When they came out of the Mercer doctor's door William King's fresh
face had gone white, but Miss Harriet walked smiling. At the foot of
the steps the doctor paused and stood an instant leaning on the
hand-rail, as though for support and to get his breath. Miss Harriet
looked at him with concern. "Why, Willy!" she said.
"Miss Harriet," William said, hoarsely, "he may be mistaken. It's
perfectly possible that he is mistaken."
"I guess not, Willy," she said, simply. "Come, now, don't be such a
wet string." She struck him a friendly blow on the shoulder that made
the doctor take a quick step forward to keep his balance; but it gave
him the grip upon himself that for a single instant he had lost.
"And, anyhow," he said, "even if he is right, it may not develop. I've
known a case where it was checked for two years; and then the patient
died of small-pox."
"Pleasant alternative," said Miss Harriet; she was smiling, her face
full of color, her shoulders back, her head up. "Come, Willy, let's
have a spree. Here we are for a day, and Martha's at home. We'll have
a good dinner, and we'll do something interesting. _Hurrah!_" said
Harriet Hutchinson.
And the doctor could do no less than fall into step at that martial
note and march at her side proudly. And by some spiritual contagion
his courage met hers like the clash of swords. They went to get their
good dinner, and Miss Harriet ate it with appetite. Afterwards she
declared they would go to the circus. "It's in town; I saw the tents.
I haven't been to a circus for forty years," she said; "but I know just
how the pink lemonade tastes. You've got to treat, Willy."
"I'll throw in pea-nuts," said William King; and with that they left
the restaurant and went sauntering along the hot, grimy street in the
direction of the open lots beyond the blast-furnaces, where, under a
deep June sky, dazzling even though it was smudged by coils of smoke,
were stretched the circus tents, brave with flags and slapping and
billowing in a joyous wind. William King held on to his hat and looked
at the great, white clouds, domed and shining, piled all along the
west. "We'll get a shower, I'm afraid, Miss Harriet."
"Well, take a pill, Willy, and then it won't hurt you," she told him,
with a laugh that belonged to the sun and wind, to the flags whipping
out on their halyards and the signs of the side-shows bellying from
their guy-ropes, to the blare of music and the eager circus crowd--that
crowd that never changes with changing generations. Still there is the
old man gaping with excited eyes; still the lanky female in spectacles;
the cross elder sister afraid of crushing her fresh skirts; the little
boy absorbed in thought; the little girl who would like to ride on the
Shetland pony when the clown offers any miss in the audience an
opportunity. We know them all, and doubtless they know us, the
patronizing, amused on-lookers, who suddenly become as eager and
absorbed as any graybeard or child in the crowd. We know the red
boxes, too, where men with hard faces and wearied eyes shout
mechanically the same words of vociferous invitation to the side-shows.
Children, pulled along by their elders, would stop, open-mouthed,
before these men; but somehow they never see the wild man or the fat
lady. Ah, the regret for the unseen side-shows!--the lady with the
snakes; the skeleton man; the duel between the educated hyena and his
trainer--that hyena of whom the man in the red box speaks with such
convincing enthusiasm. "_I have been_," cries the strident voice--"_I
have been connected with circuses all my life--all my life, ladies and
gentlemen!--and I give you my sacred word of honor that this is the
most magnificent specimen of the terrible grave-robbing hyena that I
have ever seen!_" Why did we never see that hyena? Why, why did we
always hurry on to the main tent? It is the pang that even paradise
must know, of the lost experience of earth--or perhaps of hell.
"We ought to see the fat lady," said Dr. King.
"I'm afraid we'll be late," Miss Harriet objected, eagerly.
So they pushed on with the impatient, good-natured crowd. The smell of
tan-bark and matted pelts and stale pea-nut shells came in a gust as
they jostled under the flap of the outer tent and found themselves
inside the circle of gilded cages. "Shall we go right in and get our
seats?" William said.
"What! and not look at the animals? Willy, you're crazy. I want to
feed the elephants. Why, there are a lot of them, six or seven."
So they trudged around the ring, their feet sinking deep into the
loose, trampled earth. Miss Harriet poked the monkeys clinging to the
grating of their car, with her big umbrella, and examined the
elephant's hide with professional interest. "Imagine curing that
proboscis," she said. And then they stopped in front of a miserable,
magnificent lion, turning, turning, turning in a cage hardly more than
his own length. Miss Harriet drew in her breath. "It's being trapped
that is so awful, Willy. The consciousness that _you can't get out_.
It isn't the--the pain of it; it's being trapped."
William King, looking at the poor tawny creature of the desert and free
winds and life that dealt death with passion, blinked suddenly behind
his glasses. "But you trap things yourself," he protested, a moment
afterwards.
"Oh, but I don't keep 'em trapped; I kill 'em," she defended herself.
"I couldn't keep things shut up. I'd be as bad as Annie if I saw any
living creature that wasn't free to get out-of-doors." And then she
pushed on to the next cage, and the next; then suddenly feared that
they would not get good seats if they wasted any more time among the
animals. "For we won't have any reserved doings," she said. "I want
to sit on those boards that I sat on forty years ago."
She was as excited as she might have been forty years ago; and pushed
ahead into the big tent, dragging William by the hand, and climbing up
tier after tier, to get a good view of the ring. When they sat down,
she made haste to spread open the flimsy pink sheet of the programme
with its pale type, and read to William, in a loud, ecstatic voice,
just what was going to happen:
"_Display No. 1. Gigantic Pageantric Prelude--presenting Equitational
Exercises, Hippo-dramatical Revivals, Pachydermical Aggregations--the
only terpsichorean Pachyderms ever taught to tread the mazes of the
Quadrille._
"_Display No. 2. Claire St. Jeal and her company--the loveliest
daughters of Italy, and world-famous bareback equestriennes--_"
"You are sure you are not getting tired?" William King interrupted.
"Tired?" she repeated, scornfully. "William, as Matty Barkley would
say, you are a perfect fool. Why should I be tired? I feel first
rate--never better. I wouldn't thank King George to be my uncle! I've
wanted to come to the circus for years. Willy, what will your wife
say?"
"Nothing," said William, significantly.
At which Miss Harriet laughed until the tears stood in her eyes.
"William, you have more sense than I gave you credit for. But I am not
sure that, as your Sunday-school teacher, I ought not to tell you to
confess. Hullo! look what's coming."
Flare of banners! Prancing horses! Roman soldiers in rumbling
gold-and-crimson chariots! Elephants bearing, throned upon their
backs, goddesses of liberty and queens of beauty! Miss Harriet was
leaning forward, her lips parted with excitement. William King looked
at her and drew in his breath.
[Illustration: "MISS HARRIET WAS LEANING FORWARD"]
"'Not more than six months;' God grant not!--I wish it might not be
more than two."
"Willy, read what comes next," she said, shoving the programme at him;
"I can't stop looking."
The canvas was darkening a little overhead, so that William had to put
on his glasses and hold the printed sheet at arm's-length to decipher
the blurred, smudged text sufficiently to say that "Mademoiselle
Orinda, Queen of the Flying Trapeze, would give her marv--"
"William--what shall I do about Annie?" Miss Harriet said.
"You know we will all take care of Miss Annie," he said, tenderly;
"and--"
"Oh, Willy, there's the red lemonade," she interrupted, standing up and
beckoning with her crumpled programme. "Did you ever see so deadly a
drink? You forgot the pea-nuts," she reminded him, reproachfully. And
when William secured his hot, brown-paper bag, she ate the pea-nuts and
watched the changing wonders of the ring with intent eyes. She laughed
aloud at the clown's endeavors to ride a kicking donkey, and when the
educated dogs carried one another about in a wheelbarrow she applauded
generously. "They are wonderful!" she said.
William King looked at her keenly; it was all real. Miss Harriet was
incapable of pretence.
The brilliant day, that had showed between lacings of the tent like
strings of sapphires, had dimmed and dimmed; and by-and-by, unnoticed
at first, there was the drip of rain. Here and there an umbrella was
raised, and once or twice a bedraggled man or woman led out a reluctant
child--"For I ain't a-goin' to have you catch your death of cold for no
trained elephants," a mother said, decidedly, pulling a whining boy
from beside Miss Harriet.
"Perhaps," ventured the doctor, "we really ought to go. I can't have
you 'catch your death of cold,' Miss Harriet."
"I won't die of a cold, William," she said, her eyes narrowing.
And William swore at himself under his breath, but said, with clumsy
jocularity: "Well, not if I can help it. But I don't know why you
should be so sure; it might give you bronchitis for a year."
"I won't have bronchitis for a year," Miss Harriet said, gazing at the
clowns.
And William King swore at himself again.
The rain increased to a downpour; little streams at first dripped, then
poured, upon the thinning benches. The great centre pole was streaming
wet; the clown stood in a puddle, and the red triangle on his
chalk-white forehead melted into a pink smear.
"Really, Miss Harriet," William said, anxiously, "I'm afraid--"
"If you're afraid for yourself, I'll go," she said; "but we ought to
wait for the grand concert. (Ah! there's the man with the red
balloons. If you had a half-dozen children, Willy, as you ought to
have, I'd buy him out.) Well, are you sugar or salt, to be so scared
of a drop of rain?"
She did not look afraid of rain herself when she got up and pushed past
the scattered spectators, her hair glistening with drops, her cheeks
red, her eyes clear. "William," she said, when they got outside and
were hurrying along to catch the stage for Old Chester--"William, that
has done me good. I feel superbly. Do you know, I haven't had an
instant's pain since I first spoke of the thing to you? That's three
days entirely free. Why, such a thing hasn't happened in--in three
months. Just think of that--entirely free. William, I'll cheat you
doctor-men yet." She looked at him with glowing courage. "I feel so
well," she said.
She held out her hand, there in the rain on the black cinder-path, and
William King struck his into it with a sort of shout.
"Hurrah!" he said, as she had said when they had come out from hearing
the sentence in the Mercer doctor's office.
The long ride home in the stage, in which they were the only
passengers, was perhaps a descending scale.... At first they talked of
the circus. "I liked the man and the bear best," William said.
"Oh, he wasn't as fine as that beautiful lady in pink petticoats who
rode the fat, white horse. Did you ever see a horse with so broad a
back, Willy? Why, I could have ridden him myself."
"He would need a broad back," William said; and Miss Harriet told him
to hold his tongue and not be impudent. The rain was pattering on the
roof and streaming down the windows, and in the dark, damp cavern of
the stage they could not see each other's face very well; but the
stretches of tense silence in the circus talk made William King's heart
beat heavily, although he burst out gayly that the afternoon had
brought back his youth. "Miss Harriet, when you were a child, didn't
you always want to poke around under the seats when it was over and
find things? William Rives once found five cents. But William would
find five cents in the Desert of Sahara. I never had his luck, but I
was confident that watches were dropped freely by the spectators."
"Of course," cried Miss Harriet. "Or diamond-rings. My fancy led me
towards diamond-rings. But I suppose you never knew the envy of the
ladies' clothes? Dear me--those petticoats!"
"The ring-master's boots were very bitter to me; but my greatest desire
was--"
"Willy," Miss Harriet said, hoarsely, "I don't want anybody to know."
"Of course not," William King said. "Why should they? We may hold
this thing at bay for--"
"We will hold it at bay," she said, with passion. "I will! I _will_!
Do you hear me?"
Willy King murmured something inarticulately; his eyes suddenly smarted.
The ride to Old Chester seemed to him interminable; and when, after
wandering snatches of talk about the circus, the stage at last drew up
at the green gate in Miss Harriet's privet hedge, his nerves were tense
and his face haggard with fatigue.
At home, at his belated supper-table, his good Martha was very severe
with him. "You oughtn't to allow yourself to get so tired; it's wrong.
You could just as well as not have ordered your things by mail. I must
say, William, flatly and frankly, that a doctor ought to have more
sense. I hope there was nobody in the stage you knew to talk you to
death?"
"Miss Harriet came down," William said, "but she hadn't much to say."
"I suppose she went to buy some of her horrid supplies?" Martha said.
"I can't understand that woman--catching things in traps. How would
she like to be caught in a trap? I asked her once--because I am always
perfectly frank with people. 'How would you like to be caught in a
trap, Miss Harriet?' I said. And she said, 'Oh, Annie would let me
out.' You never can get a straight answer out of Harriet Hutchinson."
"My dear, I'll take another cup of tea. Stronger, please."
"My dear, strong tea isn't good for you," Martha said.