The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 58/212

"Do you go to Winter Harbor?" he asked.

"We have gone there every summer until this one, for years. Have you

friends who go there?"

"I had--once. There was a classmate of mine from Rouen----"

"What was his name? Perhaps I know him." She stole a glance at him. His

face had fallen into sad lines, and he looked like the man who had come up

the aisle with the Hon. Kedge Halloway. A few moments before he had seemed

another person entirely.

"He's forgotten me, I dare say. I haven't seen him for seven years; and

that's a long time, you know. Besides, he's 'out in the world,' where

remembering is harder. Here in Plattville we don't forget."

"Were you ever at Winter Harbor?"

"I was--once. I spent a very happy day there long ago, when you must have

been a little girl. Were you there in--"

"Listen!" she cried. "The procession is coming. Look at the crowd!" The

parade had seized a psychological moment.

There was a fanfare of trumpets in the east. Lines of people rushed for

the street, and, as one looked down on the straw hats and sunbonnets and

many kinds of finer head apparel, tossing forward, they seemed like surf

sweeping up the long beaches.

She was coming at last. The boys whooped in the middle of the street; some

tossed their arms to heaven, others expressed their emotion by

somersaults; those most deeply moved walked on their hands. In the

distance one saw, over the heads of the multitude, tossing banners and the

moving crests of triumphal cars, where "cohorts were shining in purple and

gold." She was coming. After all the false alarms and disappointments,

she was coming!

There was another flourish of music. Immediately all the band gave sound,

and then, with blare of brass and the crash of drums, the glory of the

parade burst upon Plattville. Glory in the utmost! The resistless impetus

of the march-time music; the flare of royal banners, of pennons on the

breeze; the smiling of beautiful Court Ladies and great, silken Nobles;

the swaying of howdahs on camel and elephant, and the awesome shaking of

the earth beneath the elephant's feet, and the gleam of his small but

devastating eye (every one declared he looked the alarmed Mr. Snoddy full

in the face as he passed, and Mr. Snoddy felt not at all reassured when

Tom Martin severely hinted that it was with the threatening glance of a

rival); then the badinage of the clown, creaking along in his donkey cart;

the terrific recklessness of the spangled hero who was drawn by in a cage

with two striped tigers; the spirit of the prancing steeds that drew the

rumbling chariots, and the grace of the helmeted charioteers; the splendor

of the cars and the magnificence of the paintings with which they were

adorned; the ecstasy of all this glittering, shining, gorgeous pageantry

needed even more than walking on your hands to express.