The Genial Idiot: His Views and Reviews by John Kendrick Bangs (cat reading book TXT) 📖
- Author: John Kendrick Bangs
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“I don’t see how a woman could stand a man like that,” said Mrs. Pedagog. “Indeed, I don’t see where his ideal qualities come in, anyhow, Mr. Idiot. I think you are wrong in putting him among the Ideal Husbands even for Mrs. Van Varick.”
[23] “No, I am not wrong, for he is indeed the very essence of her ideal because he doesn’t make her stand him,” said the Idiot. “He never bothers Mrs. Van Varick at all. On the first of every month he sends her a check for a good round sum with which she can pay her bills. He presents her with a town house and a country house, and a Limousine car, and all the furs she can possibly want; provides her with an opera-box, and never fails, when he himself goes to the opera, to call upon her and pay his respects like a gentleman. If she sustains heavy losses at bridge, he makes them good, and when she gives a dinner to her set, or to some distinguished social lion from other zoos, Van Varick is always on hand to do the honors of his house, and what is supposed to be his table. He and Mrs. Van Varick are on the most excellent terms; in fact, he treats her with more respect than he does any other woman he knows, never even suggesting the idea of a flirtation with her. In other words, he does not interfere with her in any way, which is the only kind of[24] man in the world she could be happy with.”
“It’s perfectly awful!” cried Mrs. Pedagog. “If they never see each other, what on earth did they ever get married for?”
“Protection,” said the Idiot. “And it is perfectly splendid in its results. Mrs. Van Varick, being married to so considerate an absentee, is able to go about very much as she pleases backed with the influence and affluence of the Van Varick name. This as plain little Miss Floyd Poselthwaite she was unable to do. She has now an assured position, and is protected against the chance of marrying a man who, unlike Van Varick, would growl at her expenditures, object to her friends, and insist upon coming home to dinner every night, and occasionally turn up at breakfast.”
“Sweet life,” said the Bibliomaniac. “And what does the Willieboy husband get out of it?”
“Pride, protection, and freedom,” said the Idiot. “He’s as proud as Punch when he sees Mrs. Van V. swelling about town with[25] her name kept as standing matter in every society column in the country. His freedom he enjoys, just as she enjoys hers. If he doesn’t turn up for six weeks she never asks any questions, and so Van Varick can live on easy terms with the truth. If he sits up all night over a game of cards, there’s nobody to chide him for doing so, and—”
“But where does his protection come in? That’s what I can’t see,” said the Bibliomaniac.
“It’s as plain as a pike-staff,” said the Idiot. “With Mrs. Van Varick on the tapis, Tommie is safe from designing ladies who might marry him for his money.”
“Well, he’s a mighty poor ideal!” cried Mr. Pedagog.
“He certainly would not do for Mrs. Pedagog,” said the Idiot. “But you would yourself be no better for Mrs. Van Varick. The red Indian makes an Ideal Husband for the squaw, but he’d never suit a daughter of the British nobility any more than the Duke of Lacklands would make a good husband for dusky little Minnehaha. So I say[26] what’s the use of discussing the matter any further with the purpose of arbitrarily settling on what it is that constitutes an Ideal Husband? We may all hope to be considered such if we only find the girl that likes our particular kind.”
“Then,” said Mr. Brief, with a smile, “your advice to me is not to despair, eh?”
“That’s it,” said the Idiot. “I wouldn’t give up, if I were you. There’s no telling when some one will come along to whom you appear to be the perfect creature.”
“Good!” cried Mr. Brief. “You are mighty kind. I don’t suppose you can give me a hint as to how soon I may expect to meet the lady?”
“Well—no, I can’t,” said the Idiot. “I don’t believe even Edison could tell you about when to look for arrivals from Mars.”
[27] IIITHE IDIOT’S VALENTINE
WELL, old man,” said the Poet, as the Idiot entered the breakfast-room on the morning of Valentine’s day, “how did old St. Valentine treat you? Any results worth speaking of?”
“Oh, the usual lay-out,” returned the Idiot, languidly. “Nine hundred and forty-two passionate declarations of undying affection from unknown lady friends in all parts of the civilized world; one thousand three hundred and twenty-four highly colored but somewhat insulting intimations that I had better go ’way back and sit down from hitherto unsuspected gentlemen friends scattered from Maine to California; one small can of salt marked ‘St. Valentine to the Idiot,’[28] with sundry allusions to the proper medical treatment of the latter’s freshness, and a small box containing a rubber bottle-stopper labelled ‘Cork up and bust.’ I can’t complain.”
“Well, you did come in for your share of it, didn’t you?” said Mr. Brief.
“Yes,” said the Idiot, “I think I got all that was coming to me, and I wouldn’t have minded it if I hadn’t had to pay three dollars over-due postage on ’em. I don’t bother much if some anonymous chap off in the wilds of Kalikajoo takes the trouble to send me a funny picture of a monkey grinding a hand-organ with ‘the loving regards of your brother,’ or if somebody else who is afraid of becoming too fond of me sends me a horse-chestnut with a line to the effect that here is one I haven’t printed, I don’t feel like getting mad; but when I have to pay the postage on the plaguey things it strikes me it is rubbing it in a little too hard, and if I could find two or three of the senders I’d spend an hour or two of my time banging their heads together.”
[29] “I got off pretty well,” said the Bibliomaniac. “I only got one valentine, and though it cast some doubt upon the quality of my love for books, I found it quite amusing. I’ll read it to you.”
Here the Bibliomaniac took a small paper from his pocket and read the following lines:
“THE HUNGRY BIBLIOMANIAC
As often as your butter,
When people ask you what’s inside
You wouldn’t sit and sputter.
The reading that hath made you full,
The reading that doth chain you,
Is not from books, or woman’s looks,
But fresh from off the menu.”
“What do you think of that?” asked the Bibliomaniac, with a chuckle, as he folded up his valentine and stowed it away in his pocket once more.
“I think I can spot the sender,” said the[30] Idiot, fixing his eyes sternly upon the Poet. “It takes genius to get up a rhyme like ‘men’ and ‘chain you,’ and I know of only one man at this board or at any other who is equal to the task.”
“If you mean me,” retorted the Poet, flushing, “you are mightily mistaken. I wouldn’t waste a rhyme like that on a personal valentine when I could tack it on to the end of a sonnet and go out and sell it for two-fifty.”
“Then you didn’t do it, eh?” demanded the Idiot.
“No. Did you?” asked the Poet, with his eyes twinkling.
“Sir,” said the Idiot, “if I had done it, would I have had the unblushing effrontery to say, as I just now did say, that its author was a genius?”
“Well, we’re square, anyhow,” said the Poet. “You cast me under suspicion, to begin with, and it was only fair that I should whack back. I got a valentine myself, and I suspect it was from the same hand. It runs like this:[31]
“TO THE MINOR POET
That bloom on high Parnassus,
Nor do you gather thistles like
Some of those mystic asses
Who browse about old Helicon
In hope to fill their tummies;
Yours rather are those dandy-lines—
Gilt-topped chrysanthemummies—
Quite pleasant stuff
That ends in fluff—
Yet when they are beholden
Make all the world look golden.”
“Well,” ejaculated the Idiot, “I don’t see what there is in that to make you angry. Seems to me there’s some very nice compliments in that. For instance, your stuff when ’tis
Makes all the world look golden,’
according to your anonymous correspondent. If he’d been vicious he might have said something like this:[32]
They make the whole earth bilious.’”
The Poet grinned. “I’m not complaining about it. It’s a mighty nice little verse, I think, and my only regret is that I do not know who the chap was who sent it. I’d like to thank him. I had an idea you might help me,” he said, with a searching glance.
“I will,” said the Idiot. “If the man who sent you that ever reveals his identity to me I will tell him you fell all over yourself with joy on receiving his tribute of admiration. How did you come out, Doctor?”
“Oh, he remembered me, all right,” said the Doctor. “Quite in the same vein, too, only he’s not so complimentary. He calls me ‘The Humane Surgeon,’ and runs into rhyme after this fashion:
A surgeon most humane, sir;
And what he does is e’er devoid
Of ordinary pain, sir.[33]
A leg hurt by a bullet,
He wouldn’t take a knife and cut—
But with his bill he’d pull it.”
“He must have had some experience with you, Doctor,” said the Idiot. “In fact, he knows you so well that I am inclined to think that the writer of that valentine lives in this house, and it is just possible that the culprit is seated at this table at this moment.”
“I think it very likely,” said the Doctor, dryly. “He’s a fresh young man, five feet ten inches in height—”
“Pooh—pooh!” said the Idiot. “That’s the worst description of Mr. Brief I ever heard. Mr. Brief, in the first place, is not a young man, and he isn’t fresh—”
“I didn’t mean Mr. Brief,” said the Doctor, significantly.
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself to intimate that Mr. Whitechoker, a clergyman, would stoop to the writing of such a rhyme as that,” cried the Idiot. “People nowadays seem to me to be utterly[34] lacking in that respect for the cloth to which it is entitled. Mr. Brief, if you really wrote that thing you owe it to Mr. Whitechoker to own up and thus relieve him of the suspicion the Doctor has so unblushingly cast upon him.”
“I can prove an alibi,” said the Lawyer. “I could no more turn a rhyme than I could play ‘Parsifal’ on a piano with one finger, and I wouldn’t if I could. I
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