A Rough Shaking

It was night when they entered the town. They were already a weary pair when the far sounds of the brass band of the menagerie, mostly made up of attendants on the animals, first entered their ears. The marketing was over; the band was issuing its last invitation to the merry-makers to walk up and see strange sights; its notes were just dying to their close, when the wayfarers arrived at the foot of the steps leading to the platform where the musicians stood. Clare ascended, and Abdiel crept after him.

At a table in a small curtained recess on the platform, sat the mistress to receive the money of those that entered. Clare laid his sovereign before her. She took it up without looking at him, but at it she looked doubtfully. She threw it on her table. It would not ring. She bit it with her white teeth, and looked at it again; then at length gave a glance at the person who offered it. Her dull lamp flickered in the puffs of the night-wind, and she did not recognize Clare. She saw but a white-faced, ragged boy, and threw him back his sovereign.

“Won’t pass,” she said with decision, not unmingled with contempt. She sat at the receipt of money, where too many men and women cease to be ladies and gentlemen.

Clare did not at first understand. He stood motionless and, for the second time that day, bewildered. How could money be no money?

“‘Ain’t you got sixpence?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” answered Clare. “I haven’t had sixpence for many a day.”

The moment he spoke, the woman looked him sharply in the face, and knew him.

“Drat my stupid eyes!” she said fervently. “That I shouldn’t ha’ known you! Walk in, walk in. Go where you please, and do as you please. You’re right welcome.—Where did you get that sov.?”

“From Farmer Goodenough.”

“Good enough, I hope, not to take advantage of an innocent prince! Was it for taking home the bull?”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t take the bull home. The bull took me to the old home where we used to be together. He didn’t want a new one!”

“Well, never mind now. Give me the sovereign. I’ll talk to you by and by. Go in, or the show ‘ill be over. Look after your dog, though. We don’t like dogs. He mustn’t go in.”

“I’ll send him right outside, if you wish it, ma’am.”

“I do.—But will he stay out?”

“He will, ma’am.”

Clare took up Abdiel, and setting him at the top of the steps, told him to go down and wait. Abdiel went hopping down, like a dirty little white cataract out on its own hook, turned in under the steps, and deposited himself there until his master should call him.

Chapter XLV. The menagerie

A strange smell was in Clare’s nostrils, and as he went down the steps inside, it grew stronger. He did not dislike it; but it set him thinking why it should so differ from that of domestic animals. He was presently in the midst of a vision attractive to all boys, but which few had ever looked upon with such intelligent wonder as he; for Clare had read and re-read every book about animals upon which he could lay his hands. He had a great power too of remembering what he read; for he never let a description glide away over the outside of his eyes, but always put it inside his thinking place. What with pictures and descriptions, he seemed to know, as he looked around him, every animal on which his eyes fell.

The area was by no means crowded. There had been many visitors during the day, but now it was late. He could see into all the cages that formed the sides of the enclosure. Many of the creatures seemed restless, few sleepy: night was the waking time for most of them. How should a great roaming, hunting cat go to sleep in a little cube of darkness! “Oh,” thought Clare, “how gladly would I help them to bear it! I could bear it myself with somebody near to be kind to me!”

He had begun to feel that the quiet happiness to which he was once so accustomed that he did not think much about it, was his because it was given him. He had begun to see that it did not come to him of itself, but from the love of his father and mother. He had yet to learn that it was given to them to give to him by the Father of fathers and mothers. But he was beginning to prize every least kindness shown him. This re-acted on his desire to make the happiness greater and the pain less everywhere about him. He had little chance of doing much for people, he thought; but he knew how to do things for some animals, and perhaps it was only necessary to know others to be able to do something for them too!

Thoughts like these passing through his mind, and his gaze wandering hither and thither over the shifting shapes, his eyes rested on the tenant of one of the cages, and his heart immediately grew very sore, for he seemed unable to lift his head. He was a big animal, alone in his prison, of a blackish colour, and awkward appearance. He went nearer, and found he had a big ring in his nose like Nimrod. But to the ring was fastened a strong chain, and the chain was bolted down to the floor of the cage, which was of iron covered with boards, in their turn covered with a thick sheet of lead. The chain was so short that it held the poor creature’s head within about a foot of the floor. He could not lift it higher, or move it farther on either side; but he kept moving it constantly. It was a pitiful sight, and Clare went nearer still, drawn far more by compassion, and indeed sympathy, than by curiosity. He was a terrible brute, a big grizzly bear, ugly to repulsiveness. The snarling scorn, the sneering, lip-writhing hate of the demoniacal grin with which he received the boy, was hideous; the rattling, pebble-jarring growl that came from his devilish throat was loathing embodied. What if spirits worse than their own get into some of the creatures by virtue of the likeness between them! One day will be written, perhaps, a history of animals very different from any attempted by mere master in zoology. Clare spoke to the beast again and again, but was unvaryingly answered by the same odious snarl, curling his lip under his nose-ring. It seemed to express the imagined delight of tearing him limb from limb.

“Poor fellow!” said Clare, “how can he be good-tempered with that torturing ring and chain! His unalterable position must make his every bone ache!”

But had his nose been set free, such a raging-bear-struggle to get at the nearest of his fellow-prisoners would have ensued, as must soon have torn to shreds the partition between them. For he was a beast-bedlamite, an animal volcano, a furnace of death, an incarnate paroxysm of wrath. The inspiration of the creature, so far as one could see, was pure hate.

The boy turned aside with quivering heart—sore for the grizzly’s nose, and sorer still for the grizzly himself that he was so unfriendly.

Right opposite, a creature of a far differing disposition seemed casting defiance to all the ills of life. As he turned with a sad despair from the grizzly, Clare caught sight of his pranks, and hastened across the area. The creature kept bounding from side to side of his cage, agile and frolicsome as a kitten. But the light was poor, and Clare could not even conjecture to which of the cat-kinds he belonged. When he came near his cage, he saw that he was yellowish like a lion, and thought perhaps he might be a young lion. He had no mane. Clare judged him four feet in length without the tail—or perhaps four and a half. A little way off was the real lion—a young one, it is true, but quite grown, with a thin ruffy mane, and lordly carriage and gaze. It was he whose roar had challenged Nimrod, giving the topmost flutter to the flame of his wrath. But Clare was so taken with the frolicsome creature before him, that he gave but a glance at the grand one as he walked up and down his prison, and turned again to the merry one disporting himself alone, who seemed to find the pleasure of life in great games with companions no one saw but himself. For minutes he stood regarding the gladness of God’s creature. A wild thing of the woods and plains, he made the most of the bars and floor and roof of his cage. No one careless of liberty could make such bounds as those; yet he was joyous in closest imprisonment! His liberty gone, his freedom contracted to a few cubic feet, his space diminished almost to the mould of his body, the great wild philosopher created his own liberty, made it out of his own love of it. Like a live, erratic shuttle he went to and fro, unweaving, unravelling, unwinding, drawing out the knot of confinement, flinging out, radiating and spreading and breathing out space in all directions, by multitudinous motion of disentanglement! Space gone from him, space in the abstract should replace it! He would not be slave to condition! Space unconditioned should be his! For him liberty should not lie in space, but in his own soul. Room should be but the poor out-aide symbol of his inward freedom! He would spin out, he would weave, he would unroll essential liberty into spiritual space! His mind to him a kingdom was. Not a grumble, not a snarl! He left discontent to men, to build their own prisons withal. A proud man with everything he longs for, if such a man there be, is but a slave; this creature of the glad creator was and would be free, because he was a free soul. Prison bars could not touch that by whose virtue he was and would be free!

The germ of this thinking was in the mind of Clare while he stood and gazed; and as he told me the story, its ripeness came thus, or nearly thus, from his lips; for he had thought much in lonely places.

As he gazed and sympathized, there awoke within him that strange consciousness which my reader must, at one time or another, have known—of being on the point of remembering something. It was not a memory that came, but a memory of a memory—the shadow of a memory gone, but trying to come out from behind a veil—a sense of having once known something. It gave another aspect to the blessed creature before him. The creature and himself seemed for a moment to belong together to another time. Could he have seen such an animal before? He did not think so! He could never have visited a menagerie and forgotten it! If he had known such a creature, his after-reading would have recalled it, he would know it now! He could tell the lion and the tiger and the leopard, although he seemed to know he had never seen one of them; he could not tell this animal, and yet—and yet!—what was it? The feeling itself lasted scarce an instant, and went no farther. No memory came to him. The foiled expectation was all he had. The very reasoning about it helped to obliterate the shape of the feeling itself. He could not even recall how the thing had felt; he could only remember it had been there. It was now but the shadow of the shadow of a dream—a yet vaguer memory than that thinnest of presences which had at the first tantalized him. We remember what we cannot recall.

Perhaps the rousing of the odd, fantastic feeling had been favoured by the slumber beginning to encroach on tody and brain. While he stood looking at the one creature, all the wonderful creatures began to get mixed up together, and he thought it better to go and search for some field of sleep, where he might mow a little for his use. He said good-night to the great, gentle, jubilant cat, turned from him unwillingly, and went up the steps. Almost every spectator was gone. At the top of them he turned for a last look, but could distinguish nothing except the dim form of the young lion, as he thought him, still gamboling in the presence of his maker.

He thought to see the mistress of the menagerie, but she was no longer in her curtained box. He went out on the deserted platform, and down the steps. Abdiel was already at the foot when he reached it, wagging his weary little tail.

They set out to look for a shelter. Their search, however, was so much in vain, that at last they returned and lay down under one of the wagons, on the hard ground of the public square. Sleeping so often out of doors, he had never yet taken cold.

Chapter XLVI. The angel of the wild beasts

When Clare looked up he saw nothing between him and the sky. They had dragged the caravan from above him, and he had not moved. Abdiel indeed waked at the first pull, but had lain as still as a mouse—ready to rouse his master, but not an instant before it should be necessary.

Clare saw the sky, but he saw something else over him, better than the sky—the face of Mrs. Halliwell, the mistress of the menagerie. In it, as she stood looking down on him, was compassion, mingled with self-reproach.

Clare jumped up, saying, “Good morning, ma’am!” He was yet but half awake, and staggered with sleep.

“My poor boy!” answered the woman, “I sent you to sleep on the cold earth, with a sovereign of your own in my pocket! I made sure you would come and ask me for it! You’re too innocent to go about the world without a mother!”

She turned her face away.

“But, ma’am, you know I couldn’t have offered it to anybody,” said Clare. “It wasn’t good!—Besides, before I knew that,” he went on, finding she did not reply, “there was nobody but you I dared offer it to: they would have said I stole it—because I’m so shabby!” he added, looking down at his rags. “But it ain’t in the clothes, ma’am—is it?”

Getting the better of her feelings for a moment, she turned her face and said,—

“It was all my fault! The sov. is a good one. It’s only cracked! I ought to have known, and changed it for you. Then all would have been well!”

“I don’t think it would have made any difference, ma’am. We would rather sleep on the ground than in a bed that mightn’t be clean—wouldn’t we, Abby?” The dog gave a short little bark, as he always did when his master addressed him by his name.—“But I’m so glad!” Clare went on. “I was sure Mr. Goodenough thought the sovereign all right when he gave it me!—Were you ever disappointed in a sovereign, ma’am?”

“I been oftener disappointed in them as owed ‘em!” she answered. “But to think o’ me snug in bed, an’ you sleepin’ out i’ the dark night! I can’t abide the thought on it!”

“Don’t let it trouble you, ma’am; we’re used to it. Ain’t we, Abby?”

“Then you oughtn’t to be! and, please God, you shall be no more! But come along and have your breakfast We don’t start till the last.”

“Please, ma’am, may Abdiel come too?”

“In course! ‘Love me, love my dog!’ Ain’t that right?”

“Yes, ma’am; but some people like dogs worse than boys.”

“A good deal depends on the dog. When folk brings up their dogs as bad as they do their childern, I want neither about me. But your dog’s a well-behaved dog. Still, he must learn not to come in sight o’ the animals.”

“He will learn, ma’am!—Abdiel, lie down, and don’t come till I call you.”

At the word, the dog dropped, and lay.

The house-caravan stood a little way off, drawn aside when they began to break up. They ascended its steps behind, and entered an enchanting little room. It had muslin curtains to the windows, and a small stove in which you could see the bright red coals. On the stove stood a coffee-pot and a covered dish. How nice and warm the place felt, after the nearly shelterless night!

The breakfast-things were still on the table. Mr. Halliwell had had his breakfast, but Mrs. Halliwell would not eat until she had found the boy. She had been unhappy about him all the night. Her husband had assured her the sovereign was a good one, and the boy had told her he had no money but the sovereign! She little knew how seldom he fared better than that same night! When he got among hay or straw, that was luxury.

They sat down to breakfast, and the good woman was very soon confirmed in the notion that the boy was a gentleman.

“Call your dog now,” she said, “an’ let’s see if he’ll come!”

“May I whistle, ma’am?”

“Why not!—But will he hear you?”

“He has very sharp ears, ma’am.”

Clare gave a low, peculiar whistle. In a second or two, they heard an anxious little whine at the door. Clare made haste to open it. There stood Abdiel, with the words in his eyes, as plain almost as if he spoke them—“Did you call, sir?” The woman caught him and held him to her bosom.

“You blessed little thing!” she said.

And surely if there be a blessing to be had, it is for them that obey.

Clare heard and felt the horses put-to, but the hostess of this Scythian house did not rise, and he too went on with his breakfast. When they were in motion, it was not so easy to eat nicely, but he managed very well. By the time he had done, they had left the town behind them. He wanted to help Mrs. Halliwell with the breakfast-things, but whether she feared he would break some of them, or did not think it masculine work, she would not allow him.

Nothing had been said about his going with them; she had taken that for granted. Clare began to think perhaps he ought to take his leave: there was nothing for him to do! He and Abdiel ought at least to get out and walk, instead of burdening the poor horses with their weight, when they were so well rested, and had had such a good breakfast! But when he said so to Mrs. Halliwell, she told him she must have a little talk with him first, and formally proposed that he should enter their service, and do whatever he was fit for in the menagerie.

“You’re not frightened of the beasts, are you?” she said.

“Oh no, ma’am; I love them!” answered Clare. “But are you sure Mr. Halliwell thinks I could be of use?”

“Don’t you think yourself you could?” asked Mrs. Halliwell.

“I know I could, ma’am; but I should not like him to take me just because he was sorry for me!”

“You innocent! People are in no such hurry to help their neighbours. My husband’s as good a man as any going; but it don’t mean he would take a boy because nobody else would have him. A fool of a woman might—I won’t say; but not a man I ever knew. No, no! He saw the way you managed that bull!—a far more unreasonable creature than any we have to do with!”

“Ah! you don’t know Nimrod, ma’am!”

“I don’t, an’ I don’t want to!—Such wild animals ought to be put in caravans!” she added, with a laugh.

“Well, ma’am,” said Clare, “if you and Mr. Halliwell are of one mind, nothing would please me so much as to serve you and the beasts. But I should like to be sure about it, for where husband and wife are not of one mind—well, it is uncomfortable!”

Thereupon he told her how he had stood with the farmer and his wife; and from that she led him on through his whole story—not unaccompanied with tears on the part of his deliverer, for she was a tender-souled as well as generous and friendly woman. In her heart she rejoiced to think that the boy’s sufferings would now be at an end; and thenceforward she was, as he always called her, his third mother.

“My poor, ill-used child!” she said. “But I’ll be a mother to you—if you’ll have me!”

“You wouldn’t mind if I thought rather often of my two other mothers, ma’am—would you?” he said.

“God forbid, boy!” she answered. “If I were your real mother, would I have my own flesh and blood ungrateful? Should I be proud of him for loving nobody but me? That’s like the worst of the beasts: they love none but their little ones—and that only till they’re tired of the trouble of them!”

“Thank you! Then I will be your son Clare, please, ma’am.”

The next time they stopped, she made her husband come into her caravan, and then and there she would and did have everything arranged. When both her husband and the boy would have left his wages undetermined, she would not hear of it, but insisted that so much a week should be fixed at once to begin with. She had no doubt, she said, that her husband would soon be ready enough to raise his wages; but he must have his food and five shillings a week now, and Mr. Halliwell must advance money to get him decent clothes: he might keep the wages till the clothes were paid for!

Everything she wished was agreed to by her husband, and at the next town, Clare’s new mother saw him dressed to her satisfaction, and to his own. She would have his holiday clothes better than his present part in life required, and she would not let his sovereign go toward paying for them: that she would keep ready in case he might want it! Her eyes followed him about with anxious pride—as if she had been his mother in fact as she was in truth.

He had at once plenty to do. The favour of his mother saved him from no kind of work, neither had he any desire it should. Every morning he took his share in cleaning out the cages, and in setting water for the beasts, and food for the birds and such other creatures as took it when they pleased. At the proper intervals he fed as many as he might of those animals that had stated times for their meals; and found the advantage of this in its facilitating his friendly approaches to them. He helped with the horses also—with whose harness and ways he was already familiar. In a very short time he was known as a friend by every civilized animal in and about the caravans.

He did all that was required of him, and more. Not everyone of course had a right to give him orders, but Clare was not particular as to who wanted him, or for what. He was far too glad to have work to look at the gift askance. He did not make trouble of what ought to be none, by saying, with the spirit of a slave, “It’s not my place.” He did many things which he might have disputed, for he never thought of disputing them. Thus, both for himself and for others, he saved a great deal of time, and avoided much annoyance and much quarrelling. Thus also he gained many friends.

Chapter XLVII. Glum Gunn

He had but one enemy, and he did not make him such: he was one by nature. For he was so different from Clare that he disliked him the moment he saw him, and it took but a day to ripen his dislike into hatred. Like Mr. Maidstone, he found the innocent fearlessness of Clare’s expression repulsive. His fingers twitched, he said, to have a twist at the sheep-nose of him. Unhappily for Clare, he was of consequence in the menagerie, having money in the concern. He was half-brother to the proprietor, but so unlike him that he might not have had a drop of blood from the same source. An ill-tempered, imperious man, he would hurt himself to have his way, for he was the merest slave to what he fancied. When a man will have a thing, right or wrong, that man is a slave to that thing—the meanest of slaves, a willing one. He was the terror of the men beneath him, heeding no man but his brother—and him only because he knew “he would stand no nonsense.” To his sister-in-law he was civil: she was his brother’s wife, and his brother was proud of her! Also he knew that she was perfect in her part of the business. So it was reason to stand as well as he might with her!

Clare had no suspicion that he more than disliked him. It took him days indeed to discover even that he did not love him—notwithstanding the bilious eye which, when its owner was idle, kept constantly following him. And idle he often was, not from laziness, but from the love of ordering about, and looking superior.

It was natural that such a man should also be cruel. There are who find their existence pleasant in proportion as they make that of others miserable. He had no liking for any of the animals, regarding them only as property with never a right;—as if God would make anything live without thereby giving it rights! To Glum Gunn, as he was commonly called behind his back, the animals were worth so much money to sell, and so much to show. Yet he prided himself that he had a great influence as well as power over them, an occult superiority that made him their lord. It was merely a phase of the vulgarest self-conceit. He posed to himself as a lion-tamer! He had never tamed a lion, or any creature else, in his life; but when he had a wild thing safe within iron bars, then he “let him know who was his master!” By the terror of his whip, and means far worse, he compelled obedience. The grizzly alone, of the larger animals, he never interfered with.

From the first he received Clare’s “Good-morning, sir,” with a silent stare; and the boy at last, thinking he did not like to be so greeted, gave up the salutation. This roused Gunn’s anger and increased his hate. But indeed any boy petted by his sister-in-law, would have been odious to him; and any boy whatever would have found him a hard master. Clare was for a while protected by the man’s unreadiness to have words with his brother, who always took his wife’s part; but the tyrant soon learned that he might venture far.