Toni was now thirteen years old, and though short, was very lithe and well made. He had never been on a horse’s back since that glorious day when the old cavalry charger had run off with him, and he had not been able to enjoy the society of the horses much, or to lurk around the riding-school since his apprenticeship to Clery. On a certain May day which, although Toni did not know it, was a day of fate to him, he saw the greatest sight of his life—the debarkation of a circus company, with all its horses and other animals, at the little station in Bienville.
Toni had often seen recruits debark when they came to the cavalry school for instruction. Clumsy, awkward fellows they were—at first ridiculously uneasy on a horse, and often as much afraid of a horse as Toni was of people. And he had seen them return, fine, dashing-looking troopers, after having been licked into shape in the riding-school. He loved to see the horses led to the train—they were so intelligent, so orderly, and seemed like real comrades of the troopers. But he had never seen anything like the trained intelligence of the circus horses in his life, and on this May day, when he wandered down to the station and saw horses who obeyed the word of command, like human beings, in getting off the train and taking up their right places, he was astounded and delighted. Every boy in Bienville was at the station to see the circus arrive, but Toni, according to his habit, slunk off by himself. There were numerous cages of animals, in which the other boys took a much greater interest than in the horses, but the other animals were nothing to Toni, to whom the cult of the horse was everything.
He followed the circus people, at a respectful distance, to the large open field where they put up the tent, but the chief point of interest to him was the temporary canvas stables which were erected. He knew that it was time for him to go back to Clery’s, but he could not, to save his life, have torn himself away from the fascinating sights and sounds which surrounded him.
Everywhere was the bustle and well-regulated haste of such companies. The circus, which was really a small affair, had arrived in the morning, and the tent was up, and the performance ready to open by two o’clock. Toni spent the whole of the intervening time watching what was going on. Clery and the shop quite faded from his memory. He saw the circus riders come out of the dressing-tent, in their beautiful costumes of red and gold and pink and silver, a little tarnished, but glorious in Toni’s eyes, and he saw the horses gaily caparisoned and almost adored them.
If he had a single franc, he would be able to go into the tent, and see the performance, but he had not a franc, nor did he know where to get one, except—except—he knew where his mother kept a tin box full of francs. He was afraid to go to her and ask her for the franc, because he had not been near Clery’s shop that day, and if his mother once caught him she might send him back to the shop, and that would mean no circus for him that day. But it was so easy to open the box and take out a franc—a thing he had never done before or thought of doing. But, like Captain Ravenel and Sophie, there are moments in the lives of human beings when temptation overwhelms the soul. Toni, who was neither a thief nor a liar, became both, just as Captain Ravenel and Sophie Delorme had, in one desperate moment, trampled on the social law.
So Toni to, whom, in spite of his faults, deceit was as foreign even as it was to Paul Verney, conceived the thought of taking a franc out of his mother’s tin box. He sneaked back home, along by-lanes and garden walls, and crept in through the little back door which opened into the kitchen. His mother was in the front shop, and did not see him. As he stole softly up the narrow stair into the bedroom above, the sun was shining brightly, and the clock on the mantel pointed to half-past one. Toni always remembered this as an hour of fate.
The circus performance was to begin at two, and he barely had time to find the key which his mother kept under the bureau cover, and to unlock the press in which she kept her strong box, to find the key to the strong box hanging up on a nail inside the press, to open it and there, in a smaller tin box, to find many pieces of silver. Toni took out a single franc. He might have taken the whole box, but he never thought of it. It was not money he wanted, but a sight of the circus. He then closed and replaced the box, made everything as it was before, and, creeping down stairs, rushed off to the field where the circus tent was up, his heart beating with a wild excitement which was not joy—neither was it pain.
The performance was almost ready to begin when Toni handed in his franc with a trembling hand. The place was full; everybody in Bienville seemed to be there, and many persons from the surrounding country, but Toni managed to slip himself between two stout peasant women with baskets in their laps, and contrived to see the whole performance without being seen. He gave himself up, à la Toni, to the enjoyment of the moment, putting off until four o’clock the hated interview with his mother and the still worse one that he must have with Clery.
“Toni took out a single franc.”
But the circus to him was a sight well worth a dozen whippings. The view of the prancing horses, so wonderfully intelligent, the beautiful young ladies in gauze and spangles, the riders in their satin suits,—all were a dream to Toni. He did not see any of the grease spots on the costumes, nor the paint on the faces of the lovely young ladies; all was a foretaste of Paradise. It came to him in a moment what his real destiny was—to be a circus rider. At once his imagination seized upon it. He wondered himself that he had managed to exist so long without the circus. All that vaulting and jumping and leaping, that careering around on the backs of brave horses, must be heavenly—it could not possibly be work.
Toni saw himself, in imagination, one of those glorious beings. Two things only did not fit into this picture which he drew of his future—his mother and little Denise. He could not imagine either of them in the place of those short-skirted, fluffy-haired young ladies, with pink silk stockings and very stout legs.
Just before the end a pony was brought out which succeeded in throwing three clowns so successfully that the audience was in roars of laughter. The ring-master challenged any one present below a certain weight to come out in the ring and try to ride this astonishing pony. Toni, without his own volition, and knowing no more of what he was doing than a sleep-walker, wriggled out from between the two fat peasant women and got down in the sanded ring. There was a roaring in his ears and a blur before his eyes, and he could not have told how it was that he found himself upon the back of the kicking, plunging pony careering around that dazzling circle. All Toni knew was that he was the pony’s master. There was no shaking him off.
Shouts and cheers resounded, each increasing as the pony, still making desperate efforts to get rid of Toni, sped around the ring. But Toni held on as firmly and easily as if he had been born and bred in a riding-school. He had not the slightest sensation of fear, any more than on that day so long ago when the old cavalry horse had run away with him. The cheers and cries increased as the pony, realizing that Toni had the upper hand of him, came down to a steady gallop.
The ring-master advanced and cracked his whip a little, and Toni fully expected the pony to start anew the wild antics of the beginning. Instead of that, the pony came to a dead halt which was expected to throw Toni to the ground, but did not. He looked up, however, and caught sight of the ring-master standing close to him. He was a fierce-looking man with black eyes like Toni’s. The sight of those eyes waked all the cowardice in Toni’s nature. He thought he should have died of fright while that man was looking at him, and then it came over him that hundreds of eyes were looking at him all the time. He slipped off the pony’s back and like a hunted creature dashed toward the nearest opening of the tent and fled—fled homeward. He meant to creep up stairs and crawl under his little bed and stay there until his mother came up stairs, when he would catch her around the neck and tell her all about the franc and ask her, yes, actually ask her to give him a whipping just to restore things to their normal balance. He felt that he deserved five hundred whippings.
As he raced homeward, he passed Clery’s shop without looking that way. Suddenly Clery himself darted out and seizing him dragged him through the shop and into a little back room quite dark. Clery, who was an honest fellow, meant to do Toni the greatest service of his life, and said, holding him by the collar:
“Toni, you are a thief!”
Toni, in whose mind the paradise of circus land and the paroxysm of terror were rioting confusedly, looked dreamily at Clery, who looked back sternly at him. Toni remaining silent, Clery shook him, and hissed into his ear:
“You are a thief! You stole the money from your mother to go to the circus.”
Toni still said nothing, and Clery continued:
“When you did not come back, I knew that you had gone to the circus. I went over and spoke to your mother, and she told me she was sure you had not gone because you had no money. Then I saw you come back here, and go out again, and run away as fast as you could. I went over and told your mother that you had been in the house, but she declared that you had not. My boy Jean says he saw you running toward the house with both hands open and likewise your mouth, and come out of it holding a franc between your teeth. So Toni, you are a thief, and your mother, I am sure, will never love you again, and to keep you from being sent to prison for life, I mean to give you as good a whipping as I am able, for fear your mother will not do her duty by you, and when I am through, I will take you over to her, and when I tell the police—”
Clery paused. Toni was thoroughly awake and alive then. A thief! Tell the police! That meant prison to him. This awful vision drove everything else out of his mind. And then Clery, suddenly brandishing the cane, brought it down on Toni’s shoulders with all the strength of an able-bodied tailor. Toni uttered a half-shriek, but after that neither cried out nor wept, but bore stoically the blows that Clery rained upon him. It seemed as if the day of judgment had come.
When Clery, honest man, had finished with Toni and was taking him across the street, Toni looked around him with wild eyes of despair. That precious refuge under his little bed seemed no longer open to him. He was a thief—he must go to prison—that was all he knew. And just then he looked up and there was a policeman walking straight toward him. That was enough! Toni, wresting himself from Clery’s grasp, turned and ran like one possessed, the specter of a mad fear chasing him, down toward the bridge. He was afraid to crawl into his usual nook, because he could be easily seen from there, so he ran across the bridge and hid himself in a thicket of young chestnut trees on the other side.
He lay, terror stricken, his heart beating so that he thought it must almost make a hole in the ground. What was to become of him? His mother, as Clery had told him, could love him no longer. He dared not look any one in the face, but felt an outcast, like Cain. He lay there for hours, through the waning afternoon, until the purple shadows descended on the white town, on the sparkling river, the long rows of barracks and the open fields in which the circus tent had been pitched. It was now taken down and the circus people were preparing to go by the highway to the next town, ten miles away.
It was nearly eight o’clock and the young moon was trembling in the heavens, when the circus cavalcade began to travel along the white and dusty highroad, passing by Toni’s place of concealment. It suddenly came into his mind that the only thing for him to do was to go with the circus. As the end of the procession of carts and vans and horsemen and horsewomen passed, Toni crept out of his hiding-place and came up to a company of men who were trudging along on foot. He said to one of them, Nicolas by name, a youngish man with hair and beard as red as Judas’:
“May I walk a little way with you?”
This little way, in Toni’s mind, meant to walk through life with the circus company.
Nicolas laughed; runaway boys were the general concomitants of a circus company. And in a moment more he recognized the boy who had stuck on the pony’s back, and then had run away so quickly.
“Yes, come along, you young rascal,” he said, “and you can carry this portmanteau if you like,”—and he slung the heavy portmanteau from his own shoulders to Toni’s.
Toni trudged along, carrying the portmanteau easily, being a strong boy. He got into a conversation with his new friend and soon expressed his determination to stay with the circus, if only they would give him something to eat, for he was very hungry. A woman, walking along with them, heard this and handed Toni a couple of biscuits, which he eagerly devoured. They trudged on for two hours, the moon growing larger and brighter and flooding with a white radiance the hedges, the wide fields, the woods and the highway along which the cavalcade traveled slowly. Toni felt an immense sense of relief. The police could not come so far to get him. He hardened his heart against his mother. He judged, from what Clery had told him, that his mother would be the first to denounce him.
And so began poor Toni’s life with the circus, away from his mother, away from Denise, away from Paul Verney—only Jacques remained.