XX
THREE ARE ENLISTED
Now in that blazing noon Canaan looked upon a strange sight: an
open carriage whirling through Main Street behind two galloping
bays; upon the back seat a ghostly white old man with closed eyes,
supported by two pale ladies, his head upon the shoulder of the
taller; while beside the driver, a young man whose coat and hands
were bloody, worked over the hurts of an injured dog. Sam Warden's
whip sang across the horses; lather gathered on their flanks, and
Ariel's voice steadily urged on the pace: "Quicker, Sam, if
you can." For there was little breath left in the body of Eskew
Arp.
Mamie, almost as white as the old man, was silent; but she had not
hesitated in her daring, now that she had been taught to dare; she
had not come to be Ariel's friend and honest follower for nothing;
and it was Mamie who had cried to Joe to lift Eskew into the carriage.
"You must come too," she said. "We will need you."
And so it came to pass that under the eyes of Canaan Joe Louden
rode in Judge Pike's carriage at the bidding of Judge Pike's daughter.
Toward Ariel's own house they sped with the stricken octogenarian,
for he was "alone in the world," and she would not take
him to the cottage where he had lived for many years by himself,
a bleak little house, a derelict of the "early days" left
stranded far down in the town between a woollen-mill and the water-works.
The workmen were beginning their dinners under the big trees, but
as Sam Warden drew in the lathered horses at the gate, they set
down their tin buckets hastily and ran to help Joe lift the old
man out. Carefully they bore him into the house and laid him upon
a bed in one of the finished rooms. He did not speak or move and
the workmen uncovered their heads as they went out, but Joe knew
that they were mistaken. "It's all right, Mr. Arp," he
said, as Ariel knelt by the bed with water and restoratives. "It's
all right. Don't you worry."
Then the veteran's lips twitched, and though his eyes remained closed,
Joe saw that Eskew understood, for he gasped, feebly: "Pos-i-tive-ly--no--
free--seats!"
To Mrs. Louden, sewing at an up-stairs window, the sight of her
stepson descending from Judge Pike's carriage was sufficiently startling,
but when she saw Mamie Pike take Respectability from his master's
arms and carry him tenderly indoors, while Joe and Ariel occupied
themselves with Mr. Arp, the good lady sprang to her feet as if
she had been stung, regardlessly sending her work-basket and its
contents scattering over the floor, and ran down the stairs three
steps at a time.
At the front door she met her husband, entering for his dinner,
and she leaped at him. Had he seen? What was it? What had happened?
Mr. Louden rubbed his chin-beard, indulging himself in a pause which
was like to prove fatal to his companion, finally vouchsafing the
information that the doctor's buggy was just turning the corner;
Eskew Arp had suffered a "stroke," it was said, and, in
Louden's opinion, was a mighty sick man. His spouse replied in no
uncertain terms that she had seen quite that much for herself, urging
him to continue, which he did with a deliberation that caused her
to recall their wedding-day with a gust of passionate self-reproach.
Presently he managed to interrupt, reminding her that her dining-
room windows commanded as comprehensive a view of the next house
as did the front steps, and after a time her housewifely duty so
far prevailed over her indignation at the man's unwholesome stolidity
that she followed him down the hall to preside over the meal, not,
however, to partake largely of it herself.
Mr. Louden had no information of Eugene's mishap, nor had Mrs. Louden
any suspicion that all was not well with the young man, and, hearing
him enter the front door, she called to him that his dinner was
waiting. Eugene, however, made no reply and went up-stairs to his
own apartment without coming into the dining-room.
A small crowd, neighboring children, servants, and negroes, had
gathered about Ariel's gate, and Mrs. Louden watched the working-men
disperse this assembly, gather up their tools, and depart; then
Mamie came out of the house, and, bowing sadly to three old men
who were entering the gate as she left it, stepped into her carriage
and drove away. The new-comers, Colonel Flitcroft, Squire Buckalew,
and Peter Bradbury, glanced at the doctor's buggy, shook their heads
at one another, and slowly went up to the porch, where Joe met them.
Mrs. Louden uttered a sharp exclamation, for the Colonel shook hands
with her stepson.
Perhaps Flitcroft himself was surprised; he had offered his hand
almost unconsciously, and the greeting was embarrassed and perfunctory;
but his two companions, each in turn, gravely followed his lead,
and Joe's set face flushed a little. It was the first time in many
years that men of their kind in Canaan had offered him this salutation.
"He wouldn't let me send for you," he told them. "He
said he knew you'd be here soon without that." And he led the
way to Eskew's bedside.
Joe and the doctor had undressed the old man, and had put him into
night-gear of Roger Tabor's, taken from an antique chest; it was
soft and yellow and much more like color than the face above it,
for the white hair on the pillow was not whiter than that. Yet there
was a strange youthfulness in the eyes of Eskew; an eerie, inexplicable,
luminous, LIVE look; the thin cheeks seemed fuller than they had
been for years; and though the heavier lines of age and sorrow could
be seen, they appeared to have been half erased. He lay not in sunshine,
but in clear light; the windows were open, the curtains restrained,
for he had asked them not to darken the room.
The doctor was whispering in a doctor's way to Ariel at the end
of the room opposite the bed, when the three old fellows came in.
None of them spoke immediately, and though all three cleared their
throats with what they meant for casual cheerfulness, to indicate
that the situation was not at all extraordinary or depressing, it
was to be seen that the Colonel's chin trembled under his mustache,
and his comrades showed similar small and unwilling signs of emotion.
Eskew spoke first. "Well, boys?" he said, and smiled.
That seemed to make it more difficult for the others; the three
white heads bent silently over the fourth upon the pillow; and Ariel
saw waveringly, for her eyes suddenly filled, that the Colonel laid
his unsteady hand upon Eskew's, which was outside the coverlet.
"It's--it's not," said the old soldier, gently-- "it's
not on--on both sides, is it, Eskew?"
Mr. Arp moved his hand slightly in answer. "It ain't paralysis,"
he said. "They call it `shock and exhaustion'; but it's more
than that. It's just my time. I've heard the call. We've all been
slidin' on thin ice this long time--and it's broke under me--"
"Eskew, Eskew!" remonstrated Peter Bradbury. "You'd
oughtn't to talk that-a-way! You only kind of overdone a little--heat
o' the day, too, and--"
"Peter," interrupted the sick man, with feeble asperity,
"did you ever manage to fool me in your life?"
"No, Eskew."
"Well, you're not doin' it now!"
Two tears suddenly loosed themselves from Squire Buckalew's eyelids,
despite his hard endeavor to wink them away, and he turned from
the bed too late to conceal what had happened. "There ain't
any call to feel bad," said Eskew. "It might have happened
any time--in the night, maybe--at my house--and all alone--but here's
Airie Tabor brought me to her own home and takin' care of me. I
couldn't ask any better way to go, could I?"
"I don't know what we'll do," stammered the Colonel, "if
you--you talk about goin' away from us, Eskew. We--we couldn't get
along--"
"Well, sir, I'm almost kind of glad to think," Mr. Arp
murmured, between short struggles for breath, "that it 'll
be--quieter--on the--"National House" corner!"
A moment later he called the doctor faintly and asked for a restorative.
"There," he said, in a stronger voice and with a gleam
of satisfaction in the vindication of his belief that he was dying.
"I was almost gone then. _I_ know!" He lay panting for
a moment, then spoke the name of Joe Louden.
Joe came quickly to the bedside.
"I want you to shake hands with the Colonel and Peter and Buckalew.
"We did," answered the Colonel, infinitely surprised and
troubled. "We shook hands outside before we came in."
"Do it again," said Eskew. "I want to see you."
And Joe, making shift to smile, was suddenly blinded, so that he
could not see the wrinkled hands extended to him, and was fain to
grope for them.
"God knows why we didn't all take his hand long ago,"
said Eskew Arp. "I didn't because I was stubborn. I hated to
admit that the argument was against me. I acknowledge it now before
him and before you--and I want the word of it CARRIED!"
"It's all right, Mr. Arp," began Joe, tremulously. "You
mustn't--"
"Hark to me"--the old man's voice lifted higher: "If
you'd ever whimpered, or give back- talk, or broke out the wrong
way, it would of been different. But you never did. I've watched
you and I know; and you've just gone your own way alone, with the
town against you because you got a bad name as a boy, and once we'd
given you that, everything you did or didn't do, we had to give
you a blacker one. Now it's time some one stood by you! Airie Tabor
'll do that with all her soul and body. She told me once I thought
a good deal of you. She knew! But I want these three old friends
of mine to do it, too. I was boys with them and they'll do it, I
think. They've even stood up fer you against me, sometimes, but
mostly fer the sake of the argument, I reckon; but now they must
do it when there's more to stand against than just my talk. They
saw it all to-day--the meanest thing I ever knew! I could of stood
it all except that!" Before they could prevent him he had struggled
half upright in bed, lifting a clinched fist at the town beyond
the windows. "But, by God! when they got so low down they tried
to kill your dog--"
He fell back, choking, in Joe's arms, and the physician bent over
him, but Eskew was not gone, and Ariel, upon the other side of the
room, could hear him whispering again for the restorative. She brought
it, and when he had taken it, went quickly out-of-doors to the side
yard.
She sat upon a workman's bench under the big trees, hidden from
the street shrubbery, and breathing deeply of the shaded air, began
to cry quietly. Through the windows came the quavering voice of
the old man, lifted again, insistent, a little querulous, but determined.
Responses sounded, intermittently, from the Colonel, from Peter,
and from Buckalew, and now and then a sorrowful, yet almost humorous,
protest from Joe; and so she made out that the veteran swore his
three comrades to friendship with Joseph Louden, to lend him their
countenance in all matters, to stand by him in weal and woe, to
speak only good of him and defend him in the town of Canaan. Thus
did Eskew Arp on the verge of parting this life render justice.
The gate clicked, and Ariel saw Eugene approaching through the shrubbery.
One of his hands was bandaged, a thin strip of court-plaster crossed
his forehead from his left eyebrow to his hair, and his thin and
agitated face showed several light scratches.
"I saw you come out," he said. "I've been waiting
to speak to you."
"The doctor told us to let him have his way in whatever he
might ask." Ariel wiped her eyes. "I'm afraid that means--"
"I didn't come to talk about Eskew Arp," interrupted Eugene.
"I'm not laboring under any anxiety about him. You needn't
be afraid; he's too sour to accept his conge so readily."
"Please lower your voice," she said, rising quickly and
moving away from him toward the house; but, as he followed, insisting
sharply that he must speak with her, she walked out of ear-shot
of the windows, and stopping, turned toward him.
"Very well," she said. "Is it a message from Mamie?"
At this he faltered and hung fire.
"Have you been to see her?" she continued.
"I am anxious to know if her goodness and bravery caused her
any--any discomfort at home."
"You may set your mind at rest about that," returned Eugene.
"I was there when the Judge came home to dinner. I suppose
you fear he may have been rough with her for taking my step- brother
into the carriage. He was not. On the contrary, he spoke very quietly
to her, and went on out toward the stables. But I haven't come to
you to talk of Judge Pike, either!"
"No," said Ariel. "I don't care particularly to hear
of him, but of Mamie."
"Nor of her, either!" he broke out. "I want to talk
of you!"
There was not mistaking him; no possibility of misunderstanding
the real passion that shook him, and her startled eyes betrayed
her comprehension.
"Yes, I see you understand," he cried, bitterly. "That's
because you've seen others the same way. God help me," he went
on, striking his forehead with his open hand, "that young fool
of a Bradbury told me you refused him only yesterday! He was proud
of even rejection from you! And there's Norbert--and half a dozen
others, perhaps, already, since you've been here." He flung
out his arms in ludicrous, savage despair. "And here am I--"
"Ah yes," she cut him off, "it is of yourself that
you want to speak, after all--not of me!"
"Look here," he vociferated; "are you going to marry
that Joe Louden? I want to know whether you are or not. He gave
me this--and this to- day!" He touched his bandaged hand and
plastered forehead. "He ran into me--over me--for nothing,
when I was not on my guard; struck me down--stamped on me--"
She turned upon him, cheeks aflame, eyes sparkling and dry.
"Mr. Bantry," she cried, "he did a good thing! And
now I want you to go home. I want you to go home and try if you
can discover anything in yourself that is worthy of Mamie and of
what she showed herself to be this morning! If you can, you will
have found something that I could like!"
She went rapidly toward the house, and he was senseless enough to
follow, babbling: "What do you think I'm made of? You trample
on me--as he did! I can't bear everything; I tell you--"
But she lifted her hand with such imperious will that he stopped
short. Then, through the window of the sick-room came--clearly the
querulous voice:
"I tell you it was; I heard him speak just now-- out there
in the yard, that no-account step-brother of Joe's! What if he IS
a hired hand on the Tocsin? He'd better give up his job and quit,
than do what he's done to help make the town think hard of Joe.
And what IS he? Why, he's worse than Cory. When that Claudine Fear
first came here, 'Gene Bantry was hangin' around her himself. Joe
knew it and he'd never tell, but I will. I saw 'em buggy-ridin'
out near Beaver Beach and she slapped his face fer him. It ought
to be TOLD!"
"I didn't know that Joe knew--that!" Eugene stammered
huskily. "It was--it was--a long time ago--"
"If you understood Joe," she said, in a low voice, "you
would know that before these men leave this house, he will have
their promise never to tell."
His eyes fell miserably, then lifted again; but in her clear and
unbearable gaze there shone such a flame of scorn as he could not
endure to look upon. For the first time in his life he saw a true
light upon himself, and though the vision was darkling, the revelation
was complete.
"Heaven pity you!" she whispered.
Eugene found himself alone, and stumbled away, his glance not lifted.
He passed his own home without looking up, and did not see his mother
beckoning frantically from a window. She ran to the door and called
him. He did not hear her, but went on toward the Tocsin office with
his head still bent.