O. Henry

          The Hypotheses Of Failure


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LAWYER GOOCH bestowed his undivided attention
upon the engrossing arts of his profession.  But one
flight of fancy did he allow his mind to entertain.  He
was fond of likening his suite of office rooms to the bot-
tom of a ship.  The rooms were three in number, with a
door opening from one to another.  These doors could
also be closed.

"Ships," Lawyer Gooch would say, "are constructed
for safety, with separate, water-tight compartments in
their bottoms.  If one compartment springs a leak it fills
with water; but the good ship goes on unhurt.  Were it
not for the separating bulkheads one leak would sink
the vessel.  Now it often happens that while I am occu-
pied with clients, other clients with conflicting interests
call.  With the assistance of Archibald -- an office boy
with a future -- I cause the dangerous influx to be
diverted into separate compartments, while I sound
with my legal plummet the depth of each.  If neces-
sary, they may be haled into the hallway and permitted
to escape by way of the stairs, which we may term the lee
scuppers.  Thus the good ship of business is kept afloat;
whereas if the element that supports her were allowed
to mingle freely in her hold we might be swamped -- ha,
ha, ha!

The law is dry.  Good jokes are few.  Surely it
might be permitted Lawyer Gooch to mitigate the bore
of briefs, the tedium of torts and the prosiness of processes
with even so light a levy upon the good property of humour.

Lawyer Gooch's practice leaned largely to the settle-
ment of marital infelicities.  Did matrimony languish
through complications, he mediated, soothed and arbi-
trated.  Did it suffer from implications, he readjusted,
defended and championed.  Did it arrive at the extremity
of duplications, he always got light sentences for his
clients.

But not always was Lawyer Gooch the keen, armed,
wily belligerent, ready with his two-edged sword to lop
off the shackles of Hymen.  He had been known to build
up instead of demolishing, to reunite instead of severing,
to lead erring and foolish ones back into the fold instead
of scattering the flock.  Often had he by his eloquent
and moving appeals sent husband and wife, weeping, back
into each other's arms.  Frequently he had coached
childhood so successfully that, at the psychological
moment (and at a given signal) the plaintive pipe of
"Papa, won't you turn home adain to me and muvver?"
had won the day and upheld the pillars of a tottering home.

Unprejudiced persons admitted that Lawyer Gooch
received as big fees from these revoked clients as would
have been paid him had the cases been contested in court.
Prejudiced ones intimated that his fees were doubled.
because the penitent couples always came back later for
the divorce, anyhow.

There came a season in June when the legal ship of
Lawyer Gooch (to borrow his own figure) was nearly
becalmed.  The divorce mill grinds slowly in June.  It
is the month of Cupid and Hymen.

Lawyer Gooch, then, sat idle in the middle room of
his clientless suite.  A small anteroom connected -- or
rather separated -- this apartment from the hallway.
Here was stationed Archibald, who wrested from visitors
their cards or oral nomenclature which he bore to his
master while they waited.

Suddenly, on this day, there came a great knocking
at the outermost door.

Archibald, opening it, was thrust aside as superfluous
by the visitor, who without due reverence at once pene-
trated to the office of Lawyer Gooch and threw himself
with good-natured insolence into a comfortable chair
facing that gentlemen.

"You are Phineas C. Gooch, attorney-at-law?"  said
the visitor, his tone of voice and inflection making his
words at once a question, an assertion and an accusation.

Before committing himself by a reply, the lawyer esti-
mated his possible client in one of his brief but shrewd
and calculating glances.

The man was of the emphatic type -- large-sized, active,
bold and debonair in demeanour, vain beyond a doubt,
slightly swaggering, ready and at ease.  He was well-
clothed, but with a shade too much ornateness.  He was
seeking a lawyer; but if that fact would seem to saddle
him with troubles they were not patent in his beaming
eye and courageous air.

"My name is Gooch," at length the lawyer admitted.
Upon pressure he would also have confessed to the Phineas
C. But he did not consider it good practice to volunteer
information.  "I did not receive your card," he continued,
by way of rebuke, "so I -- "

"I know you didn't," remarked the visitor, coolly;
"And you won't just yet.  Light up?"  He threw a leg
over an arm of his chair, and tossed a handful of rich-
hued cigars upon the table.  Lawyer Gooch knew the
brand.  He thawed just enough to accept the invitation
to smoke.

"You are a divorce lawyer," said the cardless visitor.
This time there was no interrogation in his voice.  Nor
did his words constitute a simple assertion.  They formed 
a charge -- a denunciation -- as one would say to a dog:
"You are a dog."  Lawyer Gooch was silent under the
imputation.

"You handle," continued the visitor, "all the various
ramifications of busted-up connubiality.  You are a
surgeon, we might saw, who extracts Cupid's darts when
he shoots 'em into the wrong parties.  You furnish 
patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch
of Hymen has burned so low you can't light a cigar at it.
Am I right, Mr. Gooch?"

"I have undertaken cases," said the lawyer, guardedly,
"in the line to which your figurative speech seems to refer.
Do you wish to consult me professionally, Mr. -- "
The lawyer paused, with significance.

"Not yet," said the other, with an arch wave of his
cigar, "not just yet.  Let us approach the subject with
the caution that should have been used in the original
act that makes this pow-wow necessary.  There exists a
matrimonial jumble to be straightened out.  But before
I give you names I want your honest -- well, anyhow,
your professional opinion on the merits of the mix-up.
I want you to size up the catastrophe -- abstractly -- you
understand?  I'm Mr. Nobody; and I've got a story to tell
you.  Then you say what's what.  Do you get my wireless?"

"You want to state a hypothetical case?"  suggested
Lawyer Gooch.

"That's the word I was after.  'Apothecary' was the
best shot I could make at it in my mind.  The hypo-
thetical goes.  I'll state the case.  Suppose there's a
woman -- a deuced fine-looking woman -- who has run
away from her husband and home?  She's badly mashed
on another man who went to her town to work up some
real estate business.  Now, we may as well call this
woman's husband Thomas R. Billings, for that's his
name.  I'm giving you straight tips on the cognomens.
The Lothario chap is Henry K. Jessup.  The Billingses
lived in a little town called Susanville -- a good many
miles from here.  Now, Jessup leaves Susanville two
weeks ago.  The next day Mrs. Billings follows him.
She's dead gone on this man Jessup; you can bet your
law library on that."

Lawyer Gooch's client said this with such unctuous
satisfaction that even the callous lawyer experienced a
slight ripple of repulsion.  He now saw clearly in his
fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer, the egoistic
complacency of the successful trifler.

"Now," continued the visitor, "suppose this Mrs.
Billings wasn't happy at home?  We'll say she and her
husband didn't gee worth a cent.  They've got incom-
patibility to burn.  The things she likes, Billings wouldn't
have as a gift with trading-stamps.  It's Tabby and
Rover with them all the time.  She's an educated woman
in science and culture, and she reads things out loud at
meetings.  Billings is not on.  He don't appreciate pro-
gress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort.  Old
Billings is simply a blink when it comes to such things.
The lady is out and out above his class.  Now, lawyer,
don't it look like a fair equalization of rights and wrongs
that a woman like that should be allowed to throw down
Billings and take the man that can appreciate her?

"Incompatibility," said Lawyer Gooch, "is undoubt-
edly the source of much marital discord and unhappiness.
Where it is positively proved, divorce would seem to be
the equitable remedy.  Are you -- excuse me -- is this
man Jessup one to whom the lady may safely trust
her future?"

"Oh, you can bet on Jessup," said the client, with a
confident wag of his head.  "Jessup's all right.  He'll
do the square thing.  Why, he left Susanville just to keep
pwple from talking about Mrs. Billings.  But she fol-
lowed him up, and now, of course, he'll stick to her.
When she gets a divorce, all legal and proper, Jessup
the proper thing."

"And now," said Lawyer Gooch, "continuing the hypo-
if you prefer, and supposing that my services should
ired in the case, what -- "

The client rose impulsively to his feet.

"Oh, dang the hypothetical business," he exclaimed,
impatiently.  "Let's let her drop, and get down to
straight talk.  You ought to know who I am by this time.
I want that woman to have her divorce.  I'll pay for
it.  The day you set Mrs. Billings free I'll pay you five
hundred dollars."

Lawyer Gooch's client banged his fist upon the table
to punctuate his generosity.

"If that is the case -- " began the lawyer.

"Lady to see you, sir," bawled Archibald, bouncing
in from his anteroom.  He had orders to always announce
immediately any client that might come.  There was no
sense in turning business away.

Lawyer Gooch took client number one by the arm and
led him suavely into one of the adjoining rooms.  "Favour
me by remaining here a few minutes, sir," said he.  "I
will return and resume our consultation with the least
possible delay.  I am rather expecting a visit from a
very wealthy old lady in connection with a will.  I will
not keep you waiting long."

The breezy gentleman seated himself with obliging
acquiescence, aud took up a magazine.  The lawyer
returned to the middle office, carefully closing behind
him the connecting door.

"Show the lady in, Archibald," he said to the office
boy, who was awaiting the order.

A tall lady, of commanding presence and sternly hand-
some, entered the room.  She wore robes -- robes; not
clothes -- ample and fluent.  In her eye could be per-
ceived the lambent flame of genius and soul.  In her
hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an
umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and
fluent.  She accepted a chair.

"Are you Mr. Phineas C. Gooch, the lawyer?"  she
asked, in formal and unconciliatory tones.

"I am," answered Lawyer Gooch, without circum-
locution.  He never circumlocuted when dealing with
a woman.  Women circumlocute.  Time is wasted when
both sides in debate employ the same tactics.

"As a lawyer, sir," began the lady, "you may have
acquired some knowledge of the human heart.  Do you
believe that the pusillanimous and petty conventions of
our artificial social life should stand as an obstacle in
the way of a noble and affectionate heart when it finds its
true mate among the miserable and worthless wretches
in the world that are called men?"

"Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, in the tone that he
used in curbing his female clients, "this is an office for
conducting the practice of law.  I am a lawyer, not a
philosopher, nor the editor of an 'Answers to the
Lovelorn' column of a newspaper.  I have other
clients waiting.  I will ask you kindly to come to the
point."

"Well, you needn't get so stiff around the gills about
it," said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eves and
a startling gyration of her umbrella.  "Business is what
I've come for.  I want your opinion in the matter of a
suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is
really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble con-
ditions that the short-sihhted laws of man have interposed
between a loving --"

"I beg your pardon, madam," interrupted Lawyer
Gooch, with some impatience, "for reminding you again
that this is a law office.  Perhaps Mrs. Wilcox -- "

"Mrs. Wilcox is all right," cut in the lady, with a hint
of asperity. "And so are Tolstoi, and Mrs. Gertrude
Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and Mr. Edward Bok.
I've read 'em all.  I would like to discuss with you the
divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroy-
ing restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society.
But I will proceed to business.  I would prefer to lay
the matter before you in an impersonal way until vou
pass upon its merits.  That is to describe it as a sup-
posable instance, without -- "

"You wish to state a hypothetical case?"  said Lawyer
Gooch.

"I was going to say that," said the lady, sharply.
"Now, suppose there is a woman who is all soul and
heart and aspirations for a complete existence.  This
woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect, in
taste -- in everything.  Bah!  he is a brute.  He despises
literature.  He sneers at the lofty thoughts of the world's
great thinkers.  He thinks only of real estate and such
sordid things.  He is no mate for a woman with soul.
We will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets
with her ideal -a man with brain and heart and force.
She loves him.  Although this man feels the thrill of a
new-found affinity he is too noble, too honourable to
declare himself.  He flies from the presence of his
beloved.  She flies after him, trampling, with superb
indifference, upon the fetters with which an unenlightened
social system would bind her.  Now, what will a divorce
cost?  Eliza Ann Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap,
got one for three hundred and forty dollars.  Can I --
I mean can this lady I speak of get one that cheap?"

"Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, "your last two or
three sentences delight me with their intelligence and
clearness.  Can we not now abandon the hypothetical
and come down to names and business?"

"I should say so," exclaimed the lady, adopting the
practical with admirable readiness.  "Thomas R. Bil-
lings is the name of the low brute who stands between
the happiness of his legal -- his legal, but not his spiri-
tual -- wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom
nature intended for her mate.  I," concluded the client,
with an air of dramatic revelation, "am Mrs. Billings!"

"Gentlemen to see you, sir," shouted Archibald, invad-
ing the room almost at a handspring.  Lawyer Gooch
arose from his chair.

"Mrs. Billings," he said courteously, "allow me to
conduct you into the adjoining office apartment for a few
minutes.  I am expecting a very wealthy old gentleman
on busines connected with a will.  In a very short while
I will join you, and continue our consultation."

With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer
Gooch ushered his soulful client into the remaining
unoccupied room, and came out, closing the door with
circumspection.

The next visitor introduced by Archibald was a thin,
nervous, irritable-looking man of middle age, with a
worried and apprehensive expression of countenance.
He carried in one hand a small satchel, which he set down
upon the floor beside the chair which the lawyer placed
for him.  His clothing was of good quality, but it was worn
without regard to neatness or style, and appeared to be
covered with the dust of travel.

"You make a specialty of divorce cases," he said, in,
an agitated but business-like tone.

"I may say," began Lawyer Gooch, "that my prac-
tice has not altogether avoided -- "

"I know you do," interrupted client number three.
"You needn't tell me.  I've heard all about you.  I have
a case to lay before you without necessarily disclosing
any connection that I might have with it -- that is -- "

"You wish," said Lawyer Gooch, "to state a hvpo-
thetical case.

"You may call it that.  I am a plain man of business.
I will be as brief as possible.  We will first take up
hypothetical woman.  We will say she is married uncon-
genially.  In many ways she is a superior woman.  Phys-
ically she is considered to be handsome.  She is devoted
to what she calls literature -- poetry and prose, and
such stuff.  Her husband is a plain man in the business
walks of life.  Their home has not been happy, although
the husband has tried to make it so.  Some time ago a
man -- a stranger -- came to the peaceful town in which
they lived and engaged in some real estate operations.
This woman met him, and became unaccountably infatu-
ated with him.  Her attentions became so open that the
man felt the community to be no safe place for him, so
he left it.  She abandoned husband and home, and
followed him.  She forsook- her home, where she was
provided with every comfort, to follow this man who had
inspired her with such a strange affection.  Is there any-
thing more to be deplored," concluded the client, in a
trembling voice, "than the wrecking of a home by a
woman's uncalculating folly?"

Lawyer Gooch delivered the cautious opinion that there
was not.

"This man she has gone to join," resumed the visitor,
"is not the man to make her happy.  It is a wild and
foolish self-deception that makes her think he will.  Her
husband, in spite of their many disagreements, is the only
one capable of dealing with her sensitive and peculiar
nature.  But this she does not realize now."

"Would you consider a divorce the logical cure in the
case you present?"  asked Lawyer Gooch, who felt that
the conversation was wandering too far from the field of
business.

"A divorce!"  exclaimed the client, feelingly - almost
tearfully.  "No, no-not that.  I have read, Mr. Gooch,
of many instances where your sympathy and kindly inter-
est led you to act as a mediator between estranged hus-
band and wife, and brought them together again.  Let us
drop the hypothetical case -- I need conceal no longer
that it is I who am the sufferer in this sad affair -- the
names you shall have -- Thomas R. Billings and wife --
and Henry K. Jessup, the man with whom she is
infatuated."

Client number three laid his hand upon Mr. Gooch's
arm.  Deep emotion was written upon his careworn
face.  "For Heaven's sake", he said fervently, "help
me in this hour of trouble.  Seek, out Mrs. Billings, and
persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her
lamentable folly.  Tell her, Mr. Gooch, that her husband
is willing to receive her back to his heart and home --
promise her anything that will induce her to return.  I
have heard of your success in these matters.  Mrs. Bil-
lings cannot be very far away.  I am worn out with travel
and weariness.  Twice during the pursuit I saw her,
but various circumstances prevented our having an inter-
view.  Will you undertake this mission for me, Mr.
Gooch, and earn my everlasting gratitude?"

"It is true," said Lawver Gooch, frowning slightly at
the other's last words, but immediately calling up an
expression of virtuous benevolence, "that on a number
of occasions I have been successful in persuading couples
who sought the severing of their matrimonial bonds to
think better of their rash intentions and return to their
homes reconciled.  But I assure you that the work is
often exceedingly difficult.  The amount of argument,
perseverance, and, if I may be allowed to say it, eloquence
that it requires would astonish you.  But this is a case
in which my sympathies would be wholly enlisted.  I
feel deeply for you sir, and I would be most happy to see
husband and wife reunited.  But my time," concluded
the lawyer, looking at his watch as if suddenly reminded
of the fact, "is valuable."

"I am aware of that," said the client, "and if you
will take the case and persuade Mrs. Billings to return
home and leave the man alone that she is following --
on that day I will pay you the sum of one thousand
dollars.  I have made a little money in real estate during
the recent boom in Susanville, and I will not begrudge
that amount."

"Retain your seat for a few moments, please," said
Lawyer Gooch, arising, and again consulting his watch.
"I have another client waiting in an adjoining room whom
I had very nearly forgotten.  I will return in the briefest
possible space."

The situation was now one that fully satisfied Lawyer
Gooch's love of intricacy and complication.  He revelled
in cases that presented such subtle problems and possi-
bilities.  It pleased him to think that he was master of the
happiness and fate of the three individuals who sat, uncon-
cious of one another's presence, within his reach.  His
old figure of the ship glided into his mind.  But now the
figure failed, for to have filled every compartment of an
actual vessel would have been to endanger her safety;
with his compartments full, his ship of affairs
could but sail on to the advantageous port of a fine, fat
fee.  The thing for him to do, of course, was to wring
the best bargain he could from some one of his anxious
cargo.

First he called to the office boy: "Lock the outer
door, Archibald, and admit no one."  Then he moved,
with long, silent strides into the room in which client
number one waited.  That gentleman sat, patiently
scanning the pictures in the magazine, with a cigar in his
mouth and his feet upon a table.

"Well," he remarked, cheerfully, as the lawyer entered,
"have you made up your mind?  Does five hundred
dollars go for getting the fair lady a divorce?"

"You mean that as a retainer?"  asked Lawyer Gooch,
softly interrogative.

"Hey?  No; for the whole job.  It's enough, ain't
it?"

"My fee," said Lawyer Gooch, "would be one thousand
five hundred dollars.  Five hundred dollars down, and
the remainder upon issuance of the divorce."

A loud whistle came from client number one.  His
feet descended to the floor.

"Guess we can't close the deal," he said, arising, "I
cleaned up five hunderd dollars in a little real estate
dicker down in Susanville.  I'd do anything I could to
free the lady, but it out-sizes my pile."

"Could you stand one thousand two hundred dollars?"
asked the lawyer, insinuatingly.

"Five hundred is my limit, I tell you.  Guess I'll
have to hunt up a cheaper lawyer."  The client put on
his hat.

"Out this way, please," said Lawyer Gooch, opening
the door that led into the hallway.

As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and
down the stairs, Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself.  "Exit
Mr. Jessup," he murmured, as he fingered the Henry
Clay tuft of hair at his ear.  "And now for the forsaken
husband."  He returned to the middle office, and assumed
a businesslike manner.

"I understand," he said to client number three, "that
you agree to pay one thousand dollars if I bring about,
or am instrumental in bringing about, the return of Mrs.
Billings to her home, and her abandonment of her infatu-
ated pursuit of the man for whom she has conceived such
a violent fancy.  Also that the case is now unreservedly in
my hands on that basis.  Is that correct?"

"Entirely", said the other, eagerly.  And I can
produce the cash any time at two hours' notice."

Lawyer Gooch stood up at his full height.  His thin
figure seemed to expand.  His thumbs sought the arm-
holes of his vest.  Upon his face was a look of sym-
pathetic benignity that he always wore during such
undertakings.

"Then, sir," he said, in kindly tones, "I think I can
promise you an early relief from your troubles.  I have
that much confidence in my powers of argument and
persuasion, in the natural impulses of the human heart
toward good, and in the strong influence of a husband's
unfaltering love.  Mrs. Billinos, sir, is here -- in that
room -- the lawyer's long arm pointed to the door.
"I will call her in at once; and our united pleadings -- "

Lawyer Gooch paused, for client number three had
leaped from his chair as if propelled by steel springs, and
clutched his satchel.

"What the devil," he exclaimed, harshly, "do vou
mean?  That woman in there!  I thought I shook her
off forty miles back."

He ran to the open window, looked out below, and threw
one leg over the sill.

"Stop!"  cried Lawyer Gooch, in amazement.  "What
would you do?  Come, Mr. Billings, and face your
erring but innocent wife.  Our combined entreaties cannot
fail to -- "

"Billings!"  shouted the now thoroughly moved client.
"I'll Billings you, you old idiot!"

Turning, he hurled his satchel with fury at the lawyer's
head.  It struck that astounded peacemaker between
the eyes, causing him to stagger backward a pace or two.
When Lawyer Gooch recovered his wits he saw that his
client had disappeared.  Rushing to the window, he
leaned out, and saw the recreant gathering himself up from
the top of a shed upon which he had dropped from the
second-story window.  Without stopping to collect his
hat he then plunged downward the remaining ten feet
to the alley, up which he flew with prodigious celerity
until the surrounding building swallowed him up from 
view.

Lawyer Gooch passed his hand tremblingly across his 
brow.  It was a habitual act with him, serving to clear 
his thoughts.  Perhaps also it now seemed to soothe the
spot where a very hard alligator-hide satchel had struck.

The satchel lay upon the floor, wide open, with its con-
tents spilled about.  Mechanically, Lawyer Gooch stooped
to gather up the articles.  The first was a collar; and
the omniscient eye of the man of law perceived, wonder-
ingly, the initials H.K.J. marked upon it.  Then came
a comb, a brush, a folded map, and a piece of soap.
lastly, a handful of old business letters, addressed --
every one of them -- to "Henry K. Jessup, Esq."

Lawyer Gooch closed the satchel, and set it upon the
table.  He hesitated for a moment, and then put on his hat
and walked into the office boy's anteroom.

"Archibald," he said mildly, as he opened the hall door,
"I am going around to the Supreme Court rooms.  In five
minutes you may step into the inner office, and inform the
lady who is waiting there that" -- here Lawyer Gooch
made use of the vernacular -- "that there's nothing
doing."