The Dreamers: A Club, John Kendrick Bangs [books to read for beginners .txt] 📗
- Author: John Kendrick Bangs
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“Yes, your Honor,” he replied, “I saw. The man said he was nearly dead with hunger, and you gave him food.”
“No,” roared the Gloomster, full of fear, for he knew how small boys prattle, “I did not give him food! I gave him pie!”
“All right, your Majesty,” the boy answered. “You gave him pie. And I see now why they call you Bully. For pie is bully, and nothing less.”
“My son,” the Gloomster responded, seizing a trunk-strap and whacking the lad with it forcefully, “you don’t understand.[113] Do you know why I fed that man?”
“Because he was dying of hunger,” replied the lad, ruefully, rubbing his back where the trunk-strap had hit him.
“Precisely,” said the Gloomster. “If I hadn’t given him that pie he’d have died on the premises, and I can’t afford the expense of having a tramp die here. As it is, he will enjoy a lingering death. That was one of your mother’s pies.”
Eric ran sobbing to his room, but in his heart he believed that he had detected his father in a kindly act, and conceived that a Gloomster might occasionally relax. Nevertheless, when he succeeded to the office he was stern and unrelenting, in spite of the fact that occasionally there was to be detected in his eye a glance of geniality. This was doubtless due to the fact that from the time of his intrusion upon his father’s moment of weakness he was soundly thrashed every morning before breakfast, and spanked before retiring at night, as a preliminary to his prayers.[114]
But Christian Goodheart, the present incumbent, had not given satisfaction, and his Bishop had summoned him to show cause why he should not be removed, and, as we have seen, the Gloomster had gone away broken-hearted. Shortly after having arrived at Nightmare Abbey he was greeted by his wife.
“Well, Christian,” she said, “what did the Bishop say?”
“He wants my resignation,” sighed Christian. “He says I have shown myself unworthy, and I fear he has evidence.”
“Evidence? Against you, my husband, the most disagreeable man in the isle?” cried his wife, fondly.
“Yes,” sighed Christian. “Do you remember, you old termagant, how, forgetting myself and my position, last Tuesday I laughed when Peter Skelly told us what his baby said to his nurse?”
“I do, Christian,” the good woman answered. “You laughed heartily, and I warned you to be careful. It is not the[115] Gloomster’s place to laugh, and I feared it might reach the Bishop’s ears.”
“It has done so,” sighed Christian, shaking his head sadly and wringing his hands in his agony. “It has reached the Bishop’s ears. Little Glory Grouse was passing by the door at the moment and saw me. Astonished, the child ran home and told her mother. ‘Mommer!’ she cried, ‘I have seen the Gloomster laugh! I have seen the Gloomster laugh!’ The child was cross-questioned, but stuck to her story until Mrs. Grouse was convinced, and told her neighbors, and these neighbors told other neighbors, until the story came to the ears of Canon Cashman, by whom it was conveyed to the Bishop himself.”
“What a little gossip that Glory Grouse is! She’ll come to a bad end, mark my words!” cried Mrs. Goodheart, angrily. “She’ll have her honored father’s name on the circus posters yet.”
“Do not blame the child,” said Christian, sadly. “She was right. Who had[116] ever seen a Gloomster smile before? As well expect a ray of sunshine or a glimpse of humor in a Manx novel—”
“But the Bishop is not going to remove you for one false step, is he, Christian? He cannot do that, can he?” pleaded the woman.
“That is what I asked him,” Christian answered. “And he handed me a type-written memorandum of what he called my record. It seems that for six months they have been spying upon me. Read it for yourself.”
Mrs. Goodheart took the paper and read, with trembling hands:
“‘January 1, 1898—wished Peggy Meguire a happy New Year.’ Did you really, Christian?”
[117]
WISHED HER A HAPPY NEW-YEAR
[118]
“I don’t remember doing so,” sighed the Gloomster. “If I did, it must have been in sarcasm, for I hate Peggy Meguire, and I am sure I wish her nothing of the sort. I told the Bishop so, but all he would say was, ‘Read on.’”
“‘February 23, 1898,’” Mrs. Goodheart [119] continued, reading from the paper—“‘took off his coat and wrapped it about the shivering form of a freezing woman.’
“How very imprudent of you, Christian!” said his wife.
“But the Bishop didn’t know the circumstances,” said Christian. “It was the subtlest kind of deviltry, not humanity, that prompted the act. If I hadn’t given her my coat, the old lady would have frozen to death and been soon out of her misery. As it was, my wet coat saved her from an immediate surcease of sorrow, and, as I had foreseen, gave her muscular rheumatism of the most painful sort, from which she has suffered ever since.”
“You should have explained to the Bishop.”
“I did.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said my methods were too damned artistic.”
“What?” cried Mrs. Goodheart. “The Bishop?”
“Oh, well,” said Christian, “words to[120] that effect. He doesn’t appreciate the subtleties of gloom distinction. What he looks for is sheer brutality. Might as well employ an out-and-out desperado for the work. I like to infuse a little art into my work. I’ve tried to bring Gloomsterism up to the level of an art, a science. Slapping a man in the face doesn’t make him gloomy; it makes him mad. But subtlely infusing woe into his daily life, so that he doesn’t know whence all his trouble comes—ah! that is the perfect flower of the Gloomster’s work!”
“H’m!” said Mrs. Goodheart. “That’s well enough, Christian. If you are rich enough to consume your own product with profit, it’s all right to be artistic; but if you are dependent on a salary, don’t forget your consumer. What else have they against you?”
“Read on, woman,” said the Gloomster.
“‘April 1, 1898,’” the lady read. “‘Gave a half-crown to a starving beggar.’”[121]
“That was another highly artistic act,” said Christian. “I told the Bishop that I had given the coin to the beggar knowing it to be counterfeit, and hoping that he would be arrested for trying to pass it. The Bishop cut me short by saying that my hope had not been fulfilled. It seems that that ass of a beggar bought some food with the half-crown, and the grocer who sold him the food put the counterfeit half-crown in the contribution-box the next Sunday, and the Church was stuck. That’s what I call hard luck.”
“Oh, well,” returned Mrs. Goodheart, putting the paper down in despair. “There’s no need to read further. That alone is sufficient to cause your downfall. When do you resign?”
“At once,” sighed Christian. “In fact, the Bishop had already written my resignation—which I signed.”
“And the land is without a Gloomster for the first time in five hundred years?” demanded Mrs. Goodheart.
“No,” said Christian, the tears coursing[122] down his nose. “The place is filled already, and by one who knows gloom only theoretically—a mere summer resident of the Isle of Man. In short, a famous London author has succeeded me.”
“His name!” cried Mrs. Goodheart.
“Just then,” said Snobbe, “I awoke, and did not catch the author’s name. It is a curious thing about dreams that just when you get to the crucial point you wake up.”
“I wonder who the deuce the chap could have been?” murmured the other diners. “Has any London author with a residence on the Isle of Man ever shown any acquaintance with gloom?”
“I don’t know for sure,” said Billy Jones. “But my impression is that it must be the editor of Punch. What I am uncertain about is his residence on the Isle of Man. Otherwise I think he fills the bill.”
[123]
VII THE DREAMERS DISCUSS A MAGAZINE POEMThe pathetic tale of the Gloomster having been told and discussed, it turned out that Haarlem Bridge was the holder of the next ball in the sequence, the eighth. Haarley had been looking rather nervous all the evening, and two or three times he manifested some desire to withdraw from the scene. By order of the chairman, however, the precaution had been taken to lock all the doors, so that none of the Dreamers should escape, and, consequently, when the evil hour arrived, Haarley was perforce on hand.
He rose up reluctantly, and, taking a single page of manuscript from his pocket, after a few preliminary remarks that were no more nor less coherent than the average[124] after-dinner speech, read the following lines, which he termed a magazine poem:
[125]
“‘O ARGENT-BROWED SARCOPHAGUS’”
[126]
“O argent-browed Sarcophagus,
That looms so through the ethered trees,
Why dost thou seem to those of us
Who drink the poisoned chalice on our knees
So distant and so empyrean,
So dour yet full of mystery?
Hast thou the oracle as yet unseen
To guide thy fell misogyny?
“Nay, let the spirit of the age
With all its mystic beauty stand
Translucent ever, aye, in spite the rage
Of Cossack and of Samarcand!
Thou art enough for any soul’s desire!
Thou hast the beauty of cerulean fire!
But we who grovel on the damask earth
Are we despoilt of thy exigeant mirth?
“Canst listen to a prayer, Sarcophagus?
Indeed O art thou there, Sarcophagus?
What time the Philistine denies,
What time the raucous cynic cries,
Avaunt, yet spare! Let this thy motto be,
With thy thesaurian verbosity.
Nor think that I, a caterpillian worm,
Before thy glance should ever honk or squirm.
[127]
“’Tis but the stern condition of the poor
That panting brings me pottering at thy door,
To breathe of love and argent charity
For thee, for thee, iguanodonic thee!”
“That’s an excellent specimen of magazine poetry,” said Billy Jones. “But I observe, Haarley, that you haven’t given it a title. Perhaps if you gave it a title we might get at the mystery of its meaning. A title is a sort of Baedeker to the general run of magazine poems.”
Haarlem grew rather red of countenance as he answered, “Well, I didn’t exactly like to give it the title I dreamed; it didn’t seem to shed quite as much light on the subject as a title should.”
“Still, it may help,” said Huddy Rivers. “I read a poem in a magazine the other day on ‘Mystery.’ And if it hadn’t had a title I’d never have understood it. It ran this way:
“Life, what art thou? Whence springest thou?
The past, the future, or the now?
Whence comes thy lowering lunacy?
Whence comes thy mizzling mystery?
[128]Hast thou a form, a shape, a lineament?
Hast thou a single seraph-eyed medicament
To ease our sorrow and our twitching woe?
Hast thou one laudable Alsatian glow
To compensate, commensurate, and condign
For all these dastard, sleekish qualms of mine?
Hast thou indeed an abject agate plot
To show that what exists is really not?
Or art thou just content to sit and say
Life’s but a specious, coral roundelay?”
“I committed the thing to memory because it struck me as being a good thing to remember—it was so full of good phrases. ‘Twitching woe,’ for instance, and ‘sleekish qualms,’” he continued.
“Quaking qualms would have been better,” put in Tenafly Paterson, who judged poetry from an alliterative point of view.
“Nevertheless, I liked sleekish qualms,” retorted Huddy. “Quaking qualms might be more alliterative, but sleekish qualms is less commonplace.”
“No doubt,” said Tenafly. “I never had ’em myself, so I’ll take your word for[129] it. But what do you make out of ‘coral roundelay’?”
“Nothing at all,” said Huddy. “I don’t bother my head about ‘coral roundelay’ or ‘seraph-eyed medicament.’ I haven’t wasted an atom of my gray matter on ‘lowering lunacy’ or ‘agate plot’ or ‘mizzling mystery.’ And all because the poet gave his poem a title. He called the thing ‘Mystery,’ and when I had read it over half a dozen times I concluded that he was right; and if the thing remained a mystery to the author, I don’t see why a reader should expect ever to be able to understand it.”
“Very logical conclusion, Huddy,” said Billy Jones, approvingly. “If a poet chooses a name for his poem, you may make up your mind that there is good reason for it, and certainly the verses you have recited about the ‘coral roundelay’ are properly designated.”
“Well, I’d like to have the title of that yard of rhyme Haarlem Bridge just recited,” put in Dobbs Ferry, scratching his[130] head in bewilderment. “It strikes me as being quite as mysterious as Huddy’s. What the deuce can a man mean by referring to an ‘auburn-haired Sarcophagus’?”
“It wasn’t auburn-haired,” expostulated Haarlem. “It was argent-browed.”
“Old Sarcophagus had nickel-plated eyebrows, Dobby,” cried Tom Snobbe, forgetting himself for a moment.
“Well, who the dickens was old Sarcophagus?” queried Dobby, unappeased.
“He was
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