Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  The second audience contained a cash-paying adult, a spectacled young man whose poignant attention was very flattering. He remained after the lecture, and put a few questions to Roddy, which were answered rather confusedly upon promptings from Penrod. The young man went away without having stated the object of his interrogations, but it became quite plain, later in the day. This same object caused the spectacled young man to make several brief but stimulating calls directly after leaving the Schofield and Williams Big Show, and the consequences thereof loitered not by the wayside.

  The Big Show was at high tide. Not only was the auditorium filled and throbbing; there was an indubitable line — by no means wholly juvenile — waiting for admission to the next pufformance. A group stood in the street examining the poster earnestly as it glowed in the long, slanting rays of the westward sun, and people in automobiles and other vehicles had halted wheel in the street to read the message so piquantly given to the world. These were the conditions when a crested victoria arrived at a gallop, and a large, chastely magnificent and highly flushed woman descended, and progressed across the yard with an air of violence.

  At sight of her, the adults of the waiting line hastily disappeared, and most of the pausing vehicles moved instantly on their way. She was followed by a stricken man in livery.

  The stairs to the auditorium were narrow and steep; Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts was of a stout favour; and the voice of Penrod was audible during the ascent.

  “RE-MEM-BUR, gentilmun and lay-deeze, each and all are now gazing upon Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, the only living nephew of the great Rena Magsworth. She stuck ars’nic in the milk of eight separate and distinck people to put in their coffee and each and all of ’em died. The great ars’nic murderess, Rena Magsworth, gentilmun and lay-deeze, and Roddy’s her only living nephew. She’s a relation of all the Bitts family, but he’s her one and only living nephew. RE-MEM-BUR! Next July she’s goin’ to be hung, and, each and all, you now see before you — —”

  Penrod paused abruptly, seeing something before himself — the august and awful presence which filled the entryway. And his words (it should be related) froze upon his lips.

  Before HERSELF, Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts saw her son — her scion — wearing a moustache and sideburns of blue, and perched upon a box flanked by Sherman and Verman, the Michigan rats, the Indian dog Duke, Herman, and the dog part alligator.

  Roddy, also, saw something before himself. It needed no prophet to read the countenance of the dread apparition in the entryway. His mouth opened — remained open — then filled to capacity with a calamitous sound of grief not unmingled with apprehension.

  Penrod’s reason staggered under the crisis. For a horrible moment he saw Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts approaching like some fatal mountain in avalanche. She seemed to grow larger and redder; lightnings played about her head; he had a vague consciousness of the audience spraying out in flight, of the squealings, tramplings and dispersals of a stricken field. The mountain was close upon him ——

  He stood by the open mouth of the hay-chute which went through the floor to the manger below. Penrod also went through the floor. He propelled himself into the chute and shot down, but not quite to the manger, for Mr. Samuel Williams had thoughtfully stepped into the chute a moment in advance of his partner. Penrod lit upon Sam.

  Catastrophic noises resounded in the loft; volcanoes seemed to romp upon the stairway.

  There ensued a period when only a shrill keening marked the passing of Roderick as he was borne to the tumbril. Then all was silence.

  . . . Sunset, striking through a western window, rouged the walls of the Schofields’ library, where gathered a joint family council and court martial of four — Mrs. Schofield, Mr. Schofield, and Mr. and Mrs. Williams, parents of Samuel of that ilk. Mr. Williams read aloud a conspicuous passage from the last edition of the evening paper:

  “Prominent people here believed close relations of woman sentenced to hang. Angry denial by Mrs. R. Magsworth Bitts. Relationship admitted by younger member of family. His statement confirmed by boy-friends — —”

  “Don’t!” said Mrs. Williams, addressing her husband vehemently. “We’ve all read it a dozen times. We’ve got plenty of trouble on our hands without hearing THAT again!”

  Singularly enough, Mrs. Williams did not look troubled; she looked as if she were trying to look troubled. Mrs. Schofield wore a similar expression. So did Mr. Schofield. So did Mr. Williams.

  “What did she say when she called YOU up?” Mrs. Schofield inquired breathlessly of Mrs. Williams.

  “She could hardly speak at first, and then when she did talk, she talked so fast I couldn’t understand most of it, and — —”

  “It was just the same when she tried to talk to me,” said Mrs. Schofield, nodding.

  “I never did hear any one in such a state before,” continued Mrs. Williams. “So furious — —”

  “Quite justly, of course,” said Mrs. Schofield.

  “Of course. And she said Penrod and Sam had enticed Roderick away from home — usually he’s not allowed to go outside the yard except with his tutor or a servant — and had told him to say that horrible creature was his aunt — —”

  “How in the world do you suppose Sam and Penrod ever thought of such a thing as THAT!” exclaimed Mrs. Schofield. “It must have been made up just for their ‘show.’ Della says there were just STREAMS going in and out all day. Of course it wouldn’t have happened, but this was the day Margaret and I spend every month in the country with Aunt Sarah, and I didn’t DREAM — —”

  “She said one thing I thought rather tactless,” interrupted Mrs. Williams. “Of course we must allow for her being dreadfully excited and wrought up, but I do think it wasn’t quite delicate in her, and she’s usually the very soul of delicacy. She said that Roderick had NEVER been allowed to associate with — common boys — —”

  “Meaning Sam and Penrod,” said Mrs. Schofield. “Yes, she said that to me, too.”

  “She said that the most awful thing about it,” Mrs. Williams went on, “was that, though she’s going to prosecute the newspapers, many people would always believe the story, and — —”

  “Yes, I imagine they will,” said Mrs. Schofield musingly. “Of course you and I and everybody who really knows the Bitts and Magsworth families understand the perfect absurdity of it; but I suppose there are ever so many who’ll believe it, no matter what the Bittses and Magsworths say.”

  “Hundreds and hundreds!” said Mrs. Williams. “I’m afraid it will be a great come-down for them.”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Mrs. Schofield gently. “A very great one — yes, a very, very great one.”

  “Well,” observed Mrs. Williams, after a thoughtful pause, “there’s only one thing to be done, and I suppose it had better be done right away.”

  She glanced toward the two gentlemen.

  “Certainly,” Mr. Schofield agreed. “But where ARE they?”

  “Have you looked in the stable?” asked his wife.

  “I searched it. They’ve probably started for the far West.”

  “Did you look in the sawdust-box?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Then that’s where they are.”

  Thus, in the early twilight, the now historic stable was approached by two fathers charged to do the only thing to be done. They entered the storeroom.

  “Penrod!” said Mr. Schofield.

  “Sam!” said Mr. Williams.

  Nothing disturbed the twilight hush.

  But by means of a ladder, brought from the carriage-house, Mr. Schofield mounted to the top of the sawdust-box. He looked within, and discerned the dim outlines of three quiet figures, the third being that of a small dog.

  The two boys rose, upon command, descended the ladder after Mr. Schofield, bringing Duke with them, and stood before the authors of their being, who bent upon them sinister and threatening brows. With hanging heads and despondent countenances, each still orname
nted with a moustache and an imperial, Penrod and Sam awaited sentence.

  This is a boy’s lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime — he never knows.

  And punishment and clemency are alike inexplicable.

  Mr. Williams took his son by the ear.

  “You march home!” he commanded.

  Sam marched, not looking back, and his father followed the small figure implacably.

  “You goin’ to whip me?” quavered Penrod, alone with Justice.

  “Wash your face at that hydrant,” said his father sternly.

  About fifteen minutes later, Penrod, hurriedly entering the corner drug store, two blocks distant, was astonished to perceive a familiar form at the soda counter.

  “Yay, Penrod,” said Sam Williams. “Want some sody? Come on. He didn’t lick me. He didn’t do anything to me at all. He gave me a quarter.”

  “So’d mine,” said Penrod.

  CHAPTER XVIII MUSIC

  BOYHOOD IS THE longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the school-year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living through them is like waiting for the millennium. But they do pass, somehow, and at last there came a day when Penrod was one of a group that capered out from the gravelled yard of “Ward School, Nomber Seventh,” carolling a leave-taking of the institution, of their instructress, and not even forgetting Mr. Capps, the janitor.

  “Good-bye, teacher! Good-bye, school! Good-bye, Cappsie, dern ole fool!”

  Penrod sang the loudest. For every boy, there is an age when he “finds his voice.” Penrod’s had not “changed,” but he had found it. Inevitably that thing had come upon his family and the neighbours; and his father, a somewhat dyspeptic man, quoted frequently the expressive words of the “Lady of Shalott,” but there were others whose sufferings were as poignant.

  Vacation-time warmed the young of the world to pleasant languor; and a morning came that was like a brightly coloured picture in a child’s fairy story. Miss Margaret Schofield, reclining in a hammock upon the front porch, was beautiful in the eyes of a newly made senior, well favoured and in fair raiment, beside her. A guitar rested lightly upon his knee, and he was trying to play — a matter of some difficulty, as the floor of the porch also seemed inclined to be musical. From directly under his feet came a voice of song, shrill, loud, incredibly piercing and incredibly flat, dwelling upon each syllable with incomprehensible reluctance to leave it.

  “I have lands and earthly pow-wur.

  I’d give all for a now-wur,

  Whi-ilst setting at MY-Y-Y dear old mother’s knee-ee,

  So-o-o rem-mem-bur whilst you’re young — —”

  Miss Schofield stamped heartily upon the musical floor.

  “It’s Penrod,” she explained. “The lattice at the end of the porch is loose, and he crawls under and comes out all bugs. He’s been having a dreadful singing fit lately — running away to picture shows and vaudeville, I suppose.”

  Mr. Robert Williams looked upon her yearningly. He touched a thrilling chord on his guitar and leaned nearer. “But you said you have missed me,” he began. “I — —”

  The voice of Penrod drowned all other sounds.

  “So-o-o rem-mem-bur, whi-i-ilst you’re young,

  That the day-a-ys to you will come,

  When you’re o-o-old and only in the way,

  Do not scoff at them BEE-cause — —”

  “PENROD!” Miss Schofield stamped again.

  “You DID say you’d missed me,” said Mr. Robert Williams, seizing hurriedly upon the silence. “Didn’t you say — —”

  A livelier tune rose upward.

  “Oh, you talk about your fascinating beauties,

  Of your dem-O-zells, your belles,

  But the littil dame I met, while in the city,

  She’s par excellaws the queen of all the swells.

  She’s sweeter far — —”

  Margaret rose and jumped up and down repeatedly in a well-calculated area, whereupon the voice of Penrod cried chokedly, “QUIT that!” and there were subterranean coughings and sneezings.

  “You want to choke a person to death?” he inquired severely, appearing at the end of the porch, a cobweb upon his brow. And, continuing, he put into practice a newly acquired phrase, “You better learn to be more considerick of other people’s comfort.”

  Slowly and grievedly he withdrew, passed to the sunny side of the house, reclined in the warm grass beside his wistful Duke, and presently sang again.

  “She’s sweeter far than the flower I named her after,

  And the memery of her smile it haunts me YET!

  When in after years the moon is soffly beamun’

  And at eve I smell the smell of mignonette

  I will re-CALL that — —”

  “Pen-ROD!”

  Mr. Schofield appeared at an open window upstairs, a book in his hand.

  “Stop it!” he commanded. “Can’t I stay home with a headache ONE morning from the office without having to listen to — I never DID hear such squawking!” He retired from the window, having too impulsively called upon his Maker. Penrod, shocked and injured, entered the house, but presently his voice was again audible as far as the front porch. He was holding converse with his mother, somewhere in the interior.

  “Well, what of it? Sam Williams told me his mother said if Bob ever did think of getting married to Margaret, his mother said she’d like to know what in the name o’ goodness they expect to — —”

  Bang! Margaret thought it better to close the front door.

  The next minute Penrod opened it. “I suppose you want the whole family to get a sunstroke,” he said reprovingly. “Keepin’ every breath of air out o’ the house on a day like this!”

  And he sat down implacably in the doorway.

  The serious poetry of all languages has omitted the little brother; and yet he is one of the great trials of love — the immemorial burden of courtship. Tragedy should have found place for him, but he has been left to the haphazard vignettist of Grub Street. He is the grave and real menace of lovers; his head is sacred and terrible, his power illimitable. There is one way — only one — to deal with him; but Robert Williams, having a brother of Penrod’s age, understood that way.

  Robert had one dollar in the world. He gave it to Penrod immediately.

  Enslaved forever, the new Rockefeller rose and went forth upon the highway, an overflowing heart bursting the floodgates of song.

  “In her eyes the light of love was soffly gleamun’,

  So sweetlay,

  So neatlay.

  On the banks the moon’s soff light was brightly streamun’,

  Words of love I then spoke TO her.

  She was purest of the PEW-er:

  ‘Littil sweetheart, do not sigh,

  Do not weep and do not cry.

  I will build a littil cottige just for yew-EW-EW and I.’”

  In fairness, it must be called to mind that boys older than Penrod have these wellings of pent melody; a wife can never tell when she is to undergo a musical morning, and even the golden wedding brings her no security, a man of ninety is liable to bust-loose in song, any time.

  Invalids murmured pitifully as Penrod came within hearing; and people trying to think cursed the day that they were born, when he went shrilling by. His hands in his pockets, his shining face uplifted to the sky of June, he passed down the street, singing his way into the heart’s deepest hatred of all who heard him.

  “One evuning I was sturow-ling

  Midst the city of the DEAD,

  I viewed where all a-round me

  Their PEACE-full graves was SPREAD.

  But that which touched me mostlay — —”

  He had reached his journey’s end, a junk-dealer’s shop wherein lay the long-desired treasure of his soul — an accordion which might have possessed a high quality of interest for an antiquarian, being unquestionably a ruin, beautiful in decay, and quite beyond the sacrilegious reac
h of the restorer. But it was still able to disgorge sounds — loud, strange, compelling sounds, which could be heard for a remarkable distance in all directions; and it had one rich calf-like tone that had gone to Penrod’s heart. He obtained the instrument for twenty-two cents, a price long since agreed upon with the junk-dealer, who falsely claimed a loss of profit, Shylock that he was! He had found the wreck in an alley.

  With this purchase suspended from his shoulder by a faded green cord, Penrod set out in a somewhat homeward direction, but not by the route he had just travelled, though his motive for the change was not humanitarian. It was his desire to display himself thus troubadouring to the gaze of Marjorie Jones. Heralding his advance by continuous experiments in the music of the future, he pranced upon his blithesome way, the faithful Duke at his heels. (It was easier for Duke than it would have been for a younger dog, because, with advancing age, he had begun to grow a little deaf.)

  Turning the corner nearest to the glamoured mansion of the Joneses, the boy jongleur came suddenly face to face with Marjorie, and, in the delicious surprise of the encounter, ceased to play, his hands, in agitation, falling from the instrument.

  Bareheaded, the sunshine glorious upon her amber curls, Marjorie was strolling hand-in-hand with her baby brother, Mitchell, four years old. She wore pink that day — unforgettable pink, with a broad, black patent-leather belt, shimmering reflections dancing upon its surface. How beautiful she was! How sacred the sweet little baby brother, whose privilege it was to cling to that small hand, delicately powdered with freckles.

  “Hello, Marjorie,” said Penrod, affecting carelessness.

  “Hello!” said Marjorie, with unexpected cordiality. She bent over her baby brother with motherly affectations. “Say ‘howdy’ to the gentymuns, Mitchy-Mitch,” she urged sweetly, turning him to face Penrod.