“No you ain’t,” said the boy sturdily. “I don’t want none of your money.”
Rather abashed, Harry continued down the street. He tried to present fifty cents to an inebriated man, but a policeman tapped him on the shoulder and told him to move on. He drew up beside a ragged individual and quietly whispered, “Do you wish some money?”
“I’m on,” said the tramp, “what’s the job?”
“Oh! there’s no job!” Harry reassured him.
“Tryin’ to kid me, hey?” growled the tramp resentfully. “Well, get somebody else.” And he slunk off into the crowd.
Next Harry tried to squeeze ten cents into the hand of a passing bellboy, but the youth pulled open his coat and displayed a sign “No Tipping.”
With the air of a thief, Harry approached an Italian bootblack, and cautiously deposited ten cents in his hand. At a safe distance he saw the boy wonderingly pocket the dime, and congratulated himself. He had but twenty-four dollars and ninety cents yet to give away! His last success gave him a plan. He stopped at a newsstand where, in full sight of the vender, he dropped a two-dollar bill and sped away in the crowd. After several minutes’ hard running he came to a walk amidst the curious glances of the bundle-laden passers-by, and was mentally patting himself on the back when he heard quick breathing behind him, and the very newsie he had just left thrust into his hand the two-dollar bill and was off like a flash.
The perspiration streamed from Harry’s forehead and he trudged along despondently. He got rid of twenty-five cents, however, by dropping it into a children’s aid slot. He tried to get fifty cents in, but it was a small slot. His first large sum was two dollars to a Salvation Army Santa Claus, and, after this, he kept a sharp lookout for them, but it was past their closing time, and he saw no more of them on his journey.
He was now crossing Union Square, and, after another half hour’s patient work, he found himself with only fifteen dollars left to give away. A wet snow was falling which turned to slush as it touched the pavements, and the light dancing pumps he wore were drenched, the water oozing out of his shoe with every step he took. He reached Cooper Square and turned into the Bowery. The number of people on the streets was fast thinning and all around him shops were closing up and their occupants going home. Some boys jeered at him, but, turning up his collar, he plodded on. In his ears rang the saying, mockingly yet kindly, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
He turned up Third Avenue and counted his remaining money. It amounted to three dollars and seventy cents. Ahead of him he perceived, through the thickening snow, two men standing under a lamp post. Here was his chance. He could divide his three dollars and seventy cents between them. He came up to them and tapped one on the shoulder. The man, a thin, ugly looking fellow, turned suspiciously.
“Won’t you have some money, you fellow?” he said imperiously, for he was angry at humanity in general and Dorothy in particular. The fellow turned savagely.
“Oh!” he sneered, “you’re one of these stiffs tryin’ the charity gag, and then gettin’ us pulled for beggin’. Come on, Jim, let’s show him what we are.”
And they showed him. They hit him, they mashed him, they got him down and jumped on him, they broke his hat, they tore his coat. And Harry, gasping, striking, panting, went down in the slush. He thought of the people who had that very night wished him a Merry Christmas. He was certainly having it.
*****
Miss Dorothy Harmon closed her book with a snap. It was past eleven and no Harry. What was keeping him? He had probably given up and gone home long ago. With this in mind, she reached up to turn out the light, when suddenly she heard a noise outside as if someone had fallen.
Dorothy rushed to the window and pulled up the blind. There, coming up the steps on his hands and knees was a wretched caricature of a man. He was hatless, coatless, collarless, tieless, and covered with snow. It was Harry. He opened the door and walked into the parlor, leaving a trail of wet snow behind him.
“Well?” he said defiantly.
“Harry,” she gasped, “can it be you?”
“Dorothy,” he said solemnly, “it is me.”
“What — what has happened?”
“Oh, nothing. I’ve just been giving away that twenty-five dollars.” And Harry sat down on the sofa.
“But Harry,” she faltered, “your eye is all swollen.”
“Oh, my eye? Let me see. Oh, that was on the twenty-second dollar. I had some difficulty with two gentlemen. However, we afterward struck up quite an acquaintance. I had some luck after that. I dropped two dollars in a blind beggar’s hat.”
“You have been all evening giving away that money?”
“My dear Dorothy, I have decidedly been all evening giving away that money.” He rose and brushed a lump of snow from his shoulder. “I really must be going now. I have two — er — friends outside waiting for me.” He walked towards the door.
“Two friends?”
“Why — a — they are the two gentlemen I had the difficulty with. They are coming home with me to spend Christmas. They are really nice fellows, though they might seem a trifle rough at first.”
Dorothy drew a quick breath. For a minute no one spoke. Then he took her in his arms.
“Dearest,” she whispered, “you did this all for me.”
A minute later he sprang down the steps, and arm in arm with his friends, walked off in the darkness.
“Good night, Dorothy,” he called back, “and a Merry Christmas!”
PAIN AND THE SCIENTIST
Walter Hamilton Bartney moved to Middleton because it was quiet and offered him an opportunity of studying law, which he should have done long ago. He chose a quiet house rather out in the suburbs of the village, for as he reasoned to himself, “Middleton is a suburb and remarkably quiet at that. Therefore a suburb of a suburb must be the very depth of solitude, and that is what I want.” So Bartney chose a small house in the suburbs and settled down. There was a vacant lot on his left, and on his right Skiggs, the famous Christian Scientist. It is because of Skiggs that this story was written.
Bartney, like the very agreeable young man he was, decided that it would be only neighborly to pay Skiggs a visit, not that he was very much interested in the personality of Mr. Skiggs, but because he had never seen a real Christian Scientist and he felt that his life would be empty without the sight of one.
However, he chose a most unlucky time for his visit. It was one night, dark as pitch that, feeling restless, he set off as the clock struck ten to investigate and become acquainted. He strode out of his lot and along the path that went by name of a road, feeling his way between bushes and rocks and keeping his eye on the solitary light that burned in Mr. Skiggs’ house.
“It would be blamed unlucky for me if he should take a notion to turn out that light,” he muttered through his clenched teeth. “I’d be lost. I’d just have to sit down and wait until morning.”
He approached the house, felt around cautiously, and, reaching for what he thought was a step, uttered an exclamation of pain, for a large stone had rolled down over his leg and pinned him to the earth. He grunted, swore, and tried to move the rock, but he was held powerless by the huge stone, and his efforts were unavailing.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Mr. Skiggs!”
There was no answer.
“Help, in there,” he cried again, “Help!”
A light was lit upstairs and a head, topped with a conical shaped night-cap, poked itself out of the window like an animated jack-in-the-box.
“Who’s there?” said the night-cap in a high-pitched querulous voice. “Who’s there? Speak, or I fire.”
“Don’t fire! It’s me — Bartney, your neighbor. I’ve had an accident, a nasty ankle wrench, and there’s a stone on top of me.”
“Bartney?” queried the night cap, nodding pensively. “Who’s Bartney?”
Bartney swore inwardly.
“I’m your neighbor. I live next door. This stone is very heavy.
If you would come down here — “
“How do I know you’re Bartney, whoever he is?” demanded the night cap. “How do I know you won’t get me out there and blackjack me?”
“For heaven’s sake,” cried Bartney, “look and see. Turn a searchlight on me, and see if I’m not pinned down.”
“I have no searchlight,” came the voice from above.
“Then you’ll have to take a chance. I can’t stay here all night.”
“Then go away. I am not stopping you,” said the night cap with a decisive squeak in his voice.
“Mr. Skiggs,” said Bartney in desperation, “I am in mortal agony and — “
“You are not in mortal agony,” announced Mr. Skiggs.
“What? Do you still think I’m trying to entice you out here to murder you?”
“I repeat, you are not in mortal agony. I am convinced now that you really think you are hurt, but I assure you, you are not.”
“He’s crazy,” thought Bartney.
“I shall endeavor to prove to you that you are not, thus causing you more relief than I would if I lifted the stone. I am very moderate. I will treat you now at the rate of three dollars an hour.”
“An hour?” shouted Bartney fiercely. “You come down here and roll this stone off me, or I’ll skin you alive!”
“Even against your will,” went on Mr. Skiggs. “I feel called upon to treat you, for it is a duty to everyone to help the injured, or rather those who fancy themselves injured. Now, clear your mind of all sensation, and we will begin the treatment.”
“Come down here, you mean, low-browed fanatic!” yelled Bartney, forgetting his pain in a paroxysm of rage. “Come down here, and I’ll drive every bit of Christian Science out of your head.”
“To begin with,” began the shrill falsetto from the window, “there is no pain — absolutely none. Do you begin to have an inkling of that?”
“No,” shouted Bartney. “You, you — “ his voice was lost in a gurgle of impotent rage.
“Now, all is mind. Mind is everything. Matter is nothing — absolutely nothing. You are well. You fancy you are hurt, but you are not.”
“You lie,” shrieked Bartney.
Unheeding, Mr. Skiggs went on.
“Thus, if there is no pain, it can not act on your mind. A sensation is not physical. If you had no brain, there would be no pain, for what you call pain acts on the brain. You see?”
“Oh-h,” cried Bartney, “if you saw what a bottomless well of punishment you were digging for yourself, you’d cut out that monkey business.”
“Therefore, as so-called pain is a mental sensation, your ankle doesn’t hurt you. Your brain may imagine it does, but all sensation goes to the brain. You are very foolish when you complain of hurt — “
Bartney’s patience wore out. He drew in his breath, and let out a yell that echoed and re-echoed through the night air. He repeated it again and again, and at length he heard the sound of footsteps coming up the road.
“Hello!” came a voice.
Bartney breathed a prayer of thanksgiving.
“Come here! I’ve had an accident,” he called, and a minute later the night watchman’s brawny arms had rolled the stone off him, and he staggered to his feet.
“Good night,” called the Christian Scientist sweetly. “I hope I have made some impression on you.”
“You certainly have,” called back Bartney as he limped off, his hand on the watchman’s shoulder, “one I won’t forget.”
Two days later, as Bartney sat with his foot on a pillow he pulled an unfamiliar envelope out of his mail and opened it. It read:
WILLIAM BARTNEY.
To HEPEZIA SKIGGS, DR.
Treatment by Christian Science — $3.00. Payment by check or money order.
*****
The weeks wore on. Bartney was up and around. Out in his yard he started a flower garden and became a floral enthusiast. Every day he planted, and the next day he would weed what he had planted. But it gave him something to do, for law was tiresome at times.
One bright summer’s day, he left his house and strolled towards the garden, where the day before he had planted in despair some “store bought” pansies. He perceived to his surprise a long, thin, slippery-looking figure bending over, picking his new acquisitions. With quiet tread he approached, and, as the invader turned around, he said severely:
“What are you doing, sir?”
“I was plucking-er-a few posies — “
The long, thin, slippery looking figure got no further. Though the face had been strange to Bartney, the voice, a thin, querelous falsetto, was one he would never forget. He advanced slowly, eyeing the owner of that voice, as the wolf eyes his prey.
“Well, Mr. Skiggs, how is it I find you on my property?”
Mr. Skiggs appeared unaccountably shy and looked the other way.
“I repeat,” said Bartney, “that I find you here on my property — and in my power.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Skiggs, squirming in alarm.
Bartney grabbed him by the collar, and shook him as a terrier does a rat.
“You conceited imp of Christian Science! You miserable hypocrite! What?” he demanded fiercely, as Skiggs emitted a cry of protest. “You yell. How dare you? Don’t you know there is no such thing as pain? Come on, now, give me some of that Christian Science. Say ‘mind is everything’. Say it!”
Mr. Skiggs, in the midst of his jerky course, said quaveringly, “Mind is everyth-thing.”
“Pain is nothing,” urged his tormenter grimly.
“P-Pain is nothing,” repeated Mr. Skiggs feelingly.
The shaking continued.
“Remember, Skiggs, this is all for the good of the cause. I hope you’re taking it to heart. Remember, such is life, therefore life is such. Do you see?”
He left off shaking, and proceeded to entice Skiggs around by a grip on his collar, the scientist meanwhile kicking and struggling violently.
“Now,” said Bartney, “I want you to assure me that you feel no pain. Go on, do it!”
“I f-feel — ouch,” he exclaimed as he passed over a large stone is his course, “n-no pain.”
“Now,” said Bartney, “I want two dollars for the hours’ Christian Science treatment I have given you. Out with it.”
Skiggs hesitated, but the look of Bartney’s eyes and a tightening of Bartney’s grip convinced him, and he unwillingly tendered a bill. Bartney tore it to pieces and distributed the fragments to the wind.
“Now, you may go.”
Skiggs, when his collar was released, took to his heels, and his flying footsteps crossed the boundary line in less time than you would imagine.
“Good-bye, Mr. Skiggs,” called Bartney pleasantly. “Any other time you want a treatment come over. The price is always the same. I see you know one thing I didn’t have to teach you. There’s no such thing as pain, when somebody else is the goat.”
THE TRAIL OF THE DUKE
It was a hot July night. Inside, through screen, window and door fled the bugs and gathered around the lights like so many humans at a carnival, buzzing, thugging, whirring. From out the night into the houses came the sweltering late summer heat, over-powering and enervating, bursting against the walls and enveloping all mankind like a huge smothering blanket. In the drug stores, the clerks, tired and grumbling handed out ice cream to hundreds of thirsty but misled civilians, while in the corners buzzed the electric fans in a whirring mockery of coolness. In the flats that line upper New York, pianos (sweating ebony perspiration) ground out rag-time tunes of last winter and here and there a wan woman sang the air in a hot soprano. In the tenements, shirt-sleeves gleamed like beacon lights in steady rows along the streets in tiers of from four to eight according to the number of stories of the house. In a word, it was a typical, hot New York summer night.
In his house on upper Fifth Avenue, young Dodson Garland lay on a divan in the billiard room and consumed oceans of mint juleps, as he grumbled at the polo that ha
d kept him in town, the cigarettes, the butler, and occasionally breaking the Second Commandment. The butler ran back and forth with large consignments of juleps and soda and finally, on one of his dramatic entrances, Garland turned towards him and for the first time that evening perceived that the butler was a human being, not a living bottle-tray.
“Hello, Allen,” he said, rather surprised that he had made such a discovery. “Are you hot?”
Allen made an expressive gesture with his handkerchief, tried to smile but only succeeded in a feeble, smothery grin.
“Allen,” said Garland struck by an inspiration, “what shall I do tonight?” Allen again essayed the grin but, failing once more, sank into a hot, undignified silence.
“Get out of here,” exclaimed Garland petulantly, “and bring me another julep and a plate of ice.”
“Now,” thought the young man, “What shall I do? I can go to the theatre and melt. I can go to a roof-garden and be sung to by a would-be prima donna, or — or go calling.” “Go calling,” in Garland’s vocabulary meant but one thing: to see Mirabel. Mirabel Walmsley was his fiancee since some three months, and was in the city to receive some nobleman or other who was to visit her father. The lucky youth yawned, rolled over, yawned again and rose to a sitting position where he yawned a third time and then got to his feet.
“I’ll walk up and see Mirabel. I need a little exercise.” And with this final decision he went to his room where he dressed, sweated and dressed, for half an hour. At the end of that time, he emerged from his residence, immaculate, and strolled up Fifth Avenue to Broadway. The city was all outside. As he walked along the white way, he passed groups and groups clad in linen and lingerie, laughing, talking, smoking, smiling, all hot, all uncomfortable.
He reached Mirabel’s house and then suddenly stopped on the door step.
“Heavens,” he thought, “I forgot all about it. The Duke of Dunsinlane or Artrellane or some lane or other was to arrive today to see Mirabel’s papa. Isn’t that awful? And I haven’t seen Mirabel for three days.” He sighed, faltered, and finally walked up the steps and rang the bell. Hardly had he stepped inside the door, when the vision of his dreams came running into the hall in a state of great excitement and perturbation.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 357
