Part 36 (1/2)
”You drag them all around the cage! You shove them about like sacks of meal!”
”Yes,... but I don't trust them.”
”It seems to me,” said Speed, ”that your lions are getting rather impudent these days. They're not very much afraid of you now.”
”Nor I of them,” I said, wearily; ”I'm much more anxious about you when you go sailing about in that patched balloon of yours. Are you never nervous?”
”Nervous? When?”
”When you're up there?”
”Rubbish.”
”Suppose the patches give way?”
”I never think of that,” he said, leaning on the table with a yawn.
”Oh, Lord, how tired I am!... but I shall not be able to sleep. I'm actually too tired to sleep. Have you got a pack of cards, Scarlett?
or a decent cigar, or a gla.s.s of anything, or anything to show me more amusing than that nightmare of an elephant? Oh, I'm sick of the whole business--sick! sick! The stench of the tan-bark never leaves my nostrils except when the odor of fried ham or of that devilish camel replaces it.
”I'm too old to enjoy a gypsy drama when it's acted by myself; I'm tired of trudging through the world with my entire estate in my pocket. I want a home, Scarlett. Lord, how I envy people with homes!”
He had been indulging in this outburst with his back partly turned toward me. I did not say anything, and, after a moment, he looked at me over his shoulder to see how I took it.
”I'd like to have a home, too,” I said.
”I suppose homes are not meant for men like you and me,” he said.
”Lord, how I would appreciate one, though--anything with a bit of gra.s.s in the yard and a shovelful of dirt--enough to grow some d.a.m.n flower, you know.... Did you smell the posies in the square to-night?... Something of that kind,... anything, Scarlett--anything that can be called a home!... But you can't understand.”
”Oh yes, I can,” I said.
He went on muttering, half to himself: ”We're of the same breed--pariahs; fortunately, pariahs don't last long,... like the wild creatures who never die natural deaths,... old age is one of the curses they can safely discount,... and so can we, Scarlett, so can we.... For you'll be mauled by a lion or kicked into glory by a horse or an ox or an a.s.s,... and I'll fall off a balloon,... or the camel will give me teta.n.u.s, or the elephant will get me in one way or another,... or something....”
Again he twisted around to look at me. ”Funny, isn't it?”
”Rather funny,” I said, listlessly.
He leaned over, pulled another cigarette from the pink packet, broke a match from the card, and lighted it.
”I feel better,” he observed.
I expressed sleepy gratification.
”Oh yes, I'm much better. This isn't a bad life, is it?”
”Oh no!” I said, sarcastically.
”No, it's all right, and we've got to pull the poor old governor through and give a jolly good show here and start the whole country toward the tent door! Eh?”