The morning brought no change in the situation. The sun came grandly
up from over the blue and misty mountains, with a train of iridescent
and shimmering vapours, and a splendid pageant of clouds, bedecked in
red and gold and purple, with scintillating fleckings of jewel-like
brilliancy. These were gone, evanescent, before the dew was off the
grass that grew all along the sides of the streets, and the sky was
densely blue, poised high, high above the lofty mountain ranges, tiers
on tiers, that climbed against it as if seeking to reach these spheres
of empyreal height. The sunshine was infinitely clear and crystalline.
The soft wind had an exquisite freshness and a balsamic tang that the
lungs expanded to meet involuntarily as if an instinct recognised its
balm of healing.
The breakfast of the little rural hotel, of that peculiar excellence
and generous abundance that so often characterise the hostelries in
these out-of-the-way places of the South, put new heart into Lloyd,
and his hopes were recruited as he went out into the verandah of the
hotel lighting his cigar and beholding with benign complacence the
array of the Street Fair--the tents, the great circumference of the
Ferris wheel, with the mountains framed within its periphery, the
merry-go-round, still motionless and vacant as if the dummy horses had
just waked up, the humbler employees going hither and thither, on their
various duties, getting ready for the day. He did not say a word, for
Haxon's mood was so uncertain that it was impossible to know how any
casual phrase might affect him. Haxon himself spoke first.
"I suppose I look at that mast every morning with the same feeling that
a condemned criminal has for his first glimpse of the gallows," he said
bitterly.
Lloyd paused to throw away the match with which he had lighted his
cigar. "Gammon!" he exclaimed, contemptuously. "You couldn't be
persuaded to cut out that stunt of yours if I begged you for a month."
The acrobat's brow cleared, and Lloyd breathed more freely. He had by
lucky chance said exactly what Haxon desired to hear. He wished to feel
that he acted by his own free choice--that he was not coerced because
the hour was set, the feat advertised, and the public waited.
The morning was never characterised by special activity in the Street
Fair. The world had all its insistent duties, contending with the
delights of sight-seeing. Breakfast was to be discussed, stores opened,
the municipal court sessions to be held, the mail to be distributed,
and only gradually did spectators begin to gather in the streets, and
the spielers to take their stand.
"Only an hour, now,--an hour of life," said Haxon, as the clock in the
courthouse tower clanged out its tale of strokes; "when another hour
strikes I may be in hell."
Lloyd burst out laughing. "Seem to understand your own deserts!" he
cried with a joyous inflection.
And once more Haxon smiled responsive.
Lloyd could not forbear a sigh of relief, and catching his breath it
was metamorphosed into a spurious yawn, so fearful was he of shaking
his confrère's poise.
The next moment Haxon had forgotten his cold fit of disinclination in
sudden overwhelming curiosity. From one of the intersecting streets
there rolled into the square one of those vehicles of the region
denominated "hacks," strong, light, furnished with a canopy and with
curtains for falling weather, and with a brake, regulated by the
driver's foot, which the steep slants of the mountain roads rendered
imperatively necessary. It was drawn by two strong, well-fed, speedy
horses, caparisoned with good stout harness, and gay with red tassels
dangling at their heads. It had three seats, and a boot for trunks,
and it could hold comfortably nine persons. There were only five
passengers, however, and the driver headed straight for the hotel.
The two showmen watched without a word the commotion of the arrival;
the porter ran forth with a grin of delighted recognition; the clerk at
the desk threw down his pen and issued precipitately on the verandah;
nay, the Boniface, himself, outstripped the underling's speed and
opened the door of the hack, smiling benignly with the dignity of a
portly, affable man, and with so obvious a pleasure that it might seem
that he ran an hotel for the fun of the thing.
"Here we are again, Mr. Benson," a lady of perhaps forty-five years of
age said agreeably, while Mr. Benson's bald head shone in the sun, and
his slippered feet shuffled to and fro as he sought to offer her the
most efficient assistance in alighting from the high-swung vehicle.
"Mighty glad to see you all again--fine weather for an outing," he
asseverated, still all bland, blond smiles.
The lady was of a slender type, ostentatiously simple, with a black
taffeta skirt and a "white handkerchief linen" blouse, speckless,
perfect, absolutely plain, with large plaits or tucks, and a broad
black belt with a big steel buckle in the back. Her large black hat
partly shaded a fair, faded oval face with a crown of blond hair, the
sheen of which was fairly quenched by time; she wore a mere thread of a
filigree gold necklace about her high collar and on the wrist of one of
her delicate, transparent, thin hands, which was without her black silk
glove, a narrow gold bracelet with a bangle dangled.
Two young men had leaped out of the vehicle on the other side, while
still seated, looking about them for gloves, bags, and small sundries,
were two young ladies whose appearance made no pretensions whatever
to simplicity. Both were arrayed in the height of the mode, in white
embroidered linen suits, one made with a natty short jacket, the
other with a stylish long coat; their white lingerie hats were tilted
forward, and the embroidered frills gave scant view of aught but fair
and delicately flushed cheeks, while at the back of their heads their
redundant tresses of brown and gold showed in soft heavy puffs.
"We are simply perishing at New Helvetia," the eldest lady confided to
Mr. Benson, "for the lack of something to do or say, or see, and we
heard that down here in the 'flat woods' you have evolved a Circus, or
Street Fair, or Carnival or something, and it has saved our lives, Mr.
Benson. Don't tell us that you are overcrowded and can't take us in,
for we don't want to stay over night. You can feed the hungry, surely,
Mr. Benson."
"Indeed, madam, we can always do that."
"To perfection," the lady protested, and Mr. Benson bowed and blushed
with pleasure, flattered as well he might be.
They were all speedily housed; the flutter of skirts, the swift tread
of soft, pliant, well-made boots, and they had disappeared. As the team
of the hack trotted off to the stables Haxon beckoned to the negro
porter.
There is something very pervasive, coercive, permeating in the
influence of cultivation, of fashion, of station in the world of
wealth. It had never occurred to Lloyd, so little was he brought in
contact with this element, to gauge the lack of refinement in Haxon's
endowments or manners till he placed himself in contrast with the
newcomers.
"Who are them guys?" Haxon asked of the porter.
The method of address obviously embarrassed the servant. It seemed
derogatory to the high estate of these great ones of the earth whom he
had rejoiced to serve in their sudden comings and goings. To answer a
question which described them as "guys" was in itself an indignity.
But he swallowed the affront and replied succinctly--"They are some
of the guests what's been stayin' at the New Helveshy Springs in the
mountings, sah."
"Thought the springs were closed by this time," Lloyd remarked, and
the servant apprehending the observation as applicable to business
interests rather than actuated by mere curiosity, replied with a
placated mien, "Jes' a few stayin' on, sah--feared ter go home till
frost, 'count of de yaller fever whar dey live in Mobile or New Orleans
or some o' dem Southern cities. Dey got nuthin' ter 'muse dem at New
Helveshy--even de band's gone,--an' dey drive down 'ere wunst in a
while." He lingered for a moment, for the satisfaction of possible
further queries, but none came and he betook himself within.
Lloyd looked with anxious doubt at the brow of Haxon, seeking to
discern and gauge his sentiment, so slight an irritant might now
disturb the precarious poise of his equilibrium. But Haxon merely
remarked with a sigh, "I wish they were five hundred instead of five."
"Well, there's one comfort," said Lloyd, "the show couldn't be any
better if they were five hundred instead of five."
He had struck the wrong note and the discord jangled instantly.
"Well, the railroads don't haul folks on their merits," the acrobat
rejoined acridly. "It makes mighty little difference in this cursed
hole whether the show is good or bad, if there ain't nobody to see it.
I believe you are ambitious of playin' to a cent and a half a day."
The roseate flush on Lloyd's girlish cheek deepened, but it was one
of the slow tortures privileged to rack his soul in these days of
stress that he was debarred the natural vent of anger. He could not
retort, in sheer humanity he could not flame out in petulance at the
man whose life was to be placed in most hideous jeopardy in half an
hour, balanced on the flicker of an eyelash, lost in a momentary quiver
of the nerves. But Lloyd truly felt that his trials increased in a
regular ratio with the demonstration of his capacity to sustain them.
Sometimes he thought that a sudden sarcasm, an outbreak of the vexation
that stirred him might over-awe Haxon, elicit his self-control, and
serve really to steady his nerves. It was not an experiment which he
was willing to try at another's cost. He braced his own nerves for
endurance therefore, and taxed his capacity for expedients.
"Oh, hush," he said, with affected roughness. "You are out of
your contract now. You don't know anything about the receipts
yesterday--it's all up to me. You are agreed to take no share in
business till you've done your leap for the day. Then we'll strike the
balance."
A slow smile was dawning in the acrobat's eyes. Business must have been
better than he had feared. It is difficult to estimate the number of an
ever-shifting crowd. He had placed himself under this restriction that
he might have the less strain to preserve his calmness of mind before
his leap for life.
Suddenly there issued from the door of the hotel the two young men who
had accompanied the ladies from the New Helvetia Springs. They had
lighted their cigars, having been debarred that luxury, possibly, on
the drive. They drew up two of the many vacant chairs that stood on the
verandah and seated themselves near the railing.
"I like nothing better than an old-fashioned _el Principe_," the elder
was saying. "It gives a good clean mild smoke. You ought to smoke
nothing, though, at your age; your training will go hard with you this
fall if you saturate your system with strong tobacco,--then have to
leave off suddenly."
It was less the obvious truism than the professional word "training"
that caught the showmen's attention. They looked with keen interest
at the newcomers. One was much the younger--a tall, blond youth,
well-built and muscular, twenty years of age perhaps, fresh, alert,
perfectly groomed, glowing with health and bright-eyed vigour. The
other had an air of much distinction. He was fully thirty-five, with
clear-cut, delicate features, an intellectual face; but with a languid
eye; he was tall, exceedingly thin, and very elaborately and precisely
dressed in the height of the fashion of the day. Both wore suits of
light wool, so nearly white that the faint flecking of brown in one
and the broken "shadow check" in the other scarcely impinged on the
cream effect. Even their shoes were white. The younger had a straw hat
of a natty sailor shape, while the elder wore a Panama hat, and as he
lifted it, laying it on the broad rail of the banisters, baring his
brow to the refreshing breeze, it became evident that his short brown
hair was growing sparse at the temples and a tiny thin space on the
top of his well-shaped head threatened a baldness within the next few
years. Both were of fair complexion and clean-shaven, and that feature
the most expressive of character in a man's face, the mouth, showed
without reserve; it was of firm lines in the elder, with a suggestion
of uttering not too many nor too lightly considered words, the mouth
of a man who was capable of self-control, and had had more occasion
for this quality than seemed consonant with the sybaritic conditions
of his apparent estate in life. The lips of the youth had joyous
intimations--red, elastic, smiling, now widening in a grin of most
exuberant mockery as--to be rid perchance of the nicotian lecture--he
caught up one of the handbills of the Carnival, which were flying about
the town, and his eye fell on an item which titillated his sense of
humour.
"Oh, say, Jardine, ain't this rich?" and he read chucklingly, "'Captain
Ollory of the Royal Navy, the greatest high-dive artist in the world,
will give a free exhibition of his wonderful performance daily.'"
The other smiled with languid amusement. "'The Royal Navy?'--let's
see," and sticking his cigar between his teeth he held out his hand
for the flimsy sheet. Lloyd felt the blood flare into his face as he
watched the eyes of this pampered worldling travel, illumined with lazy
laughter, along the lines of the bill which he had written with such
eager hope and thoughtful care, and of which he had been so proud until
this moment of subtle disillusionment.
"Doesn't say what Royal Navy," Jardine suggested languidly.
"Nor how Captain Ollory--isn't that a delicious name?--happens to cease
to sail the seas to dive on dry land for the admiration of the denizens
of Colbury and the purlieus of Kildeer County. Isn't it great?" and
once more the mobile lips of the youth distended with a grimace of
delighted mockery.
A sudden rustle within the hall and the three ladies, fortified by a
delicate lunch of a sandwich and a cup of tea after their early morning
drive in the mountains, enough to refresh them, but nicely calculated
not to take off the edge of their appetite for the one o'clock dinner,
issued forth to witness the wonders of the Street Fair, laughing at
themselves and at each other that idleness and vacuity in the dreary
interval of waiting in the mountains for frost could reduce them to
such a kill-time expedient as this.
The younger gentleman could not forbear his gibes. "I have got to
recoup myself for not having been in Paris with you and Sister in
June," he said to one of the young ladies. "But I should really think
_you_ would have had enough of sight-seeing for one season."
"I'm sure I'll see things here that never could be found in Paris," she
replied carelessly.
The words were trifling, but the voice, so beautifully modulated,
thrilled Lloyd; it was so sympathetic of quality, to use a phrase that
can but slightly suggest the subtle charm it seeks to express; the very
inflection was replete with individuality--it was a voice, an accent
altogether new to his experience. He lifted his eyes wistfully toward
the group.
The sunlight struck with refulgent radiance on the dense white linen
attire of the two younger ladies; they were expanding their white
parasols, of embroidered linen like their dresses, this being the
fad of the hour, and in the intense light thus focussed the contour
and tints of their faces were asserted with a distinctness which the
momentary glimpse could scarcely have given otherwise. Both were
evidently very young, eighteen or twenty years of age; one was all fair
blonde prettiness, with roseate cheeks, and soft pink lips, with blue
eyes and golden hair. The face of the other was exquisitely fair, but
had no trace of roses, though her delicate lips were of a carmine red;
her soft redundant hair was of a pale, lustreless brown; her eyes, of
a luminous dark grey hue, were long rather than large, with long dense
black eyelashes and black arched eyebrows, and as they caught his
glance a deep gravity fell upon them. They held a look of recognition
in that momentous gaze. The laugh died out of her face--it was a look
as if from another world, another sphere of existence; she might have
been a being of another order of creation, so different she was from
aught else that he had ever seen; her eyes seemed immortal, like the
eyes of a spirit; they searched the depths of his soul--in that moment
he knew that she saw him as he was.
It was only for a moment, however; an inappreciable interval of
time--the next, she was all smiling ridicule of the Street Fair, of
herself and her friends for stooping to glean amusement and excitement
in such humble and inadequate wise.
The tread of their white shoes carried them swiftly down the steps of
the verandah, and with the younger of the two men they took the lead,
while their chaperon followed with Jardine, one of her gloved hands
holding the back breadths of her black taffeta skirt to one side, and
impressing the calico dames of Persimmon Cove, gazing after her, with
their first idea of the possibility of the survival into middle life of
the comely, the graceful, and the elegant.
As the group disappeared, or rather as their presence among the
ever-shifting crowd was only to be discerned by the glister of the sun
upon the white parasols, Lloyd's attention returned so reluctantly to
the interests of the present that he had a sense as if he had suffered
a lapse of consciousness or was but awakened from the bewilderments
of a dream. A vague forlornness waited on the moment. But as his eyes
suddenly encountered Haxon's a full realisation of the exigencies of
the situation took hold upon him. Haxon's round face was dully red;
all the blood had rushed to his head and was pounding at his temples;
he was in sudden wrath, and the drops of perspiration stood on his
forehead and bedewed his upper lip; his neck looked thick and swollen
and bulged in folds above his decent white collar that gave imminent
signs of wilting. His small brown eyes flashed and he looked at Lloyd
with a rancour that imputed a share of blame.
"Well,--here's a go!" he said, indignantly.
Once more Lloyd spurred up his jaded resources.
"What?--when?--how?" he asked, as if surprised.
"You know you heard them jays----" Haxon paused, fairly sputtering
in his indignation, "guying me an' the Royal Navy an' the whole biz.
Whyn't you speak up?"
"I--what could I say?"
"Why, you could ha' stopped their mouths--you could ha' told them they
needn't stick their faces in it--that I was a better man, navy or no
navy, than either o' them--you could ha' told them that they were both
bug-house, an' they are,--you could ha' knocked them both down with one
hand, and rolled them up together, and dropped them over the side of
the porch. If it hadn't been so close on to the time for the dive and
the tussle might ha' shook my nerve I'd ha' done it myself."
Lloyd looked at him with an infinite compassion, as he thus worked
himself into a red-hot rage. The subjection in which Haxon must needs
hold himself to the Moloch-like feat that so jeopardised his life, yet
by which he lived indeed, had hardly less constraint for his confrère
who so felt for his plight. Doubtless it was this which so sharpened
Lloyd's acute expedients.
"Why, I wouldn't have touched them for the world," he declared, and as
Haxon gazed at him speechlessly, and curiously, "they had no idea who
you are."
Haxon could only lift the handbill and point at the significant words
"Captain Ollory--Royal Navy--High Dive;" he did not utter a syllable.
"Well, you ain't labelled--are you? You ain't got a tag marked 'Captain
Ollory' tacked on to you anywheres that I can see. They never dreamed
it was you--else they wouldn't have said a word. They ain't a rude
sort."
Haxon took this in doubtfully, his breath still fast, his face still
scarlet and dripping. "I don't know about that," he averred, the
insults to the name and the feat he represented still rankling deep.
"I know they never dreamed it--nobody would ever take you for a showman
in this world. You look like something in the heavy commercial line."
Haxon drew a long breath; he had a sense that this was true, and as the
hour for his ordeal was drawing so near he would fain calm himself with
the realisation that there had been no insult to be resented.
"You are the image of a drummer of the heavy wholesale lay, white
goods salesman, I should say. I don't know what _I_ look like," Lloyd
declared, "but I am sure they never took you for a showman."
Haxon was reassured. He began to reflect that not even the practised
eye of the worldlings could have discerned Lloyd's vocation. Haxon
thought indeed that Lloyd looked as much like a man of a high social
grade as either of them, though not so smart. He would not have
said this, however; he grudged his friend the satisfaction of this
flattering theory. Yet not all at once could he quit the theme.
"But what's the matter with the Royal Navy?" he plained.
"It's all right," Lloyd declared.
"If 'Captain Ollory' is such a dead give away as all that, why did you
let it go on the bills? I know _I_ wanted it--but I did not want to be
a laughing-stock when I break my neck."
"Why, Haxon, I'm sure surprised at you--you've bloomed out into such
a confounded fool. Of course such people as those know that 'Captain
Ollory' is a stage name, and the 'Royal Navy' is to make the country
folks stare. They understand that as a little piece of business, and a
mighty good little piece it is, too, as you might know by the way they
laughed at it. They know that 'Captain Ollory' is a high-class acrobat
whose real name doesn't go on the bills, and if they don't know that
already they are going to find it out pretty damn quick. I'm blamed if
they and their ladies ain't pretty considerable astonished when they
see that turn--it's worth forty such fairs, and they jolly well know
it."
Haxon had lifted his head; his feathers were gradually smoothing down.
"There's the band now, taking up their positions," Lloyd admonished the
acrobat.
Both men gazed down into the square where presently the glitter of
polished brazen tubes caught the mid-day sunshine amongst the shifting
groups of the country folk. Suddenly the leader lifted his baton--there
was a double ruffle of the drums, then the wide blare of the horns
surged out, and the illuminated rare air pulsed with the regular throb
of the tempo. Haxon precipitately quitted the verandah to assume the
pink satin garments slashed with dark red and the pink silk tights in
which "Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy" plunged down from the giddy
heights in that "high dive" which had so astonished the population of
Kildeer County.
The summer tourists, seeking amusement in the unaccustomed paths of the
Street Fair, had not prospered. The aspect of the untutored people from
the mountains and coves hard by--the jostling, unkempt, jeans-clad men,
the slatternly women with snuff-brush in mouth and a wailing infant in
arms--so preponderated over the genteeler element of the town that the
latter was almost unnoted and ignored.
"Poor humanity," Ruth Laniston exclaimed wearily; "how uncouth, how
grotesque it seems when so near to nature's heart."
"How much man has done for man," rejoined her cousin, Lucia Laniston,
"in setting and following the fashions."
"Poor humanity indeed," said Mrs. Laniston, didactically, bent on
improving the opportunity. "How can you take so superficial a view?
As a mere example of the sensate in creation think what a marvellous
motive power is expressed in that woman--only a bundle of muscular
fibre, but without a conscious effort she moves along this pavement;
with an involuntary impulse she sees every item of that garden at the
corner--and really those coleus on the terrace are very fine!--think of
the curious cerebral processes of her mental organisation----"
"And then think of the curious way her skirt is cut," the irreverent
daughter laughed.
Mrs. Laniston grew squeamish presently and balked at the idea of seeing
the "freaks." Her interest in "poor humanity" did not extend beyond
the normal--she could not abide to view the fat lady, nor the living
skeleton, nor the wild man.
"You ought really to see 'Wick-Zoo,'" her son urged her with a
twinkling eye. "He is about as wild as I am."
The "snake-eater" was not to be tolerated, and the utmost wiles of the
spieler could not lure her party to his tent. The sun was beginning to
be grievously hot, and before Haxon had climbed quite to the top of the
mast the party had returned to the verandah of the hotel, whence they
shudderingly beheld the acrobat's graceful downward plunge.
The ladies had retired within to rest from their somewhat limited
exertions and Frank Laniston and Jardine were sitting on the verandah,
languidly chatting and observing the crowd in the square, when
suddenly they perceived walking briskly toward the hostelry a dripping
serio-comic figure, the pink satin garments party invisible beneath an
overcoat, below which, however, a pair of stalwart calves encased in
pink silk protruded. Lloyd was following and his distinctive face and
manner were too individual not to be instantly placed. The tourists
had not recognised in the acrobat the respectable commercial-looking
figure they had earlier noted with Lloyd on the verandah, but as Haxon
marched stoutly up the steps he fixed them with a serious eye and
instantly both remembered the man and their comment on the handbill in
his presence.
It was young Laniston's instinct to shrink within himself on this
discovery; he realised how deeply this ridicule must have cut, with a
keener edge that the rudeness was obviously unintentional. His face
flushed, his eye faltered, and he hung his head. But Jardine was very
much a man of the world. He considered that the matter could not well
be mended and hence had best be ignored. He and his friend could not
have been expected to recognise the presence of the acrobat and rein
their speech accordingly. Perhaps this conclusion was the more easily
reached since he himself with his habitual reserve had said little
or nothing calculated to offend the sensibilities of the acrobat. He
therefore made no sign of a comprehension of the contretemps; he bent
his eyes calmly on the sorting of a sheaf of letters which he had
just found on inquiry at the post office here. But Laniston, though
quick at contention with a fair cause of quarrel, was possessed of the
generosities of good-fellowship; he could not disregard the wound which
he had unwittingly inflicted and was eager to assuage it. His chair was
near the entrance, and thus he accosted the acrobat, as Haxon was about
to pass, without seeming to seek an occasion to make the amende.
"I must congratulate you, sir--a more daring feat I never saw," his
hearty young voice rang out buoyantly, "and I've seen some good things
on both sides of the water. I believe I have the pleasure of speaking
to Captain Ollory?"
"No," said Haxon, apparently contradicted by the rills which trickled
from his garments as he paused, and the view which the open coat gave
of the saturated pink finery and tights, "that is--a stage name."
"Oh, I understand----" Frank Laniston eagerly interpolated.
"Royal Navy--all rot, of course," Haxon stipulated, including Jardine
in his explanatory glance.
"But there is no fake about the high dive," cried out young Laniston
delightedly.
"Haxon is my name," said the acrobat, flattered and at ease again. "And
this is my friend and manager, Mr. Lloyd."
"Happy to meet you, Mr. Lloyd," said Laniston politely as they shook
hands. "My name is Laniston." Then with the easy assurance of the
very young and unthinking he continued exuberantly, "Let me introduce
my friend, Mr. Jardine," with a roguish side-glance at his stiff and
reluctant companion. Jardine shook hands, however, with the requisite
courtesy, and thus the unlucky episode passed, resulting in naught but
the achievement of an informal introduction to the two showmen, which
fact, distasteful as it was, did not recur to Jardine's mind until
later in the day.
The party from New Helvetia were dining at one of the smaller round
tables in the long low room which looked out of several windows on the
formal walks and trellised arbours of an old-fashioned flower garden.
Here the sunshine was but a drowsy glamour, the shadow of the house
and the foliage fell far athwart it, and the zinnias, the gladioli,
white and red, the roses and the pinks, made a brilliant display of
bloom. The meal was justifying the fame of the cuisine; the breeze
fluttered the white jasmine that clambered about the window hard by;
there seemed scant need of the punkahs, stoutly pulled back and forth
over the three long tables at which the public in general was served.
This little round table stood a trifle apart in a recess, which in
fact had once been a small room, now thrown into the larger by the
removal of a partition. It was sometimes consigned to the use of ladies
travelling alone, coming down from New Helvetia to take the train, the
new branch railroad having recently reached Colbury; or of some local
politician of note, a candidate for Congress alighting here in stumping
the district; or of the circuit judge, or perhaps the chancellor
holding court in this division; or of some noted revivalist bent on
awakening the conscience of a wide itinerary and here refreshing the
inner man--always the guests assigned to this table were persons of
distinction in their sort, and the board was suspected of furnishing
special dainties not served to the general public.
The long tables were very orderly and decorous. Here dined usually most
of the young clerks of the stores, a confirmed old bachelor or so, the
visiting lawyers and clients from a distance with cases in court, two
or three families of the place, the inevitable exponents of "declining
housekeeping," a few young unsettled couples, mated but not yet nested,
and to-day these were reinforced by the more well-to-do of the country
folk attending the Fair. The Laniston party, well content in their
sequestered nook and by reason of previous experience accustomed to
the situation, now and again cast a casual glance at the long tables,
but mostly found the outlook into the fair pleached alleys of the old
garden a pleasing interlude between the mountain trout and the saddle
of mountain mutton, both the finest flavoured of their kind in the
world. The pungent odour of the mint sauce was fragrant on the air; the
bees were astir among the sweet peas and pinks in the garden borders;
a humming-bird's dainty wings fluttered gauzily among the white jasmine
blooms at the window; suddenly the group's attention was recalled by
the commotion of a late entrance; the head waiter strode down the
room with an air of extreme importance and drew out two chairs at the
nearest of the long narrow tables, but on its opposite side.
Mrs. Laniston was electrified when one of two gentlemen, ushered to
these seats thus close by, gave a polite bow of recognition toward the
table isolated in the alcove. Frank Laniston, punctiliously returning
it, felt with the eyes of his mother upon him as if the sins of many
sinful years had suddenly found him out. Jardine, with a sense of
desperate ambush, formulated in his inner consciousness some hitherto
suppressed convictions concerning the "freshness" of the hobble-de-hoy
estate, and expressed his feeling of annoyance in a very stiff and
formal bow--only vouchsafed indeed lest worse things ensue. Not until
after both had spoken did Lloyd bow, and then as stiffly and haughtily
as Jardine himself.
"Why, Mr. Jardine, I didn't know that you had acquaintances here," said
Mrs. Laniston wonderingly, in a low, reproachful voice and with her
eyes discreetly averted. "Who is that tremendously handsome man whom
you seem to be keeping to yourself?"
"The stout gentleman?" suggested her son, blushing and considerably
out of countenance, but bursting with the inopportune and irrepressible
mirth of youth.
"Be still, Francis--of course not. But who was that
distinguished-looking young gentleman who bowed directly to you, Mr.
Jardine?" she asked.
Mr. Jardine had some affection, real or fancied, that menaced the
well-being of his liver, and he had sacrificed to it considerable
time in drinking the water of the New Helvetia Springs. While in that
region he had contracted an affection, real or fancied, of the heart,
the exactions of which would in no wise permit him to depart thence
until the Laniston covey should have flown southward. The intimacy
which the gradual desertion of the spa had fostered between the few
remaining guests, waiting till the fall of frost in their Southern
homes should dispel the danger of contracting the yellow fever, that
had earlier raged in those cities, had been a favouring element to
his attachment, and he had greatly rejoiced in its soft thralls. But
now this friendship for the family had placed upon him a certain
indirect responsibility in their whimsical, futile outing to the rural
amusement of the Street Fair in Colbury. He had, of course, no control
of the Laniston cub, nor of Mrs. Laniston, herself. Yet should aught
supervene unbecoming or unworthy of the position of the party in any
sort, however elicited by their own idiosyncrasies, it would seem that
he, experienced, worldly-wise, as he was, should have guarded them
from it. He knew that the two Laniston brothers, who had fled from
the yellow fever in their city homes only as far as their respective
plantations, were infinitely absorbed since the early opening of the
cotton bolls and the prospect of speedy shipments of the crop, and glad
enough to delegate their family cares, on the theory that Jardine would
of course look after anything that Frank could not handle. Jardine
lifted his eyes for a moment and observed Haxon's small bright orbs,
staring across the long table with the frankest hardihood at the two
young ladies, whose fair faces were only slightly shaded by the dainty
embroidered frills of their wide white lingerie hats which, for some
mysterious reason that Jardine could never fathom, they still saw fit
to wear at table. He had a fear that Haxon could interpret perhaps
the motion of his lips--then he reflected that the acrobat was not
troubling himself to gaze at him.
"That," Jardine replied to Mrs. Laniston with deliberate cruelty, "that
'distinguished-looking young gentleman' is the manager of the Street
Fair."
There was a momentary silence.
"Oh, Mr. Jardine," cried Lucia Laniston, "I--do--not--believe--you."
This was the voice that Lloyd had heard on the verandah earlier in
the day, low, soft, yet so keyed that distinctness hung on its every
intonation--or was it that the distance was slight?--or was it that
all space could not have annulled its vibrations to his receptive
ear? He could not know what had elicited the words, and his instincts
forbade the cool stare of absorbed interest with which Haxon permitted
himself to participate in the entertainment of the party at the round
table. Lloyd only saw that Jardine's thin cheek reddened as if in
surprised annoyance, that he was laughing in mirthless embarrassment,
and that Mrs. Laniston was rebuking her niece. "My dear--how can
you?--But Mr. Jardine, this does seem impossible."
"I met him on the hotel verandah this morning,--he was introduced to
me,--only casually of course."
Frank Laniston had no particular affinity with deceit, but his mother,
adoring as she was, had yet her captious and severe traits, and he
did not care to take upon himself the onus of having compassed the
introduction to the two showmen. He sagely opined that Jardine was
better panoplied against her weapons than he--in fact Jardine would not
be called upon to sustain her attack. It would be presumed that all
his actions were within the limit of the appropriate and judicious,
and they would not be questioned. He could not quench the sparkle in
his eyes as they met the grave regards of the elder man, on whose
shoulders he had shifted the burden of his own cubbish _faux pas_, and
he did not realise how little the adolescent type which he exemplified
appealed at this moment to Jardine's predilections. Indeed he esteemed
Jardine a friend of his own, attached by a perception of his good
qualities already budded, and his promise of better still to come,
and had no idea that if it had not been for the attractions of one of
his feminine relatives he would have long ago been thrown overboard,
as it were, and would never have had the opportunity to tie up the
straggling, unpruned, untrained vines of his rank, crude convictions to
the stanch supports of Jardine's standards. Frank Laniston was one of
the conditions of the opportunity to enjoy the society of Miss Lucia
Laniston, as was the epidemic of yellow fever raging in the South, and
Jardine was fain to submit like a philosopher to the admixture of evils
in various degrees with the happiness he experienced in the present,
and sought in the future.
"Dear me--you don't say." Mrs. Laniston cast but one casual glance at
the subject of the conversation, and then turned to the discussion of
her ice cream. She was never the woman to hold on to hot iron when she
had once burned her fingers. She had forgotten the man's fine carriage
and handsome face before she had finished explaining that this kind of
country ice cream, which was frozen custard in fact, figured always at
metropolitan hotels as Neapolitan ice cream.
"The Great Smoky ice--how would that read on an up-to-date menu?"
suggested Frank, plying his fork.
Mrs. Laniston was not altogether unaware of Haxon's bead-like gaze, and
she was disposed to hurry the young ladies through the discussion of
their Indian peaches and grapes.
"You will have plenty of those peaches at New Helvetia," she urged.
"But not till to-morrow," said Lucia.
"Let me order the coffee, now."
"For mercy's sake, mamma," the loitering Ruth remonstrated.
"I'm as hungry as a hunter--yet," the brown-haired, poetic-eyed Lucia
averred. But she affected no ethereal delicacy or daintiness. She had
enjoyed her dinner and meant to finish it with due relish.
Mr. Jardine laughed with unexpected leniency and directed her choice to
a great deeply red Indian peach, the biggest, the most luscious in the
old-fashioned white-and-gilt china basket.
"I believe the juice in this would fill a cup," she said solemnly.
"No doubt," he assented.
"Blood-red," she looked at it on the spoon.
"A beautiful tint," he agreed.
"And s-s-s-sweet," she fairly kissed it with her delicate, carmine lips.
"Why, Lucia, what a gourmande you seem," said her aunt.
"Bah, all the rest of you are as old as the hills and have got the
dyspepsia, except Ruth and me--so you grudge us our good appetites and
our nice dinner."
"I'm not old," said Frank with his adolescent laugh, half growl, half
chuckle. "I haven't got the dyspepsia."
"No, but you have got the cigarette habit--which amounts to the same
thing."
"Coffee, waiter," said Mrs. Laniston succinctly. Not a very wise or
witty conversation certainly, but it was not for Haxon.
With the peculiar carrying quality of Lucia's voice every word she
uttered was distinct to Lloyd. He could not hear what was said by the
others, albeit she spoke no louder. Now and then Frank's facetious
growl seemed to slip the leash and a phrase or a laugh became
distinguishable. Lloyd had some instinct that stood him in stead for
breeding, for tuition, for experience. He would not unduly urge Haxon,
but men of their hurried mode of life make swift work of meals and
might be called "very valiant trenchermen." They had both finished a
repast unusually loitering before the Laniston party had fairly entered
upon the fruit course. He threw his napkin on the table and started to
his feet ere Haxon's glance of protest could reach him. Then ruefully
followed by the acrobat they left the room before the Laniston party
could gather themselves together for their avoidance.
A silence ensued at the round table while Jardine leisurely cracked
almonds in search of a philopena which he was pledged to eat with Ruth,
and Mrs. Laniston trifled with her black coffee.
"Where's your hurry, now, Aunt Dora?" asked Lucia, her eyes narrowing
mischievously, and Ruth laughed in delight, growing very alluringly
pink as she gazed teasingly at her mother.
Mrs. Laniston was distinctly out of countenance. "Oh, you two
girls!--you will be the death of me. I wish you would try to be more
circumspect in the presence of company."
"Meaning Mr. Jardine," Lucia turned in an explanatory manner to Ruth,
her face grave but her eyes alight with fun.
"Meaning Mr. Jardine," Ruth turned in an explanatory manner to Lucia,
likewise grave but with her face pink and her blue eyes dancing.
Then they both collapsed in a gush of silent laughter, which they half
buried in their clusters of grapes.
"Oh, I'm sure I don't know what I shall do with them! I feel like
apologising to you for them, Mr. Jardine," Mrs. Laniston protested.
"Oh, don't mind me, I beg," said Jardine, laughing.
"Oh, don't mind him, he begs," said Lucia with an explanatory nod to
Ruth.
"Oh, don't mind him, he begs," said Ruth, gravely explaining to Lucia.
Then ensued the usual burst of silvery laughter.
"They simply distract me--the two of them;" Mrs. Laniston, after an
involuntary laugh, addressed Jardine. "You will hardly believe me, Mr.
Jardine, but my Ruth was so good, oh, an angel [the look they cast on
one another, while Jardine struggled in vain to listen gravely amidst
this foolery], before Lucia came to live with me. And Lucia's father,
George Laniston--my husband's brother, you know,--says that when Lucia
was at her own home she was a very mouse of a little girl [again that
disqualifying look at each other]. And now, together they aid and abet
each other in all manner of absurdity and--and--_wildness_--that's just
what it gets to, sometimes--just wildness."
"Sad," said Jardine, eyeing the twain indulgently.
They were both munching grapes just now and took no notice.
"They ought to be separated," said Frank, with his capable air. "Offer
a premium to the one who gets married first."
"The blessed man would be premium enough," Lucia declared, "if we just
could catch him."
"Oh, my dear, think how your voice carries," her aunt hastily
admonished her.
"Why, he, whoever he may be, might hear it and come to the rescue."
There was a moment's silence, filled with grapes.
"Mamma thinks that we never see anything," said Ruth, with a very
knowing air.
"Didn't he stare?" commented Lucia.
"Who?--the very handsome man that mamma thought Mr. Jardine was
monopolising and denying her his acquaintance?" said Frank, with his
callow chuckle.
"Oh, no," Ruth's voice affected a dreary cadence. "_He_ didn't so much
as lift his eyelashes,--his very--long--eyelashes."
"It was the other one then," said Frank, "the bullet-eyed acrobat."
"It doesn't matter in the least, Francis," said Mrs. Laniston, with
dignity.
"That manager is really the handsomest man I ever saw," said the
discreet Frank. "The clerk of the hotel tells me that he is so
considered by everybody. In Duroc's celebrated painting of 'The
Last Day,' he is posed as the angel Gabriel. Why, his nickname is
'Beauty'--he goes among his pals by the euphonious appellation of
'Beaut' Lloyd."
Frank had finished his dinner and he was showing some inclination to
rock his chair to and fro; he imagined that this was why his mother
frowned at him.
"What is his real name?" Lucia asked, unexpectedly.
"Why, child, how should he know?" Mrs. Laniston had risen, and tapped
sharply on her niece's shoulder with rather admonitory knuckly fingers.
"Why, Francis passed his exams all right; I should think that he was
far enough advanced to be able to construe the hotel register at all
events."
"And there he is enrolled as Hilary Chester Lloyd," said Frank genially.
"Not a bad name," said Ruth casually.
"Rather humble for the manager of the greatest show on earth,"
laughed Frank. "Finest high-dive artist in the world, Captain
Ollory of the Royal Navy, Flying Lady, Fat Lady, Snake-eater--eats
'em alive,--biggest boa constrictor, living skeleton, largest Ferris
Wheel----"
Lucia's face turned deeply crimson as she listened to this farrago. She
did not know why she should blush for the manager--he certainly did not
think it necessary to blush for himself. To divert attention from the
mounting flush in her face she remarked as she rose from the table,
"I'm going up in the Ferris Wheel at any rate."
"And so am I," said Ruth. "I'll snatch that joy while it is within my
reach."
The turmoil they anticipated ensued instantly.
"For heaven's sake," Mrs. Laniston solemnly adjured them. "Mr. Jardine,
in pity on me let's get them back to the mountains. They will rack my
nerves to pieces. The idea--to go up in a Ferris Wheel!"
"It is not an intellectual amusement, nor elegant in any sense, but it
is perfectly safe," said Jardine.
"I have been east and west and north and south, yet was I never in a
Ferris Wheel," said Lucia, locking her arm in Ruth's as they stood by
the table preparatory to issuing from the room.
"I have crossed the ocean, I have visited the Colosseum by moonlight, I
have explored--a little way--the Catacombs, yet was I never in a Ferris
Wheel," echoed Ruth.
"I have 'swum in a gondola,' I have viewed the pyramids at Ghizeh, I
have ridden cross-saddle in the Yosemite, yet was I never in a Ferris
Wheel," declared Lucia.
"I have seen the Rock of Gibraltar, I have stood beneath the Eiffel
tower, I have visited the Street Fair at Colbury, yet was I never in a
Ferris Wheel," Ruth took up the antistrophe.
Mrs. Laniston had less their safety in mind than the staring of the
bullet-eyed acrobat, and the fascinations of the long, unlifted
eyelashes of the Beauty-man.
"If you can endure to stay with them every minute of the time,
Mr. Jardine," she consented, conditionally. "Don't trust them to
Francis--he is so irresponsible and flighty and young."
She felt very certain that Jardine's gravity and dignity would over-awe
any possibility of an approach to familiarity which a lack of knowledge
of the world on the part of the rustics, or the irrepressible gaiety of
his youthful charges might superinduce.
"I'll take them first to a concert of 'high-class singing,'" Jardine
said, and for his life he could not forbear a laughing grimace.
"I think the sun is a little too high and too hot as yet for the
fascinations of the Ferris Wheel."
Then joined by Frank he accompanied the two out on the verandah and
down the flight of steps as once more with their white parasols aglare
in the sunlight they took their way through the crowd in the square.