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

“Just as you like,” answered the fare, pleasantly.

The cab headed for Fifth Avenue and sped up that perfect street. Jerry bounced and swayed in his seat. The potent fluids of McGary were disquieted and they sent new fumes to his head. He sang an ancient song of Killisnook and brandished his whip like a baton.

Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the cushions, looking to right and left at the lights and houses. Even in the shadowed hansom[155 - hansom – a two-wheeled closed carriage with an elevated driver’s seat, designed by Joseph Hansom in 1834] her eyes shone like stars at twilight.

When they reached Fifty-ninth street Jerry’s head was bobbing and his reins were slack. But his horse turned in through the park gate and began the old familiar nocturnal round. And then the fare leaned back, entranced, and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odours of grass and leaf and bloom. And the wise beast in the shafts, knowing his ground, struck into his by-the-hour gait and kept to the right of the road.

Habit also struggled successfully against Jerry’s increasing torpor. He raised the hatch of his storm-tossed vessel and made the inquiry that cabbies do make in the park.

“Like shtop at the Cas-sino, lady? Gezzer r’freshm’s, ’n lish’n the music. Ev’body shtops.”

“I think that would be nice,” said the fare.

They reined up with a plunge at the Casino entrance. The cab doors flew open. The fare stepped directly upon the floor. At once she was caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of lights and colours. Someone slipped a little square card into her hand on which was printed a number – 34. She looked around and saw her cab twenty yards away already lining up in its place among the waiting mass of carriages, cabs and motor cars. And then a man who seemed to be all shirt-front danced backward before her; and next she was seated at a little table by a railing over which climbed a jessamine vine.

There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted a collection of small coins in a thin purse, and received from them license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing it all – the new-coloured, new-shaped life in a fairy palace in an enchanted wood.

At fifty tables sat princes and queens clad in all the silks and gems of the world. And now and then one of them would look curiously at Jerry’s fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the kind that is tempered by the word “foulard[156 - foulard – light silk fabric, originally made in the Far East],” and a plain face that wore a look of love of life that the queens envied.

Twice the long hands of the clocks went round, Royalties thinned from their al fresco[157 - al fresco = in the open air (Italian)] thrones, and buzzed or clattered away in their vehicles of state. The music retired into cases of wood and bags of leather and baize. Waiters removed cloths pointedly near the plain figure sitting almost alone.

Jerry’s fare rose, and held out her numbered card simply:

“Is there anything coming on the ticket?” she asked.

A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she should give it to the man at the entrance. This man took it, and called the number. Only three hansoms stood in line. The driver of one of them went and routed out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to the captain’s bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare entered, and the cab whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park along the shortest homeward cuts.

At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized upon Jerry’s beclouded mind. One or two things occurred to him. He stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his phonographic voice, like a lead plummet, through the aperture:

“I want to see four dollars before goin’ any further on th’ thrip. Have ye got th’ dough?”

“Four dollars!” laughed the fare, softly, “dear me, no. I’ve only got a few pennies and a dime or two.”

Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oat-fed horse. The clatter of hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity. He shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut viciously with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a late truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he knew his recourse, and made for it at a gallop.

At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up. He flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground.

“Come on, you,” he said, roughly.

His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station. A gray-moustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and the cabby were no strangers.

“Sargeant,” began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tones of complaint. “I’ve got a fare here that —”

Jerry paused. He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow. The fog set up by McGary was beginning to clear away.

“A fare, sargeant,” he continued, with a grin, “that I want to inthroduce to ye. It’s me wife that I married at ould man Walsh’s this avening. And a divil of a time we had, ’tis thrue. Shake hands wid th’ sargeant, Norah, and we’ll be off to home.”

Before stepping into the cab Norah sighed profoundly.

“I’ve had such a nice time, Jerry,” said she.

An Unfinished Story

We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet[158 - Tophet – an ancient ritual burial site in the eastern Mediterranean] are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium[159 - radium – a radioactive silvery white metal], or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of orthodoxy.

There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme – chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field of pretty Polly’s small talk.

I had a dream that was so far removed from the higher criticism that it had to do with the ancient, respectable, and lamented bar-of-judgment theory.

Gabriel[160 - Gabriel – one of the archangels, the messenger of God; Archangel Gabriel is revered in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.] had played his trump; and those of us who could not follow suit were arraigned for examination. I noticed at one side a gathering of professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind[161 - black and collars that buttoned behind – attire of the Protestant clergymen]; but it seemed there was some trouble about their real estate titles; and they did not appear to be getting any of us out.

A fly cop – an angel policeman – flew over to me and took me by the left wing. Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits arraigned for judgment.

“Do you belong with that bunch?” the policeman asked.

“Who are they?” was my answer.

“Why,” said he, “they are —”

But this irrelevant stuff is taking up space that the story should occupy.

Dulcie worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging, or stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other little trinkets such as they keep in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcie received six dollars per week. The remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody else’s account in the ledger kept by G[162 - in the ledger kept by G – here: in the book of God] – Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend Doctor[163 - Reverend Doctor – ‘the Reverend’ is the title of a clergyman in the Western Churches.] – Well then, in the Ledger of Primal Energy.

During her first year in the store, Dulcie was paid five dollars per week. It would be instructive to know how she lived on that amount. Don’t care? Very well; probably you are interested in larger amounts. Six dollars is a larger amount. I will tell you how she lived on six dollars per week.

One afternoon at six, when Dulcie was sticking her hat-pin within an eighth of an inch of her medulla oblongata[164 - medulla oblongata – the lowest part of the brain at the base of the scull (Latin)], she said to her chum, Sadie – the girl that waits on you with her left side:

“Say, Sade, I made a date for dinner this evening with Piggy.”

“You never did!” exclaimed Sadie admiringly. “Well, ain’t you the lucky one? Piggy’s an awful swell; and he always takes a girl to swell places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman House one evening, where they have swell music, and you see a lot of swells. You’ll have a swell time, Dulce.”

Dulcie hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks showed the delicate pink of life’s – real life’s – approaching dawn. It was Friday; and she had fifty cents left of her last week’s wages.

The streets were filled with the rush-hour floods of people. The electric lights of Broadway were glowing – calling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors’ homes, turned and stared at Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them. Manhattan, the night-blooming cereus, was beginning to unfold its dead-white, heavy-odoured petals.

Dulcie stopped in a store where goods were cheap and bought an imitation lace collar with her fifty cents. That money was to have been spent otherwise – fifteen cents for supper, ten cents for breakfast, ten cents for lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings; and five cents was to be squandered for licorice drops – the kind that made your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long. The licorice was an extravagance – almost a carouse – but what is life without pleasures?

Dulcie lived in a furnished room. There is this difference between a furnished room and a boarding-house. In a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry.

Dulcie went up to her room – the third floor back in a West Side brownstone-front. She lit the gas. Scientists tell us that the diamond is the hardest substance known. Their mistake. Landladies know of a compound beside which the diamond is as putty. They pack it in the tips of gas-burners; and one may stand on a chair and dig at it in vain until one’s fingers are pink and bruised. A hairpin will not remove it; therefore let us call it immovable.

So Dulcie lit the gas. In its one-fourth-candlepower glow we will observe the room.

Couch-bed, dresser, table, washstand, chair – of this much the landlady was guilty. The rest was Dulcie’s. On the dresser were her treasures – a gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickle works, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass dish, and a cluster of artificial cherries tied with a pink ribbon.

Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener[165 - General Kitchener – Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916), a British field marshal and administrator; Kitchener became a symbol of national military victories.], William Muldoon[166 - William Muldoon (1852–1933) – an American wrestling and boxing champion and trainer], the Duchess of Marlborough[167 - the Duchess of Marlborough – Sarah Jennings (1660–1744), the wife of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and a close friend of Queen Ann of Great Britain (1669–1714)], and Benvenuto Cellini. Against one wall was a plaster of Paris plaque of an O’Callahan in a Roman helmet. Near it was a violent oleograph[168 - oleograph – a colour lithograph, a most popular method of colour reproduction in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries] of a lemon-coloured child assaulting an inflammatory butterfly. This was Dulcie’s final judgment in art; but it had never been upset. Her rest had never been disturbed by whispers of stolen copes; no critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infantile entomologist.

Piggy was to call for her at seven. While she swiftly makes ready, let us discreetly face the other way and gossip.