CHAPTER VIII
The morning brought no change in the situation. The sun came grandly up from over the blue and misty mountains, with a train of iridescent and shimmering vapours, and a splendid pageant of clouds, bedecked in red and gold and purple, with scintillating fleckings of jewel-like brilliancy. These were gone, evanescent, before the dew was off the grass that grew all along the sides of the streets, and the sky was densely blue, poised high, high above the lofty mountain ranges, tiers on tiers, that climbed against it as if seeking to reach these spheres of empyreal height. The sunshine was infinitely clear and crystalline. The soft wind had an exquisite freshness and a balsamic tang that the lungs expanded to meet involuntarily as if an instinct recognised its balm of healing.
The breakfast of the little rural hotel, of that peculiar excellence and generous abundance that so often characterise the hostelries in these out-of-the-way places of the South, put new heart into Lloyd, and his hopes were recruited as he went out into the verandah of the hotel lighting his cigar and beholding with benign complacence the array of the Street Fair—the tents, the great circumference of the Ferris wheel, with the mountains framed within its periphery, the merry-go-round, still motionless and vacant as if the dummy horses had just waked up, the humbler employees going hither and thither, on their various duties, getting ready for the day. He did not say a word, for Haxon's mood was so uncertain that it was impossible to know how any casual phrase might affect him. Haxon himself spoke first.
"I suppose I look at that mast every morning with the same feeling that a condemned criminal has for his first glimpse of the gallows," he said bitterly.
Lloyd paused to throw away the match with which he had lighted his cigar. "Gammon!" he exclaimed, contemptuously. "You couldn't be persuaded to cut out that stunt of yours if I begged you for a month." The acrobat's brow cleared, and Lloyd breathed more freely. He had by lucky chance said exactly what Haxon desired to hear. He wished to feel that he acted by his own free choice—that he was not coerced because the hour was set, the feat advertised, and the public waited.
The morning was never characterised by special activity in the Street Fair. The world had all its insistent duties, contending with the delights of sight-seeing. Breakfast was to be discussed, stores opened, the municipal court sessions to be held, the mail to be distributed, and only gradually did spectators begin to gather in the streets, and the spielers to take their stand.
"Only an hour, now,—an hour of life," said Haxon, as the clock in the courthouse tower clanged out its tale of strokes; "when another hour strikes I may be in hell."
Lloyd burst out laughing. "Seem to understand your own deserts!" he cried with a joyous inflection.
And once more Haxon smiled responsive.
Lloyd could not forbear a sigh of relief, and catching his breath it was metamorphosed into a spurious yawn, so fearful was he of shaking his confrère's poise.