The Town Marshal smiled uneasily and deprecatingly about him, and, meeting only angry glances, hearing only words of condemnation, he pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.l-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 sh.e.l.l-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, hoa.r.s.ely. "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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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-b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter-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 pa.s.sed the editor the apple-b.u.t.ter, 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.
""O bright, translucent, cerulean hue, Let my wide wings drift on in you,""
said Harkless, pointing them out to Helen.
"You seem to get a good deal of fun out of this kind of weather,"
observed Lige, as he wiped his brow and shifted his chair out of the sun.