These sympathetic women had unanimously set their expectation in so
romantically pessimistic a groove that the most tragic news of Noble
would have surprised them little. But if the truth of his whereabouts
could have been made known to them, as they sat thus together at what
was developing virtually into his wake, with Herbert as a compulsory
participant, they would have turned the session into a riot of
amazement. Noble was in the very last place (they would have said, when
calmer) where anybody in the world could have even madly dreamed of
looking for him! They would have been right about it. No one could have
expected to find Noble to-night inside the old, four-square brick house
of H. I. Atwater, Senior, chief of the Atwaters and father of too gentle
Julia. Moreover, Mr. Atwater himself was not at present in the house; he
had closed and locked it the day before, giving the servants a week's
vacation and telling them not to return till he sent for them; and he
had then gone out of town to look over a hominy-mill he thought of
buying. And yet, as the wake went on, there was a light in the house,
and under that light sat Noble Dill.
Returning home, after Florence had placed the shattering paper within
his hand, Noble had changed his shoes and his tie. He was but a
mechanism; he had no motive. The shoes he put on were no better than
those he took off; the fresh tie was no lovelier than the one he had
worn; nor had it even the lucidity to be a purple one, as the banner of
grief. No; his action was, if so viewed, "crazy," as Aunt Fanny had
called it. Agitation first took this form; that was all. Love and change
of dress are so closely allied; and in happier days, when Noble had come
home from work and would see Julia in the evening, he usually changed
his clothes. No doubt there is some faint tracery here, probably too
indistinct to repay contemplation.
When he left the house he walked rapidly downtown, and toward the end of
this one-mile journey he ran; but as he was then approaching the railway
station, no one thought him eccentric. He was, however, for when he
entered the station he went to a bench and sat looking upward for more
than ten minutes before he rose, went to a ticket window and asked for
a time-table.
"What road?" the clerk inquired.
"All points South," said Noble.
He placed the time-table, still folded, in his pocket, rested an elbow
on the brass apron of the window, and would have given himself up to
reflections, though urged to move away. Several people, wishing to buy
tickets, had formed a line behind him; they perceived that Noble had
nothing more to say to the clerk, and the latter encouraged their
protests, even going so far as to inquire: "For heaven's sakes, can't
you let these folk buy their tickets?" And since Noble still did not
move: "My gosh, haven't you got no _feet_?"
"Feet? Oh, yes," said Noble gently. "I'm going away." And went back to
his seat.
Afterwhile, he sought to study his time-table. Ordinarily, his mind was
one of those able to decipher and comprehend railway time-tables; he had
few gifts, but this was one of them. It failed him now; so he wandered
back to the ticket-window, and, after urgent coaching, eventually took
his place at the end instead of at the head of the line that waited
there. In his turn he came again to the window, and departed from it
after a conversation with the clerk that left the latter in accord with
Aunt Fanny Atwater's commiserating adjective, though the clerk's own
pity was expressed in argot. "The poor nut!" he explained to his next
client. "Wants to buy a ticket on a train that don't pull out until ten
thirty-five to-night; and me fillin' it all out, stampin' it and
everything, what for? Turned out all his pockets and couldn't come
within eight dollars o' the price! Where you want to go?"
Noble went back to his bench and sat there for a long time, though there
was no time, long or short, for him. He was not yet consciously
suffering; nor was he thinking at all. True, he had a dim, persistent
impulse to action--or why should he be at the station?--but for the
clearest expression of his condition it is necessary to borrow a
culinary symbol; he was jelling. But the state of shock was slowly
dispersing, while a perception of approaching anguish as slowly
increased. He was beginning to swallow nothing at intervals and the
intervals were growing shorter.
Dusk was misting down, outdoors, when with dragging steps he came out of
the station. He looked hazily up and down the street, where the
corner-lamps and shop-windows now were lighted; and, after dreary
hesitation, he went in search of a pawn-shop, and found one. The old man
who operated it must have been a philanthropist, for Noble was so
fortunate as to secure a loan of nine dollars upon his watch. Surprised
at this, he returned to the station, and went back to the same old
bench.
It was fully occupied, and he stood for some time looking with vague
reproach at the large family of coloured people who had taken it. He had
a feeling that he lived there and that these coloured people were
trespassers; but upon becoming aware that part of an orange was being
rubbed over his left shoe by the youngest of the children, he groaned
abruptly and found another bench.
A little after six o'clock a clanging and commotion in the train-shed
outside, attending the arrival of a "through express," stirred him from
his torpor, and he walked heavily across the room to the same
ticket-window he had twice blocked; but there was no queue attached to
it now. He rested his elbow upon the apron and his chin upon his hand,
while the clerk waited until he should state his wishes. This was a new
clerk, who had just relieved the other.
"Well! Well!" he said at last.
"I'll take it now," Noble responded.
"What'll you take now?"
"That ticket."
"What ticket?"
"The same one I wanted before," Noble sighed.
The clerk gave him a piercing look, glanced out of the window and saw
that there were no other clients, then went to a desk at the farther end
of his compartment, and took up some clerical work he had in hand.
Noble leaned upon the apron of the window, waiting; and if he thought
anything, he thought the man was serving him.
The high, vaulted room became resonant with voices and the blurred
echoes of mingling footsteps on the marble floor, as passengers from the
express hurried anxiously to the street, or more gaily straggled
through, shouting with friends who came to greet them; and among these
moving groups there walked a youthful fine lady noticeably enlivening to
the dullest eye. She was preceded by a brisk porter who carried two
travelling-bags of a rich sort, as well as a sack of implements for the
game of golf; and she was warm in dark furs, against which the vasty
clump of violets she wore showed dewy gleamings of blue.
At sight of Noble Dill, more than pensive at the ticket-window, she
hesitated, then stopped and observed him. That she should observe
anybody was in a way a coincidence, for, as it happened, she was herself
the most observed person in all the place. She was veiled in two veils,
but she had been seen in the train without these, and some of her
fellow-travellers, though strangers to her, were walking near her in a
hypocritical way, hoping still not to lose sight of her, even veiled.
And although the shroudings permitted the most meagre information of her
features, what they did reveal was harmfully piquant; moreover, there
was a sweetness of figure, a disturbing grace; while nothing could
disguise her air of wearing that many violets casually as a daily
perquisite and matter of course.
[Illustration: _"He stared at her. His elbow sagged away from the
window; the whole person of Noble Dill seemed near collapse."_]
So this observed lady stopped and observed Noble, who in return observed
her not at all, being but semi-conscious. Looked upon thoughtfully, it
is a coincidence that we breathe; certainly it is a mighty coincidence
that we speak to one another and comprehend; for these are true marvels.
But what petty interlacings of human action so pique our sense of
the theatrical that we call them coincidences and are astonished! That
Julia should arrive during Noble's long process of buying a ticket to go
to her was stranger than that she stopped to look at him, though still
not comparable in strangeness to the fact that either of them, or any
living creature, stood upon the whirling earth;--yet when Noble Dill
comprehended what was happening he was amazed.
She spoke to him.
"Noble!" she said.
He stared at her. His elbow sagged away from the window; the whole
person of Noble Dill seemed near collapse. He shook; he had no voice.
"I just this minute got off the train," she said. "Are you going away
somewhere?"
"No," he whispered; then obtained command of a huskiness somewhat
greater in volume. "I'm just standing here."
"I told the porter to get me a taxicab," she said. "If you're going home
for dinner I'll drop you at your house."
"I--I'm--I----" His articulation encountered unsurmountable
difficulties, but Julia had been with him through many such trials
aforetime. She said briskly, "I'm awfully hungry and I want to get
home. Come on--if you like?"
He walked waveringly at her side through the station, and followed her
into the dim interior of the cab, which became fragrant of violets--an
emanation at once ineffable and poisonous.
"I'm so glad I happened to run across you," she said, as they began to
vibrate tremulously in unison with the fierce little engine that drew
them. "I want to hear all the news. Nobody knows I'm home. I didn't
write or telegraph to a soul; and I'll be a complete surprise to father
and everybody--I don't know how pleasant a one! _You_ didn't seem so
frightfully glad to see me, Noble!"
"Am I?" he whispered. "I mean--I mean--I mean: Didn't I?"
"No!" she laughed. "You looked--you looked shocked! It couldn't have
been because I'm ill or anything, because I'm not; and if I were you
couldn't have told it through these two veils. Possibly I'd better take
your expression as a compliment." She paused, then asked hesitatingly,
"Shall I?"
This was the style for which the Atwaters held Julia responsible; but
they were mistaken: she was never able to control it. Now she went
cheerily on: "Perhaps not, as you don't answer. I shouldn't be so bold!
Do you suppose anybody at all will be glad to see me?"
"I--I----" He seemed to hope that words would come in their own good
time.
"Noble!" she cried. "Don't be so glum!" And she touched his arm with her
muff, a fluffy contact causing within him a short convulsion, naturally
invisible. "Noble, aren't you going to tell me what's all the news?"
"There's--some," he managed to inform her. "Some--some news."
"What is it?"
"It's--it's----"
"Never mind," she said soothingly. "Get your breath; I can wait. I hope
nothing's wrong in your family, Noble."
"No. Oh, no."
"It isn't just my turning up unexpectedly that's upset you so, of
course," she dared to say. "Naturally, I know better than to think such
a thing as that."
"Oh, Julia!" he said. "Oh, Julia!"
"What is it, Noble?"
"Noth-ing," he murmured, disjointing the word.
"How odd you happened to be there at the station," she said, "just when
my train came in! You're sure you weren't going away anywhere?"
"No; oh, no."
She was thoughtful, then laughed confidentially. "You're the only person
in town that knows I'm home, Noble."
"I'm glad," he said humbly.
She laughed again. "I came all of a sudden--on an impulse. It's a little
idiotic. I'll tell you all about it, Noble. You see, ten or twelve days
ago I wrote the family a more or less indiscreet letter. That is, I told
them something I wanted them to be discreet about, and, of course, when
I got to thinking it over, I knew they wouldn't. You see, I wrote them
something I wanted them to keep a secret, but the more I thought about
it, the more I saw I'd better hurry back. Yesterday it got into my head
that I'd better jump on the next train for home!"
She paused, then added, "So I did! About ten or twelve days is as long
as anybody has a right to expect the Atwater family connection to keep
the deadliest kind of a secret, isn't it?" And as he did not respond,
she explained, modestly, "Of course, it wasn't a very deadly secret; it
was really about something of only the least importance."
The jar of this understatement restored Noble's voice to a sudden and
startling loudness. "'Only the least importance'!" he shouted. "With a
man named Crum!"
"What!" she cried
"Crum!" Noble insisted. "That's exactly what it said his name was!"
"_What_ said his name was?"
"_The North End Daily Oriole!_"
"What in heaven's name is that?"
"It's the children's paper, Herbert's and Florence's: your own niece and
nephew, Julia! You don't mean you deny it, do you, Julia?"