Penrod

by Booth Tarkington

  CHAPTER XXIV "LITTLE GENTLEMAN"

  The midsummer sun was stinging hot outside the little barber-shop nextto the corner drug store and Penrod, undergoing a toilette preliminaryto his very slowly approaching twelfth birthday, was adhesive enough toretain upon his face much hair as it fell from the shears. There is amystery here: the tonsorial processes are not unagreeable to manhood; intruth, they are soothing; but the hairs detached from a boy's head getinto his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth, and down his neck, and hedoes everywhere itch excruciatingly. Wherefore he blinks, winks, weeps,twitches, condenses his countenance, and squirms; and perchance thebarber's scissors clip more than intended--belike an outlying flange ofear.

  "Um--muh--OW!" said Penrod, this thing having happened.

  "D' I touch y' up a little?" inquired the barber, smiling falsely.

  "Ooh--UH!" The boy in the chair offered inarticulate protest, as thewound was rubbed with alum.

  "THAT don't hurt!" said the barber. "You WILL get it, though, if youdon't sit stiller," he continued, nipping in the bud any attempt on thepart of his patient to think that he already had "it."

  "Pfuff!" said Penrod, meaning no disrespect, but endeavoring to dislodgea temporary moustache from his lip.

  "You ought to see how still that little Georgie Bassett sits," thebarber went on, reprovingly. "I hear everybody says he's the best boy intown."

  "Pfuff! PHIRR!" There was a touch of intentional contempt in this.

  "I haven't heard nobody around the neighbourhood makin' no suchremarks," added the barber, "about nobody of the name of PenrodSchofield."

  "Well," said Penrod, clearing his mouth after a struggle, "who wants 'emto? Ouch!"

  "I hear they call Georgie Bassett the 'little gentleman,'" ventured thebarber, provocatively, meeting with instant success.

  "They better not call ME that," returned Penrod truculently. "I'd liketo hear anybody try. Just once, that's all! I bet they'd never try itag----OUCH!"

  "Why? What'd you do to 'em?"

  "It's all right what I'd DO! I bet they wouldn't want to call me thatagain long as they lived!"

  "What'd you do if it was a little girl? You wouldn't hit her, wouldyou?"

  "Well, I'd----Ouch!"

  "You wouldn't hit a little girl, would you?" the barber persisted,gathering into his powerful fingers a mop of hair from the top ofPenrod's head and pulling that suffering head into an unnaturalposition. "Doesn't the Bible say it ain't never right to hit the weaksex?"

  "Ow! SAY, look OUT!"

  "So you'd go and punch a pore, weak, little girl, would you?" said thebarber, reprovingly.

  "Well, who said I'd hit her?" demanded the chivalrous Penrod. "I bet I'dFIX her though, all right. She'd see!"

  "You wouldn't call her names, would you?"

  "No, I wouldn't! What hurt is it to call anybody names?"

  "Is that SO!" exclaimed the barber. "Then you was intending what I heardyou hollering at Fisher's grocery delivery wagon driver fer a favour,the other day when I was goin' by your house, was you? I reckon I bettertell him, because he says to me after-WERDS if he ever lays eyes on youwhen you ain't in your own yard, he's goin' to do a whole lot o' thingsyou ain't goin' to like! Yessir, that's what he says to ME!"

  "He better catch me first, I guess, before he talks so much."

  "Well," resumed the barber, "that ain't sayin' what you'd do if a younglady ever walked up and called you a little gentleman. _I_ want to hearwhat you'd do to her. I guess I know, though--come to think of it."

  "What?" demanded Penrod.

  "You'd sick that pore ole dog of yours on her cat, if she had one, Iexpect," guessed the barber derisively.

  "No, I would not!"

  "Well, what WOULD you do?"

  "I'd do enough. Don't worry about that!"

  "Well, suppose it was a boy, then: what'd you do if a boy come up to youand says, 'Hello, little gentleman'?"

  "He'd be lucky," said Penrod, with a sinister frown, "if he got homealive."

  "Suppose it was a boy twice your size?"

  "Just let him try," said Penrod ominously. "You just let him try. He'dnever see daylight again; that's all!"

  The barber dug ten active fingers into the helpless scalp before himand did his best to displace it, while the anguished Penrod, becominginstantly a seething crucible of emotion, misdirected his naturalresentment into maddened brooding upon what he would do to a boy "twicehis size" who should dare to call him "little gentleman." The barbershook him as his father had never shaken him; the barber buffeted him,rocked him frantically to and fro; the barber seemed to be trying towring his neck; and Penrod saw himself in staggering zigzag pictures,destroying large, screaming, fragmentary boys who had insulted him.

  The torture stopped suddenly; and clenched, weeping eyes began to seeagain, while the barber applied cooling lotions which made Penrod smelllike a coloured housemaid's ideal.

  "Now what," asked the barber, combing the reeking locks gently, "whatwould it make you so mad fer, to have somebody call you a littlegentleman? It's a kind of compliment, as it were, you might say. Whatwould you want to hit anybody fer THAT fer?"

  To the mind of Penrod, this question was without meaning orreasonableness. It was within neither his power nor his desire toanalyze the process by which the phrase had become offensive to him,and was now rapidly assuming the proportions of an outrage. He knew onlythat his gorge rose at the thought of it.

  "You just let 'em try it!" he said threateningly, as he slid down fromthe chair. And as he went out of the door, after further conversationon the same subject, he called back those warning words once more: "Justlet 'em try it! Just once--that's all _I_ ask 'em to. They'll find outwhat they GET!"

  The barber chuckled. Then a fly lit on the barber's nose and he slappedat it, and the slap missed the fly but did not miss the nose. The barberwas irritated. At this moment his birdlike eye gleamed a gleam as itfell upon customers approaching: the prettiest little girl in the world,leading by the hand her baby brother, Mitchy-Mitch, coming to haveMitchy-Mitch's hair clipped, against the heat.

  It was a hot day and idle, with little to feed the mind--and the barberwas a mischievous man with an irritated nose. He did his worst.

  Meanwhile, the brooding Penrod pursued his homeward way; no greatdistance, but long enough for several one-sided conflicts with maligninsulters made of thin air. "You better NOT call me that!" he muttered."You just try it, and you'll get what other people got when THEY triedit. You better not ack fresh with ME! Oh, you WILL, will you?" Hedelivered a vicious kick full upon the shins of an iron fence-post,which suffered little, though Penrod instantly regretted hisindiscretion. "Oof!" he grunted, hopping; and went on after bestowing alook of awful hostility upon the fence-post. "I guess you'll know betternext time," he said, in parting, to this antagonist. "You just let mecatch you around here again and I'll----" His voice sank to inarticulatebut ominous murmurings. He was in a dangerous mood.

  Nearing home, however, his belligerent spirit was diverted to happierinterests by the discovery that some workmen had left a caldron of tarin the cross-street, close by his father's stable. He tested it, butfound it inedible. Also, as a substitute for professional chewing-gumit was unsatisfactory, being insufficiently boiled down and too thin,though of a pleasant, lukewarm temperature. But it had an excess of onequality--it was sticky. It was the stickiest tar Penrod had ever usedfor any purposes whatsoever, and nothing upon which he wiped his handsserved to rid them of it; neither his polka-dotted shirt waist nor hisknickerbockers; neither the fence, nor even Duke, who came unthinkinglywagging out to greet him, and retired wiser.

  Nevertheless, tar is tar. Much can be done with it, no matter what itscondition; so Penrod lingered by the caldron, though from a neighbouringyard could be heard the voices of comrades, including that of SamWilliams. On the ground about the caldron were scattered chips andsticks and bits of wood to the number of a great multitude. Penrod mixedquantities of this refuse into the tar, and interested himsel
f inseeing how much of it he could keep moving in slow swirls upon the ebonsurface.

  Other surprises were arranged for the absent workmen. The caldron wasalmost full, and the surface of the tar near the rim.

  Penrod endeavoured to ascertain how many pebbles and brickbats, droppedin, would cause an overflow. Labouring heartily to this end, hehad almost accomplished it, when he received the suggestion for anexperiment on a much larger scale. Embedded at the corner of agrassplot across the street was a whitewashed stone, the size of a smallwatermelon and serving no purpose whatever save the questionable one ofdecoration. It was easily pried up with a stick; though getting it tothe caldron tested the full strength of the ardent labourer. Instructedto perform such a task, he would have sincerely maintained itsimpossibility but now, as it was unbidden, and promised ratherdestructive results, he set about it with unconquerable energy, feelingcertain that he would be rewarded with a mighty splash. Perspiring,grunting vehemently, his back aching and all muscles strained, heprogressed in short stages until the big stone lay at the base of thecaldron. He rested a moment, panting, then lifted the stone, and wasbending his shoulders for the heave that would lift it over the rim,when a sweet, taunting voice, close behind him, startled him cruelly.

  "How do you do, LITTLE GENTLEMAN!"

  Penrod squawked, dropped the stone, and shouted, "Shut up, you dernfool!" purely from instinct, even before his about-face made him awarewho had so spitefully addressed him.

  It was Marjorie Jones. Always dainty, and prettily dressed, she was inspeckless and starchy white to-day, and a refreshing picture she made,with the new-shorn and powerfully scented Mitchy-Mitch clinging toher hand. They had stolen up behind the toiler, and now stood laughingtogether in sweet merriment. Since the passing of Penrod's Rupe Collinsperiod he had experienced some severe qualms at the recollection of hislast meeting with Marjorie and his Apache behaviour; in truth, his heartinstantly became as wax at sight of her, and he would have offeredher fair speech; but, alas! in Marjorie's wonderful eyes there shonea consciousness of new powers for his undoing, and she denied himopportunity.

  "Oh, OH!" she cried, mocking his pained outcry. "What a way for a LITTLEGENTLEMAN to talk! Little gentleman don't say wicked----"

  "Marjorie!" Penrod, enraged and dismayed, felt himself stung beyond allendurance. Insult from her was bitterer to endure than from any other."Don't you call me that again!"

  "Why not, LITTLE GENTLEMAN?"

  He stamped his foot. "You better stop!"

  Marjorie sent into his furious face her lovely, spiteful laughter.

  "Little gentleman, little gentleman, little gentleman!" she saiddeliberately. "How's the little gentleman, this afternoon? Hello, littlegentleman!"

  Penrod, quite beside himself, danced eccentrically. "Dry up!" he howled."Dry up, dry up, dry up, dry UP!"

  Mitchy-Mitch shouted with delight and applied a finger to the sideof the caldron--a finger immediately snatched away and wiped upon ahandkerchief by his fastidious sister.

  "'Ittle gellamun!" said Mitchy-Mitch.

  "You better look out!" Penrod whirled upon this small offender withgrim satisfaction. Here was at least something male that could withoutdishonour be held responsible. "You say that again, and I'll give youthe worst----"

  "You will NOT!" snapped Marjorie, instantly vitriolic. "He'll say justwhatever he wants to, and he'll say it just as MUCH as he wants to. Sayit again, Mitchy-Mitch!"

  "'Ittle gellamun!" said Mitchy-Mitch promptly.

  "Ow-YAH!" Penrod's tone-production was becoming affected by his mentalcondition. "You say that again, and I'll----"

  "Go on, Mitchy-Mitch," cried Marjorie. "He can't do a thing. He don'tDARE! Say it some more, Mitchy-Mitch--say it a whole lot!"

  Mitchy-Mitch, his small, fat face shining with confidence in hisimmunity, complied.

  "'Ittle gellamun!" he squeaked malevolently. "'Ittle gellamun! 'Ittlegellamun! 'Ittle gellamun!"

  The desperate Penrod bent over the whitewashed rock, lifted it, andthen--outdoing Porthos, John Ridd, and Ursus in one miraculous burst ofstrength--heaved it into the air.

  Marjorie screamed.

  But it was too late. The big stone descended into the precise midst ofthe caldron and Penrod got his mighty splash. It was far, far beyond hisexpectations.

  Spontaneously there were grand and awful effects--volcanic spectacles ofnightmare and eruption. A black sheet of eccentric shape rose out of thecaldron and descended upon the three children, who had no time to evadeit.

  After it fell, Mitchy-Mitch, who stood nearest the caldron, was thethickest, though there was enough for all. Br'er Rabbit would have fledfrom any of them.