Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Don’t you suppose I can see that?” Mr. Parcher returned, with some irritation. “That’s what’s the trouble with him. Why don’t he QUIT looking at her?”

  “I think probably he feels badly because she’s dancing with one of the other boys,” said his wife, mildly.

  “Then why can’t he dance with somebody else himself?” Mr. Parcher inquired, testily. “Instead of standing around like a calf looking out of the butcher’s wagon! By George! he looks as if he was just going to MOO!”

  “Of course he ought to be dancing with somebody,” Mrs. Parcher remarked, thoughtfully. “There are one or two more girls than boys here, and he’s the only boy not dancing. I believe I’ll—” And, not stopping to complete the sentence, she rose and walked across the interval of grass to William. “Good evening, William,” she said, pleasantly. “Don’t you want to dance?”

  “Ma’am?” said William, blankly, and the eyes he turned upon here were glassy with anxiety. He was still determined to dance on and on and on with Miss Pratt, but he realized that there were great obstacles to be overcome before he could begin the process. He was feverishly awaiting the next interregnum between dances — then he would show Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson and Wallace Banks, and some others who had set themselves in his way, that he was “abs’lutely not goin’ to stand it!”

  He couldn’t stand it, he told himself, even if he wanted to — not to-night! He had “been through enough” in order to get to the party, he thought, thus defining sufferings connected with his costume, and now that he was here he WOULD dance and dance, on and on, with Miss Pratt. Anything else was unthinkable.

  He HAD to!

  “Don’t you want to dance?” Mrs. Parcher repeated. “Have you looked around for a girl without a partner?”

  He continued to stare at her, plainly having no comprehension of her meaning.

  “Girl?” he echoed, in a tone of feeble inquiry.

  She smiled and nodded, taking his arm. “You come with me,” she said. “I’LL fix you up!”

  William suffered her to conduct him across the yard. Intensely preoccupied with what he meant to do as soon as the music paused, he was somewhat hazy, but when he perceived that he was being led in the direction of a girl, sitting solitary under one of the maple-trees, the sudden shock of fear aroused his faculties.

  “What — where—” he stammered, halting and seeking to detach himself from his hostess.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I got — I got to—” William began, uneasily. “I got to—”

  His purpose was to excuse himself on the ground that he had to find a man and tell him something important before the next dance, for in the confusion of the moment his powers refused him greater originality. But the vital part of his intended excuse remained unspoken, being disregarded and cut short, as millions of other masculine diplomacies have been, throughout the centuries, by the decisive action of ladies.

  Miss Boke had been sitting under the mapletree for a long time — so long, indeed, that she was acquiring a profound distaste for forestry and even for maple syrup. In fact, her state of mind was as desperate, in its way, as William’s; and when a hostess leads a youth (in almost perfectly fitting conventional black) toward a girl who has been sitting alone through dance after dance, that girl knows what that youth is going to have to do.

  It must be confessed for Miss Boke that her eyes had been upon William from the moment Mrs. Parcher addressed him. Nevertheless, as the pair came toward her she looked casually away in an indifferent manner. And yet this may have been but a seeming unconsciousness, for upon the very instant of William’s halting, and before he had managed to stammer “I got to—” for the fourth time, Miss Boke sprang to her feet and met Mrs. Parcher more than halfway.

  “Oh, Mrs. Parcher!” she called, coming forward.

  “I got—” the panic-stricken William again hastily began. “I got to—”

  “Oh, Mrs. Parcher,” cried Miss Boke, “I’ve been SO worried! There’s a candle in that Japanese lantern just over your head, and I think it’s going out.”

  “I’ll run and get a fresh one in a minute,” said Mrs. Parcher, smiling benevolently and retaining William’s arm with a little difficulty. “We were just coming to find you. I’ve brought—”

  “I got to — I got to find a m—” William made a last, stricken effort.

  “Miss Boke, this is Mr. Baxter,” said Mrs. Parcher, and she added, with what seemed to William hideous garrulity, “He and you both came late, dear, and he hasn’t any dances engaged, either. So run and dance, and have a nice time together.”

  Thereupon this disastrous woman returned to her husband. Her look was conscientious; she thought she had done something pleasant!

  The full horror of his position was revealed to William in the relieved, confident, proprietor’s smile of Miss Boke. For William lived by a code from which no previous experience had taught him any means of escape. Mrs. Parcher had made the statement — so needless and so ruinous — that he had no engagements; and in his dismay he had been unable to deny this fatal truth; he had been obliged to let it stand. Henceforth, he was committed absolutely to Miss Boke until either some one else asked her to dance, or (while yet in her close company) William could obtain an engagement with another girl. The latter alternative presented certain grave difficulties, also contracting William to dance with the other girl before once more obtaining his freedom, but undeniably he regarded it from the first as the more hopeful.

  He had to give form to the fatal invitation. “M’av this dance ‘thyou?” he muttered, doggedly.

  “Vurry pleased to!” Miss Boke responded, whereupon they walked in silence to the platform, stepped upon its surface, and embraced.

  They made a false start.

  They made another.

  They stood swaying to catch the time; then made another. After that they tried again, and were saved from a fall only by spasmodic and noticeable contortions.

  Miss Boke laughed tolerantly, as if forgiving William for his awkwardness, and his hot heart grew hotter with that injustice. She was a large, ample girl, weighing more than William (this must be definitely claimed in his behalf), and she had been spending the summer at a lakeside hotel where she had constantly danced “man’s part.” To paint William’s predicament at a stroke, his partner was a determined rather than a graceful dancer — and their efforts to attune themselves to each other and to the music were in a fair way to attract general attention.

  A coarse chuckle, a half-suppressed snort, assailed William’s scarlet ear, and from the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Joe Bullitt gliding by, suffused; while over Joe’s detested shoulder could be seen the adorable and piquant face of the One girl — also suffused.

  “Doggone it!” William panted.

  “Oh, you mustn’t be discouraged with yourself,” said Miss Boke, genially. “I’ve met lots of Men that had trouble to get started and turned out to be right good dancers, after all. It seems to me we’re kind of workin’ against each other. I’ll tell you — you kind of let me do the guiding and I’ll get you going fine. Now! ONE, two, ONE, two! There!”

  William ceased to struggle for dominance, and their efforts to “get started” were at once successful. With a muscular power that was surprising, Miss Boke bore him out into the circling current, swung him round and round, walked him backward half across the platform, then swung him round and round and round again. For a girl, she “guided” remarkably well; nevertheless, a series of collisions, varying in intensity, marked the path of the pair upon the rather crowded platform. In such emergencies Miss Boke proved herself deft in swinging William to act as a buffer, and he several times found himself heavily stricken from the rear; anon his face would be pressed suffocatingly into Miss Boke’s hair, without the slightest wish on his part for such intimacy. He had a helpless feeling, fully warranted by the circumstances. Also, he soon became aware that Miss Boke’s powerful “guiding” was observed by t
he public; for, after one collision, more severe than others, a low voice hissed in his ear:

  “SHE WON’T HURT YOU MUCH, SILLY BILL. SHE’S ONLY IN FUN!”

  This voice belonged to the dancer with whom he had just been in painful contact, Johnnie Watson. However, Johnnie had whirled far upon another orbit before William found a retort, and then it was a feeble one.

  “I wish YOU’D try a few dances with her!” he whispered, inaudibly, but with unprecedented bitterness, as the masterly arm of his partner just saved him from going over the edge of the platform. “I bet she’d kill you!”

  More than once he tried to assert himself and resume his natural place as guide, but each time he did so he immediately got out of step with his partner, their knees collided embarrassingly, they staggered and walked upon each other’s insteps — and William was forced to abandon the unequal contest.

  “I just love dancing,” said Miss Boke, serenely. “Don’t you, Mr. Baxter?”

  “What?” he gulped. “Yeh.”

  “It’s a beautiful floor for dancing, isn’t it?”

  “Yeh.”

  “I just love dancing,” Miss Boke thought proper to declare again. “Don’t you love it, Mr. Baxter?”

  This time he considered his enthusiasm to be sufficiently indicated by a nod. He needed all his breath.

  “It’s lovely,” she murmured. “I hope they don’t play ‘Home, Sweet Home’ very early at parties in this town. I could keep on like this all night!”

  To the gasping William it seemed that she already had kept on like this all night, and he expressed himself in one great, frank, agonized moan of relief when the music stopped. “I sh’ think those musicians ‘d be dead!” he said, as he wiped his brow. And then discovering that May Parcher stood at his elbow, he spoke hastily to her. “M’av the next ‘thyou?”

  But Miss Parcher had begun to applaud the musicians for an encore. She shook her head. “Next’s the third extra,” she said. “And, anyhow, this one’s going to be encored now. You can have the twenty-second — if there IS any!” William threw a wild glance about him, looking for other girls, but the tireless orchestra began to play the encore, and Miss Boke, who had been applauding, instantly cast herself upon his bosom. “Come on!” she cried. “Don’t let’s miss a second of it; It’s just glorious!”

  When the encore was finished she seized William’s arm, and, mentioning that she’d left her fan upon the chair under the maple-tree, added, “Come on! Let’s go get it QUICK!”

  Under the maple-tree she fanned herself and talked of her love for dancing until the music sounded again. “Come on!” she cried, then. “Don’t let’s miss a second of it! It’s just glorious!”

  And grasping his arm, she propelled him toward the platform with a merry little rush.

  So passed five dances. Long, long dances.

  Likewise five encores. Long encores.

  XXVII. MAROONED

  AT EVERY POSSIBLE opportunity William hailed other girls with a hasty “M’av the next ‘thyou?” but he was indeed unfortunate to have arrived so late.

  The best he got was a promise of “the nineteenth — if there IS any!”

  After each dance Miss Boke conducted him back to the maple-tree, aloof from the general throng, and William found the intermissions almost equal to his martyrdoms upon the platform. But, as there was a barely perceptible balance in their favor, he collected some fragments of his broken spirit, when Miss Boke would have borne him to the platform for the sixth time, and begged to “sit this one out,” alleging that he had “kind of turned his ankle, or something,” he believed.

  The cordial girl at once placed him upon the chair and gallantly procured another for herself. In her solicitude she sat close to him, looking fondly at his face, while William, though now and then rubbing his ankle for plausibility’s sake, gazed at the platform with an expression which Gustave Dore would gratefully have found suggestive. William was conscious of a voice continually in action near him, but not of what it said. Miss Boke was telling him of the dancing “up at the lake” where she had spent the summer, and how much she had loved it, but William missed all that. Upon the many-colored platform the ineffable One drifted to and fro, back and forth; her little blonde head, in a golden net, glinting here and there like a bit of tinsel blowing across a flower-garden.

  And when that dance and its encore were over she went to lean against a tree, while Wallace Banks fanned her, but she was so busy with Wallace that she did not notice William, though she passed near enough to waft a breath of violet scent to his wan nose. A fragment of her silver speech tinkled in his ear:

  “Oh, Wallie Banks! Bid pid s’ant have Bruvva Josie-Joe’s dance ‘less Joe say so. Lola MUS’ be fair. Wallie mustn’t—”

  “That’s that Miss Pratt,” observed Miss Boke, following William’s gaze with some interest. “You met her yet?”

  “Yeh,” said William.

  “She’s been visiting here all summer,” Miss Boke informed him. “I was at a little tea this afternoon, and some of the girls said this Miss Pratt said she’d never DREAM of getting engaged to any man that didn’t have seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I expect so. Anyway, they said they heard her say so.”

  William lifted his right hand from his ankle and passed it, time after time, across his damp forehead. He did not believe that Miss Pratt could have expressed herself in so mercenary a manner, but if she HAD — well, one fact in British history had so impressed him that he remembered it even after Examination: William Pitt, the younger, had been Prime Minister of England at twenty-one.

  If an Englishman could do a thing like that, surely a bright, energetic young American needn’t feel worried about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars! And although William, at seventeen, had seldom possessed more than seven hundred and fifty cents, four long years must pass, and much could be done, before he would reach the age at which William Pitt attained the premiership — coincidentally a good, ripe, marriageable age. Still, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a stiffish order, even allowing four long years to fill it; and undoubtedly Miss Boke’s bit of gossip added somewhat to the already sufficient anxieties of William’s evening.

  “Up at the lake,” Miss Boke chattered on, “we got to use the hotel dining-room for the hops. It’s a floor a good deal like this floor is to-night — just about oily enough and as nice a floor as ever I danced on. We have awf’ly good times up at the lake. ‘Course there aren’t so many Men up there, like there are here to-night, and I MUST say I AM glad to get a chance to dance with a Man again! I told you you’d dance all right, once we got started, and look at the way it’s turned out: our steps just suit exactly! If I must say it, I could scarcely think of anybody I EVER met I’d rather dance with. When anybody’s step suits in with mine, that way, why, I LOVE to dance straight through an evening with one person, the way we’re doing.”

  Dimly, yet with strong repulsion, William perceived that their interminable companionship had begun to affect Miss Boke with a liking for him. And as she chattered chummily on, revealing this increasing cordiality all the while — though her more obvious topics were dancing, dancing-floors, and “the lake” — the reciprocal sentiment roused in his breast was that of Sindbad the Sailor for the Old Man of the Sea.

  He was unable to foresee a future apart from her; and when she informed him that she preferred his style of dancing to all other styles shown by the Men at this party, her thus singling him out for praise only emphasized, in his mind, that point upon which he was the most embittered.

  “Yes!” he reflected. “It had to be ME!” With all the crowd to choose from, Mrs. Parcher had to go and pick on HIM! All, all the others went about, free as air, flitting from girl to girl — girls that danced like girls! All, all except William, danced with Miss PRATT! What Miss Pratt had offered HIM was a choice between the thirty-second dance and the twenty-first extra. THAT was what he had to look forward to: the thirty
-second reg’lar or the twenty-first extra!

  Meanwhile, merely through eternity, he was sealed unto Miss Boke.

  The tie that bound them oppressed him as if it had been an ill-omened matrimony, and he sat beside her like an unwilling old husband. All the while, Miss Boke had no appreciation whatever of her companion’s real condition, and, when little, spasmodic, sinister changes appeared in his face (as they certainly did from time to time) she attributed them to pains in his ankle. However, William decided to discard his ankle, after they had “sat out” two dances on account of it. He decided that he preferred dancing, and said he guessed he must be better.

  So they danced again — and again.

  When the fourteenth dance came, about half an hour before midnight, they were still dancing together.

  It was upon the conclusion of this fourteenth dance that Mr. Parcher mentioned to his wife a change in his feelings toward William. “I’ve been watching him,” said Mr. Parcher, “and I never saw true misery show plainer. He’s having a really horrible time. By George! I hate him, but I’ve begun to feel kind of sorry for him! Can’t you trot up somebody else, so he can get away from that fat girl?”

  Mrs. Parcher shook her head in a discouraged way. “I’ve tried, and I’ve tried, and I’ve tried!” she said.

  “Well, try again.”

  “I can’t now.” She waved her hand toward the rear of the house. Round the corner marched a short procession of negroes, bearing trays; and the dancers were dispersing themselves to chairs upon the lawn “for refreshments.”

  “Well, do something,” Mr. Parcher urged. “We don’t want to find him in the cistern in the morning!”

  Mrs. Parcher looked thoughtful, then brightened. “I know!” she said. “I’ll make May and Lola and their partners come sit in this little circle of chairs here, and then I’ll go and bring Willie and Miss Boke to sit with them. I’ll give Willie the seat at Lola’s left. You keep the chairs.”