Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  It costs a rhinoceros a great deal of valuable time to kill bluebottles by charging at them with his horns, and if he doesn’t kill them they creep under the folds of his ulster and annoy him. Immersion in water crowds the bluebottles into a small space — about the ears. And with his ears Tom drowns bluebottles at an amazing rate.

  ZIG-ZAG MUSTELINE

  NOW, the mustelidae are the weasels; and the badger is a weasel, improbable as it may seem, as also is the otter, the stoat, the polecat, the skunk, the glutton, the ratel, and many others. And since so many things are weasels — and to speak of many things at once is beyond my compass herein — those weasels only will I speak of that chiefly take the eye in the outer parts of house number twenty-seven; saying nothing of the glutton (though all weasels are gluttons, each in his way), nor of the polecat, nor the stoat, nor the skunk, nor the weasel that went pop.

  Every admirer of modesty should love the badger. So little he obtrudes himself that we are often assured that the badger (or the brock, as it is still called locally) is within a specimen or two of obliteration. But it is the brock’s modesty that conceals his existence, for well he knows that, in his case, brock’s display may not contribute much to brock’s benefit; which words are an advertisement.

  Badger-drawing is a thing of the past, and rightly. But upon this page the drawing of a badger may now be seen without danger of interference from the police. He is the white badger, and is never easy to draw. His native objection to daylight overcomes his sense of duty to the public, and nothing will make him show himself, short of taking away all his straw. Raking away his coverlet only exposes him for a moment; he burrows again and vanishes. He has left his card on the wire, he argues, and that ought to satisfy any reasonable visitor.

  Although, labelled as he is, “Common Badger,” he may feel rather ashamed of that card. That is a notion that I can never get rid of. All over the Gardens various animals are insulted by the epithet “common.” Then there are the “Stump-tail Lizard,” the “Dusty Ichneumon,” and the “Hairy-nosed Wombat,” not to mention the “Bottle-nosed Whale,” that isn’t here at all. Is man justified in so insulting his more virtuous fellow-creatures? Why should we show vulgar discourtesy even to a whale?

  The ratels, too, although not insulted in name, are grievously oppressed after the manner of David Copperffeld at Creakle’s.

  “These animals bite” is the notice for ever fixed upon their cage. It gives rise to sad unpopularity, which the ratels can never mitigate, in the manner of David, with jam tarts and redcurrant wine. But more of this presently.

  Jack, the otter, in his big round cage, has his own particular affront to endure, none the less an affront because it is in Latin. Lutra vulgaris is the scientific name of Jack, but it is just as offensive to call an otter vulgar in Latin as in English.

  I can quite believe that it was this painted stigma of vulgarity that caused Jack to run away, some few years ago, and set up in the fish business on the Regent’s Canal. It took some few days to persuade him to return, and the task of the persuaders was, I take it, none too easy. An otter is a rare good fighter, and there is trouble involved in bringing him home dead; but alive, he is a whirling tangle of teeth and claws, bad to handle. In any case, Jack is never vulgar. He is an epicure in the matter of fish, and an unerring connoisseur. Observe further the patrician disdain with which he regards the ignorant people who think to feed him with biscuits. It may be thought a vulgar taste that led him to start life afresh in the Regent’s Canal, but where else could he go?

  But in all the house numbered twenty-seven there are no such favourites as the ratels. Why these have never been properly, officially, and individually given personal names I cannot understand.

  I prefer to call them Edwin and Angelina, because they are always turning and turning; although to imagine Edwin a gentle hermit of the dale, or a gentle anything, is not easy. For Edwin bites, and hard, and so does Angelina. But then it is only their fun. I admire Edwin and Angelina because they keep up their spirits in most annoying circumstances.

  Those labels (there are two of them) informing everybody in capital letters that “These animals bite,” have a most remarkable effect on human visitors. They touch, in some occult way, a hidden and mysterious spring of human impulse. For no human creature (able to read) can see that label without at once repeating aloud, “These animals bite.” It is a most astounding phenomenon. Watch by the wires, and you shall see. A family arrives, and immediately mother points to the label and says, “These animals bite.” “Ugh!” says the eldest little girl, also looking at the label, “they bite!” “Look here,” says the boy from school, “these fellows bite!” Nurse stoops and informs Toddles that these animals bite. Toddles looks up and replies “Dey bite!” with an air of imparting exclusive knowledge; and then the whole family subsides into a murmuring chorus, whereof the only distinct words are “They bite.” And so they move off.

  Then come old men, old women, young men, and young women, boys and girls, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, and the others. Each separately reads the label, and then assures all the others that these animals bite. Little Bobby strays from a family party, and reads that fatal label. He rushes back, breathless, to report that “these animals bite,” and the whole family come pell-mell.

  They stand before the label and repeat the mystic formula to one another, and then move off, making way for others, who do the same thing. It is positively maddening. No wonder the ratels bite; the Archbishop of Canterbury would bite if you tortured him with that exasperating reiteration.

  As it is, the phrase must eat into the very being of Edwin and Angelina, and they seem to take their regular trot round to the eternal refrain, “These — animals — bite — these — animals — bite,” always and for ever; Edwin introducing a small variation by a somersault each time as he reaches the narrow part of the cage, and Angelina by a jump against the wires. These perambulations are executed with a steady thoughtfulness that plainly indicates profound cogitation of some kind. If it is not the rhythmical repetition of the notice on the label, it is probably the conjugation of the verb: “I bite, thou bitest, he bites. We bite, you bite, they bite, I have bitten, thou hast bitten—” and so on, and so on.

  Edwin and Angelina are really most deserving and persevering entertainers of the knock-about or Two Macs order, with a strong dash of the Brothers Griffiths. Angelina is best on the horizontal bar, and it is here that she retreats when at feeding time she has a tit-bit to which Edwin may take an independent fancy. The whole cage is well adapted for the performances of the ratels, and, substantially made as it is, anybody is perfectly justified in calling it a ratel-trap affair.

  Edwin and Angelina much prefer their cage to liberty; at closed hours, when the keeper takes them out for a walk, they are inclined to crawl back behind the label that tells of their bites. They have a cement floor, so that they can no longer burrow underneath with a wild notion of coming out in some other part of the world, as they once did; and the drain is carefully covered in now, so that games of follow-my-leader therein, once their chief sport, are no longer practicable. But chiefly Edwin and Angelina live to revel in the pure delights of mutual assault and battery.

  Never is Angelina so happy as when she is joyously gnawing her Edwin’s head, while his attention is concentrated on a gleeful attempt to drag the hide off her back.

  It is only from the inside of a skin as tough and elastic as the ratel’s that tooth-and-nail combat can be properly enjoyed as a pastime. A ratel is just as fond of being bitten as of biting. It stimulates the healthy action of the skin, and doesn’t hurt in the least. But a good hammering is also enjoyable. If Edwin and Angelina have been particularly good, no more acceptable reward can be offered them than the accidental leaving inside the cage of a pail. Then the devoted couple may fondle one another vigorously with that pail until it becomes a battered wisp of metal, and they feel bright and refreshed all over. Edwin and Angelina between them consume in a week suff
icient personal violence to supply Cork political meetings for six months. With a little more hardening they might even come whole out of a football match.

  But even ratels have never ventured as far as football. A little infuriate devastation by way of amusement is all very well, but the ratel avoids extremes. Still, it is not easy to understand the necessity for that notice— “These animals bite.” Nobody would think of disputing the fact.

  They are biting all the time, more legibly than you can paint it on a label. If only they ate all they bit, Edwin would have become Angelina by gradual absorption and Angelina Edwin, long ago; then they would have become absorbed back again, and which would be which by this time nobody but an analytical chemist could calculate.

  Indeed, I have a theory that the breed of ratels has been evolved out of certain quarrelsome seals, monkeys, and Malayan bears, who all ate each other up entirely, and then attacked a shopful of ladies’ muffs subsequently blossoming out in the guise of a medley of all the various antagonistic elements, to perform gymnastics and Two-Mac riots for the amusement of visitors to the Zoo; enacting also at times the instructive little sketch of “Bill Slogins and the Missis; or the Door on the Jar and the Family Jar on the Doorstep.”

  ZIG-ZAG PISCINE

  This is a Zig-Zag performed by Alice, one of the darters that live at the end of the fish-house — for it is in accordance with the general zig-zaggedness of things that the most popular residents in the fish-house are the birds. The diving birds are penguins, shags, and darters, and the darters are Jack and Alice. Many may remember the famous ballad beginning —

  “Keeper may I go in to fish?”. “Oh, yes, my own fair darter!”

  although probably they won’t. The darter therein referred to is popularly supposed to have been Alice. It is probably because of her name that Alice had this remarkable dream, although Waterman (which is the name of the keeper — a man evidently born for the fish-house) thinks it was because of swallowing Jack’s dinner as well as her own. Alice certainly had done very well — she always does — and was well disposed for sleep. Jack went quietly and respectably home to his cage, but Alice stayed on the diving-board, dozing. Waterman reached for her with the net, and for a moment aroused her senses by the display of a roach, but Alice remembered that she was loaded to the sinking-line already, and forbore. Waterman was called away, and Alice slept.

  Now as Alice slept she dreamed. And it was this. In the water below her (where she knew she had left nothing living larger than the natural animalcula) there appeared, moving towards her, a double row of great phosphorescent fishy eyes. Then between each pair of steadily upturned eyes she saw, as is usual, a nose. Then below the nose a pale, ghastly, half-open mouth. It was shuddersome. Alice had never before seen any fish that she did not welcome gladly and take inside with promptitude. But these fish, all with their noses pointing upward and their unnaturally large eyes fixed upon her — these she knew at once, by instinct, were not to be eaten. There is no record, even in the transactions of the Psychical Research Society, of an edible ghost. These awful-eyed fish passed beneath the diving-board on which she stood, and, strangely enough, Alice could see their eyes as plainly after they had passed out of sight as before.

  Then a weird, mysterious sound gathered about her, intensifying into a loud wail — the wail of many hundreds of fishy spirits repeating the words of the mystic inscription over the tank: “The diving birds are fed at twelve and three p.m.”

  Thus was the case made plain to Alice. These were the avenging spirits — the phantoms of hundreds of fish eaten and forgotten; reproachful roach and minatory minnows. Alice could not speak — it would have been impossible to deny the charge if she could, for the words were painted on a board in such large letters that nobody could doubt their truth. Suddenly each wing was taken in a clammy but firm grasp, and a pair of greater eyes than ever appeared at each side of her. “You’re wanted, young person,” said a gruff voice at one side, and “Better come quietly!” said another, on the opposite side. “Never you mind wot for,” pursued the first voice, as though Alice had asked, which she hadn’t; “you’ll find that out soon enough at the station.” And “It’s our dooty to warn you,” added the second voice, “that anything you say ‘ll be took down as evidence ag’in you.” “All right,” Alice replied, with a conciliatory flutter, “I won’t say anything.” “Says she won’t say anything,” remarked the second voice, “take that down; it’s important.”

  All this time they were moving serenely along through the glass, the frames of the cases and the walls of the house, into the black shed of doom at the back where none but keepers go and the fated fish that feed the diving birds. “You’re remanded here,” Alice’s left-hand captor informed her, “till the sessions.” “But I haven’t been charged yet,” protested Alice. “Charged? O’ course not,” returned the policeman — he was barbel— “we don’t charge you nothing for this; but it’s dry work here swimming through deal doors, and a drop o’ something short now—” “Look here,” said Alice, as an idea struck her, “can’t this be squared?” “No,” answered the barbel, gloomily, “you can’t square a ghost, you know; everything drops through his pockets. That’s the worst of being a ghost. Take down that she tried to square us,” he added to his mate; “it’s scandalous.” Nothing was taken down, however, and Alice wondered whether either had been to one of the school of fish she had heard of. “Look here,” said the barbel, “I know what you’re thinking about — schools; board schools, because you used to board on them. Ah, you’ve been a bad darter. But you mustn’t think. It isn’t allowed.”

  Alice sat on the corner of the bench near the largest tank of fish and shuddered; for now there were more ghosts than ever, and one came close to her ear and made an awful pun about this being her last perch.

  She had often wondered what was really the worst thing a ghost could do to anyone, and now she knew and trembled. Presently she was whisked up and rushed bodily through the walls again to the godwit’s cage, where a public meeting of fish was taking place in a hole in the grotto. A good many birds were waiting about outside to hear the result of the meeting, which, it seemed, was all over except the election of the chairman, which had been forgotten at the beginning, and was now being settled by a raffle. Presently a fine trout came swimming down through the air. Alice recognised him at once as the largest trout in the tank near the door. “Halloa,” said the trout, “you’re the prisoner, aren’t you? I’m the scene-shifter — always looking after the flies, you know. Never hear of trout-flies? See this scene shift.” Immediately Alice felt her wings grasped again, and something pulled her feet backward from under her. She was blinded for a few seconds, during which she felt herself hurriedly dragged the length of the fish-house. When she was set upon her feet and looked about she found that the place was fitted as a court of justice. “Ah!” said the trout in her ear, “that’s something like a system of scene-shifting; a little invention of my own. You shift the spectator — saves lots of trouble. System extensively adopted by the police.”

  Alice was standing in the dock. One of the piker was judge — the big pike from the end tank. The jury were packed — very tightly — in a box on the left. Alice wondered whether it might put the Court in a good humour to refer to it casually as the sardine-box, but decided to save the idea for an emergency. The judge looked severely about him, and from time to time snapped his jaws sharply, at which all the jury jumped nervously. Presently the judge snapped very loudly and asked, “What’s the charge?” At this the bullhead appeared dragging a board, which he displayed. It was the board from above the tank. On it were inscribed the words— “The Diving Birds are fed at twelve and three p.m.” “Oh, that’s the charge, is it?” said the judge in a loud voice. “And pray, sir, who are you?” “I’m the bullhead, me lud,” replied that unfortunate, very frightened. “I am for the prosecution.” “Then what do you mean, sir, by coming into court with no horns?” “Beg your pardon, me lud,” quavered the bullhead, “but
I’ve got none — none of us have.” “What, no horns?” said the judge. “I humbly apologize,” replied the bullhead, trembling all over. “Don’t argue, sir,” roared the judge, savagely “come to lunch with me!” At which invitation the unlucky bullhead fainted away, and all the other fish tried to look as if they thought it served him right.

  “Now there’ll be no speech for the prosecution,” said the judge, “and that’ll save time. And there’ll be nobody to call witnesses for the prosecution, and that’ll save time too. There’s too much of this dilatory legal formality, delaying meals. Where’s the evidence of arrest?” At this a carp stepped into the witness-box. “Well, constable,” asked the judge, “did you arrest the prisoner?” “No, yer ludship,” said the carp. “Is that what you’ve come to prove?” “Yus, yer ludship,” responded the carp. “Oh, I see,” said the pike, “the plan will be to call everybody who didn’t arrest her, so as to make quite sure of that first?” His lordship seemed amused.

  “Jest so, yer ludship,” answered the carp.

  “That’ll be rather slow,” said the judge, “and I want my lunch soon. Would you like to come to lunch with me?” His lordship looked more amused than ever, but the carp turned pale and gasped. “Because, you know,” the judge pursued, “if you wouldn’t, you’d better say who did arrest the prisoner, and save time.”