They had the slipperiest floors in the Rue1 de L'Echelle, made of pieces of wood joined together and then polished till the nap was like silk. Léocadie, the bonne, did it with cloths wrapped about her feet, and she looked too funny and chaseable skating up and down the floors. Sometimes Philippe, Mr. Jay's servant, did it, and he plodged, that was the difference. Léocadie ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed her, but he chaffed her. She was rather a little slop in her morning blouse and her checked apron2 and her black frizzly hair, and when she gave him an order he would answer gravely, 'Bien, Princesse!' which sent Mr. Jay into fits of laughter. Léocadie was very kind to me. She was always holding out some little odd-and-end for me to eat, saying, 'Tiens, Minet?' while I liked lying on Philippe's coat, that he took off when he worked, better than anything.
Then in the warm May days that were coming on, I used to lie in the balcony and look through the iron lace-work and put my paw out, and shake it about in the air. I could look down, too, and see the wheelbarrows with bright flowers on them, and the bare-headed women with lovely hair, and the tinkling3 cabs, and the drivers with their grey beaver4 hats.
Auntie May got a great deal better, well enough to go into society—French society. Mrs. Jay sometimes went with her, but not always, and one night—a night that will long live in my memory—Auntie May went to Madame Taine's literary party all alone.
At nine o'clock she came out of her room in her new evening cloak, and in a lovely pink dress all sequins and beads6, and went down the stairs of the flat. I slipped out too, and went down on the train of her dress most of the way. She ought to have held it up, of course. She got into the cab the concierge7 had fetched, and having said goodbye to me upstairs, thought no more about me, and I was left sitting alone on the kerb.
The gutter8 was dirty, full of vegetables and things thrown away, and even when they did tidy up, they only pushed the refuse under a grating. The dirty towel the men used to stop up the hole in the sewer9 with was lying near by—a stupid way of arranging it, I thought. The noise in the street was terrific. It was the first time I had stood there alone. The tinkly10 horse bells got on my nerves—horses all wear collars in Paris. One wonders they don't spoil their ruffs. Auntie May won't let any of her cats wear them, though for some reasons it would be most convenient, for one would always know where the cat was at a given moment. I longed to get in again, but the great big doors were shut. So sooner than sit still doing nothing, I moved a little way farther down the street, and gradually got on to what I imagined from descriptions must be the Big Boulevard. It was a great danger, but luckily it was dark. At the crossing there was a policeman with a stick that he tried to keep cabs back with as they do in London, so mother has told me, but the horses here just pushed it back rudely with their noses, and went on and nearly ran over people.
I got across, and on the other side there were numbers of places where They eat, and many people sitting outside at little tables munching11 peanuts and drinking coffee out of glasses. They dropped pieces of sugar into them and gave them to their children, who all seemed to have leave to sit up and be out of doors in the night time. Rosamond and her sisters go to bed at eight, but then they are English children. Every moment I thought something was happening, people made such a noise. Every now and then men ran down the street calling out in dreadful fear; their harsh screams of terror frightened me, but I soon discovered, by an old gentleman near me giving one man a sou and quieting him, that these scraggy poor men were only selling their papers. In the middle of the road the stream of carriages and cabs rolled—rolled by till my poor head turned, and I didn't know when I should ever cross that river of carriages and get home. I knew, having crossed the street once, that I was bound to cross it again to get back, but there was not a cat in the whole region from whom I could ask the way.
I felt so lonely that I could have mewed aloud, but if I had that would have called attention to me, and I should have been arrested by one of the men in blue who held the bâton and minded the crossing. I rubbed myself against an old gentleman who was taking absinthe at the little table near which I had placed myself. He looked down and only said, 'Tiens, un chat! Rentre, mon vieux,' which translated means, 'Hold, a cat! Go home, old man!' which was precisely12 what I wanted to do, if only he would have put me safely over the crossing. He probably thought I belonged to the restaurant near where I was lurking13.
At last the stream of carriages seemed to thin a little, and I took my courage between my teeth and made a wild dash to get across.
I did it. The garçon called out, 'Holà! Hé!' and some other strange expressions of surprise, but I never minded. Keeping a stiff whisker, although I was mortally afraid, I walked down the long street that led southwards to my home in Rue de L'Echelle.
I knew the house by a piece of orange-peel lying in a particular place near the door that I had noticed when Auntie May had started three hours ago, and also by its own peculiar14 smell.
Every house has its special smell, over and above all the town smell, you know. The smell of Paris is quite different from the smell of London. It is a kind of fried-potatoes-and-garlic smell mixed together on a hot stove-dried air—nothing solid about it, somehow. Auntie May says it is like sweet champagne15, and just as heady.
I had plenty of time to think what the air of Paris was like, for the door stayed shut, and I stayed in the street with every prospect16 of doing it till morning. I could not ring the bell and say, 'Cordon17, s'il vous plait.' Then a thought struck me. Had Auntie May come in yet? How could I tell? I looked about to see if she had dropped anything—a pin, a flower, a hair-pin?
Nothing! Now, Auntie May was just the kind of person to drop something, and I began to hope that she had not come in yet. I waited. I could sneak18 in with her if I was mean, or make a clean breast of it and show myself. I didn't know which I would do. It depended on the sort of temper she was in. I can generally smell that.
After about an hour I heard a cab come down the street, going very quickly. Auntie May got out and paid the man and sent him away. Then she rang, very loudly and impatiently. I was sitting quietly beside her, meaning her to see me. I had decided19 to do it that way, but I said nothing. She noticed me at once, and spoke20 to me seriously:
'Oh, Loki, you villain21, you darling, you naughty little cat! How come you to be out? Mercy, when I think of what might have happened! A valuable cat, alone in Paris at midnight! I hope at least you have not been very far away from this door. This is a quiet sort of street, thank goodness. Quick! Say! Set my mind at rest!'
She shook me gently and I said, 'No,' but of course she only thought I mewed.
I asked her if she had enjoyed herself?
'Why a fright, do you say? Anybody might have run off with you and made a boa of you. They wouldn't have made mincemeat, however, for you are a valuable cat, and they could see that at a glance, though you are English. They would have sold you into slavery. Well, people are honester than I thought! But perhaps nobody has passed this way? Dis, mon chou!' She had got so French that she called me a cabbage.
She squeezed me again, and I tried to remind her that nobody had answered that bell, and that her cloak was open, and it wasn't even a piece of whole fur, for it missed her neck out.
'Yes, you may well mew, for you are a really naughty little cat, and have wrung23 your poor mistress's heart. Why don't they open that door? How long have we been standing24 here? Come under my cloak.'
'I wish you would fasten it,' I said.
'You are very conversational25, Loki, to-night. I begin to think you have had adventures. I'll ring again. Conf—bother that concierge! Lazy creature! I'll ring the house down if he doesn't come soon. Well, well, we must possess our little souls in patience, Loki, you and I. Isn't it funny, standing out here in a strange town all alone at twelve o'clock at night, Loki? Awfully26 queer, and such a queer party I have been to. We drank punch in long glasses, and ate plum-cake and spoiled our gloves. When will this man answer the bell and open the door?'
She rang again. We both listened.
'I believe we shall have to make up a bed on the stones,' she said. 'I am beginning to get cross. Perhaps we can get the concierge dismissed to-morrow. Yes, we'll do that, anyhow.'
There was a man coming down the street in a rough black frieze27 cape28 and a black tie, whose ends floated out in the breeze. If ever I saw a Frenchman he was one, young too. Yet as he went by he said, very clearly and distinctly in English:
'Poosh!'
And Auntie May did push, hard. That was it. The door was open all the time!
I believe the concierge had opened it when we first rang and gone to sleep again. But all I can say is we heard no click, and that is what Auntie May said to Mrs. Jay next morning.
'I didn't think that literary parties could be so exciting!' said Mrs. Jay.
Next morning a whole heap of letters came by the post. Auntie May read bits of them aloud to Mrs. Jay, and I heard them between my mouthfuls of bread and milk. There was one from Beatrice saying that she supposed Auntie May wasn't going to stay in Paris much longer, it must be getting so hot; she supposed she wouldn't mind a few little commissions, and out came a list as long as Auntie May's arm.
There was one from Mr. Fox, which I managed to get hold of and trailed all over the room, pretending it was a mouse, and paying it back for Mr. Fox's treatment of me. I like to be loved.
There was a long letter from Mrs. Dillon in South Africa about Admiral Togo.
'I sometimes think he is turning into a baby,' she wrote. 'He really is almost human, and expresses his every wish so unmistakably that I am convinced he will actually talk some day. He is very well. His fur comes off, but the "vet29" says that is inevitable30 here, and that it will come on again. He is a shocking bad sailor and hated the sea. Nothing would induce him to look at it through a porthole unless I held him in my arm and talked all the time to him. Then he got a little, nervously31, interested. My maid bought a wicker basket-chair for him at Madeira, and he sat on it on deck, never making the slightest attempt to leave it. Below he had only one pleasure, a canary. Up to the very last he hoped that it would come into his mouth. He felt the heat of the tropics very much, and complained in a feeble way of being forced to travel in his chinchilla coat and cuffs32. I showed him how to lie on the floor with his head on a book for coolness, so all the hot time he insisted on my making this arrangement for him; he could not somehow or other get it right for himself.
'Here at Rondebosch he is getting a little old-fashioned, having no other cats to play with except me and my maid. He goes walks with me, padding along on his short fat legs, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth till he is tired, when he lies down on his back and cries till I go and pick him up, and then have to carry him the rest of the way. I want my maid to buy him a "pram33."'
I can't remember any more. Auntie May nearly cried with pleasure at getting this long letter from Mrs. Dillon. I wished Auntie May would take me walks. She never seemed to think of it, and I got into the habit of taking them for myself—on the roof.
This was stopped.
'May,' said Mrs. Jay, 'when I came in to-day I heard a mew, and your cat welcomed me into my own house from the roof, craning his silly little neck over the gutter, like the devils of Notre Dame5. Do you think it safe? He isn't attached behind, like the gargoyles34, you know.'
'Not at all safe,' said Auntie May, and, together with the hotness, this was one of the reasons for her deciding to go home.
About a fortnight after this my basket was brought out and filled with little bits of paper. I knew what this meant. I was not, however, put into it till the very last minute, two days later.
'Now, you travelled little cat,' said Auntie May, 'go into your "sleeping" and don't wail35 and distress36 me. It will soon be over, and you will see your mother again.'
I knew exactly how soon it would be over; it would last just as long as it had lasted to come here, and that was a whole day. I said nothing, and then began the goodbyes, which were just as distressing37 as my mewing would have been.
It is curious, but They do seem to have a way of caring for each other far more than we do. Mrs. Jay and Auntie May knew each other no better than I and Mistigris, and I never even troubled to say goodbye to her, yet she was a nice little cat.
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1
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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3
tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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beaver
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| n.海狸，河狸 | |
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dame
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| n.女士 | |
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beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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7
concierge
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| n.管理员；门房 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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sewer
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| n.排水沟，下水道 | |
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tinkly
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| 叮当响的 | |
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munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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12
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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13
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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15
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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16
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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17
cordon
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| n.警戒线，哨兵线 | |
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18
sneak
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| vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行 | |
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19
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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21
villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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22
disarms
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| v.裁军( disarm的第三人称单数 )；使息怒 | |
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23
wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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24
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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frieze
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| n.(墙上的)横饰带，雕带 | |
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28
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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29
vet
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| n.兽医，退役军人；vt.检查 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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31
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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32
cuffs
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| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
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33
pram
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| n.婴儿车，童车 | |
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34
gargoyles
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| n.怪兽状滴水嘴( gargoyle的名词复数 ) | |
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35
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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36
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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