Hello, everyone. I am here again to share one of short stories of O' Henry. The story is under the big theme of romance. O' Henry has his top competence of creating an extremely entertaining plot and an astonishing ending. What guess the ending of his story will be when reading his work, will not be the one that will occur. Be ready to be shocked. :D
Happy reading and share your comments.
A Service of Love
O' Henry
That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it,
and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will
be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older
than the Great Wall of China.
Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West
pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of
the town pump with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This
effort was framed and hung in the drug store window by the side
of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At twenty he
left for New York with a flowing necktie and a capital tied up
somewhat closer.
Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a
pine-tree village in the South that her relatives chipped in enough
in her chip hat for her to go 'North' and 'finish.' They could not
see her f - , but that is our story
Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music
students had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music,
Rembrandt's works pictures, Waldteufel, wall-paper, Chopin, and
Oolong.
Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other or each of
the other, as you please, and in a short time were married - for
(see above), when one loves one's Art no service seem too hard.
Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a
lonesome flat - something like the A sharp way down at the lefthand
end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their
Art and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man
would be - sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor - janitor for
the privilege of living in a flat with your Art and your Delia.
Flat-dwellers shall endorse my dictum that theirs is the only
true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close - let the
dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to
a rowing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand
to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they
will, so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the other
kind, let it be wide and long - enter you at the Golden Gate, hang
your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn, and go out by Labrador.
Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister - you know
his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are light - his high-lights
have brought him renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstock -
you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys.
They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is
every - but I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and
defined. Joe was to become capable very soon of turning out pictures
that old gentlemen with thin side-whiskers and thick pocketbooks
would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of
buying. Delia was to become familiar and then contemptuous with
Music, so that when she saw the orchestra seats and boxes unsold
she could have sore throat and lobster in a private dining-room
and refuse to go on the stage.
But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat -
the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cosy dinners
and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions - ambitions
interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable - the
mutual help and inspiration; and - overlook my artlessness -
stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11p.m.
But after awhile Art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some
switchman doesn't flag it. Everything going out and nothing
coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr.
Magister and Herr Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's
Art no service seems too hard. So, Delia said she must give music
lessons to keep the chafing dish bubbling.
For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One
evening she came home elated.
'Joe, dear,' she said gleefully, 'I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest
people! General - General A. B. Pinkney's daughter - on Seventyfirst
Street. Such a splendid house, Joe - you ought to see the
front door! Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh,
Joe, I never saw anything like it before.
'My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already.
She's a delicate thing - dresses always in white; and the sweetest,
simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three
lessons a week; and, just think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a
bit; for when I get two or three more pupils I can resume my
lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle
between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice supper.'
'That's all right for you, Dele,' said Joe, attacking a can of peas
with a carving knife and a hatchet, 'but how about me? Do you
think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the
regions of high art? Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I
guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or
two.' Delia came and hung about his neck.
'Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is
not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else.
While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live
as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of
leaving Mr. Magister.'
'All right,' said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable
dish. 'But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't Art. But
you're a trump and a dear to do it.'
'When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard,' said Delia.
'Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park,' said
Joe. 'And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his
window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees
them.'
'I'm sure you will,' said Delia sweetly. 'And now let's be thankful
for General Pinkney and this veal roast.'
During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast.
Joe was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he
was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted,
coddled, praised, and kissed at seven o'clock. Art is an engaging
mistress. It was most times seven o'clock when he returned in the
evening.
At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly
tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8 by 10 (inches)
centre table of the 8 by 10 (feet) flat parlour.
'Sometimes,' she said, a little wearily, 'Clementina tries me. I'm
afraid she doesn't practise enough, and I have to tell her the same
things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and
that does get monotonous. But General Pinkney is the dearest old
man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes
when I am with Clementina at the piano - he is a widower, you
know - and stands there pulling his white goatee. "And how are
the semiquavers and the demi-semiquavers progressing?" he
always asks.
'I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room,
Joe! And those Astrakhan rug portières. And Clementina has such a
funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I
really am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred.
General Pinkney's brother was once Minister to Bolivia.'
And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a
five, a two and a one - all legal tender notes - and laid them beside
Delia's earnings.
'Sold that water-colour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria,' he
announced overwhelmingly.
'Don't joke with me,' said Delia - 'not from Peoria!'
'All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a
woollen muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in
Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first. He was
game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another - an oil
sketch of the Lackawanna freight depot - to take back with him.
Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it.'
'I'm so glad you've kept on,' said Delia heartily. 'You're bound
to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend
before. We'll have oysters to-night.'
'And filet mignon with champignons,' said Joe. 'Where is the
olive fork?'
On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He
spread his $18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be
a great deal of dark paint from his hands.
Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a
shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.
'How is this?' asked Joe after the usual greetings.
Delia laughed, but not very joyously.
'Clementina,' she explained, 'insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after
her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at five in the
afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run
for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the
house. I know Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous.
In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over
my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so
sorry! But General Pinkney! - Joe, that old man nearly went distracted.
He rushed downstairs and sent somebody - they said the
furnace man or somebody in the basement - out to a drug store
for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much
now.'
'What's this?' asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at
some white strands beneath the bandages.
'It's something soft,' said Delia, 'that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did
you sell another sketch?' She had seen the money on the table.
'Did I?' said Joe. 'Just ask the man from Peoria. He got his
depot to-day, and he isn't sure but he thinks he wants another
parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon
did you burn your hand, Dele?'
'Five o'clock, I think,' said Dele plaintively. 'The iron - I mean
the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have
seen General Pinkney, Joe, when - '
'Sit down here a moment, Dele,' said Joe. He drew her to the
couch, sat down beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.
'What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?' he
asked.
She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and
stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of General
Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth
and tears.
'I couldn't get any pupils,' she confessed. 'And I couldn't bear to
have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in
that big Twenty-fourth Street laundry. And I think I did very well
to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you,
Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my
hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story
about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry are you, Joe? And if I
hadn't got the work you mightn't have sold your sketches to that
man from Peoria.'
'He wasn't from Peoria,' said Joe slowly.
'Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are,
Joe - and - kiss me, Joe - and what made you ever suspect that I
wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina?'
'I didn't,' said Joe, 'until to-night. And I wouldn't have then,
only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this
afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a
smoothing-iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the
last two weeks.'
'And then you didn't - '
'My purchaser from Peoria,' said Joe, 'and General Pinkney are
both creations of the same art - but you wouldn't call it either
painting or music.
And then they both laughed, and Joe began:
'When one loves one's Art no service seems - '
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. 'No,' she said -
'just "When one loves." '
Comments
Post a Comment