It was a morning of the warmest week of mid-July, and Canaan lay inert
and helpless beneath a broiling sun. The few people who moved about the
streets went languidly, keeping close to the wall on the shady side;
the women in thin white fabrics; the men, often coatless, carrying
palm-leaf fans, and replacing collars with handkerchiefs. In the
Court-house yard the maple leaves, gray with blown dust and grown to
great breadth, drooped heavily, depressing the long, motionless
branches with their weight, so low that the four or five shabby idlers,
upon the benches beneath, now and then flicked them sleepily with
whittled sprigs. The doors and windows of the stores stood open,
displaying limp wares of trade, but few tokens of life; the clerks
hanging over dim counters as far as possible from the glare in front,
gossiping fragmentarily, usually about the Cory murder, and, anon, upon
a subject suggested by the sight of an occasional pedestrian passing
perspiring by with scrooged eyelids and purpling skin. From street and
sidewalk, transparent hot waves swam up and danced themselves into
nothing; while from the river bank, a half-mile away, came a sound
hotter than even the locust's midsummer rasp: the drone of a
planing-mill. A chance boy, lying prone in the grass of the
Court-house yard, was annoyed by the relentless chant and lifted his
head to mock it: "AWR-EER-AWR-EER! SHUT UP, CAN'T YOU?" The effort
was exhausting: he relapsed and suffered with increasing malice but in
silence.
Abruptly there was a violent outbreak on the "National House" corner,
as when a quiet farmhouse is startled by some one's inadvertently
bringing down all the tin from a shelf in the pantry. The loafers on
the benches turned hopefully, saw what it was, then closed their eyes,
and slumped back into their former positions. The outbreak subsided as
suddenly as it had arisen: Colonel Flitcroft pulled Mr. Arp down into
his chair again, and it was all over.
Greater heat than that of these blazing days could not have kept one of
the sages from attending the conclave now. For the battle was on in
Canaan: and here, upon the National House corner, under the shadow of
the west wall, it waxed even keener. Perhaps we may find full
justification for calling what was happening a battle in so far as we
restrict the figure to apply to this one spot; else where, in the
Canaan of the Tocsin, the conflict was too one-sided. The Tocsin had
indeed tried the case of Happy Fear in advance, had convicted and
condemned, and every day grew more bitter. Nor was the urgent vigor of
its attack without effect. Sleepy as Main Street seemed in the heat,
the town was incensed and roused to a tensity of feeling it had not
known since the civil war, when, on occasion, it had set out to hang
half a dozen "Knights of the Golden Circle." Joe had been hissed on
the street many times since the inimical clerk had whistled at him.
Probably demonstrations of that sort would have continued had he
remained in Canaan; but for almost a month he had been absent and his
office closed, its threshold gray with dust. There were people who
believed that he had run away again, this time never to return; among
those who held to this opinion being Mrs. Louden and her sister, Joe's
step-aunt. Upon only one point was everybody agreed: that twelve men
could not be found in the county who could be so far persuaded and
befuddled by Louden that they would dare to allow Happy Fear to escape.
The women of Canaan, incensed by the terrible circumstance of the case,
as the Tocsin colored it--a man shot down in the act of begging his
enemy's forgiveness--clamored as loudly as the men: there was only the
difference that the latter vociferated for the hanging of Happy; their
good ladies used the word "punishment."
And yet, while the place rang with condemnation of the little man in
the jail and his attorney, there were voices, here and there, uplifted
on the other side. People existed, it astonishingly appeared, who
LIKED Happy Fear. These were for the greater part obscure and even
darkling in their lives, yet quite demonstrably human beings, able to
smile, suffer, leap, run, and to entertain fancies; even to have,
according to their degree, a certain rudimentary sense of right and
wrong, in spite of which they strongly favored the prisoner's
acquittal. Precisely on that account, it was argued, an acquittal would
outrage Canaan and lay it open to untold danger: such people needed a
lesson.
The Tocsin interviewed the town's great ones, printing their opinions
of the heinousness of the crime and the character of the defendant's
lawyer.... "The Hon. P. J. Parrott, who so ably represented this county
in the Legislature some fourteen years ago, could scarcely restrain
himself when approached by a reporter as to his sentiments anent the
repulsive deed. 'I should like to know how long Canaan is going to put
up with this sort of business,' were his words. 'I am a law-abiding
citizen, and I have served faithfully, and with my full endeavor and
ability, to enact the laws and statutes of my State, but there is a
point in my patience, I would state, which lawbreakers and their
lawyers may not safely pass. Of what use are our most solemn
enactments, I may even ask of what use is the Legislature itself,
chosen by the will of the people, if they are to ruthlessly be set
aside by criminals and their shifty protectors? The blame should be put
upon the lawyers who by tricks enable such rascals to escape the rigors
of the carefully enacted laws, the fruits of the Solon's labor, more
than upon the criminals themselves. In this case, if there is any
miscarriage of justice, I will say here and now that in my opinion the
people of this county will be sorely tempted; and while I do not
believe in lynch-law, yet if that should be the result it is my
unalterable conviction that the vigilantes may well turn their
attention to the lawyers--OR LAWYER--who bring about such miscarriage.
I am sick of it.'"
The Tocsin did not print the interview it obtained from Louie
Farbach--the same Louie Farbach who long ago had owned a beer-saloon
with a little room behind the bar, where a shabby boy sometimes played
dominoes and "seven-up" with loafers: not quite the same Louie Farbach,
however, in outward circumstance: for he was now the brewer of Farbach
Beer and making Canaan famous. His rise had been Teutonic and sure;
and he contributed one-twentieth of his income to the German Orphan
Asylum and one-tenth to his party's campaign fund. The twentieth saved
the orphans from the county, while the tithe gave the county to his
party.
He occupied a kitchen chair, enjoying the society of some chickens in a
wired enclosure behind the new Italian villa he had erected in that
part of Canaan where he would be most uncomfortable, and he looked
woodenly at the reporter when the latter put his question.
"Hef you any aguaintunce off Mitster Fear?" he inquired, in return,
with no expression decipherable either upon his Gargantuan face or in
his heavily enfolded eyes.
"No, sir," replied the reporter, grinning. "I never ran across him."
"Dot iss a goot t'ing fer you," said Mr. Farbach, stonily. "He iss not
a man peobles bedder try to run across. It iss what Gory tried. Now
Gory iss dead."
The reporter, slightly puzzled, lit a cigarette. "See here, Mr.
Farbach," he urged, "I only want a word or two about this thing; and
you might give me a brief expression concerning that man Louden
besides: just a hint of what you think of his influence here, you know,
and of the kind of sharp work he practises. Something like that."
"I see," said the brewer, slowly. "Happy Fear I hef knowt for a goot
many years. He iss a goot frient of mine."
"What?"
"Choe Louten iss a bedder one," continued Mr. Farbach, turning again to
stare at his chickens.
"Git owit."
"What?"
"Git owit," repeated the other, without passion, without anger, without
any expression whatsoever. "Git owit."
The reporter's prejudice against the German nation dated from that
moment.
There were others, here and there, who were less self-contained than
the brewer. A farm-hand struck a fellow laborer in the harvest-field
for speaking ill of Joe; and the unravelling of a strange street fight,
one day, disclosed as its cause a like resentment, on the part of a
blind broom-maker, engendered by a like offence. The broom-maker's
companion, reading the Tocsin as the two walked together, had begun the
quarrel by remarking that Happy Fear ought to be hanged once for his
own sake and twice more "to show up that shyster Louden." Warm words
followed, leading to extremely material conflict, in which, in spite of
his blindness, the broom-maker had so much the best of it that he was
removed from the triumphant attitude he had assumed toward the person
of his adversary, which was an admirable imitation of the dismounted
St. George and the Dragon, and conveyed to the jail. Keenest
investigation failed to reveal anything oblique in the man's record; to
the astonishment of Canaan, there was nothing against him. He was
blind and moderately poor; but a respectable, hard-working artisan, and
a pride to the church in which he was what has been called an "active
worker." It was discovered that his sensitiveness to his companion's
attack on Joseph Louden arose from the fact that Joe had obtained the
acquittal of an imbecile sister of the blind man, a two-thirds-witted
woman who had been charged with bigamy.
The Tocsin made what it could of this, and so dexterously that the
wrath of Canaan was one farther jot increased against the shyster. Ay,
the town was hot, inside and out.
Let us consider the Forum. Was there ever before such a summer for the
"National House" corner? How voices first thundered there, then
cracked and piped, is not to be rendered in all the tales of the
fathers. One who would make vivid the great doings must indeed "dip
his brush in earthquake and eclipse"; even then he could but picture
the credible, and must despair of this: the silence of Eskew Arp. Not
that Eskew held his tongue, not that he was chary of speech--no! O
tempora, O mores! NO! But that he refused the subject in hand, that
he eschewed expression upon it and resolutely drove the argument in
other directions, that he achieved such superbly un-Arplike
inconsistency; and with such rich material for his sardonic humors, not
at arm's length, not even so far as his finger-tips, but beneath his
very palms, he rejected it: this was the impossible fact.
Eskew--there is no option but to declare--was no longer Eskew. It is
the truth; since the morning when Ariel Tabor came down from Joe's
office, leaving her offering of white roses in that dingy, dusty, shady
place, Eskew had not been himself. His comrades observed it somewhat in
a physical difference, one of those alterations which may come upon men
of his years suddenly, like a "sea change": his face was whiter, his
walk slower, his voice filed thinner; he creaked louder when he rose or
sat. Old always, from his boyhood, he had, in the turn of a hand,
become aged. But such things come and such things go: after eighty
there are ups and downs; people fading away one week, bloom out
pleasantly the next, and resiliency is not at all a patent belonging to
youth alone. The material change in Mr. Arp might have been thought
little worth remarking. What caused Peter Bradbury, Squire Buckalew,
and the Colonel to shake their heads secretly to one another and wonder
if their good old friend's mind had not "begun to go" was something
very different. To come straight down to it: he not only abstained
from all argument upon the "Cory Murder" and the case of Happy Fear,
refusing to discuss either in any terms or under any circumstances, but
he also declined to speak of Ariel Tabor or of Joseph Louden; or of
their affairs, singular or plural, masculine, feminine, or neuter, or
in any declension. Not a word, committal or non-committal. None!
And his face, when he was silent, fell into sorrowful and troubled
lines.
At first they merely marvelled. Then Squire Buckalew dared to tempt
him. Eskew's faded eyes showed a blue gleam, but he withstood,
speaking of Babylon to the disparagement of Chicago. They sought to
lead him into what he evidently would not, employing many devices; but
the old man was wily and often carried them far afield by secret ways
of his own. This hot morning he had done that thing: they were close
upon him, pressing him hard, when he roused that outburst which had
stirred the idlers on the benches in the Court-house yard. Squire
Buckalew (sidelong at the others but squarely at Eskew) had volunteered
the information that Cory was a reformed priest. Stung by the mystery
of Eskew's silence, the Squire's imagination had become magically
gymnastic; and if anything under heaven could have lifted the veil,
this was the thing. Mr. Arp's reply may be reverenced.
"I consider," he said, deliberately, "that James G. Blaine's furrin
policy was childish, and, what's more, I never thought much of HIM!"
This outdefied Ajax, and every trace of the matter in hand went to the
four winds. Eskew, like Rome, was saved by a cackle, in which he
joined, and a few moments later, as the bench loafers saw, was pulled
down into his seat by the Colonel.
The voices of the fathers fell to the pitch of ordinary discourse; the
drowsy town was quiet again; the whine of the planing-mill boring its
way through the sizzling air to every wakening ear. Far away, on a
quiet street, it sounded faintly, like the hum of a bee across a creek,
and was drowned in the noise of men at work on the old Tabor house. It
seemed the only busy place in Canaan that day: the shade of the big
beech-trees which surrounded it affording some shelter from the
destroying sun to the dripping laborers who were sawing, hammering,
painting, plumbing, papering, and ripping open old and new
packing-boxes. There were many changes in the old house pleasantly in
keeping with its simple character: airy enlargements now almost
completed so that some of the rooms were already finished, and stood,
furnished and immaculate, ready for tenancy.
In that which had been Roger Tabor's studio sat Ariel, alone. She had
caused some chests and cases, stored there, to be opened, and had taken
out of them a few of Roger's canvases and set them along the wall.
Tears filled her eyes as she looked at them, seeing the tragedy of
labor the old man had expended upon them; but she felt the recompense:
hard, tight, literal as they were, he had had his moment of joy in each
of them before he saw them coldly and knew the truth. And he had been
given his years of Paris at last: and had seen "how the other fellows
did it."
A heavy foot strode through the hall, coming abruptly to a halt in the
doorway, and turning, she discovered Martin Pike, his big
Henry-the-Eighth face flushed more with anger than with the heat. His
hat was upon his head, and remained there, nor did he offer any token
or word of greeting whatever, but demanded to know when the work upon
the house had been begun.
"The second morning after my return," she answered.
"I want to know," he pursued, "why it was kept secret from me, and I
want to know quick."
"Secret?" she echoed, with a wave of her hand to indicate the noise
which the workmen were making.
"Upon whose authority was it begun?"
"Mine. Who else could give it?"
"Look here," he said, advancing toward her, "don't you try to fool me!
You haven't done all this by yourself. Who hired these workmen?"
Remembering her first interview with him, she rose quickly before he
could come near her. "Mr. Louden made most of the arrangements for
me," she replied, quietly, "before he went away. He will take charge
of everything when he returns. You haven't forgotten that I told you I
intended to place my affairs in his hands?"
He had started forward, but at this he stopped and stared at her
inarticulately.
"You remember?" she said, her hands resting negligently upon the back
of the chair. "Surely you remember?"
She was not in the least afraid of him, but coolly watchful of him.
This had been her habit with him since her return. She had seen little
of him, except at table, when he was usually grimly laconic, though now
and then she would hear him joking heavily with Sam Warden in the yard,
or, with evidently humorous intent, groaning at Mamie over Eugene's
health; but it had not escaped Ariel that he was, on his part, watchful
of herself, and upon his guard with a wariness in which she was
sometimes surprised to believe that she saw an almost haggard
apprehension.
He did not answer her question, and it seemed to her, as she continued
steadily to meet his hot eyes, that he was trying to hold himself under
some measure of control; and a vain effort it proved.
"You go back to my house!" he burst out, shouting hoarsely. "You get
back there! You stay there!"
"No," she said, moving between him and the door. "Mamie and I are
going for a drive."
"You go back to my house!" He followed her, waving an arm fiercely at
her. "Don't you come around here trying to run over me! You talk
about your 'affairs'! All you've got on earth is this two-for-a-nickel
old shack over your head and a bushel-basket of distillery stock that
you can sell by the pound for old paper!" He threw the words in her
face, the bull-bass voice seamed and cracked with falsetto. "Old
paper, old rags, old iron, bottles, old clothes! You talk about your
affairs! Who are you? Rothschild? You haven't GOT any affairs!"
Not a look, not a word, not a motion of his escaped her in all the fury
of sound and gesture in which he seemed fairly to envelop himself;
least of all did that shaking of his--the quivering of jaw and temple,
the tumultuous agitation of his hands--evade her watchfulness.
"When did you find this out?" she said, very quickly. "After you
became administrator?"
He struck the back of the chair she had vacated a vicious blow with his
open hand. "No, you spendthrift! All there was TO your grandfather
when you buried him was a basket full of distillery stock, I tell you!
Old paper! Can't you hear me? Old paper, old rags--"
"You have sent me the same income," she lifted her voice to interrupt;
"you have made the same quarterly payments since his death that you
made before. If you knew, why did you do that?"
He had been shouting at her with the frantic and incredulous
exasperation of an intolerant man utterly unused to opposition; his
face empurpled, his forehead dripping, and his hands ruthlessly
pounding the back of the chair; but this straight question stripped him
suddenly of gesture and left him standing limp and still before her,
pale splotches beginning to show on his hot cheeks.
"If you knew, why did you do it?" she repeated. "You wrote me that my
income was from dividends, and I knew and thought nothing about it; but
if the stock which came to me was worthless, how could it pay
dividends?"
"It did not," he answered, huskily. "That distillery stock, I tell
you, isn't worth the matches to burn it."
"But there has been no difference in my income," she persisted,
steadily. "Why? Can you explain that to me?"
"Yes, I can," he replied, and it seemed to her that he spoke with a
pallid and bitter desperation, like a man driven to the wall. "I can
if you think you want to know."
"I do."
"I sent it."
"Do you mean from you own--"
"I mean it was my own money."
She had not taken her eyes from his, which met hers straightly and
angrily; and at this she leaned forward, gazing at him with profound
scrutiny.
"Why did you send it?" she asked.
"Charity," he answered, after palpable hesitation.
Her eyes widened and she leaned back against the lintel of the door,
staring at him incredulously. "Charity!" she echoed, in a whisper.
Perhaps he mistook her amazement at his performance for dismay caused
by the sense of her own position, for, as she seemed to weaken before
him, the strength of his own habit of dominance came back to him.
"Charity, madam!" he broke out, shouting intolerably. "Charity, d'ye
hear? I was a friend of the man that made the money you and your
grandfather squandered; I was a friend of Jonas Tabor, I say! That's
why I was willing to support you for a year and over, rather than let a
niece of his suffer."
"'Suffer'!" she cried. "'Support'! You sent me a hundred thousand
francs!"
The white splotches which had mottled Martin Pike's face disappeared as
if they had been suddenly splashed with hot red. "You go back to my
house," he said. "What I sent you only shows the extent of my--"
"Effrontery!" The word rang through the whole house, so loudly and
clearly did she strike it, rang in his ears till it stung like a
castigation. It was ominous, portentous of justice and of disaster.
There was more than doubt of him in it: there was conviction.
He fell back from this word; and when he again advanced, Ariel had left
the house. She had turned the next corner before he came out of the
gate; and as he passed his own home on his way down-town, he saw her
white dress mingling with his daughter's near the horse-block beside
the fire, where the two, with their arms about each other, stood
waiting for Sam Warden and the open summer carriage.
Judge Pike walked on, the white splotches reappearing like a pale rash
upon his face. A yellow butterfly zigzagged before him, knee-high,
across the sidewalk. He raised his foot and half kicked at it.