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Seventeen
CHAPTER XIII. AT HOME TO HIS FRIENDS
Booth Tarkington
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       _ After ablutions, he found his wet hair plastic,
       and easily obtained the long, even sweep
       backward from the brow, lacking which no male
       person, unless bald, fulfilled his definition of a
       man of the world. But there ensued a period of
       vehemence and activity caused by a bent collar-
       button, which went on strike with a desperation
       that was downright savage. The day was warm
       and William was warmer; moisture bedewed him
       afresh. Belated victory no sooner arrived than
       he perceived a fatal dimpling of the new collar,
       and was forced to begin the operation of exchanging
       it for a successor. Another exchange, however,
       he unfortunately forgot to make: the
       handkerchief with which he had wiped the wall
       remained in his pocket.
       Voices from below, making polite laughter,
       warned him that already some of the bidden
       party had arrived, and, as he completed the
       fastening of his third consecutive collar, an
       ecstasy of sound reached him through the open
       window--and then, Oh then! his breath behaved
       in an abnormal manner and he began to tremble.
       It was the voice of Miss Pratt, no less!
       He stopped for one heart-struck look from his
       casement. All in fluffy white and heliotrope she
       was--a blonde rapture floating over the sidewalk
       toward William's front gate. Her little white
       cottony dog, with a heliotrope ribbon round his
       neck, bobbed his head over her cuddling arm; a
       heliotrope parasol shielded her infinitesimally
       from the amorous sun. Poor William!
       Two youths entirely in William's condition of
       heart accompanied the glamorous girl and hung
       upon her rose-leaf lips, while Miss Parcher
       appeared dimly upon the outskirts of the group,
       the well-known penalty for hostesses who entertain
       such radiance. Probably it serves them right.
       To William's reddening ear Miss Pratt's voice
       came clearly as the chiming of tiny bells, for she
       spoke whimsically to her little dog in that tinkling
       childlike fashion which was part of the spell she
       cast.
       ``Darlin' Flopit,'' she said, ``wake up! Oo
       tummin' to tea-potty wiz all de drowed-ups.
       P'eshus Flopit, wake up!''
       Dizzy with enchantment, half suffocated, his
       heart melting within him, William turned from
       the angelic sounds and fairy vision of the
       window. He ran out of the room, and plunged down
       the front stairs. And the next moment the crash
       of breaking glass and the loud thump-bump of a
       heavily falling human body resounded through
       the house.
       Mrs. Baxter, alarmed, quickly excused herself
       from the tea-table, round which were gathered
       four or five young people, and hastened to the
       front hall, followed by Jane. Through the open
       door were seen Miss Pratt, Miss Parcher, Mr.
       Johnnie Watson and Mr. Joe Bullitt coming leisurely
       up the sunny front walk, laughing and unaware
       of the catastrophe which had just occurred
       within the shadows of the portal. And at a little
       distance from the foot of the stairs William was
       seated upon the prostrate ``Battle of Gettysburg.''
       ``It slid,'' he said, hoarsely. ``I carried it
       upstairs with me''--he believed this--``and somebody
       brought it down and left it lying flat on
       the floor by the bottom step on purpose to trip
       me! I stepped on it and it slid.'' He was in a
       state of shock: it seemed important to impress
       upon his mother the fact that the picture had
       not remained firmly in place when he stepped
       upon it. ``It SLID, I tell you!''
       ``Get up, Willie!'' she urged, under her breath,
       and as he summoned enough presence of mind to
       obey, she beheld ruins other than the wrecked
       engraving. She stifled a cry. ``WILLIE! Did the
       glass cut you?''
       He felt himself. ``No'm.''
       ``It did your trousers! You'll have to change
       them. Hurry!''
       Some of William's normal faculties were
       restored to him by one hasty glance at the back of
       his left leg, which had a dismantled appearance.
       A long blue strip of cloth hung there, with white
       showing underneath.
       ``HURRY!'' said Mrs. Baxter. And hastily gathering
       some fragments of glass, she dropped them
       upon the engraving, pushed it out of the way,
       and went forward to greet Miss Pratt and her
       attendants.
       As for William, he did not even pause to close
       his mouth, but fled with it open. Upward he
       sped, unseen, and came to a breathless halt upon
       the landing at the top of the stairs.
       As it were in a dream he heard his mother's
       hospitable greetings at the door, and then the
       little party lingered in the hall, detained by Miss
       Pratt's discovery of Jane.
       ``Oh, tweetums tootums ickle dirl!'' he heard
       the ravishing voice exclaim. ``Oh, tootums ickle
       blue sash!''
       ``It cost a dollar and eighty-nine cents,'' said
       Jane. ``Willie sat on the cakes.''
       ``Oh no, he didn't,'' Mrs. Baxter laughed. ``He
       didn't QUITE!''
       ``He had to go up-stairs,'' said Jane. And as
       the stricken listener above smote his forehead,
       she added placidly, ``He tore a hole in his
       clo'es.''
       She seemed about to furnish details, her mood
       being communicative, but Mrs. Baxter led the
       way into the ``living-room''; the hall was vacated,
       and only the murmur of voices and laughter
       reached William. What descriptive information
       Jane may have added was spared his hearing,
       which was a mercy.
       And yet it may be that he could not have felt
       worse than he did; for there IS nothing worse than
       to be seventeen and to hear one of the Noblest
       girls in the world told by a little child that you
       sat on the cakes and tore a hole in your clo'es.
       William leaned upon the banister railing and
       thought thoughts about Jane. For several long,
       seething moments he thought of her exclusively.
       Then, spurred by the loud laughter of rivals and
       the agony of knowing that even in his own
       house they were monopolizing the attention of
       one of the Noblest, he hastened into his own,
       room and took account of his reverses.
       Standing with his back to the mirror, he
       obtained over his shoulder a view of his trousers
       which caused him to break out in a fresh
       perspiration. Again he wiped his forehead with the
       handkerchief, and the result was instantly visible
       in the mirror.
       The air thickened with sounds of frenzy, followed
       by a torrential roar and great sputterings
       in a bath-room, which tumult subsiding, William
       returned at a tragic gallop to his room and, having
       removed his trousers, began a feverish examination
       of the garments hanging in a clothes-
       closet. There were two pairs of flannel trousers
       which would probably again be white and possible,
       when cleaned and pressed, but a glance
       showed that until then they were not to be
       considered as even the last resort of desperation.
       Beside them hung his ``last year's summer suit''
       of light gray.
       Feverishly he brought it forth, threw off his
       coat, and then--deflected by another glance at
       the mirror--began to change his collar again.
       This was obviously necessary, and to quicken
       the process he decided to straighten the bent
       collar-button. Using a shoe-horn as a lever, he
       succeeded in bringing the little cap or head of the
       button into its proper plane, but, unfortunately,
       his final effort dislodged the cap from the rod
       between it and the base, and it flew off
       malignantly into space. Here was a calamity; few
       things are more useless than a decapitated collar-
       button, and William had no other. He had made
       sure that it was his last before he put it on, that
       day; also he had ascertained that there was none
       in, on, or about his father's dressing-table.
       Finally, in the possession of neither William nor
       his father was there a shirt with an indigenous
       collar.
       For decades, collar-buttons have been on the
       hand-me-down shelves of humor; it is a mistake
       in the catalogue. They belong to pathos. They
       have done harm in the world, and there have
       been collar-buttons that failed when the destinies
       of families hung upon them. There have been
       collar-buttons that thwarted proper matings.
       There have been collar-buttons that bore last
       hopes, and, falling to the floor, NEVER were found!
       William's broken collar-button was really the
       only collar-button in the house, except such as
       were engaged in serving his male guests below.
       At first he did not realize the extent of his
       misfortune. How could he? Fate is always
       expected to deal its great blows in the grand
       manner. But our expectations are fustian
       spangled with pinchbeck; we look for tragedy
       to be theatrical. Meanwhile, every day before
       our eyes, fate works on, employing for its
       instruments the infinitesimal, the ignoble and the
       petty--in a word, collar-buttons.
       Of course William searched his dressing-
       table and his father's, although he had been
       thoroughly over both once before that day. Next
       he went through most of his mother's and Jane's
       accessories to the toilette; through trinket-boxes,
       glove-boxes, hairpin-boxes, handkerchief-cases--
       even through sewing-baskets. Utterly he
       convinced himself that ladies not only use no collar-
       buttons, but also never pick them up and put
       them away among their own belongings. How
       much time he consumed in this search is difficult
       to reckon;--it is almost impossible to believe
       that there is absolutely no collar-button in a
       house.
       And what William's state of mind had become
       is matter for exorbitant conjecture. Jane,
       arriving at his locked door upon an errand, was
       bidden by a thick, unnatural voice to depart.
       ``Mamma says, `What in mercy's name is the
       matter?' '' Jane called. ``She whispered to me,
       `Go an' see what in mercy's name is the matter
       with Willie; an' if the glass cut him, after all; an'
       why don't he come down'; an' why don't you,
       Willie? We're all havin' the nicest time!''
       ``You g'way!'' said the strange voice within
       the room. ``G'way!''
       ``Well, did the glass cut you?''
       ``No! Keep quiet! G'way!''
       ``Well, are you EVER comin' down to your
       party?''
       ``Yes, I am! G'way!''
       Jane obeyed, and William somehow completed
       the task upon which he was engaged. Genius
       had burst forth from his despair; necessity had
       become a mother again, and William's collar was
       in place. It was tied there. Under his necktie
       was a piece of string.
       He had lost count of time, but he was frantically
       aware of its passage; agony was in the
       thought of so many rich moments frittered away;
       up-stairs, while Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson
       made hay below. And there was another spur
       to haste in his fear that the behavior of Mrs.
       Baxter might not be all that the guest of honor
       would naturally expect of William's mother.
       As for Jane, his mind filled with dread; shivers
       passed over him at intervals.
       It was a dismal thing to appear at a ``party''
       (and that his own) in ``last summer's suit,'' but
       when he had hastily put it on and faced the
       mirror, he felt a little better--for three or four
       seconds. Then he turned to see how the back of
       it looked.
       And collapsed in a chair, moaning. _