THE WINDFALL
_A Novel_
By CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
Author _of_
"The Bushwhackers," "The Prophet of the Great Smoky
Mountains," "The Amulet," "A Spectre of Power,"
"In the Stranger-People's Country," etc.
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY DUFFIELD & COMPANY
_Published, March, 1907_
THE WINDFALL
CHAPTER I
Despite his buoyant optimism Hilary Lloyd could but quail as he looked
about him. The vast uninhabited heights of the encompassing Great
Smoky Mountains, green, purple and bronze, seeming to his theatrical
sense magnificently posed against the turquoise background of further
ranges, glimpsed through clifty defiles and almost touching the
differing translucent blue of the sapphire sky; the river, crag-bound,
crystal-clear, with an arrowy swiftness; the forest, dense beyond
any computation, gigantic of growths, redundantly rich of foliage,
and gorgeous with autumnal tints--all were as revelations to his
half-stunned mind. He had never dreamed of the natural wealth, the
splendid extent, the picturesque values of this region. His imagination
flagged, failed. He was sensible of the strain upon his receptivity to
compass the transcendent reality. But whence, amidst these primeval
splendours, should materialise the patrons of his little street fair?
Its flimsy booths were already rising about the stony expanse of the
public square of the town of Colbury, not, in stereotyped phrase, like
magic, but with all the laborious accompaniments of hammers and saws,
the straining of muscles and patience, the expenditure of profanity
and perspiration, and the sound of loud, raucous voices. The tents
reluctantly spread their mushroom-like contour, now and again suddenly
collapsing from awkward handling or inadequate aid. The manager looked
at the few humble toilers with a prescient pang. To be stranded here,
on the uttermost confines of civilisation, seemed a disaster indeed of
direful menace. He realised his friend's impressions and could have
voiced in unison the exact phrase as a heavy fellow of medium height,
arrayed in a ready-made suit of a loud plaid, slouched up with his
hands in his pockets, and chewing a straw.
"Well, partner, we've done it again!" he said, not without the accents
of reproach.
Lloyd obviously flinched at the tone, and his face flushed. It was
of a singularly perfect contour and chiselling, according to the
canons of art, and in its large nobility of expression it might have
served, and possibly had, as a model for an artist's realisation of
some high ideal. But there was a most mundane anxiety in his luminous
eyes, darkly blue and long-lashed, and the alertness with which they
eagerly surveyed the meagre festival preparations gave an accent
of the ludicrous to his fine facial suggestions. He was like a man
playing the _rôle_ of a prince, unstaged, on the bare sidewalk, and
his utter unconsciousness and indifference to the effect of his
remarkable appearance added to its impressiveness. His hair was fine
and light brown in tint, and it shone like silk as he lifted his
straw hat and wearily mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He was
young, twenty-five perhaps, and very fair of complexion, and the
delicate texture of his skin allowed the fluctuating flush of annoyance
visibly to come and go in his cheek. He was something more than of
medium height, although not notably tall; he was very symmetrically
put together, and, while slight and elegant, his movements showed
intimations of muscular strength and a swift deftness that implied some
special athletic training.
He presently gathered his faculties together and with a desperate
courage affected to see naught amiss. "Why, we knew that it was only a
country town, Haxon," he remonstrated.
Haxon pushed his wide-brimmed imitation Panama hat on the back of
his head, showing in full relief his round red face, beaded with
perspiration. He lifted one plump hand with an accusatory gesture
toward the infinite stretch of the lonely mountains, and then turned
melancholy eyes toward Lloyd.
"Why," Lloyd responded, "what is the matter with the mountains, Hax? I
haven't got anything against 'em."
Haxon shook his head dolorously, "A good old country to walk in," he
observed, tragically.
Lloyd affected surprise. "Cheese it!" he cried, contemptuously. "With a
week to show--we're not stranded yet!"
Haxon's round head wagged to and fro unconvinced. "That railroad agent
got us good, Hil'ry," he opined didactically. "We have got time enough
to show all right--but nothing to show to."
In truth the prospect was not alluring from a utilitarian point of
view. The little brick courthouse, the most considerable edifice in the
town, stood in a plot of blue grass, surrounded by a fence of palings,
and beyond the paved square without were enough small two-story shops
to suggest the intent of the future when the intervals should be built
in and the quadrangle complete. To the west the scattered dwellings
straggled away along the hilly main street, with here and there a
few cottages built on intersecting roadways, which should hereafter
develop into cross-streets. But the temple of justice, the stores and
the residences were none of them new, and barring a gleam of fresh
paint now and again from some cottage out on the hilly reaches of the
thoroughfare the town was much as it had been for years, and would be
for years to come. There was a wonderful lack of foliage. A few ancient
oaks stood in the courthouse yard, and the trellises of vines and low
boughs in gardens betokened fruit culture, but along the streets the
idea of improvement seemed to find its earliest municipal exposition
in laying the axe to the root of every forest tree that had spread its
boughs for centuries above the lush spaces now shorn close to give
the town room to expand. The landscape, steeped in splendid colour,
of infinite vastness, of loftiest heroic suggestion and most poetic
appeal, had wrought a surfeit of beauty in the sordid little town, and
here, held in the heart of a most majestic expression of nature, there
was naught to intimate the contiguity of the heights and the forests
save the rare pure air and the fragrance of the balsam fir.
The tranquillity of the sunshine, the bland, suave atmosphere, the
benignant breath of woods and waters seemed to impart their languorous
lethargy to the inhabitants as well. There was not the frenzied
interest in a new project of whatever sort that is the concomitant of
enterprise in a live town. The merchants, the clerks, the few lawyers,
and the officials of the courthouse noticed with only an episodical
attention the preparations to get under way the first street fair which
had ever shown its attractions to the denizens of Colbury.
This attitude piqued the curiosity of Lloyd. It nettled and unnerved
him. As it fell under his observation in different ways it partook
of the nature of those who manifested it. Now it intimated a sort of
quizzical contempt, for there is a class of rural wights, who preserve
the bucolic species still, always permeated with a disdain of progress,
and a distrust of whatever is new to their limited experience. Now it
was the outspoken prophecy of disaster.
"Some fools may leave thar harvests ter waggon down from the coves ter
see yer show," a citizen suggested. "But a quarter of an eye will do
the business, accordin' ter my way o' thinkin'. Ye air goin' ter bide
hyar a week, they tell me. Why, man, the bigges' circus I ever see jes'
showed fur one evenin', then tucked up its tent an' marched."
"Well, that ain't the style for street fairs," Lloyd explained. "This
is a different sort of thing."
"It _is_,--it _is_, for sure, stranger."
Though enigmatically expressed, the acquiescence was distinctly
uncomplimentary, and Lloyd dropped the topic. He had not come here to
exhibit skill in debate, he said to himself, but to conduct a street
fair. This, it was evident, would tax his powers. The manager was
beginning to realise that he had been victimised in a certain sort by
the wily representations of a railroad agent and the summer "cut-rates"
in coming to this remote section. The merchants' evident lack of
expectation of reaping the golden reward of a "big crowd in town" had a
damping effect on the already drooping spirits of the showman. By way
of steadying his nerve Lloyd sought reassurance in verifying some of
the lures which had led him hither. In the office of the county court
clerk, a brick-paved, white-washed apartment in the courthouse, he paid
the State and county privilege tax on the show, and after he had taken
out his license to exhibit, he courteously presented the officials with
free passes to all the attractions.
"I hope you will do well," said the clerk in a tone of condolence.
"I hope so, indeed," returned Lloyd, thinking of the sum named in the
tax-receipt. "We expect a good crowd. We have been well advertised
throughout the country."
The clerk felt that he had no call to seem optimistic in other men's
affairs to the jeopardy of his own soul. He left lying to more amiable
wights, and preserved a dispiriting but veracious silence.
"The crops are all laid by," said a pleasant-spoken bystander. "Some
folks _may_ come down out'n the coves."
"I hear there is a mining camp some miles down the river," said Lloyd
hopefully. "We lay considerable on that."
"Convict camp," said the clerk sepulchrally, and the amiable bystander
burst out laughing.
"Them fellers have season tickets whar they be, stranger," he said.
And then he winked hilariously at the clerk, whose funereal aspect
brightened dimly at the dreary jest.
The small boy, ubiquitous expression of humanity, was out in force,
and underfoot as usual. Every screw that went into the adjustment of
the merry-go-round, the wooden head of every dummy horse, the great
frame of the Ferris wheel, slowly rounding its circumference high into
the air above the house tops and showing the solemn, austere, purpling
mountain landscape, suffused with burnished, golden light, grotesquely
framed by its towering circle--every detail passed under the personal
supervision of the juvenile element of the town, and if the elders
lacked interest it was more than atoned for by the frenzy of enthusiasm
which possessed the juniors. The rearing of the tall mast, from the
summit of which the noted "Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy," according
to the florid announcement of the posters--videlicet Haxon, himself,
and of what royal navy remains forever unexplained--was to spring
into the air and plunge into a reservoir of water below, marked the
accession of adult curiosity. This increased to open comment when Haxon
himself appeared, cautiously superintending its solid adjustment in the
ground, the stretching of the guy wires, the placing in position, at
the correct distance, of the great trough of water which was to break
the force of his leap from the giddy height of the summit.
The gratuitous advice, freely proffered, and the expressions of
wonderment on all sides changed to injurious doubt, as the magnitude
and risk of the proposed feat percolated through the densities of the
uninformed rural mind. "Jump off'n that thar pole?--_never_ in this
worl'!" said one of the bystanders. "Onpossible!" commented another.
Others opined, "Takes more'n the Street Fair ter fool we uns."
"Time come, an' the Cap'n will be tooken with the chicken pip, or the
bilious colic, or some disabling complaint an' the defrauded public
will be jes' settin' with its finger in its mouth."
If Haxon heard aught of these disaffected remarks he manifested no
heed. Silent, surly, he doggedly gave his whole attention to the
details on which his life depended. He was well aware that however
sparse the attendance at the Street Fair, however disastrous the
enterprise financially, the exhibition of his "high dive" must be
given, for it was of necessity performed in the open air, and therefore
was a free show in the nature of an advertisement.
Lloyd had often heard the cynical remark that the spectators of a
hazardous acrobatic feat crowd to see the performer killed, not to
witness his triumph, and he was reminded of this as he watched the
unsympathetic citizens of the little town and heard their comments
and speculations concerning his partner's feat, for Haxon was a half
owner of the enterprise. Lloyd deprecated infinitely Haxon's mood of
surly disaffection. He knew that it tended to impair the acrobat's
nerve and to render his terrible feat doubly dangerous. Haxon, of all
men, should cultivate composure, a cheerful and equable state of mind.
Lloyd was subtly aware that his partner secretly upbraided him for this
unfortunate move, the culminating disaster of an unsuccessful season.
For the company to go to pieces at last in the remote wildernesses
of the Great Smoky Mountains was indeed the extremest spite of fate,
and even speculation shrunk back appalled from the utter blank of
the possibilities beyond. The exchequer was almost empty; it was "up
to them," as they had said dolorously to each other, to make their
transportation back to New York, and they would have been glad of
this, even with empty hands as the guerdon of their summer's hard
work. And in fact this meant no inconsiderable sum, for in addition to
the concessionaries who sold and mended umbrellas, parasols and fans,
dismayed inexpressibly by their sudden projection into this primitive
community, the owners of the candy-stands and peanut-roasters, the
company carried perforce a goodly number of individuals. While there
were performers who did double duty in various wise, the "stunts" of
the specialists could not be delegated, and this swelled the bulk of
the expense accounts. True, Haxon, when his great diurnal feat had
been exploited, was wont to array himself in correct evening dress
and perform with great spirit on the cornet as the noted soloist,
Signor Allegro. The "Flying Lady," when not ethereally a-wing,
developed into a ticket-seller of no mean abilities. Even the noted
juggler of the company found time to sing tenor in the quartette of
the "high-class concert." But for the most part the duties of the
others were continuous, and they were restricted to their several
stations. Naturally, the freaks--a "Fat Lady," a "Wild Man," and a
"Living Skeleton"--dared not court gratuitously the gaze of the public
who ought to pay for the privilege of a shock to the nerves, and
sedulously secluded themselves in their tents; the kinetoscope must
needs shift its scenes unceasingly, and the wild west play which it
exhibited reached a conclusion only to begin its active agonies anew;
the merry-go-round and the Ferris Wheel were ready to solve the problem
of perpetual motion, and throughout all the brass band brayed, in tune
by happy accident, or, deliriously indifferent to the laws of harmony,
vociferously off the key. But for this microcosm, this bizarre little
world to revolve at all, must be attainable the essential motive power,
the admittance fee in goodly quantity.
The prospect here had seemed so promising, so reasonable. The
company had struggled against the unvarying luck of superior
counter-attractions wherever they had gone; to give their show in a
locality unused to all diversion, with not a rival in prospect nor
even in reminiscence, was a lure not to be disregarded. The lack of an
audience in so sparsely settled a community did not readily occur to
them; a town, even a little town, implies normally a tributary region
of suburbs and farms. The vast uninhabited mountain wildernesses faced
them like the land of doom.
Lloyd had had no Scriptural tuition that could remind him of the
Scapegoat of the Hebraic ritual, loaded with the sins and the curses of
the people and driven into the desert to lose itself in those aridities
and die; but could the creature have possessed any sense of its doom
and its direful burden, Lloyd might have realised its sentiments, as
he gazed appalled upon the infinite stretching of those austere and
lofty mountains, which even in the days of the aboriginal inhabitants
of the country were called "The Endless." It was not his fault, he
said bitterly to himself, his eyes hot as he gazed. The subject had
been fully discussed, and all had agreed on the experiment. Haxon,
though a part owner of the precarious and ephemeral property, had not
made a protest--nay, he had been an earnest advocate of "fresh fields
and pastures new." Now Lloyd abruptly reminded him of this, as with
a sudden lurch and an exclamation of impatience Haxon snatched the
hammer of a workman and with two or three well-directed blows drove
home the steel spike that held down one of the guy wires. He looked up,
still in his bent posture, from under his frowning dark eyebrows; his
round, florid face, that was wont to be so jovial, was all lowering
and sullen. His small dark eyes flashed with antagonism and vexation.
"Who's sayin' as I didn't agree--eh? Well," as Lloyd made an intimation
of negation, "what's gnawin' on ye, then?"
This was evidently no time nor mood for the discussion of the matter,
and indeed discussion was futile, a mere waste of words. The die was
cast. The Street Fair had met its fate. If the company had been wrecked
on a desert island its case could not be more desperate.
Lloyd turned away, looking dully about him. There was scant
supervision now necessary--the old routine, practised week after week
since the early spring, had grown so familiar to the workmen that
the most ingenious blunderer could hardly find a pretext for his
activities, and little by little Lloyd's meditative steps took him
slowly along the smooth red clay road till presently he found himself
on the outskirts of the town and nearing the river. He shook his head
gloomily when he stood on the high rocks of the bank and gazing down
perceived the course that the road followed through a clifty defile
to reach the verge and the ford--there was not even a bridge in this
benighted spot, and yet this was a county town! The water was swift,
evidently deep--he marked the distance down the stream where the road
once more resumed its course on the opposite bank. It obviously took
a devious route along the bed of the river, picked its steps so to
speak; there must be deep holes, quicksands, pitfalls on either side
of the comparatively safe footing of the ford, he reflected. Suddenly
he noticed the footbridge; this followed a direct line across the
torrent--a trifling, primitive structure, consisting of a couple of
logs with a shaking hand-rail, and with the deep, turbulent swift flow
of a rocky mountain stream beneath. Once more he dolorously shook
his head. Hither must come the patrons of the Street Fair, even now
spreading its attractions on the public square to welcome them--not yet
a canvas-covered wagon in sight, no horseman, no foot-passenger to
tempt the instabilities of the little bridge.
He laid his hand on the rail and as he crossed felt the elastic
structure sway beneath every step, while the waters swirled far
below. But as he reached the opposite bank and paused for a moment
his anxieties were calmed in spite of himself by the sweet peace of
the dark, cool solitude; he listened to the ripples eddying about the
jagged base of the crags--a sound distinct from the swift rush of the
tumultuous currents. It had a secondary tone, seeming keyed higher, a
clear metallic tintinnabulation like elfin minstrelsy, barely heard,
yet not discriminated by the senses. And oh, the sylvan balm of the
air!--it touched so caressingly the forlorn wight's cheek, his hair as
he took off his hat, his hot, tired eyes, that he had half a mind to
fall a-sobbing on the vague breast of this insensate sympathy. He was
comforted in some sort. His lungs, filled and weighted with the soot
and smoke and dust of a dozen sordid towns, expanded, drinking in with
deep draughts this fragrant elixir that was but the diffusive air. He
looked up into the dark green boughs of the giant oaks and beeches,
and down again into depths as green, where the crystal-clear water
reflected the verdure, leaf by leaf and branch by branch--only on the
opposite side of the stream a brilliant section of vividly blue sky was
duplicated, flaring out with a flake of cloud dazzlingly white.
So revivifying were these influences that he had a mind for solitude
for the nonce. A long quiet walk he thought would restore his composure
and steady his nerves. He would compass thus a surcease of the anxiety
that harassed him, and by inaction recruit his energies better to cope
with his problems. He had a deft, steady, sure step as he took his way
along the country road, covering the ground with surprising rapidity,
for he was a strong, athletic pedestrian; not that he had ever walked
either as a pastime or a profession, but he had done various acrobatic
"turns" in his time, and his muscles had served him well. Now and
again as he went he lifted his head and looked off through gaps in the
foliage at the encompassing mountains, critically surveying them, it
might seem, his head discriminatingly askew, his bright eyes narrowing,
and it was characteristic of his experience and his limitations
that he appraised the value of the landscape, not as scenery nor
geographically, nor agriculturally, nor botanically, but simply as it
struck the eye for stage-settings. Occasionally as the road swerved he
caught a new aspect, and turned himself to face the prospect, holding
up both arms to cut off irrelevant details, and bound the picture to
the limits of the most effective.
"Gee,--what a flat!" he said once, and sometimes he waved his hands in
the air, detaching bits here and there of cliff, or cataract, or bosky
dells which he considered appropriate for "wings" or "flies." These
erratic attitudinisings might have suggested a doubt of his sanity had
there been aught to observe him as he climbed with wondrous activity
the steep ascent of a mountain road, hardly more indeed than a bridle
path, now about seven miles from Colbury. He saw no living object, save
once, high, high in the air above the ranges, a majestically circling
bird, whose strength and grace he paused to admire, unaware that it
was the distance which so commended the foul mountain vulture; and
once, when the laurel pressed close into the road and he heard a step
within the dense covert; the next instant a deer bounded out into the
path, caught sight of him, fixed his brilliant eyes upon him, and stood
petrified with terror for an inappreciable second, holding one forefoot
uplifted. Then stamping with all four feet together and poising his
antlered head backward in a splendid pose the buck sprang down the
declivity, and with an incredible lightness and swiftness disappeared
in the densities of the deep woods.
The showman stood in stunned amaze. He had before seen deer--in a
disemboweled state and dead as Ariovistus, hanging at the door of a
certain restaurant of Gotham that thus advertised its venison, and in
the close confines of the zoological display in city parks, but in its
natural state, in its native woods it was another creature. He had no
dream that a deer was like this.
"Gee," he exclaimed, "I'm paralysed if he ain't the whole show!"
He could have cried out with delight when suddenly the river sought
anew his companionship. Down deep in a ravine now it flowed, for he
had been steadily climbing, although the zigzags of the mountain road
had minimised the slant of the ascent. How darkly cool in its abysmal
cliff-bound channel it looked, how melodiously chanting it was as it
went. He wondered if he were to cross it again--not at this height, he
hoped. But as he progressed ever higher and higher the stream seemed
to sink, ever deeper and deeper, and presently the woods intervened
to screen it from sight, and soon its voice grew faint as it wandered
away till he could barely hear it, still singing, singing as it went,
and then he was not sure if the sound were of murmurous waters or the
sibilance of the wind.
For the wind was rising, and all the leaves were astir. A thousand
voices seemed suddenly to invade the stillness. He wondered to hear a
mocking-bird break out in jubilantly brilliant melody--he had thought
the species silent at this time of the year; he was acquainted with
them as they flourished in cages in barber shops. The trees of the
dense woods were as if endowed with language, for he discriminated the
difference in the rustling of the varieties of foliage as he passed--a
keen sense he had. A tree-toad was shrilling hard by for rain. He
could not see the creature; he had no idea to what the voice belonged,
so limited was his woodland experience. He only noted the clamorous
appeal. He was beginning to be tired. He wondered how far he had
come at this brisk pace. Suddenly he fixed the terminus of his jaunt.
The road forked at a little distance in advance, and he determined
that he would not trust himself to unknown divergences of the main
thoroughfare. He slackened his gait as he approached the parting of
the ways. On one side the woods grew sparse, showing a deep declivity,
a section of valley far, far below, and beyond a panorama of mountain
ranges that took his breath away, one above another, one beyond
another, tier after tier to the limits of vision. Infinity, that the
mind cannot grasp, was here expressed to the eye. The amethystine tints
imparted by the western light were upon them, and he knew, therefore,
that they lay to the east, but despite the smile of the parting sun
a great mass of darkly purple clouds lowered above them, raising a
fictitious horizon line almost to the zenith. The wind was a-surge
in these clouds and they visibly careened, and collapsed, and filled
out anew as if they were sails spread to the fury of a gale, but no
token of motion was in the densely wooded mountains beneath them, and
only a gentle breeze ruffled the tree tops of the valleys, a silver
wake following its invisible passage. On the other side of the road he
noted how the timber had been cut away; a cornfield was yellowing in
the sun, and at the summit of the slant he perceived, lazily adrift in
the air, a whorl of smoke that issued from the crooked and dilapidated
stick-and-clay chimney of a little log cabin, almost invisible,
embowered amongst the boughs of an ample orchard of thrifty apple
trees. Nearer at hand these gave way to peach trees planted in regular
avenues and great numbers. In the dearth of manufacturing energies in
the region and evidences of any agricultural industry, except of the
simplest limits, he was surprised by these suggestions of enterprise
and labour. The grassy glades between the rows of peach trees were
alluring to the eye; some cereal had been sown and harvested, and in
the aisles a lush growth of crab-grass had sprung up, new and thick
and green as moss. The peaches had all been gathered, but the graceful
lanceolate leaves were still dense upon the boughs, and the somnolent
afternoon sunshine here and there flickered through, and lay in long,
burnished golden shafts adown the green glooms.
And suddenly he was conscious of motion in their midst. He could not
be sure how he had failed to see the figure earlier--or, indeed, had
it just come within his range of vision. A girl was standing half in
the golden glow, and half in the emerald gloom of the shadow, gazing
up wistfully at a bough gently swaying just beyond her reach. As the
breeze tossed it, he saw the prize that lured her--a great Indian
peach, the last of the season, with all the sweetness of the summer
suns, with all the freshness of the summer rains stored within the
luscious darkly-red globe. She raised her hand, and made a sudden leap
toward it with the lightness, the grace, the agile strength of a deer.
The wind brushed the bough beyond her reach, and once more she bounded
toward it elastically.
The indescribable grace of her attitudes appealed to the man whose
education, and interest, and business in life were pose. Nothing more
ethereally dainty was ever exploited before the footlights. He caught
his breath, as, realising that she had not perceived him standing in
the road, he gave himself up to staring at her, with a vague sense of a
discovery growing upon him. Her dress, rustic though it was, impressed
him as crudely picturesque. It was of the coarsest yellow calico, and
she held up the skirt in front full of clusters of purple grapes, so
overladen that the rich bunches and tendrils of vine trailed down upon
her petticoat thus revealed, which was of a dark red cotton. A short
petticoat it was, and showed her feet and ankles; her chaussure was of
the flimsiest,--a pair of old rubber sandals, that, laced with thongs
across her red hose, with only a utilitarian intent of retaining them
in place, had contrived to achieve a classic effect; these members were
so active, so swift and certain, so deftly used, so elastic of muscle
as she skipped and leaped, that the idea of the boards was suggested
anew--no _première danseuse_ that he had ever seen could do a "turn"
more daintily. She had all the sportive innocence of a fawn.
A certain difficulty encumbered her. She carried on her head a basket
or a piggin, hardly visible so filled it was with grapes, the tendrils
and clusters falling partly outside till they touched her thick auburn
hair, coiled in a great curling mass at the back of her head. She now
steadied this pail with one upheld hand, the arm bare to the elbow,
and again she caught at the peach, her fair up-turned face smiling,
her brown eyes alight with fun and yet all a-gloat, her full red lips
parted over her perfect teeth, and as she danced she sang, or rather
panted out, a stanza of a song that seemed inapposite save for the
first line, which, perhaps, suggested it to her mind:
"Oh, shell I git my heart's desire,
Kind shepherd, tell me true,
That I may quit before I tire,
My Kate has many come to sue."
"Once you fail--'tis talking,
Twice you fail--'tis mocking,
Thrice you fail--'tis shocking,
But a fool will ever play with fire."
Her voice was crudely loud, but so clear. Every tone was so justly
true. The enunciation was faulty beyond any power of description,
and at first it made him wince, albeit his own capacities for
declamation were of no high order. Then her singing struck him as
characteristic--good of its kind, but of a kind never classified. He
had an instinct for novelty. The second time she sang the stanza,
giving herself up with a sort of joyous abandon to the dance, for now
she seemed hardly to hope to reach the peach, he was entranced with
the picture she presented, the exquisite grace of her attitudes, the
incomparable lightness and strength of her dancing, her beautiful,
symmetrical form, and the strong sweet melody of her voice as it
floated out so richly. He noted the contrast of her slender waist and
limbs with the full throat--revealed by the bodice of the orange-tinted
calico, the edges of which were turned in at the top for added
coolness--the deep chest. With the vocal endowments the build assured
the singer.
His interest was as impersonal as if she were indeed a feature of some
Thespian exhibition. He had not thought how the scene must end--that
if he moved she must descry him standing so near at hand in the road.
And in fact he did not move--he was still motionless, spellbound, when
a wider circuit of the tree brought him suddenly within her range of
vision. She paused so abruptly as to jeopardise the equilibrium of the
pail on her head and she lifted her hand to steady its profuse wealth
of grape clusters, and thus she stood at gaze, her lips parted, her
eyes dilated with astonishment.
He divined her sentiments at the moment of discovery, but he could
not understand the facial expression that ensued. Her eyes narrowed
with an inimical suggestion, watchful, expectant. Her red lips closed
firmly. He had not before noticed how strong of contour was her chin,
intimating resolution. He lifted his hat courteously, and waited for
her to speak. She remained silent, and there was a moment of vacuum.
Then a sudden sound smote the stillness. A tremendous peal of thunder
came from the mass of darkly purple clouds suspended above the
mountains across the valley. As he instinctively turned his head, they
were rent by a swift zigzag gleam of a sinister whiteness, and again
the thunder pealed. The turmoils that had earlier convulsed the clouds
had now taken definite direction. The wind was driving them hitherward
across the valley, and for the first time in his life he heard the
raindrops pattering down upon tree tops two thousand feet below him,
while he stood high in the sunshine. One of the sudden mountain
storms impended. In another moment, as he perceived, the torrents
would be loosed upon them. He was arrayed to simulate prosperity;
"out-at-elbows," even in a showman, is a confession of disaster.
Had business been good he would have gone far less smart. He had a
prudential consideration of shelter.
"Gee! There comes a corker!" he exclaimed. "Could I go to the house,
lydy?"
He realised the incongruity of the address with this untutored peasant,
but a sense of policy blended with his extravagant courtesy in its
application. The "lady" gazed at him with that countenance of severe
monition which he hardly understood.
"I was thinkin' ez ye mought ez well," she replied. Her answer was
not so ungracious as irrelevant. He was a man of keen intuitions,
and he was realising that their thoughts did not meet. She spoke of
somewhat else than the storm. He was not a well-bred man in any sense.
The impersonations of the stage comprised his tuition of conduct and
courtesy, but he had the veneer which even the observation of the
customs of gentility afford, the manners of the street, the trains, the
theatre, and, as she threw down the bars of the fence and came into the
road, he lifted his hat again, and prepared to walk by her side, and
proposed to carry her pail. She said nothing. She only gave him a wide,
uncomprehending stare, then fell into the road several paces behind
him. For his life he could not avoid turning, and slackening his gait,
that she might come up alongside.
"Keep right ahead," she said severely, and thus admonished he took up
his line of march for the cabin on the hill.
She herded him along as a canine guardian of a flock might regulate
the progress of a stray sheep. Once he again stepped instinctively to
one side of the path in the expectation that she would join him, but
she instantly crossed to the same side, and kept the distance the same
between them, some two paces, even when the drops began to fall, and
he quickened his gait to a speedy run. Only a short interval elapsed
before they were at the bars of the pasture fence, which were already
on the ground, and traversing the absolutely bare and hard-trodden
dooryard to a log cabin of a most uninviting aspect.
He had scant opportunity to mark its details till he was on the rickety
little porch where, looking over his shoulder, he had a cursory
glimpse of its stereotyped features--strange enough to him; the
wood-pile, situated on a sea of chips; the bee-gums, ranged along the
fence; the grindstone; the ash-hopper; the rooting pigs in a corner;
the cow, standing in a shed at one side waiting to be milked; a good
strong waggon also under that shelter; a bevy of poultry, big and
little, pecking about the door; a dozen curs of low degree noisily
yelping around him, with so spurious an affectation of fierceness that
it could not impose even on a stranger's fears; and a big bulldog, of
a most ferocious silence, slowly dragging a block and chain from under
the house. Infinitely incongruous the whole seemed with the imperial,
august aspect of the purple, storm-dominated mountains beyond and
the smiling serenity of the far sunlit valleys, their variant tones
of green enriched by the burnished golden afternoon glamours, and by
the silver glintings of the river coursing through the coves in the
distance. The next moment the clouds fell like a curtain before them
all. The thunder pealed; the torrents descended; the dooryard was a
network of puddles, and the clamorous beat of the rain on the roof made
the room into which he was ushered resound like a drum.