Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  He put on his glasses and gave her a solemn stare before replying. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Of course John is safer out on the porch than we are in here.”

  “Oh, no, no!” she cried. “A porch is the most dangerous place there is!”

  “I don’t know whether or not he’s safe from the lightning,” Lucius explained. “I mean he’s safe from being troubled about it the way we are.”

  “I don’t call that being safe,” his lady-cousin began. “I don’t see what—”

  But she broke off to find place for a subdued shriek, as an admiral’s salute of great guns jarred the house. Other salutes followed, interjected, in spite of drawn shades and curtains, with spurts of light into the room, and at each spurt Mrs. Thomas shivered and said “Oh!” in a low voice, whereupon Ludlum jumped and said “Ouch!” likewise in a low voice. Then, at the ensuing crash, Mrs. Thomas emitted a little scream, and Ludlum emitted a large one.

  “Ouch! Owl” he vociferated. “Mamma, I want it to stop! Mamma, I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!”

  “It’s odd,” said Lucius, during an interregnum. “The thunder frightens us more than the lightning, doesn’t it?”

  “They’re both so horrible,” she murmured. “I’m glad they affect you this way, too, Lucius. It’s comforting. Do you think it’s almost over?”

  “I’ll see,” he said; and he went to a window, whither Ludlum, having jumped down, followed him.

  “Don’t open the curtains much,” Mrs. Thomas begged, not leaving her chair. “Windows are always dangerous. And come away from the window, Luddie. The lightning might—”

  She shrieked at a flash and boom, and Luddie came away from the window. Voiceless — he was so startled — he scrambled toward his mother, his arms outstretched, his feet slipping on the polished floor; then, leaping upon her lap, he clung to her wildly; gulped, choked, and found his voice. He howled.

  “That was about the last, I think,” observed Lucius, from the window. “It’s beginning to clear already. Nothing but a shower to make things cooler for us. Let’s go play with old John again. Come on, Luddie.”

  But Ludlum clung to his mother, remonstrating. “No!” he cried. “Mamma, you got to stay in the house. I don’t want to go out there. It might begin again!”

  She laughed soothingly. “But Uncle Lucius says it’s all over now, darling. Let’s go and—”

  “I d’wawn’ to! I won’t go out of the house. You tell me a story.”

  “Well,” she began, “once upon a time there was a good fairy and there was a bad fairy—”

  “Where’d they live?”

  “Oh, in a town — under some flowers in a garden in the town.”

  “Like our garden?”

  “I suppose so,” she assented. “And the good fairy—”

  “Listen, mamma,” said Ludlum. “If they lived in the garden like those fairies you were tellin’ me about yesterday, they could come in the windows of the house where the pretty little boy lived, couldn’t they?”

  “I suppose so.”

  At this Ludlum’s expression became apprehensive and his voice peevish. “Well, then,” he complained, “if there was a window open at night, or just maybe through a crack under the door, the bad fairy could slip up behind the pretty little boy, or into the pretty little boy’s bedroom, an’—”

  “No, no!” his mother laughed, stroking his head. “You see, the good fairy would always be watching, too, and the good fairy wouldn’t let the bad fairy hurt the pretty little boy.”

  The apprehensive expression was not altogether soothed from the pretty little boy’s face. However, he said: “Go on. Tell what happened. Did the pretty little boy—”

  “Lucius!” Mrs. Thomas exclaimed, “don’t stay here to be bored by Luddie and me. I’ve got to tell him this story—”

  “Yes,” Ludlum eagerly agreed. “An’ then afterward she has to read me a chapter in our book.”

  “So you go and make John tell you a story, Lucius. I have to be polite to Luddie because he’s had such a fright, poor blessed child!”

  Lucius was obedient: he rejoined John upon the porch, and the two men chatted for a time.

  “What book is Jennie reading to the boy?” Mr. Allen inquired, after a subsequent interval of silence.

  “I don’t know just now. Classic fiction of some sort, probably. She’s great on preparing his mind to be literary; reads an hour to him every day, and sometimes longer — translations — mythology — everything. All about gods and goddesses appearing out of the air to heroes, and Medusa heads and what not. Then standard works: Cooper, Bulwer, Scott Hugo — some of the great romances.”

  “I see,” said Lucius. “She always did go at things thoroughly. I remember,” he went on, with a musing chuckle, “I remember how I got hold of Bulwer’s ‘Zanoni’ and ‘Strange Story’ when I was about ten years old. By George! I’ve been afraid to go home in the dark ever since!”

  “You have?” John smiled; then sent a serious and inquiring glance at the visitor, who remained placid. “Of course Jennie doesn’t read ‘Zanoni’ to Ludlum.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” said Lucius. “Not till he’s older. She’d read him much less disturbing things at his age, of course.”

  His host made no additional comment upon the subject, but appeared to sit in some perplexity.

  Mr. Allen observed him calmly; then, after a time, went into the house — to get a cigar of his own, he said.

  In the hall he paused, listening. From the library came Mrs. Thomas’s voice, reading with fine dramatic fire:

  “‘What! thou frontless dastard, thou — thou who didst wait for opened gate and lowered bridge, when Conrad Horst forced his way over moat and wall, must thou be malapert? Knit him up to the stanchions of the hall-window! He shall beat time with his feet while we drink a cup to his safe passage to the devil!’

  “‘The doom was scarce sooner pronounced than accomplished; and in a moment the wretch wrestled out his last agonies, suspended from the iron bars. His body still hung there when our young hero entered the hall, and, intercepting the pale moonbeam, threw on the castle-floor an uncertain shadow, which dubiously yet fearfully intimated the nature of the substance which produced it.

  “‘When the syndic —

  Ludlum interrupted. “Mamma, what’s a stanchion?” His voice was low and a little husky.

  “It’s a kind of an iron-bar, or something, I think,” Mrs. Thomas answered. I’m not sure.”

  “Well, does it mean — mamma, what does it mean when it says ‘he wrested out his last annogies?”’ “‘Agonies,’ dear. It doesn’t mean anything that little boys ought to think about. This is a very unpleasant part of the book, and we’ll hurry on to where it’s all about knights and ladies, and pennons fluttering in the sunshine and—”

  “No; I don’t want you to hurry. I like to hear this part, too. It’s nice. Go on, mamma.”

  She continued, and between the curtains at the door, Lucius caught a glimpse of them. Sunlight touched them through a window; she sat in a high-backed chair; the dark-curled boy, upon a stool, huddling to her knee; and, as they sat thus, reading “Quentin Durward,” they were like a mother and son in stained glass — or like a Countess, in an old romance, reading to the Young Heir. And Lucius Brutus Allen had the curious impression that, however dimly, both of them were conscious of some such picturesque resemblance.

  Unseen, he withdrew from the renewed sound of the reading, and again went out to sit with John upon the porch, but Mrs. Thomas and Ludlum did not rejoin them until the announcement of dinner. When the meal was over, Lucius and his hostess played cribbage in the library; something they did at all their reunions — a commemoration of an evening habit of old days. But to-night their game was interrupted, a whispering in the hall becoming more and more audible as it increased in virility; while protests on the part of a party of the second part punctuated and accented the whispering:

  “I d’wawn’ to!”... “I won�
�t!”...

  “I will ast mama!”. — . — . “Leggo!”

  The whispering became a bass staccato, though subdued, under the breath; protests became monosyllabic, but increased in passion; short-clipped squealings and infantile grunts were heard — and then suddenly, yet almost deliberately, a wide-mouthed roar of human agony dismayed the echoing walls.

  The cavern whence issued the horrid sound was the most conspicuous thing in the little world of that house, as Ludlum dashed into the library. Even in her stress of sympathy, the mother could not forbear to cry: “Don’t, Luddie! Don’t stretch your mouth like that! You’ll spoil the shape of it.”

  But Ludlum cared nothing for shape. Open to all the winds, he plunged toward his mother; and cribbage-board, counters, and cards went to the floor.

  “Darling!” she implored. “What has hurt mamma’s little boy so awfully? Tell mamma!”

  In her arms, his inclement eyes salting his cheeks, the vocal pitch of his despair rose higher and higher like the voice of a reluctant pump.

  “Papa twissud my wrist!” he finally became coherent enough to declare.

  “What!”

  “He did!” All in falsetto Ludlum sobbed his version of things. “He — he suss-said I had to gug-go up to bed all — all alone. He grabbed me! He hurt! He said I couldn’t interrup’ your ole gug-game!— ‘N’ he said, ‘I’ll show you!’ ‘N’ then — then — then — he twissud my wrist!”

  At that she gathered him closer to her, and rose, holding him in her arms. Her face was deeply flushed, and her shining eyes avoided her husband, who stood near the doorway.

  “Put him down, Jennie,” he said mildly. “I”

  Straightway she strode by him, carrying her child. She did not pause, nor speak aloud, yet Lucius and John both heard the whispered word that crumpled the latter as the curtains waved with the angry breeze of her passing. “Shame!”

  Meanwhile, Lucius, on his knees — for he never regarded his trousers seriously — began to collect dispersed cards and pegs. “What say?” he inquired, upon some gaspings of his unfortunate friend, John.

  “She believed it!” (These stricken words came from a deep chair in the shadows.) “She thought I actually did twist his wrist!”

  “Oh, no,” said Lucius. “She didn’t believe anything of the kind. Darn that peg!” With face to the floor and in an attitude of Oriental devotion, he appeared to be worshipping the darkness under a divan. “She was merely reacting to the bellow of her offspring. She knew he invented it, as well as you did.”

  “It’s incredible!” said John. “The cold-blooded cunning of it! He was bound to have his way, and make her go up with him; and I’d turned him toward the stair-way by his shoulders, and he tried to hold himself back by catching at one of those big chairs in the hall. I caught his wrist to keep him from holding to the chair — and I held him a second or two, not moving. The little pirate decided on the thing then and there, in his mind. He understood perfectly well he could make it all the more horrible because you were here, visiting us. I swear it appals me! What sort of a nature is that?”

  “Oh,” said Lucius, “just natural nature. Same as you and me.”

  “I’d hate to believe that!”

  “You and I got ashamed long ago of the tricks that came in our minds to play,” said Lucius, groping under the divan. “We got ashamed so often that they don’t come any more.”

  “Yes, but it ought to be time they stopped coming into that boy’s mind. He was eight last month.”

  “Yes — darn that peg! — there seems to be something in what you say. But of course Luddie thought he was in a fix that was just as bad to him as it would be to me if somebody were trying to make me walk into Pancho Villa’s camp all alone. I’d make a fuss about that, if the fuss would bring up the whole United States Army to go with me. That’s what it amounted to with Luddie.”

  “I suppose so,” groaned the father. “It all comes down to his being a coward.”

  “It all comes down to the air being full of queer things when he’s alone,” said Lucius.

  “Well, I’d like to know what makes it full of queer things. Where does his foolishness come from?”

  “And echo answers—” Lucius added, managing to get his head and shoulders under the divan, and thrusting with arms and legs to get more of himself under.

  But a chime of laughter from the door-way answered in place of echo. “What are you doing, Lucius?” Mrs. Thomas inquired. “Swimming lessons? I never saw anything—” And laughter so overcame her that she could speak no further, but dropped into a chair, her handkerchief to her mouth.

  Lucius emerged crabwise, and placed a cribbage-peg upon the table, but made no motion to continue the game. Instead he dusted himself uselessly, lit a cigar, and sat.

  “Luddie’s all right,” said the lady, having recovered her calmness. “I think probably something he ate at dinner upset him a little. Anyhow, he was all right as soon as he got upstairs. Annie’s sitting with him and telling him stories.”

  “I wonder if that lightning struck anything this afternoon,” Lucius said absently. “Some of it seemed mighty near.”

  “It was awful.”

  “Do you remember,” Lucius asked her, “when you first began to be nervous about it?”

  “Oh, I’ve always been that way, ever since I was a little child. I haven’t the faintest idea how it got hold of me. Children just get afraid of certain things, it seems to me, and that’s all there is to it. You know how Luddie is about lightning, John.” John admitted that he knew how Luddie was about lightning. “I do,” was all he said.

  Mrs. Thomas’s expression became charmingly fond, even a little complacent. “I suppose he inherits it from me,” she said.

  “My mother has that fear to this day,” Lucius remarked. “And I have it, too, but I didn’t inherit it from her.”

  “How do you know?” his cousin asked quickly. “What makes you think you didn’t inherit it?’ “Because my father used to tell me that when I was three and four years old he would sit out on the porch during a thunder-storm, and hold me in his lap, and every time the thunder came both of us would laugh, and shout ‘Boom!’ Children naturally like a big noise. But when I got a little bit older and more imaginative, and began to draw absurd conclusions from things, I found that my mother was frightened during thunder-storms — though she tried her best to conceal it — and, of course, seeing her frightened, I thought something pretty bad must be the matter. So the fear got fastened on me, and I can’t shake it off though I’m thirty-five years old. Curious thing it is!”

  Mrs. Thomas’s brilliant eyes were fixed upon her cousin throughout this narrative with an expression at first perplexed, then reproachful, finally hostile. A change, not subtle but simple and vivid, came upon her face, while its habitual mobility departed, leaving it radiantly still, with a fierce smoldering just underneath. How deep and fast her breathing became, was too easily visible.

  “Everything’s curious, though, for the matter o’ that,” Lucius added. And without looking at his cousin — without needing to look at her, to understand the deadliness of her silence — he smoked unconcernedly. “Yes, sir, it’s all curious; and we’re all curious,” he continued, permitting himself the indulgence of a reminiscent chuckle. “You know I believe my father and mother got to be rather at outs about me — one thing and another, goodness knows what! — and it was years before they came together and found a real sympathy between them again. Truth is, I suspect where people aren’t careful, their children have about twice as much to do with driving ’em apart as with drawing ’em together — especially in the case of an only child. I really do think that if I hadn’t been an only child my father and mother might have been—”

  A sibilant breath, not a word and not quite a hiss, caused Lucius to pause for a moment, though not to glance in the direction of the lips whence came the sound. He appeared to forget the sentence he had left incomplete; at all events he neglected to finish it. How
ever, he went on, composedly:

  “Some of my aunts tell me I was the worst nuisance they ever knew. In fact, some of ’em go out of their way to tell me that, even yet. They never could figure out what was the matter with me — except that I was spoiled; but I never meet Aunt Mira Hooper on the street at home, to this day, that she doesn’t stop to tell me she hasn’t learned to like me, because she got such a set against me when I was a child — and I meet her three or four times a week! She claims there was some kind of a little tragedy over me, in our house, every day or so, for years and years. She blames me for it, but Lord knows it wasn’t my fault. For instance, a lot of it was my father’s.”

  “What did he do?” asked John.

  Lucius chuckled again. “The worst he did was to tell me stories about Indians and pioneer days. Sounds harmless enough, but father was a good storyteller, and that was the trouble. You see, the foundation of nearly all romance, whether it’s Indian stories or fairy-stories — it’s all hero and villain. Something evil is always just going to jump out of somewhere at the hero, and the reader or the listener is always the hero. Why, I got so I wouldn’t go into a darkened room, even in the daytime! As we grow older we forget the horrible visions we had when we were children; and what’s worse, we forget there’s no need for children to have ’em. Children ought to be raised in the real world, not the dream one. Yes, sir, I lay all my Aunt Mira Hooper’s grudge against me to my father’s telling me stories so well and encouraging me to read the classics and—”

  “Lucius,” Mrs. Thomas spoke in a low voice, but in a tone that checked him abruptly.

  “Yes, Jennie?”

  “Don’t you think that’s enough?”

  “I suppose it is tiresome,” he said. “Too much autobiography. I was just rambling on about—”

  “You meant me!” she cried.

  “You, Jennie?”

  “You did! And you meant Ludlum was a ‘nuisance’; not you. And I don’t think it’s very nice! Do you?”

  “Why, I nev—”

  But his cousin’s emotions were no longer to be controlled. She rose, trembling. “What a fool I was this afternoon!” she exclaimed bitterly. “I didn’t suspect you; yet I never remembered your being nervous in a thunder-storm before. I thought you were sympathetic, and all the time you were thinking these cruel, wicked things about Luddie and me!”