Hervey went into the tent, and stood looking about. Muffled by the distance he could hear the frightful monotonous music of the merry-go-round playing Little Annie Rooney for the millionth time. On the red board were strewn the leavings of Diving Denniver’s supper. The smutty little oil-stove reeked of kerosene. A long, up-ended box did duty as a washstand and on this, beside a tin basin, was the photograph of a girl. A couple of candles burned and sputtered. On the tent pole hung a broken mirror.
Diving Denniver’s bathrobe and his white bathing suit trimmed with gold braid lay on the converted couch just as he had thrown them in his hurry and anger. The very bathrobe, half off and half on the couch, seemed eloquent of his high disgust at the tyrannical interruption of his work. Hervey surmised that he would speak with the management of the carnival on his way out; he wondered why the two had not gone in that direction. But in truth the diving wonder did not love his public enough to consider it in his sudden dilemma. He never went up when the wind was strong. And he was not thinking of the expectant throng now.
Hervey longed to don that gorgeous exhibition suit. Could he slip it on in a hurry? With him it was but one step from impulse to action and in a few seconds he had thrown off his suit and was gazing at himself in the dirty old mirror, clad in the white and gold habiliments of the international wonder. How tightly it fitted! How thrillingly professional it made him feel! What a moment in his young life!
Suddenly, something very extraordinary happened. The trodden grass at his feet shimmered with a pale brightness. Clearly he saw a couple of cigarette butts in the grass. It was as if some one had spilled this brightness on the ground. Then it was gone. And there was only a dim light where the candles sputtered on the makeshift table. That was a strange occurrence.
He stepped out of the tent and there was the patch of brightness near the Ford sedan. How plainly he could read the flaunting words on the spare tire, THREE HUNDRED FOOT DIVE. Then suddenly, the square tank and the foot of the dizzy ladder were bathed in light. A long, dusty column was poking around as if it had lost something. The sedan was again illuminated. The bright patch moved under the tent and painted an area of the canvas golden. Was it looking for Diving Denniver, the wonder of two continents, to come forth and make his three hundred foot dive?
It found the tank and the ladder again and made them glowing and resplendent. Then there was wafted on the air the robust sound of the band playing real music. It drowned the tin-pan whining of the merry-go-round and sent its rousing strains over the fence which bore the forbidding sign. What a martial tumult! It made the cane ringers pause, sent the carriers of kewpie dolls to a point of vantage, and left the five-legged calf forlorn and alone. Louder and louder it sent forth its rousing melody.
Come take a ride o’er the clouds with me
Up in the air mid the stars.
Hervey Willetts stood petrified. He was in the hands of the gods—or the devils. I have sometimes wondered if he ever, ever thought. Behind every act, good or bad, there is some kind of intention. And I have told you about boys whose intentions were not of the best. But what of this boy? There was just never anything behind his acts. No boy could catch him. Yet the band and the waiting light caught him. And what did they do to him? The light seemed to be waiting for him, there at the foot of the ladder. All else was darkness. Only the area of brightness bathing the ladder and the big tank with its metal corners. It seemed to say, “Come, I am going up with you.” And, God help him, he went to it as a moth flies to a flame.
When he had ascended a few feet, he remembered that Diving Denniver went up very slowly seeming to test each rung. He knew now that this had been for effect and to make the climb seem long. For the rungs were sound and strong. Also the performer had occasionally extended his arm. The substitute realized that there had been good reason for that, for the breeze was more brisk as he ascended and he knew that the diver had thus held out his hand by way of keeping tabs on the breeze.