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

Miss Carrington she is in the heydey of flattery, fame and fizz; and that astute manager, Herr Timothy Goldstein, has her signature to ironclad papers that she will star the coming season in Dyde Rich’s new play, “Paresis by Gaslight.”

Promptly there came to Herr Timothy a capable twentieth-century young character actor by the name of Highsmith, who besought engagement as “Sol Haytosser,” the comic and chief male character part in “Paresis by Gaslight.”

“My boy,” said Goldstein, “take the part if you can get it. Miss Carrington won’t listen to any of my suggestions. She has turned down half a dozen of the best imitators of the rural dub in the city. She declares she won’t set a foot on the stage unless ‘Haytosser’ is the best that can be raked up. She was raised in a village, you know, and when a Broadway orchid sticks a straw in his hair and tries to call himself a clover blossom she’s on, all right. I asked her, in a sarcastic vein, if she thought Denman Thompson would make any kind of a show in the part. ‘Oh, no,’ says she. ‘I don’t want him or John Drew or Jim Corbett or any of these swell actors that don’t know a turnip from a turnstile. I want the real article.’ So, my boy, if you want to play ‘Sol Haytosser’ you will have to convince Miss Carrington. Luck be with you.”

Highsmith took the train the next day for Cranberry Corners. He remained in that forsaken and inanimate village three days. He found the Boggs family and corkscrewed their history unto the third and fourth generation. He amassed the facts and the local color of Cranberry Corners. The village had not grown as rapidly as had Miss Carrington. The actor estimated that it had suffered as few actual changes since the departure of its solitary follower of Thespis as had a stage upon which “four years is supposed to have elapsed.” He absorbed Cranberry Corners and returned to the city of chameleon changes.

It was in the rathskeller that Highsmith made the hit of his histrionic career. There is no need to name the place; there is but one rathskeller where you could hope to find Miss Posie Carrington after a performance of “The King’s Bathrobe.”

There was a jolly small party at one of the tables that drew many eyes. Miss Carrington, petite, marvellous, bubbling, electric, fame-drunken, shall be named first. Herr Goldstein follows, sonorous, curly-haired, heavy, a trifle anxious, as some bear that had caught, somehow, a butterfly in his claws. Next, a man condemned to a newspaper, sad, courted, armed, analyzing for press agent’s dross every sentence that was poured over him, eating his à la Newburg in the silence of greatness. To conclude, a youth with parted hair, a name that is ochre to red journals and gold on the back of a supper check. These sat at a table while the musicians played, while waiters moved in the mazy performance of their duties with their backs toward all who desired their service, and all was bizarre and merry because it was nine feet below the level of the sidewalk.

At 11:45 a being entered the rathskeller. The first violin perceptibly flatted a C that should have been natural; the clarinet blew a bubble instead of a grace note; Miss Carrington giggled and the youth with parted hair swallowed an olive seed.

Exquisitely and irreproachably rural was the new entry. A lank, disconcerted, hesitating young man it was, flaxen-haired, gaping of mouth, awkward, stricken to misery by the lights and company. His clothing was butternut, with bright blue tie, showing four inches of bony wrist and white-socked ankle. He upset a chair, sat in another one, curled a foot around a table leg and cringed at the approach of a waiter.

“You may fetch me a glass of lager beer,” he said, in response to the discreet questioning of the servitor.

The eyes of the rathskeller were upon him. He was as fresh as a collard and as ingenuous as a hay rake. He let his eye rove about the place as one who regards, big-eyed, hogs in the potato patch. His gaze rested at length upon Miss Carrington. He rose and went to her table with a lateral, shining smile and a blush of pleased trepidation.

“How’re ye, Miss Posie?” he said in accents not to be doubted. “Don’t ye remember me⁠—Bill Summers⁠—the Summerses that lived back of the blacksmith shop? I reckon I’ve growed up some since ye left Cranberry Corners.

“ ‘Liza Perry ’lowed I might see ye in the city while I was here. You know ’Liza married Benny Stanfield, and she says⁠—”

“Ah, say!” interrupted Miss Carrington, brightly, “Lize Perry is never married⁠—what! Oh, the freckles of her!”

“Married in June,” grinned the gossip, “and livin’ in the old Tatum Place. Ham Riley perfessed religion; old Mrs. Blithers sold her place to Cap’n Spooner; the youngest Waters girl run away with a music teacher; the courthouse burned up last March; your uncle Wiley was elected constable; Matilda Hoskins died from runnin’ a needle in her hand, and Tom Beedle is courtin’ Sallie Lathrop⁠—they say he don’t miss a night but what he’s settin’ on their porch.”

“The walleyed thing!” exclaimed Miss Carrington, with asperity. “Why, Tom Beedle once⁠—say, you folks, excuse me a while⁠—this is an old friend of mine⁠—Mr.⁠—what was it? Yes, Mr. Summers⁠—Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Ricketts, Mr.⁠—Oh, what’s yours? ‘Johnny’ ’ll do⁠—come on over here and tell me some more.”

She swept him to an isolated table in a corner. Herr Goldstein shrugged his fat shoulders and beckoned to the waiter. The newspaper man brightened a little and mentioned absinthe. The youth with parted hair was plunged into melancholy. The guests of the rathskeller laughed, clinked glasses and enjoyed the comedy that Posie Carrington was treating them to after her regular performance. A few cynical ones whispered “press agent” ’ and smiled wisely.

Posie Carrington laid her dimpled and desirable chin upon her hands, and forgot her audience⁠—a faculty that had