The Elephant Keeper Read online

  “Lizzy Tindall?” asked John. “Who would that be now?”

  “Why, you silly man, he means Anne’s daughter,” Margaret said, “only she is not Lizzy Tindall now, she is poor Mrs. Shadwick.”

  “Shadwick?”

  “She lives in Gillerton now. She will be pleased to see you, I am sure.”

  This was another and much harder blow for which, I confess, I had not been prepared. Dick Shadwick! Memories of the many indignities that I and Jenny had suffered at his hands came back to me.

  As soon as I could, I thanked them and walked away. My road now lay through Gillerton, and while I had no desire to meet Dick again, I retained a strong curiosity with regard to Lizzy. If I might only set eyes on her for a moment, or exchange a few brief words, I thought, I would be satisfied for ever.

  A woman whom I asked for directions mumbled, “You be n’t her husband, be you?” When I replied that I was not, that I was merely an old acquaintance, she said—“If she be n’t at home, you may find her at work, most like.” I wondered whether she meant at the Hall, imagining that Lizzy must still work there, but the woman pointed me far across the fields, toward a little hazel copse.

  In the days of my youth a path had led straight over the fields to the copse; now a quickset hedge blocked the way. I squeezed through its thorns and crossed the next part of the field. This had lately been put to the plow, and after the rain the earth stuck to my boots in clods, but the wind was behind and blew me along like a ship. Once I had pushed through a second line of quickset I saw a party of labourers digging a long ditch around a part of the copse, for what purpose I do not know. Waist-deep in the ditch were some twenty or more men, women, and children, bending and straightening to throw up loads of what seemed to be as much water as earth. All were much the same brown hue as the ditch itself, as if the mud ran through their veins. I approached a woman in the nearer part of the ditch, and asked if she could tell me whether Mrs. Shadwick were here, whereupon she called to another woman, “Betty! Betty!” and Betty put down her spade and climbed from the ditch. “He be wanting Lizzy Shadwick!” Betty looked eagerly at me. “It is about Dick, is it? You have seen him?” I replied, to her obvious disappointment, that I had not, I knew nothing of Dick, but that I used to know Lizzy from many years earlier, when I worked at the Hall. At this she said, “You cannot be Tom Page.” I was greatly surprized that this woman Betty, whom I had never seen in my life, should know my name. “I am.”—“She has spoken of you, sometimes, and the Elephants.” In both her voice and manner she seemed less than friendly, and when I asked if Lizzy were present, Betty at first made no reply. Then she said: “It will be a great shock to her, you must be gentle.”

  She turned on her heel and walked some way along the ditch. I followed, wondering which of the diggers was Lizzy. Betty stopped at a toiling figure, dark with mud. “Lizzy dear, stop that now, it is someone you know, it is someone come to see you.”

  The woman looked up, and yes, it was Lizzy, it was Lizzy indeed, I knew at once, it could be no one else; yet how pinched and hollowed her face had become! Her eyes started from their sockets. “Lizzy,” said I, “it is I, Tom Page, how do you do?” and leant forward to give her my hand, to help her from the ditch, but she ignored it and began to laugh. There was something in this laugh which cut me to the quick. It was not like her old laugh. “Why, you are never Tom Page!” she said scornfully. “I would know if you were Tom!”

  “I am Tom, I am, Lizzy. I assure you.”

  “Lizzy dear,” said Betty, “he may be Tom, you know, only changed.”

  However much I had changed, it could not have been as much as she had changed. I scarcely know how to describe what she was like, her cloaths little better than rags and dripping with mud, her hair tangled and grey and matted. But it was not the externals of her appearance which troubled me as much as what lay beneath.

  She took my hand in her muddy hand and I pulled her sliding from the ditch. The mud streamed from her boots and the lower part of her shanks. She drew very close, until her face was no more than three inches from mine.

  “No, you are not Tom,” she declared. “You are too old.”

  “We are both older, Lizzy, that is all. And I once had a mishap with my nose.”

  “Your nose?” She laughed again, and reached out a hand, as if to touch it, but stopped short. “Who did it? A man or a woman?”

  “It was a man.”

  “Not Dick?”

  “No, it was not Dick, it was no one you know.”

  “Dick is my husband,” she said earnestly, “in sickness and health, for richer for poorer, till death us do part. That is true, is it not? They say it is true. For richer for poorer, in sickness and health.”

  “Indeed, it is true.”

  “Then why is he not here? If it were true, he would be here, wouldn’t he?”

  Betty spoke. “He be returning soon, Lizzy dear. He be returning on the first ship, soon as he be able, it is certain.”

  “No no,” she replied, “you are mistaken, Betty, he will never come back. He will never come back, he has wed one of the native women. He has a little baby son.”

  “’Tis not true, Lizzy, ’tis not true.”

  “You are lying; I have seen the letter.”

  “’Tis not true, I promise you.”

  This was entirely obscure. I waited, and presently Lizzy returned her gaze to me. “Why then,” she said, “maybe you are Tom Page, and you have come back. Have you come to dig? You will need a spade, you know. You cannot dig a ditch without a spade. Unless you do use your bare hands.”

  My heart was ready to burst. “I have come to see you, Lizzy. Will you walk this way?”

  “Walk this way?” She tossed her head, in something like her old manner. “You are not my husband, are you?”

  After some coaxing, however, she allowed me to lead her into the copse, beyond the ears of Betty and the other labourers. This copse was one which she and I had sometimes visited with the Elephants; now, as we stood among the hazels, with little patches of snow-drops at our feet, I would have liked to have revived Lizzy’s memories of those happier days, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. The wind cut between us, the trees gave no shelter. I asked her about her husband.

  “Dick?” she said faintly.

  “Yes; where is he?”

  She gave a hopeless gesture with one hand. “You are looking for Dick?”

  “No,” I said. “No, Lizzy, I have come to ask for your forgiveness. For what I did to you, I must ask your forgiveness.”

  She gave a quick, nervous laugh. “And what did you do to me, Tom? What did you do?”

  “It was in the stable, shortly before I left for Easton.”

  Between the hazels I could see that the labourers had abandoned their digging and were gathered together staring at us, no doubt hoping to glean some scraps of our conversation.

  “Lizzy, do you not remember—before I left for Easton, with the female Elephant, what happened?”

  She passed a muddy hand across her face, as though brushing away a spider’s web. “I do remember the Elephants very well.”

  “One is still alive, the female. I still care for her.”

  “Not at the Hall. There are no Elephants at the Hall now.”

  “No, not at the Hall, but in London. But you do not remember what happened when I left?”

  “What happened, Tom?” Her voice was quiet, her face attentive. “What was it you did to me?”

  “I struck you.”

  “And why did you strike me, Tom?”

  Under the heat of her question I felt myself flush, despite the chill of the wind. I did not want to answer. How, in truth, should I have answered? How could I have answered? That it had been the Ooze? But I did not think it had been the Ooze. That I had wanted to hurt her? Perhaps. But why I had wanted to hurt her, I cannot truly say. Why does any man act thus, and not thus? Is it because he is acting according to or against his own nature?

  “I d
o not know, Lizzy, but it was a bad thing to do, it was wrong of me, which is why I now beg for your forgiveness.”

  “Then I do forgive you,” she said simply. “It was nothing, Tom. But you did break my heart, you know, for choosing the Elephant over me, and that was what broke my heart, and I have not forgotten, I have never forgotten. You did go away and leave me behind. That was why I—why Dick—” She checked, and raised her eyes to mine. She was trembling. “You live in London now. It is very fine, people say.”

  “London is very big, and noisy,” I said.

  “The Elephant is well, I hope?”

  “She is well enough, in the circumstances. She is a very wise creature.”

  There followed a short silence in which neither of us was able to speak. Her eyes were very large, and I felt that, as I looked into them, I was truly looking into her heart. She then said something but in such a low voice that I was unable to hear.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You and your wife, you have children?”

  “No. She is—that is—no, we have no children.”

  She gave a piteous smile, and lowered her eyes to the snow-drops, which seemed very white against the dark mud clinging to her legs and boots. I touched her elbow and said, I am not sure what I said, but I led her trembling out of the copse. We made our farewells by the ditch. “I am glad the Elephant is well,” she said in a bright voice, “Yes, I am very glad she is well, even though she were the cause of it all. She had a name, I know.”

  “Jenny,” I said.

  “Jenny. I remember. I remember. I remember.” She lifted her spade and, using it as a support, eased herself into the ditch. The next moment she was digging as if I no longer existed, or had gone long ago.

  I trudged along the ditch as far as Betty. She told me that, three winters earlier, that same winter when the Thames froze in London, there had been a great deal of hardship in Somersetshire, with many poor families starving. Dick Shadwick had been caught in the act of stealing a deer from the grounds of Harrington Hall, as a result of which he had been transported for seven years to the other end of the world. I asked whether it was true that he had taken another wife. “That is what Lizzy imagines, but whether it is true…but it makes no difference if it is true or not, they never come back,” she replied.—“Then I am very sorry for her. Why did she not go with him?” Betty said that it was a long voyage, and dangerous, and she had two young children. “And now?” I asked, dreading the answer, which was that both had died. When I repeated that I was very sorry, Betty looked at me with plain hostility. “Well you may be, Mr. Page. She is a gentle soul, and has suffered much.”

  Thus condemned I plodded away, the wind stiff in my face and the clods sticking to my boots like leg-irons. It was now late afternoon, but my only desire was to return to Jenny’s side, and I walked through the night for about six hours until weariness overtook me, and with a hard rain commencing to fall I took shelter under a bush. Here I attempted to sleep, but could not put thoughts of Lizzy out of my head. The rain trickled through the thorns and my mind was so full of horrid ideas that I leapt up and started to run through the darkness, without exercising the least caution; twice, thrice, half a dozen times I tripped and lost my footing and fell into puddles, only to pick myself up again and run on. About five miles from Bath, as I panted along, I was set on by three robbers, armed with knives and cudgels, who sprang out of the night. I tried to flee, but they caught me and one felled me with a blow to the head. When I recovered my senses I was lying in the mire; they had taken my great coat, which contained not only my pipe and tobacco and the half loaf of bread, but also my purse, and inside it the five shillings on which I had been counting for the Coach. In addition they had relieved me of some teeth, and my face was very much swollen and bruised.

  With my head throbbing, and cloaths thick with mud, I staggered into Bath, where for a day and a half I attempted to persuade people to lend me the fare, but in the condition I was everyone thought me a common beggar. One young lady with a kind face would I believe have taken pity on me, but that a fat crow of a Parson loudly ordered me away, declaring that my story as he put it was plainly nothing but a packet of lies. This made me even angrier; I stood my ground and let him know that, if he so desired, I was willing to take my oath on the Bible that every word I had uttered was true, whereupon he fastened a claw on the lady’s arm and drew her away. So much for Christian charity, I muttered to myself with great bitterness. There were others to whom I applied, and one man was good enough to give me six pence, three of which I spent on a loaf of bread and a mug of ale, reserving three for further eventualities; thus I bade farewell to the city of Bath and set out on foot for London, the distance being no more than ninety or a hundred miles.

  I walked through the day, and for the night found an old barn, somewhere short of Marlborough, where no one disturbed me and I was warm and comfortable though very troubled in my mind. The succeeding day being Saturday, which was the day that I had promised Jenny I would return, I walked on. Several coaches passed me travelling to London and as they rattled into the distance I cursed my ill-fortune. The wind blew steady from the north and cut me to the bone. Near the town of Hungerford I entered an inn, the John of Gaunt, where I drank a mug of ale and warmed myself at the fire; as I did so, the inn-keeper decided to engage me in conversation, inquiring whether I had got my swollen face from too much winking at women (for by this time I could scarcely see out of one eye). When he heard of my mishap, he said that I was lucky to have escaped with my life, the robbers in these parts being so notorious. Indeed he would not travel alone in the hours of darkness for any consideration; why, only two weeks earlier, two servants to Lady Finey, riding at night from Amesbury to Hungerford without any escorte, had lost their fingers and thumbs. Startled, I asked what he meant, whereupon he explained, with a beaming face, that it was a common superstition among thieves that a severed finger (which they kept in a leather pouch around their neck) protected them from harm when they were busy with their evil deeds. Such fingers were known as robbers’ candles. I was not sure whether to believe him and may have looked confused. “O, it’s well known—but you do not come from these parts, I can tell,” he went on, and this remark threw me into further confusion, for where indeed did I come from? Three days earlier, I would have said without hesitation that I came from Somersetshire; now I no longer knew.

  That night, with the inn-keeper’s warnings fresh in my mind, I hunted for another barn or place of safety, but could find none, and was obliged to take refuge in a wood; not having my great coat to keep me warm, I heaped myself with dry leaves, but to little avail. The night growing steadily colder, the cloud clearing and the stars shining between the black branches, the wind blowing hard from the north, my teeth (such that I had left) chattered loudly, and I gave up any attempt at sleep. Better to die on my feet than freeze to death on my side, curled like a wood-louse, I thought. I walked very circumspectly; every bush and tree seemed loaded with danger and as I thought of the severed fingers I kept my hands in a tight clench.

  On the Sunday morning I was very stiff, and my shoes were falling apart and within them my heels were cut and bleeding, but every step I took was another step nearer Jenny, and this thought bore me up. My spirits further revived when I sat on a bank eating my last scrap of bread, and the peals of some tower church began to float over the wet fields, and the sun peeped out its face behind the clouds. I took this as a sign that Fortune now favoured me, and this proved true enough, for while going along a straight piece of road I was over-taken by a man in a cart who, seeing my exhaustion, carried me more than twenty-five miles, though I was asleep for much of the way. He set me down near the Great Park at Windsor; so it was that on the evening of the Sunday I came to the river, and saw ahead of me the buildings of London town, and thus I returned to the Menagery, where to my joy I found that Jenny was safe and well. The moment when I opened the door and saw her again I shall never forget; her trunk stretched toward me
and gave a purring vibration, and her eyes gleamed with pleasure and curiosity.

  “Tom! You are back!”

  I tried to smile, but my swollen face would scarcely let me. “I am back, I am back, and I am very glad to see you.”

  “I knew you would come back today,” she said. “I knew you were coming.”

  “How could you know?”

  “Last night you were very cold. I could tell. This morning I felt you coming nearer and nearer. I have been expecting you for the past hour.” The tip of her purring trunk drifted over my cloaths. “You have been in mud.”

  “The mire.”

  “It is a good smell.” The trunk, moving upwards, brushed my lips. “What happened? Did you meet little Joshua?”

  “No.” On a sudden I felt more weary than I believe I ever felt in my entire life. I took her trunk and wound it round my neck.

  She waited. “What then? Did you learn anything of your brother? Where is your coat?”

  “O, Jenny, Jenny…I will tell you later.”

  “Tell me later then, Tom. For now, it is good that you are back here. I have been thinking of you, all the time.”

  “You are the most wonderful Elephant. You are the most wonderful friend, my true friend, my only true friend.”

  “You are my Tom,” she answered, simply. “Tom Page, Tom Page.”

  4

  The price of this little Jaunt was that I fell into a Fever which kept me tossing and sweating in my bed for days, in which I scarcely knew whether I was in London or Somersetshire, or some other country. At the height of it I was beset by a strange fear that Jenny was merely a figment of my imagination, and that neither she nor the Menagery existed or had ever existed. When I attempted to argue that I knew she existed, as much as I myself existed, a voice, speaking within my head, asked how I knew, and when I replied, I know because I know, because I saw her lately, the voice said, you think you saw her but in truth you did not see her, she is part of your imagination. I cried out, but I did see her, I am certain of it, I talked to her, and the voice answered, very severely, you did not talk to her, Tom Page, no human being can talk with an animal, it is against all natural law. And who are you? I asked—at which the voice fell silent, and I felt better, and sank into an uneasy dream in which I found myself back in the Strand, outside the Menagery. The doors were locked and bolted against me; and though I hammered with my fists and shouted, no one would let me in. Why, I asked myself, will no one let me in, and instantly I saw a ladder, which was propped against the side of the building. I climbed it, and in this way reached a small and dusty hatch, which I opened with some difficulty, using a strange crooked lever. This gave me a view over the Menagery, in which Mr. Scott sat on Jenny’s neck and rode her round her cage. So I understood that Mr. Scott was now her keeper, and I was for ever shut out from Jenny’s love.