The desperate Penrod bent over the whitewashed rock, lifted it, and then--outdoing Porthos, John Ridd, and Ursus in one miraculous burst of strength--heaved it into the air.
Marjorie screamed.
But it was too late. The big stone descended into the precise midst of the caldron and Penrod got his mighty splash. It was far, far beyond his expectations.
Spontaneously there were grand and awful effects--volcanic spectacles of nightmare and eruption. A black sheet of eccentric shape rose out of the caldron and descended upon the three children, who had no time to evade it.
After it fell, Mitchy-Mitch, who stood nearest the caldron, was the thickest, though there was enough for all. Br"er Rabbit would have fled from any of them.
CHAPTER XXV TAR
When Marjorie and Mitchy-Mitch got their breath, they used it vocally; and seldom have more penetrating sounds issued from human throats.
Coincidentally, Marjorie, quite baresark, laid hands upon the largest stick within reach and fell upon Penrod with blind fury. He had the presence of mind to flee, and they went round and round the caldron, while Mitchy-Mitch feebly endeavoured to follow--his appearance, in this pursuit, being pathetically like that of a bug fished out of an ink-well, alive but discouraged.
Attracted by the riot, Samuel Williams made his appearance, vaulting a fence, and was immediately followed by Maurice Levy and Georgie Ba.s.sett.
They stared incredulously at the extraordinary spectacle before them.
"Little GEN-TIL-MUN!" shrieked Marjorie, with a wild stroke that landed full upon Penrod"s tarry cap.
"OOOCH!" bleated Penrod.
"It"s Penrod!" shouted Sam Williams, recognizing him by the voice. For an instant he had been in some doubt.
"Penrod Schofield!" exclaimed Georgie Ba.s.sett. "WHAT does this mean?"
That was Georgie"s style, and had helped to win him his t.i.tle.
Marjorie leaned, panting, upon her stick. "I cu-called--uh-- him--oh!" she sobbed--"I called him a lul-little--oh--gentleman!
And oh--lul-look!--oh! lul-look at my du-dress! Lul-look at Mumitchy--oh--Mitch--oh!"
Unexpectedly, she smote again--with results--and then, seizing the indistinguishable hand of Mitchy-Mitch, she ran wailing homeward down the street.
""Little gentleman"?" said Georgie Ba.s.sett, with some evidences of disturbed complacency. "Why, that"s what they call ME!"
"Yes, and you ARE one, too!" shouted the maddened Penrod. "But you better not let anybody call ME that! I"ve stood enough around here for one day, and you can"t run over ME, Georgie Ba.s.sett. Just you put that in your gizzard and smoke it!"
"Anybody has a perfect right," said Georgie, with, dignity, "to call a person a little gentleman. There"s lots of names n.o.body ought to call, but this one"s a NICE----"
"You better look out!"
Unavenged bruises were distributed all over Penrod, both upon his body and upon his spirit. Driven by subtle forces, he had dipped his hands in catastrophe and disaster: it was not for a Georgie Ba.s.sett to beard him.
Penrod was about to run amuck.
"I haven"t called you a little gentleman, yet," said Georgie. "I only said it. Anybody"s got a right to SAY it."
"Not around ME! You just try it again and----"
"I shall say it," returned Georgie, "all I please. Anybody in this town has a right to SAY "little gentleman"----"
Bellowing insanely, Penrod plunged his right hand into the caldron, rushed upon Georgie and made awful work of his hair and features.
Alas, it was but the beginning! Sam Williams and Maurice Levy screamed with delight, and, simultaneously infected, danced about the struggling pair, shouting frantically:
"Little gentleman! Little gentleman! Sick him, Georgie! Sick him, little gentleman! Little gentleman! Little gentleman!"
The infuriated outlaw turned upon them with blows and more tar, which gave Georgie Ba.s.sett his opportunity and later seriously impaired the purity of his fame. Feeling himself hopelessly tarred, he dipped both hands repeatedly into the caldron and applied his gatherings to Penrod.
It was bringing coals to Newcastle, but it helped to a.s.suage the just wrath of Georgie.
The four boys gave a fine imitation of the Laoc.o.o.n group complicated by an extra figure frantic splutterings and chokings, strange cries and stranger words issued from this tangle; hands dipped lavishly into the inexhaustible reservoir of tar, with more and more picturesque results.
The caldron had been elevated upon bricks and was not perfectly balanced; and under a heavy impact of the struggling group it lurched and went partly over, pouring forth a Stygian tide which formed a deep pool in the gutter.
It was the fate of Master Roderick Bitts, that exclusive and immaculate person, to make his appearance upon the chaotic scene at this juncture.
All in the cool of a white "sailor suit," he turned aside from the path of duty--which led straight to the house of a maiden aunt--and paused to hop with joy upon the sidewalk. A repeated epithet continuously half panted, half squawked, somewhere in the nest of gladiators, caught his ear, and he took it up excitedly, not knowing why.
"Little gentleman!" shouted Roderick, jumping up and down in childish glee. "Little gentleman! Little gentleman! Lit----"
A frightful figure tore itself free from the group, encircled this innocent bystander with a black arm, and hurled him headlong. Full length and flat on his face went Roderick into the Stygian pool. The frightful figure was Penrod.
Instantly, the pack flung themselves upon him again, and, carrying them with him, he went over upon Roderick, who from that instant was as active a belligerent as any there.
Thus began the Great Tar Fight, the origin of which proved, afterward, so difficult for parents to trace, owing to the opposing accounts of the combatants. Marjorie said Penrod began it; Penrod said Mitchy-Mitch began it; Sam Williams said Georgie Ba.s.sett began it; Georgie and Maurice Levy said Penrod began it; Roderick Bitts, who had not recognized his first a.s.sailant, said Sam Williams began it.
n.o.body thought of accusing the barber. But the barber did not begin it; it was the fly on the barber"s nose that began it--though, of course, something else began the fly. Somehow, we never manage to hang the real offender.
The end came only with the arrival of Penrod"s mother, who had been having a painful conversation by telephone with Mrs. Jones, the mother of Marjorie, and came forth to seek an errant son. It is a mystery how she was able to pick out her own, for by the time she got there his voice was too hoa.r.s.e to be recognizable. Mr. Schofield"s version of things was that Penrod was insane. "He"s a stark, raving lunatic!"
declared the father, descending to the library from a before-dinner interview with the outlaw, that evening. "I"d send him to military school, but I don"t believe they"d take him. Do you know WHY he says all that awfulness happened?"
"When Margaret and I were trying to scrub him," responded Mrs. Schofield wearily, "he said "everybody" had been calling him names."
""Names!"" snorted her husband. ""Little gentleman!" THAT"S the vile epithet they called him! And because of it he wrecks the peace of six homes!"
"SH! Yes; he told us about it," said Mrs. Schofield, moaning. "He told us several hundred times, I should guess, though I didn"t count. He"s got it fixed in his head, and we couldn"t get it out. All we could do was to put him in the closet. He"d have gone out again after those boys if we hadn"t. I don"t know WHAT to make of him!"
"He"s a mystery to ME!" said her husband. "And he refuses to explain why he objects to being called "little gentleman." Says he"d do the same thing--and worse--if anybody dared to call him that again. He said if the President of the United States called him that he"d try to whip him.
How long did you have him locked up in the closet?"
"SH!" said Mrs. Schofield warningly. "About two hours; but I don"t think it softened his spirit at all, because when I took him to the barber"s to get his hair clipped again, on account of the tar in it, Sammy Williams and Maurice Levy were there for the same reason, and they just WHISPERED "little gentleman," so low you could hardly hear them--and Penrod began fighting with them right before me, and it was really all the barber and I could do to drag him away from them. The barber was very kind about it, but Penrod----"
"I tell you he"s a lunatic!" Mr. Schofield would have said the same thing of a Frenchman infuriated by the epithet "camel." The philosophy of insult needs expounding.
"SH!" said Mrs. Schofield. "It does seem a kind of frenzy."
"Why on earth should any sane person mind being called----"
"SH!" said Mrs. Schofield. "It"s beyond ME!"
"What are you SH-ing me for?" demanded Mr. Schofield explosively.