33 лучших юмористических рассказа на английском / 33 Best Humorous Short Stories
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© Поповец М. А., составление комментариев, 2015
© ООО «Издательство «Эксмо», 2015
John Kendrick Bangs
A Psychical Prank
I
Willis had met Miss Hollister but once, and that, for a certain purpose, was sufficient. He was smitten. She represented in every way his ideal, although until he had met her his ideal had been something radically different. She was not at all Junoesque, and the maiden of his dreams had been decidedly so. She had auburn hair, which hitherto Willis had detested. Indeed, if the same hirsute wealth had adorned some other woman’s head, Willis would have called it red. This shows how completely he was smitten. She changed his point of view entirely. She shattered his old ideal and set herself up in its stead, and she did most of it with a smile.
There was something, however, about Miss Hollister’s eyes that contributed to the smiting of Willis’s heart. They were great round lustrous orbs, and deep. So deep were they and so penetrating that Willis’s affections were away beyond their own depth the moment Miss Hollister’s eyes looked into his, and at the same time he had a dim and slightly uncomfortable notion that she could read every thought his mind held within its folds—or rather, that she could see how utterly devoid of thought that mind was upon this ecstatic occasion, for Willis’s brain was set all agog by the sensations of the moment.
‘By Jove!’ he said to himself afterwards – for Willis, wise man that he could be on occasions, was his own confidant, to the exclusion of all others – ‘by Jove! I believe she can peer into my very soul; and if she can, my hopes are blasted, for she must be able to see that a soul like mine is no more worthy to become the affinity of one like hers than a mountain rill can hope to rival the Amazon.’
Nevertheless, Willis did hope.
‘Something may turn up, and perhaps – perhaps I can devise some scheme by means of which my imperfections can be hidden from her. Maybe I can put stained glass over the windows of my soul, and keep her from looking through them at my shortcomings. Smoked glasses, perhaps – and why not? If smoked glasses can be used by mortals gazing at the sun, why may they not be used by me when gazing into those scarcely less glorious orbs of hers?’
Alas for Willis! The fates were against him. A far-off tribe of fates were in league to blast his chances of success forever, and this was how it happened:
Willis had occasion one afternoon to come up town early. At the corner of Broadway and Astor Place he entered a Madison Avenue car, paid his fare, and sat down in one of the corner seats at the rear end of the car. His mind was, as usual, intent upon the glorious Miss Hollister. Surely no one who had once met her could do otherwise than think of her constantly, he reflected; and the reflection made him a bit jealous. What business had others to think of her? Impertinent, grovelling mortals! No man was good enough to do that – no, not even himself. But he could change. He could at least try to be worthy of thinking about her, and he knew of no other man who could. He’d like to catch any one else doing so little as mentioning her name!
‘Impertinent, grovelling mortals!’ he repeated.
And then the car stopped at Seventeenth Street, and who should step on board but Miss Hollister herself!
‘The idea!’ thought Willis. ‘By Jove! there she is – on a horse-car, too! How atrocious! One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer’s wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car. Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a grocer’s car! Absurdest of absurdities!’
Here he raised his hat, for Miss Hollister had bowed sweetly to him as she passed on to the far end of the car, where she stood hanging on to a strap.
‘I wonder why she doesn’t sit down?’ thought Willis; for as he looked about the car he observed that with the exception of the one he occupied all the seats were vacant. In fact, the only persons on board were Miss Hollister, the driver, the conductor, and himself.
‘I think I’ll go speak to her,’ he thought. And then he thought again: ‘No, I’d better not. She saw me when she entered, and if she had wished to speak to me she would have sat down here beside me, or opposite me perhaps. I shall show myself worthy of her by not thrusting my presence upon her. But I wonder why she stands? She looks tired enough.’
Here Miss Hollister indulged in a very singular performance. She bowed her head slightly at some one, apparently on the sidewalk, Willis thought, murmured something, the purport of which Willis could not catch, and sat down in the middle of the seat on the other side of the car, looking very much annoyed – in fact, almost unamiable.
Willis was more mystified than ever; but his mystification was as nothing compared to his anxiety when, on reaching Forty-second Street, Miss Hollister rose, and sweeping by him without a sign of recognition, left the car.
‘Cut, by thunder!’ ejaculated Willis, in consternation. ‘And why, I wonder? Most incomprehensible affair. Can she be a woman of whims – with eyes like those? Never. Impossible. And yet what else can be the matter?’
Try as he might, Willis could not solve the problem. It was utterly past solution as far as he was concerned.
‘I’ll find out, and I’ll find out like a brave man,’ he said, after racking his brains for an hour or two in a vain endeavor to get at the cause of Miss Hollister’s cut. ‘I’ll call upon her to-night and ask her.’
He was true to his first purpose, but not to his second. He called, but he did not ask her, for Miss Hollister did not give him the chance to do so. Upon receiving his card she sent down word that she was out. Two days later, meeting him face to face upon the street, she gazed coldly at him, and cut him once more. Six months later her engagement to a Boston man was announced, and in the autumn following Miss Hollister of New York became Mrs. Barrows of Boston. There were cards, but Willis did not receive one of them. The cut was indeed complete and final. But why? That had now become one of the great problems of Willis’s life. What had he done to be so badly treated?
II
A year passed by, and Willis recovered from the dreadful blow to his hopes, but he often puzzled over Miss Hollister’s singular behavior towards him. He had placed the matter before several of his friends, and, with the exception of one of them, none was more capable of solving his problem than he. This one had heard from his wife, a school friend and intimate acquaintance of Miss Hollister, now Mrs. Barrows, that Willis’s ideal had once expressed herself to the effect that she had admired Willis very much until she had discovered that he was not always as courteous as he should be.
‘Courteous? Not as courteous as I should be?’ retorted Willis. ‘When have I ever been anything else? Why, my dear Bronson,’ he added, ‘you know what my attitude towards womankind – as well as mankind – has always been. If there is a creature in the world whose politeness is his weakness, I am that creature. I’m the most courteous man living. When I play poker in my own rooms I lose money, because I’ve made it a rule never to beat my guests in cards or anything else.’
‘That isn’t politeness,’ said Bronson. ‘That’s idiocy.’
‘It proves my point,’ retorted Willis. ‘I’m polite to the verge of insanity. Not as courteous as I should be! Great Scott! What did I ever do or say to give her that idea?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bronson replied. ‘Better ask her. Maybe you overdid your politeness. Overdone courtesy is often worse than boorishness. You may have been so polite on some occasion that you made Miss Hollister think you considered her an inferior person. You know what the poet insinuated. Sorosis holds no fury like a woman condescended to by a man.’
‘I’ve half a mind to write to Mrs. Barrows and ask her what I did,’ said Willis.
‘That would be lovely,’ said Bronson. ‘Barrows would be pleased.’
‘True. I never thought of that,’ replied Willis.
‘You are not a thoughtful thinker,’ said Bronson, dryly. ‘If I were you I’d bide my time, and some day you may get an explanation. Stranger things have happened; and my wife tells me that the Barrowses are to spend the coming winter in New York. You’ll meet them out somewhere, no doubt.’
‘No; I shall decline to go where they are. No woman shall cut me a second time – not even Mrs. Barrows,’ said Willis, firmly.
‘Good! Stand by your colors,’ said Bronson, with an amused smile.
A week or two later Willis received an invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Bronson to dine with them informally. ‘I have some very clever friends I want you to meet,’ she wrote. ‘So be sure to come.’
Willis went. The clever friends were Mr. and Mrs. Barrows; and, to the surprise of Willis, he was received most effusively by the quondam Miss Hollister.
‘Why, Mr. Willis,’ she said, extending her hand to him. ‘How delightful to see you again!’
‘Thank you,’ said Willis, in some confusion. ‘I – er – I am sure it is a very pleasant surprise for me. I – er – had no idea —’
‘Nor I,’ returned Mrs. Barrows. ‘And really I should have been a little embarrassed, I think, had I known you were to be here. I – ha! ha! – it’s so very absurd that I almost hesitate to speak of it – but I feel I must. I’ve treated you very badly.’
‘Indeed!’ said Willis, with a smile. ‘How, pray?’
‘Well, it wasn’t my fault really,’ returned Mrs. Barrows; ‘but do you remember, a little over a year ago, my riding up-town on a horse-car – a Madison Avenue car – with you?’
‘H’m!’ said Willis, with an affectation of reflection. ‘Let me see; ah – yes – I think I do. We were the only ones on board, I believe, and – ah —’
Here Mrs. Barrows laughed outright. ‘You thought we were the only ones on board, but – we weren’t. The car was crowded,’ she said.
‘Then I don’t remember it,’ said Willis. ‘The only time I ever rode on a horse-car with you to my knowledge was—’
‘I know; this was the occasion,’ interrupted Mrs. Barrows. ‘You sat in a corner at the rear end of the car when I entered, and I was very much put out with you because it remained for a stranger, whom I had often seen and to whom I had, for reasons unknown even to myself, taken a deep aversion, to offer me his seat, and, what is more, compel me to take it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Willis. ‘We were alone on the car.’
‘To your eyes we were, although at the time I did not know it. To my eyes when I boarded it the car was occupied by enough people to fill all the seats. You returned my bow as I entered, but did not offer me your seat. The stranger did, and while I tried to decline it, I was unable to do so. He was a man of about my own age, and he had a most remarkable pair of eyes. There was no resisting them. His offer was a command; and as I rode along and thought of your sitting motionless at the end of the car, compelling me to stand, and being indirectly responsible for my acceptance of courtesies from a total and disagreeable stranger, I became so very indignant with you that I passed you without recognition as soon as I could summon up courage to leave. I could not understand why you, who had seemed to me to be the soul of politeness, should upon this occasion have failed to do not what I should exact from any man, but what I had reason to expect of you.’
‘But, Mrs. Barrows,’ remonstrated Willis, ‘why should I give up a seat to a lady when there were twenty other seats unoccupied on the same car?’
‘There is no reason in the world why you should,’ replied Mrs. Barrows. ‘But it was not until last winter that I discovered the trick that had been put upon us.’
‘Ah?’ said Willis. ‘Trick?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Barrows. ‘It was a trick. The car was empty to your eyes, but crowded to mine with the astral bodies of the members of the Boston Theosophical Society.’
‘Wha-a-at?’ roared Willis.
‘It is just as I have said,’ replied Mrs. Barrows, with a silvery laugh. ‘They are all great friends of my husband’s, and one night last winter he dined them at our house, and who do you suppose walked in first?’
‘Madame Blavatsky’s ghost?’ suggested Willis, with a grin.
‘Not quite,’ returned Mrs. Barrows. ‘But the horrible stranger of the horse-car; and, do you know, he recalled the whole thing to my mind, assuring me that he and the others had projected their astral bodies over to New York for a week, and had a magnificent time unperceived by all save myself, who was unconsciously psychic, and so able to perceive them in their invisible forms.’
‘It was a mean trick on me, Mrs. Barrows,’ said Willis, ruefully, as soon as he had recovered sufficiently from his surprise to speak.
‘Oh no,’ she replied, with a repetition of her charming laugh, which rearoused in Willis’s breast all the regrets of a lost cause. ‘They didn’t intend it especially for you, anyhow.’
‘Well,’ said Willis, ‘I think they did. They were friends of your husband’s, and they wanted to ruin me.’
‘Ruin you? And why should the friends of Mr. Barrows have wished to do that?’ asked Mrs. Barrows, in astonishment.
‘Because,’ began Willis, slowly and softly – ‘because they probably knew that from the moment I met you, I – But that is a story with a disagreeable climax, Mrs. Barrows, so I shall not tell it. How do you like Boston?’
The Ghost Club
An unfortunate episode in the life of No. 5010
Number 5010 was at the time when I received the details of this story from his lips a stalwart man of thirty-eight, swart of hue, of pleasing address, and altogether the last person one would take for a convict serving a term for sneak-thieving. The only outer symptoms of his actual condition were the striped suit he wore, the style and cut of which are still in vogue at Sing Sing prison, and the closely cropped hair, which showed off the distinctly intellectual lines of his head to great advantage. He was engaged in making shoes when I first saw him, and so impressed was I with the contrast between his really refined features and grace of manner and those of his brutish-looking companions, that I asked my guide who he was, and what were the circumstances which had brought him to Sing Sing.
‘He pegs shoes like a gentleman,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ returned the keeper. ‘He’s werry troublesome that way. He thinks he’s too good for his position. We can’t never do nothing with the boots he makes.’
‘Why do you keep him at work in the shoe department?’ I queried.
‘We haven’t got no work to be done in his special line, so we have to put him at whatever we can. He pegs shoes less badly than he does anything else.’
‘What was his special line?’
‘He was a gentleman of leisure travellin’ for his health afore he got into the toils o’ the law. His real name is Marmaduke Fitztappington De Wolfe, of Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea, Warwickshire. He landed in this country of a Tuesday, took to collectin’ souvenir spoons of a Friday, was jugged the same day, tried, convicted, and there he sets. In for two years more.’
‘How interesting!’ I said. ‘Was the evidence against him conclusive?’
‘Extremely. A half-dozen spoons was found on his person.’
‘He pleaded guilty, I suppose?’
‘Not him. He claimed to be as innocent as a new-born babe. Told a cock-and-bull story about havin’ been deluded by spirits, but the judge and jury wasn’t to be fooled. They gave him every chance, too. He even cabled himself, the judge did, to Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea, Warwickshire, at his own expense, to see if the man was an impostor, but he never got no reply. There was them as said there wasn’t no such place as Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea in Warwickshire, but they never proved it.’
‘I should like very much to interview him,’ said I.
‘It can’t be done, sir,’ said my guide. ‘The rules is very strict.’
‘You couldn’t er – arrange an interview for me,’ I asked, jingling a bunch of keys in my pocket.
He must have recognized the sound, for he colored and gruffly replied, ‘I has me orders, and I obeys ‘em.’
‘Just – er – add this to the pension fund,’ I put in, handing him a five-dollar bill. ‘An interview is impossible, eh?’
‘I didn’t say impossible,’ he answered, with a grateful smile. ‘I said against the rules, but we has been known to make exceptions. I think I can fix you up.’
Suffice it to say that he did ‘fix me up,’ and that two hours later 5010 and I sat down together in the cell of the former, a not too commodious stall, and had a pleasant chat, in the course of which he told me the story of his life, which, as I had surmised, was to me, at least, exceedingly interesting, and easily worth twice the amount of my contribution to the pension fund under the management of my guide of the morning.
‘My real name,’ said the unfortunate convict, ‘as you may already have guessed, is not 5010. That is an alias forced upon me by the State authorities. My name is really Austin Merton Surrennes.’
‘Ahem!’ I said. ‘Then my guide erred this morning when he told me that in reality you were Marmaduke Fitztappington De Wolfe, of Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea, Warwickshire?’
Number 5010 laughed long and loud. ‘Of course he erred. You don’t suppose that I would give the authorities my real name, do you? Why, man, I am a nephew! I have an aged uncle – a rich millionaire uncle – whose heart and will it would break were he to hear of my present plight. Both the heart and will are in my favor, hence my tender solicitude for him. I am innocent, of course – convicts always are, you know – but that wouldn’t make any difference. He’d die of mortification just the same. It’s one of our family traits, that. So I gave a false name to the authorities, and secretly informed my uncle that I was about to set out for a walking trip across the great American desert, requesting him not to worry if he did not hear from me for a number of years, America being in a state of semi-civilization, to which mails outside of certain districts are entirely unknown. My uncle being an Englishman and a conservative gentleman, addicted more to reading than to travel, accepts the information as veracious and suspects nothing, and when I am liberated I shall return to him, and at his death shall become a conservative man of wealth myself. See?’
‘But if you are innocent and he rich and influential, why did you not appeal to him to save you?’ I asked.
‘Because I was afraid that he, like the rest of the world, would decline to believe my defence,’ sighed 5010. ‘It was a good defence, if the judge had only known it, and I’m proud of it.’
‘But ineffectual,’ I put in. ‘And so, not good.’
‘Alas, yes! This is an incredulous age. People, particularly judges, are hard-headed practical men of affairs. My defence was suited more for an age of mystical tendencies. Why, will you believe it, sir, my own lawyer, the man to whom I paid eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents for championing my cause, told me the defence was rubbish, devoid even of literary merit. What chance could a man have if his lawyer even didn’t believe in him?’
‘None,’ I answered, sadly. ‘And you had no chance at all, though innocent?’
‘Yes, I had one, and I chose not to take it. I might have proved myself non compos mentis; but that involved my making a fool of myself in public before a jury, and I have too much dignity for that, I can tell you. I told my lawyer that I should prefer a felon’s cell to the richly furnished flat of a wealthy lunatic, to which he replied, ‘Then all is lost!’ And so it was. I read my defence in court. The judge laughed, the jury whispered, and I was convicted instanter of stealing spoons, when murder itself was no further from my thoughts than theft.’
‘But they tell me you were caught red-handed,’ said I. ‘Were not a half-dozen spoons found upon your person?’
‘In my hand,’ returned the prisoner. ‘The spoons were in my hand when I was arrested, and they were seen there by the owner, by the police, and by the usual crowd of small boys that congregate at such embarrassing moments, springing up out of sidewalks, dropping down from the heavens, swarming in from everywhere. I had no idea there were so many small boys in the world until I was arrested, and found myself the cynosure of a million or more innocent blue eyes.’
‘Were they all blue-eyed?’ I queried, thinking the point interesting from a scientific point of view, hoping to discover that curiosity of a morbid character was always found in connection with eyes of a specified hue.
‘Oh no; I fancy not,’ returned my host. ‘But to a man with a load of another fellow’s spoons in his possession, and a pair of handcuffs on his wrists, everything looks blue.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ I replied. ‘But – er – just how, now, could you defend yourself when every bit of evidence, and – you will excuse me for saying so – conclusive evidence at that, pointed to your guilt?’
‘The spoons were a gift,’ he answered.
‘But the owner denied that.’
‘I know it; that’s where the beastly part of it all came in. They were not given to me by the owner, but by a lot of mean, low-down, practical-joke-loving ghosts.’
Number 5010’s anger as he spoke these words was terrible to witness, and as he strode up and down the floor of his cell and dashed his arms right and left, I wished for a moment that I was elsewhere. I should not have flown, however, even had the cell door been open and my way clear, for his suggestion of a supernatural agency in connection with his crime whetted my curiosity until it was more keen than ever, and I made up my mind to hear the story to the end, if I had to commit a crime and get myself sentenced to confinement in that prison for life to do so.
Fortunately, extreme measures of this nature were unnecessary, for after a few moments Surrennes calmed down, and seating himself beside me on the cot, drained his water-pitcher to the dregs, and began.
‘Excuse me for not offering you a drink,’ he said, ‘but the wine they serve here while moist is hardly what a connoisseur would choose except for bathing purposes, and I compliment you by assuming that you do not wish to taste it.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I do not like to take water straight, exactly. I always dilute it, in fact, with a little of this.’
Here I extracted a small flask from my pocket and handed it to him.
‘Ah!’ he said, smacking his lips as he took a long pull at its contents, ‘that puts spirit into a man.’
‘Yes, it does,’ I replied, ruefully, as I noted that he had left me very little but the flask; ‘but I don’t think it was necessary for you to deprive me of all mine.’
‘No; that is, you can’t appreciate the necessity unless you – er – you have suffered in your life as I am suffering. You were never sent up yourself?’
I gave him a glance which was all indignation. ‘I guess not,’ I said. ‘I have led a life that is above reproach.’
‘Good!’ he replied. ‘And what a satisfaction that is, eh? I don’t believe I’d be able to stand this jail life if it wasn’t for my conscience, which is as clear and clean as it would be if I’d never used it.’
‘Would you mind telling me what your defence was?’ I asked.
‘Certainly not,’ said he, cheerfully. ‘I’d be very glad to give it to you. But you must remember one thing – it is copyrighted.’
‘Fire ahead!’ I said, with a smile. ‘I’ll respect your copyright. I’ll give you a royalty on what I get for the story.’
‘Very good,’ he answered. ‘It was like this. To begin, I must tell you that when I was a boy preparing for college I had for a chum a brilliant fun-loving fellow named Hawley Hicks, concerning whose future various prophecies had been made. His mother often asserted that he would be a great poet; his father thought he was born to be a great general; our head-master at the Scarberry Institute for Young Gentlemen prophesied the gallows. They were all wrong; though, for myself, I think that if he had lived long enough almost any one of the prophecies might have come true. The trouble was that Hawley died at the age of twenty-three. Fifteen years elapsed. I was graduated with high honors at Brazenose, lived a life of elegant leisure, and at the age of thirty-seven broke down in health. That was about a year ago. My uncle, whose heir and constant companion I was, gave me a liberal allowance, and sent me off to travel. I came to America, landed in New York early in September, and set about winning back the color which had departed from my cheeks by an assiduous devotion to such pleasures as New York affords. Two days after my arrival, I set out for an airing at Coney Island, leaving my hotel at four in the afternoon. On my way down Broadway I was suddenly startled at hearing my name spoken from behind me, and appalled, on turning, to see standing with outstretched hands no less a person than my defunct chum, Hawley Hicks.’