Chapter Seventeen.
And Chammy never came again.
As the weather grew colder, Chammy hugged the fire more, so to speak, and was less and less inclined to run away.
Perhaps to talk of Chammy’s pedal progression as “running” is slightly to exaggerate. But, nevertheless, when Chammy made up his mind to go anywhere, whether it were on an expedition to the top of a curtain, or the extreme point of a poplar tree, he got there all the same. He would probably take a considerable time to make up his mind about it, however, and he would focus the spot he meant to reach with one eye for an hour or two to begin with. Probably, during this survey, his other eye would be wandering all round the room at Shireen, at Warlock, or at Lizzie and Tom. With one eye he was calculating the height of his ambition, as it were, with the other he was counting the chances there were against his ever reaching it at all. These chances had to be reckoned with, for first and foremost he had to descend from his perch or the branch in the ingle-nook. Having reached the floor, he would have to make for the wall of the room and creep along by the foot of the dado, perhaps changing colour once or twice so as to match the hue of the carpet, and thus do his best to escape observation. For Tabby might be there, and might sing out to Warlock:
“Oh, Warlock, here is Chammy just racing off as fast as lightning. Let us have some fun with him, and turn him over and over a few times.”
And they would do it too. And, although the cat and dog meant no harm, their attentions were somewhat disconcerting, to say the very least of it.
Or Lizzie and Tom might be on the floor and spy him, and Lizzie call to Tom, saying,—
“Oh, Tom, here is poor Chammy. I’m sure he is cold. Let us take him and nurse him by the fire a little.”
And Lizzie might roll him in a Shetland-wool shawl, and sit down before the blaze to warm him, shawl and all, being very much astonished, perhaps, when she opened the shawl to have a peep, to find no Chammy there at all.
“Oh, Tom! Tom!” she would say, looking half afraid, “I’m sure I had Chammy in my hands, and I’m sure I rolled him up; and now, why, he is clean gone!”
Or the cockatoo might see him, if Uncle Ben were there, and raise a terrible alarm, shrieking and crying, “Scray! Scray! Scray!” till all the prismatic crystals in the old-fashioned chandelier jingled to the sound.
Or the Colonel himself might find him.
“Oh, you’re on the hop, are you?” the Colonel would say. “Now you just come back to your perch by the ingle-nook.”
And he would lift him by the crest that was over his head and carry him back to the branch.
Chammy was a good-tempered kind of a chameleon at most times, though he could bite a little, and give a good pinch too if he saw any occasion; but there was nothing in the world made him more indignant than being lifted up by the crest.
It was a handy way of lifting him certainly, but Chammy used to get pea-green with anger when you did so, and his little nimble eyes would look directly back at you; or, I should rather say, one of them would, for very seldom indeed did he send them both to duty at the same time.
“Put me down at once, sir,” he would say, or seem to say, “this is an indignity I do not feel called upon tamely to submit to. You would not dare to lift a crocodile of the Nile thus. Yet I, too, belong to the ancient family of the Saurians, and I bid you beware.”
I have said that Chammy could bite. This is true; but if the weather were extra cold, he would stand any amount of teasing rather than be bothered turning his head or opening his mouth to pinch you. One of Chammy’s mottoes was “Perceverantia vincit” (Perseverance overcomes), and if his master put him back on his perch a hundred and fifty times after he, Chammy, had made up his mind to reach the top of that curtain, or get out at the window to climb a tree, he would watch his chance, bide his time, and begin all over again.
That is the sort of chameleon Chammy was.
The deliberation manifested in all the droll animal’s movements was something to watch and wonder at, and afforded no end of amusement to Lizzie and Tom. He never lifted more than one leg at a time. Not he. Four legs in four seconds. That was the speed of his pedal progression, and you didn’t need a stop-watch either to determine it. But he studied periodically on the march. He might be slow, but he was also wondrous sure, and when it came to the turn of say a left hind leg, to move it had to come to time, else Chammy would slightly turn his head and focus one goggle backwards, as much as to say:
“What’s the hitch along down there? Why on earth don’t you move instead of delaying the procession?”
When Chammy saw a fly that he had taken a fancy to, he would stalk cautiously along towards it, one leg at a time of course, and if the fly was fool enough to wait there long enough, why, it got caught and swallowed, that was all. If it didn’t, why Chammy evinced no great degree of disappointment, another fly would be sure to come. Everything comes to the chameleon who waits. So he would wait.
There was a deal to be done, mind you, before a fly could be caught, he must first judge the distance, being well acquainted with the length of his own tongue. Then the jaws began to open, which they did as slowly as the minute hand of a watch. After the jaws were opened and both goggles focussed, the tongue, which looked like a garden snail, went slowly straight out. Pop! Where is the fly? And where is the tongue? Well, the tongue went back like a bit of india-rubber, and evidently the fly was there too, for Chammy immediately began to move his jaws like a cow chewing the cud, only infinitely slower.
When flies were scarce, Lizzie or Tom fed Chammy with mealworms. They would take up one at a time with a pair of forceps and put it on Chammy’s plate.
Chammy’s plate, by the way, was the lid of a pill-box, and sometimes he would eat a dozen good big fat mealworms at one sitting, and perhaps refuse food for ten days or more after it. If presented with a mealworm when not hungry, Chammy would focus it with one eye for about a dozen seconds, then slowly turn his head away in the drollest manner possible.
“Excuse me,” he would seem to say, “but I couldn’t touch it. No good eating if you’re not hungry, is there? Take it away. Take it away.”
Chammy’s attitudes were droll in the extreme while on his tree-branch. Sometimes he would be quite perpendicular against a topmost twig, which he held for all the world as an old, old man holds his long staff, his chin resting on his two clasped hands. When he had warmed both his hands at the fire on a wintry day, he used to slowly turn round his back to the blaze to entice a little heat into his chilly old spine.
But Chammy got many a tumble, and sometimes he would stupidly catch his own tail to prevent himself from falling. So that if he had lived for hundreds of years, and he certainly gave one that impression, he had not gained a very great amount of wisdom in that time.
But he was wise enough to know that the flies were to be found mostly on the window panes, though for the life of him he never could discover why he couldn’t catch one when it was on the other side of the glass, he would have a shot at such a fly again and again, then turn pea-green with anger and disappointment, and crawl slowly away.
The Colonel was a very humane man, and when the frost became very hard, he placed a small but elegant oil-stove in a corner for the comfort of the chameleon. It had crimson glass in front, and as this glass got warm, Chammy used to stand up against it, the whole forming a very pretty picture.
Then Lizzie got a box and lined it with red flannel, and Chammy was put to bed in it every night. But the oil-stove had to be lit before he could be prevailed upon to stir of a morning. When Chammy felt certain, from his feelings, that the room was well-aired, then he gathered himself slowly up and took up a position on the edge of the box and in the front of the stove, and there he stood for hours, warming first one hand and then another.
Well, I have been writing about this queer pet all the time as if it had been a male. But the truth is, it turned out to be as Tommie said, a “her chameleon,” for lo! and behold it was discovered one morning that Chammy had laid some eggs. She put them all together in a heap in the corner and appeared to be employed all the time lifting and counting them and feeling them over. There were five altogether, about the size and shape of small beans, and pink in colour.
Chammy ate no food after this. She didn’t even seem to care to come any more to warm her toes at the stove. And, on going to take off the lid of her box one morning, Lizzie found poor Chammy immovable and colder than ever she had been before.
Then Lizzie sat down on the floor beside the red-lined box and burst into tears.
They made Chammy a grave near the sweet-scented syringa-tree, and when spring-time came, they planted it with forget-me-nots, and Chammy never came again.