PROGRESS OF THE SYMPTOMS
Mrs.BAXTER'S little stroke of diplomacy had gone straight to the mark, she was a woman of insight.For every reason she was well content to have her son spend his evenings at home, though it cannot be claimed that his presence enlivened the household, his condition being one of strange, trancelike irascibility.Evening after evening passed, while he sat dreaming painfully of Mr.Parcher's porch;
but in the daytime, though William did not literally make hay while the sun shone, he at least gathered a harvest somewhat resembling hay in general character.
Thus:
One afternoon, having locked his door to secure himself against intrusion on the part of his mother or Jane, William seated himself at his writing-table, and from a drawer therein took a small cardboard box, which he uncovered, placing the contents in view before him upon the table.(How meager, how chilling a word is ``contents''!) In the box were:
A faded rose.
Several other faded roses, disintegrated into leaves.
Three withered ``four-leaf clovers.''
A white ribbon still faintly smelling of violets.
A small silver shoe-buckle.
A large pearl button.
A small pearl button.
A tortoise-shell hair-pin.
A cross-section from the heel of a small slipper.
A stringy remnant, probably once an improvised wreath of daisies.
Four or five withered dandelions.
Other dried vegetation, of a nature now indistinguishable.
William gazed reverently upon this junk of precious souvenirs; then from the inner pocket of his coat he brought forth, warm and crumpled, a lumpish cluster of red geranium blossoms, still aromatic and not quite dead, though naturally, after three hours of such intimate confinement, they wore an unmistakable look of suffering.
With a tenderness which his family had never observed in him since that piteous day in his fifth year when he tried to mend his broken doll, William laid the geranium blossoms in the cardboard box among the botanical and other relics.
His gentle eyes showed what the treasures meant to him, and yet it was strange that they should have meant so much, because the source of supply was not more than a quarter of a mile distant, and practically inexhaustible.Miss Pratt had now been a visitor at the Parchers'
for something less than five weeks, but she had made no mention of prospective departure, and there was every reason to suppose that she meant to remain all summer.And as any foliage or anything whatever that she touched, or that touched her, was thenceforth suitable for William's museum, there appeared to be some probability that autumn might see it so enlarged as to lack that rarity in the component items which is the underlying value of most collections.
William's writing-table was beside an open window, through which came an insistent whirring, unagreeable to his mood; and, looking down upon the sunny lawn, he beheld three lowly creatures.One was Genesis; he was cutting the grass.Another was Clematis; he had assumed a transient attitude, curiously triangular, in order to scratch his ear, the while his anxious eyes never wavered from the third creature.
This was Jane.In one hand she held a little stack of sugar-sprinkled wafers, which she slowly but steadily depleted, unconscious of the increasingly earnest protest, at last nearing agony, in the eyes of Clematis.Wearing unaccustomed garments of fashion and festivity, Jane stood, in speckless, starchy white and a blue sash, watching the lawn-mower spout showers of grass as the powerful Genesis easily propelled it along over lapping lanes, back and forth, across the yard.
From a height of illimitable loftiness the owner of the cardboard treasury looked down upon the squat commonplaceness of those three lives.
The condition of Jane and Genesis and Clematis seemed almost laughably pitiable to him, the more so because they were unaware of it.They breathed not the starry air that William breathed, but what did it matter to them? The wretched things did not even know that they meant nothing to Miss Pratt!
Clematis found his ear too pliable for any great solace from his foot, but he was not disappointed;
he had expected little, and his thoughts were elsewhere.Rising, he permitted his nose to follow his troubled eyes, with the result that it touched the rim of the last wafer in Jane's external possession.
This incident annoyed William.``Look there!''
he called from the window.``You mean to eat that cake after the dog's had his face on it?''
Jane remained placid.``It wasn't his face.''
``Well, if it wasn't his face, I'd like to know what--''
``It wasn't his face,'' Jane repeated.``It was his nose.It wasn't all of his nose touched it, either.It was only a little outside piece of his nose.''
``Well, are you going to eat that cake, I ask you?''
Jane broke off a small bit of the wafer.She gave the bit to Clematis and slowly ate what remained, continuing to watch Genesis and apparently unconscious of the scorching gaze from the window.
``I never saw anything as disgusting as long as I've lived!'' William announced.``I wouldn't 'a' believed it if anybody'd told me a sister of mine would eat after--''
``I didn't,'' said Jane.``I like Clematis, anyway.''
``Ye gods!'' her brother cried.``Do you think that makes it any better? And, BY the WAY,'' he continued, in a tone of even greater severity, ``I'd a like to know where you got those cakes.Where'd you get 'em, I'd just like to inquire?''
``In the pantry.'' Jane turned and moved toward the house.``I'm goin' in for some more, now.''
