Travelers Five Along Life's Highway

The Fourth Traveler

ONLY one question was asked in the streets of Gentryville that afternoon, and it was asked from the Court-house Square to the last corner grocery in the straggling outskirts:

"If you were an undertaker like Wexley Snathers, and had a circus left to you by will, what would you do with it?" When the question was worn threadbare in business circles, it was taken home to bandy around the village supper-tables, with the final insistent emphasis, "Well, what would you do, anyhow, if you were in Wex Snathers's place?"

It would have been an intense relief to the man in question if the village could have settled the problem for him. Nothing had ever weighed so heavily upon him, not even the responsibilities of his first personally conducted funeral occasion.

All the afternoon he sat in the rear of his little coffin shop, floundering again and again through the confusing phrases of a legal document spread out before him. It notified him of the death of one Mortimer Napoleon Bennet, a travelling showman, who had left him heir to possessions valued at several thousands of dollars.

So bewildering was the unexpected news and the legal terms in which it was conveyed, that it was some time before Wexley's slow brain grasped the fact that the deceased was not a stranger, but only red-headed "Pole" Bennet, an old play-fellow, who had run away from home over thirty years before. Next, his stumpy forefinger guided his spectacles twice through the entire document before he realized that he was now the owner of all the ungodly goods and chattels enumerated therein.

"Lordy!" he groaned, as he checked off the various items. "Me, a deacon in the church, to be ownin' four gilded circus chariots and a steam calliope, to say nothin' of a trick elephant and a pair of dancin' cinnamon bears. It's downright scandalous! Pole always was a-gittin' me into hot water. Meant all right! Had a heart as big as a meetin' house, but he was at the bottom of every lickin' I ever got in my life. Mebbe not havin' any next of kin, he felt he sorter owed it to me to make me his heir."

Again his finger travelled slowly down the page to the clause in which three freaks connected with the side shows were especially commended to his care – an armless dwarf and the Wild Twins of Borneo. The lawyer's letter explained that they had long been pensioners upon the bounty of the deceased, and had the promise of the dying man that "Wex" would be good to them.

"Bug the luck!" groaned the undertaker, as the full meaning of this clause also dawned upon him. "Guardeen to an armless dwarf and two wild twins of Borneo! Pole oughtn't to 'a' done me that way. I'll be the laughing stock of the town, and that'll ruin my chances for ever with Sade."

Glowering over his spectacles, he leaned through the open window and spat testily out into the cluttered back yard. It was some time before he drew in his shoulders. When a diffident old bachelor has obstinately courted a girl for a decade, he naturally falls into the habit of determining every act of his life by the effect it will have upon her.

In this case he could not imagine what effect his queer legacy would have upon Sade Cooper, the comely, capable spinster of his dreams. She had made up her mind to marry Wexley Snathers some day, for in the stout, sandy-whiskered little undertaker she recognized an honest soul of rare worth. On the occasion of his latest proposal, several weeks before, she had given him the reason for her repeated refusals: —

"I never could get along with your ma, Wexley. If you had enough to keep me in one house and old Mis' Snathers in another, I might think of marrying you. But she'd try to get me under her thumb, same as she's always held you, and your pa before you, and you know I never could stand that, so you might as well save your breath on that question."

Wexley realized the hopelessness of his suit, if that was what stood in the way, and since Sade's outspoken confession he had almost prayed for an epidemic to smite the healthy little village, that the undertaking business might prove more lucrative.

Now, as he sat with his head out of the window, breathing in the sweetness of an old plum tree in bloom by the pump, he began to wonder if this unexpected legacy would not solve all his difficulties. If the circus could be made the stepping-stone for his desires without making him ridiculous, or offending Sade's Puritan conscience, then Pole would indeed have proved himself, for once, the greatest of benefactors.

The spring breeze bore to his senses the odour of the plum-blooms and the shouts of boys playing ball on the commons. "Poor old Pole!" he sighed, following the odour and the sound backward through nearly forty other springtimes, to the first and only circus he had ever attended. He and Pole had run away to see it, in days when shows were forbidden ground. How vividly he remembered the whole glittering pageant, from the gaily caparisoned horses with their nodding red plumes, down through the gilded coaches, with mirror panels, to the last painted fool, riding backward on his donkey.

The sudden opening of the shop door rang a bell above his head. He started guiltily, jerking in his head in such haste that he struck it with a bang against the window sash. His first impulse was to sweep the papers on his desk out of sight, but as he recognized the voice of the genial drummer who kept him supplied with coffin plates and trimmings, he was overpowered by a longing to unburden his soul. So strong was the desire that he yielded to it incontinently, and leaning over the counter and fixing his anxious little eyes on the drummer he almost whispered: —

"Between you and me and the gate-post, Bailey, what would you do if you had a circus left you by will?"

The drummer's laugh at what he supposed was intended for a joke was checked in the middle by the tragic earnestness of the questioner, who with a wiggle of his thumb beckoned him mysteriously to inspect the legal papers.

"There!" said he, "set down and give me your advice."

Seeing that the time for selling coffin-plates was not yet come, Bailey gave his attention to discovering on which side Snathers preferred the advice to fall, and being as voluble in giving advice as in the selling of goods, it was not long before he had nearly convinced his customer that, as a side-line to the undertaking business, there was nothing on earth so desirable as a circus. "Sell it?" he exclaimed in conclusion, "Not by a jugful! It will make your fortune, Snathers, sure."

"But it will make talk," protested Wex, going back to his first argument with the provoking tenacity of slow minds. "I'm afraid it will hurt the undertaking, for there'll be them as will say they wouldn't have a showman performin' the last solemn rites for them, an' there'll be others to say a man has no right to carry on a business that's a stumblin' block and an offence." He was thinking of Sade.

"Oh, that doesn't cut any ice," answered the drummer, cheerfully, as he closed the door behind him. "Go in and win!"

The news travelled fast and before dark Wex had been advised to sell his circus, to run it on shares, to have the animals killed and stuffed as a nucleus for a village museum. He was assured of success, warned of ignominious failure, congratulated on his luck and condoled with for the burden laid upon him. He was admonished that it was his Christian duty to refuse the legacy, and told by his next visitor that he would be a darn fool if he did.

He had aged visibly when he reached home, where he knew the news had preceded him by the voice of his mother in the kitchen, high and shrill above the sputter of the frying fat. She stood, hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, fork in hand, talking to some one in the back door.

"Well," she was saying, decidedly, "there was never a Snathers yit, far as I know, that even went to a circus, and no son of mine shall own one if I have my say."

The answering voice was as decided as her own, provokingly cool and deliberate, but the sweetest of all sounds to the anxious eavesdropper. He flushed to the roots of his sandy hair and clutched nervously at his stubby beard. It was Sade's voice. She had heard the news and had run in the back way, in neighbourly village fashion, to ask if it were really true. He waited breathlessly for her answer: —

"And I think Wex'd feel he was flying straight into the face of Providence not to make all he could out of it, even if he had to run it himself for awhile." Then, startled by the sneeze that betrayed Wexley's presence, she said good-bye so hurriedly that he had only a glimpse of a white sunbonnet, fluttering around the corner.

Armed with this sanction, Wexley called that evening at the Cooper cottage, where Sade kept house for a decrepit great-aunt. But she had heard wild rumours in the meantime – the possibility of his adopting the armless dwarf and the wild twins of Borneo, in case the show business did not pay. But on being anxiously assured that there was nothing whatever to fear in that direction if she would only marry him, she confessed that she did not approve of his running a circus any more than his mother did. It was only her chronic disability to agree with old Mis' Snathers that made her say it.

So it was with a sorely troubled heart and brain that Wexley took up the burden of life again next day. He had a funeral to conduct at ten o'clock, and he began it in such an absent-minded way that he might have made scandalous mistakes, had not the officiating clergyman's text – Jeremiah, xii: 9, – delivered in a high, nasal drawl, brought him to a sudden decision: "Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird. The birds round about are against her." "Yes, even Sade!" he thought. And such is the perversity of human nature that it stirred him to espouse the cause of his speckled bird. As he led the slow procession out to the cemetery, something followed him other than the hearse and the long line of carriages; – in that shadowy procession of fancy, black hearse-plumes gave place to the nod, nodding of red-plumed chariot horses. If there was anything Wexley Snathers particularly prided himself upon, it was the effective arrangement of funeral processions, and at the tempting thought of the scope for his genius circus parades would afford, the battle with his conscience was won. All the past called out loudly not to venture on any road where Pole Bennet's feet had left a track, but three days later – hoping that old Mr. Hill would hold on to life until his return – the troubled undertaker locked the door of his little coffin shop and fared forth to claim his heritage.

It is not often that a dying man leaves his earthly affairs so thoroughly provided for as did Napoleon Bennet, yet that astute showman reckoned without an important element of his problem when he thought to put the armless dwarf in his old playfellow's care. He had not counted on the twist in her little warped brain, – a superstitious dread that amounted almost to mania. She was afraid of undertakers or anything connected with their gruesome business. A cold terror seized her when she learned she was about to fall into the hands of a man on intimate terms with Death and his pale horse and, with the cunning of her kind, she began laying plans that would work his undoing.

Wexley first saw her sitting on a table, practising her one accomplishment, writing her autograph with her toes. "Be thankful for your arms. Jane Hutchins," she penned in round, childish script.

"Blest if it ain't better than I could do myself with both hands," declared Wexley, admiringly. Then, remembering what Pole had promised about his being good to the tiny creature, he patted her kindly on the head. She drew back with an inarticulate cry of alarm, turning upon him the face of a woman of thirty. A wild look of aversion gleamed in her little beady eyes.

It was the man's turn to draw back perplexed. He was beginning to feel like a fish out of water – powerless to cope with the emergencies of the show business. His employees had not been long in taking his measure. The fat lady, the living skeleton and the leading clown, after looking him over, decamped to accept the offer of a rival showman. "He's too soft a snap for me to leave!" said one of the acrobats. "Why, that old skull-and-cross-bones doesn't know any more about this business than a white kitten. Didn't even know he'd have to get a license to show, or the whole lay-out would be attached."

Wexley, overhearing the conversation, grew weak in the knees. He was rapidly becoming disillusioned. He had been disappointed in the street parade. All the remembered glamour was lacking. It looked tawdry and silly to his mature eyes, and he was ashamed to be seen with it. He had just learned that the wild twins had never seen Borneo, but were only tattooed half-witted orphans whom Pole had picked up, and were not even brothers. He was puzzled to know how he had incurred the uncanny little dwarf's displeasure, but he would have been still more puzzled could he have heard her whispering hoarsely to the twins of Borneo, as she held their frightened eyes fixed on hers in a fascinated gaze: —

"Remember, you promised to do it to-night. You know how to unlock the cages. He's a graveyard man, and if you don't let the lion eat him up, he'll put you in a box and screw the cover down." Here her voice sank to a series of husky, terrifying groans. "He'll – bury – you! In – a – deep – black – hole! And you'll never—get—out!"

Before dark Wexley had called on Pole's lawyer. "Advertise it for sale at half-price," he said. "I'm plumb disgusted, and want to get home. If to-night's performance hadn't been advertised so big, I wouldn't risk tryin' to give it. I'm dead sure it'll be a failure."

Of that evening's performance, all that he could subsequently relate was this: "The calliope was playin', and everybody was clappin' and cheerin', and I was wavin' my old hat and cheerin' too, so pleased that the performance was turning out a success, when that old elephant, Lulu, stopped short in the ring and began to trumpet. That sorter paralyzed me. I felt in my bones that something was wrong. Then the smoke began to pour in, and somebody yelled the lion was loose. Then everything seemed to go wild. There was shoutin' and yellin' and an awful stampede. In the mix-up I got a twisted ankle, and somebody stepped on my head. That's the last thing I knew till morning."

In the morning he was lying on a hospital cot, his head bandaged and his ankle in a plaster cast. Sam McCarthy, the lion tamer, his arm in a sling, had come to inquire about him.

"Well, we found out how it happened," he told Wexley. "It was Jane's doings – the little minx actually boasted of it. She struck matches with her toes and set fire to the straw in a dozen places. How those gibbering Borneo idiots ever let the lion out is more than I know, but they're strong as wildcats at times. She says she made 'em do it; – never could have happened in Bennet's time."

"I know," replied Wex, wearily. "I s'pose it was my fault that everything was left at loose ends, but it was all so confusin'. They didn't save much out of the wreck, did they?"

"No; we were too far out for the volunteer engine company to get there in time. Old Lulu's left, and the calliope. They got that out, and the dancing bears and the horses. But such things as coaches, clothes, and fol-de-rols are done for, – and several people who were hurt are going to bring suit."

The undertaker closed his eyes and groaned. "And no insurance. All Gentryville would have to die off before I could raise money enough to pull me out now," he murmured. "I might have known that, living or dead, Pole would get me into trouble! McCarthy!" he exclaimed, starting up, "I wish you'd send that lawyer down here to me. I want to get shut of the whole blamed business before sundown. It ought to be settled before I get any worse."

There was a crowd around the bulletin-board of the Gentryville Chronicle, bearing a paragraph from one of the big city dailies. People stopped to read, and pushed on with shocked faces to tell their neighbours that Wexley Snathers, trying to stop the stampede at the burning of his circus, had been fatally trampled and had since died in the hospital from internal injuries.

Old Mrs. Snathers sat in her darkened house, tense and wild-eyed, not knowing at what hour Wexley's mangled body might be laid before her. Sade refused to believe the report, until confronted with the staring headlines in which Wexley's name appeared in huge black letters. Then her remorse and self-reproach were almost more than she could endure.

It was towards night of the third day after the appearance of the bulletin that the train pulling into Gentryville bore among its passengers a tired-looking man on crutches. His head was bandaged, and his gray linen duster bore marks of a long journey. Climbing down the steps farthest from the station, he swung himself along on his crutches toward the little coffin shop, and the smell of varnish that met him on entering was like the greeting of an old friend. Ignorant of the impression current about his death, he had gone first to the shop to get his bearings before meeting the eye and tongue of the village public.

Sitting beside the open back window, his first feeling was one of relief. The circus was a thing of the past. The lawyer had assured him that by some hook or crook, best known to his profession, he could undertake to settle all suits to the satisfaction of his client. He had also undertaken to consign the freaks to some public institution for the feeble-minded, and for his services he was willing to accept the very things that had grown to be the bane of Wexley's existence, – the remnants of the circus.