by O. Henry
Mr. Peters had a wife. This had not heretofore affected his standing with Ragsy and Kidd. But to-day it invested him with a peculiar interest. His friends, having escaped matrimony, had shown a disposition to deride Mr. Peters for his venture on that troubled sea. But at last they had been forced to acknowledge that either he had been gifted with a large foresight or that he was one of Fortune’s lucky sons.
For, Mrs. Peters had a dollar. A whole dollar bill, good and receivable by the Government for customs, taxes and all public dues. How to get possession of that dollar was the question up for discussion by the three musty musketeers.
“How do you know it was a dollar?” asked Ragsy, the immensity of the sum inclining him to scepticism.
“The coalman seen her have it,” said Mr. Peters. “She went out and done some washing yesterday. And look what she give me for breakfast — the heel of a loaf and a cup of coffee, and her with a dollar!”
“It’s fierce,” said Ragsy.
“Say we go up and punch ‘er and stick a towel in ‘er mouth and cop the coin” suggested Kidd, viciously. “Y’ ain’t afraid of a woman, are you?”
“She might holler and have us pinched,” demurred Ragsy. “I don’t believe in slugging no woman in a houseful of people.”
“Gent’men,” said Mr. Peters, severely, through his russet stubble, “remember that you are speaking of my wife. A man who would lift his hand to a lady except in the way of— “
“Maguire,” said Ragsy, pointedly, “has got his bock beer sign out. If we had a dollar we could— “
“Hush up!” said Mr. Peters, licking his lips. “We got to get that case note somehow, boys. Ain’t what’s a man’s wife’s his? Leave it to me. I’ll go over to the house and get it. Wait here for me.”
“I’ve seen ‘em give up quick, and tell you where it’s hid if you kick ‘em in the ribs,” said Kidd.
“No man would kick a woman,” said Peters, virtuously. “A little choking — just a touch on the windpipe — that gets away with ‘em — and no marks left. Wait for me. I’ll bring back that dollar, boys.”
High up in a tenement-house between Second Avenue and the river lived the Peterses in a back room so gloomy that the landlord blushed to take the rent for it. Mrs. Peters worked at sundry times, doing odd jobs of scrubbing and washing. Mr. Peters had a pure, unbroken record of five years without having earned a penny. And yet they clung together, sharing each other’s hatred and misery, being creatures of habit. Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.
Mrs. Peters reposed her 200 pounds on the safer of the two chairs and gazed stolidly out the one window at the brick wall opposite. Her eyes were red and damp. The furniture could have been carried away on a pushcart, but no pushcart man would have removed it as a gift.
The door opened to admit Mr. Peters. His fox-terrier eyes expressed a wish. His wife’s diagnosis located correctly the seat of it, but misread it hunger instead of thirst.
“You’ll get nothing more to eat till night,” she said, looking out of the window again. “Take your hound-dog’s face out of the room.”
Mr. Peters’s eye calculated the distance between them. By taking her by surprise it might be possible to spring upon her, overthrow her, and apply the throttling tactics of which he had boasted to his waiting comrades. True, it had been only a boast; never yet had he dared to lay violent hands upon her; but with the thoughts of the delicious, cool bock or Culmbacher bracing his nerves, he was near to upsetting his own theories of the treatment due by a gentleman to a lady. But, with his loafer’s love for the more artistic and less strenuous way, he chose diplomacy first, the high card in the game — the assumed attitude of success already attained.
“You have a dollar,” he said, loftily, but significantly in the tone that goes with the lighting of a cigar — when the properties are at hand.
“I have,” said Mrs. Peters, producing the bill from her bosom and crackling it, teasingly.
“I am offered a position in a — in a tea store,” said Mr. Peters. “I am to begin work to-morrow. But it will be necessary for me to buy a pair of— “
“You are a liar,” said Mrs. Peters, reinterring the note. “No tea store, nor no A B C store, nor no junk shop would have you. I rubbed the skin off both me hands washin’ jumpers and overalls to make that dollar. Do you think it come out of them suds to buy the kind you put into you? Skiddoo! Get your mind off of money.”
Evidently the poses of Talleyrand were not worth one hundred cents on that dollar. But diplomacy is dexterous. The artistic temperament of Mr. Peters lifted him by the straps of his congress gaiters and set him on new ground. He called up a look of desperate melancholy to his eyes.
“Clara,” he said, hollowly, “to struggle further is useless. You have always misunderstood me. Heaven knows I have striven with all my might to keep my head above the waves of misfortune, but— “
“Cut out the rainbow of hope and that stuff about walkin’ one by one through the narrow isles of Spain,” said Mrs. Peters, with a sigh. “I’ve heard it so often. There’s an ounce bottle of carbolic on the shelf behind the empty coffee can. Drink hearty.”
Mr. Peters reflected. What next! The old expedients had failed. The two musty musketeers were awaiting him hard by the ruined château — that is to say, on a park bench with rickety cast-iron legs. His honor was at stake. He had engaged to storm the castle single-handed and bring back the treasure that was to furnish them wassail and solace. And all that stood between him and the coveted dollar was his wife, once a little girl whom he could — aha! — why not again? Once with soft words he could, as they say, twist her around his little finger. Why not again? Not for years had he tried it. Grim poverty and mutual hatred had killed all that. But Ragsy and Kidd were waiting for him to bring the dollar!
Mr. Peters took a surreptitiously keen look at his wife. Her formless bulk overflowed the chair. She kept her eyes fixed out the window in a strange kind of trance. Her eyes showed that she had been recently weeping.
“I wonder,” said Mr. Peters to himself, “if there’d be anything in it.”
The window was open upon its outlook of brick walls and drab, barren back yards. Except for the mildness of the air that entered it might have been midwinter yet in the city that turns such a frowning face to besieging spring. But spring doesn’t come with the thunder of cannon. She is a sapper and a miner, and you must capitulate.
“I’ll try it,” said Mr. Peters to himself, making a wry face.
He went up to his wife and put his arm across her shoulders.
“Clara, darling,” he said in tones that shouldn’t have fooled a baby seal, “why should we have hard words? Ain’t you my own tootsum wootsum?”
A black mark against you, Mr. Peters, in the sacred ledger of Cupid. Charges of attempted graft are filed against you, and of forgery and utterance of two of Love’s holiest of appellations.
But the miracle of spring was wrought. Into the back room over the back alley between the black walls had crept the Harbinger. It was ridiculous, and yet — Well, it is a rat trap, and you, madam and sir and all of us, are in it.
Red and fat and crying like Niobe or Niagara, Mrs. Peters threw her arms around her lord and dissolved upon him. Mr. Peters would have striven to extricate the dollar bill from its deposit vault, but his arms were bound to his sides.
“Do you love me, James?” asked Mrs. Peters.
“Madly,” said James, “but— “
“You are ill!” exclaimed Mrs. Peters. “Why are you so pale and tired looking?”
“I feel weak,” said Mr. Peters. “I— “
“Oh, wait; I know what it is. Wait, James. I’ll be back in a minute.”
With a parting hug that revived in Mr. Peters recollections of the Terrible Turk, his wife hurried out of the room and down the stairs.
Mr. Peters hitched his thumbs under his suspenders.
“All right,” he confid
ed to the ceiling. “I’ve got her going. I hadn’t any idea the old girl was soft any more under the foolish rib. Well, sir; ain’t I the Claude Melnotte of the lower East Side? What? It’s a 100 to 1 shot that I get the dollar. I wonder what she went out for. I guess she’s gone to tell Mrs. Muldoon on the second floor, that we’re reconciled. I’ll remember this. Soft soap! And Ragsy was talking about slugging her!”
Mrs. Peters came back with a bottle of sarsaparilla.
“I’m glad I happened to have that dollar,” she said. “You’re all run down, honey.”
Mr. Peters had a tablespoonful of the stuff inserted into him. Then Mrs. Peters sat on his lap and murmured:
“Call me tootsum wootsums again, James.”
He sat still, held there by his materialized goddess of spring.
Spring had come.
On the bench in Union Square Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Kidd squirmed, tongue-parched, awaiting D’Artagnan and his dollar.
“I wish I had choked her at first,” said Mr. Peters to himself.
WHILE THE AUTO WAITS
Promptly at the beginning of twilight, came again to that quiet corner of that quiet, small park the girl in gray. She sat upon a bench and read a book, for there was yet to come a half hour in which print could be accomplished.
To repeat: Her dress was gray, and plain enough to mask its impeccancy of style and fit. A large-meshed veil imprisoned her turban hat and a face that shone through it with a calm and unconscious beauty. She had come there at the same hour on the day previous, and on the day before that; and there was one who knew it.
The young man who knew it hovered near, relying upon burnt sacrifices to the great joss, Luck. His piety was rewarded, for, in turning a page, her book slipped from her fingers and bounded from the bench a full yard away.
The young man pounced upon it with instant avidity, returning it to its owner with that air that seems to flourish in parks and public places — a compound of gallantry and hope, tempered with respect for the policeman on the beat. In a pleasant voice, he risked an inconsequent remark upon the weather — that introductory topic responsible for so much of the world’s unhappiness — and stood poised for a moment, awaiting his fate.
The girl looked him over leisurely; at his ordinary, neat dress and his features distinguished by nothing particular in the way of expression.
“You may sit down, if you like,” she said, in a full, deliberate contralto. “Really, I would like to have you do so. The light is too bad for reading. I would prefer to talk.”
The vassal of Luck slid upon the seat by her side with complaisance.
“Do you know,” he said, speaking the formula with which park chairmen open their meetings, “that you are quite the stunningest girl I have seen in a long time? I had my eye on you yesterday. Didn’t know somebody was bowled over by those pretty lamps of yours, did you, honeysuckle?”
“Whoever you are,” said the girl, in icy tones, “you must remember that I am a lady. I will excuse the remark you have just made because the mistake was, doubtless, not an unnatural one — in your circle. I asked you to sit down; if the invitation must constitute me your honeysuckle, consider it withdrawn.”
“I earnestly beg your pardon,” pleaded the young ran. His expression of satisfaction had changed to one of penitence and humility. “It was my fault, you know — I mean, there are girls in parks, you know — that is, of course, you don’t know, but— “
“Abandon the subject, if you please. Of course I know. Now, tell me about these people passing and crowding, each way, along these paths. Where are they going? Why do they hurry so? Are they happy?”
The young man had promptly abandoned his air of coquetry. His cue was now for a waiting part; he could not guess the rôle he would be expected to play.
“It is interesting to watch them,” he replied, postulating her mood. “It is the wonderful drama of life. Some are going to supper and some to — er — other places. One wonders what their histories are.”
“I do not,” said the girl; “I am not so inquisitive. I come here to sit because here, only, can I be near the great, common, throbbing heart of humanity. My part in life is cast where its beats are never felt. Can you surmise why I spoke to you, Mr. — ?”
“Parkenstacker,” supplied the young man. Then he looked eager and hopeful.
“No,” said the girl, holding up a slender finger, and smiling slightly. “You would recognize it immediately. It is impossible to keep one’s name out of print. Or even one’s portrait. This veil and this hat of my maid furnish me with an incog. You should have seen the chauffeur stare at it when he thought I did not see. Candidly, there are five or six names that belong in the holy of holies, and mine, by the accident of birth, is one of them. I spoke to you, Mr. Stackenpot— “
“Parkenstacker,” corrected the young man, modestly.
“ — Mr. Parkenstacker, because I wanted to talk, for once, with a natural man — one unspoiled by the despicable gloss of wealth and supposed social superiority. Oh! you do not know how weary I am of it — money, money, money! And of the men who surround me, dancing like little marionettes all cut by the same pattern. I am sick of pleasure, of jewels, of travel, of society, of luxuries of all kinds.”
“I always had an idea,” ventured the young man, hesitatingly, “that money must be a pretty good thing.”
“A competence is to be desired. But when you have so many millions that — !” She concluded the sentence with a gesture of despair. “It is the monotony of it,” she continued, “that palls. Drives, dinners, theatres, balls, suppers, with the gilding of superfluous wealth over it all. Sometimes the very tinkle of the ice in my champagne glass nearly drives me mad.”
Mr. Parkenstacker looked ingenuously interested.
“I have always liked,” he said, “to read and hear about the ways of wealthy and fashionable folks. I suppose I am a bit of a snob. But I like to have my information accurate. Now, I had formed the opinion that champagne is cooled in the bottle and not by placing ice in the glass.”
The girl gave a musical laugh of genuine amusement.
“You should know,” she explained, in an indulgent tone, “that we of the non-useful class depend for our amusement upon departure from precedent. Just now it is a fad to put ice in champagne. The idea was originated by a visiting Prince of Tartary while dining at the Waldorf. It will soon give way to some other whim. Just as at a dinner party this week on Madison Avenue a green kid glove was laid by the plate of each guest to be put on and used while eating olives.”
“I see,” admitted the young man, humbly.
“These special diversions of the inner circle do not become familiar to the common public.”
“Sometimes,” continued the girl, acknowledging his confession of error by a slight bow, “I have thought that if I ever should love a man it would be one of lowly station. One who is a worker and not a drone. But, doubtless, the claims of caste and wealth will prove stronger than my inclination. Just now I am besieged by two. One is a Grand Duke of a German principality. I think he has, or has had, a wife, somewhere, driven mad by his intemperance and cruelty. The other is an English Marquis, so cold and mercenary that I even prefer the diabolism of the Duke. What is it that impels me to tell you these things, Mr. Packenstacker?
“Parkenstacker,” breathed the young man. “Indeed, you cannot know how much I appreciate your confidences.”
The girl contemplated him with the calm, impersonal regard that befitted the difference in their stations.
“What is your line of business, Mr. Parkenstacker?” she asked.
“A very humble one. But I hope to rise in the world. Were you really in earnest when you said that you could love a man of lowly position?”
“Indeed I was. But I said ‘might.’ There is the Grand Duke and the Marquis, you know. Yes; no calling could be too humble were the man what I would wish him to be.”
“I work,” declared Mr. Parkenstacker, “in a restaurant.”
“Not as a waiter?” she said, a little imploringly. “Labor is noble, but personal attendance, you know — valets and— “
“I am not a waiter. I am cashier in” — on the street they faced that bounded the opposite side of the park was the brilliant electric sign “RESTAURANT”— “I am cashier in that restaurant you see there.”
The girl consulted a tiny watch set in a bracelet of rich design upon her left wrist, and rose, hurriedly. She thrust her book into a glittering reticule suspended from her waist, for which, however, the book was too large.
“Why are you not at work?” she asked.
“I am on the night turn,” said the young man; “it is yet an hour before my period begins. May I not hope to see you again?”
“I do not know. Perhaps — but the whim may not seize me again. I must go quickly now. There is a dinner, and a box at the play — and, oh! the same old round. Perhaps you noticed an automobile at the upper corner of the park as you came. One with a white body.”
“And red running gear?” asked the young man, knitting his brows reflectively.
“Yes. I always come in that. Pierre waits for me there. He supposes me to be shopping in the department store across the square. Conceive of the bondage of the life wherein we must deceive even our chauffeurs. Good-night.”
“But it is dark now,” said Mr. Parkenstacker, “and the park is full of rude men. May I not walk— “
“If you have the slightest regard for my wishes,” said the girl, firmly, “you will remain at this bench for ten minutes after I have left. I do not mean to accuse you, but you are probably aware that autos generally bear the monogram of their owner. Again, good-night.”
Swift and stately she moved away through the dusk. The young man watched her graceful form as she reached the pavement at the park’s edge, and turned up along it toward the corner where stood the automobile. Then he treacherously and unhesitatingly began to dodge and skim among the park trees and shrubbery in a course parallel to her route, keeping her well in sight.