The ratpile in the pet-shop squirmed continually with new life; it never had time really to cool from the hot, naked bodies of one litter of ratlets before some other rat mother had filled it again. One nest was common to all the mothers in the rat-cage; neither mothers nor ratlets knew who belonged to whom. The vital little rats tore on into maturity, exchanging pink nakedness for white fur, cut teeth, chewed food, were kicked from the nest to look out for themselves.
The flapper-rats dug themselves into the big ratpile mounded in the centre of the cage. Rats of all sizes squeaked and squirmed, cosying pink noses into the centre of the pile to find warmth. Some rat was always rooting for something some other rat had. The rat-mound was always in a moil. Periodically the cage was cleaned out. Then confusion was terrible, even the ratty smell got mislaid, everything had to be reconstructed.
Humans were a nuisance with their tidying! How could young rats practise thrift and hoarding with surfeit of fresh food provided every day? Even a rat loses dignity and self-respect when glutted.
“Male or female?”
“Female—young—”
A selective hand stirred the ratpile. The smell of that hand was known to the rats. Its pick was half-grown and snow-white. The little rat was put into a paper bag. The cash-register jangled, purchaser and purchased joggled away on the street-car. During the joggling a human eye looked into the bag’s mouth.
“Hallo, rat! Your name is Susie.” There was glad ownership in the voice as well as sober assuming of the responsibility for a bit of life, life which has been pushed from its natural course and, by domesticity, robbed of its initiative. Giving to the little rat a name of her own hoisted her immediately from rat-hoard to individual. Named, even a rat becomes “special”.
Arrived at their destination, Susie was introduced to the family circle of her purchaser—her special human. The family drew back with squeals and shudders. They called Susie “vermin”. A door banged, another opened, and Susie came home.
The room that was to home her for life was a big studio in which her particular human lived. The woman had prepared a wired box for Susie. The box stood on a large table. The table was a conglomeration. On it, besides Susie’s box, were paint-boxes, nail-boxes, match-boxes, flower-basket, work-baskets, clothes-baskets, carpenter’s tools, gardening tools, bundles of rag, balls of string, a great lump of modelling clay, brown shoes and black shoes, a bag of oranges, and a hat. It seemed that every lost thing in the world could be found on that table. Susie was allowed to roam the table and acquaint herself with the smell of all the things.
She liked one thing best of all, a big leather-bound Bible that stood on the corner of the table. This was Susie’s lookout; mounted there, large flat feet clamped down on the leather cover and haunches squared, the rat pondered and pondered, smelling the world, eyes blank and blinkless, wiggling nose thrust into the air, whisker twitching, tiny pink forefeet waving, beating the air like the paws of a begging dog. The Bible and the soft warmness under her mistress’s chin were the high spots in Susie’s world—under her “particular” human’s chin the rat experienced a throbbing warmth similar to that of the pet-shop ratpile.
Everything in the studio had absorbed through touch the smell of Susie’s own human, even the silence was full of her. Susie homed herself happily, accepting, responding, giving herself wholeheartedly, invisibly chained to this being beyond the smell of whom she never strayed.
Spring found Susie adult and sleek. The mate of the griffon dog had a cosy basket full of puppies. Spring and instinct gave Susie notions: she chewed rag and paper and made nests in quiet, out-of-the-way corners, nests that fitted her body; but she tired of their emptiness and went back to the leather Bible, begged with her paws and wiggled her nose.
Down through the studio ventilator came a faint, faint whiff. Susie’s nose became still more active. The attic above the studio was a difficult, perilous journey for Susie—jumps, crawlings, squeezings; but at last it had been accomplished.
“Susie, Susie!” Susie’s human heard terrified rat screams and rushed up to the attic. When she opened the door it was not Susie who rushed to her for protection, but an ugly brown rat, scared out of his life by Susie’s chasing. The door slammed in the face of the wild rat—he scuttled noisily down between walls, too scared even to be quiet. Susie did not follow; she came, a dusty, cobwebby rat, glad to be taken back to her studio. She never went to the attic again.
Under the soft warmth of a feather pillow in the studio was found a morsel of life badly smashed. The creature looked like a rat but was not ratty quite and he was very nearly dead. Warmed and fed, he revived. Susie was sleeping in a ragbag hanging on the wall. Her box was requisitioned for the stranger, and a naturalist consulted as to the creature’s kind.
He asked, “When did you last coal?”
“Yesterday.”
“Ah, you got more than coal in your sacks. This is a black wharf rat, the kind that come in ships. Maybe he carries bubonic plague, looks pretty battered. Being shovelled into, and poured out of, a ton of coal is not exactly tender handling: better finish him.” It seemed “cattish” to pull from death only to push back to death again.
The ragbag quivered, a pink nose stuck out of the top. Susie came to investigate. “Um, check ratlets!” mused the naturalist.
When the black rat saw the white rat he went frantic, tore up and down his box and squealed with fear. For three days he was in the box and screeched whenever Susie set foot on the table. He was disposed of—Susie’s human went to the pet-shop and bought a sleek, gentlemanly white rat. Susie turned on him and beat him up so unmercifully, paying back with interest the scorn of the brown and the black rat, that he had to be returned to the pet-shop.
Susie lived and died an old maid.
Susie travelled. She not only made a number of camping trips with her mistress in a caravan, along with some dogs and a monkey, but she went by boat and train and stayed in hotels too.
Susie’s human said, “I go travelling. Who will care for Susie during my absence?” There was dead silence—Susie’s mistress would not plead. She popped Susie into her handbag along with a purse, travelling clock, knitting needles, and reading matter. When the steward came into the stateroom Susie hid. On the train an over-stout lady sat on the handbag. Susie’s human screamed, “Oh, my glasses!” The fat woman said, “I sat lightly,” and got up huffed.
Susie’s human slipped her hand into the bag to make sure Susie was entire. And then the train stopped. Susie’s agitated mistress left the bag on the train! The porter came running down the platform waving the bag. He swung himself again onto the moving train with a tip gripped tight; its size surprised him, and all he could gasp was, “Such a shabby ole bag too!”
In the hotel, Susie slept in the griffon dog’s box all day, while the dog and human were off in the woods painting. At night, the dog, the woman, and the rat had romps. The dog was very gentle with the rat. They had been in the hotel a week when the hostess asked Susie’s human into her sitting-room one hot evening to drink a cup of tea. This hotel proprietress was fond of creatures, and Susie’s human went upstairs and came back with Susie. “Oh!” screamed the woman, “I hate rats’ tails!”
“Rats steer by their tails and whiskers,” said Susie’s human. “Did you not see Susie when you did up my room?”
The proprietress thought it very strange to travel with a rat. “That explains certain crusts and lumps of sugar,” she mused. Susie’s human remembered that they had fallen out of her pocket-handkerchief on the stair once or twice.
The normal life of a white rat is two years. Susie, who was robust, added another six months, then she became lean and bony and her teeth got dark brown. She moved wearily and slept a great deal.
It had for two years been the rat’s custom to come up the little stair leading direct from studio to her human’s bedroom in early morning. It took weeks of patient practice for the rat to manage the jump from tread to tread. Each bare shiny step was just beyond the reach of Susie’s spring: she fell back over and over to the step below.
The night Susie conquered the stair her human was startled from sound sleep by a patter of feet scuttling over her chest. “Wild rat from the attic!” was her horror-thought on waking. She flung out an arm and struck some small soft thing weighted with life, knocked it onto the floor and switched on the light. On the mat beside the bed sat Susie, half stunned, wholly indignant at the frustration of all those patient tryings. From that time Susie came upstairs at two o’clock every morning, scrambled up the counterpane overhang, pushed a pink nose under the fingers of her dear human, lay quite still. Presently the hand she loved put Susie to the floor.
“Go down, Susie.”
The rat ran back to the studio satisfied.
Old Susie’s time was up. Any day now she might sleep and forget to wake.
“Susie, we must shut you in your box at night now.” Lidded in her box, the old rat went frantic, rattling the door, chewing the wire, squealing for liberation. She got it, and continued to mount the stair nightly. Then one night Susie did not come. In the early dawn her human crept to the stairhead. Susie was on the bottom step, dead.
Loyalty to the very last jump—loyalty even in a rat
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