Simon the Jester Part 12

With a theatrical gesture and the remark that I should see, he opened some cages and released half a dozen cats--a Persian, a white Angora, and four commonplace tabbies, who all sprang on to the table with military precision. Madame Brand began to caress them. I, wis.h.i.+ng to show interest in the troupe, prepared to do the same; but the dwarf scurried up with a screech from the other end of the room.

_"Ne touchez pas--ne touchez pas!"_

I refrained, somewhat wonderingly, from touching. Madame Brandt explained.

"He thinks you would spoil the magnetic influence. It is a superst.i.tion of his."

"But you are touching."

"He believes I have his magnetism--whatever that may be," she said, with a smile. "Would you like to see an experiment? Anastasius!"

"Carissima."

"Is that the untamed Persian you were telling me of?" she asked, pointing to a cage from which a ferocious gigantic animal more like a woolly tiger than a tom-cat looked out with expressionless yellow eyes.

"Will you let Mr. de Gex try to make friends with it?"

"Your will is law, meine Konigin," replied Professor Papadopoulos, bowing low. "But Hephaestus is as fierce as the flames of h.e.l.l."

"See what he'll do," laughed Lola Brandt.

I approached the cage with an ingratiating, "Puss, puss!" and a hideous growl welcomed me. I ventured my hand towards the bars. The beast bristled in demoniac wrath, spat with malignant venom, and shot out its claws. If I had touched it my hand would have been torn to shreds. I have never seen a more malevolent, fierce, spiteful, ill-conditioned brute in my life. My feelings being somewhat hurt, and my nerves a bit shaken, I retreated hastily.

"Now look," said Lola Brandt.

With absolute fearlessness she went up to the cage, opened it, took the unresisting thing out by the scruff of its neck, held it up like a door-mat, and put it on her shoulder, where it forthwith began to purr like any harmless necessary cat and rub its head against her cheek. She put it on the floor; it arched its back and circling sideways rubbed itself against her skirts.

She sat down, and taking the brute by its forepaws made it stand on its hind legs. She pulled it on to her lap and it curled round lazily. Then she hoisted it on to her shoulder again, and, rising, crossed the room and bowed to the level of the cage, when the beast leaped in purring thunderously in high good humour. Mr. Papadopoulos sang out in breathless delight:

"If I am the King of Cats, you, Carissima, are the Queen. Nay, more, you are the G.o.ddess!"

Lola Brandt laughed. I did not. It was uncanny. It seemed as if some mysterious freemasonic affinity existed between her and the evil beast.

During her drive hither she had entered my own atmosphere. She had been the handsome, unconventional woman of the world. Now she seemed as remote from me as the witches in "Macbeth."

If I had seen her das.h.i.+ng Paris hat rise up into a point and her umbrella turn into a broomstick, and herself into one of the buxom carlines of "Tam O'Shanter," I should not have been surprised. The feats of the mild p.u.s.s.ies which the dwarf began forthwith to exhibit provoked in me but a polite counterfeit of enthusiasm. Lola Brandt had discounted my interest. Even his performance with the ferocious Persian lacked the diabolical certainty of Lola's handling. He locked all the other cats up and enticed it out of the cage with a piece of fish. He guided it with a small whip, as it jumped over gates and through blazing hoops, and he stood tense and concentrated, like a lion-tamer.

The act over, the cat turned and snarled and only jumped into its cage after a smart flick of the whip. The dwarf did not touch it once with his hands. I applauded, however, and complimented him. He laid his hand on his heart and bent forward in humility.

"Ah, monsieur, I am but a neophyte where Madame is an expert. I know the superficial nature of cats. Now and then without vainglory I can say I know their hearts; but Madame penetrates to and holds commune with their souls. And a cat's soul, monsieur, is a wonderful thing. Once it was divine--in ancient Egypt. Doubtless monsieur has heard of Pasht? Holy men spent their lives in approaching the cat-soul. Madame was born to the privilege. Pasht watches over her."

"Pasht," I said politely in French, in reply to this clotted nonsense, "was a great divinity. And for yourself, who knows but what you may have been in a previous incarnation the keeper of the Sacred Cats in some Egyptian temple."

"I was," he said, with staggering earnestness. "At Memphis."

"One of these days," I returned, with equal solemnity, "I hope for the privilege of hearing some of your reminiscences. They would no doubt be interesting."

On the way back Lola thanked me for pretending to take the little man seriously, and not laughing at him.

"If I hadn't," said I, "he would have stuck his knife into me."

She shook her head. "You did it naturally. I was watching you. It is because you are a generous-hearted gentleman."

Said I: "If you talk like that I'll get out and walk."

And, indeed, what right had she to characterise the moral condition of my heart? I asked her. She laughed her low, lazy laugh, but made no reply. Presently she said:

"Why didn't you like my making friends with the cat?"

"How do you know I didn't like it?" I asked.

"I felt it."

"You mustn't feel things like that," I remarked. "It isn't good for you."

She insisted on my telling her. I explained as well as I could. She touched the sleeve of my coat with her gloved hand.

"I'm glad, because it shows you take an interest in me. And I wanted to let you see that I could do something besides loll about in a drawing-room and smoke cigarettes. It's all I can do. But it's something." She said it with the humility of the Jongleur de Notre Dame in Anatole Frances's story.

In Eaton Square, where I had a luncheon engagement, she dropped me, and drove off smiling, evidently well pleased with herself. My hostess was standing by the window when I was shown into the drawing-room. I noted the faintest possible little malicious twinkle in her eye.

During the afternoon I had a telephonic message from my doctor, who asked me why I had neglected him for a fortnight and urged me to go to Harley Street at once. To humour him I went the next morning. Hunnington is a bluff, hearty fellow who feeds himself into pink floridity so as to give confidence to his patients. In answer to his renewed inquiry as to my neglect, I remarked that a man condemned to be hanged doesn't seek interviews with the judge in order to learn how the rope is getting on.

I conveyed to him politely, although he is an old friend, that I desired to forget his well-fed existence. In his chatty way he requested me not to be an a.s.s, and proceeded to put to me the usual silly questions.

Remembering the result of my last visit, I made him happy by answering them gloomily; whereupon he seized his opportunity and ordered me out of England for the winter. I must go to a warm climate--Egypt, South Africa, Madeira--I could take my choice. I flatly refused to obey. I had my duties in London. He was so unsympathetic as to d.a.m.n my duties. My duty was to live as long as possible, and my wintering in London would probably curtail my short life by two months. Then I turned on him and explained the charitable disingenuousness of my replies to his questions. He refused to believe me, and we parted with mutual recriminations. I sent him next day, however, a brace of pheasants, a present from Farfax Glenn. After all, he is one of G.o.d's creatures.

The next time I called on Lola Brandt I went with the fixed determination to make some progress in my mission. I vowed that I would not be seduced by trumpery conversation about Yokohama or allow my mind to be distracted by absurd adventures among cats. I would clothe myself in the armour of eumoiriety, and, with the sword of duty in my hand, would go forth to battle with the enchantress. All said and done, what was she but a bold-faced, strapping woman without an idea in her head save the enslavement of an impressionable boy several years her junior?

It was preposterous that I, Simon de Gex, who had beguiled and fooled an electorate of thirty thousand hard-headed men into choosing me for their representative in Parliament, should not be a match for Lola Brandt.

As for her complicated feminine personality, her intuitiveness, her magnetism, her fascination, all the qualities in fact which my poetical fancy had a.s.signed to her, they had no existence in reality. She was the most commonplace person I had ever encountered, and I had been but a sentimental lunatic.

In this truly admirable frame of mind I entered her drawing-room. She threw down the penny novel she was reading, and with a little cry of joy sprang forward to greet me.

"I'm so glad you've come. I was getting the blind hump!"

Did I not say she was commonplace? I hate this synonym for boredom.

It may be elegant in the mouth of a d.u.c.h.ess and pathetic in that of an oyster-wench, but it falls vulgarly from intermediate lips.

"What has given it to you?" I asked.

"My poor little ouist.i.ti is dead. It is this abominable climate."

I murmured condolences. I could not exhibit unreasonable grief at the demise of a sick monkey which I had never seen.

"I'm also out of books," she said, after having paid her tribute to the memory of the departed. "I have been forced to ask the servants to lend me something to read. Have you ever tried this sort of thing? You ought to. It tells you what goes on in high society."

I was sure it didn't. Not a d.u.c.h.ess in its pages talked about having a blind hump. I said gravely:

"I will ask you to lend it to me. Since Dale has been away I've had no one to make out my library list."

"Do turn Adolphus out of that chair and sit down," she said, sinking into her accustomed seat. Adolphus was the Chow dog before mentioned, an accomplished animal who could mount guard with the poker and stand on his head, and had been pleased to favour me with his friends.h.i.+p.