Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  But when Herman and Verman set to ‘t the record must be no more than a few fragments left by the expurgator. It has been perhaps sufficiently suggested that the altercation in Mr. Schofield’s stable opened with mayhem in respect to the aggressor’s nose. Expressing vocally his indignation and the extremity of his pained surprise, Mr. Collins stepped backward, holding his left hand over his nose, and striking at Herman with his right. Then Verman hit him with the rake.

  Verman struck from behind. He struck as hard as he could. And he struck with the tines down — For, in his simple, direct African way he wished to kill his enemy, and he wished to kill him as soon as possible. That was his single, earnest purpose.

  On this account, Rupe Collins was peculiarly unfortunate. He was plucky and he enjoyed conflict, but neither his ambitions nor his anticipations had ever included murder. He had not learned that an habitually aggressive person runs the danger of colliding with beings in one of those lower stages of evolution wherein theories about “hitting below the belt” have not yet made their appearance.

  The rake glanced from the back of Rupe’s head to his shoulder, but it felled him. Both darkies jumped full upon him instantly, and the three rolled and twisted upon the stable-floor, unloosing upon the air sincere maledictions closely connected with complaints of cruel and unusual treatment; while certain expressions of feeling presently emanating from Herman and Verman indicated that Rupe Collins, in this extremity, was proving himself not too slavishly addicted to fighting by rule. Dan and Duke, mistaking all for mirth, barked gayly.

  From the panting, pounding, yelling heap issued words and phrases hitherto quite unknown to Penrod and Sam; also, a hoarse repetition in the voice of Rupe concerning his ear left it not to be doubted that additional mayhem was taking place. Appalled, the two spectators retreated to the doorway nearest the yard, where they stood dumbly watching the cataclysm.

  The struggle increased in primitive simplicity: time and again the howling Rupe got to his knees only to go down again as the earnest brothers, in their own way, assisted him to a more reclining position. Primal forces operated here, and the two blanched, slightly higher products of evolution, Sam and Penrod, no more thought of interfering than they would have thought of interfering with an earthquake.

  At last, out of the ruck rose Verman, disfigured and maniacal. With a wild eye he looked about him for his trusty rake; but Penrod, in horror, had long since thrown the rake out into the yard. Naturally, it had not seemed necessary to remove the lawn-mower.

  The frantic eye of Verman fell upon the lawn-mower, and instantly he leaped to its handle. Shrilling a wordless war-cry, he charged, propelling the whirling, deafening knives straight upon the prone legs of Rupe Collins. The lawn-mower was sincerely intended to pass longitudinally over the body of Mr. Collins from heel to head; and it was the time for a death-song. Black Valkyrie hovered in the shrieking air.

  “Cut his gizzud out!” shrieked Herman, urging on the whirling knives.

  They touched and lacerated the shin of Rupe, as, with the supreme agony of effort a creature in mortal peril puts forth before succumbing, he tore himself free of Herman and got upon his feet.

  Herman was up as quickly. He leaped to the wall and seized the garden-scythe that hung there.

  “I’m go to cut you’ gizzud out,” he announced definitely, “an’ eat it!”

  Rupe Collins had never run from anybody (except his father) in his life; he was not a coward; but the present situation was very, very unusual. He was already in a badly dismantled condition, and yet Herman and Verman seemed discontented with their work: Verman was swinging the grass-cutter about for a new charge, apparently still wishing to mow him, and Herman had made a quite plausible statement about what he intended to do with the scythe.

  Rupe paused but for an extremely condensed survey of the horrible advance of the brothers, and then, uttering a blood-curdled scream of fear, ran out of the stable and up the alley at a speed he had never before attained, so that even Dan had hard work to keep within barking distance. And a ‘cross-shoulder glance, at the corner, revealing Verman and Herman in pursuit, the latter waving his scythe overhead, Mr. Collins slackened not his gait, but, rather, out of great anguish, increased it; the while a rapidly developing purpose became firm in his mind — and ever after so remained — not only to refrain from visiting that neighbourhood again, but never by any chance to come within a mile of it.

  From the alley door, Penrod and Sam watched the flight, and were without words. When the pursuit rounded the corner, the two looked wanly at each other, but neither spoke until the return of the brothers from the chase.

  Herman and Verman came back, laughing and chuckling.

  “Hiyi!” cackled Herman to Verman, as they came, “See ‘at ole boy run!”

  “Who-ee!” Verman shouted in ecstasy.

  “Nev’ did see boy run so fas’!” Herman continued, tossing the scythe into the wheelbarrow. “I bet he home in bed by viss time!”

  Verman roared with delight, appearing to be wholly unconscious that the lids of his right eye were swollen shut and that his attire, not too finical before the struggle, now entitled him to unquestioned rank as a sansculotte. Herman was a similar ruin, and gave as little heed to his condition.

  Penrod looked dazedly from Herman to Verman and back again. So did Sam Williams.

  “Herman,” said Penrod, in a weak voice, “you wouldn’t HONEST of cut his gizzard out, would you?”

  “Who? Me? I don’ know. He mighty mean ole boy!” Herman shook his head gravely, and then, observing that Verman was again convulsed with unctuous merriment, joined laughter with his brother. “Sho’! I guess I uz dess TALKIN’ whens I said ‘at! Reckon he thought I meant it, f’m de way he tuck an’ run. Hiyi! Reckon he thought ole Herman bad man! No, suh! I uz dess talkin’, ‘cause I nev’ would cut NObody! I ain’ tryin’ git in no jail — NO, suh!”

  Penrod looked at the scythe: he looked at Herman. He looked at the lawn-mower, and he looked at Verman. Then he looked out in the yard at the rake. So did Sam Williams.

  “Come on, Verman,” said Herman. “We ain’ go’ ‘at stove-wood f’ supper yit.”

  Giggling reminiscently, the brothers disappeared leaving silence behind them in the carriage-house. Penrod and Sam retired slowly into the shadowy interior, each glancing, now and then, with a preoccupied air, at the open, empty doorway where the late afternoon sunshine was growing ruddy. At intervals one or the other scraped the floor reflectively with the side of his shoe. Finally, still without either having made any effort at conversation, they went out into the yard and stood, continuing their silence.

  “Well,” said Sam, at last, “I guess it’s time I better be gettin’ home. So long, Penrod!”

  “So long, Sam,” said Penrod, feebly.

  With a solemn gaze he watched his friend out of sight. Then he went slowly into the house, and after an interval occupied in a unique manner, appeared in the library, holding a pair of brilliantly gleaming shoes in his hand.

  Mr. Schofield, reading the evening paper, glanced frowningly over it at his offspring.

  “Look, papa,” said Penrod. “I found your shoes where you’d taken ’em off in your room, to put on your slippers, and they were all dusty. So I took ’em out on the back porch and gave ’em a good blacking. They shine up fine, don’t they?”

  “Well, I’ll be d-dud-dummed!” said the startled Mr. Schofield.

  Penrod was zigzagging back to normal.

  CHAPTER XXIV “LITTLE GENTLEMAN”

  THE MIDSUMMER SUN was stinging hot outside the little barber-shop next to the corner drug store and Penrod, undergoing a toilette preliminary to his very slowly approaching twelfth birthday, was adhesive enough to retain upon his face much hair as it fell from the shears. There is a mystery here: the tonsorial processes are not unagreeable to manhood; in truth, they are soothing; but the hairs detached from a boy’s head get into his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth, and down his neck, and he doe
s everywhere itch excruciatingly. Wherefore he blinks, winks, weeps, twitches, condenses his countenance, and squirms; and perchance the barber’s scissors clip more than intended — belike an outlying flange of ear.

  “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 the wound was rubbed with alum.

  “THAT don’t hurt!” said the barber. “You WILL get it, though, if you don’t sit stiller,” he continued, nipping in the bud any attempt on the part of his patient to think that he already had “it.”

  “Pfuff!” said Penrod, meaning no disrespect, but endeavoring to dislodge a temporary moustache from his lip.

  “You ought to see how still that little Georgie Bassett sits,” the barber went on, reprovingly. “I hear everybody says he’s the best boy in town.”

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

  “I haven’t heard nobody around the neighbourhood makin’ no such remarks,” added the barber, “about nobody of the name of Penrod Schofield.”

  “Well,” said Penrod, clearing his mouth after a struggle, “who wants ’em to? Ouch!”

  “I hear they call Georgie Bassett the ‘little gentleman,’” ventured the barber, provocatively, meeting with instant success.

  “They better not call ME that,” returned Penrod truculently. “I’d like to hear anybody try. Just once, that’s all! I bet they’d never try it ag —— 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 that again long as they lived!”

  “What’d you do if it was a little girl? You wouldn’t hit her, would you?”

  “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 of Penrod’s head and pulling that suffering head into an unnatural position. “Doesn’t the Bible say it ain’t never right to hit the weak sex?”

  “Ow! SAY, look OUT!”

  “So you’d go and punch a pore, weak, little girl, would you?” said the barber, reprovingly.

  “Well, who said I’d hit her?” demanded the chivalrous Penrod. “I bet I’d FIX 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 heard you 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 better tell him, because he says to me after-WERDS if he ever lays eyes on you when you ain’t in your own yard, he’s goin’ to do a whole lot o’ things you 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 young lady ever walked up and called you a little gentleman. I want to hear what 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, I expect,” 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 you and says, ‘Hello, little gentleman’?”

  “He’d be lucky,” said Penrod, with a sinister frown, “if he got home alive.”

  “Suppose it was a boy twice your size?”

  “Just let him try,” said Penrod ominously. “You just let him try. He’d never see daylight again; that’s all!”

  The barber dug ten active fingers into the helpless scalp before him and did his best to displace it, while the anguished Penrod, becoming instantly a seething crucible of emotion, misdirected his natural resentment into maddened brooding upon what he would do to a boy “twice his size” who should dare to call him “little gentleman.” The barber shook him as his father had never shaken him; the barber buffeted him, rocked him frantically to and fro; the barber seemed to be trying to wring 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 see again, while the barber applied cooling lotions which made Penrod smell like a coloured housemaid’s ideal.

  “Now what,” asked the barber, combing the reeking locks gently, “what would it make you so mad fer, to have somebody call you a little gentleman? It’s a kind of compliment, as it were, you might say. What would you want to hit anybody fer THAT fer?”

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

  “You just let ’em try it!” he said threateningly, as he slid down from the chair. And as he went out of the door, after further conversation on the same subject, he called back those warning words once more: “Just let ’em try it! Just once — that’s all I ask ’em to. They’ll find out what they GET!”

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

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

  Meanwhile, the brooding Penrod pursued his homeward way; no great distance, but long enough for several one-sided conflicts with malign insulters 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 tried it. You better not ack fresh with ME! Oh, you WILL, will you?” He delivered a vicious kick full upon the shins of an iron fence-post, which suffered little, though Penrod instantly regretted his indiscretion. “Oof!” he grunted, hopping; and went on after bestowing a look of awful hostility upon the fence-post. “I guess you’ll know better next time,” he said, in parting, to this antagonist. “You just let me catch you around here again and I’ll — —” His voice sank to inarticulate but ominous murmurings. He was in a dangerous mood.

  Nearing home, however, his belligerent spirit was diverted to happier interests by the discovery that some workmen had left a caldron of tar in the cross-street, close by his father’s stable. He tested it, but found it inedible. Also, as a substitute for professional chewing-gum it was unsatisfactory, being insufficiently boiled down and too thin, though of a pleasant, lukewarm temperature. But it had an excess of one quality — it was sticky. It was the stickiest tar Penrod had ever used for any purposes whatsoever, and nothing upon which he wiped his hands served to rid them of it; neither his polka-dotted shirt waist nor his knickerbockers; neither the fence, nor even Duke, who came unthinkingly wagging out to greet him, and retired wiser.

  Nevertheless, tar is tar. Much can be done with it, no matter what its condition; so Penrod lingered by the caldron, though from a neighbouring yard could be heard the voices of comrades, including that of Sam Williams. On the ground about the caldron were scattered chips and sticks and bits of wood to the number of a great multitude. Penrod mixed quantities of this refuse into the tar, and interested himself in seeing how much of it he could keep moving in slow swirls upon the ebon surface.
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  Other surprises were arranged for the absent workmen. The caldron was almost full, and the surface of the tar near the rim.

  Penrod endeavoured to ascertain how many pebbles and brickbats, dropped in, would cause an overflow. Labouring heartily to this end, he had almost accomplished it, when he received the suggestion for an experiment on a much larger scale. Embedded at the corner of a grassplot across the street was a whitewashed stone, the size of a small watermelon and serving no purpose whatever save the questionable one of decoration. It was easily pried up with a stick; though getting it to the caldron tested the full strength of the ardent labourer. Instructed to perform such a task, he would have sincerely maintained its impossibility but now, as it was unbidden, and promised rather destructive results, he set about it with unconquerable energy, feeling certain that he would be rewarded with a mighty splash. Perspiring, grunting vehemently, his back aching and all muscles strained, he progressed in short stages until the big stone lay at the base of the caldron. He rested a moment, panting, then lifted the stone, and was bending 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 dern fool!” purely from instinct, even before his about-face made him aware who had so spitefully addressed him.

  It was Marjorie Jones. Always dainty, and prettily dressed, she was in speckless and starchy white to-day, and a refreshing picture she made, with the new-shorn and powerfully scented Mitchy-Mitch clinging to her hand. They had stolen up behind the toiler, and now stood laughing together in sweet merriment. Since the passing of Penrod’s Rupe Collins period he had experienced some severe qualms at the recollection of his last meeting with Marjorie and his Apache behaviour; in truth, his heart instantly became as wax at sight of her, and he would have offered her fair speech; but, alas! in Marjorie’s wonderful eyes there shone a consciousness of new powers for his undoing, and she denied him opportunity.