"Dunno—the pictur' don't say," the man replied slowly.
This omission might seem a fatal oversight on the part of the managers, but the show had journeyed half over the continent with no sense of aught lacking until a juvenile patron from Persimmon Cove pounced upon the void and would not be denied.
"What be his name?" he cried in the pangs of desperate curiosity, and the others demanded in shrill unison—"What be his name? What be his name?"
"Dunno—let's go in, M'ria, an' ax his name," the head of the family suggested with a frenzied gleam of temerity in his eyes, and, as the spieler at the door saw them approach, he lifted his horn and began to shrill, "Here's Isaac. Come in, come in. He eats 'em—he eats 'em alive," so close on the heels of the plump infant delegation, that it might have suggested cannibalistic tendencies to those uninitiated in the ways of street fairs.
The band, having finished its tour of the square, changed the march to a potpourri of popular airs, and then ensued an interval weighted with silence after the surcharge of sound, when the people began to gather expectantly along the sidewalks; the merchants and clerks left their wares, and stood in doorways or clustered at gaze in second-story windows; the porches and casements of the courthouse were crowded with feminine faces and pretty attire, the society element of Colbury having gathered to this point of vantage from the remoter residence portion of the town. All the air was a-tingle with a nervous sense of expectation.
Lloyd, the victim of suspense, stood on the sidewalk in front of the principal store. Now and then he took off his brown straw hat and fanned with it, his light-brown hair shining in the sun. The pink flush in his cheek had deepened; his long dark eyelashes occasionally rose and fell with a nervous quiver, but otherwise naught betokened the stress of excitement with which he laboured. He did not notice that he had become a mark for the gaze of the village belles on the courthouse balcony—so handsome a man necessarily attracted attention, and the special smartness of the cut of his fawn-tinted suit, his russet brown shoes, the brown four-in-hand tie, and a pink wild aster in his buttonhole differentiated him from the jeans-clad rural visitors, from the clerks of Colbury, and the sedate, black-coated, elderly merchants. The sunlight had that singularly burnished richness characteristic of the last days of summer; a yearning languor of dreams; a longing for repose. A sense of impending rest was in the atmosphere. The shadows were sharp and clearly defined. Far away he could see the blue mountains quiver through the heated air. Nearer at hand they were purple and bronze and deeply green, with here and there on their slopes the sombre shadow of a dazzlingly white cloud, floating high in the sky. He marked how radiant was the fact, how dark and gruesome the similitude to the eye looking only to the earth, and he was vaguely aware of dispensations in life that this resembled. The landscape was cleft in twain by the glittering line of the river, held in deep-channelled, clifty banks, and the circumference of the Ferris Wheel framed the whole, seen through its great circle.
Hardly a movement disturbed the eager expectancy of the crowd gathered in the square; the cries of the spielers were hushed; the peanut roasters, the candy-stands had ceased to vend their wares; the groups attracted by the pictures of the freaks no longer stood to stare; the merry-go-round was still—all waited in blank patience the great sensation of the day. When the band, grouped about the tall mast near the centre of the place, burst forth suddenly with the first sonorous measures of an inspiring melody there was a galvanic thrill as of panic or turmoil throughout the press. A young mule that was new to town and town ways, hitched to the courthouse fence, had borne much exacerbation of nerves that morning in sights hitherto undreamed of, in sounds terrifying and unexplained; he found in this blare of trumpets under his confiding nose the extremest limits of his endurance. He gave one tremendous bound, burst his halter, scattered the meeker palfreys about him, that snorted in scandalised dismay at his conduct, and struggled only to get out of his way, as he galloped through the crowds and across the square, knocking down several men as he passed, and set out at a breakneck speed on the road to the mountains. His owner gazed disconsolately after him, while the half-affrighted crowd recovered its composure in a guffaw at his expense; then, as he muttered philosophically, "Waal, at that gait he'll soon be home," he addressed himself anew to the waiting expectancy, regardless of the problem of transportation which his own dismounted condition presented.
The band, disregarding the commotion, still flung forth its brazen blare of melody, and suddenly a presence threaded the crowd, which every neck was craned to view. A man, bare-headed in the sun, clad showily in pink satin, slashed with dark red, and pink silk tights, with the deft tread of one shod elastically, was passing through the press. Only once Lloyd had a glimpse of the figure long familiar to him, though to have seen Haxon only in street clothes one could never have recognised Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy. As he began to climb the mast, stepping lightly, swiftly, surely, from one steel spike to another, he became visible to the whole assemblage, and, unused to the accepted methods of applause, a cry of gratulation that was half a guffaw of delight broke forth. The acrobat, without the immediate contrast with taller men, seemed of fair height, and the muscle that was suggestive of undue stoutness in his ordinary garb, showed now in full play and athletic symmetry in the thin, elastic silk covering of limbs and arms. He went speedily to the top, and stepped with a deft lightness upon the board that surmounted it, a pitiful square, not more than eighteen inches in compass. He stood for a moment at full height above the quivering and astonished crowd—higher than the tip of the Ferris wheel, higher than the courthouse tower. The band, playing resolutely on, smote keenly vibrant nerves with a sense of discordance. One of the amazed rural spectators, agonised with the strain of the sensation, called out sharply, "Hi, somebody, can't ye make them dad-burned hawns an' accordions quit blating?"
Lloyd glanced keenly about, but the voice could not be located in the crowd. He deprecated aught that might tend to shake Haxon's nerve, aught unexpected, disagreeable, jarring in the stress of the crisis. He knew how far removed from the actualities was the gallant aspect of that richly-bedight figure, the bonhomie of the smile and flourish of salutation from the frightful perch to the humming crowd below. He knew that the realisation of risking life and limb for a meagre stipend that meant bare subsistence was daunting enough to the bravest, but to court this jeopardy for naught, for the amusement of a scanty cluster of country bumpkins, was revolting to any sane man. He remembered anew the cynical saying that the spectators gather to see the acrobat killed, not to witness his triumph, and then came back to him Haxon's sullen complaint this morning that his "turn" was absolutely without compensation—he was convinced that not one-third of the rural crowd would pay their way into a tent. The external aspects and the "high dive," necessarily an outdoor performance and a free show, would satisfy their curiosity, without enriching the exchequer of the street fair company. This state of mind was a poor preparation for Haxon's difficult feat, for it was indeed extra-hazardous, and in several towns in which they had exhibited its repetition had been forbidden by the authorities.
Lloyd was made aware by the shudder, the sibilance of the shivering crowd that the acrobat had moved, and he glanced up wincingly from under his hat brim. Haxon had stooped; he was now in a sitting posture, his feet dangling over the depths below, and the little flat square of wood supporting his weight. He slowly drew from a pocket a large handkerchief, deliberately folded it, and bound it around his eyes, tying it hard and fast at the back of his head. Then, thus blindfolded, he sat on his precarious perch for a moment, dangling his shapely, muscular legs in their pink silk tights. As he started to rise from his posture, a feminine voice from the balcony of the courthouse cried out hysterically: "Oh, make him come down—don't let him be blindfolded!" and there ensued a twitter of derision and admonition among her companions, with gay raillery that she should show herself so "very green."