“Yes,” said the other; “she’s been threatening to do it for a long time. Jealous. Mighty good sort of a girl, though, in lots of ways. Only yesterday I talked with her and almost thought I’d calmed her out of it. But you can’t tell with some women. They’ll brighten up and talk straight and seem sensible, one minute, and promise to behave, and mean it too, and the next, there they go, making a scene, cutting somebody or killing themselves! You can’t count on them. But that’s not to the point, exactly, I expect. You’d better keep away from the ‘Straw-Cellar.’ If you’d been caught with the rest you’d have had a hard time, and they’d have found out your real name, too, because it’s pretty serious on account of your dancing with her when she did it, and the Canaan papers would have got hold of it and you wouldn’t be invited to Judge Pike’s any more, Eugene.”
Eugene dropped his arm from his eyes and stared into the face of his step-brother.
“Joe Louden!” he gasped.
“I’ll never tell,” said Joe. “You’d better keep out of all this sort. You don’t understand it, and you don’t — you don’t do it because you care.” He smiled wanly, his odd distorted smile of friendliness. “When you go back you might tell father I’m all right. I’m working through a law-school here — and remember me to Norbert Flitcroft,” he finished, with a chuckle.
Eugene covered his eyes again and groaned.
“It’s all right,” Joe assured him. “You’re as safe as if it had never happened. And I expect” — he went on, thoughtfully— “I expect, maybe, you’d prefer NOT to say you’d seen me, when you go back to Canaan. Well, that’s all right. I don’t suppose father will be asking after me — exactly.”
“No, he doesn’t,” said Eugene, still white and shaking. “Don’t stand talking. I’m sick.”
“Of course,” returned Joe. “But there’s one thing I would like to ask you—”
“Your father’s health is perfect, I believe.”
“It — it — it was something else,” Joe stammered, pitifully. “Are they all — are they all — all right at — at Judge Pike’s?”
“Quite!” Eugene replied, sharply. “Are you going to get me away from here? I’m sick, I tell you!”
“This street,” said Joe, and cheerfully led the way.
Five minutes later the two had parted, and Joe leaned against a cheap restaurant sign-board, drearily staring after the lamps of the gypsy night-cab he had found for his step-brother. Eugene had not offered to share the vehicle with him, had not even replied to his good-night.
And Joe himself had neglected to do something he might well have done: he had not asked Eugene for news of Ariel Tabor. It will not justify him entirely to suppose that he assumed that her grandfather and she had left Canaan never to return, and therefore Eugene knew nothing of her; no such explanation serves Joe for his neglect, for the fair truth is that he had not thought of her. She had been a sort of playmate, before his flight, a friend taken for granted, about whom he had consciously thought little more than he thought about himself — and easily forgotten. Not forgotten in the sense that she had passed out of his memory, but forgotten none the less; she had never had a place in his imaginings, and so it befell that when he no longer saw her from day to day, she had gone from his thoughts altogether.
VIII. A BAD PENNY TURNS UP
EUGENE DID NOT inform Canaan, nor any inhabitant, of his adventure of “Straw-Cellar,” nor did any hear of his meeting with his step-brother; and after Mr. Arp’s adventure, five years passed into the imperishable before the town heard of the wanderer again, and then it heard at first hand; Mr. Arp’s prophecy fell true, and he took it back to his bosom again, claimed it as his own the morning of its fulfilment. Joe Louden had come back to Canaan.
The elder Louden was the first to know of his prodigal’s return. He was alone in the office of the wooden-butter-dish factory, of which he was the superintendent, when the young man came in unannounced. He was still pale and thin; his eyebrows had the same crook, one corner of his mouth the same droop; he was only an inch or so taller, not enough to be thought a tall man; and yet, for a few moments the father did not recognize his son, but stared at him, inquiring his business. During those few seconds of unrecognition, Mr. Louden was somewhat favorably impressed with the stranger’s appearance.
“You don’t know me,” said Joe, smiling cheerfully. “Perhaps I’ve changed in seven years.” And he held out his hand.
Then Mr. Louden knew; he tilted back in his desk-chair, his mouth falling open. “Good God!” he said, not noticing the out-stretched hand. “Have YOU come back?”
Joe’s hand fell.
“Yes, I’ve come back to Canaan.”
Mr. Louden looked at him a long time without replying; finally he remarked:
“I see you’ve still got a scar on your forehead.”
“Oh, I’ve forgotten all about that,” said the other, twisting his hat in his hands. “Seven years wipes out a good many grievances and wrongs.”
“You think so?” Mr Louden grunted. “I suppose it might wipe out a good deal with some people. How’d you happen to stop off at Canaan? On your way somewhere, I suppose.”
“No, I’ve come back to stay.”
Mr. Louden plainly received this as no pleasant surprise. “What for?” he asked, slowly.
“To practise law, father.”
“What!”
“Yes,” said the young man. “There ought to be an opening here for me. I’m a graduate of as good a law-school as there is in the country—”
“You are!”
“Certainly,” said Joe, quietly. “I’ve put myself through, working in the summer—”
“Working!” Mr. Louden snorted. “Side-shows?”
“Oh, worse than that, sometimes,” returned his son, laughing. “Anything I could get. But I’ve always wanted to come back home and work here.”
Mr. Louden leaned forward, a hand on each knee, his brow deeply corrugated. “Do you think you’ll get much practice in Canaan?”
“Why not? I’ve had a year in a good office in New York since I left the school, and I think I ought to get along all right.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Louden, briefly. “You do?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“Who do you think in Canaan would put a case in your hands?”
“Oh, I don’t expect to get anything important at the start. But after a while—”
“With your reputation?”
The smile which had faded from Joe’s lips returned to them. “Oh, I know they thought I was a harum-scarum sort of boy,” he answered lightly, “and that it was a foolish thing to run away for nothing; but you had said I mustn’t come to you for help—”
“I meant it,” said Mr. Louden.
“But that’s seven years ago, and I suppose the town’s forgotten all about it, and forgotten me, too. So, you see, I can make a fresh start. That’s what I came back for.”
“You’ve made up your mind to stay here, then?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe,” said Mr. Louden, with marked uneasiness, “that Mrs. Louden would be willing to let you live with us.”
“No,” said Joe, gently. “I didn’t expect it.” He turned to the window and looked out, averting his face, yet scoring himself with the contempt he had learned to feel for those who pity themselves. His father had not even asked him to sit down. There was a long silence, disturbed only by Mr. Louden’s breathing, which could be heard, heavy and troubled.
At last Joe turned again, smiling as before. “Well, I won’t keep you from your work,” he said. “I suppose you’re pretty busy—”
“Yes, I am,” responded his father, promptly. “But I’ll see you again before you go. I want to give you some advice.”
“I’m not going,” said Joe. “Not going to leave Canaan, I mean. Where will I find Eugene?”
“At the Tocsin office; he’s the assistant editor. Judge Pike bought the Tocsin last year, and he thinks a good
deal of Eugene. Don’t forget I said to come to see me again before you go.”
Joe came over to the older man and held out his hand. “Shake hands, father,” he said. Mr. Louden looked at him out of small implacable eyes, the steady hostility of which only his wife or the imperious Martin Pike, his employer, could quell. He shook his head.
“I don’t see any use in it,” he answered. “It wouldn’t mean anything. All my life I’ve been a hard-working man and an abiding man. Before you got in trouble you never did anything you ought to; you ran with the lowest people in town, and I and all your folks were ashamed of you. I don’t see that we’ve got a call to be any different now.” He swung round to his desk emphatically, on the last word, and Joe turned away and went out quietly.
But it was a bright morning to which he emerged from the outer doors of the factory, and he made his way towards Main Street at a lively gait. As he turned the corner opposite the “National House,” he walked into Mr. Eskew Arp. The old man drew back angrily.
“Lord ‘a’ mercy!” cried Joe, heartily. “It’s Mr. Arp! I almost ran you down!” Then, as Mr. Arp made no response, but stood stock-still in the way, staring at him fiercely, “Don’t you know me, Mr. Arp?” the young man asked. “I’m Joe Louden.”
Eskew abruptly thrust his face close to the other’s. “NO FREE SEATS!” he hissed, savagely; and swept across to the hotel to set his world afire.
Joe looked after the irate, receding figure, and watched it disappear into the Main Street door of the “National House.” As the door closed, he became aware of a mighty shadow upon the pavement, and turning, beheld a fat young man, wearing upon his forehead a scar similar to his own, waddling by with eyes fixed upon him.
“How are you, Norbert?” Joe began. “Don’t you remember me? I—” He came to a full stop, as the fat one, thrusting out an under lip as his only token of recognition, passed balefully on.
Joe proceeded slowly until he came to the Tocsin building. At the foot of the stairway leading up to the offices he hesitated for a few moments; then he turned away and walked towards the quieter part of Main Street. Most of the people he met took no notice of him, only two or three giving him second glances of half-cognizance, as though he reminded them of some one they could not place, and it was not until he had come near the Pike Mansion that he saw a full recognition in the eyes of one of the many whom he knew, and who had known him in his boyhood in the town. A lady, turning a corner, looked up carelessly, and then half-stopped within a few feet of him, as if startled. Joe’s cheeks went a sudden crimson; for it was the lady of his old dreams.
Seven years had made Mamie Pike only prettier. She had grown into her young womanhood with an ampleness that had nothing of oversufficiency in it, nor anywhere a threat that some day there might be too much of her. Not quite seventeen when he had last seen her, now, at twenty-four, her amber hair elaborately becoming a plump and regular face, all of her old charm came over him once more, and it immediately seemed to him that he saw clearly his real reason for coming back to Canaan. She had been the Rich-Little-Girl of his child days, the golden princess playing in the Palace-Grounds, and in his early boyhood (until he had grown wicked and shabby) he had been sometimes invited to the Pike Mansion for the games and ice-cream of the daughter of the house, before her dancing days began. He had gone timidly, not daring ever to “call” her in “Quaker Meeting” or “Post-office,” but watching her reverently and surreptitiously and continually. She had always seemed to him the one thing of all the world most rare, most mysterious, most unapproachable. She had not offered an apparition less so in those days when he began to come under the suspicion of Canaan, when the old people began to look upon him hotly, the young people coldly. His very exclusion wove for him a glamour about her, and she was more than ever his moon, far, lovely, unattainable, and brilliant, never to be reached by his lifted arms, but only by his lifted eyes. Nor had his long absence obliterated that light; somewhere in his dreams it always had place, shining, perhaps, with a fainter lustre as the years grew to seven, but never gone altogether. Now, at last, that he stood in her very presence again, it sprang to the full flood of its old brilliance — and more!
As she came to her half-stop of surprise, startled, he took his courage in two hands, and, lifting his hat, stepped to her side.
“You — you remember me?” he stammered.
“Yes,” she answered, a little breathlessly.
“Ah, that’s kind of you!” he cried, and began to walk on with her, unconsciously. “I feel like a returned ghost wandering about — invisible and unrecognized. So few people seem to remember me!”
“I think you are wrong. I think you’ll find everybody remembers you,” she responded, uneasily.
“No, I’m afraid not,” he began. “I—”
“I’m afraid they do!”
Joe laughed a little. “My father was saying something like that to me a while ago. He meant that they used to think me a great scapegrace here. Do you mean that?”
“I’d scarcely like to say,” she answered, her face growing more troubled; for they were close on the imperial domain.
“But it’s long ago — and I really didn’t do anything so outrageous, it seems to me.” He laughed again. “I know your father was angry with me once or twice, especially the night I hid on your porch to watch you — to watch you dance, I mean. But, you see, I’ve come back to rehabilitate myself, to—”
She interrupted him. They were not far from her gate, and she saw her father standing in the yard, directing a painter who was at work on one of the cast-iron deer. The Judge was apparently in good spirits, laughing with the workman over some jest between them, but that did not lessen Mamie’s nervousness.
“Mr. Louden,” she said, in as kindly a tone as she could, “I shall have to ask you not to walk with me. My father would not like it.”
Joe stopped with a jerk.
“Why, I — I thought I’d go in and shake hands with him, — and tell him I—”
Astonishment that partook of terror and of awe spread itself instantly upon her face.
“Good gracious!” she cried. “NO!”
“Very well,” said Joe, humbly. “Good-bye.”
He was too late to get away with any good grace. Judge Pike had seen them, and, even as Joe turned to go, rushed down to the gate, flung it open, and motioned his daughter to enter. This he did with one wide sweep of his arm, and, with another sweep, forbade Joe to look upon either moon OR sun. It was a magnificent gesture: it excluded the young man from the street, Judge Pike’s street, and from the town, Judge Pike’s town. It swept him from the earth, abolished him, denied him the right to breathe the common air, to be seen of men; and, at once a headsman’s stroke and an excommunication, destroyed him, soul and body, thus rebuking the silly Providence that had created him, and repairing Its mistake by annihilating him. This hurling Olympian gesture smote the street; the rails of the car-track sprang and quivered with the shock; it thundered, and, amid the dumfounding uproar of the wrath of a god, the Will of the Canaanite Jove wrote the words in fiery letters upon the ether:
“CEASE TO BE!”
Joe did not go in to shake hands with Judge Pike.
He turned the next corner a moment later, and went down the quiet street which led to the house which had been his home. He did not glance at that somewhat grim edifice, but passed it, his eyes averted, and stopped in front of the long, ramshackle cottage next door. The windows were boarded; the picket-fence dropped even to the ground in some sections; the chimneys sagged and curved; the roof of the long porch sprinkled shingles over the unkempt yard with every wind, and seemed about to fall. The place was desolate with long emptiness and decay: it looked like a Haunted House; and nailed to the padlocked gate was a sign, half obliterated with the winters it had fronted, “For Sale or Rent.”
Joe gat him meditatively back to Main Street and to the Tocsin building. This time he did not hesitate, but mounted the stairs and knocked upon the door
of the assistant editor.
“Oh,” said Eugene. “YOU’VE turned up, you?”
Mr. Bantry of the Tocsin was not at all the Eugene rescued from the “Straw-Cellar.” The present gentleman was more the electric Freshman than the frightened adventurer whom Joe had encountered in New York. It was to be seen immediately that the assistant editor had nothing undaintily business-like about him, nor was there the litter on his desk which one might have expected. He had the air of a gentleman dilettante who amused himself slightly by spending an hour or two in the room now and then. It was the evolution to the perfect of his Freshman manner, and his lively apparel, though somewhat chastened by an older taste, might have been foretold from that which had smitten Canaan seven years before. He sat not at the orderly and handsome desk, but lay stretched upon a divan of green leather, smoking a cigar of purest ray and reading sleepily a small verse-looking book in morocco. His occupation, his general air, the furniture of the room, and his title (doubtless equipped with a corresponding salary) might have inspired in an observant cynic the idea that here lay a pet of Fortune, whose position had been the fruit of nepotism, or, mayhap, a successful wooing of some daughter, wife, or widow. Eugene looked competent for that.
“I’ve come back to stay, ‘Gene,” said Joe.
Bantry had dropped his book and raised himself on an elbow. “Exceedingly interesting,” he said. “I suppose you’ll try to find something to do. I don’t think you could get a place here; Judge Pike owns the Tocsin, and I greatly fear he has a prejudice against you.”
“I expect he has,” Joe chuckled, somewhat sadly. “But I don’t want newspaper work. I’m going to practice law.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 75
