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

here, since I have no wish to commit myself thus publicly. I will say, however, that I did not blame the youthful-looking person unreservedly.

"Moreover, I have very fine apartments in Hades," he added, "and I should hate to give them up. I live at the select home for gods and gentlemen, kept by Madame Persephone. When she takes an interest in one of her boarders she is a mighty fine landlady, and, like most ladies, if I may say it with all due modesty, she has taken an interest in me. The result is that I have the best suite in the house, overlooking the Styx, and as fine a table as any one could want. But I must ask your pardon, sir, for taking up so much of your time with my personal affairs. We both seem to have forgotten that I am here to wait upon you."

"It has been very interesting, Adonis," I said. "And if it's anybody's fault, it is mine. What I wished of you was that you should get out my breakfast-suit, so that I might dress and go to the dining-room."

"Certainly, sir," he replied, walking to the clothes-closet. "Pardon me, but--ah--what is your profession when at home?"

"Why do you ask?" I queried. "Not that I am unwilling to tell you, but--"

"I merely wished to guide my selection of your garments. If you are a naval officer, I will put out your admiral's uniform. If you are a professional golfer, I'll get out your red coat."

"I am a literary man," I said.

"Ah!" he observed, lifting his eyebrows. "Then, of course, you won't mind wearing these."

And he hauled forth a pair of black-and-white trousers with checks as large as the squares of a chessboard, a blue cloth vest with white polka dots, and a long, gray Prince Albert coat, with mauve satin lapels. The shirt was pink and blue, stripes of each alternating, running cross-ways, a white collar, and a flaring red four-in-hand tie!

"Great Scott, Adonis!" I cried. "Must I wear those?"

"You're under no compulsion to do so," said he. "But I thought you said you were a literary man."

"Well?"

"Well--literary men never care what they wear so long as they attract attention, do they?"

I laughed. "We are not all built that way, Adonis," said I. "Some of us are modest and have a little taste."

"Well, it's news to me," said he. "I guess it must be among the minor lights."

"It is--generally," said I. "And if you don't mind, I'd rather wear the golf clothes."

And I did.


V


The Olympian Links

"There," said Adonis, as he put the finishing touch to my costume. "You look like a champion. Do you play golf, sir?"

"There's a difference of opinion about that, Adonis," I replied, my mind reverting to the number of handicap matches I hadn't won. "Some people who have observed my game say I don't. Have you links here?"

"Have we links?" he cried. "Well, rather. They're said to be the best in the universe."

"And are they handy?"

"Very--in the season."

"I don't quite catch the idea," I said.

"Oh, sometimes the course is nearer than it is at others. Come here a minute," he said, "and I'll point it out to you."

He drew me to the wonderful window of which I have already spoken, and through the powerful glass pointed in the direction of Mars.

"See that?" he said.

"Yes," I replied. "That is Mars."

"Exactly," said Adonis. "Mars is the Olympian links. His distance from here varies, as you are probably aware. When Mars is near aphelion he is 61,800,000 miles away, but in his perihelion he gets it down to 33,800,000. That's why we have our golf season while Mars is in his perihelion. It saves us 28,000,000 miles in getting there."

I laughed. "You call that handy, do you?" I said.

"Why not?" he asked. "It's a matter of five minutes on a bike, ten minutes in the automobile, and twenty minutes if you walk."

"Of course, Adonis," said I, "I'm not so green as to swallow all that. How the dickens can you walk through space?"

"You're vastly greener than you think you are," he retorted, rather uncivilly, perhaps, for a valet, but I paid no attention to that, preferring to take him, despite his menial capacity, in his godlike personality. "I might even say, sir, that your greenness is spacious. You judge us from your own mean, limited, mundane point of view. But you needn't think because you earth people cannot walk on air we Olympians are equally incapacitated. You can walk there in two ways. One of these is to fasten a pair of ankle-wings on your legs; the other is to purchase a pair of sky-scrapers. These are simple, consisting merely of boots with gas soles. You inflate the soles with gas and walk along. It's simple and easy, doesn't require any practice, and as long as you keep up in the air and don't step on church steeples or weather-vanes it's perfectly safe. Of course, if you stepped on a sharp-pointed weather-vane, or a lightning-rod, and punctured your sole, there's no telling what would happen."

"And how about the wings?" I asked.

"They're much more exhilarating, but a little dangerous if you don't know how to use them," Adonis replied. "Flying isn't any easier than roller-skating, and if you upset and get your head below your feet it's extremely difficult to right yourself again. If you try to go out there with ankle-wings, take my advice and wear a pair of small balloons about your chest to hold you right-end upward."

"I'll remember," said I, somewhat awed at the prospect of trying to walk through space with the aid of ankle-wings. "And how about the bicycle?" I added.

"If you can ride a bicycle on an ordinary road you'll have no trouble," he replied. "Keep your tires well filled with gas and avoid headers. If I were you, though, at first I'd go out on the automobile. It makes six round trips a day and it's absolutely safe. Being so high up in the air might make you dizzy, and you might find the bicycling too much for your nerves. After a little while you'll get used to enormous heights, and then, of course, you can go any old way you choose. The fare for the round trip is only fifteen hundred dollars."

"The automobile is in competent hands, eh?"

"Yes," said Adonis. "Phaeton has charge of it."

"Humph!" I sneered. "He's your idea of a competent driver, eh? He hasn't that reputation on earth. Was it an untruth that credits him with a fine smash-up when he tried to drive the chariot of the sun?"

"Not a bit of it," said Adonis. "That's all of it simple truth. I happen to know, because I saw the finish of the whole thing myself, and was one of the fellows who turned a fire-extinguisher on him and saved him from being a total loss to the insurance companies. But he learned his lesson. There's nothing like experience to teach caution, and that little episode gave Phaeton caution to burn, if I may indulge in mundane slang. He was guyed so unmercifully by everybody for his carelessness that the first thing he did when he recovered was to learn how to drive, and it wasn't six cycles before he was the most expert whip in Olympus. He finally made a profession of it and established a livery-stable. Then, when the automobile came in and horses went out of fashion, he kept up with the times, and is to-day in charge of all our rapid transit--he owns the franchises for the Jupiter and Dipper Trolley Road, he is the largest stockholder in the Metropolitan Traction Company of Neptune, Saturn, and Venus, and is said to be the moving spirit back of the new underground electric in Hades."

"I guess he'll do," said I, reflecting with admiration upon the wonderful self-rehabilitation of one I had previously regarded as a foolish incompetent.

"You won't have to guess again in this case," said Adonis, dryly. "You've hit it right the very first time."

"Well, tell me about the links, Adonis," said I. "Getting there seems to be an easy matter, but after you get there, how about the course? Is it eighteen holes?"

"It is," said Adonis, "and of proper length, too, and splendidly arranged. You start at the club-house right near the landing-stage and play right around the planet, so that when you're through you're back at the club-house again. At the ninth hole there is a half-way house, where you can get nectar, and ambrosia, and sarsaparilla, and any other soft drink you want."

"No hard drinks, eh?" I queried.

"Not at the half-way house," said Adonis. "We gods have too much sense to indulge in hard drinks in the middle of a game. If you want hard drinks you have to wait till you get back to the club-house."

"That is rather sensible," I said, as I thought of how a Martini cocktail taken at the ninth hole had ruined my chances in the Noodleport Annual Handicap last autumn. "But I say, Adonis," I added, "did I understand you to say that you played all around Mars?"

"Yes--why not?" said he.

"Pretty long holes, I should say," said I. "Mars is four thousand miles round, isn't it?"

"You _are_ an earth-worm," he retorted, forgetting his place wholly in his scorn for my picayune ideas. "Calling a paltry four thousand miles long--why, you can play around that links in two hours and a half."

"Indeed?" said I. "And how long may your hours be? Everything here is on such a magnificent scale, I suppose one of your hours is about equal to one of our decades."

"Oh no," said Adonis. "It isn't that way at all. Fact is, we make our hours to suit ourselves. I am merely reckoning on a basis that you would comprehend. I meant two and a half of your hours. Any moderately expert player can play the Mars links in that time. Take the first hole, for instance--it's only two hundred and fifty miles long."

"Really--is that all!" I ejaculated, growing sarcastic. "A drive, two brassies, an approach, and forty puts, I presume?"

"For a duffer, perhaps," retorted Adonis. "Willie Ph[oe]bus does it in six. A seventy-five-mile drive, a seventy-mile brassie, a loft over the canal for twenty-five miles, a forty-five-mile cleak, a thirty-mile approach, and--"

"A dead easy put of five miles!" I put in, making a pretence of being no longer astonished.

"That's the idea," said Adonis. "Of course, everybody can't do it," he added. "And bogie for that hole is really seven. Willie Ph[oe]bus played too well for a gentleman, so we made him a professional. He'll give you lessons for a thousand dollars an hour, if you want him to."

"Thanks," said I. "I'll think about it. Can he teach me how to drive a ball seventy-five miles?"

"That depends on your capacity," said Adonis. "Some of the best players frequently drive seventy-five miles--the record is ninety-six miles, made by Jove himself. Willie taught him."

"For Heaven's sake!" I cried, losing my self-poise for an instant. "What do you drive with? Olympian Gatling guns?"

"Not at all," replied Adonis. "We use one of our regular drivers--the best is called the 'celestial catapult.' Ph[oe]bus sells 'em at the Caddie House for five hundred dollars apiece. If you strike a ball fair and