The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 52/212

Harkless rescued the rose, pinned it on his coat himself, and, observing

internally, for the hundredth time, that the red-haired waitress was the

queerest creature in the village, set forth gaily upon his holiday.

When he reached the brick house on the pike he discovered a gentleman sunk

in an easy and contemplative attitude in a big chair behind the veranda

railing. At the click of the gate the lounger rose and disclosed the

stalwart figure and brown, smiling, handsome face of Mr. Lige Willetts, an

habitual devotee of Minnie Briscoe, and the most eligible bachelor of

Carlow. "The ladies will be down right off," he said, greeting the

editor's finery with a perceptible agitation and the editor himself with a

friendly shake of the hand. "Mildy says to wait out here."

But immediately there was a faint rustling within the house: the swish of

draperies on the stairs, a delicious whispering when light feet descend,

tapping, to hearts that beat an answer, the telegraphic message, "We come!

We come! We are near! We are near!" Lige Willetts stared at Harkless. He

had never thought the latter good-looking until he saw him step to the

door to take Miss Sherwood's hand and say in a strange, low, tense voice,

"Good-morning," as if he were announcing, at the least: "Every one in the

world except us two, died last night. It is a solemn thing, but I am very

happy."

They walked, Minnie and Mr. Willetts a little distance in front of the

others. Harkless could not have told, afterward, whether they rode, or

walked, or floated on an air-ship to the court-house. All he knew

distinctly was that a divinity in a pink shirt waist, and a hat that was

woven of gauzy cloud by mocking fairies to make him stoop hideously to see

under it, dwelt for the time on earth and was at his side, dazzling him in

the morning sunshine. Last night the moon had lent her a silvery glamour;

she had something of the ethereal whiteness of night-dews in that watery

light, a nymph to laugh from a sparkling fountain, at the moon or, as he

thought, remembering her courtesy for his pretty speech, perhaps a little

lady of King Louis's court, wandering down the years from Fontainebleau

and appearing to clumsy mortals sometimes, of a June night when the moon

was in their heads.

But to-day she was of the clearest color, a pretty girl, whose gray eyes

twinkled to his in gay companionship. He marked how the sunshine was spun

into the fair shadows of her hair and seemed itself to catch a lustre,

rather than to impart it, and the light of the June day drifted through

the gauzy hat, touching her face with a delicate and tender flush that

came and went like the vibrating pink of early dawn. She had the divinest

straight nose, tip-tilted the faintest, most alluring trifle, and a dimple

cleft her chin, "the deadliest maelstrom in the world!" He thrilled

through and through. He had been only vaguely conscious of the dimple in

the night. It was not until he saw her by daylight that he really knew it

was there.