'After divorce, perhaps,' said Paul; and fell to his dream again.

CHAPTER VIII

The damp, river-scented earth slipped under his feet. The blare of a steam clarion, and the bang of a steam-driven drum, sounded, and the naphtha lamps of the merry-go-round and the circus gleamed through the fog. The infernal noise jigged on his brain-pan as if every flying crotchet and quaver stamped like the hoof of a little devil in the surface of his brain. The smell of the lamps was in his nostrils, and with it odours of tar and stables and orange-peel.

Six-and-thirty hours had gone by since he had turned his back on Blackfriars Bridge. It was more than fifty hours since he had tasted food, and he had spent two days and a night in the open in fog and rain. He had been hungry, but the pangs of hunger had pa.s.sed, and he was conscious of little but a cold nausea. He drew towards the light and the music mechanically. In front of him, illuminated by flaring lamps (which sparkled, he thought, as an apple of Sodom might have done when newly cut), was a placard fixed in an iron frame, with clamps which pierced the turf. 'One night only in Reading,' said the placard. Until then he had not known his whereabouts.

There was no more custom for the merry-go-round, and its noisy organ ceased to play. He could hear the band within the circus now, the dull thud of hoofs on sawdusted earth, and the crack of a whip. A mirthless voice, with an intention of mirth in it, said, 'Look out! Catch her!

She'll tumble!' A laugh spouted up from the spectators within, and was half smothered by the canvas of the show. Not far from him was a slit in the canvas wall, with a pale yellow spirit of light in it. A man came into the gleam.

'Now, where,' the man asked, in a voice of anger, 'is that boy?

The voice of some invisible person responded in an alternation between a hoa.r.s.e ba.s.s and a shrill falsetto:

'Perchance he wanders with the paling moon, where Delos' tower awaits the lagging dawn, which fronts not yet her summit, or perchance----'

'Oh, go to 'ell!' said the voice that had first spoken. 'Where _is_ that boy?'

'You might,' began the invisible person, in a cracked soprano, and concluded in a tone three octaves lower, 'have let me finish.'

'Let you finish!' said the other. 'Would you finish? _Can_ you finish?

He stood comically silhouetted--a balloon propped by two monstrous sausages and topped by a football. 'Billy,' he said, in a grave voice, after a minute's pause, 'where is that boy? Miriam can't do three turns.

If Pauer isn't here in five minutes, the fat's in the fire.'

'Well,' said the falsetto voice, 'why don't you'--the hoa.r.s.e ba.s.so carried on the phrase--'send somebody else?'

'Who am I to send? asked the man in view. 'I'd give five bob,' he added, 'to get him here.'

'Tell me where he is,' said Paul, 'and I'll get him for half the money, if I have to carry him.'

The man to whom he spoke turned round and stared at him.

'Who are you?' he asked.

'A hungry vagabond,' said Paul, 'willing to earn a meal.'

'Do you know the town?'

'No; I'm a stranger.'

'That,' said the fat man, pointing, 'leads to the gate. Turn to the right, run three hundred yards, and there's a pub on the left. You can't mistake it. Tell Herr Pauer he's waited for. Sixpence if you're smart.'

'Shilling!' said Paul, half on the run already. The fat man hung fire.

'Shilling!' said Paul again.

'Shilling if he's here in ten minutes,' said the other.

Paul ran. The fatigue which had weighed upon his limbs seemed gone. Once free of the clogging and slippery mire which had been wrought out of the wet turf by many travelling feet, he raced along the firm high-road at his best speed. He made a leap into the entrance-hall of the house which had been indicated to him, and narrowly escaped collision with a man who was moving smartly towards the street.

'Hillo!' said the man, slipping nimbly on one side, and staring at him as he suddenly arrested himself.

'Hillo!' said Paul. He was face to face with the jaundiced man of Sat.u.r.day. 'Are you Herr Pauer?

He was guided to the question by the man's attire. He was in some sort of circus uniform, and in act to b.u.t.ton a huge s.h.a.ggy overcoat above it.

'That's my name,' said the other. 'What brings you here?'

'You're wanted at the circus,' Paul answered, flushing and turning pale again.

'All right,' said Herr Pauer, 'I'm going there. But what is up with you, my young friend?'

'Nothing much,' Paul answered.

'No?' said Herr Pauer, b.u.t.toning himself from throat to toes, and looking at him with a glittering eye. 'I should have thought quite differently. Come along with me.'

Paul hung back, but he remembered the earned shilling. There was a smell of cooking in the house, and he was suddenly ravenous at the mere thought of food. The two turned into the road together, and walked smartly side by side. They reached the circus, and Herr Pauer motioned to Paul to enter.

'Come in,' he said, seeing that the youngster lingered.

Paul obeyed again, and was ushered into a small turfy s.p.a.ce boxed in with canvas. A few loose boards were laid upon the ground by way of flooring. There was a table at one side, on which lay a small circular shaving mirror, a comb, a stick of cosmetic, and two open pots of porcelain, the larger one containing chalk, and the smaller half-filled with rouge.

'Three minutes,' said the fat man, thrusting his head round the canvas part.i.tion; 'and short at that.'

'All right,' returned Herr Pauer.

He unb.u.t.toned the overcoat, and let it slip to the ground, drew off a huge pair of rubber boots, and stood revealed in buckled pumps and stockings, silk breeches, a white waistcoat with gilt b.u.t.tons, and a cut-away coat of light-blue cloth slashed with gold braid. He dipped his fingers in the powdered chalk, and rubbed his face, looking hard at Paul meanwhile, and growing ghastlier every second as the white obscured the yellow of his face. He stooped to the fallen overcoat, took an old hare's-foot from one of his pockets, and, dipping it in the rouge-pot, took the shaving-gla.s.s in hand, and, with many facial contortions, pursued his toilet, looking from his own reflection to Paul's face and back again with swift alternation. He pinched a bit of the cosmetic between thumb and finger, and dressed his eyelashes with it. Then he carefully drew an arched eyebrow, and paused to look at Paul again.

The single brow gave him a comically elfin look, and Paul grinned; Herr Pauer drew another eyebrow, touched up his moustache, obliterated the gray upon his temples, and combed and twisted moustache and hair to his own satisfaction. Then he sat down on the table, and looked once more at his companion. Paul looked back at him, but felt his very eyeb.a.l.l.s redden. The band beyond the screen played louder and louder. Then there came a great roar of applause, and Herr Pauer, keeping an eye on Paul till the last instant, walked away.

The fat man entered a minute later.

'The governor says you are to go inside,' he said, 'and wait till his turn's over. Here's your bob, anyhow. A bargain's a bargain, ain't it?'

Paul accepted the proffered shilling, and slipped it into his pocket.

Then he accompanied his guide, who pushed him through a labyrinth of props and stays, above which were ranged benches for the accommodation of the audience. They reached a spot from which they could see the whole s.p.a.ce of the ring through a break between the benches. The fat man struck Paul as having somehow the look of keeping him in custody. But Herr Pauer appeared in the circle, and he forgot to think about that fancy. He wondered what his curiously-encountered chance-acquaintance was going to do. He had not long to wait, for two men in livery came on with a table, arranged in all respects as the conjurer's table had been arranged in the music-hall on Sat.u.r.day night, and Herr Pauer proceeded to play precisely the tricks the conjurer had played. He was just as adroit and swift and' agile as the original, and the audience stamped and laughed and shouted.

'Ah,' the fat man breathed in Paul's ear, 'the governor hasn't been away a month for nothing.'

Paul turned, but his custodian seemed unconscious of him. The performance reached an end amidst a hurricane of applause, and Herr Pauer came back several times to bow his acknowledgments. The fat man seemed to wake, and, with a hand on Paul's shoulder, pushed him back amongst the props and stays until they reached the canvas room again.

Somebody had placed a ragged cane-seated chair near the table, and Herr Pauer, who was already waiting, motioned his visitor into it. He seated himself on the table, with one trim leg swinging to and fro, and lit a cigar.

'Now,' he said, rolling a cloud of smoke from his lips, 'what have you run away from?'

'I haven't run away from anything,' said Paul.

'Ah, well! we shall see about that. When I saw you on Sat.u.r.day night you were flush of money. Now--so my man tells me--you call yourself a starving vagabond, and you run errands for a shilling. You are wet through, and you are mud all over. You have no hat, my young friend. You may just as well make a clean breast of it.'