Part Eleven Ethel of the Wild Heart

This is the story of a lioness in a cage at a great moving-picture studio—a lean, tawny lioness with slanting, amber eyes and flexible muscles that undulated under the loose skin like ripples of water under a blanket of kelp.

They said, the people of the studio, that Ethel was savage, that she had clawed a trainer and injured an actor for life, that she hated women and would not tolerate the touch of a human hand. And they thought me a little mad when I wanted to go into the cage where she and four other lions were taking their exercise.

210But I was of the press, so I was permitted to enter the cage with the trainer, to go through the doubled-barred iron doors, and to stand very quietly while the keeper of the lions, with a long whip, lashed the snarling animals to their pedestals.

Of them all, Ethel was the most savage. Her eyes blazed with a wicked light that burned green behind the amber; her tail lashed furiously when the trainer flicked her with his whip; and afraid as she undoubtedly was, the courage of her spirit showed itself in her stubborn crouch and the vicious striking of her powerful paws whenever the lash came near her.

She fascinated me. The other lions were cowed, it seemed, by long experience with the stinging whip. They took their places protesting and snarling, but with alacrity none the less. Ethel would not obey. In defiance of the 211stern commands of the trainer and the leather thong which flicked remorselessly about her eyes and nose, she would leap from one side of the cage to the other, crouch for an instant, then spring again, shaking the bars in her frenzied attempts to escape the persecuting lash, while the other lions watched her from their pedestals uneasily, with guttural intakes of breath and occasional snarls.

Do you wonder what I felt when Ethel careened about the cage, stubborn, disobedient, mad with rage as well as with a terror born of pain? At first I felt fear, a fear as unreasoning as that of the lioness. For in one of her crazed leaps she brushed against me, so that I was pushed sharply against the iron bars of the cage.

“Do you want to go out?” the trainer was asking me, and I shook my head, for I could not speak.

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Then suddenly the fear left me. The thread of ice which had seemed to run from the top of my head to the very soles of my feet melted away as though in a warm sunshine. For Ethel, crouching in snarling defiance, had suddenly raised her head. For an instant we measured each other, eye to eye. And in that moment I remembered another wild thing—this one uncaged—and I remembered myself a little girl alone on the Hill Trail, facing the amber eyes of one of Ethel’s distant kin. I want to tell you what I remembered, so that you will know why the ice thread was melted and why things happened in that barred cage that the trainer said had never happened before.

It was while we still lived in the little cabin on the Bay, and I was yet a child. Brother had gone away to school, and I was lonely, so more than ever I sought 213the woods and the companionship of the woods creatures there.

It was a sultry day in August when the juncoes were flying in panicky flocks, and when a haze of smoke was in the air that told of forest fires not so far away. All the night before the sky in the west had been reddened with a dull glow that gradually grew brighter, and though we had no fear for ourselves since a cleared space lay between the wooded hills and the cabin we were sorry for the wild things of the woods who would be forced to flee from the red monster that devoured their homes so relentlessly.

The air that day was oppressive, for the smoke hung low, and if we listened carefully, we could hear the distant crackling of tall pines with gum-smeared trunks on fire, and the occasional crash of a giant fir, tortured too long by licking flames.

214I sought the Hill Trail, listening, as I climbed, to the ominous crackle of burning trees, much nearer than I would have wished. And perhaps it was because of that intentness that I came, without realizing it, face to face with a wildcat, the largest I have ever seen, stretched across the trail, only a few feet in front of me.

For the first time in my life I knew the fear of which men and books tell you. Many had been the stories told by hunters who passed the cabin, of the ferocity of mountain lions and wildcats, although none of them had ever been seen in the woods around us, because civilization was too near. These beasts, said the hunters, kept to the higher hills and the deeper wooded forests, where game abounded and men seldom came. So when I saw the tawny animal so close that one light spring would have carried the powerful body upon 215me, my first impulse was to run—blindly, madly—to run until I could run no more, or until the fierce claws of the great cat should bear me to the ground—

The wildcat had not moved except to lift its head ever so slightly and to draw back its jowls in a hissing snarl that displayed cruel, white fangs. The amber eyes watched me without flickering, yet in them I saw distrust, startled anger, and ever so little of a desire to spring—to kill—

In that one instant I had many thoughts—dizzy, rambling thoughts, that chased themselves across my mind like dried leaves blown by a wind. I noticed the straight, white whiskers on either side of the wildcat’s nostrils; I heard the distant fall of a tree; I saw a grasshopper leap from a blade of grass that was bending under his weight; I heard the scuttle of leaves 216somewhere in the woods and knew that a bevy of quail was there. But I could not move. I stood still in the grip of that numb terror.

What would have happened I can not say. Suddenly the fear left me—for I knew! I knew that the tawny animal before me was a wild thing of the woods even as were the other wild things I loved. I knew that fear of fire had driven him from his familiar haunts far up in the mountains, that he sought these woods for protection, not for killing, and I knew that I, having been in those woods longer than he, was hostess there, and that it was my place to make him welcome, to extend to him the friendly greetings that I would have tendered to any of my woods friends. The fear was gone, utterly. I wanted to put my hand on his sleek head, to stroke his glossy back, to put my cheek against the russet satin of his thick coat.

217But I made no move. I spoke to him, as I would have spoken to any other of my woods friends, telling him that he was welcome, that the woods were his as well as mine, and that I hoped the fire would spare his relatives who were dear to him.

As I spoke, the amber eyes opened wider, the snarl died away, and suddenly he yawned, voluminously, with a snap of his jaws and a careless licking motion of his red tongue. Then his eyes closed indifferently, and I knew he had understood me. I knew that between us was no thought of fear or hate. I walked past him up the trail, so close that I might have touched him, and he did not move. Only the amber eyes met mine squarely, and it was as if the wild thing from the deeper woods had said with words,

“We are friends—go in peace.”

When I had gone up the trail a way, 218I stopped at the bend in the path and looked back. The wildcat was in the same position, but he was watching me still with eyes unblinking and unafraid.

So that is why, some years later, when Ethel raised her head and met my eyes, the icy fear slipped away. For I saw her, not a savage, bloodthirsty beast, but a wild thing of the deep woods, girded round with iron bars and stinging whips, a wild thing ruled by pain instead of kindliness, and there surged into my heart a great love and pity for her. I wanted to take the whip from the man, to break it into bits, to tell her that she was free to go back to her mountain fastnesses.

So, disregarding the cry of warning from the trainer and the gasps from those who stood outside the cage, I walked slowly toward the crouching lioness, saying to her the things I would have said had I met her in the 219woods, telling her that I, too, belonged to the out-of-doors, that I, too, was a captive, that between us there was a bond. Slowly the snarling lips relaxed, the glint of green went out of her slanting eyes, and she no longer crouched. I knelt beside her on the floor of the cage, while the lions above on their pedestals watched with curious, sullen eyes, and the trainer’s voice died away in a series of gulps. Gently I put out my hand and touched her rough, tawny head. She flinched and snarled, but I did not draw my hand away, and the next instant I felt her tense muscles relax, and she was quiet under the steady stroking of my hand.

The trainer spoke to me in an agonized whisper, telling me to come away quickly, and as I rose from my kneeling position, Ethel rose, too. Padding over to the pedestal which was hers, she mounted to it with a 220spring and sat there quietly, her eyes never leaving me or missing a motion I made.

When we left the cage, Ethel padded close to my side, and the trainer said in jest that I might take her for a pet.

If I only could have! My heart was aching for her as I left, for I, too, am sometimes rebellious at the ways of civilization and of a world that does not know or care about the things of life that have nothing to do with money. I, too, am lonely for the freshness of leaves wet with dew, the feeling of moss underfoot, the glint of sunlight through laced branches. I think I know a little of the longing that is hers as she paces back and forth in her narrow cage, for hers is not a savage heart—only a wild heart; and I know that love can speak to it and soothe its hurt.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.