IX
"OUTER DARKNESS"
If any echo of doubt concerning his undesirable conspicuousness
sounded faintly in Joe's mind, it was silenced eftsoons. Canaan
had not forgotten him--far from it!--so far that it began pointing
him out to strangers on the street the very day of his return. His
course of action, likewise that of his friends, permitted him little
obscurity, and when the rumors of his finally obtaining lodging
at Beaver Beach, and of the celebration of his installation there,
were presently confirmed, he stood in the lime-light indeed, as
a Mephistopheles upsprung through the trap-door.
The welcoming festivities had not been so discreetly conducted as
to accord with the general policy of Beaver Beach. An unfortunate
incident caused the arrest of one of the celebrators and the ambulancing
to the hospital of another on the homeward way, the ensuing proceedings
in court bringing to the whole affair a publicity devoutly unsought
for. Mr. Happy Fear (such was the habitual name of the imprisoned
gentleman) had to bear a great amount of harsh criticism for injuring
a companion within the city limits after daylight, and for failing
to observe that three policemen were not too distant from the scene
of operations to engage therein.
"Happy, if ye had it in mind to harm him," said the red-bearded
man to Mr. Fear, upon the latter's return to society, "why
didn't ye do it out here at the Beach?"
"Because," returned the indiscreet, "he didn't say
what he was goin' to say till we got in town."
Extraordinary probing on the part of the prosecutor had developed
at the trial that the obnoxious speech had referred to the guest
of the evening. The assaulted party, one "Nashville" Cory,
was not of Canaan, but a bit of drift-wood haply touching shore
for the moment at Beaver Beach; and-- strange is this world--he
had been introduced to the coterie of Mike's Place by Happy Fear
himself, who had enjoyed a brief acquaintance with him on a day
when both had chanced to travel incognito by the same freight. Naturally,
Happy had felt responsible for the proper behavior of his protege
--was, in fact, bound to enforce it; additionally, Happy had once
been saved from a term of imprisonment (at a time when it would
have been more than ordinarily inconvenient) by help and advice
from Joe, and he was not one to forget. Therefore he was grieved
to observe that his own guest seemed to be somewhat jealous of the
hero of the occasion and disposed to look coldly upon him. The stranger,
however, contented himself with innuendo (mere expressions of the
face and other manner of things for which one could not squarely
lay hands upon him) until such time as he and his sponsor had come
to Main Street in the clear dawn on their way to Happy's apartment--a
variable abode. It may be that the stranger perceived what Happy
did not; the three bluecoats in the perspective; at all events,
he now put into words of simple strength the unfavorable conception
he had formed of Joe. The result was mediaevally immediate, and
the period of Mr. Cory's convalescence in the hospital was almost
half that of his sponsor's detention in the county jail.
It needed nothing to finish Joe with the good people of Canaan;
had it needed anything, the trial of Happy Fear would have overspilled
the necessity. An item of the testimony was that Joseph Louden had
helped to carry one of the ladies present--a Miss Le Roy, who had
fainted-- to the open air, and had jostled the stranger in passing.
After this, the oldest woman in Canaan would not have dared to speak
to Joe on the street (even if she wanted to), unless she happened
to be very poor or very wicked. The Tocsin printed an adequate account
(for there was "a large public interest"), recording in
conclusion that Mr. Louden paid the culprit's fine which was the
largest in the power of the presiding judge in his mercy to bestow.
Editorially, the Tocsin leaned to the facetious: "Mr. Louden
has but recently `returned to our midst.' We fervently hope that
the distinguished Happy Fear will appreciate his patron's superb
generosity. We say `his patron,' but perhaps we err in this. Were
it not better to figure Mr. Louden as the lady in distress, Mr.
Fear as the champion in the lists? In the present case, however,
contrary to the rules of romance, the champion falls in duress and
passes to the dungeon. We merely suggest, en passant, that some
of our best citizens might deem it a wonderful and beauteous thing
if, in addition to paying the fine, Mr. Louden could serve for the
loyal Happy his six months in the Bastile!"
"En passant," if nothing else, would have revealed to
Joe, in this imitation of a better trick, the hand of Eugene. And,
little doubt, he would have agreed with Squire Buckalew in the Squire's
answer to the easily expected comment of Mr. Arp.
"Sometimes," said Eskew, "I think that 'Gene Bantry
is jest a leetle bit spiderier than he is lazy. That's the first
thing he's written in the Tocsin this month--one of the boys over
there told me. He wrote it out of spite against Joe; but he'd ought
to of done better. If his spite hadn't run away with what mind he's
got, he'd of said that both Joe Louden and that tramp Fear ought
to of had ten years!"
"'Gene Bantry didn't write that out of spite," answered
Buckalew. "He only thought he saw a chance to be kind of funny
and please Judge Pike. The Judge has always thought Joe was a no-account--"
"Ain't he right?" cried Mr. Arp.
"_I_ don't say he ain't." Squire Buckalew cast a glance
at Mr. Brown, the clerk, and, perceiving that he was listening,
added, "The Judge always IS right!"
"Yes, sir!" said Colonel Flitcroft.
"I can't stand up for Joe Louden to any extent, but I don't
think he done wrong," Buckalew went on, recovering, "when
he paid this man Fear's fine."
"You don't!" exclaimed Mr. Arp. "Why, haven't you
got gumption enough to see--"
"Look here, Eskew," interposed his antagonist. "How
many friends have you got that hate to hear folks talk bad about
you?"
"Not a one!" For once Eskew's guard was down, and his
consistency led him to destruction. "Not a one! It ain't in
human nature. They're bound to enjoy it!"
"Got any friends that would FIGHT for you?"
Eskew walked straight into this hideous trap. "No! There ain't
a dozen men ever LIVED that had! Caesar was a popular man, but he
didn't have a soul to help him when the crowd lit on him, and I'll
bet old Mark Antony was mighty glad they got him out in the yard
before it happened,-- HE wouldn't have lifted a finger without a
gang behind him! Why, all Peter himself could do was to cut off
an ear that wasn't no use to anybody. What are you tryin' to get
AT?"
The Squire had him; and paused, and stroked his chin, to make the
ruin complete. "Then I reckon you'll have to admit," he
murmured, "that, while I ain't defendin' Joe Louden's character,
it was kind of proper for him to stand by a feller that wouldn't
hear nothin' against him, and fought for him as soon as he DID hear
it!"
Eskew Arp rose from his chair and left the hotel. It was the only
morning in all the days of the conclave when he was the first to
leave.
Squire Buckalew looked after the retreating figure, total triumph
shining brazenly from his spectacles. "I expect," he explained,
modestly, to the others,--"I expect I don't think any more
of Joe Louden than he does, and I'll be glad when Canaan sees the
last of him for good; but sometimes the temptation to argue with
Eskew does lead me on to kind of git the better of him."
When Happy Fear had suffered--with a give- and-take simplicity of
patience--his allotment of months in durance, and was released and
sent into the streets and sunshine once more, he knew that his first
duty lay in the direction of a general apology to Joe. But the young
man was no longer at Beaver Beach; the red-bearded proprietor dwelt
alone there, and, receiving Happy with scorn and pity, directed
him to retrace his footsteps to the town.
"Ye must have been in the black hole of incarceration indeed,
if ye haven't heard that Mr. Louden has his law-office on the Square,
and his livin'-room behind the office. It's in that little brick
buildin' straight acrost from the sheriff's door o' the jail--ye've
been neighbors this long time! A hard time the boy had, persuadin'
any one to rent to him, but by payin' double the price he got a
place at last. He's a practisin' lawyer now, praise the Lord! And
all the boys and girls of our acquaintance go to him with their
troubles. Ye'll see him with a murder case to try before long, as
sure as ye're not worth yer salt! But I expect ye can still call
him by his name of Joe, all the same!"
It was a bleak and meagre little office into which Mr. Fear ushered
himself to offer his amends. The cracked plaster of the walls was
bare (save for dust); there were no shelves; the fat brown volumes,
most of them fairly new, were piled in regular columns upon a cheap
pine table; there was but one window, small-paned and shadeless;
an inner door of this sad chamber stood half ajar, permitting the
visitor unreserved acquaintance with the domestic economy of the
tenant; for it disclosed a second room, smaller than the office,
and dependent upon the window of the latter for air and light. Behind
a canvas camp-cot, dimly visible in the obscurity of the inner apartment,
stood a small gas-stove, surmounted by a stew-pan, from which projected
the handle of a big tin spoon, so that it needed no ghost from the
dead to whisper that Joseph Louden, attorney-at-law, did his own
cooking. Indeed, he looked it!
Upon the threshold of the second room reposed a small, worn, light-brown
scrub-brush of a dog, so cosmopolitan in ancestry that his species
was almost as undeterminable as the cast-iron dogs of the Pike Mansion.
He greeted Mr. Fear hospitably, having been so lately an offcast
of the streets himself that his adoption had taught him to lose
only his old tremors, not his hopefulness. At the same time Joe
rose quickly from the deal table, where he had been working with
one hand in his hair, the other splattering ink from a bad pen.
"Good for you, Happy!" he cried, cheerfully. "I hoped
you'd come to see me to-day. I've been thinking about a job for
you."
"What kind of a job?" asked the visitor, as they shook
hands. "I need one bad enough, but you know there ain't nobody
in Canaan would gimme one, Joe."
Joe pushed him into one of the two chairs which completed the furniture
of his office. "Yes, there is. I've got an idea--"
"First," broke in Mr. Fear, fingering his shapeless hat
and fixing his eyes upon it with embarrassment,--" first lemme
say what I come here to say. I--well--" His embarrassment increased
and he paused, rubbing the hat between his hands.
"About this job," Joe began. "We can fix it so--"
"No," said Happy. "You lemme go on. I didn't mean
fer to cause you no trouble when I lit on that loud-mouth, `Nashville';
I never thought they'd git me, or you'd be dragged in. But I jest
couldn't stand him no longer. He had me all wore out--all evening
long a-hintin' and sniffin' and wearin' that kind of a high-smile
'cause they made so much fuss over you. And then when we got clear
in town he come out with it! Said you was too quiet to suit HIM--said
he couldn't see nothin' TO you! `Well,' I says to myself, `jest
let him go on, jest one more,' I says, `then he gits it.' And he
did. Said you tromped on his foot on purpose, said he knowed it,--when
the Lord-a'mightiest fool on earth knows you never tromped on no
one! Said you was one of the po'rest young sports he ever see around
a place like the Beach. You see, he thought you was jest one of
them fool `Bloods' that come around raisin' a rumpus, and didn't
know you was our friend and belonged out there, the same as me or
Mike hisself. `Go on,' I says to myself, `jest one more!' `HE better
go home to his mamma,' he says; `he'll git in trouble if he don't.
Somebody 'll soak him if he hangs around in MY company. _I_ don't
like his WAYS.' Then I HAD to do it. There jest wasn't nothin' LEFT--but
I wouldn't of done you no harm by it--"
"You didn't do me any harm, Happy."
"I mean your repitation."
"I didn't have one--so nothing in the world could harm it.
About your getting some work, now--"
"I'll listen," said Happy, rather suspiciously.
"You see," Joe went on, growing red, "I need a sort
of janitor here--"
"What fer?" Mr. Fear interrupted, with some shortness.
"To look after the place."
"You mean these two rooms?"
"There's a stairway, too," Joe put forth, quickly. "It
wouldn't be any sinecure, Happy. You'd earn your money; don't be
afraid of that!"
Mr. Fear straightened up, his burden of embarrassment gone from
him, transferred to the other's shoulders.
"There always was a yellow streak in you, Joe," he said,
firmly. "You're no good as a liar except when you're jokin'.
A lot you need a janitor! You had no business to pay my fine; you'd
ort of let me worked it out. Do you think my eyes ain't good enough
to see how much you needed the money, most of all right now when
you're tryin' to git started? If I ever take a cent from you, I
hope the hand I hold out fer it 'll rot off."
"Now don't say that, Happy."
"I don't want a job, nohow!" said Mr. Fear, going to the
door; "I don't want to work. There's plenty ways fer me to
git along without that. But I've said what I come here to say, and
I'll say one thing more. Don't you worry about gittin' law practice.
Mike says you're goin' to git all you want--and if there ain't no
other way, why, a few of us 'll go out and MAKE some fer ye!"
These prophecies and promises, over which Joe chuckled at first,
with his head cocked to one side, grew very soon, to his amazement,
to wear a supernatural similarity to actual fulfilment. His friends
brought him their own friends, such as had sinned against the laws
of Canaan, those under the ban of the sheriff, those who had struck
in anger, those who had stolen at night, those who owed and could
not pay, those who lived by the dice, and to his other titles to
notoriety was added that of defender of the poor and wicked. He
found his hands full, especially after winning his first important
case--on which occasion Canaan thought the jury mad, and was indignant
with the puzzled Judge, who could not see just how it had happened.
Joe did not stop at that. He kept on winning cases, clearing the
innocent and lightening the burdens of the guilty; he became the
most dangerous attorney for the defence in Canaan; his honorable
brethren, accepting the popular view of him, held him in personal
contempt but feared him professionally; for he proved that he knew
more law than they thought existed; nor could any trick him --failing
which, many tempers were lost, but never Joe's. His practice was
not all criminal, as shown by the peevish outburst of the eminent
Buckalew (the Squire's nephew, esteemed the foremost lawyer in Canaan),
"Before long, there won't be any use trying to foreclose a
mortgage or collect a note --unless this shyster gets himself in
jail!"
The wrath of Judge Martin Pike was august-- there was a kind of
sublimity in its immenseness-- on a day when it befell that the
shyster stood betwixt him and money.
That was a monstrous task--to stand between these two and separate
them, to hold back the hand of Martin Pike from what it had reached
out to grasp. It was in the matter of some tax-titles which the
magnate had acquired, and, in court, Joe treated the case with such
horrifying simplicity that it seemed almost credible that the great
man had counted upon the ignorance and besottedness of Joe's client--a
hard-drinking, disreputable old farmer--to get his land away from
him without paying for it. Now, as every one knew such a thing to
be ludicrously impossible, it was at once noised abroad in Canaan
that Joe had helped to swindle Judge Pike out of a large sum of
money--it was notorious that the shyster could bamboozle court and
jury with his tricks; and it was felt that Joe Louden was getting
into very deep waters indeed. THIS was serious: if the young man
did not LOOK OUT, he might find himself in the penitentiary.
The Tocsin paragraphed him with a fine regularity after this, usually
opening with a Walrus-and-the-Carpenter gravity: "The time
has come when we must speak of a certain matter frankly," or,
"At last the time has arrived when the demoralization of the
bar caused by a certain criminal lawyer must be dealt with as it
is and without gloves." Once when Joe had saved a half-witted
negro from "the extreme penalty" for murder, the Tocsin
had declared, with great originality: "This is just the kind
of thing that causes mobs and justifies them. If we are to continue
to permit the worst class of malefactors to escape the consequences
of their crimes through the unwholesome dexterities and the shifty
manipulations and technicalities of a certain criminal lawyer, the
time will come when an outraged citizenry may take the enforcement
of the law in its own hands. Let us call a spade a spade. If Canaan's
streets ever echo with the tread of a mob, the fault lies upon the
head of Joseph Louden, who has once more brought about a miscarriage
of justice. . . ."
Joe did not move into a larger office; he remained in the little
room with its one window and its fine view of the jail; his clients
were nearly all poor, and many of his fees quite literally nominal.
Tatters and rags came up the narrow stairway to his door --tatters
and rags and pitiful fineries: the bleared, the sodden, the flaunting
and rouged, the furtive and wary, some in rags, some in tags, and
some-- the sorriest--in velvet gowns. With these, the distressed,
the wrong-doers, the drunken, the dirty, and the very poor, his
work lay and his days and nights were spent.
Ariel had told Roger Tabor that in time Joe might come to be what
the town thought him, if it gave him no other chance. Only its dinginess
and evil surrounded him; no respectable house was open to him; the
barrooms--except that of the "National House"--welcomed
him gratefully and admiringly. Once he went to church, on a pleasant
morning when nice girls wear pretty spring dresses; it gave him
a thrill of delight to see them, to be near clean, good people once
more. Inadvertently, he took a seat by his step-mother, who rose
with a slight rustle of silk and moved to another pew; and it happened,
additionally, that this was the morning that the minister, fired
by the Tocsin's warnings, had chosen to preach on the subject of
Joe himself.
The outcast returned to his own kind. No lady spoke to him upon
the street. Mamie Pike had passed him with averted eyes since her
first meeting with him, but the shunning and snubbing of a young
man by a pretty girl have never yet, if done in a certain way, prevented
him from continuing to be in love with her. Mamie did it in the
certain way. Joe did not wince, therefore it hurt all the more,
for blows from which one cringes lose much of their force.
The town dog had been given a bad name, painted solid black from
head to heel. He was a storm centre of scandal; the entrance to
his dingy stairway was in square view of the "National House,"
and the result is imaginable. How many of Joe's clients, especially
those sorriest of the velvet gowns, were conjectured to ascend his
stairs for reasons more convivial than legal! Yes, he lived with
his own kind, and, so far as the rest of Canaan was concerned, might
as well have worn the scarlet letter on his breast or branded on
his forehead.
When he went about the streets he was made to feel his condition
by the elaborate avoidance, yet furtive attention, of every respectable
person he met; and when he came home to his small rooms and shut
the door behind him, he was as one who has been hissed and shamed
in public and runs to bury his hot face in his pillow. He petted
his mongrel extravagantly (well he might!), and would sit with him
in his rooms at night, holding long converse with him, the two alone
together. The dog was not his only confidant. There came to be another,
a more and more frequent partner to their conversations, at last
a familiar spirit. This third came from a brown jug which Joe kept
on a shelf in his bedroom, a vessel too frequently replenished.
When the day's work was done he shut himself up, drank alone and
drank hard. Sometimes when the jug ran low and the night was late
he would go out for a walk with his dog, and would awake in his
room the next morning not remembering where he had gone or how he
had come home. Once, after such a lapse of memory, he woke amazed
to find himself at Beaver Beach, whither, he learned from the red-bearded
man, Happy Fear had brought him, having found him wandering dazedly
in a field near by. These lapses grew more frequent, until there
occurred that which was one of the strange things of his life.
It was a June night, a little more than two years after his return
to Canaan, and the Tocsin had that day announced the approaching
marriage of Eugene Bantry and his employer's daughter. Joe ate nothing
during the day, and went through his work clumsily, visiting the
bedroom shelf at intervals. At ten in the evening he went out to
have the jug refilled, but from the moment he left his door and
the fresh air struck his face, he had no clear knowledge of what
he did or of what went on about him until he woke in his bed the
next morning.
And yet, whatever little part of the soul of him remained, that
night, still undulled, not numbed, but alive, was in some strange
manner lifted out of its pain towards a strange delight. His body
was an automaton, his mind in bondage, yet there was a still, small
consciousness in him which knew that in his wandering something
incredible and unexpected was happening. What this was he did not
know, could not see, though his eyes were open, could not have told
himself any more than a baby could tell why it laughs, but it seemed
something so beautiful and wonderful that the night became a night
of perfume, its breezes bearing the music of harps and violins,
while nightingales sang from the maples that bordered the streets
of Canaan.