Sir,—It is true that I robbed a Kite’s nest a year ago for your friend Mr. Scotton, and I am sorry I did it, for it was a mean and cruel act in this country, where Kites are almost extinct. Please excuse my freedom.
As I have a wife and six children to feed, and my rent to pay after a bad season, I must accept your offer, and do another mean and cruel act. My wife says that my children have as much right to live as the Kites, and that as I was brought up to this business I must take it as it comes. Women are mostly right when there are children to be thought of, and I must pay my rent. I am sending my son, as I don’t relish the job myself.
Your humble servant,
Stephen Lee.
By return of post there came a letter for Stephen, containing a cheque for twenty-five guineas, which he handed to his astonished wife. The letter ran thus:
Dear Sir,—I send you a cheque for present needs. Your feelings do you credit. I showedyour letter to a famous ornithologist, who said that you are a fine fellow, and I am a pestilent one. All I ask of you in return for the cheque is to save the eggs before your son takes them. I am going to Spain, and will send you my skins to set up, and mention your name to others. Let me know as soon as you can whether the eggs are saved.
Yours faithfully,
W. Gatherum.
Mr. Lee rushed to the nearest telegraph office, and wired after his son, “Hold your hand till I come.” Then he put up travelling bag, and went off by the next train for Wales.
April was drawing to an end, and the oaks on the Kite’s fortress were growing ever ruddier; on the steep mossy slopes among the rocks the ferns were really beginning to uncurl. All was very quiet and peaceful; over the opposite hill a pair of Buzzards soared about unmolested;the Woodwrens had arrived, to spend the summer among the oaks; the Sandpipers were whistling along the river below, and the trout were lazily rising in the pools among the rocks.
The Baroness was happy and cheerful; the Baron, looking back on the experience of half a century, knew well that a tranquil April does not always lead to a happy May; but he said nothing of his doubts, and encouraged his wife. She had presented him, one after another, with three beautiful eggs; they lay in the nest, which had been built of sticks, and ornamented, according to the ancestral custom of the race, with such pleasing odds and ends as could be found at hand, to occupy her attention during the weary days of her sitting. A long shred of sheep’s wool: a fragment of an old bonnet that had been a scarecrow, blown by winter winds from a cottage garden: a damp piece of theTimesnewspaper, in which a fisherman’s lunch had been wrapped, containing an account of Lord Roberts’ entry into Bloemfontein; such were the innocent spoils collected to amuse the Baroness. She had been greatly tempted by some small linenput out to dry at the farmhouse; but the Baron kept her away from these treasures, as a needy Peer might keep his Peeress from the jewellers’ shops. Such objects, he told her, were dangerous, and might betray them.
So she sat on her beautiful eggs, greenish white with dark red blotches, and contented herself with theTimesand the scrap of old bonnet, while the Baron sailed slowly round the hill looking out for enemies, or made longer excursions, if all seemed safe, in search of food for his wife. And so far he had seen nothing to alarm him. A fisherman would come up the river now and again, and look up at him with interest as he rested to eat his lunch; but the Baron knew well that fishermen are too busy to be dangerous. Nor was there any other human being to be seen but a farmer on his rough-coated pony, or the parson striding over the hills to visit a distant parishioner.
But one morning in May—a lovely morning, too fresh and clear to last—as the Baron was gliding round and round far above the hill, his keen eye caught a slight movement among therocky ridges on its summit. Poised on even wings, his tail deftly balancing him against the breeze, he watched: and soon he knew that he was being watched himself. For a human figure was there, lying on its back in a cleft of the grey rock, and looking up at him with a field-glass. For a long time they watched each other, motionless and in silence; but at last the human creature seemed to weary of it, and rose. A cry escaped the Baron—he could not help it; and from over the craggy side of the fortress came the answering cry of the Baroness as she sat on her treasures.
“Fool that I am,” thought the Baron, “I have betrayed her, and she has betrayed the nest.” One hope remained; the nest was in a stronger position than last year. On the top of the cliff towards the river no trees could grow; but some fifty feet below there was a mossy ledge on which three oaks had rooted themselves. Then came another ledge with more trees: then a steep space covered with large boulders: and then another cliff falling sheer into a deep pool of the river. In the middle oak on the highestledge the nest had been placed; once on the ledge, a clever climber might mount the tree, but to get there was no easy matter, and a fall from the tree or ledge would be almost certain death.
The human creature began to move along the top of the fortress towards its rocky face above the river; he had heard the Baroness’s answering cry, and had attained his object. He knew now where the nest must be; and peeping over the edge, he soon made it out in the still almost leafless oak. He surveyed his ground carefully and then vanished for an hour or two; and the Baron, who had not yet told his wife, felt a faint gleam of hope, which increased as the rain began to sweep down the lonely valley, hiding the fortress in swirls of mist, while now and then a cold blast rushed up from below, shaking the oak to its very roots.
But late in the afternoon, wrapped in a macintosh, and carrying a bag, the minister of evil again appeared upon the hill-top; and now the Baron gave full vent to his anger and distress, calling loudly to his wife. She left thenest and joined him, wailing bitterly as she saw that ominous black figure standing but fifty feet above her treasures. Round and round they flew, anger and despair in their hearts.
Tom Lee had not been overtaken by his father’s telegram; it was he who stood there, half sorry for the Kites, but with a youngster’s love of climbing, and a keen desire to see the eggs. Now he fixed a short iron bar into the ground at the top of the cliff, and to this he fastened a stout rope. There would be just light enough to do the deed that day, and to-morrow he would travel home with the rent of one house and the spoil of another in his bag. Taking off his waterproof, and slinging on his shoulder a small basket full of cotton-wool, he seized the rope and let himself down it. As he hung in mid-air he thought he heard a call on the hill, and arriving safely on the ledge, he stood for a moment and listened. There it was again, not the Baron’s angry cry, nor yet the Baroness’s wail. But there was no time to lose, and with firm grasp of hand and foot he began to climb the oak. The boughs were sound and strong; allthat was needed was a nimble frame and a steady head, and of both these Tom had been possessed from his earliest boyhood. In three minutes the eggs were within his reach, and in another they were within the basket, safely covered up in the cotton-wool. At this moment the call caught his ear again, and ere he descended he paused to listen once more, and began to fear that some other human being was on that lonely hill. The Baron and the Baroness, who had been flying about him, though not daring to attack so formidable a foe, flew further and further away with heart-piercing cries as Tom descended the tree safely, gripped his rope again, and swarmed up it to the cliff-top.
No sooner was he safe and sound on terra firma, than a figure emerged from the drizzling mist and advanced towards him. Tom’s heart quaked within him; was it the angry spirit of the mountains, or a constable come to carry out a new County Council order? But in another moment he saw that it was his father, wet through and with an excited glow in his eyes.
“Why, dad,” he said, “I thought you were the Old Man of the Mountain. Was it you that called? Well, I’m blest,—you’ll catch your death of cold!”
“I’ve been calling ever so long,” said his father, out of breath. “I couldn’t have found you but for the Kites. Didn’t you get my telegram?”
“Not I,” answered Tom; “we don’t get telegrams up to time in these parts. But here’s the rent all safe, dad.” And he opened the basket.
The father looked with eager eyes at those beautiful eggs, and handled one gently with the deepest professional admiration.
“Well,” he said, quietly, “now you’ve been down there once, you may as well go again. You just go and put ’em straight back, my lad.”
Tom stared at his father, and thought the old man had gone clean daft. At that moment the Kites returned, and came wheeling overhead with loud melancholy cries.
“I’ve no time to explain, Tom; it’s gettingdark, and there’s not a moment to be lost. You do as I tell you, and put ’em straight back, all of them, as they were. We’ve got the rent.”
At these last words, Tom seized the rope again, and in a minute was once more on the ledge below. His father watched him from the top, pretty confident in his son’s powers of climbing. There was no need for anxiety: the good deed was done even quicker than the bad one; and Tom, puzzled but obedient, stood safe and sound once more by his father’s side.
As they went back to the little inn down the valley in the drizzling rain, the story of the cheque was told; and nothing remained but to make sure that the Kites returned to their nest. Armed with a field-glass they climbed next day another hill, and lying there on the top, they watched the fortress long and anxiously. When they left the inn that afternoon on their homeward journey, the old dealer’s heart was light. The Baron and the Baroness had not forsaken their treasures; and it may be that after all they will not be the last of their race.
Late that evening there arrived in London this telegram for the expectant collector from Stephen Lee:
“Your great kindness has saved two broods, mine and the Kites’.”
Two small cages hung side by side just above the open door of a dingy house in a dingy London street. It was a street in the region of Soho, gloomy and forlorn; dirty bits of paper, fragments of old apples, treacherous pieces of orange-peel, lay sticking in its grimy mud, and a smutty drizzle was falling which could do no honest washing away of grime, but only make it stickier. It was not a cheerful place to live in, nor did the creatures living in it seem to rejoice in their life,—all except the Canary in one of the two cages, who sang a rattling, trilling, piercing song incessantly, with all the vigour of a London street-boy whistling in the dark mist of a November evening. Cats slunk about disconsolate; carmen sat on their vans and smoked resignedly, with old sacks on their shoulders; women slipped sadly with draggled feet into the public-house and out again for such comfort as they could get there; but that Canary sang away as if it were living in a Paradise. The street rang with the shrill voice, and a cobbler in the shop opposite shook his fist at the bird and used bad language.
Downs and Dungeons.
Downs and Dungeons.
At last the Canary suddenly stopped singing, dropped to the floor of its cage, pecked up a few seeds, and drank water; then flew up again to its perch, and addressed the occupant of the other cage, a little insignificant-looking brown Linnet.
“What ever is the matter with you? Here you’ve been two nights and a day, and you don’t say a word, nor sing a note! You don’t even eat,—and of course you can’t sing if you can’t eat.”
The Linnet opened its bill as if to speak, and shut it again with a gasp as of a dying bird.
“Come now,” said the Canary, not unkindly, but with a certain comfortable Cockney patronising way, “youmusteat and drink. We all eat and drink here, and get fat and happy, andthen we sing—Listen!” And from the neighbouring tavern there came a chorus of coarse voices.
“This is a jolly street,” the Canary went on. “I was brought up in a dealer’s shop in the East End, in very low society, in a gas-lit garret among dirty children. Here we can be out of doors in summer, and see a bit of blue overhead now and then; and in the winter I am warm inside, with plenty of seed and water, two perches in my cage, and both of them all to myself. It’s a life of real luxury, and makes one sing. I could go on at it all day, trying to convince those miserable black Sparrows that they do not know what happiness means. But really it chills one’s spirits a little to have another bird close by one who mopes and won’t sing. Perhaps you can’t? I have heard the dealer say that there are birds that can’t: but I didn’t believe it. One can’t help one’s self,—out it comes like a hemp-seed out of its shell.”
The Canary rattled off again for full five minutes, and then said abruptly,
“Do you really mean you can’t sing at all?”
“I used to sing on the Downs,” said the Linnet at last, “but not like that.”
“No, no,” said the Canary; “that’s not to be expected from such as you—one must have advantages, of course, to sing well. A natural gift, to begin with; and that only comes when you are well born. You see I come of a good stock of singers. My father sang at the Crystal Palace Show, and won a prize. I have heard the dealer say that we have a pedigree going up for generations, and of course we improve as we go on, because each of us gets the benefit of the education of all our ancestors. Just let me show you what birth and education can do.” And he set off once more with such terrific energy that the cobbler over the way seized an unfinished boot, and looked as if he meant to hurl it at the cage.
Fortunately the Canary ceased at that moment, and turned again to the Linnet.
“You said you used to sing on the Downs. Pray, what are the Downs, and why can’t yousing here? With plenty to eat and nothing to do and a whole street of men and women to sing to, what more can you want? I fear you have a selfish and discontented disposition,—want of education, no doubt. But we must make allowance for every one, as Griggs the dealer used to say when he got in new birds that couldn’t sing properly.”
“I don’t know why I can’t sing here,” the Linnet answered, rousing itself a little, “but I can’t. You see we used to sing on the Downs as we flew about in the sun and the breeze and the sweet-scented air; and here I am shut up in foul air, with my wings tingling all day, and the song sticks in my throat. There was a little brook where we lived, that came out of the hill-side and sang gently all day and night as it ran down among the daisies and the gorse. We couldn’t have gone on singing if it had had to stop running. We drank of it, and bathed in it, and listened to it; and then we danced away over the hills, singing, or perched on a gorse-spray, singing. And we knew what our singing meant; but I don’t know what yours means. It’s just a littlelike the song of the Tree-pipit who lived at the foot of the Downs, but it’s far louder.”
“Naturally,” said the Canary. “I have no acquaintance with Tree-pipits, but I presume they have not birth and education. But go on about the Downs; perhaps if you were to talk about them you might find your voice. I should like to hear you sing; I might give you some hints; and if we are to be neighbours, I should wish you to acquit yourself properly here—you really are not fit to be seen in such a street as this, but if you could sing our people might think better of you. Now go on, and when I want to sing I’ll tell you to stop for a bit.”
This was really very kind and condescending of the high-born Canary, and so the Linnet felt it: and sitting a little more upright on his perch, he began. “I was born on those Downs nearly three years ago. The first thing I can remember is the lining of our nest, which was so soft that I have never felt anything like it since, except the thistledown from which we used to get the seed when we were on ourrambles in the autumn. And the next thing I recollect is the prickles of the gorse-bush in which our nest was hidden, and the splendid yellow bloom, and the strong sweet scent it gave to the air. We were always being fed by our parents, but I needn’t trouble you with that.”
“No,” said the Canary, “but I’m glad you were fed well, all the same: it’s the main thing for song and satisfaction. Well, go on; this is all dreadfully provincial, but one must make allowance, as the dealer said.”
“When we grew big enough we all five got up to the edge of the nest one by one, and our mother teased us to come out through the green prickles the same way that she came in and out to feed us. One by one we fluttered out, and perched on a bare hawthorn twig close by. Never shall I forget that moment! The world was all open to us,—a world of rolling green Downs, flecked here and there with yellow gorse like that of our home, and ending in a sparkling blue that I afterwards found was the sea. Skylarks were singing overhead: a Stonechat was perched on a gorse-twig close by,balancing himself in the breeze,—a fine bird, with black head and russet breast. Swallows darted about catching the flies that haunted the gorse-bloom; and our own people, the Linnets, were dancing about in the air and twittering their song, or sitting bolt upright on the gorse over their nests, singing a few sweet notes as the fancy took them. We could tell them from all the others by the way they perched, and we tried to do it ourselves. I would show you myself how a Linnet perches when it’s free, but I hardly have the strength, and I might knock my head against these wires.”
“Don’t trouble about it,” said the Canary; “it’s no doubt a vulgar pastime, which would not be appreciated in educated society. Go on; I’m not much bored yet—anything will do that will make you sing.”
“I’ll get on,” said the Linnet; “but I have never felt such pain as in telling you of those happy times. We grew up, and in the later summer we joined a great gathering of our people from other Downs, and went down to the sea-side. There were thousands of us together,and yet there was always food for us. Thistles, charlock, all sorts of tall plants grew there, on which we perched and hung, and pecked the delicious seeds. We could all twitter by that time, though we did not know how to sing properly; and the noise we made as we all rose together from a meal in the fresh sea air made all our hearts cheerful. And here, moving along the coast, and always finding food, we passed the winter. In the bitterest cold the seeds were always there; and at night we crept into hollows under shelter of the cliffs and slept soundly. Very few of us died, and those were nearly all old birds who were not strong enough to bear the force of the fierce winds that now and then swept along the coast and hurled the spray into the hollows where we roosted.”
“Ah,” said the Canary, “think what a privilege it is to be safe here in your own house, with food and water given you gratis, no rough winds, and a warm room in winter, that makes you sing, sing!” And off he went into one of his gay, meaningless songs, and the cobbler looked fierce and red in the face (he had been to thepublic-house while the Linnet was talking), and laid his hand again upon a hob-nailed boot. But the Canary again stopped in time, and when the din ceased, the Linnet went on.
“When the days grew longer, and the sun gained strength, we broke up our great company. New thoughts and hopes broke in upon our hearts,—hopes that for me were never to be realised,—and a new beauty seemed to come upon all of us. My forehead and breast took a crimson hue, and my back became a beautiful chestnut; I know I was a handsome bird, for one little darling told me so, and said she would unite her lot with mine. With her I left the sea, and followed the Downs inland till we came to the place where I was born; and there, in a gorse-bush near our old home, we decided to build our nest. Do you know how to build a nest?”
“No,” said the Canary. “We have those things done for us if we want them, while we sit and sing, in polite society. I can’t imagine how you could stoop to do such work yourself, as you seem to have the making of good breeding in you. But we must make allowance!”
“Well, we did it,” the Linnet continued, “and I never enjoyed anything so much. My darling and I had a great stir in our hearts, you see, and we could not stop to think whether it was genteel or not. There was stir and force and great love in our hearts, which taught us how to do it, and carried us through the work. And then the eggs were laid,—six of them; I knew them all from each other, and every one of the spots on each of them. While she sat on them, steadily, faithfully, wearing away her best feathers with the duty, I danced in the air, and brought her food, and sang my love to her from the twigs of the gorse; for I loved her, how I loved her! My heart went out to her in song, and she knew every note I sang.”
“Then sing now,” said the Canary. “Show me how you did it, and we shall get on better.”
“I can’t, I can’t,” said the Linnet, “and I am going to tell you why. One day I was looking for food for my sitting mate, when I saw another cock Linnet on the ground, hopping about and picking up seed. How the seed came to be there I did not stay to ask, nor notice anythingunusual about the manner of the bird; it was high time that my wife should be fed. The traitor called me to share the seed; it was our well-known call, and I answered it as I flew down. For a moment I noticed nothing, and was about to fly off when I saw that that bird had a string round his leg, which came from behind a little thorn-bush in front of the hedge close by. I started, suspicious, and at that same moment down came on the top of me a heavy net, half stunning me, and a man came from behind the bush and seized me. I struggled, but it was no use. With a grimy hand he held me fast and put me into a cage like this, and in a cage I have existed ever since, without hope or liberty or the power to sing as I used to.”
“What became of your mate and the eggs?” asked the Canary, interested for the first time in his life in some one besides himself.
“How should I know?” answered the Linnet. “She could not well feed herself and hatch the eggs. I don’t wish to think about it, for she is lost to me, and the Downs are lost to me, and all is lost to me that made life worthliving. The bitterness of that first moment in the cage I won’t and can’t describe to you. If you were turned out of your cage into the street to keep company with the Sparrows, you might feel a little, a very little, like it. At first it was furious anger that seized me, then utter blank stupefying despair.
“The man flung something over the cage, and I was in darkness. I suppose he went on with his wicked work, for after a while the cage door was opened, and another Linnet was put in, struggling and furious: and this happened several times. Each time the door was opened I made a frantic effort to get out, and the others too, and the little cage was full of loose feathers and struggling birds. One of us did get away, with the loss of his tail, and most gladly would I have given my tail for liberty and one more sight of my mate and the eggs.
“At last the cage was taken up: we all fluttered and scrambled over each other, thinking something better was going to happen now. But nothing happened for a long time,and then nothing but misery. Half dead with jolting, shaking, and swaying, we found ourselves at last in a small close room, where we were taken out and examined one by one, and put into separate small cages, so small that we could hardly turn round in them. The room was full of these cages, and there was a continual noise of hysterical fluttering and sorrowful twittering. None of us cared to talk, and there was nothing but misery to talk about. Seed and water were given us, and we ate and drank a little after a while, but there was no delight in that lukewarm water and that stale seed.
“But I had better stop: I’m sure you want to sing again. And there is nothing more to tell; one by one my fellow-captives were taken away, and I suppose what happened to me happened to them too. Caged we all are, and expected to sing, and to forget the Downs and the gorse and the brook and the fresh air! But we don’t and we can’t,—it is the little life left within us, to hope against hope for the Downs again.”
“Don’t you think it may be all a dream?” said the Canary, kindly; “are you sure there are such things as you talk of? You can’t see the Downs from here, can you? Then how do you know there are such things? It’s all a dream, I tell you: I had such a dream once, of rocky hills and curious trees, and fierce sun, and a vast expanse of blue waves, and all sorts of strange things that I have heard men talk of; but it was only because my grandmother had been telling us of the old island home of our family, that belongs to us by right if we could only get there. I never was there myself, you see, yet I dreamed of it, and you have been dreaming of the Downs, which no doubt belong to your family by right.”
“I can’t see the Downs,” said the Linnet, “but I can feel them still, and I know that my feeling is true.”
After this there was silence for a few minutes. Suddenly the Canary burst into song, as if to drive away the Linnet’s sad thoughts. And so indeed he meant it, and also to easehis own mind, after it had been bottled up so long. Little did he know what was to come of that outburst, as he poured forth rattle and reel, reel and rattle, every feather quivering, the cage vibrating, the air resounding, the street echoing! Children playing in the gutter stopped to look up at the cages, at the triumphant yellow bird in all the glow of effort, and at the ugly brown one that seemed trying to hide away from this hurricane of song. Even the costermonger’s placid donkey in the cart two doors away shook its long ears and rattled its harness. A policeman at the end of the street turned his head slowly round to listen, but recollected himself and turned it slowly back again. The red-faced cobbler, who had been more than once to the drink-shop while the birds were talking, once more seized the hob-nailed boot he was mending, and as the Canary burst afresh, and after a second’s pause, into a still shriller outpouring, he glanced out of the open window up the street, saw the policeman’s back vanishing round the corner, and then tookwicked aim and flung the boot with all his force at the unconscious singer.
The song suddenly ceased; there was the crash of wood and wirework tumbling to the ground, and the gutter children scrambled up and made for the fallen cage. The cobbler rushed out of the opposite house, snatched up the boot and vanished. A woman with dishevelled hair came tearing into the street and picked up the cage. It was empty, and the door was open. She glanced up, and with a sigh of relief saw the Canary still safe in his cage.
The cobbler’s arm had swerved ever so little, and the boot had hit the wrong cage. The door had come open as it reached the ground, and the Linnet had escaped. The woman thanked her stars that it was “the ugly bird” that was gone, and so too did the cobbler, now repentant, as he peered from behind the door of his back-kitchen. The Canary sat still and frightened on his perch, and for a full hour neither sang a note nor pecked a seed.
When the cage fell and the door had come unlatched, the Linnet was out of it in a moment, but, dizzy and bruised with the fall, and feeling his wings stiff and feeble, he looked for something to rest on. The first object that met his eyes was the donkey in the coster’s cart,—and indeed there was nothing else in the street that looked the least bit comfortable. Donkeys had been familiar to Lintie on the Downs, and among the thistles they both loved. So he perched on the donkey’s back, his claws convulsively grasping the tough grey hair.
The sharp eyes of a small muddy boy in the gutter instantly caught sight of him, and with a shrill yell he seized an old tin sardine-box with which he had been scraping up the mud for a pie, and aimed it at the bird. But that yell saved Lintie; the donkey shook his ears as it pierced their hairy recesses, and the bird at the same instance relaxed his hold of the hair and flew up above the house-roofs.
The air up there was even worse than down in the street. It was still drizzling, and the fine rain, clogged with the smoke from countlesscrooked chimney-pots, seemed to thicken and congeal upon every object that it met. It clung to the Linnet’s feathers, it made his eyes smart, and his heart palpitate fiercely; he must rest again somewhere, and then try his wings once more.
Fluttering over those horrible chimney-pots, he spied at last a roof where there was an attempt at a little garden: a box of sallow-looking mignonette, and two or three pots of old scarlet geraniums. Lintie dropped upon the mignonette, which refreshed him even with its sickly sweetness, and for a moment was almost happy. But only for a moment; suddenly, from behind one of the geranium-pots there came a swift soft rush of grey fur, a lightning-stroke of a velvet paw, a struggle in the mignonette, and Lintie emerged with the loss of three white-edged tail-feathers, while a pair of angry yellow eyes followed his scared flight into the grimy air.
The very fright seemed to give his wings a sudden convulsive power. Where they were carrying him he could not tell, and the loss ofthree of his steering feathers mattered little. Over the crooked chimneys, over dismal streets and foul back-yards he flew, till the air seemed to clear a little as a large open space came in sight. There were tall fine houses round this space, but all the middle part of it was full of trees and shrubs, and even flower-beds. The stems of the trees were dead-black with smoke, and the shrubs looked heavy and sodden; but yet this was the best thing that Lintie had seen for many long and weary days. Even the sounds as well as sights revived him, for surely, heard through the roar of the great street hard by, there came the cooing of Woodpigeons,—the very same soothing sound that used to come up to the Downs from the beech-woods, that hung on their steep sides.
He flew down into one of the thick shrubs, found a way in, and hid himself. He seemed as secure as in his native gorse-bush; and as it was dark in there and he was tired, and evening was not far distant, he put his head under his wing and went to sleep.
He had not slept very long when he was wakedup by a sparrow coming into the bush and beginning to chatter loudly. The next minute there came another, then a third, a fourth, half-a-dozen together, all chattering and quarrelling so noisily that for the moment they did not notice the stranger. But more and more came bustling in, and the din and the hubbub were so overwhelming that Lintie felt he must go at all risks. He moved, was detected, and instantly pounced upon.
“Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing in our roosting-bush? What do you want here? No vulgar vagrants here! Take that, and that, and that!”
So they all shouted in chorus, pecking at him the while, and the noise was so unusual that two young men of the law, looking out of a first-floor window in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, took their pipes out of their mouths and listened.
“It’s all over with me at last,” thought Lintie; but he made one brave effort to escape, found his way out of the bush, and flew into the open roadway, pursued by half a hundred sparrows.
“What in the world is up?” said one of themen up in the window. “By George, it’s murder they’re at,” he cried, as he saw a whirling, screaming cloud of sparrows on the ground below him, and their victim resigning himself to inevitable death. In a moment his pipe was on the floor, and he himself was in the street. The sparrows flew away swearing; Lintie crouched on the ground, a heap of dishevelled feathers.
The student took him gently in his hand and carried him into the house.
“They’d all but done for him, the beggars,” he said to his friend. “I fancy he might come round if we only knew what to do with him. I say, I wish you’d see whether M—— has gone home; it’s only just round in New Square,—you know the staircase. He’ll like to see the bird anyhow, and he can doctor it if he thinks it worth while.”
The friend went out, grumbling but compliant, and in five minutes returned with the Ornithologist, keen-faced and serious. He took the bird in his hand.
“It’s only a damaged cock linnet,” he said at once and decisively: “an escaped one, of course,for his crimson has turned a dirty yellow, you see, as it always does in confinement. I think he may live if he’s cared for. If he does, I’ll take him on my cycle into Sussex on Saturday, and I’ll let him go there. Can you find a cage?”
An old cage was found somewhere, and Lintie was a prisoner once more; but he was past caring about that, and simply sat huddled up at the bottom of it with his head under his wing. The Ornithologist called a cab,—a very unusual step for him,—put his great-coat over the cage, and drove off to the West End.
Two days later the Ornithologist was wheeling swiftly southwards, with a little cage fixed to the saddle in front of him. The motion was not unpleasant to Lintie when once they were free of streets and crowds, and out of suburbs, even to the last new house of dreary Croydon. He was in a cage still; but birds, even more than other animals, have a subtle inward sense of sympathy that tells them surely in whose hands they are. Lintie was in the strong hands of one who loves all birds, and whose happiness is bound up in theirs.
When they came to the North Downs between Croydon and Reigate, he stopped and looked about him. The fringe of London still seemed there; he saw villas building, men playing golf, advertisements in the fields. “Better go on,” he said to himself; “this is too near London for a damaged linnet.” And they slipped rapidly down into a verdant vale of wood and pasture.
At last they began to mount again. The Ornithologist had avoided the main route, and was ascending the South Downs at a point little known to Londoners. Near the top the hollow road began to be fringed by the burning yellow of the gorse-bloom; the air grew lighter, and the scent of clean, sweet herbage put new life into man and bird. The Linnet fluttered in his cage with wild uncertain hopes; but that determined Ornithologist went on wheeling his machine up the hill.
In a few minutes they came out of the hollow road on to the bare summit of the Down. It was an April day; the drizzle had given way to bright sunshine and a bracing east wind. Faroff to the south they could see the glitter of the sea fretted into a million little dancing waves. Nearer at hand were the long sweeping curves of chalk down, the most beautiful of all British hills, for those who know and love them; with here and there a red-tiled farmhouse lurking in a cool recess, or a little watercourse springing from the point where down and cultivation meet, and marking its onward course by the bushes and withy-beds beside it.
A Wheatear, newly arrived in the glory of slaty-blue plumage, stood bowing at them on a big stone hard by. A Stonechat, on the top twig of a gorse-bush, bade a sturdy defiance to all bird-catchers. The Cuckoo could be faintly heard from the vale behind them; still the Ornithologist held his hand.
Suddenly there came dancing overhead, here, there, and everywhere, gone in a moment and back again, half a dozen little twittering fairies; and then one of them, alighting no one knows how or when, sat bolt upright on a gorse-bush, and turned a crimson breast and forehead towards the Ornithologist. His hand was already on thecage-door; in a moment it was open, and Lintie was gone.
I cannot tell you whether those linnets were his own friends and relations; but I think that, thanks to the Ornithologist’s true instinct, he was not far from his old home. And as the summer was all before him, and the hearts of linnets are kind, and Nature in sweet air repairs all damage quickly, I cannot doubt that his sky soon cleared, and that the heavy London thundercloud rolled far away out of his horizon.
Doctor and Mrs. Jackson were, for all we knew, the oldest pair in the parish: their heads were very grey, and they had an old-world look about them, and an air of wisdom and experience in life, that gave them a place of importance in our society and claimed the respect of us all. Yet I cannot remember that any of us noticed them until they became the intimate friends of the old Scholar. Then we all came to know them, and to feel as though we had known them all our lives.
Doctor and Mrs. Jackson.
Doctor and Mrs. Jackson.
Their heads were grey, and their dress was black, and as they lived in the old grey tower of the church they seemed to have something ancient and ecclesiastical about them; no one inquired into their history or descent; we took it all for granted, as we did the Established Church itself. They were there as the church was there, looking out over meadows and ploughed fields as it had looked out since good souls built it in the reign of Henry III., and over these same fields Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked out with knowing eyes as they sat on their gurgoyles of a sunshiny morning. The water that collected on the tower roof was discharged by large projecting gurgoyles ending in the semblance of two fierce animal heads, one a griffin, and the other a wolf; and on these the Doctor and his wife loved to sit and talk, full in view of the old Scholar’s study room.
The church was not only old, but mouldy and ill cared for. It had escaped the ruthless hand of the restorer, the ivy clung around it, the lights and shadows still made its quaint stone fretwork restful to the eye, but I fear it cannot be denied that it needed the kindly hand of a skilful architect to keep it from decay. Half of a stringcourse below the gurgoyles had fallen and never been replaced: and below that again the effigy of the patron saint looked as if it had been damaged bystone-throwing. The churchyard was overgrown and untidy, and the porch unswept, and the old oaken doors were crazy on their hinges. Inside you saw ancient and beautiful woodwork crumbling away, old tiles cracking under the wear and tear of iron-heeled boots and old dames’ pattens, and cobwebs and spiders descending from the groined roof upon your prayer-book. If you went up the spiral staircase into the ringers’ chamber, you would see names written on the wall, two or three empty bottles, and traces of banquets enjoyed after the clock had struck and the peal ceased,—banquets of which the Doctor and his wife occasionally partook, coming in through that unglazed lancet window when all was still.
The church indeed was mouldy enough, and the air within it was close and sleep-giving: and as the old parson murmured his sermon twice a Sunday from the high old pulpit, his hearers gradually dropped into a tranquil doze or a pleasant day-dream,—all except the old Scholar, who sat just below, holding his hand to his ear, and eagerly looking for one of those subtleallusions, those reminiscences of old reading, or even now and then three words of Latin from Virgil or the “Imitatio,” with which his lifelong friend would strain a point to please him. They had been at school together, and at college together, and now they were spending their last years together, for the old Scholar had come, none of us knew whence, and settled down in the manor-house by the churchyard, hard by the Rectory of his old companion. And so they walked together through the still and shady avenues of life’s evening, wishing for no change, reading much and talking little, lovers of old times and old books, seeking the truth, not indeed in the world around them, but in the choice words of the wise man of old: “Pia et humilis inquisitio veritatis, per sanas patrum sententias studens ambulare.”
And Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked down on them from their gurgoyles, and approved. I suppose that old grey-headed bird did not know that he had been honoured with a doctorate, though he looked wise enough to be doctor of divinity, law and medicine, all in one; it hadbeen conferred upon him by the old Scholar one day as he walked up and down his garden path, glancing now and then at the friendly pair on the tower. And in one way or another we had all come to know of it; and even visitors to the village soon made acquaintance with the Doctor and his wife.
No one, as I said, unless it were his old friend the Vicar, knew whence or why the old Scholar had come to take up his abode among us. We thought he must have had some great sorrow in his life which was still a burden to him: but if it was the old old story, he never told his love. Yet the burden he carried, if there were one, did not make him a less cheerful neighbour to the folk around him. He knew all the old people in the village, if not all the young ones: he would sit chatting in their cottages on a wet day, and on a fine one he would stroll around with some old fellow past his work, and glean old words and sayings, and pick up odds and ends of treasure for the history of the parish which he was going to write some day.
“I am like Dr. and Mrs. Jackson,” he wouldsay: “I poke and pry into all the corners of the old place, and when I find anything that catches my eye I carry it home and hide it away. And really I don’t know that my treasures will ever come to light, any more than the Doctor’s up there in the tower.”
Those who were ever admitted to his study, as I sometimes was in my college vacations, knew that there was great store of hidden treasure there; and now and again he would talk to me of the church and its monuments, of the manor and its copyholds, of furlongs and virgates and courts leet and courts baron, and many other things for which I cared little, though I listened to please him, and left him well pleased myself.
But at other times, and chiefly on those dim still days of autumn when a mist is apt to hang over men’s hearts as over field and woodland, he would walk up and down his garden path ‘talking to hisself in furrin tongues’ as our old sexton expressed it, who heard him as he dug a grave in the adjoining churchyard. Once or twice I heard him myself, when I happened to be within range of his gentle voice. Sometimes it wasGreek, and then I could not easily follow it. Once I heard “Sed neque Medorum silvæ,” and could just catch sight of him pausing to look round at the grey fields as he slowly added line to line of that immortal song. And there were single lines which he would repeat again and again, cherishing them with tenderness like old jewels, and doubtless seeing many a sparkle in them that I could not, as he turned them over and over. And there were bits of Latin from some author unknown to me then, known to me later as the unknown author of the “De Imitatione”: “Unde coronabitur patientia tua, si nihil adversi occurrerit;” or, “Nimis avide consolationem quæris.”
At one time he took long walks or rides, and coming in after dark to dinner, would spend the evening in “logging” (as he called it) all that he had seen or heard. But when I knew him he was getting old, and the rambles were growing shorter: it was not often that he was seen beyond the village. He would go up to the village shop of afternoons, where a chair was always set for him, and talk to the people as theycame in on various errands. But his old friends died off one by one: he followed them to the churchyard, and would stand with bare head there, listening to the Vicar reading the prayers, while Dr. and Mrs. Jackson looked down on the scene from the tower as usual. And really it seemed as if they would soon be the only old friends left to him.
For the greater part of the year they were his companions most of the day: they became a part of his life, and we called them his familiar spirits. When he woke in the morning he could see them as he lay in bed, and sometimes they would come to his window if he had put out a breakfast for them overnight. But as a rule they took their own breakfast in the fields with the rooks and starlings and peewits, while he was dressing; and when, after his own breakfast, he took his walk up and down the garden path, they were to be seen perched on their gurgoyles, preening their feathers, chatting, and turning their wise old heads round and round in great ease of body and contentment of mind. In the early spring, after a bath in the large flat earthenware pan, whichwas daily filled for them by the housekeeper, they would turn their attention to a heap of odds and ends laid out for them in a corner of the garden: bits of string, old shoe-laces, shreds of all sorts,—everything that was wanted for nothing else went into the Doctor’s “library,” as the old Scholar called it, in which he and his wife conducted their researches. Nor could our dear old friend always refrain from adding some special treasure to the heap: he is known to have cut off one button after another from his coat, because they had a gleam upon them that he thought would please, and fragments of his old neckties were found in the tower when the long companionship had at last come to an end. It was only after the nesting season that for a time he missed them, when they took their young family out into the world, and introduced them to the society of which we may hope they have since become ornaments; and this absence the old Scholar took in very good part, being confident that he should see them again in August at latest. Besides, at the end of June I myself came home to the village: and though I could not hope to rivalthem in his esteem or respect, I might make shift to fill the gap till they returned. When I went to see him he would take my hand with all kindness, and invariably point to the vacant church tower. “I am glad to see you, my lad: Dr. and Mrs. Jackson have gone for a few days into the country with the children, but they will be home again long before you leave us.”
It is sad to me even now to think that such an old friendship, which I am sure was felt in equal strength by both men and birds, should ever have come to an end. It had to be, but it gives me pain to tell the story.
The old Vicar fell into a drowsy decay, and the murmur of his sermons was heard no more in the church. A Curate took the work for him, and the old Scholar came and listened as before; but the sweet old memories of a long friendship were not to be found in those discourses, nor the flashes of light from the world’s great poets and thinkers that had been wont to keep him awake and cheer him. And at last the old shepherd died, and slept among the sheep to whose needshe had been ministering so quietly for half a century. The old Scholar, bent and withered, was there to see the last of his friend, and the Doctor and his wife looked sadly down from the tower. They never saw him again outside his own garden.
A new Vicar came, a kindly, shrewd, and active man, whose sense of the right order of things was sadly wounded as he examined the church from end to end in company with his churchwardens. “You have let the fabric fall into ruin, Mr. Harding,” he said, “into ruin: I can’t use a milder word. We must scrape together what we can, and make it fit for divine worship. Let us come up into the tower and see how things are there.”
The crestfallen churchwardens followed him up the well-worn stairs, but were left far behind, and his active youthful figure disappeared in front of them into the darkness. When they found him at last in the ringers’ chamber, he was kicking at a great heap of refuse accumulated on the floor in a corner.
“What on earth is this, Mr. Harding?” askedthe Vicar. “Who makes a kitchen-midden of the church tower?”
“That there belongs to Dr. and Mrs. Jackson,” said poor Harding.
“Then Dr. and Mrs. Jackson had better come and fetch it away at once!” cried the Vicar, forgetting in his indignation to ask who they were. “See about it directly, please: it is your duty as churchwarden, and if your duties have so far been neglected, you cannot do better than begin to make up for the past. I do not mean to speak harshly,” he added, seeing Mr. Harding’s grave face grow graver, “but the state of this tower is dreadful, and we must see to it at once.”
Mr. Harding said nothing, but made for the staircase, disappeared from view, and went home very sad at heart. “I doubt the old Doctor and his missus will have to go,” said he. Mrs. Harding let her work drop to the floor and stared at him. “Then the old gentleman’ll have to go too,” she said. And there was consternation among all the old folks that evening.
Next day I happened to be sitting with theold Scholar when the new Vicar called. He was received with all the gentle grace and cordiality which our old friend showed to strangers, and we sat for a few minutes talking of the weather and the village. Then the Vicar came to the point of his mission, and I am bound to say that he performed his operation with tenderness and skill, considering how little he could have guessed what pain he was inflicting.
“You love the old church, I am sure,” he began. “And I daresay you like it better as it is, and would not care to see it restored. I don’t want to spoil it, but I must at least begin by cleaning it thoroughly: and even that alone will cost a good deal. It is inches deep in dust and mess in places, and up in the tower they eat and drink and smoke and write their names,—and what they do it for I don’t know, but they have made it the common rubbish-heap of the parish. By the way, can you tell me anything of a Dr. and Mrs. Jackson, who seem to have goings on up there,—some eccentric old people are they? or——” At this point he caught sight of my face, which was getting as red as fire.