I'm now going to tell you of the saddest experience in all my long life.
You see it happened like this. It was autumn; I was then about five
years of age, and a finer-looking Tom, I could see by my mirror, never
trod on four legs. For some days I had observed an unusual bustle both
upstairs and downstairs. The servants, especially, seemed all off their
heads, and did nothing but open doors and shut them, and nail up things
in large boxes, and drink beer and eat cold meat whenever they stood on
end. What was up, I wondered? Went and asked my mistress. "Off to the
seaside, pussy Tom," said she; "and you're going too, if you're good."
I determined to be good, and not make faces at the canary. But one
night I had been out rather late at a cat-concert, and, as usual, came
home with the milk in the morning. In order to make sure of a good
sleep I went upstairs to an unused attic, as was my wont, and fell
asleep on an old pillow. How long I slept I shall never know, but it
must have been far on in the day when I awoke, feeling hungry enough to
eat a hunter. As I trotted downstairs the first thing that alarmed me
was the unusual stillness. I mewed, and a thousand echoes seemed to
mock me. The ticking of the old clock on the stairs had never sounded
to me so loud and clear before. I went, one by one, into every room.
Nothing in any of them but the stillness, apparently, of death and
desolation. The blinds were all down, and I could even hear the mice
nibbling behind the wainscot.
My heart felt like a great cold lump of lead, as the sad truth flashed
upon my mind--my kind mistress had gone, with all the family, and I was
left, forgotten, deserted! My first endeavour was to find my way out.
Had I succeeded, even then I would have found my mistress, for cats have
an instinct you little wot of. But every door and window was fastened,
and there wasn't a hole left which a rat could have crept through.
What nights and days of misery followed!--it makes me shudder to think
of them even now.
For the first few days I did not suffer much from hunger. There were
crumbs left by the servants, and occasionally a mouse crept out from the
kitchen fender, and I had that. But by the fifth day the crumbs had all
gone, and with them the mice, too, had disappeared. They nibbled no
more in the cupboard nor behind the wainscot; and as the clock had run
down there wasn't a sound in the old house by night or by day. I now
began to suffer both from hunger and thirst. I spent my time either
mewing piteously at the hall-door, or roaming purposelessly through the
empty house, or watching, watching, faint and wearily, for the mice that
never came. Perhaps the most bitter part of my sufferings just then was
the thought that would keep obtruding itself on my mind, that for all
the love with which I had loved my mistress, and the faithfulness with
which I had served her, she had gone away, and left me to die all alone
in the deserted house. Me, too, who would have laid down my life to
please her had she only stayed near me.
How slowly the time dragged on--how long and dreary the days, how
terrible the nights! Perhaps it was when I was at my very worst, that I
happened to be standing close by my empty saucer, and in front of my
mirror. At that time I was almost too weak to walk, I tottered on my
feet, and my head swam and moved from side to side when I tried to look
at anything. Suddenly I started. Could that wild, attenuated image in
the mirror be my reflection? How it glared upon me from its glassy
eyes! And now I knew it could not be mine, but some dreadful thing sent
to torture me. For as I gazed it uttered a yell--mournful, prolonged,
unearthly--and dashed at me through and out from the mirror. For some
time we seemed to writhe together in agony on the carpet. Then up again
we started, the mirror-fiend and I. "Follow me fast!" it seemed to cry,
and I was impelled to follow. Wherever it was, there was I. How it
tore up and down the house, yelling as it went and tearing everything in
its way! How it rushed half up the chimney, and was dashed back again
by invisible hands! How it flung itself, half-blind and bleeding, at
the Venetian blinds, and how madly it tried again to escape into the
mirror and shivered the glass! Then mills began in my head--mills and
machinery--and the roar of running waters. Then I found myself walking
all alone in a green and beautiful meadow, with a blue sky overhead and
birds and butterflies all about, a cool breeze fanning my brow, and,
better than all, _water_, pure, and clear, and cool, meandering over
brown smooth pebbles, beside which the minnows chased the sunbeams. And
I drank--and slept.
When I awoke, I found myself lying on the mat in the hall, and the
sunlight shimmering in through the stained glass, and falling in patches
of green and crimson on the floor. Very cold now, but quiet and
sensible. There was a large hole in my side, and blood was all about,
so I must have, in my delirium, _torn the flesh, from my own ribs and
devoured it_. [Not overdrawn. A case of the kind actually occurred
some years ago in the new town of Edinburgh.--The Author.]
I knew now that death was come, and would set me free at last.
Then the noise of wheels in my ears, and the sound of human voices; then
a blank; and then someone pouring something down my throat; and I opened
my eyes and beheld my dear young mistress. How she was weeping! The
sight of her sorrow would have melted your heart. "Oh, pussy, pussy, do
not die!" she was crying.
Pussy didn't die; but till this day I believe it was only to please my
dear mistress I crept back again to life and love.
I'm very old now, and my thoughts dwell mostly in the past, and I like a
cheery fire and a drop of warm milk better than ever. But I have all my
faculties and all my comforts. We have other cats in the house, but I
never feel jealous, for my mistress, look you, loves me better than all
the cats in the kingdom--fact--she told me so.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
THE DUNGHILL CAT.
I'm the dunghill cat--that is what I am. Nobody owns me, and I owe
allegiance to nobody. Nobody feeds me; nobody puts a saucer on the
ground and says, "Here, pussy, there's a drop of milk for you, my pet."
Nobody ever gave me a bit of fish in my life, and nobody, so far as I
can remember, ever called me pet names or spoke kindly to me. Not that
I care, you know, but I merely mention it, that's all. But don't you
despise me because I am only a poor dunghill cat. It isn't my fault but
my misfortune, as you shall presently hear. Circumstances over which I
had no control have rendered me what I am; but I am come of respectable
parents for all that. To be sure I could not swear to my father, not
knowing exactly who he was, and the mum herself being at times a little
hazy on the point. But my mother, madam, came from Egypt, and was
descended from a long line of noble ancestors in that beautiful land,
where, they tell me, there is bread enough for all, and where a poor cat
is honoured and respected, as she always ought to be. And the mum told
me that her original ancestors came over with the Conqueror--Cambyses,
you know--so that is good enough, surely. Yes, madam, without meaning
the slightest offence, I may just remind you that when your forebears
were dressed in pig-skins, and not much of that; when they wore
flint-headed spears, and stalked about the hills with painted faces,
doing attitudes and saying "Ugh!" when astonished, my progenitors dwelt
in palaces, loved and respected by all, and were considered the equals
of prince, or priest, or peer--what do you think of that? But I'm not
proud; I'm only the poor dunghill cat, that all the dogs chase, that all
the little boys stone, and Bridget shakes the broom at. Bridget never
can catch me, though--ha, ha! Won't I eat her canary, first chance--you
see if I don't.
My earliest recollection is of being carried by the back of my neck, by
something or somebody that I afterwards discovered was my mother. I was
taken into a beautiful house, and deposited carefully on a rug in the
corner of a cupboard. Then my mother began licking me all over with her
tongue, when suddenly said a voice close alongside of me, "I declare
that pussy has been and gone and got another kitten--as if one cat of
the kind wasn't enough about the house. Sarah, go and put it where you
put all the others."
I don't know who the others were, or where they were put; but I know
what Sarah did with me. She took me up with the hot tongs, mother
screamed and so did I, till I couldn't scream any more because the black
water was all around me. Then followed a period of agony, and then a
blank, and the next thing I recollect is finding myself lying, wet and
cold, in my mother's arms, and she all wet and cold as well as me.
"My dear chee-ild," said my mamma, "this has been a sad morning; but
you're safe ne-ow, although the building is humble and your pallet is
straw. Shade of Cambyses!" continued the old lady, rubbing a paw over
her right ear, "why ever did I leave the land of Egypt?"
When I got a little older I began to look around me. I thought our new
home was one of the jolliest places that could be, despite all the
flowery accounts my mother used to give me of the land of her birth,
with its marble halls and gorgeous tesselated pavements. It was a
large, roomy loft in an old, old mill, and I used to run about the floor
and chase the great spiders before I was big and brave enough to attack
a wild mouse, or the great, untamable rats that used to frighten me so
when mother was out, by standing on their hind legs and making dreadful
faces at me. But didn't they scamper off when mother came back!
One day mother brought me a live mouse. How brave I suddenly felt. You
should have seen how I sprung on it, and heard how I growled. Had
anyone, even the immortal Cambyses himself, attempted to rescue that
wild mouse from my clutches, he should have died on the spot. How
pleased my mother looked! I think I see her yet, with her old-fashioned
face and her odd, old-world ways. Very much respected my mother was, I
assure you. I've seen no less than seven well-dressed feline swells
talking and singing to her all at once, and she didn't know which of
them to speak to first. Met a violent end, did my mother.
Verdict--"Killed by the carrier's collie."
After I had slain and eaten one mouse, I felt every inch a Tom. I
declined to lie any more in my mother's arms. No more milk for me;
blood, and only blood, was my motto, and I meant it, too. When I was a
well-grown cat of nine months old my mother introduced me to her
mistress's house, and I became, for a time, a house-cat. I cannot say,
however, that I liked the change. The lady of the dwelling was, they
told me, exceedingly good and pious, went twice to church on Sunday, and
read prayers morning and evening; but, sad to say, she never had studied
feline economy. "If cats can't find mice to eat," she used to say,
"they ought to starve."
My mother told me that this was something like asking a person to make
bricks without straw. My mother was very learned.
Well, one evening--and I had been starving all day, and was dreadfully
hungry and too faint to watch for mice--I happened to stroll into the
pantry, and there I found such a nice, nice dish of cream. Luscious!
But what a thrashing I got five minutes afterwards--I wasn't hungry for
a week. Then the hunger came on again worse than ever, and I stole
again. I couldn't help it, really. Then I was called a nasty, thieving
brute, and got blamed many times when quite innocent. There is Briddy
with the broom again. She hasn't forgiven me for that herring yet, and
I can swear it wouldn't have kept for another day. Besides, what do I
care if it was for Master Fred's breakfast? Briddy had no business to
be upstairs trying on missus's Sunday bonnet, and the kitchen-door wide
open. She thinks I don't see all her capers, and her opening drawers,
and keeking into cupboards, and examining this, that, and t'other, when
her missus is out. But lying on the top of that wall I can see a great
deal more than I trouble to tell of. But Briddy blamed me for eating
those two new-laid eggs that the baker brought. She "just laid them
down outside in the strawberry-basket, m'm, for one minute; and when she
turned again, la, m'm, they was broke and eaten, they was!" She forgot
to mention how the baker crumpled her cap, though; and she didn't tell
how she was all over flour, and had to brush herself from top to toe
when the bell rang. But, mind you, it wasn't _me_ that stole the eggs.
I would confess at once if it was; for what could a couple of paltry
new-laid eggs add to the weight of crime I have been guilty of in my
day? Why, nothing. But Dr Ricket's jackdaw took the eggs, for I saw
him hop on to the wall, and he gave a look down, first, with one side of
his head, at Briddy and the baker, then, with the other side of his
head, to the eggs; then down he went, and it was all over in a moment--I
mean the eggs were. Just like Briddy, blaming me for that piece of cold
pork. Mind you, I don't say I wouldn't have taken it had I got the
chance, but I didn't. "That beautiful piece of pork gone next, m'm; and
I never can keep that cat out. And whatever shall I do, m'm?"
But I wonder why Briddy didn't say a word about that visit she had from
the policeman. Much of a lover he is, anyhow. I could see him through
the window, and he never opened his mouth but to put something into it.
His courtship was _so_ un-Byronic, for he sat and he sat, and he chewed
and chewed, and glowered and glowered at Briddy, till I wondered she
didn't spit in his face and turn him out. Ah, Briddy, you needn't shake
the broom, what would you do without me?
But to resume my story. One night I was shut up in a room by accident,
and no one heard me call, for I did call, and, in the morning, the room
wasn't just as it ought to have been, and for this new offence I was
condemned to die--taken away in a sack, and drowned.
Not dead? Bless you, no; it wasn't likely I was going to remain at the
bottom of a mill-dam, in an old guano-bag. I was up again before you
could say mouse, and had swam on shore as cool as you like. It was a
beautiful day in early autumn, the fields were all ablaze with golden
grain, and the berries beginning to turn red and black in the hedgerows.
I sat down on a sheaf of wheat and basked till dry in the warm
sunshine. Then a young pheasant ran round the corner and cried, "Peet,
peet, have you seen my mother anywhere?" I thought I never had tasted
anything half so sweet in all my life. Then I felt a new Tom from top
to toe. Go back and be a house-cat? No, perish the thought. And I
never did.
I am now fifteen years of age, and as I look back to the days that are
gone I cannot help exclaiming, "What a jolly life I've led." I've been
a Bohemian, a robber, a brigand, and a thief. "It is a sin, pussy," you
say; "why don't you reform?" "'Cause I won't," I answer. Had I been
differently brought up, better treated, better fed, and better
understood, I mightn't be what I am. I would then have been as honest
and virtuous as one of good Mrs Peek's cats. She knows how to treat a
cat, and it is only a pity she isn't an Egyptian, she might have married
Cambyses.
Well, well, as I said before, I'm now fifteen years of age; I've seen
many ups and downs in the world, but I suppose my day is wearing
through, and I must soon be preparing for the happy hunting-fields on
the other side of Jordan.
Now, madam, you know I'm only a cat, a common dunghill cat, and have
only common dunghill notions, but here are my sentiments. Religion is a
beautiful thing when brought to bear on everyday life, and not put off
and on with your moire antique. But never you go away to church and
forget to give pussy her breakfast.
And have your prayer-book in one hand if you like of a morning, but have
a nice bit of fish or a saucer of milk for pussy in the other, and the
beauty of the one hand will be reflected from the other, as the stars
are mirrored in the ocean's wave.
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The End.