[adapted]

by
O. Henry

Old Anthony Rockwall, retired maker and owner of Rockwall’s Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth Avenue big house and smiled. His neighbour to the right — the rich club man, G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones — came out to his waiting car, wrinkling his nose in a rude way, as usual, at the Italian Renaissance statues on the soap palace’s front.

“Proud old statue that does nothing!” said the former Soap King. “The Eden Musee will get that old frozen Nesselrode yet if he doesn’t watch out. I will have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer and see if that will make his Dutch nose turn up any higher.”

And then Anthony Rockwall, who did not like bells, went to the door of his library and shouted “Mike!” in the same voice that had once broken off pieces of the sky on the Kansas fields.

“Tell my son,” said Anthony to the servant who answered, “to come in here before he leaves the house.”

When young Rockwall entered the library the old man put down his newspaper, looked at him with a kind, serious look on his big, smooth, red face, messed up his thick white hair with one hand and shook the keys in his pocket with the other.

“Richard,” said Anthony Rockwall, “what do you pay for the soap that you use?”

Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He had not yet understood his father, who was as full of surprises as a girl at her first party.

“Six dollars for twelve, I think, dad.”

“And your clothes?”

“I think about sixty dollars, usually.”

“You’re a gentleman,” said Anthony, firmly. “I’ve heard of these young men spending$24 a dozen for soap, and spending over a hundred for clothes. You have as much money to waste as any of them, and yet you stick to what is decent and simple. Now I use the old Eureka — not only for memories, but it’s the purest soap made. Whenever you pay more than 10 cents a bar for soap you buy bad perfumes and labels. But 50 cents is very good for a young man of your age, position and situation. As I said, you’re a gentleman. People say it takes three generations to make one. They are wrong. Money will do it as smooth as soap grease. It’s made you one. By hokey! it’s almost made one of me. I’m nearly as impolite and unpleasant and bad-mannered as these two old Knickerbocker gentlemen on each side of me that can’t sleep at night because I bought in between them.”

“There are some things that money can’t do,” said young Rockwall, quite sadly.

“Now, don’t say that,” said old Anthony, very surprised. “I choose money every time. I have read the encyclopedia down to Y looking for something you can’t buy with it; and I think I will have to start on the extra part at the end next week. I choose money over everything else. Tell me something money won’t buy.”

“For one thing,” answered Richard, feeling a little upset, “it won’t get someone into the special groups of society.”

“Oho! won’t it?” shouted the supporter of the root of evil. “You tell me where your special groups would be if the first Astor hadn’t had the money to pay for his cheap ticket over?”

Richard breathed out.

“And that’s what I was coming to,” said the old man, more quietly. “That’s why I asked you to come in. There’s something wrong with you, boy. I’ve been seeing it for two weeks. Tell me. I think I could get eleven million dollars in twenty-four hours, not counting the land and houses. If it’s your liver, there’s the Rambler down in the bay, full of coal, and ready to sail down to the Bahamas in two days.”

“Not a bad guess, dad; you are not far off.”

“Ah,” said Anthony, with interest; “what’s her name?”

Richard began to walk up and down the library floor. There was enough friendliness and kindness in this rough old father of his to make Richard trust him.

“Why don’t you ask her?” asked old Anthony. “She’ll say yes right away. You’ve got the money and the looks, and you’re a good boy. Your hands are clean. You’ve got no Eureka soap on them. You’ve been to college, but she’ll ignore that.”

“I haven’t had a chance,” said Richard.

“Make one,” said Anthony. “Take her for a walk in the park, or a ride on a cart with straw, or walk home with her from church. Chance! Nonsense!”

“You don’t know the social world, dad. She’s one of the people who make it work. Every hour and minute of her time is planned for days ahead. I must have that girl, dad, or this town is a dark swamp forever. And I can’t write it — I can’t do that.”

“Hmph!” said the old man. “Are you saying that with all the money I’ve got you can’t get a girl to spend an hour or two with you?”

“I waited too long. She will sail for Europe at noon the day after tomorrow for a stay of two years. I’m to see her alone tomorrow evening for a few minutes. She’s at Larchmont now at her aunt’s. I can’t go there. But I can meet her with a cab at Grand Central Station tomorrow evening at the 8.30 train. We drive down Broadway to Wallack’s very fast, where her mother and a group in a box will be waiting for us in the lobby. Do you think she would listen to me tell her I love her during that six or eight minutes in that situation? No. And what chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is one problem that your money can’t solve. We can’t buy one minute of time with money; if we could, rich people would live longer. There’s no hope of having a talk with Miss Lantry before she sails.”

“All right, Richard, my boy,” said old Anthony with a smile. “You may go down to your club now. I’m glad it isn’t your liver. But don’t forget to burn a few incense sticks in the temple to the great god Mazuma from time to time. You say money won’t buy time? Well, of course, you can’t order forever wrapped up and brought to your home for a price, but I’ve seen Father Time get pretty bad bruises on his heels from stones when he walked through the gold mines.”

That night came Aunt Ellen, gentle, emotional, with wrinkles, sighing, unhappy because of her money, to Brother Anthony as he read his evening paper, and began to talk about lovers’ troubles.

“He told me all about it,” said brother Anthony, yawning. “I told him he could use my bank account. And then he began to say bad things about money. Said money couldn’t help. Said the rules of society couldn’t be beaten even a little by a team of men with ten million dollars.”

“Oh, Anthony,” said Aunt Ellen with a sigh, “I wish you would not think so much of money. Money is nothing when there is true love. Love is very strong. If he had only spoken earlier! She could not have said no to our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. He will have no chance to speak to her. All your gold cannot bring happiness to your son.”

At eight o’clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took an old gold ring from a worn case and gave it to Richard.

“Wear it tonight, nephew,” she asked. “Your mother gave it to me. She said it brought good luck in love. She asked me to give it to you when you found the one you loved.”

Young Rockwall took the ring carefully and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second bend and stopped. He took it off and put it into his vest pocket, as men do. And then he phoned for his cab.

At the station he got Miss Lantry out of the moving crowd at eight thirty-two.

“We must not keep mama and the others waiting,” she said.

“To Wallack’s Theatre as fast as you can drive!” said Richard like a true friend.

They went fast up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white, starry lane that goes from the soft fields of sunset to the rocky hills of morning.

At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly lifted the little door and told the cab driver to stop.

“I’ve dropped a ring,” he said sorry, as he got out. “It was my mother’s ring, and I’d hate to lose it. I won’t keep you a minute — I saw where it fell.”

In less than a minute he was back in the taxi with the ring.

But in that minute a streetcar had stopped right in front of the cab. The driver tried to pass to the left, but a heavy delivery wagon blocked him. He tried the right, and had to back away from a furniture truck that should not have been there. He tried to back out, but dropped his reins and swore as usual. He was stuck in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses.

One of those street traffic jams had happened that sometimes stop business and traffic very suddenly in the big city.

“Why don’t you keep driving?” said Miss Lantry, in a hurry. “We’ll be late.”

Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a crowded stream of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the wide space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street cross each other like a girl with a 26-inch waist fills her 22-inch belt. And still from all the side streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the meeting point at full speed, and throwing themselves into the struggling crowd, locking wheels and adding their drivers’ curses to the noise. All the traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of people watching that stood along the sidewalks had not seen a street traffic jam as big as this one.

“I’m very sorry,” said Richard, as he sat down again, “but it looks like we are stuck. They won’t get this mess untangled in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn’t dropped the ring we — ”

“Let me see the ring,” said Miss Lantry. “Now that we can’t do anything about it, I don’t care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway.”

At eleven o’clock that night somebody knocked softly on Anthony Rockwall’s door.

“Come in,” shouted Anthony, who was wearing a red bathrobe, reading a book of pirate adventures.

Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a grey-haired angel who was left on earth by mistake.

“They’re going to be married, Anthony,” she said, quietly. “She has promised to marry our Richard. On their way to the theater there was a traffic jam, and it was two hours before their taxi could move again.

“And oh, brother Anthony, don’t ever brag about the power of money again. A little sign of true love — a little ring that showed never-ending and not-for-money love — was the reason our Richard found his happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to get it back. And before they could go on, a traffic jam happened. He spoke to his love and won her heart there while the cab was stuck. Money is nothing compared with true love, Anthony.”

“All right,” said old Anthony. “I’m glad the boy has got what he wanted. I told him I would spend as much money as needed for this if — ”

“But, brother Anthony, what good could your money do?”

“Sister,” said Anthony Rockwall. “I’ve got my pirate in a lot of trouble. His ship has just been sunk, and he’s too smart about the value of money to let himself drown. I wish you would let me go on with this chapter.”

The story should end here. I wish it would end here as much as you who read this wish it would. But we must go to the bottom of the well to find the truth.