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

I took a curious interest in studying the character of Aubrey DeVere. His was one of the noblest and grandest natures I had ever known, but it was so far influenced by the traditions and customs of the people with whom he had lived, that scarcely a vestige of its natural good remained.

He had been splendidly educated at the University of Virginia, and was an accomplished orator, musician and painter, but from his early childhood he had been allowed to give way to every impulse and desire, and his manhood showed sadly his lack of self-control.

One evening I was in the music room in the second story of the DeVere mansion, playing over that loveliest of Schubert’s Leider, “Hark, Hark, the Lark,” when Aubrey DeVere entered. Of late, on account of some strange whim, he had become more careful in his dress.

This evening he wore a shirt, thrown open in front, exhibiting his massive collar bone, and a black velvet smoking jacket, trimmed with gold braid in a fanciful design. On his hands were white kid gloves, and I noticed that his feet, on which he absolutely refused to wear shoes, had been recently washed at the pump. He was in one of his most bitter and sneering moods, and launched forth into a most acrimonious tirade against Grant, Lincoln, George Francis Train and other heroes of the Union. He sat down upon the center table and began scratching one of his ankles with the toe of the other foot in a manner that he knew always irritated me.

Resolved not to become angry, I continued playing. Suddenly he said:

“Pardon me, Miss Cook, but you struck a wrong note in effecting the run in that diminished seventh.”

“I think not,” I answered.

“You are a liar!” he replied. “You struck a natural, when it should have been a sharp. This is the note you should have played.”

I heard something swish through the air. From where he sat on the center table, he shot between his teeth a solid stream of tobacco juice with deadly aim full upon the black key of A-sharp on the piano. I rose from the stool, somewhat nettled, but smiling.

“You are offended,” he said, sarcastically. “You do not like our Southern ways. You think me a mauvais sujet. You think we lack aplomb and savoir-vivre. With your Boston culture, you think you can detect a false note in our courtesy, a certain lack of fineness and refinement in our manners. Do not deny it.”

“Mr. DeVere,” I said coldly, “your taunts are nothing to me. I am here to do my duty. In your own house you are at liberty to act as you choose. Will you move one of your feet and allow me to pass?”

Mr. DeVere suddenly sprang from the table and clasped me fiercely in his arms.

“Penelope,” he cried, in a terrible voice. “I love you! You miserable little dried-up, washed-out, white-eyed, sallow-cheeked, prim, angular Yankee schoolma’am. I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. Will you marry me?”

I struggled to get free.

“Put me down,” I cried. “Oh, if Cyrus were only here!”

“Cyrus!” shouted Mr. DeVere. “Who is Cyrus? Cyrus shall never have you, I swear.”

He raised me above his head with one hand and hurled me through the plate glass window into the yard below. Then he threw the furniture down upon me, piece by piece, the piano last of all. I then heard him rush down the stairs, and in a moment felt a stream of liquid trickling down among the broken furniture. I recognized the acrid smell of petroleum, heard the scratch of a match, and the fierce roaring of flames; felt a sudden scorching heat, and remembered no more.

When I regained consciousness I was lying in my own bed, and Mrs. DeVere was sitting beside me, fanning me.

I tried to rise, but was too weak.

“You must keep still,” said Mrs. DeVere gently. “You have been ill with fever for two weeks. You must excuse my son; I am afraid he startled you. He loves you very much, but he is so impulsive.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He has gone to bring Cyrus, and it is time he had returned.”

“How did I escape from that dreadful fire?”

“Aubrey rescued you. After his fit of passion had passed he dashed aside the burning furniture and carried you back upstairs.”

A few minutes later I heard the sound of footsteps, and looking up saw Aubrey DeVere and Cyrus Potts standing by my bedside.

“Cyrus,” I cried.

“How de do, Penelope,” said Cyrus.

Before I could reply there was a loud and fiendish yell outside. The front door was broken down and a dozen masked men dashed into the room.

“We hear there is a d⁠⸺ Yankee in here,” they cried. “Lynch him!”

Aubrey DeVere seized a table by the leg and killed every man of the lynching party.

“Cyrus Potts,” he thundered, “kiss that schoolma’am, or I’ll brain you as I did those other fellows.”

Cyrus dabbed an icy kiss in my direction.

A week later Cyrus and I left for Boston. His salary has been raised to $25 per month and I had saved $210.

Aubrey DeVere accompanied us to the train. Under his arm he carried a keg of blasting powder. As our train rolled out he sat down upon this keg and touched a lighted match to it.

One of his great toes fell through the car window and fell in my lap.

Cyrus is not of a jealous disposition, and I now have that great toe in a bottle of alcohol on my writing desk. We are married now, and I will never taken another trip to the South.

The Southern people are too impulsive.

Up to a few years ago man regarded the means of locomotion possessed by the fair sex as a sacred areanum into which it were desecration to inquire.

The bicycle costume has developed the fact that there are two⁠—well, that there are two. Whereas man bowed down and worshipped what