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    Chapter 51

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    engrjonathanokechukwu

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    Chapter 51

    Uploaded by

    engrjonathanokechukwu
    4 views2 pages

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    Copyright:

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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    4 views2 pages

    Chapter 51

    Uploaded by

    engrjonathanokechukwu

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    78

    O HENRY -100 SELECTED STORIES

    Underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and


    mildewed and rotten woodwork.

    Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong,
    sweet odor of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such
    sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant.
    And the man cried aloud, ‘What, dear?’ as if he had been called, and sprang
    up and faced about. The rich odor clung to him and wrapped him about. He
    reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time confused and
    commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an odor? Surely it
    must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound that had touched, that
    had caressed him?

    ‘She has been in this room,’ he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token,
    for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her
    or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of mignonette, the odor that
    she had loved and made her own – whence came it?

    The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy
    dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins – those discreet, indistinguishable
    friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and
    uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant
    lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a
    discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy
    and insolent with heliotrope; he hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he
    found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a pawnbroker’s card, two lost
    marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a
    woman’s black satin hair-bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire.
    But the black satin hair-bow also is femininity’s demure, impersonal,
    common ornament, and tells no tales.

    And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the
    walls, considering the corners of the bulging mat- ting on his hands and
    knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangings, the
    drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign unable to perceive that she
    was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing
    him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser
    ones became cognizant of the call. Once again he answered loudly, ‘Yes,
    dear!’ and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he could not yet
    discern form and color and love and outstretched arms in the odor of
    mignonette. Oh, God! Whence that odor, and since when have odors had a
    voice to call? Thus he groped.

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