Delphi complete works of.., p.75
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 75
I watched the waiters carrying them into the club, with that new field ambulance attitude towards pain which is getting so popular. They had evidently acquired precisely the old pagan attitude that Blinks and Jinks desired.
And the evening after that I saw Blinks and Jinks, both more or less bandaged, sitting in a corner of the club beneath a rubber tree, making peace.
Jinks was moving out of Montenegro and Blinks was foregoing all claims to Polish Prussia; Jinks was offering Alsace-Lorraine to Blinks, and Blinks in a fit of chivalrous enthusiasm was refusing to take it. They were disbanding troops, blowing up fortresses, sinking their warships and offering indemnities which they both refused to take. Then as they talked, Jinks leaned forward and said something to Blinks in a low voice, — a final proposal of terms evidently.
Blinks nodded, and Jinks turned and beckoned to a waiter, with the words, —
“One Scotch whiskey and soda, and one stein of Wurtemburger Bier—”
And when I heard this, I knew that the war was over.
8. — The Ground Floor
I hadn’t seen Ellesworth since our college days, twenty years before, at the time when he used to borrow two dollars and a half from the professor of Public Finance to tide him over the week end.
Then quite suddenly he turned up at the club one day and had afternoon tea with me.
His big clean shaven face had lost nothing of its impressiveness, and his spectacles had the same glittering magnetism as in the days when he used to get the college bursar to accept his note of hand for his fees.
And he was still talking European politics just as he used to in the days of our earlier acquaintance.
“Mark my words,” he said across the little tea-table, with one of the most piercing glances I have ever seen, “the whole Balkan situation was only a beginning. We are on the eve of a great pan-Slavonic upheaval.” And then he added, in a very quiet, casual tone: “By the way, could you let me have twenty-five dollars till to-morrow?”
“A pan-Slavonic movement!” I ejaculated. “Do you really think it possible? No, I couldn’t.”
“You must remember,” Ellesworth went on, “Russia means to reach out and take all she can get;” and he added, “how about fifteen till Friday?”
“She may reach for it,” I said, “but I doubt if she’ll get anything. I’m sorry. I haven’t got it.”
“You’re forgetting the Bulgarian element,” he continued, his animation just as eager as before. “The Slavs never forget what they owe to one another.”
Here Ellesworth drank a sip of tea and then said quietly, “Could you make it ten till Saturday at twelve?”
I looked at him more closely. I noticed now his frayed cuffs and the dinginess of his over-brushed clothes. Not even the magnetism of his spectacles could conceal it. Perhaps I had been forgetting something, whether the Bulgarian element or not.
I compromised at ten dollars till Saturday.
“The Slav,” said Ellesworth, as he pocketed the money, “is peculiar. He never forgets.”
“What are you doing now?” I asked him. “Are you still in insurance?” I had a vague recollection of him as employed in that business.
“No,” he answered. “I gave it up. I didn’t like the outlook. It was too narrow. The atmosphere cramped me. I want,” he said, “a bigger horizon.”
“Quite so,” I answered quietly. I had known men before who had lost their jobs. It is generally the cramping of the atmosphere that does it. Some of them can use up a tremendous lot of horizon.
“At present,” Ellesworth went on, “I am in finance. I’m promoting companies.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. I had seen companies promoted before.
“Just now,” continued Ellesworth, “I’m working on a thing that I think will be rather a big thing. I shouldn’t want it talked about outside, but it’s a matter of taking hold of the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks, — practically amalgamating them — and perhaps combining with them the entire herring output, and the whole of the sardine catch of the Mediterranean. If it goes through,” he added, “I shall be in a position to let you in on the ground floor.”
I knew the ground floor of old. I have already many friends sitting on it; and others who have fallen through it into the basement.
I said, “thank you,” and he left me.
“That was Ellesworth, wasn’t it?” said a friend of mine who was near me. “Poor devil. I knew him slightly, — always full of some new and wild idea of making money. He was talking to me the other day of the possibility of cornering all the huckleberry crop and making refined sugar. Isn’t it amazing what fool ideas fellows like him are always putting up to business men?”
We both laughed.
After that I didn’t see Ellesworth for some weeks.
Then I met him in the club again. How he paid his fees there I do not know.
This time he was seated among a litter of foreign newspapers with a cup of tea and a ten-cent package of cigarettes beside him.
“Have one of these cigarettes,” he said. “I get them specially. They are milder than what we have in the club here.”
They certainly were.
“Note what I say,” Ellesworth went on. “The French Republic is going to gain from now on a stability that it never had.” He seemed greatly excited about it. But his voice changed to a quiet tone as he added, “Could you, without inconvenience, let me have five dollars?”
So I knew that the cod-fish and the sardines were still unamalgamated.
“What about the fisheries thing?” I asked. “Did it go through?”
“The fisheries? No, I gave it up. I refused to go forward with it. The New York people concerned were too shy, too timid to tackle it. I finally had to put it to them very straight that they must either stop shilly-shallying and declare themselves, or the whole business was off.”
“Did they declare themselves?” I questioned.
“They did,” said Ellesworth, “but I don’t regret it. I’m working now on a much bigger thing, — something with greater possibilities in it. When the right moment comes I’ll let you in on the ground floor.”
I thanked him and we parted.
The next time I saw Ellesworth he told me at once that he regarded Albania as unable to stand by itself. So I gave him five dollars on the spot and left him.
A few days after that he called me up on the telephone to tell me that the whole of Asia Minor would have to be redistributed. The redistribution cost me five dollars more.
Then I met him on the street, and he said that Persia was disintegrating, and took from me a dollar and a half.
When I passed him next in the street he was very busy amalgamating Chinese tramways. It appeared that there was a ground floor in China, but I kept off it.
Each time I saw Ellesworth he looked a little shabbier than the last. Then one day he called me up on the telephone, and made an appointment.
His manner when I joined him was full of importance.
“I want you at once,” he said in a commanding tone, “to write me your cheque for a hundred dollars.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I am now able,” said Ellesworth, “to put you in on the ground floor of one of the biggest things in years.”
“Thanks,” I said, “the ground floor is no place for me.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” said Ellesworth. “This is a big thing. It’s an idea I’ve been working on for some time, — making refined sugar from the huckleberry crop. It’s a certainty. I can get you shares now at five dollars. They’ll go to five hundred when we put them on the market, — and I can run you in for a block of stock for promotion services as well. All you have to do is to give me right now a hundred dollars, — cash or your cheque, — and I can arrange the whole thing for you.”
I smiled.
“My dear Ellesworth,” I said, “I hope you won’t mind if I give you a little bit of good advice. Why not drop all this idea of quick money? There’s nothing in it. The business world has grown too shrewd for it. Take an ordinary decent job and stick to it. Let me use my influence,” I added, “to try and get you into something with a steady salary, and with your brains you’re bound to get on in time.”
Ellesworth looked pained. A “steady job” sounded to him like a “ground floor” to me.
After that I saw nothing of him for weeks. But I didn’t forget him. I looked about and secured for him a job as a canvassing agent for a book firm at a salary of five dollars a week, and a commission of one-tenth of one per cent.
I was waiting to tell him of his good luck, when I chanced to see him at the club again.
But he looked transformed.
He had on a long frock coat that reached nearly to his knees. He was leading a little procession of very heavy men in morning coats, upstairs towards the private luncheon rooms. They moved like a funeral, puffing as they went. I had seen company directors before and I knew what they were at sight.
“It’s a small club and rather inconvenient,” Ellesworth was saying, “and the horizon of some of its members rather narrow,” here he nodded to me as he passed,— “but I can give you a fairly decent lunch.”
I watched them as they disappeared upstairs.
“That’s Ellesworth, isn’t it?” said a man near me. It was the same man who had asked about him before.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Giving a lunch to his directors, I suppose,” said my friend; “lucky dog.”
“His directors?” I asked.
“Yes, hadn’t you heard? He’s just cleaned up half a million or more, — some new scheme for making refined sugar out of huckleberries. Isn’t it amazing what shrewd ideas these big business men get hold of? They say they’re unloading the stock at five hundred dollars. It only cost them about five to organize. If only one could get on to one of these things early enough, eh?”
I assented sadly.
And the next time I am offered a chance on the ground floor I am going to take it, even if it’s only the barley floor of a brewery.
It appears that there is such a place after all.
9. — The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
It is the hallucination of Mr. Butt’s life that he lives to do good. At whatever cost of time or trouble to himself, he does it. Whether people appear to desire it or not, he insists on helping them along.
His time, his company and his advice are at the service not only of those who seek them but of those who, in the mere appearances of things, are not asking for them.
You may see the beaming face of Mr. Butt appear at the door of all those of his friends who are stricken with the minor troubles of life. Whenever Mr. Butt learns that any of his friends are moving house, buying furniture, selling furniture, looking for a maid, dismissing a maid, seeking a chauffeur, suing a plumber or buying a piano, — he is at their side in a moment.
So when I met him one night in the cloak room of the club putting on his raincoat and his galoshes with a peculiar beaming look on his face, I knew that he was up to some sort of benevolence.
“Come upstairs,” I said, “and play billiards.” I saw from his general appearance that it was a perfectly safe offer.
“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Butt, “I only wish I could. I wish I had the time. I am sure it would cheer you up immensely if I could. But I’m just going out.”
“Where are you off to?” I asked, for I knew he wanted me to say it.
“I’m going out to see the Everleigh-Joneses, — you know them? no? — just come to the city, you know, moving into their new house, out on Seldom Avenue.”
“But,” I said, “that’s away out in the suburbs, is it not, a mile or so beyond the car tracks?”
“Something like that,” answered Mr. Butt.
“And it’s going on for ten o’clock and it’s starting to rain—”
“Pooh, pooh,” said Mr. Butt, cheerfully, adjusting his galoshes. “I never mind the rain, — does one good. As to their house. I’ve not been there yet but I can easily find it. I’ve a very simple system for finding a house at night by merely knocking at the doors in the neighborhood till I get it.”
“Isn’t it rather late to go there?” I protested.
“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Butt warmly, “I don’t mind that a bit. The way I look at it is, here are these two young people, only married a few weeks, just moving into their new house, everything probably upside down, no one there but themselves, no one to cheer them up,” — he was wriggling into his raincoat as he spoke and working himself into a frenzy of benevolence,— “good gracious, I only learned at dinner time that they had come to town, or I’d have been out there days ago, — days ago—”
And with that Mr. Butt went bursting forth into the rain, his face shining with good will under the street lamps.
The next day I saw him again at the club at lunch time.
“Well,” I asked, “did you find the Joneses?”
“I did,” said Mr. Butt, “and by George I was glad that I’d gone — quite a lot of trouble to find the house (though I didn’t mind that; I expected it) — had to knock at twenty houses at least to get it, — very dark and wet out there, — no street lights yet, — however I simply pounded at the doors until some one showed a light — at every house I called out the same things, ‘Do you know where the Everleigh Joneses live?’ They didn’t. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘go back to bed. Don’t bother to come down.’
“But I got to the right spot at last. I found the house all dark. Jones put his head out of an upper window. Hullo,’ I called out; ‘it’s Butt.’ ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said, ‘we’ve gone to bed.’ ‘My dear boy,’ I called back, ‘don’t apologize at all. Throw me down the key and I’ll wait while you dress. I don’t mind a bit.’
“Just think of it,” continued Mr. Butt, “those two poor souls going to bed at half past ten, through sheer dullness! By George, I was glad I’d come. ‘Now then,’ I said to myself, ‘let’s cheer them up a little, let’s make things a little brighter here.’
“Well, down they came and we sat there on furniture cases and things and had a chat. Mrs. Jones wanted to make me some coffee. ‘My dear girl,’ I said (I knew them both when they were children) ‘I absolutely refuse. Let ME make it.’ They protested. I insisted. I went at it, — kitchen all upset — had to open at least twenty tins to get the coffee. However, I made it at last. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘drink it.’ They said they had some an hour or so ago. ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘drink it.’ Well, we sat and chatted away till midnight. They were dull at first and I had to do all the talking. But I set myself to it. I can talk, you know, when I try. Presently about midnight they seemed to brighten up a little. Jones looked at his watch. ‘By Jove,’ he said, in an animated way, ‘it’s after midnight.’ I think he was pleased at the way the evening was going; after that we chatted away more comfortably. Every little while Jones would say, ‘By Jove, it’s half past twelve,’ or ‘it’s one o’clock,’ and so on.
“I took care, of course, not to stay too late. But when I left them I promised that I’d come back to-day to help straighten things up. They protested, but I insisted.”
That same day Mr. Butt went out to the suburbs and put the Joneses’ furniture to rights.
“I worked all afternoon,” he told me afterwards,— “hard at it with my coat off — got the pictures up first — they’d been trying to put them up by themselves in the morning. I had to take down every one of them — not a single one right,— ‘Down they come,’ I said, and went at it with a will.”
A few days later Mr. Butt gave me a further report. “Yes,” he said, “the furniture is all unpacked and straightened out but I don’t like it. There’s a lot of it I don’t quite like. I half feel like advising Jones to sell it and get some more. But I don’t want to do that till I’m quite certain about it.”
After that Mr. Butt seemed much occupied and I didn’t see him at the club for some time.
“How about the Everleigh-Joneses?” I asked. “Are they comfortable in their new house?”
Mr. Butt shook his head. “It won’t do,” he said. “I was afraid of it from the first. I’m moving Jones in nearer to town. I’ve been out all morning looking for an apartment; when I get the right one I shall move him. I like an apartment far better than a house.”
So the Joneses in due course of time were moved. After that Mr. Butt was very busy selecting a piano, and advising them on wall paper and woodwork.
They were hardly settled in their new home when fresh trouble came to them.
“Have you heard about Everleigh-Jones?” said Mr. Butt one day with an anxious face.
“No,” I answered.
“He’s ill — some sort of fever — poor chap — been ill three days, and they never told me or sent for me — just like their grit — meant to fight it out alone. I’m going out there at once.”
From day to day I had reports from Mr. Butt of the progress of Jones’s illness.
“I sit with him every day,” he said. “Poor chap, — he was very bad yesterday for a while, — mind wandered — quite delirious — I could hear him from the next room — seemed to think some one was hunting him— ‘Is that damn old fool gone,’ I heard him say.
“I went in and soothed him. ‘There is no one here, my dear boy,’ I said, ‘no one, only Butt.’ He turned over and groaned. Mrs. Jones begged me to leave him. ‘You look quite used up,’ she said. ‘Go out into the open air.’ ‘My dear Mrs. Jones,’ I said, ‘what DOES it matter about me?’”
Eventually, thanks no doubt to Mr. Butt’s assiduous care, Everleigh-Jones got well.
