The sun was setting behind the back fence (though at a considerable
distance) as Penrod Schofield approached that fence and looked
thoughtfully up at the top of it, apparently having in mind some purpose
to climb up and sit there. Debating this, he passed his fingers gently
up and down the backs of his legs; and then something seemed to decide
him not to sit anywhere. He leaned against the fence, sighed profoundly,
and gazed at Duke, his wistful dog.
The sigh was reminiscent: episodes of simple pathos were passing before
his inward eye. About the most painful was the vision of lovely
Marjorie Jones, weeping with rage as the Child Sir Lancelot was dragged,
insatiate, from the prostrate and howling Child Sir Galahad, after an
onslaught delivered the precise instant the curtain began to fall upon
the demoralized “pageant.” And then--oh, pangs! oh, woman!--she slapped
at the ruffian's cheek, as he was led past her by a resentful janitor;
and turning, flung her arms round the Child Sir Galahad's neck.
“PENROD SCHOFIELD, DON'T YOU DARE EVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN AS LONG AS
YOU LIVE!” Maurice's little white boots and gold tassels had done their
work.
At home the late Child Sir Lancelot was consigned to a locked
clothes-closet pending the arrival of his father. Mr. Schofield came
and, shortly after, there was put into practice an old patriarchal
custom. It is a custom of inconceivable antiquity: probably primordial,
certainly prehistoric, but still in vogue in some remaining citadels of
the ancient simplicities of the Republic.
And now, therefore, in the dusk, Penrod leaned against the fence and
sighed.
His case is comparable to that of an adult who could have survived a
similar experience. Looking back to the sawdust-box, fancy pictures this
comparable adult a serious and inventive writer engaged in congenial
literary activities in a private retreat. We see this period marked
by the creation of some of the most virile passages of a Work dealing
exclusively in red corpuscles and huge primal impulses. We see
this thoughtful man dragged from his calm seclusion to a horrifying
publicity; forced to adopt the stage and, himself a writer, compelled
to exploit the repulsive sentiments of an author not only personally
distasteful to him but whose whole method and school in belles lettres
he despises.
We see him reduced by desperation and modesty to stealing a pair of
overalls. We conceive him to have ruined, then, his own reputation,
and to have utterly disgraced his family; next, to have engaged in
the duello and to have been spurned by his lady-love, thus lost to him
(according to her own declaration) forever. Finally, we must behold:
imprisonment by the authorities; the third degree and flagellation.
We conceive our man decided that his career had been perhaps too
eventful. Yet Penrod had condensed all of it into eight hours.
It appears that he had at least some shadowy perception of a recent
fulness of life, for, as he leaned against the fence, gazing upon his
wistful Duke, he sighed again and murmured aloud:
“WELL, HASN'T THIS BEEN A DAY!”
But in a little while a star came out, freshly lighted, from the highest
part of the sky, and Penrod, looking up, noticed it casually and
a little drowsily. He yawned. Then he sighed once more, but not
reminiscently: evening had come; the day was over. It was a sigh of pure
ennui.