Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Listen here,” the proprietor interrupted, and he regarded these fastidious customers somewhat unfavourably. “You’re wastin’ my time on me. Say what it is you want or go somewheres else.”

  “Well, have you got some very nice blue-silk lampshades?” Daisy inquired, and she added: “With gold fringe an’ tassels?”

  “Lamp-shades!” he said, and he had the air of a person who begins to feel seriously annoyed. “Listen! Go on out o’ here!”

  But Daisy ignored his rudeness. “Have you got any very good unb’eached muslin?” she asked.

  “You “You go on out o’ here!” the man shouted, go on out o’ here or I’ll untie my dog.”

  “Well, I declare!” Elsie exclaimed as she moved toward the door. “I never was treated like this in all my days!”

  “What kind of a dog is it?” Daisy asked, for she was interested.

  “It’s a biting dog,” the drug-store man informed her; and she thought best to retire with Elsie. The two came out to the sidewalk and went on their way, giggling surreptitiously, and busier than ever with their chatter. After a moment the injured party in the background again followed them.

  “They’ll find out what’s goin’ to happen to ’em,” he muttered, continuing his gloomy rhapsody. “‘Please speak to us, Laurunce,’ they’ll say. ‘Oh, Laurunce, pull-lease!’ An’ then I’ll jus’ keep on laughin’ at ’em an’ callin’ ’em everything the worst I ever heard, while they keep hollerin’: ‘Oh, Laurrunce, pull-leese!’”

  A passer-by, a kind-faced woman of middle age, caught the murmur from his slightly moving lips, and halted inquiringly.

  “What is it, little boy?” she asked.

  “What?” he said.

  “Were you speaking to me, little boy? Didn’t you say ‘Please’?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he replied, colouring high; for he did not like to be called “little boy” by anybody, and he was particularly averse to this form of address on the lips of a total stranger. Moreover, no indignant person who is talking to himself cares to be asked what he is saying. “I never said a thing to you,” he added crossly. “What’s the matter of you, anyhow?”

  “Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “What a bad, rude little boy! Shame on you!”

  “I ain’t a little boy, an’ shame on your own self!” he retorted; but she had already gone upon her way, and he was again following the busy shoppers. As he went on his mouth was slightly in motion, though it was careful not to open, and his slender neck was imperceptibly distended by small explosions of sound, for he continued his dialogues, but omitted any enunciation that might attract the impertinence of strangers. “It’s none o’ your ole biznuss!” he said, addressing the middle-aged woman in this internal manner. “I’ll show you who you’re talkin’ to! I guess when you get through with me you’ll know somep’m! Shame on your own self!” Then his eyes grew large as they followed the peculiar behaviour of the two demoiselles before him. “My goodness!” he said.

  Daisy was just preceding Elsie into a barber-shop.

  “Do you keep taffeta or — or lamp-shades?” Daisy asked of the barber nearest the door.

  This was a fat coloured man, a mulatto. He had a towel over the jowl and eyes of his helpless customer, and standing behind the chair, employed his thumbs and fingers in a slow and rhythmic manipulation of the man’s forehead. Meanwhile he continued an unctuous monologue, paying no attention whatever to Daisy’s inquiry. “I dess turn roun’ an’ walk away little bit,” said the barber. “‘N’en I turn an’ look ’er over up an’ down from head to foot. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You use you’ mouth full freely,’ I say, ‘but dess kinely gim me leave fer to tell you, you ain’t got nothin’ to rouse up no int’est o’ mine in you. I make mo’ money,’ I say, T make mo’ money in a day than whut Henry ever see in a full year, an’ if you tryin’ to climb out o’ Henry’s class an’ into mine—’”

  “Listen!” Daisy said, raising her voice. “Do you keep taffeta or—”

  “Whut you say?” the barber asked, looking coldly upon her and her companion.

  “We’re out shopping,” Daisy explained. “We want to look at some—”

  “Listen me,” the barber interrupted. “Run out o’ here. Run out.”

  Daisy moved nearer him. “What you doin’ to that man’s face?” she asked.

  “Nem mine! Nem mine!” he said haughtily. “What were you tellin’ him?” Daisy inquired. “I mean all about Henry’s class an’ usin’ her mouth so full freely. Who was?”

  “Run out!” the barber shouted. “Run out!”

  “Well, I declare!” Daisy exclaimed, as she and Elsie followed his suggestion and emerged from the shop. “It’s just this same way whenever I go shopping! I never can find the things I want; they act almos’ like they don’t care whether they keep ’em or not.”

  “It’s dreadful!” Elsie agreed, and, greatly enjoying the air of annoyance they were affecting, they proceeded on their way. No one would have believed them aware that they were being followed; and neither had spoken a word referring to Master Coy; but they must have understood each other perfectly in the matter, for presently Daisy’s head turned ever so slightly, and she sent a backward glance out of the very tail of her eye. “He’s still comin’!” she said in a whisper that was ecstatic with mirth. And Elsie, in the same suppressed but joyous fashion, said: “Course he is, the ole thing!” This was the only break in their manner of being the busiest shoppers in the world; and immediately after it they became more flauntingly shoppers than ever.

  As for Laurence, his curiosity was now almost equal to his bitterness. The visit to the drug-store he could understand, but that to the, barber-shop astounded him; and when he came to the shop he paused to flatten his nose upon the window. The fat mulatto barber nearest the window was still massaging the face of the recumbent customer and continuing his narrative; the other barbers were placidly grooming the occupants of their chairs, while two or three waiting patrons, lounging on a bench, read periodicals of a worn and flaccid appearance. Nothing gave any clue to the errand of Laurence’s fair friends; on the contrary, everything that was revealed to his staring eyes made their visit seem all the more singular.

  He went in, and addressed himself to the fat barber. “Listen,” he said. “Listen. I want to ast you somep’m.”

  “Dess ‘bout when she was fixin’ to holler,” the barber continued, to his patron, “I take an’ slap my money ri’ back in my pocket. ‘You talk ‘bout try in’ show me some class,’ I say. ‘Dess lem me—”’

  “Listen!” Laurence said, speaking louder. “I want to ast you somep’m.”

  “‘Dess lem me tell you, if you fixin’ show me some class,’” the barber went on; “‘if you fixin’ show me some class,’ I say. ‘Dess lem me tell you if—’”

  “Listen!” Laurence insisted. “I want to ast you somep’m.”

  For a moment the barber ceased to manipulate his customer and gave Laurence a look of disapproval. “Listen me, boy!” he said. “Nex’ time you flatten you’ face on nat window you don’ haf to breave on nat glass, do you? Ain’ you’ folks taught you no better’n go roun’ dirtyin’ up nice clean window?”

  “What I want to know,” Laurence said: “ — What were they doin’ in here?”

  “What were who doin’ in here?”

  “Those two little girls that were in here just now. What did they come here for?”

  “My goo’nuss!” the barber exclaimed. “Man’d think barber got nothin’ do but stan’ here all day ‘n answer questions! Run out, boy!”

  “But, listen!” Laurence urged him. “What were they—”

  “Run out, boy!” the barber said, and his appearance became formidable. “Rim out, boy!”

  Laurence departed silently, though in his mind he added another outrage to the revenge he owed the world for the insults and mistreatments he was receiving that morning. “I’ll show you!” he mumbled in his throat as he came out of the shop. “You’ll wish you had
some sense, when I get through with you, you ole barber, you!”

  Then, as he looked before»him, his curiosity again surpassed his sense of injury. The busy shoppers were just coming out of a harness-shop, which was making a bitter struggle to survive the automobile; and as they emerged from the place, they had for a moment the hasty air of ejected persons. But this was a detail that escaped Laurence’s observation, for the gestures and chatter were instantly resumed, and the two hurried on as before.

  “My gracious!” said Laurence, and when he came to the harness-shop he halted and looked in through the open door; but the expression of the bearded man behind a counter was so discouraging that he thought it best to make no inquiries.

  The bearded man was as irritable as he looked. “Listen!” he called. “Don’t block up that door, d’you hear me? Go on, get away from there and let some air in. Gosh!”

  Laurence obeyed morosely. “Well, doggone it!” he said.

  He had no idea that the pair preceding him might have been received as cavalierly, for their air of being people engaged in matters of importance had all the effect upon him they desired, and deceived him perfectly. Moreover, the mystery of what they had done in the barber-shop and in the harness-shop was actually dismaying; they were his colleagues in age and his inferiors in sex; and yet all upon a sudden, this morning, they appeared to deal upon the adult plane and to have business with strange grown people. Laurence was unwilling to give them the slightest ground for a conceited supposition that he took any interest in them, or their doings, but he made up his mind that if they went into another shop, he would place himself in a position to observe what they did, even at the risk of their seeing him.

  Four or five blocks away, the business part of the city began to be serious; buildings of ten or twelve stories, several of much more than that, were piled against the sky; but here, where walked the shoppers and their disturbed shadower, the street had fallen upon slovenly days. Farther out, in the quarter whence they had come, it led a life of domestic prosperity, but gradually, as it descended southward, its character altered dismally until just before it began to be respectable again, as a business street, it was not only shabby but had a covert air of underhand enterprise. And the shop windows had not been arranged with the idea of offering a view of the interiors.

  Of course Elsie and Daisy did not concern themselves with the changed character of the street; one shop was as good as another for the purposes involved in the kind of shopping that engaged them this morning; and they were having too glorious a time to give much consideration to anything. Elsie had fallen under the spell of a daring leadership; she was as excited as Daisy, as intent as she upon preserving the illusion they maintained between them; and both of them were delightedly aware that they must be goading their frowning follower with a splendid series of mysteries.

  “I declare!” Daisy said, affecting peevishness. “I forgot to look at orstrich feathers an’ unb’eached muslin at both those two last places we went. Let’s try in here.”

  By “in here” she referred to a begrimed and ignoble façade once painted dark green, but now the colour of street dust mixed with soot. Admission was to be obtained by double doors, with the word “Café” upon both of the panels. “Café” was also repeated upon a window, where a sign-painter of great inexperience had added the details: “Soft Drinks Candys Cigars & C.” And upon three shelves in the window were displayed, as convincing proof of the mercantile innocence of the place, three or four corncob pipes, some fly-specked packets of tobacco, several packages of old popcorn and a small bottle of catsup.

  Daisy tugged at the greasy brass knob projecting from one of the once green doors, and after some reluctance it yielded. “Come on,” she said. The two then walked importantly into the place, and the door closed behind them.

  Laurence immediately hurried forward; but what he beheld was discouraging. The glass of the double door was frankly opaque; and that of the window was so dirty and besooted, and so obstructed by the shelves of sparse merchandise, that he could see nothing whatever beyond the shelves.

  “Well, dog -gone it!” he said.

  Daisy and Elsie found themselves the only visible occupants of an interior unexampled in their previous experience. Along one side of the room, from wall to wall, there ran what they took to be a counter for the display of goods, though it had nothing upon it except a blackened little jar of matches and a short thick glass goblet, dimmed at the bottom with an ancient sediment. A brass rail extended along the base of the counter, and on the wall, behind, was a long mirror, once lustrous, no doubt, but now coated with a white substance that had begun to suffer from soot. Upon the wall opposite the mirror there were two old lithographs, one of a steamboat, the other of a horse and jockey; and there were some posters advertising cigarettes, but these decorations completed the invoice of all that was visible to the shoppers.

  “Oh, dear!” Daisy said. “Wouldn’t it be too provoking if they’d gone to lunch or somep’m!” And she tapped as loudly as she could upon the counter, calling:— “Here! Somebody come an’ wait on us!

  I want to look at some of your nicest unb’eached muslin an’ some orstrich feathers.”

  There was a door at the other end of the room and it stood open, revealing a narrow and greasy passage, with decrepit walls that showed the laths, here and there, where areas of plaster had fallen. “I guess I better go call in that little hallway,” said Daisy. “They don’t seem to care how long they keep their customers waitin’!”

  But as she approached the door, the sound of several muffled explosions came from the rear of the building and reached the shoppers through the funnel of the sinister passage.

  “That’s funny,” said Daisy. “I guess somebody’s shootin’ off firecrackers back there.”

  “What for?” Elsie asked.

  “I guess they think it must be the Fourth o’ July,” Daisy answered; and she called down the passageway: “Here! Come wait on us. We want to look at some unb’eached muslin an’ orstrich feathers. Can’t you hurry up?”

  No one replied, but voices became audible, approaching; — voices in simultaneous outbursts, and manifesting such poignant emotion that although there were only two of them, a man’s and a woman’s, Daisy and Elsie at first supposed that seven or eight people were engaged in the controversy. For a moment they also supposed the language to be foreign, but discovered that some of the expressions used were familiar, though they had been accustomed to hear them under more decorous circumstances.

  “They’re makin’ an awful fuss,” Elsie said. “What are they talkin’ about?”

  “The way it sounds,” said Daisy, “it sounds like they’re talkin’ about things in the Bible.”

  Then another explosion was heard, closer; it seemed to come from a region just beyond the passageway; and it was immediately followed by a clatter of lumber and an increase of eloquence in the vocal argument.

  “You quit that!” the man’s voice bellowed plaintively. “You don’t know what you’re doin’; you blame near croaked me that time! You quit that, Mabel!”

  “I’m a-goin’ to learn you!” the woman’s voice announced. “You come out from under them boards, and I’ll learn you whether I know what I’m doin’ or not! Come out!”

  “Please go on away and lea’ me alone,” the man implored. “I never done nothin’ to you. I never seen a cent o’ that money! Honest, George never give me a cent of it. Why’n’t you go an ast him? He’s right in yonder. Oh, my goodness, why’n’t you ast him?”

  “Come out from under them boards!”

  The man’s voice became the more passionate in its protesting. “Oh, my goodness! Mabel, can’t you jest ast George? He ain’t left the place; you know that! He can’t show his face in daytime, and he’s right there in the bar, and so’s Limpy. Limpy’ll tell you jest the same as what George will, if you’ll only go and ast ’em. Why can’t you go and ast ’em?”

  “Yes!” the woman cried. “And while I’m in th
ere astin”em, where’ll you be? Over the alley fence and a mile away! You come out from under them boards and git croaked like you’re a-goin’ to!”

  “Oh, my goodness!” the man wailed. “I wish I had somep’m on me to lam you with! Jest once! That’s all I’d ast — jest one little short crack at you!”

  “You come out from under them boards!”

  “I won’t! I’ll lay here till—”

  “We’ll see!” the woman cried. “I’m a-goin’ to dig you out. I’m a-goin’ to take them boards off o’ you and then I’m a-goin’ to croak you. I am!” Elsie moved toward the outer door. “They talk so — so funny!” she said with a little anxiety. “I doe’ b’lieve it’s about the Bible.”

  “I guess she’s mad at somebody about somep’m,” Daisy said, much amused; and stepping nearer the passageway, she called: “Here! We want to look at some unb’eached muslin an’ orstrich feathers!”

  But the room beyond the passage was now in turmoil: planks were clattering again, and both voices were uproarious. The man’s became a squawk as another explosion took place; he added an incomplete Scriptural glossary in falsetto; and Elsie began to be nervous.

  “That’s awful big firecrackers they’re usin’,” she said. “I guess we ought to go home, Daisy.”

  “Oh, they’re just kind of quarrellin’ or somep’m,” Daisy explained, not at all disturbed. “If you listen up our alley, you can hear coloured people talkin’ like that lots o’ times. They do this way, an’ they settle down again, or else they’re only in fun. But I do wish these people’d come, because I just haf to finish my shopping!” And, as yet another explosion was heard, she exclaimed complacently: “My! That’s a big one!”

  Then, beyond the passage, there seemed to be a final upheaval of lumber; the discussion reached a climax of vociferation, and a powerful, bald-headed man, without a coat, plunged through the passage and into the room. His unscholarly brow and rotund jowls were beaded; his agonized eyes saw nothing; he ran to the bar, and vaulted over it, vanishing behind it half a second before the person looking for him appeared in the doorway.