Just a few weeks after this, and while reading a letter at breakfast, my
master's face flushed with joy.
There was nobody in the room but me, for the old lady did not come down
to breakfast very early.
"Why, pussy Shireen, what do you think?" he cried.
Of course, I couldn't tell what the matter might be.
"My regiment--the 78th Highlanders--has been ordered to Persia, to give
the Persians a drubbing for insolence to our Government, and if I am
well enough I must join forthwith. Hurrah! Of course I'm well enough.
"There will be many regiments there as well as ours, but oh, Shireen!
won't it be joyful, and you must come too, pussy. It may seem strange
for the captain of a gallant regiment to have a cat as a pet, but what
care I? Many a brave soldier has loved his pussy, so you come along
with me, and I'll chance it.
"Now," he added, "I'll just write a letter to the War Office, saying
that I am well, and burning to join my regiment, then I'll go down the
hill and post it before auntie is up. That will settle it."
Well, of course, children, Mrs Clifford was very sorry to lose her dear
Edgar, as she called him, so soon again; but she was a brave old lady,
and though she cried a little, she gave him a blessing and bade him go.
"Duty must be obeyed, Edgar," she said, "even though hearts should
break. Go, my boy, your country calls you."
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I don't think, children, there was a much happier cat than pussy Shireen
on the day my master left Waterloo Station for Portsmouth, to take
passage for Bombay in a ship of war, especially when the brave soldier
told me that this ship was to be commanded by Captain Beecroft himself.
Indeed, hearing that we were going to India to join our regiment for
service in Persia, Captain Beecroft had written to us, offering us a
passage, and saying he would be very glad indeed to have master once
more on board his vessel. And, he added, as master knew none of the
officers in the wardroom, he would be happy to have him as a guest in
his own apartments.
We had not gone straight to London, I may tell you, Warlock, from
Yorkshire. We had a run over to Dublin first to see a friend, and on
board the steamer I astonished everybody by my perfect coolness. I even
ran right up the rigging into the foretop, and had a look around me, and
the sailors all declared I was a ship's cat born and bred.
Well, we had arrived at our hotel in the evening. I may tell you that
it stood in one of the principal streets, and right in the middle of it,
so that anyone going out by a back window and across the tiles, would
have to go a long way round to get to the front door again.
Of course, Warlock, no human being would have dreamt of going out at a
back window and along the tiles, and no dog either. But it is precisely
what I did when master shut me in the room, and locked me in for safety
till he should post a letter.
When he returned, behold! no Shireen was there, and he called me from
the window in vain.
The truth is, I had never been to Ireland before, and wanted to see what
the Irish cats were like; so I determined to spend a night on the tiles
and go home with the milk in the morning.
I can't say, however, that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I found the
Dublin cats a rather disreputable gang. They serenaded nervous old
gentlemen, and had water and brushes and lumps of coal and the boot-jack
thrown at them; they scratched up beds of choice flowers, and they broke
into pigeon-lofts, and dove-cotes, and killed and ate the pigeons.
Moreover, they boasted of all these exploits as if they had been the
greatest fun in the world. So, on the whole, I was somewhat disgusted.
However, it opened up a new phase of life before me, and so I gained
some experience.
But, children, you must not suppose that I, a silken-coated Persian and
a brave soldier's cat, kept with this gang all night. I did not, but
retired into a garden arbour early in the evening to have a quiet talk
with a lady-cat who, it was evident from her voice and manners, had seen
better days.
She was a very pretty half-bred Angora, or rather, I should say, she had
been pretty once upon a time, but at present her face was thin and worn,
her eyes looked world-weary, and her coat hung around her in mats and
tatters.
"And so," she said, after we had settled down face to face, "and so you
have been far travelled, and come all the way from across the seas?"
"Yes," I answered, "and I am going all the way back again. The fact is,
I have no real home, except where master is, and I do not care where
that may be, whether on the lonesome moorland, amidst the city's bustle,
din, and strife, or far away upon the lone blue sea, I say, that if he
be with me I am at home."
"Ah!" sighed the poor waif in front of me. "I wish I had a kind master
or mistress, if so you wouldn't find me here to-night. Why, I haven't
even a name now, though they used to call me Zulina."
"A pretty name," I said; "but tell me, Zulina, how did so
ladylike-looking and evidently amiable a pussy as you become a nomad and
a wanderer?"
"Oh, don't call me amiable," she answered: "indeed, I am not. All my
amiability, and ever, love, for the human race, has been crushed out of
me. Well, once I had a home in the outskirts of this very city, and
many home-ties too. It was a pretty house, with gardens all around it,
and custom and long residence thereat had much endeared me to it. I
knew every hole and corner of it. Knew every mouse-run, the cupboards,
and the cosy nooks where I could have a quiet snooze when I needed such
refreshment, and the places in which I could hide when hiding became an
absolute necessity. I was acquainted with the manner of egress and
ingress, so that I felt free and untrammelled, and I was familiar with
every sound so that my rest was never disturbed by night, nor my nerves
jarred by day.
"And out of doors too, Shireen, everything about the dear old place was
familiar to me; the trees on which the sparrows perched, the field where
I often found an egg, the meadow where the wild rabbits played, and the
paths by which I could reach it in safety.
"But I was taken away from this home by a mistress who used to profess
such love for me, and removed to a town more than twenty miles from
Dublin. My new home too, was right in the centre of the town, and
everything about it looked strange and foreign to me. But so long as I
felt sure my mistress loved me, I did not care, so I began to learn the
place by heart, as it were, and all the outs and ins of it.
"But lo! what was my astonishment to hear my mistress say one day:
"`I don't think we can put up with that cat now in this new house. I
think we had better give a boy sixpence to drown it to-morrow morning.'
"That night I left the house, and the ungrateful mistress I had loved so
well and dearly. I left the house, and the town too, and wandered on
and on nearly all night, and at early dawn I was back again at my
dear-loved home.
"I had forgotten there were strangers there now. And they treated me as
a stray cat, and drummed me out when I dared to put my nose over the
threshold.
"What could I do, Shireen? I could not endure the pangs of hunger, and
though I hung about the garden of my old home for days, and made many a
plaintive but useless appeal to the new-comers, I was forced at last to
cast aside the mantle of virtue and become a thief. Yes, I even broke
into the new people's pigeon-loft and stole a bird. Then I took to this
evil existence, and since then, alas! I have never been inside a human
habitation except to steal."
"Well, Zulina, it is very sad," I said; "but I think you should try to
reform even yet, and some kind lady might take pity on you."
"No, no, no," sighed Zulina, "I am but a homeless waif and stray, and my
fate, I fear, will be to die in the street, or be torn to pieces by
dogs."
"I'm going to hope for better things for you, Zulina," I insisted. "But
good-bye. Yonder is the grey dawn stealing up into the sky, and I think
I hear the milkman's cry in a distant street. I must try to find my
master's hotel. Good-bye."
It was a long distance round, but my instinct was unerring, and finally
I found myself trotting up the correct street, and soon after sitting in
the area doorway.
Down came the milkman with his rattling cans, and in a minute or two,
Biddy, with her hair in papers, and looking very sleepy, opened the
door.
While Biddy and the milkman were interchanging a few courtesies, I
slipped quietly into the house and made my way as fast as I could
upstairs to the second floor.