THE TOY AND THE PROPHET

New Zealand Tablet, 21 December 1911, Page 2569

THE TOY AND THE PROPHET

(Concluded from last week.) ‘He picked her out of the mud this morning, while we were cornin’ up to the grounds,’ said Grayson. ‘ He’s always been that gentle with ones he likes. She’s fed him often, an’ always talks to him and pets.him. Don’t seem,’ he added, reminiscently, as if Rajah was ever like some elephants—havin’ tantrums and ugly spells. He’s touchy to strangers though.’ ‘Well, I never grasped the keeper. ‘Bless me, if I don’t remember now a-seein’ the girl feedin’ him before, but I didn’t know they *was like that together. The child had scampered away. Grayson held out his hand, as he, too,' turned to go. ‘ I’ll get a bite to eat, I think, now,’ he said gruffly. ‘ Maybe I won’t see you again% Grenville. You’re busy to-night, an’ I’ll be leavin’ early in the mornin’. I shall try to make that little town north of

here. Rajah an' I can get better accommodation there * an' cheaper'n here. Good-bye. 'Good-bye. Good luck, too 5 ~_ Grenville averted his face hastily, after they had gripped hands, and crossed quickly back to the cages. Over at the cook's waggon, Grayson got a sandwich or two, and walked on slowly out across the fields, beyond the canvases and towards the west. Every sensibility the man possessed, whatever its crudeness or narrowness or inefficiency, had awakened. With little realisation of how it had come about or what end it presaged, but with the bitter, unreasoning sense of ■ the injustice of the moment, he faced the crisis—the great crisis—of his life. The sun, a clean-cut globe of fire, was plunging out of sight behind the hills. Blue and gold painted the sky at the zenith. It was a scene, calm, tranquil, lapsing more and more rapidly into a direct antithesis of the turbulence of the morning. "Unexpectedly, as he' stood there, came to him a dull suggestion of the incongruity of this peaceful closing of the day with the wild storm that had broken upon his own life. With the sun's coming up again, he would be an outcast, driven into exile from the world he loved; holding.to the old life only through the desolate hope that Rajah might somewhere find another place, and so bring him back to the old, old fascination of the canvases. :^;=: There was no other way. The parks and permanent • gardens in the cities he had abhorred always for their monotony, their insufferable sameness. In his eyes thev stood for the very sloth of stagnancy. The thought of separation from Rajah hurt him, too, like a knifethrust. And. yet, with the elephant blind, helpless, unable adequately to be cared for in the clockwork regime of the circus A dull explosion, like a muffled shot, burst suddenly from the direction of the canvases at his back. He wheeled about instantly his eyes straining to discover

what had happened, his_nostrils quivering with the acute misgiving that an animal feels in sudden fright. • For the merest fraction of a minute he saw nothing. Then, like a surging billow of fire, flames leaped up from one of the white tents. Their simultaneous outbreak from every part of the canvas told him all that he need know. The huge paraffin-tank for the stoves in the cook's quarters had exploded, scattering the burning oil far and near over the top and sides of the adjoining dressing-tent. There was no time to hesitate or consider. Forgetting in that very instant all his outraged feelings, injustices which had been heaped upon him by the man whose property was blazing before his eyes, and driven only by that instinct which, on that other night, had whipped him back again and again -to the wrecked menagerie-car, he dashed with the speed of regained youth straight towards the menagerie quarters. He reached the tent, gasping. Heedless of everything save the big elephant, he bent down, and with fingers which in his blind haste fumbled clumsily with the rings, loosened the chain from the stake. Then, with a reckless leap, he landed on Rajah's startled head, and began urging him with a precipitate rush of words out of the tent. Half-sitting, half-clinging to the mammoth ears of the animal, Grayson drove straight through the blur of shouting, frantically-gesticulating circus-hands—-straight on towards the blazing canvas. The flames were shooting high in the air now; every second found them flaring up in new -places. 'Good boy, Rajah—good old fellow! Shake it out! Shake it out It was Grayson's voice, rising above the hiss and roar of the fire—cool, strong, imperious, yet intreating; commanding, yet never threatening. Man and elephant were abreast the fiery wall now, and Rajah's trunk, guided- uncertainly by his half-sightless eyes, reached up obediently to the burning canvas.

The elephant had learned the trick many years before' the head-on collision in the fog, when his ' act' in the arena was highly prized and paid for. It had been one of his feats to pull down with his trunk and shake out with rapid waving to and fro a series of lighted torches set in a frame at the side of the ring. j ' Good old fellow ! Shake it out! Shake it out!' And Rajah, guided as much by the sound of the trainer's clear, assuring voice as by his own half-seeing eyes, strode, trumpeting, on, tearing at the burning side-wall canvas and ripping it asunder, yard by yard, to be crushed out under his stamping feet. Grayson's own clothing was smoking. His hair was burned off in spots, and great blisters were puffing up on his uncovered hands. His face was pressed for protection against the elephant's head. Still he clung desperately to his lofty seat. It was over very quickly, after all. Rajah's huge, sweeping trunk had checked even the cunning currents of the scattered paraffin. The trainer lifted his head cautiously.-~ The canvas smoked in ruins, smouldering ineffectually above and about him. 'All out, Rajah. All out!' he cried. He tried to turn the elephant and drive him from the wrecked tent. But the animal had reared suddenly and lurched drunkenly backward, his trunk coiling about something rolled in a bundle of costumes on the ground. Grayson shouted at him, and used the sharp hook in his hand. At the same instant he saw, looking down, what was holding the big fellow back. It was the child of the manager, who had been asleep, evidently, in a corner of the tent when the fire began. Rajah's crushing foot had barely missed her. As from a great distance, the trainer's pain-racked senses realised that Killeen's voice was crying out in torment: ' My God, men, my little girl's in that tent! Mary, my little girl! Let me through !' - Then Rajah, with the child in the coil of his burned trunk, and Grayson, like a blackened fiend clinging to his head, staggered out into the open air. In

the midst of the show-folk, man and animal stopped, and Grayson slid to the ground and ran forward to the little girl whom the elephant had deposited on the grass. 'She's dead! She's dead!' shrieked the frenzied Killeen, bending over the tiny figure of the child. ' She ain't dead—only her dress scorched a little! She ain't even hurt,' said Grayson savagely. He had flung off his smoking coat, and with his red-welted hands began to fan her with his hat. Slowly her eyes opened, and she reached out her arms to her father, whimpering. 'Papapapa!' she sobbed, clinging to his neck, and putting her face against his ashen one. 9 * It was a little later, when the sputtering lights were burning in the big tent, that Grayson stood alone at the far end of the menagerie-quarters, bathing the great blisters on Rajah's trunk and body with a soft sponge soaked in sweet oil. From on beyond came the blare of the bands, the shouting of the show-folk, and occasional, scattered applause. In the half-gloom of that part of the tent where Grayson and the elephant were • the, trainer toiled on steadily, oblivious of the carnival, dipping the sponge time after time in the pail of oil and washing gently the animal's wounds. Of the pain in his own hands he seemed to feel nothing. ' Grayson!' At the low word the trainer turned slowly and looked up at the' manager standing abruptly at his elbow. "^ 'I came to say thatthat I've changed my mind. I don't want you to leave the show.' It was merely Killeen's clumsy manner of expressing his gratitude. ' The fact is, you and that elephant did a remarkable thing to-night in putting out that fire in the way you did ' Grayson stopped him brusquely. ' I didn't have anything to do with it. It was Rajah—alone!'

-""■ The manager shrugged his shoulders.- It amounts to the same thing/' he went on. ' You did it together, and it was well done. The damage was nothing to me compared with the life —of little Mary. She was asleep in the dressing-tent, and if it hadn't been for y° u —' .■<■. Grayson wheeled upon him. It wasn't me that saved the child, Killeen. It was Rajah. God knows I've not much to thank you for. But if you'd kept your eyes open these past two years, you'd have seen what I did long agoyou'd have seen how Rajah loved your little girl." Why, I've seen her time and time again feedin' him with bread an' laughin' to see him stow it away. She's talked to him an' petted him often. He loves her! That's what made him pick her out of the mud this mornin', an' that's what made him find her an' get her out of that burnin' tent when I was tryin', without knowin' it, to make him walk on the very spot where she was layin'. You can thank him for savin' her.' Killeen stared at the trained with slow comprehension, .- ' s 'I understand, Grayson,' he muttered. 'l'm sorry for my treatment. of you two. you'll stay with us, of course . ' His vision, as he waited, was of a great spinningtop, which he had meant to augur their —Rajah's and his. Again he'seemed to see the elephant's trunk sweeping up the toy before it had delivered its prophecy. 'Yes, we'll stay on,' he said slowly; and, bending down, carefully filled the sponge with the oil. Southern Gross, ■