The Complete Works of O. Henry

by O. Henry

  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 men- tion my name again. And sometimes, Beriah, pray for me when I am revelling in the gaudy, but hol- low, 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 amount- ing 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 let- ter."

  "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?"

  A PHILISTINE IN BOHEMIA

  George Washington, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signaling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great General must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid tran- sit gloria mundi.

  Should the General raise his left hand as he has raised his right it would point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the oppressed and sup- pressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national or personal freedom they have found a refuge here, and the patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their district, while he listens through his left car to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity of his proteges. Italy, Poland, the former Spanish possessions and the polyglot tribes of Austria-Hun- gary have spilled here a thick lather of their effer- vescent sons. In the eccentric cafes and lodging- houses of the vicinity they hover over their native wines and political secrets. The colony changes with much frequency. Faces disappear from the haunts to be replaced by others. Whither do these uneasy birds flit? For half of the answer observe carefully the suave foreign air and foreign courtesy of the next waiter who serves your table d'hote. For the other half, perhaps if the barber shops had tongues (and who will dispute it?) they could tell their share.

  Titles are as plentiful as finger rings among these transitory exiles. For lack of proper exploitation a stock of titled goods large enough to supply the trade of upper Fifth Avenue is here condemned to a mere pushcart traffic. The new-world landlords who en- tertain these offshoots of nobility are not dazzled by coronets and crests. They have doughnuts to sell instead of daughters. With them it is a serious matter of trading in flour and sugar instead of pearl powder and bonbons.

  These assertions are deemed fitting as an introduction to the tale, which is of plebeians and contains no one with even the ghost of a title.

  Katy Dempsey's mother kept a furnished-room house in this oasis of the aliens. The business was not profitable. If the two scraped together enough to meet the landlord's agent on rent day and nego- tiate for the ingredients of a daily Irish stew they called it success. Often the stew lacked both meat and potatoes. Sometimes it became as bad as consomme' with music.

  In this mouldy old house Katy waxed plump and pert and wholesome and as beautiful and freckled as a tiger lily. She was the good fairy who was guilty of placing the damp clean towels and cracked pitchers of freshly laundered Croton in the lodgers' rooms.

  You are informed (by virtue of the privileges of astronomical discovery) that the star lodger's name was Mr. Brunelli. His wearing a yellow tie and pay- ing his rent promptly distinguished him from the other lodgers. His raiment was splendid, his com- plexion olive, his, mustache fierce, his manners a prince's, his rings and pins as magnificent as those of a traveling dentist.

  He had breakfast served in his room, and he ate it in a red dressing gown with green tassels. He left the house at noon and returned at midnight. Those were mysterious hours, but there was nothing my- terious about Mrs. Dempsey's lodgers except the things that were not mysterious. One of Mr. Kip- ling's poems is addressed to "Ye who hold the un- written clue to all save all unwritten thing." The same "readers" are invited to tackle the foregoing assertion.

  Mr. Brunelli, being impressionable and a Latin, fell to conjugating the verb "amare," with Katy in the objective case, though not because of antipathy. She talked it over with her mother.

  "Sure, I like him," said Katy. "He's more po- liteness than twinty candidates for Alderman, and lie makes me feel like a queen whin he walks at me side. But what is he, I dinno? I've me suspicions. The marnin'll coom whin he'll throt out the picture av his baronial halls and ax to have the week's rint hung up in the ice chist along wid all the rist of 'em."

  "'Tis true," admitted Mrs. Dempsey, "that he seems to be a sort iv a Dago, and too coolchured in his spache for a rale gentleman. But ye may be mis- judgin' him. Ye should niver suspect any wan of bein' of noble descint that pays cash and pathronizes the laundry rig'lar."

  "He's the same tbricks of spakin' and blarneyin' wid his hands," sighed Katy, "as the Frinch noble- man at Mrs. Toole's that ran away wid Mr. Toole's Sunday pants and left the photograph of the Bastile, his grandfather's chat-taw, as security for tin weeks' rint."

  Mr. Brunelli continued his calorific wooing. Katy continued to hesitate. One day he asked her out to dine and she felt that a denouement was in the air. While they are on their way, with Katy in her best muslin, you must take as an entr'acte a brief peep at New York's Bohemia.

  'Tonio's restaurant is in Bohemia. The very lo- cation of it is secret. If you wish to know where it is ask the first person you meet. He will tell you in a whisper. 'Tonio discountenances custom; he keeps his house-front black and forbidding; he gives you a pretty bad dinner; he locks his door at the dining hour; but he knows spaghetti as the boarding-house knows cold veal; and -- he has deposited many dol- lars in a certain Banco di -- something with many gold vowels in the name on its windows.

  To this restaurant Mr. Brunelli conducted Katy. The house was dark and the shades were lowered; but Mr. Brunelli touched an electric button by the base- ment door, and they were admitted.

  Along a long, dark, narrow hallway they went and then through a shining and spotless kitchen that opened directly upon a back yard.

  The walls of houses hemmed three sides of the yard; a high, board fence, surrounded by cats, the other. A wash of clothes was suspended high upon a line stretched from diagonal corners. Those were property clothes, and were never taken in by 'Tonio. They were there that wits with defective pronuncia- tion might make puns in connection with the ragout.

  A dozen and a half little tables set upon the bare ground were crowded with Bohemia-hunters, who flocked there because 'Tonio pretended not to want them and pretended to give them a good dinner. There was a sprinkling of real Bohemians present who came for a change because they were tired of the real Bohemia, and a smart shower of the men who originate the bright sayings of Congressmen and the little nephew of the well-known general passen- ger agent of the Evansville and Terre Haute Rail- road Company.

  Here i
s a bon mot that was manufactured at 'Tonio's:

  "A dinner at 'Tonio's," said a Bohemian, "always amounts to twice the price that is asked for it."

  Let us assume that an accommodating voice in- quires:

  "How so?"

  "The dinner costs you 40 cents; you give 10 cents to the waiter, and it makes you feel like 30 cents."

  Most of the diners were confirmed table d'hoters -- gastronomic adventuress, forever seeking the El Do- rado of a good claret, and consistently coming to grief in California.

  Mr. Brunelli escorted Katy to a little table em- bowered with shrubbery in tubs, and asked her to excuse him for a while.

  Katy sat, enchanted by a scene so brilliant to her. The grand ladies, in splendid dresses and plumes and sparkling rings; the fine gentlemen who laughed so loudly, the cries of "Garsong! " and "We, mon- seer," and "Hello, Mame! " that distinguish Bo- hemia; the lively chatter, the cigarette smoke, the interchange of bright smiles and eye-glances -- all this display and magnificence overpowered the daugh- ter of Mrs. Dempsey and held her motionless.

  Mr. Brunelli stepped into the yard and seemed to spread his smile and bow over the entire company. And everywhere there was a great clapping of bands and a few cries of "Bravo! " and "'Tonio! 'Tonio!" whatever those words might mean. Ladies waved their napkins at him, gentlemen almost twisted their necks off, trying to catch his nod.

  When the ovation was concluded Mr. Brunelli, with a final bow, stepped nimbly into the kitchen and flung off his coat and waistcoat.

  "Flaherty, the nimblest "garsong" among the waiters, had been assigned to the special service of Katy. She was a little faint from hunger, for the Irish stew on the Dempsey table had been particu- larly weak that day. Delicious odors from unknown dishes tantalized her. And Flaherty began to bring to her table course after course of ambrosial food that the gods might have pronounced excellent.

  But even in the midst of her Lucullian repast Katy laid down her knife and fork. Her heart sank as lead, and a tear fell upon her filet mignon. Her haunting suspicions of the star lodger arose again, fourfold. Thus courted and admired and smiled upon by that fashionable and gracious assembly, what else could Mr. Brunelli be but one of those dazzling titled patricians, glorious of name but shy of rent money, concerning whom experience had made her wise? With a sense of his ineligibility growing within her there was mingled a torturing conviction that his personality was becoming more pleasing to her day by day. And why had he left her to dine alone?

  But here he was coming again, now coatless, his snowy shirt-sleeves rolled high above his Jeffries- onian elbows, a white yachting cap perched upon his jetty curls.

  "'Tonio! 'Tonio!" shouted many, and "The spaghetti! The spaghetti!" shouted the rest.

  Never at 'Tonio's did a waiter dare to serve a dish of spaghetti until 'Tonio came to test it, to prove the sauce and add the needful dash of seasoning that gave it perfection.

  From table to table moved 'Tonio, like a prince in his palace, greeting his guests. White, jewelled bands signalled him from every side.

  A glass of wine with this one and that, smiles for all, a jest and repartee for any that might challenge -- truly few princes could be so agreeable a host! And what artist could ask for further appreciation of his handiwork? Katy did not know that the proudest consummation of a New Yorker's ambition is to shake bands with a spaghetti chef or to receive a nod from a Broadway head-waiter.

  At last the company thinned, leaving' but a few couples and quartettes lingering over new wine and old stories. And then came Mr. Brunelli to Katy's secluded table, and drew a chair close to hers.

  Katy smiled at him dreamily. She was eating the last spoonful of a raspberry roll with Burgundy sauce.

  "You have seen!" said Mr. Brunelli, laying one hand upon his collar bone. "I am Antonio Brunelli! Yes; I am the great 'Tonio! You have not suspect that! I loave you, Katy, and you shall marry with me. Is it not so? Call me 'Antonio,' and say that you will be mine."

  Katy's head drooped to the shoulder that was now freed from all suspicion of having received the knightly accolade.

  "Oh, Andy," she sighed, "this is great! Sure, I'll marry wid ye. But why didn't ye tell me ye was the cook? I was near turnin' ye down for bein' one of thim foreign counts!"

  FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY

  Vuyning left his club, cursing it softly, without any particular anger. From ten in the morning un- til eleven it had bored him immeasurably. Kirk with his fish story, Brooks with his Porto Rico cigars, old Morrison with his anecdote about the widow, Hep- burn with his invariable luck at billiards -- all these afflictions had been repeated without change of bill or scenery. Besides these morning evils Miss Allison had refused him again on the night before. But that was a chronic trouble. Five times she had laughed at his offer to make her Mrs. Vuyning. He intended to ask her again the next Wednesday evening.

  Vuyning walked along Forty-fourth Street to Broadway, and then drifted down the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham. He wore a morning suit of light gray, low, dull kid shoes, a plain, finely woven straw hat, and his visible linen was the most delicate possible shade of heliotrope. His necktie was the blue-gray of a November sky, and its knot was plainly the outcome of a lordly carelessness combined with an accurate conception of the most recent dictum of fashion.

  Now, to write of a man's haberdashery is a worse thing than to write a historical novel "around" Paul Jones, or to pen a testimonial to a hay-fever cure.

  Therefore, let it be known that the description of Vuyning's apparel is germane to the movements of the story, and not to make room for the new fall stock of goods.

  Even Broadway that morning was a discord in Vuyning's ears; and in his eyes it paralleled for a few dreamy, dreary minutes a certain howling, scorching, seething, malodorous slice of street that he remembered in Morocco. He saw the struggling mass of dogs, beggars, fakirs, slave-drivers and veiled women in carts without horses, the sun blazing brightly among the bazaars, the piles of rubbish from ruined temples in the street - and then a lady, passing, jabbed the ferrule of a parasol in his side and brought him back to Broadway.

  Five minutes of his stroll brought him to a certain corner, where a number of silent, pale-faced men are accustomed to stand, immovably, for hours, busy with the file blades of their penknives, with their hat brims on a level with their eyelids. Wall Street speculators, driving home in their carriages, love to point out these men to their visiting friends and tell them of this rather famous lounging-place of the "crooks." On Wall Street the speculators never use the file blades of their knives.

  Vuyning was delighted when one of this company stepped forth and addressed him as he was passing. He was hungry for something out of the ordinary, and to be accosted by this smooth-faced, keen-eyed, low-voiced, athletic member of the under world, with his grim, yet pleasant smile, had all the taste of an adventure to the convention-weary Vuyning.

  "Excuse me, friend," said be. "Could I have a few minutes' talk with you -- on the level?"

  "Certainly," said Vuyning, with a smile. "But, suppose we step aside to a quieter place. There is a divan -- a cafe over here that will do. Schrumm will give us a private corner."

  Schrumm established them under a growing palm, with two seidls between them. Vuyning made a pleasant reference to meteorological conditions, thus forming a binge upon which might be swung the door leading from the thought repository of the other.

  "In the first place," said his companion, with the air of one who presents his credentials, "I want you to understand that I am a crook. Out West I am known as Rowdy the Dude. Pickpocket, supper man, second-story man, yeggman, boxman, all-round bur- glar, cardsharp and slickest con man west of the Twenty-third Street ferry landing -- that's my his- tory. That's to show I'm on the square -- with you. My name's Emerson."

  "Confound old Kirk with his fish stories" said Vuyning to himself, with silent glee as he went through his pockets for a card. "It's pronounced 'Vining,'" he said,
as he tossed it over to the other. "And I'll be as frank with you. I'm just a kind of a loafer, I guess, living on my daddy's money. At the club they call me 'Left-at-the-Post.' I never did a day's work in my life; and I haven't the heart to run over a chicken when I'm motoring. It's a pretty shabby record, altogether."

  "There's one thing you can do," said Emerson, admiringly; "you can carry duds. I've watched you several times pass on Broadway. You look the best dressed man I've seen. And I'll bet you a gold mine I've got $50 worth more gent's furnishings on my frame than you have. That's what I wanted to see you about. I can't do the trick. Take a look at me. What's wrong?"

  "Stand up," said Vuyning.

  Emerson arose, and slowly revolved.

  "You've been 'outfitted,'" declared the clubman. "Some Broadway window-dresser has misused you."

  "That's an expensive suit, though, Emerson."

  "A hundred dollars," said Emerson.

  "Twenty too much," said Vuyning. "Six months old in cut, one inch too long, and half an inch to- much lapel. Your hat is plainly dated one year ago, although there's only a sixteenth of an inch lacking in the brim to tell the story. That English poke in your collar is too short by the distance between Troy and London. A plain gold link cuff-button would take all the shine out of those pearl ones with dia- mond settings. Those tan shoes would be exactly the articles to work into the heart of a Brooklyn school-ma'am on a two weeks' visit to Lake Ronkon- koma. I think I caught a glimpse of a blue silk sock embroidered with russet lilies of the valley when you -- improperly -- drew up your trousers as you sat down. There are always plain ones to be had in the stores. Have I hurt your feelings, Emer- son?"