by O. Henry
But do not misconjecture because this description sounds like a General Alarm that James was either lost or a dead one.
Allons!
James stood all day at his work. His feet were tender and extremely susceptible to impositions being put upon or below them. All day long they burned and smarted, causing him much suffering and inconvenience. But he was earning twelve dollars per week, which he needed to support his feet whether his feet would support him or not.
James Turner had his own conception of what happiness was, just as you and I have ours. Your delight is to gad about the world in yachts and motor-cars and to hurl ducats at wild fowl. Mine is to smoke a pipe at evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an owl go into their common prairie home one by one.
James Turner’s idea of bliss was different; but it was his. He would go directly to his boarding-house when his day’s work was done. After his supper of small steak, Bessemer potatoes, stooed (not stewed) apples and infusion of chicory, he would ascend to his fifth-floor-back hall room. Then he would take off his shoes and socks, place the soles of his burning feet against the cold bars of his iron bed, and read Clark Russell’s sea yarns. The delicious relief of the cool metal applied to his smarting soles was his nightly joy. His favorite novels never palled upon him; the sea and the adventures of its navigators were his sole intellectual passion. No millionaire was ever happier than James Turner taking his ease.
When James left the hat-cleaning shop he walked three blocks out of his way home to look over the goods of a second-hand bookstall. On the sidewalk stands he had more than once picked up a paper-covered volume of Clark Russell at half price.
While he was bending with a scholarly stoop over the marked-down miscellany of cast-off literature, old Tom the caliph sauntered by. His discerning eye, made keen by twenty years’ experience in the manufacture of laundry soap (save the wrappers!) recognized instantly the poor and discerning scholar, a worthy object of his caliphanous mood. He descended the two shallow stone steps that led from the sidewalk, and addressed without hesitation the object of his designed munificence. His first words were no worse than salutatory and tentative.
James Turner looked up coldly, with “Sartor Resartus” in one hand and “A Mad Marriage” in the other.
“Beat it,” said he. “I don’t want to buy any coat hangers or town lots in Hankipoo, New Jersey. Run along, now, and play with your Teddy bear.”
“Young man,” said the caliph, ignoring the flippancy of the hat cleaner, “I observe that you are of a studious disposition. Learning is one of the finest things in the world. I never had any of it worth mentioning, but I admire to see it in others. I come from the West, where we imagine nothing but facts. Maybe I couldn’t understand the poetry and allusions in them books you are picking over, but I like to see somebody else seem to know what they mean. I’m worth about $40,000,000, and I’m getting richer every day. I made the height of it manufacturing Aunt Patty’s Silver Soap. I invented the art of making it. I experimented for three years before I got just the right quantity of chloride of sodium solution and caustic potash mixture to curdle properly. And after I had taken some $9,000,000 out of the soap business I made the rest in corn and wheat futures. Now, you seem to have the literary and scholarly turn of character; and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pay for your education at the finest college in the world. I’ll pay the expense of your rummaging over Europe and the art galleries, and finally set you up in a good business. You needn’t make it soap if you have any objections. I see by your clothes and frazzled necktie that you are mighty poor; and you can’t afford to turn down the offer. Well, when do you want to begin?”
The hat cleaner turned upon old Tom the eye of the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when one walks among the “stranger bands.” For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair, house, booth, seat, path or room.
“Say, Mike,” said James Turner, “what’s your line, anyway — shoe laces? I’m not buying anything. You better put an egg in your shoe and beat it before incidents occur to you. You can’t work off any fountain pens, gold spectacles you found on the street, or trust company certificate house clearings on me. Say, do I look like I’d climbed down one of them missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall? What’s vitiating you, anyhow?”
“Son,” said the caliph, in his most Harunish tones, “as I said, I’m worth $40,000,000. I don’t want to have it all put in my coffin when I die. I want to do some good with it. I seen you handling over these here volumes of literature, and I thought I’d keep you. I’ve give the missionary societies $2,000,000, but what did I get out of it? Nothing but a receipt from the secretary. Now, you are just the kind of young man I’d like to take up and see what money could make of him.”
Volumes of Clark Russell were hard to find that evening at the Old Book Shop. And James Turner’s smarting and aching feet did not tend to improve his temper. Humble hat cleaner though he was, he had a spirit equal to any caliph’s.
“Say, you old faker,” he said, angrily, “be on your way. I don’t know what your game is, unless you want change for a bogus $40,000,000 bill. Well, I don’t carry that much around with me. But I do carry a pretty fair left-handed punch that you’ll get if you don’t move on.”
“You are a blamed impudent little gutter pup,” said the caliph.
Then James delivered his self-praised punch; old Tom seized him by the collar and kicked him thrice; the hat cleaner rallied and clinched; two bookstands were overturned, and the books sent flying. A copy came up, took an arm of each, and marched them to the nearest station house. “Fighting and disorderly conduct,” said the cop to the sergeant.
“Three hundred dollars bail,” said the sergeant at once, asseveratingly and inquiringly.
“Sixty-three cents,” said James Turner with a harsh laugh.
The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change amounting to four dollars.
“I am worth,” he said, “forty million dollars, but— “
“Lock ‘em up,” ordered the sergeant.
In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating. “Maybe he’s got the money, and maybe he ain’t. But if he has or he ain’t, what does he want to go ‘round butting into other folks’s business for? When a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it’s the same as $40,000,000 to him.”
Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face.
He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched himself out luxuriously, and placed his tortured feet against the cold bars of the cell door. Something hard and bulky under the blankets of his cot gave one shoulder discomfort. He reached under, and drew out a paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called “A Sailor’s Sweetheart.” He gave a great sigh of contentment.
Presently, to his cell came the doorman and said:
“Say, kid, that old gazabo that was pinched with you for scrapping seems to have been the goods after all. He ‘phoned to his friends, and he’s out at the desk now with a roll of yellowbacks as big as a Pullman car pillow. He wants to bail you, and for you to come out and see him.”
“Tell him I ain’t in,” said James Turner.
WHIRLIGIGS
O. Henry’s ninth collection was published the year he died in 1910. The book offers 24 short stories, including the tale The Whirligig of Life, about a mountain couple who decide to divorce and the events that lead to their remarriage told from the perspective of the judge.
CONTENTS
THE WORLD AND THE DOOR
THE THEORY AND THE HOUND
THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE
CALLOWAY’S CODE
A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION<
br />
“GIRL”
SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW
THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF
THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY
A TECHNICAL ERROR
SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE
THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE
A SACRIFICE HIT
THE ROADS WE TAKE
A BLACKJACK BARGAINER
THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT
ONE DOLLAR’S WORTH
A NEWSPAPER STORY
TOMMY’S BURGLAR
A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT
A LITTLE LOCAL COLOUR
GEORGIA’S RULING
BLIND MAN’S HOLIDAY
MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES
THE WORLD AND THE DOOR
A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer El Carrero swore to me by the shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S. vice-consul at La Paz — a person who could not possibly have been cognizant of half of them.
As for the adage quoted above, I take pleasure in puncturing it by affirming that I read in a purely fictional story the other day the line: “‘Be it so,’ said the policeman.” Nothing so strange has yet cropped out in Truth.
When H. Ferguson Hedges, millionaire promoter, investor and man-about- New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and word of it went “down the line,” bouncers took a precautionary turn at the Indian clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favourite tables, cab drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafés, and careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to his account by way of preface and introduction.
As a money power a one-millionaire is of small account in a city where the man who cuts your slice of beef behind the free-lunch counter rides to work in his own automobile. But Hedges spent his money as lavishly, loudly and showily as though he were only a clerk squandering a week’s wages. And, after all, the bartender takes no interest in your reserve fund. He would rather look you up on his cash register than in Bradstreet.
On the evening that the material allegation of facts begins, Hedges was bidding dull care begone in the company of five or six good fellows — acquaintances and friends who had gathered in his wake.
Among them were two younger men — Ralph Merriam, a broker, and Wade, his friend.
Two deep-sea cabmen were chartered. At Columbus Circle they hove to long enough to revile the statue of the great navigator, unpatriotically rebuking him for having voyaged in search of land instead of liquids. Midnight overtook the party marooned in the rear of a cheap café far uptown.
Hedges was arrogant, overriding and quarrelsome. He was burly and tough, iron-gray but vigorous, “good” for the rest of the night. There was a dispute — about nothing that matters — and the five-fingered words were passed — the words that represent the glove cast into the lists. Merriam played the rôle of the verbal Hotspur.
Hedges rose quickly, seized his chair, swung it once and smashed wildly down at Merriam’s head. Merriam dodged, drew a small revolver and shot Hedges in the chest. The leading roysterer stumbled, fell in a wry heap, and lay still.
Wade, a commuter, had formed that habit of promptness. He juggled Merriam out a side door, walked him to the corner, ran him a block and caught a hansom. They rode five minutes and then got out on a dark corner and dismissed the cab. Across the street the lights of a small saloon betrayed its hectic hospitality.
“Go in the back room of that saloon,” said Wade, “and wait. I’ll go find out what’s doing and let you know. You may take two drinks while I am gone — no more.”
At ten minutes to one o’clock Wade returned. “Brace up, old chap,” he said. “The ambulance got there just as I did. The doctor says he’s dead. You may have one more drink. You let me run this thing for you. You’ve got to skip. I don’t believe a chair is legally a deadly weapon. You’ve got to make tracks, that’s all there is to it.”
Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and asked for another drink. “Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his hands?” he said. “I never could stand — I never could— “
“Take one more,” said Wade, “and then come on. I’ll see you through.”
Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o’clock the next morning Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes, stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East River pier. The vessel had brought the season’s first cargo of limes from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was no time for anything more.
From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the discursive skipper from his course.
It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land — La Paz the Beautiful, a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little steamer stopped to tread water while the captain’s dory took him ashore that he might feel the pulse of the cocoanut market. Merriam went too, with his suit case, and remained.
Kalb, the vice-consul, a Græco-Armenian citizen of the United States, born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries, considered all Americans his brothers and bankers. He attached himself to Merriam’s elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.
There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the triste Peruvian town. At Kalb’s introductory: “Shake hands with ––––,” he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men — anything but men of living tissue.
After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front galeria with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch “smoke.” The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories.
“One year more,” said Bibb, “and I’ll go back to God’s country. Oh, I know it’s pretty here, and you get dolce far niente handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn’t made for a white man to live in. You’ve got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And Mrs. Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It’s nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation.”
“Many like her here?” asked Merriam.
“Not anywhere,” said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh. She’s the only white woman in La Paz. The rest range from a dappled dun to the colour of a b-flat piano key. She’s been here a year. Comes from — well, you know how a woman can talk — ask ‘em to say ‘string’ and they’ll say ‘crow’s foot’ or ‘cat’s cradle.’ Sometimes you’d think she was from Oshkosh, and again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the next day from Cape Cod.”
“Mystery?” ventured Merriam.
“M — well, she looks it; but her talk�
�s translucent enough. But that’s a woman. I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she’d merely say: ‘Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing to eat but the sand which is here.’ But you won’t think about that when you meet her, Merriam. You’ll propose to her too.”
To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her. He found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze turkey’s wings, and mysterious, remembering eyes that — well, that looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the lower parishes in Louisiana. The tropical climate and indolent life suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on; La Paz, all in all, charmed her.
Merriam’s courtship of the Sphinx lasted three months, although be did not know that he was courting her. He was using her as an antidote for remorse, until he found, too late, that he had acquired the habit. During that time he had received no news from home. Wade did not know where he was; and he was not sure of Wade’s exact address, and was afraid to write. He thought he had better let matters rest as they were for a while.
One afternoon he and Mrs. Conant hired two ponies and rode out along the mountain trail as far as the little cold river that came tumbling down the foothills. There they stopped for a drink, and Merriam spoke his piece — he proposed, as Bibb had prophesied.
Mrs. Conant gave him one glance of brilliant tenderness, and then her face took on such a strange, haggard look that Merriam was shaken out of his intoxication and back to his senses.
“I beg your pardon, Florence,” he said, releasing her hand; “but I’ll have to hedge on part of what I said. I can’t ask you to marry me, of course. I killed a man in New York — a man who was my friend — shot him down — in quite a cowardly manner, I understand. Of course, the drinking didn’t excuse it. Well, I couldn’t resist having my say; and I’ll always mean it. I’m here as a fugitive from justice, and — I suppose that ends our acquaintance.”