Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

in reaching the chair I placed for her. Her face was very lovely, but showed signs of sadness and melancholy.

“ ‘Doctor,’ she said, in a very sweet, but sorrowful voice, ‘I want to consult you about my condition, and as it is a most unusual affection, I will have to trouble you to listen to a no doubt tedious discourse upon my family history.’

“ ‘Madam,’ said I, ‘my time is yours. Anything you have to say that will throw light upon your trouble will, of course, benefit me in my diagnosis.’

“She thanked me with a smile that for a moment erased the sad lines from her face.

“ ‘My father,’ she said, ‘was one of the Adamses of Eastern Texas. You have doubtless heard of the family.’

“ ‘Perhaps so,’ I replied, ‘but there are so many families by the name of Adams that⁠—’

“ ‘It is of no consequence,’ she continued with a little wave of her hand. ‘Fifty years ago a violent feud broke out between my grandfather’s family and another family of old Texas settlers named Redmond. The bloodshed and inhumanities exchanged between the people of each side would fill volumes. The horrors of the old Kentucky and West Virginia feuds were repeated by them. An Adams would shoot a Redmond from behind a fence, at his table while eating, in a church, or anywhere; and a Redmond would murder an Adams in like manner. The most violent hatred imaginable existed between them. They poisoned each other’s wells, they killed each other’s stock, and if an Adams met a Redmond, only one would leave the spot. The children of each family were taught to hate the others from the time they could speak, and so the legacy of antipathy was handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter. For thirty years this battle raged between them, and one by one the death-dealing rifle and revolver thinned the families until one day just twenty years ago there remained but a single representative of each family, Lemuel Adams and Louisa Redmond. They were both young and handsome, and at their first meeting forgot the ancient feud of their families and loved each other. They married at once, and thus ended the great Adams-Redmond feud. But, alas, sir, the inherited discord and hatred of so many years’ standing was destined to rebound upon an innocent victim.’

“ ‘I was the child of that marriage, and the Adams and Redmond blood would not mingle. As a babe I was like any other, and was even considered unusually prepossessing.’

“ ‘I can well believe that, madam,’ I interrupted.

“The lady colored slightly and went on: ‘As I grew older a strange warring and many adverse impulses began to sway me. Every thought or movement I made was met by a contradictory one. It was the result of hereditary antagonism. Half of me was Adams and the other half Redmond. If I attempted to look at an object, one of my eyes would gaze in another direction. If I tried to salt a potato while eating, the other hand would involuntarily reach out and sprinkle it with sugar.

“ ‘Hundreds of times while playing the piano, while one hand would strike the notes of a lovely Beethoven sonata, I could not keep the other from pounding out “Over the Garden Wall,” or “The Skidmore Guards.” The Adams and the Redmond blood would not flow in harmony. If I went into an ice cream saloon, I would order a vanilla cream in spite of myself, when my very soul was clamoring for lemon. Many a time I would strive with every nerve to disrobe for the night, and the opposing influence would be so strong that I have instead put on my finest and most elaborate clothing and retired with my shoes on. Have you ever met with a similar case, doctor?’

“ ‘Never,’ I said. ‘It is indeed remarkable. And you have never succeeded in overcoming the adverse tendency?’

“Oh, yes. By constant efforts and daily exercise I have succeeded so far that it troubles me now in one respect only. With one exception I am now entirely released from its influence. It is my locomotion that is affected. My l-lower limbs refuse to coincide in their movements. If I try to walk in a certain direction, one⁠—one of them will take the step I desire, and the other tries to go by an entirely different route. It seems that one l⁠—one of them is Adams, and the other Redmond. Absolutely the only time when they agree is when I ride a bicycle, and as one goes up when the other is going down, their opposite movements of course facilitate my progress; but when endeavoring to walk I find them utterly unmanageable. You observed my entrance into this room. Is there anything you can do for me, doctor?’

“ ‘Your case is indeed a strange one,’ I said. ‘I will consider the situation, and if you will call tomorrow at 10 o’clock I will prescribe for you.’

“She rose from her chair, and I assisted her down the stairs to her carriage, which waited below. Such a sprawling, ungainly, mixed up walk I never saw before.

“I meditated over her case for a long time that night and consulted all the authorities on locomotor ataxia, and diseases of the muscles, that I could find. I found nothing covering her case, and about midnight I wandered out along the streets for a breath of cool air. I passed a store kept by an old German whom I knew, and dropped in to speak a word with him. I had noticed some time before two tame deer he kept running about in a paddock in his yard. I asked him about them. He told me that they had been fighting, and had not been able to agree, so he had separated them, placing each one in a separate yard. Of a sudden an idea came to me.

“The next day at ten the young lady came to my office. I had a prescription ready for