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 tripsUp perilous places; sometimes, leap after leap,Like lightning flits through the woods.Sometimes he saunters with a sad, forsaken air;Then suddenly peeps roundBeaming 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 unravelThe tale of all his tricks?Alas, one traitWith the human tribe he shares; their sweets his sweet,Their bitter is his bitter. Off sugar from the vatOf 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 longGaze, gape, gasp at him and will not go away.
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 tripsUp perilous places; sometimes, leap after leap,Like lightning flits through the woods.Sometimes he saunters with a sad, forsaken air;Then suddenly peeps roundBeaming 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 unravelThe tale of all his tricks?Alas, one traitWith the human tribe he shares; their sweets his sweet,Their bitter is his bitter. Off sugar from the vatOf 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 longGaze, gape, gasp at him and will not go away.
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 tripsUp perilous places; sometimes, leap after leap,Like lightning flits through the woods.Sometimes he saunters with a sad, forsaken air;Then suddenly peeps roundBeaming 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 unravelThe tale of all his tricks?Alas, one traitWith the human tribe he shares; their sweets his sweet,Their bitter is his bitter. Off sugar from the vatOf 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 longGaze, 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 thenegro 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 onhis 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 mindwhatyou 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 forthem. 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 tohim. 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 partyof 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 thanunhappy 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.
THE END
The Westminster Press411a Harrow RoadLondon, W.9
The Westminster Press411a Harrow RoadLondon, W.9