CHAPTER XI

The first day of the County Fair was hardly eventful. The farmers were busy bringing in their exhibits of stock and produce, and arranging them properly for the inspection of the judges. It is all merely by way of preparation for the big day, the day on which the trotting and running races take place.

Fortunately, it was a cloudless day. Shortly after sunrise clouds of dust began to fill the air. All the roads leading fairwards are filled all morning with every sort and condition of vehicle. Farmers come from the farthest bounderies of the county, bringing their families; the young men bringing their "best girls." This volume of traffic soon reduces the road-bed to a fine, powdery dust, that rises, mist-like and obscures the face of the earth and sky.

Soon the presence of the Fair is felt in the village itself, and the "square" resounds to the cries of the omnibus drivers soliciting fares. "All aboard, now, for the Fair Grounds, only ten cents!" So runs the invitation yelled from half a dozen lusty, though dusty throats. For this occasion every livery stable in the place brings out all the ramshackle conveyances it has. Everything on wheels is pressed into service. Like Christmas, the great day of the County Fair, comes but once a year, and must be made the most of. Few people are going to walk on so dusty a day as this, so the 'bus drivers ply up and down from seven in the morning until dusk sets in, and the last home-stragglers have left the grounds.

At noon, the highway was become a very sea of dust. Dick had walked down to the "square," and was looking about for a conveyance of some sort when a carriage came up with Mrs. Ware and her daughter inside. Dorothy spoke to the coachman, and then waved a daintily gloved hand at Dick. "Delighted!" said that young man, getting in quickly, and adding, in Mrs. Ware's direction, "This is awfully kind in you!" In that course of the drive there was as little said as possible, because each sentence meant a mouthful of dust.

As they passed through the gates at last, Dick smiled at the dear familiar sight that yet seemed something strange. There was the half-mile track in the open meadow; the ridiculously small grand-stand perched against the western horizon, the acres of sloping ground, shaded by lofty oaks, and covered by a mass of picturesquely rural humanity. Against the inclosing fence the countless stalls, filled with the show stock of the county. The crowd was surging around the track, the various refreshment booths, the merry-go-rounds, and the spaces where the "fakirs" held forth. The grand-stand was filled to running over. The air was resonant with laughter; with the appeals of the "fakirs," with the neighing of the hundreds of horses hitched in every part of the field.

The driver halted his horses as close as possible to get to the centre of attraction, the race-track. Then, the horses turning restive, Mrs. Ware decided to get out and go over to the dairy-booth, and see some of her friends from the farms. Dorothy and Dick accompanied her, but had soon exhausted the attractions of the booth. Mrs. Ware guessed she wouldn't go with them. They started out into the motley crew of sightseers together.

As they approached the grand-stand again, their ears were assailed with by a number of quaint and characteristic cries. "Right down this way, now, and see the man with the iron jaw! Free exhibition inside every minute! Walk up, walk up, and see the ring-tailed monkey eat his own tail!" The most laughable part of this exuberant invitation was that it had nothing to do with a circus or a dime-museum, it was merely the vocal hall-mark of an ambitious seller of lemonade and candy. It was one of the tricks of the trade. It caught the fancy of the countryman. It sounded well.

There were other cries, such as: "Here's your chance. Ten shots for a nickel," and "the stick you ring is the stick you gits!" "This way for the great panoramy of Gettysburg, just from Chicago!" "Pink lemo, here, five a glass; peanuts, popcorn!" "The only Californy fruit on the grounds here!" "Ten cents admits you to the quarter-stretch--don't crowd the steps, move on, keep a-moving!" Babel was come again.

The farm-people themselves were a healthy, cheering sight. They were all bent on as much wholesome enjoyment as was possible. It looked as if every man, woman and child in the county was there. They had, most of them, come for the day, eating their meals in their vehicles, or under the trees on the green sward. The meadow was a blaze of color. The dresses of the women, with the color-note in them exaggerated in rustic love of brightness, gave the scene a touch of picturesqueness. The white tents of the various booths, the greenleaf trees, the glaring yellow sun over head, and the dust-white track stretching out in the gray mist of heat and dust made a picture of cheer and warmth.

A cheering from the grand-stand. A trotting heat is being run, and the horses have been around for the first time. It is not like the big circuit meeting, this, and Dick thought with something of gladness that the absence of a betting-shed left the scene an unalloyed charm.

Everybody thinks himself competent to speak of the merits of the horses. "He ain't got that sorrel bitted right," declares one authority. "He'll push the bay mare so she'll break on the turn; there--watch her--what 'd I tell you!" triumphs another. A third utters the disgusted sentiment that "Dandy Dan 'd win ef he wuz driv right." And so on. Dick and Dorothy smile at each other as they listen. There is nothing pleasanter in the world than a silent jest as jointure.

Then there comes a rush of dust up the track, a clatter of hoofs over the "stretch," a whirl of wheels, cheers from the crowd and the heat is lost and won.

And so the day wears on, and the program dwindles. There are several trotting races, a pacing event, a running race, and some bicycle exhibitions. The day is to be topped off with a balloon ascent, the balloonist, a woman, being billed to descend, afterward, by way of a parachute.

But to neither of these two spectators did the events of the program seem the most interesting of the displays. It was the country people themselves that had the most of quaint charms. Miss Dorothy Ware was become so saturated with the polish of cosmopolitan views, and the manners caught from extensive travel, that these scenes, once so familiar and natural, now struck her as very strange and extraordinary. In Dick the air of the metropolis had so keyed him up to the quick, unwholesome pleasures of the urban mob that this breath of country holiday filled him with a pleasant sense of rest. Never again could he be as these were, but he could, in a far-off, dreamy way, still appreciate their primitive emotions. They were all so ingenious, so openly joyful, so gayly bent on having a good time, these country folk! They strolled about in groups of young folk, or in couples, or in family parties. She casts a wistful look toward a fruit-stand; he must go promptly and buy her something. He bargains closely; he is mindful, doubtless, of the fact that there is still the yearning for the merry-go-round, the phonograph, and the panorama, to be appeased.

In the West the sun was taking on the dull red tone of shining, beaten bronze. The haze of dust began to lift, mist-wise, up against the shadowgirt horizon. From thousands of lips there presently issues a long drawn "Ah-h!" and the unwieldy mass of a balloon is seen to rise up over the meadow. A damsel in startling, grass-green tights floats in mid-air upheld by the resisting parachute, and drops earthward to the safe seclusion of a neighboring pasture. Vehicles are unhitched; there are some moments of wild shouting and maneuvering, and then the stream of humanity and horses pours out into the dusty road, and in a little while the fair grounds are merely a place for the ghosts of the things that were.

When it was all over, when he had said goodbye to Miss Ware and her mother, a sense of loneliness came over Dick, and he sank into one of those moody states that nowadays invariably meant torment. He could not remember to have talked to Dorothy of anything save commonplace and obvious things, and yet with every glance of her eye, every tone of her voice, the old glamour that he had felt aforetime had come upon him again. She was no longer the same, he had observed so much; the girlish exuberance and forth-rightness had given way to a more subdued manner, a fine, but somewhat colorless polish. Something, too, of the sparkle seemed to have gone from her; her smile had much of sadness. It flashed over him that never once had either of them referred to the words with which they once had parted. Had it been his fault, or hers? Once, she had let him hope, had she not? He remembered the dead words, but he smiled at the dim tone that yon whole picture took in his memory. It was as if it had all happened to someone else. Well,--perhaps it had; certainly he was separated by leagues of too well remembered things from that other self, the self that had said to a girl, once, "Dorothy, will you wish me luck?"

But in spite of the changes in them both, Dick felt that her charm for him was potent with a new fervor. He could not define it; it seemed a halo that surrounded her, in his eyes at least. The sardonic recesses of his memory flashed to him the echo of his foolish words to Mrs. Stewart, at the opera. "Oh, damn the past," he muttered, hotly. He would begin all over again, he would atone for those pretty steps aside; he would pin his faith to the banner of his love for Dorothy. For he felt that he did love this girl. He longed for her; she seemed to personify a harbor of refuge, a comfort; he felt that if he could go to her, and tell her everything, and feel her hand upon his forehead, her smile, and the touch of her hand would wipe away all the ghostly cobwebs of his memory, of his past, and leave him looking futureward with stern resolves for white, and happy, wholesome days.

Surely it would be madly foolish to let a Past spoil a Future!

He saw the grin upon the face of Sophistry, and set his lips. No, there were no excusing circumstances; he had gone the way of the world, because that way was easy and pleasant. Only his weakness was to blame.

"She is as far above me," he said, before he went to sleep that night, "as the stars. But--we always want the stars!"

As for Miss Ware, it need only be chronicled that she was very quiet and abstracted that evening, so that her mother was prompted to remark that "Lincolnville don't appear to suit you powerful well, Dorothy." As a matter of fact, the girl was afar off, in thought, and her eyes were bright with tears because of the things she was remembering.

She had loved Dick, on a time. And to realize that never, in all time, would her conscience permit her to satisfy that love--that was bitter, very bitter.