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 of
Mr. 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.
XII. TO REMAIN ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE IS NOT ALWAYS A VICTORY
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, impe
rial 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—”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 79