 CHAPTER 11 PART 2 OF WHAT CATTY DID NEXT This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mario Pineda. WHAT CATTY DID NEXT by Susan Kulich CHAPTER 11 PART 2 Their very last excursion of all, and one of the pleasentest, was to the all amphitheater of his all. And it was while they sat there, in the soft glow of the late afternoon, tying into bunches the violets, which they had gathered from under walls, whose foundations and to date roam itself, that a cheery call sounded from above, and an unexpected surprise descended upon them in the shape of Lieutenant Worthington, who, having secured another 15 days for love, had come to take his sister on to Venice. I didn't write you that I had applied for leave, he explained, because there seemed so little chance of my getting off again so soon. But as Locke had it, Caroters, whose turn it was, sprung his ankle and was laid up. And the Commodore let us exchange. I made all the capital I could out of Amy's fever, but upon my word, I felt like a hamburger when I came upon her and missed her swift in the casin just now, as I was hunting for you. HOW SHE HAS PICKED UP I should never have known her for the same child. Yes, she seems perfectly well again, and as strong as before she had the fever, though that dear old goofy swift is just as careful of her as ever. She would not let us bring her here this afternoon for fear we should stay out till the dew fell. Ned, it is perfectly delightful that you were able to come. It makes going to Venice seem quite a different thing, doesn't it, Catty? I don't want it to seem quite different, because going to Venice was always one of my dreams, or by Catty, with a little laugh. I hope at least it doesn't make it seem less pleasant, said Mr. Worthington, as his sister stopped to pick up a violent. No, indeed, I am glad, say, Catty. We should all be seeing it for the first time, too. Shall we not? I think you said you had never been there. She spoke simply and frankly, but she was conscious of an odd shyness. I simply couldn't stand it any longer, Ned Worthington confided to his sister when they were alone. My head is so full of her that I can't attend to my work, and it came to me all of a sudden that this might be my last chance. You'll be getting northip or long, you know, to Switzerland, and so on, but I cannot follow you, so I made a clean breast of it to the Commodore. Then a good old fellow, who has a soft spot in his heart for a love story, behaved like a brick, and made it all straight for me to come away. Mr. Sash did not join in these commendations of the Commodore. Her attention was fixed on another part of her brother's discourse. Then you won't be able to come to me again? I shan't see you again after this, she exclaimed. Dear me, I never realized that before. What should I do without you? You will have missed the car. She is the hostess herself, suggested Ned Worthington. His sister shook her head. Catty is a jewel, she remarked personally, but somehow one wants a man to call upon. I shall feel lost without you, Ned. The mons' housekeeping wound up that night with a thick tea in honor of the tenor Worthington's arrival, which taxed all the resources of the little establishment. Maria was sent out hastily to buy pun 40 da zina and bino dasti and fresh eggs for an omelet and chicken since breast, smothered in cream from the restaurant and artichokes for a salad and flowers to garnish all, and the guest ate and praised and admired, and Amy and Mabel sat on his knee and explained everything to him, and they were all very happy together. Her merriment was so infectious that it extended to the poor giantess, who had been very pensive all day at the prospect of losing her good place, and who now raised her boys in the grand area from Orpheus and made the kitchen ring with the passionate man Kefaro Chensa Yuridice. The splendid notes, full of fire and lamentation, rang out across the saucepans as effectively as if they had been footlights, and Catty, rising softly, opened the kitchen door a little way that they might not lose a sound. The next day brought them to Venice. It was a moment, indeed, as Catty seated herself for the first time in a gondola and looked from beneath its black hood on the palace walls on the grand canal, parts which they were gliding. Some were creamy white and black, some orange-tony, others of a dull, delicious, ruddy color, half pink, half red, but all, in build and ornament, were unlike palaces elsewhere. High on the prowl before her stood the gondolier, his form defined in dark outline against the sky as he swayed and bent to his long oar, raising his head now and again to give a wild musical cry as warning toward her approaching gondolas. It was all like a dream. Ned Worthington sat beside her, looking more at the changes of her expressive face than at the palaces. Venice was as new to him as to Catty, but she was a new feature in his life also, and even more interesting than Venice. They seemed to float on pleasures for the next ten days. Their arrival had been happily timed to coincide with a great popular festival which for nearly a week kept Venice in a state of continual brilliant color. All the days were spent on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building of our picture or to eat ice at Cendipiazza, with a lovely façade of sand marxists before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time. The evenings were spent on the water too. For every night, immediately after sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the Dutch palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends always took a part in it. In its center, when a barge hung with embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing color lanterns and pendants and gay awnings and managed by gondoliers in picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the music, while across their path, dazzling showers and arches of color fire poured from the palace front and the hotels. Every movement of the fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water. The torch leaped in a scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire above all the bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful in effect. Cathy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy. There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it. It was just a fairy tale and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in her childhood. She was the princess encircled by the lights as when she and Clover and Elsie played in Paradise. Only this was better. And dear me, who was the prince who seemed to belong to the story and to grow more important to it every day? Fairy tales must come to an end. Cathy's last chapter, closed with a sudden turn over of the leaf, went toward the end of this happy fortnight. Mr. Sush came into her room with the face of one who has unpleasant news to communicate. Cathy, she began, should you be awfully disappointed? Should you consider me a perfect wretch? If I went home now instead of in the autumn, Cathy was too much astonished to reply. I am ground such a coward. I am so knocked up and weakened by the way I suffered in Rome that I find I cannot face the idea of going on to Germany and Switzerland alone without Ned to take care of me. You are a perfect angel dear and I know that you would do all you could to make it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think my nerves must have given way. She continued half tearfully, but the very idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so miserably homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent afterward and I tell myself now how silly it is, but it is no use. I shall never know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America and under your father's care. I find, she continued after a lot of little posts, that we can go down with Ned to Genoa and take a steamer there which will carry us straight to New York without any stops. I hate to disappoint you dreadfully, Cathy, but I have almost decided to do it. Should you mind very much? Can you ever forgive me? She was fairly crying now. Cathy had to swallow hard before she could answer. The sense of disappointment was so sharp and with all her efforts there was almost a sob in her voice as she said. Why, yes indeed dear Polly, there is nothing to forgive. You are perfectly right to go home if you feel so. Then, with another swallow she added, you have given me the loveliest six months of street that ever was, and I should be a greedy girl indeed if I found fault because it is cut off a little sooner than we expected. You are so dear and good not to be begsed, sir her friend embracing her. It makes me feel doubly sorry about disappointing you. Indeed I wouldn't if I could help it, but I simply can't. I must go home. Perhaps we'd go back some other day when Amy is grown up or safely married to somebody who would take good care of her. This distant prospect was for the poor consolation for the immediate disappointment. The more Cathy thought about it, the sorry it did she feel. It was not only losing the chance, very likely the only one she would ever have of seeing Switzerland and Germany. It was all sorts of other little things besides. They must go home in a strange ship with the captain they didn't know, instead of in the Spartacus as they had planned and they should land in New York where no one would be waiting for them and not have the fun of sailing into Boston Bay and seeing Rose on the wharf where she had promised it to be. Furthermore they must pass the hot summer in Burnett instead of in the cool alpine valleys and Paulie's house was led till October. She and Amy would have to shift for themselves elsewhere, perhaps they would not be in Burnett at all. Oh dear what a pity it was, what a dreadful pity. Then the first shock of surprise and discomfort were over, other ideas asserted themselves and as she realized that in three weeks more or four at the longest she was to see Papa and Clover and all her dear people at home. She began to feel so very glad that she could hardly wait for the time to come. After all there was nothing in Europe quite so good as that. No I'm not sorry, she told herself, I am glad. Poor Paulie, it's no wonder she feels nervous after all she has gone through. I hope I wasn't crossed to her and it would be very nice to have Lieutenant Worfinton to take care of us as far as Genoa. The next three days were full of work, there was no more floating in Gondolas except in the way of business. All the shopping which they had put off must be done and the trunks parked for the voyage. Everyone recollected lost errands and commissions, there was continual calming and going and confusion and Amy, while with excitement popping up every other moment in the midst of it all to demand of everybody if they were not glad that they were going back to America. Cathy had never yet bought her gift from all misers spreading. She had waited, thinking continually that she should see something more tempting still in the next place they went to. But now with the sense that there were to be no more next places, she resolved to wait no longer and with a hundred francs in her pocket set forth to choose something from among the many tempting things for sale in the piazza. A bracelet of all Roman coins had caught her fancy one day in a brick-a-brack shop and she walked astray toward it, only pausing by the way to buy a pale blue iridescent picture at the Salbiades for Cessie's lack and see it carefully rolled in seaweed and soft paper. The price of the bracelet was a little more than she expected and quite a long process of bargaining was necessary to reduce it to the sum she had to spend. She had just succeeded and was counting out the money when Mr. Sasha and her brother appeared, having inspired her from the opposite side of the piazza where they were choosing last photographs at Nagas. Cathy showed her purchase and explained that it was a present for of course I should never walk out in cold blood and buy a bracelet for myself, she said with a laugh. This is a fascinating little shop said Mr. Sasha. I wonder what is the price of that queer old Chattelaine with the bottles hanging from it. The price was high but Mr. Sasha was not colorably conversant with Shopping Italian, which consisted chiefly of a few words repeated many times over and it lowered rapidly under the influence of her tropos and emerald tocarus accompanied by its telling little shrugs and looks of surprise. In the end she bought it for less than two thirds of what she had been originally asked for, as she put the parcel in her pocket her brother said. Did you have done your shopping now Polly, can you come out for a last row? Cathy may, but I can't reply Mr. Sasha. The man promised to bring me gloves at six o'clock and I must be there to pay for them. Take her down to the little net, it's an exquisite evening for the water and the sunset promises to be delicious. You can take the time, can you Cathy? Cathy could. Mr. Sasha turned to leave them but suddenly it stopped short. Cathy look, isn't that a picture? The picture was Amy who had come to the piazza with Mr. Swift to fill the doves of St. Mark's, which was on one of her favorite amusements. These pretty birds are the pets of all Venice and so accustomed to being funneled and made much of by strangers that they are perfectly tame. Amy, when her mother cuts out of her, was sitting on the marble pavement, with one on her shoulder, two parts on the edge of her lap, which was full of crumbs, and a flight of orders circling around her head. She was looking up and calling them in soft tones. They sound like cut little downy curls on her head and made them glitter. The flying doves lit on the pavement and crowded around her, their pearl and gray and rose tinted on white feathers, their scarlet feet and gold-ringed eyes, making a shifting confusion of colors as they hopped and fluttered and cooed about the little maid, unstartled even by her clear luffer. Close by stood Nurse Swift, observant and grimly pleased. The mother looked on with happy tears in her eyes. Oh, Cathy, think what she was a few weeks ago and look at her now. Can I ever be thankful enough? She squeezed Cathy's hand convulsively and walked away, turning her head now and then for another glance at Amy and the doves, while Ned and Cathy silently crossed to the landing and got into a gondola. It was the perfection of a bannish evening, with silver waves lapsing and lulling under the rose and up on the sky, and the sense that it was her last row on those enchanted waters made every moment seem doubly precious. I cannot tell you exactly what it was that Ned Worthington said to Cathy during that row or why it took so long to say it that they did not get in till after the song was set, and the stars had come out to peep at their bright, lengthy faces reflected in the grand canal. In fact, no one can tell. Or no one overheard except Giacomo, the brown, yellow-jacketed gondolier, and as he did not understand the word of English, he could not repeat the conversation. Benetian both men, however, know pretty well what it means when a gentleman and a lady, both young, find so much to say in low tones to each other under the gondola hood and are so long about giving the order to return. And Giacomo, deeply sympathetic, rowed as softly and made himself as imperceptible as he could, a display of tact which merited the big silver piece with which Dutina Worthington crossed his palm on landing. Mr. Sash had begun to look for them long before they appeared, but I think she was neither surprised nor sorry that they were so late. Cathy kissed her lahaisly and went away at once. To pack, she said, and Ned was equally undemonstrative. But they looked so happy, both of them, that polydeer was quite satisfied and asked no questions. Five days later, departing came when the Florio steamer put into the port of Genoa for passengers. It was not an easy goodbye to say. Mr. Sash and Amy both cried, and Mabel was said to be in deep affliction also. But there were alleviations. The squadron was coming home in the autumn, and the officers would have left to see their friends. And of course, Dutina Worthington most come to Brunei to visit his sister. Five months would soon go, he declared. But for all the cheerful assurance, his face was rueful enough as he held Cathy's hand in a long tight clasp while the little boat waited to take him ashore. After that, it was just waiting to be got through with till they sided Sandy Hook and the Nebersinks, a waiting bride with peeps and Marcells and Gibraltar, and a decide of a whale or two and one distant iceberg. The weather was fair all the way, and the ocean smooth. Amy was never wary of lamenting her own stupidity in not having taken Maria Matilda out of confinement before they left Venice. That child has hardly been out of the trunk since we started, she said. She hasn't seen anything except a little bit of niece. I shall really be ashamed when the other children ask her about it. I think I shall play that she was left at boarding school and didn't come to Europe at all. Don't you think that would be the best way, Mama? You might play that she was left in the States prison for having done something naughty, such as to Cathy, but Amy has got this idea. She never does naughty things, she said, because she never does anything at all. She's just a stupid poor child, it's not her fault. The 36 hours between New York and Burnett seemed longer than all the rest of the journey put together, Cathy thought. But they ended at last as the Lake Queen swung to her moorings at the familiar wharf where Dr Carr stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just as they had stood the previous October, only that now there were no clouds on anybody's face, and Johnny was skipping up and down for joy instead of grief. It was a long moment, while the plank was being lowered from the gangway. But the moment it was in place, Cathy darted across the first assured of all the passengers and was in her fighters arms. Mr. Sacha and Amy spent two or three days with them, while looking up temporary quarters elsewhere, and so long as they stayed all seemed a heavy confusion of talking and embracing and slaming and distributing of gifts. After they went away, things fell into their customary train and a certain flatness became apparent. Everything had happened that could happen. The long talk of European journey was over. Here was Cathy at home again, months sooner than they expected, yet she looked remarkably cheerful and content. Clebert could not understand, she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two private conversations between Cathy and Papa in which she had not been invited to take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from foreign parts about whose contents nothing was said. It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon, she said one day when they were alone in the bedroom. It is delightful to have you, of course, but we had brace ourselves to do without you till October, and there are such lots of delightful things that you could have been doing and seeing at this moment. Oh yes indeed, replied Cathy, but not at all as if she were particularly disappointed. Cathy, Carr, I don't understand you, persisted clever. Why don't you feel worse about it? Here you have lost five months at the most splendid time you ever had, and you don't seem to mind it a bit. Why, if I were in your place my heart would be perfectly broken, and you didn't have come either. That's the worst of it, it was just a whim of Paulies. Papa says Amy might have stayed as well as not. Why aren't you sorry, or Cathy? Oh, I don't know, perhaps because I had so much as it was, enough to last all my life. I think, though, I should like to go again. You can't imagine what beautiful pictures are put away in my memory. I don't see that you had so awfully much, said the guy gravitated clubber. You were there only a little more than six months, for I don't count it to see, and ever so much of that time was taken up with nurse and Amy. You can't have any pleasant pictures of that part of it. Yes, I have some. Well, I should really like to know what. There you were in a dark room, frightened to death, and tired to death, with only Mr. Ash and the old nurse to keep you company. Oh, yes, that brother was there part of the time. I forgot him. Clubbers stopped shorting sudden amazement. Cathy was standing with her back towards her, smoothing her hair, but the face was reflected in the glass. At clubbers' wars, a sudden deep flush had mounted in Cathy's cheeks. Deeper and deeper, it burned as she became conscious of clubbers' astonished gaze, till even the back of her neck was pink. Then, as if she could not burn any longer, she put the brush down, turned, and fled out of the room, while clubbers, looking after her, exclaimed in a ton of sudden comical dismay. What does it mean? Oh, dear me, is that what Cathy's going to do next? End of chapter 11, part 2 of what Cathy did next. End of what Cathy did next. Bye, Susan College.