Part 4

That he should sleep in a stable any longer was a manifest impossibility. Watch was established as a house-dog.

He was wonderfully quick and obedient; he learnt to shut the door, play the piano, shake hands, catch things from his nose, and lie dead, in no time. He was so gentle that one could put little animals under his charge; the canary would stand on his head, and a kitten run between his paws. One of our blue-eyed white kittens, granddaughter of the formidable cat Rector, attached herself warmly to him.

But there were one or two circumstances under which he was not docile. Soon after he came home we took him for a walk in the fields near the town. He followed quietly; when, suddenly, he spied a flock of sheep feeding, and up went the white tufted tail like a banner; nothing could hold him; no threats restrain him, until from hedge and ditch he had collected the whole flock into marching order. Much severe treatment was necessary before we could induce him to relinquish his profession. Then often as we went through the fields, Watch following with an eager eye, longing to be off after a scattered flock, an old north-country shepherd would sidle up and “pass the time of day,” and gently turn the conversation until he could say, “I suppose that dog of yours is not for sale?” He was right, Watch was not for sale.

He could not, it is true, quite resist the instinct of the chase; and often one saw him flying down the garden in pursuit of the white kitten Midge, while her old-fashioned, under-bred, good-hearted tabby mother followed to protect her. But nothing happened; he rolled over and over with Midge, and Jenny jumped upon the soft heap, and dealt out boxes of the ear when Watch’s head got uppermost. Then they all got amicably up together, and went off quite good friends. Once, I am sorry to say, he did break the leg of a rabbit, but he was more surprised than any one else at it. I found him another time, having caught a blackbird; he was very much surprised and delighted, but puzzled as to the right course to adopt next; so he made short runs at it, and pretended to bite it, and wagged his tail very much, and asked me to come up and look at it.

As for the goat, he was a most excellent good comrade with her. He exercised all his sheep-driving skill to fetch her when she lagged behind. And it takes as much skill to fetch one goat as fifty sheep. When she behaved well, he consented to go in double harness with her. The double harness was made out of tape dyed purple with Judson’s dyes. There was an old madman who lived in a house opposite the field where I generally drove them. He was very fond of watching the performance.

But now I come to a part of Watch’s character which I cannot present in such a favourable light. He was jealous.

Of course we did not find it out at first. He was not brought into comparison with other dogs, only with inferior animals, and he would naturally not be jealous of them. We are not jealous of our friend’s cat and dog, but of our friend’s friends. Watch was not jealous of our cats and birds, and goats and guinea-pigs, but of our dog-acquaintance. Occasionally he showed slight uneasiness when a horse or a baby was much noticed; they were rather too high in the scale of creation--nearly at the level of dogs.

But one day there had been a dog show near us, and after the booths had been taken down, and the exhibits gone, one poor spaniel was discovered who had lost his friends, and appealed to us for sympathy; so we invited him to afternoon tea in the garden. Watch came to tea as usual; but when he saw the other dog, he suddenly became demonstratively affectionate. This was quite appreciated; but the other dog was not therefore neglected. So Watch bit him. This was not appreciated at all. We told Watch so, but he only sat down and turned his back to us, and gave the family five minutes for repentance; and as they did not fall on their knees, and beseech his forgiveness, he solemnly marched away into the house and lay in his master’s study, quite alone, sulking. I am sorry to say, too, that he conceived occasionally the most violent antipathies to the most delightful and well-intentioned people. There was a friend of ours, devoted to dogs in general, and to him in particular, whom he would not allow to touch him; he would not take food from her hand; once, when he had accepted from some one else the food he had refused from her, he stopped eating it because he heard her laugh. Once he was the victim of uncontrollable fascination. A girl came to tea, at whose greeting he growled; then he lay down in a corner with his eyes fixed on her. She went on talking and taking no notice of him, and he came out into the room, little by little, looking at her, till he finally sat straight in front of her, with his eyes fixed on hers; and there he remained until she went away.

Watch had become identified with the family, to the extent of being called “Watch Benson” by many friends. His English vocabulary was wonderfully large. I remember the surprise of one gentleman who came to talk business with my father. Watch was in the room, and, hearing our voices outside, suddenly started to the door, which was shut. “Why don’t you go out of the window, then?” my father said, quite quietly, and Watch in a moment ran to the window and jumped out.

I never quite knew what Watch’s position was towards religious exercises. I think he approved of them, but disapproved of our exclusiveness about them. So he pretended altogether to despise church. He was depressed on Sunday morning, came to the garden gate to congratulate us when church was over, and pretended to be sleepy when the time for evening church drew near. But I think that was because he was not allowed to go; for he took up a very different position about prayers; he insisted on coming; he had his own stall in a window; though occasionally, when strangers were there, and he could not be turned out, he suddenly decided to leave it for the softer rugs in the middle of the chapel. There was one memorable occurrence, when the 26th chapter of St. Matthew was read, and Watch got more and more excited as he heard his own name repeated more and more emphatically, until at the final, “I say unto all, _Watch_,” he ran eagerly out into the middle--such exciting, personal prayers!

But he made a great point of attending; for when we changed our house, and came to the conclusion that his presence would no longer be appreciated, his efforts to attend prayers were quite pathetic. Sometimes he scratched at the door, or pushed it open, and marched in in the middle; sometimes he slunk in when we went into the chapel, and sometimes ran in first and tried to hide. He had a vague idea in his mind, that it was some special privilege, some special identification with the family.

Now that we were in London half the year, Watch could not be with us constantly. For one thing his dirty paws were such a mortification to him, and we thought he would die from the amount of soot he licked off. And he could not go walks, for he would stand smiling at us in the middle of the street, with a tram, two omnibuses, a cart, and four hansoms, bearing down upon him. So he went to stay with friends, or down to the farm in the country.

That last was often necessary, but not a great success. Watch was very exclusive; he never would go walking with servants, except when everyone else was--not out, for he might have met them--but away from home. The one exception was when the servants were nurses with children. He was fond of children, and did not think it _infra dig._ to play with them. In the same way he despised everyone at the farm, and had to be treated in a very special manner, quite different from all other dogs. “Why can’t Watch live like any of the other dogs?” one of the children asked. “Oh, my dear, Watch is much too good for us,” his mother told him, with a deep sarcasm. No other dog could come on the rug when Watch was lying there. The cat might come and was welcome, and liked the benevolent old gentleman. Just as one would not like anybody to come and take half of one’s armchair, but might be rather flattered if a cat or a little dog jumped up to settle itself there. Cats were only cats, and fit subjects for philanthropy, but other dogs were his own ill-bred relatives. As some one summed it up, “Watch doesn’t care for dogs.”

The other dogs could not be expected to appreciate this, and Watch’s airs provoked at last one outburst from King, the steady old patriarchal collie of the farm. King flew upon him one fine day to have it out, and all the other dogs, seeing that King “had taken out a free ticket,” as the bailiff phrased it, flew to avenge their private grievances. Watch was very nearly killed, but he kept his airs to the last. Such strong arguments were brought to bear upon King, that ever after, when Watch crossed the yard, King retired promptly to his kennel. He could not trust his own self-control, and fled temptation.

Poor King! he had a sad end. He and a young golden collie called Pat went out together in some woods--poachers, I fear. Towards evening Pat came back in a fearful state of agitation, trembling. The dog must have longed for words to tell what he had seen! But they guessed it. The gamekeeper was known to have a grudge against King, and he was never heard of again from that day to this.

Watch had a very different end. He grew old and blind. He had to live altogether at the farm now, but he did not mind that. He had two great friends. One was the bailiff’s daughter, and one the niece of the landlady at the “Cricketers,” over the way. The first nursed Watch, the second he went to see every day. But the niece got married, and Watch never crossed the road again, but transferred all his affection to Katie. He was nearly blind now, quite deaf, and very rheumatic. He had not much emotion left; it soon wearied him. I remember while he was still at the house, that when we all came home at the end of the holidays in two detachments, he greeted the first-comers effusively, and then retired under the sofa, and took no notice of the second batch until they had been in the house about an hour; then, his emotions being rested, he came out and greeted them too with affection.

But two loves remained to the end; his love for Katie and his love for milk pudding--and Katie generally gave him the milk pudding. He hobbled about after her as long as he could, and sat in her room. Once they thought him dying. He lay on Katie’s bed, and Katie was away--was coming back that evening. His head lay on the pillow and his eyes were closed, and they thought him dead, when Katie came upstairs and spoke to him; and the life came back to him, and she fed him, and he lived a few days more. Then he died, this time with Katie close to him.

He is buried by the gold-fish pond under a cedar, and he has a tombstone and an epitaph, “_Esne Vigil_.” And the other day I passed by, and freshly-gathered daisies were lying on it. I think Katie must have put them there.

IX

KIDS OF THE GOATS

They were Zoe and Marcianus Capello (but she was no kid), and Capricorn and his brother, and Chat and Tan. I did not possess them all at the same time; in fact, I never had more than three at one time, and that was because Marcianus Capello had twins.

Zoe was the first. When she came to us she was a little white kid, just taken from her mother; she was very pretty, with a dark mark down her back and two little tassels of hair on her neck. But, as I say, she was only just taken from her mother, and the first evening was full of much trouble and care, for we could not find anything she would eat, and we thought she would be starved. She would not be fed, moreover, with milk, and we were in despair until we thought of trying if she would eat the tender sprouts of may. It was early spring, and for a day or so all her meals were taken in our arms, as we held her up to nibble at the hawthorn hedge.

But she soon grew less fastidious, and, as goats do, would eat anything, from garden flowers, laurel leaves, and cabbages, down to paper and bread. She was tethered in the field, and this was very necessary, for if she was free she would follow us everywhere, would go walks with us out of doors, and would come into the house after us. The chief difficulty with kids is superabundant affection; they wail pitifully when one leaves them alone, and cannot be persuaded that their presence is not always desirable. Some friends of ours--they were Quakers too--used to dress up a stick with a waterproof and hat to keep their kid company. It satisfied her completely; but was it quite consistent with the Friends’ idea of truth?

Zoe nearly had a bad accident once, in consequence of her fondness for coming into the house. I was sitting on the steps at the door and playing with her, when suddenly she bounced away from me and ran into the drawing-room. I pursued her, and she, knowing she was wrong, ran farther, saw a way of escape, and jumped straight through a large plate-glass window. I thought she would be cut to pieces, and in agonies rushed outside, where I found her making the most of her opportunities by devouring our best rose trees under the window.

Zoe lived with us for a year. Then I was kept indoors by a bad cold and throat, and I heard that the kid was sympathising with me by having a bad throat also. But alas, poor Zoe! her throat was much worse than mine, and though we strapped a little blanket on her back to keep her warm, and though the gardener and the cowman poured gruel down her throat, when she could hardly swallow, she got thinner and weaker, and one morning she died. I sobbed audibly all through prayers that morning.

Then a friend of mine told me that some cousins of hers were anxious to part with a goat they had, and Marcianus Capello, otherwise called Marcap, arrived. She was not at all like Zoe; she was a large, dull, elderly, brown and white goat. She did not want to make friends at all; she chiefly wanted to eat. But there was one great advantage about her, for a few weeks after I had her she gave birth to two little twin billygoats--two fluffy black-and-white creatures with huge legs.

Marcap was, like Zoe, tethered in the field, and it was supposed that filial affection would keep the kids near her. The kids had a fine time in consequence. One morning one heard a rattling over the roof of the nursery, and found the kids were playing King of the Castle on the house-top. Another time they came skipping out of a yard where building was going on, covered with lime to the tops of their legs; and for some little time we were terribly afraid that the smallest kid would lose his eyesight, as he had splashed lime up into his eyes, and that they both would come out of it with skinny hairless legs. A procession, of my nurse holding a cup of milk and water, myself and my youngest brother (who was too naughty to be left alone), could be seen crossing the field three times a day to bathe the kid’s eyes.

When the kids were old enough to do without their mother, we gave Marcap away. I did not mind parting with Marcap; I never should have got fond of her, for she had no idea of intimacy. But to part with a kid was a different matter; it took us a long time to decide that it would be better to keep the biggest and strongest kid, Capricorn; and we gave away the little one.

Capricorn proved just a little more warlike than it is quite convenient for a kid to be, if you are in the habit of taking it out for walks. In the first place, if he met a flock of sheep in a field, he would at once begin to drive them away, running and butting after them. In the second place, if he met cows, he would invariably have a pitched battle with them, unless he was dragged away by main force. I have seen him in the middle of a ring of cows, knocked down by them, and getting up to butt them again. Thirdly, if he met a donkey, even in a cart, he would go for it, which sometimes caused the drivers of the cart to swear. Lastly, if he met children, he would try to awe them by standing on his hind-legs. His wickedness gradually developed with his growth. Before he was grown up he was a very affectionate kid. Once, when I turned back in a walk, the rest of my family had the greatest difficulty in inducing Capricorn to go with them. He got on very well with our wise collie. Watch was useful in fetching him up, if he lagged behind in a walk to carry out some of his evil designs. I had a little cart for Capricorn, too, and made him pull up stones for a rockery we were making; this was a good outlet for his energies, and he had less time to be wicked.

But he finally got too fierce for us to keep him any longer. If I was running down a hill by his side he would try to hook me with his horns, and he was not at all to be trusted with children. I gave him away reluctantly, and it was some consolation to hear that he nearly killed his new master, who came upon him suddenly in the dark. Since then I found out that it was not individual wickedness, but, so to speak, class wickedness, and that it is rarely safe to keep a billygoat when he grows up.

Then for some time I had no kid. After a while a lady near who kept goats gave me two kids.

These were very pretty kids; one was quite white, the other fawn colour, and very graceful. They would follow me everywhere; but, as I could not keep two, Chat, the white one, was given away.

It was considerably easier to take Tan walks than it had been to take Capricorn; for Tan did not want to fight every beast or child she met. Watch was useful in fetching her as he had been with Capricorn. Long afterwards, when the acquaintanceship between them was a thing of the past, to say, “Watch, fetch the kid,” would bring her hurrying up to us. Tan was the only one of my goats who ever learnt a trick, but I taught her to shake hands in exchange for leaves or oats.

Then we moved from the place where we were living, and I left Tan behind me for a child of the family who were coming into our old house. I heard no more of her for a year, and then they wrote to me to say that Tan was pining, and they wished that I would send for her. So she came up by train, and the first moment she saw me she remembered me, and we shook hands.

Tan is still alive. On misty summer mornings, one sees her pass the windows heading a herd of cows; she is much too proud to walk with sheep; and though she will condescend to go with cows, she keeps herself to herself, never talks to any of them, but preserves a proud and solitary position. On rare occasions a sudden burst of friendship or curiosity will induce her to come into the house with me.

But my friendship with Tan, I must confess it, is not what it was; perhaps it might never have waned if I had not consented to the year’s separation. But although occasionally we bleat to each other from a distance, though we shake hands over a few oats, she no longer runs to meet me if I come near, she no longer cries out with a wailing bleat when I go away, she no longer has to be tied up to prevent her following me. And I do not think it is age that has made this difference, I think it was worked by that year of separation.

Passing through the farmyard on a cold day, I found Tan in the corner where the dead leaves had blown up, and lay a foot or more deep. She was standing in the deepest part of the heap, which came up to the top of her legs, and had secured herself, as it were, a good hot bottle for the night.

In conclusion, I would say that there are no pets more enchanting than kids. They will give you as much amusement as kittens or puppies; while they are as intelligent as grown-up dogs, and even more wildly devoted. But there are two things you must never expect of a goat,--neither the least unselfishness in their affection, nor the smallest spark of benevolence.

X

COMMUNITY LIFE

Our old cowman Callaway was Cornish; he taught me to milk; he took a fatherly interest in my animals; he talked Cornished English, and I understood about a quarter of what he said. He had a wife who worked in the house of a neighbour of ours, and a very elegant daughter. I never could imagine how her hats and jackets and dresses got into the hovel in which the family lived; however, I suppose they must have got into it, for they certainly came out.

The wife’s employer’s daughter kept guinea-pigs; and Callaway promised to get us a white one. In due time he appeared with it. But to our delight, when the box was opened, out came two little white creatures, with shining red eyes, not weak bluish-pink eyes, but real good red ones like little jewels. They were named Ixtlilxochitl and Atahualpa, and installed in a wooden house with a wired-in yard under the laurel trees of the drying-ground. Here they rapidly became naturalised; burrowing under their wire fence, they found the way to the long, fresh grass beyond, and enjoyed as much liberty as they wished till nightfall, when the wooden slide of their house shut them safe from dogs and rats and cats.

I had many sympathisers in my amusements. Not only was there Callaway the cowman, who became house-builder to the community, but my old nurse used to take the guinea-pigs a breakfast of soaked bread every morning; and we had a butler sagacious about animals, to appeal to as a highest authority on all difficult questions. So when, one morning, I opened the slide, to find two new white things about as big as large mice gaily running about, the first thing I did was to run to the servants’ hall and summon the butler to advise in this difficult and delicate situation. Ixtlilxochitl was sent to a new hutch, hastily erected for him, and Atahualpa kept house for the babies.

This was very good for the development of Ixtlilxochitl’s character. He became very tame, learnt to sit up with his forepaws on my finger, and to “lie dead” on his back with his little pink hands and feet in the air; guinea-pigs’ forefeet are really small pink hands, with short claws on the fingers, and a rudimentary thumb.

Guinea-pigs grow up very soon; they have no helpless infancy at all. I have heard of a guinea-pig eating bran twenty minutes after it was born. I know we used to carry the infants about and let them run up our sleeves till they stuck, and had to be pulled back by their hind-legs; and though I would not recommend this practice, they never seemed to take any harm from it. Then, when they are about three months old they become heads of families. At first the family only consists of one or two members, but they increase in number until each family numbers seven or eight. You may expect a new family once every six or eight weeks. There is a nice sum in geometrical progression! And after this general statement of the matter you will hardly expect me to give you a history of each individual, though I made a chart of their genealogies. I will, however, give a short biographical notice of the most interesting characters.

The first two were Ulfias and Brastias. Ulfias was a nice, comely guinea-pig; he took after his father, and had brown whiskers. Brastias had pink ears, which were generally much bitten, and fierce red eyes; he was an ill-conditioned, cross little beast, and a great fighter. Moreover, he was a murderer.

It is the funniest thing in the world to see guinea-pigs fighting. They stand on the tips of their toes and raise their noses, until they present the chin only to their adversaries; then they begin to dance round, always chin to chin, gnashing their teeth; when they see a good opportunity they fly in and bite. It is a scientific way of fighting, like wrestling or fencing--quite different from the indiscriminate plunge of a cat, who rolls round in a heap with her adversary.