Ariel had sunk back in her chair. “Why should your husband hide?” she asked, in a low voice.
“Waitin’ fer his chance at Cory,” the woman answered, huskily. “I expect he’s afraid the cops are after him, too, on account of the trouble, and he doesn’t want to git locked up till he’s met Cory again. They ain’t after him, but he may not know it. They haven’t heard of the trouble, I reckon, or they’d of run Cory in. HE’S around town to-day, drinkin’ heavy, and I guess he’s lookin’ fer Mr. Fear about as hard as Mr. Louden is.” She rose to her feet, lifted her coarse hands, and dropped them despairingly. “Oh, I’m scared!” she said. “Mr. Fear’s be’n mighty good to me.”
A slow and tired footstep was heard upon the stairs, and Joe’s dog ran into the room droopingly, wagged his tail with no energy, and crept under the desk. Mrs. Fear wheeled toward the door and stood, rigid, her hands clenched tight, her whole body still, except her breast, which rose and fell with her tumultuous breathing. She could not wait till the laggard step reached the landing.
“MR. LOUDEN!” she called, suddenly.
Joe’s voice came from the stairway. “It’s all right, Claudine. It’s all fixed up. Don’t worry.”
Mrs. Fear gave a thick cry of relief and sank back in her chair as Joe entered the room. He came in shamblingly, with his hand over his eyes as if they were very tired and the light hurt them, so that, for a moment or two, he did not perceive the second visitor. Then he let his hand fall, revealing a face very white and worn.
“It’s all right, Claudine,” he repeated. “It’s all right.”
He was moving to lay his hat on the desk when his eye caught first the roses, then fell upon Ariel, and he stopped stock-still with one arm outstretched, remaining for perhaps ten seconds in that attitude, while she, her lips parted, her eyes lustrous, returned his gaze with a look that was as inscrutable as it was kind.
“Yes,” she said, as if in answer to a question, “I have come here twice to-day.” She nodded slightly toward Mrs. Fear. “I can wait. I am very glad you bring good news.”
Joe turned dazedly toward the other. “Claudine,” he said, “you’ve been telling Miss Tabor.”
“I cert’nly have!” Mrs. Fear’s expression had cleared and her tone was cheerful. “I don’t see no harm in that! I’m sure she’s a good friend of YOURS, Mr. Louden.”
Joe glanced at Ariel with a faint, troubled smile, and turned again to Mrs. Fear. “I’ve had a long talk with Happy.”
“I’m awful glad. Is he ready to listen to reason? she asked, with a titter.
“He’s waiting for you.”
“Where?” She rose quickly.
“Stop,” said Joe, sharply. “You must be very careful with him—”
“Don’t you s’pose I’m goin’ to be?” she interrupted, with a catch in her voice. “Don’t you s’pose I’ve had trouble enough?”
“No,” said Joe, deliberately and impersonally, “I don’t. Unless you keep remembering to be careful all the time, you’ll follow the first impulse you have, as you did yesterday, and your excuse will be that you never thought any harm would come of it. He’s in a queer mood; but he will forgive you if you ask him—”
“Well, ain’t that what I WANT to do!” she exclaimed.
“I know, I know,” he said, dropping into the desk-chair and passing his hand over his eyes with a gesture of infinite weariness. “But you must be very careful. I hunted for him most of the night and all day. He was trying to keep out of my way because he didn’t want me to find him until he had met this fellow Nashville. Happy is a hard man to come at when he doesn’t care to be found, and he kept shifting from place to place until I ran him down. Then I got him in a corner and told him that you hadn’t meant any harm — which is always true of you, poor woman! — and I didn’t leave him till he had promised me to forgive you if you would come and ask him. And you must keep him out of Cory’s way until I can arrange to have him — Cory, I mean — sent out of town. Will you?”
“Why, cert’nly,” she answered, smiling. “That Nashville’s the vurry last person I ever want to see again — the fresh thing!” Mrs. Fear’s burden had fallen; her relief was perfect and she beamed vapidly; but Joe marked her renewed irresponsibility with an anxious eye.
“You mustn’t make any mistakes,” he said, rising stiffly with fatigue.
“Not ME! I don’t take no more chances,” she responded, tittering happily. “Not after yesterday. MY! but it’s a load off my shoulders! I do hate it to have gen’lemen quarrelling over me, especially Mr. Fear. I never DID like to START anything; I like to see people laugh and be friendly, and I’m mighty glad it’s all blown over. I kind o’ thought it would, all along. PSHO!” She burst into genuine, noisy laughter. “I don’t expect either of ’em meant no real harm to each other, after they got cooled off a little! If they’d met to-day, they’d probably both run! Now, Mr. Louden, where’s Happy?”
Joe went to the door with her. He waited a moment, perplexed, then his brow cleared and he said in a low voice: “You know the alley beyond Vent Miller’s pool-room? Go down the alley till you come to the second gate. Go in, and you’ll see a basement door opening into a little room under Miller’s bar. The door won’t be locked, and Happy’s in there waiting for you. But remember—”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” she cut him off, loudly. “I know HIM! Inside of an hour I’ll have him LAUGHIN’ over all this. You’ll see!”
When she had gone, he stood upon the landing looking thoughtfully after her. “Perhaps, after all, that is the best mood to let her meet him in,” he murmured.
Then, with a deep breath, he turned. The heavy perfume had gone; the air was clear and sweet, and Ariel was pressing her face into the roses again. As he saw how like them she was, he was shaken with a profound and mysterious sigh, like that which moves in the breast of one who listens in the dark to his dearest music.
XV. HAPPY FEAR GIVES HIMSELF UP
“I KNOW HOW tired you are,” said Ariel, as he came back into the room. “I shall not keep you long.”
“Ah, please do!” he returned, quickly, beginning to fumble with the shade of a student-lamp at one end of the desk.
“Let me do that,” she said. “Sit down.” He obeyed at once, and watched her as she lit the lamp, and, stretching upon tiptoe, turned out the gas. “No,” she continued, seated again and looking across the desk at him, “I wanted to see you at the first possible opportunity, but what I have to say—”
“Wait,” he interrupted. “Let me tell you why I did not come yesterday.”
“You need not tell me. I know.” She glanced at the chair which had been occupied by Mrs. Fear. “I knew last night that they had sent for you.”
“You did?” he exclaimed. “Ah, I understand. Sam Warden must have told you.”
“Yes,” she said. “It was he; and I have been wondering ever since how he heard of it. He knew last night, but there was nothing in the papers this morning; and until I came here I heard no one else speak of it; yet Canaan is not large.”
Joe laughed. “It wouldn’t seem strange if you lived with the Canaan that I do. Sam had been down-town during the afternoon and had met friends; the colored people are a good deal like a freemasonry, you know. A great many knew last night all about what had happened, and had their theories about what might happen to-day in case the two men met. Still, you see, those who knew, also knew just what people not to tell. The Tocsin is the only newspaper worth the name here; but even if the Tocsin had known of the trouble, it wouldn’t have been likely to mention it. That’s a thing I don’t understand.” He frowned and rubbed the back of his head. “There’s something underneath it. For more than a year the Tocsin hasn’t spoken of Beaver Beach. I’d like to know why.”
“Joe,” she said, slowly, “tell me something truly. A man said to me yesterday that he found life here insufferable. Do you find it so?”
“Why, no!” he answered, surprised.
“Do you hate Canaan?�
��
“Certainly not.”
“You don’t find it dull, provincial, unsympathetic?”
He laughed cheerily. “Well, there’s this,” he explained: “I have an advantage over your friend. I see a more interesting side of things probably. The people I live among are pretty thorough cosmopolites in a way, and the life I lead—”
“I think I begin to understand a little about the life you lead,” she interrupted. “Then you don’t complain of Canaan?”
“Of course not.”
She threw him a quick, bright, happy look, then glanced again at the chair in which Mrs. Fear had sat. “Joe,” she said, “last night I heard the people singing in the houses, the old Sunday-evening way. It ‘took me back so’!”
“Yes, it would. And something else: there’s one hymn they sing more than any other; it’s Canaan’s favorite. Do you know what it is?”
“Is it ‘Rescue the Perishing’?”
“That’s it. ‘Rescue the Perishing’!” he cried, and repeating the words again, gave forth a peal of laughter so hearty that it brought tears to his eyes. “‘RESCUE THE PERISHING’!”
At first she did not understand his laughter, but, after a moment, she did, and joined her own to it, though with a certain tremulousness.
“It IS funny, isn’t it?” said Joe, wiping the moisture from his eyes. Then all trace of mirth left him. “Is it really YOU, sitting here and laughing with me, Ariel?”
“It seems to be,” she answered, in a low voice. “I’m not at all sure.”
“You didn’t think, yesterday afternoon,” he began, almost in a whisper,— “you didn’t think that I had failed to come because I—” He grew very red, and shifted the sentence awkwardly: “I was afraid you might think that I was — that I didn’t come because I might have been the same way again that I was when — when I met you at the station?”
“Oh no!” she answered, gently. “No. I knew better.”
“And do you know,” he faltered, “that that is all over? That it can never happen again?”
“Yes, I know it,” she returned, quickly.
“Then you know a little of what I owe you.”
“No, no,” she protested.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve made that change in me already. It wasn’t hard — it won’t be — though it might have been if — if you hadn’t come soon.”
“Tell me something,” she demanded. “If these people had not sent for you yesterday, would you have come to Judge Pike’s house to see me? You said you would try.” She laughed a little, and looked away from him. “I want to know if you would have come.”
There was a silence, and in spite of her averted glance she knew that he was looking at her steadily. Finally, “Don’t you know?” he said.
She shook her head and blushed faintly.
“Don’t you know?” he repeated.
She looked up and met his eyes, and thereupon both became very grave. “Yes, I do,” she answered. “You would have come. When you left me at the gate and went away, you were afraid. But you would have come.”
“Yes, — I’d have come. You are right. I was afraid at first; but I knew,” he went on, rapidly, “that you would have come to the gate to meet me.”
“You understood that?” she cried, her eyes sparkling and her face flushing happily.
“Yes. I knew that you wouldn’t have asked me to come,” he said, with a catch in his voice which was half chuckle, half groan, “if you hadn’t meant to take care of me! And it came to me that you would know how to do it.”
She leaned back in her chair, and again they laughed together, but only for a moment, becoming serious and very quiet almost instantly.
“I haven’t thanked you for the roses,” he said.
“Oh yes, you did. When you first looked at them!”
“So I did,” he whispered. “I’m glad you saw. To find them here took my breath away — and to find you with them—”
“I brought them this morning, you know.”
“Would you have come if you had not understood why I failed yesterday?”
“Oh yes, I think so,” she returned, the fine edge of a smile upon her lips. “For a time last evening, before I heard what had happened, I thought you were too frightened a friend to bother about.”
He made a little ejaculation, partly joyful, partly sad.
“And yet,” she went on, “I think that I should have come this morning, after all, even if you had a poorer excuse for your absence, because, you see, I came on business.”
“You did?”
“That’s why I’ve come again. That makes it respectable for me to be here now, doesn’t it? — for me to have come out alone after dark without their knowing it? I’m here as your client, Joe.”
“Why?” he asked.
She did not answer at once, but picked up a pen from beneath her hand on the desk, and turning it, meditatively felt its point with her forefinger before she said slowly, “Are most men careful of other people’s — well, of other people’s money?”
“You mean Martin Pike?” he asked.
“Yes. I want you to take charge of everything I have for me.”
He bent a frowning regard upon the lamp-shade. “You ought to look after your own property,” he said. “You surely have plenty of time.”
“You mean — you mean you won’t help me?” she returned, with intentional pathos.
“Ariel!” he laughed, shortly, in answer; then asked, “What makes you think Judge Pike isn’t trustworthy?”
“Nothing very definite perhaps, unless it was his look when I told him that I meant to ask you to take charge of things for me.”
“He’s been rather hard pressed this year, I think,” said Joe. “You might be right — if he could have found a way. I hope he hasn’t.”
“I’m afraid,” she began, gayly, “that I know very little of my own affairs. He sent me a draft every three months, with receipts and other things to sign and return to him. I haven’t the faintest notion of what I own — except the old house and some money from the income that I hadn’t used and brought with me. Judge Pike has all the papers — everything.”
Joe looked troubled. “And Roger Tabor, did he—”
“The dear man!” She shook her head. “He was just the same. To him poor Uncle Jonas’s money seemed to come from heaven through the hands of Judge Pike—”
“And there’s a handsome roundabout way!” said Joe.
“Wasn’t it!” she agreed, cheerfully. “And he trusted the Judge absolutely. I don’t, you see.”
He gave her a thoughtful look and nodded. “No, he isn’t a good man,” he said, “not even according to his lights; but I doubt if he could have managed to get away with anything of consequence after he became the administrator. He wouldn’t have tried it, probably, unless he was more desperately pushed than I think he has been. It would have been too dangerous. Suppose you wait a week or so and think it over.”
“But there’s something I want you to do for me immediately, Joe.”
“What’s that?”
“I want the old house put in order. I’m going to live there.”
“Alone?”
“I’m almost twenty-seven, and that’s being enough of an old maid for me to risk Canaan’s thinking me eccentric, isn’t it?”
“It will think anything you do is all right.”
“And once,” she cried, “it thought everything I did all wrong!”
“Yes. That’s the difference.”
“You mean it will commend me because I’m thought rich?”
“No, no,” he said, meditatively, “it isn’t that. It’s because everybody will be in love with you.”
“Quite everybody!” she asked.
“Certainly,” he replied. “Anybody who didn’t would be absurd.”
“Ah, Joe!” she laughed. “You always were the nicest boy in the world, my dear!”
At that he turned toward her with a sudden movement and his lips parted,
but not to speak. She had rested one arm upon the desk, and her cheek upon her hand; the pen she had picked up, still absently held in her fingers, touching her lips; and it was given to him to know that he would always keep that pen, though he would never write with it again. The soft lamplight fell across the lower part of her face, leaving her eyes, which were lowered thoughtfully, in the shadow of her hat. The room was blotted out in darkness behind her. Like the background of an antique portrait, the office, with its dusty corners and shelves and hideous safe, had vanished, leaving the charming and thoughtful face revealed against an even, spacious brownness. Only Ariel and the roses and the lamp were clear; and a strange, small pain moved from Joe’s heart to his throat, as he thought that this ugly office, always before so harsh and grim and lonely — loneliest for him when it had been most crowded, — was now transfigured into something very, very different from an office; that this place where he sat, with a lamp and flowers on a desk between him and a woman who called him “my dear,” must be like — like something that people called “home.”
And then he leaned across the desk toward her, as he said again what he had said a little while before, — and his voice trembled:
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 83