Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1907 — CONQUEST of CANAAN [ARTICLE]

CONQUEST of CANAAN

By BOOTH TARKINGTON,

- 1 . Author of "Cherry," "Monsieur Beaueairc." Etc. I

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. Chapter I—Eugene Bantry, a Canaan (Ind.,) young man, who has been east to college, returns nome and astounds the natives by the gorgeousness of his raiment. His stepbrother. Joe Lbudin. is characterized by the »sea male gossips who daily assemble at the •tional House for argument as the good for nothing associate of doubtful characters. II Eugene's appearance has a pronounced effect upon Mamie Pike, whose father, Judge Fike, is the wealthiest and most prominent Citizen of Canaan, Joe worships Mamie from ■far. Eugene interferes in a snow tight between Joe and his hoidenish and very poor Sirl friend, Ariel Taber, who is worsted, Ar1 hotly resents the interference and slaps ugene, who sends her home. Ill—Ariel, unbecomingly attired, attends Mamie Pike's ball. IV—Joe, concealed behind some plants on the Pike veranda, watches hungrily for a glimpse of Minnie. Ariel is Ignored by most of the guests. Ariel discovers Joe, aut shortly afterward, learning that her uncle, Jonas Tabor. has died suddenly, leaves. The Daily Tocsin oi the next day tells of Joe’s discovery on the Pike veranda and of his pursuit ■nd escape therefrom. It also refers to wounds in the head of himself and of Norbert Flitcroft, who detected him. Joe retires to the "Beach," a low resort kept by his friend, Mike Sheehan, who dresses his wound. VI- 1 Joe leaves Mike’s place. He visits Ariel Tabor, who, by the death of her Uncle Jonas, has become rich. She wishes Joe to accompany her and her grandfather to Paris. Joe refuses and leaves Canaan to avoid arrest for g>e trouble at Judge Pike's. Vll—Joe is eard from two years later- as a ticket seller for a side show. Eugene Bantry also meets him seven years later in a low resort in New York, but wisely refrains from advertising it. VIII—Joe returns to Canaan a full-fledged lawyer. Even his father ignores klm, and he is refused accommodations at the National bouse. IX—Joe is welcomed at the "Beach," ■nd "Happy Fear.” one of Joe’s admirers, seriously assualts Nashville Cory, a detractor. At the end of Happy's term in prison he visits Joe, who now has a law oflice on the square, with a living room adjoining. Joe has a large, practice, principally among the lower classes, •nd Is frequently attacked by the Tocsin. Joe begins, in bis lonliness, to yield to the seductions of the bottle. Bantry’s engagment to Mamie Pike is announced. Bantry is now associate editor of the Tocsin, owned by Judge Pike. X—Joe awakens after a "bad night" with the words, "Remember, across the Main street bridge at noon," ringing in bis ears. He goes there and is presently joined by the most beautifully dressed girl he has ever seen. Xl—She turns out to be Ariel Tabor, arrived in Canaan the night before from her long sojourn In Paris. She has seen Joe as •he alighted from the train and, realizing bis condition, had escorted him home after exacting from him a promise to meet her the next day (Sunday) across the Main street bridge at noon. Joe learna that Ariel is stopptagat Judge Pike’s home, the judge having entire charge of her money, etc. XII— Eugene Bantry, although engaged to Mamie, is much smitten with Ariel’s charms. Judge Pike tries bis usual blustering tactics with Ariel, but subsides When she tells him that she shall ask him to turn over the care of her estate to Joe Louden. Xlll—Ariel holds a sort of informal reception at Judge Pike'sand learns that the “tough element" Is talking of running Joe for mayor. XlV—Happy Fear •nd Nashville Cory have more trouble. Joe corners Happy and sends Claudine (Mrs. Tear) to meet him. XV—Ariel visits Joe’s office to put her affairs in his hands. While there Happy Fear rushes in and announces that he has killed Nashville Cory in self defensa. Joe makes Happy give himself up. XVl—Mamie Pike admits to Ariel that she, too, has begun to believe in Joe Louden, XVII—The Tocsin makes virulent attacks on Joe Louden and Happy Fear. Mike Sheehan hints that he may shortly have some interesting secrets to divulge in connection with Judge Pike's affairs. XVIII—The Tocsin continues its attacks. Judge Pike informs Ariel that her supposed fortune consists of valueless securities. XlX—Aged Eskew Arp, one of the band of National House gossips and erstwhile traducers of Joe, rescues Joe’s dog from a miserable death at the bands of the townspeople and then collapses.

CHAPTER XX. NOW, In that blazing noon Canaan looked upon* a strange sight—an open carriage whirling through Main Street bettnd two galloping bays, upon the back •eat a ghostly white old man with closed eyes, supported by two pale lattes, his head upon the shoulder of the taller, while beside the driver a young man whose coat and hands were bloody, worked over the hurts of an in-. Jured dog. Sam Warden’s whip sang across the horses; lather gathered on their flanks, and Ariel’s voice steadily urged on the pace, “Quicker, Sam, if you can." For there was little breath left In the body of Eskew Arp. Mamie, almost as white as the old man, was silent, but she had not hesitated In her daring now that she had been taught to dare. She had not come to be Ariel's friend and honest follower for nothing, and it was Mamie who had cried to Joe to lift Eskew into the carriage. “You must come, too,” she said. “We will need you.” And so it came to pass that under the eyes of Canaan Joe Louden rode in Judge Pike’s carriage at the bidding of Judge Pike’s daughter. Toward Ariel’s own house they sped with the stricken octogenarian, for he was “alone in the world’’ and she would not take him to the cottage where he had lived for many years by himself, a bleak little house, a derelict of the “early days” left stranded far down in the town between a woolen mill and the water works. The workmen were beginning their dinners un-

der the big trees, but as Sam Warden drew in the lathered horses at the gate they set down their tin buckets hastily and ran to help Joe lift the old man. out. Carefully they bore him into the house and laid him upon a bed in one of the finished rooms. He did not apeak or move, and the workmen uneoveud their heads as they went out, iriit Joe knew that they were mistaken. “It’s all right, Mr. Arp,” he said, as ▲riel knelt by the bed with water and restoratives. “It’s all right. Don’t you worry.” Then the veteran’s lips twitched, and, though his eyes remained closed, Joo ■aw that Eskew understood, for he gasped feebly, “Pos-i-tive-ly— no—free —seats!” To Mrs. Louden, sewing at an upstairs window, the sight of her stepson descending from Judge Pike’s carriage was sufficiently startling, but when she ■aw Mamie Pike take Respectability from his master's arms and carry him tenderly Indoors, while Joe and Ariel occupied themselves with Mr. Arp, the good lady sprang to her feet as if she had been stung, regardlessly sending ,1

her workbasketTand its contents scattering over the floor and ran down the stairs three steps at a time. At the front door she met her husband, entering for his dinner, and she leaped at. him. Had he seen? What was it? Wbat had happened? Mr. Louden rubbed his chin beard, indulging himself in a pause which was like to prove fatal to his companion, finally vouchsafing the information that the doctor’s buggy was just turning the corner. Eskew Arp had suffered a “stroke,” it was said, and, in Louden's opinion, was a mighty sick man. His spouse replied in no uncertain terms that she had seen quite that much for herself, urging him to continue, which he did with a deliberation that caused her to recall her wedding day with a gust of passionate self reproach. Presently he managed to interrupt, reminding her that her dining room windows commanded as comprehensive a view of the next house as did the front steps, and after a time her housewifely duty so far prevailed over her indignation at the man’s unwholesome stolidity that she followed him down the hall to preside over the meal, not, however, to partake largely, of it herself.

Mr. Louden hnd no information of Eugene’s mishap, nor had Mrs. Louden any suspicion that all was not well with the young man, and, hearing him the front door, she called to him that bis dinner was waiting. Eugene, however, made no reply and went upstairs to his own apartment without coming into the dining room. A small crowd, neighboring children, servants and negroes, had gathered about Ariel's gate, and Mrs. Louden watched the workingmen disperse this assembly, gather up their tools and depart. Then Mamie came out of the house and, bowing sadly to three old men who were entering the gate as she left It, stepped into her carriage and drove away. The newcomers, Colonel Flitcroft, Squire Buckalew and Peter Bradbury, glanced at the doctor’s buggy, shook their heads at one another and slowly went up to the porch, where Joe met them., Mrs. Louden uttered a sharp exclamation, for the colonel shook hands with her stepson. Perhaps Flltcroft himself was surprised. He had offered bls hand almost unconsciously, and the greeting was embarrassed and perfunctory, but his two companions, each in turn, gravely followed his lead, and Joe’s set face flushed a little. It was the first time in many years that men of their kind in Canaan had offered him this salutation.

“He wouldn’t let me send for you,” he told them. “He said he knew you’d be here soon without that.” And he led the way to Eskew’s bedside. Joe and the doctor had undressed the old man and had put him into nightgear of Roger Tabor’s taken from an antique chest, It was soft and yellow knd much more like color than the face above It, for the white hair on the pillow was hot whiter than that. Yet there was a strange youthfulness In the eyes of Eskew, an eerie, inexplicable, luminous, live look. The thin cheeks seemed fuller than they had been for years, and, though the heavier lines of age and sorrow could be seen, they appeared to have been half erased. He lay not in sunshine, but in clear light The windows were open, the curtains restrained, for he had asked them not to darken the room.

The doctor was whispering in a doctor's way to Ariel at the end of the room opposite the bed when the three old fellows came In. None of them spoke immediately, and, though all three cleared their throats with what they meant for casual cheerfulness to Indicate that the situation was not at ail extraordinary or depressing, it was to be seen that the colonel’s chin trembled under his mustache, and his comrades showed similar small and unwilling signs of emotion. Eskew spoke first. “Well, boys?" he said and smiled. That seemed to make it more difficult for the others. The three white heads bent silently over the fourth upon the pillow, and Ariel saw waverlngly, for her eyes suddenly filled, that the colonel laid his unsteady hand upon Eskew’s, which was outside the coverlet. “It’s—it’s not,” said the old soldier gently—“it’s not on—on both sides, is It, Eskew?”

Mr. Arp moved his hand slightly in answer. “It ain’t paralysis,” he said. “They call it ‘shock and exhaustion,’ but it’s more than that. It’s just my time. I’ve heard the call. We’ve all been slidin’ on thin ice this long time—and it’s broke under me”“Eskew, Eskew!” remonstrated Peter Bradbury. “You’d oughtn’t to talk that-a-way! You only kind of overdone a little —heat o’ the day, too, and”— “Peter,” interrupted the sick man, with feeble asperity, “did you ever, manage to fool me in your life?" “No, Eskew.” “Well, you’re not doin’ it now!” Two tears suddenly loosed themselves from Squire Buckalew's eyelids despite his hard endeavor to wink them away, and he turned from the bed too late to conceal what had happened. "There ain’t any. call to feel badjt said

Eskew. 'lt might have happened' anytime—in the night, maybe—at my house—and all alone—but here’s Alrie Tabor brought me to her own home and takln* care of me. -I couldn’t,ask any better way to go, could I?' ' “I don’t know what we’ll do,” mered the colonel, “if you—you talk about goln’ away from us, Eskew. -We —we couldn’t get along"— % “Well, sir, I'm almost kind of glad to think,” Mr. Arp murmured, between short struggles for breath, “that It’ll be—quieter—on the —National House corner.” ' A moment later be called the doctor faintly and asked for a restorative. “There," be said in a stronger voice and with a gleam of satisfaction in the vindication of his belief that be was dying. “I was almost gone then. I know!” He lay panting a moment, then spoke the name of Joe Louden. Joe came quickly to the bedside. “I want you to shake hands with the colonel and Peter and Buckalew.” "We did,” answered the colonel, Infinitely surprised and troubled. “We shook bands outside before we came in.” ’ W.

“Do it again,” said Eskew. “I want to see you.” • And Joe, making shift to smile, was suddenly blinded, so that he could not see the wrinkled hands extended to him and was fain to grope for them. “God knows why we didn’t all take his hand long ago,” said Eskew Arp “I didn’t because I was stubborn. 1 hated to admit that the argument was against me. I acknowledge it now before him and before you—and I want the word of it carried!”

“It’s all right Mr. Arp,” began Joe tremulously. “You mustn’t’’— “Hark to me.” The old man’s voice lifted higher. “If you’d ever whimpered or give back talk or broke out the wrong way it would of been different, but you never did. I’ve watched you, and I know. And you’ve just gone your own way alone, with the town against you because you got a bad name as a boy, and once we’d given you that, everything yon did or didn’t do we had to give you a blacker one. Now it’s time some one stood by you. Airie Tabor ’ll do that with all her soui and body. She told me once I thought a good deal of you. She knew. But I want these three old friends of mine to do It too. I was boys with them, and they’ll do it, I think. They’ve even stood up fer you against me sometimes; but mostly fer the sake of the argument, I reckon, but now they must do it when there’s more to stand against than just my talk. They saw it all today—the meanest thing I ever knew! I could of stood it all except that!” Before they could prevent him he had struggled half upright in bed, lifting a clinched fist at the town beyond the windows. “But, by God, when they got so low down they tried to kill your dog”— He fell back, choking, in Joe’s arms, and the physician bent over him, but Eskew was not gone, and Ariel, upon the other side of the room, could hear him whispering again for the restorative. She thought it, and when he had taken it went quickly out of doors to the side yard.

She sat upon a workman’s bench under the big trees, hidden from the street shrubbery, and, breathing deeply of the shaded air, began to cry quietly. Through the windows came the quavering voice ot the old man, lifted again, insistent, a little querulous, but determined. sounded intermittently from the colonel, from Peter and from Buckalew, and now and then a sorrowful, yet almost humorous protest from Joe; and so she made out that the veteran swore his three comrades to friendship with Joseph Louden, to lend him their countenance in all matters, to stand by him in weal and woe, to speak only good of him and defend him in the town of Canaan. Thus did Eskew Arp on the verge of parting this lift render justice. The gate clicked, and Ariel saw Eugene approaching through the shrubbery. One of his hands was bandaged, a.thin strip of courtplaster crossed his forehead from his left eyebrow to his hair and his thin and agitated face showed several light scratches. “I saw you come out,” he said, “I’ve been waiting to speak to you.” “The doctor told us to let him have his way in whatever he might ask.” Ariel wiped her eyes. “I’m afraid that means”-

“I didn’t come to talk about Eskew Arp,” Interrupted Eugene. “I’m not laboring under any anxiety about him, You needn't be afraid; he’s too sour to accept his conge so readily.” “Please lower your voice,” she said, rising quickly and moving away from him toward the house; but, as he followed, Insisting sharply that he must speak with her, she walked out of earshot of the windows and, stopping, turned toward him. “Very well,” she said. “Is it a message from Mamie?" At this he faltered and hung fire. “Have you been to see her?” she continued. “I am anxious to know if her goodness and bravery caused her any—any discomfort at home.” “You may set your mind at rest about that,” returned Eugene. “I was there when the Judgk came home to dinner, I suppose you fear he may have been rough with her for taking my stepbrother into the carriage. He was no< On the contrary, he spoke very quietly to her and went on out toward the stables. But I haven’t come to you to talk of Judge Pike either.” “No,” said Ariel; “I don’t care par* ticularly to hear of him, but of Mamie.” “Nor of her either!” he broke out “t want to talk of you!*’ <3 There was no mistaking him. no possibility of misunderstanding the real passion that shook him, and her startled eyes betrayed her comprehension.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

“Yea, T see you understand!” he cried bitterly. ’That’s because you’ve seen others the same way. God help me,” he went on, striking his forehead with his open hand, “that young fool of a Bradbury told me you refused him only yesterday! He was proud of even rejection from you! And there’s Norbert and half a dozen others, perhaps, already since you’ve been here.” He flung out his arms in ludicrous, savage despair. “And here am I”—\ “Ah, yes,” she cut him off, “it is of yourself that you want to speak after all, not of me!” . “Look here,” he vociferated. “Are you going to marry that Joe Louden? I want to know whether you are or not He gave me this and this today!” He touched his bandaged hand and plastered forehead. “He ran into me—over me—for nothing when I was not on my guard, struck me down—stamped on me”—

She turned upon him, cheeks aflame, eyes sparkling and dry. “Mr. Bantry," she cried, “he did a good thing! And now I want you to go home. I want you to go home and try if you can discover anything in yourself that is worthy of Mamie and of what she showed herself to be this morning! If you can, you will have found something that I could like!” She went rapidly toward the house, and he was senseless enough to follow, babbling: “What do you think I’m made of? You trample on me, as he did! I can’t bear everything! I tell you”— ,

Bnt she lifted her hand with such imperious will that he stopped short. Then through the window of the sickroom came clearly the querulous voice: “I tell you it was. I heard him speak just now—out there in the yard—that no account stepbrother of Joe’s! What if he is a hired hand on the Tocsin? He'd better give up his job and quit than do what he’s,done to help make the town think hard of Joe. And what is he? Why, he’s worse than Cory. When that Claudine Fear first came here, Gene Bantry was bangin’ around her himself. _ Joe knew it, and he’d never tell, but I will. I saw ’em buggy tidin’ out near Beaver Beach, and she slapped bls face fer him. It ought to be told!” “I didn’t know that Joe knew—that?’ Eugene stammered huskily. “It was— It was—a long time ago”— “If you understood Joe,” she said in a low voice, “you would know that before these men leave this house he will havetheir promise never to tell.” Hiy eyes fell miserably, then lifted again, but in her clear and unbearable gaze there shone such a flame of scorn as he could not endure to look upon. For the first time in his life he saw a true light upon himself, and, though the vision was darkling, the revelation was complete. “Heaven pity you!” she whispered. Eugene found himself alone and stumbled away, his glance not lifted. He passed bls own home without looking up and did not see his mother beckoning frantically from a window. She ran to tbe door and called him. He did not hear her, but went on toward the Tocsin office with bis head still bent.