The Gentleman From Indiana

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Gentleman From Indiana

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There were no more raids, and the Six-Cross-Roads men who were left kept
to their hovels, appalled and shaken, but, as time went by and left them
unmolested, they recovered a measure of their hardiness and began to think
on what they should do to the man who had brought misfortune and terror
upon them. For a long time he had been publishing their threatening
letters and warnings in a column which he headed: "Humor of the Day."

"Harkless don't understand the Cross-Roads," Briscoe said to Miss Sherwood
as they left the Wimby farm behind; "and then he's like most of us; hardly
any of us realizes that harm's ever going to come to _us_. Harkless was
anxious enough about other people, but----"

The young lady interrupted him, touching his arm. "Look!" she said,
"Didn't you see a child, a little girl, ahead of us on the road?"

"I noticed one a minute ago, but she's not there now," answered Briscoe.

"There was a child walking along the road just ahead, but she turned and
saw us coming, and she disappeared in the most curious way; she seemed to
melt into the weeds at the roadside, across from the elder-bush yonder."

The judge pulled in the horses by the elder-bush. "No child here, now," he
said, "but you're right; there certainly was one, just before you spoke."
The young corn was low in the fields, and there was no hiding-place in
sight.

"I'm very superstitious; I am sure it was an imp," Miss Sherwood said. "An
imp or a very large chameleon; she was exactly the color of the road."

"A Cross-Roads imp," said the judge, lifting the reins, "and in that case
we might as well give up. I never set up to be a match for those people,
and the children are as mean as their fathers, and smarter."

When the buckboard had rattled on a hundred yards or so, a little figure
clad in a tattered cotton gown rose up from the weeds, not ten feet from
where the judge had drawn rein, and continued its march down the road
toward Plattville, capering in the dust and pursuing the buckboard with
malignant gestures till the clatter of the horses was out of hearing, the
vehicle out of sight.

Something over two hours later, as Mr. Martin was putting things to rights
in his domain, the Dry-Goods Emporium, previous to his departure for the
evening's gossip and checkers at the drug-store, he stumbled over
something soft, lying on the floor behind a counter. The thing rose, and
would have evaded him, but he put out his hands and pinioned it and
dragged it to the show-window where the light of the fading day defined
his capture. The capture shrieked and squirmed and fought earnestly.
Grasped by the shoulder he held a lean, fierce-eyed, undersized girl of
fourteen, clad in one ragged cotton garment, unless the coat of dust she
wore over all may be esteemed another. Her cheeks were sallow, and her
brow was already shrewdly lined, and her eyes were as hypocritical as they
were savage. She was very thin and little, but old Tom's brown face grew a
shade nearer white when the light fell upon her.

"You're no Plattville girl," he said sharply.

"You lie!" cried the child. "You lie! I am! You leave me go, will you? I'm
lookin' fer pap and you're a liar!"

"You crawled in here to sleep, after your seven-mile walk, didn't you?"
Martin went on.

"You're a liar," she screamed again.

"Look here," said Martin, slowly, "you go back to Six-Cross-Roads and tell
your folks that if anything happens to a hair of Mr. Harkless's head every
shanty in your town will burn, and your grandfather and your father and
your uncles and your brothers and your cousins and your second-cousins and
your third-cousins will never have the good luck to see the penitentiary.
Reckon you can remember that message? But before I let you go to carry it,
I guess you might as well hand out the paper they sent you over here
with."

His prisoner fell into a paroxysm of rage, and struck at him.

"I'll git pap to kill ye," she shrieked. "I don' know nothin' 'bout yer
Six-Cross-Roads, ner no papers, ner yer dam Mister Harkels neither, ner
_you_, ye razor-backed ole devil! Pap'll kill ye; leave me go--leave me
_go_!--Pap'll kill ye; I'll git him to _kill_ ye!" Suddenly her struggles
ceased; her eyes closed; her tense little muscles relaxed and she drooped
toward the floor; the old man shifted his grip to support her, and in an
instant she twisted out of his hands and sprang out of reach, her eyes
shining with triumph and venom.

"Ya-hay, Mister Razor-back!" she shrilled. "How's that fer hi? Pap'll kill
ye, Sunday. You'll be screechin' in hell in a week, an' we 'ull set up an'
drink our apple-jack an' laff!" Martin pursued her lumberingly, but she
was agile as a monkey, and ran dodging up and down the counters and mocked
him, singing "Gran' mammy Tipsy-Toe," till at last she tired of the game
and darted out of the door, flinging back a hoarse laugh at him as she
went. He followed; but when he reached the street she was a mere shadow
flitting under the courthouse trees. He looked after her forebodingly,
then turned his eyes toward the Palace Hotel. The editor of the "Herald"
was seated under the awning, with his chair tilted back against a post,
gazing dreamily at the murky red afterglow in the west.

"What's the use of tryin' to bother him with it?" old Tom asked himself.
"He'd only laugh." He noted that young William Todd sat near the editor,
whittling absently. Martin chuckled. "William's turn to-night," he
muttered. "Well, the boys take mighty good care of him." He locked the
doors of the Emporium, tried them, and dropped the keys in his pocket.

As he crossed the Square to the drug-store, where his cronies awaited him,
he turned again to look at the figure of the musing journalist. "I hope
he'll go out to the judge's," he said, and shook his head, sadly. "I don't
reckon Plattville's any too spry for that young man. Five years he's be'n
here. Well, it's a good thing for us folks, but I guess it ain't exactly
high-life for him." He kicked a stick out of his way impatiently. "Now,
where'd that imp run to?" he grumbled.

The imp was lying under the court-house steps. When the sound of Martin's
footsteps had passed away, she crept cautiously from her hiding-place and
stole through the ungroomed grass to the fence opposite the hotel. Here
she stretched herself flat in the weeds and took from underneath the
tangled masses of her hair, where it was tied with a string, a rolled-up,
crumpled slip of greasy paper. With this in her fingers, she lay peering
under the fence, her fierce eyes fixed unwinkingly on Harkless and the
youth sitting near him.

The street ran flat and gray in the slowly gathering dusk, straight to the
western horizon where the sunset embers were strewn in long, dark-red
streaks; the maple trees were clean-cut silhouettes against the pale rose
and pearl tints of the sky above, and a tenderness seemed to tremble in
the air. Harkless often vowed to himself he would watch no more sunsets in
Plattville; he realized that their loveliness lent a too unhappy tone to
the imaginings and introspections upon which he was thrown by the
loneliness of the environment, and he considered that he had too much time
in which to think about himself. For five years his introspections had
monotonously hurled one word at him: "Failure; Failure! Failure!" He
thought the sunsets were making him morbid. Could he have shared them,
that would have been different.

His long, melancholy face grew longer and more melancholy in the twilight,
while William Todd patiently whittled near by. Plattville had often
discussed the editor's habit of silence, and Mr. Martin had suggested that
possibly the reason Mr. Harkless was such a quiet man was that there was
nobody for him to talk to. His hearers did not agree, for the population
of Carlow County was a thing of pride, being greater than that of several
bordering counties. They did agree, however, that Harkless's quiet was not
unkind, whatever its cause, and that when it was broken it was usually
broken to conspicuous effect. Perhaps it was because he wrote so much that
he hated to talk.

A bent figure came slowly down the street, and William hailed it
cheerfully: "Evening, Mr. Fisbee."

"A good evening, Mr. Todd," answered the old man, pausing. "Ah, Mr.
Harkless, I was looking for you." He had not seemed to be looking for
anything beyond the boundaries of his own dreams, but he approached
Harkless, tugging nervously at some papers in his pocket. "I have
completed my notes for our Saturday edition. It was quite easy; there is
much doing."

"Thank you, Mr. Fisbee," said Harkless, as he took the manuscript. "Have
you finished your paper on the earlier Christian symbolism? I hope the
'Herald' may have the honor of printing it." This was the form they used.

"I shall be the recipient of honor, sir," returned Fisbee. "Your kind
offer will speed my work; but I fear, Mr. Harkless, I very much fear, that
your kindness alone prompts it, for, deeply as I desire it, I cannot
truthfully say that my essays appear to increase our circulation." He made
an odd, troubled gesture as he went on: "They do not seem to read them
here, Mr. Harkless, although Mr. Martin assures me that he carefully
peruses my article on Chaldean decoration whenever he rearranges his
exhibition windows, and I bear in mind the clipping from a Rouen paper you
showed me, commenting generously upon the scholarship of the 'Herald.' But
for fifteen years I have tried to improve the art feeling in Plattville,
and I may say that I have worked in the face of no small discouragement.
In fact," (there was a slight quaver in Fisbee's voice), "I cannot
remember that I ever received the slightest word or token of encouragement
till you came, Mr. Harkless. Since then I have labored with refreshed
energy; still, I cannot claim that our architecture shows a change for the
better, and I fear the engravings upon the walls of our people exhibit no
great progress in selection. And--I--I wish also to say, Mr. Harkless, if
you find it necessary to make some alterations in the form of my
reportorial items for Saturday's issue, I shall perfectly understand,
remembering your explanation that journalism demands it. Good-evening, Mr.
Harkless. Good-evening, Mr. Todd." He plodded on a few paces, then turned,
irresolutely.

"What is it, Fisbee?" asked Harkless.

Fisbee stood for a moment, as though about to speak, then he smiled
faintly, shook his head, and went his way. Harkless stared after him,
surprised. It suddenly struck him, with a feeling of irritation, that if
Fisbee had spoken it would have been to advise him to call at Judge
Briscoe's. He laughed impatiently at the notion, and, drawing his pencil
and a pad from his pocket, proceeded to injure his eyes in the waning
twilight by the editorial perusal of the items his staff had just left in
his hands. When published, the manuscript came under a flaring heading,
bequeathed by Harkless's predecessor in the chair of the "Herald," and the
alteration of which he felt Plattville would refuse to sanction:
"Happenings of Our City." Below, was printed in smaller type:
"Improvements in the World of Business," and, beneath that, came the
rubric: "Also, the Cradle, the Altar, and the Tomb."

The first of Fisbee's items was thus recorded: "It may be noted that the
new sign-board of Mr. H. Miller has been put in place. We cannot but
regret that Mr. Miller did not instruct the painter to confine himself to
a simpler method of lettering."

"Ah, Fisbee," murmured the editor, reproachfully, "that new sign-board is
almost the only improvement in the World of Business Plattville has seen
this year. I wonder how many times we have used it from the first, 'It is
rumored in business circles that Herve Miller contemplates'--to the
exciting, 'Under Way,' and, 'Finishing Touches.' My poor White Knight, are
five years of training wasted on you? Sometimes you make me fear it. Here
is Plattville panting for our story of the hanging of the sign, and you
throw away the climax like that!" He began to write rapidly, bending low
over the pad in the half darkness. His narrative was an amplification of
the interesting information (already possessed by every inhabitant) that
Herve Miller had put up a new sign. After a paragraph of handsome
description, "Herve is always enterprising," wrote the editor. "This is a
move in the right direction. Herve, keep it up."

He glanced over the other items meditatively, making alterations here and
there. The last two Fisbee had written as follows:

"There is noticeable in the new (and somewhat incongruous) portico erected
by Solomon Tibbs at the residence of Mr. Henry Tibbs Willetts, an attempt
at rococo decoration which cannot fail to sadden the passer-by."

"Miss Sherwood of Rouen, whom Miss Briscoe knew at the Misses Jennings'
finishing-school in New York, is a guest of Judge Briscoe's household."

Fisbee's items were written in ink; and there was a blank space beneath
the last. At the bottom of the page something had been scribbled in
pencil. Harkless tried vainly to decipher it, but the twilight had fallen
too deep, and the writing was too faint, so he struck a match and held it
close to the paper. The action betokened only a languid interest, but when
he caught sight of the first of the four subscribed lines he sat up
straight in his chair with an ejaculation. At the bottom of Fisbee's page
was written in a dainty, feminine hand, of a type he had not seen for
years:

"'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
And cabbages--and kings--'"

He put the paper in his pocket, and set off rapidly down the village
street.

At his departure William Todd looked up quickly; then he got upon his feet
and quietly followed the editor. In the dusk a tattered little figure rose
up from the weeds across the way, and stole noiselessly after William. He
was in his shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned and loose. On the
nearest corner Mr. Todd encountered a fellow-townsman, who had been pacing
up and down in front of a cottage, crooning to a protestive baby held in
his arms. He had paused in his vigil to stare after Harkless.

"Whereas he bound for, William?" inquired the man with the baby.

"Briscoes'," answered William, pursuing his way.

"I reckoned he would be," commented the other, turning to his wife, who
sat on the doorstep, "I reckoned so when I see that lady at the lecture
last night."

The woman rose to her feet. "Hi, Bill Todd!" she said. "What you got onto
the back of your vest?" William paused, put his hand behind him and
encountered a paper pinned to the dangling strap of his waistcoat. The
woman ran to him and unpinned the paper. It bore a writing. They took it
to where the yellow lamp-light shone through the open door, and read:
"der Sir
"FoLer harkls aL yo ples an gaRd him yoR
best venagesn is closteR, harkls not Got 3 das to liv
"We come in Wite."

"What ye think, William?" asked the man with the baby, anxiously. But the
woman gave the youth a sharp push with her hand. "They never dast to do
it!" she cried. "Never in the world! You hurry, Bill Todd. Don't you leave
him out of your sight one second."

CHAPTER V

AT THE PASTURE BARS: ELDER-BUSHES MAY HAVE STINGS

The street upon which the Palace Hotel fronted formed the south side of
the Square and ran west to the edge of the town, where it turned to the
south for a quarter of a mile or more, then bent to the west again. Some
distance from this second turn, there stood, fronting close on the road, a
large brick house, the most pretentious mansion in Carlow County. And yet
it was a homelike place, with its red-brick walls embowered in masses of
cool Virginia creeper, and a comfortable veranda crossing the broad front,
while half a hundred stalwart sentinels of elm and beech and poplar stood
guard around it. The front walk was bordered by geraniums and hollyhocks;
and honeysuckle climbed the pillars of the porch. Behind the house there
was a shady little orchard; and, back of the orchard, an old-fashioned,
very fragrant rose-garden, divided by a long grape arbor, extended to the
shallow waters of a wandering creek; and on the bank a rustic seat was
placed, beneath the sycamores.

From the first bend of the road, where it left the town and became (after
some indecision) a country highway--called the pike--rather than a proud
city boulevard, a pathway led through the fields to end at some pasture
bars opposite the brick house.

John Harkless was leaning on the pasture bars. The stars were wan, and the
full moon shone over the fields. Meadows and woodlands lay quiet under the
old, sweet marvel of a June night. In the wide monotony of the flat lands,
there sometimes comes a feeling that the whole earth is stretched out
before one. To-night it seemed to lie so, in the pathos of silent beauty,
all passive and still; yet breathing an antique message, sad, mysterious,
reassuring. But there had come a divine melody adrift on the air. Through
the open windows it floated. Indoors some one struck a peal of silver
chords, like a harp touched by a lover, and a woman's voice was lifted.
John Harkless leaned on the pasture bars and listened with upraised head
and parted lips.

"To thy chamber window roving, love hath led my feet."

The Lord sent manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness. Harkless
had been five years in Plattville, and a woman's voice singing Schubert's
serenade came to him at last as he stood by the pasture bars of Jones's
field and listened and rested his dazzled eyes on the big, white face of
the moon.

How long had it been since he had heard a song, or any discourse of music
other than that furnished by the Plattville Band--not that he had not
taste for a brass band! But music that he loved always gave him an ache of
delight and the twinge of reminiscences of old, gay days gone forever.
To-night his memory leaped to the last day of a June gone seven years; to
a morning when the little estuary waves twinkled in the bright sun about
the boat in which he sat, the trim launch that brought a cheery party
ashore from their schooner to the Casino landing at Winter Harbor, far up
on the Maine coast.

It was the happiest of those last irresponsible days before he struck into
his work in the world and became a failure. To-night he saw the picture as
plainly as if it were yesterday; no reminiscence had risen so keenly
before his eyes for years: pretty Mrs. Van Skuyt sitting beside him--
pretty Mrs. Van Skuyt and her roses! What had become of her? He saw the
crowd of friends waiting on the pier for their arrival, and the dozen or
so emblazoned classmates (it was in the time of brilliant flannels) who
suddenly sent up a volley of college cheers in his honor--how plainly the
dear, old, young faces rose up before him to-night, the men from whose
lives he had slipped! Dearest and jolliest of the faces was that of Tom
Meredith, clubmate, classmate, his closest friend, the thin, red-headed
third baseman; he could see Tom's mouth opened at least a yard, it seemed,
such was his frantic vociferousness. Again and again the cheers rang out,
"Harkless! Harkless!" on the end of them. In those days everybody
(particularly his classmates) thought he would be minister to England in a
few years, and the orchestra on the Casino porch was playing "The
Conquering Hero," in his honor, and at the behest of Tom Meredith, he
knew.

There were other pretty ladies besides Mrs. Van Skuyt in the launch-load
from the yacht, but, as they touched the pier, pretty girls, or pretty
women, or jovial gentlemen, all were overlooked in the wild scramble the
college men made for their hero. They haled him forth, set him on high,
bore him on their shoulders, shouting "Skal to the Viking!" and carried
him up the wooded bluff to the Casino. He heard Mrs. Van Skuyt say, "Oh,
we're used to it; we've put in at several other places where he had
friends!" He struggled manfully to be set down, but his triumphal
procession swept on. He heard bystanders telling each other, "It's that
young Harkless, 'the Great Harkless,' they're all so mad about"; and while
it pleased him a little to hear such things, they always made him laugh a
great deal. He had never understood his popularity: he had been chief
editor of the university daily, and he had done a little in athletics, and
the rest of his distinction lay in college offices his mates had heaped
upon him without his being able to comprehend why they did it. And yet,
somehow, and in spite of himself, they had convinced him that the world
was his oyster; that it would open for him at a touch. He could not help
seeing how the Freshmen looked at him, how the Sophomores jumped off the
narrow campus walks to let him pass; he could not help knowing that he was
the great man of his time, so that "The Great Harkless" came to be one of
the traditions of the university. He remembered the wild progress they
made for him up the slope that morning at Winter Harbor, how the people
baked on, and laughed, and clapped their hands. But at the veranda edge he
had noticed a little form disappearing around a corner of the building; a
young girl running away as fast as she could.

"See there!" he said, as the tribe set him down, "You have frightened the
populace." And Tom Meredith stopped shouting long enough to answer, "It's
my little cousin, overcome with emotion. She's been counting the hours
till you came--been hearing of you from me and others for a good while;
and hasn't been able to talk or think of anything else. She's only
fifteen, and the crucial moment is too much for her--the Great Harkless
has arrived, and she has fled."

He remembered other incidents of his greatness, of the glory that now
struck him as rarely comical; be hoped he hadn't taken it too seriously
then, in the flush of his youth. Maybe, after all, he had been a, big-
headed boy, but he must have bottled up his conceit tightly enough, or the
other boys would have detected it and abhorred him. He was inclined to
believe that he had not been very much set up by the pomp they made for
him. At all events, that day at Winter Harbor had been beautiful, full of
the laughter of friends and music; for there was a musicale at the Casino
in the afternoon.

But the present hour grew on him as he leaned on the pasture bars, and
suddenly his memories sped; and the voice that was singing Schubert's
serenade across the way touched him with the urgent, personal appeal that
a present beauty always had for him. It was a soprano; and without
tremolo, yet came to his ear with a certain tremulous sweetness; it was
soft and slender, but the listener knew it could be lifted with fullness
and power if the singer would. It spoke only of the song, yet the listener
thought of the singer. Under the moon thoughts run into dreams, and he
dreamed that the owner of the voice, she who quoted "The Walrus and the
Carpenter" on Fisbee's notes, was one to laugh with you and weep with you;
yet her laughter would be tempered with sorrow, and her tears with
laughter.

When the song was ended, he struck the rail he leaned upon a sharp blow
with his open hand. There swept over him a feeling that he had stood
precisely where he stood now, on such a night, a thousand years ago, had
heard that voice and that song, had listened and been moved by the song,
and the night, just as he was moved now.

He had long known himself for a sentimentalist; he had almost given up
trying to cure himself. And he knew himself for a born lover; he had
always been in love with some one. In his earlier youth his affections had
been so constantly inconstant that he finally came to settle with his
self-respect by recognizing in himself a fine constancy that worshipped
one woman always--it was only the shifting image of her that changed!
Somewhere (he dreamed, whimsically indulgent of the fancy; yet mocking
himself for it) there was a girl whom he had never seen, who waited till
he should come. She was Everything. Until he found her, he could not help
adoring others who possessed little pieces and suggestions of her--her
brilliancy, her courage, her short upper lip, "like a curled roseleaf," or
her dear voice, or her pure profile. He had no recollection of any lady
who had quite her eyes.

He had never passed a lovely stranger on the street, in the old days,
without a thrill of delight and warmth. If he never saw her again, and the
vision only lasted the time it takes a lady to cross the sidewalk from a
shop door to a carriage, he was always a little in love with her, because
she bore about her, somewhere, as did every pretty girl he ever saw, a
suggestion of the far-away divinity. One does not pass lovely strangers in
the streets of Plattville. Miss Briscoe was pretty, but not at all in the
way that Harkless dreamed. For five years the lover in him that had loved
so often had been starved of all but dreams. Only at twilight and dusk in
the summer, when, strolling, he caught sight of a woman's skirt, far up
the village street--half-outlined in the darkness under the cathedral arch
of meeting branches--this romancer of petticoats could sigh a true lover's
sigh, and, if he kept enough distance between, fly a yearning fancy that
his lady wandered there.

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