by Jack London
CHAPTER XXXII
And so Michael was ultimately sold to one Jacob Henderson for twothousand dollars. "And I'm giving him away to you at that," saidCollins. "If you don't refuse five thousand for him before six months, Idon't know anything about the show game. He'll skin that last arithmeticdog of yours to a finish and you won't have to show yourself and workevery minute of the turn. And if you don't insure him for fifty thousandas soon as he's made good you'll be a fool. Why, I wouldn't ask anythingbetter, if I was young and footloose, than to take him out on the roadmyself."
Henderson proved totally different from any master Michael had had. Theman was a neutral sort of creature. He was neither good nor evil. Heneither drank, smoked, nor swore; nor did he go to church or belong tothe Y.M.C.A. He was a vegetarian without being a bigoted one, likedmoving pictures when they were concerned with travel, and spent most ofhis spare time in reading Swedenborg. He had no temper whatever. Nobodyhad ever witnessed anger in him, and all said he had the patience of Job.He was even timid of policemen, freight agents, and conductors, though hewas not afraid of them. He was not afraid of anything, any more than washe enamoured of anything save Swedenborg. He was as colourless ofcharacter as the neutral-coloured clothes he wore, as theneutral-coloured hair that sprawled upon his crown, as theneutral-coloured eyes with which he observed the world. Nor was he afool any more than was he a wise man or a scholar. He gave little tolife, asked little of life, and, in the show business, was a recluse inthe very heart of life.
Michael neither liked nor disliked him, but, rather, merely accepted him.They travelled the United States over together, and they never had aquarrel. Not once did Henderson raise his voice sharply to Michael, andnot once did Michael snarl a warning at him. They simply enduredtogether, existed together, because the currents of life had drifted themtogether. Of course, there was no heart-bond between them. Hendersonwas master. Michael was Henderson's chattel. Michael was as dead to himas he was himself dead to all things.
Yet Jacob Henderson was fair and square, business-like and methodical.Once each day, when not travelling on the interminable trains, he gaveMichael a thorough bath and thoroughly dried him afterward. He was neverharsh nor hasty in the bathing. Michael never was aware whether he likedor disliked the bathing function. It was all one, part of his own fatein the world as it was part of Henderson's fate to bathe him every sooften.
Michael's own work was tolerably easy, though monotonous. Leaving outthe eternal travelling, the never-ending jumps from town to town and fromcity to city, he appeared on the stage once each night for seven nightsin the week and for two afternoon performances in the week. The curtainwent up, leaving him alone on the stage in the full set that befitted abill-topper. Henderson stood in the wings, unseen by the audience, andlooked on. The orchestra played four of the pieces Michael had beentaught by Steward, and Michael sang them, for his modulated howling wastruly singing. He never responded to more than one encore, which wasalways "Home, Sweet Home." After that, while the audience clapped andstamped its approval and delight of the dog Caruso, Jacob Henderson wouldappear on the stage, bowing and smiling in stereotyped gladness andgratefulness, rest his right hand on Michael's shoulders with aplay-acted assumption of comradeliness, whereupon both Henderson andMichael would bow ere the final curtain went down.
And yet Michael was a prisoner, a life-prisoner. Fed well, bathed well,exercised well, he never knew a moment of freedom. When travelling, daysand nights he spent in the cage, which, however, was generous enough toallow him to stand at full height and to turn around without toouncomfortable squirming. Sometimes, in hotels in country towns, out ofthe crate he shared Henderson's room with him. Otherwise, unless otheranimals were hewing on the same circuit time, he had, outside his cage,the freedom of the animal room attached to the particular theatre wherehe performed for from three days to a week.
But there was never a chance, never a moment, when he might run free of acage about him, of the walls of a room restricting him, of a chainshackled to the collar about his throat. In good weather, in theafternoons, Henderson often took him for a walk. But always it was atthe end of a chain. And almost always the way led to some park, whereHenderson fastened the other end of the chain to the bench on which hesat and browsed Swedenborg. Not one act of free agency was left toMichael. Other dogs ran free, playing with one another, or behavingbellicosely. If they approached him for purposes of investigation oracquaintance, Henderson invariably ceased from his reading long enough todrive them away.
A life prisoner to a lifeless gaoler, life was all grey to Michael. Hismoroseness changed to a deep-seated melancholy. He ceased to beinterested in life and in the freedom of life. Not that he regarded theplay of life about him with a jaundiced eye, but, rather, that his eyesbecame unseeing. Debarred from life, he ignored life. He permittedhimself to become a sheer puppet slave, eating, taking his baths,travelling in his cage, performing regularly, and sleeping much.
He had pride--the pride of the thoroughbred; the pride of the NorthAmerican Indian enslaved on the plantations of the West Indies who dieduncomplaining and unbroken. So Michael. He submitted to the cage andthe iron of the chain because they were too strong for his muscles andteeth. He did his slave-task of performance and rendered obedience toJacob Henderson; but he neither loved nor feared that master. Andbecause of this his spirit turned in on itself. He slept much, broodedmuch, and suffered unprotestingly a great loneliness. Had Henderson madea bid for his heart, he would surely have responded; but Henderson had aheart only for the fantastic mental gyrations of Swedenborg, and merelymade his living out of Michael.
Sometimes there were hardships. Michael accepted them. Especially harddid he find railroad travel in winter-time, when, on occasion, fresh fromthe last night's performance in a town, he remained for hours in hiscrate on a truck waiting for the train that would take him to the nexttown of performance. There was a night on a station platform inMinnesota, when two dogs of a troupe, on the next truck to his, froze todeath. He was himself well frosted, and the cold bit abominably into hisshoulder wounded by the leopard; but a better constitution and bettergeneral care of him enabled him to survive.
Compared with other show animals, he was well treated. And much of theill-treatment accorded other animals on the same turn with him he did notcomprehend or guess. One turn, with which he played for three months,was a scandal amongst all vaudeville performers. Even the hardiest ofthem heartily disliked the turn and the man, although Duckworth, andDuckworth's Trained Cats and Rats, were an invariable popular success.
"Trained cats!" sniffed dainty little Pearl La Pearle, the bicyclist."Crushed cats, that's what they are. All the cat has been beaten out oftheir blood, and they've become rats. You can't tell me. I know."
"Trained rats!" Manuel Fonseca, the contortionist, exploded in the bar-room of the Hotel Annandale, after refusing to drink with Duckworth."Doped rats, believe me. Why don't they jump off when they crawl alongthe tight rope with a cat in front and a cat behind? Because they ain'tgot the life in 'm to jump. They're doped, straight doped when they'refresh, and starved afterward so as to making a saving on the dope. Theynever are fed. You can't tell me. I know. Else why does he use upanywhere to forty or fifty rats a week! I know his express shipments,when he can't buy 'm in the towns."
"My Gawd!" protested Miss Merle Merryweather, the Accordion Girl, wholooked like sixteen on the stage, but who, in private life among hergrand-children, acknowledged forty-eight. "My Gawd, how the public canfall for it gets my honest-to-Gawd goat. I looked myself yesterdaymorning early. Out of thirty rats there were seven dead,--starved todeath. He never feeds them. They're dying rats, dying of starvation,when they crawl along that rope. That's why they crawl. If they had abit of bread and cheese in their tummies they'd jump and run to get awayfrom the cats. They're dying, they're dying right there on the rope,trying to crawl as a dying man would try to crawl away from a tiger thatwas eating him. And
my Gawd! The bonehead audience sits there andapplauds the show as an educational act!"
But the audience! "Wonderful things kindness will do with animals," saida member of one, a banker and a deacon. "Even human love can be taughtto them by kindness. The cat and the rat have been enemies since theworld began. Yet here, to-night, we have seen them doing highly trainedfeats together, and neither a cat committed one hostile or overt actagainst a rat, nor ever a rat showed it was afraid of a cat. Humankindness! The power of human kindness!"
"The lion and the lamb," said another. "We have it that when themillennium comes the lion and the lamb will lie down together--andoutside each other, my dear, outside each other. And this is a forecast,a proving up, by man, ahead of the day. Cats and rats! Think of it. Andit shows conclusively the power of kindness. I shall see to it at oncethat we get pets for our own children, our palm branches. They shalllearn kindness early, to the dog, the cat, yes, even the rat, and thepretty linnet in its cage."
"But," said his dear, beside him, "you remember what Blake said:
"'A Robin Redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage.'"
"Ah--but not when it is treated truly with kindness, my dear. I shallimmediately order some rabbits, and a canary or two, and--what sort of adog would you prefer our dear little ones to have to play with, mysweet?"
And his dear looked at him in all his imperturbable, complacentself-consciousness of kindness, and saw herself the little rural school-teacher who, with Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Lord Byron as her idols, andwith the dream of herself writing "Poems of Passion," had come up toTopeka Town to be beaten by the game into marrying the solid, substantialbusiness man beside her, who enjoyed delight in the spectacle of cats andrats walking the tight-rope in amity, and who was blissfully unaware thatshe was the Robin Redbreast in a cage that put all heaven in a rage.
"The rats are bad enough," said Miss Merle Merryweather. "But look howhe uses up the cats. He's had three die on him in the last two weeks tomy certain knowledge. They're only alley-cats, but they've got feelings.It's that boxing match that does for them."
The boxing match, sure always of a great hand from the audience,invariably concluded Duckworth's turn. Two cats, with smallboxing-gloves, were put on a table for a friendly bout. Naturally, thecats that performed with the rats were too cowed for this. It was thefresh cats he used, the ones with spunk and spirit . . . until they lostall spunk and spirit or sickened and died. To the audience it was a side-splitting, playful encounter between four-legged creatures who thusdisplayed a ridiculous resemblance to superior, two-legged man. But itwas not playful to the cats. They were always excited into starting areal fight with each other off stage just before they were brought on. Inthe blows they struck were anger and pain and bewilderment and fear. Andthe gloves just would come off, so that they were ripping and tearing ateach other, biting as well as making the fur fly, like furies, when thecurtain went down. In the eyes of the audience this apparent impromptuwas always the ultimate scream, and the laughter and applause wouldcompel the curtain up again to reveal Duckworth and an assistant stage-hand, as if caught by surprise, fanning the two belligerents with towels.
But the cats themselves were so continually torn and scratched that thewounds never had a chance to heal and became infected until they were amass of sores. On occasion they died, or, when they had become tooabjectly spiritless to attack even a rat, were set to work on the tight-rope with the doped starved rats that were too near dead to run away fromthem. And, as Miss Merle Merryweather said: the bonehead audiences,tickled to death, applauded Duckworth's Trained Cats and Rats as aneducational act!
A big chimpanzee that covered one of the circuits with Michael had anantipathy for clothes. Like a horse that fights the putting on of thebridle, and, after it is on, takes no further notice of it, so the bigchimpanzee fought the putting on the clothes. Once on, it was ready togo out on the stage and through its turn. But the rub was in putting onthe clothes. It took the owner and two stage-hands, pulling him up to aring in the wall and throttling him, to dress him--and this, despite thefact that the owner had long since knocked out his incisors.
All this cruelty Michael sensed without knowing. And he accepted it asthe way of life, as he accepted the daylight and the dark, the bite ofthe frost on bleak and windy station platforms, the mysterious land ofOtherwhere that he knew in dreams and song, the equally mysteriousNothingness into which had vanished Meringe Plantation and ships andoceans and men and Steward.