ELEANOR HUYLER HAS DISAPPEARED“‘ELEANOR HUYLER HAS DISAPPEARED’”
Removing his shoes, Van Squibber, with a cry which brought the hungry beast bounding out into the path, started on a dead run, while Miss Huyler, full of confidence that the story would end happily whatever she might do, walked boldly up to the tawny creature, wondering much, however, why her rescuer had removed his shoes. It was strange that, knowing Van Squibber as well as she did, she did not at once perceive his motive in declining to run in walking-shoes, but in moments of peril we are all excusable for our vagaries of thought! You never can tell, whenyou are in danger, what may happen next, for if you could you would know how it is all going to turn out; but as it is, mental disturbance is quite to be expected.
For once Van Squibber failed. He ran fast enough and betrayed enough cowardice to attract the attention of ten lions, but this special lion, by some fearful idiosyncrasy of fate, which you never can count on, was not to be deceived. With a louder roar than any he had given, he pounced upon the brave woman, and in an instant she was no more. Van Squibber, turning to see how matters stood, was just in time to witness the final engulfment of the fair girl in the lion’s jaws.
“Egad!” he cried. “I have failed!And now what remains to be done? Shall I return and fight the lion, or shall I keep on and go to the club? If I kill the lion, people will know that I have been walking in the park before breakfast. If I continue my present path and go to the club, the fellows will all want to knowwhat I mean by coming without my shoes on. What a dilemma! Ah! I have it; I will go home.”
And that is what Van Squibber did. He went back to his rooms in the Quigmore at once, hastily undressed, and when, an hour later, his man returned with the soda mint drop, he was sleeping peacefully.
That night he met Travers at the club reading theEvening Moon.
“Hello, Van!” said Travers. “Heard the news?”
“No. What?” asked Van Squibber, languidly.
“Eleanor Huyler has disappeared.”
“By Jove!” cried Van Squibber, with well-feigned surprise. “I heard the boys crying ‘Extra,’ but I never dreamed they would put out an extra for her.”
“They haven’t,” said Travers. “The extra’s about the lion.”
“Ah! And what’s happened to the lion?” cried Van Squibber, nervously.
“He’s dead. Got loose this morning early, and was found at ten o’clock dyingof indigestion. It is supposed he has devoured some man, name unknown, for before his nose was an uneaten patent-leather pump, size 9¾ B, and in his throat was stuck the other, half eaten.”
“Ha!” muttered Van Squibber, turning pale. “And they don’t know whose shoes they were?” he added, in a hoarse whisper.
“No,” said Travers. “There’s no clew, even.”
Van Squibber breathed a sigh of relief.
“Robert!” he cried, addressing the waiter, “bring me a schooner of absinthe, and ask Mr. Travers what he’ll have.” And then, turning, he said,sotto voce, to himself, “Saved! And Eleanor is revenged. Van Squibber may have failed, but his patent-leather pumps have conquered.”
When Mr. Snobbe sat down after the narration of his story, there was a thunderous outburst of applause. It was evident that the exciting narrative had pleased his fellow-diners very much—as, indeed, it was proper that it should, since it dealt in a veiled sort of way with characters for whom all right-minded persons have not only a deep-seated admiration, but a feeling of affection as well. They had, one and all, in common with the unaffected portion of the reading community, a liking for the wholesome and clean humor of Mr. Van Bibber, and the fact that Snobbe’s story suggested a certainoriginal, even in a weak sort of fashion, made them like it in spite of its shortcomings.
“Good work,” cried Hudson Rivers. “Of course it’s only gas in comparison with the sun, but it gives light, and we like it.”
“And it’s wholly original, too, even though an imitation in manner. The real Van Bibber never failed in anything he undertook,” said Tenafly Paterson. “I’ve often wished he might have, just once—it would have made him seem more human—and for that reason I think Tom is entitled to praise.”
“I don’t know about that,” observed Monty St. Vincent. “Tom hadn’t anything to do with it—it was the dinner. Honor to whom honor is due, say I. Praise the cook, or the caterer.”
“That’s the truth,” put in Billie Jones. “Fact is, when this book of ours comes out, I think, instead of putting our names on the title-page as authors, the thing to do is to print the menu.”
“You miss the point of this association,” interjected Snobbe. “We haven’t banded ourselves together to immortalize a Welsh rabbit or a mince-pie—nay, nor even a ruddy duck. It’s our own glory we’re after.”
“That’s it,” cried Monty St. Vincent—“that’s the beauty of it. The scheme works two ways. If the stuff is good and there is glory in it, we’ll have the glory; but if it’s bad, we’ll blame the dinner. That’s what I like about it.”
“It’s a valuable plan from that point of view,” said the presiding officer. “And now, if the gentleman who secured the ball numbered two will make himself known, we will proceed.”
WRIT A POME ABOUT A KID“WRIT A POME ABOUT A KID”
Hudson Rivers rose up. “I have number two,” he said, “but I have nothing to relate. The coffee I drank kept me awake all night, and when I finally slept, along about six o’clock next morning, it was one of those sweet, dreamless sleeps that we all love so much. I must therefore ask to be excused.”
“But how shall you be represented in the book?” asked Mr. Harry Snobbe.
“He can do the table of contents,” suggested St. Vincent.
“Or the fly-leaves,” said Tenafly Paterson.
“No,” said Huddy; “I shall ask that the pages I should have filled be left blank. There is nothing helps a book so much as the leaving of something to the reader’s imagination. I heard a great critic say so once. He said that was the strong point of the French writers, and he added that Stockton’sLady or the Tigertook hold because Stockton didn’t insist on telling everything.”
“It’s a good idea,” said Mr. Jones. “I don’t know but that if those pages are left blank they’ll be the most interesting in the book.”
Mr. Rivers sat down with a smile of conscious pride, whereupon Mr. Tenafly Paterson rose up.
“As I hold the number three ball, I will give you the fruits of my dinner. Iattribute the work which I am about to present to you to the mince-pie. Personally, I am a great admirer of certain latter-day poets who deal with the woes and joys of more or less commonplace persons. I myself would rather read a sonnet to a snow-shovel than an ode to the moon, but in my dream I seem to have conceived a violent hatred for authors of homely verse, as you will note when I have finished reading my dream-poem called ‘Retribution.’”
“Great Scott!” murmured Billie Jones, with a deep-drawn sigh. “Poetry! From Tenafly Paterson! Of all the afflictions of man, Job could have known no worse.”
I BOUGHT A BOOK OF VERSE“I BOUGHT A BOOK OF VERSE”
“The poem reads as follows,” continued Paterson, ignoring the chairman’s ill-timed remark:
Writ a pome about a kid.Finest one I ever did.Heaped it full o’ sentiment—Very best I could invent.Talked about his little toys;How he played with other boys;How the beasts an’ birdies allCome when little Jamie’d call.’N’ ’en I took that little lad,Gave him fever, mighty bad.’N’ ’en it sorter pleased my whimTo have him die and bury him.It got printed, too, it didThat small pome about the kid,In a paper in the West;Put ten dollars in my vest.Every pa an’ ma aboutCried like mighty—cried right out.I jess took each grandma’s heart,Lammed and bruised it, made it smart;’N’ everybody said o’ me,“Finest pote we ever see,”’Cept one beggar, he got mad.Got worst lickin’ ever had;Got my head atween his fists,Called me “Prince o’ anarchists.”Clipped me one behind my ear—Laid me up for ’most a year.“’Cause,” he said, “my poetry’D made his wife an’ mother cry;“’Twarn’t no poet’s bizness toMake the wimmin all boo-hoo.”’N’ ’at is why to-day, by Jings!I don’t fool with hearts an’ things.I don’t care how high the bids,I’ve stopped scribblin’ ’bout dead kids;’R if I haven’t, kinder sorterThink ’at maybe p’r’aps I’d oughter.
Writ a pome about a kid.Finest one I ever did.Heaped it full o’ sentiment—Very best I could invent.Talked about his little toys;How he played with other boys;How the beasts an’ birdies allCome when little Jamie’d call.’N’ ’en I took that little lad,Gave him fever, mighty bad.’N’ ’en it sorter pleased my whimTo have him die and bury him.It got printed, too, it didThat small pome about the kid,In a paper in the West;Put ten dollars in my vest.Every pa an’ ma aboutCried like mighty—cried right out.I jess took each grandma’s heart,Lammed and bruised it, made it smart;’N’ everybody said o’ me,“Finest pote we ever see,”’Cept one beggar, he got mad.Got worst lickin’ ever had;Got my head atween his fists,Called me “Prince o’ anarchists.”Clipped me one behind my ear—Laid me up for ’most a year.“’Cause,” he said, “my poetry’D made his wife an’ mother cry;“’Twarn’t no poet’s bizness toMake the wimmin all boo-hoo.”’N’ ’at is why to-day, by Jings!I don’t fool with hearts an’ things.I don’t care how high the bids,I’ve stopped scribblin’ ’bout dead kids;’R if I haven’t, kinder sorterThink ’at maybe p’r’aps I’d oughter.
IT FILLED ME WITH DISMAY“IT FILLED ME WITH DISMAY”
The lines were received with hearty appreciation by all save Dobbs Ferry, who looked a trifle gloomy.
“It is a strange thing,” said the latter, “but that mince-pie affected me in precisely the same way, as you will see foryourselves when I read my contribution, which, holding ball number four as I do, I will proceed to give you.”
Mr. Ferry then read the following poem, which certainly did seem to indicate that the man who prepared the fatal pie had certain literary ideas which he mixed in with other ingredients:
I bought a book of verse the other day,And when I read, it filled me with dismay.I wanted it to take home to my wife,To bring a bit of joy into her life;And I’d been told the author of those pomesWas called the laureate of simple homes.But, Jove! I read, and found it full of rhymeThat kept my eyes a-filling all the time.One told about a pretty little missWhose father had denied a simple kiss,And as she left, unhappy, full of cares,She fell and broke her neck upon the stairs.And then he wrote a lot of tearful linesOf children who had trouble with their spines;And ’stead of joys, he penned so many woesI sought him out and gave him curvature ’f the nose;And all the nation, witnessing his plight,Did crown me King, and cry, “It served him right.”
I bought a book of verse the other day,And when I read, it filled me with dismay.I wanted it to take home to my wife,To bring a bit of joy into her life;And I’d been told the author of those pomesWas called the laureate of simple homes.But, Jove! I read, and found it full of rhymeThat kept my eyes a-filling all the time.One told about a pretty little missWhose father had denied a simple kiss,And as she left, unhappy, full of cares,She fell and broke her neck upon the stairs.And then he wrote a lot of tearful linesOf children who had trouble with their spines;And ’stead of joys, he penned so many woesI sought him out and gave him curvature ’f the nose;And all the nation, witnessing his plight,Did crown me King, and cry, “It served him right.”
“A remarkable coincidence,” said Thomas Snobbe. “In fact, the coincidence is rather more remarkable than the poetry.”
“It certainly is,” said Billie Jones; “but what a wonderfully suggestive pie, considering that it was a mince!”
After which dictum the presiding officer called upon the holder of the fifth ball, who turned out to be none other than Bedford Parke, who blushingly rose up and delivered himself of what he called “The Overcoat, a Magazine Farce.”
SCENE FIRSTTime:Morning at Boston
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“I think it will rain to-day, but there is no need to worry about that. Robert has his umbrella and his mackintosh, and I don’t think he is idiotic enough to lend both of them. If he does, he’ll get wet, that’s all.” Mrs. Edwards is speaking to herself in the sewing-room of the apartment occupied by herself and her husband in the HotelHammingbell at Boston. It is not a large room, but cosey. A frieze one foot deep runs about the ceiling, and there is a carpet on the floor. Three pins are seen scattered about the room, in one corner of which is a cane-bottomed chair holding across its back two black vests and a cutaway coat. Mrs. Edwards sits before a Wilcox & Wilson sewing-machine sewing a button on a light spring overcoat. The overcoat has one outside and three inside pockets, and is single-breasted. “It is curious,” Mrs. Edwards continues, “what men will do with umbrellas and mackintoshes on a rainy day. They lend them here and there, and the worst part of it is they never remember where.” A knock is heard at the door. “Who’s there?”
COME IN“‘COME IN’”
Voice(without). “Me.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards(with a nervous shudder). “Come in.” Enter Mary the house-maid. She is becomingly attired in blue alpaca, with green ribbons and puffed sleeves. She holds a feather duster inher right hand, and in her left is a jar of Royal Worcester. “Mary,” Mrs. Edwards says, severely, “where are we at?”
Mary(meekly). “Boston, ma’am.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“South Boston or Boston proper?”
Mary.“Boston proper, ma’am.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“Then when I say ‘Who’s there?’ don’t say ‘Me.’ That manner of speaking may do at New York, Brooklyn, South Boston, or Congress, but at Boston proper it is extremely gauche. ‘I’ is the word.”
Mary.“Yes, ma’am; but you know, ma’am, I don’t pretend to be literary, ma’am, and so these little points baffles I very often.” Mrs. Edwards sighs, and, walking over to the window, looks out upon the trolley-cars for ten minutes; then, picking up one of the pins from the floor and putting it in a pink silk pin-cushion which stands next to an alarm-clock on the mantel-piece, a marble affair with plain caryatids and a brass fender around the hearth, she resumes her seatbefore the sewing-machine, and threads a needle. Then—
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“Well, Mary, what do you want?”
Mary.“Please, Mrs. Edwards, the butcher is came, and he says they have some very fine perairie-chickens to-day.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“We don’t want any prairie-chickens. The prairies are so very vulgar. Tell him never to suggest such a thing again. Have we any potatoes in the house?”
Mary.“There’s three left, ma’am, and two slices of cold roast beef.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“Then tell him to bring five more potatoes, a steak, and—Was all the pickled salmon eaten?”
Mary.“All but the can, ma’am.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“Well—Mr. Edwards is very fond of fish. Tell him to bring two boxes of sardines and a bottle of anchovy paste.”
MARYMARY
Mary.“Very well, Mrs. Edwards.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“And—ah—Mary, tell him to bring some Brusselssprouts for breakfast. What are you doing with that Worcester vase?”
Mary.“I was takin’ it to cook, ma’am. Sure she broke the bean-pot this mornin’, and she wanted somethin’ to cook the beans in.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards.“Oh, I see. Well, take good care of it, Mary. It’s a rare piece. In fact, I think you’d better leave that here and remove the rubber plant from the jardinière, and let Nora cook the beans in that. Times are a little too hard to cook beans in Royal Worcester.”
Mary.“Very well, ma’am.” Mary goes out through the door. Mrs. Edwards resumes her sewing. Fifteen minutes elapse, interrupted only by the ticking of the alarm-clock and the occasional ringing of the bell on passing trolley-cars. “If it does rain,” Mrs. Edwards says at last, with an anxious glance through the window, “I suppose Robert won’t care about going to see the pantomime to-night. It will be too bad if we don’t go, for this isthe last night of the season, and I’ve been very anxious to renew my acquaintance with ‘Humpty Dumpty.’ It is so very dramatic, and I do so like dramatic things. Even when they happen in my own life I like dramatic things. I’ll never forget how I enjoyed the thrill that came over me, even in my terror, that night last winter when the trolley-car broke down in front of this house; and last summer, too, when the oar-lock broke in our row-boat thirty-three feet from shore; that was a situation that I enjoyed in spite of its peril. How people can say that life is humdrum, I can’t see. Exciting things, real third-act situations, climaxes I might even call them, are always happening in my life, and yet some novelists pretend that life is humdrum just to excuse their books for being humdrum. I’d just like to show these apostles of realism the diary I could have kept if I had wanted to. Beginning with the fall my brother George had from the hay-wagon, back in 1876, running down through myfirst meeting with Robert, which was romantic enough—he paid my car-fare in from Brookline the day I lost my pocket-book—even to yesterday, when an entire stranger called me up on the telephone, my life has fairly bubbled with dramatic situations that would take the humdrum theory and utterly annihilate it.” As Mrs. Edwards is speaking she is also sewing the button already alluded to on Mr. Edwards’s coat as described. “There,” taking the last stitch in the coat, “that’s done, and now I can go and get ready for luncheon.” She folds up the coat, glances at the clock, and goes out. A half-hour elapses. The silence is broken only by occasional noises from the street, the rattling of the wheels of a herdic over the pavement, the voices of newsboys, and an occasional strawberry-vender’s cry. At the end of the half-hour the alarm-clock goes off and the curtain falls.
SCENE SECONDTime:Evening at Boston
The scene is laid in the drawing-room of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Edwards. Mrs. Edwards is discovered readingPendennis, and seems in imminent danger of going to sleep over it. Mr. Edwards is stretched out upon the sofa, quite asleep, withIvanhoelying open upon his chest. Twenty-five minutes elapse, when the door-bell rings.
Mr. Edwards(drowsily). “Let me off at the next corner, conductor.”
Mrs. Edwards.“Why, Robert—what nonsense you are talking!”
EDWARDS REBELSEDWARDS REBELS
Mr. Edwards(rubbing his eyes and sitting up). “Eh? What? Nonsense? I talk nonsense? Really, my dear, that is a serious charge to bring against one of the leading characters in a magazine farce. Wit, perhaps, I may indulge in, but nonsense, never!”
Mrs. Edwards.“That is precisely whatI complain about. The idea of a well-established personage like yourself lying off on a sofa in his own apartment and asking a conductor to let him off at the next corner! It’s—”
Mr. Edwards.“I didn’t do anything of the sort.”
Mrs. Edwards.“You did, too, Robert Edwards. And I can prove it. If you will read back to the opening lines of this scene you will find that I have spoken the truth—unless you forgot your lines. If you admit that, I have nothing to say, but I will add that if you are going to forget lines that give the key-note of the whole situation, you’ve got no business in a farce. You’ll make the whole thing fall flat some day, and then you will be discharged.”
Mr. Edwards.“Well, I wish I might be discharged; I’m tired of the whole business. Anybody’d take me for an idiot, the way I have to go on. Every bit of fun there is to be had in these farces is based upon some predicament into whichmy idiocy or yours gets me. Are we idiots? I ask you that. Are we? You may be, but, Mrs. Edwards, I am not. The idea of my falling asleep overIvanhoe! Would I do that if I had my way? Well, I guess not! Would I even dare to say ‘I guess not’ in a magazine farce? Again, I guess not. I’m going to write to the editor this very night, and resign my situation. I want to be me. I don’t want to be what some author thinks I ought to be. Do you know what I think?”
Mrs. Edwards(warningly). “Take care, Robert. Take care. You aren’t employed to think.”
Mr. Edwards.“Precisely. That’s what makes me so immortally mad. The author doesn’t give me time to think. I could think real thoughts if he’d let me, but then! The curtain wouldn’t stay up half a second if I did that; and where would the farce be? The audience would go home tired, because they wouldn’t get their nap if the curtain was down. It’s hard luck; and as for me, I wouldn’t keepthe position a minute if I could get anything else to do. Nobody’d give me work, now that I’ve been made out to be such a confounded jackass. But let’s talk of other things.”
Mrs. Edwards.“I’d love to, Robert—but we can’t. There are no other things in the farce. The Billises are coming.”
Mr. Edwards.“Hang the Billises! Can’t we ever have an evening to ourselves?”
Mrs. Edwards.“How you do talk! How can we? There’s got to be some action in the farce, and it’s the Billis family that draws out our peculiarities.”
Mr. Edwards.“Well, I’m going out, and you can receive the Billises, and if it’s necessary for me to say anything to give go to the play, you can say it. I make you my proxy.”
Mrs. Edwards.“It can’t be done, Robert. They are here. The bell rang ten minutes ago, and they ought to have got in here five minutes since. You can’t goout without meeting them in the wings—I mean the hallway.”
Mr. Edwards.“Lost!”
EnterMr.andMrs. Billis.
Billis.“Ah, Edwards! Howdy do? Knew you were home. Saw light in—”
Mrs. Billis.“Don’t rattle on so, my dear. Speak more slowly, or the farce will be over before nine.”
Billis.“I’ve got to say my lines, and I’m going to say them my way. Ah, Edwards! Howdy do? Knew you were home. Saw light in window. Knew your economical spirit. Said to myself must be home, else why gas? He doesn’t burn gas when he’s out. Wake up—”
Mr. Edwards.“I’m not asleep. Fact is, I am going out.”
Mrs. Billis.“Out?”
Mrs. Edwards.“Robert!”
Mr. Edwards.“That’s what I said—out.O-u-t.”
Billis.“Not bad idea. Go with you. Where to?”
Mr. Edwards.“Anywhere—to find a tragedy and take part in it. I’m done farcing, my boy.”
Billis(slappingEdwardson back). “Rah! my position exactly. I’m sick of it too. Come ahead. I know that fellow Whoyt—he’ll take us in and give us a chance.”
Mrs. Billis.“I’ve been afraid of this.”
Mrs. Edwards.“Robert, consider your family.”
Mr. Edwards.“I have; and if I’m to die respected and honored, if my family is to have any regard for my memory, I’ve got to get out of farcing. That’s all. Did you sew the button on my overcoat?”
Mrs. Edwards.“I did. I’ll go get it.”
She goes out. Mrs. Billis throws herself sobbing on sofa. Billis dances a jig. Forty minutes elapse, during which Billis’s dance may be encored. Enter Mrs. Edwards, triumphantly, with overcoat.
Mrs. Edwards.“There’s your overcoat.”
Mr. Edwards.“But—but the button isn’t sewed on. I can’t go out in this.”
Mrs. Edwards.“I knew it, Robert. I sewed the button on the wrong coat.”
Billis and Robert fall in a faint. Mrs. Billis rises and smiles, grasping Mrs. Edwards’s hand fervently.
Mrs. Billis.“Noble woman!”
Mrs. Edwards.“Yes; I’ve saved the farce.”
Mrs. Billis.“You have. For, in spite of these—these strikers—these theatric Debses, you—you got in the point!The button was sewed on the wrong overcoat!”
“When the farce was finished,” said Mr. Parke, “and the applause which greeted the fall of the curtain had subsided, I dreamed also the following author’s note: ‘The elapses’ in this farce may seem rather long, but the reader must remember that it is the author’s intention that his farce, if acted, should lastthroughout a whole evening. If it were not for the elapses the acting time would be scarcely longer than twenty minutes, instead of two hours and a half.”
“I mention this,” Mr. Parke added, “not only in justification of myself, but also as a possible explanation of certain shortcomings in the work of the original master. Sometimes the action may seem to drag a trifle, but that is not the fault of the author, but of life itself. To be real one must be true, and truth is not to be governed by him who holds the pen.”
Mr. Parke’s explanation having been received in a proper and appreciative spirit by his fellow-Dreamers, Mr. Jones announced that Mr. Monty St. Vincent was the holder of the sixth ball, whereupon Mr. St. Vincent arose and delivered himself as follows:
Being the story told by the holder of the sixth ball, Mr. Monty St. Vincent.
A donkey engine, next to a Sophomore at a football match that is going his way, is the noisiest thing man ever made, and No. 4-11-44, who travelled first-class on the American linerNew York, was not inclined to let anybody forget the fact. He held a commanding position on the roof of the deck state-room No. 10, just aft of the forecastle stringer No. 3, and over the main jib-stay boom No. 67/8, that held the rudder-chains in place. All the little Taffrails and Swashbucklers looked up to him, and the Capstan loved him like a brother, for he very often helped theCapstan to bring the Anchor aboard, when otherwise that dissipated bit of iron would have staid out all night. The Port Tarpaulins insisted that the Donkey Engine was the greatest humorist that ever lived, although the Life Preservers hanging by the rail did not like him at all, because he once said they were Irish—“Cork all through,” said he. Even the Rivets that held the Top Gallant Bilges together used to strain their eyes to see the points of the Donkey Engine’s jokes, and the third Deputy-assistant Piston Rod, No. 683, in the hatchway stoke-hole, used to pound the cylinders almost to pieces trying to encore the Donkey Engine’s comic songs.
The Main Mast used to say that the Donkey Engine was as bright as the Starboard Lights, and the Smoke Stack is said to have told the Safety Valve that he’d rather give up smoking than lose the constant flow of wit the Donkey Engine was always giving forth.
Findlayson discovered all this. After his Bridge had gone safely through thatterrible ordeal when the Ganges rose and struck for higher tides, Findlayson collapsed. The Bridge—But that is another story. This is this one, and there is little profit in telling two stories at once, especially in a day when one can get the two stories printed separately in the several magazines for which one writes exclusively.
After the ordeal of the Kashi Bridge, Findlayson, as I have said, collapsed, and it is no wonder, as you will see for yourself when you read that other story. As the Main Girder of the Bridge itself wrote later to the Suspension Cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, “It’s a wonder to me that the Sahib didn’t have theBashi-bazouksearlier in the game. He suffered a terrible strain that night.”
To which the Cables of the Brooklyn Bridge wittily replied that while they sympathized with Findlayson, they didn’t believe he really knew what strain was. “Wait until he has five lines of trolley-cars running over him all day and night.Thatisa strain! He’d be worse cut up than ever if he had that. And yet we thrive under it. After all, for solid health, it’s better to be a Bridge than a Man. When are you coming across?”
Now Findlayson might have collapsed a dozen times before the Government would have cared enough to give him the vacation he needed. Not that Government is callous, like an elephant, but because it is conducted, as a witty Cobra once remarked in the jungle as he fascinated a Tigress, by a lot of Red Tapirs. Findlayson put in an application for a six months’ vacation, but by the time the necessary consent had reached him the six months were up. Everybody remembers the tale of Dorkins of the Welsh Fusileers and his appointment to the Department of the Poloese, how his term of office was to be six years, and how by the time his credentials reached him his term of office had expired. So with Findlayson. On the very date of the expiration of his desired leave he received permissionto go, and of course could not then do so, because it was too late. Fortunately for Findlayson, however, the Viceroy himself happened to be passing through, and Findlayson entertained him at a luncheon on the Bridge. By some curious mistake, when the nuts and raisins were passed, Findlayson had provided a plateful of steel nuts, designed to hold rivets in place, instead of the usual assortment of almonds andhiki-ree.
“This man needs a rest,” said the Viceroy, as he broke his front tooth trying to crack one of the steel nuts, and he immediately extended Findlayson’s leave to twenty years without pay, for which Findlayson was very grateful.
THE VICEROY EXAMINES HIS RUINED SMILETHE VICEROY EXAMINES HIS RUINED SMILE
“What is the matter with the man?” asked the Viceroy, as he drove to the station with the practising Jinrikshaw of the place.
“It’s my professional opinion,” replied the Jinrikshaw, “that the Sahib has a bad attack of melancholia. He hasn’t laughed for six months. If we couldonly get him to laugh, I think he’d recover.”
“Then it was not in a jocular spirit that he ruined my teeth with those nuts?” demanded the Viceroy, taking a small mirror out of his pocket and gazing ruefully on his ruined smile.
“No, your most Excellent Excellency,” replied the Jinrikshaw. “The fact that he ate five of them himself shows that it was an error, not a jest.”
It was thus that Findlayson got his vacation, and even to this day the Kaskalooloo folk are laughing over his error more heartily than they ever laughed over a joke.
A month after leaving his post Findlayson reached London, where he was placed under the care of the most famous physicians. They did everything they could to make him laugh, without success.Punchwas furnished, and he read it through day after day, and burst into hysterical weeping. They took him to the theatres, and he never even smiled.They secured a front seat in the House of Commons for him during important debates, and he merely sobbed. They took him to the Army and Navy Stores, and he shivered with fear. Even Beerbohm Tree as Lady Macbeth, or whatever rôle it was he was playing at the time, failed to coax the old-time dimple to his cheek. His friends began to whisper among themselves that “old Findlayson was done for,” when Berkeley Hauksbee, who had been with him in the Soudan, suggested a voyage to the United States.
“He’ll see enough there to laugh at, or I’m an unshod, unbroken, saw-backed, shark-eating skate!” he asserted, and as a last resource Findlayson was packed, bag and baggage, aboard the linerNew York.
THEY GAVE HIM PUNCHTHEY GAVE HIM PUNCH
The first three days out Findlayson was dead to the world. He lay like a fallen log in the primeval forest. Stewards were of no avail. Even the repeated calls of the doctor, whose apprehensions were aroused, could not restore him to life.
“They’ll be sewin’ him up in a jutebag and droppin’ him overboard if he doesn’t come to by to-morrow,” observed the Water Bottle to the Soap Dish, with a sympathetic glance at the prostrate Findlayson.
“He’ll be seasicker than ever if they do,” returned the Soap Dish. “It’s a long swim from here to Sandy Hook.”
But Findlayson came to in time to avert the catastrophe, and took several turns up and down the deck. He played horse-billiards with an English curate, but showed no sign of interest or amusement even at the curious aspect of the ladies who lay inert in the steamer chairs ranged along the deck.
“I’m afraid it’s hopeless,” said Peroo, his valet, shaking his head sadly. “Unless I take him in hand myself.” And Peroo was seized with an idea.
“I’ll do it!” he cried.
He approached Findlayson.
“The Sahib will not laugh,” he said. “He will not smile even. He has not snickered all day. Take these, then.They’re straight opium, but there’s fun in them.”
He took a small zinc bait-box from his fishing-kit and handed it to Findlayson, who, on opening it, found a dozen or more brown pellets. Hastily swallowing six of them, the sick man turned over in his bunk and tried to go to sleep, while Peroo went into the smoking-room for a game ofPok-Kahwith a party ofDrummerzwho were crossing to America.
A soft yellow haze suffused the state-room, and Findlayson, nervously starting to his feet to see what had caused it, was surprised to find himself confronted by a grinning row of Technicalities ranged in a line upon the sofa under the port, while seated upon his steamer trunk was the Donkey Engine 4-11-44.
“Well, here we are,” said the Deck Beam, addressing the Donkey Engine. “What are we here for?”
THE DONKEY ENGINE CALLS ON FINDLAYSONTHE DONKEY ENGINE CALLS ON FINDLAYSON
“That’s it,” said the Capstan. “We’ve left our places at your command. Now, why?”
“I wanted you to meet my friend Findlayson,” said the Donkey Engine. “He’s a good fellow. Findlayson, let me present you to my associates—Mr. Capstan, Mr. Findlayson. And that gentleman over in the corner, Mr. Findlayson, is the Starboard Upper Deck Stringer. Rivet, come over here and meet Mr. Findlayson. The Davits will be here in a minute, and the Centrifugal Bilge Pump will drop in later.”
“I’m glad to meet you all,” said Findlayson, rather dazed.
“Thought you would be,” returned the Donkey Engine. “That’s why I asked them to come up.”
“Do you mind if I smoke in here?” said the Funnel.
“Not a bit,” said Findlayson, solemnly. “Let me offer you a cigar.”
The party roared at this.
“He doesn’t smoke cigars, Fin, old boy,” said the Donkey Engine. “Offer him a ton of coal Perfectos or a basket of kindling Invincibles and he’ll take youup. Old Funnel makes a cigarette of a cord of pine logs, you know.”
“I should think so much smoking would be bad for your nerves,” suggested Findlayson.
“’Ain’t got any,” said the Funnel. “I’m only a Flue, you know. Every once in a while I do get a sooty feeling inside, but beyond that I don’t suffer at all.”
“Where’s the Keel?” asked the Thrust Block, taking off one of his six collars, which hurt his neck.
“He can’t come up to-night,” said the Donkey Engine, with a sly wink at Findlayson, who, however, failed to respond. “The Hold is feeling a little rocky, and the Keel’s got to stay down and steady him.”
Findlayson looked blankly at the Donkey Engine. As an Englishman in a nervously disordered state, he did not seem quite able to appreciate the Donkey Engine’s joke. The latter sighed, shook his cylinder a trifle, and began again.
“Hear about the Bow Anchor’s row with the Captain?” he asked the Garboard Strake.
“No,” replied the Strake. “Wouldn’t he bow?”
“He’d bow all right,” said the Donkey Engine, “but he wouldn’t ank. Result is he’s been put in chains.”
“Serves him right,” said the Bilge Stringer, filling his pipe with Findlayson’s tooth-powder. “Serves him right. He ought to be chucked overboard.”
“True,” said the Donkey Engine. “An anchor can’t be made to ank unless you chuck him overboard.”
The company roared at this, but Findlayson never cracked a smile.
“That is very true,” he said. “In fact, how could an anchor ank, as you put it, without being lowered into the sea?”
“It’s a bad case,” observed Bulwark Plate, in a whisper, to the Upper Deck Plank.
“It floors me,” said the Plank. “Idon’t think he’d laugh if his uncle died and left him a million.”
“Shut up,” said the Donkey Engine. “We’ve got to do it or bust. Let’s try again.”
Then he added, aloud,
“Say, Technicalities, did you ever hear that riddle of the Starboard Coal Bunker’s?”
The company properly had not.
“Well, the Starboard Coal Bunker got it off at Lady Airshaft’s last reception at Binks’s Ship-yard: ‘What’s the difference between a man-o’-war going through the Suez Canal under tow of a tug-boat and a boiler with a capacity of 6000 tons of steam loaded to 7000 tons, with no safety-valve, in charge of an engineer who has a certificate from Bellevue Hospital showing that he is a good ambulance-driver, but supports a widowed mother and seven uncles upon no income to speak of, all of which is invested in Spanish fours, bought on a margin of two per cent. in a Wall Street bucket-shop conducted by twoprofessional card-players from Honolulu under indictment at San Francisco for arson?’”
“Tutt!” said the Rudder. “What a chestnut! I was brought up on riddles of that kind.They can’t climb a tree.”
“Nope,” said the Donkey Engine. “That’s not the answer.”
“You don’t know it yourself,” suggested the Funnel.
“Nope,” said the Donkey Engine.
“Well, what the deuce is the answer?” said Findlayson, irritably.
“Give it up—the rest of you?” cried the Donkey Engine.
“We do,” they roared in chorus.
“I’m surprised at you,” said the Donkey Engine. “It’s very simple indeed. The man-o’-war going through the Suez Canal under tow of a tug-boat has a pull—and the other hasn’t, don’t you know—eh?”
Findlayson scratched his forehead.
“I don’t see—” he began.
“There is no reason why you should.You’re not feeling well,” interrupted the Donkey Engine, “but it’s a good riddle—eh?”
“Quite so,” said Findlayson.
“It’s long, anyhow,” said the Screw.
“Which we can’t say for to-day’s run—only 867 miles?” suggested the Donkey Engine, interrogatively.
“It’s long enough,” growled the Screw.
“It certainly is, if it is reckoned in minutes,” retorted the Donkey Engine. “I never knew such a long day.”
And so they continued in an honest and technical effort to restore Findlayson. But he wouldn’t laugh, and finally the Screw and the Centrifugal Bilge Pump and the Stringers and the other well-meaning Technicalities rose up to leave. Day was approaching, and all were needed at their various posts.
“Good-night—or good-morning, Findlayson,” said the Donkey Engine. “We’ve had a very pleasant night. I am only sorry, however, we cannot make you laugh.”
“I never laugh,” said Findlayson.“But tell me, old chap, are you really human? You talk as if you were.”
“No,” returned the Donkey Engine, sadly. “I am neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. I’m abivalve—a cockney bivalve,” he added.
“Oh,” replied Findlayson, with a gesture of deprecation, “you are not a clam!”
“No,” the Donkey Engine replied, as with a sudden inspiration; “but I’m a hoister.”
And Findlayson burst into a paroxysm of mirth—it must be remembered that he was English—the like of which the good old liner never heard before.
And later, when Peroo returned, having won atPok-Kahwith theDrummerz, he found his master sleeping like the veriest child.
Findlayson was saved.
Monty St. Vincent had no sooner seated himself after telling the interesting tale of the Salvation of Findlayson, when Billy Jones, of theOracle, rose up and stated that Mr. Harry Snobbe, as the holder of the seventh ball, would unfold the truly marvellous story that had come to him after the first dinner of the Dreamers.
“Mr. Snobbe requests all persons having nerves to be unstrung to unstring them now. His tale, he tells me, is one of intense gloom; but how intense the gloom may be, I know not. I will leave it to him to show. Gentlemen, Mr. Snobbe.”
Mr. Snobbe took the floor, and after a few preliminary remarks, read as follows:
A TALE OF THE ISLE OF MAN
Old Gloomster Goodheart, of Ballyhack, left the Palace of the Bishop of Man broken-hearted. The Bishop had summoned him a week previous to show cause why he should not be removed from his office of Gloomster, a position that had been held by members of his family for ten generations, aye, since the days of that ancient founder of the family, Cronky Gudehart, of whom tradition states that his mere presence at a wedding turned the marriage feast into a seeming funeral ceremony, making men and women weep, and on two occasions driving the bride to suicide and the groom into the Church. Indeed, Cronky Gudehart was himself the first to occupy the office of Gloomster. The office was created for his especial benefit, as you will see, for it was the merefact that the two grooms bereft at the altar sought out the consolation of the monastery that called the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities to the desirability of establishing such a functionary. The two grooms were men of wealth, and, had it not been for Cronky Gudehart’s malign influence, neither they nor their wealth would have passed into the control of the Church, a fact which Ramsay Ballawhaine, then Bishop of Man, was quick to note and act upon.
“The gloomier the world,” said he, “the more transcendently bright will Heaven seem; and if we can make Heaven seem bright, the Church will be able to declare dividends. Let us spread misery and sorrow. Let us destroy the sunshine of life that so gilds with glory the flesh and the devil. Let all that is worldly be made to appear mean and vile and sordid.”
“But how?” Ramsay Ballawhaine was asked. “That is a hard thing to do.”
“For some ’twill doubtless so appear, but I have a plan,” the Bishop had answered.“We have here living, not far from Jellimacksquizzle, the veriest spoil-sport in the person of Cronky Gudehart. He has a face that would change the August beauties of a sylvan forest into a bleak scene of wintry devastation. I am told that when Cronky Gudehart gazes upon a rose it withers, and children passing him in the highways run shrieking to their mothers, as though escaping from the bogie man of Caine Hall—which castle, as you know, has latterly been haunted by horrors that surpass the imagination. His voice is like the strident cry of doom. Hearing his footsteps, strong men quail and women swoon; and I am told that, dressed as Santa Claus, on last Christmas eve he waked up his sixteen children, and with a hickory stick belabored one and all until they said that mercy was all they wanted for their Yule-tide gifts.”
“’Tis true,” said the assistant vicar. “’Tis very true; and I happen to know, through my own ministrations, that when a beggar-woman from Sodor applied toCronky Gudehart for relief from the sorrows of the world, he gave her a bottle of carbolic acid, saying that therein lay the cure of all her woes. But what of Cronky and your scheme?”
“Let us establish the office of Gloomster,” returned the Bishop. “Set apart Nightmare Abbey as his official residence, and pay him a salary to go about among the people spreading grief and woe among them until they fly in desperation to us who alone can console.”
“It’s out of sight!” ejaculated the assistant vicar, “and Cronky’s just the man for the place.”
It was thus that the office of Gloomster was instituted. As will be seen, the duties of the Gloomster were simple. He was given liberty of entrance to all joyous functions in the life of the Isle of Man, social or otherwise, and his duties were to ruin pleasure wherever he might find it. Cronky Gudehart was installed in the office, and Nightmare Abbey was set apart as his official residence. He attended allweddings, and spoiled them in so far as he was able. It was his custom, when the vicar asked if there was any just reason why these two should not be joined together in holy wedlock, to rise up and say that, while he had no evidence at hand, he had no doubt there was just cause in great plenty, and to suggest that the ceremony should be put off a week or ten days while he and his assistants looked into the past records of the principals. At funerals he took the other tack, and laughed joyously at every manifestation of grief. At hangings he would appear, and dilate humorously upon the horrid features thereof; and at afternoon teas he would appear clad in black garments from head to foot, and exhort all present to beware of the future, and to give up the hollowness and vanities of tea and macaroons.
Results were not long in their manifestation. In place of open marriage the young people of the isle, to escape the malignant persecution of the Gloomster, took up the habit of elopement, and aselopements always end in sorrow and regret, the monasteries and nunneries waxed great in the land. To avoid funerals, at which the Gloomster’s wit was so fearsome a thing, the sick or the maimed and the halt fled out into the open sea and drowned themselves, and all sociability save that which came from book sales and cake auctions—in their very nature destructive of a love of life—faded out of the land.
“Cronky Gudehart was an ideal Gloomster,” said the Bishop of Man, with a sigh, when that worthy spoil-sport, having gone to Africa for a vacation, was eaten by cannibals. “We shall not look upon his like again.”