To the competent twenties, hundreds of miles suggesting no impossibilities, such departures may be rending, but not tragic. Implacable, the difference to Seventeen! Miss Pratt was going home, and Seventeen could not follow; it could only mourn upon the lonely shore, tracing little angelic footprints left in the sand.
To Seventeen such a departure is final; it is a vanishing.
And now it seemed possible that William might be deprived even of the last romantic consolations: of the “last waltz together,” of the last, last “listening to music in the moonlight together”; of all those sacred lasts of the “last evening together.”
He had pleaded strongly for a “dress-suit” as a fitting recognition of his seventeenth birthday anniversary, but he had been denied by his father with a jocularity more crushing than rigor. Since then—in particular since the arrival of Miss Pratt—Mr. Baxter's temper had been growing steadily more and more even. That is, as affected by William's social activities, it was uniformly bad. Nevertheless, after heavy brooding, William decided to make one final appeal before he resorted to measures which the necessities of despair had caused him to contemplate.
He wished to give himself every chance for a good effect; therefore, he did not act hastily, but went over what he intended to say, rehearsing it with a few appropriate gestures, and even taking some pleasure in the pathetic dignity of this performance, as revealed by occasional glances at the mirror of his dressing-table. In spite of these little alleviations, his trouble was great and all too real, for, unhappily, the previous rehearsal of an emotional scene does not prove the emotion insincere.
Descending, he found his father and mother still sitting upon the front porch. Then, standing before them, solemn-eyed, he uttered a preluding cough, and began:
“Father,” he said in a loud voice, “I have come to—”
“Dear me!” Mrs. Baxter exclaimed, not perceiving that she was interrupting an intended oration. “Willie, you DO look pale! Sit down, poor child; you oughtn't to walk so much in this heat.”
“Father,” William repeated. “Fath—”
“I suppose you got her safely home from church,” Mr. Baxter said. “She might have been carried off by footpads if you three boys hadn't been along to take care of her!”
But William persisted heroically. “Father—” he said. “Father, I have come to—”
“What on earth's the matter with you?” Mr. Baxter ceased to fan himself; Mrs. Baxter stopped rocking, and both stared, for it had dawned upon them that something unusual was beginning to take place.
William backed to the start and tried it again. “Father, I have come to—” He paused and gulped, evidently expecting to be interrupted, but both of his parents remained silent, regarding him with puzzled surprise. “Father,” he began once more, “I have come—I have come to—to place before you something I think it's your duty as my father to undertake, and I have thought over this step before laying it before you.”
“My soul!” said Mr. Baxter, under his breath. “My soul!”
“At my age,” William continued, swallowing, and fixing his earnest eyes upon the roof of the porch, to avoid the disconcerting stare of his father—“at my age there's some things that ought to be done and some things that ought not to be done. If you asked me what I thought OUGHT to be done, there is only one answer: When anybody as old as I am has to go out among other young men his own age that already got one, like anyway half of them HAVE, who I go with, and their fathers have already taken such a step, because they felt it was the only right thing to do, because at my age and the young men I go with's age, it IS the only right thing to do, because that is something nobody could deny, at my age—” Here William drew a long breath, and, deciding to abandon that sentence as irrevocably tangled, began another: “I have thought over this step, because there comes a time to every young man when they must lay a step before their father before something happens that they would be sorry for. I have thought this undertaking over, and I am certain it would be your honest duty—”
“My soul!” gasped Mr. Baxter. “I thought I knew you pretty well, but you talk like a stranger to ME! What is all this? What you WANT?”
“A dress-suit!” said William.
He had intended to say a great deal more before coming to the point, but, although through nervousness he had lost some threads of his rehearsed plea, it seemed to him that he was getting along well and putting his case with some distinction and power. He was surprised and hurt, therefore, to hear his father utter a wordless shout in a tone of wondering derision.
“I have more to say—” William began.
But Mr. Baxter cut him off. “A dress-suit!” he cried. “Well, I'm glad you were talking about SOMETHING, because I honestly thought it must be too much sun!”
At this, the troubled William brought his eyes down from the porch roof and forgot his rehearsal. He lifted his hand appealingly. “Father,” he said, “I GOT to have one!”
“'Got to'!” Mr. Baxter laughed a laugh that chilled the supplicant through and through. “At your age I thought I was lucky if I had ANY suit that was fit to be seen in. You're too young, Willie. I don't want you to get your mind on such stuff, and if I have my way, you won't have a dress-suit for four years more, anyhow.”
“Father, I GOT to have one. I got to have one right away!” The urgency in William's voice was almost tearful. “I don't ask you to have it made, or to go to expensive tailors, but there's plenty of good ready-made ones that only cost about forty dollars; they're advertised in the paper. Father, wouldn't you spend just forty dollars? I'll pay it back when I'm in business; I'll work—”
Mr. Baxter waved all this aside. “It's not the money. It's the principle that I'm standing for, and I don't intend—”
“Father, WON'T you do it?”
“No, I will not!”
William saw that sentence had been passed and all appeals for a new trial denied. He choked, and rushed into the house without more ado.
“Poor boy!” his mother said.
“Poor boy nothing!” fumed Mr. Baxter. “He's about lost his mind over that Miss Pratt. Think of his coming out here and starting a regular debating society declamation before his mother and father! Why, I never heard anything like it in my life! I don't like to hurt his feelings, and I'd give him anything I could afford that would do him any good, but all he wants it for now is to splurge around in at this party before that little yellow-haired girl! I guess he can wear the kind of clothes most of the other boys wear—the kind I wore at parties—and never thought of wearing anything else. What's the world getting to be like? Seventeen years old and throws a fit because he can't have a dress-suit!”
Mrs. Baxter looked thoughtful. “But—but suppose he felt he couldn't go to the dance unless he wore one, poor boy—”
“All the better,” said Mr. Baxter, firmly. “Do him good to keep away and get his mind on something else.”
“Of course,” she suggested, with some timidity, “forty dollars isn't a great deal of money, and a ready-made suit, just to begin with—”
Naturally, Mr. Baxter perceived whither she was drifting. “Forty dollars isn't a thousand,” he interrupted, “but what you want to throw it away for? One reason a boy of seventeen oughtn't to have evening clothes is the way he behaves with ANY clothes. Forty dollars! Why, only this summer he sat down on Jane's open paint-box, twice in one week!”
“Well—Miss Pratt IS going away, and the dance will be her last night. I'm afraid it would really hurt him to miss it. I remember once, before we were engaged—that evening before papa took me abroad, and you—”
“It's no use, mamma,” he said. “We were both in the twenties—why, I was six years older than Willie, even then. There's no comparison at all. I'll let him order a dress-suit on his twenty-first birthday and not a minute before. I don't believe in it, and I intend to see that he gets all this stuff out of his system. He's got to learn some hard sense!”
Mrs. Baxter shook her head doubtfully, but she said no more. Perhaps she regretted a little that she had caused Mr. Baxter's evening clothes to be so expansively enlarged—for she looked rather regretful. She also looked rather incomprehensible, not to say cryptic, during the long silence which followed, and Mr. Baxter resumed his rocking, unaware of the fixity of gaze which his wife maintained upon him—a thing the most loyal will do sometimes.
The incomprehensible look disappeared before long; but the regretful one was renewed in the mother's eyes whenever she caught glimpses of her son, that day, and at the table, where William's manner was gentle—even toward his heartless father.
Underneath that gentleness, the harried self of William was no longer debating a desperate resolve, but had fixed upon it, and on the following afternoon Jane chanced to be a witness of some resultant actions. She came to her mother with an account of them.
“Mamma, what you s'pose Willie wants of those two ole market-baskets that were down cellar?”
“Why, Jane?”
“Well, he carried 'em in his room, an' then he saw me lookin'; an' he said, 'G'way from here!' an' shut the door. He looks so funny! What's he want of those ole baskets, mamma?”
“I don't know. Perhaps he doesn't even know, himself, Jane.”
But William did know, definitely. He had set the baskets upon chairs, and now, with pale determination, he was proceeding to fill them. When his task was completed the two baskets contained:
One “heavy-weight winter suit of clothes.”
One “light-weight summer suit of clothes.”
One cap.
One straw hat.
Two pairs of white flannel trousers.
Two Madras shirts.
Two flannel shirts.
Two silk shirts.
Seven soft collars.
Three silk neckties.
One crocheted tie.
Eight pairs of socks.
One pair of patent-leather shoes.
One pair of tennis-shoes.
One overcoat.
Some underwear.
One two-foot shelf of books, consisting of several sterling works upon mathematics, in a damaged condition; five of Shakespeare's plays, expurgated for schools and colleges, and also damaged; a work upon political economy, and another upon the science of physics; Webster's Collegiate Dictionary; How to Enter a Drawing-Room and Five Hundred Other Hints; Witty Sayings from Here and There; Lorna Doone; Quentin Durward; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a very old copy of Moths, and a small Bible.
William spread handkerchiefs upon the two over-bulging cargoes, that their nature might not be disclosed to the curious, and, after listening a moment at his door, took the baskets, one upon each arm, then went quickly down the stairs and out of the house, out of the yard, and into the alley—by which route he had modestly chosen to travel.
... After an absence of about two hours he returned empty-handed and anxious. “Mother, I want to speak to you,” he said, addressing Mrs Baxter in a voice which clearly proved the strain of these racking days. “I want to speak to you about something important.”
“Yes, Willie?”
“Please send Jane away. I can't talk about important things with a child in the room.”
Jane naturally wished to stay, since he was going to say something important. “Mamma, do I HAF to go?”
“Just a few minutes, dear.”
Jane walked submissively out of the door, leaving it open behind her. Then, having gone about six feet farther, she halted and, preserving a breathless silence, consoled herself for her banishment by listening to what was said, hearing it all as satisfactorily as if she had remained in the room. Quiet, thoughtful children, like Jane, avail themselves of these little pleasures oftener than is suspected.
“Mother,” said William, with great intensity, “I want to ask you please to lend me three dollars and sixty cents.”
“What for, Willie?”
“Mother, I just ask you to lend me three dollars and sixty cents.”
“But what FOR?”
“Mother, I don't feel I can discuss it any; I simply ask you: Will you lend me three dollars and sixty cents?”
Mrs. Baxter laughed gently. “I don't think I could, Willie, but certainly I should want to know what for.”
“Mother, I am going on eighteen years of age, and when I ask for a small sum of money like three dollars and sixty cents I think I might be trusted to know how to use it for my own good without having to answer questions like a ch—”
“Why, Willie,” she exclaimed, “you ought to have plenty of money of your own!”
“Of course I ought,” he agreed, warmly. “If you'd ask father to give me a regular allow—”
“No, no; I mean you ought to have plenty left out of that old junk and furniture I let you sell last month. You had over nine dollars!'
“That was five weeks ago,” William explained, wearily.
“But you certainly must have some of it left. Why, it was MORE than nine dollars, I believe! I think it was nearer ten. Surely you haven't—”
“Ye gods!” cried the goaded William. “A person going on eighteen years old ought to be able to spend nine dollars in five weeks without everybody's acting like it was a crime! Mother, I ask you the simple question: Will you PLEASE lend me three dollars and sixty cents?”
“I don't think I ought to, dear. I'm sure your father wouldn't wish me to, unless you'll tell me what you want it for. In fact, I won't consider it at all unless you do tell me.”
“You won't do it?” he quavered.
She shook her head gently. “You see, dear, I'm afraid the reason you don't tell me is because you know that I wouldn't give it to you if I knew what you wanted it for.”
This perfect diagnosis of the case so disheartened him that after a few monosyllabic efforts to continue the conversation with dignity he gave it up, and left in such a preoccupation with despondency that he passed the surprised Jane in the hall without suspecting what she had been doing.
That evening, after dinner, he addressed to his father an impassioned appeal for three dollars and sixty cents, laying such stress of pathos on his principal argument that if he couldn't have a dress-suit, at least he ought to be given three dollars and sixty CENTS (the emphasis is William's) that Mr. Baxter was moved in the direction of consent—but not far enough. “I'd like to let you have it, Willie,” he said, excusing himself for refusal, “but your mother felt SHE oughtn't to do it unless you'd say what you wanted it for, and I'm sure she wouldn't like me to do it. I can't let you have it unless you get her to say she wants me to.”
Thus advised, the unfortunate made another appeal to his mother the next day, and, having brought about no relaxation of the situation, again petitioned his father, on the following evening. So it went; the torn and driven William turning from parent to parent; and surely, since the world began, the special sum of three dollars and sixty cents has never been so often mentioned in any one house and in the same space of time as it was in the house of the Baxters during Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of that oppressive week.
But on Friday William disappeared after breakfast and did not return to lunch.
Mrs. Baxter was troubled. During the afternoon she glanced often from the open window of the room where she had gone to sew, but the peaceful neighborhood continued to be peaceful, and no sound of the harassed footsteps of William echoed from the pavement. However, she saw Genesis arrive (in his weekday costume) to do some weeding, and Jane immediately skip forth for mingled purposes of observation and conversation.
“What DO they say?” thought Mrs. Baxter, observing that both Jane and Genesis were unusually animated. But for once that perplexity was to be dispersed. After an exciting half-hour Jane came flying to her mother, breathless.
“Mamma,” she cried, “I know where Willie is! Genesis told me, 'cause he saw him, an' he talked to him while he was doin' it.”
“Doing what? Where?”
“Mamma, listen! What you think Willie's doin'? I bet you can't g—”
“Jane!” Mrs Baxter spoke sharply. “Tell me what Genesis said, at once.”
“Yes'm. Willie's sittin' in a lumber-yard that Genesis comes by on his way from over on the avynoo where all the colored people live—an' he's countin' knot-holes in shingles.”
“He is WHAT?”
“Yes'm. Genesis knows all about it, because he was thinkin' of doin' it himself, only he says it would be too slow. This is the way it is, mamma. Listen, mamma, because this is just exackly the way it is. Well, this lumber-yard man got into some sort of a fuss because he bought millions an' millions of shingles, mamma, that had too many knots in, an' the man don't want to pay for 'em, or else the store where he bought 'em won't take 'em back, an' they got to prove how many shingles are bad shingles, or somep'm, an' anyway, mamma, that's what Willie's doin'. Every time he comes to a bad shingle, mamma, he puts it somewheres else, or somep'm like that, mamma, an' every time he's put a thousand bad shingles in this other place they give him six cents. He gets the six cents to keep, mamma—an' that's what he's been doin' all day!”
“Good gracious!”
“Oh, but that's nothing, mamma—just you wait till you hear the rest. THAT part of it isn't anything a TALL, mamma! You wouldn't hardly notice that part of it if you knew the other part of it, mamma. Why, that isn't ANYTHING!” Jane made demonstrations of scorn for the insignificant information already imparted.
“Jane!”
“Yes'm?”
“I want to know everything Genesis told you,” said her mother, “and I want you to tell it as quickly as you can.”
“Well, I AM tellin' it, mamma!” Jane protested. “I'm just BEGINNING to tell it. I can't tell it unless there's a beginning, can I? How could there be ANYTHING unless you had to begin it, mamma?”
“Try your best to go on, Jane!”
“Yes'm. Well, Genesis says—Mamma!” Jane interrupted herself with a little outcry. “Oh! I bet THAT'S what he had those two market-baskets for! Yes, sir! That's just what he did! An' then he needed the rest o' the money an' you an' papa wouldn't give him any, an' so he began countin' shingles to-day 'cause to-night's the night of the party an' he just HASS to have it!”
Mrs. Baxter, who had risen to her feet, recalled the episode of the baskets and sank into a chair. “How did Genesis know Willie wanted forty dollars, and if Willie's pawned something how did Genesis know THAT? Did Willie tell Gen—”
“Oh no, mamma, Willie didn't want forty dollars—only fourteen!”
“But he couldn't get even the cheapest readymade dress-suit for fourteen dollars.”
“Mamma, you're gettin' it all mixed up!” Jane cried. “Listen, mamma! Genesis knows all about a second-hand store over on the avynoo; an' it keeps 'most everything, an' Genesis says it's the nicest store! It keeps waiter suits all the way up to nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. Well, an' Genesis wants to get one of those suits, so he goes in there all the time, an' talks to the man an' bargains an' bargains with him, 'cause Genesis says this man is the bargainest man in the wide worl', mamma! That's what Genesis says. Well, an' so this man's name is One-eye Beljus, mamma. That's his name, an' Genesis says so. Well, an' so this man that Genesis told me about, that keeps the store—I mean One-eye Beljus, mamma—well, One-eye Beljus had Willie's name written down in a book, an' he knew Genesis worked for fam'lies that have boys like Willie in 'em, an' this morning One-eye Beljus showed Genesis Willie's name written down in this book, an' One-eye Beljus asked Genesis if he knew anybody by that name an' all about him. Well, an' so at first Genesis pretended he was tryin' to remember, because he wanted to find out what Willie went there for. Genesis didn't tell any stories, mamma; he just pretended he couldn't remember, an' so, well, One-eye Beljus kept talkin' an' pretty soon Genesis found out all about it. One-eye Beljus said Willie came in there an' tried on the coat of one of those waiter suits—”
“Oh no!” gasped Mrs. Baxter.
“Yes'm, an' One-eye Beljus said it was the only one that would fit Willie, an' One-eye Beljus told Willie that suit was worth fourteen dollars, an' Willie said he didn't have any money, but he'd like to trade something else for it. Well, an' so One-eye Beljus said this was an awful fine suit an' the only one he had that had b'longed to a white gentleman. Well, an' so they bargained, an' bargained, an' bargained, an' BARGAINED! An' then, well, an' so at last Willie said he'd go an' get everything that b'longed to him, an' One-eye Beljus could pick out enough to make fourteen dollars' worth, an' then Willie could have the suit. Well, an' so Willie came home an' put everything he had that b'longed to him into those two baskets, mamma—that's just what he did, 'cause Genesis says he told One-eye Beljus it was everything that b'longed to him, an' that would take two baskets, mamma. Well, then, an' so he told One-eye Beljus to pick out fourteen dollars' worth, an' One-eye Beljus ast Willie if he didn't have a watch. Well, Willie took out his watch an' One-eye Beljus said it was an awful bad watch, but he would put it in for a dollar; an' he said, 'I'll put your necktie pin in for forty cents more,' so Willie took it out of his necktie an' then One-eye Beljus said it would take all the things in the baskets to make I forget how much, mamma, an' the watch would be a dollar more, an' the pin forty cents, an' that would leave just three dollars an' sixty cents more for Willie to pay before he could get the suit.”
Mrs. Baxter's face had become suffused with high color, but she wished to know all that Genesis had said, and, mastering her feelings with an effort, she told Jane to proceed—a command obeyed after Jane had taken several long breaths.
“Well, an' so the worst part of it is, Genesis says, it's because that suit is haunted.”
“What!”
“Yes'm,” said Jane, solemnly; “Genesis says it's haunted. Genesis says everybody over on the avynoo knows all about that suit, an' he says that's why One-eye Beljus never could sell it before. Genesis says One-eye Beljus tried to sell it to a colored man for three dollars, but the man said he wouldn't put in on for three hunderd dollars, an' Genesis says HE wouldn't, either, because it belonged to a Dago waiter that—that—” Jane's voice sank to a whisper of unctuous horror. She was having a wonderful time! “Mamma, this Dago waiter, he lived over on the avynoo, an' he took a case-knife he'd sharpened—AN' HE CUT A LADY'S HEAD OFF WITH IT!”
Mrs. Baxter screamed faintly.
“An' he got hung, mamma! If you don't believe it, you can ask One-eye Beljus—I guess HE knows! An' you can ask—”
“Hush!”
“An' he sold this suit to One-eye Beljus when he was in jail, mamma. He sold it to him before he got hung, mamma.”
“Hush, Jane!”
But Jane couldn't hush now. “An' he had that suit on when he cut the lady's head off, mamma, an' that's why it's haunted. They cleaned it all up excep' a few little spots of bl—”
“JANE!” shouted her mother. “You must not talk about such things, and Genesis mustn't tell, you stories of that sort!”
“Well, how could he help it, if he told me about Willie?” Jane urged, reasonably.
“Never mind! Did that crazy ch—Did Willie LEAVE the baskets in that dreadful place?”
“Yes'm—an' his watch an' pin,” Jane informed her, impressively. “An' One-eye Beljus wanted to know if Genesis knew Willie, because One-eye Beljus wanted to know if Genesis thought Willie could get the three dollars an; sixty cents, an' One-eye Beljus wanted to know if Genesis thought he could get anything more out of him besides that. He told Genesis he hadn't told Willie he COULD have the suit, after all; he just told him he THOUGHT he could, but he wouldn't say for certain till he brought him the three dollars an' sixty cents. So Willie left all his things there, an' his watch an—”
“That will do!” Mrs. Baxter's voice was sharper than it had ever been in Jane's recollection. “I don't need to hear any more—and I don't WANT to hear any more!”
Jane was justly aggrieved. “But, mamma, it isn't MY fault!”
Mrs. Baxter's lips parted to speak, but she checked herself. “Fault?” she said, gravely. “I wonder whose fault it really is!”
And with that she went hurriedly into William's room and made a brief inspection of his clothes-closet and dressing-table. Then, as Jane watched her in awed silence, she strode to the window, and called, loudly:
“Genesis!”
“Yes'm?” came the voice from below.
“Go to that lumber-yard where Mr. William is at work and bring him here to me at once. If he declines to come, tell him—” Her voice broke oddly; she choked, but Jane could not decide with what emotion. “Tell him—tell him I ordered you to use force if necessary! Hurry!”
“YES'M!”
Jane ran to the window in time to see Genesis departing seriously through the back gate.
“Mamma—”
“Don't talk to me now, Jane,” Mrs. Baxter said, crisply. “I want you to go down in the yard, and when Willie comes tell him I'm waiting for him here in his own room. And don't come with him, Jane. Run!”
“Yes, mamma.” Jane was pleased with this appointment; she anxiously desired to be the first to see how Willie “looked.”
... He looked flurried and flustered and breathless, and there were blisters upon the reddened palms of his hands. “What on earth's the matter, mother?” he asked, as he stood panting before her. “Genesis said something was wrong, and he said you told him to hit me if I wouldn't come.”
“Oh NO!” she cried. “I only meant I thought perhaps you wouldn't obey any ordinary message—”
“Well, well, it doesn't matter, but please hurry and say what you want to, because I got to get back and—”
“No,” Mrs. Baxter said, quietly, “you're not going back to count any more shingles, Willie. How much have you earned?”
He swallowed, but spoke bravely. “Thirty-six cents. But I've been getting lots faster the last two hours and there's a good deal of time before six o'clock. Mother—”
“No,” she said. “You're going over to that horrible place where you've left your clothes and your watch and all those other things in the two baskets, and you're going to bring them home at once.”
“Mother!” he cried, aghast. “Who told you?”
“It doesn't matter. You don't want your father to find out, do you? Then get those things back here as quickly as you can. They'll have to be fumigated after being in that den.”
“They've never been out of the baskets,” he protested, hotly, “except just to be looked at. They're MY things, mother, and I had a right to do what I needed to with 'em, didn't I?” His utterance became difficult. “You and father just CAN'T understand—and you won't do anything to help me—”
“Willie, you can go to the party,” she said, gently. “You didn't need those frightful clothes at all.”
“I do!” he cried. “I GOT to have 'em! I CAN'T go in my day clo'es! There's a reason you wouldn't understand why I can't. I just CAN'T!”
“Yes,” she said, “you can go to the party.”
“I can't, either! Not unless you give me three dollars and twenty-four cents, or unless I can get back to the lumber-yard and earn the rest before—”
“No!” And the warm color that had rushed over Mrs. Baxter during Jane's sensational recital returned with a vengeance. Her eyes flashed. “If you'd rather I sent a policeman for those baskets, I'll send one. I should prefer to do it—much! And to have that rascal arrested. If you don't want me to send a policeman you can go for them yourself, but you must start within ten minutes, because if you don't I'll telephone headquarters. Ten minutes, Willie, and I mean it!”
He cried out, protesting. She would make him a thing of scorn forever and soil his honor, if she sent a policeman. Mr. Beljus was a fair and honest tradesman, he explained, passionately, and had not made the approaches in this matter. Also, the garments in question, though not entirely new, nor of the highest mode, were of good material and in splendid condition. Unmistakably they were evening clothes, and such a bargain at fourteen dollars that William would guarantee to sell them for twenty after he had worn them this one evening. Mr. Beljus himself had said that he would not even think of letting them go at fourteen to anybody else, and as for the two poor baskets of worn and useless articles offered in exchange, and a bent scarfpin and a worn-out old silver watch that had belonged to great-uncle Ben—why, the ten dollars and forty cents allowed upon them was beyond all ordinary liberality; it was almost charity. There was only one place in town where evening clothes were rented, and the suspicious persons in charge had insisted that William obtain from his father a guarantee to insure the return of the garments in perfect condition. So that was hopeless. And wasn't it better, also, to wear clothes which had known only one previous occupant (as was the case with Mr. Beljus's offering) than to hire what chance hundreds had hired? Finally, there was only one thing to be considered and this was the fact that William HAD to have those clothes!
“Six minutes,” said Mrs. Baxter, glancing implacably at her watch. “When it's ten I'll telephone.”
And the end of it was, of course, victory for the woman—victory both moral and physical. Three-quarters of an hour later she was unburdening the contents of the two baskets and putting the things back in place, illuminating these actions with an expression of strong distaste—in spite of broken assurances that Mr. Beljus had not more than touched any of the articles offered to him for valuation.
... At dinner, which was unusually early that evening, Mrs. Baxter did not often glance toward her son; she kept her eyes from that white face and spent most of her time in urging upon Mr. Baxter that he should be prompt in dressing for a card-club meeting which he and she were to attend that evening. These admonitions of hers were continued so pressingly that Mr. Baxter, after protesting that there was no use in being a whole hour too early, groaningly went to dress without even reading his paper.
William had retired to his own room, where he lay upon his bed in the darkness. He heard the evening noises of the house faintly through the closed door: voices and the clatter of metal and china from the far-away kitchen, Jane's laugh in the hall, the opening and closing of the doors. Then his father seemed to be in distress about something. William heard him complaining to Mrs. Baxter, and though the words were indistinct, the tone was vigorously plaintive. Mrs. Baxter laughed and appeared to make light of his troubles, whatever they were—and presently their footsteps were audible from the stairway; the front door closed emphatically, and they were gone.
Everything was quiet now. The open window showed as a greenish oblong set in black, and William knew that in a little while there would come through the stillness of that window the distant sound of violins. That was a moment he dreaded with a dread that ached. And as he lay on his dreary bed he thought of brightly lighted rooms where other boys were dressing eagerly faces and hair shining, hearts beating high—boys who would possess this last evening and the “last waltz together,” the last smile and the last sigh.
It did not once enter his mind that he could go to the dance in his “best suit,” or that possibly the other young people at the party would be too busy with their own affairs to notice particularly what he wore. It was the unquestionable and granite fact, to his mind, that the whole derisive World would know the truth about his earlier appearances in his father's clothes. And that was a form of ruin not to be faced. In the protective darkness and seclusion of William's bedroom, it is possible that smarting eyes relieved themselves by blinking rather energetically; it is even possible that there was a minute damp spot upon the pillow. Seventeen cannot always manage the little boy yet alive under all the coverings.
Now arrived that moment he had most painfully anticipated, and dance-music drifted on the night;—but there came a tapping upon his door and a soft voice spoke.
“Will-ee?”
With a sharp exclamation William swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Of all things he desired not, he desired no conversation with, or on the part of, Jane. But he had forgotten to lock his door—the handle turned, and a dim little figure marched in.
“Willie, Adelia's goin' to put me to bed.”
“You g'way from here,” he said, huskily. “I haven't got time to talk to you. I'm busy.”
“Well, you can wait a minute, can't you?” she asked, reasonably. “I haf to tell you a joke on mamma.”
“I don't want to hear any jokes!”
“Well, I HAF to tell you this one 'cause she told me to! Oh!” Jane clapped her hand over her mouth and jumped up and down, offering a fantastic silhouette against the light of the Open door. “Oh, oh, OH!”
“What's matter?”
“She said I mustn't, MUSTN'T tell that she told me to tell! My goodness! I forgot that! Mamma took me off alone right after dinner, an' she told me to tell you this joke on her a little after she an' papa had left the house, but she said, 'Above all THINGS,' she said, 'DON'T let Willie know I said to tell him.' That's just what she said, an' here that's the very first thing I had to go an' do!”
“Well, what of it?”
Jane quieted down. The pangs of her remorse were lost in her love of sensationalism, and her voice sank to the thrilling whisper which it was one of her greatest pleasures to use. “Did you hear what a fuss papa was makin' when he was dressin' for the card-party?”
“I don't care if—”
“He had to go in his reg'lar clo'es!” whispered Jane, triumphantly. “An' this is the joke on mamma: you know that tailor that let papa's dress-suit 'way, 'way out; well, Mamma thinks that tailor must think she's crazy, or somep'm 'cause she took papa's dress-suit to him last Monday to get it pressed for this card-party, an she guesses he must of understood her to tell him to do lots besides just pressin' it. Anyway, he went an' altered it, an' he took it 'way, 'way IN again; an' this afternoon when it came back it was even tighter 'n what it was in the first place, an' papa couldn't BEGIN to get into it! Well, an' so it's all pressed an' ev'ything, an' she stopped on the way out, an' whispered to me that she'd got so upset over the joke on her that she couldn't remember where she put it when she took it out o' papa's room after he gave up tryin' to get inside of it. An' that,” cried Jane—“that's the funniest thing of all! Why, it's layin' right on her bed this very minute!”
In one bound William leaped through the open door. Two seconds sufficed for his passage through the hall to his mother's bedroom—and there, neatly spread upon the lace coverlet and brighter than coronation robes, fairer than Joseph's holy coat, It lay!
As a hurried worldling, in almost perfectly fitting evening clothes, passed out of his father's gateway and hurried toward the place whence faintly came the sound of dance-music, a child's voice called sweetly from an unidentified window of the darkened house behind him:
“Well, ANYWAY, you try and have a good time, Willie!”
William made no reply; he paused not in his stride. Jane's farewell injunction, though obviously not ill-intended, seemed in poor taste, and a reply might have encouraged her to believe that, in some measure at least, he condescended to discuss his inner life with her. He departed rapidly, but with hauteur. The moon was up, but shade-trees were thick along the sidewalk, and the hauteur was invisible to any human eye; nevertheless, William considered it necessary.
Jane's friendly but ill-chosen “ANYWAY” had touched doubts already annoying him. He was certain to be late to the party—so late, indeed, that it might prove difficult to obtain a proper number of dances with the sacred girl in whose honor the celebration was being held. Too many were steeped in a sense of her sacredness, well he wot! and he was unable to find room in his apprehensive mind for any doubt that these others would be accursedly diligent.
But as he hastened onward his spirits rose, and he did reply to Jane, after all, though he had placed a hundred yards between them.
“Yes, and you can bet your bottom dollar I will, too!” he muttered, between his determined teeth.
The very utterance of the words increased the firmness of his decision, and at the same time cheered him. His apprehensions fell away, and a glamorous excitement took their place, as he turned a corner and the music burst more loudly upon his tingling ear. For there, not half-way to the next street, the fairy scene lay spread before him.
Spellbound groups of uninvited persons, most of them colored, rested their forearms upon the upper rail of the Parchers' picket fence, offering to William's view a silhouette like that of a crowd at a fire. Beyond the fence, bright forms went skimming, shimmering, wavering over a white platform, while high overhead the young moon sprayed a thinner light down through the maple leaves, to where processions of rosy globes hung floating in the blue night. The mild breeze trembled to the silver patterings of a harp, to the sweet, barbaric chirping of plucked strings of violin and 'cello—and swooned among the maple leaves to the rhythmic crooning of a flute. And, all the while, from the platform came the sounds of little cries in girlish voices, and the cadenced shuffling of young feet, where the witching dancemusic had its way, as ever and forever, with big and little slippers.
The heart of William had behaved tumultuously the summer long, whenever his eyes beheld those pickets of the Parchers' fence, but now it outdid all its previous riotings. He was forced to open his mouth and gasp for breath, so deep was his draught of that young wine, romance. Yonder—somewhere in the breath-taking radiance—danced his Queen with all her Court about her. Queen and Court, thought William, and nothing less exorbitant could have expressed his feeling. For seventeen needs only some paper lanterns, a fiddle, and a pretty girl—and Versailles is all there!
The moment was so rich that William crossed the street with a slower step. His mood changed: an exaltation had come upon him, though he was never for an instant unaware of the tragedy beneath all this worldly show and glamor. It was the last night of the divine visit; to-morrow the town would lie desolate, a hollow shell in the dust, without her. Miss Pratt would be gone—gone utterly—gone away on the TRAIN! But to-night was just beginning, and to-night he would dance with her; he would dance and dance with her—he would dance and dance like mad! He and she, poetic and fated pair, would dance on and on! They would be intoxicated by the lights—the lights, the flowers, and the music. Nay, the flowers might droop, the lights might go out, the music cease and dawn come—she and he would dance recklessly on—on—on!
A sense of picturesqueness—his own picturesqueness—made him walk rather theatrically as he passed through the groups of humble onlookers outside the picket fence. Many of these turned to stare at the belated guest, and William was unconscious of neither their low estate nor his own quality as a patrician man-about-town in almost perfectly fitting evening dress. A faint, cold smile was allowed to appear upon his lips, and a fragment from a story he had read came momentarily to his mind.... “Through the gaping crowds the young Augustan noble was borne down from the Palatine, scornful in his jeweled litter....”
An admiring murmur reached William's ear.
“OH, oh, honey! Look attem long-tail suit! 'At's a rich boy, honey!”
“Yessum, SO! Bet he got his pockets pack' full o' twenty-dolluh gol' pieces right iss minute!”
“You right, honey!”
William allowed the coldness of his faint smile to increase to become scornful. These poor sidewalk creatures little knew what seethed inside the alabaster of the young Augustan noble! What was it to THEM that this was Miss Pratt's last night and that he intended to dance and dance with her, on and on?
Almost sternly he left these squalid lives behind him and passed to the festal gateway.
Upon one of the posts of that gateway there rested the elbow of a contemplative man, middleaged or a little worse. Of all persons having pleasure or business within the bright inclosure, he was, that evening, the least important; being merely the background parent who paid the bills. However, even this unconsidered elder shared a thought in common with the Augustan now approaching: Mr. Parcher had just been thinking that there was true romance in the scene before him.
But what Mr. Parcher contemplated as romance arose from the fact that these young people were dancing on a spot where their great-grandfathers had scalped Indians. Music was made for them by descendants, it might well be, of Romulus, of Messalina, of Benvenuto Cellini, and, around behind the house, waiting to serve the dancers with light food and drink, lounged and gossiped grandchildren of the Congo, only a generation or so removed from dances for which a chance stranger furnished both the occasion and the refreshments. Such, in brief, was Mr. Parcher's peculiar view of what constituted the romantic element.
And upon another subject preoccupying both Mr. Parcher and William, their two views, though again founded upon one thought, had no real congeniality. The preoccupying subject was the imminence of Miss Pratt's departure;—neither Mr. Parcher nor William forgot it for an instant. No matter what else played upon the surface of their attention, each kept saying to himself, underneath: “This is the last night—the last night! Miss Pratt is going away—going away to-morrow!”
Mr. Parcher's expression was peaceful. It was more peaceful than it had been for a long time. In fact, he wore the look of a man who had been through the mill but now contemplated a restful and health-restoring vacation. For there are people in this world who have no respect for the memory of Ponce de Leon, and Mr. Parcher had come to be of their number. The elimination of William from his evenings had lightened the burden; nevertheless, Mr. Parcher would have stated freely and openly to any responsible party that a yearning for the renewal of his youth had not been intensified by his daughter's having as a visitor, all summer long, a howling belle of eighteen who talked baby-talk even at breakfast and spread her suitors all over the small house—and its one veranda—from eight in the morning until hours of the night long after their mothers (in Mr. Parcher's opinion) should have sent their fathers to march them home. Upon Mr. Parcher's optimism the effect of so much unavoidable observation of young love had been fatal; he declared repeatedly that his faith in the human race was about gone. Furthermore, his physical constitution had proved pathetically vulnerable to nightly quartets, quintets, and even octets, on the porch below his bedchamber window, so that he was wont to tell his wife that never, never could he expect to be again the man he had been in the spring before Miss Pratt came to visit May. And, referring to conversations which he almost continuously overheard, perforce, Mr. Parcher said that if this was the way HE talked at that age, he would far prefer to drown in an ordinary fountain, and be dead and done with it, than to bathe in Ponce de Leon's.
Altogether, the summer had been a severe one; he doubted that he could have survived much more of it. And now that it was virtually over, at last, he was so resigned to the departure of his daughter's lovely little friend that he felt no regret for the splurge with which her visit was closing. Nay, to speed the parting guest—such was his lavish mood—twice and thrice over would he have paid for the lights, the flowers, the music, the sandwiches, the coffee, the chicken salad, the cake, the lemonade-punch, and the ice-cream.
Thus did the one thought divide itself between William and Mr. Parcher, keeping itself deep and pure under all their other thoughts. “Miss Pratt is going away!” thought William and Mr. Parcher. “Miss PRATT is going away—to-morrow!”
The unuttered words advanced tragically toward the gate in the head of William at the same time that they moved contentedly away in the head of Mr. Parcher; for Mr. Parcher caught sight of his wife just then, and went to join her as she sank wearily upon the front steps.
“Taking a rest for a minute?” he inquired. “By George! we're both entitled to a good LONG rest, after to-night! If we could afford it, we'd go away to a quiet little sanitarium in the hills, somewhere, and—” He ceased to speak and there was the renewal of an old bitterness in his expression as his staring eyes followed the movements of a stately young form entering the gateway. “Look at it!” said Mr. Parcher in a whisper. “Just look at it!”
“Look at what?” asked his wife.
“That Baxter boy!” said Mr. Parcher, as William passed on toward the dancers. “What's he think he's imitating—Henry Irving? Look at his walk!”
“He walks that way a good deal, lately, I've noticed,” said Mrs. Parcher in a tired voice. “So do Joe Bullitt and—”
“He didn't even come to say good evening to you,” Mr. Parcher interrupted. “Talk about MANNERS, nowadays! These young—”
“He didn't see us.”
“Well, we're used to that,” said Mr. Parcher. “None of 'em see us. They've worn holes in all the cane-seated chairs, they've scuffed up the whole house, and I haven't been able to sit down anywhere down-stairs for three months without sitting on some dam boy; but they don't even know we're alive! Well, thank the Lord, it's over—after to-night!” His voice became reflective. “That Baxter boy was the worst, until he took to coming in the daytime when I was down-town. I COULDN'T have stood it if he'd kept on coming in the evening. If I'd had to listen to any more of his talking or singing, either the embalmer or the lunatic-asylum would have had me, sure! I see he's got hold of his daddy's dress-suit again for to-night.”
“Is it Mr. Baxter's dress-suit?” Mrs. Parcher inquired. “How do you know?”
Mr. Parcher smiled. “How I happen to know is a secret,” he said. “I forgot about that. His little sister, Jane, told me that Mrs. Baxter had hidden it, or something, so that Willie couldn't wear it, but I guess Jane wouldn't mind my telling YOU that she told me especially as they're letting him use it again to-night. I suppose he feels grander 'n the King o' Siam!”
“No,” Mrs. Parcher returned, thoughtfully. “I don't think he does, just now.” Her gaze was fixed upon the dancing-platform, which most of the dancers were abandoning as the music fell away to an interval of silence. In the center of the platform there remained one group, consisting of Miss Pratt and five orators, and of the orators the most impassioned and gesticulative was William.
“They all seem to want to dance with her all the time,” said Mrs. Parcher. “I heard her telling one of the boys, half an hour ago, that all she could give him was either the twenty-eighth regular dance or the sixteenth 'extra.'”
“The what?” Mr. Parcher demanded, whirling to face her. “Do they think this party's going to keep running till day after to-morrow?” And then, as his eyes returned to the group on the platform, “That boy seems to have quite a touch of emotional insanity,” he remarked, referring to William. “What IS the matter with him?”
“Oh, nothing,” his wife returned. “Only trying to arrange a dance with her. He seems to be in difficulties.”
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