Chapter III: An Attack of Cynicism

Now we took Taffy away from his club life, his beloved cabs, his large circle of friends who threw sticks and catalogues on Sunday, his large circle of enemies with whom he exchanged stimulating defiances in the streets; and we buried him in the country.

He enjoyed the journey, because he knows so well how to behave in the train; he keeps an eye fixed on his mistress, and stays in the carriage or gets out as he is told; he is open to blandishments from respectable strangers, and will lie obligingly on their dresses or rest his head on a knee; he keeps close to one’s side on the platform, and gets into a cab as obediently as a child. He liked the new house, too, for the front door was always open, and he needed no kind policeman to ring the bell.

Thus it was a few days before he began to realise the disadvantages. His family was arranging the house, and when he lay genially in the middle of a room he was instantly asked to move. He took offence and went away by himself, but no one had time to call him and rally him on his bad temper. Then he found there were few dogs in the benighted place, and three despicable cats.

But worst of all, an inexplicable change came over the habits of his family; they did not go for drives, and comparatively seldom for walks; but they did foolish things in the garden with rakes, and they fed idiotic hens. They would not even allow him to go into the hen-house to see what was talking so loud inside; worst of all, they played croquet, and his greatest friend putted in the garden.

Taffy loathed the sight of a hoe, of a rake, of a mallet, and of a golf club.

He allowed no ambiguity about the situation; if he saw any one begin to play croquet he turned his back on them and lay down; he refused to go out with a golf club; and if his mistress took the turn towards the poultry yard he went back to the house and lay with a sickened expression outside the front door.

A bored expression began to be characteristic of Taffy. He lay sulkily in front of the house, accompanying for a few steps every one who went out, and turning back as they went straight to some detested occupation.

He got up a fine quarrel with the milkman’s dog, but this had only the effect of curtailing his walk, for when two parasols had been fruitlessly broken over the backs of the combatants after morning church, every one felt a little shy of taking him where he might meet the milkman’s dog.

The cats were a fresh insult. Two of them were kittens, and not in the least afraid of Taffy, and it seemed to amuse his family to see them rout him; to ask him to look at them, which he could not do for fear of catching their eye; to ask him to kiss them, which he would have scorned to do even if their claws had been less sharp and their tempers more serene.

With these new occupations Taffy’s lessons ran risk of being forgotten, so he did not come to the dining-room for dessert. Demonstrations of affection lessened, and Taffy restrained his own outpourings of emotion; in fact he was in danger of becoming a reckless loafer of a dog.

When his family suddenly woke up to the existence of these tendencies in him they tried to mend matters. They paid more attention to his feelings and poured out upon him expressions of affection. Taffy responded with fervour; lessons were begun again, and Taffy presented himself nightly at the dining-room door, singing in a loud, excited tone, greeting the family as if they were a circle of long-lost friends, jerking his head under each arm so as to make it fall round his neck. His best friend took Taffy to sleep in his room, which made Taffy very happy, and he slept nine hours every night and snored most of the time. When the room was unoccupied he slept on the bed and did his best to make it comfortable.

Then a delightful event took the sting from the glorious memory of cabs. Two horses came to the stable, and Taffy could again run down to meet the carriage and place himself underneath, so close to the heels of the horse that he ran considerable risk of having his brains kicked out. There were even advantages in the new arrangement: carriages seemed to go faster than cabs, and there was a stall for him to lounge about. No longer need he repair when he was muddy to a dreary hole, peopled with empty bottles, but to a stall full of crackling straw, to refresh himself by a little horsey society after the insults of the kittens.

And with this change and refreshment of spirits he found himself able to take an interest even in the little tabby cat; he has been seen to lick her face and smell her in a patronising manner. These blandishments generally take place in the garden, and he is embarrassed if they are noticed.

Finally, Taffy resolved to take his part in these restored relations and to try to sympathise with our pursuits. He joined us in a genial frame of mind when we were hoeing a garden path. Every time a weed came up Taffy smelt the place, until his nose was covered with gravel. Finally, when he saw he had grasped the idea of the thing he dug a nice large hole in the middle of the path. So we praised him very much for his kindness and intelligence.

There is no romance about Taffy, and no mystery; we know exactly what he is feeling, and his very secrets are above board. If he has been naughty, guilt is written on his countenance; if he is bored by us, he expresses it as clearly; if he has done well, he goes round the circle to collect applause. He lives his life in the full light of day--there are no “silent silver lights and darks undreamed of” about Taffy.

Of course he has his nerves like the rest of us: after a display of affection he seeks a relief from the strain of emotion and repairs quickly to the waste-paper basket; if he is ill it is death to pity him. He becomes unable to raise his head from the ground, unable to swallow; a profound woe is on his face. The wholesome tonic of a few tricks, cheerful conversation, and a little bustle is necessary to restore him. He is now beginning to listen to conversation even when it is not addressed to himself, but he prefers it to have a healthy, objective tone. Talk about good dogs and bad dogs will bring him, self-complacent or apologetic, to your side; but conversation about walks, about carriages and horses he finds far more stimulating. For he is a martyr to self-consciousness; if one tries to draw him he falls helplessly on one side, or moves uneasily, and finally reclines with his head under the sofa. His photographs, too, are apt to wear a deprecating, uneasy expression.

Such is Taffy, intelligent, responsive, lovable, ready to impart his joys and sorrows, thoroughly companionable, entering indeed far more into one’s life than is possible for any other kind of animal.

But with all this he is essentially dependent; he is but part of the Red King’s dream, and has no thread of existence which is not rooted and twined with human lives; his independent actions are isolated, and the memory of them makes him ashamed and guilty. It is well said that there is no forlorner thing than an ownerless dog; and no unwilling prisoner could love his freedom with such wholeness of spirit as Taffy loves his servitude.

THE ADOPTED FAMILY

“God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.”

It was quite natural for the peacock to adopt us, for he had been left to his own resources at the farm; and he preferred bread and cake and poultry food to the pickings of the farmyard. He would come quite close for the bread or the Indian corn, but he would take cake from the hand, thus giving an exact estimate of the value of risk. He paid for these little attentions with his own tail, which he deposited in the course of three days close to the poultry yard.

It was very natural too that the farm kitten should adopt us, her reason being partly real sociable qualities and partly greed and luxury. She liked our company and our cat’s company; she also liked our armchairs and our cat’s meals.

But the adoption by the robins was on altogether a grander scale. They sacrificed family affection and personal safety for the honour and pleasure of domesticating a family of human beings.

We are apt to think of ourselves as occupying this unique position in creation that we alone have the power and inclination to annex other races of creatures for supplies, for service, and for pleasure. If this egotism is at all a matter of congratulation, at any rate we flatter ourselves falsely. The ant keeps its dairy establishment and its staff of domestic servants, or, as we invidiously choose to call them, its slaves. Pumas seem to show a distinct tendency to make pets of human beings, and I strongly suspect that cats take up the same position. We think we have domesticated the cat. What if the cat thinks it has tamed us? It induces us to give it board and lodging, and it surely thinks we look up to it with admiration and affection--as we do.

But, above all, robins have a perfect passion for taming mankind.

As far as we know, robins may have tried to tame other creatures. They may have paid court to cows and horses, but found that they could not catch the eye of a cart-horse, or arrest the attention of the bull. After repeated disappointments (like our own with the zebra) they may have learnt that the only animal really capable of domestication is man.

The decision of the point whether we were taming the robins or they us rests upon this: which side made the first advances.

There was no real question here--the robins began it all.

The robins had been brought up in the ivy of the garden wall. We had played croquet close to them, and gardened beneath them all the summer. They had escaped being raided by the prowling Persian or the orange Angora. Towards the end of the summer the great door into the hall stood open all day, and we used to pull chairs outside into the strip of shade. Then the robins began to take notice of us.

By this time they had grown up and pegged out their own “claims.” The baby robin, who had not yet changed his waistcoat, lived in the ivy and sat upon the left gate-post.

As we camped opposite in basket chairs he drew nearer, hoop by hoop, across the croquet ground. At last he hopped upon the back of the chair I sat in.

Then we thought it time to return his call, which was most effectively done by the distribution of breadcrumbs.

This caused immediately the descent of the second robin, who lived in a holly tree on the right hand of the door; and at once the feud began. While the baby robin’s disinterested attachment had been tolerated, no sooner did he begin to reap a reward than his father swooped on him. We gathered that it was the father, for he was full-fledged, an older bird, neat and smart.

There were altogether four of these robins, and as they adopted the Benson family, what is more natural than to call them by Mrs. Trimmer’s beloved names of Robin, Dicksy, Pecksy, and Flapsy. I am convinced that the baby resembled Dicksy; the smart formidable father shall be called Robin; Pecksy and Flapsy have still to emerge.

Now as Dicksy skimmed across the lawn, halted nervously, and advanced to pick up a breadcrumb, like a bolt from the blue Robin fell upon him from the holly tree. Dicksy fled back to shelter, but was received by Pecksy, who, emerging from the arbutus bush, chased him back with a few hard pecks. Pecksy also was half-fledged, and had a queer tuft of light feathers on her head. Although she lived in the arbutus bush, the right-hand gate-post was her watch-tower.

Now since Dicksy had been our first and earliest friend, and could alone be held disinterested, we threw crumbs after him; on these Robin and Pecksy descended; and a crumb happening to fall considerably to the left, out of the left-hand wall came shyly a fourth robin--evidently Flapsy.

The next day witnessed a gourd-like growth of intimacy with Robin. He was always in the near holly tree; he descended for crumbs and came nearer boldly; he even followed us into the house.

But meanwhile Dicksy’s life was being made a burden to him. He alone was not allowed to approach us. Pecksy drew nearer, half across the lawn; Flapsy settled on the croquet stump and took short flights towards us for crumbs; none interfered with Robin, but Dicksy’s appearance was like the trumpet for battle; each habitat became forthwith an ambush.

Dicksy reconnoitred on the left-hand gate-post--not a robin in sight. He ventured half across the lawn and not a wing stirred. He drew nearer to the tempting crumb, now he was close, and at that moment Robin swooped upon him. Dicksy swerved to the left trying to escape, and Flapsy received him with open beak; he headed off to the right and Pecksy flew out from her arbutus bush. Finally, he was driven back to cover under ivy leaves with an empty stomach and an unsatisfied heart.

Dicksy must somehow have offended against all codes and conventions of robins, but in what way we grosser mortals cannot conceive.

Later as the winter came on, when Robin came round to the lilac bush at the dining-room window, when he and Flapsy came in to inspect the tables before and after meals, when he entered the bedroom above to inquire after a late riser, and partook of light refreshment, Dicksy still seemed disconsolately to haunt his gate-post.

But now with the coming of spring, and all the new fashions, one cannot be sure of any one’s identity. Dicksy, I know, was changing his sombre waistcoat for scarlet; so I can but hope it may be he who is uttering the quaint little crack of a voice to announce his presence in the next room.

But I tremble for the prospects of next summer if we are going to prove so attractive a family. If Robin and Flapsy nest again in the ivied wall; if Dicksy brings a mate to the left hand gate-post; and Pecksy sets up an establishment in the arbutus bush, the war of the worlds will be nothing to the war of the robins.

And at this moment we have undergone a new adoption, for a milk white jackdaw without a tail flew into the garden yesterday, and the household was scattered, uttering endearments, among the cabbages, and scraps of raw meat adorned the lawn. Towards evening he was persuaded to enter the kitchen. Matilda was asked to lend her cage for a time, but when she saw a new centre of attraction she burst into screams so terrific that every one who was not already occupied in housing the jackdaw ran into the kitchen to see who was being murdered. So they provided temporary accommodation for Jack under a basket chair.

He liked it so well that this evening he was found sitting on the chair waiting for some friendly mortal to bestow him inside.

THE MYSTERIOUS RA

“_Reposeful, patient, undemonstrative,
Luxurious, enigmatically sage,
Dispassionately cruel._”

Ra had three periods of development. In the first, he showed himself cowardly and colourless; in the second, he sowed his wild oats with a mild and sparing paw; and in the third period it was borne in on us that whatever qualities of heart and head he displayed were but superficial manifestations, while the inner being of Ra, the why and wherefore of his actions, must for ever remain shrouded in mystery.

We might have guessed this, had we been wise enough, from his appearance. His very colour was uncertain. His mistress could see that he was blue--a very dark, handsome blue Persian. Those who knew less than she did about cats called him black. One, as rash as she was ignorant, said he was brown; but as there are no brown cats Ra could not have been brown. Finally, a so-called friend named him “The Incredible Blue.”

When the Incredible Blue sat at a little distance two large green eyes were all that could be discerned of his features. The blue hair was so extremely dark that it could be hardly distinguished from his black nose and mouth. This gave him an inexpressibly serious appearance.

The solemnity of his aspect was well borne out by the stolidity of his behaviour. There is little to record during his youth except an unrequited attachment to a fox-terrier. In earlier days Ra’s grandmother had been devoted to the same dog--a devotion as little desired and as entirely unreciprocated.

But it was necessary that Ra should leave the object of his devotion and come with us to live in a town; and now it became apparent that his affections had been somehow nipped in the bud. Whether it was the loss of the fox-terrier, the new fear of Taffy’s boisterous pursuits, or the severity of his grandmother’s treatment--for the first time he came into close contact with that formidable lady--whatever the reason may have been, it was plain that Ra’s heart was a guarded fortress. He set himself with steady appetite to rid the house of mice, but he neither gave nor wanted affection.

He would accept a momentary caress delicately offered; but if one stroked him an instant too long, sharp, needle-like teeth took a firm hold of the hand. We apologised once to a cat lover for the sharpness of Ra’s teeth. “I think the claws are worse,” was all he said.

Ra was an arrant coward. If a wild scuffle of feet was heard overhead we were certain that it was the small agile grandmother in pursuit of Ra. If Taffy were seen careering over the lawn, and leaping into the first fork of the mulberry-tree, it was because Ra had not faced him out for a moment, but was peering with dusky face and wide emerald eyes between the leaves.

Once or twice there was an atmosphere of tension in the house, no movement of cat or dog, and it was found that the three were fixed on the staircase unable to move. Taffy looking up from below with gleaming eyes; Granny malevolently scowling from above; and Ra in sight like Bagheera, in heart like a frightened mouse protected by the very fact that he was between the devil and the deep sea. Taffy did not dare to chase Ra for fear of the claws of the cat above; Granny did not care to begin a scrimmage downstairs, which would land them both under the dog’s nose. So they sat, free but enthralled, till human hands carried them simultaneously away.

But the general tension of feeling grew too great. Ra’s life was a burden through fear, Granny’s through jealousy, Taffy’s through scolding. Ra was sent off to a little house in London, and here his second stage of development began.

He had always been pompous, now he grew grand. It took ten minutes to get him through the door, so measured were his steps, so ceremonious the waving of his tail. He sat in the drawing-room in the largest armchair. Then it irked him that there was no garden, so he searched the street until he discovered a house with a garden, and he went to stay there for days together. A house opposite was being rebuilt, and Ra surveyed the premises and overlooked the workmen, sliding through empty window-frames and prowling along scaffolding with a weight of disapproval in his expression.

Thus Ra, who had hitherto caused no anxiety to his family, now became a growing responsibility; visions of cat stealers, of skin-dealers, of cat’s-meat men, of policemen and lethal chambers began to flit through the imagination whenever Ra was missing--which was almost always. So to save the nerves and sanity of his friends Ra left London.

We had now removed to the country, and greatly to our regret, though little to that of Ra, his ancient foe had passed from the scene; and although he felt it better to decline the challenges of the sandy kitten, yet he no longer believed his safety and his life to be in the balance; it was plain that he had realised his freedom, and would assume for himself a certain position in the household.

The house was a very old one; but Ra had been not long employed before the scurrying of feet over the ceiling was perceptibly lessened, and behind the mouldering wainscot the mouse no longer shrieked. That, indeed, is a lame, conventional way of describing the previous doings of the mice. Rather let us say that the mice no longer danced in the washing basins at night, nor ran races over the beds, nor bit the unsheltered finger of the sleeper, nor left the row of jam-pots clean and empty.

If Ra had confined himself to this small game all would have been well, but he proceeded to clear the garden of rabbits. Day by day he went out and fetched a rabbit, plump and tender, and ate it for his dinner. It must at least be recorded that at this time he was practically self-supporting.

Three he brought to me. The first was dead, and I let him eat it; the second showed the brightness of a patient brown eye, and while I held Ra an instant from his prey, the little thing had cleared the lawn like a duck-and-drake shot from a skilful hand, and disappeared in the hedgerow.

The third was dead. I took it and shut up Ra. We “devilled” the rabbit hot and strong; we positively filled it with mustard, and returned it. Ra ate half with the utmost enjoyment and the sandy kitten finished the rest.

Then came Ra’s final aspiration. Unwitting of strings of cats’ tails, dead stoats, and the gay feathers of the jay, with which the woodland was adorned, he took to the preserves. We have no reason to think he hunted anything but the innocent field mouse or a plump rabbit for us to season; but with a deadly confidence he crossed the fields evening by evening in sight of the keeper’s cottage.

If we had all been Ancient Egyptians we should have developed his talent. The keeper would have trained him to retrieve, and he would gaily have accompanied the shooting parties. If I had even been the Marchioness of Carabbas I should have turned the talent to account, and Ra, clad in a neat pair of Wellingtons, would have left my compliments and a pair of rabbits on all the principal houses in the neighbourhood.

Prejudice was too strong for us. I won a truce for Ra until we could find a new home for him, and he departed in safety. I heard, to my relief, that he seemed quite happy and settled, and had bitten and scratched a large number of Eton boys.

Now up to his departure we had at once admired and despised Ra, but no one understood him. His appearance was so dignified, his spirit seemed so mean. He lent a silky head to be caressed, and while you still stroked him, without a sign of warning except the heavy thud of the last joint of his tail, he turned and bit. He addressed one in a small, delicate voice of complaint, yet wanted nothing. He followed me up and down in the garden with a sedate step; there were no foolish games in bushes, pretence of escape, hope of chase and capture. Happy or fearful, sociable or solitary, Ra was utterly self-contained.

Now hear the last act.

Ra began paying calls from his new home, and was established on a footing of intimacy at a neighbouring house. As he sat in the drawing-room window there one morning, he watched the gardener planting bulbs. The gardener planted a hundred crocus bulbs and went home to dinner. No sooner was he gone than Ra descended, went to the bed, and dug up the bulbs from first to last. Then he returned to the drawing-room window.

The gardener came back, and lo! his hundred bulbs lay exposed. Nothing moved; no creature was to be seen but a cat with solemn face and green, disapproving eyes, who glared at him from the window.

The gardener replanted half his bulbs and went to fetch some tool; when he returned he seemed to himself to be toiling in a weird dream, for the bulbs he had replanted lay again exposed and the cat still sat like an image in the window.

Again he toiled at his replanting, and finally left the garden.

In a moment Ra descended upon it; with hasty paws he disinterred the crocuses, and laid the hundred on the earth. Then, shrouded still in impenetrable mystery, Ra returned home.

History does not relate whether or no the gardener consulted a brain specialist the following day.

MENTU

“A little lion, dainty, sweet,--
(For such there be)--
With sea-grey eyes and softly stepping feet.”

Out of the basket there stepped a forlorn little figure, dusky grey, pathetically wailing, cold, hungry, and tired. He was not eight weeks old, every relation and friend in the world was left far behind him; but he was in entire possession of himself and his manners. The ruffled coat was a uniform tint; the little pointed head gave evidence of the long pedigree he trailed behind him. In these weary and destitute circumstances the true air of _noblesse oblige_ was on him.

His very appetite had deserted him, and for days he had to be forcibly fed with warm milk in a teaspoon. He remonstrated about this, but it impaired not the least his confidence in human nature.

Then he grew better, and became an elf-like creature, playing rather seriously with his own tail, but venturing not far from the skirts of his mistress. Once he saw the old cat, and would have run to her, but she turned on him a look so malevolent that we snatched him out of harm’s way, and still scowling she proceeded to take possession of his sleeping basket. She used it for a day or two, but finding that it had been given up to her she abandoned it.

When I joined Mentu and his mistress on a tour in Cornwall some weeks later he had become a different creature. He was still very polite, but had grown in size and in confidence, and he was fast developing the drama of the cat and the madness of the kitten’s spirits. He whirled round the room to catch the crackling paper hanging on a string; he played the clown with a cardboard paper-basket, hurling himself into it with such force that it upset and poured him out like water on the other side; he retrieved paper balls, and hanging over the bars of chairs and tables beat them with the tips of his paws; he hid them under corners of carpets and expended an immense amount of time and strategy in finding them again. The paper flew into the air, and sped across the room so fast that only a very clever and agile kitten could ever have caught it. Then Mentu discovered the Shadow Dance.

One evening while the paper was swinging on a string in the lamplight, Mentu suddenly saw the shadow. Thenceforward he renounced the substance and deliberately pursued the shadow. If the actual paper came in his way he hit it with a pettish gesture, and searched the carpet for the shadow. And he knew the two were connected, for at sight of the paper he began to look about for the shadow. Then he rushed after it, and through it; he spread himself out on the carpet to catch it, and it was gone; he fled round and round in a circle after it, and cared for nothing so much as the pursuit of nothingness.

We went to an empty hotel, hidden in a little bay near the Lizard. Green slopes, covered even in March with flowering gorse, fall quickly to the pillared basalt coves. Here you may sit on slabs of rock sheltered from east and north wind, scenting the sweet, pungent incense breath of the gorse, and watching the gulls at play beneath. You can see the great liners pass, signalling at Lloyd’s station, and branching off below the Lizard Lights to cross the ocean; or you can watch the gallant ships come in, corn laden, with men crowding to the side for their first glimpse of English shores. But, except on Sunday, when Lizard Town walks two and two on the cliff, you see no man there and hardly a stray beast.

So here Mentu became the companion of our strolls, scudding across open stretches of green, rushing into shelter from imagined foes under gorse and heather, dancing with sidelong steps and waving tail down little grassy slopes, or lying on ledges of rock as grey as himself, starred with lichen as yellow as his eyes.

Once we went out along the cliff to return by the road, but here Mentu’s faith in us deserted him. He set out to go home alone, but dared not; he wished to come with us, but was tired; he would not be carried for he saw children in the distance, and a cat prefers to trust its own sense and agility in danger. So in despair of his wavering decision we walked on, until, turning, we caught sight of a pathetic figure silhouetted against the dusty road--a silky kitten with wide mouth opened in a despairing outcry against fate.

Once Mentu met a cow grazing on the cliff. Here was terror, but that he realised the compelling power of the feline eye. He fixed on her two yellow orbs with fear-distended pupils, prepared to make himself very large and terrible by an arched back if she so much as turned towards him, and thus holding her paralysed with terror (though she appeared to graze unconcernedly the while) he walked by with tiptoe dignity and scudded to shelter.

But Mentu himself was once nearly petrified by a very awful kind of Gorgon. He was tripping and smelling, and coming to the edge of a little stone well he looked in. Suddenly we saw him turn rigid, with a face of inexpressible horror. He stood statue-like for a moment, then lifting silent paws retired backwards noiselessly, imperceptibly, step by step from the edge. Once out of sight of the pool he turned and fled. I went to look in. A frog sat there.

Sometimes we went down a stony winding path to the cove beneath; a wren was building here, for the cock-wren sat on a bush and girded at Mentu as he passed. One day I heard from far below the sharp note whirring like a tiny watchman’s rattle, and returned to find Mentu lying on the path with swishing tail cruelly eyeing the atom which scolded him from above.

When the time came to go home Mentu had undergone another transformation. He had trebled in size; he had lost the rough, reddish “kitten hair”; his coat was shining, silky, ashen-grey; his eyes were the colour of hock. Blue Persians were not plentiful in Cornwall, and a little crowd followed us up and down the platform, for Mentu travelled no longer in a basket.

In the train he was perfectly calm; looked out of the window at stations, and regarded railway officials with an impartial and critical eye. A fellow traveller pronounced him “a kind of dog-cat,” alluding, we supposed, to his intelligent and self-possessed demeanour as he sat upright on his mistress’ lap.

We parted again, and from time to time I had accounts of Mentu. In spring time he relinquished the pursuits of shadows in favour of less innocuous sport. He was found curled up in a blackbird’s nest, meditating on the capital dinner he had made of the inhabitants. He laid little offerings of dead, unfledged birds on his mistress’ chair or footstool. He was seen trotting across the lawn, his head thrown proudly back, so that the nest he was bringing her should clear the ground. Saddest of all, she hung up a cocoanut for the tits outside her window, and a dead blue-tit was soon laid at her feet.

Again, it was said that he appeared suddenly, like the Cheshire cat, on a tree miles from home; and in early autumn, in the morning, he was seen crossing the lawn with a train of seventeen angry pheasants behind him.

We renewed acquaintance when I came to stay at Mentu’s home. He was out when I arrived, and as we sat with open windows in the growing dusk there was a sudden soft leap, and a presence on the window--a wild creature, with shining eyes, the very incarnation of the dusk. Even as he jumped down and came to our feet the mood changed. He purred to us, and went to his dinner plate. Finding there a satisfactory mess he began to eat, turning round to throw rapid, grateful glances towards his mistress, purring the while.

Like the Dean who gave thanks for an excellent dinner, or a moderately good dinner, so Mentu is wont to graduate his grace according to his meat. A fish’s head, or the bones of a partridge (it was long before his mistress could be persuaded that he would not prefer a nicely filleted sole) will produce the most grateful glances and the loudest purrs.

As I was occupying the sofa, Mentu took his after-dinner nap on my feet.

It is odd that cats show an intense dislike to anything destined and set apart for them. Mentu has a basket of his own, and a cushion made by a fond mistress, but to put him into it is to make him bound out like an india-rubber ball. He likes to occupy proper chairs and sofas, or even proper hearthrugs. In the same way, the well-bred cat has an inconvenient but æsthetic preference for eating its food in pleasant places, even as we consume chilly tea and dusty bread and butter in a summer glade. A plate is distasteful to a cat, a newspaper still worse; they like to eat sticky pieces of meat sitting on a cushioned chair or a nice Persian rug. Yet if these were dedicated to this use they would remove elsewhere. Hence the controversy is interminable.

“Mentu.”]

The next few days Mentu was determined to devote to family life. He came to the drawing-room in the evening and was very affable and polite. He went readily to any one who invited him, and dug his claws encouragingly into their best evening dresses. We had taught him a trick in Cornwall which he still remembered. He lies on his back, two hands are put under him, and he is gently raised. A touch on elbows and knees makes him shoot forelegs and hindlegs outwards and downwards; so that head and forelegs hang down at one end, hindlegs and tail at the other, and the great grey cat lies curved into crescent shape, purring serenely.

In the course of the evening my collie, a visitor with me, came genially into the room. Mentu did not know him; he sat upright, with eyes fixed upon the dog, shaking with terror, but making no attempt to escape.

I heard Mentu calling on his mistress early next morning in a querulous tone. As her door was shut I invited him into my room, but he found it not to his mind, and soon left me. He sat all the morning with us, but was easily _ennuyé_, and walked about uttering short bored cries until he could find some one to play with him. He delighted in a game of hide and seek which he had instituted for himself. He hid and called out, lay still till he was seen, and then sprang up to scud across the room. When we went into the garden he followed, and the scolding of a blackbird made us look up to see him on a branch overhead staring down at us. He walked with us, too, or rather when we walked he plunged rustling through the bushes bordering the path, and flashed out to stand a moment in the open.

Withal one felt that a thinking being moved with us, whether bored or childishly excited, gently affectionate or suddenly grateful; a being thoroughly self-conscious, greedy of admiration, regarding himself and us, and taking his life into his own hands. And close beneath the surface of his civilisation lay the wild beast nature. One could wake it in an instant, for if I caught his eye the surface flashed sapphire for a moment, then the eye with distended pupils was fixed upon me, and silently, holding me by the eye, he believed, he stole across the room, and jumped up suddenly almost in my face. There was something uncanny about it, and even possibly dangerous, for if I looked up from a book sometimes I found that topaz eye trying to catch and arrest my own, while the great cat stole silently nearer. I think if we had not relinquished the game Mentu’s claws would have blinded me.

For the wild nature in Mentu is as strong as his inbred civilisation; and the two are at strife together. His heart and his appetite lead him back and back to the house; keep him there for days together--a dainty fine gentleman, warm-hearted, capricious. But the spirit of the wild creature rises in him, and the night comes when at bed-time no Mentu is waiting at the door to be let in; or in the evening, as he hears the wind rise and stir the branches, even while the rain beats on the window pane, the compelling power of out-of-doors is on him, and he must go; and when the window is lifted and the night air streams in, there is but one leap into the darkness.

He will return early in the morning tired and satiate, or spring in some evening as the dusk gathers, with gleaming eyes where the light of the wild woods flickers and dies down in the comfortable firelight of an English home.

This is the true cat, the real Mentu, this wild creature who must go on his mysterious errands; or who, I rather believe it, plunges out to revel in the intoxication of innumerable scents, unaccounted sounds and the half revealed forms of wood and field in twilight, in darkness or in dawn. In his soul he is a dramatist, an artist in sensation. He lives with human beings, he loves them, as we live with children and love them, and play their games. But the great world calls us and we must go; and Mentu’s business in life is elsewhere. He lives in the half-lights, in secret places, free and alone, this mysterious little-great being whom his mistress calls “My cat.”

THE CONSCIENCE OF THE BARN-DOOR FOWL

“_The trivial round, the common task._”

Few people recognise how strong an element the sense of duty is in the lives of cocks and hens.

I have a Minorca cock of superb appearance and excellent principles. I had to cut his wings once, and I felt as if I had hit a Member of Parliament in the face. It is from him I take my standard.

He receives new hens into his flock with an impressive ceremony. When they are turned into the yard in the approved condition of screaming hysterics, he assembles his old flock about him, and proceeds in a kind of agitated procession towards the newcomers. Then the cock comes a few paces in advance, and with ruffled neck struts and scrapes in front of them. Finally he goes off to the farmyard, the hens following respectfully behind him, the newcomers last of all, pecked and hustled by the rest to make them feel at home.

To his flock of hens the cock stands in much the same position as a hen towards her chickens. It is only the roughness of the instruments they have at hand which misleads us about the particular duty which each is fulfilling.

If a chicken falls on its back it must be remembered that the only instruments by which the hen can help it to regain its feet are a beak and a claw. This is like helping a newborn infant with a sword and a gun. With the full use of ten fingers I feel some anxiety about picking up a chicken. I should quite refuse to do it with a beak and a claw. The hen is braver. She first pecks the chicken to stimulate it to exertion, and then she turns and kicks it. This latter plan is usually the more successful.

But in case of hostilities it must be remembered the hen has only the same two instruments at command. She first pecks her foe and then kicks him. Thus the thoughtless are apt to confound the different intentions in the similarity of method.

In the same way if a hen, called suddenly from an orgie of herring heads in the farmyard to a meal of corn in her own enclosure, forgets where the gate is and tries to get in through the wiring, the cock has only one possible method of helping her. He flies at her from the other side and pecks her. This is not hostile, but protective; he is helping her to recover her self-control. When he has succeeded in reminding her that she cannot hope to get through galvanised wire netting he will accompany her politely round to the gate, and bring her to her food.

The range of duties is large. To help thirteen hens to keep their heads in the various emergencies of life is a heavy responsibility; add to this that the cock keeps time for them, assembles them to their meals, separates fighters, keeps a sick hen away from the flock, or bears a shy one company while she eats; it will be evident that the self-control of the cock in the matter of food is well matched by his organising ability.

There is only one thing which clashes with the imperative sense of duty of the barn-door fowl, and that is its tendency to romantic attachments.

I had two hens sitting side by side in their first experience of nesting. Daily they were found with dazed faces, ruffled and pecked as we took them out; woke from their angry trance as they felt the earth beneath, took their dust baths, ate, drank, and returned, to fall again into a condition half comatose and half savage.

Thus they spent but twenty minutes daily in the enjoyment of each other’s society.

One brood came out five days before the other. The hen was found with an expression of scared surprise on her face, as instead of nine smooth silent eggs, she felt the downy creatures move and heard them cry. She and her brood were removed, and the other sat on with glazed eye till her turn came.

Then we took her also and lodged her next to the first; they had separate dwelling-houses and a common yard. We were only afraid that maternal tenderness would lead to a little pecking of the alien brood.

But it appeared that we had wholly miscalculated. While they sat dreaming side by side or took the refreshing dust bath, those hens had sworn eternal friendship. Although like a Boarding-Out Committee under the Local Government Act, the two hens were individually responsible for both broods, the chickens (unlike the children) were quite a secondary consideration. The hens’ main object in life was to sit as close to each other as they could, and the chickens squeezed themselves into corners, roosted on the hens’ backs, or moped in isolation.

When one chicken had nearly died of exposure, and three had been flattened under the combined weight of the hens, we removed the worst mother. On this she lost all the little wits she had ever possessed, and haunted the chicken enclosure like an unquiet spirit. It took the cock a long time to restore her self-control.

But I have a far darker tale to tell. There lived in a neat little house on a lawn a gold and red bantam cock with two golden brown hens. The darker was his favourite wife, but the three lived harmoniously, and the hens laid an egg daily.

Fifteen of these eggs were hatched out under a common barn-door fowl. She had no breeding and no tail; her colour was an undertone of black, irregularly sprinked with grey. She was cooped with the chickens about a hundred yards from the bantams, and screened from them by a shrubbery.

About this time the favourite bantam hen found an attractive heap of faggots: thither she repaired daily to lay an egg. When she had laid a dozen she sat down to hatch them. She had chosen her place well, for her golden brown feathers showed hardly at all against the wrinkled, russet leaves.

While she sat peacefully hidden the cock had heard the hen and chickens call; and, strolling to the other side of the shrubbery, discovered his fifteen children with their foster-mother. Thenceforward, from morning till night, he squatted near the coop, leaving the little favourite wife in her æsthetic bower, and the paler little wife to her own neat house.

It might be thought that paternal instinct kept him there, the joy of seeing his young family grow daily more like their mothers and himself; the dawning hope of the time when he should scratch for the young hens and pull the tail feathers out of the little cocks.

Not so; he was enchained by the attractions of that large, common, tailless fowl. Doubtless he thought her a fine large hen; so she was, quite four times his size. Perhaps he admired her figure, and thought her colouring a unique beauty.

Certain it is that just when the little hen was leading out a tiny family, the bantam cock, deserting his two wives and his twenty-seven children, fled with the common hen into the woods.

There they lived in a wild and wicked romance. People passing through the wood at evening might see a very small gold cock and a very large speckled hen sitting side by side on the branch of a tree; or in the morning might catch sight of the pair digging for a precarious livelihood in the grass at the covert edge; glancing round with guilty eyes and fleeing for safety into the bushes.

At last disillusionment came; it was sure to come. The cock went home.

He returned to find that _all the first family were dead and that eight of the second family were cocks_.

This is tragedy, but it is also history.

CONFUCIUS

“_Lord! what fools these mortals be._”

The Chow Dog was living in a house on the shores of Loch Lomond; and the first time I saw him was when he came with his mistress to call at the hotel. For reasons which will presently appear, I shall call him Confucius, though this is not his real name.

When his mistress came in to see us Confucius stopped outside, and I saw him through the window. He was of the shape of a neat little pig; he was soft and furry, and in colour like a golden fox; he had black eyes, and a bluish-black tongue. As soon as you saw that tongue you realised how inartistic, how unfinished, a red tongue is; one might as well have pink boots. By as much as a black Berkshire is more proper and neater than a pink pig, so is a bluish-black tongue better than a red one.

We were so much ravished by the appearance of the Chow Dog that we went out at once to be introduced to him. As soon as he saw us coming he began to trot steadily homewards. We had to leave him to his mistress and retire indoors, and after some conflict of wills and clash of temperaments she appeared victorious with the dog tucked under her arm.

We found that he was at this time only four months old, and absolutely the most self-confident creature living. He thought he knew everything, and scorn was the very breath of his nostrils. Though his personal experience, compared to ours, was short, he felt behind him the centuries of Chinese civilisation. When his empire was elderly, our civilisation was in the cradle. This more than redressed the personal balance and left him to the good.

Confucius clearly did not care to make our acquaintance, but we felt it a privilege to be admitted to a greater intimacy with him.

“Scorn was the very breath of his nostrils.”]

He comported himself at home with dignity, though not always with civility; he had none of the puppy _abandon_ natural at his age. I tried to teach him to retrieve a piece of paper. He was bored, but he would not be taken at a disadvantage; so he walked slowly after the paper and gravely returned it to me. After I had persisted in this exercise for some time, he saw that it was meant for a game, and as he would not appear deficient in a sense of humour, he gambolled a little as he went after it.

Confucius never gave himself up to a passing emotion. I saw him once on the rocks with a real puppy, a spaniel puppy bigger than the Chow and probably older. It crouched before him sinuous and silly; it sprang up, gambolled round him and crouched again; it flew at a gallop past his nose and lay down on the other side of him. It exhausted itself in futilities, and gasped and panted with its efforts; and all this time the Chow surveyed it with a bright, contemptuous eye. When it was utterly worn out he got up and went away.

At last Confucius made a mistake. We saw him on the edge of the lake one day with something in his mouth which he swung and tossed from side to side. We called him, and with exultant pride he came towards us. The thing was soft and furry, and so long that it hindered him as he ran. He laid it down before us with jaunty tail and conceited eye--it was his first rabbit.

I had so often smarted under the sense of Confucius’ contempt that I was not prepared to be tender to his humiliation. I had not known what it would be like. He took corporal punishment with a fair amount of self-control, but he strained and howled at the indignity of a chain, and the shame of looking at that furry thing of which but just now he had been so proud. When he found that he could not get free, he sat down and thought over the situation until his tail uncurled.

In our walk that evening we were not preceded by a triumphant golden dog, with well-cocked tail and exalted nose, for Confucius followed behind, lost in thought. He did not stray for a moment into the bushes; no rustle of wild creatures could attract him. He was dreeing his weird.

He had finished dreeing it by next morning, however, and his opinion of himself was quite restored--more than restored--as he had laid up a new piece of experience.

The last time I saw the Chow was when we left Loch Lomond. He came with his party to see us off, but it was wet and the boat was late. They had to return home, while we waited sheltering in the pierman’s hut.

The party must have fallen out by the way, for we had not waited long before Confucius came trotting back alone, quite cheerful and self-possessed. He went round to the further side of the hut so as to interpose it between himself and the homeward path. Then he sat down very comfortably. If either a dog or a philosopher could have winked, Confucius would have winked at us.

The steamer drew away until the shed grew small against the fir-tree stems, and we could only see a tiny golden speck beside it. But we knew that was Confucius sitting Jacques-like to mock at the world, at our superficial brains, our simple wiles and our infant civilisation.

A PARADISE OF BIRDS

“_Oh! the land of the rustling of wings._”

“‘God made the country and man made the town;’ I prefer the latter,” wrote a child. Man also made the Suez Canal and the ships upon it, and God made the Salt Lakes and their navies, and most people still agree with the child and prefer the former.

I had heard much about the first, and little about the second, when I landed in Egypt one November and went by train to Ismailia. On the left lay the famous little ditch, and the great ships looking incredibly tiny crept along it; and on the right lay out the great shallow lakes, and from the edge to the horizon they were as full of feathered fowl as Mother Carey’s Peace Pool.

Here in front all over the water were crowds of little birds, wild ducks maybe, dotted singly, fishing for themselves, and right away lay the flocks of flamingoes, flushing rose as they stood, flashing scarlet as they wheeled, till the flocks on the horizon looked like a sunset cloud. Late in the spring I passed again, and saw not the birds but the reason of the birds. The first time it had been a brilliant, sparkling morning, the second time it was a scarlet sunset. Where the rose-tinted flocks had touched the sky the sun now set behind bars, and where the little birds had floated singly the Arabs were drawing a net--the dark figures, each with his fisher’s coat girt round him, stood out against the crimsoned water; as they drew in round after round the silver fish leaped against the meshes, and the sound of their rustling came up to our ears as the train halted.

It is but the lean kine that the Israelites have left in the land of Goshen; yet if I was a tethered beast with scanty pasture I should feel some little comfort in having for company such a vision of whiteness as the paddy bird. To unaccustomed eyes it seems the image of the ibis, though it is not really the same; and it runs in and out over the parched fields, among the heads of the cattle.

There is peace in Cairo now among the Easterns and the Westerns, but there never can be peace between the kites and crows. The feud is carried on in the tops of the palm trees of the gardens. In one fierce contest the bone of contention fell to the ground and I went to find the cause of this eternal feud. It was no more and no less than a dead rat. At the river side they have ample material for contention, and I have seen as many as fifty great hawks or kites together hovering about the masts of the boats.

The kites are seen at their best in a little desert city near. There is not so much noise but that you can hear their musical whistle, and watch their great stately quadrilles in the air, three or four wheeling, poising, passing with swoops and curves against the blue.

A lovelier, more peaceful little bird haunts the palm gardens--the cinnamon and ashen dove which seeks the woods of England in the summer. Ten of them came home by our own boat one spring. They crept on behind it on wearied wing till we pitied them, and hoped they would alight and rest. Suddenly we all saw a sailing ship a mile or two away. With one accord the doves turned and made towards it, but not liking it on nearer view they turned again, caught us up without the least trouble, and again limped along on the wing beside us. But we were comforted for their fatigue.

In November the waters round Cairo had only just gone down, and the fields near Gizeh were all mud. When evening fell there used to come a wedge-shaped flock of pelicans from the desert. The great birds wheeled round the top of Chufu’s pyramid, and went off to their fishing.

Each little village up the Nile has its own pigeon tower built four-square, and bristling with sticks for the birds to perch. All the village owns these towers, and round them the pretty flocks clap their wings and take their brisk flights, merry and quick as Arab boys.

The long lines of herons in the water are more typical of the meditative side of Oriental character. They stand out in long grey lines, on long yellow spits of sands in the slow, great curves of the river. But no bird can boast one half the resolute patience of the Griffin Vulture. Round some long curves of the Nile I saw the great grey birds stand; as we drew slowly nearer we could distinguish five, of which two were standing opposite to one another with immense wings spread, ready to fight. When we came opposite it was seen that they were quarrelling about a dead sheep; as we drew away they were still exchanging the _retort courteous, the quip modest, the reply churlish, the reproof valiant and the countercheck quarrelsome;_ and we were out of sight again before either gave _the lie direct_. Indeed, for all I know, they may still be typifying the _Concert of Europe_.

The Egyptian vulture is much smaller and much more attractive than this abhorred great bird. _Rachen_, white with black-edged wings, has a beauty of his own as he circles luminously against the sky; there is even a horrid grandeur about him as he springs into sight from the blue, and beats steadily up the wind, allured by carrion scent among the sandhills.

But of all the birds at Luxor the bee-eater is perhaps the loveliest and the pied kingfisher the most lovable. This kingfisher is dappled white and grey, he poises over water in the position of the dove in stained-glass windows; his wings are lifted fluttering, his head bent down. So he hovers intent and busy, careless of those who pass, till he has perfectly found his aim. Then he drops as a stone falls, the waters close above his head, and in a moment he emerges with a fish curving silver from his bill. If “our loves remain” my spirit will sometimes seek a little horseshoe lake with thick green water, above which sit a parliament of lion-headed goddesses, and there it will watch this kingfisher hover and poise and fall. At this place I once saw our own kingfisher, but he is a travelled fellow and has lost the fearless, busy confidence of the grey native; he does his fishing on the sly, and went by like a blue flash to hide behind some carven stone. And I do not know how soon the pied fisher will learn to follow his example. A German, who thought himself a sportsman, also loved these kingfishers, but, as Browning says, it was “another way of love.” He came home one day with a bunch hanging from his hand. I do not know if he took them home and stuffed them to look like nature; more probably he tired of the little grey bodies and threw them away. They would not be so pretty when the soul was gone.

And some men, Englishmen too, have been known to shoot the bee-eater. This is a small light-green bird, as green as growing corn. From its tail hang two long dark feathers; it has a long black beak, with a stripe passing by the eye across paler cheeks. There are some kinds more brilliantly coloured than this; the beauty of it is most manifest when it is bee-eating. Then it spreads bronze wings, turns and flutters like a butterfly, and as it turns a gold sheen ripples over the green. These are sociable birds, and they sit by half-dozens on a branch of carob, taking turns to flutter and catch.

Compared to this bird the crowned hoopoe himself seems almost gross. He is at ease again, since Solomon took back his gift, and the crown of feathers is raised and lowered with a jaunty, self-sufficient air. Where the market road of Luxor ran out into the fields, close by the hole dug by an Arab weaver in the middle of the way to set his loom in, was a favourite place for the hoopoes, and here you might see two or three together, as large as thrushes, with bodies coloured like the russet jay, fine curving bills, and the gay crest. But if you wish to love a hoopoe do not watch it when it eats a thick-bodied moth.

Over the plain of Thebes the swallow plays, glancing by; you hail him as a fellow countryman, but foreign travel would seem to have altered his customs and driven away his dear domestic habits. The old Egyptians carved on stone two little birds like swallows, but one had a wing curled upwards, and one had a straighter wing; and whereas the latter symbolised greatness, the former portended evil. One would need all the wisdom of Egypt to know what mystery lies behind the curling of the wing.

Through the fields another merry bird comes into sight--the crested lark, which is so bold that it will hardly move from the path your donkey takes; or it sits among the corn blades as you go by, and runs but a few steps as you canter past. The birds are tame, because the Arabs do not kill them; Mohammed took a very narrow view of the subject, and it is left to Englishmen and Germans to check the excessive familiarity of birds and men, and to try to make nature more normal.

If these rarer birds are tame, our own bold sparrows are a hundred times more impudent. As the Arab waiters clear away the breakfast they chase the sparrows out through the doors; if you sleep with shutters open you may expect to find a sparrow or two sitting on your bed when you wake; they pry into your cupboard if the doors are left open; they pull a thread out of the mat near your feet to make a nest behind the electric bell wires in the hall; and one determined pair set themselves to build behind the books in our bookcase. We pulled the nest to pieces many times, but they had us at last, and we found two eggs laid upon a wisp of hay.

There is another bedroom visitor with better manners--namely, the little grey owl who mews high up in the palm tree; he does not make himself so common as the sparrow, but in my bedroom one evening he appeared on the window-sill, bowed about a dozen times and went out again.

The wagtails do not come indoors, but outside they will follow and wait for crumbs; will stand with pulsing tail while one lunches at the corner of some temple, running after the scraps of bread thrown to them and waiting to clear the remnants of the feast. The grey wagtail is the commoner, and the plump yellow wagtail is a rare shy visitor. On board ship he catches something more of the spirit of comradeship.

What more can one tell of the cuckoo with spangled crest, whose spangles can be stroked off and come back again; of the chat with rosy breast, of the oriole of golden plumage. The air is still in this country so that you may hear the voices of the past speak silently; and the very song of the birds is hushed in the land of the rustling of wings.