There was no light in any other part of the house, they discovered,
after abandoning the front door bell for an excursion to the rear.
"That's disheartening to a hungry person," Julia remarked: and then
remembered that she had a key to the front door in her purse. She opened
the door, and lighted the hall chandelier while Noble brought in her
bags from the steps where the taxicab driver had left them.
"There's nobody home at all," Julia said thoughtfully. "Not even Gamin."
"No. Nobody," her sad companion agreed, shaking his head. "Nobody at
all, Julia. Nobody at all." Rousing himself, he went back for the golf
tools, and with a lingering gentleness set them in a corner. Then,
dumbly, he turned to go.
"Wait, please," said Julia. "I want to ask you a few things--especially
about what you've got 'all down in black and white' in your pocket. Will
you shut the front door, if you please, and go into the library and
turn on the lights and wait there while I look over the house and see if
I can find why it's all closed up like this?"
Noble went into the library and found the control of the lights. She
came hurrying in after him.
"It's chilly. The furnace seems to be off," she said. "I'll----" But
instead of declaring her intentions, she enacted them; taking a match
from a little white porcelain trough on the mantelpiece and striking it
on the heel of her glittering shoe. Then she knelt before the grate and
set the flame to paper beneath the kindling-wood and coal. "You mustn't
freeze," she said, with a thoughtful kindness that killed him; and as
she went out of the room he died again;--for she looked back over her
shoulder.
She had pushed up her veils and this was his first sight of that
disastrous face in long empty weeks and weeks. Now he realized that all
his aching reveries upon its contours had shown but pallid likenesses;
for here was the worst thing about Julia's looks;--even her most
extravagant suitor, in absence, could not dream an image of her so
charming as he found herself when he saw her again. Thus, seeing Julia
again was always a discovery. And this glance over her shoulder as she
left a room--not a honeyed glance but rather inscrutable, yet implying
that she thought of the occupant, and might continue to think of him
while gone from him--this was one of those ways of hers that experience
could never drill out of her.
"I'm Robinson Crusoe, Noble," she said, when she came back. "I suppose I
might as well take off my furs, though." But first she unfastened the
great bouquet she wore and tossed it upon a table. Noble was standing
close to the table, and he moved away from it hurriedly--a revulsion
that she failed to notice. She went on to explain, as she dropped her
cloak and stole upon a chair: "Papa's gone away for at least a week.
He's taken his ulster. It doesn't make any difference what the weather
is, but when he's going away for a week or longer, he always takes it
with him, except in summer. If he's only going to be gone two or three
days he takes his short overcoat. And unless I'm here when he leaves
town he always gives the servants a holiday till he gets back; so
they've gone and even taken Gamin with 'em, and I'm all alone in the
house. I can't get even Kitty Silver back until to-morrow, and then I'll
probably have to hunt from house to house among her relatives. Papa left
yesterday, because the numbers on his desk calender are pulled off up
to to-day, and that's the first thing he does when he comes down for
breakfast. So here I am, Robinson Crusoe for to-night at least."
"I suppose," said Noble huskily, "I suppose you'll go to some of your
aunts or brothers or cousins or something."
"No," she said. "My trunk may come up from the station almost any time,
and if I close the house they'll take it back."
"You needn't bother about that, Julia. I'll look after it."
"How?"
"I could sit on the porch till it comes," he said. "I'd tell 'em you
wanted 'em to leave it." He hesitated, painfully. "I--if you want to
lock up the house I--I could wait out on the porch with your trunk, to
see that it was safe, until you come back to-morrow morning."
She looked full at him, and he plaintively endured the examination.
"_Noble!_" Undoubtedly she had a moment's shame that any creature should
come to such a pass for her sake. "What crazy nonsense!" she said; and
sat upon a stool before the crackling fire. "Do sit down, Noble--unless
your dinner will be waiting for you at home?"
"No," he murmured. "They never wait for me. Don't you want me to look
after your trunk?"
"Not by sitting all night with it on the porch!" she said. "I'm going to
stay here myself. I'm not going out; I don't want to see any of the
family to-night."
"I thought you said you were hungry?"
"I am; but there's enough in the pantry. I looked."
"Well, if you don't want to see any of 'em," he suggested, "and they
know your father's away and think the house is empty, they're liable to
notice the lights and come in, and then you'd have to see 'em."
"No, you can't see the lights of this room from the street, and I lit
the lamp at the other end of the hall. The light near the front door,"
Julia added, "I put out."
"You did?"
"I can't see any of 'em to-night," she said resolutely. "Besides, I want
to find out what you meant by what you said in the taxicab before I do
anything else."
"What I meant in the taxicab?" he echoed. "Oh, Julia! Julia!"
She frowned, first at the fire, then, turning her head, at Noble. "You
seem to feel reproachful about something," she observed.
"No, I don't. I don't feel reproachful, Julia. I don't know what I feel,
but I don't feel reproachful."
She smiled faintly. "Don't you? Well, there's something perhaps you do
feel, and that's hungry. Will you stay to dinner with me--if I go and
get it?"
"What?"
"You can have dinner with me--if you want to? You can stay till ten
o'clock--if you want to? Wait!" she said, and jumped up and ran out of
the room.
Half an hour later she came back and called softly to him from the
doorway; and he followed her to the dining-room.
"It isn't much of a dinner, Noble," she said, a little tremulously,
being for once (though strictly as a cook) genuinely apologetic;--but
the scrambled eggs, cold lamb, salad, and coffee were quite as "much of
a dinner" as Noble wanted. To him everything on that table was hallowed,
yet excruciating.
"Let's eat first and talk afterward," Julia proposed; but what she
meant by "talk" evidently did not exclude interchange of information
regarding weather and the health of acquaintances, for she spoke freely
upon these subjects, while Noble murmured in response and swallowed a
little of the sacred food, but more often swallowed nothing. Bitterest
of all was his thought of what this unexampled seclusion with Julia
could have meant to him, were those poisonous violets not at her
waist--for she had put them on again--and were there no Crum in the
South. Without these fatal obstructions, the present moment would have
been to him a bit of what he often thought of as "dream life"; but all
its sweetness was a hurt.
"_Now_ we'll talk!" said Julia, when she had brought him back to the
library fire again, and they were seated before it. "Don't you want to
smoke?" He shook his head dismally, having no heart for what she
proposed. "Well, then," she said briskly, but a little ruefully, "let's
get to the bottom of things. Just what did you mean you had 'in black
and white' in your pocket?"
Slowly Noble drew forth the historic copy of _The North End Daily
Oriole_; and with face averted, placed it in her extended hand.
"What in the world!" she exclaimed, unfolding it; and then as its title
and statement of ownership came into view, "Oh, yes! I see. Aunt Carrie
wrote me that Uncle Joseph had given Herbert a printing-press. I suppose
Herbert's the editor?"
"And that Rooter boy," Noble said sadly. "I think maybe your little
niece Florence has something to do with it, too."
"'Something' to do with it? She usually has _all_ to do with anything
she gets hold of! But what's it got to do with me?"
"You'll see!" he prophesied accurately.
She began to read, laughing at some of the items as she went along; then
suddenly she became rigid, holding the small journal before her in a
transfixed hand.
"Oh!" she cried. "_Oh!_"
"That's--that's what--I meant," Noble explained.
Julia's eyes grew dangerous. "The little fiends!" she cried. "Oh,
really, this is a long-suffering family, but it's time these outrages
were stopped!"
She jumped up. "Isn't it frightful?" she demanded of Noble.
"Yes, it is," he said, with a dismal fervour. "Nobody knows that better
than I do, Julia!"
"I mean _this_!" she cried, extending the _Oriole_ toward him with a
vigorous gesture. "I mean this dreadful story about poor Mr. Crum!"
"But it's true," he said.
"Noble Dill!"
"Julia?"
"Do you dare to say you believed it?"