In the Sweet Dry and Dry Part 7

"The first requirement," said Quimbleton to the awe-struck gathering, "is to put yourselves in the proper frame of mind. For that purpose I will ask you all to stand up, placing one foot on the rung of a chair.

Kindly imagine yourselves standing with one foot on a bra.s.s rail. You will then summon to mind, with all possible accuracy and vividness, the scenes of some bar-room which was once dear to you. I will also ask you to concentrate your mental faculties upon some beverage which was once your favorite. Please rehea.r.s.e in imagination the entire ritual which was once so familiar, from the inquiring look of the bartender down to the final clang of the cash-register. A visualization of the old free lunch counter is also advisable. All these details will a.s.sist the medium to trance herself."

Bleak in the meantime had carried a small table on the platform, and placed an empty gla.s.s upon it. Miss Chuff sat down at this table, and gazed intently at the gla.s.s. Quimbleton produced a white ap.r.o.n from somewhere, and tied it round his burly form. With Bleak playing the role of customer he then went through a pantomime of serving imaginary drinks. His representation of the now vanished type of the bartender was so admirably realistic that it brought tears to the eyes of more than one in the gathering. The editor, with appropriate countenance and gesture, dramatized the motions of ordering, drinking, and paying for his invisible refreshment. His pantomime was also accurate and satisfying, evidently based upon seasoned experience. The argument as to who should pay, the gesture conveying the generous sentiment "This one's on me," the spinning of a coin on the bar, the raising of the elbow, the final toss that dispatched the fluid--all these were done to the life. The audience followed suit with a will. A whispering rustle ran through the dingy hall as each man murmured his favorite catchwords. "Give it a name," "Set 'em up again," "Here's luck," and such archaic phrases were faintly audible. Miss Chuff kept her gaze fastened on the empty tumbler.

Suddenly her rigid pose relaxed. She drooped forward in her chair, with her head sunk and hands limp. Tenderly and reverently Quimbleton bent over her. Then, his face shining with triumph, he spoke to the hushed watchers.

"She is in the trance," he said. "Gentlemen, her happy soul is in touch with the departed spirits. What'll you have? Don't all speak at once."

Fifty-nine, in hushed voices, pet.i.tioned for a Bronx. Quimbleton turned to the unconscious girl.

"Fifty-nine devotees," he said, "ask that the spirit of the Bronx c.o.c.ktail vouchsafe his presence among us."

Miss Chuff's slender figure stiffened again. Her hand went out to the gla.s.s beside her, and raised it to her lips. Some of the more eagerly credulous afterwards a.s.serted that they had seen a cloudy yellow liquid appear in the vessel, but it is not improbable that the wish was father to the vision. At any rate, the fifty-nine suppliants experienced at that instant a gush of sweet coolness down their throats, and the unmistakable subsequent tingle. They gazed at each other with a wild surmise.

"How about another?" said one in a thrilling whisper.

"Take your turn," said Quimbleton. "Who's next?"

One hundred and fifty-three nominated Scotch whiskey. The order was filled without a slip. Quimbleton's face beamed above his beard like a full-blown rose. "Magnificent!" he whispered to Bleak, both of them having partaken in the second round. "If this keeps on we'll have a charge of the tight brigade."

The next round was ninety-five Jack Rose c.o.c.ktails, but the audience was beginning to get out of hand. Those who had not yet been served grew restive. They saw their companions with brightened eyes and beaming faces, comparing notes as to this delicious revival of old sensations. In the impatience of some and the jubilation of others, the psychic concentration flagged a little. Then, just as Quimbleton was about to ask for the fourth round, the unforgiveable happened. Some one at the back shouted, "A gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk!"

Miss Chuff shuddered, quivered, and opened her eyes with a tragic gasp.

She slipped from the chair, and fell exhausted to the floor. Bleak ran to pick her up. Quimbleton screamed out an oath.

"The spell is broken!" he roared. "There's a spy in the room!"

At that instant a battalion of armed chuffs burst into the hall. They carried a huge hose, and in ten seconds a six-inch stream of cold water was being poured upon the bewildered psychic tipplers. Quimbleton and Bleak, seizing the girl's helpless form, escaped by a door at the back of the platform.

"Heaven help us," cried Bleak, distraught. "What shall we do? This means the firing squad unless we can escape."

Theodolinda feebly opened her eyes.

"O horrible," she murmured. "The spirit of b.u.t.termilk--I saw him--he threatened me--"

"The horse!" cried Quimbleton, with fierce energy. "The Bishop's horse--in the stable!"

They ran wildly to the rear quarters of the Home, where they found the Bishop's famous charger whinneying in his stall. All three leaped upon his back. In the confusion, amid the screams of the tortured inmates and the cruel cries of the invading chuffs, they made good their escape.

Every one of the wretched inmates captured at the psychic carouse was immediately sentenced to six months' hard listening on the Chautauqua circuit. But even during this brutal punishment their memories returned with tenderest reminiscence to the experience of that afternoon. As one of them said, "it was a real treat." And although Quimbleton had plainly stated the relation in which he stood to Theodolinda Chuff, she had no less than two hundred and ten proposals of marriage, by mail, from those who had attended the seance.

CHAPTER VII

THE DECANTERBURY PILGRIMS

Through a dreary waste of devastated country a little group of refugees plodded in silence. All about them lay fields and orchards which had been torn and uprooted as though by some unbelievable whirlwind. At a watering trough along the road they halted, facing the sign:

COMPULSORY DRINKING STATION

Adults, 1 quart Children, 1 pint

THIRST FORBIDDEN BETWEEN HERE AND THE NEXT STATION

Under the eye of an armed chuff, who watched them suspiciously, the wretched wanderers drank the water in silence, but without enthusiasm.

Then they shuffled on down the road.

At the front of the small procession a slender girl, in a much-stained sports suit, rode on a tall black horse. Beside the horse trudged a bulky man in a grotesque garb of dirty lavender quilting. A matted whisk of coa.r.s.e beard drooped from his chin, but his blue eyes burned brightly in his sunburnt face. Over his shoulder he carried a six foot length of bra.s.s railing, a small folding table, and a shabby knapsack.

Behind the horse limped a lean, dyspeptic-colored individual in a Palm Beach suit that would have been a social death-warrant on the shining sands of its name-place. There is no form of sartorialism that takes on such utter humility as a Palm Beach suit gone wrong. This particular vestment was spotted with ink, with mud, with fruit-juices, with every kind of stain; it was punctured with perforations that might have been due to fallen tobacco tinder. The individual within this travesty of clothing was painfully propelling a wheelbarrow, in which rode (not without complaint) a substantial woman and a baby. An older child trailed from the Palm Beach coat-tail.

These jovial vagabonds, as the reader will have suspected, were no other than Theodolinda Chuff, Virgil Quimbleton, and the family of Bleaks.

Affairs had gone steadily from bad to worse. After the incident--or, as some blasphemously called it, the miracle--at Cana, Bishop Chuff had commenced ruthless warfare. Enraged beyond control by the perfidy of his daughter, he had sent out the armies of the Pan-Antis to wreak vengeance on every human enterprise that could be suspected of complicity in the matter of fermentation. Not only had the countryside been laid waste, but the printing press had been abolished and all publishing trades were now a thing of the past. This, of course, had thrown Dunraven Bleak out of a job. He had retrieved his wife and children from the seash.o.r.e, and in company with Quimbleton and Miss Chuff, and the n.o.ble and faithful horse John Barleycorn, they had led a nomad existence for weeks, flying from bands of pursuing chuffs, and bravely preaching their illicit gospel of good cheer in the face of terrible dangers.

The girl, who was indeed the Jeanne d'Arc of their cause, was their sole means of subsistence. It was her psychic powers that made it possible for them, in a furtive way, to give their little entertainments. Their method was, on reaching a village where there were no chuff troops, to distribute certain handbills which Bleak had been able to get printed by stealth. These read thus:

THE SIX QUIMBLETONS or The Decanterbury Pilgrims In Their Artistic Revival Of Old and Entertaining Customs, Tableaux Vivants Vanished Arts, Folklore Games and Conjuring Tricks Such as The Drinking of Healths, Toasts, Nosepainting, The Lifted Elbow, Let's Match For It, Say When, Light or Dark? and This One's On Me. COMMUNION WITH DEPARTED SPIRITS Please Do Not Leave Before the Hat Goes Round

Having taken their station in some not too prominent place, Bleak would mount the wheelbarrow and play Coming Through the Rye on a jew's-harp.

This, his sole musical accomplishment, was exceedingly distasteful to him: all his training had been in the anonymity of a newspaper office, and he felt his public humiliation bitterly.

When a crowd had gathered, Quimbleton would ascend the barrow and make a brief speech (of a highly inflammatory and treasonable nature) after which he would set up the small table and the bra.s.s rail, produce a white ap.r.o.n and a tumbler from his knapsack, and introduce Theodolinda for an alcoholic trance. It was found that the public entered into the spirit of these seances with great gusto, and often the collection taken up was gratifyingly large. However, the life was hazardous in the extreme, and they were in perpetual danger of meeting secret service agents. It was only by repeated private trances of their own that they were able to keep up their morale.

Reaching a bend in the way, where a grove of trees cast a grateful shade, the Decanterbury Pilgrims halted to rest. Quimbleton helped Theodolinda down from her horse, and they all sat sadly by the roadside.

"Theo," said Quimbleton, as he wiped his brow, "do you think, dear, that if I set up the table you could give us a little trance? Upon my soul, I am nearly done in."

"Darling Virgil," said Theodolinda, "I really can't do it. You know I've given you four trances already this morning, and you have communed with the soul of Wurzburger at least a dozen times. Then, as you know, I have put Mr. Bleak in touch with a julep six or seven times. All that takes it out of me dreadfully. I really must consider my art a bit: I don't want to be a mere psychic bartender, a clairvoyant distiller."

"You are quite right, dear girl," said Quimbleton remorsefully. "But I couldn't help thinking how agreeable a psychical seidel of dark beer would be just now. You are our little Jeanne Dark, you know," he added, with an atrocious attempt at pleasantry.

"That's all very well," said Bleak (who preferred julep to beer), "but if we don't look out Miss Chuff will go into a permanent trance. I've noticed it has been harder and harder to bring her back from these states of suspended sobriety. You know, if we crowd these phantasms of the grape upon her too fast, she might pa.s.s over altogether, and stay behind the bar for good. We are deeply indebted to Miss Chuff for her adorable willingness to act as a kind of bunghole into the spirit world, but we don't want her to slip through the hole and evaporate."

"Safety thirst!" cried Quimbleton, raising his loved one to his lips.

"We can't go on like this indefinitely," continued Bleak. "I don't mind being a mountebank, but mountebanks don't pay much interest. I'd rather be a safe deposit somewhere out of Chuff's reach. There's too much drama in this way of living."

"I can stand the drama as long as I get the drams," said the unrepentant Quimbleton.

"Well, _I_ won't stand it!" exclaimed Mrs. Bleak, shrilly. "Look what your insane schemes have brought us to! You and my husband seem to find comfort in your psychical toping, but I don't notice any psychical millinery being draped about for Miss Chuff or myself. And look at the children! They're simply in rags. If you really loved Miss Chuff I should think you'd be ashamed to use her as a spiritual demijohn!

You've alienated her from her father, and reduced my husband from managing editor of a leading paper to managing jew's-harpist of a gang of psychic bootleggers." She burst into angry tears.

Quimbleton groaned, and turned a ghastly fade upon Bleak.