GLUM GUNN.
He had but one enemy, and he did not make him such: he was one by
nature. For he was so different from Clare that he disliked him the
moment he saw him, and it took but a day to ripen his dislike into
hatred. Like Mr. Maidstone, he found the innocent fearlessness of
Clare’s expression repulsive. His fingers twitched, he said, to have a
twist at the sheep-nose of him. Unhappily for Clare, he was of
consequence in the menagerie, having money in the concern. He was
half-brother to the proprietor, but so unlike him that he might not
have had a drop of blood from the same source. An ill-tempered,
imperious man, he would hurt himself to have his way, for he was the
merest slave to what he fancied. When a man _will_ have a thing, right
or wrong, that man is a slave to that thing--the meanest of slaves, a
willing one. He was the terror of the men beneath him, heeding no man
but his brother--and him only because he knew “he would stand no
nonsense.” To his sister-in-law he was civil: she was his brother’s
wife, and his brother was proud of her! Also he knew that she was
perfect in her part of the business. So it was reason to stand as well
as he might with her!
Clare had no suspicion that he more than disliked him. It took him
days indeed to discover even that he did not love him--notwithstanding
the bilious eye which, when its owner was idle, kept constantly
following him. And idle he often was, not from laziness, but from the
love of ordering about, and looking superior.
It was natural that such a man should also be cruel. There are who
find their existence pleasant in proportion as they make that of
others miserable. He had no liking for any of the animals, regarding
them only as property with never a right;--as if God would make
anything live without thereby giving it rights! To Glum Gunn, as he
was commonly called behind his back, the animals were worth so much
money to sell, and so much to show. Yet he prided himself that he had
a great influence as well as power over them, an occult superiority
that made him their lord. It was merely a phase of the vulgarest
self-conceit. He posed to himself as a lion-tamer! He had never tamed
a lion, or any creature else, in his life; but when he had a wild
thing safe within iron bars, then he “let him know who was his
master!” By the terror of his whip, and means far worse, he compelled
obedience. The grizzly alone, of the larger animals, he never
interfered with.
From the first he received Clare’s “_Good-morning, sir_,” with a
silent stare; and the boy at last, thinking he did not like to be so
greeted, gave up the salutation. This roused Gunn’s anger and
increased his hate. But indeed any boy petted by his sister-in-law,
would have been odious to him; and any boy whatever would have found
him a hard master. Clare was for a while protected by the man’s
unreadiness to have words with his brother, who always took his wife’s
part; but the tyrant soon learned that he might venture far.
For he saw, by the boy’s ready smile, that he never resented anything,
which the brute, as most boys would have done, attributed to
cowardice; and he learned that he never carried tales to his sister,
of which, instead of admiring him for his reticence, he took
advantage, and set about making life bitter to him.
It was some time before he began to succeed, for Clare was hard to
annoy. Patient, and right ready to be pleased, he could hardly imagine
offence intended; the thought was all but unthinkable to Clare’s
nature; so he let evil pass and be forgotten as if it had never been.
Once, as he ran along with a heavy pail of water, Gunn shot out his
foot and threw him down: he rose with a cut in his forehead, and a
smile on his lips. He carried the mark of the pail as long as he
carried his body, but it was long before he believed he had been
tripped up. Had it been proved to him at the time, he would have taken
it as a joke, intending no hurt. He did not see the lurid smile on the
man’s face as he turned away, a smile of devilish delight at the
discomfiture of a hated fellow-creature. Gunn put him to the dirtiest
work--only to find that it did not trouble him: the boy was a rare
gentleman--unwilling another should have more that he might have less
of the disagreeable. I have two or three times heard him say that no
man had the right to require of another the thing he would think
degrading to himself. He said he learned this from the New Testament.
“But,” he said, “nothing God has made necessary, can possibly be
degrading. It may not be the thing for this or that man, at this or
that time, to do, but it cannot in itself be degrading.”
The boy had to take his turn with several in acting showman to the
gazing crowd, and by and by the part fell to him oftenest. Each had
his own way of filling the office. One would repeat his information
like a lesson in which he was not interested, and expected no one else
to be interested. Another made himself the clown of the exhibition,
and joked as much and as well as he could. Gunn delighted in telling
as many lies as he dared: he must not be suspected of making fools of
his audience! Clare, who from books knew far more than any of the
others concerning the creatures in their wild state, and who, by
watching them because he loved them, had already noted things none of
the others had observed, and was fast learning more, talked to the
spectators out of his own sincere and warm interest, giving them from
his treasure things new and old--things he had read, and things he had
for himself discovered. Group after group of simple country people
would listen intently as he led them round, eager after every word;
and as any peg will do to hang hate upon, even this success was noted
with evil eye by Glum Gunn. Almost anything served to increase his
malignity. Whether or not it grew the faster that he had as yet found
no wider outlet for it, I cannot tell.
At last, however, the tyrant learned how to inflict the keenest pain
on the tender-hearted boy, counting him the greater idiot that he
could so “be got at,” as he phrased it, and promising himself much
enjoyment from the discovery. But he did not know--how should he
know--what love may compel!