The Tree that Sat Down. Beverley Nichols
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of crafty schemes for enticing the animals to The Shop in the Ford; and though we very much hope that he will meet with his deserts in the end, at the moment it must be admitted that he was having a great deal of success. The Shop in the Ford was crowded from dawn to dusk, and you could hardly hear yourself speak for the purring and the twittering and the squeaking and the grunting.
And it so happened that on the very morning that Judy and her grannie were planning their Beauty Parlour and Surgery, Sam had a tremendous stroke of luck. The luck came in the shape of a bear, by the name of Mr Bruno. He is going to play a big part in our story, so please listen very carefully.
If you had seen Mr Bruno, lumbering happily along on that sunny morning, you would certainly never have guessed that he was a bear with a Secret; you would have said he was just a nice comfortable middle-aged bear, with a shaggy coat of which he was very proud, and a Mrs Bruno of whom he was very fond, and three small Master Brunos, whom he was bringing up to be good citizens of the wood.
‘What a happy person!’ you would have said. ‘With a freehold cave and a quantity of honey stored away for the winter and a loving family to look after him – what more could he want?’
But he was not a happy person at all – not really, because of his Secret. Sometimes he forgot his Secret for a while, and would dance and play and make the most amiable growls; and then suddenly he would remember it again, and stop dancing and playing, and wander off alone, to sit down under a tree and weep.
It was such an awful secret that, if we tell it to you, we hope you will keep it to yourselves.
We will tell you at once, in order to get it over.
This was Bruno’s secret:
HE HAD ESCAPED FROM A CIRCUS.
It was years and years ago, and you may be surprised that he had not forgotten it. But when you have heard his story, you will understand.
THE STORY OF BRUNO
Bruno was four years old when he escaped. Even in those days he was a big bear but he was very thin; they always kept him half-starved so that he should not grow strong enough to bite; and it was only because he had such a thick coat that you did not see his bones sticking out.
He could not remember anything about his parents, because he had been stolen from them when he was a baby. All he knew about life was his cage and the circus. His cage was so small that he had to twist his neck to get into it, and he always had cramp when he woke up in the morning. But the cage was better than the circus – oh, very much better! For in the circus he had to dance, even though his limbs were cramped, and jump through terrible flaming hoops which scorched his fur, and if he flinched or faltered, they prodded him with sharp sticks which made him bleed. The men with the sticks always had smiles on their faces, because they did not want the crowd to know how cruel they were. But though there were smiles on their faces there was sharp steel on the sticks, and if you are being beaten, it does not hurt any the less even if the man who beats you does it with a smile.
You see, it was a very wicked circus. Not all circuses are like that; there are many in which the animals are quite kindly treated. All the same, I think that they would much rather not be in circuses at all; they would rather be dancing by themselves under the green trees, and flying away where they wanted, into the blue sky.
It would be too long and sad a story to tell you all of Bruno’s life in the circus; all that you need know is how he escaped.
Although his keeper was always a little drunk at the end of the show, he usually managed to walk without stumbling. He used to prod Bruno into the cage and give him a final cut of the lash when he was inside, crying out ‘Pleasant dreams, you ugly beast, pleasant dreams!’ But this night there was no need for Bruno to crouch in the corner, covering his face with his paws, for the keeper was too drunk to lift the whip. He just slammed the door and staggered off. And before he was out of sight Bruno realized that he had forgotten to turn the key.
Bruno gasped, and stared at the door which was swinging on its hinges. One jump through that door, and he would be free. He blinked; he felt he must be dreaming … but no, he was wide awake. He took a step forward and then he paused, his heart thumping against his ribs. ‘Careful!’ he thought, ‘I must wait.’ The circus was still full of light and life and laughter; there were many people about; they would catch him before he had gone more than a few yards. Besides, he had a heavy iron chain round his wrist, which would clank and rattle and give him away.
So he lay down and pretended to be asleep. His throat was dry with excitement and his heart beat so fast that it hurt him; but he managed to stay very still.
But it seemed an eternity that he lay there, and every moment was filled with the fear that the keeper might remember, and come back to lock the door. Nobody came. One by one the lights of the circus were quenched, like coloured candles dying into the night, until there was no light but the moon.
*
All this time, Bruno had been trying to get his chain off. He gnawed at it with his teeth, he tugged at it with the claws of his left paw; all to no avail. He would willingly have cut off his arm to gain his freedom, but that was impossible.
Then he had an idea. It was a very brave idea, and it made him tremble to think of it, but it was the only thing to do, he would have to tie the chain to the cage and jump, knowing that the weight of his body would drag his paw through the iron ring. It would be agonizingly painful, it would scrape all the fur off, and it might break the bone, but it was worth going through any pain to escape.
Once he had thought of this plan he wasted no more time. He tied the chain fast to one of the strong iron bars; then he shuffled to the door and flung it open. For a moment he stood there trying to pluck up his courage for the jump. Everything was very quiet; now and then there was a growl from the lions’ cages and a neigh from the paddock where they kept the performing ponies, but there were no sounds of humans. There was only one danger now – that the pain of his paw, as it was dragged through the ring, would be so acute that he would cry out and would wake somebody up.
He took a deep breath. It was now or never. ‘Courage, Bruno,’ he muttered to himself. He closed his eyes.
He jumped.
There was one sharp cry; he could not possibly prevent it; he felt as though his paw, from the wrist down, had been plunged into boiling water, as though it were being crushed beneath heavy weights. But when he looked down he saw that the chain had gone; it had torn the fur away; his paw was bare and bleeding. And he did not cry out any more, he just lay there and sobbed beneath his breath, licking his paw very gently, till the pain grew a little less fierce and he felt he could begin to crawl away.
He crawled on his three legs, holding his bleeding paw close to his side, and always keeping to the shadow of the tents. Luck favoured him, for a cloud had drifted over the moon; before he reached the outskirts of the circus he was able to stand upright and run, over a field, through a little coppice, over another field, and finally on to a broad road.
He was free!
Now it so happened that the road on which he found himself was one of the main highways to the North; there was always a good deal of traffic on it; and you can imagine that the sight of a tall shaggy bear, with a bleeding paw, hurrying down the road in the middle of the night, was not one to which the lorry drivers were accustomed. And very soon the news began to spread abroad that there was a bear on the road; the police were called out; and before he knew where he was, he was flying for his life with a whole procession after him, made up of policemen with whistles and villagers with flashing torches and dogs with sharp teeth that glistened in the moonlight.
We need not take too long in describing that chase, though it seemed to him to go on for ever and ever. He was torn by brambles, drenched with the water of bogs into which he stumbled, famished and exhausted, but after a couple of hours he had run many miles, and he began to notice something strange about the country. It was growing wilder and wilder and yet – in some way that he could not explain – it was also growing more friendly. You see, he was on the slopes of the Magic Mountain, and nearing the outskirts of our wood. He was getting