The Dreamers Part 16

"Hoot mon! Hoot mon!"

Tammas clutched his stick. The voice was the same, and here it had penetrated the sacred precincts of the church! Nowhere was he safe from insult. Drumsheugh looked up, startled, and the voice began again:

"Gang awa' a-that, a-that, a-that--gang awa'! Oh, ye crittur! oh, ye cow!"

And then a t.i.tter ran through that solemn crowd; for, despite the gravity of the situation, even John Knox himself must have smiled. A great green parrot had flown in at one of the windows, and had perched himself on the pulpit, where, with front undismayed, he addressed the minister:

"Gang awa', gang awa'!" he cried, and preened himself. "Hoot mon, gang awa'!"

"_Knox n.o.bisc.u.m!_" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Drumsheugh. "It's Moggie McPiggert's pairrut," and he chuckled; and then, as Lang Tammas realized the situation, even he smiled broadly. He had been insulted by a parrot only, and the knowledge of it made him feel better.

The bird was removed and the service proceeded; and later, when it was over, as the two old fellows walked back to Drumsheugh's house in the gathering shades of the night, Lang Tammas said:

"I acquet Drumtochty o' its eensoolts, Drumsheugh, but I've lairnt a lesson this day."

"What's that?" asked Drumsheugh.

"When pairruts speak Scutch deealect, it's time we Scuts gae it oop,"

said Tammas.

"I think so mysel'," agreed Drumsheugh. "But hoo express our thochts?"

"I dinna ken for ye," said Lang Tammas, "but for me, mee speakee heathen Chinee this timee on."

"Vairy weel," returned Drumsheugh. "Vairy weel; I dinna ken heathen Chinee, but I hae some acqueentance wi' the tongue o' sairtain Amairicans, and that I'll speak from this day on--it's vairy weel called the Bowery eediom, and is a judeecious mixture o' English, Irish, and Volapeck."

And from that time on Lang Tammas and Drumsheugh spoke never another word of Scotch dialect; and while Tammas never quite mastered pidgin-English, or Drumsheugh the tongue of Fadden, they lived happily ever after, which in a way proves that, after all, the parrot is a useful as well as an ornamental bird.

XII

CONCLUSION--LIKEWISE MR. BILLY JONES

The cheers which followed the narration of the curious resolve of Lang Tammas and Drumsheugh were vociferous, and Berkeley Hights sat down with a flush of pleasure on his face. He construed these as directed towards himself and his contribution to the diversion of the evening. It never entered into his mind that the applause involved a bit of subtle appreciation of the kindness of Tammas and of Drumsheugh to the reading public in thus declining to give them more of something of which they had already had enough.

When the cheers had subsided Mr. Jones rose from his chair and congratulated the club upon its exhibit.

"Even if you have but faintly re-echoed the weaknesses of the strong,"

he said, "you have done well, and I congratulate you. It is not every man in your walk in life who can write as grammatically as you have dreamed. I have failed to detect in any one of the stories or poems thus far read a single grammatical error, and I have no doubt that the ma.n.u.scripts that you have read from are gratifyingly free from mistakes in spelling as well, so that, from a newspaper man's stand-point, I see no reason why you should not get these proceedings published, especially if you do it at your own expense.

"I now declare The Dreamers adjourned _sine die_!"

"Not much!" cried the members, unanimously. "Where's your contribution?"

"Out with it, William!" shouted Tom Sn.o.bbe. "I can tell by the set of your coat that you've got a ma.n.u.script concealed in your pocket."

"There's nothing ruins the set of a coat more quickly than a rejected ma.n.u.script in the pocket," put in Hudson Rivers. "I've been there myself--so, as Lang Tammas said, Billy, 'Pit it oot, and get it crackit.'"

"Well," Jones replied, with a pleased smile, "to tell you the truth, gentlemen, I had come prepared in case I was called upon; but the hour is late," he added, after the manner of one who, though willing, enjoyed being persuaded. "Perhaps we had better postpone--"

"Out with it, old man. It is late, but it will be later still if you don't hurry up and begin," said Tenafly Paterson.

"Very well, then, here goes," said Jones. "Mine is a ghost-story, gentlemen, and it is called 'The Involvular Club; or, The Return of the Screw.' It is, like the rest of the work this evening, imitative, after a fas.h.i.+on, but I think it will prove effective."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. JONES BEGINS]

Mr. Jones hereupon took the ma.n.u.script from his bulging pocket and read as follows:

THE INVOLVULAR CLUB; OR, THE RETURN OF THE SCREW

The story had taken hold upon us as we sat round the blazing hearth of Lord Ormont's smoking-room, at Castle Aminta, and sufficiently interfered with our comfort, as indeed from various points of view, not to specify any one of the many, for they were, after all, in spite of their diversity, of equal value judged by any standard, not even excepting the highest, that of Vereker's disturbing narrative of the uncanny visitor to his chambers, which the reader may recall--indeed, must recall if he ever read it, since it was the most remarkable ghost-story of the year--a year in which many ghost-stories of wonderful merit, too, were written--and by which his reputation was made--or rather extended, for there were a certain few of us, including Feverel and Vanderbank and myself, who had for many years known him as a constant--almost too constant, some of us ventured, tentatively perhaps, but not the less convincedly, to say--producer of work of a very high order of excellence, rivalling in some of its more conspicuous elements, as well as in its minor, to lay no stress upon his subtleties, which were marked, though at times indiscreetly inevident even to the keenly a.n.a.lytical, hinging as these did more often than not upon abstractions born only of a circ.u.mscribed environment--circ.u.mscribed, of course, in the larger sense which means the narrowing of a circle of appreciation down to the select few const.i.tuting its essence--the productions of the greatest masters of fictional style the world has known, or is likely, in view of present tendencies towards miscalled romance, which consists solely of depicting scenes in which bloodshed and murder are rife, soon to know again--it was proper it should, in a company chosen as ours had been from among the members of The Involvular Club, with Adrian Feverel at its head, Vereker as its vice-president, and Lord Ormont, myself, and a number of ladies, including Diana of the Crossways, and little Maisie--for the child was one of our cares, her estate was so pitiable a one--Rhoda Fleming, Daisy Miller, and Princess Ca.s.sima.s.sima, one and all, as the reader must be aware, personages--if I may thus refer to a group of appreciation which included myself--who knew a good thing when they saw it, which, it may as well be confessed at once, we rarely did in the raucous fields of fiction outside of, though possibly at times moderately contiguous to, our own territory, although it should be said that Miss Miller occasionally manifested a lamentable lack of regard for the objects for which The Involvular was formed, by showing herself, in her semi-American way, regrettably direct of speech and given over not infrequently to an unhappy use of slang, which we all, save Maisie, who was young, and, in spite of all she knew, not quite so knowledgeable a young person as some superficial observers have chosen to believe, sincerely deprecated, and on occasion when it might be done tactfully, endeavored to mitigate by a reproving glance, or by a still deeper plunge into nebulous rhetoric, as a sort of palliation to the Muse of Obscurity, which in our hearts we felt that good G.o.ddess would accept, strove to offset.

["Excuse me," said Mr. Tom Sn.o.bbe, rising and interrupting the reader at this point, "but is that all one sentence, Mr. Jones?"

"Yes," Jones replied. "Why not? It's perfectly clear in its meaning. Aren't you used to long sentences on the Hudson?" he added, sarcastically.

"No," retorted Sn.o.bbe; "that is to say, not where I live. I believe they have 'em at Sing Sing occasionally. But they never get used to them, I'm told."

"Be quiet, Tom," said Harry Sn.o.bbe. "It's bad form to interrupt.

Let Billy finish his story." Mr. Jones then resumed his ma.n.u.script.]

A perceptible shudder ran through, or rather rolled over, the group, for it was corrugating in its quality, bringing forcibly to mind, quite as much for its chill, too, as for the wrinkling suggestion of its pa.s.sage up and down our backs, turned as some of these were towards the fire, and others towards the steam-radiator, which now and again clicked startlingly in the dull red glow of the hearth light, augmenting the all too obvious nervousness of the listeners, the impa.s.sive and uninspiring squares of iron of which certain modern architects of a limited decorative sense--if, indeed, they have any at all, for the mere use of corrugated iron in the construction of a facade would seem not to admit of an aesthetic side to its designer's nature, however ornately distributed over the surface of an exterior it may be--have chosen to avail themselves, prompted either by an appalling parsimony on the part of a client, or for reasons of haste employed for the lack of more immediately available material, it being an undeniable fact that in some portions of the world stucco and terracotta, now frequently used in lieu of more substantial, if not more enduring materials, are difficult of access, and the use of a speedily obtainable subst.i.tute becoming thus a requirement as inevitable as it is to be regretted, as in the case of the fruit-market at Venice, standing as it does on the bank of the Grand Ca.n.a.l, a pile of stark, staring, obtrusive, wrinkling zinc thrusting itself brazenly into the line of a vision attuned to the most gloriously towering palazzos, as rich in beauty as in romance, with such self-sufficiency as to bring tears to the eyes of the most stolidly unappreciative, of the most coldly unaesthetic, or, in short, as some one has chosen to say, in an essay the t.i.tle of which and the name of whose author escape us at this moment, with such complacent vulgarity as to amount to nothing less than a dastardly blot upon the escutcheon of the Venetians, which all of their glorious achievements in art, in history, and in letters can never quite ineradically efface, and alongside of which the whistling steam-tugs with their belching funnels, which are by slow degrees supplanting the romantic gondolier with his picturesque costume and his tender songs of sunny climes in the cab service of the Bride of the Adriatic, seem quite excusable, or, in any event, not so unforgivable as to const.i.tute what the Americans would call an infernal shame.

[At this point the reader was interrupted again.

"Hold on a minute, Billy--will you, please?" said Tenafly Paterson. "Let's get this story straight. As I understand the first sentence somebody told a ghost-story, didn't he?"

"Yes," replied Jones, a trifle annoyed.

"And the second sentence means that those who heard it felt creepy?"

"Precisely."

"Then why the deuce couldn't you have said, 'When So-and-So had finished, the company shuddered'?"

"Because," replied Jones, "I am reading a story which is constructed after the manner of a certain school. I'm not reading a postal-card or a cable message."

The reader then resumed.]

Miss Miller, to relieve the strain upon the nerves of those present, which was becoming unbearably tense--and, in fact, poor Maisie had burst into tears with the sheer terror of the climax, and had been taken off to be put to bed by Mrs. Brookenham, who, in spite of many other qualities, was still a womanly woman at heart, and not wholly deficient in those little tendernesses, those trifling but ineffable softnesses of nature, which are at once the chief source of woman's strength and of her weakness, a fact she was constantly manifesting to us during our stay at Lord Ormont's, and which we all remarked and in some cases commented upon, since the discovery had in it some of the qualities of a revelation--began to sing one of those extraordinary popular songs that one hears at the music-halls in London, and in the politer and more refined circles of American society, if indeed there may be said to be such a thing in a land so new as to be as yet mostly veneer, with little that is solid in its social substructure, beginning as its const.i.tuent factors do at the top and working downward, rather than choosing the more natural course of beginning at the bottom and working upward, and which must materially, one may think, affect the social solidarity of the nation by r.e.t.a.r.ding its growth and in otherwise interfering with its healthy, not to say normal development, and which, as the words and import of it come back to me, was known by the rather vulgar and vernacular t.i.tle of "All c.o.o.ns Look Alike to Me," thus indicating that the life treated of in the melody, which was not altogether unmusical, and was indeed as a matter of fact quite fetching in its quality, running in one's ears for days and nights long after its first hearing, was that of the negro, and his personal likeness to his other black brethren in the eyes even of one who was supposed to have been at one time, prior to the action of the song if not coincidently with it, the object of his affections.

[Had Jones not been wholly absorbed in the reading of this wonderful story, he might at this moment have heard a slight but unmistakable rumbling sound, and have looked up and seen much that would have interested him. But, as this kind of a story requires for its complete comprehension a complete concentration of mind, he did not hear, and so, continuing, did not see.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE DID NOT SEE]