Collected Works of Booth Tarkington
Page 316
“For life is but a golden dream so sweetly.”
Other whimsies came forth from him as the dressing slowly continued, though one might easily be at fault in attempting to fathom what was his thought when, during the passage of his right foot through the corresponding leg of his trousers, he exclaimed commandingly:
“Now, Jocko, for the stirrup cup!”
Jack boots and a faithful squire, probably.
During the long and dreamy session with his neck gear he went back to the softer motif:
“Oh, years so fair; oh, night so rare!
For life is but a golden dream so sweetly.”
Then, pausing abruptly to look at his coat, so smoothly folded upon the bed, he addressed it: “O noblest sample of the tailor’s dext’rous art!”
This was too much courtesy, for the coat was “ready-made,” and looked nobler upon the bed than upon its owner. In fact, it was by no means a dext’rous sample; but evidently Noble believed in it with a high and satisfying faith; and he repeated his compliment to it as he put it on:
“Come, noblest sample of the tailor’s art; I’ll don thee!”
During these processes he had been repeatedly summoned to descend to the family dinner, and finally his mother came lamenting and called up from the front hall that “everything” was “all getting cold!”
But by this time he was on his way, and though he went back to leave his hat in his room, unwilling to confide it to the hat-rack below, he presently made his appearance in the dining-room and took his seat at the table. This mere sitting, however, appeared to be his whole conception of dining; he seemed as unaware of his mother’s urging food upon him as if he had been a Noble Dill of waxwork. Several tunes he lifted a fork and set it down without guiding it to its accustomed destination. Food was far from his thoughts or desires, and if he really perceived its presence at all, it appeared to him as something vaguely ignoble upon the horizon.
But he was able to partake of coffee; drank two cups feverishly, his hand visibly unsteady; and when his mother pointed out this confirmation of many prophecies that cigarettes would ruin him, he asked if anybody had noticed whether or not it was cloudy outdoors. At that his father looked despondent, for the open windows of the dining-room revealed an evening of fragrant clarity.
“I see, I see,” Noble returned pettishly when the fine state of this closely adjacent weather was pointed out to him by his old-maid sister. “It wouldn’t be raining, of course. Not on a night like this.” He jumped up. “It’s time for me to go.”
Mrs. Dill laughed. “It’s only a little after seven. Julia won’t be through her own dinner yet. You mustn’t — —”
But with a tremulous smile, Noble shook his head and hurriedly left the room. He went upstairs for his hat, and while there pinned a geranium blossom upon his lapel, for it may be admitted that in boutonnières his taste was as yet unformed.
Coming down again, he took a stick under his arm and was about to set forth when he noticed a little drift of talcum powder upon one of his patent leather shoes. After carefully removing this accretion and adding a brighter lustre to the shoe by means of friction against the back of his ankle, he decided to return to his room and brush the affected portion of his trousers. Here a new reverie arrested him; he stood with the brush in his hand for some time; then, not having used it, he dropped it gently upon the bed, lit an Orduma cigarette, descended, and went forth to the quiet street.
As he walked along Julia’s Street toward Julia’s Party, there was something in his mien and look more dramatic than mere sprightliness; and when he came within sight of the ineffable house and saw its many lights shining before him, he breathed with profundity, half halting. Again he murmured:
“Oh, years so fair; oh, night so rare!
For life is but a golden dream so sweetly.”
At the gate he hesitated. Perhaps — perhaps he was a little early. It might be better to walk round the block.
He executed this parade, and again hesitated at the gate. He could see into the brightly lighted hall, beyond the open double doors; and it contained nothing except its usual furniture. Once more he walked round the block. The hall was again in the same condition. Again he went on.
When he had been thrice round the block after that, he discovered human beings in the hall; they were Florence, in a gala costume, and Florence’s mother, evidently arrived to be assistants at the party, for, with the helpful advice of a coloured manservant, they were arranging some bunches of flowers on two hall tables. Their leisurely manner somewhat emphasized the air of earliness that hung about the place, and Noble thought it better to continue to walk round the block. The third time after that, when he completed his circuit, the musicians were just arriving, and their silhouettes, headed by that of the burdened bass fiddler, staggered against the light of the glowing doorway like a fantasia of giant beetles. Noble felt that it would be better to let them get settled, and therefore walked round the block again.
Not far from the corner above Julia’s, as he passed, a hoarse and unctuous voice, issuing out of an undistinguishable lawn, called his name: “Noble! Noble Dill!” And when Noble paused, Julia’s Uncle Joseph came waddling forth from the dimness and rested his monstrous arms upon the top of the fence, where a street light revealed them as shirt-sleeved and equipped with a palm-leaf fan.
“What is the matter, Noble?” Mr. Atwater inquired earnestly.
“Matter?” Noble repeated. “Matter?”
“We’re kind of upset,” said Mr. Atwater. “My wife and I been just sittin’ out here in our front yard, not doing any harm to anybody, and here it’s nine times we’ve counted you passing the place — always going the same way!” He spoke as with complaint, a man with a grievance. “It’s kind of ghostlike,” he added. “We’d give a good deal to know what you make of it.”
Noble was nonplussed. “Why — —” he said. “Why — —”
“How do you get back? That’s the mystery!” said Mr. Atwater. “You’re always walkin’ down street and never up. You know my wife’s never been too strong a woman, Noble, and all this isn’t doing her any good. Besides, we sort of figured out that you ought really to be at Julia’s dance this evening.”
“I am,” said Noble nervously. “I mean that’s where I’m going. I’m going there. I’m going there.”
“That’s what’s upsetting us so!” the fat man exclaimed. “You keep on going there! Just when we’ve decided you must be there, at last, here you come, going there again. Well, don’t let me detain you. But if you do decide to go in, some time, Noble, I’m afraid you aren’t going to be able to do much dancing.”
Noble, who had begun to walk on, halted in sudden panic. Did this sinister fear of Mr. Atwater’s mean that, as an uncle, he had heard Julia was suddenly ill?
“Why won’t I?” he asked quickly. “Is anything — —”
“Your poor feet!” said Mr. Atwater, withdrawing. “Good-night, Noble.”
The youth went on, somewhat disturbed; it seemed to him that this uncle, though Julia’s, was either going queer in the head or had chosen a poor occasion to be facetious. Next time, probably, it would be better to walk round the block below this. But it was no longer advisable to walk round any block. When he came to the happy gateway, the tuning of instruments and a fanfare of voices sounded from within the house; girls in light wraps were fluttering through the hall with young men; it was “time for the party!” And Noble went in.
Throughout the accomplishment of the entrance he made, his outside and his inside were directly contradictory. His inside was almost fluttering: there might have been a nest of nervous young birds in his chest; but as he went upstairs to the “gentlemen’s dressing-room,” to leave his hat and stick, this flopping and scrambling within him was never to be guessed from his outside. His outside was unsympathetic, even stately; he greeted his fellow guests with negligent hauteur, while his glance seemed to say: “Only peasantry here!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At the foot of the stairs he became part of the file of young people who were moving into one of the large rooms where Julia stood to “receive.” And then, between two heads before him, he caught a first glimpse of her; — and all the young birds fluttering in his chest burst into song; his heart fainted, his head ballooned, his feet seemed to dangle from him at the ends of two strings.
There glowed sapphire-eyed Julia; never had she been prettier.
The group closed, shutting out the vision, and he found himself able to dry his brow and get back his breath before moving forward in a cold and aristocratic attitude. Then he became incapable of any attitude — he was before her, and she greeted him. A buzzing of the universe confused him: he would have stood forever, but pressure from behind pushed him on; and so, enveloped in a scented cloud, he passed into a corner. He tried to remember what he had said to her, but could not; perhaps it would have discouraged him to know that all he had said was, “Well!”
Now there rattled out a challenge of drums; loud music struck upon the air. Starting instantly to go to Julia, Noble’s left leg first received the electric impulse and crossed his laggard right; but he was no pacer, and thus stumbled upon himself and plunged. Still convulsive, he came headlong before her, and was the only person near who remained unaware that his dispersal of an intervening group had the appearance of extreme unconventionality. Noble knew nothing except that this was his dance with Her.
Then heaven played with him. She came close and touched him exquisitely. She placed a lovely hand upon his shoulder, her other lovely cool hand in one of his. The air filled with bursting stars.
They danced.
Noble was conscious of her within his clasping arm, but conscious of her as nothing human. The fluffy white bodice pressed by his hand seemed to be that of some angel doll; the charming shoulder that sometimes touched his was made of a divine mist. Only the pretty head, close to his, was actual; the black-sapphire eyes gave him a little blue-black glance, now and then, and seemed to laugh.
In truth, they did, though Julia’s lips remained demure. So far as Noble was able to comprehend what he was doing, he was floating rhythmically to a faint, far music; but he was almost unconscious, especially from the knees down. But to the eye of observers incapable of perceiving that Noble was floating, it appeared that he was out of step most of the time, and danced rather hoppingly. However, these mannerisms were no novelty with him, and it cannot be denied that girls at dances usually hurried impulsively away to speak to somebody when they saw him coming. One such creature even went so far as to whisper to Julia now, during a collision: “How’d you get caught?”
Julia was loyal; she gave no sign of comprehension, but valiantly swung onward with Noble, bumped and bumping everywhere, in spite of the most extraordinary and graceful dexterity on her part.
“That’s one reason she’s such a terrible belle,” a damsel whispered to another.
“What is?”
“The way she’ll be just as nice to anybody like Noble Dill as she is to anybody,” said the first. “Look at her now: she won’t laugh at him a bit, though everybody else is.”
“Well, I wouldn’t laugh either,” said the other. “Not in Julia’s position. I’d be too busy being afraid.”
“What of?”
“Of getting a sprained ankle!”
It is well that telepathy remains, as a science, lethargic. Speculation sets before us the prospect of a Life Beyond in which every thought is communicated without the intervention of speech: a state wherein all neighbours and neighbourhoods would promptly be dispersed and few friendships long endure, one fears. If to Noble Dill’s active consciousness had penetrated merely the things thought about him and his dancing, in this one short period of time before the music for that dance stopped, he might easily have been understood if he had hurried forth, obtained explosives, and blown up the place, himself indeed included. As matters providentially were in reality, when the music stopped he stood confounded: he thought the dance had just begun.
His mouth remained open until the necessary gestures of articulation intermittently closed it as he said: “Oh! That was divine!”
Too-gentle Julia agreed.
“You said I could have part of some in between the first and last,” he reminded her. “Can I have the first part of the next?”
She laughed. “I’m afraid not. The next is Mr. Clairdyce’s and I really promised him I wouldn’t give any of his away or let anybody cut in.”
“Well, then,” said Noble, frowning a little, “would you be willing for me to cut in on the third?”
“I’m afraid not. That’s Newland Sanders’, and I promised him the same thing.”
“Well, the one after that?”
“No, that one’s Mr. Clairdyce’s, too.”
“It is?” Noble was greatly disturbed.
“Yes.”
“Two that quick with old Baldy Clairdyce!” he exclaimed, raising his voice, but unaware of the fervour with which he spoke. “Two with that old — —”
“Sh, Noble,” she said, though she laughed. “He isn’t really old; he’s just middle-aged, and only the least bit bald, just enough to be distinguished-looking.”
“Well, you know what I think of him!” he returned with a vehemence not moderated. “I don’t think he’s distinguished-looking; I think he’s simply and plainly a regular old — —”
“Sh!” Julia warned him again. “He’s standing with some people just behind us,” she added.
“Well, then,” said Noble, “can I cut in on the next one after that?”
She consulted a surreptitious little card. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till quite a little later on, Noble. That one is poor Mr. Ridgely’s. I promised him I wouldn’t — —”
“Then can I cut in on the next one after that?”
“It’s Mr. Clairdyce’s,” said Julia — and she blushed.
“My goodness!” said Noble. “Oh, my goodness!”
“Sh! I’m afraid people — —”
“Let’s go out on the porch,” said Noble, whose manner had suddenly become desperate. “Let’s go out and get some air where we can talk this thing over.”
“I’m afraid I’d better not just now,” she returned, glancing over her shoulder. “You see, all the people aren’t here yet.”
“You’ve got an aunt here,” said Noble, “and a sister-in-law and a little niece: I saw ’em. They can — —”
“I’m afraid I’d better stay indoors just now,” she said persuasively. “We can talk here just as well.”
“We can’t!” he insisted feverishly. “We can’t, Julia! I’ve got something to say, Julia. Julia, you gave me the first dance and the last dance, and of course sitting together at supper, or whatever there is, and you know as well as I do that means it’s just the same as if you weren’t giving this party but it was somewhere else and I took you to it, and it’s always understood you never dance more with anybody else than the one you went with, when you go with that person to a place, because that’s the rights of it; and other towns it’s just the same way; they do that way there, just the same as here; they do that way everywhere, because nobody else has got a right to cut in and dance more with you than the one you go with, when you goes to a place with that one. Julia, don’t you see that’s the regular way it is, and the only fair way it ought to be?”
“What?”
“Weren’t you even listening?” he cried.
“Yes, indeed, but — —”
“Julia,” he said desperately, “let’s go out on the porch. I want to explain just the way I feel. Let’s go out on the porch, Julia. If
we stay here, somebody’s just bound to interrupt us any minute before I can explain the way I — —”
But the prophecy was fulfilled even before it was concluded. A group of loudly chattering girls and their escorts of the moment bore down upon Julia, and shattered the tête-à-tête. Dislodged from Julia’s side by a large and eager girl, whom he had hated ever since she was six years old and he five, Noble found himself staggering in a kind of suburb; for the large girl’s disregard of him, as she shouldered in, was actually physical, and too powerful for him to resist. She wished to put her coarse arm round Julia’s waist, it appeared, and the whole group burbled and clamoured: the party was perfictly glorious; so was the waxed floor; so was Julia, my dear, so was the music, the weather, and the din they made!
Noble felt that his rights were being outraged. Until the next dance began, every moment of her time was legally his — yet all he could even see of her was the top of her head. And the minutes were flying.
He stood on tiptoe, thrust his head forward over the large girl’s odious shoulder, and shouted: “Julia! Let’s go out on the porch!”
No one seemed to hear him.
“Julia — —”
Boom! Rackety-Boom! The drummer walloped his drums; a saxophone squawked, and fiddles squealed. Hereupon appeared a tall authoritative man, at least thirty-two years old, and all swelled up with himself, as interpreted by Noble and several other friends of Julia’s — though this, according to quite a number of people (all feminine) was only another way of saying that he was a person of commanding presence. He wore a fully developed moustache, an easy smile, clothes offensively knowing; and his hair began to show that scarcity which Julia felt gave him distinction — a curious theory, but natural to her age. What really did give this Clairdyce some air of distinction, however, was the calmness with which he walked through the group that had dislodged Noble Dill, and the assurance with which he put his arm about Julia and swept her away in the dance.