Time is a potent remedial agent, and with the aid of tar soap and river water and the benign influence of the sun and the wind it so restored the integrity of Clotilda's locks that when it was almost five o'clock that afternoon and the excitement and interest of the fair had reached the culmination it was announced from the stage of the high-class concert that the next attraction, which was already widely advertised, would consist of a song-and-dance turn by a talented young lady of their own county, Miss Clotilda Josephine Belinda Pinnott.
Lloyd's divination of the value of local interest was justified, for the tent was crowded, and the attractions elsewhere suffered in consequence. Several members of the company left their posts, actuated by curiosity concerning this new feature. The Flying Lady ceased her winged gyrations, since her tent was deserted for the nonce, and came and occupied a back seat, where she looked odd enough, in her short white satin gown, with her illusion scarf and her mechanical wings embarrassing her posture and hanging over the bench, but most of the audience consisted of the rural element with a smaller proportion of the town folks all expectantly staring, anticipating who knows what wonders. The orchestra was in place and the music had been for some moments in full swing when suddenly the curtain drew slowly up showing a stage, dappled with the shadows of peach boughs and calcium light. Beyond could be dimly descried the mountains with sunset on the amethystine slopes and a crimson cloud aloft—this effect had been compassed by the simple expedient of dropping a section of the canvas. The rear of the tent gave on a vacant space above the bluffs of the river; the slight elevation of the stage nullified this interval and thus it was against a background of forests and mountains that the oread came softly bounding on the stage, grace personified, as light of foot, as innocently sportive as a fawn. Her left arm upheld the skirt of her yellow dress, into which she had gathered apron-wise a mass of purple grapes; here and there a cluster with leaves and tendrils fell over against her dark red petticoat.
With her right hand she now caught at a peach on the boughs, deftly interlaced beneath the roof of the tent, and now with a touch she steadied the pail or basket on her head, so overladen with the clusters of grapes that only the contour of the vessel could be descried in their midst. And as she danced she sang, the crude loudness of her voice annulled by the crowd, the space, and perchance a trifle of shyness. But indeed this was not predicable of the gay abandon with which she threw herself into the spirit of the "turn." The lime-light, that simulated the clear and burnished sunshine, showed every perfection of her beautiful face, the soft aureola of her auburn hair, all a fluffy mass, once more, of picturesque disorder; the slender charm of her lissome figure and feet and ankles; the exquisite shape of her arms, seeming in the artificial radiance of an alabastine whiteness. To her voice, like a murmurous rune rather than an accompaniment, for Lloyd was afraid that the unaccustomed adjunct to her singing might throw her off the key, the violins played a gentle pizzicato variant of the theme, of which she had been warned to take no heed, and it was in accord with the effect of the whole performance that, in lieu of the last furious whirl of the danseuse, the usual panting bow, the appealing gesture for the plaudits, the sunlit scene should vaguely vanish, the curtain slowly, softly descending, leaving the oread still sporting in the sylvan shadows amongst the immemorial fantasies of the realms of poesy.
The curtain was, however, ready to rise anew; the manager's touch was on the bell, while the pizzicato theme "Kind shepherd, tell me true," sounded from the violins, and now, to simulate an echo, only one repeated the strain, and again the first and second together, with a note from the viol no louder than a booming bee, and again the faint tones of the single instrument, and then—silence.
It remained unbroken for several minutes, but presently the audience stirred and exchanged comments. There was not the clap of a hand, not a voice raised in applause. Nothing could have fallen more absolutely flat than the whole performance. The musicians, their violins still adjusted under their chins ready to begin anew on the first tinkle of the bell, cast surprised glances at one another, then leered open ridicule, and seeing Lloyd turn away from the hand-bell they lowered their instruments and began to scrape them noisily, changing the pitch and tuning them for a performance in the pantomime tent of a comically illustrated version of "A hot time in the old town to-night."
Lloyd's face was flushed, his jaunty confident expectation wilted utterly. He could not conceive how he could be so far out of touch with the sentiment of others that their appraisement should differ so radically. The value of the "turn" in his mind was not abated one jot by their lack of appreciation; he still thought it beautiful, unique, an exquisite rustic idyl, but he listened with a pained curiosity to the comments on every hand, vaguely seeking to comprehend the reason of this divergence of opinion.
"Warn't them shoes jes' old injer-rubbers?" a country woman was saying to another, with a lowered voice and a scandalised mien.
"I reckon mebbe she don't own no better shoes," her interlocutor of charitable interpretations replied.
"Mought hev been afeard she would wear 'em out with all that prancin' an' hoppin' up an' down," a speculative third suggested.
"Wisht I hed my dime back," a grizzly old malcontent sighed. "Special puffawmance—shucks! I don't see nuthin' special in a mountain gal hoppin' up an' down arter a peach—ye kin see that any day ye look out o' the winder or alongside o' the road."