Part 4

Both were in their nature gay and sportive, with pleasant manners which admirably concealed the untamed wildness of their tawny hearts. But the resemblance lay chiefly in their excessive and stubborn pride. In both of them pride was the mainspring of all their actions, though necessarily the quality must show itself very differently in a man and in a rare and precious kind of a cat. In imprisonment, though in one case it was voluntarily made, and in the other case forced, neither would fawn or make utter and complete submission.

For though Mr. Cromartie always showed a complete resignation and exemplary obedience, yet it was only a feigned submission after all.

The visit of his new friend was to the liking of both parties, and in general they found none of the difficulties that sometimes attend living at close quarters. It is true that the Caracal was no sleeper at night, but spent all the early part of it prowling hither and thither; still it was on very silent and padded feet, and by morning he would be tired of roaming, so that on waking up Mr. Cromartie never failed to find his friend curled up on the bed beside him.

In all their relations the man never attempted to exercise any authority over the beast; if the Caracal wandered away he did not call him back, nor did he try to tempt him with any tit-bits from his table, nor by rewards of any sort train him to new tricks. Indeed, to look at them both together it would seem as if they were unaware of each other’s presence, or that nothing but a total indifference existed between them. Only if the Caracal trespassed too far on his patience, either by eating his food before he had finished, or by playing with his pen if he were writing, would he swear at him or give him a little cuff to show his displeasure. Once or twice on such occasions the Caracal bared his teeth at him and stretched out his sharp and wicked claws, but yet he always thought again before using them on his big, slowly moving friend. Once or twice, of course, as might have been expected, Mr. Cromartie got scratched, but this was done in play or was merely accidental; indeed, it almost always was when the Caracal, leaping up from the ground upon his shoulder, held on lest he should over-balance. Only once was this at all serious, and then because the Caracal, trying a higher jump than usual, landed on his head and the nape of his neck. Mr. Cromartie cried out in surprise and pain, and the Caracal drew in his claws instantly, and by purring and many affectionate rubbings of his body against his friend, sought to make amends for his misdeed. Mr. Cromartie was bleeding from ten dagger wounds on his scalp, but after the first moment he spoke gently to the cat and forgave him fully. All this was, however, nothing when weighed against the happiness he had in having a companion to be with him in his captivity, and a companion who was so much the happier for having him.

At Cromartie’s request the Caracal was now installed permanently with him, and another board was attached to the front of the cage, beside his own. It bore the inscription:

+-----------------------------------------+ | CARACAL | | | | _Felis Caracal._ ♂ Iraq. | | | | Presented by Squadron N, R.A.F., Basra. | +-----------------------------------------+

There were no pictures attached of either Man or Caracal, as it was taken for granted that visitors would be able to distinguish them. The public showed a great appreciation of the Man’s sharing his cage with an animal, and Mr. Cromartie suddenly became, what he had not been before, extremely popular. The tide turned, and everybody found charming the person who had so scandalised them. Instead of ill-natured remarks, or even insults, Mr. Cromartie’s ears were assailed with cries of delight.

This change was certainly one for the better, though Mr. Cromartie reflected that in time it might become as tedious as ill-natured remarks had been formerly. His defence was the same against each, that is, he shut his ears, never looked through the netting if he could help it, and read his books as if he were indeed a scholar working in his own study.

He was sitting in this way reading “Wilhelm Meister,” with his companion the Caracal at his feet, when he suddenly heard his name called and looked up.

There was Josephine, standing before him, looking in at him, her face pale, her mouth rigid, and her eyes staring.

Up jumped Mr. Cromartie, but as he was surprised his self-control was gone for an instant.

“My God! What have you come for?” he asked her in agitated tones.

Josephine was taken aback for a moment by this greeting, and as he strode to the front of his cage, stepped back away from him. For the moment she was confused. Then she said:

“I have come to ask you about a book. The second volume of ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses.’ Aunt Eily is fussing about it. She says the plates make it a very valuable edition. She suspects me of reading it too, and thinks it unsuitable....”

As she spoke Cromartie began laughing, screwing up his eyes and showing his teeth.

“So my forgetfulness has got you into a scrape, has it?” he asked. Then: “I’m most awfully sorry. I’ve actually got it here. I’ll post it to you to-night. I can’t slip it through the wire netting, unfortunately. That’s one of the drawbacks of living in a cage.”

Josephine had not seen Cromartie looking so charming for a long time. Her own expression changed also, but she still remained shy and awkward, and was obviously afraid of someone coming into the Ape-house and finding them together, talking.

For a moment or two they were silent. She looked at the Caracal and said:

“I read in the paper about your having a companion. I expect it is a very good plan. You are looking better. I’ve been having bronchitis, and have been laid up for a fortnight since you saw me last.”

But as Josephine spoke Cromartie’s face clouded over again. He noticed her awkwardness and was annoyed by it. He remembered also her last visit, and how she had behaved then. Recollecting all this he frowned, drew himself up, rubbed his nose rather crossly, and said:

“You must realise, Josephine, that seeing you is excessively painful to me. In fact I am not sure I can endure being exposed to the danger of it any longer. Last time you came to see me for the purpose of informing me that you think I am mad. I don’t think you are right, but if I cannot guard myself from seeing you I daresay I shall go mad. I must therefore ask you in the interests of my own health, if for nothing else, never to come near me again. If you have anything to say of an urgent nature--if there should be another book of yours, or any reason of that sort, you can always write to me. Nothing you can say or do can be anything but extremely painful and exhausting, even if you felt kindly disposed towards me; but from your behaviour I can only conclude you want to give me pain and come here to amuse yourself by hurting me. I warn you I am not going to submit to being tortured.”

“I’ve never heard such nonsense, John. I hoped you were better, but now I am sure you really are mad,” said Josephine. “I’ve never been spoken to in such a way. And you imagine that I of all people want to see you!”

“Well, I forbid your coming to see me in the future,” said Mr. Cromartie.

“Forbid! You forbid!” cried Josephine, who was now furious with him. “You forbid me to come! Don’t you realise that you are being exhibited? I, or anyone else who pays a shilling, can come and stare at you all day. Your feelings need not worry us; you should have thought of that before. You wanted to make an exhibition of yourself, now you must take the consequences. Forbid me to come and look at you! Good heavens! The impertinence of the animal! You are one of the apes now, didn’t you know that? You put yourself on a level with a monkey and you are a monkey, and I for one am going to treat you like a monkey.”

This was said in a cold, sneering sort of way that was altogether too much for Mr. Cromartie. The blood flew to his head, and with a face distorted with almost insane rage he shook his fist at her through the bars. When at last he was able to speak it was only to tell her in an unnatural voice:

“I shall kill you for that. Confound these bars!”

“They have some advantages,” said Josephine coolly. She was frightened, but as she spoke Mr. Cromartie lay down on the floor of his cage and she saw him stuff his handkerchief into his mouth and bite it; there were tears in his eyes, and sometimes he fetched a deep groan as if he were near his end.

All this frightened Josephine more even than his threatening that he would murder her. And seeing him rolling there as if he were in a fit made her repent of what she had said to him, and then she came right up to the netting of his cage and began to beg him to forgive her, and to forget what she had said.

“I did not mean one word of it, dearest John,” said she in a new and altered voice, which scarce reached to him, it was so soft. “How can you think I want to hurt you when I come to this wretched prison of yours to see you because I love you, and cannot forget you in spite of all that you have done only on purpose to hurt me?”

“Oh, go away, go away, if you have any pity left in you,” said John. His own voice was now come back to him, but he sobbed once or twice between his words.

Meanwhile the Caracal, who had watched all this scene and listened to it with a great deal of wonder, now came up to him and began to comfort him in his distress, first sniffing at his face and hands and then licking them.

And before anything more could be said between Josephine and John, the door opened and a whole party of people were come in to see the apes. At that Josephine went out of the house and out of the Gardens, and getting into a cab went straight home, all as if she were in a nightmare. As for Mr. Cromartie, he struggled quickly on to his feet and hurried out of his cage into his hiding-place to wash his face, comb his hair, and compose himself a little before facing the public; but when he went back the party were gone away and there was only his Caracal staring at him and asking him as plain as words:

“What is the matter, my dear friend? Are you all right now? Is it over? I am sorry for you, although I am a Caracal and you are a man. Indeed, I do love you very tenderly.”

There was only the Caracal when he went back into his cage, only the Caracal and “Wilhelm Meister” lying on the floor.

That night Miss Lackett suffered every torment which love can give, for her pride seemed to have deserted her now when she most wanted it to support her, and without it her pity for poor Mr. Cromartie and her shame at her own words were free to reduce and humble her utterly.

“How can I ever speak to him again?” she asked herself. “How can I ever hope to be forgiven when I have gone twice to him in his miserable captivity, and each time I have insulted him and said the things which it would hurt him most to hear?”

“From the very beginning,” she told herself, “it has all been my fault. It is I who made him go into the Zoo. I called him mad, and mocked at him and made him suffer, when everything has been due to my ungovernable temper, my pride and my heartlessness. But all the time I have suffered, and now it is too late to do anything. He will never forgive me now. He will never bear to see me again and I must suffer always. If I had behaved differently perhaps I could have saved him and myself too. Now I have killed his love for me, and because of my folly he must suffer imprisonment and loneliness for ever, and I myself shall live miserably and never again dare hold up my head.”

Providence has not framed mankind for emotions such as these; they may be felt acutely, but in a healthy and high-spirited girl they are not of a very lasting nature.

It was only natural, then, that after giving up the greater part of the night to the bitterest self-reproach and to the completest humiliation of spirit, and after shedding enough tears to make her pillow uncomfortably damp, Miss Lackett should wake next morning in a very hopeful state of mind. She determined to visit Mr. Cromartie that afternoon, and despatched a note acquainting him with her intention in these terms:

Eaton Square.

DEAR JOHN,

You know well that the reason why I behaved badly is because I still love you. I am very much ashamed, please forgive me if you can. I must see you to-day. May I come in the afternoon? It is very important, because I don’t think we can either of us continue like this much longer. I will come in the afternoon. Please consent to see me, but I will not come unless you send me word by the messenger that I may.

Yours, JOSEPHINE LACKETT.

The moment that Josephine had sent off the messenger she regretted what she had said in it, and nothing seemed to her then more certain than that her letter would exasperate Cromartie still further. The next moment she thought to herself: “I have exposed myself to the greatest humiliation a woman can receive.” For a second or two this filled her with terror, and at that moment she would have readily killed herself. As neither poisons, poignards, pistols or precipices were within reach she did nothing, and in less than a minute the mood passed, and she said to herself:

“What does my humiliation matter? I suffered more of that last night than I can ever suffer again. Last night I humiliated myself in my own eyes. If John tries to humiliate me to-day he will find the work done. Meanwhile I must be self-controlled. I have no time to waste on my emotions; I have many things to do. I must see John, and as I am in love with him I have got to make terms with him. I have got to make a bargain with him.”

Acting on these thoughts she went out at once, meaning to walk to the Zoo without waiting any longer for the messenger boy to come back. But her mind was still busy.

“I will completely forgive him, and offer to become engaged to him secretly in return for his instantly leaving the Zoo.”

She did not reflect as she said this that nothing would be easier for her than to break off such an engagement, whereas if Cromartie once left the Gardens it was improbable that they would take him back.

But when she got to the Marble Arch she had to wait a little before crossing the road, and she noticed a man selling newspapers beside her. On the placard he carried she saw:

MAN IN THE ZOO MAULED BY MONKEY

For the first moment she did not connect the placard with her lover; she permitted herself to be amused at the thought of a spectator having his finger bitten, but in the next instant a doubt arose and she hurriedly bought the paper.

“This morning the ‘Man in the Zoo,’ whose real name is Mr. John Cromartie, was shockingly mauled by Daphne, the Orang in the next cage to his.” Josephine read the account of the affair right through very slowly.

It appeared that about eleven o’clock that morning Cromartie had been playing ball in his cage with the Caracal. In dodging the Caracal he had fallen heavily against the wire mesh partition separating him from the Orang. While he had rested there for a moment the spectators were horrified to see him seized by the Orang, which caught him by the hair. Mr. Cromartie had put up his hands to prevent his face being scratched, and the Orang had managed to get hold of his fingers and had cracked the bones of them. Mr. Cromartie had shown great courage and had succeeded in freeing himself before the arrival of the keeper. Two fingers were crushed and the bones fractured; he had sustained several severe scalp wounds and a scratched face. The only danger to be feared was blood poisoning, as the injuries inflicted by apes are well known to be peculiarly venomous.

On reading this Josephine suddenly remembered how the King of Greece had died from the effects of a monkey bite, and she became more and more alarmed. She called a taxi, got into it, and told the driver to take her to the Zoological Gardens as fast as he could. All the way there she was in a fever of agitation, and could settle nothing in her own mind.

Having arrived at the Zoo, she went straight to the house of the resident curator, and was just in time to see Mr. Cromartie being carried in on a stretcher, but before she could come up to it the door was shut in her face. She rang, but it was almost five minutes before the door was opened by a maidservant who took her card in, with the request that she might see the curator as she was a friend of Mr. Cromartie’s. Before the maid came back, however, the curator came out, and Josephine explained her visit without any embarrassment. She was invited in, and found herself in a fine well-lit dining-room in the presence of two gentlemen in morning dress, and both with bushy eyebrows. The curator introduced her as a friend of Mr. Cromartie’s, and they both gave her a very keen look and bowed.

Sir Walter Tintzel, the elder of the two, was a short man with a rather round red face; Mr. Ogilvie, a taller, youngish man, with a skin like parchment, and a glass eye into which she found herself staring. “How is the patient?” asked Josephine, falling at once into that state of mind which is produced by the presence of distinguished medical men, and particularly surgeons, a state of mind, that is, of almost complete blankness, when however upset one may have been the moment before, one finds all emotion suspended, or swallowed up in fog. All the faculties at such a moment are concentrated on behaving with an absurd decorum.

“It is a little too early to say, Miss Lackett,” replied Sir Walter Tintzel, who was filled with curiosity to find out more about her.

“My friend Mr. Ogilvie has just amputated a finger; in my opinion it would have been running an unjustifiable risk not to have done so. There were several minor injuries, but happily they did not require such drastic measures. May I ask, Miss Lackett, without impertinence, if you have known Mr. Cromartie long? You are, I understand, a personal friend, a close and dear friend of Mr. Cromartie’s.”

Miss Lackett opened her eyes rather wide at this remark, and replied:

“I was naturally anxious.... Yes, I am an old friend of Mr. Cromartie’s--and, if you like, a close friend.” She laughed. “Is there danger of blood-poisoning?”

“There is a risk of it, but we have taken every precaution.”

“The King of Greece died of being bitten by a monkey,” cried Josephine suddenly.

“That’s rubbish,” interrupted the curator, coming forward. “Why everybody in the Gardens has been more or less seriously bitten by monkeys at some time or other. It is always happening. It’s dreadful to think that the poor fellow should have lost a finger, but there’s no danger.”

“You are sure there’s no danger?” asked Josephine.

The curator appealed to the medical men. They allowed themselves to smile.

Josephine withdrew, and in the hall the curator said to her:

“Don’t worry about him, Miss Lackett; it’s a beastly thing of course to think of, but it’s not serious. He isn’t the King of Greece; the monkey isn’t that sort of monkey even. He’ll be up and about in a day or two at the most. By the way, is your father General Lackett?”

Josephine was surprised, but admitted it without hesitation.

“Oh, yes--he’s an old friend of mine. Drop in one day next week to tea and see how our friend is going on.”

Josephine left in very much better spirits than she had come, and though she once or twice was troubled by the recollection of Mr. Cromartie’s unconscious form, the head swathed in bandages, and the body covered with a blanket, she felt small anxiety. On the contrary, she very soon gave herself up to rosy visions of the future.

Thus nothing appeared to her to be more clear than that Mr. Cromartie would leave the Zoo, and the loss of a finger was perhaps not too high a price to pay for restoring him to ordinary ways, or perhaps she might say not too great a punishment for conduct such as his had been.

And it crossed her mind also that now there was no need for her to humble herself to Cromartie, for he would leave the Zoo and become reconciled to her now as a matter of course. It was for her to forgive him! She had had a narrow escape. What a weak position she might have been in had she seen him before the ape bit him! How strong a position she now occupied! She must, she reflected, take this lesson to heart and never act hurriedly on the impulse of the moment, otherwise she would give John every advantage and there would be no dealing with him at all. Next she recollected the letter she had sent him, and spent a little while trying to recall the exact terms of it. When she remembered that she had said that she was ashamed and had asked to be forgiven, she bit her lips with vexation, but the next moment she stopped short and said aloud: “How unworthy this is of you! How petty! How vulgar!”

And she remembered at that moment all the vulgar and horrible things she had felt when she had first learnt that John had gone to the Zoo, and how much ashamed she was of them afterwards, and how hatefully she had behaved on both of her visits to him. She told herself then that she ought to be ashamed, ought to ask forgiveness, and that she ought to be thankful that she had done so in her letter, but in the next instant she was saying to herself: “All the same, it won’t do to put myself at his mercy. I must keep the upper hand or my life won’t be worth living.” And after that her mind raced off again to visions of the future in which John was rewarded with her hand and they took a country house. Her father was an authority on fishponds and trout streams. He and Cromartie would of course lay out a fishpond. Perhaps there would be a moat round the house. But the figure who bent over her father’s shoulder at breakfast, pushing away the egg-boiling machine to look at a plan of the new trout hatchery, that figure was a very different person from Mr. Cromartie the mutilated, monkey-bitten man in the Zoo.

When Josephine got home she found a note which had been left for her, but which was not in Mr. Cromartie’s handwriting.

It ran as follows:

Infirmary, Zoo.

DEAR JOSEPHINE,

Your note has come by the messenger. I shall not be free to see you this afternoon, which relieves me from making the decision not to do so. You say that the reason you behave cruelly to me is because you love me. It is because I know that, that I have tried to do without your love. I think you are a character who will always torture the people you love. I cannot bear pain well; that alone makes us unsuited to each other. It is the principal reason why I never wish to see you again.

You are mistaken when you say that you have something of the first importance to tell me. Unless it is something to do with the arrangements which the Zoo authorities make with regard to the Ape-house, it cannot be of importance to me.

Please believe that I bear you no resentment for the past; indeed I still love you, but I mean what I say.

Yours ever, JOHN CROMARTIE.

When Josephine had read this letter over twice and had realised that it must have been written _after_ he had been bitten by the ape, and just before his finger was cut off, she gave up her hopes.