Seventeen (Tarkington, 1916)/Chapter 10

R. PARCHER, that unhappy gentleman, having been driven indoors from his own porch, had attempted to read Plutarch's Lives in the library, but, owing to the adjacency of the porch and the summer necessity for open windows, his escape spared only his eyes and not his suffering ears. The house was small, being but half of a double one, with small rooms, and the "parlor," library, and dining-room all about equally exposed to the porch which ran along the side of the house. Mr. Parcher had no refuge except bed or the kitchen, and as he was troubled with chronic insomnia, and the cook had callers in the kitchen, his case was desperate. Most unfortunately, too, his reading-lamp, the only one in the house, was a fixture near a window, and just beyond that window sat Miss Pratt and William in sweet unconsciousness, while Miss Parcher entertained the overflow (consisting of Mr. Johnnie Watson) at the other end of the porch. Listening perforce to the conversation of the former couple though "conversation" is far from the expression later used by Mr. Parcher to describe what he heard—he found it impossible to sit still in his chair. He jerked and twitched with continually increasing restlessness; sometimes he gasped, and other times he moaned a little, and there were times when he muttered huskily.

"Oh, cute-ums!" came the silvery voice of Miss Pratt from the likewise silvery porch outside, underneath the summer moon. "Darlin' Flopit, look! Ickle boy Baxter goin' make imitations of darlin' Flopit again. See! Ickle boy Baxter puts head one side, then other side, just like darlin' Flopit. Then barks just like darlin' Flopit! Ladies and 'entlemen, imitations of darlin' Flopit by ickle boy Baxter."

"Berp-werp! Berp-werp!" came the voice of William Sylvanus Baxter.

And in the library Plutarch's Lives moved convulsively, while with writhing lips Mr. Parcher muttered to himself.

"More, more!" cried Miss Pratt, clapping her hands. "Do it again, ickle boy Baxter!"

"Berp-werp! Berp-werp-werp!"

"Word!" muttered Mr. Parcher.

Miss Pratt's voice became surcharged with honeyed wonder. "How did he learn such marv'lous, marv'lous imitations of darlin' Flopit? He ought to go on the big, big stage and be a really actor, oughtn't he, darlin' Flopit? He could make milyums and milyums of dollardies, couldn't he, darlin' Flopit?"

William's modest laugh disclaimed any great ambition for himself in this line. "Oh, I always could think up imitations of animals; things like that—but I hardly would care to—to adop' the stage for a career. Would—you?" (There was a thrill in his voice when he pronounced the ineffably significant word "you.")

Miss Pratt became intensely serious.

"It's my dream!" she said.

William, seated upon a stool at her feet, gazed up at the amber head, divinely splashed by the rain of moonlight. The fire with which she spoke stirred him as few things had ever stirred him. He knew she had just revealed a side of herself which she reserved for only the chosen few who were capable of understanding her, and he fell into a hushed rapture. It seemed to him that there was a sacredness about this moment, and he sought vaguely for something to say that would live up to it and not be out of keeping. Then, like an inspiration, there came into his head some words he had read that day and thought beautiful. He had found them beneath an illustration in a magazine, and he spoke them almost instinctively.

"It was wonderful of you to say that to me," he said. "I shall never forget it!"

"It's my dream!" Miss Pratt exclaimed, again, with the same enthusiasm. "It's my dream."

"You would make a glorious actress!" he said.

At that her mood changed. She laughed a laugh like a sweet little girl's laugh (not Jane's) and, setting her rocking-chair in motion, cuddled the fuzzy white doglet in her arms. "Ickle boy Baxter t'yin' flatterbox us, tunnin' Flopit! No'ty, no'ty flatterbox!"

"No, no!" William insisted, earnestly. "I mean it. But—but—"

"But whatcums?"

"What do you think about actors and actresses making love to each other on the stage? Do you think they have to really feel it, or do they just pretend?"

"Well," said Miss Pratt, weightily, "sometimes one way, sometimes the other."

William's gravity became more and more profound. "Yes, but how can they pretend like that? Don't you think love is a sacred thing, Cousin Lola?"

Fictitious sisterships, brotherships, and cousinships are devices to push things along, well known to seventeen and even more advanced ages. On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, "Ickle boy Baxter" and "Cousin Lola." (Thus they had broken down the tedious formalities of their first twenty minutes together.)

"Don't you think love is sacred?" he repeated in the deepest tone of which his vocal cords were capable.

"Ess," said Miss Pratt.

"I do!" William was emphatic. "I think love is the most sacred thing there is. I don't mean SOME kinds of love. I mean real love. You take some people, I don't believe they ever know what real love means. They talk about it, maybe, but they don't understand it. Love is something nobody can understand unless they feel it and and if they don't understand it they don't feel it. Don't you think so?"

"Ess."

"Love," William continued, his voice lifting and thrilling to the great theme—"love is something nobody can ever have but one time in their lives, and if they don't have it then, why prob'ly they never will. Now, if a man really loves a girl, why he'd do anything in the world she wanted him to. Don't [you think so?"

"Ess, 'deedums!" said the silvery voice.

"But if he didn't, then he wouldn't," said William vehemently. "But when a man really loves a girl he will. Now, you take a man like that and he can generally do just about anything the girl he loves wants him to. Say, f'rinstance, she wants him to love her even more than he does already—or almost anything like that—and supposin' she asks him to. Well, he would go ahead and do it. If they really loved each other he would!"

He paused a moment, then in a lowered tone he said, "I think real love is sacred, don't you?"

"Ess."

"Don't you think love is the most sacred thing there is—that is, if it's real love?"

"Ess."

"I do," said William, warmly. "I—I'm glad you feel like that, because I think real love is the kind nobody could have but just once in their lives, but if it isn't real love, why—why most people never have it at all, because—" He paused, seeming to seek for the exact phrase which would express his meaning. "—Because the real love a man feels for a girl and a girl for a man, if they really love each other, and, you look at a case like that, of course they would both love each other, or it wouldn't be real love well, what I say is, if it's real love, well, it's—it's sacred, because I think that kind of love is always sacred. Don't you think love is sacred if it's the real thing?"

"Ess," said Miss Pratt. "Do Flopit again. Be Flopit!"

"Berp-werp! Berp-werp-werp."

And within the library an agonized man writhed and muttered:

"Word! Word! —"

This hoarse repetition had become almost continuous.

... But out on the porch, that little, jasmine-scented bower in Arcady where youth cried to youth and golden heads were haloed in the moonshine, there fell a silence. Not utter silence, for out there an ethereal music sounded constantly, unheard and forgotten by older ears. Time was when the sly playwrights used "incidental music" in their dramas; they knew that an audience would be moved so long as the music played; credulous while that crafty enchantment lasted. And when the galled Mr. Parcher wondered how those young people out on the porch could listen to each other and not die, it was because he did not hear and had forgotten the music that throbs in the veins of youth. Nevertheless, it may not be denied that despite his poor memory this man of fifty was deserving of a little sympathy.

It was William who broke the silence. "How—" he began, and his voice trembled a little. "How—how do you—how do you think of me when I'm not with you?"

"Think nice-cums," Miss Pratt responded. "Flopit an' me think nice-cums."

"No," said William; "I mean what name do you have for me when you're when you're thinking about me?"

Miss Pratt seemed to be puzzled, perhaps justifiably, and she made a cooing sound of interrogation.

"I mean like this," William explained. "F'rinstance, when you first came, I always thought of you as 'Milady'—when I wrote that poem, you know."

"Ess. Boo'fums."

"But now I don't," he said. "Now I think of you by another name when I'm alone. It—it just sort of came to me. I was kind of just sitting around this afternoon, and I didn't know I was thinking about anything at all very much, and then all of a sudden I said it to myself out loud. It was about as strange a thing as I ever knew of. Don't you think so?"

"Ess. It uz dest weird!" she answered. "What are dat pitty names?"

"I called you," said William, huskily and reverently, "I called you 'My Baby-Talk Lady.'"

Bang!

They were startled by a crash from within the library; a heavy weight seemed to have fallen (or to have been hurled) a considerable distance. Stepping to the window, William beheld a large volume lying in a distorted attitude at the foot of the wall opposite to that in which the reading-lamp was a fixture. But of all human life the room was empty; for Mr. Parcher had given up, and was now hastening to his bed in the last faint hope of saving his reason.

His symptoms, however, all pointed to its having fled; and his wife, looking up from some computations in laundry charges, had but a vision of windmill gestures as he passed the door of her room. Then, not only for her, but for the inoffensive people who lived in the other half of the house, the closing of his own door took place in a really memorable manner.

William, gazing upon the fallen Plutarch, had just offered the explanation, "Somebody must 'a' thrown it at a bug or something, I guess," when the second explosion sent its reverberations through the house.

"My doodness!" Miss Pratt exclaimed, jumping up.

William laughed reassuringly, remaining calm. "It's only a door blew shut up-stairs," he said "Let's sit down again—just the way we were?"

Unfortunately for him, Mr. Joe Bullitt now made his appearance at the other end of the porch. Mr. Bullitt, though almost a year younger than either William or Johnnie Watson, was of a turbulent and masterful disposition. Moreover, in regard to Miss Pratt, his affections were in as ardent a state as those of his rivals, and he lacked Johnnie's meekness. He firmly declined to be shunted by Miss Parcher, who was trying to favor William's cause, according to a promise he had won of her by strong pleading. Regardless of her efforts, Mr. Bullitt descended upon William and his Baby-Talk-Lady, and received from the latter a honeyed greeting, somewhat to the former's astonishment and not at all to his pleasure.

"Oh, goody-cute!" cried Miss Pratt. "Here's big Bruvva Josie-Joe!" And she lifted her little dog close to Mr. Bullitt's face, guiding one of Flopit's paws with her fingers. "Stroke big Bruvva Josie-Joe's pint teeks, darlin' Flopit." (Josie-Joe's pink cheeks were indicated by the expression "pint teeks," evidently, for her accompanying action was to pass Flopit's paw lightly over those glowing surfaces.) "'At's nice!" she remarked. "Stroke him gently, p'eshus Flopit, an' nen we'll coax him to make pitty singin' for us, like us did yestiday."

She turned to William.

"Coax him to make pitty singin'? I love his voice—I'm dest crazy over it. Isn't oo?"

William's passion for Mr. Bullitt's voice appeared to be under control. He laughed coldly, almost harshly. "Him sing?" he said. "Has he been tryin' to sing around here? I wonder the family didn't call for the police!"

It was to be seen that Mr. Bullitt did not relish the sally. "Well, they will," he retorted, "if you ever spring one o' your solos on 'em!" And turning to Miss Pratt, he laughed loudly and bitterly. "You ought to hear Silly Bill sing—some time when you don't mind goin' to bed sick for a couple o' days!"

Symptoms of truculence at once became alarmingly pronounced on both sides. William was naturally incensed, and as for Mr. Bullitt, he had endured a great deal from William every evening since Miss Pratt's arrival. William's evening clothes were hard enough for both Mr. Watson and Mr. Bullitt to bear, without any additional insolence on the part of the wearer. Big Bruvva Josie-Joe took a step toward his enemy and breathed audibly.

"Let's all sing," the tactful Miss Pratt proposed, hastily. "Come on, May and Cousin Johnnie-Jump-Up," she called to Miss Parcher and Mr. Watson. "Singin'-school, dirls an' boys! Singin'-school! Ding, ding! Singin'-school bell's a-wingin'!"

The diversion was successful. Miss Parcher and Mr. Watson joined the other group with alacrity, and the five young people were presently seated close together upon the steps of the porch, sending their voices out upon the air and up to Mr. Parcher's window in the song they found loveliest that summer.

Miss Pratt carried the air. William also carried it part of the time and hunted for it the rest of the time, though never in silence. Miss Parcher "sang alto," Mr. Bullitt "sang bass," and Mr. Watson "sang tenor"—that is, he sang as high as possible, often making the top sound of a chord and always repeating the last phrase of each line before the others finished it. The melody was a little too sweet, possibly; while the singers thought so highly of the words that Mr. Parcher missed not one, especially as the vocal rivalry between Josie-Joe and Ickle Boy Baxter incited each of them to prevent Miss Pratt from hearing the other.

William sang loudest of all; Mr. Parcher had at no time any difficulty in recognizing his voice.

They sang it four times; then Mr. Bullitt sang his solo, "Tell her, O Golden Moon, how I Adore her," William following with "The violate loves the cowslip, but I love yew," and after that they all sang, "Oh, I love my love in the morning," again.

All this while that they sang of love, Mr. Parcher was moving to and fro upon his bed, not more than eighteen feet in an oblique upward-slanting line from the heads of the serenaders. Long, long he tossed, listening to the young voices singing of love; long, long he thought of love, and many, many times he spoke of it aloud, though he was alone in the room. And in thus speaking of it, he would give utterance to phrases and words probably never before used in connection with love since the world began.

His thoughts, and, at intervals, his mutterings, continued to be active far into the night, long after the callers had gone, and though his household and the neighborhood were at rest, with never a katydid outside to rail at the waning moon. And by a coincidence not more singular than most coincidences, it happened that at just about the time he finally fell asleep, a young lady at no great distance from him awoke to find her self thinking of him.