The monkey softly turned to him as if to answer, but this time said nothing.
So Jasper he was called; although this was really due to a mistake on the part of Mr Bumps. What had come into his mind, as he stood at the taffrail looking back at the coast of Africa, were the first two lines of a hymn that had been a favourite of his mother’s –
From Greenland’s icy mountains
To India’s coral strand.
But in saying the words over to himself he had got the last but one word wrong. He had said,
From Greenland’s icy mountains
To India’s jasper strand.
Still, Jasper, he thought, was a better name than Coral, and Jasper it remained.
There never was a monkey so quick to learn, so grave in the learning, and so quiet and pleasant in manner as Jasper. Mr Bumps could only guess how old he was, and he guessed, ‘p’raps five’. And since the famous little son of John Evelyn even before this age could all but talk in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, it may not be so marvellous as it sounds that Jasper soon began to pick up a few words of English. Long before this, however, he had learned to sit at table and say his grace (in his own tongue); to use a knife and fork, and a mug for his drink; to bow when spoken to; to swing his own hammock, and little things like that.
He would creep up, too, to watch the man at the wheel or the cook at his cooking in the galley or caboose. He would gaze for minutes at a time at the compass and lamp in the binnacle, and would salute the captain whenever he saw him on the bridge. He knew the Christian names of every man-jack of the crew, and where each of them slept in the fo’c’sle; he could manage a little rope-splicing, and knew the difference between a granny and a reef knot, a loop and a fisherman’s bend. In spite of his red cossack gown, he could scamper up the rigging to the truck or very summit of the mainmast twice as quick as any cabin-boy – and like every cabin-boy he had no tail to help.
Besides all this Mr Bumps taught Jasper much else. Not that he sat him down and made him learn. It amused him, and Jasper enjoyed it. It was a long voyage too; The Old Lion edged into the Doldrums; and there was plenty of time.
As the days and weeks drew by, Jasper became as much at home on The Old Lion with his friend Mr Bumps as if he had been born to the sea. Merely because he was jimp and hairy, had a small flat-nosed face, and showed his teeth when he talked, the sailors at first would tease and laugh at him, treating him only as a pet or a plaything. As soon as he began to talk King’s English, however, they teased him no more. He began to say things they remembered.
What Mr Bumps meant to do with him when he was safe home in his little house in Portsmouth he hardly knew. He was sure his wife, whose name was Emma, would be pleased to see his new friend, and there was no doubt at all about Topsy, Emmanuel and Kate. But how could he ever part with Jasper now? Yet how expect him to lead a sea-life? There was, however, no need to decide anything for the present; and meanwhile he took almost as fond a care of him – sought him out dainties, physicked him when sick – as Mrs Bumps was taking of their little Kate.
At last, and Mr Bumps had long since made up his mind that he could never of his own wish be separated from Jasper, The Old Lion drew into the English Channel. She was nearly home. And one misty afternoon in November she sailed slowly up the Thames and dropped anchor in the Pool of London. It was bitter cold, but still; and a haze of the colour of copper hung over the mighty city. And there in the midst, like an enormous leaden beehive against the sullen sky, rose the dome of St Paul’s.
Mr Bumps stepped ashore early next morning, with the monkey hooded upon his arm, some presents for his wife and children in his bag, and set out briskly for his railway station. He had not been in old England for many months, and the first thing in his mind was to get down to Portsmouth as soon as he possibly could. But the haze that had been high over the city the day before had now descended into its streets, and Mr Bumps had to grope on in the direction of the Monument and Pudding Lane through a fog which grew steadily denser.
He knew, at last, that he had lost his bearings. And when presently he came to a little public house, The Three Swans, its windows dimly glowing in the fog, he decided to go in and ask his way. But, somehow or other, he didn’t like the notion that Jasper should go in too. He glanced into the little face under its hood, and saw how cold and doleful it looked. But he was afraid the thick tobacco smoke and the smell of the beer and spirits in The Three Swans might make him ill.
So, ‘Sit you here a moment, Jasper,’ he said, as he put him down beside his bag beside the lamp-post, ‘and don’t ’ee stir till I come back.’
But, alas, Mr Bumps stayed many minutes longer than he had intended to in The Three Swans, and when he came back, though his bag was still there where he had left it, Jasper was gone.
Indeed, Jasper had been patiently waiting in the fog in the dim light of the lamp-post for no more than five of those minutes, when there came by a stranger, with a black hat on his head, a black beard, and a coat reaching almost to his heels. If the monkey had not stirred at that moment, all might have been well. But, at sound of these footsteps in the strange cold London street, the solitary creature had lifted his face and put out a hand; for he had made many friends on board ship. And the stranger stooped, and looked at him.
Now, by a chance – whether evil or not it is hard to say – this man with the dark beard was a dealer in all kinds of animals. He had a shop in a narrow alley not far from the river. That shop went back, and every now and then up two or three steps, at least thirty paces. And from end to end of it there were cages of all kinds of birds and small beasts; besides tanks of fish and of rare snakes and lizards, and even gauze-covered cages of butterflies on rows of shelves. His larger animals he kept, though out of the rain, in a stone-flagged yard.
He stooped down, his rusty black coat brushing the paving-stones, and in the foggy gloom looked long into Jasper’s face. Then he took the little, narrow hand in his, and gently shook it.
‘How d’ye do?’ he said, in a wheedling voice, and speaking through his nose. ‘Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure.’
And Jasper, with his usual gentle manners, and thinking no harm of him, looked up into his face and chattered a few sounds, which were uncommonly like sea-English.
The stranger shot one swift, thief-like glance over his shoulder, then, opening a button of his great-coat, gingerly lifted Jasper from where he sat, slipped him in under it, and strode rapidly away.
Before evening, Jasper found himself, with a few monkey nuts and a can of water, squatting alone in a cage, surrounded by other cages in which, beside barking dogs and scrambling puppies, were scores of white rabbits and rats and cats – Manx, tabby and Siamese – squirrels, ferrets, stoats, tortoises, owls, love-birds, canaries, parrots, parakeets and macaws; and in the midst of a din and screaming of voices more deafening by far than he had ever heard in his own West African forests, or in the middle of a storm at sea. He sat shivering and trembling in his gown, and at last pushed his head in under its furry hood, muttering to himself in small, mournful, monkey accents, ‘Mr Bumps, Mr Bumps. Oh, Mr Bumps!’
But Mr Bumps, having in great grief given up his friend for lost, was long since in the train and on his way in spite of the fog to his little square-windowed house in Portsmouth, and back to his Emma, his Topsy, Emmanuel and Kate.
Jasper did not stay long in Mr Moss’s animal shop – only for nine days and nine nights. But at the end of them he had already begun to pine and droop, could scarcely eat and seldom opened his eyes. He missed his friend the sailor, and his care and kindness; though whenever Mr Moss himself, or the sharp-nosed, sallow-faced young man that helped in the shop, looked in at his cage, and spoke to him, he looked solemnly back, without showing either his teeth or his temper. He never clutched at his food when it was pushed in through the wire door, nor did he even attempt to make any sound in response to what they said to him. He sat there, his hands folded under his gown, like some small hairy king deprived of
his kingdom. Mr Moss and his young man had never seen his like before; and even in this short time, they had both discovered that they could not face out the little creature’s dwelling eyes.
But though Jasper sat for the most part so quiet and motionless in his cage that he might seem, at first sight, to be fast asleep, or even stuffed, all day long his ears and wits (and now and then his eyes) were busy. He would watch the Belgian canary birds which Mr Moss, during their moulting, had fed on special seed and cayenne pepper to brighten their feathers, for hours at a time. There was an enormous python, too, coiled up in straw not far away, and for a long time he hardly dared to look at it. But at last he made himself watch that too; and he never ceased to listen to the talk between Mr Moss and his pale, soft-footed assistant, and the strange human beings that came into the shop. Strange talk in the shop too he heard between his fellow-captives.
Mr Moss himself, though if Jasper had been like other ordinary monkeys he would have soon forgotten it, never felt wholly at ease at the thought that he had stolen this one. Odd, unlucky things began to happen in the shop. He himself upset a glass case full of Death’s Head Moths. It frightened him – their tiny feet on his skin and the fanning of their sepulchral wings. The python one night, having managed to glide out of her tank, devoured a mandarin duck at one gulp, and escaped into London. And when his assistant, first thing in the morning, tripped over a broom that had been left on the floor of the shop and broke his left leg, his master began to think that it would be as well to get rid of Jasper as soon as he could.
So when that afternoon an acquaintance of his, who had once been a showman and trainer of animals for a circus, stepped into his shop and enquired how much he wanted for Jasper, the price he asked him was so very moderate that his friend paid it down at once, and carried the monkey off with him, there and then. At first sight of Jasper he too had become homesick – for the ring-lights and the tan and the tinsel and the ambling horses – and had determined to begin again.
‘And what do you call him?’ he asked Mr Moss.
‘Call him? Why, what he calls hisself, day in, day out, and even in his sleep! – Jasper.’
‘Ah, now, “Jasper”?’ repeated his friend.
He too was a dark man, but hollow-cheeked and lean; and he wore his hair long over his ears. His name was Mr J. Smith, but he changed this on the programmes and play-bills, when he was showing his animals, to Signor Dolcetto Antonio. Unlike one or two black-hearted miscreants who followed his trade, he believed in kindness and commonsense. ‘There are five things,’ he would say to his wife, ‘all things breathing – buffaloes to bullfinches – need; like you and me, Amy: food, shelter, sleep, company and freedom.’ And he gave his animals nearly as much as they could wish of them all except the last.
Away from the cold and noise and stench and darkness of Mr Moss’s shop, Jasper soon began to be himself again. His appetite returned, his eye brightened, he looked sleek and nimble. He was soon as well as could be expected – his bosom friend Mr Bumps gone, and himself so far from his own land.
In order to take all possible care of his charge, Signor Antonio brought him home to where he lived with his wife – the upper parts of a house in Jay Street, Soho. Part of this house was a shop that sold wine and oil and coffee and macaroni and olives and sausages and other kind of foreign meats and drinks. In the rest, first floor to roof, lived Mr and Mrs Smith. Here, beside the fire in their small parlour, they made Jasper as cosy as they could – in a little chamber to himself.
For two hours every morning, Signor Antonio would talk to Jasper, and teach him tricks. When he was gone out to do his business, Mrs Smith, busy herself over her cooking and housework, would talk to him too. She was a very stout woman, even stouter than the Chief of the Mlango-Nlangoes. And, like the Chief, she was full of good humour, and had a kind heart. She took particular pleasure in children and animals; and at the Zoo would not only cheep to the birds and stroke the gazelles, but nod and smile at the orang-outangs and hippopotami. She treated Jasper as if he were a long-lost son.
Her husband had soon discovered that Jasper was a monkey that had no equal. He was as different from other monkeys as day is from dusk. He learnt everything he was taught with ease and alacrity and could soon chatter away to his friend, almost as if he had known English all his life. If he looked five, he could certainly talk like two-and-a-half. But, though he was so teachable and sweet-tempered and serious in his manners, there was something about him that never ceased to perplex Mr Smith.
He felt this in particular when, his lessons done, Jasper would sit quietly in his chair, waiting for his midday meal. He had an air, at such times, as if he were brooding on something of which Mr Smith had not the least notion. He seemed to be so far away that even Mr Smith never ventured to ask him what he was thinking about, or to summon him back to dark Soho.
Merely to look at, Jasper was a comfort to the eye. Mr Smith, though he was a good-natured man, was as awkward and clumsy as a saucepan with too long a handle to it. He was all angles. Mrs Smith, too, who was even more good-natured than her husband, sat and talked with no more grace than a feather bed. But Jasper, even in the least motion of his small body, turn of the head, of the hand, of the foot, was quiet as flowing water and delicate as the flowers beside it. When he touched, it was as if thistledown had settled at his fingertips. When he stretched out his fingers to take an apple, it was like the movement of a shadow through the air. He would sidle along Mrs Smith’s curtain-rod without stirring a single ring; and if she were near, would be allowed to follow her out on to the roof where she sometimes sat – in spite of smoke and smuts – sewing a hem and looking over London. Jasper would balance himself in his gown on the edge of the tallest of the red chimney pots, glancing north, south, east and west, and not a fingertip to keep his balance!
If he was this to look at, what can he then have been in his secret mind – with its memories and dreams and sedate ponderings, river and forest, the terrors and dangers and delights of vast dark Africa, or rather of his own particular dark green corner of it?
‘What I feel about our friend over there,’ Mr Smith said to his wife one day, when Jasper sat asleep in his chair, ‘what I feel is, that he could learn me a sight more than I can learn him – of what, I mean, matters, my love. He’s that privy yet polite you don’t know where you are. And what I feel too is that there’s something little short of shameful in letting a mere mob of humans come paying their half-crowns and shillings and sixpences just to stare at him. He talks to us; but, bless you, he only talks to us about what he knows we can understand. He don’t tell us his secrets. Never. The truth is, he ought not to have been took away from where he came from, though where that was, nobody knows. No Moss ever got such a mystery by rights. Never. He’s had a queer past, has that little monk; mark me.’
And Mrs Smith, though in her heart she agreed with her husband, thought it would be unwise to say so.
‘Don’t you fret, Jim,’ she replied. ‘He has plenty to eat and keep him busy. Worry! Not he! Look at him there, sleeping as peaceful as a babby, as if there wasn’t a coconut or a black man in the world. He’s as happy as the day is long.’
‘Coconuts!’ said her husband, but he was not convinced.
At last, one early morning, a happy thought came into Mrs Smith’s mind.
‘What by and by would be really fair and square, Jim,’ she said as she was combing her hair by the glass, ‘what by and by would be nice and proper, would be for you to take half of what you make out of Jasper, and him take the other half. Once he began to earn a bit of money, we could teach him what money means. After all, Jim, it’s only a sort of short cut for bread and cheese and tables and chairs and clothes and houses – not to mention the time and trouble taken in making them; and he would soon pick it up. Then, mebbe, he might like to get a few little things for himself. He might like to set up, with some cash in the bank, as an independent gentleman. Judging from what I’ve seen of the world, he has twice as much
sense as most such and not a shadow of any vices; and I don’t see anything against it.’
Mr Smith looked at his wife in astonishment. Nor was it merely because she had been speaking with her mouth full of hairpins. It was because she would seem for days together not to agree with a single word he said, and then, of a sudden, like a knife from its sheath, out would come a notion that made everything plain and easy. So it was with what she had said about Jasper.
About nine months after he had brought him home, Mr Smith became perfectly certain that there was nothing else he could teach his charge. Jasper could make a speech; could sing; and draw pictures of forests and ships with a box of coloured chalks. He could scribble down simple sums up to fractions on a blackboard, and find an answer. He could manage everything to the last nicety with his clothes. During the week he was dressed in scarlet breeches and a green coat, with ivory buttons. On Sundays he wore a lightly-starched ruff round his neck, a velvet gown to his heels, made out of an old Sunday dolman of Mrs Smith’s, and fine shoes. For out-of-doors he had two or three different kinds of cloak. Not that Mr Smith kept him to human clothes, or human ways either. Jasper agreed he must grow used to them. Whenever he so fancied he went bare; and, if he wished, he kept two Sunday-clothes days in one week. But this was very seldom.
He knew many simple rhymes, and Mr Smith had made a little harp for him – rough, of course, but tunable. To this he would sing these rhymes, and other airs, and a curious music also, whose meaning he kept to himself. More than once, indeed, Mr Smith had been awakened early in the morning to hear Jasper playing on his harp in the next room. And then, while both the words and tune seemed to be of Jasper’s own making or remembering, there sounded a cadence in them that almost made him weep. By good fortune Mrs Smith slept far heavier of nights than he did.
Short Stories for Children Page 45
