I’ll get a blessing with the lave (what is left),
And never miss’t!”
It is a wonderful coincidence, which I know for a fact, that the Burmese Buddhist gardeners used phrases expressing similarly these identical sentiments.
The Christians were taught to feel differently. So it was lucky for her that it was in a “heathen” garden that the mother of our heroine was trespassing one day in 1892. Running from the sound of the approaching gardener, she escaped with difficulty, and left her girl behind. Poor frightened little mother, what a loss was there! You never knew the fate of your child. You never saw her any more at all.
The gardener carried the captured one in a basket to my wife, who agreed to adopt her, and named her Charlotte, or “Charlie” Darwin. For immediate company of her own size, she had a nice tabby, with whom she became quickly familiar. The little cats in the woods survive by haunting the trees, and doubtless live on terms of neutrality with the monkeys and the apes. The big leopard [222] ]is the common enemy of both the little cats and the monkeys. When once a suckling leopard, the size of a kitten, was given us, and my wife tried to coax a tabby to be wet nurse, and the cats of the house were all standing round observant of the stranger, the suckling gave a little leopard’s growl, and instantly the cats were panic-stricken, and fled to the roof, and stayed there long after the departure of the suckling, till hunger brought them down. The universal welcome these same cats extended to Charlie showed that her tribe was considered friendly. The first thing I remember of her, perhaps, also, her earliest recollection of our house, was her cheerfully dipping her nose in the cats’ dish, and sharing their milk.
She never needed a wet nurse, being more than half-grown when we received her. In fact, our neighbour had caught her pulling plantains. Among the common monkeys, the anxious mothers seem to have a rule of thumb to keep their young within reach, by using the tails as French nursemaids use the leading-strings. “The length of your tail, my child—no farther shall you go.” But our Charlie was of the human-like species, and no more had a tail than the reader himself. Besides, she was old enough to be out of leading-strings. Mother and daughter had been alike [223] ]absorbed in the fruit, and in an absent-minded way had let the gardener surprise them. He said he had never even flung a stone at a monkey, and always been content to chase them away. So Charlie Darwin and her mother had doubtless been presuming on his good-nature, as females are apt to do. But the sight of pretty Charlie tempted him, and he knocked her down, with a clod of earth, he said, and made her prisoner unhurt.
She soon grew to her full height, swelling visibly from week to week, almost from day to day, but the full height of her tribe is below army requirements. She was never much above two feet. Next to the size, the chief difference between her and the reader, if the reader is a girl, was that her arms were proportionally longer and stronger, and her legs shorter and weaker. Her Latin name was Hylobates Hooluck; but, as she never went to school, much less to college, it was never used. And nobody spoke of her as a gibbon. Plain “Charlie Darwin” she was always called, and seemed to like it.
She was not proud, though, if she had been, she might have been excused. The brightness of her face made her a centre of attraction. She seemed to dress well; for though she was never insulted [224] ]with humanly manipulated rags, her beautiful fur appeared to be like a perfectly fitting black satin dress, of Oriental cut, and gave Miss Charlie Darwin the look of a modest lady, at home in a drawing-room. Her sparkling eyes, like moist beads, were surmounted by big white eyebrows. These set off her features so well that one could understand why European ladies, in more leisurely days than ours, took time to mark their faces with beauty spots.
When moving or standing about in the drawing-room, she tottered at times, and would put her hand on anything convenient to support herself, as many an old lady likes to do; and often she would sit down, with a sigh of pleasure. But Charlie did not sit long anywhere. Her restless agility showed her youth. At tea-time, in particular, she was very much alive. She was devoted to fruit; but her natural good manners, some said, her female curiosity, said others, made her sample everything. She neglected the plain bread but, like other young people, had an almost undiscriminating love for cakes. Shortbread was an exception. She was very partial to it; and it was rare fun to give her none and keep it out of easy reach, and watch the result. She sat demurely unconcerned, as a woman can, [225] ]till she supposed she was unobserved. Then swiftly and softly she ran to where it was, never taking her eyes off the company, as if too interested in what they were saying to think of anything else; and deftly took the shortbread and resumed her seat, as if it were a matter of no consequence.
The only imperfection in her table manners was her way of drinking from a saucer, lapping her tea as the cats lapped milk. In vain my wife showed her a better example. Habits of that kind are easier to learn than to unlearn; and, after all, men also drink in that way at times, under primitive conditions, lapping of the water with the tongue, as a dog lappeth. (See Judges vii, 5.)