By May 1893, when Charlie had been about a year in her master's house,
he had been about two and a half years in the same station, in charge
of the same district, doing the same kind of work. The average for the
province was a few months. So he should not have been surprised that
he was then, on the shortest possible notice, transferred from where
he was, in the Sittang valley, in the east of Burma, to a district
with headquarters on Ramri Island, off the western coast.
What to do with Charlie in such a hurry, with such a destination,
would have been a troublesome question if she had not by that time
become independent and able to support herself. It was not that any
gibbon-Romeo had found her out. That happy fate had been impossible in
the time allowed. If, indeed, we had continued to dwell there in the
woods for another year or so, it was the confident expectation of the
neighbouring gardeners that some enterprising young gibbon would have
recognised her charms, and appreciated the combined advantages of
freedom and plenty. An official post, with abundance to eat and drink
and nothing to do, truly it was the very kind of soft job that
Mr Kipling's heroes roam the world to find. Yes, assuredly, the
gardeners were right. We would have had another civilised gibbon very
soon. Already somebody was considering on what terms, as to housing
and settlements, the managers of the Rangoon Zoo might obtain the
family. But, like many another spinster, Charlie lost her chance
through no fault of her own. We could not stay, and when suddenly the
time came to go, Charlie was ready. She had won her independence
differently.
It came about in this way. Our house was on the edge of the town.
There was nothing beyond it but some Buddhist temples and the
rifle-range. The way to both these places of resort was the road by
the side of which, among the trees, Charlie finished her morning
exercises, and sat watching for my return, impatient for breakfast. So
she was soon noticed by the people, policemen, volunteers or
villagers, who were often passing about that very time, and they never
failed to stop and watch her. Monkeys are not uncommon; but a gibbon
is a rare and popular sight on the plains of Burma. Few of the
passers-by had ever seen so human a beast before, not even the Hindu
policemen, who hold monkeys in special honour.
Of all the tribes who have both arms and legs, including ourselves,
the gibbons appear to be, proportionately, the strongest in the arms.
Those of Malaysia, in particular, called "agile" by naturalists, are
among the record leapers of the world, clearing at a fling a space
beyond the capacity of perhaps any other being without wings. Darwin
and Wallace would explain this by pointing out that they are the prey
of animals that lie in wait to catch them as they pass from tree to
tree, so that those of them who touched the ground the least would be
the most likely to survive. The same tendencies are visible in Burma,
and though Charlie's immediate kindred are not such record-makers as
her cousins in Malaysia, they are fine performers, and so was she.
By slow degrees, not all at once, the little acrobat in black velvet
tights became aware of the friendly attention of the observing crowds.
It was a visible addition to the pleasure of both sides to be
conscious of each other. The people began to applaud. When they saw
her enjoy their applause, they applauded the more. She seemed so like
a prima donna or actress, that I have never, since then, made the
common mistake of supposing the "little airs" of a woman on a public
scene to be affectation. Once, in particular, I was watching her
unobserved, when she seemed, in her excitement, to have forgotten for
the moment breakfast and everything else. She was apparently resting
when first I caught sight of her, and she did not see me. At any rate,
she was sitting with her back to the audience, looking over her
shoulder at intervals to make sure that they were still waiting. Then
she began to go bounding round the tree. After a little of this, she
went in a corkscrew direction upwards, and when high up flung herself
to a neighbouring tree. The feat was received with a burst of
applause, in the midst of which she went whirling round and came to
the top of the tree, and sat there, on the airiest pinnacle, surveying
the admiring crowd with complacency.
This happened oftener and oftener. When I was transferred, all sorts
of people offered to take her. So, first, she went to see how she
liked the surroundings of the house of the Sergeant-Instructor of the
Volunteers. Her subsequent history was reported thus.--
The Sergeant's house adjoined the barracks of the Hindu (Sikh)
policemen, who had been the most appreciative of her many admirers;
and Charlie was not a chained monkey, but a free woman, though a
Lilliputian. It soon appeared that she now needed more admiration than
any one man could give. She took less and less notice of the Sergeant
and his wife, and stayed more and more in the trees beside the
barracks, and at last it was agreed that she was to be common
property, while all were there together, but that the Hindus were to
take her when they marched away. And that was how Charlie became a
camp-follower and the pet of a battalion.
We next heard of her in 1897, when a native officer called upon us at
Toungoo, expressly to give us news of her. She was then with her
battalion in Rangoon, and as popular as ever. The details he gave have
slipped from memory, all but one, which he repeated in English,
addressing my wife: "Karlie" (so they pronounced her name) "Karlie is
now very fat."
In later years I tried to find out more, but failed. These little
people do not live long. There was a rumour that she died in 1905;
and, doubtless, she did die, her body returning to dust and air, and
her perplexed spirit, as her Hindu friends, and indeed her old master
too, would agree to say, subsiding into the great ocean of being that
floods the world.
Like foam that from the sea comes white,
So come all living things to light;
Like foam returning to the sea,
So, having been, they cease to be.