Лучшие рассказы О. Генри = The Best of O. Henry. О. ГенриЧитать онлайн книгу.
he said to himself. “She’s all right, too, I’d be sworn, even if she does have to work. Perhaps if I’d told her the truth instead of all that razzle-dazzle we might – but, confound it! I had to play up to my clothes.”
Thus spoke the brave who was born and reared in the wigwams[208] of the tribe of the Manhattans[209].
The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly cross-town until she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east, facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary gods[210]. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a handsome young lady in an elaborate house dress was looking anxiously out the window.
“Oh, you madcap!” exclaimed the elder girl, when the other entered. “When will you quit frightening us this way? It is two hours since you ran out in that rag of an old dress and Marie’s hat. Mamma has been so alarmed. She sent Louis in the auto to try to find you. You are a bad, thoughtless Puss.”
The elder girl touched a button, and a maid came in a moment.
“Marie, tell mamma that Miss Marian has returned.”
“Don’t scold, sister. I only ran down to Mme. Theo’s to tell her to use mauve insertion instead of pink. My costume and Marie’s hat were just what I needed. Everyone thought I was a shopgirl, I am sure.”
“Dinner is over, dear; you stayed so late.”
“I know. I slipped on the sidewalk and turned my ankle. I could not walk, so I hobbled into a restaurant and sat there until I was better. That is why I was so long.”
The two girls sat in the window seat, looking out at the lights and the stream of hurrying vehicles in the avenue. The younger one cuddled down with her head in her sister’s lap.
“We will have to marry some day,” she said dreamily – “both of us. We have so much money that we will not be allowed to disappoint the public. Do you want me to tell you the kind of a man I could love, Sis?”
“Go on, you scatterbrain,” smiled the other.
“I could love a man with dark and kind blue eyes, who is gentle and respectful to poor girls, who is handsome and good and does not try to flirt. But I could love him only if he had an ambition, an object, some work to do in the world. I would not care how poor he was if I could help him build his way up. But, sister dear, the kind of man we always meet – the man who lives an idle life between society and his clubs – I could not love a man like that, even if his eyes were blue and he were ever so kind to poor girls whom he met in the street.”
By Courier
It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters; and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit for a while and enjoy a foretaste of coming Spring.
She rested there, pensive and still. A certain melancholy that touched her countenance must have been of recent birth, for it had not yet altered the fine and youthful contours of her cheek, nor subdued the arch though resolute curve of her lips.
A tall young man came striding through the park along the path near which she sat. Behind him tagged a boy carrying a suit-case. At sight of the young lady, the man’s face changed to red and back to pale again. He watched her countenance as he drew nearer, with hope and anxiety mingled on his own. He passed within a few yards of her, but he saw no evidence that she was aware of his presence or existence.
Some fifty yards further on he suddenly stopped and sat on a bench at one side. The boy dropped the suit-case and stared at him with wondering, shrewd eyes. The young man took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. It was a good handkerchief, a good brow, and the young man was good to look at. He said to the boy:
“I want you to take a message to that young lady on that bench. Tell her I am on my way to the station, to leave for San Francisco, where I shall join that Alaska moose-hunting expedition. Tell her that, since she has commanded me neither to speak nor to write to her, I take this means of making one last appeal to her sense of justice, for the sake of what has been. Tell her that to condemn and discard one who has not deserved such treatment, without giving him her reasons or a chance to explain is contrary to her nature as I believe it to be. Tell her that I have thus, to a certain degree, disobeyed her injunctions, in the hope that she may yet be inclined to see justice done. Go, and tell her that.”
The young man dropped a half-dollar into the boy’s hand. The boy looked at him for a moment with bright, canny eyes out of a dirty, intelligent face, and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the bench a little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of the old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back of his head. The lady looked at him coolly, without prejudice or favour.
“Lady,” he said, “dat gent on de oder bench sent yer a song and dance by me. If yer don’t know de guy, and he’s tryin’ to do de Johnny act[211], say de word, and I’ll call a cop in t’ree minutes. If yer does know him, and he’s on de square, w’y I’ll spiel yer de bunch of hot air he sent yer.”
The young lady betrayed a faint interest.
“A song and dance!” she said, in a deliberate sweet voice that seemed to clothe her words in a diaphanous[212] garment of impalpable irony. “A new idea – in the troubadour[213] line, I suppose. I – used to know the gentleman who sent you, so I think it will hardly be necessary to call the police. You may execute your song and dance, but do not sing too loudly. It is a little early yet for open-air vaudeville, and we might attract attention.”
“Awe,” said the boy, with a shrug down the length of him, “yer know what I mean, lady. ’Tain’t a turn, it’s wind. He told me to tell yer he’s got his collars and cuffs in dat grip for a scoot clean out to ’Frisco. Den he’s goin’ to shoot snow-birds in de Klondike. He says yer told him not to send ’round no more pink notes nor come hangin’ over de garden gate, and he takes dis means of puttin’ yer wise. He says yer refereed him out like a has-been, and never give him no chance to kick at de decision. He says yer swiped him, and never said why.”
The slightly awakened interest in the young lady’s eyes did not abate. Perhaps it was caused by either the originality or the audacity of the snow-bird hunter, in thus circumventing her express commands against the ordinary modes of communication. She fixed her eye on a statue standing disconsolate in the dishevelled park, and spoke into the transmitter:
“Tell the gentleman that I need not repeat to him a description of my ideals. He knows what they have been and what they still are. So far as they touch on this case, absolute loyalty and truth are the ones paramount. Tell him that I have studied my own heart as well as one can, and I know its weakness as well as I do its needs. That is why I decline to hear his pleas, whatever they may be. I did not condemn him through hearsay or doubtful evidence, and that is why I made no charge. But, since he persists in hearing what he already well knows, you may convey the matter.
“Tell him that I entered the conservatory[214] that evening from the rear, to cut a rose for my mother. Tell him I saw him and Miss Ashburton beneath the pink oleander. The tableau was
wigwams –
the tribe of the Manhattans – a North American Indian tribe that used to inhabit the island until 1626 when Manhattan was sold to the Dutch
the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary gods – here: the place where the rich live; Mammon is an ancient god of wealth.
to do de Johny act – here: to chase after a woman, to misbehave
diaphanous = semitransparent, translucent
troubadour – a lyric poet in Italy, France and Spain in the 11th–13th centuries
conservatory – a hot-house with glass roof and walls to protect plants from cold