The Conquest of Canaan Part 33

He fell back, choking, in Joe's arms, and the physician bent over him, but Eskew was not gone, and Ariel, upon the other side of the room, could hear him whispering again for the restorative. She brought it, and when he had taken it, went quickly out-of-doors to the side yard.

She sat upon a workman's bench under the big trees, hidden from the street shrubbery, and breathing deeply of the shaded air, began to cry quietly. Through the windows came the quavering voice of the old man, lifted again, insistent, a little querulous, but determined. Responses sounded, intermittently, from the Colonel, from Peter, and from Buckalew, and now and then a sorrowful, yet almost humorous, protest from Joe; and so she made out that the veteran swore his three comrades to friendship with Joseph Louden, to lend him their countenance in all matters, to stand by him in weal and woe, to speak only good of him and defend him in the town of Canaan. Thus did Eskew Arp on the verge of parting this life render justice.

The gate clicked, and Ariel saw Eugene approaching through the shrubbery. One of his hands was bandaged, a thin strip of court-plaster crossed his forehead from his left eyebrow to his hair, and his thin and agitated face showed several light scratches.

"I saw you come out," he said. "I've been waiting to speak to you."

"The doctor told us to let him have his way in whatever he might ask."

Ariel wiped her eyes. "I'm afraid that means--"

"I didn't come to talk about Eskew Arp," interrupted Eugene. "I'm not laboring under any anxiety about him. You needn't be afraid; he's too sour to accept his conge so readily."

"Please lower your voice," she said, rising quickly and moving away from him toward the house; but, as he followed, insisting sharply that he must speak with her, she walked out of ear-shot of the windows, and stopping, turned toward him.

"Very well," she said. "Is it a message from Mamie?"

At this he faltered and hung fire.

"Have you been to see her?" she continued.

"I am anxious to know if her goodness and bravery caused her any--any discomfort at home."

"You may set your mind at rest about that," returned Eugene. "I was there when the Judge came home to dinner. I suppose you fear he may have been rough with her for taking my step-brother into the carriage.

He was not. On the contrary, he spoke very quietly to her, and went on out toward the stables. But I haven't come to you to talk of Judge Pike, either!"

"No," said Ariel. "I don't care particularly to hear of him, but of Mamie."

"Nor of her, either!" he broke out. "I want to talk of you!"

There was not mistaking him; no possibility of misunderstanding the real pa.s.sion that shook him, and her startled eyes betrayed her comprehension.

"Yes, I see you understand," he cried, bitterly. "That's because you've seen others the same way. G.o.d help me," he went on, striking his forehead with his open hand, "that young fool of a Bradbury told me you refused him only yesterday! He was proud of even rejection from you!

And there's Norbert--and half a dozen others, perhaps, already, since you've been here." He flung out his arms in ludicrous, savage despair.

"And here am I--"

"Ah yes," she cut him off, "it is of yourself that you want to speak, after all--not of me!"

"Look here," he vociferated; "are you going to marry that Joe Louden?

I want to know whether you are or not. He gave me this--and this to-day!" He touched his bandaged hand and plastered forehead. "He ran into me--over me--for nothing, when I was not on my guard; struck me down--stamped on me--"

She turned upon him, cheeks aflame, eyes sparkling and dry.

"Mr. Bantry," she cried, "he did a good thing! And now I want you to go home. I want you to go home and try if you can discover anything in yourself that is worthy of Mamie and of what she showed herself to be this morning! If you can, you will have found something that I could like!"

She went rapidly toward the house, and he was senseless enough to follow, babbling: "What do you think I'm made of? You trample on me--as he did! I can't bear everything; I tell you--"

But she lifted her hand with such imperious will that he stopped short.

Then, through the window of the sick-room came clearly the querulous voice:

"I tell you it was; I heard him speak just now--out there in the yard, that no-account step-brother of Joe's! What if he IS a hired hand on the Tocsin? He'd better give up his job and quit, than do what he's done to help make the town think hard of Joe. And what IS he? Why, he's worse than Cory. When that Claudine Fear first came here, 'Gene Bantry was hangin' around her himself. Joe knew it and he'd never tell, but I will. I saw 'em buggy-ridin' out near Beaver Beach and she slapped his face fer him. It ought to be TOLD!"

"I didn't know that Joe knew--that!" Eugene stammered huskily. "It was--it was--a long time ago--"

"If you understood Joe," she said, in a low voice, "you would know that before these men leave this house, he will have their promise never to tell."

His eyes fell miserably, then lifted again; but in her clear and unbearable gaze there shone such a flame of scorn as he could not endure to look upon. For the first time in his life he saw a true light upon himself, and though the vision was darkling, the revelation was complete.

"Heaven pity you!" she whispered.

Eugene found himself alone, and stumbled away, his glance not lifted.

He pa.s.sed his own home without looking up, and did not see his mother beckoning frantically from a window. She ran to the door and called him. He did not hear her, but went on toward the Tocsin office with his head still bent.

XXI

NORBERT WAITS FOR JOE

There was meat for gossip a plenty in Canaan that afternoon and evening; there were rumors that ran from kitchen to parlor, and rumors that ran from parlor to kitchen; speculations that detained housewives in talk across front gates; wonderings that held cooks in converse over shadeless back fences in spite of the heat; and canards that brought Main Street clerks running to the shop doors to stare up and down the sidewalks. Out of the confusion of report, the judicious were able by evenfall to extract a fair history of this day of revolution. There remained no doubt that Joe Louden was in attendance at the death-bed of Eskew Arp, and somehow it came to be known that Colonel Flitcroft, Squire Buckalew, and Peter Bradbury had shaken hands with Joe and declared themselves his friends. There were those (particularly among the relatives of the h.o.a.ry trio) who expressed the opinion that the Colonel and his comrades were too old to be responsible and a commission ought to sit on them; nevertheless, some echoes of Eskew's last "argument" to the conclave had sounded in the town and were not wholly without effect.

Everywhere there was a nipping curiosity to learn how Judge Pike had "taken" the strange performance of his daughter, and the eager were much disappointed when it was truthfully reported that he had done and said very little. He had merely discharged both Sam Warden and Sam's wife from his service, the mild manner of the dismissal almost unnerving Mr. Warden, although he was fully prepared for bird-shot; and the couple had found immediate employment in the service of Ariel Tabor.

Those who humanly felt the Judge's behavior to be a trifle flat and unsensational were recompensed late in the afternoon when it became known that Eugene Bantry had resigned his position on the Tocsin. His reason for severing his connection was dumfounding; he had written a formal letter to the Judge and repeated the gist of it to his a.s.sociates in the office and acquaintances upon the street. He declared that he no longer sympathized with the att.i.tude of the Tocsin toward his step-brother, and regretted that he had previously a.s.sisted in emphasizing the paper's hostility to Joe, particularly in the matter of the approaching murder trial. This being the case, he felt that his effectiveness in the service of the paper had ceased, and he must, in justice to the owner, resign.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!" was the simple comment of the elder Louden when his step-son sought him out at the factory and repeated this statement to him.

"So am I, I think," said Eugene, wanly. "Good-bye. I'm going now to see mother, but I'll be gone before you come home."

"Gone where?"

"Just away. I don't know where," Eugene answered from the door. "I couldn't live here any longer. I--"

"You've been drinking," said Mr. Louden, inspired. "You'd better not let Mamie Pike see you."

Eugene laughed desolately. "I don't mean to. I shall write to her.

Good-bye," he said, and was gone before Mr. Louden could restore enough order out of the chaos in his mind to stop him.

Thus Mrs. Louden's long wait at the window was tragically rewarded, and she became an unhappy actor in Canaan's drama of that day. Other ladies attended at other windows, or near their front doors, throughout the afternoon: the families of the three patriarchs awaiting their return, as the time drew on, with something akin to frenzy. Mrs.

Flitcroft (a lady of temper), whose rheumatism confined her to a chair, had her grandson wheel her out upon the porch, and, as the dusk fell and she finally saw her husband coming at a laggard pace, leaning upon his cane, his chin sunk on his breast, she frankly told Norbert that although she had lived with that man more than fifty-seven years, she would never be able to understand him. She repeated this with genuine symptoms of hysteria when she discovered that the Colonel had not come straight from the Tabor house, but had stopped two hours at Peter Bradbury's to "talk it over."

One item of his recital, while sufficiently startling to his wife, had a remarkable effect upon his grandson. This was the information that Ariel Tabor's fortune no longer existed.

"What's that?" cried Norbert, starting to his feet. "What are you talking about?"

"It's true," said the Colonel, deliberately. "She told me so herself.

Eskew had dropped off into a sort of doze--more like a stupor, perhaps,--and we all went into Roger's old studio, except Louden and the doctor, and while we were there, talkin', one of Pike's clerks came with a basket full of tin boxes and packages of papers and talked to Miss Tabor at the door and went away. Then old Peter blundered out and asked her point-blank what it was, and she said it was her estate, almost everything she had, except the house. Buckalew, tryin' to make a joke, said he'd be willin' to swap HIS house and lot for the basket, and she laughed and told him she thought he'd be sorry; that all there was, to speak of, was a pile of distillery stock--" "What?" repeated Norbert, incredulously.

"Yes. It was the truth," said the Colonel, solemnly. "I saw it myself: blocks and blocks of stock in that distillery trust that went up higher'n a kite last year. Roger had put all of Jonas's good money--"