They fastened some ruching about his slender neck, pinned ribbons at random all over him, and then Margaret thickly powdered his hair.
"Oh, yes, that"s all right," she said, replying to a question put by her mother. "They always powdered their hair in Colonial times."
"It doesn"t seem right to me--exactly," objected Mrs. Schofield, gently.
"Sir Lancelot must have been ever so long before Colonial times."
"That doesn"t matter," Margaret rea.s.sured her. "n.o.body"ll know the difference--Mrs. Lora Rewbush least of all. I don"t think she knows a thing about it, though, of course, she does write splendidly and the words of the pageant are just beautiful. Stand still, Penrod!" (The author of "Harold Ramorez" had moved convulsively.) "Besides, powdered hair"s always becoming. Look at him. You"d hardly know it was Penrod!"
The pride and admiration with which she p.r.o.nounced this undeniable truth might have been thought tactless, but Penrod, not a.n.a.lytical, found his spirits somewhat elevated. No mirror was in his range of vision and, though he had submitted to cursory measurements of his person a week earlier, he had no previous acquaintance with the costume. He began to form a not unpleasing mental picture of his appearance, something somewhere between the portraits of George Washington and a vivid memory of Miss Julia Marlowe at a matinee of "Twelfth Night."
He was additionally cheered by a sword which had been borrowed from a neighbor, who was a Knight of Pythias. Finally there was a mantle, an old golf cape of Margaret"s. Fluffy polka-dots of white cotton had been sewed to it generously; also it was ornamented with a large cross of red flannel, suggested by the picture of a Crusader in a newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt. The mantle was fastened to Penrod"s shoulder (that is, to the shoulder of Mrs. Schofield"s ex-bodice) by means of large safety-pins, and arranged to hang down behind him, touching his heels, but obscuring nowise the glory of his facade. Then, at last, he was allowed to step before a mirror.
It was a full-length gla.s.s, and the worst immediately happened. It might have been a little less violent, perhaps, if Penrod"s expectations had not been so richly and poetically idealized; but as things were, the revolt was volcanic.
Victor Hugo"s account of the fight with the devil-fish, in "Toilers of the Sea," encourages a belief that, had Hugo lived and increased in power, he might have been equal to a proper recital of the half hour which followed Penrod"s first sight of himself as the Child Sir Lancelot. But Mr. Wilson himself, dastard but eloquent foe of Harold Ramorez, could not have expressed, with all the vile dashes at his command, the sentiments which animated Penrod"s bosom when the instantaneous and unalterable conviction descended upon him that he was intended by his loved ones to make a public spectacle of himself in his sister"s stockings and part of an old dress of his mother"s.
To him these familiar things were not disguised at all; there seemed no possibility that the whole world would not know them at a glance. The stockings were worse than the bodice. He had been a.s.sured that these could not be recognized, but, seeing them in the mirror, he was sure that no human eye could fail at first glance to detect the difference between himself and the former purposes of these stockings. Fold, wrinkle, and void shrieked their history with a hundred tongues, invoking earthquake, eclipse, and blue ruin. The frantic youth"s final submission was obtained only after a painful telephonic conversation between himself and his father, the latter having been called up and upon, by the exhausted Mrs. Schofield, to subjugate his offspring by wire.
The two ladies made all possible haste, after this, to deliver Penrod into the hands of Mrs. Lora Rewbush; nevertheless, they found opportunity to exchange earnest congratulations upon his not having recognized the humble but serviceable paternal garment now brilliant about the Lancelotish middle. Altogether, they felt that the costume was a success. Penrod looked like nothing ever remotely imagined by Sir Thomas Malory or Alfred Tennyson;--for that matter, he looked like nothing ever before seen on earth; but as Mrs. Schofield and Margaret took their places in the audience at the Women"s Arts and Guild Hall, the anxiety they felt concerning Penrod"s elocutionary and gesticular powers, so soon to be put to public test, was pleasantly tempered by their satisfaction that, owing to their efforts, his outward appearance would be a credit to the family.
CHAPTER IV DESPERATION
The Child Sir Lancelot found himself in a large anteroom behind the stage--a room crowded with excited children, all about equally medieval and artistic. Penrod was less conspicuous than he thought himself, but he was so preoccupied with his own shame, steeling his nerves to meet the first inevitable taunting reference to his sister"s stockings, that he failed to perceive there were others present in much of his own unmanned condition. Retiring to a corner, immediately upon his entrance, he managed to unfasten the mantle at the shoulders, and, drawing it round him, pinned it again at his throat so that it concealed the rest of his costume. This permitted a temporary relief, but increased his horror of the moment when, in pursuance of the action of the "pageant,"
the sheltering garment must be cast aside.
Some of the other child knights were also keeping their mantles close about them. A few of the envied opulent swung brilliant fabrics from their shoulders, airily, showing off hired splendours from a professional costumer"s stock, while one or two were insulting examples of parental indulgence, particularly little Maurice Levy, the Child Sir Galahad. This shrinking person went clamorously about, making it known everywhere that the best tailor in town had been dazzled by a great sum into constructing his costume. It consisted of blue velvet knickerbockers, a white satin waistcoat, and a beautifully cut little swallow-tailed coat with pearl b.u.t.tons. The medieval and artistic triumph was completed by a mantle of yellow velvet, and little white boots, sporting gold ta.s.sels.
All this radiance paused in a brilliant career and addressed the Child Sir Lancelot, gathering an immediately formed semicircular audience of little girls. Woman was ever the trailer of magnificence.
"What YOU got on?" inquired Mr. Levy, after dispensing information.
"What you got on under that ole golf cape?"
Penrod looked upon him coldly. At other times his questioner would have approached him with deference, even with apprehension. But to-day the Child Sir Galahad was somewhat intoxicated with the power of his own beauty.
"What YOU got on?" he repeated.
"Oh, nothin"," said Penrod, with an indifference a.s.sumed at great cost to his nervous system.
The elate Maurice was inspired to set up as a wit. "Then you"re nakid!"
he shouted exultantly. "Penrod Schofield says he hasn"t got nothin" on under that ole golf cape! He"s nakid! He"s nakid."
The indelicate little girls giggled delightedly, and a javelin pierced the inwards of Penrod when he saw that the Child Elaine, amber-curled and beautiful Marjorie Jones, lifted golden laughter to the horrid jest.
Other boys and girls came flocking to the uproar. "He"s nakid, he"s nakid!" shrieked the Child Sir Galahad. "Penrod Schofield"s nakid! He"s NA-A-A-KID!"
"Hush, hush!" said Mrs. Lora Rewbush, pushing her way into the group.
"Remember, we are all little knights and ladies to-day. Little knights and ladies of the Table Round would not make so much noise. Now children, we must begin to take our places on the stage. Is everybody here?"
Penrod made his escape under cover of this diversion: he slid behind Mrs. Lora Rewbush, and being near a door, opened it unnoticed and went out quickly, closing it behind him. He found himself in a narrow and vacant hallway which led to a door marked "Janitor"s Room."
Burning with outrage, heart-sick at the sweet, cold-blooded laughter of Marjorie Jones, Penrod rested his elbows upon a window-sill and speculated upon the effects of a leap from the second story. One of the reasons he gave it up was his desire to live on Maurice Levy"s account: already he was forming educational plans for the Child Sir Galahad.
A stout man in blue overalls pa.s.sed through the hallway muttering to himself petulantly. "I reckon they"ll find that hall hot enough NOW!" he said, conveying to Penrod an impression that some too feminine women had sent him upon an unreasonable errand to the furnace. He went into the Janitor"s Room and, emerging a moment later, minus the overalls, pa.s.sed Penrod again with a ba.s.s rumble--"Dern "em!" it seemed he said--and made a gloomy exit by the door at the upper end of the hallway.
The conglomerate and delicate rustle of a large, mannerly audience was heard as the janitor opened and closed the door; and stage-fright seized the boy. The orchestra began an overture, and, at that, Penrod, trembling violently, tiptoed down the hall into the Janitor"s Room. It was a cul-de-sac: There was no outlet save by the way he had come.
Despairingly he doffed his mantle and looked down upon himself for a last sickening a.s.surance that the stockings were as obviously and disgracefully Margaret"s as they had seemed in the mirror at home. For a moment he was encouraged: perhaps he was no worse than some of the other boys. Then he noticed that a safety-pin had opened; one of those connecting the stockings with his trunks. He sat down to fasten it and his eye fell for the first time with particular attention upon the trunks. Until this instant he had been preoccupied with the stockings.
Slowly recognition dawned in his eyes.
The Schofields" house stood on a corner at the intersection of two main-travelled streets; the fence was low, and the publicity obtained by the washable portion of the family apparel, on Mondays, had often been painful to Penrod; for boys have a peculiar sensitiveness in these matters. A plain, matter-of-fact washerwoman" employed by Mrs.
Schofield, never left anything to the imagination of the pa.s.ser-by; and of all her calm display the scarlet flaunting of his father"s winter wear had most abashed Penrod. One day Marjorie Jones, all gold and starch, had pa.s.sed when the dreadful things were on the line: Penrod had hidden himself, shuddering. The whole town, he was convinced, knew these garments intimately and derisively.
And now, as he sat in the janitor"s chair, the horrible and paralyzing recognition came. He had not an instant"s doubt that every fellow actor, as well as every soul in the audience, would recognize what his mother and sister had put upon him. For as the awful truth became plain to himself it seemed blazoned to the world; and far, far louder than the stockings, the trunks did fairly bellow the grisly secret: WHOSE they were and WHAT they were!
Most people have suffered in a dream the experience of finding themselves very inadequately clad in the midst of a crowd of well-dressed people, and such dreamers" sensations are comparable to Penrod"s, though faintly, because Penrod was awake and in much too full possession of the most active capacities for anguish.
A human male whose dress has been damaged, or reveals some vital lack, suffers from a hideous and shameful loneliness which makes every second absolutely unbearable until he is again as others of his s.e.x and species; and there is no act or sin whatever too desperate for him in his struggle to attain that condition. Also, there is absolutely no embarra.s.sment possible to a woman which is comparable to that of a man under corresponding circ.u.mstances and in this a boy is a man. Gazing upon the ghastly trunks, the stricken Penrod felt that he was a degree worse then nude; and a great horror of himself filled his soul.
"Penrod Schofield!"
The door into the hallway opened, and a voice demanded him. He could not be seen from the hallway, but the hue and the cry was up; and he knew he must be taken. It was only a question of seconds. He huddled in his chair.
"Penrod Schofield!" cried Mrs. Lora Rewbush angrily.
The distracted boy rose and, as he did so, a long pin sank deep into his back. He extracted it frenziedly, which brought to his ears a protracted and sonorous ripping, too easily located by a final gesture of horror.
"Penrod Schofield!" Mrs. Lora Rewbush had come out into the hallway.
And now, in this extremity, when all seemed lost indeed, particularly including honour, the dilating eye of the outlaw fell upon the blue overalls which the janitor had left hanging upon a peg.
Inspiration and action were almost simultaneous.
CHAPTER V THE PAGEANT OF THE TABLE ROUND
"Penrod!" Mrs. Lora Rewbush stood in the doorway, indignantly gazing upon a Child Sir Lancelot mantled to the heels. "Do you know that you have kept an audience of five hundred people waiting for ten minutes?"
She, also, detained the five hundred while she spake further.
"Well," said Penrod contentedly, as he followed her toward the buzzing stage, "I was just sitting there thinking."
Two minutes later the curtain rose on a medieval castle hall richly done in the new stage-craft made in Germany and consisting of pink and blue cheesecloth. The Child King Arthur and the Child Queen Guinevere were disclosed upon thrones, with the Child Elaine and many other celebrities in attendance; while about fifteen Child Knights were seated at a dining-room table round, which was covered with a large Oriental rug, and displayed (for the knights" refreshment) a banquet service of silver loving-cups and trophies, borrowed from the Country Club and some local automobile manufacturers.
In addition to this splendour, potted plants and palms have seldom been more lavishly used in any castle on the stage or off.