Mammon and the Archer

爱神与财神 （欧亨利）

小罗克韦尔是财团主安东尼的儿子，为一女子坠入爱河。那位姑娘由于有事要分开纽约，小罗克韦尔由于没有时间来向其表白感到苦恼。父亲安东尼以为没有钱做不到的事情，对儿子的苦恼五体投地，小罗克韦尔则深信再多的金钱也买不来爱情，心中以感情至上。在小罗克韦尔送心爱女子的途中忽然遭遇堵车，堵车时间长达很久，为他的表白博得了时间。小罗克韦尔从而换取了姑娘的欢心，回来向父亲夸耀自己的爱情命运。可是，事情的原委到底是怎样的呢?

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."