25 лучших рассказов / 25 Best Short Stories. О. Генри

came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker’s motor car.

      At 6 o’clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-indorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart’s true affection.

      At 7:30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel: the man in the room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unload – the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden[8]. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out “The Cloister and the Hearth,”[9] the best non-selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard.

      The front door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Denys treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes; you would, just as she did!

      And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the bear’s. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left for the gleaners.

      “Why haven’t you written – oh, why?” cried Sarah.

      “New York is a pretty large town,” said Walter Franklin. “I came in a week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it didn’t prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since!”

      “I wrote!” said Sarah, vehemently.

      “Never got it!”

      “Then how did you find me?”

      The young farmer smiled a springtime smile.

      “I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening,” said he. “I don’t care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived.”

      “I remember,” sighed Sarah, happily. “That was dandelions below cabbage.”

      “I’d know that cranky capital W ’way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world,” said Franklin.

      “Why, there’s no W in dandelions,” said Sarah, in surprise.

      The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket, and pointed to a line.

      Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys.

      Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item:

      “DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD-BOILED EGG.”

      The Coming-out of Maggie

      Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give and Take – or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltzing, you must work in Rhinegold’s paper-box factory. Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the paper-box girl that he affected; and few strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops.

      Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-handed style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her “fellow.” Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie’s house every Saturday night so that her friend could go to the dance with them.

      The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle-making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went ’round, and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as neat and satisfying a little welter-weight affair to a finish as ever happened inside the ropes.

      On Saturdays Rhinegold’s paper-box factory closed at 3 P. M. On one such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie’s door Anna said, as usual: “Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and me’ll come by for you.”

      But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high-poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye.

      “Thanks, Anna,” said Maggie; “but you and Jimmy needn’t bother to-night. I’ve a gentleman friend that’s coming ‘round to escort me to the hop.”

      The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her. Maggie Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it?

      “You’ll see to-night,” said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had gathered in Cupid’s vineyard. “He’s swell all right. He’s two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-to-date dresser. I’ll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall.”

      Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that evening. Anna’s eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the first glimpse of her friend’s “catch.”

      At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her triumphant eye discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy.

      “Oh, gee!” cried Anna, “Mag ain’t made a hit – oh, no! Swell fellow? well, I guess! Style? Look at ’um.”

      “Go as far as you like,” said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. “Cop him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push. Don’t mind me. He don’t squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh!”

      “Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I’m glad for Mag. First fellow she ever had. Oh, here they come.”

      Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average Give and Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the association who would bind a paper-box maiden to his conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brummel airs. They were not considered honourable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the supereminence of the male in the cosmogony[10] of creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle tourneys of Cupid – these were the approved arms and ammunition of the Clover Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, genuflexions and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at a new angle.

      “A friend

8

Mukden – город на северо-востоке Китая, место знаменитой битвы при Мукдене в 1905 г. в ходе Русско-японской войны 1904–1905 гг.

9

“The Cloister and the Hearth” – исторический роман Чарльза Рида (1814–1884), английского писателя, драматурга и театрального деятеля.

10

Cosmogony – космогония, раздел физики, изучающий эволюцию космических объектов во Вселенной.