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 kn
ow 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 hal
l 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.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 214