"So I thought I would tell you," she faltered, at a loss, now that the disclosure was at an end.
"Now, Lydy, I want to say one thing to you—and mind, this is straight goods—I thank you on the knees of my heart for what you have said and how you have said it. I make no mistake about that. But you are young, and maybe you don't know that it is a deal more important how a man does a thing than what it is that he does. I can think of worse things, in my interpretation of 'gentleman' than being a showman—a good showman, giving full value in exhibitions and entertainment for the money. Now, I wonder if Mr. Jardine ever thought of a lawyer, who neglects his clients' business 'cause he's lazy, or busy about his own affairs;—or a preacher, who does the Lord's job for the money he finds in it;—or a fortune-hunter who gets a rich wife to take him off his own hands;—or a politician who buys his popularity—all these are 'gentlemen' only in a superficial appraisement. Now, I'll tell you where Mr. Jardine's view ain't in it—he thinks because I'm put up in a sort o' ornamental case that I look like a gentleman—but the Living Skeleton, who is an educated man and right rich for a freak, but who ain't put up in any case at all scarcely, Mr. Jardine would never think of for a gentleman. It won't do to trust to externals—Mr. Jardine surprises me for a man of his large experience."
She gazed searchingly into his face for a moment. She could descry no lingering suspicion there that she had used Mr. Jardine's name as a stalking-horse over which to fire her own opinions. It was a delectable deceit, but she knew that he would have forgiven the liberty—poor Mr. Jardine!
"If ever I was to find a better trade, Lydy, I'd take it with psalms of thanksgiving. But until I do I ain't goin' to shirk the show because I look like a gentleman. The main stunt is to act like a gentleman, and I think we are all up against that."
A silvery voice called out in the night to Lucia, and looking backward toward Ruth and Jardine she saw that their swing was moving upward one degree, and that they had reached the very summit of the circumference. With the consequent descent of one degree in their turn Lucia and Lloyd were now on a lower level. There seemed no appreciable difference in the height, however, as they gazed over the landscape; the wind still rushed down from the mountain with a pungent odour of dank leaves and a fragrant moisture from where the rainfall had been heavy; the clouds still in broken ranks fled tumultuously across the enstarred sky; the misty moon was slipping down behind the purple ranges—the burnished rim was visible for another moment and then was gone; the square was yet filled with people, and now and then a wild, raucous yell or loud voices in drunken altercation gave token that the mysterious inebriates were again astonishing the streets of the dry town; several of the tents were no longer illumined, the day's work being over for the "freaks" and the flying lady; the merry-go-round had ceased to whirl and whiz and the band was playing sentimental airs on the grass in front of the courthouse.
As the swings of the great wheel swayed, gently pendulous, in the breeze-filled purple night above the flaring orange-tinted lights of the Carnival below everything seemed jovial, contented—a successful day drawing serenely to a close. Suddenly from the swing on a level with the manager's lofty perch a missile shot through the air; it passed in a straight line below the swing where Jardine and Ruth sat at the summit of the circumference of the wheel, and whizzing, as if flung from a sling, it struck Lloyd's head just behind the ear and fell, a compact boulder, as large as a man's fist, on the ground below.
Lloyd, bent half double by the force of the unexpected blow, swayed forward, struggled violently to regain his place, lost his balance, and like a thunderbolt fell from the swing, while the frenzied pleasure-seekers, all safe enough, screamed in sheer dismay at the sight.
It might have been far worse. To another man the fall from such a height would have meant certain death, but with the presence of mind and the trained strength and elasticity of the professional acrobat, the showman mechanically gathered renewed control of his muscles, caught at one of the steel spokes that upheld the structure of the wheel, and thus arresting the precipitancy of the descent turned a somersault in mid-air, another and with still another came to the ground amidst a tumult of shouting and applause from the crowd assembling from every side of the square.
They seized upon him instantly, noting his half-fainting condition, and carried him bodily to the corner drug store, where the prescriptionist hastily administered restoratives and medicated the wound in an inner room with the door locked, while awaiting the arrival of the physician. The manager was in no condition to be questioned, he stated to a policeman who was early on the scene.
With an augmented sense of the importance of the disaster the officer, the only one on duty in the small municipality, returned to the wheel with the intention of taking the names and addresses of all in the swings at the time of the attack.