Part 5

Everything she had been feeling was revealed as ridiculous folly. If John could write like that at the moment when he must have been most wishing to escape from confinement, she saw that her plans for his regeneration were impossible. She went up to her room and lay down. All was lost.

That morning Mr. Cromartie had taken his breakfast of rolls, butter, Oxford marmalade, and coffee as usual. When it had been cleared away he began to play ball with the Caracal.

For this purpose he used an ordinary tennis ball, and throwing it on the floor of his cage, made it bounce on to the netting and back to him. The game therefore resembled fives, the object, however, being, on his part, to prevent the Caracal intercepting the ball, which, by the way, he was rarely able to do more than three or four times running, for the cat was very quick on its legs and had a good eye.

After they had been playing for about ten minutes Mr. Cromartie slipped backwards in taking a ball

which bounced high, and fell heavily against the wire netting wall of his cage. Before he could get his balance he felt himself taken hold of by the hair, and understood at once that it was his neighbour the Orang who had got him in its clutches. The brute then got a finger as far as Mr. Cromartie’s ear and slit it through, though not injuring the drum. Mr. Cromartie managed to turn his head then in order to see his assailant, and found his face was now exposed, and his forehead was scratched. To protect himself he put one hand in front of his face, and was pushing himself away from the netting with the other when the Orang caught hold of two of his fingers in its teeth. The pain of this made him jerk his head free, and the lock of hair by which the Orang held him came right out of his scalp.

The ape still held on to his fingers like a bulldog. Just then his Caracal, which had been dodging about between his legs, got one paw through the netting and raked the Orang’s thighs with his claws, but the ape did not leave go even then. Mr. Cromartie, who had a very cool head for a man in such a situation, took out a couple of wax vestas from his pocket, struck them on his heel, and thrust the flaring fusees through the wire into the ape’s muzzle and in that way made him leave go his hold at once.

This circumstance of his feeling for the fusees in his pocket while the ape was slowly grinding his fingers to a mere pulp very greatly impressed the spectators, who beyond shouting for assistance were powerless to do anything. No less remarkable was the way in which, directly he was free, he pulled away the Caracal from the netting before the ape could catch hold of him, and this though the cat was beside itself with the fury of the fight. But strangely enough in doing this he did not get scratched, either because he pulled him off by the scruff with his uninjured hand and carried him right out of the cage, or because the Caracal knew him even at that moment.

Collins arrived just as this happened and the shock was almost too much for him; it was remarked that he was deathly white and could scarcely speak. Mr. Cromartie was covered with blood, blood pouring from his ear and his fingers, and all his hair matted with blood, but he came back at once after locking up his Caracal, to show the spectators that he was not badly hurt; they for their part clapped their hands with joy, either because they were glad to see him escape, or because they were grateful for having been presented with such an unusual spectacle for nothing.

Cromartie then went back to his inner room and Collins led him off at once to the infirmary, where he was given first aid. It was some little while after this that he received Josephine’s letter and dictated an answer for the messenger to take to her. There was some little delay in the messenger getting to him.

Directly he had despatched the letter he was anæsthetised and the third finger of his right hand amputated.

After the operation and before he had regained consciousness, he was taken to the house of the curator, who had decided that he would be more comfortable there than anywhere else. Although at the time Mr. Cromartie had behaved with perfect composure and had borne his injuries without flinching, not only at the time of the assault, but for over three hours afterwards, and had been able to compose a letter during that time as if nothing had happened, he had received a great nervous shock the effects of which only became apparent next day. He spent a very disturbed night, but in the morning was much better; ate an ordinary breakfast but did not get up, and Sir Walter Tintzel, who visited him about eleven o’clock, was sanguine and predicted a rapid recovery. In the afternoon he was restless and suffered acutely, and as evening came on his temperature rose rapidly. That night he was in a condition of fitful delirium, occasionally falling asleep and waking up with nightmares which persisted even when he appeared to be wide awake.

On the second day the fever increased and blood-poisoning in an acute form was recognised, but the patient was altogether rational in his mind. On the third day the symptoms of blood-poisoning were more pronounced. The patient fell into a delirium which lasted without intermission for the following three days. Most of the feverish hallucinations which filled his mind then passed completely away when he recovered consciousness. Yet Mr. Cromartie had a clear and vivid memory of one of them. This was, he knew, nothing but a dream, yet it seemed but to have just happened to him, and the dream or vision was singular enough for it to be put down here.

In the Strand people were hurrying along in little crowds like gusts of dirty smoke that was blown at intervals in wisps across the road. They were all coming towards him as he walked down from Somerset House towards Trafalgar Square. No one was walking the same way that he was, and none of the people he met brushed against him or even looked at him, but they melted away to right and left and so let him pass by. Sometimes when a band of them passed him he caught a whiff of their odour, and the smell sickened him.

They were frightened, they hurried by, but he was thinking of that great man Sir Christopher Wren, who had planned the street he was then walking in. But nobody cared, nobody had built it, though the plans were all there rolled up and ready, and just as good to-day as they were in the reign of King Charles II.

He lifted up his head presently, and up in the sky a white streak was being deliberately drawn. It was an aeroplane writing advertisements. So he stood still in the middle of the hurrying crowds to watch it; now he could just see the tiny aeroplane like a little brown insect. Slowly in the sky a long straight line was drawn and then a loop--surely it must be the figure 6. And then the aeroplane stopped throwing out smoke and became almost invisible as it went off tittering across the sky.

The numeral swelled and grew and was being slowly blown away when all of a sudden another white streak appeared and the aeroplane was drawing something else. But as he watched he was aware that after all it was the same thing again, another 6, and when it had done that the aeroplane mounted again into the sky and drew another 6, but already its first work was undone by the wind and in a few moments there was nothing to be seen in the sky but a few wisps of smoke.

For a second or two Cromartie felt himself rocking in the aeroplane, which went humming away across the sky before falling again sideways like a snipe bleating; that was only a moment, as when you shut your eyes and fancy that you can feel the earth spinning in space, and then Cromartie was walking out of the Strand into Trafalgar Square. It was empty, and he looked at the Nelson monument with wonder. Landseer’s great beasts planted their feet flat down before them. What were they, he wondered? Lions or Leopards, or perhaps Bears? He could not say. And suddenly he saw that his right hand was bleeding and his fingers gone. A great crowd had entered the Square; the fountains were playing, the sun was shining, and he got on to a scarlet omnibus. But very soon he saw that the people were whispering together on the omnibus and they were all looking at him, and he knew that it was because they saw his wounded hand. He put his other hand up to his forehead and there was blood on that also. He was afraid then of the people on the bus and so he got out. But wherever he wandered the people stopped and stared at him and whispered, and as he walked among them they drew aside and formed into little groups and gazed after him as he went by, and it was because they knew him by the wounds on his head and on his hand.

They were all of them muttering and looking at him with hatred, but something restrained them, so that though their eyes were like sharp daggers they were one and all afraid to point their fingers....

He was going to vote. He would cast his vote. Nothing should stop him. At last he saw the two entrances to the underground voting hall with Ladies written over one and Gentlemen written over the other, and he went downstairs. But when he asked the attendant for his voting card the man took down a large book bound in lambskin with the wool left on, and turned over several pages and looked down them. At last he said: “But your name is not written in the Book of Life, Mr. Cromartie. You must give up your secret, you know, if you wish to be registered.” When he heard this Mr. Cromartie felt sick, and he noticed the smell that came from all the other voters in their ballot boxes; he hesitated, and at last he said:

“But if I do not give up my secret may I not vote?”

“No, Mr. Cromartie. Nobody can vote who does not give up his secret, that is called the secrecy of the ballot--but it is out of the question for you to vote, anyhow ... you bear the Mark of the Beast.”

And Mr. Cromartie looked at his hand and felt his forehead and saw that he did indeed bear the Mark of the Beast where it had bitten him, and he knew that he was an outcast. That was what everybody had whispered. He would not give up his secret so he was rejected by mankind and hated by them, for he frightened them. They were all alike, they had no secrets, but he had kept his and now the Beast had set its Mark upon him, and he seemed terrible to them all, and he himself was afraid. “The Beast has set his Mark on me,” he said to himself. “It will slowly eat me up. I cannot escape now, and one thing is as bad as another. On the whole I would rather the Beast slowly ate me up than give up so much, and the stench of my fellows disgusts me.”

And then he heard the Beast moving restlessly behind some partition; he heard the rustling of straw and the great creature slowly licking itself all over; and then its smell, sweet, and warm, and awful, swallowed him up, and he lay quite still on the floor of the cage, listening to its tail going thump, thump, thump on the floor beside him. Terror could go no further, and at last he opened his eyes and slowly understood that it was his own heart which was beating and no beast’s tail, and all about him there were clean sheets and flowers and a smell of iodoform. But his fear lasted for half that day.

In a fortnight Mr. Cromartie was pronounced out of danger, but he continued in so weak a state for some time afterwards that he was not allowed to receive any visitors, so that although Josephine called every day it was only to hear the latest news of how he had passed the night, and to leave flowers for the sickroom.

In the following weeks Mr. Cromartie made a rapid recovery; that is to say, though by no means restored to his ordinary health, he was able first to get up for an hour in the middle of the day, and then to go for a short walk round the Gardens.

The doctors attending upon him suggested at this time that an entire change of scene would be beneficial, and the curator, far from putting any obstacles in the way of this, frequently urged the patient to go for a month’s holiday to Cornwall. But in this he was met by a steady and obstinate refusal, or rather by complete passivity and non-resistance. Mr. Cromartie refused to take a holiday. He declined to go away anywhere by himself, though he added that he was completely at the curator’s disposal and prepared to go to any place where he was sent in charge of a keeper. After some days, during which the curator proposed first one scheme and then another, the plan of Mr. Cromartie’s being sent away was abandoned. In the first place it was difficult to spare a keeper, or for that matter to find a suitable man among the staff to go with Mr. Cromartie, and it was difficult to find a suitable place where they should be sent.

But the chief reason why these schemes were given up was because of the apathetic and even hostile attitude which the invalid adopted to them, and because it occurred to the curator that this hostility was perhaps not without a reason.

And indeed there is no doubt that Mr. Cromartie felt that if he once took such a holiday as had been suggested he would find it very much harder to go back into captivity at the end of it, and he opposed it because he was resolved not to escape from what he conceived were his obligations.

It was therefore decided that Mr. Cromartie should go straight back to his cage, though it was impressed upon him that he would not be expected to be on view to the public any longer than he wished, and that he must lie down to rest in his inner room for two or three hours every day.

In this way, and by taking him for motor-car drives for a couple of hours or so after dark, it was hoped that he would be able to regain his accustomed health and shake off that state of apathy which seemed his most alarming symptom to the medical men who attended him.

But before Cromartie went back to his old quarters he was to hear a piece of news from the curator which concerned him very closely, though he did not at first realise the full significance of it.

The curator was so confused in imparting this information, and so apologetic, and occupied so much time with a preamble explaining how much the Zoological Society felt themselves indebted to him, that Mr. Cromartie had some difficulty in following what he said, but at last he got at the gist of it, and the long and the short of the matter was: The experiment of exhibiting a man had been a much greater success than any of the Committee had dared to hope; such a success, indeed, that it had decided to follow it up by having a second man, a negro. It had actually engaged him two or three days since, and had installed him only that day. The intention of the Committee was eventually to establish a “Man-house” which should contain specimens of all the different races of mankind, with a Bushman, South Sea Islanders, etc., in native costume, but such a collection could of course only be formed gradually and as occasion offered.

The embarrassment of the poor curator as he made these revelations was so extreme that Cromartie could only think of how best to set him once more at his ease, and though he had a very distinct moment of annoyance when he heard of the negro, yet he suppressed it completely. When the curator had been persuaded that Cromartie bore him no grudge for these innovations, nay more, that he was perfectly indifferent to them, his joy and relief were as overwhelming as his distress and embarrassment had been before.

First he blew out a great breath, and mopped his forehead with a big silk handkerchief; then, his honest face quite transformed with happiness, he seized Cromartie by the hand, and then by the lapel, and laughed again and again while he explained that he had opposed the project with all his might because he was sure Cromartie would not like it, and after he had been overruled he had not known how to break the news to him. He vowed he had not slept for two nights thinking about it, but now when he learnt that Cromartie actually approved of the plan, he felt a new man. “I am the biggest fool in the world,” said he; “my imagination runs away with me. I am always thinking of how other people are going to be upset, and then it turns out that they don’t give a row of pins about the whole affair and I am the only person who feels upset at all ... all on account of somebody else.... Ha! Ha! Ha! It has been just like that over and over again with my wife. It is always happening to me. Well now I’ll go full blast ahead with the new ‘Man-house,’ because, you know, it’s a damned good notion. I felt that the whole time, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that it was unfair to you.”

But Mr. Cromartie did not share his enthusiasm; he merely repeated to himself, as he had done so often before, that he intended observing his side of the contract so long as the Zoo kept its own, and that there was nothing in all this which infringed or invalidated the contract in any way. But when Mr. Cromartie went into his cage he saw a black man in the cage next door--he was brushing a black bowler hat--it came as a great shock to Mr. Cromartie to realise that this man was the neighbour about whom the curator had spoken. This negro was almost coal black, a jovial fellow, dressed in a striped pink and green shirt, a mustard-coloured suit, and patent leather boots. When he saw Mr. Cromartie he at once wheeled round, and saying “The interesting invalid has arrived,” walked up to the partition separating him from Cromartie and said to him: “Allow me to welcome you back to what is now the Man-house. If I may introduce myself, Joe Tennison: I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Cromartie, it is a real pleasure to have a man next door.” Cromartie bowed stiffly and said “Good afternoon” very awkwardly, but the negro was not abashed, and leaned against the wire partition between them so that it bulged.

“They are going to clear all that poor trash away now,” he said, pointing at the Chimpanzee beyond Cromartie. “They isn’t to be kept with us any more, nasty jealous brutes; bite your fingers off if they catch you.”

Cromartie turned and looked at the Chimpanzee; it had always seemed to him rather a pathetic beast, but how much more so now while his new neighbour Tennison was speaking of it! And not for the first time he felt a friendly sympathy for the ugly little ape. Indeed he would far rather have seen the savage old Orang back in her place than have this insufferably verbose fellow patronising the animals near him.

For the moment Cromartie was quite at a loss, and had no idea what to reply to the stream of Mr. Tennison’s remarks. He had said nothing at all when a minute or two later he was relieved by the arrival of Collins with his Caracal, which had been sent back to his old cage in the cat-house after Mr. Cromartie’s injuries.

The pleasure of the two friends at once more being together was unbounded, and was shown by each of them very strongly after his own fashion. For at first the Caracal trotted up to Cromartie debonairly enough, as if he were just come to give him a sniff, then he began purring loudly and rubbed himself a score of times against Cromartie’s legs, winding himself about them, and finally he sprang right up into his friend’s arms, licked his face and his hair, and curled up for a moment or two as if he would sleep there; but no, this was not for long, for he sprang down again. Then he began trotting round the cage, sniffed in the corners, leapt on the table and made certain that all was well.

When Joe Tennison called to him, the Caracal passed by without giving him a glance, and it was just the same with his friend too, for when Cromartie heard the negro begin talking to him he just nodded his head and went into his inner room. But once there Mr. Cromartie reflected that this negro was to be his companion and neighbour for some years, and it would never do to run away from him every time he spoke. Somehow he must make Tennison respect his privacy without making an enemy of him, and at that moment Mr. Cromartie saw no way of doing this. However, he took down a book of Waley’s poems translated from the Chinese, and went back into his cage with it in his hand, and then sat down and began reading.

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 trips Up perilous places; sometimes, leap after leap, Like lightning flits through the woods. Sometimes he saunters with a sad, forsaken air; Then suddenly peeps round Beaming 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 unravel The tale of all his tricks? Alas, one trait With the human tribe he shares; their sweets his sweet, Their bitter is his bitter. Off sugar from the vat Of 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 long Gaze, 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 the negro 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?”