Tutt and Mr. Tutt - Arthur Train
"Huh! Ain't had a bite!"
"Huh!"
"Huh!"
Silence for forty minutes. Then: "Huh! Had a bite?"
"Nope!"
"Huh!"
That was generally the sum total of their interchange Yet it satisfied
them, for their souls were in harmony. To them it was pregnant of
unutterable meanings, of philosophic mysteries more subtle than those of
the esoterics, of flowers and poetry, of bird-song and twilight, of all
the nuances of softly whispered avowals, of the elusive harmonies of
love's half-fainting ecstasy.
"Huh!"
"Huh!"
And then into this Eden--only not by virtue of the excision of any
vertebra such as was originally necessary in the case of Adam--burst
woman. There was silence no longer. The air was rent with clamor; for
both Appleboy and Tunnygate, within a month of one another, took unto
themselves wives. Wives after their own image!
For a while things went well enough; it takes ladies a few weeks to find
out each other's weak points. But then the new Mrs. Tunnygate
unexpectedly yet undeniably began to exhibit the serpent's tooth, the
adder's tongue or the cloven hoof--as the reader's literary traditions
may lead him to prefer. For no obvious reason at all she conceived a
violent hatred of Mrs. Appleboy, a hatred that waxed all the more
virulent on account of its object's innocently obstinate refusal to
comprehend or recognize it. Indeed Mrs. Tunnygate found it so difficult
to rouse Mrs. Appleboy into a state of belligerency sufficiently
interesting that she soon transferred her energies to the more worthy
task of making Appleboy's life a burden to him.
To this end she devoted herself with a truly Machiavellian ingenuity,
devising all sorts of insults irritations and annoyances, and adding to
the venom of her tongue the inventive cunning of a Malayan witch doctor.
The Appleboys' flower-pots mysteriously fell off the piazza, their
thole-pins disappeared, their milk bottles vanished, Mr. Appleboy's fish
lines acquired a habit of derangement equaled only by barbed-wire
entanglements, and his clams went bad! But these things might have been
borne had it not been for the crowning achievement of her malevolence,
the invasion of the Appleboys' cherished lawn, upon which they lavished
all that anxious tenderness which otherwise they might have devoted to a
child.
It was only about twenty feet by twenty, and it was bordered by a hedge
of moth-eaten privet, but anyone who has ever attempted to induce a
blade of grass to grow upon a sand dune will fully appreciate the
deviltry of Mrs. Tunnygate's malignant mind. Already there was a horrid
rent where Tunnygate had floundered through at her suggestion in order
to save going round the pathetic grass plot which the Appleboys had
struggled to create where Nature had obviously intended a floral vacuum.
Undoubtedly it had been the sight of Mrs. Appleboy with her small
watering pot patiently encouraging the recalcitrant blades that had
suggested the malicious thought to Mrs. Tunnygate that maybe the
Appleboys didn't own that far up the beach. They didn't--that was the
mockery of it. Like many others they had built their porch on their
boundary line, and, as Mrs. Tunnygate pointed out, they were claiming to
own something that wasn't theirs. So Tunnygate, in daily obedience to
his spouse, forced his way through the hedge to the beach, and daily the
wrath of the Appleboys grew until they were driven almost to
desperation.
Now when the two former friends sat fishing in their skiffs they either
contemptuously ignored one another or, if they "Huh-Huhed!" at all the
"Huhs!" resembled the angry growls of infuriated beasts. The worst of it
was that the Appleboys couldn't properly do anything about it. Tunnygate
had, as Mrs. Tunnygate sneeringly pointed out, a perfect legal right to
push his way through the hedge and tramp across the lawn, and she didn't
propose to allow the Appleboys to gain any rights by proscription,
either. Not much!
Therefore, when Mr. Appleboy addressed to Mr. Tunnygate the remarks with
which this story opens, the latter insolently replied in words, form or
substance that Mr. Appleboy could go to hell. Moreover, as he went by
Mr. Appleboy he took pains to kick over a clod of transplanted sea
grass, nurtured by Mrs. Appleboy as the darling of her bosom, and
designed to give an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise bare and
unconvincing surface of sand. Mr. Appleboy almost cried with vexation.
"Oh!" he ejaculated, struggling for words to express the full content of
his feeling. "Gosh, but you're--mean!"
He hit it! Curiously enough, that was exactly the word! Tunnygate was
mean--and his meanness was second only to that of the fat hippopotama
his wife.
Then, without knowing why, for he had no formulated ideas as to the
future, and probably only intended to try to scare Tunnygate with vague
threats, Appleboy added: "I warn you not to go through that hedge again!
Understand--I warn you! And if you do I won't be responsible for the
consequences!"
He really didn't mean a thing by the words, and Tunnygate knew it.
"Huh!" retorted the latter contemptuously. "You!"
Mr. Appleboy went inside the shack and banged the door. Mrs. Appleboy
was peeling potatoes in the kitchen-living room.
"I can't stand it!" he cried weakly. "He's driving me wild!"
"Poor lamb!" soothed Mrs. Appleboy, peeling an interminable rind. "Ain't
that just a sweetie? Look! It's most as long as your arm!"
She held it up dangling between her thumb and fore-finger. Then, with a
groan she dropped it at his feet. "I know it's a real burden to you,
deary!" she sighed.
Suddenly they both bent forward with startled eyes, hypnotized by the
peel upon the floor.
Unmistakably it spelt "dog"! They looked at one another significantly.
"It is a symbol!" breathed Mrs. Appleboy in an awed whisper.
"Whatever it is, it's some grand idea!" exclaimed her husband. "Do you
know anybody who's got one? I mean a--a--"
"I know just what you mean," she agreed. "I wonder we never thought of
it before! But there wouldn't be any use in getting any dog!"
"Oh, no!" he concurred. "We want a real--dog!"
"One you know about!" she commented.
"The fact is," said he, rubbing his forehead, "if they know about 'em
they do something to 'em. It ain't so easy to get the right kind."
"Oh, we'll get one!" she encouraged him. "Now Aunt Eliza up to Livornia
used to have one. It made a lot of trouble and they ordered her--the
selectmen did--to do away with it. But she only pretended she had--she
didn't really--and I think she's got him yet."
"Gee!" said Mr. Appleboy tensely. "What sort was it?"
"A bull!" she replied. "With a big white face."
"That's the kind!" he agreed excitedly. "What was its name?"
"Andrew," she answered.
"That's a queer name for a dog!" he commented "Still, I don't care what
his name is, so long as he's the right kind of dog! Why don't you write
to Aunt Eliza to-night?"
"Of course Andrew may be dead," she hazarded. "Dogs do die."
"Oh, I guess Andrew isn't dead!" he said hopefully "That tough kind of
dog lasts a long time. What will you say to Aunt Eliza?"
Mrs. Appleboy went to the dresser and took a pad and pencil from one of
the shelves.
"Oh, something like this," she answered, poising the pencil over the
pad in her lap:
"Dear Aunt Eliza: I hope you are quite well. It is sort of lonely living
down here on the beach and there are a good many rough characters, so we
are looking for a dog for companionship and protection Almost any kind
of healthy dog would do and you may be sure he would have a good home.
Hoping to see you soon. Your affectionate niece, Bashemath."
"I hope she'll send us Andrew," said Appleboy fervently.
"I guess she will!" nodded Bashemath.
* * * * *
"What on earth is that sign?" wrathfully demanded Mrs. Tunnygate one
morning about a week later as she looked across the Appleboys' lawn from
her kitchen window. "Can you read it, Herman?"
Herman stopped trying to adjust his collar and went out on the piazza.
"Something about 'dog'," he declared finally.
"Dog!" she exclaimed. "They haven't got a dog!"
"Well," he remarked, "that's what the sign says: 'Beware of the dog'!
And there's something above it. Oh! 'No crossing this property.
Trespassing forbidden.'"
"What impudence!" avowed Mrs. Tunnygate. "Did you ever know such
people! First they try and take land that don't belong to them, and then
they go and lie about having a dog. Where are they, anyway?"
"I haven't seen 'em this morning," he answered. "Maybe they've gone away
and put up the sign so we won't go over. Think that'll stop us!"
"In that case they've got another think comin'!" she retorted angrily.
"I've a good mind to have you go over and tear up the whole place!"
"'N pull up the hedge?" he concurred eagerly. "Good chance!"
Indeed, to Mr. Tunnygate it seemed the supreme opportunity both to
distinguish himself in the eyes of his blushing bride and to gratify
that perverse instinct inherited from our cave-dwelling ancestors to
destroy utterly--in order, perhaps, that they may never seek to avenge
themselves upon us--those whom we have wronged. Accordingly Mr.
Tunnygate girded himself with his suspenders, and with a gleam of
fiendish exultation in his eye stealthily descended from his porch and
crossed to the hole in the hedge. No one was in sight except two
barefooted searchers after clams a few hundred yards farther up the
beach and a man working in a field half a mile away. The bay shimmered
in the broiling August sun and from a distant grove came the rattle and
wheeze of locusts. Throggs Neck blazed in silence, and utterly silent
was the house of Appleboy.
With an air of bravado, but with a slightly accelerated heartbeat,
Tunnygate thrust himself through the hole in the hedge and looked
scornfully about the Appleboy lawn. A fierce rage worked through his
veins. A lawn! What effrontery! What business had these condescending
second-raters to presume to improve a perfectly good beach which was
satisfactory to other folks? He'd show 'em! He took a step in the
direction of the transplanted sea grass. Unexpectedly the door of the
Appleboy kitchen opened.
"I warned you!" enunciated Mr. Appleboy with unnatural calmness, which
with another background might have struck almost anybody as suspicious.
"Huh!" returned the startled Tunnygate, forced under the circumstances
to assume a nonchalance that he did not altogether feel. "You!"
"Well," repeated Mr. Appleboy. "Don't ever say I didn't!"
"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mr. Tunnygate disdainfully.
With premeditation and deliberation, and with undeniable malice
aforethought, he kicked the nearest bunch of sea grass several feet in
the air. His violence carried his leg high in the air and he partially
lost his equilibrium. Simultaneously a white streak shot from beneath
the porch and something like a red-hot poker thrust itself savagely into
an extremely tender part of his anatomy.
"Ouch! O--o--oh!" he yelled in agony. "Oh!"
"Come here, Andrew!" said Mr. Appleboy mildly. "Good doggy! Come here!"
But Andrew paid no attention. He had firmly affixed himself to the base
of Mr. Tunnygate's personality without any intention of being
immediately detached. And he had selected that place, taken aim, and
discharged himself with an air of confidence and skill begotten of
lifelong experience.
"Oh! O--o--oh!" screamed Tunnygate, turning wildly and clawing through
the hedge, dragging Andrew after him. "Oh! O--oh!"
Mrs. Tunnygate rushed to the door in time to see her spouse lumbering up
the beach with a white object gyrating in the air behind him.
"What's the matter?" she called out languidly. Then perceiving the
matter she hastily followed. The Appleboys were standing on their lawn
viewing the whole proceeding with ostentatious indifference.
Up the beach fled Tunnygate, his cries becoming fainter and fainter. The
two clam diggers watched him curiously, but made no attempt to go to his
assistance. The man in the field leaned luxuriously upon his hoe and
surrendered himself to unalloyed delight. Tunnygate was now but a white
flicker against the distant sand. His wails had a dying fall:
"O--o--oh!"
"Well, we warned him!" remarked Mr. Appleboy to Bashemath with a smile
in which, however, lurked a slight trace of apprehension.
"We certainly did!" she replied. Then after a moment she added a trifle
anxiously: "I wonder what will happen to Andrew!"
Tunnygate did not return. Neither did Andrew. Secluded in their kitchen
living-room the Appleboys heard a motor arrive and through a crack in
the door saw it carry Mrs. Tunnygate away bedecked as for some momentous
ceremonial. At four o'clock, while Appleboy was digging bait, he
observed another motor making its wriggly way along the dunes. It was
fitted longitudinally with seats, had a wire grating and was marked
"N.Y.P.D." Two policemen in uniform sat in front. Instinctively Appleboy
realized that the gods had called him. His heart sank among the clams.
Slowly he made his way back to the lawn where the wagon had stopped
outside the hedge.
"Hey there!" called out the driver. "Is your name Appleboy?"
Appleboy nodded.
"Put your coat on, then, and come along," directed the other. "I've got
a warrant for you."
"Warrant?" stammered Appleboy dizzily.
"What's that?" cried Bashemath, appearing at the door. "Warrant for
what?"
The officer slowly descended and handed Appleboy a paper.
"For assault," he replied. "I guess you know what for, all right!"
"We haven't assaulted anybody," protested Mrs. Appleboy heatedly.
"Andrew--"
"You can explain all that to the judge," retorted the cop. "Meantime put
on your duds and climb in. If you don't expect to spend the night at the
station you'd better bring along the deed of your house so you can give
bail."
"But who's the warrant for?" persisted Mrs. Appleboy.
"For Enoch Appleboy," retorted the cop wearily. "Can't you read?"
"But Enoch didn't do a thing!" she declared. "It was Andrew!"
"Who's Andrew?" inquired the officer of the law mistrustfully.
"Andrew's a dog," she explained.
* * * * *
"Mr. Tutt," announced Tutt, leaning against his senior partner's door
jamb with a formal-looking paper in his hand, "I have landed a case
that will delight your legal soul."
"Indeed?" queried the elder lawyer. "I have never differentiated between
my legal soul and any other I may possess. However, I assume from your
remark that we have been retained in a matter presenting some peculiarly
absurd, archaic or otherwise interesting doctrine of law?"
"Not directly," responded Tutt. "Though you will doubtless find it
entertaining enough, but indirectly--atmospherically so to speak--it
touches upon doctrines of jurisprudence, of religion and of philosophy,
replete with historic fascination."
"Good!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, laying down his stogy. "What kind of a case
is it?"
"It's a dog case!" said the junior partner, waving the paper. "The dog
bit somebody."
"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, perceptibly brightening. "Doubtless we shall
find a precedent in Oliver Goldsmith's famous elegy:
"And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree."
"Only," explained Tutt, "in this case, though the man recovered of the
bite, the dog refused to die!"
"And so they want to prosecute the dog? It can't be done. An animal
hasn't been brought to the bar of justice for several centuries."
"No, no!" interrupted Tutt. "They don't--"
"There was a case," went on Mr. Tutt reminiscently "Let me see--at
Sauvigny, I think it was--about 1457, when they tried a sow and three
pigs for killing a child. The court assigned a lawyer to defend her, but
like many assigned counsel he couldn't think of anything to say in her
behalf. As regards the little pigs he did enter the plea that no animus
was shown, that they had merely followed the example of their mother,
and that at worst they were under age and irresponsible. However, the
court found them all guilty, and the sow was publicly hanged in the
market place."
"What did they do with the three little pigs?" inquired Tutt with some
interest.
"They were pardoned on account of their extreme youth," said Mr. Tutt,
"and turned loose again--with a warning."
"I'm glad of that!" sighed Tutt. "Is that a real case?"
"Absolutely," replied his partner. "I've read it in the Sauvigny
records."
"I'll be hanged!" exclaimed Tutt. "I never knew that animals were ever
held personally responsible."
"Why, of course they were!" said Mr. Tutt. "Why shouldn't they be? If
animals have souls why shouldn't they be responsible for their acts?"
"But they haven't any souls!" protested Tutt.
"Haven't they now?" remarked the elder lawyer. "I've seen many an old
horse that had a great deal more conscience than his master. And on
general principles wouldn't it be far more just and humane to have the
law deal with a vicious animal that had injured somebody than to leave
its punishment to an irresponsible and arbitrary owner who might be
guilty of extreme brutality?"
"If the punishment would do any good--yes!" agreed Tutt.
"Well, who knows?" meditated Mr. Tutt. "I wonder if it ever does any
good? But anybody would have to agree that responsibility for one's acts
should depend upon the degree of one's intelligence--and from that point
of view many of our friends are really much less responsible than
sheep."
"Which, as you so sagely point out, would, however be a poor reason for
letting their families punish them in case they did wrong. Just think
how such a privilege might be abused! If Uncle John didn't behave
himself as his nephews thought proper they could simply set upon him and
briskly beat him up."
"Yes, of course, the law even to-day recognizes the right to exercise
physical discipline within the family. Even homicide is excusable, under
Section 1054 of our code, when committed in lawfully correcting a child
or servant."
"That's a fine relic of barbarism!" remarked Tutt. "But the child soon
passes through that dangerous zone and becomes entitled to be tried for
his offenses by a jury of his peers; the animal never does."
"Well, an animal couldn't be tried by a jury of his peers, anyhow," said
Mr. Tutt.
"I've seen juries that were more like nanny goats than men!" commentated
Tutt. "I'd like to see some of our clients tried by juries of geese or
woodchucks."
"The field of criminal responsibility is the No Man's Land of the law,"
mused Mr. Tutt. "Roughly, mental capacity to understand the nature of
one's acts is the test, but it is applied arbitrarily in the case of
human beings and a mere point of time is taken beyond which,
irrespective of his actual intelligence, a man is held accountable for
whatever he does. Of course that is theoretically unsound. The more
intelligent a person is the more responsible he should be held to be and
the higher the quality of conduct demanded of him by his fellows. Yet
after twenty-one all are held equally responsible--unless they're
actually insane. It isn't equity! In theory no man or animal should be
subject to the power of discretionary punishment on the part of
another--even his own father or master. I've often wondered what earthly
right we have to make the animals work for us--to bind them to slavery
when we denounce slavery as a crime. It would horrify us to see a human
being put up and sold at auction. Yet we tear the families of animals
apart, subject them to lives of toil, and kill them whenever we see fit.
We say we do this because their intelligence is limited and they cannot
exercise any discrimination in their conduct, that they are always in
the zone of irresponsibility and so have no rights. But I've seen
animals that were shrewder than men, and men who were vastly less
intelligent than animals."
"Right-o!" assented Tutt. "Take Scraggs, for instance. He's no more
responsible than a chipmunk."
"Nevertheless, the law has always been consistent," said Mr. Tutt, "and
has never discriminated between animals any more than it has between men
on the ground of varying degrees of intelligence. They used to try 'em
all, big and little, wild and domesticated, mammals and invertebrates."
"Oh, come!" exclaimed Tutt. "I may not know much law, but--"
"Between 1120 and 1740 they prosecuted in France alone no less than
ninety-two animals. The last one was a cow."
"A cow hasn't much intelligence," observed Tutt.
"And they tried fleas," added Mr. Tutt.
"They have a lot!" commented his junior partner. "I knew a flea once,
who--"
"They had a regular form of procedure," continued Mr. Tutt, brushing the
flea aside, "which was adhered to with the utmost technical accuracy.
You could try an individual animal, either in person or by proxy, or you
could try a whole family, swarm or herd. If a town was infested by rats,
for example, they first assigned counsel--an advocate, he was
called--and then the defendants were summoned three times publicly to
appear. If they didn't show up on the third and last call they were
tried _in absentia_, and if convicted were ordered out of the country
before a certain date under penalty of being exorcised."
"What happened if they were exorcised?" asked Tutt curiously.
"It depended a good deal on the local power of Satan," answered the old
lawyer dryly. "Sometimes they became even more prolific and destructive
than they were before, and sometimes they promptly died. All the leeches
were prosecuted at Lausanne in 1451. A few selected representatives
were brought into court, tried, convicted and ordered to depart within
a fixed period. Maybe they didn't fully grasp their obligations or
perhaps were just acting contemptuously, but they didn't depart and so
were promptly exorcised. Immediately they began to die off and before
long there were none left in the country."
"I know some rats and mice I'd like to have exorcised," mused Tutt.
"At Autun in the fifteenth century the rats won their case," said Mr.
Tutt.
"Who got 'em off?" asked Tutt.
"M. Chassensee, the advocate appointed to defend them. They had been a
great nuisance and were ordered to appear in court. But none of them
turned up. M. Chassensee therefore argued that a default should not be
taken because _all_ the rats had been summoned, and some were either so
young or so old and decrepit that they needed more time. The court
thereupon granted him an extension. However, they didn't arrive on the
day set, and this time their lawyer claimed that they were under duress
and restrained by bodily fear--of the townspeople's cats. That all these
cats, therefore should first be bound over to keep the peace! The court
admitted the reasonableness of this, but the townsfolk refused to be
responsible for their cats and the judge dismissed the case!"
"What did Chassensee get out of it?" inquired Tutt.
"There is no record of who paid him or what was his fee."
"He was a pretty slick lawyer," observed Tutt. "Did they ever try
birds?"
"Oh, yes!" answered Mr. Tutt. "They tried a cock at Basel in 1474--for
the crime of laying an egg."
"Why was that a crime?" asked Tutt. "I should call it a _tour de
force_."
"Be that as it may," said his partner, "from a cock's egg is hatched the
cockatrice, or basilisk, the glance of whose eye turns the beholder to
stone. Therefore they tried the cock, found him guilty and burned him
and his egg together at the stake. That is why cocks don't lay eggs
now."
"I'm glad to know that," said Tutt. "When did they give up trying
animals?"
"Nearly two hundred years ago," answered Mr. Tutt. "But for some time
after that they continued to try inanimate objects for causing injury to
people. I've heard they tried one of the first locomotives that ran over
a man and declared it forfeit to the crown as a deodand."
"I wonder if you couldn't get 'em to try Andrew," hazarded Tutt, "and
maybe declare him forfeited to somebody as a deodand."
"Deodand means 'given to God,'" explained Mr. Tutt.
"Well, I'd give Andrew to God--if God would take him," declared Tutt
devoutly.
"But who is Andrew?" asked Mr. Tutt.
"Andrew is a dog," said Tutt, "who bit one Tunnygate, and now the Grand
Jury have indicted not the dog, as it is clear from your historical
disquisition they should have done, but the dog's owner, Mr. Enoch
Appleboy."
"What for?"
"Assault in the second degree with a dangerous weapon."
"What was the weapon?" inquired Mr. Tutt simply.
"The dog."
"What are you talking about?" cried Mr. Tutt. "What nonsense!"
"Yes, it is nonsense!" agreed Tutt. "But they've done it all the same.
Read it for yourself!" And he handed Mr. Tutt the indictment.
* * * * *
"The Grand Jury of the County of New York by this indictment accuse
Enoch Appleboy of the crime of assault in the second degree, committed
as follows:
"Said Enoch Appleboy, late of the Borough of Bronx, City and County
aforesaid, on the 21st day of July, in the year of our Lord one
thousand nine hundred and fifteen, at the Borough and County aforesaid,
with force and arms in and upon one Herman Tunnygate, in the peace of
the State and People then and there being, feloniously did willfully and
wrongfully make an assault in and upon the legs and body of him the said
Herman Tunnygate, by means of a certain dangerous weapon, to wit: one
dog, of the form, style and breed known as 'bull,' being of the name of
'Andrew,' then and there being within control of the said Enoch
Appleboy, which said dog, being of the name of 'Andrew,' the said Enoch
Appleboy did then and there feloniously, willfully and wrongfully
incite, provoke, and encourage, then and there being, to bite him, the
said Herman Tunnygate, by means whereof said dog 'Andrew' did then and
there grievously bite the said Herman Tunnygate in and upon the legs and
body of him, the said Herman Tunnygate, and the said Enoch Appleboy thus
then and there feloniously did willfully and wrongfully cut, tear,
lacerate and bruise, and did then and there by the means of the dog
'Andrew' aforesaid feloniously, willfully and wrongfully inflict
grievous bodily harm upon the said Herman Tunnygate, against the form of
the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the
People of the State of New York and their dignity."