CHAPTER IX
Hilary Lloyd had had his doubts as to how serious a view Haxon might take of his discovery of the moonshining enterprise that had contrived to utilise to its own profit the presence here of the Street Fair. With the return of the morning light and its renewal of courage and hope the possible suspicion of a coalition of these interests seemed to him more remote than heretofore. His own association with the moonshiner's family might perhaps be most naturally interpreted as an accident, a fortuitous circumstance, and the extreme publicity of the appearance of the manager of the show both in the company of the girl and the old grandam would be presumed to imply an unconsciousness, an entire freedom from complicity on his part. All the morning, in a sub-acute process of the mind, he had argued these premises, pro and con. While he laboured to reassure the acrobat, to freshen his nerve, to flatter his composure, to reinstate his pride, so grievously cut down in the episode of the handbill, these mental exercises were hardly pretermitted for a moment. When, however, the perilous feat was once more safely performed and Haxon had been fed, and his nerves recuperated, Lloyd, feeling that the moment for the absolutely essential revelation had arrived and could no longer be postponed, drew him aside and intimated that he had disclosures to make of an importance that necessitated closed doors. Together they ascended the stairs to the room they shared, and even there Lloyd looked out on the balcony and down the cross-hall before he began his story.
"Gosh!" exclaimed Haxon irritably. "What's up? You scare me to death! You're gone bug-house, that's what!"
Lloyd was altogether unprepared for the appalled horror that overmastered the acrobat's every power of reasoning when the disclosure was once made. It was as if the dungeons of the Federal prisons were all agape for him, and he could not escape. For some time Lloyd could only induce him to make an effort for composure by warning him that his gasps, his half articulate exclamations like cries, so shrill and sudden they were, his disordered, hasty strides about the room—he actually fell in one of these, jarring the whole floor of the house—would bring inquiry upon them and a surprise that, unexplained, as it needs must be, would develop into suspicion, and this the briefest investigation would lead to complete discovery of the facts with their trail of false accusation.
Lloyd had expected co-operation and a division of the responsibility of devising a plan of action. He had a fund of excellent common sense. He realised that he was a man of most limited education, of an experience curiously restricted, and he did not flatter himself that he had any special native gifts of perspicacity and logic. He felt the need of help and he had longed for this moment of liberation from the solitary torment of his fears—for the sense of a comrade's support and the mental attrition of a mind fresh to these weary problems. The force with which he was flung back on his own resources stunned his capacities for the time being. The revelation had only increased the danger of immediate discovery in the absolute collapse of Haxon's self-control. Lloyd used argument and persuasion, and finally resorted to menacing warnings.
"You'll give the whole thing away to the authorities before we can have a moment's counsel together and see what we can do."
"What can we do?" cried Haxon, his palms outspread dolorously. "We are caught here like a rat in a trap—we can't get away. God! If I had thirty-five dollars in the world I'd cut and run, and leave you to shift for yourself."
Lloyd eyed him critically.
"Haxon, how can you show so much courage and nerve in that cursed high dive of yours and be such a coward in a crisis like this?" he demanded sternly.
"'Cause why? 'Cause the high dive is biz, but 'tain't my trade to defy the Federal courts for offences I have never c'mitted."
He felt the aspersion on his courage—the lash cut his somewhat thick sensibilities.
"Look here, Hil'ry——" He sat down astride on a chair, facing its back and beating out on its wooden rim the several points as he made them. "If I was in the illicit distilling lay I'd be fixed for the biz, and I'd take my risks along with the profits as cool as I do in the high dive. I'd be where I was known, too,—at home,—an' there'd be some chanst of friends to back you, an' lawyers for hire, an' money at hand—'t wouldn't be at the end of a blue fizzle on the road. But here wheer I don't actually know so much as the name of the clerk of the hotel! I haven't got a fiver to save my life!"
He turned the pockets of his trousers inside out to demonstrate his impecuniosity, and his aspect as he sat thus, his round face pallid, and his hair roached and standing straight in front, might have suggested the ludicrous to another man, but to Hilary Lloyd it only accented and illustrated the stress of the untoward situation.
"I couldn't get a nickel by telegraphing—even if I left the wire to be paid at the other end, for I raised every cent I could scrape to start the show out on the road; and you are in the same fix. An' here are you an' I an' all the men in the company in this strange place, liable to arrest and jail for aiding and abetting in the illicit sale of wild-cat whisky—oh Lord!" His great full voice rose plangent on the air.
"I'll cut your tongue out if you lay it again to them words!" declared Lloyd, in a frenzy of apprehension. He darted to the door and opening it gazed down the cross-halls to detect a possible eavesdropper. He then hastened to the window and looked out on the balcony. There was no one near—no suggestion that suspicion had been aroused. He returned to his chair, reassured, but tingling with the excitement of the disastrous possibility and both angry and dismayed.
"What do you sit there, spouting all that preachment at me for? I know it as well or better than you; didn't I find the thing out and tell you how it stood? What do you suppose I did that for? To hear you spit it all out again?"
"What did you do it for?" Haxon eyed him sullenly.
"To get your help—you are a partner in the biz; you had a right to know."
Haxon looked as if he esteemed it a right with which he would willingly have dispensed.
"You've got my nerve all tore up," he complained.
"That ain't the question—what are we goin' to do about it?"
Haxon, as he still sat facing the back of the chair, took the ends of his pockets in the tips of his fingers and held them out to their extreme limits.
"What can we do—nothing!"
Lloyd looked balked and despairing. He had hoped so much, waited so long, with such torturing silence and self-repression for this appeal for the help of his friend and partner. He gazed dubiously at the attitude and face, all illustrative of the idea of absolute collapse, and then he slowly and laboriously gathered himself together. He felt like a pugilist, who, lunging with great force, has caught a heavy fall in the ring. He was game, however, game to the last.
"Well,Idon't throw up the sponge," he said at length. "That's a trick I've never learned. We can do something! You watch me right close and keep a shut mouth, and sit tight, and you'll see something doing."
He nodded his head determinedly. Haxon, watching him doubtfully, could experience no renewal of activity, no revival of hope. His faculties were completely prostrated. He could only fear.
"Now, go slow," he said, irritably anxious.
"You be bound I will," Lloyd reassured him.
A dull curiosity began to grow in Haxon's eyes that yet winced from the question.
"I have got a right to know. I'm a partner, and what you do will implicate me."
"I've a good mind to roll you on the floor till you're as thin as a sheet of paper," the athlete threatened, "only it's too good a stunt without a crowd. You may bet your immortal soul that nothingIdo will implicate you or any other man."
"I just wanted to warn you," said Haxon mildly.
"I was warned beforehand," Lloyd protested.
The mental activity, the canvass for expedients that Lloyd had sought to rouse in Haxon's mind seemed now stimulated by the cessation of urgency on the manager's part. A vague sense of being shut out of his counsels was stirring uneasily in Haxon's consciousness—it put out a clutch after the plans in which he would not share.
"Now you take care you don't make no mistake."
"Try not,—for my own sake,—but I'm not infallible," said Lloyd. His interest in Haxon's impressions had evaporated. Since Haxon had neither adequate aid nor well-considered advice to offer, and no fund of courage to recruit and reanimate the flagging energies of his partner, it did not matter how his vague conjecture skirmished about the point of attack and plan of action.
"You be sure you don't get into a hole——" Haxon paused. "You ain't thinking about giving the information to the authorities?" his small keen eyes kindled with the contemplation of this course.
"Certainly not," said Lloyd listlessly. He had drawn off his cuffs that had begun to wilt at the edges and was slipping the sleeve-links of oxydised silver into a fresh pair that, leaning back in his chair, he had reached from the tray of an open trunk.
"But you know the informer gets good pay. The government always pays like smoke." Haxon, now that his speculations, his proffers of plans, his advice were not solicited seemed bent on evolving and laying them before his companion. "We might get enough that way to defray the cost of the company's transportation to New York."
"We'd be much likelier to be laid by the heels for false arrest, for we couldn't prove any illicit distilling or sale, either. Besides, we'd get our heads shot off for playing the spy and informer; that's etiquette in this region."
"You'd better think about that reward, now Hil'ry," the acrobat eagerly urged. "Youain't afraid of getting shot, nor nothing else. You're holding back for another reason. There's a woman in the case!"
Lloyd looked up with a certain expectation and a deepening of the roseate flush on his fair, girlish cheek.
"You don't want to inform on them folks on account of that gal. You've gone and got mashed on a mountain singing-gal—the pals all say the public don't fall to her racket not the least little bit."
"Oh," said Lloyd, as if with sudden comprehension—had he thought Haxon was alluding to another woman here? He came visibly back, as from some far digression of thought.
"There's no use talking about that, Hax. I've been all along there—in fact, there ain't a by-path through this tangled torment that my mind ain't travelled since the show opened up. The reward would be paid for conviction, not for suspicion. No man gets paid for suspecting. We couldn't wait till the moonshiners were arrested and convicted in court—eat our heads off in that time, if anybody would credit us for the grub-stakes."
Haxon's face fell, so strong a hold had his now unsought plans taken upon him.
"Besides," Lloyd argued, rising from his chair, "our grounds of suspicion ain't firm underfoot; even the authorities ain't sure enough to venture to arrest the Pinnotts. They don't even molest the drunken men that were fairly sprawling all over the town this morning. They'll point the way they have travelled before long. The authorities are waiting for bigger game—laying for the moonshiners."
The terrors of the situation seized Haxon again: The suspicion that the street fair had at least some knowledge of this popular adjunct to its attractions; the obvious fact that it must profit immeasurably by the lures offered a dry town to draw a crowd; the unlucky publicity of the intimacy that the manager of the show had struck up with the old moonshiner and the several members of his family; the incongruity that his daughter had become a temporary member of the company, and had a place on the daily programme, doing a "stunt" that had no value whatever in the public eye, and might thus seem a tribute of flattery to a powerful coadjutor; the certainty that without this recruiting of the moonshine whisky-drinking element in the scantily populated region the fair could hardly have lived through the first day's performance—all were close meshes in such a net that the acrobat could hardly hope to escape thence.
"Oh, Hil'ry—we have worked so hard. I don't see no sense nor justice in our gettin' tangled up this fashion." He bowed his head on the chair back and groaned aloud.
"Now you look here," said Lloyd—he summoned a mental attention and was not disconcerted when Haxon did not lift his head. "You listen to me. I'm going to see this thing through. You just keep your tongue between your teeth and don't bat your eye, and watch me, and you'll see something doing!"
His confidence revived Haxon's hopes, though he retained his despondent attitude after he heard the tread of Lloyd's feet slowly descending the stairs. Perhaps it was well for the preservation of his composure that he did not see the deep depression the manager's face expressed while in the solitary transit down the flight, nor hear the half-smothered groan that dropped from his lips. He had wasted much time for naught in hanging his hopes on this futile interview. He was now exactly at the point whence he had started. Time meant money—the increase of the expenses of the show in a ratio with which the gate receipts by no means kept pace. Time meant danger, the continual challenge of disastrous possibilities, and that these were formulating somewhere, somehow, he did not doubt for a moment. He paused when he reached the bottom of the flight and glanced through a window of a side hall that had an outlook in the direction of the sylvan nook where Shadrach Pinnott had planted his staff. He had a vague, indeterminate disposition to make a tour of discovery thither, to satisfy himself—to see, perchance—wild hope—if his suspicions were not merely the result of his over-anxious facile fears. All the world knows that dry towns are only dry in spots, and perhaps the fact that the populace had been so called into the streets by the presence of the show made the pervasive evidences of liquor more obvious. Alack, his first glance from the window proved the tenuity of this reasoning. The farthest man he could see along the street coming from that direction was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand; then amidst a file of ordinary pedestrians two came affectionately clasping each other around the waist, under the firm conviction that four legs can better compass locomotion than two, when all are so unsteady, on the theory of strength in numbers, perhaps. No one took notice, apparently, of the aberrations of this method of progression, but he reflected it would be only the gratification of a morbid anxiety to visit the spot, and his presence there might add an element of curiosity and speculation to a circumstance already unduly suspicious. As he came out into the square he noticed with a sort of melancholy satisfaction how well the show was running in all its various departments, how orderly it was, how mindful of its best possibilities, how cheerful and brisk the performers and spielers, all unprescient, poor souls! It was like a well-oiled piece of machinery, automatic, scarcely needing the eye of the manager. He cast a glance upward at the town clock—it was already time for the afternoon concert; at that moment he heard the tuning of the violins and a booming note from the bassoon. As he entered the tent he remarked that the light within was tempered, mellow, and his artistic taste was refreshed by this—it would aid the effect of the lime-light on the stage which should simulate sunshine amongst the dappling shadows of the peach-tree leaves.
The audience crowded the tent, to his surprise, for this "stunt" had proved no favourite performance with the public, and, since already seen, it had no claims to novelty. Then he realised the cause of this accumulation of spectators; in the best seats in the centre of the place was Mr. Jardine, his jaded, slightly disdainful, thin, grave, thoughtful face easily discriminated among the many that seemed turned out of a mould, custom made, so commonplace they were. The fresh, bright, candid countenance of the young collegian was near at hand, and between the two, radiant in their white dresses and hats, and with their flower-like faces, exquisitely fair and dainty, looking expectantly toward the stage, half amused at their own readiness to be entertained with these slight trifles, were the two belated summer birds of New Helvetia. The entrance of so distinguished a party had already made the "high-class concert" the fashion; the best element of the town was present, and this had been reinforced by theprofanum vulgusof the street, for whatever the town folks found acceptable the rural wight cautiously sampled, often decrying and ridiculing while secretly approving and imitating. There were many sunbonnets, and snuff-brushes, and big wool hats, and bushy beards, but the dapper townsmen were in greater numbers than heretofore and the Misses Laniston did not wear the only be-frilled millinery that the tent displayed. It was an audience of no mean intelligence, and poor Lloyd realised that were he free from the gnawing wild beasts of secret anxiety and harrowing doubt and actual fear, his showman's heart would have beat high with the determination to stretch every nerve and do his best devoir. Even as it was there was no use in permitting the second violin to enter upon the fugues of the little overture very distinctly sharp to his acute and accurate ear. He had taken a seat near the orchestra, and he suddenly stood up and signed with a wave of the hand to catch the performer's attention. The man turned the screw slightly, and twanged the string. While Hilary Lloyd stood, his head slightly bent, with a face of motionless, intent interest, his hat in his hand, he heard distinctly, besides the violin's keen vibration, the sudden snap of the shutter of a camera. He nodded approval to the violinist, but his eyes followed the camera's sound. Ruth's flower-like face was pink with smiles and Lucia's long, romantic eyes were bright with triumphant daring. The two cavaliers were distinctly disconcerted as their eyes met Lloyd's. It was only for a moment; the manager affected to look over the house, then turning, resumed his seat, and the overture broke briskly forth.
"Lucia," her cousin Frank growled under cover of the music, "you had better mind. You will be led out by the ear, if you don't look out."
"I should be delighted to have my ear distinguished in any way, here, where a fine ear is made so conspicuous," she twittered in response.
"But the violins are all in accord now, and that second onewasout of tune before," said Ruth.
"In printing the film I shall take special pains with so fine an ear," said Lucia.
"You can't fool me," gurgled Frank. "You snapped him because the fellow looked so confoundedly handsome at the moment. You never dreamed that the place was still enough for the click of the button to betray you. There's nothing green in my eye!"
"You two must be a little more careful, if I may venture to say so," suggested Mr. Jardine, who really was somewhat aghast at the camera episode—exceedingly discommoded by the grave eye of the manager and nervous lest some neighbour might have noticed the incident. "Even in a rustic community," he continued, "it won't do to take it for granted that there are no people who know what—er—er——"
"Good manners are," suggested Lucia.
"I beg a thousand pardons—but I did not say that."
"Worse still, you implied it. You rejoice in being enigmatical." Then she turned to Ruth. "Think of poor Mrs. Jardine (when he finds her)—having to pick out his meaning from implications."
"The dear lady (when he finds her)—he will train her to deduce the state of his affections from statistics."
Then they both collapsed behind their white fans, over which they looked at each other with bright eyes, brimful of laughter. The mythical Mrs. Jardine (when he should find her) was one of their favourite subjects of retort when no reasonable justification was at hand, and they spent much time in adjusting and readjusting her traits. Oddly enough, for so sane and grave a man, this folly teased him, which fact afforded them extreme delight.
They were incomprehensible to him in more ways than one, but generally he gave this hardly a languid thought, ascribing it to the idiosyncrasies of the feminine mind, which according to the popular persuasion was adjusted to a peculiar poise. Now, however, he puzzled over the theory of their conduct, which both nettled and embarrassed him. In any metropolitan crowded centre, in any station of fashionable society, he knew from experience that their graceful propriety of demeanour, their air of delicate reserve, their instinct for the right word at the right moment, the soft youthful dignity which they could conserve, were matters for all admiration; he had relished greatly being admitted behind this conventional formal pose into the intimacies of familiar friendship where he saw them as they really were, in their natural girlish relaxation from the conventions of general society. But here was a new phase. They were recklessly conspicuous; they cared naught for the opinions of the rustic crowd—indeed what they did and said was likely to be presumed the fashion of the time and the fad of the day. "I like to be where I know nobody, and where nobody knows me," Lucia had declared, in reply to a covert admonition which he had ventured; "I feel so easy. What is that story of a knight of old who had a magic armour that protected him from sight, and he went through the camps of his enemies all unsuspected. That is how I feel; I feel invisible."
Mr. Jardine had not expected that they would adopt the Colbury standards and sit demurely still, as if conscious, in this little sphere, of the regards of all the world; that they would sparingly converse in the lowest of tones and with solicitude for the effect of their words. They could but be indifferent to criticism and maintain a certain independence in so limited an environment. But it did seem to him that they had reached the extreme of toleration in the episode of the camera. Of course he realised that Lucia had never expected the click of the instrument to acquaint the subject that she had sought and caught his photograph, but in this contretemps she perceived only an amazing jest at her own expense, of a delightful and unprecedented savour. She almost perished with laughter and ridicule of herself and seemed to have no care nor fear of the opinion of the man and this man a stranger, of low station, of most questionable position, who might take bitter offence, or venture some impertinence, or seek reprisal in some wise intolerable to her and her friends. For his own part Jardine was the same in every circumstance of life; formal, civil, conventional, reserved. However the kaleidoscope of environment shifted he did not change, and his standards were unalterable. He sought to reflect that they were both very young; they were like birds, thus freed for the nonce from the frumpish restrictions of the stereotyped dulness of their cage. They were like irresponsible school-girls, liberated from the cast-iron class-room rules; indeed it was not long since both were hard and fast in these restraints; they were like children, thinking no ill, confident or careless of approval, enjoying the passing moment, freighted with scanty opportunity for pleasure though it was, with a zest, a delight, a buoyancy of spirit, a capacity to evolve fun from serious conditions which Jardine could not have compassed at any period of his career. But he realised that there was more responsibility in the office of their chaperon than he had deemed possible when he had assumed Mrs. Laniston's charge and left her to her well-earned rest at the hotel.
Suddenly the tempo of the music changed; the subtle charm of a simple old melody was pulsing on the air and now it dwindled into a vague diminuendo, and then to a pizzicato echo, in the midst of which a clear, brilliant voice sounded singing in the distance. The curtain went up with a rush; the stage was revealed flooded with yellow sunlight and all a-dapple with the shadows of swaying peach-leaves from boughs waving in the wind above. And what was that effect? How could they have such strangely perfect scenery—the purple mountains, the azure ranges of the distance, the blue sky bedight with a cloud all opal and gold, and a river with a crystalline reflex of its splendour. Before the simple expedient of dropping a section of the canvas occurred to their minds a figure, lightsome, airy, featly dancing, bounded into the illuminated centre of the scene. There was one moment of amazed scrutiny—it was like some classic canephora of painting or sculpture; then the eye recognised in the basket-like vessel poised on the head, filled with trailing vines and purple grape clusters, the familiar cedar piggin of the mountains; the antique-draped garb was but the up-caught skirt of the conventional make, but with the yellow folds so craftily held in plaits that they sustained a wealth of the grapes, picturesquely trailing down over a dark wine-tinted petticoat, short enough to disclose ankles and feet of a wonderful agility. The auburn hair, soft, fluffy, rayonnant, was coiled in a knot of negligent charm, and the head was thrown back as the dancer leaped with incredible lightness and grace, catching with one hand toward the lure of a peach on a bough out of her reach, now and then lifting it to poise the basket, singing in a clear, true, sweet voice the lilting measures of the old song. It was a short "turn"; she knew but the single stanza. The effect was like some radiant, transient vision, the fleeting allurement of the senses in a dream, as the curtain suddenly descended, the light went out, and the vibrating echo of the violins ceased.
A moment of silent surprise; then the sound of the clapping of one enthusiastic pair of hands, and presently the tent rocked with a tumult of applause.
"By George—that's great!" cried Frank Laniston, red in the face from his exertions, his hands banging together like machinery. He gazed in sympathy at Jardine, who was fairly startled out of his composure and applauding with a will.
"It is absolutely beautiful, and perfectly unique," he exclaimed.
The two young ladies were trying what resources of clatter the sticks of their white fans might compass as they struck them against the palms of their small white gloved hands.
The man in the old whitish grey coat, whom Lloyd had noticed earlier in the audience, experiencing renewed anxiety lest some inimical espionage might account for his purchase of a ticket to a performance so ludicrous to his taste, sat in the midst of the clamour as still as if he had been carved in stone. The enthusiasm had illumined all faces save his—some subtle shadow of despondency had fallen upon it. He no longer held it half muffled in the high collar and lapels of the big old coat. It was shielded only by the drooping brim of the limp white hat and he presently turned it hither and thither, looking in stunned amazement and a deprecatory, remonstrant, unconscious inquiry at the neighbouring spectators among the crowded benches. The flavour of his secret jest had evaporated—he seemed to find naught to ridicule now.
"Why don't they raise that curtain, I wonder," growled Frank Laniston. "It's as hot as Hades in here, working this way. Bless my soul, won't she accept an encore?"
For the curtain remained immovable. Lloyd, startled by the unexpected endorsement of the attraction he had devised, that had hitherto fallen so flat, gratified by the applause as if it were a personal commendation, flushed deeply red as he sat near the orchestra and with smiling eyes waited too with all the rest for the conventional rising of the curtain and the complaisant repetition of the number. He had left nothing unforeseen in his instructions to the tyro. Clotilda had been fully informed of the nature and exigencies of an encore, and the course proper for her to pursue as the recipient of that great compliment. But, alack, the turn had never received before a hand of applause. In dead silence the rural crowd had heretofore watched the scene and wondered futilely what was the point when a simple country girl, in her old calico "coat," jumped around under a peach tree, and sang a verse of an old song, a thing to be seen on any roadside. Then they had silently filed out and there was an end for the time. Now, however, since there was applause from so experienced and discerning a source, a revised estimate seemed in order. Perhaps a new interpretation waited upon a more æsthetic point of view. The applause was hearty and general, and rose presently to an insistent clamour.
Clotilda, having had no occasion to respond to the plaudits of the public, had forgotten every syllable of her instructions. Lloyd remained yet some moments waiting, like the rest, eyeing the curtain, in the immediate expectation of seeing it rise. The musicians had their instruments in hand—at the tinkle of the bell they would beginda capo. But the curtain continued absolutely blank; no sign of the golden glow of the artificial light could be discerned, naught but the ripples of the air, swiftly running over it as the draught from the lowered canvas at the rear struck upon the fabric. Lloyd began to look discomposed, then anxious, then as the applause redoubled its demand he waited one uncertain moment longer, rose, advanced amongst the orchestra, sprang upon the stage, pushed the curtain aside and vanished behind its sphinx-like blankness.
"I never did really believe that he was the manager till this moment," said Lucia, a regretful cadence in her voice.
"What did you think he was, a duke in disguise?" chuckled Frank.
"Oh, yes, heisthe manager," said Ruth glibly, "and this is only the by-play of the real romance staged here. He is in love with that pretty girl, and was fascinated in training her."
Mr. Jardine had fended off the motley crowd from contact with his fair charges as best he might by seating the two young ladies together, with Frank on one side and himself on the other. But there was no protection from the occupants of the seats just in front, and suddenly one of these, a slovenly old wretch, in a dirty, whitey-grey coat and flapping hat, turned and fixed an eager, intent, almost indignant gaze on Ruth's face as she spoke. It was as if she had spoken a thought, a fear in his own mind, and to Jardine's surprise he saw that the face was young—young, but overgrown with the stubble of a three-days' beard, a stiff, dark beard. Wisps of short, dark hair overhung the forehead, as if a forelock were pulled of set purpose half over the eyes; for the rest, the face was dirty, unwashed, one might have thought stained in blotches—a repellent face, with fine, bright brown eyes. They turned eagerly to Lucia as, all unnoting his demonstration, she replied to Ruth's observation.
"I don't think she is so pretty," said Lucia critically. "It is the artistic environment that makes it all so fetching, don't you think, Mr. Jardine?"
He caught but the one word in the uproar of applause.
"Artistic—itisindeed! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. That scene has the true poetic glamour; it is as classic as an eclogue of Virgil."
He could hardly speak for the clamour which overpowered the tinkle of the bell, the earliest measures of the violins. As the curtain rose on the golden glow came a sudden hush; the pizzicato of the violins fell as trippingly as fairy feet on the silence; then the sound of singing broke forth in the distance and the beautiful dancing figure appeared. With familiarity one could note new effects, that, however, brought no disparagement. The opal cloud in the scenery had turned to purple, while the saffron cloud had held its glow. Once there was a sudden mutter of thunder and a swift veining of white glister was revealed amidst the hyacinthine tones.
As before, the scene was all too short, the beautiful dancing figure but a glimpse. The curtain came down in a clamour of applause; as this continued it rose after a short space. Clotilda had been schooled anew, and she was a quick study. Nothing could have seemed more perfect, more practised than her manner of smiling, grateful recognition as she came forward to the footlights. She had removed the basket of grapes from her head, but supported it in the round of her arm, half poised against her hip; the other hand lightly touched the masses of grapes held in the folds of her yellow dress, but it was obvious that their artistic draping had been made hard and fast against accident. She bowed with drooping eyelashes, and once more, lower still, she bowed, all rustic grace and diffidence, and then the curtain came down with a rush and the turn was triumphantly at an end.
"Couldn't Lucia photograph her, Mr. Jardine?" cried Ruth. "Oh, how I'd love to have her in my collection."
He hesitated coldly for one moment; then as if suddenly bethinking himself, eagerly assented.
"Doubtless—doubtless; you will want her in costume. I must speak to the manager at once."
As he eagerly breasted the crowd, seeking to get in as the spectators streamed out, the two young ladies, amazed by his willing co-operation, which they had by no means expected, stood and gazed quizzically at each other.
"A change of heart?" Lucia asked.
"Or a softening of the brain, perhaps," Ruth responded. Then they both turned to note his progress and saw him already in courteous conference with the manager. In fact Jardine had gladly embraced the opportunity to give the impression to this very handsome man of low degree that the highly placed and aristocratic Miss Lucia Laniston was out for snap-shots in general, and was adding to her collection from features of the town, the mountains, the fair, whatever presented itself as of passing interest. This was an inference more creditable and becoming than the possibility that she was greatly struck by the manly beauty of Lloyd's countenance and desired to remember it, to have the likeness to refresh her recollection, and thus caught the exceptional value of his pose at the moment. Jardine did not tell, and he did not think it necessary to tell, that Lloyd's face was the only one she had cared to portray, and that the camera had not been placed in position before and the slide drawn since she had been in town. He thought this an obliteration of the dangerous flattery if the man had been complacent and pleased by the discovery the click of the shutter had afforded him, and a placation of the offence, had he taken umbrage, by the apology suggested in the fact that he was only one of the many victims of the raging camera. He was surprised by the grave and gentlemanly address of the showman. Lloyd might have seemed indeed some man of high grade, were it not for his accent. He would be very happy to oblige, as far as he had any voice in the matter, but he must first ask the "lydy." Most of the attractions of the show were photographed and their portraits were on sale, but this lydy had very recently joined the company, playing only a temporary engagement, in fact, and she had not been photographed at all. Having also his reservations, he did not add that it had not been thought worth while, the reality itself being so incapable of sustaining interest.
Jardine, having carried his point, became afraid that he was playing it a little too fine, as the two young ladies approached and he found himself compelled to say, "This is the manager, Mr. Lloyd, ladies, and he is in hopes he may be able to secure the photograph you desire."
Mr. Lloyd raised his hat in a manner to which no exceptions could have been taken by the most exacting critic, and replying, "I shall be with you again in a moment," stepped upon the stage and disappeared.
Mr. Jardine looked harassed; he took out his handkerchief and passed it over his brow. It had been only one afternoon of chaperonage, but he had all the indicia of brain fag. The two young ladies, silent, glanced about at the queer, unaccustomed place; to his jaundiced mind they were measuring its opportunities to furnish them occasion for more mischief. Suddenly beside him the curtain drew up and the beautiful mountain girl stood posed exactly as she had appeared before the audience.
She was flattered that her picture was to be taken—now and again her lips parted over her beautiful teeth in a foolish little grin that annulled every scintilla of poesy in her presence.
"I have tried this sort of thing a bit, myself, and I don't think the perspective will answer unless the lydies are on a level. There is such a—a—mixed crowd outside—will the lydy step on the stage?" suggested Lloyd.
If for no other reason than the dismay on Jardine's high-featured, disdainful face, Lucia signified her acquiescence, and accepting the assistance of the manager's proffered outstretched hand she sprang lightly on the boards. Lloyd's quick intuition interpreted the expression on their several faces, for Jardine had instantly joined her and she felt that she must mask her thoughts if she would not have them read when Lloyd said, evidently in response to the protest in Mr. Jardine's countenance—"This is quite retired, not at all public now." Then glancing at the three or four people who were yet loitering and staring at the figures on the stage, he called out loudly—"This is no performance. Keep out of here!"
The wondering rustics slowly vanished; only one lingered and as Lloyd's gaze fell upon him he recognised the figure clad in a whitey-gray garb which had so persistently dogged his steps. His voice took on an authoritative cadence.
"Clear out. This is no performance. Clear out, I say!"
The figure turned like a dog that would fain fly at the throat, yet slinks in fear.
"I ain't carin' what you say," the intruder blustered. Then he slowly slouched out, muttering to himself, with the flapping brim of his hat well pulled down over his bright young eyes.
"You will make a lovely picture in that charming dress," Lucia said blandly, as Lloyd stepped here and there, pulling at the curtain to get a better light.
"It's all wore an' tore," Clotilda said deprecatingly. She did not doubt the admiration of the men, but she was all abashed and awkward in this presence of dainty feminine elegance. She scanned the two openly, as if comparing their traits. Then she fixed her eyes sedulously on Lucia. Her face was so out of drawing with this heavy, dully pondering, loutish expression, so incongruous with the poetic charm she had wrought, that Miss Laniston suggested:
"Sing—sing a line or two of that pretty song—sing, and dance a few steps."
The girl lifted her docile head, sprang lightly into the air, her fresh young voice floated out and suddenly the camera clicked.
"That is all, and when I get the pictures out I will come and see you and bring some of them to you. This gentleman tells me you live near by in the mountains. Where is your home?"
"He knows. He'll kem an' guide you," Clotilda easily promised for him.
Lucia turned to Lloyd, with her most entrancing smile. "Thanks, for past and future favours," she said, realising the disastrous storm the unexpected turn of events had roused in Mr. Jardine's conventional soul.
Lloyd bowed in gravest acknowledgment, and as she stepped down from the stage she remarked:
"My first and last appearance on the boards."
"You graced them," said Ruth airily.
But the two men, heavily silent, said nothing.
Lloyd ceremoniously saw them to the door, as if he had been entertaining them in the character of host, and as they departed he lifted his hat with a dignity all at variance with the sudden humorous cry of the spieler close at hand—"He eats 'em—he eats 'em alive!"
Lucia shrugged her disdainful shoulders.
"What an experience! What a place! The incongruities are amazing. I feel as if I were in a fevered dream, or a grotesque fairy-tale."
"You'll ruin those films if you don't look out for that camera," Ruth warned her, but she made no reply and swung the camera as carelessly as before.