Part 14

Even at home in the flat where we lived for two somewhat cramping years--we swept the pictures off the walls every time we put on our shirt--we could not get away from furnace troubles. The thing was an obsession, that's all. Our proprietor, that inaccessible local divinity, was supposed to supply heat, which naturally implies a furnace and a furnace-man. There really was a furnace and also a furnace-man, but the two were seldom found in conjunction.

Down in the cellar there was an enormous structure of cast iron, with twisted pipes sticking out of it in all directions as though it were some sort of mechanical octopus. And down in the very heart of it there were usually half a dozen coals smouldering away. That was its ordinary condition. But two or three afternoons a week a local financier, who had about thirty furnaces on his visiting list, used to call and pour a ton or so of coal down its throat. Then he opened wide all the drafts and went rejoicing on his way to the bank to deposit his latest dividend.

About midnight on such days we were all awakened by a noise which seemed to combine the roar of the angry surf with a riot in the Ford automobile plant. There were also suggestions of a volcano in active eruption. The furnace was boiling! Then one hustled into a dressing-gown and one hurried down to the cellar to shut the thing off; and, as one passed bashfully by, one saw sights through open doors that no gentleman would ever speak of.

We have a friend, however, who has mastered the furnace problem--about as well, that is, as mortal can hope to do it. He has devoted years of thought and much bullion and energy to the task. He has a huge furnace all encased in white asbestos--it sheds its nighty every now and then and has to get a new one--and on this furnace he has more electric attachments than would run a suburban trolley system. All he has to do before he goes to bed is to wind up two or three clocks and set half a dozen hands on as many dials, and the furnace does the rest. It keeps the house at a certain specified heat--unless, of course, it goes out, which it does every so often--and moreover, it will turn on the heat at any specified time in the morning. Instead of having to get up in a chilly house and wander dismally down to the cellar to open the blamed thing up, he has only to lie awake in bed and listen if the regulator is working properly--and three times out of five it is. But, of course, this is rather hard to hear, and if it shouldn't be working and he didn't notice it--well, on those mornings he eats his breakfast in his coon-skin coat.

Naturally he has to remove the ashes and shovel in the coal, but that only takes an hour or so a day. Besides, it is fine exercise. Nothing like putting on your furnace-clothes and tying a damp silk handkerchief over your face and going down for a little bout of graeco-roman with the furnace to give you an appetite. And the thirst!--but what's the use of talking about that nowadays?

It may be thought that we are prejudiced against furnaces. We are. We admit it frankly. And we have good reason to be. If it hadn't been for a furnace that went out, we might to-day be a happily married man and the father of a large--oh, well, perhaps that is taking a little too much for granted. But we might have been married, at any rate.

She was a druggist's daughter, a lovely girl of about eighteen summers. That is, she claimed eighteen summers, though perhaps a few summers were so short and so cold that she forgot to count them. Her father lived and had his shop in a Prohibition town--this was before there was no other kind of town. Naturally he was the principal citizen of the place and the popular saver of many masculine lives. Father used to prescribe for gentlemen for miles around, the prescriptions being usually taken in the back of the store. No one ever bought anything out of the show-case except cigars.

We used to drop into the store occasionally to ward off a chill or a fever or something of that sort--we were always strong for preventive medicine--and it was there we met daughter. It was a case of one good long look, a few words about the weather we were having, and then we went straight home and tore up all the pictures on our chiffonier. Not long after we got into the habit of taking her out in father's buggy--it had a large top and the horse could be trusted.

So we whiled away the autumn. At Christmas we sold something and blew the proceeds on a couple of dozen of those red, red roses, which are almost as significant as an engagement-ring. Gwendoline--'t was thus she loved to be called--told us several times with thrilling emphasis that she "just loved those roses to death." Everything seemed to smile upon our suit.

The night we went with our mind made up to settle the matter conclusively--even to the date of the ceremony and the nicest place to spend the following week--was a bitterly cold one. In fact, the parlor where we sat waiting for Gwen to come down seemed decidedly chilly. But she floated in looking radiantly beautiful to the eye of affection, and the light was low, and--oh, dash it all, we forgot about the temperature entirely. It is a poor lover who can't furnish his own heat.

Conversation was graceful and animated, but with an undercurrent of serious purpose. We felt that something was expected of us, but naturally a man of tact and romantic feeling doesn't plunge into a proposal of marriage as though it were the purchase of a dog-collar. It is a thing to be led up to; and we were casting about in our mind for the most graceful and effective way of doing so, when we began to realize that the room had grown strangely cold and that the lady was looking rather blue--with a tendency to redness about the nose. Also she was gazing at us in a curiously critical way, and we remembered that we never look our best when we are chilly. There is a certain spottiness--but these details are unnecessary.

It grew colder and colder. Gwendoline got a shawl, and we turned up our coat-collar as unobtrusively as possible and put our hands in our pockets. The lady became absent-minded, and in spite of ourself our thoughts wandered to tall glasses with something hot in them and pieces of lemon floating around.

There is no use dragging out this account of the disaster. The whole thing simply fizzled out. A masterful man might perhaps have saved the day--or the evening, to be accurate--by seizing the lady, slamming her against his throbbing heart, and warming her up at the fire of his own ardor. But we let the psychological moment shiver by. She passed us with a curt nod on the street next day, and six months later was married to a chap in the bank. Her father took him into the business at once--she was an only child.

Do you wonder we hate furnaces?

*Mike*

Cats have character. You may not like them, but you have to respect them. They feel no affection, and they make no pretence of it. If they rub up against your leg and purr, it is because they like the stuff your trousers are made of--yes, madam, we are speaking for ourself!

Now, it is just the opposite with dogs. You like dogs, but usually you don't respect them. They are not sufficiently self-centred and independent. They lack poise and that repose of manner which is the unfailing sign of the aristocrat.

Dogs are too fond of you--in itself an evidence of a lack of discrimination--and too demonstrative. One of the meanest-souled human weasels that ever slunk home from his office in the evening to be nasty to his wife and slap the children has a dog. And that dog watches for him for hours, and comes tearing down the street to greet him, barking his head off and turning somersaults in delirious joy.

Now, who ever saw a cat come tumbling and barking down the street to greet anyone? The finest and ablest man in the Empire--Lloyd George, Haig, or even Sir Arthur Currie or the virtuous Newton Wesley Rowell--couldn't get a flicker of a cat's whisker, if they came home after six months' absence all covered with medals. The only arrival to make a cat sit right up and mew in salutation is the milkman in the morning.

That's the fascination and mystery of cats--their independence and their inscrutability. Furthermore, they have utterly no morals, and they are perfectly unabashed about it. If a dog does something he knows to be wrong, he hangs his head and his tail and crawls around on his stomach and presents a ridiculous spectacle of contrition and self-abasement, till you let him know he is forgiven. Then he probably jumps into your lap, and licks your glasses off your nose, and sticks his paw in among the cigars in your vest-pocket. The only safe way to forgive a dog is from the top of a high ladder.

But a cat doesn't care whether you forgive her or not. She feels no compunction and shows no gratitude. She will walk off with a porter-house steak or present the household with a family of war-kittens with equal nonchalance and aplomb--we always make a point of using French words when discussing these matrimonial irregularities, such is our delicacy.

Of course, Mike wasn't that kind of a cat--to present the household, that is. He might figure as the injured husband or the co-respondent in these regrettable affairs, but never as the fair, frail one. Though, as a matter of fact, the family at first was under the impression that he was a tabby.

Mike was an under-sized and very quiet black kitten, with a pair of the worst bow legs we have ever seen on anyone but Harry Lauder. His back legs were straight enough, but he looked as if he had been run over by a motor lorry in front, or brought up with his head under a low beam. They gave him a curious resemblance to a somewhat battered prize-fighter--whence the war-like title, "Mike."

It has never been clearly established in the family who was responsible for bringing Mike into its bosom and its milk-pitcher, so to speak. Mike arrived, that's all--probably he liked the air of cultured serenity about the house and walked in. With a promptness which is a strong tribute to his fascination of manner, even at this early age, he won our landlady's heart, and was formally adopted under the name of Yvonne.

Personally, we were always opposed to Yvonne as savoring too much of coquetry or hauteur. We wanted something simple and homely like Mary Elizabeth or Emma Jane. But Yvonne it was, and Yvonne it remained till it became generally apparent that the name didn't fit Mike's gender or his mode of life.

We would like to devote a great deal of space to telling the reader what a cute little rascal Mike was in his Yvonnehood, so to speak, and how we loved to come down in the morning and find him sitting in our Toasted Pine Flakes, or stuck in the cream-jug--he used to come right up from the cellar to be with us.

We would like to tell all this, so that our unmarried lady-readers could write in to us about their own cats and their cunning ways, and all we girls could have a perfectly lovely time together--they might even bring the cats down. But _tempus fugit_--these French phrases will break in--and we must on to the mournful and disheartening story of Mike's adult life, with the sad light it throws on the impotence of pure and beautiful surroundings to correct a naturally evil character.

The beginning of Mike's downfall was staying out o' nights. While still a kitten Mike had been accustomed to take an evening stroll, but his notion of bedtime grew hazier and hazier. He became distinctly less and less retiring. Finally Mike had to be stalked like a chamois every evening and dragged by the tail off some perilous peak of fence.

It was then that we got a brilliant idea, one of those flashes, you know. We reminded our landlady that Mike always came running when he heard anyone whet the carving knife on the steel, knowing that it was a musical prelude to dainty tidbits of meat.

"Why not go to the back-door and rub the knife on the steel?" we asked, modestly trying to appear unconscious that we were getting off something rather dazzling. "Then when he hears it, he'll rush up and you can--"

The suggestion was so obviously sensible that, in spite of its coming from us, our landlady adopted it at once. Other suggestions of ours had not worked out quite according to specifications, but this one looked good. Our landlady was even moved to say that she hadn't expected so much wisdom from us.

She got a chance to try the ruse soon after. It was a warm dark night, when the feet of even the wisest cat might stray from the paths of piety, and Mike's had very evidently wandered. In fact, it seemed to us that the strong but lyric tenor voice singing of love down the lane might well belong to him. But we couldn't be sure. There was a good deal of singing going on, mostly of a sentimental nature.

We cheerfully undertook to do the knife-grinding, being an adept at any operation connected with eating. Squaring our elbows in a professional manner, we gave three or four slashing cuts on the steel that would have earned us a job in any packing-house. We made a noise like a duel in romantic comedy--some of that matinee idol stuff, you know, "Have at ye, caitiff knave!" lunging in tierce and quart, and then a quart or so in the dressing-room after the act.

Did it work? Yes, friend reader, it worked. It brought Mike all right--also every other cat off every other fence in that block. Before the landlady could slam and bolt the door, about ten frenzied felines hurled themselves into that quiet and orderly kitchen and immediately started trying to throw one another into the stove or drown one another in the sink.

While it lasted--and it was some minutes before the landlady's screams brought sufficient assistance, including the Chinaman out of the laundry across the way--it was the liveliest little scramble one could see outside the Petrograd Soviet. In ten seconds that kitchen looked like the plucking room of an otter-shop. Those cats just grabbed the fur in handfuls and threw it away. We got it in our porridge for weeks after, giving to that wholesome breakfast dish a still further resemblance to soft mortar.

Mike finally took to staying out all night. It was about this time that we began to entertain doubts as to his sex and morals--we were still calling him Yvonne in moments of friendship. He also wore a bow of red ribbon and a bell, the bell being for the purpose of tracking him around the house when he elected to go up and sleep in someone's bed.

The bell must have been an awful nuisance to Mike. Perhaps that is why he never could catch a mouse. We saw him tracking one in the grass one night. Every time he got ready to spring the infernal bell would tinkle, and Mike would sit up and moan. It was no use, and Mike definitely gave up mouse-catching as a steady job--stone-deaf mice being presumably rare.

His bow and bell, no doubt, made him unpopular with the other Toms. The decoration was not particularly becoming--he was about as pretty as a prize-fighter in a rose necklace--but his _confreres_ probably regarded it as a sign of a vain and uppish disposition. So they used to chasten him--three or four at a time, we should judge from Mike's mussed appearance when he came home for breakfast.

His bandy front legs must also have been a handicap at first in these nocturnal affrays, but he learned how to use them to good effect after a while--they were probably all right for upper cuts and short hooks from either side. We noticed that as time went on he used to bring more of his fur back with him in the morning, and we judged he was working well up towards the top of his class--welter-weight, we should say. Mike never got beyond medium size, and he was always rather lean.

His voice, however, was superb. He was the Caruso of the block. His range was tremendous, with great power and fine quality all the way. His upper register especially was quite wonderful. There were tenor notes in Mike's voice on still summer nights that could be heard for six blocks in all directions. We have no doubt that a greater number of useful articles, such as boots, hairbrushes, perfume bottles, and shaving mugs, were thrown at Mike than at any other ten cats in that end of town.

But he wasn't stuck up about it. He remained the same simple, unassuming fellow--no professional airs whatever, and always willing to sing. He loved his art, that's all.

Mike is gone, however. He hasn't turned up for a week, and we write this article in the hope that if any reader sees a black Tom with a red bow and a brass bell, the reader will please destroy him in some speedy and sure way. Poor Mike, we may never look upon his like again--such is our heartfelt prayer!

The last time we saw Mike was about two a.m.--we had been detained at the office. As we neared the house, mentally debating whether or not we would take off our boots downstairs--the last time we did so we absent-mindedly hung them on the hat-rack--we noticed a nice grey tabby stepping daintily across the deserted street ahead of us.

It had just occurred to us that this was no hour for a well-brought-up cat to be strolling around, when we noticed Mike pussy-footing along about three yards behind--no doubt with some chivalrous intention of seeing that she got home all right. He was wearing his bell and an expression of concentrated interest.

And right behind Mike came the biggest and dingiest tomcat we have ever seen. With a few dabs of paint he would have made a very fair panther; and he had much the same glare in his eye. It seemed to bode ill for Mike, and we felt vague stirrings of pity, which a moment's reflection caused us sternly to repress. We decided to let justice take its course.

We have never seen Mike since.

*Dogs*

Most men like to represent themselves as being very popular with dogs. Why any sane, self-respecting man should be proud of having dogs notice him on the street, is a thing we have never quite been able to understand. But they are. They seem to take it as a sign of a generous, sporting nature on their part that dogs should wag a friendly tail at sight of them.

A similar superstition exists as to babies. It is quite true that it is sometimes deuced embarrassing for a man to have a baby conceive a sudden passion for him. But even the victim is proud of it. The onlookers, especially the parents--oh, God bless us, yes!--regard it as an absolute certificate of character. They would hardly find it in their hearts to blame that man if they afterwards heard he was a burglar and a wife-beater. He might be indiscreet, but still "how Baby took to him!"

Now, personally, we get on pretty well with babies--also with grandmothers. Up to the age of six and after the age of sixty the girls seem to love us. Affection for us appears to be a characteristic of childhood--first or second. It would do your heart good to see the little dears grab for our watch and bang it on the arm of the chair or the top of the table, or anything that is handy and hard.

Grandmothers, too, are always very nice to us, and laugh at our jokes--especially if they are a little off color (the jokes, not the grandmothers). But girls of sixteen, say, or twenty-six, make it clear from their manner that they consider us a tiresome old stiff, afflicted with a pathetic hallucination that we are funny. There is something a little depressing about this.

As for dogs--well, frankly, we don't get on with them at all. The best we receive from them is a cold neutrality. Of all the dogs we know not one has a gosh-darn bit of use for us--except when we are sitting at their master's dining-table. Then they come and fix us with a threatening eye and black-mail us out of half our dinner. In fact, we have a suspicion that nothing but a certain leanness and stringiness in our lower members prevents them from eating out of our leg.

There is a house, for instance, where we dine almost every--well, as often as our hostess will let us. We like eating there. The cooking and the conversation are excellent. Also they don't regard the wine-cellar as a place to keep the winter's coal and ashes in.

But they have a dog--a big, black, furry dog, with feathers on his legs, and the ability to sit up and beg for hours at a stretch. He has also the biggest mouth we have ever seen on a dog of his size. When he opens it he splits himself apart right down to his hind legs. Some day in a moment of forgetfulness or excitement he is going to take our right arm off at the elbow. But still we go on feeding him. We don't dare stop.

In addition to getting most of our beefsteak and our lamb and our veal, that dog has got our goat. He sits right up beside us and counts every mouthful we take, looking all the time as if he hoped it would choke us. If we don't "come across" promptly with what he considers his proper "rake-off" on our food--the brute regards us as a parasite, anyway--he howls in fury.

"My dear," says our hostess to our host with characteristic thoughtfulness, "I think your dog is misbehaving himself--hadn't you better put him out?"

"Oh, the dog's only a little playful," says our host, eyeing us with the cold disapproval of a man who has his own opinion of a fellow who would sit in front of a big plate of roast beef and trimmings and let a poor dog suffer. "You don't want him put out, do you?" says he to us.

"Not for worlds!" we roar in counterfeit horror at the thought, and chuck a slab of sirloin into the gap at our elbow--it's as big as a manhole in the street. After that, whenever we catch this nice little doggie's eyes, we give him whatever happens to be on our fork, all the time hoping that he will go out on the street next day and eat a sausage full of arsenic, or some ptomaine pork.

If we don't catch his eye often enough, he pats us on the arm with a paw the size of a Virginia ham. He did that once when we were drinking a cup of coffee, and we poured it over a new pair of striped pants. We never cared to wear them afterwards--in fact, we didn't care to wear any at all for several days, until the new skin formed.

Talking of clothes reminds us that we were mistaken when we said no dog ever loved us. One did--Lord, how that dog worshipped us! He was a brindle bull belonging to an uncle of ours, who had an undershot jaw, one ear gone, a broken tail, and a record of seventy-odd murders--that is, Mutt had, not uncle.

Mutt was in many respects a very tough dog, but he loved us dearly. He dogged our footsteps, and he dogged us when we sat. In fact, when we were visiting uncle, which was fairly often--uncle always kept a few bottles on ice--that darn dog did nothing but dog us. He was the doggonest dogger we have ever known.

But we had little joy of his affection. We would rather have had him form a taste for anyone else on earth. We wouldn't have cared if he had taken up with the niggers down around the barn. In fact, when uncle wasn't looking, we used to punch him in the face and kick him behind the ears--even farther behind than that. But he regarded these caresses as proofs of affection, and would leap upon us and slobber in a riot of emotion till we were reduced to soggy helplessness.

That was the whole trouble--the slobbering. A friendly bulldog is a moist beast at best. If he loves you he drools on you, and the more he loves you the more humid he gets. But this brute was the dankest, wettest, coziest, sloppiest bulldog that ever drivelled his affection on a fancy vest. His finer feelings were a perfect swamp. His welcome was an inundation.