# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 37/Number 4/The Street of Bad Children

From The Red Book Magazine, 1921 August, pp. 40–44, 146–151. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
“Good-by,” said Muriel, choking. “It is a family trait.
“But I only said if Aunt Clara hadn't upset—”
THE STREET OF BAD CHILDREN
By BOOTH TARKINGTON
Illustrated by WILLIAM VAN DRESSER
   In this delightful story of today's young folks you will become better acquainted with Muriel and Renfrew, whose small brother and sister seem destined to strew the course of love with tacks and broken glass
MISS MURIEL ELIOT, aged twenty-one, and advanced, making her début as an essayist at Mrs. Norman Coy's “Wednesday Club” with a paper entitled “Marriage, a Superstition,” announced her decision to be a leader of something she called the New School of Thought. She made the announcement frankly; she herself said that she did it frankly—in fact, she seemed to wish her frankness to be thoroughly understood.
“Frankly,” she said, reading from her paper, “frankly, I am of the New School of Thought. Frankly, since leaving Professor Moroff's classroom, where the first inklings of new thought were caught by the few serious undergraduates who were able to comprehend her ideas, frankly, since then I have given the question a long and thorough period of consideration, and the time has arrived to declare my conclusions, which are, frankly, that it is the duty of those among the new generation who are capable of deeper thinking, to become leaders in the movement. Toward this, then, I presume to direct my steps. Frankly, I am a socialist In this light, then, we find a perfect illumination of all the problems which have assailed non-thinking, plodding, savorless mankind.
“Now, to dissect the institution of the marriage custom which has grown up amongst us, what do we discover? Frankly, that marriage, fundamentally motivated by the capitalistic device of private ownership of property, is usually believed to be the result of an emotional condition, love, so called!”
At this point the essayist permitted a tolerant amusement to enhance her comeliness. “Love, so called!” she repeated. “This emotional state is supposed to bring about marriage—marriage, an institution which is maintained by the influence of a superstition fostered by capitalism! Suppose we pause to analyze this emotion, love, in the cold light of science. That is to say, let us apply the newer system of thought. What do we discover? New thought informs us at once. We discover that, as Myrskwin has insisted in his notable monograph, love is nothing but the result of mere propinquity. In the cold light of science, all such interrelations are the result of the merest propinquity. Propinquity produces acquaintanceship, produces intimacy, produces friendship, produces love. Frankly, all these are invariably the result of mere propinquity.”
She made this coldly scientific statement with the emphasis of conviction; and no one could doubt that she thought she believed it. And yet under her eyes, daily (and on some Saturdays hourly) was evidence to deny it, and to prove that propinquity, all over her neighborhood, was producing neither love nor friendship.
Just across the street from the comfortable house where Miss Muriel Eliot lived with her fat little brother Robert, aged ten, and her mother and father (both of the latter being superstitiously under the influence of the institution of marriage) there were two other comfortable houses where dwelt in juxtaposition the Threamer family and the Mears family. And the result of this propinquity was indeed not love nor friendship—so far from either, in fact, that the most meager tokens of acquaintanceship were sometimes omitted by a member of one family when encountering a member of the other.
The Threamers had a beautiful little girl, Elsie. Next door was Daisy Mears, not beautiful, but of the same age; and the difficulties between these two extended so far into the upper reaches of their families that Elsie's grandmother had exchanged actual words with Daisy's great-aunt. Moreover, Master Robert Eliot, though cold and indolent, lived of late in a state of war with Daisy Mears; her mother abhorred him; his mother and sister considered that abhorrence unnatural, and believed Daisy to be the aggressor; their neighborliness toward Daisy's whole family was becoming chilled; and the more frequent the propinquity between Daisy and Robert, the more profoundly chilled was the neighborliness.
However, one circumstance did support Miss Eliot's coldly scientific conclusions. Daisy Mears had a well-grown brother, Renfrew; and if Renfrew Mears had never been granted any popinquity to Muriel Eliot, it is probable that he would not have been in love, so called, with her, nor have hoped that some day she might be influenced by a certain capitalistic superstition. Nevertheless, Renfrew himself was convinced that something more important than propinquity was the matter with him.
He explained this view to Muriel, and she understood what he meant, although he failed to state that his explanation bore directly upon his own condition. He found his opportunity at the conclusion of the Wednesday Club's sitting, on the very afternoon when she read her essay. He had just happened to be passing by, he told Muriel, when he joined her as she came out of Mrs. Norman Coy's gate; but he failed to add that he had happened to be passing that gate at casual intervals during the last three-quarters of an hour. Her cheeks showed a pretty flush of excitement; her underlip was caught between her teeth in a provoked manner; her eyes were bright with the annoyance of a person who has been in a controversy and would like to remodel it to include some vindictive afterthoughts.
“It's impossible to reach some minds,” she said. “I felt that, even before the General Discussion began. Even while I was reading my paper, I could see from the stodgy faces of half of 'em they hadn't the remotest idea what I was talking about. A savorless crew!”
“I suppose so,” Renfrew said sympathetically “They can't all get it, I expect.”
“But they ought to!” she cried. “They ought to try to keep their minds alive! Can't they see we're living in a new world? Most of 'em don't seem to have the slightest notion that the old ideas have to go; and some of 'em actually don't even realize that the new ideas are new. Your Aunt Clara was the stodgiest of all, if you don't mind my saying so. She insisted she'd 'heard all that'—you ought to've seen her expression!—when she was a girl!”
“She isn't my aunt,” Renfrew interposed hastily “She's only my great-aunt. I scarcely think of her as one of the family.”
“She was the worst of the whole club,” the indignant essayist informed him. “I might have known better than to expect such minds to grasp anything vital! What do they know? Nothing but their children's colds and the price of butter! They think they know something higher, but they don't. They've merely buried themselves under their matrimony.”
“Yes,” said the sympathetic Renfrew. “They do do that—even though it's entirely unnecessary.”
“What's unnecessary?”
“Why, to let it bury 'em. If they wanted to, of course, they could treat it in a totally different way. The trouble is they don't want to; that's what's the matter with 'em. And all the time, if they only wanted to, they could treat it—well, they could treat it in a totally different way.”
“Treat what in a totally different way?” she inquired, frowning. “I don't follow you.”
“Why, matrimony,” he explained nervously. “I mean getting married, and everything like that. For instance, the way it ought to be, they would both go on developing and growing higher—”
“'Both?'” she interrupted. “Both of whom?”
“Well—” he faltered. “I mean—I mean, for instance, the husband and the wife. They would go on and on—”
“Oh, dear me!” she said.
“Is something the matter?” he asked anxiously, and his solicitous eyes seemed to indicate that he feared a physical anguish might have assailed her. “Do you feel—”
“No!” she said sharply, and added after a moment's thought: “Life is terrible!”
“Yes, it is,” he agreed instantly. “Anyhow, it's kind of terrible. What makes you think so, though?”
“It's this going on and on and on, and never being understood!”
“Well, it is like that a good deal,” he said. “In a few ways, that is. Of course, though there's—”
“It's this feeling of being so utterly alone in the universe,” she continued. “It's this knowing that there never will be anybody, anywhere, who can understand you!”
“I have that too,” said Renfrew earnestly. “I have it just about every so often. I—”
But she shook her head, interrupting: “No; you don't know what I mean. What I mean is—”
“I know,” he insisted. “For instance, last June when I got home for good, who could I find to talk to that knew the life I'd been leading and could enter into it and talk old times over with me, as it were? Not a single other man in this town had been to the same college in my time; and when I wanted to—”
“No, no,” she protested. “You don't understand at all.”
“I don't?” he said wistfully.
“Certainly not. You really don't understand any better than those women did when they discussed my paper. The only thing they did understand was something just at the opening: a few of 'em condescendingly said they agreed with that.”
“What was it?”
“Oh, that love, so called, is merely the result of propinquity.”
“Is it?” he inquired with interest. “You mean, for instance, if people never got anywhere near each other—for instance, if they never even got a look at each other,—they probably wouldn't ever fall in—”
“I mean,” she explained with a little annoyance, “I mean that nothing draws people together except propinquity. In other words, so-called love is nothing more than mere propinquity.”
“Well—” Renfrew began, but paused, evidently puzzled. “Well, of course I see that nobody could be in love with anybody who didn't have any propinquity—I mean that never was around anywhere long enough for you to look at; and of course if you're in love, it's likely to be with somebody you know; but still, the way it seems to me, why, you aren't in love with everybody you do know, are you?”
“I'm not in love with anybody at all,” Daisy she said coldly.
“What I mean,” he went on, “—you take a man that's in love, why, there's usually more to it than that. For instance, suppose I cared for some girl in that way,—I mean, suppose I was in love with her,—well, it wouldn't be on account of her propinquity or anything like that; it would be more on account of the way she looked, and how her voice sounded, and her hair and so forth—her qualities, I mean, and all such things and—”
He hurled this missile vindictively at Mears, who ducked it, shrieking in loudest joy and never abating her pace.
“Yes,” said Muriel, “but it would only be propinquity that made you think of such things. Propinquity's absolutely all it is.”
“Well,” he said, “isn't that the same as saying propinquity's all that anything at all is? You wouldn't catch the scarlet fever if you never went near somebody who had it, but when you've got it, the doctor doesn't give you medicine for propinquity, because that isn't what's the matter with you; it's the scarlet fever.”
“Oh, my!” she sighed. “There are basic economic truths behind these things; I don't think you could understand them, Renfrew.”
“Couldn't I?” he asked meekly.
“Oh, this loneliness!” she said. “I feel it when I try to pound ideas into the heads of people like those women back there at that club! When I look at your Aunt Clara, I feel as if I were some creature from another planet, speaking another language, thinking other thoughts, feeling other—”
“Well, as I said,” he objected feebly, “it's quite a distant relationship. She's only connected with me through my grandfather.”
“I know,” said Muriel. “But I feel an antipathy between us that is actually—oh, as if that woman and I could never belong to even the same race!”
“I hope it doesn't go that far,” he said, “I mean I hope she didn't say anything that you'd feel I was responsible for, because she's a connection or something. You wouldn't feel upset with me on account of just that, would you, Muriel?”
“Well—” she said. “After all, people are a great deal like the families they belong to. The longer I live, the more I see that.”
“I don't,” he said, and added, perhaps too thoughtlessly: “I don't think you're a bit like your family.”
“I am, though, in some ways,” she said. “In others I'm not. I think you're exactly like your own family.”
“I might be like some of 'em,” he admitted. “I'm not anything like Aunt Clara.”
“I don't know. Our families aren't congenial, Renfrew.”
“Oh, that!” he said. “It's only lately—on account of the children. I know they fight all the time, but—”
“It's terrible,” she interrupted. “I think it means some deep-seated family antipathy, something ancestral. Really, your family and mine oughtn't to live on the same street.”
“I want to know what on earth you were doing to poor little Robert Eliot.”
Obviously she was in a most serious mood, but he contrived a rather uneasy laugh, and said lightly: “That always seemed lucky—to me.”
“No. You mustn't laugh. It's terrible. The sordid bickering—all day long when they're not in school—the whooping and shrillness—”
“But my little sister fights as much with little Elsie Threamer as she does with your brother, and after all, isn't it as much Robert's fault?”
“No,” said Muriel. “She maddens him. I've never seen a boy so goaded in my life. First she terrorized that dear little Laurence Coy, till Mrs. Coy said he was actually afraid to pass your house on his way to school, and then, because he kept out of her way and she couldn't get at him, she turned on poor little Robert—and since then, he's not the same boy he used to be: he's so morose and upset we scarcely know him!”
“Well, Daisy's different too,” he said. “A change has been coming over her, it seems to me. She used to be the quietest child I ever knew; but now she's restless all the time. I suppose children go through these things.”
“No,” Muriel said firmly. “It's more than that: she persecutes Robert. You know I'm not like most girls of my age, Renfrew; I'm not frivolous, and I can't be content with the surface of things—I must get beneath them and comprehend their sources. It's my nature.”
He nodded with an approval almost too visibly tender. “Of course your nature's different from other girls' natures, Muriel. I've noticed that, ever since my first freshman vacation, 'way back there over four years ago. You've got the most different nature there is, because it's higher and more intellectual than theirs.” Renfrew was warm upon this theme; he would have pursued it indefinitely. “Your intellectual nature is higher than theirs because, really, the most of 'em haven't got any at all, any more than they compare to you in looks, either. Why, with your intellectual nature and your eyes and hair and—”
She checked him, gravely. “No; I only meant that as I can't be content with the mere surface of things, I look deeper, and what I see is a family difference between us.”
“Between you and me?”
“Yes. It's an abyss!”
“But we get along all right,” he protested.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “so far as this mere superficial contact goes. We don't quarrel—”
“I couldn't quarrel with you—” he said, and spoke so emotionally that he was forced to swallow and begin again. “I couldn't quarrel with you, Muriel, any more than I could with—any more than I could with—with some beautiful—some beautiful dove, or something like that!”
“You don't know,” she said, a little regretfully. “You don't go much under the surface of things, Renfrew. You take them lightly; I suppose that's the masculine nature. No; we aren't really even friends, you and I.”
“We aren't?”
“No. We really never could be. There must be some basic uncongeniality between us.”
“But that's nothing to make any real difference between us, is it?” he urged anxiously. “You said you thought I danced just about the way you liked; and don't you remember you said, only Sunday, when we were out walking, you said I didn't jar your moods?”
“I'm not sure,” she said slowly. “I doubt if we ought to see much of each other.”
“You don't mean—you don't—” he faltered. “You don't mean you rather I didn't come over to see you as often as I do?”
“I don't know,” she returned musingly. “Why should you come, since we never, never could be friends or anything?”
“Or anything at all?” he said huskily.
“No. I think not.”
“But, good heavens!” he cried, dismayed. “Is all this because your little brother and my little sister don't get on?”
“It goes deeper than that,” she said. “Our mothers have almost quit speaking to each other.”
“But that's all on account of the children.”
“No; there's a coldness——”
“You mean the way your mother treats me, lately? Well, that's only since Daisy and Robert—”
But again she shook her head, interrupting: “Family traits go very deep. They may not show on the surface, but they're there. If one person in a family shows a certain trait, you can be pretty sure all the other members of that family have the same trait. They may suppress it for a long time, but it will come out sometime, maybe some other way..... I don't suppose you've heard of Freud, Renfrew?”
“Who?” he inquired gloomily.
“Well, anyhow, if you have a trait,” she continued, “you've got it, and that's all there is to it. It's bound to motivate you one way or another.”
“Well, suppose it is,” he said. “I don't see how that makes this terrible uncongeniality between us you speak of.”
“Don't you? I mean that I see certain traits in your relatives—”
“In my Great-aunt Clara?” he protested. “I told you she's not—”
“In your own sister!” Muriel said with emphasis.
“But, good heavens, she's only nine years old!”
“Yes,” Muriel agreed. “That's all the more significant: already she has a mania for persecution.”
Poor Renfrew looked at her with incredulity. “You mean you actually believe she persecutes your brother, when he's a year older than he is and two or three times her weight?”
“I do,” Muriel said, and he was obliged to perceive that she was entirely serious.
“But how?”
“I don't know. I only know he's not the same boy he used to be.”
“But what does she do to him?”
“I said I didn't know. Robert is a manly boy, and when we asked him about it, he simply declined to say a word. But he's actually afraid to go into our front yard when she's anywhere about. I've seen him turn back a dozen times, myself, as soon as he caught sight of her, no matter at what distance. I tell you she has a mania for persecution.”
“And you think it's a family trait?” Renfrew inquired pathetically.
At this she looked somewhat disturbed. “I try never to be personal,” she explained. “And if I say yes, it would sound like attacking your family. All I was doing, really, was just thinking aloud in an impersonal way: getting below the surface of things.”
“But what I mean,” he insisted, “—I mean: Do you mean you think because you think poor little Daisy's got this 'mania for persecution,' or whatever it is, you think I've got one too, and it'll come out on me some day, and you'd rather not see so much of me any more on that account?”
She looked annoyed. “Well, that isn't precisely the best way to put it,” she said primly.
Unfortunately young Mr. Mears had a moment of shrewdness. “Well, if that isn't what you've been saying, I don't know what on earth you were saying!” he exclaimed, and his shrewdness increasing to a still more unfortunate degree, he continued: “It seems to me that first my Great-aunt Clara's going for your essay got you all upset, and that reminded you of Daisy's being a member of the same family, and then I came along, just at the wrong time and—and—”
He paused, floundering; but his companion insisted upon his concluding the analysis. “Go on,” she said. “Finish what you were going to say.”
But, sidelong, he had seen the flash of her eye; he also perceived the delicate tints of rose deepening upon her pretty cheek; nor was the dangerous note in her voice lost upon him, “That's all,” he said weakly “That's all I was going to say.”
“Oh, it was?” She spoke no more till they had walked the little distance that remained between them and her own gate; but the dangerous note was so clear that his heart misgave him. Arriving at the gate, she passed within, closed that portal between them with a gesture distinctly symbolic of her indignant intention in so doing, and turned to face him over the barrier. “So that's what you think of me, is it?” she said crisply; but emotion of a more plaintive nature became audible as she added, not without gulping: “I'm glad I know—at last!”
He was overcome with distress. “Why, you always know what I think of you, Muriel. You know I think you've got the most beautiful eyes and—”
She made a sound of the sharpest scorn. “Yes, pretty!”
He corrected himself hurriedly. “I mean you know I think you've got the highest and most intellectual nature of any girl in this—”
“Stop!” she bade him. “You don't seem to understand in the slightest what you said!”
“I only said—”
In spite of herself the haughty young lady glanced through it. Then she paused, became a spectator, with Renfrew.
“I'll tell you what you said!” she cried, and her eyes grew suddenly so much larger and brighter that Renfrew was stricken to instant silence. Her voice quavered, yet was hot with resentment as she went on: “You said that because I was offended by the way those women talked about my paper, especially your Aunt Clara, I was in such a state of irritation that I had to take it out on the first person that came along, and that happened to be you; and so I began abusing your family, and even your little sister, and trying to make you uncomfortable—”
“No, no!” he protested. “I didn't—”
“You did!” she cried. That's the kind of person you think I am!”
“It isn't! I only said—”
“That's exactly what you meant!” She had the advantage of him there, because it was indeed what he meant; moreover, it happened to be the truth, though of course she was not in a state of mind to perceive this; nor was her resentment any the less natural; for of course the truth, even when stated with the greatest kindness, is frequently more enraging than the basest of slanders. Renfrew could but protest in vain; and being honest, e thus deepened the injury.
“I only meant I made a mistake—I mean a mistake in coming along just I then,” he floundered. “If I'd known I Aunt Clara had got you all upset, I'd have kept away. I mean—I mean you'd have had a chance to cool down and—”
“That's enough!” she cried. “All you do is to say it again!”
“No, no! I mean if it hadn't been for Aunt Clara's taking on like that at the club, why, it probably would never have occurred to you to say you thought I was like poor little Daisy.”
“It wouldn't?” Miss Eliot said, and perhaps illogically, but certainly with a sincerity of conviction that approached violence, she pointed down the street, exclaiming: “Look! Look at her now! And look at my poor little brother! And then tell me I'm not right!”
RENFREW looked. Four or five boys, headed by his small sister, burst through a previously neat hedge in shrieking pursuit of a fleeing figure that was larger and fatter than any of the pursuers. Among the most ardent of these latter, it was rather surprising to note the agile figure of that Laurence Coy not long since mentioned by Miss Eliot as also a fugitive from the terrible Daisy. Evidently he fought on her side today, for he was “after” Robert as wolfishly as any she led.
Even at a distance the pallor of Master Eliot's present complexion was striking: he moved in visible terror, not unmingled with that quality of rage which is always an underrunning component of fear. As he crossed the street, he obtained a broken chunk of asphalt paving; and he hurled this missile vindictively at Daisy Mears, who ducked it shrieking with the greatest joy and never abating her pace. Robert tore his way through another hedge, desperately seeking his own yard; the demoniac band went through after him and were lost to the sight of the emotional couple at the front gate, though incoherent shrillnesses continued to be heard at varying distances.
“There!” said Muriel. “That goes on day after day, whenever the poor boy barely steps outside his own house!”
“Well, but I was saying—”
“I told you what you were saying!” And with this, a brilliant moisture trembled in the eyes of the injured lady, as she thought of the wrong he had just done her—to cap the wrong his Great-aunt Clara had done her, and those continuous wrongs all the time being done to her brother by his sister. “You said what you knew was unjust and would hurt me! Isn't that persecuting?”
“But I only said if Aunt Clara hadn't upset—”
“Don't say it again!” she exclaimed
“But I only meant if you hadn't got so upset by what she—”
“Good-by!” said Muriel, choking. “It is a family trait. You're just the same as that terrible child! I don't want to see you again!”
Then, seeking for a handkerchief among the crumpled sheets of manuscript in her reticule, she half-ran to the house, and went indoors tumultuously. Renfrew walked despondently across the street to his own dwelling-place, and sat down upon a bench under an old walnut tree in the front yard.
“Oh, my!” he sighed.
With troubled, honest eyes he watched the blank front windows of the house opposite, hoping that maybe there would come just the glimpse of a pretty hand, even if its only errand were to adjust the shade of one of those sacred windows upstairs. But no such grace was vouchsafed him; the windows all remained blank to the plaintive gaze, though he continued to watch them patiently; and his expression should have touched Muriel, if she saw it from some hidden vantage: it was so like that of a conscientious and devoted pup who cannot explain to himself why a slammed door has shut him out.
At intervals there came to his ears a far-off clamor, childish but vehement, and the piercing merriment of his active little sister. The sounds drew nearer, till he could distinguish words: “He's hidin' under that wheelbarrow!” .... “There he goes!” .... “I'll get him!” But finally there seemed to be a culmination, a great racket in the Eliots' back yard, ending suddenly; while the appearance forthwith of the former pursuers, now scattered and flying to the street, permitted a fair guess that Master Eliot had reached sanctuary at his own kitchen door, and that probably his tormentors had been dispersed by adult intervention.
DAISY came first; she ran out through the painful gate, but lately closed to her brother with such eloquence; then, when she reached the sidewalk, she paused and looked for her followers. They had gathered in an irregular clump at some distance from her, and seemed uncertain what to do, their faces expressing both gravity and irresolution. Laurence Coy in particular now appeared mistrustful of his leader's intentions; for he moved slowly but constantly farther away from her.
She hailed them. “Come on back. She isn't goin' to hurt us.”
One known to her brother as Tommy Kimball made reply, but Renfrew did not catch his words, which were received with scorn by Daisy.
“What if she does tell your mother?” she called. “We never hurt him, did we? If she tells my mother, I'll show where he tore my clo'es when he was tryin' to get away. Look!” She displayed a skirt in need of really fundamental repairs, and walked toward the uncertain group; but for some reason these followers, though they had been ready enough to join her in pursuit of Robert, now appeared to distrust her.
“Stand still,” she said. “You wait.”
Thomas Kimball and his friends continued to move away from her. “Don't you come near me,” Master Kimball said warningly, walking backward hurriedly and keeping his eye upon her.
“Pooh!” she said. “I wont hurt you.” And then, in sheer vainglory, she halted, and upon the grass-plot that bordered the sidewalk, she stood on her head. At least, she attempted this feat, and was partly successful, in full sight of the Eliot windows.
Renfrew jumped up in horror. “Daisy!” he called. “Daisy Mears!”
Resuming a more conventional posture, she seemed surprised at the earnestness in his voice. “What?”
“You come home!” he called.
She plucked a dandelion, and came across the street and into the yard, eating it thoughtfully. “What you want, Renfrew?” she inquired.
“Don't eat that dandelion.”
“You don't eat the stem,” she informed him, “—only the top part. The stem's too bitter.”
HE gazed down on her coldly. “Don't you know you mustn't stand on your head in the public streets?”
“Why?” she asked absently, and seating herself on the grass at his feet, began to be interested in an ant-hill she discovered there.
“It's terrible!” he said. “It's an awful thing to do!”
“Well,” she returned, poking the ant-hill delicately with her forefinger, “most ev'rybody does it.”
“What!”
“I mean most ev'rybody I know.”
“Well, you quit it; that's all,” said Renfrew, and resuming his seat under the walnut tree near by, he looked at her frowningly. “I want to know what on earth you were doing to poor little Eliot.”
She glanced up, mildly astonished. “When?” she asked.
“Just now. All the time lately, for that matter. What made him run away from you and those boys?”
“You mean Robert?” she asked.
“Yes, Robert. What was he running for?”
She smiled thoughtfully. “Oh, he was just runnin'.”
“Yes, but what for?”
“I guess he must wanted to go in his own yard.”
“What happened after he got there?”
“'After he got there,'” Daisy murmured absently, as if to herself. “Well, he went in the house.”
But Renfrew increased his sternness. “Did his mother speak to you?”
“Do you mean Robert's mother?”
“Yes, I do. Did you see her?”
“I think so,” Daisy returned, after a pause, during which she seemed conscientiously to ransack her memory. “I think she came out the back way, or somewheres.”
“What did she say to you and those boys?”
“You mean to Laurence Coy and Thomas Kimball and——”
“Yes, I do,” said Renfrew. “And I mean you! What did she say?”
Daisy shook her head. “Well, I doe' know all she said.”
“What was part of it, then?”
“Well,” said Daisy, in her conscientious manner of wishing to remember accurately, “I think she said it was time for Robert to come in the house.”
“Daisy!”
“She told Thomas Kimball he better go on home,” Daisy added. “I remember that.”
“But what did she say to you?”
“Well, she was sort of talkin' to all of us, and it was kind of mixed up and everything; you could hardly tell what she meant.”
“Now, Daisy, I want you to listen to me,” Renfrew said, and he leaned forward, emphasizing his seriousness by his attitude. “You've got this whole neighborhood upset. Why, no grown person could have made anything like the trouble you have, lately! Now, look here, you don't want to grow up to be like Aunt Clara, do you?”
“Aunt Clara?” Daisy said inquiringly, and was so inconsequent as to add: “She gave me four doughnuts when I was at her house yesterday. Four doughnuts and an apple.”
“No matter, you don't want to grow up to be like her, do you?”
“Why not?” the little girl asked, but the inquiry, though quite natural, struck her brother as most unreasonable.
“Why not'!” he exclaimed. “Well, you don't; that's all! But you will if you don't learn to behave better right away.”
“I don't think so,” she returned.
“Why not?”
“Because I wont grow up right away. It takes ever an' ever so long to grow up. So how can I?”
“How can you what?” he cried.
“How can I grow up like Aunt Clara right away?”
“Oh, my goodness!” he moaned, and in helpless exasperation looked down upon the child's innocent and inquiring face. But he was determined to get under the surface of things and discover the sources of them for once, and so, summoning his patience, though without abandoning his severity, he said: “Now, listen to me, Daisy. I don't know whether you can understand this or not, but the way you behave to poor little Robert Eliot looks as if you had a perfect mania for persecution!”
“What is that, Renfrew?” she asked, and there could be no doubt that now she was brightly interested. “What'd you say I got?”
“Never mind; it isn't anything nice. Now, poor Robert is a manly little fellow. His own family asked him what this trouble is, and he wouldn't tell them.”
FOR a moment Daisy forgot that a grown person was cross-examining her: she laughed out.
“I bet not!” she cried
“Why do you 'bet not'?” Renfrew asked quickly. “Is he too afraid of what you and the other boys would do afterwards? Why wont Robert tell?”
But Daisy's expression had instantly grown absent again; she played with the ant-hill in the grass, and her eyes had a far-away look. “What, Renfrew?” she asked gently.
“Why do you say you bet Robert wouldn't tell? Answer me. Why do you say he wouldn't tell?”
“He wouldn't tell'?” she repeated with that absolute vacancy of which childhood alone is master. “He wouldn't tell who?”
“Oh, my, my!” he groaned. “Why wouldn't he tell his family?”
“What wouldn't he tell?” she asked uninterestedly, then added in a brighter tone: “All these ants are comin' up from their cellar to see who's ringin' their front door-bell. Just look at these ants, Renfrew! They're—”
“Let those ants alone! I want to know exactly what you've been doing to little Robert Eliot.”
“When, Renfrew?”
“All the time!”
“Why, we don't even go to the same school,” she said reproachfully. “I don't even see him more'n two or three—”
“Never mind! What were you doing to him half an hour ago?”
“Why, I wasn't doing anything at all.”
“I saw you,” Renfrew said indignantly. “I saw you chasing him through yards and across the street and everywhere. Now, what were you doing?”
“Why, just playing,” she returned plaintively.
“Robert wasn't playing,” Renfrew insisted, and added, with perhaps a touch of exaggeration: “He was running for his life.”
“Robert was?” she asked.
“Yes; he was! And I want to know why! What was he afraid of?”
She put the end of her right forefinger thoughtfully against a small front tooth “He threw a piece of the street at me,” she remarked reminiscently.
“Yes, he did. That was because he was trying to get away from you. I want to know why?”
“Because he was naughty,” she said. “It's naughty to throw like that.” She concluded by becoming severe. “He threw it because he was a naughty boy!”
Renfrew got up and walked to and fro, rubbing the back of his neck vindictively. “Oh, my!” he groaned. “Oh, my! Oh, my goodness!”
“These are the darlingest ants!” Daisy observed, bending her face down over the ant-hill. “They come up out their front door and run around like they're just crazy; then they go down cellar again—”
RENFREW whirled upon her. “Can't you understand a simple question? You're nine years old; you ought to be able to understand a few plain words of the simplest language.” .
He was vehement; and this seemed to puzzle her. “Are you mad about something, Renfrew?” she asked, regarding him gravely.
“See here!” he said. “A good deal depends on this for me, and I want to know. Now, once and for all, what do you do to Robert Eliot? Do the other boys hold him while you tease him? Did he begin it or did you? Do you pinch him—or stick pins in him—or what? What do you do to him?”
“To Robert Eliot?” she inquired with a vagueness that was complete. Then bending over the ant-hill once more, she asked gently and unconcernedly:
“When, Renfrew?”
There is no doubt that Renfrew had a sensation of bafflement; he felt that his child-sister's intelligence had closed absolutely; and he could conceive no possible means of getting a light through this impenetrable opacity. He despaired of ever in this life conveying his meaning to her; and again violently rubbing the back of his neck, and muttering, he paced the lawn, his other resources of self-expression appearing to be exhausted.
So soon do we forget our child selves, he did not even know that he had been in a fencing-match. Memory should have told him he had been as baffling as Daisy a hundred times in his own childhood, which was not far distant from him. But adolescence, once passed, is a curtain over childhood, much as convalescence is the curtain over a fever; the life that was lived behind this curtain, the thoughts and inward ways that were there, are irrevocably dimmed even to those who themselves lived that life and had those thoughts and inward ways.
Renfrew might have known that although a grown person cannot evade a question over and over by pretending to misunderstand it, since the hypocrisy would be too patent, a child has always the resource of allowing his attention to do what it wants to do, which is to wander at ease. There is no hypocrisy then; there is only a flaccid placidity due to the entire absence of concentration. The resulting irrelevance is not accomplished by the efforts of an actor; it is not a lie; it is genuine. And being obviously genuine, it is a secure armor against the penetration of adults, except the most ruthless. Now, since Renfrew was one of the mildest of men, and fond of his family, including Daisy, he was here in a pathetic case.
HE gave it up. “Well,” he said, turning to her gloomily, “you go in the house and get your clothes fixed. You look awful.”
She jumped up obediently. “I will, Renfrew.”
“Wait a minute,” said. “Is there anything in any of stores downtown you want?”
“What?”
“Any doll—or blocks—or tin kitchen—anything?”
Her eyes glowed, for his hand was in his pocket. Primordial old, old instinct had thrown him back, in his desperation, upon the ultimate raw diplomacy of the male in any struggle with a member of the strategic sex.
“Oh, Renfrew!” Daisy cried; and she began to jump up and down. “Will you geve me that lov-a-ly little doll-house down at Rewby's? It's got a staircase and wall-paper and—”
“How much is it?”
“Five dollars. And it's got a little table and some little chairs and—”
“Here,” said Renfrew; and he extended toward her his complete capital. “Will you promise me to let Robert Eliot alone?” He held the bill away from her. “Will you promise to make friends with him?”
“Why, that's all I been tryin' to do!” she cried.
“What?”
“Every single thing!” she said earnestly. “That's everything in the world is matter with him. I cross my heart!”
Renfrew was astonished. “You've only been trying to make friends with him? What were you chasing him for?”
“Just to make friends with him.”
THE thing was incredible, but her earnest sincerity could not be mistaken: it was plain upon her face and in her voice. “But what made him run?” her brother insisted.
“He don't like it, I guess.”
“Don't like you to make friends with him?”
“He says he don't.”
“Well, he certainly acted as if he didn't. I don't understand it: he must be a very peculiar boy. But what were the others doing—Laurence Coy and Tommy Kimball and those boys? Why were they—”
“Oh, they were just around,” she said, seeming to feel that this explained everything. “Aren't you goin' to give me that doll-house after all?”
He sighed, and lowered the bill almost to within her reach as she jumped; but there he had an inspiration. “I don't understand it,” he said, “but I guess you'd better promise me to stop trying to make friends with him.”
“I will,” she said readily. “I wont ever try to make friends with him again!”
And upon this, though with a disturbed and uncertain mind, he permitted her to take the bill and run, dancing, into the house.
After that he resumed his vigil, watching the blank windows of the house across the street, and wondering gloomily if he had done well to bribe his persecuting sister never to make friends with the brother of the resentful lady. There seemed to be a paradox somewhere.
He was well puzzled; small blame to him! To have dealt in the one afternoon with two ladies so mysterious in their impulses and emotions, and consequently so incomprehensible in their remarks, was enough to leave any honest young gentleman certain of just one thing in his befuddlement: that no man could ever understand such a sex. Yet nothing was surer than that he had understood the one, and that his perfect interpretation of her piqued mood was the very thing now keeping the once friendly windows blank; and it was quite as certain that he might have understood the other, had he chanced to be present at a children's party, a little earlier in the season.
It was at this party that the character of Daisy Mears had undergone a radical alteration. Up to the very hour she had been all her life a quiet, demure little girl, wholly commonplace, almost unnoticeable and virtually never ill-behaved; after it, she was the most talked-about person on her street.
What changed her may be called destiny by those who like to reason in that way; but so far as all material evidence goes, it was chance. She merely happened to discover a way to become suddenly prominent; she followed a vagrant impulse and tried to make friends with the young host, Laurence Coy. Keeping up the effort to make friends with him, she had succeeded in being prominent throughout the party, and prominence, once attained, is hard to relinquish.
Consequently, ever since the party, Daisy had been doing everything she could to continue being prominent, and the result was that her street might plausibly have been renamed after that famous thoroughfare in Paris, the Street of Bad Children: it became a street of shrill embroilments, afternoon turmoils and fleeing boys. Mrs. Coy spoke the truth when she said that Laurence would not come that way. He would not, indeed—not until Daisy gave up making friends with him and decided to make friends with Robert Eliot instead, as a novelty. After that, Laurence came back; he was there every day indeed, helping Daisy in her efforts to make friends with Robert.
So simple as that was the secret Renfrew felt to be hopeless!y veiled from him in the wandering inconsequences of his little sister.
THE hard-hearted windows gave him no consoling sign, not even a provoking one; nor did they the next day, though (with a book in his hand as disguise) he was faithful under the walnut tree, and retired only during a thunder-shower. On the third afternoon Muriel went out with her mother in a closed car, and seemed unaware that any such fine arboreal inspirations as walnut trees could be found in the western hemisphere. Then Renfrew was downcast and wondered if the universe had been made in spite.
But the day after that, she came out of her gate and set off up the street on foot; and though she was again oblivious of walnuts, and her air and stride were disregardfully businesslike, yet the business part of town was in the other direction, and Renfrew took courage to follow. Not that he appeared to follow; on the contrary, he went hastily to an alley behind his own house; then he ran hard up the alley to the next cross-street, turned into this cross-street and emerged from it with a casual air, ten feet before the pedestrian lady.
“Oh—you?” he said in flagrant surprise.
“I came out to walk alone,” she informed him.
“Yes, I see,” he said. “I—I only wanted to ask you a question.”
“Will you hurry, then?”
“Yes. I just wanted to know— Perhaps I might just walk along with you while I'm asking it?”
“Very well,” she said. “What question?”
“Well, the other day, after we had that—ah—talk, and you seemed so put out with my poor little sister—”
“I think you forget,” she interrupted. “If I was 'put out,' it was because seemed to me that you enjoyed doing to me what she was doing to my poor little brother.”
“But she wasn't doing anything to him,” Renfrew objected.
“She wasn't?”
“No, she wasn't. She told me so herself. She was only trying to make friends with him.”
“What!”
“And that's all I was trying to do with you,” said Renfrew. “Just trying to make friends with you, I was.”
But at that he caught a familiar flash of her eye and paused.
“What is your question?” she asked.
“I only wanted to know if your brother isn't in good spirits again. You spoke of his seeming depressed, and I—”
An urgent sound in the rear checked him, and he looked round. “Why, there's your brother now. He seems—”
HE paused again, as a panting boy with frenzied eyes dived by them from behind and disappeared through a hole in a high board fence surrounding a vacant lot. This hunted boy was not Robert: he was Master Thomas Kimball. Robert was his pursuer, and if ever there lived a happy, rosy-cheeked, care-free boy, it was this Robert. He was closely accompanied by Laurence Coy, who showed plainly a similar possession of happiness and health. Both jumped up and down, whooping.
“He's gone through that hole in the fence!” shouted Robert. “I said I bet we could drive him in there! Now she's got him!”
They were so intent upon the chase they were not concerned to identify the pair of grown people at a little distance from them. Thus, still whooping, Robert and Laurence immediately climbed the fence, disappearing on the other side. Instantly from the vacant lot there came an animal cry of some desperate thing trapped and anguished. Other cries rose, shriller, in triumph.
“Let's look over the fence,” Renfrew suggested.
Muriel received this proposal with hauteur. “What for?” she asked coldly. “I scarcely see the object. Besides, it's too high.”
“Well, then,” he said, “let's look through the hole little Tommy Kimball used. There's a board off there.”
THEY had arrived at this aperture, in fact, as he spoke, and in spite of herself the haughty young lady glanced 1rough it. Then she paused and became a spectator, with Renfrew.
In the middle of the lot Thomas Kimball, twisting at every joint, was held captive by three surging boys—and all three were needed. Advancing toward him with outrageous capers and bellowings came Laurence Coy and the fat Robert: and accompanying them danced the demon child, Daisy.
She ran to Thomas Kimball, and in spite of his most fearful writhings to avoid her touch, she patted him twice upon the head.
“He's my dear little pet!” she cried.
Then horror gave Thomas Kimball a supreme strength. He broke loose and sped away, head down, from the furies, while they followed in a migratory war dance, taunting.
“She's your girl, Thomas! Now she is your girl! She's Tommy's girl!”
The ruined Thomas ran like one to whom the worst has befallen, yet who hopes to outrun it; and the pack was after him. “Wait for your girl! She wants to pet you some more!”
They disappeared over the fence on the other side of the lot.
“Well, I declare!” Renfrew said. “So that's all it was! That's all she'd been doing to Robert, as I said—just trying to make friends with him. And you said I was persecuting you in the same way. Do you mean—”
“That will do!” Muriel said sharply, but her face was scarlet, and presently it proved to be just as well that she had some one walking with her. Anybody walking alone who indulged in such regardless hilarity as she did, might have been thought much more than eccentric.
BOOTH TARKINGTON
is writing the best stories of childhood for this magazine that he has ever written. The one in the September issue is about a TIGER—but not the sort of tiger that roams the jungle or that they keep in cages. Be sure to read “The Tiger” in the forthcoming September issue of The Red Book Magazine
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1946, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 77 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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