The Jugglers: A Story

The lazy blue river and the wide, brown plains of Picardy lay basking in the still splendor of the November afternoon. The mysterious hush of the autumn lay upon the fields and the farmsteads. A flock of herons in a near-by marsh meditated gravely, standing one-legged, and watching the cows kneedeep in the muddy meadows. High in the sunny air, a vulture sailed, majestically evil, watching both the cows and the herons. The world was saying farewell softly to the sunny hours.

The only sound that broke the deep silence was the steady trot of the big Normandy horses on the flinty towpath, as they drew a covered boat along the narrow and shallow stream, and the faint echo of the voices of five persons sitting on the roof of the boat in the sunshine. The herons cocked their eyes toward the boat, and listened attentively, though they could not understand a word of these strange, noisy, laughing, weeping, fighting, dancing, talking creatures, called men and women. Sometimes, so the herons thought, these odd beings were a little kind; sometimes they were very cruel, but always they were formidable, and were masters of life and death.

The great question under discussion on the roof of the boat was, where the theatrical company of jugglers and singers should spend the winter. Grandin, the proprietor of the show, a tall, handsome, boastful man, with a big voice like a church organ and a backbone made of brown paper, always gave his opinion first, but was generally overruled by Madame Grandin, also tall, handsome, easily wheedled or bullied, but inexorably truthful. Decisions really rested with the three subordinates, Diane Dorian, the prima donna, Jean Leroux, her partner, and the individual known as François le Bourgeois, juggler.

“I have determined upon Bienville,” roared Grandin, in his big, rich voice. “We wintered there nine years ago, and my lithograph was in some of the best shops in the place.”

“Oh, what a lie!” cried Madame Grandin, amiably. “They only put your picture in three butcher shops and the bake shop across the street, and I am sure you paid enough for it. But Bienville is my choice too.”

Grandin took this with the utmost good nature. Between his propensity to tell agreeable lies, and Madame Grandin’s natural inability to let a lie go uncontradicted, the couple struck a very good average of truth.

The manager and his wife having spoken, the real discussion was now on.

“I should say Bienville,” said Jean Leroux, quietly.

He, too, was big--an ugly, resolute man with an indomitable eye, and as honest as the day was long.

He looked at Diane as he spoke. She was dark haired and dark eyed, with a skin milk white in spite of grease paint, and had a vivid, irregular, theatrical beauty, in great contrast to the big, Juno-like manager’s wife. Also, she was so slight and thin as to deserve the name of “Skinny,” which was freely applied to her by François, and she had a voice like the flute of Pan. In spite of her soft voice and gently drooping head, Diane had ten times the resolution of the resolute Jean Leroux. She was also the vainest of women, and in order to protect her matchless complexion wore, over her scarlet hood, a transparent veil of a misty grey, through which her eyes shone as the flash of stars is seen through a drifting cloud. Jean Leroux, who frankly adored her, sat at her right, and François, who always laughed at her, sat on the other side. This François had the clear cut, highbred features, the slim hands and feet, that indescribable air of the aristocrat which marks a man who can trace his descent through many lines of greatness, back to those who shone at the court of Philippe le Bel. Yet François was a frowzy person, and his small feet had burst through his shoes; but he had the same glorious and ineffable impudence of his ancestors who bullied their kings and princes.

“What do you say, Diane?” he asked, giving Diane a friendly kick.

“I say Bienville,” replied Diane in her lovely stage voice. “I was born and brought up five miles from Bienville, in a little hole of a house, for my father, the village hatter, and my mother had a hard time to keep body and soul together. When I was a little, little girl, I used to look in clear days toward Bienville where I could see the tall spires of the cathedral making a dark line against the sky, and I used to imagine I could hear the bells on the clear December days, and in the soft summer nights. I yearned with all my heart to go to Bienville on market day, and to see the wonderful things that I had heard of there. My mother and father were always promising me that when they had enough money they would take me to Bienville on a market day, but, poor souls, they never had enough. So then, when they died and I was twelve years old, I was taken far away by my uncle. I never saw Bienville, and tended geese until I was sixteen and begun to sing at the village festivals.”

“How interesting!” cried François, who had heard the story forty times before. “When you are prima donna at the Paris Opera, and your noble lineage is acknowledged by the proudest houses in France, it will be so romantic to hear ‘The Tale of the Goose Girl’!”

This was an old joke of François’, at which everybody was expected to laugh, but Diane remained sullenly silent. François had told her by way of a gibe that her name, Dorian, was undoubtedly a corruption of the noble name of D’Orian, and the ridiculous story had taken possession of Diane, who was as ambitious as Julius Cæsar, and not without repartee.

“Anyhow,” she answered tartly, “it is better to rise from being a goose girl to being a singer in a nice company like this, than--” Diane stopped, but François finished the sentence for her.

“Than to be born in a chateau and come down to being general utility man in a nice, though small, theatrical company. But I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that the fault is in the stars, not in me. God is a great showman, and arranges many highly dramatic events in certain lives. He has a little string, which He calls Life, and when He pulls it, we walk, talk, and sin. And when He cuts that string, we walk, talk, and sin no more. To return to the concrete, however--I give my voice for Bienville too, because the Bishop is a friend of mine, and so is the major general commanding the district.”

Now, François had never before been known to mention any great people he had ever known in his former life, claiming acquaintance only with organ-grinders, ratcatchers, and the like. So all present pricked up their ears at this.

“When I was a little lad five years old,” continued François, “they wanted to teach me to read, but I did not want to read, so then I was taken into the meadows and shown two big boys, twelve and fourteen years old, who watched the cows, and meanwhile each carried a book which he read every moment he could. One of those boys has become Bishop of Bienville, and the other, I tell you, is a major general commanding. I suppose they will turn up their noses at me, as indeed they should. But Bienville is the place for the winter.”

The three subordinates having spoken, the question of spending the winter in Bienville was considered settled, provided they could get a cheap hall in which to give performances three times a week. The horses were to be sold, as they always were at the end of a season, and the boat tied up at the quay, because it could not be heated for winter weather.

“I am sorry,” said Diane, “that the summer is over, and this is the last time for this year that we shall travel by water.”

Diane did not suspect that it was the last time she should ever travel in that way again.

The horses trotted on steadily toward the far-off steeples and roofs of Bienville coming within clear sight. By that time it was nearly dusk, and a great golden, smoky moon hung in the heavens. The boat was stopped on the river bank where the streets of the little town ran down to the waterside. The horses were taken out, rubbed down, and fed, while the Juno-like manager’s wife and the future prima donna of the Paris Opera cooked supper. Presently they were all assembled around a little table in the small, stuffy cabin, lighted by a kerosene lamp hung on the beam over their heads. They were very humble people, and poor, but they were not unhappy, and lived in a singular harmony together, in spite of the fact that the three ruling spirits, Diane, Jean Leroux, and François were all made on a special model. But each had that strange, artistic conscience which begets the iron discipline of the stage. Apart from the stage, François was frankly an outlaw, and submitted to things because there was always a strong and relentless world against him.

When supper was over and everything settled for the night, Grandin and his wife were soon snoring loudly in the little coop which was their room. Diane was not in her little coop, nor was Jean Leroux huddled in his blanket in the large cabin which he shared with François. Both Diane and Jean were sitting on the roof of the cabin watching the moon and stars reflected in the black river, and listening to the sounds brought to them upon the wandering breeze of a merry little town at night. Jean Leroux, a taciturn man, was, as usual, on or off the stage, watching Diane.

“At last I am in Bienville,” murmured Diane. “After so many years of longing and yearning! I feel that something will happen to me here, something great and splendid.”

“Now, Diane,” said Leroux, “don’t let François’ jokes get into your head as serious things. Nothing is going to happen here. You sing pretty well, but you have no more chance of being a great opera singer than I have of being an archbishop. You haven’t the voice, my dear, for opera at all. You will never get beyond a good music hall artist.”

“You are so discouraging, Jean,” complained Diane. “You have a fine voice and know how to act too, but you never aspire to anything but a music hall.”

“No, and I never mean to,” was the reply of the practical Jean. “I wish you had good sense, Diane. But I love you just the same as if you had.”

Diane made no reply, and Jean was confirmed in his belief that women were the most obstinate and senseless creatures on earth when once they took a notion into their heads.

“Besides,” continued Jean, “you are too old, twenty-six, to begin training for grand opera, and you haven’t the money either. At this moment, your capital consists of two hundred and forty-six francs; you told me so yourself.”

“Two hundred and sixty-six francs,” cried Diane with flashing eyes. “You ought to be more careful how you talk about such important things, Jean.”

“Anyhow,” answered Jean gruffly, “for you to try grand opera would be exactly like a cow trying to play the piano.”

Diane argued with him angrily for half an hour. She had not the slightest intention or even wish to be a grand opera singer, and knew the absurdity of the situation quite as well as Jean. But having, like all women, great powers of deception, she was carefully concealing the true object of her wishes and ambitions--to go to Paris and become a great music hall artist, a profession which she consistently derided and contemned. The simple creature, man, is no match for the complex creature, woman.