Once Aboard the Lugger Part 74

"Hark!" boomed Mr. Marrapit; lowered the warning hand; at George directed a long finger. "Are you not afraid that you will hear upon the threshold the footsteps of the young men who will come in, wind you up, and carry you out?"

"What on earth--?" George asked.

Mr. Marrapit poked the extended finger towards him. "Ananias!" he boomed. He poked at my quivering Mary. "Sapphira!"

"Hem!" said Mrs. Major. "Hem!"

George recovered. "Is this a joke?" he asked. "I tell you--look for yourself--I have found the Rose."

Mr. Marrapit stooped to Mrs. Major's lap, hidden by the table. With a most queenly creature in his arms he stood upright. "Here is the Rose," said he.

Instantly George forgot all that had immediately pa.s.sed. Instantly he remembered that a bogus Rose was what he fully expected to see.

Instantly fear fled. Instantly a.s.surance returned.

In a full and confident note, "Uncle," he said, "you have been deceived!"

His words let loose a torrent upon him.

Mr. Marrapit with one arm clasped to his breast the cat he had raised from Mrs. Major's lap. Alternately raising and lowering the other hand, his white hair seeming to stream, his eyes flashing, he took on, to George's eyes, the appearance of an enraged prophet bellowing over the cities of the Plain.

"I _have_ been deceived!" he cried. "You are right. Though you have the forked tongue of an adder, yet you speak truly. I have been deceived. Woe is me for I have been most wickedly deceived by those who eat of my bread, who lie beneath my roof. I have cherished vipers in my bosom, and they have stung me. Bitterly have I been deceived."

He paused. A low moan from Mrs. Major, handkerchief to eyes, voiced the effect of his speech upon her; in racking sniffs Mary's emotion found vent. But upon George the outburst had a cooling result--he was certain of his ground.

He said solidly: "That's all rot."

"Rot!" cried Mr. Marrapit.

"Yes, rot. You work yourself up into such a state when you get like this, that you don't know what you're talking about--vipers and all that kind of thing. When you've calmed down and understand things, perhaps you'll be sorry. I tell you you've been deceived. That's not the Rose you've got hold of. This is the Rose. Someone has made a fool of you. Someone--"

Between two violent sniffs, "Oh, George, don't, don't!" came from his Mary.

Startled, George checked.

"Monster, be careful," said Mr. Marrapit. "Beware how much deeper you enmire yourself in the mora.s.s of your evil. Put down that miserable creature you hold. I place Mrs. Major's Rose beside it. Look upon them."

George looked. With staring eyes he gazed upon the two cats. With arched tails they advanced to exchange compliments, and the nearer they stood together the less Rose-like became the cat he had brought into the room. For the cat that Mr. Marrapit had produced--Mrs.

Major's cat, as he called it--was the Rose herself; could be none other, and none other (when thus placed alongside) could be she.

Struck unconscious to his surroundings by this appalling spectacle, George slowly stooped towards the cats as though hypnotised by the orange coats. His eyes goggled further from his head; the blood went thumping in his temples. He was aghast and horror-struck with the stupefaction that comes of effort to disbelieve the eyes. But he did disbelieve his eyes. How possibly trust them when from the Rose's very bed he had taken the Rose herself and held her till now when he produced her? He did disbelieve his eyes.

He gave Mrs. Major's cat a careless pat. By an effort throwing a careless tone into his voice, "A very good imitation," he said. "Not at all unlike the Rose!"

Mr. Marrapit became an alarming sight. He intook an enormous breath that swelled him dangerously. He opened his lips and the air rushed out with roaring sound. Again he inspired, raised his clenched hands above his head, stood like some great tottering image upon the brink of internal explosion.

As upon a sudden thought, he checked the bursting words that threatened from his lips; allowed his pent-up breath to escape inarticulate; to his normal size and appearance shrank back when it was gone.

With an air of ebbing doubt, "Not at all unlike?" he questioned.

George replied briskly. He forced himself to take confidence, though every moment made yet more difficult the struggle to disbelieve what his eyes told him. "Not at all unlike," he affirmed. "Very similar, in fact. Yes, I should say very similar indeed."

Still in the same tone of one who is being reluctantly convinced, Mr.

Marrapit again played Echo's part: "Very similar indeed? You grant that?"

"Certainly," George admitted frankly. "Certainly. I do not wonder you were mistaken."

"Nor I," Mr. Marrapit smoothly replied. "Indeed, in Mrs. Major's cat I detect certain signs which my Rose has long borne but which she has no longer, if the cat you bring is she?"

"Eh?" said George.

"Certain signs," Mr. Marrapit repeated, with the smoothness of flowing oil, "which I recollect in my Rose. The mark, for example, where her left ear was abrased by Mr. Wyvern's blood-thirsty bull-terrier."

George stooped to the cats. Pointing, he cried triumphantly: "Yes, and there is the mark!"

"Yes," Mr. Marrapit p.r.o.nounced mildly. "Yes, but you are now looking at Mrs. Major's cat."

"Hem!" said Mrs. Major. "Hem!"

Like one who has stepped upon hot iron George started back, stared aghast. A further "hem," with which a chuckle was mixed, came from Mrs. Major; from my collapsed Mary upon the edge of the sofa a sniff that was mingled groan and sob.

George put a hand to his head. This young man's senses were ajostle and awhirl. Well he remembered that mark which by disastrous blunder he had indicated on Mrs, Major's cat; vainly he sought it on his own.

Yet his was the Rose. Was this a nightmare, then, and no true thing?

He put his hand to his head.

"Looking at Mrs. Major's cat," repeated Mr. Marrapit, his tone smooth as the trickle of oil.

George fought on. "Quite so. Quite so. I know that. That is what makes it so extraordinary--that this cat which you call Mrs. Major's and think is the Rose should have the very mark that our Rose had."

"But our Rose has not--if that is she."

"Ah! not now," George said impressively. "Not now. It healed. Healed months ago. Don't you remember my saying one morning, 'The Rose's ear is quite healed now'?"

"I do not, sir," snapped Mr. Marrapit, with alarming sharpness.

"Oh!" said George. "Oh!"

"Hem!" fired Mrs. Major. "Hem! Hem!"

"That tail," spoke Mr. Marrapit, a sinister hardness now behind the oiliness. "Mark those tails."

George marked. To this young man's disordered mind the room took on the appearance of a forest of waving tails.

"Well?" rapped Mr. Marrapit. "You note those tails? Mrs. Major's cat has a verdant tail, a bush-like tail. Yours has a rat tail. Do you recollect my pride in the luxuriousness of the Rose's tail?"

George blundered along the path he had chosen. "Formerly," he said, "not latterly. Latterly, if you remember, there was a remarkable falling off in the Rose's tail. Her tail moulted. It shed hairs. I remember worrying over it. I remember--"

A voice from the sofa froze him. "Oh, George, don't, don't!" moaned his Mary.

Recovering his horror, he turned stiffly upon her. "If you mean me, Miss Humfray, you forget yourself. I do not understand you. Kindly recollect that I have another name."