Эл Дженнингс - Through the Shadows with O'Henry

He seemed crushed and hopeless. He went over to the window and looked out.

"You know I kind of like this old dismal city of dying souls."

"What the hell has that got to do with your kicking off?"

"Nothing, but the jig is up. Colonel, have you the price? Let's have a little refreshment. They'll be up with a check some time, I hope."

I did not know the cause of his sudden overpowering dejection, but no drink could lighten it. The light-hearted, winsome joyousness of the night before had vanished. The bright hues in the spectrum were muddled into the drab.

One night—a cold, raw, angry night—Bill and I were strolling along somewhere in the East Side. "Remember the kid they electrocuted at the O. P.?" he said to me. "I will show you life tonight that is more tragic than death."

Faces that were no longer human—that seemed scarred and blemished as though the skin were a kind of web-like scale—dodged from alleyways and basements.

"They are the other side of the Enchanted Profile. You don't see it on our God. He keeps it hidden."

To Bill, long before he had written the story of that name, the Enchanted Profile was the face on the dollar.

We were turning a dingy corner. The sorriest, forlornest slice of tatterdemalion came shambling along. He was sober. Hunger—if you've ever felt it, you recognize in the other fellow's eyes—stared out from his emaciated face. "Hello, pard." Bill stepped to his side and slipped a bill into his hand. We went on. A moment later the hobo shuffled up. "'Scuse me, mister. You made a mistake. You gave me $20."

"Who told you I made a mistake?" Porter pushed him. "Be off."

And the next day he asked me to walk four blocks out of our way to get a drink.

"We need the exercise. We're getting obese." I noticed that the bartender greeted Bill with a familiar smile. At the counter a big fat man jostled me, nearly knocking the glass from my hand.

It made me furious. I swung my fist. Porter caught my arm. "They don't mean anything, these New York hogs."

It happened again and again. The fourth time Porter asked me to go there I became curious.

"What do you like about that rough joint, Bill?"

"I'm broke, colonel, and the bartender knows me. My credit there is unlimited."

Broke—yet he had $20 to throw away to a bum! Porter had no conception of money values. He seemed to act according to some super standard of his own.

He beggared himself financially with his spend-thrift ways, but his whimsical investments brought him in a rich store of experience and satisfaction. The wealth of his self-expression was worth more to him than economic affluence.

Yet he was not one who bore amiably an empty wallet. He liked to spend. He wished always to be the host. Often he would say to me, "I shall have the pleasure of ordering this at your expense." When the meal was finished I would look for the check, picking up the napkins and fussing about.

"Cease your ostentation," he would say. "That is paid and forgotten. Don't make such a vulgar display of wealth."

He liked to spend—but he liked better to give away. In the book he had given to Sue he had slipped a $10 bill. She came back a few days later after the banquet at the Caledonia. I was waiting for Porter.

"I've come to bring this back. Your friend, Mr. Bill, forgot to look before he gave it to me." Just then Porter came in.

"Good morning, Miss Sue." I had forgotten her name and was calling her Sophie and Sarah and honey. Porter doffed the cap he was wearing.

"Will you come in?"

"I just come to hand this back." Porter looked at the note in her hand as though he considered himself the victim of a practical joker.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"It was in the book you give me."

"It does not belong to me, Sue. You must have put it there and forgotten."

The girl smiled, but into her intelligent black eyes came a look of gratitude and understanding.

"Forgotten, Mr. Bill? If you'd only handled as few ten spots as I have you couldn't no wise misplace one without knowin' it."

"It's yours, Sue, for I know it isn't mine. But, say, Sue, some day I might be hard up and I'll come around and get you to stake me to a meal. And if you're out of luck, ring this bell."

"There ain't many like you gents." The girl's face was flushed with gladness. "Mame and me, we think you're princes."

Half way down the hall she turned. "I know it's yours, Bill. Thanks,"

A hastily scrawled note accompanied a formal invitation. It was a bid to the wedding of William Sydney Porter and Miss Sallie Coleman, of Asheville, N. C.

Bill Porter, the prowler, the midnight investigator, the devil-may-care Bohemian was going to squeeze himself into the tight-cut habit of the benedict. When I read that note I felt as though I had been asked to a funeral.

It was more than two years since I had seen Bill. Son of impulse and whim that he was, who could figure this new venture of his?

"Pack up your togs, colonel, and come to the show. It won't be complete without you."

For months I had been planning another trip to New York. I wanted to get my book into print. Porter kept encouraging me. That was one glorious trait in him. If he saw a spark of talent in another he would fan it with praise and encouragement.

A thousand suggestions he had given me. Short stories that I had written, he had taken personally to editors and tried to make a sale for me. Another trip to New York, another joyous pilgrimage into the Mystic Maze with the Magician of Bagdad at my side—if I had any talent it would surely be kindled into flame.

The little note I held in my hand was like a heavy wet blanket on the fire of that hope. My wife and I went to the finest store in Oklahoma and bought some kind of a cut-glass water set. I sent the requisite "Congratulations and Best Wishes." There ends the greatness of Bill Porter, I thought. I was mistaken.

Toward the middle of December Porter returned a rejected manuscript to me.

"Don't give up, colonel. I'm sure you could make good at short stories. Come to New York. Don't build any high hopes on your book. Just consider you're on a little pleasure trip and taking it along as a side line. Mighty few manuscripts ever get to be books and mighty few books pay. Let me know in advance a day or two when you will arrive. Louisa is in Grand Rapids. Maybe he will run over for a day or two."

Less than a week later I was in New York. As soon as I arrived I called him up. I may have imagined it, but he did not seem like the old Bill to me. He was busy on a story.

"I'll call you up and let you buy the drinks as soon as the manuscript is finished."

Porter was an earnest worker. Pleasure never lured him from his desk, perhaps because he found such a joy in writing.

A week passed. I did not hear from him.

"He doesn't want me around his proud Southern wife," I thought. "Bill has put the convict number behind him. I've flaunted mine. This marriage of his may help him to forget. He probably doesn't want any red-headed reminder bobbing around."

As usual I had to take back the hasty judgment.

Richard Duffy came over for me one evening.

"Bill wants to see you. We're all going to dinner together."

We got to the Caledonia, where he still kept his study. Porter was at his desk, dashing in a last few periods. He looked tired, as though he had been under a long strain.

"I've been working like the devil, Bill. I've been feeling very tired. Join me in a drink. Will that make amends?"

"I don't know that any amends are necessary." I felt irritated and showed it. On the way to Mouquin's we scarcely spoke. I felt a kind of estrangement. But after the dinner the old, sunny familiarity melted the coldness.