"No," said his wife. "She was quite a sensible girl. I'd hate to be in
her place now, though, when she tells Noble about _this_."
"How can Mrs. Dill tell him, since she doesn't know it herself?"
"Well--perhaps she ought to know it, so that she _could_ tell him.
_Somebody_ ought to tell him, and it ought to be done with the greatest
tact. It ought to be broken to him with the most delicate care and
sympathy, or the consequences----"
"Nobody could foretell the consequences," her husband interrupted:--"no
matter how tactfully it's broken to Noble."
"No," she said, "I suppose that's true. I think the poor thing's likely
to lose his reason unless it _is_ done tactfully, though."
"Do you think we really ought to tell Mrs. Dill, Mollie? I mean,
seriously: Do you?"
For some moments she considered his question, then replied, "No. It's
possible we'd be following a Christian course in doing it; but still
we're rather bound not to speak of it outside the family, and when it
does get outside the family I think we'd better not be the ones
responsible--especially since it might easily be traced to us. I think
it's usually better to keep out of things when there's any doubt."
"Yes," he said, meditating. "I never knew any harm to come of people's
sticking to their own affairs."
But as he and his wife became silent for a time, musing in the
firelight, their daughter's special convictions were far from coinciding
with theirs, although she, likewise, was silent--a singularity they
should have observed. So far were they from a true comprehension of her,
they were unaware that she had more than a casual, young-cousinly
interest in Julia Atwater's engagement and in those possible
consequences to Noble Dill just sketched with some intentional
exaggeration. They did not even notice her expression when Mr. Atwater
snapped on the light, in order to read; and she went quietly out of the
library and up the stairs to her own room.
* * * * *
On the floor, near her bed, where Patty Fairchild had left her coat and
hat, Florence made another discovery. Two small, folded slips of paper
lay there, dropped by Miss Fairchild when she put on her coat in the
darkening room. They were the replies to Patty's whispered questions in
the game on the steps--the pledged Truth, written by Henry Rooter and
Herbert Atwater on their sacred words and honours. The infatuated pair
had either overestimated Patty's caution, or else each had thought she
would so prize his little missive that she would treasure it in a tender
safety, perhaps pinned upon her blouse (at the first opportunity) over
her heart. It is positively safe to say that neither of the two
veracities would ever have been set upon paper had Herbert and Henry any
foreshadowing that Patty might be careless; and the partners would have
been seized with the utmost horror could they have conceived the
possibility of their trustful messages ever falling into the hands of
the relentless creature who now, without an instant's honourable
hesitation, unfolded and read them.
"_Yes if I got to tell the truth I know I have got pretty eyes_,"
Herbert had unfortunately written. "I _am glad you think so too Patty
because your eyes are too Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr._"
And Mr. Henry Rooter had likewise ruined himself in a coincidental
manner:
"_Well Patty my eyes are pretty but suppose I would like to trade with
yours because you have beautiful eyes also, sure as my name is Henry
Rooter._"
Florence stood close to the pink-shaded electric drop-light over her
small white dressing-table, reading again and again these pathetically
honest little confidences. Her eyelids were withdrawn to an
unprecedented retirement, so remarkably she stared; while her mouth
seemed to prepare itself for the attempted reception of a bulk beyond
its capacity. And these plastic tokens, so immoderate as to be
ordinarily the consequence of nothing short of horror, were overlaid by
others, subtler and more gleaming, which wrought the true significance
of the contortion--a joy that was dumfounding.
Her thoughts were first of Fortune's kindness in selecting her for a
favour so miraculously dovetailing into the precise need of her life;
then she considered Henry and Herbert, each at this hour probably
brushing his hair in preparation for the Sunday evening meal, and both
touchingly unconscious of the calamity now befalling them; but what
eventually engrossed her mind was a thought about Wallie Torbin.
This Master Torbin, fourteen years of age, was in all the town the boy
most dreaded by his fellow-boys, and also by girls, including many of
both sexes who knew him only by sight--and hearing. He had no physical
endowment or attainment worth mention; but boys who could "whip him with
one hand" became sycophants in his presence; the terror he inspired was
moral. He had a special over-development of a faculty exercised clumsily
enough by most human beings, especially in their youth; in other words,
he had a genius--not, however, a genius having to do with anything
generally recognized as art or science. True, if he had been a violinist
prodigy or mathematical prodigy, he would have had some respect from his
fellows--about equal to that he might have received if he were gifted
with some pleasant deformity, such as six toes on a foot--but he would
never have enjoyed such deadly prestige as had actually come to be his.
In brief, then, Wallie Torbin had a genius for mockery.
Almost from his babyhood he had been a child of one purpose: to increase
by burlesques the sufferings of unfortunate friends. If one of them
wept, Wallie incessantly pursued him, yelping in horrid mimicry; if one
were chastised he could not appear out-of-doors for days except to
encounter Wallie and a complete rehearsal of the recent agony. "Quit,
Papa! _Pah_-puh, quee-yet! I'll _never_ do it again, Pah-puh! Oh,
_lemme_ alone, Pah-_puh_!"
As he grew older, his insatiate curiosity enabled him to expose
unnumbered weaknesses, indiscretions, and social misfortunes on the part
of acquaintances and schoolmates; and to every exposure his noise and
energy gave a hideous publicity: the more his victim sought privacy the
more persistently he was followed by Wallie, vociferous and attended by
hilarious spectators. But above all other things, what most stimulated
the demoniac boy to prodigies of satire was a tender episode or any
symptom connected with the dawn of love. Florence herself had suffered
at intervals throughout her eleventh summer because Wallie discovered
that Georgie Beck had sent her a valentine; and the humorist's many,
many squealings of that valentine's affectionate quatrain finally left
her unable to decide which she hated the more, Wallie or Georgie. That
was the worst of Wallie: he never "let up"; and in Florence's circle
there was no more sobering threat than, "I'll tell Wallie Torbin!" As
for Henry Rooter and Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr., they would as
soon have had a Head-hunter on their trail as Wallie Torbin in the
possession of anything that could incriminate them in an implication of
love--or an acknowledgment (in their own handwriting!) of their own
beauty.
The fabric of civilized life is interwoven with blackmail: even some of
the noblest people do favours for other people who are depended upon not
to tell somebody something that the noblest people have done. Blackmail
is born into us all, and our nurses teach us more blackmail by
threatening to tell our parents if we won't do this and that--and our
parents threaten to tell the doctor--and so we learn! Blackmail is part
of the daily life of a child. Displeased, his first resort to get his
way with other children is a threat to "tell," but by-and-by his
experience discovers the mutual benefit of honour among blackmailers.
Therefore, at eight it is no longer the ticket to threaten to tell the
teacher; and, a little later, threatening to tell any adult at all is
considered something of a breakdown in morals. Notoriously, the code is
more liable to infraction by people of the physically weaker sex, for
the very reason, of course, that their inferiority of muscle so
frequently compels such a sin, if they are to have their way. But for
Florence there was now no such temptation. Looking to the demolition of
Atwater & Rooter, an exposure before adults of the results of "Truth"
would have been an effect of the sickliest pallor compared to what might
be accomplished by a careful use of the catastrophic Wallie Torbin.
* * * * *
On Sunday evening it was her privileged custom to go to the house of fat
old Great-Uncle Joseph and remain until nine o'clock, in chatty
companionship with Uncle Joseph and Aunt Carrie, his wife, and a few
other relatives (including Herbert) who were in the habit of dropping in
there, on Sunday evenings. In summer, lemonade and cake were frequently
provided; in the autumn, one still found cake, and perhaps a pitcher of
clear new cider: apples were a certainty.
This evening was glorious: there were apples and cider and cake, with
walnuts, perfectly cracked, and a large open-hearted box of candy; for
Uncle Joseph and Aunt Carrie had foreseen the coming of several more
Atwaters than usual, to talk over the new affairs of their beautiful
relative, Julia. Seldom have any relative's new affairs been more
thoroughly talked over than were Julia's that evening; though all the
time by means of symbols, since it was thought wiser that Herbert and
Florence should not yet be told of Julia's engagement; and Florence's
parents were not present to confess their indiscretion. Julia was
referred to as "the traveller"; other makeshifts were employed with the
most knowing caution, and all the while Florence merely ate inscrutably.
The more sincere Herbert was placid; the foods absorbing his attention.
"Well, all I say is, the traveller better enjoy herself on her travels,"
said Aunt Fanny, finally, as the subject appeared to be wearing toward
exhaustion. "She certainly is in for it when the voyaging is over and
she arrives in the port she sailed from, and has to show her papers. I
agree with the rest of you: she'll have a great deal to answer for, and
most of all about the shortest one. My own opinion is that the shortest
one is going to burst like a balloon."
"The shortest one," as the demure Florence had understood from the
first, was none other than her Very Ideal. Now she looked up from the
stool where she sat with her back against a pilaster of the mantelpiece.
"Uncle Joseph," she said;--"I was just thinking. What is a person's
reason?"
The fat gentleman, rosy with firelight and cider, finished his fifth
glass before responding. "Well, there _are_ persons I never could find
any reason for at all. 'A person's reason'? What do you mean, 'a
person's reason,' Florence?"
"I mean: like when somebody says, 'They'll lose their reason,'" she
explained. "Has everybody got a reason, and if they have, what is it,
and how do they lose it, and what would they do then?"
"Oh! I see!" he said. "You needn't worry. I suppose since you heard it
you've been hunting all over yourself for your reason and looking to see
if there was one hanging out of anybody else, somewhere. No; it's
something you can't see, ordinarily, Florence. Losing your reason is
just another way of saying, 'going crazy'!"
"Oh!" she murmured, and appeared to be disturbed.
At this, Herbert thought proper to offer a witticism for the pleasure of
the company.
"_You_ know, Florence," he said, "it only means acting like _you_ most
always do." He applauded himself with a burst of changing laughter
ranging from a bullfrog croak to a collapsing soprano; then he added:
"Espeshually when you come around my and Henry's Newspaper Building! You
cert'nly 'lose your reason' every time you come around _that_ ole
place!"
"Well, course I haf to act like the people that's already there,"
Florence retorted, not sharply, but in a musing tone that should have
warned him. It was not her wont to use a quiet voice for repartee.
Thinking her humble, he laughed the more raucously.
"Oh, Florence!" he besought her. "Say not so! Say not so!"
"Children, children!" Uncle Joseph remonstrated.
Herbert changed his tone; he became seriously plaintive. "Well, she does
act that way, Uncle Joseph! When she comes around there you'd think we
were runnin' a lunatic asylum, the way she takes on. She hollers and
bellers and squalls and squawks. The least little teeny thing she don't
like about the way we run our paper, she comes flappin' over there and
goes to screechin' around you could hear her out at the Poor House
Farm!"
"Now, now, Herbert," his Aunt Fanny interposed. "Poor little Florence
isn't saying anything impolite to you--not right now, at any rate. Why
don't you be a little sweet to her just for once?"
Her unfortunate expression revolted all the manliness in Herbert's
bosom. "Be a little _sweet_ to her?" he echoed with poignant
incredulity, and then in candour made plain how poorly Aunt Fanny
inspired him. "I just exackly as soon be a little sweet to an
alligator," he said.
"Oh, oh!" said Aunt Carrie.
"I would!" Herbert insisted. "Or a mosquito. I'd rather, to _either_ of
'em, 'cause anyway they don't make so much noise. Why, you just ought to
_hear_ her," he went on, growing more and more severe. "You ought to
just come around our Newspaper Building any afternoon you please, after
school, when Henry and I are tryin' to do our work in anyway _some_
peace. Why, she just squawks and squalls and squ----"
"It must be terrible," Uncle Joseph interrupted. "What do you do all
that for, Florence, every afternoon?"
"Just for exercise," she answered dreamily; and her placidity the more
exasperated her journalist cousin.
"She does it because she thinks _she_ ought to be runnin' our own
newspaper, my and Henry's; that's why she does it! She thinks she knows
more about how to run newspapers than anybody alive; but there's one
thing she's goin' to find out; and that is, she don't get anything
_more_ to do with my and Henry's newspaper. We wouldn't have another
single one of her ole poems in it, no matter how much she offered to
pay us! Uncle Joseph, I think you ought to _tell_ her she's got no
business around my and Henry's Newspaper Building."
"But, Herbert," Aunt Fanny suggested;--"you might let Florence have a
little share in it of some sort. Then everything would be all right."
"It would?" he said. "It _woo_-wud? Oh, my goodness, Aunt Fanny, I guess
you'd like to see our newspaper just utterably ruined! Why, we wouldn't
let that girl have any more to do with it than we would some horse!"
"Oh, oh!" both Aunt Fanny and Aunt Carrie exclaimed, shocked.
"We wouldn't," Herbert insisted. "A horse would know any amount more how
to run a newspaper than she does. Soon as we got our printing-press, we
said right then that we made up our minds Florence Atwater wasn't ever
goin' to have a single thing to do with our newspaper. If you let her
have anything to do with anything she wants to run the whole thing. But
she might just as well learn to stay away from our Newspaper Building,
because after we got her out yesterday we fixed a way so's she'll never
get in _there_ again!"
Florence looked at him demurely. "Are you sure, Herbert?" she inquired.
"Just you try it!" he advised her, and he laughed tauntingly. "Just come
around to-morrow and try it; that's all I ask!"
"I cert'nly intend to," she responded with dignity. "I may have a slight
supprise for you."
"Oh, _Florence_, say not so! Say not so, Florence! Say not so!"
At this, she looked full upon him, and already she had something in the
nature of a surprise for him; for so powerful was the still balefulness
of her glance that he was slightly startled. "I might say not so," she
said. "I might, if I was speaking of what pretty eyes you say yourself
you know you have, Herbert."