CHAPTER XXXIII CHERRY DISPOSES.

WE had had a merry lunch, we had watched the tests of the draught cattle, we had all drunk pink lemonade and survived, and now, by unanimous vote, we had decided to stay and have our dinner in the “Mammoth Restaurant,” and go home by the light of the golden hunter’s moon.

The wheel of fortune had been dismantled and the man who ran it and the man who had been so lucky had gone off together. They seemed to have struck up a friendship, and I am told that it not unfrequently happens that lucky men and professional gamblers make the rounds of the various county fairs and the luck of both continues until the end of the season.

Sibthorp was not the life of the party at lunch, but Hepburn was in high spirits.

I judged that Sibthorp had been tried and found wanting and that Hepburn had been accounted worthy. Jack and Billy were their usual irresponsible selves and Tom bubbled over with a merriment that was at times elephantine but always genuine.

After lunch Sibthorp came to me and we strolled away naturally and easily. I put on my best father confessor air and waited for him to unbosom himself.

“It’s all over,” said he.

“What? You’ve asked her?”

“Yes.”

He looked so dejected that I grasped his hand.

“Maybe a cattle show was a poor place,” said I.

“I chose a poorer,” said he, “I asked her in the merry-go-round.”

“Wha-at?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to be romantic. It has often struck me that many a girl says yes because it is moonlight, or the lane is shady, or the breeze is balmy. You see I look at it from the point of view of a writer—and I thought I’d strip it of all glamour after I’d made up my mind—thanks to you—that I had a chance, and so when she said she’d like to ride around on the elephant I was fool enough to sit alongside of her on a blame little donkey and there wasn’t anybody within ear shot as the next thing behind was a wagon and they’re not popular. And just before the thing started I—well I asked her, and she burst out laughing and then she got mad and then the old thing started and we had to ride till it stopped, and then she asked me to take her away because she felt dizzy and I took her away and we ran plump into Hepburn and he asked her to go and see a man selling whips, and I went down the road a mile and wished I’d never been born. I think she felt insulted.”

I looked the other way.

“Why don’t you try again?”

“Thank you. I know when I’ve had enough.”

He left me and I went behind a large oak and sat on the grass and laughed until I cried. The idea of a sensible man sitting on a wooden donkey and asking a pretty girl on a wooden elephant if she would care to ride the merry-go-round of life with him.

“I’m afraid that Ellery is artificial,” said Ethel when I told her.

“But Hepburn is the real thing,” said I.

It was in the middle of the afternoon that Ethel and I were sitting together in a little pine grove. I had been telling her the events of the morning and now we were resting on the grass and watching the farmer folk. Oakham fair day is the great day for exchanging “visits.” Two elderly men met.

“Well, how are you doin’ it!”

“Oh, the way I always do. You’re lookin’ abaout the same. Leetle more gray but I guess you’re able to do the chores?”

“Oh, yes, ain’t had to call in Maria to do that yet. You seem to be stavin off death.”

“Fooled him so fur. Git me in the end though. That your daughter?”

“No, that’s my grandchild.”

“Well, well. Looks like your daughter Libby.”

“Libby’s daughter.”

“By Godfrey, time has a way of gittin’ along. Beats these automobiles.”

“Doos so. Well, glad I seen yer. Oakham Fair’s gre’t day to see folks. Most interestin’ exhibit. I say folks is the most interestin’ exhibit.”

“Ye-es, yes. Be’n comin’ here thirty-five years. Ever sence the fust fair.”

“Me too. Bet ye a cooky you won’t do it no thirty-five years more. Not ’nless the good Lord fergits to git ye.”

“Ha, ha, ha. Well, good bye, Silas. ’Member me to the folks.”

“I will so. Like’s not you’ll find ’em ’raound here sum’er’s. Be good.”

“Same to you y’old rascal.”

The two men shook hands and passed on and then we heard the end of a conversation on the other side of the tree—a conversation that was being carried on while two walked together.

“No, Mr. Edson, a woman always feels honoured and I hope we may always be friends.”

Ethel looked at me and her lips parted. It was Cherry’s voice. We waited to hear Hepburn speak but he did not do so.

The steps died away and Ethel rose to her feet and looked down the pathway.

Cherry was walking toward the edge of the pine woods and by her side walked a young man in whom the animation of youth seemed to be temporarily arrested.

He had not spoken a word in our hearing but we knew from the shape of his back that it was Jack.

“Three proposals in one day,” said Ethel in awed tones.

“Well, she’s worth it,” said I, and was a little astonished that Ethel did not second my assertion.

“Isn’t that Pat Casey walking with a priest?” asked Ethel suddenly.

“Yes, that’s Father Hogan and Rev. Mr. Hughson told me he was one of the greatest influences for good in Egerton.”

“I wonder if he will stop Pat from using profanity.”

“Maybe he won’t try to.”

Just then Pat left the priest, touching his cap as he did so, and a moment later he saw us and hurried over with the light little step peculiar to him, lifting his shocking bad hat as he came.

“Hello, Pat,” said I. “So you are considered a good enough man to walk with Father Hogan?”

His eyes twinkled.

“Sure it’s honoured I am by walkin’ wid him. He’s a hell of a fine man. I was just tellin’ him so. Didn’t he walk a mile out of his way yisterday to tell me he seen me ould cow I lost, roamin’ toward Maltby. First he told them to pen it up, an’ thin he come an’ told me. He’s dam sure of Heaven, that man is! No airs on him at all an’ him a friend of Archbishop Ireland.”

“Well, Pat, how’s the ould scut. Did you enter her for the race?”

“Sure I did not. She got at the oats last night an’ was feelin’ so fine this marnin’ that I knew’t’d be a sure t’hing if I entered her.”

He winked his eye at Ethel and then he said:

“An’ how’s the cherry blossom?”

“Pat, you’re a poet. She’s still on the branch.”

“Egorry, it’s the lucky man that picks her. A fine gerrul. None better in Ireland an’ that’s sayin’ arl there is to be said. I suppose ye’ll be go’n’ down one of those fine days now.”

“Yes, we expect to go to-morrow.”

“Is it so soon an’ the glory of the year so nair. Sure it’s sorry I’ll be to see the lights arl gone when I’m passin’ by in the avenin’.”

He took off his hat and extended a very dirty hand to Ethel.

She took it bravely and he said,

“If y’ave need of th’ould scut come an’ take her an’ welkim. An’ come up next yair. Give me regards to the young leddy. I’d a darter just like her wance.”

We smiled involuntarily as we contrasted Cherry and Pat.

“I’d a darter just like her, but she got consumpted an’ she’s wid the saints. She was a hell of a good gerrul.”

His eyes moistened and I understood for the first time what had made him the good-hearted man he was.

With a wave of his hand he walked lightly away.

“And yet some people don’t like the Irish,” said Ethel.

We all attended the races but they did not merit a description. They were almost as tame as a hippodrome race at a circus, and I verily believe that th’ould scut would have stood some show of winning had Pat entered him.

Cherry sat next to Ethel on the grandstand and to me she looked distraught. She had little to say and I, with my usual habit of adding two to two, made up my mind that she had accepted Hepburn and was now sorry that she had done so. I could not account for her lack of animation in any other way.

I suggested my thoughts to Ethel but she said they were nonsensical; that Cherry was very sorry to have to leave the place; that she had become attached to Clover Lodge and that she hated the thought of going up to her aunt at Bar Harbor.

She recovered her spirits in the “Mammoth Restaurant.” The long tables were so unlike anything to which she had been accustomed that the very novelty pleased her, and as we were all together at one end we were able to do and say pretty much what we wanted and we were a gay crowd.

We had met pretty nearly everybody we had ever seen in the Egertons, and we had bid good bye to old Mrs. Hartlett just before the races began.

She having a mind to try a new sensation and one that would have been impossible in her childhood, had come over with her physician in his electric run-about and it was something of a shock to see the dainty little old lady accustomed to move slowly and with dignity perched up in one of the fastest things on wheels, but it was just such open-mindedness that had enabled her to remain young for one hundred years and we bade her good bye quite sure that she at least would be in Egerton another summer whoever else might drop by the way.

Minerva was in her element all day long. A crowd was a crowd after all even if it was composed of country people, and she kept herself and James in the thick of it.

Once we saw her treating six strange little darkey boys and girls to pink lemonade and once I saw her by a happy fluke throw a left-handed ball at the colored man who was soliciting tries at his hard head and she hit him fair and square and then hit the crowd by her hearty, carefree laughter.

There was one little incident connected with Minerva’s day at the fair that might have been serious if Minerva’s star had not been in the ascendant when she herself was.

A balloon ascension had been advertised for the afternoon and Ethel had wanted to go over and see it, but I told her that the filling of balloons by gas was always a slow process and that we’d see it when it went up.

Now, James was more gallant, and when Minerva asked him to take her to see the balloon go up he took her to the very spot.

It so happened that when the balloon was filled and they were ready to cast off the guy ropes and go up to the extent of the long rope Minerva took it into her sportive head to catch hold of the rope and the next minute the balloon went up with the stout Minerva dangling beneath.

Three things went up—no, four. The balloon, Minerva, a shriek, and a shout—the latter from the crowd.

Ethel and I had been in the main tent looking at the horticultural display, but at the familiar shriek we ran out.

They had stopped the ascent of the balloon but they flew Minerva full a hundred feet above the crowd, one foot around the rope, the other frantically kicking.

It was not an adventure that could have happened to anyone but Minerva or if it had happened to any other person he would have fallen to earth and cast a gloom over the fair.

But somehow the crowd seemed to realize that it was a time for mirth and that the girl would come down all right and they howled advice at her. Some told her to climb into the car, a physical impossibility for her, while others asked her to do tricks, supposing that she was an acrobat in disguise. In fact I think it was the general opinion that she was an acrobat.

Poor Minerva an acrobat. Far from it.

“Oh, James, come an’ git me. I’ll die up here. Oh, Lawdy, why’d I come up?”

Minerva was unconsciously quoting her own utterance of a few weeks before. Why had she come up, indeed. Was it to end her days in the clouds?

Much can happen in a little space of time and although there was a good deal of give and take on the part of Minerva and the crowd I don’t suppose she was up in the air many seconds. We can afford to laugh at it now but at the time, aside from its ludicrous aspect there was a terrifying side to it. Minerva was not built to fly to mother earth from such a height and survive.

But although she was frightened half to death she did not lose her grip, and her foot around the rope lessened the strain on her hands and James and several others sprang to the rope and began to haul her down as soon as they could.

When she felt her feet touch earth she fell on her face in a dead faint and then the crowd learned for the first time that she was not an attraction of the fair.

A dash of lemonade—the nearest approach to water handy—brought her to her senses, but her feelings were hurt and she would not listen to James’s apologies (although what he found to apologise for I don’t know, seeing he had not been to blame; but he was very gallant)—she would not listen to his apologies but flounced off to a place far from the madding crowd just as Miss Pussy had retired after the humiliation of her upward trip and for the space of full five minutes Minerva refused to be comforted.

But peanuts have a mollifying effect on some dispositions and James bought a bulging bag and presented them to the amateur ascenseur and all went merry as a marriage bell from that time on.

It was moonlight when the slow-moving oxen, decorated with their prize-ribbons (for they had won first prize) took up the homeward march.

We had a free road in a very short time for everything else passed us, and we sang songs and yodled and tried to forget that to-morrow would end all the happy days.

Coming to a steep hill we all got out, although Mr. Goodman said there was no need. But sitting Turk fashion is easier for Turks than for Americans, and we felt the need of limbering up.

The ascent was flanked on either side by luxuriant maples that made a tunnel through which flecks of moonlight dappled the road. When we had gone half way up the moon seemed perched on the apex of the hill, golden and radiant, and while Ethel and I looked two figures walked into the shining circle—two figures that were very loverlike.

It was impossible to miss the significance.

Cherry and Hepburn.

Their heads were facing each other and they were two black silhouettes representing happiness.

I looked at poor Sibthorp who was walking just ahead of us. He, too, had seen the silhouette as it was outlined for one brief moment against the golden background, and I knew that his thoughts were not happy. I knew that Jack and Billy were somewhere behind us and a minute later Tom and his wife took the place of the lovers, but there was room for an ox team between them. And yet Tom and his wife are happy. But after twenty years silhouettes against the moon are not loverlike, however loverlike may be the hearts that are beating ten feet apart.

That night, after all had retired, Ethel stood before the glass taking out her hair-pins and she addressed my figure in the mirror.

“What do you suppose?” said she in a low voice.

“I suppose I’m tired,” said I yawning.

“Cherry is engaged.”

“Tell me something new,” said I. “Where are they going to live.”

“In his studio—”

“What,” I almost shouted. “Is it Jack after all.”

“No, goosie,” said she fondly. “It is Billy.”

“And the moon?—”

“That was Billy and not Hepburn. I was fooled too.”

“But Billy hasn’t a cent.”

“No, but she has faith in his future, and she says she has never loved any one else since she first knew him, years ago.”

“Ethel Vernon,” said I. “As a character reader I am not a success. I would have sworn that it lay between Hepburn and Sibthorp.”

“You must remember that Cherry is not a character in one of your stories but a real girl,” said Ethel.

“Well, I wish her joy of her long wait.”

“It won’t be as long a wait as it would be if she had rejected him,” was Ethel’s Hibernian response.