Kitabı oku: «More Tales of the Birds», sayfa 8
SELINA’S STARLING
There was no such plucky and untiring little woman as Selina in all our village. I say was, for I am thinking of years ago, at the time when her Starling came to her; but she is with us still, plucky and indefatigable as ever, but now a bent and bowed figure of a tiny little old woman, left alone in the world, but for her one faithful friend.
Untiring she has ever been, but never, so far as we can recollect, a tidy woman in her own cottage; perhaps it was natural to her, or more likely she fell in with the odd ways of her husband, a man whom no wife could ever have made tidy himself. They never had any children, and they did not see much of their neighbours; their society was that of pigs and fowls and cats, and such society, inside a cottage, is not compatible with neatness. These animals increased and multiplied, and man and wife were their devoted slaves. Their earnings were eaten up by the creatures, and nothing ever came of it so far as we could see; for it was seldom any good to ask Selina to sell you a fowl or a duck – she never had one ready to kill. We believed that they grew to a comfortable old age, and then died a natural death; and however that may be, it is true enough that neither Selina nor her husband could ever bear to part with them.
But the member of the household dearest to Selina’s heart was an old pony that lived in a little tumble-down hovel adjoining the cottage. Fan was perfectly well known to all the village, for she was always being taken out to graze on odd bits of grass which were the property of no one in particular, where, if kindly accosted, and in a good humour, she would give you her off fore foot to shake. Like Selina, she was of very small make; she had once been a pretty roan, but now wore a coat of many faded colours, not unlike an old carpet, well worn and ragged. Some people in the village declared that she was getting on for forty years old, and I am inclined to think they were not far wrong; but she was still full of life, and as plucky and hard-working as Selina.
Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Fan went up to Northstow with her master (I use the word by courtesy rather than as expressing their real relation to each other); she waited patiently at shops and market, had a dinner of hay at an inn, and returned with her little cart laden with parcels, which she had to distribute about the village before she turned in for the night. For many a year she performed these duties, and she was as well known in Northstow as she was in our village. But one day, some ten years ago, Selina’s husband fell down suddenly and died; and then for a short time there was a break in Fan’s visits to the market-town.
When the funeral was over, Selina returned to her solitary home, and busied herself as best she could. The fowls and ducks came trooping around her, anxious to be fed, and anxious for nothing else; they did not seem in the least to miss any one from the house. Selina turned them out of the kitchen, and quietly made up her mind that she could not now afford to keep them; they must go, with all their mess and litter, and she would begin to tidy up a bit at last. Then she went out to the hovel, for she heard a subdued whinnying there. Fan was the one creature in the place that had felt as she had; Fan had been wanting to know where the old man was, and had lost her spirits and her appetite. So she went and spent a full half hour with Fan, talked to her, made her comfortable, and cried a little on her rough old neck. At last she went once more into her kitchen, and thence into her tiny parlour, and after a little tidying up, she took the big family Bible from under the photograph book and the glass case with the stuffed kitten, and, laying it on the table, sat down and put on her spectacles.
She opened the book at haphazard, and began to read in the Old Testament, but she could not fix her attention. Her thoughts wandered far away, until she was suddenly roused by something falling down the chimney into the grate. It was a warm April day, and she was sitting without a fire; only in the kitchen was there a little bit of coal smouldering, to be woke up into life presently when it should be tea-time. She went and examined the grate; a few fragments of half-burnt stone had come down, and, as she looked, another bit and another fell with a rattle into the fender. Then there was a scuffle and a beating of wings; and a young starling suddenly shot down into the room, made straight for the window, banged himself against it, and fell to the ground.
Selina picked it up; it was only stunned, and soon revived in her hands. She took it gently, and put it into an old cage which lay among the lumber of the yard, brought the cage in again, set it on the table, and resumed her reading. It was the book of Ruth; and the first name she came to was Elimelech – and Elimelech, she thought, would make a good name for her visitor. All the rest of the day she tended her starling, which had come to her in this strange way just when she needed something better in the house to keep her company than those unfeeling fowls and ducks; and Elimelech, who was stupid from his fall, made no attempt to escape, but took her advances in a grateful spirit.
This was how Selina came by her Starling, and with the natural instinct she possessed of attracting all living creatures to her, she very soon made a friend of it. It was young enough to feel no shyness for the quiet little old woman: it was hardly out of its nursery, and had only just begun to learn to scramble up to the top of the chimney from the ledge on which the nest was placed, when it took a sudden panic, failed to reach the top, and came scrambling down into a new world.
For some time she kept Elimelech in his cage, but gradually she accustomed him to shift for himself. He would sit on her shoulder as she went about her household work, and when she went into the hovel he would perch on Fan’s back. Fan did not seem to mind, and very soon Elimelech took to roosting there, and a strangely devoted friendship was established between them.
While Elimelech was thus growing up as a member of the household, Selina was beginning to wonder how she was to keep that household together. How was she to keep herself and pay her rent without the little incomings that had found their way into her husband’s pocket when he took a fancy now and then to ask his customers to pay their debts? She parted with her fowls and ducks, but most of these were ancient skinny creatures, whose lives had been prolonged beyond the usual limit by careless kindness, and they brought her but little profit. It was some time before it dawned on her that she must part with Fan too, but when at last it did, she felt a terrible pang. It would be like parting with a sister. And who indeed would buy poor old Fan, and if a purchaser were found, what would he give for such an ancient little animal?
She banished the notion from her mind: she and Fan must stick together for what years of lonely life still remained to them.
One Tuesday morning, she was grazing the pony on the strip of turf that ran through the middle of the village allotments; Elimelech was perched on Fan’s back as usual, for he now insisted upon occupying his favourite station during all these little excursions, amusing himself by occasional flights into the air, or sometimes walking at the pony’s heels and picking up the insects that were disturbed as she grazed. There in the dewy summer morning the three had a consultation together, and it was decided that the next day, Wednesday, being market day at Northstow, Selina and Fan should journey thither, show themselves once more, and try and start the carrying business afresh before it was too late. There was no time to be lost; already one villager more enterprising than his fellows had purchased a donkey, and threatened to step into the place left vacant by Selina’s husband. The day was spent in going round to the old customers, and by nightfall Selina had a fair number of commissions. A heavy cloud had suddenly lifted from the little old woman’s heart; she saw her way before her and went to bed happy.
Next morning early she went into her hovel, where Elimelech had passed the night on his usual perch. She fed the pony, and then, gently removing the bird, began to put on the harness. Elimelech flew up to a rafter, and began to utter dolorous crooning whistles; and no sooner was the harnessing finished, than down he flew again with a persistence that somewhat perplexed his mistress.
“No, my dear,” she said to him, “you just stay at home and keep house till we come back.” And laying hold of him tenderly, she began to carry him across the garden to the cottage, meaning to shut him up safe in his cage till evening. But Elimelech seemed to divine what was coming, and objected strongly; he struggled in her hand, and making his escape, flew up and perched on the cottage chimney. She shook her finger at him. “Don’t you get into mischief,” she said, “or you’ll make us both unhappy.” Elimelech looked very wise up there, bowing and whistling. “I’ll take care of myself,” he seemed to say, and she thought he might be trusted to do so. Anyhow, go she must, and without him.
She mounted into the seat of the little pony-cart, and turned out into the village street; but she had hardly done so, when a whirring of wings was heard, and down came Elimelech to his perch again. There was no time to stop now; and Selina was obliged to let him have his own way, though she was not without misgivings for what might happen at Northstow, if they ever reached it all three still together. In the village there was no fear; Fan and Elimelech were now as well known as Selina herself, but at Northstow what might happen if the children were coming out of school just as she got there?
She tried to time herself so as to escape such a catastrophe, but as usually happens in such cases, she did after all run right into the middle of the school as it broke up at twelve o’clock. Elimelech, who had been perfectly well behaved all the way, only taking a little flight now and then as a relief, now thought he saw an opportunity to display himself; and no sooner did the children begin to gather round than he fluttered his wings and saluted them with a cheery whistle. Instantly the pony and cart were surrounded with a crowd of imps shouting and dancing; Fan was hustled and began to kick, and one or two boys made a dash for the starling. But Elimelech was a match for them; he quietly flew up to a neighbouring roof and waited there till the hubbub had subsided. Before Selina had reached her inn, he was on the pony’s back again.
Once in the stable, both Fan and Elimelech were safe; but Selina had to do a good deal of extra carrying that day, for she could not venture to drive the cart about the town, and had to drag every parcel separately from shop or market to the inn. At last she got away, escaping by a back lane which joined the main road outside the town, and reached home without further adventures.
On the Saturday following she started again, and again Elimelech insisted on being of the party. She had no great fear for his safety this time, for unless it came to throwing stones, which was unlikely on a market-day with policemen about, she knew that he could save himself by flight. And so it happened; whenever anything occurred to disturb him, Elimelech would fly up to some lofty point of vantage, and as regularly rejoin his company at the inn. But as time went on, he had less and less need for these sallies; Northstow grew accustomed to the strange trio, and though a boy would sometimes howl, or a passer-by stop and stare, no one seriously troubled them.
So the autumn and winter passed, and Selina began to thrive. Cheerfully and untiringly she went about her business; she was always to be relied on, and apart from her own virtues her pony and her starling attracted attention to her, and got her many new customers. Indeed Selina began to think Elimelech so important a partner in the concern, that when February came and the wild starlings in the village began to mate, she took the precaution of cutting one of his wings, lest his natural instincts should get the better of him. To lose him would be a terrible thing both for herself and Fan, who showed much discontent if the bird were not on her back, gently probing her old coat with his bill.
“Oh, he loves Fan better than me,” Selina would say to her visitors, of whom she now had plenty; “he loves me, but he loves Fan better.” If we could have penetrated into Elimelech’s mind, I do not think we should have found that this was exactly so. I believe that he loved Selina as well as we all did – I believe that he looked upon her, as Mr. Dick looked upon Aunt Betsey, as the most wonderful woman in the world. But I think that Fan’s back was a more comfortable perch than Selina’s shoulder, and the hovel more suited to his turn of mind than her kitchen – and that was all.
So the years went on, Selina throve, Elimelech’s partnership was unbroken, but Fan began to grow really old at last. She struggled up the hill with all her old pluck, but her breath came short and quick. Many a time in those days have I watched the three making their way up the long hill beyond the village, Fan panting and struggling, Elimelech whistling encouragingly on her back, and Selina, who had dismounted to ease her friend, following the cart slowly, her old black bonnet nodding with each step, and the head inside it bending over till it was almost on a level with her waist.
One day in the winter I had given Selina a commission – it was a mere trifle, but one of those trifles, a packet of tobacco or what not, which one wishes there should be no delay about. At tea-time it had not arrived, and it was past the time when Selina might be expected. I put on my hat and went out to look for her, but no pony and cart was to be seen. Then I set off strolling along the road to Northstow, asking a labourer or two whether they had seen Selina, but nothing was to be heard of her. With half a misgiving in my mind, I determined to go right on till I met her, and I was soon at the top of the hill, and pacing along the stretch of high road that lay along the uplands in the direction of the little town. It grew quite dark, and still no Selina.
I was within a mile and a half of Northstow, where the road is bordered by a broad rim of grass, when I thought I saw a dark object a little in front of me by the roadside. I went up to it, and found it was Selina’s cart, without Selina or the pony. Then I struck a match, shading it with my hand from the breeze. I just made out the pony was lying on the grass under the hedge, and that the little woman was lying there too, with her head resting against his side. She seemed to be fast asleep. As I approached Elimelech rose from the pony’s neck, and fluttered around me.
Hardly knowing what to do, and feeling as if I were breaking in ruthlessly on a scene so full of tender sadness, I stood there for a moment silent. Then I put my hand on Selina’s shoulder, saying, “How are you, Selina? What’s the matter? Has Fan come to grief?”
Selina opened her eyes and looked at me; at first she did not know where she was. Then it all came back to her.
“She’s dead,” she said at last. “She fell down suddenly in the cart and died. I took her out and dragged her so that no one should run over her, but it made me so tired that I must have fallen asleep.”
The poor little woman put her arm round the dead pony’s neck, and began to caress it. I saw that it was hopeless to get her home without help, and went on up the road towards the nearest farmhouse, telling her to stay where she was till I came back. There was no need to tell her: she neither could nor would have moved.
I had not gone far when by good luck I met a waggon returning empty to our village. I stopped the driver, whom I knew, told him what had happened, and got him to undertake to carry both Selina and her pony home in his waggon. I felt sure she would not leave her Fan to the mercy of any one who came by; and indeed I would not have left her there myself. Fan had so long been one of us that I shuddered to think of what nocturnal creatures might find her out in the night. There was a horrible story of a tramp who had passed a night in a barn not half a mile from this very spot, and had been attacked by rats in his sleep.
When we reached the cart, Selina was again fast asleep. Gently we raised her from the pony’s side, and I had to almost use force to unfasten the grip of her arm on its neck. I whispered to her that we were going to take Fan and Elimelech too, and she made no more resistance, but lay down quietly on some straw in a corner of the waggon. It was hard work to get poor Fan in after her; but she was so small and thin that at last we managed it. Elimelech perched himself upon his friend’s motionless body, and so we set off, a strange funeral procession.
Arrived at the village, I roused the neighbours, and Selina, now almost unconscious, was put to bed by kindly hands. Fan we deposited in her old hovel, and Elimelech, subdued and puzzled, was left there too.
Next morning Selina was unable to get out of her bed, though she struggled hard to do so; fatigue and exposure on the wet grass had brought her very low, and the doctor thought she would hardly get over it. We had to tell her that she would see Fan no more. She only sighed, and asked for Elimelech.
I went down to the hovel; the men were come to take the poor old pony away. Elimelech was there, not upon poor Fan’s body, but upon a rafter; and when the pony was taken out, he followed, and evaded all my efforts to catch him. I saw the cart with its burden turn the corner of the street, with the bird perched on the edge of it, fluttering his wings, as if he were expostulating with the ruthless driver.
I returned to Selina. “Elimelech is gone to see the last of poor Fan,” I said; “but we shall see him back here before long.”
“He loves me,” answered she; “but he loves Fan better, and I don’t think he’ll come back.” And Elimelech did not return that day.
But the next morning I found him sitting on her bed. She told me that he must have come back to the hovel, and when he found that shut, have come in by the front door and made his way upstairs. “And now poor Fan is gone, he loves me better than any one,” she said.
Selina is still alive, as I said at the beginning of this tale; she still finds work to do, and does it with all her might. All her animals are gone now – cats, fowls, ducks, and pony; Elimelech alone remains; he has never been unfaithful to her. But they are both growing old – too old to last much longer; and all we can hope is that Elimelech will be the survivor.
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
“Bessie, my lassie,” exclaimed the Poet, as they entered their new garden for the first time together, “what a time we shall have!”
When the Poet called his wife “lassie” she knew he was in a happy frame of mind, and was happy herself. It was long since she had heard the word; illness, overwork, and the dull surroundings of a London suburban villa, had taken all the spring out of his body, and all its natural joyousness from his mind. I call him Poet because it was the name by which his best friends knew him; I cannot be sure that he ever wrote poetry, and certainly he never published any; but they called him Poet because he was dreamy, and hated the fag and the noise of London, and pined for the country, and loved to talk of his old Yorkshire home and its plants and animals, and its beck curling under heathery banks on the edge of the moor. He was indeed only a London clerk, released at last from long years of drudgery by a happy stroke of good fortune.
They had just arrived from London to take possession of their cottage and garden in the country. It was a frosty evening early in March, and the sun was just setting as they went up the garden together; it lit up the bare boughs of a tree which stood just in front of the cottage.
“Look here, Bessie,” said the Poet; “that is a rowan tree, and it was the sight of that rowan that fixed me. The cottage was snug, the garden was good, but the rowans – there are three of them – were irresistible. There were three just outside our garden in Yorkshire, and every August the berries turned orange-red and made a glory before my window. Next August you shall see them, and you’ll see nothing quite so good till then.”
Bessie, London born and bred, was glad to get into the house, and make herself snug before the fire, where the kettle was singing an invitation to tea. She too was ready to welcome the slow and gentle ways of the country, and to be rid of perpetual bell-ringing, and postmen’s knocks, and piano-practising next door, and the rattle of carts and cabs; but I doubt if the rowans would have decided her choice. I think she thought more of the useful fruits of the garden – of the currants and gooseberries of which good store of jam should be made in the summer, of the vegetables they would grow for themselves, and the strawberries they would invite their London friends to come and share.
Next morning quite early the Poet threw his window wide open and looked out into his garden. It was not a trim and commonplace garden; it was an acre of good ground that had grown by degrees into a garden, as in the course of ages of village life one owner after another had turned it to his own purposes. The Poet looked over a bit of lawn, in the corner of which stood one of his favourite rowans, to an old bulging stone wall, buttressed up with supports of red brick of various shades, and covered with ivy. Over the top of it he could see the church tower, also ivy-clad, the yews of the churchyard, and the elms in the close beyond, in the tops of which the rooks were already busy and noisy. A thick and tall yew hedge separated the lawn from the village allotments, where one or two early labourers were collecting the winter’s rubbish into heaps and setting them alight; the shadow of the hedge upon the lawn was sharply marked by a silvery grey border of frost. On these things the Poet’s eye lingered with wonderful content for a while, and then wandered across the allotments over meadow and rich red ploughland to the line of hills that shut in his view to the south. There came into his mind the name he used to give to the moors above his Yorkshire dale in his young days when his mother read the Pilgrim’s Progress to her children – the Delectable Mountains.
He was suddenly recalled to his garden by a low melodious pipe, as of a bird practising its voice for better use in warmer days; it came from one of the rowans. Sometimes the notes were almost whispered; sometimes they rose for an instant into a full and mellow sweetness, and then died away again. They were never continuous – only fragments of song; as if the bird were talking in the sweetest of contralto voices to a friend whose answers were unheard. No other bird was singing, and the rooks were too far away in the elms to break harshly with their cawing on the blackbird’s quiet strain.
The Poet listened for a while enraptured, watching the dark form of the singer, and the “orange-tawny” bill from which the notes came so softly, so hesitatingly; and then drew in his head and began to dress, still keeping the window open, and repeating to himself —
“O Blackbird, sing me something well:
Though all the neighbours shoot thee round,
I keep smooth plats of garden ground
Where thou may’st warble, eat, and dwell.
“The espaliers, and the standards, all
Are thine; the range of lawn and park:
The unnetted blackhearts ripen dark,
All thine, against the garden wall.”
A few minutes later he was in the garden himself, scenting the dew and the fragrant earth, listening to the blackbird – his own blackbird, that meant to be his cherished guest all that spring and summer – to the singing of a skylark high above the allotment field, and to the distant murmur of the rooks. The garden was in disorder – what delicious work there would be in it! – fruit-trees to prune, vegetables to plant, a big strawberry bed to tend, borders to make gay. All this he would fain have done himself, even though he knew as little of gardening as he did of Hebrew; why not learn to do it himself, make mistakes and profit by them? So he had written to the friendly Parson of the village, who had been looking after his interests for him; but the Parson would not bear of it, and he was despotic in his own parish. He had decided that old Joseph Bates was to start the work and direct the Poet’s enthusiasm into rational channels; and after breakfast Joseph and the Poet were to meet. “A worthy old man,” the Parson had written; “you can’t do better than give him a little employment; if he gives you any trouble, send for me and I’ll settle him.”
So after breakfast – a delicious one it was, that first breakfast in the country – the Poet left his wife to her household duties, and went again into the garden to face Mr. Bates. He made his way towards his yew hedge, where he could see the old fellow busy clearing the ground beneath it of a melancholy tangle of decayed weeds. As he reached the hedge, one blackbird and then another flew out with awkward impetuosity and harsh chuckles, and the Poet stopped suddenly, sorry to have disturbed his friends.
Joseph touched his hat. “Good morning, Sir,” he said, “and welcome to your garden, if I may make so free. I’ve known it any time these fifty years and more, and my father he worked in it long afore I were born. We’d use to say as the Bateses belonged to this here bit of land years and years ago, when times was good for the poor man; but ’tis all gone from us, and here be I a working on it for hire. And ’tis powerful changed since I were a lad, and none for the better either. Look at this here yew hedge now; ’tis five and twenty year ago since I told Mr. Gale as ’twouldn’t do no good but to harbour birds, and here they be. And here they be,” he repeated, as another blackbird came scurrying out of the hedge a little further down.
At this point Joseph broke off his discourse, thrust his arm into the hedge, lifting the thick branches here and there, and pulled out a lump of fresh green moss, the first preparations for a blackbird’s nest.
“Ah, ye blackguards,” he cried, “at it already, are ye? I’ll be bound there are a dozen or two of ye somewhere or another on the premises. You see, Sir, ’tis their nater, when they’ve had it all their own way so long, and no one to look after ’em, a year come next June. They take it as the garden belongs to them; they’re like rats in a stack-yard, and you won’t have a thing to call your own by summer. But don’t you take on, Sir,” he went on, seeing the Poet’s visage lengthening; “we’ll nip ’em in the bud in no time. There’s my grandson Dan, a wonderful smart lad to find nests – you give him a sixpence, Sir, or what you please, and he’ll have every nest in the garden in an hour or two. Take it in time, Sir, as the doctor says to my wife when her rheumatics is a coming on.”
Mr. Bates chucked the unfinished nest on to a heap of weeds, thrust in his arm again, and began a fresh search. The Poet’s face grew dark: he could hardly find his voice.
“Bates,” he said at last, “stop that. You’ve taken one nest already, and if you or your grandson take another here, I’ll send you straight about your business. Do you think I took this garden to rob my blackbirds of their nests?”
“Lord save us,” cried Joseph, suddenly bewildered by this vehemence, “do I rightly understand you, Sir?”
“You needn’t understand me, if you can’t do so,” said the Poet, feeling a great dislike and dread for this terrible old man and his barbarian grandson; “but I mean to keep my blackbirds, so if you take another nest I’ll find another man.”
Joseph admitted to his wife afterwards that he was “clean took aback by this queer gentleman from London;” but, recovering himself quickly, he stuck his spade into the ground to lean upon, and began a further discourse.
“Begging your pardon, Sir, if I’ve in any ways offended you; but may be you ben’t quite accustomed to our country ways. You see, Sir, a garden’s a garden down our way: we grows fruit and vegetables in it for to eat. If the birds was to be master here, ’twouldn’t be no mortal manner of use our growing of ’em. Now I’ve heard tell as there’s gardens in London with nothing but wild animals in ’em, and maybe folks there understands the thing different to what we does.”
The Poet was inclined to think he was being made a fool of: this mild and worthy old man was quite too much for him. But he swallowed his temper and made an appeal to Joseph’s better feelings.
“Bates,” he said, in that gentle pathetic tone that his friends knew so well, “if you had lived in London for thirty years you would love to have the birds about you. Don’t people down here like to hear them sing? Don’t you feel a better man when you listen to a blackbird at dawn, as I did this morning?”
“Bless your heart, Sir,” answered Joseph, beginning to understand the situation, “I loves to hear ’em whistling, in their proper place! There’s a place for everything, as the Scripture says, and the garden’s no place for thieves; so we thinks down here, Sir, and if ’tis different where you come from, there’s no call for me to be argufying about it. We’ll let ’em be, Sir, we’ll let ’em be. I hope I knows my place.”
“Better than the birds, eh, Joseph,” said the mollified Poet. Joseph resumed his digging, and, as the newspapers say, the incident was closed.
Later in the morning the Parson dropped in to see his new parishioner, and was told of Mr. Bates’s loquacity.
“Well, well,” he said, “old Joseph is an oddity, and you must take him as you find him. But he’s quite right about the birds. They simply swarm here: the rooks and sparrows take your young peas, the bullfinches nip off your tender buds, and the blackbirds and thrushes won’t leave you a currant or a gooseberry to make your jam of.” Bessie looked up from her work with a face of alarm.
