I HAVE rambled along, talking about my profession and the things that have happened in it, until now I realize that I have not touched upon some events which meant a good deal to me personally. A clown, despite the general impression, is a real human being. He has emotions like any other mortal, and sometimes they are deeper and truer than in those who pretend to piety and keep a straight face.
Although we are nomads, we people of the circus have hearts. It was shortly after I came to America that I first saw the woman who was to play, for a time, such an important part in my life. I had just joined the Burr Robbins show, and I was a struggling young clown in a strange land. I did not even know all the people in the show. My life had been so hard and fast that I had had no time to think of romance.
One day as I walked from the pad room to the entrance to the main tent, waiting for my time to go on, I saw a young woman in tights and ruffled skirts, standing with a whip in her hand. She, too, was waiting her turn. She was lithe, slender, and graceful, and she had the most wonderful eyes I had ever seen. Something rose in my throat and a keen, swift feeling ran through me. I had never anywhere beheld anyone who had impressed me in just that way. As she stood there, full of life and animation, the very embodiment of grace and beauty, I realized that she wielded a fascination for me that was irresistible. I watched her as she made her entry. When she walked she was the very poetry of motion; her bow to the crowd was airy, and when she leaped to the back of a noble white horse, she seemed like a bird. I stood at the entrance transfixed. She seemed the most exquisite rider I had ever seen. I forgot my cue, and one of my fellow-clowns had to shake me by the shoulder and say:
“Wake up, Jules.”
That afternoon I stumbled through my work. I was so slow that the ringmaster touched me up with his whip. I could not keep my eyes off that rider. When she was in the ring the whole tent seemed to be flooded with sunshine, and when she left it, amid a tumult of applause, it seemed bare and desolate.
Day after day I watched her in silent admiration. Once I picked up courage to speak to her. The informality of circus life requires no introductions among its people. She seemed to be very proud and haughty, and treated my advance with disdain. Yet I always made it a point to be at the entrance when she went on, and I watched for her when she came out. While she was in the ring I could scarcely work.
I never realized how deeply I cared for her until I saw her talking to the head of our principal trapeze family. He was a splendid-looking Frenchman, with brown hair and curled mustache, and he had a dashing air. He got a big salary, was featured in all the bills, and quite naturally my lady smiled upon him. But I loved on in silence, and in pain, covering it all with the clown’s fool garb.
Can you imagine how I felt as I stood apart each day, watching this glorious creature laughing and making merry with a handsome rival? It was just like a scene in a French book that I had read when I was a boy at the Circus Francisco in Paris. I little dreamed then that it would happen to me.
One day I gave her some flowers that I had bought on a hot, dusty trip downtown. She accepted them with a sort of condescension, and then turned quickly away, for the French acrobat happened along, and she beamed on him.
This ordeal was not pleasant. It got on my nerves, and interfered with my work. I had always been sunny and smiling, and my unfailing good cheer had often helped to drive care away from my colleagues. I grew sad and irritable.