“Ariel, it IS you?”
She looked at him and smiled.
“You’ll be here always, won’t you? You’re not going away from Canaan again?”
For a moment it seemed that she had not heard him. Then her bright glance at him wavered and fell. She rose, turning slightly away from him, but not so far that he could not see the sudden agitation in her face.
“Ah!” he cried, rising too, “I don’t want you to think I don’t understand, or that I meant I should ever ask you to stay here! I couldn’t mean that; you know I couldn’t, don’t you? You know I understand that it’s all just your beautiful friendliness, don’t you?”
“It isn’t beautiful; it’s just ME, Joe,” she said. “It couldn’t be any other way.”
“It’s enough that you should be here now,” he went on, bravely, his voice steady, though his hand shook. “Nothing so wonderful as your staying could ever actually happen. It’s just a light coming into a dark room and out again. One day, long ago — I never forgot it — some apple-blossoms blew by me as I passed an orchard; and it’s like that, too. But, oh, my dear, when you go you’ll leave a fragrance in my heart that will last!”
She turned toward him, her face suffused with a rosy light. “You’d rather have died than have said that to me once,” she cried. “I’m glad you’re weak enough now to confess it!”
He sank down again into his chair and his arms fell heavily on the desk. “Confess it!” he cried, despairingly. “And you don’t deny that you’re going away again — so it’s true! I wish I hadn’t realized it so soon. I think I’d rather have tried to fool myself about it a little longer!”
“Joe,” she cried, in a voice of great pain, “you mustn’t feel like that! How do you know I’m going away again? Why should I want the old house put in order unless I mean to stay? And if I went, you know that I could never change; you know how I’ve always cared for you—”
“Yes,” he said, “I do know how. It was always the same and it always will be, won’t it?”
“I’ve shown that,” she returned, quickly.
“Yes. You say I know how you’ve cared for me — and I do. I know HOW. It’s just in one certain way — Jonathan and David—”
“Isn’t that a pretty good way, Joe?”
“Never fear that I don’t understand!” He got to his feet again and looked at her steadily.
“Thank you, Joe.” She wiped sudden tears from her eyes.
“Don’t you be sorry for me,” he said. “Do you think that ‘passing the love of women’ isn’t enough for me?”
“No,” she answered, humbly.
“I’ll have people at work on the old house to-morrow,” he began. “And for the—”
“I’ve kept you so long!” she interrupted, helped to a meek sort of gayety by his matter-of-fact tone. “Good-night, Joe.” She gave him her hand. “I don’t want you to come with me. It isn’t very late and this is Canaan.”
“I want to come with you, however,” he said, picking up his hat. “You can’t go alone.”
“But you are so tired, you—”
She was interrupted. There were muffled, flying footsteps on the stairs, and a shabby little man ran furtively into the room, shut the door behind him, and set his back against it. His face was mottled like a colored map, thick lines of perspiration shining across the splotches.
“Joe,” he panted, “I’ve got Nashville good, and he’s got me good, too; — I got to clear out. He’s fixed me good, damn him! but he won’t trouble nobody—”
Joe was across the room like a flying shadow.
“QUIET!” His voice rang like a shot, and on the instant his hand fell sharply across the speaker’s mouth. “In THERE, Happy!”
He threw an arm across the little man’s shoulders and swung him toward the door of the other room.
Happy Fear looked up from beneath the down-bent brim of his black slouch hat; his eyes followed an imperious gesture toward Ariel, gave her a brief, ghastly stare, and stumbled into the inner chamber.
“Wait!” Joe said, cavalierly, to Ariel. He went in quickly after Mr. Fear and closed the door.
This was Joseph Louden, Attorney-at-Law; and to Ariel it was like a new face seen in a flash-light — not at all the face of Joe. The sense of his strangeness, his unfamiliarity in this electrical aspect, overcame her. She was possessed by astonishment: Did she know him so well, after all? The strange client had burst in, shaken beyond belief with some passion unknown to her, but Joe, alert, and masterful beyond denial, had controlled him instantly; had swept him into the other room as with a broom. Could it be that Joe sometimes did other things in the same sweeping fashion?
She heard a match struck in the next room, and the voices of the two men: Joe’s, then the other’s, the latter at first broken and protestive, but soon rising shrilly. She could hear only fragments. Once she heard the client cry, almost scream: “By God! Joe, I thought Claudine had chased him around there to DO me!” And, instantly, followed Louden’s voice:
“STEADY, HAPPY, STEADY!”
The name “Claudine” startled her; and although she had had no comprehension of the argot of Happy Fear, the sense of a mysterious catastrophe oppressed her; she was sure that something horrible had happened. She went to the window; touched the shade, which disappeared upward immediately, and lifted the sash. The front of a square building in the Court-house Square was bright with lights; and figures were passing in and out of the Main Street doors. She remembered that this was the jail.
“Claudine!” The voice of the husband of Claudine was like the voice of one lamenting over Jerusalem.
“STEADY, HAPPY, STEADY!”
“But, Joe, if they git me, what’ll she do? She can’t hold her job no longer — not after this....”
The door opened, and the two men came out, Joe with his hand on the other’s shoulder. The splotches had gone from Happy’s face, leaving it an even, deathly white. He did not glance toward Ariel; he gazed far beyond all that was about him; and suddenly she was aware of a great tragedy. The little man’s chin trembled and he swallowed painfully; nevertheless he bore himself upright and dauntlessly as the two walked slowly to the door, like men taking part in some fateful ceremony. Joe stopped upon the landing at the head of the stairs, but Happy Fear went on, clumping heavily down the steps.
“It’s all right, Happy,” said Joe. “It’s better for you to go alone. Don’t you worry. I’ll see you through. It will be all right.”
“Just as YOU say, Joe,” a breaking voice came back from the foot of the steps,— “just as YOU say!”
The lawyer turned from the landing and went rapidly to the window beside Ariel. Together they watched the shabby little figure cross the street below; and she felt an infinite pathos gathering about it as it paused for a moment, hesitating, underneath the arc-lamp at the corner. They saw the white face lifted as Happy Fear gave one last look about him; then he set his shoulders sturdily, and steadfastly entered the door of the jail.
Joe took a deep breath. “Now we’ll go,” he said. “I must be quick.”
“What was it?” she asked, tremulously, as they reached the street. “Can you tell me?”
“Nothing — just an old story.”
He had not offered her his arm, but walked on hurriedly, a pace ahead of her, though she came as rapidly as she could. She put her hand rather timidly on his sleeve, and without need of more words from her he understood her insistence.
“That was the husband of the woman who told you her story,” he said. “Perhaps it would shock you less if I tell you now than if you heard it to-morrow, as you will. He’s just shot the other man.”
“Killed him!” she gasped.
“Yes,” he answered. “He wanted to run away, but I wouldn’t let him. He has my word that I’ll clear him, and I made him give himself up.”
XVI. THE TWO CANAANS
WHEN JOE LEFT Ariel at Judge Pike’s gate she lingered there, her elbows upon the uppermost cross-ba
r, like a village girl at twilight, watching his thin figure vanish into the heavy shadow of the maples, then emerge momentarily, ghost-gray and rapid, at the lighted crossing down the street, to disappear again under the trees beyond, followed a second later by a brownish streak as the mongrel heeled after him. When they had passed the second corner she could no longer be certain of them, although the street was straight, with flat, draughtsmanlike Western directness: both figures and Joe’s quick footsteps merging with the night. Still she did not turn to go; did not alter her position, nor cease to gaze down the dim street. Few lights shone; almost all the windows of the houses were darkened, and, save for the summer murmurs, the faint creak of upper branches, and the infinitesimal voices of insects in the grass, there was silence: the pleasant and somnolent hush, swathed in which that part of Canaan crosses to the far side of the eleventh hour.
But Ariel, not soothed by this balm, sought beyond it, to see that unquiet Canaan whither her old friend bent his steps and found his labor and his dwelling: that other Canaan where peace did not fall comfortably with the coming of night; a place as alien in habit, in thought, and almost in speech as if it had been upon another continent. And yet — so strange is the duality of towns — it lay but a few blocks distant.
Here, about Ariel, as she stood at the gate of the Pike Mansion, the houses of the good (secure of salvation and daily bread) were closed and quiet, as safely shut and sound asleep as the churches; but deeper in the town there was light and life and merry, evil industry, — screened, but strong to last until morning; there were haunts of haggard merriment in plenty: surreptitious chambers where roulette-wheels swam beneath dizzied eyes; ill-favored bars, reached by devious ways, where quavering voices offered song and were harshly checked; and through the burdened air of this Canaan wandered heavy smells of musk like that upon Happy Fear’s wife, who must now be so pale beneath her rouge. And above all this, and for all this, and because of all this, was that one resort to which Joe now made his way; that haven whose lights burn all night long, whose doors are never closed, but are open from dawn until dawn — the jail.
There, in that desolate refuge, lay Happy Fear, surrendered sturdily by himself at Joe’s word. The picture of the little man was clear and fresh in Ariel’s eyes, and though she had seen him when he was newly come from a thing so terrible that she could not realize it as a fact, she felt only an overwhelming pity for him. She was not even horror-stricken, though she had shuddered. The pathos of the shabby little figure crossing the street toward the lighted doors had touched her. Something about him had appealed to her, for he had not seemed wicked; his face was not cruel, though it was desperate. Perhaps it was partly his very desperation which had moved her. She had understood Joe, when he told her, that this man was his friend; and comprehended his great fear when he said: “I’ve got to clear him! I promised him.”
Over and over Joe had reiterated: “I’ve got to save him! I’ve got to!” She had answered gently, “Yes, Joe,” hurrying to keep up with him. “He’s a good man,” he said. “I’ve known few better, given his chances. And none of this would have happened except for his old-time friendship for me. It was his loyalty — oh, the rarest and absurdest loyalty! — that made the first trouble between him and the man he shot. I’ve got to clear him!”
“Will it be hard?”
“They may make it so. I can only see part of it surely. When his wife left the office, she met Cory on the street. You saw what a pitiful kind of fool she was, irresponsible and helpless and feather-brained. There are thousands of women like that everywhere — some of them are ‘Court Beauties,’ I dare say — and they always mix things up; but they are most dangerous when they’re like Claudine, because then they live among men of action like Cory and Fear. Cory was artful: he spent the day about town telling people that he had always liked Happy; that his ill feeling of yesterday was all gone; he wanted to find him and shake his hand, bury past troubles and be friends. I think he told Claudine the same thing when they met, and convinced the tiny brainlet of his sincerity. Cory was a man who ‘had a way with him,’ and I can see Claudine flattered at the idea of being peace-maker between ‘two such nice gen’lemen as Mr. Cory and Mr. Fear.’ Her commonest asseveration — quite genuine, too — is that she doesn’t like to have the gen’lemen making trouble about her! So the poor imbecile led him to where her husband was waiting. All that Happy knew of this was in her cry afterwards. He was sitting alone, when Cory threw open the door and said, ‘I’ve got you this time, Happy!’ His pistol was raised but never fired. He waited too long, meaning to establish his case of ‘self-defence,’ and Fear is the quickest man I know. Cory fell just inside the door. Claudine stumbled upon him as she came running after him, crying out to her husband that she ‘never meant no trouble,’ that Cory had sworn to her that he only wanted to shake hands and ‘make up.’ Other people heard the shot and broke into the room, but they did not try to stop Fear; he warned them off and walked out without hindrance, and came to me. I’ve got to clear him.”
Ariel knew what he meant: she realized the actual thing as it was, and, though possessed by a strange feeling that it must all be medieval and not possibly of to-day, understood that he would have to fight to keep his friend from being killed; that the unhappy creature who had run into the office out of the dark stood in high danger of having his neck broken, unless Joe could help him. He made it clear to her that the State would kill Happy if it could; that it would be a point of pride with certain deliberate men holding office to take the life of the little man; that if they did secure his death it would be set down to their efficiency, and was even competent as campaign material. “I wish to point out,” Joe had heard a candidate for re-election vehemently orate, “that in addition to the other successful convictions I have named, I and my assistants have achieved the sending of three men to the gallows during my term of office!”
“I can’t tell yet,” said Joe, at parting. “It may be hard. I’m so sorry you saw all this. I—”
“Oh NO!” she cried. “I want to UNDERSTAND!”
She was still there, at the gate, her elbows resting upon the cross-bar, when, a long time after Joe had gone, there came from the alley behind the big back yard the minor chordings of a quartette of those dark strollers who never seem to go to bed, who play by night and playfully pretend to work by day:
“You know my soul is a-full o’ them-a-trub-bils,
Ev-ry mawn!
I cain’ a-walk withouten I stum-bils!
Then le’ss go on —
Keep walkin’ on!
These times is sow’owful, an’ I am pow’owful
Sick an’ fo’lawn!”
She heard a step upon the path behind her, and, turning, saw a white-wrapped figure coming toward her.
“Mamie?” she called.
“Hush!” Mamie lifted a warning hand. “The windows are open,” she whispered. “They might hear you!”
“Why haven’t you gone to bed?”
“Oh, don’t you see?” Mamie answered, in deep distress,— “I’ve been sitting up for you. We all thought you were writing letters in your room, but after papa and mamma had gone to bed I went in to tell you good night, and you weren’t there, nor anywhere else; so I knew you must have gone out. I’ve been sitting by the front window, waiting to let you in, but I went to sleep until a little while ago, when the telephone-bell rang and he got up and answered it. He kept talking a long time; it was something about the Tocsin, and I’m afraid there’s been a murder down-town. When he went back to bed I fell asleep again, and then those darkies woke me up. How on earth did you expect to get in? Don’t you know he always locks up the house?”
“I could have rung,” said Ariel.
“Oh — oh!” gasped Miss Pike; and, after she had recovered somewhat, asked: “Do you mind telling me where you’ve been? I won’t tell him — nor mamma, either. I think, after all, I was wrong yesterday to follow Eugene’s advice. He meant for the best, but I—”
“Don’t think that. You weren’t wrong.” Ariel put her arm round the other’s waist. “I went to talk over some things with Mr. Louden.”
“I think,” whispered Mamie, trembling, “that you are the bravest girl I ever knew — and — and — I could almost believe there’s some good in him, since you like him so. I know there is. And I — I think he’s had a hard time. I want you to know I won’t even tell Eugene!”
“You can tell everybody in the world,” said Ariel, and kissed her.
XVII. MR. SHEEHAN’S HINTS
“NEVER,” SAID THE Tocsin on the morrow, “has this community been stirred to deeper indignation than by the cold-blooded and unmitigated brutality of the deliberate murder committed almost under the very shadow of the Court-house cupola last night. The victim was not a man of good repute, it is true, but at the moment of his death he was in the act of performing a noble and generous action which showed that he might have become, if he lived, a good and law-fearing citizen. In brief, he went to forgive his enemy and was stretching forth the hand of fellowship when that enemy shot him down. Not half an hour before his death, Cory had repeated within the hearing of a dozen men what he had been saying all day, as many can testify: ‘I want to find my old friend Fear and shake hands with him. I want to tell him that I forgive him and that I am ashamed of whatever has been my part in the trouble between us.’ He went with that intention to his death. The wife of the murderer has confessed that this was the substance of what he said to her, and that she was convinced of his peaceful intentions. When they reached the room where her husband was waiting for her, Cory entered first. The woman claims now that as they neared the vicinity he hastened forward at a pace which she could not equal. Naturally, her testimony on all points favoring her husband is practically worthless. She followed and heard the murdered man speak, though what his words were she declares she does not know, and of course the murderer, after consultation with his lawyer, claims that their nature was threatening. Such a statement, in determining the truth, is worse than valueless. It is known and readily proved that Fear repeatedly threatened the deceased’s life yesterday, and there is no question in the mind of any man, woman, or child, who reads these words, of the cold blooded nature of the crime. The slayer, who had formerly made a murderous attack upon his victim, lately quarrelled with him and uttered threats, as we have stated, upon his life. The dead man came to him with protestations of friendship and was struck down a corpse. It is understood that the defence will in desperation set up the theory of self-defence, based on an unsubstantiated claim that Cory entered the room with a drawn pistol. No pistol was found in the room. The weapon with which the deed was accomplished was found upon the person of the murderer when he was seized by the police, one chamber discharged. Another revolver was discovered upon the person of the woman, when she was arrested on the scene of the crime. This, upon being strictly interrogated, she said she had picked up from the floor in the confusion, thinking it was her husband’s and hoping to conceal it. The chambers were full and undischarged, and we have heard it surmised that the defence means to claim that it was Cory’s. Cory doubtless went on his errand of forgiveness unarmed, and beyond doubt the second weapon belonged to the woman herself, who has an unenviable record.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 84
