Part 3

Ever since I was a very small child I had longed to possess a pair of budgerrygars. There was a tradition of three live ones once in our family, in proof whereof my nurse could point to a little stuffed bird in its case. I used to gaze with longing at that beautiful green and yellow creature, with the speckled back and the black and blue feathers in its neck, sitting with a foreground of quaking grasses and an eternal blue sky behind. There existed also, but rarely seen, a little cardboard box containing a few of these same mysteriously beautiful blue and yellow and green feathers, with here and there a long strong tail or wing quill. Yes, there had been budgerrygars among us once; there were even real live ones now in the possession of those happy Italian women who sit at the street corners, but for me--while I was still a child--they were inmates of that imaginary Paradise of unattainable things, wherein might be found little wax cages of birds, and the fluffy hollow ducks which live in confectioners’ shops and are sold for ninepence.

After I was grown up, a friend gave me one of these ducks; I have it still, and the halo still surrounds it. When I was grown up, too, some one gave me a pair of budgerrygars; and there followed a tragedy which was not bargained for in the price paid.

They came down from London in a tiny cage,--a travelling cage. Budgerrygars do not mind lack of room, it makes it all the easier for them to sit quite close, as if they were glued together. They were lovely little things, with their pearl-grey beaks,--wonderfully sharp and strong those beaks are, as I know to my cost,--but they could use them gently, and you would see one turn with a soft croon to put straight a ruffled feather on its mate’s head.

The little gentleman had caught a cold, not much of a cold at first; he only panted slightly as he sat near the little lady and ruffled his feathers; but she cheered him up, and smoothed the feathers down, and they sat side by side and looked at the world with little meaningless grey eyes.

Their new large cage was a great excitement, and it was immense fun for them to walk over the top, using their beak as a third leg, and that the most reliable. And their spirits ran so high that they began to shriek unmusically at each other when they found themselves at opposite corners of the cage.

I am afraid we were not as careful as we ought to have been with the little gentleman. They were so funny and pretty that they were carried from room to room; and the cage must have been in a draught, for the little gentleman began to puff and breathe rather hard, and his feathers were persistently ruffled, and the little lady could not smooth them down any more, even if she had tried.

Sympathy to the ailing, the feeble, and the weak is a very modern virtue; strange, as civilisation shows us what an unprogressive virtue it is. The lame and the blind were “hated of David’s soul”; animals and savages and men of early civilisation agree with David. Now and then you find a dog which will bring a broken-legged friend to the hospital, a cat which brings its half-starved neighbour to eat its own dinner,--souls of philanthropists on pilgrimage, dead or yet to be; but the stag’s instinct of goring the sickly ones, and the wolf’s of tearing the wounded, are the ruling instincts. The lady budgerrygar took David’s side in the matter. She did not wish to bite her spouse, or peck him, or pull his feathers out, but he began to be hated of her soul.

One day she would not let him sit by her on the perch; he could hardly get up to it, yet he would have done so for the sake of sitting close to her, for the sake of putting a stray feather straight in her ladyship’s top-knot, of feeling the little pearl-grey bill travelling softly over his head with a croon of affection; but she would not have it, she drove him away from her. So he sat on the lower perch, or on the bottom of the cage; he did not scream or croon, he just puffed his feathers out and panted. Did David repent in respect of the blind and lame when he said, “My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me”?

What strange rebellion against fate moved in the soul of the little budgerrygar, what necessity of finding a lonely place to die in, what sad desire of escaping from the mate who would no longer care for him? It is all very well to talk of “instinct” and dismiss the case, but how do you suppose the abstract idea of loneliness in death nerved the failing wings and feet to seek the door of the cage, made him squeeze through the door, such a little way open; how did it attract him across the room and through the half-open door,--away--away--as far as he could go from his faithless love? Did this abstract idea act on the little budgerrygar like a machine, and move and nerve the wings for such a flight? Or was there distress in the heart, and anguish in the little animal soul, when he found himself ill at ease and ailing, deserted and repulsed?

It is a work of skill and time to induce a healthy budgerrygar to leave its cage; but this quixotic spirit found his way out of the cage for himself, and found his way out of the room, and he must have flown until he dropped dead. For we found a little heap of gay green and yellow feathers in the passage,--stone-cold and stiff;--he had been dead some hours.

Budgerrygars are very sociable birds, they cannot live alone. The little dead bird could not. So we got a new mate for the lady, whom she received warmly, and the pair lived quite happily ever after.

But I should like to know, in the whole scheme of things, what is the recompense for the little deserted lover.

VI

JACK

Few people know how different one bird is from another of the same kind. Of course we can see when one canary is green and one yellow and one crested; but few people know that some canaries have blue eyes, some brown, and some grey; or how different one canary is in intelligence and character from another.

Jack was a remarkably intelligent canary; one always felt him to be immensely superior to oneself. When he consented to sit on his swing and allow me to swing him, he always seemed to say, “This is a very childish game, but it appears to amuse you, and I am by nature indulgent.” He was often very angry with me and pecked me, but I was sure I deserved it. The only blemish I ever found in him was that he was rather unscrupulous and ill-tempered, but then he was so exceedingly superior that he had to find fault with the canaries and me sometimes.

Jack was very bright yellow, with a slim, trim figure. When he was about two years old a little wife was given to him. She was almost white, and they looked very pretty together. Her name was Thyrsis. We tried to call them Corydon and Thyrsis, but “Jack” suited him so well that we were not able to change it, so they remained rather inharmoniously “Jack and Thyrsis” to the end of their lives.

I always used to turn Jack and Thyrsis out of their cage when I was cleaning it. One morning I did not see that the window of the room opposite was open. They flew round the room together, then coming to the open door they darted out of it, into the next room and straight to the window. One instant they rested on the window-sill, then like a flash of sunlight and moonlight they were out into the sunny garden and trees beyond. All that day I haunted the garden, too anxious to cry, carrying their cages about, in the vain hope that they might be hungry or thirsty and want to come back; once I thought I saw a flash of gold, but night fell and still the birds were out. The next day we sent the town-crier round shouting out a reward of five shillings for them, and the day following Thyrsis was brought back to me in a paper bag, much exhausted but not materially worse.

I did not hear of Jack for five months.

Then a boy who lived near and kept canaries heard for the first time of my loss, and he sent me a canary which some months ago had come through the open window and settled on his own bird’s cage. Of course it was Jack. He had not forgotten his way of coming towards me with wings outspread, uttering the funny scolding noise from which he got his name.

Now by this time Jack and Thyrsis were come to years of discretion, and it was thought that they ought to build and have young. So they were provided plentifully with horsehair and cottonwool, and given a small round basket in one of the cages, and we put their two cages together, opening the door between.

They were very much delighted with the wool, and played with it a great deal, but they seemed to have no idea of the proper use of it; if we put it into the nest for them, they merely pulled it out again.

This became so hopeless, and I was so anxious to try to rear little canaries, that a friend promised me another hen. She, however, forgot what our circumstances were, and sent us a pair, who were promptly named Jock and Mummy. I would not have Jack defrauded of his wife after all, so Mummy was taken away from Jock and given to Jack instead. There is not much to tell about poor Jock. He was a middle-aged gentleman, subject to chronic asthma, and could never in that state of health have undertaken the cares and responsibility of a young family. His cage was always hung up near the fire, and when he was worse than usual I gave him a tiny drop of sal-volatile in his water. He was a contented, cheerful bird, and lived as long as with his age and asthma one could expect.

Mummy was a crested bird, pale yellow with a green crest, rather pretty, but in mind utterly vulgar. Of course she was far more effective than the refined Thyrsis had ever been. She knew all about nest building, and began at once; while the cynical and gentlemanly Jack looked on. The pair always reminded one of an aristocratic philosopher who had married his cook.

But one must give Mummy the whole credit of the nest; she put the moss and hair and wool into it, she squatted herself down in it, turned round, fluffed herself out to make it hard and round and compact; and at intervals went to keep up her strength by taking her “dishing-up beer” in the shape of hempseed.

Then she laid eggs quite satisfactorily, and they came out quite satisfactorily, and one by one all the nestlings died--_not_ satisfactorily. On examining the little corpses, we found that they had died of starvation. Jack was found guilty at the inquest, for a first principle of domestic life among canaries is that the father feeds the birds while they are very young. What was the reason, then, that he had so disgracefully neglected his duty of feeding them, while his devoted wife sat on the nest to keep them warm? There must be something more than grandeur and cynicism to make a gentleman allow his children to die of starvation.

At last we found out the reason--Jack was flirting with his first love! Thyrsis’ cage was hung in Jack’s sight, and instead of feeding his infant children, or attending to them in any way, he clung to the corner of his cage all day and serenaded Thyrsis. We put Thyrsis out of his sight; Mummy laid a second set of eggs, and Jack attended to them as if he had done it all his life. It is true that he threw the eldest out of the nest on to the floor of the cage, but there is great excuse for that; a gentleman of refined and fastidious feelings must have had a dreadful shock when he first saw an unfledged canary and realised that that repulsive creature was his progeny. With all his cynicism, he could never have imagined that anything so loathsome existed. I don’t see what else he could have done,--I should have done it myself in his place. From whatever point you look at them, unfledged canaries are altogether and absolutely hideous; their brownish-pink skin is scantily covered with hairs, little bits of flesh wave helplessly about where their wings and legs are going to be, they have two large dark swellings where their eyes are going to be, and the only thing that is defined about them is a huge mouth which is almost always open and yelling. I had to pick the canary up from the bottom of the cage, and I still owe Jack a grudge for it, though I cannot in justice blame him.

Little canaries, when they are fledged, are as pretty as before they are frightful. These three little birds, when they were fledged, were all different and all beautiful. One was like her mother, yellow and green and crested; one like his father, all yellow; and one a sort of mixture, green and yellow and without a crest. Now a curious thing happened: the father chiefly devoted himself to feeding the little hen, who was like her mother; the mother (who begins to feed the birds when they are getting fledged and do not need warmth so much) fed the little cock like the father; and I have sometimes seen these two of their superfluity feeding their neglected brother. He throve well on the little attention he got.

I brought up several nests-ful. We had Tweedledum and Tweedledee,--Tweedledee’s name was subsequently changed to “Jewel” by a little cousin to whom I gave it, and who considered it a priceless treasure,--and Daffodil, the neglected nondescript, and Vicary, and Roumenik, called after the Wallachian country-place of some friends of ours; and others whose names I forget. Roumenik was the only one I kept, he was the last hatched, and was called “the Baby” until he died at the mature age of eight years.

There was one wonderful chicken who did not live to have a name. He was very precocious, and died young. This was how it happened: the misguided Mummy laid an egg in January, and in consequence, as I have always believed, of the weather being so much too cold when it was hatched, the bird could never get fledged; when it had already begun to be active and of a roving disposition, it still had no feathers on. Even sprouting wing-feathers might have broken its fall a little, on the many occasions when it tried to get out of the nest and fell on its back on the bottom of the cage. One day it had a fall more serious than usual, and till evening it sat on the edge of its waterglass with its head hanging down and its neck apparently dislocated. In the morning I found it dead in the waterglass. So I do not know to this day which accident it died of.

But meanwhile a sudden stirring of domestic instincts came to Thyrsis, and she was stimulated to rival Mummy’s nest-building. I gave her a little basket and materials for a nest, and she set to work and built a very good nest, and sat in it for six weeks, till her claws grew long and her legs grew weak, and there was of course no sign of an egg. Then I took it away from her, for I was afraid she would be ill with sitting, and it would never be the least use. Poor Thyrsis! under other circumstances she might have proved herself, if less vulgar, quite as effective as Mummy in building and breeding. When I had had her about seven or eight years she died quite suddenly. Was it of a broken heart? Had Jack’s too late attentions stirred in her the emotion of love, as he clung to the corner of his cage, singing to her and leaving his babies to starve?

There is just one more canary I must mention, for it had a curious name and history. It was called after one of my relations “Uncle Arthur”; that is to say, it was called so by myself and my brothers; for it was supposed to be called “Arthur” by my mother and “Mr. Sidgwick” by the outside world.

Uncle Arthur was Jack’s brother, but Jack had a monopoly of the intelligence of the family. Uncle Arthur had been half starved when he first came to me, and it had affected his intellect. Perhaps I had better mention that it was not from any supposed similarity in this respect that he was named after my uncle. He was idiotic in strange ways; for instance, I have known him try to bathe in a draught, from which he got inflammation of the lungs. For a long time, also, I found it was quite safe to take him out of doors without clipping his wings, for he was too foolish to know how to fly. One day, however, he astonished me by suddenly flying up into the top of a tree, which proved that his apparent powerlessness was the result of idiocy; for when he happened, as thus at intervals, to hit upon the right way of using his wings, he could fly quite well, though in a rather curious manner and with a pigeon-like noise. He never seemed to want to build nests, he never even serenaded any of the hen-birds of Jack’s family. He had a very happy, limited life. When he was already getting old I gave him away. I am sorry to say that his death was compassed accidentally by his new mistress; she was so much disgusted with him because he would not wash [he had probably forgotten how to], that she washed him one day herself with soap and flannel. Uncle Arthur died of it.

Jack outlived all the rest. Towards the end of Mummy’s life all illusion about her passed away; he got irritated and used to pull feathers out of her, though he tried to make up by much affection between times. But it was not Mummy’s fault. She was frankly vulgar from the beginning, and Jack, with his keen perception of character, ought to have known it.

VII

A REGULAR FLIRT

Gypsy was so called because he was bought off a gypsy-cart. A friend of mine was attracted by his wonderful voice, and gave a half-crown for him. Others were attracted by his voice too, with results more fatal.

He was in his first year when I had him, and it was not until the second year that his feathers and his fascination attained their full proportions. Gypsy was a mule, a cross between a goldfinch and canary. His back was dark green, he had a yellowish breast with dark splashes on it, black wing feathers, and two patches on his cheeks the colour of gooseberry fool; and he had a reddish golden crest, which he could raise a little when he was excited.

The next summer was beautiful weather at Oxford, and I took Gypsy there when I went to College, though I cannot say that he aided study. If I read, he got up a quarrel with the leaves of the book, and flew at them as I turned them over. If I wrote, he fell into a passion with my pen, and ran across the wet ink on my paper to peck it. And his love-affairs were very distracting.

Gypsy’s cage used to be put all day on the window-sill; and I began after a time to be aware that he was liable to be seized by sudden agitations, when he fluttered backwards and forwards in his cage, with a quick, excited note. A few days more and the cause of this agitation became apparent; for a little goldfinch, a hen goldfinch I suppose, came and sat upon the window-sill.

The intimacy rapidly improved; the goldfinch would come into the room and sit on Gypsy’s cage; it made friends with a siskin and a bullfinch in the next room, and would roost in an empty cage there at night.

Gypsy’s wing-feathers were clipped, so that I could let him walk about out of doors. When I took him into the garden he called to his friend, and the goldfinch dropped down by his side to take a walk with him. Other goldfinches came sometimes, but only one constantly and fearlessly when I was there. One day I remember Gypsy walking down the path in front of me accompanied by three friends.

But it was not long before there was a signal of danger. The house we were in was having some rooms added on to it, and there were workmen about. One day when I was sitting in my room and Gypsy was having an At Home, there was a little sound outside, and a limed stick was gently shoved towards my window-sill. Of course I remonstrated, and of course I was told by the workmen that they had done it entirely for my sake, because they thought that I should like to have the bird in a cage,--I could have caught the bird ten times over if I had wished it.

But this, I fear, must after all have been the end of the love-lorn bird; for it disappeared suddenly, and I never saw it again.

For a long time Gypsy had no society but mine and the canaries. He did not care for canaries, and he was mostly in a passion with me. But after some time a pair of goldfinches was given to us, much attached to each other and otherwise uninteresting. One day I put Gypsy in their cage to see what would happen. In three minutes a complete change had been worked in that happy home. Gypsy was sitting with the little lady on her perch, whispering sweet nothings into her ear, while her disconsolate spouse sat by himself on the perch below, meditating pistols for two and coffee for one.

I will do Gypsy the justice to say that he admired himself quite as much as anyone else admired him. When he was held to the looking-glass he did not fight his reflection as some animals do, he fell deeply in love with it, and whispered to it in a tiny, sweet, wooing voice, until it was obscured by a little circle of damp breath on the glass.

Some one may ask why, if Gypsy was so universally attractive and so extremely susceptible, I did not provide him with a wife to himself. Simply because it would have been no good; Gypsy was a mere flirt; he never would have had nests and eggs and brought up families like other birds; he was a mule-bird, and they cannot be domestic.

Gypsy had one last flickering of flirtation. I took his cage out one day into a London garden, and sat with him under a tree, and he sang loud; suddenly I heard a sound very unfamiliar in London, the voice of a bird which was hopping about on the tree above. I looked up, and through the leaves I could see that it was a little goldfinch; but it was shy and flew away.

These mule-birds die generally very suddenly; and Gypsy died without apparent sign of illness at about the age of ten years.

VIII

A FAITHFUL FRIEND

We were called into my mother’s room one day, and shown a hamper which had just arrived. The hamper was strangely agitated, like that hasty-pudding in which Tom Thumb sheltered, and when it was opened out rolled a puppy! It was a collie puppy, long haired, black, with tan cheeks, a white tip to his tail, white collar and paws, and wholly fascinating.

It was really a charming puppy; at present too young to sin; too young to do anything but roll about and be petted.

He was named Watch, “for,” said the friend who gave him, “he is a sheep dog, and you are a pastoral family”--a very pretty reason, but I think she was also influenced by the _horlogerie_ of our namesake.

Time passed, and Watch grew older and uglier. His neck lengthened, until his ears looked like ridiculous ornaments on the top of it, his legs grew long and lanky, his coat grew thin, and he grew naughty. He did not indeed eat up slippers, which is the favourite employment of story-book puppies, but he did pull most of a cold Sunday dinner on to the lawn, lick the butter out of the dish, and leave joints of mutton and beef on the grass. And he had another very original, reprehensible, natural impulse--he wished to garden. His method of gardening was to dig up saplings from a carefully-planted hedge of yews. He knew it was wrong, but he could not help it. When he was seen thus employed, he fled back and sheltered himself in his stable. He was just in that state of mind and body which answers in human beings to the condition of rapid growth and dissatisfied temper, when sleeves retreat up the arms, and frocks and knickerbockers up the legs, and the family seems to be in a conspiracy for making things disagreeable to you.

So it seemed best that he should be sent to a shepherd for training. He went, and three months passed, and we looked daily for his return; when one morning, I was sent for to the door, where I saw, held in a strap, a beautiful, bashful, silky collie, small and well-proportioned, with long tail and ruff, and silk-fringed legs, ready to hide his face against the first friend with affection. I could hardly believe it was Watch--he was full-blown, come out!