The Gentleman From Indiana

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It was wonderful how the young couples worked their way arm-in-arm through
the thickest crowds, never separating. Even at the lemonade stands they
drank holding the glasses in their outer hands--such are the sacrifices
demanded by etiquette. But, observing the gracious outpouring of fortune
upon the rustic with the rare accent, a youth in a green tie disengaged
his arm--for the first time in two hours--from that of a girl upon whose
finger there shone a ring, sumptuous and golden, and, conducting her to a
corner of the yard, bade her remain there until he returned. He had to
speak to Hartly Bowlder, he explained.

Then he plunged, red-faced and excited, into the circle about the shell
manipulators, and offered, to lay a wager.

"Hol' on there, Hen Fentriss," thickly objected a flushed young man beside
him, "iss my turn."

"I'm first. Hartley," returned the other. "You can hold yer bosses a
minute, I reckon."

"Plenty fer each and all, chents," interrupted one of the shell-men.
"Place yer spondulicks on de little ball. Wich is de next lucky one to win
our money? Chent bets four sixty-five he seen de little ball go under de
middle shell. Up she comes! Dis time _we_ wins; Plattville can't win
_every_ time. Who's de next chent?"

Fentriss edged slowly out of the circle, abashed, and with rapidly
whitening cheeks. He paused for a moment, outside, slowly realizing that
all his money had gone in one wild, blind whirl--the money he had earned
so hard and saved so hard, to make a holiday for his sweetheart and
himself. He stole one glance around the building to where a patient figure
waited for him. Then he fled down a side alley and soon was out upon the
country road, tramping soddenly homeward through the dust, his chin sunk
in his breast and his hands clenched tight at his sides. Now and then he
stopped and bitterly hurled a stone at a piping bird on a fence, or gay
Bob White in the fields. At noon the patient figure was still waiting in
the corner of the court-house yard, meekly twisting the golden ring upon
her finger.

But the flushed young man who had spoken thickly to her deserter drew an
envied roll of bankbills from his pocket and began to bet with tipsy
caution, while the circle about the gamblers watched with fervid interest,
especially Mr. Bardlock, Town Marshal.

From far up Main Street came the cry "She's a-comin'! She's a-comin'!"
and, this announcement of the parade proving only one of a dozen false
alarms, a thousand discussions took place over old-fashioned silver
timepieces as to when "she" was really due. Schofields' Henry was much
appealed to as an arbiter in these discussions, from a sense of his having
a good deal to do with time in a general sort of way; and thus Schofields'
came to be reminded that it was getting on toward ten o'clock, whereas, in
the excitement of festival, he had not yet struck nine. This, rushing
forthwith to do, he did; and, in the elation of the moment, seven or eight
besides. Miss Helen Sherwood was looking down on the mass of shifting
color from a second-story window--whither many an eye was upturned in
wonder--and she had the pleasure of seeing Schofields' emerge on the steps
beneath her, when the bells had done, and heard the cheers (led by Mr.
Martin) with which the laughing crowd greeted his appearance after the
performance of his feat.

She turned beamingly to Harkless. "What a family it is!" she laughed.
"Just one big, jolly family. I didn't know people could be like this until
I came to Plattville."

"That is the word for it," he answered, resting his hand on the casement
beside her. "I used to think it was desolate, but that was long ago." He
leaned from the window to look down. In his dark cheek was a glow Carlow
folk had never seen there; and somehow he seemed less thin and tired;
indeed, he did not seem tired at all, by far the contrary; and he carried
himself upright (when he was not stooping to see under the hat), though
not as if he thought about it. "I believe they are the best people I
know," he went on. "Perhaps it is because they have been so kind to me;
but they are kind to each other, too; kind, good people----"

"I know," she said, nodding--a flower on the gauzy hat set to vibrating in
a tantalizing way. "I know. There are fat women who rock and rock on
piazzas by the sea, and they speak of country people as the 'lower
classes.' How happy this big family is in not knowing it is the lower
classes!" "We haven't read Nordau down here," said John. "Old Tom Martin's
favorite work is 'The Descent of Man.' Miss Tibbs admires Tupper, and
'Beulah,' and some of us possess the works of E. P. Roe--and why not?"

"Yes; what of it," she returned, "since you escape Nordau? I think the
conversation we hear from the other windows is as amusing and quite as
loud as most of that I hear in Rouen during the winter; and Rouen, you
know, is just like any other big place nowadays, though I suppose there
are Philadelphians, for instance, who would be slow to believe a statement
like that."

"Oh, but they are not all of Philadelphia----" He left the sentence,
smilingly.

"And yet somebody said, 'The further West I travel the more convinced I am
the Wise Men came from the East.'"

"Yes," he answered. "'From' is the important word in that."

"It was a girl from Southeast Cottonbridge, Massachusetts," said Helen,
"who heard I was from Indiana and asked me if I didn't hate to live so far
away from things." There was a pause, while she leaned out of the window
with her face aside from him. Then she remarked carelessly, "I met her at
Winter Harbor."

"Do you go to Winter Harbor?" he asked.

"We have gone there every summer until this one, for years. Have you
friends who go there?"

"I had--once. There was a classmate of mine from Rouen----"

"What was his name? Perhaps I know him." She stole a glance at him. His
face had fallen into sad lines, and he looked like the man who had come up
the aisle with the Hon. Kedge Halloway. A few moments before he had seemed
another person entirely.

"He's forgotten me, I dare say. I haven't seen him for seven years; and
that's a long time, you know. Besides, he's 'out in the world,' where
remembering is harder. Here in Plattville we don't forget."

"Were you ever at Winter Harbor?"

"I was--once. I spent a very happy day there long ago, when you must have
been a little girl. Were you there in--"

"Listen!" she cried. "The procession is coming. Look at the crowd!" The
parade had seized a psychological moment.

There was a fanfare of trumpets in the east. Lines of people rushed for
the street, and, as one looked down on the straw hats and sunbonnets and
many kinds of finer head apparel, tossing forward, they seemed like surf
sweeping up the long beaches.

She was coming at last. The boys whooped in the middle of the street; some
tossed their arms to heaven, others expressed their emotion by
somersaults; those most deeply moved walked on their hands. In the
distance one saw, over the heads of the multitude, tossing banners and the
moving crests of triumphal cars, where "cohorts were shining in purple and
gold." She _was_ coming. After all the false alarms and disappointments,
she was coming!

There was another flourish of music. Immediately all the band gave sound,
and then, with blare of brass and the crash of drums, the glory of the
parade burst upon Plattville. Glory in the utmost! The resistless impetus
of the march-time music; the flare of royal banners, of pennons on the
breeze; the smiling of beautiful Court Ladies and great, silken Nobles;
the swaying of howdahs on camel and elephant, and the awesome shaking of
the earth beneath the elephant's feet, and the gleam of his small but
devastating eye (every one declared he looked the alarmed Mr. Snoddy full
in the face as he passed, and Mr. Snoddy felt not at all reassured when
Tom Martin severely hinted that it was with the threatening glance of a
rival); then the badinage of the clown, creaking along in his donkey cart;
the terrific recklessness of the spangled hero who was drawn by in a cage
with two striped tigers; the spirit of the prancing steeds that drew the
rumbling chariots, and the grace of the helmeted charioteers; the splendor
of the cars and the magnificence of the paintings with which they were
adorned; the ecstasy of all this glittering, shining, gorgeous pageantry
needed even more than walking on your hands to express.

Last of all came the tooting calliope, followed by swarms of boys as it
executed, "Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie" with infinite dash and
gusto.

When it was gone, Miss Sherwood's intent gaze relaxed--she had been
looking on as eagerly as any child,--and she turned to speak to Harkless
and discovered that he was no longer in the room; instead, she found
Minnie and Mr. Willetts, whom he had summoned from another window.

"He was called away," explained Lige. "He thought he'd be back before the
parade was over, and said you were enjoying it so much he didn't want to
speak to you."

"Called away?" she said, inquiringly.

Minnie laughed. "Oh, everybody sends for Mr. Harkless."

"It was a farmer, name of Bowlder," added Mr. Willetts. "His son Hartley's
drinking again, and there ain't any one but Harkless can do anything with
him. You let him tackle a sick man to nurse, or a tipsy one to handle, and
I tell you," Mr. Willetts went on with enthusiasm, "he is at home. It
beats me,--and lots of people don't think college does a man any good!
Why, the way he cured old Fis----"

"See!" cried Minnie, loudly, pointing out of the window. "Look down
there. Something's happened."

There was a swirl in the crowd below. Men were running around a corner of
the court-house, and the women and children were harking after. They went
so fast, and there were so many of them, that immediately that whole
portion of the yard became a pushing, tugging, pulling, squirming jam of
people.

"It's on the other side," said Lige. "We can see from the hall window.
Come quick, before these other folks fill it up."

They followed him across the building, and looked down on an agitated
swarm of faces. Five men were standing on the entrance steps to the door
below, and the crowd was thickly massed beyond, leaving a little
semicircle clear about the steps. Those behind struggled to get closer,
and leaped in the air to catch a glimpse of what was going on. Harkless
stood alone on the top step, his hand resting on the shoulder of the pale
and contrite and sobered Hartley. In the clear space, Jim Bardlock was
standing with sheepishly hanging head, and between him and Harkless were
the two gamblers of the walnut shells. The journalist held in his hand the
implements of their profession.

"Give it all up," he was saying in his steady voice. "You've taken eighty-
six dollars from this boy. Hand it over."

The men began to edge closer to the crowd, giving little, swift,
desperate, searching looks from left to right, and right to left, moving
nervously about, like weasels in a trap. "Close up there tight," said
Harkless, sharply. "Don't let them out."

"W'y can't we git no square treatment here?" one of the gamblers whined;
but his eyes, blazing with rage, belied the plaintive passivity of his
tone. "We been running no skin. Wy d'ye say we gotter give up our own
money? You gotter prove it was a skin. We risked our money fair."

"Prove it! Come up here, Eph Watts. Friends," the editor turned to the
crowd, smiling, "friends, here's a man we ran out of town once, because he
knew too much about things of this sort. He's come back to us again and
he's here to stay. He'll give us an object-lesson on the shell game."

"It's pretty simple," remarked Mr. Watts. "The best way is to pick up the
ball with your second finger and the back part of your thumb as you
pretend to lay the shell down over it: this way." He illustrated, and
showed several methods of manipulation, with professional sang-froid; and
as he made plain the easy swindle by which many had been duped that
morning, there arose an angry and threatening murmur.

"You all see," said Harkless, raising his voice a little, "what a simple
cheat it is--and old as Pharaoh. Yet a lot of you stood around and lost
your own money, and stared like idiots, and let Hartley Bowlder lose
eighty-odd dollars on a shell racket, and not one of you lifted a hand.
How hard did you work for what these two cheap crooks took from you? Ah!"
he cried, "it is because you were greedy that they robbed you so easily.
You know it's true. It's when you want to get something for nothing that
the 'confidence men' steal the money you sweat for and make the farmer a
laughing stock. And _you_, Jim Bardlock, Town Marshal!--you, who confess
that you 'went in the game sixty cents' worth, yourself--" His eyes were
lit with wrath as he raised his accusing hand and levelled it at the
unhappy municipal.

The Town Marshal smiled uneasily and deprecatingly about him, and, meeting
only angry glances, hearing only words of condemnation, he passed his hand
unsteadily over his fat mustache, shifted from one leg to the other and
back again, looked up, looked down, and then, an amiable and pleasure-
loving man, beholding nothing but accusation and anger in heaven and
earth, and wishing nothing more than to sink into the waters under the
earth, but having no way of reaching them, finding his troubles quite
unbearable, and unable to meet the manifold eye of man, he sought relief
after the unsagacious fashion of a larger bird than he. His burly form
underwent a series of convulsions not unlike sobs, and he shut his eyes
tightly and held them so, presenting a picture of misery unequalled in the
memory of any spectator. Harkless's outstretched hand began to shake.
"You!" he tried to continue--"you, a man elected to----"

There came from the crowd the sound of a sad, high-keyed voice, drawling:
"That's a nice vest Jim's got on, but it ain't hardly the feathers fitten
for an ostrich, is it?"

The editor's gravity gave way; he broke into a ringing laugh and turned
again to the shell-men. "Give up the boy's money. Hurry."

"Step down here and git it," said the one who had spoken.

There was a turbulent motion in the crowd, and a cry arose, "Run 'em out!
Ride 'em on a rail! Tar and feathers! Run 'em out o' town!"

"I wouldn't dilly-dally long if I were you," said Harkless, and his advice
seemed good to the shell-men. A roll of bills, which he counted and turned
over to the elder Bowlder, was sullenly placed in his hand. The fellow who
had not yet spoken clutched the journalist's sleeve with his dirty hand.

"We hain't done wit' youse," he said, hoarsely. "Don't belief it, not fer
a minute, see?"

The Town Marshal opened his eyes briskly, and placing a hand on each of
the gamblers, said: "I hereby do arrest your said persons, .and declare
you my prisoners." The cry rose again, louder: "Run 'em out! String 'em
up! Hang them! Hang them!" and a forward rush was made.

"This way, Jim. Be quick," said Harkless, quietly, bending down and
jerking one of the gamblers half-way up the steps. "Get through the hall
to the other side and then run them to the lock-up. No one will stop you
that way. Watts and I will hold this door." Bardlock hustled his prisoners
through the doorway, and the crowd pushed up the steps, while Harkless
struggled to keep the vestibule clear until Watts got the double doors
closed. "Stand back, here!" he cried; "it's all over. Don't be foolish.
The law is good enough for us. Stand back, will you!"

He was laughing a little, shoving them back with open hand and elbow, when
a small, compact group of men suddenly dashed up the steps together, and a
heavy stick swung out over their heads. A straw hat with a gay ribbon
sailed through the air. The journalist's long arms went out swiftly from
his body in several directions, the hands not open, but clenched and hard.
The next instant he and Mr. Watts stood alone on the steps, and a man with
a bleeding, blaspheming mouth dropped his stick and tried to lose himself
in the crowd. Mr. Watts was returning something he had not used to his
hip-pocket.

"Prophets of Israel!" exclaimed William Todd, ruefully, "it wasn't Eph
Watts's pistol. Did you see Mr. Harkless? I was up on them steps when he
begun. I don't believe he needs as much takin' care of as we think."

"Wasn't it one of them Cross-Roads devils that knocked his hat off?" asked
Judd Bennett. "I thought I see Bob Skillett run up with a club."

Harkless threw open the doors behind him; the hall was empty. "You may
come in now," he said. "This isn't my court-house."

CHAPTER VIII

GLAD AFTERNOON: THE GIRL BY THE BLUE TENT-POLE

They walked slowly back along the pike toward the brick house. The white-
ruffed fennel reached up its dusty yellow heads to touch her skirts as she
passed, and then drooped, satisfied, against the purple iron-weed at the
roadside. In the noonday silence no cricket chirped nor locust raised its
lorn monotone; the tree shadows mottled the road with blue, and the level
fields seemed to pant out a dazzling breath, the transparent "heat-waves"
that danced above the low corn and green wheat.

He was stooping very much as they walked; he wanted to be told that he
could look at her for a thousand years. Her face was rarely and
exquisitely modelled, but, perhaps, just now the salient characteristic of
her beauty (for the salient characteristic seemed to be a different thing
at different times) was the coloring, a delicate glow under the white
skin, that bewitched him in its seeming a reflection of the rich
benediction of the noonday sun that blazed overhead.

Once he had thought the way to the Briscoe homestead rather a long walk;
but now the distance sped malignantly; and strolled they never so slow, it
was less than a "young bird's flutter from a wood." With her acquiescence
he rolled a cigarette, and she began to hum lightly the air of a song, a
song of an ineffably gentle, slow movement.

That, and a reference of the morning, and, perhaps, the smell of his
tobacco mingling with the fragrance of her roses, awoke again the keen
reminiscence of the previous night within him. Clearly outlined before him
rose the high, green slopes and cool cliff-walls of the coast of Maine,
while his old self lazily watched the sharp little waves through half-
closed lids, the pale smoke of his cigarette blowing out under the rail of
a waxen deck where he lay cushioned. And again a woman pelted his face
with handfuls of rose-petals and cried: "Up lad and at 'em! Yonder is
Winter Harbor." Again he sat in the oak-raftered Casino, breathless with
pleasure, and heard a young girl sing the "Angel's Serenade," a young girl
who looked so bravely unconscious of the big, hushed crowd that listened,
looked so pure and bright and gentle and good, that he had spoken of her
as "Sir Galahad's little sister." He recollected he had been much taken
with this child; but he had not thought of her from that time to this, he
supposed; had almost forgotten her. No! Her face suddenly stood out to his
view as though he saw her with his physical eye--a sweet and vivacious
child's face with light-brown hair and gray eyes and a short upper lip.
. . . And the voice. . . .

He stopped short and struck his palms together. "You are Tom Meredith's
little cousin!"

"The Great Harkless!" she answered, and stretched out her hand to him.

"I remember you!"

"Isn't it time?"

"Ah, but I never forgot you," he cried. "I thought I had. I didn't know
who it was I was remembering. I thought it was fancy, and it was memory. I
never forgot your voice, singing--and I remembered your face too; though I
thought I didn't." He drew a deep breath. "_That_ was why----"

"Tom Meredith has not forgotten you," she said, as he paused.

"Would you mind shaking hands once more?" he asked. She gave him her hand
again. "With all my heart. Why?"

"I'm making a record at it. Thank you."

"They called me 'Sir Galahad's little sister' all one summer because the
Great John Harkless called me that. You danced with me in the evening."

"Did I?"

"Ah," she said, shaking her head, "you were too busy being in love with
Mrs. Van Skuyt to remember a waltz with only me! I was allowed to meet you
as a reward for singing my very best, and you--you bowed with the
indulgence of a grandfather, and asked me to dance."

"Like a grandfather? How young I was then! How time changes us!"

"I'm afraid my conversation did not make a great impression upon you," she
continued.

"But it did. I am remembering very fast. If you will wait a moment, I will
tell you some of the things you said."

The girl laughed merrily. Whenever she laughed he realized that it was
becoming terribly difficult not to tell her how adorable she was. "I
wouldn't risk it, if I were you," she warned him, "because I didn't speak
to you at all. I shut my lips tight and trembled all over every bit of the
time I was dancing with you. I did not sleep that night, because I was so
unhappy, wondering what the Great Harkless would think of me. I knew he
thought me unutterably stupid because I couldn't talk to him. I wanted to
send him word that I knew I had bored him. I couldn't bear for him not to
know that I knew I had. But he was not thinking of me in any way. He had
gone to sea again in a big boat, the ungrateful pirate, cruising with Mrs.
Van Skuyt."

"How time _does_ change us!" said John. "You are wrong, though; I did
think of you; I have al----"

"Yes," she interrupted, tossing her head in airy travesty of the stage
coquette, "you think so--I mean you say so--now. Away with you and your
blarneying!"

And so they went through the warm noontide, and little he cared for the
heat that wilted the fat mullein leaves and made the barefoot boy, who
passed by, skip gingerly through the burning dust with anguished mouth and
watery eye. Little he knew of the locust that suddenly whirred his mills
of shrillness in the maple-tree, and sounded so hot, hot, hot; or those
others that railed at the country quiet from the dim shade around the
brick house; or even the rain-crow that sat on the fence and swore to them
in the face of a sunny sky that they should see rain ere the day were
done.

Little the young man recked of what he ate at Judge Briscoe's good noon
dinner: chicken wing and young roas'n'-ear; hot rolls as light as the
fluff of a summer cloudlet; and honey and milk; and apple-butter flavored
like spices of Arabia; and fragrant, flaky cherry-pie; and cool, rich,
yellow cream. Lige Willetts was a lover, yet he said he asked no better
than to Just go on eating that cherry-pie till a sweet death overtook him;
but railroad sandwiches and restaurant chops might have been set before
Harkless for all the difference it would have made to him.

At no other time is a man's feeling of companionship with a woman so
strong as when he sits at table with her-not at a "decorated" and
becatered and bewaitered table, but at a homely, appetizing, wholesome
home table like old Judge Briscoe's. The very essence of the thing is
domesticity, and the implication is utter confidence and liking. There are
few greater dangers for a bachelor. An insinuating imp perches on his
shoulder, and, softly tickling the bachelor's ear with the feathers of an
arrow-shaft, whispers: "Pretty nice, isn't it, eh? Rather pleasant to have
that girl sitting there, don't you think? Enjoy having her notice your
butter-plate was empty? Think it exhilarating to hand her those rolls?
Looks nice, doesn't she? Says 'Thank you' rather prettily? Makes your
lonely breakfast seem mighty dull, doesn't it? How would you like to have
her pour your coffee for you to-morrow, my boy? How would it seem to have
such pleasant company all the rest of your life? Pretty cheerful, eh?"

When Miss Sherwood passed the editor the apple-butter, the casual, matter-
of-course way she did it entranced him in a strange, exquisite wonderment.
He did not set the dish down when she put it in his hand, but held it
straight out before him, just looking at it, until Mr. Willetts had a
dangerous choking fit, for which Minnie was very proud of Lige; no one
could have suspected that it was the veil of laughter. When Helen told
John he really must squeeze a lemon into his iced tea, he felt that his
one need in life was to catch her up in his arms and run away with her,
not anywhere in particular, but just run and run and run away.

After dinner they went out to the veranda and the gentlemen smoked. The
judge set his chair down on the ground, tilted back in it with his feet on
the steps, and blew a wavery domed city up in the air. He called it solid
comfort. He liked to sit out from under the porch roof, he said; he wanted
to see more of the sky. The others moved their chairs down to join him in
the celestial vision. There had blown across the heaven a feathery, thin
cloud or two, but save for these, there was nothing but glorious and
tender, brilliant blue. It seemed so clear and close one marvelled the
little church spire in the distance did not pierce it; yet, at the same
time, the eye ascended miles and miles into warm, shimmering ether. Far
away two buzzards swung slowly at anchor, half-way to the sun.

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