“Well, now,” said Noble, between his teeth— “now, I am goin’ to do something!”
He turned his back upon that painful house, walked out to the front gate, opened it, passed through, and looked southward. Not quite two blocks away there shone the lights of a corner drug store, still open to custom though the hour was nearing midnight. He walked straight to the door of this place, which stood ajar, but paused before entering, and looked long and nervously at the middle-aged proprietor who was unconscious of his regard, and lounged in a chair, drowsily stroking a cat upon his lap. Noble walked in.
“Good evening,” said the proprietor, rising and brushing himself languidly. “Cat hairs,” he said apologetically. “Sheddin’, I reckon.” Then, as he went behind the counter, he inquired: “How’s the party goin’ off?”
“It’s — it’s — —” Noble hesitated. “I stepped in to — to — —”
The druggist opened a glass case. “Aw right,” he said, blinking, and tossed upon the counter a package of Orduma cigarettes. “Old Atwater’d have convulsions, I reckon,” he remarked, “if he had to lay awake and listen to all that noise. Price ain’t changed,” he added, referring humorously to the purchase he mistakenly supposed Noble wished to make. “F’teen cents, same as yesterday and the day before.”
Noble placed the sum upon the counter. “I — I was thinking — —” He gulped.
“Huh?” said the druggist placidly, for he was too sleepy to perceive the strangeness of his customer’s manner.
Noble lighted an Orduma with an unsteady hand, leaned upon the counter, and inquired in a voice that he strove to make casual: “Is — is the soda fountain still running this late?”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t know,” said Noble. “I suppose you have more calls for soda water than you do for — for — for real liquor?”
The druggist laughed. “Funny thing: I reckon we don’t have more’n half the calls for real liquor than what we used to before we went dry.”
Noble breathed deeply. “I s’pose you probably sell quite a good deal of it though, at that. By the glass, I mean — such as a glass of something kind of strong — like — like whiskey. That is, I sort of supposed so. I mean I thought I’d ask you about this.”
“No,” said the druggist, yawning. “It never did pay well — not on this corner, anyhow. Once there used to be a little money in it, but not much.” He roused himself somewhat. “Well, it’s about twelve. Anything you wanted ‘cept them Ordumas before I close up?”
Noble gulped again. He had grown pale. “I want — —” he said abruptly, then his heart seemed to fail him. “I want a glass of — —” Once more he stopped and swallowed. His shoulders drooped, and he walked across to the soda fountain. “Well,” he said, “I’ll take a chocolate sundae.”
The thought of going back to Julia’s party was unendurable, yet a return was necessary on account of his new hat, the abandonment of which he did not for a moment consider. But about half way, as he walked slowly along, he noticed an old horse-block at the curbstone, and sat down there. He could hear the music at Julia’s, sometimes loud and close at hand, sometimes seeming to be almost a mile away. “All right!” he said, so bitter had he grown. “Dance! Go on and dance!”
... When finally he reëntered Julia’s gate, he shuffled up the walk, his head drooping, and ascended the steps and crossed the veranda and the threshold of the front door in the same manner.
Julia stood before him.
“Noble Dill!” she exclaimed.
As for Noble, his dry throat refused its office; he felt that he might never be able to speak to Julia again, even if he tried.
“Where in the world have you been all evening?” she cried.
“Why, Jew-Julia!” he quavered. “Did you notice that I was gone?”
“Did I ‘notice’!” she said. “You never came near me all evening after the first dance! Not even at supper!”
“You wouldn’t — you didn’t — —” he faltered. “You wouldn’t do anything all evening except dance with that old Clairdyce and listen to him trying to sing.”
But Julia would let no one suffer if she could help it; and she could always help Noble. She made her eyes mysterious and used a voice of honey and roses. “You don’t think I’d rather have danced with him, do you, Noble?”
Immediately sparks seemed to crackle about his head. He started.
“What?” he said.
The scent of heliotrope enveloped him; she laughed her silver harp-strings laugh, and lifted her arms toward the dazzled young man. “It’s the last dance,” she said. “Don’t you want to dance it with me?”
Then to the spectators it seemed that Noble Dill went hopping upon a waxed floor and upon Julia’s little slippers; he was bumped and bumping everywhere; but in reality he floated in Elysian ether, immeasurably distant from earth, his hand just touching the bodice of an angelic doll.
Then, on his way home, a little later, with his new hat on the back of his head, his stick swinging from his hand, and a semi-fragrant Orduma between his lips, his condition was precisely as sweet as the condition in which he had walked to the party.
No echoes of “The Sunshine of Your Smile” cursed his memory — that lover’s little memory fresh washed in heliotrope — and when his mother came to his door, after he got home, and asked him if he’d had “a nice time at the party,” he said:
“Just glorious!” and believed it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS A pretty morning, two weeks after Julia’s Dance; and blue and lavender shadows, frayed with mid-summer sunshine, waggled gayly across the grass beneath the trees of the tiny orchard, but trembled with timidity as they hurried over the abnormal surfaces of Mrs. Silver as she sat upon the steps of the “back porch.” Her right hand held in security one end of a leather leash; the other end of the leash was fastened to a new collar about the neck of an odd and fascinating dog. Seated upon the brick walk at her feet, he was regarding her with a gravity that seemed to discomfort her. She was unable to meet his gaze, and constantly averted her own whenever it furtively descended to his. In fact, her expression and manner were singular, denoting embarrassment, personal hatred, and a subtle bedazzlement. She could not look at him, yet could not keep herself from looking at him. There was something here that arose out of the depths of natural character; it was intrinsic in the two personalities, that is to say; and was in addition to the bitterness consequent upon a public experience, just past, which had been brought upon Mrs. Silver partly by the dog’s appearance (in particular the style and colour of his hair) and partly by his unprecedented actions in her company upon the highway.
She addressed him angrily, yet with a profound uneasiness.
“Dog!” she said. “You ain’t feelin’ as skittish as whut you did, li’l while ago, is you? My glory! I dess would like to lay my han’ to you’ hide once, Mister! I take an’ lam you this livin’ minute if I right sho’ you wouldn’t take an’ bite me.”
She jerked the leash vindictively, upon which the dog at once “sat up” on his haunches, put his forepaws together above his nose, in an attitude of prayer, and looked at her inscrutably from under the great bang of hair that fell like a black chrysanthemum over his forehead. Beneath this woolly lambrequin his eyes were visible as two garnet sparks of which the coloured woman was only too nervously aware. She gasped.
“Look-a-here, dog, who’s went an’ ast you to take an’ pray fer ’em?”
He remained motionless and devout.
“My goo’niss!” she said to him. “If you goin’ keep on thisaway whut you is been, I’m goin’ to up an’ go way from here, ri’ now!” Then she said a remarkable thing. “Listen here, Mister! I ain’ never los’ no gran’ child, an’ I ain’ goin’ ‘dop’ no stranger fer one, neither!”
The explanation rests upon the looks and manners of him whom she addressed. This dog was of a kind at the top of dog kingdoms. His size was neither insignificant nor great; probably
his weight would have been between a fourth and a third of a St. Bernard’s. He had the finest head for adroit thinking that is known among dogs; and he had an athletic body, the forepart muffled and lost in a mass of corded black fleece, but the rest of him sharply clipped from the chest aft; and his trim, slim legs were clipped, though tufts were left at his ankles, and at the tip of his short tail, with two upon his hips, like fanciful buttons of an imaginary jacket; for thus have such dogs been clipped to a fashion proper and comfortable for them ever since (and no doubt long before) an Imperial Roman sculptor so chiselled one in bas-relief. In brief, this dog, who caused Kitty Silver so much disquietude, as she sat upon the back steps at Mr. Atwater’s, belonged to that species of which no Frenchman ever sees a specimen without smiling and murmuring: “Caniche!” He was that golden-hearted little clown of all the world, a French Poodle.
To arrive at what underlay Mrs. Silver’s declaration that she had never lost a grandchild and had no intention of adopting a stranger in the place of one, it should be first understood that in many respects she was a civilized person. The quality of savagery, barbarism, or civilization in a tribe may be tested by the relations it characteristically maintains with domestic animals; and tribes that eat dogs are often inferior to those inclined to ceremonial cannibalism. Likewise, the civilization, barbarism, or savagery of an individual may be estimated by the same test, which sometimes gives us evidence of sporadic reversions to mud. Such reversions are the stomach priests: whatever does not minister to their own bodily inwards is a “parasite.” Dogs are “parasites”; they should not live, because to fat and eat them somehow appears uncongenial. “Kill Dogs and Feed Pigs,” they write to the papers, and, with a Velasquez available, would burn it rather than go chilly. “Kill dogs, feed pigs, and let me eat the pigs!” they cry, even under no great stress, these stern economists who have not noticed how wasteful the Creator is proved to be if He made themselves. They take the strictly intestinal view of life. It is not intelligent; parasite bacilli will get them in the end.
Mrs. Silver was not of these. True, she sometimes professed herself averse to all “animals,” but this meant nothing more than her unwillingness to have her work increased by their introduction into the Atwater household. No; the appearance of the dog had stirred something queer and fundamental within her. All coloured people look startled the first time they see a French Poodle, but there is a difference. Most coloured men do not really worry much about being coloured, but many coloured women do. In the expression of a coloured man, when he looks at a black and woolly French Poodle, there is something fonder and more indulgent than there is in the expression of a coloured woman when she looks at one. In fact, when some coloured women see a French Poodle they have the air of being insulted.
Now, when Kitty Silver had first set eyes on this poodle, an hour earlier, she looked, and plainly was, dumfounded. Never in her life had she seen a creature so black, so incredibly black, or with hair so kinky, so incredibly kinky. Julia had not observed Mrs. Silver closely nor paused to wonder what thoughts were rousing in her mind, but bade her take the poodle forth for exercise outdoors and keep him strictly upon the leash. Without protest, though wearing a unique expression, Kitty obeyed; she walked round the block with this mystifying dog; and during the promenade had taken place the episode that so upset her nerves.
She had given a little jerk to the leash, speaking sharply to the poodle in reproach for some lingering near a wonderful sidewalk smell, imperceptible to any one except himself. Instantly the creature rose and walked beside her on his hind legs. He continued to parade in this manner, rapidly, but nevertheless as if casually, without any apparent inconvenience; and Mrs. Silver, never having seen a dog do such a thing before, for more than a yard or so, and then only under the pressure of many inducements, was unfavourably impressed. In fact, she had definitely a symptom of M. Maeterlinck’s awed feeling when he found himself left alone with the talking horses: “With whom was she?”
“Look-a-here, dog!” she said breathlessly. “Who you tryin’ to skeer? You ain’t no person!”
And then a blow fell. It came from an elderly but ever undignified woman of her own race, who paused, across the street, and stood teetering from side to side in joyful agitation, as she watched the approach of Mrs. Silver with her woolly little companion beside her. When this smaller silhouette in ink suddenly walked upright, the observer’s mouth fell open, and there was reason to hope that it might remain so, in silence, especially as several other pedestrians had stopped to watch the poodle’s uncalled-for exhibition. But all at once the elderly rowdy saw fit to become uproarious.
“Hoopsee!” she shouted. “Oooh, Gran’ma!”
And so, when the poodle “sat up,” unbid, to pray, while Kitty Silver rested upon the back steps, on her return from the excursion, she fiercely informed him that she had never lost a grandchild and that she would not adopt a stranger in place of one; her implication being that he, a stranger, had been suggested for the position and considered himself eligible for it.
He continued to pray, not relaxing a hair.
“Listen to me, dog,” said Kitty Silver. “Is you a dog, or isn’t you a dog? Whut is you, anyway?”
But immediately she withdrew the question. “I ain’t astin’ you!” she exclaimed superstitiously. “If you isn’t no dog, don’t you take an’ tell me whut you is: you take an’ keep it to you’se’f, ‘cause I don’ want to listen to it!”
For the garnet eyes beneath the great black chrysanthemum indeed seemed to hint that their owner was about to use human language in a human voice. Instead, however, he appeared to be content with his little exhibition, allowed his forepaws to return to the ground, and looked at her with his head wistfully tilted to one side. This reassured her and even somewhat won her. There stirred within her that curious sense of relationship evoked from the first by his suggestive appearance; fondness was being born, and an admiration that was in a way a form of Narcissism. She addressed him in a mollified voice:
“Whut you want now? Don’ tell me you’ hungry, ‘cause you awready done et two dog biskit an’ big saucer milk. Whut you stick you’ ole black face crossways at me fer, honey?”
But just then the dog rose to look pointedly toward the corner of the house. “Somebody’s coming,” he meant.
“Who you spectin’, li’l dog?” Mrs. Silver inquired.
Florence and Herbert came round the house, Herbert trifling with a tennis ball and carrying a racket under his arm. Florence was peeling an orange.
“For Heavenses’ sakes!” Florence cried. “Kitty Silver, where on earth’d this dog come from?”
“B’long you’ Aunt Julia.”
“When’d she get him?”
“Dess to-day.”
“Who gave him to her?”
“She ain’t sayin’.”
“You mean she won’t tell?”
“She ain’t sayin’,” Kitty Silver repeated. “I ast her. I say, I say: ‘Miss Julia, ma’am,’ I say, ‘Miss Julia, ma’am, who ever sen’ you sech a unlandish-lookin’ dog?’ I say. All she say when I ast her: ‘Nemmine!’ she say, dess thataway. ‘Nemmine!’ she say. I reckon she ain’t goin’ tell nobody who give her this dog.”
“He’s certainly a mighty queer-lookin’ dog,” said Herbert. “I’ve seen a few like that, but I can’t remember where. What kind is he, Kitty Silver?”
“Miss Julia tell me he a poogle dog.”
“A poodle,” Florence corrected her, and then turned to Herbert in supercilious astonishment. “A French Poodle! My goodness! I should think you were old enough to know that much, anyway — goin’ on fourteen years old!”
“Well, I did know it,” he declared. “I kind of knew it, anyhow; but I sort of forgot it for once. Do you know if he bites, Kitty Silver?”
She was noncommittal. “He ain’t bit nobody yit.”
“I don’t believe he’ll bite,” said Florence. “I bet he likes me. He looks like he was taking a fancy to me, Kitt
y Silver. What’s his name?”
“Gammire.”
“What?”
“Gammire.”
“What a funny name! Are you sure, Kitty Silver?”
“Gammire whut you’ Aunt Julia tole me,” Mrs. Silver insisted. “You kin go on in the house an’ ast her; she’ll tell you the same.”
“Well, anyway, I’m not afraid of him,” said Florence; and she stepped closer to the poodle, extending her hand to caress him. Then she shouted as the dog, at her gesture, rose to his hind legs, and, as far as the leash permitted, walked forward to meet her. She flung her arms about him rapturously.
“Oh, the lovely thing!” she cried. “He walks on his hind legs! Why, he’s crazy about me!”
“Let him go,” said Herbert. “I bet he don’t like you any more than he does anybody else. Leave go of him, and I bet he shows he likes me better than he does you.”
But when Florence released him, Gammire caressed them both impartially. He leaped upon one, then upon the other, and then upon Kitty Silver with a cordiality that almost unseated her.
“Let him off the leash,” Florence cried. “He won’t run away, ‘cause the gates are shut. Let him loose and see what he’ll do.”
Mrs. Silver snapped the catch of the leash, and Gammire departed in the likeness of a ragged black streak. With his large and eccentric ears flapping back in the wind and his afterpart hunched in, he ran round and round the little orchard like a dog gone wild. Altogether a comedian, when he heard children shrieking with laughter, he circled the more wildly; then all upon an unexpected instant came to a dead halt, facing his audience, his nose on the ground between his two forepaws, his hindquarters high and unstooping. And, seeing they laughed at this, too, he gave them enough of it, then came back to Kitty Silver and sat by her feet, a spiral of pink tongue hanging from a wide-open mouth roofed with black.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 318