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.
"But it's long ago--and I really didn't do anything so outrageous, it
seems to me." He laughed again. "I know your father was angry with me
once or twice, especially the night I hid on your porch to watch
you--to watch you dance, I mean. But, you see, I've come back to
rehabilitate myself, to--"
She interrupted him. They were not far from her gate, and she saw her
father standing in the yard, directing a painter who was at work on one
of the cast-iron deer. The Judge was apparently in good spirits,
laughing with the workman over some jest between them, but that did not
lessen Mamie's nervousness.
"Mr. Louden," she said, in as kindly a tone as she could, "I shall have
to ask you not to walk with me. My father would not like it."
Joe stopped with a jerk.
"Why, I--I thought I'd go in and shake hands with him,--and tell him
I--"
Astonishment that partook of terror and of awe spread itself instantly
upon her face.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "NO!"
"Very well," said Joe, humbly. "Good-bye."
He was too late to get away with any good grace. Judge Pike had seen
them, and, even as Joe turned to go, rushed down to the gate, flung it
open, and motioned his daughter to enter. This he did with one wide
sweep of his arm, and, with another sweep, forbade Joe to look upon
either moon OR sun. It was a magnificent gesture: it excluded the
young man from the street, Judge Pike's street, and from the town,
Judge Pike's town. It swept him from the earth, abolished him, denied
him the right to breathe the common air, to be seen of men; and, at
once a headsman's stroke and an excommunication, destroyed him, soul
and body, thus rebuking the silly Providence that had created him, and
repairing Its mistake by annihilating him. This hurling Olympian
gesture smote the street; the rails of the car-track sprang and
quivered with the shock; it thundered, and, amid the dumfounding uproar
of the wrath of a god, the Will of the Canaanite Jove wrote the words
in fiery letters upon the ether:
"CEASE TO BE!"
Joe did not go in to shake hands with Judge Pike.
He turned the next corner a moment later, and went down the quiet
street which led to the house which had been his home. He did not
glance at that somewhat grim edifice, but passed it, his eyes averted,
and stopped in front of the long, ramshackle cottage next door. The
windows were boarded; the picket-fence dropped even to the ground in
some sections; the chimneys sagged and curved; the roof of the long
porch sprinkled shingles over the unkempt yard with every wind, and
seemed about to fall. The place was desolate with long emptiness and
decay: it looked like a Haunted House; and nailed to the padlocked gate
was a sign, half obliterated with the winters it had fronted, "For Sale
or Rent."
Joe gat him meditatively back to Main Street and to the Tocsin
building. This time he did not hesitate, but mounted the stairs and
knocked upon the door of the assistant editor.
"Oh," said Eugene. "YOU'VE turned up, you?"
Mr. Bantry of the Tocsin was not at all the Eugene rescued from the
"Straw-Cellar." The present gentleman was more the electric Freshman
than the frightened adventurer whom Joe had encountered in New York.
It was to be seen immediately that the assistant editor had nothing
undaintily business-like about him, nor was there the litter on his
desk which one might have expected. He had the air of a gentleman
dilettante who amused himself slightly by spending an hour or two in
the room now and then. It was the evolution to the perfect of his
Freshman manner, and his lively apparel, though somewhat chastened by
an older taste, might have been foretold from that which had smitten
Canaan seven years before. He sat not at the orderly and handsome
desk, but lay stretched upon a divan of green leather, smoking a cigar
of purest ray and reading sleepily a small verse-looking book in
morocco. His occupation, his general air, the furniture of the room,
and his title (doubtless equipped with a corresponding salary) might
have inspired in an observant cynic the idea that here lay a pet of
Fortune, whose position had been the fruit of nepotism, or, mayhap, a
successful wooing of some daughter, wife, or widow. Eugene looked
competent for that.
"I've come back to stay, 'Gene," said Joe.
Bantry had dropped his book and raised himself on an elbow.
"Exceedingly interesting," he said. "I suppose you'll try to find
something to do. I don't think you could get a place here; Judge Pike
owns the Tocsin, and I greatly fear he has a prejudice against you."
"I expect he has," Joe chuckled, somewhat sadly. "But I don't want
newspaper work. I'm going to practice law."
"By Jove! you have courage, my festive prodigal. VRAIMENT!"
Joe cocked his head to one side with his old look of the friendly
puppy. "You always did like to talk that noveletty way, 'Gene, didn't
you?" he said, impersonally.
Eugene's color rose. "Have you saved up anything to starve on?" he
asked, crisply.
"Oh, I'm not so badly off. I've had a salary in an office for a year,
and I had one pretty good day at the races--"
"You'd better go back and have another," said his step-brother. "You
don't seem to comprehend your standing in Canaan."
"I'm beginning to." Joe turned to the door. "It's funny, too--in a
way. Well--I won't keep you any longer. I just stopped in to say
good-day--" He paused, faltering.
"All right, all right," Eugene said, briskly. "And, by-the-way, I
haven't mentioned that I saw you in New York."
"Oh, I didn't suppose that you would."
"And you needn't say anything about it, I fancy."
"I don't think," said Joe,--"I don't think that you need be afraid I'll
do that. Good-bye."
"Be sure to shut the door, please; it's rather noisy with it open.
Good-bye." Eugene waved his hand and sank back upon the divan.
Joe went across the street to the "National House." The sages fell as
silent as if he had been Martin Pike. They had just had the pleasure
of hearing a telephone monologue by Mr. Brown, the clerk, to which they
listened intently: "Yes. This is Brown. Oh--oh, it's Judge Pike?
Yes indeed, Judge, yes indeed, I hear you--ha, ha! Of course, I
understand. Yes, Judge, I heard he was in town. No, he hasn't been
here. Not yet, that is, Judge. Yes, I hear. No, I won't, of course.
Certainly not. I will, I will. I hear perfectly, I understand. Yes,
sir. Good-bye, Judge."
Joe had begun to write his name in the register. "My trunk is still at
the station," he said. "I'll give you my check to send down for it."
"Excuse me," said the clerk. "We have no rooms."
"What!" cried Joe, innocently. "Why, I never knew more than eight
people to stay here at the same time in my life."
"We have no rooms," repeated the clerk, curtly.
"Is there a convention here?"
"We have no rooms, I say!"
Joe looked up into the condensed eyes of Mr. Brown. "Oh," he said, "I
see."
Deathly silence followed him to the door, but, as it closed behind him,
he heard the outbreak of the sages like a tidal wave striking a
dump-heap of tin cans.
Two hours later he descended from an evil ark of a cab at the corral
attached to Beaver Beach, and followed the path through the marsh to
the crumbling pier. A red-bearded man was seated on a plank by the
water edge, fishing.
"Mike," said Joe, "have you got room for me? Can you take me in for a
few days until I find a place in town where they'll let me stay?"
The red-bearded man rose slowly, pushed back his hat, and stared hard
at the wanderer; then he uttered a howl of joy and seized the other's
hands in his and shook them wildly.
"Glory be on high!" he shouted. "It's Joe Louden come back! We never
knew how we missed ye till ye'd gone! Place fer ye! Can I find it?
There ain't a imp o' perdition in town, includin' myself, that wouldn't
kill me if I couldn't! Ye'll have old Maggie's room, my own aunt's; ye
remember how she used to dance! Ha, ha! She's been burnin' below
these four years! And we'll have the celebration of yer return this
night. There'll be many of 'em will come when they hear ye're back in
Canaan! Praise God, we'll all hope ye're goin' to stay a while!"