“Yes,” said the old man, grimly, with something of the look he wore when delivering a clincher at the “National House,”— “he’s stopped speaking to everybody.”
V. BEAVER BEACH
THE CANAAN DAILY Tocsin of the following morning “ventured the assertion” upon its front page that “the scene at the Pike Mansion was one of unalloyed festivity, music, and mirth; a fairy bower of airy figures wafting here and there to the throb of waltz-strains; a veritable Temple of Terpsichore, shining forth with a myriad of lights, which, together with the generous profusion of floral decorations and the mingled delights afforded by Minds’s orchestra of Indianapolis and Caterer Jones of Chicago, was in all likelihood never heretofore surpassed in elegance in our city.... Only one incident,” the Tocsin remarked, “marred an otherwise perfect occasion, and out of regard for the culprit’s family connections, which are prominent in our social world, we withhold his name. Suffice it to say that through the vigilance of Mr. Norbert Flitcroft, grandson of Colonel A. A. Flitcroft, who proved himself a thorough Lecoq (the celebrated French detective), the rascal was seized and recognized. Mr. Flitcroft, having discovered him in hiding, had a cordon of waiters drawn up around his hiding-place, which was the charmingly decorated side piazza of the Pike Mansion, and sent for Judge Pike, who came upon the intruder by surprise. He evaded the Judge’s indignant grasp, but received a well-merited blow over the head from a poker which the Judge had concealed about his person while pretending to approach the hiding-place casually. Attracted to the scene by the cries of Mr. Flitcroft, who, standing behind Judge Pike, accidentally received a blow from the same weapon, all the guests of the evening sprang to view the scene, only to behold the culprit leap through a crevice between the strips of canvas which enclosed the piazza. He was seized by the colored coachman of the Mansion, Sam Warden, and immediately pounced upon by the cordon of Caterer Jones’s dusky assistants from Chicago, who were in ambush outside. Unfortunately, after a brief struggle he managed to trip Warden, and, the others stumbling upon the prostrate body of the latter, to make his escape in the darkness.
“It is not believed by many that his intention was burglary, though what his designs were can only be left to conjecture, as he is far beyond the age when boys perform such actions out of a sense of mischief. He had evidently occupied his hiding-place some time, and an idea of his coolness may be obtained from his having procured and eaten a full meal through an unknown source. Judge Pike is justly incensed, and swears that he will prosecute him on this and other charges as soon as he can be found. Much sympathy is felt for the culprit’s family, who feel his shame most keenly, but who, though sorrowing over the occurrence, declare that they have put up with his derelictions long enough, and will do nothing to step between him and the Judge’s righteous indignation.”
The Pike Mansion, “scene of festivity, music, and mirth” (not quite so unalloyed, after all, the stricken Flitcroft keeping his room for a week under medical supervision), had not been the only bower of the dance in Canaan that evening: another Temple of Terpsichore had shone forth with lights, though of these there were not quite a myriad. The festivities they illumined obtained no mention in the paper, nor did they who trod the measures in this second temple exhibit any sense of injury because of the Tocsin’s omission. Nay, they were of that class, shy without being bashful, exclusive yet not proud, which shuns publicity with a single-heartedness almost unique in our republic, courting observation neither in the prosecution of their professions nor in the pursuit of happiness.
Not quite a mile above the northernmost of the factories on the water-front, there projected into the river, near the end of the crescent bend above the town, a long pier, relic of steamboat days, rotting now, and many years fallen from its maritime uses. About midway of its length stood a huge, crazy shed, long ago utilized as a freight storeroom. This had been patched and propped, and a dangerous-looking veranda attached to it, over-hanging the water. Above the doorway was placed a sign whereon might be read the words, “Beaver Beach, Mike’s Place.” The shore end of the pier was so ruinous that passage was offered by a single row of planks, which presented an appearance so temporary, as well as insecure, that one might have guessed their office to be something in the nature of a drawbridge. From these a narrow path ran through a marsh, left by the receding river, to a country road of desolate appearance. Here there was a rough enclosure, or corral, with some tumble-down sheds which afforded shelter, on the night of Joseph Louden’s disgrace, for a number of shaggy teams attached to those decrepit and musty vehicles known picturesquely and accurately as Night-Hawks. The presence of such questionable shapes in the corral indicated that the dance was on at Beaver Beach, Mike’s Place, as surely as the short line of cabs and family carriages on upper Main Street made it known that gayety was the order of the night at the Pike Mansion. But among other differences was this, that at the hour when the guests of the latter were leaving, those seeking the hospitalities of Beaver Beach had just begun to arrive.
By three o’clock, however, joy at Mike’s Place had become beyond question unconfined, and the tokens of it were audible for a long distance in all directions. If, however, there is no sound where no ear hears, silence rested upon the country-side until an hour later. Then a lonely figure came shivering from the direction of the town, not by the road, but slinking through the snow upon the frozen river. It came slowly, as though very tired, and cautiously, too, often turning its head to look behind. Finally it reached the pier, and stopped as if to listen.
Within the house above, a piano of evil life was being beaten to death for its sins and clamoring its last cries horribly. The old shed rattled in every part with the thud of many heavy feet, and trembled with the shock of noise — an incessant roar of men’s voices, punctuated with women’s screams. Then the riot quieted somewhat; there was a clapping of hands, and a violin began to squeak measures intended to be Oriental. The next moment the listener scrambled up one of the rotting piles and stood upon the veranda. A shaft of red light through a broken shutter struck across the figure above the shoulders, revealing a bloody handkerchief clumsily knotted about the head, and, beneath it, the face of Joe Louden.
He went to the broken shutter and looked in. Around the blackened walls of the room stood a bleared mob, applausively watching, through a fog of smoke, the contortions of an old woman in a red calico wrapper, who was dancing in the centre of the floor. The fiddler — a rubicund person evidently not suffering from any great depression of spirit through the circumstance of being “out on bail,” as he was, to Joe’s intimate knowledge — sat astride a barrel, resting his instrument upon the foamy tap thereof, and playing somewhat after the manner of a ‘cellist; in no wise incommoded by the fact that a tall man (known to a few friends as an expert in the porch-climbing line) was sleeping on his shoulder, while another gentleman (who had prevented many cases of typhoid by removing old plumbing from houses) lay on the floor at the musician’s feet and endeavored to assist him by plucking the strings of the fiddle.
Joe opened the door and went in. All of the merry company (who were able) turned sharply toward the door as it opened; then, recognizing the new-comer, turned again to watch the old woman. One or two nearest the door asked the boy, without great curiosity, what had happened to his head. He merely shook it faintly in reply, and crossed the room to an open hallway beyond. At the end of this he came to a frowzy bedroom, the door of which stood ajar. Seated at a deal table, and working by a dim lamp with a broken chimney, a close-cropped, red-bearded, red-haired man in his shirt-sleeves was jabbing gloomily at a column of figures scrawled in a dirty ledger. He looked up as Joe appeared in the doorway, and his eyes showed a slight surprise.
“I never thought ye had the temper to git somebody to split yer head,” said he. “Where’d ye collect it?”
“Nowhere,” Joe answered, dropping weakly on the bed. “It doesn’t amount to anything.”
“Well, I’ll take just a look fer myself,” said the
red-bearded man, rising. “And I’ve no objection to not knowin’ how ye come by it. Ye’ve always been the great one fer keepin’ yer mysteries to yerself.”
He unwound the handkerchief and removed it from Joe’s head gently. “WHEE!” he cried, as a long gash was exposed over the forehead. “I hope ye left a mark somewhere to pay a little on the score o’ this!”
Joe chuckled and dropped dizzily back upon the pillow. “There was another who got something like it,” he gasped, feebly; “and, oh, Mike, I wish you could have heard him going on! Perhaps you did — it was only three miles from here.”
“Nothing I’d liked better!” said the other, bringing a basin of clear water from a stand in the corner. “It’s a beautiful thing to hear a man holler when he gits a grand one like ye’re wearing to-night.”
He bathed the wound gently, and hurrying from the room, returned immediately with a small jug of vinegar. Wetting a rag with this tender fluid, he applied it to Joe’s head, speaking soothingly the while.
“Nothing in the world like a bit o’ good cider vinegar to keep off the festerin’. It may seem a trifle scratchy fer the moment, but it assassinates the blood-p’ison. There ye go! It’s the fine thing fer ye, Joe — what are ye squirmin’ about?”
“I’m only enjoying it,” the boy answered, writhing as the vinegar worked into the gash. “Don’t you mind my laughing to myself.”
“Ye’re a good one, Joe!” said the other, continuing his ministrations. “I wisht, after all, ye felt like makin’ me known to what’s the trouble. There’s some of us would be glad to take it up fer ye, and—”
“No, no; it’s all right. I was somewhere I had no business to be, and I got caught.”
“Who caught ye?”
“First, some nice white people” — Joe smiled his distorted smile— “and then a low-down black man helped me to get away as soon as he saw who it was. He’s a friend of mine, and he fell down and tripped up the pursuit.”
“I always knew ye’d git into large trouble some day.” The red-bearded man tore a strip from an old towel and began to bandage the boy’s head with an accustomed hand. “Yer taste fer excitement has been growin’ on ye every minute of the four years I’ve known ye.”
“Excitement!” echoed Joe, painfully blinking at his friend. “Do you think I’m hunting excitement?”
“Be hanged to ye!” said the red-bearded man. “Can’t I say a teasing word without gittin’ called to order fer it? I know ye, my boy, as well as ye know yerself. Ye’re a queer one. Ye’re one of the few that must know all sides of the world — and can’t content themselves with bein’ respectable! Ye haven’t sunk to ‘low life’ because ye’re low yourself, but ye’ll never git a damned one o’ the respectable to believe it. There’s a few others like ye in the wide world, and I’ve seen one or two of ’em. I’ve been all over, steeple-chasin’, sailorman, soldier, pedler, and in the PO-lice; I’ve pulled the Grand National in Paris, and I’ve been handcuffed in Hong-Kong; I’ve seen all the few kinds of women there is on earth and the many kinds of men. Yer own kind is the one I’ve seen the fewest of, but I knew ye belonged to it the first time I laid eyes on ye!” He paused, then continued with conviction: “Ye’ll come to no good, either, fer yerself, yet no one can say ye haven’t the talents. Ye’ve helped many of the boys out of a bad hole with a word of advice around the courts and the jail. Who knows but ye’d be a great lawyer if ye kept on?”
Young people usually like to discuss themselves under any conditions — hence the rewards of palmistry, — but Joe’s comment on this harangue was not so responsive as might have been expected. “I’ve got seven dollars,” he said, “and I’ll leave the clothes I’ve got on. Can you fix me up with something different?”
“Aha!” cried the red-bearded man. “Then ye ARE in trouble! I thought it ‘d come to ye some day! Have ye been dinnymitin’ Martin Pike?”
“See what you can do,” said Joe. “I want to wait here until daybreak.”
“Lie down, then,” interrupted the other. “And fergit the hullabaloo in the throne-room beyond.”
“I can easily do that” — Joe stretched himself upon the bed,— “I’ve got so many other things to remember.”
“I’ll have the things fer ye, and I’ll let ye know I have no use fer seven dollars,” returned the red-bearded man, crossly. “What are ye sniffin’ fer?”
“I’m thinking of the poor fellow that got the mate to this,” said Joe, touching the bandage. “I can’t help crying when I think they may have used vinegar on his head, too.”
“Git to sleep if ye can!” exclaimed the Samaritan, as a hideous burst of noise came from the dance-room, where some one seemed to be breaking a chair upon an acquaintance. “I’ll go out and regulate the boys a bit.” He turned down the lamp, fumbled in his hip-pocket, and went to the door.
“Don’t forget,” Joe called after him.
“Go to sleep,” said the red-bearded man, his hand on the door-knob. “That is, go to thinkin’, fer ye won’t sleep; ye’re not the kind. But think easy; I’ll have the things fer ye. It’s a matter of pride with me that I always knew ye’d come to trouble.”
VI. YE’LL TAK’ THE HIGH ROAD AND I’LL TAK’ THE LOW ROAD
THE DAY BROKE with a scream of wind out of the prairies and such cloudbursts of snow that Joe could see neither bank of the river as he made his way down the big bend of ice. The wind struck so bitterly that now and then he stopped and, panting and gasping, leaned his weight against it. The snow on the ground was caught up and flew like sea spume in a hurricane; it swirled about him, joining the flakes in the air, so that it seemed to be snowing from the ground upward as much as from the sky downward. Fierce as it was, hard as it was to fight through, snow from the earth, snow from the sky, Joe was grateful for it, feeling that it veiled him, making him safer, though he trusted somewhat the change of costume he had effected at Beaver Beach. A rough, workman’s cap was pulled down over his ears and eyebrows; a knitted comforter was wound about the lower part of his face; under a ragged overcoat he wore blue overalls and rubber boots; and in one of his red-mittened hands he swung a tin dinner-bucket.
When he reached the nearest of the factories he heard the exhaust of its engines long before he could see the building, so blinding was the drift. Here he struck inland from the river, and, skirting the edges of the town, made his way by unfrequented streets and alleys, bearing in the general direction of upper Main Street, to find himself at last, almost exhausted, in the alley behind the Pike Mansion. There he paused, leaning heavily against a board fence and gazing at the vaguely outlined gray plane which was all that could be made of the house through the blizzard. He had often, very often, stood in this same place at night, and there was one window (Mrs. Pike’s) which he had guessed to be Mamie’s.
The storm was so thick that he could not see this window now, but he looked a long time through the thickness at that part of the gray plane where he knew it was. Then his lips parted.
“Good-bye, Mamie,” he said, softly. “Goodbye, Mamie.”
He bent his body against the wind and went on, still keeping to the back ways, until he came to the alley which passed behind his own home, where, however, he paused only for a moment to make a quick survey of the premises. A glance satisfied him; he ran to the next fence, hoisted himself wearily over it, and dropped into Roger Tabor’s back yard.
He took shelter from the wind for a moment or two, leaning against the fence, breathing heavily; then he stumbled on across the obliterated paths of a vegetable-garden until he reached the house, and beginning with the kitchen, began to make the circuit of the windows, peering cautiously into each as he went, ready to tap on the pane should he catch a glimpse of Ariel, and prepared to run if he stumbled upon her grandfather. But the place seemed empty: he had made his reconnaisance apparently in vain, and was on the point of going away, when he heard the click of the front gate and saw Ariel coming towards him, her old water-proof cloak about her head and shoulders, the
patched, scant, faded skirt, which he knew so well, blowing about her tumultuously. At the sound of the gate he had crouched close against the side of the house, but she saw him at once.
She stopped abruptly, and throwing the water-proof back from her head, looked at him through the driven fog of snow. One of her hands was stretched towards him involuntarily, and it was in that attitude that he long remembered her: standing in the drift which had piled up against the gate almost knee-deep, the shabby skirt and the black water-proof flapping like torn sails, one hand out-stretched like that of a figure in a tableau, her brown face with its thin features mottled with cold and unlovely, her startled eyes fixed on him with a strange, wild tenderness that held something of the laughter of whole companionship in it mingling with a loyalty and championship that was almost ferocious — she looked an Undine of the snow.
Suddenly she ran to him, still keeping her hand out-stretched until it touched his own.
“How did you know me?” he said.
“Know you!” was all the answer she made to that question. “Come into the house. I’ve got some coffee on the stove for you. I’ve been up and down the street waiting for you ever since it began to get light.”
“Your grandfather won’t—”
“He’s at Uncle Jonas’s; he won’t be back till noon. There’s no one here.”
She led him to the front-door, where he stamped and shook himself; he was snow from head to foot.
“I’m running away from the good Gomorrah,” he said, “but I’ve stopped to look back, and I’m a pretty white pillar.”
“I know where you stopped to look back,” she answered, brushing him heartily with her red hands. “You came in the alley way. It was Mamie’s window.”
He did not reply, and the only visible token that he had any consciousness of this clairvoyance of hers was a slight lift of his higher eyebrow. She wasted no time in getting him to the kitchen, where, when she had removed his overcoat, she placed him in a chair, unwound the comforter, and, as carefully as a nurse, lifted the cap from his injured head. When the strip of towel was disclosed she stood quite still for a moment with the cap in her hand; then with a broken little cry she stooped and kissed a lock of his hair, which escaped, discolored, beneath the bandage.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 73