THE CAGE OF THE PUMA.
Marway was a fine, handsome fellow, whose manners, where he saw reason,
soon won him favour, and two of the young men in the office were his
ready slaves. Every moment of the next day Clare was watched. Marway
had laid his plans, and would forestall frustration. Clare could hardly
do anything before the dinner-hour, but Marway would make assurance
double sure.
At anchor in the roads lay a certain frigate, whose duty it was to
sail round the islands, like a duck about her floating brood. Among
the young officers on board were two with whom Marway was intimate. He
had met them the night before, and they had together laid a plot for
nullifying Clare’s interference with Marway’s scheme--which his friends
also had reason to wish successful, for Marway owed them both money.
Clare had come in the way of all three.
Now little Ann was a guardian cherub to the object of their enmity, and
he and she must first of all be separated. Clare had asked leave of
Miss Shotover to take the child to Noah’s ark, as she called it, that
evening, and Marway had learned it from her: Clare’s going would favour
their plan, but the child’s presence would render it impracticable.
One thing in their favour was, that Mr. Shotover was from home. If
Clare had resolved on telling him rather than the admiral, he could
not until the next evening, and that would give them abundant time. On
the other hand, having him watched, they could easily prevent him from
finding the admiral. But Clare had indeed come to the just conclusion
that his master had the first right to know what he had to tell. His
object was not the exposure of Marway, but the protection of his
master’s daughter: he would, therefore, wait Mr. Shotover’s return.
He said to himself also, that Marway would thereby have a chance to
bethink himself, and, like Hamlet’s uncle, “try what repentance can.”
As soon as he had put the bank in order for the night, he went to find
his little companion, and take her to Noah’s ark. The child had been
sitting all the morning and afternoon in a profound stillness of
expectation; but the hour came and passed, and Clare did not appear.
“You never, never, never came,” she said to him afterward. “I had to
go to bed, and the beasts went away.”
It was many long weeks before she told him this, or her solemn little
visage smiled again.
He went to the little room off the hall, where he almost always found
her waiting for him, dressed to go. She was not there. Nobody came. He
grew impatient, and ran in his eagerness up the front stair. At the
top he met the butler coming from the drawing-room--a respectable old
man, who had been in the family as long as his master.
“Pardon me, Mr. Porson,” said the butler, who was especially polite to
Clare, recognizing in him the ennoblement of his own order, “but it is
against the rules for any of the gentlemen below to come up this
staircase.”
“I know I’m in the wrong,” answered Clare; “but I was in such a hurry
I ventured this once. I’ve been waiting for Miss Ann twenty minutes.”
“If you will go down, I will make inquiry, and let you know directly,”
replied the butler.
Clare went down, and had not waited more than another minute when the
butler brought the message that the child was not to go out. In vain
Clare sought an explanation; the old man knew nothing of the matter,
but confessed that Miss Shotover seemed a little put out.
Then Clare saw that his desire to do justice had thwarted his
endeavour: Marway had seen Miss Shotover, he concluded, and had so
thoroughly prejudiced her against anything he might say, that she had
already taken the child from him! He repented that he had told him his
purpose before he was ready to follow it up with immediate
action. Distressed at the thought of little Ann’s disappointment, he
set out for the show, glad in the midst of his grief, that he was
going to see Pummy once more.
The weather had been a little cloudy all day, but as he left the
closer part of the town, the vaporous vault gave way, and the west
revealed a glorious sunset. Troubled for the trouble of little Ann,
Clare seemed drawn into the sunset. The splendour said to him: “Go on;
sorrow is but a cloud. Do the work given you to do, and the clouds
will keep moving; stop your work and the clouds will settle down
hard.”
“When I was on the tramp,” thought Clare, “I always went on, and
that’s how I came here. If I hadn’t gone on, I should never have found
the darling!”
As little as during any day’s tramp did he know how his reflection was
going to be justified.
He wandered on, and the minutes passed slowly: it was wandering now
with no child in his arms! He was in no haste to go to the menagerie;
he would be in good time for the beasts; and the later he was, the
sooner he would see his mother alone and have a talk with her!
At last, it being now quite dark, he turned, and made for the
caravans.
A crowd was going up the steps, passing Mrs. Halliwell slowly, and
descending into the area surrounded by the beasts. Clare went up, and
laid his money on the little white table. The good woman took it with
a smile, threw it in her wooden bowl, and handed him, as if it had
been his change, three bright sovereigns. Clare turned his face
away. He could not take them. He felt as if it would break one bond
between them.
“The money’s your own!” she said, in a low voice.
“By and by, mother!” he answered.
“No, no, take it now,” she insisted, in an almost angry whisper; but
the same moment threw the sovereigns among the silver, and some
coppers that lay on the table over them.
Judging by her look that he had better say nothing, he turned and went
down the steps. Before he reached the bottom of them, Glum Gunn
elbowed his way past him, throwing a scowl on him from his ugly eyes
at the range of a few inches.
The place was fuller than it had been all the evening, and with a
rougher sort of company. The show would close in about an hour. It
seemed to Clare not so well lighted as usual. Perhaps that was why he
did not observe that he was watched and followed by Marway, with two
others, and one burly, middle-aged, sailor-looking fellow. But I doubt
whether he would have seen them in any light, for he had no
suspicions, and was not ready to analyze a crowd and distinguish
individuals.
He avoided making straight for Pummy, contenting himself for the
moment with an occasional glimpse of him between the moving heads, now
opening a vista, now closing it again, for he hoped to get gradually
nearer unseen, so as to be close to the animal when first he should
descry him, for he dreaded attracting attention by becoming, while yet
at a distance, the object of an uproarious outbreak of affection on
the part of the puma.
But while he was yet a good way from him, a most ferocious yell sprang
full grown into the air, which the very fibres of his body knew as one
of the cries of the puma when most enraged. There he was on his hind
legs, ramping against the front of the cage, every hair on him
bristling, his tail lashing his flanks. The same instant arose a
commotion in the crowd behind Clare, a pushing and stooping and
swaying to and fro, with shouts of, “Here he is! here he is!”
Filled with a foreboding that was almost a prescience, he fell to
forcing his way without ceremony, and had got a little nearer to the
puma, when, elbowing roughly through the spectators, with red, evil
face, in drink but not drunk, Glum Gunn appeared, almost between him
and the cage--once more, to the horror of Clare, holding by the neck
his poor little Abdiel, curled up into the shape of a flea. The brute
was making his way with him to the cage of the puma, whose wrath,
grown to an indescribable frenzy, now blazed point-blank at the dog.
I think some waft of the wild odour of the menagerie must have reached
the nostrils of the loving creature, brought back old times and his
master, and waked the hope of finding him. That he had but just
arrived was plain, for he had not had time to get to his master.
Clare was almost at the edge of the close-packed, staring crowd,
absorbed in the sight of the huge raving cat. Breaking through its
outermost ring in the strength of sudden terror, he darted to the cage
to reach it before Glum Gunn. A man crossed and hustled him. Gunn
opened the door of the cage, and flung Abdiel to the puma. Ere he
could close it, Clare struck him once more a stout left-hander on the
side of his head. Gunn staggered back. Clare sprang into the
cage--just as Pummy spying him uttered a jubilant roar of
recognition. His jumping into the cage just prevented the puma from
getting out, and the crowd from trampling each other to death to
escape The Christians’ Friend; but now that Clare was in, the
cage-door might have swung all night open unheeded--so long, that is,
as no dog appeared.
As for Abdiel the puma had forgotten him: the dog was out of his sight
for the moment, though only behind him, while his friend and he were
rubbing recognizant noses. Abdiel showed his wisdom by keeping in the
background. The moment he was flung into the cage, he had got into a
corner of it, and stood up on his hind legs.
His master believed that, knowing how the puma loved the human form
divine, he thought to prejudice him in his favour by showing how near
he could come to it. There he yet stood, his head sunk on his chest,
watching out of his eyes for the terrible moment when his enemy should
again catch sight of him.
The moment came. The puma’s delight had broken out in wildest
motion. He sprang to the roof of his cage, and grappling there, looked
down with retorted neck, and saw the dog. Poor Abdiel immediately
raised his head, and in hope of propitiation all but forlorn, began a
little dance his master had taught him.
What Pummy would have done with him, I fear, but I cannot tell. Clare
sprang to the rescue, and the weight of the puma’s bulk descended, not
on Abdiel, but on the shoulders of Clare who had the dog in his
bosom. In a moment more it was evidenced that a common love, however
often the cause of jealousy, is the most powerful mediator between the
generous. The puma forgot his hate, the dog forgot his fear, and
presently, to the admiration of the crowd, Clare and Pummy and Abby
were rolling over and over each other on the floor of the cage.
Pummy had the best of the rough game. One moment he would be a bend in
a seemingly unloosable knot of confused animality, the next he would
be clinging to the top of his cage, where the others could not follow
him. Perhaps to have a human to play with, was even better than dreams
of loveliest frolics with brothers and sisters, and a mother as madly
merry as they, in still, moonlit nights among the rocks, where neither
sound nor scent of horse woke the devil in any of their bosoms!
Glum Gunn, too angry to speak, stood watching with a scowl fit for
Lucifer when he rose from his first fall from heaven. He could do
nothing! If he touched one, all three would be upon him! Experience
had taught him what the puma would do in defence of Clare! He must
bide his time!--But he must keep hold of his chance! He drew from his
pocket his master-key, and at a moment when Clare was under the other
two, slid it into the key-hole, and locked the door of the cage. He
had him now--and his beast of a dog too! If he could have turned the
puma mad, and made him tear them both to shreds, he would not have
delayed an instant. But he must think! He must say, like Hamlet,
“About, my brains!”
The man, however, who wishes to do evil, will find as ready helpers as
he who wishes to do well: in the place were those who wanted Gunn’s
aid, and would give him theirs.
He felt a touch on his arm, glanced sullenly round, and saw a face
under whose beauty lay the devil. Marway, with eye and thumb,
requested him to withdraw for a moment, and he did not hesitate. As he
went he chuckled to himself at the thought of Clare when he found the
door locked.
Marway’s three accomplices had drifted off one by one to wait him
outside: he rejoined them with Gunn; and, retiring a little way from
the caravans, the five held a council, the results of which make an
important part of Clare’s history.
Clare seemed absorbed in his game with his four-footed, one-tailed
friends, but he was wide awake: he had Abdiel to deliver, and kept,
therefore, all the time, at least half an eye on Glum Gunn. He saw
Marway come up to him, and saw them retire together: it was the very
moment to leave the cage with Abdiel! He rose, not without difficulty,
because of the jumping of his playmates upon him and over him, and
went to the door.
The moment he did so, the crowd was greatly amused to see the puma
turn upon the dog with a snarl, and the dog, at the fearful sound of
altered mood, immediately put on the man, rise to one pair of feet,
and begin to dance. The puma turned from him, went to the heel of his
chosen master, and there stood.
In vain Clare endeavoured to open the gate. He had never known it
locked, and could not think when it had been done. At length, amid the
laughter of the spectators, he desisted, and the three resumed their
frolics.
At this the admiration of the visitors broke out. They had seen the
door made fast, and had kept pretty quiet, waiting what would come:
they had thus earned their amusement when he sought in vain to open
it. When his withdrawal confessed him foiled, the merrier began to
mock and the ruder to jeer. But when they saw him laugh, and all three
return to their gambols, they applauded heartily.
Just before this last portion of the entertainment, Mr. Halliwell, who
had been looking on for a while, retired, not knowing the cage-door
was locked. He went to his wife and said, that, if they had but the
boy and his dog again, and were but free of that brother of his, the
menagerie would be a wild-beast paradise. He would have had her go and
see the pranks in the puma’s cage, but she was too tired, she said; so
he strolled out with his pipe, and left his men to close the
exhibition. Mrs. Halliwell fastened her door and went to bed, a little
hurt that Clare did not come to her.
Gradually the folk thinned away; and at last only a few who had got in
at half-price remained. To them the attendants hinted that they were
going to shut shop, and one by one they shuffled out, the readier that
Clare was now so tired that Pummy could not get up the merest tail of
a lark more. He was quite fresh himself, and had he been out in the
woods, would certainly not have gone home till morning. But he was
such a human creature that he would not insist when he saw Clare was
weary; and that he had no inclination to play with Abdiel when his
master was out of the game, was quite as well for Abdiel, for Pummy
might have forgot himself. When Abby, not free from fear, as knowing
well he was not free from danger, crept to his master’s bosom, Pummy
gave a low growl, and shoving his nose under the long body of the dog,
with one jerk threw him a yard off upon the floor, whence Abdiel
returned to content himself with his master’s feet, abandoning the
place of honour to one who knew himself stronger, and probably counted
himself better. So they all fell asleep in peace. For although Clare
knew himself and Abdiel Gunn’s prisoners, he feared no surprise with
two such rousable companions.
[Illustration: CLARE ASLEEP IN THE PUMA’S CAGE.]