Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

girl, Katie Flynn, that was with the Spaffords so long a time?”

“I’ve heard of her,” said Weatherly. “They say she stayed a year with them without a single day off. But I don’t believe any fairy story like that.”

“ ’Twas a fact. Well, I engaged her today for a cook. She’s going out to the house tomorrow.”

“Confound you for a lucky dog,” shouted Weatherly, with envy in his tones and his heart, “and you live four blocks further out than we do!”

A Professional Secret The Story of a Maid Made Over

Dr. Satterfield Prince, physician to the leisure class, looked at his watch. It indicated five minutes to twelve. At the stroke of the hour would expire the morning term set apart for the reception of his patients in his handsome office apartments. And then the young woman attendant ushered in from the waiting-room the last unit of the wealthy and fashionable gathering that had come to patronize his skill.

Dr. Prince turned, his watch still in hand, his manner courteous, but seeming to invite promptness and brevity in the interview. The last patient was a middle-aged lady, richly dressed, with an amiable and placid face. When she spoke her voice revealed the drawling, musical slur and intonation of the South. She had come, she leisurely explained, to bespeak the services of Dr. Prince in the case of her daughter, who was possessed of a most mysterious affliction. And then, femininely, she proceeded to exhaustively diagnose the affliction, informing the physician with a calm certitude of its origin and nature.

The diagnosis advanced by the lady⁠—Mrs. Galloway Rankin⁠—was one so marvelously strange and singular in its conception that Dr. Prince, accustomed as he was to the conceits and vagaries of wealthy malingerers, was actually dumbfounded. The following is the matter of Mrs. Rankin’s statement, briefly reported:

She⁠—Mrs. Rankin⁠—was of an old Kentucky family, the Bealls. Between the Bealls and another historic house⁠—the Rankins⁠—had been waged for nearly a century one of the fiercest and most sanguinary feuds within the history of the State. Each generation had kept alive both the hate and the warfare, until at length it was said that Nature began to take cognizance of the sentiment and Bealls and Rankins were born upon earth as antagonistic toward each other as cats and dogs. So, for four generations the war had waged, and the mountains were dotted with tombstones of both families. At last, for lack of fuel to feed upon, the feud expired with only one direct descendant of the Bealls and one of the Rankins remaining⁠—Evalina Beall, aged nineteen, and Galloway Rankin, aged twenty-five. The last mortal shot in the feud was fired by Cupid. The two survivors met, became immediately and mutually enamoured, and a miracle transpired on Kentucky soil⁠—a Rankin wedded a Beall.

Interposed, and irrelevant to the story, was the information that coal mines had been discovered later on the Rankin lands, and now the Galloway Rankins were to be computed among the millionaries.

All that was long enough ago for there to be now a daughter, twenty years of age⁠—Miss Annabel Rankin⁠—for whose relief the services of Dr. Prince was petitioned.

Then followed, in Mrs. Rankin’s statement, a description of the mysterious, though by her readily accounted for, affliction.

It seemed that there was a peculiar difficulty in the young lady’s powers of locomotion. In walking, a process requiring a coordination and unanimity of the functions⁠—Dr. Prince, said Mrs. Rankin, would understand and admit the nonexistence of a necessity for anatomical specification⁠—there persisted a stubborn opposition, a most contrary and counteracting antagonism. In those successively progressive and generally unconsciously automatic movements necessary to proper locomotion, there was a violent lack of harmony and mutuality. To give an instance cited by Mrs. Rankin⁠—if Miss Annabel desired to ascend a stairway, one foot would be easily advanced to the step above, but instead of aiding and abetting its fellow, the other would at once proceed to start downstairs. By a strong physical and mental effort the young lady could walk fairly well for a short distance but suddenly the rebellious entities would become uncontrollable, and she would be compelled to turn undesirable corners, to enter impossible doorways, to dance, shuffle, sidestep and perform other undignified and distressing evolutions.

After setting forth these lamentable symptoms, Mrs. Rankin emphatically asserted her belief that the affliction was the result of heredity⁠—of the union between the naturally opposing and contrary Beall and Rankin elements. She believed that the inherited spirit of the ancient feud had taken on physical manifestations, exhibiting them in the person of the unfortunate outcome of the union of opposites. That in Miss Annabel Rankin was warring the imperishable antipathy of the two families. In other words, that one of Miss Rankin’s⁠—that is to say, that when Miss Rankin took a step it was a Beall step, and the next one was dominated by the bequeathed opposition of the Rankins.

Doctor Prince received the communication with his usual grave, professional attention, and promised to call the next day at ten to inspect the patient.

Promptly at the hour his electric runabout turned into the line of stylish autos and hansoms that wait along the pavements before the most expensive hostelry on American soil.

When Miss Annabel Rankin entered the reception parlour of their choice suite of rooms Doctor Prince gave a little blink of surprise through his brilliantly polished nose glasses. The glow of perfect health and the contour of perfect beauty were visible in the face and form of the young lady. But admiration gave way to sympathy when he saw her walk. She entered at a little run, swayed, stepped off helplessly at a sharp tangent, advanced, marked time, backed off, recovered and sidled with a manoeuvring rush to a couch, where she rested, with a look of serious melancholy upon her handsome face.

Dr. Prince proceeded with his interrogatories in the delicate, reassuring gentlemanly manner that had brought him so many patrons who placed a value upon those amenities. Miss Annabel answered frankly and sensibly, indeed, for one of her years. The feud theory of