Part 3
_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 is the 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 my first 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 SECOND
_Time_: EVENING AT BOSTON
The scene is laid in the drawing-room of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Edwards. Mrs. Edwards is discovered reading _Pendennis_, and seems in imminent danger of going to sleep over it. Mr. Edwards is stretched out upon the sofa, quite asleep, with _Ivanhoe_ lying 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!"
_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 what I 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 which my 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 over _Ivanhoe_! 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 keep the 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 go out without meeting them in the wings--I mean the hallway."
_Mr. Edwards._ "Lost!"
_Enter_ MR. _and_ MRS. 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_ (_slapping_ Edwards _on 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!_"
CURTAIN.
* * * * *
"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 last throughout 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:
V
THE SALVATION OF FINDLAYSON
_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 liner _New 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. 6-7/8, 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 the Capstan 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 that terrible 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 the _Bashi-bazouks_ earlier 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. That _is_ a 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 permission to 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 and _hiki-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.
"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 could only 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. _Punch_ was 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 role 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 liner _New York_.
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 jute bag 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 of _Pok-Kah_ with a party of _Drummerz_ who 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?"
"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 you 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.
"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 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 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. 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 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.
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."
Mr. Snobbe took the floor, and after a few preliminary remarks, read as follows:
THE GLOOMSTER
A TALE OF THE ISLE OF MAN