Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Mikado’s legions were hurled upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle!⁠—well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of the same date.

Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word “great” in his code should have been “gage,” and its complemental words “of battle.” But it went to Ames “conditions white,” and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, “conditions white” excited some amusement. But it in made no difference to the Enterprise, anyway.

It was wonderful. And Calloway was wonderful in having made the new censor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint of the dearth of news and a petition for more expense money. And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.

On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey’s desk where the reporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his leg by falling into a coal-hole⁠—Ames having failed to find a murder motive in it.

“The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week,” said Scott.

“All right,” said Vesey. “Every little helps. Say⁠—Mr. Scott, which would you say⁠—‘We can state without fear of successful contradiction,’ or, ‘On the whole it can be safely asserted’?”

The Country of Elusion

The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is not⁠—and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmappable trail into that mooted country, Bohemia.

Grainger, subeditor of Doc’s Magazine, closed his roll-top desk, put on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the “down” button, and waited for the elevator.

Grainger’s day had been trying. The chief had tried to ruin the magazine a dozen times by going against Grainger’s ideas for running it. A lady whose grandfather had fought with McClellan had brought a portfolio of poems in person.

Grainger was curator of the Lion’s House of the magazine. That day he had “lunched” an Arctic explorer, a short-story writer, and the famous conductor of a slaughterhouse exposé. Consequently his mind was in a whirl of icebergs, Maupassant, and trichinosis.

But there was a surcease and a recourse; there was Bohemia. He would seek distraction there; and, let’s see⁠—he would call by for Mary Adrian.

Half an hour later he threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid-hunter through the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the “Idealia” apartment-house. One day the christeners of apartment-houses and the cognominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there will be some jealous and sanguinary knifing.

The clerk breathed Grainger’s name so languidly into the house telephone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, down to the janitor’s regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily up to Miss Adrian’s ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to come up immediately.

A colored maid with an Eliza-crossing-the-ice expression opened the door of the apartment for him. Grainger walked sideways down the narrow hall. A bunch of burnt umber hair and a sea-green eye appeared in the crack of a door. A long, white, undraped arm came out, barring the way.

“So glad you came, Ricky, instead of any of the others,” said the eye. “Light a cigarette and give it to me. Going to take me to dinner? Fine. Go into the front room till I finish dressing. But don’t sit in your usual chair. There’s pie in it⁠—Meringue. Kappelman threw it at Reeves last evening while he was reciting. Sophy has just come to straighten up. Is it lit? Thanks. There’s Scotch on the mantel⁠—oh, no, it isn’t⁠—that’s chartreuse. Ask Sophy to find you some. I won’t be long.”

Grainger escaped the meringue. As he waited his spirits sank still lower. The atmosphere of the room was as vapid as a zephyr wandering over a Vesuvian lava-bed. Relics of some feast lay about the room, scattered in places where even a prowling cat would have been surprised to find them. A straggling cluster of deep red roses in a marmalade jar bowed their heads over tobacco ashes and unwashed goblets. A chafing-dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet music supported a stack of sandwiches in a chair.

Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black fabric whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to summon visions ranging between the extremes of man’s experience. Spelled with an “ê” it belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous dreams; with an “a” it drapes lamentation and woe.

That evening they went to the Café André. And, as people would confide to you in a whisper that André’s was the only truly Bohemian restaurant in town, it may be well to follow them.

André began his professional career as a waiter in a Bowery ten-cent eating-house. Had you seen him there you would have called him tough⁠—to yourself. Not aloud, for he would have “soaked” you as quickly as he would