Unit 4Figurative Language: “The Social Triangle” and Poetry
Reading
Reading The Social Triangle
Script
The Social Triangle by O. Henry
At six o’clock, Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his iron. Ikey was a tailor’s apprentice. Are there tailor’s apprentices nowadays?
At any rate, Ikey sewed and pressed and patched all day in the steamy, smelly tailor shop. But when work was done, Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his own sky let shine.
It was Saturday night, and the boss reluctantly laid twelve dirty dollars in his hand. Ikey subtly rinsed his hands in water, put on his coat, hat and collar with its ragged tie and second-hand pin, and set forth in pursuit of his ideals.
For each of us, when our day’s work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or card games or lobster Newburg, or the sweet silence of the old bookshelves.
Behold Ikey as he strolls up the street beneath the roaring elevated railway between the rows of stinking factories. Pale, insignificant, dirty, cursed to exist forever in poverty of body and mind, yet, as he swings his cheap cane and projects the disgusting inhalations from his cigarette, you perceive that he nurtures in his cold heart the germs of society.
Ikey’s legs carried him to and into that famous place of entertainment known as the Cafe Maginnis—famous because it was the hangout of Billy McMahan, the greatest man, the most wonderful man, Ikey thought, that the world had ever produced.
Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred, and his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered, McMahan stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the center of a cheering crowd of his subordinates and constituents. It seems there had been an election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been swept back into line by a resistless flood of votes.
Ikey crept along the bar and gazed, breathing fast, at his idol.
How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great, smooth, laughing face; his gray eyes, clever as a chicken hawk’s; his diamond ring, his voice like a trumpet call, his prince’s air, his thick and active roll of money, his rousing speech to friends and associates—oh, what a king of men he was! How he overshadowed his subordinates, though they themselves were distinguished, large and serious, blue of chin and important of manner, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their short overcoats! But Billy—oh, what small use are words to paint for you his glory as seen by Ikey Snigglefritz!
The Cafe Maginnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated bartenders threw themselves skillfully upon bottles, corks and glasses. The loyal and the hopeful shook Billy McMahan’s hand. And there was born suddenly in the worshipful soul of Ikey Snigglefritz an audacious, thrilling impulse. He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which majesty moved and held out his hand. Billy McMahan grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled. Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey threw away his scabbard and charged upon Olympus.
“Have a drink with me, Billy,” he said familiarly, “you and your friends?”
“Don’t mind if I do, old man,” said the great leader, “just to keep the ball rolling.”
The last spark of Ikey’s reason fled.
“Wine,” he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand.
The corks of three bottles were drawn; the champagne bubbled in the long row of glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahan took his and nodded, with his beaming smile, at Ikey. The subordinates and satellites took theirs and growled “Here’s to you.” Ikey took his nectar in delirium. All drank.
Ikey threw his week’s wages in a wrinkled roll upon the bar.
“Correct,” said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar notes. The crowd gathered around Billy McMahan again. Ikey leaned against the bar a while, and then went out.
He went down Hester Street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to where he lived. And there his women folk, a drunken mother and three shabby sisters, jumped on him for his wages. And at his confession they howled and rebuked him in the short rhetoric of the locality.
But even as they plucked at him and struck him, Ikey remained in his ecstatic joy. His head was in the clouds; the star was drawing his wagon. Compared with what he had achieved, the loss of wages and the whining of women’s tongues were slight affairs.
He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahan.
Billy McMahan had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved the name “Mrs. William Darragh McMahan.” And there was a certain irritation attendant upon these cards; for, small as they were, there were houses in which they could not be inserted. Billy McMahan was a dictator in politics, a four-walled tower in business, dreaded, loved and obeyed among his own people. He was growing rich; the daily papers had a dozen men on his trail to capture his every word of wisdom; he had been honored in caricature holding the Tiger on a leash.
But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a race of men from which he stood apart but that he viewed with the eye of Moses looking over into the promised land. He, too, had ideals, even as had Ikey Snigglefritz; and sometimes, hopeless of attaining them, his own solid success was as dust and ashes in his mouth. And Mrs. William Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent upon her plump but pretty face, and even her silks seemed to sigh as she moved.
There was a brave and prominent assemblage in the restaurant of a noted hotel where Fashion loves to display her charms. At one table sat Billy McMahan and his wife. Mostly silent they were, but the accessories they enjoyed little needed the approval of speech. Mrs. McMahan’s diamonds were outshone by few in the room. The waiter bore the costliest brands of wine to their table. In evening dress, with an expression of gloom upon his smooth and massive face, you would look in vain for a more striking figure than Billy’s.
Four tables away sat alone a tall, slender man, about thirty, with thoughtful, melancholy eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly white, thin hands. He was dining on steak, dry toast and sparkling water. That man was Cortlandt Van Duyckink, a man worth eighty million, who inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive inner circle of society.
Billy McMahan spoke to no one around him, because he knew no one. Van Duyckink kept his eyes on his plate because he knew that everyone present was hungry to catch his. He could bestow knighthood and prestige by a nod, and he was reluctant to create a too extensive nobility.
And then Billy McMahan conceived and accomplished the most startling and audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked over to Cortlandt Van Duyckink’s table and held out his hand.
“Say, Mr. Van Duyckink,” he said, “I’ve heard you were talking about starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. I’m McMahan, you know. Well, if that’s straight, I’ll do all I can to help you. And what I say goes in that neck of the woods, doesn’t it? Oh, I’d say it certainly does.”
Van Duyckink’s rather gloomy eyes lit up. He rose to his slender height and grasped Billy McMahan’s hand.
“Thank you, Mr. McMahan,” he said, in his deep, serious tones. “I have been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad of your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with you.”
Billy walked back to his seat. His body was tingling from the praise bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon him in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan trembled with ecstasy, so that her diamonds assaulted the eye almost with pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahan’s acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became enveloped in the aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him.
“Wine for that gang!” he commanded the waiter, pointing with his finger. “Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green bush. Tell ’em it’s on me. Wine for everybody!”
The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to carry out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house and its custom.
“All right,” said Billy, “if it’s against the rules. I wonder if it would do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, it’ll flow all right at the cafe tonight, just the same. The cafe will be packed with drinks tonight; anyone coming by 2 A.M. is in for a treat.”
Billy McMahan was happy.
He had shaken the hand of Cortlandt Van Duyckink.
The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out of place moving slowly among the trash heaps on the Lower East Side. So did Cortlandt Van Duyckink, with his high-class face and white, thin hands, as he steered carefully between the groups of untidy kids in the streets. And so did Miss Constance Schuyler, with her plain, bare beauty, seated at his side.
“Oh, Cortlandt,” she breathed, “isn’t it sad that human beings have to live in such unpleasantness and poverty? And you—how noble it is of you to think of them, to give your time and money to improve their condition!”
Van Duyckink turned his serious eyes upon her.
“It is little,” he said, sadly, “that I can do. The question is a large one, and belongs to society. But even individual effort is not thrown away. Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to build soup kitchens, where no one who is hungry will be turned away. And down this other street are the old buildings that I shall cause to be destroyed and there erect others in place of those death traps of fire and disease.”
Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it wandered groups of wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children. It stopped before a crazy brick structure, stinking and uneven.
Van Duyckink stopped to examine at a better perspective one of the leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who seemed to perfectly represent its degradation, filth and misery—a narrow-chested, pale, unpleasant young man, smoking a cigarette.
Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly grasped the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke.
“I want to know you people,” he said, sincerely. “I am going to help you as much as I can. We shall be friends.”
As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an unaccustomed glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man.