The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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you've looked over my data. My very warm thanks for your patience, and--addio!"
Lindley looked after him as he strode quickly away across the green lawn, turning, at the street, in the direction Cora had taken; and the troubled Richard felt his heart sink with vague but miserable apprehension. There was a gasp of desperation beside him, and the sound of Ray Vilas's lips parting and closing with little noises of pain.
"So he knows her," said the boy, his thin body shaking. "Look at him, damn him! See his deep chest, that conqueror's walk, the easy, confident, male pride of him: a true-born, natural rake--the Toreador all over!"
His agitation passed suddenly; he broke into a loud laugh, and flung a reckless hand to his companion's shoulder.
"You good old fool," he cried. "_You'll_ never play Don Jose!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hedrick Madison, like too many other people, had never thought seriously about the moon; nor ever had he encouraged it to become his familiar; and he underwent his first experience of its incomparable betrayals one brilliant night during the last week of that hot month. The preface to this romantic evening was substantial and prosaic: four times during dinner was he copiously replenished with hash, which occasioned so rich a surfeit within him that, upon the conclusion of the meal, he found himself in no condition to retort appropriately to a solicitous warning from Cora to keep away from the cat. Indeed, it was half an hour later, and he was sitting--to his own consciousness too heavily--upon the back fence, when belated inspiration arrived. But there is no sound where there is no ear to hear, and no repartee, alas! when the wretch who said the first part has gone, so that Cora remained unscathed as from his alley solitude Hedrick hurled in the teeth of the rising moon these bitter words:
"Oh, no; _our_ cat only eats _soft_ meat!"
He renewed a morbid silence, and the moon, with its customary deliberation, swung clear of a sweeping branch of the big elm in the front yard and shone full upon him. Nothing warned the fated youth not to sit there; no shadow of imminent catastrophe tinted that brightness: no angel whisper came to him, bidding him begone--and to go in a hurry and as far as possible. No; he sat upon the fence an inoffensive lad, and--except for still feeling his hash somewhat, and a gradually dispersing rancour concerning the cat--at peace. It is for such lulled mortals that the ever-lurking Furies save their most hideous surprises.
Chin on palms, he looked idly at the moon, and the moon inscrutably returned his stare. Plausible, bright, bland, it gave no sign that it was at its awful work. For the bride of night is like a card-dealer whose fingers move so swiftly through the pack the trickery goes unseen.
This moon upon which he was placidly gazing, because he had nothing else to do, betokened nought to Hedrick: to him it was the moon of any other night, the old moon; certainly no moon of his delight. Withal, it may never be gazed upon so fixedly and so protractedly--no matter how languidly--with entire impunity. That light breeds a bug in the brain. Who can deny how the moon wrought this thing under the hair of unconscious Hedrick, or doubt its responsibility for the thing that happened?
"_Little boy_!"
It was a very soft, small voice, silky and queer; and at first Hedrick had little suspicion that it could be addressing him: the most rigid self-analysis could have revealed to him no possibility of his fitting so ignominious a description.
"Oh, little boy!"
He looked over his shoulder and saw, standing in the alley behind him, a girl of about his own age. She was daintily dressed and had beautiful hair which was all shining in pale gold.
"Little boy!"
She was smiling up at him, and once more she used that wantonly inaccurate vocative:
"Little boy!"
Hedrick grunted unencouragingly. "Who you callin' `little boy'?"
For reply she began to climb the fence. It was high, but the young lady was astonishingly agile, and not even to be deterred by several faint wails from tearing and ripping fabrics--casualties which appeared to be entirely beneath her notice. Arriving at the top rather dishevelled, and with irregular pennons here and there flung to the breeze from her attire, she seated herself cosily beside the dumbfounded Hedrick.
She turned her face to him and smiled--and there was something about her smile which Hedrick did not like. It discomforted him; nothing more. In sunlight he would have had the better chance to comprehend; but, unhappily, this was moonshine.
"Kiss me, little boy!" she said.
"I won't!" exclaimed the shocked and indignant Hedrick, edging uneasily away from her.
"Let's play," she said cheerfully.
"Play what?"
"I like chickens. Did you know I like chickens?"
The rather singular lack of connection in her remarks struck him as a misplaced effort at humour.
"You're having lots of fun with me, aren't you?" he growled.
She instantly moved close to him and lifted her face to his.
"Kiss me, darling little boy!" she said.
There was something more than uncommonly queer about this stranger, an unearthliness of which he was confusedly perceptive, but she was not without a curious kind of prettiness, and her pale gold hair was beautiful. The doomed lad saw the moon shining through it.
"Kiss me, darling little boy!" she repeated.
His head whirled; for the moment she seemed divine.
George Washington used profanity at the Battle of Monmouth. Hedrick kissed her.
He instantly pushed her away with strong distaste. "There!" he said angrily. "I hope that'll satisfy you!" He belonged to his sex.
"Kiss me some more, darling little boy!" she cried, and flung her arms about him.
With a smothered shout of dismay he tried to push her off, and they fell from the fence together, into the yard, at the cost of further and almost fatal injuries to the lady's apparel.
Hedrick was first upon his feet. "Haven't you got _any_ sense?" he demanded.
She smiled unwaveringly, rose (without assistance) and repeated: "Kiss me some more, darling little boy!"
"No, I won't! I wouldn't for a thousand dollars!"
Apparently, she did not consider this discouraging. She began to advance endearingly, while he retreated backward. "Kiss me some----"
"I won't, I tell you!" Hedrick kept stepping away, moving in a desperate circle. He resorted to a brutal formula: "You make me sick!"
"Kiss me some more, darling lit----"
"I won't!" he bellowed. "And if you say that again I'll----"
"Kiss me some more, darling little boy!" She flung herself at him, and with a yell of terror he turned and ran at top-speed.
She pursued, laughing sweetly, and calling loudly as she ran, "Kiss me some more, darling little boy! Kiss me some more, darling little boy!"
The stricken Hedrick knew not whither to direct his flight: he dared not dash for the street with this imminent tattered incubus--she was almost upon him--and he frantically made for the kitchen door, only to swerve with a gasp of despair as his foot touched the step, for she was at his heels, and he was sickeningly assured she would cheerfully follow him through the house, shouting that damning refrain for all ears. A strangling fear took him by the throat--if Cora should come to be a spectator of this unspeakable flight, if Cora should hear that horrid plea for love! Then farewell peace; indeed, farewell all joy in life forever!
Panting