The Duel

by O. Henry

　　

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The gods, lying beside their nectar on 'Lympus and peeping over the edgeof the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seemthat to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hillswithout special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habitsof ants from so great a height should be but a mild diversion whencoupled with the soft drink that mythology tells us is their onlysolace. But doubtless they have amused themselves by the comparison ofvillages and towns; and it will be no news to them (nor, perhaps, tomany mortals), that in one particularity New York stands unique amongthe cities of the world. This shall be the theme of a little storyaddressed to the man who sits smoking with his Sabbath-slippered feeton another chair, and to the woman who snatches the paper for a momentwhile boiling greens or a narcotized baby leaves her free. With these Ilove to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings. New York City is inhabited by 4,000,000 mysterious strangers; thusbeating Bird Centre by three millions and half a dozen nine's. Theycame here in various ways and for many reasons--Hendrik Hudson, the artschools, green goods, the stork, the annual dressmakers' convention, thePennsylvania Railroad, love of money, the stage, cheap excursion rates,brains, personal column ads., heavy walking shoes, ambition, freighttrains--all these have had a hand in making up the population. But every man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattanhas got to fight. He has got to fight at once until either he or hisadversary wins. There is no resting between rounds, for there are norounds. It is slugging from the first. It is a fight to a finish. Your opponent is the City. You must do battle with it from the time theferry-boat lands you on the island until either it is yours or it hasconquered you. It is the same whether you have a million in your pocketor only the price of a week's lodging. The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New Yorker or turnthe rankest outlander and Philistine. You must be one or the other. Youcannot remain neutral. You must be for or against--lover or enemy--bosomfriend or outcast. And, oh, the city is a general in the ring. Not onlyby blows does it seek to subdue you. It woos you to its heart with thesubtlety of a siren. It is a combination of Delilah, green Chartreuse,Beethoven, chloral and John L. in his best days. In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man as longas you please. You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, andbe a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, andwithout rebuke. You may become a civic pillar in any other town butKnickerbocker's, and all the time publicly sneering at its buildings,comparing them with the architecture of Colonel Telfair's residence inJackson, Miss., whence you hail, and you will not be set upon. But inNew York you must be either a New Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy,concealed in the wooden horse of your conceited provincialism. And thisdreary preamble is only to introduce to you the unimportant figures ofWilliam and Jack. They came out of the West together, where they had been friends. Theycame to dig their fortunes out of the big city. Father Knickerbocker met them at the ferry, giving one a right-hander onthe nose and the other an upper-cut with his left, just to let them knowthat the fight was on. William was for business; Jack was for Art. Both were young andambitious; so they countered and clinched. I think they were fromNebraska or possibly Missouri or Minnesota. Anyhow, they were out forsuccess and scraps and scads, and they tackled the city like twoLochinvars with brass knucks and a pull at the City Hall. Four years afterward William and Jack met at luncheon. The business manblew in like a March wind, hurled his silk hat at a waiter, dropped intothe chair that was pushed under him, seized the bill of fare, and hadordered as far as cheese before the artist had time to do more than nod.After the nod a humorous smile came into his eyes. "Billy," he said, "you're done for. The city has gobbled you up. It hastaken you and cut you to its pattern and stamped you with its brand. Youare so nearly like ten thousand men I have seen to-day that you couldn'tbe picked out from them if it weren't for your laundry marks." "Camembert," finished William. "What's that? Oh, you've stillgot your hammer out for New York, have you? Well, little oldNoisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me. It's giving me mine.And, say, I used to think the West was the whole round world--onlyslightly flattened at the poles whenever Bryan ran. I used to yellmyself hoarse about the free expense, and hang my hat on the horizon,and say cutting things in the grocery to little soap drummers fromthe East. But I'd never seen New York, then, Jack. Me for it from therathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is the West to me now. Have you heard thisfellow Crusoe sing? The desert isle for him, I say, but my wife made mego. Give me May Irwin or E. S. Willard any time." "Poor Billy," said the artist, delicately fingering a cigarette. "Youremember, when we were on our way to the East how we talked about thisgreat, wonderful city, and how we meant to conquer it and never let itget the best of us? We were going to be just the same fellows we hadalways been, and never let it master us. It has downed you, old man. Youhave changed from a maverick into a butterick." "Don't see exactly what you are driving at," said William. "I don't wearan alpaca coat with blue trousers and a seersucker vest on dressoccasions, like I used to do at home. You talk about being cut to apattern--well, ain't the pattern all right? When you're in Rome you'vegot to do as the Dagoes do. This town seems to me to have other allegedmetropolises skinned to flag stations. According to the railroadschedule I've got in mind, Chicago and Saint Jo and Paris, France, areasterisk stops--which means you wave a red flag and get on every otherTuesday. I like this little suburb of Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. There'ssomething or somebody doing all the time. I'm clearing $8,000 a yearselling automatic pumps, and I'm living like kings-up. Why, yesterday, Iwas introduced to John W. Gates. I took an auto ride with a wine agent'ssister. I saw two men run over by a street car, and I seen Edna Mayplay in the evening. Talk about the West, why, the other night I wokeeverybody up in the hotel hollering. I dreamed I was walking on a boardsidewalk in Oshkosh. What have you got against this town, Jack? There'sonly one thing in it that I don't care for, and that's a ferryboat." The artist gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall. "Thistown," said he, "is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. Whoevercomes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. Abandoning the figure of theleech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence,the genius, and the beauty of the land must pay tribute. Hand to handevery newcomer must struggle with the leviathan. You've lost, Billy. Itshall never conquer me. I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or--thecolor work in a ten-cent magazine. I despise its very vastness andpower. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, thelowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw. Ithas caught you, old man, but I will never run beside its chariot wheels.It glosses itself as the Chinaman glosses his collars. Give me thedomestic finish. I could stand a town ruled by wealth or one ruled byan aristocracy; but this is one controlled by its lowest ingredients.Claiming culture, it is the crudest; asseverating its pre-eminence,it is the basest; denying all outside values and virtue, it is thenarrowest. Give me the pure and the open heart of the West country.I would go back there to-morrow if I could." "Don't you like this _filet mignon_?" said William. "Shucks, now, what'sthe use to knock the town! It's the greatest ever. I couldn't sellone automatic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy O'Keefe's saloon, inSacramento, where I sell twenty here. And have you seen Sara Bernhardtin 'Andrew Mack' yet?" "The town's got you, Billy," said Jack. "All right," said William. "I'm going to buy a cottage on LakeRonkonkoma next summer." At midnight Jack raised his window and sat close to it. He caught hisbreath at what he saw, though he had seen and felt it a hundred times. Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream. Theirregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deepgulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous; some lay in long,desert cañons. Such was the background of the wonderful, cruel,enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city. But into this backgroundwere cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles and squaresthrough which glowed many colored lights. And out of the violet andpurple depths ascended like the city's soul sounds and odors andthrills that make up the civic body. There arose the breath of gaietyunrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know.There below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought fromthe four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill, enrich,despoil, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of it cameup to him and went into his blood. There was a knock on his door. A telegram had come for him. It came fromthe West, and these were its words: "Come back and the answer will be yes. "DOLLY." He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply:"Impossible to leave here at present." Then he sat at the window againand let the city put its cup of mandragora to his lips again. After all it isn't a story; but I wanted to know which one of the heroeswon the battle against the city. So I went to a very learned friend andlaid the case before him. What he said was: "Please don't bother me; Ihave Christmas presents to buy." So there it rests; and you will have to decide for yourself.

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