THE CAT AND THE MOUSE
WILLIAM’S signal failure as a student of science was not due to any lack of interest. It was due to excess of zeal rather than to lack of zeal. William liked to experiment. He liked to experiment with his experiments. He liked to put in one or two extra things and see what happened. He liked to heat things when he was not told to heat them just to see what happened. And strange things happened. On several occasions William was deprived of his eyebrows and front hair. William in this condition felt proud of himself. He felt that everyone who saw him must imagine him to be the hero of some desperate adventure. He cultivated a stern frown with his hairless eyebrows. Old Stinks the Science Master rather liked William. He kept him in for hours in the lab. after school washing up innumerable test tubes and cleaning the benches as atonement for his unauthorised experiments; but he would generally stay there himself, as well, smoking by the fire and drawing from William his views on life in general. On more than one occasion he gravely accepted from William the peace offering of a liquorice stick. In spite of William’s really well-meant efforts, Old Stinks generally had to re-wash all the test tubes and other implements when William had gone. Occasionally he invited William to tea and sat fascinated at the sight of the vast amount of nourishment that William’s frame seemed able to assimilate. In return William lent him his original stories and plays to read (for William rather fancied himself as an author and had burnt much midnight candle over “The Hand of Deth” and “The Tru Story of an Indian Brave”). It is not too much to say that “Stinks” enjoyed these far more than he did many works of better known authors.
But this term, Old Stinks, having foolishly contracted Scarlet Fever on the last day of the holidays, was absent and his place was taken by Mr. Evelyn Courtnay, an elegant young man with spats, very sleek hair and a microscopic moustache. From the moment he first saw him William felt that Mr. Evelyn Courtnay was the sort of man who would dislike him intensely. His fears were not ill-founded. Mr. Courtnay disliked William’s voice and William’s clothes and William’s appearance. He disliked everything about William. It is only fair to add that this dislike was heartily reciprocated by William. William, however, was quite willing to lie low. It was Mr. Courtnay who opened the campaign. He set William a hundred lines for overbalancing on his stool in an attempt to regain a piece of his litmus paper that had been taken with felonious intent by his vis-à-vis. When William expostulated he increased it to three hundred. When William, turning back to his desk and encountering a whiff of hydrochloric acid gas of his neighbour’s manufacture, sneezed, he increased it to four hundred. Then came a strange time for William. William had previously escaped scot free for most of his crimes. Now to his amazement and indignation he found himself in the unfamiliar position of a scapegoat. Any disturbance in William’s part of the room was visited on William and quite occasionally William was not guilty of it. Mr. Evelyn Courtnay, having taken a dislike to William, gratified his dislike to the full. Most people considered that this was very good for William, but it was a view that was not shared by William himself. He wrote lines in most of his spare time and made a thorough and systematic study of Mr. Courtnay. Silently he studied his habits and his mode of life and his character. He did this because he had a vague idea that Fate might some day deliver his enemy into his hand.
William rarely trusted Fate in vain.... He gleaned much of his knowledge of the ways of Mr. Courtnay from Eliza, Mr. Courtnay’s maid who occasionally spent the evening with Ellen, the Brown’s housemaid.
“’Is aunt’s comin’ to dine wif ’im to-morrer night,” said Eliza one evening.
William, who was whittling sticks in the back garden near the open kitchen door, put his penknife in his pocket, scowled and began to listen.
“Yes, it’s goin’ to be a set out an’ no mistake,” went on Eliza. “From what I makes out ’e’s expectin’ of money from ’er an’—oh my! the fuss—such a set out of a dinner an’ all! I can’t abide a young man what fusses to the hextent ’e does. An’ ’e sez the larst time she ’ad dinner wif ’im she seed a mouse an’ screamed the place down an’ went orf in an ’uff so there’s got to be mousetraps down in the dining room all night before she comes as well as all the hother fuss.”
“Well, I never!” said Ellen.
William took out his penknife and moved away in search of fresh sticks to whittle.
But he moved away thoughtfully.
******
The next morning William had a Science lesson. He was still thoughtful. Mr. Evelyn Courtnay was jocular and facetious. In the course of a few jocular remarks to the front row he said, “The feline species is as abhorrent to me as it was to the great Napoleon. Contact with it destroys my nerve entirely.”
“What’s he mean?” whispered William to his neighbour.
“He means he don’t like cats,” said William’s neighbour.
“Well, why don’t he say so then?” said William scornfully.
Someone near William dropped a test tube. Mr. Courtnay turned his languid eye upon William.
“A hundred lines, Brown,” he said pleasantly.
“It wasn’t me what did it, sir,” said William indignantly.
“Two hundred,” said Mr. Courtnay.
“Well!” gasped William in outraged innocence.
“Four hundred,” said Mr. Courtnay.
William was too infuriated to reply. He angrily mixed two liquids from the nearest bottles and heated them over his bunsen burner to relieve his feelings. There was a loud report. William blinked and wiped something warm off his face. His hand was bleeding from the broken glass.
Mr. Courtnay watched from a distance.
“Six hundred,” he said as William took a bit of test tube from his hair, “and to be done before Saturday, please.”
“Don’t do ’em,” said Ginger as he walked homeward with William.
“Yes,” said William bitterly, “an’ that means go to the Head an’ you know what that means.”
“Well, Douglas ’n Henry ’n me’ll all help,” said Ginger.
William’s countenance softened, then became sphinx-like.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve thought of a better plan than that but thanks all the same.”
******
“CATCH THE MOUSE,”
SCREAMED MISS FELICIA.
“GET DOWN AND CATCH
THAT MOUSE!”
William walked slowly down the road. One hand was in his pocket. The other held a covered basket. He approached with a stern frown and many cautious glances around him the house of Mr. Evelyn Courtnay. He entered the back gate warily. His entry did not suggest the welcome guest or even anyone who had the right of entry. There was something distinctly furtive about it. He made his way round to the house by the wall behind the bushes. He peeped in at the dining-room window. The perspiring Eliza was engaged in putting the last touches to the dining table. He peeped into the drawing-room window. There sat Mr. Evelyn Courtnay in the most elegant of elegant dress suits, engaged in the process of charming his aunt, Miss Felicia Courtnay. Miss Felicia Courtnay was elderly and grim and not very susceptible to charm, but her nephew was doing his best. Through the open window William could hear plainly.
“Oh yes, I get on splendidly, Aunt. I’m so fond of children—devoted to them. In some ways, of course, teaching is a waste of my talents, but on the whole—”
It was here that William drew his hand from his pocket and noiselessly deposited something on the floor through the open window. The something scuttled along the floor by the skirting board. William withdrew into the shadow. Suddenly a piercing scream came from within.
“It’s a mouse, Evelyn! Help! Help! HELP!”
More screams followed.
William peeped in at the window and enjoyed the diverting spectacle of Miss Felicia Courtnay standing on a chair holding up her skirts and screaming, and of Mr. Evelyn Courtnay on his knees with the poker in one hand, trying to reach the mouse who had taken refuge beneath a very low sofa. It was at that moment that William took Terence from the basket and deposited him upon the floor. Now Terence, William’s cat, though he disliked William intensely, was of a sociable disposition. He found himself in a strange room with a fire upon the hearth. He liked fires. He did not like the basket in which he had just made his journey with William. He did not wish to go in the basket again. He wished to stay in the room. He decided that the best policy was to make up to the occupants of the room in the hopes that they would allow him to sit on the hearthrug in front of the fire. He approached the only occupant he could see. Terence may have known that there was a mouse in the room or he may not. He was not interested. He was a lover of comfort only. He was no mouser.
MR. EVELYN COURTNAY SPRANG UP WITH A YELL AND
LEAPT UPON THE GRAND PIANO. “THE BRUTE TOUCHED
ME!” HE SHOUTED.
Mr. Evelyn Courtnay, who was now lying at full length on the floor trying to look beneath the low sofa, felt suddenly something soft and warm and furry and purring rub itself hard against his face. He sprang up with a yell and leapt upon the grand piano.
“The brute!” he screamed. “The brute! It touched me.”
The episode seemed to have driven him into a state closely bordering on lunacy.
William’s cat purred ingratiatingly at the foot of the grand piano.
“Catch the mouse!” screamed Miss Felicia Courtnay. “Get down and catch the mouse!”
“I can’t while that brute’s in the room,” screamed Mr. Evelyn Courtnay from the grand piano. “I can’t—I tell you. I can’t bear ’em. It touched me!”
“You coward! I’m going to faint in a minute.”
“So am I, I tell you. I can’t get down. It’s looking at me.”
“I shall never forget this—never! You brute—you—you—tyrant——”
“I shan’t either. Go away, you nasty beast, go away!”
At that moment two things happened. The mouse put its little whiskered head out of its retreat to reconnoitre and Terence, determined to make friends with this new and strange acquaintance, leapt upon the grand piano on to the very top of Mr. Evelyn Courtnay. Two screams rent the air—one a fine soprano, one a fine tenor.
“I can see it. Oh, this will kill me!”
“Get down, you brute. Get down!”
At this critical moment William entered like a deus ex machina. He swooped down upon the mouse before it realised what was happening, caught it by its tail and dropped it through the open window. Then he picked up Terence and did the same with him. Miss Felicia Courtnay, tearful and trembling, descended from her chair and literally fell upon William’s neck.
“Oh you brave boy!” she sobbed. “You brave boy! What should I have done without you?”
“I happened to see you through the window trying to catch the mouse,” said William, looking at her with an inscrutable expression and wide innocent eyes, “an’ I di’n’ want to disturb you by comin’ in myself so I just put the cat in an’ when I saw that wasn’t no good I jus’ come in myself.”
Mr. Evelyn Courtnay had descended hastily from his grand piano and was smoothing his hair with both hands and glaring at William.
“Thank the dear little boy, Evelyn,” said Miss Felicia giving her nephew a cold glance. “I don’t know what I should have done without his protection. He practically saved my life.”
Mr. Evelyn Courtnay glared still more ferociously at William and muttered threateningly.
“A little child rushing in where grown men fear to tread,” misquoted Miss Felicia sententiously, still beaming fondly at William. “He must certainly stay to dinner after that.”
Mr. Evelyn Courtnay, to his fury, had to provide William with a large meal to which William did full justice, munching in silence except when Miss Felicia’s remarks demanded an answer. Miss Felicia ignored her nephew and talked with fond and grateful affection to William only. It was William who volunteered the information that her nephew taught him Science.
“I hope he’s kind to you,” said Miss Felicia.
William gave her a pathetic glance like one who wishes to avoid a dark and painful subject.
“I—I expect he means to be,” he said sadly.
William departed immediately after dinner. He seldom risked an anticlimax. He possessed the artistic instinct. Mr. Evelyn Courtnay accompanied him to the door.
“No need to talk of this, my boy,” said Mr. Courtnay with elaborate nonchalance.
William made no answer.
“And no need to do those lines,” said Mr. Courtnay.
“Thank you,” said William. “Good-night.”
He walked briskly down the road. He’d enjoyed the evening. Its only drawback was that he could never tell anyone about it. For William, with all his faults, was a sportsman.
But he’d scored! He’d scored! He’d scored!
And Old Stinks was coming back next week!
Unable to restrain his feelings, William turned head over heels in the road.