Road to Adventure by Mary Grant Bruce

Author:Mary Grant Bruce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, juvenile, Australia
Publisher: Distributed Proofreaders Canada
Published: 1932-04-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

THE NEW LIFE

IN the weeks that followed Hugh Russell had ample opportunity to revise all his ideas of the romance of Circus life. He buried most of them, indeed, in the first twenty-four hours.

On his father’s farm his chief trouble had been loneliness. Now he was to learn what it meant to be never alone; to live every moment, day and night, in the crowded companionship of people of different types and nationalities, people who had among themselves a hundred private grudges and quarrels and jealousies that were put aside only when they became the People of the Show.

It was only natural. They lived under a strict discipline that chafed them, although they knew it could never relax. Performers might have to be coaxed and persuaded when they were difficult, but with the rank and file of the Circus there could be only the short way of the iron hand. Both Big Dan and Crowe were well fitted to use it. If a man were slack, or drank, or “answered back,” he ran the risk of being knocked down: if he did not care for that, he could go. There were always plenty to fill his place, among the country lads bitten with the glamour of the Circus. They submitted; working out their grievances upon each other. Only a man with a very even temper and rigid self-control could keep from quarrelling.

The performers—the highly-paid “artists”—helped to jangle nerves always frayed by constant travelling, work done against time, and lack of sleep. Those who were riders burdened the lives of the grooms in a hundred ways. Pazo’s men suffered constantly under his ill-temper. They declared him a good match for old Nabob. Trapeze artists, acrobats, slack-wire performers, all demanded rehearsals when the men who attended them hoped to be off duty. All the complex parts of the Circus fitted into each other so closely that the actions of one person necessarily affected those of many.

It was surely a watchful guardian angel who had thrown Hugh into the company of Jeff and Micky—to say nothing of big Carl. Among all the other men they stood out by reason of cheerful good nature and avoidance of disputes. They went their way unconcernedly, always ready to do a good turn for anyone who needed it, taking life with a light-heartedness that might often be assumed, but which rarely failed. They did not drink; and all three loved the animals, and lost no opportunity of being with them. Also, they liked children, so that they did not regard as an unmitigated nuisance the small boy who had been thrust upon them.

There was a great deal from which they could not save him. From the first day he was odd-job boy to the Circus at every camp, liable to be used by anyone. There was rarely time to explain anything to him: he had to use his own wits, which, luckily for him, were not slow. But it was only to be expected that he should make frequent mistakes; doing his best, but only to earn rough words and an occasional blow.

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