The Gentleman From Indiana

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His host helped him upstairs after dinner, and showed him the room
prepared for his occupancy. Harkless sank, sighing with weakness, into a
deep chair, and Meredith went to a window-seat and stretched himself out
for a smoke and chat.

"Doesn't it beat your time," he said, cheerily, "to think of what's become
of all the old boys? They turn up so differently from what we expected,
when they turn up at all. We sized them up all right so far as character
goes, I fancy, but we couldn't size up the chances of life. Take poor old
Pickle Haines: who'd have dreamed Pickle would shoot himself over a
bankruptcy? I dare say that wasn't all of it--might have been cherchez la
femme, don't you think? What do you make of Pickle's case, John?"

There was no answer. Harkless's chair was directly in front of the mantel-
piece, and upon the carved wooden shelf, amongst tobacco-jars and little
curios, cotillion favors and the like, there were scattered a number of
photographs. One of these was that of a girl who looked straight out at
you from a filigree frame; there was hardly a corner of the room where you
could have stood without her clear, serious eyes seeming to rest upon
yours.

"Cherchez la femme?" repeated Tom, puffing unconsciously. "Pickle was a
good fellow, but he had the deuce of an eye for a girl. Do you remember--"
He stopped short, and saw the man and the photograph looking at each
other. Too late, he unhappily remembered that he had meant, and forgotten,
to take that photograph out of the room before he brought Harkless in. Now
he would have to leave it; and Helen Sherwood was not the sort of girl,
even in a flat presentment, to be continually thrown in the face of a man
who had lost her. And it always went hard, Tom reflected, with men who
stretched vain hands to Helen, only to lose her. But there was one, he
thought, whose outstretched hands might not prove so vain. Why couldn't
she have cared for John Harkless? Deuce take the girl, did she want to
marry an emperor? He looked at Harkless, and pitied him with an almost
tearful compassion. A feverish color dwelt in the convalescent's cheek;
the apathy that had dulled his eyes was there no longer; instead, they
burned with a steady fire. The image returned his unwavering gaze with
inscrutable kindness.

"You heard that Pickle shot himself, didn't you?" Meredith asked. There
was no answer; John did not hear him.

"Do you know that poor Jeny Haines killed himself, last March?" Tom said
sharply.

There was only silence in the room. Meredith got up and rattled some tongs
in the empty fireplace, but the other did not move or notice him in any
way.

Meredith set the tongs down, and went quietly out of the room, leaving his
friend to that mysterious interview.

When he came back, after a remorseful cigarette in the yard, Harkless was
still sitting, motionless, looking up at the photograph above the mantel-
piece.

They drove abroad every day, at first in the victoria, and, as Harkless's
strength began to come back, in a knock-about cart of Tom's, a light trail
of blue smoke floating back wherever the two friends passed. And though
the country editor grew stronger in the pleasant, open city, Meredith felt
that his apathy and listlessness only deepened, and he suspected that, in
Harkless's own room, where the photograph reigned, the languor departed
for the time, making way for a destructive fire. Judge Briscoe, paying a
second visit to Rouen, told Tom, in an aside, that their friend did not
seem to be the same man. He was altered and aged beyond belief, the old
gentleman whispered sadly.

Meredith decided that his guest needed enlivening--something to take him
out of himself; he must be stirred up to rub against people once more. And
therefore, one night he made a little company for him: two or three
apparently betrothed very young couples, for whom it was rather dull,
after they had looked their fill of Harkless (it appeared that every one
was curious to see him); and three or four married young couples, for whom
the entertainment seemed rather diverting in an absent-minded way (they
had the air of remembering that they had forgotten the baby); and three or
four bachelors, who seemed contented in any place where they were allowed
to smoke; and one widower, whose manner indicated that any occasion
whatever was gay enough for him; and four or five young women, who
(Meredith explained to John) were of their host's age, and had been "left
over" out of the set he grew up with; and for these the modest party took
on a hilarious and chipper character. "It is these girls that have let the
men go by because they didn't see any good enough; they're the jolly
souls!" the one widower remarked, confidentially. "They've been at it a
long while, and they know how, and they're light-hearted as robins. They
have more fun than people who have responsibilities."

All of these lively demoiselles fluttered about Harkless with
commiserative pleasantries, and, in spite of his protestations, made him
recline in the biggest and deepest chair on the porch, where they
surfeited him with kindness and grouped about him with extra cushions and
tenderness for a man who had been injured. No one mentioned the fact that
he had been hurt; it was not spoken of, though they wished mightily he
would tell them the story they had read luridly in the public prints. They
were very good to him. One of them, in particular, a handsome, dark, kind-
eyed girl, constituted herself at once his cicerone in Rouen gossip and
his waiting-maid. She sat by him, and saw that his needs (and his not-
needs, too) were supplied and oversupplied; she could not let him move,
and anticipated his least wish, though he was now amply able to help
himself; and she fanned him as if he were a dying consumptive.

They sat on Meredith's big porch in the late twilight and ate a
substantial refection, and when this was finished, a buzz of nonsense rose
from all quarters, except the remote corners where the youthful affianced
ones had defensively stationed themselves behind a rampart of plants.
They, having eaten, had naught to do, and were only waiting a decent hour
for departure. Laughing voices passed up and down the street, and mingled
with the rhythmic plashing of Meredith's fountain, and, beyond the
shrubberies and fence, one caught glimpses of the light dresses of women
moving to and fro, and of people sitting bareheaded on neighboring lawns
to enjoy the twilight. Now and then would pass, with pipe and dog, the
beflanneled figure of an undergraduate, home for vacation, or a trio of
youths in knickerbockers, or a band of young girls, or both trio and band
together; and from a cross street, near by, came the calls and laughter of
romping children and the pulsating whirr of a lawn-mower: This sound
Harkless remarked as a ceaseless accompaniment to life in Rouen; even in
the middle of the night there was always some unfortunate, cutting grass.

When the daylight was all gone, and the stars had crept out, strolling
negroes patrolled the sidewalks, thrumming mandolins and guitars, and
others came and went, singing, making the night Venetian. The untrained,
joyous voices, chording eerily in their sweet, racial minors, came on the
air, sometimes from far away. But there swung out a chorus from fresh,
Aryan throats, in the house south of Meredith's:

'Where, oh where, are the grave old Seniors?
Safe, now, in the wide, wide world!"

"Doesn't that thrill you, boy?" said Meredith, joining the group about
Harkless's chair. "Those fellows are Sophomores, class of heaven knows
what. _Aren't_ you feeling a fossil. Father Abraham?"

A banjo chattered on the lawn to the north, and soon a mixed chorus of
girls and boys sang from there:

"O, 'Arriet, I'm waiting, waiting alone out 'ere."

Then a piano across the street sounded the dearthful harmonies of Chopin's
Funeral March.

"You may take your choice," remarked Meredith, flicking a spark over the
rail in the ash of his cigar, "Chopping or Chevalier."

"Chopin, my friend," said the lady who had attached herself to Harkless.
She tapped Tom's shoulder with her fan and smiled, graciously corrective.

"Thank you, Miss Hinsdale," he answered, gratefully. "And as I, perhaps,
had better say, since otherwise there might be a pause and I am the host,
we have a wide selection. In addition to what is provided at present, I
predict that within the next ten minutes a talented girl who lives two
doors south will favor us with the Pilgrims' Chorus, piano arrangement,
break down in the middle, and drift, into 'Rastus on Parade,' while a
double quartette of middle-aged colored gentlemen under our Jim will make
choral offering in our own back yard."

"My dear Tom," exclaimed Miss Hinsdale, "you forget Wetherford Swift!"

"I could stand it all," put forth the widower, "if it were not for
Wetherford Swift."

"When is Miss Sherwood coming home?" asked one of the ladies. "Why does
she stay away and leave him to his sufferings?"

"Us to his sufferings," substituted a bachelor. "He is just beginning;
listen."

Through all the other sounds of music, there penetrated from an unseen
source, a sawish, scraped, vibration of catgut, pathetic, insistent,
painstaking, and painful beyond belief.

"He is in a terrible way to-night," said the widower.

Miss Hinsdale laughed. "Worse every night. The violinist is young
Wetherford Swift," she explained to Harkless. "He is very much in love,
and it doesn't agree with him. He used to be such a pleasant boy, but last
winter he went quite mad over Helen Sherwood, Mr. Meredith's cousin, our
beauty, you know--I am so sorry she isn't here; you'd be interested in
meeting her, I'm sure--and he took up the violin."

"It is said that his family took up chloroform at the same time," said the
widower.

"His music is a barometer," continued the lady, "and by it the
neighborhood nightly observes whether Miss Sherwood has been nice to him
or not."

"It is always exceedingly plaintive," explained another.

"Except once," rejoined Miss Hinsdale. "He played jigs when she came home
from somewhere or other, in June."

"It was Tosti's 'Let Me Die,' the very next evening," remarked the
widower.

"Ah," said one of the bachelors, "but his joy was sadder for us than his
misery. Hear him now."

"I think he means it for 'What's this dull town to me,'" observed another,
with some rancor. "I would willingly make the town sufficiently exciting
for him--"

"If there were not an ordinance against the hurling of missiles," finished
the widower.

The piano executing the funeral march ceased to execute, discomfited by
the persistent and overpowering violin; the banjo and the coster-songs
were given over; even the collegians' music was defeated; and the
neighborhood was forced to listen to the dauntless fiddle, but not without
protest, for there came an indignant, spoken chorus from the quarter
whence the college songs had issued: "Ya-a-ay! Wetherford, put it away!
_She'll_ come back!" The violin played on.

"We all know each other here, you see, Mr. Harkless," Miss Hinsdale smiled
benignantly.

"They didn't bother Mr. Wetherford Swift," said the widower. "Not that
time. Do you hear him?--'Could ye come back to me, Douglas'?"

"Oh, but it isn't absence that is killing him and his friends," cried one
of the young women. "It is Brainard Macauley."

"That is a mistake," said Tom Meredith, as easily as he could. "There
goes Jim's double quartette. Listen, and you will hear them try to----"

But the lady who had mentioned Brainard Macauley cried indignantly: "You
try to change the subject the moment it threatens to be interesting. They
were together everywhere until the day she went away; they danced and 'sat
out' together through the whole of one country-club party; they drove
every afternoon; they took long walks, and he was at the Sherwoods' every
evening of her last week in town. 'That is a mistake!'"

"I'm afraid it looks rather bleak for Wetherford," said the widower. "I
went up to the 'Journal' office on business, one day, and there sat Miss
Sherwood in Macauley's inner temple, chatting with a reporter, while
Brainard finished some work."

"Helen is eccentric," said the former speaker, "but she's not quite that
eccentric, unless they were engaged. It is well understood that they will
announce it in the fall."

Miss Hinsdale kindly explained to Harkless that Brainard Macauley was the
editor of the "Rouen Morning Journal"--"a very distinguished young man,
not over twenty-eight, and perfectly wonderful." Already a power to be
accounted with in national politics, he was "really a tremendous success,"
and sure to go far; "one of those delicate-looking men, who are yet so
strong you know they won't let the lightning hurt you." It really looked
as if Helen Sherwood (whom Harkless really ought to meet) had actually
been caught in the toils at tet, those toils wherein so many luckless
youths had lain enmeshed for her sake. He must meet Mr. Macauley, too, the
most interesting man in Rouen. After her little portrait of him, didn't
Mr. Harkless agree that it looked really pretty dull for Miss Sherwood's
other lovers?

Mr. Harkless smiled, and agreed that it did indeed. She felt a thrill of
compassion for him, and her subsequent description of the pathos of his
smile was luminous. She said it was natural that a man who had been
through so much suffering from those horrible "White-Cappers" should have
a smile that struck into your heart like a knife.

Despite all that Meredith could do, and after his notorious effort to
shift the subject he could do very little, the light prattle ran on about
Helen Sherwood and Brainard Macauley. Tom abused himself for his wild
notion of cheering his visitor with these people who had no talk, and who,
if they drifted out of commonplace froth, had no medium to float them
unless they sailed the currents, of local personality, and he mentally
upbraided them for a set of gossiping ninnies. They conducted a
conversation (if it could be dignified by a name) of which no stranger
could possibly partake, and which, by a hideous coincidence, was making
his friend writhe, figuratively speaking, for Harkless sat like a fixed
shadow. He uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew
that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none
the less. The journalist's silence was enforced by the topics; but what
expression and manner the light allowed them to see was friendly and
receptive, as though he listened to brilliant suggestions. He had a nice
courtesy, and Miss Hinsdale felt continually that she was cleverer than
usual this evening, and no one took his silence to be churlish, though
they all innocently wondered why he did not talk more; however, it was
probable that a man who had been so interestingly and terribly shot would
be rather silent for a time afterward.

That night, when Harkless had gone to bed Meredith sat late by his own
window calling himself names. He became aware of a rhomboidal patch of
yellow light on a wall of foliage without, and saw that it came from his
friend's window. After dubious consideration, he knocked softly on the
door.

"Come."

He went in. Harkless was in bed, and laughed faintly as Meredith entered.
"I--I'm fearing you'll have to let me settle your gas bill, Tom. I'm not
like I used to be, quite. I find--since--since that business, I can't
sleep without a light. I rather get the--the horrors in the dark."

Incoherently, Meredith made a compassionate exclamation and turned to go,
and, as he left the room, his eye fell upon the mantel-piece. The position
of the photographs had been altered, and the picture of the girl who
looked straight out at you was gone. The mere rim of it was visible behind
the image of an old gentleman with a sardonic mouth.

An hour later, Tom came back, and spoke through the closed door. "Boy,
don't you think you can get to sleep now?"

"Yes, Tom. It's all right. You get to bed. Nothing troubles me."

Meredith spent the next day in great tribulation and perplexity; he felt
that something had to be done, but what to do he did not know. He still
believed that a "stirring-up" was what Harkless needed--not the species of
"stirring-up" that had taken place last night, but a diversion which would
divert. As they sat at dinner, a suggestion came to him and he determined
to follow it. He was called to the telephone, and a voice strange to his
ear murmured in a tone of polite deference: "A lady wishes to know if Mr.
Meredith and his visitor intend being present at the country-club this
evening."

He had received the same inquiry from Miss Hinsdale on her departure the
previous evening, and had answered vaguely; hence he now rejoined:

"You are quite an expert ventriloquist, but you do not deceive me."

"I beg your pardon, sir," creaked the small articulation.

"This is Miss Hinsdale, isn't it?"

"No, sir. The lady wishes to know if you will kindly answer her question."

"Tell her, yes." He hung up the receiver, and returned to the table. "Some
of Clara Hinsdale's play," he explained. "You made a devastating
impression on her, boy; you were wise enough not to talk any, and she
foolishly thought you were as interesting as you looked. We're going out
to a country-club dance. It's given for the devotees who stay here all
summer and swear Rouen is always cool; and nobody dances but me and the
very young ones. It won't be so bad; you can smoke anywhere, and there are
little tables. We'll go."

"Thank you, Tom, you're so good to think of it, but----"

"But what?"

"Would you mind going alone? I find it very pleasant sitting on your
veranda, or I'll get a book."

"Very well, if you don't want to go, I don't. I haven't had a dance for
three months and I'm still addicted to it. But of course----"

"I think I'd like to go." Harkless acquiesced at once, with a cheerful
voice and a lifeless eye, and the good Tom felt unaccountably mean in
persisting.

They drove out into the country through mists like lakes, and found
themselves part of a procession of twinkling carriage-lights, and cigar
sparks shining above open vehicles, winding along the levels like a canoe
fete on the water. In the entrance hall of the club-house they encountered
Miss Hinsdale, very handsome, large, and dark, elaborately beaming and
bending toward them warmly.

"Who do you think is here?" she said.

"Gomez?" ventured Meredith.

"Helen Sherwood!" she cried. "Go and present Mr. Harkless before Brainard
Macauley takes her away to some corner."

CHAPTER XVI

PRETTY MARQUISE

The two friends walked through a sort of opera-bouffe to find her; music
playing, a swaying crowd, bright lights, bright eyes, pretty women, a
glimpse of dancers footing it over a polished floor in a room beyond--a
hundred colors flashing and changing, as the groups shifted, before the
eye could take in the composition of the picture. A sudden thrill of
exhilaration rioted in John's pulses, and he trembled like a child before
the gay disclosure of a Christmas tree. Meredith swore to himself that he
would not have known him for the man of five minutes agone. Two small,
bright red spots glowed in his cheeks; he held himself erect with head
thrown back and shoulders squared, and the idolizing Tom thought he looked
as a king ought to look at the acme of power and dominion. Miss Hinsdale's
word in the hallway was the geniuses touch: a bent, gray man of years--a
word--and behold the Great John Harkless, the youth of elder days ripened
to his prime of wisdom and strength! People made way for them and
whispered as they passed. It had been years since John Harkless had been
in the midst of a crowd of butterfly people; everything seemed unreal, or
like a ball in a play; presently the curtain would fall and close the
lights and laughter from his view, leaving only the echo of music. It was
like a kaleidoscope for color: the bouquets of crimson or white or pink or
purple; the profusion of pretty dresses, the brilliant, tender fabrics,
and the handsome, foreshortened faces thrown back over white shoulders in
laughter; glossy raven hair and fair tresses moving in quick salutations;
and the whole gay shimmer of festal tints and rich artificialities set off
against the brave green of out-doors, for the walls were solidly adorned
with forest branches, with, here and there amongst them, a blood-red droop
of beech leaves, stabbed in autumn's first skirmish with summer. The night
was cool, and the air full of flower smells, while harp, violin, and
'cello sent a waltz-throb through it all.

They looked rapidly through several rooms and failed to find her indoors,
and they went outside, not exchanging a word, and though Harkless was a
little lame, Tom barely kept up with his long stride. On the verandas
there were fairy lamps and colored incandescents over little tables, where
people sat chatting. She was not there. Beyond was a terrace, where a
myriad of Oriental lanterns outlined themselves clearly in fantastically
shaped planes of scarlet and orange and green against the blue darkness.
Many couples and groups were scattered over the terrace, and the young men
paused on the steps, looking swiftly from group to group. She was not
there.

"We haven't looked in the dancing-room," said Tom, looking at his
companion rather sorrowfully. John turned quickly and they reentered the
house.

He had parted from her in the blackness of storm with only the flicker of
lightning to show her to him, but it was in a blaze of lights that he saw
her again. The dance was just ended, and she stood in a wide doorway, half
surrounded by pretty girls and young men, who were greeting her. He had
one full look at her. She was leaning to them all, her arms full of
flowers, and she seemed the radiant centre of all the light and gaiety of
the place. Even Meredith stopped short and exclaimed upon her; for one
never got used to her; and he remembered that whenever he saw her after
absence the sense of her beauty rushed over him anew. And he believed the
feeling on this occasion was keener than ever before, for she was prettier
than he had ever seen her.

"No wonder!" he cried; but Harkless did not understand. As they pressed
forward, Meredith perceived that they were only two more radii of a circle
of youths, sprung from every direction as the waltz ended, bearing down
upon the common focus to secure the next dance. Harkless saw nothing but
that she stood there before him. He feared a little that every one might
notice how he was trembling, and he was glad of the many voices that kept
them from hearing his heart knock against his ribs. She saw him coming
toward her, and nodded to him pleasantly, in just the fashion in which she
was bowing to half a dozen others, and at that a pang of hot pain went
through him like an arrow--an arrow poisoned with cordial, casual
friendliness.

She extended her hand to him and gave him a smile that chilled him--it,
was so conventionally courteous and poised so nicely in the manner of
society. He went hot and cold fast enough then, for not less pleasantly in
that manner did she exclaim: "I am very glad to see you, Mr. Harkless, so
extremely glad! And so delighted to find you looking strong again! Do tell
me about all our friends in Plattville. I should like to have a little
chat with you some time. So good of you to find me in this melee."

And with that she turned from the poor fellow to Meredith. "How do you do.
Cousin Tom? I've saved the next dance for you." Then she distributed words
here and there and everywhere, amongst the circle about her--pretty
Marquise with a vengeance! "No, Mr. Swift, I shall not make a card; you
must come at the beginning of a dance if you want one. I cannot promise
the next; it is quite impossible. No, I did not go as far north as
Mackinac. How do you do, Mr. Burlingame?--Yes, quite an age;--no, not the
next, I am afraid; nor the next;--I'm not keeping a card. Good evening,
Mr. Baird. No, not the next. Oh, _thank_ you, Miss Hinsdale!--No, Mr.
Swift, it is quite impossible--I'm so sorry. Cousin, the music is
commencing; this is ours."

As she took Meredith's arm, she handed her flowers to a gentleman beside
her with the slightest glance at the recipient; and the gesture and look
made her partner heartsick for his friend; it was so easy and natural and
with the air of habit, and had so much of the manner with which a woman
hands things to a man who partakes of her inner confidences. Tom knew
that Harkless divined the gesture, as well as the identity of the
gentleman. They started away, but she paused, and turned to the latter.
"Mr. Macauley, you must meet Mr. Harkless. We leave him in your care, and
you must see that he meets all the pretty girls--you are used to being
nice to distinguished strangers, you know."

Tom put his arm about her, and whirled her away, and Harkless felt as if a
soft hand had dealt him blow after blow in the face. Was this lady of
little baffling forms and small cold graces the girl who had been his kind
comrade, the girl who stood with him by the blue tent-pole, she who had
run to him to save his life, she who walked at his side along the pike?
The contrast of these homely scenes made him laugh grimly. Was this she
who had wept before him--was it she who had been redolent of kindness so
fragrantly natural and true--was it she who said she "loved all these
people very much, in spite of having known them only two days"?

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