“When you told her these were gray cats and not white cats?”
“She tole me take an’ clean ’em,” said Kitty Silver. “She say, she say she want ’em clean’ up spick an’ spang befo’ Mista Sammerses git here to call an’ see ’em.” And she added morosely: “I ain’t no cat-washwoman!”
“She wants you to bathe ’em?” Florence inquired, but Kitty Silver did not reply immediately. She breathed audibly, with a strange effect upon vasty outward portions of her, and then gave an incomparably dulcet imitation of her own voice, as she interpreted her use of it during the recent interview.
‘Miss Julia, ma’am,’ I say— ‘Miss Julia, ma’am, my bizniss cookin’ vittles,’ I say. ‘Miss Julia, ma’am,’ I tole her, ‘Miss Julia, ma’am, I cook fer you’ pa, an’ cook fer you’ fam’ly year in, year out, an’ I hope an’ pursue, whiles some might make complaint, I take whatever I find, an’ I leave whatever I find. No’m, Miss Julia, ma’am,’ I say— ‘no’m, Miss Julia, ma’am, I ain’t no cat-washwoman!’”
“What did Aunt Julia say then?”
“She say, she say: ‘Di’n I tell you take them cats downstairs an’ clean ’em?’ she say. I ain’t nobody’s cat-washwoman!”
Florence was becoming more and more interested. “I should think that would be kind of fun,” she said. “To be a cat-washwoman. I wouldn’t mind that at all: I’d kind of like it. I expect if you was a cat-washwoman, Kitty Silver, you’d be pretty near the only one was in the world. I wonder if they do have ’em any place, cat-washwomen.”
“I don’ know if they got ’em some place,” said Kitty Silver, “an’ I don’t know if they ain’t got ’em no place; but I bet if they do got ’em any place, it’s some place else from here!”
Florence looked thoughtful. “Who was it you said is going to call this evening and see ’em?”
“Mista Sammerses.”
“She means Newland Sanders,” Herbert explained. “Aunt Julia says all her callers that ever came to this house in their lives, Kitty Silver never got the name right of a single one of ’em!”
“Newland Sanders is the one with the little moustache,” Florence said. “Is that the one you mean by ‘Sammerses,’ Kitty Silver?”
“Mista Sammerses who you’ Aunt Julia tole me,” Mrs. Silver responded stubbornly. “He ain’t got no moustache whut you kin look at — dess some blackish whut don’ reach out mo’n halfway todes the bofe ends of his mouf.”
“Well,” said Florence, “was Mr. Sanders the one gave her these Persian cats, Kitty Silver?”
“I reckon.” Mrs. Silver breathed audibly again, and her expression was strongly resentful. “When she go fer a walk ‘long with any them callers she stop an’ make a big fuss over any li’l ole dog or cat an’ I don’t know whut all, an’ after they done buy her all the candy from all the candy sto’s in the livin’ worl’, an’ all the flowers from all the greenhouses they is, it’s a wonder some of ’em ain’t sen’ her a mule fer a present, ‘cause seem like to me they done sen’ her mos’ every kine of animal they is! Firs’ come Airydale dog you’ grampaw tuck an’ give away to the milkman; ‘n’en come two mo’ pups; I don’t know whut they is, ‘cause they bofe had dess sense enough to run away after you’ grampaw try learn ’em how much he ain’t like no pups; an’ nex’ come them two canaries hangin’ in the dinin’-room now, an’ nex’ — di’n’ I holler so’s they could a-hear me all way down town? Di’n’ I walk in my kitchen one mawnin’ right slam in the face of ole warty allagatuh three foot long a-lookin’ at me over the aidge o’ my kitchen sink?”
“It was Mr. Clairdyce gave her that,” said Florence. “He’d been to Florida; but she didn’t care for it very much, and she didn’t make any fuss at all when grandpa got the florist to take it. Grandpa hates animals.”
“He don’ hate ’em no wuss’n whut I do,” said Kitty Silver. “An’ he ain’t got to ketch ’em lookin’ at him outen of his kitchen sink — an’ he ain’t fixin’ to be no cat-washwoman neither!”
“Are you fixing to?” Florence asked quickly. “You don’t need to do it, Kitty Silver. I’d be willing to, and so’d Herbert. Wouldn’t you, Herbert?”
Herbert deliberated within himself, then brightened. “I’d just as soon,” he said. “I’d kind of like to see how a cat acts when it’s getting bathed.”
“I think it would be spesh’ly inter’sting to wash Persian cats,” Florence added, with increasing enthusiasm. “I never washed a cat in my life.”
“Neither have I,” said Herbert. “I always thought they did it themselves.”
Kitty Silver sniffed. “Ain’t I says so to you’ Aunt Julia? She done tole me, ‘No,’ she say. She say, she say Berjum cats ain’t wash they self; they got to take an’ git somebody else to wash ’em!”
“If we’re goin’ to bathe ’em,” said Florence, “we ought to know their names, so’s we can tell ’em to hold still and everything. You can’t do much with an animal unless you know their name. Did Aunt Julia tell you these cats’ names, Kitty Silver?”
“She say they name Feef an’ Meemuh. Yes’m! Feef an’ Meemuh! Whut kine o’ name is Feef an’ Meemuh fer cat name!”
“Oh, those are lovely names!” Florence assured her, and, turning to Herbert, explained: “She means Fifi and Mimi.”
“Feef an’ Meemuh,” said Kitty Silver. “Them name don’ suit me, an’ them long-hair cats don’ suit me neither.” Here she lifted the cover of the basket a little, and gazed nervously within. “Look at there!” she said. “Look at the way they lookin’ at me! Don’t you look at me thataway, you Feef an’ Meemuh!” She clapped the lid down and fastened it. “Fixin’ to jump out an’ grab me, was you?”
“I guess, maybe,” said Florence, “maybe I better go ask Aunt Julia if I and Herbert can’t wash ’em. I guess I better go ask her anyhow.” And she ran up the steps and skipped into the house by way of the kitchen. A moment later she appeared in the open doorway of a room upstairs.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS A pretty room, lightly scented with the pink geraniums and blue lobelia and coral fuchsias that poised, urgent with colour, in the window-boxes at the open windows. Sunshine paused delicately just inside, where forms of pale-blue birds and lavender flowers curled up and down the cretonne curtains; and a tempered, respectful light fell upon a cushioned chaise longue; for there fluffily reclined, in garments of tender fabric and gentle colours, the prettiest twenty-year-old girl in that creditably supplied town.
It must be said that no stranger would have taken Florence at first glance to be her niece, though everybody admitted that Florence’s hair was pretty. (“I’ll say that for her,” was the family way of putting it.). Florence did not care for her hair herself; it was dark and thick and long, like her Aunt Julia’s; but Florence — even in the realistic presence of a mirror — preferred to think of herself as an ashen blonde, and also as about a foot taller than she was. Persistence kept this picture habitually in her mind, which, of course, helps to explain her feeling that she was justified in wearing that manner of superciliousness deplored by her mother. More middle-aged gentlemen than are suspected believe that they look like the waspen youths in the magazine advertisements of clothes; and this impression of theirs accounts (as with Florence) for much that is seemingly inexplicable in their behaviour.
Florence’s Aunt Julia was reading an exquisitely made little book, which bore her initials stamped in gold upon the cover; and it had evidently reached her by a recent delivery of the mail, for wrappings bearing cancelled stamps lay upon the floor beside the chaise longue. It was a special sort of book, since its interior was not printed, but all laboriously written with pen and ink — poems, in truth, containing more references to a lady named Julia than have appeared in any other poems since Herrick’s. So warmly interested in the reading as to be rather pink, though not always with entire approval, this Julia nevertheless, at the sound of footsteps, closed the book and placed it beneath one of the cushions assisting the chaise longue to
make her position a comfortable one. Her greeting was not enthusiastic.
“What do you want, Florence?”
“I was going to ask you if Herbert and me — I mean: Was it Noble Dill gave you Fifi and Mimi, Aunt Julia?”
“Noble Dill? No.”
“I wish it was,” Florence said. “I’d like these cats better if they were from Noble Dill.”
“Why?” Julia inquired. “Why are you so partial to Mr. Noble Dill?”
“I think he’s so much the most inter’sting looking of all that come to see you. Are you sure it wasn’t Noble Dill gave you these cats, Aunt Julia?”
A look of weariness became plainly visible upon Miss Julia Atwater’s charming face. “I do wish you’d hurry and grow up, Florence,” she said.
“I do, too! What for, Aunt Julia?”
“So there’d be somebody else in the family of an eligible age. I really think it’s an outrageous position to be in,” Julia continued, with languid vehemence— “to be the only girl between thirteen and forty-one in a large connection of near relatives, including children, who all seem to think they haven’t anything to think of but Who comes to see her, and Who came to see her yesterday, and Who was here the day before, and Who’s coming to-morrow, and Who’s she going to marry! You really ought to grow up and help me out, because I’m getting tired of it. No. It wasn’t Noble Dill but Mr. Newland Sanders that sent me Fifi and Mimi — and I want you to keep away from ’em.”
“Why?” asked Florence.
“Because they’re very rare cats, and you aren’t ordinarily a very careful sort of person, Florence, if you don’t mind my saying so. Besides, if I let you go near them, the next thing Herbert would be over here mussing around, and he can’t go near anything without ruining it! It’s just in him; he can’t help it.”
Florence looked thoughtful for a brief moment; then she asked: “Did Newland Sanders send ’em with the names already to them?”
“No,” said Julia, emphasizing the patience of her tone somewhat. “I named them after they got here. Mr. Sanders hasn’t seen them yet. He had them shipped to me. He’s coming this evening. Anything more to-day, Florence?”
“Well, I was thinking,” said Florence. “What do you think grandpa’ll think about these cats?”
“I don’t believe there’ll be any more outrages,” Julia returned, and her dark eyes showed a moment’s animation. “I told him at breakfast that the Reign of Terror was ended, and he and everybody else had to keep away from Fifi and Mimi. Is that about all, Florence?”
“You let Kitty Silver go near ’em, though. She says she’s fixing to wash ’em.”
Julia smiled faintly. “I thought she would! I had to go so far as to tell her that as long as I’m housekeeper in my father’s house she’d do what I say or find some other place. She behaved outrageously and pretended to believe the natural colour of Fifi and Mimi is gray!”
“I expect,” said Florence, after pondering seriously for a little while— “I expect it would take quite some time to dry them.”
“No doubt. But I’d rather you didn’t assist. I’d rather you weren’t even around looking on, Florence.”
A shade fell upon her niece’s face at this. “Why, Aunt Julia, I couldn’t do any harm to Fifi and Mimi just lookin’ at ’em, could I?”
Julia laughed. “That’s the trouble; you never do ‘just look’ at anything you’re interested in, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve got rather a record, dear! Now, don’t you care: you can find lots of other pleasant things to do at home — or over at Herbert’s, or Aunt Fanny’s. You run along now and — —”
“Well — —” Florence said, moving as if to depart.
“You might as well go out by the front door, child,” Julia suggested, with a little watchful urgency. “You come over some day when Fifi and Mimi have got used to the place, and you can look at them all you want to.”
“Well, I just — —”
But as Florence seemed disposed still to linger, her aunt’s manner became more severe, and she half rose from her reclining position.
“No, I really mean it! Fifi and Mimi are royal-bred Persian cats with a wonderful pedigree, and I don’t know how much trouble and expense it cost Mr. Sanders to get them for me. They’re entirely different from ordinary cats; they’re very fine and queer, and if anything happens to them, after all the trouble papa’s made over other presents I’ve had, I’ll go straight to a sanitarium! No, Florence, you keep away from the kitchen to-day, and I’d like to hear the front door as you go out.”
“Well,” said Florence; “I do wish if these cats are as fine as all that, it was Noble Dill that gave ’em to you. I’d like these cats lots better if he gave ’em to you, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Well — —” Florence said again, and departed.
Twenty is an unsuspicious age, except when it fears that its dignity or grace may be threatened from without; and it might have been a “bad sign” in revelation of Julia Atwater’s character if she had failed to accept the muffled metallic clash of the front door’s closing as a token that her niece had taken a complete departure for home. A supplemental confirmation came a moment later, fainter but no less conclusive: the distant slamming of the front gate; and it made a clear picture of an obedient Florence on her homeward way. Peace came upon Julia: she read in her book, while at times she dropped a languid, graceful arm, and, with the pretty hand at the slimmer end of it, groped in a dark shelter beneath her couch to make a selection, merely by her well-experienced sense of touch, from a frilled white box that lay in concealment there. Then, bringing forth a crystalline violet become scented sugar, or a bit of fruit translucent in hardened sirup, she would delicately set it on the way to that attractive dissolution hoped for it by the wistful donor — and all without removing her shadowy eyes from the little volume and its patient struggle for dignified rhymes with “Julia.” Florence was no longer in her beautiful relative’s thoughts.
Florence was idly in the thoughts, however, of Mrs. Balche, the next-door neighbour to the south. Happening to glance from a bay-window, she negligently marked how the child walked to the front gate, opened it, paused for a moment’s meditation, then hurled the gate to a vigorous closure, herself remaining within its protection. “Odd!” Mrs. Balche murmured.
Having thus eloquently closed the gate, Florence slowly turned and moved toward the rear of the house, quickening her steps as she went, until at a run she disappeared from the scope of Mrs. Balche’s gaze, cut off by the intervening foliage of Mr. Atwater’s small orchard. Mrs. Balche felt no great interest; nevertheless, she paused at the sound of a boy’s voice, half husky, half shrill, in an early stage of change. “What she say, Flor’nce? D’she say we could?” But there came a warning “Hush up!” from Florence, and then, in a lowered tone, the boy’s voice said: “Look here; these are mighty funny-actin’ cats. I think they’re kind of crazy or somep’n. Kitty Silver’s fixed a washtub full o’ suds for us.”
Mrs. Balche was reminded of her own cat, and went to give it a little cream. Mrs. Balche was a retired widow, without children, and too timid to like dogs; but after a suitable interval, following the loss of her husband, she accepted from a friend the gift of a white kitten, and named it Violet. It may be said that Mrs. Balche, having few interests in life, and being of a sequestering nature, lived for Violet, and that so much devotion was not good for the latter’s health. In his youth, after having shown sufficient spirit to lose an eye during a sporting absence of three nights and days, Violet was not again permitted enough freedom of action to repeat this disloyalty; though, now, in his advanced middle-age, he had been fed to such a state that he seldom cared to move, other than by a slow, sneering wavement of the tail when friendly words were addressed to him; and consequently, as he seemed beyond all capacity or desire to run away, or to run at all, Mrs. Balche allowed him complete liberty of action.
She found him asleep upon her “back porc
h,” and placed beside him a saucer of cream, the second since his luncheon. Then she watched him affectionately as he opened his eye, turned toward the saucer his noble Henry-the-Eighth head with its great furred jowls, and began the process of rising for more food, which was all that ever seemed even feebly to rouse his mind. When he had risen, there was little space between him anywhere and the floor.
Violet took his cream without enthusiasm, pausing at times and turning his head away. In fact, he persisted only out of an incorrigible sensuality, and finally withdrew a pace or two, leaving creamy traces still upon the saucer. With a multitude of fond words his kind mistress drew his attention to these, whereupon, making a visible effort, he returned and disposed of them.
“Dat’s de ‘itty darlin’,” she said, stooping to stroke him. “Eat um all up nice clean. Dood for ole sweet sin!” She continued to stroke him, and Violet half closed his eye, but not with love or serenity, for he simultaneously gestured with his tail, meaning to say: “Oh, do take your hands off o’ me!” Then he opened the eye and paid a little attention to sounds from the neighbouring yard. A high fence, shrubberies, and foliage concealed that yard from the view of Violet, but the sounds were eloquent to him, since they were those made by members of his own general species when threatening atrocities. The accent may have been foreign, but Violet caught perfectly the sense of what was being said, and instinctively he muttered reciprocal curses within himself.
“What a matta, honey?” his companion inquired sympathetically. “Ess, bad people f’ighten poor Violet!”
From beyond the fence came the murmurings of a boy and a girl in hushed but urgent conversation; and with these sounds there mingled watery agitations, splashings and the like, as well as those low vocalizings that Violet had recognized; but suddenly there were muffled explosions, like fireworks choked in feather beds; and the human voices grew uncontrollably somewhat louder, so that their import was distinguishable. “Ow!” “Hush up, can’t you? You want to bring the whole town to — ow!” “Hush up yourself!” “Oh, goodness!” “Look out! Don’t let her — —” “Well, look what she’s doin’ to me, can’t you?” “For Heavenses’ sakes, catch holt and —— Ow!”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 308