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----"