第39章

As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one, for it was natural and unforced.He ate when he was hungry, slept when he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his toes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail.He delighted to roam about the garden, and stroll among the trees, and to lie on the green grass and luxuriate in all the sweet influences of summer.You could never accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew the secret of repose.The poet who wrote so prettily of him that his little life was rounded with a sleep, understated his felicity; it was rounded with a good many.His conscience never seemed to interfere with his slumbers.In fact, he had good habits and a contented mind.I can see him now walk in at the study door, sit down by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet, and look up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face.Ioften thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him the power of language.But since he was denied speech, he scorned the inarticulate mouthings of the lower animals.The vulgar mewing and yowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered a sort of articulate and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to call attention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some want of his, but he never went whining about.He would sit for hours at a closed window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and when it was opened, he never admitted that he had been impatient by "bolting" in.Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind of utterance given to his race he would not use, he had a mighty power of purr to express his measureless content with congenial society.

There was in him a musical organ with stops of varied power and expression, upon which I have no doubt he could have performed Scarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.

Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of the diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for his departure was as quiet as his advent was mysterious.I only know that he appeared to us in this world in his perfect stature and beauty, and that after a time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew.In his illness there was nothing more to be regretted than in all his blameless life.I suppose there never was an illness that had more of dignity, and sweetness and resignation in it.It came on gradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of appetite.An alarming symptom was his preference for the warmth of a furnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open woodfire.

Whatever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed only anxious not to obtrude his malady.We tempted him with the delicacies of the season, but it soon became impossible for him to eat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely anything.Sometimes he made an effort to take something, but it was evident that he made the effort to please us.The neighbors--and I am convinced that the advice of neighbors is never good for anything--suggested catnip.He would n't even smell it.We had the attendance of an amateur practitioner of medicine, whose real office was the cure of souls, but nothing touched his case.He took what was offered, but it was with the air of one to whom the time for pellets was passed.He sat or lay day after day almost motionless, never once making a display of those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are so disagreeable to society.His favorite place was on the brightest spot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell and he could hear the fountain play.If we went to him and exhibited our interest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of our sympathy.And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expression that said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was to all who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience in affliction.

I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card of his failing condition; and never again saw him alive.One sunny morning, he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he was very thin then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all the plants he knew, and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room, and stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brown and sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours of his life had been spent.It was a last look.He turned and walked away, laid himself down upon the bright spot in the rug, and quietly died.

It is not too much to say that a little shock went through the neighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked was his individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to see him.There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it was felt that any parade would have been distasteful to him.John, who acted as undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him and I believe assumed a professional decorum; but there may have been the usual levity underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen that it was the "driest wake he ever attended." Everybody, however, felt a fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect.

Between him and Bertha there existed a great friendship, and she apprehended his nature; she used to say that sometimes she was afraid of him, he looked at her so intelligently; she was never certain that he was what he appeared to be.

When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamber by an open window.It was February.He reposed in a candle-box, lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a little wine-glass with flowers.He lay with his head tucked down in his arms,--a favorite position of his before the fire,--as if asleep in the comfort of his soft and exquisite fur.It was the involuntary exclamation of those who saw him, "How natural he looks! "As for myself, I said nothing.John buried him under the twin hawthorn-trees,--one white and the other pink,--in a spot where Calvin was fond of lying and listening to the hum of summer insects and the twitter of birds.

Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of character that was so evident to those who knew him.At any rate, I have set down nothing concerning him, but the literal truth.He was always a mystery.I did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he has gone.I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay upon his grave.

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