Hilary Lloyd had never seen aught like this apartment. The beams of
the low, unplastered ceiling, brown with smoke and age, were hung with
strings of red peppers and bunches of herbs; the two beds, high and
plump, were covered with gay patchwork quilts of marvellous design;
the vast fireplace--he could hardly believe his eyes when he marked
the clay-and-stick materials of its construction--looked as if it had
been built by some big bird; the quaint pots, and ovens, and skillets,
and trivets ranged in one corner he appraised as cooking utensils,
but their like he had never before beheld; for a moment he did not
recognise the use of a queer box-like cradle, which a faded young
woman, with a snuff-brush in her mouth, was rocking with one foot,
delegated to maternal duty, while she sat staring with lack-lustre eyes
at the advent of the stranger with the daughter of the house.
"Hi!" he exclaimed delightedly. "Hello, Baby!" He did not wait to
make sure of his welcome or for any formalities of introduction. He
pounced down on the cradle, yanked out the infant from the coverlets,
tossed it up to the ceiling, and then set it on the tall mantelpiece,
holding it there with both hands to take a good look at it, while
the members of the family stood around in wonder. Whether the child
fancied that it had already met the showman and mistook his identity,
whether this boisterous method of address accorded with its undeveloped
sense of manners, whether the nap to which it had been consigned were
compulsory and it rejoiced in its release, it responded genially to
the demonstration in the spirit in which this was tendered. It was an
attractive object as it sat on the high mantelpiece and flopped its
very fat legs to and fro, frankly exhibited by its short pink calico
skirt, and laughed widely with two pearly white teeth all agleam in a
very red mouth. It had red hair, curling in very seductive ringlets
about a fair brow, and its big blue eyes were as merry as a clown's. At
every jocose movement of Lloyd's thumbs on its fat stomach, tickling
it surreptitiously as he held the child on its perch, it burst into
repeated peals of infantile laughter, and no one cared how hard the
rain came down, or listened to the thunder roll.
"By George, you're a peach! you're a daisy!" cried Lloyd hilariously.
"Be you uns a family man, stranger?" a high vibratory voice queried,
and Lloyd glancing down beheld at one side of the fire an ancient
wrinkled face, surrounded by the crinkled ruffle of a great white cap,
a venous hand, holding a pipe of strong tobacco at arm's length, and a
thin bent figure attired in a blue and white checked homespun gown,
with a little red plaid shoulder shawl.
"Good-evenin', madam," he said, snatching off his hat--one hand could
hold the baby. "Family man?--_nope!_" he replied emphatically, and he
shook his head sagely. "The kind of biz I'm in don't give a feller much
chance at the domestic altar--winter and summer, night and day, on the
go. As to the lydies--they ain't disposed to marry a man on the road."
He could not understand the appalled pallor that settled on her pinched
high-featured face.
"Why n't ye git a better bizness?" she asked, with the plangent cadence
of reproach.
He stared, again confronted with that sense of being at once
uncomprehending and uncomprehended. "Do I speak the English langwitch,
or not?" he said petulantly in his inner consciousness. For the
situation fostered doubts.
The stress of the obvious misunderstanding placed a period to the
carousal with the baby, and he handed the infant back to its mother
as he took a tendered chair. The child had no mind to relinquish the
gay company it had encountered, and clung to the showman, working both
bare feet in the direction of its lackadaisical mother, with a very
distinct intention of making her keep her distance, if kicks might
suffice. Its strength did not match its resolution, however, and it
was shortly consigned to its cradle, where it crawled up out of its
coverings, whenever it was laid on its back, yelling vociferously and
continuously, save when it paused once or twice to break into a laugh
as Lloyd leaned over the back of his chair to snap his fingers at it.
"You have got a dandy place up here," he said by way of making his stay
agreeable. "Fine orchard. Must have oodles of apples and peaches."
Again that doubt of the "English langwitch" assailed him. Surely he had
said naught affrighting, but there was a look like terror in the old
woman's eyes.
"Some o' the trees ain't good bearers," said the girl, speaking for the
first time since their entrance. She had bestowed elsewhere her burden
of grapes, and she was standing now on the broad hearthstone divested
of those picturesque accessories to her costume. Lloyd was conscious
of a curiosity concerning her beauty, thus devoid of embellishment,
but as he turned to critically scan her appearance his attention was
struck by a peculiarity that diverted his survey. She had just been out
in the rain--yet how they had both run to reach the shelter before the
bursting of the storm! She was evidently wet to the skin, and as she
stood on the hot flagstones the water ran off her hair, her hands, her
skirts in rills, and the heat of the fire sent the steam ascending from
every drenched fold of her garments. Her errand had obviously been a
matter of some importance toward which she had had little inclination,
for she did not relish her dripping condition, as was manifested in
the fact that she was immediately taking down a fresh gown from where
it had hung on a nail on the back of a door, and rummaging in a chest
for other dry gear. She did not leave the room, however, till a heavy
step smote the puncheons of the porch, when she gathered up the fresh
garments and climbing a ladder-like stairway to a room in the roof,
disappeared in the attic.
She had gone to summon the master of the house on his account, Lloyd
realised at length, and with a sentiment of expectant anxiety he turned
toward the newcomer, although for his life he could not understand
what should require the girl to face a tempest like this to bring the
owner to reckon with a chance wayfarer, seeking shelter from a storm.
The owner, nay, two, five, a half dozen stalwart men, heavily built,
tall, bearded, clad in brown jeans, trooped in, their united tramp
shaking the puncheons of the floor like the march of a detachment of
infantry. They, too, dripped with the rain, but with more unconcern
than the girl had manifested, for they ensconced themselves in chairs,
two or three joining the group around the hearthstone, where winter and
summer the mountaineer's fire is always aglow, its intensity governed
by the temperature; the others leaned back against the wall, their
splint-bottomed chairs tilted on the hind legs, all solemnly silent,
all monotonously chewing their quids of tobacco, all stolidly eyeing
the guest.
Only the eldest seemed to anticipate conversation. Not that he spoke
himself, but he fixed his eyes so interrogatively, so coercively on
Lloyd's face that the expression betokened a hundred eager questions.
An account of himself was evidently in order--but why? Lloyd glanced
out of the open door at the glittering, steely, serried ranks of the
rainfall, thinking that as soon as they had marched past and down
the valley he too would speedily evacuate the premises and see his
queer entertainers never again--unless indeed they were minded to
patronise the attractions of the great Lloyd & Haxon Street Fair now
ready to exhibit in Colbury. The association of ideas allayed a sudden
rush of anger which was rising in his consciousness, responsive to
the uncertainty of his position, the peculiarity of their manner,
the impossibility to compass an accord of comprehension in these
simplicities of circumstance. It was stemmed in an instant by the
instinct of the showman. Since he was expected by his uncouth host to
inaugurate the conversation he would in the interest of the show waive
ceremony and essay whatever topic came first to his tongue.
"Sudden storm, sir," he said. "I was out there admiring your fine
orchards and it overtook me."
The host's jaw dropped. It was odd that his face could be so
expressive, masked as it was by a bushy growth of red beard, evidently
once of fiery tint, but now so veined with grey that the effect was
quenched to a degree. Perhaps because all its indicia were of the
conventional type their significance was easily discerned. His mouth,
cavernous amidst the beard, stood open in readily interpreted dismay.
His small brown eyes hung with a persistent appeal on the eyes of the
stranger. His head bent forward stiffly, with an intent, expectant
waiting. He uttered not a syllable.
"Great Scott! They all look as if they had seen a ghost!" thought the
amazed Lloyd.
The next moment he felt a sudden touch on his knee, and turning sharply
in his chair, perceived the old woman's tremulous claw bespeaking
attention as she leaned forward toward him from her chimney corner.
Her cap frills quivered in her agitation; her face was deathly pale.
"Stranger," she said solemnly, "we make _vinegar_, an' sell it--an' not
a thing else. _Vinegar_--_vinegar_--sell it to the stores in town."
Lloyd stared. He felt as if he were in a nightmare. Yet he could recall
no nightmare that had ever exerted so great a strain on his mental
endowments.
"Vinegar?" he said with a forced laugh. "Well, I don't take much stock
in vinegar. I ain't one of the sour kind. Vinegar ain't good to drink.
I couldn't pledge your health in that, lydy. With all of them fine
fruits I should think you might make something better than vinegar."
The host spoke up acridly.
"Mam," he addressed the old dame, "you jes' hesh up." His voice was
husky, as if he spoke with an effort--hasty, as if he scarcely knew
what to say.
Lloyd turned upon him with a sudden flare of anger. "I don't want to
call a man a cad in his own house," he flamed. "But the lydy will talk
as she pleases while I'm aboard. I'd oodles rather talk to her than to
you, sir."
The old woman had evidently lost her poise--she cast an amazed,
affrighted glance upon her son. Then she clumsily sought to repair the
damage that she fancied she had done. "_Dried apples_, stranger, an'
_dried peaches_. We uns cut an' sell 'em ter the store--in town. Dried
apples an' peach-leather."
"Very praiseworthy. But dried apples ain't the best thing that can come
out of an orchard," Lloyd began, but the host cut him short.
"Mam," said the great, bearded giant, anticipating her reply--his face
a very mask of terror--"ef you uns don't hesh up----"
"What will you do, eh? Nothing while I'm here," Lloyd blustered. "Why,
man, you're a monstrosity. I've a mind to take you off with me!" There
was a sudden stir behind Lloyd; he had a vague perception that the five
other men were afoot with some intent, which he did not know, and for
which he did not care. "I'll put you on exhibition in my show as the
'wild man of Persimmon Cove.' You ain't any more civilised than my big
boa constrictor. You ought to draw a crowd all by your lonesome. What
sort of behaviour is this for a son?"
"Oh," squealed the old woman savagely, "he is the best son that ever
stepped--an' I'll mark the face o' the man who says the contrairy!" She
held up her talons tremulously. "The best son that ever stepped."
"Mam," quavered the mountaineer, in despair, "you uns will ruin me
bodaciously. Jes' hesh yer mouth an' hold yer tongue, ef so be ye know
how."
Lloyd, still seated, looked up wonderingly at the group, now all afoot
and gathered about him. He noted that the two younger men presently
placed themselves by the door, as if he might make a break for liberty.
He was aware, too, for the first time of the number of weapons on the
walls. The rifle on deer antlers above the mantelpiece had caught his
attention when he first entered, but now he took heed of others here
and there sustained in place by pegs driven between the logs. This was
not remarkable, perhaps, since there were several men in the family,
but he was not used to seeing a living room unite its functions with
that of an armoury. He could understand naught of the strange episode,
and it had elements and suggestions infinitely distasteful to his
predilections. "All I have got to say then is that bad is the best--if
that is the best son," Lloyd persisted. "He has got no more feeling
than the big snake in my show."
The word, mentioned for the second time, made a definite impression.
There was a sudden absolute pause within. The wind outside rose and
fell in sonorous gusts above the vast valley. The iterative beat of the
rain on the roof was differentiated, in the myriad tentative touches
of the drops, from the swirling splash of its aggregations from the
eaves. The log on the andirons, long a-smoulder, broke in twain with
a dull crash, its two ends falling apart on the piles of ashes in
either corner, and sending up a shower of sparks and a cloud of pungent
smoke. Even the padded footfalls of one of the dogs were discriminated
in the silence as he trotted across the floor and stood at the door,
gazing out at the rain for a moment, then with a blended yawn and whine
stretched himself to unprecedented proportions and once more came back
to lie on the warm hearth, where the group still stood motionless,
towering expectantly over the visitor as Lloyd sat in his chair and
stared blankly at them all.
"A show, stranger?" the husky voice of the master of the house ventured
dubiously. "Be you uns got a show?"
"I have that," Lloyd declared promptly, "and don't you forget it.
The Lloyd & Haxon Company. Greatest show on earth! Unrivalled
attractions! Flying Lydy, Fat Lydy, Isaac, the snake-eater--eats
'em alive,--Captain Ollory, of the Royal Navy, greatest high-dive
artist in the world--daily exhibition free,--finest Ferris Wheel
ever seen, Merry-go-round with both saddles and chariots--great
musical attractions--quartet of high-class singers, and daily recitals
by Signor Allegro on the cornet--brass band concert before each
performance--pyrotechnic exhibition at night, free ..." he reeled off
this farrago with the utmost respect and seriousness while his host
stared in astonishment.
"Stop--stop----" cried the showman suddenly. "I have got some pictorial
paper here and other literachure of the company." He drew from his
breast pockets some compactly folded posters which when opened
out proved to be highly tinted illustrations of these unrivalled
attractions. He sprang nimbly out of his chair and began good-naturedly
to spread them out on the floor of the cabin at the feet of the old
"lydy" who had threatened him with a passage at arms. The others stood
around dumbly, doubtfully staring at the red and yellow daubs; even
the dogs joined the circle, vaguely wagging their tails and now and
then gazing up hopefully into their masters' faces, as if to demand
when something in the nature of a banquet would ensue on so much
show of interest. One of them, a pointer, suddenly impatient, walked
across the paper, leaving on it the imprint of his toes damp from a
recent excursion into the puddles of the porch. Lloyd caught him by
the nose and lifted him off with one hand. "What d'ye mean by spoiling
the portrait of the fat lydy," he said, and dropping on one knee he
rectified the damage with his handkerchief.
"Where?--_where_, stranger?" demanded the old woman in a twitter of the
keenest curiosity. "Waal, sir!" eyeing the picture, "she is bodaciously
broad. Air that thar a speakin' likeness, sir?"
"Honest, she is fat," said Lloyd. "She has to ride in a cart by her
lone. But she is a very nice lydy--high-toned. I feel sorry for her."
"Why?" asked the girl, unexpectedly.
Lloyd glanced up doubtfully at her from his lowly posture, then slowly
rose to his feet.
"Well," he said, turning his head thoughtfully to one side, as if to
scrutinise his impressions, "I always was sorry for freaks. They are
always in demand, and they generally earn a handsome salary, but money
ain't everything--money can't make people happy."
He stopped short, reflecting that a comparatively small amount would
add very materially to his prospect of felicity.
Once more he had a shuddering sense of a venerable claw laid on his
arm. The old woman was at his side. "Stranger," she said mysteriously,
"ef anybody in town axes you ef we uns make money up hyar on the
mounting you kin jes' sw'ar ez ye knows 'tain't true. We uns ain't got
nuthin' ter make money with."
Lloyd gazed in amazement at her--then around at the humble place with
every evidence of poverty, and to his mind, discomfort. But he could
not with civility acquiesce in her statement and he hesitated.
"Mam," her son plained, "ye air wuss than pore, ye air plumb deranged.
This hyar man air a showman."
"And I want you, sir, for a freak!" Lloyd declared rudely. "Allow me,
lydy, to present you with some free tickets for the show, for yourself
and these other two lydies. These will be good for any day and the
whole biz, if you can come down to Colbury one day this week." He was
shuffling the little blue and red cards in his hands, his instinct
being to include the entire family, but a recollection of the acrid
remonstrances of "Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy" on the occasion of
similar generosities, stayed his hand.
"Naw, sir, naw sir! nare one," the head of the family had found his
ordinary sonorous voice. "We may be pore, ez Mam says, but we pay ez we
go. We kin tote our end of the log. We'll attend the show--but we ain't
wantin' nobody ter gin us a treat."
"Shadrach,--Shadrach," quavered out the old woman in a twitter of
anxiety, "whut ye talkin' 'bout. Ye know ye ain't got no money--an' you
ain't got no way--no _way_--ter git no money."
"Hesh that up, Mam," the son admonished her, "else you'll go
_dee_stracted, and eend yer days with a gag in yer mouth an' tied ter
the bedpost."
"Cheese it, I tell you!" Lloyd confronted him angrily. "You will stow
your tongue while I'm here or I'll give you what for. I'd floor you
anyhow for a nickel, but you are too old for me to touch."
"S'pose you uns try me!" one of the young mountaineers beside the door
stepped forth.
He was like unto the sons of Anak, gigantic of build, every movement
informed with elasticity and vigour, and the others broke into a great
guffaw, so slight by contrast, so girlishly dapper did Lloyd appear,
with so rose pink a flush in his cheek as he stood on the hearth.
But his eyes flashed at the challenge, and as the muscular young
mountaineer approached, carefully eyeing him, he threw off his coat and
"bunched his fives" without a moment's hesitation.
The rural giant's lunge was something frightful in its weighty
impetuosity. The stranger side-stepped with lightning-like swiftness;
his arm flew out in a sudden counter-stroke that landed with an
impact like the click of a solid shot; the little cabin shook on its
foundations and rang with a clatter that discounted the tumults of the
storm as the young mountaineer "went to grass" with a precipitancy that
left hardly an available muscle in his whole big body.
There were some capacities for the enjoyment of sport and a sense of
fair play in the applause of the others, for Tom Pinnott showed that
he was not seriously hurt by ruefully gathering himself together and
sitting where he had fallen on the floor, sheepishly laughing and
rubbing his shoulder.
"How on yearth, stranger," demanded old Shadrach Pinnott, who seemed
to bear no grudge for the several smart admonitions as to his filial
conduct which the young showman had administered, "How on yearth did ye
ever contrive ter throw Tawm."
"Oh, I have had experience in the ring," said Lloyd, pulling on
his coat. "I trained with a good prospect for the light-weight
championship, but I gave it up. I don't like to fight. I have got the
sand all right, but I have got to get my mad up to fight with any
spirit. Now, what I like in a public performance is to show some kind
of merit, you know, of fine flavour. I mean something pleasing--that
don't hurt nobody, nor leave nobody in the lurch, nor make much of one
man to destroy another's prospects. Competitions ain't my lay at all.
Now, if I could choose I'd like to exhibit a song-and-dance such as
this lydy here was enjoying in the orchard. That would hit the taste of
the public, too--to a charm--to a charm."
He wagged his head with the emphasis of conviction. An exquisite bit
of rusticity, he felt it to be, as refined, as delicate, as free from
the rough edges of common country life, idealised because of the
girl's grace and beauty, yet as genuinely bucolic as a pastoral poem
or painting. He had begun to ply her with insistence. If the "lydies"
would come down he would arrange so that it shouldn't cost them a cent.
By fair rights she ought to be paid for dancing and singing, and as
she cried out in amazed ridicule of the idea he assured her that in the
outside world this happened every day. Ladies received money, legal
tender, actual currency, for nothing but singing and dancing. "And
few of them can do a turn like you," he declared. But because of his
partner--and he paused to disclose to them in a voice of mystery the
exceedingly pertinent fact that Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy, whose
real name was Haxon, was a partner in the enterprise, and without his
consent he dared not offer her money till she had been tried and the
public captured.
"Do you think you would be scared?" he asked, ready to reassure the
delicate feminine sensibility.
"Skeered o' whut?" she demanded wonderingly.
If she could not instinctively prefigure shrinking from the crowds,
from the strange situation, he determined that he would not suggest the
poignant anguish of stage fright, and the thought occurred to him for
the first time that this was a product of civilisation, the evil of
self-consciousness, the prescience of carping criticism or ridicule.
He made haste to say that the tent of Isaac, the snake-tamer, where he
was wont to "eat 'em alive" was at the other end of the Square from
the tent wherein she would sing and dance. True, the "Wild Man" was a
close neighbour, but since she was to be in effect for a time a member
of the company he would disclose in confidence the circumstance that
Wick-Zoo, the Wild Man, was getting to be quite civilised, in fact--in
fact--he burst out laughing,--Wick-Zoo was a pretty good fellow. She
need have no fear of Wick-Zoo, the Wild Man.
Then he piped up with a very pretty tenor and sang the air which he had
caught from hearing it in the orchard, and gave her some points as to
the management of her voice to make more of it for the public behoof.
And while the old grandmother listened sharp-eyed and spellbound, the
girl, proving docile and tractable, sought to apply his admonitions
and criticism, and now and again his dulcet tenor tones rang out to
illustrate some axiom. The group of mountain men lingered for a time,
but presently drifted out to the rain-drenched porch, where drops still
trickled from the eaves. The storm was over; as they gazed out down
the valley they saw that it had become all of a luminous emerald green
with vast clouds of pearl white vapours shimmering and glistening as
the sun smote upon them, floating between the purple mountains near
at hand and half veiling the distant azure ranges. A sudden rainbow
sprung into the light, spanning the abysses from Chilhowee to the Great
Smoky heights, and further down the valley, like a faint reflection of
its glories, a duplicate arch was set in the mists beyond. With stolid
unperceptive eyes they mechanically dwelt upon the scene--it was to
them but the ordinary aspect of life. They appreciated naught of its
splendours, its vastness, its pictorial values, its uplifting subtlety
of suggestion. It meant to them that the rain was over and that sunset
would soon emblazon the west. Cows were to be milked, the stock to be
fed, the wood to be cut, and perhaps other duties pressed upon their
recollection, for Tom presently said in a low voice to his father,
"Granny mighty nigh let the cat out'n the bag."
Shadrach Pinnott warily nodded his head in assent.
Another of his sons spoke up after cautiously listening to be sure that
the newcomer could hear naught but his own carolling, "'My Kate has
many come to sue!'"
"Ef _he_ hed been what Clotildy took him fur the whole secret would hev
been out fur true."
The bare suggestion that this danger might have so nearly menaced them
put the whole group out of countenance.
"Ye 'low ez ye be sure, dad, ez he air nuthin' but a showman like
he say?" asked Daniel, the eldest of Shadrach's sons, a slow,
sedate-looking man of thirty years. "Ye 'low he didn't sense nuthin' o'
the facts from them words that Granny let fall?"
Shadrach Pinnott's shock head bent in his deep cogitation. "He hed the
papers an' the tickets of a showman," he argued. "An' thar hev been
word of a Street Fair comin', down in Colb'ry."
"An' he hev got the muscle an' the showin' of a reg'lar prize-fighter,"
said Tom, the athlete, bethinking himself to rub his shoulder.
"An' lis'n," said the crafty old moonshiner; "he sings like a plumb
mocking-bird. In my opinion the whole Revenue Department ain't ekal ter
sech quirin' ez that."
And once more the dulcet plaint "My Kate has many come to sue,"
challenged the echoes.