Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  She was a small, rather shabby woman, who held one hand concealed in the folds of her skirt, while with the other she hastily cleared her eyes of some loosened strands of her reddish hair.

  “I got you, Chollie!” she said. “You’re behind the bar, and I’m a-goin’ to make a good job of it, and get George and Limpy, too. I’m goin’ to get all three of you!”

  With that she darted across the room and ran behind the bar; whereupon Daisy and Elsie were treated to a scene like a conjuror’s trick. Until the bald-headed man’s arrival, they had supposed themselves to be quite alone in the room, but as the little woman ran behind the counter, not only this fugitive popped up from it, but two other panic-stricken men besides — one with uneven whiskers all over his mottled face, the other a well-dressed person, elderly, but just now supremely agile. The three shot up simultaneously like three Jacks-in-the-box, and, scrambling over the counter, dropped flat on the floor in front of it, leaving the little woman behind.

  “Crawl up to the end o’ the bar, George,” the bald-headed man said hoarsely. “When she comes out from behind it, jump and grab her wrist.”

  “Think I’m deef?” the little woman inquired raucously. “George’s got a fat chance to grab my wrist!”

  Then her eyes, somewhat inflamed, fell upon Daisy and Elsie. “Well, what — what — what—” she said.

  Daisy stepped toward the counter, for she felt that she had indeed delayed her business long enough.

  “We’d like to look at some nice unb’eached muslin,” she said, “an’ some of your very best orstrich feathers.”

  The subsequent commotions, as well as the preceding ones, were indistinctly audible to the mystified person who waited upon the sidewalk outside the place. Finding that his eyes revealed nothing of the interior, he had placed his ear against the window, and the muffled reports, mistaken for firecrackers by Daisy and Elsie, were similarly interpreted by Laurence; but he supposed Daisy and Elsie to have a direct connection with the sounds. A thought of the Fourth of July entered his mind, as it had Daisy’s, but it solved nothing for him: the Fourth was long past; this was not the sort of store that promised firecrackers; and even if Daisy and Elsie had taken firecrackers with them, how had it happened that they were allowed to explode them indoors? As for an “ottomatick” or a “revolaver,” he knew that neither maiden would touch such a thing, for he had heard them express their aversion to the antics of Robert Eliot, on an occasion when Master Eliot had surreptitiously borrowed his father’s “good ole six-shooter” to disport himself with in the Threamers’ garage.

  Nothing could have been more evident than that Daisy and Elsie had definite affairs to transact in this café; the air with which they entered it was a conclusive demonstration of that. But the firecrackers made guessing at the nature of those affairs even more hopeless than when the pair had visited the barber-shop and the harness-shop. Then, as a closer report sounded, Laurence jumped. “Giant firecracker!” he exclaimed huskily, and his eyes still widened; for now vague noises of tumult and altercation could be heard.

  “Well, my go-o-od-nuss!” he said.

  Two pedestrians halted near him.

  “Say, listen,” one of them said. “What’s goin’ on in there?”

  “Golly!” the other exclaimed, adding: “I happen to know it’s a blind tiger.”

  Laurence’s jaw dropped, and he stared at the man incredulously. “Wha-wha’d you say?”

  “Listen,” the man returned. “How long’s all this been goin’ on in there?”

  “Justsince they went in there. It was just a little while ago. Wha’d you say about —

  But he was interrupted. Several other passers-by had paused, and they began to make interested inquiries of the first two.

  “What’s the trouble in there? What’s going on here? What’s all the shooting? What’s—”

  “There’s something pretty queer goin’ on,” said the man who had spoken to Laurence; and he added: “It’s a blind tiger.”

  “Yes, I know that,” another said. “I was in there once, and I know from my own eyes it’s a blind tiger.”

  Laurence began to be disconcerted.

  “‘A blind tiger’?” he gasped. “A blind tiger?” What caused his emotion was not anxiety for the safety of his friends; the confident importance with which they had entered the place convinced him that if there actually was a blind tiger within, they were perfectly aware of the circumstance and knew what they were doing when they entered the animal’s presence. His feeling about them was indefinite and hazy; yet it was certainly a feeling incredulous but awed, such as any one might have about people well known to him, who suddenly appear to be possessed of supernatural powers. “Honest, d’you b’lieve there’s a blind tiger in there?” he asked of the man who had confirmed the strange information.

  “Sure!”

  “Honest, is one in there? Do you honest—”

  But no one paid him any further attention. By this time a dozen or more people had gathered; others were arriving; and as the tumult behind the formerly green door increased, hurried discussion became general on the sidewalk. Several men said that somebody ought to go in and see what the matter was; others said that they themselves would be willing to go in, but they didn’t like to do it without a warrant; and two or three declared that nobody ought to go in just at that time. One of these was emphatic, especially upon the duty men owe to themselves. “A man owes something to himself,” he said. “A man owes it to himself not to git no forty-four in his gizzard by takin’ and pushin’ into a place where somebody’s usin’ a forty-four. A man owes it to himself to keep out o’ trouble unless he’s got some call to take and go bullin’ into it; that’s what he owes to himself!”

  Another seemed to be depressed by the scandal involved. He was an unshaven person of a general appearance naïvely villainous, and, without a hat or coat, he had hurried across the street from an establishment not essentially unlike that under discussion — precisely like it, in fact, in declaring itself (though without the accent) to be a place where coffee in the French manner might be expected. “What worries me is,” he said gloomily, and he repeated this over and over, “what worries me is, it gives the neighbourhood kind of a poor name. What worries me, it’s gittin’ the neighbourhood all talked about and everything, the way you wouldn’t want it to, yourself.”

  Laurence took a fancy to this man, whose dejection had a quality of pathos that seemed to imply a sympathetic nature.

  “Is there one — honestly?” Laurence asked him. “Cross your heart there is one?”

  The gloomy man continued to address his lament to the one or two acquaintances who were listening to him. “It’s just like this — what worries me is—”

  But Laurence tugged at his soiled shirt-sleeve. “Is there honest one in there?”

  “Is there one what in there?” the man asked with unexpected gruffness.

  “A blind tiger!”

  The gloomy man instantly became of a terrifying aspect. He roared:

  “Git away f’m here!”

  Then, as Laurence hastily retreated, the man shook his head, and added to his grown listeners:— “Ain’t that jest what I says? It gits everybody to talkin’ — even a lot of awnry dressed-up little boys! It ain’t right, and Chollie and Mabel ought to have some consideration. Other folks has got to live as well as them! Why, I tell you—”

  He stopped, and with a woeful exclamation pointed to the street-corner south of them. “Look there! It’s that blame sister-in-law o’ George’s. I reckon she must of run out through the alley. Now they have done it!”

  His allusion was to a most blonde young woman, whose toilet, evidently of the hastiest, had called upon one or two garments for the street as an emergency supplement to others eloquent of the intimate boudoir. She came hurrying, her blue crocheted slippers scurrying in and out of variegated draperies; and all the while she talked incessantly, and with agitation, to a patrolman in uniform who hastened beside her. Nat
urally, they brought behind them an almost magically increasing throng of citizens, aliens and minors.

  They hurried to the once green doors; the patrolman swung these open, and he and the blonde young woman went in. So did the crowd, thus headed and protected by the law’s very symbol; and Laurence went with them. Carried along, jostled and stepped upon, he could see nothing; and inside the solidly filled room he found himself jammed against a woman who surged in front of him. She was a fat woman, and tall, with a great, bulbous, black cotton cloth back; and just behind Laurence there pressed a short and muscular man who never for an instant relaxed the most passionate efforts to see over the big woman. He stood on tiptoe, stretching himself and pushing hard down on Laurence’s shoulders; and he constantly shoved forward, inclosing Laurence’s head between himself and the big woman’s waist, so that Laurence found breathing difficult and uncomfortable. The black cotton cloth, against which his nose was pushed out of shape, smelled as if it had been in the rain — at least that was the impression obtained by means of his left nostril, which remained partially unobstructed; and he did not like it.

  In a somewhat dazed and hazy way he had expected to see Daisy and Elsie and a blind tiger, but naturally, under these circumstances, no such expectation could be realized. Nor did he hear anything said about either the tiger or the little girls; the room was a chaos of voices, though bits of shrill protestation, and gruffer interruptions from the central group, detached themselves.

  “I never!” cried the shrillest voice. “I never even pointed it at any of ’em! So help me—”

  “Now look here—” Laurence somehow got an idea that this was the policeman’s voice. “Now look here—” it said loudly, over and over, but was never able to get any further; for the shrill woman and the plaintive but insistent voices of three men interrupted at that point, and persisted in interrupting as long as Laurence was in the room.

  He could bear the black cotton back no longer, and, squirming, he made his elbow uncomfortable to the aggressive man who tortured him.

  “Here!” this person said indignantly. “Take your elbow out o’ my stomach and stand still. How d’you expect anybody to see what’s going on with you making all this fuss? Be quiet!”

  “I won’t,” said Laurence thickly. “You lea’ me out o’ here!”

  “Well, for heaven’s sakes!” the oppressive little man exclaimed. “Make some more trouble for people that want to see something! Go on and get out, then! Oh, Lordy!”

  This last was a petulant wail as Laurence squirmed round him; then the pressure of the crowd filled the gap by throwing the little man against the fat woman’s back. “Dam boy!” he raved, putting all his troubles under one head.

  But Laurence heard him not; he was writhing his way to the wall; and, once he reached it, he struggled toward the open doors, using his shoulder as a wedge between spectators and the wall. Thus he won free of the press and presently got himself out to the sidewalk, panting. And then, looking about him, he glanced up the street.

  At the next crossing to the north two busy little figures were walking rapidly homeward. They were gesturing importantly; their heads were waggling to confirm these gestures; and they were chattering incessantly.

  “Well — dog -gone it!” Laurence whispered.

  He followed them; but now his lips moved not at all, and there was no mumbling in his throat. He stared at them amazedly, in a great mental silence.

  “What wears me out the most,” Daisy said, as they came into their own purlieus again, “it’s this shopping, shopping, shopping, and they never have one single thing!”

  “No, they don’t,” Elsie agreed. “Not a thing! It just wears me out!”

  “F’instance,” Daisy continued, “look at how they acted in that las’ place when I wanted to see some orstrich feathers. Just said ‘What!’ about seven hundred times! An’ then that ole pleeceman came in!”

  For a moment Elsie dropped her rôle as a tired shopper, and giggled nervously. “I was scared!” she said.

  But Daisy tossed her head. “It’s no use goin’ shopping in a store like that; they never hate anything, and I’ll never waste my time on ’em again. Crazy things!”

  “They did act crazy,” Elsie said thoughtfully, as they paused at her gate. “I guess we better not tell about it to our mothers, maybe.”

  “No,” Daisy agreed; and then with an elaborate gesture of fatigue she said: “Well, my dear, I hope you’re not as worn out as I am! My nerves are jus’ comp’etely gone, my dear!”

  “So’re mine!” said Elsie; and then, after a quick glance to the south, she giggled. “There’s that ole thing, still comin’ along; — no, he’s stopped, an’ lookin’ at us!” She went into the yard. “Well, my dear, I must go in an’ lay down an’ rest myself. We’ll go shopping again just as soon as my nerves get better, my dear!”

  She skipped into the house, and Daisy, humming to herself, walked to her own gate, went in, and sat in a wicker rocking-chair under the walnut tree. She rocked herself and sang a wordless song, but becoming aware of a presence that lingered upon the sidewalk near the gate, she checked both her song and the motion of the chair and looked that way. Master Coy was staring over the gate at her; and she had never known that he had such large eyes.

  He was full of formless questions, but he had no vocabulary; in truth, his whole being was one intensified interrogation.

  “What you want?” Daisy called.

  “I was there,” he announced solemnly. “I was there, too. I was in that place where the pleeceman was.”

  “I doe’ care,” Daisy said, and began to sing and to rock the chair again. “I doe’ care where you went,” she said.

  “I was there,” said Laurence. “I saw that ole bline tiger. That’s nothin’!”

  Daisy had no idea of what he meant, but she remained undisturbed. “I doe’ care,” she sang. “I doe’ care, I doe’ care, I doe’ care what you saw.”

  “Well, I did!” said Laurence, and he moved away, walking backward and staring at her.

  She went on singing, “I doe’ care,” and rocking, and Laurence continued to walk backward and stare at her. He walked backward, still staring, all the way to the next corner. There, as it was necessary for him to turn toward his own home, he adopted a more customary and convenient manner of walking — but his eyes continued to be of unnatural dimensions.

  MARY SMITH

  HENRY MILLICK CHESTER, rising early from intermittent slumbers, found himself the first of the crowded Pullman to make a toilet in the men’s smoke-and-wash-room, and so had the place to himself — an advantage of high dramatic value to a person of his age and temperament, on account of the mirrors which, set at various angles, afford a fine view of the profile. Henry Millick Chester, scouring cinders and stickiness from his eyes and rouging his ears with honest friction, enriched himself of this too unfamiliar opportunity. He smiled and was warmly interested in the results of his smile in reflection, particularly in some pleasant alterations it effected upon an outline of the cheek usually invisible to the bearer. He smiled graciously, then he smiled sardonically. Other smiles he offered — the tender smile, the forbidding smile, the austere and the seductive, the haughty and the pleading, the mordant and the compassionate, the tolerant but incredulous smile of a man of the world, and the cold, ascetic smile that shows a woman that her shallow soul has been read all too easily — pastimes abandoned only with the purely decorative application of shaving lather to his girlish chin. However, as his unbeetling brow was left unobscured, he was able to pursue his physiognomical researches and to produce for his continued enlightenment a versatile repertory of frowns — the stern, the quizzical, the bitter, the treacherous, the bold, the agonized, the inquisitive, the ducal, and the frown of the husband who says: “I forgive you. Go!” A few minutes later Mr. Chester, abruptly pausing in the operation of fastening his collar, bent a sudden, passionate interest upon his right forearm, without apparent cause and with the air of never having seen it
until that moment. He clenched his fingers tightly, producing a slight stringiness above the wrist, then crooked his elbow with intensity, noting this enormous effect in all the mirrors. Regretfully, he let his shirtsleeves fall and veil the rare but private beauties just discovered, rested his left hand negligently upon his hip, extended his right in a gesture of flawlessly aristocratic grace, and, with a slight inclination of his head, uttered aloud these simple but befitting words: “I thank ye, my good people.” T’ yoong Maister was greeting the loyal tenantry who acclaimed his return to Fielding Manor, a flowered progress thoroughly incomprehensible to the Pullman porter whose transfixed eye — glazed upon an old-gold face intruded through the narrow doorway — Mr. Chester encountered in the glass above the nickeled washbasins. The Libyan withdrew in a cloud of silence, and t’ yoong Maister, flushing somewhat, resumed his toilet with annoyed precision and no more embroidery. He had yesterday completed his sophomore year; the brushes he applied to his now adult locks were those of a junior. And with a man’s age had come a man’s cares and responsibilities. Several long years had rolled away since for the last time he had made himself sick on a train in a club-car orgy of cubebs and sarsaparilla pop.

  Zigzagging through shoe-bordered aisles of sleepers in morning dishevelment, he sought the dining car, where the steward escorted him to an end table for two. He would have assumed his seat with that air of negligent hauteur which was his chosen manner for public appearances, had not the train, taking a curve at high speed, heaved him into the undesirable embrace of an elderly man breakfasting across the aisle. “Keep your feet, sonny; keep your feet,” said this barbarian, little witting that he addressed a member of the nineteen-something prom, committee. People at the next table laughed genially, and Mr. Chester, muttering a word of hostile apology, catapulted into his assigned place, his cheeks hot with the triple outrage.

  He relieved himself a little by the icy repulsion with which he countered the cordial advances of the waiter, who took his order and wished him a good morning, hoped he had slept well, declared the weather delightful and, unanswered, yet preserved his beautiful courtesy unimpaired. When this humble ambassador had departed on his mission to the kitchen Henry Millick Chester, unwarrantably persuaded that all eyes were searching his every inch and angle — an impression not uncharacteristic of his years — gazed out of the window with an indifference which would have been obtrusive if any of the other breakfasters had happened to notice it. The chill exclusiveness of his expression was a rebuke to such prying members of the proletariat as might be striving to read his thoughts, and barred his fellow passengers from every privilege to his consideration. The intensely reserved gentleman was occupied with interests which were the perquisites of only his few existing peers in birth, position, and intelligence, none of whom, patently, was in that car.