Again she mysteriously baffled him. “He’s a dear old friend of mine, you know, and I have made up my mind that we both need his help, you and I.”
“What!”
“Yes,” she continued, calmly, “in a business way I mean. I know you have great interests in a hundred directions, all more important than mine; it isn’t fair that you should bear the whole burden of my affairs, and I think it will be best to retain Mr. Louden as my man of business. He could take all the cares of the estate off your shoulders.”
Martin Pike spoke no word, but he looked at her strangely; and she watched him with sudden keenness, leaning forward in her chair, her gaze alert but quiet, fixed on the dilating pupils of his eyes. He seemed to become dizzy, and the choleric scarlet which had overspread his broad face and big neck faded splotchily.
Still keeping her eyes upon him, she went on: “I haven’t asked him yet, and so I don’t know whether or not he’ll consent, but I think it possible that he may come to see me this afternoon, and if he does we can propose it to him together and go over things a little.”
Judge Pike recovered his voice. “He’ll get a warm welcome,” he promised, huskily, “if he sets foot on my premises!”
“You mean you prefer I shouldn’t receive him here?” She nodded pleasantly. “Then certainly I shall not. Such things are much better for offices; you are quite right.”
“You’ll not see him at all!”
“Ah, Judge Pike,” she lifted her hand with gentle deprecation, “don’t you understand that we can’t quite arrange that? You see, Mr. Louden is even an older friend of mine than you are, and so I must trust his advice about such things more than yours. Of course, if he too should think it better for me not to see him—”
The Judge advanced toward her. “I’m tired of this,” he began, in a loud voice. “I’m—”
She moved as if to rise, but he had come very close, leaning above her, one arm out-stretched and at the end of it a heavy forefinger which he was shaking at her, so that it was difficult to get out of her chair without pushing him away — a feat apparently impossible. Ariel Tabor, in rising, placed her hand upon his out-stretched arm, quite as if he had offered it to assist her; he fell back a step in complete astonishment; she rose quickly, and released his arm.
“Thank you,” she said, beamingly. “It’s quite all my fault that you’re tired. I’ve been thoughtless to keep you so long, and you have been standing, too!” She swept lightly and quickly to the door, where she paused, gathering her skirts. “I shall not detain you another instant! And if Mr. Louden comes, this afternoon, I’ll remember. I’ll not let him come in, of course. It will be perhaps pleasanter to talk over my proposition as we walk!”
There was a very faint, spicy odor like wild roses and cinnamon left in the room where Martin Pike stood alone, staring whitely at the open doorway.
XIII. THE WATCHER AND THE WARDEN
THERE WAS A custom of Canaan, time-worn and seldom honored in the breach, which put Ariel, that afternoon, in easy possession of a coign of vantage commanding the front gate. The heavy Sunday dinner was finished in silence (on the part of Judge Pike, deafening) about three o’clock, and, soon after, Mamie tossed a number of cushions out upon the stoop between the cast-iron dogs, — Sam Warden having previously covered the steps with a rug and placed several garden chairs near by on the grass. These simple preparations concluded, Eugene sprawled comfortably upon the rug, and Mamie seated herself near him, while Ariel wandered with apparent aimlessness about the lawn, followed by the gaze of Mr. Bantry, until Miss Pike begged her, a little petulantly, to join them.
She came, looking about her dreamily, and touching to her lips, now and then, with an absent air, a clover blossom she had found in the longer grass against the fence. She stopped to pat the neck of one of the cast-iron deer, and with grave eyes proffered the clover-top first for inspection, then as food. There were those in the world who, seeing her, might have wondered that the deer did not play Galatea and come to life.
“No?” she said, aloud, to the steadfast head. “You won’t? What a mistake to be made of cast-iron!” She smiled and nodded to a clump of lilac-bushes near a cedar-tree, and to nothing else — so far as Eugene and Mamie could see, — then walked thoughtfully to the steps.
“Who in the world were you speaking to?” asked Mamie, curiously.
“That deer.”
“But you bowed to some one.”
“Oh, that,” Ariel lifted her eyebrows,— “that was your father. Didn’t you see him?”
“No.”
“I believe you can’t from here, after all,” said Ariel, slowly. “He is sitting upon a rustic bench between the bushes and the cedar-tree, quite near the gate. No, you couldn’t see him from here; you’d have to go as far as the deer, at least, and even then you might not notice him, unless you looked for him. He has a book — a Bible, I think — but I don’t think he is reading.”
“He usually takes a nap on Sunday afternoons,” said Mamie.
“I don’t think he will, to-day.” Ariel looked at Eugene, who avoided her clear gaze. “He has the air of having settled himself to stay for a long time, perhaps until evening.”
She had put on her hat after dinner, and Mamie now inquired if she would not prefer to remove it, offering to carry it in-doors for her, to Ariel’s room, to insure its safety. “You look so sort of temporary, wearing it,” she urged, “as if you were only here for a little while. It’s the loveliest hat I ever saw, and so fragile, too, but I’ll take care—”
Ariel laughed, leaned over, and touched the other’s hand lightly. “It isn’t that, dear.”
“What is it, then?” Mamie beamed out into a joyful smile. She had felt sure that she could not understand Ariel; was, indeed, afraid of her; and she found herself astonishingly pleased to be called “dear,” and delighted with the little familiarity of the hand-tap. Her feeling toward the visitor (who was, so her father had announced, to become a permanent member of the household) had been, until now, undefined. She had been on her guard, watching for some sign of conscious “superiority” in this lady who had been so long over-seas, not knowing what to make of her; though thrown, by the contents of her trunks, into a wistfulness which would have had something of rapture in it had she been sure that she was going to like Ariel. She had gone to the latter’s room before church, and had perceived uneasily that it had become, even by the process of unpacking, the prettiest room she had ever seen. Mrs. Warden, wife of Sam, and handmaiden of the mansion, was assisting, alternately faint and vociferous with marvelling. Mamie feared that Ariel might be a little overpowering.
With the word “dear” (that is, of course, with the way it was spoken), and with the touch upon the hand, it was all suddenly settled; she would not understand Ariel always — that was clear — but they would like each other.
“I am wearing my hat,” answered Ariel, “because at any moment I may decide to go for a long walk!”
“Oh, I hope not,” said Mamie. “There are sure to be people: a few still come, even though I’m an engaged girl. I expect that’s just to console me, though,” she added, smiling over this worn quip of the betrothed, and shaking her head at Eugene, who grew red and coughed. “There’ll be plenty to-day, but they won’t be here to see me. It’s you, Ariel, and they’d be terribly disappointed if you weren’t here. I shouldn’t wonder if the whole town came; it’s curious enough about you!”
Canaan (at least that part of it which Mamie meant when she said “the whole town”) already offered testimony to her truthfulness. Two gentlemen, aged nine and eleven, and clad in white “sailor suits,” were at that moment grooving their cheeks between the round pickets of the gate. They had come from the house across the street, evidently stimulated by the conversation at their own recent dinner-table (they wore a few deposits such as are left by chocolate-cake), and the motive of their conduct became obvious when, upon being joined by a person from next door (a starched and frilled person of the opposit
e sex but sympathetic age), one of them waggled a forefinger through the gate at Ariel, and a voice was heard in explanation:
“THAT’S HER.”
There was a rustle in the lilac-bushes near the cedar-tree; the three small heads turned simultaneously in that direction; something terrific was evidently seen, and with a horrified “OOOH!” the trio skedaddled headlong.
They were but the gay vanguard of the life which the street, quite dead through the Sunday dinner-hour, presently took on. Young couples with their progeny began to appear, returning from the weekly reunion Sunday dinner with relatives; young people meditative (until they reached the Pike Mansion), the wives fanning themselves or shooing the tots-able-to-walk ahead of them, while the husbands, wearing long coats, satin ties, and showing dust upon their blazing shoes, invariably pushed the perambulators. Most of these passers-by exchanged greetings with Mamie and Eugene, and all of them looked hard at Ariel as long as it was possible.
And now the young men of the town, laboriously arranged as to apparel, began to appear on the street in small squads, making their Sunday rounds; the youngest working in phalanxes of threes and fours, those somewhat older inclining to move in pairs; the eldest, such as were now beginning to be considered middle-aged beaux, or (by the extremely youthful) “old bachelors,” evidently considered it advantageous to travel alone. Of all these, there were few who did not, before evening fell, turn in at the gate of the Pike Mansion. Consciously, shyly or confidently, according to the condition of their souls, they made their way between the cast-iron deer to be presented to the visitor.
Ariel sat at the top of the steps, and, looking amiably over their heads, talked with such as could get near her. There were many who could not, and Mamie, occupying the bench below, was surrounded by the overflow. The difficulty of reaching and maintaining a position near Miss Tabor was increased by the attitude and behavior of Mr. Flitcroft, who that day cooled the feeling of friendship which several of his fellow-townsmen had hitherto entertained for him. He had been the first to arrive, coming alone, though that was not his custom, and he established himself at Ariel’s right, upon the step just below her, so disposing the great body and the ponderous arms and legs the gods had given him, that no one could mount above him to sit beside her, or approach her from that direction within conversational distance. Once established, he was not to be dislodged, and the only satisfaction for those in this manner debarred from the society of the beautiful stranger was obtained when they were presented to her and when they took their departure. On these occasions it was necessary by custom for them to shake her hand, a ceremony they accomplished by leaning across Mr. Flitcroft, which was a long way to lean, and the fat back and shoulders were sore that night because of what had been surreptitiously done to them by revengeful elbows and knees.
Norbert, not ordinarily talkative, had nothing to say; he seemed to find sufficient occupation in keeping the place he had gained; and from this close vantage he fastened his small eyes immovably upon Ariel’s profile. Eugene, also apparently determined not to move, sat throughout the afternoon at her left, but as he was thin, others, who came and went, were able to approach upon that side and hold speech with her.
She was a stranger to these young people, most of whom had grown up together in a nickname intimacy. Few of them had more than a very imperfect recollection of her as she was before Roger Tabor and she had departed out of Canaan. She had lived her girlhood only upon their borderland, with no intimates save her grandfather and Joe; and she returned to her native town “a revelation and a dream,” as young Mr. Bradbury told his incredulous grandmother that night.
The conversation of the gallants consisted, for the greater part, of witticisms at one another’s expense, which, though evoked for Ariel’s benefit (all eyes furtively reverting to her as each shaft was loosed), she found more or less enigmatical. The young men, however, laughed at each other loudly, and seemed content if now and then she smiled. “You must be frightfully ennuied with all this,” Eugene said to her. “You see how provincial we still are.”
She did not answer; she had not heard him. The shadows were stretching themselves over the grass, long and attenuated; the sunlight upon the trees and houses was like a thin, rosy pigment; black birds were calling each other home to beech and elm; and Ariel’s eyes were fixed upon the western distance of the street where gold-dust was beginning to quiver in the air. She did not hear Eugene, but she started, a moment later, when the name “Joe Louden” was pronounced by a young man, the poetic Bradbury, on the step below Eugene. Some one immediately said “‘SH!” But she leaned over and addressed Mr. Bradbury, who, shut out, not only from the group about her, but from the other centring upon Miss Pike, as well, was holding a private conversation with a friend in like misfortune.
“What were you saying of Mr. Louden?” she asked, smiling down upon the young man. (It was this smile which inspired his description of her as “a revelation and a dream.”)
“Oh, nothing particular,” was his embarrassed reply. “I only mentioned I’d heard there was some talk among the—” He paused awkwardly, remembering that Ariel had walked with Joseph Louden in the face of Canaan that very day. “That is, I mean to say, there’s some talk of his running for Mayor.”
“WHAT?”
There was a general exclamation, followed by an uncomfortable moment or two of silence. No one present was unaware of that noon walk, though there was prevalent a pleasing notion that it would not happen again, founded on the idea that Ariel, having only arrived the previous evening, had probably met Joe on the street by accident, and, remembering him as a playmate of her childhood and uninformed as to his reputation, had, naturally enough, permitted him to walk home with her.
Mr. Flitcroft broke the silence, rushing into words with a derisive laugh: “Yes, he’s ‘talked of’ for Mayor — by the saloon people and the niggers! I expect the Beaver Beach crowd would be for him, and if tramps could vote he might—”
“What is Beaver Beach?” asked Ariel, not turning.
“What is Beaver Beach?” he repeated, and cast his eyes to the sky, shaking his head awesomely. “It’s a Place,” he said, with abysmal solemnity,— “a Place I shouldn’t have mentioned in your presence, Miss Tabor.”
“What has it to do with Mr. Louden?”
The predestined Norbert conceived the present to be a heaven-sent opportunity to enlighten her concerning Joe’s character, since the Pikes appeared to have been derelict in the performance of this kindness.
“He goes there!” he proceeded heavily. “He lived there for a while when he first came back from running away, and he’s a friend of Mike Sheehan’s that runs it; he’s a friend of all the riff-raff that hang around there.”
“How do you know he goes there?”
“Why, it was in the paper the day after he came back!” He appealed for corroboration. “Wasn’t it, Eugene?”
“No, no!” she persisted. “Newspapers are sometimes mistaken, aren’t they?” Laughing a little, she swept across the bulbous face beside her a swift regard that was like a search-light. “How do you KNOW, Mr. Flitcroft,” she went on very rapidly, raising her voice,— “how do you KNOW that Mr. Louden is familiar with this place? The newspapers may have been falsely informed; you must admit that? Then how do you KNOW? Have you ever MET any one who has seen him there?”
“I’ve seen him there myself!” The words skipped out of Norbert’s mouth like so many little devils, the instant he opened it. She had spoken so quickly and with such vehemence, looking him full in the eye, that he had forgotten everything in the world except making the point to which her insistence had led him.
Mamie looked horrified; there was a sound of smothered laughter, and Norbert, overwhelmed by the treachery of his own mouth, sat gasping.
“It can’t be such a terrific place, then, after all,” said Ariel, gently, and turning to Eugene, “Have you ever been there, Mr. Bantry?” she asked.
He changed color, but answered wi
th enough glibness: “No.”
Several of the young men rose; the wretched Flitcroft, however, evading Mamie’s eye — in which there was a distinct hint, — sat where he was until all of them, except Eugene, had taken a reluctant departure, one group after another, leaving in the order of their arrival.
The rosy pigment which had colored the trees faded; the gold-dust of the western distance danced itself pale and departed; dusk stalked into the town from the east; and still the watcher upon the steps and the warden of the gate (he of the lilac-bushes and the Bible) held their places and waited — waited, alas! in vain.... Ah! Joe, is THIS the mettle of your daring? Did you not say you would “try”? Was your courage so frail a vessel that it could not carry you even to the gate yonder? Surely you knew that if you had striven so far, there you would have been met! Perhaps you foresaw that not one, but two, would meet you at the gate, both the warden and the watcher. What of that? What of that, O faint heart? What was there to fear? Listen! The gate clicks. Ah, have you come at last?
Ariel started to her feet, but the bent figure, coming up the walk in the darkness, was that of Eskew Arp. He bowed gloomily to Mamie, and in response to her inquiry if he wished to see her father, answered no; he had come to talk with the granddaughter of his old friend Roger Tabor.
“Mr. Arp!” called Ariel. “I am so very glad!” She ran down to him and gave him her hand. “We’ll sit here on the bench, sha’n’t we?”
Mamie had risen, and skirting Norbert frostily, touched Eugene upon the shoulder as she went up the steps. He understood that he was to follow her in-doors, and, after a deep look at the bench where Ariel had seated herself beside Mr. Arp, he obeyed. Norbert was left a lonely ruin between the cold, twin dogs. He had wrought desolation this afternoon, and that sweet verdure, his good name, so long in the planting, so carefully tended, was now a dreary waste; yet he contemplated this not so much as his present aspect of splendid isolation. Frozen by the daughter of the house, forgotten by the visitor, whose conversation with Mr. Arp was carried on in tones so low that he could not understand it, the fat one, though heart-breakingly loath to take himself away, began to comprehend that his hour had struck. He rose, descended the steps to the bench, and seated himself unexpectedly upon the cement walk at Ariel’s feet. “Leg’s gone to sleep,” he explained, in response to her startled exclamation; but, like a great soul, ignoring the accident of his position as well as the presence of Mr. Arp, he immediately proceeded: “Will you go riding with me to-morrow afternoon?”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 80
