# The Monkey with the Green Pea-Jacket

The Monkey with the Green Pea-Jacket
BY LAURA SPENCER PORTOR
HE was back in the Jungle. Back again! Dear! dear! that adventurous spirit! that leaping star that had long vanished in the blue! and, lo and behold! the star had an orbit, and was returned to their gaze! There was a great bobbing of noses, blinking of eyes, a tightening of hands on vine and branch!
They appeared to be hypnotized, fairly, while he told them of Tonio and Philippa and the hurdy-gurdy; of the wharves and the shipping; of the narrow streets with the tall houses in the downtown quarters, where Philippa and Tonio lived. Then at last he told how he had managed, one summer night when Tonio and Philippa were asleep on the wharf, to stow away in the hold of the right ship, the one that had brought the cocoanuts and the other things from home and was about to leave (this he knew by the cursing of the sailors) on her return journey.
Ah, how they listened!
Every so often the very old brown chimpanzee, who was known throughout the Jungle as the "Lonely One" (because of his knowledge, no doubt), would venture to interrupt and ask what this or that might mean. "Automobiles," for instance; "wharves"; "hurdy-gurdys"? The Hunting Party had no such things as these. For the "Lonely One" dated everything from the Hunting Party, which had come within some miles of the Jungle, and which the "Lonely One" had gone cautiously to inspect, at a certain distance, as spy and ambassador of the rest.
Then, too, there was the "Bold-faced One" who interrupted from time to time, he also to ask questions. He it was who was lord of the Jungle. He had great streaks of peacock blue and green on his nose, which none of the others had; and his hands were more like a man's, and his forearms short and powerful; and the soles of his feet were blue, also, and he had a way sometimes of lifting his head until the back of it rested between his shoulder-blades and then looking out from between the slits of his almost closed heavy-lidded eyes. This gave him a wise look, beyond all words to describe—wise and at the same time wicked. If he was displeased with any one, or if he wished to disperse a company, he had only to put his head back in that way and presently up and along the branches, down and through covert openings, the Jungle folk would go, or creep, or crawl, or slink, until in a few moments not a soul but himself remained. Then he would gather up the stone he always carried with him and make off through the trees, climbing with the aid of his powerful blue-soled feet and one strong hand, the other holding the stone secure.
These two, then, the "Lonely One" and the "Bold-faced One," put the questions; the rest continued to listen with an almost painful tension. So, Alessandro (that was the name Tonio and Philippa had given him) got through the story at last—the story of his return, sketched in with high-lights of the marvel that his life had been over there. It was growing late. The quick-moving night, soft-footed as a beast of the Jungle, was almost upon them. They retired up vine and branch, talking things over among themselves. The "Lonely One" before he left offered the hero a half a cocoanut. The "Bold-faced One" retreated slowly up the dim trunk of a rubber-tree. As he mounted one could see the blue soles of his feet as they alternately grasped and released the trunk as though they might have been the strange animated footmarks of his shadowy, lurid progress. His right hand doubled against his side was still holding the stone. One had the impression he was carrying away not only that, but other things as well, and all Alessandro's information, to think about.
But in all that Jungle company there was one who, though she listened intently to questions and answers, would never have cared to ask a question herself. It was not with Alessandro's knowledge, but with himself, she was concerned. He was a hero. He had been in strange places. Out and across the great expanse of water and back again! A traveler, an adventurous spirit! Some one, mind you, before whom the Jungle fell quiet and to whom the "Lonely One" and the "Bold-faced One" gave attentive interest. While all the rest listened, giving her no thought, she had closed one little fist around a vine and gazed her fill at him. And once, glancing indifferently over the company (ah, that lordly, masterful indifference of his!) Alessandro's eye had caught hers; and her heart knocked suddenly like something suspended that an inadvertent hand has struck. Then his gaze passed on with large indifference, leaving her humbled and exalted and changed.
Most of the others, tired from the excitement of the day, were asleep; but not Alessandro. He was too glad to be back in the Jungle moonlight to forego any of it.
He looked up and around with pleasure at the colossal vegetation, the giant trunks, the up-climbing massive monkey-ladders, the arching fronds of fern, and the grand groups of heavy-scented orchids; the great, long fingers of the air roots, too, reaching down, down, seventy feet or more, bent, it seemed, like a giant miser's fingers, on touching and grasping the rich soil. He remembered in contrast the absurdly diminutive vegetation in the Park in New York, with the tops of the trees as close over your head, almost, as the umbrellas which foolish people in cities carry over their head-dresses on rainy days.
Yes; he was glad to be back. His nostrils quivered in delighted recognition of the scents of the Jungle, too, for in the Jungle, ah, what odors! Voices of a kind, with which beast and flower and tree proclaimed themselves and saluted one another. There the jackal had passed, and there the jungle-bug, or there the giant armadillo; here the leaping paca, and there the red deer; and across and among these concords of speaking silences, or suspended above them and shedding varied sweetness like censers, marvelous blossoms here or there or high up in the roof of the Jungle, radiated or dropped perfume and proclaimed themselves penetratingly.
In the two dark, low rooms where Tonio and Philippa had lived there was a certain blend of odors of cheese and macaroni and olive-oil and stale chianti and garlic, but how slender they were and unimportant, without especial incident or meaning, with nothing changing or dramatic in them. You found them there, always in the same place; you came back to them day after day, with only now and then the odor of a banana added for variety. But here! Ah, he drew in a long breath. Here!
Nevertheless, he dwelt rather sentimentally on the thought of how Tonio and Philippa must be missing him, Tonio with the greater excitement. For when Alessandro had sometimes found life almost unendurable because of homesickness, it was Tonio who would lift the little drooped head with one finger and say, with pity or alarm: "Ecco! Philippa! He pines! He pines for the Jungle!" and Philippa would give an extra jerk to the frying-pan and, without even turning her head, would say, "Well, then, he is a little fool!"
Ah, that once that they thought they had lost him—when he had gone to sleep in the clothes-closet! Heavens! what a screaming and blaming of each other! Then, when Philippa found him at last, she had given him such a shaking! Him, mind you! yes! and dragged him along by the hand the way you have seen angry mothers drag their children. And as he went with her unwillingly he had blinked up at her to see if she really meant to offer him such indignity as that, and then, seeing no relenting in her tight-shut lips, he had looked back hopefully over his shoulder at Tonio. But Tonio's dark face gave no sign. Tonio, when he chose, had a voice like a bull; but even Tonio was not the man to cross Philippa at the moment she had her lips shut like that. So she continued to drag him along, his little, delicate hand in her great paw, and at such a rate that there were seconds when his hind legs actually did not altogether touch the floor. When at last she got him to his little, old, greasy wicker basket, Philippa clapped him down in it with perfectly unnecessary violence, gave him one hard slap (Good heavens!) jerked the cover over him, head and all, and left him to blink and boil and meditate and simmer and surmise on what would happen to him next.
As he was thinking of all this, he was roused by a touch upon his arm, tentative, delicate. He turned his head and saw beside him the kindly, anxious face of the one who, among all the rest, had gazed at him so devotedly and absorbedly that afternoon. Her eyes looked out at him now, incredibly ancient, though she was still so young.
"Now will you tell me more?" she begged. "The rest are all asleep."
"What would you have me tell you?" He affected a wide indifference, pretending not to understand.
"Everything! All about your glories! All about the wonderful things you did!"
"Oh, that!"
He waited as though to consider and select out of the entire magnificent mass something—not too overwhelming—something suited to her intellect.
"Well," he began, at last, "they took great pains to educate me to appear in public. New York is very different, of course, from the Jungle. There one must be educated."
The terms he used were altogether strange to her, yet she understood amazingly well, mainly, of course, with an understanding of the heart.
"Like a city upon a hill, at night," he told her, "lighted so high, so high! A million million stars! not spread out skimpily like that" (he lifted his chin, an indifferent jerk, to indicate the mere heavens). "Not at all like that, not way off, scattered and dim; but all gathered together in tiers and rows and brilliant groups and masses close together, I mean, as though you were to sweep your hand" (he swept his own, with a large gesture) "and gather all those stars up yonder into one corner of the heavens, and heap them up, in patterns or anyway you liked. One sees it that way coming over the ferry at night, with the black waters underneath. We used sometimes to go over to Jersey."
He paused, remembering, and she stayed so still you might have thought her a part of the Jungle. What were Jerseys and ferries? It mattered not. What if she did not understand? Was it not enough to be there in that vast place, with him, with the world asleep and a white moon over them? Was it not enough and to spare? With him who could gather the stars in the heavens and set them in rows and patterns!
The rapt attention she gave him was gratifying to him. He must not, however, allow her too easy a friendship—he who, mind you, that very afternoon had had a half a cocoanut given him by the "Lonely One," who in turn had seen the Hunting Party. Yet Alessandro meant very gladly to give her all the information she wanted, for he was not averse from having rumor and report of himself circulated.
He began by telling her of his and Tonio's and Philippa's journeys with the hurdy-gurdy, from the grand lower part of the city where every house had hundreds of people in it to the poor rich quarter where quite the contrary was true.
"We went there," he said, in a lordly manner, "to bring some pleasure to the children of that sad, oppressed community—Tonio and Philippa to grind the hurdy-gurdy, I to dance on its top."
She blinked at thought of all this—ah, the kingliness and bounty of him!—She hung upon his words.
"They had need enough of us!" he continued. "For there, mind you, you shall find no children free and yelling and dodging among the carts and trucks, and dragging delightful tin cans along to make a noise. On the contrary, the children there go about singly or in twos or threes, sedate and sad, under the charge of sometimes terrible-looking caretakers and keepers known as nurses and governesses, who tell them what they may or may not do, and sometimes (I have seen it myself) slap the hands of the littlest ones and speak to them in a language that is not their own. In that quarter the women do not throw their heads back, like my queenly Philippa, and laugh louder than the macaw; nor scream, when they choose, like the parrot, telling their next-door neighbor what they think of them. They are very subdued and sad, the poor women of the rich quarter. I have seen a great many of them, but I never yet saw one of them put her hands on her hips and fall into a dance to the music of the hurdy-gurdy; nor have I seen a single one of them beat the tambourine, quicker and quicker, madder and madder, her fists, her wrists, and the tips of her fingers. Spin! spin! whirl and jangle! then bang on her elbows, and whirl again on her fingers! No, never one of them; but you should see how Philippa can do it!
"Well, that is natural. They are weaklings, of course, for the most part; they have to be dragged everywhere in automobiles like bundles, whereas Tonio and Philippa, now, went about anywhere, everywhere, from one end of the city to the other, on their own legs and dragging the hurdy-gurdy at that! Then, too, if you could see what the poor rich women are obliged to bear on their heads—burdens of brims and feathers and plumes and maybe even a parasol over all this—whereas Philippa wore nothing on her head and dared let the sun shine on her direct. Then, too, if you could see the poor, downtrodden things guarded by men and women in uniforms who lord it over them like jailers, who announce when they may come to dinner, and who put their food before them, often more than the poor things can eat, and keep bringing in more and more and carrying it away; who leave them no privacy; who stand about in the halls and passageways and shut them up in their automobiles or let them out when they choose. But Tonio and Philippa—ah, if you had ever seen Philippa you would know she was never summoned. She fried things in the frying-pan her very self. She put exactly what she liked on the table, herself—bread and cheese and a bottle of wine;, and never a person to stand behind her chair and dole out food to her! Bread and cheese and a flagon of wine! And if Tonio was greedy, and took too much of anything, Philippa grabbed it like a queen!"
His companion listened enraptured. All that he recited was astonishing, but not surprising to her. Was he not a hundred times worthy of all this?
Meantime he was speaking again:
"One Sunday they went to see Philippa's terrible old sick aunt; a wicked old woman she was, who did as she pleased and defied the devil. She had a drooping eyelid that she had to hold propped up with one finger. Well, they left me with a young boy who lived near them. He took me inside his overcoat and on a train that flies through the air right past the second stories of the houses, and then he went over to the poor rich quarter and strolled about. At last he went into one of the churches and he allowed me to peek out a little.
"Ah, the sadness and the dreariness! There was music, but not like Tonio's, not like Tonio's! Nothing rollicking and good-natured like that, all rippling runs and clickety-clack, nor was there a particle of dancing in the aisle, only the groans of the poor rich people, begging for mercy and asking to be saved, while another of the jailers, high up in a box where he could keep an eye on every one of them, shook his fist at them. Whereas Tonio and Philippa! Ah, well, when they walked into a church it was like honored visitors on a holiday, and if they knelt it was quite happily and before an image that had little lights about it, very gay and attractive.
She closed her eyes, picturing it all—the glory and power of his associates, the splendor of his life. She could see the children with tin cans and freedom gathering around while Tonio ground out the music and Philippa beat upon the tambourine and he, ah, he danced up on the top of the marvelous instrument.
Meantime, like an artist, he was not using all the color upon his palette, only selecting here and there, and mixing and combining, according to his purpose. He would, of course, leave untold, for instance, that about the butchers boy with the basket who had given him the wicked pinch one day. He would say nothing, either, of how his heart used to beat with dread of the strange faces as he danced, and with fear of Tonio's rough, urging voice. He would not tell her of the dreadful day when, trembling with fear, he had dropped the tin cup and spilled the pennies, nor of the cruel jerk of the chain, nor how he had fled in a panic back to Tonio's shoulder. Better Tonio cross, and a beating, than the wicked, deriding boys, making fun of his misfortune. No; these had no real part in the picture he was painting. Instead, he spoke of that which was in a sense its central point, toward which every other line and interest converged.
"And then there was the green pea-jacket."
She asked him about it, exactly as he knew she would, and he explained how he had come by it.
He did not tell her that he had had a jacket before this one, a poor old dingy red one which he had inherited from his predecessor, a former monkey of Tonio's who had died suddenly of cramps one night and the responsibility for whose death remained a rich and unfailing source of quarrel between Tonio and Philippa. He did not tell her how the red jacket had become, with long wear, so greasy and grimy that he hated it. All these things he eliminated. What he did tell her was that a "beautiful creature with gold hair and white hands"—so he designated her—had told Tonio that a monkey who danced so nobly should have a green pea-jacket, trimmed with gold, and that she herself would make it. It would be ready the next time they were pleased to come to that quarter. And they did go, of course. And the queenly creature, having made the jacket for him now helped him into it and buttoned it at the neck for him with her milk-white hands, and then clasped those hands in very joy and admiration.
(Ah, how she listened!)
"Some day," he said, grandly, "I will dance for you in it. I shall dance for you in the green pea-jacket."
There was a hardly audible sound overhead. Alessandro's heart stopped as it used to when Tonio jerked the chain. The night was almost gone. Soon the vast dawn would come striding above the rim of the horizon, the great red sun in her hand, smiting it like a tocsin, calling the world to wake once more; and the light would quiver and thrill and stream from it like sound, and would change, as it quivered, into the passionate pulsations of bird-songs and the multitudinous reverberations of the morning. But that moment had not come, nor was the stirring overhead a thing of the dawn. They both glanced up. It was the "Bold-faced One" moving stealthily like a large shadow, and just making off through the trees.
She waited for nothing, but fled. Her heart was full of terror. As she went, a hundred questions hurried with her and a pack of fears ran step for step, soft-footed, beside her. What was the worst the "Bold-faced One" could do? She knew his jealous power, and the jealous guarding of that power! Lord of the Jungle he was. How long had he been there, watching them? A moment before and she had been a creature wrapt away from everything, alone with one who could gather the stars into one corner of the heavens with his hand and set them in rows and patterns, and now she was a little female monkey hastening through the Jungle, full of fear. Yet certainty went with her, too. Ah, he would dance for them! In the green pea-jacket!
They sat about the clearing, waiting. She thought now in a bewildered way how foolish had been all her fears. The "Bold-faced One" was lord of the Jungle, to be sure, but that would only redound now to her love's fame when this mighty one also paid him homage.
She sat in the crotch of a pale-trunked rubber-tree, clasping to steady herself, the ropes of the liana, and watched the rest gather.
They began coming at dawn, with whirring wing or nimble feet, or deliberate, stealthy, padded paw. There were soon a deafening chatter and screaming in the upper air, the shrill parakeets making themselves heard highest of all and well above the chatter of the monkeys. From the animals below there were mutterings and an occasional growl. By and by the "Lonely One" came slowly, carrying a cocoanut. Every one paid him the homage of silence as he passed by them. No one knew, or guessed, even, what he might know, he who had seen the Hunting Party.
Her glance ran from one group to another in feverish excitement. Presently the "Bold-faced One" appeared, letting himself down solemnly from limb to limb, the lurid blue shoes of his hind feet showing now one, now the other, as he descended. He seated himself at last on the ground, the blue soles turned in, facing each other. The stone that he carried he placed carefully beside him. He raised his muzzle, with the peacock-blue and green stripes on it, and looked about, up and down, but not directly at any one—indifferent and waiting.
At last, after what seemed hours of delay, the one she waited for was there! Lo and behold him!
He ran into the clearing on all-fours. He looked up and around at the whole vast audience about and above him.
Her heart stopped with pride. She wondered whether in all that mass of faces he had noted hers. Her heart was going hard again now, thimp-thump. She took her eyes from her hero only to take a quick glance at the rest, to see in what manner they observed him.
She need not have been anxious. Not one of them but observed him absorbedly. Even the "Bold-faced One," whom, as a rule, everybody watched, had his eyes now on Alessandro.
The chattering had ceased. There was not a sound. Silence in the Jungle is an impressive thing.
Alessandro turned about again on all-fours and glanced again at those on the branches above him. The old association of fear was strong in him and his heart shook. Yet what had he to fear? Here was no butcher's boy, here no Tonio with dark face, here no chain. He was his own master. They believed in his greatness. They had asked him to dance. Well and good. This was as it should be. Alessandro, with the world waiting for him, would dance, with even the lord of the Jungle looking on.
She who watched him with so much understanding was at the first amazed that he did not wear the green pea-jacket, nor could she have imagined that fear deterred him.
Yet it was fear which had led him into the clearing without it. Let discretion be the better part of his dancing, at first. For now that the actual test was come, he had a dim realization that the pea-jacket stood as a symbol of something borrowed, assumed, affected; something out of the order of life and nature; something that set aside the underlying law of the Jungle; something which affronted truth and flaunted probability. For had not he and his kind from time immemorial, whereof the memory of the Jungle ran not to the contrary, worn dull-colored coats? Were not the blue soles and the blue and green streaks of the "Bold-faced One" mighty things of right and title fixed and inherited for ages, come by through no quick assumptions, rather by age-old prerogatives and lawful successions? Who had colored the great blue parrot's plumage, or lent its scarlet to the giant tree-toad? Who had vouchsafed its rich red color to the huge red squirrel, or his ill-fitting, long-tailed coat to the giant armadillo? The pale-green light to the phosphorescent beetle, or the red lantern to the Jungle night-fly? Who had bestowed upon the great kalawoe his wide night wings for flight, feathered with softness like velvet, and his cry that trembled and wailed and died like something falling, falling into a bottomless abyss? Who had from generation to generation bestowed upon the musk its pungent and powerful odor, and upon the orchid with the flesh-colored heart, high up, high up, the unfailing brilliancy of its cup and the unchanging falling incense of its perfume? Who shall remove or alter or change so much as a jot or a tittle any of all these things? Shall the paca, feasting on nuts, lift its head and say, "I am lord of these matters"? or the tree-shrew its muzzle from the bark and its ant-eating and declare, "I have power to change the ancient law"? Shall the night-hawk put on the daylight feathers of the peacock, or the monkey the plumage of the macaw? Where all is law and order, shall an assumption of miracle appear? Where knowledge and right have come by toil and travail, shall one rise and say, "Away from all this, and hear me for a prophet"?
He knew in a dim, adumbrated fashion that in a world of law there is shame in an assumption of miracle; he knew that a lie is something for which creation will not stand; he knew dimly that to trespass on truth is to pull heaven and earth about one's ears. All this he knew surely, but dimly, dimly. So he would not risk the pea-jacket. Instead he would dance—the steps that Tonio had taught him. They were real things that he had learned and knew.
He raised himself on his hind legs, man fashion, balanced himself, and took the first step. A little shiver of excitement ran through her as she watched him far up. The rest watched, watched.
Slowly, measuredly, he turned round and round.
She was conscious of some lack—the lack of music. Then her fancy supplied it. As he turned, every branch and rich-hung flower of the Jungle had for her a voice and sang for him to dance. She realized vaguely that to all the rest, the entire mass of spectators, there was no sound of music. They should have known of the hurdy-gurdy over yonder in that far province of his splendor of which he had told her. Ah, if they but knew, as she did, his power to command music and the stars of the heavens!
To Alessandro, as he turned in time and measure, imagination also supplied what was lacking. At each step the rain-like rippling clatter of the hurdy-gurdy was in his ears. To him and her it was not without this added glory that he danced. To the rest, he was one of their own, fashioned brown and small like a thousand others, turning about in a senseless sort of way. Fascinated they had been, hypnotized by expectancy. Surely this was not enough! What had they come out to see? What had they come far to witness? When would the real performance begin?
He turned about again and again. Once he had to resort to all-fours because he was so dizzy; then, as Tonio had taught him, he raised himself on his hind legs, reversed, and turned from left to right, round and round, with the world looking on.
He was getting dizzy again. He came down once more on all-fours, paused, and looked about him.
The Jungle waited. What would he do next? Well, he really had done all there was to do—his utmost. Turns to the left; turns to the right; there was nothing more.
The crowd waited. The "Lonely One" beat his cocoanut three times on the ground, then held it to his ear and listened, as though to find in it a strange answer to a mysterious question.
The "Bold-faced One" was not looking at any one now, neither at the crowd of intent, blinking faces, nor at Alessandro; he was merely looking about him, an indifferent look.
She watched these two great ones with panic in her heart; then looked to Alessandro. What would come next?
Alessandro, too, felt it to be a crucial moment. He had failed to rouse their approval. They remained unstirred by his performance. His opportunity was at flood-tide. There was, he knew, not a moment to be lost. Soon the waters would be rushing black and fearful, sweeping him back toward failure and the common level and the derisive laughter of the crowd.
He signaled the "Bold-faced One." He ran over and conveyed some intelligence to him. The eyes of all were on these two. All the rest would take their cue from the lord of the Jungle. The lord of the Jungle, blinking slowly, signified he would wait. Then Alessandro hurried away they knew not where. She knew what it was he had gone for.
The green pea-jacket! Fear and pride and a conflict of emotions were in her. She could already see his power and his glory confounding these all about her. When he came back and danced for them in the green pea-jacket! Her excited imagination did not find it hard to believe the flowers and trees of the Jungle actually would find voice; and to the sound of them and to the confoundment and amazement of his audience he would dance, dance, dance until the soft-footed Jungle night came suddenly and looked over the heads of them all, to behold him. Then, then, she could see him gather the stars out of the heavens and heap them up in one corner in rows and patterns. It was not until she had thus given him every glory, that she thought of herself, and saw herself famous, too, distinguished forever by the attention he had paid her, and by the hours spent with him in the moonlight, that circumstance which the "Bold-faced One"—she was glad now—had witnessed.
A start of interest ran through the audience. He was there, there among them again. His lower limbs were bare, but the upper part of his body was clothed in the bright green pea-jacket. It was braided with gilt cord, and down its sides hung round gilt buttons. The thing was electrifying!
The entire crowd came as by a powerful magnetism a few inches closer. She herself dropped down, a vine or two lower and nearer. Even the "Bold-faced One" did not pretend indifference now. He had half risen. His eyes were fixed on Alessandro and his lips twitched and the peacock-colored streaks on his nose were in wrinkles. The great green-and-blue parrot, catching sight of the rival green of the pea-jacket, leaned so far forward, with his ruffed neck stretched so far out and his wings quivering, you would have sworn he was flying except that his talons still held tight to the branch. A huge red squirrel, with every hair standing suddenly on end and his two forefeet braced back and his claws stuck tensely in the trunk of a rubber-tree, thrust his quivering nose forward with terrible curiosity.
Keyed up by their electric surprise, Alessandro rose and turned. It might have been he was dancing, it might have been he was simply showing them the jacket. Round and round slowly, slowly, so as to allow them to see and observe every side, every button, every bit of it! He turned, he turned, he turned!
She watched the "Bold-faced One," His neck stooped slowly, now, rather fearfully. She came nearer. His lips twitched. She drew a few feet closer. His lips quivered and drew back somewhat, showing his teeth. She paused in terror. He dropped to all-fours, softly. She let herself down, down, arm by arm, dropping here and there toward the floor of the Jungle like the fruit of a tree which drops and strikes here and there, but without sound, as it goes.
The "Bold-faced One" took a slow, cautious step forward, muzzle near the ground, like the sultry step of the storm, which, though it seems not to move, yet lowers and approaches. Then, high up, a single parakeet gave a sudden, terrible, shrill scream. At the sound of it, and as though they had been waiting only for that, the great green-and-blue parrot and the huge red squirrel let go their boughs. The "Bold-faced One" showed many teeth and snarled. Sooner than it takes to tell it, like sudden rush of wind and swift increasing downpour of rain among resonant palms and brittle bamboo, the noise and chatter and excitement swept and rose into screams and uproar. Through it all there was the quick dropping of dark forms like twigs loosened and thrown down by the storm's fury. That he had cared so much to please them might have flattered them and counted in his favor had they thought of it, but there was not time nor desire for philosophy. Feeling and emotion were everything and had swept beyond control. Was it the too vivid green of the jacket? Was it the glitter and assumption of the gilt buttons? Was it, rather, the arrogance of the little turning figure, in which it was not given to those who watched to see any pathos? Or was it the ancient law rising with the old lash in its hand? Whatever it was, suddenly, like a cat-o'-nine-tails flung wide, the fierceness, the envy, the jealousy, the ridicule, the hate, the resentment, the passion, the rage, the fury, of the Jungle were let loose.
The open space that had been the arena of his glory was now a fighting, excited mass. They were all trying to get at him; but, mad with excitement, they tumbled over one another and fought one another, instead, as they went. She was among them herself, threading, pushing her way. When she reached him he was defending himself madly. She caught at the loose jacket, pulled at it. He turned sharply, thinking to strike at her, too; and as he turned the garment came loose and remained in her hand.
After that all was confusion again, black confusion and terror.
Never mind how she had managed to get him painfully to that particular opening in the Jungle, away and alone. He was sleeping now in the stillness of the night. She sat beside him, a patient little brown figure.
The rumor of another Hunting Party had mercifully taken the rest away. The "Lonely One" had knocked his cocoanut three times on the ground and had listened to it, and then, with a peculiar cry, had made off through the Jungle toward the direction in which the Hunting Party had once passed. And the rest had followed, followed, up limb and stem and along vine, stopping only to gather a few tamarinds or plums as they ran.
There was a waning moon, sunk now almost to the horizon; but all around was the steady light lent by the phosphorescent glimmer of fox-fire. The green-blue lucent glow of it gleamed and shone from giant stem and stalk like the lighting of one mystery by another. In its blended color it was like a silent brother to the great green parrot, but here was no quivering, uncertain jealousy, only a kindly steadiness, without trembling and fault of fickleness. From time to time the booming of the tree-frogs, like the bark of a lion, broke the silence, or the great kalawoe flung its wailing cry into the profound stillness, so that one could hear the trembling notes drop away and down, down, down, until the sound of it was lost in the soundless night.
She had her own thoughts to herself now. She had been timid all her life, but now, having once seen the world at its worst, fears occupied her no more. It is true, in every strange and chance sound now to which she lent her attention she seemed to hear the growing murmur of jealous chatter, as one who has been shipwrecked hears still terribly in every chance shell to which he lends his ear the roar and rush of engulfing waters; but she had no thought of this now. Her little dim mind was occupied by questions that came and went. What, oh, what had stayed his mighty hand? Why had he not used his power? Was he not one to make kings and queens obey him? Was it not from his own lips that she had heard of his might? Does one question the word of such a one?
These uncertainties floated past like wrack of cloud in the moonlit skies; then one heavier than the rest loomed and darkened her understanding; it concerned the pea-jacket.
For some reason she had not been jealous of Philippa, the queen, nor of Tonio, the kingly. But the "beautiful creature" with gold hair and white hands who had fashioned the pea-jacket for him! Ah, how humble and bare her own life seemed, in comparison!
He stirred very slightly and waked. The moon was low now on the horizon. Flowing back into his consciousness, like a full tide, was all his knowledge, all his experience over yonder beyond the great, separating sea; his pitiful experience which he had interpreted to her as triumph. Yes; and now that it was past his reach, how he loved it! New York, the mighty, with her many streets and her terrifying noise; her squalor and her splendor and her follies; her terrible tenements and her towering hostelries; her sunsets at the end of every cross-street, or in the morning a glorious dawn at the other end of every one of them, mind you! And the thronged ferries at night, carrying their great crowds with so strange a motion over dark, uncertain waters to a city of heaped-up stars; and the strings of lights, double strings of them, flung across high up, spanning the heavens, joining city to city, you cannot guess how; and the wet nights, oh, the marvelous wet nights that went about clad in fringes and beads of rain or floating mist, and decked with great red and blue and green rainflowers, and which carried in their dripping fingers shimmering ribbons of light, long and streaming and wavering and beautiful!
Dim and far that world he had despised and renounced and lost; yes, but real, all of it, and his own! He recalled it minutely—the faces of the children he had so much feared; the painful weight of his chain; Tonio's hateful, scolding voice, at sound of which he had so often fled; Philippa's dark brows and shining black hair; the overturned chianti-bottles; the reeking cheese; the blended odors of oil and macaroni; the remains of the midday meal left on the table, and Tonio snoring on the bed; the dishes unwashed; and the flies that would circle about maddeningly, and would light on his nose over and over again on exactly the same spot, all he could do! A homesickness, an intolerable homesickness for all this splendor possessed him. Oh, to get back to it!
He opened his eyes and met hers intent on him. There was something indescribably comforting in this little brown face bent over him, all love and pity and adoring pride.
There were some soft murmurings on his part as his brain grew dizzy with pain and pleasure, and some fond repetitions.
"Some day," he said, faintly, "perhaps we could return there together. Tonio would be glad to see us."
She answered him nothing.
"And you could perhaps have a green pea-jacket, too. No doubt the beautiful creature would be willing to make you one. Where is it?"
She spread it over him with careful fingers. He closed his eyes, contented. Again dim and dizzy in his mind there floated the lights of a great city, and a wavering span of starlight glory, gathered together and flung across space.
So, while he drifted drowsily on a darkening sea of consciousness, her thoughts went wistfully to a dimly guessed land which was the home of a "beautiful creature"; nor could she know that this "beautiful creature" who had the power to fashion a pea-jacket was a little child of whom it was impossible she could have anything to fear, and who, at that moment, could she have known it, was, in that far land, learning painfully and under duress a little waltz of Schumann at the hands of a not too patient governess. So, while she continued to think of the white hands and the gold hair he drew the pea-jacket close under his chin, and, longing for what he had once despised, turned his head weakly, his fluttering breath dying out softly, and was gone from her.
This did not dawn on her at once. When it did, she still thought nothing of herself, only of him. The "Bold-faced One," with his cruel ways, was indeed lord of the Jungle, and would return; but he would find this fine spirit had eluded him. She took a pride in it, as though it were a new glory. Nothing could touch him now. She did not know where he had gone, but there, she conceived, his might was returned to him. There music, like the Jungle singing, or like the rain of heaven speaking, was forever at his command, and stars as many as are in the firmament were heaped up to give him pleasure. There, too—he had said it himself—might she not one day find herself with him, with Tonio and Philippa, glad and ready to wait upon them.
So she began to take even a kind of sad pleasure in the new circumstance, and gave herself to wondering when she would be able to follow him.
She heard a slight noise overhead, at no great distance, and started. Her hand went out defensively, guardingly, to the green pea-jacket still covering him, that had been his glory. The "Bold-faced One" was coming toward her, like a dark shadow, the hand with the stone in it raised.
At the very same moment, far across the vast, separating sea, Philippa, turning on her bed in the stifling heat and noise of that squalid quarter of which Alessandro had so much boasted, replied to Tonio's mournful reminder:
"Yes; but he was always a little fool—yet all the same I wish he were back."
Until the wet season came and the rain rotted it, the pea-jacket drooped, suspended like a strange leaf, on the yanga-banga tree. The "Bold-faced One" himself had hung it there. It was guarded by turns by the great green parrot and the tree-shrew; and when the tree-shrew was one day killed by the jackal, and a new shrew was appointed, and, being a stranger and unfamiliar with these parts, wanted to know what in the name of breadfruit and cocoanuts this pea-jacket really was, of what was it made, how and for what purpose constructed—no one could give him any information further than that it had formerly been worn by a little brown monkey who had attempted to do some quite unheard-of things. Therein lay his fame. Then by and by it fell to pieces and the great green parrot picked the gilt buttons off it and stowed them away in his crop—not to honor him who once wore them, but rather because he had a liking for bright, shining things, and, once safely stowed away like that, nobody could get them away from him.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1957, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 66 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse