The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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had a year in a good office in New York since I left the school, and I think I ought to get along all right."
"Oh," said Mr. Louden, briefly. "You do?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"Who do you think in Canaan would put a case in your hands?"
"Oh, I don't expect to get anything important at the start. But after a while--"
"With your reputation?"
The smile which had faded from Joe's lips returned to them. "Oh, I know they thought I was a harum-scarum sort of boy," he answered lightly, "and that it was a foolish thing to run away for nothing; but you had said I mustn't come to you for help--"
"I meant it," said Mr. Louden.
"But that's seven years ago, and I suppose the town's forgotten all about it, and forgotten me, too. So, you see, I can make a fresh start. That's what I came back for."
"You've made up your mind to stay here, then?"
"Yes."
"I don't believe," said Mr. Louden, with marked uneasiness, "that Mrs. Louden would be willing to let you live with us."
"No," said Joe, gently. "I didn't expect it." He turned to the window and looked out, averting his face, yet scoring himself with the contempt he had learned to feel for those who pity themselves. His father had not even asked him to sit down. There was a long silence, disturbed only by Mr. Louden's breathing, which could be heard, heavy and troubled.
At last Joe turned again, smiling as before. "Well, I won't keep you from your work," he said. "I suppose you're pretty busy--"
"Yes, I am," responded his father, promptly. "But I'll see you again before you go. I want to give you some advice."
"I'm not going," said Joe. "Not going to leave Canaan, I mean. Where will I find Eugene?"
"At the Tocsin office; he's the assistant editor. Judge Pike bought the Tocsin last year, and he thinks a good deal of Eugene. Don't forget I said to come to see me again before you go."
Joe came over to the older man and held out his hand. "Shake hands, father," he said. Mr. Louden looked at him out of small implacable eyes, the steady hostility of which only his wife or the imperious Martin Pike, his employer, could quell. He shook his head.
"I don't see any use in it," he answered. "It wouldn't mean anything. All my life I've been a hard-working man and an abiding man. Before you got in trouble you never did anything you ought to; you ran with the lowest people in town, and I and all your folks were ashamed of you. I don't see that we've got a call to be any different now." He swung round to his desk emphatically, on the last word, and Joe turned away and went out quietly.
But it was a bright morning to which he emerged from the outer doors of the factory, and he made his way towards Main Street at a lively gait. As he turned the corner opposite the "National House," he walked into Mr. Eskew Arp. The old man drew back angrily.
"Lord 'a' mercy!" cried Joe, heartily. "It's Mr. Arp! I almost ran you down!" Then, as Mr. Arp made no response, but stood stock-still in the way, staring at him fiercely, "Don't you know me, Mr. Arp?" the young man asked. "I'm Joe Louden."
Eskew abruptly thrust his face close to the other's. "NO FREE SEATS!" he hissed, savagely; and swept across to the hotel to set his world afire.
Joe looked after the irate, receding figure, and watched it disappear into the Main Street door of the "National House." As the door closed, he became aware of a mighty shadow upon the pavement, and turning, beheld a fat young man, wearing upon his forehead a scar similar to his own, waddling by with eyes fixed upon him.
"How are you, Norbert?" Joe began. "Don't you remember me? I--" He came to a full stop, as the fat one, thrusting out an under lip as his only token of recognition, passed balefully on.
Joe proceeded slowly until he came to the Tocsin building. At the foot of the stairway leading up to the offices he hesitated for a few moments; then he turned away and walked towards the quieter part of Main Street. Most of the people he met took no notice of him, only two or three giving him second glances of half-cognizance, as though he reminded them of some one they could not place, and it was not until he had come near the Pike Mansion that he saw a full recognition in the eyes of one of the many whom he knew, and who had known him in his boyhood in the town. A lady, turning a corner, looked up carelessly, and then half-stopped within a few feet of him, as if startled. Joe's cheeks went a sudden crimson; for it was the lady of his old dreams.
Seven years had made Mamie Pike only prettier. She had grown into her young womanhood with an ampleness that had nothing of oversufficiency in it, nor anywhere a threat that some day there might be too much of her. Not quite seventeen when he had last seen her, now, at twenty-four, her amber hair elaborately becoming a plump and regular face, all of her old charm came over him once more, and it immediately seemed to him that he saw clearly his real reason for coming back to Canaan. She had been the Rich-Little-Girl of his child days, the golden princess playing in the Palace-Grounds, and in his early boyhood (until he had grown wicked and shabby) he had been sometimes invited to the Pike Mansion for the games and ice-cream of the daughter of the house, before her dancing days began. He had gone timidly, not daring ever to "call" her in "Quaker Meeting" or "Post-office," but watching her reverently and surreptitiously and continually. She had always seemed to him the one thing of all the world most rare, most mysterious, most unapproachable. She had not offered an apparition less so in those days when he began to come under the suspicion of Canaan, when the old people began to look upon him hotly, the young people coldly. His very exclusion wove for him a glamour about her, and she was more than ever his moon, far, lovely, unattainable, and brilliant, never to be reached by his lifted arms, but only by his lifted eyes. Nor had his long absence obliterated that light; somewhere in his dreams it always had place, shining, perhaps, with a fainter lustre as the years grew to seven, but never gone altogether. Now, at last, that he stood in her very presence again, it sprang to the full flood of its old brilliance--and more!
As she came to her half-stop of surprise, startled, he took his courage in two hands, and, lifting his hat, stepped to her side.
"You--you remember me?" he stammered.
"Yes," she answered, a little breathlessly.
"Ah, that's kind of you!" he cried, and began to walk on with her, unconsciously. "I feel like a returned ghost wandering about--invisible and unrecognized. So few people seem to remember me!"
"I think you are wrong. I think you'll find everybody remembers you," she responded, uneasily.
"No, I'm afraid not," he began. "I--"
"I'm afraid they do!"
Joe laughed a little. "My father was saying something like that to me a while ago. He meant that they used to think me a great scapegrace here. Do you mean that?"
"I'd scarcely like to say," she answered, her face growing more troubled; for they were close on the imperial domain.
"But it's long ago--and I really didn't do anything so outrageous, it seems to me." He laughed again. "I know your father was angry with me once or twice, especially the night I hid on your porch to watch you--to watch you dance, I mean. But, you see, I've come back to rehabilitate myself, to--"
She interrupted him. They were not far from her gate, and she saw her father standing in the yard, directing a painter who was at work on one of the cast-iron deer. The Judge was apparently in good spirits, laughing with the workman over some jest between them, but that did not lessen Mamie's nervousness.
"Mr. Louden," she said, in as kindly a tone as she could, "I shall have to ask you not to walk with me. My father would not like it."
Joe stopped with a jerk.
"Why, I--I