The boy and girl were nowhere in sight.
II.
Of course, we both saw them again, and not once but many times. How could we possibly keep away from them? We couldn’t, and didn’t. We became addicts, sitting through performance after performance—we took parties of friends—we went, in short, over and over again, returning willy-nilly to that delight as the drunkard returns to his bottle. Paul took along his camera, naturally, and got dozens of remarkable photographs—and how many sketches he made goodness knows. At the end, we knew those two lovely creatures absolutely by heart—as you usually know only those people you love. And all this time, right to the end, they both remained just exactly as superb and beautiful and inviolable as they had seemed at the beginning.
That is, as far as the performance was concerned. And in fact, the effect was actually heightened by what we found out about them—it added an element of the dramatic to know what we knew, and to know why they behaved as they did. How much more, too, if we could have known how it was destined to end, and how soon—! But that was impossible, of course, and nobody guessed it; and meanwhile it was quite enough for us to watch day after day the girl’s savage and contemptuous indifference, and the angry pride which so enhanced her beauty, and counter to this, the boy’s calm and cool and patient courage, the quiet courage of the one who knows that he can wait longest.
A start was made when Paul decided to ask them to Sunday tea, and did so, and they accepted. They were surprised, but they were also delighted. They came, and it was a huge success, and—as Margaret told me afterwards, for I was unable to go, much to my sorrow—they behaved beautifully, simply beautifully. Somehow, nobody had quite expected them to have much in the way of manners—an assumption which was quite unfounded, of course, and which collapsed instantly and startlingly when it came out, almost at once, that the boy was the son of a north-country vicar! A gentleman, in fact, and the girl a lady! Margaret was relieved; and Paul was amused; and everybody, as usual, had a good time. And lots of interesting things came out. They were both twenty-two, and had been married less than a year. The boy had spent a few months in New York—it was there that he had learned his stunt-riding, while working as a mechanic for the Wall of Death at Coney Island, or some such place. And he had decided that he would come back to England and be the first to introduce it there. With the money he came into from his mother on his twenty-first birthday, he bought the rights and plans for the first Drome of Death in England, therefore, and had it built at Southampton—and only a week before, at Southampton, he and his wife had given their first performance. All the money had been spent—it was a close thing—and they would be dependent on what they could make, but they were confident. And so on.
It was noticeable—Margaret said—that it was he who did all the talking. But a little nervously, and constantly turning to his wife, as if half afraid of some shadowy criticism or disapproval. The girl said practically nothing. She was perfectly self-possessed, and quite amiable, but she made it evident that she preferred to listen—now and then turning toward her husband, Margaret thought, an expression that seemed perhaps just a shade skeptical. Especially of his exploits—when he was telling of his previous exploits. Not that he boasted at all—not in the least. Apparently he had in fact been extremely modest about it. But it was when he was telling of his winning the Isle of Man trophy, and the race from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, and a few other such things, that Margaret first noticed, as she put it, what looked almost like a curl of the lip, and an angry flash of light in the girl’s eyes. It was odd, and a little disconcerting. And moreover, it seemed disconcerting to the boy.
But that was all, no further light was shed on it at the time, and it was not till a few days before the fair left town, and took the road for Folkstone, that the thing really came out.
And all through a package of cigarettes—and the fact that I had to call at the jeweler’s for my watch, which I had taken to be cleaned. The jeweler’s shop was at the end of the High Street, just beside the cliff, and above the playing-salts; and seeing the fair, and having nothing to do, I went down. Except for one or two of the penny gambling stalls, the fair was not officially open in the morning, and therefore now it looked a little deserted. Nobody about—only a few children. But when I came to the Drome of Death, there, sitting on the edge of the red plush dais, dangling his blue-trousered legs, was the boy, all alone, and the minute he saw me his eyes lighted up with recognition, and he smiled.
“I imagine you’ve seen me before,” I said.
“Many times. You’re a friend of Mr. Nash, aren’t you? I think he spoke of you.”
I admitted this, and said that I was sorry I had been unable to come to the tea, and to meet his wife and himself, and I complimented him on the show, at which he was pleased, and then he asked me if I wouldn’t sit down, and I did. But it was when I offered him a cigarette that he really showed his pleasure—he fairly beamed at me.
“You know”—he said—“I’ve been frantic for a cigarette—absolutely frantic. Ran out half an hour ago, and not a soul around the place, and myself alone here, so that I couldn’t leave—nothing safe, you know, with these gypsies round—thanks!”
“You smoke a lot?”
“Afraid I do. I don’t know, in this sort of business you need something to do in between-times, something to steady your nerves—you know what I mean? When you aren’t riding. And in the morning, especially in the morning!”
“The morning?”
“It’s a long wait in the morning—we were disappointed to find this town so small, you know, it means you can’t have any morning performances—bad luck, too, just when we could do with some extra cash—and it’s bad in this kind of business when you haven’t got anything to do. You can’t drink, not in this game—so there’s nothing to do but smoke. I’m a chain smoker—so’s the kid.”
“The kid—?”
“My wife.”
“Well, I suppose that’s natural. I should think it would get on your nerves.”
“Yes. You want to keep going. On the move all the time—that’s the trouble with a little third-rate fair like this, they only hit the small towns, and there isn’t enough in it.…”
He smiled, the blue eyes looking lightly at me, and then beyond me, as if to something in the future—something quite definitely bigger and better than this third-rate fair. But then he waved his cigarette toward the merry-go-round, and added—
“But it’s all right, you know, and you’ve got to make a beginning somewhere, haven’t you? So I suppose we were lucky, at that.”
There was a pause, he blew the ash off the cigarette, and then after a moment I told him how much I admired the looks of the Drome—in which Nash, who was an artist, agreed with me. He was delighted with this.
“It is pretty, isn’t it—?” he said. “Yes, it is pretty. A little shipyard at Southampton did the building, and they did a lovely job of it. Look at that woodwork—like a yacht, it is—everything of the finest! Much better built than the Yankee ones—much. You know, it’s a tricky piece of work to do, too—there’s got to be a lot of give and play in it, not too rigid—but not too slack either. Have you noticed when we go round there’s a kind of ripple of the whole structure that goes with us—? Well, that has to be just right. We have to tune it up, keep it tuned, just like a fiddle. That’s what the stays are for—we tighten ’em or loosen ’em—watch ’em all the time. And it’ll get better as it ages a bit—got to weather, you know, like everything else. It’s already improving—gets a little more supple.”