Part 5

And so he follows me round the place; I never garden alone. If at first I cannot see him, I whistle a quiet call; invariably I hear the Whisper Song in response, and there he is—waiting, watching, missing nothing, with his tiny throat feathers vibrating and quivering as he strives to let me into bird-land secrets, and tells me lots and lots of wonderful things that as yet I am too dull-witted to understand.

* * * * *

Then there are the blackbirds—for individuality they are hard to beat; though I admit they are always reproving someone or something, with their “Chutter, chut, chut!”

I never knew a bird with as many grudges and grievances as Augustus seems to have. He “chut-chuts” at me if I’m late with his breakfast, at Abigail when she ventures to gather a few raspberries, at the dog whenever he sees him, at the little colt for scampering down the meadow, at the cuckoo when his voice breaks—I’ve heard him get up after all the family had gone to bed, and roundly abuse a poor July cuckoo who had developed a bad stutter—and every night about sundown he admonishes the world in general, from his pulpit in a pine, despite the fact that Martha has put the children to bed and is trying to get them to sleep, and that every other masculine blackbird for acres round is discoursing on the same subject.

But the poor thing has had his troubles. The first time we really distinguished Augustus and Martha (who monopolise my bedroom window ledge, and the pinks and pansy border) from Claude and Juliet (who patronise the biggest mountain ash, and consider the white and red currants and the snails in the snapdragon bed their particular perquisites) was when the former (that means Augustus and Martha, you know) built in the old plum tree that hangs partly over the green and gold grotto. Though it has plenty of snowy-white flowers on its dark stems in the spring, it has been too neglected to produce much fruit; but it makes up in flowering ivy and heavenly-scented honeysuckle for any other deficiencies. And it was in this tangled mass of loveliness that Augustus and Martha first set up housekeeping. (Augustus being always recognizable by reason of one grey feather.)

They chose it with much circumspection—Martha with an eye to the easy building facilities offered by strands of tough woodbine, and sturdy ivy cables, combined with stout plum branches; Augustus with his main eye focussed on the bird-board, and the other on the accessibility of the bird-bath (originally a sheep-trough hollowed out of a block of rough stone, over which moss and small ivy are now trailing).

Altogether it was a most desirable site for a young couple. They were in full view of the side window in the living room, and we watched them flying in and out, to and fro, with beaks laden with grass and straw and similar materials for household decorations.

Later on, when two youngsters were hatched, there were the same endless journeyings, the same loaded beaks. But here Augustus’s perspicacity stood him in good stead; it was a very short flight from the plum tree down to the bird-board, and the pair must have nearly worn the air out, judging by the number of times they made the trip!

The tragedy happened when the youngsters were nearly ready to leave the nest. And the sad part of it was that we saw it all enacted before our eyes, and yet were powerless to prevent it.

We had just sat down to our mid-day meal; the day seemed all blue sky and bright flowers and gladdening sunshine—the very last day one ought to have met trouble.

Augustus had gone off to give Claude a piece of his mind that must have been owing for some time, judging by the heat and length of his harangue; Martha was gathering up the biggest mouthful she could manage (and it is astonishing how they will collect several pieces of bread, a piece of fat and a flake of oatmeal, packing it up securely in their beak, in order to carry it safely).

I saw a big bird swoop down on to the branch beside the nest; but big birds are so plentiful with us, it conveyed nothing out of the ordinary to me. It looked like a shrike, but I couldn’t be certain. Everything happened so quickly. It seized one of the little ones, killed it outright with one vicious toss, while the other baby called out in wild terror.

In far less time than it takes me to write this, the whole air seemed teeming with screaming blackbirds, dozens of them. They went for the murderer, trying to attack him with their beaks; but he flew off into the woods, followed by a crowd of threatening and bewailing birds; one could hear them in the distance when they were no longer in sight.

Of course we had all rushed out into the garden; but we could do nothing; the nest was too high up to be reached without a ladder.

Then an unusual silence fell over the garden; the majority of the birds having joined the crowd of pursuers. It is strange how we all bury our hatchets in face of a common danger!

It seemed almost death-like for the moment, till, from the top of a larch, a chaffinch bubbled forth. At least there was one happy bird left. Then I bethought me about baby-blackbird No. 2. The villain had only carried off one. We got a ladder, but no bird was in the nest!

We decided it must have fallen out in the scrimmage, and searched carefully. After a while we found it, helpless and terrified, among the ferns, just where it had fallen, in the grotto.

As it didn’t seem able to walk or fly, we left it there, and sat down to watch events. Back came poor Martha presently. She looked in the nest, then flew distractedly about. But I suppose the baby was too dazed with fright to do a thing, at any rate it never uttered a sound or call; and the distressed mother flew off again to the woods on her hopeless quest.

We remained on watch the whole afternoon and evening; but neither parent returned. Then I began to get anxious. I put a little food near the frightened crouching thing, but it took no notice. Only once it gave a piteous cry; how I wished it would keep it up! That at least would surely reach the mother in time. But it didn’t repeat the call.

At last we had to go in, because it was getting dark, and every bird but our poor little baby was safely in bed. We tried to console ourselves by saying that it would probably be all right, and it was wonderful how birds survived all sorts of dangers. But, all the same, we none of us believed we should ever see him again; and we shook our heads silently next morning, when we found an empty space under the ferns, where we had left him overnight.

During the day, my suspicions were aroused by the fact that Augustus returned again and again to the bird-board and stuffed his beak full of provender, which he carried off in the good old way. But the moment I tried to follow him, he merely went into a near-by tree, and tried to say “Chut! chut!” with his mouth full!

It took me all the afternoon, and used up all the stealth and cautiousness I possess, to track him. He would not fly any more than he could help; he kept right down on the ground, running along with his head slightly lowered, keeping close to the shadow of the wall, slipping under hedges and low growths, always looking about from side to side, standing stock still when he scented danger—in this way he got up the hill, and right across a field, to where a big Wellingtonia stands like a pyramid, against a stone wall, its outspreading branches drooping protectingly, and hiding all sorts of secrets in its dark green depths.

Behold, there was Martha, anxiously waiting on the doorstep, so to speak, for Augustus to return. She was as cautious in her movements as he was, but she couldn’t help uttering a low “Chut! chut!” of pleasure when she saw his beak so crammed with good things. Both slipped in under the lowest branch.

I bided my time. I didn’t want to add one single extra anxiety to the little mother heart that was already so burdened with care. But when at length I saw both birds slink off in search of food, I parted the branches and looked in. For some time I could see nothing, it was so dark and mysterious under the heavily plumed boughs, but the little one had learnt to use its voice by now; “Cheep” came vigorously from within; and then I saw our baby comfortably ensconced on a drift of pine needles against the wall.

I slipped away quietly, wondering and wondering how in the world those little birds had managed to get that fat youngster up that hill and into the tree that was fully three minutes’ walk, even for me, from the old nest!

The baby flourished apace, and before we returned to town, it was brought along to the pansy border, and told to stay there quite still for a moment, while mother got it something to eat. But it didn’t do anything of the sort; directly her back was turned, it hopped into the bird’s bath, and splashed joyously till its expostulating parents returned, alarmed out of their senses lest it should be drowned!

* * * * *

After thinking it over, I fancy that for all-round serviceability you cannot do better than the blackbird. He starts singing in January, as a rule, and keeps at it till August, always a beautiful song, but not always the same song.

It is a clear-blue message of hope, as it rings out on a cold winter’s day.

As the spring progresses, it becomes a cascade that overflows with bubbling sound and ends with a challenge: “Let any blackbird dare to say he can sing that cadenza as brilliantly as I can, and I’ll know the reason why!”

Later on, when the nestlings keep up a constant demand for “more,” he only manages to get in an occasional stanza; and that, I am inclined to think, is when he has a difference of opinion with another of his kind; though sometimes he sings a rippling, pulsating song to the setting sun.

But best of all I love him when the summer has run well on into July. He is getting tired then; two families—possibly with four in the nest at a time—are something of a handful to cater for. He has become draggled and weary in appearance. His yellow-ringed eyes do not seem as sparkling as they were. But he still tries to do his best, and towards sundown you may hear him singing; one of those in my garden seems to have a preference for an underbough on a tall pine, where he stands almost hidden from sight, and whistles gently and softly—though not to me personally, as the robin does; apparently he is talking to himself.

Gone is the buoyancy of his early spring song; gone the self-assertiveness, the boastfulness and dominating clamour of his early married life. Now, his song is much subdued, gentler, and strangely suggestive of a quiet, almost saddened reminiscence.

Is it that his family have failed to come up to his expectations? Is his song tinged with regret for the lost happiness of those first glad days of spring? Or is it the reflection of the tranquillity that comes to those who bravely shouldered life’s responsibility when the time came for leaving behind the things of youth?

Who knows what that subdued but exquisite little song means, as it falls, like a rain of soft, gentle sounds from the branches above?

I cannot tell, but it stirs something strangely responsive in my own heart; I sense far-back things that I cannot take hold of, or put into tangible shape, and for the moment I feel mysteriously akin to the unseen singer in the blue-green depths of the old and rugged pine.

VII

Only Small Talk

I SEEM to have wandered a long way from Eileen, but it was really she who brought the birds to my mind.

I got up early the morning after our arrival, in order to show her the way about, and because it is not one of my daily duties to be the first down in the morning, I noticed all the more how the opening of the doors and windows, to let in the day, is something much more than the mere undoing of locks and latches. There is nothing to compare with the inrush of sweet morning air that greets you on the threshold, as you take your first look-out on a dew-sparkling garden, probably all alive with the songs and chirps and twitters of the birds, and teeming with the scents of things seen and unseen, each pouring forth its gratitude in its own way for the ever-new miracle of the sun’s return.

This letting in of light and clean air, sunshine, song and scent, after the inanimate darkness of the night, is so wonderfully symbolic that it seems a mistake that it has come to be regarded as one of the inferior domestic tasks, relegated to the minor members of the household. And though I am not one of those exceptionally virtuous people who habitually rise at six o’clock, waking every one else within earshot and taking vain pride in their performances, whenever I chance to be the first one to welcome the morning and let in the day, I feel there are decided compensations for the wrench of getting out of bed minus a cup of tea.

I also realize how easy it is, in the flush of exhilaration produced by the early morning air, to make oneself a nuisance to all who are less energetic. For some unaccountable reason, when I am down extra early, I always want to bustle about, and do all sorts of rackety things that never occur to me on the days when I do not put in an appearance till breakfast is ready.

I had opened the windows in the living-room, and had set Eileen to make the fire, and was seeing to things in the kitchen, when she followed me with an excited squawk: “Oh, ma’am, there’s somebody has lost their canary! It was on the window ledge just now, and it’s flown into a tree. Have you got a bird-cage handy? I expect I could catch it. There it is again”—pointing to a handsome yellow and black tit who was pecking eagerly at some bacon rind I had just hung up outside the window.

I explained.

“Wild, is he? _Wild?_” she exclaimed; “and don’t they charge you nothing for them?”

She finished the room with one eye perpetually on the windows.

Having a healthy appetite, that had been touched up a little extra with the hill-top air, she was more than willing to help me get the meal ready. I made the usual preliminary inquiries as to her experience in regard to cooking, and was surprised to hear that she had actually won a silver medal at a Cookery Exhibition.

Surely this was unexpected good fortune, and I asked myself if I really deserved such a heaven-sent boon as a silver-medalled cook! I decided, however, that in view of all I had undergone in the past at the hands of those who were not so decorated, it was nothing more than my due that I should be so blessed in my declining years. My only regret was that war-time would allow so little scope for her genius!

Feeling very light-hearted, and wondering how she would get on with Abigail when cook gave one of her periodical notices and I placed Eileen on the permanent staff, I said: “Then I needn’t bother about the breakfast! We will have poached eggs on toast. I’ll lay the cloth while you get them ready.”

But she looked at me doubtfully. “We didn’t ever have _poached_ eggs at the boarding-house,” she began. “But I think I know how to do ’em. You just break them on the gridiron over the top of the fire, don’t you?”

After all, it was I who poached the eggs, while Eileen explained that the medal had been awarded to the cookery class at the orphanage _en bloc_, for making a Swiss roll. . . . No, unfortunately, she didn’t know how to make Swiss roll either, as she had been down with scarlet fever that term. Still, it was her class that got the medal, so of course she had as much right to it as anyone else.

I trust I bore the disappointment complacently. I’m fairly hardened to such sudden drops in the kitchen thermometer.

The great thing about Eileen was her willingness, and her anxiety to learn.

When I was seeking to impart knowledge, however, she seemed to think it was for her also to contribute some general information. Hence our duologues often ran on these lines:—

“When you make the tea or coffee, be sure that the water is _quite_ boiling; or else——”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you know, one of the young gentlemen where I used to live, couldn’t help being bald, no matter if he used a whole bottle of hair restorer every day. It ran in his fambly.”

“Really! Well, now we’ll fry some bacon. You put a little of the bacon fat from this jar into the pan first of all to get hot. Like this.”

“Yes, ma’am. Isn’t it strange, grandmother won’t never have red roses in her bonnet. Can’t bear red.”

She also excelled in asking questions; from morn till eve life seemed one long series of conundrums which I was expected to answer. I never realized before how many queries country life presents; hitherto it had seemed to me such a simple, straightforward state of existence.

An old man had been secured to do an occasional odd day’s work (at highest London prices). He described some misfortune that, last autumn, had befallen “Hussy,” the cow who comes for change of air into my orchard at intervals—an apple she had eaten (one of mine, of course) being blamed for the fact that her milk turned off, “like vinegar ’twas.”

Eileen—in common with every other young human under twenty years of age—thrilled at the word apple, and inquired if “Hussy” had stolen it off a tree?

“Stolen it off a tree!” scoffed the man; “and why should she bother to creek her neck up’ards when they was lying by the thousand as thick on the ground in that thur orchard as—as—well, as apples!”

Eileen looked incredulous.

“Yes, by the thousand they was, and not wuth picking up, no one wanted ’em; no men to make cider; no sugar to jam ’em; child’un all got colic a’ready as bad as bad could be, couldn’t swaller no more; too damp to keep. Ay, and we that short o’ cider as we be!” And the aged one—who had been coining money hand over fist, with letter carrying, and the sale of eggs and poultry, and a couple of pigs, and the hay in his paddock, to say nothing of gilt-edged easy little jobs waiting for him all about the place at any price per hour he cared to charge, and old age pensions paid regularly to himself and wife—paused to shake his head and sigh over the misfortunes of the times.

Eileen was likewise moved. To think of it—unwanted apples! And no one to eat them! She reverted to the phenomenon several times that day, with such queries as these:—If eating one apple turns the cow’s milk to vinegar, would eating fifty turn it to cider? If so, wouldn’t it be cheaper to make the cow grow cider, as the old man said cider had riz to 7_d._ a quart, and milk was only 6_d._ You would then make a penny a quart profit that you could put into the Savings Bank to help the War.

After watching some vegecultural operations she inquired: “Why is it, when he puts potatoes in the ground and beans in the ground all the same way, the beans come out at the top of the plant and the potatoes come out at the bottom?”

Another time it was: “What do they use the sting of the nettle for?” And when she had enlarged her garden vocabulary, she inquired: “Is a spider an annual or a perennial?”

“I can’t find a tap out there to turn off the water,” and she indicated the spring outside the gate, tumbling out of a little wooden trough wedged in among the rocks, into a pool below. “I suppose they stop it at the main. What time do they turn it off? . . . _Never?_ It runs like that always! Then how long is it before the whole lot runs away and it’s all dried up? And don’t they ever come down on you for wasting the water?”

* * * * *

Yet more accomplished people than Eileen have often surprised one by their ignorance. An experienced and supposed-to-be-highly-qualified cook came to me one day with the sad news that we couldn’t have any stuffing with the duck for dinner that day as there wasn’t a single bottle of herbs in the house. I reminded her that there was an almost unlimited amount of everything in the garden, including a sage bush growing on a wall that now measures 15 feet by 6 feet. “In the garden?” she repeated in surprise. “But I didn’t know it was good unless it was bottled! You don’t mean that country people use those things raw?”

I felt such an apologetic cannibal as I explained!

She it was who split up the chopping board to light the fire, the first morning after her arrival, because she couldn’t find a bundle of firewood anywhere. On being referred to the stack of dry kindling wood in the coal shed—she had never heard of lighting fires with trees before; never thought, indeed, to live with a family that expected you to do such things!

* * * * *

On one occasion, when I was in one of the largest and poorest of the London Elementary Schools, where the children looked as pitifully sordid and poverty-stricken as I have ever seen them, I asked a few questions of one small girl in the front row of a class. Her outside dress consisted of an old dilapidated waistcoat worn over a dingy flannelette nightgown, while a ragged piece of serge fastened around the waist with a safety-pin did duty for a skirt. But she was only one among a classful of rags and tatters.

“What is your name?” I asked, by way of starting conversation.

“Victorine,” the forlorn-looking little thing replied.

“And what is your lesson about?” I then inquired.

“Therdelfykorrickul,” she informed me.

Seeing the bewildered look on my face, the head mistress, who was showing me round, said, “Enunciate your words more carefully, Victorine, and speak slowly.”

Victorine understood what “speak slowly” meant, and so she said very deliberately, “The—Delphic—Horricul.”

“So you are learning about the Delphic Oracle. And what are you going to do when you grow up?” was my next query.

“I’m going to work in the laundry like muvver!”

We went into another classroom; here more ragged unwashed clothes greeted me on every hand. I had no need to ask the subject of the lesson, for the girls were facing a blackboard on which was written “The Characteristics of Shelley’s Poetry.”

After I had seen more tatters in a third room, where a lesson was being given on “Infinitive Verbs,” I said to the head mistress, “If I had this school, do you know what I should do? I should take a class at a time, and give out needles and cotton, and tell them to do the best they could to sew up the rags in their dresses and their pinafores. I would not mind if they did not put on patches even to a thread in the regulation way, so long as they made some attempt to run together those rents and slits and yawning gaps. I would let the other lessons go till this was done. And I would not let a girl take her place in a class in the morning till she had mended as well as she could any rents she had worn to school.”

The head mistress shook her head. “That would not be practical; you see, it isn’t in the Syllabus.”

I don’t pretend to understand the inwardness of syllabuses, but I couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t an opening here for a new one. While so much unpractical stuff is taught to the poorer classes in elementary schools, is it any wonder that the children know so little of the things appertaining to daily life?

Eileen didn’t exactly suffer from rags. She was as neat and patched and wholesome as her clean, sensible grandmother could make her; but she was forlorn-looking to the last degree. One of the first things I tried to do was to get her to take a little pride in her personal appearance. And it was wonderful how she responded. With her hair released from the uncompromising, tight screw that had been kept in place by three big iron-looking hair-pins, and done higher up, and more loosely over the forehead, and a pretty collar and blue bow for her Sunday blouse, she looked a different being.