IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY The Conquest of Canaan | ||
18. 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
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
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
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
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
"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 ex-
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
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
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
"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.
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,
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 es-
"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;
"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
" `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,
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.
IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY The Conquest of Canaan | ||