The Conquest of Canaan Part 24

Ariel was not the only one who climbed the dingy stairs that day and read the pencilled script upon Joe's door: "Will not return until evening. J. Louden." Many others came, all exceedingly unlike the first visitor: some were quick and watchful, dodging into the narrow entrance furtively; some smiled contemptuously as long as they were in view of the street, drooping wanly as they reached the stairs: some were brazen and amused; and some were thin and troubled. Not all of them read the message, for not all could read, but all looked curiously through the half-opened door at the many roses which lifted their heads delicately from a water-pitcher on Joe's desk to scent that dusty place with their cool breath.

Most of these clients, after a grunt of disappointment, turned and went away; though there were a few, either unable to read the message or so pressed by anxiety that they disregarded it, who entered the room and sat down to wait for the absentee. [There were plenty of chairs in the office now, bookcases also, and a big steel safe.] But when evening came and the final gray of twilight had vanished from the window-panes, all had gone except one, a woman who sat patiently, her eyes upon the floor, and her hands folded in her lap, until the footsteps of the last of the others to depart had ceased to sound upon the pavement below.

Then, with a wordless exclamation, she sprang to her feet, pulled the window-shade carefully down to the sill, and, when she had done that, struck a match on the heel of her shoe--a soiled white canvas shoe, not a small one--and applied the flame to a gas jet. The yellow light flared up; and she began to pace the room haggardly.

The court-house bell rang nine, and as the tremors following the last stroke pulsed themselves into silence, she heard a footfall on the stairs and immediately relapsed into a chair, folding her hands again in her lap, her expression composing itself to pa.s.sivity, for the step was very much lighter than Joe's.

A lady beautifully dressed in white dimity appeared in the doorway.

She hesitated at the threshold, not, apparently, because of any timidity (her expression being too thoughtfully a.s.sured for that), but almost immediately she came in and seated herself near the desk, acknowledging the other's presence by a slight inclination of the head.

This grave courtesy caused a strong, deep flush to spread itself under the rouge which unevenly covered the woman's cheeks, as she bowed elaborately in return. Then, furtively, during a protracted silence, she took stock of the new-comer, from the tip of her white suede shoes to the filmy lace and pink roses upon her wide white hat; and the sidelong gaze lingered marvellingly upon the quiet, delicate hands, slender and finely expressive, in their white gloves.

Her own hands, unlike the lady's, began to fidget confusedly, and, the silence continuing, she coughed several times, to effect the preface required by her sense of fitness, before she felt it proper to observe, with a polite t.i.tter:

"Mr. Louden seems to be a good while comin'."

"Have you been waiting very long?" asked the lady.

"Ever since six o'clock!"

"Yes," said the other. "That is very long."

"Yes, ma'am, it cert'nly is." The ice thus broken, she felt free to use her eyes more directly, and, after a long, frank stare, exclaimed:

"Why, you must be Miss Ariel Tabor, ain't you?"

"Yes." Ariel touched one of the roses upon Joe's desk with her finger-tips. "I am Miss Tabor."

"Well, excuse me fer asking; I'm sure it ain't any business of mine,"

said the other, remembering the manners due one lady from another.

"But I thought it must be. I expect," she added, with loud, inconsequent laughter, "there's not many in Canaan ain't heard you've come back." She paused, laughed again, nervously, and again, less loudly, to take off the edge of her abruptness: gradually t.i.ttering herself down to a pause, to fill which she put forth: "Right nice weather we be'n havin'."

"Yes," said Ariel.

"It was rainy, first of last week, though. _I_ don't mind rain so much"--this with more laughter,--"I stay in the house when it rains.

Some people don't know enough to, they say! You've heard that saying, ain't you, Miss Tabor?"

"Yes."

"Well, I tell YOU," she exclaimed, noisily, "there's plenty ladies and gen'lemen in this town that's like that!"

Her laughter did not cease; it became louder and shriller. It had been, until now, a mere lubrication of the conversation, helping to make her easier in Miss Tabor's presence, but as it increased in shrillness, she seemed to be losing control of herself, as if her laughter were getting away with her; she was not far from hysteria, when it stopped with a gasp, and she sat up straight in her chair, white and rigid.

"THERE!" she said, listening intently. "Ain't that him?" Steps sounded upon the pavement below; paused for a second at the foot of the stairs; there was the snap of a match; then the steps sounded again, retreating. She sank back in her chair limply. "It was only some one stoppin' to light his cigar in the entry. It wasn't Joe Louden's step, anyway."

"You know his step?" Ariel's eyes were bent upon the woman wonderingly.

"I'd know it to-night," was the answer, delivered with a sharp and painful giggle. "I got plenty reason to!"

Ariel did not respond. She leaned a little closer to the roses upon the desk, letting them touch her face, and breathing deeply of their fragrance to neutralize a perfume which pervaded the room; an odor as heavy and cheap-sweet as the face of the woman who had saturated her handkerchief with it, a scent which went with her perfectly and made her unhappily definite; suited to her clumsily dyed hair, to her soiled white shoes, to the hot red hat smothered in plumage, to the restless stub-fingered hands, to the fat, plated rings, of which she wore a great quant.i.ty, though, surprisingly enough, the large diamonds in her ears were pure, and of a very clear water.

It was she who broke the silence once more. "Well," she drawled, coughing genteelly at the same time, "better late than never, as the saying is. I wonder who it is gits up all them comical sayings?"

Apparently she had no genuine desire for light upon this mystery, as she continued, immediately: "I have a gen'leman friend that's always gittin' 'em off. 'Well,' he says, 'the best of friends must part,'

and, 'Thou strikest me to the heart'--all kinds of cracks like that.

He's real comical. And yet," she went on in an altered voice, "I don't like him much. I'd be glad if I'd never seen him."

The change of tone was so marked that Ariel looked at her keenly, to find herself surprised into pitying this strange client of Joe's; for tears had sprung to the woman's eyes and slid along the lids, where she tried vainly to restrain them. Her face had altered too, like her voice, haggard lines suddenly appearing about the eyes and mouth as if they had just been pencilled there: the truth issuing from beneath her pinchbeck simulations, like a tragic mask revealed by the displacement of a tawdry covering.

"I expect you think I'm real foolish," she said, "but I be'n waitin' so awful long--and I got a good deal of worry on my mind till I see Mr.

Louden."

"I am sorry," Ariel turned from the roses, and faced her and the heavy perfume. "I hope he will come soon."

"I hope so," said the other. "It's something to do with me that keeps him away, and the longer he is the more it scares me." She s.h.i.+vered and set her teeth together. "It's kind of hard, waitin'. I cert'nly got my share of troubles."

"Don't you think that Mr. Louden will be able to take care of them for you?"

"Oh, I HOPE so, Miss Tabor! If he can't, n.o.body can." She was crying openly now, wiping her eyes with her musk-soaked handkerchief. "We had to send fer him yesterday afternoon--"

"To come to Beaver Beach, do you mean?" asked Ariel, leaning forward.

"Yes, ma'am. It all begun out there,--least-ways it begun before that with me. It was all my fault. I deserve all that's comin' to me, I guess. I done wrong--I done wrong! I'd oughtn't never to of went out there yesterday."

She checked herself sharply, but, after a moment's pause, continued, encouraged by the grave kindliness of the delicate face in the shadow of the wide white hat. "I'd oughtn't to of went," she repeated. "Oh, I reckon I'll never, never learn enough to keep out o' trouble, even when I see it comin'! But that gentleman friend of mine--Mr. Nashville Cory's his name--he kind o' coaxed me into it, and he's right comical when he's with ladies, and he's good company--and he says, 'Claudine, we'll dance the light fantastic,' he says, and I kind o' wanted something cheerful--I'd be'n workin' steady quite a spell, and it looked like he wanted to show me a good time, so I went, and that's what started it." Now that she had begun, she babbled on with her story, at times incoherently; full of excuses, made to herself more than to Ariel, pitifully endeavoring to convince herself that the responsibility for the muddle she had made was not hers.

"Mr. Cory told me my husband was drinkin' and wouldn't know about it, and, 'Besides,' he says, 'what's the odds?' Of course I knowed there was trouble between him and Mr. Fear--that's my husband--a good while ago, when Mr. Fear up and laid him out. That was before me and Mr.

Fear got married; I hadn't even be'n to Canaan then; I was on the stage. I was on the stage quite a while in Chicago before I got acquainted with my husband."

"You were on the stage?" Ariel exclaimed, involuntarily.

"Yes, ma'am. Livin' pitchers at Goldberg's Rat'skeller, and amunchoor nights I nearly always done a sketch with a gen'leman friend. That's the way I met Mr. Fear; he seemed to be real struck with me right away, and soon as I got through my turn he ast me to order whatever I wanted.

He's always gen'lemanlike when he ain't had too much, and even then he vurry, vurry seldom acks rough unless he's jealous. That was the trouble yesterday. I never would of gone to the Beach if I'd dreamed what was comin'! When we got there I saw Mike--that's the gen'leman that runs the Beach--lookin' at my company and me kind of anxious, and pretty soon he got me away from Mr. Cory and told me what's what.

Seems this Cory only wanted me to go with him to make my husband mad, and he'd took good care that Mr. Fear heard I'd be there with him! And he'd be'n hangin' around me, every time he struck town, jest to make Mr. Fear mad--the fresh thing! You see he wanted to make my husband start something again, this Mr. Cory did, and he was fixed for it."

"I don't understand," said Ariel.

"It's this way: if Mr. Fear attacted Mr. Cory, why, Mr. Cory could shoot him down and claim self-defence. You see, it would be easy for Mr. Cory, because Mr Fear nearly killed him when they had their first trouble, and that would give Mr. Cory a good excuse to shoot if Mr.

Fear jest only pushed him. That's the way it is with the law. Mr.

Cory could wipe out their old score and git off scot-free."

"Surely not!"

"Yes, ma'am, that's the way it would be. And when Mike told me that Mr. Cory had got me out there jest to provoke my husband I went straight up to him and begun to give him a piece of my mind. I didn't talk loud, because I never was one to make a disturbance and start trouble the way SOME do; and right while I was talkin' we both see my husband pa.s.s the window. Mr. Cory give a kind of yelling laugh and put his arm round me jest as Mr. Fear come in the door. And then it all happened so quick that you could hardly tell what WAS goin' on. Mr.

Fear, we found afterwards, had promised Mr. Louden that he wouldn't come out there, but he took too much--you could see that by the look of him--and fergot his promise; fergot everything but me and Cory, I guess.

"He come right up to us, where I was tryin' to git away from Cory's arm--it was the left one he had around me, and the other behind his back--and neither of 'em said a word. Cory kept on laughin' loud as he could, and Mr. Fear struck him in the mouth. He's little, but he can hit awful hard, and Mr. Cory let out a screech, and I see his gun go off--right in Mr. Fear's face, I thought, but it wasn't; it only scorched him. Most of the other gen'lemen had run, but Mike made a dive and managed to knock the gun to one side, jest barely in time.

Then Mike and three or four others that come out from behind things separated 'em--both of 'em fightin' to git at each other. They locked Mr. Cory up in Mike's room, and took Mr. Fear over to where they hitch the horses. Then Mike sent fer Mr. Louden to come out to talk to my husband and take care of him--he's the only one can do anything with him when he's like that--but before Mr. Louden could git there, Mr.

Fear broke loose and run through a corn-field and got away; at least they couldn't find him. And Mr. Cory jumped through a window and slid down into one of Mike's boats, so they'd both gone. When Mr. Louden come, he only stayed long enough to hear what had happened and started out to find Happy--that's my husband. He's bound to keep them apart, but he hasn't found Mr. Fear yet or he'd be here."