o'clock, every man, woman and child of us, to see the procession come
into town. It would leave the railway at Sudleigh, and we had a faint
hope of its forming in regulation style, and sweeping into Tiverton, a
blaze of glittering chariots surmounted by queens of beauty, of lazy
beasts of the desert sulking in their cages, and dainty-stepping
horses, ridden by bold amazons. For a time, the expectation kept us
bright and hopeful, although most of us had only taken a "cold bite"
before starting; but as the eastern saffron pencilled one line of light
and the bird chorus swelled in piercing glory, we grew cross and all
unbefitting the smiling morn. Only Dilly Joyce looked sunshiny as ever,
for she had no domestic cares to beckon her; she and Nance Pete, who
was in luck that day, having a full pipe. Dilly had nestled into a
rock, curved in the form of a chair, and lay watching the eastern sky,
a faint smile of pleasure parting her lips when the saffron hardened
into gold.
"Nice, dear, ain't it?" she said, as I paused a moment near her, "I
al'ays liked the side o' the road. But it's kind o' disturbin' to have
so much talk. I dunno's you can help it, though, where there's so many
people. Most o' the time, I'm better on't to home, but I did want to
see an elephant near to!"
The sky broadened into light, and the birds jeered at us, poor,
draggled folk who lived in boxes and were embarrassed by the morn. The
men grew nervous, for milking-time was near, and in imagination I have
no doubt they heard the lowing of reproachful kine.
"Well, 'tain't no use," said Eli Pike, rising from the stone-wall, and
stretching himself, with decision. "I've got to 'tend to them cows,
whether or no!" And he strolled away on the country-road, without a
look behind. Most of the other men, as in honor bound, followed him;
and the women, with loud-voiced protest against an obvious necessity,
trailed after them, to strain the milk. Only we who formed the gypsy
element were left behind.
"I call it a real shame!" announced Mrs. Pike, gathering her summer
shawl about her shoulders, and stepping away with an offended dignity
such as no delinquent elephant could have faced. "I warrant ye, they
wouldn't ha' treated Sudleigh so. They wouldn't ha' dared!"
"I dunno's Sudleigh's any more looked up to'n we be," said Caleb
Rivers, who had been so tardy in bestirring himself that he formed a
part of the women's corps. "I guess, if the truth was known, Tiverton
covers more land'n Sudleigh does, on'y Sudleigh's all humped up
together into a quart bowl. I guess there's countries that 'ain't heard
o' Sudleigh, an' wouldn't stan' much in fear if they had!"
And so Tiverton dispersed, unamiably, and with its public pride hurt to
the quick. I tried to take pattern by Dilly Joyce, and steal from
nature a little of the wonderful filial enjoyment which came to her
unsought. When Dilly watched the sky, I did, also; when she brightened
at sound of a bird hitherto silent, I tried to set down his notes in my
memory; and when she closed her eyes, and shut out the world, to think
it over, I did the same. But the result was different. Probably Dilly
opened hers again upon the lovely earth, but I drifted off into
dreamland, and only awoke, two hours after, to find the scenes
marvellously changed. It was bright, steady morning, the morning come
to stay. Tiverton had performed its dairy rites, and returned again,
enlivened by a cup of tea; and oh, incredible joy! there was a grunting
and panting, a swaying of mighty flanks. The circus was approaching,
from Sudleigh way. Instantly I was alert and on my feet, for it would
have been impossible to miss the contagion of the general joy. I knew
how we felt, not as individuals, but as Tivertonians alone. We were
tolerant potentates, waiting, in gracious majesty, to receive a
deputation from the farther East. It grieves me much to stop here and
confess, with a necessary honesty, that this was but a sorry circus,
gauged by the conventional standards; else, I suppose, it had never
come to Tiverton at all. The circus-folk had evidently dressed for
travelling, not for us. The chariots, some of them still hooded in
canvas, were very small and tarnished. There were but three elephants,
two camels, and a most meagre display of those alluring cages made to
afford even the careless eye a sudden, quickening glimpse of restless,
tawny form, or slothful hulk within. Yet why depreciate the raw
material whereof Fancy has power divine to build her altogether perfect
heights? Here was the plain, homely setting of our plainer lives, and
right into the midst of it had come the East. The elephants affected us
most; we probably thought little about the immemorial mystery, the
vague, occult tradition wrapped in that mouse-colored hide; but even to
our dense Western imagination such quickening suggestion was vividly
apparent. We knew our world; usually it seemed to us the only one, even
when we looked at the stars. But at least one other had been created,
and before us appeared its visible sign,--my lord the elephant! There
he was, swaying along, conscious philosopher, conscious might, yet
holding his omniscience in the background, and keeping a wary eye out
for the peanuts with which we simple country souls had not provided
ourselves. There was one curious thing about it all. We had seen the
circus at Sudleigh, as I have said, yet the fact of entertaining it
within our borders made it seem exactly as if we had never laid eyes
upon it before. This was our caravan, and God Almighty had created the
elephant for us. Dilly Joyce slipped her hand quickly in mine and
pressed it hard. She was quite pale. Yet it was she who acted upon the
first practical thought. She recovered herself before my lord went by,
took a ginger cookie from her pocket, and put it into Davie Tolman's
hand.
"Here," she said, pushing him forward, "you go an' offer it to him.
He'll take it. See'f he don't!"
Davie accepted the mission with joy, and persisted in it until he found
himself close beside that swaying bulk, and saw the long trunk curved
enticingly toward him. Then he uttered one explosive howl, and fell
back on the very toes of us who were pressing forward to partake, by
right of sympathy, in the little drama.
"Lordy Massy, keep still!" cried out Nance Pete; and she snatched him
up bodily, and held him out to the elephant. I believe my own pang at
that moment to have been general. I forgot that elephants are not
carnivorous, and shuddered back, under the expectation of seeing Davie
devoured, hide and hair. But Nance had the address to stiffen the
little arm, and my lord took the cookie, still clutched in the
despairing hand, and passed on. Then Davie wiped his eyes, after
peeping stealthily about to see whether any one was disposed to jeer at
him, and took such courage that he posed, ever after, as the hero of
the day.
The procession had nearly passed us when we saw a sight calculated to
animate us anew with a justifiable pride. Sudleigh itself, its young
men and maidens, old men and children, was following the circus into
our town. It would not have a circus of its own, forsooth, but it would
share in ours! We, as by one consent, assumed an air of dignified
self-importance. We were the hosts of the day; we bowed graciously to
such of our guests as we knew, and, with a mild tolerance, looked over
the heads of those who were unfamiliar. Yet nothing checked our happy
companionship with the caravan; still we followed by the side of the
procession, through tangles of blackberry vine, and over ditch and
stubble. Some of the boys mounted the walls, and ran wildly, dislodging
stones as they went, and earning no reproof from the fathers who, on
any other day, would have been alive to a future mowing and the
clashing of scythe and rock. There was, moreover, an impression abroad
that our progress could by no means be considered devoid of danger.
"S'pose that fellar should rise up, an' wrench off them bars!"
suggested Heman Blaisdell, pointing out one cage where a great
creature, gaudy in stripes, paced back and forth, throwing us an
occasional look of scorn and great despite. "I wouldn't give much for
my chances! Nor for anybody else's!"
"My soul an' body!" ejaculated a woman. "I hope they don't forgit to
lock them cages up! Folks git awful careless when they do a thing every
day! I forgot to shet up the hins last week, an' that was the night the
skunk got in."
"I'm glad Brad brought his gun," said another, in the tone of one who
would have crossed herself had there been a saint to help. And
thereafter we kept so thickly about Brad, walking with his long free
stride, that his progress became impeded, and he almost fell over us.
Suddenly, from the front, a man's voice rose in an imperative cry,--
"Turn round! turn round!"
Quite evidently the mandate was addressed to us, and we turned in a
mass, fleeing back into Sudleigh's very arms. For a moment, it was like
Sparta and Persia striving in the Pass; then Sudleigh turned also, such
as were on foot, and fled with us. We pressed up the bank, as soon as
we could collect our errant wits; some of us, with a sense of coming
calamity, mounted the very wall, and there we had a moment to look
about us. The caravan was keeping steadily on, like fate and taxes, and
facing it stood a carryall attached to a frightened horse. On the front
seat, erect in her accustomed majesty, sat Aunt Melissa Adams; and
Uncle Hiram, ever a humble charioteer, was by her side. They, too, had
driven out to see the circus, but alas! it had not struck them that
they might meet it midway, with no volition of drawing up at the side
of the road and allowing it to pass. The old horse, hardened to the
vicissitudes of many farming seasons, had necessarily no acquaintance
with the wild beasts of the Orient; no past experience, tucked away in
his wise old head, could explain them in the very least. He plunged and
reared; he snorted with fear, and Aunt Melissa began to emit shrieks of
such volume and quality that the mangy lion, composing himself to sleep
in his cage, rose, and sent forth a cry that Tiverton will long
remember. We did not stop to explain our forebodings, but we were sure
that, in some mysterious way, Aunt Melissa was doomed, and that she had
brought her misfortune on herself. A second Daniel, she had no special
integrity to stand her in need. And still the circus advanced, and the
horse snorted and backed. He was a gaunt old beast, but in his terror,
one moment of beauty dignified him beyond belief. His head was high,
his eyes were starting.
"Turn round!" cried the men, but Uncle Hiram was paralyzed, and the
reins lay supine in his hands, while he screamed a wheezy "Whoa!" Then
Brad Freeman, as usual in cases outside precedent, became the good
angel of Tiverton. He forced his gun on the person nearest at hand--who
proved to be Nance Pete--and dashed forward. Seizing the frightened
horse by the head, he cramped the wheel scientifically, and turned him
round. Then he gave him a smack on the flank, and the carryall went
reeling and swaying back into Tiverton, the _avant-courrier_ of the
circus. You should have heard Aunt Melissa's account of that ride, an
epic moment which she treasured, in awe, to the day of her death.
According to her, it asked no odds from the wild huntsman, or the
Gabriel hounds. Well, we cowards came down from the wall, assuring each
other, with voices still shaking a little, that we knew it was nothing,
after all, and that nobody but Aunt Melissa would make such a fuss. How
she did holler! we said, with conscious pride in our own
self-possession when brought into unexpectedly close relations with
wild beasts; and we trudged happily along through the dust stirred by
alien trampling, back to Tiverton Street, and down into Brad Freeman's
field. It would hardly be possible to describe our joy in watching the
operation of tent-raising, nor our pride in Brad Freeman, when he
assumed the character of host, and not only made the circus-folk free
of the ground they had hired, but hurried here and there, helping with
such address and muscular vigor that we felt defrauded in never having
known how accomplished he really was. The strollers recognized his
type, in no time; they were joking with him and clapping him on the
back before the first tent had been unrolled. Now, none of us had ever
seen a circus performer, save in the ring; and I think we were
disappointed, for a moment, at finding we had in our midst no spangled
angels in rosy tights, no athletes standing on their heads by choice,
and quite preferring the landscape upside down, but a set of shabbily
dressed, rather jaded men and women, who were, for all the world, just
like ourselves, save that they walked more gracefully, and spoke in
softer voice. But when the report went round that the cook was getting
breakfast ready--out of doors, too!--we were more than compensated for
the loss of such tinsel joys. Chattering and eager, we ran over to the
dining-tent, and there, close beside it, found the little kitchen, its
ovens smoking hot, and a man outside, aproned and capped, cutting up
chops and steaks, with careless deftness, and laying them in the great
iron pans, preparatory to broiling.
"By all 't's good an' bad!" swore Tom McNeil, a universal and sweeping
oath he much affected, "they've got a whole sheep an' a side o' beef!
Well, it's high livin', an' no mistake!"
We who considered a few pies a baking, watched this wholesale cookery
in bewildered fascination. A savory smell arose to heaven. I never was
so hungry in my life, and I believe all Tiverton would own to the same
craving. Perhaps some wild instinct sprang up in us with the scent of
meat in out-door air, but at any rate, we became much exhilarated, and
our attention was only turned from the beguiling chops by Mrs. Wilson's
saying, in a low tone, to her husband,--
"Lothrop, if there ain't Lucindy, an' that Molly McNeil with her!
What's Lucindy got? My sake alive! you might ha' known she'd do suthin'
to make anybody wish they'd stayed to home. If you can git near her,
you keep a tight holt on her, or she'll be jumpin' through a hoop!"
I turned, with the rest. Yes, there was Miss Lucindy, tripping happily
across the level field. Molly McNeil hastened beside her, and between
them they carried a large clothes-basket, overflowing with flaming
orange-red; a basket heaped with sunset, not the dawn! They were very
near me when I guessed what it was; so near that I could see the happy
smile on Lucindy's parted lips, and note how high the rose flush had
risen in her delicate cheek, with happiness and haste.
"Stortions!" broke out a voice near me, in virile scorn,--Nance
Pete's,--"stortions! Jes' like her! Better picked 'em a mess o' pease!"
It was, indeed, a basket of red nasturtiums, and the sun had touched
them into a glory like his own. For one brief moment, we were ashamed
of Lucindy's "shallerness" and irrelevancy; but the circus people
interpreted her better. They rose from box and hamper where they had
been listlessly awaiting their tardy breakfast, and crowded forward to
meet her. They knew, through the comradeship of all Bohemia, exactly
what she meant.
"My!" said Miss Lucindy, smiling full at them as they came,--her old,
set smile had been touched, within a year, by something glad and
free,--"set 'em down now, Molly. My! are you the folks? Well, I thought
you'd seem different, somehow, but anyway, we brought you over a few
blooms. We thought you couldn't have much time, movin' round so, to
work in your gardins, especially the things you have to sow every year.
Yes, dear, yes! Take a good handful. Here's a little mignonette I put
in the bottom, so't everybody could have a sprig. Yes, there's enough
for the men, too. Why, yes, help yourself! Law, dear, why don't you
take off your veil? Hot as this is!" for the bearded lady, closely
masked in black _barège_, had come forward and hungrily stretched out a
great hand for her share.
We never knew how it all happened, but during this clamor of happy
voices, the chops were cooked and the coffee boiled; the circus people
turned about, and trooped into the tent where the tables were set, and
they took Miss Lucindy with them. Yes, they did! Molly McNeil stayed
contentedly outside; for though she had brought her share of the
treasure, quite evidently she considered herself a friendly helper, not
a partner in the scheme. But Miss Lucindy was the queen of the
carnival. We heard one girl say to another, as our eccentric townswoman
swept past us, in the eager crowd, "Oh, the dear old thing!" We saw a
sad-eyed girl bend forward, lift a string of Miss Lucindy's apron
(which, we felt, should have been left behind in the kitchen) and give
it a hearty kiss. Later, when, by little groups, we peeped into the
dining-tent, we saw Miss Lucindy sitting there at the table, between
two women who evidently thought her the very nicest person that had
ever crossed their wandering track. There she was, an untouched roll
and chop on her plate, a cup of coffee by her side. She was not
talking. She only smiled happily at those who talked to her, and her
eyes shone very bright. We were ashamed; I confess it. For was not
Sudleigh, also, there to see?
"Oh, my soul!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilson, in fretful undertone. "I wish the
old Judge was here!"
Her husband turned and looked at her, and she quailed; not with fear of
him, but at the vision of the outraged truth.
"Well, no," she added, weakly, "I dunno's I wish anything so bad as
that, but I do declare I think there ought to be somebody to keep a
tight grip on Lucindy!"
Who shall deem himself worthy to write the chronicle of that glorious
day? There were so many incidents not set down in the logical drama; so
many side-shows of circumstance! We watched all the mysterious
preparations for the afternoon performance, so far as we were allowed,
with the keenness of the wise, who recognize a special wonder and will
not let it pass unproved. We surrounded Miss Lucindy, when she came
away from her breakfast party, and begged for an exact account of all
her entertainers had said; but she could tell us nothing. She only
reiterated, with eyes sparkling anew, that they were "proper nice
folks, proper nice! and she must go home and get Ellen. If she'd known
they were just like other folks she'd have brought Ellen this morning;
but she'd been afraid there'd be talk that little girls better not
hear."
At noon, we sat about in the shade of the trees along the wall, and ate
delicious cold food from the butter-boxes and baskets our men-folks had
brought over during the forenoon lull; and we assiduously offered
Sudleigh a drink, whenever it passed the counter where barrels of free
spring-water had been set. And then, at the first possible moment, we
paid our fee, and went inside the tent to see the animals. That scrubby
menagerie had not gained in dignity from its transference to canvas
walls. The enclosure was very hot and stuffy; there was a smell of dust
and straw. The lion stretched himself, from time to time, and gave an
angry roar for savage, long-lost joys. One bear, surely new to the
business, kept walking up and down, up and down, moaning, in an abandon
of homesickness. Brad Freeman stood before the cage when I was there.
"Say, Brad," said the Crane boy, slipping his arm into the hunter's, in
a good-fellowship sure to be reciprocated. "Davie Tolman said you's
goin' to fetch over your fox, an' sell him to the circus. Be you?"
"My Lord!" answered Brad, very violently for him, the ever-tolerant.
"No! I'm goin' to let him go. _Look at that!_" And while the Crane boy,
unconcerned, yet puzzled, gave his full attention to the bear, Brad
passed on.
There was a wolf, I remember, darting about his cage, slinking,
furtive, ever on a futile prowl. He especially engaged the interest of
Tom McNeil, who said admiringly, as I, too, looked through the bars,
"Ain't he a prompt little cuss?" I felt that with Tom it was the
fascination of opposites; he never could understand superlative energy.
Just as we were trooping into the larger tent (there were no three
rings, I beg to say, maliciously calculated to distract the attention!
One, of a goodly size, was quite enough for us!) a little voice piped
up, "The snake's got loose!" How we surged and panted, and fought one
another for our sacred lives! In vain were we urged to stand still; we
strove the more. And when a bit of rope perversely and maliciously
coiled itself round Rosa Tolman's ankle, she gave a shriek so loud and
despairing that it undid us anew. If Sheriff Holmes had not come
forward and sworn at us, I believe we should have trampled one another
out of existence; but he seemed so palpably the embodiment of
authority, and his oath the oath undoubtedly selected by legislature
for that very occasion, that we paused, and on the passionate
asseveration of a circus man that the snake was safely in his cage,
consented to be calm. But Aunt Melissa Adams, unstrung by her earlier
experience, would trust no doubtful circumstance. She plodded back into
the animal-tent, assured herself, with her own eyes, of the snake's
presence at his own hearthstone, and came back satisfied, just as the
clown entered the ring. The performance needs no bush. We had palmleaf
fans offered us, pop-corn, and pink lemonade. We sweltered under the
blazing canvas, laughed at the clown's musty fooling, which deserved
rather the reverence due old age, and wondered between whiles if there
would be a shower, and if tent-poles were ever struck. Then it was all
over, and we trailed out, in great bodily discomfort and spiritual joy,
to witness, quite unlooked for, the most vivid drama of the day. Young
Dana Marden was there, he and his wife who lived down in Tiverton
Hollow. Dana was a nephew of Josh, of hapless memory, and "folks said"
that, like Josh, he had "all the Marden setness, once git him riled."
But Mary Worthen had not been in the least afraid of that when she
married him. Before their engagement, some one had casually mentioned
Dana's having inherited "setness" for his patrimony.
"I know it," she said, "and if I had anything to do with him, I'd break
him of it, or I'd break his neck!"
Tiverton had been very considerate in never repeating that speech to
Dana; and his wife, in all their five years of married life, had not
fulfilled her threat. As we were making ready to leave the grounds,
that day, and those who had horses were "tacklin up," we became aware
that Dana, a handsome, solid, fresh-colored fellow, sat in his wagon
with pretty Mary beside him, and that they evidently had no intention
of moving on. Of course we approached, to find out what the trouble
might be.
"We can send word to have Tom Bunker milk the cows," said Dana, with
distinct emphasis, "an' we can stay for the evenin' performance. Or we
can go now. Only, you've got to say which!"
"I don't want to say," returned Mary, placidly, "because I don't know
which you'd rather have. You just tell me _so_ much!"
A frown contracted his brow; he looked a middle-aged man. When he
spoke, his voice grated.
"You tell which, or we'll set here all night, an' I don't speak another
word to you till you do!"
But Mary said nothing.
"My soul!" whispered Mrs. Rivers to me. "She's got herself into it now,
jest as they say Lyddy Ann Marden done, with Josh. She'll have to back
down!"
Several more of those aimless on-lookers, ever ready for the making of
crowds, surged forward. The wagon was blocking the way. We realised
with shame that Sudleigh, too, was here, to say nothing of sister towns
less irritating to our pride. It was Uncle Eli Pike who stepped into
the breach.
"Here, Dana!" he called, and, as we were glad to remember, all the
aliens in the crowd could hear, "I guess that hoss o' yourn's gittin' a
mite balky. I'll lead him a step, if you say so." And without a word of
assent from Dana, he guided the horse out of the grounds, and started
him on the road. We watched the divided couple, on their common way.
Dana was driving, it is true; but we knew, with a heavy certainty, that
he was not speaking to his wife. He was a Marden, and nothing would
make him speak.
This slight but very significant episode sent us home in a soberer mind
than any of us had anticipated, after the gaudy triumphs of the day. We
could not quell our curiosity over the upshot of it all, and that
night, after the chores were done, we sat in the darkness,
interspersing our comments on the spangled butterflies of horse and
hoop with an awed question, now and then, while the minute-hand sped,
"S'pose they've spoke yit?"