THE WINDFALL

A Novel

By CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

Author of "The Bushwhackers," "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains," "The Amulet," "A Spectre of Power," "In the Stranger-People's Country," etc.

NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1907

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY DUFFIELD & COMPANY

Published, March, 1907

CHAPTER I

Despite his buoyant optimism Hilary Lloyd could but quail as he looked about him. The vast uninhabited heights of the encompassing Great Smoky Mountains, green, purple and bronze, seeming to his theatrical sense magnificently posed against the turquoise background of further ranges, glimpsed through clifty defiles and almost touching the differing translucent blue of the sapphire sky; the river, crag-bound, crystal-clear, with an arrowy swiftness; the forest, dense beyond any computation, gigantic of growths, redundantly rich of foliage, and gorgeous with autumnal tints—all were as revelations to his half-stunned mind. He had never dreamed of the natural wealth, the splendid extent, the picturesque values of this region. His imagination flagged, failed. He was sensible of the strain upon his receptivity to compass the transcendent reality. But whence, amidst these primeval splendours, should materialise the patrons of his little street fair? Its flimsy booths were already rising about the stony expanse of the public square of the town of Colbury, not, in stereotyped phrase, like

magic, but with all the laborious accompaniments of hammers and saws, the straining of muscles and patience, the expenditure of profanity and perspiration, and the sound of loud, raucous voices. The tents reluctantly spread their mushroom-like contour, now and again suddenly collapsing from awkward handling or inadequate aid. The manager looked at the few humble toilers with a prescient pang. To be stranded here, on the uttermost confines of civilisation, seemed a disaster indeed of direful menace. He realised his friend's impressions and could have voiced in unison the exact phrase as a heavy fellow of medium height, arrayed in a ready-made suit of a loud plaid, slouched up with his hands in his pockets, and chewing a straw.

"Well, partner, we've done it again!" he said, not without the accents of reproach.

Lloyd obviously flinched at the tone, and his face flushed. It was of a singularly perfect contour and chiselling, according to the canons of art, and in its large nobility of expression it might have served, and possibly had, as a model for an artist's realisation of some high ideal. But there was a most mundane anxiety in his luminous eyes, darkly blue and long-lashed, and the alertness with which they eagerly surveyed the meagre festival preparations gave an accent of the ludicrous to his fine facial suggestions. He was like a man playing the rôle of a prince, unstaged, on the bare sidewalk, and his utter unconsciousness and indifference to the effect of his remarkable appearance added to its impressiveness. His hair was fine and light brown in tint, and it shone like silk as he lifted his straw hat and wearily mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He was young, twenty-five perhaps, and very fair of complexion, and the delicate texture of his skin allowed the fluctuating flush of annoyance visibly to come and go in his cheek. He was something more than of

medium height, although not notably tall; he was very symmetrically put together, and, while slight and elegant, his movements showed intimations of muscular strength and a swift deftness that implied some special athletic training.

He presently gathered his faculties together and with a desperate courage affected to see naught amiss. "Why, we knew that it was only a country town, Haxon," he remonstrated.

Haxon pushed his wide-brimmed imitation Panama hat on the back of his head, showing in full relief his round red face, beaded with perspiration. He lifted one plump hand with an accusatory gesture toward the infinite stretch of the lonely mountains, and then turned melancholy eyes toward Lloyd.

"Why," Lloyd responded, "what is the matter with the mountains, Hax? I haven't got anything against 'em."

Haxon shook his head dolorously, "A good old country to walk in," he observed, tragically.

Lloyd affected surprise. "Cheese it!" he cried, contemptuously. "With a week to show—we're not stranded yet!"

Haxon's round head wagged to and fro unconvinced. "That railroad agent got us good, Hil'ry," he opined didactically. "We have got time enough to show all right—but nothing to show to."

In truth the prospect was not alluring from a utilitarian point of view. The little brick courthouse, the most considerable edifice in the town, stood in a plot of blue grass, surrounded by a fence of palings, and beyond the paved square without were enough small two-story shops to suggest the intent of the future when the intervals should be built in and the quadrangle complete. To the west the scattered dwellings straggled away along the hilly main street, with here and there a few cottages built on intersecting roadways, which should hereafter develop into cross-streets. But the temple of justice, the stores and the residences were none of them new, and barring a gleam of fresh paint now and again from some cottage out on the hilly reaches of the thoroughfare the town was much as it had been for years, and would be for years to come. There was a wonderful lack of foliage. A few ancient oaks stood in the courthouse yard, and the trellises of vines and low boughs in gardens betokened fruit culture, but along the streets the

idea of improvement seemed to find its earliest municipal exposition in laying the axe to the root of every forest tree that had spread its boughs for centuries above the lush spaces now shorn close to give the town room to expand. The landscape, steeped in splendid colour, of infinite vastness, of loftiest heroic suggestion and most poetic appeal, had wrought a surfeit of beauty in the sordid little town, and here, held in the heart of a most majestic expression of nature, there was naught to intimate the contiguity of the heights and the forests save the rare pure air and the fragrance of the balsam fir.

The tranquillity of the sunshine, the bland, suave atmosphere, the benignant breath of woods and waters seemed to impart their languorous lethargy to the inhabitants as well. There was not the frenzied interest in a new project of whatever sort that is the concomitant of enterprise in a live town. The merchants, the clerks, the few lawyers, and the officials of the courthouse noticed with only an episodical attention the preparations to get under way the first street fair which had ever shown its attractions to the denizens of Colbury.

This attitude piqued the curiosity of Lloyd. It nettled and unnerved him. As it fell under his observation in different ways it partook of the nature of those who manifested it. Now it intimated a sort of quizzical contempt, for there is a class of rural wights, who preserve the bucolic species still, always permeated with a disdain of progress, and a distrust of whatever is new to their limited experience. Now it was the outspoken prophecy of disaster.

"Some fools may leave thar harvests ter waggon down from the coves ter see yer show," a citizen suggested. "But a quarter of an eye will do the business, accordin' ter my way o' thinkin'. Ye air goin' ter bide hyar a week, they tell me. Why, man, the bigges' circus I ever see jes' showed fur one evenin', then tucked up its tent an' marched."

"Well, that ain't the style for street fairs," Lloyd explained. "This is a different sort of thing."

"It is,—it is, for sure, stranger."

Though enigmatically expressed, the acquiescence was distinctly uncomplimentary, and Lloyd dropped the topic. He had not come here to exhibit skill in debate, he said to himself, but to conduct a street fair. This, it was evident, would tax his powers. The manager was beginning to realise that he had been victimised in a certain sort by the wily representations of a railroad agent and the summer "cut-rates" in coming to this remote section. The merchants' evident lack of expectation of reaping the golden reward of a "big crowd in town" had a damping effect on the already drooping spirits of the showman. By way of steadying his nerve Lloyd sought reassurance in verifying some of the lures which had led him hither. In the office of the county court clerk, a brick-paved, white-washed apartment in the courthouse, he paid the State and county privilege tax on the show, and after he had taken out his license to exhibit, he courteously presented the officials with free passes to all the attractions.

"I hope you will do well," said the clerk in a tone of condolence.

"I hope so, indeed," returned Lloyd, thinking of the sum named in the tax-receipt. "We expect a good crowd. We have been well advertised throughout the country."

The clerk felt that he had no call to seem optimistic in other men's affairs to the jeopardy of his own soul. He left lying to more amiable wights, and preserved a dispiriting but veracious silence.

"The crops are all laid by," said a pleasant-spoken bystander. "Some folks may come down out'n the coves."

"I hear there is a mining camp some miles down the river," said Lloyd hopefully. "We lay considerable on that."

"Convict camp," said the clerk sepulchrally, and the amiable bystander burst out laughing.

"Them fellers have season tickets whar they be, stranger," he said. And then he winked hilariously at the clerk, whose funereal aspect brightened dimly at the dreary jest.

The small boy, ubiquitous expression of humanity, was out in force, and underfoot as usual. Every screw that went into the adjustment of the merry-go-round, the wooden head of every dummy horse, the great frame of the Ferris wheel, slowly rounding its circumference high into the air above the house tops and showing the solemn, austere, purpling mountain landscape, suffused with burnished, golden light, grotesquely framed by its towering circle—every detail passed under the personal supervision of the juvenile element of the town, and if the elders lacked interest it was more than atoned for by the frenzy of enthusiasm which possessed the juniors. The rearing of the tall mast, from the summit of which the noted "Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy," according to the florid announcement of the posters—videlicet Haxon, himself, and of what royal navy remains forever unexplained—was to spring into the air and plunge into a reservoir of water below, marked the accession of adult curiosity. This increased to open comment when Haxon

himself appeared, cautiously superintending its solid adjustment in the ground, the stretching of the guy wires, the placing in position, at the correct distance, of the great trough of water which was to break the force of his leap from the giddy height of the summit.

The gratuitous advice, freely proffered, and the expressions of wonderment on all sides changed to injurious doubt, as the magnitude and risk of the proposed feat percolated through the densities of the uninformed rural mind. "Jump off'n that thar pole?—never in this worl'!" said one of the bystanders. "Onpossible!" commented another. Others opined, "Takes more'n the Street Fair ter fool we uns."

"Time come, an' the Cap'n will be tooken with the chicken pip, or the bilious colic, or some disabling complaint an' the defrauded public will be jes' settin' with its finger in its mouth."

If Haxon heard aught of these disaffected remarks he manifested no heed. Silent, surly, he doggedly gave his whole attention to the details on which his life depended. He was well aware that however sparse the attendance at the Street Fair, however disastrous the enterprise financially, the exhibition of his "high dive" must be given, for it was of necessity performed in the open air, and therefore was a free show in the nature of an advertisement.

Lloyd had often heard the cynical remark that the spectators of a hazardous acrobatic feat crowd to see the performer killed, not to witness his triumph, and he was reminded of this as he watched the unsympathetic citizens of the little town and heard their comments and speculations concerning his partner's feat, for Haxon was a half owner of the enterprise. Lloyd deprecated infinitely Haxon's mood of surly disaffection. He knew that it tended to impair the acrobat's nerve and to render his terrible feat doubly dangerous. Haxon, of all men, should cultivate composure, a cheerful and equable state of mind. Lloyd was subtly aware that his partner secretly upbraided him for this unfortunate move, the culminating disaster of an unsuccessful season. For the company to go to pieces at last in the remote wildernesses of the Great Smoky Mountains was indeed the extremest spite of fate, and even speculation shrunk back appalled from the utter blank of the possibilities beyond. The exchequer was almost empty; it was "up to them," as they had said dolorously to each other, to make their

transportation back to New York, and they would have been glad of this, even with empty hands as the guerdon of their summer's hard work. And in fact this meant no inconsiderable sum, for in addition to the concessionaries who sold and mended umbrellas, parasols and fans, dismayed inexpressibly by their sudden projection into this primitive community, the owners of the candy-stands and peanut-roasters, the company carried perforce a goodly number of individuals. While there were performers who did double duty in various wise, the "stunts" of the specialists could not be delegated, and this swelled the bulk of the expense accounts. True, Haxon, when his great diurnal feat had been exploited, was wont to array himself in correct evening dress and perform with great spirit on the cornet as the noted soloist, Signor Allegro. The "Flying Lady," when not ethereally a-wing, developed into a ticket-seller of no mean abilities. Even the noted juggler of the company found time to sing tenor in the quartette of the "high-class concert." But for the most part the duties of the

others were continuous, and they were restricted to their several stations. Naturally, the freaks—a "Fat Lady," a "Wild Man," and a "Living Skeleton"—dared not court gratuitously the gaze of the public who ought to pay for the privilege of a shock to the nerves, and sedulously secluded themselves in their tents; the kinetoscope must needs shift its scenes unceasingly, and the wild west play which it exhibited reached a conclusion only to begin its active agonies anew; the merry-go-round and the Ferris Wheel were ready to solve the problem of perpetual motion, and throughout all the brass band brayed, in tune by happy accident, or, deliriously indifferent to the laws of harmony, vociferously off the key. But for this microcosm, this bizarre little world to revolve at all, must be attainable the essential motive power, the admittance fee in goodly quantity.

The prospect here had seemed so promising, so reasonable. The company had struggled against the unvarying luck of superior counter-attractions wherever they had gone; to give their show in a locality unused to all diversion, with not a rival in prospect nor even in reminiscence, was a lure not to be disregarded. The lack of an audience in so sparsely settled a community did not readily occur to them; a town, even a little town, implies normally a tributary region of suburbs and farms. The vast uninhabited mountain wildernesses faced them like the land of doom.

Lloyd had had no Scriptural tuition that could remind him of the Scapegoat of the Hebraic ritual, loaded with the sins and the curses of the people and driven into the desert to lose itself in those aridities and die; but could the creature have possessed any sense of its doom and its direful burden, Lloyd might have realised its sentiments, as he gazed appalled upon the infinite stretching of those austere and lofty mountains, which even in the days of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country were called "The Endless." It was not his fault, he said bitterly to himself, his eyes hot as he gazed. The subject had been fully discussed, and all had agreed on the experiment. Haxon, though a part owner of the precarious and ephemeral property, had not made a protest—nay, he had been an earnest advocate of "fresh fields and pastures new." Now Lloyd abruptly reminded him of this, as with a sudden lurch and an exclamation of impatience Haxon snatched the hammer of a workman and with two or three well-directed blows drove

home the steel spike that held down one of the guy wires. He looked up, still in his bent posture, from under his frowning dark eyebrows; his round, florid face, that was wont to be so jovial, was all lowering and sullen. His small dark eyes flashed with antagonism and vexation. "Who's sayin' as I didn't agree—eh? Well," as Lloyd made an intimation of negation, "what's gnawin' on ye, then?"

This was evidently no time nor mood for the discussion of the matter, and indeed discussion was futile, a mere waste of words. The die was cast. The Street Fair had met its fate. If the company had been wrecked on a desert island its case could not be more desperate.

Lloyd turned away, looking dully about him. There was scant supervision now necessary—the old routine, practised week after week since the early spring, had grown so familiar to the workmen that the most ingenious blunderer could hardly find a pretext for his activities, and little by little Lloyd's meditative steps took him slowly along the smooth red clay road till presently he found himself on the outskirts of the town and nearing the river. He shook his head gloomily when he stood on the high rocks of the bank and gazing down perceived the course that the road followed through a clifty defile to reach the verge and the ford—there was not even a bridge in this benighted spot, and yet this was a county town! The water was swift, evidently deep—he marked the distance down the stream where the road once more resumed its course on the opposite bank. It obviously took a devious route along the bed of the river, picked its steps so to speak; there must be deep holes, quicksands, pitfalls on either side of the comparatively safe footing of the ford, he reflected. Suddenly

he noticed the footbridge; this followed a direct line across the torrent—a trifling, primitive structure, consisting of a couple of logs with a shaking hand-rail, and with the deep, turbulent swift flow of a rocky mountain stream beneath. Once more he dolorously shook his head. Hither must come the patrons of the Street Fair, even now spreading its attractions on the public square to welcome them—not yet a canvas-covered wagon in sight, no horseman, no foot-passenger to tempt the instabilities of the little bridge.

He laid his hand on the rail and as he crossed felt the elastic structure sway beneath every step, while the waters swirled far below. But as he reached the opposite bank and paused for a moment his anxieties were calmed in spite of himself by the sweet peace of the dark, cool solitude; he listened to the ripples eddying about the jagged base of the crags—a sound distinct from the swift rush of the tumultuous currents. It had a secondary tone, seeming keyed higher, a clear metallic tintinnabulation like elfin minstrelsy, barely heard, yet not discriminated by the senses. And oh, the sylvan balm of the air!—it touched so caressingly the forlorn wight's cheek, his hair as he took off his hat, his hot, tired eyes, that he had half a mind to fall a-sobbing on the vague breast of this insensate sympathy. He was comforted in some sort. His lungs, filled and weighted with the soot and smoke and dust of a dozen sordid towns, expanded, drinking in with deep draughts this fragrant elixir that was but the diffusive air. He looked up into the dark green boughs of the giant oaks and beeches,