His master had strong comradeship with the Cat, but not affe_Lords of the Housetops: Thirteen Cat Tales

LORDS

OF THE HOUSETOPS

THIRTEEN CAT TALES

_BOOKS BY

CARL VAN VECHTEN_

INTERPRETERS

IN THE GARRET

THE MUSIC OF SPAIN

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS

THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE

LORDS OF THE HOUSETOPS

MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR

WITH A PREFACE BY

CARL VAN VECHTEN

_C'est l'esprit familier du lieu;

Il juge, il préside, il inspire

Toutes choses dans son empire;

Peut-être est-il fée, est-il dieu._

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

NEW YORK ALFRED · A · KNOPF MCMXXI

ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_These stories I have collected to amuse

Avery Hopwood_

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to the following authors and publishers for permission to

use the stories contained in this book:

Harper and Brothers and Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman for _The Cat_, from

Houghton Mifflin Co., for _Zut_, from _Zut and Other Parisians_

E. P. Dutton and Co., for _A Psychical Invasion_, from _John Silence_.

Doubleday, Page and Co., and Booth Tarkington for Gipsy, from _Penrod

Harper and Brothers and the Mark Twain Estate for _Dick Baker's Cat_,

from _Roughing It_ (copyright 1871-1899 by the American Publishing Co.;

Gabrilowitsch).

Harper and Brothers for _Madame Jolicoeur's Cat_, from _From the South

George H. Doran Co., for _A Friendly Rat_, from _The Book of a

The Four Seas Co., and Peggy Bacon for _The Queen's Cat_, from _The

Houghton Mifflin Co., for _Calvin_, from _My Summer in a Garden_

(copyright 1870 by Fields, Osgood and Co.; copyright 1898 by Charles

PREFACE

In the essay and especially in poetry the cat has become a favourite

subject, but in fiction it must be admitted that he lags considerably

behind the dog. The reasons for this apparently arbitrary preference on

the part of authors are perfectly easy to explain. The instinctive acts

of the dog, who is a company-loving brute, are very human; his

psychology on occasion is almost human. He often behaves as a man would

behave. It is therefore a comparatively simple matter to insert a dog

into a story about men, for he can often carry it along after the

fashion of a human character.

But, as Andrew Lang has so well observed, literature can never take a

thing simply for what it is worth. "The plain-dealing dog must be

distinctly bored by the ever-growing obligation to live up to the

anecdotes of him.... These anecdotes are not told for his sake; they are

told to save the self-respect of people who want an idol, and who are

distorting him into a figure of pure convention for their domestic

altars. He is now expected to discriminate between relations and mere

friends of the house; to wag his tail at _God Save the Queen_; to count

up to five in chips of fire-wood, and to seven in mutton bones; to howl

for all deaths in the family above the degree of second cousin; to post

letters, and refuse them when they have been insufficiently stamped; and

last, and most intolerable, to show a tender solicitude when tabby is

out of sorts." The dog, indeed, for the most part, has become as

sentimental and conventional a figure in current fiction as the ghost

who haunts the ouija board or the idealistic soldier returned from the

wars to reconstruct his own country.

Now the cat, independent, liberty-loving, graceful, strong, resourceful,

dignified, and self-respecting, has a psychology essentially feline,

which has few points of contact with human psychology. The cat does not

rescue babies from drowning or say his prayers in real life;

consequently any attempt to make him do so in fiction would be

ridiculous. He has, to be sure, his own virtues. To me these are

considerably greater than those of any other animal. But the fact

remains that the satisfactory treatment of the cat in fiction requires

not only a deep knowledge of but also a deep affection for the sphinx of

the fireside. Even then the difficulties can only be met in part, for

the novelist must devise a situation in which human and feline

psychology can be merged. The Egyptians probably could have written good

cat stories. Perhaps they did. I sometimes ponder over the possibility

of a cat room having been destroyed in the celebrated holocaust of

Alexandria. The folk and fairy tales devoted to the cat, of which there

are many, are based on an understanding, although often superficial, of

cat traits. But the moderns, speaking generally, have not been able to

do justice, in the novel or the short story, to this occult and lovable

little beast.

On the whole, however, the stories I have chosen for this volume meet

the test fairly well. Other cat stories exist, scores of them, but

these, with one or two exceptions, are the best I know. In some

instances other stories with very similar subjects might have been

substituted, for each story in this book has been included for some

special reason. Mrs. Freeman's story is a subtle symbolic treatment of

the theme. In _The Blue Dryad_ the cat is exhibited in his useful

capacity as a killer of vermin. _A Psychical Invasion_ is a successful

attempt to exploit the undoubted occult powers of the cat. Poe's famous

tale paints puss as an avenger of wrongs. In _Zut_ the often

inexplicable desire of the cat to change his home has a charming

setting. Booth Tarkington in _Gipsy_ has made a brilliant study of a

wild city cat, living his own independent life with no apparent means of

support. I should state that the ending of the story, which is a chapter

from _Penrod and Sam_, is purely arbitrary. Gipsy, you will be glad to

learn, was not drowned. He never would be. If you care to read the rest

of his history you must turn to the book from which this excerpt was

torn. There seem to be three excellent reasons for including Mark

Twain's amusing skit: in the first place it is distinctly entertaining;

in the second place Mr. Clemens adored cats to such an extent that it

would be impertinent to publish a book of cat stories without including

something from his pen; in the third place _Dick Baker's Cat_[1]

celebrates an exceedingly important feline trait, the inability to be

duped twice by the same phenomenon. It is interesting to record that

Theodore Roosevelt liked this yarn so much that he named a White House

cat, Tom Quartz.

[1: Those who have attempted to form anthologies or collections of

stories similar to this know what difficulties have to be overcome.

The publishers of Mark Twain's works were at first unwilling to

grant me permission to use this story. I wish here to take occasion

to thank Mrs. Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch and Mr. Albert Bigelow

Paine for their successful efforts in my behalf. I am sure that the

readers of this book will be equally grateful.]

Thomas A. Janvier's narrative reveals the cat in his luxurious capacity

as a treasured pet, and Mr. Alden's story is a good example of the kind

of tale in which a friendless human being depends upon an animal for

affection. There are, of course, many such, but in most cases dogs are

the heroes. _The Queen's Cat_ is a story about an ailurophobe, or a

cat-fearer, and his cure. Mr. Hudson's contribution is fact rather than

fiction. I have included it because it is delightful and because it is

the only good example available of that sort of story in which a cat

becomes friendly with a member of an enemy race, although in life the

thing is common. Mr. Warner's _Calvin_, too, certainly is not fiction,

but as it shares with Pierre Loti's _Vies de deux chattes_ the

distinction of being one of the two best cat biographies that have yet

been written I could not omit it.

There remains _The Afflictions of an English Cat_ which, it will be

perceived by even a careless reader, is certainly a good deal more than

a cat story. It is, indeed, a satire on British respectability, but we

Americans of today need not snicker at the English while reading it, for

the point is equally applicable to us. When I first run across this tale

while preparing material for my long cat book, _The Tiger in the House_,

I was immensely amused, and to my great astonishment I have not been

able to find an English translation of it. The story, the original title

of which is _Peines de coeur d'une chatte anglaise_, first appeared in

a volume of satires called _Scènes de la vie privée et publique des

animaux_, issued by Hetzel in Paris in 1846, and to which George Sand,

Alfred de Musset, and others contributed. The main purpose of the

collaboration was doubtless to furnish a text to the extraordinary

drawings of Grandville, who had an uncanny talent for merging human and

animal characteristics. The volume was translated into English by J.

Thompson and published in London in 1877, but for obvious reasons _The

Afflictions of an English Cat_ was not included in the translation,

although Balzac's name would have added lustre to the collection. But in

the Victorian age such a rough satire would scarcely have been

tolerated. Even in French the story is not easily accessible. Aside from

its original setting I have found it in but one edition of Balzac, the

_OEuvres Complètes_ issued in de luxe form by Calmann-Levy in 1879,

where it is buried in the twenty-first volume, _OEuvres Diverses_.

Therefore I make no excuse for translating and offering it to my

readers, for although perhaps it was not intended for a picture of cat

life, the observation on the whole is true enough, and the story itself

is too delicious to pass by. I should state that the opening and closing

paragraphs refer to earlier chapters in the _Vie privée et publique des

animaux_. I have, I may add, omitted one or two brief passages out of

consideration for what is called American taste.

CARL VAN VECHTEN.

_April_ 6, 1920.

_New York_.

CONTENTS

PREFACE, vii

I MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN: THE CAT, 1

II GUY WETMORE CARRYL: ZUT, 11

III ALGERNON BLACKWOOD: A PSYCHICAL INVASION, 29

IV HONORÉ DE BALZAC: THE AFFLICTIONS OF AN ENGLISH CAT, 103

(translated from the French by Carl Van Vechten)

V BOOTH TARKINGTON: GIPSY, 124

VI G. H. POWELL: THE BLUE DRYAD, 131

VII MARK TWAIN: DICK BAKER'S CAT, 144

VIII EDGAR ALLAN POE: THE BLACK CAT, 149

IX THOMAS A. JANVIER: MADAME JOLICOEUR'S CAT, 163

X W. H. HUDSON: A FRIENDLY RAT, 198

XI WILLIAM LIVINGSTON ALDEN: MONTY'S FRIEND, 203

XII PEGGY BACON: THE QUEEN'S CAT, 220

XIII CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER: CALVIN, 226

LORDS OF THE HOUSETOPS

THIRTEEN CAT TALES

THE CAT

The snow was falling, and the Cat's fur was stiffly pointed with it, but

he was imperturbable. He sat crouched, ready for the death-spring, as he

had sat for hours. It was night--but that made no difference--all times

were as one to the Cat when he was in wait for prey. Then, too, he was

under no constraint of human will, for he was living alone that winter.

Nowhere in the world was any voice calling him; on no hearth was there a

waiting dish. He was quite free except for his own desires, which

tyrannized over him when unsatisfied as now. The Cat was very

hungry--almost famished, in fact. For days the weather had been very

bitter, and all the feebler wild things which were his prey by

inheritance, the born serfs to his family, had kept, for the most part,

in their burrows and nests, and the Cat's long hunt had availed him

nothing. But he waited with the inconceivable patience and persistency

of his race; besides, he was certain. The Cat was a creature of absolute

convictions, and his faith in his deductions never wavered. The rabbit

had gone in there between those low-hung pine boughs. Now her little

doorway had before it a shaggy curtain of snow, but in there she was.

The Cat had seen her enter, so like a swift grey shadow that even his

sharp and practised eyes had glanced back for the substance following,

and then she was gone. So he sat down and waited, and he waited still in

the white night, listening angrily to the north wind starting in the

upper heights of the mountains with distant screams, then swelling into

an awful crescendo of rage, and swooping down with furious white wings

of snow like a flock of fierce eagles into the valleys and ravines. The

Cat was on the side of a mountain, on a wooded terrace. Above him a few

feet away towered the rock ascent as steep as the wall of a cathedral.

The Cat had never climbed it--trees were the ladders to his heights of

life. He had often looked with wonder at the rock, and miauled bitterly

and resentfully as man does in the face of a forbidding Providence. At

his left was the sheer precipice. Behind him, with a short stretch of

woody growth between, was the frozen perpendicular wall of a mountain

stream. Before him was the way to his home. When the rabbit came out she

was trapped; her little cloven feet could not scale such unbroken

steeps. So the Cat waited. The place in which he was looked like a

maelstrom of the wood. The tangle of trees and bushes clinging to the

mountain-side with a stern clutch of roots, the prostrate trunks and

branches, the vines embracing everything with strong knots and coils of

growth, had a curious effect, as of things which had whirled for ages in

a current of raging water, only it was not water, but wind, which had

disposed everything in circling lines of yielding to its fiercest points

of onset. And now over all this whirl of wood and rock and dead trunks

and branches and vines descended the snow. It blew down like smoke over

the rock-crest above; it stood in a gyrating column like some

death-wraith of nature, on the level, then it broke over the edge of

the precipice, and the Cat cowered before the fierce backward set of

it. It was as if ice needles pricked his skin through his beautiful

thick fur, but he never faltered and never once cried. He had nothing to

gain from crying, and everything to lose; the rabbit would hear him cry

and know he was waiting.

It grew darker and darker, with a strange white smother, instead of the

natural blackness of night. It was a night of storm and death superadded

to the night of nature. The mountains were all hidden, wrapped about,

overawed, and tumultuously overborne by it, but in the midst of it

waited, quite unconquered, this little, unswerving, living patience and

power under a little coat of grey fur.

A fiercer blast swept over the rock, spun on one mighty foot of

whirlwind athwart the level, then was over the precipice.

Then the Cat saw two eyes luminous with terror, frantic with the impulse

of flight, he saw a little, quivering, dilating nose, he saw two

pointing ears, and he kept still, with every one of his fine nerves and

muscles strained like wires. Then the rabbit was out--there was one long

line of incarnate flight and terror--and the Cat had her.

Then the Cat went home, trailing his prey through the snow.

The Cat lived in the house which his master had built, as rudely as a

child's block-house, but stanchly enough. The snow was heavy on the low

slant of its roof, but it would not settle under it. The two windows and

the door were made fast, but the Cat knew a way in. Up a pine-tree

behind the house he scuttled, though it was hard work with his heavy

rabbit, and was in his little window under the eaves, then down through

the trap to the room below, and on his master's bed with a spring and a

great cry of triumph, rabbit and all. But his master was not there; he

had been gone since early fall and it was now February. He would not

return until spring, for he was an old man, and the cruel cold of the

mountains clutched at his vitals like a panther, and he had gone to the

village to winter. The Cat had known for a long time that his master was

gone, but his reasoning was always sequential and circuitous; always for

him what had been would be, and the more easily for his marvellous

waiting powers so he always came home expecting to find his master.

When he saw that he was still gone, he dragged the rabbit off the rude

couch which was the bed to the floor, put one little paw on the carcass

to keep it steady, and began gnawing with head to one side to bring his

strongest teeth to bear.

It was darker in the house than it had been in the wood, and the cold

was as deadly, though not so fierce. If the Cat had not received his fur

coat unquestioningly of Providence, he would have been thankful that he

had it. It was a mottled grey, white on the face and breast, and thick

as fur could grow.

The wind drove the snow on the windows with such force that it rattled

like sleet, and the house trembled a little. Then all at once the Cat

heard a noise, and stopped gnawing his rabbit and listened, his shining

green eyes fixed upon a window. Then he heard a hoarse shout, a halloo

of despair and entreaty; but he knew it was not his master come home,

and he waited, one paw still on the rabbit. Then the halloo came again,

and then the Cat answered. He said all that was essential quite plainly

to his own comprehension. There was in his cry of response inquiry,

information, warning, terror, and finally, the offer of comradeship; but

the man outside did not hear him, because of the howling of the storm.

Then there was a great battering pound at the door, then another, and

another. The Cat dragged his rabbit under the bed. The blows came

thicker and faster. It was a weak arm which gave them, but it was nerved

by desperation. Finally the lock yielded, and the stranger came in. Then

the Cat, peering from under the bed, blinked with a sudden light, and

his green eyes narrowed. The stranger struck a match and looked about.

The Cat saw a face wild and blue with hunger and cold, and a man who

looked poorer and older than his poor old master, who was an outcast

among men for his poverty and lowly mystery of antecedents; and he heard

a muttered, unintelligible voicing of distress from the harsh piteous

mouth. There was in it both profanity and prayer, but the Cat knew

nothing of that.

The stranger braced the door which he had forced, got some wood from the

stock in the corner, and kindled a fire in the old stove as quickly as

his half-frozen hands would allow. He shook so pitiably as he worked

that the Cat under the bed felt the tremor of it. Then the man, who was

small and feeble and marked with the scars of suffering which he had

pulled down upon his own head, sat down in one of the old chairs and

crouched over the fire as if it were the one love and desire of his

soul, holding out his yellow hands like yellow claws, and he groaned.

The Cat came out from under the bed and leaped up on his lap with the

rabbit. The man gave a great shout and start of terror, and sprang, and

the Cat slid clawing to the floor, and the rabbit fell inertly, and the

man leaned, gasping with fright, and ghastly, against the wall. The Cat

grabbed the rabbit by the slack of its neck and dragged it to the man's

feet. Then he raised his shrill, insistent cry, he arched his back high,

his tail was a splendid waving plume. He rubbed against the man's feet,

which were bursting out of their torn shoes.

The man pushed the Cat away, gently enough, and began searching about

the little cabin. He even climbed painfully the ladder to the loft, lit

a match, and peered up in the darkness with straining eyes. He feared

lest there might be a man, since there was a cat. His experience with

men had not been pleasant, and neither had the experience of men been

pleasant with him. He was an old wandering Ishmael among his kind; he

had stumbled upon the house of a brother, and the brother was not at

home, and he was glad.

He returned to the Cat, and stooped stiffly and stroked his back, which

the animal arched like the spring of a bow.

Then he took up the rabbit and looked at it eagerly by the firelight.

His jaws worked. He could almost have devoured it raw. He fumbled--the

Cat close at his heels--around some rude shelves and a table, and

found, with a grunt of self-gratulation, a lamp with oil in it. That he

lighted; then he found a frying-pan and a knife, and skinned the rabbit,

and prepared it for cooking, the Cat always at his feet.

When the odour of the cooking flesh filled the cabin, both the man and

the Cat looked wolfish. The man turned the rabbit with one hand and

stooped to pat the Cat with the other. The Cat thought him a fine man.

He loved him with all his heart, though he had known him such a short

time, and though the man had a face both pitiful and sharply set at

variance with the best of things.

It was a face with the grimy grizzle of age upon it, with fever hollows

in the cheeks, and the memories of wrong in the dim eyes, but the Cat

accepted the man unquestioningly and loved him. When the rabbit was half

cooked, neither the man nor the Cat could wait any longer. The man took

it from the fire, divided it exactly in halves, gave the Cat one, and

took the other himself. Then they ate.

Then the man blew out the light, called the Cat to him, got on the bed,

drew up the ragged coverings, and fell asleep with the Cat in his bosom.

The man was the Cat's guest all the rest of the winter, and winter is

long in the mountains. The rightful owner of the little hut did not

return until May. All that time the Cat toiled hard, and he grew rather

thin himself, for he shared everything except mice with his guest; and

sometimes game was wary, and the fruit of patience of days was very

little for two. The man was ill and weak, however, and unable to eat

much, which was fortunate, since he could not hunt for himself. All day

long he lay on the bed, or else sat crouched over the fire. It was a

good thing that fire-wood was ready at hand for the picking up, not a

stone's-throw from the door, for that he had to attend to himself.

The Cat foraged tirelessly. Sometimes he was gone for days together, and

at first the man used to be terrified, thinking he would never return;

then he would hear the familiar cry at the door, and stumble to his feet

and let him in. Then the two would dine together, sharing equally; then

the Cat would rest and purr, and finally sleep in the man's arms.

Towards spring the game grew plentiful; more wild little quarry were

tempted out of their homes, in search of love as well as food. One day

the Cat had luck--a rabbit, a partridge, and a mouse. He could not carry

them all at once, but finally he had them together at the house door.

Then he cried, but no one answered. All the mountain streams were

loosened, and the air was full of the gurgle of many waters,

occasionally pierced by a bird-whistle. The trees rustled with a new

sound to the spring wind; there was a flush of rose and gold-green on

the breasting surface of a distant mountain seen through an opening in

the wood. The tips of the bushes were swollen and glistening red, and

now and then there was a flower; but the Cat had nothing to do with

flowers. He stood beside his booty at the house door, and cried and

cried with his insistent triumph and complaint and pleading, but no one

came to let him in. Then the cat left his little treasures at the door,

and went around to the back of the house to the pine-tree, and was up

the trunk with a wild scramble, and in through his little window, and

down through the trap to the room, and the man was gone.

The Cat cried again--that cry of the animal for human companionship

which is one of the sad notes of the world; he looked in all the

corners; he sprang to the chair at the window and looked out; but no one

came. The man was gone and he never came again.

The Cat ate his mouse out on the turf beside the house; the rabbit and

the partridge he carried painfully into the house, but the man did not

come to share them. Finally, in the course of a day or two, he ate them

up himself; then he slept a long time on the bed, and when he waked the

man was not there.

Then the Cat went forth to his hunting-grounds again, and came home at

night with a plump bird, reasoning with his tireless persistency in

expectancy that the man would be there; and there was a light in the

window, and when he cried his old master opened the door and let him in.

His master had strong comradeship with the Cat, but not affection. He

never patted him like that gentler outcast, but he had a pride in him

and an anxiety for his welfare, though he had left him alone all winter

without scruple. He feared lest some misfortune might have come to the

Cat, though he was so large of his kind, and a mighty hunter. Therefore,

when he saw him at the door in all the glory of his glossy winter coat,

his white breast and face shining like snow in the sun, his own face lit

up with welcome, and the Cat embraced his feet with his sinuous body

vibrant with rejoicing purrs.

The Cat had his bird to himself, for his master had his own supper

already cooking on the stove. After supper the Cat's master took his

pipe, and sought a small store of tobacco which he had left in his hut

over winter. He had thought often of it; that and the Cat seemed

something to come home to in the spring. But the tobacco was gone; not a

dust left. The man swore a little in a grim monotone, which made the

profanity lose its customary effect. He had been, and was, a hard

drinker; he had knocked about the world until the marks of its sharp

corners were on his very soul, which was thereby calloused, until his

very sensibility to loss was dulled. He was a very old man.

He searched for the tobacco with a sort of dull combativeness of

persistency; then he stared with stupid wonder around the room. Suddenly

many features struck him as being changed. Another stove-lid was broken;

an old piece of carpet was tacked up over a window to keep out the cold;

his fire-wood was gone. He looked and there was no oil left in his can.

He looked at the coverings on his bed; he took them up, and again he

made that strange remonstrant noise in his throat. Then he looked again

for his tobacco.

Finally he gave it up. He sat down beside the fire, for May in the

mountains is cold; he held his empty pipe in his mouth, his rough

forehead knitted, and he and the Cat looked at each other across that

impassable barrier of silence which has been set between man and beast

from the creation of the world.

MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN.

ZUT

Side by side, on the avenue de la Grande Armée, stand the épicerie of

Jean-Baptiste Caille and the salle de coiffure of Hippolyte Sergeot, and

between these two there is a great gulf fixed, the which has come to be

through the acerbity of Alexandrine Caille (according to Espérance

Sergeot), though the duplicity of Espérance Sergeot (according to

Alexandrine Caille). But the veritable root of all evil is Zut, and Zut

sits smiling in Jean-Baptiste's doorway, and cares naught for anything

in the world, save the sunlight and her midday meal.

When Hippolyte found himself in a position to purchase the salle de

coiffure, he gave evidence of marked acumen by uniting himself in the

holy--and civil--bonds of matrimony with the retiring patron's daughter,

whose dot ran into the coveted five figures, and whose heart, said

Hippolyte, was as good as her face was pretty, which, even by the

unprejudiced, was acknowledged to be forcible commendation. The

installation of the new establishment was a nine days' wonder in the

quartier. It is a busy thoroughfare at its western end, is the avenue de

la Grande Armée, crowded with bicyclists and with a multitude of

creatures fearfully and wonderfully clad, who do incomprehensible things

in connection with motor-carriages. Also there are big cafés in plenty,

whose waiters must be smoothly shaven: and moreover, at the time when

Hippolyte came into his own, the porte Maillot station of the

Métropolitain had already pushed its entrée and sortie up through the

soil, not a hundred metres from his door, where they stood like

atrocious yellow tulips, art nouveau, breathing people out and in by

thousands. There was no lack of possible custom. The problem was to turn

possible into probable, and probable into permanent; and here the seven

wits and the ten thousand francs of Espérance came prominently to the

fore. She it was who sounded the progressive note, which is half the

secret of success.

"Pour attirer les gens," she said, with her arms akimbo, "il faut

d'abord les épater."

In her creed all that was worth doing at all was worth doing gloriously.

So, under her guidance, Hippolyte journeyed from shop to shop in the

faubourg St. Antoine, and spent hours of impassioned argument with

carpenters and decorators. In the end, the salle de coiffure was

glorified by fresh paint without and within, and by the addition of a

long mirror in a gilt frame, and a complicated apparatus of gleaming

nickel-plate, which went by the imposing title of appareil antiseptique,

and the acquisition of which was duly proclaimed by a special placard

that swung at right angles to the door. The shop was rechristened, too,

and the black and white sign across its front which formerly bore the

simple inscription "Kilbert, Coiffeur," now blazoned abroad the vastly

more impressive legend "Salon Malakoff." The window shelves fairly

groaned beneath their burden of soaps, toilet waters, and perfumery, a

string of bright yellow sponges occupied each corner of the window,

and, through the agency of white enamel letters on the pane itself,

public attention was drawn to the apparently contradictory facts that

English was spoken and "schampoing" given within. Then Hippolyte engaged

two assistants, and clad them in white duck jackets, and his wife

fabricated a new blouse of blue silk, and seated herself behind the desk

with an engaging smile. The enterprise was fairly launched, and

experience was not slow in proving the theories of Espérance to be well

founded. The quartier was épaté from the start, and took with enthusiasm

the bait held forth. The affairs of the Salon Malakoff prospered

prodigiously.

But there is a serpent in every Eden, and in that of the Sergeot this

rôle was assumed by Alexandrine Caille. The worthy épicier himself was

of too torpid a temperament to fall a victim to the gnawing tooth of

envy, but in the soul of his wife the launch, and, what was worse, the

immediate prosperity of the Salon Malakoff, bred dire resentment. Her

own establishment had grown grimy with the passage of time, and the

annual profits displayed a constant and disturbing tendency toward

complete evaporation, since the coming of the big cafés, and the

resultant subversion of custom to the wholesale dealers. This persistent

narrowing of the former appreciable gap between purchase and selling

price rankled in Alexandrine's mind, but her misguided efforts to

maintain the percentage of profit by recourse to inferior qualities only

made bad worse, and, even as the Sergeot were steering the Salon

Malakoff forth upon the waters of prosperity, there were nightly

conferences in the household next door, at which impending ruin

presided, and exasperation sounded the keynote of every sentence. The

resplendent façade of Hippolyte's establishment, the tide of custom

which poured into and out of his door, the loudly expressed admiration

of his ability and thrift, which greeted her ears on every side, and,

finally, the sight of Espérance, fresh, smiling, and prosperous, behind

her little counter--all these were as gall and wormwood to Alexandrine,

brooding over her accumulating debts and her decreasing earnings, among

her dusty stacks of jars and boxes. Once she had called upon her

neighbour, somewhat for courtesy's sake, but more for curiosity's, and

since then the agreeable scent of violet and lilac perfumery dwelt

always in her memory, and mirages of scrupulously polished nickel and

glass hung always before her eyes. The air of her own shop was heavy

with the pungent odours of raw vegetables, cheeses, and dried fish, and

no brilliance redeemed the sardine and biscuit boxes which surrounded

her. Life became a bitter thing to Alexandrine Caille, for if nothing is

more gratifying than one's own success, surely nothing is less so than

that of one's neighbour. Moreover, her visit had never been returned,

and this again was fuel for her rage.

But the sharpest thorn in her flesh--and even in that of her phlegmatic

husband--was the base desertion to the enemy's camp of Abel Flique. In

the days when Madame Caille was unmarried, and when her ninety kilos

were fifty still, Abel had been youngest commis in the very shop over

which she now held sway, and the most devoted suitor in all her train.

Even after his prowess in the black days of '71 had won him the

attention of the civil authorities, and a grateful municipality had

transformed the grocer-soldier into a guardian of law and order, he

still hung upon the favour of his heart's first love, and only gave up

the struggle when Jean-Baptiste bore off the prize and enthroned her in

state as presiding genius of his newly acquired épicerie. Later, an

unwittingly kindly prefect had transferred Abel to the seventeenth

arrondissement, and so the old friendship was picked up where it had

been dropped, and the ruddy-faced agent found it both convenient and

agreeable to drop in frequently at Madame Caille's on his way home, and

exchange a few words of reminiscence or banter for a box of sardines or

a minute package of tea. But, with the deterioration in his old friends'

wares, and the almost simultaneous appearance of the Salon Malakoff, his

loyalty wavered. Flique sampled the advantages of Hippolyte's

establishment, and, being won over thereby, returned again and again.

His hearty laugh came to be heard almost daily in the salle de coiffure,

and because he was a brave homme and a good customer, who did not stand

upon a question of a few sous, but allowed Hippolyte to work his will,

and trim and curl and perfume him to his heart's content, there was

always a welcome for him, and a smile from Madame Sergeot, and

occasionally a little present of brillantine or perfumery, for

friendship's sake, and because it is well to have the good-will of the

all-powerful police.

From her window Madame Caille observed the comings and goings of Abel

with a resentful eye. It was rarely now that he glanced into the

épicerie as he passed, and still more rarely that he greeted his former

flame with a stiff nod. Once she had hailed him from the doorway,

sardines in hand, but he had replied that he was pressed for time, and

had passed rapidly on. Then indeed did blackness descend upon the soul

of Alexandrine, and in her deepest consciousness she vowed to have

revenge. Neither the occasion nor the method was as yet clear to her,

but she pursed her lips ominously, and bided her time.

In the existence of Madame Caille there was one emphatic consolation for

all misfortunes, the which was none other than Zut, a white angora cat

of surpassing beauty and prodigious size. She had come into

Alexandrine's possession as a kitten, and, what with much eating and an

inherent distaste for exercise, had attained her present proportions and

her superb air of unconcern. It was from the latter that she derived her

name, the which, in Parisian argot, at once means everything and

nothing, but is chiefly taken to signify complete and magnificent

indifference to all things mundane and material: and in the matter of

indifference Zut was past-mistress. Even for Madame Caille herself, who

fed her with the choicest morsels from her own plate, brushed her fine

fur with excessive care, and addressed caressing remarks to her at

minute intervals throughout the day, Zut manifested a lack of interest

that amounted to contempt. As she basked in the warm sun at the shop

door, the round face of her mistress beamed upon her from the little

desk, and the voice of her mistress sent fulsome flattery winging toward

her on the heavy air. Was she beautiful, mon Dieu! In effect, all that

one could dream of the most beautiful! And her eyes, of a blue like the

heaven, were they not wise and calm? Mon Dieu, yes! It was a cat among

thousands, a mimi almost divine.

Jean-Baptiste, appealed to for confirmation of these statements, replied

that it was so. There was no denying that this was a magnificent beast.

And of a chic. And caressing--(which was exaggeration). And of an

affection--(which was doubtful). And courageous--(which was wholly

untrue). Mazette, yes! A cat of cats! And was the boy to be the whole

afternoon in delivering a cheese, he demanded of her? And Madame Caille

would challenge him to ask her that--but it was a good, great beast all

the same!--and so bury herself again in her accounts, until her

attention was once more drawn to Zut, and fresh flattery poured forth.

For all of this Zut cared less than nothing. In the midst of her

mistress's sweetest cajolery, she simply closed her sapphire eyes, with

an inexpressibly eloquent air of weariness, or turned to the intricacies

of her toilet, as who should say: "Continue. I am listening. But it is

unimportant."

But long familiarity with her disdain had deprived it of any sting, so

far as Alexandrine was concerned. Passive indifference she could suffer.

It was only when Zut proceeded to an active manifestation of ingratitude

that she inflicted an irremediable wound. Returning from her marketing

one morning, Madame Caille discovered her graceless favourite seated

complacently in the doorway of the Salon Malakoff, and, in a paroxysm

of indignation, bore down upon her, and snatched her to her breast.

"Unhappy one!" she cried, planting herself in full view of Espérance,

and, while raining the letter of her reproach upon the truant,

contriving to apply its spirit wholly to her neighbour. "What hast thou

done? Is it that thou desertest me for strangers, who may destroy thee?

Name of a name, hast thou no heart? They would steal thee from me--and

above all, _now_! Well then, no! One shall see if such things are

permitted! Vagabond!" And with this parting shot, which passed

harmlessly over the head of the offender, and launched itself full at

Madame Sergeot, the outraged épicière flounced back into her own domain,

where, turning, she threatened the empty air with a passionate gesture.

"Vagabond!" she repeated. "Good-for-nothing! Is it not enough to have

robbed me of my friends, that you must steal my child as well? We shall

see!"--then, suddenly softening--"Thou art beautiful, and good, and

wise. Mon Dieu, if I should lose thee, and above all, _now_!"

Now there existed a marked, if unvoiced, community of feeling between

Espérance and her resentful neighbour, for the former's passion for cats

was more consuming even than the latter's. She had long cherished the

dream of possessing a white angora, and when, that morning, of her own

accord, Zut stepped into the Salon Malakoff, she was received with

demonstrations even warmer than those to which she had long since become

accustomed. And, whether it was the novelty of her surroundings, or

merely some unwonted instinct which made her unusually susceptible, her

habitual indifference then and there gave place to animation, and her

satisfaction was vented in her long, appreciative purr, wherewith it was

not once a year that she vouchsafed to gladden her owner's heart.

Espérance hastened to prepare a saucer of milk, and, when this was

exhausted, added a generous portion of fish, and Zut then made a tour of

the shop, rubbing herself against the chair-legs, and receiving the

homage of customers and duck-clad assistants alike. Flique, his ruddy

face screwed into a mere knot of features, as Hippolyte worked violet

hair-tonic into his brittle locks, was moved to satire by the

apparition.

"Tiens! It is with the cat as with the clients. All the world forsakes

the Caille."

Strangely enough, the wrathful words of Alexandrine, as she snatched her

darling from the doorway, awoke in the mind of Espérance her first

suspicion of this smouldering resentment. Absorbed in the launching of

her husband's affairs, and constantly employed in the making of change

and with the keeping of her simple accounts, she had had no time to

bestow upon her neighbours, and, even had her attention been free, she

could hardly have been expected to deduce the rancour of Madame Caille

from the evidence at hand. But even if she had been able to ignore the

significance of that furious outburst at her very door, its meaning had

not been lost upon the others, and her own half-formed conviction was

speedily confirmed.

"What has she?" cried Hippolyte, pausing in the final stage of his

operations upon the highly perfumed Flique.

"Do I know?" replied his wife with a shrug. "She thinks I stole her

cat--_I_!"

"Quite simply, she hates you," put in Flique. "And why not? She is old,

and fat, and her business is taking itself off, like that! You are young

and"--with a bow, as he rose--"beautiful, and your affairs march to a

marvel. She is jealous, c'est tout! It is a bad character, that."

"But, mon Dieu!"--

"But what does that say to you? Let her go her way, she and her cat. Au

r'voir, 'sieurs, 'dame."

And, rattling a couple of sous into the little urn reserved for tips,

the policeman took his departure, amid a chorus of "Merci, m'sieu', au

r'voir, m'sieu'," from Hippolyte and his duck-clad aids.

But what he had said remained behind. All day Madame Sergeot pondered

upon the incident of the morning and Abel Flique's comments thereupon,

seeking out some more plausible reason for this hitherto unsuspected

enmity than the mere contrast between her material conditions and those

of Madame Caille seemed to her to afford. For, to a natural placidity of

temperament, which manifested itself in a reluctance to incur the

displeasure of any one, had been lately added in Espérance a shrewd

commercial instinct, which told her that the fortunes of the Salon

Malakoff might readily be imperilled by an unfriendly tongue. In the

quartier, gossip spread quickly and took deep root. It was quite

imaginably within the power of Madame Caille to circulate such rumours

of Sergeot dishonesty as should draw their lately won custom from them

and leave but empty chairs and discontent where now all was prosperity

and satisfaction.

Suddenly there came to her the memory of that visit which she had never

returned. Mon Dieu! and was not that reason enough? She, the youngest

patronne in the quartier, to ignore deliberately the friendly call of a

neighbour! At least it was not too late to make amends. So, when

business lagged a little in the late afternoon, Madame Sergeot slipped

from her desk, and, after a furtive touch to her hair, went in next

door, to pour oil upon the troubled waters.

Madame Caille, throned at her counter, received her visitor with

unexampled frigidity.

"Ah, it is you," she said. "You have come to make some purchases, no

doubt."

"Eggs, madame," answered her visitor, disconcerted, but tactfully

accepting the hint.

"The best quality--or--?" demanded Alexandrine, with the suggestion of a

sneer.

"The best, evidently, madame. Six, if you please. Spring weather at

last, it would seem."

To this generality the other made no reply. Descending from her stool,

she blew sharply into a small paper bag, thereby distending it into a

miniature balloon, and began selecting the eggs from a basket, holding

each one to the light, and then dusting it with exaggerated care before

placing it in the bag. While she was thus employed Zut advanced from a

secluded corner, and, stretching her fore legs slowly to their utmost

length, greeted her acquaintance of the morning with a yawn. Finding in

the cat an outlet for her embarrassment, Espérance made another effort

to give the interview a friendly turn.

"He is beautiful, madame, your matou," she said.

"It is a female," replied Madame Caille, turning abruptly from the

basket, "and she does not care for strangers."

This second snub was not calculated to encourage neighbourly overtures,

but Madame Sergeot had felt herself to be in the wrong, and was not to

be so readily repulsed.

"We do not see Monsieur Caille at the Salon Malakoff," she continued.

"We should be enchanted"--

"My husband shaves himself," retorted Alexandrine, with renewed dignity.

"But his hair"--ventured Espérance.

"_I_ cut it!" thundered her foe.

Here Madame Sergeot made a false move. She laughed. Then, in confusion,

and striving, too late, to retrieve herself--"Pardon, madame," she

added, "but it seems droll to me, that. After all, ten sous is a sum so

small"--

"All the world, unfortunately," broke in Madame Caille, "has not the

wherewithal to buy mirrors, and pay itself frescoes and appareils

antiseptiques! The eggs are twenty-four sous--but we do not pride

ourselves upon our eggs. Perhaps you had better seek them elsewhere for

the future!"

For sole reply Madame Sergeot had recourse to her expressive shrug, and

then laying two francs upon the counter, and gathering up the sous which

Alexandrine rather hurled at than handed her, she took her way toward

the door with all the dignity at her command. But Madame Caille, feeling

her snub to have been insufficient, could not let her go without a final

thrust.

"Perhaps your husband will be so amiable as to shampoo my cat!" she

shouted. "She seems to like your 'Salon'!"

But Espérance, while for concord's sake inclined to tolerate all

rudeness to herself, was not prepared to hear Hippolyte insulted, and

so, wheeling at the doorway, flung all her resentment into two words.

"Mal élevée!"

"Gueuse!" screamed Alexandrine from the desk. And so they parted.

Now, even at this stage, an armed truce might still have been preserved,

had Zut been content with the evil she had wrought, and not thought it

incumbent upon her further to embitter a quarrel that was a very pretty

quarrel as it stood. But, whether it was that the milk and fish of the

Salon Malakoff lay sweeter upon her memory than any of the familiar

dainties of the épicerie Caille, or that, by her unknowable feline

instinct, she was irresistibly drawn toward the scent of violet and

lilac brillantine, her first visit to the Sergeot was soon repeated, and

from this visit other visits grew, until it was almost a daily

occurrence for her to saunter slowly into the salle de coiffure, and

there receive the food and homage which were rendered as her undisputed

due. For, whatever was the bitterness of Espérance toward Madame Caille,

no part thereof descended upon Zut. On the contrary, at each visit her

heart was more drawn toward the sleek angora, and her desire but

strengthened to possess her peer. But white angoras are a luxury, and an

expensive one at that, and, however prosperous the Salon Malakoff might

be, its proprietors were not as yet in a position to squander eighty

francs upon a whim. So, until profits should mount higher, Madame

Sergeot was forced to content herself with the voluntary visits of her

neighbour's pet.

Madame Caille did not yield her rights of sovereignty without a

struggle. On the occasion of Zut's third visit, she descended upon the

Salon Malakoff, robed in wrath, and found the adored one contentedly

feeding on fish in the very bosom of the family Sergeot. An appalling

scene ensued.

"If," she stormed, crimson of countenance, and threatening Espérance

with her fist, "if you _must_ entice my cat from her home, at _least_ I

will thank you not to give her food. I provide all that is necessary;

and, for the rest, how do I know what is in that saucer?"

And she surveyed the duck-clad assistants and the astounded customers

with tremendous scorn.

"You others," she added, "I ask you, is it just? These people take my

cat, and feed her--_feed_ her--with I know not what! It is overwhelming,

unheard of--and, above all, _now_!"

But here the peaceful Hippolyte played trumps.

"It is the privilege of the vulgar," he cried, advancing, razor in hand,

"when they are at home, to insult their neighbours, but here--no! My

wife has told me of you and of your sayings. Beware! or I shall arrange

your affair for you! Go! you and your cat!"

And, by way of emphasis, he fairly kicked Zut into her astonished

owner's arms. He was magnificent, was Hippolyte!

This anecdote, duly elaborated, was poured into the ears of Abel Flique

an hour later, and that evening he paid his first visit in many months

to Madame Caille. She greeted him effusively, being willing to pardon

all the past for the sake of regaining this powerful friend. But the

glitter in the agent's eye would have cowed a fiercer spirit than hers.