Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

facts. The people were Nebuchadnezzars; they bit the grass before me; there was no dust in the town for them to bite. They bowed down to Judson Tate. They knew that I was the power behind Sancho Benavides. A word from me was more to them than a whole deckle-edged library from East Aurora in sectional bookcases was from anybody else. And yet there are people who spend hours fixing their faces⁠—rubbing in cold cream and massaging the muscles (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of benzoin and electrolyzing moles⁠—to what end? Looking handsome. Oh, what a mistake! It’s the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on. It’s words more than warts, talk more than talcum, palaver more than powder, blarney more than bloom that counts⁠—the phonograph instead of the photograph. But I was going to tell you.

“The local Astors put me and Fergus up at the Centipede Club, a frame building built on posts sunk in the surf. The tide’s only nine inches. The Little Big High Low Jack-in-the-game of the town came around and kowtowed. Oh, it wasn’t to Herr Mees. They had heard about Judson Tate.

“One afternoon me and Fergus McMahan was sitting on the seaward gallery of the Centipede, drinking iced rum and talking.

“ ‘Judson,’ says Fergus, ‘there’s an angel in Oratama.’

“ ‘So long,’ says I, ‘as it ain’t Gabriel, why talk as if you had heard a trump blow?’

“ ‘It’s the Señorita Anabela Zamora,’ says Fergus. ‘She’s⁠—she’s⁠—she’s as lovely as⁠—as hell!’

“ ‘Bravo!’ says I, laughing heartily. ‘You have a true lover’s eloquence to paint the beauties of your inamorata. You remind me,’ says I, ‘of Faust’s wooing of Marguerite⁠—that is, if he wooed her after he went down the trap-door of the stage.’

“ ‘Judson,’ says Fergus, ‘you know you are as beautiless as a rhinoceros. You can’t have any interest in women. I’m awfully gone in Miss Anabela. And that’s why I’m telling you.’

“ ‘Oh, seguramente,’ says I. ‘I know I have a front elevation like an Aztec god that guards a buried treasure that never did exist in Jefferson County, Yucatan. But there are compensations. For instance, I am It in this country as far as the eye can reach, and then a few perches and poles. And again,’ says I, ‘when I engage people in a set-to of oral, vocal, and laryngeal utterances, I do not usually confine my side of the argument to what may be likened to a cheap phonographic reproduction of the ravings of a jellyfish.’

“ ‘Oh, I know,’ says Fergus, amiable, ‘that I’m not handy at small talk. Or large, either. That’s why I’m telling you. I want you to help me.’

“ ‘How can I do it?’ I asked.

“ ‘I have subsidized,’ says Fergus, ‘the services of Señorita Anabela’s duenna, whose name is Francesca. You have a reputation in this country, Judson,’ says Fergus, ‘of being a great man and a hero.’

“ ‘I have,’ says I. ‘And I deserve it.’

“ ‘And I,’ says Fergus, ‘am the best-looking man between the arctic circle and antarctic ice pack.’

“ ‘With limitations,’ says I, ‘as to physiognomy and geography, I freely concede you to be.’

“ ‘Between the two of us,’ says Fergus, ‘we ought to land the Señorita Anabela Zamora. The lady, as you know, is of an old Spanish family, and further than looking at her driving in the family carruaje of afternoons around the plaza, or catching a glimpse of her through a barred window of evenings, she is as unapproachable as a star.’

“ ‘Land her for which one of us?’ says I.

“ ‘For me, of course,’ says Fergus. ‘You’ve never seen her. Now, I’ve had Francesca point me out to her as being you on several occasions. When she sees me on the plaza, she thinks she’s looking at Don Judson Tate, the greatest hero, statesman, and romantic figure in the country. With your reputation and my looks combined in one man, how can she resist him? She’s heard all about your thrilling history, of course. And she’s seen me. Can any woman want more?’ asks Fergus McMahan.

“ ‘Can she do with less?’ I ask. ‘How can we separate our mutual attractions, and how shall we apportion the proceeds?’

“Then Fergus tells me his scheme.

“The house of the alcalde, Don Luis Zamora, he says, has a patio, of course⁠—a kind of inner courtyard opening from the street. In an angle of it is his daughter’s window⁠—as dark a place as you could find. And what do you think he wants me to do? Why, knowing my freedom, charm, and skilfulness of tongue, he proposes that I go into the patio at midnight, when the hobgoblin face of me cannot be seen, and make love to her for him⁠—for the pretty man that she has seen on the plaza, thinking him to be Don Judson Tate.

“Why shouldn’t I do it for him⁠—for my friend, Fergus McMahan? For him to ask me was a compliment⁠—an acknowledgment of his own shortcomings.

“ ‘You little, lily white, fine-haired, highly polished piece of dumb sculpture,’ says I, ‘I’ll help you. Make your arrangements and get me in the dark outside her window and my stream of conversation opened up with the moonlight tremolo stop turned on, and she’s yours.’

“ ‘Keep your face hid, Jud,’ says Fergus. ‘For heaven’s sake, keep your face hid. I’m a friend of yours in all kinds of sentiment, but this is a business deal. If I could talk I wouldn’t ask you. But seeing me and listening to you I don’t see why she can’t be landed.’

“ ‘By you?’ says I.

“ ‘By me,’ says Fergus.

“Well, Fergus and the duenna, Francesca, attended to the details. And one night they fetched me a long black cloak with a high collar, and led me to the house at midnight. I stood by the window in the patio until I heard a voice as soft and sweet as an angel’s whisper on the other side of the bars. I could see only a faint, white clad shape inside; and, true to Fergus, I pulled the