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