The Gentleman From Indiana

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Gentleman From Indiana

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"Sun in your eyes?" asked Keating, lifting his hat, so as to shield the
other's face.

"Yes."

When he looked again, both figures were gone. He made up his mind that he
would think of the only other person who could absorb his attention, at
least for a time; very soon he would stand face to face with the six feet
of brawn and intelligence and manhood that was young Fisbee.

"You are sure he is there?" he asked Tom Martin.

"Yes," answered Martin, with no need to inquire whom the editor meant. "I
reckon," he continued, solemnly, peering at the other from under his rusty
hat-brim, "I reckon when you see him, maybe you'll want to put a kind of
codicil to that deed to the 'Herald.'"

"How's that, Martin?"

"Why, I guess maybe you'll--well, wait till you see him."

"I don't want to wait much longer, when I remember what I owe him and how
I have used him, and that I have been here nearly three hours without
seeing him."

As they neared the brick house Harkless made out, through the trees, a
retreative flutter of skirts on the porch, and the thought crossed his
mind that Minnie had flown indoors to give some final directions toward
the preparation of the banquet; but when the barouche halted at the gate,
he was surprised to see her waving to him from the steps, while Tom
Meredith and Mr. Bence and Mr. Boswell formed a little court around her.
Lige Willetts rode up on horse back at the same moment, and the judge was
waiting in front of the gate. Harkless stepped out of the barouche and
took his hand.

"I was told young Fisbee was here."

"Young Fisbee is here," said the judge.

"Where, please, Briscoe?"

"Want to see him right off?"

"I do, very much."

"You'll withdraw his discharge, I expect, now?"

"Ah!" exclaimed the other. "I want to make him a present of the 'Herald,'
if he'll take it." He fumed to Meredith, who had come to the gate. "Tom,
where is he?"

Meredith put his hand on his friend's shoulder, and answered: "I don't
know. God bless you, old fellow!"

"The truth is," said the judge, as they entered the gate, "that when you
drove up, young Fisbee ran into the house. Minnie--" He turned, but his
daughter had disappeared; however, she came to the door, a moment later,
and shook her head mysteriously at her father.

"Not in the house," she said.

Mr. Fisbee came around the corner of the porch and went toward Harkless.
"Fisbee," cried the latter, "where is your nephew?"

The old man took his hand in both his own, and looked him between the
eyes, and thus stood, while there was a long pause, the others watching
them.

"You must not say that I told you," he said at last. "Go into the garden."

But when Harkless's step crunched the garden path there was no one there.
Asters were blooming in beds between the green rose-bushes, and their
many-fingered hands were flung open in wide surprise that he should expect
to find young Fisbee there. It was just before sunset. Birds were
gossiping in the sycamores on the bank. At the foot of the garden, near
the creek, there were some tall hydrangea bushes, flower-laden, and,
beyond them, one broad shaft of the sun smote the creek bends for a mile
in that flat land, and crossed the garden like a bright, taut-drawn veil.
Harkless passed the bushes and stepped out into this gold brilliance. Then
he uttered a cry and stopped.

Helen was standing beside the hydrangeas, with both hands against her
cheeks and her eyes fixed on the ground. She had run away as far as she
could run; there were high fences extending down to the creek on each
side, and the water was beyond.

"_You_!" he said. "_You--you_!"

She did not lift her eyes, but began to move away from him with little
backward steps. When she reached the bench on the bank, she spoke with a
quick intake of breath and in a voice he scarcely heard. It was the merest
whisper, and her words came so slowly that sometimes minutes separated
them.

"Can you--will you keep me--on the 'Herald'?"

"Keep you----"

"Will you--let me--help?"

He came near her. "I don't understand. Is it you--you--who are here
again?"

"Have you--forgiven me? You know now why I wouldn't--resign? You forgive
my--that telegram?"

"What telegram?"

"That one that came to you--this morning."

"_Your_ telegram?"

"Yes."

"Did you send me one?"

"Yes."

"It did not come to me."

"Yes--it did."

"But there--What was it about?"

"It was signed," she said, "it was signed--" She paused and turned half
way, not lifting the downcast lashes; her hand, laid upon the arm of the
bench, was shaking; she put it behind her. Then her eyes were lifted a
little, and, though they did not meet his, he saw them, and a strange,
frightened glory leaped in his heart. Her voice fell still lower and two
heavy tears rolled down her cheeks. "It was signed," she whispered, "it
was signed--'H. Fisbee.'"

He began to tremble from head to foot. There was a long silence. She had
turned quite away from him. When he spoke, his voice was as low as hers,
and he spoke as slowly as she had.

"You mean--then--it was--you?"

"Yes."

"You!"

"Yes."

"And you have been here all the time?"

"All--all except the week you were--hurt, and that--that one evening."

The bright veil which wrapped them was drawn away, and they stood in the
silent, gathering dusk.

He tried to loosen his neck-band; it seemed to be choking him. "I--I
can't--I don't comprehend it. I am trying to realize what it----"

"It means nothing," she answered.

"There was an editorial, yesterday," he said, "an editorial that I thought
was about Rodney McCune. Did you write it?"

"Yes."

"It was about--me--wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"It said--it said--that I had won the love of every person in Carlow
County."

Suddenly she found her voice. "Do not misunderstand me," she said rapidly.
"I have done the little that I have done out of gratitude." She faced him
now, but without meeting his eyes. "I told you, remember, that you would
understand some day what I meant by that, and the day has come. I owed you
more gratitude than a woman ever owed a man before, I think, and I would
have died to pay a part of it. I set every gossip's tongue in Rouen
clacking at the very start, in the merest amateurish preparation for the
work Mr. Macauley gave me. That was nothing. And the rest has been the
happiest time in my life. I have only pleased myself, after all!"

"What gratitude did you owe me?"

"What gratitude? For what you did for my father."

"I have only seen your father once in my life--at your table at the dance
supper, that night."

"Listen. My father is a gentle old man with white hair and kind eyes. You
saw my uncle, that night; he has been as good to me as a father, since I
was seven years old, and he gave me his name by law and I lived with him.
My father came to see me once a year; I never came to see him. He always
told me everything was well with him; that his life was happy. Once he
lost the little he had left to him in the world, his only way of making
his living. He had no friends; he was hungry and desperate, and he
wandered. I was dancing and going about wearing jewels--only--I did not
know. All the time the brave heart wrote me happy letters. I should have
known, for there was one who did, and who saved him. When at last I came
to see my father, he told me. He had written of his idol before; but it
was not till I came that he told it all to me. Do you know what I felt?
While his daughter was dancing cotillions, a stranger had taken his hand--
and--" A sob rose in her throat and checked her utterance for a moment;
but she threw up her head and met his eyes proudly. "Gratitude, Mr.
Harkless!" she cried. "I am James Fisbee's daughter."

He fell back from the bench with a sharp exclamation, and stared at her
through the gray twilight. She went on hurriedly, again not looking at
him:

"When you showed me that you cared for me--when you told me that you did--
I--do you think I wanted to care for you? I wanted to do something to show
you that I could be ashamed of my vile neglect of him--something to show
you his daughter could be grateful. If I had loved you, what I did would
have been for that--and I could not have done it. And how could I have
shown my gratitude if I had done it for love? And it has been such dear,
happy work, the little I have done, that it seems, after all, that I have
done it for love of myself. But--but when you first told me--" She broke
off with a strange, fluttering, half inarticulate little laugh that was
half tears; and then resumed in another tone: "When you told me you cared
that night--that night we were here--how could I be sure? It had been only
two days, you see, and even if I could have been sure of myself, why, I
couldn't have told you. Oh! I had so brazenly thrown myself at your head,
time and again, those two days, in my--my worship of your goodness to my
father and my excitement in recognizing in his friend the hero of my
girlhood, that you had every right to think I cared; but if--but if I had
--if I had--loved you with my whole soul, I could not have--why, no woman
could have--I mean the sort of girl I am couldn't have admitted it--must
have denied it. And what I was trying to do for you when we met in Rouen
was--was courting you. You surely see I couldn't have done it if I had
cared. It would have been brazen! And do you think that then I could have
answered--'Yes'--even if I wanted to--even if I had been sure of myself?
And now--" Her voice sank again to a whisper. "And now----"

From the meadows across the creek, and over the fields, came a far
tinkling of farm-bells. Three months ago, at this hour, John Harkless had
listened to that sound, and its great lonesomeness had touched his heart
like a cold hand; but now, as the mists were rising from the water and the
small stars pierced the sky one by one, glinting down through the dim,
immeasurable blue distances, he found no loneliness in heaven or earth. He
leaned forward toward her; the bench was between them. The last light was
gone; evening had fallen.

"And now--" he said.

She moved backward as he leaned nearer.

"You promised to remember on the day you understood," she answered, a
little huskily, "that it was all from the purest gratitude."

"And--and there is nothing else?"

"If there were," she said, and her voice grew more and more unsteady, "if
there were, can't you see that what I have done--" She stopped, and then,
suddenly, "Ah, it would have been _brazen_!"

He looked up at the little stars and he heard the bells, and they struck
into his heart like a dirge. He made a singular gesture of abnegation, and
then dropped upon the bench with his head bowed between his hands.

She pressed her hand to her bosom, watching him in a startled fashion, her
eyes wide and her lips parted. She took a few quick, short steps toward
the garden, still watching him over her shoulder.

"You mustn't worry," he said, not lifting his bent head, "I know you're
sorry. I'll be all right in a minute."

She gave a hurried glance from right to left and from left to right, like
one in terror seeking a way of escape; she gathered her skirts in her
hand, as if to run into the garden; but suddenly she turned and ran to
him--ran to him swiftly, with her great love shining from her eyes. She
sank upon her knees beside him. She threw her arms about his neck and
kissed him on the forehead.

"Oh, my dear, don't you see?" she whispered, "don't you see--don't you
see?"

When they heard the judge calling from the orchard, they went back through
the garden toward the house. It was dark; the whitest asters were but gray
splotches. There was no one in the orchard; Briscoe had gone indoors.
"Did you know you are to drive me into town in the phaeton for the
fireworks?" she asked.

"Fireworks?"

"Yes; the Great Harkless has come home."

Even in the darkness he could see the look the vision had given him when
the barouche turned into the Square. She smiled upon him and said, "All
afternoon I was wishing I could have been your mother."

He clasped her hand more tightly. "This wonderful world!" he cried.
"Yesterday I had a doctor--a doctor to cure me of love-sickness!"

They went on a little way. "We must hurry," she said. "I am sure they have
been waiting for us." This was true; they had.

From the dining-room came laughter and hearty voices, and the windows were
bright with the light of many lamps. By and by, they stood just outside
the patch of light that fell from one of the windows.

"Look," said Helen. "Aren't they good, dear people?"

"The beautiful people!" he answered.

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