Once, upon a white morning long ago, the sensational progress of a certain youth up Main Street had stirred Canaan. But that day was as nothing to this. Mr. Bantry had left temporary paralysis in his wake; but in the case of the two young people who passed slowly along the street to-day it was petrifaction, which seemingly threatened in several instances (most notably that of Mr. Arp) to become permanent.
The lower portion of the street, lined with three and four story buildings of brick and stone, rather grim and hot facades under the mid-day sun, afforded little shade to the church-comers, who were working homeward in processional little groups and clumps, none walking fast, though none with the appearance of great leisure, since neither rate of progress would have been esteemed befitting the day. The growth of Canaan, steady, though never startling, had left almost all of the churches down-town, and Main Street the principal avenue of communication between them and the "residence section." So, to-day, the intermittent procession stretched along the new cement side-walks from a little below the Square to Upper Main Street, where maples lined the thoroughfare and the mansions of the affluent stood among pleasant lawns and shrubberies. It was late; for this had been a communion Sunday, and those far in advance, who had already reached the pretty and shady part of the street, were members of the churches where services had been shortest; though few in the long parade looked as if they had been attending anything very short, and many heads of families were crisp in their replies to the theological inquiries of their offspring. The men imparted largely a gloom to the itinerant concourse, most of them wearing hot, long black coats and having wilted their collars; the ladies relieving this gloom somewhat by the lighter tints of their garments; the spick-and-span little girls relieving it greatly by their white dresses and their faces, the latter bright with the hope of Sunday ice-cream; while the boys, experiencing some solace in that they were finally out where a person could at least scratch himself if he had to, yet oppressed by the decorous necessities of the day, marched along, furtively planning, behind imperturbably secretive countenances, various means for the later dispersal of an odious monotony.
Usually the conversation of this long string of the homeward-bound was not too frivolous or worldly; nay, it properly inclined to discussion of the sermon; that is, praise of the sermon, with here and there a mild "I-didn't-like-his-saying" or so; and its lighter aspects were apt to concern the next "Social," or various pleasurable schemes for the raising of funds to help the heathen, the quite worthy poor, or the church.
This was the serious and seemly parade, the propriety of whose behavior was to-day almost disintegrated when the lady of the bridge walked up the street in the shadow of a lacy, lavender parasol carried by Joseph Louden. The congregation of the church across the Square, that to which Joe's step-aunt had been late, was just debouching, almost in mass, upon Main Street, when these two went by. It is not quite the truth to say that all except the children came to a dead halt, but it is not very far from it. The air was thick with subdued exclamations and whisperings.
Here is no mystery. Joe was probably the only person of respectable derivation in Canaan who had not known for weeks that Ariel Tabor was on her way home. And the news that she had arrived the night before had been widely disseminated on the way to church, entering church, IN church (even so!), and coming out of church. An account of her house in the Avenue Henri Martin, and of her portrait in the Salon—a mysterious business to many, and not lacking in grandeur for that!—had occupied two columns in the Tocsin, on a day, some months before, when Joe had found himself inimically head-lined on the first page, and had dropped the paper without reading further. Ariel's name had been in the mouth of Canaan for a long time; unfortunately for Joe, however, not in the mouth of that Canaan which held converse with him.
Joe had not known her. The women recognized her, infallibly, at first glance; even those who had quite forgotten her. And the women told their men. Hence the un-Sunday-like demeanor of the procession, for few towns hold it more unseemly to stand and stare at passers-by, especially on the Sabbath.—BUT Ariel Tabor returned—and walking with—WITH JOE LOUDEN! ...
A low but increasing murmur followed the two as they proceeded. It ran up the street ahead of them; people turned to look back and paused, so that they had to walk round one or two groups. They had, also, to walk round Norbert Flitcroft, which was very like walking round a group. He was one of the few (he was waddling home alone) who did not identify Miss Tabor, and her effect upon him was extraordinary. His mouth opened and he gazed stodgily, his widening eyes like sun-dogs coming out of a fog. He did not recognize her escort; did not see him at all until they had passed, after which Mr. Flitcroft experienced a few moments of trance; came out of it stricken through and through; felt nervously of his tie; resolutely fell in behind the heeling mongrel and followed, at a distance of some forty paces, determined to learn what household this heavenly visitor honored, and thrilling with the intention to please that same household with his own presence as soon and as often as possible.
Ariel flushed a little when she perceived the extent of their conspicuousness; but it was not the blush that Joe remembered had reddened the tanned skin of old; for her brownness had gone long ago, though it had not left her merely pink and white. This was a delicate rosiness rising from her cheeks to her temples as the earliest dawn rises. If there had been many words left in Joe, he would have called it a divine blush; it fascinated him, and if anything could have deepened the glamour about her, it would have been this blush. He did not understand it, but when he saw it he stumbled.
Those who gaped and stared were for him only blurs in the background; truly, he saw "men as trees walking"; and when it became necessary to step out to the curb in passing some clump of people, it was to him as if Ariel and he, enchantedly alone, were working their way through underbrush in the woods.
He kept trying to realize that this lady of wonder was Ariel Tabor, but he could not; he could not connect the shabby Ariel, whom he had treated as one boy treats another, with this young woman of the world. He had always been embarrassed, himself, and ashamed of her, when anything she did made him remember that, after all, she was a girl; as, on the day he ran away, when she kissed a lock of his hair escaping from the bandage. With that recollection, even his ears grew red: it did not seem probable that it would ever happen again! The next instant he heard himself calling her "Miss Tabor."
At this she seemed amused. "You ought to have called me that, years ago," she said, "for all you knew me!"
"I did know her—YOU, I mean!" he answered. "I used to know nearly everything you were going to say before you said it. It seems strange now—"
"Yes," she interrupted. "It does seem strange now!"
"Somehow," he went on, "I doubt if now I'd know."
"Somehow," she echoed, with fine gravity, "I doubt it, too."
Although he had so dim a perception of the staring and whispering which greeted and followed them, Ariel, of course, was thoroughly aware of it, though the only sign she gave was the slight blush, which very soon disappeared. That people turned to look at her may have been not altogether a novelty: a girl who had learned to appear unconscious of the Continental stare, the following gaze of the boulevards, the frank glasses of the Costanza in Rome, was not ill equipped to face Main Street, Canaan, even as it was to-day.
Under the sycamores, before they started, they had not talked a great deal; there had been long silences: almost all her questions concerning the period of his runaway absence; she appeared to know and to understand everything which had happened since his return to the town. He had not, in his turn, reached the point where he would begin to question her; he was too breathless in his consciousness of the marvellous present hour. She had told him of the death of Roger Tabor, the year before. "Poor man," she said, gently, "he lived to see 'how the other fellows did it' at last, and everybody liked him. He was very happy over there."
After a little while she had said that it was growing close upon lunch-time; she must be going back.
"Then—then—good-bye," he replied, ruefully.
"Why?"
"I'm afraid you don't understand. It wouldn't do for you to be seen with me. Perhaps, though, you do understand. Wasn't that why you asked me to meet you out here beyond the bridge?"
In answer she looked at him full and straight for three seconds, then threw back her head and closed her eyes tight with laughter. Without a word she took the parasol from him, opened it herself, placed the smooth white coral handle of it in his hand, and lightly took his arm. There was no further demur on the part of the young man. He did not know where she was going; he did not ask.
Soon after Norbert turned to follow them, they came to the shady part of the street, where the town in summer was like a grove. Detachments from the procession had already, here and there, turned in at the various gates. Nobody, however, appeared to have gone in-doors, except for fans, armed with which immediately to return to rockers upon the shaded verandas. As Miss Tabor and Joe went by, the rocking-chairs stopped; the fans poised, motionless; and perspiring old gentlemen, wiping their necks, paused in arrested attitudes.
Once Ariel smiled politely, not at Mr. Louden, and inclined her head twice, with the result that the latter, after thinking for a time of how gracefully she did it and how pretty the top of her hat was, became gradually conscious of a meaning in her action: that she had bowed to some one across the street. He lifted his hat, about four minutes late, and discovered Mamie Pike and Eugene, upon the opposite pavement, walking home from church together. Joe changed color.
There, just over the way, was she who had been, in his first youth, the fairy child, the little princess playing in the palace yard, and always afterward his lady of dreams, his fair unreachable moon! And Joe, seeing her to-day, changed color; that was all! He had passed Mamie in the street only a week before, and she had seemed all that she had always seemed; to-day an incomprehensible and subtle change had befallen her—a change so mystifying to him that for a moment he almost doubted that she was Mamie Pike. It came to him with a breath-taking shock that her face lacked a certain vivacity of meaning; that its sweetness was perhaps too placid; that there would have been a deeper goodness in it had there been any hint of daring. Astonishing questions assailed him, startled him: could it be true that, after all, there might be some day too much of her? Was her amber hair a little too—FLUFFY? Was something the matter with her dress? Everything she wore had always seemed so beautiful. Where had the exquisiteness of it gone? For there was surely no exquisiteness about it now! It was incredible that any one could so greatly alter in the few days elapsed since he had seen her.
Strange matters! Mamie had never looked prettier.
At the sound of Ariel's voice he emerged from the profundities of his psychic enigma with a leap.
"She is lovelier than ever, isn't she?"
"Yes, indeed," he answered, blankly.
"Would you still risk—" she began, smiling, but, apparently thinking better of it, changed her question: "What is the name of your dog, Mr. Louden? You haven't told me."
"Oh, he's just a yellow dog," he evaded, unskilfully.
"YOUNG MAN!" she said, sharply.
"Well," he admitted, reluctantly, "I call him Speck for short."
"And what for long? I want to know his real name."
"It's mighty inappropriate, because we're fond of each other," said Joe, "but when I picked him up he was so yellow, and so thin, and so creeping, and so scared that I christened him 'Respectability.'"
She broke into light laughter, stopped short in the midst of it, and became grave. "Ah, you've grown bitter," she said, gently.
"No, no," he protested. "I told you I liked him."
She did not answer.
They were now opposite the Pike Mansion, and to his surprise she turned, indicating the way by a touch upon his sleeve, and crossed the street toward the gate, which Mamie and Eugene had entered. Mamie, after exchanging a word with Eugene upon the steps, was already hurrying into the house.
Ariel paused at the gate, as if waiting for Joe to open it.
He cocked his head, his higher eyebrow rose, and the distorted smile appeared. "I don't believe we'd better stop here," he said. "The last time I tried it I was expunged from the face of the universe."
"Don't you know?" she cried. "I'm staying here. Judge Pike has charge of all my property; he was the administrator, or something." Then seeing him chopfallen and aghast, she went on: "Of course you don't know! You don't know anything about me. You haven't even asked!"
"You're going to live HERE?" he gasped.
"Will you come to see me?" she laughed. "Will you come this afternoon?"
He grew white. "You know I can't," he said.
"You came here once. You risked a good deal then, just to see Mamie dance by a window. Don't you dare a little for an old friend?"
"All right," he gulped. "I'll try."
Mr. Bantry had come down to the gate and was holding it open, his eyes fixed upon Ariel, within them a rising glow. An impression came to Joe afterward that his step-brother had looked very handsome.
"Possibly you remember me, Miss Tabor?" said Eugene, in a deep and impressive voice, lifting his hat. "We were neighbors, I believe, in the old days."
She gave him her hand in a fashion somewhat mannerly, favoring him with a bright, negligent smile. "Oh, quite," she answered, turning again to Joe as she entered the gate. "Then I shall expect you?"
"I'll try," said Joe. "I'll try."
He stumbled away; Respectability and he, together, interfering alarmingly with the comfort ofMr. Flitcroft, who had stopped in the middle of the pavement to stare glassily at Ariel. Eugene accompanied the latter into the house, and Joe, looking back, understood: Mamie had sent his step-brother to bring Ariel in—and to keep him from following.
"This afternoon!" The thought took away his breath, and he became paler.
The Pike brougham rolled by him, and Sam Warden, from the box, favored his old friend upon the pavement with a liberal display of the whites of his eyes. The Judge, evidently, had been detained after services—without doubt a meeting of the church officials. Mrs. Pike, blinking and frightened, sat at her husband's side, agreeing feebly with the bull-bass which rumbled out of the open window of the brougham: "I want orthodox preaching in MY church, and, by God, madam, I'll have it! That fellow has got to go!" Joe took off his hat and wiped his brow.
Mamie, waiting just inside the door as Ariel and Eugene entered, gave the visitor a pale greeting, and, a moment later, hearing the wheels of the brougham crunch the gravel of the carriage-drive, hurried away, down the broad hall, and disappeared. Ariel dropped her parasol upon a marble-topped table near the door, and, removing her gloves, drifted into a room at the left, where a grand piano found shelter beneath crimson plush. After a moment of contemplation, she pushed back the coverlet, and, seating herself upon the plush-covered piano-stool (to match), let her fingers run up and down the key-board once and fall listlessly in her lap, as she gazed with deep interest at three life-sized colored photographs (in carved gilt frames) upon the wall she was facing: Judge Pike, Mamie, and Mrs. Pike with her rubies.
"Please don't stop playing, Miss Tabor," said a voice behind her. She had not observed that Eugene had followed her into the room.
"Very well, if you like," she answered, looking up to smile absently at him. And she began to play a rakish little air which, composed by some rattle-brain at a cafe table, had lately skipped out of the Moulin Rouge to disport itself over Paris. She played it slowly, in the minor, with elfish pathos; while he leaned upon the piano, his eyes fixed upon her fingers, which bore few rings, none, he observed with an unreasonable pleasure, upon the third finger of the left hand.
"It's one of those simpler Grieg things, isn't it?" he said, sighing gently. "I care for Grieg."
"Would you mind its being Chaminade?" she returned, dropping her eyes to cloak the sin.
"Ah no; I recognize it now," replied Eugene. "He appeals to me even more than Grieg."
At this she glanced quickly up at him, but more quickly down again, and hastened the time emphatically, swinging the little air into the major.
"Do you play the 'Pilgrim's Chorus'?"
She shook her head.
"Vous name pas Wagner?" inquired Eugene, leaning toward her.
"Oh yes," she answered, bending her head far over, so that her face was concealed from him, except the chin, which, he saw with a thrill of inexplicable emotion, was trembling slightly. There were some small white flowers upon her hat, and these shook too.
She stopped playing abruptly, rose from the stool and crossed the room to a large mahogany chair, upholstered in red velvet and of hybrid construction, possessing both rockers and legs. She had moved in a way which prevented him from seeing her face, but he was certain of her agitation, and strangely glad, while curious, tremulous half-thoughts, edged with prophecy, bubbled to the surface of his consciousness.
When she turned to him, he was surprised to see that she looked astonishingly happy, almost as if she had been struggling with joy, instead of pain.
"This chair," she said, sinking into it, "makes me feel at home."
Naturally he could not understand.
"Because," she explained, "I once thought I was going to live in it. It has been reupholstered, but I should know it if I met in anywhere in the world!"
"How very odd!" exclaimed Eugene, staring.
"I settled here in pioneer days," she went on, tapping the arms lightly with her finger-tips. "It was the last dance I went to in Canaan."
"I fear the town was very provincial at that time," he returned, having completely forgotten the occasion she mentioned, therefore wishing to shift the subject. "I fear you may still find it so. There is not much here that one is in sympathy with, intellectually—few people really of the world."
"Few people, I suppose you mean," she said, softly, with a look that went deep enough into his eyes, "few people who really understand one?"
Eugene had seated himself on the sill of an open window close by. "There has been," he answered, with the ghost of a sigh, "no one."
She turned her head slightly away from him, apparently occupied with a loose thread in her sleeve. There were no loose threads; it was an old habit of hers which she retained. "I suppose," she murmured, in a voice as low as his had been, "that a man of your sort might find Canaan rather lonely and sad."
"It HAS been!" Whereupon she made him a laughing little bow.
"You are sure you complain of Canaan?"
"Yes!" he exclaimed. "You don't know what it is to live here—"
"I think I do. I lived here seventeen years."
"Oh yes," he began to object, "as a child, but—"
"Have you any recollection," she interrupted, "of the day before your brother ran away? Of coming home for vacation—I think it was your first year in college—and intervening between your brother and me in a snow-fight?"
For a moment he was genuinely perplexed; then his face cleared. "Certainly," he said: "I found him bullying you and gave him a good punishing for it."
"Is that all you remember?"
"Yes," he replied, honestly. "Wasn't that all?"
"Quite!" she smiled, her eyes half closed. "Except that I went home immediately afterward."
"Naturally," said Eugene. "My step-brother wasn't very much chevalier sans peur et sans reproche! Ah, I should like to polish up my French a little. Would you mind my asking you to read a bit with me, some little thing of Daudet's if you care for him, in the original? An hour, now and then, perhaps—"
Mamie appeared in the doorway and Eugene rose swiftly. "I have been trying to persuade Miss Tabor," he explained, with something too much of laughter, "to play again. You heard that little thing of Chaminade's—"
Mamie did not appear to hear him; she entered breathlessly, and there was no color in her cheeks. "Ariel," she exclaimed, "I don't want you to think I'm a tale-bearer—"
"Oh, my dear!" Ariel said, with a gesture of deprecation.
"No," Miss Pike went on, all in one breath, "but I'm afraid you will think it, because papa knows and he wants to see you."
"What is it that he knows?"
"That you were walking with Joseph Louden!" (This was as if she had said, "That you poisoned your mother.") "I DIDN'T tell him, but when we saw you with him I was troubled, and asked Eugene what I'd better do, because Eugene always knows what is best." (Mr. Bantry's expression, despite this tribute, was not happy.) "And he advised me to tell mamma about it and leave it in her hands. But she always tells papa everything—"
"Certainly; that is understood," said Ariel, slowly, turning to smile at Eugene.
"And she told him this right away," Mamie finished.
"Why shouldn't she, if it is of the slightest interest to him?"
The daughter of the house exhibited signs of consternation. "He wants to see you," she repeated, falteringly. "He's in the library."
Having thus discharged her errand, she hastened to the front-door, which had been left open, and out to the steps, evidently with the intention of removing herself as soon and as far as possible from the vicinity of the library.
Eugene, visibly perturbed, followed her to the doorway of the room, and paused.
"Do you know the way?" he inquired, with a note of solemnity.
"Where?" Ariel had not risen.
"To the library."
"Of course," she said, beaming upon him. "I was about to ask you if you wouldn't speak to the Judge for me. This is such a comfortable old friend, this chair."
"Speak to him for you?" repeated the non-plussed Eugene.
She nodded cheerfully. "If I may trouble you. Tell him, certainly, I shall be glad to see him."
He threw a piteous glance after Mamie, who was now, as he saw, through the open door, out upon the lawn and beyond easy hailing distance. When he turned again to look at Ariel he discovered that she had shifted the position of her chair slightly, and was gazing out of the window with every appearance of cheerful meditation. She assumed so unmistakably that he had of course gone on her mission that, dismayed and his soul quaking, he could find neither an alternative nor words to explain to this dazzling lady that not he nor any other could bear such a message to Martin Pike.
Eugene went. There was nothing else to do; and he wished with every step that the distance to the portals of the library might have been greater.
In whatever guise he delivered the summons, it was perfectly efficacious. A door slammed, a heavy and rapid tread was heard in the hall, and Ariel, without otherwise moving, turned her head and offered a brilliant smile of greeting.
"It was good of you," she said, as the doorway filled with red, imperial wrath, "to wish to have a little chat with me. I'm anxious, of course, to go over my affairs with you, and last night, after my journey, I was too tired. But now we might begin; not in detail, of course, just yet. That will do for later, when I've learned more about business."
The great one had stopped on the threshold.
"Madam," he began, coldly, "when I say my library, I mean my—"
"Oh yes," she interrupted, with amiable weariness. "I know. You mean you keep all the papers and books of the estate in there, but I think we'd better put them off for a few days—"
"I'm not talking about the estate!" he exclaimed. "What I want to talk to you about is being seen with Joseph Louden!"
"Yes," she nodded, brightly. "That's along the line we must take up first."
"Yes, it is!" He hurled his bull-bass at her. "You knew everything about him and his standing in this community! I know you did, because Mrs. Pike told me you asked all about him from Mamie after you came last night, and, see here, don't you—"
"Oh, but I knew before that," she laughed. "I had a correspondent in Canaan, one who has always taken a great interest in Mr. Louden. I asked Miss Pike only to get her own point of view."
"I want to tell you, madam," he shouted, coming toward her, "that no member of my household—"
"That's another point we must take up to-day. I'm glad you remind me of it," she said, thoughtfully, yet with so magically compelling an intonation that he stopped his shouting in the middle of a word; stopped with an apoplectic splutter. "We must arrange to put the old house in order at once."
"We'll arrange nothing of the sort," he responded, after a moment of angry silence. "You're going to stay right here."
"Ah, I know your hospitality," she bowed, graciously. "But of course I must not tax it too far. And about Mr. Louden? As I said, I want to speak to you about him."
"Yes," he intervened, harshly. "So do I, and I'm going to do it quick! You'll find—"
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.
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 opposite 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 with 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?"
"Aren't you very good-natured, Mr. Flitcroft?" she asked, with an odd intonation.
"I'm imposed on, often enough," he replied, rubbing his leg, "by people who think I am! Why?"
"It is only that your sitting so abruptly upon the ground reminded me of something that happened long ago, before I left Canaan, the last time I met you."
"I don't think I knew you before you went away. You haven't said if you'll go riding with me to-morrow. Please—"
"Get up," interrupted Mr. Arp, acidly. "Somebody 'll fall over you if you stay there."
Such a catastrophe in truth loomed imminent. Judge Pike was rapidly approaching on his way to the house, Bible in hand—far better in hand than was his temper, for it is an enraging thing to wait five hours in ambush for a man who does not come. In the darkness a desecration occurred, and Norbert perfected to the last detail whatever had been left incomplete of his own destruction. He began lumberingly to rise, talking at the same time, urging upon Ariel the charms of the roadside; wild flowers were in blossom, he said, recounting the benefits she might derive through acceptance of his invitation; and having, thus busily, risen to his knees, became aware that some one was passing near him. This some one Mr. Flitcroft, absorbed in artful persuasions, may have been betrayed by the darkness to mistake for Eugene. Reaching out for assistance, he mechanically seized upon the skirts of a coat, which he put to the uses of a rope, coming up hand-over-hand with such noble weight and energy that he brought himself to his feet and the owner of the coat to the ground simultaneously. The latter, hideously astonished, went down with an objurgation so outrageous in venom that Mr. Arp jumped with the shock. Judge Pike got to his feet quickly, but not so quickly as the piteous Flitcroft betook himself into the deep shadows of the street. Only a word, hoarse and horror-stricken, was left quivering on the night breeze by this accursed, whom the gods, intent upon his ruin, had early in the day, at his first sight of Ariel, in good truth, made mad: "MURDER!"
"Can I help you brush off, Judge?" asked Eskew, rising painfully.
Either Martin Pike was beyond words, or the courtesy proposed by the feeble old fellow (for Eskew was now very far along in years, and looked his age) emphasized too bitterly the indignity which had been put upon him: whatever the case, he went his way in-doors, leaving the cynic's offer unacknowledged. Eskew sank back upon the bench, with the little rusty sounds, suggestions of creaks and sighs, which accompany the movement of antiques. "I've always thought," he said, "that the Judge had spells when he was hard of hearing."
Oblongs of light abruptly dropped from the windows confronting them, one, falling across the bench, appropriately touching with lemon the acrid, withered face and trembling hands of the veteran. "You are younger than you were nine years ago, Mr. Arp," said Ariel, gayly. "I caught a glimpse of you upon the street, to-day, and I thought so then. Now I see that I was right."
"Me—YOUNGER!" he groaned. "No, ma'am! I'm mighty near through with this fool world—and I'd be glad of it, if I didn't expect that if there IS another one afterwards, it would be jest as ornery!"
She laughed, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knee, and her chin in her hand, so that the shadow of her hat shielded her eyes from the light. "I thought you looked surprised when you saw me to day."
"I reckon I did!" he exclaimed. "Who wouldn't of been?"
"Why?"
"Why?" he repeated, confounded by her simplicity. "Why?"
"Yes," she laughed. "That's what I'm anxious to know."
"Wasn't the whole town the same way?" he demanded. "Did you meet anybody that didn't look surprised?"
"But why should they?"
"Good Lord Admighty!" he broke out. "Ain't you got any lookin'-glasses?"
"I think almost all I have are still in the customs warehouse."
"Then use Mamie Pike's," responded the old man. "The town never dreamed you were goin' to turn out pretty at all, let alone the WAY you've turned out pretty! The Tocsin had a good deal about your looks and so forth in it once, in a letter from Paris, but the folks that remembered you kind of set that down to the way papers talk about anybody with money, and nobody was prepared for it when they saw you. You don't need to drop no curtseys to ME." He set his mouth grimly, in response to the bow she made him. "Ithink female beauty is like all other human furbelows, and as holler as heaven will be if only the good people are let in! But yet I did stop to look at you when you went past me to-day, and I kept on lookin', long as you were in sight. I reckon I always will, when I git the chance, too—only shows what human nature IS! But that wasn't all that folks were starin' at to-day. It was your walkin' with Joe Louden that really finished 'em, and I can say it upset me more than anything I've seen for a good many years."
"Upset you, Mr. Arp?" she cried. "I don't quite see."
The old man shook his head deploringly. "After what I'd written you about that boy—"
"Ah," she said, softly, touching his sleeve with her fingers, "I haven't thanked you for that."
"You needn't," he returned, sharply. "It was a pleasure. Do you remember how easy and quick I promised you?"
"I remember that you were very kind."
"Kind!" He gave forth an acid and chilling laugh. "It was about two months after Louden ran away, and before you and Roger left Canaan, and you asked me to promise to write to you whenever word of that outcast came—"
"I didn't put it so, Mr. Arp."
"No, but you'd ought of! You asked me to write you whatever news of him should come, and if he came back to tell you how and when and all about it. And I did it, and kept you sharp on his record ever since he landed here again. Do you know why I've done it? Do you know why I promised so quick and easy I WOULD do it?"
"Out of the kindness of your heart, I think."
The acid laugh was repeated. "NO, ma 'am! You couldn't of guessed colder. I promised, and I kept my promise, because I knew there would never be anything good to tell! AND THERE NEVER WAS!"
"Nothing at all?" she insisted, gravely.
"Never! I leave it to you if I've written one good word of him."
"You've written of the treatment he has received here," she began, "and I've been able to see what he has borne—and bears!"
"But have I written one word to show that he didn't deserve it all? Haven't I told you everything, of his associates, his—"
"Indeed you have!"
"Then do you wonder that I was more surprised than most when I saw you walking with him to-day? Because I knew you did it in cold blood and knowledge aforethought! Other folks thought it was because you hadn't been here long enough to hear his reputation, but I KNEW!"
"Tell me," she said, "if you were disappointed when you saw me with him."
"Yes," he snapped. "I was!"
"I thought so. I saw the consternation in your face! You APPROVED, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Yes, you do! I know it bothers you to have me read you between the lines, but for this once you must let me. You are so consistent that you are never disappointed when things turn out badly, or people are wicked or foolish, are you?"
"No, certainly not. I expect it."
"And you were disappointed in me to-day. Therefore, it must be that I was doing something you knew was right and good. You see?" She leaned a little closer to him, smiling angelically. "Ah, Mr. Arp," she cried, "I know your secret: you ADMIRE me!"
He rose, confused and incoherent, as full of denial as a detected pickpocket. "I DON'T! Me ADMIRE? WHAT? It's an ornery world," he protested. "I don't admire any human that ever lived!"
"Yes, you do," she persisted. "I've just proved it! But that is the least of your secret; the great thing is this: YOU ADMIRE MR. LOUDEN!"
"I never heard such nonsense," he continued to protest, at the same time moving down the walk toward the gate, leaning heavily on his stick. "Nothin' of the kind. There ain't any LOGIC to that kind of an argument, nor no REASON!"
"You see, I understand you," she called after him. "I'm sorry you go away in the bitterness of being found out."
"Found out!" His stick ceased for a moment to tap the cement. "Pooh!" he ejaculated, uneasily. There was a pause, followed by a malevolent chuckle. "At any rate," he said, with joy in the afterthought, "you'll never go walkin' with him AGAIN!"
He waited for the answer, which came, after a time, sadly. "Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I shall not."
"Ha, I thought so! Good-night."
"Good-night, Mr. Arp."