Part 28

The place visibly pleased her from its elevation. She liked looking down, and disliked looking up. She showed her preference with a naïve candour that left no room for doubt, and has always seemed to me to illustrate and illuminate the laws of Society.

Of course, she was regularly served. Whatever she called for was handed up. And more than once I recollect that we affected to forget her, and did not look at her or heed her. Then down she came, and walked about on the table, helping herself and chattering in our faces, with many a grimace and "Oo-oo-oo," our small, black Madame Sans-Gêne, with the big white eyebrows, the little Miss Free-and-Easy.

8. DOGS

Once it happened that Charlie was left in charge of a neighbour, as she was young and we had to go from home; and in the neighbour's house a dog bit her. When next she saw my wife she flung her arms round my wife's neck, and clung to her with sobs and moans, and all the gestures natural to her sex in affliction, and ever afterwards she seemed to feel that dogs were hostile.

I recollect that once our house was filled with visitors, some local tin-god and official attendants, and one of the aforesaid attendants had a bright little terrier at his heels. Poor dog, his master could not silence the irreverent barkings that interrupted even the divinity his master was attending. Cuffs and kicks were useless. Charlie, up aloft, had fixed the terrier with her glittering eye, and "Oo-oo-oo-ed" at him till he was frantic. When he was thrashed into a moment's silence, and she saw she was observed, she nimbly scuttled away among the upper carpentry, only to reappear in a few seconds elsewhere, and catch the dog's eye again, and "Oo-oo-oo" at him afresh; and then the barking recommenced, and the inevitable beating and yelping, which she seemed to enjoy immensely.

9. EQUALITY IS EQUITY

Although she went about on her hind legs, as we do, she did not despise her four-footed acquaintances, and was always intimate with the tabby, to whom she had been introduced on arrival. It was a pretty sight to watch them dip their little heads together into the saucer of milk. They always started fair, but pussy lapped the better. The milk diminished so fast that Charlie could see that her share would be the smaller one at that rate. Then tenderly but irresistibly she put her strong right arm round pussy's neck and pulled her back, out of reach of the saucer. Charlie went on lapping herself, looking round often at the cat, winking vigorously with both eyes, and uttering various friendly vowel sounds. Here, perhaps, it had better be noted, for the information of philologists, that hers was exclusively a vowel language. I never heard her sound a consonant. It would therefore have been difficult to represent it phonetically. The modulations of tones were too delicate for an Aryan ear; but a Chinaman might have been more successful, and my Burmans caught them well. Her meaning could best have been recorded by ideograms, like the oldest of the Chinese or Egyptian hieroglyphs. But there was no use for such a thing. She did not need it, and would not have learned it.

It was probably the accompanying gestures that made pussy understand her. To be pulled back from the saucer, and tightly held out of reach of it, is what may be called an unmistakable hint. Puss acquiesced. When Charlie thought their shares had been equalled she relaxed the embrace, and puss began again; but though she resumed drinking in a polite, deferential way, as if saying, "By your leave, ma'am," puss never abated her speed of lapping, and so had soon to be withdrawn once more. Occasionally this took place as often as three or four times in the emptying of one saucer; and seldom did it fail to happen once. In fact I noticed that at length they used to begin operations with Charlie's arm upon pussy's neck, ready for action. Day after day this went on. Puss never struggled. When the milk was thus equally finished they parted friends. The great rule of equity law, that "Equality is equity," was never better practised; and so profoundly is it in accordance with the nature of things that even a cat can understand it, when constrained.

10. WHERE CIVILISATION BEGAN

But where had Charlie learned that "Equality is equity," a rule that has been found beyond the grasp of a "common"-minded chancellor? Surely, in the family circle. Her whole character, and, in particular, the readiness to imitate, upon which I do not dwell only because everybody knows that kind of thing, was that of one who had inherited family instincts, whose ancestors had lived in families for immemorial generations. The habits of living species are slowly modified in the lapse of millenniums; and we were not teaching Charlie tricks, but letting her develop naturally, and observing her.

The mention of imitation reminds me that Charlie could handle my wife's hand-mirror as well as any lady; but the first sight of it raised hopes that were disappointed. She was seen to be moving it back and forward with one hand, while with the other she was groping behind it, until at last she was satisfied that there was no other gibbon there. The great life-sorrow of Charlie was that she never saw another like herself again. It was pathetic to see her looking in the mirror, and then at other inmates of the house, as if asking herself, "Why am I so different?" She was like Robinson Crusoe, without a chance of deliverance; or she might be compared to Gulliver among the giants. Though in proportion not so small as he was, she was too small to feel at home or among equals; and for animals as for men to be weak is to be miserable, and strength and weakness are largely matters of comparison. We petted her so that she did not feel that much; and though nothing could supply the lack of kindred beings, the lapse of time benumbed the pain, and she was consoled.

"Reader, if thou an oft-told tale wilt trust, Thou'lt gladly do and suffer what thou must."

One of the best-known bits of English literature is the sentence which keeps the memory of old Hobbes green, his fancy picture of a state of Nature.--

"No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all" (especially for philosophers), "continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

The great mistake in this nightmare description is the supposition that men were ever solitary by natural habits. Never, never, O Hobbes, since men began to be, never but in artificial conglomerations defying the laws of Nature, and dying in consequence, never did men and women stand alone. Individualism in its extreme form is actual insanity. In moderate forms it has always been common. It fills our jails to-day. It is almost universal among the cat tribes; but wherever and whenever it spreads among men it leads to death. The most primitive of human creatures ever known to maintain themselves have been found to live in families. The human apes, nay, the very baboons do likewise. So it is contrary to science or sifted common-sense to think of our arboreal ancestors as solitaries.

What probably misled Hobbes was the remark of Tacitus, in his Germany (XVI), that the Germans, who may have seemed to Hobbes, as to a great French historian, "the last arrived of the barbarians," lived "scattered and apart, just as a spring, a meadow, or a wood has attracted them." But Tacitus goes on to tell how they lived in villages, and were united in tribes or clans, just like the people of Afghanistan both then and now, or the Highland clans till the eighteenth century.

What misled Hobbes is matter of conjecture. That he was mistaken is certain. It would be contrary to all analogies based on our existing knowledge, that is to say, it would be sheer hallucination to imagine that, between our cousins the human apes, and primitive humanity, who both live in families, there was a different kind of creatures in human form, who lived like cats, each for himself, and every man against everybody else. Hobbes, himself, if he were alive to-day, would laugh at that, and in the light of new knowledge he would be the first to allow that, though life in a state of Nature has its drawbacks, solitude was never one of them. Civilisation is the art of living together; and it commenced with family life in immemorial antiquity, before we left the trees, so that it may be said to be older than humanity itself.

11. FILIAL FEELING

It is a common remark of Japanese philosophers, applying Western science to their Eastern histories, that filial affection is unknown to the beasts, and the last feeling to develop in spiritual evolution, and consequently the first to deteriorate. That is how they have been known to explain the moral inferiority of Western civilisation; for, as lawyers, on legal-political questions, do always--of course in a perfectly honourable manner--adapt their legal principles to their politics, so do philosophers, unconsciously, shape theories to suit their national prejudices. Why not? A man whose trade is words can find reasons for anything; but a man who cares for nothing but the truth soon learns not to theorise beyond his knowledge.

However, I never quarrel with anybody, least of all with the philosophers. They can either stretch their theory, or else say Charlie was not a beast. One or other of these two things they must do, when they know how she convinced her sceptical master that she loved as a dutiful child and was utterly devoted to the lady who had received and fed and protected her--master's wife. A little girl who risks her life for her stepmother is sure to be well furnished by nature with filial piety.

Many were the experiments made to test this, as soon as time enough had elapsed to let filial affection germinate in Charlie, if the germ of it were in her. My wife had long been sure of it, but I was doubting yet, when an indisputable experiment settled the question in Charlie's favour, and so, perhaps, gave her a place in history.

By the happiest of inspirations, one morning, my wife began crying and sobbing while Charlie was still within hearing, at the other end of the house but not yet outside the eaves. "Pretend to slap me," she said, "and make a noise."

I obeyed, and Charlie heard. Swift as a flash, she reappeared on the partition wall, between the bedroom and the dressing-room, and moving restlessly upon it, with arms now and then uplifted in distress, she "Oo-oo-oo-ed" at the top of her voice, and made hideous grimaces at me, and uttered guttural grunts we had never heard before, quite German or Pathan in accent, noises that seemed to emanate from the deepest depths of her being.

By the help of a mirror, I could see her without directly looking at her. Finding threats and expostulations unheeded, she took a leap of more than two yards, and landed on the curtain poles of the bed. I could not then pretend not to see her; but, to her horror, I heeded her no more than before. Then she made another big leap, and landed on my shoulders, and, as I felt before I felt her feet, clapped a hand upon each eye. If it had been serious fighting, as she believed it was, she might have had my eyes out before I was aware of her movement--so quick was she, "like a needle." At least, she could have blinded me for the moment--at the probable cost of her life. She had, in fact, in her desperation, for my wife's sake, ventured to try the identical feat that Ulysses practised on the cannibal monster Polyphemus, whom he blinded in his cave. If one reflects that she could hardly have weighed a stone, and the man she attacked was rather above than below the average of men in size and weight, one cannot refuse to her the praise that properly belongs to a Jack-the-Giant-Killer or tricky Ulysses.

That she was generally timid, as was natural for her size and sex, merely clenches the argument about her filial feeling. Say, if you like, that it was excitement, half-hysterical, that did it. What caused the excitement but her devotion?

Luckily for myself, I had been watching her closely. My hands were on her little wrists in a moment, and no harm was done; and my wife's caresses soon composed her.

I would gladly have repeated the experiment oftener than was allowed, which was only after long intervals about twice; and on every such occasion, the whole drama was rehearsed, the small spontaneous performer never failing to make her death-defying leap. And every time she did it, she was rewarded not with tit-bits only, but with what children dearly love, a pleasant sight. My wife thrashed me. Then Charlie laughed. She rolled from side to side, as she sat on the partition wall, as if "unable to contain herself." She "Oo-oo-oo-ed" approval, and danced for joy.

12. AGREEABLE SENSATIONS