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Roy Glashan's Library
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Based on a detail from a old oil painting (ca.1900)
The Red Book Magazine, November 1911,
with "The Flower Vendor's Story
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
The Octopus
I AM an old fool. I have been a fool as long as I remember; I have been old since the youth went out of my heart. It went out suddenly, and age sprang upon me like the darkness that pounces upon the spot of light when you extinguish a candle. She was the candle, and when She went all was darkness.
That was a long time before I met "Grouch" O'Grady. Life had resolved itself into an endless, gray film, and, curiously, it was O'Grady's little flower stand that brought about a change. I was a landscape gardener when—when the candle went out, and then—Well, I went to pieces. Engagements I could get, but I could not hold them. The wheels had clogged—I lacked driving power.
But flowers always attracted me. Some one has said that when good women die they become flowers, and perhaps that was why O'Grady's little stand became a magnet to me.
One day "Grouch" looked up from a letter that he was reading when I wandered into the little bandbox with its million and one sweet odors, and he waved his hand at the blooms around him. "What do you say to this?" he asked.
"To what?" I stammered.
"To this stand," he replied. "It's just the thing for you. You understand flowers, and you're doing nothing much—"
"But you?" I spluttered.
"I'm going West," said "Grouch." "I've got a brother who is digging holes in search of gold out at Bullfrog, and he wants me to come out so that he can inoculate me with the disease."
"I'm going West," said "Grouch."
"But the money?" I gurgled. I had wasted so much of my time in dreams that my little stock of money had slipped away from me, and the small sum that "Grouch" would require for his business was more than I could raise.
"Give me what you can now and pay the balance to my sister," said "Grouch." "I guess you won't do me out of it. I never saw a guy that loved flowers—loved 'em like you love them—that was crook enough to do anyone out of a cent."
And that is how I became the owner of the little flower stand which immediately became a shield to me. The atmosphere of that world of which I had grown afraid, seemed to be strained through a thousand perfumes in that little place, and the fear which had gripped me fled. Then I began to see how "Grouch" O'Grady had grown wise in that place. It was easy to learn there. The people who had souls seemed to show them there, and if they hadn't a soul—Well, they hadn't, that was all.
There was one big, greasy brute—a great, oily caricature of a man, who bought a lot of flowers to send up to a little variety actress at the St. Helena apartments in the next block. He hated flowers. The coarse brute told me that he hated them, and I grew to hate him on that account. He ridiculed the blossoms that were a shield to me from the world that I was afraid of. To myself I called him The Octopus.
"I detest all this garden truck," he growled, one day when he had ordered me to send two dozen roses up to the St. Helena. "It's throwing money in the gutter to buy the rubbish. If it was a dinner—wines, meats, or things like that, it would be different."
A lump came up in my throat the size of my fist, but I choked it back. I choked it back the next day and the next, when he aired his opinions in the same fashion. I waited till I had paid "Grouch" O'Grady's sister the balance of the purchase money, then—Ah, I was never so overjoyed in my life! It was wrong of me to be revengeful, but He had ridiculed the blossoms that were everything to me.
"Send up a couple of dollars' worth of this truck," he ordered, pointing to the violets that were banked up against the window. "Gee! it makes me mad to pay good money for this—"
"You can't pay money for it," I screamed.
"Why?" he asked.
"They're sold!" I yelled. "They're sold, confound you! And everything in my shop is sold when you come to buy! Clear out, and talk about garden truck in some other place!"
He looked at me as if I were a madman—I guess I was one at that moment—then he backed out the door, and I quieted down. It was a moment's delicious madness though.
It was a peculiar coincidence that I should have met The Boy and The Girl for the first time on the day that I quarreled with The Octopus. They will always be The Boy and The Girl to me. He came into the tiny store while she stood with her white face pressed against the glass in front of the bank of violets which I had refused to sell to the oily brute a few hours before.
He came into the tiny store.
I was busy at the moment, but I noticed her white face. The big eyes looked as if they were hungry—hungry for the violets. Bless you! I knew when a real flower lover stopped in front of my place. I grew wise in that little store. "Grouch" O'Grady had grown wise there. Didn't "Grouch" say that he could trust a flower lover when he went away and took my word for the balance of the money?
I had three other customers in the place when The Boy entered, and he stood back from the small counter with a blush upon his face. For a couple of minutes he stood waiting, then he backed timidly out the door and touched The Girl upon the arm. I was watching the little performance out of the corner of my eye, because the flower hunger on her face had attracted me when she pressed it up against the glass as if trying to sniff the fragrance of the violets that were inside.
When The Boy touched her arm she looked up with a quick glance of expectation that immediately changed to disappointment when she saw that his hands were empty. For a moment she listened to what excuse he offered, then she rushed through the door and came towards me hurriedly as if afraid that her stock of courage would give out before she explained her wants.
"Could I—could I have five cents' worth?" she gasped.
"Could I—could I have five cents' worth?" she gasped.
I knew I hadn't made a mistake when I saw that look upon her face as she stared through the glass.
"Of what?" I asked. The other customers had left then, and the place was empty.
"Of the violets," she stammered. "He—he came in, but he was afraid to ask for them. He thought you would not sell five cents' worth."
I took a great bunch of the violets and handed them to her. "May I present them to you?" I asked. The adoration in the white face as she leaned forward to take the flowers was a salve that took the sting from the wound made by the words of The Octopus a few hours before.
"No—no!" she cried. "You are kind—very kind, but I must pay." She put the nickel on the counter and ran out, her big, hungry eyes thanking me as she looked over the blossoms which she had pressed against her white face.
That was the first visit of The Boy and The Girl. Next morning they came along together, and he came in smiling, while she nodded to me from the doorway. He wasn't more than twenty-two, while she was only nineteen. I found that out later.
"Can we get another nickel's worth?" asked The Boy. Then he added: "But we don't want you to rob yourself like you did yesterday."
The Octopus had often bought two dollars' worth of flowers in a day, but that daily nickel order—they came every day after that—compensated me a thousand times for the loss of his custom. Loss? Why it was a gain to keep him out of the store.
Bless my heart, didn't that little girl love flowers! When she came into that tiny place, the air of which seemed to be a million thin strata of flower perfumes, she'd breathe and breathe as if her lungs would burst, and The Boy would stand by watching her breathlessly. He loved flowers too, but that little girl—why, she became etherealized in that scented atmosphere. The odors of the blooms intoxicated her, and those wonderful big eyes of hers glowed, as her nostrils drank up the perfume.
"Oh!" she cried, one morning when she and The Boy stood for a moment after making the usual purchase. "If I could work in this all day I'd feel well; I'm sure I would!" That was the first time she had mentioned her illness, and that was weeks after their first visit on the morning when I refused to serve The Octopus. After that I watched her. The white face seemed to be getting whiter each day, and her big eyes were getting bigger, while the thin nostrils—Bless me, how transparent they looked when they were breathing the scented atmosphere of that little bandbox! It seemed to me that she was trying to take with her each morning enough of that perfumed air to last her all day at her work!
The Boy told me that they were all alone in the world, two orphans without a single relative, and the struggle had been a hard one. He was clerking at a miserable wage for a downtown real-estate operator, while The Girl made hats in a sweatshop on the East Side. They hoped to marry some day, but he shook his head when he told me that. A vision of the girl's white cheeks and transparent nostrils came up before him as he spoke, and fear took the strength from the hope his words tried to express.
It was in the end of August that he came in alone one morning. The collapse had come, and The Girl was not able to go to work. He wanted to run back to the rooming house with the few cents' worth of flowers, but he was late then, so I took them when I went to breakfast and left them with the landlady.
I did that every morning for a month. The Girl's condition did not improve. It seemed, from what The Boy repeated of the doctor's opinions, that she would never get better—not in that atmosphere. That white face with its faint patches of red on the cheeks, had been a distress signal for months, but, bless you! this city is too big and busy to take notice of such things. You can see them daily—poor, overworked girls who have run the red flag up into their cheeks to let the world know that they are besieged with the most terrible of all foes, but we cannot do much. I couldn't do much to help the little, white-faced girl in the stuffy rooming house. I'm such an old fool that I could only increase the bunch of flowers and sympathize with The Boy.
I grew to love The Boy during the months of her illness. Since the moment when the youth left me suddenly, I had loved nothing but flowers, but the loneliness of those two children—they were little more than children—brought a love that filled the emptiness that had come into my heart fifteen years before. The Boy had all the passionate purity and courage of a crusader, while the sick little girl who longed for the flowers so that they might kill the greasy odors of the rooming house, dragged my heartstrings till I clenched my bony hands and raved against the conditions that are. And I didn't think I had enough spirit to look an angry donkey in the face!
But all I could do was to take the daily bunch of flowers, with a few extra for the grim landlady who informed me that the delivery of the blossoms necessitated a walk up five flights of stairs.
I didn't wonder at The Girl's hunger for those flowers. They were more important than food to her at that moment. The one-second whiff I got of those ancient threadbare carpets—is there anything more odorous than an old carpet?—made me alive to the longing for something that would do battle with the smells of the place.
As the fall went slowly by, The Girl's condition became more serious. The doctor advised her removal to a warmer climate as the only hope for recovery. The Boy brought me the news.
"He says the New York winter will kill her," he stammered, "and I—I don't know what to do."
I didn't know what to do, either. I said before that I am only an old fool, and it wanted a more vigorous mind than mine to get the little girl out of the fix that she was in. Bless you! I was such a big fool that I took no notice of what The Boy said when he stood in the store of evenings and made all sorts of threats about what he would do to save her life. And then it all came on me like a thunderbolt.
A policeman walked into my little flower box one afternoon in October and told me that The Boy wanted to see me.
"To see me?" I cried. "Why, where is he?" Intuition flamed within me at that moment, and I understood the wild talk of that youngster.
"He's arrested," said the policeman quietly. "He swiped a hundred dollars from his boss, and they caught him with the goods."
That was a terrible night for me. I'm a stupid in a matter of that sort, and imagination went foraging into the future and piled up a pyramid of misfortune that terrified me to contemplate.
I was a fool—a doddering old fool! The Boy had said over and over again that he would get the money somewhere—the money that would take that little sick child to a warmer climate—but instead of warning him against doing anything foolish, I had mooned around stupidly amongst my flowers praying that something might happen to save her life. He had told me in language that would have been plain to an idiot that he intended to commit a robbery, but I had not understood.
It was just as the policeman had said. He was caught with the stolen money in his possession, and his guilt was clear. I got my landlord to go down with me to the precinct station and bail him out, and the next morning I decided to go and explain everything to his employer.
The money had been recovered, and I thought that, if the conditions which actuated the theft were fully explained, the charge would be withdrawn. I didn't tell The Boy where I was going. I kept my own counsel, closed the little flower store and took the subway.
The junior partner heard my story, but he could do nothing. He said I might wait and see his partner, who would reach the office two hours later. I put the closed flower store from my mind and waited. If The Boy could be saved, something might turn up that would make it possible to follow the doctor's advice. Hope costs nothing, and I suppose that is why fools and poor people use such a lot of it.
The senior partner came at the end of three hours' waiting, and when he rolled through the office door, my heart sank. It was The Octopus.
He made no sign that he had ever met me before, and I told my story—told it falteringly, with hope stumbling at the end of every sentence. His cold, fishy eyes battered down the expectations that had come to life during the hours of waiting.
"It is a pretty story," he said, when I had finished. "Quite dramatic, ain't it?"
"It is true," I stammered.
"Do you still sell garden truck?" he questioned. "Yes," I answered. "You know now that it is garden truck?" he snapped. "You are certain that it is?"
"Yes," I murmured. A greater love than my love of the flowers had taken possession of my heart since the morning when I had refused to fill his order, and if he pardoned The Boy it mattered little to me what he said.
There was silence for a few minutes; then he rose and pointed to the door. "Keep on selling the rubbish!" he cried. "If you sell enough of it you may be able to send the sick girl away and give employment to the thief when he comes out of jail. Good-morning."
I talked with The Boy that evening. His case was to come before the court the following day, and I wanted him to make an excuse to account for his absence—for an indefinite absence. The Girl mustn't know that he had gone to jail. I cried that evening. I'm an old fool—I have always been an old fool.
I went with The Boy to the rooming house where the worn carpets gave out the peculiar odor. The Girl was sitting up in the shabby parlor, and the flowers which I had brought her the day before—I missed a day through my appointment with The Octopus—were at her elbow. Bless my heart! didn't she look white and fragile. She was as delicate as a piece of wonderfully thin china. The red flag upon her cheeks blazed defiantly, and the big eyes—Those eyes seemed to look through me and read the lie which I had concocted!
We told her the falsehood between us, one propping up the other when he weakened. It was hard work. A lie to me seems to be the cruelest thing in the world when I attempt to tell it, and there were some unpolished spots in the fabrication we manufactured for the little girl. The Boy was weak, and I was a bigger fool than ever as I stood there chattering stupidly in front of the big eyes that were possessed of the wonderful seeing power that comes to the very sick.
"And you'll probably go away to-morrow?" she murmured, after we had told the lame lie.
"Most probably," stammered The Boy. "He—his—"
"My friend will be going to-morrow, and he will take him along," I gurgled, and then I backed out the door and stood on the dark landing, leaving them to say good-by. They were two children, and it was hard to say which of the two had the roughest path to tread.
I stood on the landing, leaving them to say good-by.
The Boy came out five minutes afterwards, weeping as if his heart would break. I was crying too. That little lonely child with her big, all-seeing eyes would make anyone cry if he stopped to contemplate her loneliness. "And you'll get the flowers every day," blubbered The Boy, as he turned to close the door. "He—he'll bring them up to you, just the same."
The Boy was sentenced to a month's imprisonment. Lucky? Yes, he was lucky.
Then began a nightmare that extended over thirty days. Every morning I took up the bunch of flowers, and made attempts to pacify the landlady. I can't blame landladies. The good turns they do are seldom written about, and those good turns are many. I know that grim, hard-featured woman was that kind. I proved it. Two weeks after The Boy went away, and when the board and lodging bill for the little sick girl had reached a figure that was the highwater mark of boarding-house trust, I had an intuition. I confided in her. I told her hurriedly what had happened to The Boy, and the reason which prompted the act.
For a moment she stared at me.
Then she spoke.
"The blessed angel!" she cried. "Go away to your flowers; I'm going to cook some broth for the child upstairs."
One day the landlady told me that The Girl wished to speak to me. I had avoided her for some days, and I climbed the stairs with an uneasy conscience.
"He hasn't written," she said when I entered the parlor.
"He hasn't had time," I parried.
"But he will?" she cried.
"Surely," I gurgled. "He'll write the moment he gets there."
God help me! I told some lies during those few weeks. He couldn't write to her, and his silence was helping the disease. The big eyes tried to fathom the mystery, and I clumsily parried the questions which the bloodless lips fired at me.
The doctor met me on the stairs one day, and he shook his head. "She should be taken away," he growled. "If she is left here—" He passed on, muttering.
"Has the doctor spoken of his fee?" I asked the landlady. "I told him everything, you stupid!" she retorted. "Do you think you're the only person in the world who would do a good turn? Sure, it would be a hard old place if Charity wasn't abroad."
It was the day before The Boy's sentence expired, and I sat wondering as to what could be done. The doctor had said the night before that her chances were slim if she remained in the North during the winter.
I was poking about amongst the flowers, wondering—wondering how it could be arranged. The Boy was penniless, and I was in the same fix.
Some one came into the store, and I looked up. There was a blur over my eyes at the moment, and I couldn't see the face of the man who had entered, but a big, strong voice that shook the little glass vases on the shelf, didn't leave me long in doubt.
"Gee!" roared the voice, "I've been longing for that smell for nine months and fourteen days! The only flowers they have in Nevada are cactuses, Hooper—yes, cactuses!"
It was "Grouch" O'Grady!
"I've come back to buy machinery," he explained, after he had shaken my hand till the bones cracked. "We've struck it rich, old sport. If you want to come out there as a sort of clerk—"
"I don't!" I cried. "But—'Grouch'—listen, 'Grouch'—" And then I pulled him to the little bench in the corner and told him the story of The Boy and The Girl.
"The poor little mites," he muttered when I had finished. "The poor little—Say, what time does he get out?"
"Six o'clock," I gurgled. "Then we'll meet him!" cried "Grouch."
"And he can bring her out with him. Germs can't live in that atmosphere. They can't! It's that dry that the rain only gets half-way to the earth before the air absorbs it."
We met The Boy next morning, and "Grouch" O'Grady fixed up everything. Bless my soul, what a day we had! The little girl brightened up considerably, while the old landlady cried, and the doctor, who had a face like a stone Buddha, hurried down the stairs so that we couldn't see that his eyes were filling.
"Grouch" O'Grady came to see me the night before he went west, and just as I was closing up the store The Octopus came along. I tried to stop O'Grady, but I was too late. He gripped that big, oily brute by the arm before I could interfere, and he led him quietly to the window of my little flower box.
"Don't make a noise," said "Grouch." "I want to ask you a question or two. I won't hurt you. Now, what is it that you see inside the store?"
"Flowers," spluttered The Octopus.
"Beautiful flowers," said O'Grady. "Say it after me."
"Beautiful flowers," stammered the oily one.
"That's right," said "Grouch." "Now go home and ask God to irrigate your soul." And when he let go his grip The Octopus fled like a fat elephant towards the corner.
The Boy and The Girl? Oh, they're married now. In business at Reno—flower business. See, just because they loved flowers and because I am an old fool, everything worked out right, didn't it?
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.