Seventeen (Tarkington, 1916)/Chapter 30

N the smallish house which all summer long, from morning until late at night, had resounded with the voices of young people, echoing their songs, murmurous with their theories of love, or vibrating with their glee, sometimes shaking all over during their more boisterous moods—in that house, now comparatively so vacant, the proprietor stood and breathed deep breaths.

"Hah!" he said, inhaling and exhaling the air profoundly.

His wife was upon the porch, outside, sewing. The silence was deep. He seemed to listen to it—to listen with gusto; his face slowly broadening, a pinkish tint overspreading it. His flaccid cheeks appeared to fill, to grow firm again, a smile finally widening them.

"Hah!" he breathed, sonorously. He gave himself several resounding slaps upon the chest, then went out to the porch and sat in a rocking-chair near his wife. He spread himself out expansively. "My Glory!" he said. "I believe I'll take off my coat! I haven't had my coat off, outside of my own room, all summer. I believe I'll take a vacation! By George, I believe I'll stay home this afternoon!"

"That's nice," said Mrs. Parcher.

"Hah!" he said. "My Glory! I believe I'll take off my shoes!"

And, meeting no objection, he proceeded to carry out this plan.

"Hah-ah!" he said, and placed his stockinged feet upon the railing, where a number of vines, running upon strings, made a screen between the porch and the street. He lit a large cigar. "Well, well!" he said. "That tastes good! If this keeps on, I'll be in as good shape as I was last spring before you know it!" Leaning far back in the rocking-chair, his hands behind his head, he smoked with fervor; but suddenly he jumped in a way which showed that his nerves were far from normal. His feet came to the floor with a thump, he jerked the cigar out of his mouth, and turned a face of consternation upon his wife.

"What's the matter?"

"Suppose," said Mr. Patcher, huskily—"suppose she missed her train."

Mrs. Parcher shook her head.

"Think not?" he said, brightening. "I ordered the livery-stable to have a carriage here in lots of time."

"They did," said Mrs. Parcher, severely. "About five dollars' worth."

"Well, I don't mind that," he returned, putting his feet up again. "After all, she was a mighty fine little girl in her way. The only trouble with me was that crowd of boys;—having to listen to them certainly liked to killed me, and I believe if she'd stayed just one more day I'd been a goner! Of all the dam boys I ever—" He paused, listening.

"Mr. Parcher!" a youthful voice repeated.

He rose, and, separating two of the vines which screened the end of the porch from the street, looked out. Two small maidens had paused upon the sidewalk, and were peering over the picket fence.

"Mr. Parcher," said Jane, as soon as his head appeared between the vines—"Mr. Parcher, Miss Pratt's gone. She's gone away on the cars."

"You think so?" he asked, gravely.

"We saw her," said Jane. "Rannie an' I were there. Willie was goin' to chase us, I guess, but we went in the baggage-room behind trunks, an' we saw her go. She got on the cars, an' it went with her in it. Honest, she's gone away, Mr. Parcher."

Before speaking, Mr. Parcher took a long look at this telepathic child. In his fond eyes she was a marvel and a darling.

"Well—thank you, Jane!" he said.

Jane, however, had turned her head and was staring at the corner, which was out of his sight.

"Oo-oo-ooh!" she murmured.

"What's the trouble, Jane?"

"Willie!" she said. "It's Willie an' that Joe Bullitt, an' Johnnie Watson, an' Mr. Wallace Banks. They're with Miss May Parcher. They're comin' right here!"

Mr. Parcher gave forth a low moan, and turned pathetically to his wife, but she cheered him with a laugh.

"They've only walked up from the station with May," she said. "They won't come in. You'll see!"

Relieved, Mr. Parcher turned again to speak to Jane—but she was not there. He caught but a glimpse of her, running up the street as fast as she could, hand in hand with her companion.

"Run, Rannie, run!" panted Jane. "I got to get home an' tell mamma about it before Willie. I bet I ketch Hail Columbia, anyway, when he does get there!"

And in this she was not mistaken: she caught Hail Columbia. It lasted all afternoon.

It was still continuing after dinner. Thatt evening, when an oft-repeated yodel, followed by a shrill-wailed, "Jane-ee! Oh, Jane-nee-ee!" brought her to an open window down-stairs. In the early dusk she looked out upon the washed face of Rannie Kirsted, who stood on the lawn below.

"Come on out, Janie. Mamma says I can stay outdoors an' play till half past eight." Jane shook her head. "I can't. I can't go outside the house till to-morrow. It's because we walked after Willie with our stummicks out o' joint."

"Pshaw!" Rannie cried, lightly. "My mother didn't do anything to me for that."

"Well, nobody told her on you," said Jane, reasonably.

"Can't you come out at all?" Rannie urged. "Go ask your mother. Tell her—"

"How can I," Jane inquired, with a little heat, "when she isn't here to ask? She's gone out to play cards—she and papa."

Rannie swung her foot. "Well," she said, "I guess I haf to find somep'n to do! G' night!"

With head bowed in thought she moved away, disappearing into the gray dusk, while Jane, on her part, left the window and went to the open front door. Conscientiously, she did not cross the threshold, but restrained herself to looking out. On the steps of the porch sat William, alone, his back toward the house.

"Willie?" said Jane, softly; and, as he made no response, she lifted her voice a little. "Will-ee!"

"Whatchwant!" he grunted, not moving.

"Willie, I told mamma I was sorry I made you feel so bad."

"All right!" he returned, curtly.

"Well, when I haf to go to bed, Willie," she said, "mamma told me because I made you feel bad I haf to go up-stairs by myself, to-night."

She paused, seeming to hope that he would say something, but he spake not.

"Willie, I don't haf to go for a while yet, but when I do—maybe in about a half an hour—I wish you'd come stand at the foot of the stairs till I get up there. The light's lit up-stairs, but down around here it's kind of dark."

He did not answer.

"Will you, Willie?"

"Oh, all right!" he said.

This contented her, and she seated herself so quietly upon the floor, just inside the door, that he ceased to be aware of her, thinking she had gone away. He sat staring vacantly into the darkness, which had come on with that abruptness which begins to be noticeable in September. His elbows were on his knees, and his body was sunk far forward in an attitude of desolation.

The small noises of the town—that town so empty to-night—fell upon his ears mockingly. It seemed to him incredible that so hollow a town could go about its nightly affairs just as usual. A man and a woman, going by, laughed loudly at something the man had said: the sound of their laughter was horrid to William. And from a great distance from far out in the country—there came the faint, long-drawn whistle of an engine.

That was the sorrowfulest sound of all to William. His lonely mind's eye sought the vasty spaces to the east; crossed prairie, and river, and hill, to where a long train whizzed onward through the dark—farther and farther and farther away. William uttered a sigh, so hoarse, so deep from the tombs, so prolonged, that Jane, who had been relaxing herself at full length upon the floor, sat up straight with a jerk.

But she was wise enough not to speak.

Now the full moon came masquerading among the branches of the shade-trees; it came in the likeness of an enormous football, gloriously orange. Gorgeously it rose higher, cleared the trees, and resumed its wonted impersonation of a silver disk. Here was another mockery: What was the use of a moon now?

Its use appeared straightway.

In direct coincidence with that rising moon, there came from a little distance down the street the sound of a young male voice, singing. It was not a musical voice, yet sufficiently loud; and it knew only a portion of the words and air it sought to render, but, upon completing the portion it did know, it instantly began again, and sang that portion over and over with brightest patience. So the voice approached the residence of the Baxter family, singing what the shades of night gave courage to sing—instead of whistle, as in the abashing sunlight.

Thus:

Jane spoke unconsciously. "It's Freddie," she said.

William leaped to his feet; this was something he could not bear! He made a bloodthirsty dash toward the gate, which the singer was just in the act of passing.

"!" William roared.

The song stopped. Freddie Banks fled like a rag on the wind.

... Now here is a strange matter.

The antique prophets prophesied successfully; they practised with some ease that art since lost but partly rediscovered by M. Maeterlinck, who proves to us that the future already exists, simultaneously with the present. Well, if his proofs be true, then at this very moment when William thought menacingly of Freddie Banks, the bright air of a happy June evening—an evening ordinarily reckoned ten years, nine months and twenty-one days in advance of this present sorrowful evening—the bright air of that happy June evening, so far in the future, was actually already trembling to a wedding-march played upon a church organ; and this selfsame Freddie, with a white flower in his buttonhole, and in every detail accoutred as a wedding usher, was an usher for this very William who now (as we ordinarily count time) threatened his person.

But for more miracles:

As William turned again to resume his meditations upon the steps, his incredulous eyes fell upon a performance amazingly beyond fantasy, and without parallel as a means to make scorn of him. Not ten feet from the porch—and in the white moonlight that made brilliant the path to the gate—Miss Mary Randolph Kirsted was walking. She was walking with insulting pomposity in her most pronounced semicircular manner.

"You get out o' here!" she said, in a voice as deep and hoarse as she could make it. "You get out o' here!"

Her intention was as plain as the moon. She was presenting in her own person a sketch of William, by this means expressing her opinion of him and avenging Jane.

"You get out o' here!" she croaked.

The shocking audacity took William's breath. He gasped; he sought for words.

"Why, you—you—" he cried. "You—you sooty-faced little girl!"

In this fashion he directly addressed Miss Mary Randolph Kirsted for the first time in his life.

And that was the strangest thing of this strange evening. Strangest because, as with life itself, there was nothing remarkable upon the surface of it. But if M. Maeterlinck has the right of the matter, and if the bright air of that June evening, almost eleven years in the so-called future, was indeed already trembling to "Lohengrin," then William stood with Johnnie Watson against a great bank of flowers at the foot of a church aisle; that aisle was roped with white-satin ribbons; and William and Johnnie were waiting for something important to happen. And then, to the strains of "Here Comes the Bride," it did—a stately, solemn, roseate, gentle young thing with bright eyes seeking through a veil for William's eyes.

Yes, if great M. Maeterlinck is right, it seems that William ought to have caught at least some eerie echo of that wedding-march, however faint—some bars or strains adrift before their time upon the moonlight of this September night in his eighteenth year.

For there, beyond the possibility of any fate to intervene, or of any later vague, fragmentary memory of even Miss Pratt to impair, there in that moonlight was his future before him.

He started forward furiously. "You—you—you little—"

But he paused, not wasting his breath upon the empty air.

His bride-to-be was gone.