The Conquest of Canaan Part 18

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 gla.s.ses 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. n.o.body, 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 att.i.tudes.

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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sailed 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 c.o.c.ked 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 gla.s.sily 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-ba.s.s which rumbled out of the open window of the brougham: "I want orthodox preaching in MY church, and, by G.o.d, 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.