EVER since I was a very small child I had longed to possess a pair of budgerrygars. There was a tradition of three live ones once in our family, in proof whereof my nurse could point to a little stuffed bird in its case. I used to gaze with longing at that beautiful green and yellow creature, with the speckled back and the black and blue feathers in its neck, sitting with a foreground of quaking grasses and an eternal blue sky behind. There existed also, but rarely seen, a little cardboard box containing a few of these same mysteriously beautiful blue and yellow and green feathers, with here and there a long strong tail or wing quill. Yes, there had been budgerrygars among us once; there were even real live ones now in the possession of those happy Italian women who sit at the street corners, but for me—while I was still a child—they were inmates of thatimaginary Paradise of unattainable things, wherein might be found little wax cages of birds, and the fluffy hollow ducks which live in confectioners’ shops and are sold for ninepence.
After I was grown up, a friend gave me one of these ducks; I have it still, and the halo still surrounds it. When I was grown up, too, some one gave me a pair of budgerrygars; and therefollowed a tragedy which was not bargained for in the price paid.
They came down from London in a tiny cage,—a travelling cage. Budgerrygars do not mind lack of room, it makes it all the easier for them to sit quite close, as if they were glued together. They were lovely little things, with their pearl-grey beaks,—wonderfully sharp and strong those beaks are, as I know to my cost,—but they could use them gently, and you would see one turn with a soft croon to put straight a ruffled feather on its mate’s head.
The little gentleman had caught a cold, not much of a cold at first; he only panted slightly as he sat near the little lady and ruffled his feathers; but she cheered him up, and smoothed the feathers down, and they sat side by side and looked at the world with little meaningless grey eyes.
Their new large cage was a great excitement, and it was immense fun for them to walk over the top, using their beak as a third leg, and that the most reliable. And their spirits ran so high that they began to shriek unmusically at each other when they found themselves at opposite corners of the cage.
I am afraid we were not as careful as we ought to have been with the little gentleman. They were so funny and pretty that they were carried from room to room; and the cage must have been in a draught, for the little gentleman began to puff and breathe rather hard, and his feathers were persistently ruffled, and the little lady could not smooth them down any more, even if she had tried.
Sympathy to the ailing, the feeble, and the weak is a very modern virtue; strange, as civilisation shows us what an unprogressive virtue it is. The lame and the blind were “hated of David’s soul”; animals and savages and men of early civilisation agree with David. Now and then you find a dog which will bring a broken-legged friend to the hospital, a cat which brings its half-starved neighbour to eat its own dinner,—souls of philanthropists on pilgrimage, dead or yet to be; but the stag’s instinct of goring the sickly ones, and the wolf’s of tearing the wounded, are the ruling instincts. The lady budgerrygar took David’s side in the matter. She did not wish to bite her spouse, or peck him, or pull his feathers out, but he began to be hated of her soul.
One day she would not let him sit by her on theperch; he could hardly get up to it, yet he would have done so for the sake of sitting close to her, for the sake of putting a stray feather straight in her ladyship’s top-knot, of feeling the little pearl-grey bill travelling softly over his head with acroon of affection; but she would not have it, she drove him away from her. So he sat on the lower perch, or on the bottom of the cage; he did not scream or croon, he just puffed his feathers out and panted. Did David repent in respect of the blind and lame when he said, “My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me”?
What strange rebellion against fate moved in the soul of the little budgerrygar, what necessity of finding a lonely place to die in, what sad desire of escaping from the mate who would no longer care for him? It is all very well to talk of “instinct” and dismiss the case, but how do you suppose the abstract idea of loneliness in death nerved the failing wings and feet to seek the door of the cage, made him squeeze through the door, such a little way open; how did it attract him across the room and through the half-open door,—away—away—as far as he could go from his faithless love? Did this abstract idea act on the little budgerrygar like a machine, and move and nerve the wings for such a flight? Or was there distress in the heart, and anguish in the little animal soul, when he found himself ill at ease and ailing, deserted and repulsed?
It is a work of skill and time to induce a healthy budgerrygar to leave its cage; but this quixoticspirit found his way out of the cage for himself, and found his way out of the room, and he must have flown until he dropped dead. For we found a little heap of gay green and yellow feathers in the passage,—stone-cold and stiff;—he had been dead some hours.
Budgerrygars are very sociable birds, they cannot live alone. The little dead bird could not. So we got a new mate for the lady, whom she received warmly, and the pair lived quite happily ever after.
But I should like to know, in the whole scheme of things, what is the recompense for the little deserted lover.