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 lawnmower 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.”