Short Fiction - O. Henry (books recommended by bts .TXT) 📗

Jacks got his smile, too.

“Thank you, Mr. Jacks,” said Ileen. “If you only knew how I appreciate anyone’s being candid and not a flatterer! I get so tired of people telling me I’m pretty. I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who tell you the truth.”

Then I thought I saw an expectant look on Ileen’s face as she glanced toward me. I had a wild, sudden impulse to dare fate, and tell her of all the beautiful handiwork of the Great Artificer she was the most exquisite⁠—that she was a flawless pearl gleaming pure and serene in a setting of black mud and emerald prairies⁠—that she was⁠—a⁠—a corker; and as for mine, I cared not if she were as cruel as a serpent’s tooth to her fond parents, or if she couldn’t tell a plugged dollar from a bridle buckle, if I might sing, chant, praise, glorify, and worship her peerless and wonderful beauty.

But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had witnessed her delight at the crafty and discreet words of Bud and Jacks. No! Miss Hinkle was not one to be beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of a flatterer. So I joined the ranks of the candid and honest. At once I became mendacious and didactic.

“In all ages, Miss Hinkle,” said I, “in spite of the poetry and romance of each, intellect in woman has been admired more than beauty. Even in Cleopatra, herself, men found more charm in her queenly mind than in her looks.”

“Well, I should think so!” said Ileen. “I’ve seen pictures of her that weren’t so much. She had an awfully long nose.”

“If I may say so,” I went on, “you remind me of Cleopatra, Miss Ileen.”

“Why, my nose isn’t so long!” said she, opening her eyes wide and touching that comely feature with a dimpled forefinger.

“Why⁠—er⁠—I mean,” said I⁠—“I mean as to mental endowments.”

“Oh!” said she; and then I got my smile just as Bud and Jacks had got theirs.

“Thank every one of you,” she said, very, very sweetly, “for being so frank and honest with me. That’s the way I want you to be always. Just tell me plainly and truthfully what you think, and we’ll all be the best friends in the world. And now, because you’ve been so good to me, and understand so well how I dislike people who do nothing but pay me exaggerated compliments, I’ll sing and play a little for you.”

Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; but we would have been better pleased if Ileen had remained in her low rocking-chair face to face with us and let us gaze upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti⁠—not even on the farewellest of the diva’s farewell tours. She had a cooing little voice like that of a turtledove that could almost fill the parlor when the windows and doors were closed, and Betty was not rattling the lids of the stove in the kitchen. She had a gamut that I estimate at about eight inches on the piano; and her runs and trills sounded like the clothes bubbling in your grandmother’s iron wash-pot. Believe that she must have been beautiful when I tell you that it sounded like music to us.

Ileen’s musical taste was catholic. She would sing through a pile of sheet music on the left-hand top of the piano, laying each slaughtered composition on the right-hand top. The next evening she would sing from right to left. Her favorites were Mendelssohn, and Moody and Sankey. By request she always wound up with “Sweet Violets” and “When the Leaves Begin to Turn.”

When we left at ten o’clock the three of us would go down to Jacks’ little wooden station and sit on the platform, swinging our feet and trying to pump one another for clues as to which way Miss Ileen’s inclinations seemed to lean. That is the way of rivals⁠—they do not avoid and glower at one another; they convene and converse and construe⁠—striving by the art politic to estimate the strength of the enemy.

One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young lawyer who at once flaunted his shingle and himself spectacularly upon the town. His name was C. Vincent Vesey. You could see at a glance that he was a recent graduate of a southwestern law school. His Prince Albert coat, light striped trousers, broad-brimmed soft black hat, and narrow white muslin bow tie proclaimed that more loudly than any diploma could. Vesey was a compound of Daniel Webster, Lord Chesterfield, Beau Brummell, and Little Jack Horner. His coming boomed Paloma. The next day after he arrived an addition to the town was surveyed and laid off in lots.

Of course, Vesey, to further his professional fortunes, must mingle with the citizenry and outliers of Paloma. And, as well as with the soldier men, he was bound to seek popularity with the gay dogs of the place. So Jacks and Bud Cunningham and I came to be honored by his acquaintance.

The doctrine of predestination would have been discredited had not Vesey seen Ileen Hinkle and become fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud’s imprecations, and made me dumb with gloom.

For Vesey had the rhetoric. Words flowed from him like oil from a gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, appreciation, honeyed gallantry, golden opinions, eulogy, and unveiled panegyric vied with one another for preeminence in his speech. We had small hopes that Ileen could resist his oratory and Prince Albert.

But a day came that gave us courage.

About dusk one evening I was sitting on the little gallery in front of the Hinkle parlor, waiting for Ileen