The Girl and the Graft

by O. Henry

　　

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The other day I ran across my old friend Ferguson Pogue. Pogue isa conscientious grafter of the highest type. His headquarters isthe Western Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything fromspeculating in town lots on the Great Staked Plains to selling woodentoys in Connecticut, made by hydraulic pressure from nutmegs ground to apulp. Now and then when Pogue has made a good haul he comes to New York fora rest. He says the jug of wine and loaf of bread and Thou in thewilderness business is about as much rest and pleasure to him as slidingdown the bumps at Coney would be to President Taft. "Give me," saysPogue, "a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I'm not muchfond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globewhere I don't find any." While in the metropolis Pogue can always be found at one of two places.One is a little second-hand book-shop on Fourth Avenue, where he readsbooks about his hobbies, Mahometanism and taxidermy. I found him atthe other--his hall bedroom in Eighteenth Street--where he sat in hisstocking feet trying to pluck "The Banks of the Wabash" out of a smallzither. Four years he has practised this tune without arriving nearenough to cast the longest trout line to the water's edge. On thedresser lay a blued-steel Colt's forty-five and a tight roll of tens andtwenties large enough around to belong to the spring rattlesnake-storyclass. A chambermaid with a room-cleaning air fluttered nearby in thehall, unable to enter or to flee, scandalized by the stocking feet,aghast at the Colt's, yet powerless, with her metropolitan instincts,to remove herself beyond the magic influence of the yellow-hued roll. I sat on his trunk while Ferguson Pogue talked. No one could be frankeror more candid in his conversation. Beside his expression the cry ofHenry James for lacteal nourishment at the age of one month would haveseemed like a Chaldean cryptogram. He told me stories of his professionwith pride, for he considered it an art. And I was curious enough to askhim whether he had known any women who followed it. "Ladies?" said Pogue, with Western chivalry. "Well, not to any greatextent. They don't amount to much in special lines of graft, becausethey're all so busy in general lines. What? Why, they have to. Who's gotthe money in the world? The men. Did you ever know a man to give a womana dollar without any consideration? A man will shell out his dust toanother man free and easy and gratis. But if he drops a penny in one ofthe machines run by the Madam Eve's Daughters' Amalgamated Associationand the pineapple chewing gum don't fall out when he pulls the lever youcan hear him kick to the superintendent four blocks away. Man is thehardest proposition a woman has to go up against. He's the low-gradeone, and she has to work overtime to make him pay. Two times out offive she's salted. She can't put in crushers and costly machinery. He'dnotice 'em and be onto the game. They have to pan out what they get, andit hurts their tender hands. Some of 'em are natural sluice troughs andcan carry out $1,000 to the ton. The dry-eyed ones have to depend onsigned letters, false hair, sympathy, the kangaroo walk, cowhide whips,ability to cook, sentimental juries, conversational powers, silkunderskirts, ancestry, rouge, anonymous letters, violet sachet powders,witnesses, revolvers, pneumatic forms, carbolic acid, moonlight, coldcream and the evening newspapers." "You are outrageous, Ferg," I said. "Surely there is none of this'graft' as you call it, in a perfect and harmonious matrimonial union!" "Well," said Pogue, "nothing that would justify you every time incalling Police Headquarters and ordering out the reserves and avaudeville manager on a dead run. But it's this way: Suppose you're aFifth Avenue millionaire, soaring high, on the right side of copper andcappers. "You come home at night and bring a $9,000,000 diamond brooch to thelady who's staked you for a claim. You hand it over. She says, 'Oh,George!' and looks to see if it's backed. She comes up and kisses you.You've waited for it. You get it. All right. It's graft. "But I'm telling you about Artemisia Blye. She was from Kansas and shesuggested corn in all of its phases. Her hair was as yellow as the silk;her form was as tall and graceful as a stalk in the low grounds during awet summer; her eyes were as big and startling as bunions, and green washer favorite color. "On my last trip into the cool recesses of your sequestered city I met ahuman named Vaucross. He was worth--that is, he had a million. He toldme he was in business on the street. 'A sidewalk merchant?' says I,sarcastic. 'Exactly,' says he, 'Senior partner of a paving concern.' "I kind of took to him. For this reason, I met him on Broadway one nightwhen I was out of heart, luck, tobacco and place. He was all silk hat,diamonds and front. He was all front. If you had gone behind him youwould have only looked yourself in the face. I looked like a crossbetween Count Tolstoy and a June lobster. I was out of luck. I had--butlet me lay my eyes on that dealer again. "Vaucross stopped and talked to me a few minutes and then he took me toa high-toned restaurant to eat dinner. There was music, and then someBeethoven, and Bordelaise sauce, and cussing in French, and frangipangi,and some hauteur and cigarettes. When I am flush I know them places. "I declare, I must have looked as bad as a magazine artist sitting therewithout any money and my hair all rumpled like I was booked to read achapter from 'Elsie's School Days' at a Brooklyn Bohemian smoker. ButVaucross treated me like a bear hunter's guide. He wasn't afraid ofhurting the waiter's feelings. "'Mr. Pogue,' he explains to me, 'I am using you.' "'Go on,' says I; 'I hope you don't wake up.' "And then he tells me, you know, the kind of man he was. He was aNew Yorker. His whole ambition was to be noticed. He wanted to beconspicuous. He wanted people to point him out and bow to him, and tellothers who he was. He said it had been the desire of his life always. Hedidn't have but a million, so he couldn't attract attention by spendingmoney. He said he tried to get into public notice one time by plantinga little public square on the east side with garlic for free use ofthe poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and covered it over at once with alibrary in the Gaelic language. Three times he had jumped in the way ofautomobiles; but the only result was five broken ribs and a notice inthe papers that an unknown man, five feet ten, with four amalgam-filledteeth, supposed to be the last of the famous Red Leary gang had been runover. "'Ever try the reporters,' I asked him. "'Last month,' says Mr. Vaucross, 'my expenditure for lunches toreporters was $124.80.' "'Get anything out of that?' I asks. "'That reminds me,' says he; 'add $8.50 for pepsin. Yes, I gotindigestion.' "'How am I supposed to push along your scramble for prominence?' Iinquires. 'Contrast?' "'Something of that sort to-night,' says Vaucross. 'It grieves me; butI am forced to resort to eccentricity.' And here he drops his napkin inhis soup and rises up and bows to a gent who is devastating a potatounder a palm across the room. "'The Police Commissioner,' says my climber, gratified. 'Friend', saysI, in a hurry, 'have ambitions but don't kick a rung out of your ladder.When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police you spoil myappetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and incriminated. Bethoughtful.' "At the Quaker City squab en casserole the idea about Artemisia Blyecomes to me. "'Suppose I can manage to get you in the papers,' says I--'a column ortwo every day in all of 'em and your picture in most of 'em for a week.How much would it be worth to you?' "'Ten thousand dollars,' says Vaucross, warm in a minute. 'But nomurder,' says he; 'and I won't wear pink pants at a cotillon.' "'I wouldn't ask you to,' says I. 'This is honorable, stylish anduneffeminate. Tell the waiter to bring a demi tasse and some otherbeans, and I will disclose to you the opus moderandi.' "We closed the deal an hour later in the rococo rouge et noise room. Itelegraphed that night to Miss Artemisia in Salina. She took a coupleof photographs and an autograph letter to an elder in the FourthPresbyterian Church in the morning, and got some transportation and $80.She stopped in Topeka long enough to trade a flashlight interior and avalentine to the vice-president of a trust company for a mileage bookand a package of five-dollar notes with $250 scrawled on the band. "The fifth evening after she got my wire she was waiting, all décolletéeand dressed up, for me and Vaucross to take her to dinner in one ofthese New York feminine apartment houses where a man can't get in unlesshe plays bezique and smokes depilatory powder cigarettes. "'She's a stunner,' says Vaucross when he saw her. 'They'll give her atwo-column cut sure.' "This was the scheme the three of us concocted. It was business straightthrough. Vaucross was to rush Miss Blye with all the style and displayand emotion he could for a month. Of course, that amounted to nothing asfar as his ambitions were concerned. The sight of a man in a white tieand patent leather pumps pouring greenbacks through the large end ofa cornucopia to purchase nutriment and heartsease for tall, willowyblondes in New York is as common a sight as blue turtles in deliriumtremens. But he was to write her love letters--the worst kind of loveletters, such as your wife publishes after you are dead--every day. Atthe end of the month he was to drop her, and she would bring suit for$100,000 for breach of promise. "Miss Artemisia was to get $10,000. If she won the suit that was all;and if she lost she was to get it anyhow. There was a signed contract tothat effect. "Sometimes they had me out with 'em, but not often. I couldn't keep upto their style. She used to pull out his notes and criticize them likebills of lading. "'Say, you!' she'd say. 'What do you call this--letter to a HardwareMerchant from His Nephew on Learning that His Aunt Has Nettlerash? YouEastern duffers know as much about writing love letters as a Kansasgrasshopper does about tugboats. "My dear Miss Blye!"--wouldn't that putpink icing and a little red sugar bird on your bridal cake? How long doyou expect to hold an audience in a court-room with that kind of stuff?You want to get down to business, and call me "Tweedlums Babe" and"Honeysuckle," and sign yourself "Mama's Own Big Bad Puggy Wuggy Boy" ifyou want any limelight to concentrate upon your sparse gray hairs. Getsappy.' "After that Vaucross dipped his pen in the indelible tabasco. Hisnotes read like something or other in the original. I could see a jurysitting up, and women tearing one another's hats to hear 'em read. And Icould see piling up for Mr. Vaucross as much notoriousness as ArchbishopCranmer or the Brooklyn Bridge or cheese-on-salad ever enjoyed. Heseemed mighty pleased at the prospects. "They agreed on a night; and I stood on Fifth Avenue outside a solemnrestaurant and watched 'em. A process-server walked in and handedVaucross the papers at his table. Everybody looked at 'em; and helooked as proud as Cicero. I went back to my room and lit a five-centcigar, for I knew the $10,000 was as good as ours. "About two hours later somebody knocked at my door. There stood Vaucrossand Miss Artemisia, and she was clinging--yes, sir, clinging--to hisarm. And they tells me they'd been out and got married. And theyarticulated some trivial cadences about love and such. And they laiddown a bundle on the table and said 'Good night' and left. "And that's why I say," concluded Ferguson Pogue, "that a woman is toobusy occupied with her natural vocation and instinct of graft such as isgiven her for self-preservation and amusement to make any great successin special lines." "What was in the bundle that they left?" I asked, with my usualcuriosity. "Why," said Ferguson, "there was a scalper's railroad ticket as far asKansas City and two pairs of Mr. Vaucross's old pants."

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