The circus was but a sorry affair—a poor travelling show, with a few lean horses, a troup of performing dogs, a sick monkey in a cage, and several dubious specimens of humanity decked out in tinsel and colour,—yet the news that after all they were not to go to see it was received in a dead silence of disappointment. Later on, in the shrubbery, it was discussed freely enough, Jim inveighing noisily against the evil of not fulfilling promises that had been definitely made. He preached open defiance and gained nothing thereby save a gloomy threat from Edward that if he didn’t shut up his head would be smacked. Grif alone accepted the new decree with equanimity.
He had been in the town with grandpapa when the miserable procession had gone by to a hollow merriment of drums and cymbals, and had listened to grandpapa’s angry condemnation of a civilization that permitted such barbarities to exist. The sight of those scared, half-starved, professional brothers of Pouncer had in fact quite extinguished Grif’s own enthusiasm for the circus, and he had suggested, as an immediate remedy, that grandpapa should buy up all the quadrupedal members of it, and establish them in comfort at the Glebe for the rest of their lives.
“It’s all very well for you not to want to go,” Jim pointed out indignantly. “You’ve seen it already—at least, you’ve seen some of it.”
Grif admitted that he had, while Edward and Palmer conversed in undertones.
“Perhaps they’ll stay over the week-end,” suggested the optimistic Ann, “and then we’ll be able to see them in church.”
This remark was received with derision, and poor Ann retired from the council feeling hurt, for, after all, she wanted to go to the circus quite as much as any of the boys.
Thus it came and passed, Johnnie’s mixed and meagre description of them being the only glimpse they were vouchsafed of its mysterious glories. There had been songs and riding and the performing dogs and a kind of Wild West play with a lot of firing off of guns, but it hadn’t been much good, and the sick monkey had failed to get through its tricks even when stimulated by a whip. Some of the spectators had expressed their dissatisfaction openly at the second performance, and the show was moving on that day, Johnnie said, probably to the next town.
This was Johnnie’s report, and Grif had forgotten all about it when, on coming out on to the croquet-lawn after dinner, he found Ann there alone and in tears.
“What’s up?” he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Where is everybody?”
“They’ve gone to see the circus off,” said Ann, wiping her eyes. “And they promised before dinner I might come, and then they said I mightn’t, because they would maybe have to run to catch up with it.”
Ann could pour out her troubles to Grif, though she would never have dreamed of doing so to her other brothers or to Barbara. But Grif was different from them; he was somehow always nicest when other people weren’t nice at all. Every one knew that—even Jim, who had rarely any troubles that could not be cured by a few minutes’ passionate brawling with the Fates.
“Is Barbara with them?” Grif asked consolingly.
“No; she says circuses are vulgar: she’s going to pay visits with Aunt Caroline.”
“Well, let’s play a game of something.”
“It’s too hot,” said Ann, whose heart was with Palmer and Edward and Jim, racing along a dusty road in pursuit of fugitive mountebanks.
“We’ll play jacks, if you like; it’s not too hot for that. Or I’ll read you the Arabian Nights. I’m in the middle of a story, but I can tell you the beginning.”
Ann tugged at her pig-tail. All traces of grief had vanished from her plump and ruddy countenance. “I saw a man with earrings round at the back of the house just before dinner. I’m sure he was a circus man.”
“What was he doing?”
“Nothing. I told Edward and Jim about him, and they said he couldn’t be a circus man, because the circus was leaving. If he wasn’t, then he was a birate. He looked just like one.”
“What would a pirate be doing here? Besides, there aren’t any pirates now—at least there are only a few. He may have been a Lascar.”
“What’s a Lascar?” inquired Ann, with sudden interest.
“He’s a kind of sailor—one that wears earrings and gets up mutinies. No captain will take a Lascar on his ship unless he’s short-handed and has to.”
“I’d rather like to be in a mutiny,” Ann said.
“You mightn’t like it if you got marooned—put on a desert island and left there.”
“I would like it. When I grow up I’m going to live on an island anyway.”
“You’re on an island now,” Grif reminded her.
“I mean a quite small island,” pursued Ann, reflectively. “One that you can see all round.”
“If it’s so small as that there’ll be nobody there.”
“There’ll be a coast-guard station there. I like coast-guards. And I’ll ask Balmer to come and stay with me: and maybe you—now and then. But I won’t have any ladies: I’ll have nothing but boys and men: and I’ll be their queen and send them to berform tasks; and then when they come back they’ll kneel down and kiss my hand, and I’ll think of something else for them to do.”
“I’m afraid I’ll not be able to come to your island even if you do ask me,” said Grif apologetically. “I’ll probably be in Arabia.”
Ann felt her island growing very small indeed. She wished she had thought of Arabia.
“Arabia’s far better than an island,” Grif went on. “You can’t go out to take a walk there without something happening—some queer kind of thing. And there are deserts that nobody has ever crossed since the beginning of the world, except Solomon. That’s where the demons and the efrits live. After riding on a camel through the desert for days and days you come to a bronze statue of a knight on horseback. Then you get down and push him round on his pedestal and he points with his lance to show you what way you’re to go. And you come at last to a city where everything is silent and asleep, and you walk through the streets, but you see no one, and you go into a palace and across marble courts with fountains playing, but still there is no one. At last you reach a door that is just a little open, and through the door you hear the sound of a boy reading out of the Koran. He is kept there a prisoner by a female efrit, and you help him to escape, because that is your destiny and nobody else could do it. Both of you get on an ebony horse, and it flies up into the air, and very soon you see a black cloud, like a thunder cloud, coming after you. But the boy knows that this is really the female efrit, and she comes frightfully fast, and just when she is over your head she lets a big stone drop on the horse and breaks it, and you are falling down into the sea when a roc catches you and brings you to its nest. When the roc flies away next morning you climb down a cliff and find a door leading underground, and you come to beautiful gardens where the plants talk, and there are big dogs like Pouncer, only far bigger, with eyes like mill-wheels.... Where is Pouncer? Did Edward and Palmer take him?”
“No.... There they go!”
This last remark was called forth by the resplendent apparition of Aunt Caroline and Barbara, who had come out of the house and were walking down the drive.
“She told me she loved paying visits,” Ann said, despondently, as she gazed after her sister. “How can anybody love sitting on a chair and not talking except when they’re asked a question?”
Grif stretched himself on his back, with all his limbs outspread. “I expect she likes the cakes and things.”
“She says it isn’t for that. And when I asked her what it was for, she said I was too young to understand. I think she’s awful when she gets into a grown-up mood.”
“Girls are always like that—at least, they get that way sooner or later.”
“I won’t ever. I hate wearing my best dress, and I hate wearing gloves, and I hate sitting in drawing-rooms.”
“You’ll get to like it some day. That’s the difference between girls and boys. All girls go the same way. It’s a kind of disease. Edward’s nearly as bad, though he isn’t a girl. I mean, he likes dressing himself up and putting grease on his hair and going out to parties where there’s dancing.”
“I hate dancing,” said Ann. “So does Balmer. I love Balmer. He’s the nicest boy I ever saw.”
After a minute she added, “You’re nice too.”
“Master Grif, have you seen Pouncer? Other days he does be looking for his dinner long before it’s ready, and to-day he hasn’t come for it at all.”
The speaker was Hannah, and her words had an electrical effect on Grif. Instantly there flashed upon his mind a vision of the man with the earrings. What had he wanted? Why should he have come prowling about the house?
He turned to Ann. “Where was the man you saw this morning? Where was he going to?”
“He was in the wood, and he wasn’t going anywhere. I was under the ash-tree, playing Jonah in his bower, and I saw him through the branches. But when I came out to have a better look he wasn’t there.”
The search that followed was rapid and thorough—a search in which Bridget and Hannah and Ann all joined—but no Pouncer was to be found. Then, without saying a word to anyone, bareheaded and in his slippers, and with his breath rising painfully in his throat, Grif rushed down the drive and out on to the road.
As he ran towards the town he knew Pouncer had been stolen. His face had lost its colour, and was strained and woebegone, but he had no time for lamentations, he must catch the circus and get Pouncer back. Just outside the town he passed the field where the booth had been pitched. It was bare now, littered with torn papers and rubbish, and the grass was trampled down. Only two or three children were playing near it; there was no sign of his brothers; and Grif ran on to the town.
He stopped at the first shop he reached—a butcher’s—to ask which way the circus had gone. The big red-faced butcher was standing at his door taking the air, and Grif was so breathless and incoherent that his question had to be repeated several times before the butcher was able to grasp it. Even then his answer, being mingled with hostile criticisms of the show and of the performers, came with provoking slowness. “They’ll likely be stopping at Rathcarragh,” he at length surmised, “if they get that far without being jailed.” He was dwelling on the improbability of this when he became aware that Grif was no longer with him, and, in astonishment, watched him scudding on down the street. He entered his shop to communicate the tidings to his wife, and Grif tore on at full speed.
For he had heard the whistle of an engine, and now saw a white trail of smoke thinly outspread against the sky.
Could he do it? His legs were giving under him, and once he fell and cut his stocking and his knee. But he did not stop. Though his heart seemed bursting, and everything swam before his eyes, he ran on; while the white road seem to tilt up steeply in front of him in an impossible hill.
He could hear the shrill, rending noise of escaping steam now, and the slamming of doors. Another second or two and he staggered into the station. The train had not yet started, but the guard was waving his flag. Grif sprang at the door of the nearest carriage, which happened to be empty, tugged the handle round, and scrambled in.
He was safe; the train was already moving out from the platform: then everything grew suddenly dark, and his head dropped back against the cushion.
When he recovered they were rushing through a sun-scorched landscape of meadows and farmlands. He wet his handkerchief and wiped the dirt out of his cut knee. Fortunately it was not bleeding much; and he turned down his stockings, and brushed the dust off his knickerbockers.
He looked eagerly out of the windows on both sides, but could see no sign of a road. The time went by with almost unendurable slowness. They tore through a small station, and he began to fear that the train might not stop at Rathcarragh after all, or that perhaps they had already passed it, for he had not been able to read the name of the place they had left behind. They seemed to have been travelling for miles and miles, for hours and hours, when the engine whistled, and he felt that they were slowing down.
The train drew in at a platform, and before it stopped Grif jumped out. He had no ticket, but luckily he had enough money to pay for one, though it left him destitute. As he made his way through the streets of the town he looked out for a poster of the circus, but saw none. It was market day, and there were a good many people about. Nobody, however, took any notice of a rather forlorn-looking little boy in slippers, who eagerly scanned every wall where there was a bill pasted up. A few minutes’ walking brought him to the edge of the town. Beyond this there were only detached houses and gardens; and then the open country. Grif did not know what to do.
There was a public-house near, and he went in to make inquiries, but nobody had heard anything about a circus. The man in charge was quite friendly, however, so friendly indeed that Grif told him his whole story, and became, in an atmosphere heavy with the fumes of stout and whisky, the centre of a small group of solemn listeners, whose fishy eyes and thickened utterance suggested that a considerable amount of refreshment had already been given and taken. When Grif’s tale was finished, and the rather fuddled sympathy of the audience had been expressed, the potman produced some biscuits and cheese, and insisted that he should fill his pockets. He was also able to point out the road by which the circus would arrive if it were coming, and where Grif might watch for it. He began to give his own version of the affair to three or four new customers who had drifted in, and in the midst of it Grif made his escape.
He followed the road the man had pointed out, though no longer very hopefully. He felt now that it would have been wiser to have waited at home, trusting to grandpapa and the police. Unfortunately he had come too far to turn back, nor had he any money to pay for a second railway-ticket. He walked on and on, under a blazing sun, which lay upon the wide expanse of fields and meadows like the heavy breath of a furnace. There seemed to be no air, and the white road, with its thick carpet of dust, dazzled his eyes. The heat of the sun upon his bare head, the strong glare reflected from the earth, seemed to enter into his brain in a burning blinding light. His feet began to drag a little, his slippers were filled with dust, but he trudged on bravely, though his weariness added to his depression, and he would have liked to have lain down by the roadside and cried.
With his thin leather slippers he was but poorly shod for a tramp like this, and his feet began to ache, till at last each step he took caused him pain. Only the thought that every moment of delay might increase Pouncer’s danger kept him up, lent him a kind of nervous strength to continue plodding on. The town he had left behind him had long since dropped out of sight. Whichever way he turned now the landscape presented the same monotonous, dazzling aspect. The tall green corn and barley stood motionless in the fields; the cows were lying down in such shade as they could find; the birds were silent and hidden: only an insect life hummed and thridded and buzzed in the hedgerows. He felt very thirsty, but he had not passed a cottage for some time, nor passed a stream. And the glittering light seemed to bend and quiver before his tired eyes, weaving strange patterns, casting reflected, shimmering flames, as if from the burnished roofs of a city of mirage.
Two hours must have gone by; he had climbed hills and descended valleys; yet no sign of the travelling circus appeared. The heat was no longer so intense; the glare had decreased; the sun was sinking—casting longer and longer shadows. He reached at last a little copse of beech-trees, and heard the sound of running water. He scrambled through the hedge. He could rest for a while here, and still watch the road; nothing could pass without his hearing it and seeing it. He bent down to the stream and drank from his cupped hands, and splashed the cold water over his aching head. It brought him instant refreshment, but, more even than the water, the shadow was delicious as some healing balm. Leaning against the bank he closed his eyes for a moment the better to enjoy it, and a delicious darkness, like a cool, sweet-scented oil, caressed his sun-scorched nerves.
When he awoke it was quite dark and he knew he must have slept for many hours. It took him but an instant to realize his situation, and with its hopelessness he broke down and cried. He had slept through those hours when he should have been watching. What use to look for the circus now?
He would never find it:—never, never. And Pouncer must have passed with it! He would not understand; he would know only that he had been deserted—left to these cruel men who would certainly ill-treat him. Perhaps he had felt that Grif was near, and had barked, while his master had slept on in brutal unconsciousness. A passion of grief and remorse shook his slight frame as he lay sobbing, his face buried in his arms. Above him the night wind whispered in the dim trees—remote, yet strangely gentle. Moonlight chequered the dark grass with pools of milky pallor. A dead silence, save for this rustling leafy murmur, was over everything.