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

was breathin’ the smoke of the sea battle by actual warships in a tank filled with real water. A few was down on the sands enjoyin’ the moonlight and the water. And the heart of me was heavy for the new morals of the old island, while the bands behind me played and the sea pounded on the bass drum in front.

“And directly I got up and walked along the old pavilion, and there on the other side of, half in the dark, was a slip of a girl sittin’ on the tumble-down timbers, and unless I’m a liar she was cryin’ by herself there, all alone.

“ ‘Is it trouble you are in, now, Miss,’ says I; ‘and what’s to be done about it?’

“ ‘ ’Tis none of your business at all, Denny Carnahan,’ says she, sittin’ up straight. And it was the voice of no other than Norah Flynn.

“ ‘Then it’s not,’ says I, ‘and we’re after having a pleasant evening, Miss Flynn. Have ye seen the sights of this new Coney Island, then? I presume ye have come here for that purpose,’ says I.

“ ‘I have,’ says she. ‘Me mother and Uncle Tim they are waiting beyond. ’Tis an elegant evening I’ve had. I’ve seen all the attractions that be.’

“ ‘Right ye are,’ says I to Norah; and I don’t know when I’ve been that amused. After disportin’ meself among the most laughable moral improvements of the revised shell games I took meself to the shore for the benefit of the cool air. ‘And did ye observe the Durbar, Miss Flynn?’

“ ‘I did,’ says she, reflectin’; ‘but ’tis not safe, I’m thinkin’, to ride down them slantin’ things into the water.’

“ ‘How did ye fancy the shoot the chutes?’ I asks.

“ ‘True, then, I’m afraid of guns,’ says Norah. ‘They make such noise in my ears. But Uncle Tim, he shot them, he did, and won cigars. ’Tis a fine time we had this day, Mr. Carnahan.’

“ ‘I’m glad you’ve enjoyed yerself,’ I says. ‘I suppose you’ve had a roarin’ fine time seein’ the sights. And how did the incubators and the helter-skelter and the midgets suit the taste of ye?’

“ ‘I⁠—I wasn’t hungry,’ says Norah, faint. ‘But mother ate a quantity of all of ’em. I’m that pleased with the fine things in the new Coney Island,’ says she, ‘that it’s the happiest day I’ve seen in a long time, at all.’

“ ‘Did you see Venice?’ says I.

“ ‘We did,’ says she. ‘She was a beauty. She was all dressed in red, she was, with⁠—’

“I listened no more to Norah Flynn. I stepped up and I gathered her in my arms.

“ ‘ ’Tis a storyteller ye are, Norah Flynn’, says I. ‘Ye’ve seen no more of the greater Coney Island than I have meself. Come, now, tell the truth⁠—ye came to sit by the old pavilion by the waves where you sat last summer and made Dennis Carnahan a happy man. Speak up, and tell the truth.’

“Norah stuck her nose against me vest.

“ ‘I despise it, Denny,’ she says, half cryin’. ‘Mother and Uncle Tim went to see the shows, but I came down here to think of you. I couldn’t bear the lights and the crowd. Are you forgivin’ me, Denny, for the words we had?’

“ ‘ ’Twas me fault,’ says I. ‘I came here for the same reason meself. Look at the lights, Norah,’ I says, turning my back to the sea⁠—‘ain’t they pretty?’

“ ‘They are,’ says Norah, with her eyes shinin’; ‘and do ye hear the bands playin’? Oh, Denny, I think I’d like to see it all.’

“ ‘The old Coney is gone, darlin’,’ I says to her. ‘Everything moves. When a man’s glad it’s not scenes of sadness he wants. ’Tis a greater Coney we have here, but we couldn’t see it till we got in the humour for it. Next Sunday, Norah darlin’, we’ll see the new place from end to end.”

Transients in Arcadia

There is a hotel on Broadway that has escaped discovery by the summer-resort promoters. It is deep and wide and cool. Its rooms are finished in dark oak of a low temperature. Homemade breezes and deep-green shrubbery give it the delights without the inconveniences of the Adirondacks. One can mount its broad staircases or glide dreamily upward in its aerial elevators, attended by guides in brass buttons, with a serene joy that Alpine climbers have never attained. There is a chef in its kitchen who will prepare for you brook trout better than the White Mountains ever served, sea food that would turn Old Point Comfort⁠—“by Gad, sah!”⁠—green with envy, and Maine venison that would melt the official heart of a game warden.

A few have found out this oasis in the July desert of Manhattan. During that month you will see the hotel’s reduced array of guests scattered luxuriously about in the cool twilight of its lofty dining-room, gazing at one another across the snowy waste of unoccupied tables, silently congratulatory.

Superfluous, watchful, pneumatically moving waiters hover near, supplying every want before it is expressed. The temperature is perpetual April. The ceiling is painted in water colors to counterfeit a summer sky across which delicate clouds drift and do not vanish as those of nature do to our regret.

The pleasing, distant roar of Broadway is transformed in the imagination of the happy guests to the noise of a waterfall filling the woods with its restful sound. At every strange footstep the guests turn an anxious ear, fearful lest their retreat be discovered and invaded by the restless pleasure-seekers who are forever hounding nature to her deepest lairs.

Thus in the depopulated caravansary the little band of connoisseurs jealously hide themselves during the heated season, enjoying to the uttermost the delights of mountain and seashore that art and skill have gathered and served to them.

In this July came to the hotel one whose card that she sent to the clerk for her name to be registered read “Mme. Héloise D’Arcy Beaumont.”

Madame Beaumont was a guest such as the Hotel Lotus loved. She possessed the fine air of the elite,