Toni was now thirteen years old, and though short, was very lithe and
well made. He had never been on a horse's back since that glorious
day when the old cavalry charger had run off with him, and he had not
been able to enjoy the society of the horses much, or to lurk around
the riding-school since his apprenticeship to Clery. On a certain May
day which, although Toni did not know it, was a day of fate to him,
he saw the greatest sight of his life--the debarkation of a circus
company, with all its horses and other animals, at the little station
in Bienville.
Toni had often seen recruits debark when they came to the cavalry
school for instruction. Clumsy, awkward fellows they were--at first
ridiculously uneasy on a horse, and often as much afraid of a horse as
Toni was of people. And he had seen them return, fine, dashing-looking
troopers, after having been licked into shape in the riding-school. He
loved to see the horses led to the train--they were so intelligent,
so orderly, and seemed like real comrades of the troopers. But he had
never seen anything like the trained intelligence of the circus horses
in his life, and on this May day, when he wandered down to the station
and saw horses who obeyed the word of command, like human beings,
in getting off the train and taking up their right places, he was
astounded and delighted. Every boy in Bienville was at the station to
see the circus arrive, but Toni, according to his habit, slunk off by
himself. There were numerous cages of animals, in which the other boys
took a much greater interest than in the horses, but the other animals
were nothing to Toni, to whom the cult of the horse was everything.
He followed the circus people, at a respectful distance, to the large
open field where they put up the tent, but the chief point of interest
to him was the temporary canvas stables which were erected. He knew
that it was time for him to go back to Clery's, but he could not, to
save his life, have torn himself away from the fascinating sights and
sounds which surrounded him.
Everywhere was the bustle and well-regulated haste of such companies.
The circus, which was really a small affair, had arrived in the
morning, and the tent was up, and the performance ready to open by two
o'clock. Toni spent the whole of the intervening time watching what
was going on. Clery and the shop quite faded from his memory. He saw
the circus riders come out of the dressing-tent, in their beautiful
costumes of red and gold and pink and silver, a little tarnished, but
glorious in Toni's eyes, and he saw the horses gaily caparisoned and
almost adored them.
If he had a single franc, he would be able to go into the tent, and see
the performance, but he had not a franc, nor did he know where to get
one, except--except--he knew where his mother kept a tin box full of
francs. He was afraid to go to her and ask her for the franc, because
he had not been near Clery's shop that day, and if his mother once
caught him she might send him back to the shop, and that would mean no
circus for him that day. But it was so easy to open the box and take
out a franc--a thing he had never done before or thought of doing. But,
like Captain Ravenel and Sophie, there are moments in the lives of
human beings when temptation overwhelms the soul. Toni, who was neither
a thief nor a liar, became both, just as Captain Ravenel and Sophie
Delorme had, in one desperate moment, trampled on the social law.
So Toni to, whom, in spite of his faults, deceit was as foreign even as
it was to Paul Verney, conceived the thought of taking a franc out of
his mother's tin box. He sneaked back home, along by-lanes and garden
walls, and crept in through the little back door which opened into the
kitchen. His mother was in the front shop, and did not see him. As he
stole softly up the narrow stair into the bedroom above, the sun was
shining brightly, and the clock on the mantel pointed to half-past one.
Toni always remembered this as an hour of fate.
The circus performance was to begin at two, and he barely had time
to find the key which his mother kept under the bureau cover, and to
unlock the press in which she kept her strong box, to find the key to
the strong box hanging up on a nail inside the press, to open it and
there, in a smaller tin box, to find many pieces of silver. Toni took
out a single franc. He might have taken the whole box, but he never
thought of it. It was not money he wanted, but a sight of the circus.
He then closed and replaced the box, made everything as it was before,
and, creeping down stairs, rushed off to the field where the circus
tent was up, his heart beating with a wild excitement which was not
joy--neither was it pain.
The performance was almost ready to begin when Toni handed in his franc
with a trembling hand. The place was full; everybody in Bienville
seemed to be there, and many persons from the surrounding country,
but Toni managed to slip himself between two stout peasant women with
baskets in their laps, and contrived to see the whole performance
without being seen. He gave himself up, à la Toni, to the enjoyment of
the moment, putting off until four o'clock the hated interview with his
mother and the still worse one that he must have with Clery.
But the circus to him was a sight well worth a dozen whippings.
The view of the prancing horses, so wonderfully intelligent, the
beautiful young ladies in gauze and spangles, the riders in their
satin suits,--all were a dream to Toni. He did not see any of the
grease spots on the costumes, nor the paint on the faces of the lovely
young ladies; all was a foretaste of Paradise. It came to him in a
moment what his real destiny was--to be a circus rider. At once his
imagination seized upon it. He wondered himself that he had managed
to exist so long without the circus. All that vaulting and jumping and
leaping, that careering around on the backs of brave horses, must be
heavenly--it could not possibly be work.
[Illustration: "Toni took out a single franc."]
Toni saw himself, in imagination, one of those glorious beings.
Two things only did not fit into this picture which he drew of his
future--his mother and little Denise. He could not imagine either of
them in the place of those short-skirted, fluffy-haired young ladies,
with pink silk stockings and very stout legs.
Just before the end a pony was brought out which succeeded in throwing
three clowns so successfully that the audience was in roars of
laughter. The ring-master challenged any one present below a certain
weight to come out in the ring and try to ride this astonishing pony.
Toni, without his own volition, and knowing no more of what he was
doing than a sleep-walker, wriggled out from between the two fat
peasant women and got down in the sanded ring. There was a roaring in
his ears and a blur before his eyes, and he could not have told how it
was that he found himself upon the back of the kicking, plunging pony
careering around that dazzling circle. All Toni knew was that he was
the pony's master. There was no shaking him off.
Shouts and cheers resounded, each increasing as the pony, still making
desperate efforts to get rid of Toni, sped around the ring. But Toni
held on as firmly and easily as if he had been born and bred in a
riding-school. He had not the slightest sensation of fear, any more
than on that day so long ago when the old cavalry horse had run away
with him. The cheers and cries increased as the pony, realizing that
Toni had the upper hand of him, came down to a steady gallop.
The ring-master advanced and cracked his whip a little, and Toni fully
expected the pony to start anew the wild antics of the beginning.
Instead of that, the pony came to a dead halt which was expected
to throw Toni to the ground, but did not. He looked up, however,
and caught sight of the ring-master standing close to him. He was a
fierce-looking man with black eyes like Toni's. The sight of those eyes
waked all the cowardice in Toni's nature. He thought he should have
died of fright while that man was looking at him, and then it came
over him that hundreds of eyes were looking at him all the time. He
slipped off the pony's back and like a hunted creature dashed toward
the nearest opening of the tent and fled--fled homeward. He meant to
creep up stairs and crawl under his little bed and stay there until his
mother came up stairs, when he would catch her around the neck and tell
her all about the franc and ask her, yes, actually ask her to give him
a whipping just to restore things to their normal balance. He felt that
he deserved five hundred whippings.
As he raced homeward, he passed Clery's shop without looking that way.
Suddenly Clery himself darted out and seizing him dragged him through
the shop and into a little back room quite dark. Clery, who was an
honest fellow, meant to do Toni the greatest service of his life, and
said, holding him by the collar:
"Toni, you are a thief!"
Toni, in whose mind the paradise of circus land and the paroxysm of
terror were rioting confusedly, looked dreamily at Clery, who looked
back sternly at him. Toni remaining silent, Clery shook him, and hissed
into his ear:
"You are a thief! You stole the money from your mother to go to the
circus."
Toni still said nothing, and Clery continued:
"When you did not come back, I knew that you had gone to the circus. I
went over and spoke to your mother, and she told me she was sure you
had not gone because you had no money. Then I saw you come back here,
and go out again, and run away as fast as you could. I went over and
told your mother that you had been in the house, but she declared that
you had not. My boy Jean says he saw you running toward the house with
both hands open and likewise your mouth, and come out of it holding a
franc between your teeth. So Toni, you are a thief, and your mother,
I am sure, will never love you again, and to keep you from being sent
to prison for life, I mean to give you as good a whipping as I am
able, for fear your mother will not do her duty by you, and when I am
through, I will take you over to her, and when I tell the police--"
Clery paused. Toni was thoroughly awake and alive then. A thief!
Tell the police! That meant prison to him. This awful vision drove
everything else out of his mind. And then Clery, suddenly brandishing
the cane, brought it down on Toni's shoulders with all the strength
of an able-bodied tailor. Toni uttered a half-shriek, but after that
neither cried out nor wept, but bore stoically the blows that Clery
rained upon him. It seemed as if the day of judgment had come.
When Clery, honest man, had finished with Toni and was taking him
across the street, Toni looked around him with wild eyes of despair.
That precious refuge under his little bed seemed no longer open to him.
He was a thief--he must go to prison--that was all he knew. And just
then he looked up and there was a policeman walking straight toward
him. That was enough! Toni, wresting himself from Clery's grasp, turned
and ran like one possessed, the specter of a mad fear chasing him, down
toward the bridge. He was afraid to crawl into his usual nook, because
he could be easily seen from there, so he ran across the bridge and hid
himself in a thicket of young chestnut trees on the other side.
He lay, terror stricken, his heart beating so that he thought it must
almost make a hole in the ground. What was to become of him? His
mother, as Clery had told him, could love him no longer. He dared not
look any one in the face, but felt an outcast, like Cain. He lay there
for hours, through the waning afternoon, until the purple shadows
descended on the white town, on the sparkling river, the long rows of
barracks and the open fields in which the circus tent had been pitched.
It was now taken down and the circus people were preparing to go by the
highway to the next town, ten miles away.
It was nearly eight o'clock and the young moon was trembling in the
heavens, when the circus cavalcade began to travel along the white and
dusty highroad, passing by Toni's place of concealment. It suddenly
came into his mind that the only thing for him to do was to go with the
circus. As the end of the procession of carts and vans and horsemen and
horsewomen passed, Toni crept out of his hiding-place and came up to a
company of men who were trudging along on foot. He said to one of them,
Nicolas by name, a youngish man with hair and beard as red as Judas':
"May I walk a little way with you?"
This little way, in Toni's mind, meant to walk through life with the
circus company.
Nicolas laughed; runaway boys were the general concomitants of a circus
company. And in a moment more he recognized the boy who had stuck on
the pony's back, and then had run away so quickly.
"Yes, come along, you young rascal," he said, "and you can carry this
portmanteau if you like,"--and he slung the heavy portmanteau from his
own shoulders to Toni's.
Toni trudged along, carrying the portmanteau easily, being a strong
boy. He got into a conversation with his new friend and soon expressed
his determination to stay with the circus, if only they would give him
something to eat, for he was very hungry. A woman, walking along with
them, heard this and handed Toni a couple of biscuits, which he eagerly
devoured. They trudged on for two hours, the moon growing larger and
brighter and flooding with a white radiance the hedges, the wide
fields, the woods and the highway along which the cavalcade traveled
slowly. Toni felt an immense sense of relief. The police could not come
so far to get him. He hardened his heart against his mother. He judged,
from what Clery had told him, that his mother would be the first to
denounce him.
And so began poor Toni's life with the circus, away from his mother,
away from Denise, away from Paul Verney--only Jacques remained.