The Maids of Paradise Part 36

"You drag them all around the cage! You shove them about like sacks of meal!"

"Yes,... but I don't trust them."

"It seems to me," said Speed, "that your lions are getting rather impudent these days. They're not very much afraid of you now."

"Nor I of them," I said, wearily; "I'm much more anxious about you when you go sailing about in that patched balloon of yours. Are you never nervous?"

"Nervous? When?"

"When you're up there?"

"Rubbish."

"Suppose the patches give way?"

"I never think of that," he said, leaning on the table with a yawn.

"Oh, Lord, how tired I am!... but I shall not be able to sleep. I'm actually too tired to sleep. Have you got a pack of cards, Scarlett?

or a decent cigar, or a gla.s.s of anything, or anything to show me more amusing than that nightmare of an elephant? Oh, I'm sick of the whole business--sick! sick! The stench of the tan-bark never leaves my nostrils except when the odor of fried ham or of that devilish camel replaces it.

"I'm too old to enjoy a gypsy drama when it's acted by myself; I'm tired of trudging through the world with my entire estate in my pocket. I want a home, Scarlett. Lord, how I envy people with homes!"

He had been indulging in this outburst with his back partly turned toward me. I did not say anything, and, after a moment, he looked at me over his shoulder to see how I took it.

"I'd like to have a home, too," I said.

"I suppose homes are not meant for men like you and me," he said.

"Lord, how I would appreciate one, though--anything with a bit of gra.s.s in the yard and a shovelful of dirt--enough to grow some d.a.m.n flower, you know.... Did you smell the posies in the square to-night?... Something of that kind,... anything, Scarlett--anything that can be called a home!... But you can't understand."

"Oh yes, I can," I said.

He went on muttering, half to himself: "We're of the same breed--pariahs; fortunately, pariahs don't last long,... like the wild creatures who never die natural deaths,... old age is one of the curses they can safely discount,... and so can we, Scarlett, so can we.... For you'll be mauled by a lion or kicked into glory by a horse or an ox or an a.s.s,... and I'll fall off a balloon,... or the camel will give me teta.n.u.s, or the elephant will get me in one way or another,... or something...."

Again he twisted around to look at me. "Funny, isn't it?"

"Rather funny," I said, listlessly.

He leaned over, pulled another cigarette from the pink packet, broke a match from the card, and lighted it.

"I feel better," he observed.

I expressed sleepy gratification.

"Oh yes, I'm much better. This isn't a bad life, is it?"

"Oh no!" I said, sarcastically.

"No, it's all right, and we've got to pull the poor old governor through and give a jolly good show here and start the whole country toward the tent door! Eh?"

"Certainly. Don't let me detain you."

"I'll tell you what," he said, "if we only had that poor little girl, Miss Claridge, we'd catch these Bretons. That's what took the coast-folk all over Europe, so Grigg says."

Miss Claridge had performed in a large gla.s.s tank as the "Leaping Mermaid." It took like wildfire according to our fellow-performers. We had never seen her; she was killed by diving into her tank when the circus was at Antwerp in April.

"Can't we get up something like that?" I suggested, hopelessly.

"Who would do it? Miss Claridge's fish-tights are in the prop-box; who's to wear them?"

He began to say something else, but stopped suddenly, eyes fixed. We were seated nearly opposite each other, and I turned around, following the direction of his eyes.

Jacqueline stood behind me in the smoky light of the torch--Jacqueline, bare of arm and knee, with her sea-blue eyes very wide and the witch-locks cl.u.s.tering around the dim oval of her face. After a moment's absolute silence she said: "I came from Paradise. Don't you remember?"

"From Paradise?" said Speed, smiling; "I thought it might be from elf-land."

And I said: "Of course I remember you, Jacqueline. And I have an idea you ought to be in bed."

There was another silence.

"Won't you sit down?" asked Speed.

"Thank you," said Jacqueline, gravely.

She seated herself on a sack of sawdust, clasping her slender hands between her knees, and looked earnestly at the elephant.

"He won't harm you," I a.s.sured her.

"If you think I am afraid of _that_," she said, "you are mistaken, Monsieur Scarlett."

"I don't think you are afraid of anything," observed Speed, smiling; "but I know you are capable of astonishment."

"How do you know that?" demanded the girl.

"Because I saw you with your drum on the high-road when we came past Paradise. Your eyes were similar to saucers, and your mouth was not closed, Mademoiselle Jacqueline."

"Oh--pour ca--yes, I was astonished," she said. Then, with a quick, upward glance: "Were you riding, in armor, on a horse?"

"No," said Speed; "I was on that elephant's head."

This appeared to make a certain impression on Jacqueline. She became shyer of speech for a while, until he asked her, jestingly, why she did not join the circus.

"It is what I wish," she said, under her breath.

"And ride white horses?"

"Will you take me?" she cried, pa.s.sionately, springing to her feet.

Amazed at her earnestness, I tried to explain that such an idea was out of the question. She listened anxiously at first, then her eyes fell and she stood there in the torch-light, head hanging.