The Gentleman From Indiana

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Gentleman From Indiana

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And, indeed, in this estimate the speaker seemed guilty of no great
exaggeration. A never intermittent procession of pedestrians and vehicles
made its way to the station; and every wagon, buckboard, buggy, and
cut-under had its flags or bunting, or streamer of ribbons tied to the
whip. The excitement increased as the time grew shorter; those on foot
struggled for better positions, and the people in wagons and carriages
stood upon seats, while the pedestrians besieged them, climbing on the
wheels, or balancing recklessly, with feet on the hubs of opposite wagons.
Everybody was bound to see _him_. When the whistle announced the coming of
the train, the band began to play, the cannon fired, horns blew, and the
cheering echoed and reechoed till heaven's vault resounded with the noise
the people of Carlow were making.

There was one heart which almost stopped beating. Helen was standing on
the front seat of the Briscoe buckboard, with Minnie beside her, and, at
the commotion, the horses pranced and backed so that Lige Willetts ran to
hold them; but she did not notice the frightened roans, nor did she know
that Minnie clutched her round the waist to keep her from falling. Her
eyes were fixed intently on the smoke of the far-away engine, and her
hand, lifted to her face in an uncertain, tremulous fashion, as it was one
day in a circus tent, pressed against the deepest blush that ever mantled
a girl's cheek. When the train reached the platform, she saw Briscoe and
the others rush into the car, and there ensued what was to her an almost
intolerable pause of expectation, while the crowd besieged the windows of
the smoker, leaning up and climbing on each other's shoulders to catch the
first glimpse of _him_. Briscoe and a red-faced young man, a stranger to
Plattville, came down the steps, laughing like boys, and then Keating and
Bence, and then Warren Smith. As the lawyer reached the platform, he
turned toward the door of the car and waved his hand as in welcome.

"Here he is, boys!" he shouted, "Welcome Home!" At that it was as if all
the noise that had gone before had been mere leakage of pent-up
enthusiasm. A thousand horns blared deafeningly, the whistles of the
engine and of Hibbard's mill were added to the din, the court-house bell
was pealing out a welcome, and the church bells were ringing, the cannon
thundered, and then cheer on cheer shook the air, as John Harkless came
out under the flags, and passed down the steps of the car.

When Helen saw him, over the heads of the people and through a flying
tumult of flags and hats and handkerchiefs, she gave one frightened glance
about her, and jumped down from her high perch, and sank into the back
seat of the buckboard with her burning face turned from the station and
her eyes fixed on the ground. She wanted to run away, as she had run from
him the first time she had ever seen him. Then, as now, he came in
triumph, hailed by the plaudits of his fellows; and now, as on that long-
departed day of her young girlhood, he was borne high over the heads of
the people, for Minnie cried to her to look; they were carrying him on
their shoulders to his carriage. She had had only that brief glimpse of
him, before he was lost in the crowd that was so glad to get him back
again and so proud of him; but she had seen that he looked very white and
solemn.

Briscoe and Tom Meredith made their way through the crowd, and climbed
into the buckboard. "All right, Lige," called the judge to Willetts, who
was at the horses' heads. "You go get into line with the boys; they want
you. We'll go down on Main Street to see the parade," he explained to the
ladies, gathering the reins in his hand.

He clucked to the roans, and by dint of backing and twisting and turning
and a hundred intricate manoeuvres, accompanied by entreaties and
remonstrances and objurgations, addressed to the occupants of surrounding
vehicles, he managed to extricate the buckboard from the press; and once
free, the team went down the road toward Main Street at a lively gait. The
judge's call to the colts rang out cheerily; his handsome face was one
broad smile. "This is a big day for Carlow," he said; "I don't remember a
better day's work in twenty years."

"Did you tell him about Mr. Halloway?" asked Helen, leaning forward
anxiously.

"Warren told him before we left the car," answered Briscoe. "He'd have
declined on the spot, I expect, if we hadn't made him sure it was all
right with Kedge."

"If I understood what Mr. Smith was saying, Halloway must have behaved
very well," said Meredith.

The judge laughed. "He saw it was the only way to beat McCune, and he'd
have given his life and Harkless's, too, rather than let McCune have it."

"Why didn't you stay with him, Tom?" asked Helen.

"With Halloway? I don't know him."

"One forgives a generous hilarity anything, even such quips as that," she
retorted. "Why did you not stay with Mr. Harkless?"

"That's very hospitable of you," laughed the young man. "You forget that I
have the felicity to sit at your side. Judge Briscoe has been kind enough
to ask me to review the procession from his buckboard and to sup at his
house with other distinguished visitors, and I have accepted."

"But didn't he wish you to remain with him?"

"But this second I had the honor to inform you that I am here distinctly
by his invitation."

"_His_?"

"Precisely, his. Judge Briscoe, Miss Sherwood will not believe that you
desire my presence. If I intrude, pray let me--" He made as if to spring
from the buckboard, and the girl seized his arm impatiently.

"You are a pitiful nonsense-monger!" she cried; and for some reason this
speech made him turn his glasses upon her gravely. Her lashes fell before
his gaze, and at that he took her hand and kissed it quickly.

"No, no," she faltered. "You must not think it. It isn't--you see, I--
there is nothing!"

"You shall not dull the edge of my hilarity," he answered, "especially
since so much may be forgiven it."

"Why did you leave Mr. Harkless?" she asked, without raising her eyes.

"My dear girl," he replied, "because, for some inexplicable reason, my
lady cousin has not nominated me for Congress, but instead has chosen to
bestow that distinction upon another, and, I may say, an unworthier and
unfitter man than I. And, oddly enough, the non-discriminating multitude
were not cheering for me; the artillery was not in action to celebrate me;
the band was not playing to do me honor; therefore why should I ride in
the midst of a procession that knows me not? Why should I enthrone me in
an open barouche--a little faded and possibly not quite secure as to its
springs, but still a barouche--with four white horses to draw it, and
draped with silken flags, both barouche and steeds? Since these things
were not for me, I flew to your side to dissemble my spleen under the
licensed prattle of a cousin."

"Then who _is_ with him?"

"The population of this portion of our State, I take it."

"Oh, it's all right," said the judge, leaning back to speak to Helen.
"Keating and Smith and your father are to ride in the carriage with him.
You needn't be afraid of any of them letting him know that H. Fisbee is a
lady. Everybody understands about that; of course they know it's to be
left to you to break it to him how well a girl has run his paper." The old
gentleman chuckled, and looked out of the corner of his eye at his
daughter, whose expression was inscrutable.

"I!" cried Helen. "_I_ tell him! No one must tell him. He need never know
it."

Briscoe reached back and patted her cheek. "How long do you suppose he
will be here in Plattville without it's leaking out?"

"But they kept guard over him for months and nobody told him."

"Ah," said Briscoe, "but this is different."

"No, no, no!" she exclaimed. "It _must_ be kept from him somehow!"

"He'll know it by to-morrow, so you'd better tell him this evening."

"This evening?"

"Yes. You'll have a good chance."

"I will?"

"He's coming to supper with us. He and your father, of course, and Keating
and Bence and Boswell and Smith and Tom Martin and Lige. We're going to
have a big time, with you and Minnie to do the honors; and we're all
coming into town afterwards for the fireworks; I'll let him drive you in
the phaeton. You'll have plenty of time to talk it over with him and tell
him all about it."

Helen gave a little gasp. "Never!" she cried. "Never!"

The buckboard stopped on the "Herald" corner, and here, and along Main
Street, the line of vehicles which had followed it from the station took
their places. The Square was almost a solid mass of bunting, and the north
entrance of the court-house had been decorated with streamers and flags,
so as to make it a sort of stand. Hither the crowd was already streaming,
and hither the procession made its way. At intervals the cannon boomed,
and Schofields' Henry was winnowing the air with his bell; nobody had a
better time that day than Schofields' Henry, except old Wilkerson, who was
with the procession.

In advance, came the boys, whooping and somersaulting, and behind them,
rode a band of mounted men, sitting their horses like cavalrymen, led by
the sheriff and his deputy and Jim Bardlock; then followed the Harkless
Club of Amo, led by Boswell, with the magnanimous Halloway himself
marching in the ranks; and at sight of this the people shouted like
madmen. But when Helen's eye fell upon his fat, rather unhappy face, she
felt a pang of pity and unreasoning remorse, which warned her that he who
looks upon politics when it is red must steel his eyes to see many a man
with the heart-burn. After the men of Amo, came the Harkless Club of
Gainesville, Mr. Bence in the van with the step of a grenadier. There
followed next, Mr. Ephraim Watts, bearing a light wand in his hand and
leading a detachment of workers from the oil-fields in their stained blue
overalls and blouses; and, after them, came Mr. Martin and Mr. Landis at
the head of an organization recognized in the "Order of Procession,"
printed in the "Herald," as the Business Men of Plattville. They played in
such magnificent time that every high-stepping foot in all the line came
down with the same jubilant plunk, and lifted again with a unanimity as
complete as that of the last vote the convention had taken that day. The
leaders of the procession set a brisk pace, and who could have set any
other kind of a pace when on parade to the strains of such a band, playing
such a tune as "A New Coon in Town," with all its might and main?

But as the line swung into the Square, there came a moment when the tune
was ended, the musicians paused for breath, and there fell comparative
quiet. Amongst the ranks of Business Men ambled Mr. Wilkerson, singing at
the top of his voice, and now he could be heard distinctly enough for
those near to him to distinguish the melody with which it was his
intention to favor the public:

"Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
As we go marching on."

The words, the air, that husky voice, recalled to the men of Carlow
another day and another procession, not like this one. And the song
Wilkerson was singing is the one song every Northern-born American knows
and can sing. The leader of the band caught the sound, signalled to his
men; twenty instruments rose as one to twenty mouths; the snare-drum
rattled, the big drum crashed, the leader lifted his baton high over his
head, and music burst from twenty brazen throats:

"Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!"

Instantaneously, the whole procession began to sing the refrain, and the
people in the street, and those in the wagons and carriages, and those
leaning from the windows joined with one accord, the ringing bells caught
the time of the song, and the upper air reverberated in the rhythm.

The Harkless Club of Carlow wheeled into Main Street, two hundred strong,
with their banners and transparencies. Lige Willetts rode at their head,
and behind him strode young William Todd and Parker and Ross Schofield and
Homer Tibbs and Hartley Bowlder, and even Bud Tipworthy held a place in
the ranks through his connection with the "Herald." They were all singing.

And, behind them, Helen saw the flag-covered barouche and her father, and
beside him sat John Harkless with his head bared.

She glanced at Briscoe; he was standing on the front seat with Minnie
beside him, and both were singing. Meredith had climbed upon the back seat
and was nervously fumbling at a cigarette.

"Sing, Tom!" the girl cried to him excitedly.

"I should be ashamed not to," he answered; and dropped the cigarette and
began to sing "John Brown's Body" with all his strength. With that she
seized his hand, sprang up beside him, and over the swelling chorus her
full soprano rose, lifted with all the power in her.

The barouche rolled into the Square, and, as it passed, Harkless turned,
and bent a sudden gaze upon the group in the buckboard; but the western
sun was in his eyes, and he only caught a glimpse of a vague, bright shape
and a dazzle of gold, and he was borne along and out of view, down the
singing street.

"Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
As we go marching on!"

The barouche stopped in front of the courthouse, and he passed up a lane
they made for him to the steps. When he turned to them to speak, they
began to cheer again, and he had to wait for them to quiet down.

"We can't hear him from over here," said Briscoe, "we're too far off. Mr.
Meredith, suppose you take the ladies closer in, and I'll stay with the
horses. You want to hear his speech."

"He is a great man, isn't he?" Meredith said to Helen, gravely, as he
handed her out of the buckboard. "I've been trying to realize for the last
few minutes, that he is the same old fellow I've been treating so
familiarly all day long."

"Yes, he is a great man," she answered. "This is only the beginning."

"That's true," said Briscoe, who had overheard her. "He'll go pretty far.
A man that people know is steady and strong and level-headed can get
whatever he wants, because a public man can get anything, if people know
he's safe and honest and they can rely on him for _sense_. It sounds like
a simple matter; but only three or four public men in the country have
convinced us that they are like that. Hurry along, young people."

Crossing the street, they met Miss Tibbs; she was wiping her streaming
eyes with the back of her left hand and still mechanically waving her
handkerchief with her right. "Isn't it beautiful?" she said, not ceasing
to flutter, unconsciously, the little square of cambric. "There was such a
throng that I grew faint and had to come away. I don't mind your seeing me
crying. Pretty near everybody cried when he walked up to the steps and we
saw that he was lame."

Standing on the outskirts of the crowd, they could hear the mellow ring of
Harkless's voice, but only fragments of the speech, for it was rather
halting, and was not altogether clear in either rhetoric or delivery; and
Mr. Bence could have been a good deal longer in saying what he had to say,
and a thousand times more oratorical. Nevertheless, there was not a man or
woman present who did not declare that it was the greatest speech ever
heard in Plattville; and they really thought so--to such lengths are
loyalty and friendship sometimes carried in Carlow and Amo and Gaines.

He looked down upon the attentive, earnest faces and into the kindly eyes
of the Hoosier country people, and, as he spoke, the thought kept
recurring to him that this was the place he had dreaded to come back to;
that these were the people he had wished to leave--these, who gave him
everything they had to give--and this made it difficult to keep his tones
steady and his throat clear.

Helen stood so far from the steps (nor could she be induced to penetrate
further, though they would have made way for her) that only fragments
reached her, but what she heard she remembered:

"I have come home . . . Ordinarily a man needs to fall sick by the wayside
or to be set upon by thieves, in order to realize that nine-tenths of the
world is Samaritan, and the other tenth only too busy or too ignorant to
be. Down here he realizes it with no necessity of illness or wounds to
bring it out; and if he does get hurt, you send him to Congress. . . .
There will'be no other in Washington so proud of what he stands for as I
shall be. To represent you is to stand for realities--fearlessness, honor,
kindness. . . . We are people who take what comes to us, and it comes
bountifully; we are rich--oh, we are all Americans here! . . . This is the
place for a man who likes to live where people are kind to one another,
and where they have the old-fashioned way of saying 'Home.' Other places,
they don't seem to get so much into it as we do. And to come home as I
have to-day. . . . I have come home. . . ."

Every one meant to shake hands with him, and, when the speech was over,
those nearest swooped upon him, cheering and waving, and grasping at his
hand. Then a line was formed, and they began to defile by him, as he stood
on the steps, and one by one they came up, and gave him hearty greetings,
and passed on through the court-house and out at the south door. Tom
Meredith and Minnie Briscoe came amongst the others, and Tom said only,
"Good old boy," as he squeezed his friend's hand; and then, as he went
down the hall, wiping his glasses, he asked Minnie if she believed the
young man on the steps had risen from a sick bed that morning.

It was five-o'clock when Harkless climbed the stairs to the "Herald"
office, and his right arm and hand were aching and limp. Below him, as he
reached the landing, he could see boys selling extras containing his
speech (taken by the new reporter), and long accounts of the convention,
of the nominee's career, and the celebration of his home-coming. The sales
were rapid; for no one could resist the opportunity to read in print
descriptions of what his eyes had beheld and his ears had heard that day.

Ross Schofield was the only person in the editorial room, and there was
nothing in his appearance which should cause a man to start and fall back
from the doorway; but that was what Harkless did.

"What's the matter, Mr. Harkless?" cried Ross, hurrying forward, fearing
that the other had been suddenly reseized by illness.

"What are those?" asked Harkless, with a gesture of his hand which seemed
to include the entire room.

"Those!" repeated Ross, staring blankly.

"Those rosettes--these streamers--that stovepipe--all this blue ribbon."

Ross turned pale. "Ribbon?" he said, inquiringly. "Ribbon?" He seemed
unable to perceive the decorations referred to.

"Yes," answered John; "these rosettes on the chairs, that band, and----"

"Oh!" Ross exclaimed. "That?" He fingered the band on the stovepipe as if
he saw it for the first time. "Yes; I see."

"But what are they for?" asked Harkless, touching one of the streamers
curiously.

"Why--it's--it's likely meant for decorations."

John picked up the ink-well, staring in complete amazement at the hard
knot of ribbon with which it was garnished.

"They seem to have been here some time."

"They have; I reckon they're almost due to be called in. They've be'n up
ever sence--sence----"

"Who put them up, Ross?"

"We did."

"What for?"

Ross was visibly embarrassed. "Why--fer--fer the other editor."

"For Mr. Fisbee?"

"Land, no! You don't suppose we'd go to work and bother to brisken things
up fer that old gentleman, do you?"

"I meant young Mr. Fisbee--he is the other editor, isn't he?"

"Oh!" said Ross, coughing. "Young Mr. Fisbee? Yes; we put 'em up fer him."

"You did! Did he appreciate them?"

"Well--he seemed to--kind of like 'em."

"Where is he now? I came here to find him."

"He's gone."

"Gone? Hasn't he been here this afternoon?"

"Yes; some 'the time. Come in and stayed durin' the leevy you was holdin',
and saw the extra off all right."

"When will he be back?"

"Sence it's be'n a daily he gits here by eight, after supper, but don't
stay very late; the new man and old Mr. Fisbee and Parker look after
whatever comes in late, unless it's something special. He'll likely be
here by half-past eight at the farthest off."

"I can't wait till then." John took a quick turn about the room. "I've
been wanting to see him every minute since I got in," he said impatiently,
"and he hasn't been near me. Nobody could even point him out to me. Where
has he gone? I want to see him _now_."

"Want to discharge him again?" said a voice from the door, and turning,
they saw that Mr. Martin stood there observing them.

"No," said Harkless; "I want to give him the 'Herald.' Do you know where
he is?"

Mr. Martin stroked his beard deliberately. "The person you speak of hadn't
ort to be very hard to find--in Carlow. The committee was reckless
enough to hire that carriage of yours by the day, and Keating and Warren
Smith are setting in it up at the corner, with their feet on the cushions
to show they're used to ridin' around with four white horses every day in
the week. It's waitin' till you're ready to go out to Briscoe's. It's an
hour before supper time, and you can talk to young Fisbee all you want.
He's out there."

As they drove along the pike, Harkless's three companions kept up a
conversation sprightly beyond the mere exhilaration of the victorious; but
John sat almost silent, and, in spite of their liveliness, the others eyed
him a little anxiously now and then, knowing that he had been living on
excitement through a physically exhausting day, and they were fearful lest
his nerves react and bring him to a breakdown. But the healthy flush of
his cheek was reassuring; he looked steady and strong, and they were
pleased to believe that the stirring-up was what he needed.

It had been a strange and beautiful day to him, begun in anger, but the
sun was not to go down upon his wrath; for his choleric intention had
almost vanished on his homeward way, and the first words Smith had spoken
had lifted the veil of young Fisbee's duplicity, had shown him with what
fine intelligence and supreme delicacy and sympathy young Fisbee had
worked for him, had understood him, and had _made_ him. If the open
assault on McCune had been pressed, and the damnatory evidence published
in Harkless's own paper, while Harkless himself was a candidate and rival,
John would have felt dishonored. The McCune papers could have been used
for Halloway's benefit, but not for his own; he would not ride to success
on another man's ruin; and young Fisbee had understood and had saved him.
It was a point of honor that many would have held finicky and
inconsistent, but one which young Fisbee had comprehended was vital to
Harkless.

And this was the man he had discharged like a dishonest servant; the man
who had thrown what was (in Carlow's eyes) riches into his lap; the man
who had made his paper, and who had made him, and saved him. Harkless
wanted to see young Fisbee as he longed to see only one other person in
the world. Two singular things had happened that day which made his
craving to see Helen almost unbearable--just to rest his eyes upon her for
a little while, he could ask no more. And as they passed along that well-
remembered road, every tree, every leaf by the wayside, it seemed, spoke
to him and called upon the dear memory of his two walks with her--into
town and out of town, on show-day. He wondered if his heart was to project
a wraith of her before him whenever he was deeply moved, for the rest of
his life. For twice to-day he had seen her whom he knew to be so far away.
She had gone back to her friends in the north, Tom had said. Twice that
afternoon he had been momentarily, but vividly, conscious of her as a
living presence. As he descended from the car at the station, his eyes,
wandering out over the tumultuous crowd, had caught and held a picture for
a second--a graceful arm upraised, and a gloved hand pressed against a
blushing cheek under a hat such as is not worn in Carlow; a little figure
poised apparently in air, full-length above the crowd about her; so, for
the merest flick of time he had seen her, and then, to his straining eyes,
it was as though she were not. She had vanished. And again, as his
carriage reached the Square, a feeling had come to him that she was near
him; that she was looking at him; that he should see her when the carriage
turned; and in the same instant, above the singing of a multitude, he
heard her voice as if there had been no other and once more his dazzled
eyes beheld her for a second; she was singing, and as she sang she leaned
toward him from on high with the most ineffable look of tenderness and
pride and affection he had ever seen on a woman's face; such a look, he
thought, as she would wear if she came to love some archangel (her love
should be no less) with all of her heart and soul and strength. And so he
knew he had seen a vision. But it was a cruel one to visit a man who loved
her. He had summoned his philosophy and his courage in his interview with
himself on the way to Carlow, and they had answered; but nothing could
answer if his eyes were to play him tricks and bring her visibly before
him, and with such an expression as he had seen upon her face. It was too
real. It made his eyes yearn for the sight of her with an ache that was
physical. And even at that moment, he saw, far ahead of them on the road,
two figures standing in front of the brick house. One was unmistakable at
any distance. It was that of old Fisbee; and the other was a girl's: a
light, small figure without a hat, and the low, western sun dwelt on a
head that shone with gold. Harkless put his hand over his eyes with a pain
that was like the taste of hemlock in nectar.

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