Blurb: Henry Tilney, paleontologist for a NY museum, is unwittingly roped into helping Catherine Morland take a leopard to a farm in Connecticut. NA as Bringing Up Baby.
Chapter Summary: Henry and Catherine drive Baby into the country.
AND BABY MAKES THREE
4: A Knight Errant
Henry and Catherine lured Baby down to the street and into the backseat of Henry's car before a meter maid could ticket him. Catherine sat in the front passenger seat and began fiddling with the radio dial, listening for the sort of music that would keep the leopard happy in the stop-and-go congestion until they could get out of the city.
She was clear with her directions, warning him in advance of any turns so he could drive as smoothly as possible and not disturb the predator in the backseat. Once they were on a relatively open stretch of road, they kept glancing at Baby who seemed well-adjusted to travel after enduring the trip from Africa.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Catherine shyly told him that he'd better call her Catherine for the rest of the trip. "It won't do for Aunt Bess to think I rode in a stranger's car," she explained. "She'll tell my parents that I was being unsafe and I won't hear the end of it."
Henry personally thought he was far safer company than a leopard but had no objections to the request and was able to suggest in the spirit of reciprocity that she use his first name as well. Catherine accepted with something like a blush before falling silent.
There was no more conversation in the car for another ten minutes. At that point, the radio picked up more static than song and Catherine was forced to shut it off and sing to Baby herself.
She didn't sound like a professional performer but she knew all the words and stayed mostly in tune. And - what was more important - the leopard didn't seem to mind. With no need for detailed navigation for the next hour, she twisted in her seat to serenade Baby directly, checking only briefly on Henry when her voice would falter just a little. After a while, however, the pose got tiring and she faced forward and sang to the open road.
After another ten minutes she checked the backseat and saw that their most important passenger had fallen asleep. "Baby's sleeping," she said in a quiet voice and fell silent.
"Did your aunt provide you with a music tutor?" he said, thinking of all the other opportunities that Aunt Bess had provided
"Oh, she would never do that!" Catherine said, sounding scandalized but offering no explanation. "How did you end up working as a paleontologist with all the bones?"
It was a blatant change of subject but she had been singing for a long while; it was Henry's turn to provide the chatter.
"I suppose my fascination started as a child. We lived in upstate New York and there was a stream about a mile from our house. My sister and I would walk to it all the time. One summer day, I found my first fossil there in the stream bed. It was just a common trilobite but after that, I was hooked," he concluded with a shrug.
There was a pause as Catherine soaked up the story, then she frowned and asked, "That's it?"
"Yes?" he said, wondering why she felt there should be more.
"Come now, Henry," she chided him. "There has to be more to the story. We certainly have time for a little embellishment."
"I love paleontology," he shrugged simply. "I was rather good at it in college. My advisor, Professor Messing wrote amazing letters of recommendation; I could have gone to Georgia or Illinois but in the end I decided to stay in New York. The fact that my uncle is the director was honestly a discouragement as I didn't want anyone to think I had gotten my job due to nepotism. My uncle thankfully stayed out of the interview and hiring process, but I was already familiar with Professor Wiltshire who was the museum's head of paleontology so I'm sure my connections with him gave me an unfair advantage over other candidates."
"Forgive me," Catherine apologized for interrupting, "but you seem a little too humble to take advantage of your connections, Henry. I'm sure you were the best candidate."
"And what do you know of paleontology?" he asked, not unkindly. He didn't want to prove her wrong but he didn't need her defense.
"Very little, compared to some," she admitted, "but I know a great deal about men who use their connections like a battering ram to knock down anything between them and what they want. You don't seem the type."
He took his eyes off the road and stared at her, wondering how many golf balls she had accidentally stolen at her aunt's club and how many condescending harangues she'd had to deal with.
"Well," he said as he returned his attention to the road and adjusted his grip on the wheel, "regardless, I got the job. A couple of years later, old Dr. Wiltshire retired. He was as much of a dinosaur as the specimens we studied but he decided to retire before going extinct. By then, I thought I knew all there was to know about running the department. Things like: how to slowly circulate the less eye-catching pieces through our main exhibit hall; how to restore any new acquisitions and prepare them for exhibit; how to methodically examine the pieces in our permanent collection."
"What's the most interesting piece in the museum?" asked Catherine.
"The intercostal clavicle," he answered immediately even though it was not literally in the museum at the moment before adding, "I suppose my opinion is biased toward the newest piece, but we've been looking for it for ages."
Catherine recalled that it was Henry's sister who found it which led to them both talking about their siblings. Henry had yet to share Eleanor's joy with anyone so he took delight in sharing all the little signs he observed over the years that spoke of a mutual respect between his sister and his new brother-in-law.
Catherine gushed at the happily-ever-after and wished with a sigh that her own brother James could one day find a similar ending.
"Ah, yes," Henry said, remembering, "Isabella from the letter."
"It was awful," Catherine frowned. "The whole thing was just awful. She and James got engaged so fast. I fell in love with her too; we were to be sisters after all. But then she found out that James wasn't going to inherit piles of money and she cheated on him. He was devastated when he found out. He broke it off but everything around him only reminded him of her. My parents were so worried when he said he was going to Africa but I suppose it's been good for him. He sounds like he's finally over Isabella."
"It's funny, I guess, that my sister went away to find love while your brother went away to recover from love gone wrong," Henry mused.
Catherine smiled at him. "Yes, but I don't think I appreciate the idea of having to go so far from home to find happiness. Then again, if I was miserable at home as James was after Isabella, I suppose I wouldn't mind leaving it."
Henry grimaced. Eleanor had not been happy moving back to their uncle's home after she finished college. A number of her friends had only continued their education until they had secured a fiancé but Eleanor had graduated with a degree in English. Uncle Errol hadn't known what to do with her then and all his suggestions - various attempts to throw her in the path of rich bachelors with a family history of philanthropy - were met with increasing coldness. Henry had tried to step in, to explain to their uncle that Eleanor didn't want to feel like she was being married off, but it went as well as a reasonable man might expect in hindsight.
"Yes," he said slowly, the acrimonious taste of bad memories clinging to his tongue. "Eleanor was rather grateful for the opportunity to go out west where no one would think too much about what she was supposed to be doing instead."
"Will they move back to New York, do you think?" Catherine wondered. "Or will they settle out there?"
"I don't know," he answered honestly. The possibility that he would only see her again after a long period of planning and days of travel was depressing. "At least, if I can keep her on the museum's payroll, it won't feel like she's so far."
"I'm sure Sacha will be able to help you," Catherine told him, encouragingly. "And I'm glad your sister is so happy now. It's a good reminder that low spirits are temporary. And who knows? Maybe James will meet a girl in Africa and live happily ever after there."
"Just the two of them, and Baby makes three," Henry joked.
Catherine started giggling at the silliness of the image. She covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the noise but it was no use. Trying to be quiet only made her louder. Finally she could contain herself no longer and burst into loud peals of laughter. Henry soon joined her.
They might have laughed all the way to the end of their journey but they woke up the leopard in the backseat who growled petulantly. They immediately fell silent, hoping to placate the cat.
Baby, however, wasn't cheery at being woken. He remained grouchy and complaining, flexing his claws and threatening the upholstery.
"What do we do?" said Catherine.
"I don't know!" Henry replied. It was one of the few times that Henry regretted his career choice. If only he had studied living animals, he might know what to do now. "Play him some music!"
Catherine fiddled with the radio for something soothing and Henry pulled the car to a little patch of gravel on the side of the road. Henry got out of the car, then opened the back door. He didn't know what the leopard was about to do - the only animals he seriously studied were so long extinct that their behavior was pure conjecture - but he didn't want himself or Catherine trapped in the same car when it happened.
Baby bounded out and away from the road. Catherine called out in surprise and ran after him, with Henry trailing in last place.
Despite the terrain and flora being foreign to the big cat, he moved with speed and grace, and had soon escaped his chaperones.
"Oh, Baby! We've got to find him!" Catherine nearly wailed.
Henry could only agree. While he didn't want to be mauled to death in his own car, he also didn't want anyone else to be mauled due to his negligence or cowardice.
They began calling for the leopard, singing refrains from popular love songs, and methodically checking any vegetation that might be big enough to hide the animal, getting further and further from the road as time passed.
Before either of them could lose hope, there was a growl and a squawk and other noises that sounded like a brief, one-sided fight. Catherine and Henry immediately chased after the sound and found Baby with a dead duck. The sight turned their stomachs but the snack put Baby in a docile mood. After drinking from a nearby pond - the same pond at which the unlucky duck had made its temporary home - he allowed himself to be coaxed and cajoled back to the car.
As the cat washed his face and paws, Catherine shakily asked Henry if he wouldn't mind stopping at the town center near the farm to load up on meats from a butcher's shop. Baby was fed now, but her brother's letter gave no guidance on how frequently or how much to feed him and she would hate to have Baby get hungry again.
"Of course," Henry agreed, a little pale himself.
By unspoken accord, they rolled their windows down so the car interior would smell less like an abattoir. They continued on, the radio providing background noise to cover up their lack of conversation.
Notes: what do you think thus far?
