Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Sam gave her a non-committal look — expression of every kind had been wiped from his countenance. He presented a blank surface.

  “No’m,” he said meekly.

  “Everything was just a little pleasanter because you’d been friendly, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Has Georgie gone home?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “I hear you made enough noise in the cellar — Did Georgie have a good time?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Did Georgie Bassett have a good time?”

  “Well” — Sam now had the air of a person trying to remember details with absolute accuracy— “well, he didn’t say he did, and he didn’t say he didn’t.”

  “Didn’t he thank the boys?”

  “No’m.”

  “Didn’t he even thank you?”

  “No’m.”

  “Why, that’s queer,” she said. “He’s always so polite. He SEEMED to be having a good time, didn’t he, Sam?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Didn’t Georgie seem to be enjoying himself?”

  This question, apparently so simple, was not answered with promptness. Sam looked at his mother in a puzzled way, and then he found it necessary to rub each of his shins in turn with the palm of his right hand.

  “I stumbled,” he said apologetically. “I stumbled on the cellar steps.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?” she asked quickly.

  “No’m; but I guess maybe I better rub some arnica—”

  “I’ll get it,” she said. “Come up to your father’s bathroom, Sam. Does it hurt much?”

  “No’m,” he answered truthfully, “it hardly hurts at all.”

  And having followed her to the bathroom, he insisted, with unusual gentleness, that he be left to apply the arnica to the alleged injuries himself. He was so persuasive that she yielded, and descended to the library, where she found her husband once more at home after his day’s work.

  “Well?” he said. “Did Georgie show up, and were they decent to him?”

  “Oh, yes; it’s all right. Sam and Penrod were good as gold. I saw them being actually cordial to him.”

  “That’s well,” Mr. Williams said, settling into a chair with his paper. “I was a little apprehensive, but I suppose I was mistaken. I walked home, and just now, as I passed Mrs. Bassett’s, I saw Doctor Venny’s car in front, and that barber from the corner shop on Second Street was going in the door. I couldn’t think what a widow would need a barber and a doctor for — especially at the same time. I couldn’t think what Georgie’d need such a combination for either, and then I got afraid that maybe—”

  Mrs. Williams laughed. “Oh, no; it hasn’t anything to do with his having been over here. I’m sure they were very nice to him.”

  “Well, I’m glad of that.”

  “Yes, indeed—” Mrs. Williams began, when Fanny appeared, summoning her to the telephone.

  It is pathetically true that Mrs. Williams went to the telephone humming a little song. She was detained at the instrument not more than five minutes; then she made a plunging return into the library, a blanched and stricken woman. She made strange, sinister gestures at her husband.

  He sprang up, miserably prophetic. “Mrs. Bassett?”

  “Go to the telephone,” Mrs. Williams said hoarsely “She wants to talk to you, too. She CAN’T talk much — she’s hysterical. She says they lured Georgie into the cellar and had him beaten by negroes! That’s not all—”

  Mr. Williams was already on his way.

  “You find Sam!” he commanded, over his shoulder.

  Mrs. Williams stepped into the front hall. “Sam!” she called, addressing the upper reaches of the stairway. “Sam!”

  Not even echo answered.

  “SAM!”

  A faint clearing of somebody’s throat was heard behind her, a sound so modest and unobtrusive it was no more than just audible, and, turning, the mother beheld her son sitting upon the floor in the shadow of the stairs and gazing meditatively at the hatrack. His manner indicated that he wished to produce the impression that he had been sitting there, in this somewhat unusual place and occupation, for a considerable time, but without overhearing anything that went on in the library so close by.

  “Sam,” she cried, “what have you DONE?”

  “Well — I guess my legs are all right,” he said gently. “I got the arnica on, so probably they won’t hurt any m—”

  “Stand up!” she said.

  “Ma’am?”

  “March into the library!”

  Sam marched — slow-time. In fact, no funeral march has been composed in a time so slow as to suit this march of Sam’s. One might have suspected that he was in a state of apprehension.

  Mr. Williams entered at one door as his son crossed the threshold of the other, and this encounter was a piteous sight. After one glance at his father’s face, Sam turned desperately, as if to flee outright. But Mrs. Williams stood in the doorway behind him.

  “You come here!” And the father’s voice was as terrible as his face. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO GEORGIE BASSETT?”

  “Nothin’,” Sam gulped; “nothin’ at all.”

  “What!”

  “We just — we just ‘nishiated him.”

  Mr. Williams turned abruptly, walked to the fireplace, and there turned again, facing the wretched Sam. “That’s all you did?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Georgie Bassett’s mother has just told me over the telephone,” Mr. Williams said, deliberately, “that you and Penrod Schofield and Roderick Bitts and Maurice Levy LURED GEORGIE INTO THE CELLAR AND HAD HIM BEATEN BY NEGROES!”

  At this, Sam was able to hold up his head a little and to summon a rather feeble indignation.

  “It ain’t so,” he declared. “We didn’t any such thing lower him into the cellar. We weren’t goin’ NEAR the cellar with him. We never THOUGHT of goin’ down cellar. He went down there himself, first.”

  “So! I suppose he was running away from you, poor thing! Trying to escape from you, wasn’t he?”

  “He wasn’t,” Sam said doggedly. “We weren’t chasin’ him — or anything at all.”

  “Then why did he go in the cellar?”

  “Well, he didn’t exactly GO in the cellar,” Sam said reluctantly.

  “Well, how did he GET in the cellar, then?”

  “He — he fell in,” said Sam.

  “HOW did he fall in?”

  “Well, the door was open, and — well, he kept walkin’ around there, and we hollered at him to keep away, but just then he kind of — well, the first I noticed was I couldn’t SEE him, and so we went and looked down the steps, and he was sitting down there on the bottom step and kind of shouting, and—”

  “See here!” Mr. Williams interrupted. “You’re going to make a clean breast of this whole affair and take the consequences. You’re going to tell it and tell it ALL. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you tell me how Georgie Bassett fell down the cellar steps — and tell me quick!”

  “He — he was blindfolded.”

  “Aha! NOW we’re getting at it. You begin at the beginning and tell me just what you did to him from the time he got here. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go on, then!”

  “Well, I’m goin’ to,” Sam protested. “We never hurt him at all. He wasn’t even hurt when he fell down cellar. There’s a lot of mud down there, because the cellar door leaks, and—”

  “Sam!” Mr. Williams’s tone was deadly. “Did you hear me tell you to begin at the beginning?”

  Sam made a great effort and was able to obey.

  “Well, we had everything ready for the ‘nishiation before lunch,” he said. “We wanted it all to be nice, because you said we had to have him, papa, and after lunch Penrod went to guard him — that’s a new part in the rixual — and he brought him over, and we took him out to the shack and blindfolded him, and —
well, he got kind of mad because we wanted him to lay down on his stummick and be tied up, and he said he wouldn’t, because the floor was a little bit wet in there and he could feel it sort of squashy under his shoes, and he said his mother didn’t want him ever to get dirty and he just wouldn’t do it; and we all kept telling him he had to, or else how could there be any ‘nishiation; and he kept gettin’ madder and said he wanted to have the ‘nishiation outdoors where it wasn’t wet and he wasn’t goin’ to lay down on his stummick, anyway.” Sam paused for wind, then got under way again: “Well, some of the boys were tryin’ to get him to lay down on his stummick, and he kind of fell up against the door and it came open and he ran out in the yard. He was tryin’ to get the blindfold off his eyes, but he couldn’t because it was a towel in a pretty hard knot; and he went tearin’ all around the backyard, and we didn’t chase him, or anything. All we did was just watch him — and that’s when he fell in the cellar. Well, it didn’t hurt him any. It didn’t hurt him at all; but he was muddier than what he would of been if he’d just had sense enough to lay down in the shack. Well, so we thought, long as he was down in the cellar anyway, we might as well have the rest of the ‘nishiation down there. So we brought the things down and — and ‘nishiated him — and that’s all. That’s every bit we did to him.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Williams said sardonically; “I see. What were the details of the initiation?”

  “Sir?”

  “I want to know what else you did to him? What was the initiation?”

  “It’s — it’s secret,” Sam murmured piteously.

  “Not any longer, I assure you! The society is a thing of the past and you’ll find your friend Penrod’s parents agree with me in that. Mrs. Bassett had already telephoned them when she called us up. You go on with your story!”

  Sam sighed deeply, and yet it may have been a consolation to know that his present misery was not altogether without its counterpart. Through the falling dusk his spirit may have crossed the intervening distance to catch a glimpse of his friend suffering simultaneously and standing within the same peril. And if Sam’s spirit did thus behold Penrod in jeopardy, it was a true vision.

  “Go on!” Mr. Williams said.

  “Well, there wasn’t any fire in the furnace because it’s too warm yet, and we weren’t goin’ to do anything’d HURT him, so we put him in there—”

  “In the FURNACE?”

  “It was cold,” Sam protested. “There hadn’t been any fire there since last spring. Course we told him there was fire in it. We HAD to do that,” he continued earnestly, “because that was part of the ‘nishiation. We only kept him in it a little while and kind of hammered on the outside a little and then we took him out and got him to lay down on his stummick, because he was all muddy anyway, where he fell down the cellar; and how could it matter to anybody that had any sense at all? Well, then we had the rixual, and — and — why, the teeny little paddlin’ he got wouldn’t hurt a flea! It was that little coloured boy lives in the alley did it — he isn’t anyways near HALF Georgie’s size but Georgie got mad and said he didn’t want any ole nigger to paddle him. That’s what he said, and it was his own foolishness, because Verman won’t let ANYBODY call him ‘nigger’, and if Georgie was goin’ to call him that he ought to had sense enough not to do it when he was layin’ down that way and Verman all ready to be the paddler. And he needn’t of been so mad at the rest of us, either, because it took us about twenty minutes to get the paddle away from Verman after that, and we had to lock Verman up in the laundry-room and not let him out till it was all over. Well, and then things were kind of spoiled, anyway; so we didn’t do but just a little more — and that’s all.”

  “Go on! What was the ‘just a little more?’”

  “Well — we got him to swaller a little teeny bit of asafidity that Penrod used to have to wear in a bag around his neck. It wasn’t enough to even make a person sneeze — it wasn’t much more’n a half a spoonful — it wasn’t hardly a QUARTER of a spoonf—”

  “Ha!” said Mr. Williams. “That accounts for the doctor. What else?”

  “Well — we — we had some paint left over from our flag, and we put just a little teeny bit of it on his hair and—”

  “Ha!” said Mr. Williams. “That accounts for the barber. What else?”

  “That’s all,” Sam said, swallowing. “Then he got mad and went home.”

  Mr. Williams walked to the door, and sternly motioned to the culprit to precede him through it. But just before the pair passed from her sight, Mrs. Williams gave way to an uncontrollable impulse.

  “Sam,” she asked, “what does ‘In-Or-In’ stand for?”

  The unfortunate boy had begun to sniffle.

  “It — it means — Innapenent Order of Infadelaty,” he moaned — and plodded onward to his doom.

  Not his alone: at that very moment Master Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, was suffering also, consequent upon telephoning on the part of Mrs. Bassett, though Roderick’s punishment was administered less on the ground of Georgie’s troubles and more on that of Roddy’s having affiliated with an order consisting so largely of Herman and Verman. As for Maurice Levy, he was no whit less unhappy. He fared as ill.

  Simultaneously, two ex-members of the In-Or-In were finding their lot fortunate. Something had prompted them to linger in the alley in the vicinity of the shack, and it was to this fated edifice that Mr. Williams, with demoniac justice, brought Sam for the deed he had in mind.

  Herman and Verman listened — awe-stricken — to what went on within the shack. Then, before it was over, they crept away and down the alley toward their own home. This was directly across the alley from the Schofields’ stable, and they were horrified at the sounds that issued from the interior of the stable store-room. It was the St. Bartholomew’s Eve of that neighbourhood.

  “Man, man!” said Herman, shaking his head. “Glad I ain’ no white boy!”

  Verman seemed gloomily to assent.

  CHAPTER VII. WHITEY

  PENROD AND SAM made a gloomy discovery one morning in mid-October. All the week had seen amiable breezes and fair skies until Saturday, when, about breakfast-time, the dome of heaven filled solidly with gray vapour and began to drip. The boys’ discovery was that there is no justice about the weather.

  They sat in the carriage-house of the Schofields’ empty stable; the doors upon the alley were open, and Sam and Penrod stared torpidly at the thin but implacable drizzle that was the more irritating because there was barely enough of it to interfere with a number of things they had planned to do.

  “Yes; this is NICE!” Sam said, in a tone of plaintive sarcasm. “This is a PERTY way to do!” (He was alluding to the personal spitefulness of the elements.) “I’d like to know what’s the sense of it — ole sun pourin’ down every day in the week when nobody needs it, then cloud up and rain all Saturday! My father said it’s goin’ to be a three days’ rain.”

  “Well, nobody with any sense cares if it rains Sunday and Monday,” Penrod said. “I wouldn’t care if it rained every Sunday as long I lived; but I just like to know what’s the reason it had to go and rain to-day. Got all the days o’ the week to choose from and goes and picks on Saturday. That’s a fine biz’nuss!”

  “Well, in vacation—” Sam began; but at a sound from a source invisible to him he paused. “What’s that?” he said, somewhat startled.

  It was a curious sound, loud and hollow and unhuman, yet it seemed to be a cough. Both boys rose, and Penrod asked uneasily: “Where’d that noise come from?”

  “It’s in the alley,” said Sam.

  Perhaps if the day had been bright, both of them would have stepped immediately to the alley doors to investigate; but their actual procedure was to move a little distance in the opposite direction. The strange cough sounded again.

  “SAY!” Penrod quavered. “What IS that?”

  Then both boys uttered smothered exclamations and jumped, for the long, gaunt head that appeared in the doorway was entir
ely unexpected. It was the cavernous and melancholy head of an incredibly thin, old, whitish horse. This head waggled slowly from side to side; the nostrils vibrated; the mouth opened, and the hollow cough sounded again.

  Recovering themselves, Penrod and Sam underwent the customary human reaction from alarm to indignation.

  “What you want, you ole horse, you?” Penrod shouted. “Don’t you come coughin’ around ME!”

  And Sam, seizing a stick, hurled it at the intruder.

  “Get out o’ here!” he roared.

  The aged horse nervously withdrew his head, turned tail, and made a rickety flight up the alley, while Sam and Penrod, perfectly obedient to inherited impulse, ran out into the drizzle and uproariously pursued. They were but automatons of instinct, meaning no evil. Certainly they did not know the singular and pathetic history of the old horse who wandered into the alley and ventured to look through the open door.

  This horse, about twice the age of either Penrod or Sam, had lived to find himself in a unique position. He was nude, possessing neither harness nor halter; all he had was a name, Whitey, and he would have answered to it by a slight change of expression if any one had thus properly addressed him. So forlorn was Whitey’s case, he was actually an independent horse; he had not even an owner. For two days and a half he had been his own master.

  Previous to that period he had been the property of one Abalene Morris, a person of colour, who would have explained himself as engaged in the hauling business. On the contrary, the hauling business was an insignificant side line with Mr. Morris, for he had long ago given himself, as utterly as fortune permitted, to the talent that early in youth he had recognized as the greatest of all those surging in his bosom. In his waking thoughts and in his dreams, in health and in sickness, Abalene Morris was the dashing and emotional practitioner of an art probably more than Roman in antiquity. Abalene was a crap-shooter. The hauling business was a disguise.

  A concentration of events had brought it about that, at one and the same time, Abalene, after a dazzling run of the dice, found the hauling business an actual danger to the preservation of his liberty. He won seventeen dollars and sixty cents, and within the hour found himself in trouble with an officer of the Humane Society on account of an altercation with Whitey. Abalene had been offered four dollars for Whitey some ten days earlier; wherefore he at once drove to the shop of the junk-dealer who had made the offer and announced his acquiescence in the sacrifice.