Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 718
They didn’t legally adopt him; but the treatment he had from them was in all respects what he’d have received if he’d been their own son — a slightly younger brother of Irvie’s, warmly cherished though less on the way to become a personage. Both Edgar and Irvie seemed to take this same view. At least it was evident in Edgar’s manner, and Irvie could never have been allowed to doubt his own superior prominence and promise.
Dr. Joseph Erb placed upon the father most of the blame for Irvie’s youthful showiness; but here a change in American custom was concerned. Will Pease, like many another of only the fourth generation after the pioneers, had been brought up so strictly and with such consequent numberless small mortifications that on the very day after the birth of his son he told me happily that he’d never say an arbitrary no to him, the boy should live in freedom; and Will kept his word. He kept it so well that whatever else Irvie was, he was himself, his own child and on the way to be his own man. I sometimes thought, though, that he’d inherited himself — not from his lovable parents but from some everybody’s darling far back in his ancestry.
Enhancing such heritage, poor Irvie had begun even in infancy to hear talk of his talents. Both parents quoted him in his presence. They dwelt upon his babyhood’s precocities of wit, described with delight his young unconventionalities, and nobody need think he didn’t understand. When he was no more than two, his facial expression, especially when his bodily beauty was being extolled, often made me laugh within my ribs; I was too fond of Will and Evelyn to be open with such mirth.
Will Pease, teaming, would stop a friend on a downtown street and tell him something little Irvie had said or done, and then, perhaps that evening, would let Irvie hear him repeating to callers what the astonished and delighted friend had exclaimed in comment. Thus early do some of us learn our prominence.
When Irvie was eight Will told his partners and stenographers, and everybody else on their floor of the Millerwood Building, that Irvie of his own choice had begun to read Don Quixote and had written “a rather remarkable little poem” about the book. Will typed copies of the poem, sent them to relatives and friends and even handed me one in the Peases’ living-room after a fairly large but congenial dinner-party. He coughed, laughed placatively, and asked me if I’d mind reading it aloud to the company. I contrived to do it with gravity.
“Don Quixote thought he was a knight
Perhaps he was right.
It was a long time of yore
People do not wear armors any more.
Though of knights now there are none
My own heart whispers some day I will become one.”
During the reading, Will Pease sat on the edge of his chair, and, leaning forward, listened as if to angels’ choiring; but when I finished he did his best to be a modest father. Coughing apologetically, he explained that though of course the verses were faulty in form he really couldn’t help feeling that a certain quality in the thought made them rather worth hearing, if we hadn’t minded. He had to confess that he was really pretty foolish over the boy, he went on, with an engaging laugh at himself; and probably he oughtn’t to have asked grown people to listen to an eight-year-old child’s poetizing. On the other hand, he and Evelyn both had a feeling that maybe it did show just a glimmer of something perhaps rather unusual — the use of the word “whispers” in the last line of the poem, for instance — and, well, he couldn’t help feeling that the verses showed something that some day might — might develop into — well, something unusual and — and ——
“You don’t need to be making excuses, Will.” The interruption came from Janet Millerwood, Will’s aunt, a woman of my own age but all her life an undiscourageable, almost professional enthusiast. “Everybody knows how unusual Irvie already is,” she said. “No other living child of eight could possibly have written anything to compare with those lines of his. I liked particularly that touch of Irvie’s about his heart’s whispering to him that he’d be a knight some day. The word ‘whispers’ makes it a touch that has actual subtlety. He felt the thing emotionally, you see. He didn’t just think it; he felt it. There’s analysis there, instinctive discrimination, and it’s always the true essence of poetry to deal in these shades of meaning. I’m grateful to Irvie for a real pleasure, and I think it’s all simply too wonderful for words!” She turned to her sleepy old husband. “Don’t you feel so, too, Frank?”
“I liked it first rate,” he said obediently. “It’s remarkable.”
My sister Harriet, glowing, clapped her hands. “More than just remarkable,” she declared. “There’s only one Irvie!”
I glanced at Irvie’s mother. She sat deprecatorily blushing but proud as Punch. I saw something more; behind her chair a door stood ajar and beyond it, in the hall, was the poet, himself. He’d tiptoed there to listen, being obviously certain that his poem was going to be at least mentioned. I restrained my hilarious upsurge, looked dreamy and let him go on thinking himself unseen.
The hall was dim; but Irvie’s pleasure was too bright to be obscured. Never, for sheer complacency, have I seen his eavesdropper’s smile equalled, even upon the face of an applauded adult. He waited until everybody had finished the obligatory exclamations about him; then he stole away — most likely to write another subtle poem, I suspected.
By less than this have I known full-grown persons to be ruined, so far as any comfort in their society was concerned. By less did I once see a sober-minded woman of thirty so changed that until her recovery people ran at sight of her. They didn’t run at sight of Irvie Pease, though, except toward him. Old Joe Erb was Irvie’s only detractor, a pitiable minority, and when I more or less — mainly less and with inward mirth — became somewhat of the Doctor’s opinion, I naturally didn’t tell anybody. Irvie of course, though he saw us, was almost unaware of such dim old creatures as Erb and me, plainly looked upon us as inconsequent objects in his adjacent scenery. When his attention was unavoidably drawn to myself, he showed the slightly amused tolerance for the obsolete that is really in the heart of all youth when it acknowledges the existence of a bygone era’s relics.
He accepted applause, though, from any quarter, old or young, expected it and was graciously used to it. By the time he was fifteen he’d had a lifetime of it from the Peases and Millerwoods, aunts, uncles and cousins, and from the general circles in which he moved. My sister regarded him as a part of her reverent and tender mourning for her worshipped husband because Irvie had been named for him. She could never bear the slightest hint of criticism of Irvie Pease, and as for the young Emma, my niece, she was Irvie’s serf.
Where’s a man so rare that even in mature age he’s acquired the art of self-protection when he speaks to ladies of their idols? On the evening after a tennis tournament arranged by Irvie Pease to celebrate his sixteenth birthday, I stirred up an actual scene at my own dinner-table where sat only my sister, my niece and myself. Emma and Harriet were exclamatory over the humorous little speech addressed by Irvie to the tennis spectators (of whom I’d been one) when he’d accepted the silver cup donated by his great-aunt Janet and awarded to him as the winner of the “tournament”.
A fond flush decorated Emma’s brow and cheeks; she was beginning to turn prettier after a plain childhood and the warm color made her almost lovely. “Wasn’t he darlingly funny, though!” she cried. “He’s always making fun of himself in the cutest way, especially when he has an honor or something bestowed on him. You know — like calling himself the ‘Old Maestro’ or ‘Irvie, the Idiot Earl’ — all those funny things he makes up to call himself. He’s really so terribly modest, the way he makes fun of himself; it just makes everybody think all the more of him.”
I had an unfortunate impulse to be educational. “Yes, indeed,” I said airily. “Many biographies show it to be a successful method, Emma. Self-aggrandizement dressed up as mirthful self-belittlement is an excellent old device to win the innocent.”
Harriet gave me a stare that should have stopped me. “You didn’t think that was a charming little speech of his?” she asked.
“Yes, charming. I think Irvie had a regret, though.”
“What regret?”
“I had a low idea,” I said. “I thought Irvie was sorry he couldn’t make both speeches — the presentation one by poor old Janet Millerwood and his own, too.”
“But that would have been impossible!” Young Emma’s eyes were enlarged by seeing a person of my age lost to common sense. “How could anybody make a speech presenting a cup to himself and then another accepting it? Those are two utterly different things, don’t you see? They’re just the opposite. So how could Irvie have done both?”
“He couldn’t, Emma. I only had an impression he was rather restive during his great-aunt’s address to him and that he was thinking of a few rather nice things about himself he could have wished her to add. That’s not so rare, dear, in recipients of awards — even when they have bald or grey heads.”
“Why, how awful of you!” Emma’s bright hazel eyes attained their largest. “I never heard such absurd blind nonsense!”
“Don’t wither me, Emma!” Like many another rash old tease of an uncle making trouble for himself, I went on with my prattle. Emma was the most athletic girl in our large neighborhood, and on a tennis court a flying marvel. “When Irvie got up the tournament to honor his birthday,” I said musingly, “you don’t suppose he was pretty sure of one probability, do you?”
“What probability?”
“That you’d let him win, Emma.”
“Let him!” she cried. “Let him! What on earth do you mean?”
“I’m afraid I thought you slacked off rather plainly in the set you lost to him, Emma.”
“What!” She seemed to see me as a horrifying spectacle. “Of all the accusations! There never was a fairer contest. Irvie beat Edgar and he beat Mary Reame and Harry Enders, and so did I. We couldn’t play more than one set each with each or we’d have been there all night, and if every one of us didn’t play our best every time it wouldn’t have been a real tournament. Doesn’t that satisfy you?”
“It’s not to the point, dear,” I said. “I had the unworthy thought that Irvie knew you’d let him win because you always do.”
“Oh!” Emma uttered the one exclamation. It was a hurt outcry, and, although her lips moved as if she tried to add something to it, she couldn’t. In fact, she burst into tears, rose from the table and brokenly left the room.
“Thoughtful of you!” my sister said. “Do you think it considerate to tease her by casting slurs on — —”
“Slurs?” I tried to laugh myself out of a false position. “Are you taking it seriously, too? Can’t I be allowed to try to be a comic old bystander once in a while? Slurs? Good heavens! They’re only children. Slurs!”
“What else could they seem to Emma?” my sister said. “What are you trying to do to her? Spoil her friendship with a dear boy who’s the splendid only son of our own kinsfolk, our next neighbors and best friends? I declare I think you’d better dose your old dried-up sense of humor with a narcotic!”
Snubbed speechless, I nevertheless strongly agreed with her as she, too, abandoned me to my coffee and the four candles that lighted our small table. Irvie wasn’t to be joked about. Henceforth when my thoughts of him tempted me to be a funny dog I’d better become a miracle of silence.
Chapter 3
ON A RAINY afternoon during the Christmas holidays I’d come downstairs to the family library and found Emma and Edgar Semple there playing backgammon. They were busier with argument, though, than with the game.
I took the book I wanted and would have departed; but Emma stopped me. She tossed her dicebox crossly upon the gaudy gaming board, said “Wait, Uncle, please”; then spoke emotionally to Edgar.
“Edgar, you’ve got to. You’ve got to tell him and let him decide. If you won’t tell him I will.”
Edgar shook his head. “I wouldn’t.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
As usual Edgar’s expression calmly revealed nothing. “It’s of no consequence, sir.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” Emma cried. “All right, then, I’ll just prove it is and pretty serious consequence at that, because it’s — it’s about Irvie’s ruining his health!”
“His what?” I said. “To me he appears robust.”
“Ah, but you don’t know!” My niece’s eyes were suddenly moist; she jumped up and openly suffered at me. “He’s — he’s killing himself!”
I tried not to laugh. “How?”
“He’s smoking himself to death.” Emma so unhappily believed what she said that she had ado not to sob aloud. “His father and mother don’t even know that he smokes at all because old Aunt Janet promised if he wouldn’t until he’s eighteen she’d give him a car. But he is; he’s been smoking for a whole year and he coughs and coughs and won’t listen to anybody! Whenever I try to tell him the risk he’s running, he just laughs and says we’ve all got to — got to” — Emma’s voice broke, but she finished the dreadful quotation— “got to die some time so — so why not young!”
“Boys before Irvie have talked like that to girls,” I said. “Most of ’em cough, too, when they begin to try to smoke.”
“ ’Begin’?” she cried. “ ’Begin to try’? Oh, you’ve never known anybody that smokes and inhales every breath as Irvie does! Even I didn’t, until last night! Nobody can live and smoke the way he does — sixty cigarettes an hour!”
“No,” I said, “you’re right. As a regular practice that’d be poor hygiene; but nobody could do it. Even Irvie couldn’t, Emma.”
Several tears were already out upon her cheeks; now she added others. “He does! Sixty an hour! It’s how he smokes all the time except when he’s with his father and mother or Aunt Janet. I’ve been begging and begging Edgar to tell Uncle Will and Aunt Evelyn and he won’t do it — he just won’t!”
“Well — —” Edgar said. “I rather think I’d better not.”
“Do you want him to die?” Emma’s vehemence reached this climax. “Uncle Will or Aunt Evelyn wouldn’t punish him; they never did in their lives. They’d just try to save him. They’d get Dr. Erb to examine his lungs and try to cure him. What else is there to do?”
“Is that what you want me to decide?” I asked.
“You’ve got to do more!” She caught my sleeve imploringly. “Edgar won’t tell them and if I do, Irvie’ll hate me. You won’t go on letting him smoke sixty cigarettes an hour, will you? You’ll tell them, won’t you?”
I patted her hand. “I’m like Edgar. I believe I’d better keep out of it, Emma.”
She snatched her hand away, made a fist of it with which to gouge her eyes. “Nobody!” she wept. “Nobody, nobody’ll lift a finger to help!” Concluding with a gulp delivered at our consciences, she left us and went elsewhere — to continue her weeping, so I surmised, not without compassion.
“Too bad,” I said to young Edgar. “What’s made her so excited about it?”
He rose thoughtfully from the backgammon table. “She’ll calm down out of it, sir. It doesn’t amount to anything. Irvie doesn’t smoke much, not more than the rest of the boys do. He just happens to be the one the girls worry about.”
“But if he tells her he smokes sixty cigarettes an hour — —”
“No, sir.” Edgar’s calm remained complete. “Irvie didn’t tell her that.”
“But she just declared — —”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll explain it if you don’t mind keeping it confidential.” He permitted the faintest of smiles to appear momentarily upon his round face and in his blue eyes. “You know how Irvie is. He doesn’t mean any harm and it doesn’t do any. He just likes to keep a good deal going on about him, if you’ve ever happened to notice.”
“Yes, I’ve happened to.”
“I thought so,” Edgar said with the cool detachment that often gave me an odd feeling about him: I seemed to be talking with an imperturbable person of my own age — or even older! “I’m afraid you might get a wrong idea of him, sir. Older people usually see only one or two sides of younger people.”
I laughed. “We belong to different tribes, do we?”
“I think so, sir. It’s why I’ve a notion that maybe in your own mind you’re sometimes a little hard on Irvie.”
“I’ll add to your mind-reading, Edgar,” I said. “If I’m hard on Irvie, as you say, maybe it’s because he reminds me mortifyingly that at his age I, too, was something of a prima donna — at least to my own view.”
“Yes, sir; but isn’t everybody to some extent more or less just a bit that way?” Edgar seemed satisfied that we’d established this platform. “Well, then, I’ll go ahead. As you implied, yourself, it’s only human for a boy to like having the girls think they’re worrying about him. That’s why Irvie’s got ’em all believing this sixty-an-hour tragedy. He didn’t tell ’em he smoked that hard; he let ’em find it out for themselves. That was just last night and made a big sensation, especially, of course, with Emma, and so — —”
“But, Edgar, if he didn’t tell them he — —”
“No, sir. Emma got excited and counted ’em.”
“But it can’t be done, Edgar.”
“No, of course not.” Edgar’s smile appeared again. “She did count ’em, though — exactly sixty. Then she started the big fuss; but it was funny to see Irvie keep looking sideways at Sylvia to see what she — —”
“Sylvia?” At the moment I didn’t place any Sylvia among Irvie’s young subsidiaries.
“Sylvia Stelling,” Edgar explained. “You’ve probably seen her on the beach with the rest of us at Stonehaven in summer. She’s visiting Mary Reame over the holidays. Irvie’s kind of impressed with her for the simple reason she’s a New Yorker, and he can’t ever help trying his best to impress the people that impress him. ‘Most everybody seems to be like that, though, I’ve noticed — especially playing up strong to anyone from a bigger town. Well, Irvie did the sixty-an-hour stunt mostly on Sylvia’s account; but of course the rest were expected to — —”
