“Gallantry in the Face of Cats,” muttered Bernard. First to his chagrin, then to his astonishment, she burst into musical laughter.
“In the face of cats? How very droll! I dote on cats!” laughed Miss Bianca. “Or rather,” she added sentimentally, “on one particular cat … a most beautiful Persian, white as I am myself, belonging to the Boy’s mother. I used to play in his fur; I’m told we made rather a pretty picture … Alas, he is no more,” sighed Miss Bianca, “but for his sake all cats will ever be dear to me!”
Bernard was absolutely speechless. He didn’t disbelieve Miss Bianca; he could, just, imagine some pampered lap-cat fat enough and drowsy enough to have lost all natural instincts. But what an appealing thought – a mouse going out into the world alone, on a mission of danger, not afraid of cats!
“My poor playfellow! Ah me!” sighed Miss Bianca tenderly.
“Look here, you’ve got to promise—” began Bernard; and gave up. There was a dreamy look in her eyes which warned him, though he didn’t know much about women, that it was the wrong moment to run cats down. Instead, he attempted to console her.
“You’ve got all this,” he pointed out, looking round at the swings and the seesaws and the fountain.
“And how trifling it seems!” sighed Miss Bianca. “How trifling it must seem, especially, to you, compared with the real and earnest life of a pantry!”
Bernard drew a deep breath. Now or never, he thought!
“Would you like to do something real and earnest too, Miss Bianca?”
She hesitated. Her lovely eyes were for a moment veiled. Then one small pink hand crept up to finger the silver chain.
“No,” said Miss Bianca decidedly. “I’m so fond, you see, of the Boy. And he is so attached to me, how many times have I not heard him call me his only friend! I feel so long as I do my duty to the Boy, my existence, however frivolous it may appear, is in fact quite earnest enough.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Bernard glumly. (They should have sent the chairwoman, he thought, not him. The chairwoman could talk about duty quite wonderfully.) “All the same,” he persisted, “you’re not with the Boy all the time. You’re not with him now, for instance.” (There was considerable point in this; it is at night that mice most want to be up and doing, and are most bored by inactivity.) “Actually, now that you’ve no longer your, h’m, playfellow, I really don’t see how you occupy yourself.”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” said Miss Bianca modestly, “I write.”
Bernard gaped. He had never met a writer before! Though he was terribly afraid of wasting time, he couldn’t help asking What.
“Poetry,” confessed Miss Bianca.
How Bernard’s heart leapt!
For so was the Norwegian prisoner a poet!
What a wonderful, fortunate coincidence! The very thing to make Miss Bianca change her mind! Without giving himself time to think, and without any transition, Bernard blurted it all out – all about the Prisoners’ Aid Society, all about the great enterprise, all about Miss Bianca’s part in it, all about everything.
The result was exactly what might have been expected. Miss Bianca fainted clean away.
Desperately Bernard slapped her hands, fanned her face, leapt to the hidden spring, turned on the fountain, with incredible agility leapt again and caught a drop of water before it subsided, sprinkled Miss Bianca’s forehead. (Oh for the chairwoman, he thought!) Seconds passed, a long minute, before the dark eyelashes fluttered and Miss Bianca came to.
“Where am I?” she murmured faintly.
“Here, in your own porcelain pagoda,” reassured Bernard. “I am Bernard from the pantry—”
“Go away!” shrieked Miss Bianca.
“If you’ll only listen quietly—”
“I won’t hear any more!” cried Miss Bianca. “I don’t want anything to do with you! Go away, go away, go away!”
Greatly daring, Bernard caught both her hands and pressed them between his own. The action seemed to steady her. She stopped trembling.
“Dear, dearest Miss Bianca,” said Bernard fervently, “if I could take your place, do you think I wouldn’t? To spare you the least inconvenience, I’d walk into cat baskets! But I can’t travel by Diplomatic Bag, I can’t get to Norway in twenty-four hours. Nor can anyone else. You, and you alone, can be this poor chap’s saviour.”
At least she was listening, and at least she didn’t push Bernard away. She even left her hands in his.
“And a poet!” went on Bernard. “Only consider, dear Miss Bianca – a poet like yourself! How can you bear to think of him, alone in a deep dark dungeon, when one word from you—”
“Is that really all?” whispered Miss Bianca. “Just one word?”
“Well, of course you’ve got to say it to the right mouse,” admitted Bernard honestly. “And to find him I dare say you’ll have to go into pretty rough quarters. I tell you my blood boils when I think of it—”
“Why?” whispered Miss Bianca. “Why does your blood boil?”
“Because you’re so beautiful!” cried Bernard recklessly. “It’s not fair to ask you to be brave as well! You should be protected and cherished and loved and honoured, and I for my part ask nothing better than to lie down and let you walk on me!”
Miss Bianca rested her head lightly against his shoulder.
“You give me such a good opinion of myself,” she said softly, “perhaps I could be brave as well …”
Poem by Miss Bianca, written that night
“Though timid beats the female heart,
Tempered by only Cupid’s fires,
The touch of an heroic hand
With unaccustomed bravery inspires.”
M.B.
THREE DAYS LATER, Miss Bianca was in Norway.
The journey, as usual, had given her not the least trouble. She travelled as usual in the Diplomatic Bag, where she amused herself by reading secret documents while the great aeroplane flew smoothly and swiftly over mountain and forest, river, and finally, sea. (To be accurate, there was a slight bumpiness of the mountain part, but Miss Bianca was too absorbed in a very Top Secret to notice.) Precisely twenty-four hours after departure she was reinstalled in her porcelain pagoda in the Boy’s new schoolroom in Oslo, the capital of Norway.
It was then her mission really began; with, in Miss Bianca’s opinion, far too much left to her own initiative. She was simply to seek out the bravest mouse in Norway! Without the slightest idea where he was to be found – or indeed where any mice were to be found! For Miss Bianca’s life had been so remarkably sheltered, she really didn’t know anything at all about how other mice lived. Except for Bernard, she had never even spoken to one.
Except for Bernard … Miss Bianca’s thoughts flew to him so readily, she felt quite angry with herself. Now that the excitement of their midnight meeting was past, she couldn’t help recognising that good and brave as Bernard was, he was also completely undistinguished. Yet how kind and resourceful, when she fainted! How