The Gentleman From Indiana

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Gentleman From Indiana

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He cried out upon himself for a fool. What was he in her eyes but a man
who had needed to be told that she did not love him! Had he not better--
and more courteously to her--have avoided the meeting which was
necessarily an embarrassment to her? But no; he must rush like a Mohawk
till he found her and forced her to rebuff him, to veil her kindness in
little manners, to remind him that he put himself in the character of a
rejected importunate. She had punished him enough, perhaps a little too
cruelly enough, in leaving him with the man to whom she handed bouquets as
a matter of course. And this man was one whose success had long been a
trumpet at his ear, blaring loudly of his own failure in the same career.

It had been several years since he first heard of the young editor of the
Rouen "Journal," and nowadays almost everybody knew about Brainard
Macauley. Outwardly, he was of no unusual type: an American of affairs;
slight, easy, yet alert; relaxed, yet sharp; neat, regular, strong; a
quizzical eye, a business chin, an ambitious head with soft, straight hair
outlining a square brow; and though he was "of a type," he was not
commonplace, and one knew at once that he would make a rattling fight to
arrive where he was going.

It appeared that he had heard of Harkless, as well as the Carlow editor of
him. They had a few moments of shop, and he talked to Harkless as a
brother craftsman, without the offense of graciousness, and spoke of his
pleasure in the meeting and of his relief at Harkless's recovery, for,
aside from the mere human feeling, the party needed him in Carlow--even if
he did not always prove himself "quite a vehement partisan." Macauley
laughed. "But I'm not doing my duty," he said presently; "I was to present
you to the pretty ones only, I believe. Will you designate your preferred
fashion of beauty? We serve all styles."

"Thank you," the other answered, hurriedly. "I met a number last night--
quite a number, indeed." He had seen them only in dim lights, however, and
except Miss Hinsdale and the widower, had not the faintest recognition of
any of them, and he cut them all, except those two, one after the other,
before the evening was over; and this was a strange thing for a politician
to do; but he did it with such an innocent eye that they remembered the
dark porch and forgave him.

"Shall we watch the dancing, then?" asked Macauley. Harkless was already
watching part of it.

"If you will. I have not seen this sort for more than five years."

"It is always a treat, I think, and a constant proof that the older school
of English caricaturists didn't overdraw."

"Yes; one realizes they couldn't."

Harkless remembered Tom Meredith's fine accomplishment of dancing; he had
been the most famous dancer of college days, and it was in the dancer that
John best saw his old friend again as he had known him, the light lad of
the active toe. Other couples flickered about the one John watched,
couples that plodded, couples that bobbed, couples that galloped, couples
that slid, but the cousins alone passed across the glistening reflections
as lightly as October leaves blown over the forest floor. In the midst of
people who danced with fixed, glassy eyes, or who frowned with
determination to do their duty or to die, and seemed to expect the latter,
or who were pale with the apprehension of collision, or who made visible
their anxiety to breathe through the nose and look pleased at the same
time, these two floated and smiled easily upon life. Three or four steep
steps made the portly and cigarette-smoking Meredith pant like an old man,
but a dance was a cooling draught to him. As for the little Marquise--when
she danced, she danced away with all those luckless hearts that were not
hers already. The orchestra launched the jubilant measures of the deux-
temps with a torrent of vivacity, and the girl's rhythmic flight answered
like a sail taking the breeze.

There was one heart she had long since won which answered her every
movement. Flushed, rapturous, eyes sparkling, cheeks aglow, the small head
weaving through the throng like a golden shuttle--ah, did she know how
adorable she was! Was Tom right: is it the attainable unattainable to one
man and given to some other that leaves a deeper mark upon him than
success? At all events the unattainable was now like a hot sting in the
heart, but yet a sting more precious than a balm. The voice of Brainard
Macauley broke in:

"A white brow and a long lash, a flushing cheek and a soft eye, a voice
that laughs and breaks and ripples in the middle of a word, a girl you
could put in your hat, Mr. Harkless--and there you have a strong man
prone! But I congratulate you on the manner your subordinates operate the
'Herald' during your absence. I understand you are making it a daily."

Macauley was staring at him quizzically, and Harkless, puzzled, but
without resentment of the other's whimsey, could only decide that the
editor of the Rouen "Journal" was an exceedingly odd young man. All at
once he found Meredith and the girl herself beside him; they had stopped
before the dance was finished. He had the impulse to guard himself from
new blows as a boy throws up his elbow to ward a buffet, and, although he
could not ward with his elbow, for his heart was on his sleeve--where he
began to believe that Macauley had seen it--he remembered that he could
smile with as much intentional mechanism as any wornout rounder of
afternoons. He stepped aside for her, and she saw what she had known but
had not seen before, for the thickness of the crowd, and this was that he
limped and leaned upon his stick.

"Do let me thank you," he said, with a louder echo of her manner of
greeting him, a little earlier. "It has been such a pleasure to watch you
dance. It is really charming to meet you here. If I return to Plattville I
shall surely remember to tell Miss Briscoe."

At this she surprised him with a sudden, clear look in the eyes, so
reproachful, so deep, so sad, that he started. She took her flowers from
Macauley, who had the air of understanding the significance of such
ceremonies very well, and saying, "Shan't we all go out on the terrace?"
placed her arm in Harkless's, and conducted him (and not the others) to
the most secluded corner of the terrace, a nook illumined by one Japanese
lantern; to which spot it was his belief that he led her. She sank into a
chair, with the look of the girl who had stood by the blue tent-pole. He
could only stare at her, amazed by her abrupt change to this dazzling, if
reproachful, kindness, confused by his good fortune.

"'_If_ you go back to Plattville!'" she said in a low voice. "What do you
mean?"

"I don't know. I've been dull lately, and I thought I might go somewhere
else." Caught in a witchery no lack of possession could dispel, and which
the prospect of loss made only stronger while it lasted, he took little
thought of what he said; little thought of anything but of the gladness it
was to be with her again.

"'Somewhere else?' Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Have you no sense of responsibility? What is to become of your paper?"

"The 'Herald'? Oh, it will potter along, I think."

"But what has become of it in your absence, already? Has it not
deteriorated very much?"

"No," he said; "it's better than it ever was before."

"What!" she cried, with a little gasp.

"You're so astounded at my modesty?"

"But please tell me what you mean," she said quickly. "What happened to
it?"

"Isn't the 'Herald' rather a dull subject? I'll tell you how well Judge
Briscoe looked when he came to see me; or, rather, tell me of your summer
in the north."

"No," she answered earnestly. "Don't you remember my telling you that I am
interested in newspaper work?"

"I have even heard so from others," he said, with an instant of dryness.

"Please tell me about the 'Herald'?"

"It is very simple. Your friend, Mr. Fisbee, found a substitute, a
relative six feet high with his coat off, a traction engine for energy and
a limited mail for speed. He writes me letters on a type writer suffering
from an impediment in its speech; and in brief, he is an enterprising
idiot with a mania for work-baskets."

Her face was in the shadow.

"You say the--idiot--is enterprising?" she inquired.

"Far more enterprising and far less idiot than I. They are looking for oil
down there, and when he came he knew less about oil than a kindergarten
babe, and spoke of 'boring for kerosene' in his first letter to me; but he
knows it all now, and writes long and convincing geological arguments. If
a well comes in, he is prepared to get out an extra! Perhaps you may
understand what that means in Plattville, with the 'Herald's' numerous
forces. I owe him everything, even the shares in the oil company, which he
has persuaded me to take. And he is going to dare to make the 'Herald' a
daily. Do you remember asking me why I had never done that? It seemed
rather a venture to try to compete with the Rouen papers in offering State
and foreign news, but this young Gulliver has tacked onto the Associated
Press, and means to print a quarto--that's eight pages, you know--once a
week, Saturday, and a double sheet, four pages, on other mornings. The
daily venture begins next Monday."

"Will it succeed?"

"Oh, no!" he laughed.

"You think not?" Her interest in this dull business struck him as
astonishing, and yet in character with her as he had known her in
Plattville. Then he wondered unhappily if she thought that talking of the
"Herald" and learning things about the working of a country newspaper
would help her to understand Brainard Macauley.

"Why have you let him go on with it?" she asked. "I suppose you have
encouraged him?"

"Oh, yes, I encouraged him. The creature's recklessness fascinated me. A
dare-devil like that is always charming.'"

"You think there is no chance for the creature's succeeding with the
daily?"

"None," he replied indifferently.

"You mentioned work-baskets, I think?"

He laughed again. "I believe him to be the original wooden-nutmeg man.
Once a week he produces a 'Woman's Page,' wherein he presents to the
Carlow female public three methods for making currant jelly, three
receipts for the concoction of salads, and directs the ladies how to
manufacture a pretty work-basket out of odd scraps in twenty minutes. The
astonishing part of it is that he has not yet been mobbed by the women who
have followed his directions."

"So you think the daily is a mistake and that your enterprising idiot
should be mobbed? Why?" She seemed to be taking him very seriously.

"I think he may be--for his 'Woman's Page.'"

"It is all wrong, you think?"

"What could a Yankee six-footer cousin of old Fisbee's know about currant
jelly and work-baskets?"

"You know about currant jelly and work-baskets yourself?"

"Heaven defend the right, I do not!"

"You are sure he is six feet?"

"You should see his signature; that leaves no doubt. And, also, his
ability denotes his stature."

"You believe that ability is in proportion to height, do you not?" There
was a dangerous luring in her tone.

His memory recalled to him that he was treading on undermined ground, so
he hastened to say: "In inverse proportion."

"Then your substitute is a failure. I see," she said, slowly.

What muffled illumination there was in their nook fell upon his face; her
back was toward it, so that she was only an outline to him, and he would
have been startled and touched to the quick, could he have known that her
lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears as she spoke the last words.
He was happy as he had not been since his short June day; it was enough to
be with her again. Nothing, not even Brainard Macauley, could dull his
delight. And, besides, for a few minutes he had forgotten Brainard
Macauley. What more could man ask than to sit in the gloom with her, to
know that he was near her again for a little while, and to talk about
anything--if he talked at all? Nonsense and idle exaggeration about young
Fisbee would do as well as another thing.

"The young gentleman is an exception," he returned. "I told you I owed
everything to him; my gratitude will not allow me to admit that his
ability is less than his stature. He suggested my purchase of a quantity
of Mr. Watts's oil stock when it was knocked flat on its back by two wells
turning out dry; but if Mr. Watts's third well comes in, and young Fisbee
has convinced me that it will, and if my Midas's extra booms the stock and
the boom develops, I shall oppose the income tax. Poor old Plattville will
be full of strangers and speculators, and the 'Herald' will advocate vast
improvements to impress the investor's eye. Stagnation and picturesqueness
will flee together; it is the history of the Indiana town. Already the
'Herald' is clamoring with Schofields' Henry--you remember the bell-
ringer?--for Main Street to be asphalted. It will all come. The only
trouble with young Fisbee is that he has too much ability."

"And yet the daily will not succeed?"

"No. That's too big a jump, unless my young man's expressions on the
tariff command a wide sale amongst curio-hunters."

"Then he is quite a fool about political matters?"

"Far from it; he is highly ingenious. His editorials are often the
subtlest cups of flattery I ever sipped, many of them showing assiduous
study of old files to master the method and notions of his eagle-eyed
predecessor. But the tariff seems to have got him. He is a very masculine
person, except for this one feminine quality, for, if I may say it without
ungallantry, there is a legend that no woman has ever understood the
tariff. Young Fisbee must be an extremely travelled person, because the
custom-house people have made an impression upon him which no few
encounters with them could explain, and he conceives the tariff to be a
law which discommodes a lady who has been purchasing gloves in Paris. He
thinks smuggling the great evil of the present tariff system; it is such a
temptation, so insidious a break-down of moral fibre. His views must edify
Carlow."

She gave a quick, stifled cry. "Oh! there isn't a word of truth in what
you say! Not a word! I did not think you could be so cruel!"

He bent forward, peering at her in astonishment.

"Cruel!"

"You know it is a hateful distortion--an exaggeration!" she exclaimed
passionately. "No man living could have so little sense as you say he has.
The tariff is perfectly plain to any child. When you were in Plattville
you weren't like this--I didn't know you were unkind!"

"I--I don't understand, please----"

"Miss Hinsdale has been talking--raving--to me about you! You may not know
it--though I suppose you do--but you made a conquest last night. It seems
a little hard on the poor young man who is at work for you in Plattville,
doing his best for you, plodding on through the hot days, and doing all he
knows how, while you sit listening to music in the evenings with Clara
Hinsdale, and make a mock of his work and his trying to please you----"

"But I didn't mention him to Miss Hinsdale. In fact, I didn't mention
_anything_ to Miss Hinsdale. What have I done? The young man is making his
living by his work--and my living, too, for that matter. It only seems to
me that his tariff editorials are rather humorous."

She laughed suddenly--ringingly. "Of course they are! How should I know?
Immensely humorous! And the good creature knows nothing beyond smuggling
and the custom-house and chalk marks? Why, even _I_--ha, ha, ha!--even
_I_--should have known better than that. What a little fool your
enterprising idiot must be!--with his work-baskets and currant jelly and
his trying to make the 'Herald' a daily!--It will be a ludicrous failure,
of course. No doubt he thought he was being quite wise, and was pleased
over his tariff editorials--his funny, funny editorials--his best--to
please you! Ha, ha, ha! How immensely funny!"

"Do you know him?" he asked abruptly.

"I have not the honor of the gentleman's acquaintance. Ah," she rejoined
bitterly, "I see what you mean; it is the old accusation, is it? I am a
woman, and I 'sound the personal note.' I could not resent a cruelty for
the sake of a man I do not know. But let it go. My resentment is personal,
after all, since it is against a man I do know--_you_!"

He leaned toward her because he could not help it. "I'd rather have
resentment from you than nothing."

"Then I will give you nothing," she answered quickly.

"You flout me!" he cried. "That is better than resentment."

"I hate you most, I think," she said with a tremulousness he did not
perceive, "when you say you do not care to go back to Plattville."

"Did I say it?"

"It is in every word, and it is true; you don't care to go back there."

"Yes, it is true; I don't."

"You want to leave the place where you do good; to leave those people who
love you, who were ready to die to avenge your hurt!" she exclaimed
vehemently. "Oh, I say that is shameful!"

"Yes, I know," he returned gravely. "I am ashamed."

"Don't say that!" she cried. "Don't say you are ashamed of it. Do you
suppose I do not understand the dreariness it has been for you? Don't you
know that I see it is a horror to you, that it brings back your struggle
with those beasts in the dark, and revivifies all your suffering, merely
to think of it?" Her turns and sudden contradictions left him tangled in
a maze; he could not follow, but must sit helpless to keep pace with her,
while the sheer happiness of being with her tingled through his veins. She
rose and took a step aside, then spoke again: "Well, since you want to
leave Carlow, you shall; since you do not wish to return, you need not.--
Are you laughing at me?" She leaned toward him, and looked at him
steadily, with her face close to his. He was not laughing; his eyes shone
with a deep fire; in that nearness he hardly comprehended what she said.
"Thank you for not laughing," she whispered, and leaned back from him. "I
suppose you think my promises are quite wild, and they are. I do not know
what I was talking about, or what I meant, any better than you do. You may
understand some day. It is all--I mean that it hurts one to hear you say
you do not care for Carlow." She turned away. "Come."

"Where?"

"It is my turn to conclude the interview. You remember, the last time it
was you who--" She broke off, shuddering, and covered her face with her
hands. "Ah, that!" she exclaimed. "I did not think--I did not mean to
speak of that miserable, miserable night. And _I_ to be harsh with you for
not caring to go back to Carlow!"

"Your harshness," he laughed. "A waft of eider."

"We must go," she said. He did not move, but sat staring at her like a
thirsty man drinking. With an impulsive and pretty gesture she reached
out her hand to him. Her little, white glove trembled in the night before
his eyes, and his heart leaped to meet its sudden sweet generosity; his
thin fingers closed over it as he rose, and then that hand he had likened
to a white butterfly lay warm and light and quiet in his own. And as they
had so often stood together in their short day and their two nights of the
moon, so now again they stood with a serenading silence between them. A
plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran through the blue woof of
starlit air as a sad-colored thread through the tapestry of night; they
heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the silver plaints of violins,
the chiming harp, and the triangle bells, all woven into a minor strain of
dance-music that beat gently upon their ears with such suggestion of the
past, that, as by some witchcraft of hearing, they listened to music made
for lovers dancing, and lovers listening, a hundred years ago.

"I care for only one thing in this world," he said, tremulously. "Have I
lost it? I didn't mean to ask you, that last night, although you answered.
Have I no chance? Is it still the same? Do I come too late?"

The butterfly fluttered in his hand and then away.

She drew back and looked at him a moment.

"There is one thing you must always understand," she said gently, "and
that is that a woman can be grateful. I give you all the gratitude there
is in me, and I think I have a great deal; it is all yours. Will you
always remember that?"

"Gratitude? What can there--"

"You do not understand now, but some day you will. I ask you to remember
that my every act and thought which bore reference to you--and there have
been many--came from the purest gratitude. Although you do not see it now,
will you promise to believe it?"

"Yes," he said simply.

"For the rest--" She paused. "For the rest--I do not love you."

He bowed his head and did not lift it.

"Do you understand?" she asked.

"I understand," he answered, quietly.

She looked at him long, and then, suddenly, her hand to her heart, gave a
little, pitying, tender cry and moved toward him. At this he raised his
head and smiled sadly. "No; don't you mind," he said. "It's all right. I
was such a cad the other time I needed to be told; I was so entirely silly
about it, I couldn't face the others to tell them good-night, and I left
you out there to go in to them alone. I didn't realize, for my manners
were all gone. I'd lived in a kind of stupor, I think, for a long time;
then being with you was like a dream, and the sudden waking was too much
for me. I've been ashamed often, since, in thinking of it--and I was well
punished for not taking you in. I thought only of myself, and I behaved
like a whining, unbalanced boy. But I had whined from the moment I met
you, because I was sickly with egoism and loneliness and self-pity. I'm
keeping you from the dancing. Won't you let me take you back to the
house?"

A commanding and querulous contralto voice was heard behind them, and a
dim, majestic figure appeared under the Japanese lantern.

"Helen?"

The girl turned quickly. "Yes, mamma."

"May I ask you to return to the club-house for supper with me? Your father
has been very much worried about you. We have all been looking for you."

"Mamma, this is Mr. Harkless."

"How do you do?" The lady murmured this much so far under her breath that
the words might have been mistaken for anything else--most plausibly,
perhaps, for, "Who cares if it is?"--nor further did she acknowledge
John's profound inclination. Frigidity and complaint of ill-usage made a
glamour in every fold of her expensive garments; she was large and
troubled and severe. A second figure emerged from behind her and bowed
with the suave dignity that belonged to Brainard Macauley. "Mr. Macauley
has asked to sit at our table," Mrs. Sherwood said to Helen. "May I beg
you to come at once? Your father is holding places for us."

"Certainly," she answered. "I will follow you with Mr. Harkless."

"I think Mr. Harkless will excuse you," said the elder lady. "He has an
engagement. Mr. Meredith has been looking everywhere for him to take Miss
Hinsdale out to supper."

"Good-night, Miss Sherwood," said John in a cheerful voice. "I thank you
for sitting out the dance with me."

"Good-night," she said, and gave him her hand. "I'm so sorry I shan't see
you again; I am only in Rouen for this evening, or I should ask you to
come to see me. I am leaving to-morrow morning. Good-night.--Yes, mamma."

The three figures went toward the bright lights of the club-house. She was
leaning on Macauley's arm and chatting gaily, smiling up at him brightly.
John watched her till she was lost in the throng on the veranda. There, in
the lights, where waiters were arranging little tables, every one was
talking and moving about, noisily, good-humored and happy. There was a
flourish of violins, and then the orchestra swung into a rampant march
that pranced like uncurbed cavalry; it stirred the blood of old men with
militant bugle calls and blast of horns; it might have heralded the
chariot of a flamboyant war god rioting out of sunrise, plumed with youth.
Some quite young men on the veranda made as if they were restive horses
champing at the bit and heading a procession, and, from a group near by,
loud laughter pealed.

John Harkless lifted to his face the hand that had held hers; there was
the faint perfume of her glove. He kissed his own hand. Then he put that
hand and the other to his forehead, and sank into her chair.

"Let me get back," he said. "Let me get back to Plattville, where I
belong."

Tom Meredith came calling him. "Harkless? John Harkless?"

"Here I am, Tom."

"Come along, boy. What on earth are you doing out here all alone? I
thought you were with--I thought some people were with you. You're bored
to death, I know; but come along and be bored some more, because I
promised to bring you in for supper. Then we'll go home. They've saved a
place for you by Miss Hinsdale."

"Very well, lad," answered Harkless, and put his hand on the other's
shoulder. "Thank you."

The next day he could not leave his bed; his wounds were feverish and his
weakness had returned. Meredith was shaken with remorse because he had let
him wander around in the damp night air with no one to look after him.

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