Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 615
Everybody helped, which may have been one reason why the Chow acquired the conviction that in his new surroundings he had need to fight for his very life.
At about four o’clock he was more or less in costume and partly upon Antoinette’s lap when this delusion evoked from him contortions so agile that he seemed to possess the strength of seven and the speed of seventy. Bitten hands grasped at him too tentatively; he went away, and, but little impeded by what he wore as he made a great leap over the Frys’ hedge, was round the nearest corner before anybody could reach the sidewalk to see which way he went.
Filmer, uneasy and under the correct impression that the vanished creature was a thing of some price, had now once more to bear the ingratitude of his friends. While Antoinette brought disinfectants from the house to pour upon their injuries and her own, one and all assured him that he was lucky to be rid of such an animal. The best thing that could happen to Filmer, they said, would be if he never found him, and, as for themselves, did anybody think they were going to wear their feet off hunting for a dog that had bit them all up?
Setting forth to trace the Chow, Filmer went in wrong directions exclusively. Inquiries addressed to pedestrians and to colored men mowing lawns or clipping shrubberies brought him converse with nobody who’d seen a reddish kind of Chinese-looking dog dressed up like Old Times. Continuing discouragement, however, didn’t make him give up the search until late; he had a warrantable reluctance to return home without any news at all. He was positive that he’d have a scene with Goody, and there might be others, tediously, with everybody else; and when at last he did come sluggishly into his own yard, toward dinner time, he found that he’d at least been right about the scene with Goody.
She’d been what she called frenzied for three hours. She’d reached home at about the time the Chow had left that neighborhood behind him, and when her mother told her that Wu Wu — name supplied by Goody, quoting a letter from the kennels — had arrived but was now out somewhere with Filmer, for exercise, Goody said even Cousin Olita’d have known better than to let that boy do such a thing. She went hurrying forth on foot; for, although Crappio’s had at last returned the Littles’ sole remaining car, her father had driven himself downtown in it, announcing that henceforth it would spend its days in a parking lot near his place of business, except at night when it would be locked in the home garage. Passing the house of the Frys’, Goody saw friends of Filmer’s there, busy before a small camera; she applied to them and was told that they all thought Wu Wu was Filmer’s property; they wouldn’t have dreamed of getting Wu Wu so excited otherwise. They had an impression that Filmer’d gone to look for Wu Wu somewhere.
Goody made a running tour of several blocks without discovering any trace of either Filmer or Wu Wu; then she ran home and made use of the telephone, calling active friends of hers to go forth upon the search. One of these, of faithful heart, had been successful. Young Hamilton Ellers mounted a fast bicycle, and, after covering much territory, he’d come upon Wu Wu eating something bad in the lot behind the Glue Works and still wearing some of Antoinette’s ancestress’s taffeta basque safety-pinned about his middle. Having delivered the animal to its pleasingly grateful owner, Hamilton Ellers had laughed off her suggestion of the Pasteur treatment but had gone as quickly as possible to a drug store. Thus, when the foot-dragging Filmer entered the Littles’ driveway gates, Wu Wu was already within the house; and Goody, who’d been looking from a window, hurried outdoors to meet her brother. She created the scene with him as spiritedly as if Wu Wu were still a wanderer.
Informed by Cousin Olita, from a distance, that dinner was getting pretty spoiled, both entered the front door almost shouting; but the hall already contained more noise than they were making. Ripley Little had just tripped over Wu Wu, and Wu Wu had bitten Ripley Little on the shoe. Subsequently, at the table, Ripley Little praised Filmer for trying to lose Wu Wu.
This seems to have been the beginning of the feud between Wu Wu and Ripley Little. Wu Wu, uprooted from everything previously familiar to him, distracted by thunderous hours of railway travel in vibrant dark enclosure, then dragged by the neck to be manhandled and suffocated in repellent fabrics, had made for himself a little interval of liberty, only to be captured and borne through the air to a place where great weights smelling of repulsive leather polish were applied to his ribs; and this last was, to Wu Wu’s mind, the climax. The great weights and the leather polish he correctly attributed to Ripley Little, and thenceforth connected all the worst that had happened to him with this person. Ripley Little thought Wu Wu a dangerous dog, and Wu Wu thought Ripley Little a dangerous man.
During the day after that of Wu Wu’s arrival, the small Chow consented to be somewhat tolerant of almost everybody in the household; he found himself to be really congenial with Gentry Poindexter, and didn’t wholly object to Mrs. Little or to Cousin Olita or to Almatina. He felt an instant affection for the cook, reticently accepted overtures even from Filmer, and, coaxed, coddled and fed by Goody, properly adopted her, found her his light of the world. As the head of the house didn’t return until evening, Wu Wu decided that this place might be all right after all and began to look upon it as his own property. He was asleep in a relaxed attitude on the floor of the dark upper hallway when his dreams were shattered by that same dangerous intruder who smelt of leather polish.
The former encounter was repeated. Little, upstairs to refresh his appearance before dinner, stepped on Wu Wu, and Wu Wu, though no fool, was certain that the foot on his face hadn’t come there accidentally. This time he bit Ripley Little just above the ankle, then sped down the stairs screeching for Goody’s help and consolation.
Goody, rushing from the living-room below, knelt, took Wu Wu in her arms and shouted upward a number of descriptions of people who aren’t even sorry when they’ve kicked a helpless little dog. Her father, at the top of the stairs, denounced Chows and used gestures that caused Wu Wu to bark up at him passionately from Goody’s arms. Goody repeated herself, added criticism of people who won’t let their own families use a car or buy a new one for them; and Little tried his best to be heard over both Goody and Wu Wu. His short-necked and somewhat strangulated voice was at a disadvantage; nevertheless, it was easily in the money.
Mrs. Little came fluttering from her room imperfectly clad; she got her husband into his bathroom, applied lotions to his injury and promised him that he wouldn’t have hydrophobia. “Nearly broke my jam neck over him,” Little said. “Then he attacked me again, and now, the way she puts it, why, he had a right to because I kicked him! Didn’t I tell you last night I knew he was going to bite me again? He’ll bite anybody that comes near him. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on him. Dog? Not a drop of dog in him; not a drop! He’s half red-widow spider and half oriental panda; yet she’ll swear it was my fault till the jobjam cows come home!”
“Now, Ripley, please!” Mrs. Little begged. “Goody only heard Wu Wu yelping and she naturally thought — I mean she doesn’t mean — —”
“She means I ought to like to get my foot bit off by something named Wu Wu. Why, job jam it, if it was really a dog would its name be Wu Wu?”
“Now, Ripley, please!”
“Talks about a new car,” he complained. “What for? So she could let Wu Wu drive it? I’ve been thinking for a while we were maybe getting a little peace in this house because it’s been seeming not wholly given over to being a swing asylum for her percussion instrument maniac boyfriends that try to shake ceilings down and pound the last few entrails out of poor old half-murdered pianos. Why, jam my — —”
“Now, Ripley, please don’t start yourself up again. You’re not really hurt and Goody knows it or she’d be sorry.”
“She knows it, does she? How, Mrs. Little, if you please? How?”
“Why, by the way you were bell —— I mean, by the way you sounded. Now, Ripley, you mustn’t get yourself started up again just when there’s such a nice thing going to happen for all of us.”
“ ’Nice thing going to happen’?” Little permitted his trouser-leg to resume its place over his injured ankle and looked at her suspiciously. “ ’For all of us’?” he said. “You’re sure that includes me?”
“Why, of course, darling.”
“When’s it going to happen?”
“Tomorrow, Ripley. You know that.”
“I do not. What is it?”
“Why, it’s Henrietta Pellar.”
“What’s Henriettapellar? Another Chow?”
“Ripley! I told you she’s coming.”
“Oh, yes,” Little said gloomily. “I remember — the ‘dear lovely young thing from just over the Mason and Dixon line’ that was in Goody’s class at school. No, you didn’t tell me she’s going to get here as soon as tomorrow. Do you think it’s too late for us to wire her parents to keep her home where she belongs?”
“Ripley, I know you’ll be as nice to her as you can, dear, on Goody’s account and — and that after this, too, you’ll be careful about stepping on Wu Wu again and — —”
“On Goody’s account?” Little asked. “You mean I oughtn’t to step on him on Goody’s account? What about mine? Doesn’t Father ever get to have any feelings, not even when he’s bit? If I’m nice and cooing to her visitor and stop getting macerated by Wu Wu on Goody’s account, do you suppose maybe she’ll let-up on me day and night about buying a new car to be turned into a hospital-feeder?”
“But, Ripley, at her age — —”
“I’ve got an age, too, haven’t I?” he urged. “I’ve got some age, haven’t I — or isn’t Father allowed any such perquisite? No, I guess not, and I’ll bet my dobdab head that from now on if I ever start to sit in one of my own chairs to read a newspaper I won’t get three-quarters of the way down without having to leap like a gymnast because her jobjam Wu Wu’s already there and snarling he’ll tear out my pancreas if I sit on him! Already I can’t walk through my own upstairs hall without her claiming he’s got a right to bite my jobjam feet off. On top of a Chow, you inform me my house is now to be filled with a frizzle-headed jitter-squawker that’ll bring all the rhumba-thumping, boops-a-daisy ice-box raiders in town to — —”
“No, no, no!” Mrs. Little laughed. “Henrietta isn’t frizzle-headed at all. She’s the darlingest little brunette, sweet as kittens, and you’ll just love her!”
“Kittens? And I’ll just love her?” Ripley Little looked piercingly at his wife. “I know exactly what you mean; I’d rather be dead than try to live in the same house with one of those.”
“Now, Ripley! Do get ready for dinner, dear. It’s waiting and — —”
“Look at you,” he said. “Not going to put on even a jobjam petticoat?”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and ran to her own room.
XVI
DRIVING HOME AT five in the afternoon, Little’s mind was less upon the traffic than upon the beautiful girl he expected to meet when he reached his house. By this time, he supposed, the place would probably be all choked up with boys and noise and Wu Wu and Southern accent and whatever’d happened to Filmer that day and all the rest of it. Thus he was surprised to find a quiet house awaiting him, Filmer placid, no other young people within sight or sound and Wu Wu not actively demonstrative. As Little came into the living-room the Chow merely gave him a single glance of dislike and retired upstairs to Goody’s sheltering bedchamber. Mrs. Little, looking up from her Bundles for Britain knitting, explained the peacefulness.
“We’re all in love with her and so’ll you be, Ripley. Oh, yes, you will; you’ll see! Even Filmer couldn’t resist her; could you, Filmer?”
“He doesn’t think it’s manly to admit it,” Cousin Olita said, as Filmer only grunted; “but of course he couldn’t. It was so lovely to see all the gay young things together, Cousin Ripley, like a bouquet of flowers — like rosebuds dancing in the sun and — —”
“They don’t,” Filmer told her gruffly. “Rosebuds don’t dance. And do you call Bull Thetford and Ham Ellers and Ruggo Smart and Hot Toddy and Norman Peel rosebuds, kindly answer?”
“So?” Little said. “Then they’ve all been here, have they?”
“Oh, yes indeed!” his wife answered. “Goody had them all flocking in — oh, yes, certainly, Norman Peel too, dear — just after Ham and she brought her from the station. Then there were Ruggo Smart’s twin sisters, besides — Eunice and Patricia — —”
“Cousin Wilma means the ones they call Cuckoo and Screwball,” Cousin Olita explained in the manner of a translator. “Eunice and Patricia Smart are such charmingly pretty twins — so strapping big and sweet and full of animal spirits! — I shouldn’t think they’d like being called Cuckoo and Screwball.”
“You shouldn’t?” Ripley Little asked. “What good would it do ’em if they didn’t — in that outfit?”
“I believe they do, though, Cousin Ripley,” Cousin Olita said. “Goody says they’d feel the rest didn’t like ’em if they stopped calling ’em Cuckoo and Screwball. I remember a girl in my set we called Old Snoot but not to her face. That seems to be the difference.”
“Patricia and Eunice were just as delighted with darling little Henrietta as anybody,” Mrs. Little continued. “As Cousin Olita says, it was really fun to watch them start frolicking right away.” She laughed. “They never do stay put nowadays. Just before you came, Ripley, they all trooped out and nobody knows when we’ll see our two back again. They were going to eat at the Hi Toots hamburger stand and the Doughnut Dunker just off the park, and then movies and goodness knows what seemed to be in prospect. I think you don’t need to worry about having a quiet evening, dear.”
Little said that was a blessing, and the evening was indeed as eventless as his wife had promised. At ten he went upstairs through a silence broken only by his own muttered responses and a low growling evoked from Goody’s bedroom by the sound of his footsteps.
. . . At twelve he woke with a first impression that he’d fallen asleep under a chute at the stockyards; but he realized that in such places the tramplings of the herds are not accompanied by jitter-music, and besides, the disturbance that wobbled the house was going on not above but below him, in the living-room and hall downstairs. The poor old piano was at work and the boys had brought their percussion instruments. Something believed to be dancing was taking place, accomplished by syncopated floor-thumpings; and there were sounds that he recognized as being within modern youth’s definition of the word “singing”. A fresh young female voice, unfamiliar to him, yelled excruciatingly:
“Ib dib! Abba ubba ducka! Fisha eata pie!
Swish me! Kish me! Roll me in your arms!
Hippa! Dippa! Beat them fire alarms!
Ock! Bock! Oradoodle! Utch! Bluck! Yip! Hi-yi!”
As the voice wasn’t Goody’s nor either of the terrible voices of the twins, Screwball and Cuckoo, too well known to him, Ripley Little rightly identified his midnight serenader as the guest in his house, Miss Henrietta Pellar. Cheers and floor-thumpings followed her effort. Long and hysterical were the bawlings and squealings of “Ya-a-ay, Henrietter!”
More dancing ensued, seemingly by two-ton centipedes; the floor of Little’s bedroom vibrated, and finally, when he’d just about decided to go downstairs in his good old-fashioned nightshirt, roaring, there was a lull. It followed jocosely animal-like howls and a clumping toward the rear of the house: the icebox raid was on, and for the next hour or so Ripley Little had fitful snatches of sleep. From one of these, at about three, he was thoroughly roused by the sound of a large drum and a pair of cymbals rolling down the front steps; then there was quiet, though a half-whisper half-coo, passing his door, said audibly, “Honey, I do hope those cute boys’ noise didn’t get your poor old dadda waked up squawling mad, the way you say he does.”
Goody’s voice, responding, was less restrained; she didn’t seem to care. “It’s all right. He never minds anything so long as Norman Peel is there. Don’t you love Norman, too, Henrietta?”
Ripley Little conquered his impulse to call through the door. He had things in mind to say; but it seemed wiser to go on bearing them, instead.
. . . He didn’t meet the visitor at breakfast — the girls were resting, Mrs. Little said, so to be fresh for a party that evening at Screwball’s and Cuckoo’s — and it was not until after his return home in the late afternoon that he had his first experience of Henrietta. A moment earlier a prediction of his came perfectly true: with a newspaper in his hand, he almost sat down upon Wu Wu in the large living-room chair Wu Wu joined him in favoring. Wu Wu snarled a last-instant warning; and Little, after convulsively recovering his balance, called Wu Wu a jab jammed bastinadoed son of a bullfinch.
In the hall a heaven-thrilling voice cried, “Oh, oh, oh!” and a lovely person walked in. Charmingly smallish, she looked childlike, had the big-dark-eyed warm and trustful gaze of a gentle gazelle; her wavy brown hair showed a fine nimbus of gold in the late sunshine from the western window, and her movements were as lyrically graceful as those of Goody herself. She came unhesitatingly to Ripley Little, looked up archly into his eyes and shook a reproving forefinger close to his face.
“You sinful man!” she said. “I heard you cursing poor little Pussy. Oh, my me!”
“Who?” Little asked. “You heard me cursing who?”
“Yes, suh; cursing poor little Pussy. Dint you know Goody and me gone and changed Wu Wu’s name to Pussy? Don’t you like Pussy better your ownself, Mr. Little? Pussy a lot cuter name for a Chow, we think. Anyhow, he’s Pussy from now on. Ain’t you shame cursing a poor little dog with a sweet little name like Pussy?”
