Читать книгу The Pretender - Robert William Service - Страница 14

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After a hard skirmish with the catalogue of the Reading Room, which, with reference and counter-reference, defied me stubbornly, yet finally yielded to my assault, I found myself, three hours later, seated in an A.B.C. restaurant in Southampton Row.

From motives of economy I had given up eating dinners. Breakfast and a meat lunch were now my sole fortifying occasions, and of the latter this A.B.C. was oftenest the scene. I liked its friendly fires, its red plush chairs, its air of thrift and cheer. Behold me, then, a studiously shabby young man, eating a shilling lunch and wearing as a symbol of my servitude a celluloid collar. Little would you have dreamed that but two short months before I had been toying with terrapin in the gold room of Delmonico's.

But such dramatic contrasts charm me, and I was placidly engaged in the excavation of a Melton Mowbray pie, when a girl in grey took a place at the next table. Her long mantle was rather the worse for wear, her hat a cheap straw. Her small hands were encased in cotton gloves, and her feet in foreign-looking shoes.

"Painfully poor," I thought, "yet evidently a worshipper of the goddess Comme-il-faut." Then—"Why, surely I know her? Surely it is my mysterious female of the matutinal Marathon."

With timid hesitation she ordered a bun and milk. How interesting her voice was! It had a bell-like quality the more marked because she spoke with a strong inflection, and an odd precision of accent. A voice with colour, I thought; violet; yes, she had a violet voice.

But I had not seen her face, only beneath her low straw hat her hair of a gleamy brown, very fine of texture and so thick as to seem almost black. It was brought round in a coiled braid over each ear, and, where it parted at the back, showed a neck of ivory whiteness. Somewhat curiously I wished she would turn her head.

Then, as if to please me, she did so, and what I saw was almost the face of a child, so small and delicate of feature was it. It was almost colourless, of a pure pallor that contrasted with the rich darkness of her hair. The mouth was small and wistfully sweet, the chin rather long and fine, the cheeks faintly hollowed. Her brow, I noted, was broad and full, her eyebrows frank and well-defined. But it was the eyes themselves that arrested me. They were set far apart and of a rare and faultless sea-blue. Such eyes in a woman of real beauty would have been pools of love for many a fool to drown in, and even in this fragile, shrinking girl they were haunting, thrilling eyes. For the rest, she was small, slender, sad-looking, and tired, yes, tired, as if she wanted to rest and rest and rest.

"A consumptive type," I thought irritably. "Seems quite worn out. Why does she persist in that pedestrian foolishness—that's what I want to know?"

I watched her as she ate her bun, and when she rose I rose too. She payed out of a worn little purse, a plethoric purse, but, alas! its fulness was of copper. Down Woburn Street she disappeared, and I looked after her with some concern. A gentle, shrinking creature, pathetically afraid of life.

"God help her," I said, "in this ruthless city, if she has neither friends nor money." I decided I would write a story around her, a story of struggle and temptation. Yes, I would call it The Girl Who Looked Interesting.

That night I thought a good deal about my girl and my story, but next morning a distraction occurred. London revealed itself in the glory of a fog. At last I was exultant. Here was the city I had come so far to see. For the squat buildings seemed to take on dignity and height. Through the mellow haze they loomed as vaguely as the domiciles of a dream. The streets were corridors of mystery, and alone, abysmally alone, I seemed to be in some city of fantasy and fear.

But the river—there the fog achieved its ghostliest effects. As I wandered down the clammy embankment, cloud-built bridges emerged ethereally, and the flat barges were masses of mysterious shadow. St. Stephen's was a spectral suggestion, and Whitehall a delicate silver-point etching. I thanked the gods for this evasive and intangible London, half-hidden, half-revealed in its vesture of all-mystifying fog.

Well, I was tired at last, and I turned to go home. But I must have missed my way, for I found myself in a long dim street, which I judged by its furniture-fringed pavement to be Tottenham Court Road. Filled with a pleasant sense of adventure, I kept on till I came to what must have been Hampstead Road. There my eyes were drawn to a large flamboyant painting above the window of a shop in a side-street. Drawing near, I read in flaring letters the following:

EXHIBITION

Amazing! Amusing! Unique!

O'FLATHER'S EDUCATED FLEAS

As performed with tremendous success before

all the Crowned Heads of Europe and the

Potentates of Asia. For a limited

time Professor O'Flather will

give the people of London

the opportunity of see-

ing this extraordin-

ary exhibition.

Entertaining!

Instructive!

Original!

Come

and

See

THE SCIENTIFIC MARVEL OF THE CENTURY!

The marvellous insects that have all the

intelligence of human beings.

Admission, Sixpence. Children Half-price.

A large canvas showed a number of insects, vivaciously engaged in duelling, dancing, drawing water from wells, and so on. Watching them with beaming rapture was a distinguished audience, including the Czar of Russia, the Emperor William, Li Hung Chang, the Shah of Persia, and Mr. Roosevelt.

I was turning away when a big, ugly individual appeared in the doorway. He was a heavy-breathing man with a mouth like a codfish, and bloodshot eyes that peered through pouchy slits. He had a blotched, greasy face that hung down in dewlaps. From under a Stetson hat his stringy, brindled hair streamed over the collar of his fur-lined coat. On his grubby hand an off-colour diamond, big as a pea, tried to out-sparkle another in the dirty bosom of his shirt. He reeked of pomatum, and his teeth looked as if they had been cleaned with a towel. No mistaking the born showman of the Bowery breed. Moved by a sudden idea, I gracefully addressed him:

"Professor O'Flather, I presume?"

The impresario looked at me with lack-lustre eye. He transferred a chew of tobacco from one cheek to the other; then he spat with marvellous precision on a passing dog. Finally he admitted reluctantly:

"Yep! That's me."

"Pardon me, Professor, but I'm a newspaper man. I represent the Daily Dredger, with which, of course, you are familiar. I have been specially commissioned by my journal to write up your exhibition. Can you favour me with a brief interview?"

At the magic word "newspaper" his manner changed. He extended a hand like a small ham.

"Right you are, mister. Always glad to see the noospaper boys."

He ushered me into the shop, and, switching on a light, bellowed in a voice of brass, "Jinny!" From behind a crimson curtain appeared a little Jap girl in a green kimono.

"Faithful little devil!" said the Professor. "Met 'er in a Yokerhammer joint, and fetched 'er along for the sake of the show. Jinny, uncover the stock. This gen'lman's a hintervooer."

With eager pride the girl obeyed. From a glass case in the centre of the room she removed a covering. The case was divided into sections, in which were a number of suggestive shapes, supinely quiescent.

"We turn 'em over," O'Flather explained, "when they ain't working, so's they won't use up all their force. We need it in the business."

Then Jinny, with the delicacy of a lover, proceeded to put each through its performance.

"That there's Barthsheber at the well," said the Professor, pointing with a fat forefinger to a black speck that was frantically raising and lowering a string of buckets on an endless chain.

"Them's the dooelists," he went on, indicating two who, rearing on their hind legs, clashed tiny swords with all the fire and fury of Macbeth and Macduff.

"Here we have the original Tango Team," he continued, showing a pair who went through the motions of the dance in time to a tiny musical box.

Then, with pardonable pride, he drew my attention to a separate case containing a well-made model of a little farm. "There!" he said, extending his grubby hand, "all run by the little critters." And, sure enough, there were active little insects drawing ploughs up and down green furrows; others were hoeing with tremendous energy; others mowing with equal enthusiasm. Here, too, was a miniature threshing machine, turned by four black specks lying on their backs, with other frantic black specks feeding it, and an extra strenuous one forking away the straw.

As I expressed my admiration of their industry, the Professor, with growing gusto, dilated on the cleverness of his pets, and put them through their paces. There was a funeral, a chariot race, a merry-go-round, and some other contrivances no less ingenious. Lastly he showed me a glass case containing many black specks.

"Raw material. Them's the wild ones I keep to take the place of the tame ones that dies. At first I have to put 'em in a bit of a glass box like a pill box, and turning on an axis same's a little treadmill. That's to break 'em of the jumping habit. Every time they jump—bing! they hit the glass hard, so by and by they quit. But they have to keep a-moving, because the box keeps going round. In a few days they're broke in to walk all right."

"Most ingenious!"

"All my own notion. Since I started in the business, many's the hundred I've broke in. I guess I know more about the little critters than any man living."

It was with a view to tap a little of this knowledge that I invited the Professor to a near-by pub, and there, under the influence of sympathetic admiration and hot gin, he expanded confidentially.

"All of them insects you saw," he informed me, "comes from Japan. They grow bigger over there, and more intelligent. I've experimented with nigh every kind, but them Jap ones is the best. And here I want to say that it's only the females is any good. The males is mulish. Besides they're smaller and weaker, and not so intelligent. Funny that, ain't it? That's an argyment for Woman's Suffrage. No, the males is no good."

"And how do you train them, Professor?" I queried.

"Well, first of all you've got to hitch 'em up, got to get a silk thread round their waists. That's a mighty ticklish oppyration, but Jinny's good at it. You see, they're so slick cement won't stick to 'em, and if you was to use wax it kills 'em in a day or two. So we've got to get a silk loop round their middle, and cement a fine bristle to it. Once we have 'em harnessed up we begin to train 'em. That's just a matter of patience. Some's apter than others. Barthsheber there was very quick. In a few days she was on to her job."

"And how long do they live?"

"Oh, about a year, but I've had 'em for nigh two. They got mighty weak towards the last though. You know, a female in prime condition can draw twelve hundred times her own weight."

"Wonderful! And what do they eat?"

"Well," said O'Flather, thoughtfully, "a performer can go about four days without eating, but we feed 'em every day. Jinny used to do it. She loves 'em. But it's hard on a person. I've got a young woman engaged just now."

"A young woman!"

"Yep, but she's a poor weak bit of a thing. I don't think as she'll stick it much longer. You see, there's lots of folks the little devils won't take to—me, for instance. Blood's too bitter, I guess. They seem to prefer the women, too. Then again, they feed better if the body's hot, specially if the skin's perspiring."

"How very interesting!" I said absently. Then suddenly the reason of it came to me. The insects had no intelligence, no consciously directed power. The motive that inspired them was—Fear. Their extraordinary demonstrations were caused by their desperate efforts to escape. It was fear that drew the coaches and the gun-carriages; fear that made those kicking on their backs turn the threshing mills; fear in the fight to free themselves from the stakes to which they were chained that made the duellists clash their sabres, and the Bathshebas work at their wells. It was even fear that made those two lashed side by side, and head to tail, run round in opposite directions to get away from each other, till they gave the illusion of a waltz. Fear as a motive power! This exhibition, outwardly so amusing, was really all suffering and despair, struggle born of fear, pleasure gained at the cost of pain. Exquisitely ludicrous; yet how like life, how like life!

"Professor O'Flather," I said gravely, "you have taught me a lesson I will never forget."

"Naw," said the Professor modestly, "it ain't nuthin'. Hope you get a few dollars out of it. Mind you give the show a boost."

We were standing by the doorway of the exhibition when a slim figure in grey brushed past us and entered. I started, I could not be mistaken—it was the heroine of my story, The Girl Who Looked Interesting.

"Who's that, Professor—the girl who's just gone in?"

"That," said O'Flather, with a shrug, "why, that's the young woman wot feeds the fleas."