Part 3
That night she could not sleep, and could find none of the ordinary defences against unhappiness. That is to say, she was unable to affect any kind of superiority to her troubles, besides which she saw them exactly as they were, in their naked horror, and was not able to put them in conventional categories. For could Miss Lackett have said to herself: “I have been in love with John, now I find he is mad. This is a terrible tragedy, it is very painful to think of people being mad, for me it is a disappointment in love. Such disappointments are the most painful to which a girl in my position can be exposed,” and so on--if she could have done this then Miss Lackett would have found a sure way to reduce her suffering to a minimum. For by putting forward such general ideas as madness and disappointment in love she could very soon have come to feel only the general emotion suited to these ideas. But as it was she could only think of John Cromartie, his face, voice, manners, and way of moving; of the particular cage in which she had last seen him, the smell of apes, the swarm of people staring at him and laughing, and of her own loneliness and misery which John had deliberately caused. That is to say she thought only of her pain, and did not cast about to give it a name. And naming a sorrow is a first step to forgetting it. About three o’clock in the morning she got out of bed and went down to the dining room, where she found a decanter of port, another of whiskey, and some Bath Olivers. She poured herself out a glass of port and tasted it, but its sweetness disgusted her, so she put it down and helped herself to the whiskey. After she had got down half a wineglass of the spirit, taking it neat as it came from the bottle, she felt much calmer. She drank another glass of it and then went up to her room, threw herself on her bed, and at once fell into a heavy, drunken sleep.
During these days Mr. Cromartie had by no means got rid of his apprehensions of seeing Josephine. The thought which tormented him most was that he was at her mercy, that is to say, that she was at liberty to visit him whenever she liked, and to stay away as long as she chose. The material conditions of his life did not change in any degree, though there was no longer a vast crowd anxious to see him at all times; and from four policemen, two were soon thought to be enough to regulate his visitors. After another week the two were reduced to one, but though the crowd was scantier each day this policeman was left permanently, more as a protection for Mr. Cromartie than anything else, for certain persons had shown themselves very disobliging to him. Indeed, Mr. Cromartie had had to complain on two occasions, and that not only of abusive language. But during this time very little had changed in his material surroundings; this is not saying there was no alteration in Mr. Cromartie’s state of mind. In that respect there were two forces at work. One was that he was now continually thinking of Josephine and expecting a visit from her, and, that as his circle of ideas grew smaller in solitude, he became more and more taken up by imagining how she would come, what she would say, and so forth. Thus he was continually rehearsing scenes with Josephine, and this habit interfered with his daily reading and at times even alarmed him about his sanity. In the second place, perhaps because thinking so much of Josephine made him withdraw into himself, he became shy, was annoyed by the spectators, and felt something approaching a repulsion for the animals in the menagerie.
This feeling was naturally intensified in regard to his immediate neighbours, the female Orang and the Chimpanzee. In their case he was indeed only making a slight return for the ill will they bore him, which seemed to increase with every day. Mr. Cromartie was really much to blame for an aggravation of their natural and, one may say, reasonable dislike of him. For not only did he draw a larger crowd than fell to their share, but he persistently ignored them, and so neglected ordinary civilities that he would have made himself exceedingly unpopular had his neighbours been human beings like himself. This was due to a singular defect of imagination in him rather than to natural want of manners, for in ordinary life he always showed himself perfectly well bred. If an excuse can be found for his conduct it is that he believed that the proper thing for him to do was to ignore the very existence of his neighbours, and also that Collins, his keeper, never set him right on this point. The fact is that Collins was never perfectly easy with Mr. Cromartie, and that he was the kind of man to take offence himself. Indeed, he was more jealous of the feelings of his old favourites, the two apes, than he was quite aware of. Besides this he had lost the Gibbon, which had been given to another keeper when Mr. Cromartie had come, and there is no hiding the fact that Collins would have liked to have the Gibbon back in Mr. Cromartie’s place. For one thing the ape had given him less work, and for another, it had never been at any time in its life his social superior. Besides that, Collins had, for we should do him justice, a very positive affection for the animal. One evening, after a day passed in a most desultory way, Mr. Cromartie was sitting in his cage sucking his pipe, when suddenly he saw Miss Lackett come into the empty house.
This was the evening of the day after her troubled night. In the morning she had resolved to settle the question whether Cromartie were mad or not, to make a judgment on the subject that would be impartial and definitive, for she felt convinced that if she could not settle the question of his sanity one way or the other, there would be no doubt of her losing hers.
But when she had got into the Gardens she found it impossible to see Mr. Cromartie alone. A crowd, though not as large as formerly, was still clustered round the Ape-house the whole of the morning. Between one and two there were always some persons before his cage whose presence rendered it impossible for her to speak with him. She saw then that the only thing was for her to wait till last thing at night and to hurry in just at closing time. All this delay upset the arrangements of her day. The knowledge that she had promised to call for her old schoolfellow, Lady Rebecca Joel, and to go on and take tea at Admiral Goshawk’s, and to go out afterwards with them, worried her excessively. At the last minute she sent messages pleading headache and indisposition, and then found nothing to do until closing time at the Zoo. To stay in the Gardens for so long was intolerable. To add to her discomfort the sky clouded over and a sharp storm came on, the air soon being filled with sleet, snowflakes and hailstones. She ran out of the Gardens, getting wet as she did so, and it was some moments before she could find a taxi. When once inside there was the absolute necessity of telling the man where to take her.
“Baker Street,” said she. For Baker Street is a central point from which she could easily go wherever she wished. This was the reason, it will be remembered, that made the great detective Holmes choose to have his rooms in Baker Street, and to-day it is still more central. All Metro-Land is at one’s feet.
But the time taken between the Zoo and Baker Street Tube station is short, and Miss Lackett arrived with no clearer idea of where to go or what to do than she had when she first ran out of the Gardens. To be sure the rain had stopped for the time being, and she walked briskly along the Marylebone Road. For she belonged to the order of society which cannot loiter in the street. She marched away without any purpose, wondering what she would do with herself, when on came the storm again with a sudden gush of rain. Josephine looked about her and found a refuge offered by the gates of a large red-brick building, which she entered. It was Madame Tussaud’s.
She had never as a child visited the celebrated collection of wax-work effigies, and she was at once interested in what she saw there. Some internal voice bade her make the most of this casual opportunity, to throw aside her temporary unhappiness, and enjoy herself.
She fell into a peaceful state of mind, and for several hours in succession gave herself up to the pleasure of gazing at the formal figures of the most celebrated persons of this and former ages. For the most part they were the great Victorians and dated from last century. There were but few other visitors, but the great saloons are always crowded, and everywhere that she looked she found familiar faces.
Josephine had been presented at Court, but had not been impressed by the experience. Madame Tussaud’s seemed to her like a more august presentation at an Eternal Levee.
At one end of the room there were indeed the royal families of Europe in their coronation robes. There was an air of formality, a stiffness, and a constraint in all present which seemed to her natural in guests waiting for their host to come in. And perhaps in another moment a curtain would be brushed aside, and the Host of Hosts would appear.
Josephine did not wait any longer, but ran downstairs to the Chamber of Horrors.
Before it seemed possible it was time to go back to the Gardens, if she were to see Cromartie before closing time. She walked quickly into the house, and found Cromartie sitting near the front of his cage as if he were expecting to see her. As she came up to the cage he put down the pipe he had been holding in his mouth and stood up, seeming then to overshadow her, the floor of his cage being higher than the corridor in which she stood.
“Please sit down,” she said, and then was silent, finding nothing of all the things she had come to tell him ready to her tongue.
He obeyed her.
They looked then at each other for some little while in silence. At last Josephine summoned up her resolution and said to him, speaking in a low voice:
“I think that you are mad.”
Cromartie nodded his head; he had huddled himself up in his chair and apparently was unable to speak.
Josephine waited and said: “I was very worried about you, because I thought at first that something I had said to you might have made you behave in this idiotic way, but it is now quite clear to me that even if what I said did have any influence, you are quite mad, and that I need not think about you any more.”
Cromartie nodded his head again. She noticed with some surprise that he was weeping, and that his face was wet with tears which were falling on to the floor of his cage. The sight of his tears and his determined silence made her harden her heart. She felt suddenly angry.
The bell began ringing for closing time, and she heard someone, probably the policeman, with his hand on the door talking to another man outside. Josephine turned away, but a moment afterwards came back to the cage. Cromartie was walking away from her blowing his nose.
“You must be mad,” she called after him; then the door opened and the policeman came in.
“Hurry up, Miss, or you’ll have to stay here all night, and you know that would never do,” she heard him say as she hurried away.
Though Josephine’s visit had been painful, it did not succeed in distressing Cromartie for very long. Indeed, after a short time he recovered himself completely, and reasoning upon what she had said, and the reasons of her coming at all, he found much with which to comfort himself. In the first place, all the secret doubts he had had in the last week of his own sanity were now dissipated. He was not going to believe that he was mad, he said to himself, simply because Josephine Lackett told him so. Besides which, he felt sure that she only affirmed that he was mad because it suited her to believe it. If he were actually insane it would relieve her of any necessity of thinking of him, and that she had felt any such necessity to exist was in itself extremely gratifying. Furthermore, he felt certain that if Josephine had really been convinced of his insanity she would not have paid him a visit in order to tell him of it. Even Josephine would not find any satisfaction in such useless inhumanity. If she felt bound to take any steps in the matter she would have gone to the officers of the Society and insisted that he should be examined by a mental doctor, and if necessary certified as a lunatic. And with these very satisfactory reasons Mr. Cromartie assured himself that he was not really mad, or even in any danger of becoming so, though he did not doubt that Josephine would readily persuade herself to the contrary.
Happiness and misery are purely relative, and Mr. Cromartie was now raised into a state of the highest spirits by considerations which would not ordinarily produce such a result. But after the condition of complete despair in which he had been plunged for several weeks, he could hardly imagine any greater bliss than knowing that Josephine was having to persuade herself that he was mad in order to be able to dismiss him from her thoughts.
But it must not be concluded from this that Mr. Cromartie indulged in any sort of hope. He did not even consider the possibility of escaping from the Zoo or of winning Josephine’s love, because he had never had any ambition to do either. Such thoughts would have seemed to him not only ridiculous but also dishonourable. He had taken his course with his eyes open, and the question whether he should abide by it or not was not even open to consideration. In this respect the Zoological Society were indeed fortunate in their selection of a man. For though there is little doubt that Mr. Cromartie would have been given his liberty whenever he asked for it, without his having recourse to extreme measures such as refusing food or imploring the aid of visitors in rescuing him, yet letting him go would have been a cause of vexation to the Society. It is not to be supposed that there would have been any difficulty in replacing him by another specimen of his species. No, the reason why they would have felt his loss such a severe blow is because the public readily attaches itself to the individual animals in the Zoo, and is not to be consoled when such a favourite dies, or disappears, even if it is instantly replaced by an even finer specimen of the same species. Many persons habitually resort to the Gardens in order to visit their particular friends, Sam, Sadie and Rollo, and not merely to look at any polar bear, orang, or king penguin. And this applies quite as forcibly to the Fellows of the Society as to the outside public. It was natural, therefore, that they should entertain hopes that the new acquisition to the Gardens should remain in it for the rest of his natural life, and though he could not vie with the other creatures in general popularity when once the vulgar curiosity about him had worn off, yet it was to be hoped that in time he would develop as much personality as if he were a bear or an ape.
While Sir James Agate-Agar was being shown over the house by the curator, he referred to Cromartie as “your local Diogenes.” The name was immediately on the lips of everyone who moved in Zoological circles. There was opportunity here for Mr. Cromartie had he been disposed to take it. When once the vulgar publicity which had attended his installation had passed, there were many persons in the upper ranks of London society who were anxious to make Mr. Cromartie’s acquaintance, and had he known enough to take up the part marked out for him, there is no doubt but that he could have had as much society as he cared for, and that of persons of the very front rank, all of whom were animated by the most genuine interest in him and friendliness towards him, though naturally not without the expectation that they would in exchange be entertained by his remarks, for such a man as the Diogenes of the Zoo must surely be a great oddity.
But though Mr. Cromartie had every intention of remaining for the rest of his life in the cage provided for him, he had no idea of the social opportunities which doing so would afford him, and he appreciated them so little that he most steadily repulsed all overtures of the kind, and betrayed an obvious reluctance to enter into conversation with anyone, even the curator himself. At the time in question, however, this was set down to a not unnatural self-consciousness in the new situation in which he found himself, and also to the disturbing effect of being exhibited daily to a large crowd, among whom there were persons whose offensive behaviour excited the greatest indignation.
It was several days after this first interview before he was to see Miss Lackett again. During this period he had much to think of, but his spirits remained high; for the first time for ten days he took a walk round the Gardens from pleasure, and not from a feeling that he must have some fresh air if he were to keep well. For several evenings he sat motionless for half an hour or more near the beavers’ and the otters’ pools, and was frequently rewarded by a glimpse of the former, though only on one occasion by the latter. Whatever creatures in the Gardens had most retained their native wildness were sure to attract him. They seemed to him, in his rather warped state of mind, to have preserved their self-respect. It was to accomplish this in his own particular case which was his chief concern, though of course he was perfectly well aware that it did not consist in behaving with any shyness. On the contrary, Mr. Cromartie’s self-respect depended upon his maintaining an appearance of unruffled calm, together with the utmost civility in all his relations with those with whom he had any business.
One evening as he was watching for the foxes, the keeper of the small cats’ house came up to him and entered into conversation. After a few trivial remarks which served their ordinary purpose--that is they let Mr. Cromartie know that the keeper was a pleasant fellow and well-disposed to him--he said:
“I think it would be a good plan if you were to make a pet of one of the animals, that is, if you would like to. It seems a waste for you to be here and not make one of the out-of-way kind of pets.”
Mr. Cromartie had been thinking that day that perhaps the greatest disadvantage under which he lay in his situation, was that he could not have any familiar friend. His former life had been utterly renounced and was now closed to him, so that it was no use his looking backwards for one. At the same time he was so utterly cut off from the ordinary run of humanity that he would not care to risk having any intercourse with his fellows lest he should be exposed to pity, or to an offensive curiosity.
The suggestion of this keeper could not have come at a better time, for he saw that though he might not care for a _pet_ he might make a _friend_. In any case, he reflected, equality of circumstances is an excellent basis for any acquaintanceship, and he could nowhere share the circumstances of an animal’s life so well as he could here in the Zoo. Had he gone into a tropical jungle it would have been no closer, for there, though the animals would have been at home, he would not.
He followed the keeper into the small cat house, and talked with him for a little while longer.
It so happened that one of the beasts directly under the care of this man had attracted Mr. Cromartie when he went into the house before. For in the Caracal he saw an unhappiness to match his own, combined with beauty. The Caracal, poor creature, never stopped moving, holding its face to the bars of its little cage. It moved back and forth with tireless rapidity, and a monotony which seemed inspired by unutterable sorrow.
At his request the keeper now took out the Caracal for him to speak to it.
For several days after this Mr. Cromartie never failed to pay the Caracal a visit every evening, and while making very few overtures to it, he showed the creature that he was more disposed to be friendly than most of its fellow captives. This persistence was not thrown away, for after five or six days the Caracal would stop his sad motions before his bars when Cromartie came in, and would look after him with evident regret when the time came for him to go away.
The keeper, on his side, was mightily pleased at his Caracal’s getting such a companion, and perhaps the more so as it was not his own favourite; in particular the man gave himself all the credit for advising Mr. Cromartie to make a pet of some beast or other. It was not long before he spread the news of it, telling the curator and others of the staff who might be interested.
The upshot of all this was that one evening as Cromartie was sitting reading, locked in for the night, suddenly he heard the door unlocked and beheld the curator come to pay him a visit.
“Oh, I just stepped in, Mr. Cromartie,” said the curator in the most friendly way, “for a word or two. The keeper of the small cats’ house tells me that you have made quite a pet of the Caracal.”
At these words Cromartie turned a little pale, and said to himself: “The fat is in the fire now. He is going to forbid us continuing our friendship; I ought to have expected it.”
The next words the curator said quite undeceived him, for he went on: “Now how would you like, Mr. Cromartie, to have that fellow in your--in with you here, I mean? You need not have him unless you like, of course, and you need not keep him a day longer than you want to. I am not trying to save space, I assure you.”
Mr. Cromartie accepted the suggestion thankfully, and it was agreed that the Caracal should come and pay him a trial visit for a few days.
The next evening he went as usual to the small cat house, but this time when the Caracal was let out he invited him to come back with him, and with very little demur the creature followed him and then walked with him by his side, and then, his confidence increasing, the cat ran before him a few yards, stopping every now and then as if to ask him:
“Which way shall we go now, comrade?”
Then as Cromartie came up with him he shook the tassels of his tufted ears and again ran on before. You may be sure that the poor Caracal did not suffer from nostalgia for his little cage. No, indeed, he ran into his friend’s more commodious quarters as if he would be content to stay in them for ever, and after he had trotted all round them four or five times and leapt up on to the table and down off each of the chairs, he settled down as if he were at home, and perhaps indeed he was so for the first time since he was come to the Gardens.
This pretty kind of cat, for such he found the Caracal to be (not but what it had some virtues for which cats are not usually famous), proved a very great solace to him in his captivity. For the creature had a thousand playful tricks and pretty ways which were a delight to him. For so long he had not been able to see anything all day except his neighbours the sordid apes, and the staring faces of a crowd which seemed to share all the qualities of those apes (and with less excuse for being there), that it was a rare kind of happiness for him to have a graceful and charming creature beside him. Moreover it was his companion, the friend of his choice, and the sharer of his misfortunes. They were equals in everything, and there was in their love none of that fawning servility on the one side and domineering ownership on the other that makes nearly all the dealings of men and animals so degrading to each of the parties. Though it may seem fanciful, there was actually a strong resemblance in the characters of these two friends.