On the Edge of the War Zone Part 11

Sometimes I have been nervous. But all the same, it has been fifty- two weeks of growing respect for the people among whom I live, and of ever-mounting love of life, and never-failing conviction that the sum of it is beauty. I have had to fight for the faith in that, but I have kept it. Always "In the midst of life we are in Death," but not always is death so fine and beautiful a thing as in these days. No one would choose that such things as have come to pa.s.s in the last year should be, but since they are, don't be so foolish as to pity me, who have the chance to look on, near enough to feel and to understand, even though I am far enough off to be absolutely safe,--alas! eternally a mere spectator.

And speaking of having been cold reminds me that it is beginning to get cold again. We have had heavy hailstorms already, hail as big and hard as dried peas, and I have not as yet been able to get fuel.

So I am looking forward to another trying winter. In the spring my coal-dealer a.s.sured me that last winter's situation would not be repeated, and I told him that I would take all the coal he could get me.

Having said that, I took no further thought of the matter. Up to date he has not been able to get any. The railroad is too busy carrying war material.

I was pained by the tone of your last letter. Evidently mine of the Fourth of July did not please you. Evidently you don't like my politics or my philosophy, or my "deadly parallels," or any of my thoughts about the present and future of my native land. Destroy the letter.

Forget it, and we'll talk of other things, and, to take a big jump--

Did you ever keep cats?

There is a subject in which you can find no offence, and if it does not appeal to you it is your own fault.

If you never have kept cats, you have missed lots of fun, you are not half educated, you have not been disciplined at all. / A cat is a wonderful animal, but he is not a bit like what, on first making his acquaintance, you think he is going to be, and he never becomes it.

Now I have been living a year this September with one cat, and part of the time, with two. I am wiser than I used to be. By fits and starts I am more modest.

I used to think that a cat was a tame animal, who lapped milk, slept, rolled up ornamentally on a rug, now and then chased his tail, and now and then played gracefully with a ball, came and sat on your knee when you invited him, and caught mice, if mice came where he was.

All the cats I had seen in the homes of my friends surely did those things. I thought them "so pretty," "so graceful," "so soft," and I always said they "gave a cosy look to a room."

But I had never been intimate with a cat.

When the English soldiers were here a year ago, Amelie came one morning bringing a kitten in her ap.r.o.n. You remember I told you of this. He was probably three months old--so Amelie says, and she knows all about cats. She said off-hand: "C'est un chat du mois de juin." She seems to know what month well-behaved cats ought to be born. So far as I know, they might be born in any old month. He was like a little tiger, with a white face and shirt-front, white paws and lovely green eyes.

He had to have a name, so, as he had a lot of brown, the color of the English uniform, and came to me while the soldiers were here, I named him Khaki. He accepted it, and answered to his name at once. He got well rapidly. His fur began to grow, and so did he.

At first he lived up to my idea of what a kitten should be. He was always ready to play, but he had much more originality than I knew cats to have. He was so amusing that I gave lots of time to him. I had corks, tied to strings, hanging to all the door k.n.o.bs and posts in the house, and, for hours at a time, he amused himself playing games like basket-ball and football with these corks. I lost hours of my life watching him, and calling Amelie to "come quick" and see him. His ingenuity was remarkable. He would take the cork in his front paws, turn over on his back, and try to rip it open with his hind paws. I suppose that was the way his tiger ancestors ripped open their prey.

He would carry the cork, attached to the post at the foot of the staircase, as far up the stairs as the string would allow him, lay it down and touch it gently to make it roll down the stairs so that he could spring after it and catch it before it reached the bottom. All this was most satisfactory. That was what I expected a cat to do.

He lapped his milk all right. I did not know what else to give him. I asked Amelie what she gave hers. She said "soup made out of bread and drippings." That was a new idea. But Amelie's cats looked all right. So I made the same kind of soup for Khaki. Not he! He turned his back on it. Then Amelie suggested bread in his milk. I tried that.

He lapped the milk, but left the bread. I was rather in despair. He looked too thin. Amelie suggested that he was a thin kind of a cat. I did not want a thin kind of a cat. I wanted a roly-poly cat.

One day I was eating a dry biscuit at tea time. He came and stood beside me, and I offered him a piece. He accepted it. So, after that, I gave him biscuit and milk. He used to sit beside his saucer, lap up his milk, and then pick up the pieces of biscuit with his paw and eat them.

This got to be his first show trick. Everyone came to see Khaki eat "with his fingers."

All Amelie's efforts to induce him to adopt the diet of all the other cats in Huiry failed. Finally I said: "What does he want, Amelie? What do cats, who will not eat soup, eat?"

Reluctantly I got it--"Liver."

Well, I should think he did. He eats it twice a day.

Up to that time he had never talked even cat language. He had never meowed since the day he presented himself at Amelie's and asked for sanctuary.

But we have had, from the beginning, a few collisions of will-power.

The first few weeks that he was a guest in my house, I was terribly flattered because he never wanted to sleep anywhere but on my knees. He did not squirm round as Amelie said kittens usually did. He never climbed on my shoulders and rubbed against my face. He simply jumped up in my lap, turned round once, lay down, and lay perfectly still. If I got up, I had to put him in my chair, soothe him a bit, as you would a baby, if I expected him to stay, but, even then, nine times out of ten, as soon as I was settled in another chair, he followed, and climbed into my lap.

Now things that are flattering finally pall. I began to guess that it was his comfort, not his love for me, that controlled him. Well--it is the old story.

But the night question was the hardest. He had a basket. He had a cushion. I have the country habit of going to bed with the chickens.

The cat came near changing all that. I used to let him go to sleep in my lap. I used to put him in his basket by the table with all the care that you would put a baby. Then I made a dash for upstairs and closed the doors. Ha! ha! In two minutes he was scratching at the door. I let him scratch. "He must be disciplined," I said. There was a cushion at the door, and finally he would settle' down and in the morning he was there when I woke. "He will learn," I said. H'm!

One night, while I was in my dressing-room, I neglected to latch the bedroom door. When I was ready to get into bed, lo! there was Khaki on the foot of the bed, close against the footboard, fast asleep. Not only was he asleep, but he was lying on his back, with his two white paws folded over his eyes as if to keep the lamplight out of them.

Well--I had not the heart to drive him away. He had won. He slept there. He never budged until I was dressed in the morning, when he got up, as if it were the usual thing, and followed, in his most dignified manner, down to breakfast.

Well, that was struggle number one. Khaki had scored.

But, no sooner had I got myself reconciled--I felt pretty shamefaced-- when he changed his plans. The very moment I was ready for bed he wanted to go out. He never meowed. He just tapped at the door, and if that did not succeed, he scratched on the window, and he was so one-idea-ed that nothing turned him from his purpose until he was let out.

For a time I used to sit up for him to come in. I was ashamed to let Amelie know. But, one night, after I had been out in the garden with a lantern hunting for him at midnight, I heard a gentle purring sound, and, after looking in every direction, I finally located him on the roof of the kitchen. Being a bit dull, I imagined that he could not get down. I stood up on a bench under the kitchen window, and called him. He came to the eaves, and I could just reach him, but, as I was about to take him by a leg and haul him down, he retreated just out of my reach, and said what I imagined to be a pathetic "meow." I talked to him. I tried to coax him to come within reach again, but he only went up the roof to the ridgepole and looked down the other side and said "meow." I was in despair, when it occurred to me to get the step- ladder. You may think me impossibly silly, but I never supposed that he could get down.

I went for the key to the grange, pulled out the ladder, and hauled it along the terrace, and was just putting it up, when the little devil leaped from the roof into the lilac bush, swayed there a minute, ran down, scampered across the garden, and dashed up a pear tree, and--well, I think he laughed at me.

Anyway, I was mad. I went in and told him that he might stop out all night for all I cared. Still, I could not sleep for thinking of him--used to comfort--out in the night, and it was chilly. But he had to be disciplined.

I had to laugh in the morning, for he was playing on the terrace when I opened the door, and he had a line of three first-cla.s.s mice laid out for me. I said: "Why, good morning, Khaki, did mother make him stay out all night? Well, you know he was a naughty cat!"

He gave me a look--I fancied it was quizzical--rolled over, and showed his pretty white belly, then jumped up, gave one look up at the bedroom window, scampered up the salon shutter, crouched on the top, and, with one leap, was through the bedroom window. When I rushed upstairs--to see if he had hurt himself, I suppose,--he was sitting on the foot of the bed, and I think he was grinning.

So much for disciplining a cat.

However, I had learned something--and, evidently, he had also. I had learned that a cat can take care of himself, and has a right to live a cat's life, and he learned that I was dull. We treat each other accordingly. The truth is--he owns me, and the house, and he knows it.

Since then he asks for the door, and gets it when he asks. He goes and comes at his own sweet will. When he wants to come in, in the daytime, he looks in at all the windows until he finds me. Then he stands on his hind legs and beats the window with his paws until I open it for him. In the night, he climbs to the bedroom window, and taps until he wakens me. You see, it is his house, not mine, and he knows it. What is the drollest of all--he is never one minute late to his meals.

He is familiarly known to all my neighbors as "the Grand Duc de Huiry" and he looks the part. Still, from my point of view, he is not an ideal cat. He is not a bit caressing. He never fails to purr politely when he comes in. But he is no longer playful. He never climbs up to my shoulder and rubs against my face as some of Amelie's commoner cats will do. He is intelligent and handsome--just a miniature tiger, and growls like a new arrival from the jungle when he is displeased-- and he is a great ratter. Moreover Amelie has decided that he is an "intellectuel."

One morning, when he had been out all night, and did not return until almost breakfast-time, he was sitting on my knee, making his toilette, while I argued the matter with him. Amelie was dusting. I reproached him with becoming a rodeur, and I told him that I should be happier about him if I knew where he was every night, and what he did.

He yawned as if bored, jumped off my knees and began walking round the library, and examining the books.

"Well," remarked Amelie, "I can tell you where he goes. He has a cla.s.s in Maria's grange, where the wheat is stored--a cla.s.s of mice.

He goes every evening to give conferences on history and the war, and he eats up all the stupid pupils."

I had to laugh, but before I could ask her how she knew, Khaki jumped up on top of the lowest line of books, and disappeared behind.

Amelie shrugged her shoulders, and said: "Voila! He has gone to prepare his next conference." And he really had chosen a line of books on history.

You see Amelie knows beasties better than I do. There really is a sort of freemasonry between certain people and dumb animals. I have not a bit of it, though I love them. You would adore to see Amelie play with cats. She knows how. And as for her conversation with them, it is wonderful. I remarked the fact to her one day, when her morning salutations with the cats had been unusual. She replied, with her customary shrug: "Eh bien, Madame, toujours, entre eux, les betes se comprennent."

So much in brief for cat number one. Number two is a different matter.

In the spring, four kittens were born at Amelie's. They were all sorts of mongrels. There was a dear little fluffy, half angora, which I named Garibaldi, and Amelie, as usual, vulgarized it at once into "Didine."

There was a long-legged blue kitten which I dubbed Roi Albert. There was a short-legged, st.u.r.dy little energetic striped one which I called General Joffre, and a yellow and black fellow, who was, of course, Nicolas. I regretted there weren't two more, or three.

Garibaldi was about the dearest kitten I ever saw. He attached himself to me at once. When he was only a round fluffy ball he would try to climb into my lap whenever I went to see the kittens. The result was that when he was still very young, he came to live with me, and I never saw so altogether loveable an animal. He has all the cat qualities I ever dreamed of. As Amelie says: "II a tout pour lui, et il ne manque que la parole." And it is true. He crawls up my back. He will lie for hours on my shoulder purring his little soft song into my ear. He will sit beside me on my desk, looking at me with his pretty yellow eyes, as if he and I were the whole of his world. If I walk in the garden, he is under my feet. If I go up to Amelie's he goes too.

His attachment has its drawbacks. He tries to sit on my book when I am reading, and longs to lie on the keyboard of my machine when I am writing. If I try to read a paper when he is on my lap he immediately crawls under it, and gets between my eyes and the print.

I am terribly flattered, but his affection has its inconveniences.

Needless to say, Khaki hates him, and never pa.s.ses him without growling. Luckily Didine is not a bit afraid of him. Up to date they have never fought. Didine has a great admiration for Khaki, and will tag him. The difference in their characters is too funny. For example, if Didine brings a mouse into the garden Khaki never attempts to touch it. He will sit apart, indulgently watching Didine play with his prey, torment it, and finally kill it, and never offer to join in the sport. On the contrary, if Khaki brings in a mouse, Didine wants to join in the fun at once. Result--Khaki gives one fierce growl, abandons his catch and goes out of the garden. Difference, I suppose, between a thoroughbred sport and, well, a common cat.