Treasure Valley Part 21

Overhead the sky was deeply brilliant, and near the horizon a tender, misty blue. The golden landscape was lit with patches of gay woodland, and here and there by the roadside a scarlet maple, a clump of flaming sumach, or the blood-red vine of the woodbine. High up on the top of a dead tree-trunk, in the center of a smoky hollow, a flicker was shouting out derisively, "Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!" in scorn of all this frivolous humanity gone a-fairing.

The procession crossed the railroad track just as the afternoon express went thundering past. The conductor caught sight of the doctor's buggy, and blew him a salute that set all the horses upon their hind legs in indignant alarm.

A smart vehicle dashed past in a cloud of dust. It was Miss Long, driving her own horse, with Sawed-Off Wilmott by her side, his chestnut driver having been sent on ahead in charge of a friend.

"Ella Anne's goin' to show her horse," said Hannah admiringly. "She's took first prize every year for ever so long. She's a wonderful driver."

"Dere's Lorry!" screamed Joey, pointing to a little tousled black head peeping from between Malcolm Cameron and his sister, just a little in advance.

"Elsie's awful good to her," said Hannah gratefully. "Her an' Arabella Winters jist makes a pet o' that child. Lorry says they've got a secret, the three o' them, and she feels that big about it you never saw the likes! Why, that's Lenny's voice, ain't it?"

From a buggy a little farther down the line greetings were being shrieked back to the black-haired twin. Hannah drew a deep sigh of content.

"Well, now, there's every single one o' them settled," she exclaimed happily. "If Jake jist gets a chance, now, an' Timmy gets a prize for his pumpkins, we jist won't have anythin' more to ask."

The Elmbrook fair ground was a long field, with a big, barn-like building at one end. Gilbert had often pa.s.sed the place before, and found it silent and gra.s.s-grown; but now it was thronged with people, and resounding with a joyous bedlam of all the noises that all the farms in Oro, joined together, could produce. Horses neighed, cattle bawled, sheep bleated, hens cackled, babies cried and boys shouted. A merry-go-round, that charged only five cents for a horseback ride, was whirling giddily to the tune of "The Maple Leaf Forever." As the doctor guided his horse carefully through the thronged gateway Joey spied the twins, already mounted astride the largest team, and spinning around with joyous shrieks. A man with a wheel of fortune was shouting to the pa.s.sers-by to come and take a turn, and make money enough to buy a farm. A row of tents, each with its roaring proprietor in front, held all sorts of wonderful spectacles, from a three-headed pig to a panorama of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. In front of a large tent, set off in one corner, a solemn, stout man, wrapped in a white winding-sheet, was marching to and fro, ringing a funereal bell, and calling out in melancholy tones that this was the last chance for dinner.

But above all the various clamor one sound arose, penetrating, triumphant, the sound that was the true voice of the Elmbrook fair, and without which it would surely have died away in silence--the high, thrilling skirl of the bagpipes. The piper, splendid in kilt and plaid and bare knees, was marching magnificently from the hall to the racing track. Lesser beings had to push and jostle through the throng, but he had a long lane sacred to his own footsteps, and no matter what new attraction appeared, he always had his following of gaping admirers.

Young ladies, with their attendant swains, in holiday attire, wandered about arm in arm, eating peanuts. Some lovers, of the old-fas.h.i.+oned type, who plainly knew very little of the requirements of fas.h.i.+on, went about hand in hand, and were the object of many witty remarks on the part of those who followed the more up-to-date method. Farmers with long beards, their backs bent with honest toil, collected around the show horses, or sat in the high buggies, round-shouldered and content, and smoked and chewed and spat, and were, withal, supremely happy.

Whole family circles, the young father proudly carrying the baby, the mother holding as many as possible by the hand, revolved in an aimless but joyous...o...b..t. Old women in plaid shawls gathered in groups near the piper's avenue, and talked a continuous stream of Gaelic.

The hall, containing the product of the women's deft fingers, stood near the gates. At one side was a long shed devoted to the display of farm produce, and the homely place was beautiful with scarlet apples, golden pumpkins, cabbages opening like great, pale-green roses, and heaps of purple grapes and plums. Opposite this, in a corner, the cattle and sheep, and other farm stock, were herded, each living creature lifting up its voice in protest against the sudden disturbance of its. .h.i.therto even and well-ordered life. At the end of the field, opposite the gate, a rocky and uneven road, in the shape of an ellipse, served as the race track. A grand-stand, formed by nature from a gra.s.sy knoll, covered with sweet-smelling pines, rose at one side, and made a convenient and delightful resting place.

Having handed Hannah and Joey over to Jake, who arrived in a neighbor's buggy, just behind them, Gilbert tied his horse and wandered about, shaking hands and looking at the prizes. He was captured by Tim and Davy, the former in a state of wild excitement, because his pumpkins had taken first prize, and Davy's only second. On the other hand, Keturah, his cow, had taken only third; but old Sandy McKitterick had said that Spectacle John was judge, and that he didn't know a cow from a giraffe. And Isaac and Rebekah had taken first, anyhow, and the doctor must come and see the red tickets on them. Gilbert started off through the crowd, but fell a captive by the way. As he pa.s.sed a Gaelic-speaking group of checked shawls he was grasped violently by the sleeve and forced into the circle.

"There she will be now. Jist be takin' a look at her, whatefer. Och, hoch! this is what you would be doing!" And the young doctor smiled radiantly and blushed like a schoolboy, for there was Mrs. McKitterick herself, surrounded by an admiring crowd, and enjoying her first show in ten years! The hero was petted and praised in two languages, and clapped on the back and admired, until he was overwhelmed with confusion. He was rescued from his embarra.s.sment by the impatient orphan and dragged off to witness the triumph of Isaac and Rebekah.

When the geese had been sufficiently admired, and even poor Keturah's small achievement duly noted, the doctor escaped, and making a wide detour of the tartan shawls, found his way to the grand-stand. Here, seated on the dry pine-needles, under a spreading tree, was a group of three: Malcolm Cameron, with his sister and the minister's daughter.

"h.e.l.lo, doctor!" cried the boy joyfully. "I've been looking all over for you. Come along. We're going to the hall."

"What's to be seen there?" asked Gilbert, helping the ladies to rise.

"Well, for one thing, there's your new mitts."

"Hush, Malcolm!" cried his sister. "Mrs. McKitterick wanted it kept a secret."

"Great Caesar! Would you let a pair of shackles like that be sprung on an innocent man without a moment's warning?"

"What's this?" asked Gilbert, in the alarm that the name of old Mrs.

McKitterick always raised in his breast. "What's going to happen now?"

"It's only a pair of mittens, Dr. Allen," said Miss Marjorie. "Mrs.

McKitterick knit them, and if they take first prize they are to be given to you."

"It was too bad to tell," said Elsie.

"No, it wasn't!" cried her brother. "They're to be presented to him at Christmas, and he'll need three months to get resigned. Come along and see them."

As they threaded their way toward the hall Malcolm glanced at the other young man significantly. Gilbert understood.

"Miss Cameron," he said, "I am all alone in my buggy. Won't you drive home with me?"

She glanced up at him with one of her swift, searching looks. "Did Malcolm ask you to relieve him?" she whispered. This strong, grave girl did not often laugh, Gilbert had noticed, but when she was amused her eyes danced. They were sparklingly radiant now.

He felt his face growing hot. "I--I----" he began.

"Oh, never mind," she cried, and this time she permitted her lips to join her eyes in a smile. "Don't apologize. I know why he did it.

He's so transparent, poor lad. I knew last night, when he went over to see you, that he had some tremendous scheme on foot."

"But you are not going to punish me for his sins, surely?" said Gilbert, recovering. "If you knew with how much pleasure I grasped the opportunity you would come. Won't you?"

"Oh, yes," she answered frankly. "It would be too bad to spoil poor Malc's happy day; and besides," she added, with a return of her grave dignity, "I am sure I shall enjoy the drive, thank you."

Gilbert felt strangely grateful. The girl always made him feel as though she were immeasurably above him. "Because she really is, I suppose," he concluded, as he watched her, and thought of all she was sacrificing, silently, for the careless, happy boy walking so gaily ahead. Yes, she was very n.o.ble, he confessed. And then he sighed, he did not know why.

They squeezed their way into the building and pa.s.sed slowly around.

The long tables were piled with every sort of work that a woman's needle might encompa.s.s, and while the two girls examined each exhibit minutely, going into raptures over this or that, the two young men gazed vacantly about in weary bewilderment. There were doilies and tidies and pillow-covers of all patterns, crocheted lace and knitted lace and lace made every other way. There was painting on china and satin and velvet and silk and every other known fabric, and the walls were hung with homespun blankets, quilts and floor rugs.

Notwithstanding the growing display and keen compet.i.tion that each successive fair brought, there were those who had been winners of first prizes ever since the Elmbrook show was inst.i.tuted, and would probably always be. The Elmbrook prize-list was a stable inst.i.tution, and if any one but Ella Anne Long should have taken first for managing a horse, or Bella Winters for painting apple blossoms on white velvet, or old Miss McQuarry for bread and b.u.t.ter, all Oro would have felt uneasy, and folks would have begun to doubt the stability of the British Empire.

For example, there was Mrs. Spectacle John Cross's quilt. It had taken first prize for the last ten years, and was likely to do so for as many more. It hung resplendent now, like a triumphal banner, the conqueror of yet one more campaign. It was a remarkable quilt, to be sure, and no wonder all compet.i.tors faded before it. It was composed entirely of small pieces of silk and velvet, sewed together in that style known as crazy patchwork. Nevertheless, there was nothing haphazard about their arrangement. The colors were put together so as to represent a landscape. A large round sun, of pumpkin-colored silk, with rays of red satin flying from it, arose from behind a mountain of green velvet.

The sky was of blue silk, with white plush clouds, and in the foreground bloomed a flower garden of such various colors that the eye grew dazzled in contemplation.

"Here's your Minjekahwun, doctor," whispered Malcolm, grasping Gilbert's arm. "Ain't they lurid? Oh, crickey! they've got first prize! You're in for it! You'll look like the prize quilt when you get inside 'em."

The future owner of the mittens surveyed them in some dismay. They were long and roomy, even for his brawny hands, and of many and vivid colors. He looked around appealingly. Elsie Cameron's face was grave, but her eyes were laughing, while little Miss Scott was in a fit of merriment.

"Cheer up," cried Malcolm encouragingly. "They're the very thing to catch the public. You've got the purple and the orange, and that'll suit Spectacle John's crowd; and the green'll appeal to the Catholics over on the flats; and the whole thing looks like Highland tartan.

Why, there isn't a nationality in Oro that'll be able to resist you when you wear them."

They emerged from the crowded building into the brilliant light of outdoors, and Gilbert had just helped his companion down the steep, rickety steps, when a new sound arose above the babel of the fair, and quenched for a moment even the scream of the bagpipes. It came from the highway, a hoa.r.s.e "honk, honk," strange, and yet, to Gilbert, familiar. An astonished stillness fell over the group around the gate.

The whole show, in fact, stood wide-eyed and agape with wonder, for what should be coming up the road, moving entirely of its own accord, without horse or other visible means of locomotion, but a huge red double buggy, with wheels like a stone-crusher, and the appearance of a thres.h.i.+ng-machine! It paused at the gate, and a clear, gay voice called, "Good-afternoon, Dr. Allen!"

With a hasty word of apology, only half uttered, Gilbert was down the steps and standing by the motor-car. When the best thing possible happens to a man, the thing far too good to be dreamed of, it is at first unbelievable. But there she was, surely, Rosalie, her very self, in a long tan motoring coat, with a filmy scarf tied under her dimpling chin, her cheeks pink, her blue eyes dancing!

"Oh!" cried Gilbert, too overcome with joy for coherent speech, "it can't be you!"

"Yes, it's me," trilled Rosalie, laughing at her own lapse of English.

"Here's Aunt Eleanor, and Maud, and all the rest of us!"

He greeted them in a half-dazed manner. He could see no one but Rosalie, could realize nothing but the dazzling joy of her coming.

He scarcely listened even to her explanation of their appearance. They had started north on a short tour, but had never dreamed of going so far. They had spent the night at a friend's in Lakeview, and thought they must run out here and see him and his practice in their primitive state. Would they come in? Why, of course they would! She wanted to get nearer to that gorgeous piper, not to speak of the hens and ducks and pigs. And did he raise geese and turkeys himself? And had he taken a prize?

Gilbert helped the ladies to alight. He was well acquainted with Rosalie's aunt and sister, and shook hands with the elder woman warmly.

She had ever been a good friend to him, and had helped him many a time when Rosalie had contrived to make him miserable. The two young men he had met before. He recognized the owner of the car as an old rival, and looked at him with dark suspicion. His name had been coupled with Rosalie's during the past season oftener than he liked.

As the party of strangers entered the grounds they caused more excitement than the piper and the merry-go-round combined. Such a piece of mechanism as a motor-car had never before come within the range of Granny Long's telescope. Folks who had been fortunate enough to attend the Toronto Exhibition came home with great tales of having seen just such machines shooting around the city streets without any aid, and Bella Winters and Wes Long had even had their pictures taken together in one for twenty-five cents. But to most people this great red monster, looking, for all the world, as Spectacle John said, like a live thres.h.i.+ng-mill, was an astounding sight. When the party left, a crowd of men gathered about it, keeping carefully out of its track, for William Winters had seen one at Niagara Falls that ran backward as well as forward, and you could never tell when such uncanny things might shoot off in any direction. The women were more interested in the rustling silks and veils of the ladies of the party, and formed a silent and admiring lane for them as they pa.s.sed to the pine knoll.