Mammon and the Archer

愛神與財神 （歐亨利）

小羅克韋爾是財團主安東尼的兒子，為一女子墜入愛河。那位姑娘由于有事要分開紐約，小羅克韋爾由于沒有時間來向其表白感到苦惱。父親安東尼以為沒有錢做不到的事情，對兒子的苦惱五體投地，小羅克韋爾則深信再多的金錢也買不來愛情，心中以感情至上。在小羅克韋爾送心愛女子的途中忽然遭遇堵車，堵車時間長達很久，為他的表白博得了時間。小羅克韋爾從而換取了姑娘的歡心，回來向父親夸耀自己的愛情命運。可是，事情的原委到底是怎樣的呢?

Old Anthony Rockwall, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rockwall’s Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbour to the right--the aristocratic clubman, G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones--came out to his waiting motor-car, wrinkling a contumelious nostril, as usual, at the Italian renaissance sculpture of the soap palace’s front elevation.

"Stuck-up old statuette of nothing doing!" commented the ex-Soap King. "The Eden Musee’ll get that old frozen Nesselrode yet if he don’t watch out. I’ll have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer and see if that’ll make his Dutch nose turn up any higher."

And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the door of his library and shouted "Mike!" in the same voice that had once chipped off pieces of the welkin on the Kansas prairies.

"Tell my son," said Anthony to the answering menial, "to come in here before he leaves the house."

When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth, ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and rattled the keys in his pocket with the other.

"Richard," said Anthony Rockwail, "what do you pay for the soap that you use?"

Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full of unexpectednesses as a girl at her first party.

"Six dollars a dozen, I think, dad."

"And your clothes?"

"I suppose about sixty dollars, as a rule."