Kitabı oku: «The Rambles of a Rat», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XXI
A NEW KIND OF WATCH-DOG
What a rubbing of noses ensued! after all my travels and perils it was such joy to see again the face of a friend! I had so much also to relate, (I have ever been a loquacious rat,) that I almost lost breath in my long narration. I wound up my account with a description of the last adventure of Whiskerandos, who was now, in my eyes, ten times more a hero than before.
“And now that I have told you my news,” said I, “let’s hear a little of yours. In the first place, where is old Oddity?”
Bright-eyes hung down his head, and drooped his long tail in a touching and melancholy manner. Such conduct in so lively a rat showed me at once that my last surviving brother was dead!
“How did it happen?” was all that I could say.
“Not a week after our arrival in these parts, he was caught in a hay-rick by a farmer!” faltered Bright-eyes. “I saw him seized by the neck, I heard his despairing cry; I could not stay to see the poor fellow killed, and I was afraid of sharing his fate, so I made off as fast as I could.”
“Poor Oddity!” sighed I very mournfully, “never was there an uglier nor a better-hearted rat! Ah! what pleasure I vainly promised to myself in relating to you all my adventures! I have been across the deep waters, encountered various perils, now in danger of being cooked in a pie, now shivering on a barrel in the ocean, and yet here am I safe and sound after all; while you, remaining quietly in England, have ignominiously perished in a hay-rick!”
Whiskerandos, who, being a brown rat, could not be expected to feel the same regret as myself, now turned towards Bright-eyes, and asked him how far we were from London – “For I long to be back in my old quarters,” said he.
“A fortnight’s journey for a rat, should he travel by land,” replied Bright-eyes: “we came down very comfortably in a river boat, which carried us to within five miles of this spot.”
“I have had enough of water for some time,” said Whiskerandos; “and now that the fields are full of ripe corn, and the gardens of fruit, nothing so pleasant as a journey by land! What say you, friend Ratto?” inquired he.
“I have no mind for a long journey either by land or by sea,” replied I in a melancholy tone; “I’ll keep company with you for a day or two, Whiskerandos, but I would rather not return now to London. I will settle quietly for a time in the country near the spot where poor Oddity died!”
“And you?” said Whiskerandos, turning to Bright-eyes.
The lively rat shook his ears with all his natural vivacity. “Pardon me,” he cried, “but I’m of Oddity’s opinion, – heroes like Sir Whiskerandos are the very worst travelling companions in the world! How Ratto has escaped with his life I cannot imagine, but I shall certainly not try the experiment of following your fortunes for an hour! I’ve no fancy to be baked in a pie, or starved on a barrel, crushed by a drosky, or worried by a dog, drowned in a sack, or suspended by my tail! No, no, valiant Whiskerandos, I’m quite content to admire your courage at a distance, but I don’t want to share your exploits, and would rather have my ears than your fame!”
And off skipped the merry little rat, before we could say a word to stay him.
Whiskerandos and I, being weary enough with the adventures through which we had passed, slept for the greater part of that day in the field, and wandered about during the night in a not vain search for food.
The next day was remarkably hot. It was the season of harvest, and we felt the necessity of keeping quietly concealed, as many men, and women also, were busily engaged in the fields. The heat, however, produced thirst, and no water was near in which we could quench it.
“I say, Ratto,” observed Whiskerandos, “do you see yonder object, near that sheaf, that glitters so brightly in the sun?”
“It is a can,” replied I, “doubtless belonging to one of the reapers.”
“I should not wonder if there were a hunch of bread and cheese beside it,” said Whiskerandos.
“I should not be surprised if there were.”
Whiskerandos remained for a minute in silence, then said, “I want to compare English beer with Russian kwas.”
“You are not going into the field!” I cried in alarm.
“I am going, – why, there is nothing to fear; there is not a reaper near, and if there were, he would need to be a sharp fellow who could catch a rat in an open field!”
So the daring fellow went on his way, and I, after peeping cautiously on this side and that, to make sure that no human being could see us in the stubble, hurried after my companion, being to the full as curious as himself to make acquaintance with the contents of the can.
There was a bundle of something beside it, tied up in a large red handkerchief, something of a very inviting odour. But scarcely had Whiskerandos, who was foremost, touched the reaper’s dinner with the end of his whiskers, when something jumped up suddenly from behind the bundle, and the voice of a rat fiercely exclaimed, – “Keep off, or I’ll bite you!”
Whiskerandos looked surprised at the unexpected defiance, but my feelings of amazement can scarcely be conceived when I recognised, (could it be!) the dumpy form, blunt head, and piebald skin of my lost brother Oddity!
I rushed forward with a squeak of delight! No doubt, though less eager and excited in his manner, Oddity also was greatly pleased at meeting with his brother again. He looked, however, suspiciously from the handkerchief to Whiskerandos, and again desired him to “keep off,” with a resolution of which I had never dreamed the piebald rat capable.
“What is in that bundle, that you guard it so carefully?” said I, after we had rubbed noses again and again, with every expression of affection.
“The property of my master,” replied my brother.
“Master!” exclaimed both Whiskerandos and I in amazement, “who ever heard of the master of a rat! Since when have you taken upon yourself the office of a watch-dog, to guard what belongs to our enemy, man?”
“Since man first showed mercy to one of the race of Mus, since he spared a defenceless rat when in his power. I know you, Whiskerandos, I know you,” continued Oddity, the hairs bristling up on his back, as my companion, either in jest or earnest, took the corner of the handkerchief between his sharp teeth: “you are reckoned a hero amongst rats, but I too can fight in defence of what is confided to my charge; you have killed a ferret, and you may kill me, but while I have a tooth in my jaw, or a drop of blood in my body, you shall not touch a crumb belonging to my master!”
Whiskerandos would have been more than a match for three Odditys, for the piebald one had neither his strength, nor agility, nor experience in fighting; but the strong rat seemed at this juncture to have no inclination to give battle to the weak one. I hope that it will be considered no sign of cowardice on his part, that he quietly dropped the corner of the handkerchief, and never even attempted to examine the contents of the can.
Of course I was all curiosity to know every particular of my brother’s deliverance. In his own quiet, homely way, he told me his simple tale, keeping, however, all the time, a watchful eye upon the bundle beside him, while Whiskerandos acted the part of a sentinel to give me timely warning if any human being should approach so near as to endanger our safety. I will tell the story of Oddity as nearly as I can in his own words, I only wish that I could describe the expression of his bluff, honest face, at various parts of his narration.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FARMER AND HIS BRIDE
“I was caught one evening in a hay-rick. A swift-footed creature like you, Whiskerandos, might perhaps have escaped, but I was never remarkable for agility or speed. I felt a strong hand grasping me by the back of my neck, and I gave myself up for lost.
“‘Well, here’s an odd creature, – a piebald rat! I take it that’s quite a curiosity!’ cried the farmer who held me in his grasp. I expected that he would dash me against the wall the next moment, and then set his heel upon my poor body!
“‘I wonder whether Mary ever saw the like of it before,’ he continued, examining me with attention; ‘I’ll put it in the empty wire-cage, and try if I cannot tame it for her.’
“Here was a reprieve, and a most unexpected one. No one who has not believed himself to be just on the point of being smashed, can tell how glad I was when I was set loose from the farmer’s terrible gripe, though only to find myself in a cage!
“But soon the longing for liberty came. I attempted to gnaw through the wires, but they resisted my utmost efforts. The farmer watched me, spoke to me, gave me food – treated me like a creature that could feel. That man has a gentle and kindly heart! At length I grew accustomed to my master, and to see him approach my prison with food was the only pleasure of my life. He ventured his finger between the bars, and I never attempted to bite it. He released me at last from my cage, and gave me a far warmer, snugger home – in the pocket of his own great-coat!”
At this point in the story Whiskerandos and I uttered expressions of amazement.
“Wherever he went,” continued Oddity, “I went too. He taught me many things altogether new to a rat. It is our nature to take what we can get, – he taught me to see food and not to touch it! He never suffered me to feel hungry: he conversed with me as though I were a little companion, and never one blow did I receive from his hand, or one kick from his heel! It was not in the nature of a quadruped to be insensible to kindness like this!”
“And yet you owed it all to your piebald coat!” exclaimed I. “Never was beauty such an advantage to a four-footed beast as ugliness has been to you!”
“I found,” pursued Oddity very quietly, “that Will Grange, my master, was going to London, to be married to the young woman whom he had spoken of as Mary. We travelled to the city together, I snugly sleeping, coiled up in his pocket.”
“And were you given to the lady?” said Whiskerandos.
“I was placed before her on a table, in a quiet little back-parlour, in which she and my master sat together. She admired my appearance.”
“No, no!” interrupted I, “that’s impossible, I can believe anything but that!”
“Well, then, she wished to gratify my master by appearing to do so. She praised me, and fed me from her hand, and said that such a rat she never had seen in her life. Then I crept under my master’s chair, and there very quietly remained, while he and his Mary talked over future plans together.
“He told her of the various things that he had bought to make his home more comfortable for his wife. How he had planted the garden himself with all her favourite flowers, and twined honeysuckle over his porch. Then he took her hand within his own, and in a lower and softer voice asked her if she were happy.
“‘Very happy,’ she replied, looking on the ground, while her cheek grew like a cloud at sunrise; ‘only I cannot help feeling sorry,’ – her voice trembled a little as she spoke, – ‘sorry to leave father, and home, and the dear children in the ragged school whom I have taught so long!’ I fancy,” continued my brother, “that something like a dewdrop glistened on her lashes.
“‘Well, Mary,’ said the farmer heartily, ‘father will come and see us; and as for your old home, why, you get a new one in exchange, and fair exchange is no robbery, you know. Then for your ragged children, why, I’m wanting an active, steady boy on my farm, and though I’ve no great fancy for your pale-faced Londoners, yet if you know any really good one, we’ll take him down with us into Kent.’
“You should have seen how much pleased the young teacher looked! She knew one, she said, a poor motherless boy, – she would be so glad to give him a helping hand. He was one of the best boys in the school, – she would trust him in a room full of gold!
“So it was agreed between them that she should speak to the lad, and tell him to call in the evening.
“In the evening he accordingly came. I had again taken my place under the farmer’s chair, and was just falling into a doze, when I was roused by a gentle knock at the door. Mary’s cheerful ‘Come in!’ was followed by the entrance of, – whom do you think?”
“Bob and Billy!” I exclaimed at a venture.
“Yes, Bob and Billy!” repeated Oddity, with a look of great glee; “I had never thought to have seen them again! And they were so changed, I should scarcely have known them. Bob, in particular, looked so much taller, and stronger, and oh! so much happier than he had done last year! He was no more the wretched, joyless, hopeless creature, cowering in rags, one that even rats might look on with pity; he had a bright, fearless eye, and hopeful smile; and if ever a face expressed gratitude and affection, it was his when he looked on his gentle young teacher!
“‘I beg pardon for bringing Billy,’ said he, modestly but frankly, ‘I was afraid to let him go home quite alone.’
“The farmer spoke in his kindly manner to the boy. He offered him a place on his farm, and Bob’s eyes sparkled, and his cheek flushed with pleasure. It was but for a minute; the brightness and the glow faded away as he glanced down at his little lame brother. I saw that Billy was squeezing his hand, – that squeeze served all the purpose of words.
“‘Thank ’ee, sir,’ said the boy, glancing first at the farmer, then at his teacher, ‘but I think as how – I should rather – leastways I had better stay and earn my bread here in Lunnon.’
“‘And how do you earn it?’ inquired the farmer.
“‘Please, sir, I clean boots,’6 answered the boy; ‘I am one of the yellow brigade.’
“There was such a look of cheerful independence on the little fellow’s face, that no one could have glanced at him and doubted that his bread was honestly earned.
“‘And would you rather stay here and rub in blacking,’ said the farmer, ‘than be out in the open fields? Yours is an odd taste, I take it! Would you not rather come with us?’
“‘Oh, sir!’ said Bob, uneasily, shifting from one foot to the other, while Billy was squeezing his hand harder than ever, and looking half ready to cry, as he pressed closer to his side; ‘you see I could not leave him behind, – poor lame Billy, he’s no one to care for him but me.’
“‘That’s it, is it!’ cried the farmer, clapping his knee. ‘Well, Mary, what say you? could we take the two with us do you think? If they’ve always been together, poor fellows, ’twould be a pity to part them now!’
“Bob’s only answer was a look of pleasure and gratitude, but little Billy almost burst into tears of delight as he exclaimed, ‘Oh, yes! please, sir, take me too! – take me too! I’ll do anything, – I’ll work, – I’ll make baskets for your fruit.’
“‘And coops for my poultry, hey? We’ll find some way of making you useful.’ And he turned to Mary with that smile which I think that all human beings wear when they are doing some act of kindness.
“I was so much pleased,” continued Oddity, “at this conclusion to the affair, that I ran out from my place beneath the chair. Billy uttered a cry of surprise:
“‘There – look! if that an’t my own pretty spotted rat!’”
Here I rather rudely interrupted my piebald brother. “Pretty! did he call you pretty? well, well, I shall be obliged to think you so myself, I suppose. Spared by a man, petted by a woman, admired by a child, – and all for your beauty, – Oddity’s beauty!” I could not help laughing outright at the thought.
“My ugliness has at least done me no harm,” he replied, with a meekness which made me more ashamed of my rudeness than if he had fired up at my ridicule.
“And so you live all together here?” said Whiskerandos; “this farmer, his wife, the two boys, and you?”
“Yes, and we are as happy as the day is long.”
“Humph!” said Whiskerandos; “I should prefer my wild freedom; but it is different, I suppose, with man. And as for you, Oddity, you were never like other rats; you were always intended for a watch-dog. And you really guard that can and parcel for hours, and resist the temptation to nibble?”
“I am trusted,” was the simple reply.
“Now, Oddity,” said I, “I should much like to see you in your new home, surrounded by all your human companions.”
“Yonder is my master’s house,” answered Oddity, pointing across the field with his nose. “You have but to clamber up to the window in the evening, and peep through the clustering roses, and you will see us all there together.”
“I’ll have a peep,” said Whiskerandos, “and then off to old London again!”
“You must take nothing from my master’s house,” cried Oddity.
“Not a potato paring!” laughed our valiant companion.
“And now I would advise you to be off,” said my brother; “here’s my master coming for his dinner.”
Away we scampered at full speed, my light-footed comrade and I; for well we knew what was certain to be our fate if caught even by the kind-hearted farmer. We were only rats after all.
CHAPTER XXIII
A PEEP THROUGH THE ROSES
That night, when the round harvest moon was throwing her soft light on the earth, we climbed up the rose-tree by the window, and, quietly pushing aside the fragrant flowers, peeped in upon such a scene as rarely meets the eye of a rat.
There was a neat little kitchen, with a sanded floor and white-washed walls, so clean, so perfectly clean, that not even the sharp eyes of the race of Mus could have detected a speck upon them. Rows of plates lined the shelves on the wall, pans burnished till they shone like silver, a framed sampler hung over the mantelpiece, and a large clock merrily ticked behind the door. Near the wide hearth there was a table, on which a substantial supper was spread on a cloth white as new-fallen snow.
Round this table were seated the farmer, his wife, and our two old friends, Bob and Billy, in their clean smock-frocks, with country roses on their once sickly and sunken cheeks. One might have read Will Grange’s character in his kind, honest face; and his wife looked like a morning in May, all sweetness, brightness, and beauty, – such beauty as is not merely skin-deep.
The farmer tapped gaily on the table, and at the signal, Oddity, whom I had not at first perceived, clambered up to his knee, and from thence jumped on the cloth, to be fed from his master’s hand. He made his round of the party, – every one had something to give him; and I heard the merry voice of Billy as he patted his favourite’s snub nose, – “He’s a pretty little fellow! now, an’t he? I wonder what’s become of the old blind rat that he used to lead about in the shed?”
“Whiskerandos,” said I, pensively, to my companion, “I could almost wish myself in Oddity’s place!”
“So do not I,” he replied quickly, as he turned from the window. “One rat in ten millions may be petted and trusted, and show himself worthy of the trust; but our race was never intended by nature to hold the position of lap-dogs or cats.”
“And are we always to be hated by the lords of creation, never to be useful to man?”
“We are useful to man,” said my companion.
“Ah! in those places where he bakes us in pies, or makes hats or glove-thumbs of our poor skins. But in London – ”
“When you join me in London I will show you, friend Ratto, how, by acting the part of a scavenger, and clearing away that which, if left, would poison the air, the race of Mus does good service to man.”
“Little man thanks us for it!” cried I.
“Well, Bob,” said the farmer, as he leant back in his chair, and watched, with an air of amusement, his piebald favourite nibbling at a nut, “is it true what my good wife here tells me, that the post this morning actually brought a letter for you?”
“From Master Neddy,” exclaimed Bob, with sparkling eyes.
“He’s come back from Russy, and so has his father, and they’re so glad to be in old England again,” cried Billy, as in old times the most ready to speak. “The letter was sent first to the school, – the dear old school! – for they warn’t to know that missus was married, and we so snug down here in the country. Oh! won’t they be pleased to hear it? And is it not good in them, after all their travels, not to forget poor boys like us? Do you know, there was money in the letter?” he added, lowering his voice.
“Ah! Captain Blake did you some good turn, did he not?” said the farmer to Bob.
“He saved me from – ” the boy coloured and paused, —
“From want, I suppose,” said Grange, ending his sentence for him, and stroking back Oddity’s sleek ears.
“From worse,” said Bob, looking down.
“Not from death?”
“Worse than that,” murmured the boy.
“Eh?” said the farmer, in surprise.
“But for him what should I have been now! Oh sir!” cried Bob, suddenly raising his eyes, “I’ve often thought I should have told you this before, – before you took me in here, – me and my brother too, – and treated us so kindly, and trusted us and all. You should have known what I was before that day when Captain Blake – bless him for it! – first took me into a ragged school.”
“My business is with what you are, not what you were,” said the farmer, kindly; but Bob did not seem to hear the interruption, for he continued, in an agitated voice, the tears rising into and then overflowing his eyes: – “He found me a poor, ignorant, miserable creature, not knowing so much as that it was a sin to take what was not my own. He found me with no comfort and no hope, going on the broad way which leads to the prison and the gallows; and worse, – worse beyond, – I know that now. He found me a wretched thief, and he did not hate me, despise me, despair of me: he gave me a chance, he gave me a friend! Blessings on him! – he saved me from ruin!”
Here let me drop the curtain, here let me close my tale. These are feelings, these are scenes, into which higher beings alone can enter; they are too solemn for a story like mine.
And here I and my companions divide; – I to luxuriate for awhile in the plenty with which rich autumn crowns the fields around; my bold comrade to return to the city, and there, in new adventures, to display a sagacity and courage which even the lords of the creation would admire if belonging to any race but ours; Oddity, in the happy home of his kind master, remains to share the board and the hearth, – an instance that even a rat can show fidelity to man, where man can show mercy to a rat!
Perhaps the human race would despise us less proudly, and persecute us less severely, – perhaps even boys would take less pleasure in torturing, worrying, and hunting us down, – if our characters and instincts were better known. Who can say that some truth may not be learned, some lesson of kindliness gained, even from a narration simple as mine, – the history of
