A WEDDING IN THE HOUSE
It was the beginning of the end.
Mr. Fox's sister sent word she wanted to buy a cat, either me or Fred.
Auntie May told us when she came upstairs that evening after Mr. Fox
had gone. (He had stayed two whole hours.) She said:
'I think I shall sell Fred, because only last night he emptied my
wastepaper basket, mixed my unanswered letters with the thrown-away
ones, and added a paper of tin tacks and a box of boracic-acid powder
to the mess. Fred is too good to live. I hear Mr. Fox's sister is
very severe with the animals about her place, so, Freddy, you will be
heavily corrected for your misdemeanours. Yes, you are cut out for a
country cat! Your little manners are shocking. Freddy Orson! You ought
to be called Orson.'
Freddy didn't quite understand that he was being disapproved of, but
he got on her knee in a friendly way and curled round and rubbed his
long tooth against the left wing of her nose, causing her thereby great
discomfort. He meant well, but it all went to prove what she said, that
his manners were not refined. Mother and I thought he had better go,
but indeed we were not consulted. He went in a basket. Mother didn't
say goodbye to him formally. I don't think she noticed.
Then Rosamond came down to stay in Egerton Gardens, and I got at the
truth of the situation from her. She was now sixteen, and had grown
quite ugly. Children, they say, grow in and out. Well, she was 'out'
now. She was a very sensible girl, though.
'I believe Mr. Fox is very fond of you, Auntie May,' she said one day,
'and would like to marry you, but he simply can't get at you for your
cats.'
'Oh, that is what you think, do you?' said Auntie May, not taking much
notice of her, but going on with what she was doing very hard.
'Yes, and he is trying to exterminate them one by one,' said Rosamond.
'You see he has got rid of Freddy, and very soon he will be making you
an offer for Loki. As for dear old Petronilla, anybody can see that he
won't have to wait long for her, she is on her last legs. Oh, Auntie
dear, say you will marry him when Petronilla dies, and then _see_ if he
doesn't manage to give her poison.'
'Rosamond, what an odious suggestion! Mr. Fox is very nice--much too
nice to do that--and besides, as I said to him, "Love me, love my
cats."'
'Ah, so you have spoken to him about it?' gibed the horrid little girl.
'Now you _have_ given yourself away. Well, what does Mr. Fox say? Does
he love you enough to wait for Petronilla's death?'
'Don't talk nonsense, child. I am not going to marry Mr. Fox at all,
whether Pet were to die to-morrow or live to be a hundred, as I am
sure I hope she will, poor lamb! As for Mr. Fox, our tastes are too
absolutely dissimilar for anything of that kind to be possible.'
'Quite possible, _I_ think, if only the cat difficulty could be got
over,' said that naughty Rosamond. 'I believe you two adore each other!
And aren't you grateful to him for bringing your horrid cat--horrid
from his point of view I mean--across to Paris for you? I think it was
angelic, like a knight of old, performing terribly difficult tasks to
please his lady.'
'Will you hold your silly little tongue? Go and do your health
exercises!'
That was the way she always got rid of Rosamond, by some order or
another. You see Rosamond, though she was sixteen, still had to obey.
Yet though Auntie May was older than Rosamond, that child could turn
her round her little finger.
Luckily mother was not in the room when Rosamond said those nasty
things about her age. But I thought over them deeply. It was true
mother had grown very thin and weak lately; several times I have heard
Mary say when lifting her up:
'Why, she don't weigh no more than a feather!'
Her eyes were so big and bright they seemed to swallow up her whole
face. I wondered how long Mr. Fox thought he would have to wait? I
wondered how long we cats usually live, but, of course, I did not like
to ask mother for fear of making her think about death. I remember
her once telling me that when her time came to die she would not
like anybody to be there. She would try to get away into a corner
somewhere, and not be found till all was over.
That is cat's way all over the world, and I believe the way of dogs too.
I wonder if that was the way that Admiral Togo died?
One morning Auntie May got a letter from Mrs. Dillon. She read it aloud
to Rosamond as long as she could without crying, and then Rosamond took
it by her permission and read it too aloud till _she_ cried. But this
way I got it all.
RONDEBOSCH, _February 12, 18--_.
MY DEAR MAY--I have had a great sorrow. Togo is dead. My maid
and I fought for his life so hard that I thought he _must_ live. I
could have borne it better if I could have felt that it was _really_
inevitable--but the shocking ignorance we have had to contend with
has been incredible. From the first moment of our seeing anything
wrong we sought in every possible direction for help. They always
said it was malaria, and that I was to nurse him up and feed him
as his only chance. When at last I got hold of a vet who _did_ know
his business, he said the poor little thing was dying of
pleurisy--temperature a hundred and five! He said it was too late
for tapping, and he gave him a little whiff of chloroform which
sent him quietly to his last sleep. I could not bear that he should
go through any more doubtful cruel remedies. If my maid had lost an
only child she could not have felt it more, after having nursed
that cat night and day for so long. It has made me quite ill. I do
always love things so passionately, and this was more than a pet.
He was with me constantly, and I knew he was turning into a baby!
Over and over again I have said, 'He is _too_ good, he will never
live to grow up!' He was like Hans Andersen's Mermaid, he was
getting a soul, and indeed he won it at last, in the only way
possible, through love and well-borne pain. The last fortnight
he was almost human, his eyes had lost the mere animal stare, and
looked up constantly into ours for love and help, which we could
not give, alas! He lay most of the time in my arms or in my maid's,
and had grown so thin we had to carry him about in a shawl. He
lost two and a half pounds in three weeks--
It was here that Rosamond broke down and the letter was put away.
Auntie May settled to give Mrs. Dillon another kitten, a brother of
Togo's, so perhaps he might be as nice.
But the new family of kittens were rather wretched-looking little
things, and I sniffed over them a great deal, till mother told me that
I myself had looked neither better nor worse than they did. I enjoyed
helping to mind them, and often I was trusted to get into the basket
and keep them warm while mother stretched her legs. A day or two after
they were born mother said:
'I shall never have any more, so I mean to do my duty by these!' I
think that meant she fancied she was going to die soon, and I have no
doubt Auntie May knew it too, and told Mr. Fox so.
Then Beatrice came to stay in London with us for a week, and she spoke
to Auntie May very severely about Mr. Fox.
'May, you are a fool,' she said. 'I am fond of animals myself, but I
shouldn't let them interfere with things of real importance.'
'It is unfortunate,' said Auntie May in a cold, horrid tone, 'that I
should happen to fall in love with the only man I know who cannot be in
the same room with a cat. It is too absurd. But what can I do?'
'Do, silly girl? Sell all this lot of kittens before you have time to
get fond of them; leave Petronilla with Dad, and they can be the prop
of each other's declining years--that is Dad's phrase, not mine, he
said it to me only this morning--and I--yes, I will have Loki, and Tom
shall take up every blessed trap on the place--I'll make him. There,
will that suit you?'
'But I have got so used to having cats about. Must I be condemned to
live without a cat for all the rest of my life?'
'May, I have no patience with you. You must give up something.'
'Why can't _he_ give up something, instead of me?'
'You may be quite sure he does give up something--heaps of things--to
please you. He is willing to give up smoking--'
'Yes, it makes me sick. But why should any one mind cats? It is absurd
that such a silly prejudice as that can't be got over.'
'Well really, if cats make _him_, and smoking makes _you_ sick, I
consider it a very fair exchange. I say, look at Loki, now, I should
take that kitten away from him if I were you, he is licking it to a
pulp.'
Auntie May got up and took the kitten away from me. I had worked very
hard at it, and had made it quite wet. I thought I had done well. I
know I took pains. I had got my paws round its neck to steady it, and
it said nothing. I must say it looked rather shrunken and flattened out
thin when they took it away, but I believe Beatrice only mentioned it,
and objected to what I was doing to it, to change the conversation. She
probably thought she had been going on at May too long.
All this time I had never seen the blessed Mr. Fox who was upsetting us
all so. I was kept carefully out of his way. Consequently I didn't see
much of my mistress.
But one day I was in the studio under a console, behind the dummy,
behind Rosamond's portrait, in fact a good way off, and with a good
many artistic smells between me and Mr. Fox, who had come to see Auntie
May, and had been shown in there as the drawing-room was untidy and
having something done to it, and Mr. Graham was out varnishing at the
Royal Academy. Auntie May knew she had shut the door of her study, and
considered that I therefore could not possibly be anywhere but safe
upstairs. I wasn't in when she shut it, however, you see. I did not
show myself to them, tactfully, but tried to get out, following the
skirting board all the way to the door. There were heaps of things
propped up against the walls, and it was slow work. Besides, Mr. Fox
for once did not seem at all affected by my presence.
I had only got half round the room when I heard Auntie May say:
'Mr. Fox--' she hesitated a little, 'it might interest you perhaps to
know that I have decided to let Beatrice take Loki, while Pet stays
behind with Dad!'
Poor Mr. Fox turned bright red, not pale as he generally does in the
presence of a cat, and said:
'_Behind_--did you say?'
'Behind me--that is, if you take _me_ away--'
When Auntie May said that, in a little voice, it seemed to please Mr.
Fox very much, though it was a simple enough thing to say. They sat
down on a sofa together and talked, and I thought it a good opportunity
to make finally for the door.
Unfortunately one of the pictures against the wall was stood up too
straight, and when I came out from behind it it fell down with a
clatter. Auntie May got up and came to where I was, and when she saw me
she gave a little jump, and put her finger to her mouth and went back
to Mr. Fox.
'Henry,' she said, 'how do you feel?'
'I never felt better in my life, dear,' he answered. 'Since you gave
me your promise the whole air of the world seems changed. I could move
mountains, I feel so fit--'
'Yet the air of the studio,' she said, 'is not particularly pure. The
smell of paint rags, and varnishes, and stale tobacco, and _cats_--'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean that my beloved Loki has been here in the room with you for the
last half-hour, and yet you have been praising the purity of the air
and exulting in your "fitness." Oh, Henry, perhaps you have got over
it?--say you have! Then I shall be quite happy!'
'Perhaps I have,' said he. 'You, by your presence, are able to dispel
evil influences--temporarily, at any rate. We will try.'
'No, Loki goes to Beatrice's all the same,' she said sadly, and put me
gently out of the door.
I myself think it was the smell of the turpentines and varnishes, and
so on, that she had spoken of that made Mr. Fox not notice me, and I
foresaw that I should not see much more of my mistress in the time to
come.
She married Mr. Fox in less than a month's time, and I have never seen
her cry so much in her life as on her wedding day when she kissed
mother and me and bade us goodbye. She kissed us twice, once before she
went to the church, and we got tangled up in her veil, and the smell
of orange blossoms (real, in her hair, that Mrs. Jay sent from Paris)
nearly made us ill, but we were proud to be so loved, and wished we
could follow her to the altar.
[Illustration: SHE MARRIED MR. FOX IN LESS THAN A MONTH.]
Beatrice, in dove-coloured taffeta, to show that she was going to love
us dearly, and didn't think any frock too good for us, held us in
her arms too, and gave us a chance of crushing her trimmings, but she
didn't care, for it made Auntie May happy and sent her down with a
smile on her face. Rosamond, Amerye, and Kitty were her bridesmaids,
and very nice they looked, but I didn't take much notice of them,
knowing that I was going to spend the rest of my life with them in
Yorkshire. Tom met me on the staircase, just as I was stealing down to
see some of the fun.
'Hollo, little beggar!' he said. 'Where are you off to so fast? Don't
you go near the bridegroom for your life, he is shaky enough already.
Back to barracks, back to barracks, young man!' and he took me by the
scruff of my neck and walked me upstairs to the study again. So I never
had another sight of Auntie May's husband, then or afterwards.
Auntie May stays with Beatrice sometimes without him, but not for long.
They live in the summer at Shortleas. Of course she often comes over
for the day. When he comes with her I am carefully kept out of the
way, and, indeed, I fall in with their plans cheerfully, and arrange
to spend a good deal of time in the garden and employ myself as well
as I can, for I am becoming quite an outside cat now, and catch birds
and mice. One's sentiment becomes blunted with age, I find. I don't
suffer over my hunting proclivities as I used to do. Tom calls me the
sporting cat, and wouldn't shoot me for the world, I am too useful.
Beatrice is proud of me and my ruff, and shows me to visitors when she
can get me in in time. I always come when she calls me, unless I am
in the middle of a bird, and then I bring it along to show her why I
dawdled. She always screams and hides her face, and says:
'Oh, take it away, Loki, don't show it _me_! I suppose you _must_, but
I needn't know it!'
All the same, I know she thinks me smart to have caught it, and I never
spare her a bird.
Auntie May's baby has two nurses to itself. They come and stay here
what Beatrice calls _ad lib_, while Auntie May and Mr. Fox are visiting
on the 'continong,' as the head nurse says. Of course Beatrice is very
glad to have them. The under nurse is a child, not much bigger than
Rosamond, and far more meddlesome than a child. This is the sort of
thing she does.
Since I have been here I have learned that there are such things as
swallows--fidgety birds, that winter abroad like Auntie May and Mr.
Fox, and that I would as soon think of eating as I would of eating the
baby. I feel a sort of relationship, too, as if swallows were the
'smoke-blues' among birds; their fur is the kind of blue we are, only
darker, and they are not at all a common kind of bird.
One summer a swallow built its nest in a tool-house not far off the
tree where the nurse and baby and Lotty used to take the pram and sit
all the afternoon. Lotty had not much to do; the nurse would hardly
trust her with baby, so she played about and pried into other people's
affairs. She discovered the swallow's nest high up under the eaves,
where nothing except a Lotty could possibly reach it. She poked away at
it with a stick, and pushed it down.
There _was_ a scene! Rosamond was so cross! When she was told, she ran
straight into the shed where Lotty told her all the birds were lying
about on the ground. She first bade the head nurse hold me and hide my
face under her dress, lest I should see her go in and learn where the
birds were. As if I did not know, and as if I should touch them! The
nurse put me into the pram beside the baby and rocked us both; and I
liked that, and lay quite still and waited for Rosamond to come back
out of the tool-house and tell us all about it. She soon came back and
sat down beside nurse and Tom, who had come out too. Lotty sneaked away
crying.
'That little fool!' said Rosamond. 'What did she want to go into the
tool-shed for? One of the birds is not to be found, but I have picked
up the nest and two of the nestlings, and put them back and jammed
the remnants of the nest against the wall somehow. Will they live?
The only thing is that they would have been ready to fly in a day or
two. Perhaps the mother will come back and feed them? We must put a
saucer of bread and milk there. And keep Loki away. You must promise
faithfully not to go near the place to see, nurse. As for Lotty, she
will never look at a swallow again, I should hope. Ignorant meddling
little thing!'
All the rest of that afternoon did I sit quietly beside the head nurse,
with my eye fixed on that shed. By and by I counted as many as ten
swallows flying in and out continually--making a great fuss, in fact. I
promised myself to go there and see for myself after dark.
But I was saved from committing a very vile and foolish action. Of
course the sight of a cat, however harmless, would have driven away
the relations of the little swallows for ever! About a couple of hours
later, however, Rosamond went into the shed, and told Beatrice what she
had seen.
'They have found the other swallow. There are three in the nest. I
looked. They must have heaved it up off the ground somehow on their
broad flat backs. Oh how I wish I had seen them do it! And it looks--I
can't actually swear it--as if some of the bread and milk had gone!
Wonderful creatures! Now in a day or two the nestlings will probably
fly away, and I shall be able to forgive Lotty!'
Sure enough, a few days after this the nest was empty. There was no
other cat about the place but me, and I had not been near the shed,
but had relied solely for information on what I heard Rosamond tell
Beatrice. The nurse had, I am sorry to say, so little faith in human
nature that she believed to the last that I had eaten them all, but
Beatrice and Rosamond knew that I had not; they would have seen it in
my eyes if I had, so they said.
I am called Rosamond's cat. It is Rosamond that I sit on the mat for
when she is out and run to when she comes home. I am very fond of
Rosamond, and I think her very good. I suppose that is the reason her
mother is so fond of her. That is the one thing I can never understand.
I never saw Beatrice 'bat' Rosamond as my mother 'batted' me. Instead,
I see Rosamond, at sixteen, get on to her mother's knee and sit there.
Beatrice evidently knows quite well that Rosamond is her child. I often
wonder if Rosamond went away for a long while, whether Beatrice would
not forget her, as mother forgot me while I was in Paris?
Perhaps if they do decide to send her to Paris to be 'finished,' which
is talked of, when she comes back they will alter their ways, and
behave like ordinary people. Rosamond doesn't go to school, but has a
new governess every three months or so, so it shows that they do take
pains with her.
I am not sure that I am not the reason they keep her at home. She could
not look after me if she were away at school, and as it is, she is
everything to me. Of course I never can love any one as much as Auntie
May; even now when I see her I can't mew for happiness. I just lie in
her lap and say nothing for hours, and she says to Beatrice:
'I _wonder_ if Loki really remembers me?'
Oh, I am remembering all the time, only I can't say it! Why, there is
an old fur jacket of hers that she left here once for Rosamond that
I simply never let Rosamond have. I lay on it and covered it with
grey hairs, that won't brush off, thank goodness! So that in the end
Beatrice has given up all idea of taking it away from me, and it is
called Loki's coat, not Rosamond's.
Rosamond sometimes looks at me sitting on it, and pretends to shriek,
and says:
'I should be so warm this winter if Loki hadn't taken my nice winter
coat for himself!'
I blink at her, and stretch out my paw, for I know it is all fun. What
is Auntie May's smell, that is all over that dear coat, to Rosamond,
compared with what it is to me? The oddest thing of all is that they
none of Them seem to imagine how awfully fond I am of Auntie May, and
how I hate Mr. Fox for taking my mistress away from me!
One of these days at breakfast time there came a letter from Auntie
May, and they told me my mother was dead. Kitty tied a bit of black
ribbon round my paw. They don't understand. I kept it on till
dinner-time to please the child.
A month later some one told me that Auntie May had found Zobeide again
at a cat-show at the Crystal Palace--or at least a cat that she was
sure _was_ Zobeide from some secret signs she knew. She took a prize,
anyway. I gather that Auntie May was not able to make good her claim
on the cat. Fancy, nearly two years afterwards! Why, I am very much
altered since the day I was here first, and whacked Great-Uncle Tomyris
in the looking-glass in Beatrice's room. I saw him again the other day.
He looks older too, if a ghost _can_ look older. I am not afraid of him
any more. I am bored by him, and don't care to raise so much as a paw
to him.
I am really a very happy cat. I never worry. I eat brown bread. The
only bad thing that _could_ happen to me, I think, would be that my new
mistress, Rosamond Gilmour, should go and choose a Mr. Fox for herself,
and then I should be thrown on the world again.
Of course, she _may_ marry, but I believe in that case she would take
me with her, and luckily the tribe of Foxes is not common.
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_