A dull red glowed under the paint on the clown's face, and he ran into the ring in response to the signal without a reply. A thundering round of applause greeted him, which broke out again as he glanced all around with a purposely silly leer. Then he caught sight of Jim's honest face, smiling expectantly on him from one of the front benches. It struck him like a pain that this man could not look through his disguise of tawdry circus trappings, and see that a man's heart was beating under the clown's motley. There came a sudden fierce longing to tear off his outward character of mountebank, for a moment, and show Jim the stifled nature underneath, noble enough to recognize the tender chivalry hidden in the rough exterior of the awkward backwoodsman, and to be claimed by him as a kindred spirit.
As he laughed and danced and sang, no one dreamed that his thoughts kept reverting to scenes that the woman's story had called up, or that a plan was slowly shaping in his mind whereby he might serve the homesick old soul waiting out under the oak-tree for the performance to be done.
No wonder that people accustomed to seeing old Mrs. Potter in that place, gowned in homespun, and knitting a coarse yarn sock, had stopped to stare at the newcomer. Such a type of high-born, perfect ladyhood had never appeared in their midst before. The dress that she wore was a relic of the old Maryland days; so was the lace cap that rested like a bit of rare frost-work on her silvery hair. Mrs. Potter knew everybody for miles around, and was ready to laugh and joke with any one who stopped at her stand. Mrs. Ratcliffe sat in dignified silence, a faint colour deepening in her cheeks like the blush of a winter rose. It was so much worse than she had anticipated to have these rude strangers staring at her, as if she were a part of the show. She breathed a sigh of relief when the music began, for it drew the crowds into the tent as if by magic. She and little William were left entirely alone.
With the strident boom of the bass viol came the rank smell of the dog-fennel that hurrying feet had left bruised and wilting in the sun. All the rest of her life, that warm, weedy odour always brought back that humiliating experience like a keen pain. The horses in the surrounding grove stamped restlessly and whinnied as they switched off the flies. The long ride and the unaccustomed labour of the morning had exhausted her. She began to nod in her chair, giving herself up to a sense of drowsiness, for as long as the people were in the tent she would have no occupation.
Her white head dropped lower and lower, until presently she was oblivious to all surroundings. Little William, sitting on the old wood-sled with his back against the cider barrel, was forgotten. M'randy and the ill-kept cabin vanished entirely from her memory. She was back in the old Maryland days on her father's plantation, hedged about with loving forethought, as tenderly sheltered as some delicate white flower. Every path had been made smooth for her, every wish anticipated all her life long, until that day when they had set their faces westward to find Boone. It was coming down the Ohio on that long journey by flatboat that she suddenly woke to the knowledge that her husband's illness had left him a broken-down old man, as weak and irresponsible as a child.
But mercifully her dreams were back of that time. They were back with Boone in his gay young boyhood, when he danced minuets with the Governor's daughter, and entertained his college friends in lordly style on the old plantation. Back of that time when the restlessness of his 'teens sent him roving over the Alleghanies to the frontier, regardless of their long-cherished ambitions for him. Back of the time when in a sudden mad whim he had married a settler's pretty daughter, whom he was ashamed to take back to civilization when he thought of the Baltimore belles to whom he had paid boyish court. He had not stopped to consider her rough speech and uncouth manners. He had been a long time out in the wilderness, he was only twenty, and her full red lips tempted him.
If the dreams could only have stopped then, that little space she slept, while the circus band thrummed and drummed inside the tent, and the shadows of the hot August afternoon lengthened under the still trees outside, would have been a blessed respite. But they repeated the unpleasant parts as well. They came on down to the night of that unwelcome arrival. They showed her the days when Boone lay prostrated with a slow malarial fever; the days when the fierce heat made him drag his pallet desperately from one corner to another across the bare puncheons, trying to find a spot where he could be comfortable. She could see him lying as he had so often lain, with his face turned toward the back door, looking out with aching eyes on the tall corn that filled the little clearing. In his feverish wanderings he complained that it was crowding up around the house trying to choke him. And there was little William, little nine-year-old William, sitting on the floor beside him, attempting to flap away the flies with a bunch of walnut leaves. There were long intervals sometimes when the heat overpowered the child with drowsiness. Then the walnut branch wavered uncertainly or stopped in mid-air, while he leaned against the table leg with closed eyes and open mouth. Sometimes Miranda slept on the door-step, bare-footed, as usual, with a dirty bandage around her sprained ankle.
In that short sleep she seemed to relive the whole summer, that had dragged on until her sense of dependence grew to be intolerable. Miranda's shrill complaining came penetrating again into the tiny room where she sat by her husband's bed, and the old head was bowed once more on his pillow as she sobbed: "Oh, William, dear heart, if the Lord would only take us away together! I cannot bear to be a burden to any one!" It was the sound of her own sobbing that awakened her, and she sat up with a sudden start, realizing that she had been asleep. She must have slept a long time. In that interval of unconsciousness the tavern-keeper from Burnville had erected a rival stand a few rods away.
She saw with dismay his attractive display of "store" goods. Then her face flushed as he began to set out whisky bottles and glasses. Her first impulse was to gather up her belongings and get home as quickly as possible. In her perplexity she looked around for little William. Regarding a circus with such contempt herself, it had never occurred to her that he would care to see it.
He was a timid little fellow, who always hid when company came to the house, and he had never been away from home more than a dozen times in his life. The crowds frightened him, and he stayed as closely as a shadow at his grandmother's elbow until the music began. Then he forgot himself. It thrilled him indescribably, and he watched with longing eyes as the people crowded into the tent. It seemed to him that he must certainly go wild if he could not follow, but they had sold nothing. Even if they had, he would not have dared to ask for enough money to pay his admission, it seemed such an enormous sum. As she began to nod in her chair he began to edge nearer the tent. He could catch now and then a word of the clown's jokes, and hear the roars of laughter that followed. When the clown began to sing, William had one ear pressed against the tent. People clapped and cheered uproariously at the last line of every stanza. He could not hear enough of the words to understand why. In the general commotion he was conscious of only one thing: he was on the outside of that tent, and he must get inside or die.