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

before penetrated by her warmest imagination or any of the lines controlled by Harriman. With the Green Mountains’ external calm upon her she sat, her soul flaming in her with the fire of Andalusia. The tables were filled with Bohemia. The room was full of the fragrance of flowers⁠—both mille and cauli. Questions and corks popped; laughter and silver rang; champagne flashed in the pail, wit flashed in the pan.

Vandyke ruffled his long, black locks, disarranged his careless tie and leaned over to Madder.

“Say, Maddy,” he whispered, feelingly, “sometimes I’m tempted to pay this Philistine his ten dollars and get rid of him.”

Madder ruffled his long, sandy locks and disarranged his careless tie.

“Don’t think of it, Vandy,” he replied. “We are short, and Art is long.”

Medora ate strange viands and drank elderberry wine that they poured in her glass. It was just the color of that in the Vermont home. The waiter poured something in another glass that seemed to be boiling, but when she tasted it it was not hot. She had never felt so lighthearted before. She thought lovingly of the Green Mountain farm and its fauna. She leaned, smiling, to Miss Elise.

“If I were at home,” she said, beamingly, “I could show you the cutest little calf!”

“Nothing for you in the White Lane,” said Miss Elise. “Why don’t you pad?”

The orchestra played a wailing waltz that Medora had learned from the hand-organs. She followed the air with nodding head in a sweet soprano hum. Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered in what strange waters Binkley had caught her in his seine. She smiled at him, and they raised glasses and drank of the wine that boiled when it was cold. Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the unusual spring catch of shad. Miss Elise arranged the palette-and-maulstick tie pin of Mr. Vandyke. A Philistine at some distant table was maundering volubly either about Jerome or Gérôme. A famous actress was discoursing excitably about monogrammed hosiery. A hose clerk from a department store was loudly proclaiming his opinions of the drama. A writer was abusing Dickens. A magazine editor and a photographer were drinking a dry brand at a reserved table. A 36⁠–⁠25⁠–⁠42 young lady was saying to an eminent sculptor: “Fudge for your Prax Italys! Bring one of your Venus Anno Dominis down to Cohen’s and see how quick she’d be turned down for a cloak model. Back to the quarries with your Greeks and Dagos!”

Thus went Bohemia.

At eleven Mr. Binkley took Medora to the boardinghouse and left her, with a society bow, at the foot of the hall stairs. She went up to her room and lit the gas.

And then, as suddenly as the dreadful genie arose in vapor from the copper vase of the fisherman, arose in that room the formidable shape of the New England Conscience. The terrible thing that Medora had done was revealed to her in its full enormity. She had sat in the presence of the ungodly and looked upon the wine both when it was red and effervescent.

At midnight she wrote this letter:

Mr. Beriah Hoskins, Harmony, Vermont.

Dear Sir: Henceforth, consider me as dead to you forever. I have loved you too well to blight your career by bringing into it my guilty and sin-stained life. I have succumbed to the insidious wiles of this wicked world and have been drawn into the vortex of Bohemia. There is scarcely any depth of glittering iniquity that I have not sounded. It is hopeless to combat my decision. There is no rising from the depths to which I have sunk. Endeavor to forget me. I am lost forever in the fair but brutal maze of awful Bohemia. Farewell.

Once Your Medora.

On the next day Medora formed her resolutions. Beelzebub, flung from heaven, was no more cast down. Between her and the apple blossoms of Harmony there was a fixed gulf. Flaming cherubim warded her from the gates of her lost paradise. In one evening, by the aid of Binkley and Mumm, Bohemia had gathered her into its awful midst.

There remained to her but one thing⁠—a life of brilliant, but irremediable error. Vermont was a shrine that she never would dare to approach again. But she would not sink⁠—there were great and compelling ones in history upon whom she would model her meteoric career⁠—Camille, Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza⁠—such a name as one of these would that of Medora Martin be to future generations.

For two days Medora kept her room. On the third she opened a magazine at the portrait of the King of Belgium, and laughed sardonically. If that far-famed breaker of women’s hearts should cross her path, he would have to bow before her cold and imperious beauty. She would not spare the old or the young. All America⁠—all Europe should do homage to her sinister, but compelling charm.

As yet she could not bear to think of the life she had once desired⁠—a peaceful one in the shadow of the Green Mountains with Beriah at her side, and orders for expensive oil paintings coming in by each mail from New York. Her one fatal misstep had shattered that dream.

On the fourth day Medora powdered her face and rouged her lips. Once she had seen Carter in “Zaza.” She stood before the mirror in a reckless attitude and cried: “Zut! zut!” She rhymed it with “nut,” but with the lawless word Harmony seemed to pass away forever. The Vortex had her. She belonged to Bohemia for evermore. And never would Beriah⁠—

The door opened and Beriah walked in.

“ ’Dory,” said he, “what’s all that chalk and pink stuff on your face, honey?”

Medora extended an arm.

“Too late,” she said, solemnly. “The die is cast. I belong in another world. Curse me if you will⁠—it is your right. Go, and leave me in the path I have chosen. Bid them all at home never to mention my name again. And sometimes, Beriah, pray for me when I am revelling