The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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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