THE WHITE CAT

The White Cat lived at the back of a shelf at the darkest end of the

inside attic which was nearly dark all over. It had lived there for

years, because one of its white china ears was chipped, so that it was

no longer a possible ornament for the spare bedroom.

Tavy found it at the climax of a wicked and glorious afternoon. He had

been left alone. The servants were the only other people in the house.

He had promised to be good. He had meant to be good. And he had not

been. He had done everything you can think of. He had walked into the

duck pond, and not a stitch of his clothes but had had to be changed.

He had climbed on a hay rick and fallen off it, and had not broken his

neck, which, as cook told him, he richly deserved to do. He had found a

mouse in the trap and put it in the kitchen tea-pot, so that when cook

went to make tea it jumped out at her, and affected her to screams

followed by tears. Tavy was sorry for this, of course, and said so like

a man. He had only, he explained, meant to give her a little start. In

the confusion that followed the mouse, he had eaten all the

black-currant jam that was put out for kitchen tea, and for this too, he

apologised handsomely as soon as it was pointed out to him. He had

broken a pane of the greenhouse with a stone and.... But why pursue the

painful theme? The last thing he had done was to explore the attic,

where he was never allowed to go, and to knock down the White Cat from

its shelf.

The sound of its fall brought the servants. The cat was not broken--only

its other ear was chipped. Tavy was put to bed. But he got out as soon

as the servants had gone downstairs, crept up to the attic, secured the

Cat, and washed it in the bath. So that when mother came back from

London, Tavy, dancing impatiently at the head of the stairs, in a very

wet night-gown, flung himself upon her and cried, 'I've been awfully

naughty, and I'm frightfully sorry, and please may I have the White Cat

for my very own?'

He was much sorrier than he had expected to be when he saw that mother

was too tired even to want to know, as she generally did, exactly how

naughty he had been. She only kissed him, and said:

'I am sorry you've been naughty, my darling. Go back to bed now.

Good-night.'

Tavy was ashamed to say anything more about the China Cat, so he went

back to bed. But he took the Cat with him, and talked to it and kissed

it, and went to sleep with its smooth shiny shoulder against his cheek.

In the days that followed, he was extravagantly good. Being good seemed

as easy as being bad usually was. This may have been because mother

seemed so tired and ill; and gentlemen in black coats and high hats came

to see mother, and after they had gone she used to cry. (These things

going on in a house sometimes make people good; sometimes they act just

the other way.) Or it may have been because he had the China Cat to talk

to. Anyhow, whichever way it was, at the end of the week mother said:

'Tavy, you've been a dear good boy, and a great comfort to me. You must

have tried very hard to be good.'

It was difficult to say, 'No, I haven't, at least not since the first

day,' but Tavy got it said, and was hugged for his pains.

'You wanted,' said mother, 'the China Cat. Well, you may have it.'

'For my very own?'

'For your very own. But you must be very careful not to break it. And

you mustn't give it away. It goes with the house. Your Aunt Jane made me

promise to keep it in the family. It's very, very old. Don't take it out

of doors for fear of accidents.'

'I love the White Cat, mother,' said Tavy. 'I love it better'n all my

toys.'

Then mother told Tavy several things, and that night when he went to bed

Tavy repeated them all faithfully to the China Cat, who was about six

inches high and looked very intelligent.

'So you see,' he ended, 'the wicked lawyer's taken nearly all mother's

money, and we've got to leave our own lovely big White House, and go and

live in a horrid little house with another house glued on to its side.

And mother does hate it so.'

'I don't wonder,' said the China Cat very distinctly.

'_What!_' said Tavy, half-way into his night-shirt.

'I said, I don't wonder, Octavius,' said the China Cat, and rose from

her sitting position, stretched her china legs and waved her white china

tail.

'You can speak?' said Tavy.

'Can't you see I can?--hear I mean?' said the Cat. 'I belong to you now,

so I can speak to you. I couldn't before. It wouldn't have been

manners.'

Tavy, his night-shirt round his neck, sat down on the edge of the bed

with his mouth open.

'Come, don't look so silly,' said the Cat, taking a walk along the high

wooden mantelpiece, 'any one would think you didn't _like_ me to talk to

you.'

'I _love_ you to,' said Tavy recovering himself a little.

'Well then,' said the Cat.

'May I touch you?' Tavy asked timidly.

'Of course! I belong to you. Look out!' The China Cat gathered herself

together and jumped. Tavy caught her.

It was quite a shock to find when one stroked her that the China Cat,

though alive, was still china, hard, cold, and smooth to the touch, and

yet perfectly brisk and absolutely bendable as any flesh and blood cat.

'Dear, dear white pussy,' said Tavy, 'I do love you.'

'And I love you,' purred the Cat, 'otherwise I should never have lowered

myself to begin a conversation.'

'I wish you were a real cat,' said Tavy.

'I am,' said the Cat. 'Now how shall we amuse ourselves? I suppose you

don't care for sport--mousing, I mean?'

'I never tried,' said Tavy, 'and I think I rather wouldn't.'

'Very well then, Octavius,' said the Cat. 'I'll take you to the White

Cat's Castle. Get into bed. Bed makes a good travelling carriage,

especially when you haven't any other. Shut your eyes.'

Tavy did as he was told. Shut his eyes, but could not keep them shut. He

opened them a tiny, tiny chink, and sprang up. He was not in bed. He was

on a couch of soft beast-skin, and the couch stood in a splendid hall,

whose walls were of gold and ivory. By him stood the White Cat, no

longer china, but real live cat--and fur--as cats should be.

'Here we are,' she said. 'The journey didn't take long, did it? Now

we'll have that splendid supper, out of the fairy tale, with the

invisible hands waiting on us.'

She clapped her paws--paws now as soft as white velvet--and a

table-cloth floated into the room; then knives and forks and spoons and

glasses, the table was laid, the dishes drifted in, and they began to

eat. There happened to be every single thing Tavy liked best to eat.

After supper there was music and singing, and Tavy, having kissed a

white, soft, furry forehead, went to bed in a gold four-poster with a

counterpane of butterflies' wings. He awoke at home. On the mantelpiece

sat the White Cat, looking as though butter would not melt in her mouth.

And all her furriness had gone with her voice. She was silent--and

china.

Tavy spoke to her. But she would not answer. Nor did she speak all day.

Only at night when he was getting into bed she suddenly mewed,

stretched, and said:

'Make haste, there's a play acted to-night at my castle.'

Tavy made haste, and was rewarded by another glorious evening in the

castle of the White Cat.

And so the weeks went on. Days full of an ordinary little boy's joys and

sorrows, goodnesses and badnesses. Nights spent by a little Prince in

the Magic Castle of the White Cat.

Then came the day when Tavy's mother spoke to him, and he, very scared

and serious, told the China Cat what she had said.

'I knew this would happen,' said the Cat. 'It always does. So you're to

leave your house next week. Well, there's only one way out of the

difficulty. Draw your sword, Tavy, and cut off my head and tail.'

'And then will you turn into a Princess, and shall I have to marry you?'

Tavy asked with horror.

'No, dear--no,' said the Cat reassuringly. 'I sha'n't turn into

anything. But you and mother will turn into happy people. I shall just

not _be_ any more--for you.'

'Then I won't do it,' said Tavy.

'But you must. Come, draw your sword, like a brave fairy Prince, and cut

off my head.'

The sword hung above his bed, with the helmet and breast-plate Uncle

James had given him last Christmas.

'I'm not a fairy Prince,' said the child. 'I'm Tavy--and I love you.'

'You love your mother better,' said the Cat. 'Come cut my head off. The

story always ends like that. You love mother best. It's for her sake.'

'Yes.' Tavy was trying to think it out. 'Yes, I love mother best. But I

love _you_. And I won't cut off your head,--no, not even for mother.'

'Then,' said the Cat, 'I must do what I can!'

She stood up, waving her white china tail, and before Tavy could stop

her she had leapt, not, as before, into his arms, but on to the wide

hearthstone.

It was all over--the China Cat lay broken inside the high brass fender.

The sound of the smash brought mother running.

'What is it?' she cried. 'Oh, Tavy--the China Cat!'

'She would do it,' sobbed Tavy. 'She wanted me to cut off her head'n I

wouldn't.'

'Don't talk nonsense, dear,' said mother sadly. 'That only makes it

worse. Pick up the pieces.'

'There's only two pieces,' said Tavy. 'Couldn't you stick her together

again?'

'Why,' said mother, holding the pieces close to the candle. 'She's been

broken before. And mended.'

'I knew that,' said Tavy, still sobbing. 'Oh, my dear White Cat, oh, oh,

oh!' The last 'oh' was a howl of anguish.

'Come, crying won't mend her,' said mother. 'Look, there's another piece

of her, close to the shovel.'

Tavy stooped.

'That's not a piece of cat,' he said, and picked it up.

It was a pale parchment label, tied to a key. Mother held it to the

candle and read: '_Key of the lock behind the knot in the mantelpiece

panel in the white parlour._'

'Tavy! I wonder! But ... where did it come from?'

'Out of my White Cat, I s'pose,' said Tavy, his tears stopping. 'Are you

going to see what's in the mantelpiece panel, mother? Are you? Oh, do

let me come and see too!'

'You don't deserve,' mother began, and ended,--'Well, put your

dressing-gown on then.'

They went down the gallery past the pictures and the stuffed birds and

tables with china on them and downstairs on to the white parlour. But

they could not see any knot in the mantelpiece panel, because it was all

painted white. But mother's fingers felt softly all over it, and found a

round raised spot. It was a knot, sure enough. Then she scraped round it

with her scissors, till she loosened the knot, and poked it out with the

scissors point.

'I don't suppose there's any keyhole there really,' she said. But there

was. And what is more, the key fitted. The panel swung open, and inside

was a little cupboard with two shelves. What was on the shelves? There

were old laces and old embroideries, old jewelry and old silver; there

was money, and there were dusty old papers that Tavy thought most

uninteresting. But mother did not think them uninteresting. She laughed,

and cried, or nearly cried, and said:

'Oh, Tavy, this was why the China Cat was to be taken such care of!'

Then she told him how, a hundred and fifty years before, the Head of the

House had gone out to fight for the Pretender, and had told his daughter

to take the greatest care of the China Cat. 'I will send you word of the

reason by a sure hand,' he said, for they parted on the open square,

where any spy might have overheard anything. And he had been killed by

an ambush not ten miles from home,--and his daughter had never known.

But she had kept the Cat.

'And now it has saved us,' said mother. 'We can stay in the dear old

house, and there are two other houses that will belong to us too, I

think. And, oh, Tavy, would you like some pound-cake and ginger-wine,

dear?'

Tavy did like. And had it.

The China Cat was mended, but it was put in the glass-fronted corner

cupboard in the drawing-room, because it had saved the House.

Now I dare say you'll think this is all nonsense, and a made-up story.

Not at all. If it were, how would you account for Tavy's finding, the

very next night, fast asleep on his pillow, his own white Cat--the furry

friend that the China Cat used to turn into every evening--the dear

hostess who had amused him so well in the White Cat's fairy Palace?

It was she, beyond a doubt, and that was why Tavy didn't mind a bit

about the China Cat being taken from him and kept under glass. You may

think that it was just any old stray white cat that had come in by

accident. Tavy knows better. It has the very same tender tone in its

purr that the magic White Cat had. It will not talk to Tavy, it is true;

but Tavy can and does talk to it. But the thing that makes it perfectly

certain that it is the White Cat is that the tips of its two ears are

missing--just as the China Cat's ears were. If you say that it might

have lost its ear-tips in battle you are the kind of person who always

_makes_ difficulties, and you may be quite sure that the kind of

splendid magics that happened to Tavy will never happen to _you_.