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SEVENTEEN



A TALE OF YOUTH AND

SUMMER TIME AND

THE BAXTER FAMILY

ESPECIALLY WILLIAM


By Booth Tarkington




SEVENTEEN




TO S.K.T.




CONTENTS

I. WILLIAM
II. THE UNKNOWN
III. THE PAINFUL AGE
IV. GENESIS AND CLEMATIS
V. SORROWS WITHIN A BOILER
VI. TRUCULENCE
VII. MR. BAXTER'S EVENING CLOTHES
VIII. JANE
IX. LITTLE SISTERS HAVE BIG EARS
X. MR. PARCHER AND LOVE
XI. BEGINNING A TRUE FRIENDSHIP
XII. PROGRESS OF THE SYMPTOMS
XIII. AT HOME TO HIS FRIENDS
XIV. TIME DOES FLY
XV. ROMANCE OF STATISTICS
XVI. THE SHOWER
XVII. JANE'S THEORY
XVIII. THE BIG, FAT LUMMOX
XIX. "I DUNNO WHY IT IS"
XX. SYDNEY CARTON
XXI. MY LITTLE SWEETHEARTS
XXII. FORESHADOWINGS
XXIII. FATHERS FORGET
XXIV. CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN
XXV. YOUTH AND MR. PARCHER
XXVI. MISS BOKE
XXVII. MAROONED
XXVIII. RANNIE KIRSTED
XXIX. ''DON'T FORGET!''
XXX. THE BRIDE-TO-BE




SEVENTEEN




I

WILLIAM

William Sylvanus Baxter paused for a moment of thought in front of the
drug-store at the corner of Washington Street and Central Avenue. He had
an internal question to settle before he entered the store: he wished
to allow the young man at the soda-fountain no excuse for saying, "Well,
make up your mind what it's goin' to be, can't you?" Rudeness of this
kind, especially in the presence of girls and women, was hard to bear,
and though William Sylvanus Baxter had borne it upon occasion, he
had reached an age when he found it intolerable. Therefore, to avoid
offering opportunity for anything of the kind, he decided upon chocolate
and strawberry, mixed, before approaching the fountain. Once there,
however, and a large glass of these flavors and diluted ice-cream
proving merely provocative, he said, languidly--an affectation, for he
could have disposed of half a dozen with gusto: "Well, now I'm here, I
might as well go one more. Fill 'er up again. Same."

Emerging to the street, penniless, he bent a fascinated and dramatic
gaze upon his reflection in the drug-store window, and then, as he
turned his back upon the alluring image, his expression altered to
one of lofty and uncondescending amusement. That was his glance at the
passing public. From the heights, he seemed to bestow upon the world
a mysterious derision--for William Sylvanus Baxter was seventeen long
years of age, and had learned to present the appearance of one who
possesses inside information about life and knows all strangers and most
acquaintances to be of inferior caste, costume, and intelligence.

He lingered upon the corner awhile, not pressed for time. Indeed, he
found many hours of these summer months heavy upon his hands, for he had
no important occupation, unless some intermittent dalliance with a
work on geometry (anticipatory of the distant autumn) might be thought
important, which is doubtful, since he usually went to sleep on the
shady side porch at his home, with the book in his hand. So, having
nothing to call him elsewhere, he lounged before the drug-store in the
early afternoon sunshine, watching the passing to and fro of the lower
orders and bourgeoisie of the middle-sized midland city which claimed
him (so to speak) for a native son.

Apparently quite unembarrassed by his presence, they went about their
business, and the only people who looked at him with any attention were
pedestrians of color. It is true that when the gaze of these fell upon
him it was instantly arrested, for no colored person could have passed
him without a little pang of pleasure and of longing. Indeed, the
tropical violence of William Sylvanus Baxter's tie and the strange
brilliancy of his hat might have made it positively unsafe for him to
walk at night through the negro quarter of the town. And though no man
could have sworn to the color of that hat, whether it was blue or green,
yet its color was a saner thing than its shape, which was blurred,
tortured, and raffish; it might have been the miniature model of a
volcano that had blown off its cone and misbehaved disastrously on its
lower slopes as well. He had the air of wearing it as a matter of course
and with careless ease, but that was only an air--it was the apple of
his eye.

For the rest, his costume was neutral, subordinate, and even a little
neglected in the matter of a detail or two: one pointed flap of his soft
collar was held down by a button, but the other showed a frayed thread
where the button once had been; his low patent-leather shoes were of a
luster not solicitously cherished, and there could be no doubt that he
needed to get his hair cut, while something might have been done, too,
about the individualized hirsute prophecies which had made independent
appearances, here and there, upon his chin. He examined these from time
to time by the sense of touch, passing his hand across his face and
allowing his finger-tips a slight tapping motion wherever they detected
a prophecy.

Thus he fell into a pleasant musing and seemed to forget the crowded
street.




II

THE UNKNOWN

He was roused by the bluff greeting of an acquaintance not dissimilar to
himself in age, manner, and apparel.

"H'lo, Silly Bill!" said this person, William Sylvanus Baxter. "What's
the news?"

William showed no enthusiasm; on the contrary, a frown of annoyance
appeared upon his brow. The nickname "Silly Bill"--long ago compounded
by merry child-comrades from "William" and "Sylvanus"--was not to his
taste, especially in public, where he preferred to be addressed simply
and manfully as "Baxter." Any direct expression of resentment, however,
was difficult, since it was plain that Johnnie Watson intended no
offense whatever and but spoke out of custom.

"Don't know any," William replied, coldly.

"Dull times, ain't it?" said Mr. Watson, a little depressed by his
friend's manner. "I heard May Parcher was comin' back to town yesterday,
though."

"Well, let her!" returned William, still severe.

"They said she was goin' to bring a girl to visit her," Johnnie began in
a confidential tone. "They said she was a reg'lar ringdinger and--"

"Well, what if she is?" the discouraging Mr. Baxter interrupted. "Makes
little difference to ME, I guess!"

"Oh no, it don't. YOU don't take any interest in girls! OH no!"

"No, I do not!" was the emphatic and heartless retort. "I never saw one
in my life I'd care whether she lived or died!"

"Honest?" asked Johnnie, struck by the conviction with which this speech
was uttered. "Honest, is that so?"

"Yes, 'honest'!" William replied, sharply. "They could ALL die, _I_
wouldn't notice!"

Johnnie Watson was profoundly impressed. "Why, _I_ didn't know you felt
that way about 'em, Silly Bill. I always thought you were kind of--"

"Well, I do feel that way about 'em!" said William Sylvanus Baxter, and,
outraged by the repetition of the offensive nickname, he began to move
away. "You can tell 'em so for me, if you want to!" he added over his
shoulder. And he walked haughtily up the street, leaving Mr. Watson to
ponder upon this case of misogyny, never until that moment suspected.

It was beyond the power of his mind to grasp the fact that William
Sylvanus Baxter's cruel words about "girls" had been uttered because
William was annoyed at being called "Silly Bill" in a public place, and
had not known how to object otherwise than by showing contempt for any
topic of conversation proposed by the offender. This latter, being of
a disposition to accept statements as facts, was warmly interested,
instead of being hurt, and decided that here was something worth talking
about, especially with representatives of the class so sweepingly
excluded from the sympathies of Silly Bill.

William, meanwhile, made his way toward the "residence section" of the
town, and presently--with the passage of time found himself eased of his
annoyance. He walked in his own manner, using his shoulders to emphasize
an effect of carelessness which he wished to produce upon observers. For
his consciousness of observers was abnormal, since he had it whether any
one was looking at him or not, and it reached a crucial stage whenever
he perceived persons of his own age, but of opposite sex, approaching.

A person of this description was encountered upon the sidewalk within a
hundred yards of his own home, and William Sylvanus Baxter saw her while
yet she was afar off. The quiet and shady thoroughfare was empty of all
human life, at the time, save for those two; and she was upon the same
side of the street that he was; thus it became inevitable that they
should meet, face to face, for the first time in their lives. He
had perceived, even in the distance, that she was unknown to him, a
stranger, because he knew all the girls in this part of the town who
dressed as famously in the mode as that! And then, as the distance
between them lessened, he saw that she was ravishingly pretty; far, far
prettier, indeed, than any girl he knew. At least it seemed so, for it
is, unfortunately, much easier for strangers to be beautiful. Aside
from this advantage of mystery, the approaching vision was piquant and
graceful enough to have reminded a much older boy of a spotless white
kitten, for, in spite of a charmingly managed demureness, there was
precisely that kind of playfulness somewhere expressed about her. Just
now it was most definite in the look she bent upon the light and fluffy
burden which she carried nestled in the inner curve of her right arm:
a tiny dog with hair like cotton and a pink ribbon round his neck--an
animal sated with indulgence and idiotically unaware of his privilege.
He was half asleep!

William did not see the dog, or it is the plain, anatomical truth
that when he saw how pretty the girl was, his heart--his physical
heart--began to do things the like of which, experienced by an elderly
person, would have brought the doctor in haste. In addition, his
complexion altered--he broke out in fiery patches. He suffered from
breathlessness and from pressure on the diaphragm.

Afterward, he could not have named the color of the little parasol she
carried in her left hand, and yet, as it drew nearer and nearer, a rosy
haze suffused the neighborhood, and the whole world began to turn an
exquisite pink. Beneath this gentle glow, with eyes downcast in thought,
she apparently took no note of William, even when she and William had
come within a few yards of each other. Yet he knew that she would look
up and that their eyes must meet--a thing for which he endeavored to
prepare himself by a strange weaving motion of his neck against the
friction of his collar--for thus, instinctively, he strove to obtain
greater ease and some decent appearance of manly indifference. He felt
that his efforts were a failure; that his agitation was ruinous and
must be perceptible at a distance of miles, not feet. And then, in
the instant of panic that befell, when her dark-lashed eyelids slowly
lifted, he had a flash of inspiration.

He opened his mouth somewhat, and as her eyes met his, full and
startlingly, he placed three fingers across the orifice, and also
offered a slight vocal proof that she had surprised him in the midst of
a yawn.

"Oh, hum!" he said.

For the fraction of a second, the deep blue spark in her eyes glowed
brighter--gentle arrows of turquoise shot him through and through--and
then her glance withdrew from the ineffable collision. Her small,
white-shod feet continued to bear her onward, away from him, while
his own dimmed shoes peregrinated in the opposite direction--William
necessarily, yet with excruciating reluctance, accompanying them. But
just at the moment when he and the lovely creature were side by side,
and her head turned from him, she spoke that is, she murmured, but he
caught the words.

"You Flopit, wake up!" she said, in the tone of a mother talking
baby-talk. "SO indifferink!"

William's feet and his breath halted spasmodically. For an instant he
thought she had spoken to him, and then for the first time he perceived
the fluffy head of the dog bobbing languidly over her arm, with the
motion of her walking, and he comprehended that Flopit, and not William
Sylvanus Baxter, was the gentleman addressed. But--but had she MEANT
him?

His breath returning, though not yet operating in its usual manner,
he stood gazing after her, while the glamorous parasol passed down the
shady street, catching splashes of sunshine through the branches of
the maple-trees; and the cottony head of the tiny dog continued to be
visible, bobbing rhythmically over a filmy sleeve. Had she meant that
William was indifferent? Was it William that she really addressed?

He took two steps to follow her, but a suffocating shyness stopped him
abruptly and, in a horror lest she should glance round and detect him
in the act, he turned and strode fiercely to the gate of his own home
before he dared to look again. And when he did look, affecting great
casualness in the action, she was gone, evidently having turned the
corner. Yet the street did not seem quite empty; there was still
something warm and fragrant about it, and a rosy glamor lingered in
the air. William rested an elbow upon the gate-post, and with his chin
reposing in his hand gazed long in the direction in which the unknown
had vanished. And his soul was tremulous, for she had done her work but
too well.

"'Indifferink'!" he murmured, thrilling at his own exceedingly
indifferent imitation of her voice. "Indifferink!" that was just what he
would have her think--that he was a cold, indifferent man. It was what
he wished all girls to think. And "sarcastic"! He had been envious one
day when May Parcher said that Joe Bullitt was "awfully sarcastic."
William had spent the ensuing hour in an object-lesson intended to make
Miss Parcher see that William Sylvanus Baxter was twice as sarcastic
as Joe Bullitt ever thought of being, but this great effort had been
unsuccessful, because William, failed to understand that Miss Parcher
had only been sending a sort of message to Mr. Bullitt. It was a device
not unique among her sex; her hope was that William would repeat her
remark in such a manner that Joe Bullitt would hear it and call to
inquire what she meant.

"'SO indifferink'!" murmured William, leaning dreamily upon the
gate-post. "Indifferink!" He tried to get the exact cooing quality of
the unknown's voice. "Indifferink!" And, repeating the honeyed word, so
entrancingly distorted, he fell into a kind of stupor; vague, beautiful
pictures rising before him, the one least blurred being of himself, on
horseback, sweeping between Flopit and a racing automobile. And
then, having restored the little animal to its mistress, William
sat carelessly in the saddle (he had the Guardsman's seat) while the
perfectly trained steed wheeled about, forelegs in the air, preparing
to go. "But shall I not see you again, to thank you more properly?" she
cried, pleading. "Some other day--perhaps," he answered.

And left her in a cloud of dust.




III

THE PAINFUL AGE

"OH WILL--EE!"

Thus a shrill voice, to his ears hideously different from that other,
interrupted and dispersed his visions. Little Jane, his ten-year-old
sister, stood upon the front porch, the door open behind her, and in her
hand she held a large slab of bread-and-butter covered with apple sauce
and powdered sugar. Evidence that she had sampled this compound was upon
her cheeks, and to her brother she was a repulsive sight.

"Will-ee!" she shrilled. "Look! GOOD!" And to emphasize the adjective
she indelicately patted the region of her body in which she believed
her stomach to be located. "There's a slice for you on the dining-room
table," she informed him, joyously.

Outraged, he entered the house without a word to her, and, proceeding
to the dining-room, laid hands upon the slice she had mentioned, but
declined to eat it in Jane's company. He was in an exalted mood, and
though in no condition of mind or body would he refuse food of almost
any kind, Jane was an intrusion he could not suffer at this time.

He carried the refection to his own room and, locking the door, sat down
to eat, while, even as he ate, the spell that was upon him deepened in
intensity.

"Oh, eyes!" he whispered, softly, in that cool privacy and shelter from
the world. "Oh, eyes of blue!"

The mirror of a dressing-table sent him the reflection of his own eyes,
which also were blue; and he gazed upon them and upon the rest of his
image the while he ate his bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar.
Thus, watching himself eat, he continued to stare dreamily at the mirror
until the bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar had disappeared,
whereupon he rose and approached the dressing-table to study himself at
greater advantage.

He assumed as repulsive an expression as he could command, at the same
time making the kingly gesture of one who repels unwelcome attentions;
and it is beyond doubt that he was thus acting a little scene of
indifference. Other symbolic dramas followed, though an invisible
observer might have been puzzled for a key to some of them. One,
however, would have proved easily intelligible: his expression having
altered to a look of pity and contrition, he turned from the mirror,
and, walking slowly to a chair across the room, used his right hand in
a peculiar manner, seeming to stroke the air at a point about ten inches
above the back of the chair. "There, there, little girl," he said in a
low, gentle voice. "I didn't know you cared!"

Then, with a rather abrupt dismissal of this theme, he returned to the
mirror and, after a questioning scrutiny, nodded solemnly, forming with
his lips the words, "The real thing--the real thing at last!" He
meant that, after many imitations had imposed upon him, Love--the real
thing--had come to him in the end. And as he turned away he murmured,
"And even her name--unknown!"

This evidently was a thought that continued to occupy him, for he walked
up and down the room, frowning; but suddenly his brow cleared and his
eye lit with purpose. Seating himself at a small writing-table by
the window, he proceeded to express his personality--though with
considerable labor--in something which he did not doubt to be a poem.

Three-quarters of an hour having sufficed for its completion, including
"rewriting and polish," he solemnly signed it, and then read it several
times in a state of hushed astonishment. He had never dreamed that he
could do anything like this.

MILADY
I do not know her name
Though it would be the same
Where roses bloom at twilight
And the lark takes his flight
It would be the same anywhere
Where music sounds in air
I was never introduced to the lady
So I could not call her Lass or Sadie
So I will call her Milady
By the sands of the sea
She always will be
Just M'lady to me.
--WILLIAM SYLVANUS BAXTER, Esq., July 14

It is impossible to say how many times he might have read the poem over,
always with increasing amazement at his new-found powers, had he not
been interrupted by the odious voice of Jane.

"Will--ee!"

To William, in his high and lonely mood, this piercing summons brought
an actual shudder, and the very thought of Jane (with tokens of apple
sauce and sugar still upon her cheek, probably) seemed a kind of
sacrilege. He fiercely swore his favorite oath, acquired from the hero
of a work of fiction he admired, "Ye gods!" and concealed his poem in
the drawer of the writing-table, for Jane's footsteps were approaching
his door.

"Will--ee! Mamma wants you." She tried the handle of the door.

"G'way!" he said.

"Will--ee!" Jane hammered upon the door with her fist. "Will--ee!"

"What you want?" he shouted.

Jane explained, certain pauses indicating that her attention was
partially diverted to another slice of bread-and-butter and apple sauce
and sugar. "Will--ee, mamma wants you--wants you to go help Genesis
bring some wash-tubs home and a tin clo'es-boiler--from the second-hand
man's store."

"WHAT!"

Jane repeated the outrageous message, adding, "She wants you to
hurry--and I got some more bread-and-butter and apple sauce and sugar
for comin' to tell you."

William left no doubt in Jane's mind about his attitude in reference
to the whole matter. His refusal was direct and infuriated, but, in the
midst of a multitude of plain statements which he was making, there
was a decisive tapping upon the door at a point higher than Jane could
reach, and his mother's voice interrupted:

"Hush, Willie! Open the door, please."

He obeyed furiously, and Mrs. Baxter walked in with a deprecating air,
while Jane followed, so profoundly interested that, until almost the
close of the interview, she held her bread-and-butter and apple sauce
and sugar at a sort of way-station on its journey to her mouth.

"That's a nice thing to ask me to do!" stormed the unfortunate William.
"Ye gods! Do you think Joe Bullitt's mother would dare to--"

"Wait, dearie!" Mrs. Baxter begged, pacifically. "I just want to
explain--"

"'Explain'! Ye gods!"

"Now, now, just a minute, Willie!" she said. "What I wanted to explain
was why it's necessary for you to go with Genesis for the--"

"Never!" he shouted. "Never! You expect me to walk through the public
streets with that awful-lookin' old nigger--"

"Genesis isn't old," she managed to interpolate. "He--"

But her frantic son disregarded her. "Second-hand wash-tubs!" he
vociferated. "And tin clothes-boilers! THAT'S what you want your SON to
carry through the public streets in broad daylight! Ye gods!"

"Well, there isn't anybody else," she said. "Please don't rave so,
Willie, and say 'Ye gods' so much; it really isn't nice. I'm sure nobody
'll notice you--"

"'Nobody'!" His voice cracked in anguish. "Oh no! Nobody except the
whole town! WHY, when there's anything disgusting has to be done
in this family--why do _I_ always have to be the one? Why can't Genesis
bring the second-hand wash-tubs without ME? Why can't the second-hand
store deliver 'em? Why can't--"

"That's what I want to tell you," she interposed, hurriedly, and as the
youth lifted his arms on high in a gesture of ultimate despair, and
then threw himself miserably into a chair, she obtained the floor. "The
second-hand store doesn't deliver things," she said. "I bought them at
an auction, and it's going out of business, and they have to be taken
away before half past four this afternoon. Genesis can't bring them in
the wheelbarrow, because, he says, the wheel is broken, and he says he
can't possibly carry two tubs and a wash-boiler himself; and he can't
make two trips because it's a mile and a half, and I don't like to ask
him, anyway; and it would take too long, because he has to get back and
finish cutting the grass before your papa gets home this evening. Papa
said he HAD to! Now, I don't like to ask you, but it really isn't much.
You and Genesis can just slip up there and--"

"Slip!" moaned William. "'Just SLIP up there'! Ye gods!"

"Genesis is waiting on the back porch," she said. "Really it isn't worth
your making all this fuss about."

"Oh no!" he returned, with plaintive satire. "It's nothing! Nothing at
all!"

"Why, _I_ shouldn't mind it," she said; briskly, "if I had the time. In
fact, I'll have to, if you won't."

"Ye gods!" He clasped his head in his hands, crushed, for he knew that
the curse was upon him and he must go. "Ye gods!"

And then, as he stamped to the door, his tragic eye fell upon Jane, and
he emitted a final cry of pain:

"Can't you EVER wash your face?" he shouted.




IV

GENESIS AND CLEMATIS

Genesis and his dog were waiting just outside the kitchen door, and
of all the world these two creatures were probably the last in whose
company William Sylvanus Baxter desired to make a public appearance.
Genesis was an out-of-doors man and seldom made much of a toilet; his
overalls in particular betraying at important points a lack of the
anxiety he should have felt, since only Genesis himself, instead of
a supplementary fabric, was directly underneath them. And the aged,
grayish, sleeveless and neckless garment which sheltered him from waist
to collar-bone could not have been mistaken for a jersey, even though
what there was of it was dimly of a jerseyesque character. Upon the feet
of Genesis were things which careful study would have revealed to be
patent-leather dancing-pumps, long dead and several times buried;
and upon his head, pressing down his markedly criminal ears, was a
once-derby hat of a brown not far from Genesis's own color, though
decidedly without his gloss. A large ring of strange metals with the
stone missing, adorned a finger of his right hand, and from a corner of
his mouth projected an unlighted and spreading cigar stub which had the
appearance of belonging to its present owner merely by right of salvage.