Boone in his gay young boyhood, when he danced minuets with the
Governor's daughter, and entertained his college friends in lordly style
on the old plantation. Back of that time when the restlessness of his
'teens sent him roving over the Alleghanies to the frontier, regardless
of their long-cherished ambitions for him. Back of the time when in a
sudden mad whim he had married a settler's pretty daughter, whom he was
ashamed to take back to civilization when he thought of the Baltimore
belles to whom he had paid boyish court. He had not stopped to consider
her rough speech and uncouth manners. He had been a long time out in the
wilderness, he was only twenty, and her full red lips tempted him.
If the dreams could only have stopped then, that little space she slept,
while the circus band thrummed and drummed inside the tent, and the
shadows of the hot August afternoon lengthened under the still trees
outside, would have been a blessed respite. But they repeated the
unpleasant parts as well. They came on down to the night of that
unwelcome arrival. They showed her the days when Boone lay prostrated
with a slow malarial fever; the days when the fierce heat made him drag
his pallet desperately from one corner to another across the bare
puncheons, trying to find a spot where he could be comfortable. She
could see him lying as he had so often lain, with his face turned toward
the back door, looking out with aching eyes on the tall corn that filled
the little clearing. In his feverish wanderings he complained that it
was crowding up around the house trying to choke him. And there was
little William, little nine-year-old William, sitting on the floor
beside him, attempting to flap away the flies with a bunch of walnut
leaves. There were long intervals sometimes when the heat overpowered
the child with drowsiness. Then the walnut branch wavered uncertainly or
stopped in mid-air, while he leaned against the table leg with closed
eyes and open mouth. Sometimes Miranda slept on the door-step,
bare-footed, as usual, with a dirty bandage around her sprained ankle.
In that short sleep she seemed to relive the whole summer, that had
dragged on until her sense of dependence grew to be intolerable.
Miranda's shrill complaining came penetrating again into the tiny room
where she sat by her husband's bed, and the old head was bowed once more
on his pillow as she sobbed: "Oh, William, dear heart, if the Lord would
only take us away together! I cannot bear to be a burden to any one!" It
was the sound of her own sobbing that awakened her, and she sat up with
a sudden start, realizing that she had been asleep. She must have slept
a long time. In that interval of unconsciousness the tavern-keeper from
Burnville had erected a rival stand a few rods away.
She saw with dismay his attractive display of "store" goods. Then her
face flushed as he began to set out whisky bottles and glasses. Her
first impulse was to gather up her belongings and get home as quickly as
possible. In her perplexity she looked around for little William.
Regarding a circus with such contempt herself, it had never occurred to
her that he would care to see it.
He was a timid little fellow, who always hid when company came to the
house, and he had never been away from home more than a dozen times in
his life. The crowds frightened him, and he stayed as closely as a
shadow at his grandmother's elbow until the music began. Then he forgot
himself. It thrilled him indescribably, and he watched with longing eyes
as the people crowded into the tent. It seemed to him that he must
certainly go wild if he could not follow, but they had sold nothing.
Even if they had, he would not have dared to ask for enough money to pay
his admission, it seemed such an enormous sum. As she began to nod in
her chair he began to edge nearer the tent. He could catch now and then
a word of the clown's jokes, and hear the roars of laughter that
followed. When the clown began to sing, William had one ear pressed
against the tent. People clapped and cheered uproariously at the last
line of every stanza. He could not hear enough of the words to
understand why. In the general commotion he was conscious of only one
thing: he was on the outside of that tent, and he must get inside or
die.
Regardless of consequences, he threw himself on the grass and wriggled
around until he succeeded in squeezing himself under the canvas. There
was a moment of dizzy bewilderment as he sat up and looked around. Then
some cold, squirming thing touched the back of his neck. He gave a
smothered cry of terror; it was the elephant's trunk. He had come up
directly under the animal "from t'other side of the world, that could
eat a six-foot cock of hay at one meal."
As he sat there, shivering and blubbering, afraid to move because he did
not know which end of the clumsy monster was head and which tail, he
heard a loud guffaw. The pock-marked Irishman who had charge of the
nine-banded armadillo had seen the little side-show, and it doubled him
up with laughter. He roared and slapped his thigh and laughed again
until he was out of breath. Then he gravely wiped his eyes and drew the
boy out from under the great animal. William clung to him, sobbing. Then
the warm-hearted fellow, seeing that he was really terrified, took him
around and showed him all the sights. In the delight of that hour, home,
grandmother, and the world outside were completely forgotten.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Ratcliffe sat wondering what had become of the boy.
People began to straggle out of the tent. There was to be another
performance after dark, and she expected to find her customers among
those who stayed for that. The tavern-keeper began calling attention to
his refreshments in a facetious way that drew an amused crowd around
him. Her hopes sank, as group after group passed her without stopping.
Two young fellows from the village who had been drinking pushed roughly
against her table.
"Hi, Granny!" hiccoughed one of them. "Purty fine doughnuts, ole girl!"
He gathered up a plateful, and tried to find his pocket with unsteady
fingers. She stood up with a sickening feeling of helplessness, and
looked around appealingly. Just then a heavy hand struck the fellow in
the mouth, and jerked him back by his coat-collar. The pock-marked
Irishman, to whom the bewildered little William still clung, had
undertaken to find the boy's grandmother for him. The child's artless
story had aroused his warmest sympathies, and nothing could have given
him greater pleasure than this opportunity to fight for her.
"Put thim back, you ugly thafe o' the worruld," he roared, "or Oi'll
throw yez entoirely over the sorcuss tint!"
The man bristled up for a fight, but one look into the big Irishman's
glowering eyes sobered him enough to make him drop the cakes and slink
away.
The Irishman looked embarrassed as Mrs. Ratcliffe began to thank him
with tears in her eyes, and hurried back to the tent. The look of
distress deepened on her face. Everybody passed her table for the one
made popular by the loud-voiced man who knew so well how to advertise
his wares. With a stifled groan she looked around on the great pile of
provisions she had brought. What quantities of good material utterly
wasted! What would Miranda say?
As she looked around her in dismay, she saw the clown coming toward her,
still in his cap and bells. He had been watching the scene from a
distance. Her distress was pitiful. To be compelled to wait on this
jesting fool like any common bar-maid would fill her cup of degradation
to overflowing. What could she do if he accosted her familiarly as he
did every one else?
He leaned over and took off his grotesque cap. "Madam," he said, in a
low, respectful tone, "I have no money, but if you will kindly give me a
cake and a mug of cider, you shall soon have plenty of customers."
Greatly surprised, she filled him a cup, wondering what he would do.
There was a rush for that part of the grounds as the hero of the hour
appeared. He had been funny enough in the ring, but now they found his
jokes irresistible. His exaggerated praises of all he ate and drank were
laughed at, but everybody followed his example. More than one gawky boy
bought something for the sake of being made the subject of his
flattering witticisms. The tavern-keeper called and sang in vain. As
long as the clown told funny stories and praised Mrs. Ratcliffe's
gingerbread, all other allurements were powerless. He stayed with her
until the last cake had been bought and the cider barrel was empty.
It was nearly sundown when she started home. Jim came up to roll the
empty barrel on to the sled, to place her chair against it, and help
little William hitch up the oxen; but when she looked around to thank
the little clown, he had disappeared. No one could tell where he had
gone.
Never in her girlhood, rolling home in the stately family coach from
some gay social conquest, had she felt so victorious. She jingled the
silk reticule at her side with childish pleasure. She could hardly wait
for the slow oxen to plod the two long miles toward home, and when they
stopped in front of the little cabin she was trembling with eagerness.
Hurrying up the path through the gathering dusk, she poured her treasure
out on her husband's bed.
"Look!" she cried, laying her face on the pillow and slipping an arm
around his neck. "We are going back to Maryland, dear heart!" She
nestled her faded cheek against his with a happy little sob. "Oh,
William, we need not be a burden any longer, for we're going home
to-morrow!"
* * * * *
Later, the full August moon swung up over the edge of the forest. It
flooded the little clearing with its white light, and turned the dusty
road in front of the cabin to a broad band of silver. A slow, steady
tramp of many feet marching across a wooden bridge in the distance fell
on the intense stillness of the summer night.
"It's the circus," said Boone, raising his head to listen. "I reckon
they're travellin' by night on account of the heat, and they'll be
pushin' on down to the river."
His wife limped to the door and sat down on the step to watch for its
coming, but his mother hurried out to the fence and leaned across the
bars, waiting.
A strange procession of unwieldy monsters, never before seen in this
peaceful woodland, loomed up in the distance, huge and black, while a
stranger procession of fantastic shadows stalked grimly by its side. The
sleepy keepers dozed in their saddles, filing by in ghostly silence,
save for the clanking of trace-chains and the creaking of the heavy lion
cages.
At the extreme end of the long line came the tired little clown on the
trick mule. A sorrier-looking object could not be imagined, as he sat
with his knees drawn up and his head bent dejectedly down. He did not
notice the figure leaning eagerly over the bars, until she called him.
Then he looked up with a start. The next instant he had dismounted and
was standing bare-headed in the road before her. The moonlight made a
halo of her white hair, and lighted up her gentle, aristocratic face
with something of its old high-born beauty.
"I wanted to thank you," she said, holding out her slender hand to the
painted little jester with the gracious dignity that had always been her
charm. "You disappeared this afternoon before I could tell you how much
your courtesy has done for me and mine."
He bowed low over the little hand.
"I bid you farewell, sir," she added gently. "The truest gentleman I
have met in many a day!" It was the recognition that he had craved. She
had seen the man through the motley. He looked up, his face glowing as
if that womanly recognition had knighted him; and with the remembrance
of that touch resting on him like a royal accolade, he rode on after the
procession, into the depths of the moonlighted forest.
The Fourth Traveler
Wexley Snathers
By Way of an Inherited Circus
ONLY one question was asked in the streets of Gentryville that
afternoon, and it was asked from the Court-house Square to the last
corner grocery in the straggling outskirts:
"If _you_ were an undertaker like Wexley Snathers, and had a circus left
to you by will, what would you do with it?" When the question was worn
threadbare in business circles, it was taken home to bandy around the
village supper-tables, with the final insistent emphasis, "Well, what
_would_ you do, anyhow, if you were in Wex Snathers's place?"
It would have been an intense relief to the man in question if the
village could have settled the problem for him. Nothing had ever weighed
so heavily upon him, not even the responsibilities of his first
personally conducted funeral occasion.
All the afternoon he sat in the rear of his little coffin shop,
floundering again and again through the confusing phrases of a legal
document spread out before him. It notified him of the death of one
Mortimer Napoleon Bennet, a travelling showman, who had left him heir to
possessions valued at several thousands of dollars.
So bewildering was the unexpected news and the legal terms in which it
was conveyed, that it was some time before Wexley's slow brain grasped
the fact that the deceased was not a stranger, but only red-headed
"Pole" Bennet, an old play-fellow, who had run away from home over
thirty years before. Next, his stumpy forefinger guided his spectacles
twice through the entire document before he realized that _he_ was now
the owner of all the ungodly goods and chattels enumerated therein.
"Lordy!" he groaned, as he checked off the various items. "Me, a deacon
in the church, to be ownin' four gilded circus chariots and a steam
calliope, to say nothin' of a trick elephant and a pair of dancin'
cinnamon bears. It's downright scandalous! Pole always _was_ a-gittin'
me into hot water. _Meant_ all right! Had a heart as big as a meetin'
house, but he was at the bottom of every lickin' I ever got in my life.
Mebbe not havin' any next of kin, he felt he sorter owed it to me to
make me his heir."
Again his finger travelled slowly down the page to the clause in which
three freaks connected with the side shows were especially commended to
his care--an armless dwarf and the Wild Twins of Borneo. The lawyer's
letter explained that they had long been pensioners upon the bounty of
the deceased, and had the promise of the dying man that "Wex" would be
good to them.
"Bug the luck!" groaned the undertaker, as the full meaning of this
clause also dawned upon him. "Guardeen to an armless dwarf and two wild
twins of Borneo! Pole oughtn't to 'a' done me that way. I'll be the
laughing stock of the town, and that'll ruin my chances for ever with
Sade."
Glowering over his spectacles, he leaned through the open window and
spat testily out into the cluttered back yard. It was some time before
he drew in his shoulders. When a diffident old bachelor has obstinately
courted a girl for a decade, he naturally falls into the habit of
determining every act of his life by the effect it will have upon her.
In this case he could not imagine what effect his queer legacy would
have upon Sade Cooper, the comely, capable spinster of his dreams. She
had made up her mind to marry Wexley Snathers some day, for in the
stout, sandy-whiskered little undertaker she recognized an honest soul
of rare worth. On the occasion of his latest proposal, several weeks
before, she had given him the reason for her repeated refusals:--
"I never could get along with your ma, Wexley. If you had enough to keep
me in one house and old Mis' Snathers in another, I might think of
marrying you. But she'd try to get me under her thumb, same as she's
always held you, and your pa before you, and you know I never could
stand that, so you might as well save your breath on that question."
Wexley realized the hopelessness of his suit, if that was what stood in
the way, and since Sade's outspoken confession he had almost prayed for
an epidemic to smite the healthy little village, that the undertaking
business might prove more lucrative.
Now, as he sat with his head out of the window, breathing in the
sweetness of an old plum tree in bloom by the pump, he began to wonder
if this unexpected legacy would not solve all his difficulties. If the
circus could be made the stepping-stone for his desires without making
him ridiculous, or offending Sade's Puritan conscience, then Pole would
indeed have proved himself, for once, the greatest of benefactors.
The spring breeze bore to his senses the odour of the plum-blooms and
the shouts of boys playing ball on the commons. "Poor old Pole!" he
sighed, following the odour and the sound backward through nearly forty
other springtimes, to the first and only circus he had ever attended. He
and Pole had run away to see it, in days when shows were forbidden
ground. How vividly he remembered the whole glittering pageant, from the
gaily caparisoned horses with their nodding red plumes, down through the
gilded coaches, with mirror panels, to the last painted fool, riding
backward on his donkey.
The sudden opening of the shop door rang a bell above his head. He
started guiltily, jerking in his head in such haste that he struck it
with a bang against the window sash. His first impulse was to sweep the
papers on his desk out of sight, but as he recognized the voice of the
genial drummer who kept him supplied with coffin plates and trimmings,
he was overpowered by a longing to unburden his soul. So strong was the
desire that he yielded to it incontinently, and leaning over the counter
and fixing his anxious little eyes on the drummer he almost whispered:--
"Between you and me and the gate-post, Bailey, what would _you_ do if
you had a circus left you by will?"
The drummer's laugh at what he supposed was intended for a joke was
checked in the middle by the tragic earnestness of the questioner, who
with a wiggle of his thumb beckoned him mysteriously to inspect the
legal papers.
"There!" said he, "set down and give me your advice."
Seeing that the time for selling coffin-plates was not yet come, Bailey
gave his attention to discovering on which side Snathers preferred the
advice to fall, and being as voluble in giving advice as in the selling
of goods, it was not long before he had nearly convinced his customer
that, as a side-line to the undertaking business, there was nothing on
earth so desirable as a circus. "Sell it?" he exclaimed in conclusion,
"Not by a jugful! It will make your fortune, Snathers, sure."
"But it will make talk," protested Wex, going back to his first argument
with the provoking tenacity of slow minds. "I'm afraid it will hurt the
undertaking, for there'll be them as will say they wouldn't have a
showman performin' the last solemn rites for them, an' there'll be
others to say a man has no right to carry on a business that's a
stumblin' block and an offence." He was thinking of Sade.
"Oh, that doesn't cut any ice," answered the drummer, cheerfully, as he
closed the door behind him. "Go in and win!"
The news travelled fast and before dark Wex had been advised to sell his
circus, to run it on shares, to have the animals killed and stuffed as a
nucleus for a village museum. He was assured of success, warned of
ignominious failure, congratulated on his luck and condoled with for the
burden laid upon him. He was admonished that it was his Christian duty
to refuse the legacy, and told by his next visitor that he would be a
darn fool if he did.
He had aged visibly when he reached home, where he knew the news had
preceded him by the voice of his mother in the kitchen, high and shrill
above the sputter of the frying fat. She stood, hawk-eyed and
hawk-nosed, fork in hand, talking to some one in the back door.
"Well," she was saying, decidedly, "there was never a Snathers yit, far
as I know, that even went to a circus, and no son of mine shall own one
if I have _my_ say."
The answering voice was as decided as her own, provokingly cool and
deliberate, but the sweetest of all sounds to the anxious eavesdropper.
He flushed to the roots of his sandy hair and clutched nervously at his
stubby beard. It was Sade's voice. She had heard the news and had run in
the back way, in neighbourly village fashion, to ask if it were really
true. He waited breathlessly for her answer:--
"And _I_ think Wex'd feel he was flying straight into the face of
Providence not to make all he could out of it, even if he had to run it
himself for awhile." Then, startled by the sneeze that betrayed Wexley's
presence, she said good-bye so hurriedly that he had only a glimpse of a
white sunbonnet, fluttering around the corner.
Armed with this sanction, Wexley called that evening at the Cooper
cottage, where Sade kept house for a decrepit great-aunt. But she had
heard wild rumours in the meantime--the possibility of his adopting the
armless dwarf and the wild twins of Borneo, in case the show business
did not pay. But on being anxiously assured that there was nothing
whatever to fear in that direction if she would only marry him, she
confessed that she did not approve of his running a circus any more than
his mother did. It was only her chronic disability to agree with old
Mis' Snathers that made her say it.
So it was with a sorely troubled heart and brain that Wexley took up the
burden of life again next day. He had a funeral to conduct at ten
o'clock, and he began it in such an absent-minded way that he might have
made scandalous mistakes, had not the officiating clergyman's
text--Jeremiah, xii: 9,--delivered in a high, nasal drawl, brought him
to a sudden decision: "Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird. The
birds round about are against her." "Yes, even Sade!" he thought. And
such is the perversity of human nature that it stirred him to espouse
the cause of his speckled bird. As he led the slow procession out to the
cemetery, something followed him other than the hearse and the long line
of carriages;--in that shadowy procession of fancy, black hearse-plumes
gave place to the nod, nodding of red-plumed chariot horses. If there
was anything Wexley Snathers particularly prided himself upon, it was
the effective arrangement of funeral processions, and at the tempting
thought of the scope for his genius circus parades would afford, the
battle with his conscience was won. All the past called out loudly not
to venture on any road where Pole Bennet's feet had left a track, but
three days later--hoping that old Mr. Hill would hold on to life until
his return--the troubled undertaker locked the door of his little coffin
shop and fared forth to claim his heritage.
* * * * *
It is not often that a dying man leaves his earthly affairs so
thoroughly provided for as did Napoleon Bennet, yet that astute showman
reckoned without an important element of his problem when he thought to
put the armless dwarf in his old playfellow's care. He had not counted
on the twist in her little warped brain,--a superstitious dread that
amounted almost to mania. She was afraid of undertakers or anything
connected with their gruesome business. A cold terror seized her when
she learned she was about to fall into the hands of a man on intimate
terms with Death and his pale horse and, with the cunning of her kind,
she began laying plans that would work his undoing.
Wexley first saw her sitting on a table, practising her one
accomplishment, writing her autograph with her toes. "Be thankful for
your arms. Jane Hutchins," she penned in round, childish script.
"Blest if it ain't better than I could do myself with both hands,"
declared Wexley, admiringly. Then, remembering what Pole had promised
about his being good to the tiny creature, he patted her kindly on the
head. She drew back with an inarticulate cry of alarm, turning upon him
the face of a woman of thirty. A wild look of aversion gleamed in her
little beady eyes.
It was the man's turn to draw back perplexed. He was beginning to feel
like a fish out of water--powerless to cope with the emergencies of the
show business. His employees had not been long in taking his measure.
The fat lady, the living skeleton and the leading clown, after looking
him over, decamped to accept the offer of a rival showman. "He's too
soft a snap for _me_ to leave!" said one of the acrobats. "Why, that old
skull-and-cross-bones doesn't know any more about this business than a
white kitten. Didn't even know he'd have to get a license to show, or
the whole lay-out would be attached."