Chapter 6

"Till the estate is settled and you can coax your grandfather to--"

"No, no! But you could go with us."

"To Paris?"

"He would take you as his secretary."

"Aha!" Joe's voice rang out gayly as he rose, refreshed by the coffee, toast, and warmth she had given him. "You've been story-reading, Ariel, like Eugene! 'Secretary'!"

"Please, Joe!"

"Where's my tin dinner-pail?" He found it himself upon the table where he had set it down. "I'm going to earn a dishonest living," he went on. "I have an engagement to take a freight at a water-tank that's a friend of mine, half a mile south of the yards. Thank God, I'm going to get away from Canaan!"

"Wait, Joe!" She caught at his sleeve. "I want you to--"

He had swung out of the room and was already at the front-door. She followed him closely.

"Good-bye, Ariel!"

"No, no! WAIT, Joe!"

He took her right hand in his own, and gave it a manly shake. "It's all right," he said.

He threw open the door and stepped out, but she sought to detain him. "Oh, have you GOT to go?" she cried.

"Don't you ever worry about me." He bent his head to the storm as he sprang down the steps, and snow-wreaths swirled between them.

He disappeared in a white whirlwind.

She stood for several minutes shivering in the doorway. Then it came to her that she would not know where to write to him. She ran down to the gate and through it. Already the blizzard had covered his footprints.

VII

GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME

The passing of Joseph from Canaan was complete. It was an evanishment for which there was neither sackcloth nor surprise; and though there came no news of him it cannot be said that Canaan did not hear of him, for surely it could hear itself talk. The death of Jonas Tabor and young Louden's crime and flight incited high doings in the "National House" windows; many days the sages lingered with the broken meats of morals left over from the banquet of gossip. But, after all, it is with the ladies of a community that reputations finally rest, and the matrons of Canaan had long ago made Joe's exceedingly uncertain. Now they made it certain.

They did not fail of assistance. The most powerful influence in the town was ponderously corroborative: Martin Pike, who stood for all that was respectable and financial, who passed the plate o' Sundays, who held the fortunes of the town in his left hand, who was trustee for the widow and orphan,--Martin Pike, patron of all worthy charities, courted by ministers, feared by the wicked and idle, revered by the good,--Judge Martin Pike never referred to the runaway save in the accents of an august doomster. His testimony settled it.

In time the precise nature of the fugitive's sins was distorted in report and grew vague; it was recalled that he had done dread things; he became a tradition, a legend, and a warning to the young; a Richard in the bush to frighten colts. He was preached at boys caught playing marbles "for keeps": "Do you want to grow up like Joe Louden?" The very name became a darkling threat, and children of the town would have run had one called suddenly, "HERE COMES JOE LOUDEN!" Thus does the evil men do live after them, and the ill-fame of the unrighteous increase when they are sped!

Very little of Joseph's adventures and occupations during the time of his wandering is revealed to us; he always had an unwilling memory for pain and was not afterwards wont to speak of those years which cut the hard lines in his face. The first account of him to reach Canaan came as directly to the windows of the "National House" as Mr. Arp, hastening thither from the station, satchel in hand, could bring it.

This was on a September morning, two years after the flight, and Eskew, it appears, had been to the State Fair and had beheld many things strangely affirming his constant testimony that this unhappy world increaseth in sin; strangest of all, his meeting with our vagrant scalawag of Canaan. "Not a BLAMEBIT of doubt about it," declared Eskew to the incredulous conclave. "There was that Joe, and nobody else, stuck up in a little box outside a tent at the Fair Grounds, and sellin' tickets to see the Spotted Wild Boy!" Yes, it was Joe Louden! Think you, Mr. Arp could forget that face, those crooked eyebrows? Had Eskew tested the recognition? Had he spoken with the outcast? Had he not! Ay, but with such peculiar result that the battle of words among the sages began with a true onset of the regulars; for, according to Eskew's narrative, when he had delivered grimly at the boy this charge, "I know you--YOU'RE JOE LOUDEN!" the extraordinary reply had been made promptly and without change of countenance: "POSITIVELY NO FREE SEATS!"

On this, the house divided, one party maintaining that Joe had thus endeavored to evade recognition, the other (to the embitterment of Mr. Arp) that the reply was a distinct admission of identity and at the same time a refusal to grant any favors on the score of past acquaintanceship.

Goaded by inquiries, Mr. Arp, who had little desire to recall such waste of silver, admitted more than he had intended: that he had purchased a ticket and gone in to see the Spotted Wild Boy, halting in his description of this marvel with the unsatisfactory and acrid statement that the Wild Boy was "simply SPOTTED,"--and the stung query, "I suppose you know what a spot IS, Squire?" When he came out of the tent he had narrowly examined the ticket-seller,--who seemed unaware of his scrutiny, and, when not engaged with his tickets, applied himself to a dirty law-looking book. It was Joseph Louden, reasserted Eskew, a little taller, a little paler, incredibly shabby and miraculously thin. If there were any doubt left, his forehead was somewhat disfigured by the scar of an old wound--such as might have been caused by a blunt instrument in the nature of a poker.

"What's the matter with YOU?" Mr. Arp whirled upon Uncle Joe Davey, who was enjoying himself by repeating at intervals the unreasonable words, "Couldn't of be'n Joe," without any explanation. "Why couldn't it?" shouted Eskew. "It was! Do you think my eyes are as fur gone as yours? I saw him, I tell you! The same ornery Joe Louden, run away and sellin' tickets for a side-show. He wasn't even the boss of it; the manager was about the meanest-lookin' human I ever saw--and most humans look mighty mean, accordin' to my way of thinkin'! Riffraff of the riffraff are his friends now, same as they were here. Weeds! and HE'S a weed, always was and always will be! Him and his kind ain't any more than jimpsons; overrun everything if you give 'em a chance. Devil-flowers! They have to be hoed out and scattered--even then, like as not, they'll come back next year and ruin your plantin' once more. That boy Joe 'll turn up here again some day; you'll see if he don't. He's a seed of trouble and iniquity, and anything of that kind is sure to come back to Canaan!"

Mr. Arp stuck to his prediction for several months; then he began to waver and evade. By the end of the second year following its first utterance, he had formed the habit of denying that he had ever made it at all, and, finally having come to believe with all his heart that the prophecy had been deliberately foisted upon him and put in his mouth by Squire Buckalew, became so sore upon the subject that even the hardiest dared not refer to it in his presence.

Eskew's story of the ticket-seller was the only news of Joe Louden that came to Canaan during seven years. Another citizen of the town encountered the wanderer, however, but under circumstances so susceptible to misconception that, in a moment of illumination, he decided to let the matter rest in a golden silence. This was Mr. Bantry.

Having elected an elaborate course in the Arts, at the University which was of his possessions, what more natural than that Eugene should seek the Metropolis for the short Easter vacation of his Senior year, in order that his perusal of the Masters should be uninterrupted? But it was his misfortune to find the Metropolitan Museum less interesting than some intricate phases of the gayety of New York--phases very difficult to understand without elaborate study and a series of experiments which the discreetly selfish permit others to make for them. Briefly, Eugene found himself dancing, one night, with a young person in a big hat, at the "Straw-Cellar," a crowded hall, down very deep in the town and not at all the place for Eugene.

Acute crises are to be expected at the "Straw-Cellar," and Eugene was the only one present who was thoroughly surprised when that of this night arrived, though all of the merrymakers were frightened when they perceived its extent. There is no need to detail the catastrophe. It came suddenly, and the knife did not flash. Sick and thinking of himself, Eugene stood staring at the figure lying before him upon the reddening floor. A rabble fought with the quick policemen at the doors, and then the lights went out, extinguished by the proprietor, living up to his reputation for always being thoughtful of his patrons. The place had been a nightmare; it became a black impossibility. Eugene staggered to one of the open windows, from the sill of which a man had just leaped.

"Don't jump," said a voice close to his ear. "That fellow broke his leg, I think, and they caught him, anyway, as soon as he struck the pavement. It's a big raid. Come this way."

A light hand fell upon his arm and he followed its leading, blindly, to find himself pushed through a narrow doorway and down a flight of tricky, wooden steps, at the foot of which, silhouetted against a street light, a tall policeman was on guard. He laid masterful hands on Eugene.

"'SH, Mack!" whispered a cautious voice from the stairway. "That's a friend of mine and not one of those you need. He's only a student and scared to death."

"Hurry," said the policeman, under his breath, twisting Eugene sharply by him into the street; after which he stormed vehemently: "On yer way, both of ye! Move on up the street! Don't be tryin' to poke yer heads in here! Ye'd be more anxious to git out, once ye got in, I tell ye!"

A sob of relief came from Bantry as he gained the next corner, the slight figure of his conductor at his side. "You'd better not go to places like the 'Straw-Cellar,'" said the latter, gravely. "I'd been watching you for an hour. You were dancing with the girl who did the cutting."

Eugene leaned against a wall, faint, one arm across his face. He was too ill to see, or care, who it was that had saved him. "I never saw her before," he babbled, incoherently, "never, never, never! I thought she looked handsome, and asked her if she'd dance with me. Then I saw she seemed queer--and wild, and she kept guiding and pushing as we danced until we were near that man--and then she--then it was all done--before--"

"Yes," said the other; "she's been threatening to do it for a long time. Jealous. Mighty good sort of a girl, though, in lots of ways. Only yesterday I talked with her and almost thought I'd calmed her out of it. But you can't tell with some women. They'll brighten up and talk straight and seem sensible, one minute, and promise to behave, and mean it too, and the next, there they go, making a scene, cutting somebody or killing themselves! You can't count on them. But that's not to the point, exactly, I expect. You'd better keep away from the 'Straw-Cellar.' If you'd been caught with the rest you'd have had a hard time, and they'd have found out your real name, too, because it's pretty serious on account of your dancing with her when she did it, and the Canaan papers would have got hold of it and you wouldn't be invited to Judge Pike's any more, Eugene."

Eugene dropped his arm from his eyes and stared into the face of his step-brother.

"Joe Louden!" he gasped.

"I'll never tell," said Joe. "You'd better keep out of all this sort. You don't understand it, and you don't--you don't do it because you care." He smiled wanly, his odd distorted smile of friendliness. "When you go back you might tell father I'm all right. I'm working through a law-school here--and remember me to Norbert Flitcroft," he finished, with a chuckle.

Eugene covered his eyes again and groaned.

"It's all right," Joe assured him. "You're as safe as if it had never happened. And I expect"--he went on, thoughtfully--"I expect, maybe, you'd prefer NOT to say you'd seen me, when you go back to Canaan. Well, that's all right. I don't suppose father will be asking after me--exactly."

"No, he doesn't," said Eugene, still white and shaking. "Don't stand talking. I'm sick."

"Of course," returned Joe. "But there's one thing I would like to ask you--"

"Your father's health is perfect, I believe."

"It--it--it was something else," Joe stammered, pitifully. "Are they all--are they all--all right at--at Judge Pike's?"

"Quite!" Eugene replied, sharply. "Are you going to get me away from here? I'm sick, I tell you!"

"This street," said Joe, and cheerfully led the way.

Five minutes later the two had parted, and Joe leaned against a cheap restaurant sign-board, drearily staring after the lamps of the gypsy night-cab he had found for his step-brother. Eugene had not offered to share the vehicle with him, had not even replied to his good-night.

And Joe himself had neglected to do something he might well have done: he had not asked Eugene for news of Ariel Tabor. It will not justify him entirely to suppose that he assumed that her grandfather and she had left Canaan never to return, and therefore Eugene knew nothing of her; no such explanation serves Joe for his neglect, for the fair truth is that he had not thought of her. She had been a sort of playmate, before his flight, a friend taken for granted, about whom he had consciously thought little more than he thought about himself--and easily forgotten. Not forgotten in the sense that she had passed out of his memory, but forgotten none the less; she had never had a place in his imaginings, and so it befell that when he no longer saw her from day to day, she had gone from his thoughts altogether.

VIII

A BAD PENNY TURNS UP

Eugene did not inform Canaan, nor any inhabitant, of his adventure of "Straw-Cellar," nor did any hear of his meeting with his step-brother; and after Mr. Arp's adventure, five years passed into the imperishable before the town heard of the wanderer again, and then it heard at first hand; Mr. Arp's prophecy fell true, and he took it back to his bosom again, claimed it as his own the morning of its fulfilment. Joe Louden had come back to Canaan.

The elder Louden was the first to know of his prodigal's return. He was alone in the office of the wooden-butter-dish factory, of which he was the superintendent, when the young man came in unannounced. He was still pale and thin; his eyebrows had the same crook, one corner of his mouth the same droop; he was only an inch or so taller, not enough to be thought a tall man; and yet, for a few moments the father did not recognize his son, but stared at him, inquiring his business. During those few seconds of unrecognition, Mr. Louden was somewhat favorably impressed with the stranger's appearance.

"You don't know me," said Joe, smiling cheerfully. "Perhaps I've changed in seven years." And he held out his hand.

Then Mr. Louden knew; he tilted back in his desk-chair, his mouth falling open. "Good God!" he said, not noticing the out-stretched hand. "Have YOU come back?"

Joe's hand fell.

"Yes, I've come back to Canaan."

Mr. Louden looked at him a long time without replying; finally he remarked:

"I see you've still got a scar on your forehead."

"Oh, I've forgotten all about that," said the other, twisting his hat in his hands. "Seven years wipes out a good many grievances and wrongs."

"You think so?" Mr Louden grunted. "I suppose it might wipe out a good deal with some people. How'd you happen to stop off at Canaan? On your way somewhere, I suppose."

"No, I've come back to stay."

Mr. Louden plainly received this as no pleasant surprise. "What for?" he asked, slowly.

"To practise law, father."

"What!"

"Yes," said the young man. "There ought to be an opening here for me. I'm a graduate of as good a law-school as there is in the country--"

"You are!"

"Certainly," said Joe, quietly. "I've put myself through, working in the summer--"

"Working!" Mr. Louden snorted. "Side-shows?"

"Oh, worse than that, sometimes," returned his son, laughing. "Anything I could get. But I've always wanted to come back home and work here."

Mr. Louden leaned forward, a hand on each knee, his brow deeply corrugated. "Do you think you'll get much practice in Canaan?"

"Why not? I've had a year in a good office in New York since I left the school, and I think I ought to get along all right."

"Oh," said Mr. Louden, briefly. "You do?"

"Yes. Don't you?"

"Who do you think in Canaan would put a case in your hands?"

"Oh, I don't expect to get anything important at the start. But after a while--"

"With your reputation?"

The smile which had faded from Joe's lips returned to them. "Oh, I know they thought I was a harum-scarum sort of boy," he answered lightly, "and that it was a foolish thing to run away for nothing; but you had said I mustn't come to you for help--"

"I meant it," said Mr. Louden.

"But that's seven years ago, and I suppose the town's forgotten all about it, and forgotten me, too. So, you see, I can make a fresh start. That's what I came back for."

"You've made up your mind to stay here, then?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe," said Mr. Louden, with marked uneasiness, "that Mrs. Louden would be willing to let you live with us."

"No," said Joe, gently. "I didn't expect it." He turned to the window and looked out, averting his face, yet scoring himself with the contempt he had learned to feel for those who pity themselves. His father had not even asked him to sit down. There was a long silence, disturbed only by Mr. Louden's breathing, which could be heard, heavy and troubled.

At last Joe turned again, smiling as before. "Well, I won't keep you from your work," he said. "I suppose you're pretty busy--"

"Yes, I am," responded his father, promptly. "But I'll see you again before you go. I want to give you some advice."

"I'm not going," said Joe. "Not going to leave Canaan, I mean. Where will I find Eugene?"

"At the Tocsin office; he's the assistant editor. Judge Pike bought the Tocsin last year, and he thinks a good deal of Eugene. Don't forget I said to come to see me again before you go."

Joe came over to the older man and held out his hand. "Shake hands, father," he said. Mr. Louden looked at him out of small implacable eyes, the steady hostility of which only his wife or the imperious Martin Pike, his employer, could quell. He shook his head.

"I don't see any use in it," he answered. "It wouldn't mean anything. All my life I've been a hard-working man and an abiding man. Before you got in trouble you never did anything you ought to; you ran with the lowest people in town, and I and all your folks were ashamed of you. I don't see that we've got a call to be any different now." He swung round to his desk emphatically, on the last word, and Joe turned away and went out quietly.

But it was a bright morning to which he emerged from the outer doors of the factory, and he made his way towards Main Street at a lively gait. As he turned the corner opposite the "National House," he walked into Mr. Eskew Arp. The old man drew back angrily.

"Lord 'a' mercy!" cried Joe, heartily. "It's Mr. Arp! I almost ran you down!" Then, as Mr. Arp made no response, but stood stock-still in the way, staring at him fiercely, "Don't you know me, Mr. Arp?" the young man asked. "I'm Joe Louden."

Eskew abruptly thrust his face close to the other's. "NO FREE SEATS!" he hissed, savagely; and swept across to the hotel to set his world afire.

Joe looked after the irate, receding figure, and watched it disappear into the Main Street door of the "National House." As the door closed, he became aware of a mighty shadow upon the pavement, and turning, beheld a fat young man, wearing upon his forehead a scar similar to his own, waddling by with eyes fixed upon him.

"How are you, Norbert?" Joe began. "Don't you remember me? I--" He came to a full stop, as the fat one, thrusting out an under lip as his only token of recognition, passed balefully on.

Joe proceeded slowly until he came to the Tocsin building. At the foot of the stairway leading up to the offices he hesitated for a few moments; then he turned away and walked towards the quieter part of Main Street. Most of the people he met took no notice of him, only two or three giving him second glances of half-cognizance, as though he reminded them of some one they could not place, and it was not until he had come near the Pike Mansion that he saw a full recognition in the eyes of one of the many whom he knew, and who had known him in his boyhood in the town. A lady, turning a corner, looked up carelessly, and then half-stopped within a few feet of him, as if startled. Joe's cheeks went a sudden crimson; for it was the lady of his old dreams.

Seven years had made Mamie Pike only prettier. She had grown into her young womanhood with an ampleness that had nothing of oversufficiency in it, nor anywhere a threat that some day there might be too much of her. Not quite seventeen when he had last seen her, now, at twenty-four, her amber hair elaborately becoming a plump and regular face, all of her old charm came over him once more, and it immediately seemed to him that he saw clearly his real reason for coming back to Canaan. She had been the Rich-Little-Girl of his child days, the golden princess playing in the Palace-Grounds, and in his early boyhood (until he had grown wicked and shabby) he had been sometimes invited to the Pike Mansion for the games and ice-cream of the daughter of the house, before her dancing days began. He had gone timidly, not daring ever to "call" her in "Quaker Meeting" or "Post-office," but watching her reverently and surreptitiously and continually. She had always seemed to him the one thing of all the world most rare, most mysterious, most unapproachable. She had not offered an apparition less so in those days when he began to come under the suspicion of Canaan, when the old people began to look upon him hotly, the young people coldly. His very exclusion wove for him a glamour about her, and she was more than ever his moon, far, lovely, unattainable, and brilliant, never to be reached by his lifted arms, but only by his lifted eyes. Nor had his long absence obliterated that light; somewhere in his dreams it always had place, shining, perhaps, with a fainter lustre as the years grew to seven, but never gone altogether. Now, at last, that he stood in her very presence again, it sprang to the full flood of its old brilliance--and more!

As she came to her half-stop of surprise, startled, he took his courage in two hands, and, lifting his hat, stepped to her side.

"You--you remember me?" he stammered.

"Yes," she answered, a little breathlessly.

"Ah, that's kind of you!" he cried, and began to walk on with her, unconsciously. "I feel like a returned ghost wandering about--invisible and unrecognized. So few people seem to remember me!"

"I think you are wrong. I think you'll find everybody remembers you," she responded, uneasily.

"No, I'm afraid not," he began. "I--"

"I'm afraid they do!"

Joe laughed a little. "My father was saying something like that to me a while ago. He meant that they used to think me a great scapegrace here. Do you mean that?"

"I'd scarcely like to say," she answered, her face growing more troubled; for they were close on the imperial domain.