Olympian Nights, John Kendrick Bangs [good book club books .TXT] 📗

do you want to see him for? He's an old fossil."

"Granted," said I. "Still, I'm interested in old fossils."

The old gentleman roared with laughter at this apparently simple remark. I didn't see the fun of it myself, and his mirth irritated me.

"Excuse me, my dear sir," I said, trying to control my impatience. "But you don't seem to understand my position. I can't stay here and talk to you while the ruler of Olympus waits. Can't you see that?"

"No, I can't," he replied. "Can't see it at all, and I'm a pretty good seer as a general thing, too. If you didn't wish to see me, you had no business to come into my room. Now that you are here, I'm going to keep you for a little while. Take off that absurd-looking tile and sit down."

At this I grew angry. I wasn't responsible for the helmet I wore, and I had felt all along that I looked like an ass in it.

"I'll do nothing of the sort, you confounded old meddler," I cried. "I've come here on invitation, and, if I've got into the wrong room, it isn't my fault. That jackass of a Major Domo told me this was the place. Let me out."

I strode to the doorway, and the old gentleman turned to his desk and opened a drawer.

"Cigar or cigarette?" he said, calmly.

"Neither, you old fool," I retorted, turning the knob and tugging upon it. "I have no time for a smoke."

The door was locked. The old gentleman settled back in his twirling chair and regarded me with a twinkle in his eye as I vainly tried to pull the door open, and I realized that I was helpless.

"Better sit down and enjoy a quiet smoke with me," he said, calmly. "Take off that absurd-looking tile and talk to me."

"I haven't anything to say to you," I replied. "Not a word. Do you intend to let me out of this or not?"

"All in good time--all in good time," he said. "Let's talk it over. Why do you wish to go? Don't you find me good company?"

"You're a stupid old idiot!" I shouted, almost weeping with rage. "Locking me up in your rotten old den here when you must realize what you are depriving me of. What earthly good it does you I can't see."

"It does me lots of good," he said, with a chuckle. "Really, sir, it gives me a new sensation--first new sensation I have had in a long, long time. Let me see now, just how many names have you called me in the three minutes I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance?"

"Give me time, and I'll call you a lot more," I retorted, sullenly.

"Good--I'll give you the time," he said. "Go ahead. I'll listen to you for a whole hour. What am I besides a meddler, and a stupid old idiot, and an old fool?"

"You're a gray-headed maniac, and a--a zinc-fastened Zany. A doddering dotard and a chimerical chump," I said.

"Splendid!" roared he, with a spasm of laughter that seemed nearly to rend him. "Go on. Keep it up. I am enjoying myself hugely."

"You're a sneak-livered poltroon to treat me this way," I added, indignantly.

"That's the best yet," he interrupted, slapping his knee with delight. "Sneak-livered poltroon, eh? Well, well, well. Go on. Go on."

"If you'll give me a copy of Roget's _Thesaurus_, I'll tell you what else you are," I retorted, with a note of sarcasm in my voice. "It will require a reference to that book to do you justice. I can't begin to carry all that you are in my mind."

"With pleasure," said he, and reaching over to his bookcase he took thence the desired volume and handed it to me. "Proceed," he added. "I am all ears."

"Most jackasses are," I returned, savagely.

"Magnificent," he cried, ecstatically. "You are a genius at epithet. But there's the book. Let me light a cigar for you and then you can begin. Only _do_ take off that absurd tile. You don't know how supremely unbecoming it is."

There was nothing for it, so I resolved to make the best of it by meeting the disagreeable old pantaloon on his own ground. I lit one of his cigars and sat down to tell the curious old freak what I thought of him. Ordinarily I would have avoided doing this, but his tyrannical exercise of his temporary advantage made me angry to the very core of my being.

"Ready?" said I.

"Quite," said he. "Don't stint yourself. Just behave as if you'd known me all your life. I sha'n't mind."

And I began: "Well, after referring to the word 'idiot' in the index, just to get a lead," I said, "I shall begin by saying that you are evidently a hebetudinous imbecile, an indiscriminate stult--"

"Hold on!" he cried. "What's that last? I never heard the term before."

"Stult--an indiscriminate stult," I said, scornfully. "I invented the word myself. Real words won't describe you. Stult is a new term, meaning all kinds of a fool, plus two. And I've got a few more if you want them."

"Want them?" he cried. "By Vulcan, I dote upon them! They are nectar to my thirsty ears. Go on."

"You are a senseless frivoler, a fugacious gid, an infamous hoddydoddy; you are a man with the hoe with the emptiness of ages in your face; you are a brother to the ox, with all the dundering niziness of a plain, ordinary buzzard added to your shallow-brained asininity. Now will you let me go?"

"Not I," said he, shaking his head as if he relished a situation which was gradually making a madman of me. "I'd like to oblige you, but I really can't. You are giving me too much pleasure. Is there nothing more you can call me?"

"You're a dizzard!" I retorted. "And a noodle and a jolt-head; you're a jobbernowl and a doodle, a maundering mooncalf and a blockheaded numps, a gaby and a loon; you're a _Hatter_!" I shrieked the last epithet.

"Heavens!" he cried, "A Hatter! Am I as bad as that?"

"Oh, come now," I said, closing the _Thesaurus_ with a bang. "Have some regard for my position, won't you?"

I had resolved to appeal to his better nature. "I don't know who the dickens you are. You may be the three wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl rolled into one, for all I know. You may be any old thing. I don't give a tinker's cuss what you are. Under ordinary circumstances I've no doubt I should find you a very pleasant old gentleman, but under present conditions you are a blundering old bore."

"That's not bad--indeed, a blundering old bore is pretty good. Let me see," he continued, looking up the word "bore" in the index of the _Thesaurus_, "What else am I? Maybe I'm an unmitigated nuisance, an exasperating and egregious glum, a carking care, and a pestiferous pill, eh?"

"You are all of that," I said, wearily. "Your meanness surpasseth all things. I've met a good many tough characters in my day, but you are the first I have ever encountered without a redeeming feature. You take advantage of a mistake for which I am not at all responsible, and what do you do?"

"Tell me," he replied. "What do I do? I shall be delighted to hear. I've been asking myself that question for years. What do I do? Go on, I implore you."

"You rub it in, that's what," I retorted. "You take advantage of me. You bait me; you incommode me. You--you--"

"Here, take the _Thesaurus_," he said, as I hesitated for the word. "It will help you. I provoke you, I irritate you, I make you mad, I sour your temper, I sicken, disgust, revolt, nauseate, repel you. I rankle your soul. I jar you--is that it?"

"Give me the book," I cried, desperately. "Yes!" I added, referring to the page. "You tease, irk, harry, badger, infest, persecute. You gall, sting, and convulse me. You are a plain old beast, that's what you are. You're a conscienceless sneak and a wherret--you mean-souled blot on the face of nature!"

Here I broke down and wept, and the old gentleman's sides shook with laughter. He was, without exception, the most extraordinary old person I had ever encountered, and in my tears I cursed the English language because it was inadequate properly to describe him.

For a time there was silence. I was exhausted and my tormentor was given over to his own enjoyment of my discomfiture. Finally, however, he spoke.

"I'm a pretty old man, my dear fellow," he said. "I shouldn't like to tell you how old, because if I did you'd begin on the _Thesaurus_ again with the word 'liar' for your lead. Nevertheless, I'm pretty old; but I want to say to you that in all my experience I have never had so diverting a half-hour as you have given me. You have been so outspoken, so frank--"

"Oh, indeed--I've been frank, have I?" I interrupted. "Well, what I have said isn't a marker to what I'd like to have said and would have said if language hadn't its limitations. You are the infinity of the unmitigated, the supreme of the superfluous. In unqualified, inexcusable, unsurpassable meanness you are the very IT!"

"Sir," said the old gentleman, rising and bowing, "you are a man of unusual penetration, and I like you. I should like to see more of you, but your hour has expired. I thank you for your pleasant words, and I bid you an affectionate good-morning."

A deep-toned bell struck the hour of twelve. A fanfare of trumpets sounded outside, and the huge door flew open, and without a word in reply, glad of my deliverance, I turned and fled precipitately through it. The sumptuous guard stood outside to receive me, and as the door closed behind me the band struck up a swelling measure that I shall not soon forget.

"Well," said the Major Domo, as we proceeded back to my quarters, "did he receive you nicely?"

"Who?" said I.

"Jupiter, of course," he said.

"I didn't see him," I replied, sadly. "I fell in with a beastly old bore who wouldn't let go of me. You showed me into the wrong room. Who was that old beggar, anyhow?"

"Beggar?" he cried. "Wrong room? Beggar?"

"Certainly," said I. "Beggar is mild, I admit. But he's all that and much more. Who is he?"

"I don't know what you mean," replied the Major Domo. "But you have been for the last hour with his Majesty himself."

"What?" I cried. "I--that old man--we--"

"The old gentleman was Jupiter. Didn't he tell you? He made a special effort to make you feel at home--put himself on a purely mortal basis--"

I fell back, limp and nerveless.

"What will he think of me?" I moaned, as I realized what had happened.

"He thinks you are the best yet," said the Major Domo. "He has sent word by his messenger, Mercury, that the honors of Olympus are to be showered upon you to their fullest extent. He says you are the only frank mortal he ever met."

And with this I was escorted back to my rooms at the hotel, impressed with the idea that all is not lead that doesn't glitter, and when I thought of my invention of the word "stult,"