Tales of the birds

The gray wagtail looked at his wife, and she looked at him, and they seemed to nod to one another in rather an odd way.

“Dear, dear!” said the wife, – “what a sad pity!”

“Oh, dear me, dear me!” said the husband, “how sad! And such a nice young creature too! What can we do for her?”

The wife shook her head silently; Kelpie felt dreadfully ashamed of herself. What could be the matter?

“Please tell me if I have done anything wrong,” she said.

“My dear,” said the wife very kindly, “I fear you are not very well. If I were you I should get advice as soon as possible. I strongly recommend the kingfisher, who lives yonder up the brook; I believe he is very clever in cases like yours, and he eats fish, which is very good for the brain, you know. You’ll be sure to find him if you wait about a little. I am very sorry, my dear, but we must go away, for they say it’s extremely catching.” And followed by her husband she flew away down the stream.

Kelpie was now quite frightened. Something seemed to be altogether wrong with her. She began to think she must have eaten something that fatal day on the lawn, which was growing up inside her, and causing her all this trouble. She hastened away up the brook, and after searching for a while, she found the kingfisher sitting on a bough overhanging the stream. She addressed him without any apology, for she wanted dreadfully to know what was the matter with her; and she poured out her whole sad story from beginning to end. The kingfisher sat quite quiet on his bough, and listened with great attention.

“Yours is a very curious case,” he said when she had done; “a very interesting case indeed. I should strongly recommend constant change of scene; a tour on the Continent, now, would be very likely to do you good. Frequent application of cold water could hardly fail to be useful; keep to your usual insect diet, but vary it a little with the small crustaceans you will find in the stream; I can speak warmly of their value from my own experience; they are an excellent tonic. This is what I advise you to do; but if you should find yourself still troubled, I should go to some one who has made a special study of these cases, which I have not.”

“Whom would you recommend?” said Kelpie nervously. She felt quite sure that she would have to go to the specialist, because the kingfisher had told her to do exactly what she always did. She changed her scene, she dabbled in the water, and she lived on flies and anything she could get in the brooks.

“You might consult a crow,” said the kingfisher. “They are the most highly developed of all birds, and are nearest to man. There is one who lives in a wood a mile or two higher up. You can mention my name if you like.”

“Thank you very much,” said Kelpie; “but would you be so very kind as to tell me what is the matter with me?”

The kingfisher sat still for another moment as if in deep reflection; then he made a dart downwards into the water, dived, brought up a fish, and glided with it in his beak round a turn of the stream and disappeared.

Kelpie went at once in search of the crow. She felt that whatever came of it, she must find out what was wrong with her. After a long search she found the crow sitting on the dead branch of a hollow old oak-tree. The bones of a young rabbit, which he had been dissecting, doubtless with a scientific object, lay on the ground below. Kelpie felt very frightened when she looked at this huge black bird, with his enormous black bill, curved into a sharp hook at the end. But there was no help for it; she felt she must go through with it. As she approached, he gave a low hoarse croak.

“What do you want here?” he said.

“The kingfisher recommended you, sir,” said Kelpie, “as a – ”

“The kingfisher recommended me, did he?” said the crow. “The impudence of these small practitioners! But never mind the kingfisher: pray go on, my time is limited.”

“I have been greatly troubled,” said the trembling Kelpie, “with a desire to find out – ”

“I see,” said the crow decisively. “Yours is a very simple case. What did the kingfisher say about it?”

“He said I was to have change of scene, and cold water, and – ”

“Exactly,” said the crow. “He’s quite wrong. You would certainly have died if you hadn’t come to me. You are suffering from a tumor inquisitivus esuriens of a very virulent kind. I can take it out for you.” And he began to sharpen his beak on the bough.

“Is it a very – a very dangerous operation?” asked Kelpie.

“One and a half per cent survive it,” said the crow.

“I think I would rather not have it done,” said Kelpie.

“Very well,” said the crow; “but you won’t live through the winter. And if you don’t make haste and go,” he added fiercely, “I’ll do it whether you like it or not!”

Kelpie flew away as fast as she could, and never stopped till she was a good mile away, and she left that part of the country the very same day. She resolved to ask no more questions, but to pass the rest of her life as well as she could, and die contentedly in the winter. As for foreign travel, that was plainly no good now; so she thought she might as well return to the pleasant place where she had been brought up, try and find some of her relations, and get a little help and comfort before she died.

Slowly and sadly she made her way towards Oxford. It was now getting towards November, and the country was growing sad with falling leaves and creeping mists; but that was quite in keeping with her own feelings, and she did not notice the absence of the sun, or feel any sorrow at the browning of the trees and fields; only just one little gleam of sunshine brought her a moment’s pleasure, when she saw the spires of Oxford catch it in the distance, as she came flitting up the river-bank from the point where she had struck the Thames.

About two miles below Oxford she met a boat coming easily down stream, with two human beings in it; one was sculling, the other steering. She stopped on the towing path at a safe distance from them, and waited till they should pass. They were within a few yards of her, and she was just going to take flight again, when the one who was steering called out to the other in a voice she remembered only too well,

“Easy a moment, Poet, I want to look at that bird.”

Kelpie stood quite quiet, except that her tail was moving up and down with great rapidity. The Poet looked round and saw her.

“Aha, Chick,” he said (his friend was called Chick because he spent so much time in studying the development of fowls in the egg), “do you remember that hot afternoon when we lay in the garden and watched the wagtail? I suppose you’ve found out by this time why they wag their tails?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Chick. “Nor have you found out why Shakespeare wrote no plays the last three years of his life.”

“Quite true,” said the Poet; “but then I don’t work at the Museum, where they find out everything!”

“No, they don’t,” said Chick; “you’re quite out of it. Spare your irony for once. I’ll just tell you what happened that afternoon. I kept thinking of that bird all the way up to the Museum after I left you, for when I came to think of it, that tail-wagging was rather an interesting point. So when I got there, I asked the Professor about it. Well, he was a bit bothered with his specimens that afternoon, and rather short in his temper, and I was late, which made him worse; so he gave me a lecture on the spot. He’s a good lecturer, you know, even when he’s quite serene: but when he’s savage there’s no one like him. He comes out with home-truths then, and blows you into little bits. I wish you would come and let him demolish you, Poet, it would knock such a heap of rubbish out of your poetic head.”

“Very likely,” said the Poet: “but what nonsense did he knock out of your head? Plenty there to operate upon.”

“I quite allow it,” said Chick. “That is a scientific view of education which you poets would do well to act on. But the Professor growled at me when I asked him why wagtails wag their tails, and said there would have been some use in asking how they do it. And then he took me into his room, and showed me diagrams, and explained the muscular system of a bird, which I never understood before; and he kept me a whole hour there, till at last he got quite sweet again. And after that he said he’d give me a piece of advice, which I’ll hand on to you, and I hope it will do you good.”

“I’m sitting at your feet,” said the Poet, “go on.”

“Well, what he said was this: ‘You young fellows are a deal too anxious to get hold of a reason for everything; and I dare say you think it a fine thing to come and try to puzzle us with questions. Now what you have to learn here at present is not reasons, but facts. Leave alone for the present these questions that begin with the word why; there are many of them that can never be answered, as far as I can see, or they can only be answered by getting together and properly arranging a great quantity of facts. Your wagtail question is just one of this kind. You have no more business to be asking me such a question, than a young wagtail has to be asking its parents why it wags its tail. You stick to facts, and don’t ask why a thing is, until you know altogether and exactly that it is and how it is.’

“And I’ve been sticking to facts ever since,” added Chick; “and you’d much better do the same. Pull on, Poet; and whenever you see a wagtail think of what I’ve told you, and your poetic brain will be all the better for it.”

“There she goes,” said the Poet: “I wonder why she stopped so long. I really think she was listening to us.”

“I might have spared you the Professor’s sermon,” said Chick. “Pull on, Poet; go ahead. Here we are running into the bank while you’re asking questions that begin with why!” And they dropped slowly down the stream.

The Poet was quite right. Kelpie had been listening – drinking in every word of the Professor’s sermon. A delicious and soothing feeling grew upon her at each sentence, and when it was over she sprang upon her wings with a sense that a whole load of trouble had been taken off her mind.

“They were all wrong,” she said to herself: “thrush, jackdaw, kingfisher, and especially that wicked old crow. Why couldn’t they tell me the truth? But that’s a question that begins with why, and I must stick hard to facts.”

Kelpie kept hard to her facts, and found her happiness in doing so. She kept to flies, beetles, and small crustaceans; she kept hard to her husband when the pairing-time came, and to her eggs and young; she kept to the laws of her kind, and left the questions that begin with “why” to the Professor and his species.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

It was a wild and gusty day early in April; a wet wind from the south-east drove the waves into a little bay, where the sea had long ago forced an opening in the great chalk rampart of the coast. The downs rose steeply above this opening, their short sweet grass freshened by rain and wind; down below in the hollow a little stream, clear as every chalk-stream is, trickled through the long grass, still brown with the sun of last summer, and nestled here and there under a fringe of dwarf willows or alders. As it reached the shore, which was a huge bank of rounded flints from the white cliff, the brook spread itself out for a little space on a stony bed, and played with a few green weeds that had fastened themselves upon the larger pebbles, then crept quietly into the flinty bank, and vanished utterly before it lost itself finally in the sea-waves.

Early in the morning of that April day you might have seen a tiny bird fly in from the sea, and settle, more dead than alive, upon the top of the bank. Here the strong wind, coming now from behind it, blew up its feathers and made it so uncomfortable that in a minute or two it fluttered down the stones to the wider bit of stream beyond; and then again, seeing still better shelter a little further on, it struggled along the brook till it reached the first little group of fringing willows, and there, close to the water, in a little hollow under the bank, where the willow-roots were thick and close, and where a turn in the brook gave respite from the gusts and rain, it felt itself safe and tolerably warm, began to preen its feathers, and at last put its head under its little brown wing and slept.

It was a willow-warbler; olive-brown on head, back, and tail, but with just a tinge of yellow too; whitish-gray on throat and breast, and with a faint light stripe over the bright hazel eyes. It was very small, not more than five inches from point of beak to end of tail; but it had that night crossed the sea from France, and in the last few days it had made a journey of some thousand miles from the north of Africa where it had passed the winter. It had not travelled alone; it had left the coast of Normandy with a company of tired friends; but in the night the wind rose howling in the south-east and scattered the weary but hopeful little band. Many a time in that trying night it would have sunk upon the waves if the thought had not ruled its soul of the cool moist and of varied sunshine and showers, where it had first learned to fly, where the next summer it had learnt to use its voice and to woo a mate, and had brought up its young without disaster. Driven northward by the burning heat of the south, which had dried up the streams, and killed the juicy insects it loved, it had made its way steadily with its comrades to the green moist land of its birth, and its heart was full of ardent hope for another long summer of love and song and happiness.

After a while the clouds passed and the sun came out; then the little bird woke up, and realized that it had eaten nothing since it left the coast of France. In a moment it was stealing up the willow, searching every twig for insects, and finding very few, for the pelting rain had washed the boughs clean; it made its way slowly up the brook, and presently coming to a bit of treeless marsh land, whence the stream was fed, it took a longer flight across a ploughed field, and stopped at a likely-looking spot – a small round pond, closely shut in by willows and hazels. Hardly had it alighted on one of these, when it recognized the faint voice of a bird of its own kind, and returned the single cheep by another like it. In a moment the two birds were together, and recognized each other as having been in company all the way from Africa, until the storm separated them at sea.

“I’m very glad to see you,” said our friend; “but where are the others, and how did you come here?”

Just then it saw an insect on a twig hard by, and went off in an instant to seize it; then another and another; and in its hunger forgot all about the answer to its question.

“Well, you had better catch your fill of insects, and then I can answer your questions,” said the other. “I have been here ever since the sun came out, and though I thought I could hardly have eaten anything after the loss of poor Pipi, I managed to make a good meal as soon as I got my feathers in order.”

“The loss of poor Pipi! What do you mean? Is he only lost or is he dead?”

“Dead as a thrush’s snail!” was the answer of the other bird, who seemed a little put out by his long journey. “I’m very sorry of course, but it was all his own fault. You know how Pipi was always ready for any game; always for prying and poking his beak into anything strange, just like any vulgar sparrow.”

“Don’t talk like that, please,” said our friend whose name was Flip. “Pipi was my particular friend and if you insult him you insult me.”

“Well, don’t get angry,” said the other, “but wait till I tell you how that foolish Pipi came by his end. We started, as you know, at nightfall; Pipi was near me. He was as lively as ever, and was making fun of old Blossom because he had only half his tail feathers – you remember that sunny garden by the Mediterranean, where the cat got hold of Blossom and we thought his last hour had come? – Blossom couldn’t fly quite straight, and Pipi, that mischievous Pipi, said he wondered what sort of a tale Blossom would have to tell when he got to land!”

“But he helped on old Blossom, too,” said Flip; “and don’t you remember how we all had to slacken pace halfway across, before the storm came on, in order not to leave the old creature behind? Pipi would have it so!”

“Yes, I do indeed,” said Twinkle; “and it was a mercy that we ever got here alive. I should like to know why we should risk our lives for old Blossom, or why we should obey Pipi – Pipi of all birds.”

“Come,” said Flip, “don’t be so crusty. You have no cause to be angry with Pipi. I remember very well, when we were among those cruel Italians, how Pipi saved your life: I saw it with my own eyes. You were in an olive-tree by a stone wall, and on the top of the wall sat a boy with a bow and arrows, aiming at you; Pipi gave you our alarm-note, and when you took no notice he flew right at you and made you move. The boy shot the arrow, but seeing two birds he luckily missed both.”

“Well,” said Twinkle, “didn’t I say I could hardly eat because of Pipi’s death? Now I am going to tell how it was. You know how even in our first journey we were specially warned about those lighthouses, which we always so much want to go to: I really don’t know how it is, but somehow one does want dreadfully to go and see what that light is. Pipi was always excited about it; he declared he would find out some day what they are, and now he has found out with a vengeance. Poor old Pipi! He and I and one or two more were together the greater part of the way, but it was very hard to stick to one another. We had better have put off our crossing a day or two. The wind changed to the south-east, and that is very disagreeable; it comes behind you, and forces you on whether you will or no, and it gets in among the feathers and ruffles them about, and lays bare your skin, and blows the breath out of your body, and bangs you about this way and that – I can feel it now,” said Twinkle, in an injured tone, as he turned round his head and smoothed his feathers with an air of great feeling and commiseration for himself.

“Now I didn’t ask him to tell about himself,” thought Flip. “Here he is safe and sound anyhow.” But he held his tongue, and Twinkle went on: —

“After we had got half-way across, a sudden blast of wind broke up our company, and for some time I was quite alone in the darkness. Every now and then I could hear the voices of our comrades, and they must have been close to me, for the wind howled so, that it would have been impossible to catch them at any distance. I was high up, as we all had been, but now it began to rain, and I flew lower down, to see if there was any island or object on which I could rest and get shelter; but that was hard work, I can tell you, for the wind seemed to come from below whenever I opened my wings wide, and gave me such a lifting that I was quite giddy.”

“Go on, please,” said Flip, as the other paused again to recall his own discomfort. Flip felt much inclined to make unpleasant remarks, but swallowed them down with a juicy green fly, which he found at that moment. All this time they had been quietly working about the willows, and eating what they found; for willow-warblers are seldom still, and can talk very well as they search for their food.

“Well, don’t be in too great a hurry,” said Twinkle. “Consider what self-denial it is to me to tell you such a story: it’s nearly as bad as going through it all again. When I succeeded in getting lower down, and could see the white foam of the waves, I suddenly saw a light below me, and a little in front, twinkling like a great hawk’s eye, and – ”

“The lighthouse!” cried Flip, with a pang, for he felt sure that the worst part of the story was coming.

“No, not the lighthouse,” said Twinkle. “Don’t interrupt. You’re a most unpleasant bird to tell a story to, stopping one just in the most exciting part: it quite spoils the pleasure of story-telling.”

“Why, I thought – ” Flip was going to have reminded him that it was such self-denial, but he thought better of it, and swallowed his impatience with another fly.

“And down I went,” continued Twinkle, “to get a rest; for where there is a light, there must be something to perch on. Well, in a minute or two I found myself clinging with all the strength of my poor claws – ” (here he looked at them compassionately for a moment, and gave them a peck or two with his bill, to clear away some tiny particles of salt that still adhered to them).

Flip could hardly help making an angry dash at him, and indeed ruffled his feathers indignantly, but the other was too much occupied with himself to see it.

“Clinging with my poor claws,” said Twinkle, slowly and sadly, “to the rigging of a ship, and trying to get my breath. I hadn’t been there very long, when I heard a voice I knew, and who should seize hold of the same rope but Pipi himself!”

“Was Pipi very bad and tired too?” asked Flip.

“Not a bit,” was the answer. “I never knew such a bird as Pipi. Of course I pointed out to him that we were in great danger, and that we couldn’t hope to hold out much longer – and what do you think he said? ‘Twinkle,’ he said, ‘think of your first nest last year. Don’t you remember those sunny days in the meadow by the brook, and the excitement as the hatching days drew near?’ Can you imagine such folly as to talk of hatching when we were sitting in a place like that, hardly able to hold on for the wind?”

Flip thought he knew why Pipi had said that, but he did not interrupt this time.

“Well,” continued Twinkle, “he went on like that, and told me to cheer up, and said we couldn’t be far from land, for the ship was only a fishing-smack caught in a storm, and they never venture very far from shore; and at last I got very angry with such nonsense, and told him nothing should make me leave go except the wind. So Pipi declared at last that he was going on, and I had better come too; but I wouldn’t, so he opened his wings, and just as he left the rope, somehow or other I did so too.”

“Why,” said Flip, unable to suppress himself this time. “I thought you said Pipi was the last bird in the world you would obey!”

“I didn’t obey Pipi,” said Twinkle, indignantly. “I went of myself.”

But Flip knew better, for Pipi had a wonderful influence over the other birds, and they all knew that Twinkle in particular could always be led by him.

“Well, there we were again at the mercy of this horrible south-easter. Pipi was a little ahead of me, and kept up his call-note continuously: I kept on answering it as well as I could. We had not been flying long, when suddenly, at no great distance, a light burst out in the darkness. ‘Land and the lighthouse!’ called out Pipi, and on we went at a tremendous speed, for the gale was now almost behind us, roaring furiously. In another moment the light went out as suddenly as it had begun, and then I knew that it was one of those revolving lights that we have sometimes seen in our travels, and I guessed that it was that one on the headland yonder, where we arrived a year ago, that beautiful calm night with the gentle westerly breeze.”

“Oh, dear, dear!” said Flip, “I remember that it puzzled Pipi dreadfully that night, and he declared he would find out all about it some day.”

“Well,” said Twinkle, “his wish has been gratified this year. I was almost too faint and tired to fly any farther, and my pace had slackened, so that Pipi was some way in front, when out came the light again, a great deal bigger than before, and just ahead of us. As I reached it, and was sinking down on the land exhausted, I saw Pipi fly right up to it, and heard a loud tap of his bill against something hard; and then he fell down on the balustrade in front of the light, and there he lay, as dead as a thrush’s snail, as I said before.”

Flip was silent, and put his head under his wing to hide his grief. “Did you go and look at him?” he said at last.

“How can you ask such a question?” answered Twinkle. “I sank to the ground, and got into some long grass under a bit of hedge by the lighthouse. I hadn’t strength left to take wing again; and if I could have done it, I should have been blown against the lighthouse: and what was more, the light had gone out again, and I couldn’t see where it was.”

“But the light came out once more, I suppose?” asked Flip.

“I don’t know,” said the other. “I put my head under my wing and went to sleep under the hedge; which is exactly what you too would have done, if you had been there.”