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