by O. Henry
“She kind of moves in the professional class, don’t she?” asked Mack.
“The Telfair family—” I began, haughtily.
“I mean professional beauty,” said my hearer.
“She is greatly and widely admired,” I answered, cautiously.
“Any sisters?”
“One.”
“You know any more girls?”
“Why, several,” I answered. “And a few others.”
“Say,” said Mack, “tell me one thing—can you hand out the dope to other girls? Can you chin ’em and make matinée eyes at ’em and squeeze ’em? You know what I mean. You’re just shy when it comes to this particular dame—the professional beauty—ain’t that right?”
“In a way you have outlined the situation with approximate truth,” I admitted.
“I thought so,” said Mack, grimly. “Now, that reminds me of my own case. I’ll tell you about it.”
I was indignant, but concealed it. What was this loafer’s case or anybody’s case compared with mine? Besides, I had given him a dollar and ten cents.
“Feel my muscle,” said my companion, suddenly, flexing his biceps. I did so mechanically. The fellows in gyms are always asking you to do that. His arm was as hard as cast-iron.
“Four years ago,” said Mack, “I could lick any man in New York outside of the professional ring. Your case and mine is just the same. I come from the West Side—between Thirtieth and Fourteenth—I won’t give the number on the door. I was a scrapper when I was ten, and when I was twenty no amateur in the city could stand up four rounds with me. ’S a fact. You know Bill McCarty? No? He managed the smokers for some of them swell clubs. Well, I knocked out everything Bill brought up before me. I was a middle-weight, but could train down to a welter when necessary. I boxed all over the West Side at bouts and benefits and private entertainments, and was never put out once.
“But, say, the first time I put my foot in the ring with a professional I was no more than a canned lobster. I dunno how it was—I seemed to lose heart. I guess I got too much imagination. There was a formality and publicness about it that kind of weakened my nerve. I never won a fight in the ring. Light-weights and all kinds of scrubs used to sign up with my manager and then walk up and tap me on the wrist and see me fall. The minute I seen the crowd and a lot of gents in evening clothes down in front, and seen a professional come inside the ropes, I got as weak as ginger-ale.
“Of course, it wasn’t long till I couldn’t get no backers, and I didn’t have any more chances to fight a professional—or many amateurs, either. But lemme tell you—I was as good as most men inside the ring or out. It was just that dumb, dead feeling I had when I was up against a regular that always done me up.
“Well, sir, after I had got out of the business, I got a mighty grouch on. I used to go round town licking private citizens and all kinds of unprofessionals just to please myself. I’d lick cops in dark streets and car-conductors and cab-drivers and draymen whenever I could start a row with ’em. It didn’t make any difference how big they were, or how much science they had, I got away with ’em. If I’d only just have had the confidence in the ring that I had beating up the best men outside of it, I’d be wearing black pearls and heliotrope silk socks to-day.
“One evening I was walking along near the Bowery, thinking about things, when along comes a slumming-party. About six or seven they was, all in swallowtails, and these silk hats that don’t shine. One of the gang kind of shoves me off the sidewalk. I hadn’t had a scrap in three days, and I just says, ‘De-light-ed!’ and hits him back of the ear.
“Well, we had it. That Johnnie put up as decent a little fight as you’d want to see in the moving pictures. It was on a side street, and no cops around. The other guy had a lot of science, but it only took me about six minutes to lay him out.
“Some of the swallowtails dragged him up against some steps and began to fan him. Another one of ’em comes over to me and says:
“ ‘Young man, do you know what you’ve done?’
“ ‘Oh, beat it,’ says I. ‘I’ve done nothing but a little punching-bag work. Take Freddy back to Yale and tell him to quit studying sociology on the wrong side of the sidewalk.’
“ ‘My good fellow,’ says he, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I’d like to. You’ve knocked out Reddy Burns, the champion middle-weight of the world! He came to New York yesterday, to try to get a match on with Jim Jeffries. If you—’
“But when I come out of my faint I was laying on the floor in a drug-store saturated with aromatic spirits of ammonia. If I’d known that was Reddy Burns, I’d have got down in the gutter and crawled past him instead of handing him one like I did. Why, if I’d ever been in a ring and seen him climbing over the ropes, I’d have been all to the sal volatile.
“So that’s what imagination does,” concluded Mack. “And, as I said, your case and mine is simultaneous. You’ll never win out. You can’t go up against the professionals. I tell you, it’s a park bench for yours in this romance business.”
Mack, the pessimist, laughed harshly.
“I’m afraid I don’t see the parallel,” I said, coldly. “I have only a very slight acquaintance with the prize-ring.”
The derelict touched my sleeve with his forefinger, for emphasis, as he explained his parable.
“Every man,” said he, with some dignity, “has got his lamps on something that looks good to him. With you, it’s this dame that you’re afraid to say your say to. With me, it was to win out in the ring. Well, you’ll lose just like I did.”
“Why do you think I shall lose?” I asked warmly.
“’Cause,” said he, “you’re afraid to go in the ring. You dassen’t stand up before a professional. Your case and mine is just the same. You’re a amateur; and that means that you’d better keep outside of the ropes.”
“Well, I must be going,” I said, rising and looking with elaborate care at my watch.
When I was twenty feet away the park-bencher called to me.
“Much obliged for the dollar,” he said. “And for the dime. But you’ll never get ’er. You’re in the amateur class.”
“Serves you right,” I said to myself, “for hobnobbing with a tramp. His impudence!”
But, as I walked, his words seemed to repeat themselves over and over again in my brain. I think I even grew angry at the man.
“I’ll show him!” I finally said, aloud. “I’ll show him that I can fight Reddy Burns, too—even knowing who he is.”
I hurried to a telephone-booth and rang up the Telfair residence.
A soft, sweet voice answered. Didn’t I know that voice? My hand holding the receiver shook.
“Is that you?” said I, employing the foolish words that form the vocabulary of every talker through the telephone.
“Yes, this is I,” came back the answer in the low, clear-cut tones that are an inheritance of the Telfairs. “Who is it, please?”
“It’s me,” said I, less ungrammatically than egotistically. “It’s me, and I’ve got a few things that I want to say to you right now and immediately and straight to the point.”
“Dear me,” said the voice. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Arden!”
I wondered if any accent on the first word was intended; Mildred was fine at saying things that you had to study out afterward.
“Yes,” said I. “I hope so. And now to come down to brass tacks.” I thought that rather a vernacularism, if there is such a word, as soon as I had said it; but I didn’t stop to apologize. “You know, of course, that I love you, and that I have been in that idiotic state for a long time. I don’t want any more foolishness about it—that is, I mean I want an answer from you right now. Will you marry me or not? Hold the wire, please. Keep out, Central. Hello, hello! Will you, or will you not?”
That was just the uppercut for R
eddy Burns’ chin. The answer came back:
“Why, Phil, dear, of course I will! I didn’t know that you—that is, you never said—oh, come up to the house, please—I can’t say what I want to over the ’phone. You are so importunate. But please come up to the house, won’t you?”
Would I?
I rang the bell of the Telfair house violently. Some sort of a human came to the door and shooed me into the drawing-room.
“Oh, well,” said I to myself, looking at the ceiling, “any one can learn from any one. That was a pretty good philosophy of Mack’s, anyhow. He didn’t take advantage of his experience, but I get the benefit of it. If you want to get into the professional class, you’ve got to—”
I stopped thinking then. Some one was coming down the stairs. My knees began to shake. I knew then how Mack had felt when a professional began to climb over the ropes. I looked around foolishly for a door or a window by which I might escape. If it had been any other girl approaching, I mightn’t have—
But just then the door opened, and Bess, Mildred’s younger sister, came in. I’d never seen her look so much like a glorified angel. She walked straight up to me, and—and—
I’d never noticed before what perfectly wonderful eyes and hair Elizabeth Telfair had.
“Phil,” she said, in the Telfair, sweet, thrilling tones, “why didn’t you tell me about it before? I thought it was sister you wanted all the time, until you telephoned to me a few minutes ago!”
I suppose Mack and I always will be hopeless amateurs. But, as the thing has turned out in my case, I’m mighty glad of it.
No Story
* * *
TO AVOID having this book hurled into a corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor, no prodigy “cub” reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story—no anything.
But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the reporters’ room of the Morning Beacon, I will repay the favor by keeping strictly my promises set forth above.
I was doing space-work on the Beacon, hoping to be put on a salary. Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, Congressional Records, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings about its streets. My income was not regular.
One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp was something in the mechanical department—I think he had something to do with the pictures, for he smelled of photographers’ supplies, and his hands were always stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the “welcome” left off. He was pale and unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous borrower of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as well as the Chemical National Bank knows the amount of H2O that collateral will show on analysis. When he sat on my table he held one hand with the other to keep both from shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of lightness and bravado about him that deceived no one, but was useful in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed.
This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as a grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least an armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight.
“Well, Tripp,” said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, “how goes it?” He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him.
“Have you got a dollar?” asked Tripp, with his most fawning look and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his high-growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.
“I have,” said I; and again I said, “I have,” more loudly and inhospitably, “and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them,” I continued, “to meet a want—a hiatus—a demand—a need—an exigency—a requirement of exactly five dollars.”
I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of the dollars on the spot.
“I don’t want to borrow any,” said Tripp, and I breathed again. “I thought you’d like to get put onto a good story,” he went on. “I’ve got a rattling fine one for you. You ought to make it run a column at least. It ’ll make a dandy if you work it up right. It ’ll probably cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don’t want anything out of it myself.”
I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.
“What is the story?” I asked, poising my pencil with a finely calculated editorial air.
“I’ll tell you,” said Tripp. “It’s a girl. A beauty. One of the howlingest Amsden’s Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew—violets in their mossy bed—and truck like that. She’s lived on Long Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street. She’d just got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she’s a beauty that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could find George Brown in New York City! What do you think of that?
“I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer named Dodd—Hiram Dodd—next week. But it seems that George Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada—her name’s Ada Lowery—saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 A.M. train for the city. Looking for George, you know—you understand about women—George wasn’t there, so she wanted him.
“Well, you know, I couldn’t leave her loose in Wolf-town-on-the-Hudson. I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would say: ‘George Brown?—why, yes—lemme see—he’s a short man with light-blue eyes, ain’t he? Oh yes—you’ll find George on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He’s bill-clerk in a saddle-and-harness store.’ That’s about how innocent and beautiful she is. You know those little Long Island water-front villages like Greenburg—a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine summer visitors for industries. That’s the kind of a place she comes from. But, say—you ought to see her!
“What could I do? I don’t know what money looks like in the morning. And she’d paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She’s in soak for a dollar. That’s old Mother McGinnis’ price per day. I’ll show you the house.”
“What words are these, Tripp?” said I. “I thought you said you had a story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes away girls from Long Island.”
The premature lines on Tripp’s face grew deeper. He frowned seriously from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his answer with one shaking forefinger.
“Can’t you see,” he said, “what a rattling fine story it would make? You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling in a few sti
ckfuls of funny business—joshing the Long Islanders about being green, and, well—you know how to do it. You ought to get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it ’ll cost you only about four dollars. You’ll make a clear profit of eleven.”
“How will it cost me four dollars?” I asked, suspiciously.
“One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis,” Tripp answered, promptly, “and two dollars to pay the girl’s fare back home.”
“And the fourth dimension?” I inquired, making a rapid mental calculation.
“One dollar to me,” said Tripp. “For whiskey. Are you on?”
I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became shiningly moist.
“Don’t you see,” he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, “that this girl has got to be sent home to-day—not to-night nor to-morrow, but to-day? I can’t do anything for her. You know, I’m the janitor and corresponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club. I thought you could make a newspaper story out of it and win out a piece of money on general results. But, anyhow, don’t you see that she’s got to get back home before night?”
And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depressing sensation known as the sense of duty. Why should that sense fall upon one as a weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery. But I swore to myself that Tripp’s whiskey dollar would not be forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat.
Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted me via the street-cars to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I paid the fares. It seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and the smallest minted coin were strangers.