Frenzied Fiction

S >> Stephen Leacock >> Frenzied Fiction

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

My vacation is still before me, and I still propose to
spend it naked. But I shall do so at Atlantic City.

VII. The Cave-Man as He is

I think it likely that few people besides myself have
ever actually seen and spoken with a "cave-man."

Yet everybody nowadays knows all about the cave-man. The
fifteen-cent magazines and the new fiction have made him
a familiar figure. A few years ago, it is true, nobody
had ever heard of him. But lately, for some reason or
other, there has been a run on the cave-man. No up-to-date
story is complete without one or two references to him.
The hero, when the heroine slights him, is said to "feel
for a moment the wild, primordial desire of the cave-man,
the longing to seize her, to drag her with him, to carry
her away, to make her his." When he takes her in his arms
it is recorded that "all the elemental passion of the
cave-man surges through him." When he fights, on her
behalf against a dray-man or a gun-man or an ice-man or
any other compound that makes up a modern villain, he is
said to "feel all the fierce fighting joy of the cave-man."
If they kick him in the ribs, he likes it. If they beat
him over the head, he never feels it; because he is, for
the moment, a cave-man. And the cave-man is, and is known
to be, quite above sensation.

The heroine, too, shares the same point of view. "Take
me," she murmurs as she falls into the hero's embrace,
"be my cave-man." As she says it there is, so the writer
assures us, something of the fierce light of the cave-woman
in her eyes, the primordial woman to be wooed and won
only by force.

So, like everybody else, I had, till I saw him, a great
idea of the cave-man. I had a clear mental picture of
him--huge, brawny, muscular, a wolfskin thrown about him
and a great war-club in his hand. I knew him as without
fear with nerves untouched by our effete civilization,
fighting, as the beasts fight, to the death, killing
without pity and suffering without a moan.

It was a picture that I could not but admire.

I liked, too--I am free to confess it--his peculiar way
with women. His system was, as I understood it, to take
them by the neck and bring them along with him. That was
his fierce, primordial way of "wooing" them. And they
liked it. So at least we are informed by a thousand
credible authorities. They liked it. And the modern woman,
so we are told, would still like it if only one dared to
try it on. There's the trouble; if one only _dared_!

I see lots of them--I'll be frank about it--that I should
like to grab, to sling over my shoulder and carry away
with me; or, what is the same thing, allowing for modern
conditions, have an express man carry them. I notice them
at Atlantic City, I see them in Fifth Avenue--yes,
everywhere. But would they come? That's the _deuce_ of
it. Would they come right along, like the cave-woman,
merely biting off my ear as they came, or are they
degenerate enough to bring an action against me, indicting
the express company as a party of the second part?

Doubts such as these prevent me from taking active
measures. But they leave me, as they leave many another
man, preoccupied and fascinated with the cave-man.

One may imagine, then, my extraordinary interest in him
when I actually met him in the flesh. Yet the thing came
about quite simply, indeed more by accident than by
design, an adventure open to all.

It so happened that I spent my vacation in Kentucky--the
region, as everybody knows, of the great caves. They
extend--it is a matter of common knowledge--for hundreds
of miles; in some places dark and sunless tunnels, the
black silence broken only by the dripping of the water
from the roof; in other places great vaults like
subterranean temples, with vast stone arches sweeping to
the dome, and with deep, still water of unfathomed depth
as the floor; and here and there again they are lighted
from above through rifts in the surface of the earth,
and are dry and sand strewn--fit for human habitation.

In such caves as these--so has the obstinate legend run
for centuries--there still dwell cave-men, the dwindling
remnant of their race. And here it was that I came across
him.

I had penetrated into the caves far beyond my guides. I
carried a revolver and had with me an electric lantern,
but the increasing sunlight in the cave as I went on had
rendered the latter needless.

There he sat, a huge figure, clad in a great wolfskin.
Besides him lay a great club. Across his knee was a spear
round which he was binding sinews that tightened under
his muscular hand. His head was bent over his task. His
matted hair had fallen over his eyes. He did not see me
till I was close beside him on the sanded floor of the
cave. I gave a slight cough.

"Excuse me!" I said.

The Cave-man gave a startled jump.

"My goodness," he said, "you startled me!"

I could see that he was quite trembling.

"You came along so suddenly," he said, "it gave me the
jumps." Then he muttered, more to himself than to me,
"Too much of this darned cave-water! I must quit drinking it."

I sat down near to the Caveman on a stone, taking care
to place my revolver carefully behind it. I don't mind
admitting that a loaded revolver, especially as I get
older, makes me nervous. I was afraid that he might start
fooling with it. One can't be too careful.

As a way of opening conversation I picked up the Cave-man's
club.

"Say," I said, "that's a great club you have, eh? By gee!
it's heavy!"

"Look out!" said the Cave-man with a certain agitation
in his voice as he reached out and took the club from
me. "Don't fool with that club! It's loaded! You know
you could easily drop the club on your toes, or on mine.
A man can't be too careful with a loaded club."

He rose as he said this and carried the club to the other
side of the cave, where he leant it against the wall.
Now that he stood up and I could examine him he no longer
looked so big. In fact he was not big at all. The effect
of size must have come, I think, from the great wolfskin
that he wore. I have noticed the same thing in Grand
Opera. I noticed, too, for the first time that the cave
we were in seemed fitted up, in a rude sort of way, like
a dwelling-room.

"This is a nice place you've got," I said.

"Dandy, isn't it?" he said, as he cast his eyes around.
"_She_ fixed it up. She's got great taste. See that mud
sideboard? That's the real thing, A-one mud! None of your
cheap rock about that. We fetched that mud for two miles
to make that. And look at that wicker bucket. Isn't it
great? Hardly leaks at all except through the sides, and
perhaps a little through the bottom. _She_ wove that.
She's a humdinger at weaving."

He was moving about as he spoke, showing me all his little
belongings. He reminded me for all the world of a man in
a Harlem flat, showing a visitor how convenient it all
is. Somehow, too, the Cave-man had lost all appearance
of size. He looked, in fact, quite little, and when he
had pushed his long hair back from his forehead he seemed
to wear that same, worried, apologetic look that we all
have. To a higher being, if there is such, our little
faces one and all appear, no doubt, pathetic.

I knew that he must be speaking about his wife.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"My wife?" he said. "Oh, she's gone out somewhere through
the caves with the kid. You didn't meet our kid as you
came along, did you? No? Well, he's the greatest boy you
even saw. He was only two this nineteenth of August. And
you should hear him say 'Pop' and 'Mom' just as if he
was grown up. He is really, I think, about the brightest
boy I've ever known--I mean quite apart from being his
father, and speaking of him as if he were anyone else's
boy. You didn't meet them?"

"No," I said, "I didn't."

"Oh, well," the Cave-man went on, "there are lots of ways
and passages through. I guess they went in another
direction. The wife generally likes to take a stroll
round in the morning and see some of the neighbours. But,
say," he interrupted, "I guess I'm forgetting my manners.
Let me get you a drink of cave-water. Here, take it in
this stone mug! There you are, say when! Where do we get
it? Oh, we find it in parts of the cave where it filters
through the soil above. Alcoholic? Oh, yes, about fifteen
per cent, I think. Some say it soaks all through the soil
of this State. Sit down and be comfortable, and, say if
you hear the woman coming just slip your mug behind that
stone out of sight. Do you mind? Now, try one of these
elm-root cigars. Oh, pick a good one--there are lots
of them!"

We seated ourselves in some comfort on the soft sand,
our backs against the boulders, sipping cave-water and
smoking elm-root cigars. It seemed altogether as if one
were back in civilization, talking to a genial host.

"Yes," said the Cave-man, and he spoke, as it were, in
a large and patronizing way. "I generally let my wife
trot about as she likes in the daytime. She and the other
women nowadays are getting up all these different movements,
and the way I look at it is that if it amuses her to run
around and talk and attend meetings, why let her do it.
Of course," he continued, assuming a look of great
firmness, "if I liked to put my foot down--"

"Exactly, exactly," I said. "It's the same way with us!"

"Is it now!" he questioned with interest. "I had imagined
that it was all different Outside. You're from the Outside,
aren't you? I guessed you must be from the skins you wear."

"Have you never been Outside?" I asked.

"No fear!" said the Cave-man. "Not for mine! Down here
in the caves, clean underground and mostly in the dark,
it's all right. It's nice and safe." He gave a sort of
shudder. "Gee! You fellows out there must have your nerve
to go walking around like that on the outside rim of
everything, where the stars might fall on you or a thousand
things happen to you. But then you Outside Men have got
a natural elemental fearlessness about you that we Cave-men
have lost. I tell you, I was pretty scared when I looked
up and saw you standing there."

"Had you never seen any Outside Men?" I asked.

"Why, yes," he answered, "but never close. The most I've
done is to go out to the edges of the cave sometimes and
look out and see them, Outside Men and Women, in the
distance. But of course, in one way or another, we Cave-men
know all about them. And the thing we envy most in you
Outside Men is the way you treat your women! By gee! You
take no nonsense from them--you fellows are the real
primordial, primitive men. We've lost it somehow."

"Why, my dear fellow--" I began.

But the Cave-man, who had sat suddenly upright, interrupted.

"Quick! quick!" he said. "Hide that infernal mug! She's
coming. Don't you hear!"

As he spoke I caught the sound of a woman's voice somewhere
in the outer passages of the cave.

"Now, Willie," she was saying, speaking evidently to the
Cave-child, "you come right along back with me, and if
I ever catch you getting in such a mess as that again
I'll never take you anywhere, so there!"

Her voice had grown louder. She entered the cave as she
spoke--a big-boned woman in a suit of skins leading by
the hand a pathetic little mite in a rabbit-skin, with
blue eyes and a slobbered face.

But as I was sitting the Cave-woman evidently couldn't
see me; for she turned at once to speak to her husband,
unconscious of my presence.

"Well, of all the idle creatures!" she exclaimed. "Loafing
here in the sand"--she gave a sniff--"and smoking--"

"My dear," began the Cave-man.

"Don't you my-dear me!" she answered. "Look at this place!
Nothing tidied up yet and the day half through! Did you
put the alligator on to boil?"

"I was just going to say--" began the Cave-man.

"_Going_ to say! Yes, I don't doubt you were going to
say. You'd go on saying all day if I'd let you. What I'm
asking you is, is the alligator on to boil for dinner or
is it not--My gracious!" She broke off all of a sudden,
as she caught sight of me. "Why didn't you say there was
company? Land sakes! And you sit there and never say
there was a gentleman here!"

She had hustled across the cave and was busily arranging
her hair with a pool of water as a mirror.

"Gracious!" she said, "I'm a perfect fright! You must
excuse me," she added, looking round toward me, "for
being in this state. I'd just slipped on this old fur
blouse and run around to a neighbour's and I'd no idea
that he was going to bring in company. Just like him!
I'm afraid we've nothing but a plain alligator stew to
offer you, but I'm sure if you'll stay to dinner--"

She was hustling about already, good primitive housewife
that she was, making the stone-plates rattle on the mud
table.

"Why, really--" I began. But I was interrupted by a sudden
exclamation from both the Cave-man and the Cave-woman
together:

"Willie! where's Willie!"

"Gracious!" cried the woman. "He's wandered out alone--oh,
hurry, look for him! Something might get him! He may have
fallen in the water! Oh, hurry!"

They were off in a moment, shouting into the dark passages
of the outer cave: "Willie! Willie!" There was agonized
anxiety in their voices.

And then in a moment, as it seemed, they were back again,
with Willie in their arms, blubbering, his rabbit-skin
all wet.

"Goodness gracious!" said the Cave-woman. "He'd fallen
right in, the poor little man. Hurry, dear, and get
something dry to wrap him in! Goodness, what a fright!
Quick, darling, give me something to rub him with."

Anxiously the Cave-parents moved about beside the child,
all quarrel vanished.

"But surely," I said, as they calmed down a little, "just
there where Willie fell in, beside the passage that I
came through, there is only three inches of water."

"So there is," they said, both together, "but just suppose
it had been three feet!"

Later on, when Willie was restored, they both renewed
their invitation to me to stay to dinner.

"Didn't you say," said the Cave-man, "that you wanted to
make some notes on the difference between Cave-people
and the people of your world of to-day?"

"I thank you," I answered, "I have already all the notes
I want!"

VIII. Ideal Interviews

I. WITH A EUROPEAN PRINCE

With any European Prince, travelling in America

On receiving our card the Prince, to our great surprise
and pleasure, sent down a most cordial message that he
would be delighted to see us at once. This thrilled us.

"Take us," we said to the elevator boy, "to the apartments
of the Prince." We were pleased to see him stagger and
lean against his wheel to get his breath back.

In a few moments we found ourselves crossing the threshold
of the Prince's apartments. The Prince, who is a charming
young man of from twenty-six to twenty-seven, came across
the floor to meet us with an extended hand and a simple
gesture of welcome. We have seldom seen anyone come across
the floor more simply.

The Prince, who is travelling incognito as the Count of
Flim Flam, was wearing, when we saw him, the plain morning
dress of a gentleman of leisure. We learned that a little
earlier he had appeared at breakfast in the costume of
a Unitarian clergyman, under the incognito of the Bishop
of Bongee; while later on he appeared at lunch, as a
delicate compliment to our city, in the costume of a
Columbia professor of Yiddish.

The Prince greeted us with the greatest cordiality, seated
himself, without the slightest affectation, and motioned
to us, with indescribable bonhomie, his permission to
remain standing.

"Well," said the Prince, "what is it?"

We need hardly say that the Prince, who is a consummate
master of ten languages, speaks English quite as fluently
as he does Chinese. Indeed, for a moment, we could scarcely
tell which he was talking.

"What are your impressions of the United States?" we
asked as we took out our notebook.

"I am afraid," answered the Prince, with the delightful
smile which is characteristic of him, and which we noticed
again and again during the interview, "that I must scarcely
tell you that."

We realized immediately that we were in the presence not
only of a soldier but of one of the most consummate
diplomats of the present day.

"May we ask then," we resumed, correcting our obvious
blunder, "what are your impressions, Prince, of the
Atlantic Ocean?"

"Ah," said the Prince, with that peculiar thoughtfulness
which is so noticeable in him and which we observed not
once but several times, "the Atlantic!"

Volumes could not have expressed his thought better.

"Did you," we asked, "see any ice during your passage
across?"

"Ah," said the Prince, "ice! Let me think."

We did so.

"Ice," repeated the Prince thoughtfully.

We realized that we were in the presence not only of a
soldier, a linguist and a diplomat, but of a trained
scientist accustomed to exact research.

"Ice!" repeated the Prince. "Did I see any ice? No."

Nothing could have been more decisive, more final than
the clear, simple brevity of the Prince's "No." He had
seen no ice. He knew he had seen no ice. He said he had
seen no ice. Nothing could have been more straightforward,
more direct. We felt assured from that moment that the
Prince had not seen any ice.

The exquisite good taste with which the Prince had answered
our question served to put us entirely at our ease, and
we presently found ourselves chatting with His Highness
with the greatest freedom and without the slightest _gene_
or _mauvaise honte_, or, in fact, _malvoisie_ of any kind.

We realized, indeed, that we were in the presence not
only of a trained soldier, a linguist and a diplomat,
but also of a conversationalist of the highest order.

His Highness, who has an exquisite sense of humour--indeed,
it broke out again and again during our talk with him
--expressed himself as both amused and perplexed over
our American money.

"It is very difficult," he said, "with us it is so simple;
six and a half groner are equal to one and a third
gross-groner or the quarter part of our Rigsdaler. Here
it is so complicated."

We ventured to show the Prince a fifty-cent piece and to
explain its value by putting two quarters beside it.

"I see," said the Prince, whose mathematical ability is
quite exceptional, "two twenty-five-cent pieces are equal
to one fifty-cent piece. I must try to remember that.
Meantime," he added, with a gesture of royal condescension,
putting the money in his pocket, "I will keep your coins
as instructors"--we murmured our thanks--"and now explain
to me, please, your five-dollar gold piece and your
ten-dollar eagle."

We felt it proper, however, to shift the subject, and
asked the Prince a few questions in regard to his views
on American politics. We soon found that His Highness,
although this is his first visit to this continent, is
a keen student of our institutions and our political
life. Indeed, His Altitude showed by his answers to our
questions that he is as well informed about our politics
as we are ourselves. On being asked what he viewed as
the uppermost tendency in our political life of to-day,
the Prince replied thoughtfully that he didn't know. To
our inquiry as to whether in his opinion democracy was
moving forward or backward, the Prince, after a moment
of reflection, answered that he had no idea. On our asking
which of the generals of our Civil War was regarded in
Europe as the greatest strategist, His Highness answered
without hesitation, "George Washington."

Before closing our interview the Prince, who, like his
illustrious father, is an enthusiastic sportsman, completely
turned the tables on us by inquiring eagerly about the
prospects for large game in America.

We told him something--as much as we could recollect--of
woodchuck hunting in our own section of the country. The
Prince was interested at once. His eye lighted up, and
the peculiar air of fatigue, or languor, which we had
thought to remark on his face during our interview, passed
entirely off his features. He asked us a number of
questions, quickly and without pausing, with the air, in
fact, of a man accustomed to command and not to listen.
How was the woodchuck hunted? From horseback or from an
elephant? Or from an armoured car, or turret? How many
beaters did one use to beat up the woodchuck? What bearers
was it necessary to carry with one? How great a danger
must one face of having one's beaters killed? What
percentage of risk must one be prepared to incur of
accidentally shooting one's own beaters? What did a bearer
cost? and so on.

All these questions we answered as best we could, the
Prince apparently seizing the gist, or essential part of
our answer, before we had said it.

In concluding the discussion we ventured to ask His
Highness for his autograph. The Prince, who has perhaps
a more exquisite sense of humour than any other sovereign
of Europe, declared with a laugh that he had no pen.
Still roaring over this inimitable drollery, we begged
the Prince to honour us by using our own fountain-pen.

"Is there any ink in it?" asked the Prince--which threw
us into a renewed paroxysm of laughter.

The Prince took the pen and very kindly autographed for
us seven photographs of himself. He offered us more, but
we felt that seven was about all we could use. We were
still suffocated with laughter over the Prince's wit;
His Highness was still signing photographs when an equerry
appeared and whispered in the Prince's ear. His Highness,
with the consummate tact to be learned only at a court,
turned quietly without a word and left the room.

We never, in all our experience, remember seeing a
prince--or a mere man for the matter of that--leave a
room with greater suavity, discretion, or aplomb. It was
a revelation of breeding, of race, of long slavery to
caste. And yet, with it all, it seemed to have a touch
of finality about it--a hint that the entire proceeding
was deliberate, planned, not to be altered by circumstance.
He did not come back.

We understand that he appeared later in the morning at
a civic reception in the costume of an Alpine Jaeger,
and attended the matinee in the dress of a lieutenant of
police.

Meantime he has our pen. If he turns up in any costume
that we can spot at sight, we shall ask him for it.

II. WITH OUR GREATEST ACTOR

That is to say, with Any One of
our Sixteen Greatest Actors

It was within the privacy of his own library that we
obtained--need we say with infinite difficulty--our
interview with the Great Actor. He was sitting in a deep
arm-chair, so buried in his own thoughts that he was
oblivious of our approach. On his knee before him lay a
cabinet photograph of himself. His eyes seemed to be
peering into it, as if seeking to fathom its unfathomable
mystery. We had time to note that a beautiful carbon
photogravure of himself stood on a table at his elbow,
while a magnificent half-tone pastel of himself was
suspended on a string from the ceiling. It was only when
we had seated ourself in a chair and taken out our notebook
that the Great Actor looked up.

"An interview?" he said, and we noted with pain the
weariness in his tone. "Another interview!"

We bowed.

"Publicity!" he murmured rather to himself than to us.
"Publicity! Why must one always be forced into publicity?"

It was not our intention, we explained apologetically,
to publish or to print a single word--

"Eh, what?" exclaimed the Great Actor. "Not print it?
Not publish it? Then what in--"

Not, we explained, without his consent.

"Ah," he murmured wearily, "my consent. Yes, yes, I must
give it. The world demands it. Print, publish anything
you like. I am indifferent to praise, careless of fame.
Posterity will judge me. But," he added more briskly,
"let me see a proof of it in time to make any changes I
might care to."

We bowed our assent.

"And now," we began, "may we be permitted to ask a few
questions about your art? And first, in which branch of
the drama do you consider that your genius chiefly lies,
in tragedy or in comedy?"

"In both," said the Great Actor.

"You excel then," we continued, "in neither the one nor
the other?"

"Not at all," he answered, "I excel in each of them."

"Excuse us," we said, "we haven't made our meaning quite
clear. What we meant to say is, stated very simply, that
you do not consider yourself better in either of them
than in the other?"

"Not at all," said the Actor, as he put out his arm with
that splendid gesture that we have known and admired for
years, at the same time throwing back his leonine head
so that his leonine hair fell back from his leonine
forehead. "Not at all. I do better in both of them. My
genius demands both tragedy and comedy at the same time."

"Ah," we said, as a light broke in upon us, "then that,
we presume, is the reason why you are about to appear in
Shakespeare?"

The Great Actor frowned.

"I would rather put it," he said, "that Shakespeare is
about to appear in me."

"Of course, of course," we murmured, ashamed of our own
stupidity.

"I appear," went on the Great Actor, "in _Hamlet_. I
expect to present, I may say, an entirely new Hamlet."

"A new Hamlet!" we exclaimed, fascinated. "A new Hamlet!
Is such a thing possible?"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11