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 toa 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 theirgenealogies. 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.
After these two came Enid, Elaine, and Geraint. Enid was the first to have a baby, and she had only one—a fat round one, which grew and prospered until one day when he suddenly disappeared. We searched and hunted with anxious hearts, but with no result. After a time we wanted to move the hutches to a new place, and when we took up that in which poor Enid and the baby lived, there was a hole under it—a rat’s hole, and at the end of the hole, as we peered down, we saw a little white thing—the skin and bones of a baby guinea-pig. Enid never had another baby; she grew sad and thin and pined away, and at last she died.
Then Elaine had a baby—two; but one was deformed, completely paralysed in his hind-legs, and I felt that the kindest thing to do would be to destroy him. So I took out a bottle of laudanum, and prepared to begin the hari-kari. Poor little guinea-pig! it was already very ill, and I could with difficulty get its little rabbit-like mouth open. What a tiny throat! could it swallow even enough poison to end its panting little life? When I laid it down again there was very little change, and I did not know what to do; then the pink nose, the hands and feet, began to have a slightly blue tinge.I could not disturb it again to open its mouth, so I poured a little more laudanum on its mouth and nose, and the limbs got bluer, and the breathing became harder, and at last ceased. It was a dreadful thing to do. However, on the whole, it was less dreadful than drowning it. Once I had to drown a bat.... We will draw a veil over that.
However, to proceed with the guinea-pigs. The baby that was not deformed was a very nice little pig—small but comely. He grew up and was called Jim.
There is an individuality about guinea-pigs, not explicable but to be apprehended intuitively. Jim was quite individual. You would have known that if you had only seen him sitting upright at his mother’s side to nibble out of the hay trough.
The guinea-pigs lived in a large estate fenced in by wire; inside the yard were various settlements, bedrooms, all with free access to the yard, and usually to the ground beyond, for they made holes under the wire and disported themselves outside. They had a beautiful rack to hold their hay, saucers for bran, and were given a breakfast of soaked bread every morning. At breakfast-time shrill whistles might be heard from the guinea-pigyard. Most people think guinea-pigs have only one noise, but in reality they have, quite clearly defined, three fundamental notes, of desire, contentment, and anger. They whistle when they are hungry, make what are called “guinea-pig noises” when they are well content—for ordinary conversation, and they gnash their teeth when they are angry.
About this time, when the colony was not too large, I used to take them out for picnics.
Opposite the front door, at the corner of the lawn, there is a large escalonia tree; on warm summer evenings it sheds a delicious fragrant smell from leaves and flowers. Opposite this there is a stile made to get into the fields. The stile is made in such a manner as to be a very comfortable seat. Here, under the escalonia, I used to turn out the guinea-pigs for a day in the country, while I read a book on the stile, and Watch was put to guard them; if any little pig strayed too far, he saw where it went to, and helped me to find it again.
But, in time, the colony grew too large for this, and at last it began to increase with a rapidity that alarmed me; for, as you see, it is not a case of the simple geometrical progression of creatureswhich have the same number in every family; but, as guinea-pigs get older, each family gets larger, so that it is like a sum in compound interest, at an accelerating rate of interest. I began to be frightened when the “five Mitchinsons” were born, and the next family was larger still.
In fact, they would have eaten us out of garden and farm, if it had not been for what political economists call “violent checks”; these violent checks were kidnapping, nepoticide, and massacre.
Kidnapping was the first check. Our house was being added to, and there were various workmen about, and one morning when I visited the hutches, Daisy and Ally Mitchinson were missing. There is no more to say about it; they were never seen again. I felt like a mother, who, having complained of the burden and size of her family, is deprived of one of them.
But that was not the worst. Atahualpa was still flourishing, although a great-great-grandmother. One morning I found reason to seclude her from the rest of the community, and by an arrangement of hutches, I shut off a little yard for her by herself.
I came back a few hours later, and I found Brastias had displayed himself in his true coloursat last. He had leaped the barrier, and was standing with gory mouth and fiery eye, over the carcase of a baby guinea-pig. In another corner of the hutch was Atahualpa, behaving with the supremest indifference to six more.
That day I gave away sixteen guinea-pigs. But I believe that we should have had a repetition of Bishop Hatto, if it had not been for the last check—namely, massacre.
We were overrun with rats, and rat-catchers were sent for. One morning two men came up with their dogs. The men were looking at the rat-holes, and arranging a plan of campaign, when suddenly they found that the dogs were not with them. Across the wall which separated the cow stables and haystacks from the garden and guinea-pig yard, they heard a doleful noise. They ran round, and found that the dogs had been doing their duty nobly, and all the guinea-pigs but two lay dead on the ground.
The victims were buried in a large grave, and my brother found a suitable slate and wrote a Latin epitaph on it. He put it up as a headstone, and enjoyed the proceeding very much.
But I did not enjoy it. I had not the heart to keep guinea-pigs any more. I gave away thetwo survivors, and the hutches mouldered away, and cucumbers grew over the yard, and only the genealogy and the tombstone were left as memorials of that very large family with the white coats and jewelled eyes.