Short Fiction, O. Henry [best books to read for teens TXT] 📗

of drinks begins to chant the sanitary saga of Santone. “Rather a moist night, gentlemen, for our town. A little fog from our river, but nothing to hurt. Repeated Tests.”

“Damn your litmus papers,” gasps Toledo⁠—“without any⁠—personal offense intended.”

“We’ve heard of ’em before. Let ’em turn red, white and blue. What we want is a repeated test of that⁠—whiskey. Come again. I paid for the last round, Goodall of Memphis.”

The bottle oscillates from one to the other, continues to do so, and is not removed from the counter. The bartender sees two emaciated invalids dispose of enough Kentucky Belle to floor a dozen cowboys, without displaying any emotion save a sad and contemplative interest in the peregrinations of the bottle. So he is moved to manifest a solicitude as to the consequences.

“Not on your Uncle Mark Hanna,” responds Toledo, “will we get drunk. We’ve been⁠—vaccinated with whiskey⁠—and⁠—cod liver oil. What would send you to the police station⁠—only gives us a thirst. S-s-set out another bottle.”

It is slow work trying to meet death by that route. Some quicker way must be found. They leave the saloon and plunge again into the mist. The sidewalks are mere flanges at the base of the houses; the street a cold ravine, the fog filling it like a freshet. Not far away is the Mexican quarter. Conducted as if by wires along the heavy air comes a guitar’s tinkle, and the demoralizing voice of some señorita singing:

“En las tardes sombrillos del invierro
En el prado a Marar me reclino
Y maldigo mi fausto destino⁠—
Una vida la mas infeliz.”

The words of it they do not understand⁠—neither Toledo nor Memphis, but words are the least important things in life. The music tears the breasts of the seekers after Nepenthe, inciting Toledo to remark:

“Those kids of mine⁠—I wonder⁠—by God, Mr. Goodall of Memphis, we had too little of that whiskey! No slow music in mine, if you please. It makes you disremember to forget.”

Hurd of Toledo, here pulls out his watch, and says: “I’m a son of a gun! Got an engagement for a hack ride out to San Pedro Springs at eleven. Forgot it. A fellow from Noo York, and me, and the Castillo sisters at Rhinegelder’s Garden. That Noo York chap’s a lucky dog⁠—got one whole lung⁠—good for a year yet. Plenty of money, too. He pays for everything. I can’t afford⁠—to miss the jamboree. Sorry you ain’t going along. Goodbye, Goodall of Memphis.”

He rounds the corner and shuffles away, casting off thus easily the ties of acquaintanceship as the moribund do, the season of dissolution being man’s supreme hour of egoism and selfishness. But he turns and calls back through the fog to the other: “I say, Goodall of Memphis! If you get there before I do, tell ’em Hurd’s a-comin’ too. Hurd, of T’leder, Ah-hia.”

Thus Goodall’s tempter deserts him. That youth, uncomplaining and uncaring, takes a spell at coughing, and, recovered, wanders desultorily on down the street, the name of which he neither knows nor recks. At a certain point he perceives swinging doors, and hears, filtering between them a noise of wind and string instruments. Two men enter from the street as he arrives, and he follows them in. There is a kind of antechamber, plentifully set with palms and cactuses and oleanders. At little marble-topped tables some people sit, while soft-shod attendants bring the beer. All is orderly, clean, melancholy, gay, of the German method of pleasure. At his right is the foot of a stairway. A man there holds out his hand. Goodall extends his, full of silver, the man selects therefrom a coin. Goodall goes upstairs and sees there two galleries extending along the sides of a concert hall which he now perceives to lie below and beyond the anteroom he first entered. These galleries are divided into boxes or stalls, which bestow with the aid of hanging lace curtains, a certain privacy upon their occupants.

Passing with aimless feet down the aisle contiguous to these saucy and discreet compartments, he is half checked by the sight in one of them of a young woman, alone and seated in an attitude of reflection. This young woman becomes aware of his approach. A smile from her brings him to a standstill, and her subsequent invitation draws him, though hesitating, to the other chair in the box, a little table between them.

Goodall is only nineteen. There are some whom, when the terrible god Phthisis wishes to destroy he first makes beautiful; and the boy is one of these. His face is wax, and an awful pulchritude is born of the menacing flame in his cheeks. His eyes reflect an unearthly vista engendered by the certainty of his doom. As it is forbidden man to guess accurately concerning his fate, it is inevitable that he shall tremble at the slightest lifting of the veil.

The young woman is well-dressed, and exhibits a beauty of distinctly feminine and tender sort; an Eve-like comeliness that scarcely seems predestined to fade.

It is immaterial, the steps by which the two mount to a certain plane of good understanding; they are short and few, as befits the occasion.

A button against the wall of the partition is frequently disturbed and a waiter comes and goes at signal.

Pensive Beauty would nothing of wine; two thick plaits of her blond hair hang almost to the floor; she is a lineal descendant of the Lorelei. So the waiter brings the brew; effervescent, icy, greenish golden. The orchestra on the stage is playing “Oh, Rachel.” The youngsters have exchanged a good bit of information. She calls him, “Walter” and he calls her “Miss Rosa.”

Goodall’s tongue is loosened and he has told her everything about himself, about his home in Tennessee, the old pillared mansion under the oaks, the stables, the hunting; the friends he has; down to the chickens, and the box bushes bordering the walks. About his coming South for the climate, hoping to escape the hereditary foe of his family. All about his