Why am I here in this place of madness, this house of diseased minds?
Because of a cat!
And it is a cat that takes me away from this place—to go to my death! And
maybe this cat will follow on to haunt me in some other world, as it has
in this. Who knows?
This doom had its beginning, as far as this life is concerned, when I was
a boy, a lonely boy in my grandmother’s house. My grandmother had a great
yellow Tartar cat that she loved as only a lonely old woman can love a
cat.
[Illustration]
Perhaps it was because I was jealous of the love and attention my
grandmother lavished on Toi Wah—a boy’s natural antipathy for anything
that usurps the place he thinks is his by right. Or perhaps it was the
same inborn cruelty, the same impish impulse to inflict suffering on a
helpless dumb creature, which I have observed in other boys.
Anyway, with or without reason, I hated this self-complacent,
supercilious animal that looked at me out of topaz eyes, with a look that
seemed to see through and beyond me, as if I did not exist.
I hated her with a hatred that could be satisfied only with her death,
and I thought and brooded for hours, that should have been devoted to my
studies, of ways and means to bring this death about.
I must be fair to myself. Toi Wah hated me too. I could sense it as I sat
by my grandmother’s chair before the fire and looked across at Toi Wah,
who lay in a chair on the opposite side. At such times I would always
catch her watching me out of half-closed eyes, stealthily, furtively,
never off her guard.
If she lay in my grandmother’s lap and I leaned over to stroke her
beautiful yellow fur, I could feel her actually shrink from my hand, and
she would never purr, as she always did when my grandmother stroked her.
Sometimes I would hold her on my lap and pretend that I loved her. But as
I stroked her, my hands would itch and twitch with the desire to clinch
my hand in her satiny skin, and with the other hand choke her until she
died.
My desire to kill would become so over-powering that my breath would
become hurried, my heart would beat almost to suffocation and my face
would flush.
Usually my grandmother, noticing my reddened face would glance up over
her spectacles, from the book she was reading and say, “What ails you,
Robert? You look flushed and feverish. Perhaps the room is too warm for
you. Put Toi Wah down and run out in the air for a while.”
I would take Toi Wah then, and, holding her as tightly as I dared, and
with my teeth clenched to restrain myself, I would put her on her cushion
and go out.
My grandfather had brought Toi Wah, a little yellow, fluffy, amber-eyed
kitten, home with him in his ship from that mysterious land washed by the
Yellow Sea.
And with Toi Wah had come a strange tale of her taking, stolen from an
old Buddhist Monastery garden nestling among age-old pines beside the
Grand Canal of China.
About her neck was a beautifully-wrought collar of flexible gold, with a
dragon engraved along its length, together with many Chinese characters
and set with stones of Topaz and Jade. The collar was made so as to allow
for expansion as the need arose, so that Toi Wah was never without her
collar from her kittenhood to adult age. In fact, the collar could not be
loosened without injury to the metal.
One day I descended into the kitchen with the cat in my arms and showed
Charlie, our Chinese cook, who had sailed the Seven Seas with my
grandfather, the collar about her neck.
The old Chinaman stared until his eyes started from his head, all the
time making queer little noises in his throat. He rubbed his eyes and put
on his great horn spectacles and stared again, muttering to himself.
“What is it, Charlie?” I asked, surprised at the old man, who was usually
so stoically calm.
“These velly gleat words,” he said at last, shaking his head cryptically.
“Words no good flo you. Words good for velly gleat cat; Gland Lama cat.”
“But what do the words say?” I urged.
He mooned over the inscription for a long time, fingering the collar
lovingly, while Toi Wah lay passively in my arms and looked at him.
“He say what I no can say good in English,” he explained at last. “He
say, ‘Death no can do, no can die.’ See? When Gland Lama cat wear this
colla’, no can die. No can be kill him—just change flom cat to some other
thing; monkey—tiger—hoss—maybe man—next time,” he concluded vaguely.
“He say, ‘Love me, I love you, hate me, I hate you.’ No can say good in
English what Chinese say. See?”
And with this I had to be content for the time. Now I know the characters
engraved on Toi Wah’s collar referred to a quotation from the seventh
book of Buddha, which, freely translated, reads as follows:
“_That which is alive hath known death, and that which lives
can never die. Death is not; there is only a changing from
shape to shape, from life to life._
“_Mayhap the despised animal, walking in the dust of the road,
was one time King of Ind, or the consort of Ghengis Khan._
“_Do me no harm. Protect me, O Man, and I will protect thee.
Feed me, O Man, and I will feed thee. Love me, O Man, and I
will love thee. Hate me, and I will hate thee. Slay me, and I
will slay thee._
“_We be brothers, O Man, thou and I, from life to life, from
death to death, until Nirvana be won._”
If I had only known then, and stayed my hand, I would not now be haunted
by this yellow terror that peers out at me from the dark; that follows
after me with softly padding feet; never nearer, never receding, until....
Toi Wah was mated with another Tartar cat of high degree, and became the
mother of a kitten.
And such a mother! Only the hard heart made cruel by fear would remain
unsoftened by the great cat’s untiring devotion to her kitten.
Everywhere she went she carried it in her mouth; never leaving it alone
for a moment, seeming to sense its danger from me; an abnormal, hated cat!
However, she seemed to relent even toward me if I happened to pass her
chair when she was nursing the little creature.
At such times she would lay stretching out her legs, opening and shutting
her great paws in a sort of ecstasy, purring her utter content. She would
look up at me, maternal pride and joy glowing in her yellow eyes, soft
and lustrous now, the hate and suspicion of me crowded out by mother love.
“Look!” she seemed to say. “Look at this wonderful thing I have created
out of my body! Do you not love it?”
I did not love it. No! On the contrary, it intensified my hate by adding
another object to it.
My grandmother added fuel to the fire by sending me out to the shops to
buy delicacies for Toi Wah and her kitten; liverwurst and catnip for the
mother, milk and cream for the kitten.
“Robert, my son,” she would say to me, all unaware of my hatred, “Do
you know we have quite a royal family with us? These wonderful cats are
descended in an unbroken line from the cats of the Royal Household of
Ghengis Khan. The records were kept in the Buddhist Monastery from which
Toi Wah came.”
“How did Grandfather get her?” I asked.
“Do not ask me, child,” the old lady smiled. “He told me only that he
stole her in a spirit of bravado from the garden of this ancient Buddhist
Monastery when egged on to do so by his friends. They were spending an
idle week exploring the ancient towns along the Grand Canal of China, and
were attracted by the beautiful Tartar cats in this garden. It seemed the
Buddhist Monks reared these cats as a sort of religious duty.
“Your grandfather always believed that a Buddhist curse of some sort
went with Toi Wah after a Chinese merchant translated the Chinese
characters on her collar for him. And he often said he wished that he had
not whisked her into the pocket of his big sou’wester jacket, when the
priests were not looking.
“Myself, I do not believe in these superstitious curses and omens, so I
would not let him take the collar off. In fact, he _could_ not do it; it
was so cunningly riveted.
“He always feared some evil would come from the cat, but I have found her
a great comfort and a thing to love.”
And she would hold out her hands to Toi Wah, and the great cat would leap
in her lap and rub her head lovingly against my grandmother’s neck.
After that I feared Toi Wah more than ever. This fear was an intangible,
elusive thing. I could not understand it or analyze it; but it was very
real. If I wandered about the dim old passageways of my grandmother’s
ancient house, or explored the dusty cobwebby rooms, there seemed always
to follow after me the soft padding sound of Toi Wah’s paws. Following,
always following after me, but never coming nearer; always just beyond
where I could see.
It was maddening! Always to have following after me the stealthy, soft,
almost inaudible sound of padded feet. I could never win free from it
within the house.
In my bedroom, sitting alone before the fire with the door locked and
bolted, every corner of the room previously explored, the bed looked
under, I would always feel that she was sitting there behind me, watching
me out of vigilant yellow eyes. Eyes that were full of suspicion and
hate. Waiting, watching—for what? I did not know. I only feared.
Out of this fear grew many unreal terrors. I came to believe that Toi Wah
was waiting a favorable chance to spring on me from behind, or when I was
asleep, and to dig her great curved claws into my throat, tearing and
rending it in her hate.
I became so possessed by this fear that I fashioned a leather collar for
myself that fitted well up under my ears and around my neck. I wore this
always when I was alone in my room and when I slept, gaining some sense
of security thereby. But in the night time! No one can know what I, a
lonely boy, suffered then!
My eyes would no sooner close in drowsy weariness when the stealthy
padding of Toi Wah’s footsteps would begin. I could hear them coming
softly up the stairs, stealing along the dark passageway to my room, at
the end. They stopped there because the door was locked and bolted, with
the heavy chiffonier jammed against it as an extra precaution. I would
listen intently, and I fancied I could hear a faint scratching sound at
the door.
Then there would rush over me all the terrors of the dark. Suppose I had
failed to close the transom securely? If the transom was open Toi-Wah
could, with one great leap, win through and on to my bed. And then—
The cold sweat of fear would exude from every pore, as my imagination
visualized Toi Wah leaping through, and, with a snarl, pouncing upon my
throat with tooth and claw. I would shudder and tremblingly feel about my
neck to make sure my leather collar was securely fastened.
At last, unable to stand the uncertainty any longer, I would leap out
of bed, turn on the light, rush to the door, frantically drag the heavy
chiffonier to one side, and throw open the door. Nothing!
Then I would creep along the passageway to the head of the stairs, and
peer down into the dimly-lighted hall. Nothing!
Looking fearfully over my shoulder as I went, I would go back to my room,
shut the door, lock and bolt it, push the chiffonier against it, assure
myself that the transom was closed, and jump into bed, burying my head
beneath the covers.
Then I could sleep. Sleep only to dream that Toi Wah had crept softly
into the room and was sucking the breath out of my body. This was a
popular superstition in the country years ago, and no doubt my dream was
aided by my being half suffocated beneath the bedclothes. But the dream
was none the less terrifying and real.
Night after night I lived this life of cowering terror; of listening
for the haunting sound of stealthy, softly-padding footsteps always
following, never advancing, never receding.
But the day of my revenge came at last. How sweet it was then! How
frightful it seems now!
_II._
Toi Wah’s kitten, now half grown, wandered away from his mother below
stairs and up to my room. Returning home from school, I found him there,
lying on the rug playing with one of my tennis balls.
Joy filled my heart at the sight of him. I had just seen his mother
sleeping placidly on my grandmother’s lap, who was also sleeping.
I softly closed and locked the door. At last I would be rid of one of the
pests that made my life a hell! I put on my leather collar and the heavy
gloves I used for working in the garden. I took these precautions because
even of this small kitten I was afraid!
Unaware of its danger, the kitten romped about the rug. I drew a long
breath, stooped and picked him up. He looked at me, sensed his danger,
spat, and tried to squirm out of my hands.
“Too late, you devil!” I exulted, holding him firmly.
A buzzing came to my ears, a fullness of the head, a dryness of the
mouth, as I choked him—choked him until his glazing yellow eyes started
from their sockets and his tongue hung out. Choked him joyously,
relentlessly, deriving more pleasure from the death agony of this little
creature, whose mother I hated and feared, than I had ever known.
After a long time I opened my hands and looked at him closely for any
signs of life. But he was quite dead. Of one of them at least, I was
forever rid, I thought jubilantly as I gazed at the lifeless body. And
then—
There came a scratching at the door; and a loving, agonized _meow_!
It did not seem possible that any animal was capable of putting into the
only sound with which it could express itself, the anxious, yearning love
that sound conveyed.
The old fear clutched at my heart. It seems incredible that I, almost
a full-grown man, a football champion and all-round athlete, could be
afraid of a cat in broad daylight.
But I was! Cold sweat poured down my back, and my hands trembled so that
the dead kitten fell with a soft _thump_ on the rug.
This sound aroused me from my semi-stupor of fear. Hastily, I threw up
the window-sash and tossed the inert little body out into the yard.
I closed the window, and, with a studied nonchalance, walked whistling to
the door and opened it.
“Come in, kittie,” I said innocently. “Poor kittie!”
Toi Wah ran in and frantically circled the room, _meowing_ piteously. She
paid no attention to me, but ran here and there, under the bed, under the
chiffonier, seeking in every corner of the large old-fashioned room.
She came at last to the rug before the fire, lowered her head and sniffed
at the spot where, but a moment before, her darling had lain.
She looked up at me, then, with great mournful eyes. Eyes with no hate in
them now, only unutterable sorrow. I have never seen in the eyes of any
creature the sorrow I saw there.
That look brought a queer lump in my throat. I was sorry now for what I
had done. If I could have recalled my act, I would have done so. But it
was too late. The dead kitten lay out in the yard.
For a moment Toi Wah looked at me, and then the sorrow in her eyes gave
way to the old look of suspicion and hate. And then, with a yowl like a
wolf, she sprang out of the room.
As night came on, my fear increased. I dared not go to bed. I was uneasy,
too, craven that I was, for fear my grandmother would suspect me. But,
fortunately for me, she thought the kitten had been stolen and never
dreamed I had killed it.
I lingered until the last moment before starting upstairs to bed. I
studiously avoided looking at Toi Wah as I passed her on my way to the
stairs.
I raced up the stairs and down the long passage to my bedroom. Hastily
undressing, throwing my clothes here and there, I plunged into the very
center of the bed and buried my head beneath the covers.
There I waited in shivering terror for the sound of padding footsteps.
They never came. And then, because I was tired out by the lateness of the
hour, and perhaps also stupefied by the lack of fresh air in my room, I
slept.
Far in the night I heard the chimes from the church across the street,
and opened my eyes. The moonlight was shining in from the window and I
saw two fiery eyes glaring at me from a corner.
Was I in the clutches of a nightmare, engendered by my fears? Or had I,
in my haste to get to bed, neglected to shut and lock my door? I do not
know, but suddenly there was a jar to the bed as something leaped upon it
from the floor.
I sat up, shivering with terror, and Toi Wah looked into my eyes and held
them. In her mouth she held the bedraggled body of her kitten. She laid
it softly down on the coverlet, never taking her eyes from mine.
Suddenly a soft glow, a sort of halo, shone around her, and then, as I am
a living and an honorable man, _Toi Wah spoke to me_!
_III._
She said—I could see her mouth move—“_He that hath slain shall slay
again. Then he that slayeth shall himself be slain._
“_Yea, seventy times seven shall thy days be after my cycle is broken.
Then, at this hour, shall I return that the thing may be accomplished
after Lord Buddha’s law._”
Then the voice ceased, the halo faded. I felt the bed rebound as she
jumped to the floor, and there I heard the soft padding of her feet down
the passageway.
I awoke with a shriek. My forehead was damp with sweat. My teeth were
chattering. I looked and saw that my door was wide open. I leaped out of
bed and turned on the light. Was it a hideous dream, a fearful nightmare?
I do not know. But, lying there on the coverlet, was the wet muddy body
of Toi Wah’s kitten.
A live and famished man-eating tiger in the room could not have inspired
me with greater terror. I dared not touch the cold dead thing. I dared
not remain in the room with it.
I fled down the stairs, stumbling over furniture in the lower hall, until
I reached the houseman’s room. Here I knocked and begged, with chattering
teeth, to be allowed to remain on a couch in his room until morning,
telling him I had been frightened by a dreadful dream.
Early the next morning I secretly took the dead kitten out in the garden
and buried it deep, putting a pile of stones over the grave; watching
carefully for any glimpse of Toi Wah.
As I returned to the house, I met the old housekeeper, who stood with an
anxious face at the kitchen door.
“Master Robert, no wonder that you could not sleep the morn! Your poor
grandmother passed away in the night. It must have been after midnight,
for I did not leave her until the stroke of eleven.”
My heart leaped. Not for surprise or grief at my grandmother’s death.
That was a thing to be expected, and the cold aristocratic old lady had
not loved me over much.
Nor was it for joy that she had left me rich, the last of an old race
whose forbears went down to the sea in ships, bringing home the wealth of
the world.
No! I thought only that Toi Wah and I were on equal ground at last! And
that as soon as possible I would rid myself of the dread of her by day
and my terror of her by night.
My inheritance would be a thing of little worth if I must spend anxious
days and fear-haunted nights. Toi Wah must die, in order that I might
know joyful days and sleep at night in peace.
The joyous blood throbbed in my head and hissed in my ears as I raced up
to my room, got my leather collar and gloves and seized the great iron
poker beside the fire-place.
I carried these up to the attic, a small, close room, dimly lighted by a
skylight. There were no openings here from which a cat could escape.
Then I descended to my grandmother’s room. Already the corpse candles had
been lighted. I gave only a glance at the quiet, gaunt, aristocratic old
face, dignified even in death.
I looked about in the flickering shadows thrown by the candles for Toi
Wah. I did not see her. Could it be that she, sensing her danger, had
fled?
My heart sank. I drew my breath sharply.
“The cat—Toi Wah?” I asked the housekeeper, who watched beside the dead.
“Where is she?”
“Under the bed,” she answered. “The poor creature is that distracted she
would not eat, and had to be driven from your grandmother’s side in order
that we might compose the body. She would not leave the room, but darted
under the bed there, snarling and spitting. It’s afraid of her I am.”
I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the bed. Crouched in
the farthest corner was Toi Wah, and her great yellow eyes glared at me
in terror and defiance.
“It’s afraid of her, I am, Master Robert,” the housekeeper repeated.
“Please take her away.”
I was afraid of Toi Wah, too. So afraid of her that I could know no
peace, nor happiness, if she lived. I was sure of that.
It is the coward who is dangerous. Fear kills always if it can. It never
temporizes, nor is it ever merciful. Beware of him who fears you.
I crawled under the bed and seized her. She made no resistance, much to
my surprise, but I could feel her body trembling through my gloves. As my
hand closed over her, she made a little sound like a gasp—that was all.
I crawled out, and in the presence of the housekeeper, and the dead, I
held her lovingly in my arms, calling her “poor kittie” and stroking her
long yellow fur, while she lay passive, tremblingly passive, in my arms.
I deceived the housekeeper, who thought I was venting my grief for my
grandmother’s death by loving and caressing the object of the old lady’s
affection. I did not deceive Toi Wah. She lay quietly in my arms, but it
was the paralysis of terror; the nonresistant stupor of great fear. Her
body never ceased trembling, and her eyes were lifeless and dull. She
seemed to know her fate and had accepted the inevitable.
I carried her upstairs, threw her upon the floor and locked the door.
I seized the poker beside the door and turned to slay her. Toi Wah lay
where I had thrown her, crouched as if to spring, but she did not move.
She only looked at me.
I did not fear her now. On my hands were heavy gauntlets, and about my
throat was the heavy leather guard I had made, bradded and studded with
steel and brass.
Toi Wah did not move. She only looked, but such a look! It appealed to
the merciless devil in my heart. It burned into my soul.
“Kill me!” her great amber eyes seemed to say. “Kill me quickly and
mercifully as you killed the darling of my heart. What sayeth the
Master: ‘Be merciful, and thy heart shall know peace.’ Today is yours,
tomorrow—Who can say?”
As if in a dream, I stood and looked into her eyes. Looked until those
amber eyes converged into a dirty yellow pool around the edge of which
grew giant ferns and reeds taller than our forest trees. And a misty haze
hung over the scene.
Into the pool floated a canoe, a hollowed-out tree trunk. In the canoe
was a man, a woman, and a child, all naked except for skins about their
shoulders.
The man pushed toward the shore with a pole, and as he made a landing he
leaped into the water and pulled the boat upon the bank.
As he pulled at the boat, the reeds quivered to the right of him, and a
great yellow-colored tiger leaped from the cover of the ferns and seized
the child.
For a moment it stood there, the man and woman paralyzed by fear and
horror. Then, blood dripping from its jaws, it leaped back among the
reeds and was gone.
The face of the man in the boat _was mine_! And it was Toi Wah who held
my child in her dripping jaws! A great Toi Wah, with sabre teeth and
dirty yellow hide, but still Toi Wah.
The pool faded and I stood there, looking into the eyes of my
grandmother’s Tartar cat.