Chapter III: Wild Beasts

PLUNKETT was, as he had foretold, late in reaching home that night. He had a goodly amount of work to get through, and he had undertaken to finish, if possible, before retiring.

In the course of the evening, Mrs. Heavitree appeared by his side, as he worked. Plunkett had quite expected her to do this, after his morning talk about Narcissus. It was not her fashion to leave matters long unsettled.

"You went home to dinner, after all, Plunkett," she said.

"Yes, ma'am. It's all right about my girl."

"She will come to me next week? Is your wife willing?"

"I didn't ask her, ma'am. I said Narcissus was to go."

Mrs. Heavitree smiled. She had an alert practical manner, and a particularly kind smile. "Then I am to consider the matter settled. Another girl wishes to come, but she must wait for the next vacancy. Narcissus has the first choice, for her mother's sake. By-the-by, what is her second name?"

"Narcissus Plunkett. Nought else." Plunkett thought his wife had shown some shrewdness.

"Is that all? You should have given her a good work-a-day name for common use. It does not matter in our house, where she is well known; but if she takes to service later, she will have to be called 'Plunkett.' So you mean to keep Marigold at home for the present?"

"I do, ma'am. Couldn't get along without one on 'em, and that's a fact. She's a good girl, is Marigold."

"A thoroughly good and nice girl. We all grew fond of her."

"She is that, and no mistake, ma'am. But it's Narcissus as is my wife's favourite. She and Marigold don't rub on together comfortable."

"Do they not? I am sorry for that. Marigold must try to bear patiently with little difficulties. She has had her year away, and now it is Narcissus' turn. I shall have a quiet talk with Marigold some day, and see how things are going on."

"Six o'clock, sharp, I'll be home. So mind!" said Plunkett next day, at the close of his early dinner. "Don't you go and say I haven't told you, and dawdle about and get nothing ready."

Plunkett had a big voice, and an authoritative manner of speaking, but his eyes twinkled.

"As like as not you won't be here till seven," Mrs. Plunkett answered.

"Yes, I shall. So don't you count upon that, nor act according. I'm going to take these girls off to the beast show, and it's half-price after six. We'll get the worth of our money."

"And we'll stay all the evening?" begged Narcissus.

"What for not? I ain't in the way of doing business nor pleasure shilly-shally like. See you're both ready. And you, too, if you'll come—" dubiously, to his wife.

"Likely I should, when it's all you want to get away with the girls," she retorted.

Plunkett might have replied that this was by no means all he wanted. He honestly wished for his wife too, only under the condition that she would don a good-tempered face for the occasion. If she must needs wear a mask of acidity, he would undoubtedly prefer her absence to her presence. But an explanation of this sort is difficult to make. Plunkett considered so long what to say that he ended by saying nothing.

"I'm glad mother ain't going; she'd spoil it all," Narcissus said later in the day, when she and Marigold had run upstairs to change their dresses. "She looks so cross about everything."

"I'm glad, too . . . But I wonder if she wouldn't like it, really," debated Marigold. "I mean, I wonder if we oughtn't to ask her again."

"Why, Marigold! What do you mean? Wouldn't you rather have father to ourselves? We shall have lots of fun with him; and if she's there, she'll just spoil everything. She'll want to go where we don't like, and she'll hurry us home before we've half done."

"Father 'll take care about that. He won't let us be hurried home. I'm only thinking—doesn't it seem rather dull for her being left behind, if she does really want to go?"

"Why doesn't she say so, then?"

"I suppose she thinks we don't want her."

"Well,—and we don't—if she can't be nice."

Marigold went on buttoning her neat brown dress, and said nothing.

"I can't make you out, Marigold. I'm sure I shouldn't have thought you cared particularly about her—now she's so horridly cross."

"I don't. That's the very thing. I don't care, and I don't want her, and it doesn't seem right."

Marigold's conscience was quicker and more wide-awake than that of Narcissus; at the same time, that her independence was greater, and her sense of resentment more prompt.

"That isn't our fault. If she was different—if she was like when she first came. But when a person does nothing except grumble, grunt, all day, one can't love her. I can't and I don't. And I don't see what you want her to come for this evening."

"I don't want it. I only want to do right."

"O well, I think you can leave that to her and father. There's nothing she hates like being meddled with. I wouldn't interfere if I was you. It'll just mean burning your own fingers, and making her crosser than before."

Marigold was not easily convinced.

Something in Mrs. Plunkett's look, when she had said sharply to her husband, "All you want is to get away with the girls," had touched the feelings of one of those girls. Marigold, though very bright and active, and not demonstrative, had a tender heart. The thought had come keenly—"I shouldn't like to feel that they all wanted to get away from me." It had haunted her all day, not finding expression until now.

"I shall say something, Narcissus," she remarked in the last moment before going downstairs.

"If you do, you'll be sorry. Much best to let well alone," said Narcissus.

But if Marigold once formed a purpose, she was not easily bent from it.

"Mother, wouldn't you like to see the wild beasts too?" she asked a few minutes later.

Mrs. Plunkett looked all over Marigold, as if trying to divine the motive for so unexpected a question.

"You'll be dull here, all alone. Why shouldn't you come? It'll be such fun all of us together."

To Marigold's surprise a gleam of positive softness stole into the vinegary visage.

"Well—I don't mind if I do! I've been nowhere for ever so long."

A protesting sigh from Narcissus was audible.

"There, that's the way!" said Mrs. Plunkett, suddenly overclouded. "As sure as ever I say I'll do anything, I'm made to feel as nobody wants me."

"Narcissus didn't mean that really—not really and truly," said Marigold. "She couldn't, because it would be selfish; and Narcissus isn't selfish. You'll come, mother? Then you've got to dress sharp. Father will be back in ten minutes. I'll see to everything."

Mrs. Plunkett betook herself off with some semblance of haste, and Narcissus said despairingly,—"There! Now you've spoilt it all."

"No, I haven't. Did you see how she looked—just for one moment? Just like what she was when she first came to us."

"I don't care. I know how she will look there,—as glum and sour as anything."

"She won't, if she doesn't get put out."

"But every single thing puts her out, and she's for ever thinking people mean what they don't mean. It's so awfully silly. And I did mean that I didn't want her."

"Then you've got to begin to want her. It won't do for us to get into this sort of way. We shall just be miserable," said Marigold with some energy, as she laid the table for tea. "I know she's tiresome, and it's difficult to love her, and she makes me feel so angry sometimes, I don't know how to bear myself. But all the same she has her rights, and I can't stand seeing her left out of everything. She's father's wife. Don't you see?"

"I wish she wasn't," responded Narcissus; and with the words Plunkett came in.

"Ready, girls?" said he. "See here, I've brought a knot of flowers for each of you. I like my girls to look nice. Got your Sunday frocks on—that's right. Where's she?"

"Mother's coming with us, father," said Marigold.

It must be confessed that a little of the jollity died out of Plunkett's face with this announcement.

"She is, is she? I thought she said—Oh well, it's all right. Tea ready?"

"Marigold did it! Mother wasn't coming; and Marigold went like a goose and asked her," pouted Narcissus.

"And she was pleased," added Marigold.

"Marigold's a very good girl," said Plunkett. "A very good girl indeed! So there! We'll all go, and we'll have a good time together."

It really seemed hopeful that they might. Mrs. Plunkett came down in her best dress and bonnet, actually looking quite agreeable, almost smiling.

"Marigold seemed to think I might as well see the show too," she said. "And I don't know why I shouldn't. It isn't often as we have the chance."

The lions and tigers, having dined not long before, were enjoying a calm after-dinner nap, as mild and sleepy in aspect as overgrown grimalkins.

"I can't fancy one of them tigers carrying off an ox," Plunkett remarked, contemplating the cage. "He looks sort of easy-going—blinking his eyes. Shouldn't think he was big enough neither. Though they do say a tiger can pick up an ox like a cat picking up a mouse, and heave it over his shoulder, and make nothing of it."

"They 'do say' a great many mistaken things," remarked a voice close behind, and Plunkett turned to find himself addressed by an elderly gentleman, military as to his moustache, and placid as to his expression. "The proportionate sizes of a tiger and an ox are rather different from those of a cat and a mouse."

"But a tiger can kill an ox, sir," protested Plunkett.

"Kill it! Ay, with a single blow of his paw! And drag it away to his lair. That's one thing. To toss the ox over his shoulder would be another thing. I doubt if the biggest Bengal tiger would quite accomplish that with a full-grown ox. At all events, the dragging is the more usual plan."

"Mighty unpleasant customer to meet in the open," said Plunkett.

"He's quiet enough now, and just like an enormous striped cat," said Marigold.

"Cat-like in his ways too," responded the gentleman.

He told a story of Indian life—of an unfortunate man who had fallen a victim. The man's comrades, safe in surrounding treetops, but powerless to help him, because unarmed, had watched the tragedy—had seen the tigress playing with her victim as a cat plays with a mouser—teaching her cubs, as a cat teaches her kittens in similar circumstances. She did not kill the man outright, but only disabled him a little. Then she would let him run, and the cubs—kitten-like—would scramble after him; and if he showed any chance of escaping from the cubs, the tigress would bound up and pat him down again, before she let him have another try, and then another chase.

"It's an awful story, I think," said Mrs. Plunkett, shuddering. Quite a little crowd had gathered round to listen.

"And those men safe in the tops of the trees weren't English. I'm glad of that, anyway," said Plunkett.

"No; they were natives. Poor fellows! They were completely scared. They could do nothing."

"It's horrible," said Narcissus.

"One comfort is, that the man probably did not suffer. A kind of stupefaction seems to come over the victim at such a time. Some who have been in the clutch of a lion or tiger, and all but killed, have described such a sense—rather like having taken an opiate. One hopes it is always so—with mice and birds as well as men."

"Anyway it's awful," repeated Mrs. Plunkett. "I don't wonder those men stayed up in the trees. I wouldn't have come down."

"And yet there have been men who could face lions and tigers without fear," said the gentleman musingly.

"Have there?" asked Plunkett; and "Yes, I know," said Marigold—the two speaking simultaneously.

"That's General Heavitree," whispered a voice near. "Mr. Heavitree's uncle."

Plunkett nodded back an assent, and General Heavitree looked at Marigold.

"You know—what?" he asked.

"The early Christians," said Marigold modestly. "Wasn't it them you meant, sir? They weren't afraid to meet tigers and lions, and to be eaten up by them, sooner than give up their faith."

"Quite true, quite right! I'm glad you know so much. But I was thinking of one who dared to meet lions face to face 'in the open'—a bishop of our own days. Did you ever hear of Bishop Hannington? If not, I'd get his Life some day to read, if I were you. It is worth reading. He was an African bishop, and one day in Africa, he faced a lion and lioness so steadily that they were afraid to attack him. Yes, actually afraid, though he had no gun, no weapons of defence, except his tremendous courage. He ran towards them, looked them in the face, threw up his arms,—and they fled! It's not the only instance of the kind known. Man may master beast by the power of the eye alone; but then he must be perfectly fearless, perfectly confident. The moment he begins to fear, all is up with him. Well, I advise you to get that little book for yourselves—the 'Life of Bishop Hannington'—and to read it," said General Heavitree, looking round on the group.

"I don't mind reading about the bishop, but I know I couldn't ever face a lion or a tiger," said Mrs. Plunkett. "The very thought of it turns me cold all over."

Then the General moved away, and the Plunketts passed on to a great centre of attraction, in the shape of a huge good-humoured elephant. Neither of the girls had ever seen an elephant before.

"Oh, isn't he big! Oh, isn't he ugly! And what a great queer trunk he has! And such little eyes! And, oh dear! What a red mouth. Look, father, when he puts up his trunk."

"Well, so have you got a red mouth too, Narcissus."

"But I haven't got a trunk, father. If I had, that would make all the difference. Oh, look; do look! What enormous legs—like great thick pillars."