Лучшие рассказы О. Генри = The Best of O. Henry. О. Генри

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СКАЧАТЬ so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney’s brother was once Minister to Bolivia.”

      And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one – all legal tender notes – and laid them beside Delia’s earnings.

      “Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria[65],” he announced overwhelmingly.

      “Don’t joke with me,” said Delia, “not from Peoria!”

      “All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle’s window and thought it was a windmill at first. He was game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another – an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight depot – to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it.”

      “I’m so glad you’ve kept on,” said Delia, heartily. “You’re bound to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We’ll have oysters to-night.”

      “And filet mignon with champignons,” said Joe. “Where is the olive fork?”

      On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.

      Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.

      “How is this?” asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously.

      “Clementina,” she explained, “insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn’t a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn’t in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen. Pinkney! – Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs and sent somebody – they said the furnace man or somebody in the basement – out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn’t hurt so much now.”

      “What’s this?” asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages.

      “It’s something soft,” said Delia, “that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?” She had seen the money on the table.

      “Did I?” said Joe; “just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot to-day, and he isn’t sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape[66] and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?”

      “Five o’clock, I think,” said Dele, plaintively. “The iron – I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen. Pinkney, Joe, when —”

      “Sit down here a moment, Dele,” said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.

      “What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?” he asked.

      She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.

      “I couldn’t get any pupils,” she confessed. “And I couldn’t bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don’t you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You’re not angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn’t got the work you mightn’t have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria.”

      “He wasn’t from Peoria,” said Joe, slowly.

      “Well, it doesn’t matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe – and – kiss me, Joe – and what made you ever suspect that I wasn’t giving music lessons to Clementina?”

      “I didn’t,” said Joe, “until to-night. And I wouldn’t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I’ve been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.”

      “And then you didn’t —”

      “My purchaser from Peoria,” said Joe, “and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same art – but you wouldn’t call it either painting or music.”

      And then they both laughed, and Joe began:

      “When one loves one’s Art no service seems —”

      But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said – “just ’When one loves.’”

      The Coming-out of Maggie

      Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give and Take – or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltzing, you must work in Rhinegold’s paper-box factory. Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the paper-box girl that he affected; and few strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops.

      Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-handed style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her “fellow.” Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie’s house every Saturday night so that her friend could go to the dance with them.

      The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle-making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went ’round, and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as neat and satisfying a little welter-weight affair to a finish as ever happened inside the ropes.

      On Saturdays Rhinegold’s paper-box factory closed at 3 P. M. On one such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie’s door Anna said, as usual: “Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and me’ll come by for you.”

      But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high-poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye.

      “Thanks, Anna,” said Maggie; “but you and Jimmy needn’t bother to-night. I’ve a gentleman friend that’s coming ’round to escort me to the hop.”

      The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her. Maggie СКАЧАТЬ