O. Henry

           The Marry Month Of May


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PRITHEE, smite the poet in the eye when he would
sing to you praises of the month of May.  It is a month
presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness.
Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods:
Puck and his train of midgets are busy in town and
country.

In May nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding
us remember that we are not gods, but overconceited
members of her own great family.  She reminds us that
we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and the
donkey; lineal scions of the pansy and the chimpanzee,
and but cousins-german to the cooing doves, the quacking
ducks and the housemaids and policemen in the parks.

In May Cupid shoots blindfolded -- millionaires marry
stenographers; wise professors woo white-aproned gum-
chewers behind quick-lunch counters; schoolma'ams
make big bad boys remain after school; lads with ladders
steal lightly over lawns where Juliet waits in her trellissed
window with her telescope packed; young couples out
for a walk come home married; old chaps put on white
spats and promenade near the Normal School; even
married men, grown unwontedly tender and sentimental,
whack their spouses on the back and growl: "How goes
it, old girl:"

This May, who is no goddess, but Circe, masquerading
at the dance given in honour of the fair dйbutante, Sum-
mer, puts the kibosh on us all.

Old Mr. Coulson groaned a little, and then sat up
straight in his invalid's chair.  He had the gout very
bad in one foot, a house near Gramercy Park, half a
million dollars and a daughter.  And he had a house-
keeper, Mrs. Widdup.  The fact and the name deserve
a sentence each.  They have it.

When May poked Mr. Coulson he became elder brother
to the turtle-dove.  In the window near which he sat
were boxes of jonquils, of hyacinths, geraniums and
pansies.  The breeze brought their odour into the room.
Immediately there was a well-contested round between
the breath of the flowers and the able and active effluvium
from gout liniment.  The liniment won easily; but not
before the flowers got an uppercut to old Mr. Coulson's
nose.  The deadly work of the implacable, false enchant-
ress May was done.

Across the park to the olfactories of Mr. Coulson came
other unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells
of spring that belong to the-big-city-above-the-Subway,
alone.  The smells of hot asphalt, underground caverns,
gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs,
Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on news-
papers.  The inblowing air was sweet and mild.  Sparrows
wrangled happily everywhere outdoors.  Never trust May.

Mr. Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache,
cursed his foot, and pounded a bell on the table by his
side.

In came Mrs. Widdup.  She was comely to the eye,
fair, flustered, forty and foxy.

"Higgins is out, sir," she said, with a smile suggestive
of vibratory massage.  "He went to post a letter.  Can
I do anything for you, sir?"

"It's time for my aconite," said old Mr. Coulson.
"Drop it for me.  The bottle's there.  Three drops.
In water.  D -- that is, confound Higgins!  There's
nobody in this house cares if I die here in this chair for
want of attention."

Mrs. Widdup sighed deeply.

"Don't be saying that, sir," she said.  "There's them
that would care more than any one knows.  Thirteen
drops, you said, sir?"

"Three," said old man Coulson.

He took his dose and then Mrs. Widdup's hand.  She
blushed.  Oh, yes, it can be done.  Just hold your
breath and compress the diaphragm.

"Mrs. Widdup," said Mr. Coulson, "the springtime's
full upon us."

"Ain't that right?"  said Mrs. Widdup.  "The air's
real warm.  And there's bock-beer signs on every corner.
And the park's all yaller and pink and blue with flowers;
and I have such shooting pains up my legs and
body."

"'In the spring,'" quoted Mr. Coulson, curling his
mustache, "'a y-- that is, a man's -- fancy lightly turns
to thoughts of love.'"

"Lawsy, now!"  exclaimed Mrs. Widdup; "ain't that
right?  Seems like it's in the air."

"'In the spring,'" continued old Mr. Coulson, "'a
livelier iris shines upon the burnished dove.'"

"They do be lively, the Irish," sighed Mrs. Widdup
pensively.

"Mrs. Widdup," said Mr. Coulson, making a face at
a twinge of his gouty foot, "this would be a lonesome
house without you.  I'm an -- that is, I'm an elderly
man -- but I'm worth a comfortable lot of money.  If
half a million dollars' worth of Government bonds and
the true affection of a heart that, though no longer beating
with the first ardour of youth, can still throb with
genuine -- "

The loud noise of an overturned chair near the portiиres
of the adjoining room interrupted the venerable and
scarcely suspecting victim of May.

In stalked Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, bony,
durable, tall, high-nosed, frigid, well-bred, thirty-five,
in-the-neighbourhood-of-Gramercy-Parkish.  She put up
a lorgnette.  Mrs. Widdup hastily stooped and arranged
the bandages on Mr. Coulson's gouty foot.

"I thought Higgins was with you," said Miss Van
Meeker Constantia.

"Higgins went out," explained her father, "and Mrs.
Widdup answered the bell.  That is better now, Mrs.
Widdup, thank you.  No; there is nothing else I require."

The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring
stare of Miss Coulson.

"This spring weather is lovely, isn't it, daughter?"
said the old man, consciously conscious.

"That's just it," replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia
Coulson, somewhat obscurely.  "When does Mrs. Wid-
dup start on her vacation, papa?"

"I believe she said a week from to-day," said Mr.
Coulson.

Miss Van Meeker Constantia stood for a minute at
the window gazing, toward the little park, flooded with
the mellow afternoon sunlight.  With the eye of a botanist
she viewed the flowers -- most potent weapons of insid-
ious May.  With the cool pulses of a virgin of Cologne
she withstood the attack of the ethereal mildness.  The
arrows of the pleasant sunshine fell back, frostbitten,
from the cold panoply of her unthrilled bosom.  The
odour of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in the
unexplored recesses of her dormant heart.  The chirp of
the sparrows gave her a pain.  She mocked at May.

But although Miss Coulson was proof against the
season, she was keen enough to estimate its power.  She
knew that elderly men and thick-waisted women jumped
as educated fleas in the ridiculous train of May, the merry
mocker of the months.  She had heard of foolish old
gentlemen marrying their housekeepers before.  What a
humiliating thing, after all, was this feeling called
love!

The next morning at 8 o'clock, when the iceman called,
the cook told him that Miss Coulson wanted to see him
in the basement.

"Well, ain't I the Olcott and Depew; not mentioning
the first name at all?"  said the iceman, admiringly, of
himself.

As a concession he rolled his sleeves down, dropped his
icehooks on a syringe and went back.  When Miss Van
Meeker Constantia Coulson addressed him he took off
his bat.

"There is a rear entrance to this basement," said Miss
Coulson, "which can be reached by driving into the
vacant lot next door, where they are excavating for a
building.  I want you to bring in that way within two
hours 1,000 pounds of ice.  You may have to bring
another man or two to help you.  I will show you where
I want it placed.  I also want 1,000 pounds a day delivered
the same way for the next four days.  Your company may
charge the ice on our regular bill.  This is for your extra
trouble."

Miss Coulson tendered a ten-dollar bill.  The iceman
bowed, and held his hat in his two hands behind him.

"Not if you'll excuse me, lady.  It'll be a pleasure to
fix things up for you any way you please."

Alas for May!

About noon Mr. Coulson knocked two glasses off his
table, broke the spring of his bell and yelled for Higgins
at the same time.

"Bring an axe," commanded Mr. Coulson, sardoni-
cally, "or send out for a quart of prussic acid, or have a
policeman come in and shoot me.  I'd rather that than
be frozen to death."

"It does seem to be getting cool, Sir," said Higgins.
"I hadn't noticed it before.  I'll close the window, Sir."

"Do," said Mr. Coulson.  "They call this spring,
do they?  If it keeps up long I'll go back to Palm Beach.
House feels like a morgue."

Later Miss Coulson dutifully came in to inquire how
the gout was progressing.

"'Stantia," said the old man, "how is the weather out-
doors?"

"Bright," answered Miss Coulson, "but chilly."

"Feels like the dead of winter to me," said Mr. Coulson.

"An instance," said Constantia, gazing abstractedly
out the window, " of 'winter lingering in the lap of spring,'
though the metaphor is not in the most refined taste."

A little later she walked down by the side of the little
park and on westward to Broadway to accomplish a
little shopping.

A little later than that Mrs. Widdup entered the invalid's
room.

"Did you ring, Sir?"  she asked, dimpling in many
places.  "I asked Higgins to go to the drug store, and I
thought I heard your bell."

"I did not," said Mr. Coulson.

"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Widdup, "I interrupted you
sir, yesterday when you were about to say something."

"How comes it, Mrs. Widdup," said old man Coulson
sternly, "that I find it so cold in this house?"

"Cold, Sir?"  said the housekeeper, "why, now, since
you speak of it it do seem cold in this room.  But, out-
doors it's as warm and fine as June, sir.  And how this
weather do seem to make one's heart jump out of one's
shirt waist, sir.  And the ivy all leaved out on the side
of the house, and the hand-organs playing, and the
children dancing on the sidewalk -- 'tis a great time for
speaking out what's in the heart.  You were saying
yesterday, sir -- "

"Woman!"  roared Mr. Coulson; "you are a fool.  I
pay you to take care of this house.  I am freezing to
death in my own room, and you come in and drivel to
me about ivy and hand-organs.  Get me an overcoat at
once.  See that all doors and windows are closed below.
An old, fat, irresponsible, one-sided object like you prat-
ing about springtime and flowers in the middle of winter!
When Higgins comes back, tell him to bring me a hot rum
punch.  And now get out!"

But who shall shame the bright face of May?  Rogue
though she be and disturber of sane men's peace, no wise
virgins cunning nor cold storage shall make her bow her
head in the bright galaxy of months.

Oh, yes, the story was not quite finished.

A night passed, and Higgins helped old man Coulson
in the morning to his chair by the window.  The cold of
the room was gone.  Heavenly odours and fragrant mild-
ness entered.

In hurried Mrs. Widdup, and stood by his chair.  Mr.
Coulson reached his bony hand and grasped her plump one.

"Mrs. Widdup," he said, "this house would be no
home without you.  I have half a million dollars.  If that
and the true affection of a heart no lonoer in its youthful
prime, but still not cold, could -- "

"I found out what made it cold," said Mrs. Widdup,
leanin' against his chair.  "'Twas ice -- tons of it --
in the basement and in the furnace room, everywhere.  I
shut off the registers that it was coming through into your
room, Mr. Coulson, poor soul!  And now it's Maytime
again."

"A true heart," went on old man Coulson, a little
wanderingly, "that the springtime has brought to life
again, and -- but what will my daughter say, Mrs.
Widdup?"

"Never fear, sir," said Mrs. Widdup, cheerfully.
"Miss Coulson, she ran away with the iceman last night,
sir!"