Josephine had been presented at Court, but had not been impressed by the
experience. Madame Tussaud’s seemed to her like a more august
presentation at an Eternal Levee.
At one end of the room there were indeed the royal families of Europe in
their coronation robes. There was an air of formality, a stiffness, and
a constraint in all present which seemed to her natural in guests
waiting for their host to come in. And perhaps in another moment a
curtain would be brushed aside, and the Host of Hosts would appear.
Josephine did not wait any longer, but ran downstairs to the Chamber of
Horrors.
Before it seemed possible it was time to go back to the Gardens, if she
were to see Cromartie before closing time. She walked quickly into the
house, and found Cromartie sitting near the front of his cage as if he
were expecting to see her. As she came up to the cage he put down the
pipe he had been holding in his mouth and stood up, seeming then to
overshadow her, the floor of his cage being higher than the corridor in
which she stood.
“Please sit down,” she said, and then was silent, finding nothing of all
the things she had come to tell him ready to her tongue.
He obeyed her.
They looked then at each other for some little while in silence. At last
Josephine summoned up her resolution and said to him, speaking in a low
voice:
“I think that you are mad.”
Cromartie nodded his head; he had huddled himself up in his chair and
apparently was unable to speak.
Josephine waited and said: “I was very worried about you, because I
thought at first that something I had said to you might have made you
behave in this idiotic way, but it is now quite clear to me that even if
what I said did have any influence, you are quite mad, and that I need
not think about you any more.”
Cromartie nodded his head again. She noticed with some surprise that he
was weeping, and that his face was wet with tears which were falling on
to the floor of his cage. The sight of his tears and his determined
silence made her harden her heart. She felt suddenly angry.
The bell began ringing for closing time, and she heard someone, probably
the policeman, with his hand on the door talking to another man outside.
Josephine turned away, but a moment afterwards came back to the cage.
Cromartie was walking away from her blowing his nose.
“You must be mad,” she called after him; then the door opened and the
policeman came in.
“Hurry up, Miss, or you’ll have to stay here all night, and you know
that would never do,” she heard him say as she hurried away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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