Part 15

“The others hung back; but I jumped at the chance. ‘I do!’ I exclaimed, quickly. He seemed pleased as he ran his eyes over me. I was of medium height, with good muscles.

“‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come to the hotel at seven, and I’ll tell you what’s wanted.’

“At the stroke of the hour I was on hand, and he explained my duties. Then he pulled a ten-dollar bill from his pocket.

“‘That’s yours at nine to-morrow night if you do your work well,’ he said. ‘Now go home and sleep soundly.’

“My parents were spending the Fourth with cousins in a neighboring town, so I was alone in the house. I went to bed early, but until long after midnight excitement kept me from getting a single wink.

“The next day I was on hand bright and early. I helped stretch the rope between two mill roofs, ran errands, and made myself generally useful. When not busy I hung about, watching my employer. He certainly was an artist in his line, a man without bravado, either all nerves or none at all. I could not help thinking, too, that for an Italian he spoke English remarkably well.

“At half past two a carriage took us from the hotel to the western mill. We dressed in the loft. The signor donned his tinsel-spangled tights. I figured as clown in an old stovepipe hat and white cotton suit, liberally besprinkled with stars of red and green. The same colors streaked my face. As we clambered through the scuttle, the crowds lining the bridges and banks set up a shout, and the town band on the other mill began playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’

“Sharp at three o’clock the music stopped. The assistant on our roof advanced to the edge, fired six blank cartridges from a self-cocking revolver, and shouted this magniloquent announcement through a megaphone:

“‘Ladies and gentlemen, the celebrated Signor Lupini will now illustrate his art, assisted by Rinaldo Nobisco, the famous clown, recently secured from the London hippodrome, ladies and gentlemen, at great trouble and expense.’

“Whistles and catcalls from the boys below greeted this absurd reference to me, and I felt rather foolish. Signor Lupini stepped briskly forward, bowed to his audience and was soon promenading along the spidery line between the two cornices. Aided by a long balancing-pole, he stood on one foot, knelt, lay down, walked across blindfold, and performed many other marvelous feats. His perfect control of nerve and muscle fascinated me. I did not realize that his facility came from years of toilsome practice.

“Here was the calling for me. I resolved to stretch a rope the very next day between the beams over the haymow.

“During the signor’s exhibition the crowd was very quiet, and the band did not play. It was only when he was once more safe upon the roof that their long-restrained applause broke forth, and the band struck up ‘Hail to the Chief.’ He rested a few minutes, and then motioned to me to make ready.

“Among our paraphernalia was a strong, light wheelbarrow with a tire grooved to fit the rope. I began to feel a little shaky; but there was no time to indulge this emotion, for my employer exclaimed: ‘All aboard, my boy, and remember, a stiff upper lip!’

“I seated myself, facing forward, my feet dangling on each side of the wheel. Signor Lupini, stooping, gripped the handles.

“‘Sit steady,’ he said. ‘Don’t wink one eye unless you wink the other at the same time.’

“He ran me a few turns round the graveled surface, then flicked the wheel dexterously up on the rope and headed straight for the edge.

“‘Keep perfectly still,’ he adjured me, ‘and you’re as safe as you’d be on the street.’

“For all my assumption of coolness, I was frightened half out of my wits. I shut my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them we were fairly out on the tremulous hemp.

“‘Don’t look down,’ cautioned the signor. ‘Face straight forward. Sit tight.’

“Hardly daring to breathe, I stiffened myself as if I were in a plaster cast. I could see the narrow line just ahead buckle slightly at the approach of the wheel. How long that two hundred feet seemed!

“Slowly, surely, we drew near the roof. The tire jolted against the cornice. In two or three seconds we were safely on the gravel. Then the band blared out and the crowds set off explosives. My fright was over, and I felt proud as a peacock.

“On the trip back my employer made me sit facing him, and I had a good chance to admire the easy, effortless play of his wiry muscles. He was a thorough gymnast, a man of steel and india-rubber. After several other trips, during which I occupied different positions on the barrow, we went back to the hotel.

“Promptly at eight we emerged again through the scuttle. A crowd bigger than that of the afternoon had gathered, and a roar of applause greeted us. I say ‘us,’ for by this time I felt myself to be almost as important as Signor Lupini. My head was completely turned.

“The evening performance possessed certain novel features. Tin pans of red fire stood on each cornice, and along the bridge-rails had been stationed a half-dozen boys liberally supplied with rockets and Roman candles.

“The master of ceremonies fired an introductory volley with his revolver.

“‘Light up, Jimmy!’ he shouted to his associate across the river, at the same time touching a match to the pan beside him. Jimmy obeyed. A deep red glow illuminated the scene, flashing from the mill windows, and revealing the human clusters on bridges and banks.

“As in the afternoon, Signor Lupini began with a few feats performed alone, the blaze of fireworks making his spangled tights glitter. I waited impatiently for our dual performance, thirsting for some of the applause. Finally my turn came, and the signor wheeled me back and forth several times. So great was my confidence in him that I had forgotten my nervousness.

“At last nine o’clock was near.

“‘Now, my boy,’ said my employer, ‘we’ll wind up with something I don’t try very often. I see you have good grit.’

“He screwed to the barrow sides a light, strong chair of steel, its seat a yard in air. After helping me into this, he passed me a long-handled pan of red fire. We were to close in a blaze of glory. ‘Keep cool,’ said he, ‘and we’ll give ’em something to look at.’

“He trundled me up to the cornice, his assistant dropped a lighted lucifer into the pan, and we moved out on the rope amid the crimson glare and the whizzing of rockets. The crowd yelled, and one of the boys setting off fireworks from the lower bridge lost his head.

“_Whi-s-s-sh!_ A badly aimed rocket shot not five feet over our heads, showering us with sparks. A little lower, and it would have dashed us from the rope. Signor Lupini drew a quick breath. I cringed in my steel chair, but still kept tight hold of the pan handle. The sudden fright set my teeth chattering. My employer noticed my trepidation.

“‘Keep quiet, my boy, and we’ll get over all right,’ said he, reassuringly, cool as a cucumber.

“On we rolled, smoothly and steadily. We were about half-way across when the unlucky rocketeer on the lower bridge outdid his previous blunder. A warning shriek blended with the swish of a projectile. I dared not turn my head, but a sidelong glance revealed a fiery comet heading straight toward us. Signor Lupini saw it, too, and could not repress a cry of alarm. The next second it was upon us. I shut my eyes, convinced that we were lost. A whir, a rushing of flame, a slight shock! The apparition had passed, and we were still on the rope.

“I was hardly daring to congratulate myself when my heart was chilled by a low groan behind me. The barrow wabbled. The signor was trembling violently, swaying, reeling like a drunken man; every throb of his body came to me through the tight-clutched handles. Something fearful must have happened. I clung to the chair arms in sheer paralysis of horror. An accident would hurl us down seventy-five feet into the river, where drowning or maiming worse than death awaited us.

“We moved a few feet farther, then stopped. The barrow swayed, as if about to overturn. Another groan from the signor. I would have questioned him, but the words died in my throat. Perhaps he had been pierced by the rocket, and might at any instant fall unconscious.

“Cries of horror rose from the spectators. The rockets and Roman candles ceased. The entertainment threatened to become a tragedy.

“Again we started, moving intermittently. Now a few quick steps would fill me with the dread of being flung off; now we almost stopped, and I feared we should never go on. Before and behind us fizzed the red fire. Signor Lupini’s feet shuffled on the rope, his breath came hard. Not a word in explanation, but always those terrible groans. My hair bristled.

“With straining eyes I stared ahead into the red glare on the approaching mill. How slowly the distance lessened! On the roof stood Jimmy, gazing at us, pale and open-mouthed. The speechless horror on his face reflected our peril.

“The cornice was only ten feet off. Signor Lupini thrust the barrow suddenly forward. A second later the wheel grated on the gravel; it was none too soon. As a long sigh of relief rose from the spellbound crowds, the gymnast collapsed into a writhing heap. It took three men to get him down through the scuttle and into the carriage that conveyed him to his hotel.

“The rocket had struck his right calf a glancing blow. His skill had enabled him to withstand a shock that would have overthrown a clumsier man; but his muscles, steeled to resist, had cramped violently, and we had been in deadly peril all the way across. Two lives had hung on his ability to resist the agonizing pains and preserve his poise.

“That last hundred feet decided me that I didn’t care to be a professional acrobat. The tight rope was never stretched between the beams of the haymow.”

DOWN THE INCLINE

By Charles Newton Hood

“All that I had to do to earn my one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week salary was, four times each week-day, to climb to the top of a high tower, mount a bicycle, ride it down a long, narrow incline, pitched at an angle of about forty-five degrees, then up a few feet and out through the air, across a gap of thirty feet to another platform, and so to the ground.”

It was John Manser who was speaking, formerly one of the most daring performers in what is called the carnival business.

“No, I am not doing that sort of an act now.

“My mother had been writing to me, begging me to stop, but I was looking forward to getting married, and that one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week was making the nest-egg grow.

“I was one of the ‘feature’ acts furnished by the Ferari Brothers to street fairs, carnivals and the like, and had stepped from construction boss to performer one day by taking the place of an indisposed athlete at an hour’s notice, and leaping the gap successfully on his bicycle without any previous rehearsal. I was at once put on as a regular performer with the company.

“My work did not seem so very terrible to me. With the bands playing and with the thousands of happy spectators looking on, it was rather pleasant than otherwise to climb to the top of the high platform, dressed in my gay costume, and at the word, come hurtling down the steep run, and then up and out through the air like a bird.

“All that seemed to be required was to be absolutely sure that the apparatus was put up strong and perfectly true, and that the gap was of exactly the correct width. Mine was precisely twenty-eight feet and four inches. I always superintended the erection of everything myself, and trued every part up with the utmost care.

“In the act itself, it required only strong hands and arms to keep the bicycle steady and straight down the run, and to lean back a little and give a strong up pull on the handle-bar when we ‘took off’ for the jump, so that the machine would surely strike on the rear wheel on the other side, to prevent the shock which would throw me headlong if the front wheel should strike first, or even at the same instant.

“All summer long I had enjoyed the work, and I often wondered that they should pay me so much for such a simple thing. Even when the performer who ‘looped-the-loop’ on a bicycle in another part of the grounds fell and was crippled for life, I ascribed it to the fact that his health was not very good, and that he sometimes resorted to stimulants to help him through his act; and his misfortune did not render me at all nervous regarding my own work.

“It was the last day of the carnival at Grand Creek. We had had a most successful week, and on the closing night it was estimated that not less than fifteen thousand people crowded the grounds. The last of my four rides for the day was scheduled for eleven o’clock at night, and was to be the closing feature.

“Promptly at five minutes of eleven I climbed to the platform, and my bicycle was sent up to me by rope and pulley. It was a heavy, dark night, but the thousands of electric lights made the grounds almost as light as day. Little lamps were strung thickly all down the run, and the skeleton framework of my tower and trestles was outlined with them.

“A fitful, eddying wind had come up, which roared dismally through the timbers. It swayed the big framework somewhat, but not enough to trouble me.

“The people had come crowding to my portion of the grounds, and as I gazed down at their upturned faces, massed so thickly together below me, the sight was a weird one under the electric lights.

“Straight ahead of me lay the narrow run, with its broad stripe of white down the center, to aid me in steering, then the ‘saucer,’ as it was called, at the bottom, where the run turned up toward the ‘take-off,’ then the wide gap and the farther platform, with its even wider guiding stripe of white.

“I gave the bicycle a quick examination, stood up straight and made the little posing flourish which is expected of all athletes, fixed my bicycle on the run, and seated myself firmly. The official announcer below raised his hand. The band stopped playing, and there was that breathless hush of apprehension and expectation which is so carefully worked up for sensational acts.

“‘All ready?’ shouted the announcer.

“‘Right!’ I responded.

“‘Go!’

“The snare-drummer of the band struck into the long roll with which he always accompanied my flights. Instantly I removed the restraining foot which I had kept upon the platform, placed it upon the locked pedal, and shot rapidly down the incline.

“At that instant every electric light in the city of Grand Creek went out!

“It was a darkness doubly dense and awful after the brilliancy of the moment before. Perfectly helpless, I was plunging down a steep, narrow incline toward probable death. If the wheel swerved but a little to the right or left, I should sweep over the edge and be dashed to pieces on the ground below.

“My bicycle, rushing down the incline, travelled at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Sometimes now I awake at night with a gasp of horror from having lived over those awful moments, but at the time my thoughts were cool and collected.

“‘It all depends on you, Jack, my boy,’ I told myself. ‘You can’t be smashed any harder for keeping your head.’

“I knew that the wheel was absolutely straight for the jump when I started, and grasping the handles, I bent every effort toward keeping the wheel perfectly rigid. Down I rushed through the darkness, and so strange was the sensation that it almost seemed as if the wheel had left the run, and was sailing through the air. The speed seemed doubly terrific. Even if I kept the run, could I hold the wheel for the jump and what then?

“The saucer came almost before I expected it. In spite of myself I must have given a spasmodic twist to the handles, for the wheel twisted in my hands and swerved. I threw myself frantically to one side and lost consciousness!

“Yes, I’m alive yet. Entirely uninjured except for the thump which put me to sleep when I struck the platform.

“The great momentum swept both the wheel and myself from the edge of the take-off and hurled us against the yielding bodies of those in the front row of the crowd, backed by the thousands of other spectators, as against a carefully prepared and cushioned buffer. It was learned that not less than eighteen persons received the impact of the wheel and myself at the same instant, and so scattered was the blow that nobody was injured in the slightest.

“One very fat man, who had been standing with his handsome top-hat held behind him, told me that he sat down with fearful suddenness after receiving my head in his stomach, and he showed me his hat; but he wasn’t hurt.

“The next day the Ferari Brothers Carnival Company went to Battle Rapids, but my ticket read East Putney, Vermont.”

THE COST OF LOVING

By Frederick Orin Bartlett

With a slight lift of his heavy shoulders, Dr. Schriftman brought to a close his final lecture of the year to the senior medical class. For a moment he faced these young men aggressively. With his shaggy white beard, his wiry gray hair, his bulky body, he looked more like some good-natured Santa Claus than a surgeon who was famous on two continents for his stoicism as well as his skill. It was tradition that he should say what he was about to say to each graduating class.

“Shentlemen,” he began in his rough guttural, which still retained the trace of an accent. “Shentlemen, you are about to enter a brofession which will be very jealous of you. It demands all—everything. You will be tempted by many false gods—by women, by gold. Peware! Let your work be your religion, your wife, and your reward. So you will be goot surgeons. Shentlemen, I wish you success.”

As he turned to leave the platform, he was greeted with noisy and hearty cheering.

“Raus mit der ladies!” shouted some one.

The cry was taken up with a will, but when another voice broke through with: “Hoch Schriftman!” the one hundred throats strained themselves to the utmost in a final effort to give expression to their genuine appreciation of the man.

But Schriftman, indifferent alike to their jests and plaudits, had already jammed his silk hat on the back of his head and was hurrying down stairs to where his machine waited to whisk him to the hospital.

He timed his day as by a stop watch. He rose at seven, gave himself until eight to finish his solitary breakfast, and, hurrying off to the medical school, remained there until eleven. He was at the hospital from eleven-thirty until three. From three-ten until five he kept his office hours. He generally dined alone in his apartments after this and gave up his evenings to consultations, to the preparation of papers, and to study. It was a long evening, for he seldom retired until two. More often than not he was called to the hospital after this and finished his sleep there. The doctors’ quarters were as much home to him as the three book-cluttered rooms which led from his office. And yet there were men—young men, too—who envied Schriftman, and when tempted by bright eyes and warm cheeks quoted to themselves his famous epigram:

“It costs too much to love.”

As his machine drew up before the big gray building, a young interne hurried out, opened the door, and then fell back respectfully to give to his senior the place of honor by Schriftman’s side. In answer to questions which went to their mark like arrows, Burrell covered the progress of every case since the day before and turned to the new patient in Ward 27.

“Female, age eight. Mother an actress, died of pneumonia; father a bicycle rider, killed in an accident. Family history negative.”

And so with a dozen other medical details Burrell led up to the result of his preliminary examination and to the laboratory report. He made no diagnosis except in connection with her weak heart. But to Schriftman it was not the faulty heart but the chronic pain in the back which was significant. As he removed his hat and gloves before going to the ward, he pressed his cross-examination deeper. It was evident to Dr. Burrell that it was to be the rare good fortune of this female, age eight, to prove an interesting case to Schriftman.

In the meanwhile the lass in question lay stretched out on her back, watching with hectic interest the hurried movements of the head nurse. There wasn’t very much of Gretzel left; just a shriveled body, a thin mouth, a straight, sensitive nose, a pair of blue eyes, and a wealth of light hair. But the eyes were quite perfect. So deep and clear, so timid and yet so wise were these that as they peered out of the haggardness of their surroundings they gave the effect of a maid within a maid. It was as though some other soul, unrelated to this pain-racked body, were peering through the mask of her gaunt features. The eyes were younger and fresher and stronger than the rest of her. At present they were unusually alert.

In contrast to the isolated boarding-house room from which they had brought her, life here fairly buzzed. The plaints and groanings of her fellow patients, the shadow-like movements of the nurses, the constant coming and going of the young doctors on their unknown errands, the catlike tread of life through the night, the undercurrent of suspense, and her own helplessness in the midst of it kept her on guard. The nurses, drawn to her at once, tried to reassure her, but to little purpose, because Gretzel believed nothing of what they whispered. People had lied to her all her life. When her father had told her she would soon be well and that then he would take her far out into the country, he had lied. When her father was killed, her mother had lied to her, saying that daddy had only gone away for a little while to prepare a home for them both. Then her mother had died and every one had lied about that. They said that she had gone to join daddy and that some day she would send for Gretzel. Finally the landlady had lied when she had been hurried off into the ambulance. This woman had assured Gretzel that she might possibly find her mother at the hospital. She hadn’t found her mother—the nurses had never heard of her mother. So now, with her thin lips tight together, she listened, believing nothing, but kept her eyes wide open ready for what might happen next.