The lights of the Street Carnival were all broadly a-flare in the
purple dusk when the Laniston party once more issued forth into the
square. The stars, now in scintillating myriads, shone white from a
remote and richly dark sky; across it in tattered fragments thin tawny
clouds were flying before the wind, stragglers from the routed armies
of the storm. The young moon, golden as it tended toward the west, but
with a vague, veiling, pearly tissue, illumined the upper atmosphere
and showed even the bending of the tree tops of the nearest forests as
they crouched before the blast. There was a suggestion of solemnity,
of silence, of the great latent forces of nature, of the unresponsive,
insoluble problems of creation when one glanced off to that benighted
landscape under the voiceless moon. But the sordid purlieus of the
little square rang with the spielers' solicitations, the hucksters'
cries, the wild clatter of the merry-go-round, whizzing gaily to the
music of the band,--every saddle was bestridden; every chariot was
occupied with the philandering rural youth, who saw no incongruity
in being obliged to shout soft nothings to each other amidst the
grinding of the machinery, the blare of the band and the clamour of
voices as loud as their own. The Flying Lady was a-wing in her tent,
its outer aspect suggesting a great illuminated mushroom; and from
a similar semblance close at hand issued the heart-rending howls of
Wick-Zoo, that made many a rustic shiver now with fascinated fear, and
with reminiscent horror at every casual recollection far away in his
mountain home for six months to come. At every turn was this glow of
canvas, the lamps within shining through the translucent fabric, and
threading their way amongst these tents Mr. Jardine and his two fair
young charges came presently to the base of the frame of the great
wheel, its periphery reaching high up above all the glare and sound,
the glow of its infrequent electric bulbs seeming to enstar the dim
purple dusk.
The wind had freshened considerably, but it was no deterrent to those
who would fain try the revolution, for only three of the settees were
now vacant, and while the earlier comers were poised, gently swinging
high in mid-air, the obliging custodian of the monster was affably
ready to receive the price of admission and accommodate as many
passengers as could find places. The contrivance had long been a trite
feature at all shows and street fairs and pleasure grounds catering
to the amusement of the humbler populace, but to Mr. Jardine, who did
not frequent entertainments of this description, it was as astounding
a novelty as to any backwoods denizen of Persimmon Cove. Its method
of operation was of course obvious at the first glance, but he asked
several questions of its custodian as he stood with the young ladies
at the wicket below and passed in the price for its giddy pleasure,
and if he had not been thus occupied he might have been pleased to
observe that while they were submitted to the critical gaze of the
jostling crowd, arrayed with so special a daintiness, their jaunty
bravado wilted a trifle and their ready laughter had frozen into an icy
dignity of demeanour. It might seem difficult for a lady in an Irish
lace blouse and a crisp white linen skirt, determined on an ascent in
a Ferris Wheel in a rough country crowd, to maintain the aloof, pale
hauteur of a princess, but Lucia's aspect in the light of the sparse
electric bulbs and the flickering torches was calculated to thus
impress all privileged to gaze upon her. There was a respectful silence
pervading the crowd for a few moments after they had reached the spot,
but the interests of self are predominant, and after a modicum of
patience Mr. Jardine was unceremoniously urged.
"Does the wind affect the safety of the machine?" he asked
solicitously, gazing aloft as well as he could through the slender
steel spokes to where the topmost laden settees were swinging back and
forth, seemingly with added impetus in the stiff breeze.
"Not at all, sir," said the functionary, as in a parenthesis, while he
counted the change, "twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five."
"There is no danger?"
"Ef ye air afeard, old man, jes' stand back an' lemme git a chanct," a
country youth admonished Mr. Jardine.
"Lord sakes, stranger, take yer place, an give we uns the next turn,"
an elderly mountaineer suggested.
"Them folks up thar air gittin' twict the wuth o' thar money in all
this wasted time," a grudging soul opined. And the rest of the crowd
pressed sensibly forward.
Jardine had never been so unceremoniously addressed since he was born.
But the two young ladies, who laughed on such slight provocation,
were enabled to preserve an impassive gravity now, which fact he
observed with a feeling of grateful relief, for he was conscious of
the ridiculous plight of his elegant personality. He went on with as
deliberate a dignity as if he were aware of no interruption, albeit
acutely conscious of a score of eyes eagerly fixed on his face.
"No danger of the wind obstructing the revolution, and preventing the
descent of passengers?" he concluded his query.
"Not at all, sir--forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five--that's O. K.--I
think you'll find your change correct, sir. Take this seat."
Jardine moved forward with a young lady on each arm--suddenly, as
he was about to induct Lucia into the waiting settee, he stopped
immovable--"Why," he exclaimed, addressing his charges, "where is
Frank?"
The patience of the wheel-man was overstrained. He had collected the
price of admission, and if Jardine did not care to make the ascent no
money would be refunded. He was now keen to sell the passage in the
last remaining settee.
"Take your places, sir, and let these gentlemen come forward," he said
peremptorily.
But Jardine still looked over his shoulder and said again to the young
ladies, "Where is Frank?"
"'Where, oh, where is good old Francis?'" sang a wag in the group.
"'Safe in the Promised Land.'"
There was a guffaw of appreciation from the bystanders and it
ameliorated for the moment the temper of the crowd, which had shown a
nettlesome rancour. It was still pressing forward, and a dirty, horny
hand offered over Jardine's shoulder the money for the same seats.
"There air fower o' we uns--ef he won't ride let we uns go up?"
"Why," exclaimed Jardine wonderingly, still looking over his shoulder
expectantly, "Frank promised to get some cigarettes at the hotel and
then overtake us."
"Take your places, sir," the ticket-seller insisted. "I can't keep the
wheel standing still all night while you collect your party."
At that moment a call came from above, and all gazing up through the
barely seen spokes and fellies of the great wheel to where the loftiest
chariots seemed to swing vaguely among the stars and the swift scud of
brown and white clouds, perceived how the oscillation was increased by
the atmospheric disturbance. The pause, too, had grown monotonous, the
air was becoming cold, and one of the passengers summoned the official
below to continue the revolution and bring the descent into progress.
"Take your places, sir, or I will give them to the next comer,"
declared the custodian of the wheel.
There was a scuffle in the crowd for the first opportunity. Jardine,
but for very shame, would have yielded the places and relinquished the
money, yet he could not allow his escort of the ladies to this coveted
pleasure terminate so disastrously. How inefficient, he reflected, how
superannuated he must seem to them, how preposterously he had contrived
to mismanage this humble little outing on which they had set their
whimsical hearts. How cordially he would have welcomed an opportunity
to slaughter with his own hands the marplot Frank! How willingly he
would have deprived him of the pleasure of making the ascent in this
choice company by leaving the recreant and proceeding at once.
"But I can't," he said in perplexity. "We have taken two of the
settees--four seats. One of the settees would be inadequately weighted
with only one person--its balance would not be kept--it might not be
safe. I must wait for the gentleman whom I expect every moment."
In vain the ticket-seller protested that the equilibrium of the
settees did not depend upon the weight or number of the occupants.
But the wind had now grown so chill that he looked up with anxiety
and deprecation at the stationary wights high in the wheel, who were
threatening to make complaints to the municipal authorities for their
detention thus out of reason and against their will, and demanding an
immediate descent and release. Then he said, for he had a gift for
expedients and was an excellent man of business:
"We can't wait no longer, sir. If you think the wheel ain't safe
with only one passenger on the settee jes' let this gent take a seat
alongside o' one of the ladies, and that will sure make the balance all
right," and he summoned forward with a nod the wag who had chanted the
inquiry concerning "the good old Francis."
He was a slightly built, common young fellow, arrayed in a cheap plaid
suit, a steel watch chain, a straw hat, and he was chewing a straw
as if it were his daily provender. He had a flat face, sandy hair, a
good-natured small grey eye and no eyelashes to speak of. He stepped
forward with nonchalant alacrity. He had evidently been selected as
the most responsible looking person available, and the only reason
that Jardine did not faint upon the spot was that his attention was
stimulated by the sudden offer of a substitute even more distasteful to
his prejudices.
"Do you think that with this wind more avoirdupois is necessary?"
Lloyd's voice broke upon the air. He had come up during the discussion
and was a witness of the speechless horror of Jardine, who might have
involved himself in some unpleasant dilemma with the crowd had he
declined, and who could not of course accept the expedient. "Well--it
is up to the show folks to make these things satisfactory to the public
as well as safe, and if the gentleman will consider me a sufficient
makeweight I'll undertake to balance this settee."
He forthwith cut the Gordian knot and broke the deadlock by handing
Lucia to the waiting settee with a grace as definite and a manner as
gravely deferential as if the role of squire of dames were in continual
rehearsal in his repertoire. He seated himself beside her before
Jardine could protest, and as they swung off together into the air the
next settee came within reach and there was no course left to Jardine
but to assist Ruth to her place, and follow in the regular rotation of
the wheel.
Jardine had never esteemed himself an elderly lover; in the
conventional walks of life in the city of their respective homes there
had seemed no disparity whatever in their ages. Now the variance in
taste, in temperament, in the outlook at life, in the pursuit of
excitement, in sheer endurance, was definitely asserted. The sensation,
as the settees rose elastically with the revolution of the wheel, was
nauseating to his well-conducted stomach. Then, as they paused and
swung, pendulum-like, to and fro, while the lower seat was filled
and other passengers were liberated, the posture, the situation was
revolting to his priggish sense of dignity. He fairly dreaded the upper
dizzy reaches of the circumference, and naught but the coercion of the
circumstances could have constrained him to the ordeal. He maintained
silence, however, remembering the rural fling "old man" and desiring to
betray no sentiment of discomfort to the delighted Ruth, who sat beside
him gurgling with gleeful laughter, and uttering little disconnected
exclamations of half-feigned fear and a real sense of jeopardy.
When, rather than incur Lucia's anger, Jardine had lent himself to
the absurd pleasuring, on which the two girls seemed bent, he had no
conception of such a turn of circumstances as should relegate her to
the care of another, a stranger, and of all people in the world, the
manager of an itinerant show. He scarcely knew how he should face Mrs.
Laniston after this signal demonstration of his incapacity to discharge
so simple a duty as devolved upon him in the escort of the two young
ladies--she could never be made to comprehend the pressure of the
situation. He sought to comfort himself by the realisation that after
all the wheel was but a public conveyance, and for a lady to sit beside
a strange man in this vehicle was not a matter of more pronounced
familiarity than in a street car or a railway train, an episode of
daily occurrence. In this point of view the rural wag would have
been more acceptable to his predilections than this extraordinarily
handsome man, with the manners of a gentleman and the calling of a
strolling faker. Lucia would never seem aware of the existence of the
one, whereas the other had after a fashion been brought to her notice;
they had asked of him the favour of photographing the dancing-girl,
though as an excuse indeed for having been detected in surreptitiously
photographing the manager. The two had on that occasion exchanged
sundry formal observations, and it would be but natural that some
conversation would ensue upon being brought thus accidentally into this
renewal of association.
The wind blowing so freshly into their faces almost took away their
breath, and now and again, hearing naught from the other couple,
Jardine hastily glanced up at them, thinking that it was the gusts
that annulled the sound of the exclamations, silvery and joyous, with
which Lucia in this novel and coveted amusement must be regaling her
incongruous companion as they rose together in their swing ever higher
and higher toward the stars. But the electric bulbs showed her face
very quiet and grave; her dress gleamed like "white samite, mystic,
wonderful," against the purple dusk; she was silent and to his great
gratification the manager sat beside her as uncommunicative as if he
had been a part of the machine, essential to its utility, like one of
the dummy horses of the merry-go-round. A very well-conducted young
man, Jardine thought, with a fervent thanksgiving that matters were
no worse. He had feared that the incongruity of a simulated flirtation
with so inappropriate a subject, might attract her eager quest of
amusement and her mirthful disposition to horrify and tease her aunt.
He formulated an apology in his inner consciousness. He said to himself
that he ought to have known her well enough to realise that her innate
sense of propriety would conserve all the essential decorums, even in
these circumstances so conducive to unconventionality.
But it was not a conventional observation that Lucia saw fit to address
to the manager, as he still sat silent, and it surprised him beyond
measure.
"Do you think this is a suitable business for you?" she asked, her
manner stately and almost reproachful, her voice low but icy, her
beautiful head turning slowly toward him, and the light of those
magnetic eyes seeming to shine through his very soul.
Lloyd had not been silent from any realisation of the difference in
their station, any humble acknowledgment of the superiority of her
world. He could not speak, his heart beat so fast; his proximity to the
goddess that she seemed abashed his every thought. Her beautiful dress,
her dainty hands, the exquisite pose of her head, the soft flutter of
her lovely hair in the wind, each made its own bewildering demand for
homage. He was in the thrall of an appreciated bliss, so perfect, so
unexpected that it almost overwhelmed him. He had never dreamed that
he might be so near heaven as thus alone with her. And yet until to-day
he had not known that she existed. He could scarcely realise that
she could turn her head and look into his eyes and speak directly to
him--it scarcely mattered what were the words. The day had been hard;
the dangers that menaced him were great; the difficulties that pressed
him down were heavy; and suddenly, in a moment, he was translated into
elysium. Swinging so elastically in the wind--the medium of the air a
purple dusk, the river molten silver in the moon where the reflection
of the splendid cresset glanced upon it and the rest mystery, the
mountains vast imposing barriers against all the sordid world beyond,
the town but a bevy of flickering lights below, and above the pure
white fires of the constant stars--they two were side by side, while
she, the ideal loveliness, she spoke to him!
"Beg pardon," Lloyd said, catching at the necessity of reply.
"Do you think this is a suitable business for you?" she repeated.
He stared at her for a moment amazed, hardly comprehending. Then
recovering himself he made an effort at appropriate rejoinder. "The
business ought to be better of course," he said. Then he hesitated
doubtfully. His heart could but expand toward her, though his sensitive
nature must needs feel the topic intrusive. "You see--we were
misinformed. A town of this size generally has an outlying population
that makes up a toler'ble payin' crowd. We _are_ playin' to very little
money. Business is poor--and that's the truth----" he paused abruptly,
for she had blushed so deeply in embarrassment that he felt that he was
altogether beyond his depth.
"Oh, I don't mean the financial returns," she said, beginning to
falter. She hardly knew, she said to herself, what she would be at. Why
should she have fancied that this man would understand her--why should
she upbraid him with a calling below his merits? Certainly she did not
understand herself.
"Oh--beg pardon," he said, obviously confused, gazing searchingly at
her in the electric light. Her face was pale, a trifle agitated, grave;
her eyes--they looked immortal, they were from the beginning of the
world, for all time to come--the beautiful eyes, with a thought--was it
pity, was it sorrow, was it faith--what was it in their depths?
"I meant--I meant," she hesitated, realising that she must follow her
suggestion through--that there was no opportunity for withdrawal, for
recantation, "I meant that it seems that you ought to have a better
kind of business."
"It is a mighty good business for the money that is in it--it is the
best show for the investment that ever was under canvas," he protested
with sudden fervour--he was loyal to the merits of his funny little
show.
It was all out of the question, she felt now--one of her sudden mad
impulses--but an explanation must needs come. She would not for the
world decry the little exhibition, on which he had lavished such
whole-souled labour and thought and eager solicitude. Besides she had
her object which she could hardly interpret even to herself. Her lips
curved suddenly in the sweet smile that was wont to embellish them;
her eyes flashed with her ready laughter. He was looking eagerly,
intently at her. But her ridicule was genial--she was laughing with him
rather than at him. "I'm not saying a word against the greatest show on
earth nor the high-dive artist, nor the snake-eater, nor the beautiful
dancing oread; but I shall never see you again, and I thought I would
tell you something that occurred to me to-day."
The swing moved gently to and fro; the wind came fresh and free and
fluttered her white draperies; she gazed far off, far off amongst the
purple mountains; in the valley beyond a foothill she could see a
red spark of light, so high they were now, at the very summit of the
circumference, the light from the hearthstone of some humble home. The
golden moon still showed in a deep indentation of the horizon line.
Mists hovered about the lofty domes of the range. The stars sparkled
aloof in the dark blue sky.
Still he looked intently at her and her words came with difficulty:
"Our party could not believe that you were the manager of this little
show--not because it is a poor show, but--because--you--you seem
different."
Oh, would the wheel never turn! What was she saying, and
why--why--should she say it? What madness to be thus isolated between
heaven and earth so that she must face out to the end the inexorable
statement that she had so foolishly begun.
His coolness somewhat reassured her. "Oh, you mean that I look above
my business," he said quietly; "that is, this was the opinion of your
party."
"Yes," she replied in grateful renewal of confidence, "Mr. Jardine said
that you looked like a gentleman--according to his interpretation, of
course, I mean."
"I hope, for his sake, that it is a just interpretation," he said
with a constrained, inscrutable smile. "It works overtime, that word
'gentleman'!"
"So often I have heard of a hint shaping a life," she went on to
explain her meaning more clearly; "I thought that if it should occur to
you that others esteemed you capable of better things it might be an
inspiration to you to achieve them."
"Much obliged to Mr. Jardine," he said equivocally.
"Your associates in the show are so accustomed to you and to themselves
that probably they do not perceive the difference."
"Real or imaginary," he interpolated.
"So I thought I would tell you," she faltered, at a loss, now that the
disclosure was at an end.
"Now, Lydy, I want to say one thing to you--and mind, this is straight
goods--I thank you on the knees of my heart for what you have said and
how you have said it. I make no mistake about that. But you are young,
and maybe you don't know that it is a deal more important _how_ a man
does a thing than _what_ it is that he does. I can think of worse
things, in _my_ interpretation of 'gentleman' than being a showman--a
good showman, giving full value in exhibitions and entertainment for
the money. Now, I wonder if Mr. Jardine ever thought of a lawyer, who
neglects his clients' business 'cause he's lazy, or busy about his
own affairs;--or a preacher, who does the Lord's job for the money he
finds in it;--or a fortune-hunter who gets a rich wife to take him off
his own hands;--or a politician who buys his popularity--all these are
'gentlemen' only in a superficial appraisement. Now, I'll tell you
where Mr. Jardine's view ain't in it--he thinks because I'm put up in
a sort o' ornamental case that I look like a gentleman--but the Living
Skeleton, who is an educated man and right rich for a freak, but who
ain't put up in any case at all scarcely, Mr. Jardine would never think
of for a gentleman. It won't do to trust to externals--Mr. Jardine
surprises me for a man of his large experience."
She gazed searchingly into his face for a moment. She could descry no
lingering suspicion there that she had used Mr. Jardine's name as a
stalking-horse over which to fire her own opinions. It was a delectable
deceit, but she knew that he would have forgiven the liberty--poor Mr.
Jardine!
"If ever I was to find a better trade, Lydy, I'd take it with psalms of
thanksgiving. But until I do I ain't goin' to shirk the show because I
look like a gentleman. The main stunt is to act like a gentleman, and I
think we are all up against that."
A silvery voice called out in the night to Lucia, and looking backward
toward Ruth and Jardine she saw that their swing was moving upward one
degree, and that they had reached the very summit of the circumference.
With the consequent descent of one degree in their turn Lucia and Lloyd
were now on a lower level. There seemed no appreciable difference in
the height, however, as they gazed over the landscape; the wind still
rushed down from the mountain with a pungent odour of dank leaves and
a fragrant moisture from where the rainfall had been heavy; the clouds
still in broken ranks fled tumultuously across the enstarred sky; the
misty moon was slipping down behind the purple ranges--the burnished
rim was visible for another moment and then was gone; the square was
yet filled with people, and now and then a wild, raucous yell or loud
voices in drunken altercation gave token that the mysterious inebriates
were again astonishing the streets of the dry town; several of the
tents were no longer illumined, the day's work being over for the
"freaks" and the flying lady; the merry-go-round had ceased to whirl
and whiz and the band was playing sentimental airs on the grass in
front of the courthouse.
As the swings of the great wheel swayed, gently pendulous, in the
breeze-filled purple night above the flaring orange-tinted lights of
the Carnival below everything seemed jovial, contented--a successful
day drawing serenely to a close. Suddenly from the swing on a level
with the manager's lofty perch a missile shot through the air; it
passed in a straight line below the swing where Jardine and Ruth sat at
the summit of the circumference of the wheel, and whizzing, as if flung
from a sling, it struck Lloyd's head just behind the ear and fell, a
compact boulder, as large as a man's fist, on the ground below.
Lloyd, bent half double by the force of the unexpected blow, swayed
forward, struggled violently to regain his place, lost his balance,
and like a thunderbolt fell from the swing, while the frenzied
pleasure-seekers, all safe enough, screamed in sheer dismay at the
sight.
It might have been far worse. To another man the fall from such a
height would have meant certain death, but with the presence of mind
and the trained strength and elasticity of the professional acrobat,
the showman mechanically gathered renewed control of his muscles,
caught at one of the steel spokes that upheld the structure of the
wheel, and thus arresting the precipitancy of the descent turned
a somersault in mid-air, another and with still another came to
the ground amidst a tumult of shouting and applause from the crowd
assembling from every side of the square.
They seized upon him instantly, noting his half-fainting condition, and
carried him bodily to the corner drug store, where the prescriptionist
hastily administered restoratives and medicated the wound in an inner
room with the door locked, while awaiting the arrival of the physician.
The manager was in no condition to be questioned, he stated to a
policeman who was early on the scene.
With an augmented sense of the importance of the disaster the officer,
the only one on duty in the small municipality, returned to the wheel
with the intention of taking the names and addresses of all in the
swings at the time of the attack.
There had been a panic amongst the occupants of the swings; loud
and frantic shouts for liberation, for the turn of the wheel, had
predominated even over the clamours below in the square. The wheel was
as aversely regarded as if it had been the instrument of torture of old
by the dizzy wights who clung to their places uttering frenzied appeals
for release, for they feared indeed that there was a madman among them.
In obedience to the reiterated cries for extrication from their plight
the wheel had been revolved as rapidly as practicable, and although
the order of precedence among the settees was retained, the position
in the periphery at the time of the disaster could not be established,
and it was now impossible to say whence had come the stone so quickly
flung in the darkness during the rotation of the machine. A number of
the swings had already been vacated as soon as the ground was reached,
and the occupants of others, to evade testifying or suspicion, leaped
out when at a safe distance from the earth and disappeared, mingling
indiscriminately with the crowd. Jardine noticed how many of the
settees passed by the wicket already empty as the revolving structure
brought them within safe descent and he imperatively motioned to Lucia
in advance to vacate the swing as soon as the pause at the ground made
it possible. The occupant of the swing behind Jardine did not await
the stoppage; he was a countryman in a long greyish coat and a wide
white flapping hat, and he leaped to the ground in the shadow with a
nimble temerity which Jardine thought altogether inconsistent with
his slit boots as if bunions troubled his feet, his thick stick, his
bent figure and hobbling gait as he made off through the shadows which
the intense electric lights served to deepen about the stand. Once he
turned and looked back and catching a far glimmer of the light on his
half-obscured face he showed two rows of strong white teeth bared in a
grin of extreme relish.
Haxon was on the scene in a few minutes, wild with anxiety and
asking hither and thither how the disaster had happened. "Where's my
partner--if my partner is killed we are all ruined," he declared.
For Lloyd had not divulged his plan of action to annul false suspicion
and to evade the aspect of collusion with the moonshiners who had so
craftily utilised the presence of the street fair to profitably pursue
their illegal traffic.
Haxon showed so definite a determination of detection and reprisal
that Jardine, gripping his charges each by the elbow, propelled them
through the darkness toward the hotel, demanding through his set teeth
by way of explaining his vehemence, "Do you two want to be witnesses
in a police court?" But indeed, they were tractable enough as they
sped as swiftly as he dared set the pace, that they might not seem in
flight, through the half-deserted square, past the vacant hucksters'
stands, the shadowy, lifeless tents, the vague equine figures of the
merry-go-round, stiff and silent in the claro-obscuro, cutting across
the courthouse yard and coming at last to the hotel verandah, almost
vacant at this hour.
Lucia was so trembling, pale and shocked that he could not forbear
saying, "I hope--I do hope, that this will be a lesson to you,"
when she burst out laughing; and when Ruth, scarcely less agitated,
declared, "For my part I hope, I do hope that that handsome Mr. Lloyd
is not killed," Lucia burst into tears.