The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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thought I'd go in and shake hands with him,--and tell him I--"
Astonishment that partook of terror and of awe spread itself instantly upon her face.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "NO!"
"Very well," said Joe, humbly. "Good-bye."
He was too late to get away with any good grace. Judge Pike had seen them, and, even as Joe turned to go, rushed down to the gate, flung it open, and motioned his daughter to enter. This he did with one wide sweep of his arm, and, with another sweep, forbade Joe to look upon either moon OR sun. It was a magnificent gesture: it excluded the young man from the street, Judge Pike's street, and from the town, Judge Pike's town. It swept him from the earth, abolished him, denied him the right to breathe the common air, to be seen of men; and, at once a headsman's stroke and an excommunication, destroyed him, soul and body, thus rebuking the silly Providence that had created him, and repairing Its mistake by annihilating him. This hurling Olympian gesture smote the street; the rails of the car-track sprang and quivered with the shock; it thundered, and, amid the dumfounding uproar of the wrath of a god, the Will of the Canaanite Jove wrote the words in fiery letters upon the ether:
"CEASE TO BE!"
Joe did not go in to shake hands with Judge Pike.
He turned the next corner a moment later, and went down the quiet street which led to the house which had been his home. He did not glance at that somewhat grim edifice, but passed it, his eyes averted, and stopped in front of the long, ramshackle cottage next door. The windows were boarded; the picket-fence dropped even to the ground in some sections; the chimneys sagged and curved; the roof of the long porch sprinkled shingles over the unkempt yard with every wind, and seemed about to fall. The place was desolate with long emptiness and decay: it looked like a Haunted House; and nailed to the padlocked gate was a sign, half obliterated with the winters it had fronted, "For Sale or Rent."
Joe gat him meditatively back to Main Street and to the Tocsin building. This time he did not hesitate, but mounted the stairs and knocked upon the door of the assistant editor.
"Oh," said Eugene. "YOU'VE turned up, you?"
Mr. Bantry of the Tocsin was not at all the Eugene rescued from the "Straw-Cellar." The present gentleman was more the electric Freshman than the frightened adventurer whom Joe had encountered in New York. It was to be seen immediately that the assistant editor had nothing undaintily business-like about him, nor was there the litter on his desk which one might have expected. He had the air of a gentleman dilettante who amused himself slightly by spending an hour or two in the room now and then. It was the evolution to the perfect of his Freshman manner, and his lively apparel, though somewhat chastened by an older taste, might have been foretold from that which had smitten Canaan seven years before. He sat not at the orderly and handsome desk, but lay stretched upon a divan of green leather, smoking a cigar of purest ray and reading sleepily a small verse-looking book in morocco. His occupation, his general air, the furniture of the room, and his title (doubtless equipped with a corresponding salary) might have inspired in an observant cynic the idea that here lay a pet of Fortune, whose position had been the fruit of nepotism, or, mayhap, a successful wooing of some daughter, wife, or widow. Eugene looked competent for that.
"I've come back to stay, 'Gene," said Joe.
Bantry had dropped his book and raised himself on an elbow. "Exceedingly interesting," he said. "I suppose you'll try to find something to do. I don't think you could get a place here; Judge Pike owns the Tocsin, and I greatly fear he has a prejudice against you."
"I expect he has," Joe chuckled, somewhat sadly. "But I don't want newspaper work. I'm going to practice law."
"By Jove! you have courage, my festive prodigal. VRAIMENT!"
Joe cocked his head to one side with his old look of the friendly puppy. "You always did like to talk that noveletty way, 'Gene, didn't you?" he said, impersonally.
Eugene's color rose. "Have you saved up anything to starve on?" he asked, crisply.
"Oh, I'm not so badly off. I've had a salary in an office for a year, and I had one pretty good day at the races--"
"You'd better go back and have another," said his step-brother. "You don't seem to comprehend your standing in Canaan."
"I'm beginning to." Joe turned to the door. "It's funny, too--in a way. Well--I won't keep you any longer. I just stopped in to say good-day--" He paused, faltering.
"All right, all right," Eugene said, briskly. "And, by-the-way, I haven't mentioned that I saw you in New York."
"Oh, I didn't suppose that you would."
"And you needn't say anything about it, I fancy."
"I don't think," said Joe,--"I don't think that you need be afraid I'll do that. Good-bye."
"Be sure to shut the door, please; it's rather noisy with it open. Good-bye." Eugene waved his hand and sank back upon the divan.
Joe went across the street to the "National House." The sages fell as silent as if he had been Martin Pike. They had just had the pleasure of hearing a telephone monologue by Mr. Brown, the clerk, to which they listened intently: "Yes. This is Brown. Oh--oh, it's Judge Pike? Yes indeed, Judge, yes indeed, I hear you--ha, ha! Of course, I understand. Yes, Judge, I heard he was in town. No, he hasn't been here. Not yet, that is, Judge. Yes, I hear. No, I won't, of course. Certainly not. I will, I will. I hear perfectly, I understand. Yes, sir. Good-bye, Judge."
Joe had begun to write his name in the register. "My trunk is still at the station," he said. "I'll give you my check to send down for it."
"Excuse me," said the clerk. "We have no rooms."
"What!" cried Joe, innocently. "Why, I never knew more than eight people to stay here at the same time in my life."
"We have no rooms," repeated the clerk, curtly.
"Is there a convention here?"
"We have no rooms, I say!"
Joe looked up into the condensed eyes of Mr. Brown. "Oh," he said, "I see."
Deathly silence followed him to the door, but, as it closed behind him, he heard the outbreak of the sages like a tidal wave striking a dump-heap of tin cans.
Two hours later he descended from an evil ark of a cab at the corral attached to Beaver Beach, and followed the path through the marsh to the crumbling pier. A red-bearded man was seated on a plank by the water edge, fishing.
"Mike," said Joe, "have you got room for me? Can you take me in for a few days until I find a place in town where they'll let me stay?"
The red-bearded man rose slowly, pushed back his hat, and stared hard at the wanderer; then he uttered a howl of joy and seized the other's hands in his and shook them wildly.
"Glory be on high!" he shouted. "It's Joe Louden come back! We never knew how we missed ye till ye'd gone! Place fer ye! Can I find it? There ain't a imp o' perdition in town, includin' myself, that wouldn't kill me if I couldn't! Ye'll have old Maggie's room, my own aunt's; ye remember how she used to dance! Ha, ha! She's been burnin' below these four years! And we'll have the celebration of yer return this night. There'll be many of 'em will come when they hear ye're back in Canaan! Praise God, we'll all hope ye're goin' to stay a while!"
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