be said of the justice of old England if...."
Hardly had I pronounced these words than I was interrupted by a murmur
of voices, so strongly had the public been influenced by the
_Cat-Chronicle_ and by Puck's friends.
"She questions the justice of old England which has created the jury!"
cried some one.
"She wishes to explain to you, My Lords," cried my adversary's
abominable lawyer, "that she went on the rooftop with a French Cat in
order to convert him to the Anglican faith, when, as a matter of fact,
she went there to learn how to say, _Mon petit homme_, in French, to her
husband, to listen to the abominable principles of papism, and to learn
to disregard the laws and customs of old England!"
Such piffle always drives an English audience wild. Therefore the words
of Puck's attorney were received with tumultuous applause. I was
condemned at the age of twenty-six months, when I could prove that I
still was ignorant of the very meaning of the word, Tom. But from all
this I gathered that it was on account of such practices that Albion
was called Old England.
I fell into a deep miscathropy which was caused less by my divorce than
by the death of my dear Brisquet, whom Puck had had killed by a mob,
fearing his vengeance. Also nothing made me more furious than to hear
the loyalty of English Cats spoken of.
You see, O! French Animals, that in familiarizing ourselves with men, we
borrow from them all their vices and bad institutions. Let us return to
the wild life where we obey only our instincts, and where we do not find
customs in conflict with the sacred wishes of Nature. At this moment I
am writing a treatise on the abuse of the working classes of animals, in
order to get them to pledge themselves to refrain from turning spits, to
refuse to allow themselves to be harnessed to carriages, in order, to
sum up, to teach them the means of protecting themselves against the
oppression of the grand aristocracy. Although we are celebrated for our
scribbling I believe that Miss Martineau would not repudiate me. You
know that on the continent literature has become the haven of all Cats
who protest against the immoral monopoly of marriage, who resist the
tyranny of institutions, and who desire to encourage natural laws. I
have omitted to tell you that, although Brisquet's body was slashed with
a wound in the back, the coroner, by an infamous hypocrisy, declared
that he had poisoned himself with arsenic, as if so gay, so light-headed
a Cat could have reflected long enough on the subject of life to
conceive so serious an idea, and as if a Cat whom I loved could have the
least desire to quit this existence! But with Marsh's apparatus spots
have been found on a plate.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC.
Translated by Carl Van Vechten.
GIPSY
On a fair Saturday afternoon in November Penrod's little old dog Duke
returned to the ways of his youth and had trouble with a strange cat on
the back porch. This indiscretion, so uncharacteristic, was due to the
agitation of a surprised moment, for Duke's experience had inclined him
to a peaceful pessimism, and he had no ambition for hazardous
undertakings of any sort. He was given to musing but not to avoidable
action, and he seemed habitually to hope for something which he was
pretty sure would not happen. Even in his sleep, this gave him an air of
wistfulness.
Thus, being asleep in a nook behind the metal refuse-can, when the
strange cat ventured to ascend the steps of the porch, his appearance
was so unwarlike that the cat felt encouraged to extend its field of
reconnaissance--for the cook had been careless, and the backbone of a
three-pound whitefish lay at the foot of the refuse-can.
This cat was, for a cat, needlessly tall, powerful, independent, and
masculine. Once, long ago, he had been a roly-poly pepper-and-salt
kitten; he had a home in those days, and a name, "Gipsy," which he
abundantly justified. He was precocious in dissipation. Long before his
adolescence, his lack of domesticity was ominous, and he had formed bad
companionships. Meanwhile, he grew so rangy, and developed such length
and power of leg and such traits of character, that the father of the
little girl who owned him was almost convincing when he declared that
the young cat was half broncho and half Malay pirate--though, in the
light of Gipsy's later career, this seems bitterly unfair to even the
lowest orders of bronchos and Malay pirates.
No; Gipsy was not the pet for a little girl. The rosy hearthstone and
sheltered rug were too circumspect for him. Surrounded by the comforts
of middle-class respectability, and profoundly oppressed, even in his
youth, by the Puritan ideals of the household, he sometimes experienced
a sense of suffocation. He wanted free air and he wanted free life; he
wanted the lights, the lights, and the music. He abandoned the
_bourgeoisie_ irrevocably. He went forth in a May twilight, carrying the
evening beefsteak with him, and joined the underworld.
His extraordinary size, his daring, and his utter lack of sympathy soon
made him the leader--and, at the same time, the terror--of all the
loose-lived cats in a wide neighbourhood. He contracted no friendships
and had no confidants. He seldom slept in the same place twice in
succession, and though he was wanted by the police, he was not found. In
appearance he did not lack distinction of an ominous sort; the slow,
rhythmic, perfectly controlled mechanism of his tail, as he impressively
walked abroad, was incomparably sinister. This stately and dangerous
walk of his, his long, vibrant whiskers, his scars, his yellow eye, so
ice-cold, so fire-hot, haughty as the eye of Satan, gave him the deadly
air of a mousquetaire duellist. His soul was in that walk and in that
eye; it could be read--the soul of a bravo of fortune, living on his
wits and his valour, asking no favours and granting no quarter.
Intolerant, proud, sullen, yet watchful and constantly planning--purely
a militarist, believing in slaughter as in a religion, and confident
that art, science, poetry, and the good of the world were happily
advanced thereby--Gipsy had become, though technically not a wildcat,
undoubtedly the most untamed cat at large in the civilized world. Such,
in brief, was the terrifying creature which now elongated its neck, and,
over the top step of the porch, bent a calculating scrutiny upon the
wistful and slumberous Duke.
The scrutiny was searching but not prolonged. Gipsy muttered
contemptuously to himself, "Oh, sheol; I'm not afraid o' _that_!" And he
approached the fishbone, his padded feet making no noise upon the
boards. It was a desirable fishbone, large, with a considerable portion
of the fish's tail still attached to it.
It was about a foot from Duke's nose, and the little dog's dreams began
to be troubled by his olfactory nerve. This faithful sentinel, on guard
even while Duke slept, signalled that alarums and excursions by parties
unknown were taking place, and suggested that attention might well be
paid. Duke opened one drowsy eye. What that eye beheld was monstrous.
Here was a strange experience--the horrific vision in the midst of
things so accustomed. Sunshine fell sweetly upon porch and backyard;
yonder was the familiar stable, and from its interior came the busy hum
of a carpenter shop, established that morning by Duke's young master, in
association with Samuel Williams and Herman. Here, close by, were the
quiet refuse-can and the wonted brooms and mops leaning against the
latticed wall at the end of the porch, and there, by the foot of the
steps, was the stone slab of the cistern, with the iron cover displaced
and lying beside the round opening, where the carpenters had left it,
not half an hour ago, after lowering a stick of wood into the water, "to
season it." All about Duke were these usual and reassuring environs of
his daily life, and yet it was his fate to behold, right in the midst of
them, and in ghastly juxtaposition to his face, a thing of nightmare and
lunacy.
Gipsy had seized the fishbone by the middle. Out from one side of his
head, and mingling with his whiskers, projected the long, spiked spine
of the big fish: down from the other side of that ferocious head dangled
the fish's tail, and from above the remarkable effect thus produced shot
the intolerable glare of two yellow eyes. To the gaze of Duke, still
blurred by slumber, this monstrosity was all of one piece--the bone
seemed a living part of it. What he saw was like those interesting
insect-faces which the magnifying glass reveals to great M. Fabre. It
was impossible for Duke to maintain the philosophic calm of M. Fabre,
however; there was no magnifying glass between him and this spined and
spiky face. Indeed, Duke was not in a position to think the matter over
quietly. If he had been able to do that, he would have said to himself:
"We have here an animal of most peculiar and unattractive appearance,
though, upon examination, it seems to be only a cat stealing a fishbone.
Nevertheless, as the thief is large beyond all my recollection of cats
and has an unpleasant stare, I will leave this spot at once."
On the contrary, Duke was so electrified by his horrid awakening that he
completely lost his presence of mind. In the very instant of his first
eye's opening, the other eye and his mouth behaved similarly, the latter
loosing upon the quiet air one shriek of mental agony before the little
dog scrambled to his feet and gave further employment to his voice in a
frenzy of profanity. At the same time the subterranean diapason of a
demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again
till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the
sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal
attack upon the hobgoblin--and the massacre began.
Never releasing the fishbone for an instant, Gipsy laid back his ears in
a chilling way, beginning to shrink into himself like a concertina, but
rising amidships so high that he appeared to be giving an imitation of
that peaceful beast, the dromedary. Such was not his purpose, however,
for, having attained his greatest possible altitude, he partially sat
down and elevated his right arm after the manner of a semaphore. This
semaphore arm remained rigid for a second, threatening; then it vibrated
with inconceivable rapidity, feinting. But it was the treacherous left
that did the work. Seemingly this left gave Duke three lightning little
pats upon the right ear, but the change in his voice indicated that
these were no love-taps. He yelled "help!" and "bloody murder!"
Never had such a shattering uproar, all vocal, broken out upon a
peaceful afternoon. Gipsy possessed a vocabulary for cat-swearing
certainly second to none out of Italy, and probably equal to the best
there, while Duke remembered and uttered things he had not thought of
for years.
The hum of the carpenter shop ceased, and Sam Williams appeared in the
stable doorway. He stared insanely.
"My gorry!" he shouted. "Duke's havin' a fight with the biggest cat you
ever saw in your life! C'mon!"
His feet were already in motion toward the battlefield, with Penrod and
Herman hurrying in his wake. Onward they sped, and Duke was encouraged
by the sight and sound of these reinforcements to increase his own
outrageous clamours and to press home his attack. But he was
ill-advised. This time it was the right arm of the semaphore that
dipped--and Duke's honest nose was but too conscious of what happened in
consequence.
A lump of dirt struck the refuse-can with violence, and Gipsy beheld the
advance of overwhelming forces. They rushed upon him from two
directions, cutting off the steps of the porch. Undaunted, the
formidable cat raked Duke's nose again, somewhat more lingeringly, and
prepared to depart with his fishbone. He had little fear for himself,
because he was inclined to think that, unhampered, he could whip
anything on earth; still, things seemed to be growing rather warm and he
saw nothing to prevent his leaving.
And though he could laugh in the face of so unequal an antagonist as
Duke, Gipsy felt that he was never at his best or able to do himself
full justice unless he could perform that feline operation inaccurately
known as "spitting." To his notion, this was an absolute essential to
combat; but, as all cats of the slightest pretensions to technique
perfectly understand, it can neither be well done nor produce the best
effects unless the mouth be opened to its utmost capacity so as to
expose the beginnings of the alimentary canal, down which--at least that
is the intention of the threat--the opposing party will soon be passing.
And Gipsy could not open his mouth without relinquishing his fishbone.
Therefore, on small accounts he decided to leave the field to his
enemies and to carry the fishbone elsewhere. He took two giant leaps.
The first landed him upon the edge of the porch. There, without an
instant's pause, he gathered his fur-sheathed muscles, concentrated
himself into one big steel spring, and launched himself superbly into
space. He made a stirring picture, however brief, as he left the solid
porch behind him and sailed upward on an ascending curve into the sunlit
air. His head was proudly up; he was the incarnation of menacing power
and of self-confidence. It is possible that the white-fish's spinal
column and flopping tail had interfered with his vision, and in
launching himself he may have mistaken the dark, round opening of the
cistern for its dark, round cover. In that case, it was a leap
calculated and executed with precision, for as the boys clamoured their
pleased astonishment, Gipsy descended accurately into the orifice and
passed majestically from public view, with the fishbone still in his
mouth and his haughty head still high.
There was a grand splash! BOOTH TARKINGTON.
THE BLUE DRYAD
"According to that theory"--said a critical friend, _à propos_ of the
last story but one--"susceptibility of 'discipline' would be the chief
test of animal character, which means that the best dogs get their
character from men. If so--"
"You pity the poor brutes?"
"Oh no. I was going to say that on that principle cats should have next
to no character at all."
"They have plenty," I said, "but it's usually bad--at least hopelessly
unromantic. Who ever heard of a heroic or self-denying cat? Cats do what
they like, not what you want them to do."
He laughed. "Sometimes they do what you like very much. You haven't
heard Mrs. Warburton-Kinneir's cat-story?"
"The Warburton-Kinneirs! I didn't know they were back in England."
"Oh yes. They've been six months in Hampshire, and now they are in town.
She has Thursday afternoons."
"Good," I said, "I'll go the very next Friday, and take my chance...."
Fortunately only one visitor appeared to tea. And as soon as I had
explained my curiosity, he joined me in petitioning for the story which
follows:--
* * * * *
Stoffles was her name, a familiar abbreviation, and Mephistophelian was
her nature. She had all the usual vices of the feline tribe, including
a double portion of those which men are so fond of describing as
feminine. Vain, indolent, selfish, with a highly cultivated taste for
luxury and neatness in her personal appearance, she was distinguished by
all those little irritating habits and traits for which nothing but an
affectionate heart (a thing in her case conspicuous by its absence) can
atone.
It would be incorrect, perhaps, to say that Stoffles did not care for
the society of my husband and myself. She liked the best of everything,
and these our circumstances allowed us to give her. For the rest, though
in kitten days suspected of having caught a mouse, she had never been
known in after life to do anything which the most lax of economists
could describe as useful. She would lie all day in the best arm-chair
enjoying real or pretended slumbers, which never affected her appetite
at supper-time; although in that eventide which is the feline morn she
would, if certain of a sufficient number of admiring spectators,
condescend to amuse their dull human intelligence by exhibitions of her
dexterity. But she was soon bored, and had no conception of altruistic
effort. Abundantly cautious and prudent in all matters concerning her
own safety and comfort, she had that feline celerity of vanishing like
air or water before the foot, hand, or missile of irritated man; while
on the other hand, when a sensitive specimen of the gentler sex (my
grandmother, for example) was attentively holding the door open for her,
she would stiffen and elongate her whole body, and, regardless of all
exhibitions of kindly impatience, proceed out of the drawing-room as
slowly as a funeral _cortège_ of crocodiles.
A good-looking Persian cat is an ornamental piece of furniture in a
house; but though fond of animals, I never succeeded in getting up an
affection for Stoffles until the occurrence of the incident here to be
related. Even in this, however, I cannot conceal from myself that the
share which she took was taken, as usual, solely for her own
satisfaction.
We lived, you know, in a comfortable old-fashioned house facing the
highroad, on the slope of a green hill from which one looked across the
gleaming estuary (or the broad mud-flats) of Southampton Water on to the
rich, rolling woodland of the New Forest. I say we, but in fact for some
months I had been alone, and my husband had just returned from one of
his sporting and scientific expeditions in South America. He had already
won fame as a naturalist, and had succeeded in bringing home alive quite
a variety of beasts, usually of the reptile order, whose extreme rarity
seemed to me a merciful provision of Nature.
But all his previous triumphs were completely eclipsed, I soon learned,
by the capture, alive, on this last expedition, of an abominably
poisonous snake, known to those who knew it as the Blue Dryad, or more
familiarly in backwoods slang, as the Half-hour Striker, in vague
reference to its malignant and fatal qualities. The time in which a
snake-bite takes effect is, by the way, no very exact test of its
virulence, the health and condition not only of the victim, but of the
snake, having of course to be taken into account.
But the Blue Dryad, sometimes erroneously described as a variety of
rattlesnake, is, I understand, supposed to kill the average man, under
favourable circumstances, in less time even than the deadly
Copperhead--which it somewhat resembles, except that it is larger in
size, and bears a peculiar streak of faint peacock-blue down the back,
only perceptible in a strong light. This precious reptile was destined
for the Zoological Gardens.
Being in extremely delicate health at the time, I need hardly say that I
knew nothing of these gruesome details until afterwards. Henry (that is
my husband), after entering my room with a robust and sunburned
appearance that did my heart good, merely observed--as soon as we had
exchanged greetings--that he had brought home a pretty snake which
"wouldn't (just as long, that is to say, as it couldn't) do the
slightest harm,"--an evasive assurance which I accepted as became the
nervous wife of an enthusiastic naturalist. I believe I insisted on its
not coming into the house.
The cook, indeed, on my husband expressing a wish to put it in the
kitchen, had taken up a firmer position: she had threatened to "scream"
if "the vermin" were introduced into her premises; which ultimatum,
coming from a stalwart young woman with unimpaired lungs, was
sufficient.
Fortunately the weather was very hot (being in July of the
ever-memorable summer of 1893), so it was decided that the Blue Dryad,
wrapped in flannel and securely confined in a basket, should be left in
the sun, on the farthest corner of the verandah, during the hour or so
in the afternoon when my husband had to visit the town on business.
He had gone off with a cousin of mine, an officer of Engineers in
India, stationed, I think, at Lahore, and home on leave. I remember that
they were a long time, or what seemed to me a long time, over their
luncheon; and the last remark of our guest as he came out of the
dining-room remained in my head as even meaningless words will run in
the head of any idle invalid shut up for most of the day in a silent
room. What he said was, in the positive tone of one emphasizing a
curious and surprising statement, "D'you know, by the way, it's the
_one_ animal that doesn't care a rap for the cobra." And, my husband
seeming to express disbelief and a desire to change the subject as they
entered my boudoir, "It's a holy fact! Goes for it, so smart! Has the
beggar on toast before you can say 'Jack Robinson!'"
The observation did not interest me, but simply ran in my head. Then
they came into my room, only for a few moments, as I was not to be
tired. The Engineer tried to amuse Stoffles, who was seized with such a
fit of mortal boredom that he transferred his attentions to Ruby, the
Gordon setter, a devoted and inseparable friend of mine, under whose
charge I was shortly left as they passed out of the house. The
Lieutenant, it appears, went last, and inadvertently closed without
fastening the verandah door. Thereby hangs a tale of the most trying
quarter of an hour it has been my lot to experience.
I suppose I may have been asleep for ten minutes or so when I was
awakened by the noise of Ruby's heavy body jumping out through the open
window. Feeling restless and seeing me asleep, he had imagined himself
entitled to a short spell off guard. Had the door not been ostensibly
latched he would have made his way out by it, being thoroughly used to
opening doors and such tricks--a capacity which in fact proved fatal to
him. That it was unlatched I saw in a few moments, for the dog on his
return forced it open with a push and trotted up in a disturbed manner
to my bedside. I noticed a tiny spot of blood on the black side of his
nose, and naturally supposed he had scratched himself against a bush or
a piece of wire. "Ruby," I said, "what have you been doing?" Then he
whined as if in pain, crouching close to my side and shaking in every
limb. I should say that I was myself lying with a shawl over my feet on
a deep sofa with a high back. I turned to look at Stoffles, who was
slowly perambulating the room, looking for flies and other insects (her
favourite amusement) on the wainscot. When I glanced again at the dog
his appearance filled me with horror; he was standing, obviously from
pain, swaying from side to side and breathing hard. As I watched, his
body grew more and more rigid. With his eyes fixed on the half-open
door, he drew back as if from the approach of some dreaded object,
raised his head with a pitiful attempt at a bark, which broke off into a
stifled howl, rolled over sideways suddenly, and lay dead. The horrid
stiffness of the body, almost resembling a stuffed creature overset,
made me believe that he had died as he stood, close to my side, perhaps
meaning to defend me--more probably, since few dogs would be proof
against such a terror, trusting that I should protect him against the
_thing coming in at the door_. Unable to resist the unintelligible idea
that the dog had been frightened to death, I followed the direction of
his last gaze, and at first saw nothing. The next moment I observed
round the corner of the verandah door a small, dark, and slender object,
swaying gently up and down like a dry bough in the wind. It had passed
right into the room with the same slow, regular motion before I realized
what it was and what had happened.
My poor, stupid Ruby must have nosed at the basket on the verandah till
he succeeded somehow in opening it, and have been bitten in return for
his pains by the abominable beast which had been warranted in this
insufficient manner to do no harm, and which I now saw angrily rearing
its head and hissing fiercely at the dead dog within three yards of my
face.