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 tacks1 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 disapproved2 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 thereby3 great discomfort4. 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 exterminate5 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 odious6 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?' gibed8 the horrid9 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 knight10 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 malaria11, and that I was to nurse him up and feed him as his only chance. When at last I got hold of a vet12 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 passionately13, 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 Mermaid14, 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 mere15 animal stare, and looked up constantly into ours for love and help, which we could not give, alas16! 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 sniffed17 over them a great deal, till mother told me that I myself had looked neither better nor worse than they did. I enjoyed helping18 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 spoke7 to Auntie May very severely19 about Mr. Fox.
'May, you are a fool,' she said. 'I am fond of animals myself, but I shouldn't let them interfere20 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 prop21 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 condemned22 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 pulp23.'
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 flattened24 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 dummy25, behind Rosamond's portrait, in fact a good way off, and with a good many artistic26 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 varnishing27 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 propped28 up against the walls, and it was slow work. Besides, Mr. Fox for once did not seem at all affected29 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 decided30 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 clatter31. 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 varnishes32, 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 exulting33 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 dispel34 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 tangled35 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.
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 proclivities36 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 dawdled37. 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 meddlesome38 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 pram39 and sit all the afternoon. Lotty had not much to do; the nurse would hardly trust her with baby, so she played about and pried40 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 poked41 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 sneaked42 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 meddling43 little thing!'
All the rest of that afternoon did I sit quietly beside the head nurse, with my eye fixed44 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 vile45 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 solely46 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.
'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 awfully48 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 whacked49 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.
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1
tacks
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| 大头钉( tack的名词复数 )； 平头钉； 航向； 方法 | |
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disapproved
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| v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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exterminate
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| v.扑灭，消灭，根绝 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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7
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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gibed
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄( gibe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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vet
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| n.兽医，退役军人；vt.检查 | |
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13
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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14
mermaid
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| n.美人鱼 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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16
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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17
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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18
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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prop
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| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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pulp
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| n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆 | |
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flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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dummy
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| n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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27
varnishing
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| 在（某物）上涂清漆( varnish的现在分词 ) | |
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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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varnishes
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| 清漆的面（尤指木器或金属制品上的）( varnish的名词复数 )； 光泽面； 罩光漆 | |
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exulting
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| vi. 欢欣鼓舞，狂喜 | |
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dispel
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| vt.驱走，驱散，消除 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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proclivities
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| n.倾向，癖性( proclivity的名词复数 ) | |
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dawdled
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| v.混（时间）( dawdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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meddlesome
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| adj.爱管闲事的 | |
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pram
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| n.婴儿车，童车 | |
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40
pried
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| v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的过去式和过去分词 )；撬开 | |
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41
poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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42
sneaked
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| v.潜行( sneak的过去式和过去分词 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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43
meddling
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| v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 ) | |
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44
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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45
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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46
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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47
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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48
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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49
whacked
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| a.精疲力尽的 | |
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