by O. Henry
"Double the ante!" cried the criticised one, greed- ily. "Give me more of it. There's a way to tote the haberdashery, and I want to get wise to it. Say, you're the right kind of a swell. Anything else to the queer about me?"
"Your tie," said Vuyning, "is tied with absolute precision and correctness."
"Thanks," gratefully -- "I spent over half an hour at it before I -- "
"Thereby," interrupted Vuyning, "completing your resemblance to a dummy in a Broadway store window."
"Yours truly," said Emerson, sitting down again.
"It's bully of you to put me wise. I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn't just put my finger on it. I guess it comes by nature to know how to wear clothes."
"Oh, I suppose," said Vuyning, with a laugh, "that my ancestors picked up the knack while they were peddling clothes from house to house a couple of hundred years ago. I'm told they did that."
"And mine," said Emerson, cheerfully, "were making their visits at night, I guess, and didn't have a chance to catch on to the correct styles."
"I tell you what," said Vuyning, whose ennui had taken wings, "I'll take you to my tailor. He'll eliminate the mark of the beast from your exterior. That is, if you care to go any further in the way of expense."
"Play 'em to the ceiling," said Emerson, with a boyish smile of joy. "I've got a roll as big around as a barrel of black-eyed peas and as loose as the wrapper of a two-for-fiver. I don't mind telling you that I was not touring among the Antipodes when the burglar-proof safe of the Farmers' National Bank of Butterville, Ia., flew open some moonless nights ago to the tune of $16,000."
"Aren't you afraid," asked Vuyning, "that I'll call a cop and hand you over?"
"You tell me," said Emerson, coolly, "why I didn't keep them."
He laid Vuyning's pocketbook and watch -- the Vuyning 100-year-old family watch on the table.
"Man," said Vuyning, revelling, "did you ever hear the tale Kirk tells about the six-pound trout and the old fisherman?"
"Seems not," said Emerson, politely. "I'd like to."
"But you won't," said Vuyning. "I've heard it scores of times. That's why I won't tell you. I was just thinking how much better this is than a club. Now, shall we go to my tailor?"
"Boys, and elderly gents," said Vuyning, five days later at his club, standing up against the window where his coterie was gathered, and keeping out the breeze, "a friend of mine from the West will dine at our table this evening."
"Will he ask if we have heard the latest from Denver?" said a member, squirming in his chair.
"Will he mention the new twenty-three-story Ma- sonic Temple, in Quincy, Ill.?" inquired another, dropping his nose-glasses.
"Will he spring one of those Western Mississippi River catfish stories, in which they use yearling calves for bait?" demanded Kirk, fiercely.
"Be comforted," said Vuyning. "He has none of the little vices. He is a burglar and safe-blower, and a pal of mine."
"Oh, Mary Ann!" said they. "Must you always adorn every statement with your alleged humor?"
It came to pass that at eight in the evening a calm, smooth, brilliant, affable man sat at Vuyning's right hand during dinner. And when the ones who pass their lives in city streets spoke of skyscrapers or of the little Czar on his far, frozen throne, or of insig- nificant fish from inconsequential streams, this big, deep-chested man, faultlessly clothed, and eyed like an Emperor, disposed of their Lilliputian chatter with a wink of his eyelash.
And then he painted for them with hard, broad strokes a marvellous lingual panorama of the West. He stacked snow-topped mountains on the table, freezing the hot dishes of the waiting diners. With a wave of his hand he swept the clubhouse into a pine-crowned gorge, turning the waiters into a grim posse, and each listener into a blood-stained fugitive, climbing with torn fingers upon the ensanguined rocks. He touched the table and spake, and the five panted as they gazed on barren lava beds, and each man took his tongue between his teeth and felt his mouth bake at the tale of a land empty of water and food. As simply as Homer sang, while he dug a tine of his fork leisurely into the tablecloth, he opened a new world to their view, as does one who tells a child of the Looking-Glass Country.
As one of his listeners might have spoken of tea too strong at a Madison Square "afternoon," so he depicted the ravages of redeye in a border town when the caballeros of the lariat and "forty-five" reduced ennui to a minimum.
And then, with a sweep of his white, unringed hands, be dismissed Melpomene, and forthwith Diana and Amaryllis footed it before the mind's eyes of the clubmen.
The savannas of the continent spread before them. The wind, humming through a hundred leagues of sage brush and mesquite, closed their ears to the city's staccato noises. He told them of camps, of ranches marooned in a sea of fragrant prairie blos- soms, of gallops in the stilly night that Apollo would have forsaken his daytime steeds to enjoy; he read them the great, rough epic of the cattle and the hills that have not been spoiled by the band of man, the mason. His words were a telescope to the city men, whose eyes had looked upon Youngstown, O., and whose tongues had called it "West."
In fact, Emerson had them "going."
The next morning at ten he met Vuyning, by ap- pointment, at a Forty-second Street cafe.
Emerson was to leave for the West that day. He wore a suit of dark cheviot that looked to have been draped upon him by an ancient Grecian tailor who was a few thousand years ahead of the styles.
"Mr. Vuyning," said he, with the clear, ingenuous smile of the successful "crook," it's up to me to go the limit for you any time I can do so. You're the real thing; and if I can ever return the favor, you bet your life I'll do it."
"What was that cow-puncher's name?" asked Vuyning, "who used to catch a mustang by the nose and mane, and throw him till he put the bridle on?"
"Bates," said Emerson.
"Thanks," said Vuyning. "I thought it was Yates. Oh, about that toggery business -- I'd for- gotten that."
"I've been looking for some guy to put me on the right track for years," said Emerson. "You're the goods, duty free, and half-way to the warehouse in a red wagon."
"Bacon, toasted on a green willow switch over red coals, ought to put broiled lobsters out of business," said Vuyning. "And you say a horse at the end of a thirty-foot rope can't pull a ten-inch stake out of wet prairie? Well, good-bye, old man, if you must be off."
At one o'clock Vuyning had luncheon with Miss Allison by previous arrangement.
For thirty minutes be babbled to her, unaccount- ably, of ranches, horses, cations, cyclones, round-ups, Rocky Mountains and beans and bacon. She looked at him with wondering and half-terrified eyes.
"I was going to propose again to-day," said Vuy- ning, cheerily, but I won't. I've worried you often enough. You know dad has a ranch in Colorado. What's the good of staying here? Jumping jon- quils! but it's great out there. I'm going to start next Tuesday."
"No, you won't," said Miss Allison.
"What?" said Vuyning.
"Not alone," said Miss Allison, dropping a tear upon her salad. "What do you think?"
"Betty!" exclaimed Vuyning, "what do you mean?
"I'll go too," said Miss Allison, forcibly. Vuyning filled her glass with Apollinaris.
"Here's to Rowdy the Dude!" he gave -- a toast mysterious.
"Don't know him," said Miss Allison; "but if he's your friend, Jimmy -- here goes!"
THE MEMENTO
Miss Lynnette D'Armande turned her back on Broadway. This was but tit for tat, be- cause Broadway had often done the same thing to Miss D'Armande. Still, the "tats" seemed to have it, for the ex-leading lady of the "Reaping the Whirlwind" company had everything to ask of Broadway, while there was no vice-versa.
So Miss Lynnette D'Armande turned the back of her chair to her window that overlooked Broadway, and sat down to stitch in time the lisle-thread heel of a black silk stocking. The tumult and glitter of the roaring Broadway beneath her window had no charm for her; what she greatly des
ired was the stifling air of a dressing-room on that fairyland street and the roar of an audience gathered in that capricious quarter. In the meantime, those stock- ings must not be neglected. Silk does wear out so, but -- after all, isn't it just the only goods there is?
The Hotel Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathon looks on the sea. It stands like a gloomy cliff above the whirlpool where the tides of two great thorough- fares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the end of their wanderings, to loosen the buskin and dust the sock. Thick in the streets around it are booking- offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster-pal- aces to which those thorny paths lead. Wandering through the eccentric halls of the dim and fusty Thalia, you seem to have found yourself in some great ark or caravan about to sail, or fly, or roll away on wheels. About the house lingers a sense of unrest, of expectation, of transientness, even of anxiety and apprehension. The halls are a labyrinth. Without a guide, you wander like a lost soul in a Sam Loyd puzzle.
Turning any corner, a dressing-sack or a cul-de-sac may bring you up short. You meet alarming tragedians stalking in bath-robes in search of ru- mored bathrooms. From hundreds of rooms come the buzz of talk, scraps of new and old songs, and the ready laughter of the convened players.
Summer has come; their companies have disbanded, and they take their rest in their favorite caravansary, while they besiege the managers for engagements for the coming season.
At this hour of the afternoon the day's work of tramping the rounds of the agents' offices is over. Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things and a swish of silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odor of gaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious young comedians, with versatile Adam's apples, gather in doorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching from somewhere comes the smell of ham and red cabbage, and the crash of dishes on the American plan.
The indeterminate hum of life in the Thalia is enlivened by the discreet popping -- at reasonable and salubrious intervals -- of beer-bottle corks. Thus punctuated, life in the genial hostel scans easily -- the comma being the favorite mark, semicolons frowned upon, and periods barred.
Miss D'Armannde's room was a small one. There was room for her rocker between the dresser and the wash-stand if it were placed longitudinally. On the dresser were its usual accoutrements, plus the ex-lead- ing lady's collected souvenirs of road engagements and photographs of her dearest and best professional friends.
At one of these photographs she looked twice or thrice as she darned, and smiled friendlily.
"I'd like to know where Lee is just this minute," she said, half-aloud.
If you had been privileged to view the photograph thus flattered, you would have thought at the first glance that you saw the picture of a many-petalled white flower, blown through the air by a storm. But the floral kingdom was not responsible for that swirl of petalous whiteness.
You saw the filmy, brief skirt of Miss Rosalie Ray as she made a complete heels-over-head turn in her wistaria-entwined swing, far out from the stage, high above the heads of the audience. You saw the cam- era's inadequate representation of the graceful, strong kick, with which she, at this exciting moment, sent flying, high and far, the yellow silk garter that each evening spun from her agile limb and descended upon the delighted audience below.
You saw, too, amid the black-clothed, mainly mas- culine patrons of select vaudeville a hundred hands raised with the hope of staying the flight of the bril- liant aerial token.
Forty weeks of the best circuits this act had brought Miss Rosalie Ray, for each of two years. She did other things during her twelve minutes -- a song and dance, imitations of two or three actors who are but imitations of themselves, and a balancing feat with a step-ladder and feather-duster; but when the blossom-decked swing was let down from the flies, and Miss Rosalie sprang smiling into the seat, with the golden circlet conspicuous in the place whence it was soon to slide and become a soaring and coveted guerdon -- then it was that the audience rose in its seat as a single man -- or presumably so -- and in- dorsed the specialty that made Miss Ray's name a favorite in the booking-offices.
At the end of the two years Miss Ray suddenly an- nounced to her dear friend, Miss D'Armande, that she was going to spend the summer at an antediluvian village on the north shore of Long Island, and that the stage would see her no more.
Seventeen minutes after Miss Lynnette D'Armande had expressed her wish to know the whereabouts of her old chum, there were sharp raps at her door.
Doubt not that it was Rosalie Ray. At the shrill command to enter she did so, with something of a tired flutter, and dropped a heavy hand-bag on the floor. Upon my word, it was Rosalie, in a loose, travel-stained automobileless coat, closely tied brown veil with yard-long, flying ends, gray walking-suit and tan oxfords with lavender overgaiters.
When she threw off her veil and hat, you saw a pretty enough face, now flushed and disturbed by some unusual emotion, and restless, large eyes with discontent marring their brightness. A heavy pile of dull auburn hair, hastily put up, was escaping in crinkly, waving strands and curling, small locks from the confining combs and pins.
The meeting of the two was not marked by the effusion vocal, gymnastical, osculatory and catecheti- cal that distinguishes the greetings of their unpro- fessional sisters in society. There was a brief clinch, two simultaneous labial dabs and they stood on the same footing of the old days. Very much like the short salutations of soldiers or of travellers in for- eign wilds are the welcomes between the strollers at the corners of their crisscross roads.
"I've got the hall-room two flights up above yours," said Rosalie, "but I came straight to see you before going up. I didn't know you were here till they told me."
"I've been in since the last of April," said Lyn- nette. "And I'm going on the road with a 'Fatal Inheritance' company. We open next week in Eliz- abeth. I thought you'd quit the stage, Lee. Tell me about yourself."
Rosalie settled herself with a skilful wriggle on the top of Miss D'Armande's wardrobe trunk, and leaned her head against the papered wall. From long habit, thus can peripatetic leading ladies and their sisters make themselves as comfort. able as though the deepest armchairs embraced them.
"I'm going to tell you, Lynn," she said, with a strangely sardonic and yet carelessly resigned look on her youthful face. "And then to-morrow I'll strike the old Broadway trail again, and wear some more paint off the chairs in the agents' offices. If anybody had told me any time in the last three months up to four o'clock this afternoon that I'd ever listen to that 'Leave-your-name-and-address' rot of the booking bunch again, I'd have given 'em the real Mrs. Fiske laugh. Loan me a handkerchief, Lynn. Gee! but those Long Island trains are fierce. I've got enough soft-coal cinders on my face to go on and play Topsy without using the cork. And, speaking of corks -- got anything to drink, Lynn?"
Miss D'Armande opened a door of the wash-stand and took out a bottle.
"There's nearly a pint of Manhattan. There's a cluster of carnations in the drinking glass, but -- "
"Oh, pass the bottle. Save the glass for com- pany. Thanks! That hits the spot. The same to you. My first drink in three months!"
"Yes, Lynn, I quit the stage at the end of last season. I quit it because I was sick of the life. And especially because my heart and soul were sick of men of the kind of men we stage people have to be up against. You know what the game is to us -- it's a fight against 'em all the way down the line from the manager who wants us to try his new motor-car to the bill-posters who want to call us by our front names.
"And the men we have to meet after the show are the worst of all. The stage-door kind, and the man- ager's friends who take us to supper and show their diamonds and talk about seeing 'Dan' and 'Dave' and 'Charlie' for us. They're beasts, and I hate 'em.
"I tell you, Lynn, it's the girls like us on the stage that ought to be pitied. It's girls from good homes that are honestly ambitious and work hard to rise in th
e profession, but never do get there. You bear a lot of sympathy sloshed around on chorus girls and their fifteen dollars a week. Piffle! There ain't a sorrow in the chorus that a lobster cannot heal.
"If there's any tears to shed, let 'em fall for the actress that gets a salary of from thirty to forty-five dollars a week for taking a leading part in a bum show. She knows she'll never do any better; but she hangs on for years, hoping for the 'chance I that never comes.