“Now, I have made a minute study of cats. Of all animals they interest
me the most. They have less apparent intensity, less uttered passion,
than dogs, but in my opinion more character. Their subtlety is
extraordinary, their sensitiveness wonderful. Will you understand me
when I say that all dogs are men, all cats women? That remark expresses
the difference between them.”
He paused a moment.
“Go on--go on,” I said, leaning forward, with my eyes fixed upon his
keen, puckered face.
He seemed pleased with my suddenly-aroused interest..
“Cats are as subtle and as difficult to understand as the most complex
woman, and almost as full of intuitions. If they have been well treated,
there is often a certain gracious, condescending suavity in their
demeanour at first, even towards a total stranger; but if that stranger
is ill disposed toward them, they seem instinctively to read his soul,
and they are in arms directly. Yet they dissemble their fears in a cold
indifference and reserve. They do not take action: they merely abstain
from action. They withdraw the soul that has peeped out, as they can
withdraw their claws into the pads upon their feet. They do not show
fight as a dog might, they do not become aggressive, nor do they whine
and put their tails between their legs. They are simply on guard,
watchful, mistrustful. Is not all this woman?”
“Possibly,” I answered, with a painful effort to assume indifference.
“A woman intuitively knows who is her friend and who is her enemy--so
long, at least, as her heart is not engaged; then she runs wild, I
allow. A woman---- But I need not pursue the parallel. Besides, perhaps
it is scarcely to the point, for my object is not to bolster up an
absurd contention that all women have the souls of cats. No; but I have
met women so strangely like cats that their souls have, as I said before
souls do, coloured their bodies in actions. They have had the very look
of cats in their faces. They have moved like them. Their demeanour has
been patently and strongly feline. Now, I see nothing ridiculous in the
assumption that such women’s bodies may contain souls--in process of
development, of course--that formerly were merely cat souls, but that
are now gaining humanity gradually, are working their way upwards in
the scale. After all, we are not so much above the animals, and in our
lapses we often become merely animals. The soul retrogrades for the
moment.”
He paused again and looked at me. I was biting my lips, and my glass of
wine was untouched. He took my agitation as a compliment, I suppose, for
he smiled and said:
“Are you in process of conversion?”
I half shook my head. Then I said, with an effort: “It is a curious and
interesting idea, of course. But there is much to explain. Now, I should
like to ask you this: Do you--do you believe that a soul, if it passes
on as you think, carries its memory with it, its memory of former loves
and--and hates? Say that a cat’s soul goes to a woman’s body, and
that the cat has been--has been--well, tortured--possibly killed, by
someone--say some man, long ago, would the woman, meeting that man,
remember and shrink from him?”
“That is a very interesting and curious problem, and one which I do not
pretend to have solved. I can, therefore, only suggest what might be,
what seems to me reasonable.
“I do not believe that the woman would remember positively, but I think
she might have an intuition about the man. Our intuitions are, perhaps,
sometimes only the fragmentary recollections of our souls, of what
formerly happened to them when in other bodies. Why, otherwise, should
we sometimes conceive an ardent dislike of some stranger--charming to
all appearance--of whom we know no evil, whom we have never heard of nor
met before? Intuitions, so called, are often only tattered memories.
And these intuitions might, I should fancy, be strengthened, given
body, robustness, by associations--of place, for example. Cats become
intensely attached to localities, to certain spots, a particular house
or garden, a particular fireside, apart from the people who may be
there. Possibly, if the man and the woman of whom you speak could
be brought together in the very place where the torture arid death
occurred, the dislike of the woman might deepen into positive hatred.
It would, however, be always unreasoning hatred, I think, and even quite
unaccountable to herself. Still----”
But here Lord Melchester rose from the table. The conversations broke
into fragments. I felt that I was pale to the lips.
We passed into the drawing-room. The ladies were grouped together at one
end, near the piano. Margot was among them. She was, as usual, dressed
in white, and round the bottom of her gown there was an edging of
snow-white fur. As we came in, she moved away from the piano to a
sofa at some distance, and sank down upon it. Professor Black, who had
entered the room at my side, seized my arm gently.
“Now, that lady,” he whispered in my ear--“I don’t know who she may
be, but she is intensely cat-like. I observed it before dinner. Did you
notice the way she moved just then--the soft, yielding, easy manner in
which she sat down, falling at once, quite naturally, into a charming
pose? And her china-blue eyes are----”
“She is my wife, Professor,” I interrupted harshly.
He looked decidedly taken aback.
“I beg your pardon; I had no idea. I did not enter the drawing-room
to-night till after you arrived. I believed that lady was one of
my fellow-guests in the house. Let me congratulate you. She is very
beautiful.”
And then he mingled rather hastily in the group near the piano.
The man is mad, I know--mad as a hatter on one point, like so many
clever men. He sees the animal in every person he meets just because his
preposterous theory inclines him to do so. Having given in his adherence
to it, he sees facts not as they are, but as he wishes them to be; but
he shall not carry me with him. The theory is his, not mine. It does not
hold water for a moment. I can laugh at it now, but that night I confess
it did seize me for the time being. I could scarcely talk; I found
myself watching Margot with a terrible intentness, and I found myself
agreeing with the Professor to an extent that made me marvel at my own
previous blindness.
There was something strangely feline about the girl I had married--the
soft, white girl who was becoming terrible to me, dear though she still
was and must always be. Her movements had the subtle, instinctive and
certain grace of a cat’s. Her cushioned step, which had often struck me
before, was like the step of a cat. And those china-blue eyes! A sudden
cold seemed to pass over me as I understood why I had recognised
them when I first met Margot. They were the eyes of the animal I
had tortured, the animal I had killed. Yes, but that proved nothing,
absolutely nothing. Many people had the eyes of animals--the soft eyes
of dogs, the furtive, cruel eyes of tigers. I had known such people. I
had even once had an affair with a girl who was always called the shot
partridge, because her eyes were supposed to be like those of a dying
bird. I tried to laugh to myself as I remembered this. But I felt cold,
and my senses seemed benumbed as by a great horror. I sat like a stone,
with my eyes fixed upon Margot, trying painfully to read into her all
that the words of Professor Black had suggested to me--trying, but
with the wish not to succeed. I was roused by Lady Melchester, who came
toward me asking me to do something, I forget now what. I forced myself
to be cheerful, to join in the conversation, to seem at my ease; but I
felt like one oppressed with nightmare, and I could scarcely withdraw
my eyes from the sofa where my wife was sitting. She was talking now
to Professor Black, who had just been introduced to her; and I felt a
sudden fury in my heart as I thought that he was perhaps dryly, coldly,
studying her, little knowing what issues--far-reaching, it might be,
in their consequences--hung upon the truth or falsehood of his strange
theory. They were talking earnestly, and presently it occurred to me
that he might be imbuing Margot with his pernicious doctrines, that he
might be giving her a knowledge of her own soul which now she lacked.
The idea was insupportable. I broke off abruptly the conversation in
which I was taking part, and hurried over to them with an impulse which
must have astonished anyone who took note of me. I sat down on a chair,
drew it forward almost violently, and thrust myself in between them.
“What are you two talking about?” I said, roughly, with a suspicious
glance at Margot.
The Professor looked at me in surprise.
“I was instructing your wife in some of the mysteries of
salmon-fishing,” he said. “She tells me you have a salmon-river running
through your grounds.”