THREE ARE ENLISTED
Now in that blazing noon Canaan looked upon a strange sight: an open carriage whirling through Main Street behind two galloping bays; upon the back seat a ghostly white old man with closed eyes, supported by two pale ladies, 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 injured 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 woollen-mill and the water-works.The workmen were beginning their dinners under 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 speak or move and the workmen uncovered their heads as they went out, but Joe knew that they were mistaken."It's all right, Mr.Arp,"he said, as Ariel 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, Joe saw that Eskew understood, for he gasped, feebly: "Pos-i-tive-ly--no--free--seats!"To Mrs.Louden, sewing at an up-stairs window, the sight of her stepson descending from Judge Pike's carriage was sufficiently startling, but when she saw 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 her work-basket and 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? What 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 their 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 had no information of Eugene's mishap, nor had Mrs.Louden any suspicion that all was not well with the young man, and, hearing him enter the front door, she called to him that his dinner was waiting.Eugene, however, made no reply and went up-stairs 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 working-men 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 new-comers, 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 Flitcroft himself was surprised; he had offered his 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 night-gear of Roger Tabor's, taken from an antique chest; it was soft and yellow and much more like color than the face above it, for the white hair on the pillow was not 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.
