The Conquest of Canaan Part 23

"Yes'm. Ev'ybody think so, _I_ reckon. Be'n a tai'ble lot o' talk.u.m 'bout you to-day. Dun'no' how all dem oth' young ladies goin' take it!" He laughed with immoderate delight, yet, as to the volume of mere sound, discreetly, with an eye to open windows. "You got 'em all beat, Miss Airil! Dey ain' be'n no one 'roun' dis town evah got in a thousum mile o' you! Fer looks, an' de way you walk an' ca'y yo'self; an' as fer de clo'es--name o' de good lan', honey, dey ain' nevah SEE style befo'! My ole woman say you got mo' fixin's in a minute dan de whole res' of 'em got in a yeah. She say when she helpin' you onpack she must 'a' see mo'n a hunerd paihs o' slippahs alone! An' de good Man knows I 'membuh w'en you runnin' roun' back-yods an' up de alley rompin' 'ith Joe Louden, same you's a boy!"

"Do you ever see Mr. Louden, nowadays?" she asked.

His laugh was repeated with the same discreet violence. "Ain' I seen him dis ve'y day, fur up de street at de gate yonnah, stan'in' 'ith you, w'en I drivin' de Judge?"

"You--you didn't happen to see him anywhere this--this afternoon?"

"No'm, I ain' SEE him." Sam's laughter vanished and his lowered voice became serious. "I ain' SEE him, but I hearn about him."

"What did you hear?"

"Dey be'n consid'able stir on de aidge o' town, I reckon," he answered, gravely, "an' dey be'n havin' some trouble out at de Beach--"

"Beaver Beach, do you mean?"

"Yes'm. Dey be'n some shootin' goin' on out dat way."

She sprang forward and caught at his arm without speaking.

"Joe Louden all right," he said, rea.s.suringly. "Ain' nuffum happen to him! Nigh as I kin mek out f'm de TALK, dat Happy Fear gone on de ramPAGE ag'in, an' dey hatta sent fer Mist' Louden to come in a hurry."

XIV

WHITE ROSES IN A LAW-OFFICE

As upon a world canopied with storm, hung with mourning purple and habited in black, did Mr. Flitcroft turn his morning face at eight o'clock antemeridian Monday, as he hied himself to his daily duty at the Washington National Bank. Yet more than the merely funereal gloomed out from the hillocky area of his countenance. Was there not, i'faith, a glow, a Vesuvian shimmer, beneath the murk of that darkling eye? Was here one, think you, to turn the other cheek? Little has he learned of Norbert Flitcroft who conceives that this fiery spirit was easily to be quenched! Look upon the jowl of him, and let him who dares maintain that people--even the very Pikes themselves--were to grind beneath their brougham wheels a prostrate Norbert and ride on scatheless! In this his own metaphor is nearly touched "I guess not!

They don't run over ME! Martin Pike better look out how he tries it!"

So Mother Nature at her kindly tasks, good Norbert, uses for her unguent our own perfect inconsistency: and often when we are stabbed deep in the breast she distracts us by thin scratches in other parts, that in the itch of these we may forget the greater hurt till it be healed. Thus, the remembrance of last night, when you undisguisedly ran from the wrath of a Pike, with a pretty girl looking on (to say nothing of the acrid Arp, who will fling the legend on a thousand winds), might well agonize you now, as, in less hasty moments and at a safe distance, you brood upon the piteous figure you cut. On the contrary, behold: you see no blood crimsoning the edges of the horrid gash in your panoply of self-esteem: you but smart and scratch the scratches, forgetting your wound in the hot itch for vengeance. It is an itch which will last (for in such matters your temper shall be steadfast), and let the great Goliath in the mean time beware of you!

You ran, last night. You ran--of course you ran. Why not? You ran to fight another day!

A bank clerk sometimes has opportunities.

The stricken fat one could not understand how it came about that he had blurted out the d.a.m.ning confession that he had visited Beaver Beach.

When he tried to solve the puzzle, his mind refused the strain, became foggy and the terrors of his position acute. Was he, like Joe Louden, to endure the ban of Canaan, and like him stand excommunicate beyond the pale because of Martin Pike's displeasure? For Norbert saw with perfect clearness to-day what the Judge had done for Joe. Now that he stood in danger of a fate identical, this came home to him. How many others, he wondered, would do as Mamie had done and write notes such as he had received by the hand of Sam Warden, late last night?

"DEAR SIR." (This from Mamie, who, in the Canaanitish way, had been wont to address him as "Norb"!)--"My father wishes me to state that after your remark yesterday afternoon on the steps which was overheard by my mother who happened to be standing in the hall behind you and your BEHAVIOR to himself later on--he considers it impossible to allow you to call any more or to speak to any member of his household.

"Yours respectfully, "MAMIE PIKE."

Erasures and restorations bore witness to a considerable doubt in Mamie's mind concerning "Yours respectfully," but she had finally let it stand, evidently convinced that the plain signature, without preface, savored of an intimacy denied by the context.

"'DEAR SIR'!" repeated Norbert, between set teeth. "'IMPOSSIBLE TO ALLOW YOU TO CALL any more'!" These and other terms of his dismissal recurred to him during the morning, and ever and anon he looked up from his desk, his lips moving to the tune of those horrid phrases, and stared out at the street. Basilisk glaring this, with no Christian softness in it, not even when it fell upon his own grandfather, sitting among the sages within easy eye-shot from the big window at Norbert's elbow. However, Colonel Flitcroft was not disturbed by the gaze of his descendant, being, in fact, quite unaware of it. The aged men were having a busy morning.

The conclave was not what it had been. [See Arp and all his works.]

There had come, as the years went by, a few recruits; but faces were missing: the two Tabors had gone, and Uncle Joe Davey could no longer lay claim to the patriarchship; he had laid it down with a half-sigh and gone his way. Eskew himself was now the oldest of the conscript fathers, the Colonel and Squire Buckalew pressing him closely, with Peter Bradbury no great time behind.

To-day they did not plant their feet upon the bra.s.s rail inside the hotel windows, but courted the genial weather out-doors, and, as their summer custom was, tilted back their chairs in the shade of the western wall of the building.

"And who could of dreamed," Mr. Bradbury was saying, with a side-glance of expectancy at Eskew, "that Jonas Tabor would ever turn out to have a niece like that!"

Mr. Arp ceased to fan himself with his wide straw hat and said grimly:

"I don't see as Jonas HAS 'turned out'--not in particular! If he's turned at all, lately, I reckon it's in his grave, and I'll bet he HAS if he had any way of hearin' how much she must of spent for clothes!"

"I believe," Squire Buckalew began, "that young folks' memories are short."

"They're lucky!" interjected Eskew. "The shorter your memory the less meanness you know."

"I meant young folks don't remember as well as older people do,"

continued the Squire. "I don't see what's so remarkable in her comin'

back and walkin' up-street with Joe Louden. She used to go kitin'

round with him all the time, before she left here. And yet everybody talks as if they never HEARD of sech a thing!"

"It seems to me," said Colonel Flitcroft, hesitatingly, "that she did right. I know it sounds kind of a queer thing to say, and I stirred up a good deal of opposition at home, yesterday evening, by sort of mentioning something of the kind. n.o.body seemed to agree with me, except Norbert, and he didn't SAY much, but--"

He was interrupted by an uncontrollable cackle which issued from the mouth of Mr. Arp. The Colonel turned upon him with a frown, inquiring the cause of his mirth.

"It put me in mind," Mr. Arp began promptly, "of something that happened last night."

"What was it?"

Eskew's mouth was open to tell, but he remembered, just in time, that the grandfather of Norbert was not the audience properly to be selected for this recital, choked a half-born word, coughed loudly, realizing that he must withhold the story of the felling of Martin Pike until the Colonel had taken his departure, and replied:

"Nothin' to speak of. Go on with your argument."

"I've finished," said the Colonel. "I only wanted to say that it seems to me a good action for a young lady like that to come back here and stick to her old friend and playmate."

"STICK to him!" echoed Mr. Arp. "She walked up Main Street with him yesterday. Do you call that stickin' to him? She's been away a good while; she's forgotten what Canaan IS. You wait till she sees for herself jest what his standing in this com--"

"I agree with Eskew for once," interrupted Peter Bradbury. "I agree because--"

"Then you better wait," cried Eskew, allowing him to proceed no farther, "till you hear what you're agreein' to! I say: you take a young lady like that, pretty and rich and all cultured up, and it stands to reason that she won't--"

"No, it don't," exclaimed Buckalew, impatiently. "Nothing of the sort!

I tell you--"

Eskew rose to his feet and pounded the pavement with his stick. "It stands to reason that she won't stick to a man no other decent woman will speak to, a feller that's been the mark for every stone throwed in the town, ever since he was a boy, an outcast with a reputation as black as a preacher's shoes on Sunday! I don't care if he's her oldest friend on EARTH, she won't stick to him! She walked with him yesterday, but you can mark my words: his goose is cooked!" The old man's voice rose, shrill and high. "It ain't in human nature fer her to do it! You hear what I say: you'll never see her with Joe Louden again in this livin' world, and she as good as told me so, herself, last night. You can take your oath she's quit him already! Don't--"

Eskew paused abruptly, his eyes widening behind his spectacles; his jaw fell; his stick, raised to hammer the pavement, remained suspended in the air. A sudden color rushed over his face, and he dropped speechless in his chair. The others, after staring at him in momentary alarm, followed the direction of his gaze.

Just across Main Street, and in plain view, was the entrance to the stairway which led to Joe's office. Ariel Tabor, all in cool gray, carrying a big bunch of white roses in her white-gloved hands, had just crossed the sidewalk from a carriage and was ascending the dark stairway. A moment later she came down again, empty-handed, got into the carriage, and drove away.

"She missed him," said Squire Buckalew. "I saw him go out half an hour ago. BUT," he added, and, exercising a self-restraint close upon the saintly, did not even glance toward the heap which was Mr. Arp, "I notice she left her flowers!"