walked home,” Mr. Baxter remarked, addressing his wife. “I suppose
there's something in the clean air after a rain that brings 'em out. I
noticed one thing, though; maybe it's the way they dress nowadays, but
you certainly don't see as many pretty girls on the streets as there
used to be.”
William looked up absently. “I used to think that, too,” he said, with
dreamy condescension, “when I was younger.”
Mr. Baxter stared.
“Well, I'll be darned!” he said.
“Papa, papa!” his wife called, reprovingly.
“When you were younger!” Mr. Baxter repeated, with considerable
irritation. “How old d' you think you are?”
“I'm going on eighteen,” said William, firmly. “I know plenty of
cases--cases where--” He paused, relapsing into lethargy.
“What's the matter with him?” Mr. Baxter inquired, heatedly, of his
wife.
William again came to life. “I was saying that a person's age is
different according to circumstances,” he explained, with dignity, if
not lucidity. “You take Genesis's father. Well, he was married when he
was sixteen. Then there was a case over in Iowa that lots of people
know about and nobody thinks anything of. A young man over there in Iowa
that's seventeen years old began shaving when he was thirteen and shaved
every day for four years, and now--”
He was interrupted by his father, who was no longer able to contain
himself. “And now I suppose he's got WHISKERS!” he burst forth. “There's
an ambition for you! My soul!”
It was Jane who took up the tale. She had been listening with growing
excitement, her eyes fixed piercingly upon William. “He's got a beard!”
she cried, alluding not to her brother, but to the fabled Iowan. “I
heard Willie tell ole Mr. Genesis about it.”
“It seems to lie heavily on your mind,” Mr. Baxter said to William. “I
suppose you feel that in the face of such an example, your life between
the ages of thirteen and seventeen has been virtually thrown away?”
William had again relapsed, but he roused himself feebly. “Sir?” he
said.
“What IS the matter with him?” Mr. Baxter demanded. “Half the time
lately he seems to be hibernating, and only responds by a slight
twitching when poked with a stick. The other half of the time he either
behaves like I-don't-know-what or talks about children growing whiskers
in Iowa! Hasn't that girl left town yet?”
William was not so deep in trance that this failed to stir him. He left
the table.
Mrs. Baxter looked distressed, though, as the meal was about concluded,
and William had partaken of his share in spite of his dreaminess, she
had no anxieties connected with his sustenance. As for Mr. Baxter, he
felt a little remorse, undoubtedly, but he was also puzzled. So plain
a man was he that he had no perception of the callous brutality of
the words “THAT GIRL” when applied to some girls. He referred to his
mystification a little later, as he sat with his evening paper in the
library.
“I don't know what I said to that tetchy boy to hurt him,” he began in
an apologetic tone. “I don't see that there was anything too rough for
him to stand in a little sarcasm. He needn't be so sensitive on the
subject of whiskers, it seems to me.”
Mrs. Baxter smiled faintly and shook her head.
It was Jane who responded. She was seated upon the floor, disporting
herself mildly with her paint-box. “Papa, I know what's the matter with
Willie,” she said.
“Do you?” Mr. Baxter returned. “Well, if you make it pretty short,
you've got just about long enough to tell us before your bedtime.”
“I think he's married,” said Jane.
“What!” And her parents united their hilarity.
“I do think he's married,” Jane insisted, unmoved. “I think he's married
with that Miss Pratt.”
“Well,” said her father, “he does seem upset, and it may be that her
visit and the idea of whiskers, coming so close together, is more than
mere coincidence, but I hardly think Willie is married, Jane!”
“Well, then,” she returned, thoughtfully, “he's almost married. I know
that much, anyway.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, because! I KIND of thought he must be married, or anyways
somep'm, when he talked to Mr. Genesis this mornin'. He said he knew how
some people got married in Pennsylvania an' India, an' he said they were
only seven or eight years old. He said so, an' I heard him; an' he said
there were eleven people married that were only seventeen, an' this boy
in Iowa got a full beard an' got married, too. An' he said Mr. Genesis
was only sixteen when HE was married. He talked all about gettin'
married when you're seventeen years old, an' he said how people thought
it was the best thing could happen. So I just KNOW he's almost married!”
Mr. Baxter chuckled, and Mrs. Baxter smiled, but a shade of
thoughtfulness, a remote anxiety, tell upon the face of the latter.
“You haven't any other reason, have you, Jane?” she asked.
“Yes'm,” said Jane, promptly. “An' it's a more reason than any! Miss
Pratt calls you 'mamma' as if you were HER mamma. She does it when she
talks to Willie.”
“Jane!”
“Yes m, I HEARD her. An' Willie said, 'I don't know what you'll think
about mother.' He said, 'I don't know what you'll think about mother,'
to Miss Pratt.”
Mrs. Baxter looked a little startled, and her husband frowned. Jane
mistook their expressions for incredulity. “They DID, mamma,” she
protested. “That's just the way they talked to each other. I heard 'em
this afternoon, when Willie had papa's cane.”
“Maybe they were doing it to tease you, if you were with them,” Mr.
Baxter suggested.
“I wasn't with 'em. I was sailin' my boat, an' they came along, an'
first they never saw me, an' Willie looked--oh, papa, I wish you'd seen
him!” Jane rose to her feet in her excitement. “His face was so funny,
you never saw anything like it! He was walkin' along with it turned
sideways, an' all the time he kept walkin' frontways, he kept his face
sideways--like this, papa. Look, papa!” And she gave what she considered
a faithful imitation of William walking with Miss Pratt. “Look, papa!
This is the way Willie went. He had it sideways so's he could see Miss.
Pratt, papa. An' his face was just like this. Look, papa!” She contorted
her features in a terrifying manner. “Look, papa!”
“Don't, Jane!” her mother exclaimed.
“Well, I haf to show papa how Willie looked, don't I?” said Jane,
relaxing. “That's just the way he looked. Well, an' then they stopped
an' talked to me, an' Miss Pratt said, 'It's our little sister.'”
“Did she really?” Mrs. Baxter asked, gravely.
“Yes'm, she did. Soon as she saw who I was, she said, 'Why, it's our
little sister!' Only she said it that way she talks--sort of foolish.
'It's our ittle sissy'--somep'm like that, mamma. She said it twice an'
told me to go home an' get washed up. An' Miss Pratt told Willie--Miss
Pratt said, 'It isn't mamma's fault Jane's so dirty,' just like that.
She--”
“Are you sure she said 'our little sister'?” said Mrs. Baxter.
“Why, you can ask Willie! She said it that funny way. 'Our 'ittle
sissy'; that's what she said. An' Miss Pratt said, 'Ev'rybody would love
our little sister if mamma washed her in soap an' water!' You can ask
Willie; that's exackly what Miss Pratt said, an' if you don't believe it
you can ask HER. If you don't want to believe it, why, you can ask--”
“Hush, dear,” said Mrs. Baxter. “All this doesn't mean anything at all,
especially such nonsense as Willie's thinking of being married. It's
your bedtime.”
“Well, but MAMMA--”
“Was that all they said?” Mr. Baxter inquired.
Jane turned to him eagerly. “They said all lots of things like that,
papa. They--”
“Nonsense!” Mrs. Baxter in interrupted. “Come, it's bedtime. I'll go up
with you. You mustn't think such nonsense.”
“But, mamma--”
“Come along, Jane!”
Jane was obedient in the flesh, but her spirit was free; her opinions
were her own. Disappointed in the sensation she had expected to produce,
she followed her mother out of the room wearing the expression of a
person who says, “You'll SEE--some day when everything's ruined!”
Mr. Baxter, left alone, laughed quietly, lifted his neglected newspaper
to obtain the light at the right angle, and then allowed it to languish
upon his lap again. Frowning, he began to tap the floor with his shoe.
He was trying to remember what things were in his head when he was
seventeen, and it was difficult. It seemed to him that he had been a
steady, sensible young fellow--really quite a man--at that age. Looking
backward at the blur of youthful years, the period from sixteen to
twenty-five appeared to him as “pretty much all of a piece.” He could
not recall just when he stopped being a boy; it must have been at about
fifteen, he thought.
All at once he sat up stiffly in his chair, and the paper slid from his
knee. He remembered an autumn, long ago, when he had decided to abandon
the educational plans of his parents and become an actor. He had located
this project exactly, for it dated from the night of his seventeenth
birthday, when he saw John McCullough play “Virginius.”
Even now Mr. Baxter grew a little red as he remembered the remarkable
letter he had written, a few weeks later, to the manager of a passing
theatrical company. He had confidently expected an answer, and had made
his plans to leave town quietly with the company and afterward reassure
his parents by telegraph. In fact, he might have been on the stage at
this moment, if that manager had taken him. Mr. Baxter began to look
nervous.
Still, there is a difference between going on the stage and getting
married. “I don't know, though!” Mr. Baxter thought. “And Willie's
certainly not so well balanced in a GENERAL way as I was.” He wished
his wife would come down and reassure him, though of course it was all
nonsense.
But when Mrs. Baxter came down-stairs she did not reassure him. “Of
course Jane's too absurd!” she said. “I don't mean that she 'made it
up'; she never does that, and no doubt this little Miss Pratt did say
about what Jane thought she said. But it all amounts to nothing.”
“Of course!”
“Willie's just going through what several of the other boys about his
age are going through--like Johnnie Watson and Joe Bullitt and Wallace
Banks. They all seem to be frantic over her.”
“I caught a glimpse of her the day you had her to tea. She's rather
pretty.”
“Adorably! And perhaps Willie has been just a LITTLE bit more frantic
than the others.”
“He certainly seems in a queer state!”
At this his wife's tone became serious. “Do you think he WOULD do as
crazy a thing as that?”
Mr. Baxter laughed. “Well, I don't know what he'd do it ON! I don't
suppose he has more than a dollar in his possession.”
“Yes, he has,” she returned, quickly. “Day before yesterday there was
a second-hand furniture man here, and I was too busy to see him, but
I wanted the storeroom in the cellar cleared out, and I told Willie he
could have whatever the man would pay him for the junk in there, if he'd
watch to see that they didn't TAKE anything. They found some old pieces
that I'd forgotten, underneath things, and altogether the man paid
Willie nine dollars and eighty-five cents.”
“But, mercy-me!” exclaimed Mr. Baxter, “the girl may be an idiot, but
she wouldn't run away and marry a boy just barely seventeen on nine
dollars and eighty-five cents!”
“Oh no!” said Mrs. Baxter. “At least, I don't THINK so. Of course girls
do as crazy things as boys sometimes--in their way. I was thinking--”
She paused. “Of COURSE there couldn't be anything in it, but it did seem
a little strange.”
“What did?”
“Why, just before I came down-stairs, Adelia came for the laundry; and
I asked her if she'd seen Willie; and she said he'd put on his dark
suit after dinner, and he went out through the kitchen, carrying his
suit-case.”
“He did?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Baxter went on, slowly, “I COULDN'T believe he'd do
such a thing, but he really is in a PREPOSTEROUS way over this little
Miss Pratt, and he DID have that money--”
“By George!” Mr. Baxter got upon his feet. “The way he talked at dinner,
I could come pretty near believing he hasn't any more brains LEFT than
to get married on nine dollars and eighty-five cents! I wouldn't put it
past him! By George, I wouldn't!”
“Oh, I don't think he would,” she remonstrated, feebly. “Besides, the
law wouldn't permit it.”
Mr. Baxter paced the floor. “Oh, I suppose they COULD manage it. They
could go to some little town and give false ages and--” He broke off.
“Adelia was sure he had his suit-case?”
She nodded. “Do you think we'd better go down to the Parchers'? We'd
just say we came to call, of course, and if--”
“Get your hat on,” he said. “I don't think there's anything in it at
all, but we'd just as well drop down there. It can't HURT anything.”
“Of course, I don't think--” she began.
“Neither do I,” he interrupted, irascibly. “But with a boy of his age
crazy enough to think he's in love, how do WE know what 'll happen?
We're only his parents! Get your hat on.”
But when the uneasy couple found themselves upon the pavement before
the house of the Parchers, they paused under the shade-trees in the
darkness, and presently decided that it was not necessary to go in.
Suddenly their uneasiness had fallen from them. From the porch came
the laughter of several young voices, and then one silvery voice, which
pretended to be that of a tiny child.
“Oh, s'ame! S'ame on 'oo, big Bruvva Josie-Joe! Mus' be polite to Johnny
Jump-up, or tant play wiv May and Lola!”
“That's Miss Pratt,” whispered Mrs. Baxter. “She's talking to Johnnie
Watson and Joe Bullitt and May Parcher. Let's go home; it's all right.
Of course I knew it would be.”
“Why, certainly,” said Mr. Baxter, as they turned. “Even if Willie were
as crazy as that, the little girl would have more sense. I wouldn't have
thought anything of it, if you hadn't told me about the suit-case. That
looked sort of queer.”
She agreed that it did, but immediately added that she had thought
nothing of it. What had seemed more significant to her was William's
interest in the early marriage of Genesis's father, and in the Iowa
beard story, she said. Then she said that it WAS curious about the
suit-case.
And when they came to their own house again, there was William sitting
alone and silent upon the steps of the porch.
“I thought you'd gone out, Willie,” said his mother, as they paused
beside him.
“Ma'am?”
“Adelia said you went out, carrying your suit-case.”
“Oh yes,” he said, languidly. “If you leave clothes at Schwartz's in the
evening they have 'em pressed in the morning. You said I looked damp at
dinner, so I took 'em over and left 'em there.”
“I see.” Mrs. Baxter followed her husband to the door, but she stopped
on the threshold and called back:
“Don't sit there too long, Willie.”
“Ma'am?”
“The dew is falling and it rained so hard to-day--I'm afraid it might be
damp.”
“Ma'am?”
“Come on,” Mr. Baxter said to his wife. “He's down on the Parchers'
porch, not out in front here. Of course he can't hear you. It's three
blocks and a half.”
But William's father was mistaken. Little he knew! William was not upon
the porch of the Parchers, with May Parcher and Joe Bullitt and Johnnie
Watson to interfere. He was far from there, in a land where time was
not. Upon a planet floating in pink mist, and uninhabited--unless old
Mr. Genesis and some Hindoo princes and the diligent Iowan may have
established themselves in its remoter regions--William was alone with
Miss Pratt, in the conservatory. And, after a time, they went together,
and looked into the door of a room where an indefinite number of little
boys--all over three years of age--were playing in the firelight upon a
white-bear rug. For, in the roseate gossamer that boys' dreams are made
of, William had indeed entered the married state.
His condition was growing worse, every day.
XVIII
THE BIG, FAT LUMMOX
In the morning sunshine, Mrs. Baxter stood at the top of the steps of
the front porch, addressing her son, who listened impatiently and edged
himself a little nearer the gate every time he shifted his weight from
one foot to the other.
“Willie,” she said, “you must really pay some attention to the laws of
health, or you'll never live to be an old man.”
“I don't want to live to be an old man,” said William, earnestly. “I'd
rather do what I please now and die a little sooner.”
“You talk very foolishly,” his mother returned. “Either come back and
put on some heavier THINGS or take your overcoat.”
“My overcoat!” William groaned. “They'd think I was a lunatic, carrying
an overcoat in August!”
“Not to a picnic,” she said.
“Mother, it isn't a picnic, I've told you a hunderd times! You think
it's one those ole-fashion things YOU used to go to--sit on the damp
ground and eat sardines with ants all over 'em? This isn't anything like
that; we just go out on the trolley to this farm-house and have noon
dinner, and dance all afternoon, and have supper, and then come home on
the trolley. I guess we'd hardly of got up anything as out o' date as a
picnic in honor of Miss PRATT!”
Mrs. Baxter seemed unimpressed.
“It doesn't matter whether you call it a picnic or not, Willie. It will
be cool on the open trolleycar coming home, especially with only those
white trousers on--”
“Ye gods!” he cried. “I've got other things on besides my trousers! I
wish you wouldn't always act as if I was a perfect child! Good heavens!
isn't a person my age supposed to know how much clothes to wear?”
“Well, if he is,” she returned, “it's a mere supposition and not founded
on fact. Don't get so excited, Willie, please; but you'll either have to
give up the picnic or come in and ch--”
“Change my 'things'!” he wailed. “I can't change my 'things'! I've got
just twenty minutes to get to May Parcher's--the crowd meets there, and
they're goin' to take the trolley in front the Parchers' at exactly a
quarter after 'leven. PLEASE don't keep me any longer, mother--I GOT to
go!”
She stepped into the hall and returned immediately. “Here's your
overcoat, Willie.”
His expression was of despair. “They'll think I'm a lunatic and they'll
say so before everybody--and I don't blame 'em! Overcoat on a hot day
like this! Except me, I don't suppose there was ever anybody lived in
the world and got to be going on eighteen years old and had to carry his
silly old overcoat around with him in August--because his mother made
him!”
“Willie,” said Mrs. Baxter, “you don't know how many thousands and
thousands of mothers for thousands and thousands of years have kept
their sons from taking thousands and thousands of colds--just this way!”
He moaned. “Well, and I got to be called a lunatic just because you're
nervous, I s'pose. All right!”
She hung it upon his arm, kissed him; and he departed in a desperate
manner.
However, having worn his tragic face for three blocks, he halted before
a corner drug-store, and permitted his expression to improve as he
gazed upon the window display of My Little Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban
Cigarettes, the Package of Twenty for Ten Cents. William was not a
smoker--that is to say, he had made the usual boyhood experiments,
finding them discouraging; and though at times he considered it
humorously man-about-town to say to a smoking friend, “Well, _I_'ll
tackle one o' your ole coffin-nails,” he had never made a purchase
of tobacco in his life. But it struck him now that it would be rather
debonair to disport himself with a package of Little Sweethearts upon
the excursion.
And the name! It thrilled him inexpressibly, bringing a tenderness into
his eyes and a glow into his bosom. He felt that when he should smoke
a Little Sweetheart it would be a tribute to the ineffable visitor for
whom this party was being given--it would bring her closer to him. His
young brow grew almost stern with determination, for he made up his
mind, on the spot, that he would smoke oftener in the future--he would
become a confirmed smoker, and all his life he would smoke My Little
Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban Cigarettes.
He entered and managed to make his purchase in a matter-of-fact way, as
if he were doing something quite unemotional; then he said to the clerk:
“Oh, by the by--ah--”
The clerk stared. “Well, what else?”
“I mean,” said William, hurriedly, “there's something I wanted to 'tend
to, now I happen to be here. I was on my way to take this overcoat
to--to get something altered at the tailor's for next winter. 'Course
I wouldn't want it till winter, but I thought I might as well get it
DONE.” He paused, laughing carelessly, for greater plausibility. “I
thought he'd prob'ly want lots of time on the job--he's a slow worker,
I've noticed--and so I decided I might just as well go ahead and let him
get at it. Well, so I was on my way there, but I just noticed I only
got about six minutes more to get to a mighty important engagement I got
this morning, and I'd like to leave it here and come by and get it on my
way home, this evening.”
“Sure,” said the clerk. “Hang it on that hook inside the
p'scription-counter. There's one there already, b'longs to your friend,
that young Bullitt fella. He was in here awhile ago and said he wanted
to leave his because he didn't have time to take it to be pressed in
time for next winter. Then he went on and joined that crowd in Mr.
Parcher's yard, around the corner, that's goin' on a trolley-party. I
says, 'I betcher mother maje carry it,' and he says, 'Oh no. Oh no,' he
says. 'Honest, I was goin' to get it pressed!' You can hang yours on the
same nail.”
The clerk spoke no more, and went to serve another customer, while
William stared after him a little uneasily. It seemed that here was a
man of suspicious nature, though, of course, Joe Bullitt's shallow talk
about getting an overcoat pressed before winter would not have imposed
upon anybody. However, William felt strongly that the private life of
the customers of a store should not be pried into and speculated about
by employees, and he was conscious of a distaste for this clerk.
Nevertheless, it was with a lighter heart that he left his overcoat
behind him and stepped out of the side door of the drug-store. That
brought him within sight of the gaily dressed young people, about thirty
in number, gathered upon the small lawn beside Mr. Parcher's house.
Miss Pratt stood among them, in heliotrope and white, Flopit nestling in
her arms. She was encircled by girls who were enthusiastically caressing
the bored and blinking Flopit; and when William beheld this charming
group, his breath became eccentric, his knee-caps became cold and
convulsive, his neck became hot, and he broke into a light perspiration.
She saw him! The small blonde head and the delirious little fluffy hat
above it shimmered a nod to him. Then his mouth fell unconsciously open,
and his eyes grew glassy with the intensity of meaning he put into
the silent response he sent across the picket fence and through the
interstices of the intervening group. Pressing with his elbow upon the
package of cigarettes in his pocket, he murmured, inaudibly, “My Little
Sweetheart, always for you!”--a repetition of his vow that, come what
might, he would forever remain a loyal smoker of that symbolic brand. In
fact, William's mental condition had never shown one moment's turn for
the better since the fateful day of the distracting visitor's arrival.
Mr. Johnnie Watson and Mr. Joe Bullitt met him at the gate and offered
him hearty greeting. All bickering and dissension among these three had
passed. The lady was so wondrous impartial that, as time went on, the
sufferers had come to be drawn together, rather than thrust asunder, by
their common feeling. It had grown to be a bond uniting them; they
were not so much rivals as ardent novices serving a single altar, each
worshiping there without visible gain over the other. Each had even come
to possess, in the eyes of his two fellows, almost a sacredness as a
sharer in the celestial glamor; they were tender one with another. They
were in the last stages.
Johnnie Watson had with him to-day a visitor of his own--a vastly
overgrown person of eighteen, who, at Johnnie's beckoning, abandoned
a fair companion of the moment and came forward as William entered the
gate.
“I want to intradooce you to two of my most int'mut friends, George,”
said Johnnie, with the anxious gravity of a person about to do something
important and unfamiliar. “Mr. Baxter, let me intradooce my cousin,
Mr. Crooper. Mr. Crooper, this is my friend, Mr. Baxter.”
The gentlemen shook hands solemnly, saying,