“I, I, I,” yowled the blue kitten. “Listen to me! I am the blue kitten, and most unusual. I …”
“I,” answered Arunah. “I am Arunah Hyde. You are only a queer-looking kitten, growing into a queer-looking cat. You, listen to me. I shall sign the contract for the Lightning Express. There will be twice as many stages coming and going. Then I shall put Castle Town on the map. I shall make it the center of Vermont, of the Universe.”
“I have heard that before,” interrupted the kitten.
But Arunah would not listen.
“I opened streets. I built houses and stores. I built this, the Mansion House. And listen, you kitten, to the horses’ hoofs — faster, faster, faster.
“Horses from Sudbury, Middlebury,
Racing to Burlington, to Woodstock
And to Hanover,
Hear the thudding of their hoofs,
Hear the snapping of the whip
Faster, faster, always faster,
Along the shore of Lake Champlain,
To Ticonderoga and Lake George,
To St. Johns and Montreal,
Hoofs flashing through Albany,
Heading for New York and city streets.
Those are my horses, those are my stages,
In Washington, men speak of me, Arunah Hyde,
I am a power, a great power I tell you,
Gold pours from my fingers,
And Castle Town is the center of the Universe,
And I, I, Arunah Hyde, am …”
“Mer-oww! Oww!” yowled the blue kitten who was almost a blue cat by this time. “For pity’s sake, man, stop. I heard, or I dreamed I heard, long ago that a dark spell was being woven about Castle Town. And now I know that you are the one who is weaving that spell. And the spell has mastered you. So, do stop, Arunah Hyde, for pity’s sake! For your sake! For everybody’s sake!”
But Arunah paid no attention. “I have mills, I say. And a quarry. I cut marble for my housefronts. I make roofs from my own slate.”
“With your hands fashion beauty,” put in the blue kitten loudly. He was determined to be heard. After all, it was his song, his spell that was important.
“With my hands, I count gold,” Arunah spoke louder.
“Riches will pass and power. Beauty remains!” yowled the big, fat blue kitten.
“That is nonsense. Utter nonsense,” yelled Arunah.
“All that is worth doing, do well,” said the kitten.
“Do fast,” corrected Arunah.
“Certain and round be the measure,
Every line be graceful and true.”
“Lines are nothing. Put on a good front,” cried Arunah. “Set something new in the window, a fat blue cat, for instance. Then the travelers will pour faster into the Mansion House. Mansion is a good name, blue cat. For you are a cat now. Tavern would sound altogether too unpretentious.”
“Time is the mold, time the weaver, the carver,
Time and the workman together.”
Never had the cat — the blue cat purred so loudly. For with cathood his voice had unexpectedly deepened. It was really magnificent. At the end of the song, he threw back his head and yowled triumphantly.
“Besides, I won’t stay in the window of your old Mansion House, Arunah Hyde! Never!”
“You will if you are stuffed with sawdust!” gloated Arunah. “You are fat enough right now!” And he grabbed for the blue cat.
The cat struggled. He scratched and bit and clawed. He clawed and bit and scratched. But because he was so fat his breath was short and he was losing the fight.
When — a stagecoach came crashing to a stop. And Arunah must needs drop the blue cat to rush forward to the door. But even as he rushed he held onto the blue cat’s tail.
The cat, with one final surge of strength, tore his tail loose from Arunah’s grasp. And as the door opened the blue cat dashed through. Only a few hairs from his tail remained in Arunah’s hands. And what were a few hairs compared to the life of a grown-up blue cat?
Away from the Mansion House dashed the blue cat. Up the road and up the road, back the way he had come. Not even Arunah’s horses ever ran as hard and fast as the blue cat was running. At least he had learned speed from Arunah. He was headed back for the meadow where he was born. Past the cobbler’s shop he ran, by the old tavern the weaver had sketched for his weaving, past John Gilroy’s shop, to the village green and the shop where Ebenezer Southmayd, the pewterer, had worked. On and on, back and back, raced the blue cat, losing weight with every step.
When he was quite exhausted he hid under a mulberry bush and considered. Somehow, in spite of what Arunah Hyde had almost done to him — stuffing him with cream in order to stuff him with sawdust — the blue cat felt sorry for the man.
Speed and gain and power. That was Arunah’s spell, and it drove Arunah Hyde harder than he drove his horses. It was a dark spell, spreading far and wide over Castle Town.
“‘And in the end that spell will overpower him.’ I am sure that was what the river said, or something very like. I was asleep, or ’most asleep — but still I heard. I must have heard. Poor Arunah!” mourned the blue cat. “Poor, poor man!”
Two great crystal tears gathered and dropped slowly from his amber eyes. One was for Arunah. One was for the thick yellow cream, the beautiful lake salmon and the plates piled high with chicken, which the blue cat had left forever behind him.
A long, mournful, unearthly sound went through the valley, wailing up and down, louder, more frightening than any loon. Wailing, wailing, from Bird Mountain to Lake Bombazine.
The blue cat was startled, for he had never heard such a sound. He felt tired and sick, very sick. His thoughts began to swirl in his head, like the yellow cream swirled when poured into Arunah’s tinny bowl. The sound was, he decided, a whistle of some sort from the future. Blue cats, who were born under a blue moon, his mother had said, often heard things no ordinary cat could hear.
No ordinary cat — he grew sicker and sicker. Could Arunah have poisoned him before he left? How terrible to die of poison before he had found a hearth to fit his song!
No ordinary cat — no hearth. Oh, dear. He wished that he was an ordinary cat. The tip of his tail pained him a little and he remembered that he had left some of the hairs from the very end of it in Arunah’s hand. He grew sicker and sicker as he lay underneath the mulberry bush. And he wished, oh, how he wished, that he was an ordinary cat, and not having such a difficult time to find a hearth.
An ordinary cat! It was his last thought. But the blue cat, lying with his eyes closed under the mulberry bush, did not know that with the losing of three black hairs from the end of his tail, he had lost his only chance to be an ordinary cat. Come what might he was the blue cat. And he would remain the blue cat to the end of his days. He was really most unusual. A truly extraordinary cat. He was the Blue Cat of Castle Town!
CHAPTER SIX
THE BARN CAT OF SYLVANUS GUERNSEY
THE thin blue cat woke at last. He sat up and looked weakly about him. He must have been lying under the mulberry bush for a long, long time. He must have … Now, let me see, he thought. What was it I was trying to do when … ?
But the cat could remember only that he had been going somewhere, running as fast as he could, as fast as the Lightning Express — whatever that might be.
He stirred, and though he ached in every muscle and bone, he managed to creep around to the other side of the mulberry bush. There he gazed upon a narrow lane leading off the main road and meandering over a hill. At the bend of the lane a wisp of smoke was rising from a chimney and losing itself in a riot of scarlet and gold maple leaves. The house itself could be seen in gray patches through a thinning thicket of cherry and alder. The lane seemed familiar. Perhaps, thought the cat, perhaps I was going there.
Having come to this conclusion, he stood up, crossed the road in a shaky fashion, and then slowly and painfully started up the lane. He stopped often to rest. His head and his tail hung low. As he rounded t
he bend, however, he lifted his head again. This time he saw a yellow tabby in the doorway of a barn next to a small, unpainted house. The tabby stopped washing her face to watch him. She was an ordinary cat, and seemed vaguely familiar. While he looked at her, she mewed in a friendly fashion. The blue cat tried to answer. But he was too weak. The gray borders of the lane — the faded goldenrod and the spilling milkweed pods — seemed to whirl about him. The blue cat shuddered twice, then he sank down and lay still in the dust of the lane.
When next the blue cat opened his eyes, he was curled in a comfortable nest of dried clover, Queen Anne’s lace and chickory, in the corner of a warm and comfortable haymow. He could hear cows in their stanchions stirring and munching at their hay. Some hens were clucking softly. A stream of sunlight coming through a little dust-covered window sifted down warmly upon him. A spider worked at her web.
Sweet fragrance from the hay rose all about. Everything in that place was filled with beauty and peace and content. Everything, that is, except the blue cat. His stomach was empty — horribly empty. One cannot see beauty or know peace, and certainly no one can be content with an empty stomach.
Just then, picking her way quietly over the haymow, came the yellow tabby with the friendly mew. From her mouth hung a nice fat mouse. The tabby hurried when she saw the blue cat’s hungry eyes. With a flourish of her tail she laid the mouse down in front of him. Then, head on one side, she withdrew a bit to watch.
“Mmmm,” purred the blue cat gratefully, when his stomach was mouseful and comfortable. “Mmmm., that was a breakfast fit for a king.”
“I never heard of such,” said the tabby cat. “But being only a barn cat, there are many things of which I never heard. If I were a blue cat, like you, matters would be quite different. Are you a king?”
The blue cat’s old pride came over him and for a moment he fairly swelled with importance, although he knew no more about kings than the barn cat. Still the word, when she said it, sounded important.
“I am the blue cat,” he said. “And I know the song — the song — Why! What is the song I know?”
The barn cat shook her head. “I sing my own song, the song of the hunter. I am the best mouser in Castle Town. In time I expect to catch rats!”
“Sing your own song,” said the blue cat wonderingly. “That is it! Or at least that is the beginning. But what about the rest of the song? And what am I to do with it?”
“Don’t worry about that until you are stronger,” urged the barn cat. And she mewed until the blue cat followed her to the bowl of milk in a stable corner.
“It is there every night,” said the barn cat. “Sylvanus Guernsey filled the bowl last night. Tonight Zeruah, his daughter, will fill it. For every winter Sylvanus goes away. He walks all the way back to Connecticut where he works for other folk until spring. Then he returns to Castle Town and makes spinning wheels. Most folk do not buy them any more. But Sylvanus likes to make them. Zeruah will be lonely this winter, for her mother has died.
“Besides Zeruah does not like to do anything. But she will care for us creatures in the barn after a fashion, though she does not make friends with us. She does not make friends with anyone. She is not good-looking and she is certain nobody likes her.”
Just then Zeruah herself lifted the latch of the barn door and came in, milking pail on her arm.
The blue cat shook his head in a startled fashion. “Mew! Mew!” Why, this was the girl on whose doorstone he had sat in his kittenhood, on the long-ago day when he had first started out to sing the song — the song … Oh, dear, he would never remember! And if he didn’t something terrible was bound to happen, because he, the blue cat, would have failed in … What was it he would have failed in?
Over and over, day after day, the blue cat pondered these questions. The bright leaves fell from the trees, the last asters and goldenrod disappeared, the maples and sumac lost their brave scarlet, the bronze of the fern fronds dulled. The birds flew south.
The wind howled and moaned. Then the snow came, flake after flake, thicker and thicker, swirling in gusts, beating at the frost-covered window high in the barn, sifting in the door when Zeruah came with the milkpails.
It was cold. But the creatures were not cold. The cows chewed their cuds contentedly, there was the warm clucking of hens, the friendly baa, baa of a sheep. Prowling over the hay, in his thick fur coat, or curled in the comfortable nest, well supplied with mice by the barn cat, and bowls of milk by Zeruah, sometimes the blue cat forgot the song he had lost, forgot too that he had a mission to perform.
He would listen to the barn cat mewing her concern about Zeruah, until he, too, felt anxious about the lonely girl. This was strange, for until that winter, he had thought only about himself.
Of course he had reason to be grateful to Zeruah, he reminded himself. And even more grateful to the yellow barn cat.
“How can I ever repay you?” he asked the barn cat more than once. “I cannot catch even one mouse.”
Mousing was something his mother had not taught him. It wasn’t her fault, he explained. It was simply that as a kitten he had other matters to attend to.
“I see,” the barn cat said politely. “What matters?”
“The matter of learning the song … Well, the song I have lost,” explained the blue cat. And his voice held such a wailing note that the barn cat thought he must be hungry and stole off to catch another mouse.
Little by little that winter some memories came back to the blue cat. He did remember that he was looking for someone in Castle Town who would understand his song, and to whom he should teach that song. Then he would be given a hearth to sleep on. And then — something else would happen. Something important for Castle Town itself. Something in which Arunah Hyde was concerned.
And having remembered Arunah, the cat remembered Ebenezer Southmayd and John Gilroy. Little by little he put everything he recalled together. Until at last he had the story of his life, everything that is, except the song which he had once sung so proudly. The song — the song …
At last the cat sighed a long sigh. He could, he was positive, remember no more. He must have lost the song somewhere in Castle Town, lost it as he fled desperately from Arunah.
A ray of sunlight sifted through the little window above him. Warm sunlight with the feel of spring about it. In another corner of the mow two yellow kittens called to their mother. The blue cat stalked over to look at them. They were round yellow balls with perky ears and pointed tails, and they looked much like the barn cat.
“Nice enough, as kittens go,” decided the blue cat, not realizing he had spoken aloud.
“Nice enough?” echoed the barn cat, leaping unexpectedly from the rafters, and pushing the blue cat aside. “Why these are the most wonderful kittens in all Vermont!”
“Hmm!” answered the blue cat, moving away. And this time, strictly under his breath, he said, “What poor judgment you have, barn cat.”
He went off by himself to the farthest mow, and lay down blinking, and a little lonely. And here the ray of sun sought him out.
The sun did have a feel of spring about it. And when spring came how could a blue cat stay placidly in a barn? Besides, he would soon be too great a burden for the barn cat. How could she expect to catch mice for four? His own mother, he recalled, had thought it difficult to catch mice for two.
Once the blue cat made up his mind, there was — as his mother could have told you — no changing it. So he went immediately to tell the barn cat of his decision. “It is not spring yet, but it will be soon,” he said. “And I think I had better get an early start. I have, as you know, a great many matters to attend to.” He thanked her then for all she had done. “Sometime,” he insisted, “I will repay you. And the girl Zeruah, as well.”
“But where,” asked the barn cat, “are you going? And what will you do?”
“I am going back the way I came,” he told her. “To search for the song. It must be lying under the snow somewhere in Castle Town. And if I s
earch hard enough I shall find it. I feel that in my bones.”
“Well, after all, you are not a blue cat for nothing,” answered the barn cat.
The blue cat bowed his head. Somehow the words filled him with sadness. He said, humbly enough, for he had learned a great deal, “I am blue I know. But I have decided that I am only an ordinary cat, and not even a poor mouser. Still, wherever it is lying, I must find and sing my own song. Of that I feel certain.”
The barn cat hovered about him. She straightened his whiskers and even washed his ears. “Pink ears,” she insisted, “are so becoming to a blue cat!”
She looked at his fine, long, white whiskers, and at the eyebrows which were like small fountains above his amber eyes. She approved the softness and whiteness of his waist-coat. That was the result of a good winter diet of mouse and milk. Then she looked him over from head to tail.
“There isn’t a black hair on you,” she said musingly — having with her own motherhood inherited the wisdom of all mother cats. “You certainly are an extraordinary cat!”
Then the blue cat, who didn’t for an instant believe these words — remembering, for one thing, the barn cat’s opinion of the yellow kittens — climbed slowly down the haymow to the floor and hurried past some hens scratching in the straw to the stable door. There he pushed open the swinging round of the cat-hole, and stepped out into the snow.
It was deeper than he thought. He lifted one foot gingerly and looked about. Snow, snow, snow, as far as he could see. Even the sun felt different here than it had in the barn. There was no least feel of spring about it now. And there was a wind which pierced like an icicle through his blue fur. Hmm! Brrrr! He set down his lifted foot and turned about to re-enter the cat-hole.
The Blue Cat of Castle Town Page 5