Seventeen (Tarkington, 1916)/Chapter 18

N the morning sunshine, Mrs. Baxter stood at the top of the steps of the front porch, addressing her son, who listened impatiently and edged himself a little nearer the gate every time he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Willie," she said, "you must really pay some attention to the laws of health, or you'll never live to be an old man."

"I don't want to live to be an old man," said William, earnestly. "I'd rather do what I please now and die a little sooner."

"You talk very foolishly," his mother returned. "Either come back and put on some heavier things or take your overcoat."

"My overcoat!" William groaned. "They'd think I was a lunatic, carrying an overcoat in August!"

"Not to a picnic," she said.

"Mother, it isn't a picnic, I've told you a hunderd times! You think it's one those ole-fashion things you used to go to—sit on the damp ground and eat sardines with ants all over 'em? This isn't anything like that; we just go out on the trolley to this farm-house and have noon dinner, and dance all afternoon, and have supper, and then come home on the trolley. I guess we'd hardly of got up anything as out o' date as a picnic in honor of Miss Pratt!"

Mrs. Baxter seemed unimpressed.

"It doesn't matter whether you call it a picnic or not, Willie. It will be cool on the open trolleycar coming home, especially with only those white trousers on—"

"Ye gods!" he cried. "I've got other things on besides my trousers! I wish you wouldn't always act as if I was a perfect child! Good heavens! isn't a person my age supposed to know how much clothes to wear?"

"Well, if he is," she returned, "it's a mere supposition and not founded on fact. Don't get so excited, Willie, please; but you'll either have to give up the picnic or come in and ch—"

"Change my 'things'!" he wailed. "I can't change my 'things'! I've got just twenty minutes to get to May Parcher's—the crowd meets there, and they're goin' to take the trolley in front the Parchers' at exactly a quarter after 'leven. Please don't keep me any longer, mother—I got to go!"

She stepped into the hall and returned immediately. "Here's your overcoat, Willie."

His expression was of despair. "They'll think I'm a lunatic and they'll say so before everybody—and I don't blame 'em! Overcoat on a hot day like this! Except me, I don't suppose there was ever anybody lived in the world and got to be going on eighteen years old and had to carry his silly old overcoat around with him in August—because his mother made him!"

"Willie," said Mrs. Baxter, "you don't know how many thousands and thousands of mothers for thousands and thousands of years have kept their sons from taking thousands and thousands of colds—just this way!"

He moaned. "Well, and I got to be called a lunatic just because you're nervous, I s'pose. All right!"

She hung it upon his arm, kissed him; and he departed in a desperate manner.

However, having worn his tragic face for three blocks, he halted before a corner drug-store, and permitted his expression to improve as he gazed upon the window display of My Little Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban Cigarettes, the Package of Twenty for Ten Cents. William was not a smoker—that is to say, he had made the usual boyhood experiments, finding them discouraging; and though at times he considered it humorously man-about-town to say to a smoking friend, "Well, I'll tackle one o' your ole coffin-nails," he had never made a purchase of tobacco in his life. But it struck him now that it would be rather debonair to disport himself with a package of Little Sweethearts upon the excursion.

And the name! It thrilled him inexpressibly, bringing a tenderness into his eyes and a glow into his bosom. He felt that when he should smoke a Little Sweetheart it would be a tribute to the ineffable visitor for whom this party was being given—it would bring her closer to him. His young brow grew almost stern with determination, for he made up his mind, on the spot, that he would smoke oftener in the future—he would become a confirmed smoker, and all his life he would smoke My Little Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban Cigarettes. He entered and managed to make his purchase in a matter-of-fact way, as if he were doing something quite unemotional; then he said to the clerk:

"Oh, by the by—ah—"

The clerk stared. "Well, what else?"

"I mean," said William, hurriedly, "there's something I wanted to 'tend to, now I happen to be here. I was on my way to take this overcoat to—to get something altered at the tailor's for next winter. 'Course I wouldn't want it till winter, but I thought I might as well get it done." He paused, laughing carelessly, for greater plausibility. "I thought he'd prob'ly want lots of time on the job—he's a slow worker, I've noticed—and so I decided I might just as well go ahead and let him get at it. Well, so I was on my way there, but I just noticed I only got about six minutes more to get to a mighty important engagement I got this morning, and I'd like to leave it here and come by and get it on my way home, this evening."

"Sure," said the clerk. "Hang it on that hook inside the p'scription-counter. There's one there already, b'longs to your friend, that young Bullitt fella. He was in here awhile ago and said he wanted to leave his because he didn't have time to take it to be pressed in time for next winter. Then he went on and joined that crowd in Mr. Parcher's yard, around the corner, that's goin' on a trolley-party. I says, 'I betcher mother maje carry it,' and he says, 'Oh no. Oh no,' he says. 'Honest, I was goin' to get it pressed!' You can hang yours on the same nail."

The clerk spoke no more, and went to serve another customer, while William stared after him a little uneasily. It seemed that here was a man of suspicious nature, though, of course, Joe Bullitt's shallow talk about getting an overcoat pressed before winter would not have imposed upon anybody. However, William felt strongly that the private life of the customers of a store should not be pried into and speculated about by employees, and he was conscious of a distaste for this clerk.

Nevertheless, it was with a lighter heart that he left his overcoat behind him and stepped out of the side door of the drug-store. That brought him within sight of the gaily dressed young people, about thirty in number, gathered upon the small lawn beside Mr. Parcher's house.

Miss Pratt stood among them, in heliotrope and white, Flopit nestling in her arms. She was encircled by girls who were enthusiastically caressing the bored and blinking Flopit; and when William beheld this charming group, his breath became eccentric, his knee-caps became cold and convulsive, his neck became hot, and he broke into a light perspiration.

She saw him! The small blonde head and the delirious little fluffy hat above it shimmered a nod to him. Then his mouth fell unconsciously open, and his eyes grew glassy with the intensity of meaning he put into the silent response he sent across the picket fence and through the interstices of the intervening group. Pressing with his elbow upon the package of cigarettes in his pocket, he murmured, inaudibly, "My Little Sweetheart, always for you!"—a repetition of his vow that, come what might, he would forever remain a loyal smoker of that symbolic brand. In fact, William's mental condition had never shown one moment's turn for the better since the fateful day of the distracting visitor's arrival.

Mr. Johnnie Watson and Mr. Joe Bullitt met him at the gate and offered him hearty greeting. All bickering and dissension among these three had passed. The lady was so wondrous impartial that, as time went on, the sufferers had come to be drawn together, rather than thrust asunder, by their common feeling. It had grown to be a bond uniting them; they were not so much rivals as ardent novices serving a single altar, each worshiping there without visible gain over the other. Each had even come to possess, in the eyes of his two fellows, almost a sacredness as a sharer in the celestial glamor; they were tender one with another. They were in the last stages.

Johnnie Watson had with him to-day a visitor of his own—a vastly overgrown person of eighteen, who, at Johnnie's beckoning, abandoned a fair companion of the moment and came forward as William entered the gate.

"I want to intradooce you to two of my most int'mut friends, George," said Johnnie, with the anxious gravity of a person about to do something important and unfamiliar. "Mr. Baxter, let me intradooce my cousin, Mr. Crooper. Mr. Crooper, this is my friend, Mr. Baxter."

The gentlemen shook hands solemnly, saying,

"'M very glad to meet you," and Johnnie turned to Joe Bullitt. "Mr. Croo—I mean, Mr. Bullitt, let me intradooce my friend, Mr. Crooper—I mean my cousin, Mr. Crooper. Mr. Crooper is a cousin of mine."

"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Crooper," said Joe. "I suppose you're a cousin of Johnnie's, then?"

"Yep," said Mr. Crooper, becoming more informal. "Johnnie wrote me to come over for this shindig, so I thought I might as well come." He laughed loudly, and the others laughed with the same heartiness. "Yessir," he added, "I thought I might as well come, 'cause I'm pretty apt to be on hand if there's anything doin'!"

"Well, that's right," said William, and while they all laughed again, Mr. Crooper struck his cousin a jovial blow upon the back.

"Hi, ole sport!" he cried, "I want to meet that Miss Pratt before we start. The car'll be along pretty soon, and I got her picked for the girl I'm goin' to sit by."

The laughter of William and Joe Bullitt, designed to express cordiality, suddenly became flaccid and died. If Mr. Crooper had been a sensitive person he might have perceived the chilling disapproval in their glances, for they had just begun to be most unfavorably impressed with him. The careless loudness—almost the notoriety—with which he had uttered Miss Pratt's name, demanding loosely to be presented to her, regardless of the well-known law that a lady must first express some wish in such matters—these were indications of a coarse nature sure to be more than uncongenial to Miss Pratt. Its presence might make the whole occasion distasteful to her—might spoil her day. Both William and Joe Bullitt began to wonder why on earth Johnnie Watson didn't have any more sense than to invite such a big, fat lummox of a cousin to the party.

This severe phrase of theirs, almost simultaneous in the two minds, was not wholly a failure as a thumb-nail sketch of Mr. George Crooper. And yet there was the impressiveness of size about him, especially about his legs and chin. At seventeen and eighteen growth is still going on, sometimes in a sporadic way, several parts seeming to have sprouted faster than others. Often the features have not quite settled down together in harmony, a mouth, for instance, appearing to have gained such a lead over the rest of a face, that even a mother may fear it can never be overtaken. Voices, too, often seem misplaced; one hears, outside the door, the bass rumble of a sinister giant, and a mild boy, thin as a cricket, walks in. The contrary was George Crooper's case; his voice was an unexpected piping tenor, half falsetto and frequently girlish—as surprising as the absurd voice of an elephant.

He had the general outwardness of a vast and lumpy child. His chin had so distanced his other features that his eyes, nose, and brow seemed almost baby-like in comparison, while his mountainous legs were the great part of the rest of him. He was one of those huge, bottle-shaped boys who are always in motion in spite of their cumbersomeness. His gestures were continuous, though difficult to interpret as bearing upon the subject of his equally continuous conversation; and under all circumstances he kept his conspicuous legs incessantly moving, whether he was going anywhere or remaining in comparatively one spot.

His expression was pathetically offensive, the result of his bland confidence in the audible opinions of a small town whereof his father was the richest inhabitant—and the one thing about him, even more obvious than his chin, his legs, and his spectacular taste in flannels, was his perfect trust that he was as welcome to every one as he was to his mother. This might some day lead him in the direction of great pain, but on the occasion of the "subscription party" for Miss Pratt it gave him an advantage.

"When do I get to meet that cutie?" he insisted, as Johnnie Watson moved backward from the cousinly arm, which threatened further flailing. "You intradooced me to about seven I can't do much for, but I want to get the howdy business over with this Miss Pratt, so I and she can get things started. I'm goin' to keep her busy all day!"

"Well, don't be in such a hurry," said Johnnie, uneasily. "You can meet her when we get out in the country—if I get a chance, George."

"No, sir!" George protested, jovially. "I guess you're sad birds over in this town, but look out! When I hit a town it don't take long till they all hear there's something doin'! You know how I am when I get started, Johnnie!" Here he turned upon William, tucking his fat arm affectionately through William's thin one. "Hi, sport! Ole Johnnie's so slow, you toddle me over and get me fixed up with this Miss Pratt, and I'll tell her you're the real stuff—after we get engaged!"

He was evidently a true cloud-compeller, this horrible George.