Seventeen (Tarkington, 1916)/Chapter 17

HE pale end of sunset was framed in the dining-room windows, and Mr. and Mrs. Baxter and the rehabilitated Jane were at the table, when William made his belated return from the afternoon's excursion. Seating himself, he waived his mother's references to the rain, his clothes, and probable colds, and after one laden glance at Jane denoting a grievance so elaborate that he despaired of setting it forth in a formal complaint to the Powers—he fell into a state of trance. He took nourishment automatically, and roused himself but once during the meal, a pathetic encounter with his father resulting from this awakening.

"Everybody in town seemed to be on the streets, this evening, as I walked home," Mr. Baxter remarked, addressing his wife. "I suppose there's something in the clean air after a rain that brings 'em out. I noticed one thing, though; maybe it's the way they dress nowadays, but you certainly don't see as many pretty girls on the streets as there used to be."

William looked up absently. "I used to think that, too," he said, with dreamy condescension, "when I was younger."

Mr. Baxter stared.

"Well, I'll be darned!" he said.

"Papa, papa!" his wife called, reprovingly.

"When you were younger!" Mr. Baxter repeated, with considerable irritation. "How old d' you think you are?"

"I'm going on eighteen," said William, firmly. "I know plenty of cases—cases where—" He paused, relapsing into lethargy.

"What's the matter with him?" Mr. Baxter inquired, heatedly, of his wife.

William again came to life. "I was saying that a person's age is different according to circumstances," he explained, with dignity, if not lucidity. "You take Genesis's father. Well, he was married when he was sixteen. Then there was a case over in Iowa that lots of people know about and nobody thinks anything of. A young man over there in Iowa that's seventeen years old began shaving when he was thirteen and shaved every day for four years, and now—"

He was interrupted by his father, who was no longer able to contain himself. "And now I suppose he's got whiskers!" he burst forth. "There's an ambition for you! My soul!"

It was Jane who took up the tale. She had been listening with growing excitement, her eyes fixed piercingly upon William. "He's got a beard!" she cried, alluding not to her brother, but to the fabled Iowan. "I heard Willie tell ole Mr. Genesis about it."

"It seems to lie heavily on your mind," Mr. Baxter said to William. "I suppose you feel that in the face of such an example, your life between the ages of thirteen and seventeen has been virtually thrown away?"

William had again relapsed, but he roused himself feebly. "Sir?" he said.

"What is the matter with him?" Mr. Baxter demanded. "Half the time lately he seems to be hibernating, and only responds by a slight twitching when poked with a stick. The other half of the time he either behaves like I-don't-know-what or talks about children growing whiskers in Iowa! Hasn't that girl left town yet?"

William was not so deep in trance that this failed to stir him. He left the table.

Mrs. Baxter looked distressed, though, as the meal was about concluded, and William had partaken of his share in spite of his dreaminess, she had no anxieties connected with his sustenance. As for Mr. Baxter, he felt a little remorse, undoubtedly, but he was also puzzled. So plain a man was he that he had no perception of the callous brutality of the words "that girl" when applied to some girls. He referred to his mystification a little later, as he sat with his evening paper in the library.

"I don't know what I said to that tetchy boy to hurt him," he began in an apologetic tone. "I don't see that there was anything too rough for him to stand in a little sarcasm. He needn't be so sensitive on the subject of whiskers, it seems to me."

Mrs. Baxter smiled faintly and shook her head.

It was Jane who responded. She was seated upon the floor, disporting herself mildly with her paint-box. "Papa, I know what's the matter with Willie," she said.

"Do you?" Mr. Baxter returned. "Well, if you make it pretty short, you've got just about long enough to tell us before your bedtime."

"I think he's married," said Jane.

"What!" And her parents united their hilarity.

"I do think he's married," Jane insisted, unmoved. "I think he's married with that Miss Pratt."

"Well," said her father, "he does seem upset, and it may be that her visit and the idea of whiskers, coming so close together, is more than mere coincidence, but I hardly think Willie is married, Jane!"

"Well, then," she returned, thoughtfully, "he's almost married. I know that much, anyway."

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, because! I kind of thought he must be married, or anyways somep'm, when he talked to Mr. Genesis this mornin'. He said he knew how some people got married in Pennsylvania an' India, an' he said they were only seven or eight years old. He said so, an' I heard him; an' he said there were eleven people married that were only seventeen, an' this boy in Iowa got a full beard an' got married, too. An' he said Mr. Genesis was only sixteen when he was married. He talked all about gettin' married when you're seventeen years old, an' he said how people thought it was the best thing could happen. So I just KNOW he's almost married!"

Mr. Baxter chuckled, and Mrs. Baxter smiled, but a shade of thoughtfulness, a remote anxiety, tell upon the face of the latter.

"You haven't any other reason, have you, Jane?" she asked.

"Yes'm," said Jane, promptly. "An' it's a more reason than any! Miss Pratt calls you 'mamma' as if you were her mamma. She does it when she talks to Willie."

"Jane!"

"Yes'm, I heard her. An' Willie said, 'I don't know what you'll think about mother.' He said, 'I don't know what you'll think about mother,' to Miss Pratt."

Mrs. Baxter looked a little startled, and her husband frowned. Jane mistook their expressions for incredulity. "They did, mamma," she protested. "That's just the way they talked to each other. I heard 'em this afternoon, when Willie had papa's cane."

"Maybe they were doing it to tease you, if you were with them," Mr. Baxter suggested.

"I wasn't with 'em. I was sailin' my boat, an' they came along, an' first they never saw me, an' Willie looked—oh, papa, I wish you'd seen him!" Jane rose to her feet in her excitement. "His face was so funny, you never saw anything like it! He was walkin' along with it turned sideways, an' all the time he kept walkin' frontways, he kept his face sideways—like this, papa. Look, papa!" And she gave what she considered a faithful imitation of William walking with Miss Pratt. "Look, papa! This is the way Willie went. He had it sideways so's he could see Miss. Pratt, papa. An' his face was just like this. Look, papa!" She contorted her features in a terrifying manner. "Look, papa!"

"Don't, Jane!" her mother exclaimed.

"Well, I haf to show papa how Willie looked, don't I?" said Jane, relaxing. "That's just the way he looked. Well, an' then they stopped an' talked to me, an' Miss Pratt said, 'It's our little sister.'"

"Did she really?" Mrs. Baxter asked, gravely.

"Yes'm, she did. Soon as she saw who I was, she said, 'Why, it's our little sister!' Only she said it that way she talks—sort of foolish. 'It's our 'ittle sissy'—somep'm like that, mamma. She said it twice an' told me to go home an' get washed up. An' Miss Pratt told Willie—Miss Pratt said, 'It isn't mamma's fault Jane's so dirty,' just like that. She—"

"Are you sure she said 'our little sister'?" said Mrs. Baxter.

"Why, you can ask Willie! She said it that funny way. 'Our 'ittle sissy'; that's what she said. An' Miss Pratt said, 'Ev'rybody would love our little sister if mamma washed her in soap an' water!' You can ask Willie; that's exackly what Miss Pratt said, an' if you don't believe it you can ask her. If you don't want to believe it, why, you can ask—"

"Hush, dear," said Mrs. Baxter. "All this doesn't mean anything at all, especially such nonsense as Willie's thinking of being married. It's your bedtime."

"Well, but mamma—"

"Was that all they said?" Mr. Baxter inquired.

Jane turned to him eagerly. "They said all lots of things like that, papa. They—"

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Baxter in interrupted. "Come, it's bedtime. I'll go up with you. You mustn't think such nonsense."

"But, mamma—"

"Come along, Jane!"

Jane was obedient in the flesh, but her spirit was free; her opinions were her own. Disappointed in the sensation she had expected to produce, she followed her mother out of the room wearing the expression of a person who says, "You'll see—some day when everything's ruined!"

Mr. Baxter, left alone, laughed quietly, lifted his neglected newspaper to obtain the light at the right angle, and then allowed it to languish upon his lap again. Frowning, he began to tap the floor with his shoe.

He was trying to remember what things were in his head when he was seventeen, and it was difficult. It seemed to him that he had been a steady, sensible young fellow—really quite a man—at that age. Looking backward at the blur of youthful years, the period from sixteen to twenty-five appeared to him as "pretty much all of a piece." He could not recall just when he stopped being a boy; it must have been at about fifteen, he thought.

All at once he sat up stiffly in his chair, and the paper slid from his knee. He remembered an autumn, long ago, when he had decided to abandon the educational plans of his parents and become an actor. He had located this project exactly, for it dated from the night of his seventeenth birthday, when he saw John McCullough play "Virginius."

Even now Mr. Baxter grew a little red as he remembered the remarkable letter he had written, a few weeks later, to the manager of a passing theatrical company. He had confidently expected an answer, and had made his plans to leave town quietly with the company and afterward reassure his parents by telegraph. In fact, he might have been on the stage at this moment, if that manager had taken him. Mr. Baxter began to look nervous.

Still, there is a difference between going on the stage and getting married. "I don't know, though!" Mr. Baxter thought. "And Willie's certainly not so well balanced in a general way as I was." He wished his wife would come down and reassure him, though of course it was all nonsense.

But when Mrs. Baxter came down-stairs she did not reassure him. "Of course Jane's too absurd!" she said. "I don't mean that she 'made it up'; she never does that, and no doubt this little Miss Pratt did say about what Jane thought she said. But it all amounts to nothing."

"Of course!"

"Willie's just going through what several of the other boys about his age are going through—like Johnnie Watson and Joe Bullitt and Wallace Banks. They all seem to be frantic over her."

"I caught a glimpse of her the day you had her to tea. She's rather pretty."

"Adorably! And perhaps Willie has been just a little bit more frantic than the others."

"He certainly seems in a queer state!"

At this his wife's tone became serious. "Do you think he would do as crazy a thing as that?"

Mr. Baxter laughed. "Well, I don't know what he'd do it on! I don't suppose he has more than a dollar in his possession."

"Yes, he has," she returned, quickly. "Day before yesterday there was a second-hand furniture man here, and I was too busy to see him, but I wanted the storeroom in the cellar cleared out, and I told Willie he could have whatever the man would pay him for the junk in there, if he'd watch to see that they didn't take anything. They found some old pieces that I'd forgotten, underneath things, and altogether the man paid Willie nine dollars and eighty-five cents."

"But, mercy-me!" exclaimed Mr. Baxter, "the girl may be an idiot, but she wouldn't run away and marry a boy just barely seventeen on nine dollars and eighty-five cents!"

"Oh no!" said Mrs. Baxter. "At least, I don't think so. Of course girls do as crazy things as boys sometimes—in their way. I was thinking—" She paused. "Of course there couldn't be anything in it, but it did seem a little strange."

"What did?"

"Why, just before I came down-stairs, Adelia came for the laundry; and I asked her if she'd seen Willie; and she said he'd put on his dark suit after dinner, and he went out through the kitchen, carrying his suit-case."

"He did?"

"Of course," Mrs. Baxter went on, slowly, "I couldn't believe he'd do such a thing, but he really is in a prposterous way over this little Miss Pratt, and he did have that money—"

"By George!" Mr. Baxter got upon his feet. "The way he talked at dinner, I could come pretty near believing he hasn't any more brains left than to get married on nine dollars and eighty-five cents! I wouldn't put it past him! By George, I wouldn't!"

"Oh, I don't think he would," she remonstrated, feebly. "Besides, the law wouldn't permit it."

Mr. Baxter paced the floor. "Oh, I suppose they could manage it. They could go to some little town and give false ages and—" He broke off. "Adelia was sure he had his suit-case?"

She nodded. "Do you think we'd better go down to the Parchers'? We'd just say we came to call, of course, and if—"

"Get your hat on," he said. "I don't think there's anything in it at all, but we'd just as well drop down there. It can't hurt anything."

"Of course, I don't think—" she began.

"Neither do I," he interrupted, irascibly. "But with a boy of his age crazy enough to think he's in love, how do we know what 'll happen? We're only his parents! Get your hat on."

But when the uneasy couple found themselves upon the pavement before the house of the Parchers, they paused under the shade-trees in the darkness, and presently decided that it was not necessary to go in. Suddenly their uneasiness had fallen from them. From the porch came the laughter of several young voices, and then one silvery voice, which pretended to be that of a tiny child.

"Oh, s'ame! S'ame on 'oo, big Bruvva Josie-Joe! Mus' be polite to Johnny Jump-up, or tant play wiv May and Lola!"

"That's Miss Pratt," whispered Mrs. Baxter. "She's talking to Johnnie Watson and Joe Bullitt and May Parcher. Let's go home; it's all right. Of course I knew it would be."

"Why, certainly," said Mr. Baxter, as they turned. "Even if Willie were as crazy as that, the little girl would have more sense. I wouldn't have thought anything of it, if you hadn't told me about the suit-case. That looked sort of queer."

She agreed that it did, but immediately added that she had thought nothing of it. What had seemed more significant to her was William's interest in the early marriage of Genesis's father, and in the Iowa beard story, she said. Then she said that it WAS curious about the suit-case.

And when they came to their own house again, there was William sitting alone and silent upon the steps of the porch.

"I thought you'd gone out, Willie," said his mother, as they paused beside him.

"Ma'am?"

"Adelia said you went out, carrying your suit-case."

"Oh yes," he said, languidly. "If you leave clothes at Schwartz's in the evening they have 'em pressed in the morning. You said I looked damp at dinner, so I took 'em over and left 'em there."

"I see." Mrs. Baxter followed her husband to the door, but she stopped on the threshold and called back:

"Don't sit there too long, Willie."

"Ma'am?"

"The dew is falling and it rained so hard to-day—I'm afraid it might be damp."

"Ma'am?"

"Come on," Mr. Baxter said to his wife. "He's down on the Parchers' porch, not out in front here. Of course he can't hear you. It's three blocks and a half."

But William's father was mistaken. Little he knew! William was not upon the porch of the Parchers, with May Parcher and Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson to interfere. He was far from there, in a land where time was not. Upon a planet floating in pink mist, and uninhabited—unless old Mr. Genesis and some Hindoo princes and the diligent Iowan may have established themselves in its remoter regions—William was alone with Miss Pratt, in the conservatory. And, after a time, they went together, and looked into the door of a room where an indefinite number of little boys—all over three years of age—were playing in the firelight upon a white-bear rug. For, in the roseate gossamer that boys' dreams are made of, William had indeed entered the married state.

His condition was growing worse, every day.