О. Генри - Short Stories / Рассказы

“She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and diamond rings and ear bobs. Her arms was bare; and she was using a desk telephone with one hand, and drinking tea with the other.

“ ‘Well, boys,’ says she after a bit, ‘what is it?’

“I told her in as few words as possible what we wanted for Bill, and the price we could pay.

“ ‘Those western appointments,’ says she, ‘are easy. Le’me see, now,’ says she, ‘who could put that through for us. No use fooling with Territorial delegates. I guess,’ says she, ‘that Senator Sniper would be about the man. He’s from somewheres in the West. Let’s see how he stands on my private menu card.’ She takes some papers out of a pigeonhole with the letter ‘S’ over it.

“ ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘he’s marked with a stat; that means ‘ready to serve.’ Now, let’s see. ‘Age 55; married twice; Presbyterian, likes blondes, Tolstoy, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third bottle of wine.’

‘Yes,’ she goes on, ‘I am sure I can have your friend, Mr Bummer, appointed Minister to Brazile.’

“ ‘Humble,’ says I: ‘And United States Marshal was the berth.’

“ ‘Oh, yes,’ says Mrs Avery. ‘I have so many deals of this sort I sometimes get them confused. Give me all the memoranda you have of the case, Mr Peters, and come back in four days. I think it can be arranged by then.’

“So me and Andy goes back to our hotel and waits. Andy walks up and down and chews the left end of his mustache.

“ ‘A woman of high intellect and perfect beauty is the rare thing, Jeff,’ says he.

“ ‘As rare,’ says I, ‘as an omelet made from the eggs of the fabulous bird known as the epidermis,’ says I.

“ ‘A woman like that,’ says Andy, ‘ought to lead a man to the highest positions of opulence and fame.’

“ ‘I misdoubt,’ says I, ‘if any woman ever helped a man to secure a job any more than to have his meals ready promptly and spread a report that the other candidate’s wife had once been a shoplifter. They are no more adapted for business and politics,’ says I, ‘than Algernon Charles Swinburne is to be floor manager at one of Chuck Connor’s annual balls. I know,’ says I to Andy, ‘that sometimes a woman seems to step out into the kalsomine light as the chargé d’affaires [24]of her man’s political job, but how does it come out? Say, they have a neat little berth somewhere as foreign consul of record to Afghanistan or lock-keeper on the Delaware and Raritan Canal. One day this man finds his wife putting on her overshoes and three months’ supply of bird seed into the canary’s cage. ‘Sioux Falls?’ he asks with a kind of hopeful look in his eye.

‘No, Arthur,’ says she, ‘Washington. We’re wasted here,’ says she. ‘You ought to be Toady Extraordinary to the Court of St. Bridget or Head Porter of the Island of Porto Rico. I’m going to see about it.’

“ ‘Then this lady,’ I says to Andy, ‘moves against the authorities at Washington with her baggage and munitions, consisting of five dozen indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet when she was 15; a letter of introduction from King Leopold to the Smithsonian Institution, and a pink silk costume with canary colored spats.

“ ‘Well, and then what?’ I goes. ‘She has the let-ters printed in the evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal tea given in the palm room of the B. & O. [25]Depot and then calls on the President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-camp [26]of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting there to grasp her by the hands – and feet. They carry her out to S. W. B. street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear of her she is writing postal cards to the Chinese Minister asking him to get Arthur a job in a tea store.’

“ ‘Then,’ says Andy, ‘You don’t think Mrs Avery will land the Marshalship for Bill?’

‘I do not,’ says I. ‘I do not wish to be a septic, but I doubt if she can do as well as you and me could have done.’

‘I don’t agree with you,’ says Andy. ‘I’ll bet you she does. I’m proud of having a higher opinion of the talent and the powers of negotiation of ladies.’

“We was back at Mrs Avery’s hotel at the time she appointed. She was looking pretty and fine enough, as far as that went, to make any man let her name every officer in the country. But I hadn’t much faith in looks, so I was certainly surprised when she pulls out a document with the great seal of the United States on it, and ‘William Henry Humble’ in a fine, big hand on the back.

‘You might have had it the next day, boys,’ says Mrs Avery, smiling. ‘I hadn’t the slightest trouble in getting it,’ says she. ‘I just asked for it, that’s all. Now, I’d like to talk to you a while,’ she goes on, ‘but I’m awfully busy, and I know you’ll excuse me. I’ve got an Ambassadorship, two Consulates and a dozen other minor applications to look after. I can hardly find time to sleep at all. You’ll give my compliments to Mr Humble when you get home, of course.’

“Well, I handed her the $1000 which she pitched into her desk drawer without counting. I put Bill’s appointment in my pocket and me and Andy made our adieus.

“We started back for the Territory the same day. We wired Bill: ‘Job landed; get the tall glasses ready,’ and we felt pretty good.

“Andy joshed me all the way about how little I knew about women.

“ ‘All right,’ says I. ‘I’ll admit that she surprised me. But it’s the first time I ever knew one of’em to manipulate a piece of business on time without getting it bungled up in some way,’ says I.

“Down about the edge of Arkansas I got out Bill’s appointment and looked it over, and then I handed it to Andy to read. Andy read it but didn’t add any remarks to my silence.

“The paper was for Bill, all right, and a genuine document, but it appointed him post-master of Dade City, Fla. [27]

“Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill’s appointment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward Lake Superior.

“I never saw Bill Humble after that.”

The song was over. The words were David’s; the air, one of the countryside. The company about the inn table applauded heartily, for the young poet paid for the wine. Only the notary, M. Papineau, shook his head a little at the lines, for he was a man of books, and he had not drunk with the rest.

David went out into the village street, where the night air drove the wine vapour from his head. And then he remembered that he and Yvonne had quarrelled that day, and that he had resolved to leave his home that night to seek fame and honour in the great world outside.

“When my poems are on every man’s tongue,” he told himself, in a fine exhilaration, “she will, perhaps, think of the hard words she spoke this day.”

Except the roisterers in the tavern, the village folk were abed. David crept softly into his room in the shed of his father’s cottage and made a bundle of his small store of clothing. With this upon a staff, he set his face outward upon the road that ran from Vernoy.

He passed his father’s herd of sheep, huddled in their nightly pen – the sheep he herded daily, leaving them to scatter while he wrote verses on scraps of paper. He saw a light yet shining in Yvonne’s window, and a weakness shook his purpose of a sudden. Perhaps that light meant that she rued, sleepless, her anger, and that morning might – But, no! His decision was made. Vernoy was no place for him. Not one soul there could share his thoughts. Out along that road lay his fate and his future.