The Son of Tarzan | Page 8

"I--ah--essayed to take the book from him," he replied, a slight flush
mounting his sallow cheek; "but--ah--your son is quite muscular for
one so young."
"He wouldn't let you take it?" asked the mother.
"He would not," confessed the tutor. "He was perfectly good natured
about it; but he insisted upon pretending that he was a gorilla and that I
was a chimpanzee attempting to steal food from him. He leaped upon
me with the most savage growls I ever heard, lifted me completely
above his head, hurled me upon his bed, and after going through a
pantomime indicative of choking me to death he stood upon my
prostrate form and gave voice to a most fearsome shriek, which he
explained was the victory cry of a bull ape. Then he carried me to the
door, shoved me out into the hall and locked me from his room."
For several minutes neither spoke again. It was the boy's mother who
finally broke the silence.
"It is very necessary, Mr. Moore," she said, "that you do everything in
your power to discourage this tendency in Jack, he--"; but she got no
further. A loud "Whoop!" from the direction of the window brought
them both to their feet. The room was upon the second floor of the
house, and opposite the window to which their attention had been
attracted was a large tree, a branch of which spread to within a few feet
of the sill. Upon this branch now they both discovered the subject of
their recent conversation, a tall, well-built boy, balancing with ease
upon the bending limb and uttering loud shouts of glee as he noted the
terrified expressions upon the faces of his audience.
The mother and tutor both rushed toward the window but before they
had crossed half the room the boy had leaped nimbly to the sill and
entered the apartment with them.

"`The wild man from Borneo has just come to town,'" he sang, dancing
a species of war dance about his terrified mother and scandalized tutor,
and ending up by throwing his arms about the former's neck and kissing
her upon either cheek.
"Oh, Mother," he cried, "there's a wonderful, educated ape being shown
at one of the music halls. Willie Grimsby saw it last night. He says it
can do everything but talk. It rides a bicycle, eats with knife and fork,
counts up to ten, and ever so many other wonderful things, and can I go
and see it too? Oh, please, Mother--please let me."
Patting the boy's cheek affectionately, the mother shook her head
negatively. "No, Jack," she said; "you know I do not approve of such
exhibitions."
"I don't see why not, Mother," replied the boy. "All the other fellows go
and they go to the Zoo, too, and you'll never let me do even that.
Anybody'd think I was a girl--or a mollycoddle. Oh, Father," he
exclaimed, as the door opened to admit a tall gray-eyed man. "Oh,
Father, can't I go?"
"Go where, my son?" asked the newcomer.
"He wants to go to a music hall to see a trained ape," said the mother,
looking warningly at her husband.
"Who, Ajax?" questioned the man.
The boy nodded.
"Well, I don't know that I blame you, my son," said the father, "I
wouldn't mind seeing him myself. They say he is very wonderful, and
that for an anthropoid he is unusually large. Let's all go, Jane--what do
you say?" And he turned toward his wife, but that lady only shook her
head in a most positive manner, and turning to Mr. Moore asked him if
it was not time that he and Jack were in the study for the morning
recitations. When the two had left she turned toward her husband.

"John," she said, "something must be done to discourage Jack's
tendency toward anything that may excite the cravings for the savage
life which I fear he has inherited from you. You know from your own
experience how strong is the call of the wild at times. You know that
often it has necessitated a stern struggle on your part to resist the
almost insane desire which occasionally overwhelms you to plunge
once again into the jungle life that claimed you for so many years, and
at the same time you know, better than any other, how frightful a fate it
would be for Jack, were the trail to the savage jungle made either
alluring or easy to him."
"I doubt if there is any danger of his inheriting a taste for jungle life
from me," replied the man, "for I cannot conceive that such a thing may
be transmitted from father to son. And sometimes, Jane, I think that in
your solicitude for his future you go a bit too