To Say Nothing of the Dog (13 page)

“And it was just like ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ only without the curse, and the mirrors breaking and flying about. That’s the thing with poetry, it tends to exaggerate. I hadn’t any inclination to lie down in the bottom of the boat and die of a broken heart at all. I rowed smartly in, hopped ashore, and asked her what sort of cat and where had she last seen it. She said, black with a white face and the dearest little white feet, and that it had gone missing two days before and she was afraid something had happened to it, and I said, never fear, that cats have nine lives. And just then a chaperone person who turned out to be her cousin came along and told her she shouldn’t talk to strangers, and she said, ‘O, but this young man has kindly offered to help me,’ and her cousin said, ‘That’s very good of you, Mr.—?’ and I said St. Trewes, and she said, ‘How do you do? I am Miss Brown and this is Miss Mering,’ and then she turned to her and said, ‘Tossie, I’m afraid we must be going. We shall be late for tea.’ Tossie! Have you ever heard such a beautiful name? ‘O name forever sweet! forever dear! The sound of it is precious to mine ear!’ Tossie!” he said rapturously.

Tossie? “Then who’s Princess Arjumand?” I said.

“Her cat. It’s named after the Indian maharani they named the Taj Mahal after, though one would think it would be called the Taj Arjumand in that case. Her father was out in India, the Mutiny and Rajahs and never the twain shall meet and all that.”

I was still lost. “Princess Arjumand’s father?”

“No. Miss Mering’s father, Colonel Mering. He was a colonel in the Raj, but now he collects fish.”

I didn’t even ask what “collecting fish” was.

“At any rate, the cousin said they had to be going, and Toss—Miss Mering said, ‘O, I do hope we meet again, Mr. St. Trewes. We are going tomorrow afternoon to see the Norman church at Iffley at two o’clock,’ and her cousin said, ‘Tossie!’ and Miss Mering said she was only telling me in case I found Princess Arjumand, and I said I would search most diligently, and I did, I went up and down the river with Cyril, calling ‘Puss, puss!’ all last night and this morning.”

“With Cyril?” I said, wondering if a bulldog was the best searcher under the circumstances.

“He’s nearly as good as a bloodhound,” he said. “That’s what we were doing when we ran into Professor Peddick and he sent us along to meet his antique relatives.”

“But you didn’t find the cat?”

“No, and not likely to, either, this far from Muchings End. I’d assumed Miss Mering lived near Oxford, but it turns out she’s only visiting.”

“Muchings End?” I said.

“It’s downriver. Near Henley. Her mother’d brought her up to Oxford to consult a medium—”

“A medium?” I said weakly.

“Yes, you know, one of those persons who tips tables and dresses up in cheesecloth with flour on her face to tell you your uncle’s very happy in the afterlife and his will’s in the top lefthand drawer of the sideboard. I’ve never believed in them myself, but then again, I’ve never believed in Fate either. And that’s what it must have been. My meeting Miss Mering, and your being on the railway platform and her telling me she and her cousin were to go to Iffley this afternoon.

“Only I hadn’t enough money for the boat, which is why it must be Fate. I mean, what if you hadn’t wanted to go on the river and hadn’t had the cost of Jabez? We shouldn’t be going to meet her at Iffley right now, and I might never have seen her again. At any rate, these mediums are apparently very good at finding missing cats as well as wills, so they came up to Oxford for a séance. But the spirits didn’t know where Princess Arjumand was either, and Miss Mering thought it might have followed her up from Muchings End, which didn’t seem very likely. I mean, a dog might follow one, but cats—”

Only one thing in all this tangled account was clear—he was not my contact. He knew nothing about what it was I was supposed to do at Muchings End. If it
was
Muchings End and I hadn’t gotten that wrong, too. I had gone off with a contemp and a complete stranger—to say nothing of the dog—and left my contact waiting on the station platform or the tracks or in a boathouse somewhere. And I had to get back there.

I looked back at Oxford. Its distant spires shone in the sun, already two miles behind. And I couldn’t jump overboard and walk back because that would mean leaving my luggage behind. I’d already abandoned my contact. I couldn’t abandon my luggage as well.

“Terence,” I said. “I’m afraid I—”

“Nonsense!” someone ahead of us shouted, and there was a splash that nearly swamped the boat. The covered basket, which was sitting on the top of the Gladstone bag, almost went overboard. I grabbed for it.

“What is it?” I said, trying to see round the curve.

Terence looked disgusted. “Oh, it’s very likely Darwin.”

I kept imagining I was cured, when clearly I was obviously still suffering from a considerable residue of time-lag and was still having Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds. “I beg your pardon?” I said cautiously.

“Darwin,” Terence said. “Professor Overforce taught him to climb trees and now he’s taken to jumping down on innocent passersby. Turn the boat, Ned.” He gestured the direction I was to turn us in. “Bring us away from the bank.”

I did so, trying to see round the bend and under the willows.

“Landed bang in the middle of a punt with two Corpus Christi men and their girls last week,” Terence said, rowing us toward the middle of the river. “Cyril completely disapproves.”

Cyril did, in fact, look disapproving. He had sat up, more or less, and was looking toward the willows.

There was another, louder splash, and Cyril’s ears went back alertly. I followed his gaze.

Either I had been mistaken about my Difficulty, or my Blurring of Vision had taken on new dimensions. An elderly man was floundering in the water beneath the willows, splashing wildly and uselessly.

Good Lord, I thought, it
is
Darwin.

He had Darwin’s white beard and mutton chop whiskers and his balding head, and what looked like a black frock coat was floating around him. His hat, upside down, was floating several yards from him, and he made a grab for it and went under. He came up choking and flailing, and the hat drifted farther out.

“Good heavens, it’s my tutor, Professor Peddick,” Terence said. “Quick, turn the boat, no, not that way! Hurry!”

We rowed frantically over, me with my hands in the water, paddling, to make us go faster. Cyril stood up with his front paws on the tin trunk like Nelson on the bridge at Trafalgar.

“Stop! Don’t run Professor Peddick over,” Terence said, pushing the oars away from him and leaning over the side.

The old man was oblivious to us. His coat had billowed up like a lifejacket around him, but it obviously wasn’t keeping him afloat. He went under for more than the third time, one hand still reaching ineffectually for his hat. I leaned over the edge of the boat and grabbed for him.

“I’ve got his collar,” I shouted, and suddenly remembered that the one Warder had put on me was detachable, and fumbled for the collar of his frock coat instead. “I’ve got him,” I said, and yanked upward.

His head rose out of the water like a whale’s, and, also like a whale, spewed a great gasping spout of water all over us.

“ ‘Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise.’ Don’t let go,” Terence said, clamping Professor Peddick’s hand onto the side of the boat and fishing for the other one. I’d lost my grip on his neck when he spouted, but his hand had come up, too, when he breached, and I grabbed for that and pulled, and his head came up again, shaking water like a dog.

I have no idea how we got him into the boat. The gunwale dipped sharply underwater, and Terence shouted, “Cyril, no! Ned, back up! We’re going under! No, don’t let go!” but our masses of luggage apparently acted as ballast and kept us from upsetting, even though Cyril came over at the last minute to look at the proceedings and add to the weight on this side of the boat.

Finally, I got a grip on one of his arms, and Terence maneuvered around till he was on the professor’s other side, bracing his foot against the portmanteau so the boat didn’t capsize and got a grip on the other, and we were able to haul him, drenched and pathetic, over the side and into the boat.

“Professor Peddick, are you all right, sir?” Terence said.

“Perfectly all right, thanks to you,” he said, wringing out his sleeve. What I had taken to be a frock coat was actually a black gabardine academic robe. “Fortuitous thing you came along when you did. My hat!”

“I’ve got it,” Terence said, leaning out over the water. What I had taken to be a hat was a mortarboard, complete with the tassel.

“I know I packed blankets. I remember Dawson setting them out,” Terence said, rummaging in his luggage. “What on earth were you doing in the water?”

“Drowning,” Professor Peddick said.

“You very nearly were,” Terence said, digging in the tin box. “But how did you come to be in the water? Did you fall in?”

“Fall in?
Fall
in?” the professor said, outraged. “I was
pushed.”

“Pushed?” Terence said, taken aback. “By whom?”

“By that murderous villain Overforce.”

“Professor
Overforce?” Terence said. “Why would Professor Overforce push you in the water?”

“Larger matters,” Professor Peddick said. “Facts are inconsequential in the study of history. Courage is unimportant, and duty and faith. Historians must concern themselves with larger matters. Pah! A lot of scientific rigamarole. All history can be reduced to the effects of natural forces acting upon populations. Reduced! The Battle of Monmouth! The Spanish Inquisition! The Wars of the Roses! Reduced to natural forces! And populations! Queen Elizabeth! Copernicus! Hannibal!”

“Perhaps you’d better begin at the beginning,” Terence said.

“Ab initio.
An excellent plan,” Professor Peddick said. “I had come to the river to reflect upon a problem I was having with my monograph on Herodotus’s account of the battle of Salamis by that method which Mr. Walton recommends as the perfect aid to thinking, ‘a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts.’ But, alas, it was not to be. For I had come to
‘piscatur in aqua turbida.’ ”

Oh, good, I thought, another one who makes no sense and spouts quotations. And in Latin.

“One of my pupils, Tuttle Minor, had told me he’d seen a white gudgeon just here along the bank while practicing for the Eights. Nice boy, wretched recitations and worse penmanship, but very sound on fish.”

“I
knew
I’d packed them,” Terence said, coming up with a green wool blanket. “Here,” he said, handing it to the professor. “Take that off and put this round you.”

Professor Peddick unbuttoned his robe. “His brother, Tuttle Major, was the same way. Dreadful penmanship.” He pulled his arm out of one sleeve and stopped, a peculiar expression on his face, and stuck his arm into the other sleeve.

“Always blotted his essays.” His hand groped wildly in the sleeve. “Translated
‘Non omnia possumus omnus’
as ‘No possums allowed on the omnibus.’ “He made one last wild gyration and pulled his arm out of the sleeve, “Thought he’d never be able to sit exams,” and opened his closed hand to reveal a tiny white fish.

“Ah,
Ugobio fluviatilis albinus,”
he said, peering at its flopping. “Where’s my hat?”

Terence produced the professor’s mortarboard, and Professor Peddick dipped it in the river and then dropped the fish into the water-filled hat. “Excellent specimen,” he said, leaning over it. “Assistant to the Head of the Exchequer now. Advisor to the Queen.”

I sat there watching him examine the fish and marvelling at what we’d caught. A genuine eccentric Oxford don. They’re an extinct species, too, unless you count Mr. Dunworthy, who is really too sensible to be eccentric, and I had always felt a bit cheated that I hadn’t been there in the glory days of Jowett and R. W. Roper. Spooner was the most famous, of course, because of his gift for mangling the Queen’s English. He’d told a delinquent student, “You have tasted a worm,” and announced the morning hymn one Sunday as “Kinquering Congs Their Titles Take.”

My favorite don was Claude Jenkins, whose house was so messy it was sometimes impossible to open the front door, and who had arrived late for a meeting and apologized by saying, “My housekeeper has just died, but I’ve propped her up on a kitchen chair, and she’ll be all right till I return.”

But they had all been personalities: Professor of Logic Cook Wilson, who after two hours of steady orating, said, “After these preliminary remarks . . .” Mathematics professor Charles Dodgson who, when Queen Victoria wrote him praising
Alice in Wonderland
and requesting a copy of his next book, sent her his mathematical treatise
Condensations of Determinants,
and the professor of classics who thought a barometer would look better if placed horizontally rather than vertically.

And of course Buckland, with his household menagerie and his trained eagle who had strutted, wings half spread, down the aisle of Christ Church Cathedral during morning prayers. (Church must have been exciting in those days. Perhaps Bishop Bittner should have tried introducing animals to Coventry Cathedral when attendance lagged. Or Spoonerisms.)

But I had never expected to actually meet one in the flesh, and here he was, an excellent specimen, interestedly peering at a fish swimming in his mortarboard, and orating on the subject of history.

“Overforce propounds the theory that the study of history as a chronicle of kings and battles and events is obsolete,” Professor Peddick said. “ ‘Darwin has revolutionized biology,’ he says—”

Darwin. The same Darwin whom Professor Overforce had taught to climb trees?

“ ‘—and so must history be revolutionized,’ Overforce claims. ‘It must no longer be a chronicle of dates and incidents and facts. They are no more important than a finch or a fossil is to the theory of evolution.’ ”

Actually, I thought, they were utterly important.

“ ‘Only the laws underlying the theory of history are important, and they are natural laws.’ ‘But what of the events that have shaped history for good or ill?’ I asked him. ‘Events are irrelevant,’ Overforce said. Julius Caesar’s assassination! Leonidas’s stand at Thermopylae! Irrelevant!”