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CABBAGES AND KINGS
CABBAGES AND KINGS O HENRY The Proem
By the Carpenter
They will tell you in Anchuria that President Miraflores of that
volatile republic died by his own hand in the coast town of Coralio;
that he had reached thus far in flight from the inconveniences of
an imminent revolution; and that one hundred thousand dollars
government funds which he carried with him in an American leather
valise as a souvenir of his tempestuous administration was never
afterward recovered.
For a ~real~ a boy will show you his grave. It is back of the town
near a little bridge that spans a mangrove swamp. A plain slab of
wood stands at its head. Some one has burned upon the headstone with
a hot iron this inscription:
RAMON ANGEL DE LAS CRUZES
Y MIRAFLORES
PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA
DE ANCHURIA
QUE SEA SU JUEZ DIOS
It is characteristic of this buoyant people that they pursue no man
beyond the grave. "Let God be his judge!"--Even with the hundred
thousand unfound though they greatly coveted the hue and cry went
no further than that.
To the stranger or the guest the people of Coralio will relate the
story of the tragic end of their former president; how he strove
to escape from the country with the publice funds and also with Dona
Isabel Guilbert the young American opera singer; and how being
apprehended by members of the opposing political party in Coralio
he shot himself through the head rather than give up the funds and
in consequence the Senorita Guilbert. They will relate further
that Dona Isabel her adventurous bark of fortune shoaled by the
simultaneous loss of her distinguished admirer and the souvenir
hundred thousand dropped anchor on this stagnant coast awaiting
a rising tide.
They say in Coralio that she found a prompt and prosperous tide
in the form of Frank Goodwin an American resident of the town
an investor who had grown wealthy by dealing in the products of
the country--a banana king a rubber prince a sarsaparilla indigo
and mahogany baron. The Senorita Guilbert you will be told married
Senor Goodwin one month after the president's death thus in the
very moment when Fortune had ceased to smile wresting from her
a gift greater than the prize withdrawn.
Of the American Don Frank Goodwin and of his wife the natives have
nothing but good to say. Don Frank has lived among them for years
and has compelled their respect. His lady is easily queen of what
social life the sober coast affords. The wife of the governor of the
district herself who was of the proud Castilian family of Monteleon
y Dolorosa de los Santos y Mendez feels honored to unfold her napkin
with olive-hued ringed hands at the table of Senora Goodwin. Were
you to refer (with your northern prejudices) to the vivacious past
of Mrs. Goodwin when her audacious and gleeful abandon in light opera
captured the mature president's fancy or to her share in that
statesman's downfall and malfeasance the Latin shrug of the shoulder
would be your only answer and rebuttal. What prejudices there were
in Coralio concerning Senora Goodwin seemed now to be in her favor
whatever they had been in the past.
It would seem that the story is ended instead of begun; that the
close of tragedy and the climax of a romance have covered the ground
of interest; but to the more curious reader it shall be some slight
instruction to trace the close threads that underlie the ingenious
web of circumstances.
The headpiece bearing the name of President Miraflores is daily
scrubbed with soap-bark and sand. An old half-breed Indian tends the
grave with fidelity and the dawdling minuteness of inherited sloth.
He chops down the weeds and ever-springing grass with his machete he
plucks ants and scorpions and beetles from it with his horny fingers
and sprinkles its turf with water from the plaza fountain. There is
no grave anywhere so well kept and ordered.
Only by following out the underlying threads will it be made clear
why the old Indian Galves is secretly paid to keep green the grave
of President Miraflores by one who never saw that unfortunate
statesman in life or in death and why that one was wont to walk
in the twilight casting from a distance looks of gentle sadness upon
that unhonored mound.
Elsewhere than at Coralio one learns of the impetuous career
of Isabel Guilbert. New Orleans gave her birth and the mingled
French and Spanish creole nature that tinctured her life with such
turbulence and warmth. She had little education but a knowledge of
men and motives that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the
common woman was she endowed with intrepid rashness with a love for
the pursuit of adventure to the brink of danger and with desire for
the pleasures of life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb;
she was Eve after the fall but before the bitterness of it was felt.
She wore life as a rose in her bosom.
Of the legion of men who had been at her feet it was said that
but one was so fortunate as to engage her fancy. To President
Miraflores the brilliant but unstable ruler of Anchuria she yielded
the key to her resolute heart. How then do we find her (as the
Coralians would have told you) the wife of Frank Goodwin and happily
living a life of dull and dreamy inaction?
The underlying threads reach far stretching across the sea.
Following them out it will be made plain why "Shorty" O'Day of the
Columbia Detective Agency resigned his position. And for a lighter
pastime it shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus
beneath the tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now
to cause laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowing crags
where formerly rang the cries of pirate's victims; to lay aside pike
and cutlass and attack with quip and jollity; to draw one saving
titter of mirth from the rusty casque of Romance--this were pleasant
to do in the shade of the lemon-trees on that coast that is curved
like lips set for smiling.
For there are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That segment of
continent washed by the tempestuous Caribbean and presenting to the
sea a formidable border of tropicle jungle topped by the overweening
Cordilleras is still begirt by mystery and romance. In past times
buccaneers and revolutionists roused the echoes of its cliffs and
the condor wheeled perpetually above where in the green groves
they made food for him with their matchlocks and toledos. Taken and
retaken by sea rovers by adverse powers and by sudden uprising of
rebellious factions the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has
scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master.
Pizarro Balboa Sir Francis Drake and Bolivar did what they could
to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan Lafitte and other
eminent swashbucklers bombarded and pounded it in the name of
Abaddon.
The game still goes on. The guns of the rovers are silenced; but the
tintype man the enlarged photograph brigand the kodaking tourist
and the scouts of the gentle brigade of fakirs have found it out and
carry on the work. The hucksters of Germany France and Sicily now
bag in small change across their counters. Gentlemen adventurers
throng the waiting-rooms of its rulers with proposals for railways
and concessions. The little ~opera-bouffe~ nations play at
government and intrigue until some day a big silent gunboat glides
into the offing and warns them not to break their toys. And with
these changes comes also the small adventurer with empty pockets to
fill light of heart busy-brained--the modern fairy prince bearing
an alarm clock with which more surely than by the sentimental
kiss to awaken the beautiful tropics from their centuries' sleep.
Generally he wears a shamrock which he matches pridefully against
the extravagant palms; and it is he who had driven Melpomene to
the wings and set Comedy to dancing before the footlights of the
Southern Cross.
So there is a little tale to tell of many things. Perhaps to the
promiscuous ear of the Walrus it shall come with most avail; for in
it there are indeed shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbage-palms
and presidents instead of kings.
Add to these a little love and counterplotting and scatter
everywhere throughout the maze a trail of tropical dollars--dollars
warmed no more by the torrid sun than by the hot palms of the scouts
of Fortune--and after all here seems to be Life itself with talk
enough to weary the most garrulous of Walruses.
I
"Fox-in-the-Morning"
Coralio reclined in the mid-day heat like some vacuous beauty
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