Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

“If that is the case⁠—” began the lawyer.

“Lady to see you, sir,” bawled Archibald, bouncing in from his anteroom. He had orders to always announce immediately any client that might come. There was no sense in turning business away.

Lawyer Gooch took client number one by the arm and led him suavely into one of the adjoining rooms. “Favour me by remaining here a few minutes, sir,” said he. “I will return and resume our consultation with the least possible delay. I am rather expecting a visit from a very wealthy old lady in connection with a will. I will not keep you waiting long.”

The breezy gentleman seated himself with obliging acquiescence, and took up a magazine. The lawyer returned to the middle office, carefully closing behind him the connecting door.

“Show the lady in, Archibald,” he said to the office boy, who was awaiting the order.

A tall lady, of commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered the room. She wore robes⁠—robes; not clothes⁠—ample and fluent. In her eye could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. She accepted a chair.

“Are you Mr. Phineas C. Gooch, the lawyer?” she asked, in formal and unconciliatory tones.

“I am,” answered Lawyer Gooch, without circumlocution. He never circumlocuted when dealing with a woman. Women circumlocute. Time is wasted when both sides in debate employ the same tactics.

“As a lawyer, sir,” began the lady, “you may have acquired some knowledge of the human heart. Do you believe that the pusillanimous and petty conventions of our artificial social life should stand as an obstacle in the way of a noble and affectionate heart when it finds its true mate among the miserable and worthless wretches in the world that are called men?”

“Madam,” said Lawyer Gooch, in the tone that he used in curbing his female clients, “this is an office for conducting the practice of law. I am a lawyer, not a philosopher, nor the editor of an ‘Answers to the Lovelorn’ column of a newspaper. I have other clients waiting. I will ask you kindly to come to the point.”

“Well, you needn’t get so stiff around the gills about it,” said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her umbrella. “Business is what I’ve come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble conditions that the shortsighted laws of man have interposed between a loving⁠—”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some impatience, “for reminding you again that this is a law office. Perhaps Mrs. Wilcox⁠—”

“Mrs. Wilcox is all right,” cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity. “And so are Tolstoy, and Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and Mr. Edward Bok. I’ve read ’em all. I would like to discuss with you the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to business. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in an impersonal way until you pass upon its merits. That is to describe it as a supposable instance, without⁠—”

“You wish to state a hypothetical case?” said Lawyer Gooch.

“I was going to say that,” said the lady, sharply. “Now, suppose there is a woman who is all soul and heart and aspirations for a complete existence. This woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect, in taste⁠—in everything. Bah! he is a brute. He despises literature. He sneers at the lofty thoughts of the world’s great thinkers. He thinks only of real estate and such sordid things. He is no mate for a woman with soul. We will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets with her ideal⁠—a man with brain and heart and force. She loves him. Although this man feels the thrill of a newfound affinity he is too noble, too honourable to declare himself. He flies from the presence of his beloved. She flies after him, trampling, with superb indifference, upon the fetters with which an unenlightened social system would bind her. Now, what will a divorce cost? Eliza Ann Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap, got one for three hundred and forty dollars. Can I⁠—I mean can this lady I speak of get one that cheap?”

“Madam,” said Lawyer Gooch, “your last two or three sentences delight me with their intelligence and clearness. Can we not now abandon the hypothetical and come down to names and business?”

“I should say so,” exclaimed the lady, adopting the practical with admirable readiness. “Thomas R. Billings is the name of the low brute who stands between the happiness of his legal⁠—his legal, but not his spiritual⁠—wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom nature intended for her mate. I,” concluded the client, with an air of dramatic revelation, “am Mrs. Billings!”

“Gentlemen to see you, sir,” shouted Archibald, invading the room almost at a handspring. Lawyer Gooch arose from his chair.

“Mrs. Billings,” he said courteously, “allow me to conduct you into the adjoining office apartment for a few minutes. I am expecting a very wealthy old gentleman on business connected with a will. In a very short while I will join you, and continue our consultation.”

With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer Gooch ushered his soulful client into the remaining unoccupied room, and came out, closing the door with circumspection.

The next visitor introduced by Archibald was a thin, nervous, irritable-looking man of middle age, with a worried and apprehensive expression of countenance. He carried in one hand a small satchel, which he set down upon the floor beside the chair which the lawyer placed for him. His clothing was of good quality, but it was worn without regard to neatness or style, and appeared to be covered with the dust of