Part 3

The toucan will chatter horribly in native freedom, but that is only when many hundreds of other toucans are present to keep it in countenance; for the toucan's voice is not pretty, and he knows it. Still, when hundreds assemble, every one with a discordant voice, nothing is more natural than that they should all shout at once, and unite in the belief that the performance is admirable. If there were any ugly women (there are not, of course--it is a mere hypothesis), and they were all collected together to the number of many hundreds on a solitary island, the first thing they would do would be to hold a beauty show with a prize for everybody, and next they would fight over the distribution of those prizes. The toucans do something very much like this--minus the fighting, because the prize is mutual admiration. They chatter and scream in their hundreds--taking care to leave a sentinel on guard, because other animals won't stand anything, even in South America--and at intervals they all join in a simultaneous yell of approbation, audible half a league off. The whole performance is a sad piece of humbug, which makes one marvel greatly that because of it the South American natives call the toucan the Preacher-bird. Here, with so many gorgeous parrots and macaws about, the toucan behaves with becoming modesty, but in the presence of any duller-clad bird than itself its arrogance is frightful. A great crowd of toucans will mob any such unfortunate creature with much chatter, till, surrounded by long and threatening bills, like a despairing debtor, he "hops the twig"--if he can.

Perhaps the most dissipated-looking creature in the animal kingdom is a toucan during a bad moult. You long to give him a gallon of soda-water and a temperance tract. He sleeps much (a toucan always sleeps with his beak over his shoulder and covered by his wing--he doesn't mean to have that nose stolen)--he sleeps as much as possible, and wakes as seedy as one can imagine. He can scarcely drag his beak off his back without banging it on his perch, and considers the question of breakfast with a shudder. With many blinks he strives desperately to pull himself together--to pull together a handful of loose quills and a beak. They give him grapes; it is a mockery. Who can eat grapes with such a head? He may struggle with a grape perhaps for a few seconds, but breakfast beats him in the end, and he retires to a repentant corner. What a night it must have been!

Out of his moult, however, and in good feather, the toucan is rather a fine bird, so long as you forget his nose. The Ariel toucan here--with the black beak--is a little horsey in aspect--a very little--but quite neat and gentlemanly. Not such a real old crusted Tory-club-window gentleman as the Triton cockatoo, but still a gentleman. As for the green-billed toucan, she can never be anything but a good-natured Jewess in her most gorgeous Shabbos clothes.

The comparative quietness of the toucans in house number 54-55 is, probably, due to a worse thing--the noise of the parrots and cockatoos; the house can hold no more noise, and the toucans altogether despair of ever making themselves heard. Why the windows are so rarely broken I can scarcely understand, except on the hypothesis of a suspension of natural laws for the benefit of natural science and its institutions. The keeper says he doesn't mind the noise--to such torture may human nature be accommodated by long habit. Saint Cecilia would have become accustomed to boiling if she had had forty years of it. The other saint (male, but I forget which) who was grilled could never have done without his hot gridiron if he had been able to keep on it for forty years, the time this keeper has been among these parrots. Personally, I should expect to become reconciled to boiling, grilling, or any other class of plain cookery, in about half the time that would elapse before a few hundred competitive parrot-yells began to feel soothing to the nerves.

There is no other house in these Gardens where the unobtrusive visitor is so made to feel his utter smallness and insignificance--and that by mere brazen clamour--as in this. The elephants look large--they _are_ large--but the elephants behave with gentlemanly quietness and self-respect. The parrots rise up and curse you (and everything else) with sudden and painful unanimity. You are appalled, dwarfed, made insignificant and ashamed by the overpowering vastness of--the mere row.

The fact is that each single individual of this crowd of parrots, cockatoos, macaws, and parrakeets holds his own importance above every other created thing as a prime article of belief, and is naturally and most virtuously indignant when he finds that you don't go directly to him and load him with presents. Therefore, he blares and screams at you, till the air swims in your ears and eyes and the outer world is but a chaos of great beaks, angry combs, and streaks of red, green, and white. If you venture so far as to make an invidious selection, and tender a peace-offering to a particular bird, you draw down upon your devoted head the double rage and united jealousy of all the other parrots, cockatoos, parrakeets, and macaws, each convinced that you couldn't possibly have seen _him_ or you would never have slighted so superlative a creature; and again the air and the colours swim to your senses. The whole sensation is not unlike that produced by a long inspection of immense thundering and shrieking engineering works. You feel bewildered and you feel small: and everything about you is metallic and mechanical. Every movement of a parrot, if you will but notice it, is suggestive of metal joints and mechanical action; and the voice--but there is no metal metallic enough to emit such a voice as that at its worst.

There is a married couple here--Triton cockatoos--near the keeper's room. They nag and quarrel and snarl at one another, and all on strictly mechanical principles. Their only gibe is an inarticulate snarl delivered when repartee seems unlikely. Thus, Mr. C. observing Mrs. C. apparently asleep will snarl ferociously, and compose himself to rest. In a little while Mrs. C. will rouse herself, and perceiving the placid quiescence of Mr. C., will snarl at him and go to sleep again: all this with a mechanic jerk of the head and neck suggestive of Punch or an automaton. After a while, perhaps, the inclination for a snarl will take both at once, and, finding themselves face to face, with nothing original to say, they will subside and sulk for the rest of the day, each trying hard to think of some particularly unkind remark to hurl at the other.

Cocky, the big Triton, has been moved here from the insect-house, and shows signs of forgetting his English. That is what will occur in a congregation of this sort. The marvel is that many of the birds will still talk at all. An old, rose-crested cockatoo will dance gracefully, with his head on one side (and his eye on the reward), at the offer of a nut. He is called Cocky, in common with all of his kind, just as the parrot is always Polly; but I prefer to call him Richardson, because his is, practically speaking, the only show in the fair. There is a slender-billed cockatoo, who offers me a warlike challenge to "come on" whenever I approach him, and a few more who have a word or two, but Richardson is the only bird capable of a decent show. He will stand at his cage wires and bawl out "What ho! what ho! what ho!" in a way that confirms his classification as a showman and gives a hint of aspirations to tragedy. Richardson is the least mechanical of the birds here, and is a most respectable and old-fashioned veteran, who would look quite in character taking snuff, and whose polite accomplishments have not been ruined by his residence among unmannered crowds of other birds.

But, mannered or not, here is nothing but a crowd of screaming, unfeeling, snapping painted machines. I have never seen a plucked parrot, but I know, without seeing, that you have only to pluck one to lay bare nuts and bolts, cams, hinges, springs, cranks, and metallic joints. See a cockatoo spread and shut his crest: clearly it is just the motion that could be actuated by a string on the wooden harlequin principle: probably, as there is no string, there is a long spiral spring under the feathers of the head (just lying along where some people part their hair) set going by a catch on the principle of the air-gun trigger. As to the gorgeous mechanisms on perches that hang in a line down the main aisle, every joint, sound, and motion spells "clockwork" aloud. Such of these as speak have one word, which is "Hullo!" This, in varying degrees of urgency and gruffness, will greet you as you pass along the line--if you show any indication of nuts; otherwise you are insignificant, and unworthy of notice. One fine blue and yellow machine will not say "Hullo" without receiving a nut in advance; probably being constructed on the familiar automatic principle. But it is all an expressionless outcome of clockwork.

We seldom see among the lists of "patents sealed" and "provisional protections" granted, any reference to an invention for improvements in the mechanism of parrots and cockatoos. It is a remarkable thing that so obvious a field for invention and improvement should have been so much neglected. Plainly, an easy and obvious improvement would be the provision of a simple shut-off valve, by which the suffering proprietor could stop the parrot's steam whistle when desired. The desirability of some such improvement need not be enlarged upon, and, once the appliance were in the market, every parrot-owner would hasten to have it fitted to his machine. Another contrivance, having the same object, would consist of a self-acting escape valve, by which the familiar scream of the mechanism would be diverted, and escape noiselessly through a small grating at the back of the neck after a certain degree of pressure had been attained. Moreover, what more easy than to have the outer side of the jaw-hinge fitted with a convenient butterfly-nut, by tightening which, after the periodical stoking with maize and so forth, the engine would be prevented from nipping carelessly-offered fingers? As it is at present, the jaw-hinge is a mere ordinary pair of sharp pincers barbarically ornamented with feathers and colours. Improvements suggest themselves at every point. Many of these otherwise amusing instruments cause trouble by occasionally breaking out into startling and exceedingly forcible language. It would seem that a pressure valve might be profitably employed in this case also, by means of which, as soon as the expressions reached to the degree of "blow it," or "shut up," the power would be immediately diverted, and either allowed to escape harmlessly through a small chimney at the top of the head, or else conducted by a power-transmitting mechanism to an adjacent musical-box, which would play "Pop Goes the Weasel," or something else of a similarly moral tendency. The whole subject is full of profitable suggestions, which are offered, free of any expense beyond a small royalty to myself, to the notice of persons of mechanical genius.

_Stories from the Diary of a Doctor._

_By the Authors of_ "THE MEDICINE LADY."

IX. AN OAK COFFIN.

On a certain cold morning in early spring, I was visited by two ladies, mother and daughter. The mother was dressed as a widow. She was a tall, striking-looking woman, with full, wide-open dark eyes, and a mass of rich hair turned back from a white and noble brow. Her lips were firm, her features well formed. She seemed to have plenty of character, but the deep lines of sadness under her eyes and round her lips were very remarkable. The daughter was a girl of fourteen, slim to weediness. Her eyes were dark, like her mother's, and she had an abundance of tawny brown and very handsome hair. It hung down her back below her waist, and floated over her shoulders. She was dressed, like her mother, in heavy mourning, and round her young mouth and dark, deep eyes there lingered the same inexpressible sadness.

I motioned my visitors to chairs, and waited as usual to learn the reason of their favouring me with a call.

"My name is Heathcote," said the elder lady. "I have lately lost my husband. I have come to you on account of my daughter--she is not well."

I glanced again more attentively at the young girl. I saw that she looked overstrained and nervous. Her restlessness, too, was so apparent that she could scarcely sit still, and catching up a paper-knife which stood on the table near, she began twirling it rapidly between her finger and thumb.

"It does me good to fidget with something," she said, glancing apologetically at her mother.

"What are your daughter's symptoms?" I asked.

Mrs. Heathcote began to describe them in the vague way which characterizes a certain class of patient. I gathered at last from her words that Gabrielle would not eat--she slept badly--she was weak and depressed--she took no interest in anything.

"How old is Miss Gabrielle?" I asked.

"She will be fifteen her next birthday," replied her mother.

All the while Mrs. Heathcote was speaking, the young daughter kept her eyes fixed on the carpet--she still twirled the paper-knife, and once or twice she yawned profoundly.

I asked her to prepare for the usual medical examination. She complied without any alacrity, and with a look on her face which said plainly, "Young as I am, I know how useless all this fuss is--I only submit because I must."

I felt her pulse and sounded her heart and lungs. The action of the heart was a little weak, but the lungs were perfectly healthy. In short, beyond a general physical and mental debility, I could find nothing whatever the matter with the girl.

After a time, I rang the bell to desire my servant to take Miss Heathcote into another room, in order that I might speak to her mother alone.

The young lady went away very unwillingly. The sceptical expression on her face was more apparent than ever.

"You will be sure to tell me the exact truth?" said Mrs. Heathcote, as soon as we were alone.

"I have very little to tell," I replied. "I have examined your daughter carefully. She is suffering from no disease to which a name can be attached. She is below par, certainly; there is weakness and general depression, but a tonic ought to set all these matters right."

"I have tried tonics without avail," said Mrs. Heathcote.

"Has not your family physician seen Miss Heathcote?"

"Not lately." The widow's manner became decidedly hesitating. "The fact is, we have not consulted him since--since Mr. Heathcote's death," she said.

"When did that take place?"

"Six months ago."

Here she spoke with infinite sadness, and her face, already very pale, turned perceptibly paler.

"Is there nothing you can tell me to give me a clue to your daughter's condition? Is there anything, for instance, preying on her mind?"

"Nothing whatever."

"The expression of her face is very sad for so young a girl."

"You must remember," said Mrs. Heathcote, "that she has lately lost her father."

"Even so," I replied; "that would scarcely account for her nervous condition. A healthy-minded child will not be overcome with grief to the serious detriment of health after an interval of six months. At least," I added, "that is my experience in ordinary cases."

"I am grieved to hear it," said Mrs. Heathcote.

She looked very much troubled. Her agitation was apparent in her trembling hands and quivering lips.

"Your daughter is in a nervous condition," I said, rising. "She has no disease at present, but a little extra strain might develop real disease, or might affect her nerves, already overstrung, to a dangerous degree. I should recommend complete change of air and scene immediately."

Mrs. Heathcote sighed heavily.

"You don't look very well yourself," I said, giving her a keen glance.

She flushed crimson.

"I have felt my sorrow acutely," she replied.

I made a few more general remarks, wrote a prescription for the daughter, and bade Mrs. Heathcote good-bye. About the same hour on the following morning I was astonished when my servant brought me a card on which was scribbled in pencil the name _Gabrielle Heathcote_, and underneath, in the same upright, but unformed hand, the words, "I want to see you most urgently."

A few moments later, Miss Gabrielle was standing in my consulting-room. Her appearance was much the same as yesterday, except that now her face was eager, watchful, and all awake.

"How do you do?" she said, holding out her hand, and blushing. "I have ventured to come alone, and I haven't brought a fee. Does that matter?"

"Not in the least," I replied. "Pray sit down and tell me what you want."

"I would rather stand," she answered; "I feel too restless and excited to sit still. I stole away from home without letting mother know. I liked your look yesterday and determined to see you again. Now, may I confide in you?"

"You certainly may," I replied.

My interest in this queer child was a good deal aroused. I felt certain that I was right in my conjectures of yesterday, and that this young creature was really burdened with some secret which was gravely undermining her health.

"I am willing to listen to you," I continued. "You must be brief, of course, for I am a very busy man, but anything you can say which will throw light on your own condition, and so help me to cure you, will, of course, be welcome."

"You think me very nervous?" said Miss Gabrielle.

"Your nerves are out of order," I replied.

"You know that I don't sleep at night?"

"Yes."

Miss Gabrielle looked towards the door.

"Is it shut?" she asked, excitedly.

"Of course it is."

She came close to me, her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, her face turned not only white but grey.

"I can stand it no longer," she said. "I'll tell you the truth. You wouldn't sleep either if you were me. _My father isn't dead!_"

"Nonsense," I replied. "You must control such imaginings, Miss Gabrielle, or you will really get into a very unhealthy condition of mind."

"That's what mother says when I speak to her," replied the child. "But I tell you, this thing is true. My father is not dead. I know it."

"How can you possibly know it?" I asked.

"I have seen him--there!"

"You have seen your father!--but he died six months ago?"

"Yes. He died--and was buried, and I went to his funeral. But all the same he is not dead now."

"My dear young lady," I said, in as soothing a tone as I could assume, "you are the victim of what is called a hallucination. You have felt your father's death very acutely."

"I have. I loved him beyond words. He was so kind, so affectionate, so good to me. It almost broke my heart when he died. I thought I could never be happy again. Mother was as wretched as myself. There weren't two more miserable people in the wide world. It seemed impossible to either of us to smile or be cheerful again. I began to sleep badly, for I cried so much, and my eyes ached, and I did not care for lessons any more."

"All these feelings will pass," I replied; "they are natural, but time will abate their violence."

"You think so?" said the girl, with a strange smile. "Now let me go on with my story: It was at Christmas time I first saw my father. We live in an old house at Brixton. It has a walled-in garden. I was standing by my window about midnight. I had been in bed for an hour or more, but I could not sleep. The house was perfectly quiet. I got out of bed and went to the window and drew up the blind. I stood by the window and looked out into the garden, which was covered with snow. There, standing under the window, with his arms folded, was father. He stood perfectly still, and turned his head slowly, first in the direction of my room and then in that of mother's. He stood there for quite five minutes, and then walked across the grass into the shelter of the shrubbery. I put a cloak on and rushed downstairs. I unbolted the front door and went into the garden. I shouted my father's name and ran into the shrubbery to look for him, but he wasn't there, and I--I think I fainted. When I came to myself I was in bed and mother was bending over me. Her face was all blistered as if she had been crying terribly. I told her that I had just seen father, and she said it was a dream."

"So it was," I replied.

Miss Gabrielle's dark brows were knit in some pain.

"I did not think you would take that commonplace view," she responded.

"I am sorry I have offended you," I answered. "Girls like you do have bad dreams when they are in trouble, and those dreams are often so vivid, that they mistake them for realities."

"Very well, then, I have had more of those vivid dreams. I have seen my father again. The last time I saw him he was in the house. It was about a month ago. As usual, I could not sleep, and I went downstairs quite late to get the second volume of a novel which interested me. There was father walking across the passage. His back was to me. He opened the study door and went in. He shut it behind him. I rushed to it in order to open it and follow him. It was locked, and though I screamed through the key-hole, no one replied to me. Mother found me kneeling by the study door and shouting through the key-hole to father. She was up and dressed, which seemed strange at so late an hour. She took me upstairs and put me to bed, and pretended to be angry with me, but when I told her that I had seen father she burst into the most awful bitter tears and said:--

"'Oh, Gabrielle, he is dead--dead--quite dead!'

"'Then he comes here from the dead,' I said. 'No, he is not dead. I have just seen him.'

"'My poor child,' said mother, 'I must take you to a good doctor without delay. You must not get this thing on your brain.'

"'Very well,' I replied; 'I am quite willing to see Dr. Mackenzie.'"

I interrupted the narrative to inquire who Dr. Mackenzie was.

"He is our family physician," replied the young lady. "He has attended us for years."

"And what did your mother say when you proposed to see him?"

"She shivered violently, and said, 'No, I won't have him in the house.' After a time she decided to bring me to you."

"And have you had that hallucination again?" I inquired.

"It was not a hallucination," she answered, pouting her lips.

"I will humour you," I answered. "Have you seen your father again?"

"No, and I am not likely to."

"Why do you think that?"

"I cannot quite tell you--I think mother is in it. Mother is very unhappy about something, and she looks at me at times as if she were afraid of me." Here Miss Heathcote rose. "You said I was not to stay long," she remarked. "Now I have told you everything. You see that it is absolutely impossible for ordinary medicines to cure me, any more than ordinary medicines can cure mother of her awful dreams."