THE MILK RAN DOWN THE CREASES TO THE FLOOR.
THE MILK RAN DOWN THE CREASES TO THE FLOOR.
THE MILK RAN DOWN THE CREASES TO THE FLOOR.
Next morning They tried us again, but still we couldn't, and Rosamond seemed so terribly disappointed that we asked mother to tell us how it was done.
'You have to put your tongue over the milk and catch some of it up in the curve of it, and flick it into your throat in the same movement. That's all there is!'
'And quite enough,' sighed lazy Freddy.
'Dogs do it differently,' mother continued. 'They put their tongueunderthe milk or water, or whatever it is they want to drink, but they toss it into their mouths in precisely the same way.'
'I shall never do it,' poor Zobeide complained. 'You will have to nurse me all my days, mother.'
'You great fat podge!' I said. (Zobeide was very roundabout.) 'Mother can't nurse you when you are taken away from her and sold, as you are sure to be. Then you will get thinner and thinner, till you starve, unless they feed you with a stylographic penholder, like poor Blanch; but she was an invalid.'
'Don't jar, children,' mother said, 'but give your minds to business. To-morrow, when they begin teaching you again, don't sputter so much, but try and make a start. It comes all at once, and once gained you never lose the art. You try and you seem no nearer, and suddenly—you find you can do it! Now I will tell you as a fact that I shan't be able to feed you exclusively for much longer. I don't know about looking fagged, but I certainly begin to feel it. I can't, for all the trouble I take, keep my coat as nice as I should like to, and that is a sure sign that the fatigue is beginning to tell on me. Four great kittens! They ought to have got a foster-mother—and I should not have liked that altogether! But I tell you that the time has come when you must all try to reinforce me and supplement what I can give you from extraneous sources.' Mother did use nice long words.
So next day, when they brought the whole set-out, I thought I would really have a good try, and I swallowed down the spoonful of milk without sputtering. Butthatwasn't lapping, mother called loudly from the bed. I was stung by that, so when Auntie May put a little milk in a very flat saucer and ducked my head in it, I stayed in a minute and worked my tongue about. When I could positively bear it no longer, I came up again spitting and sputtering, not a drop of milk having gone down my throat. But I found that if she didn't roughly shove my head in, but let me bend over the saucer myself, and not go deep in, but skim about on the top, I could manage to flick up a little; though perhaps I only fancied I had done that, from the milk that got on to the fur about my mouth. It really was not at all bad stuff. Auntie May still went on putting the point of the little spoon down my throat, and I got a certain amount of milk into me that way, and wasn't so hungry afterwards. Fred, I must say, had no perseverance. He sulked and tossed his head, jibbed, as Auntie May called it, and would have nothing to say to the spoon; while as for the saucer, he walked straight across that and out on the other side.Icouldn't do the things Freddy does; he has a 'cheek,' Auntie May says, and Rosamond says he is like Kitty, whom I have never seen, but, judging from all they say of her, she must be the naughtiest kitten in Yorkshire. When Freddy has walked right through the saucer and is all whitened, he sits down and drinks the milk off his toes, showing that he knows quite well it is meant to eat, not to bathe in, and, as Auntie May says, simply defies her.
The bad example of my brother made me somehow determine I would accomplish lapping, and, sure enough, next day I did. You should have heard the noise They all made!
'Loki can do it! Loki has done it! He's lapped three laps! He is getting some into his mouth! He has lapped first! Hooray! Bravo, Loki!'
I heard Them, but I did not look round till I had lapped right down to the pattern on the saucer. Then I raised my head proudly. Everything looked quite different now somehow. I felt another kitten. Yet nothing really was changed. Rosamond's moonface was as round as ever, Auntie May was still sitting there with her apron full of great pools where Fred and Zobeide and Admiral Togo had let it run down out of the corners of their mouths, mother was purring away and looking at us all with her great big mournful eyes.
In less than a week I was no better or cleverer than everybody else. The others could do it too, but they hated the bother of it. The other way is really so much more convenient. And mother prefers it; she says that it brings us together. She says:
'As long as I nurse you children, I shall be devoted to you. I shall cosset you and shield you and watch over you, and get miserable if you are in a draught or let people handle you or tease you, and so on; but once you can look after yourselves, it will be a very different pair of paws, I warn you! That is cat rule all the world over. I shall not, I hope, be actually unkind, but I shall take the very slightest notice of you. Out of the nursery, out of mind. Lost to sight, to memory you will not be dear, for if I allowed myself to become unduly fond of any one of my children, how could I bear to have that child taken from me? One has to steel oneself. They under whom we live are responsible, though, perhaps, in a state of nature, in that jungle of which I have visions and of which I dream at night as if it were my kingdom, it would be the same—I cannot tell.'
We all said politely, 'Oh, mother, I am sure you would never be unkind,' but indeed afterwards we found she spoke quite truly. She could not help it; it was the way she was made. Cats have the softest outsides, but the hardest hearts of all animals. Later on, nobody would have known that she was my mother from the way she bullied me, and let out with her paws when I passed her sometimes, without the slightest warning, and didn't seem to care when I hurt myself at all. There was the time when I was ill and fed out of that very forget-me-not spoon that ought to have stirred up tender recollections. I bit a piece out of that spoon in a fit of temper one day when I felt particularly bad, and was in a blue rage in consequence. I damaged the spoon, of course, as mother pointed out, but I hurt myself far more. I bled, and the spoon did not. It had a rivet put in it and was as well as ever again.
I felt mother's unkindness very much, and it was of a piece with many other bits of her conduct. I have got over it now; indeed, I have had my revenge if I had wanted it, when I saw her making a slave of herself over another lot of kittens just as she had done over us. She began to be grateful to me then, for I made myself useful taking her place in the basket sometimes, and keeping the little wretches warm while she took a turn and stretched her legs, and went to look if Auntie May had been given or had bought anything new. Mother always took notice of that sort of thing; nothing new that came into the house ever escaped her for long. She even knew when Mr. Graham was engaged on a different picture, at least he said she did. She used to stand on her hind legs and plant her fore paws on the ledge of the easel and look at the painting he was doing quite gravely. The artist himself was certain that she knew, and he used to tickle her neck with his brush or his mahl-stick and say, 'Well, Petronilla, do you approve of my new subject?' That is how mother ascertained that itwasnew, for if he had covered all the canvas up, without leaving one little weeny corner white, how on earth could a poor cat tell? While she was away on these voyages of discovery, I curled round the kittens, and they liked me for about ten minutes till they found I was not their mother. I could not feed them, only wash them, and that I did very nicely and thoroughly, so that mother said when she came back that she could not have done it better herself.
SHE USED TO STAND ON HER HIND LEGS AND LOOK AT THE PAINTING.
SHE USED TO STAND ON HER HIND LEGS AND LOOK AT THE PAINTING.
SHE USED TO STAND ON HER HIND LEGS AND LOOK AT THE PAINTING.
But this state of things was not until much later; for the present we four were the kittens of the hour, and she petted us, and was the dearest, sweetest little mother in the world.
We soon could do more than lap, we could eat things. Auntie May and Rosamond had a chafing-dish, and they used to cook all sorts of messes in it for us and for mother, who was very fussy about her food, and took dislikes to the most ordinary things. For instance, porridge she would not touch, or cod-liver oil biscuits, while Hovis food, or Horlick's, or a sardine put her out of her mind with delight. They say that a sardine will sometimes bring a dying cat back to life. They burnt methylated spirit in the chafing-dish, and the first time I saw the sly curling flame winding up among Auntie May's new novel, I confess I was frightened. But mother reassured us; she said if I looked attentively I would see that it was a very obedient flame, and would go straight up into the air and do no harm unless they interrupted it. She gave it a wide berth herself, and hoped we would do the same when we began to be able to get out of our basket and walk about. Auntie May and Rosamond were not so very careful, for once when they thought the spirit was getting low, Rosamond took the whole bottle and poured some more on. Huh! it took fire, and she dropped it pretty quick, and it broke, and there were three separate burning pools on the floor. Mother put a paw over us all, though we could not have got out of the bed even if we had wanted to, and gripped Freddy by the neck, ready to lift him out if it should be necessary. Luckily Auntie May was there, and there was a large flowerpot full of earth in the room. She tilted out the flower, head over roots, and poured the earth on the burning pools, instead of the water which Rosamond had torn off to the bathroom to get. It was soon out, and the poor child got a scolding and a lesson in chemistry from her grandpapa.
They had not got proper things to work with, mother said. They had no spoon, but used to stir up the mixture with the butt-end of one of Auntie May's pens. When it was ready, they would pour it out into any piece of china that was handy—Japanese pots and plates that cost a fortune, so I was told. Then they washed them up in the bath, and we used to hear this sort of thing: 'Mind that cloisonné, Rosamond!' or, 'That is a bit of Persian four-mark you have chipped, I do believe!' But it was no matter, they got a new bit out of the studio. Mr. Graham was a collector, and nothing was too good for the cats.
Up to now, none of us had ever succeeded in getting out of the bed by ourselves. We were lifted out by them to walk about a little, keeping our stomachs off the ground with great difficulty. Our legs had a strange tendency to slip away beyond us, 'doing splits' as they do in the pantomime—so Auntie May called our way of getting ourselves along. When at last we did succeed in keeping our legs at right angles to our bodies, we wobbled sadly, and longed to be put back again among the hay. But at times, when we weren't eating or sleeping, but thoroughly awake, and there wasn't much doing in the old dull bed, we used to try to get out of it. We three boys used to make a ladder of Zobeide, and, propping ourselves up on her, get over the edge in a jerk, but at first we could only one of us look over, and then Zobeide would meanly crumble away under us, and pitch us all head-over-heels into the bed again. She took an unfair advantage, too, and bit our hind legs.
One day, however, I managed to climb up without the help of Zobeide, till my paws rested on the top of the basket, and I was screwing up my hind legs till they came nearly up to join the front ones, when somebody—I believe it was Rosamond—gave the after-part of me a push and I came over on to the floor on my nose, which, luckily, is flat, not Roman. I rose unsteadily, and walked away like one in a dream. I think I must have walked right out of the door and into the bathroom. Rosamond was behind me, and I had a sort of feeling that I would like to run away from her—a feeling that I have had many a time since with nearly all of Them. It was because she was behind me. Now if she had been in front I should have longed to pass her, and then turn round and jeer at her. But as it was, Run! Run! was my motto, and into a corner for preference. I chose a corner, and squeezed myself in behind some old boxes in the bathroom. They must have been very full of dust, for I sneezed twice and so told Rosamond where I was, and she put a great hand like a house in and caught hold of me.
'Naughty little thing!' she said. That was the first hint I had that They expect us to stay beside them and not run away. I took the hint; at least, I was good enough to stop running away sometimes, when she said my name very decidedly. You never know what They may have in their hands to make it worth your while to stop; as often as not it is something to eat. Rosamond put me back in the box, and mother cleaned me for half-an-hour quite unnecessarily, saying, 'My children shall be kept unspotted from the world as far as I can manage it, for the world is very dirty.'
She is indeed most particular. She washed off the marks of people's hands carefully wherever they had touched us. It looks rude, I think, to see a cat, the moment it has been kindly stroked, turn round and begin to lick the stain away. Rosamond said it is just as if she took out her pocket-handkerchief after grandpapa had kissed her, and wiped her cheek with it.
We could all get out of our bed now. In fact, we would not stay in, except for sleeping and eating (mother still fed us a little, so as to let us down easy). We were all over the place, and the door of the study had to be always kept shut. Rosamond said that being cat-maid was much harder than lessons at home, for she could keep Fraülein in order, but she could not keep us.
'Ican'tkeep them in,' she complained to her grandpapa. 'I collect them all in my pinafore and drop them all into bed, and out they ooze in a moment like so many india-rubber balls! Fred especially is afiend. He is in to everything. He is outside everything. He touches everything—licks it mostly. I am glad to say that he burnt his nose badly the other day on the electric radiator. He won't touch that again in a hurry!'
No, that he won't! He singed off a bit of his whiskers, and we all laughed at him awfully. He was a queer little cat, not a bit like Zobeide or Togo.Wenever wanted to fight, but he lay down in a corner of the bed and said, 'Come on, you!' Then Zobeide or I took a hand, and he knocked us down and drove the straws into our eyes. Mother punished him by taking him in her arms and kicking him with her hind legs, but he bit her face and she had to leave off. When we packed ourselves to go to sleep, mother happening to be away, we always made a sort of cross, lying over each other for warmth, and Freddy always took the top, out of his turn, and having so much the biggest head, always managed to get his own way. We three others hoped that the first one of us Auntie May sold or gave away would be Fred, but nothing was said about that. Auntie May bought a ball with a jingle in it for us all, she distinctly said so, but Fred always assumed that it was his ball, and he went so far as to claw the jingle out of it, saying that it amused him quite as much without. We never got a chance of playing with that ball unless Auntie May happened to leave her house shoes in the room, and then Fred said we might take the ball, for he didn't get a chance of real leather to gnaw every day.
Altogether he was a terror, and Mary used to say she would like to wring his neck. That didn't frighten Fred; he knew she wouldn't do anything of the kind, and he went on jumping on to the back of her neck, and getting among the ashes when she was lighting the fire and being swept up by mistake, and plopping on to paper parcels, and eating coals, and needles, and buttons, and corks, and working off a hundred wicked tricks he had invented.
You see, Fred never would attend to mother's lectures when we were left quite alone in the room, and she told us all the little catly rules that we should have to guide our conduct by when we left her. Some of them, she said, were traditional, going back to the days beyond the dawn of history, when cats were worshipped. She said we must never forget that great fact, never allow ourselves to lose sight of it, but let it regulate all our conduct and our relations towards Them. They no longer worship us, though they are kind to us. They have perhaps forgotten, but we need not. Therefore we must be gentle, obedient, subservient to Them, but with a reservation. We should, if we thought proper, come to their call, but never with vulgar alacrity. She thought it the highest possible praise of a cat to have said of him, as Auntie May had once said of a friend's cat, 'The more he is called, the more he doesn't come.' We should find time to sit down on the way and make pretence to attend to our personal appearance, or what not. We might suffer Them to hold us in their arms, but not in inconvenient or indecorous positions, such as upside down, or round their necks like a boa, or pretending we are wheelbarrows, and so on. She said They—the more punctilious of Them—have a way of holding a cat up by the loose skin of its neck, that being considered the least uncomfortable one to us personally. Quite a mistake, she said; they only think so because we do not usually protest—how can we, when the skin is strained so tightly over our throats as to preclude all attempt at conversation? The only proper way to hold a cat is to take both hands to it and support the lower limbs, instead of letting the whole weight of the body depend from the shoulders or the paws. She told us how to open a door, if it was left ever so little ajar. That is to walk up it—about two good steps will do. If it is shut, the handle should be turned; but that needs special aptitudes. Then if we mew passionately before a closed door and it is opened for us, we should not go in, as would naturally occur to an undisciplined cat to do, but sit down at a distance and lick our face, so as to show we do not really care about it.
She told us the proper way to lie down—never at once, but after having described two or three circles. The right thing to do is to turn round and round, brushing our fur the right way till we are more or less in the form of a ball. Then, and not till then, we may definitely lie down with an expression of contentment if we feel like it. We are to imagine ourselves making a nest in some very high grass, beating it down all round us to form a bed before we can settle in for the night. Then we must tuck our heads in symmetrically, and safely too, taking care to keep one eye free, ready to open and see what is going on, and an ear cocked to hear strange or unusual sounds. That kind of high long grass was, she said, called jungle grass, and our ancestors long ago, in the time before they were worshipped, lived in the jungle and ran wild there. The worshipping came afterwards.
She taught us humility, too. When we heard the strays howling outside in the square garden, too weak to catch birds for their food perhaps, and begging a morsel or a cup of milk from door to door, we were to pause in our own feeding and think, 'This cat's ancestors were probably kings, like mine. I must not be stuck-up.'
Sometimes even Fred would leave off roaming and sitting away by himself, thinking over and planning some new bit of mischief to do, and come back to bed and take the warm place that Zobeide had made, and beg mother to tell us about 'Dirty Whitey' of the underground. We had all heard it many a time, but it was a nice story.
Mother had seen her once the time she was in the underground at Notting Hill Gate with Auntie May, and Auntie May had said:
'Oh, bother, there's that wretched cat again! It makes me quite sick to see it playing about between the rails.'
She was waiting for her train, and a nice porter was standing near her, and he said:
'Bless you, Miss, she knows her way better nor any of us. She takes a little walk to High Street, Kensington, now and again, and comes back quite safe and sound. She bringed up a family of kittens there in the tunnel and never a one was hurt. But I don't doubt myself she'll get copped some day!'
Auntie May said she thought so too, and she walked along to the other end of the platform to avoid seeing the white cat crossing the line just out of bravado as the train was coming in. When her own train came along, she said she felt as if that cat would be under it and be cut in bits. But it wasn't, for she saw it again a week later, and told mother. Then quite a month later she came in and told mother that 'Dirty Whitey' had been 'copped' at last.
'Whitey' had been chasing a rat across the metals when a train was just coming in, and professional pride had forbidden her to let go. So the train had cut off her head with the tail of that rat in her mouth—at least, so the porter had told Auntie May. We loved that story, and, as I have said, even Freddy used to come and listen when mother began to tell it to us.
Zobeide liked the story of the cat that walked all the way to London after its master, who was very meanly moving house and had intended not to take the family cat. Instinct, mother said. It seemed to work both ways, for another cat was brought in a covered basket away from the house it had been born in to one a hundred miles away in quite another part of the country. It never saw anything, for it had been packed up in the room in the first house, and the basket was not undone till they had got into a room in the other and shut the door. No matter, for that cat was not to be beaten. It just went straight up the chimney and home again. It evidently loved places better than people, Zobeide remarked.
'It is generally the way,' mother would answer, 'butIhappen to love Auntie May, and wheresheis, is home to me. I'm not sure I even believe those stories. I know that I should be puzzled to find my way back to Egerton Gardens, even if I wanted to! Probably if I once started, the gods of my ancestors would endow me with a sixth sense and show me the way.'
Admiral Togo always asked for the Whittington story and got it, but I didn't care for it. I liked the story of the cat that told the people of the house that the basement was on fire, by running into their bedroom with her coat all smouldering where a hot splinter had fallen on it, and the Pied Piper of Hamelin. That was all about rats, as it happened, but no matter, it made my mouth water.
We all had a most terrible shock. Waking up from our afternoon sleep, we found that instead of being four, we were only three. Admiral Togo had gone. Mother had been asleep too, but she missed Togo first, and went routing about among us to make quite sure.
'I can't surely have mislaid him,' we heard her muttering. 'Or is it what I fear?'
'Perhaps he has got over the edge of the bed into the great world,' said Zobeide, 'and is hiding somewhere to tease us.'
'Possibly,' mother said gently. She jumped out of bed, and looked all over the room and into every corner. She called gently to Togo once or twice, using a special pet name of her own, and she was still wandering about when Rosamond came up with mother's dinner. She saw the state of affairs at once.
'Aha, old girl, looking for your kitten?' she said. 'Can't find Togo, eh?'
It struck me as suspicious that she knew which of us mother was seeking without looking into the basket. Mother answered quite crossly, 'No, nothing in particular.' She didn't want Rosamond to know that she valued Togo, or any kitten that ever was born.
'Well, then, dear Pet, I must tell you. Togo was getting too old to run about with women and children, and he has had his curls cut off, and been packed off to a preparatory school!'
'Tsha!' mother spat angrily. She didn't choose to be chaffed by a child. 'School! I am not going to be put off with a cock-and-bull story like that.'
But she couldn't keep it up for very long. She did really care what had become of Admiral Togo, and she hung her head and dropped her tail and tried to get behind the door.
'Poor Petronilla! You seem very much distressed!' observed Auntie May, coming in just then, and kindly lifting mother up, and putting her back with us. 'But you are a sensible cat—I never knew a sensibler—and you have been through this kind of thing before. Cheer up! You have three left.'
'And I wonder how long I shall have them?' mother muttered. 'You are making pretty quick work with them. You have killed one, and now you have sold the other—'
Her bitterness made her unjust, because Auntie May didn't kill Blanch, though she certainly had sold Admiral Togo, for what Rosamond said next showed it.
'May I go and see Togo?'
'You may. I am sure Mrs. Dillon will have no objection, but don't imagine for a moment that Togo will be glad to seeyou. Cats have hardly any memories, and kittens none at all. And a good thing too, for treated as chattels as they are they would have wretched lives of it.Theydon't listen to the rain upon the roof and think of other days, or have tears come into their eyes when they look at sunsets because they feel so ancient—'
'Why, Auntie May, you are talking like an old cat, while you are only a young woman. You aren'tveryold—notmorethan thirty, are you?'
'That is just the most miserable age,' said Auntie May; 'when I am forty I shall be as cheerful as—old boots!' She actually wiped a tear away as she spoke. 'Good gracious me, Pet is simply murdering Freddy! Drop it—drop it!'
'Please don't interfere!' mother said, as well as she could speak with her mouth full of Freddy. 'If you only knew what he had been up to this afternoon you would be obliged to me, I can tell you! You will miss It presently, and wonder where it has got to. But I'll make the boy tell me where it is, and put it back too, before I have done with him!'
She gave it to Fred well, but she spared his pride and never tolduswhere he had put Auntie May's opera-glasses. She hit very hard herself, but she never allowed us to lay a paw on each other, except in kindness. She was so afraid of our hurting each other, like Uncle Tomyris, who pulled out Uncle Ra's left eye once in a cattery brawl.
'They got Professor Hobday to come and fit him with an artificial one. They really did, word of an honest cat!' mother said. She told us some other things that the Professor did, such as bandaging a cat's broken arm and putting it in splints, also false teeth, but that was a dog, I think, and it was worth about three hundred pounds. No cat that ever was born was worth that, mother says, but it is They who settle what we are all to cost, and They might be mistaken. They have agreed that cats are inferior to dogs; you may be as silly as you like about a dog, and even believe he has got a soul if you like, but a cat!—'My dear, it's too absurd!'
I hear this kind of thing in the drawing-room on Auntie May's at-home day, when we are often carried downstairs in a basket and allowed to play about and amuse the people. One hears a good deal. People who don't like cats think that Auntie May makes a perfect fool of herself about us. Once when Auntie May was persuaded to bring us down, to please a Mrs. Wheeler, I heard, with my own big ears, Mrs. Wheeler begin her sentence one way and finish it another.
'Lovely creatures, so beautiful in the firelight, when the light catches their outside fur and makes it shine like silver—' (Then Auntie May moved off and she went on) 'Poor, dear May! She is a bit of a bore with her cats, don't you think so? Do you notice how she always brings the conversation round to them in the end? It is a great mistake. She will be an old maid, it's a sure sign! Look at her now with a saucer on the floor and those three cats making a Manx penny all round it, and a nice man wanting to talk to her, and can't get a word from her! He looks disgusted, and no wonder!'
Auntie May didn't really keep us downstairs very long, and the nice man, as it happened, carried us up for her to her study, and put us all back in our basket, and stayed up talking with her quite a long time, and talking about Mrs. Wheeler, the very woman who had been abusing Auntie May for loving us so.
'She's a cat, that's what she is!' the nice man said, and Auntie May agreed, which was rather insulting to us. I am, however, not quite sure whether he didn't say adinstead of at, which with them makes quite a different word.
Presently they said it was June, and the weather got beautiful. Auntie May thought we ought to take the air in the garden, and be allowed to run about on the grass. Rosamond was overjoyed, and so were we, at first. Then we began to get frightened. There was absolutely nothing on the top of us except the sky and the sun. I missed the nice sheltering bed and the cosy walls of the room we had lived in always. I felt as if the top of my skull had been taken off. I saw nothing to hide under either, except black poles that simply ran up straight into the blue. The sun was very hot, too, and I suppose I looked wretched, for suddenly Rosamond said:
'I do believe Loki has got a sunstroke, like Kitty had last year. His poor little head is so hot—feel!'
Auntie May was in such a fright that she bundled us all into the house.
Next day, when the sun was not quite so hot, she took us out again and we soon got used to it. Sometimes she chose me alone and took me on a lead and held the loop of it while she worked. She wrote on great white sheets of paper that the wind got under and tried to blow away. She told me to make myself useful and be a paperweight, but then when I sat on the freshly-written sheets it spread the ink all about and she did not seem to like that. At last the wind went down and she got interested and forgot me entirely. Rosamond sneaked the end of the lead out of her hand when she was not looking and held it; it seemed to give her the greatest pleasure to hold me in. It is odd how that child likes managing people, and positively begs for responsibility. Well, she took it this time, and a nice mess she made of it!
She opened her hand as she got interested in her book, and I simply walked away with the lead bobbling after me. I liked responsibility too.
Suddenly I saw a dog coming towards me—I knew it was a dog from the one that was embroidered on the child's crawler we had to lie on at home. He was black, coarse-furred, with small mean eyes, and a fringe that kept tumbling into them. He approached me. I did not like to turn, or cringe, or look afraid, but I felt my tail stiffening and my claws sliding out all ready, by no will of my own. There was an odd feeling in my back too. I knew as well as if you had told me that I should be rude and spit at him if he came nearer.
He did. I spat. He barked. Still Auntie May didn't leave off putting her pencil in her mouth and writing with it. Then my mood changed. I felt I should like to leave that dog—I wanted not to be where it was. After all I was only a kitten, and I turned round slowly and walked in the direction of Auntie May.
He came prancing after me. I ran. He ran. The lead was most awfully in my way. I went straight past Auntie May in my nervousness, and up one of the straight black poles that seemed to lead up to Heaven—out of that dog's way, at any rate. It was a tree, so I heard after. Perhaps he could climb too—I didn't know! It was an instinct. The loop of the lead lay along the ground, and the idiotic puppy, as he must have been, hadn't the sense to hang on to it and drag me down. I think it was pretty clever of me to climb my first tree handicapped and shackled like that. Auntie May heard his short, sharp, cross barks, and came running and caught hold of the end of the lead to prevent me from going any higher up. Some people called off the puppy, and then, and not till then, did I allow myself to come down on to her shoulder, which she obligingly held under the exact bit of tree I was on.
OUT OF THAT DOG'S WAY AT ANY RATE.
OUT OF THAT DOG'S WAY AT ANY RATE.
OUT OF THAT DOG'S WAY AT ANY RATE.
It was much easier to go up than to come down. Perhaps I was excited then and made light of difficulties, but still mother told me that it was always the same way with her. Cats should look before they climb.
I scratched Auntie May's nose terribly for her as I came down, and it bled and had to be bathed. She was most kind about it.
'Never mind, darling, it won't matter. I am an ugly thing anyway, and I haveonlygot to be presented at Court to-morrow! Just a little unimportant occasion of that kind.'
'Can't you explain to the Queen,' said Rosamond, 'that your cat scratched you? I have always heard she is so very kind.'
'No, I shan't worry her with explanations,' said Auntie May; 'only soldiers' scratches are worth talking about. Let us go in.'
Mother lectured me when she heard of my adventure. 'You should not have run,' she said, 'with that great heavy lead and all. If he had had the spirit of a flea he would have broken your back for you. You should not have shown it him; you should have stopped still and gone for his nose. That hurts, and he knows it. He would have run away from you the moment you raised your paw. Remember!'
At the end of July Rosamond was taken home by somebody who was travelling up to Yorkshire. Her mother was not very well and wanted her. In fact, for the whole of August Auntie May was always worrying about Beatrice, Rosamond's mother, who was her twin-sister. She said she couldn't quite make out from Beatrice's letters what was the matter with her, or if it was serious or no, and though she paid several visits to big country houses in August she did not enjoy them. We were left to the care of Mary, who was becoming a very excellent cat's-maid, and so mother told Auntie May whenever she came home, and that, although she never could love Mary as much as she loved Auntie May, she had not wanted for anything during her absence.
At last Beatrice's letters got so scanty and muddly that Auntie May said she must go and see her and find out for herself. So she telegraphed to Tom, her brother-in-law, that she was going down to Crook Hall on Thursday, whether they wanted her or not.
The answer came back, and puzzled Auntie May very much:
'Do—want—you—bring—kitten.'
'Bring kitten?Why should I? Beatrice doesn't want to keep kittens because she has so many dogs. What can it mean? This is some game of Rosamond's, I'll be bound. I'llnottake a kitten.'
But the more she thought over it, the more she felt that Tom wouldn't have putBring Kittenunless he wanted one. He is a man who doesn't talk any more than he need, and it was he who had sent the telegram off himself. Beatrice wanted the kitten for some reason or other, there was not a doubt of it, or Tom wanted Beatrice to have a kitten. She began to think shewouldtake a kitten.
'I will take the strongest,' she said. 'Petronilla, which do you consider your strongest kitten?'
Mother answered, 'Frederick B. Nicholson, as you call him,' but of course Auntie May couldn't understand her. She sat down by the basket, where we still spent most of our time, and talked to us about ourselves.
'Freddy's nose is too long—makes him rather snipe-faced—but his paws are broad and magnificent, and his eyes golden. Zobeide, your tail is a weeny-weeny bit too thin and drawn out at the tip, and your ears too pointed and long. You, Loki, have got a tolerably neat little chubby face of your own, but your ears are not tufted, and your nose, if you were human, would be an impertinent snub. Still, you are going to be a fluffy cat, one can see that, and invalids—if poor Beatrice really is an invalid—prefer fluffiness. I think I'll take you, Loki. No, Fred, not you, indeed, you pertinacious darling, for you always go for one's eyes, you are such a dangerous cat, without a single atom of self-control. So, Loki, you may as well say goodbye to your mother and make the most of her, for she just won't know you when you come back. Get him ready for me, Petronilla, by to-morrow morning, will you?'
'So Beatrice is an invalid!' said mother, after she had gone. 'It is bad for you, my child. But now listen attentively to your mother, and perhaps she may tell you how to avoid any bad effects. If they put you on the patient's bed, keep as near the foot as you can; don't lie near her or take her breath. I always believe in giving invalids a very wide berth. I remember once that my old mistress, Miss Jane Beverley, was very ill, and I had kept away as much as I could. She did not want me either; she didn'treallylove cats. One day, however, I was curious to know how she was going on and I ventured into her sick-room, though it was a foolish thing to do. From what I observed myself, I concluded that she was on the high road to recovery. We know better than They do. It is the air that blows from people that are not going to get better that tells us about it. No such airs came from her. I leaped on to the bed and went right up to her face and stroked her chin. You should have heard her old nurse:
'"Bless us, ma'am," she almost screamed, "you're going to get well. The cat's taken to you again!"
'She was an unusually skilled nurse to know this principle that is so strong in cats, and let her judgment be swayed by it.'
'And did Miss Beverley get well?' asked Zobeide.
'Of course—till next time. They die, you know, like us, in the end.'
Next morning came, and Auntie May was very sad and serious. I believe she was quite frightened about her sister. She had a basket lined, with torn-up bits of paper in it, brought in for me, and at the very last moment I was put into it by Mary. Mother came and sniffed at me as I lay inside, and advised me not to go and get all the skin off my face trying to pick at the walls of the basket to open it, but lie still and try to sleep, and eat a little grass the first chance I got on arriving at Crook Hall.
Then Mary came back into the room hastily. They have got so into the habit of telling us things that she said to mother as she took me up, 'Cab's at the door!' She carried me down, and I suppose it was Auntie May who took hold of me, for I heard Mr. Graham kiss her several times, and I suppose he wouldn't kiss Mary, though he says she is a very good servant. We went out of the door, for I felt the rush of fresh air against the sides of the basket, and I sniffed, and then I felt so terribly strange that I am ashamed to say I did give one long 'Miau!' as I was carried across the pavement to the cab. I saw nothing, of course, but mother had explained to me all the probable stages of my journey.
There began the strangest, weirdest series of noises I had ever heard then, though I have, I am sorry to say, heard them many a time since. Howling, rushing, grating, bumping, rolling, trotting, whistling, screeching, hitting—and spitting, if I may say so. We seemed to be always going up and down stairs. I mewed a few small mews, and Auntie May spoke to me through the walls of the basket and said, 'Hush! hush!' very gently, and I hushed, and only grunted to inform her how I felt.
Then at last all was still, except for a curious rushing noise that never stopped. The rocking motion that went with it was very pleasant and soothing, and made one feel quite stupid. Suddenly I felt Auntie May's hand slide into the basket, which I licked and lay down against. I was quite easy in my mind after that, but getting more and more stupefied every minute. Presently she opened the lid of the basket and I sat up and looked about.
We seemed to be in a small, plain, unfurnished house, with nothing in it but seats and a hat-rack. A large man, far bigger than Auntie May's little papa, was sitting opposite her and reading a sheet of enormous printed paper. In the other corner was a lacy black woman. When the basket was opened she jumped and frightened me, and Auntie May said, 'Sit still, nervous little cat!'
'Oh, what a darling!' the woman exclaimed. 'May I just touch it?' She did touch me, but Auntie May held my hind paws firmly down in the basket. She needn't have bothered, I don't go to strangers.
'Mightn't he jump out? Aren't you awfully nervous about him?' cackled the black woman. 'Isn't he a sweet colour? He is like that new grey pastel shade they brought out in Paris last year. Teuf-Teuf, they called it—something to do with the automobiles? Why don't you call him Teuf-Teuf? Such a sweet name for a cat!'
'Because somehow he happens to have a name already,' Auntie May said, extra sweetly, because she was so bored by the lady and wanted to read her novel.
'Why doesn't he have a yellow ribbon round his dear neck? A yellow ribbon would look so sweet—so like Velasquez' scheme of colouring!'
'I never allow my cats to wear horse-collars,' said Auntie May, 'for fear of spoiling their ruffs. I think Imustput you in again, darling, for I want to read. You won't mind, will you, for I will leave you my hand to lick!'
So down went the lid on me, and the lady in the corner calmed down, though she still chirped occasionally like the birds in the square garden in the mornings.
The rushing and the rocking stopped suddenly, and I heard a voice call out 'Darlington!'
'Oh, how sweet!' said the lady in the corner. 'And what are you going to do with your darling cat?'
'Put him on the rails!' said Auntie May, quite rudely. 'Goodmorning!'
But we did not catch our train; it had gone. We had missed the connection. 'Tant pis!' Auntie May said (which means 'All the worse!'). 'We will go and put an ornamental frill round something.'
That meanteat, as I found soon enough. She opened the basket and turned me out on to a marble tablecloth, very cold to the feet, and gave me a saucer full of milk. I don't like eating off anything white, for that always means getting banged. Auntie May's way of preventing kittens from stealing off tables is to associate eating off anything white in their minds with a whipping. However, in this case it was she herself who put me up to it. When we had done (Auntie May ate a couple of sponge-cakes) we went to another room where a woman in grey was sitting over the fire knitting, and Auntie May talked to an old gentleman with black silk gaiters and a black silk pinafore like Rosamond's, who turned out to be the bishop of the town near where Beatrice lived. It was all delightful, except that people kept opening the door of the room and looking in and going away again, making me jump every time, and the bishop too. Iama nervous little cat, as Auntie May told the black lady, and I am to Fred as a carthorse is to a racehorse. After we had sat there for what seemed a long time, a guard put his head in at the door and said, as if it didn't particularly matter, 'Anybody here for the four-fifteen?'
It did matter, and everybody jumped up except the grey-haired woman, who went on knitting. Auntie May popped me into the basket, and fastened the lid safely; the bishop offered to carry me, but she would not let him. I was relieved, and I think by the sound of his voice he was relieved too. I did not mew, for it would only distress her and disgrace her before her new friend. Besides, I was full, and you have no idea what a difference it makes. I curled round and determined to take no notice of any sort of noise. Even when Auntie May prodded me with her finger kindly, I wished she would not, for I felt too stupid to mew, and just wanted to be let alone for the rest of the journey. Besides, I felt rather sick. They should not fill one up with milk like a bottle and then shake one about. I wished I had refused it at the time.
The train slowed down, and the bishop said, 'Can I be of assistance to you in any way?'
'Thank you very much,' Auntie May said, 'but Tom, my brother-in-law, will meet us. There he is!'
Then, I think, she forgot all about the bishop, for she said to some one at the carriage window, in a fearfully excited voice, 'Oh, Tom, how is she? Ihavebrought a kitten—'
Tom did not answer, but I fancy he shook his head, or something that didn't seem hopeful, for Auntie May squeaked, 'Oh dear!' in not at all her usual voice.
Tom seemed only business-like. 'Where's your ticket? Hand it over. Had you to take a dog ticket for this little brute?'
'Tom!'
'All right. Come on!'
They did not say a word to each other till we had walked a little way and stood about a little, and Auntie May had taken a step up with me and sat down. And then the rolling and rocking began again. I was nearly dead with fuss and different ways of travelling. But I listened to what was said.
'She hardly knew us yesterday,' he was saying. He had a deep big voice, much louder than May's father's voice, but then Mr. Graham is an artist and Tom Gilmour is a sportsman, and is always calling to things across bogs and moors to follow him or come to heel, so mother told me. He went on, choking rather:
'It was a sort of faint. She got quite cold, and the nurse said, "Anythingto rouse her, sir! I wish she had a pet, sir!" And I was sending for you anyhow, and so I said, "Would a kitten do?" and the woman said, "Might try it, sir." So I sent that message to you, "Bring a cat!" Pretty comic, wasn't it? Ho, ho!'
It was a melancholy sort of cackle, but Auntie May cried out:
'Oh, Tom, how can you laugh with Beatrice in such a state?' She began to cry herself and rock about in the carriage.
'Better to laugh than cry with an invalid any day,' said Tom. 'And I tell you what, May, my dear, if you are going to be a hysterical muff, you had much better not have come down at all. You will do Beatrice more harm than good. Stow it, can't you? Good Lord, now there's the wretched brute in the basket beginning to caterwaul!'
I wasnotcaterwauling, only trying to tell Auntie May to be quiet and that Tom was quite right. But one is so easily misunderstood. However, Auntie May got sensible all at once, and thanked Tom for speaking sharply to her, and said she meant to do Beatrice good, not harm, and would he like to see the little kitten, and she had chosen the prettiest, and so on.
'If you like you can let the beast out,' he said roughly. 'I look upon all cats as vermin myself. I know I shoot 'em pretty quick when they come into the garden. They are so beastly destructive, you know, worse than rabbits even. Here, yank him out and let's see the little beggar.'
So out I came, and I at once crawled all over his nice great knees, covered with thick lovely wool that I could pick up with my claws in handfuls and not be missed. My claws were little and the stuff was thick, not like the clothes of Auntie May's friends, male and female. The men squirm when I get on their knees and try to bear it, but the women jump up and squeak the moment you touch them. They have only got one coating probably under their thin muslin gowns, being ridiculously under-furred. But Tom only grinned and said:
'Go it, little un! You can't hurtme. Beatrice's knitted stockings will stand a good deal. Poor darling! I only wish I knew whether she would ever knit me any more of them!'
'Nowyoumustn't be depressed!' said Auntie May, patting his knees. She was awfully fond of Tom I could see, and he of her, though he abused her all the time, and laughed at her novels and her editors and publishers, and her life in London generally, so different from his and Beatrice's. I was very eager to see Beatrice, because she was Auntie May's sister and Rosamond's mother, but I was not allowed to until after supper, mine and Auntie May's. We had it with Tom alone, and he hardly said a word all dinner, though the nurse came down and told us that Beatrice was much better and hadn't fainted at all that day, and had eaten quite a fair meal at seven.
After supper, about half-past eight, Auntie May took me in her arms and carried me into a bedroom. A stiff woman was there with a white cap and apron on. On the bed, that was very prettily trimmed and arranged with painted flowers and real flowers all about it, was Beatrice. She had yellow hair trained all over the pillow, tied up with blue bows, and a great many of them. Her eyes were very wide open and sad. She was a very tall woman, for she stretched a good way under the bedclothes. She put out a wretchedly thin sort of claw to take hold of me—she had seen Auntie May before, just for a minute.
'Oh, you sweet, right, absolutely perfect thing,' she said to me. 'May, how did you know that it was exactly what I wanted?'
All this was so fearfully and wonderfully polite that I made a great effort and conquered my own repugnance to an ill person, and flinging mother's mean counsels to the winds, I let her take me in her arms and fold me up quite close to her, almost inside the sheets, and squeeze me till I thought she would drive all the breath out of my body. At any rate, the poor sick thing was happy, and it is a delightful feeling to be giving any one pleasure like that. I didn't even squeal. She was far too weak to do it again, luckily, but lay quite still with her arms slack, letting me lie on her chest, curled up so that it would take me some time to go away. I think They ought to know that if once you get a cat to curl wherever it is you want him to settle, he has accepted the situation, and there is no fear of his running away for the present.
'Will you leave it with me, May, dear? Will it stop alone with me without you, do you think?'
'Oh, it is very young, it hasn't learnt to lovemeyet!' Auntie May said hastily. 'It will stay with you all right—that is, if nurse permits it.'
She raised her eyebrows at the nurse and the nurse nodded.
'I can't say I approve of cats in the sick-room, Miss,' she said in a low voice while Beatrice was fondling me, 'but for this once—and it seems to have done her so much good, too!'
Auntie May said, 'You see, we are all like that in our family—perfectly mad on cats. It is only because my sister lives in the country, where cats are so apt to go a-hunting and get killed, that she doesn't have the house full of them. You see, I know how she feels, as I am her twin-sister. Now I will go and tell my brother-in-law of the success of his prescription.'
Before she left the room she bent down and whispered to me:
'Be a good boy, and stay behind willingly, and don't come squealing after me the moment the door shuts behind me, or I'll never forgive you, Loki, so just you mind!'
'What are you two mumbling together?' asked Beatrice pleasantly. 'I won't have any secrets. I want Loki's undivided allegiance, please.'
So I stayed with Beatrice all night, and the nurse most officiously stayed too. There was a sweet little dancing light on the mantelpiece that I could not take my eyes off, as it flickered over the edge of its silver dish. Beatrice never seemed to sleep. The nurse fed her twice—once it was cornflour, for they gave me the remainder of it. The nurse was kind on the whole, but rather contemptuous. I told mother about her afterwards, and mother said nurses always were contemptuous—that is, if they were any good. The coaxing, sweet-spoken ones never got any authority, and usually were changed in a month.
This one didn't mind showing that she thought Beatrice an utter fool to want to keep a grey kitten with her day and night, but she had seen so many invalids she was never surprised at anything. When she was not nursing Beatrice, she sat and made herself stiff white calico aprons, and broke a needle over every seam. She took me down to Auntie May for my meals, lifting me very gently, as if I had been a 'case'; but she hadn't the slightest idea where my bones came, as Auntie May did—I could tell that from the way she carried me.
I sawherhaving her meals once. She crooked her little finger over the handle of the teacup as she drank and stopped between each mouthful, and when the parlour-maid, who waited on her very crossly, asked her if she would have another helping of mutton, she answered, 'Thank you, I have sufficient,' and to the same question about her beer, she replied, 'Not any more, thank you!'
It was while I was in Beatrice's bedroom that I first saw myself in the glass. I thought it was another cat at first. I kissed it, and its mouth was very cold. Then I lifted my paw to shake paws with it, as it seemed so anxious to be friends. It did exactly what I did. This was unsatisfactory somehow. I got cross, and dabbed at its paw with mine; and then I got crosser still and dabbed just anywhere all over the place, and it seemed quite as furious as I was and dabbed too. I should have gone on for ever if Beatrice hadn't asked what that scratching, pattering noise was? The nurse answered, 'The cat sees himself in the glass, Madam,' in the little stiff voice she had.
So that was all, and I was very much hurt at having been made such a fool of, and what is more, I did not believe it. Itwasa ghost.
Some cats believe in ghosts, some don't, mother told me. She herself sees them. I longed to get home again and compare notes with mother. What I saw may have been the ghost of Great-Uncle Tomyris, whom I am supposed to resemble. I sometimes went and exposed myself to him again, but not too often; I had a shy feeling about him. I simply detested being held up to a glass to see him, as Auntie May sometimes chose to do, with great want of tact. I would not fight him, or even touch him; why should I? His nose was awfully cold, and sent a thrill through me, as of one who comes from another world.
Beatrice got slowly better, and I got ill. They did not feed me right, but brought me remains of sticky, greasy made dishes with queer flavours that would disagree with any cat. We like to live very simply, and I was little more than a kitten. But Ihadto eat something to keep body and fur together, and yet what I did eat did not nourish me, and only did me harm.
'His little stomach is like a drum,' Beatrice said sadly. 'He has got indigestion. What could you fancy, my pet, my sweet? I wish I could guess and I would give it you.'
I wanted a piece of plain lean beef, minced for preference, or shredded, but I knew cooks didn't like setting the mincing-machine in motion 'for a cat!' so I supposed I should not get it, though I knew Auntie May had ordered it for me. It is funny how people, inferior people, think a cat can eat anything. Auntie May always takes in the butcher by not allowing the cook at home to send for 'pieces for cats.' If you mention that it's for a cat, she says, the butcher or the fishmonger always wraps up the meat or fish in newspaper, she has noticed that particularly.
I wished she would go into the kitchen and blow up that cook. She was so bothered about Beatrice that she was not herself, and seemed to have forgotten me, in spite of her loving words when she came across me on the stairs or anywhere.
Beatrice had massage, and she knew how it was done and she gave me some, which relieved the pain a little. She used to rub my stomach gently for half-an-hour together, and when I at last got well she was firmly persuaded that she had cured me. I knew better. It was Tom.
Tom never took much notice of me, but once when he was leaning over Beatrice's bed she told him that I was not well.
'Poor brute,' said he, 'I should like to know how it could be well! Fed on messes and deprived of exercise! No dog could thrive on a regimen like that, and I suppose a cat is put together something after the same fashion.'
'But,' said Beatrice, 'how can he have exercise, Tom? They tell me that there were two degrees of frost the night before last, and the garden is a mush, and the grass all white with rime!'
'No matter, that's what he wants. Look at him!'
I had risen and gone across to the window to try to signify to Them that I agreed with Tom, who added, 'The poor little beggar knows what is good for him.'
'It isn't good for him to wet his little silver feet,' said Beatrice.
'I bet you it wouldn't hurt him. Be as good as a Beecham's pill to the little fellow,' said Tom, who was getting quite excited over his idea. I was leaping about, alternately rubbing myself against the window and then against his knee. 'Look here, Beatrice, I'll take him out. I'll take the responsibility.'
'Do what you like, Tom, but whatever you do don't let May catch you.'
'May is in the dark room, developing some photos. Come on, you kid!' He lifted me as nicely as Auntie May could; his hands were enormous, and one of them seemed to swallow me all up, and hiding me under the lapel of his coat, he slunk downstairs with me, chuckling all the time. He opened the hall door, carried me across the gravel, which was soaking, and dropped me on to the lawn.
Wow! but it was wet! I stood a moment undecided, but then I saw that good Tom on the other side of the patch of grass dangling something in his hand. My courage came to me and I darted across, squelching out wet at every step I took. Tom, of course, wasn't at the other end when I got there, but at the place I had just left, still waving the enticing thing, whatever it was. I scuttled after him, and we played that game three times, and I felt like a new cat. The fourth time he stayed, and let me get hold of the object, which was nothing more than an old leather bit of strap that he punished the dogs with, and when I had got my teeth well into it, he caught me up by it and carried me back to Beatrice.
'Here's your precious cat! Now dry his feet and polish them up for all you're worth; put a shine on them, if you can'—he handed her a towel—'and don't leave a wet hair on him.'
I was all right after that. Also the rime went off the grass, and it was rather fine for October, and they got into the way of letting me go out a little regularly. Auntie May protested, and said it had never been done in our family, but Tom assured her it could do me no harm if I was brought in and not allowed to sit about with damp feet. I simply loved Tom, for it was he who cured me far more than the massage, and got me leave to run about in the garden and try to catch things.
I never caught anything, but all sorts of things tried to catch me. Once it was three thrushes that hunted me across the lawn in front of the drawing-room windows, and a strange dog once strayed in, attracted by the sight of me, and I should have had a bad time, only that Beatrice always took care to have a window left open somewhere on all the sides of the house for me to fly in to in case of need.
Thehousedogs had all been introduced to me and told to leave me alone, and they jolly well obeyed. Beatrice said she never could have believed that they would have tolerated me as they did. They not only tolerated me—I saw to that myself, for I very soon began to lord it over them and take any seat I fancied, even though it had been Peg's or Meg's before—they got to treat me as gentlemen treat ladies, moving out of any nice place when I approached, and never thinking of going out of a room before me. We could not understand each other in the least, and I have often wondered why, since I can understand Beatrice and Auntie May, and all the big ones so well. The dogs make absurd noises and bark, but perhaps it means nothing, and they onlythinkthey are talking! Anyway they are not nearly such conversational creatures as cats; they often get through a whole day without uttering a sound. Now I can't even enter a room without making a remark, and when anything has happened to me I come in and tell Them, forgetting They can't understand me. Auntie May always listens politely.
'What is all this you are trying to tell me?' she said, when I came in one day full of the adventure of the tame rabbit which had insulted me. Kitty had brought it out on the lawn to be introduced to me and we had just rubbed noses, when it suddenly turned round and tossed up its heels, all over mould, in my face and scuttled off. Ill-bred thing! I tried to tell Them, but it was no use. Rosamond said, 'What is it all about, little talking cat? Auntie May, just listen, he is bubbling away with conversation, and most awfully interested in himself and what has happened to him. IwishI could understand.'
Up to now I had been kept as much as possible with Beatrice; but when she was better and able to come down, I realised that there were three children in the house—my old friend Rosamond, of course, and two others, Amerye and Kitty, whom I had hardly seen at all.
Heaps of people kept cropping up. There was Miss Grueber, their governess, and Annie, their schoolroom-maid. After Beatrice had been downstairs and 'on the sofa' a week, her mother-in-law, Tom's mother, a Mrs. Gilmour, came, and I scratched her.
She made the most fearful fuss, and I am ready to declare that my claw was not shot out with any degree of violence, nor did it penetrate more than the eighth of an inch into her hand. But she said her arm would mortify. She complained of a twisting sort of pain reaching up as far as her elbow, and wore her arm in a sling to keep the blood out of it. She said there was poison in cat's nails as well as in that of human beings, only their nails don't affect you unless that human being is in a rage. She went about with a 'poor-poor' face, and requested that I might be removed if I happened to be in the room when she came into it. I often hid when she was there, for though I disliked her and would not ever go near her again, or play with her bobbly fringe or the ends of her fur stole, I found her amusing and liked to listen to the absurd things she said and the stories she told, although I hardly believed them. She said she herself was indifferent to cats if they didn't come near her, but there were people who fainted away if a cat came into the room where they were. That I afterwards had reason to know was true, for it coloured my whole life.
One day Beatrice was downstairs lying on the sofa in a sweet lace thing with lots of fascinating frills to play with. I refrained because she had been ill. She told us she had put on this lovelynégligéebecause Mr. Fox was coming to tea.
'Who is Mr. Fox?' asked Auntie May.
'Oh, a very nice man who has taken Shortleas this year. I don't know where he comes from—London, I suppose—but I met him somewhere before I was ill and found we were neighbours—if you call five miles apart neighbours—and thought we might as well be civil to him. I asked him to tea while you were here—I thought perhaps he might like to meet a London authoress.'
Auntie May looked cross, as she always does when they talk of her books, which she doesn't think much of, only they bring her pocket money, and as Mr. Graham is always spending his on old silver and enamel, it is important to her. Then as it was still quite early, and Mr. Fox wasn't likely to come till tea-time, Beatrice civilly asked Mrs. Gilmour to play something to us.
Mrs. Gilmour said she wouldn't, at first, but Beatrice worried her to do it, knowing that she meant to in the end, and at last the old lady opened the instrument, as she called it, and began.
In all my life I never heard anything like it! The old thing's gnarled fingers hopped and skipped and jumped and rattled about like hailstones, and the notes bobbed up under them as if they were alive. I longed to catch them, but I dared not go any nearer to the terrible noise.
'Lovely!' murmured Beatrice, closing her eyes.
'Sweet!' said Auntie May, pegging away at her fancy work that she wants to get done.
I felt perfectly sick, and as if my inside was being pulled right out of me. I should have died if I couldn't have run away and hidden myself somewhere. Down, down went my tail, as we cats always put it when in trouble, and I crept under the Chesterfield sofa, wishing only that my ears had been smaller and did not let the sound in so much.
'I love the minor key,' said Auntie May, and then I knew what it wasIdisliked so much.
Presently there was a scrunch on the gravel outside; not a cart or trap scrunch, but a motor scrunch, which is quite different. Auntie May gave a pat to her hair, and Beatrice a tug to her skirt, and whispered to Auntie May in fun:
'Now mind you don't shock him, you wild London girl!'
Mrs. Gilmour must have heard the scrunch too, but she went on playing louder than ever, only jumping up with a little mew of surprise as the door opened and Barton announced: 'Mr. Fox.'
I could see Mr. Fox by lifting up the edge of the valance of the sofa with my nose, and I took a good look at him. He was very tall, and very dark-haired, and stooped a little. I dropped the edge of the valance again, for it was tiring, and I could tell things about him by using my ears—for instance, that he was a very shy man.
He was, of course, introduced to Auntie May, and for the rest of his visit he sat staring at her. I guessed this from the direction of his voice when he spoke. Mrs. Gilmour talked to him most, and all about the poor, and why they want a three-roomed cottage instead of a two-roomed one.
'I should think every family wanted a spare room,' said Auntie May, 'to stow their mother-in-law—or the cat.'
'Don't be flippant, May,' said Beatrice, and Mr. Fox seemed to be wriggling on his chair, for it creaked. I suppose he didn't like her to make fun of mothers-in-law; but if his was like Mrs. Gilmour, it would be difficult to help it.
Presently I looked out and saw that he had pulled his handkerchief out and then didn't seem to know what to do with it. Very soon, however, he began to put it to his mouth and I could hear him gasp.
'Do ring, May,' said Beatrice. 'I can see that Mr. Fox is dying for tea after his long drive.'
'Not at all,' Mr. Fox blurted out. 'Not at all. I never take tea, I—'
'Have a brandy and soda, then. Tom always does.'
'Mr. Fox looks quite pale,' said Mrs. Gilmour.
'The fact is,' said Mr. Fox, and his voice trembled, 'I am not very—I am afraid I cannot stop for tea to-day.'
'I am afraid you are not well, Mr. Fox. Last time you came I had the pleasure of pouring you out a very strong cup.'
'I know,' mumbled poor Mr. Fox. 'The heat'—it was drizzling snow and sleet at that very moment—'I want air. I feel I must leave you; the truth is, I am so unfortunately constituted'—here he simply gasped. 'I am convinced that there is a cat in the room.'
'There isn't, that I know of. But if there was—'
'I am sorry to say I am sure of it, from my ridiculous weakness. I have been subject to it from childhood. I cannot breathe—I feel positively faint if one of those animals is anywhere in my neighbourhood.'
'May, if your wretched cat is hidden under the sofa—hunt it out quick, or poor Mr. Fox will faint!'
'Please don't disturb your pet for me,' said poor Mr. Fox, politely. 'I had much better go. I am quite ashamed of myself.'
But meantime Auntie May had lifted up the valance of the sofa, and I had walked out, given Mr. Fox one look, and sought the door which Auntie May opened for me respectfully. No vulgar shooing for me! She followed me out and took me in her arms.
'Never mind, you sweet little innocent lamb that never did harm to any one. Never mind what the silly man says. Go and have tea in the schoolroom, and behave, and don't get schoolroom manners, please—remember you are a drawing-room cat, and behave as such.'
She opened the schoolroom door and shoved me in; she seemed in a great hurry to get back to the silly weak sort of man.
I knew what she meant by schoolroom manners. Nobody could behave better than Rosamond, Amerye, or Kitty sometimes. When they were allowed to have tea in the drawing-room they made it a point of honour to be quite different, but in the schoolroom they had an idea that it didn't matter. They clawed large chunky slices of bread off the plate and buttered them with the butter-knife up in the air, as they weren't allowed to do when Beatrice was there, and drank 'giant drinks' till their cups were empty, looking at each other over the rim all the while and trying not to end with a sputter, as a syphon does.
Kitty, the youngest child, was still shy about speaking when she was told to, though she could rattle away twenty to the dozen when not invited to give her opinion, or even when told to shut up.
This very day she gave us an example of her particular kind of obstinacy. She badly wanted some more cake and didn't want to ask politely for it, because that would be letting Fraülein know that shedidwant it.
Fraülein knew that. She said:
'Now, Kiddy'—that was the way she pronounced Kitty—'you can have that piece of cake as soon as you say, "Yes, please." Kiddy, do you want it?'
Kitty nodded.
'Well, you can have it if you will only say, "Yes, please," and if you won't say, "Yes, please," Kiddy—well, then, you can go wizout.'
Kitty began to cry gently.
'You little silly,' said Rosamond, 'if you really do want the bun, why can't you say what you are wanted to say? What is there in it after all? Yes please, yes please, yes please—I can go on for ever.'
'Pray don't,' said Fraülein. 'Now, Kiddy—'
'Iwillsay it, Fraülein, Iwillreally,' Kitty cried.
'Well, then, say it.'
'I can't.'
'Very well, then, go wizout.'
Kitty began to turn on the waterworks and Rosamond pinched her severely.
'Iamgoing to say it; take away your hand,' declared Kitty at last. So they held out the plate to her and said solemnly, 'Will you have this bun?' and Kitty sold them all a good deal, for she opened her mouth and said:
'No, thank you.'
That was exactly what a cat would have done in her place.
That child is like a cat in some other ways, she spoils property. I don't suppose her teeth meet in things exactly, but her fingers are as sharp as claws any day. When Auntie May came in a few moments later, having got rid of Mr. Fox, I heard some more about Rosamond's famous doll Wilhelmina.
It appears that Kitty had once had a delightful toy, an old woman who lived in a shoe with her ten children, and that after she had had it a month Kitty undressed all the children and stripped them to see if any of them had measles or not. She then lost their clothes, or used them for something else, painting rags, I believe, so the old woman had to keep all her children in the toe for decency. We talked about the old woman for a long time, and then—I suppose Auntie May had forgotten about the fate of the doll, for she turned to Rosamond and asked her what had become of Wilhelmina?