Whirligigs

by O. Henry

  "I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did I get that money?"

  "Take it easy, Yancev. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We'll go fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping there like bullfrogs. We'll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a picnic on Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham sandwich tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?"

  Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so Goree retired again into brooding silence.

  By late Afternoon they had travelled ten of the twelve miles between Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree place; a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road was now steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The tilted aisles of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom. The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopæia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foilage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze.

  Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of Painter's Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to him. Though he hid forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the music of "Home, Sweet Home."

  They rounded the cliff, decended into Elder Branch, and paused there to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream. Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale, unwinking eyes. The head quicky disappeared; there was a violent swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple orchard in the direction of the house, zigzagging among the trees.

  "That's Garvey," said Coltrane; "the man you sold out to. There's no doubt but he's considerably cracked. I had to send him up for moonshining, once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I believed him irresponsible. Why, what's the matter, Yancey?"

  Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its colour. "Do I look queer, too?" he asked, trying to smile. "I'm just remembering a few more things." Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. "I recollect now where I got that two hundred dollars."

  "Don't think of it," said Coltrane cheerfully. "Later on we'll figure it all out together."

  They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the hill Goree stopped again.

  "Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel" he asked. "Sort of foolish proud about appearances?"

  The colonel's eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sagging suit of flax and the faded slouch hat.

  "It seems to me," he replied, mystified, but humouring him, "I remember a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair, and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge."

  "Right you are," said Goree eagerly. "And it's in me yet, though it don't show. Oh, I'm as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as Lucifer. I'm going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a little matter."

  "Speak out, Yancey. We'll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of Blue Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella's peacock's tail to wear in your hat."

  "I'm in earnest. In a few minutes we'll pass the house up there on the hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a century. Strangers live there now -and look at me! I am about to show myself to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar. Colonel Coltrane, I'm ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your coat and hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a foolish pride, but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I pass the old place."

  "Now, what does this mean?" said Coltrane to himself, as he compared his companion's sane looks and quiet demeanour with his strange request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange.

  The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly the same size -rather tall, portly, and erect. Twenty-five years were between them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree looked older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel had the smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on Goree's disreputable old flax coat and faded slouch hat.

  "Now," said Goree, taking up the reins, "I'm all right. I want you to ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can get a good look at me. They'll see I'm no back number yet, by any means. I guess I'll show up pretty well to them once more, anyhow. Let's ride on."

  He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel following, as he had been requested.

  Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes were turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and hiding-place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself, "Will the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?"

  It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he saw what he had been looking for -a puff of white smoke, coming from the thick cedars in one comer. He toppled so slowly to the left that Coltrane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with one arm.

  The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his aim. He had sent the bullet where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would pass - through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane's black frock coat.

  Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel's arm kept him steady. The little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon Coltrane's fingers, which held his bridle.

  "Good friend," he said, and that was all.

  Thus did Yancey Goree, as be rode past his old home, make, considering all things, the best showing that was in his power.

  Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the manager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their argument had waxed too warm to be quelled by a manager's gaze. It was midnight, and the restaurant was filled with patrons from the theatres of that district. Some among the dispersed audiences must have recognized among the quarrelsome sextet the faces of the players belonging to the Carroll Comedy Company.

  Four of the six made up the company. Another was the author of the comedietta, "A Gay Coquette," which the quartette of layers had been presenting with fair success at several vaudeville houses in the city. The sixth at the table was a person inconsequent in the realm of art, but one at whose bidding many lobsters had perished.

  Loudly the six maintained their clamorous debate. No one of the Party was silent except when answers were stormed from him by the excited ones. That was the comedian of "A Gay Coquette." He was a young man with a face even too melancholy for his profession.

  The oral warfare of four immoderate tongues was directed at Miss Clarice Carroll, the twinkling star of the small aggregation. Excepting the downcast comedian, all members of the party united in casting upon her with vehemence the blame of some momentous misfortune. Fifty times they told her: "It is your fault, Clariceit is you alone who spoilt the scene. It is only of late that you have acted this way. At this rate the sketch will have to be taken off."

  Miss Carroll was a match for any four. Gallic ancestry gave her a vivacity that could easily mount to fury. Her large eyes flashed a scorching
denial at her accusers. Her slender, eloquent arms constantly menaced the tableware. Her high, clear soprano voice rose to what would have been a scream had it not possessed so pure a musical quality. She hurled back at the attacking four their denunciations in tones sweet, but of too great carrying power for a Broadway restaurant.

  Finally they exhausted her patience both as a woman and an artist. She sprang up like a panther, managed to smash half a dozen plates and glasses with one royal sweep of her arm, and defied her critics. They rose and wrangled more loudly. The comedian sighed and looked a trifle sadder and disinterested. The manager came tripping and suggested peace. He was told to go to the popular synonym for war so promptly that the affair might have happened at The Hague.

  Thus was the manager angered. He made a sign with his hand and a waiter slipped out of the door. In twenty minutes the party of six was in a police station facing a grizzled and philosophical desk sergeant.

  "Disorderly conduct in a restaurant," said the policeman who had brought the party in.

  The author of "A Gay Coquette" stepped to the front. He wore nose-glasses and evening clothes, even if his shoes had been tans before they met the patent-leather-polish bottle.

  "Mr. Sergeant," said he, out of his throat, like Actor Irving, "I would like to protest against this arrest. The company of actors who are performing in a little play that I have written, in company with a friend and myself were having a little supper. We became deeply interested in the discussion as to which one of the cast is responsible for a scene in the sketch that lately has fallen so flat that the piece is about to become a failure. We may have been rather noisy and intolerant of interruption by the restaurant people; but the matter was of considerable importance to all of us. You see that we are sober and are not the kind of people who desire to raise disturbances. I hope that the case will not be pressed and that we may be allowed to go."

  "Who makes the charge?" asked the sergeant.

  "Me," said a white-aproned voice in the rear. "De restaurant sent me to. De gang was raisin' a roughhouse and breakin' dishes."

  "The dishes were paid for," said the playwright. "They were not broken purposely. In her anger, because we remonstrated with her for spoiling the scene, Miss -"

  "It's not true, sergeant," cried the clear voice of Miss. Clarice Carroll. In a long coat of tan silk and a redplumed hat, she bounded before the desk.

  "It's not my fault," she cried indignantly. "Howdare they say such a thing! I've played the title rôle ever since it was staged, and if you want to know who made it a success, ask the public -that's all."

  "What Miss Carroll says is true in part," said the author. "For five months the comedietta was a drawingcard in the best houses. But during the last two weeks it has lost favour. There is one scene in it in which Miss Carroll made a big hit. Now she hardly gets a hand out of it. She spoils it by acting it entirely different from her old way."

  "It is not my fault," reiterated the actress.

  "There are only two of you on in the scene," argued the playwright hotly, "you and Delmars, here -"

  "Then it's his fault," declared Miss Carroll, with a lightning glance of scorn from her dark eyes. The comedian caught it, and gazed with increased melancholy at the panels of the sergeant's desk.

  The night was a dull one in that particular police station.

  The sergeant's long-blunted curiosity awoke a little.

  "I've heard you," he said to the author. And then he addressed the thin-faced and ascetic-looking lady of the company who played "Aunt Turnip-top" in the little comedy.

  "Who do you think spoils the scene you are fussing about?" he asked.

  "I'm no knocker," said that lady, "and everybody knows it. So, when I say that Clarice falls down every time in that scene I'm judging her art and not herself. She was great in it once. She does it something fierce now. It'll dope the show if she keeps it up."

  The sergeant looked at the comedian.

  "You and the lady have this scene together, I understand. I suppose there's no use asking you which one of you queers it?"

  The comedian avoided the direct rays from the two fixed stars of Miss Carroll's eyes.

  "I don't know," he said, looking down at his patentleather toes.

  "Are you one of the actors?" asked the sergeant of a dwarfish youth with a middle-aged face.

  "Why, say!" replied the last Thespian witness, "you don't notice any tin spear in my hands, do you? You haven't heard me shout: 'See, the Emperor comes!' since I've been in here, have you? I guess I'm on the stage long enough for 'em not to start a panic by mistaking me for a thin curl of smoke rising above the footlights."

  "In your opinion, if you've got one," said the sergeant, "is the frost that gathers on the scene in question the work of the lady or the gentleman who takes part in it?"

  The middle-aged youth looked pained.

  "I regret to say," he answered, "that Miss Carroll seems to have lost her grip on that scene. She's all right in the rest of the play, but -but I tell you, sergeant, she can do it -she has done it equal to any of 'em -and she can do it again."

  Miss Carroll ran forward, glowing and palpitating.

  "Thank you, Jimmy, for the first good word I've had in many a day," she cried. And then she turned her eager face toward the desk.

  "I'll show you, sergeant, whether I am to blame. I'll show them whether I can do that same. Come, Mr. Delmars; let us begin. You will let us, won't you, sergeant?"

  "How long will it take?" asked the sergeant, dubiously.

  "Eight minutes," said the playwright. "The entire play consumes but thirty."

  "You may go ahead," said the sergeant. "Most of you seem to side against the little lady. Maybe she had a right to crack up a saucer or two in that restaurant. We'll see how she does the turn before we take that up."

  The matron of the police station had been standing near, listening to the singular argument. She came nigher and stood near the sergeant's chair. Two or three of the reserves strolled in, big and yawning.

  "Before beginning the scene," said the playwright, "and assuming that you have not seen a production of 'A Gay Coquette,' I will make a brief but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy -burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss Carroll's rôle is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy part of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so that she may preserve and present the same coquettish idea.

  "Now, the scene in which we take exception to Miss Carroll's acting is called the 'gorilla dance.' She is costumed to represent a wood nymph, and there is a great song-and-dance scene with a gorilla -played by Mr. Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is set.

  "That used to get four and five recalls. The main thing was the acting and the dance -it was the funniest thing in New York for five months. Delmars's song, 'I'll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home,' while he and Miss Carroll were cutting hide-and-seek capers among the tropical plants, was a winner."

  "What's the trouble with the scene now?" asked the sergeant.

  "Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle of it," said the playwright wrathfully.

  With a wide gesture of her ever-moving arms the actress waved back the little group of spectators, leaving a space in front of the desk for the scene of her vindication or fall. Then she whipped off her long tan cloak and tossed it across the arm of the policeman who still stood officially among them.

  Miss Carroll had gone to supper well cloaked, but in the costume of the tropic wood nymph. A skirt of fern leaves touched her knee; she was like a hummingbird -green and golden and purple.

  And then she danced a fluttering, fantastic dance, so agile and light and mazy in her steps that the other three members of the Carroll Comedy Company broke into applause at the art of it.

  And at the proper time Delmars leaped out at her side, mimicking the uncouth, hideous bounds of the gorilla so funnily that the grizzled sergeant himself gave
a short laugh like the closing of a padlock. They danced together the gorilla dance, and won a hand from all.

  Then began the most fantastic part of the scene -the wooing of the nymph by the gorilla. It was a kind of dance itself -eccentric and prankish, with the nymph coquettish and seductive retreat, followed by the gorilla as he sang "I'll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home."

  The song was a lyric of merit. The words were nonsense, as befitted the play, but the music was worthy of something better. Delmars struck into it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words.

  During one verse of the song the wood nymph performed the grotesque evolutions designed for the scene. At the middle of the second verse she stood still, with a strange look on her face, seeming to gaze dreamily into the depths of the scenic forest. The gorilla's last leap had brought him to her feet, and there he knelt, holding her hand, until he had finished the haunting-lyric that was set in the absurd comedy like a diamond in a piece of putty.

  When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden flow of tears with both hands.

  "There!" cried the playwright, gesticulating with violence; "there you have it, sergeant. For two weeks she has spoiled that scene in just that manner at every performance. I have begged her to consider that it is not Ophelia or Juliet that she is playing. Do you wonder now at our impatience? Tears for the gorilla song! The play is lost!"

  Out of her bewitchment, whatever it was, the wood nymph flared suddenly, and pointed a desperate finger at Delmars.

  "It is you -you who have done this," she cried wildly. "You never sang that song that way until lately. It is your doing."

  "I give it up," said the sergeant.

  And then the gray-haired matron of the police station came forward from behind the sergeant's chair.

  "Must an old woman teach you all?" she said. She went up to Miss Carroll and took her hand.