“Spirits are not finely touchedBut to fine issues.”
“Spirits are not finely touchedBut to fine issues.”
“Spirits are not finely touchedBut to fine issues.”
Ina certain manufacturing town, of no great size, there lived a musician. For the most part he gained his living by playing at concerts and giving lessons; but he was young, ardent, and clever, and he had always nursed a hope that he might one day be a great composer. He felt a soul of music within him, that wanted to come out and express itself. But, though he had had a complete training in composition, and had written much music and published a little, no one took any notice of what he composed; it was too good to sell well (so he used to say, and perhaps it was true), and he had never had a chance of having any of his larger works performed inpublic. And he began to get rather irritable and impatient, so that his wife was sometimes at her wits’ end to know how to cheer him up and set him to work once more with a good heart.
Great was the poor man’s delight when one day a letter arrived from the town clerk, to tell him that on the approaching visit of the Prince of Wales to open the new Town Hall, a grand concert was to be given, in which works by natives of the town were to be performed; and that he was invited to write a short cantata for voices and orchestra. A liberal sum was to be paid him, and he was to train his own choir, to have the best artists from London to help him, and to conduct his composition himself. The news put him in such a state of high spirits that now the prudent wife was obliged to pour a little cold water on his ambition, and tell him that he must not expect too much success all at once. But she made him comfortable in their little parlour, and kept the neighbours from breaking in upon his work; and for some time the cantata went on ata flowing pace, until nearly half of it was done.
After a while however the musician’s brain began to rebel against being kept in all day hard at work, and to refuse to keep quiet and rest in soothing sleep at night. It said as plainly as possible—“If you will go on driving me in harness all day long, I shall be obliged to fidget at night, and what is more, it is quite impossible for me to do such good work in the day as I used to. So take your choice: either you must give me repose sometimes, or I must cease to be able to find you beautiful melodies, and to show you how to treat them to the best advantage.” But the musician did not know that his brain was complaining in this way, though his wife heard it quite well; and he went on driving it harder than ever, whipping it up and spurring it on, though it had hardly any strength left to pull the cantata along with it. And all this time he was shutting himself away from his friends, who used formerly to come often and refresh him with a friendly chat in the evenings; he refused to go with his wife andvisit the very poor people whom they had been in the habit of comforting out of their slender store; he lost his temper several times with his pupils, and one day boxed a boy’s ears for playing a wrong note twice over, so that the father threatened to summon him before the magistrates and have him fined for assault; and his wife began at last to fear that his stroke of good luck had done him more harm than good.
One morning he got up after a restless night, in which his poor brain had been complaining as usual without being taken any notice of, and settled himself down in the parlour after breakfast with the cantata, feeling worried and tired both in his body and mind. With great labour and trouble he finished the last chorus of his first part, and uttered a sigh of relief. The next thing to be done was to write the first piece of the second part, which was to be an air for a single voice, and was to be sung at the concert by one of the best singers in the country. All the rest of the cantata had been thought out carefully beforehe began to write; but this song, for which beautiful words were chosen from an old poet, had never worked itself out in his brain so as to satisfy him. And now the poor brain was called upon for inspiration, just at a time when it was hardly fit even to do clerk’s work.
He tried to spur it up with a pipe of tobacco, but not a bit would it budge. Then he took a dose ofsal volatile; but the effect of it only lasted a few minutes, and then he felt even more stupid than before. Then he opened the window and looked out into their little back-garden, just as a gleam of sunshine shot down through a murky sky. This made him feel a little better, and he returned to his desk, and sat for a few moments looking at the words which he was to set to music, feeling almost as if he were now going to make a little way. But the sunshine had also made the canary in the window feel a little warm-hearted, and it burst out into such a career of song, that the room seemed to be echoing all over with its strains. And all his own music fled at once out of the distracted composer’s head.
“You little noisy fiend!” he cried angrily, “putting in your miserable little twopenny pipe, when a poor human artist is struggling to sing. Don’t you know, you little wretch, that art is long and time is fleeting?”
He jumped up, took down the cage with an ungentle hand, and carried it into another room, where he drew a heavy shawl over it and shut the door. The canary’s song was stifled, but the musician’s song was not a bit the better for it. And after a while there came another annoyance. The house was small and not very solidly built, and though the room where he was at work did not look out on the street, any street-calls, bands, hurdy-gurdys, or such like noise-making enemies, could be heard there quite distinctly. This time it was a street-boy whistling a tune; it was not a bad tune, and it was whistled with a good heart; indeed the boy put so much energy into his performance, that he must have been in very high spirits. And why did he stop there so long? Generally they passed by, and the tails of their tunes disappeared in the distance, or they turned down the next street. But this one wasclearly stopping there on purpose to annoy the composer.
He went softly into the front room, keeping out of sight from the window. He was seized with a desire to wreak vengeance on this tormentor, but he was not quite clear how to do it, and must survey his ground first. Stepping behind the window-curtain, he peeped out between the curtain and the window-frame, and saw a small boy, whistling hard, with a long string in his hand, which descended into the area below. The musician stood on tiptoe, and looked down into the area; it was a sort of relief to him to see what this urchin was about. At the end of the string he perceived a dead mouse, which was being made to jump up and down and counterfeit life, as well as was possible under the circumstances, for the benefit of a young cat of the household, who was lying in wait for it, springing on it, and each time finding it drawn away from her just as she thought her claws were fast fixed in it. This boy was in fact an original genius, who had invented this way of amusing himself; he called it cat-fishing, and it was excellent sport.
The musician suddenly flung up the window, and faced the boy, who seemed by no means disconcerted; he only left off whistling and looked hard at the musician.
“What are you doing with the cat?” said the latter, with all the dignity he could put on. “What business have you to meddle with my cat, and make that infernal din in front of my house?”
The boy began slowly to haul up the string, looking all the while steadily at the composer.
“I say, guv’nor,” he said, with a mock show of friendly interest, “do you know as you’ve got a blob of ink at the end o’ your nose?”
The composer was taken aback. He certainly did not know it, but nothing was more likely, considering how he had been pulling his moustache and scratching his head with fingers which, as he glanced at them, showed some traces of ink. He put his hand involuntarily to his nose, and half turned to the glass over the chimney-piece. There was not a stain there: the nose was innocent of ink. Instantly he returned to the window, but the boy was gone; all that was left of him was a distant sound of “There’s nae luck aboot the house” fardown the street. The composer went gloomily back to his study, without a particle of music in his brain; the canary and the whistler had driven it all away. He sat down mechanically at his desk, but he might as well have sat down at the kitchen-table and tried to make it play like a piano.
He got up once more, and looked out of the window. The sun was again shining, and the little garden, fenced in between brick walls which caught the sunshine, and enlivened with a few annuals (for it was early summer), did not look altogether uninviting. At the end of it was a little arbour which he had built himself, and a rose tree that he had planted against it was already beginning to blossom. The composer thought he would go and quiet himself down in this little arbour, and try and get his thoughts fixed upon the air he was to write. Out he went, and seated there, began to feel more at ease. After a while he began to think once more of the old poet’s lines; and feeling as if music were coming into his brain again, went and fetched his manuscript and his pen and ink, to be ready in case he should have musical thoughts to write down.
Suddenly there broke in upon his peace the loud, shrill song of a wren. It was close to him, just outside the arbour; and when a wren sings close to you, it pierces your ears like the shrillest whistle ever blown by schoolboy. It was all unconscious of the presence of the composer so close to its nest, which it had built in the branches of the rose-tree that climbed up outside; and it hopped down for a moment on the gravel just in front of the arbour to pick up some fragment of food. The composer’s nerves were quite unstrung by its sudden outburst of self-asserting song; it was an insult to music, to the poet, and to himself. No sooner did the tiny bird appear, as complacent and hearty as all wrens are, than he seized the ink-bottle, and like Luther at Wittemburg, flung it wildly at the little fiend that thus dared to disturb his peace. Of course he missed his aim; of course he broke the ink-bottle and spilt the ink; and alas! when he returned from picking up the bits, a splash from the bottle had fallen in a grand slanting puddle over the neat manuscript of the last page of the chorus which concluded his second part. And ashe stood beholding it in dismay, lo! the voice of that irrepressible little wren, as shrill and pert as ever, only a little further off!
If the musician had not quarrelled with his brain, and if the struggle between them had not put his nerves all out of tune—if he had been then the gentle and sweet-tempered artist he generally was—he would have laughed at the idea of such a little pigmy flouting him in this ridiculous way. As it was, he growled under his breath that everything was against him, crushed his hat on his head, took the manuscript into the house and locked it up in a drawer, wrote a hurried note to his wife, who had gone put, to say he had gone for a long walk and would not be back till late, and sallied out of the house where no peace was any longer possible for him.
He walked fast, and was soon out of the town and among the lanes. They were decked with the full bloom of the wild roses, and the meadows were golden with buttercups; but these the composer did not even see. Birds sang everywhere, but he did not hear them. He was just conscious that the sun was shining on him, but his eyeswere fixed on the ground, and his mind was so full of his own troubles that there was no room in it for anything nicer to enter there. He was thinking that his song would never be written, for he could not bear to write anything that should be unworthy of those words, or second-rate as music; and it seemed as if his brain would never again yield him any music that he could be satisfied with. “I shall be behindhand,” he thought to himself. “I shall have to write and say I can’t carry out my undertaking; my one chance will be lost, and all my hopes with it. I shall lose my reputation and my pupils, and then there will be nothing left but beggary and a blighted life!” And he worked himself up into such a dreadful state that when he was crossing a river by a bridge, it did actually occur to him whether it would not be as well to jump over the parapet and put an end to his troubles once for all. His mind was so full of himself that for a moment he forgot even his wife and child, and all his friends and well-wishers.
He stood by the parapet for some minutes looking over. The swallows and sand-martinswere gliding up and down, backwards and forwards through the bridge, catching their food and talking to themselves. A big trout rose to secure a mayfly from the deep pool below, and sent a circle of wavelets spreading far and wide. A kingfisher flashed under the bridge, all blue and green, and shot away noiselessly up the stream; and then a red cow or two came down to drink, and after drinking stood in the water up to their knees, and looked sublimely cool and comfortable. And the river itself flowed on with a gentle rippling talk in the sunshine, hushing as it entered the deep pool, and passing under the bridge slowly and almost silently—“like anandantepassing into anadagio,” said the musician to himself; and he walked on with eyes no longer fixed on the ground, for even this little glimpse of beauty from the bridge had been medicine to the brain, and it wanted more—it wanted to see and to hear more things that were beautiful and healing.
He went on, still gloomy, but his gloom was no longer an angry and sullen one. Through his eyes and ears came sensations that gradually gladdened his heart, and relieved the oppression onhis brain: he began to notice the bloom on the hedges and in the fields; and the singing of the larks high in air, though he hardly attended to it, made part of the joyousness of nature which was beginning to steal into his weary being. Presently he came to a little hamlet, hardly more than a cottage or two, but with a little church standing at right angles to the road. The churchyard looked inviting, for rose-bushes were blooming among the graves, and it was shut out from the road by a high wall, so that he would be unobserved there. He walked in and sat down on a tombstone to rest.
He had not been there long, and was beginning to feel calmed and quieted, when there broke out on him from the ivied wall the very same shrill wren’s song that had so wounded his feelings in the morning. It sent a momentary pang through him. There started up before his eyes the broken ink-bottle, the smeared page, the bitter vexation and worry, and the song not even yet begun. But the battle of body and brain was no longer being waged, and as the tiny brown bird sang again and again, and always the same strain,he began to wonder how such cheerful music could ever have so maddened him. It brought to his mind a brilliant bit ofScarlatti, in which a certain lively passage comes up and up again, always the same, like a clear, strong spring of water bubbling up with unflagging energy, and with a never-failing supply of joyousness. And the wren andScarlattigetting the better of him, he passed out of the churchyard, and actually began to feel that he was hungry.
Just across the road was a thatched cottage, standing in a little garden gay with early summer flowers; beehives stood on each side of the entrance, and a vine hung on the walls. It looked inviting, and the musician stepped over the little stile, and tapped at the door, which was open. A woman of middle age came forward.
“Can you tell me,” said he, “whether there is an inn anywhere near where I could get some bread and cheese?”
She answered that there was no inn nearer than the next village, two miles away. “But you look tired and pale, sir. Come in and have amorsel before you go on; and a cup of tea will be like to do you good. Sit you down in the porch and rest a bit, and I’ll bring you something in a moment.”
The musician thanked her, and sat down in the porch by the beehives. It was delicious there!—bees, flowers, sunshine; on the ground the shadows of the vine-leaves that were clustering unkempt above his head; in the distance golden meadows and elm-trees, and the faint blue smoke of the town he had left behind him. Outside the porch hung a cage, in which was a skylark, the favourite cage-bird of the poor; it had been interrupted in its song by the stranger’s arrival, but now began again, and sang with as good a heart and as lusty a voice as its free brethren in the blue of heaven.
“What a stream of song!” thought the musician. “He sings like good old Haydn! We can’t do that now. We don’t pour out our hearts in melody, and do just what we like with our tunes.”
“How that bird does sing.”—P. 49.“How that bird does sing.”—P. 49.
The lark ceased for a moment, and the ticking of the big clock within the cottage suddenly called up in his mind theandanteof theClock Symphony,and the two bassoons ticking away in thirds with that peculiar comical solemnity of theirs; and he leant back in the porch and laughed inside himself till the lark began to sing again. Then he went on mentally to the lastallegro vivace, and caught up by its extraordinary force and vivacity, his brain was dancing away in a flood of delicious music, when the woman came out to him with a cup of tea and bread and butter.
“How that bird does sing!” he said to her. “It has done me worlds of good already!”
“Ah,” she answered, “he has been a good friend to us too. It was my boy that gave him to me—him as is away at sea. He sings pretty nigh all the year round, and sometimes he do make a lot of noise; but we never gets tired of him, he minds us so of our lad. Ah, ’tis a bad job when your only boy will go for to be a sailor. I never crosses the road to church of a stormy morning and sees the ripples on the puddles, but I thinks of the stormy ocean and my poor son!”
The musician asked more about the sailor; and he was shown his likeness, and various relics of him that the fond mother had cherished up.And when he rose to go he shook hands with the woman warmly, and told her that he would one day bring his wife and ask for another cup of tea. Then he started off once more, refreshed as much by the milk of human kindness as by the tea and bread and butter.
He soon began to feel sleepy, and looked for a quiet spot where he could lie down in the shade. Crossing two or three fields he came to a little dingle, where a stream flowed by a woodside; on the other side was a meadow studded with elms and beeches, and under the shade of one of these, close to the brook, and facing the wood, he lay down, and was soon fast asleep.
He was woke up by a musical note so piercing, yet so exquisitely sweet, acrescendonote of such wonderful power and volume, that he started up on his elbow and looked all round him. It was not repeated; but in a minute or two there came from the wood opposite him a liquid trill; then an inward murmur; then a loud jug-jug-jug; and then the nightingale began to sing in earnest, and carried the musician with him into a kind of paradise. He did not think now of the greatcomposers; this was not Beethoven or Mozart; this was something new, and altogether rich and strange. Every time the bird ceased he was in suspense as to what would come next; and what came next was as surprising as what went before. At last the nightingale ceased, and dropped into the thick underwood; but the musician lay there still, and mused and dozed.
At length he started up and looked at his watch; it was past seven o’clock. He hurried off homewards in the cool air, refreshed and quieted, thinking of nothing but the things around him, and now and then of the cottage, the lark, the brookside, and the nightingale. But presently there came into his recollection the old poet’s lines, and he repeated them over to himself, for they seemed in harmony with his mood, and with the coolness, and the sunset. Then as a star comes out in the twilight, there came upon his mind a strain worthy to be married to immortal verse; like the star, it grew in brightness every moment, until he could see it clear and full. In a moment paper and pencil were in his hand, and the thought was fixed beyond all fear of forgetting.By the time he reached home, the whole strain was worked out in his mind, and he wrote the first draft of it that same evening, as he sat contented in his parlour, with his wife sewing by his side.
After this nothing went wrong with the cantata. It was finished, it was a great success, and the music to the old poet’s words was enthusiastically encored. The audience called loudly for the composer, and the Prince of Wales sent for him, and congratulated him warmly. And the day after the concert he took his wife out into the country, and they had tea at the cottage; the lark sang to them, the flowers were alive with murmuring bees, and the musician’s mind was free from all care and anxiety.
As they sat there, he told his wife the whole story of that eventful day, not even keeping from her the thought that had passed through his mind on the bridge. When he had finished, she laid her hand on his, and said, in her comfortable womanly way—
“You were out of tune, dear, that’s what it was. And you can’t make beautiful music, ifyou’re out of tune: everything you see and hear jars on you. You must tell me next time you feel yourself getting out of tune, and we’ll come out here and set you all right again.”
They went comfortably back to the town, after a day of complete happiness. As they neared their own door, they saw the street-boy leaning again over their railings, and cat-fishing as usual in the area. He was whistling with all his might; but this time it was “Weel may the keel row.” They took it as a good omen; and the astonished urchin found himself pounced on from behind, carried into the house by main force, and treated with cake, and all manner of good things, while the musician sat down to the piano and played him all the beautiful tunes he could remember. He did not come to fish in their area any more after this; but a few days later he was heard whistling “Vedrai carino” with an abstracted air, as he leant over a neighbour’s railings, amusing himself with his favourite pastime.
Onthe evening of the 21st of June, 1887, a cock sparrow sat on the roof of St. James’s Palace, in London, gazing down now into St. James’s Street, now into Pall Mall, where the preparations were almost finished for the Jubilee which was to take place next day. Flags were being fixed at all the windows, and Chinese lanterns hung out for the illuminations; seats were being everywhere contrived for the spectators, and all was bustle and activity. Every one seemed in good humour; it was plain that all were bent on showing the good Queen who had reigned fifty years without a blot on her fair fame, that their hearts went out to her in sympathy and goodwill. Yet any one skilled in the ways of birds, who could have seen the sparrow as he sat there, would have judged from the set of hisfeathers thathismind was very far from being at ease.
“There’s no time to lose,” he muttered to himself; “she’ll have to sit all day and all night, or we sha’n’t do it after all.” He flew down to a snug corner behind a tall brick chimney looking to the south, where his wife was sitting on a nest with four eggs in it.
“My dear,” he said; “you mustn’t leave the nest to-day; you know my hopes and wishes; you will disappoint me dreadfully if you can’t manage to hatch out an egg to-morrow. It really is our duty, as we live in a palace, to have a nestling hatched on the Jubilee day. Why, my people have lived here ever since the Queen came to the throne, and one of my ancestors was born on the very day of her accession! we must keep up the tradition, and, my dear, it all depends on you. Remember, I picked you out of a whole crowd down in St James’s Park, and I made no inquiries about your connections; you may have come from a Pimlico slum for all I know. But I saw you had good qualities and I asked no questions. Now do try and doyourself justice. Sit close, and don’t on any account leave the eggs, and I will bring you all sorts of good things from the Prince of Wales’ own kitchen.”
The hen sparrow fluttered her wings a little and meekly assured her husband that she would do her best. “It’s hard work,” she added; “my poor breast is getting quite bare, and I’m so hungry. But I’ll sit till August to please you, you beautiful and noble bird.”
“That’s right,” said the cock sparrow, much pleased; and indeed he was a fine bird, with his black throat and blue head, and mottled brown back. He flew straight down to the back door of Marlborough House, where the Prince of Wales lives (he patronized no human beings but royalty and the aristocracy), and finding the usual supply of crumbs and scraps put out by the royal kitchen-maid, he made a good meal first himself, and then set to work to carry his wife her supper.
The day was very hot and very long, and the warmth greatly helped the weary hen in performing her duties. She stuck to her postall the time she was having her supper, and she knew that her eggs would soon be hatched; but neither she nor her husband had quite reckoned for the warmth of the day. Just when the cock was going to roost, well satisfied with his wife, and certain that his fondest hopes would be realized to-morrow, crack, crack! peep, peep! out came a tiny sparrow from the egg in the warmest corner of the nest, full three hours before the Jubilee day was to begin!
She called her husband—
“Oh what a little darling,” she cried. “Oh, what a lovely little yellow beak! and what a sweet crumply little red skin!” And she forgot all about the Jubilee.
“What a horrid little wretch you mean,” said the cock sparrow. “An impudent, pushing little ugly brute, to come out just at the wrong time! And he would have seized it and thrust it out of the nest, if the poor delighted mother had not spread her wings quite over it.
“Oh, don’t be so cruel,” she said, “please don’t; I’ll hatch another to-morrow, if I possiblycan. I’ll sit all day, and never even want to go and see the procession, as you promised I should.”
“Very well,” said the cock. “You stay here and sit close till you’ve hatched another. Not one bit of food shall that little monster have from me, till his brother is born. And if he isnotborn to-morrow, it’ll be very much the worse for you, my dear!”
He went to roost again, and his wife cuddled herself down once more on the eggs, and fondled her little new-born chick. All night long the hammering of boards went on in the streets below, where the preparations were being finished for the procession, and the poor hen passed a very sleepless night. Her body was tired, and she was dreadfully afraid of her husband’s anger, if she should fail in her duty. “But, after all,” she thought, “one must go through a good deal if one is to have a husband who lives in a palace and is connected with the highest families in the land!”
The next day was, as we all remember, another very hot one. The sun blazed downupon the poor hen sparrow, who was obliged to keep sitting close all day, until she really thought she must have died with heat and anxiety. Not for one minute would her husband allow her to leave the nest and look at the processions. He perched on a chimney whence he could see her on the nest, and also see the procession coming through from Buckingham Palace; and he described it all to her from his chimney, but what was the good of that? She might just as well have read it in the newspapers the next morning.
All day long she sat on those three remaining eggs, and it really seemed as if they would never crack. The cock got more and more angry and impatient. “We shall be disgraced,” he cried, when the processions were all over, and still no second chick; “we shall be disgraced, and we shall have to leave the Palace. I shall, at least; you may stay if you like: you have no connection with the royal family and no sense of shame.”
The hen could say nothing. She was doing her best, poor thing, and she could do no more.Hour after hour passed, and still no egg burst. At last, as the big clock on the Palace struck seven, crack! peep!—a second little sparrow poked out its bill into this wicked world.
The cock sparrow was in a state of wild excitement. He pushed his wife off the nest, and declared he was going to take charge of it all himself.
“Oh, what a beauty!” he exclaimed; “so different from that other little wretch! Fly at once, my dear, to Buckingham Palace, and let Her Majesty know. She’ll be delighted. And only think if you were to bring back some crumbs from the hand of royalty itself! I’ll take care of it meanwhile.”
Off flew poor weary Mrs. Sparrow on her errand. But when she got to Buckingham Palace, she didn’t know how to find the Queen; so she flew down into Palace Road, and picked up a crumb or two in front of a baker’s shop there, which she brought home in her beak.
“Well done!” cried her husband, without waiting to ask where they came from. “Crumbs from Her Majesty’s own hand! wasn’t she
A Jubilee Sparrow.—P. 61.A Jubilee Sparrow.—P. 61.
delighted? Did she say it was to be called ‘Jubilee,’ in honour of the day? Of course she did. Jubilee he shall be; and there isn’t another young one in London to compare with him.”
There was indeed a terrible to-do made about this little nestling, which was ugly enough in the eyes of every one but its parents. The news of it spread about, and from all parts of London sparrows came to see it. All sorts of tales were told of it, and the further you got from St. James’s, the more wonderful they were. In the Strand they told how the bird broke the egg as the Queen was passing by, and how Her Majesty happened to look up to see what o’clock it was, and seeing the old sparrow on the roof, bowed to him most graciously. Further east, the sparrows of St. Paul’s Cathedral narrated how a bird had been born on the roof of Buckingham Palace, just over the Queen’s own bedroom window, and how Her Majesty, on hearing the news, had sent for a long ladder, and ordered the Lord Chamberlain to take up some choice daintiesto the parents on a plate of solid gold. And far away in the East-end, the black and sooty sparrows who inhabit those parts, and who firmly believe themselves and their race to be the most important part of the whole population of London, were much stirred by a rumour that a sparrow had been born in the West-end, which had been declared by the Queen to be heir to the throne, and that the days of the rule of man were coming to an end, and the sparrows were going to have it all their own way.
Thus the fame of little Jubilee spread over the whole of London, and even into the country, for the sparrows that were going out of town for the summer carried the news with them, and the whole world of sparrows were in a few days chattering and quarrelling about it.
Meanwhile Jubilee was being stuffed with all sorts of good things, and in the second week of his existence very nearly died of over-eating. If he had been fed with wholesome flies, like the others, he would have taken no hurt; but his father was always bringing bread-crumbs fromthe Prince of Wales’s back-door, and these, when forced down the wide-open yellow throat of poor Jubilee, were apt to choke him sadly.
“Never mind,” said the father, “it will all help to strengthen his blood, and make him a fit neighbour for kings and princes!”
Luckily the entreaties of his mother, who declared he would die if he were not fed properly, had some effect, and Jubilee grew to be a fledgling without falling a victim to his own greatness. When he was ready to leave the nest, the others, who had been carefully brought up to consider themselves nobodies, and to bow before Jubilee in everything, were told to go and shift for themselves—their mother might look after them if she liked. As for Jubilee, he was to be under his father’s care for a while longer, and to be introduced to the world where he was to cut such a great figure. He had by this time, as you may suppose, come to think a good deal of himself; and to say the truth, there was no such conceited young jackanapes of a sparrow to be found in the whole of London. But all the parent sparrows had taught their young ones to look up to him,and his high mightiness had things pretty much his own way.
The royal families being by this time gone out of town, it was not possible to have him presented at court; so the father sparrow was obliged to be content with taking him to the water in the park, to introduce him to the ducks. He did indeed drop a hint or two about going to Windsor Castle when Jubilee should be strong enough; but he had never been so far himself, and had some doubts in his own mind as to his reception by the rival sparrows of that royal residence. Supposing they had produced a Jubilee sparrow there too! It might be wiser not to go so far a-field.
The ducks were very gracious to Jubilee. They informed him that they were the property of the state, and under the especial care and patronage of the nobility and gentry. They lamented that the royal princes and princesses did not often come to feed them, and told him how two centuries ago, that excellent monarch Charles the Second had made it a regular practise and duty to walk in the park for the purpose of throwing bread to the ducks of that day. Theysaid that Jubilee might come every day and share the things that were given them.
So Jubilee led a happy life for a while in the society of the ducks, and became more vain than ever. He was very bold, and would hardly get out of the way of the passers-by. And this vanity and boldness led to a turn in the fortunes of this sadly spoilt young bird, which it is now our painful duty to relate.
One day he was left by his father with the Ducks, and was listening to their aristocratic conversation, taking a bathe in the water now and then, and preening himself in the sunshine, when two very ragged and dirty boys came by. One of them had a large hunk of bread which he was eating, and as he passed the ducks he threw them a few crumbs. The ducks did not mind where they got their bread; whether it were given them by a monarch or a street-boy was all the same to them; and young Jubilee of course did as they did. So it came to pass that he flew down from the bush where he happened to be perching at the moment, and dexterously picked up a crumb which had fallen just at the edge of the water.
The boys, seeing this, threw him another and then another, nearer and nearer to themselves; and Jubilee, in all his pride and self-confidence, came close up to them. Suddenly one of the boys whipped off his cap, and flung it with such good aim, that it knocked over poor Jubilee, and half stunned him; the other boy instantly pounced down upon him, and he was a prisoner in a pair of grimy hands. He called out loud to the ducks, but they only said “quack-quack,” and went off to the other side of the water, as they saw no more bread was coming.
“Serves him right!” said an old drake: “you ducks made such a fuss about that little piece of impudence, that he was getting quite unbearable.”
Meanwhile, to prevent his escape, as he struggled and pecked with all his might, his captor put him into his pocket; where he found himself in company with a morsel of mouldy cheese, a half-eaten apple, two or three bits of string, the cork of a ginger-beer bottle, the head of a herring, and the bowl of an old clay pipe; all of which, combined with the dirtiness of the pocket itself, made up such a smellthat Jubilee will never forget it to the last day of his life. The only comfort was that there was one place where light showed through the pocket; and for this he made and tried to struggle out. The boy, feeling him struggling, gave his pocket a slap, which quieted master Jubilee for a time; but after a while he recovered and began to make for fresh air again. This time the other boy saw his beak coming out and warned his companion in time; so Jubilee was taken out, and they tied the poor prisoner’s legs together with one of the bits of string, and put him into another pocket in company with a dead mouse. And now he had to lie still and take things as they came. He was tired out with fear, and struggling, and hardly had life enough left in him to be angry or cry out.
It was some time before he was released from the company of the dead mouse. When he was taken out of the pocket, he found himself in a dark and grimy room, with hardly any furniture, no fireplace, and only one small window high up in the wall. What a change from St. James’s Palace! He was in fact in the cellar of a smallhouse in a back street in Westminster, where the father of the boys lived: a very poor man, whose wages were so small, even when he was lucky enough to get work, that he could only afford to rent a cellar; and here he and his wife and their two boys lived.
When the door was shut, Jubilee’s legs were untied and he was then put into a small box, in the lid of which one of the boys had bored a few small holes to give him air. Some crumbs were dropped through the holes, but they quite forgot to give him water, and the poor bird had to suffer great torments of thirst. When night came at last and the family lay down on their wretched mattresses in the corners of the room, Jubilee expected to get some sleep; but even this was denied him. No sooner was all quiet than the rats began to prowl about the room; and you may be sure they soon smelt out Jubilee. They came and climbed up on to the box, and when they heard him inside, they began to gnaw the wood between two of the holes. Luckily the nights were still short, and the poverty-stricken family were stirring early,or they would have got at Jubilee before morning. Even as it was, the poor bird, who used to sleep so peacefully after a good supper on the roof of the Royal Palace in the snuggest corner of the nest, had to spend his whole night within a few inches of half-a-dozen hungry monsters, who were thirsting for his blood. He was almost out of his mind by morning.
The boys had each a piece of bread given them for breakfast, some crumbs from which they gave their prisoner; and at the instance of their mother, they also gave him some water, and Jubilee felt a little better, and began to forget about the rats. Suddenly there came a knock at the door. The father had gone to work; the mother opened it. A man in uniform came in. Jubilee thought it must be a special messenger from the Queen, come to demand his instant release.
But it was only the School Board attendance officer, who had come to see why the boys were not at school. They shrank into a corner and presently made for the door, but the officer was too quick for them. He told theirmother that he did not wish to have the father fined, and that if the boys would go to the school with him at once, and promise to go regularly, he would not summon him. The boys were frightened and went off with the officer: and Jubilee was left alone with the mother, who now began to try and clean up a bit, and make the room tidy; though, indeed, poor thing, she was too thin and starved to do any real work.
Soon she came to the box where Jubilee was.
“Ah, poor bird!” she thought to herself, “you have come out of fresh air, and away from kind friends, just as we did when we came to this dreadful London. Oh, why did I ever leave the village, and father and mother, and the orchards, and the meadows where we used to gather buttercups and tumble in the hay?” And she sat down on a broken chair by Jubilee’s box, and thought of the sweet air of the country, and wiped away a few slow tears with her apron. At last she got up, and took the box in her hands. “He’ll only starve here,” she thought, “and the rats will get athim. I’ve a great mind to let him go.” But then she thought how vexed the boys would be, and she gave up that idea. If she could only sell him they might all be the better for it. She would try and sell him for sixpence and they would buy a fourpenny loaf, and the boys should have a penny each to console them for the loss of their bird. She took him down the street in the box, turned down another street, and offered him at a shop where numbers of birds in cages were hanging in the window.
“Will you give me sixpence for this bird?” she asked. A pang went through Jubilee; to be sold for a sixpence, and he a royal bird!
The shopman, who was in his shirt (and very dirty it was), and had an evil face, and a short stubbly gray beard, looked with great contempt at Jubilee.
“Sixpence,” he shouted; “why, it’s only a sparrow!”
“Oh,” thought Jubilee, “if I could only tell him that I am a Jubilee sparrow, the only one in London, and worth a thousand times more than my weight in gold!” He had heard this so oftenfrom his father, that he at last had come to believe that if ever he really were to be sold they would weigh him and multiply the result by a thousand.
“Sixpence!” cried the shopman. “Sparrows are dear at a penny!”
The poor woman was sadly disappointed, and so indeed was Jubilee. She offered to sell the box as well, and after some bargaining, Jubilee and his box were handed over to the man for the sum of threepence, on which the starving family dined that day, and were thankful too.
Jubilee had not been long in the shop when the evil-faced man opened the box cautiously and seized him before he could escape. Once more his legs were tied together, and he was taken into a little dingy back room and laid upon a table. Then the man shut the door, lit a gas-lamp, and took out some paints and washes; and setting a canary in a cage before him, began to paint Jubilee’s feathers to imitate it.
“What a fat little brute you are,” he said, as he poked his dirty finger into the poor bird’s stomach. “But we’ll soon take that down; we’llsoon starve you into a nice slim canary. No more fat living for you, you little pig.”
Every feather of Jubilee’s wings and tail had to be painted separately, and washed before it was painted; and the poor worn-out bird had to lie there on the table all that day with his legs tied, and was given nothing to eat. After it was all over he was untied and put in a small cage, but kept in the same dingy inner room, away from the street. Two days later he was taken out again, and the whole process had to be gone over once more; and all this time he was getting thinner and thinner. It was a week after he had been sold, before he was pronounced fit to be taken into the shop, and hung in the window in his cage; a label was tied on to it on which was written—
“Canary, a Bargain.“Warranted Sound. Only 3/6.”
Poor Jubilee! He was at least worth three and sixpence, and his affairs were beginning to go up again. If he could only have the luck to be bought by one of the royal family, all might bewell again. But it was not to be. And for a long time nobody even offered to buy him. A fat bullfinch was sold, and Jubilee was quite glad to get rid of him; he was so fat, and so proud of his portly red waistcoat. Linnets and Goldfinches went, and others took their places, and there was always a pretty brisk sale of canaries. But Jubilee was neglected, probably because he used to sit on his perch and mope and ruffle his feathers, from hunger and hatred of the world. He looked sulky, and of course he never sang; so the customers would have nothing to say to him. It was a sad downfall for him, to sit in a cage all day and mope, and have faces made at him by street-boys, who loved to flatten their noses against the window and make all sorts of horrible noises and cat-calls, until the old man ran out with a stick and drove them away. But hunger and misfortune had done Jubilee some good, though it had made him very miserable. He had lost all his old pride, and had had all the nonsense knocked out of his head which his foolish father had stored up there.
One day he was sitting on his perch, dull andlistless as usual, and terribly annoyed by the shrill singing of three canaries who were in the window with him, and were always making fun of him because he was only a sham canary and couldn’t sing; when two boys stopped at the window. They were of quite a different kind from any who had been there before; they did not flatten their noses against the glass, or make horrible noises; they wore good clothes, and had broad white collars which were quite clean, instead of dirty old handkerchiefs. They looked a good deal at Jubilee, and were evidently talking about him; but he could not hear what they said. At last they came into the shop and offered the old man two shillings for him.
“Make it half-a-crown,” said he, “and you shall have him;” for he was anxious to get rid of Jubilee. He might begin to moult, or the paint might wear off; and then there might be mischief.
The boys consented to give half-a-crown, and took Jubilee away with them. How glad he was to get out of that shop! Surely better times were coming! He was once more inthe hands of the aristocracy, and certainly they handled him much more gently than the street boys. They carried him to a big house in Belgravia, put him in an empty cage, and began to examine him closely. Then they took him out and turned up his feathers.
“I thought so,” said one: “I told you so when we were looking at him through the window. That fellow’s a regular old thief. It’s nothing but a common sparrow. Run and ask father to come and see him.”
The other boy soon returned with a kind-looking gentleman, who laughed when he saw Jubilee, and told the boys they were lucky to have caught a well-known thief and impostor. Then he sent for a cab, took the cage and the boys, and drove down to the street where the old man lived, taking up a policeman on the way. And in another half-hour Jubilee found himself at a police-station; he was put in a sunny window, and the paint partly washed off him, the old man was locked up in a cell, and the gentleman and the boys were to come next day and give evidence.
The next day Jubilee was brought into court in his cage. It was not very pleasant; for he was half yellow and half his natural brown, and all the people laughed at him when he was handed up to the magistrate to be looked at. But a kind-hearted policeman, who had taken care of him the evening before, and given him seeds and water, had pity on him, and took him out of court as soon as he had been looked at, and washed the paint quite off him, and put him back in his sunny window. The case was soon proved, and when the old man had been sent away to prison for obtaining money on false pretences, the policeman asked the boys if he might keep the bird, as it was only a sparrow, and his sick wife would be very glad of it to keep her company while he was out on his beat. The boys gladly let him have it, and Jubilee was once more carried off in his cage to a new residence.
This was a small two-storied house in Pimlico. The policeman carried him up-stairs to his wife who lay ill in bed.
“Ah, Harry dear,” said she, “I’m so glad tosee you; I’ve been waiting so long for you. I thought the morning would never come to an end. And what have you got there?”
“Something to make the time go quicker for you,” said the policeman; and he put the cage down on his wife’s bed, and told her the story of the sparrow.
“Poor bird,” said she, “poor thing. I can feel for him, as I’m caged up too, and can’t get out into the fresh air. But thank you, Harry, for thinking of me. He’ll be a companion to me, these long dreary mornings. But what shall we call him?”
“Well,” said Harry, “I reckon he’s about two months old; and to-day’s the 20th of August; so that just about takes us back to Jubilee day. I think he must have been born very near about the Jubilee. Let us call him Jubilee.”
And Jubilee felt that he was among friends, for now he had his right name, and was made much of, and was really of some use. And the policeman’s uniform was consoling too: for it brought back to his mind St. James’s Palace, and the policemen walking up and down thestreet below, and the scarlet-coated sentinels marching to and fro in front of the Prince of Wales’s gates.
And so two or three weeks went by, and Jubilee sat on his perch, and was fed well with seeds, and wished he could have sung like the canaries to show his gratitude and make the time pass quicker for the suffering wife. She grew paler and paler, and wearier and wearier, and seemed to take pleasure in nothing but Jubilee, and in looking for the time when her husband should come home. She would take the bird out of his cage, and he would hop about on the bed, and take seeds and crumbs out of her hand. He did not want to escape, and meet with new perils and adventures. Never had Jubilee been so happy before.
One day the doctor came, and told her husband that if his wife was ever to get well, she must go into the country for fresh air. It was hard on Harry, for he could not go with her; he must stay in London, and earn his living. But he took his savings out of the bank, and with these he contrived to get his wife taken toVictoria station, and thence in the train to the Sussex village where her parents lived. And of course Jubilee went with her.
I cannot stop to tell the wonders of that journey for Jubilee, or the delight of getting into pure fresh breezes among the Sussex downs. He was put into a window in an old red-brick cottage, where he soon learnt to forget all about London, and the pride of his early days, and all the horrors he had gone through. And, in spite of his being only a sparrow, and having never a song to sing, he was able to soothe the sick wife’s weary hours, and perhaps loved her as dearly as she loved him.
But she got no better; and one day the doctor said that a telegram must be sent at once to fetch her husband from London. When he came in the afternoon, she was lying unconscious, with Jubilee on a chair beside the bed. Jubilee did not know what followed; but before it was dark the policeman had taken his cage to the window and opened the door, saying in a voice that trembled as the bird had never heard it tremble before—
“We shall not want you any more, little Jubilee; go your way, and take our thanks with you.”
Jubilee flew out of the cage into the free air. What has since become of him I cannot tell you. But we may be sure that he did not go back to the perils of London streets, or to the pride and glory of a royal palace.
Upthe little street of thatched fishermen’s cottages, that ran inland from the stony beach and then curved away under the swelling down, there hurried early one May morning a dark-eyed girl, with a wounded pigeon in her hand. The wings of the bird were fluttering, as if it were in pain; a feather dropped here and there upon the road, and there was blood at its beak. The girl pressed it to her cheek in loving pity, and her loose dark brown hair fell over it, as the morning breeze followed her from the sea.
She stopped at a cottage gate, half way up the street, unlatched it with her free hand, passed through the little garden, and ran into the cottage without knocking. No one was in the little room.
“Harold!” she cried. “Harold! where are you?”
A boy of fifteen, tall and lithe, bonny-looking, and fair-haired, came in through the back door. He wore a blue jersey, and seemed made for a seafaring life.
“Why, Molly, it’s not seven o’clock, and we haven’t had breakfast yet. I thought you girls were in bed at this time of day. Hallo! What’s the matter with the pigeon?”
He took the bird out of her hand, for Molly, in spite of her fourteen years, had begun to cry, and could not answer his question. He turned the bird over gently and smoothed its feathers. Then he fell to stroking Molly’s hair.
“Poor old Molly,” he said soothingly. “Don’t cry. Was it the cat?”
Molly sat down, took the pigeon back from him, and dried her eyes on its silky plumage.
“No,” she said, still choking a little, “it wasn’t the cat, it was a terrible great bird. Why should he have come atmypigeon, thatyougave me, when there were so many others for him? I saw him, as I was dressing, come right down, andjust as he was seizing poor Snowdrop I threw my shoe at him and frightened him, and then he let go Snowdrop, and made a swoop into Mrs. Timms’s garden, and carried off another pigeon instead. Oh, the horrible, cruel creature!”
Harold gave a long whistle. “It’s the falcon,” he said, “from the red cliffs. I know him, the cruel brute! He’s got his nest there, Molly, and he’s feeding young ones. That’s why it is he comes here now. Never you mind, Molly,” he added, as he saw the pigeon was dead, “I’ll give you another, and what’s more, I’ll have those young falcons to make all safe.”
Molly looked at him with her usual admiring gaze. Harold and she had been playmates since they were small children and lived as next door neighbours, and though they did not see quite so much of each other now that Harold’s father was dead, and his mother had come to live in a smaller cottage further up the street, they were still as fond of each other as ever. Molly had long ago given up her whole soul to Harold: she had no secret from him. He had been a brother to her all her life, and even more than a brother. Perhapsif she had had any brothers they would have either despised her and kept her down, or they would have spoilt her, but Harold did neither. He was her sun, cheering and warming her; as to being obliged to do without him, that was a thing she had never thought of.
But some little time before the appearance of the falcon Harold had suddenly taken it into his head that he must go into the royal navy. A coast-guard friend of his had for some time been trying to persuade him to join a training-ship, but Harold had steadily refused, thinking that a fisherman’s free life was the happiest in the world. But as he grew older he began to discover that the fisherman’s freedom was bought at a high price. They had to sell their fish for very little, and other people made the money they ought to have had. And for a great part of the year very little was done in the way of fishing, except lobster-and crab-catching, and lobsters and crabs were getting scarcer than they used to be. There were in fact too many fishermen, and they were gradually catching all the crabsand lobsters on the coast. And so Harold at last came to the conclusion that if he was to support his mother in her old age he should set himself to some work which would make him sure of a fixed income, and if possible a rising one.
When Molly learnt that her Harold was actually going to leave her, and that in a few days she would see the last of him for a long time to come, her whole life seemed to be going to change. It was as if her boat had suddenly sprung a leak, and was sinking away from beneath her. The village, the bay, the beach, the lanes, could never be the same without Harold. She had been used to lean on him, to rest her whole being against his; and she did not know that even boys and girls, like men and women, must lose the props they make for themselves, and yet contrive somehow to stand without their help. Seeing her sorrowful eyes, and wishing to see them bright again, rather than feeling with her in her pain, he had given her the pigeon; and now the cruel falcon’s talons had torn her sensitive little heart almost as ruthlessly as the bird’s tender breast.
Harold came out of the cottage door and looked at the weather. It was a still spring morning with a silky mist lying about the hills, which would clear away if the slightest breeze got up.
“I’ll go to-day, Molly,” he said, “and you shall come with me if you like. We’ll have one jolly day together before I go to the training-ship. The tide runs eastward up till twelve, and will bring us back easily in the afternoon. Come down to the beach in half an hour: I’ll have the boat ready, and some bread and cheese. You ask your mother for some cold tea.” And Harold, delighted with his plan, and with his mind as cloudless as a sunny summer’s day, ran off to get his boat ready, hardly finding time to give Molly the kiss that her uplifted grateful face demanded of him.
In half an hour she and the boat were both ready, and they passed out of the little bay, she steering and he rowing, as the mist began to lift from the curving outlines of the downs. It was very restful to Molly to glide overthat silky sea, with the gulls quietly sailing above, the breeze from the land just breathing on her, and Harold’s bright face opposite to her; and for a while she was perfectly happy, thinking of nothing. But suddenly the sound of a big gun reached them, and looking out to sea they saw the distant masts of a huge ironclad, and a white curl of smoke, which had already risen high in air by the time the sound reached them. As they looked, another white puff, and, as it slowly rose, another faint boom. Harold’s eyes sparkled, and he rested on his oars, and turned to watch the ship.
“I expect it’s theMonarch,” he said. “I know she’s cruising about here. Just think, Molly! Some day perhaps you’ll hear the big guns and I shall be on board. And thinking of you,” he added, as his face came round to look at Molly with a look half of pity, half of pride. But there was a big tear slowly slipping down Molly’s brown cheek. The thought of Harold’s going had come over her like a cloud, and the rain was beginning to fall. For a moment he felt angry; plunged the oarsinto the water, and rowed on strongly with just a faint flush on his cheek. Then seeing her face turned away, so that he should not see the tear, and the little mouth compressed and chin held firm so as to keep another from escaping, he shipped his oars, jumped across to her, and with boyish energy gave her a host of rough kisses on each cheek. Then he took her face between his hands and said—
“Molly, don’t you be silly. If you’re going to cry every time you hear a big gun fired I’ll sail right away to the other side of the world and marry some one over there. But if you’ll be a good girl I’ll come back some day and be a coastguard, and then we can live in one of those cottages by the flagstaff, and you shall polish the windows and the floors till they shine like mother’s china. And when I get to Portsmouth I’ll have a likeness taken in uniform, and you shall have it to hang up in your own room. Now then, let go, silly, or we shall be on the rocks!”
He disengaged himself from the fervid embrace in which Molly had caught him, and was back inhis seat, pulling hard into the current of the tide again, which was now carrying them fast along the foot of the cliffs. They rounded one little headland, and then another, and presently found themselves under a deep curve of the cliffs, here some three or four hundred feet high, quite inaccessible from above, where the rocks were almost perpendicular, but broken somewhat at the base by the action of the sea. These cliffs—the red cliffs as they were called from their colour—were the favourite breeding place of many birds, and they were dotted all over, as the boat rounded the headland, with kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, and other sea-birds, who sailed up into the air, or far away to sea, with loud cries, as the intruders came nearer. Harold paid them little attention, but made straight across the curve towards the opposite headland, where the cliff seemed almost to beetle over, and where the shadow, as they had been rowing eastwards and it was still morning, lay heavy and black over the water. Here, he knew, the peregrine falcon built its nest nearly every year: for the nest could only be reached from the sea, and no hardy climber hadas yet attempted to get at it by that way. Once the male bird had been shot, and for two or three years no nest had been built; but another pair had found the place out, and this year had been so far lucky enough to escape the guns of collectors and gamekeepers.
Harold put in to the shore, and moored the boat to a stone. No falcon was in sight. He told Molly to lie down in the boat quite still; and stretching himself beside her on his back, he fed her with bread and cheese, keeping a sharp lookout all the while. For a long time they lay there, and it was a happy time for both of them. The gentle sigh of the waves daintily lapping the stones, and the call of the sea-birds overhead, were all the sounds they heard, except the occasional distant boom of a gun, which still sent a little pang through Molly’s tender heart. But she thought of the coastguard’s cottage, and all the time that was to be passed before she could be polishing its floors and windows for Harold melted away before that vision of happiness, which stood out like a distant peak when all the nearer hills and vales are hidden in a morning mist.
So they lay there in the boat, waiting for the falcon to appear, for it was hopeless to try and discover the nest until one of the old birds should return to it with food for the young. Every now and then Molly’s rosy mouth opened to receive a bit of bread and cheese, offered it on the point of Harold’s clasp-knife, which his coastguard friend had given him; but at last there was no more, and lulled by the gentle motion of the boat, she fell into a peaceful doze. She awoke, feeling Harold’s hand on her mouth.
“Don’t speak, Molly,” he whispered; “look there! That’s the wicked thing that killed your Snowdrop.”
She looked up and saw a large bird hovering just at the edge of the cliffs above them. Its great wings were spread out, as it sailed round and round for a while, looking to see that the coast was clear: and their sharp eyes could see that it carried something in its talons. Then, seeing nothing to disturb its solitude, it wheeled slowly down the cliff, and perched on a projecting bit of rock, not very high above their heads, and stood there, proud and fierce, with one foot stillgrasping its victim, which they could now see was a young leveret, bleeding and struggling in its last agony. When the last struggle was over, and not before, the sharp, cruel, beak was driven like a knife into the leveret’s neck, and the fur torn from its back; and when the butcher’s work was complete, the great bird slowly rose on its wings, and sailed into the air once more with the bleeding victim.
Harold slowly changed his position in the boat, and watched the falcon closely and silently. Wheeling once or twice, as it rose against the cliff, and uttering a chattering cry as if to announce its coming to its young ones, it passed within a narrow cleft in the rock, about a third of the way down the precipice, and disappeared. The boy was on his feet in an instant, and, springing out of the boat, he took off his blue jersey, and threw it to Molly to take care of; then he took a long look at the rocks above him, and rapidly made up his mind as to the line he would take in climbing. The first part was easy enough; but at the height of about a hundred feet from the sea the rocks suddenly became steeper.Still there was nothing to prevent an active lad from scaling them, if the hold for hand and foot were only firm; but the red rock was sometimes loose and brittle, and would need great care in handling. If he could pass safely along the face of these higher rocks by a little ledge which gave room for a few rock-loving plants to grow, he would reach the cleft into which the falcon had disappeared; once there, he must trust to luck, for he could not see further from below.
He quickly passed up the lower and more broken part of the cliff, Molly watching the easy motion of his supple form with pride and confidence. No shade of anxiety for him crossed her mind; she had often seen him climb both rocks and trees before, and had even sometimes climbed with him. She too was strong and active, and knew the delight of swinging herself from rock to rock or from bough to bough, with the perfect confidence that young heads place in the resources of their hands and feet. She would have been quite willing to dare even these cliffs with him, if he had asked her; but Harold knew very wellthat this would be the roughest climb he had ever yet tried, and had all the morning spoken as if he were going alone; so Molly quietly acquiesced, as she always did on such occasions. She sat in the boat, her hands playing with her blue worsted cap, but her eyes intently fixed on the climber.
When he reached the steeper rocks, he went more slowly; and she could see him testing the firmness of his foothold by a kick, or loosening a stone with his hand, which went leaping downwards and fell into the sea with a splash, almost too near the boat to be pleasant. Once or twice he picked up the egg of some Guillemot or Gull which had flown off as he approached, and held it out for Molly to see; and once he stopped to examine the skin of the leveret which the falcon had left behind on the projecting bit of rock. At last he safely reached the ledge, and began to walk carefully along it, steadying himself against the rock above him with his right hand. Just before he reached the cleft to which the ledge was leading him, Molly saw the falcon sail out of it againwithin a few yards of him; but Harold stood perfectly motionless in the shadow of the rock, and the magnificent bird, too busy to search for intruders, failed to see him, and rising slowly, passed over the beetling brow of the cliff and disappeared inland.
Then he went on again slowly, to the corner where the ledge passed into the cleft and out of Molly’s sight: and now she first began to wonder whether he would after all be able to reach the nest. The corner projected sharply, and in rounding it, the ledge seemed almost to come to an end; no grass grew on it at that point, and the rocks above and below were cut sharply and steeply. She saw him stop for a minute or two when he came to this corner, and put his foot forward to try the footing; her blue cap dropped out of her hands into the boat, and she sat up gazing with eager eyes and parted lips. Then she saw him rest his left foot on the jutting bit of rock he had tested, kneel down on his right knee, and slowly work himself along with the help of his hands. As he turned the corner, he seemed to get intoeasier quarters, for he rose to his feet again, and passed in a moment out of her sight into the dark cleft.
A few minutes later she heard the cries of the young falcons, and a loud shout from Harold told her that vengeance was being done for Snowdrop’s death. Sticks and rubbish began to fall down the rocks; he was razing to the ground the falcon’s rockbuilt refuge. And then he emerged again, with a young bird in his hand, which he proceeded to tie up in his pocket-handkerchief, and button inside the breast of his shirt. When all was ready, he again knelt down, this time with his left knee, using his right foot to support him below wherever it could find a firm support. Molly watched her hero now impatiently; she wanted him to come down quickly and show her the young falcon.
The difficult part was almost over, when some bit of stone on which he had rested his right foot gave away, and rolled down the precipice. He had nothing now to hold by except his left knee, and Molly, now standing up in the boatin real anxiety, saw him keeping his balance with difficulty by pressing his unsupported leg hard against the rocks. Then she saw him make a spring—such a spring indeed as one can make with nothing to spring from but one’s left knee—and try to catch at a big red knob which lay just at the end of the perilous part of the ledge. His hands caught the knob, and he turned with his face to the rock struggling to bring his feet up once more to the level of the ledge. But the stone was treacherous and gave way, and the boy, after another moment’s effort to save himself, fell after it down the steeper part of the rocks, till he was caught by another ledge below, and there lay quite still.
Molly uttered an inarticulate sound as she saw him fall; she did not cry or scream, but she trembled all over. A cold feeling went down her back, and her heart beat so violently that for a moment she was obliged to sit down panting. She looked all round to see if any boat was in sight, but the fishermen did not often come so far at that time of the year, and the sea was unbroken by an oar. Onlyfar out in the offing lay the huge form of the ironclad; and for an instant there flashed through Molly’s mind the picture of Harold in his young strength sitting opposite her with his oars, turning to watch the firing of the big guns, then holding her face in his hands, and bidding her not be silly. Something told her that now an effort was needed from her, such as she had never had to make in her life before; and, strong and healthy as she was, she felt her faintness passing, and her will growing strong. She was quite alone; she must act; what should she do?
At first she thought of rowing back for help, but she knew that the tide had not yet turned, and that she would be a much longer time getting back than they had taken in coming. And then she would have to leave Harold all that time, and he perhaps dying, or at least badly hurt. He might indeed be dead; but at none of these possibilities did she quail again, now that she had fully nerved herself for action. She must climb and reach him; and she set about it instantly. With a woman’s instinctshe took what was left of the cold tea that they had brought with them, tied Harold’s blue jersey round her neck by the sleeves, stepped firmly out of the boat, and after marking the spot where he fell, began to climb.
Once at the top of the easier rocks, she found herself not far below the shelf upon which he must be lying, and called to him. No answer came. Panting with effort and excitement, but with firm limbs and steady head, she began to ascend the steeper rocks, and presently reached what seemed to be a faint track, made perhaps by some animal, which led her easily upwards to the shelf. When she reached it her strength failed for a moment, and her eyes seemed dim; but mastering herself again she advanced, and suddenly came upon Harold, lying on his back in a little bed of rough grass and samphire. She saw in an instant that he was alive, and spoke to him, but he did not answer. Then she knelt down beside him, folded up the jersey and put it under his head; opened the bottle of cold tea, and moistening herfingers with it, rubbed his temples and wetted his nostrils. She gave his forehead one kiss; but there was work to be done, and this was no time for kisses: she felt half ashamed even of this one. She searched for wounds, but could find none; only she feared that one arm on which he was lying must be badly hurt. But she could not move him, and must wait till he came to himself; and she went on rubbing and chafing, yet sparing the tea till he should wake and be able to drink some. It was quite an hour before he came to himself.
At last his eyes opened slowly, and his lips moved a little, but without a sound. She held the bottle to them, and he swallowed a little of the tea; then the eyes closed again, and he seemed to sleep. Presently she saw a fisherman’s boat passing at some distance from the shore. She stood up, waved her handkerchief and shouted; but the boat was too far off, and she was neither heard nor seen.
Her shouting woke Harold again, and in a faint voice he said, “What’s the matter, Molly?” and then, after a pause, “Where’s the young falcon?”
She looked in his shirt; the handkerchief was still there, and the young bird was in it, though dead. “Here it is, Harold,” she said; “and now you must try and get up and come down with me to the boat, and I’ll row you home and take care of you till you’re all right again.”
“Dear old Molly,” was all that Harold answered; but they were words that Molly never forgot.