New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Then, at the door, as though the way of his coming had been so much
less important than the fact that he had come, she asked: “How did you
come to knock at my door?”
He looked at her for a moment, remembering the cards, and felt a sudden
jealous pain. What if they had fallen into other hands as adventurous
as his? Quickly he decided that she must never know the truth. He would
never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which
she had been driven by her great distress.
“One of our piano tuners lives in this house,” he said. “I knocked at
your door by mistake.”
The last thing he saw in the room before the green door closed was her
smile.
At the head of the stairway he paused and looked curiously about him.
And then he went along the hallway to its other end; and, coming back,
ascended to the floor above and continued his puzzled explorations.
Every door that he found in the house was painted green.
Wondering, he descended to the sidewalk. The fantastic African was
still there. Rudolf confronted him with his two cards in his hand.
“Will you tell me why you gave me these cards and what they mean?” he
asked.
In a broad, good-natured grin the negro exhibited a splendid
advertisement of his master’s profession.
“Dar it is, boss,” he said, pointing down the street. “But I ’spect you
is a little late for de fust act.”
Looking the way he pointed Rudolf saw above the entrance to a theatre
the blazing electric sign of its new play, “The Green Door.”
“I’m informed dat it’s a fust-rate show, sah,” said the negro. “De
agent what represents it pussented me with a dollar, sah, to distribute
a few of his cards along with de doctah’s. May I offer you one of de
doctah’s cards, sah?”
At the corner of the block in which he lived Rudolf stopped for a glass
of beer and a cigar. When he had come out with his lighted weed he
buttoned his coat, pushed back his hat and said, stoutly, to the lamp
post on the corner:
“All the same, I believe it was the hand of Fate that doped out the way
for me to find her.”
Which conclusion, under the circumstances, certainly admits Rudolf
Steiner to the ranks of the true followers of Romance and Adventure.
FROM THE CABBY’S SEAT
The cabby has his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps,
than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying
seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles,
of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu,
and you are goods in transit. Be you President or vagabond, to cabby
you are only a Fare, he takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your
vertebrae and sets you down.
When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with legal
rates you come to know what contempt is; if you find that you have left
your pocketbook behind you are made to realise the mildness of Dante’s
imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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