Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin

by Marguerite Henry

  What fascinated Benjamin was the way they laid on their colors. Beaver had chewed the stem of a tall spear of grass and was using the chewed end exactly as if it were a goose-quill pen. Sassoonan was using a flat piece of wood that looked like a miniature butter paddle. And Elk was using a piece of birch bark.

  “Think on it!” Benjamin whispered to Grimalkin. “The Indians like to draw, too. At last I’ve found some real schoolfellows.” And right there in the heart of Penn’s forest Benjamin West joined his first art class.

  • • •

  The sun was directly overhead when the Indians went back to finish their boat. While Grimalkin sunned himself in a small patch of sunlight, Benjamin helped the Indians gather dry twigs to lay on top of the felled trunk. He helped set fire to them. He even helped swab the sides of the trunk. After the fire had scooped a deep hollow in the trunk, Bear and Elk and Beaver scraped the inside surface with pieces of flint.

  Benjamin watched them a long time to see just how it was done. Then he gathered oak leaves until his stick was full.

  “Little Quekel friends soon eat!” announced Sassoonan when the inside of the canoe was scraped as smooth as a stone. While corn cakes roasted in the charred tree stump, Bear and Elk and Beaver invited Benjamin to go fishing. With nothing but birds’ claws for fish hooks they caught eight sunfish and a red-bellied trout. Grimalkin had good luck, too. He caught a frog.

  Afternoon found Benjamin and the Indians sitting on the floor of the forest, sharing their food. How Sassoonan and his sons enjoyed the sliced ham and the fresh bread and ciderkin! They even ate Grimalkin’s bonny clabber. As for Benjamin and Grimalkin, they preferred the corn cakes and the fish. They ate until they could hold no more.

  Sassoonan grunted contentedly when the meal was over. He took a clay pipe out of the skin pouch that hung around his neck. He filled it with tobacco and puffed slowly. After a long silence he spoke softly to his sons. At once they brought out their bows and arrows and taught Benjamin how to shoot flying squirrels on the wing. Then they showed him how to make a sun sign. They drew a circle on the ground with a sharp stone, and drove a twig into the center of the circle, bending it in the direction of the sun.

  “I see!” nodded Benjamin. “If we should be scouts, we could make a sun sign for our followers. It would tell them when we left here.”

  “Amen!” replied the Indians, pleased at the quickness of their pupil.

  Suddenly Benjamin realized that the twig pointed to sunset-time. He picked up his stick of leaves and his poplar board and whistled for Grimalkin.

  “Run! Run!” spoke Sassoonan. “Cold night soon here. Good-by, little Quekel friends.”

  Chapter 8

  A STICK OF INDIGO BLUE

  Benjamin parted the bushes. He did not cross the road at once. He stood there, looking at the inn. He could see the windows bright with firelight. He could see wood smoke curling from the chimney, brushing the face of the moon. He could see into the horse shed. By the light of the lanthorn that hung over the entrance it looked as if every stall were filled. That meant the inn, too, would be crowded.

  Suddenly Benjamin felt very small and tired. He picked Grimalkin up for comfort, and stumbled across the road, his knapsack thumping against his back. “If only I did not have to see everyone in the inn!” he confided to Grimalkin. “They may laugh at my lumps of red and yellow earth or hold their noses at our smell of smoke and bear’s grease.”

  Just then the door of the inn opened and Mamma slipped out into the courtyard.

  “Mamma!” called Benjamin softly.

  “Benjamin, have thee and Grimalkin returned?”

  “Mamma! I have something to show thee. Please to follow me to the horse shed.”

  Benjamin was no longer tired. He took the poplar board out of his knapsack and held it close to the lanthorn.

  Even by the feeble light Mamma could tell that the picture was warm with color.

  “Why, wherever did thee get color?” she exclaimed.

  “From the earth, Mamma.”

  “And the Indian Chief? Is it not our good friend Sassoonan?”

  “It is!”

  “I am glad thee found Sassoonan. I need not have worried.”

  Grimalkin rubbed against Mamma’s skirts to attract her attention.

  “Aye, little one, I thought about thee, too,” she said.

  A cool wind was rising. Mamma untied her apron and wrapped it about her shoulders.

  “Benjamin,” she said slowly, thoughtfully, “does thee know that color is not necessary to thy well-being?”

  “Aye,” piped Benjamin in a small voice.

  “It is not like the sun that warms, or the rain that freshens, or the bread that nourishes. Does thee know that?”

  “Yes, Mamma. I know.”

  “Very well then. I shall give thee a stick of my indigo blue. With red and yellow from the earth and with blue from my dye pot, thee can blend all the tints in the rainbow.”

  Benjamin turned his back to the light. He was suddenly afraid his happiness might spill over into tears.

  • • •

  Mamma must have had a talk with Papa, for after that night Benjamin was given a little corner of his own by the chimney place. There each evening he sat over his drawing board while Grimalkin curled himself at the very edge of the board where he watched through half-shut eyes.

  The guests gathered about Benjamin in openmouthed wonder. “Forsooth!” they exclaimed. “Here is a lad who can paint anything from a portrait to a landscape. What is more,” they remarked, “you can tell the one from the other! Ah, to be a boy again! Nary a care in the world.”

  But Benjamin did have a care, and it irritated him like a wood nettle in his shirt. What good were all the colors of the rainbow? What good were they if he could not lay them on smoothly?

  He tried his forefinger, but it was too pudgy. The color spread where he did not want it to go. He tried duck feathers, but they made the color spatter. He whittled a tiny wooden paddle, but that did not seem to carry enough color. It dried off in the split second it took to move from the paint cup to the drawing board!

  One night Benjamin decided to try a dry reed of timothy grass. He was doing, from memory, a portrait of Dr. Jonathan Moris at the time. The portrait was nearly done. Benjamin had only to color Dr. Moris’ bright red wig. He was unmindful of the guests who stood behind his stool, watching.

  Suddenly a great blob of red paint spilled from the reed and fell squarely on the tip of Dr. Moris’ nose.

  “Oh!” gasped Benjamin, and Grimalkin yowled nervously at the distress in his voice.

  The onlookers broke out in loud laughter.

  Benjamin whirled around in anger. He saw wagoners and a traveling tinker and scissors-grinder holding their sides. Their heads were thrown back, their mouths wide open, like cats on a fence. Only one among them did not laugh. It was Uncle Phineas Pennington from Philadelphia. He took out his pocket handkerchief and helped blot up the color.

  “Uncle Phineas,” said Benjamin through tight lips, “thee is a great merchant in the city of Philadelphia. Thee must know real painters. How do they apply their color?”

  Uncle Phineas folded his pocket handkerchief.

  “I am told,” he said, “that they use hair pencils. In no wise have I seen them myself, mind thee,” he hastened to add. “I have only heard tell of them.”

  “Hair pencils?”

  “Aye, hair pencils.”

  “But what kind of hair, Uncle?”

  “Camel’s hair fastened in a goose quill.”

  Benjamin grew thoughtful. “Are there any camels in Penn’s Province?”

  “No,” replied Uncle Phineas. “They live on a desert in Africa.”

  Sick at heart, Benjamin laid the portrait of Dr. Moris on the fire. He watched it burn to ashes and at last went upstairs.

  Grimalkin padded softly behind him. When Benjamin was ready for bed, Grimalkin put out the candle with his paw and burrowed under the covers.

/>   Benjamin’s sleep was fitful. He crossed the desert in his dreams. He sat astride a huge camel that had a peculiar rocking gait, unlike any creature in Chester County. Even in his dreams he felt a kind of seasickness come over him.

  At last the camel knelt on his cushioned knees so that Benjamin could dismount. Then he broke into rough laughter. “I’ve heard about such as you,” he snorted. “You paint a man’s portrait and then make a clown of him with a red nose. Fie on you!”

  Chapter 9

  THE SCRATCHINGS OF LITTLE BEN

  The next day Benjamin put his earth colors and his indigo blue away. Beside them he laid the duck feathers, the wooden paddle and the reed pen.

  “I don’t care a fig about color!” he pretended to Grimalkin that afternoon when chores were done.

  It was a day late in November. Outside the wind howled and sent the inn signboard creaking on its hinges. All was cozy within the low-ceilinged kitchen. Mamma was at the loom, Hannah at the churn.

  Grimalkin gazed up at Benjamin with searching eyes. Then he hooked his forepaw around Benjamin’s wrist and drew him down so that the boy and the cat were looking eye to eye.

  “What is it, kitling?” asked Benjamin. “Would thee like to sit for thy portrait? But mind thee, it will be in charcoal—black as thy fur.”

  Grimalkin gave an affectionate lick to Benjamin’s hand. Then he whisked softly over to the hearth. There he put all four paws close together, sat down on his haunches, curved his tail closely about his feet, and smiled the way cats will.

  “Never was there another cat so understanding!” laughed Benjamin. “Now if thee can just hold still, Grimalkin.”

  Grimalkin proved a fine sitter. He posed very quietly—except for the tipmost end of his tail, which moved up and down like a wee beckoning finger.

  Benjamin worked rapidly. Soon the carts would come rumbling into the courtyard. Soon the inn would be alive with noisy travelers. Soon Grimalkin would grow weary of sitting and streak down cellar or upstairs.

  He worked with quick, free strokes. He did not think of body, ears, eyes, legs, tail. He saw the whole cat at once.

  There! The form was captured. Now he could strengthen the features to make this a portrait of a particular cat, Grimalkin.

  He copied Grimalkin’s eyes with their wonderfully long pupils. He drew the whiskers.

  “Elmira’s whiskers curve downward,” he said as he worked. “Thy whiskers be different, Grimalkin. They bristle out straight and orderly, like the lines of my copybook.”

  Now Benjamin studied Grimalkin’s tail. Its tip still twitched up and down, up and down.

  Suddenly Benjamin caught his breath. “Why, that soft, silken tail!” he whispered.

  His strokes became slower, slower; then stopped altogether. He swooped Grimalkin into his arms and raced up the stairs to his little cubbyhole of a room. He set Grimalkin on the floor, backed out the door, closed it firmly and fled down to the kitchen. He began to collect articles from here, there and everywhere: Mamma’s shears, a goose quill, Grimalkin’s half-finished portrait. Then he rummaged in the bottom drawer of the pine dresser and found all of his jugs of paint and the stick of indigo.

  Mamma at her loom and Hannah at the churn exchanged smiles.

  “The scratchings of little Ben,” said Hannah above the swishing noise of the churn.

  Mamma nodded.

  Back in his room, Benjamin carefully laid each article on his bench. As the pair of shears clattered against the paint jugs, Grimalkin whisked up the bedpost. Once as a kitten he had had his ear nipped by that very same pair of shears. One of the grownups had been cutting a cocklebur out of his fur and had accidentally pinched his ear.

  “I recall the accident, too,” said Benjamin comfortingly. “It shall not happen again. I promise thee.”

  Grimalkin leaped down onto the coverlet, and in that little instant Benjamin laid hold of him.

  The fur on Grimalkin’s back and tail bristled in fear.

  “Why, how nice of thee to bristle up!” exclaimed Benjamin. “I can cut thy hair easily now.”

  And indeed he did. He cut the tapering hairs at the very tip of Grimalkin’s tail.

  “See! It didn’t hurt thee a bit,” murmured Benjamin as he tied the little bundle together with one of his own long hairs. Then he fixed it in the goose quill.

  “How soft and silky!” he whispered as he brushed the hairs across his hand. “A camel’s shaggy coat would not be near so fine.”

  Twilight was closing in. Benjamin moved his bench closer to the window. He poured some of the thick yellow earth paint into a mussel shell, added a few drops of indigo blue and stirred the mixture vigorously. Then he daubed a sample of the color on his hand and held it up to Grimalkin’s eyes.

  “It needs a mite more of the yellow,” he said.

  His heart beat fast. The color matched now. He brought the drawing board close to the light. With his new hair pencil he painted the eyes a clear green. The color did not spread. It did not spatter or spill. It went on so smoothly that not a single hair line showed.

  The picture in Benjamin’s hand trembled as he turned it around and faced it to the looking glass. Next he lifted Grimalkin and held the portrait and the cat side by side.

  “Alike as a pair of boots!” he laughed. Then his face sobered. “Thee, Grimalkin, is my nighest friend,” he said softly, earnestly. “When I am an old man with white curls, I shall remember how thee furnished my paintbrush.”

  And he pressed his head close against Grimalkin’s.

  Chapter 10

  PATCHY AS A RAG BAG

  All that evening, in the chimney corner, Benjamin painted in a fever of excitement. He made a new portrait of Dr. Jonathan Moris, and never once did the red color land where it was not intended.

  “The doctor’s red bush wig looks so natural,” declared Papa, “I can nigh smell the pomade on it.”

  When the portrait was done, Benjamin painted indigo birds, and yellow-billed cuckoos, and foxes and weasels.

  The evening flew. By the time Grimalkin snuffed out the candle to remind everyone that it was bedtime, Benjamin had painted six pictures. With the sixth picture came a horrible discovery. The paintbrush was not going to last. In fact, it was worn out already!

  • • •

  In the days that followed, Grimalkin played a kind of hide-and-seek with Benjamin. Whenever he spied Benjamin coming toward him, shears in hand, he vanished like a puff of smoke. One time he flew up the scarecrow’s breeches and hid for almost an hour.

  But at last Grimalkin made a discovery. If he sat very still while Benjamin cut a tuft of hair from his coat, he was rewarded with the most delicious tidbits—a nubbin of roast pork or venison, a crumb of shoo-fly pie, some freshly cracked nut meats, a dollop of soft white cheese.

  And quite as pleasant as the tidbits were Benjamin’s words of praise. “Thee is beautiful. Thee is comely in spite of everything,” Benjamin would murmur softly as he snipped the little tufts of fur. “What if thy coat be fleckered? The light in thy eyes is like a candle. Thee is a true Quaker. Sober, patched coat, but shining spirit within.”

  Grimalkin would roll over and over in happiness. Then he would chase his tail until Benjamin grew dizzy watching him.

  Soon Grimalkin did not fear the shears at all. He was ready and willing to furnish all the paintbrushes his master could use. He seemed to know he was important and needed. He walked about, waving his shorn tail as gaily as if it had been a flag. And the patchier he grew, the closer he clung to Benjamin. Had not Benjamin saved his life? Now he, Grimalkin, was returning a favor!

  • • •

  “Mamma,” questioned Papa one day, “has thee or the girls accidentally scalded our Grimalkin?”

  “No, Papa,” replied Mamma with concern in her voice. “I have asked the girls that very question.”

  Papa stooped down and stroked Grimalkin. “Is thee ailing, little one?”

  “The mange, likely,” said Mamma, “or some winter illn
ess that will vanish with the snow’s melting.” But Mamma’s words sounded more hopeful than her voice.

  “Patchy as a rag bag!” sighed Papa. “He minds me of a piebald horse I had as a boy.” And he shook his head sadly.

  No one suspected the real cause of Grimalkin’s appearance. Yet each one of the family tried to remedy it.

  Mamma saved all the giblets from chickens, geese and wild turkeys for Grimalkin. What did it matter if the gravy had no savor? Better to restore Grimalkin’s health, she thought.

  Papa, who was very fond of kidney pie, gave all the kidneys on his plate to Grimalkin.

  The girls, too, tried to coax Grimalkin’s appetite. They saved little dabs of whipped sillabub and floating island pudding for him. They even saved the knucklebones and ham marrow that usually went to Papa’s hound dogs.

  As for the boys, they slyly offered little morsels to Grimalkin underneath the table board: squash and succotash, mussels and shad.

  Every day was feast day for Grimalkin. He scarcely had time to lick the flavor left on his lips. Always there seemed to be a new and more tempting morsel set before him.

  Meanwhile, Benjamin went his way, unmindful of all the worry he had caused. He went to school. He did his chores. He painted his pictures.

  “No need to tell our little wren,” Mamma had whispered to each of the family in turn. “He will learn of Grimalkin’s ailment soon enough.”

  Grimalkin, however, grew plump as a pig being fattened for market. But his fur did not improve. It became steadily worse.

  One First Day evening on the edge of winter Papa led the way into the parlor for the quiet hour of family worship.

  A lone candle made black shadows on the wall. The fire in the hearth burned softly as if it, too, were at worship.

  The family settled itself on small benches, Mamma and the girls on one side of the parlor, the boys on the other. Behind Benjamin sat Thomas and John, their knees at his back. On either side were Joseph and Samuel. Papa sat facing everyone.