Then, with a rather abrupt dismissal of this theme, he returned to the mirror and, after a questioning scrutiny, nodded solemnly, forming with his lips the words, “The real thing — the real thing at last!” He meant that, after many imitations had imposed upon him, Love — the real thing — had come to him in the end. And as he turned away he murmured, “And even her name — unknown!”
This evidently was a thought that continued to occupy him, for he walked up and down the room, frowning; but suddenly his brow cleared and his eye lit with purpose. Seating himself at a small writing-table by the window, he proceeded to express his personality — though with considerable labor — in something which he did not doubt to be a poem.
Three-quarters of an hour having sufficed for its completion, including “rewriting and polish,” he solemnly signed it, and then read it several times in a state of hushed astonishment. He had never dreamed that he could do anything like this.
MILADY
I do not know her name
Though it would be the same
Where roses bloom at twilight
And the lark takes his flight
It would be the same anywhere
Where music sounds in air
I was never introduced to the lady
So I could not call her Lass or Sadie
So I will call her Milady
By the sands of the sea
She always will be
Just M’lady to me.
— WILLIAM SYLVANUS BAXTER, Esq., July 14
It is impossible to say how many times he might have read the poem over, always with increasing amazement at his new-found powers, had he not been interrupted by the odious voice of Jane.
“Will — ee!”
To William, in his high and lonely mood, this piercing summons brought an actual shudder, and the very thought of Jane (with tokens of apple sauce and sugar still upon her cheek, probably) seemed a kind of sacrilege. He fiercely swore his favorite oath, acquired from the hero of a work of fiction he admired, “Ye gods!” and concealed his poem in the drawer of the writing-table, for Jane’s footsteps were approaching his door.
“Will — ee! Mamma wants you.” She tried the handle of the door.
“G’way!” he said.
“Will — ee!” Jane hammered upon the door with her fist. “Will — ee!”
“What you want?” he shouted.
Jane explained, certain pauses indicating that her attention was partially diverted to another slice of bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar. “Will — ee, mamma wants you — wants you to go help Genesis bring some wash-tubs home and a tin clo’es-boiler — from the second-hand man’s store.”
“WHAT!”
Jane repeated the outrageous message, adding, “She wants you to hurry — and I got some more bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar for comin’ to tell you.”
William left no doubt in Jane’s mind about his attitude in reference to the whole matter. His refusal was direct and infuriated, but, in the midst of a multitude of plain statements which he was making, there was a decisive tapping upon the door at a point higher than Jane could reach, and his mother’s voice interrupted:
“Hush, Willie! Open the door, please.”
He obeyed furiously, and Mrs. Baxter walked in with a deprecating air, while Jane followed, so profoundly interested that, until almost the close of the interview, she held her bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar at a sort of way-station on its journey to her mouth.
“That’s a nice thing to ask me to do!” stormed the unfortunate William. “Ye gods! Do you think Joe Bullitt’s mother would dare to—”
“Wait, dearie!” Mrs. Baxter begged, pacifically. “I just want to explain—”
“‘Explain’! Ye gods!”
“Now, now, just a minute, Willie!” she said. “What I wanted to explain was why it’s necessary for you to go with Genesis for the—”
“Never!” he shouted. “Never! You expect me to walk through the public streets with that awful-lookin’ old nigger—”
“Genesis isn’t old,” she managed to interpolate. “He—”
But her frantic son disregarded her. “Second-hand wash-tubs!” he vociferated. “And tin clothes-boilers! THAT’S what you want your SON to carry through the public streets in broad daylight! Ye gods!”
“Well, there isn’t anybody else,” she said. “Please don’t rave so, Willie, and say ‘Ye gods’ so much; it really isn’t nice. I’m sure nobody ‘ll notice you—”
“‘Nobody’!” His voice cracked in anguish. “Oh no! Nobody except the whole town! WHY, when there’s anything disgusting has to be done in this family — why do I always have to be the one? Why can’t Genesis bring the second-hand wash-tubs without ME? Why can’t the second-hand store deliver ’em? Why can’t—”
“That’s what I want to tell you,” she interposed, hurriedly, and as the youth lifted his arms on high in a gesture of ultimate despair, and then threw himself miserably into a chair, she obtained the floor. “The second-hand store doesn’t deliver things,” she said. “I bought them at an auction, and it’s going out of business, and they have to be taken away before half past four this afternoon. Genesis can’t bring them in the wheelbarrow, because, he says, the wheel is broken, and he says he can’t possibly carry two tubs and a wash-boiler himself; and he can’t make two trips because it’s a mile and a half, and I don’t like to ask him, anyway; and it would take too long, because he has to get back and finish cutting the grass before your papa gets home this evening. Papa said he HAD to! Now, I don’t like to ask you, but it really isn’t much. You and Genesis can just slip up there and—”
“Slip!” moaned William. “‘Just SLIP up there’! Ye gods!”
“Genesis is waiting on the back porch,” she said. “Really it isn’t worth your making all this fuss about.”
“Oh no!” he returned, with plaintive satire. “It’s nothing! Nothing at all!”
“Why, I shouldn’t mind it,” she said; briskly, “if I had the time. In fact, I’ll have to, if you won’t.”
“Ye gods!” He clasped his head in his hands, crushed, for he knew that the curse was upon him and he must go. “Ye gods!”
And then, as he stamped to the door, his tragic eye fell upon Jane, and he emitted a final cry of pain:
“Can’t you EVER wash your face?” he shouted.
IV. GENESIS AND CLEMATIS
GENESIS AND HIS dog were waiting just outside the kitchen door, and of all the world these two creatures were probably the last in whose company William Sylvanus Baxter desired to make a public appearance. Genesis was an out-of-doors man and seldom made much of a toilet; his overalls in particular betraying at important points a lack of the anxiety he should have felt, since only Genesis himself, instead of a supplementary fabric, was directly underneath them. And the aged, grayish, sleeveless and neckless garment which sheltered him from waist to collar-bone could not have been mistaken for a jersey, even though what there was of it was dimly of a jerseyesque character. Upon the feet of Genesis were things which careful study would have revealed to be patent-leather dancing-pumps, long dead and several times buried; and upon his head, pressing down his markedly criminal ears, was a once-derby hat of a brown not far from Genesis’s own color, though decidedly without his gloss. A large ring of strange metals with the stone missing, adorned a finger of his right hand, and from a corner of his mouth projected an unlighted and spreading cigar stub which had the appearance of belonging to its present owner merely by right of salvage.
And Genesis’s dog, scratching himself at his master’s feet, was the true complement of Genesis, for although he was a youngish dog, and had not long been the property of Genesis, he was a dog that would have been recognized anywhere in the world as a colored person’s dog. He was not a special breed of dog — though there was something rather houndlike about him — he was just a dog. His expression was grateful but anxious, and he was unusually bald upon the bosom, but otherwise
whitish and brownish, with a gaunt, haunting face and no power to look anybody in the eye.
He rose apprehensively as the fuming William came out of the kitchen, but he was prepared to follow his master faithfully, and when William and Genesis reached the street the dog was discovered at their heels, whereupon William came to a decisive halt.
“Send that dog back,” he said, resolutely. “I’m not going through the streets with a dog like that, anyhow!”
Genesis chuckled. “He ain’ goin’ back,” he said. “‘Ain’ nobody kin make ‘at dog go back. I ‘ain’ had him mo’n two weeks, but I don’ b’lieve Pres’dent United States kin make ‘at dog go back! I show you.” And, wheeling suddenly, he made ferocious gestures, shouting. “G’on back, dog!”
The dog turned, ran back a few paces, halted, and then began to follow again, whereupon Genesis pretended to hurl stones at him; but the animal only repeated his manoeuver — and he repeated it once more when William aided Genesis by using actual missiles, which were dodged with almost careless adeptness.
“I’ll show him!” said William, hotly. “I’ll show him he can’t follow ME!” He charged upon the dog, shouting fiercely, and this seemed to do the work, for the hunted animal, abandoning his partial flights, turned a tucked-under tail, ran all the way back to the alley, and disappeared from sight. “There!” said William. “I guess that ‘ll show him!”
“I ain’ bettin’ on it!” said Genesis, as they went on. “He nev’ did stop foll’in’ me yet. I reckon he the foll’indest dog in the worl’! Name Clem.”
“Well, he can’t follow ME!” said the surging William, in whose mind’s eye lingered the vision of an exquisite doglet, with pink-ribboned throat and a cottony head bobbing gently over a filmy sleeve. “He doesn’t come within a mile of ME, no matter what his name is!”
“Name Clem fer short,” said Genesis, amiably. “I trade in a mandoline fer him what had her neck kind o’ busted off on one side. I couldn’ play her nohow, an’ I found her, anyways. Yes-suh, I trade in ‘at mandoline fer him ‘cause always did like to have me a good dog — but I d’in’ have me no name fer him; an’ this here Blooie Bowers, what I trade in the mandoline to, he say HE d’in have no name fer him. Say nev’ did know if WAS a name fer him ‘tall. So I’z spen’ the evenin’ at ‘at lady’s house, Fanny, what used to be cook fer Miz Johnson, nex’ do’ you’ maw’s; an’ I ast Fanny what am I go’n’ a do about it, an’ Fanny say, ‘Call him Clematis,’ she say. ‘‘At’s a nice name!’ she say. ‘Clematis.’ So ‘at’s name I name him, Clematis. Call him Clem fer short, but Clematis his real name. He’ll come, whichever one you call him, Clem or Clematis. Make no diff’ence to him, long’s he git his vittles. Clem or Clematis, HE ain’ carin’!”
William’s ear was deaf to this account of the naming of Clematis; he walked haughtily, but as rapidly as possible, trying to keep a little in advance of his talkative companion, who had never received the training as a servitor which should have taught him his proper distance from the Young Master. William’s suffering eyes were fixed upon remoteness; and his lips moved, now and then, like a martyr’s, pronouncing inaudibly a sacred word. “Milady! Oh, Milady!”
Thus they had covered some three blocks of their journey — the too-democratic Genesis chatting companionably and William burning with mortification — when the former broke into loud laughter.
“What I tell you?” he cried, pointing ahead. “Look ayonnuh! NO, suh, Pres’dent United States hisse’f ain’ go tell ‘at dog stay home!”
And there, at the corner before them, waited Clematis, roguishly lying in a mud-puddle in the gutter. He had run through alleys parallel to their course — and in the face of such demoniac cunning the wretched William despaired of evading his society. Indeed, there was nothing to do but to give up, and so the trio proceeded, with William unable to decide which contaminated him more, Genesis or the loyal Clematis. To his way of thinking, he was part of a dreadful pageant, and he winced pitiably whenever the eye of a respectable passer-by fell upon him. Everybody seemed to stare — nay, to leer! And he felt that the whole world would know his shame by nightfall.
Nobody, he reflected, seeing him in such company, could believe that he belonged to “one of the oldest and best families in town.” Nobody would understand that he was not walking with Genesis for the pleasure of his companionship — until they got the tubs and the wash-boiler, when his social condition must be thought even more degraded. And nobody, he was shudderingly positive, could see that Clematis was not his dog (Clematis kept himself humbly a little in the rear, but how was any observer to know that he belonged to Genesis and not to William?)
And how frightful that THIS should befall him on such a day, the very day that his soul had been split asunder by the turquoise shafts of Milady’s eyes and he had learned to know the Real Thing at last!
“Milady! Oh, Milady!”
For in the elder teens adolescence may be completed, but not by experience, and these years know their own tragedies. It is the time of life when one finds it unendurable not to seem perfect in all outward matters: in worldly position, in the equipments of wealth, in family, and in the grace, elegance, and dignity of all appearances in public. And yet the youth is continually betrayed by the child still intermittently insistent within him, and by the child which undiplomatic people too often assume him to be. Thus with William’s attire: he could ill have borne any suggestion that it was not of the mode, but taking care of it was a different matter. Also, when it came to his appetite, he could and would eat anything at any time, but something younger than his years led him — often in semi-secrecy — to candy-stores and soda-water fountains and ice-cream parlors; he still relished green apples and knew cravings for other dangerous inedibles. But these survivals were far from painful to him; what injured his sensibilities was the disposition on the part of people especially his parents, and frequently his aunts and uncles — to regard him as a little boy. Briefly, the deference his soul demanded in its own right, not from strangers only, but from his family, was about that which is supposed to be shown a Grand Duke visiting his Estates. Therefore William suffered often.
But the full ignominy of the task his own mother had set him this afternoon was not realized until he and Genesis set forth upon the return journey from the second-hand shop, bearing the two wash-tubs, a clothes-wringer (which Mrs. Baxter had forgotten to mention), and the tin boiler — and followed by the lowly Clematis.
V. SORROWS WITHIN A BOILER
THERE WAS SOMETHING really pageant-like about the little excursion now, and the glittering clothes-boiler, borne on high, sent flashing lights far down the street. The wash-tubs were old-fashioned, of wood; they refused to fit one within the other; so William, with his right hand, and Genesis, with his left, carried one of the tubs between them; Genesis carried the heavy wringer with his right hand, and he had fastened the other tub upon his back by means of a bit of rope which passed over his shoulder; thus the tin boiler, being a lighter burden, fell to William.
The cover would not stay in place, but continually fell off when he essayed to carry the boiler by one of its handles, and he made shift to manage the accursed thing in various ways — the only one proving physically endurable being, unfortunately, the most grotesque. He was forced to carry the cover in his left hand and to place his head partially within the boiler itself, and to support it — tilted obliquely to rest upon his shoulders — as a kind of monstrous tin cowl or helmet. This had the advantage of somewhat concealing his face, though when he leaned his head back, in order to obtain clearer vision of what was before him, the boiler slid off and fell to the pavement with a noise that nearly caused a runaway, and brought the hot-cheeked William much derisory attention from a passing street-car. However, he presently caught the knack of keeping it in position, and it fell no more.
Seen from the rear, William was unrecognizable — but interesting. He appeared to be a walking clothes-boiler, armed with a shield and connected, by means of a
wash-tub, with a negro of informal ideas concerning dress. In fact, the group was whimsical, and three young people who turned in behind it, out of a cross-street, indulged immediately in fits of inadequately suppressed laughter, though neither Miss May Parcher nor Mr. Johnnie Watson even remotely suspected that the legs beneath the clothes-boiler belonged to an acquaintance. And as for the third of this little party, Miss Parcher’s visitor, those peregrinating legs suggested nothing familiar to her.
“Oh, see the fun-ee laundrymans!” she cried, addressing a cottony doglet’s head that bobbed gently up and down over her supporting arm. “Sweetest Flopit must see, too! Flopit, look at the fun-ee laundrymans!”
“‘Sh!” murmured Miss Parcher, choking. “He might hear you.”
He might, indeed, since they were not five yards behind him and the dulcet voice was clear and free. Within the shadowy interior of the clothes-boiler were features stricken with sudden, utter horror. “FLOPIT!”
The attention of Genesis was attracted by a convulsive tugging of the tub which he supported in common with William; it seemed passionately to urge greater speed. A hissing issued from the boiler, and Genesis caught the words, huskily whispered:
“Walk faster! You got to walk faster.”
The tub between them tugged forward with a pathos of appeal wasted upon the easy-going Genesis.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 209