Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “It’s not much like a children’s party in our day,” Mrs. Williams said to Penrod’s mother. “We’d have been playing ‘Quaker-meeting’, ‘Clap-in, Clap-out’ or ‘Going to Jerusalem’, I suppose.”

  “Yes, or ‘Post-office’ and ‘Drop-the-handkerchief’,” said Mrs. Schofield. “Things change so quickly. Imagine asking little Fanchon Gelbraith to play ‘London Bridge’! Penrod seems to be dancing with her very nicely, though he wasn’t a shining light in the dancing class.”

  Penrod himself thought he was dancing nicely; that is, he thought so until in the course of his duties as host (duties of which his mother from time to time reminded him) he came to dance with Marjorie Jones. The afternoon was waning; he had conscientiously danced with almost all of the little girls and four or five times with Fanchon. Marjorie accepted his offer expressionlessly; but, after some moments of exercise, she made a little outcry of pain.

  “Oh, dear! Why can’t you learn to dance like the other boys? You just step on everybody!”

  “I don’t either!”

  “You do too!”

  “I don’t either!”

  “You ought to be ashamed!” she said. “Here it is, just about time to go home and your party nearly all over and you still go around stepping on everybody!” They stopped dancing and stared at each other insultingly. “You ought to be ashamed!”

  “I ought not. You ought to be ashamed, yourself! Talking like that!”

  “You be quiet!”

  “I will not!” Penrod said, so furious that he did not even notice Fanchon and some other little girls, who were trying to make their farewells and tell him they’d had “a wonerfle time” at his party; he had forgotten Fanchon. All he wanted was to make Marjorie ashamed of talking like that. “You be quiet yourself!” he shouted at her, though his departing guests now so pressed upon him that all he could see of her was an amber arc over intervening heads. “You ought to be ashamed, yourself! Talking like that! You ought to be—”

  But by this time she was gone entirely, and it was not until the last guest had departed that he recovered his composure. Even then he murmured reminiscently, “Talking like that on my birthday!” as he found himself alone with a remnant of lemonade in the punch bowl, and disposed of it.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  OVER THE FENCE

  PENROD WAS OUT in the yard. The sun was on the horizon line, far behind the back fence, and a western window of the house blazed in gold unbearable to the eye: Penrod’s birthday was nearly over. He sighed, and took from the inside pocket of his new jacket the “slingshot” Aunt Sarah Crim had given him that morning.

  He snapped the rubbers absently. They held fast; and his next impulse was entirely irresistible. He found a shapely stone, fitted it to the leather, and drew back the ancient catapult for a shot. A sparrow hopped upon a branch between him and the house, and he aimed at the sparrow; but the reflection from the dazzling window struck in his eyes as he loosed the leather.

  He missed the sparrow, but not the window. There was a loud crash, and to his horror he caught a glimpse of his father, stricken in mid-shaving, ducking a shower of broken glass, glittering razor flourishing wildly. Words crashed with the glass, stentorian words, fragmentary but colossal.

  Penrod stood petrified, a broken sling in his hand. He could hear his parent’s booming descent of the back stairs, instant and furious; and then, red-hot above white lather, Mr. Schofield burst out of the kitchen door and hurtled forth upon his son.

  “What do you mean?” he demanded, shaking Penrod by the shoulder. “Ten minutes ago I happened to be saying to your mother — almost the first time in my life — that you were a fine, well-behaved boy, and here you go and throw a rock at me through the window when I’m shaving for dinner!”

  “I didn’t!” Penrod quavered. “I was shooting at a sparrow, and the sun got in my eyes, and the sling broke—”

  “What sling?”

  “This’n.”

  “Where’d you get that devilish thing? Don’t you know I’ve forbidden you a thousand times—”

  “It ain’t mine,” said Penrod. “It’s yours.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said meekly. “Aunt Sarah Crim gave it to me this morning and told me to give it back to you. She said she took it away from you thirty-five years ago. You killed her hen, she said. She told me some more to tell you, but I’ve forgotten.”

  “Oh!” said Mr. Schofield.

  He took the broken sling in his hand, looked at it long and thoughtfully — and he looked longer, and quite as thoughtfully, at Penrod. Then he turned away, and walked toward the house.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” said Penrod.

  Mr. Schofield coughed, and, as he reached the door, called back, but without turning his head. “Never mind, little boy. A broken window isn’t much harm.”

  When he had gone in, Penrod wandered down the yard to the back fence, climbed upon it, and sat in reverie there.

  A slight figure could be seen, likewise upon a fence, beyond two neighbouring yards.

  “Yay, Penrod!” called comrade Sam Williams.

  “Yay!” Penrod returned mechanically.

  “Well, so long!” Sam shouted, dropping from his fence; and the friendly voice came then, more faintly, “Many happy returns of the day, Penrod!”

  And now, a plaintive little whine sounded from below Penrod’s feet, and, looking down, he saw that Duke, his wistful, old scraggly dog, sat in the grass, gazing seekingly up at him.

  The last shaft of sunshine of that day fell graciously and like a blessing upon the boy sitting on the fence. Years afterward, a quiet sunset would recall to him sometimes the gentle evening of his twelfth birthday, and bring him the picture of his boy self, sitting in rosy light upon the fence, gazing pensively down upon his wistful, scraggly, little old dog, Duke. But something else, surpassing, he would remember of that hour, for, in the side street, close by, a pink skirt flickered from behind a shade tree to the shelter of the fence, there was a gleam of amber curls, and Penrod started, as something like a tiny white wing fluttered by his head, and there came to his ears the sound of a light laugh and of light footsteps departing, the laughter tremulous, the footsteps fleet.

  In the grass, between Duke’s forepaws, there lay a white note, folded in the shape of a cocked hat, and the sun sent forth a final amazing glory as Penrod opened it and read:

  “Your my Bow.”

  THE END

  The Show Piece

  Tarkington’s last novel, The Show Piece, was first published by Doubleday Incorporated in 1947. It was left unfinished and was published posthumously, after Tarkington died in May 1946 just before his 77th birthday. During the 1920’s, Tarkington began to suffer from problems with his eyesight and towards the later years of his life he employed a secretary to transcribe his works. Despite his failing eyesight, he did manage during the 1930’s to edit novels by his friend, Kenneth Roberts, who greatly valued Tarkington’s judgment. Roberts’ respect and appreciation for his friend’s assistance was such that he dedicated two of his novels to Tarkington as well as offering co-writer credits on two other works. Roberts went on to establish himself as a popular author of historical novels in the 1930’s.

  The Show Piece explores the life of a young boy, Irving, who is egocentric, humourless and unkind. In spite of his obvious and substantial flaws, he is frequently flattered and indulged by his family and friends, further encouraging his egotistical tendencies and exacerbating his sense of superiority. He is able to maintain the mirage of talent and accomplishment due to the brilliance of his cousin, Edgar and the devotion of his friend, Emma. The unfinished nature of the book results in a somewhat thinly sketched novel, although the author did provide notes on how he intended to finish the work had his health permitted it.

  The first edition of the novel

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three
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br />   Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  NOTES

  Journalist and novelist, Kenneth Roberts

  Introduction

  WHEN I TRIED to think whether or not my husband would wish this unfinished novel of his to be published, I could reach no decision; for only Divine Providence could possibly supply me with the answer. As I read and re-read The Show Piece, however, I began to be certain that the writing itself demanded publication. I saw, too, that in the most important way the book really had been finished; that it is all here for people who care about the essence of a book.

  Mr. Tarkington had found occasion to dictate the synopsis of the ending as he saw it would be, and he had left a few dictated notes. The synopsis and the notes are included for the benefit of those who read in order to know ‘what finally happened’, which of course is important, too, and something that only a morbidly literary affectation would seek to ignore, since everything living must begin and develop, or fail to develop, and end. Yet in The Show Piece, as in most of Mr. Tarkington’s writings ever since The Flirt, the truth and the mystery of human nature, and how most clearly to tell about that truth and that mystery, have been his chief concern.

  It seems to me appropriate — and I hope I am not wrong — to reprint here parts of an article that Mr. Tarkington wrote not much more than a year ago when he was asked to tell how and why he had written a book of his called Image of Josephine. In these few words Mr. Tarkington expressed to the full, I think, what he had come to consider his particular sort of business, so to speak, as a novelist. He wrote:

  Since everything we do depends much upon what our ancestors have done for us, and to us, it must be true that any novel begins to be written before the writer is born. So if an author tried to explain completely how and why he has written a certain book he’d have to produce biographies of all the twigs on his family tree, followed by his own memoirs — to include the influence of environment — and in all the world there wouldn’t be patience enough to listen to him unless his mother were still alive.

  Of course this means only that the quality of any book depends upon the kind of person the author is. Well, that’s something he doesn’t himself know, because no man knows himself and even the shrewdest women have but a sketchy notion of themselves and usually don’t like to expose it to too much light....

  If for some moments the reader will think hard of his circle of friends and acquaintances he’ll perceive that his thoughts are really roving among strangers. Their aspects and manners are familiar enough to him, of course, and he knows what many of them would do under given circumstances. Every one of them has his own special reputation, so to speak, and a few adjectives tell the colour of it. One man is thought ‘kind and broad-minded’; another ‘cold and yet self-sacrificing’, and so on. Thus the reader may think of these people but might find that his wife differs from him in her opinion of some of them....

  In any book intended to investigate human beings and if possible to reveal something about them, the writer must take account of such matters. If the people in the book are to ‘come alive’ to the eye and ear of an observant reader, those people must be not easier to know all about than actual people. They must be people about whom the reader could change his opinion, as he does, sometimes, of actual people; and his likes and dislikes may alter accordingly. The people of the book, to seem human, must be as inconsistent, for instance, as human beings are, and must inspire in one another as diverse opinions of themselves as all human beings do. That is, they mustn’t fall into fiction patterns. What they feel, think, and do mustn’t conform to the literary expectations of a reader more accommodatingly than do the actual creatures of flesh about him. The author, moreover, mustn’t work the reader into liking or disliking any of the people of the book. Such processes are appropriate to the ‘vicarious adventure’ and vicarious love-experience stories wherein the reader (probably the author, too) becomes in imagination one or more of the fictitious people and thus ‘escapes’ from life and the cares of the day; but though almost any book, or almost any work of art, can possibly be used as ‘escape’, the investigatory novel isn’t meant that way....

  The Show Piece, though it is an entirely different sort of book from Image of Josephine, is certainly also an investigatory novel. While it is an exploration of egoism, and — as Mr. Tarkington said while he was writing it — might even have been called The Egoist if George Meredith hadn’t used that title, it is much more than the revelation of ‘Irvie Pease’s’ unconscious and seemingly immutable self-centredness. It deals also, in Mr. Tarkington’s deceptively simple and uninvoluted prose, with the strange attraction of egoism and the powerful and intricate effects that egoism may have upon a variety of lives other than that of its own peculiar victim, perhaps because we are egoists all, in one measure or another.

  To me, however, and I think I dare be this personal, the deepest significance of the book, and what makes it a crown to his life as a man and as a writer, is the tremendous fact that his own centre was not in self. Autobiographical as any creative human being’s mind necessarily in time must be seen to be, yet only the great can achieve something beyond ‘self-expression’, can see from the outside as well as from the inside, and so be wise. Mr. Tarkington was wise, and so was truly modest; but it is not, I think, incumbent upon me to be modest for him.

  SUSANAH TARKINGTON

  Chapter One

  THAT AN ABLE-MINDED man in his late forties could be made morally bilious by a dear innocent child of four or five, and that for years such a man, a family doctor, would return to that condition whenever he thought of that child, overtaxes credulity; but the thing has happened.

  The older we grow the queerer we are — though it may be only that the older we grow the better we see how queer everybody is — but, even in the days of Irvie Pease’s infancy, Dr. Joseph Erb recognized the strangeness of his thoughts about the child. Later, old Erb began to perceive the even greater oddity of his going on, year after year, feeling the same way about Irvie — whom almost everybody else loved. Erb and I had gone into our fifties, though, before the doctor openly admitted to me the absurdity of his prejudice.

  That afternoon, having prescribed a tonic and peevishly referred to my dislike of exercise, Erb sat down by one of the open windows of my workroom, lighted a bent cigarette and looked poisoned as a noisy young voice was heard from the front yard of the house next door. ‘At twenty or even thirty,’ Erb said, ‘I wouldn’t have believed that at my present age I could be so irked by merely the voice of that fifteen-year-old child out there. How do you stand it, yourself?’

  ‘Without fury’, I replied, not permitting myself to laugh. ‘It brings me no acute discomfort even though I come near living with it.’

  ‘So you do’, he assented. ‘Why don’t you move away?’

  At that, I did laugh. ‘Do you think Irvie Pease is the reason I’m such an old wreck that my sister calls you in to prescribe bitter syrups for me and threaten me with death if I don’t walk five miles a day?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about five miles’, he said. ‘You can push yourself around a few blocks at the end of an afternoon’s work, can’t you? You’d better — if you expect to finish this book you’re on!’ His annoyance with me increased as the voice outdoors became noisier. ‘Stop making a fuss over a twenty minutes’ walk a day. Confound it, listen to that boy out there!’

  ‘Why should we, Doctor?’

  ‘Because we can’t help it! Not with that window open.’

  ‘Look at me, Lucy!’ the boy was shouting. ‘Watch me, Edgar! Look, all you
kids! Everybody listen to me, the Old Maestro!’

  Dr. Erb knew as well as I did that many people found this gay young voice anything but an unpleasant one; nevertheless he gave me a malign glance, and then, urged by the human perversity that draws the eye to what will afflict it, he stared down from the window into the broad front yard next door. So did I.

  There was a stone sun-dial in the midst of the green lawn and upon it a youth in grey flannels had clambered to stand erect, inviting the attention of five or six contemporaries previously engaged in the chase of a pair of frolicsome cocker spaniels. The boy on the sun-dial was brown-haired, brown-eyed, tall for his age but comely and not cumbersome. Indeed he was so elaborately graceful that the strong suspicion of his being consciously so was readable in Dr. Erb’s crinkled expression.

  ‘Hey!’ the boy shouted. ‘Everybody shut up! Forget those tykes, stand still, look at me and listen! Me, the good Old Maestro’s giving you a recitativo. Anybody that laughs is fined five dollars!’ Then, as the group of his young friends subdued themselves to watch and listen, he assumed a mock heroic attitude, one arm extended and the other upon his heart. ‘I’m a statue on a pedestal, see. Statue of an Orator in the Forum Romanorum.’

  One of the boys made an objection. ‘You can’t be, Irving. Statues can’t talk.’

  ‘This one can’, the youth on the sun-dial said, and improvised loudly. ‘Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your great big stick-out ears! I come not to bury Caesar or anything but to praise him if I can think why. Black as pitch from the pole to pole, I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul! Kindly cheer, everybody; cheers, please! Louder, please; anybody that doesn’t cheer loud as they can I’ll fine ten dollars.’