Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (33 page)

Sometimes I trotted, sometimes I ran, sometimes I dragged myself. And there came a time when I reached a road, and crossed a river by a bridge and came to the edge of a town where there were houses, that I was so weary I could not move myself another foot and I lay for a moment beneath a hedge, not knowing any more the difference between waking or dreaming, between life and death.

Yet I must have slept then for a moment in sheer exhaustion, and I DID dream, for at that instant I was not Thomasina, but another. I sat upon a golden throne, it seemed, and set in the gold of the throne were cats’ eyes of emeralds. About my neck there was a golden collar likewise set with emeralds, and the cushion beneath my body was of purest linen, stuffed with down.

On either side of my golden throne stood two golden braziers and from them rose the smoke and fragrance of incense that was pleasing to my nostrils. Then a great light shone and there came a clangor as of brass gongs and two great doors of bronze at the far end of the sanctuary in which my throne was set swung open, admitting many lovely maidens in white robes, carrying leaves of palms which they waved as they sang sweetly, while others set up a quivering and shivering of sound with some strange musical instrument which they shook, which filled my whole being with delight.

And when they reached the forefoot of my throne they bowed down before me and remained prostrate. And there came striding through the bronze doors the figure of a man. He was clad in a brown tunic and the hair of his head and beard were the color of flame and his eyes were hard and cruel.

But when he came before my throne, he knelt, and the cruelty and hardness melted from his glance and he laid before my throne the offering of a golden mouse with ruby eyes. Then he prostrated himself, too, and groaned, “Wondrous one! Great Queen of Sept! Daughter of the sun and moon, destroyer of the serpent Apophet; devourer of the stars—oh, sacred and holy Bast, help me—help me—”

Again the great gong boomed, but this time it was the roll of the thunder and the dream was no more, for I was Thomasina, drenched, exhausted, miserable and shivering beneath a hedge while the purple lightnings filled the skies and the rains seethed down and roared through the gutters and the voice within me that would not give me rest spoke to me again.

“Go home, Thomasina. Go home to your Mary Ruadh—home—home!”

3 2

L
ori whispered, “Will you take her?”

The struggle was pitiful, the duel between the will to live and the resignation to die. Lori’s tears mingled with the beads of sweat forming upon the child’s brow and cheeks.

MacDhui leaned over and wiped dry the pinched and agonized face. “No,” he replied. “It were better in your arms. It is thus that I would go.”

Mrs. McKenzie covered her face with her hands and commenced to sob quietly. Willie Bannock, too, had bowed his head in his hands and turned his face to the wall.

The storm was spewing forth its farewell venom in a crescendo of glare and concussion. Between the thunderclaps there were even more frightful minutes of silence except for the sluicing of the rain and the churning of the wind-lashed waves upon the foreshore. In one of these they heard the clock in the church tower strike four. Across the figure of the child, held cradled in Lori’s arms, she and MacDhui exchanged despairing glances.

A lightning bolt struck into the nearby loch, simultaneous with a stunning clap of thunder and a wild, wind-driven sluicing of rain against the windowpanes. The last shuddering boom of the echoing reverberations through the granite hills seemed to them all like the crack of doom.

Mary Ruadh opened her eyes. They looked for a long time into those of Lori, as though for the first and last time she was gazing upon the person from whom such currents of womanly love and tenderness had been flowing. Then the eyes of the child, dying embers in her small, wasted face—it seemed no bigger in size than one of her dolls—sought those of her father. For an instant a false flush of color came to the pale cheeks and momentarily expression returned, and for that instant she looked almost well and pretty.

At that moment they all heard the cry of the cat against the rush of wind and sea and rain and the departing mutter of thunder in the hills.

Startled, they all looked up, Lori and MacDhui, the tear-stained Mrs. McKenzie and Willie Bannock, whose long, limp mustache hung from a miserable and swollen countenance.

They heard it again, the long, wailing, plaintive meow, a chilling cry to accompany a small girl to dissolution.

Someone in the room said, “Thomasina!” It was hardly a voice at all, so long had the vocal chords been unused.

Mr. Andrew MacDhui, from a shocked and tortured heart, cried, “Who spoke?”

Willie Bannock replied, his mustache suddenly alive and bristling, his soft, kind eyes popping, “The bairn! I’ll swear it was the
bairn!”

A long protracted, purplish glare of sheet lightning dulled the lamps and candles in the room to red pinpoints but illuminated the window and the miserable, anguished, waterlogged ginger cat poised on the outside sill thereof, begging to be let inside.

Mary Ruadh’s second cry of recognition and Mrs. McKenzie’s shriek were almost simultaneous.

“Thomasina! Thomasina!” The little girl was pointing to the window, now black and blank again.

“Maircy on us all!” It was Mrs. McKenzie. “ ’Tis Mary Ruadh’s Thomasina come back to us frae the grave!”

Andrew MacDhui started to his feet, his eyes half mad, crying, “Ah, no, no! Am I out of my mind? The ghost of Thomasina come for Mary Ruadh—”

The window leaped to life again, framing the head and body of the cat, with its expression of outrage at the stupidity of those within the warm, dry room. It was the good, solid Willie Bannock whose wits returned the first. “ ’Tis nae a ghaistie!” he cried. “ ’Tis Thomasina real as life.
Will
ye
not let her in to the
wee
bairn
—
?”

MacDhui grasped at the miracle now. “Mrs. McKenzie”—he whispered hoarsely, lest the animal hear him and take fright— “Mrs. McKenzie. She knows you. Do you open the window. But gently—oh, in God’s name, gently.”

The old housekeeper arose trembling and in the dim light of the lamps and flickering candles, one hand clutching her wrapper closed, went to the window, which again was dark and empty.

The room seemed filled with unbearable tension, but only Lori heard the hard, dry beating of the pinions of the angel of death in retreat.

Mrs. McKenzie slowly and carefully, as she had been bidden, raised the window. Gusts of storm-driven rain swept in and nothing else.

“Come, puss,” croaked Mrs. McKenzie. “Come Thomasina! Come and get your porridge!”

And Lori’s melodious voice rang out, too, above the soughing of the wind, “Talitha! Come, my puss. Come, Talitha!”

There was a soft plop and a soaked and bedraggled cat landed upon the floor of the room, looked about at them all, and opened her mouth in a silent “meow” of greeting; then she shook herself to send the drops of muddy water flying in all directions and thereafter raised first one paw and then the other, fore and aft in rotation, shaking it in a kind of drying-off dance. Willie Bannock, the practical, had slipped up behind her and jammed the window shut. They all then stared as though they could not get enough of staring. But there was no doubt of it. Thomasina had come home.

It was impossible, but it was so. Andrew MacDhui went over to the animal with the fearful feeling that should he touch her she would vanish in a puff of smoke, or that his hands would grasp nothing, that it was a mirage or an apparition that had bemused them all . . .Yet when he lifted her gently she spat at him realistically enough. She was solid, wet, and indignant. For an instant he held her aloft as though she were the Holy Grail. “Sir! SIR!” he cried from a full heart, “Thank you!”

Then MacDhui carried the cat over to Mary Ruadh in Lori’s lap and placed it in her arms. The child, leaving off with dying, embraced it and covered it with kisses. Thomasina began to purr. Mary Ruadh cried out in her small, cracked, newly returned voice that was hardly a voice at all, “Daddy—Daddy! You’ve brought Thomasina back to me! Really live Thomasina, and all well!” There would be a long and careful convalescence, but in that instant the child’s world had slipped back into place. The big, wonderful, smelly man was God again.

MacDhui looked upon the scene from the depths of bewilderment, relief, and gratitude. “Do you understand it?” he said to Lori.

The old, enchanted, rueful, and tender expression had returned to the corners of Lori’s mouth and her eyes were filled with wisdom. “Yes,” she replied simply. She arose and placed the child, with Thomasina clutched to her, in her bed. When the girl relinquished her hold, the cat at once went to work washing herself. There was much work to be done there, including cracked and bleeding pads and a paw where several claws had been torn almost loose. But she had time occasionally, as of old, to bestow a side lick or two with the rough tongue upon the neck and cheek of Mary Ruadh and to look up with undiminished hostility into the face of the big man with the red hair and red beard and the strangely wet cheeks as he stood looking down upon them.

The storm abated at last and withdrew muttering into the distance. The child gathered the unprotesting cat into her arms again. A few moments later both were asleep.

Willie Bannock and Mrs. McKenzie were sent off to bed. The rain had stopped and the wind had died down . . . There came a knock upon the front door. MacDhui opened it to the Reverend Angus Peddie, owlish after a sleepless night and clad in old clothes. He, too, had been up with his family. He said, “I saw your light, Andrew.”

The veterinary stood regarding his friend for a moment. There was something about his expression, a calmness and peace. The deep concern and anxiety no longer filled the eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. “Ah,” he said, “then you know.”

Peddie would have wished his friend the joy of telling him the news, but could not deny the truth of the revelation that had come to him during the night, the wonderful certainty that his prayers and MacDhui’s had been answered.

“Ah—yes,” he replied, “I do. The child is well and will live—”

“She can speak again.”

Peddie nodded. MacDhui then said more slowly, “Thomasina has returned to her,” and waited to see the effect upon his friend, but Peddie merely nodded again and said, “Ah, that too. Well—”

They went in and tiptoed into the room where Lori was watching by the bedside of the sleeping child and cat. Mr. Peddie’s cheerful smile lit up his round face and inside his breast there was a singing happiness. “Aye,” he said. “A lovely sight—”

MacDhui suddenly remembered something that had puzzled him and when they had all three repaired to his study across the hall he said, “Lori—”

“Aye, Andrew—”

“When Mrs. McKenzie opened the window and called to Thomasina you called her too, but it was another name. What was it?”

“Talitha.”

“Talitha?” MacDhui looked bewildered.

But the Reverend Peddie could not repress a chuckle as the veterinary stared at him. “Mark, Chapter V; Verse 35,
et
sequitur,” he said.

Lori smiled, but MacDhui continued to look baffled.

“If I can quote from memory,” the dominie said, “or at least the pertinent part—” and looking up and within himself he launched into it: “ ‘There came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master further? As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue and when he was come in he saith unto them: Why make ye this ado and weep? The damsel is not dead but sleepeth—”

Lori was still smiling her slow, mysterious smile, but MacDhui now was regarding them both sharply.

Mr. Peddie continued, “—And he took the damsel by the hand and saith unto her,
Talitha cumi;
which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked. And they were astonished with a great astonishment—’ ”

MacDhui said hoarsely, “I do not understand.” But he had a glimmering.

Lori said, “She was not dead, but only asleep. I watched the children at their burial play from the woods. When they had gone I went and opened the grave, for fear of some mischief—”

“Ahhhhh.” A long sigh escaped from Mr. MacDhui.

Lori looked inward and backward to that day. “My tears fell upon her, for she was a sweet, sad sight, curled up in her silk box as natural as life. And—and then she sneezed.”

The two men were listening silently to the recital.

“I plucked her forth and took her home. It was wicked of the children to bury her, I thought. I named her—Talitha.”

Mr. MacDhui sighed again and then said gravely, “Thank you, Lori.” His mind had reviewed swiftly all that had happened, the circumstances under which he had ordered Willie Bannock to chloroform the animal, the rush and hurry when the dog needed their attention again, and Bannock leaving off with the cat not yet dead. The mysterious paralysis had cleared of itself, as it sometimes did. His thoughts left him with a strange tinge of sadness.

Lori was looking into both their faces as if searching for some censure, but found none. Then she said, “Ye could both do with a bit of breakfast. I’ll go into the kitchen and warm some porridge and make you tea—”

MacDhui moodily loaded his pipe, set it to burning, and smoked silently, for he was still thinking hard. Mr. Peddie waited for his friend to speak, but when he did not, said, “There is still something that upsets you, Andrew?”

“Aye,” the animal doctor admitted, and then after a further moment’s reflection said, “So it wasn’t really your kind of miracle after all—”

Mr. Peddie’s cheerful and engaging smile lit up his round face. “And you who at first thought that it was or might be are now regretting it for my sake. That is good of you, Andrew, and kind. No, it wasn’t. But when you look back over it all, and think about it—from the very beginning, hasn’t the design been beautiful?”