by O. Henry
Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle.
Out came — out it had to come — Maida’s $4.
“You blessed darling,” cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset. “I’ll pay the mean old thing and then I’m going to try on my dress. I think it’s heavenly. Come up and look at it. I’ll pay the money back, a dollar a week — honest I will.”
Thanksgiving.
The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched into Maida’s room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. Maida sat by the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist darning a st — . Oh, doing fancy work.
“Why, goodness me! ain’t you dressed yet?” shrilled the red one. “How does it fit in the back? Don’t you think these velvet tabs look awful swell? Why ain’t you dressed, Maida?”
“My dress didn’t get finished in time,” said Maida. “I’m not going to the dinner.”
“That’s too bad. Why, I’m awfully sorry, Maida. Why don’t you put on anything and come along — it’s just the store folks, you know, and they won’t mind.”
“I was set on my purple,” said Maida. “If I can’t have it I won’t go at all. Don’t bother about me. Run along or you’ll be late. You look awful nice in red.”
At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the time of the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls shrieking over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachman’s roar over his own deeply-concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. Bachman, who came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see Mr. Ramsay moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of all.
At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless air she slowly made her way to Schlegel’s shop and told him she could not pay the $4 due on the dress.
“Gott!” cried Schlegel, angrily. “For what do you look so glum? Take him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass mine shop every day in two years? If I make clothes is it that I do not know how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when you can. Take him away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in him all right. So. Pay me when you can.”
Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and hurried away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of rain struck upon her face. She smiled and did not feel it.
Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose wardrobes are charged to the old man’s account, you cannot begin to comprehend — you could not understand why Maida did not feel the cold dash of the Thanksgiving rain.
At five o’clock she went out upon the street wearing her purple dress. The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her in a steady, wind-blown pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with close-held umbrellas and tight buttoned raincoats. Many of them turned their heads to marvel at this beautiful, serene, happy-eyed girl in the purple dress walking through the storm as though she were strolling in a garden under summer skies.
I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual longing for pretty things — to starve eight months in order to bring a purple dress and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned?
Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and she walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart must have one crumb during a year. The rain ran down and dripped from her fingers.
Some one turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. Ramsay’s eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest.
“Why, Miss Maida,” said he, “you look simply magnificent in your new dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. And of all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and intelligence. There is nothing more healthful and invigorating than braving the weather as you are doing. May I walk with you?”
And Maida blushed and sneezed.
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99
John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted with what his comrades called Japanitis.
Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour of the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions of both the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of pins stuck in the map which represented the opposing forces, and these he moved about from day to day in conformity with the war news in the daily papers.
Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, and then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen would hear him yell: “Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat ‘em up, you little sleight-o’-hand, bow-legged bull terriers — give ‘em another of them Yalu looloos, and you’ll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your Russians — say, wouldn’t they give you a painsky when it comes to a scrapovitch?”
Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic champion of the Mikado’s men. Supporters of the Russian cause did well to keep clear of Engine-House No. 99.
Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes’s head. That was when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his driver’s seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the finest team in the whole department — according to the crew of 99.
Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these — the code of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention of street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffries’s new punch trying for place and show.
The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention of the S. P. C. A.
One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled ashore and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty — perhaps, theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of its own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; its face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few coins — denarii — scudi — kopecks — pfennigs — pilasters — whatever the financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been.
Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar and movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates had shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he hated, as far as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99. Light as a cork, he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the crudest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into the reservoir of Liberty.
While crossing Third avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful chord in the uproar — the musical clanging of a gong and a great shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were hurrying to see.
This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, enraptured, uncomprehen
ding grin. And so stepping, stepped into the path of No. 99’s flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe.
The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions or amendments. It is a simple thing — as simple as the rule of three. There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the hose-cart and the iron pillar of the elevated railroad.
John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver’s strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus — beautiful, raven-black, best-loved Erebus — lay whickering in his harness with a broken leg.
In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of No. 99 heard the crack of the S. P. C. A. agent’s pistol, and turned their heads away, not daring to look toward Erebus again.
When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one of them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly about it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered effervescently and waved its hands.
“Sounds like a seidlitz powder,” said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, “and it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man! — that hoss was worth a steamer full of such two-legged animals. It’s a immigrant — that’s what it is.”
“Look at the doctor’s chalk mark on its coat,” said Reilly, the desk man. “It’s just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one of them Finns, I guess. That’s the kind of truck that Europe unloads onto us.”
“Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up in hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city,” groaned another fireman. “It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned.”
“Somebody go around and get Sloviski,” suggested the engine driver, “and let’s see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of hair and head noises.”
Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third avenue, and was reputed to be a linguist.
One of the men fetched him — a fat, cringing man, with a discursive eye and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him.
“Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski,” requested Mike Dowling. “We can’t quite figure out whether he’s from the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong-on-the-Ganges.”
Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immigrant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger ale.
“I have you his name,” reported Sloviski. “You shall not pronounce it. Writing of it in paper is better.” They gave him paper, and he wrote, “Demetre Svangvsk.”
“Looks like short hand,” said the desk man.
“He speaks some language,” continued the interpreter, wiping his forehead, “of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the Roumanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not him quite understand.”
“Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?” asked Mike, frowning at the polyglot description.
“He is a” — answered Sloviski— “he is a — I dink he come from — I dink he is a fool,” he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, “and if you pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen.”
“Whatever he is, he’s a bird,” said Mike Dowling; “and you want to watch him fly.”
Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and bestowed upon him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus of Company 99. Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, turning once to show his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen.
In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital. With great gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. “My money on the Japs every time,” he declared. “Why, look at them Russians — they’re nothing but wolves. Wipe ‘em out, I say — and the little old jiu jitsu gang are just the cherry blossoms to do the trick, and don’t you forget it!”
The second day after Byrnes’s reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, the unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than ever. He managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose-cart driver on his recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident. This he accomplished by so many extravagant gestures and explosive noises that the company was diverted for half an hour. Then they kicked him out again, and on the next day he came back grinning. How or where he lived no one knew. And then John Byrnes’s nine-year-old son, Chris, who brought him convalescent delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Svangvsk, and they allowed him to loaf about the door of the engine-house occasionally.
One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire Commissioner buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped inside for an informal inspection. The men kicked Svangvsk out a little harder than usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, in which everything shone like my lady’s mirror.
The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss of Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that would do him credit. So they let Joe out of his stall and showed the Deputy how deserving he was of the finest mate that could be in horsedom.
While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into the Deputy’s auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a monster puffing and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. The big auto shot away, luckily taking a straight course down the street. The boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the cushions and howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped that auto except a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to gain by such a stoppage.
Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another kick when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others sprang for the door Demetre sprang for Joe. He glided upon the horse’s bare back like a snake and shouted something at him like the crack of a dozen whips. One of the firemen afterward swore that Joe answered him back in the same language. Ten seconds after the auto started the big horse was eating up the asphalt behind it like a strip of macaroni.
Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said that the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the middle of it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on its back cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over and picked the black speck out of the noise.
Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk’s last kicking at the hands — or rather the feet — of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through the door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he was going to receive.
Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe’s and made a noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of the delicatessen.
John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be kicked. Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that Demetre grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of punishment.
“The heathen rides like a Cossack,” remarked a fireman who had seen a Wild West show— “they’re the greatest riders in the world.”
The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever.
“Yas — yas — me Cossack,” he spluttered, striking his chest.
“Cossack!” repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, “ain’t that a kin
d of a Russian?”
“They’re one of the Russian tribes, sure,” said the desk man, who read books between fire alarms.
Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know of the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called to Byrnes:
“Hello there, Jimmy, me boy — how’s the war coming along? Japs still got the bear on the trot, have they?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said John Byrnes, argumentatively, “them Japs haven’t got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets a good whack at ‘em and they won’t be knee-high to a puddle-ducksky.”
THE LOST BLEND
Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need not listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, where a dime dropped into the cold bouillon aperture will bring forth a dry Martini.
Con Lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Kenealy’s café. You and I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side and went into voluntary liquidation with our week’s wages. Opposite danced Con, clean, temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, punctual, trustworthy, young, responsible, and took our money.
The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little “places” which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited by laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have nothing to do with either.
Over the café lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter Katherine had eyes of dark Irish — but why should you be told? Be content with your Geraldine or your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; and when she called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the pitcher of beer for dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk punch in the shaker. Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; and if you hurl the last shilling of your fortune upon the bar for whiskey, the bartender shall take it, and marry his boss’s daughter, and good will grow out of it.