The Dreamers: A Club

V

THE SALVATION OF FINDLAYSON

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. 67/8, 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 rôle 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:

Old Gloomster Goodheart, of Ballyhack, left the Palace of the Bishop of Man broken-hearted. The Bishop had summoned him a week previous to show cause why he should not be removed from his office of Gloomster, a position that had been held by members of his family for ten generations, aye, since the days of that ancient founder of the family, Cronky Gudehart, of whom tradition states that his mere presence at a wedding turned the marriage feast into a seeming funeral ceremony, making men and women weep, and on two occasions driving the bride to suicide and the groom into the Church. Indeed, Cronky Gudehart was himself the first to occupy the office of Gloomster. The office was created for his especial benefit, as you will see, for it was the mere fact that the two grooms bereft at the altar sought out the consolation of the monastery that called the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities to the desirability of establishing such a functionary. The two grooms were men of wealth, and, had it not been for Cronky Gudehart’s malign influence, neither they nor their wealth would have passed into the control of the Church, a fact which Ramsay Ballawhaine, then Bishop of Man, was quick to note and act upon.

“The gloomier the world,” said he, “the more transcendently bright will Heaven seem; and if we can make Heaven seem bright, the Church will be able to declare dividends. Let us spread misery and sorrow. Let us destroy the sunshine of life that so gilds with glory the flesh and the devil. Let all that is worldly be made to appear mean and vile and sordid.”

“But how?” Ramsay Ballawhaine was asked. “That is a hard thing to do.”

“For some ’twill doubtless so appear, but I have a plan,” the Bishop had answered. “We have here living, not far from Jellimacksquizzle, the veriest spoil-sport in the person of Cronky Gudehart. He has a face that would change the August beauties of a sylvan forest into a bleak scene of wintry devastation. I am told that when Cronky Gudehart gazes upon a rose it withers, and children passing him in the highways run shrieking to their mothers, as though escaping from the bogie man of Caine Hall – which castle, as you know, has latterly been haunted by horrors that surpass the imagination. His voice is like the strident cry of doom. Hearing his footsteps, strong men quail and women swoon; and I am told that, dressed as Santa Claus, on last Christmas eve he waked up his sixteen children, and with a hickory stick belabored one and all until they said that mercy was all they wanted for their Yule-tide gifts.”

“’Tis true,” said the assistant vicar. “’Tis very true; and I happen to know, through my own ministrations, that when a beggar-woman from Sodor applied to Cronky Gudehart for relief from the sorrows of the world, he gave her a bottle of carbolic acid, saying that therein lay the cure of all her woes. But what of Cronky and your scheme?”

“Let us establish the office of Gloomster,” returned the Bishop. “Set apart Nightmare Abbey as his official residence, and pay him a salary to go about among the people spreading grief and woe among them until they fly in desperation to us who alone can console.”

“It’s out of sight!” ejaculated the assistant vicar, “and Cronky’s just the man for the place.”

It was thus that the office of Gloomster was instituted. As will be seen, the duties of the Gloomster were simple. He was given liberty of entrance to all joyous functions in the life of the Isle of Man, social or otherwise, and his duties were to ruin pleasure wherever he might find it. Cronky Gudehart was installed in the office, and Nightmare Abbey was set apart as his official residence. He attended all weddings, and spoiled them in so far as he was able. It was his custom, when the vicar asked if there was any just reason why these two should not be joined together in holy wedlock, to rise up and say that, while he had no evidence at hand, he had no doubt there was just cause in great plenty, and to suggest that the ceremony should be put off a week or ten days while he and his assistants looked into the past records of the principals. At funerals he took the other tack, and laughed joyously at every manifestation of grief. At hangings he would appear, and dilate humorously upon the horrid features thereof; and at afternoon teas he would appear clad in black garments from head to foot, and exhort all present to beware of the future, and to give up the hollowness and vanities of tea and macaroons.

Results were not long in their manifestation. In place of open marriage the young people of the isle, to escape the malignant persecution of the Gloomster, took up the habit of elopement, and as elopements always end in sorrow and regret, the monasteries and nunneries waxed great in the land. To avoid funerals, at which the Gloomster’s wit was so fearsome a thing, the sick or the maimed and the halt fled out into the open sea and drowned themselves, and all sociability save that which came from book sales and cake auctions – in their very nature destructive of a love of life – faded out of the land.

“Cronky Gudehart was an ideal Gloomster,” said the Bishop of Man, with a sigh, when that worthy spoil-sport, having gone to Africa for a vacation, was eaten by cannibals. “We shall not look upon his like again.”

“I’ve no doubt he disagreed with the cannibals,” sobbed the vicar, as he thought over the virtues of the deceased.

“None who ate him could escape appendicitis,” commented the Bishop, wiping a tear from his eye; “and, thank Heaven, the operation for that has yet to be invented. Those cannibals have been taken by this time from their wicked life.”

So it had gone on for ten generations. Cronky had been succeeded by his son and by his son’s son, and so on. To be Gloomster of the Isle of Man had by habit become the prerogative of the Gudehart family until the present, when Christian Goodheart found himself summoned before the Bishop to show cause why he should not be removed. Hitherto the Gloomster had given satisfaction. It would be hard to point to one of them – unless we except Eric Goodheart, the one who changed the name from Gudehart to Goodheart – who had not filled the island with that kind of sorrow that makes life seem hardly worth living. Eric Goodheart had once caught his father, “Bully Gudehart,” as he was called, in a moment of forgetfulness, doing a kindly act to a beggar at the door. A wanderer had appeared at the door of Nightmare Abbey in a starving condition, and Eric had surprised the Gloomster in the very act of giving the beggar a piece of apple-pie. The father found himself suddenly confronted by the round, staring eyes of his son, and he was frightened. If it were ever known that the Gloomster had done a kindly thing for anybody, he might be removed, and Bully Gudehart recognized the fact.

“Come here!” he cried brutally, to Eric, as the beggar marched away munching hungrily on the pie. “Come here, you brat! Do you hear? Come here!” The boy was coming all the while. “You saw?”

“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. 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.

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.