Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (25 page)

Sitting there, pulling at his lip, his short legs barely touching the ground, the little man felt almost certain that this was the key to MacDhui’s character. It was not so much that Peddie was afraid of losing MacDhui to God as to himself. The big man was in deep trouble. If the child never recovered her power of speech, if she were to die, he must inevitably face and bear the burden of his own guilt and be destroyed, unless help were forthcoming.

Miserably Peddie reflected upon his own inadequacy. He did not doubt but that God would dispose of the matter as He saw fit. It was his own role in the curious drama that was sorely troubling him.

2 2

T
he three boys were sitting uneasily, straight-backed in a row in the waiting room, where there were several other clients with pets to be attended that morning. MacDhui recognized them the first time he thrust his head in through the door, a gesture which these days carried with it far less truculence than before. There was Wolf Cub Geordie McNabb squirming and fidgeting, lean Jamie Braid, the pipe sergeant’s son, looking both nervous and mournful, and the cool, handsome, quite self-contained Hughie Stirling, the only one of the three who seemed to be enjoying himself.

There was obviously some sort of conspiracy afoot, for upon the appearance of the animal doctor, little Geordie and tall Jamie at once rolled their eyes nervously in the direction of Hughie Stirling to discover any signs of panic or inclination to fly in their leader. There was none. The handsome boy remained calm and steadfast.

MacDhui himself was curious as to the nature of this delegation and the reason for it and when he had disposed of the last client he set Willie Bannock some work in the hospital section, opened the door to the waiting room, and called, “All right, lads. You may come in now.”

They filed in behind Hughie Stirling solemnly and filled with so much import that it was threatening to spill over before MacDhui, seated at his old-fashioned roll-top desk in the corner by the window said, “Right. Now, out with it. What is it I can do for you?”

The three ranged themselves in step-down row according to sizes like three organ pipes, and spokesman Hughie Stirling asked forthwith, “How is Mary Ruadh, sir? Is she better? And may we go and visit her, sir?”

MacDhui suddenly felt his heart go out to the three. It was strange how one could come to regard people in an entirely different light within a few moments. He had seen the boys around town, knew vaguely who they were, but they had never pierced below the outer skin of his consciousness. Yet now they stood there suddenly as three friends.

“Mary Ruadh is very ill,” he replied gravely. “Yes, you may go to pay her a visit. Perhaps it will cheer her up. It is good of you to think of her and to come here first to ask permission.”

“We didna ken she was sae sick,” Jamie Braid intoned mournfully. “I have na’ laid eyes on her since the day o’ the burial—” He gulped and clamped his lips shut at a fierce nudge from Hughie.

“Has she got another puss Baldrin?” Geordie asked.

Gentler with the younger boy, Hughie merely laid a hand upon his shoulder and said, “Hush, Geordie. You’ll soon enough see.” Then to Mr. MacDhui he said, “It is said that she cannot speak any longer—even to—well, to us. Is this true, sir?”

The veterinary felt the current of sympathy flowing strongly between himself and this boy and wondered whether this was a measure of his desperate longing to be one with and comprehend childhood, now that it was too late. There was something direct about the approach of the young to problems that he had never understood, a cutting of corners and the dismissal of the unessential.

And yet, withal, he appreciated that the lad was showing a regard for his feelings and sensibilities he would not have credited to one of his age. It seemed somehow the first glimpse he had been permitted of the pity of the young for their more backward elders. A window had been opened onto a world where adults were discussed, plots were laid, plans hatched to get on with them in spite of their queer and often unjust behavior, or schemes thought out to circumvent their baser natures without hurting their feelings if possible, or getting into trouble.

“Mary Ruadh has lost the power of speech,” he replied, “we hope only temporarily and that it will return. By all means go to see her and tell her what you have been doing, or things that might interest her. If—if by any chance Mary were to reply or speak to you, I wish that one of you would come here and notify me at once. I should be most grateful.”

“Yes, sir,” Hughie Stirling said, “that we will. I’ve been sailing with Dad and we tipped over. I’ll tell her about that. Perhaps it will make her laugh.”

Yet they made no move to leave and Mr. MacDhui was now convinced of something he had been suspecting, namely that there was yet another reason for the delegation.

The vet felt a moment of resentment at such subterfuge and was seized with the impulse to bark angrily at them to come out with it. Nevertheless he restrained himself. There was that in the doleful countenance of Jamie Braid with which one could not be angry. Besides he was sure that at the first sign of his old choler all three, or certainly Jamie and Geordie would take to their heels. Curbing himself, he loaded a pipe in the interim and concentrated upon the handsome head and trim figure of the ringleader.

“Sir,” Hughie Stirling asked, “may we speak to you about another matter?”

With careful deliberation, MacDhui got his pipe glowing before replying through clouds of smoke, “Yes, yes.”

“Sir,” Hughie Stirling began. “We’ve all done something that was wrong. But it was my fault,” he added quickly, with a side glance at his now uncomfortable companions. “I led them on. And besides, I had the money too.”

“Ah,” said MacDhui. “I thought there was something else had you standing first on one leg and then the other. Been up to mischief, eh? I suppose you’ve damaged something. Well, then, make a clean breast of it—”

“Oh no, sir, it wasn’t anything like that,” Hughie explained. “It’s something quite different. We—we went to see the gypsies last night.”

Jamie Braid swallowed his Adam’s apple and said, “It was nae only Hughie’s fault. We were a’ keen to go.”

“They
beat
the bear,” Geordie McNabb announced, and unaccountably tears gathered in his eyes and began to roll unchecked down his cheeks.

“Ah,” commented Mr. MacDhui, to keep the ball moving, “so that’s it.” Though he did not yet understand at all.

“You see,” Hughie explained, “it was forbidden. We had asked, but none of us were allowed to go. We’ll catch it at home if they ever find out.”

MacDhui said, “And quite right too. That’s no place for youngsters,” and smoked on.

“But you see, there was a performance. They give a performance, though it’s not official or the police would interfere. It’s almost like a circus. And they ride up and down bareback and pick up handkerchiefs off the ground and stand up on the backs of their horses and they have some dogs and monkeys that can do tricks, and a bear. Of course I’ve seen plenty of bears in zoos and I’ve been to the real circus in Edinburgh, but Jamie and Geordie had never seen a real live bear.”

The story was developing, but the purpose behind this confession still defied MacDhui. When he remained silent, Hughie continued, “So then when my great-aunt Stuart came to visit and gave me a half crown, we had the money because you see I already had sixpence, and tickets were a shilling each. And so we went.”

“It was awfu’ sir,” Jamie Braid said. “I wished sair I hadna gone.”

“They beat the poor bear,” Geordie wailed, “and its nose was a’ bluggy and it lay down on the ground and cried.” The child commenced to weep in earnest until Hughie produced a pocket handkerchief, said, “Oh, come on, Geordie, be a man. It’s all over now and we’re doing something about it,” wiped the round face and got the nose blown. He turned then to the veterinary.

“That was it, sir! That’s why we’ve come to you. They were horrid cruel. They beat the bear and the horses and the dogs and monkey too. There were only a few other people there to see the performance and they weren’t from the town. Perhaps that’s what made the gypsies angry. The bear isn’t much of a bear, sir, and when it wouldn’t dance they beat it with a chain.”

MacDhui removed his pipe from his mouth. “They usually do, you know,” he said.

Hughie nodded. “I’ve heard. But that wasn’t all, sir. There were other animals in cages in the dark. They were supposed to show them to us for our shilling, but they didn’t, because they were so angry that no more than a dozen people came to see their show. But afterward we sneaked around behind in the dark and snooped. Because we had paid our shilling each, and were entitled to, weren’t we?”

MacDhui did not reply.

“We couldn’t quite see what all of them were, but some of them were lying there in the dark just moaning and whimpering. And the smell was awful.”

“I wouldna doot that yin skelpies practiced some kind of abominations upon the puir beasties,” Jamie Braid said, his long face set in folds of sadness.

“The gypsies came and chased us away with sticks,” Hughie Stirling concluded, “so we ran and came home. That was last night. So this morning we got together and held a meeting . . .”

Mr. MacDhui puffed at his pipe, producing a vast smoke screen. “I see. And what did you decide at your meeting?”

“That we wanted the police to go there and make them stop beating their animals and punish them.”

“That is a laudable resolution,” the veterinary admitted, “but why don’t you go to Constable MacQuarrie with it? That’s his business.”

The three exchanged glances. THE question, the one they had known all along must be answered, had been asked. Even Hughie Stirling was embarrassed. Finally he replied, “Sir, when the gypsies first came, the police said they might stay as long as they behaved themselves—”

“And what is it then you wish me to do?”

The uncomfortable hurdle taken, Hughie breathed a sigh of relief and launched into the plan: “We thought, sir, that if you were to go, on account of who you were, and knowing everything about animals, you could either make them stop, for they would be afraid of you, or if you went to the police and complained, they would listen to you, and—”

“Losh!” grunted Mr. MacDhui. “Thank you for nothing. I have no mind to be pulling police chestnuts out of the fire. Gypsies and complaints of cruelty to animals are their jurisdiction, and—”

“Oh sir,” pleaded Hughie Stirling, and MacDhui felt himself oddly wrung by the young voice, “It wouldn’t be the police chestnuts—they’re our chestnuts!”

MacDhui sat up, sucking on his pipe and gazing at the three now with keen interest. “Well, at least you’re honest,” he growled. “I don’t know that I have the time, what with Mary Ruadh so ill and—”

“Oh, one of us would stay with Mary Ruadh. And there’s Mrs. McKenzie. You see, even if we sent an anomous letter to the police, by the time they got it and did anything Geordie’s bear might be dead.”

Geordie commenced to cry again at being identified with the bear, which clever Hughie had done on purpose, and wailed, “He hit the bear with a chain and the blug squoorted out!”

Mr. MacDhui tamped down the ashes of his pipe with a forefinger long fireproofed by this habit, and sighed, as Geordie suddenly dug hard with his fists into his eyes and made a fierce effort to control himself. He succeeded and said, “I think the bear was
lame.
That’s why it couldn’t dance. It had a sore on its hind leg.”

Jamie Braid testified, “There was a horse struck wi’ a loaded crop, sor. It went to its knees—”

Mr. MacDhui sighed again. “It is not a pretty picture you draw,” he said.

Hughie Stirling was at him eagerly. “Then you
will
go, sir?”

The vet was surprised that he so much as entertained the idea, for he had enough on his plate without becoming embroiled with gypsies who in the end would merely be told by the police to move on and would then go elsewhere and continue to practice their cruelties unless witnesses could be produced to corroborate specific charges.

Besides, the boys could have been exaggerating. In the dim light of smoky gasoline flares, or lanterns, things might have looked worse than they were. True, the Ursari, the gypsy bear trainers, were not notably kindly men, but often they were savaged and mauled by their beasts.

But small Geordie McNabb and lank Jamie Braid, with their laconic sentences, had seared a vivid picture into the brain of the animal doctor, of helpless creatures brutally maltreated. And he was remembering, too, that it was Geordie who had brought him a small frog once with a broken leg and had been turned out of his office. That frog he had later encountered healed and living contentedly in an out-of-the-world house in an out-of-the-world glen. Perhaps this was one he owed both to Lori and Geordie. He said finally, “I will think about it.”

Translated by the code of the young used to dealing with adults, it meant to Hughie a firm “yes,” though actually the vet had not yet decided and meant what he had said.

The three now prepared to file out, saying their thank-yous. Only Hughie Stirling hung back for a moment after the other two had made their escape. He said, “We’ll try very hard with Mary Ruadh, sir. It was really to see her that we came, sir. I just thought we might be able to combine—as long as we were here, because of Geordie—he’s taken it very hard.”

Mr. MacDhui put his hand on the boy’s shoulder with surprising gentleness and said, “Thank you, Hughie, for telling me. Now run along.”

After the boy had gone he sat quietly smoking and thinking, and feeling, and wondering what it was that had come over him.

And if the veterinary was thinking and feeling, so was Wolf Cub Geordie McNabb. For in
his
code of grownups “I’ll think about it” meant forgotten. His active little mind turned to the last time he had visited Mr. MacDhui for a favor and had been refused. And so the veterinary was not the only one that morning who thought upon a green frog with a broken leg and that other place where mercy could be found for animals that were sick or injured—