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 mothe
r, 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.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 213