IT was June. From the patent inner columns of the “Carlow County Herald”
might be gleaned the information (enlivened by cuts of duchesses) that
the London season had reached a high point of gaiety; and that, although
the weather had grown inauspiciously warm, there was sufficient gossip
for the thoughtful. To the rapt mind of Miss Selina Tibbs came a
delicious moment of comparison: precisely the same conditions prevailed
in Plattville.
Not unduly might Miss Selina lay this flattering unction to her soul,
and well might the “Herald” declare that “Carlow events were crowding
thick and fast.” The congressional representative of the district was
to deliver a lecture at the court-house; a circus was approaching the
county-seat, and its glories would be exhibited “rain or shine”; the
court had cleared up the docket by sitting to unseemly hours of the
night, even until ten o'clock--one farmer witness had fallen asleep
while deposing that he “had knowed this man Hender some eighteen
year”--and, as excitements come indeed when they do come, and it seldom
rains but it pours, the identical afternoon of the lecture a strange
lady descended from the Rouen Accommodation and was greeted on the
platform by the wealthiest citizen of the county. Judge Briscoe, and
his daughter, Minnie, and (what stirred wonder to an itch almost beyond
endurance) Mr. Fisbee! and they then drove through town on the way to
the Briscoe mansion, all four, apparently, in a fluster of pleasure and
exhilaration, the strange lady engaged in earnest conversation with Mr.
Fisbee on the back seat.
Judd Bennett had had the best stare at her, but, as he immediately fell
into a dreamy and absent state, little satisfaction could be got from
him, merely an exasperating statement that the stranger seemed to have
a kind of new look to her. However, by means of Miss Mildy Upton, a
domestic of the Briscoe household, the community was given something a
little more definite. The lady's name was Sherwood; she lived in Rouen;
and she had known Miss Briscoe at the eastern school the latter had
attended (to the feverish agitation of Plattville) three years before;
but Mildy confessed her inadequacy in the matter of Mr. Fisbee. He had
driven up in the buckboard with the others and evidently expected to
stay for supper Mr. Tibbs, the postmaster (it was to the postoffice
that Miss Upton brought her information) suggested, as a possible
explanation, that the lady was so learned that the Briscoes had invited
Fisbee on the ground of his being the only person in Plattville they
esteemed wise enough to converse with her; but Miss Tibbs wrecked her
brother's theory by mentioning the name of Fisbee's chief.
“You see, Solomon,” she sagaciously observed, “if that were true, they
would have invited him, instead of Mr. Fisbee, and I wish they had.
He isn't troubled with malaria, and yet the longer he lives here the
sallower-looking and sadder-looking he gets. I think the company of a
lovely stranger might be of great cheer to his heart, and it will be
interesting to witness the meeting between them. It may be,” added the
poetess, “that they _have_ already met, on his travels before he settled
here. It may be that they are old friends--or even more.”
“Then what,” returned her brother, “what is he doin' settin' up in his
office all afternoon with ink on his forehead, while Fisbee goes out
ridin' with her and stays for supper after_werds_?”
Although the problem of Fisbee's attendance remained a mere maze of
hopeless speculation, Mildy had been present at the opening of Miss
Sherwood's trunk, and here was matter for the keen consideration of the
ladies, at least. Thoughtful conversations in regard to hats and linings
took place across fences and on corners of the Square that afternoon;
and many gentlemen wondered (in wise silence) why their spouses were
absent-minded and brooded during the evening meal.
At half-past seven, the Hon. Kedge Halloway of Amo delivered himself
of his lecture; “The Past and Present. What we may Glean from Them, and
Their Influence on the Future.” At seven the court-room was crowded, and
Miss Tibbs, seated on the platform (reserved for prominent citizens),
viewed the expectant throng with rapture. It is possible that she would
have confessed to witnessing a sea of faces, but it is more probable
that she viewed the expectant throng. The thermometer stood at
eighty-seven degrees and there was a rustle of incessantly moving
palm-leaf fans as, row by row, their yellow sides twinkled in the light
of eight oil lamps. The stouter ladies wielded their fans with vigor.
There were some very pretty faces in Mr. Halloway's audience, but it
is a peculiarity of Plattville that most of those females who do not
incline to stoutness incline far in the opposite direction, and the lean
ladies naturally suffered less from the temperature than their sisters.
The shorn lamb is cared for, but often there seems the intention to
impart a moral in the refusal of Providence to temper warm weather to
the full-bodied.
Old Tom Martin expressed a strong consciousness of such intention when
he observed to the shocked Miss Selina, as Mr. Bill Snoddy, the stoutest
citizen of the county, waddled abnormally up the aisle: “The Almighty
must be gittin” a heap of fun out of Bill Snoddy to-night.”
“Oh, Mr. Martin!” exclaimed Miss Tibbs, fluttering at his irreverence.
“Why, you would yourself. Miss Seliny,” returned old Tom. Mr. Martin
always spoke in one key, never altering the pitch of his high, dry,
unctuous drawl, though, when his purpose was more than ordinarily
humorous, his voice assumed a shade of melancholy. Now and then he
meditatively passed his fingers through his gray beard, which followed
the line of his jaw, leaving his upper lip and most of his chin
smooth-shaven. “Did you ever reason out why folks laugh so much at fat
people?” he continued. “No, ma'am. Neither'd anybody else.”
“Why is it, Mr. Martin?” asked Miss Selina.
“It's like the Creator's sayin', 'Let there be light.' He says,
'Let ladies be lovely--'” (Miss Tibbs bowed)--“and 'Let men-folks be
honest--sometimes;' and, 'Let fat people be held up to ridicule
till they fall off.' You can't tell why it is; it was jest ordained
that-a-way.”
The room was so crowded that the juvenile portion of the assemblage was
ensconced in the windows. Strange to say, the youth of Plattville were
not present under protest, as their fellows of a metropolis would have
been, lectures being well understood by the young of great cities
to have instructive tendencies. The boys came to-night because they
insisted upon coming. It was an event. Some of them had made sacrifices
to come, enduring even the agony (next to hair-cutting in suffering) of
having their ears washed. Conscious of parental eyes, they fronted
the public with boyhood's professional expressionlessness, though they
communicated with each other aside in a cipher-language of their own,
and each group was a hot-bed of furtive gossip and sarcastic comment.
Seated in the windows, they kept out what small breath of air might
otherwise have stolen in to comfort the audience.
Their elders sat patiently dripping with perspiration, most of the
gentlemen undergoing the unusual garniture of stiffly-starched collars,
those who had not cultivated chin beards to obviate such arduous
necessities of pomp and state, hardly bearing up under the added anxiety
of cravats. However, they sat outwardly meek under the yoke; nearly all
of them seeking a quiet solace of tobacco--not that they smoked; Heaven
and the gallantry of Carlow County forbid--nor were there anywhere
visible tokens of the comforting ministrations of nicotine to violate
the eye of etiquette. It is an art of Plattville.
Suddenly there was a hum and a stir and a buzz of whispering in the
room. Two gray old men and two pretty young women passed up the aisle to
the platform. One old man was stalwart and ruddy, with a cordial eye
and a handsome, smooth-shaven, big face. The other was bent and trembled
slightly; his face was very white; he had a fine high brow, deeply
lined, the brow of a scholar, and a grandly flowing white beard that
covered his chest, the beard of a patriarch. One of the young women
was tall and had the rosy cheeks and pleasant eyes of her father, who
preceded her. The other was the strange lady.
A universal perturbation followed her progress up the aisle, if she had
known it. She was small and fair, very daintily and beautifully made;
a pretty Marquise whose head Greuze should have painted. Mrs. Columbus
Landis, wife of the proprietor of the Palace Hotel, conferring with a
lady in the next seat, applied an over-burdened adjective: “It ain't so
much she's han'some, though she is, that--but don't you notice she's got
a kind of smart look to her? Her bein' so teeny, kind of makes it more
so, somehow, too.” What stunned the gossips of the windows to awed
admiration, however, was the unconcerned and stoical fashion in which
she wore a long bodkin straight through her head. It seemed a large
sacrifice merely to make sure one's hat remained in place.
The party took seats a little to the left and rear of the lecturer's
table, and faced the audience. The strange lady chatted gaily with the
other three, apparently as unconscious of the multitude of eyes fixed
upon her as the gazers were innocent of rude intent. There were pretty
young women in Plattville; Minnie Briscoe was the prettiest, and, as the
local glass of fashion reflected, “the stylishest”; but this girl
was different, somehow, in a way the critics were puzzled to
discover--different, from the sparkle of her eyes and the crown of her
trim sailor hat, to the edge of her snowy duck skirt.
Judd Bennett sighed a sigh that was heard in every corner of the room.
As everybody immediately turned to look at him, he got up and went out.
It had long been a jocose fiction of Mr. Martin, who was a widower of
thirty years' standing, that he and the gifted authoress by his side
were in a state of courtship. Now he bent his rugged head toward her
to whisper: “I never thought to see the day you'd have a rival in my
affections. Miss Seliny, but yonder looks like it. I reckon I'll have
to go up to Ben Tinkle's and buy that fancy vest he's had in stock this
last twelve year or more. Will you take me back when she's left the city
again; Miss Seliny?” he drawled. “I expect, maybe, Miss Sherwood is
one of these here summer girls. I've heard of 'em but I never see one
before. You better take warning and watch me--Fisbee won't have no clear
field from now on.”
The stranger leaned across to speak to Miss Briscoe and her sleeve
touched the left shoulder of the old man with the patriarchal white
beard. A moment later he put his right hand to that shoulder and gently
moved it up and down with a caressing motion over the shabby black
broadcloth her garment had touched.
“Look at that old Fisbee!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, affecting indignation.
“Never be 'n half as spruced up and wide awake in all his life. He's
prob'ly got her to listen to him on the decorations of Nineveh--it's my
belief he was there when it was destroyed. Well, if I can't cut him out
we'll get our respected young friend of the 'Herald' to do it.”
“Sh!” returned Miss Tibbs. “Here he is.”
The seats upon the platform were all occupied, except the two foremost
ones in the centre (one on each side of a little table with a lamp, a
pitcher of ice-water, and a glass) reserved for the lecturer and the
gentleman who was to introduce him. Steps were audible in the hall, and
every one turned to watch the door, where the distinguished pair now
made their appearance in a hush of expectation over which the beating
of the fans alone prevailed. The Hon. Kedge Halloway was one of the
gleaners of the flesh-pots, himself, and he marched into the room
unostentatiously mopping his shining expanse of brow with a figured
handkerchief. He was a person of solemn appearance; a fat gold
watch-chain which curved across his ponderous front, adding mysteriously
to his gravity. At his side strolled a very tall, thin, rather
stooping--though broad-shouldered--rather shabby young man with a
sallow, melancholy face and deep-set eyes that looked tired. When they
were seated, the orator looked over his audience slowly and with an
incomparable calm; then, as is always done, he and the melancholy young
man exchanged whispers for a few moments. After this there was a pause,
at the end of which the latter rose and announced that it was his
pleasure and his privilege to introduce, that evening, a gentleman who
needed no introduction to that assemblage. What citizen of Carlow needed
an introduction, asked the speaker, to the orator they had applauded
in the campaigns of the last twenty years, the statesman author of
the Halloway Bill, the most honored citizen of the neighboring and
flourishing county and city of Amo? And, the speaker would say, that if
there were one thing the citizens of Carlow could be held to envy the
citizens of Amo, it was the Honorable Kedge Halloway, the thinker,
to whose widely-known paper they were about to have the pleasure and
improvement of listening.
The introduction was so vehemently applauded that, had there been
present a person connected with the theatrical profession, he might have
been nervous for fear the introducer had prepared no encore. “Kedge is
too smart to take it all to himself,” commented Mr. Martin. “He knows
it's half account of the man that said it.”
He was not mistaken. Mr. Halloway had learned a certain perceptiveness
on the stump. Resting one hand upon his unfolded notes upon the table,
he turned toward the melancholy young man (who had subsided into the
small of his back in his chair) and, after clearing his throat, observed
with sudden vehemence that he must thank his gifted friend for his
flattering remarks, but that when he said that Carlow envied Amo a
Halloway, it must be replied that Amo grudged no glory to her sister
county of Carlow, but, if Amo could find envy in her heart it would be
because Carlow possessed a paper so sterling, so upright, so brilliant,
so enterprising as the “Carlow County Herald,” and a journalist so
talented, so gifted, so energetic, so fearless, as its editor.
The gentleman referred to showed very faint appreciation of these
ringing compliments. There was a lamp on the table beside him, against
which, to the view of Miss Sherwood of Rouen, his face was silhouetted,
and very rarely had it been her lot to see a man look less enthusiastic
under public and favorable comment of himself. She wondered if he,
also, remembered the Muggleton cricket match and the subsequent dinner
oratory.
The lecture proceeded. The orator winged away to soary heights with
gestures so vigorous as to cause admiration for his pluck in making use
of them on such a night; the perspiration streamed down his face, his
neck grew purple, and he dared the very face of apoplexy, binding his
auditors with a double spell. It is true that long before the peroration
the windows were empty and the boys were eating stolen, unripe fruit in
the orchards of the listeners. The thieves were sure of an alibi.
The Hon. Mr. Halloway reached a logical conclusion which convinced even
the combative and unwilling that the present depends largely upon the
past, while the future will be determined, for the most part, by the
conditions of the present. “The future,” he cried, leaning forward with
an expression of solemn warning, “The future is in our own hands, ladies
and gentlemen of the city of Plattville. Is it not so? We will find it
so. Turn it over in your minds.” He leaned backward and folded his hands
benevolently on his stomach and said in a searching whisper; “Ponder
it.” He waited for them to ponder it, and little Mr. Swanter, the
druggist and bookseller, who prided himself on his politeness and who
was seated directly in front, scratched his head and knit his brows
to show that he was pondering it. The stillness was intense; the fans
ceased to beat; Mr. Snoddy could be heard breathing dangerously. Mr.
Swanter was considering the advisability of drawing a pencil from his
pocket and figuring on it upon his cuff, when suddenly, with the energy
of a whirlwind, the lecturer threw out his arms to their fullest extent
and roared: “It is a _fact_! It is carven on stone in the gloomy caverns
of TIME. It is writ in FIRE on the imperishable walls of Fate!”
After the outburst, his voice sank with startling rapidity to a tone of
honeyed confidence, and he wagged an inviting forefinger at Mr.
Snoddy, who opened his mouth. “Shall we take an example? Not from the
marvellous, my friends; let us seek an illustration from the ordinary.
Is that not better? One familiar to the humblest of us. One we can all
comprehend. One from our every-day life. One which will interest even
the young. Yes. The common house-fly. On a window-sill we place a bit
of fly-paper, and contiguous to it, a flower upon which the happy
insect likes to feed and rest. The little fly approaches. See, he hovers
between the two. One is a fatal trap, an ambuscade, and the other a
safe harbor and an innocuous haven. But mystery allures him. He poises,
undecided. That is the present. That, my friends, is the Present! What
will he do? WHAT will he do? What will he DO? Memories of the past
are whispering to him: 'Choose the flower. Light on the posy.' Here we
clearly see the influence of the past upon the present. But, to employ a
figure of speech, the fly-paper beckons to the insect toothsomely, and,
thinks he; 'Shall I give it a try? Shall I? Shall I give it a try?' The
future is in his own hands to make or unmake. The past, the voice of
Providence, has counselled him: 'Leave it alone, leave it alone, little
fly. Go away from there.' Does he heed the warning? Does he heed it,
ladies and gentlemen? Does he? Ah, no! He springs into the air, decides
between the two attractions, one of them, so deadly to his interests
and--_drops upon the fly-paper to perish miserably_! The future is in
his hands no longer. We must lie upon the bed that we have made, nor can
Providence change its unalterable decrees.”
After the tragedy, the orator took a swallow of water, mopped his brow
with the figured handkerchief and announced that a new point herewith
presented itself for consideration. The audience sank back with a gasp
of release from the strain of attention. Minnie Briscoe, leaning back,
breathless like the others, became conscious that a tremor agitated
her visitor. Miss Sherwood had bent her head behind the shelter of the
judge's broad shoulders; was shaking slightly and had covered her face
with her hands.
“What is it, Helen?” whispered Miss Briscoe, anxiously. “What is it? Is
something the matter?”
“Nothing. Nothing, dear.” She dropped her hands from her face. Her
cheeks were deep crimson, and she bit her lip with determination.
“Oh, but there is! Why, you've tears in your eyes. Are you faint? What
is it?”
“It is only--only----” Miss Sherwood choked, then cast a swift glance at
the profile of the melancholy young man. The perfectly dismal decorum of
this gentleman seemed to inspire her to maintain her own gravity. “It
is only that it seemed such a pity about that fly,” she explained. From
where they sat the journalistic silhouette was plainly visible, and both
Fisbee and Miss Sherwood looked toward it often, the former with the
wistful, apologetic fidelity one sees in the eyes of an old setter
watching his master.
When the lecture was over many of the audience pressed forward to shake
the Hon. Mr. Halloway's hand. Tom Martin hooked his arm in that of the
sallow gentleman and passed out with him.
“Mighty humanizin' view Kedge took of that there insect,” remarked Mr.
Martin. “I don't recollect I ever heard of no mournfuller error
than that'n. I noticed you spoke of Halloway as a 'thinker,' without
mentioning what kind. I didn't know, before, that you were as cautious a
man as that.”
“Does your satire find nothing sacred, Martin?” returned the other, “not
even the Honorable Kedge Halloway?”
“I wouldn't presume,” replied old Tom, “to make light of the catastrophe
that overtook the heedless fly. When Halloway went on to other subjects
I was so busy picturin' the last moments of that closin' life, stuck
there in the fly-paper, I couldn't listen to him. But there's no use
dwellin' on a sorrow we can't help. Look at the moon; it's full enough
to cheer us up.” They had emerged from the court-house and paused on
the street as the stream of townsfolk divided and passed by them to take
different routes leading from the Square. Not far away, some people were
getting into a buckboard. Fisbee and Miss Sherwood were already on the
rear seat.
“Who's with him, to-night, Mr. Fisbee?” asked Judge Briscoe in a low
voice.
“No one. He is going directly to the office. To-morrow is Thursday, one
of our days of publication.”
“Oh, then it's all right. Climb in, Minnie, we're waiting for you.” The
judge offered his hand to his daughter.
“In a moment, father,” she answered. “I'm going to ask him to call,” she
said to the other girl.
“But won't he--”
Miss Briscoe laughed. “He never comes to see me!” She walked over
to where Martin and the young man were looking up at the moon, and
addressed the journalist.
“I've been trying to get a chance to speak to you for a week,” she said,
offering him her hand; “I wanted to tell you I had a friend coming to
visit me Won't you come to see us? She's here.”
The young man bowed. “Thank you,” he answered. “Thank you, very much. I
shall be very glad.” His tone had the meaningless quality of perfunctory
courtesy; Miss Briscoe detected only the courtesy; but the strange lady
marked the lack of intention in his words.
“Don't you include me, Minnie?” inquired Mr Martin, plaintively. “I'll
try not to be too fascinatin', so as to give our young friend a show. It
was love at first sight with me. I give Miss Seliny warning soon as your
folks come in and I got a good look at the lady.”
As the buckboard drove away, Miss Sherwood, who had been gazing
steadfastly at the two figures still standing in the street, the tall
ungainly old one, and the taller, loosely-held young one (he had not
turned to look at her) withdrew her eyes from them, bent them seriously
upon Fisbee, and asked: “What did you mean when you said no one was with
him to-night?”
“That no one was watching him,” he answered.
“Watching him? I don't understand.”
“Yes; he has been shot at from the woods at night and----”
The girl shivered. “But who watches him?”
“The young men of the town. He has a habit of taking long walks after
dark, and he is heedless of all remonstrance. He laughs at the idea
of curtailing the limit of his strolls or keeping within the town when
night has fallen; so the young men have organized a guard for him, and
every evening one of them follows him until he goes to the office to
work for the night. It is a different young man every evening, and the
watcher follows at a distance so that he does not suspect.”
“But how many people know of this arrangement?”
“Nearly every one in the county except the Cross-Roads people, though it
is not improbable that they have discovered it.”
“And has no one told him”
“No; it would annoy him; he would not allow it to continue. He will not
even arm himself.”
“They follow and watch him night after night, and every one knows and no
one tells him? Oh, I must say,” cried the girl, “I think these are good
people.”
The stalwart old man on the front seat shook out the reins and whined
the whip over his roans' backs. “They are the people of your State and
mine. Miss Sherwood,” he said in his hearty voice, “the best people in
God's world--and I'm not running for Congress, either!”
“But how about the Six-Cross-Roads people, father?” asked Minnie.
“We'll wipe them clean out some day,” answered her father--“possibly
judicially, possibly----”
“Surely judiciously?” suggested Miss Sherwood.
“If you care to see what a bad settlement looks like, we'll drive
through there to-morrow--by daylight,” said Briscoe. “Even the doctor
doesn't insist on being in that neighborhood after dark. They are trying
their best to get Harkless, and if they do----”
“If they do!” repeated Miss Sherwood. She clasped Fisbee's hand gently.
His eyes shone and he touched her fingers with a strange, shy reverence.
“You will meet him to-morrow,” he said.
She laughed and pressed his hand. “I'm afraid not. He wasn't even
interested enough to look at me.”