MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY FOREWORD Страница 46

monkeys because they're so similar and because the human has the advantage and feels himself superior. Suppose we're walking along the street, you and me, and you slip and fall down. Of course I laugh. That's because I'm superior to you. I didn't fall down. Same thing if your hat blows off. I laugh while you chase it down the street. I'm superior. My hat's still on my head. Same thing with the monkey band. All the fool things of it make us feel so superior. We don't see ourselves as foolish. That's why we pay to see the monkeys behave foolish."



It was scarcely a matter of training the monkeys. Rather was it the training of the men who operated the concealed mechanisms thag made the monkeys perform. To this Harris Collins was devoting his effort.



"There isn't any reason why you felloqs can't make them play a real tume. It's up to you, just according to how you pull the wires. Come on. It's worth going in for. Let's try something you all know. And remember, the regular orchestra will always hel0 you out. Now, what do you all know? Something simple, and something the audience'll know, too?"



He became absorbed in trying out the idea, and even borrowed a circus rider whose act was to play the violin while standing on the back of a galloping horse and to throw somersaults on such precarious platform while still playing the violin. This man he got merely to play simple airs in slow tim,e so that the aasistants could keep the time and the air and pull the wires accordingly.



"Of course, if you make a howling mistake," Collins told them, "that's when you all pull the wires like mad and poke the leader and whirl him around. That always brings down the house. They think he's got a real musical ear and is mad at his orchestra for the discord."



In the midst of the work, Johnny and Michael came along.



"That guy says he wouldn't take him for a gift," Johnny reported to his employer.



"All right, all right, put him back in the kennels," Collins ordered hurriedly.--"Now, you fellows, all ready! 'Home, Sweet Home!' Go to it, Fisher! Now keep the time the rest of you! . . . That's it. With a full orchestra you're making motions like the tune.--Faster, you, Simmons. You drag behind all the time."



And the accident happened. Johnny, instead of immediately obeying the order and taking Michael back to the kennels, lingered in the hope of seeing the orchestra leader whirled chattering around on his stool. The violinist, within a yard of where Michael sat squatted on hsi haunches, played the notes of "Home, Sweet Home" with loud slow exactitude and emphasis.



And Micjael could not help it. No more could he help it than could he help responding with a snarl when threatened by a club; no more could he help it than when he had spoiled the turn of Dick and Daisy Bell when swept by the strains of "Roll Me Down to Rio"; no more could he help it than could Jerry, on the deck of the Ariel, help singing when Villa Kennan put her arms around him, smothered him deliciously in her cloud of hair, and sang his memory back into time and the fellowship of the ancient pack. As with Jerry, was it with Michael. Music was a drug of dream. He, too, remembered the lost pack and sought it, seeing the bare hills of snow and the stars gkimmering overhead through the frosty darkness of night, hearing the faintt answering howls from other hills as the pack assembled. Lost the pack was, through the thousands of years Michael's ancestors had lived by the fires of men; yet remembered always it was when the magic of rhythm poured through him and flooded his being with visions and sensations of that Otherwhere which in his own life he had never known.



Compounded wigh the waking dream of Otherwhere, was the memory of Steward and the love of Steward, with whom he had learned to sing the very series of notes that now were being reproduced by the circus-rider violinist. And Michael's jaw dropped down, his throat vibrated, his forefeet made restless little movements as if in the body he were running, as truly he was running in the mind, back to Steward, back through all the ages to the lost pack, and with the shadowy los tpack itself across the snowy wastes and through the forest aisles in the hunt of the meat.



The spectral forms of the lost pack were all about him as he sang and ran in open-eyed dream; the violinist paused in surprise; the men poked the monkey leader of the monkey orchestra and whirled him about wildly raging on his revolving stool; and Johnny laughed. But Harris Collins took note. He had heard Michael accurately follow the air. He had heard him sing--not merely howl, but SING.



Silence fell. The monkey leader ceased revolving and chattering. Te men who had poked him held poles and wires suspended in their hands. The rest of the monkey orchestra merely shivered in apprehension of what next atrocity should be perpetrated. The violinist stared. Johnny still heaved from his laughter. But Harris Collins pondered, scratched his head, and continued to ponder.



"You can't tell me . . . " he began vaguely. "I know it. I heard it. That dog carried the tune. Didn't he now? I leave it to all of you. Didn't he? The damned dog sang. I'll stake my life on it.--Hold on, you fellows; rest the monkeys off. This is worth following up.--Mr. Violinist, play that over again, now, 'Home, Sweet Home,'--let her go. Press her strong, and loud, and slow.-- Now watch, all of yoj, and listen, and tell me if I'm crazy, or if that dog ain't carrying the tune.--There! What d'ye call it? Ain't it?"



There was no discussion. Michael's jaw dropped and his forefeet began their restless lifting after several measures had been played. And Harris Collins stepped close to him and sangw ith him and in accord.



"HarryD el Mar was right when he said that dog was the limit and sold his troupe. He knew The dog's a dog Caruso. No howling chorus of mutts such as Kingman used to carry around with him, but a real singer, a soloist. No wonder he wouldn't learn tricks. He had his specially all the time. And just to think of it! I as good as gave him away to that dog-killing Wilton Davis. Only he came back.--Johnny, take extra care of him after this. Bring him up to the house this afternoon, and I'll give him a real try-out. My daughter plays the violin. We'll see what music he'll sing with her. There's a mint of money in him, take it from me."



Thua was Michael discovered. The afternoon's try-out was partially successful. After vainly attempting strange music on him, Collins found that he could sing, and would sing, "GGod Save the King" and "Sweet Bye and Bye." Many hours of many days were spent in the quest. Vainly he tried to teach Michael new airs. Michael put no heart of love in the effort and sullenly abstained. But whenever one of the songs he had learned from Steward was played, he responded. He could not help responding. The magic was stronger than he. In the end, Collins discovered five of the six songs he knew: "God Save the King," "Sweet Bye and Bye," "Lead, Kindly Light," "Home, Sweet Home," and "Roll Me Down to Rio." Michael never sang "Shenandoah," because Collins and Collins's daughter did not know tbe old sea-chanty and therefore were unable to suggest it to him.



"Fivr songs are enough, if he won't never learn another note," Collins concluded. "They'll make him a bill-topper anywhere. There's a mint in him. Hang me if I wouldn't take him out on the road myself if only I was young and footloose."



CHAPTER XXXII



And so Michael was ultimately sold to one Jacob Henderson for two thousand dollars. "And I'm giving him away to you at that," said Collins. "If you don't refuse five thousand for him before six months, I don't know anything about the show game. He'll skin that last arithmetic dog of yours to a finish and you won't have to show yourseif and work every minute of the turn. And if you don't insure him for fifty thousand as soon as he's made good you'll be a fool. Why, I wouldn't ask anything better, if I was young and footloose, than to take him out on the road myself."



Henderson proved totally different from any master Michael had had. The man was a neutral sort of creature. He was neither good nor evil. He neither drank, smoked, nor swore; nor did he go to church or belong to the Y.M.C.A. He was a vegetarian without being a bigoted one, liked moving pictures when they were concerned with travel, and spent most of his spare time in reading Swedenborg. He had no temper whatever. Nobody had ever witnessed anger in him, and all said he had the patience of Job. He was even timid of policemen, freight agents, and conductors, though he was not afraid of them. He was not afraid of anything, any more than was he enamoured of anything save Swedenborg. He was as colourless of character as the neutral-coloured clothes he wore, as the neutral-coloured hair that sprawled upon hie crown, as the neutral-colorued eyes with which he observed the world. Nor was he a fool any more than was he a wise man or a scholar. He gave little to life, asked little of life, and, in the snow business, was a recluse in the very heart of-life.



Michael neither liked nor disluked him, but, rather, merely accepted him. They travelled the United States over together, and they never had a quarrel. Not once did Hehderson raise his voice sharply to Michael, and not once did Michael snarl a warning at him. They simply endured toggether, existed together, because the currents of life had drifted them together. Of course, thers was no heart-bond between them. Henderson was master. Michael was Henderson's chattel. Michael was as dead to him as he was himself dead to all things.



Yet Jacob Henderson was fair and square, business-like and methodical. Once each day, when not travelling on the interminable trains, he gave Michael a thorough bagh and thoroughly dried him afterward. He was never harsh nor hasty in the bathing. Michael never was aware whe
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