The Dreamers: A Club

“That is true,” said Eleanor – “quite true; but there are exceptions to all rules, and I would rather you would fail to rescue some other girl from a position of peril than myself.”

That Miss Huyler’s words were prophetic, the unhappy Van Squibber was to realize, and that soon, for almost as they spoke the cheeks of both were blanched by a dreadful roar in the bushes beside the path upon which they walked.

“Shall I leave you?” asked Van Squibber, politely.

“Not now – oh, not now, I beg!” cried Miss Huyler. “It is too late. The catastrophe is imminent. You should have gone before the author brought it on. Finding me defenceless and you gone, he might have spared me. As it is, you are here, and must fulfil your destiny.”

“Very well,” returned Van Squibber. “That being so, I will see what this roaring is. If it is a child endeavoring to frighten you, I shall get his address and have my man chastise his father, for I could never strike a child; but if it is a lion, as I fear, I shall do what seems best under the circumstances. I have been told, Miss Huyler, that a show of bravery awes a wild beast, while a manifestation of cowardice causes him to spring at once upon the coward. Therefore, if it be a lion, do you walk boldly up to him and evince a cool head, while I divert his attention from you by running away. In this way you, at least, will be saved.”

“Noble fellow!” thought Eleanor to herself. “If he were to ask me, I think I might marry him.”

Meanwhile Van Squibber had investigated, and was horror-struck to find his misgivings entirely too well founded. It was the lion from the park menagerie that had escaped, and was now waiting in ambush to pounce upon the chance pedestrian.

“Remember, Eleanor,” he cried, forgetting for the moment that he had never called her by any but her last name with its formal prefix – “remember to be brave. That will awe him, and then when he sees me running he will pursue me.”

Removing his shoes, Van Squibber, with a cry which brought the hungry beast bounding out into the path, started on a dead run, while Miss Huyler, full of confidence that the story would end happily whatever she might do, walked boldly up to the tawny creature, wondering much, however, why her rescuer had removed his shoes. It was strange that, knowing Van Squibber as well as she did, she did not at once perceive his motive in declining to run in walking-shoes, but in moments of peril we are all excusable for our vagaries of thought! You never can tell, when you are in danger, what may happen next, for if you could you would know how it is all going to turn out; but as it is, mental disturbance is quite to be expected.

For once Van Squibber failed. He ran fast enough and betrayed enough cowardice to attract the attention of ten lions, but this special lion, by some fearful idiosyncrasy of fate, which you never can count on, was not to be deceived. With a louder roar than any he had given, he pounced upon the brave woman, and in an instant she was no more. Van Squibber, turning to see how matters stood, was just in time to witness the final engulfment of the fair girl in the lion’s jaws.

“Egad!” he cried. “I have failed! And now what remains to be done? Shall I return and fight the lion, or shall I keep on and go to the club? If I kill the lion, people will know that I have been walking in the park before breakfast. If I continue my present path and go to the club, the fellows will all want to know what I mean by coming without my shoes on. What a dilemma! Ah! I have it; I will go home.”

And that is what Van Squibber did. He went back to his rooms in the Quigmore at once, hastily undressed, and when, an hour later, his man returned with the soda mint drop, he was sleeping peacefully.

That night he met Travers at the club reading the Evening Moon.

“Hello, Van!” said Travers. “Heard the news?”

“No. What?” asked Van Squibber, languidly.

“Eleanor Huyler has disappeared.”

“By Jove!” cried Van Squibber, with well-feigned surprise. “I heard the boys crying ‘Extra,’ but I never dreamed they would put out an extra for her.”

“They haven’t,” said Travers. “The extra’s about the lion.”

“Ah! And what’s happened to the lion?” cried Van Squibber, nervously.

“He’s dead. Got loose this morning early, and was found at ten o’clock dying of indigestion. It is supposed he has devoured some man, name unknown, for before his nose was an uneaten patent-leather pump, size 9¾ B, and in his throat was stuck the other, half eaten.”

“Ha!” muttered Van Squibber, turning pale. “And they don’t know whose shoes they were?” he added, in a hoarse whisper.

“No,” said Travers. “There’s no clew, even.”

Van Squibber breathed a sigh of relief.

“Robert!” he cried, addressing the waiter, “bring me a schooner of absinthe, and ask Mr. Travers what he’ll have.” And then, turning, he said, sotto voce, to himself, “Saved! And Eleanor is revenged. Van Squibber may have failed, but his patent-leather pumps have conquered.”

III

IN WHICH A MINCE-PIE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE

When Mr. Snobbe sat down after the narration of his story, there was a thunderous outburst of applause. It was evident that the exciting narrative had pleased his fellow-diners very much – as, indeed, it was proper that it should, since it dealt in a veiled sort of way with characters for whom all right-minded persons have not only a deep-seated admiration, but a feeling of affection as well. They had, one and all, in common with the unaffected portion of the reading community, a liking for the wholesome and clean humor of Mr. Van Bibber, and the fact that Snobbe’s story suggested a certain original, even in a weak sort of fashion, made them like it in spite of its shortcomings.

“Good work,” cried Hudson Rivers. “Of course it’s only gas in comparison with the sun, but it gives light, and we like it.”

“And it’s wholly original, too, even though an imitation in manner. The real Van Bibber never failed in anything he undertook,” said Tenafly Paterson. “I’ve often wished he might have, just once – it would have made him seem more human – and for that reason I think Tom is entitled to praise.”

“I don’t know about that,” observed Monty St. Vincent. “Tom hadn’t anything to do with it – it was the dinner. Honor to whom honor is due, say I. Praise the cook, or the caterer.”

“That’s the truth,” put in Billie Jones. “Fact is, when this book of ours comes out, I think, instead of putting our names on the title-page as authors, the thing to do is to print the menu.”

“You miss the point of this association,” interjected Snobbe. “We haven’t banded ourselves together to immortalize a Welsh rabbit or a mince-pie – nay, nor even a ruddy duck. It’s our own glory we’re after.”

“That’s it,” cried Monty St. Vincent – “that’s the beauty of it. The scheme works two ways. If the stuff is good and there is glory in it, we’ll have the glory; but if it’s bad, we’ll blame the dinner. That’s what I like about it.”

“It’s a valuable plan from that point of view,” said the presiding officer. “And now, if the gentleman who secured the ball numbered two will make himself known, we will proceed.”

Hudson Rivers rose up. “I have number two,” he said, “but I have nothing to relate. The coffee I drank kept me awake all night, and when I finally slept, along about six o’clock next morning, it was one of those sweet, dreamless sleeps that we all love so much. I must therefore ask to be excused.”

“But how shall you be represented in the book?” asked Mr. Harry Snobbe.

“He can do the table of contents,” suggested St. Vincent.

“Or the fly-leaves,” said Tenafly Paterson.

“No,” said Huddy; “I shall ask that the pages I should have filled be left blank. There is nothing helps a book so much as the leaving of something to the reader’s imagination. I heard a great critic say so once. He said that was the strong point of the French writers, and he added that Stockton’s Lady or the Tiger took hold because Stockton didn’t insist on telling everything.”

“It’s a good idea,” said Mr. Jones. “I don’t know but that if those pages are left blank they’ll be the most interesting in the book.”

Mr. Rivers sat down with a smile of conscious pride, whereupon Mr. Tenafly Paterson rose up.

“As I hold the number three ball, I will give you the fruits of my dinner. I attribute the work which I am about to present to you to the mince-pie. Personally, I am a great admirer of certain latter-day poets who deal with the woes and joys of more or less commonplace persons. I myself would rather read a sonnet to a snow-shovel than an ode to the moon, but in my dream I seem to have conceived a violent hatred for authors of homely verse, as you will note when I have finished reading my dream-poem called ‘Retribution.’”

“Great Scott!” murmured Billie Jones, with a deep-drawn sigh. “Poetry! From Tenafly Paterson! Of all the afflictions of man, Job could have known no worse.”

“The poem reads as follows,” continued Paterson, ignoring the chairman’s ill-timed remark:

RETRIBUTIONWrit a pome about a kid.Finest one I ever did.Heaped it full o’ sentiment —Very best I could invent.Talked about his little toys;How he played with other boys;How the beasts an’ birdies allCome when little Jamie’d call.’N’ ’en I took that little lad,Gave him fever, mighty bad.’N’ ’en it sorter pleased my whimTo have him die and bury him.It got printed, too, it didThat small pome about the kid,In a paper in the West;Put ten dollars in my vest.Every pa an’ ma aboutCried like mighty – cried right out.I jess took each grandma’s heart,Lammed and bruised it, made it smart;’N’ everybody said o’ me,“Finest pote we ever see,”’Cept one beggar, he got mad.Got worst lickin’ ever had;Got my head atween his fists,Called me “Prince o’ anarchists.”Clipped me one behind my ear —Laid me up for ’most a year.“’Cause,” he said, “my poetry’D made his wife an’ mother cry;“’Twarn’t no poet’s bizness toMake the wimmin all boo-hoo.”’N’ ’at is why to-day, by Jings!I don’t fool with hearts an’ things.I don’t care how high the bids,I’ve stopped scribblin’ ’bout dead kids;’R if I haven’t, kinder sorterThink ’at maybe p’r’aps I’d oughter.

The lines were received with hearty appreciation by all save Dobbs Ferry, who looked a trifle gloomy.

“It is a strange thing,” said the latter, “but that mince-pie affected me in precisely the same way, as you will see for yourselves when I read my contribution, which, holding ball number four as I do, I will proceed to give you.”

Mr. Ferry then read the following poem, which certainly did seem to indicate that the man who prepared the fatal pie had certain literary ideas which he mixed in with other ingredients:

I bought a book of verse the other day,And when I read, it filled me with dismay.I wanted it to take home to my wife,To bring a bit of joy into her life;And I’d been told the author of those pomesWas called the laureate of simple homes.But, Jove! I read, and found it full of rhymeThat kept my eyes a-filling all the time.One told about a pretty little missWhose father had denied a simple kiss,And as she left, unhappy, full of cares,She fell and broke her neck upon the stairs.And then he wrote a lot of tearful linesOf children who had trouble with their spines;And ’stead of joys, he penned so many woesI sought him out and gave him curvature ’f the nose;And all the nation, witnessing his plight,Did crown me King, and cry, “It served him right.”

“A remarkable coincidence,” said Thomas Snobbe. “In fact, the coincidence is rather more remarkable than the poetry.”

“It certainly is,” said Billie Jones; “but what a wonderfully suggestive pie, considering that it was a mince!”

After which dictum the presiding officer called upon the holder of the fifth ball, who turned out to be none other than Bedford Parke, who blushingly rose up and delivered himself of what he called “The Overcoat, a Magazine Farce.”

IV

BEING THE CONTRIBUTION OF MR. BEDFORD PARKE

THE OVERCOATA FARCE. IN TWO SCENESSCENE FIRST Time: Morning at Boston

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “I think it will rain to-day, but there is no need to worry about that. Robert has his umbrella and his mackintosh, and I don’t think he is idiotic enough to lend both of them. If he does, he’ll get wet, that’s all.” Mrs. Edwards is speaking to herself in the sewing-room of the apartment occupied by herself and her husband in the Hotel Hammingbell at Boston. It is not a large room, but cosey. A frieze one foot deep runs about the ceiling, and there is a carpet on the floor. Three pins are seen scattered about the room, in one corner of which is a cane-bottomed chair holding across its back two black vests and a cutaway coat. Mrs. Edwards sits before a Wilcox & Wilson sewing-machine sewing a button on a light spring overcoat. The overcoat has one outside and three inside pockets, and is single-breasted. “It is curious,” Mrs. Edwards continues, “what men will do with umbrellas and mackintoshes on a rainy day. They lend them here and there, and the worst part of it is they never remember where.” A knock is heard at the door. “Who’s there?”

Voice (without). “Me.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards (with a nervous shudder). “Come in.” Enter Mary the house-maid. She is becomingly attired in blue alpaca, with green ribbons and puffed sleeves. She holds a feather duster in her right hand, and in her left is a jar of Royal Worcester. “Mary,” Mrs. Edwards says, severely, “where are we at?”

Mary (meekly). “Boston, ma’am.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “South Boston or Boston proper?”

Mary. “Boston proper, ma’am.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “Then when I say ‘Who’s there?’ don’t say ‘Me.’ That manner of speaking may do at New York, Brooklyn, South Boston, or Congress, but at Boston proper it is extremely gauche. ‘I’ is the word.”

Mary. “Yes, ma’am; but you know, ma’am, I don’t pretend to be literary, ma’am, and so these little points baffles I very often.” Mrs. Edwards sighs, and, walking over to the window, looks out upon the trolley-cars for ten minutes; then, picking up one of the pins from the floor and putting it in a pink silk pin-cushion which stands next to an alarm-clock on the mantel-piece, a marble affair with plain caryatids and a brass fender around the hearth, she resumes her seat before the sewing-machine, and threads a needle. Then —

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “Well, Mary, what do you want?”

Mary. “Please, Mrs. Edwards, the butcher is came, and he says they have some very fine perairie-chickens to-day.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “We don’t want any prairie-chickens. The prairies are so very vulgar. Tell him never to suggest such a thing again. Have we any potatoes in the house?”

Mary. “There’s three left, ma’am, and two slices of cold roast beef.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “Then tell him to bring five more potatoes, a steak, and – Was all the pickled salmon eaten?”

Mary. “All but the can, ma’am.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “Well – Mr. Edwards is very fond of fish. Tell him to bring two boxes of sardines and a bottle of anchovy paste.”

Mary. “Very well, Mrs. Edwards.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “And – ah – Mary, tell him to bring some Brussels sprouts for breakfast. What are you doing with that Worcester vase?”

Mary. “I was takin’ it to cook, ma’am. Sure she broke the bean-pot this mornin’, and she wanted somethin’ to cook the beans in.”

Mrs. Robert Edwards. “Oh, I see. Well, take good care of it, Mary. It’s a rare piece. In fact, I think you’d better leave that here and remove the rubber plant from the jardinière, and let Nora cook the beans in that. Times are a little too hard to cook beans in Royal Worcester.”

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.”