Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
On the Trapeze
By Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910)A
When the song was over the men hung the rope and trapeze. Jenny and Lou Slingsby swung themselves up to it, turned a few somersaults, and then were quiet. They were only meant to give effect to the scene in their gauzy dresses and spangles. Then South came forward and told the audience what we meant to do. It was a feat, he said, which had never been produced before in any theatre, and in which failure was death. No one but that most daring of all acrobats, Balacchi, would attempt it. Now, I knew South so well that I saw under all his confident, bragging tone he was more anxious and doubtful than he had ever been. He hesitated a moment, and then requested that after we took our places the audience should preserve absolute silence, and refrain from even the slightest movement until the feat was over. The merest trifle might distract the attention of the performers and render their eyes and hold unsteady, he said. He left the stage, and the music began.
I went round to take my place in the gallery. George had not yet left his room. As I passed I tapped at the door and called, “Good luck, old fellow!”
“That’s certain now, Zack,” he answered, with a joyous laugh. He was so exultant, you see, that Susy had come.
But the shadow of death seemed to have crept over me. When I took my stand in the lofty gallery, and looked down at the brilliant lights and the great mass of people, who followed my every motion as one man, and the two glittering, half-naked girls swinging in the distance, and heard the music rolling up thunders of sound, it was all ghastly and horrible to me, sir. Some men have such presentiments, they say: I never had before or since. South remained on the stage perfectly motionless, in order, I think, to maintain his control over the audience.
The trumpets sounded a call, and in the middle of a burst of triumphant music George came on the stage. There was a deafening outbreak of applause, and then a dead silence, but I think every man and woman felt a thrill of admiration of the noble figure. Poor George! the new, tight-fitting dress of purple velvet that he had bought for this night set off his white skin, and his fine head was bare, with no covering but the short curls that Susy liked.
It was for Susy! He gave one quick glance up at her, and a bright, boyish smile, as if telling her not to be afraid, which all the audience understood, and answered by an involuntary, long-drawn breath. I looked at Susy. The girl’s colorless face was turned to George, and her hands were clasped as though she saw him already dead before her; but she could be trusted, I saw. She would utter no sound. I had only time to glance at her, and then turned to my work. George and I dared not take our eyes from each other.
There was a single bugle note, and then George swung himself up to the trapeze. The silence was like death as he steadied himself and slowly turned so as to front me. As he turned he faced the stage-box for the first time. He had reached the level of the posture-girls, who fluttered on either side, and stood on the swaying rod poised on one foot, his arms folded, when in the breathless stillness there came a sudden cry and the words, “Oh, Charley! Charley!”
Even at the distance where I stood I saw George start and a shiver pass over his body. He looked wildly about him.
“To me! to me!” I shouted.
He fixed his eye on mine and steadied himself. There was a terrible silent excitement in the people, in the very air.
There was the mistake. We should have stopped then, shaken as he was, but South, bewildered and terrified, lost control of himself: he gave the word.
I held the rope loose—held George with my eyes—
One!
I saw his lips move: he was counting with me.
Two!
His eye wandered, turned to the stage-box.
Three!
Like a flash, I saw the white upturned faces below me, the posture-girls’ gestures of horror, the dark springing figure through the air, that wavered—and fell a shapeless mass on the floor.
There was a moment of deathlike silence, and then a wild outcry—women fainting, men cursing and crying out in that senseless, helpless way they have when there is sudden danger. By the time I had reached the floor they had straightened out his shattered limbs, and two or three doctors were fighting their way through the great crowd that was surging about him.
Well, sir, at that moment what did I hear but George’s voice above all the rest, choked and hollow as it was, like a man calling out of the grave: “The women! Good God! don’t you see the women?” he gasped.
Looking up then, I saw those miserable Slingsbys hanging on to the trapeze for life. What with the scare and shock, they’d lost what little sense they had, and there they hung helpless as limp rags high over our heads.
“Damn the Slingsbys!” said I. God forgive me! But I saw this battered wreck at my feet that had been George. Nobody seemed to have any mind left. Even South stared stupidly up at them and then back at George. The doctors were making ready to lift him, and half of the crowd were gaping in horror, and the rest yelling for ladders or ropes, and scrambling over each other, and there hung the poor flimsy wretches, their eyes starting out of their heads from horror, and their lean fingers loosing their hold every minute. But, sir—I couldn’t help it—I turned from them to watch George as the doctors lifted him.
“It’s hardly worth while,” whispered one.
But they raised him and, sir—the body went one way and the legs another.
I thought he was dead. I couldn’t see that he breathed, when he opened his eyes and looked up for the Slingsbys. “Put me down,” he said, and the doctors obeyed him. There was that in his voice that they had to obey him, though it wasn’t but a whisper.
“Ladders are of no use,” he said. “Loper!”
“Yes, George.”
“You can swing yourself up. Do it.”
I went. I remember the queer stunned feeling I had: my joints moved like a machine.
When I had reached the trapeze, he said, as cool as if he were calling the figures for a Virginia reel: “Support them, you—Loper. Now, lower the trapeze, men—carefully!”
It was the only way their lives could be saved, and he was the only man to see it. He watched us until the girls touched the floor more dead than alive, and then his head fell back and the life seemed to go suddenly out of him like the flame out of a candle, leaving only the dead wick.