O. Henry

                          The Pendulum

`EIGHTY-FIRST STREET - let 'em out, please,' yelled the shepherd in 
blue.
   A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scram-bled 
aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled 
away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with 
the released flock.
   John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon 
of his daily life there was no such word as `perhaps.' There are no 
surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a 
flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and 
downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous day.
   Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavoured with cold 
cream and butterscotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a 
macadamized lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and 
Japs slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot 
roast; a salad flavoured with a dressing warranted not to crack or 
injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry 
marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. 
After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that 
the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half 
past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch 
the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the flat 
overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly at 
eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the flat 
across the hall would yield to the gentle influence of delirium 
tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that 
Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week con-
tract. 'Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out 
his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the 
high-ways; the dumb-waiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor 
would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the Yalu, 
the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip 
downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and letter-box - 
and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be under way.
   John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a 
quarter-past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, 
and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone:
   `Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins? 
   `Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's,' he would answer, `and play a 
game or two of pool with the fellows.'
   Of late such had been John Perkins' habit. At ten or eleven he 
would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up; 
ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating 
from the wrought-steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid 
will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his 
victims from the Frogmore flats.
   To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the 
commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her 
affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in portentous 
disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in the middle 
of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder-box, jumbled 
together on dresser and chairs -this was not Katy's way. With a 
sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of her brown hair 
among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation must have 
possessed her, for she always carefully placed these combings in the 
little blue base on the mantel, to be some day formed into the coveted 
feminine `rat.'
   Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded 
paper. John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus:

DEAR JOHN, -
   `I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. I am going to 
take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the depot 
there. There is cold mutton in the ice-box. I hope it isn't her quinsy 
again. Pay the milkxnan 60 cents. She had it bad last spring. Don't 
forget to write to the company about the gas meter, and your good 
socks are in the top drawer. I will write to-morrow.
                                                      `Hastily
                                                                
`KATY.'

   Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been 
separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a 
dumbfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never varied, 
and it left him dazed.
   There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, 
the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the 
meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her 
haste. A little paper bag of her favourite butter-scotch lay with its 
string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping 
rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. 
Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its 
soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains with 
a queer feeling of desolation in his heart.
   He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched 
her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He had 
never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had become so 
thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he 
breathed - necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without warning, she 
was gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had never existed. 
Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most a week or two, 
but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had pointed a finger 
at his secure and uneventful home.
   John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat 
down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade's 
shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings now 
appeared to him the ghosts of pot roast and the salad with tan polish 
dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinsied mother-in-law had 
knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal John 
sat at a front window.
   He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come 
join in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might 
go forth unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as any 
gay bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his fling 
until dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrath-ful Katy waiting 
for him, bearing the chalice that held the dregs of his joy: He might 
play pool at McCloskey's with his roistering friends until Aurora 
dimmed the electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings that had 
curbed him always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon him were 
loosened. Katy was gone.
   John Perkins was not accustomed to analysing his emotions. But as 
he sat in his Katy-bereft 10 x 12 parlour he hit unerringly upon the 
keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his 
happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the 
dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her 
presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and 
fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has 
flown - or in other no less florid and true utterances?
  `I'm a double-dyed dub,' mused John Perkins, `the way I've been 
treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the boys 
instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone with 
nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, you're the 
worst kind of a shine. I'm going to make it up for the little girl. 
I'll take her out and let her see some amusement. And I'll cut out the 
McCloskey gang right from this minute.'
   Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come 
dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were knocking 
the balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the nightly game. 
But no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the remorseful soul of 
Perkins, the bereft. The thing that was his, lightly held and half 
scorned, had been taken away from him, and he wanted it. Backward to a 
certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim bounced from the orchard, 
could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his descent.
   Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of 
it stood Katy's blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of her 
contour. Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles made by 
the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and pleasure. A 
delicate but impelling odour of bluebells came from it. John took it 
and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive grenadine. Katy had 
never been unresponsive. Tears - yes, tears - came into John Perkins' 
eyes. When she came back things would be different. He would make up 
for all his neglect. What was life without her?
   The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. 
John stared at her stupidly.
   `My! I'm glad to get back,' said Katy. `Ma wasn't sick to amount to 
anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little spell, 
and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the next 
train back. I'm just dying for a cup of coffee."
   Nobody heard the click and the rattle of the cogwheels as the 
third-floor front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into 
the Order of Things. A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear 
was adjusted and the wheels revolved in their old orbits.
   John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his 
hat and walked to the door.
   `Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?' asked 
Katy, in a querulous tone.
   `Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's,' said John, `and play a game 
or two of pool with the fellows.'