cat-head appeared; and then the whole of a delighted little black
cat-body emerged--and cuddled with joy-purrs of recognition in its
deliverer's arms! Within the sequent instant the recognition was mutual.
"Thunder of guns!" cried the Major. "It is the Shah de Perse!"
Being thus caught red-handed, the hireling of Monsieur Peloux cowered.
"Brigand!" continued the Major. "Thou hast ravished away this charming
cat by the foulest of robberies. Thou art worse than the scum of Arab
camp-followings. And if I had thee to myself, over there in the desert,"
he added grimly, "thou shouldst go the same way!"
All overawed by the Major's African attitude, the hireling took to
whining. "Monsieur will believe me when I tell him that I am but an
unhappy tool--I, an honest man whom a rich tempter, taking advantage of
my unmerited poverty, has betrayed into crime. Monsieur himself shall
judge me when I have told him all!" And then--with creditably
imaginative variations on the theme of a hypothetical dying wife in
combination with six supposititious starving children--the man came
close enough to telling all to make clear that his backer in
cat-stealing was Monsieur Peloux!
With a gasp of astonishment, the Major again took the word. "What
matters it, animal, by whom thy crime was prompted? Thou art the
perpetrator of it--and to thee comes punishment! Shackles and prisons
are in store for thee! I shall--"
But what the Major Gontard had in mind to do toward assisting the march
of retributive justice is immaterial--since he did not do it. Even as
he spoke--in these terms of doom that qualifying conditions rendered
doomless--the man suddenly dodged past him, bolted across the platform,
jumped to the foot-board of a carriage of the just-starting train,
cleverly bundled himself through an open window, and so was gone:
leaving the Major standing lonely, with impotent rage filling his heart,
and with the Shah de Perse all a purring cuddle in his arms!
Acting on a just impulse, the Major Gontard sped to the telegraph
office. Two hours must pass before he could follow the miscreant; but
the departed train ran express to Marseille, and telegraphic heading-off
was possible. To his flowers, and to the romance of a breakfast that old
Marthe by then was in the very act of preparing for him, his thoughts
went in bitter relinquishment: but his purpose was stern! Plumping the
Shah de Perse down anyway on the telegraph table, and seizing a pen
fiercely, he began his writings. And then, of a sudden, an inspiration
came to him that made him stop in his writings--and that changed his
flames of anger into flames of joy.
His first act under the influence of this new and better emotion was to
tear his half-finished dispatch into fragments. His second act was to
assuage the needs, physical and psychical, of the Shah de Perse--near to
collapse for lack of food and drink, and his little cat feelings hurt by
his brusque deposition on the telegraph table--by carrying him tenderly
to the buffet; and there--to the impolitely over-obvious amusement of
the buffetière--purchasing cream without stint for the allaying of his
famishings. To his feasting the Shah de Perse went with the avid energy
begotten of his bag-compelled long fast. Dipping his little red tongue
deep into the saucer, he lapped with a vigour that all cream-splattered
his little black nose. Yet his admirable little cat manners were not
forgotten: even in the very thick of his eager lappings--pathetically
eager, in view of the cause of them--he purred forth gratefully, with a
gurgling chokiness, his earnest little cat thanks.
As the Major Gontard watched this pleasing spectacle his heart was all
aglow within him and his face was of a radiance comparable only with
that of an Easter-morning sun. To himself he was saying: "It is a dream
that has come to me! With the disgraced enemy in retreat, and with the
Shah de Perse for my banner, it is that I hold victoriously the whole
universe in the hollow of my hand!"
* * * * *
While stopping appreciably short of claiming for himself a clutch upon
the universe, Monsieur Peloux also had his satisfactions on the evening
of the day that had witnessed the enlèvement of the Shah de Perse. By
his own eyes he knew certainly that that iniquitous kidnapping of a
virtuous cat had been effected. In the morning the hireling had brought
to him in his private office the unfortunate Shah de Perse--all
unhappily bagged, and even then giving vent to his pathetic
complainings--and had exhibited him, as a pièce justificatif, when
making his demand for railway fare and the promised extra napolèon. In
the mid-afternoon the hireling had returned, with the satisfying
announcement that all was accomplished: that he had carried the cat to
Pas de Lanciers, of an adequate remoteness, and there had left him with
a person in need of a cat who received him willingly. Being literally
true, this statement had in it so convincing a ring of sincerity that
Monsieur Peloux paid down in full the blood-money and dismissed his
bravo with commendation. Thereafter, being alone, he rubbed his
hands--gladly thinking of what was in the way to happen in sequence to
the permanent removal of this cat stumbling-block from his path.
Although professionally accustomed to consider the possibilities of
permutation, the known fact that petards at times are retroactive did
not present itself to his mind.
And yet--being only an essayist in crime, still unhardened--certain
compunctions beset him as he approached himself, on the to-be eventful
evening of that eventful day, to the door of Madame Jolicoeur's
modestly elegant dwelling on the Pavé d'Amour. In the back of his head
were justly self-condemnatory thoughts, to the general effect that he
was a blackguard and deserved to be kicked. In the dominant front of his
head, however, were thoughts of a more agreeable sort: of how he would
find Madame Jolicoeur all torn and rent by the bitter sorrow of her
bereavement; of how he would pour into her harried heart a flood of
sympathy by which that injured organ would be soothed and mollified; of
how she would be lured along gently to requite his tender condolence
with a softening gratitude--that presently would merge easily into the
yet softer phrase of love! It was a well-made program, and it had its
kernel of reason in his recognized ability to win bad causes--as that
of the insurance solicitor--by emotional pleadings which in the same
breath lured to lenience and made the intrinsic demerits of the cause
obscure.
"Madame dines," was the announcement that met Monsieur Peloux when, in
response to his ring, Madame Jolicoeur's door was opened for him by a
trim maid-servant. "But Madame already has continued so long her
dining," added the maid-servant, with a glint in her eyes that escaped
his preoccupied attention, "that in but another instant must come the
end. If M'sieu' will have the amiability to await her in the salon, it
will be for but a point of time!"
Between this maid-servant and Monsieur Peloux no love was lost.
Instinctively he was aware of, and resented, her views--practically
identical with those expressed by Madame Gauthier to Monsieur
Fromagin--touching his deserts as compared with the deserts of the Major
Gontard. Moreover, she had personal incentives to take her revenges.
From Monsieur Peloux, her only vail had been a miserable two-franc
Christmas box. From the Major, as from a perpetually verdant
Christmas-tree, boxes of bonbons and five-franc pieces at all times
descended upon her in showers.
Without perceiving the curious smile that accompanied this young
person's curiously cordial invitation to enter, he accepted the
invitation and was shown into the salon: where he seated himself--a
left-handedness of which he would have been incapable had he been less
perturbed--in Madame Jolicoeur's own special chair. An anatomical
vagary of the Notary's meagre person was the undue shortness of his body
and the undue length of his legs. Because of this eccentricity of
proportion, his bald head rose above the back of the chair to a height
approximately identical with that of its normal occupant.
His waiting time--extending from its promised point to what seemed to
him to be a whole geographical meridian--went slowly. To relieve it,
he took a book from the table, and in a desultory manner turned the
leaves. While thus perfunctorily engaged, he heard the clicking of an
opening door, and then the sound of voices: of Madame Jolicoeur's
voice, and of a man's voice--which latter, coming nearer, he recognized
beyond all doubting as the voice of the Major Gontard. Of other voices
there was not a sound: whence the compromising fact was obvious that
the two had gone through that long dinner together, and alone! Knowing,
as he did, Madame Jolicoeur's habitual disposition toward the
convenances--willingly to be boiled in oil rather than in the smallest
particular to abrade them--he perceived that only two explanations of
the situation were possible: either she had lapsed of a sudden into
madness; or--the thought was petrifying--the Major Gontard had won out
in his French campaigning on his known conquering African lines. The
cheerfully sane tone of the lady's voice forbade him to clutch at the
poor solace to be found in the first alternative--and so forced him to
accept the second. Yielding for a moment to his emotions, the
death-whiteness of his bald head taking on a still deathlier pallor,
Monsieur Peloux buried his face in his hands and groaned.
In that moment of his obscured perception a little black personage
trotted into the salon on soundless paws. Quite possibly, in his then
overwrought condition, had Monsieur Peloux seen this personage enter he
would have shrieked--in the confident belief that before him was a cat
ghost! Pointedly, it was not a ghost. It was the happy little Shah de
Perse himself--all a-frisk with the joy of his blessed home-coming and
very much alive! Knowing, as I do, many of the mysterious ways of little
cat souls, I even venture to believe that his overbubbling gladness
largely was due to his sympathetic perception of the gladness that his
home-coming had brought to two human hearts.
Certainly, all through that long dinner the owners of those hearts had
done their best, by their pettings and their pamperings of him, to make
him a participant in their deep happiness; and he, gratefully
respondent, had made his affectionate thankings by going through all of
his repertory of tricks--with one exception--again and again. Naturally,
his great trick, while unexhibited, repeatedly had been referred to.
Blushing delightfully, Madame Jolicoeur had told about the night-cap
that was a necessary part of it; and had promised--blushing still more
delightfully--that at some time, in the very remote future, the Major
should see it performed. For my own part, because of my knowledge of
little cat souls, I am persuaded that the Shah de Perse, while missing
the details of this love-laughing talk, did get into his head the
general trend of it; and therefore did trot on in advance into the salon
with his little cat mind full of the notion that Madame Jolicoeur
immediately would follow him--to seat herself, duly night-capped, book
in hand, in signal for their game of surprises to begin.
Unconscious of the presence of the Shah de Perse, tortured by the gay
tones of the approaching voices, clutching his book vengefully as though
it were a throat, his bald head beaded with the sweat of agony and the
pallor of it intensified by his poignant emotion, Monsieur Peloux sat
rigid in Madame Jolicoeur's chair!
* * * * *
"It is declared," said Monsieur Brisson, addressing himself to Madame
Jouval, for whom he was in the act of preparing what was spoken of
between them as "the tonic," a courteous euphuism, "that that villain
Notary, aided by a bandit hired to his assistance, was engaged in
administering poison to the cat; and that the brave animal, freeing
itself from the bandit's holdings, tore to destruction the whole of his
bald head--and then triumphantly escaped to its home!"
"A sight to see is that head of his!" replied Madame Jouval. "So swathed
is it in bandages, that the turban of the Grand Turk is less!" Madame
Jouval spoke in tones of satisfaction that were of reason--already she
had held conferences with Madame Jolicoeur in regard to the trousseau.
"And all," continued Monsieur Brisson, with rancour, "because of his
jealousies of the cat's place in Madame Jolicoeur's affections--the
affections which he so hopelessly hoped, forgetful of his own
repulsiveness, to win for himself!"
"Ah, she has done well, that dear lady," said Madame Jouval warmly. "As
between the Notary--repulsive, as Monsieur justly terms him--and the
charming Major, her instincts rightly have directed her. To her worthy
cat, who aided in her choosing, she has reason to be grateful. Now her
cruelly wounded heart will find solace. That she should wed again, and
happily, was Heaven's will."
"It was the will of the baggage herself!" declared Monsieur Brisson with
bitterness. "Hardly had she put on her travesty of a mourning than she
began her oglings of whole armies of men!"
Aside from having confected with her own hands the mourning to which
Monsieur Brisson referred so disparagingly, Madame Jouval was not one to
hear calmly the ascription of the term baggage--the word has not lost in
its native French, as it has lost in its naturalized English, its
original epithetical intensity--to a patroness from whom she was in the
very article of receiving an order for an exceptionally rich trousseau.
Naturally, she bristled. "Monsieur must admit at least," she said
sharply, "that her oglings did not come in his direction;" and with an
irritatingly smooth sweetness added: "As to the dealings of Monsieur
Peloux with the cat, Monsieur doubtless speaks with an assured
knowledge. Remembering, as we all do, the affair of the unhappy old
woman, it is easy to perceive that to Monsieur, above all others, any
one in need of poisonings would come!"
The thrust was so keen that for the moment Monsieur Brisson met it only
with a savage glare. Then the bottle that he handed to Madame Jouval
inspired him with an answer. "Madame is in error," he said with
politeness. "For poisons it is possible to go variously elsewhere--as,
for example, to Madame's tongue." Had he stopped with that retort
courteous, but also searching, he would have done well. He did ill by
adding to it the retort brutal: "But that old women of necessity come to
me for their hair-dyes is another matter. That much I grant to Madame
with all good will."
Admirably restraining herself, Madame Jouval replied in tones of
sympathy: "Monsieur receives my commiserations in his misfortunes."
Losing a large part of her restraint, she continued, her eyes
glittering: "Yet Monsieur's temperament clearly is over-sanguine. It is
not less than a miracle of absurdity that he imagined: that he, weighted
down with his infamous murderings of scores of innocent old women, had
even a chance the most meagre of realizing his ridiculous aspirations of
Madame Jolicoeur's hand!" Snatching up her bottle and making for the
door, without any restraint whatever she added: "Monsieur and his
aspirations are a tragedy of stupidity--and equally are abounding in all
the materials for a farce at the Palais de Cristal!"
Monsieur Brisson was cut off from opportunity to reply to this outburst
by Madame Jouval's abrupt departure. His loss of opportunity had its
advantages. An adequate reply to her discharge of such a volley of home
truths would have been difficult to frame.
* * * * *
In the Vic bakery, between Madame Vic and Monsieur Fromagin, a
discussion was in hand akin to that carried on between Monsieur Brisson
and Madame Jouval--but marked with a somewhat nearer approach to
accuracy in detail. Being sequent to the settlement of Monsieur
Fromagin's monthly bill--always a matter of nettling dispute--it
naturally tended to develop its own asperities.
"They say," observed Monsieur Fromagin, "that the cat--it was among his
many tricks--had the habitude to jump on Madame Jolicoeur's head when,
for that purpose, she covered it with a night-cap. The use of the cat's
claws on such a covering, and, also, her hair being very abundant--"
"_Very_ abundant!" interjected Madame Vic; and added: "She, she is of a
richness to buy wigs by the scores!"
"It was his custom, I say," continued Monsieur Fromagin with insistence,
"to steady himself after his leap by using lightly his claws. His
illusion in regard to the bald head of the Notary, it would seem, led to
the catastrophe. Using his claws at first lightly, according to his
habit, he went on to use them with a truly savage energy--when he found
himself as on ice on that slippery eminence and verging to a fall."
"They say that his scalp was peeled away in strips and strings!" said
Madame Vic. "And all the while that woman and that reprobate of a Major
standing by in shrieks and roars of laughter--never raising a hand to
save him from the beast's ferocities! The poor man has my sympathies.
He, at least, in all his doings--I do not for a moment believe the story
that he caused the cat to be stolen--observed rigidly the convenances:
so recklessly shattered by Madame Jolicoeur in her most compromising
dinner with the Major alone!"
"But Madame forgets that their dinner was in celebration of their
betrothal--following Madame Jolicoeur's glad yielding, in just
gratitude, when the Major heroically had rescued her deserving cat from
the midst of its enemies and triumphantly had restored it to her arms."
"It is the man's part," responded Madame Vic, "to make the best of such
matters. In the eyes of all right-minded women her conduct has been of a
shamelessness from first to last: tossing and balancing the two of them
for months upon months; luring them, and countless others with them, to
her feet; declaring always that for her disgusting cat's sake she will
have none of them; and ending by pretending brazenly that for her cat's
sake she bestows herself--second-hand remnant that she is--on the
handsomest man for his age, concerning his character it is well to be
silent; that she could find for herself in all Marseille! On such
actions, on such a woman, Monsieur, the saints in heaven look down with
an agonized scorn!"
"Only those of the saints, Madame," said Monsieur Fromagin, warmly
taking up the cudgels for his best customer, "as in the matter of second
marriages, prior to their arrival in heaven, have had regrettable
experiences. Equally, I venture to assert, a like qualification applies
to a like attitude on earth. That Madame has her prejudices, incident to
her misfortunes, is known."
"That Monsieur has his brutalities, incident to his regrettable bad
breeding, also is known. His present offensiveness, however, passes all
limits. I request him to remove himself from my sight." Madame Vic spoke
with dignity.
Speaking with less dignity, but with conviction--as Monsieur Fromagin
left the bakery--she added: "Monsieur, effectively, is a camel! I bestow
upon him my disdain!"
THOMAS A. JANVIER.
A FRIENDLY RAT
Most of our animals, also many creeping things, such as our "wilde
wormes in woods," common toads, natter-jacks, newts, and lizards, and
stranger still, many insects, have been tamed and kept as pets.
Badgers, otters, foxes, hares, and voles are easily dealt with; but that
any person should desire to fondle so prickly a creature as a hedgehog,
or so diabolical a mammalian as the bloodthirsty flat-headed little
weasel, seems very odd. Spiders, too, are uncomfortable pets; you can't
caress them as you could a dormouse; the most you can do is to provide
your spider with a clear glass bottle to live in, and teach him to come
out in response to a musical sound, drawn from a banjo or fiddle, to
take a fly from your fingers and go back again to its bottle.
An acquaintance of the writer is partial to adders as pets, and he
handles them as freely as the schoolboy does his innocuous ring-snake;
Mr. Benjamin Kidd once gave us a delightful account of his pet
humble-bees, who used to fly about his room, and come at call to be fed,
and who manifested an almost painful interest in his coat buttons,
examining them every day as if anxious to find out their true
significance. Then there was my old friend, Miss Hopely, the writer on
reptiles, who died recently, aged 99 years, who tamed newts, but whose
favourite pet was a slow-worm. She was never tired of expatiating on
its lovable qualities. One finds Viscount Grey's pet squirrels more
engaging, for these are wild squirrels in a wood in Northumberland, who
quickly find out when he is at home and make their way to the house,
scale the walls, and invade the library; then, jumping upon his
writing-table, are rewarded with nuts, which they take from his hand.
Another Northumbrian friend of the writer keeps, or kept, a pet
cormorant, and finds him no less greedy in the domestic than in the wild
state. After catching and swallowing fish all the morning in a
neighbouring river, he wings his way home at meal-times, screaming to be
fed, and ready to devour all the meat and pudding he can get.
The list of strange creatures might be extended indefinitely, even
fishes included; but who has ever heard of a tame pet rat? Not the small
white, pink-eyed variety, artificially bred, which one may buy at any
dealer's, but a common brown rat, _Mus decumanus_, one of the commonest
wild animals in England and certainly the most disliked. Yet this wonder
has been witnessed recently in the village of Lelant, in West Cornwall.
Here is the strange story, which is rather sad and at the same time a
little funny.
This was not a case of "wild nature won by kindness"; the rat simply
thrust itself and its friendship on the woman of the cottage: and she,
being childless and much alone in her kitchen and living-room, was not
displeased at its visits: on the contrary, she fed it; in return the rat
grew more and more friendly and familiar towards her, and the more
familiar it grew, the more she liked the rat. The trouble was, she
possessed a cat, a nice gentle animal not often at home, but it was
dreadful to think of what might happen at any moment should pussy walk
in when her visitor was with her. Then, one day, pussy did walk in when
the rat was present, purring loudly, her tail held stiffly up, showing
that she was in her usual sweet temper. On catching sight of the rat,
she appeared to know intuitively that it was there as a privileged
guest, while the rat on its part seemed to know, also by intuition, that
it had nothing to fear. At all events these two quickly became friends
and were evidently pleased to be together, as they now spent most of the
time in the room, and would drink milk from the same saucer, and sleep
bunched up together, and were extremely intimate.
By and by the rat began to busy herself making a nest in a corner of the
kitchen under a cupboard, and it became evident that there would soon be
an increase in the rat population. She now spent her time running about
and gathering little straws, feathers, string, and anything of the kind
she could pick up, also stealing or begging for strips of cotton, or
bits of wool and thread from the work-basket. Now it happened that her
friend was one of those cats with huge tufts of soft hair on the two
sides of her face; a cat of that type, which is not uncommon, has a
quaint resemblance to a Mid-Victorian gentleman with a pair of
magnificent side-whiskers of a silky softness covering both cheeks and
flowing down like a double beard. The rat suddenly discovered that this
hair was just what she wanted to add a cushion-like lining to her nest,
so that her naked pink little ratlings should be born into the softest
of all possible worlds. At once she started plucking out the hairs, and
the cat, taking it for a new kind of game, but a little too rough to
please her, tried for a while to keep her head out of reach and to throw
the rat off. But she wouldn't be thrown off, and as she persisted in
flying back and jumping at the cat's face and plucking the hairs, the
cat quite lost her temper and administered a blow with her claws
unsheathed.