“Does he, indeed!”
“Popocatepetl, the great chief,” said the eagle again, thinking that the little animal had not heard rightly.
“Well, and why does he summon me?”
“Because he is in distress, and he needs your assistance.”
The little animal reflected for a time, and then said, “I will go.”
When Popocatepetl perceived the little animal and the eagle he stretched forth his great, solemn arms. “Oh, blessed little animal with two arms, two legs, a head, and a very brave air, help me in my agony. Behold I, Popocatepetl, who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, I, who knew the sun in his childhood, I, Popocatepetl, appeal to you, little animal. I am hungry.”
After a while the little animal asked: “How much will you pay?”
“Pay?” said Popocatepetl.
“Pay?” said the eagle.
“Assuredly,” quoth the little animal. “Pay!”
“But,” demanded Popocatepetl, “were you never hungry? I tell you I am hungry, and is your first word then ‘pay’?”
The little animal turned coldly away. “Oh, Popocatepetl, how much wisdom has flown past you since you saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars and since you knew the sun in his childhood? I said ‘pay,’ and, moreover, your distress measures my price. It is our law. Yet it is true that we did not see the King of Everything fashioning the stars. Nor did we know the sun in his childhood.”
Then did Popocatepetl roar and shake in his rage. “Oh, louse—louse—louse! Let us bargain then! How much for your blood?” Over the head of the little animal hung death.
But he instantly bowed himself and prayed: “Popocatepetl, the great, you who saw the King of Everything fashioning the stars, and who knew the sun in his childhood, forgive this poor little animal. Your sacred hunger shall be my care. I am your servant.”
“It is well,” said Popocatepetl at once, for his spirit was ever kindly. “And now, what will you do?”
The little animal put his hand upon his chin and reflected. “Well, it seems you are hungry, and the King of Everything has forbidden you to go for food in fear that your monstrous feet will riddle the earth with holes. What you need is a pair of wings.”
“A pair of wings!” cried Popocatepetl delightedly.
“A pair of wings!” screamed the eagle in joy.
“How very simple, after all.”
“And yet how wise!”
“But,” said Popocatepetl, after the first outburst, “who can make me these wings?”
The little animal replied: “I and my kind are great, because at times we can make one mind control a hundred thousand bodies. This is the secret of our performance. It will be nothing for us to make wings for even you, great Popocatepetl. I and my kind will come”—continued the crafty little animal—“we will come and dwell on this beautiful plain that stretches from the sea to the sea, and we will make wings for you.”
Popocatepetl wished to embrace the little animal. “Oh, glorious! Oh, best of little brutes! Run! run! run! Summon your kind, dwell in the plain and make me wings. Ah, when once Popocatepetl can soar on his wings from star to star, then, indeed—”
Poor old stupid Popocatepetl! The little animal summoned his kind, they dwelt on the plains, they made this and they made that, but they made no wings for Popocatepetl.
And sometimes when the thunderous voice of the old peak rolls and rolls, if you know that tongue, you can hear him say: “Oh, traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Where are my wings? My wings, traitor! I am hungry! Where are my wings?”
But the little animal merely places his finger beside his nose and winks.
“Your wings, indeed, fool! Sit still and howl for them! Old idiot!”
November, 1896
[The Pocket Magazine, Vol. 3, pp. 136–142.]
YEN-NOCK BILL
AND
HIS SWEETHEART
They called him Yen-Nock Bill. He had been a book agent, a confidence man, a member of a celebrated minstrel troupe, a shoplifter, a waiter in a Bowery restaurant and other things. But he had never been guilty of a dishonest act in his life. He used to say so, solemnly.
“No, sir,” he often remarked, “I’ve lived at a pretty hot gait all my life, but I’ve always been on the level. Never did a crooked thing since I was born. No, sir!”
He did not stick at an occupation because he was fond of a certain delicate amusement of the Chinese. A most peculiar truth of life is the fact that, when a man gets to be an opium smoker, he has ill-fortune. Disaster comes upon his business schemes, and his valuable friends slide unaccountably away from him. And so it happened that, when Bill fell deadly ill with pneumonia, there was nobody to come to him and bid him a good journey through the skyland.
On the contrary, his dragon of a landlady paced the halls and wondered who was going to provide the four dollars Bill owed for lodging. She was a woman with business principles, and she wanted her four dollars. She did not give three hurrahs in Hades whether Bill lived or died, so long as he did not put her to pecuniary loss. She was a just woman; her life had been a hard struggle for daily bread, and when anybody owed her four dollars, it was no more than fair that she should be paid.
Bill was a small man. He had a way of pulling the sheet up to his throat with one thin hand, and then coughing until his whole body jumped and writhed. When he was not coughing, he simply lay and rolled his eyes. In the days of his prosperity, when his particular confidence game was paying him a great deal of money, Bill had a sweetheart, and it becomes a most painful obligation to introduce her into this story.
When Julie heard of Bill’s plight, she went there post haste. She flung herself down at the bedside and cried: “Oh, Billie!”
Bill raised himself and scanned her with a cold eye. “Why th’ell didn’t you come before?” he demanded. “You’re a nice one, you are. Leaving me here to die—leaving me here to die all alone—all alone—without a friend in the world.” He shed tears.
Julie soothed him and flattered the man in the manner of woman, even in the face of his arrant injustice, and by the way the irritation in his voice was of a quality worse than knife blades. “I’ll take you right to the flat, dear,” cried Julie, sobbing. “There I can take care of you and ’tend you until you get well; poor, poor boy!”
But when she put out her hand to smooth his brow, he brushed her away savagely. “Oh, you make me tired, you fool! Tell me how I’m going to get around there, will you? You are an ass.”
Thereupon Julie pleaded with him. “I’ll call a cab, dear, and have it right here at the door, and the coachman can help you downstairs. I’ll go around now and borrow Swift Dover’s winter overcoat, and then I’ll go home and have Mary fix everything ready for you. And then I’ll have the doctor come right over. Won’t you come, dear? Won’t you?”
Bill turned his stern face toward the wall. “No,” he answered. To one who had no interest in the proceedings it would have been plain that Bill lied, but since this woman loved this man, she could never tell when he lied to her. So she continued to beseech him. Always he answered: “No.”
At last she went into the hall to beg the landlady to use her influence, but the door was no sooner closed behind her than Bill cried out, in a wild spasm of sick man’s rage: “Julie, Julie!”
Julie returned in a flurry. “What, dear? What is it?”
“Why don’t you order the cab?” he cried, shrilly. “Get a gait on you, will you! Think I want to lie here forever?”
“All right, Billie—all right,” answered Julie. She kissed him and hurried away. Bill scowled at the wall and muttered sullenly to himself. Suddenly he had seemed possessed of some great grievance.
Julie returned, out of breath, and with Swift Doyer’s winter overcoat over her arm. “It’s all right!” she cried. “The cab’s at the door, and everything is all fixed.”
But here the landlady appeared as a factor. Previously she had been concerned chiefly about her four dollars, but now
her ideas of respectability were concerned. She evidently had concluded that it would be better for Bill to die alone in the hall bedroom. “He shan’t be taken from my house until I know where he is going,” she said, coldly and significantly to Julie.
The girl flashed upon her one of those tearful glances into which a woman can put scorn, rage, and at the same time entreaty. Julie hesitated a moment, and the landlady never knew how near she came to a time of fire and the sword, whirlwind and sudden death. Better ask a ravenous wolf to sleep under your pillow than to stand between a woman who loves so completely and the man.
But Julie went calmly away with no word. Later a four-wheeler drew up before the house, and Swift Doyer and Jimmie the Mole emerged from it. “We want that sick man,” said Swift to the landlady. “I’m his friend, and I’m going to take him home.” The landlady gracefully accepted four dollars from Swift, and led the way to the hall bedroom.
“Let ’er go easy, boys,” said Bill, with a wan smile, as they carried him around the curve of the stairs. In daylight Bill was a sad figure. Two weeks’ growth of red beard was on his leaden face, and his eyes swung and turned in a way that was at once childish and insane. But when they bundled him into the cab, Julie put her arms about his neck and cooed and murmured. The instant they were alone in Julie’s flat he began to howl at her. Swift Doyer was a good fellow, but he used to remark that Bill’s voice made him wish that he was a horse, so that he could spring upon the bed and trample him to death. And for many days thereafter Bill bullied and abused, rated and raged at the girl, until people whose windows opened on the air shaft often remarked: “Say, why don’t she kill him!”
Julie arrived at a point where she threw out her hands and said: “Oh, be good to me; won’t you, Billie, dear?”
“No! Why should I?”
November 29, 1896
[New York Journal, p. 35.]
DIAMONDS AND DIAMONDS*
Jimmie the Mole derived his name from a certain way he would look at you when you lied to him. Lie to Jimmie in those days and he would shrug down his shoulders and squint at you most horribly and steadfastly until you grew nervous, probably, and went away. But when he was lying to you, he was a polished and courtly gentleman with no shadow of facial deformity about him.
Once Jimmie was smitten with a financial famine. He was about to take a trip to Boston, too, where some confiding man had offered him work in a concert hall as a sweet singer of ballads. Jimmie had a Tenderloin voice. This means a tenor well-suited to the air: “She has fallen by the wayside.” Sometimes he went forth into the great wide world and made money with this voice.
Jimmie, being penniless and anxious to go to Boston, went to see the Flasher. “You better go over to Nellie Doyer’s and borrow enough money for my ticket to Boston and then let me take your ring along with me. I’ll see if I can’t cop out a small bundle.” The obedient Flasher borrowed money for the ticket and the obedient Flasher gave her ring to Jimmie.
Jimmie went to Boston and for two weeks made glad the rafters with his Tenderloin voice.
While standing in a corner saloon one morning, he espied a large fat personage in black clothing and with a large diamond stuck in a shirt emphatically soiled. This man seemed to strike Jimmie with considerable interest. He hung near and furtively watched this fat person drink whiskey.
Once he found himself at the bar elbow to elbow with this man. As has been said, Jimmie was often a courtly and polished gentleman. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but would you like to buy a ring?”
The fat person had not been a Boston alderman for nothing. He turned sharply and said: “No.”
“I’m in hard luck just now and I need a hundred bad or I wouldn’t think of selling it. If you happen to know of anybody who might like a nice diamond, I hope you won’t mind telling me.”
The fat person relented at this point because Jimmie’s voice was obviously that of a courtly and polished gentleman. “Well, no I don’t remember anybody just now. Let’s look at the ring.”
Jimmie held forth a graceful hand.
“Fine stone,” said the ex-alderman.
“Yes,” replied Jimmie. “A present from my girl in Chicago. She’ll be crazy when she finds out that I’ve blown it in. Can’t help it though. Hard luck is hard luck. I came here looking for a theatrical job—that’s my business—but I don’t get a thing but a frost from every manager I strike. Hard luck is hard luck.”
“Sure,” said the fat person. “How much do you want for the ring?”
“Well, I’ll take a hundred,” answered Jimmie candidly, “and the ring is worth that to anybody. It’ll stand me a hundred in any pawnshop but I don’t want to get up against the pawnshops anymore and when I’ve got anything to sell I’d rather have it go outright to some good fellow.”
The fat person again gazed down at the ring. “Let me see it off your finger, will you?”
“Sure,” said Jimmie.
The other looked at the ring close both inside and outside. “Looks like a good ring.”
“It is a good ring. I’d like to see a man prove there was anything fake about that ring.”
“Dan,” called the fat person to the bartender. “How’s that for a gig-lamp?” He pushed the trinket over the bar.
“Gee,” cried the bartender, holding it high. “Say, that’s a peach.”
The fat person said to Jimmie: “Young feller, I’m almost coming around to giving up a hundred for it myself.”
Jimmie shrugged his shoulders. “A hundred and it’s yours.”
The other again examined the ring. Finally he said: “Well—you bring it around to a jeweler’s with me and if he says it’s worth the money you say it is, why, I’ll throw down a hundred for it.” Whereupon he cast a keen eye at Jimmie.
But Jimmie promptly cried: “Certainly. Come ahead.”
When they walked into the street, the fat person rather shied away from Jimmie and with singular intentness he kept his eyes straight to the front. “You say”—he observed. “You say your girl in Chicago gave you this ring?”
“Oh, that’s on the level all right,” answered the Mole. “But”—he added and he looked squarely at the fat person, “I’ve heard people say that they saw it on the finger of a ranchman from Montana just a little while before he came to Chicago on a skate.”
“Um,” said the fat person with a quick sidelong glance. He whistled indifferently.
When they had entered the jeweler’s shop, the fat person crowded his great form against the showcase and said: “My friend, would you mind telling us what this ring is worth?”
When the jeweler appeared he seemed bored. Evidently he was bored because he thought somebody was going to be swindled, but why this should bore him more than it should enrage him or make him weep, none can tell.
“Let’s see it.” Jimmie gave him the ring and he went away. When he returned, he drummed on the counter and stared at the ceiling. “It’s worth about two hundred dollars.”
“It is, is it?” said the fat person.
“Yes.”
“Would you give two hundred for it?”
“If I was buying diamonds for myself I might. But as a dealer, I might give a hundred. Or maybe a hundred and fifty.”
“You would, would you?” said the fat person. Jimmie took the ring again and the two marched away.
The fat person led swiftly some distance down the sidewalk. When he stopped he said: “Well, I’ll take the ring at a hundred.”
“All right,” said the Mole. “I’ll keep to my bargain although it seems as if I might have struck higher.”
“A hundred dollars is a good deal of money,” said the fat person. “The Montana—”
“Take the ring,” said Jimmie.
The other counted out the hundred in bills. “Here’s your money—gimme the ring.” At this point they eyed each other warily but the transfer was made in safety. This ornament of politics had the ring and the polished and courtly gentleman had the bills.
“Good luck to you,” rejoined Jimmie. “I’d come and break a cold bottle with you only I must light out for Chicago to see my girl. Say,” he said facing around again, “I almost wish I hadn’t—”
But the fat person waved his hand gaily and walked rapidly away. “Ta-ta, old boy,” he cried. Jimmie the Mole gazed after him wistfully.
The next morning Jimmie was in New York. When he arrived at Flasher’s flat she was at breakfast. He took from his jacket one hundred dollars in bills and from his finger he took her ring. He laid them on the table before her.
“There,” he said with a tired sigh.
“Same old game, Jimmie?”
“Same old game.”
“You always were so smooth, Jimmie,” murmured Flasher.
This money would have endured some time if the Mole had not fallen in love with his luck and gone to the races. In consequence he was again obliged to borrow the two hundred dollar diamond from Flasher.
The next day he appeared in a jewelry shop in a remote eastside street. “Fred,” he said to the proprietor, “I want you to make me a ringer for this again.” He handed the man the diamond ring. “And, look here, I won’t pay more than three dollars either. A guy in Boston the other day charged me four dollars and a half for the same fake you make.”
If you are a politician and you allow a man to substitute a ring of paste and gold plate for a two-hundred-dollar diamond ring and sell it to you for a hundred dollars merely because you have had a jeweler appraise the real diamond—if you are this kind of an ass and dwell in a live ward, let your idiocy be known. It will make you friends. People will laugh and vote for you out of a sense of humor. If you don’t believe it, look at the returns and see who was elected last year to the board of aldermen from the 204th ward of the city of Boston.
1896?
[Bulletin of the New York Public Library,
Vol. 60 (October, 1956), pp. 483–486.]
* By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Hitherto unpublished in book form.
The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane Page 43