The Zoo Revisited/Chapter 1
I.—A CHAT WITH THE QUEEN'S LION.
"MANY happy returns of the day, Victor.”
“Thank you,” yawned the lion; “is it my birthday?”
“Yes, as near as we can fix it. You are four years old to-day, and about three hundredweight, I should say, in the scales, if we could only persuade you to sit in l them.”
“No, sir, not after my experience of having the collar filed off my neck.”
“Why, do you mean to say you bear a grudge, after all this time, for an operation that prevented your being choked! The collar was put on you in Africa when you were perhaps five months old, and five months later it had got too tight for you, and so Mr. Bartlett had it taken off—to save your life. It was very kind of him.”
“I don't know anything about that,” was the reply; “all I know is that I did not see the kindness of having my head put in a sack, and my legs stretched out while they filed”
“Yes; but remember you were a finely-grown young fellow, and, good-natured though you are (for a lion), you did lose your temper, and handling a lion out of temper is not exactly the kind of job you would put children to However, that's all over. They got your collar off in spite of you, and so here I am wishing you many happy returns of the day, instead of j seeing you stuffed down in Cromwell Road.”
“Perhaps; but I'm not going to sit in the scales to be weighed all the same. And I'm much bigger than I was when they put my head in a sack; so don't try to do that again.”
“Certainly not. Nobody wants to. You are a remarkably handsome lion, let me tell you, one of the most thoroughbred-looking of your royal race. Besides, your colour, golden-red, gives you a fine distinction above all your kind—'the ruddy lion' that 'ramps in gold on proud Scotland's royal shield' (excuse the quotation); but I am sorry to hear that your mane will never darken. I think the black manes of the Libyans give them a grim and gloomy majesty that is very becoming. But this is getting personal.”
“A trifle,” said Victor.
“You are very proud, I presume, of being 'the Queen's lion'? She would be very proud of you if she only knew what a noble personage you have grown.”
“Yes, I suppose she would,” said the lion, with one eye over his shoulder at the lioness who was approaching; “but I have never seen the Queen, and”
Here he suddenly sprang to one side and growled a remonstrance at his beautiful companion.
“That is a lovely lioness,” I said.
“Ya-a-s,” he drawled, “a pretty little thing, but too young. Look at my back,” and he turned to show me the pattern which the lioness's claws had engraved and chased upon his golden skin. “A great deal too young. That is her idea of playing—and I don't like it. But,” brightening up, “I had a talk with Mr. Bartlett the other day, and showed him my scars, and she's going away—until she gets older, and learns manners. But she is a beautiful creature, isn't she?—Ah! would you!” he thundered, as the lissome princess made a pounce at him with all her claws unsheathed.
“Would you rather be alone then?”
“Alone! No. I'm engaged to Leona.”
[VICTOR AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, REGENT'S PARK
From a photograph by Russell and Son, 17, Baker Street, N.W.]
“The fine lioness that Mr. Vaughan Kirby gave to the Gardens last May? that he brought up from a cub, and when she was full grown that followed him about anywhere like a spaniel? She is a noble bride.”
“At any rate she has the manners becoming to her position, and the dignity. She doesn't get excited over everything she sees and Hullo! Bless my eyes, what's that?”
And suddenly Victor forgot all about dignity and not getting excited and stood at his utmost height, glaring with set eyes over my shoulder, his tail swishing at the tip, and he gave a low, strange growl, and the young lioness understood him and came to his side, then looked where he was looking, and it was splendid to see her outbreak of enthusiasm, the terribly eager way she paced up and down, and the awful fixedness of her glare. It was a noble lover of the real wild life.
I turned to see what had happened, and there, just emerging from their stables, was a group of elands with a fawn among them in the paddock opposite to the lions. Neither Victor nor the lioness had ever seen them before, for they had only that morning been brought from another cage. And the great elands loitered about and browsed, perfectly regardless of the fact that a pair of lions, literally quivering for their blood, were watching them from a distance that two bounds would have covered. Victor soon pulled himself together; his limbs unstiffened, his head was lowered. But the young lioness went to and fro all the morning with a deadly gleam in her eyes and a magnificent longing in the poise of her head and the quick short step.
“Those are elands,” I said, “such as your father and mother fed upon, and it may be that in your babyhood you, too, were fed with their venison.”
“I can't say,” replied the lion. “All I know is that when I saw them I felt a queer feeling such as I have never felt, before. Perhaps, as you say, I was fed on eland by my father.”
“Or perhaps it was what we call 'instinct.' You knew they were elands because you couldn't help knowing" it. For the princess here was born in Holland, and yet look at her. She feels just as you felt, but she couldn't tell you why.”
“Yes, she does; and yet where we were before there were plenty of animals that would have been g-ood to eat, and neither of us experienced such a sensation as this. I assure you my mouth is watering.”
“No; that was because the animals that you used to see from the other place were bison from America and gayals and buffalo from Asia. Your father never saw bison or gayal, and so neither you nor your princess recognised them. With the elands it is different. Her inherited instinct tells her that if she were still in Africa she would rush upon and kill these very antelope, and she has not yet learned that she cannot do so in Regent's Park. You yourself may actually have eaten elands, and though you have forgotten it, the memory is really somewhere in you still. But you left Africa when very young.”
“Yes, I was a mere baby when they took me away from Sokoto. A child carried me nearly the whole way to the coast, and I was a plaything for him till they put me on the ship.”
“You don't remember it, do you?”
“No, I can't say that I do. But do you know, sometimes when I am lying asleep I dream of some place that must be Sokoto, and the wind is whispering in the crisp fronds of the palm-scrub and muttering overhead in the leaves of the mvule trees, and clouds-are driving along the night-sky, and nothing can hear me for the voice of the wind, nor see me for the drifting rock as I pass along to where I know the herds of antelope are asleep, or to the drinking-place on the river-bank where giraffe and zebra and many a beast with horns come down to drink. But the dream never comes to any end, somehow. A crane cries out from the rushes yonder, or another lion awakes from his sleep with a growl—dreaming too, perhaps—and I awake before the end comes. The wind is crisp in the reeds in that pond yonder, and soft in the elms overhead, and the grey clouds are blowing across the moon. But I know there are no herds of antelope lying asleep about here; no meeting-place for the thirsty forest-folk at nightfall, where a lion may choose what he will kill. I have come to understand these bars,” he added a little wearily, and his eyes went back to the great horned things in the enclosure just across the path, and he fell into a day-dream as he watched them. But the lioness kept on her way, to and fro, a splendid picture of suppressed activity and desire. As she passed she happened to touch Victor, and disturbed his reverie.
“Did you ever hear,” I asked, “of a man called Stanley? He was up your way about your time.”
“No,” said Victor, “I was too young, I suppose.”
“Nor of Selous?”
“No. What is he?”
“Among other things,” said I, with some hesitation, “he is a mighty hunter of lions.”
“My father,” said Victor quietly, “was a mighty hunter of men.”
And he sat down, as the lions sit round Nelson's statue, with his two great forepaws straight out before him and looked me full in the face out of unfathomable eyes.
“I cannot understand,” said he after a pause, “why men hunt lions.”
“Or why lions hunt men?”
“That is simple enough; because men are good to eat. What else were they made for—at least in Africa?”
“In Africa, perhaps! It may certainly be better for an African to be eaten by a lion than to be caught as a slave by an Arab.”
“And who knows,” retorted Victor, “better for a lion to be shot by Selous than brought home to be caged by Jamrach?”
“What! and Leona before you?”
“1 wasn't speaking of myself. I am quite contented where I am—but I should like an afternoon with those elands. I must see Mr. Bartlett about it, and about taking this young lioness away. Ah! here he comes. Good-bye.”