The Dreamers: A Club by John Kendrick Bangs (affordable ebook reader TXT) 📕
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- Author: John Kendrick Bangs
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“How Travers would laugh if he saw me walking in Central Park!” he thought. “He’d probably ask me when I’d come over from Germany,” he added. And then, looking ahead, a thing Van Squibber rarely did, by-the-way—for you can’t always tell[31] by looking ahead what may happen to you—his eyes were confronted by a more or less familiar back.
“Dear me!” he said. “If that isn’t Eleanor Huyler’s back, whose back is it, by Jove?”
Insensibly Van Squibber quickened his pace. This was also a thing he rarely did. “Haste is bad form,” he had once said to Travers, who, on leaving Delmonico’s at 7.20, seemed anxious to catch the 7.10 train for Riverdale. Insensibly quickening his pace, he soon found himself beside the owner of the back, and, as his premonitions had told him, it was Eleanor Huyler.
“Good-morning,” he said.
“Why, Mr. Van Squibber!” she replied, with a terrified smile. “You here?”
“Well,” returned Van Squibber, not anxious to commit himself, “I think so, though I assure you, Miss Huyler, I am not at all certain. I seem to be here, but I must confess I am not quite myself this morning. My man—”[32]
“Yes—I know,” returned the girl, hastily. “I’ve heard of him. He is your alter ego.”
“I had not noticed it,” said Van Squibber, somewhat nonplussed. “I think he is English, though he may be Italian, as you suggest. But,” he added, to change the subject, “you seem disturbed. Your smile is a terrified smile, as has been already noted.”
“It is,” said Miss Huyler, looking anxiously about her.
“And may I ask why?” asked Van Squibber, politely—for to do things politely was Van Squibber’s ambition.
“I—I—well, really, Mr. Van Squibber,” the girl replied, “I am always anxious when you are about. The fact is, you know, the things that happen when you are around are always so very extraordinary. I came here for a quiet walk, but now that you have appeared I am quite certain that something dramatic is about to occur. You see—you—you have turned up so often at the—what I may properly[33] call, I think, the nick of time, and so rarely at any other time, that I feel as though some disaster were impending which you alone can avert.”
“And what then?” said Van Squibber, proudly. “If I am here, what bodes disaster?”
“That is the question I am asking myself,” returned Miss Huyler, whose growing anxiety was more or less painful to witness. “Can your luck hold out? Will your ability as an averter of danger hold out? In short, Mr. Van Squibber, are you infallible?”
The question came to Van Squibber like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky. It was too pertinent. Had he not often wondered himself as to his infallibility? Had he not only the day before said to Travers, “You can’t always tell in advance just how a thing you are going into may turn out, even though you have been through that thing many times, and think you do.”
“I do lead a dramatic life,” he said,[34] quietly, hoping by a show of serenity to reassure her. “But,” he added, proudly, “I am, after all, Van Squibber; I am here to do whatever is sent me to do. I am not a fatalist, but I regard myself as the chosen instrument of fate—or something. So far, I have not failed. On the basis of averages, I am not likely to fail now. Fate, or something, has chosen me to succeed.”
“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.
[35]
[36]
“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 [37] 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[38] 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.”
[39]
[40]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 [41] 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[42] 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[43] 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.”
[44]
III IN WHICH A MINCE-PIE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCEWhen 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[45] 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.”[46]
“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.”
[47]
[48]
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.”
[49]
“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[50] 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.”
[51]
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