Love Among the Lions: A Matrimonial Experience

by F. Anstey

"A de Castro can never marry a Craven."

My recollection of the rest of that walk is indistinct. I felt no distress, only a kind of stupor. I tried to fix my thoughts on Lurana, on her strange beauty, and the wondrous fact that in a very few hours the ceremony, which was to unite us, would be, at all events, commenced. But at times I had a pathetic sense of the irony which decreed that I, a man of simple tastes and unenterprising disposition, should have fallen hopelessly in love with the only young woman in the United Kingdom capable of insisting on being married in a wild-beast cage.

It seemed hard, and I remember envying quite ordinary persons—butchers, hawkers, errand-boys, crossing-sweepers, and the like, for their good fortune in not being engaged to spend any part of that afternoon in a den of forest-bred African lions.

However, though there was nothing about the intentions of the Home Office in the early editions of the evening papers, the officials might be preparing a dramatic coup for the last moment. I was determined not to count upon it—but the thought of it kept me up until the time when I had to think of returning, for the idea of flight never for an instant presented itself to me. I was on parôle as it were, and I preferred death by Lurana's side to dishonour and security without her.

So anxious was I not to be late, and also to discover whether any communication from the Home Secretary had reached the manager, that I almost hurried back to Islington. I was admitted to the Hall by a private entrance, and shown to the kind of unroofed cabin in which I was to change, and which, being under the balcony and at some distance from the gangway between the stables and the ring, was comparatively private and secluded.

Here, after asking an assistant to let Mr Niono know I had arrived, and would like to see him, I waited. The Circus had begun, as I knew from the facts that the blare of the orchestrions was hushed, and that a brass band overhead began and left off with the abruptness peculiar to Circus music.

Screens of board and canvas hid the auditorium from view, but I was conscious of a vast multitude on the other side, vociferous and in the best of humours.

Between the strains of the orchestra and the rattling volleys of applause, I heard the faint stamping and trampling from the stables, and, a sound that struck a chill to my heart—the prolonged roar of exasperation and ennui which could only proceed from a bored lion.