We entered. The orchestra, composed of a cornopean, two small flutes and a clavier which some one struck with two rulers—I was unfamiliar with the dulcimer—were making such a clatter as quite to drown out the faithful and monotonous drum outside. Little by little we grew used to it and through all the noise I soon became aware of a sort of call, at once indescribably sad, sweet and authoritative, and so insistent that no one could resist it. In later years the Hungarian dances gave me a better understanding of the longing which I then felt. The sound brought before me unknown, far distant lands, and all the pleasures of vague pain. I longed to extend my arms to hasten the future. It was, as it were, a new apprehension of the still more vague sensation which Aunt Deen’s cradle song had awakened in me:
Si Dieu favorise
Ma noble entreprise
J’irai-z-à Venise
Couler d’heureux jours.
And I dimly realised that The House would never fulfil my dream. We didn’t hear such music there.
Powdered clowns in parti-coloured red and yellow costumes and little pointed caps played tricks upon one another which excited the laughter of the crowd and disgusted me. I had not come to witness buffoonery, but had expected, without quite knowing what, a noble and moving spectacle. Happily a tight-rope dancer restored my serenity, for it was with difficulty that she preserved her equilibrium, seeming likely at any moment to fall to the ground.
But the sensational number was the flying trapeze of the two Marinetti brothers. More than one celebrated acrobat has doubtless begun his career in a travelling circus. The two Marinetti brothers later became celebrated; one was killed in London by a fall; the other is to-day one of the first mimics of the world. At that time they were very young fellows, hardly older than I. One might have thought that they were simply amusing themselves, with no thought of the spectators. They played into each other’s hands with touching solicitude and arranged by a slight signal for the execution of their joint turns—I had almost said their duet, for there was so much rhythm in the supple movements of their two bodies that they really seemed to sing. During their whole glorious or tragic career, did they ever do anything more daring than those flights from one trapeze to another, without the security of the net, always laid in wait for by death, for which they seemed to care no more than a sparrowhawk for a knife?
The stifled cry of a woman in the audience awoke me to the danger to which I had been as indifferent as they, but of which I became suddenly aware. I was full of admiration and envy of them, soaring thus through the air. I could conceive of nothing more heroic, and my notion of courage underwent a change. Until now, through the epic stories father had told me, I had imagined it as always serving a cause. Hector was defending his city against the Greeks and Roland his faith against the Saracens. But was it not finer to juggle thus with oneself, for no reason, for one’s own pleasure?—for the public had ceased to count. In that ill-lighted circus, to the sound of that strange, exciting orchestra, I came to feel the charm of the danger that serves no purpose.
But clowns, rope dancer and even the Marinetti brothers were eclipsed in my imagination as by enchantment, when into the ring there dashed a little horsewoman standing erect upon a black horse whose saddle was large and flat like a table. I had been looking down during the interval, that is why I noticed the horse, for otherwise I should surely have seen only the rider. She wore a robe of gold. If the lamps had emitted less smoke and more light it is probable that that frayed dress would not have given me such a vision of luxury. The girl’s arms were bare and her hair unbound. Alone among all those tawny performers she was fair like the heroines of all my ballads. Merely by her leap into the ring she gave me what no woman had ever given me before, not even she whom I had met with grandfather and whom I had called the lady of the pavilion before I named her Helen;—not the sense of beauty—to that I had already attained; but the fear of approaching her and not keeping her. Yet I search my memory in vain for her features—I can not find them. I must have seen her often, and now I wonder if I ever looked at her, if I ever really dared to look at her. I think she had golden eyes—the golden tint of a virgin in a stained glass window through which the sun is shining. How old was she? Sixteen or seventeen—not older, and perhaps not so old. The fruits of her country do not need many months for ripening. She appeared taller than she was, by reason of her slenderness. It would be unjust to call her thin; slight, yes, but her slight form was full and muscular, and I wondered at the nascent roundness of her bosom. She was leaping through hoops that were held before her, and at each spring I trembled lest the horse should get away or she should miss the large saddle. It made me happy to tremble for her. Reassured by her skill I began to watch the movement of her hair, which each time she bounded rose and fell in cadence upon her shoulders. If a lock fell over her face she would throw it back with a gesture of annoyance.