JOSEPHINE AND HENRY THE EIGHTH
The return of Mrs. Sage after an absence of twenty-three years was an
“event” far surpassing in interest anything that had transpired in
Rumley since the strange disappearance of old Oliver Baxter.
Hundreds of people, eager to see the famous Josephine Judge, crowded the
station platform, long before the train from Chicago was due to arrive;
they filled the depot windows; they were packed like sardines atop the
spare baggage and express trucks; they ranged in overflow disorder along
the sidewalks on both sides of the street adjacent. In this curious
throng were acquaintances of another day, those who remembered her as
the incomprehensible wife of Parson Sage when Sharp’s Field was a barren
outskirt and the trains for Chicago passed through Rumley at forty miles
an hour—a whistle, a rising and diminishing roar, a disdainful clanging
of bells, and then the tail end of a coach that left a whirlwind of dust
in its wake as it thundered away. The _Morning Despatch_ dug up an
ancient and totally featureless picture of Josephine Judge as she was at
the time of her last appearance in Chicago, some twenty years before,
and printed it, with rare tact on the part of the editor, in that
department of the paper devoted exclusively on Saturdays—and this was
Saturday—to church news and a directory of divine services. Inasmuch as
this sadly blurred two-column “cut” represented Miss Judge as a svelte
Salvation Army lassie, the editor may have been pardoned for giving it a
prominent position on the “Church page,” notwithstanding the fact that
said lassie was depicted in the act of tickling a tambourine with the
toe of her left foot. In any case, a great many people who were not in
the habit of reading the church section studied it with interest this
morning, and planned to take half an hour or so off in the afternoon.
The train pulled in. The crowd tiptoed and gaped, craned its thousand
necks, and then surged to the right. Above the hissing of steam and the
grinding of wheels rose the voice of Sammy Parr far down the platform.
“Keep back, everybody! Don’t crowd up so close. Right this way, Mr.
Sage—How are you? Open up there, will you? Let ’em through. Got my new
car over here, Mr. Sage—lots of room. Hello, Jane! Great honor to have
the pleasure of taking Mrs. Sage home in my car. Right over this way.
Grab those suitcases, boys. Open up, please!”
Mr. Sage paused aghast half way down the steps of the last coach but
one. He stared, open-mouthed, out over the sea of faces; his knees
seemed about to give way under him; his nerveless fingers came near
relaxing their grip on the suitcase handles; he was bewildered, stunned.
“In heaven’s name—” he groaned, and then, poor man, over his shoulder
in helpless distress to the girl behind him—“Oh, Jane, why didn’t we
wait for the midnight—”
But some one had seized the bags and with them he was dragged
ingloriously to the platform. Jane came next, crimson with
embarrassment. She hurried down the steps and waited at the bottom for
her mother to appear. As might have been expected of one so truly
theatric, Josephine delayed her appearance until the stage was clear, so
to speak. She even went so far as to keep her audience waiting. Preceded
by the Pullman porter, who up to this time had remained invisible but
now appeared as a proud and shining minion bearing boxes and traveling
cases, wraps and furs, she at length appeared, stopping on the last step
to survey, with well-affected surprise and a charming assumption of
consternation, the crowd that packed the platform. Recovering herself
with admirable aplomb, she rested her hand gracefully upon the brass
rail and bowed to the right and the left and straight before her; the
rigid smile with which every successful actress nightly envelops her
audience in response to curtain calls parted her carmine lips while her
big eyes ranged with sightless intensity over a void studded with what
their fatuous owners were prone to call faces. Just as she was on the
point of stepping down to the platform, her attention seemed suddenly to
have been caught and held by an object off to the left at an elevation
of perhaps ten feet above the heads of the spectators. She studied this
object smilingly for thirty or forty seconds. As many as a dozen kodaks
clicked during this brief though providential period of inactivity on
her part.
Now, a great many—perhaps all—of those who made up the eager, curious
crowd, expected to behold a young and radiant Josephine Judge; they had
seen her in the illustrated Sunday supplements and in the pictorial
magazines; always she was sprightly and vivid and alluring. They were
confronted, instead, by a tall, angular woman of fifty-two or-three,
carelessly—even “sloppily”—dressed in a slouchy two-piece pepper and
salt tweed walking costume, a glistening black straw hat that sat well
down upon a mass of bright auburn hair—(old-timers in the crowd
remembered her jet black tresses)—stout English oxfords somewhat run
down at the heel, and a neck piece of white fur. What most of the
observers at first took to be a wad of light brown fur tucked under her
right arm was discovered later to be a beady-eyed “Pekinese.”
But the minister’s wife was still a vividly handsome woman; the years
had put their lines at the corners of her eyes, to be sure, and had
pressed the fullness out of her cheeks, but they had not dimmed the
luster of her eyes nor sobered the smile that played about her mirthful
lips. She had taken good care of herself; she had made a business of
keeping young in looks as well as in spirit.
She had gone away from Rumley with a cheap and unlovely suitcase; she
came back with twenty trunks, her traveling bags of seal, her jewel box
and toilet case, hat boxes, shoe boxes, a pedigreed “Peke” named Henry
the Eighth, and an accent that could have come from nowhere save the
heart of London-town. In a clear, full voice, trained to reach remote
perches in lofty theaters, she spoke to her husband from the coach
steps:
“Herbert, dear, have you the checks for my luggage, or have I?”
“I—I will attend to the trunks—” he began huskily, only to be
interrupted by the indefatigable Sammy.
“Don’t give ’em another thought, Mr. Sage. I’ll see to everything. Give
me the checks and—right this way, please, Mrs. Sage.”
“Thank you—thank you so much,” said Mrs. Sage graciously, and, as Sammy
bustled on ahead, inquired in an undertone of Jane at whose side she
walked: “Is that the wonderful Oliver October I’ve been hearing so much
about?”
“No, Mother—that is Sammy Parr. I—I don’t see Oliver anywhere. I wrote
him the train we were coming—”
A few paces ahead Sammy was explaining loudly to Mr. Sage: “I guess
something important of a political nature must have turned up to keep
Oliver from meeting the train. We had it all fixed up to meet you with
my car and he was to be here at four sharp. Doc Lansing’s up at Harbor
Point, Michigan, for a little vacation. Won’t be back till Sunday week.
Muriel’s out here in the car, Mr. Sage. She’ll drive you home while I
see about the baggage.”
Mr. Sage had recovered his composure by this time. He leaned close to
Sammy’s ear and said gravely:
“Luggage, Sammy—luggage.”
“Sure—I get you,” said Sammy, winking. “But just the same I’ll call it
baggage till I’ve got it safely out of the hands of Jim O’Brien, the
baggage master. He doesn’t like me any too well as it is, and if I
called it—Here we are! Hop right in, Jane. Permit me to introduce
myself, Mrs. Sage. I am—”
“I remember you quite well,” interrupted the great actress (pronouncing
it “quate”). “You are Sammy Parr—little Sammy Parr who used to
live—ah—let me see, where was it you were living when I left Rumley,
Sammy?”
Sammy flushed with joy to the roots of his hair.
“I didn’t think you’d remember me, Mrs.—”
“Pairfectly,” said she. “Oh, thank you so much. What a lovely car you
have. Don’t come too close to Henry the Eighth—he has a vile way of
snapping at people, whether he likes them or not. My word, Sammy! Jane!
Herbert! Can I believe my eyes? Is this Rumley? Is this—”
“This is my wife, Mrs. Sage,” introduced Sammy, indicating the
bare-headed young lady at the wheel.
“How do you do, Mrs. Sage. I’m awfully thrilled to meet you. I saw you
act in London during the war. My first husband was an officer in the
American Army, you see. You were perfectly lovely. I shall never
forget—oh, dear, what was the name of the play? I ought to remember—”
“Don’t try,” interrupted Mrs. Sage. “I want to forget it myself. I say,
Herbert, old thing, you can’t make me believe this is Rumley. You are
deceiving me. I don’t recognize a single—Oh, yes, I do! I take it all
back. I would know that man if I saw him in Timbuktu. The old Johnnie in
the car we just passed. It was Gooch—the amiable Gooch—and, my word,
what a dust he was raising!”
Oliver, pedaling furiously, arrived at the parsonage ten minutes behind
the Sages. The minister greeted him as he came clattering up the front
steps.
“Sh!” he cautioned, his finger to his lips. “Don’t make such a noise,
Oliver—if you please. She’s—she’s resting. Sh! Do you mind tiptoeing,
lad? Jane and I have got quite in the habit of it the past two weeks. I
am happy to see you, my boy. She always rests about this time of the
day. You have come out for the senatorship, I hear. Especially if she’s
had a train trip or anything like that. Well, well, I hope you will go
in with flying colors. If she doesn’t get her rest right on the minute,
she has a headache and—”
“Where is Jane, Uncle Herbert?” broke in Oliver, twiddling his hat. He
was struck by the dazed, beatific, and yet harassed expression in the
minister’s eyes—as if he were still in a maze of wonder and perplexity
from which he was vainly trying to extricate himself.
“Jane? Oh, yes, Jane. Why, Jane is upstairs with her dear
mother—helping her with her hair, I think. I am sure she will not be
down for some time, Oliver. After the hair I think she rubs her back or
something of that sort. Do you mind toddling—I mean strolling—around
the yard with me, Oliver? I was on the point of taking Henry the Eighth
out for a little exercise—ten minutes is the allotted time, ten to the
second. He—”
“Henry the what?” inquired Oliver, still gripping the pastor’s hand.
“The Eighth,” said Mr. Sage, looking about the porch and shifting the
position of his feet in some trepidation. “Bless my soul, what can have
become of him? I hope I haven’t been standing on him. I should have
squashed him—Ah, I remember! The hatrack!”
He dashed into the hall, followed by Oliver, and there was Henry the
Eighth suspended from the hatrack by his leash in such a precarious
fashion that only by standing on his hind legs was he able to avoid
strangulation.
“I am so absent-minded,” murmured Mr. Sage, rather plaintively. “Poor
doggie! Was he being hanged like a horrid old murderer? Was he—”
“Hey!” cried Oliver. “He’s nipping your ankle, Uncle Herbert.”
“I know he is,” said Mr. Sage, smiling patiently. “He does it every time
he gets a chance. I’m quite used to it by now.”
“I’d kick his ugly little head off,” said Oliver.
“Oh, dear, no! You wouldn’t kick Henry the Eighth, I’m sure you
wouldn’t.”
They were out on the porch now, Mr. Sage holding the leash at arm’s
length and walking in a lopsided, overhanging sort of manner in order to
keep his ankles out of reach of Henry the Eighth’s sharp little
snappers. Oliver followed down the steps and out upon the sunburnt lawn.
“Does he snap at you like that all the time?” he inquired, sending a
swift, searching glance up at the second floor windows.
“I am afraid he does,” said Mr. Sage, dejectedly. “He doesn’t like me.”
“I’ll tell you what, Uncle Herbert,” began Oliver mendaciously; “you
just lead him around toward the back of the house, out of sight of those
windows up there, and I’ll show you how to break him of that. I love
dogs, and I know how to make ’em love me.”
“He will not allow you to pet him, Oliver,” said Mr. Sage hastily.
“I’m not going to pet him,” said Oliver grimly. “You want to break him
of biting, don’t you?”
“I should very much like to be on—er—friendly terms with him.”
“All right then. Bring him back this way. We’ll give him his first
lesson in politeness. The trouble with Henry the Eighth is he’s been
spoiled by women. What he needs is a good sound spanking.”
“Bless my soul, Oliver! You—”
“I guess it’s safe over there back of the woodshed, Uncle Herbert. They
can’t see or hear from the house. Many’s the time I’ve been taken out to
the woodshed, and I don’t believe Henry the Eighth is any better than I
was.”
“My dear boy, I—”
“Now, let him snap at you a couple of times—let him think he’s got you
trembling all over with fright. That’s the stuff! Gee, he’s a mean
little beast, isn’t he? He’s got the idea he’s a lion or a tiger. Now,
yank him up by the leash and take hold of the back of his neck with your
left hand—”
“You do it, Oliver. Really, I—I—can’t,” pleaded Mr. Sage.
“Go ahead! Yank him up—look out, sir! He came close to getting you that
time. That’s the way. You taught me the art of self-defense a long time
ago. Turn about is fair play, sir. I’m going to teach you the art of
self-protection. Now take the end of the leash and give him ten sharp
cuts with it. Go on! I’ll keep watch.”
And so, to the immeasurable astonishment of Henry the Eighth, ten
chastening lashes were administered to his squirming hindquarters, each
succeeding one being a little harder than its predecessor as the
minister abandoned himself to a most unseemly though delightful state of
malevolence. Half way through he decided to drag the performance out a
little by increasing the length of the intervals between lashes, thus
deceiving Henry the Eighth into the belief that each blow was the last
only to find himself lamentably mistaken a few seconds later.
“Keep a sharp watch, Oliver,” whispered Mr. Sage, between his teeth
somewhere along about the seventh lash.
“I will,” said Oliver, who hadn’t taken his eyes off of the west window
in what he knew to be Jane’s bed-chamber. “Don’t you worry.”
“For goodness’ sake, don’t—don’t let her catch me at it.”
“I’m awfully sorry I wasn’t at the station when Jane—when you got in,
Uncle Herbert. Did you have a comfortable trip down from—”
“Nine,” counted Mr. Sage, and then fifteen seconds later: “Ten. Now,
what shall I do with him, Oliver? If I let him down he’ll jump at me
like a rattlesnake and—”
“Oh, no, he won’t,” said Oliver, reluctantly withdrawing his gaze from
the window and joining the other beyond the corner of the woodshed.
“He’ll lick your hand if you hold it close enough to his nose. Let him
down. See that? He’s got his tail between his legs—or as much of it as
he can get there—and he’ll keep it there till he thinks you want him to
wag it.”
“I feel like a brute,” muttered Mr. Sage, but not as contritely as might
have been expected. “I hope I haven’t really injured the poor little
fellow.” Henry the Eighth, cringing flat on his little belly, peeped
anxiously but evilly up at his new master. “He doesn’t appear to be able
to stand on his feet, Oliver.”
“Does he know any tricks?”
“Oh my, yes. He’s really quite clever. He does quite a few for
Josephine. Rolls over, plays dead, jumps over her foot, sits up and
begs, and—”
“Tell him to roll over,” said Oliver sternly.
“Oh, he won’t do them for me. He growls at me whenever I attempt to—”
“Tell him to roll over.”
“Roll over, Henry—roll over, sir! Why—why, bless my soul, he’s doing
it.”
“Tell him to play dead.”
Henry the Eighth “played dead”—with his beady eyes wide open,
however—and then sat up on his haunches and begged.
“Now, see what he’ll do if you try to pat his head.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t like to risk—er—he is quite likely to nip my fingers
if I—”
“If he tries it, spank him once or twice.”
Henry the Eighth plucked up the courage to growl when the minister’s
left hand neared his head. An instant later, the flat of Mr. Sage’s
right hand came in contact with a portion of Henry’s anatomy that
already had suffered considerable pain and indignity. Whereupon he
squeezed out an apologetic little yelp and turned over on his back to
play dead again. Mr. Sage solemnly shook both of the feathery front paws
and called him a nice doggie. He had to call him a nice doggie three
times, and, besides that, had to show his teeth in a broad, ingratiating
smile before Henry was willing to trust his own eyes and ears. He wagged
his bushy tail weakly, experimentally.
“Nice doggie,” said Mr. Sage again.
“Don’t overdo it,” warned Oliver. “Don’t be too polite to him. He’ll be
thinking he’s a lion again, Uncle Herbert.”
“I wouldn’t have Mrs. Sage know that I’ve thrashed him for anything in
the world,” said the minister guiltily. “You won’t mention it, my lad?”
“I can’t promise not to tell Jane about it.”
“Oh, I don’t mind your telling Jane. She’s been at me for a week to
paddle him—”
“I say, Uncle Herbert, don’t you think Jane may have
finished—er—rubbing Mrs. Sage’s back by this time?” inquired the
impatient Oliver.
“Possibly,” said the other. “Come along, doggie—let’s romp a bit. Oh,
by the way, before I forget it, Oliver, Mrs. Sage prefers to
be—er—called Miss Judge.”
Oliver’s face fell. “Oh, thunder! Am I not to call her Aunt Josephine?”
“Certainly—certainly, my boy. I mean, Miss Judge in public. It seems to
be a—er—a theatrical custom. On the train coming down a gentleman from
Hopkinsville joined us for a few moments and I was obliged to introduce
her as ‘my wife, Miss Judge.’ Come along, Henry—there’s a nice dog!
Jump over my foot! Good! He did it splendidly, didn’t he, Oliver?”
Meanwhile, Jane, having brushed her mother’s hair, was now employed in
the more laborious task of rubbing the lady’s back—a task attended by
grateful little grunts and sighs on the part of the patient and a rather
expressive tightening of the lips and crinkling of the brow on the part
of the impatient daughter.
“You have a great deal of magnetism in your hands, my dear,” droned Mrs.
Sage, luxuriously—the sort of thing one invariably purrs when one’s
head is being rubbed. “As I say, my maid always did it for me in London,
but God bless my soul, she never had the touch that you have. Really, my
dear, it was like being scraped with sandpaper. The right shoulder now,
please.”
“I think Oliver is downstairs with father,” began Jane wistfully.
“She was my dresser, too,” went on Mrs. Sage drowsily. “Really, I wonder
now that I endured her as long as I did. And I shouldn’t, you may be
sure, if she hadn’t—a little lower down, dear—if she hadn’t—ah—what
was I going to say? Oh, yes; if she hadn’t been so kind to Henry the
Eighth. I do hope your father is giving him a nice little romp in the
front—”
“Shall I run down and see, Mother?” broke in Jane eagerly.
“Presently, my dear, presently. I shall be taking my tub in a few—you
say we have a bathroom now? Dear me, how the house has grown. It used to
be a sort of stand-up process in a wash-tub half full of warm water and
suds. Ah me! What a change time has wrought. You must take me all over
the house to-morrow, Jane dear. I sha’n’t be quite up to it this
evening, don’t you know. How many servants have we?”
“One,” said Jane succinctly.
“One?” gasped Josephine. “I never heard of such a thing.”
“One is all we need, and besides one is all we can afford. I am afraid
you will have a lot to put up with, Mother dear.”
Josephine was silent for a long time. Suddenly she lifted her head and
looked up into her daughter’s face.
“My dear,” she said, with a wry little twist at the corner of her
generous mouth, “I’ve come home to stay. I daresay you will find me
capable of taking things as they are. I did it once before and I can do
it again. Now, if you will draw me a nice warm tub; I’ll—I’ll—” she
yawned voluptuously—“I’ll get in and sozzle a bit. And that reminds me,
Jane. I shall never in any way interfere with you as housekeeper here.
Your father assures me that you are a perfect manager. I was a very poor
one in my day. I daresay we’d better let well enough alone. Don’t make
it too hot, my dear—and do see if you can find my bath slippers in that
bag over there by the door.”
The express wagon with Mrs. Sage’s trunks arrived as Oliver, in despair,
was preparing to depart as he had come, on Marmaduke Smith’s bicycle. He
took fresh hope. Here was a chance to see Jane after all. With joyous
avidity he offered to help Joe O’Brien lug the trunks upstairs.
“Where do you want ’em, Jane?” he shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
There was no answer. “Where shall we put them, Uncle Herbert?” he asked,
his hands jammed deep in his pockets.
“Bless my soul, I—I haven’t an idea,” groaned Mr. Sage, passing his
hand over his brow. This act seemed to have cleared some of the fog from
his brain. “Unless you put them in my study,” he suggested brightly.
“They will fill it to overflowing, but—but I can think of no other
place. Dear me, what a lot of them there are.”
Fifteen minutes later, the trunks being piled high in the pastor’s
little study, Oliver mopped his brow and expressed himself feelingly to
Mr. Sage from the bottom of the porch steps.
“I’ll make Uncle Horace sweat for this,” he growled. “If he hadn’t come
nosing around this afternoon, I would have—At the same time, Uncle
Herbert, I think Jane might have been allowed a minute or two to say
hello to a fellow. Good Lord, sir, is—is this to be Jane’s job from now
on?”
“Sh! The windows are open, Oliver.”
“Is she to be nothing but a lady’s maid to Aunt Josephine?”
“We are so happy to have her with us, my dear boy,
that—er—nothing—er—”
“I understand, Uncle Herbert,” broke in Oliver contritely, noting the
pastor’s distress. “I’m sorry I spoke as I did. Tell Jane I’ll call her
up this evening. And please tell Aunt Josephine I am awfully keen to see
her. I used to love her better than anything going, you know.”
“It’s different now,” said Mr. Sage. “You are both considerably older
than you were. Will you come up to-night?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll come up and move the trunks for you, Uncle Herbert. So
that you can have room to write next Sunday’s sermon,” he said, with his
gay, whimsical smile.
Then he pedaled slowly away on Marmaduke’s wheel, looking over his
shoulder until the windows of the parsonage were no longer visible.