Penrod

B >> Booth Tarkington >> Penrod


In the darkness Mr. Williams' facial expression could not be seen, but
his voice sounded hopeful.

"Is he--is he still in a great deal of pain?"

"They say the crisis is past," said Margaret, "but the doctor's still
up there. He said it was the acutest case of indigestion he had ever
treated in the whole course of his professional practice."

"Of course _I_ didn't know what he'd do with the dollar," said Robert.

She did not reply.

He began plaintively, "Margaret, you don't----"

"I've never seen papa and mamma so upset about anything," she said,
rather primly.

"You mean they're upset about ME?"

"We ARE all very much upset," returned Margaret, more starch in her tone
as she remembered not only Penrod's sufferings but a duty she had vowed
herself to perform.

"Margaret! YOU don't----"

"Robert," she said firmly and, also, with a rhetorical complexity which
breeds a suspicion of pre-rehearsal--"Robert, for the present I can only
look at it in one way: when you gave that money to Penrod you put into
the hands of an unthinking little child a weapon which might be, and,
indeed was, the means of his undoing. Boys are not respon----"

"But you saw me give him the dollar, and you didn't----"

"Robert!" she checked him with increasing severity. "I am only a woman
and not accustomed to thinking everything out on the spur of the moment;
but I cannot change my mind. Not now, at least."

"And you think I'd better not come in to-night?"

"To-night!" she gasped. "Not for WEEKS! Papa would----"

"But Margaret," he urged plaintively, "how can you blame me for----"

"I have not used the word 'blame,'" she interrupted. "But I must insist
that for your carelessness to--to wreak such havoc--cannot fail to--to
lessen my confidence in your powers of judgment. I cannot change my
convictions in this matter--not to-night--and I cannot remain here
another instant. The poor child may need me. Robert, good-night."

With chill dignity she withdrew, entered the house, and returned to the
sick-room, leaving the young man in outer darkness to brood upon his
crime--and upon Penrod.


That sincere invalid became convalescent upon the third day; and a
week elapsed, then, before he found an opportunity to leave the house
unaccompanied--save by Duke. But at last he set forth and approached the
Jones neighbourhood in high spirits, pleasantly conscious of his pallor,
hollow cheeks, and other perquisites of illness provocative of interest.

One thought troubled him a little because it gave him a sense of
inferiority to a rival. He believed, against his will, that Maurice
Levy could have successfully eaten chocolate-creams, licorice sticks,
lemon-drops, jaw-breakers, peanuts, waffles, lobster croquettes,
sardines, cinnamon-drops, watermelon, pickles, popcorn, ice-cream
and sausage with raspberry lemonade and cider. Penrod had admitted to
himself that Maurice could do it and afterward attend to business, or
pleasure, without the slightest discomfort; and this was probably no
more than a fair estimate of one of the great constitutions of all time.
As a digester, Maurice Levy would have disappointed a Borgia.

Fortunately, Maurice was still at Atlantic City--and now the
convalescent's heart leaped. In the distance he saw Marjorie coming--in
pink again, with a ravishing little parasol over her head. And alone! No
Mitchy-Mitch was to mar this meeting.

Penrod increased the feebleness of his steps, now and then leaning upon
the fence as if for support.

"How do you do, Marjorie?" he said, in his best sick-room voice, as she
came near.

To his pained amazement, she proceeded on her way, her nose at a
celebrated elevation--an icy nose.

She cut him dead.

He threw his invalid's airs to the winds, and hastened after her.

"Marjorie," he pleaded, "what's the matter? Are you mad? Honest, that
day you said to come back next morning, and you'd be on the corner,
I was sick. Honest, I was AWFUL sick, Marjorie! I had to have the
doctor----"

"DOCTOR!" She whirled upon him, her lovely eyes blazing.

"I guess WE'VE had to have the doctor enough at OUR house, thanks to
you, Mister Penrod Schofield. Papa says you haven't got NEAR sense
enough to come in out of the rain, after what you did to poor little
Mitchy-Mitch----"

"What?"

"Yes, and he's sick in bed YET!" Marjorie went on, with unabated fury.
"And papa says if he ever catches you in this part of town----"

"WHAT'D I do to Mitchy-Mitch?" gasped Penrod.

"You know well enough what you did to Mitchy-Mitch!" she cried. "You
gave him that great, big, nasty two-cent piece!"

"Well, what of it?"

"Mitchy-Mitch swallowed it!"

"What!"

"And papa says if he ever just lays eyes on you, once, in this
neighbourhood----"

But Penrod had started for home.

In his embittered heart there was increasing a critical disapproval of
the Creator's methods. When He made pretty girls, thought Penrod, why
couldn't He have left out their little brothers!



CHAPTER XXI RUPE COLLINS

For several days after this, Penrod thought of growing up to be a
monk, and engaged in good works so far as to carry some kittens (that
otherwise would have been drowned) and a pair of Margaret's outworn
dancing-slippers to a poor, ungrateful old man sojourning in a shed
up the alley. And although Mr. Robert Williams, after a very short
interval, began to leave his guitar on the front porch again, exactly as
if he thought nothing had happened, Penrod, with his younger vision of
a father's mood, remained coldly distant from the Jones neighbourhood.
With his own family his manner was gentle, proud and sad, but not for
long enough to frighten them. The change came with mystifying abruptness
at the end of the week.

It was Duke who brought it about.

Duke could chase a much bigger dog out of the Schofields' yard and far
down the street. This might be thought to indicate unusual valour on
the part of Duke and cowardice on that of the bigger dogs whom he
undoubtedly put to rout. On the contrary, all such flights were founded
in mere superstition, for dogs are even more superstitious than boys
and coloured people; and the most firmly established of all dog
superstitions is that any dog--be he the smallest and feeblest in the
world--can whip any trespasser whatsoever.

A rat-terrier believes that on his home grounds he can whip an elephant.
It follows, of course, that a big dog, away from his own home, will run
from a little dog in the little dog's neighbourhood. Otherwise, the big
dog must face a charge of inconsistency, and dogs are as consistent as
they are superstitious. A dog believes in war, but he is convinced
that there are times when it is moral to run; and the thoughtful
physiognomist, seeing a big dog fleeing out of a little dog's yard, must
observe that the expression of the big dog's face is more conscientious
than alarmed: it is the expression of a person performing a duty to
himself.

Penrod understood these matters perfectly; he knew that the gaunt brown
hound Duke chased up the alley had fled only out of deference to a
custom, yet Penrod could not refrain from bragging of Duke to the
hound's owner, a fat-faced stranger of twelve or thirteen, who had
wandered into the neighbourhood.

"You better keep that ole yellow dog o' yours back," said Penrod
ominously, as he climbed the fence. "You better catch him and hold him
till I get mine inside the yard again. Duke's chewed up some pretty bad
bulldogs around here."

The fat-faced boy gave Penrod a fishy stare. "You'd oughta learn him not
to do that," he said. "It'll make him sick."

"What will?"

The stranger laughed raspingly and gazed up the alley, where the hound,
having come to a halt, now coolly sat down, and, with an expression of
roguish benevolence, patronizingly watched the tempered fury of Duke,
whose assaults and barkings were becoming perfunctory.

"What'll make Duke sick?" Penrod demanded.

"Eatin' dead bulldogs people leave around here."

This was not improvisation but formula, adapted from other occasions to
the present encounter; nevertheless, it was new to Penrod, and he was
so taken with it that resentment lost itself in admiration. Hastily
committing the gem to memory for use upon a dog-owning friend, he
inquired in a sociable tone:

"What's your dog's name?"

"Dan. You better call your ole pup, 'cause Dan eats LIVE dogs."

Dan's actions poorly supported his master's assertion, for, upon Duke's
ceasing to bark, Dan rose and showed the most courteous interest in
making the little, old dog's acquaintance. Dan had a great deal of
manner, and it became plain that Duke was impressed favourably in spite
of former prejudice, so that presently the two trotted amicably back to
their masters and sat down with the harmonious but indifferent air of
having known each other intimately for years.

They were received without comment, though both boys looked at them
reflectively for a time. It was Penrod who spoke first.

"What number you go to?" (In an "oral lesson in English," Penrod had
been instructed to put this question in another form: "May I ask which
of our public schools you attend?")

"Me? What number do I go to?" said the stranger, contemptuously. "I
don't go to NO number in vacation!"

"I mean when it ain't."

"Third," returned the fat-faced boy. "I got 'em ALL scared in THAT
school."

"What of?" innocently asked Penrod, to whom "the Third"--in a distant
part of town--was undiscovered country.

"What of? I guess you'd soon see what of, if you ever was in that school
about one day. You'd be lucky if you got out alive!"

"Are the teachers mean?"

The other boy frowned with bitter scorn. "Teachers! Teachers don't order
ME around, I can tell you! They're mighty careful how they try to run
over Rupe Collins."

"Who's Rupe Collins?"

"Who is he?" echoed the fat-faced boy incredulously. "Say, ain't you got
ANY sense?"

"What?"

"Say, wouldn't you be just as happy if you had SOME sense?"

"Ye-es." Penrod's answer, like the look he lifted to the impressive
stranger, was meek and placative. "Rupe Collins is the principal at your
school, guess."

The other yelled with jeering laughter, and mocked Penrod's manner and
voice. "'Rupe Collins is the principal at your school, I guess!'" He
laughed harshly again, then suddenly showed truculence. "Say, 'bo,
whyn't you learn enough to go in the house when it rains? What's the
matter of you, anyhow?"

"Well," urged Penrod timidly, "nobody ever TOLD me who Rupe Collins is:
I got a RIGHT to think he's the principal, haven't I?"

The fat-faced boy shook his head disgustedly. "Honest, you make me
sick!"

Penrod's expression became one of despair. "Well, who IS he?" he cried.

"'Who IS he?'" mocked the other, with a scorn that withered. "'Who IS
he?' ME!"

"Oh!" Penrod was humiliated but relieved: he felt that he had proved
himself criminally ignorant, yet a peril seemed to have passed. "Rupe
Collins is your name, then, I guess. I kind of thought it was, all the
time."

The fat-faced boy still appeared embittered, burlesquing this speech in
a hateful falsetto. "'Rupe Collins is YOUR name, then, I guess!' Oh, you
'kind of thought it was, all the time,' did you?" Suddenly concentrating
his brow into a histrionic scowl he thrust his face within an inch of
Penrod's. "Yes, sonny, Rupe Collins is my name, and you better look
out what you say when he's around or you'll get in big trouble! YOU
UNDERSTAND THAT, 'BO?"

Penrod was cowed but fascinated: he felt that there was something
dangerous and dashing about this newcomer.

"Yes," he said, feebly, drawing back. "My name's Penrod Schofield."

"Then I reckon your father and mother ain't got good sense," said Mr.
Collins promptly, this also being formula.

"Why?"

"'Cause if they had they'd of give you a good name!" And the agreeable
youth instantly rewarded himself for the wit with another yell of
rasping laughter, after which he pointed suddenly at Penrod's right
hand.

"Where'd you get that wart on your finger?" he demanded severely.

"Which finger?" asked the mystified Penrod, extending his hand.

"The middle one."

"Where?"

"There!" exclaimed Rupe Collins, seizing and vigorously twisting the
wartless finger naively offered for his inspection.

"Quit!" shouted Penrod in agony. "QUEE-yut!"

"Say your prayers!" commanded Rupe, and continued to twist the luckless
finger until Penrod writhed to his knees.

"OW!" The victim, released, looked grievously upon the still painful
finger.

At this Rupe's scornful expression altered to one of contrition. "Well,
I declare!" he exclaimed remorsefully. "I didn't s'pose it would hurt.
Turn about's fair play; so now you do that to me."

He extended the middle finger of his left hand and Penrod promptly
seized it, but did not twist it, for he was instantly swung round with
his back to his amiable new acquaintance: Rupe's right hand operated
upon the back of Penrod's slender neck; Rupe's knee tortured the small
of Penrod's back.

"OW!" Penrod bent far forward involuntarily and went to his knees again.

"Lick dirt," commanded Rupe, forcing the captive's face to the sidewalk;
and the suffering Penrod completed this ceremony.

Mr. Collins evinced satisfaction by means of his horse laugh.

"You'd last jest about one day up at the Third!" he said. "You'd come
runnin' home, yellin' 'MOM-MUH, MOM-muh,' before recess was over!"

"No, I wouldn't," Penrod protested rather weakly, dusting his knees.

"You would, too!"

"No, I w----

"Looky here," said the fat-faced boy, darkly, "what you mean,
counterdicking me?"

He advanced a step and Penrod hastily qualified his contradiction.

"I mean, I don't THINK I would. I----"

"You better look out!" Rupe moved closer, and unexpectedly grasped the
back of Penrod's neck again. "Say, 'I WOULD run home yellin' "MOM-muh!"'"

"Ow! I WOULD run home yellin' 'Mom-muh.'"

"There!" said Rupe, giving the helpless nape a final squeeze. "That's
the way we do up at the Third."

Penrod rubbed his neck and asked meekly:

"Can you do that to any boy up at the Third?"

"See here now," said Rupe, in the tone of one goaded beyond all
endurance, "YOU say if I can! You better say it quick, or----"

"I knew you could," Penrod interposed hastily, with the pathetic
semblance of a laugh. "I only said that in fun."

"In 'fun'!" repeated Rupe stormily. "You better look out how you----"

"Well, I SAID I wasn't in earnest!" Penrod retreated a few steps. "_I_
knew you could, all the time. I expect _I_ could do it to some of the
boys up at the Third, myself. Couldn't I?"

"No, you couldn't."

"Well, there must be SOME boy up there that I could----"

"No, they ain't! You better----"

"I expect not, then," said Penrod, quickly.

"You BETTER 'expect not.' Didn't I tell you once you'd never get back
alive if you ever tried to come up around the Third? You want me to SHOW
you how we do up there, 'bo?"

He began a slow and deadly advance, whereupon Penrod timidly offered a
diversion:

"Say, Rupe, I got a box of rats in our stable under a glass cover, so
you can watch 'em jump around when you hammer on the box. Come on and
look at 'em."

"All right," said the fat-faced boy, slightly mollified. "We'll let Dan
kill 'em."

"No, SIR! I'm goin' to keep 'em. They're kind of pets; I've had 'em all
summer--I got names for em, and----"

"Looky here, 'bo. Did you hear me say we'll let 'Dan kill 'em?"

"Yes, but I won't----"

"WHAT won't you?" Rupe became sinister immediately. "It seems to me
you're gettin' pretty fresh around here."

"Well, I don't want----"

Mr. Collins once more brought into play the dreadful eye-to-eye scowl as
practised "up at the Third," and, sometimes, also by young leading
men upon the stage. Frowning appallingly, and thrusting forward his
underlip, he placed his nose almost in contact with the nose of Penrod,
whose eyes naturally became crossed.

"Dan kills the rats. See?" hissed the fat-faced boy, maintaining the
horrible juxtaposition.

"Well, all right," said Penrod, swallowing. "I don't want 'em much."
And when the pose had been relaxed, he stared at his new friend for a
moment, almost with reverence. Then he brightened.

"Come on, Rupe!" he cried enthusiastically, as he climbed the fence.
"We'll give our dogs a little live meat--'bo!"



CHAPTER XXII THE IMITATOR

At the dinner-table, that evening, Penrod Surprised his family by
remarking, in a voice they had never heard him attempt--a law-giving
voice of intentional gruffness:

"Any man that's makin' a hunderd dollars a month is makin' good money."

"What?" asked Mr. Schofield, staring, for the previous conversation had
concerned the illness of an infant relative in Council Bluffs.

"Any man that's makin' a hunderd dollars a month is makin' good money."

"What IS he talking about!" Margaret appealed to the invisible.

"Well," said Penrod, frowning, "that's what foremen at the ladder works
get."

"How in the world do you know?" asked his mother.

"Well, I KNOW it! A hunderd dollars a month is good money, I tell you!"

"Well, what of it?" said the father, impatiently.

"Nothin'. I only said it was good money."

Mr. Schofield shook his head, dismissing the subject; and here he made
a mistake: he should have followed up his son's singular contribution
to the conversation. That would have revealed the fact that there was a
certain Rupe Collins whose father was a foreman at the ladder works. All
clues are important when a boy makes his first remark in a new key.

"'Good money'?" repeated Margaret, curiously. "What is 'good' money?"

Penrod turned upon her a stern glance. "Say, wouldn't you be just as
happy if you had SOME sense?"

"Penrod!" shouted his father. But Penrod's mother gazed with dismay at
her son: he had never before spoken like that to his sister.

Mrs. Schofield might have been more dismayed than she was, if she had
realized that it was the beginning of an epoch. After dinner, Penrod was
slightly scalded in the back as the result of telling Della, the cook,
that there was a wart on the middle finger of her right hand. Della thus
proving poor material for his new manner to work upon, he approached
Duke, in the backyard, and, bending double, seized the lowly animal by
the forepaws.

"I let you know my name's Penrod Schofield," hissed the boy. He
protruded his underlip ferociously, scowled, and thrust forward his head
until his nose touched the dog's. "And you better look out when Penrod
Schofield's around, or you'll get in big trouble! YOU UNDERSTAN' THAT,
'BO?"

The next day, and the next, the increasing change in Penrod puzzled and
distressed his family, who had no idea of its source.

How might they guess that hero-worship takes such forms? They were
vaguely conscious that a rather shabby boy, not of the neighbourhood,
came to "play" with Penrod several times; but they failed to connect
this circumstance with the peculiar behaviour of the son of the house,
whose ideals (his father remarked) seemed to have suddenly become
identical with those of Gyp the Blood.

Meanwhile, for Penrod himself, "life had taken on new meaning, new
richness." He had become a fighting man--in conversation at least. "Do
you want to know how I do when they try to slip up on me from behind?"
he asked Della. And he enacted for her unappreciative eye a scene of
fistic manoeuvres wherein he held an imaginary antagonist helpless in a
net of stratagems.

Frequently, when he was alone, he would outwit, and pummel this same
enemy, and, after a cunning feint, land a dolorous stroke full upon a
face of air. "There! I guess you'll know better next time. That's the
way we do up at the Third!"

Sometimes, in solitary pantomime, he encountered more than one opponent
at a time, for numbers were apt to come upon him treacherously,
especially at a little after his rising hour, when he might be caught at
a disadvantage--perhaps standing on one leg to encase the other in his
knickerbockers. Like lightning, he would hurl the trapping garment from
him, and, ducking and pivoting, deal great sweeping blows among the
circle of sneaking devils. (That was how he broke the clock in his
bedroom.) And while these battles were occupying his attention, it was
a waste of voice to call him to breakfast, though if his mother, losing
patience, came to his room, she would find him seated on the bed pulling
at a stocking. "Well, ain't I coming fast as I CAN?"

At the table and about the house generally he was bumptious, loud with
fatuous misinformation, and assumed a domineering tone, which neither
satire nor reproof seemed able to reduce: but it was among his own
intimates that his new superiority was most outrageous. He twisted the
fingers and squeezed the necks of all the boys of the neighbourhood,
meeting their indignation with a hoarse and rasping laugh he had
acquired after short practice in the stable, where he jeered and taunted
the lawn-mower, the garden-scythe and the wheelbarrow quite out of
countenance.

Likewise he bragged to the other boys by the hour, Rupe Collins being
the chief subject of encomium--next to Penrod himself. "That's the
way we do up at the Third," became staple explanation of violence, for
Penrod, like Tartarin, was plastic in the hands of his own imagination,
and at times convinced himself that he really was one of those dark
and murderous spirits exclusively of whom "the Third" was
composed--according to Rupe Collins.

Then, when Penrod had exhausted himself repeating to nausea accounts of
the prowess of himself and his great friend, he would turn to two other
subjects for vainglory. These were his father and Duke.

Mothers must accept the fact that between babyhood and manhood their
sons do not boast of them. The boy, with boys, is a Choctaw; and either
the influence or the protection of women is shameful. "Your mother won't
let you," is an insult. But, "My father won't let me," is a dignified
explanation and cannot be hooted. A boy is ruined among his fellows if
he talks much of his mother or sisters; and he must recognize it as
his duty to offer at least the appearance of persecution to all things
ranked as female, such as cats and every species of fowl. But he must
champion his father and his dog, and, ever, ready to pit either against
any challenger, must picture both as ravening for battle and absolutely
unconquerable.

Penrod, of course, had always talked by the code, but, under the new
stimulus, Duke was represented virtually as a cross between Bob, Son of
Battle, and a South American vampire; and this in spite of the fact that
Duke himself often sat close by, a living lie, with the hope of peace
in his heart. As for Penrod's father, that gladiator was painted as of
sentiments and dimensions suitable to a super-demon composed of equal
parts of Goliath, Jack Johnson and the Emperor Nero.

Even Penrod's walk was affected; he adopted a gait which was a kind of
taunting swagger; and, when he passed other children on the street, he
practised the habit of feinting a blow; then, as the victim dodged,
he rasped the triumphant horse laugh which he gradually mastered to
horrible perfection. He did this to Marjorie Jones--ay! this was
their next meeting, and such is Eros, young! What was even worse, in
Marjorie's opinion, he went on his way without explanation, and left
her standing on the corner talking about it, long after he was out of
hearing.

Within five days from his first encounter with Rupe Collins, Penrod had
become unbearable. He even almost alienated Sam Williams, who for a time
submitted to finger twisting and neck squeezing and the new style of
conversation, but finally declared that Penrod made him "sick." He made
the statement with fervour, one sultry afternoon, in Mr. Schofield's
stable, in the presence of Herman and Verman.

"You better look out, 'bo," said Penrod, threateningly. "I'll show you a
little how we do up at the Third."

"Up at the Third!" Sam repeated with scorn. "You haven't ever been up
there."

"I haven't?" cried Penrod. "I HAVEN'T?"

"No, you haven't!"

"Looky here!" Penrod, darkly argumentative, prepared to perform the
eye-to-eye business. "When haven't I been up there?"

"You haven't NEVER been up there!" In spite of Penrod's closely
approaching nose Sam maintained his ground, and appealed for
confirmation. "Has he, Herman?"

"I don' reckon so," said Herman, laughing.

"WHAT!" Penrod transferred his nose to the immediate vicinity of
Herman's nose. "You don't reckon so, 'bo, don't you? You better look out
how you reckon around here! YOU UNDERSTAN' THAT, 'BO?"

Herman bore the eye-to-eye very well; indeed, it seemed to please
him, for he continued to laugh while Verman chuckled delightedly. The
brothers had been in the country picking berries for a week, and it
happened that this was their first experience of the new manifestation
of Penrod.

"HAVEN'T I been up at the Third?" the sinister Penrod demanded.

"I don' reckon so. How come you ast ME?"

"Didn't you just hear me SAY I been up there?"

"Well," said Herman mischievously, "hearin' ain't believin'!"

Penrod clutched him by the back of the neck, but Herman, laughing
loudly, ducked and released himself at once, retreating to the wall.