CHAPTER XXII
THE STREET FAIR
Littleburg was trembling under the fearful din of a carnival too big for it, when Abbott Ashton, after his weeks of absence returned to find himself at Hamilton Gregory's door. He discovered old Mrs. Jefferson in the front room—this July night—because old age is on no friendly terms with falling dew; but every window was open.
"Come in," she cried, delighted at sight of his handsome smiling face —he had been smiling most of the time during his drive from Simmtown with Robert Clinton. "Here I sit by the window, where sometimes I imagine I hear a faint far-away sound. I judge it's from some carnival band. Take this chair and listen attentively; your ears are younger— now!"
Abbott did not get all of this because of the Gargantuan roar that swept through the window, but he gravely tilted his head, then took the proffered ear-trumpet: "You are right," he said, "I hear something."
"It's the street fair," she announced triumphantly. "But sometimes it's louder. How fine you look, Abbott—just as if your conscience doesn't hurt you for disappearing without leaving a clue to the mystery. You needn't be looking around, sir,—Fran isn't here."
"I wonder where she is?" Abbott smiled, "I'm dreadfully impatient to tell her the good news. Mrs. Jefferson, I'm to teach in a college— it's a much bigger thing than the position I lost here. And I have a chance to work out some ideas that I know Fran will like. I used to think that everything ought to be left precisely as it is, because it's been that way so long—I mean the church; and schools; and—and society. But I've made up my mind that nothing is right, unless it works right."
Mrs. Jefferson listened in desperate eagerness. "A watch?" she hazarded.
"Exactly," he responded hastily. "If a watch doesn't run, what's the use of its being pretty? And if churches develop a gift of tongue instead of character, what's the value of their prayers and songs? And I've concluded that if schools don't teach us how to live, they have the wrong kind of springs and wheels. Where is Fran, Mrs. Jefferson?"
"Still," she temporized, "we can't get along without watches, Abbott."
"No, nor schools, nor churches. But they must have good works. Is Fran down at the fair, do you think?"
The other bent toward him stealthily. "Ask where Mrs. Gregory is," she said, wonderfully significant.
"Well?"
"Abbott, listen: she's gone a-visiting!"
"Visiting!" Abbott was surprised.
"Yes, visiting, she that hasn't been off this place to visit a soul for ages. I tell you, boy, times have changed, here. Maybe you think nobody'd be left at home to visit; but Fran has found that there is a woman in town that she used to know, and the woman has a mighty sick child, and Lucy has gone to sit by it, so the mother can rest. Think of that, Abbott, think of Lucy going anywhere. My! Have you heard that we've lost a secretary at this place? I mean the future Mrs. Bob. Yes, she's gone. I'd as soon have thought of the court-house being picked up and set in the parlor."
Mrs. Jefferson drew back and said succinctly, "Fran did it!"
Her cap quivered as she leaned forward again. "Get her to tell you all about it. We darsen't speak about it much because of the neighbors. We conspired, Fran and I. Yes, she's down at the carnival, you boy!"
Abbott hastily departed. Later he found himself in a cloud-burst of confetti, on the "city square" and when he had cleared his eyes of the red and white snow, he saw Fran disappearing like a bit of crimson glass at the bottom of a human kaleidoscope. Fran had thrown the confetti, then fled—how much brighter she was than all the other shifting units of humanity.
He fought his way toward her determinedly, finding she was about to be submerged. Was she actually trying to elude him?
"Fran!" he cried reproachfully as he reached her side. "How have you the heart to run away from me after I've been lost for weeks? Nobody knew I'd ever be found."
Fran gave up flight, and stopped to look at him. A smile slipped from the corner of one eye, to get caught at the corner of her demure mouth. "When you disappeared, you left me yourself. A friend always does. I've had you all the time."
Abbott glowed. "Still, it isn't exactly the same as if I had been able to touch your hand. Suppose we shake hands, little friend; what do you say?"
"I don't say anything," Fran retorted; "I just shake."
Her handclasp was so hearty that he was slightly disconcerted. Was her friendship so great that it left no room in her heart for something greater? Fran's emotions must not be compressed under a friendship- monopoly, but just now he hardly saw his way toward fighting such a trust.
"I want to talk to you, Fran, talk and talk, oh, just about all the long night through! Come, let me take you back home—"
"Home? Me? Ridiculous! But I'll tell you the best place that ever was, for the kind of talking you and I want to do to each other. Abbott, it won't matter to you—will it?—at what place I say to meet me, at about half-past nine?"
"Why, Fran! It's not eight o'clock," Abbott remonstrated, glancing toward the court-house clock to find it stopped, and then consulting his watch. "Do you think I am going to wait till—"
"Till half-past nine," said Fran, nonchalantly. "Very well, then."
"But what will we do in the meantime, if we're not to talk till—"
"We?" she mocked him. "Listen, Abbott, don't look so cross. I've a friend in town with a sick daughter, and she's a real friend so I must go to help her, a while."
He was both mystified and disappointed. "I didn't know you had any such friends in Littleburg," he remonstrated, remembering how unkind tongues had set the village against her.
Fran threw back her head, and her gesture was full of pride and confidence. "Oh!" she cried, "the town is full of my friends."
He could only stare at her in dumb amazement.
"All right, then," she said with the greatest cheerfulness, "at half- past nine. You understand the date—nine-thirty. Of course you wouldn't have me desert a friend in trouble. Where shall we meet, Abbott—at nine-thirty? Shall we say, at the Snake-Eater's?"
"No. We shall not say at the Snake-Eater's. Fran, I want you right now. I know nothing of this sick friend, but I need you more than anybody else in the world could possibly need you."
Fran said nothing, but her eyes looked at him unfaltering. She flashed up out of the black continuity of the throng like a ray of light glancing along the surface of the sea. It needed no sun in the sky to make Fran-beams.
"Go, Fran," he exclaimed, "I'll wait for you as long as I must, even if it's the eternity of nine-thirty; and I'd go anywhere in the world to meet you, even to the den of the Snake-Eater."
"That's the way for a friend to talk!" she declared, suddenly radiant —a full Fran-sun, now, instead of the slender penetrating Fran-beam.
Seeing a leg-lined lane opening before her, she darted forward.
Abbott called—"But I can't promise to talk to you as a friend, when we meet—I mean, just as a friend."
Fran looked back at him, still dazzling. "I only ask you to treat me as well," she said with assumed humility, "as we are told we ought to treat our—enemies."