«A brat?» cried Jack in delight. «A boy! Or a, girl! It's bound to be one or the other. Listen, I was afraid to tell you how much I wanted one, Edna. Oh, boy! This is going to make everything very, very fine. Lie down. You're delicate. Put your feet up. I'm going to fix dinner. This is practice. Stay still. Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Or girl as the case maybe!»
He went out through the living-room on his way to the kitchen. As he passed the window he caught sight of the parrot on the dark porch outside, and he put his head through to speak to it.
«Have you heard the news?» said he. «Behold a father! You're going to be cut right out, my bird. You're going to be given away. Yes, sir, it's a baby.»
The parrot gave a long low whistle. «You don't say so?» said he in a husky voice, a voice of apprehension, a quite astonishing imitation of Charlie's voice. «What about Jack?»
«What's that?» said Jack, startled.
«He'll think it's his,» whispered the parrot in Edna's voice. «He's fool enough for anything. Kiss me, darling. Phew-w-w! You don't say so? What about Jack? He'll think it's his, he's fool enough for anything. Kiss me, darling. Phew-w-w!»
Jack went out into the kitchen, and sat down with his head in his hands for several minutes.
«Hurry up!» cried Edna from the bedroom. «Hurry up — Father!»
«I'm coming,» said Jack.
He went to his desk, and took out the revolver. Then he went into the bedroom.
At the sound of the cry and the shot, the parrot laughed. Then, lifting its claw, it took the chain in its beak, and bit through it as if it were paper.
Jack came out, holding the gun, his hand over his eyes. «Fool enough for anything!» said the parrot, and laughed.
Jack turned the gun on himself. As he did so, in the infinitesimal interval between the beginning and the end of the movement of his finger on the trigger, he saw the bird grow, spread its dark wings, and its eyes flamed, and it changed, and it launched itself toward him.
The gun went off. Jack dropped to the floor. The parrot, or whatever it was, sailing down, seized what came out of his ruined mouth, and wheeled back through the window, and was soon far away, visible for a moment only as it swept on broader wings past the new-arisen moon.
VARIATION ON A THEME
A young man, with a bowler hat, cane, flaxen mustache, and blue suit, was looking at a gorilla in a zoo. All about him were cages floored with squares of desert. On these yellow flats, like precise false statements of equatorial latitudes, lay the shadows of bars. There were nutshells, banana skins, fading lettuce; there were the cries of birds who believed themselves mewed up because they were mad, the obeisances of giraffes, the yawns of lions. In an imitation of moon crags, mountain goats bore about ignobly eyes that were pieces of moon. The elephants, grey in a humidity of grass and dung, shifted from one foot to another. Jurassic days, it seemed, would quite definitely never be here again. Mice, moving with the speed of a nervous twitch, were bold in the freedom of a catastrophe of values.
Perceiving that they were alone, the gorilla addressed the young man in an imitation of the American accent, which he affected for reasons of his own. «Pal, you look a decent sort of guy. Get me a suit like yours, only larger, a bowler hat, and a cane. I guess I can do without the mustache. I want to get out of here. I got ambitions.»
The young man was greatly taken aback to hear a gorilla speak. However, common sense reminded him that he was in a city in which many creatures enjoyed that faculty, whom, at first sight, or at any hearing, one would hardly credit with sufficient intelligence to have attained it. He therefore recovered from his wonder, but, having a nice sense of distinctions, he replied to the gorilla, «I do not see that I can do that, for the place for a gorilla is either a cage or the Congo. In the society of men you would be like a fish out of water, a bull in a china shop, or a round peg in a square hole. You would be a cause of embarrassment, and would therefore yourself be embarrassed. You would be treated as an alien, disdained on account of your complexion, and slighted because of your facial angle.»
The gorilla was very much mortified by this reply, for he was extremely vain. «Here,» he said, «you don't want to say that sort of thing. I'm a writer. Write you anything you like. I've written a novel.»
«That alters the situation entirely!» cried the young man with enthusiasm. «I am a novelist myself, and am always ready to lend a hand to a struggling fellow author. Tell me one thing only, and my services are yours. Have you genius?»
«Yes,» said the gorilla, «I certainly have.»
«In that case,» said the young man, «I shall bring your suit, hat, cane, shoes, and body-linen at this hour tomorrow. I will also bring you a file, and you will find me awaiting you under the large chestnut tree by the West Gate, at the hour of dusk.»
The gorilla had not expected the file. As a matter of fact, he had asked for the outfit, not for purposes of escape, but in order to cut a figure before the public. He was rather like one of those prisoners who wrote from old Spain, and who were more interested in what they got in than in how they got out. However, he hated to waste anything, so, having received the file, he put it to such use as enabled him to join his benefactor under the dark and summer tree.
The young man, intoxicated by his own good action, shook the gorilla warmly by the hand. «My dear fellow,» said he, «I cannot say how glad I am to see you out here among us. I am sure you have written a great novel in there; all the same, bars are very dangerous to literary men in the long run. You will find my little house altogether more propitious to your genius. Don't think that we are too desperately dull, however; everyone drops in on Sundays, and during the week we have a little dinner or two, at which you will meet the sort of people you should know. By the way, I hope you have not forgotten your manuscript.»
«Fellow came snooping in just as I was making my getaway,» said the gorilla. «So I had to dump it. See?» This was the most villainous lie in the world, for the unscrupulous ape had never written so much as a word.
«What a terrible pity!» cried the young man in dismay. «I suppose you feel you will have to return to it.»
«Not me,» said the gorilla, who had been watching some singularly handsome limousines pass the spot where they were standing, and had noticed the faultless complexions and attractive toilettes of the ladies whom these limousines were conveying from one party to another. «No,» said he. «Never mind. I got the whole thing in my head. You put me up; I'll write it out all over again. So don't worry.»
«Upon my word, I admire your spirit!» cried his deliverer enthusiastically. «There is something uncommercial about that, which appeals to me more than I can say. I am sure you are right; the work will be even more masterly for being written over again. A thousand little felicities, necessarily brushed aside in the first headlong torrent of creativeness, will now assert their claims. Your characters will appear, so to speak, more in the round than formerly. You will forget some little details, though of course you will invent others even more telling; very well, those that you forget will be the real shadows, which will impart this superior roundness to your characters. Oh, there is nothing like literature! You shall have a little study on the second floor, quiet, austere, but not uncomfortable, where you shall reconstruct your great work undisturbed. It will undoubtedly be the choice of the Book Society, and I really don't see why we should not hope for the Hawthornden as well.»
By this time they were strolling along under the dozing trees, each of which was full-gorged with a large block of the day's heat, still undigested, and breathed spicily upon them as they passed below.