He went outdoors and smoked Orduma cigarettes, one
after the other. Dances and intermissions succeeded
each other but Noble had “enough of that,
for one while!” So he muttered.
And remembering how Julia had told him that he was
killing himself with cigarettes, “All right,”
he said now, as he bitterly lighted his fifth at the
spark of the fourth;—“I hope I will!”
“Lot o’ difference it’d make!”
he said, as he lighted the eighth of a series that
must, all told, have contained nearly as much tobacco
as a cigar. And, leaning back against the trunk
of one of the big old walnut trees in the yard, he
gazed toward the house, where the open window nearest
him splashed with colour like a bright and crowded
aquarium. “To her, anyway!”
he added, with a slight remorse, remembering that his
mother had frequently shown him evidences of affection.
Yes, his mother would care, and his father and sisters
would be upset, but Julia—when the friends
of the family were asked to walk by for a last look,
would she be one? What optimism remained to him
presented a sketch of Julia, in black, borne from
the room in the arms of girl friends who tried in
vain to hush her; but he was unable to give this more
hopeful fragment an air of great reality. Much
more probably, when word came to her that he had smoked
himself to death, she would be a bride, dancing at
Niagara Falls with her bald old husband—and
she would only laugh and pause to toss a faded rose
out of the window, and then go right on dancing.
But perhaps, some day, when tears had taught her the
real meaning of life with such a man——
“You—wow!”
Noble jumped. From the darkness of the yard beside
the house there came a grievous howl, distressful
to the spinal marrow, a sound of animal pain.
It was repeated even more passionately, and another
voice was also heard, one both hoarsely bass and falsetto
in the articulation of a single syllable. “Ouch!”
There were sounds of violent scuffing, and the bass-falsetto
voice cried: “What’s that you stuck
me with?” and another: “Drag her!
Drag her back by her feet!”
These alarms came from the almost impenetrable shadows
of the small orchard beside the house; and from the
same quarter was heard the repeated contact of a heavy
body, seemingly wooden or metallic, with the ground;
but high over this there rose a shrieking: “Help!
Help! Oh, hay-yulp!” This voice
was girlish. “Hay-yulp!”
Noble dashed into the orchard, and at once fell prostrate
upon what seemed a log, but proved to be a large and
solidly packed ice-cream freezer lying on its side.
Dark forms scrambled over the fence and vanished,
but as Noble got to his feet he was joined by a dim
and smallish figure in white—though more
light would have disclosed a pink sash girdling its
middle. It was the figure of Miss Florence Atwater,
seething with furious agitations.
