by Paul Gallico
He enfolded her as though shielding her from all the furies, crying to her, “It’s all right, Mary Ruadh. It’s all right, I’m here. It was nothing but a bad dream.” He punched his way through the wind back to the house and inside, shouldering the door closed, then knelt, still enfolding the shuddering child.
“There, Mary Ruadh. It was only a dream. There is nothing to be frightened of. Or was it that old cat of Mrs. Culross’s that woke you? I didn’t half send her over the fence in a hurry—frightening my little girl—”
It was the fearful silence of her that alarmed him. Not so much as a sob came from her, but there was no mistaking the renewed hatred and terror in her eyes. The little body trembled uncontrollably in his arms.
He said, “You’ve had a nasty fright, my girl, but there’s nothing can harm you. Do you want to come in and sleep with Daddy?” He held the miserable and shaking child away from him for a moment, looking for some sign. He wished she would cry; he wished that she would throw her two arms about his neck and cling to him and cry her eyes out against his cheek so that he could comfort her. But she did not.
“It wasn’t Thomasina!” he said desperately.
He picked her up and took her into his room and laid her in his bed, smoothing the pillow under her head. “In the morning, we’ll have Dr. Strathsay in for a look-see,” he said. “Now cuddle to Daddy and we’ll both get some sleep.”
But for a long time, before sleep claimed them both, he could feel the awful, silent trembling of her body, as though she were racked by sobs that she would not or could not release.
Dr. Strathsay sat in the office of Mr. MacDhui and fumbled with the seal attached to his heavy-linked watch chain. He was a comfortably ponderous man with rough iron-gray hair and the jowls and sad eyes of a bloodhound. As years of the practice of medicine had deepened his wisdom, it had also softened his heart to the point where he was forced to conceal it beneath a dour manner and a kind of professional pessimism.
Now he spoke thoughtfully and unhappily, looking down at the fat carved stone seal in his fingers. “The child has lost the power of speech. Did you know this?”
MacDhui conquered the sickness at the pit of his stomach and said, “She has not addressed a word to me in almost a month, ever since the time she brought her pet cat Thomasina to me, suffering from a type of animal neuromeningitis. Its limbs were already paralyzed and I had it chloroformed. But she continued to speak with others.”
Dr. Strathsay nodded. “I see. Now she is unable to speak at all.”
MacDhui understood now the meaning of that last fearful silence the night before. He asked, “Did you find any physical—”
“I do not know—as yet,” Dr. Strathsay confessed. “There seems to be nothing wrong in the region of the vocal chords. Of course there is always the further problem of—ahem”—and he coughed uncomfortably, for these were the kind of interviews he dreaded—“the speech areas of the brain, as well as, ah, other and perhaps less tangible factors. Has the child had a shock of some kind?”
“Yes,” Mr. MacDhui admitted. “I think perhaps so. Last night during the wind, I was awakened by the caterwauling of a puss outside the window and the child’s loud outcry of ‘Thomasina!’ She ran out of the house after it and I after her.”
“And was it Thomasina?” Dr. Strathsay inquired gravely.
“Hardly. Thomasina is dead. From the glimpse I caught of it, it was a cat belonging to one of the neighbors. But in her sleep Mary Ruadh could have mistaken its cry for that of—of the one that had been her pet. When I reached her and brought her back she was trembling—I took her into my bed—”
The doctor nodded. “How long has she been ill?” he asked.
“Ill?” repeated Mr. MacDhui, and looked at the old practitioner anxiously, “But she has not been ill.” Then he recollected, Mr. Peddie. He said, “Mr. Peddie did suggest— And last night I found her skin somewhat clammy to the touch.”
Dr. Strathsay said, “It is not unusual for the physician to fail to recognize sickness when it is near to him—I should say the child was very ill.”
Mr. MacDhui exhaled a long sigh. “Have you any idea as to the nature of the illness?”
“Not yet. Nor should I say there was as yet any real cause for alarm. I shall have to make a more detailed examination and the usual laboratory tests, blood and urine. Then we shall see. In the meantime I suggest she be kept in bed with rest and quiet and all the love and attention possible. She is badly frightened, as indeed you and I would be likewise if we were suddenly stricken dumb. What started out as a sort of a game, almost, has turned fearfully earnest. Ah—I don’t suppose something such as another cat, or perhaps a puppy might—”
As Mr. MacDhui’s nerves cracked again, he leaped from his chair, slamming the surface of the desk with his fist. The doctor placed a soothing hand upon the veterinary’s arm. “Sorry! Of course you would have tried—” He arose heavily. “Well, we shall do our best. I have given her a sedative. Perhaps it is only a children’s disease incubating and waiting to develop, coupled with hysteria, and we shall have to wait a time to see. I will look in again this evening.”
Mr. MacDhui watched him go. Without putting it into so many words, the doctor had managed to convey that he considered the situation not to his liking. For the first time that he could remember, MacDhui did not envy the medical man his profession. Aye, family friend, healer, and humanitarian he might be, but what of the times when there was no cure and he must face the family and say to them, “Prepare yourselves. There is no hope?”
He shuddered and then pulled himself together strongly. Dr. Strathsay was known to tend toward the pessimistic side rather than raise false hopes by overoptimism. The first examination had indicated nothing organically wrong with the child—
But he could not maintain the pose. If he lost his daughter he would not be able to bear it. Again and again he cursed the miserable cat that had been the cause of it all and which, just as the struggle between himself and his daughter had appeared about to end, had seemed like a ghost to have returned from the nether world. The mere memory of it, the crying of its name, appeared to have been sufficient to destroy her and with her, himself too.
Mr. MacDhui arose, left his office, and went over to his dwelling and into Mary Ruadh’s room. She was sleeping, and now that he stood there looking down, he noted what he knew he should have seen long ago, the bluish circles beneath her eyes, the pall and translucent texture of the skin, the bloodlessness of the young mouth.
Mrs. McKenzie was fecklessly and needlessly dusting things in a neighboring room that had been dusted ten times over; an eye and ear pitched toward Mary Ruadh’s door.
MacDhui went to her and with more kindness than he had shown her in many a day, for he saw that she was looking wan and worried herself, said, “That’s right, Mrs. McKenzie. Remain close in case she should wake up. Let the kitchen go for a while. She will want comfort and someone close by whom she trusts. She has had a shock and lost the power of speech temporarily. Should you notice anything alarming and I am not here, do not hesitate to send for Dr. Strathsay at once.”
He was surprised at the hostility of the look the angular housekeeper turned upon him. “Shock indeed,” she sniffed. “I wouldna doot that. The bairn’s grievin’ hersel’ ower her Thomasina that ye pit tae daith wi’ nae mair thocht nor heart fer yer ain kin an’ bluid nor a stone. Like as not she’ll end in a grave aside her beloved puss, and ye’ll hae none but yersel’ to blame, Mr. Veterinary MacDhui, an’ it’s time someone said so tae yer face, and ye may dae what ye like aboot it.”
MacDhui merely nodded and said, “Stay nigh, Mrs. McKenzie. I gather we shall have some further news when Dr. Strathsay comes again this evening and it may not be all bad.”
He went out and returned to his office and began packing his bag for his rounds. He could not get the cat out of his mind. Had he but been less impatient, treated it, caged it, let Willie Bannock look after it— It might have died anyway, but th
e child would not have resented it so. The words of Mrs. McKenzie came back to him—“with no more thought to your own blood and kin than a stone—” Was this indeed what he was like? Was it true what they were saying of him in the town?
Tortured, his mind fled then into another and seemingly far-off world, one to be entered only through a magic door of glass perhaps. It was as lost, distant, and unreal as the realm of Queen Mab and all her faery train. Somewhere there was a stone cottage in a forest glade by a covin-tree from whence hung a silver bell, and where there dwelt a woman with red hair who was not all of this world, but who lived for the hurt and sick creatures of the wilderness. And in this dream he tugged the cord of the Mercy Bell and when she came forth and asked who or what it was needed her help he said, “I do, Lori.”
He saw that without knowing he had taken a package of powdered plaster from the shelf and was holding it in his hand. He remembered then that he had promised to return to the glen and put a plaster cast upon the shoulder of the badger for the mad girl who lived there. He dropped the package into the bag and went out.
1 9
Ho, Ho, you should have seen me dance that morning! I leaped, I ran, I spun in mid-air. I jumped twisty-wise to the side, eight jumps all stiff-legged, then around and around I went and up the covin-tree and down.
I laid back my ears and ran. I ran and ran and when I came to where Lori was I put the brakes on and skidded across the grass, then leaped into the air across my own shadow and came down washing, so that Lori laughed. “Talitha! You funny, funny puss!”
Oh, I had never felt so gay and wonderful and godlike, for the night before, the power to interfere had come back to me on the wings of a wind like the ancient desert khamsin, and I had worked a perfectly stupendous mischief and was mightily pleased with myself.
I hugged my secret to my breast as I danced, for no one had seen me come or go. I slipped away under the noses of the foolish dogs and in the morning Lori found me sleeping in my basket, as usual. But, oh, I had been as the gods of old that night.
Wullie and McMurdock, and Dorcas and her kittens came out to watch as I ran and ran, first in ever-widening circles, and then straightaway in the cat gallop, pulling and kicking so that my paws hardly touched the ground and I fairly flew. Then around I went again with my fur and tail bushed and when I came to Lori I threw myself on my back at her feet and rolled from side to side while she laughed and leaned over and rubbed the underside of my belly and scratched under my chin and said, “Talitha, you’re daft this morning.”
And the dogs became infected with the gaiety of my dance and began to jump about and bark too, and the birds flew up. The magpie flapped its wings and croaked, “Talitha’s mad!” The kittens commenced to chase their tails, the squirrel took to flying about in the branches of the covin-tree, and none of them knew I was celebrating the fact that I had visited a really prodigious punishment upon a mortal, as I was used to doing in the old days when I was all knowing and all powerful.
Yet, even as I danced and celebrated, I was not wholly happy or content, for no one believed that I was a goddess. I think that Lori suspected, for she was very wise, and her eyes were like the eyes of the priestesses I used to have in ancient Egypt. But when once you have been worshiped as I have, it is most disconcerting not to be.
That day Lori, too, was gayer than I had ever seen her before. She sang as she went about her feeding of the birds and animals; it was a song without words; the melody was one born in a human heart when the world was still young. The sweetness of it reminded me of the temple flutes of Khufu. And ever and anon she would stop and listen, or glance down the path that led from the glen to the cottage as though she were expecting someone.
Shortly after midmorning the Mercy Bell rang. I managed to get up a tree, one near the stables, just in time. It was the Man with the Red Beard.
God am I, warden of the heavens, spinner of the threads of destiny, yet this man I hate and fear.
To Lori I sent messages. “Beware! Beware! Send him forth from here. For I have placed a doom upon him and he is as one accursed. All who have to do with him will share his doom. Send him forth from here because of the evil he has done. Beware!”
But Lori did not hear me and I could not reach her. It was not thus in my temple in Bubastis. There I had but to think a thought, barely to feel a warning or a prophecy and my high priestess, Nefert-Amen, would arise and casting off her veil would cry, “Hear, oh hear—Bast-Ra has spoken.” And the worshipers, without in the temple courtyard, would fall upon their faces and avert their eyes and groan and praise me for my wisdom.
Lori and the man went into the stables together.
He came not only that morning, but the next day and the next, and the next thereafter.
I spied upon them from the roof of the stables and learned his name and who he is. It is Andrew MacDhui and he is an animal doctor from the town below, where Lori goes sometimes to fetch supplies, and he healed Lori’s wounded badger that came to her one day almost dead from its injuries. It is strange that I should fear him so. For I am Bast-Ra, the goddess, but before that I am a cat, the lord of the earth. Yet in the sight of this man my blood turns to water; I quake and tremble and run like the smallest, most timorous, most frightened of mice.
Why? Who is he? Except for the doom-dream I have never encountered him before. Yet my god-sense tells me that he is a slayer of cats and hence accursed and I have put my punishment upon him.
The MacDhui was worming his way into Lori’s confidence by teaching her. I watched him show her how to make a plaster cast for the shoulder and paw of the badger, and they worked together side by side, and the man flattered her by marveling how skilled her fingers were and how a touch from them would soothe the wildest and most savage beast. When the plaster was set the MacDhui lifted the badger’s head, pulled his ears, and rubbed his fur and said, “Old fellow, I think you’re going to live to fight another battle. If anything you are going to strike even a stronger blow when this shoulder knits. But keep out of traps.” The badger rolled his eyes at him like a worshipful dog and when I saw the smile that Lori gave him I nearly died with hatred and jealousy. Had I not been so afraid of him, I should have jumped down through the hole and scratched and bitten out his throat.
Another day I watched them as he taught her how to set and splint the broken wing of a crow, and I looked down with envy and disgust at the two red heads close together bent over the black bird and their fingers meeting as they worked to mend the broken bone.
But he could not seem to bear it when Lori spoke of her unseen friends with whom she often talked in the forest, or the little caves in the rocky parts of the glen. Once he went about the room, pushing out his bristly red beard at all the shelves and the jars of ointments Lori had got on them, and then there was nothing for it but he had to get into every one with his fingers, or his nose, smelling, tasting. Then he asked, “Where did you come by your knowledge of medicinal herbs, Lori? Your pharmacopoeia is quite creditable.”
When she replied, “The Little People,” he glared at her like an angry bull and cried, “What? What nonsense! I asked you for a sensible answer, Lori.”
From my vantage spot, looking through the hole in the roof, I spit at him and cursed him again, for he brought a tear to Lori’s eyes. She looked like a small child that has been scolded. She said, “They live under the bracken. You don’t often get to see them, but sometimes if you go quietly you can hear them whispering—”
The MacDhui said, “I’m sorry, Lori—I didn’t mean—” But he never said what it was he hadn’t meant.
Another time he asked her, “Who are you, Lori?”
“I am—Lori. I am no one.”
“Where do you come from, Lori?”
“From Sligachan in Skye by the hills of Cuchullin.”
“That is a far piece from here.”
“Aye.”
“Have you any parents living, or relatives, Lori, no one to whom you belong?”
“No.�
��
“How came you here?”
“The angels guided me.”
And again he glared at her.
But all the time she was growing more skilled, more knowledgeable in the healing of hurt, more used to his ways so that now they worked more swiftly and silently, she understanding what he wished and having it at hand before he asked.
One day he brought a little dog in a basket. It was very sick. He placed it on the table, along with knives and instruments he had in a case. Then together, he and Lori worked for a long time over the dog, he explaining, she ever ready with what he needed.
When it was finished, he said, “May I leave it here with you, Lori? I have done what I can, but the beast needs now what only you can give it— When you have made it well I will come for it.”
When he went away Lori came out of the stables and stood looking after him until he disappeared around the bend in the path and his footsteps were no longer heard. I came down from the roof via the beech tree and twined about her ankles. I heard her whisper, “Who am I?” and then, “What am I?” and at the very last, “What is this singing in my heart?”
I rubbed harder against her ankles, but she did not seem to know that I was there.
2 0
Dr. Strathsay and Mr. Andrew MacDhui walked slowly together by the loch side, contemplating the gray waters, the walking gulls on the tide-bared sand and the heavy gray day. Across the long, narrow expanse of salt water a curtain of rain falling from fast-scudding clouds was traveling northward up the valley but along the opposite shore.
The grayness of the weather seemed even to drain the color out of MacDhui’s hair and beard. It got into the folds of Dr. Strathsay’s jowls and enveloped his battered hat and mackintosh. But his eyes were alive, intelligent and compassionate. His news seemed to be good, but he delivered it warily to the man who hung upon every word.
