The circus season was over, the animals had gone into comfortable winter
quarters, while the performers, less fortunate than the beasts, were
scattered far and near, "some in rags and some in tags, and some" (a
very few) "in velvet gowns." But one small group had found midwinter
employment, a party of Japanese men and women, who were jugglers,
contortionists, and acrobats; and as their work was pretty as well as
novel, they found a place on the programme of some of the leading
vaudeville theatres.
They were in a large Western city. Behind the curtain their retiring
manners, their exquisite cleanliness, their grave and gentle
politeness, made them favourites with the working forces of the theatre,
while before the curtain the brilliant, graceful precision with which
they carried out their difficult, often dangerous, performance won them
the high favour of the public.
On that special day the matinee was largely attended, the theatre being
filled, even to the upper circles, as at night. Smilingly the audience
had watched the movements of the miniature men and women in their
handsome native costumes, and with "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" had seen them
emerge from those robes, already arrayed for acrobatic work, in suits of
black silk tights with trunks and shoulder and wrist trimmings of red
velvet fairly stiffened with gold embroideries; and then came the act
the people liked best, because it contained the element of danger,
because in its performance a young girl and a little lad smilingly
risked life and limb to entertain them.
The two young things had climbed like cats up to the swinging bars,
high up, where the heat had risen from a thousand gas lights, and the
blood thundered in their ears, and the pulses on their temples beat like
hammers. So high, that looking down through the quivering, bluish mist,
the upturned faces of the people merged together and became like the
waters of a pale, wide pool. Their work was well advanced. With
clocklike precision they had obeyed, ever-smilingly obeyed, the orders
conveyed to them by the sharp tap of the fan their trainer held, though
to the audience the two young forms glittering in black and scarlet and
gold, poising and fluttering there, were merely playing in midair like a
pair of tropical birds.
They were beginning their great feat, in which danger was so evident
that women often cried out in terror and some covered their eyes and
would not look at all--the music even had sunken to a sort of tremor of
fear. They were for the moment hanging head downward from their
separate bars, when across the stillness came the ominous sound of
cracking, splintering wood; afterward it was known that the rung of a
chair in an upper private box had broken, but then,--but _then_! the
sound was close to the swaying girl's ear!
Believing it was her bar that was breaking, her strained nerves tore
free from all control! Driven by fear, she made a mad leap out into
space, reaching frantically for the little brown hands that a half
second later would have been ready for her, with life and safety in
their tenacious grasp.
To those who do their work in space and from high places, the distance
between life and death, between time and eternity, is often measured by
half seconds. Little Omassa had leaped too soon, the small brown hands
with power to save were not extended. She grasped the empty air, gave a
despairing cry, and as she whirled downward, had barely time to realize
that the sun had gone black out in the sky, and that the world with its
shrieking millions was thundering to its end, when the awful crash came.
There were shouts and shrieks, tears and groans, and here and there
helpless fainting. Ushers rushed from place to place, the police
appeared suddenly. The Japanese, silent, swift, self-controlled, were
moving their paraphernalia that the curtain might be lowered, were
stretching a small screen about the inert, fallen figure, were bringing
a rug to lift her on, and their faces were like so many old, _old_ ivory
masks.
Tom McDermott, in his blue coat, stood by the silent little figure
waiting for the rug and for the coming of the doctor, and groaned, "On
her face, too--and she a girl child!"
Tom had seen three battle-fields and many worse sights, but none of them
had misted his eyes as did this little glittering, broken heap, and he
turned his face away and muttered, "If she'd only keep quiet!" for truly
it was dreadful to see the long shudders that ran over the silent,
huddled thing, to see certain red threads broadening into very rivulets.
At last the ambulance, then the all-concealing curtain, the reviving
music, a song, a pretty dance, and _presto_, all was forgotten!
When Omassa opened her eyes, her brain took up work just where it had
left off; therefore she was astonished to find the sun shining, for had
she not seen the sun go out quite black in the sky? Yet here it was so
bright, and she was--was, where? The room was small and clean, oh,
clean! like a Japanese house, and almost as empty. Could it be? But no,
this bed was American, and then why was she so heavy? What great weight
was upon her? She could not move one little bit, and oh, my! _what_ was
it she could faintly see beyond and below her own nose--was it shadow?
Surely she could not see her own _lip_? She smiled at that, and the
movement wrung a cry of agony from her--when, like magic, a face was
bending over her, so kind and gentle, and then a joyous voice cried to
some one in the next room, "This little girl, not content with being
alive, sir, has her senses--is she not a marvel?"
And with light, delicate touch the stranger moistened the distended,
immovable lip poor Omassa had dimly seen, through which her lower teeth
had been driven in her fall, and in answer to her pleading, questioning
glances at her own helpless body, told her she was encased in plaster
now, but by and by she would be released, and now she was to be very
quiet and try to sleep. And then she smoothed a tiny wrinkle out of the
white quilt, shut out the sunlight, and, smiling kindly back at her,
left Omassa, who obediently fell asleep--partly because her life was one
of obedience, and partly because there was nothing else to do.
And then began the acquaintance between Mrs. Helen Holmes, nurse, and
Omassa, Japanese acrobat. The other nurses teased Helen Holmes about
her pet patient, saying she was only a commonplace, Japanese child
woman; but Mrs. Holmes would exclaim, "If you could only see her light
up and glow!"
And so they came to calling Omassa "the lantern," and would jestingly
ask "when she was going to be lighted up"; but there came a time when
Mrs. Holmes knew the magic word that would light the flame and make the
lantern glow, like ruby, emerald, and sapphire; like opal and
tourmaline.
The child suffered long and terribly; both arms were broken, and in
several places, also her little finger, a number of ribs, her
collar-bone, and one leg, while cuts were simply not counted. During her
fever-haunted nights she babbled Japanese for hours, with one single
English name appearing and reappearing almost continually,--the name of
Frank; and when she called that name it was like the cooing of a pigeon,
and the down-drooping corners of her grave mouth curled upward into
smiles. She spoke English surprisingly well, as the other members of the
troupe only knew a very little broken English; and had she not placed
the emphasis on the wrong syllable, her speech, would have been almost
perfect.
Generally she was silent and sad and unsmiling, but grateful,
passionately grateful to her "nurse-lady," as she called Mrs. Holmes;
yet when, that kind woman stooped to kiss her once, Omassa shrank from
the caress with such repugnance as deeply to wound her, until the
little Japanese had explained to her the national abhorrence of kissing,
assuring her over and over again that even "the Japan ma'ma not kiss
little wee baby she love."
Mrs. Holmes ceased to wonder at the girl's sadness when she found she
was absolutely alone in the world: no father, no mother; no, no sister,
no brother, "no what you call c-cousine?--no nothing, nobody have I got
what belong to me," she said.
One morning, as her sick-room toilet was completed, Mrs. Holmes said
lightly:--
"Omassa, who is Frank?" and then fairly jumped at the change in the
ivory-tinted, expressionless face. Her long, narrow eyes glowed, a pink
stain came on either cheek, she raised herself a little on her best arm,
eagerly she cried, "You know him--oh, you know Frank?"