Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Listen, I told you, didn’t I?” said Penrod. “Look, Sam! First, we’ll train ’em to walk the fence-rail here in your yard. We’ll take one of ’em at a time and put him on the rail. Then one of us’ll hold him from jumpin’ off while the other pushes him along from behind so’s he’s got to keep goin’. Well, if he can’t get off, and if he’s got to keep goin’ — so, well, if we do that enough, say so often a day for so many weeks — well, he can’t help himself from learning how to walk a fence-rail, can he?”

  “No. But how—”

  “Listen — didn’t I tell you? Well, when he’s got that much good and learned, all we do is get a board half the size of the fence-rail and do the same thing with him on it — and then get another one half the size of that one, and so on till we get him trained to walk on a board that’s just the same size as a rope. I’d like to know then if he couldn’t walk just as well on a rope as on a board he couldn’t tell the difference from a rope from.”

  “Well, I don’t care,” Sam said. “I bet it’ll take pretty near forever, though.”

  “It would if we just sit around here and never do anything.”

  “Oh, I’m willing to give it a try,” Sam said.

  Sam’s mother, coming out into the yard, half an hour later, preserved her composure, though given cause for abandoning it. Walter-John was seated upon the fence-rail but moving steadily. Sam distrained him from leaving the rail, while Penrod’s two extended hands, applying serious and constant pressure at the base of Walter-John’s spine, compelled Walter-John to progress along the fence-rail. Walter-John’s expression was concerned and inquiring, and Duke, tied to a tree, near by, stood in an attitude of depression.

  “Let the dogs go now, boys,” Mrs. Williams called. “I’ve got something for you, and then Sam has to come in and get dressed to go and spend an hour or so at his grandmother’s. It’s after three o’clock.”

  “What you got for us?” Sam asked.

  She displayed a plate covered with a napkin.

  “Oh, oh!” Both boys trotted to Mrs. Williams.

  “What’s under that napkin?” cried the eager Sam.

  “Look!” and she withdrew the napkin, while Sam shouted.

  “Doughnuts!”

  He dashed at them; but his mother fended him off. “Wait, Sam!” she said. “Shame on you! See how polite Penrod is! He doesn’t grab and—”

  “That’s only because he’s company,” Sam interrupted. “Gimme those doughnuts!”

  “No,” she said. “There are five apiece, and you’ll divide evenly. Here, Penrod; you take your five first.”

  “Ma’am?” said Penrod, his face flushing painfully.

  “Don’t be bashful.” Mrs. Williams laughed, and she extended the plate toward him. “You’re Sam’s guest and you must choose your five first.”

  Penrod was anxious to prevent his recent misfortune from becoming known, and he felt that to decline these doughnuts would arouse suspicion. Yet he was uncertain whether or not he could, with physical security, hold five doughnuts even in his hands.

  “Hurry, Penrod! I know you want them.”

  At arm’s length he took five doughnuts, two in one hand and three in the other. Then his arms fell at his sides, and he stood very straight, holding his head high and his nose to the clouds.

  “There!” said Mrs. Williams, departing. “All right, Sammy! As soon as you’ve finished them, you must come to dress. Not more than ten minutes.”

  Sam carolled and capered with his doughnuts, stuffing his mouth full, so that he carolled no more, but capered still, in greater ecstasy. No pleasures of contemplation for Sam, or dwelling long and delicately upon morsels! What was sweet to his flesh he took, and consumed as he took. The five doughnuts sped to the interior almost en masse. Within four minutes there remained of them but impalpable tokens upon Sam’s cheeks.

  “Hah!” he shouted. “Those were good!” Then, his eye falling upon Penrod’s drooping hands, “Well, for gray-shus sakes!” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you goin’ to eat ’em?” Penrod’s voice was lifeless. He responded: “Well, some days I kind o’ like to save mine up and eat ’em when I feel like it.” He swallowed twice, coughed twice.

  “I wish I’d saved mine,” Sam said. “Come on, John, ole doggie!” he added, beginning to drag the pup toward the house.

  “What you goin’ to do with him?” Penrod asked.

  “I’m goin’ to lock him up in the cellar while I’m gone. That’s where they said I could keep him.”

  “What for? Let me have him till you get back. I’ll bring him over here before dinner-time.”

  Sam thought this request outrageous. “No, sir!” he cried. “Haven’t you got a dog o’ your own? You want to go and get mine so’s he knows you better’n he would me? I guess not! John Carmichael’s goin’ to stay right in our cellar every minute I’m not here to be trainin’ him!”

  “Oh, come on, Sam!” Penrod urged, for he had become more and more fascinated by Walter-John throughout the day. “It isn’t goin’ to hurt him any, is it?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Oh, come on, Sam! What’s the use actin’ that way to a poor dog — lockin’ him up in a dark ole cellar when he ought to be out in the fresh air so’s he could keep strong? He likes Duke, and he ought to be allowed to stay with him. I call it mighty mean, lockin’ him up in that ole ugly cellar just because you want to go and have a good time at your grandmother’s.”

  “I don’t care what you call it; he’s goin’ to be locked up,” Sam said. “And I don’t either want to go and have a good time at my grandmother’s. I got to go.”

  Whereupon, having thus uttered his final decision in the matter, and defended his character against the charge of selfishness, Sam towed Walter-John as far as the cellar door.

  “Wait a minute, Sam,” Penrod urged. “If you’ll let me have him till you get back, I’ll give you some o’ these doughnuts.”

  “How many?”

  “I’ll give you,” said Penrod, “the whole kitamaboodle!”

  “Y ay!”

  Blithely the doughnuts passed from Penrod’s hands to Sam’s, and the end of the bit of clothes-line from Sam’s to Penrod’s.

  “Come on, Walter!” Penrod cried.

  Though his utterance was already thick, Sam protested instantly. “Stop that!” he commanded. “His name’s John Carmichael, and you got to call him John. You can’t have him if you’re goin’ to call him Walter.”

  Penrod began to argue rather bitterly. “My goodness, gracious heavens! He’s just the same as my dog till you get back, isn’t he?”

  “He is not!”

  “Didn’t I just pay you for him? It’s just the same as buyin’ him till you get back from your grandmother’s, and whatever time he’s my dog, he’s got to be named Walter. If you don’t like it, you can give me back my doughnuts!”

  “Oh, goodness!” Sam groaned. “Well, you got to quit callin’ him Walter after to-day, anyways. The poor dog’s got to learn his name sometime.”

  Penrod, wearing an unassuming air of triumph, released Duke from the tree to which he had been tied, and, leading both dogs, proceeded toward the back gate; but before he went out into the alley Sam was amazed to see him pause at the hydrant and wash his hands exhaustively. Then Penrod opened the alley gate and passed from sight with his two charges, leaving Sam staging, open-mouthed.

  Duke trotted obediently after his master; but Walter-John still misconceived the purposes of a leash and progressed for the most part in his seated or semi-seated attitude. However, Penrod reached his own yard — the front yard, away from the kitchen — without much difficulty, and paused there, regarding Walter-John with pleasure and affection.

  He sat down on the grass, a dog under each arm. His imagination stepped quietly out of the present into the gold-clouded future. He saw himself in the filtered light of a great tent, addressing in a magnificent bass voice the fanning multitude.

  “Laydeez and gentlemun, allow me to i
nterodoos to your attainshon, the great tight-rope-walking dog, Walter!” And straightway, from the “dressing-room tent”, Walter-John came hopping on hind legs, white ruff about his neck. Then Penrod proclaimed: “And now, laydeez and gentlemun, let me interodoos to your attainshon, Walter’s little boy, Duke, the greatest tight-rope dog on EARTH!” Whereupon, Duke, similarly hopping and similarly beruffed, came forward to the side of the ringmaster in the ring, and the three bowed low, to twenty-thousand plaudits. Anxious at-tendants in uniform ran to their posts to support the tightrope, and Penrod, smiling negligently —

  His bubble broke. The clatter of a brazen gong and a staccato of iron-shod hoofs — sounds increasing, coming nearer — startled him from the proud day-dream. A hose-cart, then a fire-engine, then a hook-and-ladder wagon careened in turn round the corner, passed furiously and roared up the street, followed by panting boys with faces alight.

  Penrod leaped to his feet. The stable was too far. He dragged Duke and Walter-John up the front steps and across the verandah; he tried the front door, found it unlocked, opened it, thrust Walter-John and Duke into the hall, slammed the door and made off to the fire.

  In the cool hall, Duke and Walter-John looked at each other vaguely; then discovered that they were free. A frolicsome look bloomed upon the fertile face of Walter-John. With no motive, he dashed into a large room that opened from the hall, and knocked over a tall silver vase of lilies that somebody had set upon the floor directly in his way. Then he charged upon Duke, upset him, left him kicking at the air, and scampered to and fro for the love of motion. Duke was instantly infected; his puphood of the morning returned in full flood, and he, in his turn, charged upon Walter-John.

  Both dogs had been through a great deal that day; in fact, their trainers had shown them a poor time, and nothing could have been more natural than that Duke and Walter-John should wish to liven things up after their protracted experience as apprentices in baseball, sitting-up, hoop-jumping and tight-rope-walking. They made it an orgy. The house was empty of human life, upstairs and down, as far as the kitchen door, which was closed. Walter-John and Duke engaged in mimic battle all over this empty house, and wherever there was anything that could be upset, they upset it, for Walter-John was undoubtedly cumbersome.

  Exhausting for a time this pleasure, Walter-John found matter of interest on a low table in the library. This consisted of a new encyclopedia, limp-leather covers, gilt tops, thin paper, seven volumes, purchased by Mr. Schofield the week before. Walter-John dragged down two volumes, one labelled “Ala-Con”, the other, “Mon-Pyx”. Walter-John began to eat “Ala-Con”, and Duke — all culture fallen from him now in his rejuvenation — Duke began to eat “Mon-Pyx”. That is, they did not eat except accidentally, for neither of them actually swallowed much of the paper; but the effect upon “Ala-Con” and “Mon-Pyx” was none the less radical.

  Growing tired of this learned work, they found some semi-edible slippers in Margaret’s room upstairs, also a table-cover — which frightened Walter-John on account of the noise the things made when he dragged the cover from the table. Next, he discovered, hanging in an open closet in the same room, a beady substance that proved enjoyable. In this, as in everything, the senile Duke joined him with gusto. The orgy continued.

  Penrod found the fire an unusually satisfactory one. In fact, a large warehouse, almost full of hides and leather, burned all up, and dusk was falling when Penrod, smelling intensely, again reached his place of residence. As he opened the gate, he saw Duke coming round a corner of the house with a peculiar air. There was something regretful and haunted about the little old dog; he advanced hesitatingly, seeming to be without confidence, and when Penrod spoke to him, he disappeared instantly. In the darkness, his young master could not see where or even in which direction he went. Suddenly a chill struck upon Penrod’s spine. He remembered. Where, oh, where, was Walter-John?

  Penrod entered the front hall impetuously; but paused there at once — and more cold chills touched his young spine. A sound of lamentation — his mother’s voice — came from the library, and evidently she was addressing Mr. Schofield.

  “You never saw such a house! Oh, if I’d only followed my instinct and not let Margaret persuade me to go to that reception with her! We had Della give Duke a whipping, because he had a shred of Margaret’s best party dress stick’ ing to his nose, and he must have helped that horrible pup! Della threw lumps of coal at him when she chased him out, and I do hope she hit him. It seems utterly impossible that there were only two dogs in the house. Look at that encyclopedia — why anybody would think it must have taken two of them all afternoon to do just that much damage, let alone all the other awful things! Della says she’s sure Penrod let them into the house, and this time I certainly don’t intend to say one word against it if you think you ought to—”

  “Yes, of course I ought to,” Mr. Schofield said; and, to the dismayed ears listening in the hallway, his voice was the executioner’s.

  With infinite precaution, Penrod returned to the front door, let himself out, and no one could have heard a footfall as he crossed the verandah.

  He found Sam closing the door of the Williams’s cellar upon Walter-John. “Where’d you come across him?” Penrod asked, in a preoccupied tone. He was not much interested.

  “Nice way to bring him home like you promised, wasn’t it?” Sam returned indignantly. “I found him out in the alley, ‘way up by the corner, and he acted like he was scared to death. He didn’t even ack like he knew me.”

  “See here a minute, Sam,” Penrod said, in a friendly though still preoccupied tone. “On account of all those doughnuts I gave you, and everything, I don’t s’pose your mother would mind if I stayed over here for dinner much, would she?”

  CHAPTER III

  BEGINNINGS OF JASHBER

  NO DOUBT MANY of us, like Penrod, live not so much in one commingled world as in two interchangeable worlds, the one able instantly to replace the other with such smooth rapidity as to produce not the slightest jar. In youth especially, the interchanging of these two worlds is so continuous, so facile, and accomplished with so quick and sleek a movement that it is like the play of light and shadow when young grasses flutter and twinkle, reflected in a clear stream, itself unruffled by the April breeze. Penrod’s most striking interchangeability was with George B. Jashber, the supreme figure of all the dramatis personae he created for himself and out of himself. The great Jashber period did not come upon him spontaneously, full born out of a single emotion; George B. Jashber came on by fits and starts, as it were, developing slowly and irregularly, dropped altogether for days at a time, and then returning to life, becoming at last so well conceived and complete as to be powerful in the affairs of people whole decades older and more experienced than Penrod.

  In that sequestered hermitage, the sawdust-box in the woodshed adjoining the horseless stable, the secret, romantic manuscript, “Harold Ramorez,” was from time to time exhumed. Perhaps the exhumation would take place upon a day when Penrod was gloomy through some oppression, and several chapters — or, it might be, only part of a chapter, or no more than the beginning of a sentence — would be added.

  The earlier portions of the narrative were concerned with the escapes of the handsome bandit, Harold Ramorez, from detectives and other vicious and inept enemies, including ghosts, and the reader (if a reader may be imagined for the manuscript) was led to place his sympathies entirely with Ramorez; for Penrod worked after the manner of all child-of-nature authors, picturing his idealed self as the hero, which unconscious system, when followed with sufficient artlessness and a little craftsmanship, leads the child-of-nature reader to picture his idealed self as the hero, so that reader and author meet and fuse in the fiction, separating with reluctance at the end, yet consoled by the shared belief that the story was “good”. Thus, although Penrod did not know that he had a method, he did have one; but, unfortunately, something happened to it — no infrequent disaster in cases like his.

 
He had what is sometimes defined in argot as a “change of heart”, and it radically affected his hero at a high point in the narrative. Penrod began to admire detectives more than he admired bandits, and, although the author never realized what he had done, the too plastic Ramorez became the villain, while the hitherto malevolent but futile detective, Jashber, or Jasber, burst unexpectedly into noble bloom as the hero — this in the course of one chapter, short enough in the reading. However, in the writing of it Penrod consumed the greatest part of two mornings that were a full month apart, and, in the meantime, he had been to two matinées, had read several paper novels, and, moreover, had strained his young eyes at more than several unusually violent “movies”. To be definite, this chapter was:

  CHAPITER XIIII

  HAROLD RAMOREZ decied he would go away from where was all such blodshed and plots of the scondrel Jashber so biding goodby to some of his freinds he got on the cars, he looked all around and cooly lit a cigrette. Well said the conduter this is not the place where anybody is alowed to smoke and you have no tiket I guess I know that as well as anybody said our hero but you need not talk so much I got money and will pay $5 bill for a tiket The conduter took hold of the $5 and put it in his pocket. Then the conduter went on out Soon harold Ramorez had reached the city and he was just walkin arond looking at the stores and houses and not hurting anything when a shot rang out stratling our hero What could that be said Harold I wonder why anybody would shoot at me here where I do not know anybody bing Bing went the old pistol bing bing bing it went bing bing one hole went through our heros coat and one went in his hat shightly crazing his scalp and porduc a flech wond Harld smiled at this O said he a flech wond is nothing and will soon heal up but I wold like to know what anybody is shootin at me here for where I never came before in my life and my emenies did not know I was going to any such a place.

  O no they didn’t O no not at all I guess said a tanting voice O no it said Harold whished to know who it was tanting him so he looked around Soon he saw the foul Jashber still holding the smoking revoler in his hands He was behind a tree exept part of his face and the old pistol Well I would like to know what did you have to come all the way here for our hero said to him I was not doing anything to you and you have no busines to go shooting at me said he I guess I got some rights arond here There folowed a deep curse Well go ahead and swear all you want to because that will not hurt me but remember when you go to meet your maker each vile oth you say now he will know about and probaly do somthing you will not like Well I will not stand this kind of talk said Jashber There flowed a curse and some more vile oths I hate you Harold Ramorez and I bet I get you yet said he Our hero cooly tanted him for what he said then You are the worst yet said Harold and you are double whatever you call me yes and I bet you wold not come half way I will shoot you throgh and throgh said the scondrel you are a — (The dashes are Penrod’s.)