CHAPTER XIII
Frank came in presently and joined the group, for until the hour for retiring they were monopolising the little blue reception room as a private parlour. He had encouraging news of Lloyd. "He's all right," Frank cheerily averred. "His head has got a lump on it as big as a hen's egg, and it aches to beat the band. The doctor says, though, it is not serious. The stone glanced aside, didn't hit him squarely. If it had he would have been a deader by now. Ought to have seen 'Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy' fairly blubber—he is a good-hearted old kid."
"But what was the motive of the attack?" Mrs. Laniston asked, enjoying every item of the sensation, without the jeopardy and the shock.
"Nobody can imagine," said Frank.
"Some intoxicated wretch," said Jardine disgustedly—he felt as if he would like to be disinfected, fumigated, because of the moral effluvia of such low company—he had never been in such a crowd before in his life.
"A drunken man can't sling a stone with a steady hand like that," said Frank. "Ididhear," he added with a sudden after-thought,—"that old Shadrach Pinnott's son, Tom—who my informant said was as drunk as a 'fraish b'iled owel,'—ain't that a lovely expression for a lovely state?—declared that the man who threw the stone was a lover of Tom's sister, Clotildy Pinnott—sweet name!—and was jealous of the manager fellow who had taught her to sing and dance in that dinky, dainty way. The manager is dead in love with her, too—so the discarded lover chews the rag, and holds the bag, and hurls the bolt."
Lucia, who had ceased her tears as she listened, pressing her handkerchief once and again to her eyes, as she was thrown, half reclining on one of the sofas, now began anew to sob nervously, and Jardine looked anxiously at Mrs. Laniston, as if commending the demonstration to her attention and ministrations. But Mrs. Laniston was eager for the news—she had had a dull evening at the hotel.
"Nefarious business," she commented.
"Of course," declared Frank. "Intent to commit murder. The man tried to kill Lloyd. If the manager hadn't been a ground-and-lofty-tumbler once in his career—he seems to have been some of everything—all 'round athlete—he couldn't have broken his fall by throwing somersaults—he would have been killed by the fall from such a height."
"But consider the frightful danger that Lucia was in, mamma," cried Ruth. "A little swerving to one side and the stone would have struckherhead instead of his."
Frank's boyish red face grew grave and dismayed.
"Was the man in the settee beside Lucia?" he asked aghast, hearing this detail for the first time.
"But, for God's sake, don't mention it," said Mr. Jardine testily, rising from his chair and taking a nervous turn through the room. "If this miscreant should be captured and a trial ensue, it would be a most disagreeable, almost derogatory thing for her to have to give her testimony in open court under these circumstances. Don't—don'tmention it."
"Certainly not," said Frank formally. "I shall bear your injunction in mind."
No one can so bitterly object to schooling as he who stands in need of it. In reality this phase of the possibilities had not occurred to the youth, and he fully appreciated the value of the warning. But he deprecated the tone, the possessory manner in which Mr. Jardine was playing the role of tutelary deity to the family. The interest of the subject, however, overpowered his rancour, and after a momentary pause he went on with an indignant sense of offended dignity. "But how in the name of all that is stylish did the manager of the Street Fair happen to be escorting Lucia?"
"Because," said Ruth, with a deep satirical bow and a manner of punctilious ceremony, "youwere so polite as to decline to escort her."
"My child!" remonstrated Mrs. Laniston, aghast. Then turning to the delinquent, "Why, Francis—how is this?"
"Frank gave us the slip—he promised to meet us," Ruth with true sisterly candour was bent on fixing his remissness upon him.
"I would have given up the project," Mr. Jardine felt it incumbent on him to say. "But we had waited a good while and the crowd was very impatient; and when the manager proposed to take the place it was on the score of balancing the swing, and really it seemed a little too pointed and conscious to decline—the wheel being a public conveyance, so to speak."
"And besides, he didn't give you time—he didn't anticipate a refusal," said Ruth. "He selected Lucia in preference to me, thank goodness! I wonder that, when he was attacked, Lucia did not fall out of the swing—it shook like a leaf in the wind."
"Francis should have been with you—I thought that was what you went out for—to escort your relatives," Mrs. Laniston fixed rebuking eyes on him.
"Oh, I did—I did," Frank's repentance was always most complete and disarming. He had no nettling reservation of justification. His square, rosy face was crestfallen and concerned. "I simply forgot! I stopped for some cigarettes at the cigar stand in the bar-room—or rather where the bar ought to be—and there were a lot of country fellows there, spinning yarns of bear-hunting and trapping wolves in the mountains—I stopped to listen—quaint characteristic stories—and I had no idea of how the time was passing. I am awfully sorry, Lucia. But my apologies do no good now."
"You needn't apologise," said Lucia good-naturedly, though she could not cease to sob as she spoke. "I was not in the least hurt—only considerably scared—and if you had joined us in time I should have missed the most sensational incident of my experience."
"It is not a little mortifying to me that I should have been the cause of it—and of your appearing in public on so conspicuous an occasion escorted so inappropriately, to say the least of it."
Frank was of the opinion that Jardine was in fault—he should have called the excursion off rather than consign Lucia to such escort. He should have brought the young ladies back to the hotel, if anything more were involved than their foolish, childish desire to swing in the big wheel. As Frank sat solemnly gazing at the toes of his white shoes, one hand on each knee, he was resolving that he would submit this view of the case to his mother as soon as he could have an audience with her free of Jardine's presence. It did not in the slightest degree, he felt, mitigate his own remissness in failing to appear, but surely Jardine need not have carried out the plan at all and any hazards. And having satisfied his conscience to this extent he began to seek to minimise the most nettling and derogatory phases of the incident, as it personally concerned his relatives.
"I don't believe the point that he was acting as escort to Lucia will be brought out at all," he said. "I noticed in the drug store that when 'Captain Ollory' asked Lloyd how in h-h-heaven he happened to be in the Ferris Wheel he merely answered that he went to balance one of the swings which apparently was not sufficiently weighted to be satisfactory. And the matter seemed to pass."
Lucia drew herself into a sitting posture. The nervous shock she had undergone showed in her pallor and the dark circles under her eyes. Her dainty lace blouse, with its elbow sleeves revealing her fair, beautifully proportioned arms, the knots of faint-hued ribbon, her delicately arranged hair, all seemed incongruous with the piteous aspect of her tearful eyes and the pathetic downward droop of her lips.
"I think that was very considerate of him, especially in view of the state of his wound—don't you, Aunt Dora? He might easily have overlooked that point."
"Or he might not have appreciated it," Mrs. Laniston assented.
"Yes, he would appreciate it," said Frank, wagging his wise head. "I tell you now, that fellow is as delicate-minded as any girl. He has got very popular here too—the town folks were fairly gushing over him in the drug store. If that rascal were caught they'd make him squeak, you bet your life. He would see sights."
Mr. Jardine was not an imaginative man, but before his mental vision was a dull night scene of dusky purple atmosphere, veined about with white lights, and hirpling away in the shadow was the figure of a grey-coated old man, suddenly turning over his shoulder a malignant young face with a grin of glistening white teeth.
Jardine gave an abrupt start, for it was as if this recollection had become visible to others, when Frank, still sitting in his pondering attitude, a hand on either knee, and his florid face bent down, said without preamble—"I wonder if any of you noticed this afternoon at the 'high-class concert' a fellow with an old whitey-grey coat who looked in the back like an old man and had a young face, if you could catch a glimpse of it under the flapping brim of an old white hat."
"Yes, indeed," cried Ruth excitedly. "When I said the scene was merely a by-play and the real romance was when the manager had fallen in love with the girl he had trained so beautifully, this man, who was sitting in front of us, turned and looked straight into my eyes as if he would deny it—as if he could destroy me for the suggestion."
"I noticed that too," said Lucia. "That is what made me remember him when I saw him again to-night—in the same old whitey-grey coat and flapping white hat. He was in the wheel with us—in a swing alone—just behind you and Mr. Jardine."
"Ladies—ladies—let me beg of you—I must insist that you do not pursue this line of thought!" Jardine admonished them. "You do not want to convince yourselves, that your consciousness may convince others——" he paused dumbfounded. He was himself advancing the matter. He was formulating their conclusion, inchoate as yet—he was putting it into systematic words.
"Oh, Mr. Jardine," cried Ruth with the cadence of discovery, and rising to her feet, "youthink that this man was the criminal—that it was a case of jealousy."
"No—no—that is precisely the impression I do not wish to give," Jardine protested. "I am sure I do not know, and I have no right to accuse or suspect anyone."
"Well,Iknow," declared Ruth recklessly; "the whole matter is as plain as a pike-staff. I saw a perfect inferno of wrath in his eyes when I said that the manager was in love with that beautiful mountain girl. And when we were photographing her I noticed that she looked at Mr. Lloyd with adoring eyes. He has taken her away from her mountain lover, and these primitive people have primitive reprisals. Mr. Lloyd has paid the penalty for his easy fascinations."
"Ruth, you must not run on so," Mrs. Laniston admonished her, after having listened with interest to the end of the cogent speculations. "For heaven's sake, how ill Lucia is looking," she broke off suddenly. "You are tired, Lucia; you need rest, my dear, after all these excitements. Come—we must say good-night." She rose rather wearily herself, and stood for a moment while the others reluctantly came to a standing posture and gathered themselves together in a group.
"It is really quite necessary that we should not put mere suspicions into words—very unpleasant consequences might ensue," Jardine ventured. He noted in the mirror over the mantelpiece how anxious, and patient, and sharpened was his face. He had already felt that his dignity had never been so seriously compromised as in the events of the day, but this possibility was of far more importance.
"You are very right, Mr. Jardine," Mrs. Laniston assented. Then turning to Ruth with an admonitory air, "Really, I think that we have had quite enough of undesirable publicity and sensation. You might presently find yourself swearing to your fancies in court. You must heed Mr. Jardine's very sensible warnings, for whichIat least am much obliged. [Ruth wheeled about and made him a pretty little mirthful bow of smiling acknowledgments.] You might actually swear a man's liberty away with your foolish impressions. This is a serious matter and you must rein your tongue."
"I am mute; I am mute," Ruth declared gaily, "and here is Lucia with not even a word to throw to—to Wick-Zoo."
"I can say good-night at least—and thank you very much, Mr. Jardine," Lucia remarked languidly. She was as pale, she seemed as fragile as the lace she wore. He accompanied them along the verandah to the foot of the staircase, and as their white draperies rustled up the flight into the shadowy dimness of the upper story he turned away with a practical anxious solicitude, characteristic of a husband or father rather than a lover, wondering if Mrs. Laniston realised the seriousness of a nervous shock, and if it would have been too intrusive to suggest calling in a physician to prescribe. This trend of thought led to the alternative of a stimulant rather than a drug. A glass of wine could do no harm, and he hurried to the office with the intention of sending up a bottle of the best that the town afforded with a plate of wafers or crackers of some delicate sort.
The duck-like clerk dashed his hopes with a single quack. "Dry town, Mr. Jardine," he reminded the guest jocosely.
Jardine remembered his brandy flask. He had left it, well filled, at New Helvetia.
"This is really a case of necessity," he said, and then checked himself abruptly. The circumstances of the nervous shock it would not be well to unnecessarily detail.
"Mrs. Laniston ill?" asked the clerk, drawing his visage into such an expression of respectful sympathy as might do homage to one of the valued patrons of the house. "Sorry, indeed. Would be glad to provide the stimulants. Interests of house prevent. Law strictly enforced. Sorry, indeed."
Then a sudden new thought seemed to strike him. "No law against tipping you a wink." He began to laugh very much. "I wouldn't tell such a thing to the young man, Frank—of course. Promising boy. Confide in your discretion. Distinguished stranger in town. Retiring disposition. Dispenses for a consideration. Holds forth in seclusion. Best of reasons. Follow the first tipsy hill-billy you see. Meet up with something. Surprise you. Purest liquor in the world. Absolutely unadulterated." The duck smacked his bill together and quacked forth a laugh of the most wicked relish.
As a matter of curiosity Jardine had been given the opportunity more than once at New Helvetia to sample certain spirits said to issue from no bonded still. There hung about this beverage a wholesome home-made flavour, or perhaps its extraordinary strength and its colourless limpidity imparted a persuasion of its purity. He was easily convinced of the value of the commodity, but he only doubtfully thanked the clerk and walked forth on the verandah, his ardour very definitely quenched.
He had made for Lucia Laniston this day sacrifices of inclination and conviction altogether disproportioned to the trivial matters that had constrained them. He would not have believed himself capable of so much self-abnegation as they had involved. He could have done greater things that were in accord with his tastes, his habits, his sense of the appropriate, with far less strain upon his generosity. It seemed to him now that he had indeed reached the limit. To be recommended to sally forth to seek a moonshiner's lair!—he was amazed and affronted that the clerk should have ventured such a suggestion. Then he reflected that he had said that it was a case of necessity, and not even the drug stores were privileged to keep the ardent stuff for medical purposes.
It was indeed a case of necessity, he said to himself, remembering the transparent pallor of Lucia's face, the nerveless flaccidity of her cold little hand as he had held it in his grasp for one moment in the good-night leave-takings. He loved her in a plain, home-like, hearty fashion. He would have been constant himself, and unreceptive to little variations of sentiment in her; he would not have entertained captious and suspicious theories as to minutiæ of tone and word and manner; he would not have sought unhappiness in analysing his own affection and the degree of responsive warmth it awakened had she once accepted his devotion and promised her love in return. He would have believed placidly in her and continued altogether confident in himself. He was solicitous for her well-being, her health, her happiness in a reasonable sense. Had he been sure of her heart, her approval of himself, he would not have hesitated to deny her all the fantastic follies that had no real value as amusement and that had served to make the day a nettling penance to him, as it should have been to any other sane being. But any valid pleasure, any opportunity of worldly advantage, any cultivated and appropriate enjoyment—he would have strained every nerve to afford her these. The idea that she was neglected, that her aunt did not realise the shock she had endured, that she was suffering for aught that he could procure and he alone—he clapped his correct hat on his priggish head and started out into the night.
It was dank and cool; the winds were still astir in the upper atmosphere, for the clouds raced continually athwart the densely enstarred sky. The town, stretching away in straggling streets along the hillside, was dark save for the lamps at regular intervals; here and there an upper window shone above shrubbery and vines, the chamber of some late patron of the Street Fair or perchance a sick-room. The square was almost deserted; the business houses were dark, presenting the blank front of their shutters to the passer-by; only the drug store was yet alight and groups of loiterers congregated here, more than one exhibiting the unsteady footsteps in which the hotel clerk had recommended his patron to walk for the nonce.
These wavering steps set a languid pace along the quiet country road for a considerable distance. Trees grew close on either hand but there were few dwellings; they were dark and silent, with one exception where a frantically barking dog dragged a block and chain around a dooryard, unaccustomed to be thus accoutred by night, and possibly restrained to avoid harassing the unusual number of harmless wayfarers along the highroad. The stars gave sufficient light to show the direction of the thoroughfare and the eccentric gait of the guide whom Jardine had elected to follow. There was a footbridge visible spanning the river; many a broken stellular reflection flashed from the dark, lustrous surface, and the foam of the rapids was assertively white in the claro-obscuro. Jardine had a sense of anxiety lest the feet of the "hill-billy" in advance were too unsteady to carry him safely across the narrow structure. But he presently descried him meandering cheerfully along on the sit, he had paused and clung fearfully to the hand-further side, although at one point, when in tran-rail, and cried aloud in thick, drunken accents that he was falling—he was a goner—he was a goner!—"Tell Polly Ann how I died—how I died—how I died!"——All the solemn rocks and all the impressive dark solitudes echoed and re-echoed the serio-comic mandate, till even after Jardine had crossed he noted a crag that was still rehearsing the words as if in conscious mimicry.
There seemed no goal to this night jaunt, and Mr. Jardine was beginning to feel a fool in his own estimation—a catastrophe he dreaded, for he was fain to think well of himself—when he met two or three hilarious, roaring wights coming townward singing with more uproarious mirth than melody—"A leetle mo' cider, too, an' a leetle mo' cider, too."
He was glad of the darkness that precluded their notice, as they passed, that he was of a different type from that proclaimed by their accent. But as he turned a sudden curve of the road obscurity no longer protected him. He must have been instantly visible even at the distance in the flaring fires of an encampment which sent far-reaching red pulsations through the woods and across the dark waters of the river. A dozen torch standards, after the manner of the lights of the street fair, showed rude tables whereon barbecued meats, salt-rising breads, and home-made cakes and pies were dispensed at prices which no doubt undercut the charges for such refreshments in the town. There were two barrels, brazenly displayed, placed close together with a small plank, shelf-like, from one to the other, holding glasses and a big blue pitcher. In the background was a stanch waggon, of which the white canvas hood was no mean shelter from the weather had one needed it; two or three of the dogs were now asleep on the straw beneath it. An old woman, a younger one, with an infant in arms, and a girl of eighteen, perhaps, grouped about the fire gave a touch of domesticity to the scene. Naught could seem further removed from the suggestion of law-breaking and defiance of vested authority. An eating-stand at a distance from the town, to escape the municipal tax on a lunch counter, and yet catch the country custom, to make some small profits on the occasion and see the Carnival—what more candid? Jardine felt pierced through and through with the vigilance of the eyes focussed upon him as he advanced in the light. And never was there more virtuous indignation expressed in voice and manner than was shown by an elderly man with a bushy red beard and a pale stolid face and a brown jeans suit, standing at the refreshment counter, as Jardine came up and proffered his request.
"Brandy—or whisky? why, stranger, we ain't sellin' whisky and brandy. It's agin the Fed'ral law 'thout ye air able to pay a tax and hire a spy to watch you. And it's agin the town law, bein' a dry town. We uns hev got a good supper cooked an' some powerful ch'ice apple cider hyar though. We uns got a fine orcherd in good bearin' this year, but we wouldn't even sell a bottle o' cider—we sell by the drink—thar ain't no money in it cept' by the drink."
And when Jardine had declined this refreshment the old woman beside the fire rose and came forward and earnestly essayed to sell him one of the home-made baskets. She was most voluble as she recommended her wares. "They ain't no cur'ous baskets like them Injuns make over ter Qualla-town, stranger," she said. "They ain't no quare shape with some kind o' spell in the weavin'they tell me thatthembaskets kin be read like a book by them ez hev got the key o' the braid. But I ain't one as would want some onholy witch-like savage saying ter be in use round my fireside, a-repeatin' a spell or a curse on me an' mine ever' time it was handled in the light. Now, hyar is a reg'lar, homefolks, sanctified, Christian basket, ez don't mean nuthin' but a quarter of a dollar. That's all the magic there is about it. It's good and solid and roomy, stranger, an' yer lady would find it so convenient to hold chips around the hearthstone. Try it, stranger—jes' twenty-five cents."
Jardine was ashamed to refuse altogether any expenditure of money and presently he was trudging along the road to Colbury with the basket in his hand and a fund of information as to the ingenious methods in which the moonshiners were successfully defying the Federal law. Had he been known to the distillers, or perhaps had he merely demanded a drink he would have been served with the brush whisky in one of the primitive gourds, since the evidence must needs have gone down his throat at the stand, and few men would have sought the informer's reward at the risk of the informer's fate on the testimony of a recollected flavour, which is hardly proof in any court. That the two barrels indeed contained cider was obvious by the fragrance—the more fiery liquor was in some secret receptacle not so easily seen and seized, secured perhaps when the moonshiner turned back to the spring, which he did more than once to rinse the gourds in the waters of its branch.
Despite the appearance of an invincible security, however, Jardine was forcibly reminded of the pitcher that goes to the well; he saw clearly in the future the inevitable consequences of the extreme daring of the old moonshiner, rendered unduly venturesome by long immunity and prideful faith in his own ingenious craft. The idea struck Jardine's mind, with a most unpleasant collocation of circumstances, that the Street Fair must profit largely by this extraordinary opportunity to the inebriates of the whole surrounding region. Since the closing of the saloons in Colbury the poorer class, by far the larger, must needs be constrained to purchase in the quantity by shipment from some city, or in default of the price for this luxury, or the hindrance of distance and ignorance, be reduced to the absolute despair of temperance. Doubtless for the facilities of boozing by the drink they had flocked into Colbury by scores, where in the close vicinity the flowing bowl might be drained for a nickel, and the moonshiners might justly have considered themselves entitled to a share of the profits of the show since their powerful attraction must have added so largely to the gate receipts. He shrugged his shoulders mechanically in the effort to shake off the suspicion which he had begun to entertain. The Street Fair was so obviously playing in hard luck; was so pitifully inadequate as an exhibition, in his opinion; its financial resources were evidently so limited that this phenomenal opportunity of recruiting its exchequer rendered it peculiarly liable to a charge of collusion with the moonshiners, in the estimation of almost any man seeking the solution of the problem of so many inebriated spectators of the show on the streets of a dry town. Only the appearance and manner of Lloyd caused him to doubt his conclusion, and then he wondered at himself that the endowments of unusual personal beauty, a thing valueless in a man, absolutely apart from character or station, a gift, an accident, together with a grave and gentlemanly address, which was also a fortuitous circumstance, should weigh with him for an instant where an itinerant faker was concerned. In this development of the situation he was infinitely nettled that this man, the manager of the show, and doubtless the prime mover and responsible agent of this unlawful whisky traffic, should have been brought into any association with Miss Laniston, however casual and temporary. He ground his teeth with indignant contempt that it was possible that she should ever exchange a syllable with such a man, should be seated beside him in the Ferris Wheel in the midst of an attack upon him, stimulated by jealousy or whisky or both. Jardine was not a profane man, for oaths are ever bad form, but between his gritting teeth he cursed Frank Laniston again and again that his callow folly should have left his position vacant by her side, and open to the possibility of such a contretemps.
Jardine canvassed almost in a state of nervous panic the probability that these facts might be remembered by the police should the camp of the moonshiners be raided by the revenue force and the manager of the Street Fair be implicated. Even if no more should result than a casual mention in such an investigation it would be an indignity insupportable in his estimation. And should the miscreant who attacked the manager be discovered would not her testimony be required to establish the facts? The tormentingly acute divination of the two young girls had fixed on the culprit, he was convinced, and should some unwary word from them lead to his discovery a prosecution would involve to them as witnesses the most annoying and derogatory conspicuousness. He hardly knew how he could answer to his friends, their respective fathers, that while in his care, assumed of sheer good-will though it was, such social inappropriateness could be permitted to supervene. They were not at the end of this miserable tangle—and he felt greatly to blame. Yet with no authority, a disregarded advice, a thousand hampering constraints on speaking his mind candidly, how could he do more than he had in protection, and counsel, and care? He wished to high heaven that the Laniston Brothers were not so intent on turning the trick in the late advance in the price of cotton, and would give their personal attention to the precious interests of their families. He was conscious that by this collective term he meant only Lucia, and he was fair enough to admit to himself that under the chaperonage of her aunt, and with the companionship of her cousins, male and female, and the volunteer tutelage of a friend of the family, an experienced man of the world, George Laniston was amply justified in thinking his only daughter safe enough, and well out of harm's way.
So perverse were the circumstances that Jardine thought that even his own excursion to-night might be subject to misconstruction—and he hedged immediately on the chance. As he had not succeeded in his quest there was certainly scant utility in seeming to have patronised the moonshiners. There was no great change in the aspect of the town as he entered it—a torch a-flare here and there among the tents; the street lamps shining at regular intervals; the drug store alone alight among the silent business houses of the quadrangle; the gas ablaze in the hotel office, and although, so short was his absence, the duck was off duty he still lingered in the room lighting a thick cigar at the little lamp for the purpose on the counter.
"No go," said Jardine—he had earlier thrown away his basket.
The duck raised astonished eyebrows. "I'd resent that. Personal. Listen, will you?"
A voice mellow, clear, floated in from the street—singing in beatitude—marred only by hiccoughs, and now and then a wild involuntary wail off the key. "We won't go home—we won't go home—we won't go home till mornin',—till daylight doth appear."
When silence ensued the duck said significantly: "All the rope they want—hang themselves—don't even run them in. Visitors soon. Official."