No two animals in the world could have loved each other more dearly and devotedly than did the Czar and his little wise companion, Whiskey.
Whiskey, I need hardly tell you, Cracker, was like Warlock there, the gamest of the game, but of course he never showed his teeth to the Czar. They took their meals from the same dish, only Whiskey seemed to have compacted to have all the bones. They were also constantly together, all day long, except when Whiskey’s duty to his master called him afield, and at night they shared the selfsame bed; the Czar often taking Whiskey in his arms because he appeared to be the biggest. I’m not sure, indeed, that the Czar did not awaken Whiskey when that little gentleman took the nightmare. Be this as it may, they were, altogether, as loving as loving could be.
And once or twice a week this kindly couple used to go out hunting together.
“Just like Warlock and me,” said Tabby.
Yes, said Shireen, and they cared nothing for game laws, and took no heed of the keepers, except to hide or run from them; for this cat and dog were a law unto themselves apparently.
On their hunting expeditions they used to go out together in the morning, and after spending all the long day in the woods and wilds, they invariably came home before dark.
This coming home before nightfall was no doubt a suggestion of Whiskey’s, for a dog can neither see so well in the dark as a cat, nor can his constitution so easily withstand the dews of night. But the very fact of the Czar’s consenting to keep early hours to please his Scottish friend, is another proof of how dearly he must have loved him.
And almost every night these sons of Nimrod brought home with them some trophy from the hunting-ground. Sometimes it was a rabbit, more often a bird—if the latter, Whiskey generally had the honor of carrying it, and very proud was he of the distinction; if a small rabbit, the Czar bore the burden.
And so things went on till one mournful night, when Whiskey returned later than usual and all alone. He came into the house, but lay down on the mat near the door, and from that he would not budge an inch. He refused his porridge and all consolation, and lay there in a nervous and acutely listening attitude, starting up whenever he heard the slightest sound outside.
His mistress at last went to bed and left him.
It must have been long past midnight when Whiskey came dashing into his mistress’s bedroom, knocking over a chair in his excitement, and barking wildly as he rushed hither and thither.
When his mistress got up at last poor little Whiskey preceded her to the door, barking again and looking anxious and excited.
Outside a pitiful mew was heard, and as soon as the lady opened the door in rushed the Czar on three legs. He had left one foot in a horrid trap.
And now nothing could exceed the kindness of the dog towards his wounded companion and playmate. He threw himself down on the rug beside her, whining and crying with very grief, and gently licked the bleeding stump where the cat himself had gnawed it off to save his life.
And every day for weeks did Whiskey apply hot fomentations with his soft wee tongue to pussy’s leg, until at last it was completely healed.
But they had no more romping together in fields and woods, for the Czar’s hunting-days were over—in this world at all events.
“Cornered at last,” cried Uncle Ben, laughing, as he looked at the chess-board. “No, you haven’t a move. Ho! Ho! Well, I’ve had my revenge.”
“And I,” said the Colonel, “shall have mine another evening.”
“Right you are. Now, good-bye, Lizzie and Tom. Come, Cracker, old dog, you go my way, don’t you?”
So good-nights were said, and hands were shaken, and off went Uncle Ben and his cockatoo adown the road towards his bungalow, where his man Pedro was waiting to place before him his frugal supper.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: “Go Home, My Friends, It Is All Over”
The school stood quite in the suburbs of the little village—the girls’ school I mean—and there was nothing very unusual about it. Year in and year out, with certainly no more holidays than they deserved, the teachers—orphan girls both—labored all day long at their duties, and had the satisfaction of knowing that they were well beloved by their sometimes noisy pupils, to whom their wish, however, was always law; and the children generally made a good show when examination time came round.
It was in here, one hard frosty day, that Shireen dropped on her way down town, to pay her usual round of visits.
She had just left Uncle Ben’s bungalow, after a long talk and song with the sailor, and a few words to Cockie, the cockatoo, who, if he did not say very much, was a wonderful mimic, and made many droll motions. He never saw a boy, for example, without going through the movements of using a whip. Perhaps Cockie believed with Solomon, that it was a pity to “spare the rod and spoil the child.”
There was a kind of general welcome to Shireen when she entered the school-house; but, strangely enough, she went straight up to the desk, and paid her compliments to the two teachers before doing anything else.
Then Shireen looked about her from the seat she had taken, namely, a high three-legged stool. She could, from this elevation, see a large number of her little friends, with whom she would hold a little conversation presently. But there was one homely, good-natured face that she missed, and one of the teachers, as if reading her thoughts, stroked her back and head, as she remarked with a smile.
“Emily isn’t here today, Pussy.”
“No,” said the other girl. “Emily has been a good girl, and worked hard; and she has finished her education, and gone home to keep house for her father.”
So Shireen did not stop so long today in the school as was her wont, for the chief attraction was gone. But she dispensed her favors among her friends freely enough before she went. And they were not all girls, either, whom Shireen regarded affectionately. For though it was a girls’ school, there were tiny, wee pests of fair-haired boys there, not an inch bigger, presumably, than the school tongs, and of one or two of these Shireen seemed very fond.
Down the room she trotted at last, however. She was not long in meeting with an adventure, for round the distant corner came Danger, the butcher’s bull-terrier. There wasn’t a good tree within fifty yards, so Shireen had a race for it. She got up into the sycamore safely, nevertheless. Danger coming in a good second, and stopping to bark savagely up at her.
Shireen raised her back and growled defiance down at him.
Then she taunted him.
“Why don’t you come up?” she cried derisively. “Why don’t you climb the tree? Because you can’t, clever though you think yourself. Fuss! Futt! Wouldn’t I make the fur fly out of you if you did come up. And wouldn’t I carve my name on your nose, just. Go home! Go home, you ugly brute. Mind, you’ll catch it when Cracker meets you. Oh, he’ll give it to you properly next time.”
The dog trotted off at last, and then Shireen came slowly down.
She meant today to pay all her other visits before going to Emily’s, because then she would have longer time to stay with her. So she went first to see Jeannie Lynch, at her mother’s tiny earthen-floored cottage. Jeannie’s mother was an invalid, and would never be better. But she could just sit by the fire in her high-backed chair, and do knitting, while Jeannie attended to the housewifery. Shireen found the girl busy washing up the dinner things, and singing low to herself. But there was a subdued, chastened kind of a look on her pretty face, which was habitual to it, for Jeannie was lame, and, I’m sorry to say, the village children teased her and called “Box-foot” after her. So even when she went out to do shopping for her mother, she limped along the street, looking fifty years of age, instead of the eleven summers that made up the sum total of her existence hitherto. She looked, indeed, as if she owed people an apology for her somewhat ungainly appearance.
Shireen loved her, nevertheless, and she loved Shireen, and it wasn’t for sake of the drop of milk Jeannie always put down for her, nor in the hope of catching the mouse that nibbled paper in the cupboar
d, that pussy always stopped at least an hour at this humble dwelling.
But she had to go at last, because she must see Mr. Burn-the-wind, and also little Alec Dewsbury. Alec was one of the afflicted. At school one day, when quite a tiny lad, he had somehow injured his spine, and on a small, stretcher-bed he had lain helpless for years. Often in summer he lay out in the garden under the tree’s green shade, where he could hear the birds sing, and look up at the sailing clouds, with the rifts of blue between; and higher still in imagination, far, far away beyond the blue, where they told him God and angels dwell, though God was everywhere. In winter his stretcher stood in a cozy corner of his cottage home; and kind people brought him books and papers to read. But Alec’s pale face always lit up with joy when Shireen came in, for he had no pet of his own.
“I wonder,” he said to his mother one day, “if cats go to heaven? Oh, surely they do,” he added, before she could answer. “I’m certain all good and beautiful creatures go there. Besides, mother, we know there are cows and bees there.”
“What put that in your head, lammie?”
“Because it’s a land flowing with milk and honey, you know; so there must be cows and bees there.”
Alec was a very, very old boy for his years.
The blacksmith, on this particular day, was in very fine form, and making the sparks fly in golden horizontal showers just as Shireen trotted in to say “good-day.” He had four ragamuffins of rosy-faced children, perched high on a bench, with their legs dangling in the air, to whom he was relating an old-fashioned fairy-tale, which made them laugh at one moment, and stare with wonder and astonishment the next. Shireen knew all four children, so she jumped up, and seated herself beside the smallest, a mite of a girl, who at once declared to the others that pussy loved her “bestest of all.”
Then the blacksmith smoothed Shireen with the back of his hand, because it was the only unsoiled portion of that horny fist of his, and then he went on with his story.
While they were all listening, Lizzie and Tom ran in. Tom had his skates slung over his shoulder; and his sister carried a basket, which contained many a dainty, and many a little luxury for the aged and the indigent sick.
Like pussy herself, Lizzie and Tom were always welcome, whether they had a basket or not; because, even when they did not bring little gifts of jelly, or beef-tea, or books, or snuff and tobacco, they brought smiles, and the sunshine of their innocent and winsome ways.
But today, neither Lizzie nor Tom stayed long with Burn-the-wind, because the former had her basket to lighten and hearts to lighten thereby, and because Tom noticed there was no horse to be shod at present, and he knew that the ice on the mill-pond was inches thick.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried Lizzie, as they got nearer to the top of the street. “Something surely has happened. Look, Tom, at the lot of the people, and they are carrying somebody. Oh, Tom, it is Emily, I know and feel sure.”
Yes, it was Emily.
Poor girl! Only the day before, she had returned from school for good. She was going to settle down now, she told everyone of her intimate friends, laughing gleefully. She was going to do her father’s little house-keeping; and poor old dad, as she called him, would in future have many a comfort he had missed since mother died.
And baby, too, would not be so much neglected, and could be taken out every forenoon, after father had gone back to work.
There was a bit of garden, too, behind the humble cottage, with a nice grass plot in the center; there, in spring and summer, the daisies grew, and the yellow celandines.
Bobby, her infant brother, could roll on the grass when it was dry and fine, while she did the gardening all around. And this would be so delightful, because then she would never want a flower to place on mother’s grave.
So you will observe, dear reader, that it was all beautifully arranged.
Alas! And alas! If I were writing an altogether imaginary story, the somewhat sad and somber ending to this chapter would be altered. But there is far more of truth in my story than anyone will ever know.
That day then, when Emily took her little brother out in his far from elegant perambulator, she heard the sound of a band. A wild-beast show was stationed on the village green it seemed, and there was a triumphal procession through the streets of the little town. Poor Emily stood aside to see it pass, for, despite the fact that children would be admitted to the great marquee for half-price, this procession was the only part of the show she would see. But she marveled much at the lordly ungainliness of the elephants; at the queer, old-fashioned visages of the camels, and at the wisdom of the piebald pony, and the wit of the immortal clown who rode him, who had appeared—didn’t the bills tell her so?—before every respectable crowned head in Europe. But she stood agape with astonishment when she saw the beautiful and airily dressed “Lion Queen,” perched high on top of her gilded carriage.
Then the procession passed on, and Emily resumed her journey with the perambulator. Not far up the street she remembered that she wanted some tobacco for her father, and that she had passed the shop. She left the perambulator where it was for a few minutes, till she should run back and make the little purchase.
As she stood at the counter she heard the quick rattle of wheels, and a noise of galloping hoofs, and then the shout of “Horse ran off!” fell upon her car.
“Oh, the baby!” cried Emily, and dashed out of the shop.
The perambulator, with the child in it, laughing and blinking in the sunshine, stood right in the track of danger.
But Emily, heedless of everything except the desire to save her brother, rushed on towards it. Nearer and nearer came the horse. People shrieked as they saw the girl at the perambulator.
One push sent it clear away from under the very hoofs of the fear-maddened horse. Next moment, Emily herself was down.
Then the sorrowful procession.
Two hours after Lizzie and Tom had seen Emily borne by kind and loving hands into the humble cottage that had been her home, the doctor came out.
He shook his head sadly.
“Go home, my friends,” he said, “it is all over.”
He jumped into his carriage and was driven away. But tears trickled down the cheeks of men in that little crowd; faces were buried in aprons, and women wept aloud.
The grief of poor Emily’s father was something to see and remember forever and a day. I am not going to attempt to describe it. He was a good man, and a Christian; yet, not that night, nor for many nights and days, was he able to see the light, and to say from his heart: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be His name.”
As to Shireen—I must tell you about her. She never left the cottage while Emily’s poor little body lay there; and had you entered the house the night before the funeral, you would have seen the poor father sitting by his half out fire, absorbed in grief, and Shireen upon the coffin-lid.
In the cat’s face sorrow, intense sorrow, predominated; but there was also a touch of anger also. Why was her favorite here in this dark box? What had they done to her? Who had done it?
Ah! There was a mystery somewhere, which this little feline playmate and friend of the deceased girl failed to fathom. Can we, in our wisdom? Alas, no!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: En Voyage for Bagdad
Winter had passed and gone. It had fled far away to Norland hills, and spring reigned in its stead.
Sweet-voiced, hopeful spring! Spring, that is always so full of love and joy. Spring, with the balmy wind that whispers softly through the woods and groves, mingling its voice with the purling song of the brooklet and rill, sighing over fields of waving corn, and wooing the odors from a thousand wild flowers. Spring, with its chorus of joy-birds, whose melodies ring out from every woodland, every thicket and grove, till all the green earth seems to lift up its voice in a chorus of gladness and mirth. Sweet-voiced, hopeful spring, the poet’s one season of all the seasons of the year.
The old castle lawn was beautiful again, green with verdure a
nd starred over with daisies, and out there now Lizzie and Tom were able to play and gambol once more, where Uncle Ben, with his cockatoo, and the Colonel used to sit there in their good straw chairs, smoke their pipes, and talk together of the days of auld lang syne.
Out on this lawn on one particularly blue skied sunny afternoon, Shireen and her friends were assembled, Warlock looking as wise as ever, Vee-Vee as gentle and loving, and Cracker, with his droll, rough, kindly face, all willing to please.
“Shireen,” said Cracker, “we haven’t heard you speak for a long time.”
Shireen paused in the middle of the operation of face-washing and sat on her mat for a moment or two, with her paw raised thoughtfully in front of her.
“You see,” she said at last, “it takes some time for grief like what I suffered for poor Emily to die away. Oh, mine isn’t gone even yet, and somehow I feel older since they took and buried my girlfriend. But this is not going to prevent me from concluding my story, and I’m sure I ought to be glad to see you all around me on this lovely afternoon, and to know that we are all alive and well.”
“Let me see, where did I leave off in my story about my master and Beebee?”
“Oh, I remember,” cried Warlock. “You and your master were about to start on a long journey up the great river to a town called—what was it called though?”
“Bagdad!” cried Shireen. “I have it all now. Yes, and the kind good-natured priest was going with us.”
Well, my children, Bagdad, you know, is far away to the north, and high up the winding Tigris. Oh, that river does wind to be sure, in and out, out and in, and sometimes it really flows north when it might be saving time by keeping on towards the sunny south, or the golden east. But I dare say, after all, the river knows best, and is in no great hurry to leave this lovely land.
The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 44