The Thing’s the Play Page #2

"The Thing's the Play" by O. Henry is a short story that showcases the author's trademark wit and keen insight into human nature. Centered around the lives of a struggling playwright and a poignant encounter with a wealthy patron, the narrative explores themes of ambition, artistic integrity, and the harsh realities of the theater world. Through clever dialogue and unexpected twists, O. Henry reveals the complexities of pursuing one's dreams while navigating the fickle nature of success and recognition.

• Short story

								

lovers were approaches and adieus. Worse still, in the last one she had
lost a customer, too.

Business languished, and she hung out a Room to Let card. Two large
rooms on the third floor were prepared for desirable tenants. Roomers
came, and went regretfully, for the house of Mrs. Barry was the abode
of neatness, comfort and taste.

One day came Ramonti, the violinist, and engaged the front room above.
The discord and clatter uptown offended his nice ear; so a friend had
sent him to this oasis in the desert of noise.

Ramonti, with his still youthful face, his dark eyebrows, his short,
pointed, foreign, brown beard, his distinguished head of gray hair, and
his artist’s temperament—revealed in his light, gay and sympathetic
manner—was a welcome tenant in the old house near Abingdon Square.

Helen lived on the floor above the store. The architecture of it was
singular and quaint. The hall was large and almost square. Up one side
of it, and then across the end of it ascended an open stairway to the
floor above. This hall space she had furnished as a sitting room and
office combined. There she kept her desk and wrote her business
letters; and there she sat of evenings by a warm fire and a bright red
light and sewed or read. Ramonti found the atmosphere so agreeable that
he spent much time there, describing to Mrs. Barry the wonders of
Paris, where he had studied with a particularly notorious and noisy
fiddler.

Next comes lodger No. 2, a handsome, melancholy man in the early 40’s,
with a brown, mysterious beard, and strangely pleading, haunting eyes.
He, too, found the society of Helen a desirable thing. With the eyes of
Romeo and Othello’s tongue, he charmed her with tales of distant climes
and wooed her by respectful innuendo.

From the first Helen felt a marvelous and compelling thrill in the
presence of this man. His voice somehow took her swiftly back to the
days of her youth’s romance. This feeling grew, and she gave way to it,
and it led her to an instinctive belief that he had been a factor in
that romance. And then with a woman’s reasoning (oh, yes, they do,
sometimes) she leaped over common syllogisms and theory, and logic, and
was sure that her husband had come back to her. For she saw in his eyes
love, which no woman can mistake, and a thousand tons of regret and
remorse, which aroused pity, which is perilously near to love requited,
which is the sine qua non in the house that Jack built.

But she made no sign. A husband who steps around the corner for twenty
years and then drops in again should not expect to find his slippers
laid out too conveniently near nor a match ready lighted for his cigar.
There must be expiation, explanation, and possibly execration. A little
purgatory, and then, maybe, if he were properly humble, he might be
trusted with a harp and crown. And so she made no sign that she knew or
suspected.

And my friend, the reporter, could see nothing funny in this! Sent out
on an assignment to write up a roaring, hilarious, brilliant joshing
story of—but I will not knock a brother—let us go on with the story.

One evening Ramonti stopped in Helen’s hall-office-reception-room and
told his love with the tenderness and ardor of the enraptured artist.
His words were a bright flame of the divine fire that glows in the
heart of a man who is a dreamer and doer combined.

“But before you give me an answer,” he went on, before she could accuse
him of suddenness, “I must tell you that ‘Ramonti?’ is the only name I
have to offer you. My manager gave me that. I do not know who I am or
where I came from. My first recollection is of opening my eyes in a
hospital. I was a young man, and I had been there for weeks. My life
before that is a blank to me. They told me that I was found lying in
the street with a wound on my head and was brought there in an
ambulance. They thought I must have fallen and struck my head upon the
stones. There was nothing to show who I was. I have never been able to
remember. After I was discharged from the hospital, I took up the
violin. I have had success. Mrs. Barry—I do not know your name except
that—I love you; the first time I saw you I realized that you were the
one woman in the world for me—and”—oh, a lot of stuff like that.

Helen felt young again. First a wave of pride and a sweet little thrill
of vanity went all over her; and then she looked Ramonti in the eyes,
and a tremendous throb went through her heart. She hadn’t expected that
throb. It took her by surprise. The musician had become a big factor in
her life, and she hadn’t been aware of it.

“Mr. Ramonti,” she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage,
remember; it was in the old home near Abingdon Square), “I’m awfully
sorry, but I’m a married woman.”

And then she told him the sad story of her life, as a heroine must do,
sooner or later, either to a theatrical manager or to a reporter.

Ramonti took her hand, bowed low and kissed it, and went up to his
room.

Helen sat down and looked mournfully at her hand. Well she might. Three
suitors had kissed it, mounted their red roan steeds and ridden away.

In an hour entered the mysterious stranger with the haunting eyes.
Helen was in the willow rocker, knitting a useless thing in
cotton-wool. He ricocheted from the stairs and stopped for a chat.
Sitting across the table from her, he also poured out his narrative of
love. And then he said: “Helen, do you not remember me? I think I have
seen it in your eyes. Can you forgive the past and remember the love
that has lasted for twenty years? I wronged you deeply—I was afraid to
come back to you—but my love overpowered my reason. Can you, will you,
forgive me?”

Helen stood up. The mysterious stranger held one of her hands in a
strong and trembling clasp.

There she stood, and I pity the stage that it has not acquired a scene
like that and her emotions to portray.

For she stood with a divided heart. The fresh, unforgettable, virginal
love for her bridegroom was hers; the treasured, sacred, honored memory
of her first choice filled half her soul. She leaned to that pure
feeling. Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance bound her to it.
But the other half of her heart and soul was filled with something
else—a later, fuller, nearer influence. And so the old fought against
the new.

And while she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking,
petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the
noblest. The daws may peck upon one’s sleeve without injury, but
whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far from the
neck.

This music and the musician called her, and at her side honor and the
old love held her back.

“Forgive me,” he pleaded.

“Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you
love,” she declared, with a purgatorial touch.

“How could I tell?” he begged. “I will conceal nothing from you. That
night when he left I followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark
street I struck him down. He did not rise. I examined him. His head had
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes