“Mamma, what do you s’pose Willie barked at the lookin’-glass for?”
“That,” said Mrs. Baxter, “is beyond me. Young people and children do the strangest things, Jane! And then, when they get to be middle-aged, they forget all those strange things they did, and they can’t understand what the new young people–like you and Willie mean by the strange things THEY do.”
“Yes’m. I bet _I_ know what he was barkin’ for, mamma.”
“Well?”
“You know what I think? I think he was kind of practisin’. I think he was practisin’ how to bark at Mr. Parcher.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Baxter laughed. “Who ever could think of such a thing but you, Jane! You go to sleep and forget your nonsense!”
Nevertheless, Jane might almost have been gifted with clairvoyance, her preposterous idea came so close to the actual fact, for at that very moment William was barking. He was not
barking directly at Mr. Parcher, it is true, but within a short distance of him and all too well within his hearing.
X
MR. PARCHER AND LOVE
Mr. Parcher, that unhappy gentleman,
having been driven indoors from his own porch, had attempted to read Plutarch’s Lives in the library, but, owing to the adjacency of the porch and the summer necessity for open windows, his escape spared only his eyes and not his suffering ears. The house was small, being but half of a double one, with small rooms, and the “parlor,” library, and dining-room all about equally exposed to the porch which ran along the side of the house. Mr. Parcher had no refuge except bed or the kitchen, and as he was troubled with chronic insomnia, and the cook had callers in the kitchen, his case was desperate. Most unfortunately, too, his reading-lamp, the only one in the house, was a fixture near a window, and just beyond that window sat Miss Pratt and William in sweet unconsciousness, while Miss Parcher entertained the overflow (consisting of Mr. Johnnie Watson) at the other end of the porch. Listening perforce to the conversation of the former couple though “conversation” is far from the expression later used by Mr. Parcher to describe what he heard–he found it impossible to sit still in his chair. He jerked and twitched with continually increasing restlessness; sometimes he gasped, and other times he moaned a little, and there were times when he muttered huskily.
“Oh, cute-ums!” came the silvery voice of Miss Pratt from the likewise silvery porch outside, underneath the summer moon. “Darlin’ Flopit, look! Ickle boy Baxter goin’ make imitations of darlin’ Flopit again. See! Ickle boy Baxter puts head one side, then other side, just like darlin’ Flopit. Then barks just like darlin’ Flopit! Ladies and ‘entlemen, imitations of darlin’ Flopit by ickle boy Baxter.”
“Berp-werp! Berp-werp!” came the voice of William Sylvanus Baxter.
And in the library Plutarch’s Lives moved convulsively, while with writhing lips Mr. Parcher muttered to himself.
“More, more!” cried Miss Pratt, clapping her hands. “Do it again, ickle boy Baxter!”
“Berp-werp! Berp-werp-werp!”
“WORD!” muttered Mr. Parcher.
Miss Pratt’s voice became surcharged with honeyed wonder. “How did he learn such marv’lous, MARV’LOUS imitations of darlin’ Flopit? He ought to go on the big, big stage and be a really actor, oughtn’t he, darlin’ Flopit? He could make milyums and milyums of dollardies,
couldn’t he, darlin’ Flopit?”
William’s modest laugh disclaimed any great ambition for himself in this line. “Oh, I always could think up imitations of animals; things like that–but I hardly would care to–to adop’ the stage for a career. Would–you?” (There was a thrill in his voice when he pronounced the ineffably significant word “you.”)
Miss Pratt became intensely serious.
“It’s my DREAM!” she said.
William, seated upon a stool at her feet, gazed up at the amber head, divinely splashed by the rain of moonlight. The fire with which she spoke stirred him as few things had ever stirred him. He knew she had just revealed a side of herself which she reserved for only the chosen few who were capable of understanding her, and he fell into a hushed rapture. It seemed to him that there was a sacredness about this moment, and he sought vaguely for something to say that would live up to it and not be out of keeping. Then, like an inspiration, there came into his head some words he had read that day and thought beautiful. He had found them beneath an illustration in a magazine, and he spoke them almost instinctively.
“It was wonderful of you to say that to me,” he said. “I shall never forget it!”
“It’s my DREAM!” Miss Pratt exclaimed, again, with the same enthusiasm. “It’s my DREAM.”
“You would make a glorious actress!” he said.
At that her mood changed. She laughed a laugh like a sweet little girl’s laugh (not Jane’s) and, setting her rocking-chair in motion, cuddled the fuzzy white doglet in her arms. “Ickle boy Baxter t’yin’ flatterbox us, tunnin’ Flopit! No’ty, no’ty flatterbox!”
“No, no!” William insisted, earnestly. “I mean it. But–but–”
“But whatcums?”
“What do you think about actors and actresses making love to each other on the stage? Do you think they have to really feel it, or do they just pretend?”
“Well,” said Miss Pratt, weightily, “sometimes one way, sometimes the other.”
William’s gravity became more and more profound. “Yes, but how can they pretend like that? Don’t you think love is a sacred thing, Cousin Lola?”
Fictitious sisterships, brotherships, and cousin- ships are devices to push things along, well known to seventeen and even more advanced ages. On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, “Ickle boy Baxter” and “Cousin Lola.” (Thus they had broken down the tedious formalities of their first twenty minutes together.)
“Don’t you think love is sacred?” he repeated in the deepest tone of which his vocal cords were capable.
“Ess,” said Miss Pratt.
“_I_ do!” William was emphatic. “I think love is the most sacred thing there is. I don’t mean SOME kinds of love. I mean REAL love. You take some people, I don’t believe they ever know what real love means. They TALK about it, maybe, but they don’t understand it. Love is something nobody can understand unless they feel it and and if they don’t understand it they don’t feel it. Don’t YOU think so?”
“Ess.”
“Love,” William continued, his voice lifting and thrilling to the great theme–“love is something nobody can ever have but one time in their lives, and if they don’t have it then, why prob’ly they never will. Now, if a man REALLY loves a girl, why he’d do anything in the world she wanted him to. Don’t YOU think so?”
“Ess, ‘deedums!” said the silvery voice.
“But if he didn’t, then he wouldn’t,” said William vehemently. “But when a man really loves a girl he will. Now, you take a man like that and he can generally do just about anything the girl he loves wants him to. Say, f’rinstance, she wants him to love her even more than he does already–or almost anything like that–and supposin’ she asks him to. Well, he would go ahead and do it. If they really loved each other he would!”
He paused a moment, then in a lowered tone he said, “I think REAL love is sacred, don’t you?”
“Ess.”
“Don’t you think love is the most sacred thing there is–that is, if it’s REAL love?”
“Ess.”
“_I_ do,” said William, warmly. “I–I’m glad you feel like that, because I think real love is the kind nobody could have but just once in their lives, but if it isn’t REAL love, why–why most people never have it at all, because–” He paused, seeming to seek for the exact phrase which would express his meaning. “–Because the REAL love a man feels for a girl and a girl for a man, if they REALLY love each other, and, you look at a case like that, of course they would BOTH love each other, or it wouldn’t be real love well, what _I_ say is, if it’s REAL love, well, it’s–it’s sacred, because I think that kind of love is always sacred. Don’t you think love is sacred if it’s the real thing?”
“Ess,” said Miss Pratt. “Do Flopit again. Be Flopit!”
“Berp-werp! Berp-werp-werp.”
And within the library an agonized man writhed and muttered:
“WORD! WORD! WORD–”
This hoarse repetition had become almost continuous.
. . . But out on the porch, that little, jasmine- scented bower in Arcady where youth cried to youth and golden heads were haloed in the moonshine, there fell a silence. Not utter silence, for out there an ethereal music sounded constantly, unheard and forgotten by older ears. Time was when the sly playwrights used “incidental music” in their dramas; they knew that an audience would be moved so long as the music played; credulous while that crafty enchantment lasted. And when the galled Mr. Parcher wondered how those young people out on the porch could listen to each other and not die, it was because he did not hear and had forgotten the music that throbs in the veins of youth. Nevertheless, it may not be denied that despite his poor memory this man of fifty was deserving of a little sympathy.
It was William who broke the silence. “How–” he began, and his voice trembled a little. “How –how do you–how do you think of me when I’m not with you?”
“Think nice-cums,” Miss Pratt responded. “Flopit an’ me think nice-cums.”
“No,” said William; “I mean what name do you have for me when you’re when you’re
thinking about me?”
Miss Pratt seemed to be puzzled, perhaps justifiably, and she made a cooing sound of interrogation.
“I mean like this,” William explained. “F’rinstance, when you first came, I always thought of you as `Milady’–when I wrote that poem, you know.”
“Ess. Boo’fums.”
“But now I don’t,” he said. “Now I think of you by another name when I’m alone. It–it just sort of came to me. I was kind of just sitting around this afternoon, and I didn’t know I was thinking about anything at all very much, and then all of a sudden I said it to myself out loud. It was about as strange a thing as I ever knew of. Don’t YOU think so?”
“Ess. It uz dest WEIRD!” she answered. “What ARE dat pitty names?”
“I called you,” said William, huskily and reverently, “I called you `My Baby-Talk Lady.’ ”
BANG!
They were startled by a crash from within the library; a heavy weight seemed to have fallen (or to have been hurled) a considerable distance. Stepping to the window, William beheld a large volume lying in a distorted attitude at the foot of the wall opposite to that in which the reading- lamp was a fixture. But of all human life the room was empty; for Mr. Parcher had given up, and was now hastening to his bed in the last faint hope of saving his reason.
His symptoms, however, all pointed to its having fled; and his wife, looking up from some computations in laundry charges, had but a vision of windmill gestures as he passed the door of her room. Then, not only for her, but for the inoffensive people who lived in the other half of the house, the closing of his own door took place in a really memorable manner.
William, gazing upon the fallen Plutarch, had just offered the explanation, “Somebody must ‘a’ thrown it at a bug or something, I guess,” when the second explosion sent its reverberations through the house.
“My doodness!” Miss Pratt exclaimed, jumping up.
William laughed reassuringly, remaining calm. “It’s only a door blew shut up-stairs,” he said “Let’s sit down again–just the way we were?”
Unfortunately for him, Mr. Joe Bullitt now made his appearance at the other end of the porch. Mr. Bullitt, though almost a year younger than either William or Johnnie Watson, was of a turbulent and masterful disposition. Moreover, in regard to Miss Pratt, his affections were in as ardent a state as those of his rivals, and he lacked Johnnie’s meekness. He firmly declined to be shunted by Miss Parcher, who was trying to favor William’s cause, according to a promise he had won of her by strong pleading. Regardless of her efforts, Mr. Bullitt descended upon William and his Baby-Talk-Lady, and received from the latter a honeyed greeting, somewhat to the former’s astonishment and not at all to his pleasure.
“Oh, goody-cute!” cried Miss Pratt. “Here’s big Bruvva Josie-Joe!” And she lifted her little dog close to Mr. Bullitt’s face, guiding one of Flopit’s paws with her fingers. “Stroke big Bruvva Josie-Joe’s pint teeks, darlin’ Flopit.” (Josie-Joe’s pink cheeks were indicated by the expression “pint teeks,” evidently, for her accompanying action was to pass Flopit’s paw lightly over those glowing surfaces.) “ ‘At’s nice!” she remarked. “Stroke him gently, p’eshus Flopit, an’ nen we’ll coax him to make pitty singin’ for us, like us did yestiday.”
She turned to William.
“COAX him to make pitty singin’? I LOVE his voice–I’m dest CRAZY over it. Isn’t oo?”
William’s passion for Mr. Bullitt’s voice appeared to be under control. He laughed coldly, almost harshly. “Him sing?” he said. “Has he been tryin’ to sing around HERE? I wonder the family didn’t call for the police!”
It was to be seen that Mr. Bullitt did not relish the sally. “Well, they will,” he retorted, “if you ever spring one o’ your solos on ’em!” And turning to Miss Pratt, he laughed loudly and bitterly. “You ought to hear Silly Bill sing– some time when you don’t mind goin’ to bed sick for a couple o’ days!”
Symptoms of truculence at once became alarmingly pronounced on both sides. William was
naturally incensed, and as for Mr. Bullitt, he had endured a great deal from William every evening since Miss Pratt’s arrival. William’s evening clothes were hard enough for both Mr. Watson and Mr. Bullitt to bear, without any additional insolence on the part of the wearer. Big Bruvva Josie-Joe took a step toward his enemy and breathed audibly.
“Let’s ALL sing,” the tactful Miss Pratt proposed, hastily. “Come on, May and Cousin Johnnie- Jump-Up,” she called to Miss Parcher and Mr. Watson. “Singin’-school, dirls an’ boys! Singin’- school! Ding, ding! Singin’-school bell’s a-wingin’!”
The diversion was successful. Miss Parcher and Mr. Watson joined the other group with alacrity, and the five young people were presently seated close together upon the steps of the porch, sending their voices out upon the air and up to Mr. Parcher’s window in the song they found loveliest that summer.
Miss Pratt carried the air. William also carried it part of the time and hunted for it the rest of the time, though never in silence. Miss Parcher “sang alto,” Mr. Bullitt “sang bass,” and Mr. Watson “sang tenor”–that is, he sang as high as possible, often making the top sound of a chord and always repeating the last phrase of each line before the others finished it. The melody was a little too sweet, possibly; while the singers thought so highly of the words that Mr. Parcher missed not one, especially as the vocal rivalry between Josie-Joe and Ickle Boy Baxter incited each of them to prevent Miss Pratt from hearing the other.
William sang loudest of all; Mr. Parcher had at no time any difficulty in recognizing his voice.
“Oh, I love my love in the morning And I love my love at night,
I love my love in the dawning,
And when the stars are bright. Some may love the sunshine,
Others may love the dew.
Some may love the raindrops,
But I love only you-OO-oo!
By the stars up above
It is you I luh-HUV!
Yes, _I_ love own-LAY you!”
They sang it four times; then Mr. Bullitt sang his solo, “Tell her, O Golden Moon, how I Adore her,” William following with “The violate loves the cowslip, but _I_ love YEW,” and after that they all sang, “Oh, I love my love in the morning,” again.
All this while that they sang of love, Mr. Parcher was moving to and fro upon his bed, not more than eighteen feet in an oblique upward- slanting line from the heads of the serenaders. Long, long he tossed, listening to the young voices singing of love; long, long he thought of love, and many, many times he spoke of it aloud, though he was alone in the room. And in thus speaking of it, he would give utterance to phrases and words probably never before used in
connection with love since the world began.
His thoughts, and, at intervals, his mutterings, continued to be active far into the night, long after the callers had gone, and though his household and the neighborhood were at rest, with
never a katydid outside to rail at the waning moon. And by a coincidence not more singular than most coincidences, it happened that at just about the time he finally fell asleep, a young lady at no great distance from him awoke to find her self thinking of him.
XI
BEGINNING A TRUE FRIENDSHIP
This was Miss Jane Baxter. She opened her eyes upon the new-born day, and her first thoughts were of Mr. Parcher. That is, he was already in her mind when she awoke, a circumstance to be accounted for on the ground that his conversation, during her quiet convalescence in his library, had so fascinated her that in all likelihood she had been dreaming of him. Then, too, Jane and Mr. Parcher had a bond in common, though Mr. Parcher did not know it. Not without result had William repeated Miss Pratt’s inquiry in Jane’s hearing: “Who IS that curious child?” Jane had preserved her sang-froid, but the words remained with her, for she was one of those who ponder and retain in silence.
She thought almost exclusively of Mr. Parcher until breakfast-time, and resumed her thinking of him at intervals during the morning. Then, in the afternoon, a series of quiet events not unconnected with William’s passion caused her to think of Mr. Parcher more poignantly than ever; nor was her mind diverted to a different channel by another confidential conversation with her mother. Who can say, then, that it was not by design that she came face to face with Mr. Parcher on the public highway at about five o’clock that afternoon? Everything urges the belief that she deliberately set herself in his path.
Mr. Parcher was walking home from his office, and he walked slowly, gulping from time to time, as he thought of the inevitable evening before him. His was not a rugged constitution, and for the last fortnight or so he had feared that it was giving way altogether. Each evening he felt that he was growing weaker, and sometimes he thought piteously that he might go away for a while. He did not much care where, though what appealed to him most, curiously enough, was not the thought of the country, with the flowers and little birds; no, what allured him was the idea that perhaps he could find lodgment for a time in an Old People’s Home, where the minimum age for inmates was about eighty.
Walking more and more slowly, as he
approached the dwelling he had once thought of as home, he became aware of a little girl in a checkered dress approaching him at a gait varied by the indifferent behavior of a barrel-hoop which she was disciplining with a stick held in her right hand. When the hoop behaved well, she came ahead rapidly; when it affected to be intoxicated, which was most often its whim, she zigzagged with it, and gained little ground. But all the while, and without reference to what went on concerning the hoop, she slowly and continuously fed herself (with her left hand) small, solemnly relished bites of a slice of bread-and-butter covered with apple sauce and powdered sugar.
Mr. Parcher looked upon her, and he shivered slightly; for he knew her to be Willie Baxter’s sister.
Unaware of the emotion she produced in him, Jane checked her hoop and halted.
“G’d afternoon, Mister Parcher,” she said, gravely.
“Good afternoon,” he returned, without much spirit.
Jane looked up at him trustfully and with a strange, unconscious fondness. “You goin’ home now, Mr. Parcher?” she asked, turning to walk at his side. She had suspended the hoop over her left arm and transferred the bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar to her right, so that she could eat even more conveniently than before.
“I suppose so,” he murmured.
“My brother Willie’s been at your house all afternoon,” she remarked.
He repeated, “I suppose so,” but in a tone which combined the vocal tokens of misery and of hopeless animosity.
“He just went home,” said Jane. “I was ‘cross the street from your house, but I guess he didn’t see me. He kept lookin’ back at your house. Miss Pratt was on the porch.”
“I suppose so.” This time it was a moan.
Jane proceeded to give him some information. “My brother Willie isn’t comin’ back to your house to-night, but he doesn’t know it yet.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Parcher.
“Willie isn’t goin’ to spend any more evenings at your house at all,” said Jane, thoughtfully. “He isn’t, but he doesn’t know it yet.”
Mr. Parcher gazed fixedly at the wonderful child, and something like a ray of sunshine flickered over his seamed and harried face. “Are you SURE he isn’t?” he said. “What makes you think so?”
“I know he isn’t,” said demure Jane. “It’s on account of somep’m I told mamma.”
And upon this a gentle glow began to radiate throughout Mr. Parcher. A new feeling budded within his bosom; he was warmly attracted to Jane. She was evidently a child to be cherished, and particularly to be encouraged in the line of conduct she seemed to have adopted. He wished the Bullitt and Watson families each had a little girl like this. Still, if what she said of William proved true, much had been gained and life might be tolerable, after all.
“He’ll come in the afternoons, I guess,” said Jane. “But you aren’t home then, Mr. Parcher, except late like you were that day of the Sunday- school class. It was on account of what you said that day. I told mamma.”
“Told your mamma what?”
“What you said.”
Mr. Parcher’s perplexity continued. “What about?”
“About Willie. YOU know!” Jane smiled fraternally.
“No, I don’t.”
“It was when I was layin’ in the liberry, that day of the Sunday-school class,” Jane told him. “You an’ Mrs. Parcher was talkin’ in there about Miss Pratt an’ Willie an’ everything.”
“Good heavens!” Mr. Parcher, summoning his memory, had placed the occasion and Jane together. “Did you HEAR all that?”
“Yes.” Jane nodded. “I told mamma all what you said.”
“Murder!”
“Well,” said Jane, “I guess it’s good I did, because look–that’s the very reason mamma did somep’m so’s he can’t come any more except in daytime. I guess she thought Willie oughtn’t to behave so’s’t you said so many things about him like that; so to-day she did somep’m, an’ now he can’t come any more to behave that loving way of Miss Pratt that you said you would be in the lunatic asylum if he didn’t quit. But he hasn’t found it out yet.”
“Found what out, please?” asked Mr. Parcher, feeling more affection for Jane every moment.
“He hasn’t found out he can’t come back to your house to-night; an’ he can’t come back to- morrow night, nor day-after-to-morrow night, nor–”
“Is it because your mamma is going to tell him he can’t?”
“No, Mr. Parcher. Mamma says he’s too old –an’ she said she didn’t like to, anyway. She just DID somep’m.”
“What? What did she do?”
“It’s a secret,” said Jane. “I could tell you the first part of it–up to where the secret begins, I expect.”
“Do!” Mr. Parcher urged.
“Well, it’s about somep’m Willie’s been WEARIN’,” Jane began, moving closer to him as they slowly walked onward. “I can’t tell you what they were, because that’s the secret–but he had ’em on him every evening when he came to see Miss Pratt, but they belong to papa, an’ papa doesn’t know a word about it. Well, one evening papa wanted to put ’em on, because he had a right to, Mr. Parcher, an’ Willie didn’t have any right to at all, but mamma couldn’t find ’em; an’ she rummidged an’ rummidged ‘most all next day an’ pretty near every day since then an’ never did find ’em, until don’t you believe I saw Willie inside of ’em only last night! He was startin’ over to your house to see Miss Pratt in ’em! So I told mamma, an’ she said it ‘d haf to be a secret, so that’s why I can’t tell you what they were. Well, an’ then this afternoon, early, I was with her, an’ she said, long as I had told her the secret in the first place, I could come in Willie’s room with her, an’ we both were already in there anyway, ’cause I was kind of thinkin’ maybe she’d go in there to look for ’em, Mr. Parcher–”
“I see,” he said, admiringly. “I see.”
“Well, they were under Willie’s window-seat, all folded up; an’ mamma said she wondered what she better do, an’ she was worried because she didn’t like to have Willie behave so’s you an’ Mrs. Parcher thought that way about him. So she said the–the secret–what Willie wears, you know, but they’re really papa’s an’ aren’t Willie’s any more’n they’re MINE–well, she said the secret was gettin’ a little teeny bit too tight for papa, but she guessed they–I mean the secret–she said she guessed it was already pretty loose for Willie; so she wrapped it up, an’ I went with her, an’ we took ’em to a tailor, an’ she told him to make ’em bigger, for a surprise for papa, ’cause then they’ll fit him again, Mr. Parcher. She said he must make ’em a whole lot bigger. She said he must let ’em way, WAY out! So I guess Willie would look too funny in ’em after they’re fixed; an’ anyway, Mr. Parcher, the secret won’t be home from the tailor’s for two weeks, an’ maybe by that time Miss Pratt’ll be gone.”
They had reached Mr. Parcher’s gate; he halted and looked down fondly upon this child who seemed to have read his soul. “Do you honestly think so?” he asked.
“Well, anyway, Mr. Parcher,” said Jane, “mamma said–well, she said she’s sure Willie wouldn’t come here in the evening any more when YOU’re at home, Mr. Parcher–’cause after he’d been wearin’ the secret every night this way he wouldn’t like to come and not have the secret on. Mamma said the reason he would feel like that was because he was seventeen years old. An’ she isn’t goin’ to tell him anything about it, Mr. Parcher. She said that’s the best way.”
Her new friend nodded and seemed to agree. “I suppose that’s what you meant when you said he wasn’t coming back but didn’t know it yet?”
“Yes, Mr. Parcher.”
He rested an elbow upon the gate-post, gazing down with ever-increasing esteem. “Of course I know your last name,” he said, “but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your other one.”
“It’s Jane.”
“Jane,” said Mr. Parcher, “I should like to do something for you.”
Jane looked down, and with eyes modestly lowered she swallowed the last fragment of the bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar which had been the constantly evanescent companion of their little walk together. She was not mercenary; she had sought no reward.
“Well, I guess I must run home,” she said. And with one lift of her eyes to his and a shy laugh–laughter being a rare thing for Jane– she scampered quickly to the corner and was gone.
But though she cared for no reward, the extraordinary restlessness of William, that evening, after dinner, must at least have been of great interest to her. He ascended to his own room directly from the table, but about twenty minutes later came down to the library, where Jane was sitting (her privilege until half after seven) with her father and mother. William looked from one to the other of his parents and seemed about to speak, but did not do so. Instead, he departed for the upper floor again and presently could be heard moving about energetically in various parts of the house, a remote
thump finally indicating that he was doing something with a trunk in the attic.
After that he came down to the library again and once more seemed about to speak, but did not. Then he went up-stairs again, and came down again, and he was still repeating this process when Jane’s time-limit was reached and she repaired conscientiously to her little bed. Her mother came to hear her prayers and to turn out the light; and–when Mrs. Baxter had passed out into the hall, after that, Jane heard her speaking to William, who was now conducting what seemed to be excavations on a serious scale in his own room.
“Oh, Willie, perhaps I didn’t tell you, but– you remember I’d been missing papa’s evening clothes and looking everywhere for days and days?”
“Ye–es,” huskily from William.
“Well, I found them! And where do you suppose I’d put them? I found them under your window-seat. Can you think of anything more absurd than putting them there and then forgetting it? I took them to the tailor’s to have them let out. They were getting too tight for papa, but they’ll be all right for him when the tailor sends them back.”
What the stricken William gathered from this it is impossible to state with accuracy; probably he mixed some perplexity with his emotions. Certainly he was perplexed the following evening at dinner.
Jane did not appear at the table. “Poor child! she’s sick in bed,” Mrs. Baxter explained to her husband. “I was out, this afternoon, and she ate nearly ALL of a five-pound box of candy.”
Both the sad-eyed William and his father were dumfounded. “Where on earth did she get a five-pound box of candy?” Mr. Baxter demanded.
“I’m afraid Jane has begun her first affair,” said Mrs. Baxter. “A gentleman sent it to her.”
“What gentleman?” gasped William.
And in his mother’s eyes, as they slowly came to rest on his in reply, he was aware of an inscrutability strongly remindful of that inscrutable look of Jane’s.
“Mr. Parcher,” she said, gently.
XII
PROGRESS OF THE SYMPTOMS
Mrs. BAXTER’S little stroke of diplomacy had gone straight to the mark,
she was a woman of insight. For every reason she was well content to have her son spend his evenings at home, though it cannot be claimed that his presence enlivened the household, his condition being one of strange, trancelike irascibility. Evening after evening passed, while he sat dreaming painfully of Mr. Parcher’s porch; but in the daytime, though William did not literally make hay while the sun shone, he at least gathered a harvest somewhat resembling hay in general character.
Thus:
One afternoon, having locked his door to secure himself against intrusion on the part of his mother or Jane, William seated himself at his writing-table, and from a drawer therein took a small cardboard box, which he uncovered, placing the contents in view before him upon the table. (How meager, how chilling a word is “contents”!) In the box were:
A faded rose.
Several other faded roses, disintegrated into leaves.
Three withered “four-leaf clovers.”
A white ribbon still faintly smelling of violets.
A small silver shoe-buckle.
A large pearl button.
A small pearl button.
A tortoise-shell hair-pin.
A cross-section from the heel of a small slipper.
A stringy remnant, probably once an improvised wreath of daisies.
Four or five withered dandelions.
Other dried vegetation, of a nature now indistinguishable.
William gazed reverently upon this junk of precious souvenirs; then from the inner pocket of his coat he brought forth, warm and crumpled, a lumpish cluster of red geranium blossoms, still aromatic and not quite dead, though naturally, after three hours of such intimate confinement, they wore an unmistakable look of suffering. With a tenderness which his family had never observed in him since that piteous day in his fifth year when he tried to mend his broken doll, William laid the geranium blossoms in the cardboard box among the botanical and other relics.
His gentle eyes showed what the treasures meant to him, and yet it was strange that they should have meant so much, because the source of supply was not more than a quarter of a mile distant, and practically inexhaustible. Miss Pratt had now been a visitor at the Parchers’ for something less than five weeks, but she had made no mention of prospective departure, and there was every reason to suppose that she meant to remain all summer. And as any
foliage or anything whatever that she touched, or that touched her, was thenceforth suitable for William’s museum, there appeared to be some probability that autumn might see it so enlarged as to lack that rarity in the component items which is the underlying value of most collections.
William’s writing-table was beside an open window, through which came an insistent whirring, unagreeable to his mood; and, looking down upon the sunny lawn, he beheld three lowly creatures. One was Genesis; he was cutting the grass. Another was Clematis; he had
assumed a transient attitude, curiously triangular, in order to scratch his ear, the while his anxious eyes never wavered from the third creature.
This was Jane. In one hand she held a little stack of sugar-sprinkled wafers, which she slowly but steadily depleted, unconscious of the increasingly earnest protest, at last nearing agony, in the eyes of Clematis. Wearing unaccustomed garments of fashion and festivity, Jane stood, in speckless, starchy white and a blue sash, watching the lawn-mower spout showers of grass as the powerful Genesis easily propelled it along over lapping lanes, back and forth, across the yard.
From a height of illimitable loftiness the owner of the cardboard treasury looked down upon the squat commonplaceness of those three lives. The condition of Jane and Genesis and Clematis seemed almost laughably pitiable to him, the more so because they were unaware of it. They breathed not the starry air that William breathed, but what did it matter to them? The wretched things did not even know that they meant nothing to Miss Pratt!
Clematis found his ear too pliable for any great solace from his foot, but he was not disappointed; he had expected little, and his thoughts were elsewhere. Rising, he permitted his nose to follow his troubled eyes, with the result that it touched the rim of the last wafer in Jane’s external possession.
This incident annoyed William. “Look there!” he called from the window. “You mean to eat that cake after the dog’s had his face on it?”
Jane remained placid. “It wasn’t his face.”
“Well, if it wasn’t his face, I’d like to know what–”
“It wasn’t his face,” Jane repeated. “It was his nose. It wasn’t all of his nose touched it, either. It was only a little outside piece of his nose.”
“Well, are you going to eat that cake, I ask you?”
Jane broke off a small bit of the wafer. She gave the bit to Clematis and slowly ate what remained, continuing to watch Genesis and apparently unconscious of the scorching gaze from the window.
“I never saw anything as disgusting as long as I’ve lived!” William announced. “I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it if anybody’d told me a sister of mine would eat after–”
“I didn’t,” said Jane. “I like Clematis, anyway.”
“Ye gods!” her brother cried. “Do you think that makes it any better? And, BY the WAY,” he continued, in a tone of even greater severity, “I’d a like to know where you got those cakes. Where’d you get ’em, I’d just like to inquire?”
“In the pantry.” Jane turned and moved toward the house. “I’m goin’ in for some more, now.”
William uttered a cry; these little cakes were sacred. His mother, growing curious to meet a visiting lady of whom (so to speak) she had heard much and thought more, had asked May Parcher to bring her guest for iced tea, that afternoon. A few others of congenial age had been invited: there was to be a small matinee, in fact, for the honor and pleasure of the son of the house, and the cakes of Jane’s onslaught were part of Mrs. Baxter’s preparations. There was no telling where Jane would stop; it was conceivable that Miss Pratt herself might go waferless.
William returned the cardboard box to its drawer with reverent haste; then, increasing the haste, but dropping the reverence, he hied himself to the pantry with such advantage of longer legs that within the minute he and the wafers appeared in conjunction before his mother, who was arranging fruit and flowers upon a table in the “living-room.”
William entered in the stained-glass attitude of one bearing gifts. Overhead, both hands supported a tin pan, well laden with small cakes and wafers, for which Jane was silently but repeatedly and systematically jumping. Even under the stress of these efforts her expression was cool and collected; she maintained the self-possession that was characteristic of her.
Not so with William; his cheeks were flushed, his eyes indignant. “You see what this child is doing?” he demanded. “Are you going to let her ruin everything?”
“Ruin?” Mrs. Baxter repeated, absently, refreshing with fair water a bowl of flowers upon the table. “Ruin?”
“Yes, ruin!” William was hotly emphatic, “If you don’t do something with her it ‘ll all be ruined before Miss Pr–before they even get here!”
Mrs. Baxter laughed. “Set the pan down, Willie.”
“Set it DOWN?” he echoed, incredulously “With that child in the room and grabbing like–”
“There!” Mrs. Baxter took the pan from him, placed it upon a chair, and with the utmost coolness selected five wafers and gave them to Jane. “I’d already promised her she could have five more. You know the doctor said Jane’s digestion was the finest he’d ever misunderstood. They won’t hurt her at all, Willie.”
This deliberate misinterpretation of his motives made it difficult for William to speak. “Do YOU think,” he began, hoarsely, “do you THINK–”
“They’re so small, too,” Mrs. Baxter went on. “SHE probably wouldn’t be sick if she ate them all.”
“My heavens!” he burst forth. “Do you think I was worrying about–” He broke off, unable to express himself save by a few gestures of despair. Again finding his voice, and a great deal of it, he demanded: “Do you realize that Miss PRATT will be here within less than half an hour? What do you suppose she’d think of the people of this town if she was invited out, expecting decent treatment, and found two-thirds of the cakes eaten up before she got there, and what was left of ’em all mauled and pawed over and crummy and chewed-up lookin’ from some wretched CHILD?” Here William became oratorical, but not with marked effect, since Jane regarded him with unmoved eyes, while Mrs. Baxter continued to be mildly preoccupied in arranging the table. In fact, throughout this episode in controversy the ladies’ party had not only the numerical but the emotional advantage. Obviously, the
approach of Miss Pratt was not to them what it was to William. “I tell you,” he declaimed;– “yes, I tell you that it wouldn’t take much of this kind of thing to make Miss Pratt think the people of this town were–well, it wouldn’t take much to make her think the people of this town hadn’t learned much of how to behave in society and were pretty uncilivized!” He corrected himself . “Uncivilized! And to think Miss Pratt has to find that out in MY house! To think–”
“Now, Willie,” said Mrs. Baxter, gently, “you’d better go up and brush your hair again before your friends come. You mustn’t let yourself get so excited.”
“ `Excited!’ ” he cried, incredulously. “Do you think I’m EXCITED? Ye gods!”
He smote his hands together and, in his despair of her intelligence, would have flung himself down upon a chair, but was arrested half-way by simultaneous loud outcries from his mother and Jane.
“Don’t sit on the CAKES!” they both screamed.
Saving himself and the pan of wafers by a supreme contortion at the last instant, William decided to remain upon his feet. “What do I care for the cakes?” he demanded, contemptuously, beginning to pace the floor. “It’s the
question of principle I’m talking about! Do you think it’s right to give the people of this town a poor name when strangers like Miss PRATT come to vis–”
“Willie!” His mother looked at him hopelessly. “Do go and brush your hair. If you
could see how you’ve tousled it you would.”
He gave her a dazed glance and strode from the room.
Jane looked after him placidly. “Didn’t he talk funny!” she murmured.
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Baxter. She shook her head and uttered the enigmatic words, “They do.”
“I mean Willie, mamma,” said Jane. “If it’s anything about Miss Pratt. he always talks awful funny. Don’t you think Willie talks awful funny if it’s anything about Miss Pratt, mamma?”
“Yes, but–”
“What, mamma?” Jane asked as her mother paused.
“Well–it happens. People do get like that at his age, Jane.”
“Does everybody?”
“No, I suppose not everybody. Just some.”
Jane’s interest was roused. “Well, do those that do, mamma,” she inquired, “do they all act like Willie?”
“No,” said Mrs. Baxter. “That’s the trouble; you can’t tell what’s coming.”
Jane nodded. “I think I know,” she said. “You mean Willie–”
William himself interrupted her. He returned violently to the doorway, his hair still tousled, and, standing upon the threshold, said, sternly:
“What is that child wearing her best dress for?”
“Willie!” Mrs. Baxter cried. “Go brush your hair!”
“I wish to know what that child is all dressed up for?” he insisted.
“To please you! Don’t you want her to look her best at your tea?”
“I thought that was it!” he cried, and upon this confirmation of his worst fears he did increased violence to his rumpled hair. “I suspected it, but I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it! You mean to let this child–you mean to let–” Here his agitation affected his throat and his utterance became clouded. A few detached phrases fell from him: “–Invite MY friends–children’s party–ye gods!–think Miss Pratt plays dolls–”
“Jane will be very good,” his mother said. “I shouldn’t think of not having her, Willie, and you needn’t bother about your friends; they’ll be very glad to see her. They all know her, except Miss Pratt, perhaps, and–” Mrs. Baxter paused; then she asked, absently: “By the way, haven’t I heard somewhere that she likes pretending to be a little girl, herself?”
“WHAT!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Baxter, remaining calm; “I’m sure I’ve heard somewhere that she likes to talk `baby-talk.’ ”
Upon this a tremor passed over William, after which he became rigid. “You ask a lady to your house,” he began, “and even before she gets here, before you’ve even seen her, you pass judgment upon one of the–one of the noblest–”
“Good gracious! _I_ haven’t `passed judgment.’ If she does talk `baby-talk,’ I imagine she does it very prettily, and I’m sure I’ve no objection. And if she does do it, why should you be insulted by my mentioning it?”
“It was the way you said it,” he informed her, icily.
“Good gracious! I just said it!” Mrs. Baxter laughed, and then, probably a little out of patience with him, she gave way to that innate mischievousness in such affairs which is not unknown to her sex. “You see, Willie, if she pretends to be a cunning little girl, it will be helpful to Jane to listen and learn how.”
William uttered a cry; he knew that he was struck, but he was not sure how or where. He was left with a blank mind and no repartee. Again he dashed from the room.
In the hall, near the open front door, he came to a sudden halt, and Mrs. Baxter and Jane heard him calling loudly to the industrious Genesis:
“Here! You go cut the grass in the back yard, and for Heaven’s sake, take that dog with you!”
“Grass awready cut roun’ back,” responded the amiable voice of Genesis, while the lawn- mower ceased not to whir. “Cut all ‘at back yod ‘s mawnin’.”
“Well, you can’t cut the front yard now. Go around in the back yard and take that dog with you.”
“Nemmine ’bout ‘at back yod! Ole Clem ain’ trouble nobody.”
“You hear what I tell you?” William shouted. “You do what I say and you do it quick!”
Genesis laughed gaily. “I got my grass to cut!”
“You decline to do what I command you?” William roared.
“Yes, indeedy! Who pay me my wages? ‘At’s MY boss. You’ ma say, ‘Genesis, you git all ‘at lawn mowed b’fo’ sundown.’ No, suh! Nee’n’ was’e you’ bref on me, ’cause I’m got all MY time good an’ took up!”
Once more William presented himself fatefully to his mother and Jane. “May I just kindly ask you to look out in the front yard?”
“I’m familiar with it, Willie,” Mrs. Baxter returned, a little wearily.
“I mean I want you to look at Genesis.”
“I’m familiar with his appearance, too,” she said. “Why in the world do you mind his cutting the grass?”
William groaned. “Do you honestly want guests coming to this house to see that awful old darky out there and know that HE’S the kind of servants we employ? Ye gods!”
“Why, Genesis is just a neighborhood outdoors darky, Willie; he works for half a dozen families besides us. Everybody in this part of town knows him.”
“Yes,” he cried, “but a lady that didn’t live here wouldn’t. Ye gods! What do you suppose she WOULD think? You know what he’s got on!”
“It’s a sort of sleeveless jersey he wears, Willie, I think.”
“No, you DON’T think that!” he cried, with great bitterness. “You know it’s not a jersey! You know perfectly well what it is, and yet you expect to keep him out there when–when one of the one of the nobl–when my friends arrive! And they’ll think that’s our DOG out there, won’t they? When intelligent people come to a house and see a dog sitting out in front, they think it’s the family in the house’s dog, don’t they?” William’s condition becoming more and more disordered, he paced the room, while his agony rose to a climax. “Ye gods! What do you think Miss Pratt will think of the people of this town, when she’s invited to meet a few of my friends and the first thing she sees is a nigger in his undershirt? What ‘ll she think when she finds that child’s eaten up half the food, and the people have to explain that the dog in the front yard belongs to the darky–” He interrupted himself with a groan: “And prob’ly she wouldn’t believe it. Anybody’d SAY they didn’t own a dog like that! And that’s what you want her to see, before she even gets inside the house! Instead of a regular gardener in livery like we ought to have, and a bulldog or a good Airedale or a fox-hound, or something, the first things you want intelligent people from out of town to see are that awful old darky and his mongrel scratchin’ fleas and like as not lettin’ ’em get on other people! THAT’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Go out to tea expecting decent treatment and get fl–”
“WILLIE!”
Mrs. Baxter managed to obtain his attention. “If you’ll go and brush your hair I’ll
send Genesis and Clematis away for the rest of the afternoon. And then if you ‘ll sit down quietly and try to keep cool until your friends get here, I’ll–”
“ `Quietly’!” he echoed, shaking his head over this mystery. “I’m the only one that IS quiet around here. Things ‘d be in a fine condition to receive guests if I didn’t keep pretty cool, I guess!”
“There, there,” she said, soothingly. “Go and brush your hair. And change your collar, Willie; it’s all wilted. I’ll send Genesis away.”
His wandering eye failed to meet hers with any intelligence. “Collar,” he muttered, as if in soliloquy. “Collar.”
“Change it!” said Mrs. Baxter, raising her voice. “It’s WILTED.”
He departed in a dazed manner.
Passing through the hall, he paused abruptly, his eye having fallen with sudden disapproval upon a large, heavily framed, glass-covered engraving, “The Battle of Gettysburg,” which hung upon the wall, near the front door. Undeniably, it was a picture feeble in decorative
quality; no doubt, too, William was right in thinking it as unworthy of Miss Pratt, as were Jane and Genesis and Clematis. He felt that she must never see it, especially as the frame had been chipped and had a corner broken, but it was more pleasantly effective where he found it than where (in his nervousness) he left it. A few hasty jerks snapped the elderly green cords by which it was suspended; then he laid the picture upon the floor and with his handkerchief made a curious labyrinth of avenues in the large oblong area of fine dust which this removal disclosed upon the wall. Pausing to wipe his hot brow with the same implement, he remembered that some one had made allusions to his collar and hair, whereupon he sprang to the stairs, mounted two at a time, rushed into his own room, and confronted his streaked image in the mirror.
XIII
AT HOME TO HIS FRIENDS
After ablutions, he found his wet hair plastic, and easily obtained the long, even sweep backward from the brow, lacking which no male person, unless bald, fulfilled his definition of a man of the world. But there ensued a period of vehemence and activity caused by a bent collar- button, which went on strike with a desperation that was downright savage. The day was warm and William was warmer; moisture bedewed him afresh. Belated victory no sooner arrived than he perceived a fatal dimpling of the new collar, and was forced to begin the operation of exchanging it for a successor. Another exchange, however, he unfortunately forgot to make: the
handkerchief with which he had wiped the wall remained in his pocket.
Voices from below, making polite laughter, warned him that already some of the bidden party had arrived, and, as he completed the fastening of his third consecutive collar, an ecstasy of sound reached him through the open window–and then, Oh then! his breath behaved in an abnormal manner and he began to tremble. It was the voice of Miss Pratt, no less!
He stopped for one heart-struck look from his casement. All in fluffy white and heliotrope she was–a blonde rapture floating over the sidewalk toward William’s front gate. Her little white cottony dog, with a heliotrope ribbon round his neck, bobbed his head over her cuddling arm; a heliotrope parasol shielded her infinitesimally from the amorous sun. Poor William!
Two youths entirely in William’s condition of heart accompanied the glamorous girl and hung upon her rose-leaf lips, while Miss Parcher appeared dimly upon the outskirts of the group, the well-known penalty for hostesses who entertain such radiance. Probably it serves them right.
To William’s reddening ear Miss Pratt’s voice came clearly as the chiming of tiny bells, for she spoke whimsically to her little dog in that tinkling childlike fashion which was part of the spell she cast.
“Darlin’ Flopit,” she said, “wake up! Oo tummin’ to tea-potty wiz all de drowed-ups. P’eshus Flopit, wake up!”
Dizzy with enchantment, half suffocated, his heart melting within him, William turned from the angelic sounds and fairy vision of the window. He ran out of the room, and plunged down the front stairs. And the next moment the crash of breaking glass and the loud thump-bump of a heavily falling human body resounded through the house.
Mrs. Baxter, alarmed, quickly excused herself from the tea-table, round which were gathered four or five young people, and hastened to the front hall, followed by Jane. Through the open door were seen Miss Pratt, Miss Parcher, Mr. Johnnie Watson and Mr. Joe Bullitt coming leisurely up the sunny front walk, laughing and unaware of the catastrophe which had just occurred within the shadows of the portal. And at a little distance from the foot of the stairs William was seated upon the prostrate “Battle of Gettysburg.”
“It slid,” he said, hoarsely. “I carried it upstairs with me”–he believed this–“and somebody brought it down and left it lying flat on the floor by the bottom step on purpose to trip me! I stepped on it and it slid.” He was in a state of shock: it seemed important to impress upon his mother the fact that the picture had not remained firmly in place when he stepped upon it. “It SLID, I tell you!”
“Get up, Willie!” she urged, under her breath, and as he summoned enough presence of mind to obey, she beheld ruins other than the wrecked engraving. She stifled a cry. “WILLIE! Did the glass cut you?”
He felt himself. “No’m.”
“It did your trousers! You’ll have to change them. Hurry!”
Some of William’s normal faculties were restored to him by one hasty glance at the back of his left leg, which had a dismantled appearance. A long blue strip of cloth hung there, with white showing underneath.
“HURRY!” said Mrs. Baxter. And hastily gathering some fragments of glass, she dropped them upon the engraving, pushed it out of the way, and went forward to greet Miss Pratt and her attendants.
As for William, he did not even pause to close his mouth, but fled with it open. Upward he sped, unseen, and came to a breathless halt upon the landing at the top of the stairs.
As it were in a dream he heard his mother’s hospitable greetings at the door, and then the little party lingered in the hall, detained by Miss Pratt’s discovery of Jane.
“Oh, tweetums tootums ickle dirl!” he heard the ravishing voice exclaim. “Oh, tootums ickle blue sash!”
“It cost a dollar and eighty-nine cents,” said Jane. “Willie sat on the cakes.”
“Oh no, he didn’t,” Mrs. Baxter laughed. “He didn’t QUITE!”
“He had to go up-stairs,” said Jane. And as the stricken listener above smote his forehead, she added placidly, “He tore a hole in his clo’es.”
She seemed about to furnish details, her mood being communicative, but Mrs. Baxter led the way into the “living-room”; the hall was vacated, and only the murmur of voices and laughter reached William. What descriptive information Jane may have added was spared his hearing, which was a mercy.
And yet it may be that he could not have felt worse than he did; for there IS nothing worse than to be seventeen and to hear one of the Noblest girls in the world told by a little child that you sat on the cakes and tore a hole in your clo’es.
William leaned upon the banister railing and thought thoughts about Jane. For several long, seething moments he thought of her exclusively. Then, spurred by the loud laughter of rivals and the agony of knowing that even in his own house they were monopolizing the attention of one of the Noblest, he hastened into his own, room and took account of his reverses.
Standing with his back to the mirror, he obtained over his shoulder a view of his trousers which caused him to break out in a fresh perspiration. Again he wiped his forehead with the handkerchief, and the result was instantly visible in the mirror.
The air thickened with sounds of frenzy, followed by a torrential roar and great sputterings in a bath-room, which tumult subsiding, William returned at a tragic gallop to his room and, having removed his trousers, began a feverish examination of the garments hanging in a clothes-
closet. There were two pairs of flannel trousers which would probably again be white and possible, when cleaned and pressed, but a glance
showed that until then they were not to be considered as even the last resort of desperation. Beside them hung his “last year’s summer suit” of light gray.
Feverishly he brought it forth, threw off his coat, and then–deflected by another glance at the mirror–began to change his collar again. This was obviously necessary, and to quicken the process he decided to straighten the bent collar-button. Using a shoe-horn as a lever, he succeeded in bringing the little cap or head of the button into its proper plane, but, unfortunately, his final effort dislodged the cap from the rod between it and the base, and it flew off malignantly into space. Here was a calamity; few things are more useless than a decapitated collar- button, and William had no other. He had made sure that it was his last before he put it on, that day; also he had ascertained that there was none in, on, or about his father’s dressing-table. Finally, in the possession of neither William nor his father was there a shirt with an indigenous collar.
For decades, collar-buttons have been on the hand-me-down shelves of humor; it is a mistake in the catalogue. They belong to pathos. They have done harm in the world, and there have been collar-buttons that failed when the destinies of families hung upon them. There have been collar-buttons that thwarted proper matings. There have been collar-buttons that bore last hopes, and, falling to the floor, NEVER were found! William’s broken collar-button was really the only collar-button in the house, except such as were engaged in serving his male guests below.
At first he did not realize the extent of his misfortune. How could he? Fate is always expected to deal its great blows in the grand manner. But our expectations are fustian spangled with pinchbeck; we look for tragedy to be theatrical. Meanwhile, every day before our eyes, fate works on, employing for its instruments the infinitesimal, the ignoble and the petty–in a word, collar-buttons.
Of course William searched his dressing- table and his father’s, although he had been thoroughly over both once before that day. Next he went through most of his mother’s and Jane’s accessories to the toilette; through trinket-boxes, glove-boxes, hairpin-boxes, handkerchief-cases– even through sewing-baskets. Utterly he
convinced himself that ladies not only use no collar- buttons, but also never pick them up and put them away among their own belongings. How much time he consumed in this search is difficult to reckon;–it is almost impossible to believe that there is absolutely no collar-button in a house.
And what William’s state of mind had become is matter for exorbitant conjecture. Jane, arriving at his locked door upon an errand, was bidden by a thick, unnatural voice to depart.
“Mamma says, `What in mercy’s name is the matter?’ ” Jane called. “She whispered to me, `Go an’ see what in mercy’s name is the matter with Willie; an’ if the glass cut him, after all; an’ why don’t he come down’; an’ why don’t you, Willie? We’re all havin’ the nicest time!”
“You g’way!” said the strange voice within the room. “G’way!”
“Well, did the glass cut you?”
“No! Keep quiet! G’way!”
“Well, are you EVER comin’ down to your party?”
“Yes, I am! G’way!”
Jane obeyed, and William somehow completed the task upon which he was engaged. Genius had burst forth from his despair; necessity had become a mother again, and William’s collar was in place. It was tied there. Under his necktie was a piece of string.
He had lost count of time, but he was frantically aware of its passage; agony was in the
thought of so many rich moments frittered away; up-stairs, while Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson made hay below. And there was another spur to haste in his fear that the behavior of Mrs. Baxter might not be all that the guest of honor would naturally expect of William’s mother. As for Jane, his mind filled with dread; shivers passed over him at intervals.
It was a dismal thing to appear at a “party” (and that his own) in “last summer’s suit,” but when he had hastily put it on and faced the mirror, he felt a little better–for three or four seconds. Then he turned to see how the back of it looked.
And collapsed in a chair, moaning.
XIV
TIME DOES FLY
He remembered now what he had been too hurried to remember earlier. He had worn these clothes on the previous Saturday, and, returning from a glorified walk with Miss Pratt, he had demonstrated a fact to which his near- demolition of the wafers, this afternoon, was additional testimony. This fact, roughly stated, is that a person of seventeen, in love, is liable to sit down anywhere. William had dreamily seated himself upon a tabouret in the library, without noticing that Jane had left her open paint-box there. Jane had just been painting sunsets; naturally all the little blocks of color were wet, and the effect upon William’s pale- gray trousers was marvelous–far beyond the capacity of his coat to conceal. Collar- buttons and children’s paint-boxes–those are the trolls that lie in wait!
The gray clothes and the flannel trousers had been destined for the professional cleaner, and William, rousing himself from a brief stupor, made a piteous effort to substitute himself for that expert so far as the gray trousers were concerned. He divested himself of them and brought water, towels, bath-soap, and a rubber bath- sponge to the bright light of his window; and; there, with touching courage and persistence, he tried to scrub the paint out of the cloth. He obtained cloud studies and marines which would have interested a Post-Impressionist, but upon trousers they seemed out of place.
There came one seeking and calling him again; raps sounded upon the door, which he had not forgotten to lock.
“Willie,” said a serious voice, “mamma wants to know what in mercy’s name is the matter! She wants to know if you know for mercy’s name what time it is! She wants to know what in mercy’s name you think they’re all goin’ to think! She says–”
“G’WAY!”
“Well, she said I had to find out what in mercy’s name you’re doin’, Willie.”
“You tell her,” he shouted, hoarsely–“tell her I’m playin’ dominoes! What’s she THINK I’m doin’?”
“I guess”–Jane paused, evidently to complete the swallowing of something–“I guess she thinks you’re goin’ crazy. I don’t like Miss Pratt, but she lets me play with that little dog. It’s name’s Flopit!”
“You go ‘way from that door and stop bothering me,” said William. “I got enough on my mind!”
“Mamma looks at Miss Pratt,” Jane remarked. “Miss Pratt puts cakes in that Mr. Bullitt’s mouth and Johnnie Watson’s mouth, too. She’s awful.”
William made it plain that these bulletins from the party found no favor with him. He bellowed, “If you don’t get away from that DOOR–”
Jane was interested in the conversation, but felt that it would be better to return to the refreshment-table. There she made use of her own conception of a whisper to place before her mother a report which was considered interesting and even curious by every one present; though, such was the courtesy of the little assembly, there was a general pretense of not hearing.
“I told him,” thus whispered Jane, “an’ he said, `You g’way from that door or I’ll do somep’m’–he didn’t say what, mamma. He
said, `What you think I’m doin’? I’m playin’ dominoes.’ He didn’t mean he WAS playin’ dominoes, mamma. He just said he was. I
think maybe he was just lookin’ in the lookin’- glass some more.”
Mrs. Baxter was becoming embarrassed. She resolved to go to William’s room herself at the first opportunity; but for some time her conscientiousness as a hostess continued to occupy her at the table, and then, when she would have gone, Miss Pratt detained her by a roguish appeal to make Mr. Bullitt and Mr. Watson behave. Both refused all nourishment except such as was placed in their mouths by the delicate hand of one of the Noblest, and the latter said that really she wanted to eat a little tweetie now and then herself, and not to spend her whole time feeding the Men. For Miss Pratt had the
same playfulness with older people that she had with those of her own age; and she elaborated her pretended quarrel with the two young gentlemen, taking others of the dazzled company into her confidence about it, and insisting upon “Mamma Batster’s” acting formally as judge to settle the difficulty. However, having thus arranged matters, Miss Pratt did not resign the center of interest, but herself proposed a compromise: she would continue to feed Mr. Bullitt and Mr. Watson “every other tweetie”–that is, each must agree to eat a cake “all by him own self,” after every cake fed to him. So the comedietta went on, to the running accompaniment of laughter, with Mr. Bullitt and Mr.
Watson swept by such gusts of adoration they were like to perish where they sat. But Mrs. Baxter’s smiling approval was beginning to be painful to the muscles of her face, for it was hypocritical. And if William had known her thoughts about one of the Noblest, he could only have attributed them to that demon of groundless prejudice which besets all females, but most particularly and outrageously the mothers and sisters of Men.
A colored serving-maid entered with a laden tray, and, having disposed of its freight of bon- bons among the guests, spoke to Mrs. Baxter in a low voice.
“Could you manage step in the back hall a minute, please, ma’am?”
Mrs. Baxter managed and, having closed the door upon the laughing voices, asked, quickly– “What is it, Adelia? Have you seen Mr. William? Do you know why he doesn’t come down?”
“Yes’m,” said Adelia. “He gone mighty near out his head, Miz Baxter.”
“What!”
“Yes’m. He come floppin’ down the back stairs in his baf-robe li’l’ while ago. He jes’ gone up again. He ‘ain’t got no britches, Miz Baxter.”
“No WHAT?”
“No’m,” said Adelia. “He ‘ain’t got no britches at all.”
A statement of this kind is startling under Almost any circumstances, and it is unusually so when made in reference to a person for whom a party is being given. Therefore it was not unreasonable of Mrs. Baxter to lose her breath.
“But–it can’t BE!” she gasped. “He has! He has plenty!”
“No’m, he ‘ain’t,” Adelia assured her. “An’ he’s carryin’ on so I don’t scarcely think he knows much what he’s doin’, Miz Baxter. He brung down some gray britches to the kitchen to see if I couldn’ press an’ clean ’em right quick: they was the ones Miss Jane, when she’s paintin’ all them sunsets, lef’ her paint-box open, an’ one them sunsets got on these here gray britches, Miz Baxter; an’ hones’ly, Miz Baxter, he’s fixed ’em in a condishum, tryin’ to git that paint out, I don’t believe it ‘ll be no use sendin’ ’em to the cleaner. `Clean ’em an’ press ’em QUICK?’ I says. `I couldn’ clean ’em by Resurreckshum, let alone pressin’ ’em!’ No’m! Well, he had his blue britches, too, but they’s so ripped an’ tore an’ kind o’ shredded away in one place, the cook she jes’ hollered when he spread ’em out, an’ he didn’ even ast me could I mend ’em. An’ he had two pairs o’ them white flannen britches, but hones’ly, Miz Baxter, I don’t scarcely think Genesis would wear ’em, the way they is now! `Well,’ I says, `ain’t but one thing lef’ to do _I_ can see,’ I says. `Why don’t you go put on that nice black suit you had las’ winter?’ ”
“Of course!” Mrs. Baxter cried. “I’ll go and–”
“No’m,” said Adelia. “You don’ need to. He’s up in the attic now, r’arin’ roun’ ‘mongs’ them trunks, but seem to me like I remember you put that suit away under the heavy blankets in that big cedar ches’ with the padlock. If you jes’ tell me where is the key, I take it up to him.”
“Under the bureau in the spare room,” said Mrs. Baxter. “HURRY!”
Adelia hurried; and, fifteen minutes later, William, for the last time that afternoon, surveyed himself in his mirror. His face showed the strain that had been upon him and under which he still labored; the black suit was a map of creases, and William was perspiring more freely than ever under the heavy garments. But at least he was clothed.
He emptied his pockets, disgorging upon the floor a multitude of small white spheres, like marbles. Then, as he stepped out into the hall, he discovered that their odor still remained about him; so he stopped and carefully turned his pockets inside out, one after the other, but finding that he still smelled vehemently of the “moth- balls,” though not one remained upon him, he went to his mother’s room and sprinkled violet toilet-water upon his chest and shoulders. He disliked such odors, but that left by the moth- balls was intolerable, and, laying hands upon a canister labeled “Hyacinth,” he contrived to pour a quantity of scented powder inside his collar, thence to be distributed by the force of gravity so far as his dampness permitted.
Lo, William was now ready to go to his party! Moist, wilted, smelling indeed strangely, he was ready.
But when he reached the foot of the stairs he discovered that there was one thing more to be done. Indignation seized him, and also a creeping fear chilled his spine, as he beheld a lurking shape upon the porch, stealthily moving toward the open door. It was the lowly Clematis, dog unto Genesis.
William instantly divined the purpose of Clematis. It was debatable whether Clematis had remained upon the premises after the departure of Genesis, or had lately returned thither upon some errand of his own, but one thing was certain, and the manner of Clematis–his attitude, his every look, his every gesture–made
it as clear as day. Clematis had discovered, by one means or another, the presence of Flopit in the house, and had determined to see him personally.
Clematis wore his most misleading expression; a stranger would have thought him shy and easily turned from his purpose–but William was not deceived. He knew that if Clematis meant to see Flopit, a strong will, a ready brain, and stern action were needed to thwart him; but at all costs that meeting must be prevented. Things had been awful enough, without that!
He was well aware that Clematis could not be driven away, except temporarily, for nothing was further fixed upon Clematis than his habit of retiring under pressure, only to return and return again. True, the door could have been shut in the intruder’s face, but he would have sought other entrance with possible success, or, failing that, would have awaited in the front yard the dispersal of the guests and Flopit’s consequent emerging. This was a contretemps not to be endured.
The door of the living-room was closed, muffling festal noises and permitting safe passage through the hall. William cast a hunted look over his shoulder; then he approached Clematis.
“Good ole doggie,” he said, huskily. “Hyuh, Clem! Hyuh, Clem!”
Clematis moved sidelong, retreating with his head low and his tail denoting anxious thoughts.
“Hyuh, Clem!” said William, trying, with only fair success, to keep his voice from sounding venomous. “Hyuh, Clem!”
Clematis continued his deprecatory retreat.
Thereupon William essayed a ruse–he pretended to nibble at something, and then extended his hand as if it held forth a gift of food. “Look, Clem,” he said. “Yum-yum! Meat, Clem! Good meat!”
For once Clematis was half credulous. He did not advance, but he elongated himself to investigate the extended hand, and the next instant
found himself seized viciously by the scruff of the neck. He submitted to capture in absolute silence. Only the slightest change of countenance betrayed his mortification at having been found so easy a gull; this passed, and a look of resolute stoicism took its place.
He refused to walk, but offered merely nominal resistance, as a formal protest which he wished to be of record, though perfectly understanding that it availed nothing at present. William