The Return of Peter Grimm Part 12

"It's the circus parade!" shouted Willem. "The one they tell about in the advertis.e.m.e.nts and pictures on the fences. I didn't know the parade would start so early. There come some of them now. Oh, look! Oom Peter!

Look! It's a clown! See! He's coming right toward us!"

The band in full brazen force was discoursing a "Dutch Ditties" waltz as it turned the corner above. And now, the voices of the barkers were heard in the land.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," came the leathern tones of one unseen announcer, "one hour before the big show begins in the main tent we will give a grand free balloon ascension!"

"Remember," adjured a second Unseen, "one price admits you to all parts of the big show!"

"Lemo--lemo--ice cold lemonade--five cents a gla.s.s!" shouted a youthful vender.

"You ought to quaff one beaker of it to Sir Walter Scott's memory, Mrs.

Batholommey," observed McPherson.

But the din of the oncoming parade drowned his voice. The whole roomful, from Marta down to Willem, were thronging into the bay window. They were all children again. A touch of circus had renewed their youth as by the wave of a magic wand. Willem broke into a cry of utter joy and pointed ecstatically at the open window.

The next moment a clown, white and vermilion of face, clad in the traditional white, black, and scarlet motley of his tribe, had leaped cat-like upon the window sill and swept the room with his painted grin.

In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet of the all-absorbed spectators, he cried in high cracked falsetto:

"Well, _well_, _WELL_! Here we are again, good people! Billy Miller's Big Show! Larger--greater--grander than ever. Everything new! Come and see the wild animals! Hear the lions roar!"

Wheeling suddenly towards Mrs. Batholommey he pointed a whitened forefinger at her and broke into a truly frightful roar. The good lady jumped at least six inches from the ground.

"Steady, ma'am!" exhorted the clown. "I won't let him bite you! Come one, come all! Come see the diving deer! The human fly, Mademoiselle Zarella!" he added, addressing the rector. "She walks suspended from the ceiling! One ring and no confusion!" he confided to the delightedly smiling Peter. "And all for the price of admission! Remember the grand free exhibition one hour before the big show!"

He paused, catching sight of Willem for the first time. Now, it is a well-grounded tradition in one-ring circus life that no clown stays long in the business or scores a hit in it unless he is genuinely fond of children. Noting the all-absorbing bliss and adoration in Willem's wide eyes, the clown grinned at the boy in right brotherly fas.h.i.+on.

"Howdy!" said he cordially. "Shake!"

Marvelling, overcome with rapture, feeling as though the proffered honour was one far too wonderful to be real, Willem shyly extended his hand and met the friendly grasp of the flour-dusted fingers. The clown, striking an att.i.tude, began in shrill, exaggerated diction, to chant the antiquated "Frog Opera" song:

"Uncle Rat has gone to town,--Ha-_H'M_!

Uncle Rat has gone to town,"

he sang on, addressing Willem,

"To buy his niece a wedding gown."

"Ha-_H'M_!" intoned Willem, delightedly; laughing aloud as he realised he was actually singing with a real live clown.

"What shall the wedding breakfast be?"

continued the clown, interrogating the equally youthful and delighted Peter Grimm. And this time more voices than Peter's and Willem's caught up the refrain:

"Ha-_H'M_!

Hard-boiled eggs and a cup of tea,"

sang the clown. And again from Willem and the rest came the answering:

"Ha-_H'M_!"

"Billy Miller's Big Show!" yelled the clown. "Come one, come all! So long, Sonny!"

He was gone. The others came back to earth. But Willem was still in the wonder clouds. It had been to him an experience to rehea.r.s.e a thousand times, to dream over, to remember forever. Peter Grimm, reading the boy's thoughts as could only a heart that must ever be boyish, beckoned Willem to him, as Kathrien and Marta departed to their interrupted work in the dining-room and the rest looked half ashamed at their momentary excitement over so garish and trivial a thing.

"Willem!" called Grimm.

"_Ja_, Mynheer," answered the boy, coming slowly, his face still alight with his tremendous adventure of a moment ago.

"Willem," repeated Grimm, "you wouldn't care to go to that circus, would you? Wouldn't it be pretty stupid?"

"_Stupid!_" gasped the boy. "Oh!"

"Well," said Peter, "suppose you go, then?"

"Go? Really, Mynheer Grimm?"

"Go get the seats," ordered Grimm. "Here's the money. Get two _front_ seats. _Two._ We'll both go. We'll make a night of it, you and I. We'll stay out till--till ten o'clock!"

The vision of this bliss was too much for Willem's English.

"_Ekar, ekar na hat circus!_" he babbled dazedly.

Then he rushed up impulsively to Peter and seized the big, kindly hand in both his own.

"Oh, Mynheer _Grimm_!" he squealed in ecstasy. "There ain't any one else like you in the world. And--and--when the other fellows laugh at your funny hat, _I_ don't."

"What?" asked Grimm, perplexed. "Is my hat funny?"

The boy was vibrant with laughter, drunk with antic.i.p.ation. But, momentarily straightening his glowing face with a cast of semi-gravity, he said:

"And--and--Mynheer Grimm--it's too bad you've got to die!"

CHAPTER VI

BREAKING THE NEWS

There was an instant of stark, palsied silence. The rector, his wife, and McPherson looked at the all-unconscious boy with dumb horror. A horror that for the time crowded out indignation. Frederik, ignorant as he was of any cause for emotion, was struck by the tense bearing of the trio and looked from one to the other with the air of the only man in the room who does not catch a joke's point.

Peter Grimm alone was not affected by Willem's words. He was used to the child's oddities, his alternating high spirits, and dashes of sadness; his old-fas.h.i.+oned phrases and his queer lapses. Grimm broke the ominous silence with an amused chuckle.

"Most people die, sooner or later, Willem," he answered, stroking the boy's shock of soft yellow hair. "I'll live to see you in the business though. And we'll go to dozens of circuses together, too. Don't worry your little head over your Oom Peter's dying. I----"

He paused. The electrified atmosphere generated by the three conspirators began to reach his non-sensitive brain. A quick glance at Mr. Batholommey and a second at the rector's wife confirmed his vague feeling that something was wrong. He turned back to Willem, in time to intercept a blighting scowl of warning the doctor was trying to flash to the boy.