The Beast Tamer

by Ruskin Bond

  To his extreme surprise, however, the constable, after exploring the beam of light and all that it contained for some time in silence, reached out his hand for the knife which Beckwith still held open. He looked at it on both sides, examined the handle and gave it back. ‘Foul play, Mr Beckwith?’ he said, laughing. ‘Bless you, they use bigger tools than that. That’s just a toy, the like of that. Cut your hand with it, though, already, I see.’ He must have noticed the handkerchief, for as he spoke the light from his lantern shone full upon the face and neck of the child, or creature, in the young man’s arms, so clearly that, looking down at it, Beckwith himself could see the clear grey of its intensely watchful eyes, and the very pupils of them, diminished to specks of black. It was now, therefore, plain to him that what he held was a foreigner indeed, since the parish constable was unable to see it. Strap had smelt it, then seen it, and he, Beckwith, had seen it; but it was invisible to Gulliver. ‘I felt now,’ he says in his narrative, ‘that something was wrong. I did not like the idea of taking it into the house; but I intended to make one more trial before I made up my mind about that. I said good night to Gulliver, put her on my bicycle and pushed her home. But first of all I took the handkerchief from her neck and put it in my pocket. There was no blood upon it, that I could see.’

  His wife, as he had expected, was waiting at the gate for him. She exclaimed, as he had expected, upon the lateness of the hour. Beckwith stood for a little in the roadway before the house, explaining that Strap had bolted up the hill and had had to be looked for and fetched back. While speaking he noticed that Mrs Beckwith was as insensible to the creature on the bicycle as Gulliver the constable had been. Indeed, she went much farther to prove herself so than he, for she actually put her hand upon the handle-bar of the machine, and in order to that drove it right through the centre of the girl crouching there. Beckwith saw that done. ‘I declare solemnly upon my honour,’ he writes, ‘that it was as if Mary had drilled a hole clean through the middle of her back. Through gown and skin and bone and all her arm went; and how it went in I don’t know. To me it seemed that her hand was on the handle-bar, while her upper arm, to the elbow, was in between the girl’s shoulders. There was a gap from the elbow downwards where Mary’s arm was inside the body; then from the creature’s diaphragm her lower arm, wrist and hand came out. And all the time we were speaking the girl’s eyes were on my face. I was now quite determined that I wouldn’t have her in the house for a mint of money.’

  He put her, finally, in the dog-kennel. Strap, as a favourite, lived in the house; but he kept a Greyhound in the garden, in a kennel surrounded by a sort of run made of iron poles and galvanized wire. It was roofed in with wire also, for the convenience of stretching a tarpaulin in wet weather. Here it was that he bestowed the strange being rescued from the down. It was clever, I think, of Beckwith to infer that what Strap had shown respect for would be respected by the Greyhound, and certainly bold of him to act upon his inference. However, events proved that he had been perfectly right. Bran, the Greyhound, was interested, highly interested, in his guest. The moment he saw his master, he saw what he was carrying. ‘Quiet, Bran, quiet there,’ was a very unnecessary adjuration. Bran stretched up his head and sniffed, but went no farther; and when Beckwith had placed his burden on the straw inside the kennel, Bran lay down, as if on guard, outside the opening and put his muzzle on his forepaws. Again Beckwith noticed that curious appearance of the eyes which the Fox-terrier’s had made already. Bran’s eyes were turned upwards to show the narrow arcs of white.

  Before he went to bed, he tells us, but not before Mrs Beckwith had gone there, he took out a bowl of bread and milk to his patient. Bran, he found to be still stretched out before the entry; the girl was nestled clown in the straw, as if asleep or prepared to be so, with her face upon her hand. Upon an afterthought he went back for a clean pocket handkerchief, warm water and a sponge. With these, by the light of a candle, he washed the wound, dipped the rag in hazeline and applied it. This done, he touched the creature’s head, nodded a good night and retired. ‘She smiled at me very prettily,’ he says. ‘That was the first time she did it.’

  There was no blood on the handkerchief which he had removed.

  Early in the morning, following upon the adventure, Beckwith was out and about. He wished to verify the overnight experiences in the light of refreshed intelligence. On approaching the kennel he saw at once that it had been no dream. There, in fact, was the creature of his discovery playing with Bran the Greyhound, circling sedately about him, weaving her arms, pointing her toes, arching her graceful neck, stooping to him, as if inviting him to sport, darting away—‘like a fairy,’ says Beckwith, ‘at her magic, dancing in a ring.’ Bran, he observed, made no effort to catch her, but crouched rather than sat, as if ready to spring. He followed her about with his eyes as far as he could; but when the course of her dance took her immediately behind him, he did not turn his head, but kept his eye fixed as far backward as he could, against the moment when she should come again into the scope of his vision. ‘It seemed as important to him, as it had the day before to Strap, to keep her always in his eye. It seemed—and always seemed so long as I could study them together—intensely important.’ Bran’s mouth was stretched to ‘a sort of grin’; occasionally he panted. When Beckwith entered the kennel and touched the dog (which took little notice of him), he found him trembling with excitement. His heart was heating at a great rate. He also drank quantities of water.

  Beckwith, whose narrative, hitherto summarized, I may now quote, tells us that ‘the creature was indescribably graceful and lightfooted. You couldn’t hear the fall of her foot: you never could. Her dancing and circling about the cage seemed to be the most important business of her life; she was always at it, especially in bright weather. I shouldn’t have called it restlessness so much as busyness. It really seemed to mean more to her than exercise or irritation at confinement. It was evident also that she was happy when so engaged. She used to sing. She sang also when she was sitting still with Bran; but not with such exhilaration.

  ‘Her eyes were bright—when she was dancing about—with mischief and devilry. I cannot avoid that word, thought it does not describe what I really mean. She looked wild and outlandish and full of fun, as if she knew that she was teasing the dog, and yet couldn’t help herself. When you say of a child that he looks wicked, you don’t mean it literally; it is rather a compliment than not. So it was with her and her wickedness. She did look wicked, there’s no mistake—able and willing to do wickedness; but I am sure she never meant to hurt Bran. They were always firm friends, though the dog knew very well who was the master.

  ‘When you looked at her you did not think of her height. She was so complete; as well-made as a statuette. I could have spanned her waist with my two thumbs and middle fingers, and her neck (very nearly) with one hand. She was pale and inclined to be dusky in complexion, but not so dark as a gypsy; she had grey eyes, and dark brown hair, which she could sit upon if she chose. Her gown you could have sworn was made of cobweb; I don’t know how else to describe it. As I had suspected, she wore nothing else, for while I was there that first morning, so soon as the sun came up over the hill she slipped it off her and stood dressed in nothing at all. She was a regular little Venus, that’s all I can say. I never could get accustomed to that weakness of hers for slipping off her frock, though no doubt it was very absurd. She had no sort of shame in it, so why on earth should I?

  ‘The food, I ought to mention, had disappeared: the bowl was empty. But I know now that Bran must have had it. So long as she remained in the kennel or about my place she never ate anything, nor drank either. If she had I must have known it, as I used to clean the run out every morning. I was always particular about that. I used to say that you couldn’t keep dogs too clean. But I tried her unsuccessfully, with all sorts of things: flowers, honey, dew—for I had read somewhere that fairies drink dew and suck honey out of flowers. She used to look at the little messes I made for her, an
d when she knew me better, would grimace at them, and look up in my face and laugh at me.

  ‘I have said that she used to sing sometimes. It was like nothing that I can describe. Perhaps the wind in the telegraph wires comes nearest to it, and yet that is an absurd comparison. I could never catch any words; indeed I did not succeed in learning a single word of her language. I doubt very much whether they have what we call a language—I mean, the people who are like her, her own people. They communicate with each other, I fancy, as she did with my dogs, inarticulately, but with perfect communication and understanding on either side. When I began to teach her English, I noticed that she had a kind of pity for me, a kind of contempt perhaps is nearer the mark, that I should be compelled to express myself in so clumsy a way. I am no philosopher, but I imagine that our need of putting one word after another may be due to our habit of thinking in sequence. If there is no such thing as Time in the other world, it should not be necessary there to frame speech in sentences at all. I am sure that Thumbeline (which was my name for her; I never learned her real name) spoke with Bran and Strap in flashes, which revealed her whole thought at once. So also they answered her, there’s no doubt. So also she contrived to talk with my little girl, who, although she was four years old and a great chatterbox, never attempted to say a single word of her own language to Thumbeline, yet communicated with her by the hour together. But I did not know anything of this for a month or more, though it must have begun almost at once.

  ‘I blame myself for it, myself only. I ought, of course, to have remembered that children are more likely to see fairies than grownups; but then—why did Florrie keep it all a secret? Why did she not tell her mother, or me, that she had seen a fairy in Bran’s kennel? The child was as open as the day, yet she concealed her knowledge from both of us without the least difficulty. She seemed the same careless, laughing child she had always been; one could not have supposed her to have a care in the world; and yet for nearly six months she must have been full of care, having daily secret intercourse with Thumbeline and keeping her eyes open all the time lest her mother or I should find her out. Certainly she could have taught me something in the way of keeping secrets. I know that I kept mine very badly, and blame myself more than enough for keeping it at all. God knows what we might have been spared, if, on the night I brought her home, I had told Mary the whole truth! And yet how could I have convinced her that she was impaling someone with her arm while her hand rested on the bar of the bicycle? Is not that an absurdity on the face of it? Yes, indeed; but the sequel is no absurdity. That’s the terrible fact.

  ‘I kept Thumbeline in the kennel for the whole winter. She seemed happy enough there with the dogs, and, of course, she had had Florrie, too, though I did not find that out until the spring. I don’t doubt, now, that if I had kept her in there altogether, she would have been perfectly contented.

  ‘The first time I saw Florrie with her, I was amazed. It was a Sunday morning. There was our four-year-old child standing at the wire, pressing herself against it, and Thumbeline close to her. Their faces almost touched; their fingers were interlaced; I am certain that they were speaking to each other in their own fashion, by flashes, without words. I watched them for a bit; I saw Bran come and sit up on his haunches and join them. He looked from one to another, and all about; and then he saw me.

  ‘Now that is how I know that they were all three in communication, because, the very next moment, Florrie turned round and ran to me, and said in her pretty baby-talk, “Talking to Bran. Florrie talking to Bran”. If this was willful deceit, it was most accomplished. It could not have been better done. “And who else were you talking to, Florrie?” I said. She fixed her round blue eyes upon me, and said shortly, “No-one else.” And I could not get her to confess or admit, then or at any time afterwards, that she had any cognizance at all of the fairy in Bran’s kennel, although their communications were daily, and often lasted for hours at a time. I don’t know that it makes things any better, but I have thought sometimes that the child believed me to be as insensible to Thumbeline as her mother was. She can only have believed it at first, of course, but that may have prompted her to a concealment which she did not afterwards care to confess to.

  ‘Be this as it may, Florrie, in fact, behaved with Thumbeline exactly as the two dogs did. She made no attempt to catch her at her circlings and wheelings about the kennel, nor to follow her wonderful dances, nor (in her presence) to imitate them. But she was (like the dogs) aware of nobody else when under the spell of Thumbeline’s personality; and when she had got to know her, she seemed to care for nobody else at all. I ought, no doubt, to have foreseen that and guarded against it.

  ‘Thumbeline was extremely attractive. I never saw such eyes as hers, such mysterious fascination. She was nearly always good-tempered, nearly always happy; but sometimes she had fits of temper and kept herself to herself. Nothing then would get her out of the kennel, where she would lie curled up like an animal with her knees to her chin and one arm thrown over her face. Bran was always wretched at these times, and did all he knew to coax her out. He ceased to care for me or my wife after she came to us, and instead of being wild at the prospect of his Saturday and Sunday runs, it was hard to get him along. I had to take him on a lead until we had turned to go home; then he would set off by himself, in spite of hallooing and scolding, at a long steady gallop, and one would find him waiting crouched at the gate of his run, and Thumbeline on the ground inside it, with her legs crossed like tailor, mocking and teasing him with her wonderful shining eyes. Only once or twice did I see her worse than sick or sorry; then she was transported with rage and another person altogether. She never touched me—and why or how I had offended her I have no notion—but she buzzed and hovered about me like an angry bee. She appeared to have wings, which hummed in their furious movement; she was red in the face; her eyes burned; she grinned at me and ground her little teeth together. A curious shrill noise came from her, like the screaming of a gnat or hover-fly; but no words, never any words. Bran showed me his teeth too, and would not look at me. It was very odd.

  ‘When I looked in, on my return home, she was as merry as usual, and as affectionate. I think she had no memory.

  ‘I am trying to give all the particulars I was able to gather from my observation. In some things she was difficult, in others very easy to teach. For instance, I got her to learn in no time that she ought to wear her clothes, such as they were, when I was with her. She certainly preferred to go without them, especially in the sunshine; but by leaving her, the moment she slipped her frock off, I soon made her understand that if she wanted me she must behave herself according to my notions of behaviour. She got that fixed in her little head, but even so she used to do her best to hoodwink me. She would slip out one shoulder when she thought I wasn’t looking, and before I knew where I was, half of her would be gleaming in the sun like satin. Directly I noticed it I used to frown, and then she would pretend to be ashamed of herself, hang her head and wriggle her frock up to its place again. However, I could never teach her to keep her skirts about her knees. She was as innocent as a baby about that sort of thing.

  ‘I taught her some English words, and a sentence or two. That was towards the end of her confinement to the kennel, about March. I used to touch parts of her, or of myself, or Bran, and peg away at the names of them. Mouth, eyes, ears, hands, chest, tail, back, front: she learned all those and more. Eat, drink, laugh, cry, love, kiss, those also. As for kissing (apart from the word) she proved herself to be an expert. She kissed me, Florrie, Bran, Strap, indifferently, one as soon as another, and any rather than none, and all four for choice.

  ‘I learned some things myself, more than a thing or two. I don’t mind owning that one thing was to value my wife’s steady and tried affection far above the wild love of this unbalanced, unearthly little creature, who seemed to be like nothing so much as a woman with the conscience left out. The conscience, we believe, is the still small voice of the Deity crying to us in the da
rk recesses of the body; pointing out the path of duty; teaching respect for the opinion of the world, for tradition, decency and order. It is thanks to conscience that a man is true and a woman modest. Not that Thumbeline could be called immodest, unless a baby can be so described or an animal. But could I be called true? I greatly fear that I could not—in fact, I know it too well. I meant no harm; I was greatly interested; and there was always before me the real difficulty of making Mary understand that something was in the kennel which she couldn’t see. It would have led to great complications, even if I had persuaded her of the fact. No doubt she would have insisted on my getting rid of Thumbeline—but how on earth could I have done that if Thumbeline had not chosen to go? But, for all that, I know very well that I ought to have told her, cost what it might. If I had done it I should have spared myself lifelong regret, and should only have gone without a few weeks of extraordinary interest, which I now see clearly could not have been good for me, as not being founded upon any revealed Christian principle, and most certainly were not worth the price I had to pay for them.

  ‘I learned one more curious fact which I must not forget. Nothing would induce Thumbeline to touch or pass over anything made of zinc. I don’t know the reason for it; but gardeners will tell you that the way to keep a plant from slugs is to put a zinc collar round it. It is due to that I was able to keep her in Bran’s run without difficulty. To have got out she would have had to pass zinc. The wire was all galvanized.

  ‘She showed her dislike of it in numerous ways: one was her care to avoid touching the sides or tops of the enclosure when she was at her gambols. At such times, when she was at her wildest, she was all over the place, skipping high like a lamb, twisting like a leveret, wheeling round and round in circles like a young dog, or skimming, like a swallow on the wing, above ground. But she never made a mistake; she turned in a moment or flung herself backward if there was the least risk of contact. When Florrie used to converse with her from outside, in that curious silent way the two had, it would always be the child that put its hands through the wire, never Thumbeline. I once tried to put her against the roof when I was playing with her. She screamed like a shot hare and would not come out of the kennel all day. There was no doubt at all about her feelings for zinc. All other metals seemed indifferent to her.