O Henry
Strictly Business
More Stories of the Four Million
III
BABES IN THE JUNGLE
Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея
Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West,
says to me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy,
and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to
New York. In the West a sucker is born every minute; but in New
York they appear in chunks of roe--you can't count 'em!"
Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of
the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left
ear; so I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice.
I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up
Broadway. And I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up
in a spacious kind of haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and
rubbing the half-moons on his nails with a silk handkerchief.
"Paresis or superannuated?" I asks him.
"Hello, Billy," says Silver; "I'm glad to see you. Yes, it seemed to
me that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness.
I've been saving New York for dessert. I know it's a low-down
trick to take things from these people. They only know this and
that and pass to and fro and think ever and anon. I'd hate for my
mother to know I was skinning these weak-minded ones. She
raised me better."
"Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that
does skin grafting?" I asks.
"Well, no," says Silver; "you needn't back Epidermis to win to-
day. I've only been here a month. But I'm ready to begin; and the
members of Willie Manhattan's Sunday School class, each of
whom has volunteered to contribute a portion of cuticle toward
this rehabilitation, may as well send their photos to the _Evening
Daily_.
"I've been studying the town," says Silver, "and reading the papers
every day, and I know it as well as the cat in the City Hall knows
an O'Sullivan. People here lie down on the floor and scream and
kick when you are the least bit slow about taking money from
them. Come up in my room and I'll tell you. We'll work the town
together, Billy, for the sake of old times."
Silver takes me up in a hotel. He has a quantity of irrelevant
objects lying about.
"There's more ways of getting money from these metropolitan
hayseeds," says Silver, "than there is of cooking rice in Charleston,
S. C. They'll bite at anything. The brains of most of 'em
commute. The wiser they are in intelligence the less perception of
cognizance they have. Why, didin't a man the other day sell J. P.
Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller, Jr., for Andrea del Sarto's
celebrated painting of the young Saint John!
"You see that bundle of printed stuff in the corner, Billy? That's
gold mining stock. I started out one day to sell that, but I quit it in
two hours. Why? Got arrested for blocking the street. People
fought to buy it. I sold the policeman a block of it on the way to
the station-house, and then I took it off the market. I don't want
people to give me their money. I want some little consideration
connected with the transaction to keep my pride from being hurt. I
want 'em to guess the missing letter in Chic-go, or draw to a pair
of nines before they pay me a cent of money.
"Now there's another little scheme that worked so easy I had to
quit it. You see that bottle of blue ink on the table? I tattooed an
anchor on the back of my hand and went to a bank and told 'em I
was Admiral Dewey's nephew. They offered to cash my draft on
him for a thousand, but I didn't know my uncle's first name. It
shows, though, what an easy town it is. As for burglars, they won't
go in a house now unless there's a hot supper ready and a few
college students to wait on 'em. They're slugging citizens all over
the upper part of the city and I guess, taking the town from end to
end, it's a plain case of assault and Battery."
"Monty," says I, when Silver had slacked, up, "you may have
Manhattan correctly discriminated in your perorative, but I doubt
it. I've only been in town two hours, but it don't dawn upon me
that it's ours with a cherry in it. There ain't enough rus in urbe
about it to suit me. I'd be a good deal much better satisfied if the
citizens had a straw or more in their hair, and run more to
velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms. They don't look easy
to me."
"You've got it, Billy," says Silver. "All emigrants have it. New
York's bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a
foreigner. You'll be all right. I tell you I feel like slapping the
people here because they don't send me all their money in laundry
baskets, with germicide sprinkled over it. I hate to go down on the
street to get it. Who wears the diamonds in this town? Why,
Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride.
New Yorkers can be worked easier than a blue rose on a tidy. The
only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break the cigars in my vest
pocket when I get my clothes all full of twenties."
"I hope you are right, Monty," says I; "but I wish all the same I had
been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock. The crop of
farmers is never so short out there but what you can get a few of
'em to sign a petition for a new post office that you can discount
for $200 at the county bank. The people hear appear to possess
instincts of self-preservation and illiberality. I fear me that we are
not cultured enough to tackle this game."
"Don't worry," says Silver. "I've got this Jayville-near-Tarrytown
correctly estimated as sure as North River is the Hudson and East
River ain't a river. Why, there are people living in four blocks of
Broadway who never saw any kind of a building except a
skyscraper in their lives! A good, live hustling Western man ought
to get conspicuous enough here inside of three months to incur
either Jerome's clemency or Lawson's displeasure."
"Hyperbole aside," says I, "do you know of any immediate system
of buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by
applying to the Salvation Army or having a fit on Miss Helen
Gould's doorsteps?"
"Dozens of 'em," says Silver. "How much capital have you got,
Billy?"
"A thousand," I told him.
"I've got $1,200," says he. "We'll pool and do a big piece of
business. There's so many ways we can make a million that I don't
know how to begin."
The next morning Silver meets me at the hotel and he is all
sonorous and stirred with a kind of silent joy.
"We're to meet J. P. Morgan this afternoon," says he. "A man I
know in the hotel wants to introduce us. He's a friend of his. He
says he likes to meet people from the West."
"That sounds nice and plausible," says I. "I'd like to know Mr.
Morgan."
"It won't hurt us a bit," says Silver, "to get acquainted with a few
finance kings. I kind of like the social way New York has with
strangers."
The man Silver knew was named Klein. At three o'clock Klein
brought his Wall Street friend to see us in Silver's room. "Mr.
Morgan" looked some like his pictures, and he had a Turkish towel
wrapped around his left foot, and he walked with a cane.
"Mr. Silver and Mr. Pescud," says Klein. "It sounds superfluous,"
says he, "to mention the name of the greatest financial--"
"Cut it out, Klein," says Mr. Morgan. "I'm glad to know you
gents; I take great interest in the West. Klein tells me you're from
Little Rock. I think I've a railroad or two out there somewhere. If
either of you guys would like to deal a hand or two of stud poker I-
-"
"Now, Pierpont," cuts in Klein, "you forget!"
"Excuse me, gents!" says Morgan; "since I've had the gout so bad I
sometimes play a social game of cards at my house. Neither of
you never knew One-eyed Peters, did you, while you was around
Little Rock? He lived in Seattle, New Mexico."
Before we could answer, Mr. Morgan hammers on the floor with
his can and begins to walk up and down, swearing in a loud tone
of voice.
"They have been pounding your stocks to-day on the Street,
Pierpont?" asks Klein, smiling.
"Stocks! No!" roars Mr. Morgan. "It's that picture I sent an agent
to Europe to buy. I just thought about it. He cabled me to-day
that it ain't to be found in all Italy. I'd pay $50,000 to-morrow for
that picture--yes, $75,000. I give the agent a la carte in purchasing
it. I cannot understand why the art galleries will allow a De
Vinchy to--"
"Why, Mr. Morgan," says klein; "I thought you owned all of the
De Vinchy paintings."
"What is the picture like, Mr. Morgan?" asks Silver. "It must be as
big as the side of the Flatiron Building."
"I'm afraid your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver," says
Morgan. "The picture is 27 inches by 42; and it is called 'Love's
Idle Hour.' It represents a number of cloak models doing the two-
step on the bank of a purple river. The cablegram said it might
have been brought to this country. My collection will never be
complete without that picture. Well, so long, gents; us financiers
must keep early hours."
Mr. Morgan and Klein went away together in a cab. Me and
Silver talked about how simple and unsuspecting great people was;
and Silver said what a shame it would be to try to rob a man like
Mr. Morgan; and I said I thought it would be rather imprudent,
myself. Klein proposes a stroll after dinner; and me and him and
Silver walks down toward Seventh Avenue to see the sights. Klein
sees a pair of cuff links that instigate his admiration in a pawnshop
window, and we all go in while he buys 'em.
After we got back to the hotel and Klein had gone, Silver jumps at
me and waves his hands.
"Did you see it?" says he. "Did you see it, Billy?"
"What?" I asks.
"Why, that picture that Morgan wants. It's hanging in that
pawnshop, behind the desk. I didn't say anything because Klein
was there. It's the article sure as you live. The girls are as natural
as paint can make them, all measuring 36 and 25 and 42 skirts, if
they had any skirts, and they're doing a buck-and-wing on the
bank of a river with the blues. What did Mr. Morgan say he'd give
for it? Oh, don't make me tell you. They can't know what it is in
that pawnshop."
When the pawnshop opened the next morning me and Silver was
standing there as anxious as if we wanted to soak our Sunday suit
to buy a drink. We sauntered inside, and began to look at watch-
chains.
"That's a violent specimen of a chromo you've got up there,"
remarked Silver, casual, to the pawnbroker. "But I kind of enthuse
over the girl with the shoulderblades and red bunting. Would an
offer of $2.25 for it cause you to knock over any fragile articles of
your stock in hurrying it off the nail?"
The pawnbroker smiles and goes on showing us plate watch-
chains.
"That picture," says he, "was pledged a year ago by an Italian
gentleman. I loaned him $500 on it. It is called 'Love's Idle Hour,'
and it is by Leonardo de Vinchy. Two days ago the legal time
expired, and it became an unredeemed pledge. Here is a style of
chain that is worn a great deal now."
At the end of half an hour me and Silver paid the pawnbroker
$2,000 and walked out with the picture. Silver got into a cab with
it and started for Morgan's office. I goes to the hotel and waits for
him. In two hours Silver comes back.
"Did you see Mr. Morgan?" I asks. "How much did he pay you for
it?"
Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover.
"I never exactly saw Mr. Morgan," he says, "because Mr. Morgan's
been in Europe for a month. But what's worrying me, Billy, is
this: The department stores have all got that same picture on sale,
framed, for $3.48. And they charge $3.50 for the frame alone--
that's what I can't understand."
IV
THE DAY RESURGENT
I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it
comes to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial
conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in
number.
First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may
have free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the
proper number of toes will fill the bill. Miss Clarice St. Vavasour,
the well-known model, will pose for it in the "Lethergogallagher,"
or whatever it was that Trilby called it.
Second--the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework
of lilies. This is magazine-covery, but reliable.
Third--Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.
Fourth--Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw
hat, happy and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.
Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the
higher criticism has hard-boiled them.
The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of
all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our
conception. It belongs to all religions, although the pagans
invented it. Going back still further to the first spring, we can see
Eve choosing with pride a new green leaf from the tree _ficus
carica_.
Now, the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forth
the theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, a
holiday nor an occasion. What it is you shall find out if you
follow in the footsteps of Danny McCree.
Easter Sunday dawned as it should, bright and early, in its place
on the calendar between Saturday and Monday. At 5:24 the sun
rose, and at 10:30 Danny followed its example. He went into the
kitchen and washed his face at the sink. His mother was frying
bacon. She looked at his hard, smooth, knowing countenance as
he juggled with the round cake of soap, and thought of his father
when she first saw him stopping a hot grounder between second
and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot in Harlem, where
the La Paloma apartment house now stands. In the front room of
the flat Danny's father sat by an open window smoking his pipe,
with his dishevelled gray hair tossed about by the breeze. He still
clung to his pipe, although his sight had been taken from him two
years before by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off
without permission. Very few blind men care for smoking, for the
reason that they cannot see the smoke. Now, could you enjoy
having the news read to you from an evening newspaper unless
you could see the colors of the headlines?
"'Tis Easter Day," said Mrs. McCree.
"Scramble mine," said Danny.
After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning
costume of the Canal Street importing house dray chauffeur--frock
coat, striped trousers, patent leathers, gilded trace chain across
front of vest, and wing collar, rolled-brim derby and butterfly bow
from Schonstein's (between Fourteenth Street and Tony's fruit
stand) Saturday night sale.
"You'll be goin' out this day, of course, Danny," said old man
McCree, a little wistfully. "'Tis a kind of holiday, they say. Well,
it's fine spring weather. I can feel it in the air."
"Why should I not be going out?" demanded Danny in his
grumpiest chest tones. "Should I stay in? Am I as good as a
horse? One day of rest my team has a week. Who earns the
money for the rent and the breakfast you've just eat, I'd like to
know? Answer me that!"
"All right, lad," said the old man. "I'm not complainin'. While me
two eyes was good there was nothin' better to my mind than a
Sunday out. There's a smell of turf and burnin' brush comin' in the
windy. I have me tobaccy. A good fine day and rist to ye, lad.
Times I wish your mother had larned to read, so I might hear the
rest about the hippopotamus--but let that be."
"Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?" asked
Danny of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. "Have you
been taking him to the Zoo? And for what?"
"I have not," said Mrs. McCree. "He sets by the windy all day.
'Tis little recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all. I'm
thinkin' they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of
grease without stoppin' for the most of an hour. I looks to see if
there's lard burnin' in the fryin' pan. There is not. He says I do not
understand. 'Tis weary days, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a
blind man, Danny. There was no better nor stronger than him
when he had his two eyes. 'Tis a fine day, son. Injoy yeself ag'inst
the morning. There will be cold supper at six."
"Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus?" asked Danny of
Mike, the janitor, as he went out the door downstairs.
"I have not," said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher. "But 'tis
the only subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages
that I've not been compained to about these two days. See the
landlord. Or else move out if ye like. Have ye hippopotamuses in
the lease? No, then?"
"It was the old man who spoke of it," said Danny. "Likely there's
nothing in it."
Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck
northward into the heart of the district where Easter--modern
Easter, in new, bright raiment--leads the pascal march. Out of
towering brown churches came the blithe music of anthems from
the choirs. The broad sidewalks were moving parterres of living
flowers--so it seemed when your eye looked upon the Ester girl.
Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the
background of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands.
The windows of the brownstone mansions were packed with the
most opulent creations of flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies.
Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned,
walked Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him.
"Why, Corrigan," he asked, "is Easter? I know it comes the first
you're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March--but
why? Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor
appoint it out of politics?"
"'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air of
the Third Deputy Police Commissioner, "peculiar to New York. It
extends up to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. In my opinion 'tis not political."
"Thanks," said Danny. "And say--did you ever hear a man
complain of hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I
mean."
"Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, "and
there was wood alcohol in that."
Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying
simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his.
The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so
often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-
made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find
in the griefs of the common people their most striking models.
But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of
Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny
set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly.
The family entrance of Dugan's caf'e was feasible; so Danny
yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a
dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still
groped after the mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee.
"Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, "why do they have Easter?"
"Skiddoo!" said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. "Is that a new
one? All right. Tony Pastor's for you last night, I guess. I give it
up. What's the answer--two apples or a yard and a half?"
From Dugan's Danny turned back eastward. The April sun seemed
to stir in him a vague feeling that he could not construe. He made
a wrong diagnosis and decided that it was Katy Conlon.
A block from her house on Avenue A he met her going to church.
They pumped hands on the corner.
"Gee! but you look dumpish and dressed up," said Katy. "What's
wrong? Come away with me to church and be cheerful."
"What's doing at church?" asked Danny.
"Why, it's Easter Sunday. Silly! I waited till after eleven expectin'
you might come around to go."
"What does this Easter stand for, Katy," asked Danny gloomily.
"Nobody seems to know."
"Nobody as blind as you," said Katy with spirit. "You haven't
even looked at my new hat. And skirt. Why, it's when all the girls
put on new spring clothes. Silly! Are you coming to church with
me?"
"I will," said Danny. "If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought
to be able to give some excuse for it. Not that the hat ain't a
beauty. The green roses are great."
At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding.
He spoke rapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early
Sabbath dinner; but he knew his business. There was one word
that controlled his theme--resurrection. Not a new creation; but a
new life arising out of the old. The congregation had heard it
often before. But there was a wonderful hat, a combination of
sweet peas and lavender, in the sixth pew from the pulpit. It
attracted much attention.
After church Danny lingered on a corner while Katy waited, with
pique in her sky-blue eyes.
"Are you coming along to the house?" she asked. "But don't mind
me. I'll get there all right. You seem to be studyin' a lot about
something. All right. Will I see you at any time specially, Mr.
McCree?"
"I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning
and crossing the street.
Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly.
Danny stopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in
his pockets, at the curb on the corner. His face was that of a
graven image. Deep in his soul something stirred so small, so fine,
so keen and leavening that his hard fibres did not recognize it. It
was something more tender than the April day, more subtle than
the call of the senses, purer and deeper-rooted than the love of
woman--for had he not turned away from green roses and eyes that
had kept him chained for a year? And Danny did not know what it
was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his dinner, had
told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow the
drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth.
Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of
delight.
"Hippopotamus!" he shouted to an elevated road pillar. "Well,
how is that for a bum guess? Why, blast my skylights! I know
what he was driving at now.
"Hippopotamus! Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx! It's been a
year since he heard it; and he didn't miss it so very far. We quit at
469 B. C., and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldn't
have guessed what he was trying to get out of him."
Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his
labor supported.
Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe
lay on the sill.
"Will that be you, lad?" he asked.
Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at the
outset of committing a good deed.
"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?"
he snapped, viciously. "Have I no right to come in?"
"Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh. "Is it
evening yet?"
Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled
in gilt letters, "The History of Greece." Dust was on it half an inch
thick. He laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a
strip of paper. And then he gave a short roar at the top of his
voice, and said:
"Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?"
"Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree. "Many and
weary be the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I
took a great likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. 'Tis a
fine day outside, lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have
gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe."
"Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not
hippopotamus," said Danny. "The war began there. It kept
something doing for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy
named Philip of Macedon, in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece
by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronaea. I'll read
it."
With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man
McCree sat for an hour, listening.
Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs.
McCree was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were
running from old man McCree's eyes.
"Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said. "There is none finer
in the land. My two eyes have come back to me again."
After supper he said to Danny: "'Tis a happy day, this Easter.
And now ye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough."
"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?"
said Danny, angrily. "Have I no right to stay in it? After supper
there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B. C.,
when the kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of
the Roman Empire. Am I nothing in this house?"