第12章

That might not have been thought a cheerful feast for Joe Louden.The fatted calf was upon the board, but it had not been provided for the prodigal, who, in this case, was the brother that stayed at home: the fete rewarded the good brother, who had been in strange lands, and the good one had found much honor in his wanderings, as he carelessly let it appear.Mrs.Louden brightened inexpressibly whenever Eugene spoke of himself, and consequently she glowed most of the time.Her husband--a heavy, melancholy, silent man with a grizzled beard and no mustache--lowered at Joe throughout the meal, but appeared to take a strange comfort in his step-son's elegance and polish.Eugene wore new evening clothes and was lustrous to eye and ear.

Joe escaped as soon as he could, though not before the count of his later sins had been set before Eugene in detail, in mass, and in all of their depth, breadth, and thickness.His father spoke but once, after nodding heavily to confirm all points of Mrs.Louden's recital.

"You better use any influence you've got with your brother," he said to Eugene, "to make him come to time.I can't do anything with him.If he gets in trouble, he needn't come to me! I'll never help him again.I'm TIRED of it!"Eugene glanced twinklingly at the outcast."Ididn't know he was such a roarer as all that!" he said, lightly, not taking Joe as of enough consequence to be treated as a sinner.

This encouraged Mrs.Louden to pathos upon the subject of her shame before other women when Joe happened to be mentioned, and the supper was finished with the topic.Joe slipped away through the kitchen, sneakingly, and climbed the back fence.In the alley he lit a cheap cigarette, and thrusting his hands into his pockets and shivering violently--for he had no overcoat,--walked away singing to himself, "A Spanish cavalier stood in his retreat," his teeth affording an appropriate though involuntary castanet accompaniment.

His movements throughout the earlier part of that evening are of uncertain report.It is known that he made a partial payment of forty-five cents at a second-hand book-store for a number of volumes--Grindstaff on Torts and some others--which he had negotiated on the instalment system; it is also believed that he won twenty-eight cents playing seven-up in the little room behind Louie Farbach's bar; but these things are of little import compared to the established fact that at eleven o'clock he was one of the ball guests at the Pike Mansion.He took no active part in the festivities, nor was he one of the dancers: his was, on the contrary, the role of a quiet observer.He lay stretched at full length upon the floor of the enclosed porch (one of the strips of canvas was later found to have been loosened), wedged between the outer railing and a row of palms in green tubs.The position he occupied was somewhat too draughty to have been recommended by a physician, but he commanded, between the leaves of the screening palms, an excellent view of the room nearest the porch.A long window, open, afforded communication between this room, one of those used for dancing, and the dim bower which had been made of the veranda, whither flirtatious couples made their way between the dances.