane,” said Miss Elise. “Why don’t you pad?”

  The orchestra played a wailing waltz that Medora had learned from the hand-­organs. She followed the air with nodding head in a sweet soprano hum. Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered in what strange waters Binkley had caught her in his seine. She smiled at him, and they raised glasses and drank of the wine that boiled when it was cold. Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the unusual spring catch of shad. Miss Elise arranged the palette-­and-­maul-­stick tie pin of Mr. Vandyke. A Philistine at some distant table was maundering volubly either about Jerome or Gérôme. A famous actress was discoursing excitably about monogrammed hosiery. A hose clerk from a department store was loudly proclaiming his opinions of the drama. A writer was abusing Dickens. A magazine editor and a photographer were drinking a dry brand at a reserved table. A 36-­25-­42 young lady was saying to an eminent sculptor: “Fudge for your Prax Italys! Bring one of your Venus Anno Dominis down to Cohen’s and see how quick she’d be turned down for a cloak model. Back to the quarries with your Greeks and Dagos!”

  Thus went Bohemia.

  At eleven Mr. Binkley took Medora to the boarding-­house and left her, with a society bow, at the foot of the hall stairs. She went up to her room and lit the gas.

  And then, as suddenly as the dreadful genie arose in vapor from the copper vase of the fisherman, arose in that room the formidable shape of the New England Conscience. The terrible thing that Medora had done was revealed to her in its full enormity. She had sat in the presence of the ungodly and looked upon the wine both when it was red and effervescent.

  At midnight she wrote this letter:

  “Mr. BERIAH HOSKINS, Harmony, Vermont.

  “Dear Sir: Henceforth, consider me as dead to you forever. I have loved you too well to blight your career by bringing into it my guilty and sin-­stained life. I have succumbed to the insidious wiles of this wicked world and have been drawn into the vortex of Bohemia. There is scarcely any depth of glittering iniquity that I have not sounded. It is hopeless to combat my decision. There is no rising from the depths to which I have sunk. Endeavor to forget me. I am lost forever in the fair but brutal maze of awful Bohemia. Farewell.

  “ONCE YOUR MEDORA.”

  On the next day Medora formed her resolutions. Beelzebub, flung from heaven, was no more cast down. Between her and the apple blossoms of Harmony there was a fixed gulf. Flaming cherubim warded her from the gates of her lost paradise. In one evening, by the aid of Binkley and Mumm, Bohemia had gathered her into its awful midst.

  There remained to her but one thing—a life of brilliant, but irremediable error. Vermont was a shrine that she never would dare to approach again. But she would not sink—there were great and compelling ones in history upon whom she would model he
r meteoric career—Camille, Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza—such a name as one of these would that of Medora Martin be to future generations.

  For two days Medora kept her room. On the third she opened a magazine at the portrait of the King of Belgium, and laughed sardonically. If that far-­famed breaker of women’s hearts should cross her path, he would have to bow before her cold and imperious beauty. She would not spare the old or the young. All America—all Europe should do homage to her sinister, but compelling charm.

  As yet she could not bear to think of the life she had once desired—a peaceful one in the shadow of the Green Mountains with Beriah at her side, and orders for expensive oil paintings coming in by each mail from New York. Her one fatal misstep had shattered that dream.

  On the fourth day Medora powdered her face and rouged her lips. Once she had seen Carter in “Zaza.” She stood before the mirror in a reckless attitude and cried: “Zut! zut!” She rhymed it with “nut,” but with the lawless word Harmony seemed to pass away forever. The Vortex had her. She belonged to Bohemia for evermore. And never would Beriah——

  The door opened and Beriah walked in.

  “’Dory,” said he, “what’s all that chalk and pink stuff on your face, honey?”

  Medora extended an arm.

  “Too late,” she said, solemnly. “The die is cast. I belong in another world. Curse me if you will—it is your right. Go, and leave me in the path I have chosen. Bid them all at home never to mention my name again. And sometimes, Beriah, pray for me when I am revelling in the gaudy, but hollow, pleasures of Bohemia.”

  “Get a towel, ’Dory,” said Beriah, “and wipe that paint off your face. I came as soon as I got your letter. Them pictures of yours ain’t amounting to anything. I’ve got tickets for both of us back on the evening train. Hurry and get your things in your trunk.”

  “Fate was too strong for me, Beriah. Go while I am strong to bear it.”

  “How do you fold this easel, ’Dory?—now begin to pack, so we have time to eat before train time. The maples is all out in full-­grown leaves, ’Dory—you just ought to see ’em!”

  “Not this early, Beriah?”

  “You ought to see ’em, ’Dory; they’re like an ocean of green in the morning sunlight.”

  “Oh, Beriah!”

  On the train she said to him suddenly:

  “I wonder why you came when you got my letter.”

  “Oh, shucks!” said Beriah. “Did you think you could fool me? How could you be run away to that Bohemia country like you said when your letter was postmarked New York as plain as day?”

  Tommy’s Burglar

  * * *

  AT TEN o’clock P.M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall asleep over one of St. George Rathbone’s novels on the third floor, but she was overruled. Raspberries and cops were not created for nothing.

  The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must have action and not too much description in a 2,000-­word story.

  In the dining room he opened the slide of his dark lantern. With a brace and centrebit he began to bore into the lock of the silver-­closet.

  Suddenly a click was heard. The room was flooded with electric light. The dark velvet portières parted to admit a fair-­haired boy of eight in pink pajamas, bearing a bottle of olive oil in his hand.

  “Are you a burglar?” he asked, in a sweet, childish voice.

  “Listen to that,” exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. “Am I a burglar? Wot do you suppose I have a three-­days’ growth of bristly beard on my face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and let me grease the bit, so I won’t wake up your mamma, who is lying down with a headache, and left you in charge of Felicia, who has been faithless to her trust.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Tommy, with a sigh. “I thought you would be more up-­to-­date. This oil is for the salad when I bring lunch from the pantry for you. And mamma and papa have gone to the Metropolitan to hear De Reszke. But that isn’t my fault. It only shows how long the story has been knocking around among the editors. If the author had been wise he’d have changed it to Caruso in the proofs.”

  “Be quiet,” hissed the burglar, under his breath. “If you raise an alarm I’ll wring your neck like a rabbit’s.”

  “Like a chicken’s,” corrected Tommy. “You had that wrong. You don’t wring rabbits’ necks.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of me?” asked the burglar.

  “You know I’m not,” answered Tommy. “Don’t you suppose I know fact from fiction. If this wasn’t a story I’d yell like an Indian when I saw you; and you’d probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the sidewalk.”

  “I see,” said the burglar, “that you’re on to your job. Go on with the performance.”

  Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him.

  “Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burglar? Have you no friends?”

  “I see what you’re driving at,” said the burglar, with a dark frown. “It’s the same old story. Your innocence and childish insouciance is going to lead me back into an honest life. Every time I crack a crib where there’s a kid around, it happens.”

  “Would you mind gazing with wolfish eyes at the plate of cold beef that the butler has left on the dining table?” said Tommy. “I’m afraid it’s growing late.”

  The burglar accommodated.

  “Poor man,” said Tommy. “You must be hungry. If you will please stand in a listless attitude I will get you something to eat.”

  The boy brought a roast chicken, a jar of marmalade and a bottle of wine from the pantry. The burglar seized a knife and fork sullenly.

  “It’s only been an hour,” he grumbled, “since I had a lobster and a pint of musty ale up on Broadway. I wish these story writers would let a fellow have a pepsin tablet, anyhow, between feeds.”

  “My papa writes books,” remarked Tommy.

  The burglar jumped to his feet quickly.

  “You said he had gone to the opera,” he hissed, hoarsely and with immediate suspicion.

  “I ought to have explained,” said Tommy. “He didn’t buy the tickets.” The burglar sat again and toyed with the wishbone.

  “Why do you burgle houses?” asked the boy, wonderingly.

  “Because,” replied the burglar, with a sudden flow of tears. “God bless my little brown-­haired boy Bessie at home.”

  “Ah,” said Tommy, wrinkling his nose, “you got that answer in the wrong place. You want to tell your hard-­luck story before you pull out the child stop.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the burglar, “I forgot. Well, once I lived in Milwaukee, and——”

  “Take the silver,” said Tommy, rising from his chair.

  “Hold on,” said the burglar. “But I moved away. I could find no other employment. For a while I managed to support my wife and child by passing confederate money; but, alas! I was forced to give that up because it did not belong to the union. I became desperate and a burglar.”

  “Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?” asked Tommy.

  “I said ‘burglar,’ not ‘beggar,’ ” answered the cracksman.

  “After you finish your lunch,” said Tommy, “and experience the usual change of heart, how shall we wind up the story?”

  “Suppose,” said the burglar, thoughtfully, “that Tony Pastor turns out earlier than usual to-­night, and your father gets in from ‘Parsifal’ at 10.30. I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my own little boy Bessie, and——”

  “Say,” said Tommy, “haven’t you got that wrong?”

  “Not on your coloured crayon drawings by B. Cory
Kilvert,” said the burglar. “It’s always a Bessie that I have at home, artlessly prattling to the pale-­cheeked burglar’s bride. As I was saying, your father opens the front door just as I am departing with admonitions and sandwiches that you have wrapped up for me. Upon recognizing me as an old Harvard classmate he starts back in——”

  “Not in surprise?” interrupted Tommy, with wide-­open eyes.

  “He starts back in the doorway,” continued the burglar. And then he rose to his feet and began to shout: “Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah!”

  “Well,” said Tommy, wonderingly, “that’s the first time I ever knew a burglar to give a college yell when he was burglarizing a house, even in a story.”

  “That’s one on you,” said the burglar, with a laugh. “I was practising the dramatization. If this is put on the stage that college touch is about the only thing that will make it go.”

  Tommy looked his admiration.

  “You’re on, all right,” he said.

  “And there’s another mistake you’ve made,” said the burglar. “You should have gone some time ago and brought me the $9 gold piece your mother gave you on your birthday to take to Bessie.”

  “But she didn’t give it to me to take to Bessie,” said Tommy, pouting.

  “Come, come!” said the burglar, sternly. “It’s not nice of you to take advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know what I mean. It’s mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs, anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all the swag I’m allowed is the blamed little fol-­de-­rols and luck-­pieces that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted of molasses candy, too. I’ve a good notion to tie this table cover over your head and keep on into the silver-­closet.”