David Garnett

“ It is not honest to say first that you love me, and then that you are a Christian and love everybody equally.”
“Nonsense,” said the girl, “you know that is nonsense. It is not Christianity, it is because I love several people very much.”
“You do not love several people very much,” said Cromartie, interrupting her. “You cannot possibly love people like your aunts. Nobody could. No, you do not really love anybody. You imagine that you do because you have not got the courage to stand alone.”
“I know whom I love, and whom I do not,” said Josephine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cromartie made a singular determination—one which you may swear no other man in like circumstances would ever have arrived at.
It was somehow or other to get himself exhibited in the Zoo, as if he were part of the menagerie.
It may be that a strange predilection which he had for keeping his word is enough to account for this. But it will always be found that many impulses are entirely whimsical and not to be accounted for by reason. ”

“ I think you are a character who will always torture the people you love. I cannot bear pain well; that alone makes us unsuited to each other. It is the principal reason why I never wish to see you again.
You are mistaken when you say that you have something of the first importance to tell me. Unless it is something to do with the arrangements which the Zoo authorities make with regard to the Ape-house, it cannot be of importance to me.{67}
Please believe that I bear you no resentment for the past; indeed I still love you, but I mean what I say.
Yours ever,
John Cromartie. ”

“ At the moment he was feeling faint, and only by an effort of will continued standing where he was without clutching hold of the bars.
“Are you interested in the girls?” asked the negro. “They come and watch me all the morning, and they do stare so ... he, he, he.”
“No, I’m not interested,” said Mr. Cromartie. Nobody could have mistaken the desperate sincerity in his voice.
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Tennison, at once restored to his former heartiness and buoyancy of manner.
“That is how I feel myself, just how I feel. I have no interest in women at all. ”

“ Presently Cromartie said, “For the last time, Josephine, will you marry me, and be damned to your relations?”
“No! You silly savage!” said Josephine. “No,{7} you wild beast. Can’t you understand that one doesn’t treat people like that? It is simply wasting my breath to talk. I’ve explained a hundred times I am not going to make father miserable. I am not going to be cut off with a shilling and become dependent on you when you haven’t enough money to live on yourself, to satisfy your vanity. My vanity, do you think having you in love with me pleases my vanity? ”

“ They left the Dingo, walked to the next cage, and stood side by side looking at the creature in it.
“The slender dog,” said Josephine, reading the label. She laughed, and the slender dog got up and walked away.
“So that is a wolf,” said Cromartie, as they stopped six feet further on. “Another dog in a cage.... Give yourself to me, Josephine, that sounds to me as if you were crazy. But it shows anyway that you are not in love with me. If you are in love it is all or nothing. You cannot be in love with several people at once. ”

“ He followed the keeper into the small cat house, and talked with him for a little while longer.
It so happened that one of the beasts directly under the care of this man had attracted Mr. Cromartie when he went into the house before. For in the Caracal he saw an unhappiness to match his own, combined with beauty. The Caracal, poor creature, never stopped moving, holding its face to the bars of its little cage. It moved back and forth with tireless rapidity, and a monotony which seemed inspired by unutterable sorrow. ”

“ You are a survival—atavism at its worst. Don’t ask me why I fell in love with you—I did, but I cannot marry Tarzan of the Apes, I’m not romantic enough. I see, too, that you do believe what you have been saying. You do think mankind is your enemy. I can assure you that if mankind thinks of you, it thinks you are the missing link. You ought to be shut up and exhibited here in the Zoo—I’ve told you once and now I tell you again—with the gorilla on one side and the chimpanzee on the other. ”

“ Love is the very devil. And that poor young man is certainly in love. Nobody can cheer him up. Nobody can do anything except her that caused the trouble in his heart. There’s nothing I can do for him now except just to pretend to notice nothing, the same as I always do. ”

“ They did not stop to look at dogs or foxes, or wolves or tigers, they raced past the lion house and the cattle sheds, and without glancing at the pheasants or a lonely peacock, slipped through the turnstile into Regent’s Park. There, still hand in hand, they passed unnoticed into the crowd. Nobody looked at them, nobody recognised them. The crowd was chiefly composed of couples like themselves. ”

“ Josephine withdrew, and in the hall the curator said to her:
“Don’t worry about him, Miss Lackett; it’s a beastly thing of course to think of, but it’s not serious. He isn’t the King of Greece; the monkey isn’t that sort of monkey even. He’ll be up and about in a day or two at the most. By the way, is your father General Lackett?” ”

“ You are always considering the feelings of other people,” said Mr. Cromartie. His companion did not answer him, so he went on:
“You say somebody feels this, or that somebody else may feel the other. You never talk to me about anything except what other people are feeling, or may be going to feel. I wish you could forget about other people and talk about yourself, but I suppose you have to talk of other people’s feelings because you haven’t any of your own.”
The beast opposite them was bored. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is a terrible tragedy, it is very painful to think of people being mad, for me it is a disappointment in love. Such disappointments are the most painful to which a girl in my position can be exposed,” and so on—if she could have done this then Miss Lackett would have found a sure way to reduce her suffering to a minimum. For by putting forward such general ideas as madness and disappointment in love she could very soon have come to feel only the general emotion suited to these ideas. But as it was she could only think of John Cromartie, his face, voice, manners, and way of moving ”

“ Josephine Lackett.
The moment that Josephine had sent off the messenger she regretted what she had said in it, and nothing seemed to her then more certain than that her letter would exasperate Cromartie still further. The next moment she thought to herself: “I have exposed myself to the greatest humiliation a woman can receive.” For a second or two this filled her with terror, and at that moment she would have readily killed herself. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ As he looked through the meshes of his cage at the excited faces watching him, it cost him an effort to listen to what was being said of him, and after a while his attention wandered even against his will, for he cared nothing for mankind and cared nothing for what they said. ”

“ If placed in a cage between the Orang-outang and the Chimpanzee, an ordinary member of the human race would arrest the attention of everyone who entered the Large Ape-house. In such a position he would lead to a thousand interesting comparisons being made by visitors for whose education the Gardens do in a large measure exist. Every child would grow up imbued with the outlook of a Darwin, and would become aware not only of his own exact place in the animal kingdom, but also in what he resembled, and in what he{11} differed from the Apes. ”

“ No, the reason why they would have felt his loss such a severe blow is because the public readily attaches itself to the individual animals in the Zoo, and is not to be consoled when such a favourite dies, or disappears, even if it is instantly replaced by an even finer specimen of the same species. Many persons habitually resort to the Gardens in order to visit their particular friends, Sam, Sadie and Rollo, and not merely to look at any polar bear, orang, or king penguin. And this applies quite as forcibly to the Fellows of the Society as to the outside public. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever creatures in the Gardens had most retained their native wildness were sure to attract him. They seemed to him, in his rather warped state of mind, to have preserved their self-respect. It was to accomplish this in his own particular case which was his chief concern, though of course he was perfectly well aware that it did not consist in behaving with any shyness. On the contrary, Mr. Cromartie’s self-respect depended upon his maintaining an appearance of unruffled calm, together with the utmost{46} civility in all his relations with those with whom he had any business. ”

“ I hate them all, and I’m going to be happy with you in spite of them. Nobody can make me feel ashamed now. I can’t help being myself and I will be myself.”
“Darling,” said Cromartie, “you would be wretched here. It’s awful; you mustn’t think of it. I have a much more sensible plan. I can’t ask them to let me go. Anyhow I shan’t do that. But I am still so feeble that I can easily make myself really ill again, and then I think they will let me go and we can get married.{92}”
“That won’t do,” said Josephine. “We can’t wait any longer, and you would die if you tried that. ”

“ It was natural enough that the creatures that were fed by the public should feel resentment if they were passed over, for they are all insatiably greedy, and the worse they digest the food given them the more anxious they are to glut themselves with it. The wolves felt a different jealousy, for they were constantly forming attachments to particular persons among the crowd, and if the chosen person neglected them for a neighbour they became jealous. ”