III
OLD HOPES
The door which Ariel had entered opened upon a narrow hall, and
down this she ran to her own room, passing, with face averted, the
entrance to the broad, low-ceilinged chamber that had served Roger
Tabor as a studio for almost fifty years. He was sitting there now,
in a hopeless and disconsolate attitude, with his back towards the
double doors, which were open, and had been open since their hinges
had begun to give way, when Ariel was a child. Hearing her step,
he called her name, but did not turn; and, receiving no answer,
sighed faintly as he heard her own door close upon her.
Then, as his eyes wandered about the many canvases which leaned
against the dingy walls, he sighed again. Usually they showed their
brown backs, but to-day he had turned them all to face outward.
Twilight, sunset, moonlight (the Courthouse in moonlight), dawn,
morning, noon (Main Street at noon), high summer, first spring,
red autumn, midwinter, all were there--illimitably detailed, worked
to a smoothness like a glaze, and all lovingly done with unthinkable
labor.
And there were "Italian Flower-Sellers," damsels with
careful hair, two figures together, one blonde, the other as brunette
as lampblack, the blonde--in pink satin and blue slippers--leaning
against a pillar and smiling over the golden coins for which she
had exchanged her posies; the brunette seated at her feet, weeping
upon an unsold bouquet. There were red-sashed "Fisher Lads
" wading with butterfly-nets on their shoulders; there was
a "Tying the Ribbon on Pussy's Neck"; there were portraits
in oil and petrifactions in crayon, as hard and tight as the purses
of those who had refused to accept them, leaving them upon their
maker's hands because the likeness had failed.
After a time the old man got up, went to his easel near a window,
and, sighing again, began patiently to work upon one of these failures--a
portrait, in oil, of a savage old lady, which he was doing from
a photograph. The expression of the mouth and the shape of the nose
had not pleased her descendants and the beneficiaries under the
will, and it was upon the images of these features that Roger labored.
He leaned far forward, with his face close to the canvas, holding
his brushes after the Spencerian fashion, working steadily through
the afternoon, and, when the light grew dimmer, leaning closer to
his canvas to see. When it had become almost dark in the room, he
lit a student-lamp with a green-glass shade, and, placing it upon
a table beside him, continued to paint. Ariel's voice interrupted
him at last.
"It's quitting-time, grandfather," she called, gently,
from the doorway behind him.
He sank back in his chair, conscious, for the first time, of how
tired he had grown. "I suppose so," he said, "though
it seemed to me that I was just getting my hand in." His eyes
brightened for a moment. "I declare, I believe I've caught
it a great deal better. Come and look, Ariel. Doesn't it seem to
you that I'm getting it? Those pearly shadows in the flesh--"
"I'm sure of it. Those people ought to be very proud to have
it." She came to him quietly, took the palette and brushes
from his hands and began to clean them, standing in the shadow behind
him. "It's too good for them."
"I wonder if it is," he said, slowly, leaning forward
and curving his hands about his eyes so as to shut off everything
from his view except the canvas. "I wonder if it is!"
he repeated. Then his hands dropped sadly in his lap, and he sank
back again with a patient kind of revulsion. "No, no, it isn't!
I always think they're good when I've just finished them. I've been
fooled that way all my life. They don't look the same afterwards."
"They're always beautiful," she said, softly.
"Ah, ah!" he sighed.
"Now, Roger!" she cried, with cheerful sharpness, continuing
her work.
"I know," he said, with a plaintive laugh,--"I know.
Sometimes I think that all my reward has been in the few minutes
I've had just after finishing them. During those few minutes I seem
to see in them all that I wanted to put in them; I see it because
what I've been trying to express is still so warm in my own eyes
that I seem to have got it on the canvas where I wanted it."
"But you do," she said. "You do get it there."
"No," he murmured, in return. "I never did. I got
out some of the old ones when I came in this morning, some that
I hadn't looked at for years, and it's the same with them. You can
do it much better yourself--your sketches show it."
"No, no!" she protested, quickly.
"Yes, they do; and I wondered if it was only because you were
young. But those I did when I was young are almost the same as the
ones I paint now. I haven't learned much. There hasn't been any
one to show me! And you can't learn from print, never! Yet I've
grown in what I SEE-- grown so that the world is full of beauty
to me that I never dreamed of seeing when I began. But I can't paint
it--I can't get it on the canvas. Ah, I think I might have known
how to, if I hadn't had to teach myself, if I could only have seen
how some of the other fellows did their work. If I'd ever saved
money to get away from Canaan --if I could have gone away from it
and come back knowing how to paint it--if I could have got to Paris
for just one month! PARIS--for just one month!"
"Perhaps we will; you can't tell what MAY happen." It
was always her reply to this cry of his.
"PARIS--for just one month!" he repeated, with infinite
wistfulness, and then realizing what an old, old cry it was with
him, he shook his head, impatiently sniffing out a laugh at himself,
rose and went pottering about among the canvases, returning their
faces to the wall, and railing at them mutteringly.
"Whatever took me into it, I don't know. I might have done
something useful. But I couldn't bring myself ever to consider doing
anything else-- I couldn't bear even to think of it! Lord forgive
me, I even tried to encourage your father to paint. Perhaps he might
as well, poor boy, as to have put all he'd made into buying Jonas
out. Ah me! There you go, `Flower-Girls'! Turn your silly faces
to the wall and smile and cry there till I'm gone and somebody throws
you on a bonfire. I'LL never look at you again." He paused,
with the canvas half turned. "And yet," he went on, reflectively,
"a man promised me thirty-five dollars for that picture once.
I painted it to order, but he went away before I finished it, and
never answered the letters I wrote him about it. I wish I had the
money now--perhaps we could have more than two meals a day."
"We don't need more," said Ariel, scraping the palette
attentively. "It's healthier with only breakfast and supper.
I think I'd rather have a new dress than dinner."
"I dare say you would," the old man mused. "You're
young--you're young. What were you doing all this afternoon, child?"
"In my room, trying to make over mamma's wedding-dress for
to-night."
"To-night?"
"Mamie Pike invited me to a dance at their house."
"Very well; I'm glad you're going to be gay," he said,
not seeing the faintly bitter smile that came to her face.
"I don't think I'll be very gay," she answered.
"I don't know why I go--nobody ever asks me to dance."
"Why not?" he asked, with an old man's astonishment.
"I don't know. Perhaps it's because I don't dress very well."
Then, as he made a sorrowful gesture, she cut him off before he
could speak. "Oh, it isn't altogether because we're poor; it's
more I don't know how to wear what I've got, the way some girls
do. I never cared much and-- well, I'M not worrying, Roger! And
I think I've done a good deal with mamma's dress. It's a very grand
dress. I wonder I never thought of wearing it until to-day. I may
be"--she laughed and blushed --"I may be the belle of
the ball--who knows!"
"You'll want me to walk over with you and come for you afterwards,
I expect."
"Only to take me. It may be late when I come away--if a good
many SHOULD ask me to dance, for once! Of course I could come home
alone. But Joe Louden is going to sort of hang around outside, and
he'll meet me at the gate and see me safe home."
"Oh!" he exclaimed, blankly.
"Isn't it all right?" she asked.
"I think I'd better come for you," he answered, gently.
"The truth is, I--I think you'd better not be with Joe Louden
a great deal."
"Why?"
"Well, he doesn't seem a vicious boy to me, but I'm afraid
he's getting rather a bad name, my dear."
"He's not getting one," she said, gravely. "He's
already got one. He's had a bad name in Canaan for a long while.
It grew in the first place out of shabbiness and mischief, but it
did grow; and if people keep on giving him a bad name the time will
come when he'll live up to it. He's not any worse than I am, and
I guess my own name isn't too good--for a girl. And yet, so far,
there's nothing against him except his bad name."
"I'm afraid there is," said Roger. "It doesn't look
very well for a young man of his age to be doing no better than
delivering papers."
"It gives him time to study law," she answered, quickly.
"If he clerked all day in a store, he couldn't."
"I didn't know he was studying now. I thought I'd heard that
he was in a lawyer's office for a few weeks last year, and was turned
out for setting fire to it with a pipe--"
"It was an accident," she interposed.
"But some pretty important papers were burned, and after that
none of the other lawyers would have him."
"He's not in an office," she admitted. "I didn't
mean that. But he studies a great deal. He goes to the courts all
the time they're in session, and he's bought some books of his own."
"Well--perhaps," he assented; "but they say he gambles
and drinks, and that last week Judge Pike threatened to have him
arrested for throwing dice with some negroes behind the Judge's
stable."
"What of it? I'm about the only nice person in town that will
have anything to do with him-- and nobody except you thinks I'M
very nice!"
"Ariel! Ariel!"
"I know all about his gambling with darkies," she continued,
excitedly, her voice rising, "and I know that he goes to saloons,
and that he's an intimate friend of half the riffraff in town; and
I know the reason for it, too, because he's told me. He wants to
know them, to understand them; and he says some day they'll make
him a power, and then he can help them!"
The old man laughed helplessly. "But I can't let him bring
you home, my dear."
She came to him slowly and laid her hands upon his shoulders. Grandfather
and granddaughter were nearly of the same height, and she looked
squarely into his eyes. "Then you must say it is because you
want to come for me, not because I mustn't come with Joe."
"But I think it is a little because you mustn't come with Joe,"
he answered, "especially from the Pikes'. Don't you see that
it mightn't be well for Joe himself, if the Judge should happen
to see him? I understand he warned the boy to keep away from the
neighborhood entirely or he would have him locked up for dice-throwing.
The Judge is a very influential man, you know, and as determined
in matters like this as he is irritable."
"Oh, if you put it on that ground," the girl replied,
her eyes softening, "I think you'd better come for me yourself."
"Very well, I put it on that ground," he returned, smiling
upon her
"Then I'll send Joe word and get supper," she said, kissing
him.
It was the supper-hour not only for them but everywhere in Canaan,
and the cold air of the streets bore up and down and around corners
the smell of things frying. The dining-room windows of all the houses
threw bright patches on the snow of the side-yards; the windows
of other rooms, except those of the kitchens, were dark, for the
rule of the place was Puritanical in thrift, as in all things; and
the good housekeepers disputed every record of the meters with unhappy
gas-collectors.
There was no better housekeeper in town than Mrs. Louden, nor a
thriftier, but hers was one of the few houses in Canaan, that evening,
which showed bright lights in the front rooms while the family were
at supper. It was proof of the agitation caused by the arrival of
Eugene that she forgot to turn out the gas in her parlor, and in
the chamber she called a library, on her way to the evening meal.
That might not have been thought a cheerful feast for Joe Louden.
The fatted calf was upon the board, but it had not been provided
for the prodigal, who, in this case, was the brother that stayed
at home: the fete rewarded the good brother, who had been in strange
lands, and the good one had found much honor in his wanderings,
as he carelessly let it appear. Mrs. Louden brightened inexpressibly
whenever Eugene spoke of himself, and consequently she glowed most
of the time. Her husband-- a heavy, melancholy, silent man with
a grizzled beard and no mustache--lowered at Joe throughout the
meal, but appeared to take a strange comfort in his step-son's elegance
and polish. Eugene wore new evening clothes and was lustrous to
eye and ear.
Joe escaped as soon as he could, though not before the count of
his later sins had been set before Eugene in detail, in mass, and
in all of their depth, breadth, and thickness. His father spoke
but once, after nodding heavily to confirm all points of Mrs. Louden's
recital.
"You better use any influence you've got with your brother,"
he said to Eugene, "to make him come to time. I can't do anything
with him. If he gets in trouble, he needn't come to me! I'll never
help him again. I'm TIRED of it!"
Eugene glanced twinklingly at the outcast. "I didn't know he
was such a roarer as all that!" he said, lightly, not taking
Joe as of enough consequence to be treated as a sinner.
This encouraged Mrs. Louden to pathos upon the subject of her shame
before other women when Joe happened to be mentioned, and the supper
was finished with the topic. Joe slipped away through the kitchen,
sneakingly, and climbed the back fence. In the alley he lit a cheap
cigarette, and thrusting his hands into his pockets and shivering
violently--for he had no overcoat,--walked away singing to himself,
"A Spanish cavalier stood in his retreat," his teeth affording
an appropriate though involuntary castanet accompaniment.
His movements throughout the earlier part of that evening are of
uncertain report. It is known that he made a partial payment of
forty-five cents at a second-hand book-store for a number of volumes--
Grindstaff on Torts and some others--which he had negotiated on
the instalment system; it is also believed that he won twenty-eight
cents playing seven-up in the little room behind Louie Farbach's
bar; but these things are of little import compared to the established
fact that at eleven o'clock he was one of the ball guests at the
Pike Mansion. He took no active part in the festivities, nor was
he one of the dancers: his was, on the contrary, the role of a quiet
observer. He lay stretched at full length upon the floor of the
enclosed porch (one of the strips of canvas was later found to have
been loosened), wedged between the outer railing and a row of palms
in green tubs. The position he occupied was somewhat too draughty
to have been recommended by a physician, but he commanded, between
the leaves of the screening palms, an excellent view of the room
nearest the porch. A long window, open, afforded communication between
this room, one of those used for dancing, and the dim bower which
had been made of the veranda, whither flirtatious couples made their
way between the dances.
It was not to play eavesdropper upon any of these that the uninvited
Joe had come. He was not there to listen, and it is possible that,
had the curtains of other windows afforded him the chance to behold
the dance, he might not have risked the dangers of his present position.
He had not the slightest interest in the whispered coquetries that
he heard; he watched only to catch now and then, over the shoulders
of the dancers, a fitful glimpse of a pretty head that flitted across
the window-- the amber hair of Mamie Pike. He shivered in the draughts;
and the floor of the porch was cement, painful to elbow and knee,
the space where he lay cramped and narrow; but the golden bubbles
of her hair, the shimmer of her dainty pink dress, and the fluffy
wave of her lace scarf as she crossed and recrossed in a waltz,
left him, apparently, in no discontent. He watched with parted lips,
his pale cheeks reddening whenever those fair glimpses were his.
At last she came out to the veranda with Eugene and sat upon a little
divan, so close to Joe that, daring wildly in the shadow, he reached
out a trembling hand and let his fingers rest upon the end of her
scarf, which had fallen from her shoulders and touched the floor.
She sat with her back to him, as did Eugene.
"You have changed, I think, since last summer," he heard
her say, reflectively.
"For the worse, ma cherie?" Joe's expression might have
been worth seeing when Eugene said "ma cherie," for it
was known in the Louden household that Mr. Bantry had failed to
pass his examination in the French language.
"No," she answered. "But you have seen so much and
accomplished so much since then. You have become so polished and
so--" She paused, and then continued, "But perhaps I'd
better not say it; you might be offended."
"No. I want you to say it," he returned, confidently,
and his confidence was fully justified, for she said:
"Well, then, I mean that you have become so thoroughly a man
of the world. Now I've said it! You ARE offended--aren't you?"
"Not at all, not at all," replied Mr. Bantry, preventing
by a masterful effort his pleasure from showing in his face. "Though
I suppose you mean to imply that I'm rather wicked."
"Oh no," said Mamie, with profound admiration, "not
exactly wicked."
"University life IS fast nowadays," Eugene admitted. "It's
difficult not to be drawn into it!"
"And I suppose you look down on poor little Canaan now, and
everybody in it!"
"Oh no," he laughed, indulgently. "Not at all, not
at all! I find it very amusing."
"All of it?"
"Not you," he answered, becoming very grave.
"Honestly--DON'T you?" Her young voice trembled a little.
"Honestly--indeed--truly--" Eugene leaned very close to
her and the words were barely audible.
"You KNOW I don't!"
"Then I'm--glad," she whispered, and Joe saw his step-brother
touch her hand, but she rose quickly. "There's the music,"
she cried, happily. "It's a waltz, and it's YOURS!"
Joe heard her little high heels tapping gayly towards the window,
followed by the heavier tread of Eugene, but he did not watch them
go.
He lay on his back, with the hand that had touched Mamie's scarf
pressed across his closed eyes.
The music of that waltz was of the old-fashioned swingingly sorrowful
sort, and it would be hard to say how long it was after that before
the boy could hear the air played without a recurrence of the bitterness
of that moment. The rhythmical pathos of the violins was in such
accord with a faint sound of weeping which he heard near him, presently,
that for a little while he believed this sound to be part of the
music and part of himself. Then it became more distinct, and he
raised himself on one elbow to look about.
Very close to him, sitting upon the divan in the shadow, was a girl
wearing a dress of beautiful silk. She was crying softly, her face
in her hands.