Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

The viscount stood near a portiére picking his teeth, when he saw Mrs. St. Bibbs enter.

He was at her side in a moment, and had written his name opposite hers for every dance.

George looked over and saw them, and gasped in surprise: “Jerusalem, that’s Molly!”

He leaned against a velvet cul-de-sac near the doorway and watched them. Mrs. St. Bibbs was the belle of the evening. Everybody crowded about her, and the viscount leaned over her and talked in his most engaging manner, fanning her with an old newspaper, as she smiled brightly upon him, a brilliant stream of wit, persiflage and repartee falling from her lips.

“Mon dieu!” said the viscount to himself, as his ardent gaze rested upon her, “I wish I knew who she is.”

At supper Mrs. St. Bibbs was the life of the gang. She engaged in a witty discussion with the brightest intellects around the table, completely overwhelming the boss joshers of the town. She conversed readily with gents from the wards, speaking their own dialect, and even answered without hesitation a question put to her by a man who had a sister attending the State University.

George could scarcely believe that this fascinating, brilliant woman of the world was the quiet little wife he had left at home that evening.

When the ball was over and the musicians had been stood off, George went up to his wife, feeling ashamed and repentant.

“Molly,” he said, “forgive me. I didn’t know how beautiful and gay you could be in swell society. The next time our Longfellow Literary Coterie gives a fish fry at the Hook and Ladder Company Hall I’ll take you along.”

Mrs. St. Bibbs took her husband’s arm with a sweet smile.

“All right, George,” she said, “I just wanted you to see that this town can’t put up no society shindigs that are too high up for me to tackle. I once spent two weeks in Galveston, and I generally catch on to what’s proper as quick as anybody.”

At present there are no two society people in town more sought after and admired than George St. Bibbs and his accomplished wife.

A Post Reporter stood on the San Jacinto Street bridge last night. Half of a May moon swam in a sea of buttermilky clouds high in the east. Below, the bayou gleamed dully in the semidarkness, merging into inky blackness farther down. A steam tug glided noiselessly down the sluggish waters, leaving a shattered trail of molten silver. Foot passengers across the bridge were scarce. A few belated Fifth-Warders straggled past, clattering along the uneven planks of the footway. The reporter took off his hat and allowed a cool breath of a great city to fan his brow. A mellow voice, with, however, too much dramatic inflection, murmured at his elbow, and quoted incorrectly from Byron:

“Oh, moon, and darkening river, ye are wondrous strong;
Yet lovely in your strength as is the light of a dark eye in woman.”

The reporter turned and saw a magnificent specimen of the genus tramp. He was attired in a garb to be viewed with wonder, and even awe. His coat was a black frock, fallen into decay some years ago. Under it he wore a jaunty striped blazer, too tight to button, and the ghost of a collar peered above its intricacies. His trousers were patched, and torn, and frayed, and faded away at the bottom into ghostly, indescribable feet shod in shapeless leather and dust.

His face, however, was the face of a hilarious faun. His eyes were brilliant and piercing, and a godlike smile lit up a face that owed little to art or soap.

His nose was classic, and his nostrils thin and nervous, betokening either race or fever. His brow was high and smooth, and his regard lofty and superior, though a bristly beard of uncertain cut and grisly effect covered the lower part of his countenance.

“Do you know what I am, sir?” asked this strange being. The reporter gazed at his weird form and shook his head.

“Your reply reassures me,” said the wanderer. “It convinces me that I have not made a mistake in addressing you. You have some of the instincts of a gentleman, because you forbore to say what you know well, namely, that I am a tramp. I look like a tramp and I am one, but no ordinary one. I have a university education, I am a Greek and Latin scholar, and I have held the chair of English literature in a college known all over the world. I am a biologist, and more than all, I am a student of the wonderful book, man. The last accomplishment is the only one I still practice. If I am not grown unskilled, I can read you.”

He bent a discriminating look upon the reporter. The reporter puffed at his cigar and submitted to the scrutiny.

“You are a newspaper man,” said the tramp. “I will tell you how I reached the conclusion. I have been watching you for ten minutes. I knew you were not a man of leisure, for you walked upon the bridge with a somewhat rapid step. You stopped and began to watch the effect of the moon upon the water. A business man would have been hurrying along to supper. When you got your cigar out you had to feel in three or four pockets before you found one. A newspaper man has many cigars forced upon him in the course of a day, and he has to distribute them among several pockets. Again, you have no pencil sticking out of your pocket. No newspaper man ever has. Am I right in my conjecture?”

The reporter made a shrewd guess.

“You are right,” he said, “and your having seen me going into a newspaper office some time ago no doubt assisted you in your diagnosis.”

The tramp laughed.

“You are wrong,” he said. “You were coming out when I saw you yesterday. I like a man like you. You can give and take. I have been in