I had been prepared—I was still prepared—for Lurana's dear sake, to face the deadliest peril. But to do so with a total loss of dignity; to be irresistibly comic in the supreme crisis, to wrestle with wild beasts to the accompaniment of peals of Homeric laughter—would any lover in the world be capable of heroism such as that?
True, I might remove the spectacles—but in that case I could not trust my nerve; or I might take off the muffler but then I could not trust the tiger. And in either case I should be courting not only my own destruction, but that of one whose life was far dearer to me than my own.
I asked myself solemnly whether I had the right to endanger her safety, simply from a selfish unwillingness to appear grotesque in her eyes and those of the audience. The answer was what every rightminded reader will have foreseen.
And, seeing that the probability was that Lurana would absolutely decline to go through the ceremony at all with the guy I now appeared (for had she not objected even to my assuming a green shade, which was, comparatively, becoming), it was obvious that only one alternative remained, and that I took.
Cautiously opening the door of my cabin, I looked up and down the passage. At one end I could just see the elephant surrounded by a crowd of grooms and helpers, who were presumably harnessing him to the cage and were too far away or too much engaged to notice me. At the other were a few deserted stalls and rifle-galleries, whose proprietors had all gone to swell the crowd of spectators who were waiting to see as much as they could of my wedding, and it began to seem likely that they would see very little indeed.
I was about to make for the nearest exit when I remembered that it would probably be guarded, so, assuming as far as possible the air of an ordinary visitor, I slipped quietly up a broad flight of stairs, on each of which was a recommendation to try somebody's "Pink Pills for Pale People," and gained the upper gallery without attracting attention.
I felt instinctively that my best chance of escaping detection was to mingle with the crowd, and besides, I was naturally curious to know how the affair would end, so, seeing a door and pigeon-hole with the placard "Balcony Seats, Sixpence," I went in, and was lucky enough to secure the only cane bottom chair left in the back row.
After removing my spectacles, I had a fairly good view of the ring below, with its brown tan enclosed by a white border cushioned along the top in faded crimson. The reserved stalls were all full, and beyond the barriers, the crowd swayed and surged in a dense black mass. Nobody was inside the ring except a couple of nondescript grooms in scarlet liveries, who hung about with an air of growing embarrassment. The orchestra opposite was reiterating "The Maiden's Prayer" with a perseverance that at length got upon the nerves of the audience, which began to stamp suggestively.
"It's a swindle," said a husky man, who was obviously inclined to scepticism, and also sherry, "a reg'lar take in! There won't be nobody married in a lion's cage—I've said so all along."