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: Catherine steals a car. Henry's suit is ruined.
AND BABY MAKES THREE
6: A Rest in the Quest
"Stop here," Catherine directed in front of a line of busy shops and Henry dutifully pulled into the one open parking spot.
The butcher shop was clearly marked and doing brisk business although the line did not extend outside the shop.
"You go," Catherine said when he had turned off the engine. "I'll stay here and keep an eye on Baby."
"Are you sure?" he wondered. They had both been a little shaken from Baby's earlier snack.
Catherine smiled back at him. "Perfectly," she said, and she was at ease with her decision. The car had been aired out and it was easy to imagine that nothing had happened. "I'll be quite safe."
Henry wasn't completely convinced of that, but decided the best option was for him to be quick. So he left the keys in the car and hustled into the shop.
She checked on the cat in the backseat who was starting to perk up again in response to the bustle on the street. Before she could get too worried about that, however, there was a knock on the hood of the car.
"Miss?" came a disgruntled voice. "Miss, you need to move your car."
Catherine whipped her head around. By the man's attire, he worked for the local police force but she didn't know him. "I'm sorry? Can you repeat that?" she asked as she leaned out the window.
"I said you need to move your car," he repeated with more volume and more irritation.
"My car? I need to move my car?" With her head full of leopards and meat and paleontologists, it was difficult to figure out what had gotten this man in such a tizzy. She didn't even own a car.
The officer straightened and glared at her with the full force of his authority. "Get out of the car, miss, and come here."
Feeling trapped, Catherine stepped out and came forward. "What seems to be the problem?" she asked nervously.
"The problem is that you've parked your car in front of the hydrant," he told her, gesturing at the fire plug by the front bumper of Henry's car.
Catherine took it all in and felt a little silly as the pieces fell into place. "Oh, but this isn't my car," she informed him. Her mother would no doubt scold her for weaponizing the truth but Catherine thought it was excusable. It was Henry's car and, yes, he had parked in that spot at her suggestion but he would only be a moment. And surely if a fire were to break out in the next minute or two, Catherine could move the car to another block. It was unnecessary for her to move it right now, and if she could just keep the officer talking until Henry came back then the crisis would be averted.
"This isn't your car?" the man demanded, incredulous. "What were you doing, sitting in it, if it isn't your car?"
"Well, I just," she turned to look through the windshield and saw a conspicuous absence of leopard in the back.
"I, I just," she stammered, her eyes frantically searching for signs of Baby without showing her panic to the peace officer. She had left her door ajar when the man had told her to get out of the car, and the windows were rolled down to air out the interior besides. The leopard could have gotten out while they were looking at Henry's fender! Baby could be anywhere!
"I was -" Just when Catherine had decided that the threat to public safety was more dire than the threat to her dignity, she saw a leopard tail curl into the window of the next car. Baby must have snuck into it.
"I just wanted to see if I liked it," she lied through her teeth, promising to pay strict attention to her father's next three sermons as a penance, "to see if I wanted to get a new car. I'll just leave it alone now," she added, opening the door of the car Baby had chosen. She sat down and made herself comfortable. The key was waiting in the ignition and the key chain hanging from it was instantly recognizable.
The officer looked at her and would probably have kept hassling her in some way, but Henry came out of the shop and she called to him, telling him to, "Get in this car, please. We don't want to be late!"
He complied although the expression on his face demanded some explanation, but as soon as he opened the passenger door and saw the leopard lounging in the backseat as well as the policeman frowning on the curb, he knew his questions could wait. Catherine turned the key and pulled out of the spot.
"I'm very sorry about that," she said as soon as she could, her eyes on the policeman in the rearview mirror. "You had parked too close to a hydrant and they wanted me to move your car but then Baby got out and I figured, for the moment at least, it'd be better to pretend that my car was the one with the leopard in it."
"We can't abandon my car," he said.
"It's not abandoned. The police will probably tow it in a few minutes and then you can pick it up at the station," Catherine told him. "Good heavens, I left the key in it; they won't need to tow it if they don't want to; they can just drive it over. It'll be safe until you can get it back."
"And in exchange we've stolen a car!" Henry pointed out as if that was worse.
"This is Sacha's car," Catherine clarified calmly. "I didn't recognize it when we parked next to it but after I got inside -"
"We stole Mr. Sherman's car?" Henry said, aghast.
"Borrowed, really," she corrected. "I'm sure he'll understand when I explain it to him. There's a leopard in the back; we can't just leave Baby behind for Sacha to find later. And I didn't want to try to coax Baby back into your car with that police officer standing there. He'd make a commotion, I'm sure of it. Besides, if I had to choose, I'd rather disappoint the police than the leopard. There are natural laws that trump man-made ones."
Henry disagreed adamantly in principle but in application he was wavering. He grumbled for a while but not so vehemently that he demanded Catherine return to his car right away. Recognizing it for the victory it was, she changed the subject, explaining that her aunt's farm was only ten minutes away, 15 if one was trying not to incommode a leopard in the back.
Henry was too distracted thinking about his job and his family and his car and how inextricably bound and bungled it all was to read the handsome sign that marked the moment they crossed the farm's boundary. The main house, however, was sufficient to pull him from his musings. They did not stop there but drove past to the carriage house in the back.
Henry then got out to open the wide doors and Catherine drove through, parking the borrowed car inside. Henry shut the doors securely. The whole structure gave off the impression that it had been built for horses decades ago and then converted for cars as they became more fashionable. The stalls were free of hay. There was no riding tack laying about but there were mechanics' tools, and the whole place smelled faintly of oil and exhaust rather than anything to do with animals.
Catherine got out and helped Henry make one of the stalls leopard-friendly. They chose the emptiest one and quickly removed anything that looked like it might hurt the animal or anything that looked like Baby could rip it apart. They added a few blankets and a bucket of drinking water from a nearby sink as well as one of the raw steaks Henry had bought from the butcher. Satisfied with their work, they coaxed Baby out of the car and into his temporary nest.
As they shut the stall door to keep Baby contained until Catherine could decide how best to let an animal like that roam freely, Henry noticed a bit of cobweb on her sleeve. Without thinking he brushed it off, and left a trail of grease in its wake.
He knew as soon as he saw the mark that the stain would never come out of that fabric. From the look of horror on Catherine's face, she knew too that her blouse was ruined. This was perhaps the first time he had seen Fortune direct bad luck at her when he was in the area, and she looked devastated.
"I'm sorry," he apologized. He held up his hands in a placating gesture only to think that the grime on his hands was more threatening than soothing so he took a step back.
He tripped over a push broom propped against the wall behind him, flailed momentarily and knocked into a storage case, then fell to the ground. Catherine called out in alarm but didn't move to interfere as the broom handle fell on top of him along with every random thing on the shelves. He curled up protectively, his hands shielding his face from anything sharp or heavy.
When the clattering finally ceased, Catherine was by his side, helping him up. He was filthy now, far worse than Catherine and her blouse. If she wanted to change out to short sleeves, no one would suspect why. Henry's suit, on the other hand, was probably a lost cause.
"Henry, are you all right?" she said, helping him up. "Oh my goodness, let's get you to the house, clean you up a little."
He didn't think there was much point in cleaning up a little when he clearly needed a lot. The clavicle was still safe in his pocket, still covered in the protective plaster, but Henry's own person was another, less fortunate story. Even ignoring what would probably turn into a few bruises, his hands, face, and hair were splattered with oil and coated with dirt. His clothes were probably not fit for the rag bag. He didn't keep an emergency change of clothes in his car but even if he did, he didn't have his car anymore. There was no way that Henry could try to contact Alexander Sherman right now, and there was no way that Henry could climb back into the stolen car and drive it back to New York.
Having given up on anything, he was docile as Catherine led him to the kitchen entrance in the back, where she walked in with all the confidence of family. Aunt Bess was in Boston but the maid was in the kitchen, preparing for a meal. She took one look at the bedraggled horror that was Henry and screamed at the sight of him.
This attracted the dog, who rushed in from another room and began to yap in defense of its territory, pinning in Henry at the door. Catherine took hold of the dog's collar and pulled him away from where he was harassing Henry's pants leg.
Catherine quickly got the situation under control, explaining to the maid that this disheveled vagabond was actually a respected scientist from New York who had business with Dear Mr. Sherman, and they had been parking the car in the garage when Poor Henry suffered an unfortunate mishap and now he needed to wash up. "Is that all right, Susan? Can he use one of the bathrooms?"
The maid looked as though she didn't want Henry to take another step across her freshly waxed floor, but as it wasn't really her house, she wasn't really in a position to refuse her employer's niece. "Just don't let him use the good towels, Miss Catherine," she conceded. "I'll never get them white again otherwise."
Catherine agreed to the terms of surrender and handed off a wrapped package of steaks to store in the refrigerator until Catherine had need of them. Then Henry followed her through the house, taking care that he didn't bump into a wall accidentally or tread on a pale rug and leave a trail. Henry didn't think of himself as a vain man but the woman's reaction to his appearance had shaken his natural confidence.
Catherine led him to a spare room with a private en suite. A cheval mirror in the corner of the room projected a modern atrocity at him. He yelped at his reflection and wondered why Catherine didn't seem offended by the mere sight of him.
"True beauty comes from inside," she counseled in the tone of someone parroting the catechism. "But maybe you can take a shower and I can find some old clothes for you to wear, if you want," she said.
He took her up on the offer with alacrity.
"I'll find something suitable for you to wear, I'm sure of it," Catherine spoke with confidence. "Just get started and I'll put the clothes on the bed for you to change into after the shower."
She bustled out, shutting the door behind her.
Alone, Henry carefully removed the intercostal clavicle from his jacket pocket and set it on the bed. Then he stripped off everything except the final layer of clothing and laid it on the bed as well, turning his clothes inside-out so as not to dirty the quilt.
He stepped into the en suite to disrobe the rest of the way. There was a flimsy fashionable robe hanging from the hook on the door; he wondered if this had been left behind by a previous visitor or was simply provided like soap and towels for the guests' convenience. He turned on the water. With a slight groan from the pipes, the shower began to fill with steam.