Array Коллектив авторов - 30 лучших рассказов американских писателей

‘Why, no,’ said I, ‘I am no surgeon.’

‘Pardon me,’ said Judson Tate, ‘but every man should know enough of anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health. A sudden cold may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary vesicles, which may result in a serious affection of the vocal organs.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said I, with some impatience; ‘but that is neither here nor there. Speaking of the strange manifestations of the affection of women, I – ’

‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Judson Tate; ‘they have peculiar ways. But, as I was going to tell you: when I went back to Oratama I found out from Manuel Iquito what was in that mixture he gave me for my lost voice. I told you how quick it cured me. He made that stuff from the chuchula plant. Now, look here.’

Judson Tate drew an oblong, white pasteboard box from his pocket.

‘For any cough,’ he said, ‘or cold, or hoarseness, or bronchial affection whatsoever, I have here the greatest remedy in the world. You see the formula, printed on the box. Each tablet contains licorice, 2 grains; balsam tolu, 1/10 grain; oil of anise, 1/20 minim; oil of tar, 1/60 minim; oleo-resin of cubebs, 1/100 minim; fluid extract of chuchula , 1/10 minim.

‘I am in New York,’ went on Judson Tate, ‘for the purpose of organizing a company to market the greatest remedy for throat affections ever discovered. At present I am introducing the lozenges in a small way. I have here a box containing four dozen, which I am selling for the small sum of fifty cents. If you are suffering – ’

I got up and went away without a word. I walked slowly up to the little park near my hotel, leaving Judson Tate alone with his conscience. My feelings were lacerated. He had poured gently upon me a story that I might have used. There was a little of the breath of life in it, and some of the synthetic atmosphere that passes, when cunningly tinkered, in the marts. And, at the last it had proven to be a commercial pill, deftly coated with the sugar of fiction. The worst of it was that I could not offer it for sale. Advertising departments and counting-rooms look down upon me. And it would never do for the literary. Therefore I sat upon a bench with other disappointed ones until my eyelids drooped.

I went to my room, and, as my custom is, read for an hour stories in my favourite magazines. This was to get my mind back to art again.

And as I read each story, I threw the magazines sadly and hopelessly, one by one, upon the floor. Each author, without one exception to bring balm to my heart, wrote liltingly and sprightly a story of some particular make of motor-car that seemed to control the sparking plug of his genius.

And when the last one was hurled from me I took heart.

‘If readers can swallow so many proprietary automobiles,’ I said to myself, ‘they ought not to strain at one of Tate’s Compound Magic Chuchula Bronchial Lozenges.’

And so if you see this story in print you will understand that business is business, and that if Art gets very far ahead of Commerce, she will have to get up and hustle.

I may as well add, to make a clean job of it, that you can’t buy the chuchula plant in the drug stores.

A red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type.

In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from the vespertine pipe.

Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to embrace – here were the children playing in the corridors of the House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture.

A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and resting by the window, and said:

‘Papa, won’t you play a game of checkers with me if you aren’t too tired?’

The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window answered, with a frown.

‘Checkers. No, I won’t. Can’t a man who works hard all day have a little rest when he comes home? Why don’t you go out and play with the other kids on the sidewalk?’

The woman who was cooking came to the door.

‘John,’ she said, ‘I don’t like for Lizzie to play in the street. They learn too much there that ain’t good for ’em. She’s been in the house all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your time to amuse her when you come home.’

‘Let her go out and play like the rest of ’em if she wants to be amused,’ said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, ‘and don’t bother me.’

‘You’re on,’ said Kid Mullaly. ‘Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to the dance. Put up.’

The Kid’s black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and challenged. He drew out his ‘roll’ and slapped five tens upon the bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus ‘taken’ more slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder, took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an inch-long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash register.

‘And, oh, what’ll be done to you’ll be a plenty,’ said a bettor, with anticipatory glee.

‘That’s my lookout,’ said the ‘Kid,’ sternly. ‘Fill ’em up all around, Mike.’

After the round Burke, the ‘Kid’s’ sponge, sponge-holder, pal, Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the club’s President and Secretary for the fifth time that day, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief.

‘Cut that blond out, “Kid,”’ was his advice, ‘or there’ll be trouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for? You’ll never find one that’ll freeze to you like Liz has. She’s worth a hallful of Annies.’

‘I’m no Annie admirer!’ said the ‘Kid,’ dropping a cigarette ash on his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony’s shoulder. ‘But I want to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She’s been bragging that I daren’t speak to another girl. Liz is all right – in some ways. She’s drinking a little too much lately. And she uses language that a lady oughtn’t.’

‘You’re engaged, ain’t you?’ asked Burke.

‘Sure. We’ll get married next year, maybe.’

‘I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer,’ said Burke. ‘That was two years ago, when she used to came down to the corner of Chrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort of a kid then, and couldn’t speak without blushing.’

‘She’s a little spitfire, sometimes, now,’ said the Kid. ‘I hate jealousy. That’s why I’m going to the dance with Annie. It’ll teach her some sense.’