Part 1

Chapter 14,085 wordsPublic domain

Birds and Beasts

_Translated by_ A. R. Allinson _from the French of_ Camille Lemonnier

_Illustrated by_ E. J. Detmold

London: George Allen & Company, Ltd. _Ruskin House_, Rathbone Place. Mcmxi

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

Contents and Illustrations

PAGE Jack and Murph 1 The Captive Goldfinch 53 Strange Adventures of a Little White Rabbit 91 “Monsieur Friquet” 106 A Lost Dog 133 Misadventures of an Owl 156

Birds and Beasts

Jack and Murph

Jack and Murph were friends, old friends, trusty and tried.

It was now nearly six years since the day chance had brought them together as members of the same company. Jack had come straight from the African forests; he had crossed the seas, and set foot on the continent of Europe for the first time; his amazement knew no bounds.

It is not for nothing a little fellow of his sort is torn from the freedom of his vagabond life in the woods and surrendered to the tender mercies of a showman of performing animals. He learned to know the cruel tedium of captivity; shut up in a cage, he thought sadly of his merry gambols in the tree-tops; his little face grew wan and withered, and he came near pining to death. But time damped the keenness of his grief; by dint of seeing around him other little creatures that, like himself, had wearied for their native wilds, then little by little had grown reconciled to their fate, and now seemed to get a prodigious amount of fun out of their new life, he made the best of the bars, the tainted air of the booth, and the clown’s grimaces, rehearsing his drolleries before the animals’ cages.

At the same time he could never quite share the gaiety of his companions in misfortune. While they were enjoying everlasting games of hide-and-seek, scuffling, squabbling, pelting each other with nuts, he would cower timidly in a corner, too sad at heart to join in their noisy merriment. Sometimes, when his feelings grew too much for him, he would break out in a series of sharp, shrill outcries, or wail like a new-born babe in his doleful despair.

The master was very fond of him, for he was both intelligent and teachable. In a very short time he learned to do his musket drill, to walk the slack-rope, and use the spring-board. But these accomplishments only earned him the ill-will of the other pupils. There was never a prank they did not play him. No sooner had he cracked a nut, to eat the kernel, than a hand would dart over his shoulder and snatch the morsel just as he was putting it between his teeth. They slapped his face, pinched his tail, scarified his head with their nails, jumped upon him, or half strangled him in a corner, till a day came at last when his master, noticing how he was bullied, put him in a separate cage all by himself. But this loneliness only made him more unhappy still; he spent his life in lamentation, sitting stock-still all day long, with his arms hanging limp, and his eyes fixed on vacancy, refusing either to eat or drink. This would never do; so they left him at liberty to wander at will in the house.

Oh! but this house was not a bit like mine or yours; yet it had doors and windows like any other house, but so tiny these doors and windows were, they were hardly worth mentioning. Imagine a house on four wheels, and no higher than a man of middle size, with three little windows high up admitting light and air from outside; you entered by a wooden staircase that looked more like the ladder of a windmill than anything else.

This queer construction rolled most part of the year along the high roads, jolting, gee-wo, gee-hup! in and out of the ruts, and carting about in its interior men and animals, to say nothing of household stuff—beds, cooking-stoves, chests crammed with clothes, and a whole heap of other things. An old horse, who was little better than a bag of bones, was in the shafts; when a halt was called, they let him crop the grass alongside the hedgerows.

It was the funniest thing, being hauled along like this, tossing and tumbling in this box on wheels where the furniture seemed to be always just on the point of starting a polka. The table would throw up its legs in the air, and the chairs turn head over heels, while the pots and pans knocked together in the corners, making the quaintest music, sharp or flat in key according to the jolts.

Jack, perched atop of a big press, held on tooth and nail to save a tumble. More often than not he found himself under the table along with his good friend Murph, a Stoic philosopher, who let nothing ever disturb his equanimity, but calmly went on beating the bush of his thick woolly coat in search of the game that lived there. All the while the caravan, bumping and thumping with a terrific rattle, was tacking and luffing over the rolling billows of the stony roads.

III

It is high time to tell you that Jack was a dear, pretty little monkey of the chimpanzee kind, with tiny, delicate hands, nervous and semi-transparent, almost like a sick child’s. He was no bigger, the whole body of him, than a pocket-handkerchief, and you could have easily hidden him inside your hat. He was slim and slender, daintily made, with narrow chest and sloping shoulders—a creature all nerves, with a wonderful little pale phiz of his own, puckered and wrinkled, and long, drooping eyelids, greyish-white, and as thin as an onion skin, that slowly, rhythmically, opened and closed over brown eyes ringed with yellow. He bore the solemn, serious look of those who suffer; his eyes seemed fixed on something beyond the visible world, and now and again he would pass his long, dry fingers across his eyes as if to wipe away a tear. He seldom gambolled, and never indulged in the grotesque contortions of other apes; their restless, ceaseless activity seemed foreign to his nature, and even his grimaces had nothing in common with theirs.

Noise scared him; he was never angry, but habitually silent and thoughtful. He preferred to lurk alone in dark corners, where he would spend long hours, squatted on his tail, almost motionless, dreaming sadly of some mysterious, unattainable future. But, for all his unlikeness to his colleagues and their comicality, his queer little crumpled, wrinkled face never failed to produce its effect on the spectators. Jack was perfectly irresistible; no one _could_ look at him for any length of time without bursting out laughing. His aspect was at once so piteous and so ridiculous, his gaze so pathetic and so grotesque, his deadly earnestness so side-splitting, while his eyelids would droop suddenly ever and anon in so anxious and appealing a wink, that the result was comic beyond belief. An old, old man’s head on a baby’s body, a mask that was for ever changing, twitching, wrinkling, with eyes that looked out grave, intense, solemn, from beneath a low, flat brow crowned by what looked for all the world like a wig!

The louder the merriment he excited, the more serious Jack became. On show days, while the audience was convulsed with mirth, the gravity of his mien, the careworn look in his eyes, over which the lids dropped mechanically at regular intervals, as if weighed down with their load of melancholy, reached the acme of fantastic absurdity.

Alas! men cannot tell what monkeys are thinking of. If they knew, they would not always laugh. Jack was dreaming of the sun, the vast green forests, the friends he had left behind; he was dreaming of the delights of swinging high in the air, cradled in the leafy hammocks of the boughs, dreaming of the trailing lianas, of the romps and games with his fellows throwing cocoanuts at one another’s heads, and of the endless chivyings and chasings from tree-top to tree-top above the rolling billows of the wind-tossed jungles, through which the wild beasts—elephants, panthers, and lions—plough their way like ships on the high seas, leaving in their wake a broad furrow of floating odours and deep-toned sounds.

But Jack had a friend, and he never embarked on his voyages into the far-away dreamland without calling on his old chum Murph to join him.

Yes, Murph gambolled with him in the tropical jungles, Murph frolicked with him in the tall grasses, Murph and he amused themselves together at never-ending games of play; if ever it was granted him to see his native land again, he fully hoped to take Murph along with him.

Poor Jack! he did not understand that the worthy Murph, acrobat as he was, would have found it hard to follow him in the lofty regions where his congeners are wont to disport themselves, nearer to the stars than the earth. Not a doubt of it, Murph would have had to kick his heels at the foot of a tree, while his friend was off and away aloft; and the smallest of his perils would have been to find himself, on looking round, face to face with a python-snake, just uncoiling his folds to spring, or else, on the river-banks, confronted with the gaping jaws of a crocodile.

Murph could play dominoes, tell fortunes, hunt for a handkerchief in a spectator’s pocket, read the paper. Murph had many other accomplishments besides, but it is far from certain that he would have extricated himself successfully from a _tête-à-tête_ of this sort with beasts that could boast neither his education nor his manners.

The liking was reciprocal. From the very first Jack had taken a fancy to the big woolly-coated dog, as woolly as a sheep, who never barked or growled or grumbled or showed his teeth—so unlike the other dogs in the menagerie; in the same way Murph, the big dog, had formed an affection for the well-behaved, sad-faced little ape, who never pulled his tail and never tried to scratch out his eyes.

As it happened, the showman had made up his mind to make them perform together. Murph was the best runner in the troupe; there was nobody like him for a round trot or a swinging gallop, for wheeling suddenly round and dropping to his knees just before making his exit, nobody to match Murph, always good-tempered and imperturbable, always on the look-out, with his bright eyes half hid under the bushy eyebrows, for a bit of sugar and a round of applause.

Jack, for his part, had very soon become a brilliant horseman, lissom and fearless, an adept at leaping through the hoops and vaulting the bars. Thus the two seemed made for each other, both in body and mind. They bore the hardships of the life together, and they shared its successes; by dint of standing so often back against back and muzzle against muzzle, they found their hearts brought close together too, and became fast friends. Murph was never to be seen without Jack; wherever Jack was, Murph was there as well; they lived curled up on the same rug, in the same corner, under the same table, Murph licking Jack in the neck, and Jack stroking Murph’s nose, each bound to each in perfect trust and amity.

Murph was older than Jack by nearly nine years, and his years made him nearly as serious-minded as his friend. But it was a different sort of gravity. Murph was neither morose nor disillusioned; his was the gentle seriousness of old age. He had seen many things since he had been in the world, but life did not appear to have left only its dregs in him. He still believed in springtide, in friendship, in the master’s kind heart; then he had neither family nor native land to regret, for he had been born in the menagerie of a father and mother broken in like himself to circle the trapeze and leap through the hoop.

His horizon was bounded by the four walls of the caravan in which, as a puppy still sucking at his mother’s breast, he had been carted from fair to fair. Day by day he had watched from behind the window-panes the long procession of cities and countries filing past; he had visited most parts of Europe, in company with the strange _omnium-gatherum_ of apes, goats, parrots, and dogs that at each halting-place was the delight of the infant population. But he had never taken it upon him to covet the kingdom of this world; he had never craved to roam at liberty through the streets; never, in one word, had he so much as dreamt of playing truant. He was a very learned dog, and, like other learned people, he lived absorbed in his own thoughts, self-centred within the circle of his meditations, seeking nothing of things outside.

Murph was a poodle by breed, and you might have searched long before you found a bigger or better-built one. Standing well on his legs, with a good, strong, supple back of his own, he carried his head high, as a self-respecting poodle should. I mean, of course, in the days when Murph was still young, for since age had crept on him, it _would_ droop more or less; but even so, there was something proud and dignified about its carriage that always attracted attention. He walked slowly and sedately, as if intent on the solution of an ever-insoluble problem. His thick, curly fleece clothed his neck like a mane, while a stout pair of long drooping moustaches gave him the look of an old cavalry officer; his skin was smooth and polished where the coat had been cut very close; he wore heavy ruffles round his ankles, and his tail ended in a woolly tuft.

Thus accoutred, Murph was a fine-looking dog; the curs of low degree that came prowling round the van, and caught a glimpse of him through the crack of the door, gazed at him with admiration. He had the majestic port of beings destined to greatness; it was easy to see he might have been a diplomatist, or a great general, if nature, in fashioning his lot, had not chosen rather to give him the shape of a poodle; nor was Murph slow to appreciate and enjoy the impression he produced.

Fine fellow as he was, he was not altogether free from vanity; the humblest animal with which Murph compared himself was the lion; he had seen one once in a travelling menagerie, and been struck by his own likeness to the king of beasts. Why, had he not, like the lion, a mane about his neck, a tuft to his tail, and bracelets of hair about his ankles? Had he not likewise his Olympian look and superb carriage? By dint of a little imagination, Murph had come to believe the lion a degenerated type of poodle dog.

But let us pass lightly over his foibles; every one has his little weaknesses. Time, moreover, that damps the foolish ardour of mankind and dogkind, had tamed our friend’s ambitions. He was by now as contemplative and calm as some wise philosopher satiated with the glories of this world. More often on his back than on his feet, he would watch the younger dogs, his juniors in the profession, capering and giving themselves the airs of a drum-major heading his regiment, without any other feeling towards them but one of kindly indulgence; and if any one else was disposed to rebuke them, he would shake his head, as much as to say, “There, there, we have all of us done the like in our day!”

VII

Jack had come as a solace to his old age; he had loved him as a friend, almost as a son, with a truly fatherly affection.

This little suffering, delicate creature, so morbidly nervous and excitable, had roused in him some mysterious instinct of protection, that had grown little by little and ended by forming an unbreakable bond of brotherhood. Ceaselessly he watched over his protégé, sheltered him, defended him, kept for him the best of his bodily heat and his warm heart. If a bullying animal ran after Jack, in one bound the latter was beside Murph, who would show a determined front, that soon sent the would-be tormentor to the right-about. One day, indeed, Murph, usually so good-tempered, showed his teeth to the master himself, who, for some small fault, had thought good to lift his whip at the little monkey. If Jack was a-cold—and he was always shivering, blow the wind from what quarter it might—quick he would slip between Murph’s paws and cuddle against his breast in the warm, cosy place. Murph was Jack’s special providence.

Thus they had been living for nearly half-a-dozen years. Never a cloud had dimmed their good accord; never an angry snap of the teeth—never a pettish fit; mankind might have taken a lesson in the art of friendship from them. Thus they had grown old, loving, fondling, helping each other, making between them the prettiest happy family ever known in the world, never weary one of the other, but realising the ideal of the most perfect union.

Mutual esteem further increased their affection. Murph had never seen an ape more alert and clever, more intelligent and active than Jack; he would gladly have stood for hours watching him performing his tricks, clinging to the cords with his delicate, dry little hands, then hurling himself into space to alight again on his feet, or else holding on by his tail and swinging from earth to heaven on the trapeze.

On his side Jack—Jack the cynic, whose lack-lustre eyes seemed incapable of any curiosity—admired his friend Murph as a creature of extraordinary gifts.

And what wonderful things the good dog could do, to be sure! I have mentioned some of them; I could tell of many others. Murph could climb a ladder; Murph could walk along a line of bottle necks; Murph could nose out the prettiest lady in the audience; Murph could play the cornet-à-piston; Murph could smoke a pipe; Murph was almost a man.

VIII

It did one good to see him “come on,” a big pink bow knotted in the tufts that adorned his tail. He would enter gravely, bow politely to right and left, then cast a questioning look at his master, quite motionless the while, except for a slight quiver of the tail, waiting for the conclusion of the introductory remarks which the “old man” never failed to address to the audience. At last came the loud “Hi, Murph!”—and the good dog began his evening’s work.

He could have given points to the most experienced actors by his aplomb, his punctiliousness, his patient and never-flagging attention. Nothing ever distracted him from his part. Wags would amuse themselves sometimes by offering him a lump of sugar, or even pitch a sausage or a cake right between his paws; but Murph was adamant against such temptations. How the crowd cheered and clapped hands and stamped feet when he went bounding from hoop to hoop, so supple and nimble and self-possessed, never losing step or missing a spring, striking the paper with his head fair and square in the middle every time, crashing through and landing again on his feet, gravely and yet so elegantly.

His tricks finished, he would repeat his bows to right and left, still quite sedate and unintoxicated by the thunders of applause. The fact is, Murph respected both his audience and himself; he knew how to keep his feelings to himself—how different from those ill-trained dogs that yelp and bark and lose their heads in the hurly-burly, quite forgetting that the finest thing on earth is to take one’s triumph modestly.

But Murph was particularly admirable in the tricks he went through with Jack. Each of the two friends seemed made to help out the other, and each vied with the other in sacrificing himself to enhance the general effect. Now it was “Mazeppa’s ride”; you know—Mazeppa bound on the back of his fiery charger and borne on and on in wild career over the steppes in a whirlwind of flying stones and smothering dust. Now it was a _powder-play_ of Bedouins, pursuing, retreating, prancing, curvetting, rising in their stirrups and brandishing their muskets; or else a mortal combat between two troops of horse, firing at each other, reloading and firing again. The spectacle, whatever it was, was always thrilling.

Murph would stand waiting in the side-scenes for his cue. Suddenly he would give a spring, a tremendous spring, and like a bomb-shell he was on the stage, with mane erect and flashing eyes; clearing every obstacle, upsetting everything he encountered, animate or inanimate, he hurled himself on to the boards; on his back, clinging to his woolly coat, shaking and shivering, teeth hard set and mouth awry, rode a little black figure wrapped in a voluminous burnous that flapped in the wind.

And bing! bang! bang! as his steed dashed by, with all the flash and dazzle of red saddle braided with gold, scarlet bridle, and red, green, blue spangles, shaking the boards, rattling the lustres, rustling the curtain, to reiterated cries of “Hi! hip! hurrah, hurrah!” and the crack of the whip going off like pistol-shots behind, Jack would fire off his gun over and over again, till he was shrouded in a cloud of smoke, through which he could be discerned still tireless, still indefatigable, bestriding Murph in every possible position, now perched on the neck, now on the crupper. He seemed made of iron, the frail little being! Murph might prance and jib and shy, buck-jump and leap fences—nothing could unseat Jack. The performance over, the latter would shake his little head under its jockey-cap two or three times, by way of bow, and so exit, as his friend the poodle gave one last tremendous bound that carried him and his rider out of sight.

The enthusiasm of the spectators followed him behind the scenes, and the floor trembled and shook under the drumming of heavy boots. The applause grew deafening, and suddenly Jack and Murph made a final whirlwind dash across the stage, executed a last frantic _fantasia_—and retired for good and all.

But, alas! Murph was getting old. His exertions tired him dreadfully; after each performance he had to be rubbed down and attended to, or he would have lain moaning and groaning for an hour.

His master was sorry for him, and with deep regret—for he saw no glimpse among his troupe of any talent to take the place of the “falling star”—he set him to do his more quiet tricks—playing dominoes, finding handkerchiefs, walking on bottles.

At the same time he resolved to try a young poodle to fill the hole in the receipts his good, faithful Murph’s retirement was bound to make. He trained the animal to run in circles, to leap through hoops, to clear obstacles, and one fine day clapped Jack on his back.

Banco—that was the poodle’s name—had not gone three steps before he was bitten, beaten, garrotted, and left blinded and bleeding. The master punished Jack severely, and presently made a fresh attempt. But, no—Jack _would_ not obey; he tore Banco’s ear in two, and then sprang from the saddle and hid himself in a dark corner.

Much the same thing happened at every new trial. The whip was no sort of use; Jack was not to be moved. At last, wearied out, the showman gave in, and Jack and Murph remained inseparable, living and working together as before.

One night Murph came in from his performance utterly worn out, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his strength exhausted; his midday meal had proved indigestible, and, to cap all, the applause to-night had been faint and feeble.

Ah! few of us know how actors live on that elusive thing, the favour of the public, and what renewed force, when they are grown old and have one foot in the grave already, what fresh vigour the smiles of a delighted audience instil in their veins, when the blood is beginning to run feeble!