It may be assumed that the last of the news items was wasted upon Noble Dill and that he never knew of the neighbourhood improvement believed to be imminent as a result of the final touches to the ditch of the Mr. Henry D. Vance backyard.



CHAPTER TWENTY

Throughout that afternoon adult members of the Atwater family connection made futile efforts to secure all the copies of the week's edition of The North End Daily Oriole. It could not be done.

It was a trying time for "the family." Great Aunt Carrie said that she had the "worst afternoon of any of 'em," because young Newland Sanders came to her house at two and did not leave until five; all the time counting over, one by one, the hours he'd spent with Julia since she was seventeen and turned out, unfortunately, to be a Beauty. Newland had not restrained himself, Aunt Carrie said, and long before he left she wished Julia had never been born—and as for Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Junior, the only thing to do with him was to send him to some strict Military School.

Florence's father telephoned to her mother from downtown at three, and said that Mr. George Plum and the ardent vocalist, Clairdyce, had just left his office. They had not called in company, however, but coincidentally; and each had a copy of The North End Daily Oriole, already somewhat worn with folding and unfolding. Mr. Clairdyce's condition was one of desperate calm, Florence's father said, but Mr. Plum's agitation left him rather unpresentable for the street, though he had finally gone forth with his hair just as he had rumpled it, and with his hat in his hand. They wished the truth, they said: Was it true or was it not true? Mr. Atwater had told them that he feared Julia was indeed engaged, though he knew nothing of her fiance's previous marriage or marriages, or of the number of his children. They had responded that they cared nothing about that. This man Crum's record was a matter of indifference to them, they said. All they wanted to know was whether Julia was engaged or not—and she was!

"The odd thing to me," Mr. Atwater continued to his wife, "is where on earth Herbert could have got his story about this Crum's being a widower, and divorced, and with all those children. Do you know if Julia's written any of the family about these things and they haven't told the rest of us?"

"No," said Mrs. Atwater. "I'm sure she hasn't. Every letter she's written to any of us has passed all through the family, and I know I've seen every one of 'em. She's never said anything about him at all, except that he was a lawyer. I'm sure I can't imagine where Herbert got his awful information; I never thought he was the kind of boy to just make up such things out of whole cloth."

Florence, sitting quietly in a chair near by, with a copy of "Sesame and Lilies" in her lap, listened to her mother's side of this conversation with an expression of impersonal interest; and if she could have realized how completely her parents had forgotten (naturally enough) the details of their first rambling discussion of Julia's engagement, she might really have felt as little alarm as she showed.

"Well," said Mr. Atwater, "I'm glad our branch of the family isn't responsible. That's a comfort, anyhow, especially as people are reading copies of Herbert's dreadful paper all up and down the town, my clerk says. He tells me that over at the Unity Trust Company, where young Murdock Hawes is cashier, they only got hold of one copy, but typewrote it and multigraphed it, and some of 'em have already learned it by heart to recite to poor young Hawes. He's the one who sent Julia the three fivepound boxes of chocolates from New York all at the same time, you remember."

"Yes," Mrs. Atwater sighed. "Poor thing!"

"Florence is out among the family, I suppose?" he inquired.

"No; she's right here. She's just started to read Ruskin this afternoon. She says she's going to begin and read all of him straight through. That's very nice, don't you think?"

He seemed to muse before replying.

"I think that's very nice, at her age especially," Mrs. Atwater urged. "Don't you?"

"Ye-es! Oh, yes! At least I suppose so. Ah—you don't think—of course she hasn't had anything at all to do with this?"

"Well, I don't see how she could. You know Aunt Fanny told us how Herbert declared before them all, only last Sunday night, that Florence should never have one thing to do with his printing-press, and said they wouldn't even let her come near it."

"Yes, that's a fact. I'm glad Herbert made it so clear that she can't be implicated. I suppose the family are all pretty well down on Uncle Joseph?"

"Uncle Joseph is being greatly blamed," said Mrs. Atwater primly. "He really ought to have known better than to put such an instrument as a printing-press into the hands of an irresponsible boy of that age. Of course it simply encouraged him to print all kinds of things. We none of us think Uncle Joseph ever dreamed that Herbert would publish, anything exactly like this, and of course Uncle Joseph says himself he never dreamed such a thing; he's said so time and time and time again, all afternoon. But of course he's greatly blamed."

"I suppose there've been quite a good many of 'em over there blaming him?" her husband inquired.

"Yes—until he telephoned to a garage and hired a car and went for a drive. He said he had plenty of money with him and didn't know when he'd be back."

"Serves him right," said Mr. Atwater. "Does anybody know where Herbert is?"

"Not yet!"

"Well——" and he returned to a former theme. "I am glad we aren't implicated. Florence is right there with you, you say?"

"Yes," Mrs. Atwater replied. "She's right here, reading. You aren't worried about her, are you?" she added.

"Oh, no; I'm sure it's all right. I only thought——"

"Only thought what?"

"Well, it did strike me as curious," said Mr. Atwater; "especially after Aunt Fanny's telling us how Herbert declared Florence could never have a single thing to do with his paper again——"

"Well, what?"

"Well, here's her poem right at the top of it, and a very friendly item about her history mark of last June. It doesn't seem like Herbert to be so complimentary to Florence, all of a sudden. Just struck me as rather curious; that's all."

"Why, yes," said Mrs. Atwater, "it does seem a little odd, when you think of it."

"Have you asked Florence if she had anything to do with getting out this week's Oriole?"

"Why, no; it never occurred to me, especially after what Aunt Fanny told us," said Mrs. Atwater. "I'll ask her now."

But she was obliged to postpone putting the intended question. "Sesame and Lilies" lay sweetly upon the seat of the chair that Florence had occupied; but Florence herself had gone somewhere else.

She had gone for a long, long ramble; and pedestrians who encountered her, and happened to notice her expression, were interested; and as they went on their way several of them interrupted the course of their meditations to say to themselves that she was the most thoughtful looking young girl they had ever seen. There was a touch of wistfulness about her, too; as of one whose benevolence must renounce all hope of comprehension and reward.

Now, among those who observed her unusual expression was a gentleman of great dimensions disposed in a closed automobile that went labouring among mudholes in an unpaved outskirt of the town. He rapped upon the glass before him, to get the driver's attention, and a moment later the car drew up beside Florence, as she stood in a deep reverie at the intersection of two roads.

Uncle Joseph opened the door and took his cigar from his mouth. "Get in, Florence," he said. "I'll take you for a ride." She started violently; whereupon he restored the cigar to his mouth, puffed upon it, breathing heavily the while as was his wont, and added, "I'm not going home. I'm out for a nice long ride. Get in."

"I was takin' a walk," she said dubiously. "I haf to take a whole lot of exercise, and I ought to walk and walk and walk. I guess I ought to keep on walkin'."

"Get in," he said. "I'm out riding. I don't know when I'll get home!"

Florence stepped in, Uncle Joseph closed the door, and the car slowly bumped onward.

"You know where Herbert is?" Uncle Joseph inquired.

"No," said Florence, in a gentle voice.

"I do," he said. "Herbert and your friend Henry Rooter came to our house with one of the last copies of the Oriole they were distributing to subscribers; and after I read it I kind of foresaw that the feller responsible for their owning a printing-press was going to be in some sort of family trouble or other. I had quite a talk with 'em and they hinted they hadn't had much to do with this number of the paper, except the mechanical end of it; but they wouldn't come out right full with what they meant. They seemed to have some good reason for protecting a third party, and said quite a good deal about their fathers and mothers being but mortal and so on; so Henry and Herbert thought they oughtn't to expose this third party—whoever she may happen to be. Well, I thought they better not stay too long, because I was compromised enough already, without being seen in their company; and I gave 'em something to help 'em out with at the movies. You can stay at movies an awful long time, and if you've got money enough to go to several of 'em, why, you're fixed for pretty near as long as you please. A body ought to be able to live a couple o' months at the movies for nine or ten dollars, I should think."

He was silent for a time, then asked, "I don't suppose your papa and mamma will be worrying about you, will they, Florence?"

"Oh, no!" she said quickly. "Not in the least! There was nothin' at all for me to do at our house this afternoon."

"That's good," he said, "because before we go back I was thinking some of driving around by way of Texas."

Florence looked at him trustfully and said nothing. It seemed to her that he suspected something; she was not sure; but his conversation was a little peculiar, though not in the least sinister. Indeed she was able to make out that he had more the air of an accomplice than of a prosecutor or a detective. Nevertheless, she was convinced that far, far the best course for her to pursue, during the next few days, would be one of steadfast reserve. And such a course was congenial to her mood, which was subdued, not to say apprehensive; though she was sure her recent conduct, if viewed sympathetically, would be found at least Christian. The trouble was that probably it would not be viewed sympathetically. No one would understand how carefully and tactfully she had prepared the items of the Oriole to lead suavely up to the news of Aunt Julia's engagement and break it to Noble Dill in a manner that would save his reason.

Therefore, on account of this probable lack of comprehension on the part of the family and public, it seemed to her that the only wise and good course to follow would be to claim nothing for herself, but to allow Herbert and Henry to remain undisturbed in full credit for publishing the Oriole. This involved a disappointment, it is true; nevertheless, she decided to bear it.

She had looked forward to surprising "the family" delightfully. As they fluttered in exclamation about her, she had expected to say, "Oh, the poem isn't so much, I guess—I wrote it quite a few days ago and I'm writing a couple new ones now—but I did take quite a lot o' time and trouble with the rest of the paper, because I had to write every single word of it, or else let Henry and Herbert try to, and 'course they'd just of ruined it. Oh, it isn't so much to talk about, I guess; it just sort of comes to me to do things that way."

Thirteen attempts to exercise a great philanthropy, and every grown person in sight, with the possible exception of Great-Uncle Joseph, goes into wholly unanticipated fits of horror. Cause and effect have no honest relation: Fate operates without justice or even rational sequence; life and the universe appear to be governed, not in order and with system, but by Chance, becoming sinister at any moment without reason.

And while Florence, thus a pessimist, sat beside fat Uncle Joseph during their long, long drive, relatives of hers were indeed going into fits; at least, so Florence would have described their gestures and incoherences of comment. Moreover, after the movies, straight into such a fitful scene did the luckless Herbert walk when urged homeward by thoughts of food, at about six that evening. Henry Rooter had strongly advised him against entering the house.

"You better not," he said earnestly. "Honest, you better not, Herbert!"

"Well, we got apple dumplings for dinner," Herbert said, his tone showing the strain of mental uncertainty. "Eliza told me this morning we were goin' to have 'em. I kind of hate to go in, but I guess I better, Henry."

"You won't see any apple dumplings," Henry predicted.

"Well, I believe I better try it, Henry."

"You better come home with me. My father and mother'll be perfectly willing to have you."

"I know that," said Herbert. "But I guess I better go in and try it, anyhow, Henry. I didn't have anything to do with what's in the Oriole. It's every last word ole Florence's doing. I haven't got any more right to be picked on for that than a child."

"Yes," Henry admitted. "But if you go and tell 'em so, I bet she'd get even with you some way that would probably get me in trouble, too, before we get through with the job. I wouldn't tell 'em if I was you, Herbert!"

"Well, I wasn't intending to," Herbert responded gloomily; and the thought of each, unknown to the other, was the same, consisting of a symbolic likeness of Wallie Torbin at his worst. "I ought to tell on Florence; by rights I ought," said Herbert; "but I've decided I won't. There's no tellin' what she wouldn't do. Not that she could do anything to me, particyourly——"

"Nor me, either," his friend interposed hurriedly. "I don't worry about anything like that! Still, if I was you I wouldn't tell. She's only a girl, we got to remember."

"Yes," said Herbert. "That's the way I look at it, Henry; and the way I look at it is just simply this: long as she is a girl, why, simply let her go. You can't tell what she'd do, and so what's the use to go and tell on a girl?"

"That's the way I look at it," Henry agreed. "What's the use? If I was in your place, I'd act just the same way you do."

"Well," said Herbert, "I guess I better go on in the house, Henry. It's a good while after dark."

"You're makin' a big mistake!" Henry Rooter called after him. "You won't see any apple dumplings, I bet a hunderd dollars! You better come on home with me."

Herbert no more than half opened his front door before he perceived that his friend's advice had been excellent. So clearly Herbert perceived this, that he impulsively decided not to open the door any farther, but on the contrary to close it and retire; and he would have done so, had his mother not reached forth and detained him. She was, in fact, just inside that door, standing in the hall with one of his great-aunts, one of his aunts, two aunts-by-marriage, and an elderly unmarried cousin, who were all just on the point of leaving. However, they changed their minds and decided to remain, now that Herbert was among them.

The captive's father joined them, a few minutes later, but it had already become clear to Herbert that The North End Daily Oriole was in one sense a thing of the past, though in another sense this former owner and proprietor was certain that he would never hear the last of it. However, on account of the life of blackmail and slavery now led by the members of the old regime, the Oriole's extinction was far less painful to Herbert than his father supposed; and the latter wasted a great deal of severity, insisting that the printing-press should be returned that very night to Uncle Joseph. Herbert's heartiest retrospective wish was that the ole printing-press had been returned to Uncle Joseph long ago.

"If you can find him to give it to!" Aunt Harriet suggested. "Nobody knows where he goes when he gets the way he did this afternoon when we were discussing it with him! I only hope he'll be back to-night!"

"He can't stay away forever," Aunt Fanny remarked. "That garage is charging him five dollars an hour for the automobile he's in, and surely even Joseph will decide there's a limit to wildness some time!"

"I don't care when he comes back," Herbert's father declared grimly. "Whenever he does he's got to take that printing-press back—and Herbert will be let out of the house long enough to carry it over. His mother or I will go with him."

Herbert bore much more than this. He had seated himself on the third step of the stairway, and maintained as much dogged silence as he could. Once, however, they got a yelp of anguish out of him. It was when Cousin Virginia said: "Oh, Herbert, Herbert! How could you make up that terrible falsehood about Mr. Crum? And, think of it; right on the same page with your cousin Florence's pure little poem!"

Herbert uttered sounds incoherent but loud, and expressive of a supreme physical revulsion. The shocked audience readily understood that he liked neither Cousin Virginia's chiding nor Cousin Florence's pure little poem.

"Shame!" said his father.

Herbert controlled himself. It could be seen that his spirit was broken, when Aunt Fanny mourned, shaking her head at him, smiling ruefully:

"Oh, if boys could only be girls!"

Herbert just looked at her.

"The worst thing," said his father;—"that is, if there's any part of it that's worse than another—the worst thing about it all is this rumour about Noble Dill."

"What about that poor thing?" Aunt Harriet asked. "We haven't heard."

"Why, I walked up from downtown with old man Dill," said Mr. Atwater, "and the Dill family are all very much worried. It seems that Noble started downtown after lunch, as usual, and pretty soon he came back to the house and he had a copy of this awful paper that little Florence had given him, and——"

"Who gave it to him?" Aunt Fanny asked. "Who?"

"Little Florence."

"Why, that's curious," Cousin Virginia murmured. "I must telephone and ask her mother about that."

The brooding Herbert looked up, and there was a gleam in his dogged eye; but he said nothing.

"Go on," Aunt Harriet urged. "What did Noble do?"

"Why, his mother said he just went up to his room and changed his shoes and necktie——"

"I thought so," Aunt Fanny whispered. "Crazy!"

"And then," Mr. Atwater continued, "he left the house and she supposed he'd gone down to the office; but she was uneasy, and telephoned his father. Noble hadn't come. He didn't come all afternoon, and he didn't go back to the house; and they telephoned around to every place he could go that they know of, and they couldn't find him or hear anything about him at all—not anywhere." Mr. Atwater coughed, and paused.

"But what," Aunt Harriet cried;—"what do they think's become of him?"

"Old man Dill said they were all pretty anxious," said Mr. Atwater. "They're afraid Noble has—they're afraid he's disappeared."

Aunt Fanny screamed.

Then, in perfect accord, they all turned to look at Herbert, who rose and would have retired upstairs had he been permitted.

As that perturbing evening wore on, word gradually reached the most outlying members of the Atwater family connection that Noble Dill was missing. Ordinarily, this bit of news would have caused them no severe anxiety. Noble's person and intellect were so commonplace—"insignificant" was the term usually preferred in his own circle—that he was considered to be as nearly negligible as it is charitable to consider a fellow-being. True, there was one thing that set him apart; he was found worthy of a superlative when he fell in love with Julia; and of course this distinction caused him to become better known and more talked about than he had been in his earlier youth.

However, the eccentricities of a person in such an extremity of love are seldom valued except as comedy, and even then with no warmth of heart for the comedian, but rather with an incredulous disdain; so it is safe to say that under other circumstances, Noble might have been missing, indeed, and few of the Atwaters would have missed him. But as matters stood they worried a great deal about him, fearing that a rash act on his part might reflect notoriety upon themselves on account of their beautiful relative—and The North End Daily Oriole. And when nine o'clock came and Mrs. Dill reported to Herbert's father, over the telephone, that nothing had yet been heard of her son, the pressure of those who were blaming the Oriole more than they blamed Julia became so wearing that Herbert decided he would rather spend the remaining days of his life running away from Wallie Torbin than put in any more of such a dog's evening as he was putting in. Thus he defined it.

He made a confession; that is to say, it was a proclamation. He proclaimed his innocence. He began history with a description of events distinctly subsequent to Sunday pastimes with Patty Fairchild, and explained how he and Henry had felt that their parents would not always be with them, and as their parents wished them to be polite, they had resolved to be polite to Florence. Proceeding, he related in detail her whole journalistic exploit.

Of the matter in hand he told the perfect and absolute truth—and was immediately refuted, confuted, and demonstrated to be a false witness by Aunt Fanny, Aunt Carrie, and Cousin Virginia, who had all heard him vehemently declare, no longer ago than the preceding Sunday evening, that he and his partner had taken secure measures to prevent Florence from ever again setting foot within the Newspaper Building. In addition, he was quite showered with definitions; and these, though so various, all sought to phrase but the one subject: his conduct in seeking to drag Florence into the mire, when she was absent and could not defend herself. Poor Florence would answer later in the evening, he was told severely; and though her cause was thus championed against the slander, it is true that some of her defenders felt stirrings of curiosity in regard to Florence. In fact, there was getting to be something almost like a cloud upon her reputation. There were several things for her to explain;—among them, her taking it upon herself to see that Noble received a copy of the Oriole, and also her sudden departure from home and rather odd protraction of absence therefrom. It was not thought she was in good company. Uncle Joseph had telephoned from a suburb that they were dining at a farmhouse and would thence descend to the general region of the movies.

"Nobody knows what that man'll do, when he decides to!" Aunt Carrie said nervously. "Letting the poor child stay up so late! She ought to be in bed this minute, even if it is Saturday night! Or else she ought to be here to listen to her own bad little cousin trying to put his terrible responsibility on her shoulders."

One item of this description of himself the badgered Herbert could not bear in silence, although he had just declared that since the truth was so ill-respected among his persecutors he would open his mouth no more until the day of his death. He passed over "bad," but furiously stated his height in feet, inches, and fractions of inches.

Aunt Fanny shook her head in mourning. "That may be, Herbert," she said gently. "But you must try to realize it can't bring poor young Mr. Dill back to his family."

Again Herbert just looked at her. He had no indifference more profound than that upon which her strained conception of the relation between cause and effect seemed to touch;—from his point of view, to be missing should be the lightest of calamities. It is true that he was concerned with the restoration of Noble Dill to the rest of the Dills so far as such an event might affect his own incomparable misfortunes, but not otherwise. He regarded Noble and Noble's disappearance merely as unfair damage to himself, and he continued to look at this sorrowing great-aunt of his until his thoughts made his strange gaze appear to her so hardened that she shook her head and looked away.

"Poor young Mr. Dill!" she said. "If someone could only have been with him and kept talking to him until he got used to the idea a little!"

Cousin Virginia nodded comprehendingly. "Yes, it might have tided him over," she said. "He wasn't handsome, nor impressive, of course, nor anything like that, but he always spoke so nicely to people on the street. I'm sure he never harmed even a kitten, poor soul!"

"I'm sure he never did," Herbert's mother agreed gently. "Not even a kitten. I do wonder where he is now."

But Aunt Fanny uttered a little cry of protest. "I'm afraid we may hear!" she said. "Any moment!"



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

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.



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?"

She was in great confusion: "Do I deny what?"

"That his name's Crum!" Noble said passionately. "That his name's Crum and that he's a widower and he's been divorced and's got nobody knows how many children!"

Julia sought to collect herself. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "If you mean that I happened to meet a very charming man while I was away, and that his name happened to be Crum, I don't know why I should go to the trouble of denying it. But if Mr. Crum has had the experiences you say he has, it is certainly news to me! I think someone told me he was only twenty-six years old. He looked rather younger."

"You 'think someone told' you!" Noble groaned. "Oh, Julia! And here it is, all down in black and white, in my pocket!"

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about." Julia's tone was cold, and she drew herself up haughtily, though the gesture was ineffective in the darkness of that quivering interior. The quivering stopped just then, however, as the taxicab came to a rather abrupt halt before her house.

"Will you come in with me a moment, please?" Julia said as she got out. "There are some things I want to ask you—and I'm sure my father hasn't come home from downtown yet. There's no light in the front part of the house."



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

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?"

He sprang up. "It isn't true?"

"Not one word of it! I told you Mr. Crum is only twenty-six. He hasn't been out of college more than three or four years, and it's the most terrible slander to say he's ever been married at all!"

Noble dropped back into his chair of misery. "I thought you meant it wasn't true."

"I've just told you there isn't one word of tr——"

"But you're—engaged," Noble gulped. "You're engaged to him, Julia!"

She appeared not to hear this. "I suppose it can be lived down," she said. "To think of Uncle Joseph putting such a thing into the hands of those awful children!"

"But, Julia, you're eng——"

"Noble!" she said sharply.

"Well, you are eng——"

Julia drew herself up. "Different people mean different things by that word," she said with severity, like an annoyed school-teacher. "There are any number of shades of meaning to words; and if I used the word you mention, in writing home to the family, I may have used a certain shade and they may have thought I intended another."

"But, Julia——"

"Mr. Crum is a charming young man," she continued with the same primness. "I liked him very much indeed. I liked him very, very much. I liked him very, very——"

"I understand," he interrupted. "Don't say it any more, Julia."

"No; you don't understand! At first I liked him very much—in fact, I still do, of course—I'm sure he's one of the best and most attractive young men in the world. I think he's a man any girl ought to be happy with, if he were only to be considered by himself. I don't deny that. I liked him very much indeed, and I don't deny that for several days after he—after he proposed to me—I don't deny I thought something serious might come of it. But at that time, Noble, I hadn't—hadn't really thought of what it meant to give up living here at home, with all the family and everything—and friends—friends like you, Noble. I hadn't thought what it would mean to me to give all this up. And besides, there was something very important. At the time I wrote that letter mentioning poor Mr. Crum to the family, Noble, I hadn't—I hadn't——" She paused, visibly in some distress. "I hadn't——"

"You hadn't what?" he cried.

"I hadn't met his mother!"

Noble leaped to his feet. "Julia! You aren't—you aren't engaged?"

"I am not," she answered decisively. "If I ever was—in the slightest—I certainly am not now."

Poor Noble was transfigured. He struggled; making half-formed gestures, speaking half-made words. A rapture glowed upon him.

"Julia—Julia——" He choked. "Julia, promise me something. Will you promise me something? Julia, promise to promise me something."

"I will," she said quickly. "What do you want me to do?"

Then he saw that it was his time to speak; that this was the moment for him to dare everything and ask for the utmost he could hope from her.

"Give me your word!" he said, still radiantly struggling. "Give me your word—your word—your word and your sacred promise, Julia—that you'll never be engaged to anybody at all!"



CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

At six minutes after four o'clock on the second afternoon following Julia's return, Noble Dill closed his own gate behind him and set forth upon the four-minute walk that would bring him to Julia's. He wore a bit of scarlet geranium in the buttonhole of his new light overcoat; he flourished a new walking-stick and new grey gloves. As for his expression, he might have been a bridegroom.

Passing the mouth of an alley, as he swung along the street, he was aware of a commotion, of missiles hurled and voices clashed. In this alley there was a discord: passion and mockery were here inimically intermingled.

Casting a glance that way, Noble could see but one person; a boy of fourteen who looked through a crack in a board fence, steadfastly keeping an eye to this aperture and as continuously calling through it, holding his head to a level for this purpose, but at the same time dancing—and dancing tauntingly, it was conveyed—with the other parts of his body. His voice was now sweet, now piercing, and again far too dulcet with the overkindness of burlesque; and if, as it seemed, he was unburdening his spleen, his spleen was a powerful one and gorged. He appeared to be in a torment of tormenting; and his success was proved by the pounding of bricks, parts of bricks and rocks of size upon the other side of the fence, as close to the crack as might be.

"Oh, dolling!" he wailed, his tone poisonously amorous. "Oh, dolling Henery! Oo's dot de mos' booful eyes in a dray bid nasty world. Henery! Oh, has I dot booful eyes, dolling Pattywatty? Yes, I has! I has dot pretty eyes!" His voice rose unbearably. "Oh, what prettiest eyes I dot! Me and Herbie Atwater! Oh, my booful eyes! Oh, my booful——"

But even as he reached this apex, the head, shoulders, and arms of Herbert Atwater rose momentarily above the fence across the alley, behind the tormentor. Herbert's expression was implacably resentful, and so was the gesture with which he hurled an object at the comedian preoccupied with the opposite fence. This object, upon reaching its goal, as it did more with a splash than a thud, was revealed as a tomato, presumably in a useless state. The taunter screamed in astonishment, and after looking vainly for an assailant, began necessarily to remove his coat.

Noble, passing on, thought he recognized the boy as one of the Torbin family, but he was not sure, and he had no idea that the episode was in any possible manner to be connected with his own recent history. How blindly we walk our ways! As Noble flourished down the street, there appeared a wan face at a prison window; and the large eyes looked out upon him wistfully. But Noble went on, as unwitting that he had to do with this prison as that he had to do with Master Torbin's tomato.

The face at the window was not like Charlotte Corday's, nor was the window barred, though the prisoner knew a little solace in wondering if she did not suggest that famous picture. For all purposes, except during school hours, the room was certainly a cell; and the term of imprisonment was set at three days. Uncle Joseph had been unable to remain at the movies forever: people do have to go home eventually, especially when accompanied by thirteen-year-old great-nieces. Florence had finally to face the question awaiting her; and it would have been better for her had she used less imagination in her replies.

Yet she was not wholly despondent as her eyes followed the disappearing figure of Noble Dill. His wholesome sprightliness was visible at any distance; and who would not take a little pride in having been even the mistaken instrument of saving so gay a young man from the loss of his reason? No; Florence was not cast down. Day-after-to-morrow she would taste Freedom again, and her profoundest regret was that after all her Aunt Julia was not to be married. Florence had made definite plans for the wedding, especially for the principal figure at the ceremony. This figure, as Florence saw things, would have been that of the "Flower Girl," naturally a niece of the bride; but she was able to dismiss the bright dream with some philosophy. And to console her for everything, had she not a star in her soul? Had she not discovered that she could write poetry whenever she felt like it?

Noble passed from her sight, but nevertheless continued his radiant progress down Julia's Street. Life stretched before him, serene, ineffably fragrant, unending. He saw it as a flower-strewn sequence of calls upon Julia, walks with Julia, talks with Julia by the library fire. Old Mr. Atwater was to be away four days longer, and Julia, that great-hearted bride-not-to-be, had given him her promise.

Blushing, indeed divinely, she had promised him upon her sacred word, never so long as she lived, to be engaged to anybody at all.

THE END

* * * * *

BOOKS BY BOOTH TARKINGTON

ALICE ADAMS BEASLEY'S CHRISTMAS PARTY BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN CHERRY CONQUEST OF CANAAN GENTLE JULIA HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE HIS OWN PEOPLE IN THE ARENA MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE PENROD PENROD AND SAM RAMSEY MILHOLLAND SEVENTEEN THE BEAUTIFUL LADY THE FLIRT THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA THE GIBSON UPRIGHT THE GUEST OF QUESNAY THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS THE MAN FROM HOME THE TURMOIL THE TWO VANREVELS

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

1. Punctuation normalized to contemporary standards.

2. List of "Books by Booth Tarkington" originally before frontispiece moved to end of text.