“You do not know what you have done,” said Professor Porter. “Now he will doubtless refuse to marry her.”
“He most certainly will,” said Tarzan, emphatically.
“And further,” added Tarzan, “you need not fear that your pride will suffer, Professor Porter, for you will be able to pay the Canler person what you owe him the moment you reach home.”
“Tut, tut, sir!” exclaimed Professor Porter. “What do you mean, sir?”
“Your treasure has been found,” said Tarzan.
“What—what is that you are saying?” cried the professor. “You are mad, man. It cannot be.”
“It is, though. It was I who stole it, not knowing either its value or to whom it belonged. I saw the sailors bury it, and, ape-like, I had to dig it up and bury it again elsewhere. When D‘Arnot told me what it was and what it meant to you I returned to the jungle and recovered it. It had caused so much crime and suffering and sorrow that D’Arnot thought it best not to attempt to bring the treasure itself on here, as had been my intention, so I have brought a letter of credit instead.
“Here it is, Professor Porter,” and Tarzan drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to the astonished professor, “two hundred and forty-one thousand dollars. The treasure was most carefully appraised by experts, but lest there should be any question in your mind, D’Arnot himself bought it and is holding it for you, should you prefer the treasure to the credit.”
“To the already great burden of the obligations we owe you, sir,” said Professor Porter, with trembling voice, “is now added this greatest of all services. You have given me the means to save my honor.”
Clayton, who had left the room a moment after Canler, now returned.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I think we had better try to reach town before dark and take the first train out of this forest. A native just rode by from the north, who reports that the fire is moving slowly in this direction.”
This announcement broke up further conversation, and the entire party went out to the waiting automobiles.
Clayton, with Jane, the professor and Esmeralda occupied Clayton’s car, while Tarzan took Mr. Philander in with him.
“Bless me!” exclaimed Mr. Philander, as the car moved off after Clayton. “Who would ever have thought it possible! The last time I saw you you were a veritable wild man, skipping about among the branches of a tropical African forest, and now you are driving me along a Wisconsin road in a French automobile. Bless me! But it is most remarkable.”
“Yes,” assented Tarzan, and then, after a pause, “Mr. Philander, do you recall any of the details of the finding and burying of three skeletons found in my cabin beside that African jungle?”
“Very distinctly, sir, very distinctly,” replied Mr. Philander.
“Was there anything peculiar about any of those skeletons?”
Mr. Philander eyed Tarzan narrowly.
“Why do you ask?”
“It means a great deal to me to know,” replied Tarzan. “Your answer may clear up a mystery. It can do no worse, at any rate, than to leave it still a mystery. I have been entertaining a theory concerning those skeletons for the past two months, and I want you to answer my question to the best of your knowledge—were the three skeletons you buried all human skeletons?”
“No,” said Mr. Philander, “the smallest one, the one found in the crib, was the skeleton of an anthropoid ape.”
“Thank you,” said Tarzan.
In the car ahead, Jane was thinking fast and furiously. She had felt the purpose for which Tarzan had asked a few words with her, and she knew that she must be prepared to give him an answer in the very near future.
He was not the sort of person one could put off, and somehow that very thought made her wonder if she did not really fear him.
And could she love where she feared?
She realized the spell that had been upon her in the depths of that far-off jungle, but there was no spell of enchantment now in prosaic Wisconsin.
Nor did the immaculate young Frenchman appeal to the primal woman in her, as had the stalwart forest god.
Did she love him? She did not know—now.
She glanced at Clayton out of the corner of her eye. Was not here a man trained in the same school of environment in which she had been trained—a man with social position and culture such as she had been taught to consider as the prime essentials to congenial association?
Did not her best judgment point to this young English nobleman, whose love she knew to be of the sort a civilized woman should crave, as the logical mate for such as herself?
Could she love Clayton? She could see no reason why she could not. Jane was not coldly calculating by nature, but training, environment and heredity had all combined to teach her to reason even in matters of the heart.
That she had been carried off her feet by the strength of the young giant when his great arms were about her in the distant African forest, and again today, in the Wisconsin woods, seemed to her only attributable to a temporary mental reversion to type on her part—to the psychological appeal of the primeval man to the primeval woman in her nature.
If he should never touch her again, she reasoned, she would never feel attracted toward him. She had not loved him, then. It had been nothing more than a passing hallucination, super-induced by excitement and by personal contact.
Excitement would not always mark their future relations, should she marry him, and the power of personal contact eventually would be dulled by familiarity.
Again she glanced at Clayton. He was very handsome and every inch a gentleman. She should be very proud of such a husband.
And then he spoke—a minute sooner or a minute later might have made all the difference in the world to three lives—but chance stepped in and pointed out to Clayton the psychological moment.
“You are free now, Jane,” he said. “Won’t you say yes—I will devote my life to making you very happy.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
That evening in the little waiting room at the station Tarzan caught Jane alone for a moment.
“You are free now, Jane,” he said, “and I have come across the ages out of the dim and distant past from the lair of the primeval man to claim you—for your sake I have become a civilized man—for your sake I have crossed oceans and continents—for your sake I will be whatever you will me to be. I can make you happy, Jane, in the life you know and love best. Will you marry me?”
For the first time she realized the depths of the man’s love—all that he had accomplished in so short a time solely for love of her. Turning her head she buried her face in her arms.
What had she done? Because she had been afraid she might succumb to the pleas of this giant, she had burned her bridges behind her—in her groundless apprehension that she might make a terrible mistake, she had made a worse one.
And then she told him all—told him the truth word by word, without attempting to shield herself or condone her error.
“What can we do?” he asked. “You have admitted that you love me. You know that I love you; but I do not know the ethics of society by which you are governed. I shall leave the decision to you, for you know best what will be for your eventual welfare.”
“I cannot tell him, Tarzan,” she said. “He too, loves me, and he is a good man. I could never face you nor any other honest person if I repudiated my promise to Mr. Clayton. I shall have to keep it—and you must help me bear the burden, though we may not see each other again after tonight.”
The others were entering the room now and Tarzan turned toward the little window.
But he saw nothing outside—within he saw a patch of greensward surrounded by a matted mass of gorgeous tropical plants and flowers, and, above, the waving foliage of mighty trees, and, over all, the blue of an equatorial sky.
In the center of the greensward a young woman sat upon a little mound of earth, and beside her sat a young giant. They ate pleasant fruit and looked into each other’s eyes an
d smiled. They were very happy, and they were all alone.
His thoughts were broken in upon by the station agent who entered asking if there was a gentleman by the name of Tarzan in the party.
“I am Monsieur Tarzan,” said the ape-man.
“Here is a message for you, forwarded from Baltimore; it is a cablegram from Paris.”
Tarzan took the envelope and tore it open. The message was from D’Arnot.
It read:
Fingerprints prove you Greystoke. Congratulations.
D’ARNOT.
As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with extended hand.
Here was the man who had Tarzan’s title, and Tarzan’s estates, and was going to marry the woman whom Tarzan loved—the woman who loved Tarzan. A single word from Tarzan would make a great difference in this man’s life.
It would take away his title and his lands and his castles, and—it would take them away from Jane Porter also.
“I say, old man,” cried Clayton, “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for all you’ve done for us. It seems as though you had your hands full saving our lives in Africa and here.
“I’m awfully glad you came on here. We must get better acquainted. I often thought about you, you know, and the remarkable circumstances of your environment.
“If it’s any of my business, how the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?”
“I was born there,” said Tarzan, quietly. “My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn’t tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was.”
ENDNOTES
1 (p. 6) European power: King Leopold II of Belgium established the Congo Free State in 1885 as his personal possession; his systematic exploitation of the Congolese population was secured by an army—the Force Publique, led by European officers. Reports of Africans from the British colonies in Sierra Leone and Lagos (in present-day Nigeria) being “employed without their consent,” flogged, and shot in the Congo Free State became public in 1896.
2 (p. 64) Numa the lion: In the original magazine version of the novel, Burroughs had Tarzan encounter tigers, but then changed the animals to lions when he learned that tigers do not live in Africa.
3 (p. 121) “Oh, Gaberelle!”: This is presumably a mispronunciation of Gabriel, the name of one of the archangels. Later (p. 137) Esmeralda becomes convinced that Tarzan is an angel.
4 (p. 138) “higher white races”: Here is an example of the theories about race and evolution that inform the novel. For a discussion of Burroughs’s reliance on pseudo-scientific theory see the introduction.
5 (p. 149) the remains of which lay buried somewhere in the Congo valley: Burroughs alludes to legends of a lost white civilization in Africa that were popular in fiction of the period; he employed such legends in some of the Tarzan sequels.
6 (p. 174) hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate: The theory that learned traits, such as aristocratic manners, could be inherited was developed by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the early nineteenth century.
7 (p. 181) Leopold II of Belgium: The atrocities committed in the Congo Free Sate became the subject of an international humanitarian campaign. Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Crime of the Congo (1909) are examples of writings from the period that denounced Leopold’s rule.
8 (p. 199) “... I regret that I am not a man, that I might make it”: It appears that Jane’s gender precludes her from calling Clayton a liar because, as a matter of honor, a gentleman could not strike a woman as he would a man who accused him of being a liar.
9 (p. 205) “this superman of yours”: The first usage in English of this term, a translation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, was by George Bernard Shaw in 1903, referring to a man of genius or a great leader. The flying superhero and champion of the underdog who went by this name did not come into existence until 1938.
10 (p. 228) the part played by fingerprints in this fascinating science: Fingerprints were used in ancient Assyria and in China for signing legal documents. In Europe and America, their use by police for identifying individuals began in the 1890s.
11 (p. 229) Negro or Caucasian: In 1892 British scientist Francis Galton, the founder of the eugenics movement, developed the system for classifying fingerprints that is still commonly used by police. Galton’s primary interest, however, was not in criminology but in advancing his “racial taxonomy.” Although he claimed to be able to identify criminals and mental and racial “inferiors” by specific facial features, he was unable to establish any racial or other classifications through fingerprints.
INSPIRED BY
TARZAN OF THE APES
ERB, Inc., and the Advent of Merchandising
Edgar Rice Burroughs was one of the first writers to become incorporated, and he was a pioneer of the media tie-in. In the biography Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan (1999), John Taliaferro writes:
In 1931, [Burroughs] grew weary of having to share his income with middlemen—“parasites,” he called them—and began publishing his own books under the ERB, Inc. imprint. Still not content with the return on his creative capital, he struck deals to turn Tarzan into a radio show, a daily newspaper strip, a Sunday comic page, and, most lucrative of all, motion pictures.... As he saw it, there was no such thing as overkill, and well before Walt Disney ever hawked his first mouse ears or Ninja Turtle “action figures” became film stars, Burroughs was already a grand master of a concept that would one day be known as multimedia.
The Tarzan radio show that was first broadcast in 1932 and that aired for two years is an early example of how the Tarzan brand proliferated: Signal Oil Company, a sponsor of the program, collaborated with Burroughs to sell Tarzan fuel and Tarzan children’s puzzles at their gas stations. Over the years, Tarzan’s image has been used to hawk everything from ice cream to comic books to lunch boxes to underwear. Recordings of the original Tarzan radio shows are still available and popular today.
Literature
Tarzan of the Apes was wildly successful upon its initial publication in the pulp-fiction magazine The All-Story in 1912. The magazine’s editor immediately asked for a sequel, and Burroughs delivered The Return of Tarzan (1913). The editor of All-Story refused the manuscript, but Burroughs had no trouble publishing it in a rival magazine, New Story. The second novel opens with Tarzan traveling from New York to France, having renounced his title and his relationship with Jane Porter. Tarzan befriends a Russian countess during the journey, while angering her brother, the unsavory Nikolas Rokoff. Tarzan then becomes involved with a French secret-agent organization, which dispatches the hero on a mission to the Middle East. He makes his way back to Africa, where he discovers the lost city of Opar, which would figure prominently in several other volumes in the Tarzan series. Tarzan reunites with Jane by the end of the novel, satisfying the many readers disappointed when they didn’t stay together at the end of the first story.
Burroughs wrote two dozen Tarzan novels before his death in 1950. In the third novel, The Beasts of Tarzan (1914), Nikolas Rokoff kidnaps Jack Clayton, the infant son of Tarzan and Jane. Rokoff details a plan to one-up the African upbringing that made Tarzan so powerful, boasting that cannibals rather than apes will raise Tarzan’s son.
Rescued by his parents and returned home to Europe, Jack Clayton becomes the main character in the fourth installment, The Son of Tarzan (1914). Clayton, bored with civilized city life, returns to Africa aboard a steamship. The Son of Tarzan is the first and last novel in the series in which Tarzan is not the main character. The next book, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916), takes the hero back to the lost city first discovered in The Return of Tarzan. Subsequent sequels depict Tarzan fighting alongside or against ant men, the Foreign Legion, and even the Japanese during World War II.
Philip José Farmer, a lifelong Burroughs devotee and winner of the Hugo Award for science
fiction, wrote a number of novels inspired by Tarzan. Farmer’s biography Tarzan Alive (1972) playfully contends that its subject is not a work of fiction, but a real person who continues to reside in Africa. Painstakingly written by a true expert on the material, the incredibly detailed, exuberant work summarizes the twenty-four original Tarzan novels, speculating on ambiguities in the series and indicating where Burroughs supposedly altered the truth to protect Tarzan’s identity. Farmer also traces Tarzan’s family tree, demonstrating his relation to Sherlock Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and even Leopold Bloom, protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The events of The Dark Heart of Time (1999), Farmer’s first of ficial Tarzan novel, take place between Tarzan the Untamed (1920) and Tarzan the Terrible (1921), the seventh and eighth books of the Burroughs series. In Farmer’s book, Tarzan temporarily abandons his search for the kidnapped Jane to follow the map of a dead Spanish soldier discovered in Tarzan the Untamed, with a mysterious businessman named Stonecraft hot on his heels.
Before the Burroughs estate permitted Farmer to write his official Tarzan novel, Farmer wrote a number of stories featuring Tarzan-like characters, some of which are directed at a mature audience. Farmer’s bawdy Lord Tyger (1970) tells the tale of an eccentric millionaire who attempts to create his own Tarzan by kidnapping a baby and sending him to be raised by apes in Africa. The adults-only A Feast Unknown (1969) and its two sequels are satires that spoof the overabundance of sex and violence in modern culture via Lord Grandrith, a Tarzan-inspired main character. Hadon of Ancient Opar (1974) describes the grand city of Opar during its golden age, some 14,000 years before it fell into the ruin discovered by Burroughs’s Tarzan. The first half of The Adventures of the Peerless Peer (1974) details Sherlock Holmes’s quest to steal back British secrets from German spies. Farmer’s spoof-tribute takes the detective to Africa, where he meets Tarzan, who joins him on the quest.
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