FROM TOP TO BOTTOM
The moment we arrived at No. 100 Egerton Gardens Auntie May, finding
out that her father had just gone round to his club, rushed upstairs to
find her family, while I trotted at her heels, and screamed out before
she had used her eyes almost:
'Oh, my darling dearest old Petronilla! They tell me that you have been
pining for me.'
Mother had her nose buried in a saucer of milk, and waited a moment
before she looked up, then she let Auntie May take her in her arms
and 'poor-poor' her, and she herself began to purr very prettily, but
still there was a good deal of difference between the two greetings.
It isn't that mother has no feelings, but that she is good at hiding
them. As for Zobeide and Freddy, they were biting each other's heads
off at the other end of the room, and took no notice. I didn't want
to distract mother from being nice to Auntie May, so I went up to my
brother and sister and spoke to them. But they had no time to listen to
me, and their game looked so exciting that I was roped in before I knew
where I was, and Fred rolled me over and punched me with his hind legs
by mistake for Zobeide. So that was all the how-do-you-do that I got,
after three months' separation. As for mother, when she was done with
Auntie May, she just gave me a comprehensive lick that seemed to say
everything.
Home was delightful enough after that. And then mother's accident came.
Mother is still very playful for her age, and people notice it. You can
get her all lengths with a bit of string, and none of us can beat her
in a helter-skelter race from the top of the house to the bottom. You
hear her bumping on each story like an india-rubber ball. (We could
never play this game except when Mr. Graham was out. The old make
everything so stiff. Auntie May had no objection.) Sometimes when we
felt very fresh we chased mother _upstairs_, which is much more tiring,
and it was when we were doing this that the accident happened.
Mother got a good start of us, and Fred was after her like a wild cat.
He soon got close to her heels, and kept it up all the way to Auntie
May's room at the very top of the house. The window of that room was
open, but Freddy was too wild to see it. He simply chased mother across
the room and out of the window, very nearly following her himself, but
able to arrest his mad course on the sill just in time. I, too, managed
to stop on the floor behind, and I said to my brother gravely:
'You've never gone and chased mother out of the window, Fred?'
He said, 'I am sure I don't know. Where _has_ mother got to?' He seemed
quite stunned.
Then Auntie May came up, quite out of breath, followed by Mary, to whom
she said:
'Mary, I saw something like a streak of silver lightning go past Mr.
Graham's room, where I was sorting his collars. Is it possible that it
was poor Pet?'
She looked out of the window, and told Mary she could see nothing.
Freddy had got into a corner under something.
'Perhaps, Miss,' said Mary, 'she's that mangled as to be
unrecognisable! The young girl that fell in my mother's street was
taken up all mashed up like--'
Auntie May didn't say anything at all, but just went downstairs to look
if what Mary said was true. Nobody thought of preventing me and Fred,
so we went along too.
Our mistress first looked all over the yard, where mother, if she
really _had_ fallen out of the window, was bound to have come down. But
there was nothing there. Only there was a little tiny smear of blood on
the edge of the tin dustbin. I heard them say so.
Auntie May grew quite pale, and went to the other side of the house
that was connected with the common garden. We followed her. There, sure
enough, we all saw poor mother hiding under a laurel bush, and shaking
like a leaf. Her lip was bleeding. She must have picked herself up when
she first fell, and run all the way round by the tradesmen's entrance.
'Oh, mother,' cried Fred, who got to her first, 'what have you been and
done to yourself?'
'Hush!' said mother. 'I cut my lip on the dustbin in falling, that's
all. Bit my tongue, I think. Don't make a fuss--don't say anything!'
But Auntie May had taken poor mother up very gently in her arms, and
felt her. 'Poor, poor thing! She seems quite dazed--but no bones
broken, I think?'
'Oh, Miss, them cats could fall out of Heaven and not hurt theirselves,
I do believe. Cat o' nine tails, indeed--'
'Nine lives, Mary. Here, come along in and get me the whisky and a
spoon!'
She sat by the fire with mother spread out on her knee, and petted
her and stroked her, and poured a tiny drop of whisky and water down
her throat. She sat nursing her like that for two hours, mother told
me afterwards, for long before that Mary had marched Freddy and me
upstairs, holding us like a string of onions.
Later in the day mother was brought up and put to bed, very weak and
disinclined to talk. She never scolded either Freddy or me, feeling, no
doubt, that she began it by romping with us, and the matter was never
discussed again.
I fell out of the very same window myself a year later. It was entirely
my own fault and Mary's habit of being too free with her hands. I was
quietly sitting on the window sill, watching the fat birds fly past the
stone coping, and giving their children walking lessons up the tiles of
the roof opposite, when Mary came in to do the room.
'Hullo, Boy!' she said, and put out her hand to stroke me. Now, I
always back when people threaten to stroke me--it's a habit--and I
backed on to nothing! Over I went, and I remember nothing more till
I came down whack on the very identical dustbin that poor mother had
cut herself on. I did not cut my lip, but I bit my tongue. I had to
pick myself up, for though poor Mary, as she said, set off running
downstairs as soon as she saw me begin to go, I got to the bottom first.
'Gracious goodness me! Whatever'll Miss May say? I've done for myself.
Hold up yer head, will yer, and let's see if there's not some life in
yer. Oh, you naughty aggravating thing to bleed at the lip so!'
'Wipe it off, can't you, Mary?' I said, and she did so with the hem of
her cotton dress.
'You ain't much hurt after all!' she said, when she had cleaned me up.
She did not notice that I had got my mouth all lop-sided with breaking
one of my long teeth on the right side. I regretted this, for it was
unsymmetrical. I was quite able to walk in, and took it easy for the
rest of the afternoon on the best arm-chair.
Auntie May was out, so I didn't get any whisky, and when she came in I
told her.
'Oh, what a long, long story!' said she. 'And what is it all about?
Daddy, he is telling me something that has happened to him as hard as
he can--such a piteous tale!'
'He threw himself out of the window, Miss,' said Mary, passing by. Of
course I couldn't contradict her, and I didn't want to either, she was
a good soul, was Mary, and I bore her no malice. Cats never do, it's
your precious dogs that remember grievances.
'I always used to jeer,' said Auntie May to some friends who were
calling next day, 'when people said that cats did not hurt themselves
when they fall, but now I see they are right. Both mine have had their
little experience of this kind, and I am happy to say are not one penny
the worse!'
She hadn't noticed my short tooth. I found out at the cat-party how
unsightly it was, and what a blemish.
A friend of Auntie May's, who had three beautiful Persians, gave
a cat-party, and asked Auntie May to it. It was at four o'clock,
refreshments at five, and a dark room provided for cats that would not
behave or fraternise. We three had all bows of different colours, put
on us for once, but at the last minute mother shirked it, and hid so
that Auntie May could not find her. So she had to leave her behind. The
party was not very far off, only across the garden, so she carried us
one under each arm.
There were about thirty cats at Mrs. Felton's, and only nine of them
were grey like us. There was a ginger cat, with a Roman ribbon round
his neck, who took a fancy to me. Freddy could not be parted from a
white girl-cat; he likes girls, I hate them. I mean never to marry, but
Fred liked female society from the very first. Then there was a black
cat who had been on the stage. He said he had been very much neglected
in his youth, and once had been walking about on the tops of roofs
till he got too far away from his home, and suddenly found himself,
on jumping down some steps, or ladder, or something, in a great wide
covered place, with people on it, shouting.
They all stopped when they saw him, and a man with a stick rapped it
and said 'Attention--please, ladies _and_ gentlemen.'
He was the business manager, and the black cat had jumped into the
middle of a dress rehearsal. The real manager was acting, and he took
no notice of the black cat till he was done, and then he wouldn't
have it chased away, for, said he, a black cat brings good luck to a
theatre. So they fed him, and he lived there, and had perfect liberty
to walk about where he pleased. He did go where he pleased, and whether
they were acting or not it made no difference to him, he just walked
on, so they call it, and smelt their boots, or sat on the ladies'
trains, or licked up stage tea-trays if he liked. The reason he was
here was that he was the guest of the manager's daughter, who had taken
him off the stage because he had brought luck to her father's piece.
But he often sighed for the nice merry days.
[Illustration: A BLACK CAT BRINGS GOOD LUCK TO A THEATRE.]
There were little saucers of milk and warm Ridge's Food dotted about
the room, one for each cat. Fred and the white cat, however, chose to
drink out of the same saucer. Some of the cats would not stay to be
spoken to, but slunk under chairs, and one nice tom hissed and spat. I
did feel so ashamed of him. He was left severely to himself while the
games were going on, and I was so sorry for him that I went and spoke
to him.
'Do you live near here?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, 'and I wish I was there now. I don't care for this sort
of function. I don't see why I should be asked to sit on my hind legs
and talk to every idiot who comes up and strokes me and says "Puss!
Puss!" I keep thinking of my nice place on the hearthrug at home, and a
little tag--what do you call it?--in the hearthrug that I play with. It
is worth all these fine toys to me. I would not play with that absurd
mouse they are trailing along the ground with shrieks and cries and
"Come ons" for anything. It disgusts me. It is too expensive a toy!'
For They held up their skirts and played with us, squeaking and
miauling to imitate us. They don't imitate us half as well as the
parrot imitates Them, and I am told that is pretty much the same thing.
The younger kittens took a polite interest in the toy mouse, but we
elders preferred conversation with really sensible cats, and if they
would only have left us alone, we might have enjoyed ourselves. Auntie
May was as bad as the rest, she would keep trying to make me sit on her
knee when I didn't want to, and I had to do it so as not to disgrace
her by disobedience.
There was a woman talking to her about the habits of cats, and trying
to get hints from my mistress, whom I gathered was rather a boss, about
the care and management of 'kits,' as she would call them.
'I am such a novice,' said she, 'a mere beginner. But I shall hope to
be showing in a year or so--'
'I never show,' said Auntie May. 'I think it is most unkind, for the
sake of a wretched prize that you have to subscribe to furnish, to
subject your pet to all those horrid experiences--fleas, frights,
colds, and all the rest of it--'
'Oh, but I see you make quite a friend of _your_ cats. May I ask if you
allow your kittens to sleep alone? At what age?'
'As soon as possible,' said Auntie May. 'I never coddle them or allow
them to think of being afraid of the dark.'
'But don't they cry out and rend your heart? That one, for instance,'
she pointed to Fred, who was crawling up her at the moment.
'This one!' said Auntie May, stooping to pick up Fred. 'Oh, Fred never
cries--he breaks. If I put him to sleep alone in my study, he does what
he can to show me that it won't do. Many's the time I have come in
apprehensively in the morning and found a mush of fragments of china
or glass on the floor. He writes his name in ink across blank sheets
of paper, he pulls all my correspondence out of my pigeon-holes and
lays it in rows for me to see without labour, he separates shoes and
earrings and gloves and everything that likes to live in a pair. Oh, he
is a regular demon, I _must_ get rid of him some day.'
'Don't sell him to me,' said the lady affectedly, 'after the character
you have given him.'
By six o'clock carriages were ordered. There was a great chivying,
and would any one believe that some of them did not know their own
cats? Auntie May knew hers, no fear. Some of us had been sick, but
the hostess said it didn't matter, as she had put a drugget down to
avert the evils of such a contingency. I am not a bit ashamed of being
sick any more than Auntie May is ashamed of blowing her nose. It is a
perfectly natural action.
We none of us said Goodbye to each other. They never gave us time. Fred
and his white cat were really a little sorry to part, but they said
nothing, only she gave him a look over her mistress's shoulder which
seemed to say, 'I hope we shall meet again.'
I did not want to see any one of them again except the theatrical cat,
who was a jolly sort of cheerful beast. I forgot to say there was a
Manx cat there, without a tail; its mother had bitten it off in a
temper when it was young, I suppose. It was an awkward creature,
and the white cat spat at him and told him he wasn't the only cat on
the tiles. He had been making himself very civil to her, but she was a
very unconventional young lady, I was told, and if she liked you she
did, and if she didn't she wouldn't stop in the same room with you, and
thickened all the way down when she was forced to obey.
[Illustration: I DID NOT WANT TO SEE ANY ONE OF THEM AGAIN.]
Auntie May shouldered her own two, and said Goodbye. She did not get a
very good hold, and we both of us oozed out under her arm in the square
garden, and she was in a terrible way. We teased her a little bit, but
we saw the poor thing was tired, so came back to her.