Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

blattering small talk that is supposed to charm the budding intellect of the young. The Child bawled, and was dragged away, hugging her Betsy close.

There came the Secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in pumps, and worshipping pomp and ceremony. He counted out into Fuzzy’s hand ten ten-dollar bills; then dropped his eye upon the door, transferred it to James, its custodian, indicated the obnoxious earner of the reward with the other, and allowed his pumps to waft him away to secretarial regions.

James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him as far as the front door.

When the money touched fuzzy’s dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It⁠—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind’s eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed hand; and now wherever he might go the enchanted palaces with shining footrests and magic red fluids in gleaming glassware would be open to him.

He followed James to the door.

He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal for him to pass into the vestibule.

Beyond the wrought-iron gates in the dark highway Black Riley and his two pals casually strolled, fingering under their coats the inevitably fatal weapons that were to make the reward of the rag-doll theirs.

Fuzzy stopped at the Millionaire’s door and bethought himself. Like little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green thoughts and memories began to decorate his confused mind. He was quite drunk, mind you, and the present was beginning to fade. Those wreaths and festoons of holly with their scarlet berries making the great hall gay⁠—where had he seen such things before? Somewhere he had known polished floors and odors of fresh flowers in winter, and⁠—and someone was singing a song in the house that he thought he had heard before. Someone singing and playing a harp. Of course, it was Christmas⁠—Fuzzy though he must have been pretty drunk to have overlooked that.

And then he went out of the present, and there came back to him out of some impossible, vanished, and irrevocable past a little, pure-white, transient, forgotten ghost⁠—the spirit of noblesse oblige. Upon a gentleman certain things devolve.

James opened the outer door. A stream of light went down the graveled walk to the iron gate. Black Riley, McCarthy, and “One-ear” Mike saw, and carelessly drew their sinister cordon closer about the gate.

With a more imperious gesture than James’s master had ever used or could ever use, Fuzzy compelled the menial to close the door. Upon a gentleman certain things devolve. Especially at the Christmas season.

“It is cust⁠—customary,” he said to James, the flustered, “when a gentleman calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the season with the lady of the house. You und’stand? I shall not move shtep till I pass compl’ments season with lady the house. Und’stand?”

There was an argument. James lost. Fuzzy raised his voice and sent it through the house unpleasantly. I did not say he was a gentleman. He was simply a tramp being visited by a ghost.

A sterling silver bell rang. James went back to answer it, leaving Fuzzy in the hall. James explained somewhere to someone.

Then he came and conducted Fuzzy into the library.

The lady entered a moment later. She was more beautiful and holy than any picture that Fuzzy had seen. She smiled, and said something about a doll. Fuzzy didn’t understand that; he remembered nothing about a doll.

A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a stamped sterling-silver waiter. The Lady took one. The other was handed to Fuzzy.

As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem his disabilities dropped from him for one brief moment. He straightened himself; and Time, so disobliging to most of us, turned backward to accommodate Fuzzy.

Forgotten Christmas ghosts whiter than the false beards of the most opulent Kris Kringle were rising in the fumes of Grogan’s whisky. What had the Millionaire’s mansion to do with a long, wainscoted Virginia hall, where the riders were grouped around a silver punch-bowl, drinking the ancient toast of the House? And why should the patter of the cab horses’ hoofs on the frozen street be in any wise related to the sound of the saddled hunters stamping under the shelter of the west veranda? And what had Fuzzy to do with any of it?

The Lady, looking at him over her glass, let her condescending smile fade away like a false dawn. Her eyes turned serious. She saw something beneath the rags and Scotch terrier whiskers that she did not understand. But it did not matter.

Fuzzy lifted his glass and smiled vacantly.

“P-pardon, lady,” he said, “but couldn’t leave without exchangin’ comp’ments sheason with lady th’ house. ’Gainst princ’ples gen’leman do sho.”

And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the House when men wore lace ruffles and powder.

“The blessings of another year⁠—”

Fuzzy’s memory failed him. The Lady prompted:

“⁠—Be upon this hearth.”

“⁠—The guest⁠—” stammered Fuzzy.

“⁠—And upon her who⁠—” continued the Lady, with a leading smile.

“Oh, cut it out,” said Fuzzy, ill-manneredly. “I can’t remember. Drink hearty.”

Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the smile of her caste. James enveloped and re-conducted him toward the front door. The harp music still softly drifted through the house.

Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate.

“I wonder,” said the Lady to herself, musing, “who⁠—but there were so many who came. I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing to them after they have fallen so low.”

Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door. The Lady called: “James!”

James stalked back obsequiously, leaving