The Gentleman From Indiana

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"Idiot!" he cried. "What has happened to me?" Then he shook his fist at
the moon and went in to work--he thought.

CHAPTER VII

MORNING: "SOME IN RAGS AND SOME IN TAGS AND SOME IN VELVET GOWNS"

The bright sun of circus-day shone into Harkless's window, and he awoke to
find himself smiling. For a little while he lay content, drowsily
wondering why he smiled, only knowing that there was something new. It was
thus, as a boy, he had wakened on his birthday mornings, or on Christmas,
or on the Fourth of July, drifting happily out of pleasant dreams into the
consciousness of long-awaited delights that had come true, yet lying only
half-awake in a cheerful borderland, leaving happiness undefined.

The morning breeze was fluttering at his window blind; a honeysuckle vine
tapped lightly on the pane. Birds were trilling, warbling, whistling. From
the street came the rumbling of wagons, merry cries of greeting, and the
barking of dogs. What was it made him feel so young and strong and light-
hearted? The breeze brought him the smell of June roses, fresh and sweet
with dew, and then he knew why he had come smiling from his dreams. He
would go a holiday-making. With that he leaped out of bed, and shouted
loudly: "Zen! Hello, Xenophon!"

In answer, an ancient, very black darky put his head in at the door, his
warped and wrinkled visage showing under his grizzled hair like charred
paper in a fall of pine ashes. He said: "Good-mawn', suh. Yessuh. Hit's
done pump' full. Good-mawn', suh."

A few moments later, the colored man, seated on the front steps of the
cottage, heard a mighty splashing within, while the rafters rang with
stentorian song:

"He promised to buy me a bunch o' blue ribbon,
He promised to buy me a bunch o' blue ribbon,
He promised to buy me a bunch o' blue ribbon,
To tie up my bonny brown hair

"Oh dear! What can the matter be?
Oh dear! What can the matter be?
Oh dear! What can the matter be?
Johnnie's so long at the Fair!"

At the sound of this complaint, delivered in a manly voice, the listener's
jaw dropped, and his mouth opened and stayed open. "_Him!_" he muttered,
faintly. "_Singin'_!"

"Well, the old Triangle knew the music of our tread;
How the peaceful Seminole would tremble in his bed!"

sang the editor.
"I dunno huccome it," exclaimed the old man, "an' dat ain' hyer ner dar;
but, bless Gawd! de young man' happy!" A thought struck him suddenly, and
he scratched his head. "Maybe he goin' away," he said, querulously. "What
become o' ole Zen?" The splashing ceased, but not the voice, which struck
into a noble marching chorus. "Oh, my Lawd," said the colored man, "I pray
you listen at dat!"

"Soldiers marching up the street,
They keep the time;
They look sublime!
Hear them play Die Wacht am Rhein!
They call them Schneider's Band.
Tra la la la, la!"

The length of Main Street and all the Square resounded with the rattle of
vehicles of every kind. Since earliest dawn they had been pouring into the
village, a long procession on every country road. There were great red and
blue farm wagons, drawn by splendid Clydesdales; the elders of the family
on the front seat and on boards laid from side to side in front, or on
chairs placed close behind, while, in the deep beds back of these,
children tumbled in the straw, or peeped over the sides, rosy-cheeked and
laughing, eyes alight with blissful anticipations. There were more
pretentious two-seated cut-unders and stout buckboards, loaded down with
merrymakers, four on a seat meant for two; there were rattle-trap phaetons
and comfortable carry-alls drawn by steady spans; and, now and then, mule
teams bringing happy negroes, ready to squander all on the first Georgia
watermelons and cider. Every vehicle contained heaping baskets of good
things to eat (the previous night had been a woeful Bartholomew for Carlow
chickens) and underneath, where the dogs paced faithfully, swung buckets
and fodder for the horses, while colts innumerable trotted dose to the
maternal flanks, viewing the world with their big, new eyes in frisky
surprise.

Here and there the trim side-bar buggy of some prosperous farmer's son,
escorting his sweetheart, flashed along the road, the young mare stepping
out in pride of blood to pass the line of wagons, the youth who held the
reins, resplendent in Sunday best and even better, his scorched brown face
glowing with a fine belief in the superiority of both his steed and his
lady; the latter beaming out upon life and rejoicing in the light-blue
ribbons on her hat, the light-blue ribbon around her waist, the light-
blue, silk half-mittens on her hands, and the beautiful red coral necklace
about her neck and the red coral buttons that fastened her gown in the
back.

The air was full of exhilaration; everybody was laughing and shouting and
calling greetings; for Carlow County was turning out, and from far and
near the country people came; nay, from over the county line, clouds of
dust rising from every thoroughfare and highway, and sweeping into town to
herald their coming.

Dibb Zane, the "sprinkling contractor," had been at work with the town
water-cart since the morning stars were bright, but he might as well have
watered the streets with his tears, which, indeed, when the farmers began
to come in, bringing their cyclones of dust, he drew nigh unto, after a
spell of profanity as futile as his cart.

"Tief wie das Meer soll deine Liebe sein,"

hummed the editor in the cottage. His song had taken on a reflective tone
as that of one who cons a problem, or musically ponders which card to
play. He was kneeling before an old trunk in his bedchamber. From one
compartment he took a neatly folded pair of duck trousers and a light-gray
tweed coat; from another, a straw hat with a ribbon of bright colors. They
had lain in the trunk a long time undisturbed; and he examined them
musingly. He shook the coat and brushed it; then he laid the garments upon
his bed, and proceeded to shave himself carefully, after which he donned
the white trousers, the gray coat, and, rummaging in the trunk again,
found a gay pink cravat, which he fastened about his tall collar (also a
resurrection from the trunk) with a pearl pin. After that he had a long,
solemn time arranging his hair with a pair of brushes. When at last he was
suited, and his dressing completed, he sallied forth to breakfast.

Xenophon stared after him as he went out of the gate whistling heartily.
The old darky lifted his hands, palms outward.

"Lan' name, who dat!" he exclaimed aloud. "Who dat in dem pan-jingeries?
He jine' de circus?" His hands fell upon his knees, and he got to his feet
pneumatically, shaking his head with foreboding. "Honey, honey, hit' baid
luck, baid luck sing 'fo' breakfus. Trouble 'fo' de day be done. Trouble,
honey, gre't trouble. Baid luck, baid luck!"

Along the Square the passing of the editor in his cool equipment evoked
some gasps of astonishment; and Mr. Tibbs and his sister rushed from the
postoffice to stare after him.

"He looks just beautiful, Solomon," said Miss Tibbs.

"But what's the name for them kind of clothes?" inquired her brother.
"'Seems to me there's a special way of callin' 'em. 'Seems as if I see a
picture of 'em, somewheres. Wasn't it on the cover of that there long-
tennis box we bought and put in the window, and the country people thought
it was a seining outfit?"

"It was a game, the catalogue said," observed Miss Selina. "Wasn't it?"

"It was a mighty pore investment," the postmaster answered.

As Harkless approached the hotel, a decrepit old man, in a vast straw hat
and a linen duster much too large for him, came haltingly forward to meet
him. He was Widow-Woman Wimby's husband. And, as did every one else, he
spoke of his wife by the name of her former martial companion.

"Be'n a-lookin' fer you, Mr. Harkless," he said in a shaking spindle of a
voice, as plaintive as his pale little eyes. "Mother Wimby, she sent some
roses to ye. Cynthy's fixin' 'em on yer table. I'm well as ever I am; but
her, she's too complaining to come in fer show-day. This morning, early,
we see some the Cross-Roads folks pass the place towards town, an' she
sent me in to tell ye. Oh, I knowed ye'd laugh. Says she, 'He's too much
of a man to be skeered,' says she, 'these here tall, big men always 'low
nothin' on earth kin hurt 'em,' says she, 'but you tell him to be
keerful,' says she; an' I see Bill Skillett an' his brother on the Square
lessun a half-an-hour ago, 'th my own eyes. I won't keep ye from yer
breakfast.--Eph Watts is in there, eatin'. He's come back; but I guess I
don't need to warn ye agin' him. He seems peaceable enough. It's the other
folks you got to look out fer."

He limped away. The editor waved his hand to him from the door, but the
old fellow shook his head, and made a warning, friendly gesture with his
arm.

Harkless usually ate his breakfast alone, as he was the latest riser in
Plattville. (There were days in the winter when he did not reach the hotel
until eight o'clock.) This morning he found a bunch of white roses, still
wet with dew and so fragrant that the whole room was fresh and sweet with
their odor, prettily arranged in a bowl on the table, and, at his plate,
the largest of all with a pin through the stem. He looked up, smilingly,
and nodded at the red-haired girl. "Thank you, Charmion," he said. "That's
very pretty."

She turned even redder than she always was, and answered nothing,
vigorously darting her brush at an imaginary fly on the cloth. After
several minutes she said abruptly, "You're welcome."

There was a silence, finally broken by a long, gasping sigh. Astonished,
he looked at the girl. Her eyes were set unfathomably upon his pink tie;
the wand had dropped from her nerveless hand, and she stood rapt and
immovable. She started violently from her trance. "Ain't you goin' to
finish your coffee?" she asked, plying her instrument again, and, bending
over him slightly, whispered: "Say, Eph Watts is over there behind you."

At a table in a far corner of the room a large gentleman in a brown frock
coat was quietly eating his breakfast and reading the "Herald." He was of
an ornate presence, though entirely neat. A sumptuous expanse of linen
exhibited itself between the lapels of his low-cut waistcoat, and an inch
of bediamonded breastpin glittered there, like an ice-ledge on a snowy
mountain side. He had a steady, blue eye and a dissipated, iron-gray
mustache. This personage was Mr. Ephraim Watts, who, following a calling
more fashionable in the eighteenth century than in the latter decades of
the nineteenth, had shaken the dust of Carlow from his feet some three
years previously, at the strong request of the authorities. The "Herald"
had been particularly insistent upon his deportation, and, in the local
phrase, Harkless had "run him out of town." Perhaps it was because the
"Herald's" opposition (as the editor explained at the time) had been
merely moral and impersonal, and the editor had always confessed to a
liking for the unprofessional qualities of Mr. Watts, that there was but
slight embarrassment when the two gentlemen met to-day. His breakfast
finished, Harkless went over to the other and extended his hand. Cynthia
held her breath and clutched the back of a chair. However, Mr. Watts made
no motion toward his well-known hip pocket. Instead, he rose, flushed
slightly, and accepted the hand offered him.

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Watts," said the journalist, cordially. "Also,
if you are running with the circus and calculate on doing business here
to-day, I'll have to see that you are fired out of town before noon. How
are you? You're looking extremely well."

"Mr. Harkless," answered Watts, "I cherish no hard feelings, and I never
said but what you done exactly right when I left, three years ago. No,
sir; I'm not here in a professional way at all, and I don't want to be
molested. I've connected myself with an oil company, and I'm down here to
look over the ground. It beats poker and fan-tan hollow, though there
ain't as many chances in favor of the dealer, and in oil it's the farmer
that gets the rake-off. I've come back, but in an enterprising spirit this
time, to open up a new field and shed light and money in Carlow. They told
me never to show my face here again, but if you say I stay, I guess I
stay. I always was sure there was oil in the county, and I want to prove
it for everybody's benefit. Is it all right?"

"My dear fellow," laughed the young man, shaking the gambler's hand again,
"it is all right. I have always been sorry I had to act against you.
Everything is all right! Stay and bore to Corea if you like. Did ever you
see such glorious weather?"

"I'll let you in on some shares," Watts called after him as he turned
away. He nodded in reply and was leaving the room when Cynthia detained
him by a flourish of the fly-brush. "Say," she said,--she always called
him "Say"--"You've forgot your flower."

He came back, and thanked her. "Will you pin it on for me, Charmion?"

"I don't know what call you got to speak to me out of my name," she
responded, looking at the floor moodily.

"Why?" he asked, surprised.

"I don't see why you want to make fun of me."

"I beg your pardon, Cynthia," he said gravely. "I didn't mean to do that.
I haven't been considerate. I didn't think you'd be displeased. I'm very
sorry. Won't you pin it on my coat?"

Her face was lifted in grateful pleasure, and she began to pin the rose to
his lapel. Her hands were large and red and trembled. She dropped the
flower, and, saying huskily, "I don't know as I could do it right," seized
violently upon a pile of dishes and hurried from the room.

Harkless rescued the rose, pinned it on his coat himself, and, observing
internally, for the hundredth time, that the red-haired waitress was the
queerest creature in the village, set forth gaily upon his holiday.

When he reached the brick house on the pike he discovered a gentleman sunk
in an easy and contemplative attitude in a big chair behind the veranda
railing. At the click of the gate the lounger rose and disclosed the
stalwart figure and brown, smiling, handsome face of Mr. Lige Willetts, an
habitual devotee of Minnie Briscoe, and the most eligible bachelor of
Carlow. "The ladies will be down right off," he said, greeting the
editor's finery with a perceptible agitation and the editor himself with a
friendly shake of the hand. "Mildy says to wait out here."

But immediately there was a faint rustling within the house: the swish of
draperies on the stairs, a delicious whispering when light feet descend,
tapping, to hearts that beat an answer, the telegraphic message, "We come!
We come! We are near! We are near!" Lige Willetts stared at Harkless. He
had never thought the latter good-looking until he saw him step to the
door to take Miss Sherwood's hand and say in a strange, low, tense voice,
"Good-morning," as if he were announcing, at the least: "Every one in the
world except us two, died last night. It is a solemn thing, but I am very
happy."

They walked, Minnie and Mr. Willetts a little distance in front of the
others. Harkless could not have told, afterward, whether they rode, or
walked, or floated on an air-ship to the court-house. All he knew
distinctly was that a divinity in a pink shirt waist, and a hat that was
woven of gauzy cloud by mocking fairies to make him stoop hideously to see
under it, dwelt for the time on earth and was at his side, dazzling him in
the morning sunshine. Last night the moon had lent her a silvery glamour;
she had something of the ethereal whiteness of night-dews in that watery
light, a nymph to laugh from a sparkling fountain, at the moon or, as he
thought, remembering her courtesy for his pretty speech, perhaps a little
lady of King Louis's court, wandering down the years from Fontainebleau
and appearing to clumsy mortals sometimes, of a June night when the moon
was in their heads.

But to-day she was of the clearest color, a pretty girl, whose gray eyes
twinkled to his in gay companionship. He marked how the sunshine was spun
into the fair shadows of her hair and seemed itself to catch a lustre,
rather than to impart it, and the light of the June day drifted through
the gauzy hat, touching her face with a delicate and tender flush that
came and went like the vibrating pink of early dawn. She had the divinest
straight nose, tip-tilted the faintest, most alluring trifle, and a dimple
cleft her chin, "the deadliest maelstrom in the world!" He thrilled
through and through. He had been only vaguely conscious of the dimple in
the night. It was not until he saw her by daylight that he really knew it
was there.

The village hummed with life before them. They walked through shimmering
airs, sweeter to breathe than nectar is to drink. She caught a butterfly,
basking on a jimson weed, and, before she let it go, held it out to him in
her hand. It was a white butterfly. He asked which was the butterfly.

"Bravo!" she said, tossing the captive craft above their heads and
watching the small sails catch the breeze; "And so you can make little
flatteries in the morning, too. It is another courtesy you should be
having from me, if it weren't for the dustiness of it. Wait till we come
to the board walk."

She had some big, pink roses at her waist. "In the meantime," he answered,
indicating these, "I know very well a lad that would be blithe to accept a
pretty token of any lady's high esteem."

"But you have one, already, a very beautiful one." She gave him a genial
up-and-down glance from head to foot, half quizzical, but so quick he
almost missed it. And then he was glad he had found the straw hat with the
youthful ribbon, and all his other festal vestures. "And a very becoming
flower a white rose is," she continued, "though I am a bold girl to be
blarneying with a young gentleman I met no longer ago than last night."

"But why shouldn't you blarney with a gentleman, when you began by saving
his life?"

"Or, rather, when the gentleman had the politeness to gallop about the
county with me tucked under his arm?" She stood still and laughed softly,
but consummately, and her eyes closed tight with the mirth of it. She had
taken one of the roses from her waist, and, as she stood, holding it by
the long stem, its petals lightly pressed her lips.

"You may have it--in exchange," she said. He bent down to her, and she
began to fasten the pink rose in place of the white one on his coat. She
did not ask him, directly or indirectly, who had put the white one there
for him, because she knew by the way it was pinned that he had done it
himself. "Who is it that ev'ry morning brings me these lovely flow'rs?"
she burlesqued, as he bent over her.

"'Mr. Wimby,'" he returned. "I will point him out to you. You must see
him, and, also, Mr. Bodeffer, the oldest inhabitant--and crossest."

"Will you present them to me?"

"No; they might talk to you and take some of my time with you away from
me." Her eyes sparkled into his for the merest fraction of a second, and
she laughed half mockingly. Then she dropped his lapel and they proceeded.
She did not put the white rose in her belt, but carried it.

The Square was heaving with a jostling, goodnatured, happy, and constantly
increasing crowd that overflowed on Main Street in both directions; and
the good nature of this crowd was augmented in the ratio that its size
increased. The streets were a confusion of many colors, and eager faces
filled every window opening on Main Street or the Square. Since nine
o'clock all those of the courthouse had been occupied, and here most of
the damsels congregated to enjoy the spectacle of the parade, and their
swains attended, gallantly posting themselves at coignes of less vantage
behind the ladies. Some of the faces that peeped from the dark, old court-
house windows were pretty, and some of them were not pretty; but nearly
all of them were rosy-cheeked, and all were pleasant to see because of the
good cheer they showed. Some of the gallants affected the airy and easy,
entertaining the company with badinage and repartee; some were openly
bashful. Now and then one of the latter, after long deliberation,
constructed a laborious compliment for his inamorata, and, after advancing
and propounding half of it, again retired into himself, smit with a
blissful palsy. Nearly all of them conversed in tones that might have
indicated that they were separated from each other by an acre lot or two.

Here and there, along the sidewalk below, a father worked his way through
the throng, a licorice-bedaubed cherub on one arm, his coat (borne with
long enough) on the other; followed by a mother with the other children
hanging to her skirts and tagging exasperatingly behind, holding red and
blue toy balloons and delectable batons of spiral-striped peppermint in
tightly closed, sadly sticky fingers.

A thousand cries rent the air; the strolling mountebanks and gypsying
booth-merchants; the peanut vendors; the boys with palm-leaf fans for
sale; the candy sellers; the popcorn peddlers; the Italian with the toy
balloons that float like a cluster of colored bubbles above the heads of
the crowd, and the balloons that wail like a baby; the red-lemonade man,
shouting in the shrill voice that reaches everywhere and endures forever:
"Lemo! Lemo! Ice-cole lemo! Five cents, a nickel, a half-a-dime, the
twentiethpotofadollah! Lemo! Ice-cole lemo!"--all the vociferating
harbingers of the circus crying their wares. Timid youth, in shoes covered
with dust through which the morning polish but dimly shone, and
unalterably hooked by the arm to blushing maidens, bought recklessly of
peanuts, of candy, of popcorn, of all known sweetmeats, perchance; and
forced their way to the lemonade stands; and there, all shyly, silently
sipped the crimson-stained ambrosia. Everywhere the hawkers dinned, and
everywhere was heard the plaintive squawk of the toy balloon.

But over all rose the nasal cadence of the Cheap John, reeking oratory
from his big wagon on the corner: "Walk up, walk up, walk up, ladies and
gents! Here we are! Here we are! Make hay while we gather the moss. Walk
up, one and all. Here I put this solid gold ring, sumptuous and golden,
eighteen carats, eighteen golden carats of the priceless mother of metals,
toiled fer on the wild Pacific slope, eighteen garnteed, I put this golden
ring, rich and golden, in the package with the hangkacheef, the elegant
and blue-ruled note-paper, self-writing pens, pencil and penholder. Who
takes the lot? Who takes it, ladies and gents?"

His tongue curled about his words; he seemed to love them. "Fer a quat-of-
a-dollah! Don't turn away, young man--you feller in the green necktie,
there. We all see the young lady on your arm is a-langrishing fer the
golden ring and the package. Faint heart never won fair wummin'. There you
are, sir, and you'll never regret it. Go--and be happy! Now, who's the
next man to git solid with his girl fer a quat-of-a-dollah? Life is a
mysterus and unviolable shadder, my friends; who kin read its orgeries?
To-day we are here--but to-morrow we may be in jail. Only a quat-of-a-
dollah! We are Seventh-Day Adventists, ladies and gents, a-givin' away our
belongings in the awful face of Michael, fer a quat-of-a-dollah. The same
price fer each-an-devery individual, lady and gent, man, wummin, wife and
child, and happiness to one and all fer a quat-of-a-dollah!"

Down the middle of the street, kept open between the waiting crowd, ran
barefoot boys, many of whom had not slept at home, but had kept vigil in
the night mists for the coming of the show, and, having seen the muffled
pageant arrive, swathed, and with no pomp and panoply, had returned to
town, rioting through jewelled cobwebs in the morning fields, happy in the
pride of knowledge of what went on behind the scenes. To-night, or
to-morrow, the runaways would face a woodshed reckoning with outraged
ancestry; but now they caracoled in the dust with no thought of the grim
deeds to be done upon them.

In the court-house yard, and so sinning in the very eye of the law, two
swarthy, shifty-looking gentlemen were operating (with some greasy walnut
shells and a pea) what the fanciful or unsophisticated might have been
pleased to call a game of chance; and the most intent spectator of the
group around them was Mr. James Bardlock, the Town Marshal. He was simply
and unofficially and earnestly interested. Thus the eye of Justice may not
be said to have winked upon the nefariousness now under its vision; it
gazed with strong curiosity, an itch to dabble, and (it must be admitted)
a growing hope of profit. The game was so direct and the player so sure.
Several countrymen had won small sums, and one, a charmingly rustic
stranger, with a peculiar accent (he said that him and his goil should now
have a smoot' old time off his winninks--though the lady was not
manifested), had won twenty-five dollars with no trouble at all. The two
operators seemed depressed, declaring the luck against them and the
Plattville people too brilliant at the game.

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