Читать книгу Circular Saws - Humbert Wolfe - Страница 14

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AT about half-past eleven on a summer evening there might have been observed, wending her way slowly along the Rue du Soleil Levant into the Cour de St. Pierre at Geneva, a small black kitten with her tail straight up. There was nobody in the cobbled square except the beech-tree in the middle with a wooden seat round him. The kitten, who was being brought up on a severely anti-religious basis, doubted whether the tree might not have been influenced by the cathedral window, in whose shadow he had dreamed summer and winter for more than a hundred years. She was therefore on the point of slipping into a most engaging gutter of stone, like a deep mouse-track, that leads past the chapel of Calvin to the railings that overlook the Passage des Degrés des Poules.

But the beech wasn’t going to stand that. On the contrary! He dropped one little fidgety brown leaf—puff!—between the kitten’s paws, who, throwing religious prejudice to the winds, played with it as enchantingly as though it had been a convert to Epistemological Radicalism.

Then the moon looked over the crooked gables into the square, and proceeded to light her cold lamp in all the dark cathedral windows. But the beech rustled her leaves warningly at her. “What is it?” said the moon, and then she saw the little black kitten dancing with the leaf on the cobbles. “Who is your little black faun of a friend?” she inquired of the beech. “I don’t know her name,” said the beech, “but she certainly dances extremely well.”

At this point the kitten stopped abruptly and said a little harshly, “What are you two old ones whispering about?” “We were remembering,” said the beech, who was a kindly old fellow, “the time when we also danced with our shadows in the joy of our youth.” “How can that be?” said the kitten impatiently. “The moon never was young, and you never had but one leg, and that stuck in the ground. You are telling me fairy tales, and I have no patience with them. Let me tell you my dancing is merely automatic muscular reaction.” “Dear me,” said the moon mildly, “what long words that child uses! But tell me, little one, if you don’t like fairy tales, you won’t want to hear the story of the cat and the fiddle.” “Does it observe the dramatic unities?” inquired the kitten. “I don’t know what they are,” said the moon, “but it has a moral.” “Which is more than you have, you little wretch,” said the beech severely. “Oh well,” said the kitten ungraciously, “I suppose I must hear it, though I expect that it will be representational.”

“Once upon a time,” said the moon, “there was a cat that had the soul of a musician. But when she tried to render her thoughts into sound she excited no sympathetic response. On the contrary, people threw boots and bottles at her. ‘I do not care,’ said the cat, ‘my songs are for posterity.’ But nevertheless the constant succession of missiles disturbed her.”

“It is my considered opinion,” interrupted the kitten, “that she was no artist. The best art rejects appreciation.”

“So the dog said,” observed the moon, “when he was chasing the cat up the tree with yells of derision. But the cat was not comforted.

“Finally one day as she wandered disconsolate through a field she met a very tragic cow lowing, as it seemed to the cat, with a mild haunting beauty. When she came up with the cow the cat observed that her eyes were streaming with tears. ‘How is it,’ said the cat, ‘that you who are notoriously as unmusical as a milk-can can low with a beauty that brings tears to your own eyes.’ ‘It is not my music that brings tears to my eyes, but my lost calf. And let me tell you, cat, that till you also play on the strings of your own heart you will never make music.’”

“This is very affecting,” said the beech-tree; “and very untrue,” added the kitten.

“The cat resolved this dark saying till one day she heard in the dining-room the delicate symphony of a spoon upon a china plate. Presently the sound ceased and the cat jumped upon the table to investigate. ‘How is it,’ said she to the empty dish, ‘that you make such exquisite music though you are nothing but baked clay?’ ‘It is the loss of the beautiful jelly that adorned me that sings,’ said the dish, ‘and let me tell you, cat, that till you also play upon the strings of your own heart you will never make music.’

“‘This is very strange,’ thought the cat, but she continued nevertheless to sing as before without sympathetic response. Till at last an angry old gentleman obtained a gun and shot the cat dead.”

“This story is in very bad taste,” said the kitten.

“I think she richly deserved it,” said the beech.

“Wait a minute,” said the moon, “the story is not finished. An old poor maker of fiddle-strings found the cat on his way home. And about a month later a young fiddler of the country called upon him to buy some strings. ‘These are the best I have ever made,’ said the old man. That night,” went on the moon, “the fiddler played under a window of a high house in the Place de la Taconnerie an old German tune, ‘Einst o wunder.’ And now no one threw boots and missiles, but out of a high lattice fell a white rose.”

“That is a very beautiful story,” said the beech, “and now I am almost sorry for the cat.” “You need not be,” said the moon; “even if her life was short her art”—“was in the right place,” rudely interjected the impertinent kitten. “But what I want to know is, who shot the fiddler?” “I am afraid,” replied the moon, “that I must be going about my business.”