The Abandoned, page 12
Unfortunately, Mr. Strachan elected to try out the yarn as he planned to tell it at his favorite pub, the Crown and Thistle in Stobcross Street in Glasgow, when he went on leave after arrival there. Acquainting Captain Sourlies with the events that had caused Jennie to fall overboard, he went into his speech beginning: “Unable to stond the sicht o’ his little sweetheart droonin’ in the cruel sea. . .” which he concluded with: “Under the saircumstances it seemed only richt an’ proper to heave to, stand by, lower away, and go to the rrrrrrescue.”
Captain Sourlies inhaled another forty cubic yards of air and then cooed: “In holy St. Andrew’s name, Mr. Strachan, what for? For two mangy strays thot—”
Mr. Strachan drew himself up. “The proof, sor, of one of the true meeracles of nature. Who would have believed thot yon puss would have forsaken the safety and comfort of this vessel to join his mate in the mairciless sea? But here they both are, and who will be able to dispute the proof?”
“Proof! Proof!” turtle-doved Captain Sourlies, though by the amount of oxygen he took in and the empurplement of his features the sound at the very least should have split the Countess amidships. “Proof, ye clobber-head! What proof have ye got but one dead cot and anither that is half dead? Ye big, red-headed gossoon, ye could exhibit those in the market square from now until Michaelmas and not an iota of proof would ye have for yer blosted fairy tale.”
Peter thought that his heart would break with grief at the captain’s words that Jennie was dead. Tucked under Mr. Strachan’s arm, he saw the puzzled expression spread over the face of the mate as he tried to comprehend the captain’s argument.
“But, sor,” he protested, “what more proof could anyone want than thot I’m the mon, stonding before their verra eyes, that fished the two oot of the drink, and here are the verra pusses they will have just heard aboot.”
“Muster Strachan! Muster!” said Captain Sourlies in the last extremity of indignation, anger, and outrage, which caused his voice to fall away to a mere trill-like gurgle. “Ye will oblige me by carrying out my orders. Ye will retire to yer quarters, relieved of all duties as of this unhoppy moment. On the way ye will drop yon dead cot over the side, and, for all of me, the ither one with it. Upon our arrival at Glasgie, ye will hond me yer papers ond prepare to sever all further connections with this craft. Dismissed.”
At the order to drop poor Jennie over the side, Peter managed to squirm out of Mr. Strachan’s arms onto the deck, prepared to fight to prevent this, unaware of course that Mr. Strachan had no intention whatsoever of carrying out the captain’s command. At that particular moment the mate was less distressed over the fact that he had been summarily dismissed from his job than over the doubt the captain had cast over the nature and validity of his proof of quite the most wonderful yarn through which he had ever lived or in which he had actually played a part.
Having given his orders, Captain Sourlies turned on his heel and marched to his cabin, from which thereupon issued the sound of smashing glass and crockery, which continued for a long time, four and three quarters minutes to be exact, for Mr. Box timed it by the biscuit watch he carried in his trousers pocket attached to a leather thong. Since Mealie had not yet removed the luncheon dishes, or for that matter, the breakfast things either, that day, he had rather more ammunition than usual and he was likewise a good deal angrier than he had ever been before.
The engines of the Countess of Greenock rumbled, shuddered, and pounded, the propeller thrashed, the column of dirty black smoke ascending straight up into the air flattened out and again became an umbrella. She thrust her blunt nose northward once more and resumed her wallowing progress toward her ultimate destination.
Mr. Strachan, with Jennie still under his arm, started back aft to his quarters with Peter trotting at his heels, prepared to spring at the back of his neck at the first sign of dropping Jennie over the side, and bite and paralyze him as he had done to the rat. The mate, however, was sorely baffled and needed time and quiet to think things out. In the meantime he had no intention of disposing of the proof no matter what the captain had said, and anyway, since he had been discharged, what difference did it make what he did?
And so with Peter still at his heels he went inside his cabin, tossed the body of Jennie Baldrin onto a mat in one corner, and sat down at his desk to try to think. Here, however, he was overtaken by the thought of the injustice of it all, the contrariness of Captain Sourlies and the fact that he had lost his job. And because he was young and such things are very serious at such a time, he put his head down upon his arm and gave himself up to the pleasures of being genuinely sad over the unhappy turn that events had taken.
But Peter truly mourned over his good, kind, and dear friend, and the tears that fell from his eyes as he sat over her who had once been so lively and animated and full of the spirit of adventure and independence, and saw how small and still she now was, were no less salty than the sea water that matted her poor coat.
And Peter thought that as a last respect to his lost friend he would wash her.
He began at her head and the tip of her nose and washed and washed, and in every stroke there was love and regret and longing and the beginning of the awful loneliness that comes when a loved one has gone away. Already he was missing and wanting and needing her more than he had ever dreamed he could when she had been alive.
The salt on her fur stung his tongue; the ceaseless motion of his head, added to the other efforts he had made that day, brought on fatigue and weariness almost beyond endurance. He wanted to close his eyes and crawl away and sleep for ages, but he was caught up in the rhythm of the washing, a kind of perpetual motion, almost as though by continuing he could wash her back to life again.
Darkness fell, lights sprang up in the other cabins of the lumbering Countess, but Mr. Strachan remained at his desk with his head buried in his arms without moving, and Peter washed and washed.
He massaged her shoulders and neck and the thin bony chest beneath which the stilled heart lay, her lean sides and long flanks, her soft white muzzle, the eyes and behind the ears, stroke after stroke in a kind of hypnotic rhythm that he felt he could not have left off even had he wished to do so.
Wash, wash, wash. There was no sound in the darkened cabin but the even breathing of Mr. Strachan and the rasping of Peter’s tongue over Jennie’s coat.
Until someone sneezed.
Peter thought his own heart would stop. For he was quite certain that it had not been his sneeze and it was by no means a large enough one for Mr. Strachan to be the author of it.
Wildly hoping, yet not really daring to hope, Peter redoubled his efforts, rasping, scraping, massaging, working around under Jennie’s shoulders and over the breast —from beneath which now came a small flutter. And then there were two more quite distinct sneezes and Jennie in a faint voice called: “Peter—are you there? Am I alive or dead?”
With a glad shout that rang through the cabin and caused Mr. Strachan to raise his head from his arms with a start, Peter called: “Jennie! Jennie dear! You are alive! Oh, I’m so glad. Jennie, they all thought you were dead, but I knew you weren’t, that you couldn’t be.”
At the noise Mr. Strachan leaped up from his desk and switched on the cabin light, and there on the mat where he had dumped her lifeless form was Jennie, blinking in the light, sneezing a few more times to clear her lungs of the last remaining drops of the salt sea, and even managing to stagger weakly to her legs for a moment and give herself a few licks. And at her side was the big white cat still washing and ministering to her.
Making a queer kind of noise in his throat, Mr. Strachan bent over Jennie, stroked her, and said: “For a’ the siller in the National Bonk o’ Scotland, I wouldna ha believed it. ’Tis the last and final meeracle and the grrrand finish to the yarn. Now will they nae believe the proof that’s before their eyes?” and scooping Jennie up into his arms, he ran out of the cabin with Peter after him.
Up the passageway, down the steps, across the after cargo hatch, up the iron steps, and onto the bridge ran Mr. Strachan with Jennie clutched to his broad chest, where she lay quietly, being yet too weak to struggle against such close contact with a human, and when he arrived there, he shouted: “Coptain, Coptain Sourlies, look here, sor!” just as though nothing had ever happened between them.
And when the captain stepped out of his cabin, prepared to quiver once more with rage, Mr. Strachan solemnly showed him Jennie, now stretching and making small sounds of protest and craning her head around to try to see Peter, who was right at his feet. And in the voice of one who is discussing higher things, the mate said:
“What sae ye now that I nae ha proof? Raised from the dead she has been by the tender meenistrations of her mate, in my cobin before my verra eyes, and here’s the proof, yawning and stretching before ye, and whoever else says it did not hoppen, there’s the proof in the twa of them for him too.”
Strangely, Captain Sourlies no longer found it possible in his heart to be angry with Mr. Strachan, since it was obvious that he was never going to be able to grasp the simple idea that an object was not and rarely could be proof of a happening long after the happening was over; but remembering how Jennie had looked hanging head-down in the mate’s grasp, with the water running out of her, and seeing how she appeared now, with the sparkle back in her eyes, her nose pink once more, and her whiskers standing out stiff and straight, he suddenly felt better than he had in a long time, and besides, the lights of Port Carlisle were just ahead and they were going to make the tide after all.
And strangely, too, word had got around the ship that Jennie was not dead but alive, and there was a kind of gathering of the men in the forward cargo well just beneath the chocolate layer-cake bridge, and when Mr. Strachan came out and showed them Jennie, a big cheer went up, and everybody suddenly grew light-hearted and began slapping his fellow on the back and shouting: “Well well,” and “’Tis woonderful,” just as though something splendid had happened to them.
The sailor who had been a hermit called for three cheers and a hip-hip-hooray for the white ’un, to which Mr. Box said: “’ere, ’ere,” and they were given with a will, and Peter had never felt quite so proud and happy in all his life.
And the captain forgave Mr. Strachan and said no more about turning in his papers and leaving the ship, and after the mate had ordered Mealie to open a tin of condensed milk and gave Jennie a big dish of it, he put her to bed in his cabin on his own bunk and resumed his duties on the bridge of the Countess, with Peter happily purring at his feet. And that is where the Carlisle pilot found them when he came aboard to steer the ship into port.
MR. STRACHAN’S PROOF LEADS TO DIFFICULTIES
BY THE TIME the Countess of Greenock had been warped into her berth at the foot of Warroch Street in Glasgow, Jennie had quite recovered from her experience and was in fact, Peter thought, looking better than she ever had before. The sea air, the regular hours, the lack of worry about where the next meal was to come from had agreed with her.
She had filled out so that her ribs and flanks were no longer so lamentably lean and close together, her face was rounder and more full, which diminished the size of her ears somehow and gave her a more pleasing aspect, and of course, what with the daily cleanings she bestowed upon herself, her coat was now in much better condition, softer even than velvet and with a fine sheen and glisten to it.
Had Peter been asked now, he would most certainly have called her beautiful, with her Oriental eyes slightly slanted, the long, aristocratic dip of her head from ears to muzzle, the sweet pink of the delicate little triangle of her nose matching the translucent rose of her ears. While her head might appear too small to some, it fitted now in better proportion to her body, and when she stood straight, with her tail nicely curving away from her she looked not only lovable, but handsome and distinguished, with breeding evident in her long graceful lines.
Jennie had prepared Peter and briefed him for their arrival in Glasgow as they sailed up the Firth of Clyde and turned the corner into the river Clyde past the grimy, red-brick towns of Gourock and Greenock scattered over the south bank and the round green hills rising to the north. They were to lie low together until the Countess made fast and put out her gangways. Then in the confusion attendant upon unloading they would seize the first moment when nobody was watching them or the gangplank to whisk ashore and run off. In a way, Peter was sorry at the anticipation of leaving the ship and those aboard her, but the prospect of seeing new places and encountering new and exciting adventures quite made up for any regrets, and as the river narrowed and they passed the great factories on its banks and the famous shipyards, and the big gray city drew near, he could hardly contain himself and asked Jennie a dozen times when they should find the first opportunity to get ashore unnoticed.
Mr. Strachan, however, had other ideas, for just before the Countess approached within shouting distance of the dockside, he came down from the bridge for a moment, seized both Peter and Jennie, and shut them up in his cabin, and thus they were forced to view the fascinations of the entire landing operation as performed with the usual inefficiency and raffish style by the crew, from the somewhat limited vantage point of the porthole.
They were able to see, however, that no sooner had the gangplank been raised from the pier to the side of the Countess than Captain Sourlies was upon it and running down, making it sway, jounce, and clatter with his weight and the speed of his descent. Once ashore, he immediately hailed a passing taxi, jumped into it, causing it to sag heavily on one side and proceed slantwise on two wheels, as it were, and drove off without another backward glance at the Countess of Greenock or anything or anyone aboard her.
“Now what do we do?” Peter fretted. “We shan’t ever be able to get away if Mr. Strachan keeps us locked up here all the time.”
But Jennie was unworried. She said: “He can’t keep us forever, and anyway we shall be able to slip out some time. I have yet to hear of a human that was able to keep a cat in a room when we didn’t want to stay. And besides I don’t think he means to keep us here at all. He acts very much to me like somebody who has something on his mind. At any rate, we shall soon find out and watch our opportunity to escape. I am most anxious to get in touch with my relatives.”
It was shortly after the stroke of four bells had announced six o’clock in the evening that Mr. Strachan turned his duties over to Mr. Carluke and came aft, letting himself into his cabin quickly so that there was no chance for either Peter or Jennie to duck between his legs, and besides, since one would not have dreamed of going without the other, they had to watch for the chance when both could slip away together.
He greeted them with: “Ah there, pusses. I ha’ nae doot ye’ll be ready for a bit o’ shore leave, an’ as soon as I have me jacket an’ kit we’ll be off. We’ll be stoppin’ by for a moment at the Crown and Thustle for a pint o’ bitter, after which it’s hame we’ll go while I introduce ye to the mussis, who’ll be proud to know ye when I tell her the saircumstances in connection.”
Peter translated this piece of information quickly for Jennie’s benefit, and the little tiger tabby looked reflective but not too disturbed. “They always want to take you home—if they don’t first want to kick you or throw things at you. Of course that won’t do. We must get away as quickly as we can.”
But it began to look as though the opportunity was not going to be easy to come by. Mr. Strachan changed his jacket to one of a more shore-going cut with a belt at the back, set a blue cap on his red curls, picked up an old leather valise in his left hand, and tucking both Peter and Jennie together under his right arm, he went out and down the gangplank, hailed a cruising hack, and ordering the proprietor to drive to a public house by the name of the Crown and Thistle on Stobcross Street, near Queens Dock, North Basin, climbed in, holding the two cats firmly.
Jennie had been inside of a public house before, since she had found them to be fertile places for a handout, particularly around closing time, when the occupants might be counted upon to be mellow and in a mood to bestow largess of crumbs and scraps; but Peter had only looked in from the outside, and now, perched with Jennie on the long, smooth mahogany bar of the public room of the Crown and Thistle, he found himself immensely intrigued with what he saw, heard, and smelled. It was quite like what he had always imagined from looking in through the doors from the outside.
It was a largish, noisy, comfortable place, all done up in browns, with brown tables and chairs, paneling and a long and gleaming mirror behind the bar reflecting rows and rows of bottles. The handles of the beer pumps looked like some of the levers from the machinery of the Countess, and round electric globes in clusters overhead shed a soft yellow light. The room was full of men clad in rough work clothes, some sea, some shore-going, who occupied all of the tables as well as the space in front of the bar, and of course there was a darts game going on at the board at the far end.
Jennie wrinkled up her nose, but Peter found he liked the warm, cozy beer smell, man smell, clothing smell and offstage cooking smell. So busy was the place that both a man and a woman, a buxom, elderly person with hairs growing in tufts and bunches from the strangest places on her face, served behind the bar. The man, who wore a corduroy waistcoat and had his sleeves rolled up, frowned at the presence of the two cats on the bar, but the woman thought they were ducky, and every time she passed close by, she stopped to chuck them under the chin. The room was stylishly decorated with beautifully printed and colored advertisements for beer, ale, stout, and porter and calendars and chromos of ships supplied by the big steamship companies. There had as yet been no opportunity for Jennie to give the signal for them to cut and run, since the door was shut to keep in the steamy, pleasant warmth and there was too much danger of their being trampled underfoot if they tried to get out during the brief periods of its opening and closing.
Mr. Strachan, with one pint of dark in his system and another at his elbow, was standing next to a little fellow, a factory hand with a needle nose in a peaked tweed cap, while beside him there was an enormous docker, his badge still pinned to his braces; also a commercial man, several sailors off a destroyer, and the usual roster of beer-drinkers and nondescripts.
