Chapter 1 No.1

It was eleven o'clock. Outside it was snowing, and so I remained in Pigalle's, loath to leave, and killing the time with a book. Pigalle's was one of those basement eating places in New York's West Thirties, a comfy, tight, cosy sort of a cellar. An Italian table d'h?te, of course, though not like the usual; it had more character and less popularity. You seldom saw a blond skin there, the place being unknown to the night-tramping hordes of avid New Yorkers who crowd into all the "foreign" places and devour all the foreign food they can find.

Mostly the habitués were French and Italian, gentle, noisy people who did, in their way, slight damage to the fine arts. By nine-thirty, they were done eating and gone; almost all the lights were turned out and chairs were piled up on the tables, out of the way of the early morning mop. By ten Pigalle and his wife and several others, mostly sculptors, scene painters and musicians, were gathered beneath the light at the main table and had begun their nightly game of poker. From then on it was slim gambling and loud, staccato chatter in French and Italian.

At eleven, then, this night, the cautious door-bell tinkled. Some kind of a world knocking at mine and wanting to get in, I thought. Some kind of an adventure out there, demanding to be encountered; some kind of a soul pounding at the walls of my soul. Every time the doorbell tinkles, whoever has this Show is setting a new scene. Or, no. The wall opens and the genie slips through, spreads his rug on the ground and begins to make new magic before your very eyes. Never a doorbell rang yet, I thought, that didn't bring a bit of heaven or hell-or mere purgatory-with it.

At eleven the doorbell tinkled and the fat little waitress-maid-scrubwoman-second cook, a Lombard wench by the name, the sweet ineffable name of Philomène, waddled over and opened the door a tiny space. Pigalle occasionally sold liquor without a license; hence his caution as to visitors. She let in an odd apparition; with doubts, I thought; certainly with mutterings and rolling of her black eyes. At any rate she knew him, whether for well or ill.

The man cast his eyes around, saw that the only open table save the poker table was the one I held, and came and sat down opposite me. With a slightly insolent motion he dragged his chair around sidewise, turned his shoulder to me and stared across the room at a gaudy lithograph of the good ship Isabella bound for Naples, eighty-five dollars first class. Philomène, with a porky look, asked him what he wished.

He announced in French that he desired of all things to "strangle a parrokeet." This was some absurd slang for saying he wanted an absinthe.

He was a gaunt, tall, round-shouldered, queer old fellow with a gray beard and a matted moustache, colored with the brown stain of cigarette smoke. As ugly, I thought, as ugly as-oh, Socrates. And yet with something lovable about him. And his combination of dress was certainly odd enough: a frayed, cutaway coat with extremely long tails, dripping wet and dangling cylindrically like sections of melted stovepipe; mussy, baggy old gray trousers; a blue plush waistcoat; a black, but clean muffler pinned tight up under his chin with a safety pin of the brassiest; and a broad-brimmed black slouch hat, so broad of brim that he walked forever in its shadow. This hat he kept on all the time. His hands were long and clean and white-the virile, sensitive hands of a poet, I thought. The eyes were the fascinating feature of the man. I said to myself right away, "This man is a mystic." Though they burned brightly in their sockets, they had a trick of turning abruptly dim; a sort of film or veil, closed over them. "Druid or old Celt," I murmured. "Give him a bit of mistletoe and he'd call his gods right down into my demi-tasse and scare the poker game into fits."

He swallowed his whole glass of absinthe in five gulps-a performance that it would make a cow shudder to watch-threw back his head, and, with a hoarse burr, called for another. This time he spoke English; but the burr was decidedly Scotch. Pigalle now looked around at him-gross, pleasant, Proven?al Pigalle-and nodded; then went on placidly shuffling the tiny cards in his great fat hands.

When the second absinthe came the old man took it slowly; settled himself back on his shoulder-blades and the tail of his spine, and pulled his hat down level with his eyes, as if he intended to spend a considerable time with us. He called for a package of French cigarettes-cigarettes jaunes-and proceeded to color his moustache a riper brown. "Now my adventure has knocked and come in," I thought. "If he is my adventure, I cannot help him-nor can I keep him off. He is the primum mobile. It is up to him."

Suddenly my ears were shocked with a sharp argument between two young fellows at the poker table. No, it was not about the game. One said something; the other shrieked his answer; the first shouted back; the second in a violent burst that had a finality about it slammed down his cards and said something curt, with a solemn rolling of his eyes.

To my amazement, the odd old fish across from me boomed out with equal violence: "Ben trovato!" None of them paid any attention to him.

I may have shown some of my surprise at his action, for he turned suddenly to me, and asked: "Did you understand what he said?"

I replied that I did not.

"He said, roughly translated: 'Sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour.' Yes. And it is true. Sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour, young man. There's many an artist who must-" he stopped short and began biting his finger ends.

My mind reverted to Bernhardt's film and the question about the moth. "Who must-what?" I prodded. "Content himself with this catch phrase?"

"Content himself? Damnation, no! Must feel the keener triumph in a piece of work, young man, just because it is perishable." He thumped the table and breathed hard. I got the full paregoric reek of his drink. "What is this stork-legged Verlaine going to say?" I thought to myself. But he contented himself with breathing for a few moments and that odd film dropped over his eyes. "Just because the thing is ended, and dies out of men's minds almost as soon as it is ended"-he seemed to be feeling slowly for the words-"if the work was right, was masterly done, there's a sort of higher joy in knowing that it triumphed-and was suddenly gone-like a sunset, like a light on the water, like a summer." He asked abruptly: "You think I have 'spiders on my ceiling'-you think I am crazy?"

"On the contrary. Can you make this clearer to me, this-?"

"My agreement that sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour?" He sipped his absinthe. "With your patience. Let me see. I can give you a favorite example of mine, about a friend of mine named Andy Gordon-something like a story?" Now in his eyes there was an eager shine.

"Go on."

"You know, my friend, I am Highland Scotch." (He pronounced it Heeland.) "I may be queer. That all depends. But don't be alarmed at the way I put things. I am not out of my head. Now this yarn about Andy Gordon. Remember," said he, tapping the table with his long white finger, and smiling at me in a charming manner, "sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour. By the way, that young fellow over there who said that is a violoncellist. 'Grand ducal 'cello to the imperial violin,' you know."

I reconsidered him in the wink of an eye. He is not Socrates and he is not Verlaine, I said to myself. This old lovable scarecrow is the Ancient Mariner, and he is going to hold me with his glittering eye and I am going to listen like a three years' child. The very fellow: the "skinny hand," the "long gray beard"-and doubtless, too, the true Ancient Mariner smelled of tobacco and drink. Certainly he talked poetry. And so did my old man, miraculously, almost without effort. So I sat back and listened, while he told his story.

You'll also like

The Billionaire's Secret Twins: Her Revenge

Shearwater

4.4

I was four months pregnant, weighing over two hundred pounds, and my heart was failing from experimental treatments forced on me as a child. My doctor looked at me with clinical detachment and told me I was in a death sentence: if I kept the baby, I would die, and if I tried to remove it, I would die. Desperate for a lifeline, I called my father, Francis Acosta, to tell him I was sick and pregnant. I expected a father's love, but all I got was a cold, sharp blade of a voice. "Then do it quietly," he said. "Don't embarrass Candi. Her debutante ball is coming up." He didn't just reject me; he erased me. My trust fund was frozen, and I was told I was no longer an Acosta. My fiancé, Auston, had already discarded me, calling me a "bloated whale" while he looked for a thinner, wealthier replacement. I left New York on a Greyhound bus, weeping into a bag of chips, a broken woman the world considered a mistake. I couldn't understand how my own father could tell me to die "quietly" just to save face for a party. I didn't know why I had been a lab rat for my family’s pharmaceutical ambitions, or how they could sleep at night while I was left to rot in the gray drizzle of the city. Five years later, the doors of JFK International Airport slid open. I stepped onto the marble floor in red-soled stilettos, my body lean, lethal, and carved from years of blood and sweat. I wasn't the "whale" anymore; I was a ghost coming back to haunt them. With my daughter by my side and a medical reputation that terrified the global elite, I was ready to dismantle the Acosta empire piece by piece. "Tell Francis to wash his neck," I whispered to the skyline. "I'm home."

His Twisted Game, My Dangerous Love

Elroy Notman

4.5

Vesper's marriage to Julian Sterling was a gilded cage. One morning, she woke naked beside Damon Sterling, Julian's terrifying brother, then found a text: Julian's mistress was pregnant. Her world shattered, but the real nightmare had just begun. Julian's abuse escalated, gaslighting Vesper, funding his secret life. Damon, a germaphobic billionaire, became her unsettling anchor amidst his chaos. As "Iris," Vesper exposed Julian's mistress, Serena Sharp, sparking brutal war: poisoned drinks, a broken leg, and the horrifying truth-Julian murdered her parents, trapping Vesper in marriage. The man she married was a killer. Broken and betrayed, Vesper was caught between monstrous brothers, burning with injustice. Refusing victimhood, Vesper reclaimed her identity. Fueled by vengeance, she allied with Damon, who vowed to burn his empire for her. Julian faced justice, but matriarch Eleanor's counterattack forced Vesper's choice as a hitman aimed for her.

The Ghost Wife's Billion Dollar Tech Comeback

Huo Wuer

5.0

Today is October 14th, my birthday. I returned to New York after months away, dragging my suitcase through the biting wind, but the VIP pickup zone where my husband’s Maybach usually idled was empty. When I finally let myself into our Upper East Side penthouse, I didn’t find a cake or a "welcome home" banner. Instead, I found my husband, Caden, kneeling on the floor, helping our five-year-old daughter wrap a massive gift for my half-sister, Adalynn. Caden didn’t even look up when I walked in; he was too busy laughing with the girl who had already stolen my father’s legacy and was now moving in on my family. "Auntie Addie is a million times better than Mommy," my daughter Elara chirped, clutching a plush toy Caden had once forbidden me from buying for her. "Mommy is mean," she whispered loudly, while Caden just smirked, calling me a "drill sergeant" before whisking her off to Adalynn’s party without a second glance. Later that night, I saw a video Adalynn posted online where my husband and child laughed while mocking my "sensitive" nature, treating me like an inconvenient ghost in my own home. I had spent five years researching nutrition for Elara’s health and managing every detail of Caden’s empire, only to be discarded the moment I wasn't in the room. How could the man who set his safe combination to my birthday completely forget I even existed? The realization didn't break me; it turned me into ice. I didn't scream or beg for an explanation. I simply walked into the study, pulled out the divorce papers I’d drafted months ago, and took a black marker to the terms. I crossed out the alimony, the mansion, and even the custody clause—if they wanted a life without me, I would give them exactly what they asked for. I left my four-carat diamond ring on the console table and walked out into the rain with nothing but a heavily encrypted hard drive. The submissive Mrs. Holloway was gone, and "Ghost," the most lethal architect in the tech world, was finally back online to take back everything they thought I’d forgotten.

Rising From Wreckage: Starfall's Epic Comeback

Huo Wuer

4.5

Rain hammered against the asphalt as my sedan spun violently into the guardrail on the I-95. Blood trickled down my temple, stinging my eyes, while the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers mocked my panic. Trembling, I dialed my husband, Clive. His executive assistant answered instead, his voice professional and utterly cold. "Mr. Wilson says to stop the theatrics. He said, and I quote, 'Hang up. Tell her I don’t have time for her emotional blackmail tonight.'" The line went dead while I was still trapped in the wreckage. At the hospital, I watched the news footage of Clive wrapping his jacket around his "fragile" ex-girlfriend, Angelena, shielding her from the storm I was currently bleeding in. When I returned to our penthouse, I found a prenatal ultrasound in his suit pocket, dated the day he claimed to be on a business trip. Instead of an apology, Clive met me with a sneer. He told me I was nothing but an "expensive decoration" his father bought to make him look stable. He froze my bank accounts and cut off my cards, waiting for the hunger to drive me back to his feet. I stared at the man I had loved for four years, realizing he didn't just want a wife; he wanted a prop he could switch off. He thought he could starve me into submission while he played father to another woman's child. But Clive forgot one thing. Before I was his trophy wife, I was Starfall—the legendary voice actress who vanished at the height of her fame. "I'm not jealous, Clive. I'm done." I grabbed my old microphone and walked out. I’m not just leaving him; I’m taking the lead role in the biggest saga in Hollywood—the one Angelena is desperate for. This time, the "decoration" is going to burn his world down.

Marrying Her Was Easy, Losing Her Was Hell

Michael Tretter

4.6

"Stella once savored Marc's devotion, yet his covert cruelty cut deep. She torched their wedding portrait at his feet while he sent flirty messages to his mistress. With her chest tight and eyes blazing, Stella delivered a sharp slap. Then she deleted her identity, signed onto a classified research mission, vanished without a trace, and left him a hidden bombshell. On launch day she vanished; that same dawn Marc's empire crumbled. All he unearthed was her death certificate, and he shattered. When they met again, a gala spotlighted Stella beside a tycoon. Marc begged. With a smirk, she said, ""Out of your league, darling."

Once The Foolish Wife, Now His Eternal Obsession

Calla Rhodes

4.6

For three years, Cathryn and her husband Liam lived in a sexless marriage. She believed Liam buried himself in work for their future. But on the day her mother died, she learned the truth: he had been cheating with her stepsister since their wedding night. She dropped every hope and filed for divorce. Sneers followed-she'd crawl back, they said. Instead, they saw Liam on his knees in the rain. When a reporter asked about a reunion, she shrugged. "He has no self-respect, just clings to people who don't love him." A powerful tycoon wrapped an arm around her. "Anyone coveting my wife answers to me."

The Best Short Stories of 1915

Contents

Chapter 1 No.1

Other books by Various

Ecclesiastical Curiosities

Le Tour du Monde; d'Alexandrette au coude de l'Euphrate

Yule Logs

Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12)

Chicago's Awful Theater Horror

Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12)