The Dreamers: A Club by John Kendrick Bangs (affordable ebook reader TXT) 📕
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- Author: John Kendrick Bangs
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[52]
“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.
[53]
Talked about his little toys;
How he played with other boys;
How the beasts an’ birdies all
Come when little Jamie’d call.
’N’ ’en I took that little lad,
Gave him fever, mighty bad.
’N’ ’en it sorter pleased my whim
To have him die and bury him.
It got printed, too, it did
That small pome about the kid,
In a paper in the West;
Put ten dollars in my vest.
Every pa an’ ma about
Cried 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;
[54]
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 to
Make 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 sorter
Think ’at maybe p’r’aps I’d oughter.
[55]
[56]
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 [57] 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 pomes
Was called the laureate of simple homes.
But, Jove! I read, and found it full of rhyme
That kept my eyes a-filling all the time.
One told about a pretty little miss
Whose father had denied a simple kiss,
And as she left, unhappy, full of cares,
She fell and broke her neck upon the stairs.
[58]
And then he wrote a lot of tearful lines
Of children who had trouble with their spines;
And ’stead of joys, he penned so many woes
I 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.”
[59]
IV BEING THE CONTRIBUTION OF MR. BEDFORD PARKE THE OVERCOATA FARCE. IN TWO SCENES
SCENE 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[60] 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?”
[61]
[62]
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 [63] 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[64] 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.”
[65]
[66]
Mary. “Very well, Mrs. Edwards.”
Mrs. Robert Edwards. “And—ah—Mary, tell him to bring some Brussels [67] 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[68] 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[69] 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.[70]
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!”
[71]
[72]
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 [73] 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[74] 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
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