“Why don’t you join the Punch and Judy show?” said the little princess. “That’s what I would do if I were free.”
At that moment she was bundled into her father’s coach with all her boxes and trunks, and before long a cloud of dust hid them all from view.
Gobbolino sat on the nursery windowsill watching the coach until it disappeared with the princess’s tiny white handkerchief still fluttering from the window.
The nursery seemed so empty and silent without her, he did not care to stay even a night longer in the king’s palace, but slipped silently down the stairs and out into the street the first time the door was opened.
12
Punch and Judy
Gobbolino left the town as quickly as possible and trotted down the country lanes.
Often he stopped a passer-by to ask politely:
“Please, sir, or ma’am, can you tell me, has a Punch and Judy show passed this way?” and often he had the answer:
“Why, yes, my little cat. I saw it playing on the village green back yonder. You will certainly catch it up if you trot fast enough.”
And Gobbolino trotted as fast as his paws would carry him to the next village and the next and the next.
At the entrance of every village he was sure to ask:
“Please, has a Punch and Judy show been here lately?”
And he always had the answer:
“Why, yes, my little cat, it was here only yesterday. You will certainly catch it up if you trot fast enough.”
At last in the distance he saw a crowd gathered under a tree, and there sure enough was the striped show-box, and the gaudy figures of Punch and Judy.
But they were not playing today to an eager crowd. The show-people sat around sad and despondent. Some bent their heads on their hands, while others stared into the distance, saying nothing at all. It was a pitiful sight to behold, and Gobbolino lost no time in asking a woman on the outskirts of the crowd what the matter could be, and whether he could give them any help in their distress.
“Our dog Toby has died!” the woman told him, wiping away a tear. “And of course Punch and Judy cannot perform without him. We shall all be ruined.”
“Oh dear! Oh dear! That is very sad!” said Gobbolino with much sympathy. “I was just about to join your show and travel the country with you, but I see now I shall hardly be wanted since there is not a show any longer.”
The woman looked him up and down. Then she called the showman, who was gloomily mending a rent in the show-box.
“Dandy! Dandy? Come here and look at this kitten! He talks of joining our show. Why shouldn’t he take Toby’s place and go along with us? With a ruff round his neck, who is to notice? Only a black face instead of a white, and such beautiful blue eyes! He may save our fortunes yet!”
Dandy the showman stared at Gobbolino and finally said:
“Well, why not? He looks pretty enough and clever enough, and if we have no Toby we shall be ruined. Will you do your best for us, little cat with the blue eyes, if we give you a home in our company?”
“That I will gladly, master!” said Gobbolino in delight, so the showman’s wife dressed him up in a paper ruff and a blue jacket and popped him into the striped show-box with Punch and Judy and the policeman and the baby.
At first these were very ready to be jealous of him and to dislike him, but when they saw how modest Gobbolino was, how sweet-tempered, and how eager to ask: “Should Dog Toby act like this? Or like this?” they soon became friendly in return, and it was the gayest company in the land that set forth again presently to entertain the next village they could find.
Crowds gathered the moment that the striped show-box came into sight:
“Here’s the Punch and Judy! Here’s the Punch and Judy!”
Dandy the showman would halt on the village green and set up the box; soon Punch and Judy were at their tricks and the crowd were roaring with laughter, but it was always the dog Toby who was asked for again and again: “Toby! Toby! Show us Dog Toby! Oh, what a clever fellow he is, and what beautiful blue eyes he has!”
Gobbolino acted so well and entered into his part so eagerly that there was always a whole capful of silver at the end of the show.
The showman’s children had new shoes, his wife wore bracelets, and the showman himself wore a yellow waistcoat.
“And all thanks to you, my little friend!” he would say affectionately, rubbing Gobbolino under the ears. “What do you say to joining the show for good – eh? A cat might have a worse home, after all.”
“I will gladly stay with you for ever, kind master!” Gobbolino replied at once, for strange as were his new surroundings after the luxury of the palace, he found his new life as pleasant as he could wish for.
He enjoyed watching the crowds gather as the striped Punch and Judy went from village to village. He enjoyed the grins that widened on the children’s faces when he and Punch popped up in the box. He loved to see the careworn faces of the old men and women, the worried faces of mothers, break into smiles as they forgot their troubles in following his tricks.
“Really there is nothing so pleasant as making people happy!” said Gobbolino. “I shall be perfectly content to stay here for ever – Gobbolino the performing cat.”
He often wished the little princess could watch his acting. He had secret hopes that one day the showman might find his way to the boarding-school, or to the orphanage gates, or even to the nursery of the little brothers, and meanwhile he was very happy, particularly in the evenings when the show-people put up their little tents round a blazing campfire and Gobbolino sat peacefully beside it, his paws tucked under his chest, as content as the sleekest tabby on a kitchen hearth.
“At last I have found my home!” he said to himself. “Who would ever have believed it would be such a strange one? But what matter? For here I am.”
One day they came to a village that was less pleasant than the rest.
The houses were grey and dirty. No flowers grew in the gardens, which were full of weeds. The street was littered with rubbish, while the pond on the village green was thick with duckweed and slime.
Nobody came out to greet the Punch and Judy show when the showman put up his striped box on the green.
A few children, slouching home from school, stared rudely but went home to tell their parents, for just as the showman was about to move on, a few people began to straggle up and stood about in little groups to watch the show.
The showman would willingly have left such disagreeable people behind, but being a merry-hearted man himself, he thought he had better do all he could to cheer their misery, so he set Gobbolino beating a drum and drew up the curtain.
The children and their parents watching did not clap their hands as most children did.
Instead, they began to make rude remarks.
“Punch has cracked his nose! Judy’s pinny is torn! Look at Toby’s face! Whoever saw a black dog Toby before?”
“The old show-box could do with a clean! And the showman too, I daresay!”
“And Dog Toby, he’s black enough!” shouted someone else.
All the children laughed, but it was very disagreeable laughter.
Suddenly a voice from the back called out:
“That isn’t a dog at all! It’s a cat!”
Gobbolino bristled all over with rage, and the voice called out again:
“It’s a cat, I tell you! And what is more it is a witch’s cat, or I am very much mistaken!”
The crowd turned round to stare at the ugly old crone who stood at the back, leaning on her stick and croaking out her words with an ugly leer.
“Old Granny Dobbin ought to know! She’s a witch herself!” cried the children in chorus.
The showman began to pull down the little curtain to close the show, but the children would not be quieted.
“A witch’s cat! A witch’s cat!” they sang. “Take off his ruff and let us see the witch’s cat!”
They made a path for old Granny Dobbin
and pushed her to the front.
“Speak to the witch’s cat, Granny!” they shouted. “Make him speak to you! Make some magic for us!”
“Ha! Ha!” croaked the old woman, pointing her finger at Gobbolino. “I know you! Grimalkin was your mother! Your little sister Sootica is apprenticed to a witch, way up in the Hurricane Mountains! You a dog Toby, indeed! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
The fathers and mothers of the children, standing behind, grew threatening, and shook their fists at the showman.
“How dare you bring a witch’s kitten into our village?” they cried. “How dare you harm our children so? They might be turned into mice, or green caterpillars, or toads! If it hadn’t been for old Granny Dobbin here, goodness knows what might have happened! Away with you directly!”
“Out of the village! Chase them out of the village!” clamoured the children, picking up sticks and stones, and they all became so angry and pressing that the showman lost no time in packing up his box and preparing to depart.
Gobbolino, his ruff taken off, did all he could to explain himself to the angry villagers, but nobody would listen to him except old Granny Dobbin.
“It’s no good, my poor simpleton!” she said when he had finished his story. “Nobody will ever keep you for long. Once a witch’s cat, always a witch’s cat. You will never find the home of your dreams while your eyes are blue and sparks come out of your whiskers.”
“I have met plenty of kind people in the world!” said Gobbolino stoutly. “I feel sure that one day I shall find the home I am looking for.”
“Never! Never! Never!” said the old hag. “Today or tomorrow you will realize I am telling you the truth! A kitchen hearth and a cosy fireside! Ha! Ha! Ha! That you will never know, witch’s kitten!”
Gobbolino’s beautiful blue eyes filled with tears, but there was no time to stay and ponder over the witch’s words, for the showman had shouldered his box and was striding up the village street with a pack of village children at his heels, all jeering and booing in the most unpleasant fashion.
They kept this up all the way to the next village, so that the showman dared not stop there, although it was quite a pleasant place, but had to trudge on all the weary miles to the next, by which time darkness had fallen and it was time to camp for the night.
It was pleasant to awaken to bright sunlight shining on whitewashed cottages and gardens gay with flowers.
The children were clean and rosy-cheeked in their pretty pinafores. The showman was surprised to see them hanging back as he set up his box on the green.
“Won’t you come and look?” he invited them.
“We’ve heard you have a witch’s cat instead of a dog Toby!” they told him, with their fingers in their mouths. “Our mothers said it would hurt us, and our fathers told us to go straight to school. We mustn’t stop.”
So they took hands and ran away. There was nobody left to watch the Punch and Judy, and soon the showman packed up again and went on his way.
It was the same at the next village, and the next and the next. The word had gone before, as swift as the wind, “The showman has a witch’s cat!” and nobody would come to see.
“It is of no use, master!” Gobbolino said at last, when the seventh village had refused to look at them. “You will be ruined, I see, if I stay with you any longer. You must find a new dog Toby, and I must find a new home. I am sorry, dear master, I really am, for bringing such trouble on your head; but I did not choose my birthplace, and sorrow enough it has brought me. Goodbye and good luck to you, master dear. And may your fortune mend quickly!”
The honest showman, with tears running down his cheeks, agreed at last that Gobbolino was right. He embraced the little cat very fondly, and when Gobbolino had said a sad goodbye to all the show-people he watched them trudge away in a little cloud of dust without him.
“Oh, why was I born a witch’s cat? Oh, why?” thought Gobbolino when at last they were out of sight. “I could wish for nothing better than a home with such kind and pleasant people as these, but no! Everyone turns against me, and, oh, my goodness, what is to become of me now?”
13
Gobbolino in the Tower
Gobbolino was sitting sadly by the roadside thinking of his hard fate when he heard the Clop! Clop! Clop! of an approaching horse and rider.
A white horse was coming along the king’s highway, decked in gold and scarlet as a knight’s horse should be, but for all this gay dress the knight who sat astride it was pale and wan. He gazed straight ahead of him so mournfully that Gobbolino’s heart ached for him, and he quite forgot his own troubles.
The knight would have passed by without noticing the witch’s kitten had not his horse suddenly shied, nearly throwing his rider, who became aware of Gobbolino, and looking kindly into his beautiful blue eyes said:
“Good-day to you, my little cat! What are you doing in the king’s highway? Surely you are rather far from home?”
“I have no home, kind sir!” replied Gobbolino humbly. “I beg your pardon for getting in your way, but I was wondering how best to find one.”
“You are a very pretty cat!” the knight said, stooping to stare at Gobbolino. “And you have beautiful blue eyes and three very handsome black paws besides a white one. Tell me, do you think you could amuse a fair lady?”
“I am not very clever, but I could tell her stories,” said Gobbolino, thinking of the tales he used to tell the little princess.
“Could you make her laugh and sing?” asked the knight.
“I am not very amusing, but I could play tricks on her!” replied Gobbolino, thinking of the pranks he had played on the farmer’s children and on the little brothers.
“Could you make her fall in love with a humble knight?” the knight asked very sadly.
“I could put her under a spell,” said Gobbolino, remembering the magic he had learned in the witch’s cave. He wished with all his heart to help this kind knight with the sad eyes, who spoke to him so gently.
“Then I think you will do very well as a present for my lady fair,” said the knight, holding out his foot to Gobbolino. “Jump upon my horse and come with me!”
Gobbolino sprang lightly on to the knight’s foot and then on to the saddle, and they rode away together in a cloud of dust.
While they rode, the knight told Gobbolino the cause of his sadness.
He was in love with a beautiful lady who had been shut up in a tower by her father until she should make up her mind which of two suitors she would marry. One was the sad knight himself, and the other the black baron who lived in a castle nearby.
Both of them went to visit her every day and took her presents, and each of them tried to bring her something that would please her better than the other.
Every day when he came, the black baron would guess what present the sad knight had brought the day before, and he was always right. Every day the sad knight tried to guess what present the black baron had brought her. And he never made a mistake either.
The fair lady, whose name was Alice, had laughingly promised to marry the suitor whose present the other could not guess.
The sad knight had brought lilies, roses, jewels, and a nightingale in a golden cage – and the black baron had guessed them all.
The black baron had brought a silver swan, lovebirds, rare fruits, and a musical box – and the sad knight had never failed to find out any of them.
Neither of them had ever thought of a little black cat with three black paws and beautiful blue eyes.
The tower stood in the middle of a wood. It was guarded by a dragon, but he was old and lazy, and he always let the knights go by.
Gobbolino had never seen a dragon before, and he was more than a little frightened when the trees opened out into a grassy sward, the tower rose before them, and he saw the green coils of the monster lying about its foundations. The knight jumped boldly from his horse, however, and thundered on the door of the tower, holding Gobbolino on his arm.
The dragon opened one eye and
looked at them, but it did not move, and a little serving maid, the Lady Alice’s only attendant, tripped down the stairs and opened the door.
“Is my lady alone?” the knight asked her.
“Why, yes, Sir Knight,” said the little maid. “The baron departed half an hour ago, having brought my lady the loveliest set of ivory balls you ever saw! She heard your horse splashing across the ford, and is waiting to receive you.”
Gobbolino was no longer surprised that the suitors found it so easy to guess each other’s presents, and he made up his mind that the baron should not find out so quickly about himself.
The knight and Gobbolino followed the little maid up the winding stair to the top where the Lady Alice sat beside her spinning-wheel and looked out over the forest.
The moment she saw Gobbolino she cried out:
“Oh, what a pretty little cat! Oh, do let him come and sit on my lap, so I may tickle his ears!”
Gobbolino leapt lightly on to her lap and sat there purring, while the fair lady rubbed his chin gently with her long white fingers and her rings played a hundred tunes in his ears.
“Stay with me for ever, little cat!” the Lady Alice whispered. “It is so lonely here in the tower with nobody but my serving maid and these stupid knights and that lazy fat dragon to talk to.”
“I will stay with you willingly, madam,” Gobbolino replied, for he was always anxious to please and to make people happy. Besides, he could think of worse homes than the tower in the forest, with a fair lady to tickle his ears and all the wide woods and trees to behold around him. If he could cheer the Lady Alice’s solitude a little he felt he would be willing to make his home with her for ever.
The knight was highly pleased to see Lady Alice so delighted with his present.
“I have never had such a pretty gift before!” said she.
“What about the gift my friend the black baron brought you earlier in the day?” said the knight slyly.
“Oh, that!” said Lady Alice. “Yes, it was very pretty indeed, but it hadn’t such sleek black fur, such dainty paws and such beautiful blue eyes!”
Gobbolino the Witch's Cat Page 6