Fran Part 37

To reach the station, they must either penetrate the heart of the town, or follow the dark streets of the outskirts. In the latter case, their a.s.sociation would arouse surprise and comment, but in the throng, reasonable safety might be expected. Once in the station, they might hope to pa.s.s the hour of waiting in obscurity, since that was the last place that a search would be made.

After the first intense moment of exaltation, both began to fear a possible search. Grace apparently dreaded discovery as shrinkingly as if her conscience were not clear, and Gregory, in the midst of his own perturbation, found it incongruous that she who was always right, wanted to hide. As they breasted the billows of jollity which in its vocal stress became almost materialized, there grew up within him a feeling uneasily akin to the shame of his past. Old days seemed rising from their graves to chill him with their ghastly show of skeletons of dead delights.

But Grace's hand was upon his arm, and the crowd pressed them close together--and she was always beautiful and divinely formed. The prospect of complete possession filled him with ecstasy, while Grace herself yielded to the love that had outgrown all other principles of conduct.

Grace could deceive herself about this love, could rea.s.sure her conscience with specious logic, but she never lost her coolness of judgment concerning Hamilton Gregory. His lapses from conventionality did not come from deliberate choice, and she realized the danger of letting his feverish impulse grow cold. Even the prospect of waiting one hour at the station frightened her. She must save him from that Fran who, it appeared, was his daughter--and from the worldly woman who was not his wife--and he must be saved at once, or the happiness of their lives would suffer s.h.i.+pwreck.

They gained the street before the court-house which by courtesy pa.s.sed under the name of "the city square". Grace's hand grew tense on Gregory's arm--"Look!"

Her whisper was lost in the wind, but Gregory, following her frightened glance, saw Robert Clinton elbowing his way through the crowd, forcing his progress bluntly, or jovially, according to the nature of obstruction. He did not see them and, by dodging, they escaped.

The nearness of danger had paled Grace's cheeks. Gregory accepted his own trembling as natural, but Grace's evident fear acted upon his nebulous state of mind in a way to condense jumbled emotions and deceptive longings into something like real thought. If they were in the right, why did they feel such expansive relief when the crowd swept them from the sidewalk to bear them far away from Robert Clinton?

The merry-go-round, its very music traveling in a circle, clashed its steam-whistlings and organ-wailings against a drum-and-trombone band, while these distinct strata of sound were cut across by an outcropping of graphophones and megaphones. Upon an open-air platform, a minstrel troupe, by dint of falsetto inarticulateness, futile banjoes, and convulsive dancing, demonstrated how little of art one might obtain for a dime. Always out of sympathy with such displays, but now more than ever repelled by them, Grace and Gregory hurried away to find themselves penned in a court, surrounded on all sides by strident cries of "barkers", cracking reports from target-practice, fusillades at the "doll-babies", clanging jars from strength-testers and the like; while from this horrid field of misguided energy, there was no outlet save the narrow entrance they had unwittingly used.

"Horrible!" exclaimed Grace, half-stumbling over the tent-ropes that entangled the ground. "We must get out of this."

It was not easy to turn about, so dense was the crowd.

Scarcely had they accomplished the manoeuver when Grace exclaimed below her breath, "There he is!"

Sure enough, Robert Clinton stood at the narrowest point of their way.

He was clinging to an upright, and while thus lifted above the heads of the mult.i.tude, sought to scan every face.

"I don't think he has seen us," muttered Hamilton Gregory, instinctively lowering his head.

"We can't get out, now," Grace lamented. "No, he hasn't seen us--yet.

But that's the only place of--of escape--and he keeps looking so curiously--he must have been to the store. He knows I'm away. He may have gone to the house."

It was because every side-show of the carnival company had insisted on occupying s.p.a.ce around the court-house, and because this s.p.a.ce was meager, that the country folk and excursionists and townsmen showed in such compressed numbers at every turn. In reality, however, they were by no means countless; and if Robert's eagle glance continued to travel from face to face, with that maddening thoroughness--

"We'd better separate," Gregory hoa.r.s.ely whispered. "We'll meet at the station."

"No. If he sees us, what would be the use? Anyway, he'll have to know to-morrow...everybody will know--to-_morrow_! No," said Grace, overcoming a slight indecision, "the important thing is not to be stopped, whoever sees. Come this way."

"But there's no chance out, that way," Gregory returned, with the obstinacy of the weak. "And if he does see us, it won't do to be seeming to try to hide."

"But we _are_ hiding," Grace said definitely.

"Possibly we can keep moving about, and he will go away."

"Why should we hide, anyhow?" demanded Gregory, with sudden show of spirit.

To that, she made no reply. If he didn't know, what was the use to tell him?

Gregory moved on, but glanced back over his shoulder. "Now, he's getting down," he said in agitation. "He's making his way right toward us....All right, let him come!"

"In here--quick!" cried Grace, dragging him to one side. "Quick!"

A voice stopped them with, "Your tickets, please."

"Oh, no," wailed Gregory, "_not_ into a show, Grace. We can't go into a _show_. It's--it's impossible."

She spoke rapidly: "We must. We'll be safe in there, because no one would ever suppose we'd go into such a place."

"But Grace," said Gregory firmly, "I can not--I will not go into a show."

The voice addressed them again: "It's first-cla.s.s in every particular, lady. There is nothing here to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of the most fastidious. See those fierce man-eating lions that have been captured in the remotest jungles of Africa--"

Gregory looked back.

Robert Clinton was drawing nearer. As yet he had not discovered them but his eyes, grown fiercer and more impatient, were never at rest.

With a groan, Gregory thrust some money into the showman's hand, and he and Grace mingled with the noisy sight-seers flocking under the black tent.

CHAPTER XXII

THE STREET FAIR

Littleburg was trembling under the fearful din of a carnival too big for it, when Abbott Ashton, after his weeks of absence returned to find himself at Hamilton Gregory's door. He discovered old Mrs.

Jefferson in the front room--this July night--because old age is on no friendly terms with falling dew; but every window was open.

"Come in," she cried, delighted at sight of his handsome smiling face --he had been smiling most of the time during his drive from Simmtown with Robert Clinton. "Here I sit by the window, where sometimes I imagine I hear a faint far-away sound. I judge it's from some carnival band. Take this chair and listen attentively; your ears are younger-- now!"

Abbott did not get all of this because of the Gargantuan roar that swept through the window, but he gravely tilted his head, then took the proffered ear-trumpet: "You are right," he said, "I hear something."

"It's the street fair," she announced triumphantly. "But sometimes it's louder. How fine you look, Abbott--just as if your conscience doesn't hurt you for disappearing without leaving a clue to the mystery. You needn't be looking around, sir,--Fran isn't here."

"I wonder where she is?" Abbott smiled, "I'm dreadfully impatient to tell her the good news. Mrs. Jefferson, I'm to teach in a college-- it's a much bigger thing than the position I lost here. And I have a chance to work out some ideas that I know Fran will like. I used to think that everything ought to be left precisely as it is, because it's been that way so long--I mean the church; and schools; and--and society. But I've made up my mind that nothing is right, unless it works right."

Mrs. Jefferson listened in desperate eagerness. "A watch?" she hazarded.

"Exactly," he responded hastily. "If a watch doesn't run, what's the use of its being pretty? And if churches develop a gift of tongue instead of character, what's the value of their prayers and songs? And I've concluded that if schools don't teach us how to live, they have the wrong kind of springs and wheels. Where is Fran, Mrs. Jefferson?"

"Still," she temporized, "we can't get along without watches, Abbott."

"No, nor schools, nor churches. But they must have good works. Is Fran down at the fair, do you think?"

The other bent toward him stealthily. "Ask where Mrs. Gregory is," she said, wonderfully significant.