"Yes," said Ascher, "yes. Quite so."

He spoke vaguely. I think he did not hear what I said. Or perhaps the learned horse struck him differently. Or his mind may have been entirely occupied with the problem of Mexican railways so that he could pay no attention either to the learned horse or to me. If so, he was wakened from his reverie by the next performance.

A company of acrobats in spangled tights, three men and one young woman, took possession of the arena. At first they tumbled, turned somersaults, climbed on each other's shoulders and a.s.sumed att.i.tudes which I should have said beforehand were impossible for any creature with bones. Then a large net was stretched some six feet from the ground and several trapezes which had been tied to the roof were allowed to hang down. The acrobats climbed up by a ladder and swung from one trapeze to another.

The business was commonplace enough, but I became aware that Ascher was very much interested in it. He became actually excited when we reached the final act, the climax of the performance.

The programme, at which I glanced, spoke of "The Flying Lady." The woman, her spangles aglitter in a blaze of lime light, did indubitably fly, if rushing unsupported through the air at some height from solid ground is the essence of flying. Two of the men hung on their trapezes, one by his hands and the other by his legs. They swung backwards and forwards. The length of the ropes was so great that they pa.s.sed through large arcs, approaching each other and then swinging back until there was a long s.p.a.ce between them. The young woman, standing on a third trapeze, swung too. Suddenly, at the upward end of a swing, just as her trapeze hung motionless for an instant, she launched herself into the air. The man on the next trapeze came swinging towards her. She caught him by the feet at the very moment when he was nearest to her. He swung back and she dangled below him. When he reached the highest point of the half circle through which he pa.s.sed, she was stretched out, making with him a horizontal line. At that moment she let go and shot, feet foremost, through the air. The man who hung head downwards from the next trapeze came swiftly towards her and caught her by the ankles. The two swung back together and at the end of his course he let her go. The impulse of his swing sent her, turning swiftly as she flew, towards a ladder at the end of the row. She alighted on her feet on a little platform, high up near the roof of the building. There she stood, bowing and smiling.

The people burst into a shout of cheering. Ascher leaned forward in his seat and gazed at her. The two men still kept their trapezes in full swing. The third man, standing on a platform at the other end of the row, set the remaining trapeze swinging, that from which the woman had begun her flight. A minute later she flung herself from the platform and the whole performance was repeated. I could hear Ascher panting with excitement beside me.

"A horribly risky business," I said, "but wonderful, really wonderful.

If one of those swings were a fraction late---- But of course the whole thing is exactly calculated."

"Yes, yes," said Ascher, "calculated, of course. It's a matter of mathematics and accurate timing of effort. But if it were worked by machinery, with lay figures, we should think nothing of it. Somebody would do sums and there would be nothing particular in it. The wonderful thing is the confidence. The timing of the swings might be all right; but if the woman hesitated for an instant, or if one of the men felt the slightest doubt about the thing's coming off--If they didn't all feel absolutely sure that the hands would be there to grasp her at just the proper moment--It's the perfect trust which the people have, of each other, of the calculations--Don't you see?"

I began to see that Ascher was profoundly moved by this performance. I also began to see why.

"It's like--like some things in life," I said, "or what some things ought to be."

"It's like what my life is," said Ascher. "Don't you see it?"

"I should be rather stupid if I didn't see it, considering the trouble you took to explain the working of international credit to me for two whole days."

"Then you do understand."

"I understand," I said, "that you are that woman. Your whole complex business is very like hers. It's the meeting of obligations exactly at the end of their swing, the fact that at the appointed moment there will be something there for you to grasp."

"And the confidence," said Ascher. "If the bankers in any country doubt the solvency of the bankers in another country, if there's the smallest hesitation, an instant's pause of distrust or fear, then international credit collapses and----"

He flung out his arm with a gesture of complete hopelessness. I realised that if anything went wrong between bankers in their trapeze act there would be a very ugly smash.

"And in your case," I said, "there's no net underneath."

The girl and the three men were safe on firm ground again. They were bowing final acknowledgments to the cheering crowd. I suppose they do the same thing every night of their lives, but they were still able to enjoy the cheering. Their faces were flushed and their eyes sparkled.

They are paid, perhaps pretty well paid, for risking their lives; but the applause is the larger part of the reward.

"Also," I said to Ascher, "n.o.body cheers you. n.o.body knows you're doing it."

"No. n.o.body knows we're doing it. n.o.body sees our flights through the air or guesses the supreme confidence we bankers must have in each other. When anybody does notice us it's--well, our friend Gorman, for instance."

Gorman holds the theory that financial men, Ascher and the rest, are bloated spiders who spend their time and energy in trapping the world's workers, poor flies, in gummy webs.

"And of course Gorman is right in a way," said Ascher. "I can't help feeling that things ought to be better managed. But--but it's a pity that men like him don't understand."

Ascher is wonderful. I shall never attain his mental att.i.tude of philosophic tolerance. I do not feel that Gorman is in any way right about the Irish landlords. I felt, though I like the man personally, that he and his friends are deliberately and wickedly perverse.

"Some day," said Ascher, "something will go wrong. A rope will break, or a man will miss his grip, and then people in one place will be starving, while people somewhere else have food all round them rotting in heaps.

Men will want all sorts of things and will not be able to get them, though there will be plenty of them in the world. Men will think that the laws of nature have stopped working, that G.o.d has gone mad. Hardly any one will understand what has happened, just that one trapeze rope has broken, or that one man has lost his nerve and missed his grip."

"She might have fallen clear of the net," I said, "and come down on the audience."

"When we slip a trick," said Ascher, "it will be on the audience that we shall come down; and the audience, the people, will be bruised and hurt, won't in the least know what has happened."

Gorman--I suddenly recollected this--had an adventure in finance to propose. If Ascher goes into the scheme I shall have an opportunity of watching an interesting variant of the trapeze act. We shall get the people, who own the existing cash registers on the swing and then hold them to ransom. We shall set our small trapeze oscillating right across their airy path and decline to remove it unless they agree to part with some of the very shiniest of their spangles and hand them over to us for our adornment. I wondered how Ascher, who is so deeply moved by the perils of his own flights, would like the idea of destroying other people's confidence and upsetting their calculations.

I looked down and saw that Gorman had left his seat. Mrs. Ascher had been making good progress with Tim. The boy was leaning towards her and talking eagerly. She lay back in her seat and smiled at him. If she were not interested in what he was saying she succeeded very well in pretending that she was. All really charming women practise this form of deception and all men are taken in by it if it is well done. Mrs. Ascher does it very well.

When the net was cleared away and the trapezes slung up again in the roof, we had a musical ride, performed by six men and six women mounted on very shiny horses. Mrs. Ascher, of course, objected strongly to the music. I could see her squirming in her seat. Ascher did not find the thing interesting and began to fidget. It was, indeed, much less suggestive than either the learned horse or the acrobats. You cannot discover in a musical ride any parable with a meaning applicable to life. Nothing in the world goes so smoothly and pleasantly. There are always risks even when there are no catastrophes, and catastrophes are far too common. Ascher probably felt that we were out of touch with humanity. He kept looking round, as if seeking some way of escape.

Fortunately Gorman turned up again very soon.

"I hope you won't mind," he said, "but I have changed the arrangement for supper. Mrs. Ascher," he nodded towards the seat in which she was writhing, "wants to meet the Galleotti family. They're not a family, you know, and of course they're not called Galleotti. The woman is a Mrs.

Briggs, and the tallest of the men is her husband. The other two are no relation. I don't know their names, but Tim will introduce us."

I looked at my programme again. It was under the name of the Galleotti Family that the acrobats performed.

"That will be most interesting," I said.

"I'm afraid it won't," said Gorman. "People like that are usually quite stupid. However Mrs. Ascher wanted it, so of course I made arrangements."

Mrs. Ascher evidently wanted to see life, the most real kind of life, thoroughly. Not contented with having the doorkeeper of a cheap circus sitting, so to speak, in her lap all evening, she was now bent on sharing a meal with a troupe of acrobats.

"It's rather unlucky," Gorman went on, "but Mrs. Briggs simply refuses to go to the Plaza. I had a table engaged there."

"How regal of you, Gorman!" I said.

"You'd have thought she'd have liked it," he said. "But she made a fuss about clothes. It's extraordinary how women will."

"You can hardly blame her," I said; "I expect the head waiter would turn her out if she appeared in that get-up of hers. Very absurd of him, of course, but----"

I was not conscious that my eyes had wandered to Mrs. Ascher's dress until Gorman winked at me. Fortunately Ascher noticed neither my glance nor Gorman's wink. I had not thought of suggesting that Mrs. Briggs'

stage costume was no more daring than what Mrs. Ascher wore.

"Of course," said Ascher, "she wouldn't come to supper in tights. It's her other clothes she's thinking of. I daresay they are shabby."

I could understand what Mrs. Briggs felt. Gorman could not. I do not think that any feeling about the shabbiness of his coat would make him hesitate about dining with an Emperor.

"I hope you won't mind," he said to Ascher, "but we're going to rather a third-rate little place."

Gorman had evidently meant to do us well in the way of supper, champagne probably. He may have had the idea that good food would soften Ascher's heart towards the cash register scheme, but Mrs. Ascher's insistence on meeting the Galleotti family spoiled the whole plan. We could not talk business across Mrs. Briggs, so it mattered little what sort of supper we had.

Mrs. Ascher left her seat and joined us. Tim, looking more nervous than ever, followed her at a distance.

"Take me out of this," she said to me. "Take me out of this or I shall go mad. That dreadful band!"

She spoke in a kind of intense hiss, and I took her out at once, leaving the others to collect our hats and coats and to hunt up the Galleotti family. When we reached the entrance hall she sank into a seat. I thought she was going to faint and felt very uncomfortable. She shut her eyes and murmured in a feeble way. I bent down to hear what she was trying to say, and was relieved to find that she was asking for a cigarette. I gave her one at once. I even lit it for her as she seemed very weak. It did her good. When she had inhaled three or four mouthfuls of smoke she was able to speak quite audibly and had forgotten all about the horror of the band. Her mind went back to the Galleotti family.

"Did you notice the muscular development of those men?" she said. "I don't think I ever saw more perfect symmetry, the tallest of the three especially. The play of his shoulder muscles was superb. I wonder if he would sit for me. I do a little modelling, you know. Some day I must show you my things. I did a baby faun just before I left London. It isn't good, of course; but I can't help knowing that it has feeling."