Part 1

Produced by Jan MacGillivray

THE UNDERPUP

By

I. A. R. Wylie

The Penguins were always breaking out with something. Miss Thornton, who had run Camp Happy Warriors for years and still believed there was good in everyone, said it was merely their age. The Penguins were older than the Peewits, who still trailed attenuated clouds of glory; and were younger than the Pelicans, who were beginning to talk mysteriously about Life, Beaux, and Parties--things so far removed from the Peewits that they weren't even interested, but near enough to the Penguins to exasperate them into having marvelous ideas of their own.

So the Penguins were wonderfully set up when they first realized that they had a Social Conscience. They felt that even Priscilla ("Prissy") Adams, their counselor, who generally thought their ideas dreadful, would have to admit that a Social Conscience was a good idea.

Clara VanSittart had brought it to camp with her, just as the previous summer she had brought the first pair of white mice. Clara was a fat, earnest child with spectacles, who would one day be chairman of a Women's Club. Her mother, who was several chairmen already, had discovered the Poor that winter--rather to their consternation--so that Clara knew that at the very moment when the Penguins were sitting round their campfire, surrounded by trees and stars and lakes, and faintly nauseated with toasted marshmallows, there were poor, half-starved children literally gasping for air in New York City's crowded, stifling streets. There was even a place called Hell's Kitchen, it was so hot and awful. Clara knew all the best words like "underprivileged," and by the time the last marshmallow had been drawn from its prong the Penguins were in tears.

"But it's no use just crying," little Janet Cooper said. She was usually so afraid of everyone, including herself, that they all stared at her. "We ought to _do_ something," she said. And dived back into the shadow like an alarmed young tadpole.

No one had ever accused the Penguins of inertia. They proceeded at once to do something. And the counselors wished afterward that it had been white mice again.

* * * * *

Thus it came about that one April morning the following year Pip-Emma Binns sat at her desk by the classroom window and wrote an English composition called "Trees." Or rather she was not writing. She was chewing bits out of a wooden pen-holder and balefully regarding the back of Vittoria Emanuella Perozzi, the class' champion essayist. Vittoria used words which Miss Perkins called metaphors and similes and which Pip-Emma called baloney. If a person looked white, why not just say so? Why bring in sheets? However, Miss Perkins thought a lot of that sort of thing, and so, no doubt, would the dames who were giving a prize of two months' vacation in some swell kids' camp for the best description of trees.

What did a tree look like? In Pip-Emma's opinion it looked like a tree. But she knew that wouldn't get her anywhere--certainly not to Camp Happy Warriors, where Pop and Ma were hell-bent on her going. She pulled her dark brows together. She wiped an inky hand over her black hair drawn back into a short defiant pigtail. Then inspiration struck her, too. Very carefully she wrote two sentences. "I can't describe trees. I haven't seen any." And signed it Emma Binns.

It was like a metaphor. It wasn't true. It was baloney. But to Mrs. VanSittart and her committee it was just too heart-rending. No trees. Poor little Emma Binns! As for Vittoria Emanuella Perozzi, she had evidently seen so many trees so often and so beautifully that, in the committee's opinion, there was no urgent need for her to see any more of them.

* * * * *

The Happy Warriors were gathered with their counselors and under their respective banners in Grand Central Terminal, and Clara VanSittart inspected the Penguins like a colonel inspecting a regiment before battle. She gave last orders. After all, the Social Conscience had been her idea, and it had to go over with a bang so that even the Pelicans would be impressed.

"Every Penguin," she said, "must remember to be kind. The poor kid won't be able to do the things we do, and I guess she'll do a lot we don't. But you're not to look s'perior or call her down so as to hurt her feelings. We've got to remember we'd be like her if we didn't belong to the Privileged Classes." It was a prepared speech and had more than a suggestion of Mrs. VanSittart's firm handling of committees. "And don't laugh at her mother," Clara concluded. "She's sure to be pretty awful."

As it happened, Mrs. Binns, who went out as daily help, had no time to go running round after a lot of queer-sounding birds. She'd given Pip-Emma's new middy costume a final admonitory twitch. "And mind you behave like a lady," she'd said, swallowing her tears, "or I'll sock you."

Mr. Binns, who might have been heavyweight champion of the world if he hadn't busted his hand early in life on the skull of a certain Black Bruiser, drove Emma to the station in the cab of his truck. "Keep yer chin covered, Pip," he said, grinning, "and don't pull your punches."

Pip-Emma, staggering through the unfamiliar immensities of Grand Central under the weight of her suitcase, felt sickish. She hated leaving Pop and Ma. She loathed being a Penguin. She'd seen a penguin once at the zoo, and she'd seen no sense in it. She despised her costume. It would take weeks to live down the jeers and cheers which had greeted and pursued it to the end of 45th Street on Eighth. She hated leaving the Gang. It was her Gang. She ruled it with despotic efficiency. In fact, when she and Clara VanSittart, introduced by a worried Prissy Adams, shook hands, two born chairmen unconsciously locked horns.

Clara said, "How d'you do?"

And Pip-Emma said, "I'm fine."

It was one of those social blunders that Clara had foreseen and that had better be dealt with at once. Clara said kindly: "I'm so glad you're fine. But I didn't really want to know, you know."

"Why not?" Pip-Emma asked.

In the perceptible silence a Peewit was heard to titter, and the outrageous sound startled Clara out of her poise. She said, "Just because I don't," quite rudely.

And Pip-Emma, remembering Pop and Ma, retorted that it was dumb to ask questions if you didn't want to know the answers.

It was a short but sharp encounter--Mr. Binns would have described it as a feint with the left followed by a nice right to the jaw. Clara VanSittart had a blinking, winded look, and all the Penguins said, "How d'you do?" as though they couldn't help themselves.

Only little Janet added very timidly, "I hope you'll have a swell time."

And Pip-Emma said, "Sure," much too much as though she were sure.

But she stayed right by Janet. If you find yourself among a bunch of strange kids, you gotta get yourself a Gang. You gotta pick out some poor mutts that don't know how to hold their end up and sock anyone who jumps on 'em. Then they're your Gang. Pip-Emma knew on sight that Janet couldn't hold her end up to save her neck, and that sooner or later she, Pip-Emma, would have to sock the fat girl in the eye.

Clara VanSittart did not know this. She sat next to Emma Binns in the Pullman, determined, without heat or anger, to explain Social Usages and Camp Customs. But Pip-Emma did not seem to want to listen. From her middy pocket she had produced three small sea shells and a tiny flexible rubber ball, and she was doing things with them on the back of her suitcase. It was Mr. Binns' favorite method of getting himself a free drink, and Pip-Emma was no slouch herself. Also if you're getting a Gang, you don't run after it. You let it come to you. If kids saw you up to something they didn't understand, they flocked round like a bunch of hungry sparrows. Gradually the Penguins' excited chatter died down. They were watching her. They were beginning to flock. Pip-Emma knew without looking at them. There was a lot Pip-Emma knew, though she didn't always know she knew it.

"I don't see what you're doing," Clara said fretfully. "What is it? A game?"

"Sure. I put the ball under one of the shells--like that--and you bet where it is."

"All right. I bet. It's there."

"But you haven't betted anything."

Clara blushed hotly. As a well-bred Penguin, she found it impossible to explain that all the Penguins had sacrificed their first week's pocket money to the maintenance of Emma and their Social Conscience.

"I can't. I--I haven't anything."

"You gotta bead necklace."

"All right. I bet it."

It was incredible. Her eyes had deceived her. Pip-Emma took the necklace. Other Penguins, shocked at their leader's failure and convinced of their own right-sightedness, backed their guesses with small gold rings and other detachable possessions. Janet Cooper, who hadn't anything else, bet her Penguin Badge, which was like pledging the family Bible. But, as it happened, Janet won. She was the only winner. Pip-Emma nodded approval of her.

"You're not such a dumb cluck," she said.

Some Peewits, perched respectfully on the outskirts, burst into disrespectful squeaks, and the Penguins refused to meet one another's eyes. At that moment Prissy bore down on them. She was kind but firm.

"What a clever trick, Emma! But it is a trick, isn't it? It wouldn't be quite fair to bet about it, would it? Besides, Happy Warriors don't bet."

Pip-Emma handed back her winnings. She was thoughtful and deliberate. She made no protest. But the Pullman, usually the scene of such happy tumult, sank into an oppressive silence.

* * * * *

But on the bus ride from the station to the Camp the Penguins began to preen their damp feathers. They loved the Camp. They were proud of the big dining room built like a woodman's cabin and the open sleeping tents circled with military precision round the campfires. They were proud of themselves. They got up to the bugle on the coldest mornings and made their beds and fetched water and built fires. They were strong and brave, as Happy Warriors should be. When Emma Binns saw how wonderful it all was and what a fine bunch they were, she'd feel pretty small. And they'd have to be awfully nice to her and not rub things in.

So they felt better and began to sing. And the twins, Pauline and Claudine Bennett, bounced joyfully in their seats.

It was Pip-Emma's longest journey. She was getting tired and homesick. She'd never been homesick before. It was like toothache in the wrong place. Right now Pop and Ma would be sitting down to Ma's special steak and onions. Afterward, it being Saturday, they'd go to an early show at the movies and finish up with a Pineapple Temptation or maybe a Banana Royal at Hader's drugstore. They'd be feeling pretty mean, too. They hadn't really wanted her to go. They'd wanted her to have a swell time and live like the rich kids did, with butlers waiting on you behind your chair and maybe breakfast brought you on a tray, like in the movies. Because one day Pip-Emma, who was smart as a whip, was going places, so she'd better know how things were done before she got there.

The Gang would be out now in force. Pip-Emma's heart contracted. Maybe they were missing her. Maybe, though, if she sent them post cards showing the swell way she was living, they'd be kinda sunk. She'd tell 'em she had a Gang of her own already and that they were swell kids.

They weren't, of course. She looked them over gloomily. Sissies. Just to look at their nails was enough. As to her Gang, it consisted for the moment of one pale small kid who jumped if you spoke to her.

The station bus swung round a curve.

"There!" the Penguins shrieked together. And they all looked at Emma. "There!" they said.

Pip-Emma looked.

"It's our Camp," Janet explained in her thin high voice. "There's the lake. And that's our dining hall. And there, among the trees, is the Penguin Circle, where we sleep."

Emma said nothing. It was as though, at the wave of a wicked wand, Roxy's and all its ushers had been bewitched into ruins and rags. And it was more than Emma, at that moment, could bear. Her sharp, sallow little face puckered. To the Penguins' consternation, she burst into a storm of tears.

Before supper Clara VanSittart summoned the Penguins to a hasty powwow. They drew Prissy into it, the situation being beyond them.

"P'raps it was the trees upset her," Janet hazarded. "You know, she's never seen any."

The twins shook their heads. "It wasn't the trees. When we showed her our tent, she said her uncle slept in a place like that."

"What's her uncle?" the Penguins demanded indignantly.

"He's a W.P.A. worker," the twins said in unison, "and he's helping build a post office somewhere. She said there weren't any houses, so they had to live in tents."

Clara VanSittart drew a shocked breath. The truth was obvious. To Emma Binns their Camp was just a camp. When she heard that she'd have to make her bed, light fires, and wash dishes, she'd write home. She'd tell her people--probably dreadful people--that that was how the VanSittarts lived.

Clara took a firm lead. She proposed at once that Emma Binns should not make beds. When the time came, she was to be led away to some remote spot while the Penguins made hers and did her share of the chores. Clara explained that bed making was the sort of thing that poor Emma probably had to do at home. It wasn't a treat. And maybe she was underfed. She didn't look very strong. It was their duty, belonging as they did to the Privileged Classes, to make Sacrifices.

It was a simple supper, nourishing but Spartan. When Pip-Emma, seated at the Penguin table, thought of the Pineapple Temptation Ma might be eating at that very moment, her gloom deepened. But she wasn't going to cry again. Not if she had to bite her tongue out. She'd never cried like that before in her life.

The Penguins suddenly burst into song:

"We are the happy Penguins-- We play without a care; We don't worry who wins the game, So long as we play fair!"

At that moment every Penguin was stricken by the same thought. The memory of their unpaid gambling debts rose in their midst like a reproachful specter. Their song wavered and sank to silence.

From her point of vantage at the Pelican table Miss Thornton viewed them anxiously. "The Penguins seem depressed," she said. "Is anything the matter?"

"I guess it's their Social Conscience," Prissy Adams said grimly, "getting the better of them."

After taps Clara VanSittart laid a packet on Emma's cot. She had no business to be talking at all. And it was almost another speech.

"We feel," she concluded, "that Prissy didn't understand."

In tense silence Emma undid the parcel. It contained her legitimate winnings. She didn't want their darned old beads, but she wrapped the things up again and slipped them under her pillow. "O.K.," she said.

The Penguins crept into their beds. They had made a noble gesture. They had cleared their consciences. But for some reason or other they slept badly.

* * * * *

The Penguins followed each other on the springboard in rapid succession. They performed every dive they knew and some they didn't, with an almost desperate fervor. And after each feat they turned anxious faces to the small figure in the cheap black bathing suit perched on the landing stage, its face between its fists, like a Gothic imp peering down malevolently on the world from a cathedral buttress. But in fact Pip-Emma wasn't even looking at them. She was worrying about Pop and Ma and the Gang.

Prissy Adams climbed out of the water and stood beside her. "Don't you want to go in, too, Emma?" she said. "Don't you want to learn to swim?"

"Nope," Pip-Emma said. "It's cold, and I'm scared."

"Of course you're not," Prissy said. "Happy Warriors are never scared," she said with a brightness that she hoped wouldn't become a habit.

"I ain't a Happy Warrior," Emma said. "And I'm scared."

"But supposing someone were drowning, wouldn't you want to be able to save them?"

"We don't drown down our way," Pip-Emma retorted bleakly. "We ain't got no water."

It was almost as pathetic as the absence of trees. And, as a statement, much more accurate. Except on hot summer nights when good-natured street cleaners turned their hoses on the ecstatically squealing Gang, there was no water. Pip-Emma, remembering those glorious occasions, hunched herself dismally, and the defeated Prissy strode on her way. At the same moment Janet bobbed up from among the woodpiles.

"Gee, that was swell of you, Emma!"

Pip-Emma peered down. "What was?"

"Saying you were scared. I'm always scared. But I'd be too scared to tell anyone."

Pip-Emma stretched out a skinny arm and pulled Janet up beside her. "What you scared of?"

"'Most everything."

"Why?"

Janet sighed. "It's something wrong with me. The doctors say it's--it's a complex. An in--inferiority complex."

"What's that?"

"It's a thing you get, like measles."

Pip-Emma looked at Janet dubiously. "I don't see no spots."

"You don't have spots. You just feel mean. You want dreadfully to do things. But you know you can't. So you don't."

"What things?"

"Well, like the swimming race next Saturday. Mummy and Dad are coming up for it. Prissy says I could win the Penguin Trophy if I didn't have my complex. But Clara knows she's going to win. So she will. She hasn't got any complex. She just overeats."

They sat side by side in melancholy silence. But Pip-Emma's misplaced toothache was easing off. Janet might not be the Gang. But she belonged to Emma. Ever since Emma had said she wasn't a dumb cluck she'd followed Emma round like a little lost dog that had been found. If anyone belonged to you like that, you had to look out for them.

"I wish my Pop and Ma were coming up," Pip-Emma said suddenly.

"Why? Are you homesick, too, Emma?"

"I dunno. I want Pop and Ma."

"It's no good wanting, is it?"

"Well, you've got yours, haven't you?"

"Not really. Not together. I mean--they don't live together."

"Why not?"

"They don't have to. Dad's got a place in Florida and Long Island and Maine and New York. So when they quarrel, they just go off. Different places. And I can't be with either of them because the other won't let me," Janet choked. "I guess they'll quarrel Saturday," she said.

"Gee, that's tough." Pip-Emma gave a small hoarse chuckle. "Pop and Ma get mad sometimes. But Ma says, 'You old son-of-a-gun, I guess I gotter live with you and like it.' And Pop says, 'I like it fine, you old so-and-so.' And he takes us out and gives us a sundae at the drugstore. Ma says you can't stay mad in two rooms."

"I wish we lived in two rooms," Janet said.

Pip-Emma knitted her black brows. "Maybe," she said, "you might tell 'em so."

"I'd be too scared."

But Pip-Emma was after her thought like a terrier after an elusive rabbit. "If my Pop and Ma were here, I'd jump into their darned old water. I wouldn't care how cold it was. I wouldn't be scared. Maybe if your Pop and Ma are along, you'll win the race, and then you'll never be scared again."

"But I shan't win it. I'll lose my breath like I always do. And Clara's so fat. She just has to float."

"Maybe if she was sick--if she eats something--"

"She can't. Prissy's got her on a diet. She's Prissy's pet."

Pip-Emma put her arm over Janet's shoulder. It was an accolade, and Janet knew it.

"Gee--you poor kid!" Pip-Emma said, and relapsed into deep thought again.

The two wandered off the landing stage together. Outside the gameroom Claudine was writing up a notice on the blackboard. The twins went to a progressive school where you learned spelling only if you felt the urge. The twins had never felt it.

"You don't spell Saturday with an 'a' in the middle," Pip-Emma said.

A hot and flustered twin rubbed out the word with a lofty air of apprehended carelessness, and Pip-Emma wrote it in for her.

"If I spelled like you do," she said, "old Perks would give me hell."

* * * * *

The harassed Penguins pinned one of their last hopes on horses. It seemed probable that if Pip-Emma had never seen any trees, she had never seen horses, either--or only from a distance--and that she would be impressed. But it turned out that Pip-Emma's uncle had a horse--not the W.P.A. uncle but the mounted-cop uncle--and that it was a bigger and better horse than anything in the Camp stables. Pip-Emma had actually ridden it from Ninth to Tenth Avenue. Moreover her uncle had chased Squint-Eyed Peters down Forty-fifth Street and shot him and his armored car so full of holes that it was hardly worth while cleaning them up. Pip-Emma told the story after taps and in such gory detail that the Penguins didn't know or care that discipline was going to the dogs.

They learned at the same time that Mr. Binns, in his unregenerate youth, had been an Englishman and had fought in the Great War and that Emma's name was Pip because in English soldier language Pip-Emma meant anything that happened after midday. And Emma had happened in Hell's Kitchen at 3:30.

The Penguins sat up in their beds and listened spellbound. The glamour surrounding Wall Street, Big Business, and the kind but stoutish and baldish gentlemen who were their fathers was suffering an acute depression. The prospect of their fathers' appearance on Saturday and of Pip-Emma's dispassionate appraisal filled the Penguins with uneasiness.

Things had come to such a pass that when on Friday evening, after the Camp singsong, Clara felt Emma's arm slip through hers, the VanSittart pride positively glowed. It was the first time that Pip-Emma had seemed to notice Clara--which was a humiliation in itself, seeing that Pip-Emma was really Clara's own idea. And Clara, thanks to Prissy's training diet, was low in her mind anyway.

"Guess what I've found!" Pip-Emma whispered.

But of course Clara couldn't guess anything.

"I've found where they've got all tomorrow's ice cream. Buckets and buckets of it."

Clara, as top Penguin, wavered. Some lingering Penguin rectitude still glowed in her, but only faintly. After all, she was hungry. She was being starved to death. And no one cared. Only Emma Binns seemed to know what she was suffering.

"Dare you!" Pip-Emma said.

It was Clara's chance. Now she could show the stuff in her. Being born on Park Avenue didn't mean necessarily that you were a dumb cluck. She let Pip-Emma lead her by devious paths through the deserted kitchen. Then to the huge icebox. And there it was--buckets and buckets! Clara's first handful didn't even make a dent.

"I bet I can eat more than you can," Pip-Emma said.

At breakfast the next morning Miss Thornton made an unusual appearance. She was grave and even troubled.

"Children, a serious thing has happened. Last night someone must have broken all our Camp rules. Someone opened the icebox and ate several pints of our ice cream. I hope--I'm sure--the culprit will stand up at once and not spoil our happy day for us."

Pip-Emma stood up at once. "It was me, Miss Thornton."

"But, Emma, dear, why? Didn't you have enough to eat? Were you hungry?"

Pip-Emma said simply and bravely, "I guess I'm always hungry."

Miss Thornton felt the sudden tears come into her throat. Poor little Emma Binns! No trees. Never enough to eat. And not without a forlorn charm. Prissy Adams, who had caught a glimpse of Clara's greenish countenance, remained grim and unmoved.

"Dear child, you should have told me. Come to my tent afterward. We can talk it over. Meantime it was fine and brave of you to tell the truth. It shows that you are a real Penguin--" she gave her warm, beloved chuckle--"almost, but not quite, perfect."

Everyone laughed and cheered except the Penguins, who for some unknown reason sank into the profoundest gloom. Clara VanSittart had left the table hurriedly.

* * * * *