rapidly becoming disillusioned. He had been disappointed in the street
parade. All the remembered glamour was lacking. It looked tawdry and
silly to his mature eyes, and he was ashamed to be seen with it. He had
just learned that the wild twins had never seen Borneo, but were only
tattooed half-witted orphans whom Pole had picked up, and were not even
brothers. He was puzzled to know how he had incurred the uncanny little
dwarf's displeasure, but he would have been still more puzzled could he
have heard her whispering hoarsely to the twins of Borneo, as she held
their frightened eyes fixed on hers in a fascinated gaze:--
"Remember, you promised to do it to-night. You know how to unlock the
cages. He's a graveyard man, and if you don't let the lion eat him up,
he'll put you in a box and screw the cover down." Here her voice sank to
a series of husky, terrifying groans. "He'll--bury--you!
In--a--deep--black--hole! And you'll _never_--_get_--_out_!"
Before dark Wexley had called on Pole's lawyer. "Advertise it for sale
at half-price," he said. "I'm plumb disgusted, and want to get home. If
to-night's performance hadn't been advertised so big, I wouldn't risk
tryin' to give it. I'm dead sure it'll be a failure."
* * * * *
Of that evening's performance, all that he could subsequently relate was
this: "The calliope was playin', and everybody was clappin' and
cheerin', and I was wavin' my old hat and cheerin' too, so pleased that
the performance was turning out a success, when that old elephant, Lulu,
stopped short in the ring and began to trumpet. That sorter paralyzed
me. I felt in my bones that something was wrong. Then the smoke began to
pour in, and somebody yelled the lion was loose. Then everything seemed
to go wild. There was shoutin' and yellin' and an awful stampede. In the
mix-up I got a twisted ankle, and somebody stepped on my head. That's
the last thing I knew till morning."
In the morning he was lying on a hospital cot, his head bandaged and his
ankle in a plaster cast. Sam McCarthy, the lion tamer, his arm in a
sling, had come to inquire about him.
"Well, we found out how it happened," he told Wexley. "It was Jane's
doings--the little minx actually boasted of it. She struck matches with
her toes and set fire to the straw in a dozen places. How those
gibbering Borneo idiots ever let the lion out is more than _I_ know, but
they're strong as wildcats at times. She says she made 'em do it;--never
could have happened in Bennet's time."
"I know," replied Wex, wearily. "I s'pose it was my fault that
everything was left at loose ends, but it was all so confusin'. They
didn't save much out of the wreck, did they?"
"No; we were too far out for the volunteer engine company to get there
in time. Old Lulu's left, and the calliope. They got that out, and the
dancing bears and the horses. But such things as coaches, clothes, and
fol-de-rols are done for,--and several people who were hurt are going to
bring suit."
The undertaker closed his eyes and groaned. "And no insurance. All
Gentryville would have to die off before I could raise money enough to
pull me out now," he murmured. "I might have known that, living or dead,
Pole would get me into trouble! McCarthy!" he exclaimed, starting up, "I
wish you'd send that lawyer down here to me. I want to get shut of the
whole blamed business before sundown. It ought to be settled before I
get any worse."
* * * * *
There was a crowd around the bulletin-board of the Gentryville
_Chronicle_, bearing a paragraph from one of the big city dailies.
People stopped to read, and pushed on with shocked faces to tell their
neighbours that Wexley Snathers, trying to stop the stampede at the
burning of his circus, had been fatally trampled and had since died in
the hospital from internal injuries.
Old Mrs. Snathers sat in her darkened house, tense and wild-eyed, not
knowing at what hour Wexley's mangled body might be laid before her.
Sade refused to believe the report, until confronted with the staring
headlines in which Wexley's name appeared in huge black letters. Then
her remorse and self-reproach were almost more than she could endure.
* * * * *
It was towards night of the third day after the appearance of the
bulletin that the train pulling into Gentryville bore among its
passengers a tired-looking man on crutches. His head was bandaged, and
his gray linen duster bore marks of a long journey. Climbing down the
steps farthest from the station, he swung himself along on his crutches
toward the little coffin shop, and the smell of varnish that met him on
entering was like the greeting of an old friend. Ignorant of the
impression current about his death, he had gone first to the shop to get
his bearings before meeting the eye and tongue of the village public.
Sitting beside the open back window, his first feeling was one of
relief. The circus was a thing of the past. The lawyer had assured him
that by some hook or crook, best known to his profession, he could
undertake to settle all suits to the satisfaction of his client. He had
also undertaken to consign the freaks to some public institution for the
feeble-minded, and for his services he was willing to accept the very
things that had grown to be the bane of Wexley's existence,--the
remnants of the circus.
Here he was at last, a free man, although with a sore head and a
sprained ankle. The next thought was not so pleasant. He was farther
from winning Sade than he had ever been before, by the whole amount of
his doctors' bills and travelling expenses. Had it not been for his
feeling that it was almost sacrilege to curse a dead man, he would then
and there have anathematized Pole with a glad heart but with a vicious
gnashing of teeth.
As he sat there in the deepening spring twilight, a tall comely figure
came through the little gate at the side of his shop and started across
his back yard. It was the short cut towards his home. He started forward
eagerly as he recognized the familiar outlines in the dusk, and the slow
sweep of skirts. He did not stop to wonder why she should be going to
his mother's just then. His only feeling was joy that his eyes rested
upon her. It seemed years since he had seen her last. He knocked on the
window-pane to attract her attention.
"Sade! Oh, Sade!" he cried, leaning out of the window, his linen duster
gleaming ghostly gray in the twilight.
The startling apparition, looming thus suddenly out of the coffin shop,
froze the woman's very soul. With a terrified cry she sank weakly in a
heap on the ground, and sat there shivering and gibbering, tears of
fright streaming down her cold face.
"Lord 'a' mercy, Sade! What's the matter?" he cried, stumbling over his
crutches in his haste to unbolt the back door and get to her. As he
attempted to raise her she fell limply against him, fainting.
"'Be thankful for your arms. Jane Hutchins,'" chuckled Wexley under his
breath, as he realized that for the first time in his long wooing his
arms were actually around her, and he half carried, half dragged her to
the door-step.
Sade was not given to hysterics, but her fright at seeing what she
supposed was Wexley's spirit, and the relief at finding him so very much
in the flesh kept her sobbing and laughing alternately for some time.
And the time was all too short for the man who listened to her tearful
confession of remorse.
As he helped her to her feet he said solemnly: "I'll forgive Pole now
for all the trouble he ever got me into. Since this circus affair has
made you change your mind, it's the best job he ever did in his life."
Several days later he made the same remark to his mother. "Humph!" she
sniffed. "You hain't lived with her yit." Wexley whistled softly as he
rubbed up his best sample coffin-plate, with which he intended to adorn
the parlour wall, as is the fashion of Gentryville. He would hang it up
on his wedding day, in grateful memory of his benefactor, with the name
"Mortimer Napoleon Bennet" engraved upon it. At present it bore on its
shining surface in large ornate letters only the inscription, "Rest in
Peace."
The Fifth Traveler
Bap. Sloan
To His Mount of Pisgah
THROUGH the twilight that filled the valley a winding white pike was all
that could be seen distinctly. The brown-furrowed corn-fields were
blotted out in the dusk. Farm-houses had merged their outlines into the
dark mass of the surrounding trees. Only the apple-orchards kept their
identity, and that because it was blossom-time, and the dewy night air
was heavy with their sweetness.
Somewhat back from the pike, yet near enough for the rattle of passing
wheels to give a sense of companionship, a man sat rocking back and
forth in a narrow vine-inclosed porch. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and
collarless, and the slow creak of the old wooden chair seemed to voice
his physical comfort like a purr; but it by no means expressed the state
of his mind. That was attuned to something wholly melancholic, like the
croaking of frogs in the pond below his house, or the far-away baying of
a dismal-minded hound, which, tied behind some cabin across the
clearing, was making the peaceful Sabbath evening vibrant with its
misery.
"I can't help havin' a sort of fellow-feelin' for that dawg," muttered
the man, raising his head to listen, and passing his hand slowly over
the bald spot on his crown. "Must be considerable of a relief to let out
and howl like that when you feel bad. There's been times when I wouldn't
'a' minded tryin' it myself for a spell."
Then he settled back into his chair with a long-drawn sigh. He was
awaiting the second ringing of the church bell. The first one had tolled
its summons through the valley nearly an hour before, and vehicles were
beginning to rattle along the pike toward evening service. The little
frame meeting-house, known as the Upper Beargrass Church, stood in a
grove of cedars just beyond Baptist Sloan's potato-field. It was near
enough for any one sitting on his porch to hear the preacher's voice all
through the sermon, and sometimes when he waxed eloquent at the close,
in a series of shouted exhortations, even the words were distinctly
audible.
But never in all the years of his remembrance had Baptist Sloan listened
to the services of the sanctuary from his door-step. On the few
occasions that illness had kept him at home, pain and multitudinous
bedclothes had shut out all sound of song or sermon; and at other times
he was the most punctual attendant of all the congregation, not
excepting even the sexton. People wondered why this was so, for he was
pointed out as the black sheep of the flock, a man little better than an
infidel, and belonging to that stiff-necked and proud generation which
merits the anathemas of all right-minded people.
That he was a riddle which Upper Beargrass Church had been trying vainly
to read for thirty years was a fact well known to the reprobate himself;
for he had been openly preached at from the pulpit, laboured with in
private, and many a time made the subject of special prayer. So, as he
sat on the porch in the dark, with only the croaking of the frogs and
the distant baying of the hound to break the stillness, it was with no
surprise whatever that he heard his own name spoken by some one driving
up the pike.
He could not see the horse that plodded along at a tortoise-like gait,
or the old carryall that sagged and creaked with the weight of two big
men on the front seat and a woman and three children on the back; but he
recognized the voice as that of Mrs. Jane Bowles. Thin and strident, it
stabbed the stillness like the rasping shrill of a katydid. She was
leaning forward to speak to the visiting minister on the front seat.
"We're coming to Bap Sloan's house now, Brother Hubbs," she called in
high staccato. "I want you should rub it into him good to-night in your
sermon. He's a regular wolf in sheep's clothing, if ever there was one.
Twice on a Sunday, for fifty-two weeks in the year, he's sitting in that
third pew from the front, as pious as any pillar in the congregation.
You can count up for yourself how many sermons he must have heard, for
he's fifty, if he's a day. But in spite of all that anybody can say or
_do_, he won't be immersed and join. He's held out against everything
and everybody till he's gospel-hardened. I ain't saying he doesn't put
into the collection-box regular, or that he ain't a moral man outwardly;
but that outward show of goodness only makes his example worse for the
young folks. I never can look at him without saying to myself, 'But
inwardly ye are ravening wolves.'"
The old horse had crawled along almost to the gate by this time, but
Sister Bowles, not being able to see any one on the porch, went on,
serenely unaware of being overheard.
"And there's Luella Clark that he's courted off and on for twenty years.
It makes me real mad when I think of the good offers she's had and let
slip account of him. She _couldn't_ marry him, being close communion,
and not tolerating the idea of being 'unequally yoked together with
unbelievers.' 'Twouldn't 'a' been right; and yet, somehow, she didn't
seem to be quite able to give him up, when that was the only thing
lacking. He'd make a good husband, for there never was a better brother
lived than he was to his sister Sarah. She kept house for him till the
day of her death. They say that last winter, when she lay there a-dying,
she told him she couldn't go easy till she saw him immersed; but all
he'd say was, 'Oh, don't ask me! I can't _now_, Sarah. Some day I will,
but not _now_.'"
Here the preacher's voice broke in like the deep roll of a bass drum.
"Has this--ah--young woman any idea of what--ah--produces such a state
of--ah--obstinacy in the brother's mind?"
"Not an i-_dee_!" was the reply, jolted out shrilly as the carryall
struck a stone. "Not one good reason could he give Luella for putting
off attending to his soul's salvation and trifling away his day of
grace. Not one good reason, even to get her to marry him. But I think
Luella is getting tired of dangling along. The other day I heard her
joking about that little bald spot that's beginning to show on his head,
and I noticed that Mr. Sam Carter's buggy has been hitched at their gate
several times when I've happened to be passing. He's a widower, and you
know, Brother Hubbs, that when widowers--"
The loud clanging of the church bell struck Sister Bowles's sentence in
the middle, and the end of it was lost to the eager ears on the porch.
Although this sound of the church bell was what Baptist Sloan had been
waiting to hear for the last hour, he did not rise until the final echo
of its ringing had died away in the farthermost part of the valley. Then
he went slowly into the house and lighted a lamp.
The open door into the kitchen revealed the table where he had eaten his
dinner and supper without removing the soiled dishes. In every corner
was the cheerless look that betrays the lack of a woman's presence. He
had done his own housekeeping since his sister's death in the early
winter. As he passed the table he gathered up a plateful of scraps which
he had intended to give to the cat, but had forgotten, and carried it
out to the back door-step. He tried to be mindful of the old creature's
comfort for his sister's sake; but he was an absent-minded man,
irresolute in nearly every action, and undecided in all things except
the one for which the neighbourhood condemned him.
Just before he entered the house he had almost made up his mind that he
would not go to church that night. Sister Bowles's conversation had
startled him with a new idea, and jogged him out of his well-worn rut.
He would sit out on the porch till church was over, and then follow
Luella home, and take up the thread of his protracted courtship where
she had snapped it five years before.
But the habit of decades asserted itself. He bolted the back door,
carried the lamp into the little bedroom adjoining the kitchen, and
proceeded to brush his hair according to the usual Sunday-night
programme of preparation. Sarah had always tied his cravat for him, and
his stiff fingers fumbled awkwardly at the knot. That was one ceremony
to which he could not grow accustomed, and he had serious thoughts of
turning out a beard that would hide all sins both of omission and
commission in the way of neckties.
At last he was ready, but even with his hand on the knob and his hat on
his head, he wavered again and turned back. Cautiously tiptoeing across
the floor to see that the blue paper shade was drawn tightly over the
one tiny window of the little bedroom, he opened the door into the
closet, and felt around until his hand struck a nail that marked some
secret hiding-place in the wall. From somewhere within its depths he
drew out a little japanned canister, branded, in gilt letters, "Young
Hyson;" but it was not tea that he emptied on the bed and poured through
his rough hands, horny with long contact with hoe and plow. It was a
stream of dollars and dimes and nickels, with an occasional gold piece
filtering through like a disk of sunshine. A wad of paper money stuck in
the canister until he shook it. He counted that last, smoothing out the
ragged bills one at a time, and then folding them inside a crisp new one
so that its flaunting V was displayed on top.
One might have thought him a miser gloating over his gold, so carefully
he counted it again and again, sitting there on the edge of his bed. But
there was no miserly greed in the wistful glance that followed the last
coin into the little canister, and it was with a discouraged sigh that
he replaced the cover and sat looking at it, the slavish hoarding of
years.
"It will take twenty dollars more," he finally whispered to himself;
"and I can't depend on any ready cash until after wheat harvest." He
counted slowly on his fingers May, June, July--it might be three months
before he could get his threshing done, and three months, now that he
was so near the goal of his life's ambition, seemed longer than the
years already passed in waiting.
They were singing in the church when he went out on the porch again, and
as he did not want to go in late, that decided the question that had
been see-sawing in his mind. He sat down in the rocking-chair, with his
elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Sister Bowles's
conversation still rankled.
"O Lord," he groaned presently, "you know I'm not a wolf in sheep's
clothing. More like I'm a sheep in a wolf's. Nobody understands it. Not
even Luella. I want to tell her, and yet it seems like I hadn't ought to
yet awhile. One minute I think one way and the next minute another. O
Lord, I _vow_ I don't know what to do!"
Then he caught the words of the song. It was not one of the usual hymns
that floated out to him across the scent of the apple-boughs, but an old
tune that he had heard years ago at a camp-meeting:
"John went down to the river Jordan!
John went down to the river Jordan!
John went down to the river Jordan
To wash his sins away!"
Little did the congregation think, as they lifted their lusty voices,
that with the thread of that old tune lay the unravelling of Bap Sloan's
riddle. For this is the scene it brought back to him, out of one of the
earliest years of his childhood. There was a white face lying back among
the pillows of a great bed, with carved posts and a valance of flowered
chintz that smelled faintly of lavender. Somebody had lifted the big
family Bible and laid it open on the edge of the bed, and he saw
himself, a sober-faced little fellow in brown dress and apron, standing
on tiptoe to look at the pictures. That white face on the pillows was
his mother's, and this was the only recollection he had of her. Pointing
to a queer old engraving, she had told him the story of John the
Baptist, adding, with her thin hand on his curls: "And your name is
John, too. Little John Baptist, though we don't call you by all of it. I
named you that a purpose. Give you a good name, so 't you'd be a good
man. Mebbe it's just a whim of mine, but I've thought a good deal about
it while I've been lying here sick. Mebbe some day _you'll_ be able to
go to the Holy Land, 'way over the mountains and over the seas, and be
baptized in that same river Jordan, where the dove descended. See the
pretty dove?"
Even though the baby brain understood but dimly what she said to him,
the light in her uplifted eyes filled him with solemn awe, and from that
moment the mantle of her ambition rested henceforth on his young
shoulders. It was a vague, intangible thing at first, when he used to go
back to the old Bible and study the picture in secret. He never
understood when it began to fold itself about his life, or how it grew
with his years till it completely enveloped him.
He was a man little given to introspection, and with a mind so slow to
arrive at a conclusion that it always seemed doubtful if he would ever
reach it. Still, when he once settled down on an opinion, his sister
Sarah used to say it was with the determination of a snapping-turtle.
"He wouldn't let go then till it thundered." His sister Sarah took
charge of him, mind and body, when their mother died, and so thoroughly
did she manage him that her will was always his, except in that one
matter. He would not join the church of his fathers until he got ready,
and he would give no reason for his delay.
He was twenty when he made his first stubborn stand against her, and for
thirty years Sarah wept over him both in public and private, and for
thirty years Luella Clark's heart battled with her conscience, which
would not let her be "unequally yoked together with an unbeliever." And
through all that time Baptist Sloan had kept his own counsel, hoarding
every penny he could save, to the refrain of his mother's remembered
words: "Over the mountains and over the seas, and be baptized in that
same river Jordan, where the dove descended."
He had so firmly made up his mind that after that pilgrimage to his
Mecca he would marry Luella that he had never viewed his conduct from
her standpoint until Sister Bowles opened his eyes. Her speech about the
widower aroused him to an undefined sense of danger. All that next hour
his inclination shifted like a weather-vane, first to take Luella into
his confidence, then not to. By the time the congregation rose for the
last hymn he had made up his mind.
The moon was coming up now, a faint, misty light struggling through the
clouds. He waited until most of the congregation had passed his gate,
and then striking out across the potato-field, waited at the turn of the
road on the other side of the cedar-grove. It was here that Luella
always parted company with the Robinson girls, and went the remaining
way alone. It was only a few steps farther to her mother's brown
cottage, and he hurried to overtake her before she should reach the
gate.
"Land o' Goshen! Bap Sloan!" she exclaimed, with a startled little cry,
as he came puffing along by her side. "Who'd 'a' dreamed of seeing _you_
here? Why wa'n't you at church to-night? Everybody was asking if you
were sick, it's been so long since you've missed."
"Stop a minute, Luella," he exclaimed, blocking her way by planting
himself directly in her path. "I want to talk to you. I've made up my
mind at last to tell you, and I want you to come back and sit down on
the stile where nobody else can't hear it."
Led by curiosity as much as by the new masterfulness in his tone, Luella
turned back a step and seated herself on the stile that led into the
apple-orchard. The blossom-laden bough of a gnarly old tree bent over
her head and sent a gust of fragrance past her that made her close her
eyes an instant and draw a long breath, it was so heavenly sweet. The
night was warm, but she drew her shawl around her erect, angular figure
with a forbidding air that made it hard for him to begin. "Well?" she
said stiffly.
"I don't know just how it's goin' to strike you," he began, hesitating
painfully. "That is--well, I don't know--maybe you won't take any
interest in it, after all; but I kinder thought--something might happen
in the meantime--maybe I'd better--"
He gave a nervous little cough, unable to find the words.
"What air you aiming at, anyhow, Baptist Sloan?" she demanded. "What's
got your tongue? Mother'll wonder what's keeping me, so I wish you'd
speak up and say what's on your mind, if there's anything a-troubling
you."
Then he blurted out his confession in a few short sentences, and waited.
She sat staring at him through such a long silence that he forced an
uneasy laugh.