But the low-comedy merchant par excellence of this department is the bubaline antelope. His hoofs spread out before his shins like the long boots of the dancing nigger, his horns are of the loudest thunder-and-lightning pattern, his ears are of the wildest donkey-design, his head is that of a cheap tack-hammer, and his nose — but, there; there is no describing that nose — it puts the ant-eater to shame.
His bodily framework asserts itself through the inadequate skin in ostentatious lumps and corners; as though about half of the bones had been sent home too large, with the skin originally intended for something two-thirds the bubaline’s size.
The bubaline antelope is the quadruped embodiment of the Misfit as an institution. And he is hopelessly, lamentably innocent and unconscious of his eccentricities! Small boys stand before his den and scream with laughter; the bubaline looks at them with a mild and grieved surprise.
He has heard hundreds of visitors laugh like that, and could never understand why it was done. What can it be? Any animal with a sense of humour would at least cover up that nose.
Over in the house where once the giraffes lived, solemnly ruminate the stately zebus. The zebu is a grand piece of scenery, and looks as though it might carry with it some excellent cuts of beef. But it is not active, and only its ears betray the fact that the whole thing is not stuffed. And those ears bob and flap solemnly as though worked by some concealed official behind with a long string.
ZIG-ZAG FINAL
NOW, after I have classified and displayed many things in a system of confusion proper to my want of design, at the end there remain many old friends, from the woolly llama that lives by Tom, the white camel, to the vagrant mouse that steals pinches of the porcupine’s dinner. Some are in the catalogue, many are not.
There is an old horse that drags a refuse cart, and, having been here for years, is past all surprising. He would plod past a two-headed dragon, or a unicorn with a fiery tail, in the same state of calmness in which he plods past Jim the rhinoceros or Jack the bison. Far different is it with the venerable canal horses that tramp resignedly by the Regent’s Canal, where it cuts the Gardens in two. They see nothing, for that costs a shilling, and the Society spend many shillings in fences; but they hear, and most of all they hear the parrots when they hang out for an airing on a warm day.
There is a wicked old blue macaw — a fine, big fellow, whose name should be Blue Peter — who tricks the unhappy canal horses all day; shouting “Wo — o — o — o!” at the top of his voice, and chuckling with unholy delight when the angular victim welcomes the opportunity for a rest.
Some creatures there are that are uncatalogued because they hold official positions. Such are Nell, Church’s terrier, divers cats, and the matronly old hens that hatch out eggs for rarer birds. The fat importance of one old Cochin hen and the tremendous number and thickness of her garments make out a complete claim on her behalf to be called Mrs. Gamp. Mrs. Gamp’s must be a life of surprises.
For a respectable suburban hen of the strictest propriety and the most regular and orderly habits is naturally surprised when a long and conscientious sitting results in a brood of spindly cranes or an ear-splitting choir of laughing jackasses. It shocks her sense of the proper and respectable, and confuses her orderly intellect. For in her suburban intelligence what is eccentric is disreputable, and so she trots about distracted, half afraid of her family and half of the gallinaceous Mrs. Grundy. The life is undermining her nervous system. No hen’s nervous system will stand an eternal uncertainty as to whether a particular egg will turn to a thing all beak, or a thing all legs, or a thing to swim, a thing to run, or a thing to fly; with a reserve possibility that it may turn to a snake or a lizard. There is dignity in Mrs. Gamp’s official position, I grant; but it is a wearing work, hatching out a perpetual succession of nightmares.
In the Zoo you may find curiosities on both sides of the bars. On the human side there are, at least, as many as on the other. Maybe a company of sailors, who go to a show for a laugh, and guffaw conscientiously at everything, to the intense scandal of the serious creatures, like Bob the Bactrian and most of the owls: or a worthy group of country cousins, each brimming over with perfect ignorance of any animal more recondite than a cow, and imparting their misinformation to each other with great freedom and confidence. The intelligent foreigner comes here, too, in those peculiar felt and straw hats that only he knows how to get; hats often with little cockades of feathers stuck in the sides of the bands. He begins at house number one, and solemnly and diligently broods over each animal in succession, to the very last in house sixty-four.
He is fat of face, and usually wears spectacles. Also there is the unhappy elementary school, sternly marshalled in a trotting column and dragged neck and crop through the grounds for the enlargement of their information and the improvement of their beraddled minds; whom the unbending schoolmaster impels over the gravel paths at the pace calculated to get them out of the gate within the time allowed for their free visit; and whose precise acquisitions in zoology on the run, and impressions of the whole business in general, one would rather like to analyze.
But pre-eminent, perkiest, cheekiest of all things not in the catalogue, is the sparrow. He flies casually to and fro among wolves, tigers, and leopards, with an airy confidence and self-sufficiency that nothing bigger than a sparrow can imitate.
He drops in casually on Tom, the big tiger, as he takes his afternoon nap in his back-yard, and bounces to and fro under Tom’s nose, discussing zoological politics on a footing of perfect equality, and disturbing Tom’s nap.
Feeling his vast importance, and quite recognising the principle that his exalted position carries with it certain social duties which he must not neglect, he makes a flying call on Duke, the Nubian lion, and patronizes him with the proper grace, suggesting various impossible alterations in regimen by way of improving Duke’s digestion and mending his temper.
He hops across the Gardens and discusses the prospects of the hay-crop with Jim the rhinoceros, who is dietetically interested in the matter; then, having swaggered past the retiring mice who assume a residuary interest in Jim’s dinner, he hangs about a little at a bar — partly because it is the nobby thing, and partly because of the crumbs — and so across Regent’s Park and off to a cricket match at Lord’s.
But there are creatures that have not been spoken of in these pages, yet still have respectable positions in the catalogue.
Instance the llamas and guanacos. I am not fond of the guanaco. He spits — and with an accurate aim. Take care how you rouse the ire of the guanaco, for he spits suddenly and without warning. You may rouse his ire in many hundreds of thousands of ways. By wearing a peculiar hat or an ordinary hat; walking quietly or with a swagger, or running or sitting or standing still; by speaking, shouting, or remaining silent, or by existing in the same world; and, his ire roused, he promptly spits, while Tom, the wicked old white camel next door, looks on with delighted approval. He would spit himself if he could, but prefers biting.
Then there is the secretary bird, with his many quills and his smart, War Office air. He has caused many a pitched zoological battle over the question whether he is a stork or a hawk; and his own battles with snakes cover him with glory and fill him with snake. He struts smartly about, plainly a secretary who knows his business and will stand no nonsense. There are all the stags, finest and largest and most disdainful of all being the wapiti. But a stag is always in a preliminary and incipient state of weeping, in spite of his assumption of “side,” and until he becomes venison is really an uninteresting creature. Some day, perhaps, he wil properly make up his mind and have a good cry and get it over.
Then he may turn his mind to something else and take a worthy position in society. As it is, the stag at best, if he has any definite character at all, is a hypocrite. He poses as the beautiful, mild, benignant, timid, loving and oppressed creature, and is at heart a savage. Worthy and well-meaning people, with soft hearts and heads of blubber, sob and squeal bec
ause he is hunted. He is such a darling, timid, trustful creature, say they, and to hunt him is the act of cowardly brutality.
Now, I challenge any of these kind people to approach a group of the mildest park deer, any day late in August, select a quiet-looking buck, and attempt, in the most friendly way, to pat or stroke him. I am not particular as to the sort of deer — big red deer or little roebuck — but I hope the challenge won’t be accepted, because the worthy adventurer will probably experience a dig in the ribs that will cause him a ride home on a hurdle. I say nothing of wilder deer. Verb. sat sap. Still, the stag is a characterless creature. There is even more character in the yak, just opposite, mild creature as it is, with its old womanish air of coddling in its black silk shawl, and its pathetic grunt.
Also there are the Barbary wild sheep, who turn up in all sorts of unexpected corners of the place. There is something truculently timid, savagely mild, about the name of the Barbary wild sheep. It begins like thunder and dies away like a zephyr. It reminds one of Sidney Smith’s lethally-preaching Wild Curates.
But behold, I have forgotten some of the most noble of the uncatalogued; chief among them Nell, Church’s fox-terrier, who (herself and her numerous descendants) makes deadly war on the uncatalogued, unhoused, uninvited undesired rats, themselves a large part of the population of this place, and as destructive. An excellent official is Nell, honest, diligent, and with quick jaws.
But no less worthy in their way are the regiment of battle-scarred cats, terrors among mice and rats both. Chief among these is Mr. Toots, of the camel-house, the intimate friend of Bob the Bactrian; and the elephant-house cat and the ostrich-house cat occupy high positions. But many a stout heart beats quicker at the smell of mouse beneath the fur of the more obscure rank and file of the uncatalogued cats.
THE END
THE DORRINGTON DEED BOX
CONTENTS
THE NARRATIVE OF MR. JAMES RIGBY
THE CASE OF JANISSARY
THE CASE OF “THE MIRROR OF PORTUGAL”
THE AFFAIR OF THE. “AVALANCHE BICYCLE & TYRE CO., LTD.”
THE CASE OF MR. LOFTUS DEACON
OLD CATER’S MONEY
The first edition
THE NARRATIVE OF MR. JAMES RIGBY
I SHALL here set down in language as simple and straightforward as I can command, the events which followed my recent return to England; and I shall leave it to others to judge whether or not my conduct has been characterised by foolish fear and ill-considered credulity. At the same time I have my own opinion as to what would have been the behaviour of any other man of average intelligence and courage in the same circumstances; more especially a man of my exceptional upbringing and retired habits.
I was born in Australia, and I have lived there all my life till quite recently, save for a single trip to Europe as a boy, in company with my father and mother. It was then that I lost my father. I was less than nine years old at the time, but my memory of the events of that European trip is singularly vivid.
My father had emigrated to Australia at the time of his marriage, and had become a rich man by singularly fortunate speculations in land in and about Sydney. As a family we were most uncommonly self-centred and isolated. From my parents I never heard a word as to their relatives in England; indeed to this day I do not as much as know what was the Christian name of my grandfather. I have often supposed that some serious family quarrel or great misfortune must have preceded or accompanied my father’s marriage. Be that as it may, I was never able to learn anything of my relatives, either on my mother’s or my father’s side. Both parents, however, were educated people, and indeed I fancy that their habit of seclusion must first have arisen from this circumstance, since the colonists about them in the early days, excellent people as they were, were not as a class distinguished for extreme intellectual culture. My father had his library stocked from England, and added to by fresh arrivals from time to time; and among his books he would pass most of his days, taking, however, now and again an excursion with a gun in search of some new specimen to add to his museum of natural history, which occupied three long rooms in our house by the Lane Cove river.
I was, as I have said, eight years of age when I started with my parents on a European tour, and it was in the year 1873. We stayed but a short while in England at first arrival, intending to make a longer stay on our return from the Continent. We made our tour, taking Italy last, and it was here that my father encountered a dangerous adventure.
We were at Naples, and my father had taken an odd fancy for a picturesque-looking ruffian who had attracted his attention by a complexion unusually fair for an Italian, and in whom he professed to recognise a likeness to Tasso the poet. This man became his guide in excursions about the neighbourhood of Naples, though he was not one of the regular corps of guides, and indeed seemed to have no regular occupation of a definite sort. “Tasso,” as my father always called him, seemed a civil fellow enough, and was fairly intelligent: but my mother disliked him extremely from the first, without being able to offer any very distinct reason for her aversion. In the event her instinct was proved true.
“Tasso” — his correct name, by the way, was Tommaso Marino — persuaded my father that something interesting was to be seen at the Astroni crater, four miles west of the city, or thereabout: persuaded him, moreover, to make the journey on foot: and the two accordingly set out. All went well enough till the crater was reached, and then, in a lonely and broken part of the hill, the guide suddenly turned and attacked my father with a knife, his intention, without a doubt, being murder and the acquisition of the Englishman’s valuables. Fortunately my father had a hip-pocket with a revolver in it, for he had been warned of the danger a stranger might at that time run wandering in the country about Naples. He received a wound in the flesh of his left arm in an attempt to ward off a stab, and fired, at wrestling distance, with the result that his assailant fell dead on the spot.
He left the place with all speed, tying up his arm as he went, sought the British consul at Naples, and informed him of the whole circumstances. From the authorities there was no great difficulty. An examination or two, a few signatures, some particular exertions on the part of the consul, and my father was free so far as the officers of the law were concerned. But while these formalities were in progress no less than three attempts were made on his life — two by the knife and one by shooting — and in each his escape was little short of miraculous. For the dead ruffian, Marino, had been a member of the dreaded Camorra and the Camorristi were eager to avenge his death.
To anybody acquainted with the internal history of Italy — more particularly the history of the old kingdom of Naples — the name of the Camorra will be familiar enough. It was one of the worst and most powerful of the many powerful and evil secret societies of Italy, and had none of the excuses for existence which have been from time to time put forward on behalf of the other. It was a gigantic club for the commission of crime and the extortion of money. So powerful was it that it actually imposed a regular tax on all food material entering Naples — a tax collected and paid with far more regularity than were any of the taxes due to the lawful Government of the country. The carrying of smuggled goods was a monopoly of the Camorra, a perfect organisation existing for the purpose throughout the kingdom. The whole population was terrorised by this detestable society, which had no less than twelve centres in the city of Naples alone. It contracted for the commission of crime just as systematically and calmly as a railway company contracts for the carriage of merchandise. A murder was so much, according to circumstances, with extras for disposing of the body; arson was dealt in profitably; maimings and kidnappings were carried out with promptitude and despatch; and any diabolical outrage imaginable was a mere matter of price. One of the staple vocations of the concern was of course brigandage. After the coming of Victor Emmanuel and the fusion of Italy into one kingdom the Camorra lost some of the power, but for a long time gave considerable trouble. I have heard that in the year afte
r the matters I am describing two hundred Camorristi were banished from Italy.
As soon as the legal forms were complied with, my father received the broadest possible official hint that the sooner and the more secretly he left the country the better it would be for himself and his family. The British consul, too, impressed it upon him that the law would be entirely unable to protect him against the machinations of the Camorra; and indeed it needed but little persuasion to induce us to leave, for my poor mother was in a state of constant terror lest we were murdered together in our hotel; so that we lost no time in returning to England and bringing our European trip to a close.
In London we stayed at a well-known private hotel near Bond Street. We had been but three days here when my father came in one evening with a firm conviction that he had been followed for something like two hours, and followed very skilfully too. More than once he had doubled suddenly with a view to confront the pursuers, who he felt were at his heels, but he had met nobody of a suspicious appearance. The next afternoon I heard my mother telling my governess (who was travelling with us) of an unpleasant looking man, who had been hanging about opposite the hotel door, and who, she felt sure, had afterwards been following her and my father as they were walking. My mother grew nervous and communicated her fears to my father. He, however, pooh-poohed the thing, and took little thought of its meaning. Nevertheless the dogging continued, and my father, who was never able to fix upon the persons who caused the annoyance — indeed he rather felt their presence by instinct, as one does in such cases, than otherwise — grew extremely angry, and had some idea of consulting the police. Then one morning my mother discovered a little paper label stuck on the outside of the door of the bedroom occupied by herself and my father. It was a small thing, circular, and about the size of a six-penny-piece, or even smaller, but my mother was quite certain that it had not been there when she last entered the door the night before, and she was much terrified. For the label carried a tiny device, drawn awkwardly in ink — a pair of knives of curious shape, crossed; the sign of the Camorra.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 190