That is, he looked neither to the right nor to the left until he had passed the Baxters’ fence. But when he had gone as far as the upper corner of the fence beyond, he turned his head and looked back, without any expression — except that of a whistler — at Jane. And thus, still whistling “My country, ’tis of thee,” and with blank pink face over his shoulder, he proceeded until he was out of sight.
“Who was that boy?” the new neighbor then inquired.
“It’s Freddie,” said Jane, placidly. “He’s in our Sunday-school. He’s in love of me.”
“JANE!”
Again the outraged and ink-stained countenance glared down from the window.
“What you want?” Jane asked.
“What you MEAN talking about such things?” William demanded. “In all my life I never heard anything as disgusting! Shame on you!”
The little girl from across the street looked upward thoughtfully. “He’s mad,” she remarked, and, regardless of Jane’s previous information, “It IS your papa, isn’t it?” she insisted.
“No!” said Jane, testily. “I told you five times it’s my brother Willie.”
“Oh!” said the little girl, and, grasping the fact that William’s position was, in dignity and authority, negligible, compared with that which she had persisted in imagining, she felt it safe to tint her upward gaze with disfavor. “He acts kind of crazy,” she murmured.
“He’s in love of Miss Pratt,” said Jane. “She’s goin’ away to-day. She said she’d go before, but to-day she IS! Mr. Parcher, where she visits, he’s almost dead, she’s stayed so long. She’s awful, I think.”
William, to whom all was audible, shouted, hoarsely, “I’ll see to YOU!” and disappeared from the window.
“Will he come down here?” the little girl asked, taking a step toward the gate.
“No. He’s just gone to call mamma. All she’ll do’ ll be to tell us to go play somewheres else. Then we can go talk to Genesis.”
“Who?”
“Genesis. He’s puttin’ a load of coal in the cellar window with a shovel. He’s nice.”
“What’s he put the coal in the window for?”
“He’s a colored man,” said Jane.
“Shall we go talk to him now?”
“No,” Jane said, thoughtfully. “Let’s be playin’ callers when mamma comes to tell us to go ‘way. What was your name?”
“Rannie.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“It is too, Rannie,” the little girl insisted. “My whole name’s Mary Randolph Kirsted, but my short name’s Rannie.”
Jane laughed. “What a funny name!” she said. “I didn’t mean your real name; I meant your callers’ name. One of us was Mrs. Jones, and one was—”
“I want to be Mrs. Jones,” said Rannie.
“Oh, my DEAR Mrs. Jones,” Jane began at once, “I want to tell you about my lovely chuldren. I have two, one only seven years old, and the other—”
“Jane!” called Mrs. Baxter from William’s window.
“Yes’m?”
“You must go somewhere else to play. Willie’s trying to work at his studies up here, and he says you’ve disturbed him very much.”
“Yes’m.”
The obedient Jane and her friend turned to go, and as they went, Miss Mary Randolph Kirsted allowed her uplifted eyes to linger with increased disfavor upon William, who appeared beside Mrs. Baxter at the window.
“I tell you what let’s do,” Rannie suggested in a lowered voice. “He got so fresh with us, an’ made your mother come, an’ all, let’s — let’s—”
She hesitated.
“Let’s what?” Jane urged her, in an eager whisper.
“Let’s think up somep’n he won’t like — an’ DO it!”
They disappeared round a corner of the house, their heads close together.
XXIX. “DON’T FORGET!”
UP-STAIRS, MRS. BAXTER moved to the door of her son’s room, pretending to be unconscious of the gaze he maintained upon her. Mustering courage to hum a little tune and affecting inconsequence, she had nearly crossed the threshold when he said, sternly:
“And this is all you intend to say to that child?”
“Why, yes, Willie.”
“And yet I told you what she said!” he cried. “I told you I HEARD her stand there and tell that dirty-faced little girl how that idiot boy that’s always walkin’ past here four or five times a day, whistling and looking back, was in ‘love of’ her! Ye gods! What kind of a person will she grow up into if you don’t punish her for havin’ ideas like that at her age?”
Mrs. Baxter regarded him mildly, not replying, and he went on, with loud indignation:
“I never heard of such a thing! That Worm walkin’ past here four or five times a day just to look at JANE! And her standing there, calmly tellin’ that sooty-faced little girl, ‘He’s in love of me’! Why, it’s enough to sicken a man! Honestly, if I had my way, I’d see that both she and that little Freddie Banks got a first-class whipping!”
“Don’t you think, Willie,” said Mrs. Baxter— “don’t you think that, considering the rather noncommittal method of Freddie’s courtship, you are suggesting extreme measures?”
“Well, SHE certainly ought to be punished!” he insisted, and then, with a reversal to agony, he shuddered. “That’s the least of it!” he cried. “It’s the insulting things you always allow her to say of one of the noblest girls in the United States — THAT’S what counts! On the very last day — yes, almost the last hour — that Miss Pratt’s in this town, you let your only daughter stand there and speak disrespectfully of her — and then all you do is tell her to ‘go and play somewhere else’! I don’t understand your way of bringing up a child,” he declared, passionately. “I do NOT!”
“There, there, Willie,” Mrs. Baxter said. “You’re all wrought up—”
“I am NOT wrought up!” shouted William. “Why should I be charged with—”
“Now, now!” she said. “You’ll feel better to-morrow.”
“What do you mean by that?” he demanded, breathing deeply.
For reply she only shook her head in an odd little way, and in her parting look at him there was something at once compassionate, amused, and reassuring.
“You’ll be all right, Willie,” she said, softly, and closed the door.
Alone, William lifted clenched hands in a series of tumultuous gestures at the ceiling; then he moaned and sank into a chair at his writing-table. Presently a comparative calm was restored to him, and with reverent fingers he took from a drawer a one-pound box of candy, covered with white tissue-paper, girdled with blue ribbon. He set the box gently beside him upon the table; then from beneath a large, green blotter drew forth some scribbled sheets. These he placed before him, and, taking infinite pains with his handwriting, slowly copied:
DEAR LOLA — I presume when you are reading these lines it will be this afternoon and you will be on the train moving rapidly away from this old place here farther and farther from it all. As I sit here at my old desk and look back upon it all while I am writing this farewell letter I hope when you are reading it you also will look back upon it all and think of one you called (Alias) Little Boy Baxter. As I sit here this morning that you are going away at last I look back and I cannot rember any summer in my whole life which has been like this summer, because a great change has come over me this summer. If you would like to know what this means it was something like I said when John Watson got there yesterday afternoon and interrupted what I said. May you enjoy this candy and think of the giver. I will put something in with this letter. It is something maybe you would like to have and in exchange I would give all I possess for one of you if you would send it to me when you get home. Please do this for now my heart is braking. Yours sincerely, WILLIAM S. BAXTER (ALIAS) LITTLE BOY BAXTER.
William opened the box of candy and placed the letter upon the top layer of chocolates. Upon the letter he placed a small photograph (wrapped in tissue-p
aper) of himself. Then, with a pair of scissors, he trimmed an oblong of white cardboard to fit into the box. Upon this piece of cardboard he laboriously wrote, copying from a tortured, inky sheet before him:
IN DREAM
BY WILLIAM S. BAXTER
The sunset light
Fades into night
But never will I forget
The smile that haunts me yet
Through the future four long years
I hope you will remember with tears
Whate’er my rank or station
Whilst receiving my education
Though far away you seem
I will see thee in dream.
He placed his poem between the photograph and the letter, closed the box, and tied the tissue-paper about it again with the blue ribbon. Throughout these rites (they were rites both in spirit and in manner) he was subject to little catchings of the breath, half gulp, half sigh. But the dolorous tokens passed, and he sat with elbows upon the table, his chin upon his hands, reverie in his eyes. Tragedy had given way to gentler pathos; — beyond question, something had measurably soothed him. Possibly, even in this hour preceding the hour of parting, he knew a little of that proud amazement which any poet is entitled to feel over each new lyric miracle just wrought.
Perhaps he was helped, too, by wondering what Miss Pratt would think of him when she read “In Dream,” on the train that afternoon. For reasons purely intuitive, and decidedly without foundation in fact, he was satisfied that no rival farewell poem would be offered her, and so it may be that he thought “In Dream” might show her at last, in one blaze of light, what her eyes had sometimes fleetingly intimated she did perceive in part — the difference between William and such every-day, rather well-meaning, fairly good-hearted people as Joe Bullitt, Wallace Banks, Johnnie Watson, and others. Yes, when she came to read “In Dream,” and to “look back upon it all,” she would surely know — at last!
And then, when the future four long years (while receiving his education) had passed, he would go to her. He would go to her, and she would take him by the hand, and lead him to her father, and say, “Father, this is William.”
But William would turn to her, and, with the old, dancing light in his eyes, “No, Lola,” he would say, “not William, but Ickle Boy Baxter! Always and always, just that for you; oh, my dear!”
And then, as in story and film and farce and the pleasanter kinds of drama, her father would say, with kindly raillery, “Well, when you two young people get through, you’ll find me in the library, where I have a pretty good BUSINESS proposition to lay before YOU, young man!”
And when the white-waistcoated, white-side-burned old man had, chuckling, left the room, William would slowly lift his arms; but Lola would move back from him a step — only a step — and after laying a finger archly upon her lips to check him, “Wait, sir!” she would say. “I have a question to ask you, sir!”
“What question, Lola?”
“THIS question, sir!” she would reply. “In all that summer, sir, so long ago, why did you never tell me what you WERE, until I had gone away and it was too late to show you what I felt? Ah, Ickle Boy Baxter, I never understood until I looked back upon it all, after I had read ‘In Dream,’ on the train that day! THEN I KNEW!” “And now, Lola?” William would say. “Do you understand me, NOW?”
Shyly she would advance the one short step she had put between them, while he, with lifted, yearning arms, this time destined to no disappointment ——
At so vital a moment did Mrs. Baxter knock at his door and consoling reverie cease to minister unto William. Out of the rosy sky he dropped, falling miles in an instant, landing with a bump. He started, placed the sacred box out of sight, and spoke gruffly.
“What you want?”
“I’m not coming in, Willie,” said his mother. “I just wanted to know — I thought maybe you were looking out of the window and noticed where those children went.”
“What children?”
“Jane and that little girl from across the street — Kirsted, her name must be.”
“No. I did not.”
“I just wondered,” Mrs. Baxter said, timidly. “Genesis thinks he heard the little Kirsted girl telling Jane she had plenty of money for carfare. He thinks they went somewhere on a street-car. I thought maybe you noticed wheth—”
“I told you I did not.”
“All right,” she said, placatively. “I didn’t mean to bother you, dear.”
Following this there was a silence; but no sound of receding footsteps indicated Mrs. Baxter’s departure from the other side of the closed door.
“Well, what you WANT?” William shouted.
“Nothing — nothing at all,” said the compassionate voice. “I just thought I’d have lunch a little later than usual; not till half past one. That is if — well, I thought probably you meant to go to the station to see Miss Pratt off on the one-o’clock train.”
Even so friendly an interest as this must have appeared to the quivering William an intrusion in his affairs, for he demanded, sharply:
“How’d you find out she’s going at one o’clock?”
“Why — why, Jane mentioned it,” Mrs. Baxter replied, with obvious timidity. “Jane said—”
She was interrupted by the loud, desperate sound of William’s fist smiting his writing-table, so sensitive was his condition. “This is just unbearable!” he cried. “Nobody’s business is safe from that child!”
“Why, Willie, I don’t see how it matters if—”
He uttered a cry. “No! Nothing matters! Nothing matters at all! Do you s’pose I want that child, with her insults, discussing when Miss Pratt is or is not going away? Don’t you know there are SOME things that have no business to be talked about by every Tom, Dick, and Harry?”
“Yes, dear,” she said. “I understand, of course. Jane only told me she met Mr. Parcher on the street, and he mentioned that Miss Pratt was going at one o’clock to-day. That’s all I—”
“You say you understand,” he wailed, shaking his head drearily at the closed door, “and yet, even on such a day as this, you keep TALKING! Can’t you see sometimes there’s times when a person can’t stand to—”
“Yes, Willie,” Mrs. Baxter interposed, hurriedly. “Of course! I’m going now. I have to go hunt up those children, anyway. You try to be back for lunch at half past one — and don’t worry, dear; you really WILL be all right!”
She departed, a sigh from the abyss following her as she went down the hall. Her comforting words meant nothing pleasant to her son, who felt that her optimism was out of place and tactless. He had no intention to be “all right,” and he desired nobody to interfere with his misery.
He went to his mirror, and, gazing long — long and piercingly — at the William there limned, enacted, almost unconsciously, a little scene of parting. The look of suffering upon the mirrored face slowly altered; in its place came one still sorrowful, but tempered with sweet indulgence. He stretched out his hand, as if he set it upon a head at about the height of his shoulder.
“Yes, it may mean — it may mean forever!” he said in a low, tremulous voice. “Little girl, we MUST be brave!”
And the while his eyes gazed into the mirror, they became expressive of a momentary pleased surprise, as if, even in the arts of sorrow, he found himself doing better than he knew. But his sorrow was none the less genuine because of that.
Then he noticed the ink upon his forehead, and went away to wash. When he returned he did an unusual thing — he brushed his coat thoroughly, removing it for this special purpose. After that, he earnestly combed and brushed his hair, and retied his tie. Next, he took from a drawer two clean handkerchiefs. He placed one in his breast pocket, part of the colored border of the handkerchief being left on exhibition, and with the other he carefully wiped his shoes. Finally, he sawed it back and forth across them, and, with a sigh, languidly dropped it upon the floor, where it remained.
Returning to the mirror, he again brush
ed his hair — he went so far, this time, as to brush his eyebrows, which seemed not much altered by the operation. Suddenly, he was deeply affected by something seen in the glass.
“By George!” he exclaimed aloud.
Seizing a small hand-mirror, he placed it in juxtaposition to his right eye, and closely studied his left profile as exhibited in the larger mirror. Then he examined his right profile, subjecting it to a like scrutiny emotional, yet attentive and prolonged.
“By George!” he exclaimed, again. “By George!”
He had made a discovery. There was a downy shadow upon his upper lip. What he had just found out was that this down could be seen projecting beyond the line of his lip, like a tiny nimbus. It could be seen in PROFILE.
“By GEORGE!” William exclaimed.
He was still occupied with the two mirrors when his mother again tapped softly upon his door, rousing him as from a dream (brief but engaging) to the heavy realities of that day.
“What you want now?”
“I won’t come in,” said Mrs. Baxter. “I just came to see.”
“See what?”
“I wondered — I thought perhaps you needed something. I knew your watch was out of order—”
“F’r ‘evan’s sake what if it is?”
She offered a murmur of placative laughter as her apology, and said: “Well, I just thought I’d tell you — because if you did intend going to the station, I thought you probably wouldn’t want to miss it and get there too late. I’ve got your hat here all nicely brushed for you. It’s nearly twenty minutes of one, Willie.”
“WHAT?”
“Yes, it is. It’s—”
She had no further speech with him.
Breathless, William flung open his door, seized the hat, racketed down the stairs, and out through the front door, which he left open behind him. Eight seconds later he returned at a gallop, hurtled up the stairs and into his room, emerging instantly with something concealed under his coat. Replying incoherently to his mother’s inquiries, he fell down the stairs as far as the landing, used the impetus thus given as a help to greater speed for the rest of the descent — and passed out of hearing.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 227
