"The dear man!" She shook her head. "He was just the same. To him
poor Uncle Jonas's money seemed to come from heaven through the hands
of Judge Pike--"
"And there's a handsome roundabout way!" said Joe.
"Wasn't it!" she agreed, cheerfully. "And he trusted the Judge
absolutely. I don't, you see."
He gave her a thoughtful look and nodded. "No, he isn't a good man," he
said, "not even according to his lights; but I doubt if he could have
managed to get away with anything of consequence after he became the
administrator. He wouldn't have tried it, probably, unless he was more
desperately pushed than I think he has been. It would have been too
dangerous. Suppose you wait a week or so and think it over."
"But there's something I want you to do for me immediately, Joe."
"What's that?"
"I want the old house put in order. I'm going to live there."
"Alone?"
"I'm almost twenty-seven, and that's being enough of an old maid for me
to risk Canaan's thinking me eccentric, isn't it?"
"It will think anything you do is all right."
"And once," she cried, "it thought everything I did all wrong!"
"Yes. That's the difference."
"You mean it will commend me because I'm thought rich?"
"No, no," he said, meditatively, "it isn't that. It's because everybody
will be in love with you."
"Quite everybody!" she asked.
"Certainly," he replied. "Anybody who didn't would be absurd."
"Ah, Joe!" she laughed. "You always were the nicest boy in the world,
my dear!"
At that he turned toward her with a sudden movement and his lips
parted, but not to speak. She had rested one arm upon the desk, and her
cheek upon her hand; the pen she had picked up, still absently held in
her fingers, touching her lips; and it was given to him to know that he
would always keep that pen, though he would never write with it again.
The soft lamplight fell across the lower part of her face, leaving her
eyes, which were lowered thoughtfully, in the shadow of her hat. The
room was blotted out in darkness behind her. Like the background of an
antique portrait, the office, with its dusty corners and shelves and
hideous safe, had vanished, leaving the charming and thoughtful face
revealed against an even, spacious brownness. Only Ariel and the roses
and the lamp were clear; and a strange, small pain moved from Joe's
heart to his throat, as he thought that this ugly office, always before
so harsh and grim and lonely--loneliest for him when it had been most
crowded,--was now transfigured into something very, very different from
an office; that this place where he sat, with a lamp and flowers on a
desk between him and a woman who called him "my dear," must be
like--like something that people called "home."
And then he leaned across the desk toward her, as he said again what he
had said a little while before,--and his voice trembled:
"Ariel, it IS you?"
She looked at him and smiled.
"You'll be here always, won't you? You're not going away from Canaan
again?"
For a moment it seemed that she had not heard him. Then her bright
glance at him wavered and fell. She rose, turning slightly away from
him, but not so far that he could not see the sudden agitation in her
face.
"Ah!" he cried, rising too, "I don't want you to think I don't
understand, or that I meant _I_ should ever ask you to stay here! I
couldn't mean that; you know I couldn't, don't you? You know I
understand that it's all just your beautiful friendliness, don't you?"
"It isn't beautiful; it's just ME, Joe," she said. "It couldn't be any
other way."
"It's enough that you should be here now," he went on, bravely, his
voice steady, though his hand shook. "Nothing so wonderful as your
staying could ever actually happen. It's just a light coming into a
dark room and out again. One day, long ago--I never forgot it--some
apple-blossoms blew by me as I passed an orchard; and it's like that,
too. But, oh, my dear, when you go you'll leave a fragrance in my
heart that will last!"
She turned toward him, her face suffused with a rosy light. "You'd
rather have died than have said that to me once," she cried. "I'm glad
you're weak enough now to confess it!"
He sank down again into his chair and his arms fell heavily on the
desk. "Confess it!" he cried, despairingly. "And you don't deny that
you're going away again--so it's true! I wish I hadn't realized it so
soon. I think I'd rather have tried to fool myself about it a little
longer!"
"Joe," she cried, in a voice of great pain, "you mustn't feel like
that! How do you know I'm going away again? Why should I want the old
house put in order unless I mean to stay? And if I went, you know that
I could never change; you know how I've always cared for you--"
"Yes," he said, "I do know how. It was always the same and it always
will be, won't it?"
"I've shown that," she returned, quickly.
"Yes. You say I know how you've cared for me--and I do. I know HOW.
It's just in one certain way--Jonathan and David--"
"Isn't that a pretty good way, Joe?"
"Never fear that I don't understand!" He got to his feet again and
looked at her steadily.
"Thank you, Joe." She wiped sudden tears from her eyes.
"Don't you be sorry for me," he said. "Do you think that 'passing the
love of women' isn't enough for me?"
"No," she answered, humbly.
"I'll have people at work on the old house to-morrow," he began. "And
for the--"
"I've kept you so long!" she interrupted, helped to a meek sort of
gayety by his matter-of-fact tone. "Good-night, Joe." She gave him her
hand. "I don't want you to come with me. It isn't very late and this
is Canaan."
"I want to come with you, however," he said, picking up his hat. "You
can't go alone."
"But you are so tired, you--"
She was interrupted. There were muffled, flying footsteps on the
stairs, and a shabby little man ran furtively into the room, shut the
door behind him, and set his back against it. His face was mottled
like a colored map, thick lines of perspiration shining across the
splotches.
"Joe," he panted, "I've got Nashville good, and he's got me good,
too;--I got to clear out. He's fixed me good, damn him! but he won't
trouble nobody--"
Joe was across the room like a flying shadow.
"QUIET!" His voice rang like a shot, and on the instant his hand fell
sharply across the speaker's mouth. "In THERE, Happy!"
He threw an arm across the little man's shoulders and swung him toward
the door of the other room.
Happy Fear looked up from beneath the down-bent brim of his black
slouch hat; his eyes followed an imperious gesture toward Ariel, gave
her a brief, ghastly stare, and stumbled into the inner chamber.
"Wait!" Joe said, cavalierly, to Ariel. He went in quickly after Mr.
Fear and closed the door.
This was Joseph Louden, Attorney-at-Law; and to Ariel it was like a new
face seen in a flash-light--not at all the face of Joe. The sense of
his strangeness, his unfamiliarity in this electrical aspect, overcame
her. She was possessed by astonishment: Did she know him so well,
after all? The strange client had burst in, shaken beyond belief with
some passion unknown to her, but Joe, alert, and masterful beyond
denial, had controlled him instantly; had swept him into the other room
as with a broom. Could it be that Joe sometimes did other things in
the same sweeping fashion?
She heard a match struck in the next room, and the voices of the two
men: Joe's, then the other's, the latter at first broken and
protestive, but soon rising shrilly. She could hear only fragments.
Once she heard the client cry, almost scream: "By God! Joe, I thought
Claudine had chased him around there to DO me!" And, instantly,
followed Louden's voice:
"STEADY, HAPPY, STEADY!"
The name "Claudine" startled her; and although she had had no
comprehension of the argot of Happy Fear, the sense of a mysterious
catastrophe oppressed her; she was sure that something horrible had
happened. She went to the window; touched the shade, which disappeared
upward immediately, and lifted the sash. The front of a square
building in the Court-house Square was bright with lights; and figures
were passing in and out of the Main Street doors. She remembered that
this was the jail.
"Claudine!" The voice of the husband of Claudine was like the voice of
one lamenting over Jerusalem.
"STEADY, HAPPY, STEADY!"
"But, Joe, if they git me, what'll she do? She can't hold her job no
longer--not after this...."
The door opened, and the two men came out, Joe with his hand on the
other's shoulder. The splotches had gone from Happy's face, leaving it
an even, deathly white. He did not glance toward Ariel; he gazed far
beyond all that was about him; and suddenly she was aware of a great
tragedy. The little man's chin trembled and he swallowed painfully;
nevertheless he bore himself upright and dauntlessly as the two walked
slowly to the door, like men taking part in some fateful ceremony. Joe
stopped upon the landing at the head of the stairs, but Happy Fear went
on, clumping heavily down the steps.
"It's all right, Happy," said Joe. "It's better for you to go alone.
Don't you worry. I'll see you through. It will be all right."
"Just as YOU say, Joe," a breaking voice came back from the foot of the
steps,--"just as YOU say!"
The lawyer turned from the landing and went rapidly to the window
beside Ariel. Together they watched the shabby little figure cross the
street below; and she felt an infinite pathos gathering about it as it
paused for a moment, hesitating, underneath the arc-lamp at the corner.
They saw the white face lifted as Happy Fear gave one last look about
him; then he set his shoulders sturdily, and steadfastly entered the
door of the jail.