Case with 4 Clowns (33 page)

A light tap on my shoulder made me start violently and I looked up to see Jackson bending over me. Without saying a word he beckoned me and I followed him into the gangway.

“Mr. Beef,” he said quietly, “told me that you have a revolver.”

“Beef told you?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes. Would you mind handing it over to me. You must realize that I'm responsible for anything that happens in this tent, and I don't like any of the audience carrying firearms.”

“But this is ridiculous,” I said. “Beef left me his revolver in case there should be any trouble while he was away. And now you're expecting me to hand it over to you. Well, if it gives you any comfort, I haven't got the thing on me now. And you can believe that or not.”

Jackson looked at me for a moment, and then turned abruptly and left the tent. He seemed to believe me. As I was returning to my seat, however, I had the premonition that he might have gone to the wagon to try and find the revolver. Obviously, if I was not carrying the thing, there was only one place where it could be. I quickly followed him out into the open.

It was still raining hard, and the thunder had passed across some miles to the north, where it could still be heard like a dull undertone of guns. I walked towards our wagon, but before I got half-way I saw a figure coming from it. I intercepted him before he had reached the big top. It was Jackson.

“Didn't I see you just come out of our wagon?” I asked.

“That's quite right, Mr. Townsend,” answered Jackson coolly. “I went to see if I could find that gun.”

“But what right had you …” I began indignantly, but the proprietor interrupted.

“Look here, Mr. Townsend,” he said reasonably, “there's no reason for you to make all this fuss. I told you before that I didn't like people in the circus carrying firearms, so I've taken charge of this particular gun. You must try to understand my position in this case. Suppose anything happens there in the ring, won't I be responsible? Of course I will. So I'm taking care to avoid all possible accidents, that's all.”

“I still don't see,” I said coldly, “that that gives you the right to break into my wagon.”

“A slight exaggeration,” said Jackson with a smile. “Actually, the door was unlocked. But, of course, you are right. I had no legal right to take this gun. But I think I have the justification, under the circumstances. Now I must get back to the ring.”

“With my gun in your pocket,” I commented.

“Quite. And to put it quite bluntly, there it's going to stay.” And with this Jackson gave a brief nod and passed
me into the big tent. There was nothing I could do but to return to my seat.

Daroga's wire-walking act had finished, and as I sat down again the comedy ride began. The comedy ride, I discovered from Cora Frances, was one of the traditional acts of the sawdust ring. There is very little variation in it and Eric's performance followed the usual lines.

The horse ran into the ring, followed by Eric, made up with wig and bulbous nose, so as to be almost unrecognizable. Puffing a fat cigar, he watched the horse running round the ring for a while, and then, handing the cigar to an attendant, he strolled forward and raised his hand confidently to the audience in a gesture which implied that he would now show everybody how a horse should be ridden. The rest of the act was the sheerest slap-stick. Eric leaped over the horse's back, under its hoofs, was thrown off backwards, sideways, and even over its head. He remained completely unruffled, and continued his attempt to mount the running horse, as if one or two failures were the least one could expect in such a task. The crowd rocked with laughter.

By now Jackson was at his place in the center of the ring, cracking his long ring-master's whip. But I noticed from time to time that he kept his left hand buried in his coat-pocket all through the act. His face was cold and unmoving as he flicked the lash of the whip a few feet behind the horse every time it passed; his mind was clearly a long way away, and his actions almost automatic.

At last Eric mounted the horse, and struggled to his feet on its crupper. There was much arm waving and shouting to the crowd, and then he began to undress. At least he began to divest himself of coat after coat, and then waistcoat after waistcoat, tossing them into the center of the ring, until the whole place seemed littered with shed clothing. At the fourteenth waistcoat he revealed a pair of stays fastened tightly
round his waist, and the crowd's laughter grew into a roar. These he unbuttoned with difficulty. Immediately, his trousers began to slip gently to his knees, and with a scream of mock embarrassment, he somersaulted out of them, and ran from the ring with his long white shirt trailing behind him.

It seemed quite possible now, with the show nearly half-finished, that Beef had been right when he said nothing would happen that evening. As I looked around the audience, I realized that the early gloom had altogether disappeared, and had been replaced by a real excitement and interest in the performance. It was, without doubt, the best I had ever seen, and I turned to Cora Frances to express the belief that the artists were excelling themselves.

“Aren't they,” she replied. “At times, you know, one has the feeling that they are performing from sheer desperation. I've never seen them quite so careless. Even Daroga, usually so steady and quiet, was positively taking his life in his hands this evening. I think it's most awfully thrilling.”

Perhaps that was the explanation which I had missed. Were they really throwing themselves at risks in desperation? There was no doubt about the show being an outstanding one, and Cora's reason might be the correct one. She, however, was happily unconscious of the implications of what she had said. Or was she?

The last turn before the interval was the elephants, and as they walked slowly into the ring, Cora nudged me, drawing my attention, no doubt, to her handiwork on their toenails. Daroga followed them on, looking dour and reserved in his Indian costume. But I could tell from the abrupt way he ran through the act, that he was boiling with rage. Once or twice he looked over in our direction, and Cora giggled like a school girl.

“My dear,” she whispered. “He's livid with fury. He must know who did them. But it would be just like him to blame
it on to the new hand. Just look at the poor lamb. Positively cringing.”

The new hand, who remained in the ring during the elephant act, did appear to be behaving very strangely. He kept as far away from Daroga as possible, and also from the elephants, only leading one or another of them when it was absolutely essential. The act started off with the usual climbing on to tubs, dancing, and lifting the wire-walker into the air. Then the Concinis entered for their part of the act, in which they were lifted to the animals' backs in a sort of pyramid.

Very slowly and resentfully the animals took their places and the two girls climbed into position. Then came the turn of the new hand, who should have been lifted to the head of the bigger elephant. The animal curled his trunk around the man's waist, but made no effort to raise him from the ground. Suddenly, the man screamed, a high-pitched fearful scream, and began to pull at the trunk with his hands.

“He's crushing me,” he shouted. “I can't breathe.”

Jackson leaped forward and began to shout at the elephant, striking at it with the iron hook he was holding, but the animal refused to release the man, lifting him instead high into the air above the wire-walker's head and trumpeting shrilly. The man's screams ceased suddenly and he seemed to go limp. Half of the audience were already on their feet and utterly silent. As if in slow motion, the elephant rolled slowly from side to side. It seemed about to toss the man, like a bit of rubbish, into the audience. A woman screamed. Daroga stood underneath the massive bulk of the animal. Uncannily, the thunder had rolled back almost immediately over the tent, and drowned the sound of elephant and people. Then, slowly, as if ashamed, the elephant gently lowered the new hand to the ground. The girls scrambled down from their positions as quickly as they could, and helped to pull the unconscious man
away. Without waiting for an order from Daroga, the two beasts immediately turned and walked quietly, but steadily, from the ring.

As the tension was relieved the audience began to talk rapidly among themselves, although most of them still remained standing, staring at the prostrate man. Jackson came forward and bent over him for a few seconds, and then, when he straightened up, he was holding the man's arm and helping him to rise. Something of a cheer broke from the crowd as the man lifted his pale face, and then, with the almost instinctive action of show-people, he shook his arm loose from the proprietor's and waved it at the audience. When he had walked shakily, but unaided, from the ring, Jackson turned once more to the waiting people.

“It's quite all right, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “no harm has been done. The man only fainted. You have just witnessed an example of the amazing gentleness of these massive brutes in captivity. At the last moment, the elephant would not repay with violence, the kindness of his trainers, but placed the man unharmed, back on the ground. Would you, please, resume your seats. There will now be an interval of ten minutes before the second half of the show.”

There was the sound of an incipient jeer from the members of Bogli's Circus, but the rest of the audience seemed satisfied, and their spontaneous clapping soon drowned the one hostile sound. A loud excited buzz of conversation arose, pricked here and there by the cries of attendants selling ice-creams and chocolates.

May 3rd (continued).

A
FTER
a bare ten minutes the band returned to their places and began playing immediately. During the interval it had been more obvious that the storm had by no means passed over, but was describing a sort of circular movement round the district, all the time more or less close to the tober. At some moments the lighting was visible through the tent top and the thunder seemed to burst at the same instant, while at others the vaguest of rumblings was only to be heard in some lull in the music or between the acts. But it no longer seemed to depress the audience, and even the circus staff looked less nervy than they had at the beginning of the evening. After a short introduction from the band, the music changed, and the first act of the second half commenced.

Through the parted curtain at the back of the ring ran eight pure white horses, their necks bent in a proud arc, and their tails almost touching their heels as they ran. Corinne followed them, dressed in a strict black costume and looking more handsome than I had ever seen her. She seemed a different person from the Corinne we had watched in the almost dismal seal act. Perhaps, I thought, she had a feeling for horses. I had been amazed at the one riding act I had seen her do, and here again it seemed as though there were a special sort of sympathy between her and the animals.

The horses were a little disturbed by the storm, and at first they showed some hesitation in the act, snorting, and occasionally jumping nervously when the whip seemed to approach too closely to them. I had once seen such an act completely ruined because one of the horses had been flicked with the lash, but I soon realized that Corinne was far too good a circus artist
to lose her temper in the ring. She might have shown boredom, indifference, during an act which was anathema to her, but now I could see the infinite patience, the coaxing, as she tried to give the horses confidence. And she was succeeding. After a few moments she was completely holding the animals' attention, and the act was running smoothly and briskly, as if there was no thunder, no rain, anywhere for a thousand miles. The audience was enthusiastic.

Meanwhile, I had noticed a strange thing happening beside me. Torrant was talking. I had never heard him speak at so great a length or with such intensity, and for once Cora Frances was the listener.

“But she's so lovely,” he was saying. “Look at the way she's handling those horses. Of course, to some people, she's snappy and bad-tempered—I mean people who don't see things quite the same way as she does, although I don't mean by that that she's not broad-minded. For instance, once … what was I saying? Oh yes, I mean, she's not really bad-tempered by nature. Perhaps to those kinds of people I just mentioned, but that's because she's unhappy here. There are so many things she could do—she could do anything—so why should she stay in this circus when she doesn't want to? She doesn't owe her father anything. What's he ever done for her, I wonder. Anyway, she's repaid him by now.”

“My dear,” burst in Cora, unable to keep silent any longer, “if you're trying to tell me that Corinne is a sweet-natured girl, then I do so entirely agree with you. But when you reckon with her, you know, you have to reckon with the circus in general.”

“Oh, the circus, the circus,” interrupted Torrant. “That's what everybody says. But I can't see why circus people should always be considered as something different from others. ‘Hath not a Jew eyes?'…”

“But really,” cried Cora, “I think that's most unfair. There's
not the slightest resemblance. Of course I know all about the wandering Jew and all that—but he turned out to be a man called Feuchtwanger didn't he, so there was no real mystery at all to that story. And of course circus people do wander about, I suppose …”

“I was quoting,” said Torrant, “in a purely figurative way. What I meant was, why should circus people always be looked on as different from other people?”

“Well, I'm sure you say things in the queerest ways,” said Cora, a little nettled.

“Then perhaps I express myself badly,” answered Torrant. “What I really mean is,” and now he seemed to be trying desperately to express himself, “that this sort of life is all wrong for a beautiful girl like Corinne. She ought to have a comfortable home and things like that. You can't imagine how I hate it when I see her out there with that beastly seal, handling fish and being made a fool of by that stupid brother of hers. It's so humiliating.”