O. Henry

               Mammon and the Archer

   OLD ANTHONY ROCKWALL, retired manufacturer and proprietor of 
Rockwall's Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth 
Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbour to the right the 
aristocratic clubman, G. Van Schuylight Suffolk Jones - came out to 
his waiting motor-car, wrinkling a contumelious nostril, as usual, at 
the Italian renaissance sculpture of the soap palace's front 
elevation.
   `Stuck-up old statuette of nothing doing!' commented the ex-Soap 
King. `The Eden Musee'll get that old frozen Nesselrode yet if he 
don't watch out. I'll have this house painted red, white, and blue 
next summer and see if that'll make his Dutch nose turn up any 
higher.'
   And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the 
door of his library and shouted `Mike!' in the same voice that had 
once chipped off pieces of the welkin on the Kansas prairies.
   `Tell my son,' said Anthony to the answering menial, `to come in 
here before he leaves the house.'
   When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his 
newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth, 
ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and 
rattled the keys in his pocket with the other.
   `Richard,' said Anthony Rockwall, `what do you pay for the soap 
that you use?'
   Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. 
He had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full 
of unexpectednesses as a girl at her first party.
   `Six dollars a dozen, I think, dad.' `And your clothes?'
   `I suppose about sixty dollars, as a rule.'
   `You're a gentleman,' said Anthony decidedly. `I've heard of these 
young bloods spending $24 a dozen for soap, and going over the hundred 
mark for clothes. You've got as much money to waste as any of 'em, and 
yet you stick to what's decent and moderate. Now I use the old Eureka 
- not only for sentiment, but it's the purest soap made. Whenever you 
pay more than ten cents a cake for soap you buy bad perfumes and 
labels. But fifty cents is doing very well for a young man in your 
generation, position and condition. As I said, you're a gentleman. 
They say it takes three generations to make one. They're off. Money'll 
do it as slick as soap grease. It's made you one. By hokey! it's 
almost made one of me. I'm nearly as impolite and disagreeable and 
ill-mannered as these two old Knickerbocker gents on each side of me 
that can't sleep of nights because I bought in between 'em.'
   `There are some things that money can't accomplish,' remarked young 
Rockwall rather gloomily.
   `Now, don't say that,' said old Anthony, shocked. `I bet my money 
on money every time. I've been through the encyclopedia down to Y 
looking for something you can't buy with it; and I expect to have to 
take up the appendix next week. I'm for money against the field. Tell 
me something money won't buy.'
   `For one thing,' answered Richard, rankling a little, `it won't buy 
one into the exclusive circles of society.'
   `Oho won't it?' thundered the champion of the root of evil. `You 
tell me where your exclusive circles would be if the first Astor 
hadn't had the money to pay for his steerage passage over?' Richard 
sighed.
   `And that's what I was coming to,' said the old man less 
boisterously. `That's why I asked you to come in. There's something 
going wrong with you, boy. I've been noticing it for two weeks. Out 
with it. I guess I could lay my hands on eleven millions within 
twenty-four hours, besides the real estate. If it's your liver, 
there's the Rambler down in the bay, coaled, and ready to steam down 
to the Bahamas in two days.'
   `Not a bad guess, dad; you haven't missed it far.' 
   `Ah,' said Anthony keenly; `what's her name?'
   Richard began to walk up and down the library floor. There was 
enough comradeship and sympathy in this crude old father of his to 
draw his confidence.
   `Why don't you ask her?' demanded old Anthony. `She'll jump at you. 
You've got the money and the looks, and you're a decent boy. Your 
hands are clean. You've got no Eureka soap on 'em. You've been to 
college, but she'll overlook that.'
   `I haven't had a chance,' said Richard.
   `Make one,' said Anthony. `Take her for a walk in the park, or a 
straw ride, or walk home with her from church. Chancel Pshaw!' 
   `You don't know the social mill, dad. She's part of the stream that
turns it. Every hour and minute of her time is arranged for days in 
advance. I must have that girl, dad, or this town is a blackjack swamp 
for evermore. And I can't write it - I can't do that.'
   'Tut!' said the old man. 'Do you mean to tell me that with all the 
money I've got you can't get an hour or two of a girl's time for 
yourself?'
   'I've put it off too late. She's going to sail for Europe at noon 
day after to-morrow for a two years' stay. I'm to see her alone 
tomorrow evening for a few minutes. She's at Larchmont now at her 
aunt's. I can't go there, But I'm allowed to meet her with a cab at 
the Grand Central Station to-morrow evening at the 8.30 train. We 
drive down Broadway to Wallack's at a gallop, where her mother and a 
box party will be waiting for us in the lobby. Do you think she would 
listen to a declaration from me during those six or eight minutes 
under those circumstances? No. And what chance would I have in the 
theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is one tangle that your 
money can't unravel. We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we 
could, rich people would live longer. There's no hope of getting a 
talk with Miss Lantry before she sails.'
   'All right, Richard, my boy,' said old Anthony cheerfully. 'You may 
run along down to your club now. I'm glad it ain't your liver. But 
don't forget to burn a few punk sticks in the joss-house to the great 
god Mazuma from time to time. You say money won't buy time? Well, of 
course, you can't order eternity wrapped up and delivered at your 
residence for a price, but I've seen Father Time get pretty bad stone 
bruises on his heels when he walked through the gold diggings.'
That night came Aunt Ellen, gentle, sentimental, wrinkled, sighing, 
oppressed by wealth, in to Brother Anthony at his evening paper, and 
began discourse on the subject of lovers' woes.
   'He told me all about it,' said brother Anthony yawning. 'I told 
him my bank account was at his service. And then he began to knock 
money. Said money couldn't help. Said the rules of society couldn't be 
buckled for a yard by a team of ten-millionaires.'
   'Oh, Anthony,' sighed Aunt Ellen, 'I wish you would not think so 
much of money. Wealth is nothing where a true affection is concerned. 
Love is all-powerful. If he only had spoken earlier! She could not 
have refused our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. He will have 
no opportunity to address her. All your gold cannot bring happiness to 
your son.'
   At eight o'clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold 
ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard.
   'Wear it to-night, nephew,' she begged. 'Your mother gave it to me. 
Good luck in love, she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you 
when you had found the one you loved.'
   Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his 
smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He 
took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of 
man. And then he 'phoned for his cab.
   At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at 
8.32.
   'We mustn't keep mamma and the others waiting,' said she.
   'To Wallack's Theatre as fast as you can drivel' said Richard 
loyally.
   They whirled up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white-
starred lane that leads from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky 
hills of morning.
At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and 
ordered the cabman to stop.
   'I've dropped a ring,' he apologized, as he climbed out. 'It was my 
mother's, and I'd hate to lose it. I won't detain you a minute -I saw 
where it fell.'
   In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring.
   But within that minute a cross-town car had stopped directly in 
front of the cab. The cabman tried to pass to the left, but a heavy 
express wagon cut him off. He tried the right, and had to back away 
from a furniture van that had no business to be there. He tried to 
back out, but dropped his reins and swore dutifully. He was blockaded 
in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses.
   One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up 
commerce and movement quite suddenly in the big city.
   'Why don't you drive on?' said Miss Lantry impatiently. 'We'll be 
late.'
   Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested 
flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and street-cars filling the vast 
space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street cross one 
another as a twenty-six-inch maiden fills her twenty-two-inch girdle. 
And still from all the cross-streets they were hurrying and rattling 
toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling themselves into 
the struggling mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers 
imprecations to the clamour. The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to 
have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the 
thousands of spectators that lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a 
street blockade of the proportions of this one.
   'I'm very sorry,' said Richard, as he resumed his seat, 'but it 
looks as if we are stuck. They won't get this jumble loosened up in an 
hour. It was my fault. If I hadn't dropped the ring we -'
   `Let me see the ring,' said Miss Lantry. `Now that it can't be 
helped, I don't care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway.'
   At eleven o'clock that night somebody tapped lightly on Anthony 
Rockwall's door.
   `Come in,' shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressing-gown, reading 
a book of piratical adventures.
   Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a grey-haired angel that had 
been left on earth by mistake.
   `They're engaged, Anthony,' she said softly. `She has promised to 
marry our Richard. On their way to the theatre there was a street 
blockade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it.
   `And oh, brother Anthony, don't ever boast of the power of money 
again. A little emblem of true love - a little ring that symbolized 
unending and unmercenary affection - was the cause of our Richard 
finding his happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to 
recover it. And before they could continue the blockade occurred. He 
spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money 
is dross compared with true love, Anthony.'
   `All right,' said old Anthony. `I'm glad the boy has got what he 
wanted. I told him I wouldn't spare any expense in the matter if -' 
   `But, brother Anthony, what good could your money have done?'
   `Sister,' said Anthony Rockwall, `I've got my pirate in a devil of 
a scrape. His ship has just been scuttled, and he's too good a judge 
of the value of money to let drown. I wish you would let me go on with 
this chapter.'
   The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily as you who 
read it wish it did. But we must go to the bottom of the well for 
truth.
   The next day a person with red hands and a blue polka-dot necktie, 
who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony Rockwall's house, and was 
at once received in the library.
   `Well,' said Anthony, reaching for his' chequebook, `it was a good 
bilin' of soap. Let's see - you had $5,000 in cash.'
   `I paid out $300 more of my own,' said Kelly. `I had to go a little 
above the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5; 
but the trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to $10. The motor-
men wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops struck me 
hardest - $SO I paid two, and the rest $20 and $2S. But didn't it work 
beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady wasn't on to that 
little outdoor vehicle mob scene. I wouldn't want William to break his 
heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either! The boys was on 
time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake 
could get below Greeley's statue.'
   `Thirteen hundred - there you are, Kelly,' said Anthony, tearing 
off a cheque. `Your thousand, and the $300 you were out. You don't 
despise money, do you, Kelly?'
   `Me?' said Kelly. `I can lick the man that invented poverty.'
   Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door.
   `You didn't notice,' said he, `anywhere in the tie-up, a kind of a 
fat boy without any clothes on shooting arrows around with a bow, did 
you?'
   `Why, no,' said Kelly, mystified. `I didn't. If he was like you 
say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got there.'
   `I thought the little rascal wouldn't be on hand,' chuckled 
Anthony. `Good-bye, Kelly.'