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

in the whole city for him a bed or a broiled lobster or a streetcar fare or a carnation for buttonhole unless he should obtain them by sponging on his friends or by false pretenses. Therefore he had chosen the park.

And all this was because an uncle had disinherited him, and cut down his allowance from liberality to nothing. And all that was because his nephew had disobeyed him concerning a certain girl, who comes not into this story⁠—therefore, all readers who brush their hair toward its roots may be warned to read no further. There was another nephew, of a different branch, who had once been the prospective heir and favorite. Being without grace or hope, he had long ago disappeared in the mire. Now dragnets were out for him; he was to be rehabilitated and restored. And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer to the lowest pit, joining the tattered ghosts in the little park.

Sitting there, he leaned far back on the hard bench and laughed a jet of cigarette smoke up to the lowest tree branches. The sudden severing of all his life’s ties had brought him a free, thrilling, almost joyous elation. He felt precisely the sensation of the aeronaut when he cuts loose his parachute and lets his balloon drift away.

The hour was nearly ten. Not many loungers were on the benches. The park-dweller, though a stubborn fighter against autumnal coolness, is slow to attack the advance line of spring’s chilly cohorts.

Then arose one from a seat near the leaping fountain, and came and sat himself at Vallance’s side. He was either young or old; cheap lodging-houses had flavoured him mustily; razors and combs had passed him by; in him drink had been bottled and sealed in the devil’s bond. He begged a match, which is the form of introduction among park benchers, and then he began to talk.

“You’re not one of the regulars,” he said to Vallance. “I know tailored clothes when I see ’em. You just stopped for a moment on your way through the park. Don’t mind my talking to you for a while? I’ve got to be with somebody. I’m afraid⁠—I’m afraid. I’ve told two or three of those bummers over about it. They think I’m crazy. Say⁠—let me tell you⁠—all I’ve had to eat today was a couple pretzels and an apple. Tomorrow I’ll stand in line to inherit three millions; and that restaurant you see over there with the autos around it will be too cheap for me to eat in. Don’t believe it, do you?”

“Without the slightest trouble,” said Vallance, with a laugh. “I lunched there yesterday. Tonight I couldn’t buy a five-cent cup of coffee.”

“You don’t look like one of us. Well, I guess those things happen. I used to be a high-flyer myself⁠—some years ago. What knocked you out of the game?”

“I⁠—oh, I lost my job,” said Vallance.

“It’s undiluted Hades, this city,” went on the other. “One day you’re eating from china; the next you are eating in China⁠—a chop-suey joint. I’ve had more than my share of hard luck. For five years I’ve been little better than a panhandler. I was raised up to live expensively and do nothing. Say⁠—I don’t mind telling you⁠—I’ve got to talk to somebody, you see, because I’m afraid⁠—I’m afraid. My name’s Ide. You wouldn’t think that old Paulding, one of the millionaires on Riverside Drive, was my uncle, would you? Well, he is. I lived in his house once, and had all the money I wanted. Say, haven’t you got the price of a couple of drinks about you⁠—er⁠—what’s your name⁠—”

“Dawson,” said Vallance. “No; I’m sorry to say that I’m all in, financially.”

“I’ve been living for a week in a coal cellar on Division Street,” went on Ide, “with a crook they called ‘Blinky’ Morris. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. While I was out today a chap with some papers in his pocket was there, asking for me. I didn’t know but what he was a fly cop, so I didn’t go around again till after dark. There was a letter there he had left for me. Say⁠—Dawson, it was from a big downtown lawyer, Mead. I’ve seen his sign on Ann Street. Paulding wants me to play the prodigal nephew⁠—wants me to come back and be his heir again and blow in his money. I’m to call at the lawyer’s office at ten tomorrow and step into my old shoes again⁠—heir to three million, Dawson, and $10,000 a year pocket money. And⁠—I’m afraid⁠—I’m afraid.”

The vagrant leaped to his feet and raised both trembling arms above his head. He caught his breath and moaned hysterically.

Vallance seized his arm and forced him back to the bench.

“Be quiet!” he commanded, with something like disgust in his tones. “One would think you had lost a fortune, instead of being about to acquire one. Of what are you afraid?”

Ide cowered and shivered on the bench. He clung to Vallance’s sleeve, and even in the dim glow of the Broadway lights the latest disinherited one could see drops on the other’s brow wrung out by some strange terror.

“Why, I’m afraid something will happen to me before morning. I don’t know what⁠—something to keep me from coming into that money. I’m afraid a tree will fall on me⁠—I’m afraid a cab will run over me, or a stone drop on me from a housetop, or something. I never was afraid before. I’ve sat in this park a hundred nights as calm as a graven image without knowing where my breakfast was to come from. But now it’s different. I love money, Dawson⁠—I’m happy as a god when it’s trickling through my fingers, and people are bowing to me, with the music and the flowers and fine clothes all around. As long as I knew I was out of the game I didn’t mind. I was even happy sitting here ragged and hungry, listening to the fountain jump and watching the carriages go up