XVIII
IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY
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 farm- house 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.