The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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and I were up all night at Uncle Jonas's, and Colonel Flitcroft came about two o'clock, and he told us."
"Did he tell you about Norbert?"
"Yes--a great deal." She poured coffee into a cup from a pot on the stove, brought it to him, then placing some thin slices of bread upon a gridiron, began to toast them over the hot coals. "The Colonel said that Norbert thought he wouldn't get well," she concluded; "and Mr. Arp said Norbert was the kind that never die, and they had quite an argument."
"What were you doing at Jonas Tabor's?" asked Joe, drinking his coffee with a brightening eye.
"We were sent for," she answered.
"What for?"
She toasted the bread attentively without replying, and when she decided that it was brown enough, piled it on a warm plate. This she brought to him, and kneeling in front of him, her elbow on his knee, offered for his consideration, looking steadfastly up at his eyes. He began to eat ravenously.
"What for?" he repeated. "I didn't suppose Jonas would let you come in his house. Was he sick?"
"Joe," she said, quietly, disregarding his questions---"Joe, have you GOT to run away?"
"Yes, I've got to," he answered.
"Would you have to go to prison if you stayed?" She asked this with a breathless tensity.
"I'm not going to beg father to help me out," he said, determinedly. "He said he wouldn't, and he'll be spared the chance. He won't mind that; nobody will care! Nobody! What does anybody care what _I_ do!"
"Now you're thinking of Mamie!" she cried. "I can always tell. Whenever you don't talk naturally you're thinking of her!"
He poured down the last of the coffee, growing red to the tips of his ears. "Ariel," he said, "if I ever come back--"
"Wait," she interrupted. "Would you have to go to prison right away if they caught you?"
"Oh, it isn't that," he laughed, sadly. "But I'm going to clear out. I'm not going to take any chances. I want to see other parts of the world, other kinds of people. I might have gone, anyhow, soon, even if it hadn't been for last night. Don't you ever feel that way?"
"You know I do," she said. "I've told you--how often! But, Joe, Joe,--you haven't any MONEY! You've got to have money to LIVE!"
"You needn't worry about that," returned the master of seven dollars, genially. "I've saved enough to take care of me for a LONG time."
"Joe, PLEASE! I know it isn't so. If you could wait just a little while--only a few weeks,--only a FEW, Joe--"
"What for?"
"I could let you have all you want. It would be such a beautiful thing for me, Joe. Oh, I know how you'd feel; you wouldn't even let me give you that dollar I found in the street last year; but this would be only lending it to you, and you could pay me back sometime--"
"Ariel!" he exclaimed, and, setting his empty cup upon the floor, took her by the shoulders and shook her till the empty plate which had held the toast dropped from her hand and broke into fragments. "You've been reading the Arabian Nights!"
"No, no," she cried, vehemently. "Grandfather would give me anything. He'll give me all the money I ask for!"
"Money!" said Joe. "Which of us is wandering? MONEY? Roger Tabor give you MONEY?"
"Not for a while. A great many things have to be settled first."
"What things?"
"Joe," she asked, earnestly, "do you think it's bad of me not to feel things I OUGHT to feel?"
"No."
"Then I'm glad," she said, and something in the way she spoke made him start with pain, remembering the same words, spoken in the same tone, by another voice, the night before on the veranda. "I'm glad, Joe, because I seemed all wrong to myself. Uncle Jonas died last night, and I haven't been able to get sorry. Perhaps it's because I've been so frightened about you, but I think not, for I wasn't sorry even before Colonel Flitcroft told me about you."
"Jonas Tabor dead!" said Joe. "Why, I saw him on the street yesterday!"
"Yes, and I saw him just before I came out on the porch where you were. He was there in the hall; he and Judge Pike had been having a long talk; they'd been in some speculations together, and it had all turned out well. It's very strange, but they say now that Uncle Jonas's heart was weak--he was an old man, you know, almost eighty,--and he'd been very anxious about his money. The Judge had persuaded him to risk it; and the shock of finding that he'd made a great deal suddenly--"
"I've heard he'd had that same shock before," said Joe, "when he sold out to your father."
"Yes, but this was different, grandfather says. He told me it was in one of those big risky businesses that Judge Pike likes to go into. And last night it was all finished, the strain was over, and Uncle Jonas started home. His house is only a little way from the Pikes', you know; but he dropped down in the snow at his own gate, and some people who were going by saw him fall. He was dead before grandfather got there."
"I can't be sorry," said Joe, slowly.
"Neither can I. That's the dreadful part of it! They say he hadn't made a will, that though he was sharper than anybody else in the whole world about any other matter of business, that was the one thing he put off. And we're all the kin he had in the world, grandfather and I. And they say"--her voice sank to a whisper of excitement--"they say he was richer than anybody knew, and that this last business with Judge Pike, the very thing that killed him--something about grain--made him five times richer than before!"
She put her hand on the boy's arm, and he let it remain there. Her eyes still sought his with a tremulous appeal.
"God bless you, Ariel!" he said. "It's going to be a great thing for you."
"Yes. Yes, it is." The tears came suddenly to her eyes. "I was foolish last night, but there had been such a long time of WANTING things; and now--and now grandfather and I can go--"
"You're going, too!" Joe chuckled.
"It's heartless, I suppose, but I've settled it! We're going--"
"_I_ know," he cried. "You've told me a thousand times what HE'S said--ten times a thousand. You're going to Paris!"
"Paris! Yes, that's it. To Paris, where he can see at last how the great ones have painted,--where the others can show him! To Paris, where we can study together, where he can learn how to put the pictures he sees upon canvas, and where I--"
"Go on," Joe encouraged her. "I want to hear you say it. You don't mean that you're going to study painting; you mean that you're going to learn how to make such fellows as Eugene ask you to dance. Go ahead and SAY it!"
"Yes--to learn how to DRESS!" she said.
Joe was silent for a moment. Then he rose and took the ragged overcoat from the back of his chair. "Where's that muffler?" he asked.
She brought it from where she had placed it to dry, behind the stove.
"Joe," she said, huskily, "can't you wait till--"
"Till the estate is settled and you can coax your grandfather to--"
"No, no! But you could go with us."
"To Paris?"
"He would take you as his secretary."
"Aha!" Joe's voice rang out gayly as he rose, refreshed by the coffee, toast, and warmth she had given him. "You've been story-reading, Ariel, like Eugene! 'Secretary'!"
"Please, Joe!"