SUBJECT TO VANITY
Τῇ γὰρ ματαιότητι ἡ κτίσις ὑπετάγη, οὐχ ἑκοῡσα ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸν
ὑποτάξαντα, ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι ὅτι καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ κτίσις ἐλευθερωθήσεται ἀπὸ τῆς
δουλείας τῆς φθορᾶς εἰς τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τῆς δόξης τῶν τέκνων τοῦ θεοῦ.
SUBJECT TO VANITY
BY
MARGARET BENSON
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR_
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD, & COMPANY
1895
TO
OUR BETH
IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE
FOR
LIFELONG LOVE
AND CARE
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. APOLOGIA PRO FELE MEA 9
II. CLANDESTINE CORRESPONDENCE 31
III. IN THE BOSOM OF THE FAMILY 41
IV. CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 51
V. THE DESERTED LOVER 65
VI. JACK 75
VII. A REGULAR FLIRT 89
VIII. A FAITHFUL FRIEND 97
IX. KIDS OF THE GOATS 111
X. COMMUNITY LIFE 123
XI. FINISHED SOLOMON 135
[Illustration]
I
APOLOGIA PRO FELE MEA
Why were cats created? I do not mean this as a sceptical question,
doubtful of any end in their creation; no answer about adaptation and
environment would be adequate, nor any statement of specific use. For
with all the higher animals--that is to say, with all the animals one
intimately knows--there is some beauty of intelligence, physique, or
character which renders them, as one must necessarily believe they
are, ends in themselves, not only means to the perfection of our very
egotistic species. The dog, for instance, has at anyrate moral beauty,
and the stag physical; but the cat, who so often loses her physical
beauty after the first year of her life, and who slinks about with a
weight of strange and secret care on her shoulders, what has she? Who
ever knew a cat of really fine character, and yet why otherwise do they
suffer such bitter experience? Not experience merely of pans and pots
and cat-hunts, which only touch the physical cat; but of the real,
keen, emotional suffering of the moral cat, fierce pangs of envy, and
the burden of alienated affection? I think cats must be meant to be
good rather than beautiful.
When Persis walked out of her travelling-basket, I thought that I
had never seen so pretty a kitten. She was about as long as she was
high, and as broad as she was long; her coat was of grey--or as this
particular shade is called blue--and white, soft, long hair; and she
had olive-yellow eyes. She would not have much to say to me just then;
but when I came into the room, where she had been shut up in the
evening, and saw the little, upright figure sitting on the table beside
a lighted candle, which my nurse had set there in case she should feel
lonely and unhappy in the dark, after a moment’s contemplation--for
Persis is shortsighted--she jumped down and rushed to meet me.
She is very well-bred; of course her white is a mistake--she ought
to be blue all over; but she has all the other signs of good
breeding--long silky tufts in the inside of her paws; ears so
beautifully feathered that all other cats’ ears look distressingly
naked; a little, dark smudge on her pink nose, to show that she knew it
ought to have been black; and now she is full grown, the most beautiful
tail I have ever seen--“like a squirrel,” children say.
[Illustration]
She was not called Persis at first, but Hafiz. The popular rendering of
that as “Uffiz” was not very pretty; and while the salutation to “the
beloved Persis” was being read in the second lesson one Sunday morning,
it suddenly struck me that Persis would be a very nice and appropriate
name for a Persian cat, and the name “took.”
Her manners mostly were charming, and with gracefulness like a
well-born lady she would stretch one hand from her basket to greet one
coming into the room. She was very affectionate; she would put her arms
round my neck in a way I have never known any other cat do, not even
her children. Like most other Persian cats, she would kiss me and lick
my hand. She had, I will confess, one rude trick: when she was in a
larky condition in the twilight, if she caught my eye, she would run,
with her head turned round and the side of her face on the ground, all
about the room, ending up by coming quite close to me, and jumping and
clawing in the air. The position was ludicrous, her head twisted round,
and her eyes fixed on mine so that she could not see what was in front
of her, and ran sometimes into legs of tables and chairs; her nerves,
too, in such a tense condition that if one startled her she would jump
high into the air, and then flee into a corner. She always reminded one
of the way in which a cockney street-boy makes faces if you catch his
eye.
She was not always amiable, the one defect in her character was that
she was liable to “strange fits of passion,” and would pass from play
to anger on occasion without the slightest warning.
She is the fiercest cat towards other animals that I have ever seen.
While she was yet a tiny kitten, I brought up a large semi-Persian
Tom cat to paint. The tiny kitten chased this big creature round and
round the room; if he got under a chair, she got on it, and reached
down a little menacing white paw to slap his face. He submitted meekly,
until, in order to see what would happen at close quarters, I brought
her quite near to him. She spit and swore at him, but thus brought to
bay he knocked her over with a sounding box on each ear, and she fled
under the table, where, with a tiny drop of blood on her face, she
bemoaned herself and appealed for sympathy, the picture of a helpless,
injured child. As for the other cat, once roused he went on growling
and spitting all morning.
The only small quadruped I ever knew Persis not want to fight was a
rabbit. Some children on the place had a tame rabbit which was very
fond of cats. One day she met him out of doors. He saw her and came
running to play with her; she looked with a horrified face for a
moment then turned and fled; she must have thought him a deformed sort
of cat; much as if children met a human being with huge pendent ears
and an uncouth way of walking who wanted to come and play with them.
Persis was very musical. If one whistled to her she would come from any
part of the room, creep up as near to one’s face as she could, purr
loudly, lick one’s face in growing rapture; then, if the whistling
continued, she got over-excited, and had to manifest excessive pleasure
by biting. I am determined to tell a story which no one will believe,
but which is none the less true, that three or four times she has been
found standing on the music-stool and making dabs at the keys with her
forepaws; she, of course, had discovered before that a piano would
make a sound if walked on, and she not unfrequently practised in that
manner, but these three or four times I looked up, being surprised at
hearing the same note repeated, and found her standing as I have said.
However, no one need believe that, and it is their own loss if they do
not; and anyhow, now it is a matter of ancient history, for Persis lost
all care for the æsthetic part of life when she had a family to bring
up.
While she was still an independent lady she used to sleep in my room,
chiefly on my bed. It was a difficult matter to arrange at first,
because I did not want the kitten to sleep on my face, which was her
constant aspiration. Consequently, when I put out the light and settled
to sleep, placing her firmly at the end of the bed, a loud purr was
heard, and a little dark form proceeded to march up, stamping her paws
on the counterpane and drawing them out in rapturous expectation of a
pleasant evening.
Finally we compromised: she was allowed to sleep half-way up, embracing
my arm if she liked. But I was rather glad when this habit was broken,
because she began not to leave me enough room. One of my brothers
thought he would try her in his room one night, but he had broken rest;
for first she made defiant runs at him from the end of the bed, then
in the middle of the night he was waked up by a pitiful howling, of
which he took no notice. Two hours later he was waked again by louder
howling, and then discovered that the cat had got out of one of his
windows, walked on a narrow moulding round to a shut window, and did
not dare to go back again. She was so overjoyed at being taken in that
she fell into the bath. After that she came on his bed.
But I am wandering from the point of my story. Before Persis’ kittens
came she had some friends, but no rivals. She treated her friends in a
rather severe manner at first. One of them was a fox-terrier, called
Don. The first time she was introduced to him she nearly jumped out of
her skin with swearing and spitting. When he went out of the room, she
went round to all the places where he had been and spit at them afresh.
She has a fine scent; if new people have been in the room she always
goes round and smells the places where they have been. She smells every
new dress I have. The meek Don, who could kill a strange cat as soon
as look at it, submitted wonderfully to her whims; and when she flew
at him, beside herself with passion because he was enjoying the coffee
sugar at the bottom of a cup merely picked the cup up in his teeth and
trotted off. But she soon got accustomed to him. And then, distressed
at his appearance, tried to lick the black spots off his back; used
stealthily to wash the inside of his ears, ready always to rain a
shower of blows on his nose with the tips of her paws if he so much
as turned round. Then she began to worship in a manner not common to
cats; with the sincerest flattery, she used to lie at his feet in the
same position that he was lying in; if, for instance, he was lying with
his legs stretched straight out below him, she would lie with her back
touching the tips of his toes and her legs stretched out in the same
way--an unnatural position for a cat.
[Illustration]
Now her daughter, the image of Persis, will lie in the same way at
Don’s feet; but I have never heard of any other cat doing it.
After this she became acquainted with a Gordon setter, and the
obstinate curliness of Di’s hair gave Persis as much occupation as
those black spots on Don’s back which never would come off. But she
was jealous of none of these, she knew herself to be--as a cat--so
infinitely superior to them. She was jealous of nobody and nothing
until her kittens came.
There are certain great facts in life which nothing can prepare you
for. No amount of reasoning, no previous imagination, will make you
in the least able to calculate your feelings. Such must be the moment
to very many when they realise that they will die; such is often the
moment when people or creatures realise that there exists a little
helpless living thing, theirs peculiarly, and yet not themselves. The
change that her child can work in a grumbling, egotistical woman is
incomprehensible,--could not have been argued by any logic; but far
more surprising the event must be to a creature who does not know what
is going to happen, cannot guess that her feelings will be moved in a
totally new way, and could not realise beforehand that such an event
might happen to her as it had to others. I tried to prepare Persis
once; I gave her a stuffed kitten on a penwiper to play with. She
looked at it with some interest, licked it a little, shook it, and left
it; treated it much as a rather careless child treats her doll, but
more amiably than she treated other animals. Nor could she dream that
little bits of fur,--much like that to the outward eye,--endued with
just enough life to tremble on their little weak legs, and utter tiny,
plaintive shrieks, should rouse her to such a passionate emotion as to
make her forget her own pressing bodily wants.
We know very little more than she did about it, we know just the bare
fact that it always will be so, but why it _should_ be so we know no
more than she. Who understands the miracle by which an utterly selfish
creature, whose natural instinct is to hate all other animals, and,
indeed, only to tolerate human beings because it can make use of them,
should be made to know and feel, in a short ten minutes’ space perhaps,
an overpowering, passionate, protective love?
One morning Persis did not feel very well, in sign whereof she showed
a decided intention to occupy my bed. She was sent down to an empty
bedroom while a hamper of hay was being prepared for her; but when
her invalid couch was ready she was nowhere to be found; a search
discovered finally that she had put herself to bed in the room already,
under the counterpane. Still, she was thinking of nobody but herself.
Later in the morning I visited her,--when three little helpless,
shapeless, furry things were moving about her, and Persis was not
thinking of herself at all. One would not have believed an animal’s
expression could change so much; the overwhelming surprise, the intense
affection, were in her face as clearly as they could be in an human
face; for the time her egotism had gone, she was not a cat, she was a
mother. Formerly she had been shy of people, frightened of men; now, as
one after another came in to see her kittens, she showed no fear, and,
what was even more curious, no anger; she merely purred in pride and
entire confidence.
They were wonderful kittens--two quite blue, one like its mother; their
eyes were shut, their ears were flattened down over their faces,--they
were little bodies which breathed and fed and grew.
But they _did_ grow, and their ears stood up and their eyes
opened,--dark and light blue,--and their heads got steadier, and in a
month they were little square solid kittens, who with much difficulty
could get out of the box in which they were placed. Getting out was a
process which involved the fullest exercise of all mental and physical
powers; for first they had to advance to the side, then one tiny paw
and then another was put over the side, and the adventurer was for the
time hung up by his shoulders. Then he worked himself on by the help
of much kicking behind and clawing against the box, until the part
outside was just heavier than the part inside, and with a scramble, and
by the help of the centre of gravity, the whole kitten tumbled on to
the floor. It was a grand triumph of mind over matter. And still Persis
beamed on them, and on the world in general.
[Illustration]
But as they grew began the first little rift within the lute. It was
difficult to help it. I put it to you--could one carry three kittens
and a cat about, like Henry III. of France, to exhibit to visitors.
If it was a choice between exhibiting kittens and cat, visitors would
surely prefer to see the kittens; and so it came to pass that the
children were carried into the drawing-room and handed round, while
in the empty schoolroom the “old” cat sat alone. It was only a couple
of months since she had been shown to visitors herself. Sometimes I
took her too, but that was not a great success, for everybody liked the
kittens best.
And now the kittens began to be steady on their legs, and able to
run and play, and their horizon was no longer bounded by licking and
feeding and warming; and when they once began to play, their mother
seemed rather large and rather old to play with them. Persis did not
care to play with me or cheek me any more, but she liked to gambol
with the kittens. So she played mouse in front of Pasht, but Pasht
would rather play with her brother and ran off the other way; and
she pretended to be a tiger lying in ambush to wait for Marjara, but
Marjara wished to tie herself up in a soft heap with Ganem and bite his
ears, so the Old Cat stopped in her gambols and looked at them.
Ganem was given away; and as he had been rather a favourite playfellow,
and the least favourite child of his mother, the family got on more
happily after that. Then I went away, and saw them no more for some two
months. When I came back, the Old Cat and Pasht were sent for.
They made their journey in a large hamper, and were brought up to my
room. Pasht had grown lovely; soft mouse colour with topaz eyes; but
nevertheless the meeting was a real disappointment. Persis came out of
the basket and with no greeting to me, jumped down and went to look out
of the window. What could I do? I had to play with Pasht.
I thought perhaps the cat’s temper had been upset by the journey, so I
left her alone, and some hours after came back to both of them. Persis
was lying and staring out of the window, and the kitten was occupying
the room; it ran at me, jumped and climbed up with loud purrs, and
rubbed against my face. I went to the window-sill, and still Persis did
not move; when she saw the kitten she growled a little; I put it down
close to her, on which she spit, slapped it, and fled.
So things went on. When I came into the room the kitten always ran
to greet me: it was impossible to take no notice of such a soft,
confiding, mouse-coloured creature, yet all the while I was speaking
to it two great sullen, green eyes were fixed on us, watching us round
the room. If I came there to speak to the cat, she went quickly away,
if the kitten approached her she spit, and if it came nearer, hit out
at it. Evidently the change had come in Persis from a kitten to a cat.
She was a mere domestic cat, with a not very amiable temper, she cared
no more for human beings, and had arrived at the queer alienation from
the young when they are grown up which comes to nearly all creatures;
she had had half a human soul once, but she had fulfilled the animal
functions, and she was an animal again.
Yet one or two symptoms seemed to belie this view. Once or twice,
coming into the room, I greeted her first. Then she purred until the
kitten came near, when she got up and left us hastily.
But it was difficult to see why this sullenness should so perpetually
prevail. She hardly ever forgot it. Her big green eyes had almost
always that sullen, lowering, miserable expression.
Now and then, indeed, when twilight came on, she rushed in and out of
the room, alternately defying the kitten and flying from it; but not
the most unimaginative cat on earth can resist the excitement of the
growing darkness, when the eyes flash out in amethyst and topaz, and
the pupils dilate with dramatic terror and eagerness. But twilight
deepened into dark, and candles were lighted and fairyland stopped, and
the legs of the tables and chairs ceased to be tree-trunks in a jungle,
and Persis came back to life in the schoolroom, and despair clouded
back on to her brow.
But the truth only began to dawn upon me one day. I took Persis into
my own room quite alone, and suddenly the sullen expression vanished;
I carried her in my arms and she began to purr; I put her down and she
walked up and down on the counterpane, stamping her paws and spreading
her claws,--Persis had all at once become a kitten again. She licked my
face and put two arms round my neck when I took her up. I brought her
downstairs, thinking our old relations were re-established; the kitten
came near, and Persis walked hastily away from me and took no more
notice of either of us.
Then the kitten ailed and was sent away to be nursed, and with that
curious, confused idea that creatures have, the mother felt a lack
somewhere when the object of such strong emotion was removed, even
though the emotion was only jealousy. She hunted for the kitten all
afternoon. We found her in a part of the garden which she did not
usually frequent, and she ran away with a sense of guilt when she saw
us. But when evening came, and she was in the room alone with me and
there was no kitten, I was left in doubt no more as to what it was
which was moving her. She squeezed herself in by me on the sofa, she
kissed me and purred blissfully.
And so it goes on. I have not had the heart to banish the kitten
altogether, yet when she is there I can seldom get a purr or a look
from the cat. One day I persuaded her to let me stroke her under the
ears and the throat; this is almost like mesmerism to a cat, and if one
can persuade them to let one begin, one can do almost anything with
them; and so I was gradually bringing her to a happier state of mind,
when the friendly kitten, perceiving that something sociable was going
on, came up to share in it. They met face to face as Persis took turns
up and down under my hand. They looked at each other for a moment, then
she slapped the kitten in the face and fled.
What am I to do? If I keep the kitten I cannot prevent this jealousy.
Persis lives in a condition of perpetual, jealous misery; if she thinks
the kitten is sent away, or that she is exclusively favoured, then only
does she emerge out of sullenness. And yet she is not really devoted
to me; she is only a complete egoist, and cannot be happy unless I am
devoted to her. After all, am I not bound to her? Was she not once my
sole and only cat, carried about, exhibited to company, hunted for
if she got lost? And yet Pasht is much fonder of me than Persis ever
was; Pasht will run after me, while Persis wishes to run away and be
fetched back. Pasht comes to meet me when I come into the room, cries
to be picked up, purrs as soon as I touch her; but when I do so, those
green, miserable eyes watch me, and Persis will allow no caress which
is not offered to her first.
What shall I do?
[Illustration]
II
CLANDESTINE CORRESPONDENCE
The last week has been an arduous one; I have had to chaperon Pasht.
Pasht has experienced her first proposal. I suppose it is no wonder,
considering her age, that she was flattered; but I could wish that she
had fixed her affections on anyone less vulgar and under-bred.
This was how I found it out. Pasht had been for many days very eager
to go into the garden. One morning we were playing croquet on the
lawn, and I paid no attention to the kitten, until suddenly I looked
up to see her lying on the path, her long thick hair fluffed out, her
sweet mouse-coloured cat’s visage resting on the edge of the grass,
her little chin rubbing against it, and her long squirrel tail lazily
sweeping and thumping the gravel.
At first I thought it was only flirtatiousness in general, an attempt
to captivate the universe at large, when lo! out of the laurels
opposite to her flashed an ordinary, vulgar, ill-bred, short-haired
tabby cat, who stood there for a moment, looked at me and disappeared.
[Illustration]
I was very much shocked, picked up Pasht and shut her up in the
schoolroom, when she instantly appeared on the window-sill and
reproached me loudly. But of course I did not take it seriously, and
thought that they would both get over it.
I must explain the position (unfortunate in this respect) of the rooms
in which the cats and I live.
It has four large windows looking on the lawn and the laurel
bushes--too high for a cat to jump down, but not too high for her
to practise little wiles on the window-sill for the benefit of
appreciative spectators below. Just on the left hand of the door is a
long window, from which steps go down to the garden, and close by the
steps is a large laurustinus, a most convenient place for ambushes
and clandestine meetings. Opposite the schoolroom door, again, there
is another door opening on to a back staircase, whence one gets into
kitchens, whose windows also give on to the lawn, and are usually open.
My bedroom is above the schoolroom.
On the evening when I had abruptly stopped Pasht’s flirtation, a noise
arrested my attention as I was going to bed. It was the voice of a cat
saying “wwoww.” You know what it means when a cat says that? He is
paying compliments. The noise went on and on, round the schoolroom-end
of the house, until I went to sleep, but I heard no answer from Pasht.
Pasht was hysterically affectionate when I saw her next morning; she
said “a - - - ow,” and clung on to my dress, and climbed up on to my
shoulder and refused to leave me, and walked about over my letters when
the ink was wet, and flapped her tail into my mouth, and altogether
played the fool, and pretended that she had forgotten her vulgar
suitor of the night before and I heard no serenades outside.
[Illustration]
But in the middle of the day I suddenly heard from my bedroom an
extremely loud voice saying “wwaughwow,” and looking down saw Pasht
standing on the window-sill of the schoolroom. I don’t know whether she
said it or not, for as soon as she saw me she looked up and took to the
more ordinary and ladylike expression of a general desire to go out in
the sunshine. Several times in the day I heard it again, but as soon as
I looked round, Pasht turned an innocent face to me and said “miaow.”
In the evening the gentleman began to woo again; I knew it was the
suitor this time, as Pasht was safely shut up. I listened at the door
of the schoolroom to hear if she was answering, but there was no sound.
She _is_ a regular flirt.
A party from the house went round the garden with croquet mallets, but
with no result.
Next morning it became too clear that Pasht was encouraging her suitor;
he rushed away from the laurestinus bush as I came out, and she was
sitting on the window-sill. I took her out for a short time in the
garden under strict supervision, but she would do nothing but flop into
graceful attitudes on the lawn. I really had not thought it of her.
I took her in again, and argued the point a little.
I told her that she was behaving in a very vulgar and forward manner,
and that no nice Tom would respect her. She merely looked up in my face
and said “a - - - ow.”
Then I said I would not have made any objection if he had been a
gentleman, but he was so exceedingly common and ill-bred.
But she still looked with pathetic topaz eyes, and opened a little pink
mouth with a deprecating mew.
I felt much as if, “with a little hoard of maxims,” I was “preaching
down a daughter’s heart.”
And what was worse, it did no good. Every time the door was opened,
however much Pasht was pretending to be devoted to me, she suddenly
found she had urgent business in the kitchen, and flew downstairs;
and when I, knowing the nature of the little flirt, did not go down
to the kitchen at all, but straight out of the long window on to the
lawn and found her there, she looked up with the most innocent face
possible,--“Yes; after all, I see you enjoy the sunshine as much as
I do.” When, in spite of kicks and struggles, I carried her in, she
never once said “wwoww,” but merely gave vent to the emphatic mew which
means, “_I don’t want to go in._”
I took her an airing in my arms that day, but it was extremely
exhausting, and I covered my dress with long hair.
And all that night the cat mewed.
Another exploring party went from the house with shovel and tongs.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. Pasht was sent away to a very strict
boarding-school system at the farm.
A week after, when the strange cat had ceased to howl round the house,
she came back again; but as soon as the schoolroom door was left ajar,
the urgent business in the kitchen claimed her, and Pasht disappeared
for many hours.
Poor little Pasht, were you disappointed that no one met you in the
garden to flirt with, or wanted to bounce out of the laurel bushes and
exhibit his masculine beauty before you? Or, after all, is your little
heart as hard as I think it, and do you prefer a nice warm room, a lawn
to romp on, someone in whose lap to lie, who will gently ruffle your
throat and ears--do you really, deep down in your heart, prefer these
beyond all lovers whatever?
Anyhow, when Pasht appeared at the long window, she had a gay, innocent
little air on, and she ran in saying, “You see, the fine weather _did_
tempt me to stay out rather long,--where is my breakfast?”
Never mind, little Pasht; we will arrange an honourable alliance some
day with a gentleman of rank.
[Illustration]
III
IN THE BOSOM OF THE FAMILY
Is it not true that there is a very general want of recognition of
family-life among domestic animals? It is a great mistake to suppose
they are incapable of it; often, as a matter of fact, they do not lead
domestic lives, for the simple reason that people will not let them.
If, for instance, you won’t keep a whole family of cats, how can you
expect them to develop domestic affections? We talk of their being
“domesticated,” but we mean that they are made a part of our domestic
arrangements, without being allowed to have any of their own; yet they
are quite as capable of it as we are. Of course their domesticity does
not last long, naturally and necessarily not, because they have not
one family but a series of families, and one family must be dismissed
before the next is taken on; so domestic affection developes into
murderous desires. However, I must say that in all experiences I have
personally had of cats, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, goats, and birds, I
have only known one murder, and that was by an uncle.
Rector was allowed to have all his family about him. His wife was
decidedly under-bred. He was called Rector, in fact, because he would
not catch the mice, and had to have another less aristocratic but more
useful cat to help him. The curate was called Jenny. She was a low-bred
tabby. Rector could not help despising Jenny, and if anything vexed him
he used to bite her badly; but she was a very meek drudge, and took it
as a matter of course. Rector was white, with blue eyes, so we only
kept the white kittens, some of which were blue-eyed, and _not_ deaf;
blue-eyed or not, Rector used to take them out walks in the evening.
The four--papa and mamma and two kittens--used to proceed together to
the mound near the pump, and Jenny then left them, to crouch in the
bushes,--this for a purpose of her own.
Then began the game. Rector rolled the kittens over and played with
them gently, until all three became a little excited; then, if Rector
got carried away, and bit or scratched his infant till it squeaked,
out bounced Jenny from the bushes to deal him a handsome box on the
ear; and, having thus admonished her husband to take better care of the
children, she retreated again to the shelter of the yew-trees.
If you keep a whole family, you will find that there is not only
a parental, filial, brotherly, and sisterly relation, but also a
grand-parental. When Midge had some white kittens, Jenny, whose
under-bred offspring had been put out of the way shortly before, helped
her to nurse them, with as much pride and perhaps more solicitude than
Midge herself showed. It was a most charming scene. We went to see the
family soon after the birth of the kittens, and found Midge, in the
rôle of the interesting young mother, leaning back upon Jenny. Jenny
put a paw round her, while they surveyed--the mother languidly and the
grandmother proudly--the squirming white family.
But it is not cats only who have these strong domestic ties; almost
every animal shows the same thing in a greater or less degree.
We inherited, on changing our home, a beautiful pair of swans. The
first year that they became ours they had four cygnets, and brought
them up extremely well. It is true that when they were full grown, the
cock-swan, if one may use such an expression, tried to kill them; but
that was only natural, they had become his rivals. They were variously
disposed of: one was taken up to a pond in London, from which, not
being properly pinioned, he escaped, and kept a cockney crowd for an
hour well amused on London Bridge by flying over it and swimming under,
after which he--or, as he could not possibly be caught, the abstract
idea of him--was presented to the Thames Conservancy.
So far, this doesn’t seem to have much to do with the swan’s idea of
home, but, as some candid preacher said, “You may think this has not
got much to do with my text, but I’m coming to it presently.”
The swans lived on in peace and happiness through the autumn and
winter, but in the spring, when they ought to have been nesting, some
wicked boy hit the lady swan on the head with a stick, and she sickened
and died.
For some time the widower was left solitary; then we thought this was
rather cruel, and busied ourselves in getting a mate for him; and a
fine young swan was procured. When lo! it was found that the old
fellow would not let his young companion come into the pond. We thought
it would “wear off,” and left the young one to its fate; and many times
we passed the pond to find the poor young thing squatting sadly on the
road, and the widower swelling up and down.
Then we found there was a slight mistake, the young swan was a
cock-swan also.
So we changed him, and got a real lady instead. This time he would
just let his companion come into the pond, but oh! she had a bad time
of it there; he pulled her feathers out, and he drove her away from
the bread; but it had to be gone through,--it was his way of showing
constancy, and it turned out all right. She is treated now with as much
respect as his first wife.
But she was a very young wife; so, when she had hatched three eggs
into cygnets, her pride knew no bounds. The father, getting into his
dotage, encouraged her in her maternal follies. The cygnets were fine
healthy birds, but the two old birds took them out walking to such an
extent that one by one they died. No one quite knows why. Some say that
there was not enough grass by the pond, and the parents took them to
find grass; and some say that parental vanity wished to display such
flourishing offspring; but anyhow, the fact remains that the cygnets
took walks with their parents till they died. There is nothing more
domestic than the family walk.
But now contrast this domestic affection with the melancholy fate of
the inebriate swan.
A clergyman’s wife kept one swan, and the swan, no one knows how, got
into the habit of going to eat malt at a public-house. If he had done
this within bounds it would not have mattered, but he got regularly
intoxicated, and every evening reeled homewards. His mistress tried to
reform him, but to no purpose; and she tried to shut him up, but he
got out; and she used to meet him coming home with rolling, uncertain
step and hanging head. She wept, for it was such a bad example to the
parish; but that had no effect on him. At last, one evening, he was run
over and killed while reeling home in a state of intoxication.
Now, how far more melancholy is such an end than that of the three
infants killed by family affection! I would rather die three times over
from walking with my family than once from intoxication.
What is the moral? Do not break up the family too early. The presence
of the children (up to the age when he wants to kill them) will have
a softening and steadying effect on the manners of the father; while
who knows what stores of masculine experience he may not impart to his
children up to the time when they wish to fight him.
Besides all this, it is really much more amusing.
[Illustration]
IV
CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE
How vividly one sometimes retains for years the memory of a chance
acquaintance--a person whom one has met but once, passed in the street,
talked to for half an hour, whose name one may not even know.
A friend of mine was travelling in Persia, and as she and her brother
were resting in a caravansarai after a journey, they saw a Persian
gentleman beckoning to them from the garden. They went down to him, and
he asked them to come and have supper with him. They came, and found
the bread laid out, plate-wise, and the roast meat on it. They ate and
talked to him, and after their meal went on their journey. They never
asked for nor heard his name, nor he theirs,--they will never meet
again; but that Persian gentleman will be as vivid to them until the
day of their death as a friend of years.
Such memory of a mere passing chance acquaintance is not confined to
human beings. Sometimes one meets animals for an hour or two, sometimes
one accidentally lights upon them in a crisis of their lives,--such
even as their death,--and one suddenly and unexpectedly understands
and knows them. Some people and animals one never gets near. You may,
for instance, sit opposite people in church for years, know all their
Sunday dresses and hats, and how much they give in the offertory,
and be not a bit nearer to them in the end than at the beginning.
Such is the acquaintance one has with caterpillars; they are always
just the same; they eat and grow and become cocoons, and reappear as
butterflies, and there is no character from beginning to end. That is
partly why they are such excellent symbols.
Then there are some animals that have no sense of intimacy; they
let you into all their domestic relations,--their committees, their
politics, and so forth, at once; for the reason that they have only one
side to their character. They have established a Platonic Republic;
they do their domestic duties on the scale of the commonwealth,
have a universal nursery and government education. In spite of their
monarchical arrangements, they are real socialists at heart,--they
care for nothing but the good of the State. Even those that live in
a tiny community, two or three together, have no real individuality.
Have you ever found one of those tiny round nests, like ashes of paper,
which apparently grow on a stalk, and in which two or three yellow and
black tree-wasps live? It is the easiest thing in the world to scrape
acquaintance with those wasps; kill an ordinary housefly and give it to
them. They will take it from your fingers, and, without the slightest
shame at “talking shop” in public, will roll it into a neat, hard,
black ball, crushing up legs and wings alike, and stow it away inside
the nest.
But the want of intimacy characteristic of many insects is not
characteristic of insects _as such_. I once attended a grasshopper
crisis. There was nothing professional about the grasshoppers; they
did not not “spend themselves in leaps ... to reach the sun.” They did
not think the least bit in the world about the sun, they were merely
private individuals--courting. Grasshoppers’ courting is an organised
affair. I saw it in Switzerland on a soft, sunny afternoon, when the
hotel population was divided between the Roman Catholic Church on the
right and the English Church on the left, and the steps of the hotel
between the two. As I dawdled along by a bank of bilberry just turning
red, the grasshoppers were singing loud among the stalks of heather;
suddenly I was aware that they were not singing aimlessly and jumping
without purpose, but that they were intently engaged. It was like the
old fairy-story, when a child falls asleep on a bank, and wakes to find
himself surrounded by fairies intent on preparation for the marriage
of the king. The large limp ladies were sprawling about ungracefully,
and in front sat their small, spry gentlemen singing away. Here was a
green gentleman serenading a brown lady, and I wondered at his taste;
presently she got up and ran away. Clearly that was part of the drama;
it was the genuine “flirtatious” instinct of avoiding a plain answer on
purpose to provoke pursuit; for the gentleman does not jump, but runs
after her to bring her back. When lo! a green lady is seen crossing
the path, also coyly escaping from a suitor, and the faithless swain
is captivated all in a moment by the green charms, and deserts his
brunette to pursue her. Further on--astonishing sight!--is a young
ladies’ school, just “come out”; fourteen or fifteen green and brown
ladies, shy and awkward, scrambling down the bank and all talking
together.
I never saw such courting before or since, but I shall never lose the
feeling of intimacy, for I know now that grasshoppers are not always
little machines arranged with the greatest amount of muscle for the
smallest amount of weight, or wound up to trill on in the sunshine, as
mechanically as a watch ticks, or even created to be a burden,--but
they are tiny creatures, full of emotion and insect loves, putting
their best energy into their whirring song to claim the admiration of
the languid, lovely creatures that lie lazily listening.
But sometimes one arrives at a sudden personal relation to a wild
creature, too often ended abruptly by its escape or death, and its
kinsfolk are never afterwards to one as little as before. One has
regarded it as a member of a class; henceforward one regards that class
as composed of individuals possessed of strong personal desires, needs,
emotions, not merely obeying what we call “instincts,”--meaning thereby
the mechanical impulse to eat, grub, make nests, care for young. To
take an extreme instance, perhaps you think that moles are altogether
uninteresting, merely existing for the sake of lightening the soil and
destroying the wire-worm, and, in case of undue increase, fit to make
a cap for the mole-catcher and a little skeleton to swing from a tree.
But perhaps some day you will see in the stubble, after the hay is
cut, a little black form running confusedly round and round; catch it,
and hold in your hands the soft, velvet-coated body; feel the funny,
groping snout pushing through your fingers, on the chance--however
different their touch is from the damp, delicious earth--that it will
be able to find some place where it may grub a hole and escape; realise
that you might make a pet of this small, soft thing, and then please
recognise its wild desire for liberty, and let it go.
But there are some animals which, although usually recognised as “wild
animals,” seem to have no fear whatever, except when they are being
chased; once they are in the hands of a human being they are completely
self-possessed. A friend of mine sat in a field when the hay was being
carried, and saw a little field-mouse playing about; she pursued and
nearly caught it, but it finally escaped. She came back to where she
had been sitting to fetch her umbrella, and under it was found another
little field-mouse asleep, which she caught without difficulty, carried
back, and put into a box with holes in it.
[Illustration]
She brought him in to tea that afternoon, and even at this, his first
meal, he sat up like a kangaroo on his long hind-legs, and ate bread
and milk out of a spoon. He absorbed alarming quantities of it, fell
instantly asleep, woke up after a few minutes and ate a great deal
more; but the next morning the poor little beast was found gasping,
apparently dying; and when his box was opened he would not run away.
But he presently recovered as suddenly, and again devoured much food,
and so went on through the day, though his gasping fits returned at
intervals. Next morning he died. Is it that we find these creatures
generally when they are ill?--the least touch seems to make them die.
Certainly I remember once or twice, in those joyful days when sitting
in a hayfield meant the height of bliss, that our very gentle and
amiable collie, excited by an “animal” smell, would grub open a nest of
little field-mice, and stand by delighted and smiling at his discovery,
while we came up just in time to see three or four expiring infants. He
could hardly have killed them, for he only wanted to look at them. Yet
they died.
What was it, I wonder, that killed Maximilianus? Maximilianus was a
very small shrew, and we found him running about the garden; he was
just about as long as his name. He was not the least frightened, and
we carried him about for half a day; but we found nothing he could
eat, until at last we came upon a very large, fat, orange-coloured
centipede. Maximilianus seized upon this with the utmost delight, began
it vigorously at one end, and ate it up like a radish as far as the
middle. Then he died.
We had once a visitor in the shape of a squirrel, who came uninvited,
made his abode with us for some months, and finally departed, taking
“French leave.” My mother was his guide, philosopher, and friend. He
slept in a pocket of her apron (this was in the seventies), whence
he came out to fly up the curtains and drop down, venture on to the
breakfast table, and experiment on her tea with a tiny paw. He always
ran up the curtain when he was scolded; as for instance when my father,
going to the sideboard to cut ham, found the squirrel’s head just
coming out of it, having eaten its way through from the other side.
Then, after being received in the bosom of our family, after sharing
meals with the household, after attending lessons and even prayers
(when he ran up the back of a kneeling housemaid), the skwug suddenly
disappeared without warning. A few days after, my mother was walking
in the wood, when a squirrel ran up to her, put its paw upon her foot,
looked her in the face, then turned and ran away. It was never heard of
again.
Sometimes you find animals which, though not very near and dear to
human beings, have a great influence on other animals. Our donkey
died the other day. She was a remarkable and original animal. Though
she was a fixture, taken at a high valuation from our predecessors,
her demeanour was such that we called her Jack, and thought she had
retired to a well-earned repose. Then we found she was not quite two
years old, and a lady. We were always good friends, but not specially
intimate. She and her mule-foal might come to the window for bread
and salt when the horses were not allowed on the grass; but for weeks
together she did not avail herself of this privilege, till one day a
snort was heard from outside, and the donkey’s nose was seen flattened
against the glass. Once, when my mother was walking with a friend of
hers,--not an acquaintance of the donkey,--Jack, for I cannot help
calling her so, solemnly accompanied them all the afternoon, walking
between them. But such occasional walks, and the fact that she was
amiably willing to follow anyone quite impartially for a handful of
oats, constituted the extent of our intimacy with her. Not such was her
relation to the other animals. As exclusively as my goat walked with
the cows, Jack walked with the horses. She did not, of course, consider
herself so superior to her company as the goat. She made many friends
among the horses; you might not have known it, perhaps, but neither
as a general rule would you suspect the friendship which men have for
one another by their way of behaving. If a man meets a great friend in
company, he either takes no notice of him or stands near him without
saying anything. Jack used to stand about with the horses without
saying anything, but they liked to have her near.
One morning Jack was found dead of fatty degeneration of the heart.
“I’m sure the horses miss her,” said the bailiff’s wife; “I look at
them standing in the yard, and I can see they miss her.”
Jack was buried in the orchard, and her little mule followed the body
as far as the garden-gate. But there they shut the door, and the one
mourner was left outside.
V
THE DESERTED LOVER
Ever since I was a very small child I had longed to possess a pair of
budgerrygars. There was a tradition of three live ones once in our
family, in proof whereof my nurse could point to a little stuffed
bird in its case. I used to gaze with longing at that beautiful green
and yellow creature, with the speckled back and the black and blue
feathers in its neck, sitting with a foreground of quaking grasses
and an eternal blue sky behind. There existed also, but rarely seen,
a little cardboard box containing a few of these same mysteriously
beautiful blue and yellow and green feathers, with here and there a
long strong tail or wing quill. Yes, there had been budgerrygars among
us once; there were even real live ones now in the possession of those
happy Italian women who sit at the street corners, but for me--while
I was still a child--they were inmates of that imaginary Paradise of
unattainable things, wherein might be found little wax cages of birds,
and the fluffy hollow ducks which live in confectioners’ shops and are
sold for ninepence.
[Illustration]
After I was grown up, a friend gave me one of these ducks; I have it
still, and the halo still surrounds it. When I was grown up, too, some
one gave me a pair of budgerrygars; and there followed a tragedy which
was not bargained for in the price paid.
They came down from London in a tiny cage,--a travelling cage.
Budgerrygars do not mind lack of room, it makes it all the easier for
them to sit quite close, as if they were glued together. They were
lovely little things, with their pearl-grey beaks,--wonderfully sharp
and strong those beaks are, as I know to my cost,--but they could
use them gently, and you would see one turn with a soft croon to put
straight a ruffled feather on its mate’s head.
The little gentleman had caught a cold, not much of a cold at first;
he only panted slightly as he sat near the little lady and ruffled his
feathers; but she cheered him up, and smoothed the feathers down, and
they sat side by side and looked at the world with little meaningless
grey eyes.
Their new large cage was a great excitement, and it was immense fun for
them to walk over the top, using their beak as a third leg, and that
the most reliable. And their spirits ran so high that they began to
shriek unmusically at each other when they found themselves at opposite
corners of the cage.
I am afraid we were not as careful as we ought to have been with
the little gentleman. They were so funny and pretty that they were
carried from room to room; and the cage must have been in a draught,
for the little gentleman began to puff and breathe rather hard, and
his feathers were persistently ruffled, and the little lady could not
smooth them down any more, even if she had tried.