He heard her mother reply: `Buff, are you sure it really was Jennie? After all those years. . . . It may have been only another cat that was like Jennie.'
`Oh, Mummy, now…. There was only one cat in the whole world like Jennie-'And here her voice trailed off as she and her mother walked out of earshot and turned the corner into the Square, leaving Peter's heart as cold and weighted as the cobblestone on which he crouched, and in his ears the echo of Buff's last remark: `… there was only one cat in the whole world like Jennie.' How well he knew this to be true now that he had lost her, perhaps for ever.
There was no use waiting or looking any longer in the Mews. And besides, deep down, Peter had always known that even if Jennie had been angry at him she would have answered his call had she been there.
But where to search next? In a panic lest she might have returned to the hostel in the meantime, he went charging around the corner and in through the broken board, almost tearing an ear in his haste, but of course she was not there. He would even have been glad to have been abused by the two sisters once more just because they had last had contact with Jennie, but they had gone out and there were only a few strangers in the hostel, most of the residents having gone about the business of the day.
It was then the conviction came over him that he must look elsewhere, and probably far from there, that she must have left the neighbourhood which had brought her unhappiness.
He thought now that he would go back and look around their old haunts on the docks as the most likely place where Jennie might go. He moved both by day and by night, and because his mind was so occupied by his quest, Peter was not even aware what an experienced and practised London cat he had become, thanks to Jennie's teaching and training. Sights and sounds and sudden noises no longer frightened him; he erred to know how to avoid trouble automatically; he could melt away and hide at a moment's notice, instinctively, no matter where he was he always picked out and marked a place of safety to which to go in case of sudden danger, something to get under, or on top. But of course he was doing these things without realizing it at all. For right then he was going through that awful stage of seeing Jennie in every tabby cat curled up in a shop doorway, or washing in a window, or gliding across the top of a fence or hoarding.
Because the yearning for her was ever in his mind, it seemed to him that each time he turned a corner his heart leaped high with hope that he might come upon Jennie, and if there was a cat there at all tiger striped, no matter what her size, shape or colour, he suffered first from the hope-born illusion that it was Jennie and then from the oft-repeated when it was not.
And from this he passed to the stage where he had the strongest feeling that surely now he must and would find her just around the next corner, and so he would dash at full speed to get there and look. There would be nobody there, only some children playing in the gutter, or women queueing up at the fish store or the local sweet shop, or perhaps only a dog scavenging in the streets. Then the conviction would seize hold of Peter that he had just managed to miss her, that she had been there but probably had just nipped around the next corner, and that if he ran as fast as he could he might be in time to catch her there.
This sort of thing of course soon led to a state approaching exhaustion, particularly since he was not stopping to eat or drink, except as he came upon a pool of dirty water still remaining from the last rain in some depression of the street, and whatever scraps of anything edible happened to come his way during his pell-mell, headlong, conscience-driven search. He had let himself go physically and personally as well, not stopping to wash or clean up, and soon his white fur lost its gloss and became matted and dirty, his pink skin began to collect grime and itch him, and it was not long before he was the counterpart of the scrawniest, mangiest stray that ever slunk along the backwaters of London Town and the river reaches.
And still he kept on, with night merging into day and day into night again. He slept when he could not go on any longer out of sheer weariness, and wherever he happened to be, and always when he had had a little rest, there was the memory of the sweet and unforgettable face of Jennie with its white throat and soft, pink-lined muzzle, and the glowing, liquid, tender eyes, as well as all her individual mannerisms; her smile, the quick way she would look over at him to make sure that everything was well with him, her dear motions when she washed herself, her gay carriage. And there were her little weaknesses such as her family and ancestry and her desire to show off and look well before Peter's eyes, and at the same time all her strength, her lithe sureness, muscular paws and quiet, efficient action when it came to the hunt, or any kind of emergency. And it drove him on and on and on, ever searching.
When he reached the dock section once more he found that he remembered his way about somewhat better, and he went to the shack where Mr. Grims had lived on the chance that Jennie might just possibly have returned there to mourn for her friend, or drawn by her memories of the old man.
It was a grey, cold day, and raining again, when Peter went slinking along beneath the cover of the lined– up goods wagons in the late afternoon as he had that day so long ago with Jennie and thus came at last to the shack with the tin roof and the crooked-pipe chimney sticking out of it.
But, alas, what a difference. Gone were the red-blooming geraniums from either side of the door and from the windows. It looked dirty, dismal and more tumbledown than ever, and when Peter crept near and looked inside through the half-opened door he could see a mean-eyed, snivelling-looking little fellow wearing a dirty neckcloth, sitting on the cot with an Upraised gin bottle held to his mouth, and the whole place smelled of gin and sweat and dirt. And of course there was no sign of Jennie.
The man removed the bottle from his lips, and since he had drained it empty, he sent it flying through the door where it crashed into a thousand pieces almost where Peter was sitting. Had it been another inch or two to the left, it would have hit him. Peter wished it had. He dragged himself away from there..
As a kind of last hope, he found his steps turning towards the basin, east of the London docks, where the Countess of Greenock had been berthed. Surely, oh surely that was where Jennie must have gone. And the terrible part of his punishment was that each time he had such a thought about where she might be, it became at once the place where she must be and then he became all of a fever to get there, and as he went his mind would delude him with the picture of exactly where he would find Jennie, and how she would look, and what he would say to her, and what she would reply. And soon he would convince himself that it was all true and that he had only to hasten his steps to reach the Countess to find all as it was before-Mr. Strachan slashing at his dummy with his sword, Mr. Carluke cocking his fingers and firing off imaginary pistols at imaginary bad men and Indians, the crash of smashing crockery emanating from Captain Sourlies' cabin, and Jennie perched up on her favourite place-the flag locker on the after– deck.
The Countess was indeed in port, warped to her dock in the usual slovenly manner, but outside of the mournful strains of singing coming from amidships, there were no signs of life aboard her, the entire crew and officers having apparently gone ashore leaving no kind of watch whatsoever and no one aboard except Mealie, the cook.
He was sitting on a stool on deck at the head of the gangway, shining black and round-eyed, chanting a doleful blues, but his sharp and rolling eyes missed nothing, and when Peter poked his head around the corner of the gangplank and looked up, he ceased singing at once and shouted down-'Hollo, you Whitey! Hollo you. I know you. I know you. I never forget NO one. Where you been, hey? Where you gorl friend? You looking for you gorl friend, hey? She ain' been aroun' here.. . Why you both no come back.? We got plandy mouse and rot on board again.'