The Dreamers: A Club, John Kendrick Bangs [books to read for beginners .txt] 📗

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 you[96] up. 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.[97]

“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. “I[98] don’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 two[99] professional 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.[100] 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.[101] “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 a bivalve—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 at Pok-Kah with the Drummerz, he found his master sleeping like the veriest child.

Findlayson was saved.

[102]

VI IN WHICH HARRY SNOBBE RECITES A TALE OF GLOOM

Monty St. Vincent had no sooner seated himself after telling the interesting tale of the Salvation of Findlayson, when Billy Jones, of the Oracle, 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.”[103]

Mr. Snobbe took the floor, and after a few preliminary remarks, read as follows:

THE GLOOMSTER

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 mere[104] fact 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.[105] “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 to[106] Cronky 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 all[107] weddings, 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 as[108] elopements 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.”

[109]