Stories by American Authors Volume V Part 3

"I verily believe that poor Mr. Sloane is dead in his bed!" he cried.

There was a moment's perfect silence. "Amen," said I. "Yes, old boy, try and be just." Mr. Sloane had quietly died in my absence.

24th.--Theodore went up to town this morning, having shaken hands with me in silence before he started. Doctor Jones, and Brooks the attorney, have been very officious, and, by their advice, I have telegraphed to a certain Miss Meredith, a maiden lady, by their account the nearest of kin; or, in other words, simply a discarded niece of the defunct. She telegraphs back that she will arrive in person for the funeral. I shall remain till she comes. I have lost a fortune, but have I irretrievably lost a friend? I am sure I can't say. Yes, I shall wait for Miss Meredith.

[1] _The Galaxy, July_, 1869.

YATIL.[2]

BY F.D. MILLET.

While in Paris, in the spring of 1878, I witnessed an accident in a circus, which for a time made me renounce all athletic exhibitions. Six horses were stationed side by side in the ring before a spring-board, and the whole company of gymnasts ran and turned somersaults from the spring over the horses, alighting on a mattress spread on the ground.

The agility of one finely developed young fellow excited great applause every time he made the leap. He would shoot forward in the air like a javelin, and in his flight curl up and turn over directly above the mattress, dropping on his feet as lightly as a bird. This play went on for some minutes, and at each round of applause the favorite seemed to execute his leap with increased skill and grace. Finally, he was seen to gather himself a little farther in the background than usual, evidently to prepare for a better start. The instant his turn came he shot out of the crowd of attendants and launched himself into the air with tremendous momentum. Almost quicker than the eye could follow him, he had turned and was dropping to the ground, his arms held above his head, which hung slightly forward, and his legs stretched to meet the shock of the elastic mattress.

But this time he had jumped an inch too far. His feet struck just on the edge of the mattress, and he was thrown violently forward, doubling up on the ground with a dull thump, which was heard all over the immense auditorium. He remained a second or two motionless, then sprang to his feet, and as quickly sank to the ground again. The ring attendants and two or three gymnasts rushed to him and took him up. The clown, in evening dress, personating the mock ringmaster, the conventional spotted merryman, and a stalwart gymnast in buff fleshings, bore the drooping form of the favorite in their arms, and, followed by the bystanders, who offered ineffectual a.s.sistance, carried the wounded man across the ring and through the draped arch under the music gallery. Under any other circ.u.mstances the group would have excited a laugh, for the audience was in that condition of almost hysterical excitement when only the least effort of a clown is necessary to cause a wave of laughter. But the moment the wounded man was lifted from the ground, the whole strong light from the brilliant chandelier struck full on his right leg dangling from the knee, with the foot hanging limp and turned inward. A deep murmur of sympathy swelled and rolled around the crowded amphitheatre.

I left the circus, and hundreds of others did the same. A dozen of us called at the box-office to ask about the victim of the accident. He was advertised as "The Great Polish Champion Bareback Rider and Aerial Gymnast." We found that he was really a native of the East, whether Pole or Russian the ticket-seller did not know. His real name was Nagy, and he had been engaged only recently, having returned a few months before from a professional tour in North America. He was supposed to have money, for he commanded a good salary, and was sober and faithful. The accident, it was said, would probably disable him for a few weeks only, and then he would resume his engagement.

The next day an account of the accident was in the newspapers, and twenty-four hours later all Paris had forgotten about it. For some reason or other I frequently thought of the injured man, and had an occasional impulse to go and inquire after him; but I never went. It seemed to me that I had seen his face before, when or where I tried in vain to recall. It was not an impressive face, but I could call it up at any moment as distinct to my mind's eye as a photograph to my physical vision. Whenever I thought of him, a dim, very dim memory would flit through my mind, which I could never seize and fix.

Two months later I was walking up the Rue Richelieu, when some one, close beside me and a little behind, asked me in Hungarian if I was a Magyar. I turned quickly to answer no, surprised at being thus addressed, and beheld the disabled circus-rider. It flashed upon me, the moment I saw his face, that I had seen him in Turin three years before.

My surprise at the sudden identification of the gymnast was construed by him into vexation at being spoken to by a stranger. He began to apologize for stopping me, and was moving away, when I asked him about the accident, remarking that I was present on the evening of his misfortune. My next question, put in order to detain him, was:

"Why did you ask if I was a Hungarian?"

"Because you wear a Hungarian hat," was the reply.

This was true. I happened to have on a little round, soft felt hat, which I had purchased in Buda Pesth.

"Well, but what if I were Hungarian?"

"Nothing; only I was lonely and wanted company, and you looked as if I had seen you somewhere before. You are an artist, are you not?"

I said I was, and asked him how he guessed it.

"I can't explain how it is," he said, "but I always know them. Are you doing anything?"

"No," I replied.

"Perhaps I may get you something to do," he suggested. "What is your line?"

"Figures," I answered, unable to divine how he thought he could a.s.sist me.

This reply seemed to puzzle him a little, and he continued:

"Do you ride or do the trapeze?"

It was my turn now to look dazed, and it might easily have been gathered, from my expression, that I was not flattered at being taken for a saw-dust artist. However, as he apparently did not notice any change in my face, I explained without further remark that I was a painter. The explanation did not seem to disturb him any; he was evidently acquainted with the profession, and looked upon it as kindred to his own.

As we walked along through the great open quadrangle of the Tuileries, I had an opportunity of studying his general appearance. He was neatly dressed, and, though pale, was apparently in good health.

Notwithstanding a painful limp his carriage was erect, and his movements denoted great physical strength. On the bridge over the Seine we paused for a moment and leaned on the parapet, and thus, for the first time, stood nearly face to face. He looked earnestly at me a moment without speaking, and then, shouting "_Torino_" so loudly and earnestly as to attract the gaze of all the pa.s.sers, he seized me by the hand, and continued to shake it and repeat "_Torino_" over and over again.

This word cleared up my befogged memory like magic. There was no longer any mystery about the man before me. The impulse which now drew us together was only the unconscious souvenir of an earlier acquaintance, for we had met before. With the vision of the Italian city, which came distinctly to my eyes at that moment, came also to my mind every detail of an incident which had long since pa.s.sed entirely from my thoughts.

It was during the Turin carnival, in 1875, that I happened to stop over for a day and a night, on my way down from Paris to Venice. The festival was uncommonly dreary, for the air was chilly, the sky gray and gloomy, and there was a total lack of spontaneity in the popular spirit. The gaudy decorations of the Piazza and the Corso, the numberless shows and booths, and the brilliant costumes, could not make it appear a season of jollity and mirth, for the note of discord in the hearts of the people was much too strong. King Carnival's might was on the wane, and neither the influence of the Church nor the encouragement of the State was able to bolster up the superannuated monarch. There was no communicativeness in even what little fun there was going, and the day was a long and a tedious one. As I was strolling around in rather a melancholy mood, just at the close of the cavalcade, I saw the flaming posters of a circus, and knew my day was saved, for I had a great fondness for the ring. An hour later I was seated in the cheerfully lighted amphitheatre, and the old performance of the trained stallions was going on as I had seen it a hundred times before. At last the "Celebrated Cypriot Brothers, the Universal Bareback Riders," came tripping gracefully into the ring, sprang lightly upon two black horses, and were off around the narrow circle like the wind, now together, now apart, performing all the while marvellous feats of strength and skill. It required no study to discover that there was no relationship between the two performers. One of them was a heavy, gross, dark-skinned man, with the careless bearing of one who had been nursed in a circus. The other was a small, fair-haired youth of nineteen or twenty years, with limbs as straight and as shapely as the Narcissus, and with joints like the wiry-limbed fauns. His head was round, and his face of a type which would never be called beautiful, although it was strong in feature and attractive in expression. His eyes were small and twinkling, his eyebrows heavy, and his mouth had a peculiar proud curl in it which was never disturbed by the tame smile of the practised performer. He was evidently a foreigner. He went through his acts with wonderful readiness and with slight effort, and, while apparently enjoying keenly the exhilaration of applause, he showed no trace of the _blase_ bearing of the old stager. In nearly every act that followed he took a prominent part. On the trapeze, somersaulting over horses placed side by side, grouping with his so-called brother and a small lad, he did his full share of the work, and when the programme was ended he came among the audience to sell photographs while the lottery was being drawn.

As usual during the carnival, there was a lottery arranged by the manager of the circus, and every ticket had a number which ent.i.tled the holder to a chance in the prizes. When the young gymnast came in turn to me, radiant in his salmon fleshings and blue trunks, with slippers and bows to match, I could not help asking him if he was an Italian.

"No, signor, Magyar!" he replied, and I shortly found that his knowledge of Italian was limited to a dozen words. I occupied him by selecting some photographs, and, much to his surprise, spoke to him in his native tongue. When he learned I had been in Hungary he was greatly pleased, and the impatience of other customers for the photographs was the only thing that prevented him from becoming communicative immediately. As he left me I slipped into his hand my lottery-ticket, with the remark that I never had any luck, and hoped he would.

The numbers were, meanwhile, rapidly drawn, the prizes being arranged in the order of their value, each ticket taken from the hat denoting a prize, until all were distributed. "Number twenty-eight--a pair of elegant vases!" "Number sixteen--three bottles of vermouth!" "Number one hundred and eighty-four--candlesticks and two bottles of vermouth!"

"Number four hundred and ten--three bottles of vermouth and a set of jewelry!" "Number three hundred and nineteen--five bottles of vermouth!"

and so on, with more bottles of vermouth than anything else. Indeed, each prize had to be floated on a few litres of the Turin specialty, and I began to think that perhaps it would have been better, after all, not to have given my circus friend the ticket, if he were to draw drink with it.

Many prizes were called out, and at last only two numbers remained. The excitement was now intense, and it did not diminish when the conductor of the lottery announced that the last two numbers would draw the two great prizes of the evening, namely: An order on a Turin tailor for a suit of clothes, and an order on a jeweller for a gold watch and chain.

The first of these two last numbers was taken out of the hat.

"Number twenty-five--order for a suit of clothes!" was the announcement.

Twenty-five had been the number of my ticket. I did not hear the last number drawn, for the Hungarian was in front of my seat trying to press the order on me, and protesting against appropriating my good luck. I wrote my name on the programme for him, with the simple address, U.S.A., persuaded him to accept the windfall, and went home. The next morning I left town.

On the occasion of our mutual recognition in Paris, the circus boy began to relate, as soon as the first flush of his surprise was over, the story of his life since the incident in Turin. He had been to New York and Boston, and all the large sea-coast towns; to Chicago, St. Louis, and even to San Francisco; always with a circus company. Whenever he had had an opportunity in the United States, he had asked for news of me.

"The United States is so large!" he said, with a sigh. "Every one told me that, when I showed the Turin programme with your name on it."

The reason why he had kept the programme and tried to find me in America was because the lottery ticket had been the direct means of his emigration, and, in fact, the first piece of good fortune that had befallen him since he left his native town. When he joined the circus he was an apprentice, and beside a certain number of hours of gymnastic practice daily and service in the ring both afternoon and evening, he had half a dozen horses to care for, his part of the tent to pack up and load, and the team to drive to the next stopping-place. For sixteen and often eighteen hours of hard work he received only his food and his performing clothes. When he was counted as one of the troupe his duties were lightened, but he got only enough money to pay his way with difficulty. Without a _lira_ ahead, and with no clothes but his rough working-suit and his performing costume, he could not hope to escape from this sort of bondage. The luck of number twenty-five had put him on his feet.

"All Hungarians worship America," he said, "and when I saw that you were an American I knew that my good fortune had begun in earnest. Of course I believed America to be the land of plenty, and there could have been no stronger proof of this than the generosity with which you, the first American I had ever seen, gave me, a perfect stranger, such a valuable prize. When I remembered the number of the ticket and the letter in the alphabet, Y, to which this number corresponds, I was dazed at the significance of the omen, and resolved at once to seek my fortune in the United States. I sold the order on the tailor for money enough to buy a suit of ready-made clothes and pay my fare to Genoa. From this port I worked my pa.s.sage to Gibraltar, and thence, after performing a few weeks in a small English circus, I went to New York in a fruit-vessel. As long as I was in America everything prospered with me.

I made a great deal of money, and spent a great deal. After a couple of years I went to London with a company, and there lost my pay and my position by the failure of the manager. In England my good luck all left me. Circus people are too plenty there; everybody is an artist. I could scarcely get anything to do in my line, so I drifted over to Paris."

We prolonged our stroll for an hour, for although I did not antic.i.p.ate any pleasure or profit from continuing the acquaintance, there was yet a certain attraction in his simplicity of manner and in his nave faith in the value of my influence on his fortunes. Before we parted he expressed again his ability to get me something to do, but I did not credit his statement enough to correct the impression that I was in need of employment. At his earnest solicitation I gave him my address, concealing, as well as I could, my reluctance to encourage an acquaintance which could not result in anything but annoyance.

One day pa.s.sed, and two, and on the third morning the porter showed him to my room.

"I have found you work!" he cried, in the first breath.

Sure enough, he had been to a Polish acquaintance who knew a countryman, a copyist in the Louvre. This copyist had a superabundance of orders, and was glad to get some one to help him finish them in haste. My gymnast was so much elated over his success at finding occupation for me that I hadn't the heart to tell him that I was at leisure only while hunting a studio. I therefore promised to go with him to the Louvre some day, but I always found an excuse for not going.

For two or three weeks we met at intervals. At various times, thinking he was in want, I pressed him to accept the loan of a few francs, but he always stoutly refused. We went together to his lodging-house, where the landlady, an English-woman, who boarded most of the circus people, spoke of her "poor dear Mr. Nodge," as she called him, in quite a maternal way, and a.s.sured me that he had wanted for nothing, and should not so long as his wound disabled him. In the course of a few days I had gathered from him a complete history of his circus-life, which was full of adventure and hardship. He was, as I had thought then, somewhat of a novice in the circus business at the time we met in Turin, having left his home less than two years before. He had indeed been a.s.sociated as a regular member of the company only a few months, after having served a difficult and wearing apprenticeship. He was born in Koloszvar, where his father was a professor in the university, and there he grew up with three brothers and a sister, in a comfortable home. He always had had a great desire to see travel, and from early childhood developed a special fondness for gymnastic feats. The thought of a circus made him fairly wild. On rare occasions a travelling show visited this Transylvanian town, and his parents with difficulty restrained him from following the circus away. At last, in 1873, one show, more complete and more brilliant than any one before seen there, came in on the newly opened railway, and he, now a man, went away with it, unable longer to restrain his pa.s.sion for the profession. Always accustomed to horses, and already a skilful acrobat, he was immediately accepted by the manager as an apprentice, and after a season in Roumania and a disastrous trip through Southern Austria, they came into Northern Italy, where I met him.

Whenever he spoke of his early life he always became quiet and depressed, and for a long time I believed that he brooded over his mistake in exchanging a happy home for the vicissitudes of Bohemia. It came out slowly, however, that he was haunted by a superst.i.tion, a strange and ingenious one, which was yet not without a certain show of reason for its existence. Little by little I learned the following facts about it: His father was of pure Szeklar or original Hungarian stock, as dark-skinned as a Hindoo, and his mother was from one of the families of Western Hungary, with probably some Saxon blood in her veins. His three brothers were dark like his father, but he and his sister were blondes.

He was born with a peculiar red mark on his right shoulder, directly over the scapular. This mark was shaped like a forked stick. His father had received a wound in the insurrection of '48, a few months before the birth of him, the youngest son, and this birth-mark reproduced the shape of the father's scar. Among Hungarians his father pa.s.sed for a very learned man. He spoke fluently German, French, and Latin (the language used by Hungarians in common communication with other nationalities), and took great pains to give his children an acquaintance with each of these tongues. Their earliest playthings were French alphabet-blocks, and the set which served as toys and tasks for each of the elder brothers came at last to him as his legacy. The letters were formed by the human figure in different att.i.tudes, and each block had a little couplet below the picture, beginning with the letter on the block. The Y represented a gymnast hanging by his hands to a trapeze, and being a letter which does not occur in the Hungarian language except in combinations, excited most the interest and imagination of the youngsters. Thousands of times did they practise the grouping of the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture.

Learning the French by heart, they believed the _Y a-t-il_ to be one word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest with this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this letter, borne on his body in an indelible mark, and brought to his mind every moment of the day, came to seem in some way connected with his life. As he grew up in this belief he became more and more superst.i.tious about the letter and about everything in the remotest way connected with it.

The first great event of his life was joining the circus, and to this the letter Y more or less directly! led him. He left home on his twenty-fifth birth-day, and twenty five was the number of the letter Y in the block-alphabet.