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Herself - "Memoirs of the Comtesse du Barry"

Nettie Garmer Barker - "Kansas Women in Literature"

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Alan Seeger - "Poems"

The Conquest of Canaan

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Conquest of Canaan




At this she seemed amused. "You ought to have
called me that, years ago," she said, "for all you
knew me!"

"I did know her--YOU, I mean!" he answered.
"I used to know nearly everything you were going
to say before you said it. It seems strange now--"

"Yes," she interrupted. "It does seem strange
now!"

"Somehow," he went on, "I doubt if now I'd
know."

"Somehow," she echoed, with fine gravity, "I
doubt it, too."

Although he had so dim a perception of the staring
and whispering which greeted and followed them,
Ariel, of course, was thoroughly aware of it, though
the only sign she gave was the slight blush, which
very soon disappeared. That people turned to
look at her may have been not altogether a novelty:
a girl who had learned to appear unconscious of the
Continental stare, the following gaze of the boulevards,
the frank glasses of the Costanza in Rome,
was not ill equipped to face Main Street, Canaan,
even as it was to-day.

Under the sycamores, before they started, they
had not talked a great deal; there had been long
silences: almost all her questions concerning the
period of his runaway absence; she appeared to
know and to understand everything which had happened
since his return to the town. He had not,
in his turn, reached the point where he would begin
to question her; he was too breathless in his
consciousness of the marvellous present hour. She
had told him of the death of Roger Tabor, the year
before. "Poor man," she said, gently, "he lived to
see `how the other fellows did it' at last, and
everybody liked him. He was very happy over there."

After a little while she had said that it was
growing close upon lunch-time; she must be going back.

"Then--then--good-bye," he replied, ruefully.

"Why?"

"I'm afraid you don't understand. It wouldn't
do for you to be seen with me. Perhaps, though,
you do understand. Wasn't that why you asked me
to meet you out here beyond the bridge?"

In answer she looked at him full and straight for
three seconds, then threw back her head and closed
her eyes tight with laughter. Without a word she
took the parasol from him, opened it herself, placed
the smooth white coral handle of it in his hand, and
lightly took his arm. There was no further demur
on the part of the young man. He did not know
where she was going; he did not ask.

Soon after Norbert turned to follow them, they
came to the shady part of the street, where the town
in summer was like a grove. Detachments from
the procession had already, here and there, turned
in at the various gates. Nobody, however,
appeared to have gone in-doors, except for fans, armed
with which immediately to return to rockers upon
the shaded verandas. As Miss Tabor and Joe
went by, the rocking-chairs stopped; the fans
poised, motionless; and perspiring old gentlemen,
wiping their necks, paused in arrested attitudes.

Once Ariel smiled politely, not at Mr. Louden,
and inclined her head twice, with the result that the
latter, after thinking for a time of how gracefully
she did it and how pretty the top of her hat was,
became gradually conscious of a meaning in her
action: that she had bowed to some one across the
street. He lifted his hat, about four minutes late,
and discovered Mamie Pike and Eugene, upon the
opposite pavement, walking home from church
together. Joe changed color.

There, just over the way, was she who had been,
in his first youth, the fairy child, the little princess
playing in the palace yard, and always afterward
his lady of dreams, his fair unreachable moon! And
Joe, seeing her to-day, changed color; that was all!
He had passed Mamie in the street only a week
before, and she had seemed all that she had always
seemed; to-day an incomprehensible and subtle
change had befallen her--a change so mystifying to
him that for a moment he almost doubted that she
was Mamie Pike. It came to him with a breath-
taking shock that her face lacked a certain vivacity
of meaning; that its sweetness was perhaps too
placid; that there would have been a deeper goodness
in it had there been any hint of daring.
Astonishing questions assailed him, startled him:
could it be true that, after all, there might be some
day too much of her? Was her amber hair a little
too--FLUFFY? Was something the matter with her
dress? Everything she wore had always seemed so
beautiful. Where had the exquisiteness of it gone?
For there was surely no exquisiteness about it now!
It was incredible that any one could so greatly alter
in the few days elapsed since he had seen her.

Strange matters! Mamie had never looked
prettier.

At the sound of Ariel's voice he emerged from
the profundities of his psychic enigma with a leap.

"She is lovelier than ever, isn't she?"

"Yes, indeed," he answered, blankly.

"Would you still risk--" she began, smiling,
but, apparently thinking better of it, changed her
question: "What is the name of your dog, Mr.
Louden? You haven't told me."

"Oh, he's just a yellow dog," he evaded, unskilfully.

"YOUNG MAN!" she said, sharply.

"Well," he admitted, reluctantly, "I call him
Speck for short."

"And what for long? I want to know his real
name."

"It's mighty inappropriate, because we're fond
of each other," said Joe, "but when I picked him
up he was so yellow, and so thin, and so creeping,
and so scared that I christened him `Respectability.' "

She broke into light laughter, stopped short in
the midst of it, and became grave. "Ah, you've
grown bitter," she said, gently.

"No, no," he protested. "I told you I liked
him."

She did not answer.

They were now opposite the Pike Mansion, and
to his surprise she turned, indicating the way by
a touch upon his sleeve, and crossed the street
toward the gate, which Mamie and Eugene had entered.
Mamie, after exchanging a word with Eugene
upon the steps, was already hurrying into the
house.

Ariel paused at the gate, as if waiting for Joe
to open it.

He cocked his head, his higher eyebrow rose,
and the distorted smile appeared. "I don't
believe we'd better stop here," he said. "The last
time I tried it I was expunged from the face of
the universe."

"Don't you know?" she cried. "I'm staying
here. Judge Pike has charge of all my property;
he was the administrator, or something." Then
seeing him chopfallen and aghast, she went on:
"Of course you don't know! You don't know
anything about me. You haven't even asked!"

"You're going to live HERE?" he gasped.

"Will you come to see me?" she laughed. "Will
you come this afternoon?"

He grew white. "You know I can't," he said.

"You came here once. You risked a good deal
then, just to see Mamie dance by a window. Don't
you dare a little for an old friend?"

"All right," he gulped. "I'll try."

Mr. Bantry had come down to the gate and was
holding it open, his eyes fixed upon Ariel, within
them a rising glow. An impression came to Joe
afterward that his step-brother had looked very
handsome.

"Possibly you remember me, Miss Tabor?" said
Eugene, in a deep and impressive voice, lifting his
hat. "We were neighbors, I believe, in the old
days."

She gave him her hand in a fashion somewhat
mannerly, favoring him with a bright, negligent
smile. "Oh, quite," she answered, turning again
to Joe as she entered the gate. "Then I shall
expect you?"

"I'll try," said Joe. "I'll try."

He stumbled away; Respectability and he, together,
interfering alarmingly with the comfort of
Mr. Flitcroft, who had stopped in the middle of the
pavement to stare glassily at Ariel. Eugene
accompanied the latter into the house, and Joe,
looking back, understood: Mamie had sent his step-
brother to bring Ariel in--and to keep him from
following.

"This afternoon!" The thought took away his
breath, and he became paler.

The Pike brougham rolled by him, and Sam
Warden, from the box, favored his old friend upon
the pavement with a liberal display of the whites
of his eyes. The Judge, evidently, had been
detained after services--without doubt a meeting of
the church officials. Mrs. Pike, blinking and
frightened, sat at her husband's side, agreeing
feebly with the bull-bass which rumbled out of
the open window of the brougham: "I want
orthodox preaching in MY church, and, by God,
madam, I'll have it! That fellow has got to go!"
Joe took off his hat and wiped his brow.



XII

TO REMAIN ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE IS NOT ALWAYS A VICTORY

Mamie, waiting just inside the door as Ariel and
Eugene entered, gave the visitor a pale greeting,
and, a moment later, hearing the wheels of the brougham
crunch the gravel of the carriage-drive, hurried away,
down the broad hall, and disappeared. Ariel dropped her
parasol upon a marble-topped table near the door, and,
removing her gloves, drifted into a room at the
left, where a grand piano found shelter beneath
crimson plush. After a moment of contemplation,
she pushed back the coverlet, and, seating herself
upon the plush-covered piano-stool (to match),
let her fingers run up and down the key-board once
and fall listlessly in her lap, as she gazed with deep
interest at three life-sized colored photographs (in
carved gilt frames) upon the wall she was facing:
Judge Pike, Mamie, and Mrs. Pike with her rubies.

"Please don't stop playing, Miss Tabor," said a
voice behind her. She had not observed that
Eugene had followed her into the room.

"Very well, if you like," she answered, looking
up to smile absently at him. And she began to
play a rakish little air which, composed by some
rattle-brain at a cafe table, had lately skipped out
of the Moulin Rouge to disport itself over Paris.
She played it slowly, in the minor, with elfish
pathos; while he leaned upon the piano, his eyes
fixed upon her fingers, which bore few rings, none,
he observed with an unreasonable pleasure, upon
the third finger of the left hand.

"It's one of those simpler Grieg things, isn't
it?" he said, sighing gently. "I care for Grieg."

"Would you mind its being Chaminade?" she
returned, dropping her eyes to cloak the sin.

"Ah no; I recognize it now," replied Eugene.
"He appeals to me even more than Grieg."

At this she glanced quickly up at him, but more
quickly down again, and hastened the time
emphatically, swinging the little air into the major.

"Do you play the `Pilgrim's Chorus'?"

She shook her head.

"Vous name pas Wagner?" inquired Eugene,
leaning toward her.

"Oh yes," she answered, bending her head far
over, so that her face was concealed from him,
except the chin, which, he saw with a thrill of
inexplicable emotion, was trembling slightly.
There were some small white flowers upon her hat,
and these shook too.

She stopped playing abruptly, rose from the
stool and crossed the room to a large mahogany
chair, upholstered in red velvet and of hybrid
construction, possessing both rockers and legs. She
had moved in a way which prevented him from
seeing her face, but he was certain of her agitation,
and strangely glad, while curious, tremulous half-
thoughts, edged with prophecy, bubbled to the
surface of his consciousness.

When she turned to him, he was surprised to
see that she looked astonishingly happy, almost
as if she had been struggling with joy, instead of
pain.

"This chair," she said, sinking into it, "makes
me feel at home."

Naturally he could not understand.

"Because," she explained, "I once thought I
was going to live in it. It has been reupholstered,
but I should know it if I met in anywhere in the
world!"

"How very odd!" exclaimed Eugene, staring.

"I settled here in pioneer days," she went on,
tapping the arms lightly with her finger-tips. "It
was the last dance I went to in Canaan."

"I fear the town was very provincial at that
time," he returned, having completely forgotten
the occasion she mentioned, therefore wishing to
shift the subject. "I fear you may still find it
so. There is not much here that one is in sympathy
with, intellectually--few people really of
the world."

"Few people, I suppose you mean," she said,
softly, with a look that went deep enough into his
eyes, "few people who really understand one?"

Eugene had seated himself on the sill of an open
window close by. "There has been," he answered,
with the ghost of a sigh, "no one."

She turned her head slightly away from him,
apparently occupied with a loose thread in her sleeve.
There were no loose threads; it was an old habit of
hers which she retained. "I suppose," she
murmured, in a voice as low as his had been, "that a
man of your sort might find Canaan rather lonely
and sad."

"It HAS been!" Whereupon she made him a
laughing little bow.

"You are sure you complain of Canaan?"

"Yes!" he exclaimed. "You don't know what
it is to live here--"

"I think I do. I lived here seventeen years."

"Oh yes," he began to object, "as a child, but--"

"Have you any recollection," she interrupted,
"of the day before your brother ran away? Of
coming home for vacation--I think it was your first
year in college--and intervening between your
brother and me in a snow-fight?"

For a moment he was genuinely perplexed; then
his face cleared. "Certainly," he said: "I found
him bullying you and gave him a good punishing
for it."

"Is that all you remember?"

"Yes," he replied, honestly. "Wasn't that all?"

"Quite!" she smiled, her eyes half closed.
"Except that I went home immediately afterward."

"Naturally," said Eugene. "My step-brother
wasn't very much chevalier sans peur et sans reproche!
Ah, I should like to polish up my French a
little. Would you mind my asking you to read a
bit with me, some little thing of Daudet's if you
care for him, in the original? An hour, now and
then, perhaps--"

Mamie appeared in the doorway and Eugene rose
swiftly. "I have been trying to persuade Miss
Tabor," he explained, with something too much of
laughter, "to play again. You heard that little
thing of Chaminade's--"

Mamie did not appear to hear him; she entered
breathlessly, and there was no color in her cheeks.
"Ariel," she exclaimed, "I don't want you to think
I'm a tale-bearer--"

"Oh, my dear!" Ariel said, with a gesture of
deprecation.

"No," Miss Pike went on, all in one breath, "but
I'm afraid you will think it, because papa knows and
he wants to see you."

"What is it that he knows?"

"That you were walking with Joseph Louden!"
(This was as if she had said, "That you poisoned
your mother.") "I DIDN'T tell him, but when we
saw you with him I was troubled, and asked
Eugene what I'd better do, because Eugene always
knows what is best." (Mr. Bantry's expression,
despite this tribute, was not happy.) "And he
advised me to tell mamma about it and leave it
in her hands. But she always tells papa everything--"

"Certainly; that is understood," said Ariel,
slowly, turning to smile at Eugene.

"And she told him this right away," Mamie
finished.

"Why shouldn't she, if it is of the slightest
interest to him?"

The daughter of the house exhibited signs of
consternation. "He wants to see you," she repeated,
falteringly. "He's in the library."

Having thus discharged her errand, she hastened
to the front-door, which had been left open, and out
to the steps, evidently with the intention of
removing herself as soon and as far as possible from
the vicinity of the library.

Eugene, visibly perturbed, followed her to the
doorway of the room, and paused.

"Do you know the way?" he inquired, with a
note of solemnity.

"Where?" Ariel had not risen.

"To the library."

"Of course," she said, beaming upon him. "I
was about to ask you if you wouldn't speak to
the Judge for me. This is such a comfortable old
friend, this chair."

"Speak to him for you?" repeated the non-
plussed Eugene.

She nodded cheerfully. "If I may trouble you.
Tell him, certainly, I shall be glad to see him."

He threw a piteous glance after Mamie, who was
now, as he saw, through the open door, out upon the
lawn and beyond easy hailing distance. When he
turned again to look at Ariel he discovered that she
had shifted the position of her chair slightly, and
was gazing out of the window with every appearance
of cheerful meditation. She assumed so unmistakably
that he had of course gone on her mission
that, dismayed and his soul quaking, he could find
neither an alternative nor words to explain to this
dazzling lady that not he nor any other could bear
such a message to Martin Pike.

Eugene went. There was nothing else to do; and
he wished with every step that the distance to the
portals of the library might have been greater.

In whatever guise he delivered the summons, it
was perfectly efficacious. A door slammed, a heavy
and rapid tread was heard in the hall, and Ariel,
without otherwise moving, turned her head and
offered a brilliant smile of greeting.

"It was good of you," she said, as the doorway
filled with red, imperial wrath, "to wish to have a
little chat with me. I'm anxious, of course, to go
over my affairs with you, and last night, after my
journey, I was too tired. But now we might begin;
not in detail, of course, just yet. That will do for
later, when I've learned more about business."

The great one had stopped on the threshold.

"Madam," he began, coldly, "when I say my
library, I mean my--"

"Oh yes," she interrupted, with amiable weariness.
"I know. You mean you keep all the
papers and books of the estate in there, but I think
we'd better put them off for a few days--"

"I'm not talking about the estate!" he exclaimed.
"What I want to talk to you about is being seen
with Joseph Louden!"

"Yes," she nodded, brightly. "That's along the
line we must take up first."

"Yes, it is!" He hurled his bull-bass at her.
"You knew everything about him and his standing
in this community! I know you did, because Mrs.
Pike told me you asked all about him from Mamie
after you came last night, and, see here, don't
you--"

"Oh, but I knew before that," she laughed. "I
had a correspondent in Canaan, one who has always
taken a great interest in Mr. Louden. I asked Miss
Pike only to get her own point of view."

"I want to tell you, madam," he shouted,
coming toward her, "that no member of my household--"

"That's another point we must take up to-day.
I'm glad you remind me of it," she said, thoughtfully,
yet with so magically compelling an intonation
that he stopped his shouting in the middle of
a word; stopped with an apoplectic splutter. "We
must arrange to put the old house in order at once."

"We'll arrange nothing of the sort," he responded,
after a moment of angry silence. "You're
going to stay right here."

"Ah, I know your hospitality," she bowed,
graciously. "But of course I must not tax it too
far. And about Mr. Louden? As I said, I want
to speak to you about him."

"Yes," he intervened, harshly. "So do I, and
I'm going to do it quick! You'll find--"

Again she mysteriously baffled him. "He's a
dear old friend of mine, you know, and I have made
up my mind that we both need his help, you and I."

"What!"

"Yes," she continued, calmly, "in a business way
I mean. I know you have great interests in a hundred
directions, all more important than mine; it
isn't fair that you should bear the whole burden of
my affairs, and I think it will be best to retain Mr.
Louden as my man of business. He could take all
the cares of the estate off your shoulders."

Martin Pike spoke no word, but he looked at her
strangely; and she watched him with sudden keenness,
leaning forward in her chair, her gaze alert but
quiet, fixed on the dilating pupils of his eyes. He
seemed to become dizzy, and the choleric scarlet
which had overspread his broad face and big neck
faded splotchily.

Still keeping her eyes upon him, she went on:
"I haven't asked him yet, and so I don't know
whether or not he'll consent, but I think it possible
that he may come to see me this afternoon, and if
he does we can propose it to him together and go
over things a little."

Judge Pike recovered his voice. "He'll get a
warm welcome," he promised, huskily, "if he sets
foot on my premises!"

"You mean you prefer I shouldn't receive him
here?" She nodded pleasantly. "Then certainly
I shall not. Such things are much better for offices;
you are quite right."

"You'll not see him at all!"

"Ah, Judge Pike," she lifted her hand with
gentle deprecation, "don't you understand that we
can't quite arrange that? You see, Mr. Louden is
even an older friend of mine than you are, and so I
must trust his advice about such things more than
yours. Of course, if he too should think it better
for me not to see him--"

The Judge advanced toward her. "I'm tired of
this," he began, in a loud voice. "I'm--"

She moved as if to rise, but he had come very
close, leaning above her, one arm out-stretched and
at the end of it a heavy forefinger which he was
shaking at her, so that it was difficult to get out of
her chair without pushing him away--a feat
apparently impossible. Ariel Tabor, in rising, placed
her hand upon his out-stretched arm, quite as if
he had offered it to assist her; he fell back a step in
complete astonishment; she rose quickly, and
released his arm.

"Thank you," she said, beamingly. "It's quite
all my fault that you're tired. I've been thoughtless
to keep you so long, and you have been standing,
too!" She swept lightly and quickly to the
door, where she paused, gathering her skirts. "I
shall not detain you another instant! And if Mr.
Louden comes, this afternoon, I'll remember. I'll
not let him come in, of course. It will be perhaps
pleasanter to talk over my proposition as we walk!"

There was a very faint, spicy odor like wild roses
and cinnamon left in the room where Martin Pike
stood alone, staring whitely at the open doorway,



XIII

THE WATCHER AND THE WARDEN

There was a custom of Canaan,
time-worn and seldom honored in
the breach, which put Ariel, that
afternoon, in easy possession of a
coign of vantage commanding the
front gate. The heavy Sunday dinner was finished
in silence (on the part of Judge Pike, deafening)
about three o'clock, and, soon after, Mamie tossed
a number of cushions out upon the stoop between
the cast-iron dogs,--Sam Warden having previously
covered the steps with a rug and placed several
garden chairs near by on the grass. These simple
preparations concluded, Eugene sprawled
comfortably upon the rug, and Mamie seated herself
near him, while Ariel wandered with apparent
aimlessness about the lawn, followed by the gaze
of Mr. Bantry, until Miss Pike begged her, a little
petulantly, to join them.

She came, looking about her dreamily, and
touching to her lips, now and then, with an absent
air, a clover blossom she had found in the longer
grass against the fence. She stopped to pat the
neck of one of the cast-iron deer, and with grave
eyes proffered the clover-top first for inspection,
then as food. There were those in the world
who, seeing her, might have wondered that the
deer did not play Galatea and come to life.

"No?" she said, aloud, to the steadfast head.
"You won't? What a mistake to be made of cast-
iron!" She smiled and nodded to a clump of lilac-
bushes near a cedar-tree, and to nothing else--so
far as Eugene and Mamie could see,--then walked
thoughtfully to the steps.

"Who in the world were you speaking to?" asked
Mamie, curiously.

"That deer."

"But you bowed to some one."

"Oh, that," Ariel lifted her eyebrows,--"that
was your father. Didn't you see him?"

"No."

"I believe you can't from here, after all," said
Ariel, slowly. "He is sitting upon a rustic bench
between the bushes and the cedar-tree, quite near
the gate. No, you couldn't see him from here;
you'd have to go as far as the deer, at least, and
even then you might not notice him, unless you
looked for him. He has a book--a Bible, I think--
but I don't think he is reading."

"He usually takes a nap on Sunday afternoons,"
said Mamie.

"I don't think he will, to-day." Ariel looked at
Eugene, who avoided her clear gaze. "He has the
air of having settled himself to stay for a long time,
perhaps until evening."

She had put on her hat after dinner, and Mamie
now inquired if she would not prefer to remove it,
offering to carry it in-doors for her, to Ariel's
room, to insure its safety. "You look so sort of
temporary, wearing it," she urged, "as if you were
only here for a little while. It's the loveliest hat I
ever saw, and so fragile, too, but I'll take care--"

Ariel laughed, leaned over, and touched the
other's hand lightly. "It isn't that, dear."

"What is it, then?" Mamie beamed out into a
joyful smile. She had felt sure that she could not
understand Ariel; was, indeed, afraid of her; and
she found herself astonishingly pleased to be called
"dear," and delighted with the little familiarity
of the hand-tap. Her feeling toward the visitor
(who was, so her father had announced, to become
a permanent member of the household) had been,
until now, undefined. She had been on her guard,
watching for some sign of conscious "superiority"
in this lady who had been so long over-seas, not
knowing what to make of her; though thrown,
by the contents of her trunks, into a wistfulness
which would have had something of rapture in it
had she been sure that she was going to like Ariel.
She had gone to the latter's room before church,
and had perceived uneasily that it had become,
even by the process of unpacking, the prettiest
room she had ever seen. Mrs. Warden, wife of
Sam, and handmaiden of the mansion, was assisting,
alternately faint and vociferous with marvelling.
Mamie feared that Ariel might be a little
overpowering.

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