“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t think I ever could know. Do you think it’s enough, dear?”
XXVII
ABOUT TWELVE O’CLOCK on the night before her wedding, Claire came into her room, and, after locking the door, went to a chest and took from it a large oblong case of stamped brown leather. She set it upon a chair beside the chest; then, after a moment of frowning, sank down upon the floor beside the chair and opened the leathern case. It contained various objects, now worthless, and she took them out, one by one, and dropped them into a waste-basket that stood beside the chest.
There were some packets of letters, tied with narrow ribbons; there were a few withered flowers, singly and in little clumps, and there were ribbons that had been tied about bouquets of orchids, of roses, of violets; there were college pins, scarf pins, a green silk handkerchief, a club hat-band, and sheafs of photographs. Most of the photographs were of the heads of young gentlemen; but some were of groups of boys and girls together; and in most of these a younger Claire appeared. There were “snapshots” of her with girls and boys in sail-boats, in motor-boats, or on beaches or rocks by the sea; and in a number of them she was seen with the same boy always beside her. Later pictures showed another boy occupying this favoured place; and in others other boys were seen there. Then there were little photographs taken abroad; and in several of these a young Italian cavalry officer was a romantic figure. Claire solemnly threw him into the waste-basket along with the rest.
At last the leathern chest was cleared of everything except a single photograph and a foreign envelope of thin bluish paper. She brought forth the photograph and looked at it long and intently; it was not a portrait; it was a landscape, singular and beautiful — a long ledge of cliff whereon were gardens and walled villas and Greek ruins and an old Mediterranean town, with a snow-capped volcano rising beyond and the sea washing the foot of the cliff. This photograph did not share the fate of the others; she replaced it gently in the case, and then, with fingers that moved slowly and gently, as in some reverent ceremony, she brought forth the bluish envelope and took from it two sheets of paper. One of these was thin and bluish, like the envelope; it was the conclusion of a letter the previous pages of which had been lost, or destroyed; and the other sheet showed a writing in faded ink by a different hand.
Claire read the fragment of the letter first; she had read it often and often before. Part of the sentence at the top of the page was missing, having been written upon one of the lost sheets; and what she read began abruptly:
“Therefore I thought you might care to have the verses. His sister is anxious that I should send them to you and she speaks often and warmly of her gratitude to you. Please never doubt that you did the kindest and best thing; it is she who asks me to tell you that. I have made a copy of the verses for her, and the enclosure is the original, just as she found it among his effects. He had a fancy for writing in Elizabethan forms sometimes, though he laughed at his use of them, himself, and said he had no doubt he used them incorrectly. I thought them charming, and it seemed to me he had a distinct gift that way. He had not shown these that I send you to anyone — not even to his sister — nor had he spoken of them at all; but we both perceived that the reference was to you. My surmise is that they were written here at Raona, probably soon after your departure — or, even, perhaps, a little before — and I hope that they and my sorrowful news may not make your remembrance of our beautiful old cliff too sad a one for you to return to us some day. For my own part, my heart is heavy just now, dear Miss Ambler, and I fear yours will be. We shall not look upon his like again — yet Raona stands here forever and waits your sight of it once more.”
She put the writing back into the bluish envelope as gently and slowly as she had brought it forth; then she took up the other sheet and read the verses, as she had read them so many, many times before.
“O, Ladye, scorn mee!
Ladye, let mee be
Contente wyth lyfe or death,
Soe I may goe forth wyllinglye
When that the thread He sonderethe.
“O, Ladye scorn mee,
Gayze on mee mockynglye,
Be kynde and passe mee bye!
Suffere mee not to love thee, Ladye,
Lest I so hayte to die!”
She read slowly, her head bent far over the faded writing, and that fair and charming head of hers was bowed low indeed when she had finished. Her hands, rising to meet it, held the sheet of paper in them so that the writing came against her cheek. “Ah, goodbye — good-bye — good-bye!” she whispered brokenly.
She would never read either the letter or the quaint little poem again; or take them again from the leathern case where she replaced them; but she would always know they were there, and so, finally, in spite of that dutiful farewell whisper of hers, it was not quite good-bye.
XXVIII
THE CHURCH WAS not a large one, and the decorously expectant wedding-guests filled it comfortably. A soprano voice had sung nobly from a gallery, long white ribbons had been drawn, and now the organ palpitated profoundly into every ear a majestic vamping. Through a door just opened at the left of the altar, the clergyman in his gown could be seen, and, behind him, the bridegroom and his supporting comrade, composing themselves for the imminent confrontation and erasing from their countenances every token of either emotion or intelligence. All that they allowed to remain visible was accurate tailoring accompanied by the pallor of stage-fright.
The organ developed the heralding signal of the great nuptial approach; the air of the interior trembled to those bars of music so familiar that they seem to invest their composer, not in his chosen solemn mantle, but in the mocking garb of a comedian. To these helplessly satirical measures, the clergyman slowly advanced, followed obscurely by the two sartorial vacancies, while from the rear, dressed as twins, eight embarrassingly self-conscious gentlemen were seen to be approaching rhythmically. After them, eight lovely young women, all in heliotrope and as rhythmic and self-conscious as the eight gentlemen twins, though more becomingly so, passed through stained shafts of light from a pointed window, seeming to float dazzlingly in many colours for a moment before they turned to heliotrope again and paced slowly to their appointed stations.
Then the bride came down the aisle, alone. She walked with her head a little advanced but her face uplifted; and about her grave and tender eyes, and upon her lips, there appeared the faintest foreshadowings of an ineffable smile. Through the fine lace of her veil, there were glints of her fair hair like gold seen in a mist: never had she been so graceful; never had she looked so lovely. And when she passed through the coloured light of the great window, and her bridal white became a drifting rosiness in aureoles of amber and softest blue, a breathed “Ah!” of pleasure was multitudinous upon the air. For she seemed then just such a glimpsed vision of angelic beauty, wistful yet serene, as a devout eye attuned to miracles should have beheld in that place.
She suspected this, herself, for she had seen the bridesmaids passing through that light before her. “I hope it’s doing as well by me,” she thought. “With this beautiful cream-white it ought to do even a lot better. Thank heaven everything’s all right so far! I sha’n’t begin to let my smile be more definite just yet — not till I reach the third pew from the end — and I mustn’t forget to turn my head to the right and let a gentle little corner of the smile go to poor Mother after I’ve given Walter that look. He’s there, waiting, of course; I’ll be able to see him in a moment, poor thing! I’m getting married to him and this is my wedding — my wedding! It doesn’t seem to be that. Why don’t I realize it? How on earth does it happen? How does it come to be my wedding — if it really is! Am I in love with him? Is it because of that? Was it the contagion, after all? Am I getting married because ‘all the rest’ were getting married? What is my reason for it? Have I just been crazy? Good heavens, is it happening now?” And that “double” sense of hers was never more strongly with her than then, as she came dow
n the aisle to be wedded. As audience, she saw herself distractedly asking these belated questions and at the same time stage-directing her every movement and expression. But at the third pew from the front, where she intended to look up and seem to become happily conscious of Walter, then to smile exquisitely upon him, there was a moment when the audience within her, and the stage-director, and the actress as well, disappeared.
Walter should have advanced a step to meet her and take her hand; but he did not move. He stood stock-still; and, though he appeared to be looking at her, she saw that he was but dimly aware of her. His eyes were glassy and he trembled from head to foot; she perceived that he was almost helpless, dazed with stage-fright. And at that, a quick emotion rose within her: she was filled with pity, with tenderness and with amusement.
She put out her hand to him, and as he took it gingerly, she grasped his unnerved fingers strongly, and from her bright eyes gave him, not the look she had intended and rehearsed, but one more truly eloquent, wholly impulsive and impromptu.
“You dear goose!” it said so clearly that he understood it completely. “What’s the matter with you? I’m here to see you through this, don’t you understand? I’ll see you through it all right, and I’ll see you through everything — everything — all right. That’s what I’m here for. Don’t you see?”
He did see: colour came into his stricken cheeks; something of his usual manliness returned to him, and, as he moved forward with her to the altar, his eyes became human again in the look of passionate gratitude he gave her.
She was uplifted with the happiness of a great reassurance; once more she knew that she had forgotten herself and remembered him.
THE END
Penrod Jashber
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
Tarkington, 1922
CHAPTER I
THE NEW PUP
ON A FRIDAY in April, Penrod Schofield, having returned from school at noon promptly, on account of an earnest appetite, found lunch considerably delayed and himself (after a bit of simple technique) alone in the pantry with a large, open, metal receptacle containing about two-thirds of a peck of perfect doughnuts just come into the world.
The history of catastrophe is merely the history of irresistible juxtapositions. When Penrod left the pantry he walked slowly. In the large metal receptacle were left a small number of untouched doughnuts; while upon the shelf beside it were two further doughnuts, each with a small bite experimentally removed — and one of these bites, itself, lay, little mangled, beside the parent doughnut.
Nothing having been discovered, he seated himself gently at the lunch-table, and, making no attempt to take part in the family conversation, avoided rather than sought attention. This decorum on his part was so unusual as to be the means of defeating its object, for his mother and father and Margaret naturally began to stare at him. Nevertheless, his presence continued to be unobtrusive and his manner preoccupied. Rallied by Margaret, he offered for reply only a smile, faint, courteous and strange, followed, upon further badinage, by an almost imperceptible shake of the head, which he seemed to fear might come off if more decisively agitated.
“But, Penrod dear,” his mother insisted, “you must eat a little something or other.”
For the sake of appearances, Penrod made a terrible effort to eat a little something or other.
When they had got him to his bed, he said, with what resentful strength remained to him, that it was all the fault of his mother, and she was indeed convinced that her insistence had been a mistake. For several hours the consequences continued to be more or less demonstrative; then they verged from physical to mental, as the thoughts of Penrod and the thoughts of his insides merged into one. Their decision was unanimous — a conclusive horror of doughnuts. Throughout ghastly durations of time there was no thought possible to him but the intolerable thought of doughnuts. There was no past but doughnuts; there was no future but doughnuts. He descended into the bottomest pit of an abyss of doughnuts; he lay suffocating in a universe of doughnuts. He looked back over his dreadful life to that time, before lunch, when he had been alone with the doughnuts in the pantry, and it seemed to him that he must have been out of his mind. How could he have endured even the noxious smell of the things? It was incredible to him that any human being could ever become hardy enough to bear the mere sight of a doughnut.
Not until the next morning did Penrod Schofield quit his bed and come out into the fair ways of mankind again, and then his step was cautious; there was upon his brow the trace of an experience. For a little while after his emergence to the air he had the look of one who has discovered something alarming in the pleasant places of life, the look of one who has found a scorpion hiding under a violet. He went out into the yard through the front door, and, even with his eyes, avoided the kitchen.
“Yay, Penrod!” a shout greeted him. “Look! Looky here! Look what I got!”
Upon the sidewalk was Sam Williams in a state of unmistakable elation. His right hand grasped one end of a taut piece of clothes-line; the other end had been tied round the neck of a pup; but, owing to the pup’s reluctance, the makeshift collar was now just behind his ears, so that his brow was furrowed, his throat elongated and his head horizontal. As a matter of fact, he was sitting down; nevertheless, Sam evidently held that the pup was being led.
“This good ole dog o’ mine not so easy to lead, I can tell you!”
These were Sam’s words, in spite of the pup’s seated attitude. On the other hand, to support the use of “lead”, the pup was certainly moving along at a fair rate of speed. In regard to his state of mind, any beholder must have hesitated between two guesses: his expression denoted either resignation or profound obstinacy, and, by maintaining silence throughout what could not possibly have been other than a spiritual and bodily trial, he produced an impression of reserve altogether deceptive. There do exist reserved pups, of course; but this was not one of them.
Sam brought him into the yard. “How’s that for high, Penrod?” he cried.
Penrod forgot doughnuts temporarily. “Where’d you get him?” he asked. “Where’d you get that fellow, Sam?”
“Yay!” shouted Master Williams. “He belongs to me.”
“Where’d you get him? Didn’t you hear me?”
“You just look him over,” Sam said importantly. “Take a good ole look at him and see what you got to say. He’s a full-blooded dog, all right! You just look this good ole dog over.”
With warm interest, Penrod complied. He looked the good ole dog over. The pup, released from the stress of the rope, lay placidly upon the grass. He was tan-coloured over most of him, though interspersed with black; and the fact that he had nearly attained his adolescence was demonstrated by the cumbersomeness of his feet and the halfknowing look of his eye. He was large; already he was much taller and heavier than Duke.
“How do you know he’s full-blooded?” asked Penrod cautiously, before expressing any opinion.
“My goodness!” Sam exclaimed. “Can’t you look at him? Don’t you know a full-blooded dog when you see one?” Penrod frowned. “Well, who told you he was?”
“John Carmichael.”
“Who’s John Carmichael?”
“He’s the man works on my uncle’s farm. John Carmichael owns the mother o’ this dog here; and he said he took a fancy to me and he was goin’ to give
me this dog’s mother and all the other pups besides this one, too, only my fam’ly wouldn’t let me. John says they were all pretty full-blooded, except the runt; but this one was the best. This one is the most full-blooded of the whole kitamaboodle.” For the moment Penrod’s attention was distracted from the pup. “Of the whole what?” he inquired.
“Of the whole kitamaboodle,” Sam repeated carelessly. “Oh,” said Penrod, and he again considered the pup. “I bet he isn’t as full-blooded as Duke. I bet he isn’t anyway near as full-blooded as Duke.”
Sam hooted. “Duke!” he cried. “Why, I bet Duke isn’t a quarter full-blooded! I bet Duke hasn’t got any full blood in him at all! All you’d haf to do’d be look at Duke and this dog together; then you’d see in a minute. I bet you, when this dog grows up, he could whip Duke four times out o’ five. I bet he could whip Duke now, only pups won’t fight. All I ask is, you go get Duke and just look which is the most full-blooded.”
“All right,” said Penrod. “I’ll get him, and I guess maybe you’ll have sense enough to see yourself which is. Duke’s got more full blood in his hind feet than that dog’s got all over him.”
He departed hotly, calling and whistling for his own, and Duke, roused from a nap on the back porch, loyally obeyed the summons. A moment or two later, he made his appearance, following his master to the front yard, where Sam and the new pup were waiting. However, upon his first sight of this conjuncture, Duke paused at the corner of the house, then quietly turned to withdraw. Penrod was obliged to take him by the collar.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 433
