conception of art. There was sent to him once a fine and very expressive
cat's head in bronze, by Frémiet. I placed it on the floor. He regarded
it intently, approached it cautiously and crouchingly, touched it with
his nose, perceived the fraud, turned away abruptly, and never would
notice it afterward. On the whole, his life was not only a successful
one, but a happy one. He never had but one fear, so far as I know: he
had a mortal and a reasonable terror of plumbers. He would never stay in
the house when they were here. No coaxing could quiet him. Of course he
didn't share our fear about their charges, but he must have had some
dreadful experience with them in that portion of his life which is
unknown to us. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that,
in his scheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mischief.
In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me to estimate Calvin
by the worldly standard. I know that it is customary now, when any one
dies, to ask how much he was worth, and that no obituary in the
newspapers is considered complete without such an estimate. The plumbers
in our house were one day overheard to say that, "They say that _she_
says that _he_ says that he wouldn't take a hundred dollars for him." It
is unnecessary to say that I never made such a remark, and that, so far
as Calvin was concerned, there was no purchase in money.
As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one, for
it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, slept when he
was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his toes and the
end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. He delighted to roam about
the garden, and stroll among the trees, and to lie on the green grass
and luxuriate in all the sweet influences of summer. You could never
accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew the secret of repose. The poet
who wrote so prettily of him that his little life was rounded with a
sleep, understated his felicity; it was rounded with a good many. His
conscience never seemed to interfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had
good habits and a contented mind. I can see him now walk in at the study
door, sit down by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet,
and look up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face. I
often thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him the
power of language. But since he was denied speech, he scorned the
inarticulate mouthings of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing and
yowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered a sort
of articulate and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to call
attention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some want of
his, but he never went whining about. He would sit for hours at a closed
window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and when it was
opened he never admitted that he had been impatient by "bolting" in.
Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind of utterance given to
his race he would not use, he had a mighty power of purr to express his
measureless content with congenial society. There was in him a musical
organ with stops of varied power and expression, upon which I have no
doubt he could have performed Scarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.
Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of the
diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for his departure
was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only know that he appeared
to us in this world in his perfect stature and beauty, and that after a
time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his illness there was nothing more
to be regretted than in all his blameless life. I suppose there never
was an illness that had more of dignity and sweetness and resignation in
it. It came on gradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of
appetite. An alarming symptom was his preference for the warmth of a
furnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open wood-fire. Whatever
pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed only anxious not to
obtrude his malady. We tempted him with the delicacies of the season,
but it soon became impossible for him to eat, and for two weeks he ate
or drank scarcely anything. Sometimes he made an effort to take
something, but it was evident that he made the effort to please us. The
neighbours--and I am convinced that the advice of neighbours is never
good for anything--suggested catnip. He wouldn't even smell it. We had
the attendance of an amateur practitioner of medicine, whose real office
was the cure of souls, but nothing touched his case. He took what was
offered, but it was with the air of one to whom the time for pellets was
passed. He sat or lay day after day almost motionless, never once making
a display of those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are
so disagreeable to society. His favourite place was on the brightest
spot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell and he
could hear the fountain play. If we went to him and exhibited our
interest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of our
sympathy. And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expression
that said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was to all
who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience in affliction.
I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card of
his failing condition; and never again saw him alive. One sunny morning,
he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he was very thin
then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all the plants he knew,
and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room, and stood a long
time looking out upon the little field, now brown and sere, and toward
the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours of his life had been spent.
It was a last look. He turned and walked away, laid himself down upon
the bright spot in the rug, and quietly died.
It is not too much to say that a little shock went through the
neighbourhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked was his
individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to see him.
There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it was felt that
any parade would have been distasteful to him. John, who acted as
undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him, and I believe assumed a
professional decorum; but there may have been the usual levity
underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen that it was the
"dryest wake he ever attended." Everybody, however, felt a fondness for
Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect. Between him and Bertha
there existed a great friendship, and she apprehended his nature; she
used to say that sometimes she was afraid of him, he looked at her so
intelligently; she was never certain that he was what he appeared to be.
When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamber by
an open window. It was February. He reposed in a candle-box, lined about
the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a little wine-glass with
flowers. He lay with his head tucked down in his arms,--a favourite
position of his before the fire,--as if asleep in the comfort of his
soft and exquisite fur. It was the involuntary exclamation of those who
saw him, "How natural he looks!" As for myself, I said nothing. John
buried him under the twin hawthorn-trees,--one white and the other
pink,--in a spot where Calvin was fond of lying and listening to the hum
of summer insects and the twitter of birds.
Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of character that
was so evident to those who knew him. At any rate, I have set down
nothing concerning him but the literal truth. He was always a mystery. I
did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he has gone. I would
not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay upon his grave.
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
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| Transcriber's Note |
| |
| Printer's errors have been corrected and hyphenation standardized. |
| The author's spelling has been maintained. |
| |
| |
| Page number in Contents for Preface corrected from vii to ix. |
| |
| The following spelling corrections have been made:-- |
| |
| Page 41 'practise' to 'practice'. 'do not practice as a' |
| |
| Page 98 'necesssary' to 'necessary'. 'the door was not necessary'.|
| |
| Page 122 'with' to 'which'. 'with that agility to which'. |
| |
| Page 125 'Accompaned' to 'Accompanied'. 'Accompanied by my lord'. |
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| Page 181 'undersood' to 'understood'. 'and so well understood'. |
| | |
| Page 238 'icoseles' to 'isoceles'. 'a lean isoceles triangle'. |
| |
| Page 241 'obstrusive' to 'obtrusive'. 'the least obtrusive of |
| beings'. |
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