Part 30 (1/2)
There was a wolf, I remember, darting about his cage, slinking, furtive, ever on a futile prowl. He especially engaged the interest of Tom McNeil, who said admiringly, as I, too, looked through the bars, ”Ain't he a prompt little cuss?” I felt that with Tom it was the fascination of opposites; he never could understand superlative energy.
Just as we were trooping into the larger tent (there were no three rings, I beg to say, maliciously calculated to distract the attention!
One, of a goodly size, was quite enough for us!) a little voice piped up, ”The snake's got loose!” How we surged and panted, and fought one another for our sacred lives! In vain were we urged to stand still; we strove the more. And when a bit of rope perversely and maliciously coiled itself round Rosa Tolman's ankle, she gave a shriek so loud and despairing that it undid us anew. If Sheriff Holmes had not come forward and sworn at us, I believe we should have trampled one another out of existence; but he seemed so palpably the embodiment of authority, and his oath the oath undoubtedly selected by legislature for that very occasion, that we paused, and on the pa.s.sionate a.s.severation of a circus man that the snake was safely in his cage, consented to be calm. But Aunt Melissa Adams, unstrung by her earlier experience, would trust no doubtful circ.u.mstance. She plodded back into the animal-tent, a.s.sured herself, with her own eyes, of the snake's presence at his own hearthstone, and came back satisfied, just as the clown entered the ring. The performance needs no bush. We had palmleaf fans offered us, pop-corn, and pink lemonade. We sweltered under the blazing canvas, laughed at the clown's musty fooling, which deserved rather the reverence due old age, and wondered between whiles if there would be a shower, and if tent-poles were ever struck. Then it was all over, and we trailed out, in great bodily discomfort and spiritual joy, to witness, quite unlooked for, the most vivid drama of the day. Young Dana Marden was there, he and his wife who lived down in Tiverton Hollow. Dana was a nephew of Josh, of hapless memory, and ”folks said”
that, like Josh, he had ”all the Marden setness, once git him riled.”
But Mary Worthen had not been in the least afraid of that when she married him. Before their engagement, some one had casually mentioned Dana's having inherited ”setness” for his patrimony.
”I know it,” she said, ”and if I had anything to do with him, I'd break him of it, or I'd break his neck!”
Tiverton had been very considerate in never repeating that speech to Dana; and his wife, in all their five years of married life, had not fulfilled her threat. As we were making ready to leave the grounds, that day, and those who had horses were ”tacklin up,” we became aware that Dana, a handsome, solid, fresh-colored fellow, sat in his wagon with pretty Mary beside him, and that they evidently had no intention of moving on. Of course we approached, to find out what the trouble might be.
”We can send word to have Tom Bunker milk the cows,” said Dana, with distinct emphasis, ”an' we can stay for the evenin' performance. Or we can go now. Only, you've got to say which!”
”I don't want to say,” returned Mary, placidly, ”because I don't know which you'd rather have. You just tell me _so_ much!”
A frown contracted his brow; he looked a middle-aged man. When he spoke, his voice grated.
”You tell which, or we'll set here all night, an' I don't speak another word to you till you do!”
But Mary said nothing.
”My soul!” whispered Mrs. Rivers to me. ”She's got herself into it now, jest as they say Lyddy Ann Marden done, with Josh. She'll have to back down!”
Several more of those aimless on-lookers, ever ready for the making of crowds, surged forward. The wagon was blocking the way. We realised with shame that Sudleigh, too, was here, to say nothing of sister towns less irritating to our pride. It was Uncle Eli Pike who stepped into the breach.
”Here, Dana!” he called, and, as we were glad to remember, all the aliens in the crowd could hear, ”I guess that hoss o' yourn's gittin' a mite balky. I'll lead him a step, if you say so.” And without a word of a.s.sent from Dana, he guided the horse out of the grounds, and started him on the road. We watched the divided couple, on their common way.
Dana was driving, it is true; but we knew, with a heavy certainty, that he was not speaking to his wife. He was a Marden, and nothing would make him speak.
This slight but very significant episode sent us home in a soberer mind than any of us had antic.i.p.ated, after the gaudy triumphs of the day. We could not quell our curiosity over the upshot of it all, and that night, after the ch.o.r.es were done, we sat in the darkness, interspersing our comments on the spangled b.u.t.terflies of horse and hoop with an awed question, now and then, while the minute-hand sped, ”S'pose they've spoke yit?”
Alas! the prevailing voice was still against it; and when we went to market, and met there the people from the Hollow (who were somewhat more bucolic than we), they pa.s.sed about the open secret. Dana did not speak to his wife. Again we knew he never would. The summer waned; the cows were turned into the shack, and the most ”forehanded” among us began to cut boughs for banking up the house, and set afoot other preparations for winter's cold. Still Dana had not spoken. But the effect on Mary was inexplicable to us all. We knew she loved him deeply, and that the habits of their relations.h.i.+p were very tender; we expected her to sink and fail under the burden of this sudden exile of the heart, just as Lyddy Ann had done, so many years ago. But Mary held her head high, and kept her color. She even ”went abroad” more than usual; ostentatiously so, we thought, for she would come over to Tiverton to pa.s.s the afternoon, after the good, old-fas.h.i.+oned style, with women whom she knew but slightly. And, most incredible of all, though Dana would not speak to her, she spoke to him! Once, in driving past, I heard her clear voice (it seemed now a dauntless voice!) calling,--
”Dana, dinner's ready!” Dana dropped the board he was carrying, and went in, a fierce yet dogged look upon his face, as if it needed hourly schooling to mirror his hard heart. Then the agent of the Sudleigh ”Star,” who was canva.s.sing for a new domestic paper, had also his story to tell. He went to the Mardens', and Mary, who admitted him, put down her name, and then called blithely into the kitchen,--
”Dana, I'm all out o' change. Will you hand me a dollar 'n' a quarter?”
Dana, flushed red and overwhelmed by a pitiable embarra.s.sment, came to the door and gave the money; and Mary, with that proud unconsciousness which made us wonder anew every time we saw it in her, thanked him, and dismissed the visitor, as if nothing were wrong. The couple went as usual to church and sociable. Certain lines deepened in Dana's face, but Mary grew every day more light-heartedly cheerful. Yet the one-sided silence lived, with the terrible tenacity of evil.
So the days went on until midwinter snows began to blow, and then we learned, with a thrill of pride, that the International Dramatic Company proposed coming to our own little hall, for a two weeks'
engagement. Some said Sudleigh Opera House was too large for it, and too expensive; but we, the wiser heads, were grandly aware that, with unusual ac.u.men, the drama had at last recognized the true emporium of taste. We resolved that this discriminating company should not repent its choice. A week before the great first night, magnificent posters in red and blue set before us, in very choice English, the dramatic performances, ”Shakespearean and otherwise,” destined to take place among us. The leading parts were to be a.s.sumed by Mr. and Mrs. Van Rensellaer Wilde, ”two of the foremost artists in the stellar world, supported by an adequate company.”
The announcement ended with the insinuating alliteration, ”Popular prices prevail.” The very first night, we were at the door, an excited crowd, absolutely before it was open; but early as we went, the hospitable pianist held the field before us; the hall resounded with his jocund banging at the very moment when the pioneer among us set foot within. I have never seen anywhere, either on benefit or farewell night, a cordiality to be compared with that which presided over our own theatre in Tiverton Hall. Mr. Van Rensellaer Wilde himself stood within the doorway, to greet us as we came; a personable man, with the smooth, individual face of his profession, a moist and beery eye, a catholic smile, tolerant enough to include the just and the unjust, a rusty, old-fas.h.i.+oned stock, and the very ancientest brown Prince Albert coat still in reputable existence,--a strange historical epitome of brus.h.i.+ngs and spongings, of camphor exile and patient patching. Quite evidently he was not among the prosperous, even in his stellar world.
But not for that would he repine. This present planet was an admirable plot of ground, and here he stood, cheerfully ready to induct us, the Puritan-born, into the fict.i.tious joys thereof. And popular prices prevailed; the floor of the hall itself confirmed it. It was divided, by chalk-lines, into three sections. Enter the first division, and a legend at your feet indicated the ten-cent territory. Advance a little, and ”twenty-five cents” met the eye; and presently, approaching the platform, you were in the seats of the scornful, thirty-five cents each. The latter, by common consent, were eschewed by the very first comers, not alone for reasons of thrift, but because we thought they ought to be left for old folks, ”a leetle mite hard o' hearin',” or the unfortunates who were ”not so fur-sighted” as we. So we seated ourselves in delight already begun, for was not Mr. Gad Greenfield performing one of the ”orchestral pieces” which the programme had led us to expect? The piano was an antique, accustomed to serve as victim at Sudleigh's dancing-school and sociables. I have never heard its condition described, on its return to Sudleigh; I only know that, from some eccentric partiality, Gad Greenfield's music was all _fortissimo_.