THE CROCODILE TEARS OF CELIA JANE
Jerry could hardly wait until time for the parade. He and Chris were
both too excited to play; they stayed in the house most of the time and
questioned Mother 'Larkey about what she had seen at the circus the time
her husband had taken her to one in the city. She was busy sewing on a
dress for Mrs. Johnson which was wanted by Saturday night and was at
length obliged to send them out of doors with orders to stay out until
dinner was ready.
They soon exhausted each other's conversation relative to circuses and
their knowledge and guesses about what they would see, and fell silent.
And the minutes dragged their slow length out towards eleven o'clock.
They could smell the mush and potatoes frying for their early dinner
when Danny returned from the circus ground. They knew at once that he
hadn't succeeded in getting a "ticket to paradise", as Mother 'Larkey
had called their circus passes, nevertheless Chris asked:
"Did you get a ticket?"
"No," replied Danny, sitting down dejectedly. After a while they knew he
didn't intend to say any more. Jerry waited as long as he could and then
asked in turn:
"Didn't the el'funts want any water for dinner?"
"No," stated Danny glumly.
That little word "No" seemed to be all that Danny cared to say about his
experience, and the following silence lasted fully ten minutes. Danny
was the first to break it. He did so after apparently awakening to the
fact that dinner was preparing. He sniffed the penetrating odor of
frying potatoes and mush that had got a little burned, and sat up.
"Gee, but I'm hungry," he said and sniffed again.
"Wasn't there anything you could do for a ticket?" Chris asked.
"No. The man said the early bird got the worm at the circus as well as
in the garden."
After a time Jerry woke to the fact that Danny was looking at him out of
the corners of his eyes in a peculiar, questioning manner that made him
feel uneasy. He turned his glance away.
"I'll give you both my tops an' the shiny horseshoe nail an' baseball
for your circus ticket," Danny proposed.
Jerry's hand flew protectingly to the pocket of his blouse. "No!" he
cried loudly. "I won't! I earned it myself!"
"Well, I ain't tryin' to take it away from you, am I?" Danny asked,
aggrieved. "I jest offered you some of my things for it. There ain't no
law against offerin' to trade, I guess. I'll teach you to skate and let
you use the skates I got at Christmas if you will. An' I'll feed your
white rabbit for you."
"No," said Jerry, edging away from him, ready to run to the house if
Danny should try to grab the ticket. "I earned the ticket and I'm
a-goin' to see the circus."
"Dinner's ready, children," called Mrs. Mullarkey. "You'll have to hurry
to get a good place to see the parade."
Jerry was ready to start without having anything to eat. He was too
excited to be hungry, but Mother 'Larkey made him eat so he "wouldn't
get too faint to enjoy the circus." It was a race between the boys to
see who would finish first. Chris won. Danny, who confessed to being
hungry, ate twice as much as Jerry and Chris.
"Now you children keep together at the parade," admonished Mrs.
Mullarkey, as they were ready to start. "You can follow the parade out
to the circus grounds for the free show outside, but Danny, you keep
with Nora and Celia Jane and see that they get home all right."
Jerry didn't see how the circus could be much more fascinating than the
parade with all its cages open so you could see the animals. And with
the clowns, too, especially the one with the donkey, going through such
laughable antics. But he was a little disappointed that the elephants
didn't jump a fence or do anything like that during the parade. However,
the beautiful ladies in gorgeous raiment who rode in the little houses
strapped to the elephants' backs made him forget about their
fence-jumping proclivities.
When the parade was over, Jerry and the Mullarkey children, together
with a hundred or more small boys and girls, followed the steam-throated
calliope through the principal street of the town out to the tents,
fascinated by the loudness of the music and the escape of jets of steam
as the player fingered the keys. It seemed to Jerry that there couldn't
in all the wide world be such heavenly music. Celia Jane and Chris
shared his enthusiasm, but Nora confessed to liking a fiddle better and
Danny asserted that the music of the trombone was easier on the ears.
The free exhibition on the little platform outside the side-show tent
had all the fascination of the unknown for Jerry and Chris and Celia
Jane and Nora, but not for Danny, who had been to the vaudeville theater
twice and who knew that this outside sample never could come up to the
glories to be revealed inside for fifty cents, or a dollar and a half
for reserved seats in the boxes, and was critical.
The dancing girl in short skirts and the man with the beard which fell
to his feet and the very red-faced snake charmer merely whetted his
appetite for what was to come, while to Jerry and the rest of the
Mullarkey children it was a substantial part of the feast itself.
The free show seemed to Jerry not to have much more than started when
the raucous voice of the ballyhoo announced:
"This, ladies and gents, concludes the free show. The main show will not
begin for half an hour, thirty minutes--just time enough to see the side
show, the world's greatest congress of freaks and monstrosities. See the
sword-swallower from India to whom a steel sword is no more than a
string of spaghetti to an Italian. Kelilah, the famous dancer of the
Nile, whose graceful contortions have delighted the eyes and moved the
hearts of kings. See Major Wee-Wee, the smallest man in the world, no
bigger than a two-year-old baby, and Tom Morgan, the giant who stands
seven feet three inches in his stocking feet. They are all there--every
kind of human freak from the living skeleton to the fat woman who weighs
four hundred pounds. The price is the same to one and all--twenty-five
cents, only a quarter of a dollar. This way and get your tickets for the
side show. There is just time to take in all its wonders before the big
show in the main tent begins."
The promise of all these delights proved irresistible to Jerry and Chris
and they left the children and were almost first in line, but the ticket
taker refused them admittance.
"Those tickets are not good to the side show," he said. "They admit you
to the main tent."
Stunned at this disaster, Jerry and Chris slunk under the ropes at the
entrance and rejoined Danny and Nora and Celia Jane. They stood in
silence as the crowd surged around the ticket seller for the side show
and watched the people stream through the door. Never had the lack of
"twenty-five cents, only a quarter of a dollar", meant so much to any
small boy as it meant to Jerry and Chris. Some of the people were
already going into the main tent, passing up the glories of the side
show. Jerry wondered if they, too, didn't have the necessary quarter of
a dollar.
"It would be just grand to see all them freaks," sighed Celia Jane. "If
I could only see just half the circus."
Jerry, his ticket still in his hand, looked up and saw Danny glancing
covetously at it.
"What'll you take for your ticket?" he asked eagerly. "I'll give you
anything of mine you want."
"I won't trade," replied Jerry, stuffing the ticket into his blouse
pocket. "I'm a-goin' to see the circus."
Danny made the same proposition to Chris but Chris also refused. There
was nothing of Danny's that could compensate Jerry or Chris for missing
the circus, especially when they were right there on the ground with
their tickets in their hands.
After the crowd had disappeared--part into the side show, part into the
main tent, some to their homes and some to wander about the
grounds--Jerry and Chris were debating whether they should go into the
big tent at once or wait until time for the main performance, when they
observed Danny, who had edged away from them, talking in a low voice to
Celia Jane. From the motion of Celia Jane's head and the entreating
position of Danny's hands, they knew she was refusing some request of
his.
If they had not just then become absorbed in watching some circus
employee leading two big, fat, white horses out of a tent they would
have seen Celia Jane's negative shakes of the head become weaker as
Danny's attitude became more and more commanding, and all that occurred
afterward might never have happened. But they didn't look around.
When the horses had disappeared, Jerry spoke:
"They might start early," he said. "Let's go in now, Chris."
"All right, let's," Chris replied.
They turned to tell the other Mullarkey children good-by and saw that
Celia Jane was crying. Her shoulders shook and she seemed to be in the
utmost despair.
"What's the matter with Celia Jane?" Chris asked.
"I don't know," said Nora. "What ails her, Danny?"
"I don't know," Danny asserted quickly. "What're you cryin' for, Celia
Jane?"
"I want to see the circus," sobbed Celia Jane. She raised her face and
there were tears running down it.
"You ain't got no ticket, have you?" asked Danny. "Nor fifty cents?"
"N-n-no," sobbed Celia Jane.
"Then there ain't no chance at all of your gettin' in, is there?"
"I ain't never seen no circus," moaned Celia Jane.
"Come on, Jerry," said Chris; "let's go in now, so's we won't miss
anything if they start early."
At that Celia Jane started crying harder than ever and Jerry stood
still, a curious something making his heart beat faster and his throat
growing all choky.
"Let's go home, Celia Jane," proposed Nora, in a soothing tone. "Mebbe
next time we can go. They might let us carry water for the elephants and
earn a ticket to the circus, even if we are girls."
"I want to see it now," sobbed Celia Jane.
Jerry began to feel sort of shuddery inside and his mouth puckered up
the way it did when he felt like crying.
He was awfully sorry that Celia Jane didn't have a ticket too. He knew
he would be crying out of sympathy if Celia Jane kept on that way, and
started towards Chris, who had gone halfway towards the entrance to the
tent and then had stopped to wait for him. His joy at the thought of
what he was going to witness was clouded through the fact that Celia
Jane could not see and enjoy it too. He walked very slowly towards Chris
and looked back at Celia Jane.
"Oh, J-J-Jerry!" cried the weeping girl, "I-I-I want to see the circus
too."
At that appeal Jerry felt as though his heart had stopped beating and
was sinking down into his bare feet. He winked hard to keep the tears
from coming. He just couldn't bear to see Celia Jane so heartbroken
about not being able to see the circus.
"You can have my t-t-ticket," he said slowly and pulled the treasured
bit of blue cardboard out of his pocket. There were tears in his eyes
but he walked slowly to Celia Jane, holding out the ticket to her.
"Oh, Jerry!" cried Celia Jane. "Will you really give it to me of your
own free will?"
Jerry couldn't speak at first. He nodded his head, but Celia Jane just
took one end of the ticket between her fingers.
"Do you give it to me, Jerry?" she asked, in a voice in which there was
no trace of weeping. Yet the tears stood on her face.
"Yes," said Jerry at last and let go of the ticket. "You can have it,
Celia Jane."
"Then I give it to Danny," said Celia Jane and straightway handed the
ticket to Danny, who snatched it and ran to the entrance of the main
tent.
Jerry was so surprised at the treachery of Celia Jane after her recent
evidences of affection and at the suddenness of it all that he could not
even cry out,--could do nothing but stare after Danny. He saw the
precious bit of pasteboard taken from Danny's outstretched hand by the
ticket-taker and dropped into a box and then saw Chris give up his
ticket and go in.
"Celia Jane!" he heard Nora cry, "I'm going to tell mother what you did
to Jerry. You'll catch it."
"Danny!" Jerry at last found his voice, and it rose in a forlorn wail.
"The ticket is mine! Danny!"
Jerry had forgotten how easily Celia Jane could make the tears come
whenever she liked, no matter if she didn't really want to cry. He would
show that Celia Jane that she had gone too far this time. He didn't know
what he would do, but turned to go to her. As he did so, a crowd of
persons going to the circus passed between them and when they had passed
he saw Celia Jane running for home with Nora following at a slower pace.
"Why, what's the matter, little boy? Why are you crying?" he heard a man
ask.
Jerry felt the hot tears of bitter disappointment coming and he did not
want all those persons to see him crying. So he turned and ran blindly
around the big tent; when he was alone he flung himself down on the
ground and sobbed out his grief, with face pressed into the grass.
Never, never, never would he forgive Celia Jane for her perfidy,--nor
Danny either for taking the ticket, when he knew that it had been given
to Celia Jane because Jerry thought she was really crying because she
wanted to see the circus. He would really run away this time. He would
run away without going back to tell Mother 'Larkey and Kathleen and
Nora good-by.
Now he would not get to see the elephants jumping the fence, nor the
trapeze performers, nor the dancing pony. Even the trained seals took on
a halo of enchantment now that the magic ticket that was to open all
those joys to him was irrevocably gone.
His sobbing rose in a renewed outburst, but even as he sobbed he felt
something shake his foot very slightly. He stopped sobbing so hard.
There was no further shaking of his foot and he again gave himself up to
the bitterness of his grief.
Then there came a tug at his foot; it was shaken harder than before and
then pulled. Very much startled, Jerry sat up and found himself staring
into a pair of twinkling yet sympathetic eyes and a face which was just
as white as chalk, with very, very red lips. It was a man, and he wore a
white skullcap over his head and a white, loose sort of gown with blue
dots all over it.
It was Whiteface, the clown, sitting on his heels right there in front
of him! That very surprising individual suddenly turned a handspring,
and without standing up, kicked his heels together straight up into the
air and then sat down in front of Jerry, leaned his head on his elbow
and smiled with twinkling eyes, without uttering a word.