The Gentleman From Indiana

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Gentleman From Indiana

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But Helen drew away and went to the window, flattening her arm against the
pane, her forehead pressed against her arm. She had let him go; she had
let him go alone. She had forgotten the danger that always beset him. She
had been so crazy, she had seen nothing, thought of nothing. She had let
him go into that, and into the storm, alone. Who knew better than she how
cruel they were? She had seen the fire leap from the white blossom and
heard the ball whistle, the ball they had meant for his heart, that good,
great heart. She had run to him the night before--why had she let him go
into the unknown and the storm to-night? But how could she have stopped
him? How could she have kept him, after what he had said? She peered into
the night through distorting tears.

The wind had gone down a little, but only a little, and the electrical
flashes danced all around the horizon in magnificent display, sometimes
far away, sometimes dazingly near, the darkness trebly deep between the
intervals when the long sweep of flat lands lay in dazzling clearness,
clean-cut in the washed air to the finest detail of stricken field and
heaving woodland. A staggering flame clove earth and sky; sheets of light
came following it, and a frightful uproar shook the house and rattled the
casements, but over the crash of thunder Minnie heard her friend's loud
scream and saw her spring back from the window with both hands, palm
outward, pressed to her face. She leaped to her and threw her arms about
her.

"What is it?"

"Look!" Helen dragged her to the window. "At the next flash--the fence
beyond the meadow----"

"What was it? What was it like?" The lightning flashed incessantly. Helen
tried to point; her hand only jerked from side to side.

"_Look_!" she cried.

"I see nothing but the lightning," Minnie answered, breathlessly.

"Oh, the _fence_! The fence--and in the field!"

"_Helen_! What was it _like_?"

"Ah-ah!" she panted, "a long line of white--horrible white----"

"What _like_?" Minnie turned from the window and caught the other's wrist
in a fluttering clasp.

"Minnie, Minnie! Like long white gowns and cowls crossing the fence."
Helen released her wrist, and put both hands on Minnie's cheeks, forcing
her around to face the pane. "You must look--you must look," she cried.

"They wouldn't do it, they wouldn't--it _isn't_!" Minnie cried. "They
couldn't come in the storm. They wouldn't do it in the pouring rain!"

"Yes! Such things would mind the rain!" She burst into hysterical
laughter, and Minnie, almost as unnerved, caught her about the waist.
"They would mind the rain. They would fear a storm! Ha, ha, ha! Yes--yes!
And I let him go--I let him go!"

Pressing close together, shuddering, clasping each other's waists, the two
girls peered out at the flickering landscape.

"_Look_!"

Up from the distant fence that bordered the northern side of Jones's
field, a pale, pelted, flapping thing reared itself, poised, and seemed,
just as the blackness came again, to drop to the ground.

"Did you _see_?"

But Minnie had thrown herself into a chair with a laugh of wild relief.
"My darling girl!" she cried. "Not a line of white things--just one--Mr.
Jones's old scarecrow! And we saw it blown down!"

"No, no, no! I saw the others; they were in the field beyond. I saw them!
When I looked the first time they were nearly all on the fence. This time
we saw the last man crossing. Ah! I let him go alone!"

Minnie sprang up and enfolded her. "No; you dear, imagining child, you're
upset and nervous--that's all the matter in the world. Don't worry; don't,
child, it's all right. Mr. Harkless is home and safe in bed long ago. I
know that old scarecrow on the fence like a book; you're so unstrung you
fancied the rest. He's all right; don't you bother, dear."

The big, motherly girl took her companion in her arms and rocked her back
and forth soothingly, and petted and reassured her, and then cried a
little with her, as a good-hearted girl always will with a friend. Then
she left her for the night with many a cheering word and tender caress.
"Get to sleep, dear," she called through the door when she had closed it
behind her. "You must, if you have to go in the morning--it just breaks my
heart. I don't know how we'll bear it without you. Father will miss you
almost as much as I will. Good-night. Don't bother about that old white
scarecrow. That's all it was. Good-night, dear, good-night."

"Good-night, dear," answered a plaintive little voice. Helen's hot cheek
pressed the pillow and tossed from side to side. By and by she turned the
pillow over; it had grown wet. The wind blew about the eaves and blew
itself out; she hardly heard it. Sleep would not come. She got up and
laved her burning eyes. Then she sat by the window. The storm's strength
was spent at last; the rain grew lighter and lighter, until there was but
the sound of running water and the drip, drip on the tin roof of the
porch. Only the thunder rumbling in the distance marked the storm's
course; the chariots of the gods rolling further and further away, till
they finally ceased to be heard altogether. The clouds parted
majestically, and then, between great curtains of mist, the day-star was
seen shining in the east.

The night was hushed, and the peace that falls before dawn was upon the
wet, flat lands. Somewhere in the sodden grass a swamped cricket chirped.
From an outlying flange of the village a dog's howl rose mournfully; was
answered by another, far away, and by another and another. The sonorous
chorus rose above the village, died away, and quiet fell again.

Helen sat by the window, no comfort touching her heart. Tears coursed her
cheeks no longer, but her eyes were wide and staring, and her lips parted,
for the hush was broken by the far clamor of the court-house bell ringing
in the night. It rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. She could not
breathe. She threw open the window. The bell stopped. All was quiet once
more. The east was growing gray.

Suddenly out of the stillness there came the sound of a horse galloping
over a wet road. He was coming like mad. Some one for a doctor? No; the
horse-hoofs grew louder, coming out from the town, coming this way, coming
faster and faster, coming _here_. There was a splashing and trampling in
front of the house and a sharp "Whoa!" In the dim gray of first dawn she
made out a man on a foam-flecked horse. He drew up at the gate.

A window to the right of hers went screeching up. She heard the judge
clear his throat before he spoke.

"What is it? That's you, isn't it, Wiley? What is it?" He took a good deal
of time and coughed between the sentences. His voice was more than
ordinarily quiet, and it sounded husky. "What is it, Wiley?"

"Judge, what time did Mr. Harkless leave here last night and which way did
he go?"

There was a silence. The judge turned away from the window. Minnie was
standing just outside his door. "It must have been about half-past nine,
wasn't it, father?" she called in a shaking voice. "And, you know, Helen
thought he went west."

"Wiley!" The old man leaned from the sill again.

"Yes!" answered the man on horseback.

"Wiley, he left about half-past nine--just before the storm. They think he
went west."

"Much obliged. Willetts is so upset he isn't sure of anything."

"Wiley!" The old man's voice shook; Minnie began to cry aloud. The
horseman wheeled about and turned his animal's head toward town. "Wiley!"

"Yes."

"Wiley, they haven't--you don't think they've got him?"

"By God, judge," said the man on horseback, "I'm afraid they have!"

CHAPTER X

THE COURT-HOUSE BELL

The court-house bell ringing in the night! No hesitating stroke of
Schofields' Henry, no uncertain touch, was on the rope. A loud, wild,
hurried clamor pealing out to wake the country-side, a rapid _clang!
clang! clang!_ that struck clear in to the spine.

The court-house bell had tolled for the death of Morton, of Garfield, of
Hendricks; had rung joy-peals of peace after the war and after political
campaigns; but it had rung as it was ringing now only three times; once
when Hibbard's mill burned, once when Webb Landis killed Sep Bardlock and
intrenched himself in the lumber-yard and would not be taken till he was
shot through and through, and once when the Rouen accommodation was
wrecked within twenty yards of the station.

Why was the bell ringing now? Men and women, startled into wide
wakefulness, groped to windows--no red mist hung over town or country.
What was it? The bell rang on. Its loud alarm beat increasingly into men's
hearts and quickened their throbbing to the rapid measure of its own.
Vague forms loomed in the gloaming. A horse, wildly ridden, splashed
through the town. There were shouts; voices called hoarsely. Lamps began
to gleam in the windows. Half-clad people emerged from their houses, men
slapping their braces on their shoulders as they ran out of doors.
Questions were shouted into the dimness.

Then the news went over the town.

It was cried from yard to yard, from group to group, from gate to gate,
and reached the furthermost confines. Runners shouted it as they sped by;
boys panted it, breathless; women with loosened hair stumbled into
darkling chambers and faltered it out to new-wakened sleepers; pale girls
clutching wraps at their throats whispered it across fences; the sick,
tossing on their hard beds, heard it. The bell clamored it far and near;
it spread over the country-side; it flew over the wires to distant cities.
The White-Caps had got Mr. Harkless!

Lige Willetts had lost track of him out near Briscoes', it was said, and
had come in at midnight seeking him. He had found Parker, the "Herald"
foreman, and Ross Schofield, the typesetter, and Bud Tipworthy, the devil,
at work in the printing-room, but no sign of Harkless, there or in the
cottage. Together these had sought for him and had roused others, who had
inquired at every house where he might have gone for shelter, and they had
heard nothing. They had watched for his coming during the slackening of
the storm and he had not come, and there was nowhere he could have gone.
He was missing; only one thing could have happened.

They had roused up Warren Smith, the prosecutor, the missing editor's most
intimate friend in Carlow, and Homer, the sheriff, and Jared Wiley, the
deputy. William Todd had rung the alarm. The first thing to do was to find
him. After that there would be trouble--if not before. It looked as if
there would be trouble before. The men tramping up to the muddy Square in
their shirt-sleeves were bulgy about the right hips; and when Homer Tibbs
joined Lum Landis at the hotel corner, and Landis saw that Homer was
carrying a shot-gun, Landis went back for his. A hastily sworn posse
galloped out Main Street. Women and children ran into neighbors' yards and
began to cry. Day was coming; and, as the light grew, men swore and
savagely kicked at the palings of fences that they passed.

In the foreglow of dawn they gathered in the Square and listened to Warren
Smith, who made a speech from the court-house fence and warned them to go
slow. They answered him with angry shouts and hootings, but he made his
big voice heard, and bade them do nothing rash; no facts were known, he
said; it was far from certain that harm had been done, and no one knew
that the Six-Cross-Roads people had done it--even if something had
happened to Mr. Harkless. He declared that he spoke in Harkless's name.
Nothing could distress _him_ so much as for them to defy the law, to take
it out of the proper hands. Justice would be done.

"Yes it will!" shouted a man below him, brandishing the butt of a raw-hide
whip above his head. "And while you jaw on about it here, he may be tied
up like a dog in the woods, shot full of holes by the men you never lifted
a finger to hender, because you want their votes when you run for circuit
judge. What are we doin' _here_? What's the good of listening to you?"

There was a yell at this, and those who heard the speaker would probably
have started for the Cross-Roads without further parley, had not a rumor
sprung up, which passed so rapidly from man to man that within five
minutes it was being turbulently discussed in every portion of the crowd.
The news came that the two shell-gamblers had wrenched a bar out of a
window under cover of the storm, had broken jail, and were at large. Their
threats of the day before were remembered now, with convincing vividness.
They had sworn repeatedly to Bardlock and to the sheriff, and in the
hearing of others, that they would "do" for the man who took their money
from them and had them arrested. The prosecuting attorney, quickly
perceiving the value of this complication in holding back the mob that was
already forming, called Homer from the crowd and made him get up on the
fence and confess that his prisoners had escaped--at what time he did not
know, probably toward the beginning of the storm, when it was noisiest.

"You see," cried the attorney, "there is nothing as yet of which we can
accuse the Cross-Roads. If our friend has been hurt, it is much more
likely that these crooks did it. They escaped in time to do it, and we all
know they were laying for him. You want to be mighty careful, fellow-
citizens. Homer is already in telegraphic communication with every town
around here, and we'll have those men before night. All you've got to do
is to control yourselves a little and go home quietly." He could see that
his words (except those in reference to returning home--no one was going
home) made an impression. There rose a babble of shouting and argument and
swearing that grew continually louder, and the faces the lawyer looked
down on were creased with perplexity, and shadowed with an anger that
settled darker and darker.

Mr. Ephraim Watts, in spite of all confusion, clad as carefully as upon
the preceding day, deliberately climbed the fence and stood by the lawyer
and made a single steady gesture with his hand. He was listened to at
once, as his respect for the law was less notorious than his irreverence
for it, and he had been known in Carlow as a customarily reckless man.
They wanted illegal and desperate advice, and quieted down to hear it. He
spoke in his professionally calm voice.

"Gentlemen, it seems to me that Mr. Smith and Mr. Ribshaw" (nodding to the
man with the rawhide whip) "are both right. What good are we doing here?
What we want to know is what's happened to Mr. Harkless. It looks just now
like the shell-men might have done it. Let's find out what they done.
Scatter and hunt for him. 'Soon as anything is known for certain,
Hibbard's mill whistle will blow three times. Keep on looking till it
does. _Then_" he finished, with a barely perceptible scornful smile at the
attorney, "_then_ we can decide on what had ought to be done."

Six-Cross-Roads lay dark and steaming in the sun that morning. The forge
was silent, the saloon locked up, the roadway deserted, even by the pigs.
The broken old buggy stood rotting in the mud without a single lean,
little old man or woman--such were the children of the Cross-Roads--to
play about it. The fields were empty, and the rag-stuffed windows blank,
under the baleful glance of the horsemen who galloped by at intervals,
muttering curses, not always confining themselves to muttering them. Once,
when the deputy sheriff rode through alone, a tattered black hound, more
wolf than dog, half-emerged, growling, from beneath one of the tumble-down
barns, and was jerked back into the darkness by his tail, with a snarl
fiercer than his own, while a gun-barrel shone for a second as it swung
for a stroke on the brute's head. The hound did not yelp or whine when the
blow fell. He shut his eyes twice, and slunk sullenly back to his place.

The shanties might have received a volley or two from some of the mounted
bands, exasperated by futile searching, had not the escape of Homer's
prisoners made the guilt of the Cross-Roads appear doubtful in the minds
of many. As the morning waned, the advocates of the theory that the
gamblers had made away with Harkless grew in number. There came a telegram
from the Rouen chief of police that he had a clew to their whereabouts; he
thought they had succeeded in reaching Rouen, and it began to be generally
believed that they had escaped by the one-o'clock freight, which had
stopped to take on some empty cars at a side-track a mile northwest of the
town, across the fields from the Briscoe house. Toward noon a party went
out to examine the railroad embankment.

Men began to come back into the village for breakfast by twos and threes,
though many kept on searching the woods, not feeling the need of food, or
caring if they did. Every grove and clump of underbrush, every thicket,
was ransacked; the waters of the creek, shallow for the most part, but
swollen overnight, were dragged at every pool. Nothing was found; there
was not a sign.

The bar of the hotel was thronged all morning as the returning citizens
rapidly made their way thither, and those who had breakfasted and were
going out again paused for internal, as well as external, reinforcement.
The landlord, himself returned from a long hunt, set up his whiskey with a
lavish hand.

"He was the best man we had, boys," said Landis, as he poured the little
glasses full. "We'd ort of sent him to the legislative halls of Washington
long ago. He'd of done us honor there; but we never thought of doin'
anything fer him; jest set 'round and let him build up the town and give
him empty thankyes. Drink hearty, gentlemen," he finished, gloomily, "I
don't grudge no liquor to-day--except to Lige Willetts."

"He was a good man," said young William Todd, whose nose was red, not from
the whiskey. "I've about give up."

Schofields' Henry drew his sleeve across his eyes. "He was the only man in
this whole city that didn't jab and nag at me when I done my best," he
exclaimed, with an increasing break in his utterance. "Many a good word
I've had from him when nobody in town done nothin' but laugh an' rile an'
badger me about my--my bell." And Schofields' Henry began to cry openly.

"He was a great hand with the chuldern," said one man. "Always have
something to say to 'em to make 'em laugh when he went by. 'Talk more to
them 'n he would to grown folks. Yes, sir."

"They knowed _him_ all right," added another. "I reckon all of us did,
little and big."

"It's goin' to seem mighty empty around here," said Ross Schofield.
"What's goin' to become o' the 'Herald' and the party in this district?
Where's the man to run either of 'em now. Like as not," he concluded
desperately, "the election'll go against us in the fall."

Dibb Zane choked over his four fingers. "We might's well bust up this
dab-dusted ole town ef he's gone."

"I don't know what's come over that Cynthy Tipworthy," said the landlord.
"She's waited table on him last two year, and her brother Bud works at the
'Herald' office. She didn't say a word--only looked and looked and looked
--like a crazy woman; then her and Bud went off together to hunt in the
woods. They just tuck hold of each other's hands like----"

"That ain't nothin'," Homer Tibbs broke in. "You'd ort to've saw old Miz
Hathaway, that widder woman next door to us, when she heard it. He had
helped her to git her pension; and she tuck on worse 'n' anything I ever
hear--lot worse 'n' when Hathaway died."

"I reckon there ain't many crazier than them two Bowlders, father and
son," said the postmaster, wiping the drops from his beard as he set his
glass on the bar. "They rid into town like a couple of wild Indians, the
old man beatin' that gray mare o' theirn till she was one big welt, and he
ain't natcherly no cruel man, either. I reckon Lige Willetts better keep
out of Hartley's way."

"I keep out of no man's way," cried a voice behind him. Turning, they saw
Lige standing on the threshold of the door that led to the street. In his
hand he held the bridle of the horse he had ridden across the sidewalk,
and that now stood panting, with lowered head, half through the doorway,
beside his master. Lige was hatless, splashed with mud from head to foot;
his jaw was set, his teeth ground together; his eyes burned under red
lids, and his hair lay tossed and damp on his brow. "I keep out of no
man's way," he repeated, hoarsely.

"I heard you, Mr. Tibbs, but I've got too much to do, while you loaf and
gas and drink over Lum Landis's bar--I've got other business than keeping
out of Hartley Bowlder's way. I'm looking for John Harkless. He was the
best man we had in this ornery hole, and he was too good for us, and so
we've maybe let him get killed, and maybe I'm to blame. But I'm going to
find him, and if he's hurt--damn _me_! I'm going to have a hand on the
rope that lifts the men that did it, if I have to go to Rouen to put it
there! After that I'll answer for my fault, not before!"

He threw himself on his horse and was gone. Soon the room was emptied, as
the patrons of the bar returned to the search, and only Mr. Wilkerson and
the landlord remained, the bar being the professional office, so to speak,
of both.

Wilkerson had a chair in a corner, where he sat chanting a funeral march
in a sepulchral murmur, allowing a parenthetical _hic_ to punctuate the
dirge in place of the drum. Whenever a batch of newcomers entered, he rose
to drink with them; and, at such times, after pouring off his liquor with
a rich melancholy, shedding tears after every swallow, he would make an
exploring tour of the room on his way back to his corner, stopping to look
under each chair inquiringly and ejaculate: "Why, where kin he be!" Then,
shaking his head, he would observe sadly: "Fine young man, he was, too;
fine young man. Pore fellow! I reckon we hain't a-goin' to git him."

At eleven o'clock. Judge Briscoe dropped wearily from his horse at his own
gate, and said to a wan girl who came running down the walk to meet him:
"There is nothing, yet. I sent the telegram to your mother--to Mrs.
Sherwood."

Helen turned away without answering. Her face was very white and looked
pinched about the mouth. She went back to where old Fisbee sat on the
porch, his white head held between his two hands; he was rocking himself
to and fro. She touched him gently, but he did not look up. She spoke to
him.

"There isn't anything--yet. He sent the telegram to mamma. I shall stay
with you, now, no matter what you say." She sat beside him and put her
head down on his shoulder, and though for a moment he appeared not to
notice it, when Minnie came out on the porch, hearing her father at the
door, the old scholar had put his arm about the girl and was stroking her
fair hair softly.

Briscoe glanced at them, and raised a warning finger to his daughter, and
they went tiptoeing into the house, where the judge dropped heavily upon a
sofa with an asthmatic sigh; he was worn and tired. Minnie stood before
him with a look of pale inquiry, and he shook his head.

"No use to tell _them_; but I can't see any hope," he answered her, biting
nervously at the end of a cigar. "I expect you better bring me some coffee
in here; I couldn't take another step to save me. I'm too old to tear
around the country horseback before breakfast, like I have to-day."

"Did you send her telegram?" Minnie asked, as he drank the coffee she
brought him. She had interpreted "coffee" liberally, and, with the
assistance of Mildy Upton (whose subdued nose was frankly red and who shed
tears on the raspberries), had prepared an appetizing table at his elbow.

"Yes," responded the judge, "and I'm glad she sent it. I talked the other
way yesterday, what little I said--it isn't any of our business--but I
don't think any too much of those people, somehow. She thinks she belongs
with Fisbee, and I guess she's right. That young fellow must have got
along with her pretty well, and I'm afraid when she gives up she'll be
pretty bad over it; but I guess we all will. It's terribly sudden,
somehow, though it's only what everybody half expected would come; only we
thought it would come from over yonder." He nodded toward the west. "But
she's got to stay here with us. Boarding at Sol Tibbs's with that old man
won't do; and she's no girl to live in two rooms. You fix it up with her--
you make her stay."

"She must," answered his daughter as she knelt beside him and patted his
coat and handed him several things to eat at the same time. "Mr. Fisbee
will help me persuade her, now that she's bound to stay in spite of him
and the Sherwoods, too. I think she is perfectly grand to do it. I've
always thought she was grand--ever since she took me under her wing at
school when I was terribly 'country' and frightened; but she was so sweet
and kind she made me forget. She was the pet of the school, too, always
doing things for the other girls, for everybody; looking out for people
simply heads and heads bigger than herself, and so recklessly generous and
so funny about it; and always thoughtful and--and--pleasant----"

Minnie was speaking sadly, mechanically; but suddenly she broke off with a
quick sob, sprang up and went to the window; then, turning, cried out:

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