The faint, rank smell of the wild beasts mingling with the evening air, was instilling its intoxication in my brain. I longed for darkness, the din and glare; longed for my tent and the gaping faces, for the smoky wind to fan my cheek as I bobbed cantering round the ring. It must have been a ridiculously childish face that ever and again scrutinized my companion’s. Nothing for me in that looking-glass! How slow a face his was; he was refusing to look at me. It dismayed and fretted me to find him so sombre and dour.
His glance shifted to and fro under a frown that expressed a restless anxiety. His silence seemed to reproach me. Oh, well, when the day was over, and Mademoiselle’s finery packed up in its bundle again, and the paint washed off, and the last echo of applause from the crowded benches had died away, and my pay was safe in my pocket, then he would know that the stake I had played for had been my freedom, my very self. Then surely his heart would lighten, and he would praise me, and we could go in peace. Would he not realize, too, that even my small body had its value, and was admired in a dismal world that cared not a jot for the spirit that inhabited it?
The showman stood by the tent, a gaudy silk scarf knotted round his neck. My lean-breasted gipsy woman spangled there beside him, with her black hair looped round her narrow bony head, and her loose, dusty, puckered boots showing beneath her skirts. There was a clear lustre in the lamp-starred air; and the spectacle of man and woman, of resting wheel and cropping horse, meadow and hill, poured a livelong blessing into my heart. Even the cowed, enfeebled lion with the mange of age and captivity in his skin, seemed to drowse content, and the satin-skinned leopards—almost within pat of paw of the flaxen-haired girl in the white stockings who leaned idly against the wheel—paced their den as if in pride. It was the same old story: my heart could not contain it all. Yet to whom tell its secrets?
A roomier tent had been prepared for me. We were ushered into it by the showman with a mock obeisance that swelled the veins on his forehead almost to bursting. The gipsy’s birdlike eyes pierced and darted from one to the other of us, her skinny hand concealing her mouth. I felt as light as a feather, and thankful that my mud-caked shoes and petticoats were hardly discernible as none too elegantly I scrambled down from the cart.
The showman watched me with that sly, covetous grin about his mouth that I knew so well, though the stare with which he had greeted Mr. Anon had been more insolent than friendly. I had cut the time rather close, he told me, but better late than never! As for that long-nosed rat with the cage, he hadn’t been much smitten with the looks of him; and he was not the man to ask questions of a lady, not he. Here I was, and he hoped I had come for good. A rough life but a merry. Up with the lark until down under the daisies; and every man jack of them ready to kiss the ground I walked on. And the Fat Woman—just pining good money away she was, with longing to mother the little stranger!
I nodded my head at him with a smile as worldly-wise as I could make it. “It’s the last taste that counts, Mr. Showman,” I said politely. “Everyone has been exceedingly kind to me; and my love, please, to the Fat Woman. This is my friend, Mr. Anon. He has come to take care of me. We shall go back—go on together.”
The showman broke into a laugh, but his face hardened again, as, grinding one jaw slowly on the other, he turned to Mr. Anon. Maybe “the young gentleman” was anxious to enjoy a taste of the life on his own account, he asked me. Could he ride? A bit of steeplechasing? There was plenty of horseflesh—a double turn: Beauty and the Beast, now? Or perhaps another Spotted Boy? Love or money; just name the figure. Treat him fair and square, and he wouldn’t refuse a genuine offer; though, naturally, every inch made a difference, and a foot twelve times as much. And looks were looks.
There was little enough to enjoy in the sound of all this. Apparently the mere sight of Mr. Anon had soured the showman. Many of his words were Greek to me, and to judge from the woman’s yelps of laughter their meaning was none of the daintiest. I shrugged my shoulders, smiled, spread out my hands, and with a word or two fenced him off, pretending to be flattered. He looked at the woman as if to say, There’s manners for you! She made a sudden, ferocious grimace. We were a singular four in the tent.
But it would be false to profess that I hadn’t a sneaking admiration for the man; and I kept glancing uneasily at the “young gentleman” who was so blackly ignoring his advances. To say the least of it, it was a little unintelligent of Mr. Anon not to take things as they came, if only for my sake.
“But you must please try and help me a little,” I pleaded, when the showman and the gipsy had left us to ourselves for a moment. “It’s only his fun. He’s really not a bad sort of man underneath. You can’t say there’s a Spirit of Evil in that great hulking creature, now can you? I am not the least bit afraid of him.”
He glanced at me without turning his head. Involuntarily I sighed. Things never were so easy as one supposed or hoped they would be.
Already my fingers were busy at the knots of my bundle, and for a while,
