Your note has come by the messenger. I shall not be free to see you
this afternoon, which relieves me from making the decision not to
do so. You say that the reason you behave cruelly to me is because
you love me. It is because I know that, that I have tried to do
without your love. I think you are a character who will always
torture the people you love. I cannot bear pain well; that alone
makes us unsuited to each other. It is the principal reason why I
never wish to see you again.
You are mistaken when you say that you have something of the first
importance to tell me. Unless it is something to do with the
arrangements which the Zoo authorities make with regard to the
Ape-house, it cannot be of importance to me.
Please believe that I bear you no resentment for the past; indeed I
still love you, but I mean what I say.
Yours ever,
JOHN CROMARTIE.
When Josephine had read this letter over twice and had realised that it
must have been written _after_ he had been bitten by the ape, and just
before his finger was cut off, she gave up her hopes.
Everything she had been feeling was revealed as ridiculous folly. If
John could write like that at the moment when he must have been most
wishing to escape from confinement, she saw that her plans for his
regeneration were impossible. She went up to her room and lay down. All
was lost.
That morning Mr. Cromartie had taken his breakfast of rolls, butter,
Oxford marmalade, and coffee as usual. When it had been cleared away he
began to play ball with the Caracal.
For this purpose he used an ordinary tennis ball, and throwing it on the
floor of his cage, made it bounce on to the netting and back to him. The
game therefore resembled fives, the object, however, being, on his part,
to prevent the Caracal intercepting the ball, which, by the way, he was
rarely able to do more than three or four times running, for the cat was
very quick on its legs and had a good eye.
After they had been playing for about ten minutes Mr. Cromartie slipped
backwards in taking a ball
[Illustration]
which bounced high, and fell heavily against the wire netting wall of
his cage. Before he could get his balance he felt himself taken hold of
by the hair, and understood at once that it was his neighbour the Orang
who had got him in its clutches. The brute then got a finger as far as
Mr. Cromartie’s ear and slit it through, though not injuring the drum.
Mr. Cromartie managed to turn his head then in order to see his
assailant, and found his face was now exposed, and his forehead was
scratched. To protect himself he put one hand in front of his face, and
was pushing himself away from the netting with the other when the Orang
caught hold of two of his fingers in its teeth. The pain of this made
him jerk his head free, and the lock of hair by which the Orang held him
came right out of his scalp.
The ape still held on to his fingers like a bulldog. Just then his
Caracal, which had been dodging about between his legs, got one paw
through the netting and raked the Orang’s thighs with his claws, but the
ape did not leave go even then. Mr. Cromartie, who had a very cool head
for a man in such a situation, took out a couple of wax vestas from his
pocket, struck them on his heel, and thrust the flaring fusees through
the wire into the ape’s muzzle and in that way made him leave go his
hold at once.
This circumstance of his feeling for the fusees in his pocket while the
ape was slowly grinding his fingers to a mere pulp very greatly
impressed the spectators, who beyond shouting for assistance were
powerless to do anything. No less remarkable was the way in which,
directly he was free, he pulled away the Caracal from the netting before
the ape could catch hold of him, and this though the cat was beside
itself with the fury of the fight. But strangely enough in doing this he
did not get scratched, either because he pulled him off by the scruff
with his uninjured hand and carried him right out of the cage, or
because the Caracal knew him even at that moment.
Collins arrived just as this happened and the shock was almost too much
for him; it was remarked that he was deathly white and could scarcely
speak. Mr. Cromartie was covered with blood, blood pouring from his ear
and his fingers, and all his hair matted with blood, but he came back at
once after locking up his Caracal, to show the spectators that he was
not badly hurt; they for their part clapped their hands with joy, either
because they were glad to see him escape, or because they were grateful
for having been presented with such an unusual spectacle for nothing.
Cromartie then went back to his inner room and Collins led him off at
once to the infirmary, where he was given first aid. It was some little
while after this that he received Josephine’s letter and dictated an
answer for the messenger to take to her. There was some little delay in
the messenger getting to him.
Directly he had despatched the letter he was anæsthetised and the third
finger of his right hand amputated.
After the operation and before he had regained consciousness, he was
taken to the house of the curator, who had decided that he would be more
comfortable there than anywhere else. Although at the time Mr. Cromartie
had behaved with perfect composure and had borne his injuries without
flinching, not only at the time of the assault, but for over three hours
afterwards, and had been able to compose a letter during that time as if
nothing had happened, he had received a great nervous shock the effects
of which only became apparent next day. He spent a very disturbed night,
but in the morning was much better; ate an ordinary breakfast but did
not get up, and Sir Walter Tintzel, who visited him about eleven
o’clock, was sanguine and predicted a rapid recovery. In the afternoon
he was restless and suffered acutely, and as evening came on his
temperature rose rapidly. That night he was in a condition of fitful
delirium, occasionally falling asleep and waking up with nightmares
which persisted even when he appeared to be wide awake.
On the second day the fever increased and blood-poisoning in an acute
form was recognised, but the patient was altogether rational in his
mind. On the third day the symptoms of blood-poisoning were more
pronounced. The patient fell into a delirium which lasted without
intermission for the following three days. Most of the feverish
hallucinations which filled his mind then passed completely away when
he recovered consciousness. Yet Mr. Cromartie had a clear and vivid
memory of one of them. This was, he knew, nothing but a dream, yet it
seemed but to have just happened to him, and the dream or vision was
singular enough for it to be put down here.
In the Strand people were hurrying along in little crowds like gusts of
dirty smoke that was blown at intervals in wisps across the road. They
were all coming towards him as he walked down from Somerset House
towards Trafalgar Square. No one was walking the same way that he was,
and none of the people he met brushed against him or even looked at him,
but they melted away to right and left and so let him pass by. Sometimes
when a band of them passed him he caught a whiff of their odour, and the
smell sickened him.
They were frightened, they hurried by, but he was thinking of that great
man Sir Christopher Wren, who had planned the street he was then walking
in. But nobody cared, nobody had built it, though the plans were all
there rolled up and ready, and just as good to-day as they were in the
reign of King Charles II.
He lifted up his head presently, and up in the sky a white streak was
being deliberately drawn. It was an aeroplane writing advertisements. So
he stood still in the middle of the hurrying crowds to watch it; now he
could just see the tiny aeroplane like a little brown insect. Slowly in
the sky a long straight line was drawn and then a loop--surely it must
be the figure 6. And then the aeroplane stopped throwing out smoke and
became almost invisible as it went off tittering across the sky.
The numeral swelled and grew and was being slowly blown away when all of
a sudden another white streak appeared and the aeroplane was drawing
something else. But as he watched he was aware that after all it was the
same thing again, another 6, and when it had done that the aeroplane
mounted again into the sky and drew another 6, but already its first
work was undone by the wind and in a few moments there was nothing to be
seen in the sky but a few wisps of smoke.
For a second or two Cromartie felt himself rocking in the aeroplane,
which went humming away across the sky before falling again sideways
like a snipe bleating; that was only a moment, as when you shut your
eyes and fancy that you can feel the earth spinning in space, and then
Cromartie was walking out of the Strand into Trafalgar Square. It was
empty, and he looked at the Nelson monument with wonder. Landseer’s
great beasts planted their feet flat down before them. What were they,
he wondered? Lions or Leopards, or perhaps Bears? He could not say. And
suddenly he saw that his right hand was bleeding and his fingers gone. A
great crowd had entered the Square; the fountains were playing, the sun
was shining, and he got on to a scarlet omnibus. But very soon he saw
that the people were whispering together on the omnibus and they were
all looking at him, and he knew that it was because they saw his
wounded hand. He put his other hand up to his forehead and there was
blood on that also. He was afraid then of the people on the bus and so
he got out. But wherever he wandered the people stopped and stared at
him and whispered, and as he walked among them they drew aside and
formed into little groups and gazed after him as he went by, and it was
because they knew him by the wounds on his head and on his hand.
They were all of them muttering and looking at him with hatred, but
something restrained them, so that though their eyes were like sharp
daggers they were one and all afraid to point their fingers....
He was going to vote. He would cast his vote. Nothing should stop him.
At last he saw the two entrances to the underground voting hall with
Ladies written over one and Gentlemen written over the other, and he
went downstairs. But when he asked the attendant for his voting card the
man took down a large book bound in lambskin with the wool left on, and
turned over several pages and looked down them. At last he said: “But
your name is not written in the Book of Life, Mr. Cromartie. You must
give up your secret, you know, if you wish to be registered.” When he
heard this Mr. Cromartie felt sick, and he noticed the smell that came
from all the other voters in their ballot boxes; he hesitated, and at
last he said:
“But if I do not give up my secret may I not vote?”
“No, Mr. Cromartie. Nobody can vote who does not give up his secret,
that is called the secrecy of the ballot--but it is out of the question
for you to vote, anyhow ... you bear the Mark of the Beast.”
And Mr. Cromartie looked at his hand and felt his forehead and saw that
he did indeed bear the Mark of the Beast where it had bitten him, and he
knew that he was an outcast. That was what everybody had whispered. He
would not give up his secret so he was rejected by mankind and hated by
them, for he frightened them. They were all alike, they had no secrets,
but he had kept his and now the Beast had set its Mark upon him, and he
seemed terrible to them all, and he himself was afraid. “The Beast has
set his Mark on me,” he said to himself. “It will slowly eat me up. I
cannot escape now, and one thing is as bad as another. On the whole I
would rather the Beast slowly ate me up than give up so much, and the
stench of my fellows disgusts me.”
And then he heard the Beast moving restlessly behind some partition; he
heard the rustling of straw and the great creature slowly licking itself
all over; and then its smell, sweet, and warm, and awful, swallowed him
up, and he lay quite still on the floor of the cage, listening to its
tail going thump, thump, thump on the floor beside him. Terror could go
no further, and at last he opened his eyes and slowly understood that it
was his own heart which was beating and no beast’s tail, and all about
him there were clean sheets and flowers and a smell of iodoform. But his
fear lasted for half that day.
In a fortnight Mr. Cromartie was pronounced out of danger, but he
continued in so weak a state for some time afterwards that he was not
allowed to receive any visitors, so that although Josephine called every
day it was only to hear the latest news of how he had passed the night,
and to leave flowers for the sickroom.
In the following weeks Mr. Cromartie made a rapid recovery; that is to
say, though by no means restored to his ordinary health, he was able
first to get up for an hour in the middle of the day, and then to go for
a short walk round the Gardens.
The doctors attending upon him suggested at this time that an entire
change of scene would be beneficial, and the curator, far from putting
any obstacles in the way of this, frequently urged the patient to go for
a month’s holiday to Cornwall. But in this he was met by a steady and
obstinate refusal, or rather by complete passivity and non-resistance.
Mr. Cromartie refused to take a holiday. He declined to go away anywhere
by himself, though he added that he was completely at the curator’s
disposal and prepared to go to any place where he was sent in charge of
a keeper. After some days, during which the curator proposed first one
scheme and then another, the plan of Mr. Cromartie’s being sent away was
abandoned. In the first place it was difficult to spare a keeper, or for
that matter to find a suitable man among the staff to go with Mr.
Cromartie, and it was difficult to find a suitable place where they
should be sent.
But the chief reason why these schemes were given up was because of the
apathetic and even hostile attitude which the invalid adopted to them,
and because it occurred to the curator that this hostility was perhaps
not without a reason.
And indeed there is no doubt that Mr. Cromartie felt that if he once
took such a holiday as had been suggested he would find it very much
harder to go back into captivity at the end of it, and he opposed it
because he was resolved not to escape from what he conceived were his
obligations.
It was therefore decided that Mr. Cromartie should go straight back to
his cage, though it was impressed upon him that he would not be expected
to be on view to the public any longer than he wished, and that he must
lie down to rest in his inner room for two or three hours every day.
In this way, and by taking him for motor-car drives for a couple of
hours or so after dark, it was hoped that he would be able to regain his
accustomed health and shake off that state of apathy which seemed his
most alarming symptom to the medical men who attended him.
But before Cromartie went back to his old quarters he was to hear a
piece of news from the curator which concerned him very closely, though
he did not at first realise the full significance of it.
The curator was so confused in imparting this information, and so
apologetic, and occupied so much time with a preamble explaining how
much the Zoological Society felt themselves indebted to him, that Mr.
Cromartie had some difficulty in following what he said, but at last he
got at the gist of it, and the long and the short of the matter was: The
experiment of exhibiting a man had been a much greater success than any
of the Committee had dared to hope; such a success, indeed, that it had
decided to follow it up by having a second man, a negro. It had actually
engaged him two or three days since, and had installed him only that
day. The intention of the Committee was eventually to establish a
“Man-house” which should contain specimens of all the different races of
mankind, with a Bushman, South Sea Islanders, etc., in native costume,
but such a collection could of course only be formed gradually and as
occasion offered.
The embarrassment of the poor curator as he made these revelations was
so extreme that Cromartie could only think of how best to set him once
more at his ease, and though he had a very distinct moment of annoyance
when he heard of the negro, yet he suppressed it completely. When the
curator had been persuaded that Cromartie bore him no grudge for these
innovations, nay more, that he was perfectly indifferent to them, his
joy and relief were as overwhelming as his distress and embarrassment
had been before.
First he blew out a great breath, and mopped his forehead with a big
silk handkerchief; then, his honest face quite transformed with
happiness, he seized Cromartie by the hand, and then by the lapel, and
laughed again and again while he explained that he had opposed the
project with all his might because he was sure Cromartie would not like
it, and after he had been overruled he had not known how to break the
news to him. He vowed he had not slept for two nights thinking about it,
but now when he learnt that Cromartie actually approved of the plan, he
felt a new man. “I am the biggest fool in the world,” said he; “my
imagination runs away with me. I am always thinking of how other people
are going to be upset, and then it turns out that they don’t give a row
of pins about the whole affair and I am the only person who feels upset
at all ... all on account of somebody else.... Ha! Ha! Ha! It has been
just like that over and over again with my wife. It is always happening
to me. Well now I’ll go full blast ahead with the new ‘Man-house,’
because, you know, it’s a damned good notion. I felt that the whole
time, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that it was unfair to you.”
But Mr. Cromartie did not share his enthusiasm; he merely repeated to
himself, as he had done so often before, that he intended observing his
side of the contract so long as the Zoo kept its own, and that there was
nothing in all this which infringed or invalidated the contract in any
way. But when Mr. Cromartie went into his cage he saw a black man in the
cage next door--he was brushing a black bowler hat--it came as a great
shock to Mr. Cromartie to realise that this man was the neighbour about
whom the curator had spoken. This negro was almost coal black, a jovial
fellow, dressed in a striped pink and green shirt, a mustard-coloured
suit, and patent leather boots. When he saw Mr. Cromartie he at once
wheeled round, and saying “The interesting invalid has arrived,” walked
up to the partition separating him from Cromartie and said to him:
“Allow me to welcome you back to what is now the Man-house. If I may
introduce myself, Joe Tennison: I am delighted to meet you, Mr.
Cromartie, it is a real pleasure to have a man next door.” Cromartie
bowed stiffly and said “Good afternoon” very awkwardly, but the negro
was not abashed, and leaned against the wire partition between them so
that it bulged.
“They are going to clear all that poor trash away now,” he said,
pointing at the Chimpanzee beyond Cromartie. “They isn’t to be kept with
us any more, nasty jealous brutes; bite your fingers off if they catch
you.”
Cromartie turned and looked at the Chimpanzee; it had always seemed to
him rather a pathetic beast, but how much more so now while his new
neighbour Tennison was speaking of it! And not for the first time he
felt a friendly sympathy for the ugly little ape. Indeed he would far
rather have seen the savage old Orang back in her place than have this
insufferably verbose fellow patronising the animals near him.
For the moment Cromartie was quite at a loss, and had no idea what to
reply to the stream of Mr. Tennison’s remarks. He had said nothing at
all when a minute or two later he was relieved by the arrival of Collins
with his Caracal, which had been sent back to his old cage in the
cat-house after Mr. Cromartie’s injuries.
The pleasure of the two friends at once more being together was
unbounded, and was shown by each of them very strongly after his own
fashion. For at first the Caracal trotted up to Cromartie debonairly
enough, as if he were just come to give him a sniff, then he began
purring loudly and rubbed himself a score of times against Cromartie’s
legs, winding himself about them, and finally he sprang right up into
his friend’s arms, licked his face and his hair, and curled up for a
moment or two as if he would sleep there; but no, this was not for long,
for he sprang down again. Then he began trotting round the cage, sniffed
in the corners, leapt on the table and made certain that all was well.
When Joe Tennison called to him, the Caracal passed by without giving
him a glance, and it was just the same with his friend too, for when
Cromartie heard the negro begin talking to him he just nodded his head
and went into his inner room. But once there Mr. Cromartie reflected
that this negro was to be his companion and neighbour for some years,
and it would never do to run away from him every time he spoke. Somehow
he must make Tennison respect his privacy without making an enemy of
him, and at that moment Mr. Cromartie saw no way of doing this. However,
he took down a book of Waley’s poems translated from the Chinese, and
went back into his cage with it in his hand, and then sat down and began
reading.
He lives in thick forests, deep among the hills,
Or houses in the clefts of sharp, precipitous rocks;
Alert and agile is his nature, nimble are his wits;
Swift are his contortions,
Apt to every need,
Whether he climbs tall tree-stems of a hundred feet,
Or sways on the shuddering shoulder of a long bough.
Before him, the dark gullies of unfathomable streams;
Behind, the silent hollows of the lonely hills.
Twigs and tendrils are his rocking-chairs,
On rungs of rotting wood he trips
Up perilous places; sometimes, leap after leap,
Like lightning flits through the woods.
Sometimes he saunters with a sad, forsaken air;
Then suddenly peeps round
Beaming with satisfaction. Up he springs,
Leaps and prances, whoops and scampers on his way.
Up cliffs he scrambles, up pointed rocks,
Dances on shale that shifts or twigs that snap,
Suddenly swerves and lightly passes....
Oh, what tongue could unravel
The tale of all his tricks?
Alas, one trait
With the human tribe he shares; their sweets his sweet,
Their bitter is his bitter. Off sugar from the vat
Of brewers’ dregs he loves to sup.
So men put wine where he will pass.
How he races to the bowl!
How nimbly licks and swills!
Now he staggers, feels dazed and foolish,
Darkness falls upon his eyes....
He sleeps and knows no more.
Up steal the trappers, catch him by the mane,
Then to a string or ribbon tie him, lead him home;
Tether him in the stable or lock him in the yard;
Where faces all day long
Gaze, gape, gasp at him and will not go away.
Joe Tennison came up three or four times while he was reading and began
a conversation, but Cromartie ignored his remarks and did not even lift
his head, but just read quietly on.
Fortunately there were a great many of the public come to see their old
favourite Mr. Cromartie now he was back, and to have a look at the new
black man also, about whom there was nearly as much discussion as there
ever had been about Cromartie himself.
The presence of the public was lucky for two reasons; firstly, it served
to distract Joe Tennison by giving him that which he most wanted in
life--an audience; and secondly, Mr. Cromartie was able, by totally
ignoring spectators, to show him that that was his ordinary method of
conducting himself. There was therefore no reason why the negro should
feel himself insulted by being treated as if he did not exist. And here
I should explain that Mr. Cromartie had no objection to his neighbour as
a negro, and no particular prejudice against persons of that colour. Mr.
Tennison was indeed the first negro to whom he had spoken. At the same
time the fellow aroused a strong feeling of dislike, and this aversion
was one which steadily increased as time went on.
The next day Mr. Cromartie found Josephine Lackett waiting for him when
he first went into his cage after breakfast. She was standing a little
distance off looking out of the door of the Ape-house (to give it its
old name), and Cromartie called out to her before he reflected on what
he was doing: “Josephine! Josephine! What are you doing there?”
She turned round and came towards him, and the sight of her so much
affected Mr. Cromartie that for some time he did not trust himself to
speak again, and when he did so it was more tenderly than he had done
since his captivity. But Josephine on her part could not for some time
get used to the presence of Mr. Tennison, who sat lolling in a deck
chair within a few feet of them and kept putting his gold-rimmed
eyeglass in his eye to stare at her, and then letting it fall out, as if
he had not quite learnt the trick of it, which was indeed the case, as
he had only bought it a week before.
For some little time then Josephine found herself with nothing to say
except to congratulate John on his recovery, and to tell him how glad
she was that he was well again. Then she thanked him for calling to her
and letting her speak to him.
“Don’t behave like a goose, Josephine,” said John Cromartie. Then
guessing why she was constrained, he said: “My dear Josephine, do ignore
him as I do.”
But Josephine did not speak, and just then in strolled the Caracal,
having just completed his morning toilet.
“I paid your cat several visits while you were ill,” said Josephine. “He
seemed very unhappy and would not take much notice of me. I think he is
rather shy of women, and is not used to them.”
Mr. Cromartie nodded. He was glad Josephine had gone to see the Caracal,
but he knew that she had wasted her time; he did not care for the people
who came and gazed into his cage from the outside. Suddenly he heard
Josephine say: “John, I must see you in private. I must talk to you,
because I cannot go on like this. You cannot go on shirking things any
longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you must recognise that we are bound up with each other. I
don’t mind _what_ you decide to do, but you must do something. I cannot
go on living like this any longer. Please arrange somehow for us to see
each other and talk it over.”
It was Cromartie now who was embarrassed and shy; Cromartie who could
not talk simply about what he felt, at least not for a considerable
time. At last, however, he got out a few disconnected remarks, saying
he was very sorry but he could do nothing then, and that he was not a
free agent. But in the end he got more confidence and looked Josephine
straight in the eyes and said: “My dear, it’s quite inevitable that both
of us should be unhappy. I love you, if you want me to put it in that
way. I cannot ever forget you, and now you seem to be feeling the same
for me, and you too must expect to be very unhappy. I only hope your
feeling for me will wear off. I daresay it will in time, and I hope my
feeling for you will also. Until then we must try and be resigned.”
“I am not resigned,” said Josephine. “I’m going to get savage about it,
or go mad or something.”
“It’s the greatest mistake for us to stir up each other’s feelings,”
said Cromartie rather roughly. “That’s the worst thing we can either of
us do, the most unkind thing. No, the only thing for you to do is to
forget me, the only hope for me is to forget you.”
“That’s impossible; it’s worse when we don’t see each other,” said
Josephine.
Just then they realised that several people had come into the Ape-house
and were hesitating to interrupt their conversation.
“It’s a bad business,” said Cromartie, “a damned bad business,” and at
these words Josephine went away. He turned away and sat down, but a
moment later he heard a loud “Excuse me, Sah. Excuse an intrusion, but
I believe, Sah, that your young lady friend’s christian name is
Josephine. That is a remarkable coincidence! for my own name, you know,
is Joseph. Joseph and Josephine.”
If, on hearing this remark, Mr. Cromartie gave Tennison any
encouragement to continue, it was quite accidental. At the moment he was
feeling faint, and only by an effort of will continued standing where he
was without clutching hold of the bars.
“Are you interested in the girls?” asked the negro. “They come and watch
me all the morning, and they do stare so ... he, he, he.”
“No, I’m not interested,” said Mr. Cromartie. Nobody could have mistaken
the desperate sincerity in his voice.
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Tennison, at once restored to his former
heartiness and buoyancy of manner.
“That is how I feel myself, just how I feel. I have no interest in women
at all. Only my poor old mammy, my old black mammy, she was of the very
best, the very best she was. A mother is the best friend you have
through life--the best friend you can make. My mother was ignorant, she
could not read, neither could she write, but she knew almost all of the
whole Bible by heart, and I first learnt of Salvation from my mother’s
lips. When I was five years old she taught me the Holy Words of Glory,
and I repeated them after her text by text. She was the best friend I
shall ever have.
“But other women--no, sir. I have no use for them. They are just a
temptation in a man’s life, a temptation to make him forget his true
manhood. And the worst of it is that the more you shun them the more
they do run after you. That’s a fact.
“No, I am very much safer and better off here shut up alongside of you,
with this wire netting and bars to fence off the women, and I guess you
feel the same way as I do. Don’t you, Mr. Cromartie?” Cromartie suddenly
looked up and saw the person who had been addressing him.
“Who are you?” he asked, and then, looking rather wildly, he walked out
of his cage into his back room, where he lay down feeling very
exhausted.
He was still very weak from his illness, and the close atmosphere of the
Ape-house gave him a headache. Every moment he had now to exercise
self-control, and it was more and more exhausting for him to do so. Very
often he did what he did on this occasion, and this was to lie down to
rest in his back room and then burst into tears, quite without any
restraint, and though he laughed at himself afterwards, the act of
weeping comforted him, although it left him weaker than before and more
inclined to weep again.
But the pricks and troubles of the outside world meant very little to
Mr. Cromartie just then. He could not help thinking the whole time of
Josephine.
For so long he had believed that there were so many insuperable
obstacles which would prevent them ever being happy together, that the
additional fact of his being shut up in the Zoo was a relief to him.
But now that he felt so weak it was an extra strain, and especially now
as he was beginning to wonder if Josephine and he could not be happy
together for a little while.
He still knew that they were too proud to endure each other for very
long, but could they not have a week or a month or even a year of
happiness together?
Perhaps they might, but anyhow it wasn’t possible, and here he was
locked up in a cage, with a nigger waiting outside to talk some
disgusting trash at him and wear out his patience.
But as a matter of fact, when Cromartie pulled himself together once
more and went out into his cage Joe Tennison did not address him--that
is, not directly. But he was as tiresome as he had been before, but now
it was in a different way.
When Cromartie had settled down and had been reading for a little while,
there were no visitors for two or three minutes, and then he heard the
negro speaking to himself as he gazed in his direction.
“Poor fellow! Poor young fellow! The women do make hay with a man, they
do. I’ve been through it all.... I know all about it.... Oh, gracious,
yes. Love! Love is the very devil. And that poor young man is certainly
in love. Nobody can cheer him up. Nobody can do anything except her that
caused the trouble in his heart. There’s nothing I can do for him now
except just to pretend to notice nothing, the same as I always do.” At
this point the speaker was distracted by the arrival of a party of
visitors who stopped outside his cage, but thereafter Mr. Cromartie
adopted the same method to the negro that he had always adopted to the
public. That is to say, he ignored his existence and contrived never to
meet his eyes, and never took the least notice of what he said.
The next morning, while Cromartie was playing with his Caracal, with a
ball, as he had been accustomed to do before the Orang had taken
advantage of him, he heard Josephine’s voice calling to him.
He threw the ball to his friend the bounding, tasselled cat, and went
straight to her, and without waiting for any greeting she said to him:
“John, I love you, and I must see you alone at once. I must come into
your cage and talk to you there.”
“No, Josephine, don’t--that’s not possible,” said Cromartie. “I can’t go
on seeing you like this even, and surely you see that if you were to
come into my cage I could not bear it after you had gone away.”
“But I don’t want to go away,” said Josephine.
“If you were ever to come inside my cage you would have to stay for
ever,” said Cromartie. He had recovered himself now, his moment of
weakness was past. “And if you don’t decide to do that, I don’t think we
can go on seeing each other at all. I think I shall die if I see you
like this. We can never be happy together.”
“Well, we had better be unhappy together than unhappy apart,” said
Josephine. She had suddenly begun to cry.
“My darling creature,” said Cromartie, “it’s all a silly mistake; but we
will arrange things somehow. I’ll get the curator to have you in the
next cage to me instead of that damned nigger, and we shall see each
other all the time.”
Josephine shook her head vigorously to get the tears out of her eyes,
like a dog that has been swimming.
“No, that won’t do,” she declared angrily, “that won’t do at all. It has
got to be the same cage as yours or I won’t live in a cage at all. I
haven’t come here to live in a cage by myself. I’ll share yours and be
damned to everyone else.”
She gave an angry laugh and shook her yellow hair back. Her eyes
sparkled with tears, but she looked steadily at Cromartie. “Damn other
people,” she repeated; “I care for nobody in the world but you, John,
and if we are going to be put in a cage and persecuted, we must just
bear it. I hate them all, and I’m going to be happy with you in spite of
them. Nobody can make me feel ashamed now. I can’t help being myself and
I will be myself.”
“Darling,” said Cromartie, “you would be wretched here. It’s awful; you
mustn’t think of it. I have a much more sensible plan. I can’t ask them
to let me go. Anyhow I shan’t do that. But I am still so feeble that I
can easily make myself really ill again, and then I think they will let
me go and we can get married.”
“That won’t do,” said Josephine. “We can’t wait any longer, and you
would die if you tried that. There was nothing about your not being
allowed to marry in the contract when you came here, was there?” she
asked. “You have only got to tell them that you are going to get married
to-day, and that your wife is ready to live in your cage.”
During this conversation several people had come into the Ape-house, and
after looking at Josephine in a highly scandalised manner had gone out
again, but now Collins came in. He looked rather puzzled and awkward
when he saw Josephine, but she turned to him at once and said:
“Mr. Cromartie and I wish to see the curator; will you please find him
and ask him to come here?”
“Very good,” said Collins; then catching sight of Joe Tennison gazing at
Cromartie and the lady from a distance of three feet, with his yellow
eyeballs almost popping out of his sooty face, he sternly ordered him to
go into the back room of his cage.
“Oh, I can tell you something, I can tell you what you’ld never
believe,” cried Joe, but Collins silently pointed his finger at him, and
the nigger jumped up and slowly beat a retreat into his own quarters.
Ten minutes later the curator came in.
“Come round to the back where we can talk more conveniently, Miss
Lackett,” he said. Then he unlocked the door of the inner cage or den
and Josephine walked in. They sat down.
“I have asked Miss Lackett to marry me, and have been accepted,” said
Cromartie rather stiffly. “I was anxious to tell you at once, so as to
make arrangements with regard to the ceremony, which of course we wish
to be carried out as privately as possible, and at once. After our
marriage my wife is prepared to live with me in this cage, unless of
course you arrange for us to have other quarters.”
The curator suddenly laughed, a loud, good-natured, hearty laugh. To
Cromartie it seemed a piece of brutality, to Josephine a menace. They
both frowned, and drew slightly together waiting for the worst.
“I ought to explain to you,” the curator began, “that the committee has
already considered what to do in the event of such a contingency as this
occurring.
“It is impossible, for various reasons, for us to keep married couples
in the Man-house, and we decided that in the event of your mentioning
marriage, Mr. Cromartie, that we should consider our contract with you
at an end. In other words you are free to go, and in fact I am now going
to turn you out.”
As he said these words the curator rose and opened the door. For a
moment the happy couple hesitated; they looked at each other and then
walked out of the cage together, but Josephine kept hold of her man as
they did so. The curator slammed the door and locked it on the forgotten
Caracal, and then said:
“Cromartie, I congratulate you very heartily; and my dear Miss Lackett,
you have chosen a man for whom all of us here have the very greatest
respect and admiration. I hope you will be happy with him.”
Hand in hand Josephine and John hurried through the Gardens. They did
not stop to look at dogs or foxes, or wolves or tigers, they raced past
the lion house and the cattle sheds, and without glancing at the
pheasants or a lonely peacock, slipped through the turnstile into
Regent’s Park. There, still hand in hand, they passed unnoticed into the
crowd. Nobody looked at them, nobody recognised them. The crowd was
chiefly composed of couples like themselves.
[Illustration]