Aileen Aroon, A Memoir

“You may have it, Laura dear,” said my mistress, “if you will be kind to it.”

“Thank you so very much,” said Laura, “and I know I shall be fond of it always.”

And I do not doubt for a moment that Laura meant what she said. Her fault, however, and my misfortune lay, as you shall see, in the fact that she did not know a bit how to treat a pussy in order to make it happy.

Laura liked me, and romped with me morning and night, it is true; but although cats are ever so fond of attention and of romps, they cannot live upon either, and often and often I have gone hungry to my saucer and found it empty, which made me feel very cold and sad and dispirited. Yet, in spite of this, I grew to be very fond indeed of my new mistress, and as I sometimes managed to catch a mouse I was not so very badly off after all.

When I gazed at Miss Laura’s gentle face and her sweet eyes – they were just like my own – I could not help thinking that if she only knew how hungry and cold I often was, she would surely feed me twice a day at least. But my crowning sorrow was to come; and this was nothing less than the loss, I fear entirely, of my mistress’s affection.

My grief was all the more bitter in that I was in some measure to blame for it myself. You see, I was a growing cat, and every day the pangs of hunger seemed more difficult to bear; so one day, when left by myself in the kitchen, I found out a way to open the cupboard, and – pray do not blame me; I do think if you had seen all the nice things therein, and felt as hungry as I felt, you would have tasted them too.

One little sin begets another, and before two months were over I was known in the kitchen as “that thief of a cat.” I do not think Miss Laura knew of my depredations downstairs, for I was always honest in the parlour, and she would, I feel certain, have forgiven me even if she had known. As I could not be trusted in the kitchen, I was nearly always tamed out-of-doors of a night. This was exceedingly unkind, for it was often dark and rainy and cold, and I could find but little shelter. On dry moonlight nights I did not mind being out, for there was fun to be got – fun and field-mice. Alas! I wish now I had kept to fun and field-mice; but I met with evil company, vagrant outdoor cats, who took a delight in mewing beneath the windows of nervous invalids; who despised indoor life, looked upon theft as a fine art, and robbed pigeon-lofts right and left.

Is it any wonder, then, that I soon turned as reckless as any of them? I always came home at the time the milk arrived in the morning, however; and even now, had my young mistress only fed me, I would have changed my evil courses at once. But she did not.

Now this constant stopping out in all weathers began to tell on my beautiful coat; it was no longer silky and beautiful. It became matted and harsh, and did show the dirt, so much so that I was quite ashamed to look in the glass. And always, too, I was so tired, all through my wanderings, when I returned of a morning, that I did nothing all day but nod drowsily over the fire. No wonder Miss Laura said one day —

“Oh, pussy, pussy! you do look dirty and disreputable. You are no longer the lovely creature you once were; I cannot care for such a cat as you have grown.”

But I still loved her, and a kind word from her lips, or a casual caress was sure to make me happy, even in my dullest of moods.

The end came sooner than I expected, for one day Miss Laura went from home very early in the morning. As soon as she was gone, Mary Jane, the servant, seized me rudely by the neck. I thought she was going to kill me outright.

“I’ll take good care, my lady,” she said, “that you don’t steal anything, at any rate for four-and-twenty hours to come.”

Then she marched upstairs with me, popped me into my mistress’s bedroom, locked the door, and went away chuckling. There was no one else in the room, only just myself and the canary. And all that long day no one ever came near me with so much as a drop of milk. When night came I tried to sleep on Miss Laura’s bed, but the pangs of hunger effectually banished slumber. When day broke I felt certain somebody would come to the door. But no. I thought this was so cruel of Mary Jane, especially as I had no language in which to tell my mistress, on her return, of my sufferings. Towards the afternoon I felt famishing, and then my eyes fell upon the canary.

“Poor little thing!” said I; “you, too, are neglected and starving.”

“Tweet, tweet!” said the bird, looking down at me with one eye.

“Now, dicky,” I continued, “I’m going to do you a great kindness. If you were a very, very large bird, I should ask you to eat me and put me out of all this misery.”

“Tweet, tweet!” said the bird very knowingly, as much as to say, “I would do it without the slightest hesitation.”

“Well,” said I, “I mean to perform the same good office for you. I cannot see you starving there without trying to ease your sufferings, and so – ”

Here I sprang at the cage. I draw a veil over what followed.

And now my appetite was appeased, but my conscience was awakened. How ever should I be able to face my mistress again? Hark! what is that? It is Miss Laura’s footstep on the stair. She is singing as sweetly as only Laura can. She approaches the door; her hand is on the latch. I can stand it no longer. With one bound, with one wild cry, I dash through a pane of glass, and drop almost senseless on to the lawn beneath the window.

It was sad enough to have to leave my dear mistress and my dear old home, which, despite all I had endured, I had learned to love, as only we poor pussies can love our homes. But my mind was made up. I had eaten Miss Laura’s pet canary, and I dare never, never look her in the face again.

Till this time I had lived in the sweet green country, but I now wandered on and on, caring little where I went or what became of me. By day I hid myself in burrows and rat-haunted drains, and at night came forth to seek for food and continue my wanderings. So long as the grass and trees were all around me, I was never in want of anything to eat; but in time all this changed, and gradually I found myself caning nearer and nearer to some great city or town. First, rows upon rows of neatly-built villas and cottages came into view, and by-and-by these gave place to long streets where never a green thing grew, and I passed lofty, many-windowed workshops, from which issued smoke and steam, and much noise and confusion. I met with many cats in this city, who, like myself, seemed to be outcasts, and had never known the pleasures of home and love. They told me they lived entirely by stealing, at which they were great adepts, and on such food as they picked out of the gutter. They listened attentively to my tales of the far-off country, where many a rippling stream meandered through meadows green, in which the daisies and the yellow cowslips grew; of beautiful flowers, and of birds in every bush. Very much of what I told them was so very new to them that they could not understand it; but they listened attentively, nevertheless, and many a night kept me talking to them until I was so tired I felt ready to drop. In return for my stories they taught me – or rather, tried to teach me – to steal cleverly, not clumsily, as country cats do. But, alas! I could not learn, and do as I would I barely picked up a living; then my sufferings were increased by the cruelty of boys, who often pelted me with stones and set wild wicked dogs to chase me. I got so thin at last that I could barely totter along.

One evening a large black tom-cat who was a great favourite of mine, and often brought me tit-bits, said to me, “There’s a few of us going out shopping to-night; will you come?”

“I’ll try,” I answered feebly, “for I do feel faint and sick and hungry.”

We tried some fishmongers’ shops first, and were very successful; then we went to another shop. Ill as I was, I could not help admiring the nimble way my Tom, as I called him, sprang on to a counter and helped himself to a whole string of delicious sausages. I tried to emulate Tom’s agility, but oh, dear! I missed my footing and fell down into the very jaws of a terrible dog.

How I got away I never could tell, but I did; and wounded and bleeding sorely, I managed to drag myself down a quiet street and into a garden, and there, under a bush, I lay down to die. It was pitilessly cold, and the rain beat heavily down, and the great drops fell through the bush and drenched me to the skin. Then the cold and pain seemed all at once to leave me. I had fallen into an uneasy doze, and I was being chased once more by dogs with large eyes and faces, up and down in long wet streets where the gas flickered, through many a muddy pool. Then I thought I found myself once again in the fields near my own home, with the sun brightly shining and the birds making the air ring with their music. Then I heard a gentle voice saying —

“Now, Mary, I think that will do. The cheese-box and cushion make such a fine bed for her; and when she awakes give the poor thing that drop of warm milk and sugar.”

I did awake, and was as much surprised as pleased to find myself in a nice snug room, and lying not far from the fire. A neatly-dressed servant-girl was kneeling near me, and not far off a lady dressed in black sat sewing.

This, then, was my new mistress, and —I was saved. How different she was from poor Miss Laura, who, you know, did not mean to be cruel to me. This lady was very, very kind to me, though she made but little fuss about it. Her thoughtfulness for all my comforts and her quiet caresses soon wooed me back again to life, and now I feel sure I am one of the happiest cats alive. I am not dirty and disreputable now, nor is my fur matted. I am no longer a thief, for I do not need to steal. My mistress has a canary, but I would not touch it for worlds – indeed, I love to hear it sing, although its music is not half so sweet to me as that of the teakettle. Of an evening when the gas is lighted, and a bright fire burning in the grate, we all sing together – that is, the kettle, canary, and myself. They say I am very beautiful, and I believe they are right, for I have twice taken a prize at a cat show, and hope to win another. And if you go to the next great exhibition of cats, be sure to look for me. I am gentle in face and short in ears, my fur is long, and soft, and silky, and my eyes are as blue as the sea in summer. So you are sure to know me.

Ida sat silent, but evidently thinking, for some time after I had finished.

“That is quite a child’s story, isn’t it?” she said at last.

“Yes,” I replied; “but don’t you like it?”

“Oh yes, I do,” she said – “I like all your stories; so now just tell me one more.”

“No, no,” I cried, “it is quite time we returned; your auntie will be back, and dinner waiting; besides, we have about three miles to walk.”

“Just one little, little tale,” she pleaded.

“Well,” I replied, “it must be a very little, little one, and then we’ll have to run. I shall call the story – ”

Lost; or, Little Nellie’s Favourite

“It was a bitterly cold morning in the month of February, several years ago. How the time does fly, to be sure! Snow had been lying on the ground for weeks, and more had fallen during the night; the wind, too, blew high from the east, and the few passengers who were abroad made the best of their way along the street, I can assure you, and looked as though they would rather be at home and at the fireside. I myself was out in the cold from force of habit. It had long been my custom to take a short walk before breakfast, and as the post-office of our village was only half a mile from my residence, going down for the letters that arrived by the first mail afforded me just sufficient excuse for my early ramble. But on this particular morning, as I was returning homewards, I was very much surprised to find my little friend Nellie May standing at her gate bare-headed, and with her pretty auburn hair blowing hither and thither in the wind.

“‘Why, Nellie, dear!’ I exclaimed, ‘what can have sent you out of the house so early? It is hardly eight o’clock, and the cold will kill you, child.’

“‘I was watching for you, sir,’ said Nellie, looking as serious as a little judge. ‘Do come and tell me what I shall do with this poor dog. He was out in the snow, looking so unhappy, and has now taken up his abode in the shed, and neither Miss Smith nor I can entice him out, or get him to go away. And we are afraid to go near him.’

“I followed Nellie readily enough, and there, lying on a sack, which he had taken possession of, was the dog in question. To all intents and purposes he was of a very common kind. Nobody in his senses would have given sixpence for him, except perhaps his owner, and who that might be was at present a mystery.

“‘Will you turn him out and send him away?’ asked Nellie.

“The dog looked in my face, oh, so pleadingly!

“‘Kind sir,’ he seemed to say, ‘do speak a word for me; I’m so tired, my feet are sore, I’ve wandered far from home, and I am full of grief.’

“‘Send him away?’ I replied to Nellie. ‘No, dear; you wouldn’t, would you, if you thought he was weary, hungry, and in sorrow for his lost mistress? Look how thin he is.’

“‘Oh!’ cried Nellie, her eyes filling with tears, ‘I’ll run and bring him part of my own breakfast.’

“‘Nellie,’ I said, as we parted, ‘be kind to that poor dog; he may bring you good fortune.’

“I do not know even now why I should have made that remark, but events proved that my words were almost prophetic. It was evident that the dog had travelled a very long way; but under Nellie’s tender care he soon recovered health and strength and spirits as well, and from that day for three long years you never would have met the girl unaccompanied by ‘Tray,’ as we called him.

“Now it came to pass that a certain young nobleman came of age, and a great fête was given to his tenantry at P – Park, and people came from quite a long distance to join in it. I saw Nellie the same evening. It had been a day of sorrow for her. Tray had found his long lost mistress.

“‘And, oh, such an ugly little old woman!’ said Nellie almost spitefully, through her tears. ‘Oh, my poor Tray, I’ll never, never see him more!’

“Facts are stranger than fiction, however, and the little old lady whom Nellie thought so ugly adopted her (for she was an orphan), and Nellie became in time very fond of her. The dog Tray, whose real name by the way was Jumbo, had something to do with this fondness, no doubt.

“The old lady is not alive now; but Nellie has been left all she possessed, Jumbo included. He is by this time very, very old; his lips are white with age, he is stiff too, and his back seems all one bone. As to his temper – well, the less I say about that the better, but he is always cross with everybody – except Nellie.”

Chapter Five.

Embodying a Little Tale and a Little Adventure

“Reason raise o’er instinct as you can —In this ’tis Heaven directs, in that ’tis man.”

If ever two days passed by without my seeing the portly form of my friend Captain D – , that is Frank, heaving in sight about twelve o’clock noon, round the corner of the road that led towards our cottage, then I at once concluded that Frank either had the gout or was gardening, and whether it were the fit of the gout or merely a fit of gardening, I felt it incumbent upon me to walk over to his house, a distance of little more than two miles, and see him.

Welcome? Yes; I never saw the man yet who could give one a heartier welcome than poor Frank did. He was passionately fond of my two dogs, Nero and Aileen Aroon, and the love was mutual.

But Frank had a dog of his own, “Meg Merrilees” to name, a beautiful and kind-hearted Scotch collie. Most jealous though she was of her master’s affections, she never begrudged the pat and the caress Nero and Aileen had, and, indeed, she used to bound across the lawn to meet and be the first to welcome the three of us.

On the occasion of my visits to Frank, I always stopped and dined with him, spending the evening in merry chatter, and tales of “auld lang syne,” until it was time for me to start off on the return journey.

When I had written anything for the magazines during the day, I made a practice of taking it with me, and reading over the manuscript to my friend, and a most attentive and amused listener he used to be. The following is a little jeu d’esprit which I insert here, for no other reason in the world than that Frank liked it, so I think there must be a little, little bit of humour in it. It is, as will be readily seen, a kind of burlesque upon the show-points and properties of the Skye-terrier. I called the sketch —

“That Skye-Terrier.” – A Burlesque

“He’s a good bred ’un, sir.” This is the somewhat unclassical English with which “Wasp’s” Yorkshire master introduced the puppy to me as he consigned it to my care, in return for which I crossed his hand five times with yellow gold. “And,” he added, “he’s a game ’un besides.”

I knew the former of these statements was quite correct from young Wasp’s pedigree, and of the latter I was so convinced, before a week was over, that I consented to sell him to a parson for the same money I gave for him – and glad enough to get rid of him even then. At this time the youthful Wasp was a mere bundle of black fluff, with wicked blue eyes, and flashing teeth of unusually piercing properties. He dwelt in a distant corner of the parson’s kitchen, in a little square basket or creel, and a servant was told off to attend upon him; and, indeed, that servant had about enough to do. Wasp seemed to know that Annie was his own particular “slavey,” and insisted on her being constantly within hail of him. If she dared to go upstairs, or even to attend the door-bell, Wasp let all the house hear of it, and the poor good-natured girl was glad to run back for peace’ sake. Another thing he insisted on was being conveyed, basket and all, to Annie’s bedroom when she retired for the night. He also intimated to her that he preferred eating the first of his breakfasts at three o’clock every morning sharp, upon pain of waking the parson; his second at four; third at five, and so on until further notice.

I was sorry for Annie.

From the back of his little basket, where he had formed a fortress, garrisoned by Wasp himself, and provisioned with bones, boots, and slippers enough to stand a siege of any length of time, he used to be always making raids and forays on something. Even at this early age the whole aim of his existence seemed to be doing mischief. If he wasn’t tearing Annie’s Sunday boots, it was because he was dissecting the footstool; footstool failing, it was the cat. The poor cat hadn’t a dog’s life with him. He didn’t mind pussy’s claws a bit; he had a way of his own of backing stern on to her which defied her and saved his eyes. When close up he would seize her by the paw, and shake it till she screamed with pain.

I was sorry for the cat.

If you lifted Wasp up in your arms to have a look at him, he flashed his alabaster teeth in your face one moment, and fleshed them in your nose the next. He never looked you straight in the face, but aslant, from the corners of his wicked wee eyes.

In course of time – not Pollok’s – Wasp’s black puppy-hair fell off, and discovered underneath the most beautiful silvery-blue coat ever you saw in your life; but his puppy-manners did not mend in the least. In his case the puppy was the father of the dog, and if anything the son was worse than the father.

Talk of growing, oh! he did grow: not to the height – don’t make any mistake, please; Wasp calculated he was plenty high enough already – but to the length, if you like. And every day when I went down to see him Annie would innocently ask me —

“See any odds on him this morning, doctor?”

“Well, Annie,” I would say, “he really does seem to get a little longer about every second day.”

“La! yes, sir, he do grow,” Annie would reply – “’specially when I puts him before the fire awhile.”

Indeed, Annie assured me she could see him grow, and that the little blanket with which she covered him of a night would never fit in the morning, so that she had to keep putting pieces to it.

As he got older, Wasp used to make a flying visit upstairs to see the parson, but generally came flying down again; for the parson isn’t blessed with the best of tempers, anyhow. Quickly as he returned, Wasp was never down in time to avoid a kick from the clergyman’s boot, for the simple reason that when Wasp’s fore-feet were at the kitchen-door his hindquarters were never much more than half-way down the stairs.

N.B. – I forgot to say that this story may be taken with a grain of salt, if not found spicy enough to the taste.

There was a stove-pipe that lay in a back room; the pipe was about two yards long, more or less. Wasp used to amuse himself by running in at one end of it and out at the other. Well, one day he was amusing himself in this sort of way, when just as he entered one end for the second time, what should he perceive but the hindquarters of a pure-bred Skye just disappearing at the other. (You will please to remember that the stove-pipe was two yards long, more or less.) Day after day Wasp set himself to pursue this phantom Skye, through the pipe and through the pipe, for Wasp couldn’t for the life of him make out why the animal always managed to keep just a little way ahead of him. Still he was happy to think that day after day he was gaining on his foe, so he kept the pot a-boiling. And one day, to his intense joy, he actually caught the phantom by the tail, in the pipe. Joy, did I say? I ought to have said sorrow, for the tail was his own; but, being a game ’un, he wouldn’t give in, but hung on like grim death until the plumber came and split the pipe and relieved him. (Don’t forget the length of the pipe, please.) Even after he was clear he spun round and round like a Saint Catherine’s wheel, until he had to give in from sheer exhaustion. Yes, he was a long dog.

And it came to pass, or was always coming to pass, that he grew, and he grew, and he grew, and the more he grew, the longer and thicker his hair grew, till, when he had grown his full length – and I shouldn’t like to say how long that was – you couldn’t have told which was his head and which was his tail till he barked; and even Annie confessed that she frequently placed his dish down at the wrong end of him. It was funny. If you take half a dozen goat-skins and roll them separately, in cylinders, with the hairy side out, and place them end to end on the floor, you will have about as good an idea of Wasp’s shape and appearance as any I can think about. You know those circular sweeping-machines with which they clean the mud off the country roads? Well, Wasp would have done excellently well as the roller of one of those; and indeed, he just looked like one of them – especially when he was returning from a walk on a muddy morning. It was funny, too, that any time he was particularly wet and dirty, he always came to the front door, and made it a point of duty always to visit the drawing-room to have a roll on the carpet previously to being kicked downstairs.

Getting kicked downstairs was Wasp’s usual method of going below. I believe he came at last to prefer it – it saved time.

Wasp’s virtues as a house-dog were of a very high order: he always barked at the postman, to begin with; he robbed the milkman and the butcher, and bit a half-pound piece out of the baker’s leg. No policeman was safe who dared to live within a hundred yards of him. One day he caught one of the servants of the gas company stooping down taking the state of the metre. This man departed in a very great hurry to buy sticking-plaster and visit his tailor.

I lost sight of Wasp for about six months. At the end of that time I paid the parson a visit. When I inquired after my longitudinal friend, that clergyman looked very grave indeed. He did not answer me immediately, but took two or three vigorous draws at his meerschaum, allowing the smoke to curl upwards towards the roof of his study, and following it thoughtfully with his eyes; then he slowly rose and extracted a long sheet of blue foolscap from his desk, and I imagined he was going to read me a sermon or something.

“Ahem!” said the parson. “I’ll read you one or two casual items of Wasp’s bill, and then you can judge for yourself how he is getting on.”

There is no mistake about it —