A BLACK CAT BRINGS GOOD LUCK TO A THEATRE.
A BLACK CAT BRINGS GOOD LUCK TO A THEATRE.
A BLACK CAT BRINGS GOOD LUCK TO A THEATRE.
There were little saucers of milk and warm Ridge's Food dotted about the room, one for each cat. Fred and the white cat, however, chose to drink out of the same saucer. Some of the cats would not stay to be spoken to, but slunk under chairs, and one nice tom hissed and spat. I did feel so ashamed of him. He was left severely to himself while the games were going on, and I was so sorry for him that I went and spoke to him.
'Do you live near here?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, 'and I wish I was there now. I don't care for this sort of function. I don't see why I should be asked to sit on my hind legs and talk to every idiot who comes up and strokes me and says "Puss! Puss!" I keep thinking of my nice place on the hearthrug at home, and a little tag—what do you call it?—in the hearthrug that I play with. It is worth all these fine toys to me. I would not play with that absurd mouse they are trailing along the ground with shrieks and cries and "Come ons" for anything. It disgusts me. It is too expensive a toy!'
For They held up their skirts and played with us, squeaking and miauling to imitate us. They don't imitate us half as well as the parrot imitates Them, and I am told that is pretty much the same thing. The younger kittens took a polite interest in the toy mouse, but we elders preferred conversation with really sensible cats, and if they would only have left us alone, we might have enjoyed ourselves. Auntie May was as bad as the rest, she would keep trying to make me sit on her knee when I didn't want to, and I had to do it so as not to disgrace her by disobedience.
There was a woman talking to her about the habits of cats, and trying to get hints from my mistress, whom I gathered was rather a boss, about the care and management of 'kits,' as she would call them.
'I am such a novice,' said she, 'a mere beginner. But I shall hope to be showing in a year or so—'
'I never show,' said Auntie May. 'I think it is most unkind, for the sake of a wretched prize that you have to subscribe to furnish, to subject your pet to all those horrid experiences—fleas, frights, colds, and all the rest of it—'
'Oh, but I see you make quite a friend ofyourcats. May I ask if you allow your kittens to sleep alone? At what age?'
'As soon as possible,' said Auntie May. 'I never coddle them or allow them to think of being afraid of the dark.'
'But don't they cry out and rend your heart? That one, for instance,' she pointed to Fred, who was crawling up her at the moment.
'This one!' said Auntie May, stooping to pick up Fred. 'Oh, Fred never cries—he breaks. If I put him to sleep alone in my study, he does what he can to show me that it won't do. Many's the time I have come in apprehensively in the morning and found a mush of fragments of china or glass on the floor. He writes his name in ink across blank sheets of paper, he pulls all my correspondence out of my pigeon-holes and lays it in rows for me to see without labour, he separates shoes and earrings and gloves and everything that likes to live in a pair. Oh, he is a regular demon, Imustget rid of him some day.'
'Don't sell him to me,' said the lady affectedly, 'after the character you have given him.'
By six o'clock carriages were ordered. There was a great chivying, and would any one believe that some of them did not know their own cats? Auntie May knew hers, no fear. Some of us had been sick, but the hostess said it didn't matter, as she had put a drugget down to avert the evils of such a contingency. I am not a bit ashamed of being sick any more than Auntie May is ashamed of blowing her nose. It is a perfectly natural action.
We none of us said Goodbye to each other. They never gave us time. Fred and his white cat were really a little sorry to part, but they said nothing, only she gave him a look over her mistress's shoulder which seemed to say, 'I hope we shall meet again.'
I did not want to see any one of them again except the theatrical cat, who was a jolly sort of cheerful beast. I forgot to say there was a Manx cat there, without a tail; its mother had bitten it off in a temper when it was young, I suppose. It was an awkward creature, and the white cat spat at him and told him he wasn't the only cat on the tiles. He had been making himself very civil to her, but she was a very unconventional young lady, I was told, and if she liked you she did, and if she didn't she wouldn't stop in the same room with you, and thickened all the way down when she was forced to obey.
I DID NOT WANT TO SEE ANY ONE OF THEM AGAIN.
I DID NOT WANT TO SEE ANY ONE OF THEM AGAIN.
I DID NOT WANT TO SEE ANY ONE OF THEM AGAIN.
Auntie May shouldered her own two, and said Goodbye. She did not get a very good hold, and we both of us oozed out under her arm in the square garden, and she was in a terrible way. We teased her a little bit, but we saw the poor thing was tired, so came back to her.
About the spring time, when the grass in the square garden was not so often wet and the birds made more noise there and the nests were more plentiful, Auntie May seemed not so very well.
She always had the hardest knee in the house to sit on, though it was the nicest knee, and now her fingers grew so thin that the rings began to drop off them, and thenwewere accused of having taken them. I believe it was for this reason that she suddenly began to say that she must go away.
'And leave us?' we said, when she told us.
'I don't think I can make up my mind to leave you, dears,' she said, just as if she had understood our remarks, which of course she did not. 'Fancy waking up in the morning all alone by myself instead of being waked by one of you putting your paw in my mouth! I can't picture it. No, I'll stay here and die.'
'Nonsense!' her father would say. 'You must live, dear, if not for my sake, for the sake of the cats. Let us think of something to amuse you and make you forget your family for a while. Why not go up to see Beatrice?'
'No, I don't want to go and stay with Beatrice.' She and Beatrice were cross with each other just then, I happened to know, and truly Auntie May's temper was not exactly even nowadays. She had been known to say that we got on her nerves, and that there were too many of us. We knew she was out of sorts by that alone.
'Why not try Folkestone with your Aunt Cecilia?'
'An old cat!'
'What about Mrs. Gilmour at Bournemouth?'
'Another!' It was easy to see she was ill.
'Then come with me to the Riviera?'
'That would be lovely, but, dear Daddy, I could not possibly take you away from your Academy picture.'
'Then,' said the poor old man in desperation, 'go to America and read passages from your own works and make a fortune.'
He was at his wit's end or he would not have proposed anything so absurd and improper as that. He said no more, but I sometimes saw him watching her with tears in his eyes.
When her hair began to come out in handfuls she herself agreed that something must be done.
'I think I will go and live in Paris for a bit and study.'
'But, my dear child, you don't know anybody there.'
'That's just the point. I shall change the scene completely and get out of myself.'
That seems an odd and impossible sort of thing to do, but it isn't the first time I have heard people speak of performing this feat. Cats can't, and wouldn't want to, I fancy.
The old man said he couldn't think of allowing it, and she at once wrote for rooms to an address she knew. He said it would never do, and she answered the woman's letter who kept the pension and took the rooms for a month.
Thenwewere the difficulty. She could not think of leaving us to Mary, who was good but careless, and she thought of a certain place she had heard of at Gunnersbury where they boarded cats.
Mother disliked the idea very much, but what could she do? We were all three put in baskets and taken in a cab. Gunnersbury seemed partly country when we got out, but I saw very little, for we were hustled into the house, and our fastenings not undone till we were in a garden with wire cages or houses in it that they called 'cat-runs.'
A young lady in a grey voile frock trimmed with blue ribbons was sweeping one of the wire places out, and she seemed to be no relation to the mistress of the cattery, just a friend.
'I am single-handed just now,' the old lady said. 'My daughter, who helps me, is away, taking King Henry the Eighth to a cat-show, but Miss Joldwin—sucha nice girl, and so well connected!—is good enough to come here and help me turn out the cages twice a day!'
I don't see why because Miss Joldwin was a pedigree-woman she should be too good to sweep out a cattery, but I do think she might have put a pinafore on, and said so.
'Dear little fellow, he is very lively and talkative!' said the old woman to me. 'I know I shall make a pet of you, I shall.'
'Oh, no favouritism, Mrs. Jennings, please,' said Auntie May. 'I should like them all to be kept together, if you don't mind, as much as possible. They are a very united and loving family. Fred, do leave Zobeide alone! You are nearly murdering her.'
'Pretty little spirited dears,' murmured the woman, and I hated her. 'Come here! Kittie! Kittie!'
I wouldn't come here, and I saw that Auntie May was pleased. She soon after took her leave, whispering to us:
'Now keep yourselves to yourselves, my dears, and though you must be civil to other cats, don't make great friends. I shan't be away long; I feel I shan't be able to stand it. Eat what you are given, and don't have fancies. Don't climb up the old woman. Be civil to her, but no more. Now goodbye, pets—angels—darlings—Imusttear myself away!'
She tore herself away, and we were left alone in the wire house with a sort of box thing inside where we were expected to retire for the night. It wasn't bad, and the food was excellent.
I cannot tell the clock, and I never know either what time or what day of the week it is, so I cannot say how long we were all together in this cattery. It may have been a month. But one day (I had been taken into the house, for I was a good cat and allowed to sit on the dining-room woolly rug) I heard a well-known voice in the hall saying:
'No, thank you. There is no necessity for me to see it. I leave the selection of the kitten to you. So long as the animal is ready packed in a basket and so forth, all ready for my servant to fetch and hand over to me at Charing Cross, that will do. Thank you, ten-thirty. He will call here half an hour before. Good morning!'
It was the voice of Mr. Fox.
Mother said, 'It sounds as if one of you was going to leave me! This wretched man seems to have bought a kitten of Auntie May and doesn't even care which!'
'Mr. Fox buy a cat!' I cried. 'He simply hates us; he can't bear to be in the room with one of us. Don't you remember, I told you all about him at Crook Hall?'
'I cannot explain it!' said mother. 'Perhaps he is going to give you to some one? I wish I knew what places one goes to from Charing Cross. But there is no cat's Bradshaw, alas!'
I was taken away by a groom—I smelt his clothes through the basket—next day, as arranged. We got into a noisy place full of people talking, and I felt myself being transferred to Mr. Fox's hands, and didn't he take hold of the handle of the basket that contained me as if it was a hot coal! I wondered why he didn't put me in the guard's van; but no, he stuck to me and put me down on the seat of the compartment, just as Auntie May did, and then went as far off me as he could go, for I could tell the distance by the rustle of the newspaper he opened, and read fiercely all the way. I learned that we were going to cross the sea from the conversation of two ladies in the same compartment.
'Do you think it is going to be rough, guard? Have you heard what the sea is like at Dover?'
'Like a mill pond, ma'am.'
'Oh, I do hope—' said one.
'I suffer so always!' said the other.
'Not worse than me, surely? Nobody could. I shall die in crossing some day. What is that in the basket? Is it a bird or a cat? I saw a parrot once crossing. I believe it was sick, or was it only imitating the dreadful noise people make? I wonder if cats are sick?'
I wondered too. Not that I mind being sick, as I said before, and I thought They were making a great deal too much of it.
I didn't like it, though, when we got to Dover, and Mr. Fox shouldered me and carried me down a ladder and on to something that wobbled gently. There was a horrible smell—that was the worst of it—a kind of salt prick in the air, that I didn't like. Mr. Fox handed me to a man, saying:
'Here, take care of this animal for me—you see it is labelled "Valuable Cat"—and look after it till we get to Calais!'
'Ay, ay, sir,' said the man, who smelt of salt too.
This sailor planked me down somewhere, and never noticed me till there was a shouting and a trampling and a hauling and a slowing-down movement. Then the big thing that breathed in the middle stopped, and there was no noise except of voices. Quite a nice rest. The sailor came back and took me up, and put me back into the hands of Mr. Fox, who gave him something he said 'Thank ye!' for, and who then carried me up the ladder himself. I wished I could have seen his face. I am sure he was pale, though perhaps in the strong smell of salt he didn't notice the smell of me so much, and didn't feel so ill. I don't know, for, as I say, I never saw his face.
He never undid me, but sat quite close to me on the rattlingest train I ever was in, far worse than the boat. The two ladies said so. They happened to have got into the same carriage as we did, and from their subdued sort of manner I think they had both been very ill.
'I wonder how the cat got on?' said one in a very weak voice.
'I don't know, I'm sure, nor care,' said the other. Then in a lower voice she said:
'The man doesn't look very fit; he's green. I expect he has had an awful time!'
I wanted to cry out and say, 'You are quite mistaken. That is the effect ofme!' but of course I couldn't do anything but scrabble about a little on the sides of the basket. They seemed to be eating an enormous luncheon! I had a parcel of fish in with me loosely done up that I could easily have got at, but I never eat on a journey. I make up for it afterwards.
We stopped twice, and people cried out things, but at last we stopped and did not go on again.
'C'est Paris?' said one of the ladies, and then I knew that she was half French, and was probably going home. I thought of Auntie May, who I knew was in Paris, but somehow I was quite surprised to hear her voice—a very thin and weak little voice—speaking to Mr. Fox on the platform.
'Oh, Mr. Fox, Inevercan thank you enough. And you, of all people, who hate cats so, to offer to bring me Loki. Tell me, how did you get on?'
'Very fairly,' said he. 'I do not choose to let this kind of thing get hold of me. I'm all right, thanks, and glad to be able to do you this little service.'
We all walked along—I was carried of course—till we came to some kind of barrier, and they wouldn't let Auntie May pass. She had forgotten to take a platform ticket, it appeared.
'I shall stay here, then,' said she to Mr. Fox. 'You go through with this ticket, and I shall see whether these foreigners will have the cheek to keep me.' I believe she winked. She was so happy at having got me. She made Mr. Fox obey her, telling him to wait for her on the other side, and she sat down on a seat and took me on her knee, and kissed me.
'I shall get well much faster now I have a soft sweet grey cat to cuddle,' said she. 'I wonder how Mr. Fox knew that? And to offerhimselfas a messenger, of all people! I don't believe he hadanybusiness engagement in Paris at all, I believe it is pure philanthropy!'
Presently an official came and argued with her in French. She was very sweet to him, on the principle that a soft answer turns away wrath, and sure enough she worked it, for presently he said sharply, 'Passez, Mademoiselle!' which means 'Go on.'
Mr. Fox had examined his luggage, and was waiting for her on the other side of the barrier.
'Oh, why did you wait?' she said. 'I should think now I have Loki with me you would want to give me a wide berth?'
'I don'twantto,' said he, 'but my unfortunate peculiarity is sure to assert its sway over me. Let me, at least, put you into a cab.'
'And shall I not have the pleasure of seeing you while you are in Paris?'
'I am afraid I must not venture to come and see you and risk a scene?' He laughed; he had a nice laugh. 'But will you be very kind, and come to lunch with me to-morrow at Durand's? I go back at night.'
'But,' she said, 'I thought you said you had to be in Paris on business, and that was why you would bring me Loki? That is what Daddy assured me you said when he told you I was pining for him.'
'I can get through the business I have to do in the morning before lunch,' said he, quite shortly, and whisked us into a cab and paid it, and told the man to drive us to Rue Chauvau La Garde.
Miss Florence Pettigrew—that was the name of the woman who kept thepensionAuntie May had settled to go to—was a pretty, very little woman, and reminded me somehow of the Manx cat, she seemed shortened somewhere, somehow. She opened the door to us and I heard her greeting Auntie May, and took a dislike to her at once from the basket. I didn't like her any better when I was taken out. I'm sure she had a wooden leg.
'Well, so that's the cat. I hope he means to have good manners in my flat. I don't want my nice new furniture torn to bits, you know, Graham.'
That was Auntie May's surname, but I had never heard her called that before. Auntie May was shown to her room and asked if she would have hot water, but she sat down on the bed and cried, and cuddled me, and said, 'Well, Loki, this is life!'
I thought she didn't like life much just now, when we went in to dinner. Manxie, as I always called her, kept telling us that she had had to get fish on purpose for Auntie May, but she couldn't afford it for herself. No, what she had was three-pennyworth of meat a day for herself, and that was enough for any woman. I thought she seemed more like a Manx cat than ever, with her daily allowance of cat's meat, for she couldn't have got proper people's meat for that price!
Auntie May gave me some fish, but it was so French and buttery that I hated it. I tried to eat it, though, for Auntie May's sake, who looked so pale and ill that I longed to write home to her father about her and get her fetched home. It was unfortunate that Mr. Fox could not stand me, or else he would have come to the house and seen Manxie, and after he had seen her I am sure he wouldn't have approved of Auntie May's staying where she was so disliked. Why, Manxie even leaned across the table once, when Auntie May coughed, and said:
'I am sorry for you, Graham, but I don't like you. I don't like your eyes!'
Did anybody ever hear anything like that? The woman was mad, that was her only excuse. Poor Auntie May was miserable and her eyes were sunk in and her cheeks hollow, but I don't see that when she was paying Manxie ten francs a day that she ought to have been abused about her eyes. Hollow cheeks are better than a hollow leg any day.
She went out todéjeunerwith Mr. Fox next day, telling Manxie about it, who was very cross with her for not bringing Mr. Fox to the flat.
'It is just as if you were ashamed of it, Graham,' she said, and Auntie May didn't contradict her, but shut me up in her room and went. She came back with some nice asparagus heads for me that she had begged of the waiter at Durand's. After that she went out no more to luncheon, and I supposed Mr. Fox had gone back to England.
Then Auntie May began to get worse and worse, and she coughed so that she quite lost her voice and could only call me in a whisper. She had a doctor fetched, to Manxie's great disgust, and he said she had to put her mouth to the spout of a kettle that had benzoin in it, and she used to sit for hours with her lips to the spout till Manxie complained that the steam hurt her ceiling. French rooms are very funny, before you furnish them yourself; there is a mirror let into the mantelpiece and a stove in the dining-room. They cook quite differently, too, and Manxie's cook used to write poetry. She kept the papers in her biggest stew-pan, and used to read them to Auntie May, who said they were quite good for a cook and far better than her omelettes.
Trivia, that was her name, was so grateful that she was always coming in with cups oftisane.
'Buvez ça, Madame, je vous assure que cela vous fera du bien!' and Auntie May said it did do her good, but as a matter of fact she got worse and worse, and the doctor said he must get a friend of his to call on her. She was English. He was English. As Auntie May said, 'I come to Paris to change my ideas, and I have an English land-lady, an English doctor, and now I am to have an English friend. Funny how we English herd together!'
I may say that I mixed with the French more than Auntie May did. I had a French friend; her name was Mistigris. She belonged to M. Ducrot, the concierge. To call on her I had to seize my opportunity and sneak downstairs when thebonnewent out to do her shopping and Auntie May was still in bed. Mistigris was generally lying on the silk eiderdown that covers Monsieur and Madame Ducrot's bed. Their bed takes up half their room, and it isn't very big either. It is close to the door. Madame Ducrot cooks every meal there. They only have the one room and the coal-cellar under the stairs. Their door gives on to the stairs and has a glass window in it, so that they can see whoever goes past. They are a curious race, are concierges, whose business it is to find out things and take tips. At night, when they are in bed, of course the door is fastened, but M. Ducrot has a bell that rings by the bed head, and he has to wake up, if he isn't already awake, and pull a button to open the door. The person at the door going out also has to say, 'Cordon, s'il vous plait!' All this Mistigris told me. She was very Anglophobe, meaning she hated the English at first, but I convinced her that we were reallydes braves gens—that means a good sort. At first she used to call out 'Angliche!' and 'Poos! Poos!' at me, very rudely, and even sometimes, 'Aha, Rosbif!' but she soon improved. Besides, they don't say 'Puss! Puss!' to their cats here, but Minet or Minette, so perhaps she was only trying to emulate the English accent. Of course I don't know French any more than Mistigris knows English, but our common language, 'Catapuk,' is known all over the world, so there was no difficulty about our intercourse.
Madame Ducrot did not like my friendship with Mistigris at first, for fear I should run away with her, but I am a born bachelor, and people soon see that there is no fear of my carrying any cat off. Mistigris was pretty, rather prettier than the white cat at the party, but it made no difference to me, we were very good friends and that was all.
Mistigris used to lie in wait for me in the shadow of the bed-curtain sitting on her warm nest in the eiderdown. Talk of French politeness; she never once invited me to come up! And if I happened to get down to see her about meal times when she sat on the table between Monsieur and Madame Ducrot, as they drank their soup and ate their salad, she frowned at me through the glass door and pretended not to know me. I didn't want any cabbage soup, either, their cookery is far too greasy for me. But when she was not so pleasantly engaged and the door of the room was open, she used to come to me and thread herself in and out through the balusters as a sign of friendliness. I never saw her after seven o'clock. They turn all lights out on the stairs here after eight, and I used to sit indoors on the cold wood floor in the evenings and listen for Auntie May to come in. Manxie fed her so badly that in disgust she used to go out and get her dinner at a restaurant. She used to come up, bumping herself in the dark, and fumble for the door-key under the mat, where Manxie, who went to bed at nine to save lights, had left it. There was a jam-pot on a bracket in the hall full of oil and a wick floating in it. It was the cheapest possible way of lighting, so Manxie said. Then Auntie May used to grope for her sealed bottle of milk on the table, and light one of those beastly French matches that smell and sputter, and read her letters if there were any, and then go to bed.
MISTIGRIS USED TO LIE IN WAIT FOR ME.
MISTIGRIS USED TO LIE IN WAIT FOR ME.
MISTIGRIS USED TO LIE IN WAIT FOR ME.
I used to help her to undress, playing with her strings and stay-laces, and anything in the least taggy, and placing her slippers in different ends of the room ready for her to find in the morning. Then when she was in bed, I used to take a header off the high bureau and light on her. She kissed my head for about five minutes and I purred, and then having said good-night to her properly so, I lay down on the lower part of the bed, for I was getting such a big cat that my weight was too much for her shoulder where I used to like to lie. She put out her hand and stroked me sometimes in the middle of the night; she liked to feel I was there. If she was too sleepy to wake up, I generally crept up and just touched the tip of her nose and so back again without waking her. I didn't attempt to prise her eyelids open, as Fred did once when he had the privilege of sleeping with her. He never had it again. Auntie May values her eyes above anything, and she said it was too dangerous. I never woke her in the morning, for I thought she wanted all the sleep she could get. Manxie used to come and look at her sometimes when she was asleep, and pry into her drawers. I always kept one eye on her, and she knew it. The funny thing is it frightened her, though, of course, she knew that I could not tell tales of her.
At last poor Auntie May stayed in bed altogether, and the doctor brought his friend Mrs. Jay.
She was a nice woman and I adored her, although she played a funny little trick on me. She used to take me up when she came in, and I used to mew.
'It is an odd thing,' Auntie May said to her, after Mrs. Jay had been to see her two or three times and they were great friends, 'that you love cats so much and yet they mew when you hold them!'
'Isn't it odd?' said Mrs. Jay, smiling. She had a very pretty voice. 'I cannot suggest any explanation.'
Icould have explained it. Mrs. Jay bit my neck every time, not hard or cruelly, but just so that I could not help crying out.
She was not a naturally unkind woman, but she had a mania for experimenting on people by teasing them as well as being good to them. She saved Auntie May's life, I think.
She came one day and said very decidedly:
'Now, Miss May Graham, I am going to take you away from here, bag and baggage, cat and cattage. That dreadful Pettigrew—'
'Poor Pettigrew!' said Auntie May in a thin little voice.
'Poor Pettigrew indeed! She is simply starving you, that is what she is doing, and taking ten francs a day for it! I am not going to leave you here a day longer, if I take you away in an ambulance!'
There was no need for Auntie May to go in an ambulance. She paid Manxie, who was in a towering rage, a month's pay in lieu of notice, Mrs. Jay packed up her belongings, my old basket was brought out again, and we were settled in the Rue de L'Echelle by the evening. I never saw Mistigris again.
They had the slipperiest floors in the Rue de L'Echelle, made of pieces of wood joined together and then polished till the nap was like silk. Léocadie, thebonne, did it with cloths wrapped about her feet, and she looked too funny and chaseable skating up and down the floors. Sometimes Philippe, Mr. Jay's servant, did it, and he plodged, that was the difference. Léocadie ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed her, but he chaffed her. She was rather a little slop in her morning blouse and her checked apron and her black frizzly hair, and when she gave him an order he would answer gravely, 'Bien, Princesse!' which sent Mr. Jay into fits of laughter. Léocadie was very kind to me. She was always holding out some little odd-and-end for me to eat, saying, 'Tiens, Minet?' while I liked lying on Philippe's coat, that he took off when he worked, better than anything.
Then in the warm May days that were coming on, I used to lie in the balcony and look through the iron lace-work and put my paw out, and shake it about in the air. I could look down, too, and see the wheelbarrows with bright flowers on them, and the bare-headed women with lovely hair, and the tinkling cabs, and the drivers with their grey beaver hats.
Auntie May got a great deal better, well enough to go into society—French society. Mrs. Jay sometimes went with her, but not always, and one night—a night that will long live in my memory—Auntie May went to Madame Taine's literary party all alone.
At nine o'clock she came out of her room in her new evening cloak, and in a lovely pink dress all sequins and beads, and went down the stairs of the flat. I slipped out too, and went down on the train of her dress most of the way. She ought to have held it up, of course. She got into the cab the concierge had fetched, and having said goodbye to me upstairs, thought no more about me, and I was left sitting alone on the kerb.
The gutter was dirty, full of vegetables and things thrown away, and even when they did tidy up, they only pushed the refuse under a grating. The dirty towel the men used to stop up the hole in the sewer with was lying near by—a stupid way of arranging it, I thought. The noise in the street was terrific. It was the first time I had stood there alone. The tinkly horse bells got on my nerves—horses all wear collars in Paris. One wonders they don't spoil their ruffs. Auntie May won't let any of her cats wear them, though for some reasons it would be most convenient, for one would always know where the cat was at a given moment. I longed to get in again, but the great big doors were shut. So sooner than sit still doing nothing, I moved a little way farther down the street, and gradually got on to what I imagined from descriptions must be the Big Boulevard. It was a great danger, but luckily it was dark. At the crossing there was a policeman with a stick that he tried to keep cabs back with as they do in London, so mother has told me, but the horses here just pushed it back rudely with their noses, and went on and nearly ran over people.
I got across, and on the other side there were numbers of places where They eat, and many people sitting outside at little tables munching peanuts and drinking coffee out of glasses. They dropped pieces of sugar into them and gave them to their children, who all seemed to have leave to sit up and be out of doors in the night time. Rosamond and her sisters go to bed at eight, but then they are English children. Every moment I thought something was happening, people made such a noise. Every now and then men ran down the street calling out in dreadful fear; their harsh screams of terror frightened me, but I soon discovered, by an old gentleman near me giving one man a sou and quieting him, that these scraggy poor men were only selling their papers. In the middle of the road the stream of carriages and cabs rolled—rolled by till my poor head turned, and I didn't know when I should ever cross that river of carriages and get home. I knew, having crossed the street once, that I was bound to cross it again to get back, but there was not a cat in the whole region from whom I could ask the way.
I felt so lonely that I could have mewed aloud, but if I had that would have called attention to me, and I should have been arrested by one of the men in blue who held thebâtonand minded the crossing. I rubbed myself against an old gentleman who was taking absinthe at the little table near which I had placed myself. He looked down and only said, 'Tiens, un chat! Rentre, mon vieux,' which translated means, 'Hold, a cat! Go home, old man!' which was precisely what I wanted to do, if only he would have put me safely over the crossing. He probably thought I belonged to the restaurant near where I was lurking.
At last the stream of carriages seemed to thin a little, and I took my courage between my teeth and made a wild dash to get across.
I did it. The garçon called out, 'Holà! Hé!' and some other strange expressions of surprise, but I never minded. Keeping a stiff whisker, although I was mortally afraid, I walked down the long street that led southwards to my home in Rue de L'Echelle.
I knew the house by a piece of orange-peel lying in a particular place near the door that I had noticed when Auntie May had started three hours ago, and also by its own peculiar smell.
Every house has its special smell, over and above all the town smell, you know. The smell of Paris is quite different from the smell of London. It is a kind of fried-potatoes-and-garlic smell mixed together on a hot stove-dried air—nothing solid about it, somehow. Auntie May says it is like sweet champagne, and just as heady.
I had plenty of time to think what the air of Paris was like, for the door stayed shut, and I stayed in the street with every prospect of doing it till morning. I could not ring the bell and say, 'Cordon, s'il vous plait.' Then a thought struck me. Had Auntie May come in yet? How could I tell? I looked about to see if she had dropped anything—a pin, a flower, a hair-pin?
Nothing! Now, Auntie May was just the kind of person to drop something, and I began to hope that she had not come in yet. I waited. I could sneak in with her if I was mean, or make a clean breast of it and show myself. I didn't know which I would do. It depended on the sort of temper she was in. I can generally smell that.
After about an hour I heard a cab come down the street, going very quickly. Auntie May got out and paid the man and sent him away. Then she rang, very loudly and impatiently. I was sitting quietly beside her, meaning her to see me. I had decided to do it that way, but I said nothing. She noticed me at once, and spoke to me seriously:
'Oh, Loki, you villain, you darling, you naughty little cat! How come you to be out? Mercy, when I think of what might have happened! A valuable cat, alone in Paris at midnight! I hope at least you have not been very far away from this door. This is a quiet sort of street, thank goodness. Quick! Say! Set my mind at rest!'
She shook me gently and I said, 'No,' but of course she only thought I mewed.
'Your sweet little mew quite disarms me. Oh, but youhavegiven me a fright—an awful fright!'
I asked her if she had enjoyed herself?
'Why a fright, do you say? Anybody might have run off with you and made a boa of you. They wouldn't have made mincemeat, however, for you are a valuable cat, and they could see that at a glance, though you are English. They would have sold you into slavery. Well, people are honester than I thought! But perhaps nobody has passed this way?Dis, mon chou!' She had got so French that she called me a cabbage.
She squeezed me again, and I tried to remind her that nobody had answered that bell, and that her cloak was open, and it wasn't even a piece of whole fur, for it missed her neck out.
'Yes, you may well mew, for you are a really naughty little cat, and have wrung your poor mistress's heart. Why don't they open that door? How long have we been standing here? Come under my cloak.'
'I wish you would fasten it,' I said.
'You are very conversational, Loki, to-night. I begin to think you have had adventures. I'll ring again. Conf—bother that concierge! Lazy creature! I'll ring the house down if he doesn't come soon. Well, well, we must possess our little souls in patience, Loki, you and I. Isn't it funny, standing out here in a strange town all alone at twelve o'clock at night, Loki? Awfully queer, and such a queer party I have been to. We drank punch in long glasses, and ate plum-cake and spoiled our gloves. Whenwillthis man answer the bell and open the door?'
She rang again. We both listened.
'I believe we shall have to make up a bed on the stones,' she said. 'I am beginning to get cross. Perhaps we can get the concierge dismissed to-morrow. Yes, we'll do that, anyhow.'
'I BELIEVE WE SHALL HAVE TO MAKE UP A BED ON THE STONES,' SHE SAID.
'I BELIEVE WE SHALL HAVE TO MAKE UP A BED ON THE STONES,' SHE SAID.
'I BELIEVE WE SHALL HAVE TO MAKE UP A BED ON THE STONES,' SHE SAID.
There was a man coming down the street in a rough black frieze cape and a black tie, whose ends floated out in the breeze. If ever I saw a Frenchman he was one, young too. Yet as he went by he said, very clearly and distinctly in English:
'Poosh!'
And Auntie May did push, hard. That was it. The door was open all the time!
I believe the concierge had opened it when we first rang and gone to sleep again. But all I can say is we heard no click, and that is what Auntie May said to Mrs. Jay next morning.
'I didn't think that literary parties could be so exciting!' said Mrs. Jay.
Next morning a whole heap of letters came by the post. Auntie May read bits of them aloud to Mrs. Jay, and I heard them between my mouthfuls of bread and milk. There was one from Beatrice saying that she supposed Auntie May wasn't going to stay in Paris much longer, it must be getting so hot; she supposed she wouldn't mind a few little commissions, and out came a list as long as Auntie May's arm.
There was one from Mr. Fox, which I managed to get hold of and trailed all over the room, pretending it was a mouse, and paying it back for Mr. Fox's treatment of me. I like to be loved.
There was a long letter from Mrs. Dillon in South Africa about Admiral Togo.
'I sometimes think he is turning into a baby,' she wrote. 'He really is almost human, and expresses his every wish so unmistakably that I am convinced he will actually talk some day. He is very well. His fur comes off, but the "vet" says that is inevitable here, and that it will come on again. He is a shocking bad sailor and hated the sea. Nothing would induce him to look at it through a porthole unless I held him in my arm and talked all the time to him. Then he got a little, nervously, interested. My maid bought a wicker basket-chair for him at Madeira, and he sat on it on deck, never making the slightest attempt to leave it. Below he had only one pleasure, a canary. Up to the very last he hoped that it would come into his mouth. He felt the heat of the tropics very much, and complained in a feeble way of being forced to travel in his chinchilla coat and cuffs. I showed him how to lie on the floor with his head on a book for coolness, so all the hot time he insisted on my making this arrangement for him; he could not somehow or other get it right for himself.'Here at Rondebosch he is getting a little old-fashioned, having no other cats to play with except me and my maid. He goes walks with me, padding along on his short fat legs, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth till he is tired, when he lies down on his back and cries till I go and pick him up, and then have to carry him the rest of the way. I want my maid to buy him a "pram."'
'I sometimes think he is turning into a baby,' she wrote. 'He really is almost human, and expresses his every wish so unmistakably that I am convinced he will actually talk some day. He is very well. His fur comes off, but the "vet" says that is inevitable here, and that it will come on again. He is a shocking bad sailor and hated the sea. Nothing would induce him to look at it through a porthole unless I held him in my arm and talked all the time to him. Then he got a little, nervously, interested. My maid bought a wicker basket-chair for him at Madeira, and he sat on it on deck, never making the slightest attempt to leave it. Below he had only one pleasure, a canary. Up to the very last he hoped that it would come into his mouth. He felt the heat of the tropics very much, and complained in a feeble way of being forced to travel in his chinchilla coat and cuffs. I showed him how to lie on the floor with his head on a book for coolness, so all the hot time he insisted on my making this arrangement for him; he could not somehow or other get it right for himself.
'Here at Rondebosch he is getting a little old-fashioned, having no other cats to play with except me and my maid. He goes walks with me, padding along on his short fat legs, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth till he is tired, when he lies down on his back and cries till I go and pick him up, and then have to carry him the rest of the way. I want my maid to buy him a "pram."'
I can't remember any more. Auntie May nearly cried with pleasure at getting this long letter from Mrs. Dillon. I wished Auntie May would takemewalks. She never seemed to think of it, and I got into the habit of taking them for myself—on the roof.
This was stopped.
'May,' said Mrs. Jay, 'when I came in to-day I heard a mew, and your cat welcomed me into my own house from the roof, craning his silly little neck over the gutter, like the devils of Notre Dame. Do you think it safe? He isn't attached behind, like the gargoyles, you know.'
'Not at all safe,' said Auntie May, and, together with the hotness, this was one of the reasons for her deciding to go home.
About a fortnight after this my basket was brought out and filled with little bits of paper. I knew what this meant. I was not, however, put into it till the very last minute, two days later.
'Now, you travelled little cat,' said Auntie May, 'go into your "sleeping" and don't wail and distress me. It will soon be over, and you will see your mother again.'
I knew exactly how soon it would be over; it would last just as long as it had lasted to come here, and that was a whole day. I said nothing, and then began the goodbyes, which were just as distressing as my mewing would have been.
It is curious, but They do seem to have a way of caring for each other far more than we do. Mrs. Jay and Auntie May knew each other no better than I and Mistigris, and I never even troubled to say goodbye to her, yet she was a nice little cat.
We trained along, and it was very hot, and then we got into that weary old boat again, as I could tell by the fishy smell. I was put down by Auntie May's side in the cabin, and as soon as she had settled down a man came up to her and told her that she had a dog with her, and then when she denied it he said quite sharply:
'Ouvrez!' which means 'Open' without 'please.'
I drew myself up to my full height, and when the lid of the basket was lifted up was discovered in a sitting posture. I gave the insolent fellow A Look and lay down again to express my thorough contempt of him.
Bless me, there was a parrot in a cage, done up in an old red flannel petticoat in the most degrading way, that I heard them paying eighteen-pence for!
It was about five o'clock when we arrived, and took a cab to go home. I was undone in the hall of No. 100 Egerton Gardens. I then jumped out gracefully and quietly, and stood, a little dazed, to tell the truth. Auntie May, having paid the cab, left the servants to get out the luggage, and taking me in her arms went straight to the studio. I knew she wanted badly to go and see mother and Fred, but restrained herself.
'Fathers before cats!' she said. 'What would Dad think if I did not go and dig him out first?'
On opening the studio door she gave a terrible jump, and dropped me. Mr. Graham was there all right, painting away with his back to her and his palette on his thumb; but what made her jump was the sight of mother sitting on the funny little bit of a chair which was all he would allow himself to sit on when he was tired, and Fred and Zobeide wallowing composedly in the wastepaper basket—Fred larger and more impudent than ever.
Worse than this, there was a large black cat with a white star on its breast, mumbling a fish's head in the middle of the floor, that didn't even have the grace to leave off when we came in.
'Oh, my dear, darling Dad!' cried Auntie May, rushing to him. 'How glad I am to see you; and how are you, and why do I find you all—siltedup with cats like this?'
Mr. Graham put down his palette and his mahl-stick, and Zobeide ran off with the latter, and Fred jumped on to the former, and he kissed Auntie May again and again, and answered her question rather slowly.
'Well, you see, my dear, you were a long time away, and Pet and Zobeide and Freddy—you were always so fond of them—I thought I could look after them all better if I kept them constantly under my eye. They are not the rose, but they were near it—and I was a bit lonely.'
'And so you had my menagerie in to remind you of me! Dear darling Dad, you couldn't have paid me a better compliment. But then, father, who is the black gentleman?'
'He ismycat!' said the old gentleman gravely, 'and you will please to love him for my sake. He is another story. One dark night I took him in—or rather he tookmein, for he stayed here a week without my knowing it. He drank Pet's milk and ate my more easily digested paints, and never had the decency to get Pet to present him to me, though he was enjoying my hospitality. He is not well-favoured, as you see, but an interesting beast—an adventurer, I fear. The other cats barely tolerate him!'
I should think not indeed! I had my tail twice as thick as usual already, and the black cat was staring hard at me, wishing he dared stiffen his too, but hardly sure enough of his position yet, in spite of Mr. Graham's friendly speech, to do so. The black cat then spoke to me personally:
'Now don't you be unkind, you new cat!' (My tail got stiffer, and I vowed I would never go from home again and leave a place for interlopers!) 'Your gracious lady mother and worthy brother have accepted me, and so why should not you? I only get cat's meat; the cook says it is good enough for me as I am not a thoroughbred, so I don't see why you should object to my presence here. I have shown the others that I am not prepared to be an annoyance. I never play with their rattley ball, or put my nose into their saucers of milk or what not, or sit in their places, as soon as I find out which they are.'
'That is quite true, Loki,' said mother. 'He is not at all pushing, and he is fairly good company. Fancy! He knows what it is to starve. It is as good as a story to listen to him. Such weird tales! I can hardly bring myself to believe them, but then mine has been such a sheltered life!'
'What can any one as pretty as you, ma'am,' said the black cat (and then I saw how he had got round mother), 'know of the wickedness of the world and the cruelty of men? I am an example of that cruelty. I will tell you how—'
Fred interrupted him.
'He really isn't bad fun, Loki. He does to chase, and when he is caught hasn't the least objection to our biting his tail. It is rather nice to have a plain tail you needn't take care of, isn't it?'
'Oh, if you find him useful,' I said, 'I have nothing more to say.'
All this time May and her father were licking each other. He was pleased to seeherback.Mymother seemed to have forgottenme! She met me merely with politeness, as she might a stranger. It had all fallen out exactly as she had predicted. I was nothing to her now—nothing special, I mean. Later on in the day she gave me a bat with her paw, the first of many. I soon got used to it, and hit back.
Mr. Graham told Auntie May that Mr. Fox had been three times to ask after her. I don't think from the way he spoke that Mr. Fox had told him about his visit to Paris, for he seemed to be under the impression that I had been sent on to her from the cattery at Kew by parcels delivery, and, as far as I know, May did not undeceive him. Mr. Fox had gone up to Shortleas, his shooting near Beatrice's house, and Mr. Graham said he was quite rich.
Auntie May said, 'How do you know that, Daddy?'
'Because he told me so, my dear.'
All Auntie May said was, 'Oh!' but as she went out of the room she added, 'It is a pity he hates cats so, isn't it?'
The black cat's name was Charlie, but Auntie May never knew that, and she christened him Blackavice, because he had a black face. He was a really comfortable old thing, and the night after I came back we all listened to him, sitting on different high things in the room. We cats never like to be crowded up together unless we are sleeping, and then we prefer it because of the warmth.
He was only nine, and he had had a strange and varied life. He told us all in snippets, some things one evening and some another, and some things twice over. We never minded that, but listened to his yarns with the greatest attention. We liked him fairly well, but not well enough to lick him. One never knew where he had been, and there is a dustbin full of potato peelings and other things to every house in the square.
He had lived once, he said, in a family in London where the master kept him to catch mice, and the cook to put thefts on. He never knew what he hadn't done. When he saw a joint or a fish come in, handed over at the backdoor by the fishmonger or the butcher's boy, he used to say sadly to himself, 'Now, shall I be supposed to steal that?' And generally the cook's mother came in the afternoon of that day, and, sure enough, she got one of those soles or the end of that joint, and the mistress was told next morning, 'Ma'am, that awful Charlie again!' He tried to manage to be out of the way while the mistress was ordering dinner, because after saying this sort of thing the cook used to look round for him and broom him out to show how cross she was with him, and how she abhorred his crime. It was a most insecure life. Then once or twice he said he thought that he might as well have the good of the fish or meat he was accused of stealing, and he really did take it; but the cook was too sharp for him, and gave him a whipping for stealing the portion of her poor old mother. That didn't pay, and only was the means of his getting two whippings instead of one.
The cook hardly fed him at all, but expected him to cater for himself out of the mice that were living behind the boards, and who came out at night and played about. The supply of mice varied very much, and he said that, when mice were plentiful, he used to let them go so as to save them for another dinner later on; then if mice were scarce he got so weak he couldn't catch them. He often thought it wasn't good enough, and that he would like to make a change. He visited every house in the square in which he lived, in turn, hoping that they would see fit to keep him, as he was a black cat, and a black cat taking up its abode with you is accounted lucky. But no, they all broomed him out, and one tall cook hot-watered him out, and that hurt. So he stayed on with Mrs. Murch and was bullied all the time, and had no pleasure in life, except on warm sunny days sitting in the square garden pretending that there was no necessity to fag after birds. He used to envy the cats who didn't have need to pretend, but were so well fed that all they need do was to look lazily after the birds flying past, and gibber at them, or cats like us who are positively forbidden to go after birds because it is cruel. The first time the family went away for the summer and left him, he couldn't make head or tail of it, he said. But other cats told him he might think himself lucky They had not locked him in, the way They do sometimes, and then the policeman has to get them out if he is kind and has a mind to. Charlie had the run of the garden and the birds, but he missed the 'drain' of milk the cook gave him when she was in a good humour, and he soon got so weak and flabby that he could not catch a bird, and they used to sit in the branches and mock at him—the sparrows, that is.
He made up his mind that he would not go through with it another year, and about July he began to make love to the cook's mother, taking her a mackerel or so that he had stolen on purpose for her and laying it at her feet. The cook's mother was pleased with him, and, as he had calculated, offered to borrow him for a month and see what he could do with the rats down at her place, down at Limehouse Pier, or something like that, and he said we would hardly believe it, but he got far more to eat while he was there than at home. The poor are much more lavish than the rich, and live so much better. And he saw life! 'My word!' he would say, licking his whiskers, which were fine and large, and his only beauty. He said they were of immense use to him in showing what sized gaps he could get through, for if his whiskers were at all incommoded, he at once knew that the hole or gap was too small for the thickest part of him. Such tight places he had been in. He would lift up his head and yawn and say:
'The things I have seen, ma'am, you would not believe!'
Then mother would kindly ask him to spare our youth, and not tell us all the dreadful things that he had seen and heard in the slums, for it would not have been nice. He might tell her when they were alone, but as they seldom were alone I don't think he ever got the chance, though he was dying to shock her, because she was so shockable.
And then the old woman died, and a rent-collecting lady, who had been kind to her when she couldn't pay her rent and paid it for her herself, took Charlie away with her when all the sticks were sold—there was only a table and a chair, as far as I can remember, when she had pawned everything—and gave him to a little boy who was her nephew. It happened to be a little boy in Egerton Gardens where we lived. Funny, how small the world is! That boy was rough and played experiments with him, and catapulted him, and tied things to him, and harnessed him, and put him to bed in his sister's doll's nightgowns in the day-time. That was disagreeable, Charlie said, but he never bit him, and he was glad afterwards, for the little boy got ill.