THE MENAGERIE.
A strange smell was in Clare’s nostrils, and as he went down the steps
inside, it grew stronger. He did not dislike it; but it set him
thinking why it should so differ from that of domestic animals. He was
presently in the midst of a vision attractive to all boys, but which
few had ever looked upon with such intelligent wonder as he; for Clare
had read and re-read every book about animals upon which he could lay
his hands. He had a great power too of remembering what he read; for
he never let a description glide away over the outside of his eyes,
but always put it inside his thinking place. What with pictures and
descriptions, he seemed to know, as he looked around him, every animal
on which his eyes fell.
The area was by no means crowded. There had been many visitors during
the day, but now it was late. He could see into all the cages that
formed the sides of the enclosure. Many of the creatures seemed
restless, few sleepy: night was the waking time for most of them. How
should a great roaming, hunting cat go to sleep in a little cube of
darkness! “Oh,” thought Clare, “how gladly would I help them to bear
it! I could bear it myself with somebody near to be kind to me!”
He had begun to feel that the quiet happiness to which he was once so
accustomed that he did not think much about it, was his because it was
_given_ him. He had begun to see that it did not come to him of
itself, but from the love of his father and mother. He had yet to
learn that it was given to them to give to him by the Father of
fathers and mothers. But he was beginning to prize every least
kindness shown him. This re-acted on his desire to make the happiness
greater and the pain less everywhere about him. He had little chance
of doing much for people, he thought; but he knew how to do things for
some animals, and perhaps it was only necessary to know others to be
able to do something for them too!
Thoughts like these passing through his mind, and his gaze wandering
hither and thither over the shifting shapes, his eyes rested on the
tenant of one of the cages, and his heart immediately grew very sore,
for he seemed unable to lift his head. He was a big animal, alone in
his prison, of a blackish colour, and awkward appearance. He went
nearer, and found he had a big ring in his nose like Nimrod. But to
the ring was fastened a strong chain, and the chain was bolted down to
the floor of the cage, which was of iron covered with boards, in their
turn covered with a thick sheet of lead. The chain was so short that
it held the poor creature’s head within about a foot of the floor. He
could not lift it higher, or move it farther on either side; but he
kept moving it constantly. It was a pitiful sight, and Clare went
nearer still, drawn far more by compassion, and indeed sympathy, than
by curiosity. He was a terrible brute, a big grizzly bear, ugly to
repulsiveness. The snarling scorn, the sneering, lip-writhing hate of
the demoniacal grin with which he received the boy, was hideous; the
rattling, pebble-jarring growl that came from his devilish throat was
loathing embodied. What if spirits worse than their own get into some
of the creatures by virtue of the likeness between them! One day will
be written, perhaps, a history of animals very different from any
attempted by mere master in zoology. Clare spoke to the beast again
and again, but was unvaryingly answered by the same odious snarl,
curling his lip under his nose-ring. It seemed to express the imagined
delight of tearing him limb from limb.
“Poor fellow!” said Clare, “how can he be good-tempered with that
torturing ring and chain! His unalterable position must make his every
bone ache!”
But had his nose been set free, such a raging-bear-struggle to get at
the nearest of his fellow-prisoners would have ensued, as must soon
have torn to shreds the partition between them. For he was a
beast-bedlamite, an animal volcano, a furnace of death, an incarnate
paroxysm of wrath. The inspiration of the creature, so far as one
could see, was pure hate.
The boy turned aside with quivering heart--sore for the grizzly’s
nose, and sorer still for the grizzly himself that he was so
unfriendly.
Right opposite, a creature of a far differing disposition seemed
casting defiance to all the ills of life. As he turned with a sad
despair from the grizzly, Clare caught sight of his pranks, and
hastened across the area. The creature kept bounding from side to side
of his cage, agile and frolicsome as a kitten. But the light was poor,
and Clare could not even conjecture to which of the cat-kinds he
belonged. When he came near his cage, he saw that he was yellowish
like a lion, and thought perhaps he might be a young lion. He had no
mane. Clare judged him four feet in length without the tail--or
perhaps four and a half. A little way off was the real lion--a young
one, it is true, but quite grown, with a thin ruffy mane, and lordly
carriage and gaze. It was he whose roar had challenged Nimrod, giving
the topmost flutter to the flame of his wrath. But Clare was so taken
with the frolicsome creature before him, that he gave but a glance at
the grand one as he walked up and down his prison, and turned again to
the merry one disporting himself alone, who seemed to find the
pleasure of life in great games with companions no one saw but
himself. For minutes he stood regarding the gladness of God’s
creature. A wild thing of the woods and plains, he made the most of
the bars and floor and roof of his cage. No one careless of liberty
could make such bounds as those; yet he was joyous in closest
imprisonment! His liberty gone, his freedom contracted to a few cubic
feet, his space diminished almost to the mould of his body, the great
wild philosopher created his own liberty, made it out of his own love
of it. Like a live, erratic shuttle he went to and fro, unweaving,
unravelling, unwinding, drawing out the knot of confinement, flinging
out, radiating and spreading and breathing out space in all
directions, by multitudinous motion of disentanglement! Space gone
from him, space in the abstract should replace it! He would not be
slave to condition! Space unconditioned should be his! For him liberty
should not lie in space, but in his own soul. Room should be but the
poor out-side symbol of his inward freedom! He would spin out, he
would weave, he would unroll essential liberty into spiritual space!
His mind to him a kingdom was. Not a grumble, not a snarl! He left
discontent to men, to build their own prisons withal. A proud man with
everything he longs for, if such a man there be, is but a slave; this
creature of the glad creator was and would be free, because he was a
free soul. Prison bars could not touch that by whose virtue he was and
would be free!
The germ of this thinking was in the mind of Clare while he stood and
gazed; and as he told me the story, its ripeness came thus, or nearly
thus, from his lips; for he had thought much in lonely places.
As he gazed and sympathized, there awoke within him that strange
consciousness which my reader must, at one time or another, have
known--of being on the point of remembering something. It was not a
memory that came, but a memory of a memory--the shadow of a memory
gone, but trying to come out from behind a veil--a sense of having
once known something. It gave another aspect to the blessed creature
before him. The creature and himself seemed for a moment to belong
together to another time. Could he have seen such an animal before? He
did not think so! He could never have visited a menagerie and
forgotten it! If he had known such a creature, his after-reading would
have recalled it, he would know it now! He could tell the lion and the
tiger and the leopard, although he seemed to know he had never seen
one of them; he could not tell this animal, and yet--and yet!--what
was it? The feeling itself lasted scarce an instant, and went no
farther. No memory came to him. The foiled expectation was all he
had. The very reasoning about it helped to obliterate the shape of the
feeling itself. He could not even recall how the thing had felt; he
could only remember it had been there. It was now but the shadow of
the shadow of a dream--a yet vaguer memory than that thinnest of
presences which had at the first tantalized him. We remember what we
cannot recall.
Perhaps the rousing of the odd, fantastic feeling had been favoured by
the slumber beginning to encroach on body and brain. While he stood
looking at the one creature, all the wonderful creatures began to get
mixed up together, and he thought it better to go and search for some
field of sleep, where he might mow a little for his use. He said
good-night to the great, gentle, jubilant cat, turned from him
unwillingly, and went up the steps. Almost every spectator was
gone. At the top of them he turned for a last look, but could
distinguish nothing except the dim form of the young lion, as he
thought him, still gamboling in the presence of his maker.
He thought to see the mistress of the menagerie, but she was no longer
in her curtained box. He went out on the deserted platform, and down
the steps. Abdiel was already at the foot when he reached it, wagging
his weary little tail.
They set out to look for a shelter. Their search, however, was so much
in vain, that at last they returned and lay down under one of the
wagons, on the hard ground of the public square. Sleeping so often out
of doors, he had never yet taken cold.