II
When I arrived he was waiting in the Lion House, and I felt a relief to see that Primrose Robinson had not accompanied him.
“Sit here,” he said. “I want to talk to you seriously, Tarver.”
Now, the great beasts in the Lion House always affect my nerves. I know they cannot get out and all that sort of thing, but the unexpected so often happens; accidents will occur; and besides, as I explained to Robinson when asking him to step with me into the air, the spectacle of lions and tigers at feeding time is anything but pleasing to the possessor of a delicate appetite.
But Robinson said the spot would answer our purpose well. He was moody and preoccupied; he showed no interest in anything. Then, when I had grown weary of trying to make him talk, he suddenly began on a painful subject.
“Primrose was bitterly disappointed not to come. She always counts the days and hours between your visits. I won’t disguise the fact, Tarver; she’s grown to be very fond of you.”
What could I say? While I was reflecting he proceeded:
“She’d make a grand wife. Her interests are at my heart too. It’s a great opportunity. Why don’t you take your luck and thank your stars for it?”
I here broke into a perspiration.
“My dear Robinson,” I said, “you must really forgive me, but these affairs cannot be arranged like a transaction on ’Change.”
“She loves you,” said Robinson. “Her heart has gone out to you.”
“But, my dear fellow, love wants two hearts to beat as one.”
“Blessed if I know how anybody can help loving her,” said Robinson.
“You see, no man has the power to direct another’s feelings in the matter,” I explained.
Then he made a most extraordinary remark.
“Well, it’s no good beating about the bush, Tarver, so I’ll be frank. My sister wants to marry you; I want you to marry her and make her a home——”
“And let you be free of her?” I interrupted hotly.
He felt the thrust and winced, but proceeded:
“I wish you to marry her. What is more, I insist upon it. You shall marry her.”
I lack pluck as a rule, but a worm will turn at times. I said I would be eternally lost if I did.
“Bad language won’t help you,” he continued quietly. “Listen and judge for yourself if I threaten without power. You will recollect that I did not leave Thibet until I came of age. For one-and-twenty years I studied the wisdom of the land. Briefly, a Mahatma, whose pretensions and learning it would be idle to question, took a fancy to me, and imparted not a little of his knowledge on absurdly easy terms. I never counted to employ it. Self-control, indeed, was the first great lesson he taught me. But all information is useful. I wish you to marry my sister. Will you or will you not?”
I thought he was merely trying to frighten me, so dared him to do his worst. I purposely expressed myself with some severity.
“Don’t think I fear your tomfoolery,” I said. “If you’re a Mahatma, you ought to be locked up with all the other wild beasts. That for you! You won’t alarm me, I promise you!”
Here I snapped my thumb and finger under his nose.
Hardly were the words out of my mouth when Robinson, looking round to see that nobody was within earshot, made use of a word of some twelve syllables, which I had never heard before. A second afterwards I found myself, to my horror, inside the bars of the Bengal tiger’s house. This was not all. Looking round wildly, I observed that the tiger had disappeared, and, on raising my voice to cry for help, a hideous roar thundered through the building, but no human sound left my lips. Then I realised what had happened. I was the tiger! Robinson had transferred my ego into this brute beast. I, Thomas Tarver, found my immortal soul shut up within the frame of the most savage monster an inscrutable Providence ever designed. I looked out of its eyes; I strode here and there; I lifted giant paws, and, raising myself on my hind legs, gazed through my bars at Robinson. He was sitting where I had left him, and there opposite, limp in its chair, looking more like a respectably dressed Guy Fawkes than anything, reposed my mortal shell.
“For God’s sake come here!” I said; but only a tigerish whimper sounded through the den. However, Robinson understood it and stepped to the bar.
“You do look a fool!” he remarked. Then he explained the fiendish thing he had done.
“You see, a tiger doesn’t run a soul, Tarver, so I’ve just drawn yours out of your wretched carcase and popped it into this creature. Now, for all practical purposes you’re a Bengal tiger, and you’ll have to remain one until you grow reasonable. I rather fancy you’ll be fed at four.”
If I could have got out at that moment, Mahatma or no Mahatma, Robinson would have had a painful experience. I was, honestly, as angry as a man or beast can be. I spoke hotly. I said things I should not have said under any other conditions. Robinson understood me, but other visitors saw nothing but a big tiger in a raging temper.
Presently my poor shell fell off its chair, and a crowd collected and Robinson explained to the people that my heart was weak. Then I saw myself carried away under the direction of the demon who had called himself my friend. Nobody paid any attention to me myself. I was left with nothing to do for twenty-four hours but reflect upon my position and eat a piece of dead horse. Why I did not go mad I shall never understand. Presently a tigress came out of the inner den, and I felt myself trembling in every limb. She took little notice of me, but finding I made no effort to eat my dinner, consumed it herself when my back was turned. Heaven only knows what she thought had happened to me. But she left me alone, for which I thanked her. I walked up and down for long, weary hours; I tried to speak to the keepers; I impressed several spectators with my hopeless appearance. The infant mind often sees deeper than an adult intelligence, and a little girl it was who read my anguish in my eyes.
“What a poor, dear, unhappy old tiger!” she said, and flung me a currant bun.
“You little fool!” exclaimed her mother, “that was for the elephant. Tigers don’t eat buns!”
But they do under some conditions. My tiger’s appetite was keen. I ate that bun, and I even regretted the dead horse before closing time. That night I found myself driven into a small sleeping-den—alone I was thankful to see—and when silence fell I put my paws over my head and tried to grasp the situation. Here was I—a reasonable human soul—chained in this awful living prison. I might have been back in Bengal too for all the use my fellow-creatures could be. Then a grey rat hopped into my den. It came fearlessly up, cocked its whiskers and spoke. Needless to say that this rat was Robinson, or rather Robinson’s astral embodiment.
“Well,” he asked, “how do you find yourself? Variety is charming, eh? But you’re a poor thing in tigers.”
I put my paw on him.
“Now,” I said, “restore me instantly, or I’ll crush you.”
“No,” answered Robinson, “you won’t; you’ll crush a grey rat—that’s all. You can’t touch me, any more than they’d hurt you if they shot this tiger. You may like to hear the news. We’ve taken your carcase back to your diggings. Several doctors have examined you, and they are divided in their opinions. Some say you are dead; others fancy it is a case of trance. Primrose went down and wept over you, and kissed your pallid cheek. She says it doesn’t matter now who knows her secret passion, as you have gone. A devoted woman, Tarver!”
Nothing annoyed me more on that terrible day than the mental spectacle of Primrose Robinson dropping tears on me and fussing about my bachelor rooms.
“I suppose you’ll marry her all right now?” asked Robinson.
“I won’t,” I answered. “I defy you and your devilish accomplishments. Providence isn’t going to let this outrage go on for ever. Something will be sure to happen, and the moment I’m restored I’ll summon you, if it costs me every farthing I’ve got in the world.”
“The only thing that can happen,” said Robinson, “is this: I shall hurry you on. There are worse tenements than tigers. You’ll have to give in; it’s only a question of time. You’ll go to sleep presently and when you wake you’ll find yourself the adjutant stork. He happens to be moulting just now, too—a sight for the gods, my boy! I’ll look you up again in the course of a day or two. Till then, ta-ta, Tarver.”
He was gone with a whisk of his tail, and despite the bold front I had put on before him, I broke down, shed bitter tears, and I suppose finally went to sleep on my sawdust.
Next morning I woke to find Robinson’s prediction verified. I gazed gloomily at my hideous future through the eyes of an adjutant stork—a bird in poor feather—a piteous, comic object that made even the professional attendants laugh as they passed me. The public poured forth their wit upon me; the human misery in my eye merely served to accentuate the proportions of my beak, the length of my legs, the general air of ruin and decay which characterised me. I tried to talk again, believing all birds possessed the power; but I found that an adjutant stork does not. Doubtless Robinson knew this. He did not manifest himself that day, but on the following evening, after office hours, he arrived in the form of a house-sparrow and sat upon the edge of a bath where I was standing on one leg—that being, so I found, the most comfortable position.
“Great Scott!” he chirruped, “you look as if you’d seen trouble and no mistake! How goes it?”
“Devil!” I answered. “Tell me how long this loathsome tragedy is to last.”
“All depends on you, Tarver. Primrose goes down every day to look at you and weep over you. The doctors are still undecided. Two hold out that you are alive, but all the others say you’re dead as a herring. I tell them I think you live.”
“Is there no alternative except a union with Miss Robinson?”
“None, Tarver. I’ve no hesitation in saying this: the marriage was made in heaven.”
“In Thibet, more likely,” I replied, not without acerbity.
“Has Providence taken any steps yet?” he asked civilly.
The question gave me fresh courage.
“No, but do your worst,” I answered; “I still have hope. You cannot rob me of life; you cannot alter my destiny.”
“True,” he admitted, “I cannot; but I can give you about the worst time in these Gardens any man ever endured even in imagination. The day after to-morrow is Bank Holiday. Just you wait and see where you come in then!”
After which threat he flew off.