The Elephant Keeper Page 25

  My mother always held that dreams were a form of prophecy, which I do not believe, but do not entirely disbelieve either; and in my fevered state this terrible dream made a great impression on me. As I lay in bed, one moment burning hot and the next shaking with cold, I convinced myself that it was indeed true, and that Mr. Scott had deliberately persuaded me to visit Somersetshire with the sole aim of making himself Jenny’s keeper in my absence. I could not help recalling all the little signs of affection which she had shewn toward him, how on this occasion she had followed him everywhere with her eyes, how on another she had wrapped her trunk round his neck and drawn it gently over his cheek. What a fool I had been to leave them alone!

  I must have again fallen asleep, for when I woke there was darkness outside and a strange clamour in the street. Listening to this clamour, and wondering at its cause, I heard the words fire and Strand, and a sudden conviction took hold of me that the Menagery was ablaze. Springing from my bed I ran to the window. A red flickering glow hung over the roof-tops, and in my imagination I seemed to see the flames as they rippled up the walls and spread along the beams, leaping to light the tinder-dry grass of the Man-Eater’s mane and the straw which lapped Jenny’s legs.

  Bare-foot, and wearing nothing but a night-shirt, I ran into White Horse Yard and down Drury Lane, and as I reached the Strand I smelt the smoke. The fire turned out to be some way short of the Menagery, with several houses ablaze, among them a well-known whore-house which I myself had visited more than a few times. A number of whores stood outside, in various states of dishevelment, coughing and choking and gaping at the fire as it raged and crackled. Men were running to and fro with pails of water which they tossed on to the flames, but in truth nothing could be done to tame the blaze; the heat was so intense that it was impossible to approach very near without being roasted alive. This proved a blessing, however, for on a sudden a fiery truss which had been dangling by a thread from an upper storey crashed to the stones in a shower of sparks. One man, struck on the shoulder, fell burning to the ground; water was instantly poured over him and the fire extinguished, though his cloaths continued to smoke. Another man, with a blackened face and wild eyes, ran hither and thither crying hoarsely for his wife, or maybe his daughter. Meanwhile the occupants of the adjacent houses, fearing the spread of the fire, were hurriedly carrying chests and tables and the rest of their possessions into the street.

  I had the same fear with regard to the Menagery, yet outside its doors I met Mr. Scott smoking a pipe in his usual calm way. Later he chuckled as he told me how astonished he was to see me clad in nothing but a thin night-shirt, and that in my Fever I shrieked and babbled that the animals must be brought out, they would all be burnt alive, there was not a moment to be lost, et cetera. When he attempted to reason with me, pointing out that the wind was taking the flames in another direction, I cursed him and swung a fist at his head, and ran into the Menagery, where I attempted to lead Jenny from her cage. I remember none of this, only that I woke in daylight to find myself lying in a bed of straw, covered in the monkie’s great coat, and Jenny watching me.

  The Fever passed, but for a long while afterward I was unable to tell Jenny about my journey to Harrington Hall. When I did at last manage to speak on the subject, I made no mention of Lizzy Tindall. I cannot forget her dark face, she haunts me even now: she rises like a ghost from the wet ditch and stares at me with an expression which says, louder than any words, Take me with you to London now, Dick will never return, take me with you to London. What should I have said? What could I have said? She is married, even if her husband has abandoned her; it would not be possible to bring her here. And yet that face, those eyes…it was a mistake to go back. I reproach myself greatly for having done so.

  My spirits in those days were further lowered by the concerts, which are another of Mr. Cross’s desperate schemes to revive the fortunes of the Menagery.—Concerts, pray? Animal concerts?—Yes, Sir, indeed—though it must be added, in all conscience, with regard to the Truth (and, please note, the capital T), that they contain no music.—No music, why, how can a concert be a concert if it has no music? Explain yourself!—Well, Sir, by your leave, I shall do what I can.

  It was about a month after I had returned from Somersetshire that Mr. Cross came into the Menagery with a cheap fiddle. Mr. Scott and I should teach the monkie to play some tunes, he said, to accompany the Empress on her drum, while Bruin the bear should learn to dance in time. “Rule Britannia,” played by a monkie and an Elephant, with a dancing bear, would be sure to draw in the crowds.

  Teaching Jenny to hit the drum with a stick was easy enough; she mastered it in a matter of minutes. Instructing Stephen to play the fiddle was much more difficult. During that first lesson, we succeeded in putting the bow into Stephen’s left hand (it had to be the left, for the right, as I mentioned, is withered to a dead bird’s claw); however, he had no idea why he was being asked to hold the bow, and, as soon as we stepped away, he let it fall to the floor. I picked it up, replaced it in his hand, folding his bony fingers below mine; at which, Mr. Scott knelt before us, offering the fiddle, and I began to guide the bow over the gut. The sound frightened the little monkie: his mouth opened wide, and his scraggy body shook and trembled. However, it was a kind of progress, and as a reward Mr. Scott decided to give him a pipe of tobacco, lifting it to his lips. I was sure that he would be burnt, and indeed, as soon as he breathed in the hot smoke, he choaked and fell gasping to the floor.

  Since then, Stephen has advanced on the fiddle to the extent that he will hold the bow without dropping it, and will scrape and saw at the fiddle, so long as Mr. Scott or I hold the fiddle and guide the bow. The bow saws thin air more often than not, and when it touches the gut, the noise is a wild, horrible caterwauling. The art of fiddle-playing is so far beyond his capabilities that, if he were taught for the rest of eternity, he would never play anything like “Rule Britannia.” However, to my great surprize, he has entirely mastered the art of pipe-smoking, and sits for hours with the pipe between his lips, even when it is empty of tobacco. The pipe has become his pet, his passion, his reason for living: if you try to take it from him, in order to fill it with tobacco, he refuses—runs to the corner of his prison and hides it behind his back, where he squats, baring his teeth in a pitiful threat. “Come, Sir—come, Stephen—don’t be so naughty—put away those fierce teeth, Sir, and hand over your pipe. I insist, Stephen.” Mr. Scott laughs loudly, and indeed I laugh too; Stephen’s anguish is so human, it is hard not to laugh. Sometimes we let him keep it, yet other times we get it off him, prising it from his tight fingers: whereupon he howls and shrieks, flinging himself to the ground. We fill it with a few sprigs of tobacco, and hand it back. “Stephen—here—see, your pipe—have it back.” Sunk in misery, he will not open his eyes. “Stephen—here—” Then he looks up, and in an instant his little face is transformed from misery to joy. And why should Stephen, whose life contains so much fear, not have this simple pleasure?

  As for Bruin, he is as good at dancing as Stephen is at playing the violin; which is to say that he does not dance at all, but understands that he is supposed to do something, and when the cacophony begins, therefore, he lies on the ground and rolls from side to side, grimacing hideously, and collecting straw and dung in his fur. He does this because he hopes to please us, and so to be rewarded with a lump of sugar or some other tid-bit, and also because he is afraid. So he rolls, and Stephen scrapes the violin, and Jenny bangs the drum, and people laugh, and Mr. Cross is delighted, and rubs his hands in glee; while I, steering Stephen’s bony arm, and watching this sorry spectacle, imagine the lives which these creatures might have had, among their own kind, if they had never been captured. Bright pictures of jungles and mountains and plains float through my mind, like sunlit clouds. It is a vision almost too much to bear; my eyes prickle in shame: for even as I write, “among their own kind,” I feel a kinship with these creatures. We inhabit the same world; we breathe the same air, beneath the same sk
y. We have two eyes, two ears, teeth, a brain, a heart. We are born into a state of helplessness; we grow, and learn to fend for ourselves; we feel pleasure and pain; we grow old and die. Why do philosophers always look for differences instead of likenesses? A flea makes no great distinction in its choice of living quarters: it prefers a bear, but will cheerfully take ship on a monkie or lion or Elephant, or a human being.

  Shortly after the end of one of these concerts, I was cleaning between Jenny’s toes with a small brush when I heard my name. Looking up, I saw a stooping, elderly man in a coat and hat. “Tom,” he said, “it is Tom, isn’t it? Tom Page? How are you now? I thought it must be you. Why,” for I was at a loss, “don’t you recognise me? You remember—I was at Easton—years ago—did a portrait of the Elephant. John Sanders.” He took off his hat, which glistened with rain-drops, and I recognised him then, of course; though the foxy tinge to his hair had entirely faded away, and he seemed somewhat smaller than I had remembered, an air of snuff still clung to him. He shook me warmly by the hand. “Yes, I’d heard that there was an Elephant here,” he said, “and I’d meant to call in. I thought that it must be the same one.”

  He asked what had happened to me, after the death of Lord Bidborough and the sale of the estate at Easton, and I told him how the Elephant had been sold from one owner to another, down the years, until she was finally bought by Mr. Cross.

  “So you stayed with the creature? Thick and thin?”

  “I did.”

  He seemed to reflect. “And what does your wife think of London town?”

  “I am not married.”

  “Well, and why should you be? When you marry, you’re no longer a free man, believe me.” He called to his wife, who was watching Mr. Scott toss the snake a mouse: “Edith—come over here—I was right—it is the same Elephant!”

  Mrs. Sanders, a stout, burly woman, with a heavy brown umbrella which made a puddle on to the floor, said that she was very pleased to make my acquaintance, having heard all sorts of stories about the Elephant from her husband. “Told me he was nearly trampled alive, once—didn’t you, John?”

  “I was scared all the time, to tell the truth,” Mr. Sanders replied. “Every moment that I was painting. It wasn’t in a cage, like this—it was standing in the open! There was only Tom keeping it off me! I tell you, my hand shook like a leaf. O, it was a miracle that I ever finished that painting! I’ve often wondered what happened to it.”

  “John, it’s always like that,” said Mrs. Sanders. “You’ve done so many portraits, and you never know where any of them are, do you?”

  “But it was a good portrait, that one,” he answered her. “One of the best I ever did, I’d say; could be the best. At least, the only one that I ever did of an Elephant. I shouldn’t mind seeing it again, though I don’t suppose I ever will.”

  There came a loud howl from the monkie. I begged their pardon, and went to see what the matter was. It turned out that Stephen had dropped his pipe, which had shattered. He sat over the broken pieces, rocking to and fro with grief and giving small wails and sobs, like a child whose toy has been broken. Tears coursed down his wrinkled cheeks. “Stephen? Stephen. It is only a pipe. I will get you another pipe.” He did not understand; instead, thinking that I was going to steal the remains of the pipe, he gathered them together and retreated to brood in the furthest corner of the cage.

  I took out my pipe, put it on the floor, and, leaving him to recover his composure, returned to Mr. and Mrs. Sanders. We talked for ten or fifteen minutes, and I asked him how the Art was progressing. He replied that he was “still grubbing in the same soil,” though it had become no easier to find work. There were fallow patches. The fashions in painting had changed; the animal work had largely dried up, and everyone now was interested in landskips. So, he had become a landskip painter, producing views of ruined abbeys and castles, and sunsets and lakes.

  “Do you know Richmond Castle, in Yorkshire? I did that recently. Jervaux Abbey. I take what comes along. If I was asked to do more animals, I wouldn’t refuse.”

  “He never refuses anything,” Mrs. Sanders put in. “Do you, John? Why, you ought to do one of the animals here. Look at that lion. It’s asking to have its portrait taken!”

  We glanced round. The Man-Eater, chewing one of his paws, looked utterly dejected.

  “You could do it if you wanted,” Mrs. Sanders said. “You could do better than whoever did those daubs.” By “daubs,” she meant the pictures on the walls of the Menagery. “Much better,” she added.

  Mr. Sanders did not speak for a moment. “It would be a Challenge, certainly,” he conceded at last. “An Artistic Challenge. To take the likeness of a lion. The King of the Beasts.”

  “It would be a Feather in your Hat,” she told him. “A proper Feather.”

  Mr. Sanders regarded his hat with an expression of some doubt, turning it in his hands.

  “John, now we’re here, you may as well ask,” Mrs. Sanders urged. “It never does any harm, asking. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.”

  I directed him to Mr. Cross, who was sat in his little booth. While he was there, Mrs. Sanders talked of their children. They seemed to be doing well enough. Of their daughters, one was married, with two children, while the other had lately been widowed, but was bearing up and recovering her spirits at home with them. As for their sons, the elder was employed by a bank in the city, and the younger was a school-master in Highgate. On balance, she was glad that neither had decided to follow in their father’s footsteps as an Artist. “It’s not easy, Art,” she told me. “It’s not like people think. You can’t depend on it, with assurance. There’s not sufficient security.”

  Mr. Sanders came back soon enough. He seemed relieved that Mr. Cross had declined to commission a portrait of the lion. “I wouldn’t really have wanted to do it. I wouldn’t have done it. I’ve finished with animals.”

  “Well, you were right to ask,” Mrs. Sanders said firmly. “But tell Mr. Page about the death-masks.”

  “O,” said Mr. Sanders, “that’s the latest,” and mentioned the name of some rich gentleman, Sir John F—, an alderman of the City of London, whose mask he had taken recently. “It’s not hard, once you know how. You take the first impression in plaster-of-paris, before casting in bronze. I’m hoping it’ll build up. Word of mouth, that’s how these things work. I’ve thought about advertising, but it’s expensive.”

  “Practised on me at the start, he did—didn’t you, John?” Mrs. Sanders gave a joyous laugh. “I felt half-dead! Plaster up my nostrils!”

  Mr. Sanders nodded, and confessed, in a tone of slight melancholy: “It’s not what I ever expected to be doing—death-masks. They’re not what you’d call Art.”

  “You have to take what Life gives, John,” Mrs. Sanders said, rallying him. “You can’t always pick and choose. We do very nicely for ourselves. We’re very fortunate, compared to many.”

  They lived in the country, about eight miles south of London, in the village of Streatham. Mrs. Sanders gave me their address, and said that, if I could escape, I would be very welcome to join them for Sunday dinner, and to bring my wife. “He is not married,” Mr. Sanders corrected. “In that case,” said Mrs. Sanders, “he is very welcome to bring himself.”

  I thanked her, but said that, since I had to look after the Elephant, it was impossible to leave on a Sunday, it being our busiest day of the week.

  Mrs. Sanders looked at Jenny, who was calmly waiting for me to finish my conversation. “Surely you can leave the creature for half a day? Can’t someone else take care of it?”

  She pressed me so hard that, eventually, I went to Mr. Cross, and, to my dismay, he raised no strong objection. Thus it was agreed that I would visit them on the next Sunday but one, arriving about noon. Mrs. Sanders said, that she would roast a joint of meat, if that was agreeable to me. I replied that it was very agreeable.

  “That’s easy, then,” said she. “We shall look forward to your company. O, it’s good mee
ting up with old friends, isn’t it, John?”

  “It is, indeed,” Mr. Sanders agreed, with a faint smile.

  After he and Mrs. Sanders had gone, I found little Stephen smoking his new pipe—his eyes closed in what I took to be an ecstasy, though his expression was that of a soul in torment. I left him, and returned to Jenny, who held out the little brush which I had been using on her toes. “Tom?”

  “Jenny, Mr. and Mrs. Sanders have invited me to Sunday dinner. Should I go?”

  “Why, of course you should go, Tom, if you would like to.”

  “It would mean leaving you for part of the day. You would not mind? Mr. and Mrs. Sanders’s daughter, who has been widowed, is living with them.”

  Her trunk swayed upwards. She regarded me with some anxiety.

  “She may not be there,” I said.

  “Tom,” she said seriously, “if you want to marry anyone, you must do so. I understand.”

  I laughed. “When I have never even met her, it is a little early to talk of marriage. She is probably ugly and sallow-skinned, and hare-lipped. Besides,” and I reached out with my arms, and gazed into her eyes, “how could I marry her? O, Jenny! How could I ever marry someone else, when I am married already?”