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Seventeen
CHAPTER XX. SYDNEY CARTON
Booth Tarkington
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       _ At the farm-house where the party were to dine,
       Miss Pratt with joy discovered a harmonium
       in the parlor, and, seating herself, with all the
       girls, Flopit, and Mr. George Crooper gathered
       around her, she played an accompaniment, while
       George, in a thin tenor of detestable sweetness,
       sang ``I'm Falling in Love with Some One.''
       His performance was rapturously greeted,
       especially by the accompanist. ``Oh, wunnerfulest
       Untle Georgiecums!'' she cried, for that was now
       the gentleman's name. ``If Johnnie McCormack
       hear Untle Georgiecums he go shoot umself dead--
       Bang!'' She looked round to where three figures
       hovered morosely in the rear. ``Tum on, sin'
       chorus, Big Bruvva Josie-Joe, Johnny Jump-up,
       an' Ickle Boy Baxter. All over adain, Untle
       Georgiecums! Boys an' dirls all sin' chorus.
       Tummence!''
       And so the heartrending performance continued
       until it was stopped by Wallace Banks, the
       altruistic and perspiring youth who had charge
       of the subscription-list for the party, and the
       consequent collection of assessments. This
       entitled Wallace to look haggard and to act as
       master of ceremonies. He mounted a chair.
       ``Ladies and gentlemen,'' he bellowed, ``I want
       to say--that is--ah--I am requested to announce t
       that before dinner we're all supposed to take a
       walk around the farm and look at things, as this
       is supposed to be kind of a model farm or
       supposed to be something like that. There's a
       Swedish lady named Anna going to show us
       around. She's out in the yard waiting, so please
       follow her to inspect the farm.''
       To inspect a farm was probably the least of
       William's desires. He wished only to die in some
       quiet spot and to have Miss Pratt told about it in
       words that would show her what she had thrown
       away. But he followed with the others, in the
       wake of the Swedish lady named Anna, and as
       they stood in the cavernous hollow of the great
       barn he found his condition suddenly improved.
       Miss Pratt turned to him unexpectedly and
       placed Flopit in his arms. ``Keep p'eshus Flopit
       cozy,'' she whispered. ``Flopit love ole friends
       best!''
       William's heart leaped, while a joyous warmth
       spread all over him. And though the execrable
       lummox immediately propelled Miss Pratt forward--
       by her elbow--to hear the descriptive
       remarks of the Swedish lady named Anna, William's
       soul remained uplifted and entranced. She
       had not said ``like''; she had said, ``Flopit LOVE
       ole friends best''! William pressed forward valiantly,
       and placed himself as close as possible
       upon the right of Miss Pratt, the lummox being
       upon her left. A moment later, William wished
       that he had remained in the rear.
       This was due to the unnecessary frankness of
       the Swedish lady named Anna, who was briefly
       pointing out the efficiency of various agricultural
       devices. Her attention being diverted by some
       effusions of pride on the part of a passing hen,
       she thought fit to laugh and say:
       ``She yust laid egg.''
       William shuddered. This grossness in the presence
       of Miss Pratt was unthinkable. His mind
       refused to deal with so impossible a situation; he
       could not accept it as a fact that such words had
       actually been uttered in such a presence. And
       yet it was the truth; his incredulous ears still
       sizzled. ``She yust laid egg!'' His entire skin
       became flushed; his averted eyes glazed themselves
       with shame.
       He was not the only person shocked by the
       ribaldry of the Swedish lady named Anna. Joe
       Bullitt and Johnnie Watson, on the outskirts of
       the group, went to Wallace Banks, drew him
       aside, and, with feverish eloquence, set his
       responsibilities before him. It was his duty, they
       urged, to have an immediate interview with this
       free-spoken Anna and instruct her in the proprieties.
       Wallace had been almost as horrified as
       they by her loose remark, but he declined the
       office they proposed for him, offering, however,
       to appoint them as a committee with authority
       in the matter--whereupon they retorted with
       unreasonable indignation, demanding to know
       what he took them for.
       Unconscious of the embarrassment she had
       caused in these several masculine minds, the
       Swedish lady named Anna led the party onward,
       continuing her agricultural lecture. William
       walked mechanically, his eyes averted and looking
       at no one. And throughout this agony he
       was burningly conscious of the blasphemed
       presence of Miss Pratt beside him.
       Therefore, it was with no little surprise, when
       the party came out of the barn, that William
       beheld Miss Pratt, not walking at his side, but
       on the contrary, sitting too cozily with George
       Crooper upon a fallen tree at the edge of a peach-
       orchard just beyond the barn-yard. It was Miss
       Parcher who had been walking beside him, for
       the truant couple had made their escape at the
       beginning of the Swedish lady's discourse.
       In vain William murmured to himself, ``Flopit
       love ole friends best.'' Purple and black again
       descended upon his soul, for he could not disguise
       from himself the damnatory fact that George
       had flitted with the lady, while he, wretched William,
       had been permitted to take care of the dog!
       A spark of dignity still burned within him. He
       strode to the barn-yard fence, and, leaning over it,
       dropped Flopit rather brusquely at his mistress's
       feet. Then, without a word even without a look
       --William walked haughtily away, continuing his
       stern progress straight through the barn-yard
       gate, and thence onward until he found himself
       in solitude upon the far side of a smoke-house,
       where his hauteur vanished.
       Here, in the shade of a great walnut-tree which
       sheltered the little building, he gave way--not to
       tears, certainly, but to faint murmurings and
       little heavings under impulses as ancient as young
       love itself. It is to be supposed that William
       considered his condition a lonely one, but if all the
       seventeen-year-olds who have known such half-
       hours could have shown themselves to him then,
       he would have fled from the mere horror of
       billions. Alas! he considered his sufferings a new
       invention in the world, and there was now inspired
       in his breast a monologue so eloquently bitter
       that it might deserve some such title as A Passion
       Beside the Smoke-house. During the little time
       that William spent in this sequestration he
       passed through phases of emotion which would
       have kept an older man busy for weeks and left
       him wrecked at the end of them.
       William's final mood was one of beautiful
       resignation with a kick in it; that is, he nobly gave
       her up to George and added irresistibly that
       George was a big, fat lummox! Painting pictures,
       such as the billions of other young sufferers
       before him have painted, William saw
       himself a sad, gentle old bachelor at the family
       fireside, sometimes making the sacrifice of his
       reputation so that SHE and the children might
       never know the truth about George; and he gave
       himself the solace of a fierce scene or two with
       George: ``Remember, it is for them, not you--
       you THING!''
       After this human little reaction he passed to
       a higher field of romance. He would die for
       George and then she would bring the little boy
       she had named William to the lonely headstone--
       Suddenly William saw himself in his true and
       fitting character--Sydney Carton! He had
       lately read A Tale of Two Cities, immediately
       re-reading until, as he would have said, he ``knew
       it by heart''; and even at the time he had seen
       resemblances between himself and the appealing
       figure of Carton. Now that the sympathy between
       them was perfected by Miss Pratt's preference
       for another, William decided to mount the
       scaffold in place of George Crooper. The scene
       became actual to him, and, setting one foot upon
       a tin milk-pail which some one had carelessly
       left beside the smoke-house, he lifted his eyes to
       the pitiless blue sky and unconsciously assumed
       the familiar attitude of Carton on the steps of
       the guillotine. He spoke aloud those great last
       words:
       ``It is a far, far better thing that I do, than
       I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that
       I go to--''
       A whiskered head on the end of a long,
       corrugated red neck protruded from the smoke-
       house door.
       ``What say?'' it inquired, huskily.
       ``Nun-nothing!'' stammered William.
       Eyes above whiskers became fierce. ``You
       take your feet off that milk-bucket. Say! This
       here's a sanitary farm. 'Ain't you got any more
       sense 'n to go an'--''
       But William had abruptly removed his foot
       and departed.
       He found the party noisily established in the
       farm-house at two long tables piled with bucolic
       viands already being violently depleted. Johnnie
       Watson had kept a chair beside himself vacant for
       William. Johnnie was in no frame of mind to sit
       beside any ``chattering girl,'' and he had
       protected himself by Joe Bullitt upon his right and
       the empty seat upon his left. William took it,
       and gazed upon the nearer foods with a slight
       renewal of animation.
       He began to eat; he continued to eat; in fact,
       he did well. So did his two comrades. Not that
       the melancholy of these three was dispersed--
       far from it! With ineffaceable gloom they ate
       chicken, both white meat and dark, drumsticks,
       wishbones, and livers; they ate corn-on-the-cob,
       many ears, and fried potatoes and green peas
       and string-beans; they ate peach preserves and
       apricot preserves and preserved pears; they ate
       biscuits with grape jelly and biscuits with crab-
       apple jelly; they ate apple sauce and apple butter
       and apple pie. They ate pickles, both cucumber
       pickles and pickles made of watermelon rind;
       they ate pickled tomatoes, pickled peppers, also
       pickled onions. They ate lemon pie.
       At that, they were no rivals to George Crooper,
       who was a real eater. Love had not made his
       appetite ethereal to-day, and even the attending
       Swedish lady named Anna felt some apprehension
       when it came to George and the gravy,
       though she was accustomed to the prodigies
       performed in this line by the robust hands on the
       farm. George laid waste his section of the
       table, and from the beginning he allowed himself
       scarce time to say, ``I dunno why it is.'' The
       pretty companion at his side at first gazed
       dumfounded; then, with growing enthusiasm for
       what promised to be a really magnificent
       performance, she began to utter little ejaculations of
       wonder and admiration. With this music in his
       ears, George outdid himself. He could not resist
       the temptation to be more and more astonishing
       as a heroic comedian, for these humors sometimes
       come upon vain people at country dinners.
       George ate when he had eaten more than he
       needed; he ate long after every one understood
       why he was so vast; he ate on and on sheerly
       as a flourish--as a spectacle. He ate even
       when he himself began to understand that there
       was daring in what he did, for his was a toreador
       spirit so long as he could keep bright eyes fastened
       upon him.
       Finally, he ate to decide wagers made upon his
       gorging, though at times during this last period
       his joviality deserted him. Anon his damp brow
       would be troubled, and he knew moments of
       thoughtfulness. _