He was fair, undersized, and short-sighted, and the necktie he
had chosen was of a vivid salmon-pink, trying to his complexion,
which had been injured by overwork and close confinement in a glass
counting-hutch lighted by electricity, and heated by steam. He
followed his companion, who was a smart, bustling young salesman
with a lady-killing reputation, and sporting proclivities; and as he
went he smiled a little vaguely, and his mouth was not quite shut,
a negligence which deprives the expression of intellectuality. They
had fauteuil seats so close to the Ring that their knees rubbed
against the low velvet-cushioned barrier that enclosed the sand-strewn
space, which seemed to Mr. Lanter to be a brown central-patch, in a
gorgeous, multi-colored dream. The dome above, all glass and gilding,
the pretty women in the boxes, the perambulating vendors of candy and
ices, the orchestra tuning up in a gilded balcony on the left of the
stage, the whiffs of menagerie, gas, and stabling which escaped from
the coulisses, the people who pushed past into their places, Madame
Smithers trilling and piping in emulation of the feathered songsters
of American groves, the Centaur Family upon their gaily-trapped
steeds, the bursts of applause, the shouts of laughter, were all made
of dream-stuff.... But when heavy tableau-curtains rose upon a scene
representing a mediæval banqueting-hall, and revealed the American
Girl Giantess, throned upon a high seat, arrayed in gilded chain-mail
and flowing purple draperies, a sword in her large white right hand,
a crimson cloak upon her shoulders and a dragon-crested helm upon her
large fair head, the start Mr. Lanter gave would have awakened any
ordinary sleeper. But the dream closed in again, as Miss Minota rose,
and, bowing to the right, to the left, to the middle, descended the
baize-covered staircase which led from the stage to the Ring.... Other
spectators saw a young woman monstrously overgrown, with tow-colored
hairplaits as thick as coir-cable, and blue eyes as round as silver
dollars, who was well-proportioned in her huge way, and who, if looked
at through the wrong end of an opera-glass, when divested of her tawdry
theatrical trappings, might have appeared an honest, ordinary young
person of average good looks. But Mr. Lanter saw a golden roof-ridge
and a ring of magic fire roaring up, and the Brunhild of his visions;
and breathed hard, and felt a clammy sensation about the palms of
the hands, while his heart drummed heavily against the lining of his
ready-made waistcoat. He must have been very pale or very purple in the
face, for his companion nudged him.
“Guess you’re feeling off color!... Like to get out into the air?... If
so, I’ll keep your seat,” he whispered; but Mr. Lanter shook his head.
The band struck up a march, Miss Minota descended into the arena,
a voluble gentleman in evening dress, who acted as showman, and,
when necessary, as interpreter, walking in the shadow of her
elbow. She seemed, indeed, an overwhelming example of feminine
physical development as she gravely performed her round, replying
in monosyllables to the remarks that were made to her by members of
the audience, complying with their expressed desire to shake her
enormous hand. Mr. Lanter was hot and cold by turns as her monumental
proportions drew nearer; he meant to rise in his place and boldly
engage her in conversation; he got as far as getting on his legs.
It seemed that the large blue eyes of the giantess dropped upon him
inquiringly; he almost fancied her about to pause. But his tongue
refused to utter the word which would have arrested her progress....
She swept past, and it was as though the mainsail of a yacht had gone
over on the starboard tack, emptying a whole breeze out of an acre of
canvas. Another moment and she had ascended to the stage, her draperies
of crimson and purple trailing as she went; she had lifted her weights,
respectively guaranteed at one hundred and one hundred and forty pounds
avoirdupois; she had made her three bows, and the tableau-curtains had
descended and closed. Thenceforward Mr. Lanter took no interest in the
entertainment. With fishy eyes he sat, retrospective, unobservant; and
his companion, the lively Mr. Goter, found him mighty dull.
“Oh, look here!... Say now! what’s up with you?” he protested, as they
walked home together through the crowded streets.
The clang of street-car gongs, the intermittent roar and rattle of
the elevated railway, mingled with the blare of tin horns, and the
clamor of voices. It was hot May weather, and there was a smell upon
the languid air that seemed to combine in itself the flavor of rotten
fruit, the musky odor of African skins, the pungent acridity of frying
oil, and the rankness of coarse tobacco.
“Up with me? Why, I’m all right,” said Mr. Lanter, “and I’ve had a real
good time, thanks to you, old man!”
“Come, have a drink?” said the pacified Goter, and they turned in at
the swing doors of a beer saloon. “Bully, wasn’t she?” he broke out,
after ordering two iced bocks. “My style all over! Guess I’ve a good
mind to take her on!” and he winked knowingly.
Mr. Lanter set down his tall glass of untasted Münchener. “Look here,
who are you talking about?” He was salmon-pink to the edge of his black
Derby hat, and his pale blue eyes had angry sparks in them.
“That girl that did the jugglin’ business on the plank-and-ladder,”
responded Goter. “Black eyes, black hair, high color, and spankin’
action. Did you s’pose I meant that walkin’ grain-elevator in the tin
armor? No, sir!”
He had yet another fulminating witticism on hand, and he discharged it.
Before it had done crackling he saw stars, for the placable Lanter had
suddenly smitten him upon the nose.
“Good thunder! what are you up to, anyway?” spluttered the astonished
Mr. Goter.
“Hol’ off there! Go easy!” shouted the barkeeper. Half a dozen men,
their drinks in their hands, their hats tilted back from interested
faces, had gathered round, and a colored boy was mopping the
red-stained marble table with a wet cloth.
“He--he insulted a lady!” gasped Mr. Lanter, “and I struck him! If he
does it again--I’ll do it again!... Mind that!” The tone and the look
with which he delivered the final warning convinced Mr. Goter that he
had better mind.
Thenceforward he ceased to regard Mr. Lanter as a “Willie” and Mr.
Lanter ceased to regard himself as a Christian young man. His own
violence had shocked him. There must be a good deal of cold reason, he
reflected, at the bottom of Mrs. Lanter’s inveterate prejudice against
public places of entertainment, and his conscience pricked him. But she
had made him promise that he would not go to “theaters,” and he salved
his conscience by reminding himself that he had kept his word. But he
went again and yet again to Kneeman’s Star Musée. And upon the third
occasion he mustered up courage to speak to Miss Minota.
“How do you do?” he blurted out. Then as an afterthought he blurted
out, “Mademoiselle.” He had to tilt his head quite back to look up into
Miss Minota’s large fair moon-face. He wondered what she would say if
anybody told her that she was his ideal of womanhood?
“I guess I am very well, thank you,” responded the giantess. She had a
plaintive, mooing voice, and despite the usage of a public career, she
seemed little less bashful than Mr. Lanter.
“Do you like N’York?” Mr. Lanter inquired.
“Well,” Miss Minota returned, “I guess I do!” She sighed as she
continued: “But one place is much the same as another to you--when you
don’t see anythin’ more of it than the inside of the hotel where you
happen to be located, and the inside of the hall where you chance to be
exhibitin’.”
“Why, now, that’s a shame!” said Mr. Lanter, growing red with sympathy.
“Don’t your friends take you around some, when you feel you’d like to
go?”
“I suppose they’d be real pleased,” said Miss Minota, after an
instant’s consideration, “if I didn’t attract so much attention.
But when you’re too big to go on the cars, like other folk, or pass
along the sidewalk without blockin’ it----” She shrugged her enormous
shoulders with a little air of fatigue, and the gentleman in evening
dress, who officiated as showman, gave her the signal to move.
“Good-afternoon!” she said graciously, and passed on.
But Mr. Lanter’s brain was surging with sympathy. “My gracious!” he
cried to himself, “is it possible that that splendid creature isn’t
happy?” A vague look of gentle melancholy was certainly floating on the
surface of those limpid china-blue eyes. He breathed through his nose
and clenched his fists, one of which already bore a proof impression
of Mr. Goter’s projecting front tooth. And the very next half-holiday
found him waiting at the side-door through which professionals found
entrance to the back scenes of Kneeman’s. One or two sallow, cropped
men in furred overcoats passed in, one of them in company with a
black-eyed, vivacious, middle-aged woman, who conversed with her
fingers, her shoulders, and every muscle of her face--and in whom Mr.
Lanter recognized Goter’s houri. Then a vehicle like a hotel-omnibus,
only taller and shinier, drawn by a pair of stout horses, pulled up by
the curb; two men, moustached, and dressed in a kind of buff uniform
faced with red (Mr. Lanter recognized it as the livery common to the
attendants of the Musée), got down from the box seat and opened the
omnibus door.... Mr. Lanter’s heart thumped wildly as a colossal foot
and ankle, appareled in a pink silk stocking and rosetted black satin
shoe, cautiously descended to the ground, and the rest of Miss Minota
followed by gradual instalments until the giantess stood upright on
the pavement, her nine feet of height handsomely accentuated by an
umbrageous hat, with a plume of nodding feathers which might have
served for the central ornament of a canopy of state. She inclined this
tremendous headgear in gracious recognition of Mr. Lanter. Mr. Lanter
took off his hat with his best manner, and boldly stepped forward.
A large pink flush invaded the giantess’s immense cheeks, previously
of a pale or dough-colored complexion. “Won’t you walk in a minute?”
she said, in a timid, fluttering way. Then, not without difficulty, she
went in at the side-door, Mr. Lanter followed, the attendants mounted
to their seats, and the large shiny omnibus drove away.
The sensation of moving and speaking in a dream bore heavily upon Mr.
Lanter as he followed the tall, stooping figure of the giantess up
a short flight of stairs and through what seemed to be a labyrinth
of winding passages, each of which seemed more dark and dusky than
the preceding one, and conveyed a stronger olfactory impression
of gas, mice, and turpentine. But the labyrinth ended in a vast
echoing chaos of shaky canvas scenes and machinery, which Miss
Minota introduced as the stage. The iron curtain that separated the
stage from the auditorium was down, and they stood together in the
midst of a heterogeneous jumble of properties among which Mr. Lanter
recognized the plank-and-ladder of the equilibrists, the gilded props
and rubber-covered block-tackle used by the tight-rope dancer, the
belled and ribboned saddles employed by the Centaur Family, and Miss
Minota’s mediæval throne, flanked by the gilded weights employed in her
exhibition of manual strength.
“Won’t you----” Involuntarily he pointed to the gaudy throne-seat.
“Well,” said the giantess, “I don’t know but what I will sit down--just
a minute.” Seated, her large round face and china-blue, rather foolish
eyes were above the level of Mr. Lanter’s as he stood before her.
Certainly, but for the suet dumpling pallor of her fair complexion and
a prevailing flabbiness, the result of insufficient exercise, Miss
Minota would have been good-looking. “I guess I ought to thank you for
being so polite!” she said, and her tone and accent were homely as
those of the New England village-folk among whom Mr. Lanter had been
raised. “I guess you thought I acted like I was silly just now; but
boys do scare me so.... If there’s one thing more than another I dasn’t
face, it’s a boy; and you bet boys know it, and lay along for me--the
nasty little things! So there’s another reason why I can’t go round
like other folks--even if the management wouldn’t object to my givin’
the show away!” She folded her immense hands upon her knees and looked
placidly at Mr. Lanter.
“But why should the management object, Miss--Mademoiselle?” asked Mr.
Lanter, standing, very red and stiff and embarrassed, at Miss Minota’s
knee, like a somewhat dull little boy about to say a lesson.
“Because once folks have seen me for nothin’, they’ll leave the
pay-place alone,” said Miss Minota. “It’s human natur’, take it how you
will. An’ I’m only Mademoiselle on the posters. My first professional
exhibitin’ tour was in the State of Minnesota, an’ that’s how I got
my professional name. My own name seemed kind of one-horse for a
poster--Quilt--Miss Hattie Quilt of Smartsville, New Hampshire, I was
when I lived to-home.”
“I’ve been to Smartsville,” said Mr. Lanter eagerly, as though it were
a bond. “It’s only forty miles from Saunderstown where I was raised.
My mother, Mrs. Lanter, she lives there now. And Quilt’s a name I’ve
heard.... There was old Deacon Quilt that had the lawsuit----”
“I guess he was my grandfather!” said Miss Minota soberly.
Mr. Lanter tilted his head, trying to remember what the lawsuit had
been about.
“It was a suit about an iron bedstead,” said Miss Minota. “It’s ’most
ten years ago. Grandfather bought it for me, because I’d crowded
mother out of hers. We slep’ together till I was ’bout eleven years
old. Well, grandfather measured me himself for that bed, but it didn’t
get delivered for a month on end, and I’d growed beyond my measure,
and didn’t fit it, or it didn’t fit me. Mother tried to convince the
old man by showin’ him my frocks--she’d let ’em down eight inches
only four weeks back, an’ they was hardly on speakin’ terms with my
boot-tops by then--but he said on’y Jonah’s gourd growed at that rate,
an’ the dry-goods man must change the bedstead or he’d go to law. An’
the dry-goods man said rather than have legal trouble he’d change the
bed for a bigger, ’n he did; but the new one was six weeks in gettin’
delivered, and it was the same story over again--it didn’t fit me,
nohow! So grandfather went to law, an’ the case was tried in the
Smartsville court-house, an’ grandfather would ’a got damages if the
dry-goods man’s lawyer hadn’t asked to have me produced in court. It
was my first public appearance, an’ I was dretful shy. People used to
laugh at me bein’ so shy, but you’ve no idee what a tryin’ thing it is
bein’ bigger ’n anybody else--when you first find it out!” The large
form of Miss Minota was convulsed by a shudder. “You’d hide yourself in
a mousehole, if it was big enough to hold you. Well, they called Miss
Hattie Quilt, an’ I got up an’ straightened out, for I’d been settin’
cramped in a kind of pew, an’ it seemed even to myself as if I’d never
end. An’ the judge looked at me through his glasses. My! didn’t he
stare! An’ he asked how old I was, an’ I said ‘Risin’ twelve’; an’ the
judge allowed if I kep’ on risin’ I might get somewheres in time; an’
that a man with a granddaughter like that growin’ up about him ought to
provide india-rubber bedsteads an’ a sliding roof. An’ all the folks
laughed an’ grandfather had to pay sixty dollars damages an’ costs.”
Miss Minota’s gentle, monotonous, mooing voice left off talking; she
paused to draw breath.
“And then----?” said Mr. Lanter, in whose brain dim and faded hearsays
connected with the Quilt law-case were stirring.
“Then grandfather took a kind of down on me,” Miss Minota explained,
“though he’d set a deal of store on me before. An’ mother used to
beg me with tears in her eyes not to grow at that rate; an’ I tried
not--hard; but I kep’ on. I stinted meals an’ wore an iron pound-weight
on my head under my hat--but still I kep’ on. An’ at last grandfather
opinioned to father and mother it was time to let out the house--or to
let out me. So they hired me to Dan Slater--perhaps you’ve heard of
Slater’s Traveling Museum of Marvels--an’----”
“I should have thought they’d been ashamed!” burst out Mr. Lanter,
flushing to the temples. “Their own flesh and blood!”
“That’s what other people kep’ saying to grandfather, ‘your own flesh
and blood’!” returned Miss Minota. “But all grandfather ever said was
that there was more flesh and blood than he’d bargained for, and he’d
thank ’em to ’tend to their own affairs.”
“I don’t think he was a nice kind of man,” said little Mr. Lanter,
thrilling with indignation to his toes and finger-tips, “to send a
young girl away from her home and her mother--out into the world--among
strangers who might have treated her badly!” He looked up at his ideal
of womanhood with passionate chivalry.
“Oh, but they didn’t treat me badly!” said Miss Minota. “Dan Slater
was real kind. An’ when I outgrew the caravan I traveled in at first,
he telescoped two together--an’ as one of ’em had been made for the
giraffe, I got on pretty well. But I’ve never got used to bein’ made a
show of, an’ stared at, and asked questions by people, whether they’re
ordinary folks or Kings an’ Queens an’ Serene Highnesses--an’ I guess I
never will. Perhaps you wouldn’t believe it’s lonsome to be bigger ’n
anybody else--but it makes me feel so, times!”
“I wish I could prevent your feeling lonesome!” burst out Mr. Lanter,
before he was aware. “I wish I could carry you right away from
this”--he waved his hand comprehensively--“and take care of you. I
wouldn’t let a rough breath blow on you as I could help. I’d stand
between you and the world, and shelter you--I’d spend my life in doing
it--and spend it gladly!” He forgot himself in what he was saying, and
therefore did not blush, but his awkward, plain, and homely little
figure in its badly-fitting store clothes was a spectacle to smile
at. “Oh! if you knew all I’d thought and dreamed of since I saw you
first!” he said, with a quiver of passion in his voice. “It seems like
a dream to be talking to you here.... If it didn’t how could I tell
you straight out as I am telling you now, what I haven’t even had the
courage to write--that I--I----”
Miss Minota modestly reared her Alpine height from the mediæval throne
as a trampling of feet sounded from the dusty passage beyond. “I guess
I have got to go and dress,” she said modestly.
“Oh, please wait one minute!” pleaded Mr. Lanter. “You must know it, if
you never speak to me or look at me again. I think you the grandest,
most glorious woman I ever saw! I’m ready to die for you right now, if
the dying of a common store clerk would be any use! But it wouldn’t,”
said Mr. Lanter, “and so I must go on thinking of you, and worshipping
you, and loving you to the end of my days----” He broke down, blushing
and stammering.
“Oh, my!” cried Miss Minota. In her surprise she sat down again so
unguardedly that the mediæval throne creaked and tottered. “You don’t
mean it? Honest, you don’t?”
“I mean it with all my soul!” asseverated Mr. Lanter.
Miss Minota blushed a dull red all over her immense face, as she met
the young man’s rather ugly, candid gaze. Then her large china-blue
eyes brimmed over; she pulled from her pocket a cambric handkerchief
as large as the mainsail of a toy yacht, and began to cry like a
thunder-cloud.
“Don’t!” begged Mr. Lanter. “Please don’t! If you’re angry with me I
don’t know what I should do. I don’t, indeed!” He was dreadfully in
earnest, and quite pale, and large drops stood upon his forehead, for
the air in the Musée was insufferably hot and close. There was a smell
of charred wood and blistering paint, and the unsettled dust of the
place made the straggling rays of daylight that bored their way into it
seem blue and smoky. A sudden clamor of voices broke out below, almost
under the stage it seemed, and then came the trampling of feet, the
crash of broken glass, and the smell of some spilled chemical mingled
with the grosser odors of the place. The scent, the stir, the sounds,
seemed vaguely associated in Mr. Lanter’s mind with something dangerous
and sinister. But he was listening to Miss Minota.
“I ain’t a mite angry,” said the giantess, giving her overflowing eyes
a final dab with the handkerchief, now crumpled into a damp ball. “I
should hate to have you believe it! I--I think you’re real generous,
an’ kind, an’ noble. And I shall be grateful to you all my life”--she
mopped her eyes again--“for makin’ me feel--for once--like I’d been an
ordinary-sized girl; for I--I’ll own I have fretted considerable. But
there, when things can’t be altered, anyhow, it’s no good frettin’, is
it? An’, of course, there could never be nothin’ between us--I couldn’t
ever play it so low down on a man that’s as generous and kind as you
are, as to say there could be. But I’m just as obliged. And now I’ll
say good-bye, and if we don’t never meet again you’re to remember I was
grateful. My land! I do believe the show’s afire!”
For the crackling, blistering heat that parched the flooring underfoot,
with the sudden volume of smoke that rolled upward, betrayed the
condition of things no less than the thin tongues of flame that
licked upward between the boards. In the regions under the stage the
conflagration had broken out; they heard the shouts of the stage-hands,
the crash of glass fire-bombs breaking one after another, and next
moment a solitary man, smoke-blackened and red-faced, burst upward from
the regions below, and, rushing to the fire-hose, coiled like a brown
snake against the bare masonry of the wall, began to haul it down. As
the man tugged and swore at the hose, other voices shouted and other
feet clattered, and half a dozen other men, singed and blackened like
so many demons, emerged as the first had done, from those conjectural
lower depths.
“It’s no use--no use!” they shouted as they ran, and the fireman
dropped the hose and ran with them. They did not have to cross the
charring, blistering stage, for they were on the right side for the
passage-way. They fought and struggled, shrieking, in the narrow exit,
blocked by their terrified bodies.
“Come! Didn’t you hear?” shouted Mr. Lanter. He caught Miss Minota by
the skirt and tugged at it like a faithful terrier. “Run!” he shouted
again. But a choking volume of smoke, a blast of fiercer heat fanned
up from below. The boards of the stage were now in flames. And the
flames were of beautiful, ravishingly-delicate shades of blue and
hyacinth and orange-red. And they devoured where they licked with a
deadly greed and a purring, crackling kind of satisfaction.... “Come!”
Mr. Lanter shouted again. The giantess had sunk upon her knees,
he shook her violently by the shoulder, and she lifted her large,
terrified face and staring blue eyes, now for the first time upon a
level with his own.
“I dasn’t!” she cried. “The floor wouldn’t bear me--I should never
git across! Save yourself while you have time!” As she sobbed and
shuddered, Mr. Lanter put his arm round her, as though she had been
quite an ordinary-sized girl.
“Pluck up!” he shouted, for the fire roared as triumphantly as though
Kneeman’s Star Musée were the choicest morsel in the world. “I’ll get
you out of this or burn with you, by--thunder!” and he kissed her. The
kiss seemed to revive Miss Minota, for she gasped, and struggled to her
feet, and looked with him upon a wall of rejoicing flame that soared
upward between them and the passage-way. “These doors behind us--where
do they lead?” Mr. Lanter shouted, and Miss Minota shouted back, “To
the dressing-rooms!”
There was no way of escape before them; the iron curtain walled them
in. As the slim greedy tongues of fire began to lick the boards on
which they stood, they retreated to the back of the stage. But the
stifling smoke and the greedy fire followed them, and the end of things
seemed not far off.... It seemed quite natural now that they should be
holding hands. They were blackened both, and smoke-begrimed, parched
and giddy with the terrific heat, and the incandescent air fanned on
their smirched faces as though the wings of Azrael had stirred it; but
they were a comfort to each other. To be heard by each other in that
fiendish tumult of insentient things was impossible; but they pressed
close to one another like children in the smoky dark, and held one
another’s hands.