The Blue Cat of Castle Town

by Catherine Cate Coblentz

  Here was one who must have been born knowing the river’s song, who could sing it and sing it well! The cat stared in amazement at the carpenter.

  Then why? But suddenly the blue cat remembered why. Only a blue cat could teach that song to others. Occasionally a mortal knew the song, but only a blue cat could teach it. This then was the quest upon which he had been sent! This was the task which was his to do! This was the song he must sing!

  The cat was almost frantic with delight. He curled and uncurled his claws. He stretched himself from head to tail. He arched his back until it was the shape of the middle arch above him. And when the carpenter began the song again, the cat sang it with him, sang it loudly and triumphantly, until Sally drawn by the sound came to the door.

  “Sally,” cried the man. “I shall build the pulpit. I must build it.”

  “Of course,” said Sally.

  “There will be no wages while I work on it.”

  “I can manage. We shall be having the garden soon.”

  “There is more than that.” The man paused and swallowed hard. “I must use our savings, too. That troubles me. For when the new baby comes, you may have need of it. And it is not too much, as you know.”

  “I shall be happier if you use it. Somehow, Thomas Royal, it seems to me that the building of this pulpit is something you must do. It is a task for which you have been preparing all your life. It is like a song which must be sung. What is money compared to …”

  “Beauty,” supplied the carpenter.

  “Yes,” said Sally. “And peace.”

  “And content,” purred the cat. Beauty and peace and content. Of such was the Bright Enchantment. And he, the blue cat, would have his part in bringing that enchantment to Castle Town. He had found his song! More than that, he believed now in that song!

  Yet he did not start forth on his quest right away. Day after day he went with the carpenter to the church. There the cat lay on the front pew and watched and listened. The man sang or whistled as he worked. And the blue cat purred and purred. He was determined to relearn the song of the river so well that no matter what happened he would never forget it. Never!

  Finally the day arrived when the pulpit was finished. The carpenter smoothed the last bit of simple carving, painted the last inch of the pine into whiteness, repolished the sweep of the dark shining cherry rails on either side.

  He came then and took his seat on the front pew beside the cat.

  “I have sung my own song, at last,” said the man. “My song and Sally’s. And the peace of the forest is here. It is the most beautiful pulpit in all Vermont. It is fit for the King of Kings.”

  The carpenter closed his eyes, but the cat looking closely saw that his lips were moving. The cat folded one paw over the other and made ready to nap. His left ear caught a whispering sound and he blinked. Then both amber eyes were wide.

  Up from the simple lines of the pulpit sprang tall pines. Their branches of dark needles filled the arch and overflowed into the church, whispering, whispering. And a glory was in those pine branches. A glory and an everlasting radiance.

  And to the scent of pine was added a new fragrance. From the shining polished rails grew wild cherry trees, slender and lovely, bursting into bloom beneath the sheltering branches of pine. And the sound of the singing of birds was there.

  The carpenter’s eyes remained closed, his lips still moving. The blue cat knew he must look no more. Softly he slipped from the pew, and bending his head reverently, he took his leave.

  It was time now to finish his quest; time to carry out the task which had been his from the beginning. Time for his song to be sung.

  But he would never forget the glory and the everlasting radiance.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ZERUAH GUERNSEY, THE GIRL

  THERE was no least doubt in the blue cat’s mind as to where he should go. Through the vestibule he hurried, under the white columns, down the steps and across the village green. Past Ebenezer Southmayd’s shop, he went, back along the main road, until he came to a certain mulberry bush. There was the narrow lane, leading off the main road and meandering over a hill. The blue cat hurried up the lane.

  The barn cat was as usual in the barn door. But this time she was washing the faces of her two kittens.

  The blue cat had started toward Zeruah’s doorstone, but the barn cat hailed him. “Do come and look at these kittens,” she said. “They grow more marvelous every day.”

  “Hmm,” said the blue cat, nodding wisely. Then he changed the subject. “I don’t know yet just how I am going to repay you for what you did for me last winter,” he began.

  At the words the barn cat dashed away, for she had been reminded of something. In a whisk of a cat’s tail she was back, bringing a fat mouse, which she presented with her best company manner. The blue cat was not hungry, but he ate politely.

  Then he inquired about the girl, Zeruah.

  “Unhappy as ever,” said the barn cat. “Perhaps she is lonely for her father, who is staying a long time in Connecticut. Though I think she would be just as unhappy if he were at home. I am more worried than ever about her. She does not even tend her mother’s garden.”

  “Perhaps,” said the blue cat, “I can do something for Zeruah now. I have, you see, found the song.”

  “Mew!” It was the barn cat’s turn to be polite.

  Then, as the blue cat hurried off toward the doorstone of Zeruah’s house, the barn cat, with a kitten on either side, sat and watched. This time the blue cat did not demand that the door be opened. He stretched himself in the sun on the doorstone and waited for the girl to come out. He had much to think about. Besides he had learned to bide his time.

  At length Zeruah did open the door. She had a bucket on her arm, which she must go to the spring to fill. The room behind her, the cat saw, was as barren and as carelessly kept as ever. Even the girl did not look overly tidy at the moment.

  Nevertheless, the blue cat stood up and began his song.

  “Go away,” said the girl, turning down the path in the direction of the spring.

  The blue cat only purred the louder as he followed at her heels.

  The girl pretended not to hear. Still the cat kept purring. And, when Zeruah bent to dip her bucket in the spring, the cat drew close and purred into her left ear. His left ear, he remembered, had always heard more than his right one.

  But Zeruah paid no attention. Unless the frown between her eyes, the firm set of her chin, showed that she heard.

  Oh, my dear, thought the blue cat. And he was so sorry for Zeruah that he rubbed his head gently against her hair, purring softly. There was something like a sob from the girl. At this, the cat raised his paw and rested it on her shoulder.

  With no warning whatever, Zeruah loosened her hold of the bucket and flung herself face down in the grass. “I am so lonely,” she sobbed harshly. “So lonely. And I am so ugly. No one will ever look at me, blue cat.”

  The blue cat’s pink nose was at Zeruah’s ear.

  “With your hands fashion beauty.”

  “If I had someone to love, I could do that, blue cat. But it is no use.”

  “Certain and true he the measure’’

  Zeruah sat up and leaned her back against a pine. The blue cat crept into her lap and kept singing, low and comfortingly. He had been through so much, and had grown so discouraged, so sad, so disgusted with himself, that he could understand how Zeruah felt. It was the worst thing in the world to lose faith with oneself.

  While the pine branches above whispered on and on, as though keeping time to the blue cat’s song.

  When Zeruah went back to the house, the blue cat followed. This time the girl did not close the door, and the blue cat walked in and made himself at home.

  Day after day the blue cat sat on the uncomfortable hearth, beside the fire that smoked and smoldered and. more often than not, went out. And he sang and sang to the girl, Zeruah.

  Hour after hour she sat in a straight chair, staring out
of the window, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing. Though after a time the blue cat was hopeful that her left ear did catch hungrily at the words of his song. At any rate, singing was the only thing he could do and he knew but one song.

  So he sang the song of the river. Sang as he never had sung before, for he thought of Thomas Royal Dake, the carpenter, and of the understanding of his Sally. He thought of the Bright Enchantment.

  If Zeruah would only learn his song, then the blue cat was certain, he could teach it to almost anyone in all Castle Town! Even if he spent every one of his nine lives trying, he was willing to spend them. For the dark spell of Arunah, about which he had heard so much that spring, and with which he, himself, was familiar, must be broken.

  The blue cat had entirely forgotten that if he taught a mortal to sing, he would find a hearth. What should happen to him no longer seemed important. The Song was important!

  No wonder the blue cat’s purr was a mighty purr to hear.

  And then, one day, the girl put her head down on the bare table. There were tears again, but they were restful tears.

  And again the blue cat was at the girl’s left ear. For it was only one leap from the floor to the tabletop.

  “Sing your own song.”

  Zeruah moved her head, in a half shake.

  “Out of yesterday song comes. It goes into tomorrow.”

  “There has been no song for me ever,” cried Zeruah. “No song in yesterday and there will be none in tomorrow.”

  “With your life fashion beauty,” went on the cat bravely, thinking of Ebenezer Southmayd and John Gilroy, though he was astonished at the bitterness in the girl’s tone.

  “Fashion beauty! Hmm,” said the girl. “One does not have to be beautiful to do that!”

  “Sing your own song.”

  But Zeruah stood up. “Why should I sing? There is no one to hear,” she said. “No one.”

  And she wouldn’t, and she didn’t sing. But she did listen to the blue cat.

  So, over and over and over, the blue cat sang the song of the river. He sat by the uncomfortable hearth in the barren room and sang it. He sang and believed in the song.

  Until at last the girl looked at the cat one morning and asked, “How can I fashion beauty?” She gave the cat no time to reply, but went on speaking as though she had been thinking about the matter for some time. “I have nothing with which to do such a thing. Nothing! I have only a sheep which my father gave me long ago. The sheep’s wool is mine. When my mother was living she made me card and spin it, though I had no joy in the doing of it. There is plenty of woolen yarn! Woolen yarn! Linen would be better. I have heard that the weaver made beautiful white cloths with pictures on them. Blue cat, I wonder …”

  Her father came home from Connecticut. On Sunday he went to the church on the village green. Zeruah would not go with him, because she was too unhappy.

  When her father came home from church he told her of the pulpit. “It is beautiful,” he said.

  “Was it sent here from away? Did a great artist fashion it? Is it made of far-off expensive woods brought by the sailing ships?”

  “Why, Zeruah, my daughter, the carpenter Thomas Dake made it. He cut the pines himself, in the grove behind our very house. And the wild black cherry from its edge.”

  “I will go and see this pulpit,” said the girl. And she did on a week-day morning, while the cat followed at her heels. This time the cat saw nothing unusual about the pulpit. But the girl sniffed and said, “Strange I can smell pine needles and cherry blossoms.”

  When they came out of the church, the cat went over in front of Ebenezer Southmayd’s shop and the girl followed. Still in the window sat the teapot, the last and the most beautiful piece of work which the pewterer had fashioned.

  The girl did not go to see the tablecloths but she thought about them a good deal. And she remembered the odor of pine and of cherry blossoms.

  One morning Zeruah said to the cat, “Let us go to the grove behind the house.”

  “Purr,” agreed the blue cat.

  Into the shady grove beneath the tall white pines they went. And it was still save for the whisper, whisper of the pines and the purr of the blue cat. And one day as they sat together on the brown needles a silence began to weave itself about Zeruah. The cat felt a prickling — a little prickling from his ears to his paws and his tail. For the silence was like the silence which had surrounded the carpenter on the day when the cat had crept into the church and found him dreaming of the pulpit he could make.

  The blue cat did not purr. He did not move. He just waited.

  “Perhaps,” said Zeruah to the silence. Then, “I will try.”

  “Could you make me a frame?” she asked her father that evening when he came from the barn. “A frame on which I could embroider — a carpet?”

  As her father looked at her, she explained. “I want to use up the woolen yarn I have from my sheep. I saw a flower in the woods which I would like to keep forever. It was one which my mother used to search for.”

  The blue cat waited anxiously for the answer.

  “The flower was in the woods where the carpenter got his trees for the pulpit,” said the girl. “There are herbs and plants there I can use for dyes.”

  “And your other designs?”

  The girl’s face was beginning to glow. “From the woods, some of them. And I shall tend my mother’s garden again. There is a root of the rose there which her grandmother brought from Connecticut. When it blossoms I shall put the blooms in her blue-and-white dish and put that in my carpet. I shall gather the blue flowers from the flax meadow, and I shall put these in the pewter bowl which Ebenezer Southmayd fashioned in Connecticut. It has his touchmark on it. Though I must make the bowl in colors, for there can be no thread of silver — not even from the dyes of all the plants in the woods.”

  “I wish you would put my white rooster in your carpet,” said her father.

  “The white rooster! Do you think he is pretty?”

  “He is pretty to me.”

  Zeruah smiled gently, and the cat stared at her in amazement. She did not look plain in the least when she smiled.

  “I shall put the rooster in the carpet,” she promised. “But first I must tidy the house. I cannot make a carpet in a room which looks like this.”

  So she did. She swept the house, and brushed a cobweb from the corner. She dusted the spinning wheel and set it by the hearth. She found a cover for the table. And she put the pewter dish in the center and placed some apples in it. The blue-and-white bowl she set in the window, and put pink ragged robin and blue lupine in it.

  She built up the fire so that it crackled cheerfully, while the teapot on the crane above bubbled and sang. The cat, too, sang on the bare hearth until, one day, Zeruah brought a rug, a thin rug to be sure, with nothing beautiful about it, and placed it there for him.

  It was a trifle more comfortable and the blue cat was grateful as he curled himself upon it and sang his song of the river, while Zeruah took her wools and sat herself down in front of the tambour frame, with her new wooden needle in her hand.

  One day Zeruah looked up from her frame. “In time, blue cat,” she said, “this house will be beautiful. I can almost see the carpet on the floor. And when the carpet is finished …” She paused and looked calculatingly at the blue cat.

  “Blue cat,” she said, in a curious musing tone. “Blue cat, I am going to keep you forever.”

  The cat, who had been lying peacefully on the hearth rug, arched himself in the air and turned completely over, as though a hot coal had struck him. He remembered Arunah’s promise to keep him forever. Arunah had planned to stuff him with sawdust. And now — Zeruah. Why, Zeruah was saying the same thing! He sat up straight and glared at her.

  But the girl was laughing aloud. “Oh, blue cat,” she said. “You have done so much for me with your singing. So I shall put you in my carpet, just as you looked now, blue cat. Glare and all. You, sitting there on your ugly rug! For e
ven with the glare you are not ugly to me, blue cat. You see, I love you.”

  And suddenly Zeruah began singing the song of the river.

  The blue cat relaxed. He lay down once more and listened. He felt a mighty satisfaction because he had carried out his quest. He had taught a mortal to sing the song of the river.

  He felt a little sad too, for he had promised himself to do even more. If Zeruah learned the song from him, then he had promised himself to teach others in the valley. And that meant he must leave the room which he had grown to love. He must … Wait! There was something else he must do first. He must find a way to thank the barn cat for what she had done when he had been tired and sick and discouraged. That would require some thinking.

  Compared to the song of the river, a thank-you for the barn cat should have been a simple thing. But for a long time the blue cat could not think of anything suitable. She was the best mouser in Castle Town. He could catch grasshoppers, but she did not care for them. And birds were beyond his ability. So what could he — a blue cat — do for one as capable and competent in every way as the barn cat had shown herself to be? And who was, in her opinion at least, the mother of two most remarkable kittens.

  Then, one day, Zeruah called to the blue cat. “Come and see yourself,” she said, as she lifted him to the chair in front of the tambour frame. “You really are a remarkable cat!”

  There, looking back at him from the frame, was his own blue self — the self he remembered from the brief glimpse he had taken so long ago in the well on the village green. Older, of course, with the marks of a difficult life behind him. But with his white whiskers standing out straight and well kept, above his white waistcoat. As he gazed, and almost felt like yowling and spitting at the creature before him — so like it was to himself, he knew what he could do for the barn cat.