The Abandoned, page 18
Peter felt Jennie reply politely: “Strays, sir.”
“Hm!” The large round eyes were staring at them fixedly through the glass of the windowpane as Mr. Black radioed the next question: “Just passing through, or were you thinking of stopping off?”
Peter could contain himself no longer and, quite forgetting Jennie’s early admonition, sent out on his own wave length: “Oh, but I live here. I mean, just north in the Mews. Don’t you remember me? I’m Peter Brown, from No. 1A. My father is Colonel Brown, and—”
Mr. Black interrupted. He had a most suspicious look on his face. “Peter Brown, eh? Can’t say I’ve ever seen you before in my life, and I rather know everybody around here. Never knew the Browns to keep a cat. They used to have a small boy, but he’s gone away. Look here, my smart friend, if you’re trying to crash this neighborhood under false pretenses, let me tell you—”
But here, fortunately, the quick-thinking Jennie intervened with: “Please, sir, it’s what my friend imagines. That’s his imagining game. He’s always playing it.”
“Ah well,” said Mr. Black, “as long as that’s all it is. We’re not snobs in this neighborhood, but we’re rather full up on strays at the moment.”
“We’re just back from Glasgow,” Jennie commented, rather irrelevantly, it seemed to Peter, who had yet to learn how well she knew what she was about and that, above all, cats must be kept interested.
Mr. Black was interested. “Glasgow. You don’t say. I used to know some cats there. How did you come down?”
Peter had recovered from his mistake and felt that he could answer this. Proudly he sent forth: “We shipped out,” using a phrase he had learned from listening to the sailors aboard the Countess, “Countess of Greenock—Glasgow—London.”
Mr. Black looked impressed. “Well, well,” he said. ‘Ship’s cats. You two probably know your way about, then. I used to belong to a sailor once—well, a kind of sailor, perhaps more of a deckhand person. He worked on the ferry that runs between Devonport and Torcross. Did you know that that operated on a cable running under the water from one shore to the other?”
Jennie indicated politely that she didn’t and that she had never heard of such an amazing thing.
“Well, it did,” insisted Mr. Black. “I don’t suppose you would call that sailing exactly, but it does give us something in common in a way, so I suppose it will be all right for you to stay. The bombed premises at No. 38 is where most everyone lives. You tell them I said it was all right for you to be there. And mind you, see that you obey the rules of the neighborhood, or out you go, both of you. The principal one to remember is no tipping over of ashcans at night. The residents don’t like it and complain to Mr. Clegg. He’s the man who does for me. He owns the park and the square and everything. And no fighting! That disturbs the residents too. If you must fight, go over to Wigmore Street, or Manchester Square. There’s fighting goes on there all the time. We try to keep our neighborhood quiet and respectable. There are two spinsters who live down at No. 52, who are susceptible and will give you a handout occasionally if you ask piteously enough. What did you say your names were?”
“Jennie Baldrin,” Jennie replied. “I’m part Scotch, you know, and my friend’s name is Peter, and—”
“Right you are,” interrupted Mr. Black. “Carry on, then,” and he fell to washing vigorously.
“There now,” Jennie said with quiet satisfaction as they went on slowly. “You see? Now we know we have a place to go just in case. Greetings to you, my dears. Long life and good health to you both.”
These last two remarks were addressed to the two grays with the ring tails and lyre markings on their heads who sat spinning in the ground-floor window of No. 5 just as they always had when Peter lived in the neighborhood, washing, blinking, purring, and, with their eyes, following the people who came and went.
Their reply to Jennie’s polite salutation as it came wafted through the window was soft and sleepy, and often it was difficult to tell which one was talking.
“I’m Chin.”
“I’m Chilla.”
“We’re twins.”
“We’re actually Ukrainian.”
“We’re never allowed to go out of the house.”
“Have you talked to Mr. Black?”
Since this was the first question addressed to them and seemed to emanate from both, Peter took it upon himself to reply and said: “Yes, we have. He was very kind and said we might stay.”
If a sniff can be broadcast, that was what seemed to come over to Peter’s and Jennie’s whiskers next. “Hmph! Well! We always say we don’t know what this neighborhood is coming to. It was different when we moved in. Exclusive.”
“Remember, no tipping over of ashcans.”
“Strays!”
“Long life and good health to you both!” Jennie murmured once more politely as they passed out of sight, and then added: “Stupid snobs!” From No. 5 came the vibrations of low and angry growling.
“Pedigree indeed,” said Jennie. “I’d like to know how far back they go and what their ancestors looked like when mine were gods in Egypt. And where is the Ukraine, anyway?”
“I think it’s in Russia,” said Peter, who was not very sure, “or maybe Turkey.”
“Russians!” Jennie said indignantly. “And they talk about what the neighborhood is coming to!”
“Long life, good health and much comfort to you,” Peter said, as he had been taught, to the ginger cat with light-green eyes squatted behind the iron rail in front of No. 11, with its tail neatly wrapped around it. This he knew was the cat of Mrs. Bobbit, the caretaker. He had seen it there often and had even stroked it. But now he went up and touched noses.
The ginger said: “Well spoken, youngster. It’s nice to find somebody left with manners these days. You’ve been properly taught. Remember, there’s nothing quite like manners to get you on in the world. I’ve been very cross this morning and would as soon have knocked you ears-over-tail as not until you spoke so softly. Wuzzy is the name. I suppose you’ve seen Mr. Black?”
Jennie told their names. She was nearly bursting with pride at the praise Peter had earned from the ginger-colored one.
Wuzzy said to Jennie: “Jennie Baldrin, eh? That’s Scotch. But there’s more to you, from the look of you. Good breeding. Egyptian probably, from your ears. I’m such a mixture nobody can say where it started. Come back and tell me all about you after you’re settled.”
“Now there,” said Jennie Baldrin firmly, “is one of the nicest cats I’ve ever met. I must have a long talk with her,” and she looked so pleased and gay and cheered that Peter was indeed glad that even for just a little he had managed to take her mind off poor Mr. Grims.
As they went on, they were conscious of a soft call from somewhere above, giving them greetings, long life, and milk with every meal. They looked up to see a tortoise-shell cat ensconced in the bay window of No. 18.
“Do stop a minute,” she pleaded. “I’m so bored. You two look as though you’ve been places.” (“Haven’t we just?” was Peter’s thought to himself.) “My name’s Hedwig. I’ve got everything in the world, and I’m very unhappy. I belong to a childless couple.”
“Oh dear,” Jennie sympathized. “That can be just too bad.”
“It is,” said Hedwig, “believe me. Carry me around all day. On my back in their arms just like a baby. And cluck and coo and make noises that I can’t make head or tail out of. I’ve a basket with a blue ribbon, and pillows and scratching-posts and toys, just drawersful of things. And I’m so sick of them all. I used to be pretty handy in an alley myself before they picked me up. If I can get out for a few minutes later, I’ll be over to the bombed house. I’m dying to hear how it is on the road.”
“You see,” Jennie remarked to Peter as they went on toward the top of the square, “it isn’t all cream and chopped liver. . . .”
They continued and met a stunning, rose-colored, pedigreed Persian who talked of nothing but show business and blue ribbons; a long-haired gray named Mr. Silver, who assured them that there was nothing like belonging to a bachelor for the very best kind of life; and three assorted tabbies who lived with the two spinsters, and who said if you didn’t mind too much not being allowed up on things, there really was nothing like living with two old-maid sisters, because nothing ever changed or happened to frighten or worry one.
And in this manner it was that Peter, accompanied by Jennie Baldrin, went all the way around Cavendish Square and made the acquaintance of the friends and neighbors living there and was accepted by them as one of them, as Jennie had wished it. Having done so, he came at last to the street that led to the Mews.
Now, strangely enough, he was no longer in a hurry as he had been before, but paused for a moment at the entrance to the narrow little pocket or blind alley that was the Mews. Yet, for all of being a cat and understanding cats better than he ever had before, the thought that soon he would be able to see his mother and father made him very happy. He said to Jennie Baldrin: “We did it, Jennie. Here it is. And just down there is our house.”
Jennie’s sadness had returned, for she had grown to love Peter very much. She said: “Yes, Peter. And perhaps just down there a little way is where you and I will have to part.”
“Oh, Jennie!” said Peter. “Jennie dear! Don’t you know that, whatever happens, I’ll never leave you? Never, never, never!”
But Jennie was a better prophet than she knew. Except that it didn’t at all turn out as she thought it would, what awaited them at the tiny narrow Mews.
REUNION IN CAVENDISH MEWS
Now that they were there at last, Peter found that he did not quite know what to do, or rather that he really had no plan. For this was not like a regular visit where you went up to the front door and rang the bell, and when someone came to answer, you sent in your card with a message scribbled on it: “Mr. Peter Brown, late of No. 1A Cavendish Mews, solicits the honor of an interview with his mother and father, Colonel and Mrs. Brown.” Or you didn’t even go bursting through the front door, granting that it was off the latch, shouting: “Mummy! Mummy! I’m home. I’m back again. Have you missed me?”
He couldn’t even reach the doorknob, much less the bell. He had the shape and form of a large white cat and had lost the power to speak to human beings, though he could understand them, and even had he been able to talk to his mother and father or Nanny, who was afraid of cats to begin with, the idea of trying to persuade them that actually he was Peter, to whom something very odd had happened, did not seem to him to be very sensible. He might have been able to explain it to someone his own age without any difficulty, but a grown-up would be more likely to say: “Stuff and nonsense. Small boys don’t turn into cats,” and there would be an end of it.
But now that the moment had come, he thought it might be nice if they just went and sat in front of the house for a while and looked. Perhaps his father was home and he could see him through the window on the ground floor if the curtain was not drawn, or his mother and Nanny might come in or out of the house and he would have the opportunity to observe that they were well and in good health, and above all to show his mother to Jennie Baldrin. He very much wanted Jennie to see how beautiful his mother was. And that is what he decided to do.
“It’s there,” he said, “the little one on the far side of the Mews.” It was easy to point out to Jennie because it was such a small one, no more than two stories high and rather huddled next to its neighbor, a much larger house of white granite that had been repaired recently, and into which some new people were to move just about the time whatever it was had happened to him to cause him to be changed into a cat.
Theirs was a pretty house and had a beautiful black door framed in creamy wood, and on it his father had had fastened a shiny brass plate with his name on it: “Col. A. Brown,” because people were always having trouble finding the Mews, much more anyone who lived in it.
Yet now, even before they crossed the street, Peter could see that there was something odd about the door, or rather different, yes, and something wrong with the sitting-room window too, giving on the street, which always boasted of stiff, starched, lacy curtains through which one could just see the piecrust table on which stood the small bronze statue of Mercury.
Peter saw now what was different. The brass plate was no longer on the door, nor were there any curtains in the window, or any furniture whatsoever in the room, for one could now look right in and see that it was empty. But in the corner of the window was a small white card with some black lettering on it, and what it said was that the premises were vacant and to let, and interested parties should address themselves to Tredgemore & Silkin, in Sackville Street, or inquire of the superintendent. It was quite clear that the Browns had moved away and no longer lived at No. 1A Cavendish Mews, and there was not one single, solitary clue to where they had gone.
Peter’s first reaction was that he was not at all surprised. They always seemed to be moving from one place to another. He remembered that, and it had something to do with his father’s being in the Army and shifting his station.
His second emotion was one of bleak disappointment. It had not seemed so bad being a cat, particularly after Jennie had found him and taken him under her protection, and their adventures together he had enjoyed thoroughly. But suddenly he became aware that always in the background of his thoughts had been the comforting fact that no matter where he was, or what happened, his parents were there, living in the little flat in the Mews, and when he did think about them he could imagine just what it was they were doing. Above all, it held out the promise that he could see them again any time he wished to go back, even though they could not recognize him.
And now they were gone.
Peter sat down in front of the black door and the empty window and blinked his eyes hard to keep back the tears. Not even washing would have been a solace for the grief he felt. He had been so eager that his new accomplishments might be made manifest and that he would be able to show his mother and father some of the things he had learned to do and let them know that this was no longer the same Peter who had to be held by the hand by Scotch Nanny when crossing the street. He could now go about London quite well, almost by himself. And he had taken a trip to a strange city in a steamship, been chased up a bridge by dogs; he could kill rats and mice and earn his keep and the admiration of a man like Mr. Strachan, the first mate, and altogether he had become a very important person.
He might have been able to control himself, but the quick-witted Jennie, even without being able to read, had guessed what had happened and tried to comfort him. “Oh Peter,” she said, brushing up close to him, “they’ve gone away and left you. I’m so sorry. It’s just like—well, when my people went away and left me. It must be. I do understand.”
Reminded thus of her own tragedy, Jennie felt on the point of weeping herself, but holding back with an effort, she fell to washing Peter’s face firmly and lovingly with that sweetly gallant movement of her head which he found so touching, and of course this caused him at once to burst into tears.
Even so, he was sorry too for Jennie, that she had been reminded of the great tragedy of her life; and so, partly to try to recover his own composure, as well as to make known his sympathy for her, he reciprocated by washing her face at the same time she was washing his, with the result that now Jennie also lost control of her emotions. In a moment they were both sitting on the pavement in the Mews lamenting piteously, seeking relief from their grief in loud, mournful song, and of course doing the one thing against which Mr. Black had warned them: namely, making a noise and disturbing the residents, even though it was broad daylight and not yet two o’clock in the afternoon.
For upstairs on the second floor of the large, white granite house next door, a window went up and somebody said: “Oh hush, kitties. Go away. You make me sad.”
Thereupon a head appeared at the window, looking out and down upon the two unhappy cats, an extraordinarily pretty one belonging to a young girl whose long, wavy brown hair, tied with a red ribbon, tumbled down on either side of a fresh and sweet face featuring a tender mouth and soft, endearing brown eyes.
This was what was revealed to Peter as he gazed upwards through his tears, but Jennie saw something else that made her recoil as though she had come face to face with a ghost. She stared at the apparition, quite frozen into immobility for an instant, with one paw upraised and the strangest expression on her face.
And simultaneously the soft eyes of the girl went all round and alight with wonder, her mouth formed into an “O” of surprise and momentary disbelief, and then she cried out: “Jennie! Jennie Baldrin! Oh, my darling! Oh, wait! Wait! I’m coming to you.”
Then she was gone from the window, and both Peter and Jennie heard the sound of hurried footsteps running down the stairs inside, and before Peter had time to say more than “Jennie, she knew your name, she called you by it,” the door to the street burst open, and through it ran the child, all flushed and panting. She gathered Jennie into her arms and was hugging and kissing her, holding and rocking and crying over her and saying: “Jennie, my dear, dear dear Jennie! Oh, it is you. I’ve found you at last. Or was it you who found me, you clever, clever cat? My darling, darling Jennie, you do know me, your own Buff, don’t you, dearest? Oh, I must kiss you all over again.”
And there was no doubt that Jennie did know her, for in an instant and with a look of complete bliss and happiness on her face she had draped herself about Buff’s shoulders like a long, live, limp fur-piece and set up a purring louder than any airplane motor in the sky.
Now Buff shouted upstairs, as other windows in the Mews began to open and people poked their heads out in curiosity at the noise: “Mummy, Mummy! Jennie’s come back to me. She’s found me. Mummy, come down and look. I’m sure it is Jennie.”
Thereupon Buff’s mother came downstairs, and she turned out to be a tall, sweet-faced woman who resembled Buff, and at the same time Peter thought with a pang at his heart that she resembled his mother too, so that for a moment he was not quite certain which was which. But she had no eyes for him whatsoever, as, indeed, neither did Buff; and now both fell to hugging and stroking and fondling Jennie, and talking together and to her, and to the nearest heads that were poked out of windows, marveling, recounting, explaining the miracle of it all and how it had happened in the first place that they had come to lose Jennie three years ago.
