CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THEY WENT SATIRICALLY down the street, their chumminess with one another bountifully increased by their common derision of the outsider on the porch; and even at a distance they still contrived to make themselves intolerable; looking back over their shoulders, at intervals, with say-not-so expressions on their faces. Even when these faces were far enough away to be but yellowish oval planes, their say-not-so expressions were still bitingly eloquent.
Now a northern breeze chilled the air, as the hateful three became indistinguishable in the haze of autumn dusk, whereupon Florence stopped swinging her foot, left the railing, and went morosely into the house. And here it was her fortune to make two discoveries vital to her present career; the first arising out of a conversation between her father and mother in the library, where a gossipy fire of soft coal encouraged this proper Sunday afternoon entertainment for man and wife.
“Sit down and rest, Florence,” said her mother. “I’m afraid you play too hard when Patty and the boys are here. Do sit down quietly and rest yourself a little while.” And as Florence obeyed, Mrs. Atwater turned to her husband, resuming: “Well, that’s what I said. I told Aunt Carrie I thought the same way about it that you did. Of course nobody ever knows what Julia’s going to do next, and nobody needs to be surprised at anything she does do. Ever since she came home from school, about four-fifths of all the young men in town have been wild about her — and so’s every old bachelor, for the matter of that!”
“Yes,” Mr. Atwater added. “And every old widower, too.”
His wife warmly accepted the amendment. “And every old widower, too,” she said, nodding. “Rather! And of course Julia’s just done exactly as she pleased about everything, and naturally she’s going to do as she pleases about this.”
“Well, of course it’s her own affair, Mollie,” Mr. Atwater said mildly. “She couldn’t be expected to consult the whole Atwater family connection before she — —”
“Oh, no,” she agreed. “I don’t say she could.Still, it is rather upsetting, coming so suddenly like this, when not one of the family has ever seen him — never even heard his very name before.”
“‘Well, men ... I don’t want to see any loafin’ around here, men. I expect I’ll have a pretty good newspaper this week.’”
“Well, that part of it isn’t especially strange, Mollie. He was born and brought up in a town three hundred miles from here. I don’t see just how we could have heard his name unless he visited here or got into the papers in some way.”
Mrs. Atwater seemed unwilling to yield a mysterious point. She rocked decorously in her rocking-chair, shook her head, and after setting her lips rigidly, opened them to insist that she could never change her mind: Julia had acted very abruptly. “Why couldn’t she have let her poor father know at least a few days before she did?”
Mr. Atwater sighed. “Why, she explains in her letter that she only knew it, herself, an hour before she wrote.”
“Her poor father!” his wife repeated commiseratingly.
“Why, Mollie, I don’t see how father’s especially to be pitied.”
“Don’t you?” said Mrs. Atwater. “That old man, to have to live in that big house all alone, except a few negro servants?”
“Why, no! About half the houses in the neighbourhood, up and down the street, are fully occupied by close relatives of his: I doubt if he’ll be really as lonely as he’d like to be. And he’s often said he’d give a great deal if Julia had been a plain, unpopular girl. I’m strongly of the opinion, myself, that he’ll be pleased about this. Of course it may upset him a little at first.”
“Yes; I think it will!” Mrs. Atwater shook her head forebodingly. “And he isn’t the only one it’s going to upset.”
“No, he isn’t,” her husband admitted seriously. “That’s always been the trouble with Julia; she never could bear to seem disappointing; and so, of course, I suppose every one of ’em has a special idea that he’s really about the top of the list with her.”
“Every last one of ’em is positive of it,” said Mrs. Atwater. “That was Julia’s way with ’em!”
“Yes, Julia’s always been much too kind-hearted for other people’s good.” Thus Mr. Atwater summed up Julia; and he was her brother. Additionally, since he was the older, he had known her since her birth.
“If you ask me,” said his wife, “I’ll really be surprised if it all goes through without a suicide.”
“Oh, not quite suicide, perhaps,” Mr. Atwater protested. “I’m glad it’s a fairly dry town though.”
She failed to fathom his simple meaning. “Why?”
“Well, some of ’em might feel that desperate at least,” he explained. “Prohibition’s a safeguard for the disappointed in love.”
This phrase and a previous one stirred Florence, who had been sitting quietly, according to request, and “resting”, but not resting her curiosity. “Who’s disappointed in love, papa?” she inquired with an explosive eagerness that slightly startled her preoccupied parents. “What is all this about Aunt Julia, and grandpa goin’ to live alone, and people committing suicide and prohibition and everything? What is all this, mamma?”
“Nothing, Florence.”
“Nothing! That’s what you always say about the very most inter’sting things that happen in the whole family! What is all this, papa?”
“It’s nothing that would be interesting to little girls, Florence. Merely some family matters.”
“My goodness!” Florence exclaimed. “I’m not a ‘little girl’ any more, papa! You’re always forgetting my age! And if it’s a family matter I belong to the family, I guess, about as much as anybody else, don’t I? Grandpa himself isn’t any more one of the family than I am, I don’t care how old he is!”
This was undeniable, and her father laughed. “It’s really nothing you’d care about one way or the other,” he said.
“Well, I’d care about it if it’s a secret,” Florence insisted. “If it’s a secret I’d want to know it, whatever it’s about.”
“Oh, it isn’t a secret, particularly, I suppose. At least, it’s not to be made public for a time; it’s only to be known in the family.”
“Well, didn’t I just prove I’m as much one o’ the family as — —”
“Never mind,” her father said soothingly. “I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your knowing it — if you won’t go telling everybody. Your Aunt Julia has just written us that she’s engaged.”
Mrs. Atwater uttered an exclamation, but she was too late to check him.
“I’m afraid you oughtn’t to have told Florence. She isn’t just the most discreet — —”
“Pshaw!” he laughed. “She certainly is ‘one of the family’, however, and Julia wrote that all of the family might be told. You’ll not speak of it outside the family, will you, Florence?”
But Florence was not yet able to speak of it, even inside the family; so surprising, sometimes, are parents’ theories of what will not interest their children. She sat staring, her mouth open, and in the uncertain illumination of the room these symptoms of her emotional condition went unobserved.
“I say, you won’t speak of Julia’s engagement outside the family, will you, Florence?”
“Papa!” she gasped. “Did Aunt Julia write she was engaged?”
“Yes.”
“To get married?”
“It would seem so.”
“To who?”
“‘To whom,’ Florence,” her mother suggested primly.
“Mamma!” the daughter cried. “Who’s Aunt Julia engaged to get married to? Noble Dill?”
“Good gracious, no!” Mrs. Atwater exclaimed. “What an absurd idea! It’s to a young man in the place she’s visiting — a stranger to all of us. Julia only met him a few weeks ago.” Here she forgot Florence, and turned again to her husband, wearing her former expression of experienced foreboding.
“It’s just as I said. It’s exactly like Julia to do such a reckless thing!”
/> “But as we don’t know anything at all about the young man,” he remonstrated, “how do you know it’s reckless?”
“How do you know he’s young?” Mrs. Atwater retorted crisply. “All in the world she said about him was that he’s a lawyer. He may be a widower, for all we know, or divorced, with seven or eight children.”
“Oh, no, Mollie!”
“Why, he might!” she insisted. “For all we know, he may be a widower for the third or fourth time, or divorced, with any number of children! If such a person proposed to Julia, you know yourself she’d hate to be disappointing!”
Her husband laughed. “I don’t think she’d go so far as to actually accept ‘such a person’ and write home to announce her engagement to the family. I suppose most of her swains here have been in the habit of proposing to her just as frequently as she was unable to prevent them from going that far; and while I don’t think she’s been as discouraging with them as she might have been, she’s never really accepted any of ’em. She’s never been engaged before.”
“No,” Mrs. Atwater admitted. “Not to this extent! She’s never quite announced it to the family before, that is.”
“Yes; I’d hate to have Julia’s job when she comes back!” Julia’s brother admitted ruefully.
“What job?”
“Breaking it to her admirers.”
“Oh, she isn’t going to do that!”
“She’ll have to, now,” he said. “She’ll either have to write the news to ’em, or else tell ’em, face to face, when she comes home.”
“She won’t do either.”
“Why, how could she get out of it?”
His wife smiled pityingly. “She hasn’t set a time for coming home, has she? Don’t you know enough of Julia’s ways to see she’ll never in the world stand up to the music? She writes that all the family can be told, because she knows the news will leak out, here and there, in confidence, little by little, so by the time she gets home they’ll all have been through their first spasms, and after that she hopes they’ll just send her some forgiving flowers and greet her with manly hand-clasps — and get ready to usher at the wedding!”
“Well,” said Mr. Atwater, “I’m afraid you’re right. It does seem rather like Julia to stay away till the first of the worst is over. I’m really sorry for some of ’em. I suppose it will get whispered about, and they’ll hear it; and there are some of the poor things that might take it pretty hard.”
“‘Take it pretty hard!’” his wife echoed loudly. “There’s one of ’em, at least, who’ll just merely lose his reason!”
“Which one?”
“Noble Dill.”
At this, the slender form of Florence underwent a spasmodic seizure in her chair, but as the fit was short and also noiseless, it passed without being noticed.
“Yes,” said Mr. Atwater thoughtfully. “I suppose he will.”
“He certainly will!” Mrs. Atwater declared. “Noble’s mother told me last week that he’d got so he was just as liable to drop a fountain-pen in his coffee as a lump of sugar; and when any one speaks to him he either doesn’t know it, or else jumps. When he says anything, himself, she says they can scarcely ever make out what he’s talking about. He was trying enough before Julia went away; but since she’s been gone Mrs. Dill says he’s like nothing in her experience. She says he doesn’t inherit it; Mr. Dill wasn’t anything like this about her.”
Mr. Atwater smiled faintly. “Mrs. Dill wasn’t anything like Julia.”
“No,” said his wife. “She was quite a sensible girl. I’d hate to be in her place now, though, when she tells Noble about this.”
“How can Mrs. Dill tell him, since she doesn’t know it herself?”
“Well — perhaps she ought to know it, so that she could tell him. Somebody ought to tell him, and it ought to be done with the greatest tact. It ought to be broken to him with the most delicate care and sympathy, or the consequences — —”
“Nobody could foretell the consequences,” her husband interrupted:— “no matter how tactfully it’s broken to Noble.”
“No,” she said, “I suppose that’s true. I think the poor thing’s likely to lose his reason unless it is done tactfully, though.”
“Do you think we really ought to tell Mrs. Dill, Mollie? I mean, seriously: Do you?”
For some moments she considered his question, then replied, “No. It’s possible we’d be following a Christian course in doing it; but still we’re rather bound not to speak of it outside the family, and when it does get outside the family I think we’d better not be the ones responsible — especially since it might easily be traced to us. I think it’s usually better to keep out of things when there’s any doubt.”
“Yes,” he said, meditating. “I never knew any harm to come of people’s sticking to their own affairs.”
But as he and his wife became silent for a time, musing in the firelight, their daughter’s special convictions were far from coinciding with theirs, although she, likewise, was silent — a singularity they should have observed. So far were they from a true comprehension of her, they were unaware that she had more than a casual, young-cousinly interest in Julia Atwater’s engagement and in those possible consequences to Noble Dill just sketched with some intentional exaggeration. They did not even notice her expression when Mr. Atwater snapped on the light, in order to read; and she went quietly out of the library and up the stairs to her own room.
On the floor, near her bed, where Patty Fairchild had left her coat and hat, Florence made another discovery. Two small, folded slips of paper lay there, dropped by Miss Fairchild when she put on her coat in the darkening room. They were the replies to Patty’s whispered questions in the game on the steps — the pledged Truth, written by Henry Rooter and Herbert Atwater on their sacred words and honours. The infatuated pair had either overestimated Patty’s caution, or else each had thought she would so prize his little missive that she would treasure it in a tender safety, perhaps pinned upon her blouse (at the first opportunity) over her heart. It is positively safe to say that neither of the two veracities would ever have been set upon paper had Herbert and Henry any foreshadowing that Patty might be careless; and the partners would have been seized with the utmost horror could they have conceived the possibility of their trustful messages ever falling into the hands of the relentless creature who now, without an instant’s honourable hesitation, unfolded and read them.
“Yes if I got to tell the truth I know I have got pretty eyes,” Herbert had unfortunately written. “I am glad you think so too Patty because your eyes are too Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr.”
And Mr. Henry Rooter had likewise ruined himself in a coincidental manner:
“Well Patty my eyes are pretty but suppose I would like to trade with yours because you have beautiful eyes also, sure as my name is Henry Rooter.”
Florence stood close to the pink-shaded electric drop-light over her small white dressing-table, reading again and again these pathetically honest little confidences. Her eyelids were withdrawn to an unprecedented retirement, so remarkably she stared; while her mouth seemed to prepare itself for the attempted reception of a bulk beyond its capacity. And these plastic tokens, so immoderate as to be ordinarily the consequence of nothing short of horror, were overlaid by others, subtler and more gleaming, which wrought the true significance of the contortion — a joy that was dumfounding.
Her thoughts were first of Fortune’s kindness in selecting her for a favour so miraculously dovetailing into the precise need of her life; then she considered Henry and Herbert, each at this hour probably brushing his hair in preparation for the Sunday evening meal, and both touchingly unconscious of the calamity now befalling them; but what eventually engrossed her mind was a thought about Wallie Torbin.
This Master Torbin, fourteen years of age, was in all the town the boy most dreaded by his fellow-boys, and also by girls, including many of both sexes who knew him only by sight — and hearing. He had no physical endowme
nt or attainment worth mention; but boys who could “whip him with one hand” became sycophants in his presence; the terror he inspired was moral. He had a special over-development of a faculty exercised clumsily enough by most human beings, especially in their youth; in other words, he had a genius — not, however, a genius having to do with anything generally recognized as art or science. True, if he had been a violinist prodigy or mathematical prodigy, he would have had some respect from his fellows — about equal to that he might have received if he were gifted with some pleasant deformity, such as six toes on a foot — but he would never have enjoyed such deadly prestige as had actually come to be his. In brief, then, Wallie Torbin had a genius for mockery.
Almost from his babyhood he had been a child of one purpose: to increase by burlesques the sufferings of unfortunate friends. If one of them wept, Wallie incessantly pursued him, yelping in horrid mimicry; if one were chastised he could not appear out-of-doors for days except to encounter Wallie and a complete rehearsal of the recent agony. “Quit, Papa! Pah-puh, quee-yet! I’ll never do it again, Pah-puh! Oh, lemme alone, Pah-puh!”
As he grew older, his insatiate curiosity enabled him to expose unnumbered weaknesses, indiscretions, and social misfortunes on the part of acquaintances and schoolmates; and to every exposure his noise and energy gave a hideous publicity: the more his victim sought privacy the more persistently he was followed by Wallie, vociferous and attended by hilarious spectators. But above all other things, what most stimulated the demoniac boy to prodigies of satire was a tender episode or any symptom connected with the dawn of love. Florence herself had suffered at intervals throughout her eleventh summer because Wallie discovered that Georgie Beck had sent her a valentine; and the humorist’s many, many squealings of that valentine’s affectionate quatrain finally left her unable to decide which she hated the more, Wallie or Georgie. That was the worst of Wallie: he never “let up”; and in Florence’s circle there was no more sobering threat than, “I’ll tell Wallie Torbin!” As for Henry Rooter and Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr., they would as soon have had a Head-hunter on their trail as Wallie Torbin in the possession of anything that could incriminate them in an implication of love — or an acknowledgment (in their own handwriting!) of their own beauty.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 324