HE was in his room when the familiar formula of a whistled signal
sounded from the darkening street. It was Alfred Craik, he recognized
the halt ending of the bar; he whistled like an old hinge, Anthony
thought impatiently. He made his way to the lawn, and called shortly,
over the crumbling iron fence. Alfred Craik was agog with weighty
information.
“The circus is coming in at three-thirty tomorrow morning,” he
announced. “The station agent told me... old Giller's lot on Newberry
Street. 'Member last year we had breakfast with the elephant trainer!”
Circuses, Anthony told him in large unconcern, were for infantile minds;
they might put their circus on top the Courthouse without calling forth
the slightest notice from him; horses were no better than old cows; and
as for clowns, the ringmaster, they made him specifically ill.
The greater part of this diatribe Alfred chose to ignore; he impatiently
besought Anthony to “come off”; and warned him strenuously against a
tardy waking. Once more in his room Anthony smiled at the other's pretty
enthusiasm. Yet at half past three he woke sharply, starting up on his
elbow as though he had been called. He heard in the distance the faint,
shrill whistle of the locomotive drawing the circus into Ellerton.
He sank back, but, with the face of Eliza radiant against the gloom,
slumber deserted him. It occurred to him that he might, after all, rise
and witness from his rarer elevation the preparations that had once
aroused in him such immature joy.
The circus ground was an apparently inexplicable tangle of canvas and
lumber, threaded by men like unsubstantial, hurrying shadows. At the
fence corner loomed the vague bulks of elephants, heaving ceaselessly,
stamping with the dull clank of chains; a line of cages beyond was still
indistinguishable. The confusion seemed hopeless--the hasty, desperate
labor at the edges of the billowing, grey canvas, the virulent curses as
feet slipped in the torn sod, the shrill, passionate commands, resembled
an inferno of ineffectual toil for shades condemned to never-ending
labor. The tent rose slowly, hardly detached from the thin morning
gloom, and the hammering of stakes uprose with a sharp, furious energy.
A wagonload of hay creaked into the lot; a horse whinnied; and, from a
cage, sounded a longdrawn, despondent howl. The fusillade of hammering,
the ringing of boards, increased. A harried and indomitable voice
maintained an insistent grip upon the clamor. It grew lighter; pinched
features emerged, haggard individuals in haphazard garbs stood with the
sweat glistening on their blue brows.
The elephants, tearing apart a bale of hay, appeared ancient beyond all
computation, infinitely patient, infinitely weary. Out of the sudden
crimson that stained the east a ray of sunlight flashed like a pointed,
accusing finger and rested on the garish, gilded bars and tarnished
fringe of the cages; it hit the worn and dingy fur of an aged, gaunt
lioness, the dim and bleared topaz of her eyes blinking against the
flood of day; it fell upon a pair of lean wolves trotting in a quick,
constricted circle; upon a ragged hyena with a dry and uplifted snout;
upon a lithe leopard with a glittering, green gaze of unquenchable hate.
“Take a hold,” a husky voice had urged Anthony; “help the circus men put
up the big tent, and get a free pass.” In the contagion of work he had
pulled upon the hard canvas, the stiff ropes that cut like scored
iron, and held stakes to be driven into the slushy sod. Thin shoulders
strained against his own, gasping and maculate breaths assailed him.
The flesh was tom from a man's palm; another, hit a glancing blow on the
head with a mall, wandered about dazed, falling over ropes, blundering
in paths of hasty brutality.
Anthony rested with aching muscles in the orient flood of the sun.
The tent was erected, flags fluttered gaily aloft, the posters of the
sideshow flung their startling colors abroad. A musical call floated
upward from an invisible bugle: an air of gala, of triumphant and
irresponsible pleasure, permeated the scene. “She's all right, isn't
she?” Alfred Craik demanded at his side. He nodded silently, and turned
toward home, his pulses leaping with joy at the dewy freshness of the
morning, the knowledge of Eliza--a sparkling, singing optimism drawn
from the unstained fountain of his youth.