The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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Jewels." More distant, a second organ was heard; other pianos, other organs, took up other themes; and as a wakeful puppy's barking will go over a village at night, stirring first the nearer dogs to give voice, these in turn stimulating those farther away to join, one passing the excitement on to another, until hounds in farm-yards far beyond the town contribute to the long-distance conversation, even so did "Rescue the Perishing" enliven the greater part of Canaan.
It was this that made Ariel realize a thing of which hitherto she had not been able to convince herself: that she was actually once more in the town where she had spent her long-ago girlhood; now grown to seem the girlhood of some other person. It was true: her foot was on her native heath and her name was Ariel Tabor--the very name of the girl who had shared the town's disapproval with Joe Louden! "Rescue the Perishing" brought it all back to her; and she listened to these sharply familiar rites of the Canaanite Sabbath evening with a shiver of pain.
She turned from the gate to go into the house, heard Eugene's voice at the door, and paused. He was saying good-night to Mamie.
"And please say 'au revoir' to Miss Tabor for me," he added, peering out under his hand. "I don't know where she can have gone."
"Probably she came in and went to her room," said Mamie.
"Don't forget to tell her 'au revoir.'"
"I won't, dear. Good-night."
"Good-night." She lifted her face and he kissed her perfunctorily. Then he came down the steps and went slowly toward the gate, looking about him into the darkness as if searching for something; but Ariel had fled away from the path of light that led from the open door.
She skimmed noiselessly across the lawn and paused at the side of the house, leaning against the veranda, where, on a night long past, a boy had hid and a girl had wept. A small creaking sound fell upon her ear, and she made out an ungainly figure approaching, wheeling something of curious shape.
"Is that you, Sam?" she said.
Mr. Warden stopped, close by. "Yes'm," he replied. "I'm a-gittin' out de hose to lay de dus' yonnah." He stretched an arm along the cross-bar of the reel, relaxing himself, apparently, for conversation. "Y'all done change consid'able, Miss Airil," he continued, with the directness of one sure of privilege.
"You think so, Sam?"
"Yes'm. Ev'ybody think so, _I_ reckon. Be'n a tai'ble lot o' talkum 'bout you to-day. Dun'no' how all dem oth' young ladies goin' take it!" He laughed with immoderate delight, yet, as to the volume of mere sound, discreetly, with an eye to open windows. "You got 'em all beat, Miss Airil! Dey ain' be'n no one 'roun' dis town evah got in a thousum mile o' you! Fer looks, an' de way you walk an' ca'y yo'self; an' as fer de clo'es--name o' de good lan', honey, dey ain' nevah SEE style befo'! My ole woman say you got mo' fixin's in a minute dan de whole res' of 'em got in a yeah. She say when she helpin' you onpack she must 'a' see mo'n a hunerd paihs o' slippahs alone! An' de good Man knows I 'membuh w'en you runnin' roun' back-yods an' up de alley rompin' 'ith Joe Louden, same you's a boy!"
"Do you ever see Mr. Louden, nowadays?" she asked.
His laugh was repeated with the same discreet violence. "Ain' I seen him dis ve'y day, fur up de street at de gate yonnah, stan'in' 'ith you, w'en I drivin' de Judge?"
"You--you didn't happen to see him anywhere this--this afternoon?"
"No'm, I ain' SEE him." Sam's laughter vanished and his lowered voice became serious. "I ain' SEE him, but I hearn about him."
"What did you hear?"
"Dey be'n consid'able stir on de aidge o' town, I reckon," he answered, gravely, "an' dey be'n havin' some trouble out at de Beach--"
"Beaver Beach, do you mean?"
"Yes'm. Dey be'n some shootin' goin' on out dat way."
She sprang forward and caught at his arm without speaking.
"Joe Louden all right," he said, reassuringly. "Ain' nuffum happen to him! Nigh as I kin mek out f'm de TALK, dat Happy Fear gone on de ramPAGE ag'in, an' dey hatta sent fer Mist' Louden to come in a hurry."
XIV
WHITE ROSES IN A LAW-OFFICE
As upon a world canopied with storm, hung with mourning purple and habited in black, did Mr. Flitcroft turn his morning face at eight o'clock antemeridian Monday, as he hied himself to his daily duty at the Washington National Bank. Yet more than the merely funereal gloomed out from the hillocky area of his countenance. Was there not, i'faith, a glow, a Vesuvian shimmer, beneath the murk of that darkling eye? Was here one, think you, to turn the other cheek? Little has he learned of Norbert Flitcroft who conceives that this fiery spirit was easily to be quenched! Look upon the jowl of him, and let him who dares maintain that people--even the very Pikes themselves--were to grind beneath their brougham wheels a prostrate Norbert and ride on scatheless! In this his own metaphor is nearly touched "I guess not! They don't run over ME! Martin Pike better look out how he tries it!"
So Mother Nature at her kindly tasks, good Norbert, uses for her unguent our own perfect inconsistency: and often when we are stabbed deep in the breast she distracts us by thin scratches in other parts, that in the itch of these we may forget the greater hurt till it be healed. Thus, the remembrance of last night, when you undisguisedly ran from the wrath of a Pike, with a pretty girl looking on (to say nothing of the acrid Arp, who will fling the legend on a thousand winds), might well agonize you now, as, in less hasty moments and at a safe distance, you brood upon the piteous figure you cut. On the contrary, behold: you see no blood crimsoning the edges of the horrid gash in your panoply of self-esteem: you but smart and scratch the scratches, forgetting your wound in the hot itch for vengeance. It is an itch which will last (for in such matters your temper shall be steadfast), and let the great Goliath in the mean time beware of you! You ran, last night. You ran--of course you ran. Why not? You ran to fight another day!
A bank clerk sometimes has opportunities.
The stricken fat one could not understand how it came about that he had blurted out the damning confession that he had visited Beaver Beach. When he tried to solve the puzzle, his mind refused the strain, became foggy and the terrors of his position acute. Was he, like Joe Louden, to endure the ban of Canaan, and like him stand excommunicate beyond the pale because of Martin Pike's displeasure? For Norbert saw with perfect clearness to-day what the Judge had done for Joe. Now that he stood in danger of a fate identical, this came home to him. How many others, he wondered, would do as Mamie had done and write notes such as he had received by the hand of Sam Warden, late last night?
"DEAR SIR." (This from Mamie, who, in the Canaanitish way, had been wont to address him as "Norb"!)--"My father wishes me to state that after your remark yesterday afternoon on the steps which was overheard by my mother who happened to be standing in the hall behind you and your BEHAVIOR to himself later on--he considers it impossible to allow you to call any more or to speak to any member of his household.
"Yours respectfully, "MAMIE PIKE."
Erasures and restorations bore witness to a considerable doubt in Mamie's mind concerning "Yours respectfully," but she had finally let it stand, evidently convinced that the plain signature, without preface, savored of an intimacy denied by the context.
"'DEAR SIR'!" repeated Norbert, between set teeth. "'IMPOSSIBLE TO ALLOW YOU TO CALL any more'!" These and other terms of his dismissal recurred to him during the morning, and ever and anon he looked up from his desk, his lips moving to the tune of those horrid phrases, and stared out at the street. Basilisk glaring this, with no Christian softness in it, not even when it fell upon his own grandfather, sitting among the sages within easy eye-shot from the big window at Norbert's elbow. However, Colonel Flitcroft was not disturbed by the gaze of his descendant, being, in fact, quite unaware of it. The aged men were having a busy morning.
The conclave was not what it had been. [See Arp and