After this final bit of reminiscence — probably designed to be repeated to Mr. Schofield — she disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, and returned with a pitcher of lemonade and a blue china dish sweetly freighted with flat ginger cookies of a composition that was her own secret. Then, having set this collation before her guests, she presented Penrod with a superb, intricate and very modern machine of destructive capacities almost limitless. She called it a pocket-knife.
“I suppose you’ll do something horrible with it,” she said, composedly. “I hear you do that with everything, anyhow, so you might as well do it with this, and have more fun out of it. They tell me you’re the Worst Boy in Town.”
“Oh, Aunt Sarah!” Mrs. Schofield lifted a protesting hand.
“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Crim.
“But on his birthday!”
“That’s the time to say it. Penrod, aren’t you the Worst Boy in Town?”
Penrod, gazing fondly upon his knife and eating cookies rapidly, answered as a matter of course, and absently, “Yes’m.”
“Certainly!” said Mrs. Crim. “Once you accept a thing about yourself as established and settled, it’s all right. Nobody minds. Boys are just like people, really.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Schofield cried involuntarily.
“Yes, they are,” Aunt Sarah returned. “Only they’re not quite so awful, because they haven’t learned to cover themselves all over with little pretences. When Penrod grows up he’ll be just the same as he is now, except that whenever he does what he wants to do he’ll tell himself and other people a little story about it to make his reason for doing it seem creditable.”
“No, I won’t!” said Penrod suddenly.
“There’s one cookie left,” Aunt Sarah observed. “Are you going to eat it?”
“Well,” her great-nephew returned, thoughtfully, “I guess I better.”
“Why?” the old lady asked. “Why do you guess you’d ‘better’?”
“Well,” said Penrod, with a full mouth, “it might get all dried up if nobody took it, and get thrown out and wasted.”
“You’re beginning finely,” Mrs. Crim remarked. “A year ago you’d have taken the cookie without this virtuous display of thrift.”
“Ma’am?”
“Nothing. I see that you’re twelve years old, that’s all. There are more cookies, Penrod.” She went away, returning with a fresh supply and the prophecy, “Of course, you’ll be sick before the day’s over; you might as well get a good start.”
Mrs. Schofield looked thoughtful. “Aunt Sarah,” she ventured, “don’t you really think we improve as we get older?”
“Meaning,” said the old lady, “that Penrod hasn’t much chance to escape the penitentiary if he doesn’t? Well, we do learn to restrain Ourselves in some things; and there are people who really want^ome one else to take the last cookie, though they aren’t very common. But it’s all right, the world seems to be getting on.” She gazed whimsically upon her great-nephew and added, “Of course, when you watch a boy and think about him, it doesn’t seem to be getting on very fast.”
Penrod moved uneasily in his chair; he was conscious that he was her topic but unable to make out whether or not her observations were complimentary; he inclined to think they were not. Mrs. Crim settled the question for him.
“I suppose Penrod is regarded as the neighbourhood curse?”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Schofield cried. “He—”
“I dare say the neighbours are right,” the old lady continued placidly. “He’s had to repeat the history of the race and go through all the stages from the primordial to barbarism. You don’t expect boys to be civilized, do you?”
“Well, I”
“You might as well expect eggs to crow. No; you’ve got to take boys as they are, and learn to know them as they are.”
“Naturally, Aunt Sarah,” Mrs. Schofield said, “I know Penrod.”
Aunt Sarah laughed heartily. “Do you think his father knows him, too?”
“Of course, men are different,” Mrs. Schofield returned, apologetically. “But a mother knows—”
“Penrod,” Aunt Sarah said, solemnly, “does your father understand you?”
“Ma’am?”
“About as much as he’d understand Sitting Bull!” she laughed. “And I’ll tell you what your mother thinks you are, Penrod. Her real belief is that you’re a novice in a convent.”
“Ma’am?”
“Aunt Sarah!”
“I know she thinks that, because whenever you don’t behave like a novice she’s disappointed in you. And your father really believes that you’re a decorous, well-trained young business man, and whenever you don’t live up to that standard you get on his nerves and he thinks you need a walloping. I’m sure a day very seldom passes without their both saying they don’t know what on earth to do with you. Does punishment do you any good, Penrod?”
“Ma’am?”
“Go on and finish the lemonade; there’s about a glassful left. Oh, take it, take it; and don’t say why! Of course you’re a little pig.”
Penrod laughed gratefully, his eyes fixed upon her over the rim of his uptilted glass.
“Fill yourself up uncomfortably,” said the old lady. “You’re twelve years old, and you ought to be happy — if you aren’t anything else. It’s taken over nineteen hundred years of Christianity and some hundreds of thousands of years of other things to produce you, and there you sit!”
“Ma’am?”
“It’ll be your turn to muss things up for the betterment of posterity, soon enough,” said Aunt Sarah Crim. “Drink your lemonade!”
CHAPTER XXII
FANCHON
AUNT SARAH’S A funny old lady,” Penrod observed, on the way back to the town. “What’s she want me to give Papa this old sling for? Last thing she said was to be sure not to forget to give it to him. He don’t want it; and she said, herself, it ain’t any good. She’s older than you or Papa, isn’t she?”
“About fifty years older,” Mrs. Schofield answered, turning upon him a stare of perplexity. “Don’t cut into the leather with your new knife, dear; the livery man might ask us to pay if — No, I wouldn’t scrape the paint off, either — nor whittle your shoe with it. Couldn’t you put it up until we get home?”
“We goin’ straight home?”
“No. We’re going to stop at Mrs. Gelbraith’s and ask a strange little girl to come to your party this afternoon.”
“Who?”
“Her name is Fanchon. She’s Mrs. Gelbraith’s little niece.”
“What makes her so queer?”
“I didn’t say she’s queer.”
“You said—”
“No; I mean that she is a stranger. She lives in New York and has come to visit here.”
“What’s she live in New York for?”
“Because her parents live there. You must be very nice to her, Penrod; she has been very carefully brought up. Besides, she doesn’t know the children here, and you must help to keep her from feeling lonely at your party.”
“Yes’m.”
When they reached Mrs. Gelbraith’s, Penrod sat patiently humped upon a gilt chair during the lengthy exchange of greetings between his mother and Mrs. Gelbraith. That is one of the things a boy must learn to bear: when his mother meets a compeer there is always a long and dreary wait for him, while the two appear to be using strange symbols of speech, talking for the greater part, it seems to him, simultaneously, and employing a wholly incomprehensible system of emphasis at other times not in vogue. Penrod twisted his legs, his cap and his nose.
“Here she is!” Mrs. Gelbraith cried, unexpectedly, and a dark-haired, demure person entered the room wearing a look of gracious social expectancy. In years she was eleven, in manner about sixty-five, and evidently had lived much at court. She performed a curtsey in acknowledgment of Mrs. Schofield’s greeting, and bestowed her hand upon Penrod, who had entertained no hope of such an honour, showed his surprise that it should
come to him, and was plainly unable to decide what to do about it.
“Fanchon, dear,” Mrs. Gelbraith said, “take Penrod out in the yard for a while, and play.”
“Let go the little girl’s hand, Penrod,” Mrs. Schofield laughed, as the children turned toward the door.
Penrod hastily dropped the small hand, and exclaiming, with simple honesty, “Why, I don’t want it!” followed Fan-chon out into the sunshiny yard, where they came to a halt and surveyed each other.
Penrod stared awkardly at Fanchon, no other occupation suggesting itself to him, while Fanchon, with the utmost coolness, made a very thorough visual examination of Penrod, favouring him with an estimating scrutiny that lasted until he literally wiggled. Finally, she spoke.
“Where do you buy your haberdashery?” she asked.
“What?”
“Where do you buy your haberdashery? Papa gets his at Skoone’s. You ought to get yours there. I’m sure the tie you’re wearing isn’t from Skoone’s.”
“Skoone’s?” Penrod repeated. “Skoone’s?”
This girl seemed to be talking; but her words were puzzling. It was his first meeting with one of those grown-up little girls produced by the winter apartment and the summer hotel. He began to feel resentful.
“I suppose,” she went on, “I’ll find everything here fearfully Western. Some nice people called yesterday, though. Do you know the Magsworth Bittses? Auntie says they’re charming. Will Roddy be at your party?”
“I guess he will,” Penrod returned, finding this intelligible. “The mutt!”
“Really!” Fanchon exclaimed airily. “You are an odd child!”
It was too much.
“Oh, Bugs!” said Penrod.
This bit of ruffianism had a curious effect. Fanchon looked upon him with sudden favour.
“I like you, Penrod!” she said, and, whatever else there may have been in her manner, there certainly was no shyness.
“Oh, Bugs!” This repetition may have lacked gallantry; but it was uttered in no very decided tone. Penrod was shaken.
“Yes, I do!” She stepped closer to him, smiling. “Your hair is ever so pretty.”
Sailors’ parrots swear like mariners, they say; and gay mothers ought to realize that all children are imitative, for, as the precocious Fanchon leaned toward Penrod, the manner in which she looked into his eyes might have made a thoughtful observer wonder where she had learned her pretty ways.
Penrod was even more confused than he had been by her previous mysteries; but his confusion was pleasant: he wanted more of it. Looking intentionally into another person’s eyes is an act unknown to childhood; and Penrod’s discovery that it could be done was sensational. He had never thought of looking into the eyes of Marjorie Jones.
Despite all anguish, contumely, tar and Maurice Levy, he still secretly thought of Marjorie, with pathetic constancy, as his “beau” — though that is not how he would have spelled it. Marjorie was beautiful; her curls were long and the colour of amber; her nose was straight and her freckles were honest; she was much prettier than this accomplished visitor. But beauty is not all.
“I do!” breathed Fanchon, softly.
She seemed to him a fairy creature from some rosier world than this. So humble is the human heart, it glorifies and makes glamorous almost any poor thing that says to it: “I like you!”
Penrod was enslaved. He swallowed, coughed, scratched the back of his neck, and said, disjointedly:
“Well — I don’t care — if you want to. I just as soon.”
“We’ll dance together,” said Fanchon, “at your party.”
“I guess so. I just as soon.”
“Don’t you want to, Penrod?”
“Well, I’m willin’ to.”
“No. Say you want to!”
“Well—”
He used his toe as a gimlet, boring into the ground; his wide open eyes stared with intense vacancy at a button on his sleeve. His mother appeared upon the porch in departure, calling farewells over her shoulder to Mrs. Gelbraith, who stood in the doorway.
“Say it!” whispered Fanchon.
“Well, I just as soon.”
She seemed satisfied.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
A DANCING FLOOR had been laid upon a platform in the yard, when Mrs. Schofield and her son arrived at their own abode; and a white and scarlet striped canopy was in process of erection overhead, to shelter the dancers from the sun. Workmen were busy everywhere under the direction of Margaret, and the smitten heart of Penrod began to beat rapidly. All this was for him; he was Twelve!
After lunch, he underwent an elaborate toilette and murmured not. For the first time in his life he knew the wish to be sand-papered, waxed and polished to the highest possible degree. And when the operation was over, he stood before the mirror in new bloom, feeling encouraged to hope that his resemblance to his father was not so strong as Aunt Sarah seemed to think.
The white gloves upon his hands had a pleasant smell, he found; and, as he came down the stairs, he had great content in the twinkling of his new dancing slippers. He stepped twice on each step, the better to enjoy their effect and at the same time he deeply inhaled the odour of the gloves. In spite of everything, Penrod had his social capacities. Already it is to be perceived that there were in him the makings of a cotillion leader.
Then came from the yard a sound of tuning instruments, squeak of fiddle, croon of ‘cello, a falling triangle ringing and tinkling to the floor; and he turned pale.
Chosen guests began to arrive, while Penrod, suffering from stage-fright and perspiration, stood beside his mother, in the “drawing-room”, to receive them. He greeted unfamiliar acquaintances and intimate fellow-criminals with the same frigidity, murmuring: “‘M glad to see y’,” to all alike, largely increasing the embarrassment that always prevails at the beginning of children’s festivities. His unnatural pomp and circumstance had so thoroughly upset him, in truth, that Marjorie Jones received a distinct shock, now to be related. Doctor Thrope, the kind old clergyman who had baptized Penrod, came in for a moment to congratulate the boy, and had just moved away when it was Marjorie’s turn, in the line of children, to speak to Penrod. She gave him what she considered a forgiving look, and, because of the occasion, addressed him in a perfectly courteous manner.
“I wish you many happy returns of the day, Penrod.”
“Thank you, sir!” he returned, following Dr. Thrope with a glassy stare in which there was absolutely no recognition of Marjorie. Then he greeted Maurice Levy, who was next to Marjorie: “‘M glad to see y’!”
Dumfounded, Marjorie turned aside, and stood near, observing Penrod with gravity. It was the first great surprise of her life. Customarily, she had seemed to place his character somewhere between that of the professional rioter and that of the orang-outang: nevertheless, her manner at times just hinted a consciousness that this Caliban was her property. Wherefore, she stared at him incredulously as his head bobbed up and down, in the dancing-school bow, greeting his guests. Then she heard an adult voice, near her, exclaim:
“What an exquisite child!”
Marjorie glanced up — a little consciously, though she was used to it. It was Sam Williams’s mother addressing Mrs. Bassett, both being present to help Mrs. Schofield make the festivities festive.
“Exquisite!”
Here was a second surprise for Marjorie: they were not looking at her. They were looking with beaming approval at a girl she had never seen; a dark and modish stranger of singularly composed and yet modest aspect. Her downcast eyes, becoming in one thus entering a crowded room, were all that produced the effect of modesty, counteracting something about her that might have seemed too assured. She was very slender, very dainty, and her apparel was disheartening to the other girls; it was of a knowing picturesqueness wholly unfamiliar to them. There was a delicate trace of powder upon the lobe of Fanchon’s left ear, and the outlines of her eyelids, if very closely scrutinized, wo
uld have revealed successful experimentation with a burnt match.
Marjorie’s lovely eyes dilated: she learned the meaning of hatred at first sight. Observing the stranger with instinctive suspicion, all at once she seemed, to herself, awkward. Poor Marjorie underwent the experience that hearty, healthy, little girls and big girls undergo at one time or another — from heels to head she felt herself, somehow, too thick.
Fanchon leaned close to Penrod and whispered in his ear:
“Don’t you forget!”
Penrod blushed.
Marjorie saw the blush. Her lovely eyes opened even wider, and in them there began to grow a light. It was the light of indignation; — at least, people whose eyes glow with that light always call it indignation.
Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, approached Fanchon, when she had made her curtsey to Mrs. Schofield. Fanchon whispered in Roderick’s ear also.
“Your hair is pretty, Roddy! Don’t forget what you said yesterday!”
Roderick likewise blushed.
Maurice Levy, captivated by the newcomer’s appearance, pressed close to Roderick.
“Give us an intaduction, Roddy?”
Roddy being either reluctant or unable to perform the rite, Fanchon took matters into her own hands, and was presently favourably impressed with Maurice, receiving the information that’his tie had been brought to him by his papa from Skoone’s’ whereupon she privately informed him that she liked wavy hair, and arranged to dance with him. Fanchon also thought sandy hair attractive, Sam Williams discovered, a few minutes later, and so catholic was her taste that a ring of boys encircled her before the musicians in the yard struck up their thrilling march, and Mrs. Schofield brought Penrod to escort the lady from out-of-town to the dancing pavilion.
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.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 451