Circus -- Fiction; Clowns -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
She came tripping up to him, almost on the stroke of ten, as he sat at the
outside edge of the café terrace, awaiting her. The reconciliation was
complete. Like most of the young men there, he too had his maid. They met
as if they had known each other for years. She was full of an evil fellow,
_un gros type_, with a roll of fat at the back of his neck and a great
diamond ring which flashed in the moonlight, who had waited for her at the
stage door and walked by her side, pestering her with his attentions.
"And do you know how I got rid of him? I said: 'Monsieur, I can't walk with
you through the streets on account of my comrades. But I swear to you that
you will find me at the Café des Négotiants at a quarter past ten.' And so
I made my escape. Look," said she excitedly, gripping Andrew's arm, "here
he is."
She met the eyes of the _gros type_ with the roll of fat and the
diamond ring, who halted somewhat uncertainly in front of the cafe.
Whereupon Andrew rose to his long height of six foot four and, glaring at
the offender, put him to the flight of over-elaborated unconcern. Elodie
was delighted.
"You could have eaten him up alive, _n'est-ce pas_, André?"
And Andrew felt the thrill of the successful Squire of Dames. For the rest
of the evening, there was no longer any 'Monsieur' or 'Mademoiselle.' It
was André and Elodie.
Yes, he would write to her from Paris, telling her of his fortunes. And
she too would write. The Agence Moignon would always find him. It is
parenthetically to be noted how his afternoon fears of the impermanence of
the Agence Moignon had vanished. Time flew pleasantly. She seemed to have
set herself, her youth and her femininity, to the task of evoking the wide
baby smile on his good-natured though dismal face. It was only on their
homeward way, after midnight, that she mentioned the '_boîle_.' There
had been discussions. Some had said this and some had said that. There had
been partisans of the Coinçons and partisans of André. There was subject
matter for one of the pretty quarrels dear to music-hall folk. But Elodie
summed up the whole matter, with her air of precocious wisdom--a wisdom
gained in the streets and sewing-rooms and cafés-concerts of Marseilles.
"What you do is excellent, _mon cher_; but it is _vieux jeu_. The
circus is not the music-hall. You must be original."
As originality was banned from the circus tradition, he stood still in the
narrow, quiet street and gasped.
"Original?"
"You are so long and thin," she said.
"That has always been against me; it was against me to-day."
"But you could make it so droll," she declared. "And there would be no one
else like you. But you must be by yourself, not with a troupe like the
Merveilleux. _Tiens_," she caught him by the lapels of his jacket and
a passer-by might have surmised a pleading stage in a lovers' discussion,
"I have heard there is a little little man in London--oh, so little, _et
pas du tout joli_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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