第60章
YOUTH AND MR.PARCHER
As 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 dance-
music 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, middle-
aged 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-