Through the Shadows with O'Henry

by Эл Дженнингс

  And then he became instantly serious. "Sometimes things look so black to me, Al. I don't see much use in anything. I can't bet on myself. Sometimes I want to have nothing to do with any one and sometimes I envy the defiance that seems to win you so many friends."

  Porter could have walked down Broadway and won the smiling salute of every celebrity for a mile had he so wished. And yet he made that comment one day because a half-dozen bartenders had called me by name.

  He had been very busy getting out some stories. I had not seen him for four days. I improved the time by striking up acquaintance with the elite of the bar- rooms. One evening I was talking to the tender in a saloon across from the Flatiron Building. Both my listener and I were excitedly going through the perilous joys of a holdup. I heard a hesitating cough. Porter was at my elbow.

  "Did you find an old friend in the bartender?" he asked when we got outside.

  "No, I just met him yesterday."

  "Well, I stood there 10 minutes with a Sahara thirst on me before he turned to quench it. You're evidently more riches to him than my dime.

  "I've been looking for you, colonel. I went into five different saloons. I asked if a diminutive giant with a demure face and red hair had been prowling about the premises. 'Who, Mr. Jennings from Oklahoma?' they up and says, and then they try to point out your footprints to me on the asphalt. How do you do it?"

  "You ought to come here and run for Mayor. You'd be elected sure. And then you could appoint me your secretary. We'd be in clover."

  Many hours later we wheeled around again near the Flatiron Building. My hat was carried away in the tornado and then hurled down the street.

  I started to run after it. Porter's firm, strong hand was on my arm. "Don't, colonel. Some one will bring it to you. The north wind is considerate. It pays indemnities on the damage wrought. It will send a porter to return your headpiece to you."

  "Like hell it will."

  A likely chance it seemed at two o'clock in the morning. I shook off his arm, determined to recover my property, when dashing up from nowhere came an old man. "Pardon me, sir, is this yours?"

  For the second time in my life I heard Bill Porter send up that bubbling, sonorous laugh of his.

  For a moment I felt like a person bewitched. "Where in thunder did that old gnome come from, anyway?"

  "You oughtn't to be so particular about the creature's origin. You've got your hat, haven't you?"

  It was a night of gayety. "We'll continue this in our next, colonel. Come over at noon." It was Porter's good night.

  I was ready for the jaunt promptly at 12. "Mr. Porter is in his rooms—go right up," the clerk said. I reached the door. I could hear Bill stropping his razor. I knocked. He did not answer.

  Mindful of the joyous buoyancy of the night before I gave a vicious kick at the door. He did not come.

  In a gale of resentment and hurt pride, I rushed to my room a block away.

  "He's sick and tired of me sliding in there night and day," I thought. "He wants to be rid of me." I grabbed up my suitcase and started dumping my clothes into it. I planned to leave New York that afternoon. I was just jamming in the last few collars when the door opened and Bill's ruddy, understanding face looked down at me.

  "Forgive me, colonel, that I have not a sixth sense. I could not distinguish your knock from any one else's." Porter slipped his hand into his pocket. "Take this, Al, and let yourself in any hour of the day or night. You'll never find Bill Porter's door or his time locked against the salt of the earth."

  More eloquent than the gift of a dollar from a Shylock was this tribute from the reserved Bill Porter.

  I was always under the impression that Porter's spirit, unshadowed by the walls of the Ohio penitentiary, would have been a buoyant, fantastic incarnation. He had a robust philosophy that withstood without the tarnish of cynicism the horrors of prison life.

  Without these searing memories I think the debonair grace of youth that was uppermost in his heart would have been the dominant force triumphant over the ordinary melancholy of life.

  "I have accepted an invitation for you, colonel." He was in one of his gently sparkling moods. "Get into your armor asinorum, for we fare forth to make contest with tinsel and gauze. In other words we mingle with the proletariat. We go to see Margaret Anglin and Henry Miller in that superb and realistic Western libel, 'The great Divide'."

  After the play the great actress, Porter and I and one or two others were to have supper at the Breslin Hotel. I think Porter took me there that he might sit back and enjoy my unabashed criticisms to the lady's face.

  "I feel greatly disappointed in you, Mr. Porter,"

  Margaret Anglin said to Bill as we took our places at the table.

  "In what have I failed?"

  "You promised to bring your Western friend—that terrible outlaw Mr. Jennings—to criticise the play."

  "Well, I have introduced him." He waved his hand down toward me.

  Miss Anglin looked me over with the trace of a smile in her eye.

  "Pardon me," she said, "but I can hardly associate you with the lovely things they say of you. Did you like the play?"

  I told her I didn't. It was unreal. No man of the West would shake dice for a lady in distress. The situation was unheard of and could only occur in the imagination of a fat-headed Easterner who had never set his feet beyond the Hudson.

  Miss Anglin laughed merrily. "New York is wild over it. New York doesn't know any better."

  Porter sat back, an expansive smile spreading a light in his gray eyes. "I am inclined to agree with our friend," he offered. "The West is unacquainted with Manhattan chivalry." Afterward he kept prodding every one present with his genial quips.

  I never saw him in a happier mood. The very next morning he was in the depths of despondency. I went over early in the afternoon. He was sitting at his desk rigid and silent. I started to tiptoe out. I thought he was concentrated in his writing.

  "Come in, Al." He had a picture in his hand. "That's Margaret, colonel. I want you to have the picture. If anything should happen to me, I think I'd feel happy if you would look after her."

  He seemed crushed and hopeless. He went over to the window and looked out.

  "You know I kind of like this old dismal city of dying souls."

  "What the hell has that got to do with your kicking off?"

  "Nothing, but the jig is up. Colonel, have you the price? Let's have a little refreshment. They'll be up with a check some time, I hope."

  I did not know the cause of his sudden overpowering dejection, but no drink could lighten it. The light-hearted, winsome joyousness of the night before had vanished. The bright hues in the spectrum were muddled into the drab.

  One night—a cold, raw, angry night—Bill and I were strolling along somewhere in the East Side. "Remember the kid they electrocuted at the O. P.?" he said to me. "I will show you life tonight that is more tragic than death."

  Faces that were no longer human—that seemed scarred and blemished as though the skin were a kind of web-like scale—dodged from alleyways and basements.

  "They are the other side of the Enchanted Profile. You don't see it on our God. He keeps it hidden."

  To Bill, long before he had written the story of that name, the Enchanted Profile was the face on the dollar.

  We were turning a dingy corner. The sorriest, forlornest slice of tatterdemalion came shambling along. He was sober. Hunger—if you've ever felt it, you recognize in the other fellow's eyes—stared out from his emaciated face. "Hello, pard." Bill stepped to his side and slipped a bill into his hand. We went on. A moment later the hobo shuffled up. "'Scuse me, mister. You made a mistake. You gave me $20."

  "Who told you I made a mistake?" Porter pushed him. "Be off."

  And the next day he asked me to walk four blocks out of our way to get a drink.

  "We need the exercise. We're getting obese." I noticed that the bartender greeted Bill with a familiar smile. At the counter a big fat man jostled me,
nearly knocking the glass from my hand.

  It made me furious. I swung my fist. Porter caught my arm. "They don't mean anything, these New York hogs."

  It happened again and again. The fourth time Porter asked me to go there I became curious.

  "What do you like about that rough joint, Bill?"

  "I'm broke, colonel, and the bartender knows me. My credit there is unlimited."

  Broke—yet he had $20 to throw away to a bum! Porter had no conception of money values. He seemed to act according to some super standard of his own.

  He beggared himself financially with his spend-thrift ways, but his whimsical investments brought him in a rich store of experience and satisfaction. The wealth of his self-expression was worth more to him than economic affluence.

  Yet he was not one who bore amiably an empty wallet. He liked to spend. He wished always to be the host. Often he would say to me, "I shall have the pleasure of ordering this at your expense." When the meal was finished I would look for the check, picking up the napkins and fussing about.

  "Cease your ostentation," he would say. "That is paid and forgotten. Don't make such a vulgar display of wealth."

  He liked to spend—but he liked better to give away. In the book he had given to Sue he had slipped a $10 bill. She came back a few days later after the banquet at the Caledonia. I was waiting for Porter.

  "I've come to bring this back. Your friend, Mr. Bill, forgot to look before he gave it to me." Just then Porter came in.

  "Good morning, Miss Sue." I had forgotten her name and was calling her Sophie and Sarah and honey. Porter doffed the cap he was wearing.

  "Will you come in?"

  "I just come to hand this back." Porter looked at the note in her hand as though he considered himself the victim of a practical joker.

  "What is the meaning of this?"

  "It was in the book you give me."

  "It does not belong to me, Sue. You must have put it there and forgotten."

  The girl smiled, but into her intelligent black eyes came a look of gratitude and understanding.

  "Forgotten, Mr. Bill? If you'd only handled as few ten spots as I have you couldn't no wise misplace one without knowin' it."

  "It's yours, Sue, for I know it isn't mine. But, say, Sue, some day I might be hard up and I'll come around and get you to stake me to a meal. And if you're out of luck, ring this bell."

  "There ain't many like you gents." The girl's face was flushed with gladness. "Mame and me, we think you're princes."

  Half way down the hall she turned. "I know it's yours, Bill. Thanks,"

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  After two years; a wedding invitation; another visit to New York; delayed hospitality; in O. Henry's home; blackmail.

  A hastily scrawled note accompanied a formal invitation. It was a bid to the wedding of William Sydney Porter and Miss Sallie Coleman, of Asheville, N. C.

  Bill Porter, the prowler, the midnight investigator, the devil-may-care Bohemian was going to squeeze himself into the tight-cut habit of the benedict. When I read that note I felt as though I had been asked to a funeral.

  It was more than two years since I had seen Bill. Son of impulse and whim that he was, who could figure this new venture of his?

  "Pack up your togs, colonel, and come to the show. It won't be complete without you."

  For months I had been planning another trip to New York. I wanted to get my book into print. Porter kept encouraging me. That was one glorious trait in him. If he saw a spark of talent in another he would fan it with praise and encouragement.

  A thousand suggestions he had given me. Short stories that I had written, he had taken personally to editors and tried to make a sale for me. Another trip to New York, another joyous pilgrimage into the Mystic Maze with the Magician of Bagdad at my side—if I had any talent it would surely be kindled into flame.

  The little note I held in my hand was like a heavy wet blanket on the fire of that hope. My wife and I went to the finest store in Oklahoma and bought some kind of a cut-glass water set. I sent the requisite "Congratulations and Best Wishes." There ends the greatness of Bill Porter, I thought. I was mistaken.

  Toward the middle of December Porter returned a rejected manuscript to me.

  "Don't give up, colonel. I'm sure you could make good at short stories. Come to New York. Don't build any high hopes on your book. Just consider you're on a little pleasure trip and taking it along as a side line. Mighty few manuscripts ever get to be books and mighty few books pay. Let me know in advance a day or two when you will arrive. Louisa is in Grand Rapids. Maybe he will run over for a day or two."

  Less than a week later I was in New York. As soon as I arrived I called him up. I may have imagined it, but he did not seem like the old Bill to me. He was busy on a story.

  "I'll call you up and let you buy the drinks as soon as the manuscript is finished."

  Porter was an earnest worker. Pleasure never lured him from his desk, perhaps because he found such a joy in writing.

  A week passed. I did not hear from him.

  "He doesn't want me around his proud Southern wife," I thought. "Bill has put the convict number behind him. I've flaunted mine. This marriage of his may help him to forget. He probably doesn't want any red-headed reminder bobbing around."

  As usual I had to take back the hasty judgment.

  Richard Duffy came over for me one evening.

  "Bill wants to see you. We're all going to dinner together."

  We got to the Caledonia, where he still kept his study. Porter was at his desk, dashing in a last few periods. He looked tired, as though he had been under a long strain.

  "I've been working like the devil, Bill. I've been feeling very tired. Join me in a drink. Will that make amends?"

  "I don't know that any amends are necessary." I felt irritated and showed it. On the way to Mouquin's we scarcely spoke. I felt a kind of estrangement. But after the dinner the old, sunny familiarity melted the coldness.

  "I'd like you to meet my wife, colonel."

  Somehow I felt the words were not the truth. I all but said I didn't want to see her. I felt that she would not welcome an ex-convict.

  The graciousness of Southern hospitality dispelled my fears. We reached Porter's apartments about 10:30, an hour and a half late. Mrs. Porter greeted us with great cordiality. She had been the first love of Porter in his boyhood days.

  To admit the least, I was slightly "teed." Perhaps she did not observe it. Certainly there was no hint of disapproval in her manner.

  She served us refreshments and chatted with a pleasant ease. I was relieved, but not convinced.

  Toward midnight Duffy and I started to leave. Bill took up his hat.

  "Why, you're not going, too, are you, Mr. Porter?" the lady said.

  He stopped for a moment to explain. Duffy and I walked up the street.

  "What the hell did Bill want with a wife? It puts an end to his liberty—his wanderings," I whispered loudly to Duffy, just as Porter tapped me on the shoulder. He smiled expansively, irrepressibly, as a boy might have.

  "You're not pleased with my choice?"

  "I'm not to be pleased!" I fired back.

  I intended walking on with Duffy. Porter interfered.

  "Come this way with me. We may not see much more of each other."

  We went down to the Hudson and sat on the docks. The lights of all New Jersey, like a million stars, like a hundred Milky Ways, sparkled in the water. The big steamers, black, powerful, were moored in the slips. Tugboats and ferries skimmed—mystic, enchanted barks—up and down the river.

  We talked carelessly. Porter started several times to speak seriously and broke off. Another mood seized him and he looked at me indulgently and smiled.

  "You're dissatisfied with my matrimonial venture?"

  "It's the silliest thing you ever did."

  "She is a most estimable young lady." Porter seemed to be enjoying my resentment.

  "That may be, but what did you want w
ith her?"

  "I loved her."

  "Oh, my God! That covers a multitude of sins."

  Porter was a born troubadour. He had a happy-go-lucky heart, for all that it was crowded down with sadness. I felt that he had made a fatal mistake to take upon himself obligations that his nature made him unfitted to meet.

  "Colonel, I wanted your opinion. I've wondered if I acted honorably."

  Porter was the soul of chivalry. For all that he saw in Hell's Kitchen, his reverence for woman remained. "I've married a highbred woman and brought all my troubles upon her. Was it right?"

  Strange blend of impulsiveness and honor, the instinctive nobility in Porter urged him always to measure up to his big responsibilities.

  My fears were ill founded. Bill's marriage did not interfere with his greatness. He was never one of the recklessly debonair who shake off with an easy conscience the obligations they have incurred. Porter served two masters—Bohemianism, Convention. He served both well.

  Only the Midas touch or the purse of Fortunatus could answer such demands. It does not need the suggestion of blackmail to account for Porter's intermittent penury. But I know that in one instance he was a victim.

  It was the night after his sudden despondency. For three hours I sat in his room waiting for him to keep an appointment. He came in whitef aced and haggard. The jaunty neatness that was always his was gone. He looked limp and careless to me. He went over to his desk and sat down. After a long silence he faced me. "I was serious, colonel, last night. If I should drop off, will you look after Margaret be a sort of foster-father, as it were?"

  "What's up, Bill? You're as husky as a stevedore."

  "Colonel, you were right. I should have faced it." And, without prelude, he launched into the most unusual confidence. Twice Porter deliberately spoke of his own affairs.

  "I can't stand it much longer. She comes after me regularly, and she's the wife of a big broker here at that. Tonight I told her to go hang. She'll get no more from me."

  "Will she tell?"

  "Let her."

  Not a former convict at the penitentiary—none of these, so far as I know, ever bothered him—but a woman of high social class, a woman who had lived in Austin and flirted with Bill Porter in his troubadour days.