[Illustration]
John Cromartie and Josephine Lackett gave up their green tickets at the
turnstile, and entered the Zoological Society’s Gardens by the South
Gate.
It was a warm day at the end of February, and Sunday morning. In the air
there was a smell of spring, mixed with the odours of different
animals--yaks, wolves, and musk-oxen, but the two visitors did not
notice it. They were lovers, and were having a quarrel.
They came soon to the Wolves and Foxes, and stood still opposite a cage
containing an animal very like a dog.
“Other people, other people! You are always considering the feelings of
other people,” said Mr. Cromartie. His companion did not answer him, so
he went on:
“You say somebody feels this, or that somebody else may feel the other.
You never talk to me about anything except what other people are
feeling, or may be going to feel. I wish you could forget about other
people and talk about yourself, but I suppose you have to talk of other
people’s feelings because you haven’t any of your own.”
The beast opposite them was bored. He looked at them for a moment and
forgot them at once. He lived in a small space, and had forgotten the
outside world where creatures very like himself raced in circles.
“If that is the reason,” said Cromartie, “I do not see why you should
not say so. It would be honest if you were to tell me you felt nothing
for me. It is not honest to say first that you love me, and then that
you are a Christian and love everybody equally.”
“Nonsense,” said the girl, “you know that is nonsense. It is not
Christianity, it is because I love several people very much.”
“You do not love several people very much,” said Cromartie, interrupting
her. “You cannot possibly love people like your aunts. Nobody could. No,
you do not really love anybody. You imagine that you do because you have
not got the courage to stand alone.”
“I know whom I love, and whom I do not,” said Josephine. “And if you
should drive me to choose between you and everybody else, I should be a
fool to give myself to you.”
+--------------------------+
| DINGO ♂ |
| _Canis familiaris var._ |
|NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA|
+--------------------------+
“Poor little Dingo,” said Cromartie. “They do shut up creatures here on
the thinnest pretexts. He is only the familiar dog.”
[Illustration]
The Dingo whined, and wagged his tail. He knew that he was being spoken
of.
Josephine turned from her lover to the Dingo, and her face softened as
she looked at it.
“I suppose they have got to have everything here, every single kind of
beast there is, even if it turns out to be nothing but an ordinary dog.”
They left the Dingo, walked to the next cage, and stood side by side
looking at the creature in it.
“The slender dog,” said Josephine, reading the label. She laughed, and
the slender dog got up and walked away.
“So that is a wolf,” said Cromartie, as they stopped six feet further
on. “Another dog in a cage.... Give yourself to me, Josephine, that
sounds to me as if you were crazy. But it shows anyway that you are not
in love with me. If you are in love it is all or nothing. You cannot be
in love with several people at once. I know because I am in love with
you, and other people are all my enemies, necessarily my enemies.”
“What nonsense!” said Josephine.
“If I am in love with you,” Cromartie went on, “and you with me, it
means that you are the only person who is not my enemy, and I am the
only person who is not yours. A fool to give yourself to me! Yes, you
are a fool if you fancy you are in love when you are not, and I should
be a fool to believe it. You do not give yourself to the person with
whom you are in love, you are yourself instead of being dressed up in
armoured plate.”
“Has this place got nothing in it besides tame dogs?” asked Josephine.
They walked together towards the lion house, and Josephine took John’s
arm in hers. “Armoured plate. It doesn’t seem to me to make sense. I
cannot bear to hurt the people I love, and so I am not going to live
with you, or do anything that they would mind if they found out.”
John said nothing to this, only shrugged his shoulders, screwed up his
eyes, and rubbed his nose. In the lion house they walked slowly from
cage to cage until they came to a tiger which walked up and down, up and
down, up and down, turning his great painted head with intolerable
familiarity, and with his whiskers just brushing the brick wall.
“They pay for their beauty, poor beasts,” said John, after a pause. “And
you know it proves what I’ve been saying. Mankind want to catch anything
beautiful and shut it up, and then come in thousands to watch it die by
inches. That’s why one hides what one is and lives behind a mask in
secret.”
“I hate you, John, and all your ideas. I love my fellow creatures--or
most of them--and I can’t help it if you are a tiger and not a human
being. I’m not mad; I can trust people with every feeling I have got,
and I shall never have any feelings that I shouldn’t like to share with
everybody. I don’t mind if I am a Christian--it’s better than suffering
from persecution mania, and browbeating me because I’m fond of my father
and Aunt Eily.”
But Miss Lackett did not look very browbeaten as she said this. On the
contrary her eyes sparkled, her colour was high and her looks imperious,
and she kept tapping the toe of her pointed shoe on the stone floor. Mr.
Cromartie was irritated by this tapping, so he said something in a low
voice on purpose so that Josephine should not be able to hear it; the
only word audible was “browbeating.”
She asked him very savagely what he had said. John laughed. “What’s the
use of my talking to you at all if you fly into a rage before you have
even heard what I have got to say?” he asked her.
Josephine turned pale with self-control; she glared at a placid lion
with such fury that, after a moment or two, the beast got up and walked
into the den behind his cage.
“Josephine, please be reasonable. Either you are in love with me or else
you are not. If you are in love with me it can’t cost you much to
sacrifice other people to me. Since you won’t do that it follows that
you are not in love with me, and in that case you only keep me hanging
round you because it pleases your vanity. I wish you would choose
someone else for that sort of thing. I don’t like it, and any of your
father’s old friends would do better than me.”
“How dare you talk to me about my father’s old friends?” said Josephine.
They were silent. Presently Cromartie said, “For the last time,
Josephine, will you marry me, and be damned to your relations?”
“No! You silly savage!” said Josephine. “No, you wild beast. Can’t you
understand that one doesn’t treat people like that? It is simply wasting
my breath to talk. I’ve explained a hundred times I am not going to make
father miserable. I am not going to be cut off with a shilling and
become _dependent_ on you when you haven’t enough money to live on
yourself, to satisfy your vanity. My _vanity_, do you think having you
in love with me pleases my _vanity_? I might as well have a baboon or a
bear. You are Tarzan of the Apes; you ought to be shut up in the Zoo.
The collection here is incomplete without you. You are a
survival--atavism at its worst. Don’t ask me why I fell in love with
you--I did, but I cannot marry Tarzan of the Apes, I’m not romantic
enough. I see, too, that you do believe what you have been saying. You
do think mankind is your enemy. I can assure you that if mankind thinks
of you, it thinks you are the missing link. You ought to be shut up and
exhibited here in the Zoo--I’ve told you once and now I tell you
again--with the gorilla on one side and the chimpanzee on the other.
Science would gain a lot.”
“Well, I will be. I am sure you are quite right. I’ll make arrangements
to be exhibited,” said Cromartie. “I’m very grateful to you for having
told me the truth about myself.” Then he took off his hat and said
“Good-bye,” and giving a quick little nod he walked away.
“Miserable baboon,” muttered Josephine, and she hurried out through the
swing doors.
They were both of them in a rage, but John Cromartie was in such a
desperate rage that he did not know he was angry, he only thought that
he was very miserable and unhappy. Josephine, on the other hand, was
elated. She would have enjoyed slashing at Cromartie with a whip.
That evening Cromartie could not keep still. When the chairs presumed to
stand in his path he knocked them over, but he soon found that merely
upsetting furniture was not enough to restore his peace of mind. It was
then that Mr. Cromartie made a singular determination--one which you may
swear no other man in like circumstances would ever have arrived at.
It was somehow or other to get himself exhibited in the Zoo, as if he
were part of the menagerie.
It may be that a strange predilection which he had for keeping his word
is enough to account for this. But it will always be found that many
impulses are entirely whimsical and not to be accounted for by reason.
And this man was both proud and obstinate, so that when he had decided
upon a thing in passion he would brave it out so far that he could no
longer withdraw from it.
At the time he said to himself that he would do it to humiliate
Josephine. If she loved him it would make her suffer, and if she did not
love him it would not matter to him where he was.
“And perhaps she is right,” he said to himself with a smile. “Perhaps I
am the missing link, and the Zoo is the best place for me.”
He took his pen and a sheet of paper and sat down to write a letter,
though he knew that if he achieved his object he would be bound to
suffer. For some little while he thought over all the agonies of being
in a cage and held up to the derision of the gaping populace.
And then he reflected that it was harder for some of the animals than it
would be for himself. The tigers were prouder than he was, they loved
their liberty more than he did his, they had no amusements or resources,
and the climate did not suit them.
In his case there were no such added difficulties. He told himself that
he was humble of heart, and that he resigned his liberty of his own free
will. Even if books were not allowed him, he could at all events watch
the spectators with as much interest as that with which they watched
him.
In this manner he encouraged himself, and the thought of how terrible it
was for the tigers touched his heart so much that his own fate seemed to
him easier to contemplate.
After all, he reflected, he was so unhappy at that moment that nothing
could be worse whatever he did. He had lost Josephine, and it would be
easier to bear that loss in the discipline of a prison. Strengthened by
these considerations, he shook his pen and wrote as follows:--