The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr.Pupkin Judge Pepperleigh lived in a big house with hardwood floors and a wide piazza that looked over the lake from the top of Oneida Street.
Every day about half-past five he used to come home from his office in the Mariposa Court House.On some days as he got near the house he would call out to his wife:
"Almighty Moses, Martha! who left the sprinkler on the grass?"On other days he would call to her from quite a little distance off:
"Hullo, mother! Got any supper for a hungry man?"And Mrs.Pepperleigh never knew which it would be.On the days when he swore at the sprinkler you could see his spectacles flash like dynamite.But on the days when he called: "Hullo, mother," they were simply irradiated with kindliness.
Some days, I say, he would cry out with a perfect whine of indignation: "Suffering Caesar! has that infernal dog torn up those geraniums again?" And other days you would hear him singing out:
"Hullo, Rover! Well, doggie, well, old fellow!"In the same way at breakfast, the judge, as he looked over the morning paper, would sometimes leap to his feet with a perfect howl of suffering, and cry: "Everlasting Moses! the Liberals have carried East Elgin." Or else he would lean back from the breakfast table with the most good-humoured laugh you ever heard and say: "Ha! ha! the Conservatives have carried South Norfolk."And yet he was perfectly logical, when you come to think of it.After all, what is more annoying to a sensitive, highly-strung man than an infernal sprinkler playing all over the place, and what more agreeable to a good-natured, even-tempered fellow than a well-prepared supper? Or, what is more likeable than one's good, old, affectionate dog bounding down the path from sheer delight at seeing you,--or more execrable than an infernal whelp that has torn up the geraniums and is too old to keep, anyway?
As for politics, well, it all seemed reasonable enough.When the Conservatives got in anywhere, Pepperleigh laughed and enjoyed it, simply because it does one good to see a straight, fine, honest fight where the best man wins.When a Liberal got in, it made him mad, and he said so,--not, mind you; from any political bias, for his office forbid it,--but simply because one can't bear to see the country go absolutely to the devil.
I suppose, too, it was partly the effect of sitting in court all day listening to cases.One gets what you might call the judicial temper of mind.Pepperleigh had it so strongly developed that I've seen him kick a hydrangea pot to pieces with his foot because the accursed thing wouldn't flower.He once threw the canary cage clear into the lilac bushes because the "blasted bird wouldn't stop singing." It was a straight case of judicial temper.Lots of judges have it, developed in just the same broad, all-round way as with Judge Pepperleigh.
I think it must be passing sentences that does it.Anyway, Pepperleigh had the aptitude for passing sentences so highly perfected that he spent his whole time at it inside of court and out.
I've heard him hand out sentences for the Sultan of Turkey and Mrs.
Pankhurst and the Emperor of Germany that made one's blood run cold.
He would sit there on the piazza of a summer evening reading the paper, with dynamite sparks flying from his spectacles as he sentenced the Czar of Russia to ten years in the salt mines--and made it fifteen a few minutes afterwards.Pepperleigh always read the foreign news--the news of things that he couldn't alter--as a form of wild and stimulating torment.
So you can imagine that in some ways the judge's house was a pretty difficult house to go to.I mean you can see how awfully hard it must have been for Mr.Pupkin.I tell you it took some nerve to step up on that piazza and say, in a perfectly natural, off-hand way: "Oh, how do you do, judge? Is Miss Zena in? No, I won't stay, thanks; Ithink I ought to be going.I simply called." A man who can do that has got to have a pretty fair amount of savoir what do you call it, and he's got to be mighty well shaved and have his cameo pin put in his tie at a pretty undeniable angle before he can tackle it.Yes, and even then he may need to hang round behind the lilac bushes for half an hour first, and cool off.And he's apt to make pretty good time down Oneida Street on the way back.
Still, that's what you call love, and if you've got it, and are well shaved, and your boots well blacked, you can do things that seem almost impossible.Yes, you can do anything, even if you do trip over the dog in getting off the piazza.
Don't suppose for a moment that Judge Pepperleigh was an unapproachable or a harsh man always and to everybody.Even Mr.
Pupkin had to admit that that couldn't be so.To know that, you had only to see Zena Pepperleigh put her arm round his neck and call him Daddy.She would do that even when there were two or three young men sitting on the edge of the piazza.You know, I think, the way they sit on the edge in Mariposa.It is meant to indicate what part of the family they have come to see.Thus when George Duff, the bank manager, came up to the Pepperleigh house, he always sat in a chair on the verandah and talked to the judge.But when Pupkin or Mallory Tompkins or any fellow like that came, he sat down in a sidelong fashion on the edge of the boards and then they knew exactly what he was there for.If he knew the house well, he leaned his back against the verandah post and smoked a cigarette.But that took nerve.
But I am afraid that this is a digression, and, of course, you know all about it just as well as I do.All that I was trying to say was that I don't suppose that the judge had ever spoken a cross word to Zena in his life.--Oh, he threw her novel over the grape-vine, Idon't deny that, but then why on earth should a girl read trash like the Errant Quest of the Palladin Pilgrim, and the Life of Sir Galahad, when the house was full of good reading like The Life of Sir John A.Macdonald, and Pioneer Days in Tecumseh Township?
