The Hypnotic Bear And The Sentimental Lecturer

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Title:     The Hypnotic Bear And The Sentimental Lecturer
Author: Francis Metcalfe [More Titles by Metcalfe]

The doctor shook his head as he slipped his ophthalmoscope into his pocket, and Rey, the trainer, who had been holding the bear's head still while the oculist made the examination, opened the door of the cage for him. The bear--a medium-sized black animal--wandered aimlessly about, stumbling over the water pan and knocking its head against the bars, its eyes, which were evidently sightless, shining like two fiery opals as they reflected the electric light.

"I am sorry to tell you that it is a hopeless case," said the physician to the Proprietor, who was standing with the Stranger in front of the cage watching the examination. "Both optic nerves are atrophied, and the animal must have received some serious injury, possibly a heavy blow on the forehead." The Proprietor, who has the reputation of being a "good loser," thanked him and gave some directions to the trainer about the care of the animal before leading the way to the table in front of the Arena, where the Press Agent was waiting for them.

"It is rather unusual to call the most famous specialist in the country to examine a menagerie animal," he said, after the doctor hurriedly left them to catch the express train back to the city. "You know that he takes no small fee; his services are either given for charity or his charge is very high--and this visit was not for charity."

"I should think that the value of a bear would hardly warrant the expense," answered the Stranger as the waiter filled the glasses.

"It wouldn't be for an ordinary bear, but I was willing to pay anything in reason to restore the sight of this particular specimen, so I sent for the best-known oculist in New York. The decision which he has just given will probably mean a loss of thousands of dollars to me, but that is one of the risks which I have to assume. Would it interest you to hear a rather unusual romance of the menagerie business?" The Stranger gave eager assent, and the Press Agent settled himself comfortably and lighted a cigar.

"You have no idea how many animals are offered to the owner of a menagerie and from what unusual sources the offers come," said the Proprietor. "Travelers in far countries bring back strange animals as pets or curiosities; people buy young wild animals which get beyond control when they mature and become veritable white elephants on their hands, and their owners have to dispose of them. I have had everything from monkeys to lions brought to me, and so it did not surprise me when an artist came to the Hippodrome in Paris last winter and asked me if I didn't want to purchase a bear. He seemed anxious for me to see it immediately, and at his earnest solicitation I got in a cab with him and drove to his studio, which was situated on the far side of the Seine. The bear which you saw examined to-night was in a small room adjoining the studio, chained to a ring in the wall.

"The apartment was luxuriously furnished, and I realized that it was not lack of ready money which made the artist so anxious to dispose of the brute; but he seemed in a desperate hurry to have me take it away, and offered it for such a low price that I closed the bargain at once. I suggested sending one of my men for it in the evening, but he insisted upon my taking it with me, and as the bear was evidently as gentle as a kitten I called a closed cab and drove away with it. The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me and gave no trouble, but as we drove along I got to thinking the matter over and the whole proceeding seemed a little strange. I had Mephisto, as the bear was named, put in a cage well away from the other animals--a sort of quarantine precaution which I always take with new arrivals--and as there was apparently nothing unusual about him gave him little attention, there being for the moment no group of animals in training for which he would be available. I soon noticed that during the intermissions, when the audience wandered about and examined the animals in the cages, there was always a crowd of women about his den; but I thought that it was because he was such an inveterate beggar, and had a habit of standing at the bars with his mouth wide open, waiting for some one to flick a lump of sugar into it.

"The bear had given us no trouble, and there was only one peculiar thing about him: he seemed to have an aversion to cats. The bodies of three of them had been found in front of his cage, although we had never seen one killed. The cats about a menagerie instinctively keep out of harm's way, and it puzzled me to know how Mephisto had managed to get them within reach of his heavy paw. Jack Bonavita, who fusses about his lions at all hours of the day and night, solved that mystery and incidentally saved his pet cat, Tramp, from an untimely ending. Tramp has been with Jack for years and appreciates the folly of venturing within reach of the animals in the cages, but Bonavita came across him in front of Mephisto's cage in the middle of the night. The bear was absolutely quiet, lying with its head on its paws and its eyes, which glistened like two points of flame, fixed on the cat. Tramp was staring at it in turn and slowly drawing nearer to the cage, apparently struggling against some influence which was stronger than its will. Bonavita watched them for a few minutes, but before the cat ventured within striking distance he picked it up and carried it away, while Mephisto, growling with rage, tried to break through the stout bars and get at it.

"Two days before we were to sail for America I was sitting at my desk arranging some of the last details of shipment, when the door burst open and a well-dressed, handsome woman rushed in, followed by the artist who had sold me the bear. She was in a tearing rage and jabbering excitedly in a language which I did not understand, while the artist was trying to quiet her. She pushed him aside, and opening a purse which was well stuffed with banknotes, she asked in French, which she spoke with a marked foreign accent, for how much I would sell Mephisto. The artist protested, but she turned on him and gave him a tongue lashing of which I could guess the meaning, although the words were unintelligible to me. I couldn't quite grasp the situation, but the strange hypnotic power which the bear apparently exercised over cats had excited my curiosity, and I wished to investigate it at my leisure, so I politely but positively refused to name a price, and told her the animal was not for sale. The artist seemed relieved and she was very much disappointed, but she quieted down and asked me what I intended to do with the animal. I told her that I was taking it to America, where it would be put in a mixed group which Rey was to train, and after inquiring when we were to sail, they left the office.

"I regretted that I had not taken the opportunity to find out something about the history of the animal, and looked over the audience to try to locate the couple, but they had left the building. One of the keepers told me that she had screamed when she recognized the bear and called it by name. She was trying to bribe him to let her go into the cage when the artist came up and expostulated with her, and they had an awful row before coming to my office. I heard nothing more from them and we shipped the animals at Havre the following day. The traveling dens were placed in the 'tween decks, which is not a pleasant place to be when the ship is tossing about, and I was surprised the second day out to find the woman who had tried to purchase Mephisto standing in front of his cage in that smelly place, talking to the bear as if it were a child. She laughed when I came up to her, and told me that as I would not part with the bear I would have to take her with the show. I, too, laughed, for I have a large family of daughters, and I knew that the simple traveling gown which she wore had cost more than two months' salary of my best trainer, but to my great surprise she was in dead earnest, and asked me seriously if I would not let her train a group of animals."

The Press Agent grew very attentive, but the Proprietor told him that he was not talking for publication, and that a name which occupied several pages of the Almanach de Gotha was sacred, even from an American promoter of publicity.

"And she does carry that name and was born to it," he continued, "but I can't tell you what it is. She didn't tell it to me and it was not on the passenger list, but the ambassador from a great European nation came on from Washington to see her and remonstrate with her and to influence me to exclude her from the show. I wouldn't consent to that, but I am afraid that the accident of the bear's going blind will be the cause of my losing an act which promised to be sensational."

"You have kept it quiet enough," said the Press Agent with a trace of resentment in his voice. "It sounds to me as if it ought to be good for a front-page column in every New York paper."

"As I told you, there are reasons why I can't exploit it," answered the Proprietor. "I am counting upon it for my opening sensation at the Paris Hippodrome next winter, and I don't intend to discount it before a Coney Island audience. But to get back to my experience with her on the steamer. I found that she occupied the most expensive deck stateroom, and had a maid and a man servant traveling with her; so that I refused all of her renewed offers for the bear when I found the powerful fascination it had for her, and I finally consented to let her try the experiment of working with a group of animals. You know the class from which trainers are usually recruited, and you can imagine the interest I take in a woman who possesses an absolute fearlessness which is inherited from generations of ancestors who have never shown the white feather, in addition to education and intelligence. The only thing which puzzled me was her motive, and that I have not discovered yet, although the ambassador, who had received all sorts of communications about her from his own government, told me her history. It seems that she has always been noted for her eccentricity and her rebellion against the strict laws of convention which were supposed to control her life, and this is not the first time she has defied them. She had commissioned the artist--who, by the way, is one of the most celebrated men in Paris--to paint a portrait of her. At the same time he was painting an exhibition picture to be called the 'Dancing Bear,' and had purchased Mephisto for a model. The picture was to represent the bear dancing on its hind legs opposite a woman, to the music of a flageolet played by a man bear leader--such an exhibition as is commonly given at the country fairs throughout Europe. He had no difficulty in getting a male model, but he was in despair about the woman dancer. He tried model after model, and although they started in all right each one became so nervous after a sitting or two that they refused to continue. The bear was chained to the wall and they were posed safely out of reach, but each of them asserted that the animal was like a serpent and trying to charm them so that they would come close enough to be caught. They were all afraid that they might yield to the fascination and be seriously injured. Tramp, the cat, would probably have told the same story if he had been able to talk.

"As a matter of curiosity the artist experimented with men, but the bear appeared indifferent to them and the men made no complaint. It only seemed to exercise this strange hypnotic power over women--and cats--for the artist found two Persian felines, which had been studio pets, dead beside it; simply crushed, as were those which were killed by the bear at the Hippodrome. He mentioned the matter during one of the sittings for the portrait, and the lady, being curious to see the animal, came to his studio--and then the trouble commenced. She developed a most unaccountable attachment for Mephisto, and he was as gentle as a lamb with her. They would sit facing each other by the hour, and the artist swore they talked to each other and understood each other perfectly. The animal never attempted to harm her, but the artist became alarmed for fear there should be an accident, and believing that there was something uncanny about the brute, he decided to get rid of it and sold it to me.

"Well, I watched her with the bear on shipboard and since we landed, and I can't yet understand her control over it, for it does not control her in any way. There seems to be a sympathy between them which makes them absolutely understand each other, and through it she understands the other caged beasts. The act which I had framed for her when I found that she was absolutely in earnest was a dance to be given in the midst of a group of adult lions. The lady is absolutely fearless and approved the plan, but stipulated that she should select the lions.

"'I have means of knowing which ones will behave and which are such idiots that they can't be controlled if anything goes wrong,' she answered when I suggested that I was a better judge of the dispositions of the lions. 'I don't intend to have my beauty spoiled,' she said, 'and I only want beasts which are intelligent. No one can trust a fool.' Perhaps I have fallen under her influence, which according to her standard should indicate intelligence, for I have given way at every point and her judgment has proved correct, for in rehearsing the act she has perfect control over the animals, three of which I considered the most vicious in the menagerie. I let her take them in fear and trembling.

"For the past three days she has been anxious and uneasy about the bear and has insisted that it was rapidly going blind. She says that the bear is her teacher about things in the animal world, and that she can tell what it is thinking about. Its eyes look perfectly sound, and it is only for two days that we have noticed anything wrong with it. Mephisto knew its way about its old cage so well that it gave no evidence of blindness, and a bear is naturally clumsy in its movements, but when we moved it to a strange den it stumbled over everything. I experimented by bringing Tramp in front of its cage, but with the loss of sight the hypnotic power has apparently deserted it, and the cat paid no attention to it. Finally I called in the doctor and you heard him pronounce his verdict."

"But where is the great loss?" asked the Stranger.

"It is principally a loss in prospective profits," replied the Proprietor as he beckoned to the waiter. "I had the new act all planned out for Paris--the lady was to appear masked for her performance, but I knew her identity would be discovered and that it would be a tremendous sensation. I don't know how much of her desire to train animals is due to eccentricity and as a protest against the conventions which hedged in her former life, and how much to her strange infatuation for Mephisto, but since its blindness has developed she has lost interest and I suppose she will renege on the whole business."

"How do you account for it all--her infatuation for the bear and her intuitive knowledge of the dispositions of the lions?" asked the Stranger.

"I don't try to account for anything. It is one of the thousand things about animals and the million things about women which no mere man can understand," replied the Proprietor laughing. "I have simply given you the facts of the situation and you can draw your own conclusions, but the bear's blindness upsets my plans and possibly prevents a sensation in circles which approach royalty."

"Women are difficult to understand," agreed the Press Agent as the Proprietor paused to moisten his throat, "and a man who is in love with one of 'em is just about as unaccountable for his actions. I had that fact engraved upon the tablets of my memory when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a dime museum in Pittsburg. Merritt was a good, hard-headed business man as a rule and he made a first-class lecturer; but when I found that he was taking to 'dropping into poetry' and delivering his descriptions of the freaks in verse, I began to get leary about the condition of the contents of his head. The poetry was always extemporaneous and was pretty bad, but it amused the crowd when it wasn't too sentimental.

"As I say, the poetry was strictly on the bum, but what it lacked in quality it made up in quantity and he could spiel it off by the yard. Whenever he got stuck for a rhyme he would blow the whistle which he used to call the crowd in front of the freak he was lecturing about and move to the next platform. That didn't happen often, but whenever we had a Circassian Beauty among the freaks Merritt's poetry got so sentimental that no one but a bride and groom could stand for it--and it had to be early in the honeymoon at that. He would ring in turtle doves and azure skies and all the wishy-washy things in natural history and mythology and it was positively sickening.

"He sure had a soft place in his heart for Circassian Beauties, and as they were as common as wire tappers on Broadway under a reform administration he was always getting sentimental. We used to get a new lot of freaks each week; our agent in New York engaged 'em and sent on the advertising matter ahead, and when we looked over the list I could see Merritt's face brighten up if there happened to be one of the fuzzy blondes included in the bunch.

"Business was good, in spite of Merritt's poetry, so that I didn't kick when I saw that another one was coming. It was a good assortment: a Legless Wonder, The Man Who Breaks Paving Stones With His Bare Fists, a pair of Siamese Twins, a Leopard Boy and a particularly fuzzy Circassian Beauty. I saw Merritt's eyes grow soft when he looked at her photograph, and I prayed for a large proportion of the newly wedded among the audience that week.

"Well, Merritt starts in with the Stone Breaker and restrains himself pretty well; the only sentiment he got in was a fervent wish that 'a certain blonde beauty, with eyes of cerulean blue, would not break a heart which time would prove tender and true,' as ruthlessly as this man cracked rocks. He was gradually working up to the blonde, you understand, and he got warmer as he approached. The next one was the Legless Wonder, and he got a little tangled up in his comparisons when he sprung his poetry about him and tried to ring in the Circassian, and he had to blow his whistle like blazes to spare the blushes of the audience. The Siamese Twins gave him a good opening about 'bonds eternal' and the 'season vernal' and he didn't do a thing with it. The Leopard Boy was a cinch for him as he declaimed that

"'They say that beauty is but skin deep.
And as you gaze upon this freak,
You will, I think, agree with me,
That though beneath he fair may be,
You'd much prefer to look the same
As the fair being who next will claim
Our admiration and attention,
With charms too numerous to mention.'

"That made the Leopard Boy mad, for you know that freaks are as proud of their deformities as a mother is of a new baby, and look on normal people as objects of pity. But Merritt blew his whistle and passed on to the Circassian, and he made sheep's eyes and threw a chest as his fingers toyed with her peroxide locks. Say, it was sickening to listen to, and I saw that even the Stone Breaker was showing signs of distress and couldn't stand much of it. He bore up pretty well at first, while Merritt stuck to describing the 'golden locks and eyes of blue,' but when he got to the 'sugar is sweet and so are you,' stage he commenced to get mad and moved over to the platform.

"'Say, Mag,' says he, 'get down offen dat staige an' come away from de guy. It ain't in our contrac' dat we has ter stand for his gettin' soft on youse an' stringin' youse like dat. Come down, er I'll climb up an' break his face fer him.'

"'Sure, Mike,' says the blonde, and climbs down. That made Merritt mad and he talks real English without any poetic frills for a minute. He allowed that he could lick any Stone Breaker that ever came off the Bowery, and when he started to prove it there was a mix-up which made the breaking up of 'The Society upon the Stanislaus' look like a fist fight between two Frenchmen. The walls were covered with curiosities from all over the world, and pretty soon they were flying through the air. Merritt yanked down an Indian war club and started for the Stone Breaker and somebody swatted him over the head with a mummy. The Legless Wonder couldn't join in, but he contributed a two-headed calf which was preserved in a jar of alcohol, and the Leopard Boy grabbed a bunch of Zulu spears and prodded every one in reach. Even the blonde was something of a scrapper and she mixed in with a miscellaneous assortment of stuffed animals and preserved specimens, to say nothing of some choice language which she hadn't learned in Circassia. The place was pretty well wrecked by the time the police arrived and separated the fighters.

"'What's all this row about, anyway?' asks the sergeant after they had quieted things down.

"'Dat guy was tryin' to get nex' to me wife, de Circassian Beaut',' answers the Stone Breaker. 'He spouts bum poetry about her, an' I won't stand fer it, see? Leave me go an' I'll crack his nut as easy as I would a pavin' stone.' Merritt had lots of fight left in him and tried to break loose, but the Circassian's remarks wilted him and I never knew him to use poetry again.

"'Aw, wot's de use, Mike?' says she. 'Youse can't crack a ting dat ain't hard, an' his sky-piece is made of mush.'"

[The end]
Francis Metcalfe's short story: Hypnotic Bear And The Sentimental Lecturer

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