CHAPTER V
When Hilary Lloyd in a flutter of enthusiasm detailed to his partner the fact that he had found a charming new attraction Haxon lowered indifferent. He felt that the show was already good enough for all reasonable purposes.
"I had rather hear that you have found transportation," Haxon said sourly.
"It may help to the same thing," Lloyd argued, bent on keeping up his own and his confrère's spirits. "It may draw more of the country folks. There's a kind of interest in seein' one's own sort perform—if the thing is well done."
As Lloyd went about the square the next day, alert, ready, seeming so capable, so entirely at ease mentally, the flagging spirits of the members of the company were recruited by his cheerful presence, and their secret troublous fears of a desperate stranding in this out-of-the-way corner of the world were exorcised.
It was indeed an humble cause in which to wage so hard-fought a battle. The hopeless courage, the gallant temper, the ingenious expedients, the hearty strivings might have graced a higher plane of achievement. He kept his smiling face, his quiet, serene manner, his courteous suavity to strangers, his unruffled placidity with his employees as uninfluenced as if he did not behold in the immediate future the ghastly vision of the complete collapse and rout of his little force, overwhelmed by a pitiless and grotesque fate. It was ever with him, predominant in his mind. He could not even look at the boa constrictor, which he loathed, without the sardonic reflection how the possession of the reptile would embarrass the holders of the mortgage which their earlier disasters had placed on all the portable property of the show. He had a sensitively organised nature, and it was a positive grief to him that Haxon could not meet their mutual misfortunes in the spirit of good comradeship. Haxon had protested that he did not hold his partner accountable for their beclouded prospects in this last move; nevertheless his sullen disaffection, his lowering silence, his deep aversion to the place and people, his despair that he could formulate no plan of getting away, added a thousand fold to the normal difficulties of the situation, bereft Lloyd of advice and the sense of support, and magnified his fears by the reflection of another's. Lloyd was but a strolling showman, yet he braced his nerves like a soldier in the last charge of a forlorn hope. All smartly groomed as he was, he lent a hand to every need that became pressing as the morning wore on and the preparations for opening the Fair neared completion. He whisked a brisk brush in the lettering of an unfinished sign, while the painter who was one of the clowns in a pantomime "turn" must needs run to paint his face. He wielded a hammer in driving down a tent-peg which the straining of the wind in yesterday's storm had loosened in the ground. He personally supervised the unfurling of the flag and eyed it with a pose of glad satisfaction as it rose to the tip of the tall staff and floated out buoyantly to the soft breeze. He called the bandmaster to account while the instruments were in process of tuning, and himself made sure of a perfect accord, for he had a fine ear. When the first tones of the blaring melody issued upon the air as the military figures with their brazen instruments and tawdry uniforms marched out to make the circuit of the square no one could have divined—as he stood on the sidewalk and watched the pigmy effort at pageant,—the turmoil of emotion in his heart, his racking pity for them, for all the employees, for himself and his partner; his keen sense of responsibility that cut him like a knife; his bruised and desperate hope; his trampled and abased and writhing pride; his awful doubts of the future—oh, that the veil might be lifted one moment, whatever the Gorgon face revealed! Now and again he heard his name spoken as a magnate and celebrity, and was aware that he was pointed out by the denizens of the town to the country folk who had waggoned in to see the show. Certain of the citizens, who had affected to think slightingly of him and his enterprise, were not above sharing the prestige of his notoriety, and the distinction conferred by his acquaintance in the estimation of these rural wights.
These spectators were few, however, chiefly heavy, jeans-clad worthies with their sunbonneted helpmeets, and leading by the hand a goodly delegation of tow-headed olive branches. They all seemed disposed to circle, inquisitively staring, about the tents; not one had yet passed a ticket-seller's wicket. The very signs were alluring to their unaccustomed eyes—the picture of the boa constrictor had a horrifying fascination to a family group who had brought up motionless in front of it, the paterfamilias, chin-whiskered, loose-jointed, his jaws slowly working on his quid of tobacco, his shoulders bent, shortening the set of his brown coat in the back, his knees crooked, drawing the trousers to a generous display of wrinkled, blue yarn socks, a child of two years poised on his elbow, an elder one holding to his hand, two more clinging to his coat tails and the last acquisition, an infant, in its mother's arms.
"M'ria, M'ria," the man exclaimed wildly, "do you uns reckon fur sure that thar sarpient, whut's pictured thar, air actially inside that tent?"
His wife shifted her snuff-brush in her mouth to permit enunciation. "I hope ter the powers they hev got him tied," she rejoined.
Had the worthy couple monopolised the interest of speculation they might have remained indefinitely spellbound, exchanging sapient conjectures concerning the snake, but one of the children piped up suddenly with that juvenile proclivity for the unanswerable. "What be his name, dad?" and the rest instantly chorused—"What be his name?"