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.