Mr. Jardine, seating himself on the piazza of the hotel, which
overlooked the motley throngs of the square with the salient
concomitants of the mushroom spread of the tents, the tawdry ornaments
of the vendors' stands, the tall mast of the high diver, the periphery
of the gigantic Ferris Wheel with its seats filled with rustics swaying
in the slow revolution through the afternoon glow, the business houses
of the little town that bounded the space on each side, their decorous,
sober, orderly appearance, so alien to the flurry and carnival folly of
the streets, had sufficient need of the mild stimulant of his cigar to
restore the tone of his nerves and allay the irritation that harassed
his mental processes. He was glad of the silence, for so he accounted
the freedom from talk whether of accost or reply, despite the varied
clamours of raucous voices, the wailing of infants, the whinnying
of impatient horses, eager for the homeward journey, and mindful of
supper, as the waggon teams stood hitched in rows to the courthouse
fence, the braying of the band, the stentorian cries of the spielers,
all the unwearied activities of the lungs of the mountebanks. He was
glad to be no longer in the seat of the scornful, to be continually
objecting, deriding, frowning down the features of the little show;
if it was the fad of the young ladies to entertain their idleness with
such rubbish, surely for the nonce he might ignore its vapidities,
its pitiful poverty-stricken shifts, its sedulous catering to the low
capacities of the common rustic crowd. There was much distasteful,
even disgusting to a fastidious sense in its exhibitions, but there
was nothing absolutely coarse, and not the most remote suggestion
of anything vile. It was a clean show, as its handbills insistently
proclaimed. It need not have so lacerated his sensibilities, he felt,
as the fragrant nicotian solace began its soothing effect. To be sure
it was a sacrifice, a poignant trial to his hyper-elegant standards
to be with Lucia Laniston amid scenes so unworthy. He would fain meet
her, as heretofore, on a plane more in accord with the character of
both, among circumstances that elicited those charms of intellect and
culture that had won his admiration and respect as her more obvious
grace and beauty had captured his heart. In his eyes she united many
fascinations, the more remarkable because of her youth. Her solid,
unimpassioned judgment, her cultivated taste, her very respectable
scholastic acquirements, gauged from even a high educational point
of view, of which he had seen many evidences, rendered it manifestly
impossible that she should enjoy the exhibition in any serious sense.
It merely furnished a surface for that exuberant buoyancy and those
fantastic traits which her aunt called "wildness," and which he
supposed were the inseparable concomitants of such abounding youth and
vitality and joyous spirits. She was alert and energetic, and full of
life and mirth, and it was not the fashion of the day, as of yore, to
set such a damsel down to sew her sampler by the fire till such time,
soon or late, as her cavalier came to claim his domestic paragon.
Things were different now. Wider courses of study, much travel,
athletic recreations, great liberty of thought and action had resulted
in a wider outlook for girls--and, suddenly, he doubted if it made them
happier from any point of view. He was remembering the dull depression,
the listless disillusionment in Lucia Laniston's face as but now they
had walked to the hotel together, and the ladies had sought their rooms
for some freshening of attire before starting on the afternoon drive
back to New Helvetia. The horses were swift and fresh, and the distance
was thus minimised; there was a new moon to enliven the dusk, the roads
were very good; the driver, a stalwart young fellow, himself, and Frank
Laniston, three men, quietly carrying arms in conformity with the
privilege accorded travellers, were ample escort for the ladies, even
in these remote wildernesses; but Jardine was a prudent man of a prompt
habit. He drew out his watch, and looked critically at the wane of the
day evidenced in the skies, bright though they still were, beginning to
hope that the usual feminine procrastinations might not so postpone
the hour of departure as to render the party unduly benighted.
Chances of casualties, a broken wheel, a horse going lame, a mistaken
direction in fording a river, a cloud on the moon, the shattering
of the carriage lamps in a blow from a projecting bough, even the
unlikely possibility of highway robbers, should not be invested with
unnecessary jeopardy and added danger. He was at such a disadvantage in
this respect as does not usually harass the guardian of ladies. He was
neither husband, father, nor brother, to stand, timepiece in hand, and
proclaim the wasting hour, like an irate clock. He could not order the
luggage downstairs--packed or unpacked. He could not threaten that he
would start on schedule time, regardless if all portable property were
left behind. Jardine was only a friend, as yet, benign, complaisant,
and in no position to dictate. Yet he wondered, with a vexation which
tobacco was powerless to reach, what could be detaining the ladies
in their preparations for an afternoon drive through an unpeopled
wilderness. If it was a question of toilette its effect was already
a foregone conclusion--Ruth had slain her thousands, and Lucia her
tens of thousands--unconsciously he was adopting their own exaggerated
vein. He could not imagine that anything of consequence hindered
their readiness,--only the usual feminine, dilatory aversion to be
on time for any vicissitude of life. He began to feel that he must
act, yet he shrank from encountering the laggards with admonitions
and reproaches. He realised that he had not commended himself by his
stiff imperviousness to the simple enjoyments of the "lark" to-day,
such as it was, and his disdainful incapacity to enter into its spirit
had not bettered it. He was anxious to appear no more as unresponsive
monitor, full of warnings, and wise saws, and stiff reproofs. Where
was Francis Laniston? Naught was to be disparaged by thrusting him
into the jaws of domestic displeasure. Let him make the remonstrance,
and bear its resilient blow as behoved his position and relationship.
Let the dilatory ladies wreak their displeasure on the urgent Frank!
Animated by this inhuman resolution, Jardine sprang from his chair to
go in search of Frank. He was interrupted by the sudden issuance of the
clerk of the hotel, a young, plump, blond man, wearing an immaculate
white duck suit, with short hair in a stiff straight roach above his
brow, no eyebrows--thus he dispensed with frowns--a long, blunt nose, a
twinkling blue-grey eye, very small and very affable. His whole aspect
was not unducklike, and, as he remained all day behind his desk, having
no outside vocation to call him from his post, he was very speckless,
without even the creases incident to a sitting posture, since he stood
at his desk, or perched on a high stool. He might have been expected to
creak with starch as his brisk short steps brought him to the encounter.
"Speak to you a moment, Mr. Jardine?" he said, pausing by a chair, and
leaning with both hands on its back in his stiff white garments. Many
men, however wasteful in general, have some saving grace of frugality.
Jennings, the clerk, a most voluble man, was nevertheless sparing
in parts of speech, and economised pronouns and conjunctions. This
necessitated a reckless expenditure in punctuation--commas, colons,
periods, and dashes, but, as his prelections were not destined for
type, he did not realise, perhaps, that what he saved at the spile he
lost at the bung. "Considerable storm in the mountains. Thought I ought
to let you know. Heard you give orders for the horses to be put to at
once. See from east window of office. Mountains have been caught up in
clouds--so to speak. I tried to telephone to New Helvetia, in interest
of your party.--Hate to be alarmist--wanted to find out what weather
is doing there. No answer. Central says wire is blown down. Intact as
far as Crossroads. Tried Mr. Tackett, the storekeeper there. He says
raining there heavily. Big blow in the woods--falling timber--and
lightning--thought I'd let you know."
"Thank you, very much," said Jardine, still standing with his watch in
his hand contemplating, not its dial, but these untoward complications.
"Can you afford us accommodations? I understood this morning that the
house was full."
"Thought of that--the ladies have had a room all day--only one--very
large, with alcove--two beds--double room. And you gentlemen--we have
thought of you--we will offer you little blue parlour--best we can
do----"
"And sleep tunefully on the piano, I suppose," Frank interpolated. He
had just strolled up, evidently already informed of the quandary, and
stood listening, his hands in his pockets.
The duck laughed with a short grating note.
"Folding bed--that handsome cabinet with the Indian curiosities on the
brackets--latest patent. The divan is really a sofa-bed, too--you'll be
qualified to help us out and be hospitable, if any more single men drop
in on us," the clerk said tauntingly.
"Now don't you bank on that. The little blue parlour is my bower, and
don't you forget it," said Frank.
The ladies had not come prepared to stay the night, but Mrs. Laniston
remembered that in going to New Helvetia in June she had left a steamer
trunk here, after her European voyage, filled with heavier wear than
would be needed before autumn. According to the accommodating methods
of the hotel, it had been received and stored in the attic, and now
it was brought down in the nick of time, to the delight of the young
ladies, who hoped that it might contain something that they might
borrow, in addition to the absolutely necessary paraphernalia for the
night. As soon as Mrs. Laniston showed some natural disposition to
defend her belongings from these unwarranted depredations, they became
"possessed," as she expressed it, to see what she had in her trunk,
and, having all the desire in the world to maintain her ascendency and
her rights, she declared she would not turn the key until they promised
that they would ask for nothing but the loan of a nightgown apiece.
When matters had reached this deadlock, she seated herself in a cane
rocking-chair, her bunch of keys in her hand, and her eyes on the
pansies that papered the bedroom wall. Both the girls, in the trim
pleated skirts of their white linen suits, and their sheer shirt
waists,--the two jackets had been folded and laid on one of the beds
in the big, cool, clean room,--seemed exceedingly capable of rummaging
exploits, and she compressed her lips with resolution as from the
corner of her eyes she noted their movements, and their expectant gaze.
"Such fun, Aunt Dora, to try on something new."
"And something blue," murmured Ruth.
"Say, Aunt Dora," said Lucia, sparkling with incredible brilliancy and
lustre of delighted anticipation, "do you suppose that little blue
messaline waist of yours is in that trunk? I just live to try that
shade! I don't want to risk buying anything in it till I can try it on.
I believe it would be becoming to me."
"More so to me," said Ruth. "Anything blue suits my blond hair."
"Not that green cast--it throws green reflections on blond hair."
"Girls, this is cruel," said Mrs. Laniston, "to keep me cooped up in
this close room, while there is such a fresh breeze on the verandah,
and----"
"Mr. Jardine waiting to make love to you; I mean to tell papa." Ruth
saucily laughed.
"You needn't stay here a minute, Aunt Dora. Just leave the keys, and go
at once," said Lucia, with the eye of a bandit.
"I am fairly afraid to leave the trunk," Mrs. Laniston declared. "You
are capable of opening it with a poker."
Lucia glanced around at the utensil as if this expedient had not
occurred to her.
"Mr. Jardine must be waiting for you, girls," Mrs. Laniston admonished
them.
"I know the reason you won't open the trunk before us, Aunt Dora.
Because you are going to lend him and Frank some--some--petticoats! for
the night--you know!"
Mrs. Laniston tried to look shocked.
"Lucia, I am surprised," she said.
"Why, I am only talking to you, Aunt Dora. I would not bring a blush to
the antique cheek of Mr. Jardine for the world," she gravely protested.
"Much cheek as he has got," Ruth gurgled.
"As for Frank, his brazen athletics have made his cheek a permanent
cardinal red, and he could not blush if he would."
Mrs. Laniston broke into an unwilling laugh.
"You two will be the death of me!"
"But what _will_ Frank and the other gentleman do?" queried Frank's
sister.
"My dear, you mustn't inquire into such matters. Frank told me they
would furnish themselves at a clothier's here, where they have
ready-made garments for sale."
"It may be indelicate," said Lucia, "but I would rather picture them
arrayed in ready-made nightgowns, bought in the metropolis of Colbury,
than standing stiffly up on end, dressed in their usual attire all
night. It is more humane."
Mrs. Laniston burst out laughing.
"There!" she suddenly exclaimed, rising and starting to the door,
throwing the bunch of keys on the floor. "I beg and pray you to let my
things alone, and, if you rummage through them, you do so without my
consent, that's all."
Her last glance into the room was not reassuring. The lid of the
precious trunk was already lifted, and the two girls on their knees
before it were diving into its contents, shouldering each other in
their eagerness, their countenances alight with keen curiosity and
greedy expectancy of novelty.
Mrs. Laniston gave a sketch of their employment when she joined Jardine
and Frank on the verandah outside the door of the large parlour. They
had drawn forth a wicker rocking-chair for her from that apartment, and
here, quietly and safely ensconced, she watched the evidences of storm
to the east, as she swayed to and fro, with devout thankfulness that
they had escaped its fury.
"How lucky that we did not start half an hour ago," she said. "We
should have been in the thick of it."
"I hope you didn't say so to those girls," cried Frank. "They will make
it a reason to be behind time for ever more--the dangers they escaped
by never being ready!"
A grey curtain of cloud had fallen over the familiar scene to the
east. It was null, inexpressive, motionless. It cut off the field of
vision. There was no trace of mountain forms, of intervenient valleys
and coves. There might seem naught beyond--some prairie country, this,
whose low horizon brought down the sky to a level with the plain. Only
now and then on the impalpable nullity was a flicker of red fire; in
irregular zigzag lines it pulsed, and once and again the thunders of
the remote tempest shook the sunbeams here. The gay carnival crowds in
the square heeded the storm that burst elsewhere as little as sunshine
ever cares for shadow. The contrast reminded her, Mrs. Laniston said,
of the indifference of the happy in the world to the sadness of others.
Their storms are brewing in the clouded future, to burst sometime,
but all unprescient and unsympathising they sport like small insects
of the stinging varieties--gnats, and gadflies, and wasps--in the
glamour of to-day. "I think happiness, prosperity, give a sense of
superiority. No doubt sorrow and adversity discipline the heart and
soul and temperament, and form and strengthen the character; but any of
us would rather be inferior than perfected at such a cost to comfort. I
think the world is less and less ambitious of realising in one's self
high standards and spiritual elevation. People only care to be thought
fortunate and envied, now--not to be noble, in spite of all that fate
can do."
Mrs. Laniston loved to moralise after a fashion. Much feminine
club life had liberated a certain facility of expression, and
she was an ornament to the rostrum, for she had a good voice, a
low-pitched contralto, and a very agreeable and distinct enunciation
and intonation, which were natural endowments, but which sounded
like the product of training. She had taken no pains to become an
impressive speaker, but she rather liked the sense of superiority the
reputation fostered, and she had fallen into the habit of analysing her
impressions, and setting them in order.
"Gee! wouldn't I hate to have such a rum lot of reflections as all
that, just because New Helvetia is getting it in the neck. My! did you
see that flash!" said Frank.
"And wouldn't I hate to have such a 'rum lot' of expressions if I was
entering my junior year at college, and expected to compete for the
medal for oratory," his mother retorted.
Jardine laughed. "Slang is more and more incorporated into the
language every year," he said.
"Yes," she assented, "and it is used by a class of persons who were
formerly far more exacting. It seems to be considered to impart a sort
of rude strength to phraseology, and a shade of meaning otherwise
impracticable. It affects to be hearty, and downright, and candid.
Whereas it is nothing but slip-shod, and out-at-elbows, and a slovenly
expression of down-at-heel ideas--sometimes lack of ideas. I think
there ought to be some reform, some united action on the part of people
who appreciate the art of conversation, the fit phrasing of thoughts of
value."
"The Federation of Women's Clubs might get on to it," Frank suggested.
His mother went on without noticing him.
"In fact, Mr. Jardine, all the standards are down. Now, when I was
young--it has not been so very many years--it was the extreme of
uncouthness for a lady to swing her arms in walking. At present they
swing _both_ arms, if you please, as if these adjuncts were propellers,
and to and fro they work their progress thus along the street, instead
of walking naturally and gracefully. I thought for a time that this
was a peculiarity of college towns, and of the athletic craze; but you
see everywhere the poor wretch, swinging all loose from the shoulder.
I have told my girls that I will not tolerate this gaucherie--they try
to do it from perversity--but happily they can't remember it always.
Then the young men are not more elegant. Things, in the similitude of
gentlemen, _whistle_ upon the streets!"
"Conscience stricken!" said Frank, with a grimace.
"I don't mean that for you, dear," said his mother. "I should have
to feel much more fit than I do to-day to tackle your long list of
enormities."
This was as an aside, an interlude. She had a sudden perception of
another phase of the subject, and forthwith entered upon it.
"Then, this lack of standard is obvious in matters of far more
importance--it enters the domestic circle. I suppose no one ever
found housekeeping very great fun, but in my young days nobody ever
protested. There may have been shirks, but they hid their misdeeds.
Now, there is a clamour of open detestation of all domestic concerns.
It began with the caterer; in old times one's own establishment was
competent to furnish the refreshments of every entertainment--to
have cakes baked or ices frozen out of one's own house would be a
confession of being beyond one's depth, and of seeking to entertain
more elaborately and making more pretensions than one was entitled
to sustain. A household valued its reputation for fine dinners, and
elaborate refreshments at dancing parties; people even had specialties
that you saw nowhere else, and were sometimes grudging of receipts, and
kept some choice concoctions a dead secret. To have additional waiters
hired for the occasion--unless indeed it were a ball--was unheard of in
houses of good style. Then, when the caterer was fairly established,
the expense accounts came in and cut down the menu----"
"Till it got down to the delectable cup of tea and the midget sandwich,
with an appetising baby ribbon round its tum-tum," interpolated Frank.
"Be still, Francis. In old times every article must be perfection--the
heads of families would be bowed in shame if aught were amiss with
cooking or service--but now it is all the caterer's affair, even the
decorations--sometimes actually the china."
Mr. Jardine was fully ten years Mrs. Laniston's junior, but he was
sufficiently retrospective, and his experience sufficiently extensive
in days gone by, to make him interested in her animadversions on
the present, and her theory of the superiority of the past. He was
of a temperament older than his age, and he sympathised rather with
the stately methods of yore than the less exacting fashions of the
present day. Thus he found it no hardship to moralise on the signs of
the times, with his cigar graciously permitted, and his eyes on the
far-away storm, with an interlocutor intelligent enough to evolve and
present subjects of sufficient interest to titillate his understanding,
requiring no exertion on his part, and loquacious enough to discuss
them with an ability which did not call for interference, or
contradiction, or instruction from him. His was a facile acquiescence,
and Mrs. Laniston, accustomed to talk for time, while some factional
whips of one of her clubs awaited the appearance of dilatory voters,
before a momentous question should be put to the arbitration of the
majority, had by no means exhausted the suggestions the outlook
presented to her discerning contemplation.
"Now here is another phase that appeals more directly to you than to
me, Mr. Jardine. I will venture to say that in the last ten years,
since your college days in fact, there has supervened a total change in
the popular estimate of youth. Formerly in society it was the young man
with the reputation for talent who was in the ascendant. Merely _rich_
men had to stand back. You must have known intellectual young fellows
who enjoyed all the prestige of achievement, a positive value, merely
on the strength of their glowing promise of development. A man was
said to be talented--this reputation lifted him into a prominence that
naught else could compass. People spoke of him with respect. If a girl
desired to marry a man of that sort, yet in college, or new to the bar,
it was considered a safe thing even if he were poor--so sure he was to
make his mark. Now-a-days they live a life apart as students; a career
is not the focus of their regards. Their identity is compassed in their
position as back-stop, or stop-gap----"
"Oh, hi!" interpolated Frank.
"--Or whatever it may be called in their insufferable jargon. A young
man who goes to college to study, and who does it, is contemned as a
grind. Such a thing as taking exercise for health merely in order to
be able to study, to clear the brain--like a horseback ride, or a long
walk--is antiquated. They exercise for the play--as if their playing
days were not over; for the competition--the great children! My Frank
there would rather lead the sprinters in the track team than win the
medal for oratory----"
Frank did not deny this.
"--And he would be more envied and thought a better man than the
medalist."
"If I don't get some sprinting training this fall, they'll shunt me off
the track team," said Frank, his face falling with a sudden anxious
monition.
"I perceive the same trait in the professions, Mr. Jardine. No longer
do you see a politician pointed out as a close and powerful debater,
or a lawyer as a cogent reasoner. Why, they used to make all manner of
discriminations in a man's mental endowments. One was no lawyer, but
a popular speaker--could carry a jury with him against both law and
fact; another had no eloquence, nor appreciation of principles, but
was grounded in case learning and precedent; another had a splendid
choice of words, and a magnetic presence, and a gift of oratory--and
the house would be crowded whenever he spoke. Now, they tell me a
judge would virtually order such an orator to sit down--ask him
to come to the point, or to be brief. They consider all this too
flamboyant--spread-eagleism."
"There does seem a great change in recent years," said Jardine, ceasing
his thoughtful puffing of his cigar, taking it out of his mouth and
looking critically at its ash; "there are now no world-famous orators,
very few politicians of real parts, rarely indeed a statesman; the
notable lawyers are mostly old men of other days, of other traditions."
"And yet," said Mrs. Laniston, admirably capable of presenting the
antithesis, "though imagination, æstheticism, hero-worship, ambition,
all the aspirations are dead, this is pre-eminently the age of the
fake and the blatherskite. People are capable of credulity, but not of
credence. They are superstitious, but they have no faith. The 'isms'
of any fantastic sort will flourish, and the churches are empty.
The adoption of queer creeds, of fake cures, of quack medicines, of
dangerous beautifiers, of impossible methods of learning, of absurd
processes of art and illustration, of fantastic devices in edibles
would abash the pretended miracle workers of the Middle Ages. You can
scarcely buy a yard of genuine goods or a pound of unadulterated food.
People don't care for reading as they once did; the art of conversation
is dead; nobody writes letters any more--your friends send you souvenir
postcards."
She fanned silently a few moments, her delicate, diamonded hand all
the more dainty for the simulation of a man's shirtsleeve and cuff,
which her plaited linen blouse affected, her eyes fixed on the panorama
of storm on the horizon while the air here was so suave that the
grey-streaked curls on her brow did not stir with the motion of her
rocking. She suddenly resumed, interested in another branch of the
subject.
"Instead of the solid business of education, that ought to be as solemn
as prayer, the acquisition of knowledge and the mental training for
the battle of life being held up as a great opportunity and privilege
for the young, it is made attractive, alluring, easy; the fakers have
found that royal road to learning. I was dismayed when I had got Lucia
and Ruth beyond the geography, and spelling, and arithmetic phase. I
said to them, 'Now, if you don't want to learn anything further, you
can stay at home, but every day that you do stay at home you shall
sew--plain sewing--from morning till night.' Mr. Laniston said I ought
to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals. But they developed into quite
hard students. They balked just enough to get a bowing acquaintance
with needle and thimble. I had my way--I hate half measures. They know
what they do know, thoroughly. I can't tolerate incompetence. Unless a
thing is excellent in its way I can make no terms with it, no allowance
because of partiality or affection. Now, Mr. Laniston loves music, and
he knows something about it. But he would sit and listen, with all
the delight in life, to Ruth as she bleated out of time and tune--the
poor child has no voice and no taste--her talent is for painting. But
I stopped that. I said, 'Because her lispings please _you_, she shan't
make a show of herself.' And I stopped the lessons. Lucia is altogether
different, a fine voice and a fine ear, but she can't draw a straight
line. So she had every musical advantage, and I saw to it that she
availed herself of them. We had many a battle royal. 'The sons of
harmony came to cuffs,'" she quoted, with a laugh.
The accession of Mr. Jardine's interest was so apparent when Mrs.
Laniston spoke of Lucia that she might have been tempted to continue
the subject, for she made a point of deserving her reputation as an
agreeable woman, had not the young lady in question suddenly issued
from the door of the hotel. Her cousin Ruth was following, and, after
a glance of inquiry, they smilingly took their way along the verandah
toward the door of the ladies' parlour, where the party sat. The eyes
of both were intently fixed on Mrs. Laniston, as if in anticipation
of some effect, she scarcely knew what. Suddenly she remembered the
plundered trunk, left defenceless at their mercy. Mr. Jardine was
devoutly grateful that they had seen fit to remove their hats. He was
priggish, even old-fashioned in certain persuasions, and the sight
of a young lady at table, on the verandah, at the piano, all day, in
a hat, was at variance with his taste. He had no idea that the hats
had disappeared because of an incongruity with adjuncts, very lately
assumed, of the white dresses. The jacket of Lucia's gown had been laid
aside, and she now wore, in lieu of the plain white linen blouse, one
of fine white Irish lace. It had dainty elbow sleeves (Mrs. Laniston
still conserved a plump arm). It had a belt, a stock collar, and at
each elbow a knot of delicately tinted ribbons of a sea-shell pink,
with rainbow stripes of faint blue, brown, fawn, and a thread of red.
Nothing could have better accorded with the fair, fresh complexion, the
brown hair, in a luxuriant pompadour roll, half crushed down on one
side of the forehead, the long, romantic, dark grey eyes, with their
drooping black lashes. He could not imagine why they should be received
in such cold silence by this woman, with her evident motherly doting on
them both. Ruth was a bit the more showy; she had confiscated a bolero
of alternate lace insertion and lilac ribbon, and she had found a lilac
ribbon for her blond hair. Mrs. Laniston had a moment of wonder as to
where that blue messaline waist could be--certainly it had not been in
that trunk! Since she remained silent, Mr. Jardine's manner was marked
with an accession of humorous cordiality as he rose and placed chairs
for the two.
"And what are the commands of your ladyship for this evening?" he said,
looking admiringly at Lucia.
"The Ferris Wheel, of course!" she exclaimed, with enthusiasm.
He could have fallen on the spot. He had ignored the Ferris Wheel, and
he had rested supine in the fatuous conviction that she had forgotten
it. He was indescribably tired of the street fair. Its inanities would
have been insupportable to a man of his type in its best estate, but
hampered with the thousand sensitive points that beset the escort of
a lady in an amusement utterly beneath her pretensions and custom, so
remote from her comprehension that she was as if on another planet,
made heavy draughts on his amiability, his endurance, even his
_savoir faire_. He hardly knew how to meet the unprecedented problem
it presented in the interest of his fair charges. If he had had his
way neither should have shown her face in so motley a throng. But he
was exacting, a bit old-fashioned, and had not even Mrs. Laniston's
philosophy that would give them a little line in matters of scant
importance that she might more easily curb them when circumstances
required this. They would soon tire of a harmless folly, but a monotony
of dulness could not be maintained. The prospect of further experiences
of the street fair strained the tension of his equanimity almost to the
breaking point. He could scarcely endure the thought how nearly they
had escaped it all; a little more--but for the causeless delay of their
preparations--and the "hack," with its strong, fleet horses would have
been at the door. To be sure it would have whirled them into the midst
of the mountain storm, but the thought of wind and lightning, thunder
and torrents of rain was less abhorrent to him at that moment than the
recurrence of the trials of the "show."
"Oh, yes, indeed!" Ruth chimed in. "How glad I am we couldn't get
off--we would have missed the ride on the Ferris Wheel, the cream of
the whole correspondence."
It was a relief when he discovered that they had no intention of
sallying forth for that enjoyment until after the early supper of the
little hostelry. There was a possibility that something might occur
in the interval--rain, wind, earthquake, he hardly cared, so keen, so
nettling was his irritation, and his desire to obstruct their fell
purpose, to keep them within doors, decorously spending the evening
in conversation with their own exclusive party, or, so long as the
little blue parlour remained open for the general use of the guests
of the hotel, a quiet game of bridge, in its quasi retirement. Mrs.
Laniston and he were often partners at this delectable pastime, and the
two girls delighted to combine their science, luck, even chicanery,
against them. The delay restored his equanimity for the nonce, but his
look of annoyance had been so palpable that Mrs. Laniston thought a
remonstrance in order, when she could speak aside to one of the young
ladies.
"I wouldn't insist on the Ferris Wheel," she said to Lucia, as
they walked through the ladies' parlour; the verandah had become
unpleasantly crowded; the evening intermission had supervened at the
fair; the wickets were closed; the lamps were not yet lighted, and
the sunset glow was dulling into twilight. However removed from the
normal estate of mankind, the living skeleton and the fat lady must
eat, rest a bit, quench their thirst, and sigh against the ridicule of
Fate. It was one of the unadvertised features of the show, considered
amusing or pathetic according to the individual temperament of the
spectator, that the fat lady, who, poor soul, had not her nerves under
the best control, burst into tears, ever and anon, and her mountain
of flesh shook and trembled with sobs. She had an æsthetic mind, and
was sensitive to ridicule and the wonderment of the crowd, and would
fain have been beautiful and admired rather than have filled her purse
with gold. She needed a respite to bathe her eyes and readjust her
tawdry finery, and hearken to the consolations of her attendant. The
boa constrictor, gorged, had coiled up, and was lost in the torpor of
digestion and the recuperation of sleep. The spielers had cast aside
their horns; one or two were in the drug store, busy in swallowing the
unpalatable vaseline for their throats; the Ferris Wheel was empty and
still for the nonce; the rural visitors of the more prosperous class
who could sustain the added expense of the hotel, detained also by the
storm in the mountains, were trooping up the steps and sauntering
along the verandah. Their ladies were ensconced in numbers in the
rocking chairs of the large parlour. It had occurred to Jardine that
the garden walks were probably solitary and attractive at this hour,
and he suggested repairing thither. As the party emerged into the
fragrant flowery paths, Mrs. Laniston continued her aside to her niece.
"I fancy Mr. Jardine considers the Ferris Wheel undignified."
"There is no question of dignity about it," said Lucia coldly. "It is
the simple amusement of a simple little fair. If we see fit to break
the monotony of our detention at New Helvetia by visiting a countryside
_fête_, new to our experience, and so far interesting, and by
participating in such a degree as pleases us, it is not an appropriate
subject for his criticism."
Mrs. Laniston was struck with the justice of this observation. "But
don't be too independent," she admonished the young lady, for Mr.
Jardine was a very good match from a worldly point of view.
"I do not need his assistance to preserve my dignity," she retorted.
Thus she walked on with her head held very high, and an added
stateliness of carriage that comported well with her fine height and
her slender, willowy figure.
The sunset glow was still reddening among the dark, luxuriant shrubs.
In the few locust trees the wreaths of honeysuckle vines, that
clambered up to the lowest boughs and festooned the space from one
to another, were in the fall blooming--all the world was pervaded
with that sweet reminiscent fragrance of spring. There were late
roses, too, of an old-fashioned kind, pink and white, and one, "the
giant of battles," had dark-red velvet petals, and an odour as of an
exquisite distillation of all the hoarded sweetness and sunshine of
summer; it furnished a rich note of colour to Lucia's brown hair,
where it clung with its thorns and leaves with as artless an effect
as if it had been blown thither by the breeze, coming more freshly
now from the dusky reaches of the east. The sky was still perceptibly
a faint blue, but here and there the crystalline scintillation of a
white star trembled, and the red was fast dying out of the west. As
the party, two by two, paced slowly along the pleached alleys, Jardine
became aware of a change in Lucia's manner toward him. In one instant
every other consideration was annulled. With absent, reflective eyes
he meditated for a moment, fumbling mentally for the cause. Then,
with the quickened divination of a lover, he surmised the betrayal of
his disaffection, and Mrs. Laniston's politic admonition. He did not
realise that she prudently considered his eligibility, but only that
she feared that it might not prove agreeable to go about pleasuring in
a humble way with an escort who openly scorned the simple diversion.
Despite Mrs. Laniston's bland graciousness, he was indignant that she
should have interfered. His fastidiousness had fallen from him as if
he had never entertained so finicky a disdain, as it seemed to him now.
Rather than displease Lucia, than incur her resentment, he would have
taken a turn on Ixion's wheel--the safe and healthful revolution of
the monster circumference glimpsed over the hotel roof was, indeed, a
minute sacrifice to afford her the girlish fun, the simple pleasure she
found, like a child, in simple things. It was her unspoiled taste, he
now said to himself, her fund of good humour, her indulgent, uncritical
attitude toward the humble folk, that could forbear ridicule, and share
their pleasure in little things--all added a grace to her metropolitan
experience, her travel, her culture; she saw good in everything,
because she saw the reflection of her own warm heart, and her own pure
mind.
Jardine was not unskilled in casuistry. It would have been his instinct
to cast himself on his knees at her feet, and beg her forgiveness, if
so much as the glance of his eye had offended her, but he knew that
confession fixes the fault in mind, and a fault that is condoned is
not so obliterated as one that is, in effect, denied. There are some
affronts that will not be expunged by pardon. To be tired of her
amusement, to question her dignity, to repine at escorting her wherever
she might list to go, to scorn the subject that interested her--he
would not throw himself on her generosity with this score against him.
He would annul, disavow, disprove the impression. He suddenly turned,
as he walked slowly along with Mrs. Laniston, and, standing in the
path, impeding the progress of the two young ladies, he looked straight
at Lucia with warning eyes.
"Now, I don't want to say anything disagreeable," he cast down his
glance at the dial of his watch which he held in his hand, "but that
wind from the east is freshening very considerably. It may bring rain,
and you two may risk your ride in the Ferris Wheel if you postpone any
preparations you may have to make till after supper."
He was quick enough where his interests were concerned. He caught a
swift upbraiding glance that flashed from Lucia's eyes to those of Mrs.
Laniston, who looked embarrassed.
"Why, you are not complimentary," cried Ruth. "Don't you see we are
already bedizened to the best of our ability."
"Won't you need your hats?"
Having worn them when they were so little appropriate, surely, he
thought, they would not sally forth without them to ride in that queer,
uplifted procession of passengers in the Ferris Wheel, as if they had
dressed for the occasion.
"No, indeed, we _can't_ wear them," cried Ruth. "They are not suited
for lace; we are wearing lace, and they are embroidered."
She looked at her mother with such arch audacity that Mrs. Laniston
could scarcely refrain from giving her a box on the ear.
"I was in hopes they had forgotten that miserable Ferris Wheel," said
Mrs. Laniston, turning toward Jardine.
"Oh, why?" he exclaimed disingenuously. "Let them exhaust the
attractions of the fair."
"Well, since you will kindly look after them," Mrs. Laniston's craft
matched his own, "I have no inclination, myself, for the 'wild wheel,
that lowers the proud.'"
"Oh, that is Fortune's wheel; this is Ferris's wheel--altogether a
different make; warranted no vicissitudes," cried Lucia, all her gay
self again, and Jardine drew a breath of relief, for he felt that he
had made a very narrow escape of encountering her resentment.
Perhaps he doubted that the Ferris Wheel was exempt from the
vicissitudes of the wheel of fortune, for, shortly after the conclusion
of supper, he hurried them out upon the verandah, saying that the wind
was rising and he would not risk them on the machine if its force
should increase.