Seventeen. Booth Tarkington
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the new young people—like you and Willie mean by the strange things THEY do.”
“Yes'm. I bet I know what he was barkin' for, mamma.”
“Well?”
“You know what I think? I think he was kind of practisin'. I think he was practisin' how to bark at Mr. Parcher.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Baxter laughed. “Who ever could think of such a thing but you, Jane! You go to sleep and forget your nonsense!”
Nevertheless, Jane might almost have been gifted with clairvoyance, her preposterous idea came so close to the actual fact, for at that very moment William was barking. He was not barking directly at Mr. Parcher, it is true, but within a short distance of him and all too well within his hearing.
X
MR. PARCHER AND LOVE
Mr. Parcher, that unhappy gentleman, having been driven indoors from his own porch, had attempted to read Plutarch's Lives in the library, but, owing to the adjacency of the porch and the summer necessity for open windows, his escape spared only his eyes and not his suffering ears. The house was small, being but half of a double one, with small rooms, and the “parlor,” library, and dining-room all about equally exposed to the porch which ran along the side of the house. Mr. Parcher had no refuge except bed or the kitchen, and as he was troubled with chronic insomnia, and the cook had callers in the kitchen, his case was desperate. Most unfortunately, too, his reading-lamp, the only one in the house, was a fixture near a window, and just beyond that window sat Miss Pratt and William in sweet unconsciousness, while Miss Parcher entertained the overflow (consisting of Mr. Johnnie Watson) at the other end of the porch. Listening perforce to the conversation of the former couple though “conversation” is far from the expression later used by Mr. Parcher to describe what he heard—he found it impossible to sit still in his chair. He jerked and twitched with continually increasing restlessness; sometimes he gasped, and other times he moaned a little, and there were times when he muttered huskily.
“Oh, cute-ums!” came the silvery voice of Miss Pratt from the likewise silvery porch outside, underneath the summer moon. “Darlin' Flopit, look! Ickle boy Baxter goin' make imitations of darlin' Flopit again. See! Ickle boy Baxter puts head one side, then other side, just like darlin' Flopit. Then barks just like darlin' Flopit! Ladies and 'entlemen, imitations of darlin' Flopit by ickle boy Baxter.”
“Berp-werp! Berp-werp!” came the voice of William Sylvanus Baxter.
And in the library Plutarch's Lives moved convulsively, while with writhing lips Mr. Parcher muttered to himself.
“More, more!” cried Miss Pratt, clapping her hands. “Do it again, ickle boy Baxter!”
“Berp-werp! Berp-werp-werp!”
“WORD!” muttered Mr. Parcher.
Miss Pratt's voice became surcharged with honeyed wonder. “How did he learn such marv'lous, MARV'LOUS imitations of darlin' Flopit? He ought to go on the big, big stage and be a really actor, oughtn't he, darlin' Flopit? He could make milyums and milyums of dollardies, couldn't he, darlin' Flopit?”
William's modest laugh disclaimed any great ambition for himself in this line. “Oh, I always could think up imitations of animals; things like that—but I hardly would care to—to adop' the stage for a career. Would—you?” (There was a thrill in his voice when he pronounced the ineffably significant word “you.”)
Miss Pratt became intensely serious.
“It's my DREAM!” she said.
William, seated upon a stool at her feet, gazed up at the amber head, divinely splashed by the rain of moonlight. The fire with which she spoke stirred him as few things had ever stirred him. He knew she had just revealed a side of herself which she reserved for only the chosen few who were capable of understanding her, and he fell into a hushed rapture. It seemed to him that there was a sacredness about this moment, and he sought vaguely for something to say that would live up to it and not be out of keeping. Then, like an inspiration, there came into his head some words he had read that day and thought beautiful. He had found them beneath an illustration in a magazine, and he spoke them almost instinctively.
“It was wonderful of you to say that to me,” he said. “I shall never forget it!”
“It's my DREAM!” Miss Pratt exclaimed, again, with the same enthusiasm. “It's my DREAM.”
“You would make a glorious actress!” he said.
At that her mood changed. She laughed a laugh like a sweet little girl's laugh (not Jane's) and, setting her rocking-chair in motion, cuddled the fuzzy white doglet in her arms. “Ickle boy Baxter t'yin' flatterbox us, tunnin' Flopit! No'ty, no'ty flatterbox!”
“No, no!” William insisted, earnestly. “I mean it. But—but—”
“But whatcums?”
“What do you think about actors and actresses making love to each other on the stage? Do you think they have to really feel it, or do they just pretend?”
“Well,” said Miss Pratt, weightily, “sometimes one way, sometimes the other.”
William's gravity became more and more profound. “Yes, but how can they pretend like that? Don't you think love is a sacred thing, Cousin Lola?”
Fictitious sisterships, brotherships, and cousinships are devices to push things along, well known to seventeen and even more advanced ages. On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, “Ickle boy Baxter” and “Cousin Lola.” (Thus they had broken down the tedious formalities of their first twenty minutes together.)
“Don't you think love is sacred?” he repeated in the deepest tone of which his vocal cords were capable.
“Ess,” said Miss Pratt.
“I do!” William was emphatic. “I think love is the most sacred thing there is. I don't mean SOME kinds of love. I mean REAL love. You take some people, I don't believe they ever know what real love means. They TALK about it, maybe, but they don't understand it. Love is something nobody can understand unless they feel it and and if they don't understand it they don't feel it. Don't YOU think so?”
“Ess.”
“Love,” William continued, his voice lifting and thrilling to the great theme—“love is something nobody can ever have but one time in their lives, and if they don't have it then, why prob'ly they never will. Now, if a man REALLY loves a girl, why he'd do anything in the world she wanted him to. Don't YOU think so?”
“Ess, 'deedums!” said the silvery voice.
“But if he didn't, then he wouldn't,” said William vehemently. “But when a man really loves a girl he will. Now, you take a man like that and he can generally do just about anything the girl he loves wants him to. Say, f'rinstance, she wants him to love her even more than he does already—or almost anything like that—and supposin' she asks him to. Well, he would go ahead and do it. If they really loved each other he would!”
He paused a moment, then in a lowered tone he said, “I think REAL love is sacred, don't you?”
“Ess.”
“Don't you think love is the most sacred thing there is—that is, if it's REAL love?”
“Ess.”
“I do,” said William,