The Story of Freginald (3 page)

Louise and Leo took long walks nearly every morning before the show began. They'd stop in at the farms and gossip with the farmers and their wives. Leo was such a cultured and widely traveled lion that he was welcome everywhere, and as Mr. Boomschmidt's show traveled through this part of the country every year, the people were used to these animals and weren't afraid of them. Most farmers, if they look out of the window and see a lion and an elephant and a rhinoceros strolling up through the orchard to the house will dash down cellar and hide, and rightly so, but these farmers would just throw up the window and wave their arms to the animals and shout to them to come in and have a cup of coffee.

But after the first week Mr. Boomschmidt called Louise aside. “I've always tried to be good to my animals,” he said. “I find it pays in the long run to let 'em do about as they please. It's nice for 'em to have friends in all the towns we visit, and nothing pleases me better when we're putting up the tents in a town we haven't visited in a year than to see a farmer and his wife rush up and shake hands with the hippopotamus and tell him how glad they are to see him, and how they've missed him while he's been away. But, on the other hand, I expect it isn't a good thing for the show. Nobody's going to pay twenty-five cents in the afternoon to see a panther they've entertained at their own home in the morning. Friends are one thing and a menagerie's another, though sometimes there isn't much difference. But who wants to pay to see his friends? The most important thing is to make this show a success. So I'm going to ask you, Louise, since you're our principal attraction, not to get too friendly with the neighborhood people. I hate to ask it of you—it seems kind of mean. But you see how it is. If we don't do it we'll fail to draw the crowds, just as the other animals have failed, and the show'll have to disband. Then we won't any of us have any more fun.”

Louise agreed that this was so. It was fun to stop at the farms, where they were always invited into the sitting-room and given some refreshment, but, after all, there were plenty of people and animals to make friends with right in the show itself. So after that on their walks he and Leo, although they spoke politely to people they met on the roads, didn't pay any more calls. And he spent more and more time playing with other young animals near the tents and visiting with the people in the show.

One of the people Louise liked best was Madame Delphine, the fortune-teller. She was really two people. When the sightseers began to stream into the circus grounds, she put on a black wig and a sort of gypsy costume with dozens of bangles and bracelets and strings of bright beads and sat in a mysterious little tent and told people's fortunes by looking at the palms of their hands. But when the show was over and the tent and the costume were packed up, she sat in a rocking-chair in her wagon and rocked and knitted and talked. Sometimes she stopped rocking and sometimes she stopped knitting, but she almost never stopped talking. Only once in a while she would stop and listen while Louise told her one of the poems he had made up and then she would say: “Very pretty,” and go on talking again. But Louise liked to listen to her because she told him lots of interesting things about the circus and the hundreds of towns she had visited and the people she had known.

Madame Delphine used very beautiful and high-flown language when she was telling fortunes, but when she sat and rocked she used just ordinary language like anybody else. And Louise noticed that when she used ordinary language she said much more interesting things. He tried it with his poems, and he found that the simpler they were, the better people liked them. He was rather smart to notice this, for lots of really important people never find it out at all.

There were other reasons why Louise liked to visit Madame Delphine. Her real name was Annie Carraway, and she lived in the wagon with her daughter Rosie, who was Mademoiselle Rose, the bareback rider and equestrienne, in the circus. It was very cosy in the wagon, and everything was always as neat as a pin. There were two bunks covered with patchwork quilts, and armchairs with tidies on the backs, and pictures on the wall, of Niagara Falls and of two little girls playing a duet, and little curtains at the windows, and even a little stove. And there was always a dish of hard candy in the middle of the center table, and Louise was invited to help himself. It was a pretty pleasant place to be.

One day Madame Delphine asked Louise if he wouldn't like her to tell his fortune.

“Oh yes, I would,” he said. “I wanted to ask you before, but I thought maybe you get pretty tired of it, doing it all day.”

Madame Delphine laughed comfortably. “Land sakes,” she said, “I never get tired of it. And even if I did, I guess I could accommodate a friend. Hold out your paw.” She laid down her knitting and peered at it. “Land sakes,” she said again, “you've got lines in your palm just like a human.” She turned the paw and twisted it, looked across it, and then doubled it up and looked at the side. Then she said:

“H'm, remarkable indeed. You have some highly developed artistic talent. You will attain to great eminence in your chosen field and be on terms of equality with the highest in the land. Yes, very magnificent. Could it be sculpture? No, I think not. You have not the long delicate fingers of the sculptor. Ah, I have it!” she said triumphantly. “It is poetry. You are a poet. Am I right?”

“Why, yes,” said Louise, “but you knew I wrote poetry anyway. I've recited some of it for you.”

Madame Delphine seemed a little put out. “That's it,” she said. “You're just like all my customers. Never satisfied with hearing the truth. Expect me to make up things about them. I tell them what I see; that's all I can do. If they don't like it—”

“Oh, I like it,” said Louise. “Please go on.”

“Well,” said Madame Delphine, “this is a difficult hand to read. A very unusual hand. See how the lifeline crosses the fate-line, then makes a loop round the Mount of Jupiter and swings up across the heart-line and disappears between those two fingers. Almost unheard of. But it speaks volumes to one who knows. You're going to have a very full life.” She looked up at him sharply. “Have you ever had a serious illness? When you were about four?”

“Well, I—I had a sore throat once,” said Louise.

“Ah,” said Madame Delphine significantly. “I thought so. Well, so much for the past. Now as to the future.” She frowned and puckered up her eyes. “I see before you a pathway leading upward and ever upward to the heights of fame. It is bestrewn with obstacles. But you will surmount them with a dauntless courage and a perseverance that makes nought of what would be insuperable impediments to a less gifted soul. I see much happiness and much travel. There are many long journeys before you, across rivers and mountains and through the marts of men. But what is this?” She bent and peered closer at his paw. “I see danger,” she whispered. “Beware of a tall, dark man. A man with a long, black mustache. He is coming nearer and nearer. He brings trouble.” She shook her head ominously, then dropped Louise's paw, leaned back in her chair, and began knitting. “There,” she said, “that is all I can tell you.”

Louise thanked her politely. But he didn't see that she had told him much that anybody else couldn't have told him. That part about fame as a poet was pleasant, to hear, but he knew it was just her way of being nice. The only thing she had really told him was about the tall, dark man. Probably she had just made that up. But still, he decided that he would keep an eye out for a long, black mustache, and when he saw one he'd go the other way. There wasn't any sense in taking chances.

There was a little girl elephant with the show, and curiously enough she had the same name as the bear: Louise. The two Louises didn't like each other very well. The bear thought the little elephant was stuck up, which she was, and the elephant thought the little bear was rough and horrid, which he wasn't—or at least not more than bears usually are. So most of the time they played on opposite sides of the camp. And this led to a very funny misunderstanding. For when anybody wanted either one of them, he would shout: “Louise! Louise!” Then both the animals would come running and would get there at exactly the same time.

After this had happened a few times, everyone said: “How fond those two are of each other! They never seem to be apart a minute! Why, I never
saw
such devotion!”

It happened so many times that it got to be a regular joke with the older animals to go out and shout: “Louise!” even when they didn't want either of the Louises, just to see if for
once
they wouldn't appear together. But they always did, and then the animals would put their heads on one side and smile and say: “Oh, how darling! Oh, how too perfectly sweet!”

All these things made our Louise very mad. They also made Louise the elephant mad, and one day when they had been called three times in about half an hour she said angrily to the bear: “Look here, you. We've got to do something about thith. I jutht won't thtand it any longer, tho now!”

She always lisped a little when she was angry, and the little bear mimicked her. “Oh, you jutht won't thtand it, tho now! Well, thuppose you think of thome thing elthe, then. I don't like it any better than you do, having people think I like to play with you, you thtuck up thithy, you!”

He was pretty angry himself, but when he saw her eyes fill up with tears that rolled right down her funny short stubby little trunk, he was sorry right away.

“Oh, please don't cry,” he said. “Gee, I didn't mean anything!” He tried to pat her back, but she shook his paw off crossly and cried harder and harder.

“Oh,
don't,”
said the bear. “Please, Louise, Louise, please.—Oh, listen, Louise, if you'll stop I'll make up a poem about you. Will you? Listen.”

Her sobs sunk to sniffles and she opened her eyes, which she had shut in order to cry better.

“Listen!” said the bear.

“O loveliest of all Louises,

Say why the sight of me displeases.

Oh, could you never learn to care

For this adoring, humble bear?

When you perform, as is your duty,

In all your elephantine beauty,

Your tricks before the audience,

My admiration is immense,

And when you dance in airy grace

I gaze enraptured on your face.

Nothing about you but endears—

Your eyes, your lovely floppy ears,

Your graceful trunk. Don't be a tease.

Oh, tell me, beautiful Louise,

And give me quick your answer, please.”

“Oh,” said the elephant when he had finished, “do you
really
mean that?”

“No,” said the bear. “Of course I don't. You don't like me and I don't like you. I just—”

“Hello!” said a voice behind them. “Why, goodness, gracious me, you're a poet, young bear—a poet! Isn't he a poet, Leo? Oh, my goodness! This is too much! Here's a bear whose name is Louise, and he can hop like a rabbit, and now I find he's a poet. What a find! Leo, tell him what a find he is.”

“Mr. Boomschmidt means,” said the lion, “that even more people will come to see a bear who is a poet than a bear whose name is Louise.—Look out, Mr. Boomschmidt, you'll have that hat off again,” he said hastily, as the showman began pushing his hat back on his forehead.

“That's it exactly,” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Poetry! That's what we'll give 'em! All the signs written in poetry, and recitations at each performance. Madame Delphine told me you wrote poetry, but I thought it was just—well, poetry. I didn't know it was good. Leo, why don't you say something? Why don't you get enthusiastic? Don't you ever get excited about anything?”

“I am excited,” said the lion. “But I want to know what this little elephant is crying about. Come, come, Louise,” he began soothingly.