O Henry

                The Four Million


                   Man About Town


Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея



There were two or three things that I wanted to know.  I do not care
about a mystery.  So I began to inquire.

It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit
cases.  And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces.
This serious query was at first received with suspicion because it
sounded like a conundrum.  I was at last assured that its double form
of construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who
makes up beds.  I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why,
then, they were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was
shunned.

The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was
enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town.
He was more vague in my mind than a type should be.  We must have a
concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we
can comprehend it.  Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is
as clear as a steel engraving.  His eyes are weak blue; he wears a
brown vest and a shiny black serge coat.

He stands always in the sunshine chewing something; and he keeps
half-shutting his pocket knife and opening it again with his thumb.
And, if the Man Higher Up is ever found, take my assurance for it, he
will be a large, pale man with blue wristlets showing under his
cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes polisbed within sound
of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere about him turquoises.

But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man
About Town, was blank.  I fancied that he bad a detachable sneer
(like the smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was
all.  Whereupon I asked a newspaper reporter about him.

"Why," said he, "a 'Man About Town' something between a 'rounder' and
a 'clubman.'  He isn't exactly--well, he fits in between Mrs. Fish's
receptions and private boxing bouts.  He doesn't--well, he doesn't
belong either to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan
Galvanised Iron Workers' Apprentices' Left Hook Chowder Association.
I don't exactly know how to describe him to you.  You'll see him
everywhere there's anything doing.  Yes, I suppose he's a type.
Dress clothes every evening; knows the ropes; calls every policeman
and waiter in town by their first names.  No; he never travels with
the hydrogen derivatives.  You generally see him alone or with
another man."

My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield.  By
this time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight.  People
passed, but they held me not.  Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left
me unscathed.  Diners, heimgangers, shop-girls, confidence men,
panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, millionaires and outlanders hurried,
skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took
no note of them.  I knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had
served.  I wanted my Man About Town.  He was a type, and to drop him
would be an error--a typograph--but no! let us continue.

Let us continue with a moral digression.  To see a family reading the
Sunday paper gratifies.  The sections have been separated.  Papa is
earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising
before an open window, and bending--but there, there!  Mamma is
interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N_w
Yo_k.  The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports,
for a certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken
a flyer in Q., X. & Z.  Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who
attends the New York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article
describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a
prize in sewing on graduation day.

Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours' grip;
and little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with
the real estatc transfers.  This view is intended to be reassuring,
for it is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped.  For
it introduces strong drink.

I went into a cafe to -- and while it was being mixed I asked the man
who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what he
undcrstood by the term, epithet, description, designation,
characterisation or appellation, viz.:  a "Man About Town."

"Why," said he, carefully, "it means a fly guy that's wise to the
all-night push--see?  It's a hot sport that you can't bump to the
rail anywhere between the Flatirons--see?  I guess that's about what
it means."

I thanked him and departed.

On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle
gently against my waistcoat pocket.

"Would you mind telling me," I asked her, "if you ever meet with the
character commonly denominated as 'A Man About Town' during your
daily wanderings?"

"I think I know whom you mean," she answered, with a gentle smile.
"We see them in the same places night after night.  They are the
devil's body guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful
as they are, their commanders are well served.  We go among them,
diverting a few pennies from their wickedness to the Lord's service."

She shook the box again and I dropped a dime into it.

In front of a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was
climbing from a cab.  He seemed at leisure; and I put my question to
him.  He answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would.

"There is a type of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered.  "The
term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called
upon to define the character before.  It would be difficult to point
you out an exact specimen.  I would say, offhand, that it is a man
who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting
to see and know.  At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him.  He
follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the
business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he
could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw.  He is the man who
has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and
from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city
where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife.  Your 'Man About
Town' has done that.  He is always on the scent of something new.  He
is curiosity, impudence and omnipresence.  Hansoms were made for him,
and gold-banded cigars; and the curse of music at dinner.  There are
not so many of him; but his minority report is adopted everywhere.

"I'm glad you brought up the subject; I've felt the influence of this
nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyse it
before.  I can see now that your 'Man About Town' should havc been
classified long ago.  In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak
models; and the orchestra 'p1ays 'Let's All Go Up to Maud's' for him,
by request, instead of Handel.  He makes his rounds every evening;
while you and I see the elephant once a week.  When the cigar store
is raided, he winks at the officer, familiar with his ground, and
walks away immune, while you and I search among the Presidents for
names, and among the stars for addresses to give the desk sergeant."

My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence.
I seized my advantage.

"You have classified him," I cried with joy.  "You have painted his
portrait in the gallery of city types.  But I must meet one face to
face.  I must study the Man About Town at first hand.  Where shall I
find him?  How shall I know him?"

Without seeming to hear me, the critic went on.  And his cab-driver
was waiting for his fare, too.

"He is the sublimated essence of Butt-in; the refined, intrinsic
extract of Rubber; the concentrated, purified, irrefutable,
unavoidable spirit of Curiosity and Inquisitiveness.  A new sensation
is the breath in his nostrils; when his experience is exhausted he
explores new fields with the indefatigability of a--"

"Excuse me," I interrupted, "but can you produce one of this type?
It is a new thing to me.  I must study it.  I will search the town
over until I find one.  Its habitat must be here on Broadway."

"I am about to dine here," said my friend.  "Come inside, and if
there is a Man About Town present I will point him out to you.  I
know most of the regular patrons here."

"I am not dining yet," I said to him.  "You will excuse me.  I am
going to find my Man About Town this night if I have to rake New
York from the Battery to Little Coney Island."

I left the hotel and walked down Broadway.  The pursuit of my type
gave a pleasant savour of life and interest to the air I breathed.
I was glad to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified.
Leisurely and with something of an air I strolled along with my heart
expanding at the thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a
sharer in its magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and
prestige.

I turned to cross the street.  I heard something buzz like a bee, and
then I took a long, pleasant ride with Santos-Dumont.

When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said
aloud:  "Hasn't it passed yet?"

A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my
brow that was not at all fevered.  A young doctor came along,
grinned, and handed me a morning newspaper.

"Want to see how it happened?" he asked cheerily.  I read the
article.  Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off
the night before.  It closed with these lines:

Bellevue Hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not
serious.  He appeared to be a typica1 Man About Town."