Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Noble was left alone in the middle of the floor, but not for long. Couples charged him, and he betook himself to the wall. The party, for him, was already ruined.

  Sometimes, as he stood against the wall, there would be swirled to him, out of all the comminglements of other scents, a faint, faint hint of heliotrope and then Julia would be borne masterfully by, her flying skirts just touching him. And sometimes, out of the medley of all other sounds, there would reach his ear a little laugh like a run of lightly plucked harp strings, and he would see her shining dark hair above her partner’s shoulder as they swept again near him for an instant. And always, though she herself might be concealed from him, he could only too painfully mark where she danced: the overtopping head of the tall Clairdyce was never lost to view. The face on the front part of that disliked head wore continuously a confident smile, which had a bad effect on Noble. It seemed to him desecration that a man with so gross a smile should be allowed to dance with Julia. And that she should smile back at her partner, and with such terrible kindness — as Noble twice saw her smile — this was like a calamity happening to her white soul without her knowing it. If she should ever marry that man — well, it would be the old story: May and December! Noble shuddered, and the drums, the fiddles, the bass fiddle, and the saxophone seemed to have an evil sound.

  When the music stopped he caromed hastily through the room toward Julia, but she was in a thicket of her guests when he arrived, and for several moments Mr. Clairdyce’s broad back kept intervening — almost intentionally, it seemed. When Noble tried to place himself in a position to attract Julia’s attention, this back moved, too, and Noble’s nose but pressed black cloth. And the noise everybody made was so baffling that, in order to be heard, Julia herself was shouting. Finally Noble contrived to squirm round the obtrusive back, and protruded his strained face among all the flushed and laughing ones.

  “Julia, I got to — —” he began.

  But this was just at the climax of a story that three people were telling at the same time, Julia being one of them, and he received little attention.

  “Julia,” he said hoarsely; “I got something I want to tell you about — —”

  He raised his voice: “Julia, come on! Let’s go out on the porch!”

  Nobody even knew that he was there. Nevertheless, the tall and solid Clairdyce was conscious of him, but only, it proved, as one is conscious of something to rest upon. His elbow, a little elevated, was at the height of Noble’s shoulder, and this heavy elbow, without its owner’s direct or active cognizance, found for itself a comfortable support. Then, as the story reached its conclusion, this old Clairdyce joined the general mirth so heartily as to find himself quite overcome, and he allowed most of his weight to depend upon the supported elbow. Noble sank like feathers.

  “Here! What you doin’?” he said hotly. “I’ll thank you to keep off o’ me!”

  Old Baldy recovered his balance without being aware what had threatened it, while his elbow, apparently of its own volition, groped for its former pedestal. Noble evaded it, and pushed forward.

  “Julia,” he said. “I got to say some — —”

  But the accursed music began again, and horn-rimmed Newland Sanders already had his arm about her waist. They disappeared into the ruck of dancers.

  “Well, by George!” said Noble. “By George, I’m goin’ to do something!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HE WENT OUTDOORS and smoked Orduma cigarettes, one after the other. Dances and intermissions succeeded each other but Noble had “enough of that, for one while!” So he muttered.

  And remembering how Julia had told him that he was killing himself with cigarettes, “All right,” he said now, as he bitterly lighted his fifth at the spark of the fourth;— “I hope I will!”

  “Lot o’ difference it’d make!” he said, as he lighted the eighth of a series that must, all told, have contained nearly as much tobacco as a cigar. And, leaning back against the trunk of one of the big old walnut trees in the yard, he gazed toward the house, where the open window nearest him splashed with colour like a bright and crowded aquarium. “To her, anyway!” he added, with a slight remorse, remembering that his mother had frequently shown him evidences of affection.

  Yes, his mother would care, and his father and sisters would be upset, but Julia — when the friends of the family were asked to walk by for a last look, would she be one? What optimism remained to him presented a sketch of Julia, in black, borne from the room in the arms of girl friends who tried in vain to hush her; but he was unable to give this more hopeful fragment an air of great reality. Much more probably, when word came to her that he had smoked himself to death, she would be a bride, dancing at Niagara Falls with her bald old husband — and she would only laugh and pause to toss a faded rose out of the window, and then go right on dancing. But perhaps, some day, when tears had taught her the real meaning of life with such a man ——

  “You — wow!”

  Noble jumped. From the darkness of the yard beside the house there came a grievous howl, distressful to the spinal marrow, a sound of animal pain. It was repeated even more passionately, and another voice was also heard, one both hoarsely bass and falsetto in the articulation of a single syllable. “Ouch!” There were sounds of violent scuffing, and the bass-falsetto voice cried: “What’s that you stuck me with?” and another: “Drag her! Drag her back by her feet!”

  These alarms came from the almost impenetrable shadows of the small orchard beside the house; and from the same quarter was heard the repeated contact of a heavy body, seemingly wooden or metallic, with the ground; but high over this there rose a shrieking: “Help! Help! Oh, hay-yulp!” This voice was girlish. “Hay-yulp!”

  Noble dashed into the orchard, and at once fell prostrate upon what seemed a log, but proved to be a large and solidly packed ice-cream freezer lying on its side.

  Dark forms scrambled over the fence and vanished, but as Noble got to his feet he was joined by a dim and smallish figure in white — though more light would have disclosed a pink sash girdling its middle. It was the figure of Miss Florence Atwater, seething with furious agitations.

  “Vile thieves!” she panted.

  “Who?” Noble asked, brushing at his knees, while Florence made some really necessary adjustments of her own attire. “Who were they?”

  “It was my own cousin, Herbert, and that nasty little Henry Rooter and their gang. Herbert thinks he hass to act perfectly horrable all the time, now his voice is changing!” said Florence, her emotion not abated. “Tried to steal this whole ice-cream freezer off the back porch and sneak it over the fence and eat it! I stuck a pretty long pin in Herbert and two more of ’em, every bit as far as it would go.” And in the extremity of her indignation, she added: “The dirty robbers!”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “You bet your life they didn’t!” the child responded. “Tried to drag me back to the house! By the feet! I guess I gave ’em enough o’ that!”

  Then, tugging the prostrate freezer into an upright position, she exclaimed darkly: “I expect I gave ole Mister Herbert and some of the others of ’em just a few kicks they won’t be in such a hurry to forget!” And in spite of his own gloomy condition, Noble was able, upon thinking over matters, to spare some commiseration for Herbert and his friend, that nasty little Henry Rooter and their gang. They seemed to have been at a disadvantage.

  “I suppose I’d better carry the freezer back to the kitchen porch,” he said. “Somebody may want it.”

  “‘Somebody’!” Florence exclaimed. “Why, there’s only two of these big freezers, and if I hadn’t happened to suspeck somep’n and be layin’ for those vile thieves, half the party wouldn’t get any!” And as an afterthought, when Noble had pantingly restored the heavy freezer to its place by the kitchen door, she said: “Or else they’d had to have such little saucers of it nobody would of been any way like satisfied, and prob’ly all the fam’ly that’s here assisting would of had to go without
any at all. That’d ‘a’ been the worst of it!”

  She opened the kitchen door, and to those within explained loudly what dangers had been averted, directing that both freezers be placed indoors under guard; then she rejoined Noble, who was walking slowly back to the front yard.

  “I guess it’s pretty lucky you happened to be hangin’ around out here,” she said. “I guess that’s about the luckiest thing ever happened to me. The way it looks to me, I guess you saved my life. If you hadn’t chased ’em away, I wouldn’t been a bit surprised if that gang would killed me!”

  “Oh, no!” said Noble. “They wouldn’t — —”

  “You don’t know ’em like I do,” the romantic child assured him. “I know that gang pretty well, and I wouldn’t been a bit surprised. I wouldn’t been!”

  “But — —”

  She tossed her head, signifying recklessness.

  “Guess ’twouldn’t make much difference to anybody particular, whether they did or not,” said this strange Florence.

  Noble regarded her with astonishment; they had reached the front yard, and paused under the trees where the darkness was mitigated by the light from the shining windows. “Why, you oughtn’t to talk that way, Florence,” he said. “Think of your mamma and papa and your — and your Aunt Julia.”

  She tossed her head again. “Pooh! They’d all of ’em just say: ‘Good ribbons to bad rubbish,’ I guess!” However, she seemed far from despondent about this; in fact, she was naturally pleased with her position as a young girl saved from the power of ruffians by a rescuer who was her Very Ideal. “I bet if I died, they wouldn’t even have a funeral,” she said cheerfully. “They’d proba’ly just leave me lay.”

  The curiosities of the human mind are found not in high adventure: they are everywhere in the commonplace. Never for a moment did it strike Noble Dill that Florence’s turn to the morbid bore any resemblance to his recent visions of his own funeral. He failed to perceive that the two phenomena were produced out of the same laboratory jar and were probably largely chemical, at that.

  “Why, Florence!” he exclaimed. “That’s a dreadful way to feel. I’m sure your — your Aunt Julia loves you.”

  “Oh, well,” Florence returned lightly;— “maybe she does. I don’t care whether she does or not.” And now she made a deduction, the profundity of which his condition made him unable to perceive. “It makes less difference to anybody whether their aunts love ’em or not than whether pretty near anybody else at all does.”

  “But not your Aunt Julia” he urged. “Your Aunt Julia — —”

  “I don’t care whether she does than any other aunt I got,” said Florence. “All of ‘em’s just aunts, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “But, Florence, your Aunt Julia — —”

  “She’s nothin’ in the world but my aunt,” Florence insisted, and her emphasis showed that she was trying hard to make him understand. “She’s just the same as all of ’em. I don’t get anything more from her than I do from any the rest of ’em.”

  Her auditor was dumfounded, but not by Florence’s morals. The cold-blooded calculation upon which her family affections seemed to be founded, this aboriginal straightforwardness of hers, passed over him. What shocked him was her appearing to see Julia as all of a piece with a general lot of ordinary aunts. Helplessly, he muttered again:

  “But your Aunt Julia — —”

  “There she is now,” said Florence, pointing to the window nearest them. “They’ve stopped dancing for a while so’s that ole Mister Clairdyce can get a chance to sing somep’n. Mamma told me he was goin’ to.”

  Dashing chords sounded from a piano invisible to Noble and his companion; the windows exhibited groups of deferentially expectant young people; and then a powerful barytone began a love song. From the yard the singer could not be seen, but Julia could be: she stood in the demurest attitude; and no one needed to behold the vocalist to know that the scoundrel was looking pointedly and romantically at her.

  “Dee-urra-face that holds soswee tasmile for me,

  Wairyew nah tmine how darrrk the worrrl dwooed be!”

  To Noble, suffering at every pore, this was less a song than a bellowing; and in truth the confident Mr. Clairdyce did “let his voice out,” for he was seldom more exhilarated than when he shook the ceiling. The volume of sound he released upon his climaxes was impressive, and the way he slid up to them had a great effect, not indoors alone, but upon Florence, enraptured out under the trees.

  “Oh, isn’t it be-you-tiful!” she murmured.

  Her humid eyes were fixed upon Noble, who was unconscious of the honour. Florence was susceptible to anything purporting to be music, and this song moved her. Throughout its delivery from Mr. Clairdyce’s unseen chest, her large eyes dwelt upon Noble, and it is not at all impossible that she was applying the tender words to him, just as the vehement Clairdyce was patently addressing them to Julia. On he sang, while Noble, staring glassily at the demure lady, made a picture of himself leaping unexpectedly through the window, striding to the noisy barytone, striking him down, and after stamping on him several times, explaining: “There! That’s for your insolence to our hostess!” But he did not actually permit himself these solaces; he only clenched and unclenched his fingers several times, and continued to listen.

  “Geev a-mee yewr ra-smile,

  The luv va-ligh TIN yew rise,

  Life cooed not hold a fairrerr paradise.

  Geev a-mee the righ to luv va-yew all the wile,

  My worrlda for AIV-vorr,

  The sunshigh NUV vyewr-ra-smile!”

  The conclusion was thunderous, and as a great noise under such circumstances is an automatic stimulant of enthusiasm, the applause was thunderous too. Several girls were unable to subdue their outcries of “Charming!” and “Won-derf’l!” — not even after Mr. Clairdyce had begun to sing the same song as an encore.

  When this was concluded, a sigh, long and deep, was heard under the trees. It came from Florence. Her eyes, wanly gleaming, like young oysters in the faint light, were still fixed on Noble; and there can be little doubt that just now there was at least one person in the world, besides his mother, who saw him in a glamour as something rare, obs, exquisite, and elegant. “I think that was the most be-you-tiful thing I ever heard!” she said; and then, noting a stir within the house, she became practical. “They’re starting refreshments,” she said. “We better hurry in, Mr. Dill, so’s to get good places. Thanks to me, there’s plenty to go round.”

  She moved toward the house, but, observing that he did not accompany her, paused and looked back. “Aren’t you goin’ to come in, Mr. Dill?”

  “I guess not. Don’t tell any one I’m out here.”

  “I won’t. But aren’t you goin’ to come in for — —”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m going to wait out here a while longer.”

  “But,” she said, “it’s refreshments!”

  “I don’t want any. I — I’m going to smoke some more, instead.”

  She looked at him wistfully, then even more wistfully toward the house. Evidently she was of a divided mind: her feeling for Noble fought with her feeling for “refreshments.” Such a struggle could not endure for long: a whiff of coffee conjured her nose, and a sound of clinking china witched her ear. “Well,” she said, “I guess I ought to have some nourishment,” and betook herself hurriedly into the house.

  Noble lit another Orduma. He would follow the line of conduct he had marked out for himself: he would not take his place by Julia for the supper interval — perhaps that breach of etiquette would “show” her. He could see her no longer — she had moved out of range — but he imagined her, asking everywhere: “Hasn’t any one seen Mr. Dill?” And he thought of her as biting her lip nervously, perhaps, and replying absently to sallies and quips — perhaps even having to run upstairs to her own room to dash something sparkling from her eyes, and, maybe, to look angrily in her glass for an instant and exclaim, “Fool!” For Julia wa
s proud, and not used to be treated in this way.

  He felt the least bit soothed, and, lightly flicking the ash from his Orduma with his little finger, an act indicating some measure of restored composure, he strolled to the other side of the house and brought other fields of vision into view through other windows. Abruptly his stroll came to an end.

  There sat Julia, flushed and joyous, finishing her supper in company with old Baldy Clairdyce, Newland Sanders, George Plum, seven or eight other young gentlemen, and some inconsidered adhering girls — the horrible barytone sitting closest of all to Julia. Moreover, upon that very moment the orchestra, in the hall beyond, thought fit to pay the recent vocalist a sickening compliment, and began to play “The Sunshine of Your Smile.”

  Thereupon, with Julia herself first taking up the air in a dulcet soprano, all of the party, including the people in the other rooms, sang the dreadful song in chorus, the beaming Clairdyce exerting such demoniac power as to be heard tremendously over all other voices. He had risen for this effort, and to Noble, below the window, everything in his mouth was visible.

  The lone listener had a bitter thought, though it was a longing, rather than a thought. For the first time in his life he wished that he had adopted the profession of dentistry.

  “Geev a-mee the righ to luv va-yew ALL the wile,

  My worrrlda for AIV-vorr,

  The sunshigh NUV vyewr-ra-smile!”

  The musicians swung into dance music; old Baldy closed the exhibition with an operatic gesture (for which alone, if for nothing else, at least one watcher thought the showy gentleman deserved hanging), and this odious gesture concluded with a seizure of Julia’s hand. She sprang up eagerly; he whirled her away, and the whole place fluctuated in the dance once more.