You know well that the reason why I behaved badly is because I
still love you. I am very much ashamed, please forgive me if you
can. I must see you to-day. May I come in the afternoon? It is very
important, because I don’t think we can either of us continue like
this much longer. I will come in the afternoon. Please consent to
see me, but I will not come unless you send me word by the
messenger that I may.
Yours,
JOSEPHINE LACKETT.
The moment that Josephine had sent off the messenger she regretted what
she had said in it, and nothing seemed to her then more certain than
that her letter would exasperate Cromartie still further. The next
moment she thought to herself: “I have exposed myself to the greatest
humiliation a woman can receive.” For a second or two this filled her
with terror, and at that moment she would have readily killed herself.
As neither poisons, poignards, pistols or precipices were within reach
she did nothing, and in less than a minute the mood passed, and she said
to herself:
“What does my humiliation matter? I suffered more of that last night
than I can ever suffer again. Last night I humiliated myself in my own
eyes. If John tries to humiliate me to-day he will find the work done.
Meanwhile I must be self-controlled. I have no time to waste on my
emotions; I have many things to do. I must see John, and as I am in love
with him I have got to make terms with him. I have got to make a bargain
with him.”
Acting on these thoughts she went out at once, meaning to walk to the
Zoo without waiting any longer for the messenger boy to come back. But
her mind was still busy.
“I will completely forgive him, and offer to become engaged to him
secretly in return for his instantly leaving the Zoo.”
She did not reflect as she said this that nothing would be easier for
her than to break off such an engagement, whereas if Cromartie once left
the Gardens it was improbable that they would take him back.
But when she got to the Marble Arch she had to wait a little before
crossing the road, and she noticed a man selling newspapers beside her.
On the placard he carried she saw:
MAN IN THE ZOO
MAULED BY
MONKEY
For the first moment she did not connect the placard with her lover; she
permitted herself to be amused at the thought of a spectator having his
finger bitten, but in the next instant a doubt arose and she hurriedly
bought the paper.
“This morning the ‘Man in the Zoo,’ whose real name is Mr. John
Cromartie, was shockingly mauled by Daphne, the Orang in the next cage
to his.” Josephine read the account of the affair right through very
slowly.
It appeared that about eleven o’clock that morning Cromartie had been
playing ball in his cage with the Caracal. In dodging the Caracal he had
fallen heavily against the wire mesh partition separating him from the
Orang. While he had rested there for a moment the spectators were
horrified to see him seized by the Orang, which caught him by the hair.
Mr. Cromartie had put up his hands to prevent his face being scratched,
and the Orang had managed to get hold of his fingers and had cracked the
bones of them. Mr. Cromartie had shown great courage and had succeeded
in freeing himself before the arrival of the keeper. Two fingers were
crushed and the bones fractured; he had sustained several severe scalp
wounds and a scratched face. The only danger to be feared was blood
poisoning, as the injuries inflicted by apes are well known to be
peculiarly venomous.
On reading this Josephine suddenly remembered how the King of Greece had
died from the effects of a monkey bite, and she became more and more
alarmed. She called a taxi, got into it, and told the driver to take her
to the Zoological Gardens as fast as he could. All the way there she was
in a fever of agitation, and could settle nothing in her own mind.
Having arrived at the Zoo, she went straight to the house of the
resident curator, and was just in time to see Mr. Cromartie being
carried in on a stretcher, but before she could come up to it the door
was shut in her face. She rang, but it was almost five minutes before
the door was opened by a maidservant who took her card in, with the
request that she might see the curator as she was a friend of Mr.
Cromartie’s. Before the maid came back, however, the curator came out,
and Josephine explained her visit without any embarrassment. She was
invited in, and found herself in a fine well-lit dining-room in the
presence of two gentlemen in morning dress, and both with bushy
eyebrows. The curator introduced her as a friend of Mr. Cromartie’s, and
they both gave her a very keen look and bowed.
Sir Walter Tintzel, the elder of the two, was a short man with a rather
round red face; Mr. Ogilvie, a taller, youngish man, with a skin like
parchment, and a glass eye into which she found herself staring. “How is
the patient?” asked Josephine, falling at once into that state of mind
which is produced by the presence of distinguished medical men, and
particularly surgeons, a state of mind, that is, of almost complete
blankness, when however upset one may have been the moment before, one
finds all emotion suspended, or swallowed up in fog. All the faculties
at such a moment are concentrated on behaving with an absurd decorum.
“It is a little too early to say, Miss Lackett,” replied Sir Walter
Tintzel, who was filled with curiosity to find out more about her.
“My friend Mr. Ogilvie has just amputated a finger; in my opinion it
would have been running an unjustifiable risk not to have done so. There
were several minor injuries, but happily they did not require such
drastic measures. May I ask, Miss Lackett, without impertinence, if you
have known Mr. Cromartie long? You are, I understand, a personal friend,
a close and dear friend of Mr. Cromartie’s.”
Miss Lackett opened her eyes rather wide at this remark, and replied:
“I was naturally anxious.... Yes, I am an old friend of Mr.
Cromartie’s--and, if you like, a close friend.” She laughed. “Is there
danger of blood-poisoning?”
“There is a risk of it, but we have taken every precaution.”
“The King of Greece died of being bitten by a monkey,” cried Josephine
suddenly.
“That’s rubbish,” interrupted the curator, coming forward. “Why
everybody in the Gardens has been more or less seriously bitten by
monkeys at some time or other. It is always happening. It’s dreadful to
think that the poor fellow should have lost a finger, but there’s no
danger.”
“You are sure there’s no danger?” asked Josephine.
The curator appealed to the medical men. They allowed themselves to
smile.
Josephine withdrew, and in the hall the curator said to her:
“Don’t worry about him, Miss Lackett; it’s a beastly thing of course to
think of, but it’s not serious. He isn’t the King of Greece; the monkey
isn’t that sort of monkey even. He’ll be up and about in a day or two at
the most. By the way, is your father General Lackett?”
Josephine was surprised, but admitted it without hesitation.
“Oh, yes--he’s an old friend of mine. Drop in one day next week to tea
and see how our friend is going on.”
Josephine left in very much better spirits than she had come, and though
she once or twice was troubled by the recollection of Mr. Cromartie’s
unconscious form, the head swathed in bandages, and the body covered
with a blanket, she felt small anxiety. On the contrary, she very soon
gave herself up to rosy visions of the future.
Thus nothing appeared to her to be more clear than that Mr. Cromartie
would leave the Zoo, and the loss of a finger was perhaps not too high a
price to pay for restoring him to ordinary ways, or perhaps she might
say not too great a punishment for conduct such as his had been.
And it crossed her mind also that now there was no need for her to
humble herself to Cromartie, for he would leave the Zoo and become
reconciled to her now as a matter of course. It was for her to forgive
him! She had had a narrow escape. What a weak position she might have
been in had she seen him before the ape bit him! How strong a position
she now occupied! She must, she reflected, take this lesson to heart and
never act hurriedly on the impulse of the moment, otherwise she would
give John every advantage and there would be no dealing with him at all.
Next she recollected the letter she had sent him, and spent a little
while trying to recall the exact terms of it. When she remembered that
she had said that she was ashamed and had asked to be forgiven, she bit
her lips with vexation, but the next moment she stopped short and said
aloud: “How unworthy this is of you! How petty! How vulgar!”
And she remembered at that moment all the vulgar and horrible things she
had felt when she had first learnt that John had gone to the Zoo, and
how much ashamed she was of them afterwards, and how hatefully she had
behaved on both of her visits to him. She told herself then that she
ought to be ashamed, ought to ask forgiveness, and that she ought to be
thankful that she had done so in her letter, but in the next instant she
was saying to herself: “All the same, it won’t do to put myself at his
mercy. I must keep the upper hand or my life won’t be worth living.” And
after that her mind raced off again to visions of the future in which
John was rewarded with her hand and they took a country house. Her
father was an authority on fishponds and trout streams. He and Cromartie
would of course lay out a fishpond. Perhaps there would be a moat round
the house. But the figure who bent over her father’s shoulder at
breakfast, pushing away the egg-boiling machine to look at a plan of the
new trout hatchery, that figure was a very different person from Mr.
Cromartie the mutilated, monkey-bitten man in the Zoo.
When Josephine got home she found a note which had been left for her,
but which was not in Mr. Cromartie’s handwriting.
It ran as follows:
Infirmary, Zoo.