CHAPTER XV THE TWO FAMILIES
Penrod entered the schoolroom, Monday picturesquely leaning upon a man'scane shortened to support a cripple approaching the age of twelve. Hearrived about twenty minutes late, limping deeply, his brave young mouthdrawn with pain, and the sensation he created must have been a solace tohim; the only possible criticism of this entrance being that it was justa shade too heroic. Perhaps for that reason it failed to stagger MissSpence, a woman so saturated with suspicion that she penalized Penrodfor tardiness as promptly and as coldly as if he had been a mere,ordinary, unmutilated boy. Nor would she entertain any discussion of thejustice of her ruling. It seemed, almost, that she feared to argue withhim.
However, the distinction of cane and limp remained to him, consolationswhich he protracted far into the week--until Thursday evening, in fact,when Mr. Schofield, observing from a window his son's pursuit of Dukeround and round the backyard, confiscated the cane, with the promisethat it should not remain idle if he saw Penrod limping again. Thus,succeeding a depressing Friday, another Saturday brought the necessityfor new inventions.
It was a scented morning in apple-blossom time. At about ten of theclock Penrod emerged hastily from the kitchen door. His pockets bulgedabnormally; so did his checks, and he swallowed with difficulty. Athreatening mop, wielded by a cooklike arm in a checkered sleeve,followed him through the doorway, and he was preceded by a small,hurried, wistful dog with a warm doughnut in his mouth. The kitchen doorslammed petulantly, enclosing the sore voice of Della, whereupon Penrodand Duke seated themselves upon the pleasant sward and immediatelyconsumed the spoils of their raid.
From the cross-street which formed the side boundary of the Schofields'ample yard came a jingle of harness and the cadenced clatter of a pairof trotting horses, and Penrod, looking up, beheld the passing of afat acquaintance, torpid amid the conservative splendours of a ratherold-fashioned victoria. This was Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, afellow sufferer at the Friday Afternoon Dancing Class, but otherwise notoften a companion: a home-sheltered lad, tutored privately and preservedagainst the coarsening influences of rude comradeship and miscellaneousinformation. Heavily overgrown in all physical dimensions, virtuous,and placid, this cloistered mutton was wholly uninteresting to PenrodSchofield. Nevertheless, Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, was apersonage on account of the importance of the Magsworth Bitts family;and it was Penrod's destiny to increase Roderick's celebrity far, farbeyond its present aristocratic limitations.
The Magsworth Bittses were important because they were impressive; therewas no other reason. And they were impressive because they believedthemselves important. The adults of the family were impregnably formal;they dressed with reticent elegance, and wore the same nose and thesame expression--an expression which indicated that they knew somethingexquisite and sacred which other people could never know. Other people,in their presence, were apt to feel mysteriously ignoble and tobecome secretly uneasy about ancestors, gloves, and pronunciation. TheMagsworth Bitts manner was withholding and reserved, though sometimesgracious, granting small smiles as great favours and giving off achilling kind of preciousness. Naturally, when any citizen of thecommunity did anything unconventional or improper, or made a mistake, orhad a relative who went wrong, that citizen's first and worst fearwas that the Magsworth Bittses would hear of it. In fact, this painfulfamily had for years terrorized the community, though the communityhad never realized that it was terrorized, and invariably spoke of thefamily as the "most charming circle in town." By common consent, Mrs.Roderick Magsworth Bitts officiated as the supreme model as well ascritic-in-chief of morals and deportment for all the unlucky peopleprosperous enough to be elevated to her acquaintance.
Magsworth was the important part of the name. Mrs. Roderick MagsworthBitts was a Magsworth born, herself, and the Magsworth crest decoratednot only Mrs. Magsworth Bitts' note-paper but was on the china, on thetable linen, on the chimney-pieces, on the opaque glass of the frontdoor, on the victoria, and on the harness, though omitted from thegarden-hose and the lawn-mower.
Naturally, no sensible person dreamed of connecting that illustriouscrest with the unfortunate and notorious Rena Magsworth whose name hadgrown week by week into larger and larger type upon the front pages ofnewspapers, owing to the gradually increasing public and official beliefthat she had poisoned a family of eight. However, the statement that nosensible person could have connected the Magsworth Bitts family with thearsenical Rena takes no account of Penrod Schofield.
Penrod never missed a murder, a hanging or an electrocution in thenewspapers; he knew almost as much about Rena Magsworth as her jurymendid, though they sat in a court-room two hundred miles away, and he hadit in mind--so frank he was--to ask Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, ifthe murderess happened to be a relative.
The present encounter, being merely one of apathetic greeting, did notafford the opportunity. Penrod took off his cap, and Roderick, seatedbetween his mother and one of his grown-up sisters, nodded sluggishly,but neither Mrs. Magsworth Bitts nor her daughter acknowledged thesalutation of the boy in the yard. They disapproved of him as aperson of little consequence, and that little, bad. Snubbed, Penrodthoughtfully restored his cap to his head. A boy can be cut aseffectually as a man, and this one was chilled to a low temperature. Hewondered if they despised him because they had seen a last fragment ofdoughnut in his hand; then he thought that perhaps it was Duke who haddisgraced him. Duke was certainly no fashionable looking dog.
The resilient spirits of youth, however, presently revived, anddiscovering a spider upon one knee and a beetle simultaneously upon theother, Penrod forgot Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts in the course ofsome experiments infringing upon the domain of Doctor Carrel. Penrod'sefforts--with the aid of a pin--to effect a transference of livingorganism were unsuccessful; but he convinced himself forever that aspider cannot walk with a beetle's legs. Della then enhanced zoologicalinterest by depositing upon the back porch a large rat-trap from thecellar, the prison of four live rats awaiting execution.
Penrod at once took possession, retiring to the empty stable, wherehe installed the rats in a small wooden box with a sheet of brokenwindow-glass--held down by a brickbat--over the top. Thus the symptomsof their agitation, when the box was shaken or hammered upon, could bestudied at leisure. Altogether this Saturday was starting splendidly.
After a time, the student's attention was withdrawn from his specimensby a peculiar smell, which, being followed up by a system of selectivesniffing, proved to be an emanation leaking into the stable from thealley. He opened the back door.
Across the alley was a cottage which a thrifty neighbour had built onthe rear line of his lot and rented to negroes; and the fact that anegro family was now in process of "moving in" was manifested by thepresence of a thin mule and a ramshackle wagon, the latter ladenwith the semblance of a stove and a few other unpretentious householdarticles.
A very small darky boy stood near the mule. In his hand was a rustychain, and at the end of the chain the delighted Penrod perceived thesource of the special smell he was tracing--a large raccoon. Duke,who had shown not the slightest interest in the rats, set up a franticbarking and simulated a ravening assault upon the strange animal. Itwas only a bit of acting, however, for Duke was an old dog, had sufferedmuch, and desired no unnecessary sorrow, wherefore he confined hisdemonstrations to alarums and excursions, and presently sat down ata distance and expressed himself by intermittent threatenings in aquavering falsetto.
"What's that 'coon's name?" asked Penrod, intending no discourtesy.
"Aim gommo mame," said the small darky.
"What?"
"Aim gommo mame."
"WHAT?"
The small darky looked annoyed.
"Aim GOMMO mame, I hell you," he said impatiently.
Penrod conceived that insult was intended.
"What's the matter of you?" he demanded advancing. "You get fresh withME, and I'll----"
"Hyuh, white boy!" A coloured youth of Penrod's o
wn age appeared inthe doorway of the cottage. "You let 'at brothuh mine alone. He ain' donothin' to you."
"Well, why can't he answer?"
"He can't. He can't talk no better'n what he WAS talkin'. Hetongue-tie'."
"Oh," said Penrod, mollified. Then, obeying an impulse so universallyaroused in the human breast under like circumstances that it has becomea quip, he turned to the afflicted one.
"Talk some more," he begged eagerly.
"I hoe you ackoom aim gommo mame," was the prompt response, in whicha slight ostentation was manifest. Unmistakable tokens of vanity hadappeared upon the small, swart countenance.
"What's he mean?" asked Penrod, enchanted.
"He say he tole you 'at 'coon ain' got no name."
"What's YOUR name?"
"I'm name Herman."
"What's his name?" Penrod pointed to the tongue-tied boy.
"Verman."
"What!"
"Verman. Was three us boys in ow fam'ly. Ol'est one name Sherman. 'N'encome me; I'm Herman. 'N'en come him; he Verman. Sherman dead. Verman, hede littles' one."
"You goin' to live here?"
"Umhuh. Done move in f'm way outen on a fahm."
He pointed to the north with his right hand, and Penrod's eyes openedwide as they followed the gesture. Herman had no forefinger on thathand.
"Look there!" exclaimed Penrod. "You haven't got any finger!"
"_I_ mum map," said Verman, with egregious pride.
"HE done 'at," interpreted Herman, chuckling. "Yessuh; done chop 'erspang off, long 'go. He's a playin' wif a ax an' I lay my finguh on dedo'-sill an' I say, 'Verman, chop 'er off!' So Verman he chop 'er rightspang off up to de roots! Yessuh."
"What FOR?"
"Jes' fo' nothin'."
"He hoe me hoo," remarked Verman.
"Yessuh, I tole him to," said Herman, "an' he chop 'er off, an' ey ain'tairy oth' one evuh grown on wheres de ole one use to grow. Nosuh!"
"But what'd you tell him to do it for?"
"Nothin'. I 'es' said it 'at way--an' he jes' chop er off!"
Both brothers looked pleased and proud. Penrod's profound interest wasflatteringly visible, a tribute to their unusualness.
"Hem bow goy," suggested Verman eagerly.
"Aw ri'," said Herman. "Ow sistuh Queenie, she a growed-up woman; shegot a goituh."
"Got a what?"
"Goituh. Swellin' on her neck--grea' big swellin'. She heppin' mammymove in now. You look in de front-room winduh wheres she sweepin'; youkin see it on her."
Penrod looked in the window and was rewarded by a fine view of Queenie'sgoitre. He had never before seen one, and only the lure of furtherconversation on the part of Verman brought him from the window.
"Verman say tell you 'bout pappy," explained Herman. "Mammy an' Queeniemove in town an' go git de house all fix up befo' pappy git out."
"Out of where?"
"Jail. Pappy cut a man, an' de police done kep' him in jail evuh senseChris'mus-time; but dey goin' tuhn him loose ag'in nex' week."
"What'd he cut the other man with?"
"Wif a pitchfawk."
Penrod began to feel that a lifetime spent with this fascinating familywere all too short. The brothers, glowing with amiability, were asenraptured as he. For the first time in their lives they moved in therich glamour of sensationalism. Herman was prodigal of gesture with hisright hand; and Verman, chuckling with delight, talked fluently,though somewhat consciously. They cheerfully agreed to keep theraccoon--already beginning to be mentioned as "our 'coon" by Penrod--inMr. Schofield's empty stable, and, when the animal had been chained tothe wall near the box of rats and supplied with a pan of fair water,they assented to their new friend's suggestion (inspired by a finesense of the artistic harmonies) that the heretofore nameless pet bechristened Sherman, in honour of their deceased relative.
At this juncture was heard from the front yard the sound of thatyodelling which is the peculiar accomplishment of those whose voiceshave not "changed." Penrod yodelled a response; and Mr. Samuel Williamsappeared, a large bundle under his arm.
"Yay, Penrod!" was his greeting, casual enough from without; but, havingentered, he stopped short and emitted a prodigious whistle. "YA-A-AY!"he then shouted. "Look at the 'coon!"
"I guess you better say, 'Look at the 'coon!'" Penrod returned proudly."They's a good deal more'n him to look at, too. Talk some, Verman."Verman complied.
Sam was warmly interested. "What'd you say his name was?" he asked.
"Verman."
"How d'you spell it?"
"V-e-r-m-a-n," replied Penrod, having previously received thisinformation from Herman.
"Oh!" said Sam.
"Point to sumpthing, Herman," Penrod commanded, and Sam's excitement,when Herman pointed was sufficient to the occasion.
Penrod, the discoverer, continued his exploitation of the manifoldwonders of the Sherman, Herman, and Verman collection. With the air ofa proprietor he escorted Sam into the alley for a good look at Queenie(who seemed not to care for her increasing celebrity) and proceeded toa dramatic climax--the recital of the episode of the pitchfork and itsconsequences.
The cumulative effect was enormous, and could have but one possibleresult. The normal boy is always at least one half Barnum.
"Let's get up a SHOW!"
Penrod and Sam both claimed to have said it first, a question leftunsettled in the ecstasies of hurried preparation. The bundle underSam's arm, brought with no definite purpose, proved to have beenan inspiration. It consisted of broad sheets of light yellowwrapping-paper, discarded by Sam's mother in her spring house-cleaning.There were half-filled cans and buckets of paint in the storeroomadjoining the carriage-house, and presently the side wall of the stableflamed information upon the passer-by from a great and spreading poster.
"Publicity," primal requisite of all theatrical and amphitheatricalenterprise thus provided, subsequent arrangements proceeded with a furyof energy which transformed the empty hayloft. True, it is impossible tosay just what the hay-loft was transformed into, but history warrantablyclings to the statement that it was transformed. Duke and Sherman weresecured to the rear wall at a considerable distance from each other,after an exhibition of reluctance on the part of Duke, during which hedisplayed a nervous energy and agility almost miraculous in so small andmiddle-aged a dog. Benches were improvised for spectators; the ratswere brought up; finally the rafters, corn-crib, and hay-chute wereornamented with flags and strips of bunting from Sam Williams'attic, Sam returning from the excursion wearing an old silk hat, andaccompanied (on account of a rope) by a fine dachshund encountered onthe highway. In the matter of personal decoration paint was generouslyused: an interpretation of the spiral, inclining to whites and greens,becoming brilliantly effective upon the dark facial backgrounds ofHerman and Verman; while the countenances of Sam and Penrod were eachsupplied with the black moustache and imperial, lacking which, noprofessional showman can be esteemed conscientious.
It was regretfully decided, in council, that no attempt be made to addQueenie to the list of exhibits, her brothers warmly declining to act asambassadors in that cause. They were certain Queenie would not likethe idea, they said, and Herman picturesquely described her activityon occasions when she had been annoyed by too much attention to herappearance. However, Penrod's disappointment was alleviated by aninspiration which came to him in a moment of pondering upon thedachshund, and the entire party went forth to add an enriching line tothe poster.
They found a group of seven, including two adults, already gathered inthe street to read and admire this work.
SCHoFiELD & WiLLiAMS BiG SHOW ADMiSSioN 1 CENT oR 20 PiNS MUSUEM oF CURioSiTES Now GoiNG oN SHERMAN HERMAN & VERMAN THiER FATHERS iN JAiL STABED A MAN WiTH A PiTCHFORK SHERMAN THE WiLD ANIMAL CAPTURED iN AFRiCA HERMAN THE ONE FiNGERED TATOOD WILD MAN VERMAN THE SAVAGE TATOOD WILD BoY TALKS ONLY iN HiS NAiTiVE LANGUAGS. Do NoT FAIL TO SEE DUKE THE INDiAN DOG ALSO THE MiCHiGAN TRAiNED
RATS
A heated argument took place between Sam and Penrod, the point at issuebeing settled, finally, by the drawing of straws; whereupon Penrod, withpardonable self-importance--in the presence of an audience now increasedto nine--slowly painted the words inspired by the dachshund:
IMPoRTENT Do NoT MISS THE SoUTH AMERiCAN DoG PART ALLIGATOR.
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