Seventeen (Tarkington, 1916)/Chapter 25

S a hurried worldling, in almost perfectly fitting evening clothes, passed out of his father's gateway and hurried toward the place whence faintly came the sound of dance-music, a child's voice called sweetly from an unidentified window of the darkened house behind him:

"Well, anyway, you try and have a good time, Willie!"

William made no reply; he paused not in his stride. Jane's farewell injunction, though obviously not ill-intended, seemed in poor taste, and a reply might have encouraged her to believe that, in some measure at least, he condescended to discuss his inner life with her. He departed rapidly, but with hauteur. The moon was up, but shade-trees were thick along the sidewalk, and the hauteur was invisible to any human eye; nevertheless, William considered it necessary.

Jane's friendly but ill-chosen "anyway" had touched doubts already annoying him. He was certain to be late to the party—so late, indeed, that it might prove difficult to obtain a proper number of dances with the sacred girl in whose honor the celebration was being held. Too many were steeped in a sense of her sacredness, well he wot! and he was unable to find room in his apprehensive mind for any doubt that these others would be accursedly diligent.

But as he hastened onward his spirits rose, and he did reply to Jane, after all, though he had placed a hundred yards between them.

"Yes, and you can bet your bottom dollar I will, too!" he muttered, between his determined teeth.

The very utterance of the words increased the firmness of his decision, and at the same time cheered him. His apprehensions fell away, and a glamorous excitement took their place, as he turned a corner and the music burst more loudly upon his tingling ear. For there, not half-way to the next street, the fairy scene lay spread before him.

Spellbound groups of uninvited persons, most of them colored, rested their forearms upon the upper rail of the Parchers' picket fence, offering to William's view a silhouette like that of a crowd at a fire. Beyond the fence, bright forms went skimming, shimmering, wavering over a white platform, while high overhead the young moon sprayed a thinner light down through the maple leaves, to where processions of rosy globes hung floating in the blue night. The mild breeze trembled to the silver patterings of a harp, to the sweet, barbaric chirping of plucked strings of violin and 'cello—and swooned among the maple leaves to the rhythmic crooning of a flute. And, all the while, from the platform came the sounds of little cries in girlish voices, and the cadenced shuffling of young feet, where the witching dancemusic had its way, as ever and forever, with big and little slippers.

The heart of William had behaved tumultuously the summer long, whenever his eyes beheld those pickets of the Parchers' fence, but now it outdid all its previous riotings. He was forced to open his mouth and gasp for breath, so deep was his draught of that young wine, romance. Yonder—somewhere in the breath-taking radiance—danced his Queen with all her Court about her. Queen and Court, thought William, and nothing less exorbitant could have expressed his feeling. For seventeen needs only some paper lanterns, a fiddle, and a pretty girl—and Versailles is all there!

The moment was so rich that William crossed the street with a slower step. His mood changed: an exaltation had come upon him, though he was never for an instant unaware of the tragedy beneath all this worldly show and glamor. It was the last night of the divine visit; to-morrow the town would lie desolate, a hollow shell in the dust, without her. Miss Pratt would be gone—gone utterly—gone away on the train! But to-night was just beginning, and to-night he would dance with her; he would dance and dance with her—he would dance and dance like mad! He and she, poetic and fated pair, would dance on and on! They would be intoxicated by the lights—the lights, the flowers, and the music. Nay, the flowers might droop, the lights might go out, the music cease and dawn come—she and he would dance recklessly on—on—on!

A sense of picturesqueness—his own picturesqueness—made him walk rather theatrically as he passed through the groups of humble onlookers outside the picket fence. Many of these turned to stare at the belated guest, and William was unconscious of neither their low estate nor his own quality as a patrician man-about-town in almost perfectly fitting evening dress. A faint, cold smile was allowed to appear upon his lips, and a fragment from a story he had read came momentarily to his mind.... "Through the gaping crowds the young Augustan noble was borne down from the Palatine, scornful in his jeweled litter...."

An admiring murmur reached William's ear.

"Oh, oh, honey! Look attem long-tail suit! 'At's a rich boy, honey!"

"Yessum, so! Bet he got his pockets pack' full o' twenty-dolluh gol' pieces right iss minute!"

"You right, honey!"

William allowed the coldness of his faint smile to increase to become scornful. These poor sidewalk creatures little knew what seethed inside the alabaster of the young Augustan noble! What was it to them that this was Miss Pratt's last night and that he intended to dance and dance with her, on and on?

Almost sternly he left these squalid lives behind him and passed to the festal gateway.

Upon one of the posts of that gateway there rested the elbow of a contemplative man, middleaged or a little worse. Of all persons having pleasure or business within the bright inclosure, he was, that evening, the least important; being merely the background parent who paid the bills. However, even this unconsidered elder shared a thought in common with the Augustan now approaching: Mr. Parcher had just been thinking that there was true romance in the scene before him.

But what Mr. Parcher contemplated as romance arose from the fact that these young people were dancing on a spot where their great-grandfathers had scalped Indians. Music was made for them by descendants, it might well be, of Romulus, of Messalina, of Benvenuto Cellini, and, around behind the house, waiting to serve the dancers with light food and drink, lounged and gossiped grandchildren of the Congo, only a generation or so removed from dances for which a chance stranger furnished both the occasion and the refreshments. Such, in brief, was Mr. Parcher's peculiar view of what constituted the romantic element.

And upon another subject preoccupying both Mr. Parcher and William, their two views, though again founded upon one thought, had no real congeniality. The preoccupying subject was the imminence of Miss Pratt's departure;—neither Mr. Parcher nor William forgot it for an instant. No matter what else played upon the surface of their attention, each kept saying to himself, underneath: "This is the last night—the last night! Miss Pratt is going away—going away to-morrow!"

Mr. Parcher's expression was peaceful. It was more peaceful than it had been for a long time. In fact, he wore the look of a man who had been through the mill but now contemplated a restful and health-restoring vacation. For there are people in this world who have no respect for the memory of Ponce de Leon, and Mr. Parcher had come to be of their number. The elimination of William from his evenings had lightened the burden; nevertheless, Mr. Parcher would have stated freely and openly to any responsible party that a yearning for the renewal of his youth had not been intensified by his daughter's having as a visitor, all summer long, a howling belle of eighteen who talked baby-talk even at breakfast and spread her suitors all over the small house—and its one veranda—from eight in the morning until hours of the night long after their mothers (in Mr. Parcher's opinion) should have sent their fathers to march them home. Upon Mr. Parcher's optimism the effect of so much unavoidable observation of young love had been fatal; he declared repeatedly that his faith in the human race was about gone. Furthermore, his physical constitution had proved pathetically vulnerable to nightly quartets, quintets, and even octets, on the porch below his bedchamber window, so that he was wont to tell his wife that never, never could he expect to be again the man he had been in the spring before Miss Pratt came to visit May. And, referring to conversations which he almost continuously overheard, perforce, Mr. Parcher said that if this was the way he talked at that age, he would far prefer to drown in an ordinary fountain, and be dead and done with it, than to bathe in Ponce de Leon's.

Altogether, the summer had been a severe one; he doubted that he could have survived much more of it. And now that it was virtually over, at last, he was so resigned to the departure of his daughter's lovely little friend that he felt no regret for the splurge with which her visit was closing. Nay, to speed the parting guest—such was his lavish mood—twice and thrice over would he have paid for the lights, the flowers, the music, the sandwiches, the coffee, the chicken salad, the cake, the lemonade-punch, and the ice-cream.

Thus did the one thought divide itself between William and Mr. Parcher, keeping itself deep and pure under all their other thoughts. "Miss Pratt is going away!" thought William and Mr. Parcher. "Miss Pratt is going away—to-morrow!"

The unuttered words advanced tragically toward the gate in the head of William at the same time that they moved contentedly away in the head of Mr. Parcher; for Mr. Parcher caught sight of his wife just then, and went to join her as she sank wearily upon the front steps.

"Taking a rest for a minute?" he inquired. "By George! we're both entitled to a good long rest, after to-night! If we could afford it, we'd go away to a quiet little sanitarium in the hills, somewhere, and—" He ceased to speak and there was the renewal of an old bitterness in his expression as his staring eyes followed the movements of a stately young form entering the gateway. "Look at it!" said Mr. Parcher in a whisper. "Just look at it!"

"Look at what?" asked his wife.

"That Baxter boy!" said Mr. Parcher, as William passed on toward the dancers. "What's he think he's imitating—Henry Irving? Look at his walk!"

"He walks that way a good deal, lately, I've noticed," said Mrs. Parcher in a tired voice. "So do Joe Bullitt and—"

"He didn't even come to say good evening to you," Mr. Parcher interrupted. "Talk about manners, nowadays! These young—"

"He didn't see us."

"Well, we're used to that," said Mr. Parcher. "None of 'em see us. They've worn holes in all the cane-seated chairs, they've scuffed up the whole house, and I haven't been able to sit down anywhere down-stairs for three months without sitting on some dam boy; but they don't even know we're alive! Well, thank the Lord, it's over—after to-night!" His voice became reflective. "That Baxter boy was the worst, until he took to coming in the daytime when I was down-town. I couldn't have stood it if he'd kept on coming in the evening. If I'd had to listen to any more of his talking or singing, either the embalmer or the lunatic-asylum would have had me, sure! I see he's got hold of his daddy's dress-suit again for to-night."

"Is it Mr. Baxter's dress-suit?" Mrs. Parcher inquired. "How do you know?"

Mr. Parcher smiled. "How I happen to know is a secret," he said. "I forgot about that. His little sister, Jane, told me that Mrs. Baxter had hidden it, or something, so that Willie couldn't wear it, but I guess Jane wouldn't mind my telling you that she told me especially as they're letting him use it again to-night. I suppose he feels grander 'n the King o' Siam!"

"No," Mrs. Parcher returned, thoughtfully. "I don't think he does, just now." Her gaze was fixed upon the dancing-platform, which most of the dancers were abandoning as the music fell away to an interval of silence. In the center of the platform there remained one group, consisting of Miss Pratt and five orators, and of the orators the most impassioned and gesticulative was William.

"They all seem to want to dance with her all the time," said Mrs. Parcher. "I heard her telling one of the boys, half an hour ago, that all she could give him was either the twenty-eighth regular dance or the sixteenth 'extra.'"

"The what?" Mr. Parcher demanded, whirling to face her. "Do they think this party's going to keep running till day after to-morrow?" And then, as his eyes returned to the group on the platform, "That boy seems to have quite a touch of emotional insanity," he remarked, referring to William. "What is the matter with him?"

"Oh, nothing," his wife returned. "Only trying to arrange a dance with her. He seems to be in difficulties."