“The fact of telling the story will count in your favor.”
“In that case I will make an effort.” He rested an elbow on the arm of his chair, slowly stroking the back of his head as if uncertain where to begin. “It is really a foolish thing to do,” he said at last, “but if you are relentless I suppose there is no escape. In the first place, to begin at the very beginning, there was a little court with arches all around it, with grass in the centre and a fountain at each corner. On the marble steps, at one end, we were all sitting, a dozen or more children, watching a man with a bear and two monkeys. These monkeys had sham fights. One was dressed like an English soldier with a red jacket, and he always got the worst of it. It was great fun and we all laughed.”
“Where was this?”
“In India. At the very beginning of the show, when the English monkey for a moment was on top, a servant rushed into the court and dragged me away. It was a barbarous deed, and I was ugly; as disagreeable probably as Horace Bennett could have wished. So I only lose ground, you see, by telling this story.”
“Never mind. Unless you tell it I shall believe the worst.”
“Well, looking back as I was dragged along, the last thing I saw was the red monkey being chased and beaten by the white one, and they scrambled right up the bear’s back. In the chamber where we went that white jacket was brought out and I made another row, for I knew it meant a long and tiresome performance in which I had to keep still and behave myself.”
“A performance on a stage?”
“No; in a large room, with lots of people standing about. As our procession started for the big hall, which was several rooms away on another side of the house, I noticed that my uncle and one or two others kept closer to me than usual. There was a tremendous haste and confusion, and everybody seemed excited.”
In telling his story Mr. Judd spoke in a low voice, pronouncing his words clearly and with a certain precision. His only gesture consisted in occasionally drawing a hand slowly up the back of his head, as if finding solace in rubbing the short thick hair in the wrong direction. Although his voice and manner suggested an indolent repose, she noticed that the brown hands, with their long fingers, were hard and muscular, and were the hands of a nervous temperament.
“When we entered the large hall there were lots of people, mostly soldiers, and in uniforms I had not seen before. The principal person seemed to be a short, thick-set man with a round face and big eyes, who stood in the centre of the room, and his wide sash and odd-looking turban with gold scales interested me tremendously. We all stood there a few minutes and there was a good deal of talk about something, when all of a sudden this man with the handsome turban seized me under the arms with both hands, lifted me up, and handed me to a big chap behind him.