“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,
“‘M very glad to meet you,” and Johnnie turned to Joe Bullitt. “Mr. Croo — I mean, Mr. Bullitt, let me intradooce my friend, Mr. Crooper — I mean my cousin, Mr. Crooper. Mr. Crooper is a cousin of mine.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Crooper,” said Joe. “I suppose you’re a cousin of Johnnie’s, then?”
“Yep,” said Mr. Crooper, becoming more informal. “Johnnie wrote me to come over for this shindig, so I thought I might as well come.” He laughed loudly, and the others laughed with the same heartiness. “Yessir,” he added, “I thought I might as well come, ‘cause I’m pretty apt to be on hand if there’s anything doin’!”
“Well, that’s right,” said William, and while they all laughed again, Mr. Crooper struck his cousin a jovial blow upon the back.
“Hi, ole sport!” he cried, “I want to meet that Miss Pratt before we start. The car’ll be along pretty soon, and I got her picked for the girl I’m goin’ to sit by.”
The laughter of William and Joe Bullitt, designed to express cordiality, suddenly became flaccid and died. If Mr. Crooper had been a sensitive person he might have perceived the chilling disapproval in their glances, for they had just begun to be most unfavorably impressed with him. The careless loudness — almost the notoriety — with which he had uttered Miss Pratt’s name, demanding loosely to be presented to her, regardless of the well-known law that a lady must first express some wish in such matters — these were indications of a coarse nature sure to be more than uncongenial to Miss Pratt. Its presence might make the whole occasion distasteful to her — might spoil her day. Both William and Joe Bullitt began to wonder why on earth Johnnie Watson didn’t have any more sense than to invite such a big, fat lummox of a cousin to the party.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 218