Seventeen

B >> Booth Tarkington >> Seventeen


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:

"My countree, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liber-tee, My countree, 'tis
of thee, Sweet land of liber-tee, My countree, 'tis of thee, Sweet land
of liber-tee, My countree, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liber-tee, My
countree, 'tis--"


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.

"You GET OUT O' HERE!" 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.