O. Henry

                  The Romance of a Busy Broker

PITCHER, CONFIDENTIAL CLERK in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, 
allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually 
expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half 
past nine in company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy 
`Good morning, Pitcher,' Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were 
intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of 
letters and telegrams waiting there for him.
   The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was 
beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forwent the 
pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or 
lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to 
luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it 8tted her figure with 
fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-
green wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly 
radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peachblow, 
her expression a happy one, tinged with reminiscence.
   Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways 
this morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where 
her desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. 
Once she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware 
of her presence.
   The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy 
New York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs.
   `Well - what is it? Anything?' asked Maxwell sharply. His opened 
mail lay like a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen grey 
eye, impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently.
   `Nothing,' answered the stenographer, moving away with a little 
smile.
   `Mr. Pitcher,' she said to the confidential clerk, `did Mr. Maxwell 
say anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer?'
   `He did,' answered Pitcher. `He told me to get another one. I 
notified the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples 
this morning. It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece 
of pineapple chewing gum has showed up yet.'
   `I will do the work as usual, then,' said the young lady, `until 
someone comes to fill the place.' And she went to her desk at once and 
hung the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its 
accustomed place.
   He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker 
during a rush of business is handicapped for the profession of 
anthropology. The poet sings of the `crowded hour of glorious life.' 
The broker's hour is not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are 
hanging to all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms.
   And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to 
reel out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the desk telephone had a 
chronic attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and 
call at him over the railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. 
Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks 
in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's 
face relaxed into something resembling animation.
   On the Exchange there were hurncanes and landslides and snowstorms 
and glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were 
reproduced in miniature in the broker's offices. Maxwell shoved his 
chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a 
toe-dancer. He jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk to door with 
the trained agility of a harlequin.
   In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became 
suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding 
canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a 
string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a 
silver heart. There was a self possessed young lady connected with 
these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her.
   `Lady from the Stenographer's Agency to see about the position,' 
said Pitcher.
   Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and 
ticker tape.
   `What position?' he asked, with a frown.
   `Position of stenographer,' said Pitcher. `You told me yesterday to 
call them up and have one sent over this morning.
   `You are losing your mind, Pitcher,' said Maxwell. `Why should I 
have given you any such instructions? Miss Leslie has given perfect 
satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as 
long as she chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam. 
Countermand that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don't bring any 
more of'em in here.'
   The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself 
independently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed. 
Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the `old man' 
seemed to get more absent-minded and forgetful every day of the world.
   The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor 
they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell's Gustomers 
were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as 
swift as the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were 
imperilled, and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate, 
strong machine - strung to fall tension, going at fall speed, 
accurate, never hesitating, with the proper word and decision and act 
ready and prompt as clockwork. Stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, 
margins and securities - here was a world of finance, and there was no 
room in it for the human world or the world of nature.
   When the luncheon hour drew near there came a slight lull in the 
uproar.
   Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands full of telegrams and 
memoranda, with a fountain pen over his right ear and his hair hanging 
in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the 
beloved janitress Spring had turned on a little warmth through the 
waking registers of the earth.
   And through the window came a wandering - perhaps a lost odour - a 
delicate, sweet odour of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment 
immovable. For this odour belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and 
hers only.
   The odour brought her vividly, alinost tangibly before him. The 
world of finance dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next 
room - twenty steps away.
   `By George, I'll do it now,' said Maxwell, half aloud. `I'll ask 
her now. I wonder I didn't do it long ago.'
   He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to 
cover. He charged upon the desk of the stenographer.
   She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her 
cheek, and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on 
her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the 
pen was above his ear.
   `Miss Leslie,' he began hurriedly, `I have but a moment to spare. I 
want to say something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven't 
had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love 
you. Talk quick, please - those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out 
of Union Pacific.'
   `Oh, what are you talking about?' exclaimed the young lady. She 
rose to her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed.
   `Don't you understand?' said Maxwell restively. `I want you to 
marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I 
snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling 
me for the 'phone now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you, 
Miss Leslie?'
   The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome 
with amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then 
she smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly 
about the broker's neck.
   `I know now,' she said softly. `It's this old business that has 
driven everything else out of your head for the time. I was frightened 
at first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at 
eight o'clock in the Little Church Around the Corner.'