"I thought you said her name was Naomi?"
"So it is," I replied. "Why?"
"Oh, nothing," he answered, "only just now you referred to her as Enid."
This was remarkable, as I had not seen Enid for years, and had quite
forgotten her. Somehow it took the glitter out of the conversation. A
dozen sentences later Dick stopped me again with:--
"Who's Julia?"
I began to get irritated. Julia, I remembered, had been cashier in a
city restaurant, and had, when I was little more than a boy, almost
inveigled me into an engagement. I found myself getting hot at the
recollection of the spooney rhapsodies I had hoarsely poured into her
powder-streaked ear while holding her flabby hand across the counter.
"Did I really say 'Julia'?" I answered somewhat sharply, "or are you
joking?"
"You certainly alluded to her as Julia," he replied mildly. "But never
mind, you go on as you like, I shall know whom you mean."
But the flame was dead within me. I tried to rekindle it, but every time
I glanced up and met the green eyes of the black Tom it flickered out
again. I recalled the thrill that had penetrated my whole being when
Naomi's hand had accidently touched mine in the conservatory, and
wondered whether she had done it on purpose. I thought how good and
sweet she was to that irritatingly silly old frump her mother, and
wondered if it really were her mother, or only hired. I pictured her
crown of gold-brown hair as I had last seen it with the sunlight kissing
its wanton waves, and felt I would like to be quite sure that it were all
her own.
Once I clutched the flying skirts of my enthusiasm with sufficient
firmness to remark that in my own private opinion a good woman was more
precious than rubies; adding immediately afterwards--the words escaping
me unconsciously before I was aware even of the thought--"pity it's so
difficult to tell 'em."
Then I gave it up, and sat trying to remember what I had said to her the
evening before, and hoping I had not committed myself.
Dick's voice roused me from my unpleasant reverie.
"No," he said, "I thought you would not be able to. None of them can."
"None of them can what?" I asked. Somehow I was feeling angry with Dick
and with Dick's cat, and with myself and most other things.
"Why talk love or any other kind of sentiment before old Pyramids here?"
he replied, stroking the cat's soft head as it rose and arched its back.
"What's the confounded cat got to do with it?" I snapped.
"That's just what I can't tell you," he answered, "but it's very
remarkable. Old Leman dropped in here the other evening and began in his
usual style about Ibsen and the destiny of the human race, and the
Socialistic idea and all the rest of it--you know his way. Pyramids sat
on the edge of the table there and looked at him, just as he sat looking
at you a few minutes ago, and in less than a quarter of an hour Leman had
come to the conclusion that society would do better without ideals and
that the destiny of the human race was in all probability the dust heap.
He pushed his long hair back from his eyes and looked, for the first time
in his life, quite sane. 'We talk about ourselves,' he said, 'as though
we were the end of creation. I get tired listening to myself sometimes.
Pah!' he continued, 'for all we know the human race may die out utterly
and another insect take our place, as possibly we pushed out and took the
place of a former race of beings. I wonder if the ant tribe may not be
the future inheritors of the earth. They understand combination, and
already have an extra sense that we lack. If in the courses of evolution
they grow bigger in brain and body, they may become powerful rivals, who
knows?' Curious to hear old Leman talking like that, wasn't it?"
"What made you call him 'Pyramids'?" I asked of Dick.
"I don't know," he answered, "I suppose because he looked so old. The
name came to me."
I leaned across and looked into the great green eyes, and the creature,
never winking, never blinking, looked back into mine, until the feeling
came to me that I was being drawn down into the very wells of time. It
seemed as though the panorama of the ages must have passed in review
before those expressionless orbs--all the loves and hopes and desires of
mankind; all the everlasting truths that have been found false; all the
eternal faiths discovered to save, until it was discovered they damned.
The strange black creature grew and grew till it seemed to fill the room,
and Dick and I to be but shadows floating in the air.
I forced from myself a laugh, that only in part, however, broke the
spell, and inquired of Dick how he had acquired possession of it.
"It came to me," he answered, "one night six months ago. I was down on
my luck at the time. Two of my plays, on which I had built great hopes,
had failed, one on top of the other--you remember them--and it appeared
absurd to think that any manager would ever look at anything of mine
again. Old Walcott had just told me that he did not consider it right of
me under all the circumstances to hold Lizzie any longer to her
engagement, and that I ought to go away and give her a chance of
forgetting me, and I had agreed with him. I was alone in the world, and
heavily in debt. Altogether things seemed about as hopeless as they
could be, and I don't mind confessing to you now that I had made up my
mind to blow out my brains that very evening. I had loaded my revolver,
and it lay before me on the desk. My hand was toying with it when I
heard a faint scratching at the door. I paid no attention at first, but
it grew more persistent, and at length, to stop the faint noise which
excited me more than I could account for, I rose and opened the door and
_it_ walked in.
"It perched itself upon the corner of my desk beside the loaded pistol,
and sat there bolt upright looking at me; and I, pushing back my chair,
sat looking at it. And there came a letter telling me that a man of
whose name I had never heard had been killed by a cow in Melbourne, and
that under his will a legacy of three thousand pounds fell into the
estate of a distant relative of my own who had died peacefully and
utterly insolvent eighteen months previously, leaving me his sole heir
and representative, and I put the revolver back into the drawer."
"Do you think Pyramids would come and stop with me for a week?" I asked,
reaching over to stroke the cat as it lay softly purring on Dick's knee.
"Maybe he will some day," replied Dick in a low voice, but before the
answer came--I know not why--I had regretted the jesting words.
"I came to talk to him as though he were a human creature," continued
Dick, "and to discuss things with him. My last play I regard as a
collaboration; indeed, it is far more his than mine."
I should have thought Dick mad had not the cat been sitting there before
me with its eyes looking into mine. As it was, I only grew more
interested in his tale.
"It was rather a cynical play as I first wrote it," he went on, "a
truthful picture of a certain corner of society as I saw and knew it.
From an artistic point of view I felt it was good; from the box-office
standard it was doubtful. I drew it from my desk on the third evening
after Pyramids' advent, and read it through. He sat on the arm of the
chair and looked over the pages as I turned them.
"It was the best thing I had ever written. Insight into life ran through
every line, I found myself reading it again with delight. Suddenly a
voice beside me said:--
"'Very clever, my boy, very clever indeed. If you would just turn it
topsy-turvy, change all those bitter, truthful speeches into noble
sentiments; make your Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (who never has
been a popular character) die in the last act instead of the
Yorkshireman, and let your bad woman be reformed by her love for the hero
and go off somewhere by herself and be good to the poor in a black frock,
the piece might be worth putting on the stage.'
"I turned indignantly to see who was speaking. The opinions sounded like
those of a theatrical manager. No one was in the room but I and the cat.
No doubt I had been talking to myself, but the voice was strange to me.
"'Be reformed by her love for the hero!' I retorted, contemptuously, for
I was unable to grasp the idea that I was arguing only with myself, 'why
it's his mad passion for her that ruins his life.'
"'And will ruin the play with the great B.P.,' returned the other voice.
'The British dramatic hero has no passion, but a pure and respectful
admiration for an honest, hearty English girl--pronounced "gey-url." You
don't know the canons of your art.'
"'And besides,' I persisted, unheeding the interruption, 'women born and
bred and soaked for thirty years in an atmosphere of sin don't reform.'
"'Well, this one's got to, that's all,' was the sneering reply, 'let her
hear an organ.'
"'But as an artist--,' I protested.
"'You will be always unsuccessful,' was the rejoinder. 'My dear fellow,
you and your plays, artistic or in artistic, will be forgotten in a very
few years hence. You give the world what it wants, and the world will
give you what you want. Please, if you wish to live.'
"So, with Pyramids beside me day by day, I re-wrote the play, and
whenever I felt a thing to be utterly impossible and false I put it down
with a grin. And every character I made to talk clap-trap sentiment
while Pyramids purred, and I took care that everyone of my puppets did
that which was right in the eyes of the lady with the lorgnettes in the
second row of the dress circle; and old Hewson says the play will run
five hundred nights.
"But what is worst," concluded Dick, "is that I am not ashamed of myself,
and that I seem content."
"What do you think the animal is?" I asked with a laugh, "an evil
spirit"? For it had passed into the next room and so out through the
open window, and its strangely still green eyes no longer drawing mine
towards them, I felt my common sense returning to me.
"You have not lived with it for six months," answered Dick quietly, "and
felt its eyes for ever on you as I have. And I am not the only one. You
know Canon Whycherly, the great preacher?"
"My knowledge of modern church history is not extensive," I replied. "I
know him by name, of course. What about him?"
"He was a curate in the East End," continued Dick, "and for ten years he
laboured, poor and unknown, leading one of those noble, heroic lives that
here and there men do yet live, even in this age. Now he is the prophet
of the fashionable up-to-date Christianity of South Kensington, drives to
his pulpit behind a pair of thorough-bred Arabs, and his waistcoat is
taking to itself the curved line of prosperity. He was in here the other
morning on behalf of Princess ---. They are giving a performance of one
of my plays in aid of the Destitute Vicars' Fund."
"And did Pyramids discourage him?" I asked, with perhaps the suggestion
of a sneer.
"No," answered Dick, "so far as I could judge, it approved the scheme.
The point of the matter is that the moment Whycherly came into the room
the cat walked over to him and rubbed itself affectionately against his
legs. He stood and stroked it."
"'Oh, so it's come to you, has it?' he said, with a curious smile.
"There was no need for any further explanation between us. I understood
what lay behind those few words."
I lost sight of Dick for some time, though I heard a good deal of him,
for he was rapidly climbing into the position of the most successful
dramatist of the day, and Pyramids I had forgotten all about, until one
afternoon calling on an artist friend who had lately emerged from the
shadows of starving struggle into the sunshine of popularity, I saw a
pair of green eyes that seemed familiar to me gleaming at me from a dark
corner of the studio.
"Why, surely," I exclaimed, crossing over to examine the animal more
closely, "why, yes, you've got Dick Dunkerman's cat."
He raised his face from the easel and glanced across at me.
"Yes," he said, "we can't live on ideals," and I, remembering, hastened
to change the conversation.
Since then I have met Pyramids in the rooms of many friends of mine. They
give him different names, but I am sure it is the same cat, I know those
green eyes. He always brings them luck, but they are never quite the
same men again afterwards.
Sometimes I sit wondering if I hear his scratching at the door.