Thomasina

She looked out of the door, brushing away a lock of the dark red hair from her forehead and the gesture too was of one who is also clearing away cobwebs from the mind. Geordie lay there on his belly, hidden by the ferns, loving her suddenly with all his heart and he did not know why nor did he think of any spell cast upon him but only that she was there and he loved her.

The girl looked about her for a moment and then to Geordie’s surprise gave a high, clear call on two notes. For a moment, Geordie thought that the silver bell was still ringing, so clear and piercing was the call, but the sides of the metal had long ceased vibrating and it was only her throat that produced the marvellous sound.

It acted upon the buck, who came stepping nimbly out of the woods and walked slowly across half the clearing as she stood contemplating the animal out of her far-away eyes, with a rueful smile at her lips. The deer stopped and lowered its head and stood there gazing up at her mischievously and playfully so that she burst into laughter and cried – “Was it you then, at the bell again? For that you’ll be waiting for your supper –”

But the buck, as though suddenly alarmed, or sensing the presence of another, turned and bounded away into the forest. The cats came sedately forward, walking almost in tandem, and began to weave in and out of her feet. But the Scottie dog ran to the box containing the frog and began to sniff it, thus calling her attention to its presence.

She crossed the threshold then and Geordie watched her run to the box with quick, lithe steps that had in them something of the movements of the deer. She knelt, her hands folded in her lap for an instant and peered down into the box. Then she reached in and removed the wearing, injured, palpitating little creature.

She held it gently in her hand and the broken leg spilled from the side of it and hung limp. Carefully she probed it with a finger and looked into its beady yellow-green eyes and the odd space between her nose and upper lip twitched most movingly as she lifted the frog and held it to her cheek for an instant while she said: “Was it the angels or the Little Folk who brought you here to me? Poor wee frog. I’ll be doing what I can for you.” Then she arose and disappeared into the house, shutting the door after her.

The cottage slept again, its eyes tightly shut. The two cats and the dog retired whence they had come. The whirring birds quieted down. Only the squirrel in the tree who knew where Geordie was continued to scold. Geordie felt as though the greatest load he had ever known in his life had been lifted from him and he was free at last. The frog was safe and in good hands. His heart filled now almost to bursting with a new and strange kind of joy and singing, he left the shelter of the bracken, and as fast as his legs would carry him hop-skipped and jumped along the path alongside the foaming burn, downhill towards Inveranoch and home.

The same summer’s morning, Mr MacDhui, finishing with his waiting list of clients, motioned with his head to his friend Mr Peddie, who had waited until the last, to go inside with his groaning animal. He followed him remarking: “Come in, Angus. I am sorry you have had to wait for so long. These fools with their useless pets seem to take up all of my time. Well, what is the trouble? Have you been overfeeding the beast on sweets again? I warned you, did I not?” He seemed hardly aware he had included his friend in the category.

Mr Peddie, who really did not have the proper physical aspect for it, contrived to look both guilty and sheepish. He replied: “Of course you are right, Andrew, but what am I to do? He sits up and begs so prettily. He is mortally fond of sweets.” He looked fondly upon the pug dog who lay belly flat upon the enamelled examining table with an occasional belch disturbing his normal wheezing. He rolled his creamy eyes pleadingly in the direction of Mr MacDhui, who, memory and experience told him, possessed the formula to pardon over-indulgence.

The vet leaned down to smell the dog, wrinkling his nose in distaste; he probed his belly and took his temperature. “Hmph!” he grunted. “The same complaint – only aggravated …” He stuck his chin out and bristled his beard at the divine and mocked: “A man of God, you are, speaking for the Creator, and himself having no more self-control than to stuff this wretched animal with sweets to his own detriment.”

“Oh,” replied Peddie, squirming uneasily, his usually joyous moon face exhibiting the sadness of the scolded child: “Not really a man of God, though I do try. No more than an employee of His in the division of humans who must make up in love what they lack in brains and grace.” He made a deprecating gesture – “So many men, good men, go into the army, or politics, or law, He is often compelled to take what He can get.”

MacDhui grinned appreciatively and looked at his friend with affection. “Do you think He really enjoys all this sycophancy, flattery, bribery and cajoling that you chaps seem to think necessary to keep Him good-tempered and tractable?”

Mr Peddie answered immediately and with equal good humour: “If ever God inveigled Himself into error it was when He let man imagine Him in his own image, but I rather think this was man’s rather than God’s idea since it has been more flattering to the former.”

MacDhui barked like a fox, flashing his strong white teeth through the red line of his full lips. He loved the running battle with Peddie which had been going on between them ever since he had moved from Glasgow to Inveranoch at his behest, and which they carried on almost whenever and wherever they encountered one another. “Oh, no,” he said. “Then you admit that man has endowed God with a full set of his own faults and spends most of his praying time catering to them?”

The minister stroked the head of his little dog lovingly. “I suspect the real punishment for the sin in Eden,” he said, “was when He made us human, when He took away the divinity He had loaned us and made us kin and blood brothers with –” and here he nodded with his head towards the suffering pug dog – “these. You must admit the sentence contains an element of humour, something for which God is rarely given credit.”

For once Mr MacDhui was caught without a retort, for with a university cunning, his friend had suddenly made use of some of his own best arguments.

“But you won’t even admit that relationship,” the minister continued, cheerful at having extricated himself from the position where MacDhui could lecture him, “whereas I love this little fellow foolishly and consider him as important as myself when it comes to indulgence. Tell me, Andrew, do you not at all come to love these suffering animals you treat? Does not your heart break when they look at you so helplessly and trustingly?”

MacDhui turned his aggressive beard upon the pastor and regarded him with mingled truculence and pity as he replied: “Hardly. Even if I am only a vet I am still a doctor. If every doctor permitted himself to become emotionally involved with each of his patients or relatives of his patients, he would not last long. I am not sentimental, nor can I abide this indulgent affection wasted upon useless animals.” And he thrust out his beard again.

The Rev. Angus Peddie nodded his round, smooth face as though in understanding and agreement and quite suddenly attacked from another quarter. He asked: “Was there then nothing you could do as a doctor for that poor old woman’s dog – I mean Mrs Laggan’s? The one you persuaded her to have put away, and I doubt not have done so by now.”

Mr MacDhui turned as red as his hair, and his eyes grew hard and angry. “Why, has she complained to you, or said anything?”

“Do you find that so strange then? No, she did not complain, but she could not conceal her desolation. I saw her eyes as she went out. She is now all alone in the world.”

MacDhui continued defiant. “You thought I was hard on her, did you? Well, and what if I could have kept the animal alive for another three weeks, or a month, or even two? The end result would be the same. She would still be alone in the world. And besides, I offered to procure her another dog. People are always wishing me to find homes for all sorts.”

“But it was that poor, wretched, wheezy dog she loved and whose presence and friendship gave her comfort – just as this little fellow here fills a part of my life. Don’t you believe in the power of love at all to make our tour of duty here a little more bearable?”

MacDhui shrugged and did not reply. He had loved and wooed and would have devoted his life to the profession of medicine and it had been denied him. He had loved Anne MacLean, his wife, and she had been taken from him … Love was a snare and love was a danger. One was better off without it, if one could avoid it, which was not always possible, and he thought of Mary Ruadh and his love for her. Simpler perhaps to be a stick or a stone, or a tree and feel nothing.

Mr Peddie was ruminating with his brow knitted in a frown. “There must be a key, you know,” he said.

“Key to what?”

“Perhaps it IS love. The key to the relationship between man and the four-footed, the winged and the finned creatures who are his neighbours in woods, field and stream, and his brothers and sisters on earth—”

“Tosh!” snorted MacDhui. “We are all part of the gigantic cosmic accident that put us here. We all started even, you know. We developed the upright position and the thumb and they lost. Bad luck for them.”

Peddie regarded MacDhui keenly through his spectacles and said with a smile – “Ah, Angus – I did not know you had come so far already. To admit we were put here seems to me a weakening of your position you can ill afford. And who, may I ask, arranged this cosmic accident? For surely you are not so old-fashioned as to believe any longer that accidents just happen—”

“And if I ask you who, you will say God, of course.”

“Who but?”

“Anti-God. The system is wretchedly run. I could conduct it better myself.” MacDhui reached up to a shelf and took down a small bottle of medicine. The pug dog emitted a gigantic belch, struggled to its feet and sat up begging. The two men looked at one another and burst into roars of laughter.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_7c7f92c8-2222-5900-9baf-ab29ddb3496b)

I was checking a mousehole when Mary Ruadh came to take me away to go down to the quay in the town in company with Hughie Stirling to see the steamer arrive from Glasgow.

The interruption did not leave me in the best of humour for I had put in a lot of time and work on that hole and felt that I was just about to achieve results.

It was the one by the larder, the important one. I had been treating it for days and it was a nuisance being dragged off. Mousehole watching to me was duty, and I always did it thoroughly and well. All of the other things I had to do for Mary Ruadh to keep her happy and contented including submitting to being carried about by her everywhere she went were her idea and not mine.

People are inclined to forget or overlook our primary purpose in a house – and out of purely selfish reasons such as when they try to turn us into babies – and when made to live unnatural lives, we become spoiled and lazy. Even when every so often we bring them a mouse as a reminder and lay it at their feet, people are so conceited and stupid as to accept it as a personal gift, instead of realising that we are calling attention to our reason for being there and paying up for board and lodging.

I suppose you think that checking a mousehole is easy and no work at all. Well, all I can say is YOU try it sometime. Get down on your hands and knees and remain in that position, concentrating and staring at one little hole in the wainscoting for hours at a time, while simultaneously pretending that you are not. Checking a mousehole isn’t just giving it a sniff and going away as a dog would do. On the contrary. If you are as conscientious and dutiful as I am, it is a full-time job, particularly if there are two or three or you suspect one of them of having two entrances.

It isn’t catching mice, mind you, that is the most necessary. Anyone can catch a mouse; it is no trick at all; it is putting them off and keeping them down that is important. You will hear sayings like – “The only good mouse is a dead mouse,” but that is only half of it. The only good mouse is the mouse that isn’t there at all. What you must do if you are at all principled about your work, is to conduct a war of nerves on the creatures. This calls for both time, energy and a good deal of cleverness, which I wouldn’t begrudge if I wasn’t expected to do so many other things besides.

Just to give you an idea of what mousehole watching entails, after you have located and charted them and decided which ones are active and which extinct, you select one and go there, but, of course, never twice at the same time exactly. A mouse is no fool and soon learns to time you if you are regular. I find that hunch and instinct, or just plain feline know-how are the best things to guide you. You just KNOW at a certain moment; it comes over you as in a dream that THAT is the time to go there.

Well, first you take two or three sniffs and then settle down in front of it and stare for a while. If the mouse is in, he or she can’t get out, and if they are out they can’t get home. Either way it is worrying. And so for the first hour you just remain there staring. At the same time, when you get used to it you find that you can think about all sorts of other things, make plans, or wish, or remember who you were, or what happened to an ancestor thousands and thousands of generations ago, or perhaps think about what there is going to be for supper.

THEN, suddenly you close both eyes and pretend that you are asleep. Now, this is the most important and delicate part of the entire operation, for now you may rely only upon your ears and the receiving antennae at the ends of your whiskers. For this is when the mouse, if it is out, will try to get in, or try to get out if it is in, and just at the psychological moment when it thinks it has you, you open one eye.

I can promise you that the effect upon the mouse of finding itself suddenly stared at by that single eye of yours is absolutely tremendous. I am not sure what it is exactly, unless it is to be confronted with the evidence that you actually need only one eye to watch while the other one sleeps that is so upsetting to the mouse, but there it is. A few doses of that and it is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Its nervousness soon communicates itself to its family, they hold a consultation and decide to move away.

This is the manner in which any responsible member of our species handles the mouse problem in the household, but as you can see it calls for technique, practice and time; above all, time. I managed to keep the house reasonably clear in spite of all the other things I had to do, room and parcel inspection, washing, exchanging news with the neighbours and looking after Mary Ruadh, for which, of course, I got no thanks or appreciation at all from Mr MacDhui, and little more from Mrs McKenzie, from whom I had to listen to such complaints as – “Och, ye lazy Thomasina. The mice have been at the larder again. Do ye then no ken a moosie when ye see yin?” – which was supposed to be very cutting and sarcastic, but, of course, rolled right off my back.

So there I was, just settled down to put the cap on three solid days of nerve war, when Hughie Stirling came whistling outside the house, and the next thing I knew, Mary Ruadh, in a blue pinafore with blue socks and blue shoes, was picking me up and carrying me off through the town down to the quay. I had never been there before at steamboat time.

Hughie Stirling was the Laird’s son. He was almost ten, but already tall for his age. He lived in the Manor, whose grounds reached almost to the back of our house, and he was a great friend to Mary Ruadh.

You can have boys, for my part. I find them nasty, dirty, cruel, in the main, and unkind and heartless to boot, selfish little beasts, but I must admit that Hughie Stirling was different. He managed to keep himself clean and had a kind of noble look about him with a lean face, dark, wavy hair and light blue eyes, the far-seeing kind.

Mary Ruadh tagged after him whenever she could, or he would let her, which was quite often, for he seemed to like to look after her. Most boys of that age will have no part of little girls at any price, but a few, like Hughie, seem to like having them about, particularly if they have no sisters. They watch over them, picking them up, brushing them off and wiping away their tears when they fall or hurt themselves, and see to it that their noses are blown when it is necessary. Like Mary Ruadh, Hughie was an only child and so he liked to borrow her occasionally and, of course, I went along over Mary Ruadh’s arm, for she would not go without me. Hughie never seemed to mind this and appeared to understand it and not think it curious. Perhaps he appreciated my worth. I am not surprised to find this attitude in one of the aristocracy.

If I could live my own life, that is to say, if I were not ‘house’, I should move to the waterfront and spend the days sitting on the jetties in the sun, sniffing the tar in the ropes with which the boats are made fast, and when the fishermen’s skiffs came in I would strut along the granite flagstones of the quay with my tail a-quivering in the air and go down to greet them and see what they had brought in from the sea.

Next to lavender, I think the smells I like best are those of the sea, boats and piles of old oilskins, sweaters, gear and tackle and rubber boots in the boathouses, and the beautiful smell of fish; fish and seaweed, crab and lobster and the green sea-scum that fastens to the grey stone landing steps. And there is a wonderful odour by the sea in the very early morning too, when the sun has not yet pierced through the mists and everything is soggy with damp and dew and salt.