Penrod

B >> Booth Tarkington >> Penrod


Headed by this pair, the children sought partners and paraded solemnly
out of the front door and round a corner of the house. There they found
the gay marquee; the small orchestra seated on the lawn at one side
of it, and a punch bowl of lemonade inviting attention, under a tree.
Decorously the small couples stepped upon the platform, one after
another, and began to dance.

"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 having a difficult
time with her, poor boy; he wasn't a shining light in the dancing
class."

However, Penrod's difficulty was not precisely of the kind his mother
supposed. Fanchon was showing him a new step, which she taught her
next partner in turn, continuing instructions during the dancing. The
children crowded the floor, and in the kaleidoscopic jumble of bobbing
heads and intermingling figures her extremely different style of
motion was unobserved by the older people, who looked on, nodding time
benevolently.

Fanchon fascinated girls as well as boys. Many of the former eagerly
sought her acquaintance and thronged about her between the dances, when,
accepting the deference due a cosmopolitan and an oracle of the mode,
she gave demonstrations of the new step to succeeding groups, professing
astonishment to find it unknown: it had been "all the go," she
explained, at the Long Shore Casino for fully two seasons. She
pronounced "slow" a "Fancy Dance" executed during an intermission by
Baby Rennsdale and Georgie Bassett, giving it as her opinion that Miss
Rennsdale and Mr. Bassett were "dead ones"; and she expressed surprise
that the punch bowl contained lemonade and not champagne.

The dancing continued, the new step gaining instantly in popularity,
fresh couples adventuring with every number. The word "step" is somewhat
misleading, nothing done with the feet being vital to the evolutions
introduced by Fanchon. Fanchon's dance came from the Orient by a
roundabout way; pausing in Spain, taking on a Gallic frankness in
gallantry at the Bal Bullier in Paris, combining with a relative from
the South Seas encountered in San Francisco, flavouring itself with
a carefree negroid abandon in New Orleans, and, accumulating, too,
something inexpressible from Mexico and South America, it kept,
throughout its travels, to the underworld, or to circles where nature
is extremely frank and rank, until at last it reached the dives of New
York, when it immediately broke out in what is called civilized
society. Thereafter it spread, in variously modified forms--some of
them disinfected--to watering-places, and thence, carried by hundreds of
older male and female Fanchons, over the country, being eagerly adopted
everywhere and made wholly pure and respectable by the supreme moral
axiom that anything is all right if enough people do it. Everybody was
doing it.

Not quite everybody. It was perhaps some test of this dance that earth
could furnish no more grotesque sight than that of children doing it.

Earth, assisted by Fanchon, was furnishing this sight at Penrod's party.
By the time ice-cream and cake arrived, about half the guests had
either been initiated into the mysteries by Fanchon or were learning
by imitation, and the education of the other half was resumed with the
dancing, when the attendant ladies, unconscious of what was happening,
withdrew into the house for tea.

"That orchestra's a dead one," Fanchon remarked to Penrod. "We ought to
liven them up a little!"

She approached the musicians.

"Don't you know," she asked the leader, "the Slingo Sligo Slide?"

The leader giggled, nodded, rapped with his bow upon his violin; and
Penrod, following Fanchon back upon the dancing floor, blindly brushed
with his elbow a solitary little figure standing aloof on the lawn at
the edge of the platform.

It was Marjorie.

In no mood to approve of anything introduced by Fanchon, she had
scornfully refused, from the first, to dance the new "step," and,
because of its bonfire popularity, found herself neglected in a society
where she had reigned as beauty and belle. Faithless Penrod, dazed by
the sweeping Fanchon, had utterly forgotten the amber curls; he had not
once asked Marjorie to dance. All afternoon the light of indignation had
been growing brighter in her eyes, though Maurice Levy's defection
to the lady from New York had not fanned this flame. From the moment
Fanchon had whispered familiarly in Penrod's ear, and Penrod had
blushed, Marjorie had been occupied exclusively with resentment against
that guilty pair. It seemed to her that Penrod had no right to allow a
strange girl to whisper in his ear; that his blushing, when the strange
girl did it, was atrocious; and that the strange girl, herself, ought to
be arrested.

Forgotten by the merrymakers, Marjorie stood alone upon the lawn,
clenching her small fists, watching the new dance at its high tide,
and hating it with a hatred that made every inch of her tremble. And,
perhaps because jealousy is a great awakener of the virtues, she had
a perception of something in it worse than lack of dignity--something
vaguely but outrageously reprehensible. Finally, when Penrod brushed by
her, touched her with his elbow, and, did not even see her, Marjorie's
state of mind (not unmingled with emotion!) became dangerous. In fact, a
trained nurse, chancing to observe her at this juncture, would probably
have advised that she be taken home and put to bed. Marjorie was on the
verge of hysterics.

She saw Fanchon and Penrod assume the double embrace required by the
dance; the "Slingo Sligo Slide" burst from the orchestra like the
lunatic shriek of a gin-maddened nigger; and all the little couples
began to bob and dip and sway.

Marjorie made a scene. She sprang upon the platform and stamped her
foot.

"Penrod Schofield!" she shouted. "You BEHAVE yourself!"

The remarkable girl took Penrod by the ear. By his ear she swung him
away from Fanchon and faced him toward the lawn.

"You march straight out of here!" she commanded.

Penrod marched.

He was stunned; obeyed automatically, without question, and had very
little realization of what was happening to him. Altogether, and without
reason, he was in precisely the condition of an elderly spouse detected
in flagrant misbehaviour. Marjorie, similarly, was in precisely the
condition of the party who detects such misbehaviour. It may be added
that she had acted with a promptness, a decision and a disregard of
social consequences all to be commended to the attention of ladies in
like predicament.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she raged, when they reached the
lawn. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"What for?" he inquired, helplessly.

"You be quiet!"

"But what'd _I_ do, Marjorie? _I_ haven't done anything to you," he
pleaded. "I haven't even seen you, all aftern----"

"You be quiet!" she cried, tears filling her eyes. "Keep still! You ugly
boy! Shut up!"

She slapped him.

He should have understood from this how much she cared for him. But he
rubbed his cheek and declared ruefully:

"I'll never speak to you again!"

"You will, too!" she sobbed, passionately.

"I will not!"

He turned to leave her, but paused.

His mother, his sister Margaret, and their grownup friends had finished
their tea and were approaching from the house. Other parents and
guardians were with them, coming for their children; and there were
carriages and automobiles waiting in the street. But the "Slingo Slide"
went on, regardless.

The group of grown-up people hesitated and came to a halt, gazing at the
pavilion.

"What are they doing?" gasped Mrs. Williams, blushing deeply. "What is
it? What IS it?"

"WHAT IS IT?" Mrs. Gelbraith echoed in a frightened whisper. "WHAT----"

"They're Tangoing!" cried Margaret Schofield. "Or Bunny Hugging or
Grizzly Bearing, or----"

"They're only Turkey Trotting," said Robert Williams.

With fearful outcries the mothers, aunts, and sisters rushed upon the
pavilion.

"Of course it was dreadful," said Mrs. Schofield, an hour later,
rendering her lord an account of the day, "but it was every bit the
fault of that one extraordinary child. And of all the quiet, demur
little things--that is, I mean, when she first came. We all spoke of how
exquisite she seemed--so well trained, so finished! Eleven years old! I
never saw anything like her in my life!"

"I suppose it's the New Child," her husband grunted.

"And to think of her saying there ought to have been champagne in the
lemonade!"

"Probably she'd forgotten to bring her pocket flask," he suggested
musingly.

"But aren't you proud of Penrod?" cried Penrod's mother. "It was just as
I told you: he was standing clear outside the pavilion----"

"I never thought to see the day! And Penrod was the only boy not doing
it, the only one to refuse? ALL the others were----"

"Every one!" she returned triumphantly. "Even Georgie Bassett!"

"Well," said Mr. Schofield, patting her on the shoulder. "I guess we can
hold up our heads at last."



CHAPTER XXXI OVER THE FENCE

Penrod was out in the yard, staring at the empty marquee. The sun was on
the horizon line, so far behind the back fence, and a western window of
the house blazed in gold unbearable to the eye: his day was nearly
over. He sighed, and took from the inside pocket of his new jacket the
"sling-shot" 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 collossal.

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, for the very first time in our lives, your mother and I
were saying we were proud of you, 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 his 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," said the boy 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 appeared, likewise upon a fence, beyond two neighbouring
yards.

"Yay, Penrod!" called comrade Sam Williams.

"Yay!" returned Penrod, mechanically.

"I caught Billy Blue Hill!" shouted Sam, describing retribution in a
manner perfectly clear to his friend. "You were mighty lucky to get out
of it."

"I know that!"

"You wouldn't of, if it hadn't been for Marjorie."

"Well, don't I know that?" Penrod shouted, with heat.

"Well, so long!" called Sam, 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."